patrickamory

Here are a few recommendations; I travel to London every two months and eat out a lot when I'm there, largely on business so be aware that I'm pretty much ignoring price/portion size etc. - I'm mainly concerned with food and atmosphere: - Sweetings - the best seafood restaurant I've ever visited, period - note, they are only open for weekday lunch - J Sheekey - another great British fish restaurant - great location, super comfortable and atmospheric - Dock Kitchen - interestingly situated over a canal, inspired by north African and Mediterranean cuisine but with Indian and Asian influences - not fusion but fully its own thing - St John (Smithfield location) - no description necessary, I think - The Painted Heron - an upscale neighborhood Indian place in Chelsea, super-comfy and off the beaten track for most visitors - I think the food is quite good, and not typical curry house fare - e.g. "Lamb neck fillets in Kashmiri roganjosh curry with apricots & sweet pickled red chilli" - Wiltons - super old-school seafood place in Jermyn St. be aware of what you're getting into - jacket and tie for sure - Ba Shan - stunning Sichuan, Fuchsia Dunlop is a consultant (to my mind way better than Bar Shu across the street) - River Cafe - still excellent. I love Ruth Rogers' cooking (and her cookbooks), and it's a lovely setting. A pain to get to however. Of the big names you hear over and over, I liked Moro fine but wasn't blown away - most likely an off day though, I want to revisit; I have tried twice at Fino but haven't gotten in; I've never been to the Ledbury or Hawskmoor; I like Wolseley quite a bit if you get a nice table, and the late opening hours are a bummer; Dinner by Heston Blumenthal was exciting but in retrospect a bit theatrical and somehow not well-balanced eating; Ottolenghi is on my list because I love his new book; and I found the Connaught appalling - both the food and the dining room (though we ate at the chef's table in the kitchen). Finally, Yauatcha is quite tasty, and fun in a cocktail lounge type of way, but not a destination restaurant in any sense of the word.

Back to Persian food. Fresh green almonds are in season: So we made a khoresh of baby almonds with green herbs and chicken. Verjus is an ingredient: As are parsley, mint, grape molasses, saffron and rosewater.

rotuts Paprika can get bitter at high temps? I use paprika from The Spice House on all my roast chickens which are finished at 450, and I've never experienced this. pastameshugana Ah someone else here is cooking from the Ottolenghi! I made that same dish just a couple of weeks ago - you can compare here. I used all the ingredients (except subbing mandarins for clementines), and loved the dish, but the combination of arak, fennel bulbs and crushed fennel is a bit over the top. I like anise flavors but they sort of dominated. Next time I think I'll cut down on the arak.

Whoops sorry FP! And Mike - yes indeed Fuchsia Dunlop.

Steamed asparagus, General Tso's chicken and Yangzhou fried rice.

Fantastic meals everyone! Kim - that is an INSANE Easter spread. Leftovers for days?? Soba - the salad looks gorgeous actually. It's the time of year when I start longing for food like that basquecook - I've bookmarked your fried chicken post. Do you totally submerge? Do you turn it? And do you cover it a la Laurie Colwin? Keith, buy the Ottolenghi, you won't regret it! It's a beautifully produced book too, stunning photos not just of food but of the city, the markets and the people. And... the John Dory on peas looks lovely Baselerd, love the halibut and Meyer lemon. So we can still get Meyer lemons? I need to make a new batch of preserved lemons before they go out of season... storebought just doesn't compare.

I don't use fat. Just a generous rub with a mixture of salt, pepper and high-quality paprika (either sweet or half-sharp depending on my mood). No basting either. Gives wonderful crackly, tasty skin, with a depth of flavor and wonderful dark-red brown color from the paprika.

I tried the Zuni air-drying method (which, as posted above, I use on turkeys and ducks). I thought it was fine, I still prefer my tried-and-tested Hazan method above. I don't brine.

I couldn't agree more on the tasting menus. I'd prefer eating menus.

I knew I was having a touch of deja-vu in the new roast chicken thread! Always have trouble remembering posting on a subject before...

slkinsey - it certainly does!

That sounds wonderful Lindsey. For me my favorites in London at any rate would be St. John (original location), J Sheekey, and the Guinea Grille. Even better than all of the above, but open for weekday lunch only - Sweetings.

More Ottolenghi... Yemeni lamb and cannellini bean soup. The green stuff is zhoug, Israeli chile salsa with parsley and cilantro.

