Eric_Malson

Meat

Are there really people with such a low gross-out threshold? Just wondering.

I was at Blondie's (west side) last weekend (great wings, as usual) and found out that Blondie's did indeed serve Atomic wings in the past, but at some point some dispute arose and they now do their own.

I, for one, am very happy to know this, ecr. I grew to love hot and sour soup at a Chinese restaurant in my college town of Bloomington, Indiana, and this particular restaurant served a hot and sour soup very similar to the one you describe (with the addition of black tree fungus, maybe some straw mushrooms--it's been a long time, so I'm not quite sure--some egg-drop, some cubes of tofu and lily buds). In those days--the late '70's/early'80's--hot and sour soup was not the ubiquitous menu item it is today, and the next place I encountered was in NYC. This was, of course, the brown stuff, and it seemed to me like a different dish entirely, and I've never liked it nearly as much as my first love. I suppose I take this as some sort of validation of my "instinct for authenticity", whether or not I should.....hey, humor me!

I was having some good eats this evening over at Sam Kinsey and Kathleen Berger's place, and we were discussing--what else?--e.Gullet, and one of my mother's regular creations that I had completely forgotten resurfaced in the memory banks. She called it "frozen fruit dessert" and it consisted of canned fruit cocktail (with the liquid, for sweetening), a lot of Cool Whip, and some lemon juice (ReaLemon, no doubt) all mixed together, spread into ice cube trays and frozen. No one else in the family seemed to find this stuff quite as appalling as I did (making me, once again, the "difficult one"). I would never, under any circumstances, consume the individual components on their own (with the possible exception of the lemon juice).... put them together and you get something utterly disgusting. I wonder if Sandra Lee knows about this recipe?

Which other two? I was referring to the post immediately before mine that mentioned Casa Marcial and El Corral del Indiano in/near Arriondas--I should have been more clear.

Casa Gerardo is indeed outstanding--better than the other two, in my opinion, because it stays closer to its roots in traditional Asturian cooking. I would hate for anyone to go to Asturias and seek out only Michelin-starred restaurants--it would be missing the point of the region entirely. The real glory of Asturias is its fantastic natural bounty--with its fertile farmlands, mountains, rivers and the sea, it has just about everything. And I passionately believe the best way to enjoy these riches are the traditional preparations (or something very close to it). Casa Gerardo makes a top-notch fabada asturiana, but I still would not want to miss the fabada at La Máquina in Lugones. It's just about all they do, they've been doing it for years, and they do it better than anyone. I had a marvelous chuletón de buey at Casa Gerardo, but it was certainly no better then the ones I've had at any number traditional parrillas in Asturias--El Quesu or Nozana in Pola de Siero, La Fusta in Argüelles (I have a soft spot for that one because it was the first one I was ever taken to) or, if you like your grilled meats with a spectacular view, Buenos Aires on top of Mte. Naranco in the outskirts of Oviedo. And once you set foot in one of these, you'll want to try everything they have, trust me! A seafood dish in any Michelin-starred restaurant will, of course, be excellent. But is the experience any more elevated, really, than enjoying seafood in any of the informal bars or restaurants in any number of coastal towns right where it was just caught (like, say, Cudillero, Puerto de Vega, Navia, Luanco, Lastres)? I think not. Casa Gerardo makes a stunning arroz con leche, but..... ok, Casa Gerardo makes the most amazing arroz con leche I have ever tasted. And don't miss the sidrerías, whatever you do. Sidra was made to be drunk while eating centollo (spider crab), IMHO. Or the various artisanal meat and cheese products in the areas where they are made.....the list goes on and on. And I don't know want this to sound like I'm running down Casa Gerardo--I'm not. It's a truly outstanding restaurant, and you shouldn't miss it if you're anywhere nearby. I certainly don't plan to skip it my next trip to Asturias!

OMG, how could I have forgotten about "Chinese food" nights, featuring La Choy?? Did your mom ever make the egg-foo young, too? You know, beat some eggs and mix it with the mystery contents of the can and fry. I thought I hated Chinese food for years, until....well, you know the rest. We would have counted ourselves lucky to have been served Uncle Ben's. Mom always made Minute Rice. And I never had real butter until I left home either. How could anyone think that margarine was in any way "better for you" than butter (which was mom's reasoning)? I shudder just thinking about all of this...

