Jason Perlow

For the NY Strip Steak Kebabs, BTW, we made a condiment called "Vinagre", which is a type of vinegar made with pineapple rinds and chile peppers: Pineapple Vinagre

Last night we made steak kebabs and had a number of grilled veggies, plus Spanish style (Latino) yellow rice: Grilled: Mushrooms, Poblanos, Onion, Pineapple, Napa Cabbage (rubbed with bacon grease), Grape Tomatoes

More Daisy food tonight: These are New York Strip Steak "Pinchos" (Spanish-style Kebabs), marinated in Recaito, Garlic, Mustard, Olive Oil, Salt and Pepper, Parsley and Lime Juice, with Puerto Rican Achiote-Flavored Shortgrain Rice, with Grilled Sweet Onion, Mushrooms, Grape Tomatoes, Poblano Peppers, and Napa Cabbage rubbed with Bacon Grease. We also had some Puerto Rican "Vinagre" (Spicy Pineapple Vinegar) on the side which we had made before as a condiment for the kebabs.

Bring your camera, Brooks!

A Pod is essentially a round tea bag stuffed with ground coffee. You plop it into the machine's pod holder, fill the unit with water, hit the button, and bang, 30 seconds later, you get a cup of coffee. Ya-Roo, I really don't want to hijack this thread, but have a look at the existing topic on Pod systems: Senseo and other Coffee Pod Systems I've evaluated a number of Pod units, here is the one that I like the best: Bunn My Cafe Commercial Pod Brewer a close tie to the Bunn is the Simplehuman: Simplehuman Pod Brewer And also the Keurig B60, which uses proprietary K-Cups (which I think results in a uniformly good tasting product): Keurig B60

My name is Jason Perlow, I'm a Jewish boy from New York, and I -LOVE- grits girls. If interested, please email me at BIGSUTHERNLUVIN235@AOL.COM.

It was actually so hot and humid and disgusting that day, that the adhesive attaching the synthetic rubber grip to my camera actually liquified, and caused it to slide right off. Danny Meyer has asked us to "pray" for nice weather on June 10 and 11th.

Now I feel gyped. I WANT butter in my burgers.

Both the fresh alligator/pork and the smoked alligator/pork are very good. I think that Alligator is best when blended with other meats, otherwise it's too tough and a bit too swampy.

For those of you not from this area, here's what the view directly behind Shake Shack looks like: Note that this is during the Big Apple Barbecue Block Party (2005), where there's about 1000x the amount of people in the park than normal. But its about the same time of year as now (June), so you can see now nice it looks. On that day, however, it was over 100 degrees. Which makes eating one of these outside even more appealing when the weather is nice and temperate, like now:

Seabra's Marisqueria is an excellent restaurant but they don't serve the same kind of stuff. It's heavily seafood focused, particularly grilled seafood, and its Portuguese, not Spanish. Its also much more of a sit down at the bar type atmosphere and the dishes are the type that are meant to accomodate that. Incidentally, I thought Marisqueria was going to become hard to get into since it was profiled in Tony Bourdain's show in the New Jersey episode. But I don't remember exactly if that part was left on the cutting room floor or not, I saw the original uncut version.

Poche's Market in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. They got a web site, they ship. http://www.pochesmarket.com/

They are very, very good Todd, but yes, there are plenty of good burgers in the city. Shake Shack's "sister" burger, the Blue Smoke Burger, is just as good albeit in a sit-down, jazz club setting. I think the big draw of Shake Shack is being able to eat outside in the nice weather, in the middle of Madison Square Park. There really isn't anywhere else in the city that you can have a great burger lunch in an Al Fresco atmosphere like that.

If you buy your pods from someone like PodHead, who is a small artisinal roaster, you can get pods that were roasted within a week if not the day of your order. They are foil wrapped and vaccum sealed with preservative gas, its far better than the stuff that you can get from a company like Senseo/Douwe Egberts. I also think that Green Mountain is doing very good things with their Keurig cups as well.

I dunno, the Simplehuman and the Senseo are pretty sleek, as is the Melitta. Also really cheap too compared to the other stuff you were looking at. At the very least, at those prices, you can buy one of those to supplant whatever fancy cappucino machine you are looking at.

