lullyloo

I guess not! With all the intestines and offal and stomachs and tongues people eat around here, I thought, bones would be a given.

Yes, wings! I had almost forgotten them. If they're cooked well, the very tips of the wings are crispy/crunchy and quite edible.

Mmmm, fat. Or from a pork chop. (Most people cut it off and leave it in a little pile, but I like to eat a piece or two.) Or a pork roast or ham right out of the oven, crisp on the edges. How about the Pope's hat (is that what it's called?) from the chicken. Crispy skin and fat with just a little meat. Delish.

I like it too, mhadam. And the skin at the bottom of the leg bone for that matter.

I'm curious how serious people here are with their bones (chicken, lamb, pork, beef, fish - if it once breathed, I want to know!) I learned from my father who was very serious about stripping them bare, and then some. He sat at the table long after the rest of us were finished and (when possible) broke down the bones into manageable pieces, put the whole piece in his mouth and did his work. When he was finished, the bones on his plate were as clean as if they'd been sitting in the desert for a week. When he could, he ate them or sucked the marrow out. This was actually a very dainty, tidy process; he wasn't a "picker"; didn't get gunk all over his hands or fingernails or become savage. In the privacy of my own home, I get pretty serious about cleaning my bones. Probably not as delicate as my father or as thorough, but he did teach me that often the bones are the best part. There is always a lot more meat there than you think (and some other interesting things, too), and I think it goes with my preoccupation with not wasting anything. My boyfriend was not a good bone cleaner, and it killed me to see perfectly good tidbits getting thrown in the trash, so I often cleaned his bones too. What are your habits, methods, grievances, etc?

I read once that in Spain it is common to coat the greens with oil first, then add salt (the oil helps the salt to spread more evenly) and then sprinkle with vinegar to taste. I have experienced doing vinegar first and sometimes it can wilt the leaves a bit

Frittata with sauteed bacon and yellow-green speckled zucchini, goat cheese and basil leaves added at last minute and put under broiler. However, the result was not so great. the goat cheese got zapped by the heat and turned into hard yuck. Tomato salad with toasted pine nuts, chopped basil, kalamatas, roasted yellow peppers marinated in roasted garlic and olive oil, and anchovy vinagrette. That was so good I finished the dressing off with a spoon!

Oh I'm so glad someone started this thread. I've been meaning to for a long time. Everyday for lunch I take a big salad of either red leaf lettuce or romaine (also went through a spinach phase), vidalia onion, sometimes also scallion, always radish, pickling cukes, sometimes tomato or avocado or red pepper, and albacore tuna. Had the tuna once in Spain just flaked into a simple salad with a lettuce, tomato, cuke and onion, OO and vinegar and it was delish. The mama tossed it with her hands. yummm. I am not opposed to iceberg at all. In big cold chunks it is sweet and refreshing. I especially like it the way they serve it in old-school steakhouses in a big wedge with roquefort or blue cheese dressing. At home I always make my own vinegrette with a smidge over one half EVOO and one half red wine or cider vinegar, sometimes a drop of cheap balsamic to add a little sweet, sometimes lemon, dijon mustard. Always dried oregano, salt, pepper. And my favorite - SPIKE! (a spice mix far superior to Mrs. Dash) Anyone else a closet spike fan? Lately I've been experimenting with anchovy vinagrette in my mini-chopper. But really if I didn't have budgetary restrictions I'd always eat arugula with toasted pine nuts and some sort of cheese - hard, soft, stinky, creamy, whatever. All summer long I've been keeping a big container of pickled beets with vidalias in the refrigerator. Very refreshing. Went through a chopped red cabbage with vinagrett phase (gasp! no not the requisite strands you find in midwestern mixed salad but larger crunchy pieces) which I picked up from an Israeli friend. Also go in big for adding apple or pear (usually in the winter, though) and cilantro and making a dressing with sesame oil, soy sauce, ginger, vietnamese chili sauce and rice vinegar.

When I read Chicago style dog, I assumed the 2.50 included tomato, onion, pickle relish, and a cucumber spear with celery seed sprinkled on top. That's a Chicago style dog and worth the extra buck, IMO. Did those condiments not come with it, Billy D?

