Sabrosita

Come on, come on, I'm anxiously awaiting this post to help plan my trip. Leaving one month from today!!! Your posts helped me a lot on SE Asia, so looking forward to hearing about Beijing before I get there.

Glad I stopped by and saw this! I did a similar trip to the first part of yours--Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Halong Bay and Hanoi--about 9 months ago. It was fun to read your adventures, how much was similar, how much was different. I definitely preferred Chiang Mai to Bangkok, but for me Hanoi was a revelation in terms of the quality of food, it truly was like you could eat the passion everything was made with. The pride oozing from street vendors was palpable. We too thought Bun Cha was one of the best things. If anyone is interested in some very similar experiences, but also quite different, here are my blogs from the trip. I used a lot of egullet knowledge to find my places, so I have to thank everyone here once again! http://thegastrognome.wordpress.com/2008/1...od-post-part-1/ http://thegastrognome.wordpress.com/2008/1...ed-to-try-more/ http://thegastrognome.wordpress.com/2008/1...ake-up-for-pho/ http://thegastrognome.wordpress.com/2008/1...-in-chiang-mai/ http://thegastrognome.wordpress.com/2008/1...for-chiang-mai/ http://thegastrognome.wordpress.com/2008/1...d-pics-bangkok/ And everyone who is heading there, if you have any questions or want to know where places are, I'm happy to do my best to remember, but you'll love it!!!

Deep-fried scorpions? Guaranteed that it cannot be found in the USA. Yours is one idea. Except that a lot of delicious items are cooked-to-order in restaurants and you may not find them on the street to look at. One idea I have, which is what I plan to do the next time I visit Beijing: hire a local tour guide (from Craight's List or something). Let him/her guide you to some of the good, and not necessarily touristy, restaurants. Treat him/her to those meals. Meals don't cost too much in the Mainland China (unless you go to the 5-star hotels). For a big group, it shouldn't be a big deal. If not, meet the tour guide for a few hours shortly after you arrive. Pay him/her. Have them list out / write down the restaurants of reommendation in Chinese (and any specialties). Or bribe Fengyi... ← That's a great idea--I'm also hoping to find any food bloggers in beijing that might want to take a Seattle food blogger under their wing for a meal or two.

Hi all! I'm planning to be in Beijing for 9 days this fall for the sole purpose of delicious eating. I'm guessing that mostly we're just going to wander until we see something crowded and tasty looking, but would love to hear if anyone has suggestions for areas to look and for specific restaurants. I love Sichuan hot pot, we'll need to try some duck, I eat anything and everything and the less likely it is I can get it in the US, the better!

I agree--I'm usually the first to defend him, but I thought last nights show was formulaic and rather one note. I never felt excitement about the food or chemistry between him and the camera, the food or the other people. I really hope it the rest of the season gets better.

If it is really good beef, and the milk soak helps with the texture, I have to tell you one of the best bites I ever had was beef liver sashimi--slice thin and dress with sesame oil, have mashed garlic and mashed ginger on the side for dipping, garnish with chives.

something tells me that nutria just ain't gonna fly ← Oh, the fun of living in Uruguay! I have in fact eaten nutria. I did not know what a nutria was at the time. they explained it as like a beaver. I would have gone more with "giant rat" in retrospect. That said, I don't remember particularly disliking it. My palate was also jaded, as we at a lot of really nasty things in Uruguay, so I think something that easy to eat and not stuffed with ham and cheese was a welcome change.

Funnily enough, I just did a piece on this, because, well....I want to be an empanada lady and sell them on the streets! I'm pretty sure if the economy ever truly dies and I can't find a job anymore, I'm taking up a basket and heading out to the street. Sadly, I actually started to do the math and figured that I could actually make decent money and support myself selling like 100 to 150 empanadas a day.... Okay, I need to remember this is a fantasy and get back to doing my current job before I NEED to sell the empanadas to survive... http://www.accidentalhedonist.com/index.ph...1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

Yeah, I know that feeling, I (white, american girl) once worked in a pizzeria in a small town in Mexico--I am pretty sure a lot of people got a kick out of having a little white girl doing all the dirty work at the pizza place.

Hmmm, I recently wrote an article declaring beef tendon the next pork belly, alot of which is just hopefulness on my part, but I suppose that is under the 'offal' category.

I recently picked up a lobe of fresh quebecois foie at a local retailer. I was actually surprised at how easy it was to find, and really how cheap it was for good quality product. If anyone is looking for a fun food adventure, i would recommend spending the money and playing around with it. You can see what I did with it here: http://thegastrognome.wordpress.com/2009/0...s-of-foie-gras/

yes, they are--they are a business expense here, as oppose to entertainment. ETA: I am not a tax consultant, but I spoke with one when I started doing reviews and he said that I could deduct the entire cost.

