Jason Perlow

Looks like the Post picked up on this thread...

INCOMING!!!! http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...4-2004Aug9.html

There is a specific type of tea that is sold in Thai groceries in large plastic bags that contains a very finely ground red-colored tea that when brewed, comes out a brilliant orange/red color to which sweetened condensed milk is added after pouring into glasses with ice. I've gotten this red tea on my clothing by accident during brewing and it stains like a !@%^& Its great tasting stuff. If you don't have sweetened condensed milk or think its too sweet, try half and half instead. It works pretty good.

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Well, truth be told, I haven't bought many new Rieslings in about 6 months, as we have a decent supply at the moment, so my pricing data is a bit out of date. Most of my wines are 1999er or 2000, some 97's and 98's. I don't have any 2001's as far as I know, maybe one of my Selbach Osters or Prums are. But I bought most of mine from larger liquor stores in NJ, I don't buy much wine in NYC, except on the rare occasion I go visit Nancy's or Astor Wines or some place like that. I've never been to Vintage New York. The Dr. Frank is a good wine, I've had it.

Curlz, galangal is a root rhizome related to ginger, its used extensively in Thai cooking. The name Galangal is derived from the Arabic word Khalanjan, which is thought to be a bastardization of a Chinese word meaning 'mild ginger.' http://www.theepicentre.com/Spices/galangal.html The word "Kha" in Thai is the word for Galangal. Thus "Thom Kha Gai" is galangal soup with chicken.

quite frankly, if i don't have to pick out big bits of lemongrass and galanagal, i wonder what the heck is going on as well. i agree. for a dinner party i might pull them out if preparing for guests, but at a thai place, leave 'em in there, 'cause that's half the fun. Absolutely. I want to see that fresh Thai produce is being used, ESPECIALLY in Thom Kha.

I concur with JSibley that River Kwai is a very nice, authentic Thai restaurant -- Rachel and I had a nice meal this evening. Very diverse Thai menu, with lots of offerings in Noodles. I would put the food quality on par with Wondees. However, the portions are VERY small. Their larb portion was like 1/3 to a 1/4 of the size you get at Wondees, for about the same amount of money -- come to think of it, it was the smallest portion of Larb I have ever seen. Curry puffs were 3 to a plate and were rather small. Rachel's noodle dish also was quite small. A "large" Thom Kha Gai soup yeilded 2 1/2 small soup bowls worth of soup -- the Wondee's equivalent can feed 5 people. My dinner curry order was like 1/3 the size of what Wondees would serve. I had some other issues as well. The soup was good, but the one thing I didn't like besides the portion size was that there were no identifyable peices of galangal or lemongrass in the soup, which although done to make the soup easier to eat is a major flaw in my book. Plenty of mushrooms and some nice white meat chicken but not much else. The Gang Keow Warn green curry had well defined flavor, but even though I ordered it at the highest spicy level, I didn't even break a sweat. The vegetables were purposefully undercooked, and while some people might like that, I didn't. I don't like Thai Eggplant and green beans to be crunchy in a curry. The place is clearly focusing heavily on presentation, all the dishes came out very nice looking, and even the rice is molded into little boat shapes and garnished with little carrot flowers on top. Its a bit annoying however that it takes them 10 minutes to get you an extra plate of rice if you want it, though. Rachel felt the service was a tad on the unprofessional side because they didn't have any professional waitstaff and family members were acting as servers, but I thought they looked presentable enough. I'd probably come back again for lunch or something if I was shopping in nearby Wayne, but otherwise I'll stick to Wondees, its a much better value. Although if I lived in the area I would probably be very glad that such an authentic Thai restaurant was nearby, and I am sure the Totowa residents are quite happy they are there. Oh and if you do go, its a REQUIREMENT that you eat at the Applegate Farms Ice Cream in the same strip mall that JSibley mentioned. Its so creamy that its practically gelato -- and they have some great flavors, including this Graham Cracker flavor that is truly outstanding.

According to my local boutique wine dealer, a lot of women are buying it to go with their take-out sushi orders, ignorant of the fact that Sake is a HORRIBLE match for Sushi. The Japanese never drink sake with Sushi, ever. They drink beer.

