eunny jang

A really useful tip I picked up from the Zuni Cafe book, but had forgotten until last night: When roasting a chicken, don't worry about futzing with racks or anything. Use any oven-safe vessel just large enough to hold the chicken, and pre heat it dry in the oven. Wipe your chicken very very dry and just stick it breast side up in the pan. When you go to turn it, there should be no sticking, and the skin will be beautifully crisp.

A weensy 3-pound chicken, roasted in nothing but its own rosemary-stuffed, salted skin. The seasoned bird was put uncovered in the fridge for a couple hours before cooking, which I think really helped dry the surface and crisp the skin. I made a roasted garlic and red pepper flake puree, and briefly considered slathering it on the chicken for the last few minutes of roasting, but decided I'd rather eat crispy skin. Instead, a couple tablespoons of it were frizzled in oil before adding blanched broccolini spears. Squeeze of lemon; sprinkle of Asiago, green vegetable done. A generously oiled, winey orzo pilaf with candy-sweet oven baked grape tomatoes, wilted spinach, and shallots. Later, when no one was looking, I (shame, shame) ate the salty, crunchy scrapings from the roasting pan. Oh, and I ate the gizzard of the chicken, salted and peppered, as a little treat-for-the-cook snack before my boyfriend arrived.

Is it Morton's that does a $7 martini-and-steak-sandwich during happy hour?

I wish I had your fridge! Everything you're planning on making sounds delicious. Edit: ahhh, FORward slash.

My favorite is the woman who purchases nothing but a large bottle of Midol, Tampax, and two tubes of slice 'n' bake cookie dough. I once saw a man at Costco who had the following two, and only two, items on a freight cart: a "Body By Jake" Cardio Glide-stride excercise machine thing, and an enormous tub of white chocolate macadamia cookies.

Considering the quality of your photos (which are really lovely), that trade would be most unfair to you! Last night we ate: Little belly-bomb-esque burgers on grilled potato rolls, assembled as desired with guacamole, jack, bacon, tomato, onion and all the other usual suspects. I ate two; my boyfriend ate four. Red skinned potatoes boiled till tender, bathed in olive oil and salt, cut into slabs and grilled to make thick, crunchy "chips" The best baked beans ever, with bourbon and molasses and chipotles and BACON.

great tutorial above. Here's a cheater's method to get the edge margin of nori to stick: put a very small dab (like one or two grains) of rice down that edge. roll as usual, and press gently to smash the rice grains and glue the flap down. When I was little, my mom wouldn't buy me Elmer's Glue for construction paper projects and made me use pounded rice instead

Can I play even if the quote's from a television show? The Sopranos - Adrianna is cooking breakfast for an upset Christopher. She tries to comfort him, and he snaps at her:

Surf and Turf, only not: Flank steak with an ECSTACY-INDUCING chimichurri Jerked shrimp, grilled and beheaded/shelled at the table Little grilled peach/red onion salsa/salad kind of thing Rice cooked with coconut milk and ginger with scallions stirred in Greens. I so have to get a camera.

I haaaaate cell phones in restaurants. It's so incredibly rude to excuse yourself from a conversation you are having to answer a call, unless you are expecting a birth or a death - you are, in effect, saying "excuse me while I pay attention to someone more important than you at the moment." I hate call waiting, too, for the same reason. Cell phones are a convienience to be sure - I have one, and admit I'll chat on it at times when alone, but never while putting someone else on hold (in person or wirelessly) and always unobtrusively, to avoid bothering people within earshot. You know what I hate the most? People who pull out their ringing phones and just sit there staring at the caller id, trying to decide whether or not to pick it up, while their obnoxious ring tone blares the first few bars of Ode to Joy or Take Me Out to the Ballgame for interminable repetitions at a decibel level approaching that of landing jets.

The one in Burtonsville/Silver Spring. I have had ok-but-not-fabulous luck with the location in Rockville, but this was HORRIFYING.

