jtraceynj

I know someone -- a real fan of The Hot Grill -- who after two recent visits says the magic is gone. She thought that it was a different dog, and that the new dog was -- nasty. Anyone else been there lately? Holly, you out there?

Suvir, a friend asked me: "What do you use when it calls for a "fresh hot green chili" as almost every recipe does? I use a small amount of jalapeno because that's all I can find, but Madhur Jaffrey says that's wrong!" Can you help?

Fish sticks, macaroni and cheese, and ketchup -- lots of ketchup. Sometimes I would "accidentally" push the macaroni into the ketchup. I tried to resurrect this as a gag at home -- it was pretty gross. My grandmother made a famous 2-ingredient "pasta fazool": campbell's pork and beans mixed with spaghettios. Thank God I wasn't alive yet. My aunt said she hated this so much she asked my grandmother: "Ma, can't you just keep them separate so I can eat one, then the other?" And my grandmother said "No, then it wouldn't be pasta fazool!" Another odd memory: My grandfather, addicted to Entenmann's crumb cakes, would hide them from my father. When we'd visit, my dad would hunt for it, find it, slice the entire top off, eat it, and put it back in the hiding space. Good for much hilarity. This was the only time I heard my grandfather curse.

Pea soup with hot dogs. Yum! Thanks mom!!! (Makes my wife turn green though.)

Recipe: Sloppy Joes Adapted from TriBakery Time: 1 hour 20 minutes 2 tablespoons olive oil 1 cup finely diced onion 1 teaspoon minced garlic 2 pounds lean ground beef 1 cup tomato paste 2 3/8 cups tomato purée 1/2 teaspoon chili powder 1/2 teaspoon Tabasco sauce 1 teaspoon puréed canned chipotle in adobo 1 bay leaf 12 kaiser rolls or hamburger buns 12 slices cheddar cheese. 1. In a large skillet over medium heat, warm oil, and sauté onions until translucent, 5 to 6 minutes. Add garlic, and sauté for 30 seconds. Add ground beef, and sauté until well browned, 15 to 20 minutes. 2. Add tomato paste, tomato purée, chili powder, Tabasco, chipotle and bay leaf. Stir until blended. Raise heat to bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low. Simmer mixture, stirring occasionally, until thick enough to spread on a sandwich, about 45 minutes. 3. To serve, heat a broiler. Slice the rolls open and place them under the broiler until lightly toasted, turning as necessary. Ladle about 1/2 cup onto the bottom of each roll, and top with cheddar cheese to taste. Return bottom halves to the broiler until cheese just melts. Top with the remaining halves, and serve immediately. Yield: 12 servings.

Making risotto today for dad's birthday, and so the usual $37 stockpot of delicious meat brodo is ready to be defatted and used. My question is: Must that disgusting layer of fat be thrown out, or is that like throwing out gold? Would it be gross to save for cooking, say, potatoes? Should I be ashamed of myself for even asking?

Come on, this is the best (worst) you people can do? Puh-lease. 1. Canned pea soup with cut-up hot dogs. 2. Budget Gourmet Swedish meatballs (3 packages), dispose of noodles, mix just the meatballs with kraft mac and cheese. 3. Perdue short cuts stuffed into store-bought tortillas with pre-shredded cheddar, melt, then pour can of hormel chili on top. Eat until unconscious. 4. three fried eggs, 1/3 a roll of Taylor ham (fried), all chopped up together and shoved into a hard roll with more of that pre-shredded cheddar. 5. bennigan's monte cristo. Need I say more. 6. fried breakfast sausage fried and cut up into chunks, mixed with hashbrowns and maple syrup.

Michael, I agree that the Kings isn't anything to get excited about. I can't even find good fresh mozzarella. On a separate note: have you found any restaurants you can recommend yet? Try Theresa's in Westfield, it's often good and pricing is reasonable.

Rachel: I wasn't yelling. If you look at my initial message about all Jason's recommendations being in his area (which I think must be in another thread, cause I don't see it here), the "yelling" was meant to be a joke. It was an attempt to get people from other areas to chime in, not to get you to spend your life visiting out-of-town restaurants and reporting on them. I did post about a few restaurants that I like, but being very new to the area, I don't have a lot to say about the local places just yet. And I don't think most of us need to be told that some places are worth travelling for. With all due respect -- going from Scotch Plains to Englewood is not what I'd call travelling "a little further." I've driven 100 miles just to go to a restaurant, and I will again. But most of us are looking for regular stops on our lists.

I'm not sure what to say about you thinking Cathay 22 is "past its prime." It may not be cutting edge but you can eat well there and it's nearby -- aka Not in Bergen County/Hackensack/Englewood. Any restaurant 20 years old probably meets the definition of past its prime. Unless you want to travel then the choice -- between Cathay 22 and the 800 "hunan woks" in the area with the colorful photographs of General Tso's chicken above the counter -- is pretty easy.

In Scotch Plains -- newly emigrated from Rumson! Which has Fromagerie, a great place to blow a 401k; and Salt Creek Grill, which is a great place to blow ๪ on bad hamburgers and sorry ass fries; and this little Irish pub/restaurant, which is a great place to sit in a barely air conditioned room and eat canned mushroom soup gravy on thick chicken cutlets; and What's Your Beef?, which is supposedly Heather Locklear's FAVE place to eat, in spite of her 22-inch waist. Apologize for spreading urban myths. And -- actually -- Fromageries was wonderful. But there we sat, two barely solvent editors, eating this marvelous food, our 92 Mazda Protege hidden down the block far from the beemers and -- no lie -- the lambhorghini (sp?) in the lot. There were actually people there with thick wads of 100-dollar bills.

How about some suggestions in places other than the 10-mile radius around Jason Perlow's house?? :) We don't all live in Hackensack or Edgewater dammit!

By the way, I keep hearing how great noodle chu on 46 is -- I wish I could say my experiences there were good. Three visits, three disasters. Disgusting soggy scallops, the blandest pan-fried noodles I've ever had, "spicy" mushy dumplings that my grandmother could have popped into her mouth 8 at a time without reaching for a drink. Bean curd soup was okay. IN Eatontown (Monmouth County) there is a place called Far East Taste that I thought might break the trend. Noodles are a little better there, and there are a couple of nice soups. But I don't know who he has working in the kitchen with him -- invariably (and I do mean invariably) we found pieces of bones in stir fries, or chicken that tasted like it was freezer burned, or huge pieces of hard onion in a dish whose onions were otherwise soft, etc. I worry about food safety when I taste two pieces of pork that I have to spit out because of the off taste while the other pieces taste good. My wife won't go with me there anymore. At least the dumplings are SOMEWHAT smaller and less doughy than the usual embarrassing NJ dumplings. There is good Thai food to be found though, which is what we usually opt for when sick of Cathay 22.

Hank, the only Chinese restaurant I've ever been to in Jersey that was good was Cathay 22 -- and, regretfully, most of the good stuff seems hidden away on the "Chinese only" menu and dumb American slobs like me are presented with a menu with exactly two pork recipes: moo shu pork and pork in garlic sauce. Thankfully there are some good dishes on the menu, including spicy dumplings and these little eggplant puffs and dandan noodles and kung bao chicken, etc. I am trying to get the courage to ask them to translate the !@#*$!@$ Chinese-only menu.