Gruzia

I thought the scene in the Italian restaurant with the headmistress teaching schoolgirls how to eat spaghetti in the Western manner is absolutely hilarious. The other scene that always sticks in my mind is the two lovers with the room service food - I can never quite look at eggs the same way again!

My Everyday Mexican extravagaza continues! This time? Enchiladas:

I love eggplants! Maybe because eggplants are used often in Georgian cuisine so I grew up eating them. One of my favorite Georgian dishes is eggplant sliced thinly (about quarter inch) lengthwise, fried, then layered with thinly sliced raw onions (blanched if not a big raw onion fan) and a sauce made out of ground walnuts, cilantro and garlic (mashed to smooth paste in mortar)....let stand in the fridge overnight and enjoy the next day! Of course if you are impatient, as I am, just slather on some of the sauce on the freshly fried eggplant slices, roll 'em up, and enjoy

yours looks like that, too? Maybe they're related - her name is Seela (russian for strength) and currently she is sleeping on the couch, exactly like in the picture!

I believe they are simply young garbanzo beans - I got them in the frozen section of Trader Joe's - super simple to make, they boil up in a matter of minutes.

So as one of my friends complained that I have cooked out of less than 10% of the cookbooks I own, I have made a quick and tasty dinner out of Rick Bayless's Everyday Mexican. Surprisingly enough, for the amount of chipotles I used as the marinade in the chicken and as part of the salsa, the heat was definately manageable. So, I present Chipotle Chicken and Smoky Chipotle Salsa with tomatillos, accompanied by onions and cucumbers:

PLaying catch-up with food from weekend and the week: mmmmm...skillet potatoes, quick, easy and hot! A riff on Alton Brown's Shrimp Scampi...the tomatoes add a great fresh touch buckwheat stir-fry with pineapple spinach, plantain mash, and green garbanzos with olive oil, sea salt and pepper Yet another Alton Brown dish...shallots, garlic and chicken in olive oil - really easy and makes the chicken sooooo tender spinach and quinoa made with tomato paste, boullion cubes and pickled jalapenos - much better than it sounds

hate the smell will eat the popcorn hate the popcorn flavored jellybeans

So true! I hate the smell of microwave popcorn - so nice to know I'm not the only one!

ugh - in college i met a guy who said he was allergic to both garlic and tomatoes - right then I knew it wouldn't last! recently, I had to work with a girl who was one of those people that chew with their mouth open - we were working together for a month and though the girl was nice, by the end, I was ready to strangle her. seriously, is there anything more annoying than wet smacky chewy noises coming from somebody else's mouth?

i'm a big fan of raw zucchini - I don't like the texture when they are cooked.

Rose petal jam

I'm not sure how thick or thin the wire on guitar cutters is, but reading your post, the idea that popped into my head is that you could get one of those little bead looms from a craft store and string it with wire rather than thread.

Have you thought about the Food Source (on Lancaster Ave in Bryn Mawr) dry aged porterhouse? I haven't tried it but one of my friends swore it was the best steak in the area.

Nathan is correct, i was a the bar room. A side note, btw, on the seating arrangements there - the tables are fine but we sat right next to the bar, at a low long couch with low set tables - if you have any back problems or plan to spend a long time eating, make sure you sit at an actual table because my back was killing me by the time the meal was over.

Well, we did not stay away from alcohol - my friend had a 16oz black label Sapporo and I had two glasses of umeboshi wine - but with everything, the bill came out to be $120 for two people - that's including tip, which they automatically add to the bill for you. ← Thanks! I wanted to ask about tipping. Umeboshi wine? Umeshu, I suppose. ← Ooops, my bad You're right...it's the Choya Umeshu wine - served with a plum in the glass

Well, we did not stay away from alcohol - my friend had a 16oz black label Sapporo and I had two glasses of umeboshi wine - but with everything, the bill came out to be $120 for two people - that's including tip, which they automatically add to the bill for you.

C. sapidus - I've had Great Curries of India for a while and this is the first dish I've made from it. It was pretty good, but there were mistakes in the recipe concerning the use of one of the ingredients which threw me off a little. I think I have to make a couple more dishes to really get a good feel for the book. i will say, though, i like how she is always asking for meat with bones or bones to put into the dish as it definately adds more flavor. Wendy - Thank you! I love that bowl, it was a random TJ Maxx purchase and it totally makes me want to make things just to put them into it.

