Jason Perlow

Hendricks Gin, which is flavored with cucumber and roses, makes a really wild martini.

#Moderation Mode Moved here

The debris po boy is fairly unique to New Orleans (and the Mother's one at that is probably the best example). The Philly Cheesesteak comes close but it is not the same thing.

Well, basically you dont want anything thats a "Brut" because that will be very dry. Same goes with Non Dose or Zero Dosage because it doesnt have any sugar added at all (yes, thats right, they add sugar to champagne). Basically, champagne comes in a few basic "flavors" see http://www.champagne.fr/gb/portail-gb/index-gb.html -- regular (Traditional Blend), a mixture of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, and to some extent Pinot Meunier which has various sweetness classifications: Brut – very dry Extra Dry – slightly sweet Demi-Sec – fairly sweet -- Non Dose' which is like the regular but is not "dosed" with sugar Other types of champagne: -- Blanc de Blanc "white of whites" which is 100 percent Chardonnay and yeilds very light wines with almost no body. -- Blanc de Noir "white of dark" which is 100 percent Pinot Noir, thus yeilding very full bodied wines -- Rose' which is usually mostly chardonnay but has a bit of pinot noir in it with the color from the pinot noir skins, and is sweeter than your regular champagne. Blanc De Blancs tend to be on the dry side because they are entirely made of chardonnay which has very little varietal character to begin with. The Rose's and the Blanc de Noirs (if you can find them) are much fruitier. Typically speaking as you get into vintages over 5 years old a dry champagne will exhibit drier taste characteristics as it cellars. A young wine will always be much fruitier and bolder. I happen to be a big fan of Bollinger, but only the non-vintage stuff if you still want fruity (~ ุ per bottle). Also Pol Roger. Egly-Ouriet, which is a grower champagne (RM) has been making the rounds in better wine shops and makes a full range of great champagnes. In the non-champagne category, a sparkling reisling (Reisling Sekt) is going to be very fruity and sweet by comparison. Italian Prosecco is essentially the exact same formulation as Champagne (Chardonnay/Pinot Noir with sometimes a little pinot grigio thrown in) but they tend to be sweeter. ______ Heres some additional info that I posted on Chowhound a few years back: A couple of things that are important to understanding what is good and bad about champagne is that probably the best champagnes are the ones we hear least about. Companies like Dom Perignon, Moet, Perrier Jouet, Tattinger, Cliqout , Mumm and Louis Roederer spend the most advertising dollars and thus we -think- they are the good ones, when really they are very commercial and not that good. As noted in the previous message, there are many smaller producers that make much better champagnes for less money. Champagnes can be devided into three major types -- These are the "Codes" you find on champage labels. Negotiant Manipulant -- These are companies that buy grapes from growers and make champagne. All of the ones I mentioneed above are NM. Most NM's are commercial champagnes, but some like Bollinger are exceptional. Recoltant Manipulant (RM) or "Grower Champagnes" are made by the grape producers themselves, they are hard to find in the US and virtually all of them are superb. If a wine store carries these this is the sign of a very good wine shop. Cooperative Manipulant (CM) - a Co-op co-producer. There are 11,000 of these growers who pool their resources to market their own brands. There are 150 such firms, most of these are pretty pathetic. Marque de Archeteur (MA) - Buyer's Brand. Always the cheapest on the shelf, made from second pressings and inferior quality grapes. Execreble. Finally there are also the Methode Champenoise -- wines made in the champagne style but from other countries. Some of these can be very good, like Italian Prosecco and sparkling German Weisserbugunders-- and are MUCH less expensive than champagne, 8-13 dollars a bottle. ____

The shredded Dried Sauteed Sichuan Beef is also really good there, as is the Ma Po spicy tofu and dan dan noodles. Its kind of hard to screw up there. Kung Pao is still what draws me, though.

#Moderation Mode Moved here

But seriously... Jason, maybe your friend fredlet, who designed eGullet, can sell these guys some design advice... the site looks like they threw the kitchen sink in as well as everything else. No comment. :)

yeah but these are smaller.. and you gotta suck them out of their shells, which results in loud slurping an funny noises. Not a hoity-toity thing like in French restaurants.

