eunny jang

the ox hearts sound amazing, though i like heart cooked crisp-crusted over dry heat rather than braised to melting, myself. or was this thread about something other than a restaurant and the food they serve? i can't remember.

I buy them at the store too Note: I was talking to my mom tonight, and she mentioned that you should NEVER cover the pot - doing so will make the beans "puh-juh", which in this context, I gather she means kind of loose and mushy.

Pale? Na, that cocktail is making me blush.

<shudder> No gin, but drank some of the most eunique drinks I've had in a while.

Ahh. We went "just to have a drink and scope it out" - didn't even use it. And actually, the bill was a LOT gentler than I expected, which is wonderful, since it means I'm going to deposit my broke butt on those stools as often as possible going forward.

[heresy] You know, I actually didn't love that pappa. The egg was the teensiest bit overdone - the bread wads and tomato bits were such separate, distinct things, just hanging out in the same broth - a creamier yolk, broken and swirled about, would have done wonders towards coherence. [/heresy] The bacon was excellent, crisp and melting - the fries (oh, those lemons, some traced a little with juice-gone-caramel showing through the batter) were delicious - and the tuna was beatiful, so startlingly of the sea, so clearly fish, with some tapenade to give it fishy emphasis with no hint of fishiness. I never, ever, ever eat dessert - can't abide gloppy sweet things - but when shown the dessert menu, the pear tart stood out immediately. The passionfruit sorbet, puckeringly tart and crunchy with seeds, against the shattering tart shell and the silky custard and those pearly, pristine pear slices - how do they cook those pears? They're soft and yielding with just a little snap - goodness me. My boyfriend got some chocolate toffee thing that I didn't even bother to taste, as I was busy licking my plate. And that Derek is some bartender. Though clearly slammed with things in the back, the front, and outside, he was kind and thoughtful - and he didn't make me feel like a wine idiot, pouring glasses for me that were like loupes for the thing the plate, bringing out unnoticed details and blooming subtler tastes. Dug it - and how.

Went. Drank. Ate. Dug. Totally, man.

Goodness, that sounds good.

pa...le....na..... tonight. how late is the cafe open, anyone know?

Re: clumpy salt - a little humidity is one thing...a shaker-shaped pillar of salt that would stand alone even out of the shaker is another, disgusting, thing. Re: dirty ashtrays: wholeheartedly agree, but it squicks me out when I see someone wipe down an ashtray and then tuck the bar rag back in his apron, like he's going to use the same rag for something else <shudder, shudder, shudder>

Seared-off cubes of chuck. Tomatoes, onions, oregano, crushed chilis, plenty of cumin. Long-cooked. Beans on the side if you must. Zero-sugar cornbread with scallins and bacon baked in. Diced white onions. Sour cream on the side.

Yum yum yum. Spices is great for casual Sunday-night eating, picky groups, and low-pressure dates. The satays uniformly suck, but the wafu salad is great. I really like all their curries - subtle but distinct. The sashimi is just okay - more than once I've watched my chirashi idle under a heat lamp while the rest of the food comes up (ICK). The tom yum soup makes me want to turn cartwheels. Spices, spices spices! I like the (still new-ish) new space, too - anyone remember when it was dank and dark and, if you were unlucky, you got stuck eating in what amounted to a hallway? edit: o yah - Spices also gets points because it is definitely, indubitably infinitely better than Dupont Raku. They are the same restaurant - casual, non-threatening pan-Asian - but Spices, like, gets it right.

Bring your own knives. Stick them in your belt. Every time you go over. Tell her it's for your own protection (mean against dangerously dull knives slipping off tomato skins, but glare menacingly as you say it). Kill two birds with one (blade).

I haven't seen this with baby crab, but I DIG gae-jang - halved blue crabs quick-cured in chili paste. You may be meant to eat the baby crabs whole, but when faced with the larger ones, you bite down on the raw crab (the shells soften a little in the cure) and work out the squelchy, silky raw meat with your teeth and lips. Is it nice? It's AWESOME. The chili paste is generously spiked with vinegar and garlic and scallion. Repeat the process until your lips burn and you can't taste anything anymore. Eat it right out of the plastic deli tub. YUM!

If the salt shaker is full of clumpy damp stuff (particularly at an outdoor table), I'm outta there.

