Kouign Aman

Tomorrow's the big night. We're staying one night right on the edge of the Theatre district, looks a couple blocks from Boston Common. Any place around there that will work for dinner for a small person who's been all day on a plane? Or shall we just stop at the nearest place thats serving? Also, any good breakfast places? The hotel menu is scary pricey. We're looking forward to Summer Shack, icecream, a few stops at Hanover street and a number of other recommendations from this thread. Thanks all, for the input. Also, not so cheap... is there a better / not so good location of Legal Seafood? My boss raved about them.

What restaurant would you suggest, as a good starting point to develop a common set of references?

Wow! What a high, just to read this. It must be incredible to have done it. How do you keep the spheres from leaving an oilslick atop the champagne? What kind of oil do you drip the spheres into? I've never even been tempted by this process before. Now I want to make vinaigrette spheres, using them to carry the oil onto the salad. Someone else, please do this. I know I never will get to it.

Lovely lovely food. Delightful pork shots. And now bike porn too. :swoon:

think I should scale it back, rachel?

What fun! You are bringing back good memories of meals and waitresses from our brief stay in Munich. Our English Garden meal was in the evening, in the rain, huddled outside under the umbrellas. Good food and much laughter.

June 2008 Restaurant Week - San Diego Round II! June 22 - 27. Who's going where? (I'll be out of town. )

when you take time to post to the site, even if you are feeling like carp. <you know who you are! >

Tomatoes fattening everywhere! Glee and joy One corn stalk is flowering (its all of 18" high. So much for the Elephant's Eye!), and there are 6 or so more in the ground. Gonna have to figure out how to self pollinate the early bird. The sunflower seeds germinate, grow a bit, then die. Its odd. The beans skipped the germination step. The pumpkins need a new home this week. They are past due removal from their pots. Some of the over-wintering peppers are flowering now. Its such fun wandering the garden each day, looking for whats new.

Kouign Aman, is that something you would like to se or think would be sucessful in san diego. avon garde cuisine or science-food games ← I was simply answering your comment re our press. I doubt we've much of a market for "molecular cuisine" as a stand alone restaurant. Certain aspects of it are being incorporated into local menus and that works (foams certainly, probably 'caviar' here and there, but not as the main point of the dish). Classics are dissed, so places that reliably turn out perfect classics & riffs upon them get no buzz (Milles Fleurs for example). What kind of changes do you think would change the perception (or the reality) of San Diego's food scene? Do you suppose it would help this discussion if we all went to the same restaurant some time, so we could establish a common set of referents? It wouldnt have to be a gathering, necessarily. It could be that we just all try to get to the place within a month of each other. El Bizcocho? Chive? Other?

Somewhere quite close to Santa Barbara is a nursery that specializes in bananas. I last visited a ..few... years ago. They offered tastings from any of the fruit that was ripe. I remember at least 20 different varieties. Might be worth a google, and drive down the coast?

I made lemongrass icecream recently, using an 'Oster Kitchen Center' icecream maker. It went very quickly. The plus side is it uses ice and table salt. so I dont have to keep the chiller in the freezer, also I dont risk running out of 'chill capacity'. Heated chopped lemongrass in heavy cream, just to the boiling point. Let cool and removed the skin that formed, and the lemongrass chunks. Recipe was 1.5 c cream, 0.5 c milk, 0.5 c sugar, mixed, chilled, then churned. The result was different in texture from any other icecream I've made. It stayed creamy in the freezer for a full week, where all other flavors started to get icy in a day or so. Also, this was the COLDEST icecream I've ever had. I dont know why. We made two other flavors at the time. Neither of them was as cold, and both got icy after a couple days in the freezer. I'm wondering if it was heating the cream or some component of the lemongrass that had the smoothing effect. I think it has to be the lemongrass that made it seems so cold, like menthol seems cold. I'll be making it again. It was wunnerful.

The Heifer Project is another good way to donate food. I keep wondering how much 1000 grains of rice weighs, since you know they dont count it out!

cjbleid, I think we're honored that you broke 2.5 years of silence to post on San Diego. As for din, we're full of places that are very loud. Re dining - there's good food here. There arent many of us who get to the same restaurants tho, so its hard to build an active discussion. As for why the press is what it is - we dont have anyone doing cutting edge science-food games. And traditional preparations seem to be panned by the food press. Other than that, I have no ideas as to the general negativity re the available food. Of course, I dont have a lot of experience dining in comparator cities either. What would you change, and why ? How do you think it would impact things?

Pax, you rock. Wishing you an easy recovery and good health.

Haggis, o' course! The tenor liked his with drambuie sauce. The "lights" being the lungs : haggis recipes another haggis recipe

While the focus of this discussion so far has been on molecular gastronomy and its output, there are other challenging meals, some of which are completely classic. I did not grow up taking blue crabs apart. A meal of blue crabs falls firmly into the challenging meal category. Its damn hard work, I'm relatively inept, it takes forever to get enough crab meat to fill up, some of the 'bits' looked a bit off-putting the first time, and my fingers stung from the combination of cuts and crabboil. And everytime I've dined on blue crab, its been a perfectly delightful and pleasurable meal none-the-less. The first time I had a greek dish with cinnamon in the meat - that was a new experience comparable to the unexpected combinations featured by the boys with their chemical toys. Two bites of 'what the hell?", followed by pure pleasure. Not so for my dining companion. The association of cinnamon with sweet was too strong to overcome in one meal - it rated as 'interesting, glad I had it, dont want more thankyou'. So, to riff off the title of the topic : is greek food pleasurable? Sometimes tho, one doesnt want to be challenged. One wants to relax. I suspect that the subjective experience of the food at Moto would be improved by arriving well rested and not too hungry. It would probably be diminished by arriving stressed, starved or tired.

This was very good. It even looked ok on the plates. The fried sage leaves looked like leaves. Photographed, it looks like I was serving giant planaria or leeches. After seeing the photo, my husband termed dinner "tortilleechi".

Thanks for that idea. I'll save it for future reference. This time, we're looking at mango icecream, by majority rule. tortillini alfredo with peas on the side took care of two things from the freezer and one from the fridge. lamb stew yesterday took care of a fair portion of the crisper drawer, and half the lamb. The rest will go bravely to the sour cherry rice adventure. quiche for breakfast finished off the ham and two packets of cheese (and sadly, the eggs). We are eating well. I wonder if our clothes will fit much longer?

Yes, cherries. Its been so long since I made it, it could have been chicken.... That's the star in all the recipes I found on line too. Thanks to you, and on another thread, dockhl, for your help with cherry rice recipes. I think I will be cobbling together recipes to make it work with lamb. wheeee!

Our favorite Afghan restaurant makes this and calls it yagout chalow. menu I remember some years back making this from a recipe in the Time Life Foods of the World ringbound recipe book. I dont have the books now. Would someone who has that recipe or a similar one please have pity, and summarize the ingredients and methods? All the recipes I find on line are for rice alone or with chicken. Thanks in hopeful advance.

Lemongrass icecream with ginger syrup sauce. Next time, I'll thicken the sauce slightly. It was muy good. :happy dance:

Thanks! I have a freezer full of mango chunks, and a bag of gingersnaps. I'm thinking some kind of mango pie or crumble with gingersnap crust. I have no idea how to implement that tho. Any ideas?

I saw this the other day. This lady has clearly given some thought to the matter of food movies. Whew! BadHomeCooking movie list

Susan, thanks for all you did, and wishing you & your family well in life. I hope 'posting more' means we'll hear from The Cabin this year.