Ate crabs last night - picked some up at Cameron's and brought them home. Yes, the craving was something fierce, and we didn't feel like driving far to get really good crabs, but really, we should have turned right around when faced with the dribbling, black-edged and stinky razor clam cadavers lying spread-eagle and exposed on the melting ice. If that didn't put us off, we should have taken note of the display of fresh oysters in canning jars - one lid of which was swole like a barefoot-and-pregnant teenager. The hermetic seal on another was (like hers) definitely broken. Undeterred, we bought a couple dozen (females; no males left at 7pm on a Sunday). The lightness of the bag was only briefly commented upon. Got home, spread out newspaper. She-crabs were light and filled with water, with mushy flesh. And you know, I was unaware that blue crabs came from West Virginia coal mining towns, but they all seemingly had black-lung. These crabs should have rioted in the company store. They should have hired Erin Brockovich to represent them in a multimillion dollar class-action suit against the mining company. They should have demanded that the camp doctor tell them what was really going on. Thier gills were grey and black and spongy. They were sad, sorry little specimens (two of which were most definitely not legal sized). Even the roe was dried out and hard. UGH. This is the third crab eating session of the season for me, and definitely the most dissapointing one. Anyone have any luck with stores where one can pick up steamed crabs locally and NOT play a crapshoot where if you lose, you get, literally, a sack of crap? I've got good sources for live, but he's too far to drive for a casual Sunday dinner.

Now that I think about it, I don't like dessert at all. Although I would always prefer cheese - and MAYBE some fruit, depending on the cheese - to some gloppy itchy-sweet thing, I am sort of a cretin at heart - I think I have always kind of thought that if I'm still hungry after finishing dinner, I'll just have another steak, damnit.

So my Great Steak Experiment went off pretty well. I ordered a Lobel's Cowboy steak (a two-pound ribeye with a giant, frenched bone sticking out) as a gift. It had great flavor - not insanely flavorful, mind you, as the blather about dry-aged for three weeks would have you believe - but it was tasty nonetheless. And it was exceedingly, meltingly tender, not mushy like filet can be, but tender in all the right ways, even cooked to a done-ish medium (as the giftee likes it). The leftovers were still buttery even after refrigeration. The charred and crisp ridge of outer fat was (shame, shame) consumed and thoroughly enjoyed, in secret, by me as the dishes were put away. Worth it - perhaps not as the regular Friday-night steak, but for a special meal, certainly. And I would absolutely consider buying one of their mixed boxes for a special-occasion barbeque or other party.

I just took on 5 Guys. My first time, but not the last, assuming that I recover from this experience. It was pretty good. Two big, loose patties, reasonably flavorful and certainly juicy, with cheese, bacon, tomatoes, lettuce, onions, and mustard. The short analysis: not enough bacon, too much mustard, and (pet peeve!) wan, bite-less diced onions that fell out in sad little jumping-ship pieces with every bite. The fries were excellent, salted well and not really crisp after the first minute or so, but tasty and an excellent swab for green-tabasco mopping. I went to the location at King and Beauregard in Alexandria (Bailey's Crossroad-ish?). They get points for the box o' peanuts sitting in the corner (a fixture of 5 Guys, from what I am told), but lose points because, when I grabbed a handful, the nuts rattled in their shells, macarena-like. Also, I can't decide if the guy behind the counter who told me my order would be too much food for me to eat is a plus or a minus. For the record, I ate it all, but mostly just to prove him wrong. I may have to be rolled out of here later. Not to mention, my office and my clothes smell and feel like I rubbed myself down with peanut oil, and then put a topcoat of it on the walls. Fucking Illustrator CS is even more of a bitch when your mouse is slick and your keyboard is sticky.

Yes, yes, yes! And in the winter, great soup.

Not anymore. Prices have gone up and the past two times we've been the service was inattentive and the food mediocre. It used to be so wonderful.

It is astonishing to me that this thread has gotten so heated. As far as independent, good Italian for $30pp including wine and three courses? Il Pizzico in Maryland.