I don't think it's unreasonable to order three dishes between two people and have them live up to expectation. Is there a "plate minimum" that would have changed my experience?

Well, we also had a fruit tart and a mini baguette from Petrossian earlier in the day.

Abra, thank you so much for calling attention to how awesome Georgian food is! I'm half Georgian and it is so nice when others find out about our cuisine (It is especially nice not to have to say "Georgia the country not the state" which is generally followed by a responce like "There's a country?") There are many different ways of making khatchepuri - my mom makes it in the type that is enclosed by dough completely, but as a little girl I ate the khatchapuri shaped like a boat from bakeries in Georgia - salty, buttery filling and crisp dough is hard to beat. I haven't tried the version you baked but Nigela Lawson has a pretty good approximation of the filling in one of her books - the cheese you actually use in Georgia is not available in US so there are various mixes of mozarella, feta, etc that people use to replicate it. As for all the piles of herbs - I was cooking something one time and asking my mother about the quantity of cilantro I should put in - her reply was "Georgian rule of thumb - you can never have too much" Also, as an aside, when making the walnut sauces - Crushing the garlic to a paste in a mortar is something to try if you always mince it or use a food processor - it really makes a difference to the flavor.

My first post on the dinner thread! You guys were a large reason behind my getting a digital camera Anyway, dinner from a couple of nights ago, pasta with Eggplant and Ricotta Sauce from Marcella Hazan's Essentials: Dinner from tonight, Coriander rice with Chicken in Red Curry Sauce from Camelia Panjabi's Great Curries of India:

I went there a couple of weeks ago and was really happy that i did. Opening that heavy, unmarked, dark door to find a brightly lit, friendly little restaurant is a bit surreal. i called earlier to make a reservation and mentioned that we don't eat pork and was happy to discover that they didn't have a problem with that and that they remembered my request when I came in. Our first course was steamed broccoli rabe with a fine sprinkle of katsuobushi on top - a great dish, simple and flavorful. Second course was a couple of sushi with japanese omelet and grated daikon. Once again, very clean flavors, not terribly complicated but perfectly cooked. Third course was mackarel, salmon, and yellowtail tuna sashimi. I've always thought i didn't like mackarel, but here it was perfect, with a smoky-oily taste that reminded me of really good russian cured fish. Yum. I guess i really do like mackarel. Fourth dish was yellowfin tuna cheek, broiled. So good. Perfectly cooked, crispy skin and silky, moist flesh. Fifth course featured a cabbage salad with two of the most perfectly fried croquettes i've ever had. A bit of sauce that tasted like the best ketchup - tomato-y and tart and savory. This course was perfect. The croquettes had a mixture of potato and egg on the inside with a crisp coating of panko. Think savory custardy starchy comfort food enclosed by perfectly crispy shell. The piquant sauce added a great dimension to the croquettes. And the fresh cabbage was really refreshing. This dish was so good, i can't do it justice. Next came a salad of fried chicken with sprouted beans, bean sprouts, super thin red onion slices - nice combo of taste and texture. And i had a bowl of udon soup to finish off the meal. I loved this meal. It was something really special to be fed food that was cooked so well and carried its flavors so cleanly and honestly.

So a couple of weekends ago, i decided to make a trip to NYC - after asking for recommendations in the MOMA area, so many responded with "The Modern, of course" that, despite wanting to avoid the obvious choices, I decided to try it for lunch. We got this as an appetizer..this is the poached egg, lobster, sunchoke, and uni foam dish that was mentioned by BrianZ. Our lobster was pretty good - tender and sweet, and I liked the earthy note the sunchokes added but thought the uni foam was completely useless, pretty much overwhelmed by the other ingredients. My friend had this - lamb tenderloin, I think, with a pomegranate sauce,an arugula salad, and a lamb terrine type thing. The terrine was good, the salad underwhelming, the lamb good (its hard not to like lamb), but I've had better. This was my dish - duck confit with sauteed potatoes and a fluff of green. Again, good, but not great. A bit boring in view of the setting and the reputation. Overall, I'm underimpressed. We were looking forward to this meal because of all the buzz about the restaurant so maybe our expectations were too high but while the food was good, it just didn't leave me with that glowing, i-had-a-great-meal feeling. Especially when you factor in the prices.

did anyone catch the post-show interview on bravotv.com? Is it just me or did Marcel appear to be , umm, slightly less than sober?