The Hersch

But forty years ago no one in the US called it cilantro. I'm sure you're right that the term was imported from Mexico, but we really didn't need it. Arugula is another plant with a perfectly good English name, but instead we call it not "rocket", nor even by the standard Italian word (rucola), but by an Italian dialect term. That these are major issues to me demonstrates how smoothly runs my path through life.

I find nutmeg utterly revolting. I think it may have something to do with eggnog, which is also utterly revolting (and would be even without nutmeg). About the cilantro thing being physical/genetic (I've also heard allergy explanations): I wonder how common the alleged physical aversion to cilantro is in parts of the world like southeast Asia where it's an integral part of the indigenous cuisine. And why did we stop calling it by its English name and start calling it by its Spanish name?

Thanks! I note that your recipe includes no "exotic" ingredients hard to find in the US. Was this adapted for western supermarket shopping, or would you make it exactly this way in Indonesia?

Oh my that looks good, Spaghetttti. Any chance of a recipe?

In Bavaria, this would be a schnapps called Enzian (which means gentian). But it's not reallly gentian flavored so much as merely made from gentians. It mostly tastes like a jolt of pure alcohol, although it's typically only 40%. It's usually pretty rough stuff, though. Okay, very rough stuff.

Kelley's Katch is a treasure. You can order from their website. I have spread the gospel of Kelley's Katch to many others, who also happily order their delicious product. They've recently added American sturgeon/shovelnose caviar to the paddlefish. For Thanksgiving, I ordered a tin of each. My sister (perhaps an even bigger caviar lover than I) and I agreed that although we liked them both, we liked the paddlefish caviar better. And the prices are breathtakingly low, so you can splurge on a couple of bottles of Bollinger to go with.

champagne and caviar champagne and raw oysters green olives, gin, and vermouth

Al Tiramisu? Have they done something to the space to make it quiet? I ate there not very long after they opened (and hated it), and it was one of the noisiest places I've ever been (as were BeDuCi and Verdi before it in the same space). Has this changed?

Yeah but. I have a place in Shenandoah County, Virginia, which, as you might imagine, is in the Shenandoah Valley. Now, the Shenandoah Valley is one of the world's great apple-growing regions. Not just a place where some apples are grown, but one of the Great Apple-Growing Regions of the World. I was up there in October, which could reasonably be called the height of apple season, and I went to the one major food emporium in the town of Mount Jackson, which is a Food Lion. In the Shenandoah Valley, at the height of apple season. Within two miles of at least one major commercial apple orchard. They had maybe eight varieties of apples, from two places: Washington State and New Zealand. (And since October in New Zealand is springtime, the New Zealand apples were at least a half-year old.) I don't understand the economics of that, let alone the aesthetics. Why can't I get Virginia apples in a Virginia apple-country store at the height of the Virginia apple season? Why does the US import apples? Where do all the Virginia apples go? You can get them at farmers' markets and such, but you never see them in ordinary supermarkets in FREAKING VIRGINIA. There's something seriously wrong with this system.

I had to quote all of the above because I think it's among the smartest things I've ever read about oysters. "Perhaps closer, as they are actually alive"...yes, yes, yes!!! The sexiest way of eating oysters, to me, is to eat them in Paris, and with plenty of champagne too. The French unfortunately make the mistake of sauce mignonette, which is a terrible thing to put on an oyster. As someone else remarked, lemon juice and plenty of fresh pepper. Oysters are especially good when large, and plump, and briny, and followed by sole meuniere and a stroll in the 6th arrondissement.

Excuse me, I should say "Cassie, the Irish terrier who lives with me"....as she points out, I do not own her.

The thought of barely cooked pancetta makes me hungry. It needn't make you queasy. One of the very best ways to enjoy pancetta is utterly, gloriously, unctuously raw. Hm...almost lunchtime. ← Sorry, I just dig on cooked swine ← Well, this wasn't dinner, it was lunch, but after this little exchange I went home to a beautiful chunk of pancetta in my fridge. I also had a beautiful leftover soup of turnips, cannelllini beans, escarole, and onions. I heated up the soup, cut some slices of sourdough bread (the kind of dismaying LaBrea stuff that you can get in supermarkets in godforsaken towns in North Carolina for god's sake), and some nice thin slices of raw pancetta, and had the best lunch I've had in months, along with a glass of cheap pinot grigio. My Irish terrier Cassie got a couple of nibbles of pancetta, and she was very happy too.

Let me encourage you or anyone to order domestic caviar from the excellent purveyor called Kelley's Katch in Savannah, Tennessee. They sell paddlefish caviar and also have recently added hackleback sturgeon caviar, although I see that currently that is out of stock. That's okay, because the paddlefish is better anyway. Paddlefish caviar is quite similar to sevruga, and Kelley's Katch sells it for about 10 dollars an ounce, a small fraction of what you'll pay for sevruga. Visit their website HERE. You should be in plenty of time to get it for NYE. It's wonderful, and it's inexpensive enough that you can have a simply obscene indulgence; I mean you can practically fill the bathtub with the stuff and have money left for a couple of bottles of Bollinger. They ship overnight for $25, which still adds up to a bargain. Not connected to them at all; a repeat and more than satisfied customer.