More from Ottolenghi's Jerusalem... roasted chicken with clementines and arak. Served with white beans and kale, plus Macedonian ajvar on the side.

Chicken grits with salt pork featuring leftovers from last night's roast chicken

Great thread. I'm roasting a chicken as I write this, funnily enough. As usual, Murray's cooked the Hazan way - dry rub, stuffed with pierced lemons, trussed front and back, roasted low upside-down and right side-up, and finished high. weinoo, as you probably know, Murray's is a cooperative of farms so the chickens vary. Bell & Evans is more consistent, but in my experience, the best Murray's chickens are better. You can, however, tell the origin of a Murray's chicken from the code on the sticker. Tonight it's 0813, which equates to a few farms along Troxelville Road in Middleburg, PA - I've Google Earthed them. Just because I can tell what farm it's from doesn't mean it's better, though I think I've done well with 0813 in the past. Will report on the taste after dinner!

I don't brine. For those who live in the New York area, go Murray's over Bell & Evans. I've tried high-heat, low-heat, dry-brine, wet-brine, Marcella Hazan, Zuni, and the full 6-turn 45-degree angle Julia Child Mastering methods. Over two ranges & zillions of chickens I can unequivocally say that for me, the Marcella Hazan method with rolled, pierced lemons, trussed, first half-hour upside-down self-basting chicken is pretty much miraculous, every time. My one twist to it is using high-quality paprika (either sweet or half-sharp) mixed into the salt & pepper rub, for color and a tiny bit of umami. Necessary? No. Pretty? Definitely. Better than Zuni.

Matzoh ball ramen - what a great idea!

Both dishes are built around Sichuan chili bean paste... I really think that getting the Pixian stuff makes a huge difference. I've never tasted anything like it. Huge chunks of whole chili skins in the paste, mild and pickled tasting, just chunky and fantastic.

It was good, I think perhaps I should have dried the celery more thoroughly before stir-frying. It suffered in comparison to the chard, which was ridiculously good.

Hmm, I also made the shrimp fried rice

I made the "send the rice down" chopped celery with ground beef, and the twice-cooked swiss chard (the latter especially delicious). I had real Pixian chili bean paste this time and it makes a huge difference over the Lee Kum Kee kind!

Jason, that all looks so great.

My second try at recreating my favorite Dominican chicken stew with rice and beans from a long-defunct NYC restaurant. This time, the recipe for the pollo guisado came from this site. The picture looked closer to what I remember. As always, there are some oddities when cooking from recipes posted by non-professionals: potatoes are clearly pictured but not listed in the ingredients; the list of ingredients is out of order; there is nothing on the strength of heat to use and cooking times are only given randomly. Sometimes I feel like this can be a strength in a recipe, because it forces you to experiment. It also makes me wonder about the recipe that I used last time, from the Dominican Flavor website, which was similarly somewhat random in its instructions, and curiously referred to "boiling the oil." That version of the stew made the meat too dry - I now wonder whether the author expected you to know to add water to the oil and boil it, which is essentially what this version does. The two recipes do have very specific and unusual things in common, e.g. caramelizing white sugar in the hot oil before browning the chicken in it, so I'm guessing I was just supposed to know. In any event, this version of the stew was closer to the pollo guisado at Sucelt, though still not quite there. I need to cut down on the green pepper, probably omit the celery, steam/braise for longer, and add something for depth of flavor. Possibly chicken stock instead of water. Possibly Worcestershire sauce (!) which seems to be an approved ingredient in Dominican cuisine, and recommended in the original recipe (I used Manischewitz instead, which was her other option - subbing for "vino tinto"). The beans last time were Rancho Gordo's negro de arbol, and much blacker than their black valentine midnight beans which I used this time. The bean recipe this time was Cuban, from Three Guys In Miami. (Black beans are more Cuban; Dominicans normally use red beans, but Sucelt gave you a choice of either one.) I can recommend this version unreservedly, though I think I want to use a blacker, denser bean than RG's black valentines midnights next time. I subbed red pepper for green pepper. Next time, I'll also hopefully have sourced bitter oranges for agrio de naranja, the delicious hot salsa - and plantains for maduros, the sweet sticky fried version to go on top. I remember when you couldn't go into a NYC bodega that didn't have plantains - now they're much harder to find, at least on the gentrified East Side where I now live. Oofff! I didn't mean to write a book. Here's the photo.

Dejah, the Catonnese roast duck with Singapore rice noodles looks superb!