Margaret, I just ate brunch at Elephant and Castle last weekend. It was on Greenwich Ave. I assume it's the same place. Their signature at breakfast seemed to be a spinach puree served with almost every dish. The beet-cucumber puree sounds very nice. I'll have to try that. Maybe with a little mint. Blue Heron, I didn't realize that cold borscht was specifically Lithuanian. Makes sense seeing as my grandparents are of Lithuanian descent. Nouvelle Ashkenazy . . . that could be a funny thread, Steve. I think Shaw had some good ideas with his Ashkenazy (and Sephardic) versions of potato pancakes last December.

Steve, that sounds delish, too! Would you pour the borscht over the smashed potatoes still hot or say room temp?

Jaymes, I am not exactly sure (maybe someone else can tell us), but I always thought my grandmother's recipe for cold borscht was a standard Russian and/or Russian-Jewish recipe.

Now that sounds very interesting. Is it really thick, tomato-heavy like gazpacho or is the borscht the main liquid?

Cold borscht is one of my favorite dishes to eat in the summer - the color (ZOW!), flavor (how can three mundane ingredients make a flavor so compelling?), creamy coolth, and simplicity are so refreshing!!! so transporting!! Made it the other night based on my grandmother's recipe. Beet juice (from a can, but when I have more time, I want try again with fresh beets) whisked with yoghurt and a generous squirt of lemon juice until bright fuschia (can also use sour cream or half yog - half sour cream). Poured over very thinly sliced cucumber and hard boiled egg, and of course you can add some chopped beets, too, if you like, and a dash of pepper. In my opinion the additions should be kept small in size and not too many should be floating in the divine borscht, so as not to mar its lovely minimalness (a word?). Any thoughts, recipe variations, poetic musings? (Perhaps a separate thread would be) tributes to the beet?

Okay, at first I thought you all were crazy. Tomatoes, water chestnuts, melon, fennel?! And I racked my brain trying to come up with something that truly made me shudder. Then I remembered . . . raw garlic. Can cook with it, love the smell of it. But the slight possibility of it raw in a dish - say in salsa - or in large, chunky quantities (like on pizza) - or a whole raw clove??? gag!! Can do creamy roasted cloves but no, cannot do raw or undercooked. Will I be lambasted for this? E-gulleteers do not seem to have jumped on the everything tastes better with loads of garlic bandwagon, but who knows?

Mamta has a nice site with simple, homey recipes for some Indian classics. I bookmarked it. Thanks for sharing, Matthew.

Marinated a slew of pork chops in yoghurt, fresh garlic and ginger paste, ground coriander, cumin, turmeric, garam masala, pounded cardamom and fennugreek seeds, vietnamese chili sauce, salt and a splash of lemonade. They sat for about seven hours, then got broiled. Talk about brining. The combination of salt and yoghurt made a very powerful tenderizer. I've never had pork chops so tender. It was almost like a different meat. (kind of scared me actually) And the marinade (basically a tandoori) gave great flavor. Sided with sweet potato chunks roasted with ground pepper and garlic cloves, asparagus and cauliflower. As Sunday is my only cooking day in my current living routine, that's dinner all week long folks . . .

what's SW?

Halleleujah, Steve P! I think I've seen the light! Now that we've cleared up the "cheap eats" crowd discussion . . . I am really not in disagreement with you on Sietsema's merits as a food reviewer. I always take his reviews with a grain of salt (or a whole shaker :wow: sorry, couldn't resist). You can tell just by his obsession with eating innards and other exotic animal body parts that the man likes to shock. (He also likes to use the word "slicked." Has anyone else noticed this? "oil-slicked," "butter-slicked," "gravy-slicked," Yikes!) He obviously covers a certain "adventurous-eating" beat, just as the other Voice restaurant critic (Jessica Winters?) covers the more upscale, urban, trendy restaurant beat. I don't trust her reviews any more or less than his. Truth be told, I think I've gone to more of the restaurants that Fat-Guy recommended (before joining e-gullet) than any in the Voice. However, Sietsema's lists can be very useful, especially on the VV website, if you are looking for something spur of the moment in a particular neighborhood in a certain price range. His reverse snobbery just goes with the territory. It's the Voice, for god's sake! All the critics are pedantic. If you really want to have a heated discussion, let's talk about their film reviewers.

