The Hersch

I've often wondered what "Belgian" endive is called in Belgium (and the Netherlands, and just about anywhere where English isn't the local language). Is it called the local equivalent of "Belgian"?

Serve cold with caviar and champagne.

A zillion people have listed salad dressing. Honestly, I don't understand why anyone buys bottled salad dressing. It's all horrible, and making a vinaigrette, for example, which is really as good as salad dressing gets, takes all of 40 seconds. Or dressing a salad in the Italian manner, just tossing it with olive oil, then some salt, then some vinegar...if the salad greens are good, and the olive oil is good, you can't get better than that. But you people who say you don't buy pre-roasted coffee...really? You buy raw coffee beans and roast them yourself? In what, your ovens? I don't quite understand that. Where do you even find raw coffee beans?

I've done a brined turkey a couple of times and have sworn off it forever. The drippings are definitely too salty for gravy-making, unless you're a total salt freak. The stuffing isn't so much a problem if you go very light on putting salt in it before you stuff the bird with it. But to me the biggest flaw is the meat. Sure, the breast comes out juicy, but the whole bird has a sort of processed texture that I find really unappealing. By brining you sort of turn the turkey into processed luncheon meat.

Pound the hell out of it with a meat hammer, dredge in seasoned flour, and pan-fry in a little peanut oil. This is what I grew up with as "chicken-fried steak". Adding icky "cream gravy" is the southern approach, which is here deprecated.

Salisbury steak is by definition made with ground beef. Swiss steak, perhaps?

Or boysenberry yoghurt for something even more different. Sorry, I'll go now.

Eat it raw. I don't mean that rudely.

The Chinese restaurant at Eden Center had "Dragon" in the name, I think. I never ate there, but heard it was good. The roast pig at MDH is totally wonderful. At Chinese New Year there's a line out the door of Chinese folks waiting to buy it by the pound to take home. They do an excellent roast pig at Miu Kee, too. Perhaps you weren't aware, IR Chef Salad, that there's an outpost of the Chinatown Full Kee at Bailey's Crossroads? It's pretty much the same menu, but in a much nicer place. The Chinatown place is pretty funky; the Bailey's Crossroads place is actually quite nice. And they have a liquor license, which the DC restaurant doesn't. At either place one dish not to be missed is the Oyster and Spring Onion Casserole (or whatever the exact name is), which is among the best things I've ever eaten anywhere.

I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with. Looking up the thread, I see no praise of the dim sum at Mark's Duck House. ← Perhaps you should read the very first post which indicates "It was ALMOST up to NY standards in our slightly humble opinion!". ← But that wasn't about dim sum. They were there at 4 pm and ordered off the menu: I'm not sure that MDH is less clean than other restaurants, although as I say it certainly has a grungy appearance. But even fancy places have to struggle with cockroaches. I was at the bar at Kinkead's for lunch a few weeks ago when a cockroach scurried by. A Chinese place that is far less funky than MDH and not far away is Miu Kee, out Rt. 50 just before Annandale Road (in the little strip with the IHOP). They don't do dim sum, but they have some very tasty Cantonese food.

I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with. Looking up the thread, I see no praise of the dim sum at Mark's Duck House. All the praise seems to be for the Peking Duck at Peking Gourmet. That said, I've had some fairly tasty things off the carts at Mark's, although I haven't been there for dim sum in a couple of years. What I have always liked there are the big bowls of Cantonese soup with noodles and wontons and such. The place is kind of grungy, but so is my kitchen. The dim sum buffet at Lucky Three on Rt. 7 (weekday lunch only) is pretty good. Have you tried that?

Yeah, me too.

