SobaAddict70

Tarts count. (All kinds. Maybe the next eGCI could be a tarte tatin making class, cuz god knows mine never come out right.) Soba

I think any of the above would be fabulous. (Including a burger pie. Sort of like shepherd's pie I guess. ) Rachel, I'm a spanikopita addict. I would've made my screen name SpanikopitaAddict70 but Soba has a better ring to it. Seriously, I really really really dig Greek spinach phyllo pies, so you've got my vote on that one. Soba

Make a poundcake, and top slices with roasted pears, serve with vanilla-infused whipped cream on the side. Make a pear chutney, serve with pork or chicken. Or a pear salsa, for use with chicken or fish. Poach pears in syrup, hollow with a melon baller. Stuff with ice cream or chocolate mousse, dip top half in simple syrup and bottom half in raspberry sauce. Serve in a pool of raspberry coulis, with whipped cream on the side. Bake in a baking dish, dotted with butter and brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg or allspice. Drizzle dark rum. Bake until pears are tender, serve by itself or with a soft cheese, or topped with crushed biscotti. Soba

Anything that has chocolate and TONS of butter is in. Soba

Well, you can also reply to the thread as well. Soba

Since the potluck we held in July was such a resounding success, I thought we might do another one. But this time, the theme will be PIE. Since this is one of those "eGullet-isms" that we regularly toss around on the boards, it only seems fitting that there be an event that celebrates the use of it. Because the holiday season is fast approaching, we're thinking of holding the event in either early December or sometime around the second or third weekend in January -- either December 6 or January 17. At this time, we have a place in mind which can hold about twenty to twenty-five people comfortably, although we are open to suggestions regarding alternate hosting sites (for example, if lower Manhattan is not convenient for some people). Pies (both savory and sweet) are welcome, as are quiches, pasteles/tamales/empanadas, knishes, breads, pasties, pierogies, dumplings, spreads, cheeses, sausages and cake. If anyone can make a case for why their offering should be considered pie, that's fine. Please feel free to reply to this thread so we can gauge interest level. Please PM Suzanne F or myself if you'd like to reserve a spot. Soba

I passed on the review form. heh I give their burgers a 6.5 out of a possible 10. I ordered mine medium rare, and it came quite rare on the inside. A little mushy, reminiscent of hamburger-flavored steak tartare. Their fries were excellent however. 1 out of 2 ain't bad. And when I got home, I took a much needed nap. Soba

very Joel Robuchon-ish, Jinmyo. (the salad that is) Kristin: rice and rice?!? Soba

When in doubt, what would El Gordo do? That's the ticket for me. Soba

I recall a recipe from the Time-Life Foods of the World book for Japan that went along something like these lines: Take some turnips and cut them into small balls. Take some seasoned shrimp puree and coat each turnip ball. Roll shrimp-coated balls in noodles which have been broken into matchstick sized pieces. Deep fry the noodle balls until noodles and shrimp are golden brown. Using chopsticks, carefully cut open the noodle balls and gently take out the turnip, reserve for another use. Insert a glazed chestnut into each noodle nest, and serve. These should appear as a mimic of a chestnut in its wild state. Soba

Mmmm, gruyere. One of my favorite cheeses, along with Jarlsberg and Brie. Oyster tempura as a garnish or as an accompaniament is something that I came up with the last time I made a variation on a roasted red pepper, tomato and onion soup that usually pops up around this time of year. Roast red peppers, peel, julienne and set aside. Roast plum tomatoes, onions, carrots and garlic cloves (squeeze out garlic), set aside. Saute some onions in a little unsalted butter. Add vegetables, cook for a few minutes, deglaze with white wine. Add shrimp or fish stock, simmer for a few minutes and adjust seasoning. Remove from heat and let cool slightly. Working in batches, puree soup in a food processor or blender. Return to pot, add light cream, simmer until heated through. Adjust seasoning and serve. For service, top with oyster tempura, pan-seared scallops or sauteed shrimp. Soba

