Jason Perlow

We're all hugely proud of you Monica. Now, about that raise...

Quite positive. http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/plants/plan...ages/3744.shtml http://www.all-creatures.org/recipes/i-pepper-ban.html http://hirts.com/cgi-local/catalog.cgi?cat...2,127,&item=967

That appears to be a caribbean "banana" pepper which is related to the hungarian "hot wax" pepper. Mildly to Medium hot, although it is possible to have particularly hot specimens if the plants are stressed. They frequently make hot sauce out of it and it is also used for pickling. Common to Jamaica, Trinidad/Tobago and other islands.

Brooks (Mayhaw Man) will post his recipe later on.

Stewarts is pretty common in NJ (even more than Boylan) and I agree, its pretty good stuff.

I agree with the diet barqs -- and the Penefiel is a great apple flavored soda and is avalaible for distribution in NJ with other Mexican soda imports, including Mexican coca-cola and Mexican Pepsi and Mexican Orange Crush, all of which come in glass 12oz classic soda bottles. As far as I know, the Mexican coke (which is excellent BTW and is exactly like the original classic Coke formula) is the only one in the NJ area that can be bought in a -original- Coke bottle. Most of the bottles used in the Mexican Coke are over 20 years old, they just re-wash and re-sterilize them.

Another good Soda company is Jones, they are known for some wacky and interesting flavors as well as their support for charitable causes. They also have stong NJ distribution. http://www.bevnet.com/reviews/jones/

Green Tomato Relish. Our own Mayhaw Man has a killer recipe for it. Makes a great gift, goes great on hot dogs and hamburgers.

I think you should be thinking about what your local distributors carry as opposed to what people's favorites are. In NJ, I can tell you that there are limitations as to what you can get delivered as far as esoteric soda brands go. Boylan Bottleworks, which is based in NJ, makes one of the best soda lines there is. All their stuff is classic soda shop flavors, they use cane sugar as opposed to HFCS, and their diet soda line is also very good. By far their strongest products are their Red Birch and their Root Beer, and their Cane Cola, but their fruit flavors are also very good, especially the orange and black cherry. http://www.thebevnet.com/reviews/boylans/

Sweet Potato Starch, usually. I've also seen it made with cellophane noodles which I think are made out of mungbean. Both Korean Jap Chae and Cellophane noodles come out translucent when cooked, which is what you want for Jap Chae.

St. James is a very interesting rum because of all the Rhum Agricoles, it doesn't have that characteristic fermented sugar cane flavor of a Rhum Agricole -- this comes from the uniqueness of the St. James distilling process that separates them from everyone else on the island.

I would concur with Pan and say that Arturo's is a very good representative of a good, classic NY pizza. No question in my mind that it ranks within the top 5 in NYC, and if it was located anyplace else in the US with the exception of perhaps New Haven, it would probably be the best pizza in that entire area -- a place like Arturos would be a constant mob scene in LA. Crust is excellent, perhaps somewhat on the thick side compared to other old-school neapolitan style NY pizzas, somewhat salty, nice chew to it while having a nice char from the brick oven, nice tangy and zingy sauce with a hit of sweetness to it, and an appropriate amount of low moisure mozzarella which was of good quality and had some nice saltiness. By far my favorite pizza though was the white clam pie, which although quite salty, had all the characteristics of a great linguine with white clam sauce, but on a pizza. Clams were fresh and were not overcooked, and they were a good match for the garlic and cheese.

Jo Mel's Vinegar/Sesame meatballs were outstanding at the NJ Pig BBQ and Potluck. http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showto...ndpost&p=712236

By far my favorite is the "oh my god this shit is spicy as hell" Nongshim Shin Ramyun Cup, which is probably laced with like a kilo of MSG per serving: It comes in a package that is decorated like a containment vessel for one of Kim Jong-Il's science projects (click on red cup-o-soup product on the extreme lower left) http://eng.nongshim.com/eng/pro/nood_deft_lst.jsp Apparently its the top selling Ramen product in Korea and does very well in Japan and Taiwan as well.

Well, if you want to try something totally different, I suggest the special Sunday Brunch at China46 restaurant in ridgefield. All sorts of Dim Sum, about a dozen chinese chafing dishes, about a dozen or so of cold chinese appetizers, plus non stop chinese goodies delivered to your table for all of $11.95 a person. Its the best deal in the entire area right now for brunch. Not your typical chinese food either, its regional stuff from Shanghai, Sichuan and Hong Kong. I have some pictures of it starting on this page: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=4364&st=100

For Dark soy I use "Orchid Brand" which is a thick Superior Dark Soy. I only use a very small amount of it when making dishes like fried rices and chow mian noodles.

I'm sure somewhere out there, she'll know, Carolyn.

