whippy

no biggie, i just meant that a slow restaurant sometimes has cashflow problems which can affect the quality of the food, not that a slow restaurant has premade food sitting around. thanks for the reply.

fennel is easy. for next year.

so, this is sorta off topic, but is the joint busy? it's sorta in a great location, but also sorta hidden. are people eating there? this has a big impact on the quality of the food!

i'm not really sure it IS an age issue. isn't it a class issue instead? when u go somewhere cheap (i.e., "funky") we're not paying enough to care about the uniform of the servers. how many older people would go to a cheap and "funky" joint and be upset about a random piercing? but when we go somewhere expensive (i.e., "nice") we indulge our aristocratic fantasy that the servers should display a certain uniform. isn't it what we pay for a meal that dictates the standard of servers' uniforms?

pre thread: 39 post thread: 46 (215 all topics)

for myself, i find worrying the odds of getting a bad egg tedious, if not irritating. i know i'm healthy enough that if i get sick once out of every 50,000 eggs i eat--i will probably somehow survive. of course, i'm not elderly, an infant or immuno compromised. i eat with abandon and i feel it's my right. i have some immuno compromised friends, and when they eat eggs they simply order them well done. no big deal. unfortunately in my neck of the woods, my ability to eat anything made publicly from "pooled raw eggs" is severely limited. all raw egg based emulsifications are, restaurant wise, against the law. hollandaise etc, is regularly made in portland from commercially pasteurized eggs; in my experience, it's yucky. (you can't even store eggs on the upper shelves in refrigerators, lest a random broken egg leaks into other products below. from lay experience, maybe 1 egg out of every 30 dozen arrives broken. few of these broken eggs would leak through the packing, but let's just say 1 out of 2 to be liberal. if you accept my 1 in 720 number, my local government is creating rules to protect a small segment of the public from the dangers of raw eggs not just at the level of 1 in 50,000, but 1 in 36 million. go, multnomah county, oregon!) none of which would really bother me if there were a truly good substitute for raw eggs. but so far as i've experienced, there isn't.

i adored my last pair of bouncy rubber anywears for 3 years! dirt cheap, and they made love to my feet. (back not a problem for me.) went out into the world to get a new pair, and they weren't available locally anymore, so i got a pair of birks instead. they're not nearly as cozy. not the cheapest link, but the best picture of anywears

i hope none of you are shy. this is a great blog in the making. do share with us! in some ways, some hows. you don't have to give away everything-- --just almost everything!

i have a hunch the main place this dish is served is hollywood.

what about grinders? i use a big mortar/pestle, a small mortar/pestle, a coffee grinder, a food processor and a vita-prep blender for grinding. i think i've got most tasks covered, but that's five tools for one job. online, i've noticed various indian-made grinders that i don't recognize. can anyone describe some of these grinders and how they work? are there any really good all-in-one wet/dry grinders? is a sil-batta the final answer? what about coconut graters? my routine involves removing the shell, then peeling the coconut with a peeler and finally micro-grating or grating/freezing it. kind of a pain in the butt. indian coconut graters i've seen seem to disregard the shelling/peeling aspect of things. but what about the brown skin?? any other thoughts on region-specific pots? steamers? fryers? just a couple of tiny questions. whippy

touch of pink love that the biggest navigational icon is for "recipes"--bigger even than "synopsis." hope the food's going to come across on celluloid, and not stay in the closet.

i add a tiny pinch of cinnamon to lychee juice and shake with vodka etc. do almost the same thing with soda, garnished with a split chilli.

i've sometimes wondered about this from the other side of the coin--what sort of indian food goes well with cocktails? very generally, i find myself preferring to shy away from large portions, dairy, rice and dals; i gravitate toward smaller portions, spices, meats, fried food and breads. with the latter sort of fare, imo, beer tends to lose its edge over cocktails. i follow vikram that cachaca is brilliant with some kinds of indian food (and anyone in n. america making a caipiranha in this light--take the time to find key limes if you can!). but i hesitate to limit myself to one choice of base libation. given the right treatment, rums, tequilas, vodkas and gins all have their shining strengths with some kinds of indian foods. i'm not sure about various whiskies, though.... another thought that comes to mind is that cocktails are often--at least as much--about the mixer as the base. fruit and vegetable juices, sodas, syrups: all seriously impact the nature of the cocktail. so-- what sort of mixers (guavas, tomatoes, pineapples, mangoes (!), chilis, sodas, citrus) go with indian food? and what sort of indian food goes with these sort (fruit juices, etc.) of mixers? well, blabbity blab blab. blame toucano brand cachaca.