NYTimes Dining In/Dining Out Section Wednesday, 22 October 2003 Cooking with the Times: André Soltner, Recipes: 1. Tart Dough 2. Quiche Lorraine (Bacon and Cheese Tart) 3. Alsatian Ziwelawaïa (Alsatian Onion Quiche) 4. Tourte de Poisson à la Bière (Fish Quiche in Beer Custard) Amanda Meets The Naked Chef (Amanda Hesser) Southern Indian Renaissance (R.W. Apple, Jr.) Restaurants Trapped In Amber (William Grimes) Bits and Pieces (Florence Fabricant) The Newest Addition to Ducasse's Crown: Mix In New York (William Grimes) 50 Carmine (Eric Asimov) Newcomer to the Rarefied World of New York's Best: The Grocery (Florence Fabricant) Essence d'Anchovie (Melissa Clark) Wine Talk (Frank J. Prial) The Minimalist (Mark Bittman) Correction Recipes in today's section: 1. Pumpkin, Sage, Chestnut and Bacon Risotto 2. Steamed Fish Fillets With Hard-Cooked Egg Sauce 3. Linguine With Colatura What?!? No Nigella this week? Soba

Along the lines of listing your favorite soup, what do you like to garnish them with? Croutons? Chives? Cilantro? Bruschetta? Roasted cauliflower? Scallops? Oyster tempura? Creme fraiche? Foie gras wontons? Or nothing at all...? Mine depends on the soup. As for croutons, I prefer homemade anyday. Soba

The way it's done in my family: Leftover rice, oil, garlic, minced scallions, mushroom soy. (The mushroom soy is my preference.) Maybe some Chinese sausage if I'm feeling kinky. NEVER any egg. I should add that I am of Filipino-Chinese ancestry, born in the Philippines but raised for the most part here in the U.S. (in response to alanamoana's post about his/her background on page 1 of this thread). My family likes to keep things relatively simple when it comes to fried rice. Soba

droooooooooool.... Soba

No, unfortunately, I haven't. I don't really use precise amounts when I make these things. It's sort of feel as you go. I'm still in the process of tweaking the adobo so I can approximate it to as close as the version that my mom makes. Ditto for the dinuguan (pork and offal stew with vinegar, chiles and pig's blood) which I feel is much more difficult, precisely because my mom made it far less often than I'd have liked to. My mom's cooking, btw, is the benchmark that I use in evaluating any Filipino food that I come across. Very few things pass that test. I'll think about putting stuff into the archive though. ----- Monday: Roasted cauliflower soup with pan-seared scallops and caviar (break up a head, drizzle with EVOO and a little salt, roast at 325 F for 45 minutes or thereabouts, let cool. saute onion, carrots and leeks in unsalted butter, add a bit of minced garlic if you want, saute until onions and leeks are translucent. add chicken stock. add a potato (for body). add cauliflower. adjust seasoning and simmer or until potato is cooked through. remove from heat and cool slightly. working in batches, puree soup in a food processor or blender. return to pot, add a splash of light cream, and adjust seasoning. for service: garnish with one or two scallops, a spoonful of caviar, and either minced scallions or chives). Green salad with white wine viniagrette. A baguette. Pellegrino. Tonight: Leftover soup (no scallops). Stir-fried vegetables and tofu, with oyster sauce. Brown rice. Poached, sliced chicken breast with ginger-garlic paste. Iced green tea with honey and lemon. Soba

I love soup. This is one of those things that I can have any time of the year, preferably warm or hot to chilled or cold, preferably at the beginning of a meal as opposed to the middle or end. The range of soups out there is amazing and stunning. Things from a simple bowl of consomme to elaborate affairs such as chrysanthemum hot pot and the liquid formed at the end of having shabu-shabu. Gazpacho, fruit soups, vichysoisse, potage, mulligatawny, miso, chicken-based soups, soup with dumplings or matzoh balls, bouilliabaise...these are the ultimate comfort foods, in my opinion. I don't have a favorite soup. I love them all...although my three "must" favorites are chicken noodle soup (and the quality of the stock matters), lentil soup, and miso. What are your favorite soups? Discuss. Soba

Mrs. Dash + most anything in need of salt = yum. *ducks from incoming* Soba

Lunch, from our corporate cafeteria: balsamic marinated chicken breast with roasted peppers and cipolini onions Jamaican coconut rice and pigeon peas green beans with mushrooms Poland Spring fresh fruit. Soba

A query then: Would a person from a low-income household who had Internet access (and there probably are households out there who fit that description in this day of the computer age) find this thread -- if not the thread, specifically the direction that this thread has taken -- useful or enlightening or vaguely amusing? I'm not sure where I stand on that. I'll get back to you though. Soba

