patrickamory

After owning it for a few months, I finally tackled a recipe from the Momofuku cookbook. This was noodles with ginger and scallion sauce. First, the chopped scallions: And the chopped ginger: Combined with light soy sauce, sherry vinegar, oil and salt: Taking a tip from Ruth Bourdain's article in the first issue of Lucky Peach, I got some packaged ramen noodles from the local Korean grocery, Han Ah Reum, and discarded the flavor and vegetable packets: And the final dish, with some Vietnamese chili-garlic sauce. Incredibly easy to make. And I have extra ginger-scallion sauce in the fridge.

RG "Midnight" (turtle) beans, with scotch bonnets over white rice. Simply yummy...

I thought it was superb, really glad this thread gave me the headsup before the review! And even so it was almost impossible to get a reservation, even for 6:45. House-cured salmon, sunchokes in hay, salted caramel ice cream, a great wine list and terrific prices - wow. (My only complaint is that is that it's a little scene-y in both the clientele and the waitstaff - very beautiful people. I guess that comes from the Indochine connection. Still absolutely lovely place to dine, and the vintage wallpaper in the men's room rules.) Hilarious that they left the original Acme awning up - Southwestern & Cajun Cusine. Man, did I have many a deserted & disappointing lunch there over the years.

mm beautiful dorade Kim that pulled pork looks amazing and I'll echo what everyone else has said about the Meyer lemon focaccia deensiebat. I also love a savory-sweet combination. If I had any baking skills I'd give this a go (I actually have some meyer lemons left over from my preserved lemons experiment)

Your Millser wouldn't ? Yes easier to get out of the Millser, but there's something about the pounded texture of the wetgrinder's paste that releases more flavor into the curry.

Super difficult city to eat in - always has been. The native cooking - always more focused on what was made in the home and less on eating out - has largely been driven out to the suburbs, or homogenized beyond belief, by the huge transient population of students, tech people and medical folks. You have to travel to find it. The new restaurants that have come in tend to be pretty bland to satisfy the massive undergrad community, or super high-end (Boston is one of the most expensive cities in the country). Moreover, there is a certain classic Boston snobbishness that looks down on superficialities like fine dining! I would stay 100 miles away from any branch of Legal Seafoods. L'Espalier has moved and I don't believe is what it used to be. If you have a car and lots of time (which it sounds like you don't), I'd head up to the North Shore and hit the Ipswich Clam Box, Farnham's or Woodman's. You can get decent New England seafood at Jasper White's Summershack. (Not North Shore or Maine quality, but "good enough," as my mother used to say.) For a more upscale vibe, Radius in the financial district has been around forever but I think is still supposed to be good. I've heard good things a sushi restaurant in the same area called O Ya - expect to pay through the nose. Locke-Ober is the classic old Boston place, but it's been vanilla-ized since Lydia Shire took it over. In Cambridge, Craigie on Main gets good reviews - I have not been. There is good Vietnamese in Allston, Speed's Hot Dogs (a truck) in Newmarket Square (car needed) and Simco's Hot Dogs in Mattapan (car definitely needed) are both sui generis. Chang Sho for Chinese-American in Cambridge (you can get there on Red Line). Casey's Diner in Natick for classic railroad-car burgers and dogs (car needed). The East Coast Grill in Inman Square in Cambridge used to be good, but I think it's gone downhill since it expanded. Scargo's recommendations are not bad.... I don't think Helmand (the Afghan place in East Cambridge) is as good as it used to be. If Lala Rokh is still there on Beacon Hill, as it seems to be, it's a wonderfully romantic and absolutely delicious Persian place which would put any New York equivalent to shame (but not Los Angeles). Bostonians, please jump in with your recommendations. I'm a native (though since relocated), and I still believe the best options are out of town or eating at someone's house. Which is the way it always was.

Bruce the green curry was delicious, thanks, but creamier and sweeter than I'm used to. I think I may prefer David Thompson's thin salty broth. But they really are two different beasts. I love my wetgrinder. It's the Ultra Pride+ and it really has made it easier to make curry paste. The key thing which people don't even mention is that you can be prepping the next ingredient while the wetgrinder is grinding the previous one. The only difficult part is getting all the paste out. I feel like the grinder "eats" about a fifth of it. Tonight I made chole from Maya Kaimal's book. It was interesting to find a Punjabi recipe in a south Indian cookbook, which instantly interested me (why the outlier), and I had had Rancho Gordo garbanzos soaked and ready to go. This was delicious. (Surprisingly, especially delicious with the leftover Sodsook chicken and jasmine rice).