Ah Tommy. You obviously have never really eaten Chinese food. Go to China 46. Not like anything you have eaten recently, most likely. the lack of flavor/etc that you mention is a problem with american-style Cantonese food. Its been done that way for american tastes, not Chinese. If you have ever had REAL Hong Kong Style or Shanghainese or Sichuan or Taiwanese you wouldnt feel that way, I can assure you.

Yeah you can actually vote once per day. Per computer. Its actually 1 vote per IP address per day, because if you use dial up every time you dial in you get a different IP address. Us high-speed cable modem and DSL users only get to vote once a day :)

Not sure if it lets you vote more than 1 time from any particular computer. But theres no excuse! Vote! Vote! :)

Click on the link to vote! (edited link) http://chef2chef.net/rank/inter2.shtml We are currently ranked around #32, this link will bring you directly to the page our site is listed on. You are allowed to vote once every 24 hours.

I knew about this... but where did you see this published?

Interesting. Chinese food with heat... like sichuan on major steroids I guess? I'm most impressed with Grand Sichuan International Midtown's (50th and 9th) ability to handle the heat authentically... some of it is off the scale actually, such as in their Kung Pao which we have talked about often here. Unusual for a US chinese restaurant. As to Edison... there are no fewer than 100 indian restaurants in that area alone... chat houses... snack places... vegetarian... non vegetarian... south indian.. moghlai... very overwheming, it would take me years to go through it all and find the good ones. BTW I think they do have Indian Chinese there, and Indian Pizza if I do recall.

Thanks Suvir! Nice post... I'm curious about the Indian Chinese food. I would think that would taste a lot like Malaysian food, since that has heavy Indian influences. Got any solid recommendations for NJ Indian restaurants in the Edison area? there are so many to choose from. Please post in the NJ forum if you know of any... so far my favorite is Kinara, in Edgewater, which got really positive reviews in the NY Times.

Actually its called Spicy Capsicum Noodle and its a cold noodle dish.. but yes its quite similar to Jap Chae. With a lot of cilantro and very hot.

Robert there is no way that eGullet could have possibly caused the spread of the virus, since eGullet runs LINUX and not Windows... what I am guessing is someone who you have corresponded with via email who uses this site (maybe Bux, Steve Klc, any number of folks) contracted this virus, sent you an email on something (maybe a reply to an email you sent) and when you opened the mail up in Outlook, the embedded script in the email launched the virus that infected your system. BadTransB is a particularly nasty Windows e-mail virus (click here for info). I know this because I just spent the whole day re-formatting my dad's computer that was infected with it. BadTrans originates from Europe. He got it from an art dealer in Paris who he buys antiques from. BadTrans B is especially serious because it installs a keystroke logger on your system (which reads the log of every key you press on your keyboard) and emails it to a hidden email address. That means if you sent anyone credit card information as of the 24th over email or any personal information I would immediately call your various financial institutions and let them know about any unusual charges that might be on your accounts. A virus scanner might not be able to get this off your system if you are already infected because it locks access to your file system, and the only recourse is to erase your hard drive and reload the operating system. I would try downloading McAffee Viruscan (ww.mcaffee.com) which is a very good virus scanner program, which you can evaluate for free for 30 days, and this can kill the BadTransB, as can Norton Antivirus (http://www.symantec.com).

Frozen Butterfingers. And ho-ho's.

