eunny jang

The restaurant doesn't owe you anything. A warm and sincere thanks is plenty. They COULD give you something once in a while, and it would be nice, but you certainly can't expect it. Would you expect the GP you've gone to all your life toss in a free physical once a year to say thanks? Or the mechanic you visit faithfully to give you free services at Christmas? A lot of small businesses just don't have room built in for that.

So last night I rolled out some beautifully thin, wide spinach pasta dough for lasagne. They're 13 inches long and almost six inches wide. I, like an idiot, cooked all of the dough though it was obvious that I'd only need half of it. So now I have four beautifully thin, bright green, enormous sheets of cooked pasta oiled and rolled in damp paper towels sitting in my fridge. Is there anything interesting to be done here? I was thinking pasta chips, or maybe folding them into boxes and baking crisp...but I'm sure others will have better ideas. If worse comes to worse, I'll make manicotti or something.

Well, that's totally justifiable.

Last night I made a big gooey American lasagne, though with less mozzarella than restaurants do (can't abide slicks of oil on top of melted cheese) with some leftover meatballs crumbled into leftover meat sauce, freshened with more tomatoes and some delicious, fennel-heavy pork sausage. I used homemade noodles for the first time for this - the texture was so different than that of boughten noodles, silky and brightly flavored - I'll never go back. The noodles were rolled from dough with plenty of spinach in it - a brilliant plan that ensured the noodles were self-moisturizing and didn't dry out even with my dry-ish sauce. Broccoli quick-cooked in white wine and tossed in the pan with lemon zest, crushed red pepper and flakes of parmesan.

Don, I was all set for this raucous forum and it's been very tame. I guess excepting a jab at Eunny Jang, I've been behaving myself. However, there are a couple of things I was hoping to address. Maybe those people who formed their preconceived notions stayed out of the chat. Or maybe my really long answers don't let others get a word in edgewise. First, thank you for doing this chat - it's been informative and entertaining, and I've been following it since it was announced. I suspect there are a lot of people who have never eaten at your restaurant and have heard all the controversy, but don't have any particular bias against it or against you - I'd certainly rather someone run their business the way they see fit than "sell out". Overall, my impression is that you are unorthodox and brave. But then, I don't know you at all, and am hardly fit to judge either way, so I haven't. I hope that you don't think there's a sea of angry people out there with pitchforks - I hope most people (idiot washingtonpost.com user reviewers aside) feel like I do. CK has always been on my list to try, and the liquor license will probably be the thing that finally does it. I do, however, have problems with daSto. I didn't see it being a pun or humorous in any way - see my suggestion that you open, rather, a German bakery in the same location called "DasSto" Thanks again for taking the time to have this conversation and add a little more knowledge and levity to this corner of the world. Didn't notice any jabs at me, but then, obliviousness is hardly unusual for me.

Buy some grape tomates. Poke holes with a toothpick, and marinate in pepper vodka with herbs, maybe a little vinegar if you like. Virtually no prep, and they'll stay nice-looking for the whole car ride as long as you keep them cool and don't squash them. There are a hundred things to do with these: Serve them like chocolate truffles in candy papers; chop and use for a killer salsa or on crostini; skewer them and grill with cubes of feta. Or just pass them in a bowl with toothpicks. On a hot day, people will snap these up and yell at you when you run out.

are we talking condiments, or SAUCE? I would drink a proper red wine pan sauce from the cooking of a really delicious piece of meat, sweet with shallots and mounted with not-too-much butter.

As usual, Hillvalley is totally correct. The Smithsonian museums have pretty dismal choices - lots of cafeteria-style places to get soggy salads and heat-lamped sandwiches: a place that goes for a "retro soda fountain" look in the Museum of American History but fails miserably; the McDonalds and KFCs mentioned previously; a very pretty, rather pricey atrium garden cafe in (I think) the National Gallery of Art, which if I remember, had really awful, steamtable food. There are good restaurants within easy walking distance, though. Although I still think your best bet is either pack a lunch or assemble one of hotdogs and firecrackers to eat sprawled on the grass on the Mall.

My boyfriend cooks, but it always involves some sort of grilled item. He is king of the marinades - dumping whatever sounds good together and sloshing it around. Sometimes, out of nowhere, he buys a turkey that's on sale and roasts it so he can have turkey sandwiches and make turkey soup. Plain-jane stuff, but everything he makes tends to taste pretty good. Once, he put some fresh blackberries on a plate because, in his words, "that corner of the plate was empty and it needed some other color to make it look good" But usually, he comes over and I cook. He helps me with the dishes, and dumps the garbage down the chute for me.

Spices, spices, spices! But that's pretty casual I suppose.

For what it's worth, it looked kind of empty at just-past-midnight last Saturday, with a pack of large, imposing fellows standing out front glaring at passerby and shouting nonsense at each other into miniscule cell phones. That time period's not really reflective of the dinner scene tho, I guess.