Paul those hickory wings look amazing. Below are some photos of my Thai meal tonight. First, Bruce's chicken thighs Isan from Victor Sodsook. I think Bruce might have scraped off the marinade before grilling (I actually roasted and broiled) - I could have benefited from doing that. The dipping sauce is Sodsook's vinegar with sugar, salt and Chinese garlic-chili sauce. It's quite thick and sweet. Then I made Su-mei Yu's green curry with meatballs and squash. Her version of the curry is quite a bit thicker and sweeter than David Thompson's (Thompson actually makes a point of adding no sugar to green curries). It's also a more complicated paste, incorporating a great deal of roasted dry spices (cumin, caraway, white peppercorns and coriander seeds), a puree of jalapenos for color, along with the usual array of bird chiles, garlic, salt, coriander root, kaffir lime zest, galangal, lemongrass, shallots and shrimp paste (which I roasted first). Partial mise of paste ingredients: The chiles going into the wetgrinder (the paste at this point already includes garlic, salt, coriander root and the dry spices): The finished green curry paste: The ingredients for the meatballs: ground beef, minced yellow corn, chile water squeezed from the jalapeno puree, and salt: Thai basil (incorrectly marked and marketed by Kalustyan's here in NYC as holy basil): The kaffir limes were full of way more juice than they normally are; I used an extra short squeeze in the curry and adjusted the flavors accordingly: The remaining chile water is added for color (in Thailand, they use the minced leaves of the chile plant): And the final green curry, including the yellow squash, kaffir lime leaves, halved green chiles, fish sauce, white sugar, some more chile water, and of course coconut cream and coconut milk along with the Thai basil, the meatballs and the curry paste:

I do a brown roasted stock from an early '90s Gourmet magazine, and it always turns out delicious. I hack up an entire chicken (usually Murray's, though I'm curious to try a real stewpot bird if I can find one) and put the pieces, bones and neck in a heavy roasting pan with carrots and onions and roast for a while. Decant everything into a stockpot, deglaze the roasting pan and put that in as well, then simmer with a bouquet garni for a couple hours.

I'll say that my bag of white runner cannelinis was about one-third floaters as well. RG say there was a real shortage of those beans this year, so maybe it's a related problem. That said, the non-floating beans were absolutely delicious. I recently got the garbanzos which were also excellent, along with many more Stallards. Have also bulked up on borlottis and am trying the chiles de arbol. A friend also brought back some heirloom rum beans from Chiapas state which I'm very much looking forward to trying!!

C. sapidus the Sodsook will get a reprieve while I try that recipe! I was also planning a green curry of chicken for a friend tomorrow... may change that to beef balls...

John Mueller's truck on S. 1st offers superlative real Texas barbecue - brisket, sausages, prime rib - it's all wonderful. I have not yet been to Franklin's. But have been to most of the well known out of town spots - Lockhart, Taylor, Llano, Elgin, Luling etc.

A waiter in an LA restaurant actually put down the gravy boat of jus three nights ago and remarked, "And here's more au jus on the side."

C. sapidus the curry looks awesome, Bruce. I often use Kasma's website as a reference, but her two cookbooks were long out of print by the time I got into Thai cooking. And they now seem to go for $45-63 (minimum) on the used market. If I were to buy just one, which of the two would you recommend, given that I own Thompson, Su-Mei Yu and Victor Sodsook, as well as Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet (though I'm thinking of selling the latter two - I never use them)? EDIT: to keep the thread on topic, here's a dinner picture. Chicken thighs with wild rice and brussels sprouts.

