trillium

Thanks, Priscilla. Do you remember if it's possible to mount the shelves upside down on Metro (and Metro-likes)? Seems like I could turn the top shelf into a lid holder that way. ← Not Priscilla, but a die-hard Metro fan. I think the black plastic bracket clips are what determine which way the shelves go on, snap them on upside down and you're good to go. Or do everthing right side up, with the idea of flipping it over when you're done. And do make sure if you're going to work at the unit that you have a nice ledge on whatever your work surface will be. regards, trillium

I have some frikah that one of my favorite local farmers did in the spring. I've been hoarding it, but realized it needs to get eaten up before our move. I also have a chunk of boneless lamb shoulder. I'm having trouble deciding what to make. On the one hand, I could make soup with these two things (although when I made it before it was with the cracked kind, these are whole grains) or I could cook the frikah and shoulder serparately and then serve them together. I found some very tasty looking but labor-intensive recipes in Med. Greens and Grains, but I don't have that much time to spend on the prep right now. Any ideas? regards, trillium

Hell no. But do pay attention to serving size and what you serve. I always feel that a pre-dinner drink should stimulate the appetite, not drown it with sugar or numb it with too much ethanol, so I try to make aperativi that are either small in serving size, or low in alcohol, but it certainly doesn't mean you can't have cocktails! Mine also tend towards the herbal-bitter side, because I love a drink with a bitter presence before dinner. The whole point of T-day is drink and eat all day, isn't it? And remember that you can turn almost any true cocktail into a "fizz" by shaking it, pouring it over ice, and topping with soda water. I think Chartreuse and Benedictine are overlooked ingredients when people consider pre-dinner drinks this time of year. They are both complex and match the flavors of the food and the season. I think there are even some drinks that use Chartreuse, Benedictine and dry sherry in combination, but I can't remember them right now. You might consider those. Sparkling wine based drinks are nice too, and offer plenty of ways to add in other flavors. regards, trillium

While you're all hanging, I thought I'd add something for other people (like me) who read this thread with great interest because they might have to redo a horrid kitchen totally on the cheap. Metro shelving has come out of patent and there are huge shelves (48 wide, 8 feet tall?) at Costco for even cheaper then similiarly sized Metro shelves at the restaurant supply shop. I think we ended up buying 4 of these monsters for kitchen storage and basement storage. They look small in the warehouse, but you get them home and they're huge. You can buy nifty accessories sized for Metro shelves and their ilk at Storables (pdf of accessories and prices) if you have one of those in your town. I bought some hanging baskets, a towl rack and a potholder rack. Also, even though Dave as moved on and found the perfect work surface, I'll give out a resounding negative vote to making an island type deal from Metro shelving unless you're going to bolt a countertop onto it (I talked to the Boos guys about this). I couldn't afford to do that so I just have the wire top with a piece of vinyl on it and then my big cutting boards. I hate it with an ungodly passion. It is amazingly difficult to work on a surface that has no ledge when you cook a lot like I do. I never thought the ledge would make much difference but it does. I loved seeing the Corti guy's kitchen in Saveur a few issues ago. He left his 70's kitchen mostly intact expect for dropping in a nice gas range. And in Julia Child's kitchen, every single surface is butcher block. I love the stuff. I hate granite, it was in our last apartment, but it could just be my personality. I find it only useful for pastry. I hate how careful you have to be setting down hot cast-iron on it, and I hate how cold it is to work on. We're trying to buy a house right now that has a horrible 70's kitchen, and if we manage to do it, we'll have no $$ left over for expensive remodels, so I'm really loving this thread. Thanks to Dave and all the contributors. regards, trillium

thanks...I'll let you know how it goes. One last (I hope) question... any rough guesses on how much a 15lb recipe yields in terms of quarts or pints? best, trillium

Thanks a bunch for posting that! 15 lbs of green tomatoes are about what I have, and it would be swell to get them all put up in one go. Do you coarse chop or slice them? Am I supposed to slice the coarsely chopped chunks? And just to check, the 3 Tblsp to onions is salt, right? And lastly, for Brooks and/or other fans of this relish, how sweet does it run? Is it the same sweetness level as say, a commerical green cucumber relish? Less sweet? How cool is this...I've made Suvir's tomato chutney and know I'll make Brook's tomato relish. I heart eGullet. regards, trillium