a bit on avocado leaves, too

in spite of "cell free" signs on the door and on every single menu, our joint regularly hosts several calls, incoming and outgoing, daily. sometimes hourly. the servers all know that they do NOT have to wait on customers until they have stopped talking on their phones. most of the servers, however, are too nice and will engage the self-absorbed with pantomimes, pointing, shaking and nodding. the back of the house is more fun. all the cooks and dishwashers know that when a cell phone on the floor rings it is their job to cheerfully shout "Hello?" hasn't made a dent in the cellular nation.

i like oysters raw, fried, broiled, grilled, chopped or pureed into soups...well, in many ways with many accompaniments. but i remain somewhat suspicious of the combination of oysters with lots of dairy. (the cooking light recipe strikes me as sort of "glurpy.") where are oysters eaten in india? i've located one recipe from goa and about five from saraswat cuisine. (while none involve dairy, a couple use coconut milk, which sounds yummy.)

i'm not sure about the annato seed, but when processed into the little red bricks labeled "achiote" paste, i've found that it can act as a very red coloring agent. i mix the paste with o.j., oil, ground cumin, sugar etc as a quick, bright marinade for fish and chicken. after grilling, you end up with a rich brown crust over background red hues. because i think it has a non-neutral and assertive flavor of its own (tangy, iodine-y) i haven't imagined using it in an indian context until now. yours, whippy

to my tastebuds, i find some similarities between fresh (and frozen) green soybeans, fresh green fava beans (which are hyper fashionable within the american market) and fresh green chickpeas. in anticipation of the coming chickpea harvest (in my whereabouts), i'm curious about how/if you use them? is there a region noted for its use of fresh green chickpeas? anybody cooking with fresh favas? frozen soybeans? how? and especially, fresh green chickpeas? they're just so yummy. yerz, whippy

questions answered about 3-4 pages back under fresh turmeric/mango turmeric. i've purchased frozen amla from local groceries. they're very different from oregon gooseberries.

i wish i could respond to all the ideas discussed here since i asked about (and feel somewhat responsible for) the blogs' various loci. but i'm not smart enough to do that. i can say this, i marvel at egullet's international reach. it strikes me as a new thing in our world. i think it's both tremendous and important to talk about food on this sort of scale. though perhaps this is just new to me, i'm not sure. i've enjoyed all the blogs i've had time to retrospectively read. (soba's fantastic index doesn't readily identify all the locations or origins though, just some.) from those i've gotten through, most are totally rad. however, in my neighborhood at least, hyderabad gets less media coverage than new orleans (for instance) and i remain equally interested in both. that's where egullet comes in, an opportunity to throw the spotlight on areas unexplored by the powers. the local media don't seem to care about hyderabad as much as new orleans. while i agree the unit of nationhood is indeed very arbitrary (it lumps), i think it's at least functional when talking about areas of the globe on an international scale. asking us to be region-fluent on a global scale will eliminate a great many of us; well, maybe just me there are so many intelligent people posting all the time. keep the blogs coming, from wherever!

can anybody who has been paying better attention summarize the loci of the various blogs? my hasty retrospective survey reveals japan, u.s., canada, france, germany. where else? it'd be nice to see the torch passed elsewhere, if somehow possible. (loved harry, hated neville longbottom why so tall?)

i think you disagree with me? not totally sure. but if i'm reading you correctly, we agree in spirit, in terms of the way things should be. lots of people should be enjoying the very good meals available at bewon. (who aren't.) i myself regularly dream about just such a restaurant landscape. however, i'm not at all sure that people like you and i--who are interested enough in food and restaurants to spend their odd minutes posting random thoughts on a board dedicated to the food-obsessed--really speak of a more general portland population. i lurk the portlandfoodorg site, and admire it. but a table of ten, or even a small crowd will NOT support a gem like bewon in the long run. big crowds and regulars support restaurants in the long run. in big crowds, say, 2 people out of a hundred are "foodies." does that sound fair? for what it's worth, i can think of nothing funnier than art galleries in the pearl having to move because the cheesecake factory could outbid them. i'd laugh myself silly. i know that's offensive somehow. i'm sorry. whippy

"rude food" published may 1 2004.

yes, 4s instead of 3s (on a scale of 1 to 10). is that fair? probably not really. chains are special creatures. you are a dreamer. i am with you all the way, but pdx is not yet ready to "just give it a try." most of our compatriots would rather find a comfortably corporate atmposphere to relax in. as evidence, who bothers to post here? your sad comrade, whippy

well, for once somebody is doing a good job of smuggling, then, over here on the west coast. crates of them are currently available at a local grocer for only $2.49 a pound. unfortunately, they are shipped on ice and possess all the charm of any frozen, and then thawed fruit.