Popcorn croc! Awesome! We had guests last night so I went to town a bit. After cheese and olives we had an eclectic meal consisting of the following. Okra with two mustard seeds: This is one of my favorite Mahur Jaffrey dishes. It's a Bengali preparation. Okra when sauteed rather than boiled has a lovely texture and a meaty flavor. The spices involve turmeric. I use fresh grated turmeric rather than the dried called for in the recipe, and increase the amount accordingly. I'm still getting used to the wonder that is fresh turmeric: In addition to the turmeric, there are ground black and yellow mustard seeds in a proportion of about 3:1, red chile powder, two fresh hot green chiles, salt, and kalonji (the latter is used to flavor the oil for the initial browning, the rest are dissolved in water for the simmering phase): And the final product: Although the other main dish was to be Indian, I had leftover white cannelinis from my soaking yesterday and it seemed a shame to let them go to waste, so I made the Algerian dersa recipe for the third time this week. I really had time to let it cook this time and the beans became perfectly creamy. Every time I use the tagine it seems to get a little better. Here's the sauce reducing before the beans are added - it consists of a half-cup of olive oil, two minced garlic cloves, and equal amounts ground toasted cumin, ground cinnamon, red chile powder and sweet paprika, plus water and tomato paste: Again I served this with the two harissas, the "real" canned harissa from Tunisa, and what I call the "Portlandia" harissa in an upscale jar, which is really more of a spread. Both great in their own way. Basmati rice of course: And the piece de resistance, a Mughal dish, fragrant chicken braised in yogurt. This is one of my favorite Julie Sahni recipes, but it takes so long to prepare that I rarely make it for guests. The recipe isn't complicated, but the first stage takes at least 45 minutes, and then it needs another 45 minutes to cook and another hour (at least) to rest while the flavors knit. It's truly magnificent - I recommend this so strongly. The sauce consists of onions and garlic slowly caramelized and oil, plus some dry spices which are quickly fried with the cooked onion-garlic mixture: red chile powder, my homemade garam masala, ground coriander seed, toasted ground Indian white poppy seeds (which are delightfully nutty - worth going out of your way to get), and finally a mixture of yogurt and sour cream. This is then cooked and then pureed in the food processor. Meanwhile, you brown the chicken pieces in a lot of ghee, add the onion-yogurt mixture, and cook very slowly for a long time. Other condiments included a homemade ginger-chile pickle that incorporates ajwain, a sort of dried Indian oregano with considerably more skunky flavor, mango chutney, and lime pickle. We had M&Ms for dessert - nobody had room for anything else.

Kim incredibly sumptuous fried chicken. I use Laurie Colwin's method (and almost set the kitchen on fire the first time). ScottyBoy beautiful ingredients shot. Are those squabs? Tonight for my third tagine meal I combined elements of the last two with some of my bean cooking. I soaked RG white cannelinis for 6 hours, then substituted them for the chickpeas in the Algerian dersa dish. I added well dried, salted chicken thighs and sultanas for a chicken and bean tagine with raisins. The dish seemed to find favor with the guests, so I'll make it again soon. Unlike the chickpeas, the white cannelinis became intensely creamy and smooth in about 90 minutes. And yes, my Rifi tagine really is that asymmetrical when lying flat!

Right, but just to clarify, it's 100V in Japan and 110V in the US, so you can just plug it right in with no problems here.

Chicken with saffron, honey and tomatoes cooked in the tagine:

True Greek yogurt is more likely to come from sheep or goats than cows, I'm guessing?

Has KFC changed over the years?

C. sapidus, almost everything you make looks delicious to me. That veal! I love veal anyway, and I also love pasillas (see chili thread) - with honey it must have been over the top! In the endless parade of beans that is my life these days, I made beans borrachos from a friend's family recipe. It starts with bacon and chicharrones, incorporates roasted peeled poblanos, then onions, garlic, tomatoes and a bottle of Negra Modelo:

Just the scent of garlic, cayenne pepper, sweet paprika, cumin, black pepper and cinnamon sauteeing in olive oil was intoxicating. The earthenware does give an entirely different flavor to the food!

I love black cardamom. The scent is so deeply smoky and nutty. Amazing for flavoring oil before frying onions for Indian dishes. You can shell them and grind the seeds as part of a garam masala. There are umpteen Indian recipes calling for them. Also, substitute for green cardmoms for a deeper, richer flavor (less subtle and elegant, perhaps) - sub one black for three greens, depending on freshness.

Mussels look delicious. Used the tagine for the first time tonight. Algerian chickpeas, with couscous and harissa: And a salad of leeks:

Jealous!