Like I said, maybe it's just me. It always seemed to me that McD's appealed to white/middle-class persons (on a narrow basis) and to mainstream America (on a broader basis), and that BK appealed to a black or minorities/lower-middle to lower-income persons (on both a narrow and broad basis). Perhaps, as Jason sees it, it's that McD's has been more successful in its media outreach efforts than BK. Perhaps its because McD's has been on sound financial footing, moreso than BK. Perhaps its a combination of all of these theories. Then again, many of you are more attuned to the media than I am. Soba afterthought: can you HIYW with a McDonald's sandwich? Can you go into a McDonald's and order a Big Mac, hold the special sauce and onions? Because I was under the impression that you can't.

Well, I don't know about you, but for some reason there seems to be more McD's than there are BKs or Wendy's, White Castles, Popeye's, Pizza Huts, etc. For instance, there seem to be more McDonald's franchises per square block in Manhattan, and which seem to be located in places with a higher visibility factor than their equivalents. There's a Burger King located on side street between Whitehall and Broad, yet there's a McDonald's on Water Street between Whitehall and Broad. Of the McD's that I've seen, these tend to be multi-level locations, whereas I've never seen a BK with that kind of layout. In Chelsea, a neighborhood I frequent, there's a stretch of Sixth Avenue with at two McDonald's within a 10 block stretch of each other. There's a Wendy's on the corner of 33rd and Fifth Avenue, a high-profile location if ever there was one since it's right across the street from the Empire State Building, but I'd be hard pressed to name another location within Manhattan. Ditto for Roy Rogers franchises, or Arby's. Location/distribution demographics is an important part of this debate, because you can determine a) who your primary customer base are, b) the makeup of your employees, c) the economic composition of potential future customers among other things, and market to them accordingly. For example, why is it that McDonald's seems to identify more with a white/middle-class socio-economic group while Burger King seems to identify more with a black or minority/lower-middle class to lower-income class socio-economic group? Maybe it's just me. Soba

No, but you did say: (my emphasis)and you also said: However, in your defense, you also said: I wanted to show an instance of a "low-income" family that actually had good food on the table, with circumstances similar to that being painted throughout much of this thread. There seems to be this "poor people or low-income people have nothing better to eat than fast food because they don't have the time, the money, the wherewithal or they don't want to expend any effort" crap (or something close to it) that's somehow being injected into this debate, so I decided to inject a dose of reality. Soba

Priscilla, you've created a monster. 150+ pages and growing, like an Energizer bunny on steroids... Been on a Filipino comfort food binge lately, when not working late: Thursday (last week): Adobo rellenong (chicken adobo), steamed rice, stir-fried broccoli with tofu, garlic and tree ear mushrooms. Iced green tea with honey. Bananas. Friday: Pancit with shrimp, dried scallops and vegetables (pancit is a noodle dish that uses rice noodles, beef, chicken or more commonly, pork, some seafood and lots of veggies. I used dried scallops which I got from Chinatown, and minced shrimp in this version). Steamed tofu with orange blossom honey, for dessert -- this is a very simple dessert -- basically steam a block of tofu in a bamboo steamer, a double boiler, or a bowl inside a covered wok, top with honey that's been heated through, with a little crystallized ginger mixed in. Blueberry oolong tea. Saturday: Leftover adobo. Brown rice. Pakbet (talong (eggplant) stewed with okra, bitter melon, tomatoes and onions). Baguoong (shrimp) paste with garlic, fried until crumbly. Pellegrino. Pumpkin flan (while preparing the custard, mix in some pureed pumpkin). Sunday: Leftover pancit. Talong omelette. Banana ketchup. Pellegrino. Eight treasure rice pudding (which I had gotten from China Fun) for dessert. Soba

I'd be interested to know what are the particular location demographics of Burger King operations -- where they are located throughout the U.S., proportion of cities to suburbs, concentration of operations in any given city -- for instance, more BKs in downtown or midtown or inner city areas or semi-residential/semi-industrial areas, things of that nature. (by the by, if McD's is the Starbucks of the fast food industry, then BK is the equivalent of Pasqua Coffee.) This is a follow-up question to vengroff's post. The answer to this would go a long way, or at least part of the way, to determining who or what comprises BK's target audience. Friedclams, any help? Soba