Great minds! We had the same chops for dinner, with lovely sage-rubbed center cut loin chops in a breadcrumb-parmesan-lemon zest crust. A cheese-less Provencal-ish charred tomato and potato gratin, summery and sunny and oozy with juice and crispy with crumbs. Less-than-pristine green beans gussied up with a toss in some interesting whole-grain-and-vodka mustard.

Everyone's been up to delicious and amazing things, I see We had big giant beef/pork/veal meatballs (inspired by the meatball thread, of course), marinara and my first-ever homemade pasta. It was absolutely delicious, and easy to boot - it was an awakening for me to discover that pasta at home could actually taste like something rather than just be a vehicle for other flavors. I think next I'll print out that beautiful eGCI course and try my hand at stuffed pasta. Arugula with a very light anchovy/oil/cheese/lemon sprinkle.

For the binder, I like to soak a couple slices of crustless white bread in milk (spongy stuff works best here), sqeeze, and chop down to a homogenous paste. It really helps with moistness, and contributes another soft, tender texture rather than the graininess that too-dry breadcrumbs or the glueyness that overmoistened ones sometimes give. Oven or pan brown, just to get color on them, and then finish simmering in the sauce. It makes for a greasier sauce, but I think it turns spaghetti-and-meatballs into a cohesive thing rather than meatballs-sitting on-top-of-spaghetti.

Silly, yes. unsettling or offensive, no. I should have been clearer - I was suggesting that many of the customers G. Clark is hoping to attract would think so, in this hyper-pc day. Personally, I just think it's un-clever, sort of gratuitous, and has some serious smugness working for it, which is always unattractive.

Did Tom skip his chat yesterday? It's not archived and the persnickety stupid Post website isn't letting the weekly schedule load.

On the contrary - I'd think the bulk of the target demo for a "little foodie store" would deem the name vaguely unsettling and offensive before they thought it was clever, cute or humorous. And that's my real problem with it - it's not clever at all. It's not a pun, it's not really wordplay. Seems kind of pointless. For the record, I think "zeeStore", or "de Store, esse" would be pretty silly names too. Now, a German bakery in the middle of the 'hood called DasSto' would be hysterical.

I'm not about to daSHto daSto anytime soon. How could five little letters so succinctly combines condescension, obliviousness, and one-beat-behind trendiness? Any way you cut it, it is guilty of at least two of the above. The name reminds me for some reason of Jean Teasdale from The Onion: "eBay? hOoray!" Kitchen kitch bought at a "little foodie store" holds no appeal for me. Either it's gingham-checked crap like this: BBQ Chef Geese, which is so cutesy-tacky it makes me want to puke, or it's self-satisfied hipster doofus crap like this: Rosie apron, which is so smug it makes me want to puke. Their "hard to find packaged goods" better be damn interesting.

Is this hysterically tongue-in-cheek, intentionally obnoxious, or just stupid?

In no-fingers situations, I don't mind the last segment if the dish is served on a plate (or soup bowl with a wide rim in the case of soups/stews etc) that one can easily maneuver with a knife and fork on. Then it's an easy case of two cuts (one to slit the shell segment and one to free the shrim, whole, from it), fork, and eat. What really bothers me is if the dish is served in a vessel impossible to perform this operation on, i.e. a giant martini glass or bowl with no rim or somesuch, but you're still supposed to keep your fingers out of it. Otherwise, I figure if it's a venue and a group of people you feel okay eating with your hands in, then it's okay for me to eat it shell and all. In that case, the tail makes a handy little handle.

Cooking just for me this week. Spareribs were on sale for less than $1.50 (!!)/pound, but barbeque was the last thing on my mind. So I baked them the way my mom used to, with a sweet, sticky marinade of soy, mirin, scallions, garlic, honey, and plenty of musty red Korean chile powder. I also fished pieces of crispy skin out of the pan of chicken fat I had rendering on the back of the stove, along with the diced onion I'd scooped in there to flavor it. Then, I ate them :)

Puttanesca, hands-down. For that pesky mushy leftover pasta, I am fond of frizzling leftover (unsauced) spaghetti or linguine in oil with garlic and red chile flakes till crisp-chewy and topping with a lightly fried egg and oil toasted crumbs. The broken, oozing yolk is already a perfect sauce right out of the shell.

Latest crab report - Bushel from Waterman's in Ocean City. Small-ish (I thought) mediums, $89/bushel. The larges, about .5-1 inch larger from point to point than the mediums, were running $139/bushel. They were uniformly sweet and plump, if a bit small, and full of heavy, firm meat. The shells actually came away very easily - provided for easier access - though I don't know if that's a good thing. My only real complaint was that the mustard was pretty grey in most of them. I ate sixteen over the course of 3 hours. Urp.

Ahh. It's a soft, long caramel tube, with sweet white creamy stuff (like the filling of an oreo, but softer, which I suppose means it has more hydrogenated fats or whatever) inside. It is absolutely delicious, in a make-your-teeth-itch sort of way.

I'd make a not-sweet-at-all coconut rice with scallions, myself. Or is that too heavy?