Delivery can hugely affect the quality of the food. There's one particular Chinese place near my house in Jersey that makes an AWESOME General Tso's chicken -- batter coating is nice and crispy, etc. But if you get it delivered, the plastic tub-like containers they use to pack the food in end up steaming it and the coating becomes a soggy disgusting mess. And that place is only 5 minutes from our house, tops. Rachel and I always go to eat at the restaurant because overall, their food is much better when you eat there than get it delivered.

I dunno, at lot, at least 50 varieties of rum, maybe more, probably 15 or 20 varieties of cognac/armagnac/calvados and assorted brandies. Then probably another 20 or 30 bottles of other whiskies and vodkas, gins, cordials, liqueurs.

Uh.. I have a whole bedroom dedicated to the overflow of liquor bottles from the liquor cabinet as well as my wine racks... but I wouldn't classify that as normal by any means. Since I like to collect rum, I have a disproportionate amount of rum compared to the other kinds of spirits I keep around, although I do have a lot of brandy as well. The actual liquor cabinet/bar in our living room area. Its your basic crappy Ikea cabinet set. Someday we'll buy nicer ones. The guest bedroom aka "the booze room" holding the majority of my rum and liquor collection, plus the wine. The racks are of the utilitarian metal type. There's also a hotel honor-bar type mini fridge in the room where we keep canned sodas, poland spring, seltzer, juices, beer, and a few bottles of bubbly. No wine cooler, as I don't keep expensive bottles around, most of the wine I have I drink within a year or two.

Wagyu beef from Lobels Jumbo Stone Crab Claws flown in overnight from Florida. Makes lobster and King Crab look pale by comparison. Russian or Iranian Ocetra Caviar

Yeah the poststickers at Hwang/Han (I can never get the transliteration correct with Hangul) Hae Do are huge, in fact they are known specifically for their dumplings, which are these big kimchee/beef stuffed things which you can either get steamed (boiled?) or pan fried. They actually have several different flavors of mandu/mandoo there, all of which are really good.

BTW there's totally another kind of Bulgogi that you don't see that often in the states called Yuk Soo Bulgogi that is only served at North Korean-style restaurants -- its cooked on a similar dome like apparatus except that there is a broth in a reservoir (or rather, its a very wet marinade of beef in a bowl that is given to you, and when you cook it, it yeilds the runoff as broth/sauce). For wrapping the meat, they use paper thin slices of daikon radish and steamed flat thin square rice cakes, as well as chili paste and a loose chop of salt/pepper/garlic, and saemjang. I had it this way once locally here in NJ at a restaurant called Han Hae Do (its named after a North Korean province). The Banchan that is associated with North Korean meals also tends to be a lot more heavy on garlic and chile, if you can imagine that. BTW Bulgogi has undergone a lot of changes in the last 100 years. I understand it the term "bulgogi" (Fire Meat) originated around 1950... prior to that a dish called neobiani was very popular, and that consists of soy sauce-seasoned ground meat which is sizzled in a pan, and now Neobiani is a separate dish entirely from Bulgogi because it tends to refer to slices of soy-marinated sirloin which are broiled on a grill or tenderloin in some provinces as opposed to the sweeter bulgogi/deungsim/chadolbagi marinade. Even prior to that (and we are going back quite a bit) the dish was called sulhamyukjeok and prior to that maekjeok -- the "jeok" part means "skewered" (kind of like a shish kebab), which due to modern cooking methods of cooking over a grill or grate is no longer used.

I think Hawaii has a lot more second and third generation Koreans than we do here on the East Coast -- that bulogogi prep must be something uniquely Hawaiian due to the type of meat you get at regular supermarkets there. Here in the NY/NJ metro area, and I would imagine in Los Angeles as well, we've got a huge proliferation of big Korean supermarkets such as Han Ah Reum which cater to the latest generation of recently immigrated families and its way too convenient for them to buy a 2 or 3 lb pack of frozen or fresh sliced ribeye from the meat department at these places just like they did in Seoul than to try to adapt a roast like you do. Your method does sound very interesting though, I probably want to try it that way sometime. EDIT: I just realized you live in England... You probably don't even HAVE Korean butchers there, lol.

Interesting... I try to marinate bulgogi and galbi for a very long time, I actually force marinade it for several hours in a vacuum container. BTW for those of you non-koreans here... you can use other cuts of thinly or not so thinly sliced beef/steak with the same basic bulgogi/kalbi marinade (the non-traditional one I do is Soy Sauce, Sesame Oil, Garlic (lots), Scaliion, Minced Ginger, Black Pepper, Honey, a squirt of Sriracha Sauce) and grill it, they are just called other things, such as Deungsim (sliced sirloin), Chadolbagi (sliced beef tenderloin) and Wooseol. Those names come from different parts of Korea where that bbq cut is popularized.