So, I'm sprinting down T street in heels, late meeting edemuth and mdt at Straits of Malaya, when a blinged-out gold Camry pulls out of a blind alley and almost knocks me over. Emboldened with the rage of the righteous, I start yelling, "Watch where you're going, you as...." He is agitated and embarrased. He cuts me off: "Your fly is unbuttoned." Chastened and sails pretty much windless, I go on to Straits and meet Erin and Mike on the roof. With apologies for being late, I order a Tsing Tao. We look at the menu. We talk about the pedigree of Malaysian food (interesting: as you'd expect, it's basically Chinese, but with spicings borrowed from all over SE Asia, particularly southern India). We agonize over the menu, which is long and delicious-looking. We sit and bask in the setting sun. We eat shrimp chips and pickle-y, crunchy acar, and the wonderful five-spice rolls - cross-sections revealing a murky millefiori of deeply spiced speckles and bits, encircled by a band of miraculously frizzled-crisp wrapper and set off with a bracingly sour tamarind sauce. I could eat these every day for the rest of my life and not get tired of them. That complicated spice combination echoes and reverberates in my mile-a-minute brain. Second beer. The #8 and the #12 being requisites, we choose one more to round out entrees: the tamarind chicken. I make a fool of myself by stacking up the silver plate stands when the food comes out, thinkng that they're unused votive candleholders or something. The #12, curry chicken with eggplants, is the standout and the favorite at the table. I love eggplant cooked this way - melting, creamy flesh that has managed to Hoover up every iota of ginger in the sauce, against the snap of the still-firm skin. The (excellent) carrots have nothing on these little satchels of punch and contrast. The #8 is a close second; the tamarind chicken is only a little dissapointing - very subtly flavored with only a whiff of tamarind. The tomatoes could have been cooked a little more - but that wouldn't have improved on their intrinsic mealiness (no excuse this late in the summer). The rice that accompanies each entree is deliciously gummy and swollen with sauce. Everything has only a tiny gloss of oil, and clean, distinct flavors. The service is friendly and unobtrusive. Larry Tan, in a Hawaiian shirt that gives him thirty thousand cool points before he's even said anything, stops by and inquires how our meal was in the sincerest way possible. The roof deck is bustling with customers and servers; every few minutes the doorway inside is darkened by a server bringing out a handled bowl of delicious looking and smelling food. It is breezy and dark; the table next to us has lost something and a group effort among servers and Larry and the diners has everyone on the floor, looking around for whatever it is that the big-earringed girl has dropped. It's funny, and I'm full and comfortable and happy. I laugh, and turn to finish my beer, and I realize.... my fly is still unbuttoned. Confidential to edemuth and mdt: I'm really not usually such an idiot.

LeftBank, too.

Cook or soak the beans until they're just barely softened; then add plenty of soy sauce and a little sugar or mirin and cook till they're wrinkled. The way my mom makes them, they're just barely tender with a little "bite" in the center. She garnishes with sesame seeds. YUM!

Ok. The orgasming over in the Straits of Malaya thread is making me think that tonight, the last night of summer, would be nice to spend on a roof deck eating shrimp chips and drinking Tiger beers. My boyfriend has bailed on me - anyone up for a little stir-fry and some late-summer sun? The weather's supposed to be beautiful....

Mmmmm. Butternut squash and not-too-watery pumpkin are natural partners for sage. Ravioli alla zucca, or a risotto with roast squash cubes and lots of sage....

Or the ones who are afraid to wash mushrooms and you end up with dirt and nasty ground things and worse in things like morels.

Should I go here tonight? Don's post makes it sound not like getting there Right! This! Minute! is like missing Haley's comet.

Potatoes, cheese, bacon, and onions. I mean really, Jinmyo, can't you come up with anything a little less proletarian than that?

Actually, that sounds like a LOT of fun. But I'd be terrified to run into my last boyfriend there (where's the "roiling hellbroth of hatred" emoticon?). Me, I'll be at the bar at Bistrot du Coin, eating the mussels with white wine and unabashadly asking for extra bread with it.

I love baked potato soup in the winter - make a thick roux (don't let it color at all), add milk, bring to a bubble, and stir in flesh-only cubes of Idahos coated in olive oil and baked long and hot until the skins are crunchy. Season and serve very plain with dishes of the usual baked potato condiments: bacon, cheese, scallions, sour cream, salsa, what-have-you. Warming and just the right thing when you're feeling fussy and can't decide what to eat. I always end up scraping the bowl out with the crunchy skins