eternal
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Posts posted by eternal
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Our flight was late last night - we ended up landing minutes before they closed the airport for a thunderstorm - and so we drove around and ended up at Euclid. The beer selection was great and while we waited for our meal, we flipped through "The Perfect Bite", the cookbook from the chef of Rioja. Man, it is one of the better cookbooks I've seen in awhile so I think we will try to stop by there on the way out of town on Sunday.
Euclid's wurst was good but nothing we had (Schnitzel, roast veggies, wild mushroom poutine) was anything to write home about but it was good and also wasn't very expensive. It is a nice change for bar food.
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The Denver thread has gone stale. Are there any recommendations for the city? Looking for local food, casual, bistro-type. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
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I'm assuming you're coming from the US. In which case, I always tell people to go to Tsukiji market on their first day in Tokyo. You are going to be jet lagged anyway and will probably wake up at like 4am. You might as well head down to the market in the morning. I'm not sure you can see the tuna auctions anymore but if you can, they happen at like 5am. Look online but they are very cool. Also, since you're jet lagged, I don't think I'd want to go to Disney on that day. Spend the day there when you have more energy - later in the week.
I also disagree with spending 12 days in Tokyo. That is a long time to spend in that city. Go to Kyoto, rent a few bikes and bike from temple to temple for 3 days. Kyoto is much more digestible then the insaneness that is Tokyo.
I'm not sure how much the kids would like it but you could do a day trip to Nara or elsewhere. I love Kurashiki but I think the kids would be bored. Nara at least has deer (deer!) and lots of temples to visit.
Edo-Tokyo museum is very cool. Ask for a free English guide when you get there. They will spend an hour plus with just you explaining the history of Japan and with the displays, I think your kids would like it. Daiba would also be something the kids like as well.
Can't help you with the food. We just ate wherever.
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I do think Elliot's is probably the best of the waterfront restaurants but I hear the oysters at Walrus and Carpenter are awesome. Actually, the oysters at Ventana with kumquat/thai chili mignonette are the best I've ever had.
I don't understand the fascination with Molly Moon but I'm not much of a dessert person.
Otherwise, your choices send pretty awesome.
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I think I read this in Bon Appetit...A very basic sauce for pasta that we now use all the time.
2 big cans of whole tomatos
1 stick of butter
1 yellow onion, peeled, cut in half
red pepper flakes
put all in a big pot. break up tomatoes
simmer for 1 hour
remove onion
Use immersion blender to blend to desired consistency.
You can add some other stuff - fresh basil at the end - an anchovie or two at the beginning but just that basic recipe is a delicious accompiant for fresh pasta
I also have the KA pasta attachment and I really like it
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I am brining some chicken today and I have about two liters of additional brine that I didn't need to use. I threw it in the freeze because I have plenty of freezer space. It was accidentally contaminated when I discovered one of my containers had a crack when i first poured the brine into it so there are bits of chicken in it. I figure this can't be any different from buying frozen chicken - right? I imagine anything alive would die in the freezer. Am i wrong? Can I use this brine in a few months to brine another set of chicken?
I think I'm making this too complicated
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Awesome post, Clark. I would also agree that while I love my Kamado egg, it will not do what the OP wants.
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This is an interesting article on cooking a whole pig
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I would second the dicing, cutting, slicing. I like getting my ingredients ready. It is meditating and then the cooking experience is so much more pleasurable. When in a rush, I tend to try and prepare Just-In-Time but then I'm more likely to forget something and the whole experience is more stressed.
Watching a baseball game while shelling favas ain't bad either
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Of course you should cook them until you like the tenderness. Who cares what some BBQ judge thinks. If you like it falling off the bone, cook them until they are falling off the bone.
I've always braised them in the oven but I'm excited to smoke some this summer on my new, incredibly old and used, egg.
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I've been in NY since Tuesday so I thought I'd give an update.