How 'bout this one:

You could easily stroll over to 18th Street where it crosses T and eat at the dreaded Lauriol Plaza or Straits of Malaysia or any of the restaurants down that strip. For my money, though, I'd go to Caravan Grill, get a takeout container and fill it with pomegranate chicken and lamb shanks from the buffet. You have to love a place that (inexplicably) keeps a basket brimming with fruit stripe gum, apparantly part of the buffet, right next to the olives and pickles.

Toddled on down to Sushi Taro last night. I've probably eaten there half a dozen times or so, but not within the past six months. We unfortunately got stuck in that white box of a room they keep for large parties - with one drunk-ish three top, one actually drunk four top and one quiet deuce (us), the room was uncomfortably full and almost intolerably loud. The food was just okay, with the exception of some spanking-fresh yellowtail, buttery and wonderful and the sexiest thing I have eaten in a while. My chirashi assortment was respectable, with a couple dainty pieces each of tuna, fatty tuna, yellowtail, salmon, flounder, raw sweet shrimp, tamago (cold and sweet, blech) and a mess of salmon roe, which oddly, did not taste at all of the sea or of fish - it was like eating cells of bubble wrap. The underlying rice was really dissapointing - cold and compacted and doused in vinegar. Also at the table was the sashimi assortment "C", which had three big slabs each of tuna, boston mackerel, fatty tuna, flounder, giant clam, and salmon. I wished a little more thought had gone into the selection; aside from the giant clam, it was pretty much the same spread of fish you'd get in a supermarket to-go sushi container. I did, however, eye enviously the bowl of hot, fluffy plain white rice which accompanied it. The Spanish mackerel we ordered alongside was, I think, the dissapointment of the night; it was cut very thinly into translucent slices, and didn't have that luscious fatty smack I was after. The sear job it appeared to have undergone seemed pretty pointless; the skin was limp and half-cooked. The scallion sprinkled atop wasn't shaved into wispy rings, but sliced into sad little bruised chunks. For $9.50, I thought it was pretty clumsy overall. Tilting my bowl of soup to drink resulted in a mouthful of grainy miso with the texture of wet sand. A good three tablespoons of it was sitting at the bottom of my bowl. Maybe the liquid was saturated and the miso particles precipitated out? Or maybe it had been taken from the last dregs of that pot? At any rate, it was kind of gross. With agedashi tofu, shumai, chirashi, a sashimi platter, one a la carte sashimi item, and two carafes of sake, the total was $133 for two before tax and tip. We had great service, and a really interesting conversation with our Uighur waiter. Still, I can't help but feel like this restaurant is assuming that its good reputation and the blessing of Tom Sietsema excuse its more-than-occasional clumsiness and carelessness. But then we rented Goodfellas and went home, so everything was all right.

I used to really like Xando for coffee and studying at night, but am pretty meh about Cosi. Their sandwiches are outrageously priced, and everything on the little line always seems to be held at a temperature that approaches absolute zero. And the chairs where there's outdoor seating are really uncomfortable. The coffee is still decent though.

Bvus, great pictures! Interesting experiment. I am ordering a couple of Lobel's Cowboy steaks for a birthday gift for my boyfriend. Of course, I expect to get a steak that tastes good, but the Flinstones proportions of it with that huge handle of a bone are really amusing. Frenched and gussied up, it reminds me of a lamb chop...gone terribly, terribly wrong. The giftee in question will love it. Now, how on earth am I supposed to cook this thing? Sear followed by oven roast? Would it work on a grill?

I. Don't. Care. For. Chocolate. In fact, I would say I dislike it pretty intensely.

Oohh, the Federal Reserve has a GREAT cafeteria with a grill station, a pizza and pasta station, a soul-food station, a fantastic salad bar, and an ice cream bar. My recollection is that the food was routinely tasty and well-prepared. Don't know if you can walk in and get a visitor's badge, but I used to sign in as the guest of an RA there and eat - grilled entree with two sides, a salad, a soda and a sundae for something like $2.35