As much as I love Grand Sichuan, Wu Liang Ye on W. 48th St. wins on two counts: "double-cooked fresh bacon with spicy capsicum" (the best twice-cooked pork I've tried anywhere) and the cold appetizer "hand-shredded chicken with spicy sesame vinaigrette". This location, btw, has better food than than the other ones. I have slightly different favorites at GS 9th Ave. @ 51st: Braised beef filets in chili sauce Sliced pork (belly) with garlic sauce (cold appetizer) ma-po tofu smoked tea duck ...and another vote for their beef tendon in red pepper sauce And in the "best-as-in-unique-and-excellent" category, their stir-fried cured pork with garlic shoot, form the "Mao's home cooking" section.....outstanding. Also, if you ask them, they will prepare beef the same way as their Au-zhou chicken, and I think that dish is even better. Joe's Shanghai: the best dish I've tried here was a half (I think) steamed chicken which was served on a big platter in a very light sauce (wine sauce, maybe? I can't quite remember)....simple, fresh, marvelous. The soup dumplings paled in comparison.

Off-topic for a moment: Talking with my mother once about food, I used the word "aspic". Oddly enough, she had no idea what it was, and asked. I said, "Well, it's bigger than a toothpick...." She nearly slapped me.

I posted about this on another thread, but Mom made this WAY too often, and it stills qualifies as just about the worst food I've had in anyone's home.... "Salmon loaf"--made with canned salmon, chalky vertebrae left in--accompanied by a floury-pasty creamed peas. Having that regularly inflicted upon me was a truly traumatizing experience. Actually, all fish-products were disaster. In Ohio in the mid-'60's, fresh fish was either simply not available (which I suspect) or prohibitively expensive....in any case, it was not purchased for the family. Fish meals, therefore, were produced exclusively from canned or frozen products--fish sticks or breaded fish filets (practically tasteless and ALWAYS dry, and somehow always managed to have bones in them) baked too long in the oven, and of course the tuna-noodle casserole (which might not have been bad without the presence of canned tuna, a product which I cannot eat to this day). I never, ever understood how anyone could eat those things voluntarily. I was into my 30's before I could eat fish (not shellfish--I always liked shellfish when prepared properly) with any enjoyment whatsoever.

Asturias has been my number one food obsession for years now. I've already posted quite a bit of what I know about restaurant highlights here (you can search for posts under my member name), but if you have some questions that haven't been addressed, ask away. For general information about Asturian food and cooking in English, there really isn't much. Penelope Casas' books are probably your best bet, particularly her book on regional Spanish cooking called Delicioso! For my money, Asturian food is the best in Spain (I know there are people around here who will disagree with me!), and I've travelled EXTENSIVELY throughout the province seeking it out. Give me some guidelines as to just what you'd like to know, and I'll tell you all I can.

Hear, hear re the goddess of food writing, Elizabeth David! I have almost all of her books (although somehow, I never felt the need to own Spices, Salt and Aromatics in the English Kitchen or English Bread and Yeast Cookery), and if I had to pick a "favorite cookbook" on my shelf, it would probably be her French Provincial Cooking. I find myself going back to her Italian Food quite often, too, even though one doesn't normally associate her necessarily with Italian cooking (that book is still relatively easy to find in a glossy, almost coffee-table format with lots of pictures). Being a Spanish food fanatic, I also love anything by Penelope Casas, especially The Foods and Wines of Spain. The book on Catalan cooking by Colman Andrews previously mentioned in this thread is also a winner. The other cookbook I use a LOT may seem odd, but it's clear, concise, and every recipe I've tried has turned out spectacularly and has the "taste of authenticity": it is The Hungarian Cookbook by Susan Derecskey (out of print, but Amazon lists some as being still available). Perhaps this is the place to plug a couple of other books: for those of you that are somewhat daunted by the prospect of just getting in the kitchen and cooking something (even though this is a food-lover's site, I know that not everyone here loves to cook!), the "60-Minute Gourmet" books by Pierre Franey have loads of basic techniques explained in the simplest and clearest possible way, and the recipes have the added advantage of (stating the obvious once again!) requiring no more than an hour to prepare. A quick check of my book sources shows that French Provincial Cooking is in print with a new preface by Julia Child, and there are still some copies around through Amazon (and abebooks.com) of the handy collection Elizabeth David Classics, which consists of Mediterranean Food, French Country Cooking, and Summer Cooking together in one volume. Almost unbelievably, Amazon says that most of her books are actually still in print (for quite a while this was definitely not the case, and I'm not quite sure I do believe Amazon on this one).

Oh, normal are they? Even though you never ate a raw oyster in your whole life until a little over a month ago? Nothing I've ever eaten can compete with the things previously mentioned here--just the usual offal and blood dishes. Nepalese yak's milk cheese perhaps, courtesy of Ellen Shapiro?

