patrickamory

2 AM! I too have been caught short by Moroccan recipes, and Wolfert's in general, that appear to be simpler than they actually are. On the cinnamon issue, I gather from a post by Wolfert in the thread that you linked that cassia (or Chinese cinnamon) is used in tagines, while Ceylon cinnamon is used in desserts. (I find cinnamon terminology incredibly confusing. Neither of the types above seem to be the thick, hard, "standard" cinnamon sticks, which come from Indonesia, but rather varieties of the flakier, softer stuff - the Chinese being less soft than the Ceylon. And it seems like the Chinese stuff is technically cassia while the Ceylonese stuff is "true cinnamon". Which leaves what we call cinnamon most regularly, c. burmannii, entirely out of the picture!) (And then there's Saigon cinnamon, which is another thing again.)

PERFECT omelet Soba. No unsightly brown on the outside - it could have been made in France. Rare to see.

Where do you shop in Chicago? All I've ever heard them called is NY Strips. New York strip = boneless, Kansas City strip = bone-in. At least it was that way when my partner lived in Chicago in the mid-'00s. There was a local grocery in his neighborhood (Clark and Fullerton) called Big Apple Finer Foods with an excellent old butcher counter in the back that had dry-aged beef. That's where we first encountered KC Strip. Since then I've seen it on restaurant menus outside of New York. Of course here, New York strip is just called strip steak (or shell steak, which I THINK is more or less the same cut). Bone-in strip is rarer in general here - if the bone is present, people seem to go for T-bones or porterhouses and get some of the filet on the other side as well.

Gorgeous dumplings Keith! And fascinating to learn that you prefer the Lee Kum Kee brand marinade over homemade for char siu. I've been using hrzt8w's recipe for a while with great results (the non-preprepared recipe is actually spread throughout several posts in that thread). But I'm always perfectly content to use a pre-made product if it tastes better

Dry-aged bone-in shell from Eataly.

My go-to restaurants in Thai Town are usually Jitlada for its southern menu and Sapp Coffee Shop for the boat noodles and jade noodles. However a friend recently recommended that I try a hole in the wall spot called Spicy BBQ, located in a mini-mall at Normandie and Santa Monica, and it's absolutely terrific. It specializes in northern Thai cuisine. I had lunch there yesterday. We started with nahm prik pao, chile dipping sauce served with raw cucumbers and half-cooked cabbage, that was explosive with depth and a slow, spreading heat that warmed the mouth and belly: That's at the bottom of the photo. At the top is barbecued pork, which was unctuously sweet and tender. I'd think this would be more of a beer snack / street food item in Thailand, but we were more than happy to have it as an appetizer. We then followed with a limey, tangy shrimp salad with unexpected undertones of dark roasted spices. The shrimp was startlingly fresh and sweet, with a perfect char: We finished with one of the best renditions of chicken khao soi I've ever experienced... the dish is obviously more subtle in its flavors than the ones we started with, yet it ended up the table's favorite... rich, soft but with layers and layers of flavor and mild heat - the ultimate comfort food: Served excellent Thai iced coffee as well. Keep in mind that the place is tiny, and there appears to be one person serving whom I suspect is the owner, so it wasn't super fast. There was no wait though. Two other tables, both composed of Thai diners. Better than anything I've had in NYC (not that the bar is very high here compared to SoCal even when you take Queens into account, sadly).

Hi Soba, Fantastic start! I find your philosophy and approach to cooking fascinating, and although I eat a great deal more meat than you do, I am really looking forward to this. (Also hoping that you find fiddleheads, one of my favorite things - though I'm guessing it's just a tad late in the season for them.) re: pressure cooking legumes. I don't like this except for chickpeas, where the results are creamier than anything I've been able to achieve by other methods. On the other hand, I don't have Umbrian chickpeas... what on earth are those, where do you get them, and in what way are they different from, say, Whole Foods chickpeas or Rancho Gordo garbanzos, both of which seem very standard to me?

OMG Hainanese chicken rice - one of my favorite dishes. I made it some time ago and was not happy with the chicken - somehow dried it out too much. Will try again. Especially after eating it recently at the great Savoy Kitchen in Alhambra. And then seeing that photo above. Thanks Dejah and huiray for the fascinating discussion! Prawncrackers - that pasta is off the hook. Plantes Vertes - it's the season for that sort of risotto. One of my favorites. Will be making this week. In general: tantalizing meals everyone! This thread just keeps getting better and better (if that's even possible).

Rafa, I don't think the multiple locations are related anymore (they're people from the same family, but they are completely separate businesses, sourced differently, etc.) If I'm wrong, someone please correct me. I love the Ottomanelli's on Bleecker, as posted up-thread - they are a proper old-school butcher with very reasonable prices, fantastic meat, and they'll do just about anything for you. Recently, I've also been buying from the meat counter at Eataly, which is superb. Prices are much higher of course, but some items like the aged bone-in shell are just fantastic ($26.80/lb). We've also had goat ribs from there, and it's our usual source of pork belly ($8/lb). The ground beef and ground pork are excellent, though it was not ground to order as it would be at Ottomanelli or East Village Meat Market - they might do it for you if you asked. They have amazing looking ground lamb which I might try in a bit. (I don't have a meat grinder at home, though I do use the food processor freeze/pulse method sometimes - it's good but different).