We arrived Tuesday night to find that our room had a water problem and there were no rooms left at the Ace. We had booked a large room for 6 nights but ended up spending the first night in a small room at the doubletree down the street. It wasn't a great start but the Ace more than made up for it by picking up our bags the next day (while we were both at work), comping us two nights at the Ace, getting us a reservation at Breslin for that night, leaving a bottle of wine and nuts in our room with a handwritten note and buying my wife and colleagues a round of drinks during dinner. They really were super nice and the room itself is big, modern and very comfortable (includes a guitar). I highly recommend it.
So Wednesday night we ate at the Breslin. Everything was good. The lamb burgers was delicious as always as was the black bass, cooked with the scales on. The scotch egg, soft-shell crab were good as well. All in all, it is a very good place, but I think I've done it enough and don't need to keep going back. On to better things.
Thursday night we ate at Union Square Cafe. This was a bit of a last minute choice. It was getting close to 10pm and we were in the area. I'd eaten here once before and while it really isn't my favorite style of atmosphere (a bit too formal), the food was perfect. Tonight was no different. Service was great and our pasta and asparagus salad were both delicious but the smoked steak was awesome. My wife commented that it was the best steak she's ever had. I wouldn't go that far, but the 45 minutes of smoking really adds to the overall bbq flavor. I think they must cook it sous-vide as well because the band of medium-rare redness in the steak was almost all the way to the edges. Delicious.
I was walking to Szechuan gourmet on Friday when I passed Lan Sheng Szechuan on the same street. I quickly pulled up yelp and debated between the two, deciding to go to Lan Sheng based on specific recommendations of it over SG. It was excellent. I had the dan dan noodles and the cumin lamb. I love dan dan noodles. So simple. So delicious. The lamb reminded me of SPicy and Tasty - something I hadn't tasted in years. It is close to the office too so double-score.
Last night we went to Aldea. The cocktail menu was very interesting and while discussing options, the bartender told me about a drink he makes with Aperol and a chocolate (cocoa nib)-infused gin that he makes himself. I signed on and wasn't disappointed. It was not sweet. Instead it was similar to a campari but with a definite chocolate bite to it. I now want to go home and infuse some gin at home.
We sat at the bar overlooking the kitchen. many things on the menu sounded great. We ordered two sardine toasts to begin. They were great (though they should be for $11 each). One sardine was draped on a salted brioche toast, topped with the big orange caviar along with a few sprouts. Very tasty.
Unfortunately, the rest of the savory part of the meal was less ideal. The rice dish they are famous for was very good and comforting. The veal was less so. Boring. Bland. The same could be said for the white asparagus that while large and one of the most beautiful plates I've ever seen, was not very tasty. Everything need a lot of salt and while I hoped to be reminded of spargel in Germany, I had no such luck. Same could be said for whatever else came at the same time - which I don't even remember today.
Dessert was probably the best part of the meal. The sonhos and bread pudding thing we got were both delicious and made up some for the lackluster mains. It was a fairly disappointing meal all in all and I would not go back. You are clearly paying for the space and the beauty but I'm just not as much interested in that stuff as I am in the taste of the food. I would go home and remake the rice and the sardine dish but everything else just felt lacking...
We ate a ton at a bat mitzvah today but will probably head to Xi'an famous food for noodles later and tomorrow I think we'll hit Havana Cafe and if lucky, maybe a stop t Casa Mono, which still might be my favorite restaurant in the city.
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Where is it 14.99 in seattle?
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last year Fred Meyer was loads cheaper than the fish market or anywhere else I saw.
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Might be a little too fancy for what we're thinking but interesting. Thanks for the link.
I got in late last night. Just here for a couple days this week. I really wanted Ramen so searched on yelp based on my location at the Westin on 43rd and 8th and ended up walking to Totto Ramen on 52nd and 9th. Oh man, it was so damn good. I really wish we had real ramen bars in Seattle. I've been to momofuku, rai rai ken, setagaya and various others but this ramen was the best I've ever had - including multiple times in Japan. I highly recommend it.