Decided to check this thread out because of its recent mention on the "Best Buffalo Wings in NYC" thread, and was surprised to note that my favorite frites in town weren't already mentioned (at least I didn't see it in a quick scan of the posts....): Cafe de Bruxelles, in the West Village. Truly outstanding frites (I haven't been there in a few years, but I trust it hasn't changed much)--certainly much better than the ones I had at Les Halles (downtown). Petite Abeille also does frites pretty damn well. The B. Frites on Broadway @ 52nd St. really is a pretty fair imitation of the frites stands I tried in Belgium.

I had no idea there was an Atomic Wings in Manhattan ....now I must have some... Oops....edited to say it seems I'm confused about Atomic Wings. I had wings at a chain in Dallas called "Atomic Wings", I believe, and thought this was the same chain. From the website, that does not appear to be the case. Anyway, I have had consistently good Buffalo wings at Blondie's (UWS--79th St. between B'way and Amsterdam, and there's an UES location, but I forget exactly where it is--1st or 2nd Ave. in the low 90's), and they offer many different levels of "heat" options. For that extra infusion of grease, their cottage fries (accompanied by a "cheddar cheese" sauce the consistency of microwaved Velveeta) are pretty kick-ass, too! I was told at some point, by what I remember to be a reliable source but now cannot recall what the source was, that Mudville 9 on Chambers St. had good wings. Can anyone with firsthand experience confirm or deny? Edited to add: Brother Jimmy's food is tasty, but their wings are not my idea of good Buffalo wings.

All this lentil lore of which I was in complete ignorance! I'm probably stating the obvious here, but Fairway almost always has green lentils. I haven't bought them in a while, but I believe they used to be about a dollar a pound.

For my money, the Portuguese do roast kid better than anyone. Here's a method for preparing from the Trás-os-Montes region: First, rub the entire prepared kid goat with a paste made from: 1/4-lb. garlic, 1 tbsp. ground black pepper, 3 or 4 tbsp. paprika, and 4 bay leaves. Then marinate in a bottle of white wine for 12 hours. Stuff with a mixture of: 1 lb. potatoes, cut into small cubes 1/2 lb. of olives (whole, with pits) 1/2 lb. of chorizo, cut into rounds 1/3 lb. of salpicão (another kind of sausage--perhaps you could use soppressata) 1/3 lb. of either an inexpensive prosciutto or slab bacon, cut into cubes parsley 2 tsp. black pepper 2 whole cloves 2 tbsp. lard Sew up the cavity with needle and thread. Roast slowly, brushing with olive oil. This recipe is for spit-roasting, but should work in an oven as long as it's on a rack. A bit simpler is this interesting-sounding preparation from the Beira Alta region, roast kid goat in the style of leitão (roast suckling pig): The day before: For a kid of about 12 lbs., make a paste with a mortar and pestle of: 6 cloves of garlic parsley 8 black peppercorns coarse salt (to taste, but don't skimp!) Then add 1/2 lb. lard and 2 bay leaves broken into small pieces. Rub the entire goat, inside and out, with the paste and leave it overnight. While roasting: chop some parsley and add it to 1/3 bottle of white wine, and sprinkle the goat with it periodically. I have no information on desirable final internal temperature or how long it should roast.

That was exactly my point, Suzanne--thank you. They can, of course, close whenever they want.

I decided to try this place tonight on the strength of the recommendation of the fellow e-gulleteers above. Since it was Christmas eve, I thought it would be likely to be open when some other joints in the area would not. At 8:10, all signs were lit up....people inside, all doors wide open. I walked in, only to be informed by a manager-type that they were closed. I must have looked extremely confused....it finally occurred to me to ask when they had closed, and I was told 8. Since that information apparently did not effectively dispel my look of confusion, manager-type then informed me, "It's Christmas." ("Well, duh!") All well and good so far, although not exactly sparkling repartee. I can only guess that I was not leaving fast enough for manager-type's taste, because he then said, a bit impatiently, "We were open all day." That sentence positively guaranteed I will never be back. Perhaps I'm over-reacting--those who know me will be deeply shocked by this, but I have been known to do that from time to time. But I was incredibly annoyed by it.....just how IS the information that the establishment in question was "open all day" supposed to have any bearing whatsoever on the situation of a potential customer, reasonably taking the establishment to be open, being refused service at that moment? Maybe someone should start a "stupidest/most offensive things said by restaurant employees" thread. It might be a good corrective for all those (admittedly amusing) disgruntled-waiter sites.