Back to the future with my mom's meatloaf recipe from when I was growing up in the '70s.

Darn! I meant to go today to get ingredients for your spring soup recipe Soba. Instead I woke up at 12:30 and still haven't left the house

That is correct. What Americans call sirloin, the British call rump. British sirloin is more or less equivalent to American short loin, which yields strip, shell, T-bone, porterhouse and part of the tenderloin (filet).

Soba that spring vegetable soup looks perfect. Maybe I'll make it to USG this weekend. And thanks for the tip on the water instead of stock! Makes perfect sense for a fresh & delicate soup like this one.

I'd devour your chicken in a second, sigma.

Paging janeer to thread!

Very pretty Mjx

Beautiful seafood Franci.

Not to jump into some of the more intense debates here... I do think strawmen are being created, and semantics and language are playing a huge role. I will point out that Jim Leff intentionally created the word "chowhound" to distinguish his approach from that of "foodies" at the time, which was of course the mid-'90s. I'm presuming that everyone here has heard the catchphrase "Food is the new rock." So to that extent, the comparison with "hipster" is intelligible to many of us. But then what is a hipster? The whole argument feels very played and boring to me... language and labels aside, it's possible to care about food, cooking and enjoyment without somehow casting aspersions on the rest of the world. If they feel denigrated in some way then that's their lookout, right?

Moderator note: Since the Dinner! 2013 topic quickly became too large for our servers to handle efficiently, we're continuing to divide it up; the preceding part of this discussion is here: Dinner! 2013 (Part 2)] RRO good to see you back and I love the look of those buns. I'd never heard of Koon Yick - have googled - worth searching out? Ashen in Chicago they call a bone-in strip a Kansas City strip. Never heard it called that way in New York (but they don't call them New York strips here either!)

With all due respect, it feels like a meaningless question. It depends on the setting, the cuisine, the preparation, even one's state of mind. It's like asking what the best tasting vegetable or fruit is. There is no single answer. At any moment it could be otoro sashimi from one of my favorite sushi counters, soft-shell lobster fresh off the boat on the island in Maine I visit every summer, Mersea oysters at Sweetings or grilled turbot at a number of London restaurants. Herring in Copenhagen prepared in a myriad of different ways. All the smoked fish at Russ & Daughters. Caviar at Petrossian. Or... rainbow trout fished & gutted by my pal on a lake in Wyoming and then quickly cooked in his dad's Aga with a tiny bit of lemon and butter, just 30 .

Soba The chicken chettinad was fantastic. It's very unusual (for me anyway) - you make a dry paste out of chunks of coconut, garam masala, fennel seed, green cardamom pods and cloves, and fry that in browned onions, garlic and ginger. The dry spices go in next with the chiles, then you brown the chicken in that, then add tomatoes and finally water. The chicken gets simmered, and curry leaves and cilantro go in at the end with a generous amount of lime juice. The small chunks of coconut and curry leaf give the sauce an agreeable chewiness, and the heat of the chile powder and green chiles is nicely offset by the sourness of the lime. I agree with Tina btw - your dishes smell like spring! I'm in California right now and wishing I was eating ramps.

huiray thanks for the info on the book. I'm definitely going to check it out. The dried spice in that bowl is entirely powdered red chile. Cumin and coriander only make an appearance via garam masala. The spice mix is most dominated by deeply toasted powdered white poppy seeds. It was fiery.

It's a classic. Great late-night location too. I've been going for probably 20 years now... 25? (Was there once a Little Noodletown? I seem to remember something of the sort...)

Chicken Chettinad:

Bruce thanks for the tip on Tiger skin peppers. Bookmarked! huiray I think the reason people love Fuchsia Dunlop is that she's a great food writer & researcher - her memoir about learning to cook in Sichuan Province in the '90s is fascinating, one of the best food books of the last 10 years. Hunanese and Sichuan cuisine are popular right now perhaps partly because of her, also because some very good restaurants presenting the food of these regions have opened up in major American cities and London recently, as I'm sure you're aware. Personally, I love Cantonese cuisine and I wish I knew books as good as Dunlop's on the subject. Is the Teresa M. Chen book comparable? Not just a collection of good recipes, but an authoritative presentation of the cooking, the region, its history, and the foodways? There are so few cookbooks in that league from any cuisine. I do have the Grace Young cookbook on wok cookery, which is more oriented toward other regions of China and especially Guangzhou/Hong Kong, but it is (a) primarily a book on technique (and a very good one) and (b) somewhat hyphenated-American, not that that's a bad thing in itself of course. My Taiwanese in-laws come from a country with incredible food, some say the best in China. But they almost never cook at home, and if they do, it's only braises. I've tried to convince them that it's possible to do decent wok cookery on a home stove - even if you're not going to achieve true wok hei - but it's like arguing with a wall. I sense that the restaurant and street food available 24 hours a day in Taipei is so incredible that they don't see the point of bothering. Anyway, thread jack! Sorry to go off on a tangent here... this probably belongs in the Chinese eats thread anyway.