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I have to disagree. I stuff sausages with the KA without problem. What do you find useless about it?
I've never owned any other mixer so I can't comment about how it compares to others but we've been very happy with our KA. Have had it for 10 years and works like a charm. We have the smaller model so maybe sometimes it would be nice to have something bigger but I'm actually not sure we've ever needed more space.
We have the meat grinder and sausage stuffer, the ice cream maker and the pasta maker (3 attachments - sheet, spaghetti and linguini) which is expensive but very high-quality. We now quickly make pasta on a regular basis. I dig the KA.
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Yea. I didn't find much on Yelp either. Oh well. We'll just have to go back to Portugal at some point
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So a friend texted me today thinking I was in the city. I'm going tomorrow but he wanted to know a good place to get dinner at tonight. I recommended Degustation and he said it was amazingly good. interesting because he is very picky and a pescatarian.
On another note, any thoughts on a good classical Portuguese place? Some place with fried bacalhau and potatoes?
Thanks
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We have this one from DeLonghi and I know everyone says electric fryers suck and they don't hit the right temperature and while i've never tested the temps, I have had plenty of success making fried chicken from the Ad Hoc book and french fries that are super crispy with it. Have had it for 5 years but don't use it a ton - just 5-10 times a year. Will use it this weekend for my wife's bday. She wants the Shack Shake menu.
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Not sure they'd be called 'experts and chefs' but the Italian friends I've had through the years have told me that the "pasta should swim" in the water.
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And Italians can do things for no apparent reason just like the rest of us - oh I'm italian. The results seem to suggest that this is lore - people have just done it this way because the person before them did it that way or because "experts always told me to do it on TV". I suspect the visual cue of the water returning to boil faster with lots of water led to people to believe that this is the "right" way to do it but not for any valid reason.
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I just noticed Veritas has open tables and their menu looks pretty nice. I ran across them looking through a blog on woolly pigs. Would one rate veritas higher than aldea?
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But boiling in well salted water works consistently well and is pretty easy.
Agreed. But I was more talking bout the quantity of water. Since I don't have a super-high powered range, boiling 2 liters of water is certainly quicker than a couple gallons.
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even sited the same book I did, though I mixed up Bittman with Buford. Thanks
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It seems like every place you read about pasta, everyone says you need lots of water to boil your pasta. Even AB talks about using at least gallon of water for a couple of servings (if memory serves..).
Why is this?
Less water means more starch in the water and generally, I want to incorporate some of that in with the sauce and pasta at the end to get the sauce to help stick to the pasta. Bittman even talks in his book about how the best pasta at Babbo is produced at the end of the night because that's when the pot of boiling water they use to finish the pasta has become thick with starch.
At home I used to use this big stock pot to boil pasta in but now I see no point. Other than the pasta water dropping a few more degrees when i dump the pasta in, it would seem to have the reverse effect from what I want.
Is this just more cookbook lore stuff or is there something more to it?
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With respect to sushi, in most cases, if it's a place that's "hip and happening", it's not the right place to go.
Fair enough. But lets assume I'm not interested in sushi for this trip
I think I'm set now though. Appreciate all the help! Heading to NY for one night this week and think I'll just end up at Txikito
Denver Dining 2011
in Southwest & Western States: Dining
Posted
Stopped by Rioja on the way home and WOW, what a great meal. One of the best we've had in a long time. As good or better than Beast in Portland which is also awesome. We sat in the bar and had the goat cheese biscuits and lavender sourdough with our appetizer course of the signature artichoke tortalleni (sp) which was light, delicate and delicious. We followed that with the kurabota pork chop with some sort of bacon vinaigrette sauce and cheesy tater-tot things along with the English Pea Risotto with smoked duck leg confit.
I don't normally get risotto because I can make it at home but this was really a lesson in how it can be done right. My risotto always comes out gummy but this one was creamy and a wonderful complement to the smoked duck leg confit. HIghly recommended dish. The pork chop was great two but the others were standout dishes.
Eat there.