Well, Rachel and I went tonight -again- cause you twisted our arm. The food, as usual, was awesome. And better than chinatown. I can certainly see where a diner can go wrong, however. If you get there before 6:30PM, they have a "early dinner" menu (yikes.. shades of south Florida!) which is the same old american chinese crap, which they obviously sell as a revenue generator during these rough times. However, I urge you to bypass this and go straight to their REGULAR MENU which is full of all kinds of authentic stuff. We got there at 7:15 and the place was deserted as the early birders had just high tailed out of the joint. We started with two appetizers: a huge plate of small snails sauteed in a light soy gravy (perhaps this had oyster sauce and a few other seasonings in it) with scallions -- these were a blast to eat, and we only finished half of them because it was such a large appetizer -- this is better for 4 people. You really gotta suck these things outta their shells, but the payoff is good. Our second appetizer was the pan-fried Shanghai dumplings, which are sort of the shanghainese equivalent to the cantonese ones you get at dim sum or at regular takeout places and served with a simiar soy/sugar/scallion dipping sauce, except these are like Xiao Long Bao that have been pan fried and have a fluffier dough texture, and have sesame seeds on the top. These were awesome. For our main dishes we went with the Shanghai Spicy and Tangy Jumbo Prawns, which are large battered shrimp in a very light sweet sauce with generous slices of raw garlic and flecks of chili pepper and slices of raw capsicum in it. You could say it was the proto-dish for the "Sweet and Sour" dishes you get in Cantonese takeout places, except the sweetness was not cloying and the sauce was -very- light. Really a very good dish. The second entree was also very good -- Shanghai Stir Fry Noodles (notice I am staying with the Shanghai theme, and for good reason... its the specialty of the restaurant) , which were homemade flat egg noodles similar to linguine that are stir fried in soy sauce, and tossed with fresh spinach, mushrooms and shredded pork. I've never seen spinach used in a chinese stir fry dish before, especially with noodles, but this was really good. So the answer to the question is: YES. The place is still good. But stick to the native dishes.

Frankly, I think Chinatown for the most part sucks compared to some places we have here in NJ, but thats another argument entirely.

Its a solid shanghainese seafood joint. Stick with the shrimp, lobster and fish and you'll be in good shape. The noodle soups are good too.

Rachel, Jhlurie and I went to Sapphire this evening -- so here's the scoop. Kervan 2 was bought by owners nephew and reopened as Sapphire -- so the place is literally still in the family, and all of the existing kitchen staff is still there. Apparently, the original owner (who also owns Kervan in Cliffside Park) is going to retire shortly, so the original Kervan restaurant is also up for sale. In any case, Sapphire has breathed new life back into their old menu -- while the old kebab favorites are there, there are many new dishes, and overall I think everything tastes fresher and better. Notable example -- the bread appears to be fresher, comes out piping hot, and the appetizers seem to have a fresher appearance as well. In many ways, I felt Sapphire surpasses the original Kervan in Clifside, I found it to be a thoroughly enjoyable experience. Sapphire has many kinds of mezze on the appetizer menu, so I asked the waiter to prepare for us a mixed platter (ฟ.00) which included caviar/yogurt dip (Jhlurie's fave), a smoky/creamy Babaghanoush, Turkish Eggplant Salad (a stringier, more peppery kind of babaghanoush) , Eggplant/tomato/onion salad, Lebni (yogurt and spices mixed with chopped walnuts) and a creamy, nutty tasting Hummus. Everything was excellent. For entrees, Jhlurie ordered the Beyti Kebab (ground lamb mixed with spices grilled on a skewer) which came with a rice pilaf and grilled chile pepper (hot!) and onion salad. Rachel had a braised lamb shank which was in a tomatoey base with potatoes and other vegetables, I didnt try it, both of them finished everything on their plates so I take it they liked what they ate. I decided to try one of the new dishes -- which had a really complex name, but was essentially a trio of stuffed grilled vegetables -- a mixture of rice, lamb and beef is stuffed into a zucchini, a pepper, and an eggplant. I finished the whole dish with some help from the other two, very tasty, this one can easily be shared. I liked it a lot but I think its probably too much stuffed stuff, it gets a bit monotonous, so I would order this and split it between two people and perhaps order a kebab entree as well. We didnt have coffee or anything because we were so full from the huge appetizer platter and our main dishes, but I plan to try their turkish coffee and their baklava selection. All in all I'd have to say Sapphire is probably going to become the eminent middle eastern restaurant in the Begeren County area, they are that good. Goodbye Kervan... Hello Sapphire!

30,000BTU professional wok burner (approx 񘧸) for the kitchen we are redoing. Dont have the space for it. Definitely over the top, but god do I want one. :)

Thanks for making me aware of the difference! Hindi, Language, Hindu, religion. :) Besides Hindi what are the other prominent languages of India, and how do they relate to regions and cultures cuisine-wise?

Yeah bacon is a great thing to cook in a cast iron for a new pan. As are hamburgers. Or chorizo.