Hey Kristian! Welcome back! I dunno about Vancouver... you picked a place to move to where the liquor is state-controlled. Maybe you should try a weekend trip to Portland or Seattle (where the rum is also state controlled!)

An excellent point, made even more potent by the fact that European imports cost about $3 more/bottle on the West Coast. On the other hand, those Gruner-Veltliners are made of rocks, and we jist cain't get 'em out here. They are worth the mark-up. --minerally sigh.-- California must have some weird taxation on foreign wine then. In New Jersey, German and Alsatian Rieslings are less expensive than the New York ones. Most of the importers of German and Alsatian wines are based in this area of the country, though. Terry Theise being one of the major ones.

New York Rieslings are great wines, but my problem with them is they are comparatively expensive compared to EXCELLENT German and Alsatian Rieslings. When I can get the real Mccoy from Germany at $6-$12 per bottle for a nice ripe QMP, why should I spend $15 and up for a NY one? And vintage NY Riesling is nonexistent. Sure, theres the difference in terroir, but hey, they aren't THAT different. If they were the same price or cheaper, it would be a different story, I would drink them all the time.

The term "Methòde Champagnoise" is used for any wine that is produced in the style and process of Champagne. Obviously any wine made from varietals used in this process other than Pinot Noir, Chardonnay or Pinot Meunier cannot be called a Methòde Champagnoise. Our own Craig Camp wrote a nice article about this for the Daily Gullet: http://www.egullet.com/?pg=ARTICLE-campdollars

Uh, can you scale that down to the 5lb recipe? I think even in this house, there will be some difficulty consuming 40lbs of wonton filling.

Dejah, would you care to share your wonton-stuffing recipe?

No more so than any other French press.

As far as I am concerned, if the coffee stays hot for an hour, I'm happy with that. The Columbia can keep it hot for 2 hours -- after about an hour, I agree, it does start to taste burned. But 1 hour is a huge convenience, especially if you are making 8 cups of coffee. It takes me about an hour or so to drink 2 man sized mugs (10-12 oz each). However with an equivalent sized glass Bodum, your'e lucky if it stays hot for 10 minutes.

No, because the inside core isn't made of Stainless. Its vacuum bottle material. Only the outside is stainless. Its real easy to clean. actually, I just looked at ours, the whole thing is made of stainless, both the outer and inner wall. The plunger rod is also stainless, but the plunger itself seems to be made of a heat resistant plastic with some kind of rubberized material along the edges that maintains the separation of grains from the coffee.

No, because the inside core isn't made of Stainless. Its vacuum bottle material. Only the outside is stainless. Its real easy to clean.

The Columbia 8-cup is on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...X/egulletcom-20 Although you might want to try going to froogle.google.com and entering "bodum columbia" or "bodum bistro vacuum" because you are in .CA, I'm not sure if Amazon US ships to Canada or if it will be cost effective for you if they do.

Get the Bodum, but specifically, get the one that has a built in vaccum bottle so that it keeps the coffee hot. The regular glass walled see-thru "Melior" or "Brazil" French press loses heat really, really fast. I think the one you want is "Columbia" which is the one we have and are quite happy with. Also the Bistro Vaccum looks really cool:

Thats probably Char Siu, or chinese roast pork. You slice it up and use it in soups, sautees, all kinds of stuff.

Some types of watermelon, like Sugar Babies, have a very high sugar content compared to some of the other kinds. Typically for this recipe we use regular large, seeded watermelons. Some of the smaller unseeded watermelons are less sweet and thus make better candidates for this sorbet. You can tweak the recipe by adding more lime juice and cutting down on the amount of added syrup and sugar.

Put the longhorns in a food drier or cook them on a baking sheet at like 150 degrees to totally dry them out, then crush them to use as pepper flakes. If you want to make hot sauce, cook the hot ones (habaneros, longhorns) in a saucepan with a cup of vinegar for 5 minutes or so until soft. Thow them with the vinegar from pan into blender with salt (a lot) and some black pepper. Optionally add fruit like apples or mango or citrus juice, blend up. Put in bottles, refrigerate. The Serranos and Poblanos are good chopped up and cooked in rice with chicken stock, tomatoes and safrron -- that will give you Mexican Rice.

Roxannne's was effectively the nexus of the raw food movement in California, it will be interesting to see how all the other raw food restaurants and raw food pundits take in the news.