No, Nadya, dear, Mel Krupin was the maitre 'd for many years at Paul Young's on Connecticut Avenue and then Duke Ziebert's almost until it closed. The deli opened after he left there. ← Mark's right...sorry, got confused between Krupin reincarnations. ← There was another Krupin incarnation, Mel Krupin's, between Duke Zeibert's and Krupin's Deli.

I remember having lunch at Sans Souci with my mother and perhaps siblings when I was probably 13 or 14. That was I'm sure the fanciest restaurant I had ever been in up to that point, and I have a vague memory that the food was good. That was in the mid-sixties. Then I had dinner there, it must have been 1977 because of who I was with, and my gawd it was awful. The service was still elaborate and formal, but the muck on the plates was just dreadful. Canned asparagus! And yet so expensive that I had to sneak out, leaving my friend at the table, and drive to Arlington to get some more cash to pay the bill. (That was before ATMs and god knows no one would have given me a credit card in those days.) Sans Souci closed its doors for good not long after, I believe.

The thought of barely cooked pancetta makes me hungry. It needn't make you queasy. One of the very best ways to enjoy pancetta is utterly, gloriously, unctuously raw. Hm...almost lunchtime.

Bombay Bistro in Fairfax City. Wonderful. Connaught Place, also in Fairfax City, less wonderful to me but my sister, who lives in Manhattan, thinks the sun rises there. Punjab Dhaba at Loemann's plaza. I've probably misspelled that. They have an every-day buffet at lunch that is EXTREMELY variable. Sometimes everything is delicious, sometimes everything seems rather like muck. But if you skip the buffet and order the masala dosa (obviously not a Punjabi dish) you will be very, very happy with what you get. That's the Indian. Vietnamese: I love the pho at Pho Satay on Annandale Rd. at Rt. 50. There's also a good Vietnamese restaurant at Loemann's (or is it Loehmann's) Plaza, I think it's called Saigon House. There's a Pho place nearby (near Punjab Dhaba) called I think Pho 50 that I've heard is good, but I've never eaten there. There are of course many good Vietnamese places in Eden Center, but the one where I had the most wonderful Vietnamese crepe thing filled with sprouts and wonderful pork and stuff I can't remember the name of. But if you really want to be very very happy, go to China Star. Order the salt and pepper eggplant. Be happy.

Could it be a quince?

I'm so glad to see Bistrot du Coin getting trashed after seeing far too much praise for it in various places, like from Tom S. I totally hated this place the first time I went, which was not very long after it opened. The food was so-so, the service was terrible, and they seemed to have gone out of their way to make the place as noisy as possible, adding LOUD canned music (which is utterly un-French) to the already unbearable acoustics. So my friends and I gave them a year, and went back. Nothing had improved, and nothing would induce me to waste another bit of my money or my life in that wretched hole. I hated Al Tiramisu for many of the same reasons, and will never go there again either.

The bar area was crowbarred out of the original Old Ebbit Grill, which was around the corner from the current location; the original structure was demolished. The question of whether or not an old bar in a new location with an old name and new owners is historic, is a little too metaphysical for me. The original establishment is missed, though. ← Amen. Remember the potato chips? But the old Old Ebbitt grill wasn't the original; it was at least the 3rd location, I believe. So there would have been an old old Old Ebbitt and an old old old Old Ebbitt before the the old one, all before the current new Old Ebbitt Grill. The fact remains that the new Old Ebbitt Grill is mostly pretty new. And given the fact that the development it's now located in was in part made possible by the demolition of Rhodes Tavern, calling the new Old Ebbitt Grill "historic" is, well, cruelly ironic.

Okay, I get cavernous. But historical? In what way is the modern so-called Old Ebbitt Grill historical? It goes all the way back to what, 1983?

Everyone I know who has ever used one of the Westmark "Pomfix" vegetable peelers has fallen in love with them. Unfortunately, they're kind of expensive and kind of hard to find, at least in the US (Westmark is a German brand). You can get them online at Jensco. Simply the best peeler I've ever used. (The Messermeister is great for peeling things like raw tomatoes and bell peppers, though.)

Aphrodite is a wonderful, strange little store. I don't think I've bought olives there, but I'm pretty sure they've got a range of choices. But be sure to buy some of their Egyptian feta. It's the best feta I've ever tasted, and it's very inexpensive. The shop is in the same little strip as Rabieng.

Uncovered. I never tried it covered, but I think it would be too much steamed and not enough sauteed. It's really good, by the way.

About ten years ago, it became traditional in my family to have fresh spinach with olive oil and garlic as part of Thanksgiving dinner. Now that I'm doing the cooking, I make it my way, which I developed and which is one of a very few things that I cook in the microwave. In a large glass bowl, put as much chopped garlic as you want in a good bit of extra-virgin olive oil. Put it in the microwave and zap at full power for about 30 seconds. Add a big bunch of spinach (I use the prewashed, dried baby spinach, such as the "microwave in this bag" kind; the important thing is it should be dry) to the bowl and toss it about in the hot oil. Add some salt. Toss about some more, return to the microwave and zap at full power for about 30 seconds. Take it out and toss about some more. Keep up the zapping and the tossing until it's perfectly cooked, which should be about three or four zappings. Add more olive oil and salt as appropriate. Serve hot or at room temperature.