Actually I've seen a variant of this dish in Malaysian restaurants as well. They dry-fry the string beans, and add small dried shrimp as well as ground pork, but then they toss in fermented shrimp paste in addition to the chili/bean paste, and I beleive garlic and shallots as well. I'm pretty sure it also has the preserved vegetable. I think Penang in NYC makes it that way, the NJ location in East Hanover certainly does. I think we order it just about every time we go there. I wasn't aware this was typically a Sichuan dish, though. ← Yes, although this dish is typically made with long beans (kacang panjang in Malay). String beans are not traditional in Malaysia. Also, the pork is inessential and never used when Kacang Panjang Belacan is made by Malays, who as Muslims cannot eat pig products. The typical dish would include plenty of little dried shrimp, plenty of belacan, and indeed the chilis and shallots you mention, but I'm not positive about the garlic and I normally wouldn't expect any meat to be in the dish, unless you count shrimps (there could be some non-dried medium-sized shrimps in the dish, too). I would be surprised if the Malaysian version of the dish has origins in Sichuan, though. I think belacan dishes go back a long way in Malaysia and Indonesia. ← Right, long beans. I think they use long beans at Penang as well. They also make the same dish with Okra and also with "convolous". I'm -fairly- sure the version at Penang uses both the shrimp and the pork, because the restaurant is owned by Chinese Malaysians, not Muslim ones. The observation about not expecting vegetable dishes to have any meat in them at all when dining in Malaysia is interesting because I don't think Penang has a single vegetable dish on their menu without any meat. Even their tofu dish (their Tofu Nyonya, excellent) is meat based. So really everything you get from that restaurant, while Malay, is coming from the Chinese perspective. Still, one of my favorite Asian restaruants in the area though. http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=16273

Unfortunately I've only eaten at the Modern (twice) but I hope to correct things shortly by eating at Alinea in a few months when I have a Chicago gig.

We haven't made any firm decisions about what other things we are going to grow this year, but definitely a few varieties of tomatoes, cukes, and zucchinis. That along with a number of kinds of herbs as well, including basil, parsley, oregano and thyme. I think we'll do charantais canteloupes again. Perhaps some of the fancier lettuce varieties as well. Hot peppers too.

Actually I've seen a variant of this dish in Malaysian restaurants as well. They dry-fry the string beans, and add small dried shrimp as well as ground pork, but then they toss in fermented shrimp paste in addition to the chili/bean paste, and I beleive garlic and shallots as well. I'm pretty sure it also has the preserved vegetable. I think Penang in NYC makes it that way, the NJ location in East Hanover certainly does. I think we order it just about every time we go there. I wasn't aware this was typically a Sichuan dish, though.

Whoever it was, they don't deserved to be boiled. Steamed, like all the run of the mill Bagel places do.

The person who came up with it should be shot.

The only two Coca-Cola products that are made KFP to my knowledge are Coke Classic and Sprite. And the diet versions of both. The Sprite is good too, if you like Lemon-Lime flavors. I'd really like to see a KFP Barq's Root Beer and KFP Fanta Orange.

Ya Roo: Check this site out: http://www.singleservecoffee.com/ They have reviews of various single-serve espresso / cappuccino and coffee machines. They all use different types of "pods" or single-serve packaged espresso shots. They actually make a pretty decent coffee, and there is no waste because you are only making one serving at a time. Cleanup is as simple as throwing the "shot" out, which is enclosed in some sort of paper or plastic medium. No grains to go all over the place. I personally have a few of the coffee machines (not espresso/cappuccino) and my experience with them has been very positive for the most part. In terms of getting coffee "minimum fuss" you can't beat these machines.

Sometimes there are good sales on the 2-Liters. I've seen them as low as 89 cents. 2-Liter is not my preferred container for buying soda, though. I prefer cans simply because you can go six months or more on the carbonation, whereas 2-Liters are limited to 3 or 4 months tops. And once you open a 2-Liter you pretty much have to drink it all within 24 hours or it goes flat. KFP Coke definitely has a different mouthfeel than regular HFCS coke. One of the reasons HFCS is liked by soda manufacturers, other than the fact that it is cheap, is that its very consistent in how it behaves, it won't foam up. Sugar syrup, which is a combination of sucrose and water, will actually "foam up" and give you a "head" on your soda if you pour it in ice, plus it affects the viscosity of the liquid and also the size of the bubbles -- You'll notice the bubbles are smaller on a sucrose-based soda as well. That's part of the old-time flavor and behavior people are looking for in a sugar soda.

That's odd, John. HFCS is actually supposed to be sweeter than Sucrose. You sure you didn't switch the caps?