Thanks, and thanks for merging it with this thread. I did a search for green+tomatoes before I posted and didn't pull it up. I think I'm searching wrongly, because I just did a search for green tomato relish with Mayhaw Man as the author and it didn't pull up any recipes, just posts where it is mentioned. Any hints on where to find the recipe on eG? regards, trillium

So summer is officially long gone, and yesterday I managed to go outside and harvest all of the green fruits that hadn't been damaged by rain and rot. I have a lot. A lot a lot. I don't want to bread and fry them. I don't want to make some sweetish jam preserve thing with them. I'm hoping for ideas for savory food or preserves. We're happily using the green cherry tomatoes in Thai stir fries, the sour fruitiness is nice with the last of the summer's basil and the brined green peppercorns. We'll also do the typical Chinese stir-fry of beef and the big green tomatoes and green onions but after that I'm fresh out of ideas. The partner votes to broil them all and use them like tomatillos, but we already have tomatillos stashed in the freezer so I'm hoping eGulleteers can help us out! What would you do with 7 kilos of green tomatoes? thanks, trillium

You could do much worse then starting with the recipe given in the link I posted upthred. It pretty much is the standard. It's just spelled a little differently but it means kung pao chicken. regards, trillium

Can I come to your house for a drink please? regards, trillium

I find most of the food writing in this city awful (with the Jim Dixon disclaimer, of course). I think most of it can barely be called journalism. The most obviously bad are the Mercury, sometimes it obviously reads that they don't even eat the food they're writing about (I thinking of the bbq thing a while back) and it doesn't seem that serious about food. The WW is spotty and it seems cliquey some how...sometimes it seems like the reviewers are writing about their friends, or they've picked a couple of "golden" restaurants and then ignore everything else. The Oregonian seems mostly to be advertisements (what is up with that awful section that tells you about the new high brands of flavoured, high fructose corn syrup "fruit juices" or deep fried nasties or canned applesauce at the grocery store????) or geared towards people with more disposable income then taste, and what taste they have is lily white and dated. And they sometimes don't do their research when they write up cuisines they're not familiar with. Bugs me because it makes Portland look like a hick town (uh, hmmm). However, I do like the occasional preserving section that runs. Thanks for letting me vent! regards, trillium

I hate to answer this question as Ms. Dunlop as been known to pop in from time to time, but I think the traditional kung pao is marinated chicken, lots o' chillies, garlic, ginger, scallions, Sichuan peppercorns and peanuts. I think the seasonings are the usual sweet/sour suspects and you fry the hell out of the chillies to get the oil nice and scented before you cook any thing else. I don't think it ever has any sort of veggies added, I 've found that version to be a more Cantonese-restaurant-cooking-in-a western-setting version of a Sichuan dish. Oh look... I found Ms. Dunlop's recipe for Gong Bao Gai on the Leite page. Do try it this way some time... in this case I much prefer the original version (unlike ma po where I like both depending on mood). regards, trillium

Haum ha is not like cincalok or belecan or trassi or kapi. It is in the same family of fermented shrimp products, but the paste is a lavendar-grey color, with emphasis on lavendar, and it's thicker then cincalok and thinner then belecan/trassi or kapi. It also tastes different, not so complex as a nice belecan or kapi, and not that milky floral aromatic tastes of a good cincalok....but I've only had the cheap ones, I'll bet there are better versions to be had. regards, trillium

Word is that Marcella Hazan drinks hers on the rocks...but on special occasions she goes for Gentleman Jack. regards, trillium (drank JD neat all through college and lived to tell the tale...)

I feel your pain. I'm not so crazy about the Torani orgeat, it just tastes like almond extract to me. I've been very happy with the Sicilian orzata I bought from A.G. Ferrari. It has a nice natural bitter almond flavor and the orange flower component is present but not overwhelmong. Their lemon syrup is damn good too. regards, trillium

So far, Genie's (in pdx). regards, trillium

Hmmm. I wouldn't be so sure that just ABCs or CBCs don't do this nowadays. The partner's family, which is Hokkien, but have been in Singapore for the last 3 gens, do this, and when the mainlanders I work with (not all city folks, some country guys too) found out about it, they commented on how old fashioned it was and intimated that no one in mainland China does it any more. Curious. Maybe regional? Oh, and I have to say, most of these guys I work with like going to the crappiest "Chinese" restaurants in town, because they're cheap and you get lots of food! They don't really seem to care what it tastes like. regards, trillium

