herbacidal

Doing the Piggly Wiggly!! Piggy doing the Jiggly Wiggly!!

okay, let's do this one at a time. i'd probably call that south asian, not east asian. keralan, now that's something i haven't seen too much of, or heard about outside of a F+W / Travel + Leisure article a while ago. Can't say that I think any South Asian places here are especially notable. There's Shivnanda and Cafe Spice, both in Old City, the latter more for beginners to the cuisine. Outside of those 2, everything else I can think of within city limits is the "buffet" type. Kabul and Arianna, 2 Afghan places also in Old City, are pretty good, I was at the former years ago, and the latter about 2 years ago. The only cabbie place I know of is Chef Abu's, on 9th about 3 blocks north of Vine. Not particularly. It's probably better than Portland, but still not necessarily notable. I would view Foo's with not suspicion, but rather disdain. But maybe that's just my mood. Just walk around Chinatown, he'll see the places with stuff in the windows, and he'll probably know what to look for. There's a place on east side of 10th between Cherry and Arch, Mai Lai Wah on corner of 10th and Race, Ocean City on 9th just below Vine St. Expressway. That first one is a shop that just does meat, "jaam liu" in Cantonese. The other 2 are parts of restaurants. Most of the "name" Latin places are fusion. Exceptions are tacquerias, Las Cazuelas, Los Catrines, and a few others. He's either thinking of Cuba Libre or Alma de Cuba. Wait, how can I forget Pasion!. I hope that's the one he's thinking of, b/c that's the 1 I'd recommend. Striped Bass would also probably be a good choice. The secret handshake is: grasp left hands, 360 spin around, grasp right hands... He can contact me for more info in any area. I've never had the chance to speak to any Singapore Chinese in depth, would be sorta cool. I'm ABC Cantonese myself.

And it has begun!! Thursday before I went to bed, I started the first 2. The first two flavors are: habanero and watermelon Jolly Rancher. I ended up going with Smirnoff 100 proof, as KatieLoeb recommended to me the higher alcohol content would be helpful. I did go with more flavoring than recommended above, 3 habanero peppers for 800ml. I used 5-6 Jolly Ranchers for the watermelon. The 3rd one will be star anise, I just have to put it together. I am very concerned about oversweetening the vodka with that one.

GIMME no, go get it.

hey varmint, is there a general plan/timeline? are you going to still be going strong on sunday?

sounds interesting. worthy of an experiment.

i may have to back out. i am planning a conference that weekend for people around the state coming to Philly. i really should be there. although continued monitoring of this thread is not helping how i feel about my obligations to the conference. it is doing amazing amounts to my consideration of driving down at 2AM Friday evening to arrive 10AM Saturday morning.

popped in on dwight's at 47th and lancaster saturday. much better than ron's (the one time i had it, which I suspect was after its true heyday) and phoebe. isn't there a place just off broad somewhere in north philly? not as spicy as they imply when i ask for hot, though.

more importantly, was it on for more than one episode? if so, i think i saw it, but after about 2 minutes, i had to change the channel.

philly. lessee, when i'm dining with others, particularly wine geeks, particularly one wine geek, i'll drink wine. otherwise, i'll usually drink water. when i'm at bars, it's usually bourbon, but occasionally beer. at parties, i'll bring and drink cognac. then there's the occasional shot of something or other. hmm, guess i'm an equal opportunity alcohol abuser.

glad you enjoyed it too. i do want to check out the new chef, albeit for different reasons than katie implied for herself above. refer to one of my previous posts.

i meant it in a negative sense, but i should probably retract that. that's why i would retract my previous connotation. yup, except i don't care particularly much about wine other than it taste palatable, and any wine i would come close to is at least that much. tell me and us how it goes.

okay, i give in. i'll say what i shoulda said before. it is my impression from everyone that wine brats functions as a singles group / dating service not offficially, but informally for people between 25-40 or so.

there's probably all kinds of names, as far as english. If you think about it, for many Chinese terms (ingredients, occasions, etc.), there's names that have emerged as romanized pronounciations and others that have emerged as something closer to translations. For the former, think tofu, for the latter, bean curd. there's another chinese name i think i remember learning for Dumpling/Duanwujie Festival, just can't remember specifically what it was. just think about Mooncake Festival, or based on the translation, Mid-Autumn Festival.

well, let's be specific. i've always preferred cooks that actually spend time in their restaurants. by that i mean, i've always also preferred cooks that actually did the shit, were in the weeds in the BOH, instead of directing everybody. (i've seen both kinds.) in other words, people who can be both production manager and creative head. this applies to outside a specific restaurant as well, ie building in TV shows, books, yada yada. i've also become somewhat accepting that not everybody has those multifaceted capabilities. such is life. i did not say that i admired and particularly liked bobby flay. but i am somewhat accepting of him as a decent chef/cook based on what i've seen of him in general.

I'm more on the fence. Not so much a fan of him and his cooking as seen on TV in general. He does exude a vibe that doesn't appeal to me personally. I will say that many of the people that i've seen on his shows don't really seem to be particularly knowledgeable in my eyes. can't help but agree wholeheartedly here though.

This is more like a tamale than a dumpling. oh, those dumplings! i've always called them rice cakes in english, for lack of a better word. problem with that is, there really are so many chinese "rice cakes". the same can be said of dumplings, of course. i was actually remarking to someone that i forgot it was today/yesterday (here/asia). but tamales is a better description than anything, because of the wrapping thing, plus less common. okay, that's my new term for it.

yea, i never used to like fish skin. now, along with the fat, it's one of my favorirte parts.

my bad, that's the wine brats. i know nothing about phillywine.com except having just looked it up.

this is third-hand, but I am absolutely sure you will meet tons of people 25-45. That is the reputation of the group.

ginger is appealing. lemongrass not so much, at least for me. but that's not so much fun! at any rate, with less "predictable" flavors that I'm trying for, I would probably do smaller jars, so as to risk less.

I assume to dilute you add water? Yea, that was one thing that had occured to me. Well, the key for me, as I see it is to use something good enough such that it is neutral in odor and taste, yet not so good that it would be a waste to infuse it with something, it would be something I would drink straight up. My impression based on vodkaphiles.com was that Smirnoff Red Label fit that bill. That combination intrigues me. Although at this point, the 3 I want to do are: 1) Jolly Rancher, because it's interesting to me how the taste would come out 2) a Spanish flavor oriented one, because if I do bring one to the paella shindig in Chicago, this would be the one to bring 3) an Asian fruit one, because I'm Asian (Chinese, because no Asian actually thinks of themselves as Asian, although there are no "Chinese fruits" really) on that last one the following have occured to me: durian, jackfruit, mango, longan, lychee I've googled it, but I may be limited to what I can find locally.

those last two sound really good. the cantonese style one i'm not so sure. Would you know what part of Guangdong they would be from? I've never heard of them personally.

sorry, what is pandan?

yea, i gotta agree with T there. in fact, that's what i wanted to say originally, before I got distracted. not enough good stuff in between the bread.