Thanks for the references. In the Lowell Edmunds article you link to, Fisher is quoted as saying that in France, to get a martini you must ask for "Martini-gin". Since in Europe generally "martini" means vermouth (in my observation), perhaps she changed this to "vermouth-gin" in her book about Aix in order not to confuse her American readers. If that was her intent, I think she failed (although I hold her writing in extravagantly high regard otherwise). I must say that I'm left with less than high regard for Lowell Edmunds. When you quote someone's article, tell us the name of the article and where it appeared, for pity's sake. On the subject of room-temperature drinks: You're forgetting the English! If English television is any guide, the English drink room-temperature gin-and-tonic. You can see Judi Dench do it repeatedly on "As Time Goes By".

Understood, but I wish I knew exactly what MFK Fisher was drinking.

Room temperature? On ice? Stirred with ice and strained into a chilled cocktail glass?

Mark's Duck House has dim sum on carts every day at lunch time. I guess 4 pm is well past lunch time. You can also order from their two extensive menus and I suppose from the many things posted on the walls. If you have a taste for "roast pig", order it from the menu and not from the dim sum cart, where it mysteriously costs about twice as much.

I've just been visiting Aix-en-Provence and simultaneously reading MFK Fisher's beautiful memoir of the town (A Map of Another Town). In her book, Fisher repeatedly refers to a drink she calls a "vermouth-gin", which she apparently drank quite a lot of. I don't believe she ever uses the term "martini". When I had a drink at Les Deux Garçons, where she had some of these "vermouth-gins", I was too chicken to try to order one, but I have a feeling if I had done so they wouldn't have known what I was talking about (Fisher was writing about her time there in the 1950s). Is anyone familiar with this "vermouth-gin" term, and how it might differ from a martini? 50-50, perhaps?

I don't see how this procedure is workable. How could the meat possibly brown using this technique? On the other hand, I don't think that browning the meat is traditional in Hungarian goulash.

"Fois" is "faith"; hence the churches.

It is? Sarnie, perhaps.

I wouldn't mind if "Amazing Grace" were never sung again.

After reading this discussion, I heard a bottle of green Chartreuse whistle at me from a shelf at my spirits-monger the other day, so I bought it. I don't believe I had ever tasted the stuff before, and I certainly wasn't aware that it's 110 proof and a serious butt-kicker. And beautiful. Anyway, over the course of the last four days, I've had about six Last Word cocktails, mixed as prescribed: 1-1-1-1. The maraschino was Luxardo, and the gin varied between Gordon's and Junipero. I think fancy gin in this cocktail is probably a waste of money. Anyway: This Cocktail Is Superb. I fell in love instantly. This may be the greatest cocktail ever devised, with the obvious exception of the martini. It is so elegant and balanced, so cool and invigorating, so complex and intriguing, and packs such a wallop with it. Wow. This may indeed be the last word.

Well, just because they said they didn't have it doesn't mean they didn't, of course. When I was there a couple of weeks back, I saw the guanciale in the window of the salumi counter, with a small "Guanciale" sign, but when I told the woman working the counter that I wanted some guanciale, her response was essentially "huh?". She made a real hash of it when cutting it, too. Ah well. As to Balducci's: I don't know why it would be impossible for them if it's possible for Dean and Deluca, and for Dean Gold at Dino. I love Balducci's for some things, but their deli counter isn't one of them. Back in Sutton Place Gourmet days, they used to carry a beautiful dry-cured pancetta (from Italy, I think). Balducci's only carries this wet American crap masquerading as pancetta, which is certainly not worth what they charge for it. As to the Virginia-cured pork jowl mentioned back in November, while I really like this stuff (hey, it's salt-cured pork jowl, what's not to like?) it is utterly unlike guanciale. It's intensely salty and has none of the subtlety of the Italian-style stuff.

Usinger is good. But I think even better is the Bavaria Sausage company in Madison Wisconsin. Seriously good Würste. Visit their WEBSITE.

I discovered a couple of weeks ago that Dean & Deluca in Georgetown carries guanciale. Expensive at $17/lb, and the woman working the counter didn't have a clue as to how to handle it, but it's good. She didn't know where it came from, but I saw some other stuff marked Salumeria Biellese, so it's probably from there.