Over the years, I've often been struck by odd background music in restaurants (being a musician, I somehow can't seem to not listen to music if it's playing, even if it's very soft), but one instance is the clear winner. It was almost 20 years ago and my very first time in Paris (for a grand total of nine hours, changing trains--I had just finished a stint at an opera house in Germany and had to get to Spain pronto for a concert tour with a violinist. Back then, flights within Europe cost almost as much as transatlantic, so the train was the only feasible option.). We had just enough time to see Notre Dame and have an early dinner before checking in for the overnight train to Spain, and found a relaxed, somewhat bohemian, and extremely cheap restaurant with decent food. A local radio station was on which played what might be described as "progressive pop." All was as it should be until a certain "song" came on which caused all of us to nearly choke on our food....the genre it most closely resembled was rap, except the rhythm of the words was slower than any rap I've ever heard--every word and idea was CLEARLY understandable (to English speakers, anyway). It was "sung" (spoken? shouted?) by a woman over a droning electronic harmony/beat. The first few lines will give you a taste: You don't own me, b*stard.... You f*cking a**hole! You wanna s*ck my p*ssy? Well, lemme s*ck your d*ck! It then went on to describe a lot of sexual acts, many of which I had never thought of before. (The ones involving Belgian waffles and her grandmother were particularly evocative!) After we got over our initial shock, we looked around the room to see the reactions of other diners to this particular selection: nothing. Everyone else was calmly eating and chatting....they were all French and didn't understand the words! It took me YEARS to find out what that thing was. About 3 or 4 years ago (thanks to the internet!), I finally managed to ascertain that it was Karen Finley's "Tales of Taboo". Naturally, I'm now the proud owner of a copy. I love to play at for people, introducing it as "the song I heard in a quaint little restaurant during my very first trip to Paris!" Ah, I'll always remember Paris......

I was at Yeah a couple of months ago and can see now that I just ordered the wrong things. I remember ordering a combination plate of some of the same cold appetizers I had just had a couple of weeks before that at New Green Bo (usual stuff like wine chicken, the beef one, and something else that now slips my mind) and being greatly underwhelmed--all had been much tastier at NGB. I can't even remember the main dishes, they made so little impression. However that eel dish sounds fantastic, as does the nameless cold appetizer mentioned in the Pan's previous post. And spicy minced meat noodles....mmm, good winter fare. I can see I'm going to have make another trip and try again!

This reminds me of what was probably the single nastiest dish my mother used to make, with alarming regularity, when I was young: salmon loaf (made from canned salmon, of course) topped with creamed peas (basically an almost unseasoned roux--which sometimes came out so thick as to be almost solid--with canned peas added). For the curious, it was more or less like a meat loaf, except made with canned salmon. I'm not even much of a fan of canned tuna, but this crap....thirty years ago, at least, it was truly vile (perhaps the process has improved over the years ), and they always left in the vertebrae, which my mother, in turn, left in. So I would gamely be trying to choke down this mush, chewing it half-heartedly, when suddenly my teeth would unexpectedly crunch some little chalky discs of salmon vertebrae..... This dish and several others almost as revolting are the reason I thought I just didn't like most food until I left home to go to college. My mother wasn't actually a bad cook, either. But most of her efforts admirably reflected her philosophy about food, stated to me years later while discussing her bewilderment at my obsession with good food: "For me, food is just a necessity to be taken care of. I eat only to stop the physical sensation of hunger."

Mmmm... So you think they put Spam on market shelves just for its decorative effect, eh? You must be a very fortunate person living in a very fortunate part of the world, which deserves congratulations. Me, I once was a reporter covering areas of New York City where Spam is a big local item. But of course, if you don't want to understand the allegory which I'm (clumsily, no doubt) attempting when I mention Spam or macaroni and cheese, you're perfectly entitled to your opinion. *Sigh* It can be so difficult to convey a bantering tone in a post on a bulletin board.... Still, if you're going to bring into the discussion something as essentially ....well.... nasty as Spam, you surely must expect to get a rise out of someone. I'm sure there many people that actually buy (and, theoretically, at least, eat) that stuff, but they are, as an old friend of mine used to say, "strictly NOCD" ("Not Our Class, Dear"). As for that lunch, Miguel....Guincho would be as good a place as any to start. Or Sesimbra. Or, if it's winter (which it very well may be), how about the wonderful cabrito assado--with the positively ambrosial arroz de miudos-- at O Labrego in Feliteira (Runa)?

An easy question for me, actually, because there are 3 that are clearly on top of the craving heap: 1. Queijo da Serra (from Portugal) 2. Afuega 'l Pitu (from Asturias, Spain) 3. a good Parmesan (it's already a cliche here, I know, but it's so good in/with so many things!)