I was cooking for a party of about 50 people all in their 20s so I had to compromise a little bit of gourmetness for things people would both want to eat and appreciate in their drunkeness. We paired everything with kegs of local microbrews. Homemade soft pretzels (Alton Brown's recipe) with hot pepper and brie dip paired with roger's pilsner Grilled pizza--chanterelle and rosemary or duck proscuitto, caramelized onion and mozzarella paired with Manny's pale ale Pork butt, apples and onions braised in apple cider and apple cider vinegar paired with chopper redale. Over all it was really fun and very funny when the pretzels ran out and people were clamoring for other things to dip in the brie--I saw pizza, pork, and at the end of the night saw someone funneling it into their mouth using a spoon fashioned from the foil from the top of a champagne bottle! Hope everyone else had a great NYE and has a very delicious 2009!

When I was a kid I looooved Bugles, you know the corn chips type things....So we were on a road trip and I was starving and the options at the gas station were really limited, so I bought a bag... And it became the exception to hunger being the best sauce because those things were REVOLTING. I had loved them as a kid, but now they tasted like rancid butter covered in salt. And nothing else. What was I thinking???

Hi. I actually work for a catering company here in Seattle run by a South African woman, and we do many SA Indian dishes, and I can attest to both the unique flavors and the greatness of the cuisine. Actually there are number of South African minority cultures that we use influences from here and I'm shocked every time that South Africa is never listed as next hot culinary place because these are amazing.... I'd love to see the cuisine get more attention, definitely let me know if you start a blog, I'd be reading it for sure.

I think it would feed more than that--I'm pretty sure an ostrich egg is equal to something like 22 regular chicken eggs, iirc.

I LOVE this idea. I hope you will consider immitation a sincere form of flattery, because I am totally going to steal that idea! ← Please steal! Just don't have any of the same friends as me

So I'm really glad that this topic is around, because I think I need some feedback, and I can't post on my blog because people who would recieve the gift would read it... I'm thinking of trying "Pho-Pourri"...Like potpourri, but it will be all the spices needed for pho broth (star anise, cloves, cinnamon, cardamom, coriander, etc.) wrapped up in a little lacey thing, so they can just drop it into broth and I'll give them a pack of rice noodles as well. They will have to add broth and meat though. I think if done right it could be cute? maybe? I'm still working on it...This is Seattle, so Pho is like what everyone always wants in winter, so I think it should work. Suggestions? Comments? Thanks!

One of my lifetime best things I ever ate was the beef liver sashimi at Hagi in NYC. Don't know what they do with it but it is incredible!

I was just coming in to chime in with a huge discovery I made in my tamale making last night, but first will answer Chris's question. We always freeze them, and you can send them directly into the steamer. I have found that, sadly, they will never be as fluffy as they were the first time. I actually think the best way to reheat them is the microwave--it tends to steam them without getting them too soggy, and also gets the center good and hot. Now, onto my new discovery for the fluffiest tamales I have ever made...I was using a mix of duck fat and lard, after having already used it once to confit the duck...And I stuck it in the mixer and gave it a really good whipping before mixing in the the mas(ec)a...I think having the air whipped in really helped with the fluffiness...I reccomend this highly--didn't even want to put sauce on top because the texture of the masa was so great.

Recent flavors I've done: Mango and Chilies Brie Cheese Banana Ice cream with peanut butter stirred in, topped with honey Strawberry mint frozen yogurt Goat milk and caramel

A little something I designed one day....http://thegastrognome.wordpress.com/2008/03/27/seattle-food-tour/

As someone who works for restaurants that changes its menu fairly often, let me tell you, I spend a lot of time upkeeping our menu on the website. We, unlike others, don't have a PDf, but we do have a nearly full time marketing manager (Me!). However, without such a thing, I could definetly see having a PDF version being a much quicker way to keep an updated menu online. The difference between saving a document as a pdf and re-uploading it and retyping the whole menu in pieces into an html document is a huge amount of time...And you know how hard that is to come by in the restaurant industry.

I absolutely know what the original poster is talking about. I don't mind most of her stuff, I've read her books etc. so I think it is something about the column she does for the NY Times. I just want to throw the paper at someone if I bother to read it. I think the problem is that she doesn't SAY anything. She just talks you through basic cooking. Like, I do that every night. But she thinks she is SOOOO inventive because when she didn't have olives she used capers...or whatever. I think that maybe for people who are used to just following a recipe out of a cookbook, this style of writing is more interesting, but for me it makes me so annoyed. I can't pinpoint just why. I just hate it. Okay. I'm done now. Thanks for listening.

The squid ink shouldn't flavor the hummus too much, though I would wait on adding salt until tasting it with the ink. It doesn't tend to have a squidy flavor, in my experience, though a little bit of a muddled salt flavor (we used it to make filthy dirty black martinis). When I first read the thread, my instinct was definetly the squid ink. A little goes a long way...