First of all, Steve and others, I'm not really clear who this "cheap eats" crowd is, but I'll take you're word on it that there are foodies out there who believe cheap = better/more authentic cooking and that Seitsema doesn't always give an accurate, discriminating description. However, as a regular reader of the Voice, a young person scraping by on very little in this city and hustling from a full-time job to my second life as a student/actor/filmmaker, and a worldly foodie, I got quite excited (for many of the reasons Pan already mentioned) to see cheap and best Asian in the same sentence. I resent the tone that many of you have taken that people who value "cheap eats" or cheap ethnic do not have tastes sophisticated enough to tell when they are eating less than the best in ingredients, in preparation, etc. I am not sticking up for Sietsema but more for the people on eGullet who ARE interested in inexpensive restaurants whether it's for the food item itself (how many sophisticated and technical discussions have we had about hot dogs and barbecue? umpteen! So don't make generalized statements about what people on this board are "keyed into") or because of the value (don't tell me that it doesn't give you pleasure when you come across a place like Fried Dumpling where the dumplings are actually some of the most delicious you can find in New York and they're also only five for a dollar!). As someone interested in eating and cooking good food, reading about it, etc., I for one, am not "obsessed with the social context of fine dining and what it means in the history of the development of mankind" and I'm sure there are others here who aren't either. No, eating at Sahara in Brooklyn may not give you much of an idea of what is going on in Turkey but it sure gives you a good idea of what is going on in its neighborhood in Brooklyn. One last word on this point. I have never eaten at Sugiyama, and I'm not sure that I disagree with you about Sietsema's writing as a "restaurant review" per se. But I have to say I was highly amused by his description of the other patrons (again am not sure if this is fair to do in a review when a restaurant's business are very sensitive to reviews). It was a funny description of a bizarre dining experience and now that you mention it, it was an interesting comment on the "social context" of that particular fine dining experience as well. I thought people's reactions on the Sugiyama thread were a bit touchy.

I hate that water separation problem. Pomi crushed definitely alleviates it, but I like using whole plums. Sometimes a blob of tomato paste cures the water separation problem, but I find i have to be careful with the amount. Too much imparts a sort of generalized reconstituted tomatoey flavor (as opposed to snappy and refreshingly tomatoey, if you know what I mean). My dad's tradition for a quicksauce, which I love and try to emulate, is to nearly burn the garlic. Saute it before the onions and get it really good and brown; as soon as you add the onions and turn the heat down the garlic won't brown much beyond its current state. It imparts a very strong toasty garlicky flavor I love. And then I always saute a minced jalepeno or two and saute with the onions for a little heat.

Thanks, Suvir. I'm always looking for a new Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi cabbie haunt.

Do you know if this place is still open and where it is? Would love to visit.

Well, lullyloo has roasted her first chicken using a combination of methods proffered by all you fine e-gulleteers. Started with a six and a half pound roaster and brined in salt and a smidge of sugar for seven hours. Then I mashed up some butter, fresh thyme, garlic clove, salt and paprika with a mortar and pestle and slathered it under the skin, in the cavity, and on top. Stuffed the cavity with the neck, gizzards, etc., two whole lemons, a handful of garlic cloves and more thyme. Then basted the skin with olive oil and paprika. I roasted that baby according to times and temp (400) in Joy of Cooking, breast side down for an hour then flipped to finish for what I thought would be another twenty or so minutes. I don't know where Joy of Cooking got their times from because it really took more like two hours total. I was kind of worried that despite the brining the breast would be dried out since it had been in the oven for so long, but miraculously, it wasn't. It was definitely done and a couple of slices had that near-crumbly texture overdone poultry gets, yet they were still moist! (hoorah brining!) The skin was marvelously crispy skin heaven (hoorah butter!), and now I have enough chicken to last me all week and then some. It was a big bird! I deglazed the pan juices (which were abundant - hoorah gizzards!) with the juice of the two lemons and poured it over some penne. A little on the rich side as I didn't have the patience at this point to get rid of enough of the fat. Very happy with the experience and can't wait to try variations. The thyme wasn't too strong, but not sure if it's my herb of choice. Thanks to everyone for all your marvelous suggestions. And now I have a nice carcass to make some stock.

That Cook's Illustrated, boy. Flour in the batter. I love how they are always striving for the consummate in basic dishes everyone loves.