I think I got a very different impression when I read it in the paper yesterday. I don't live there (I'll stay here with my inferior west coast seafood and produce, thank-you-very-much) so I only go by what the article says, and what it says makes it seem like the owner is using the whole "exclusive" vibe as a marketing ploy. I dislike stuff like that. To me, that attitude = jackass. I'm not a huge fan of cosmos, but I'd hardly dismiss them as ridiculous. Done right, they follow the same formula of other more classic cocktails. If you're not happy making them, why not take the time to educate your customer about other more interesting drinks, instead of just not stocking cranberry juice? Aren't there more fun ways of persuading people then by blunt force? Explain to me how needing an unlisted phone number to get a reservation at a place with no sign is not exclusionary. If the number is easy to come by, why is the opposite emphasized in the paper? And won't the whole world (or at least the NYT reading one) know there is a bar in the building now? regards, trillium

Huh. And to think I got called snotty! I like it that more and more people are paying attention to making a proper cocktail, but being a jackass never gets people anywhere, so why do they think it's going to get them customers interested in trying new things? I would think you could be provacative and witty as an approach to get people to try new things, but I'm not a bartender, so what do I know? And that whole exclusionary thing with the secret door and phone number? That crap drives me nuts. I'll go out of my way to avoid that stuff, good cocktail or no. regards, trillium

The moon was beautiful in pdx last night and we stood in the middle of the road eating our mooncake and gazing. Sadly for us we'd already eaten the box we bought two weeks ago (Sheng Kee) and when we took the bus to the store to get more yesterday, there was only a sad mashed box of mini mooncakes from Sheng Kee and a bunch of scary looking coconut ones from a bakery in Canada. We did without the egg, and took home the mini-pack. Maybe next year I will make the pandan scented lotus filled ones again (with LARD!). They're not as pretty as the pros, but very tasty. My favorite from the box this year is the red date with nuts. regards, trillium

I'd like to add my thanks as well, it's great to have you here. rien, you expressed very eloquently what I was wondering myself... the west coast didn't seem to be represented, except in mention of the dreadful strawberries trucked across the country ... Meyer lemons, Dungeness crab, all those wonderful berries from the Willamette valley, wild halibut (cheeks!), sand dabs and salmon ... where do these figure in? regards, trillium

This year I finally got it together in between the pomarola and sambal productions to make this chutney. It is as delicious as all the other posts say. I added 35 dried chillies to the tarka instead of um, I think it was 16? And all the cayenne and a scotch bonnet chilli cut in half and just thrown in whole. I think I've been living with a SE Asian for too long, because even I thought the chutney wasn't hot enough. All the Andhran food I've eaten has been pretty darn hot, but is this type of chutney supposed to be more mild? Anyone? regards, trillium

Ahh. Henri Bourdain Pastis. Way more complex and herbalicious then Herbsaint. If it were me, I wouldn't bother switching to something else, but I don't have a bottle of real absinthe in my bar. regards, trillium

Mekong Market (or something very close as a name) is in the 1300 block of Hewitt in Everett. They had Chaokoh last time I was there. Don't know about case prices, but the owner is very nice and if you call them they can probably arrange to have it waiting for you. They're not as cheap as shops in the ID but my mum likes going there because it's close. regards, trillium

Umm, boy were you on a roll!! Ha ha. Maybe one of the people in charge can delete some of those repeats! I didn't start this thread, but I think it's more of a discussion about what happens when two different food cultures meet under the same roof. Especially what happens with a Chinese food culture vs. x culture. There is a "Chinese" restaurant in nearly every town, and it hardly ever resembles food cooked in the homes of recently arrived or 3 generations ago arrived ethnic Chinese. I think it's an interesting discussion, and in no way implies that you have to limit yourself or expertise to the ethnic food culture you came from! For example, in my house, I like Cantonese food more then the ethnic (southern) Chinese guy! I'm so sorry you're running into double standards when it comes to an ethnic Asian doing food writing on foods other than Asian, but I don't think you'll find that here. I'm guessing that your race had nothing to do with people asking you to repeat yourself here in Portland (Oregon, right?). When I moved here from Chicago the same thing happened to me and I'm not Asian. It's most likely that you were speaking much faster then people here are accustomed to following. I've had to slow down and make time for please and thank you and good morning when you pass someone on the sidewalk. At first it was disconcerting, but now I really enjoy it. regards, trillium