patrickamory

I recently got an Ultra Pride mainly for the purpose of making Thai curry paste. I have to concur with Chris's assessment that it does a good job. It makes smooth, creamy pastes that are better than anything a food processor or blender can do, and often better than the ones that I spend agonizing hours pounding by hand in a mortar and pestle. However I have some caveats to add: - You must chop ingredients finely - galangal in particular, because it's so hard, but also garlic. Su-mei Yoo's recipe for crying tiger calls for 3 whole garlic cloves to be smashed and pounded into the paste. The wet grinder cannot handle this - the stone blades will choke on the large clove segments. You have to mince the garlic, or at least chop it roughly - No small quantities. David Thompson's paste recipes often start off, as Chris notes, with 10-20 dried red chiles, seeded and soaked. If you just put those in the grinder with a pinch of salt, it won't be able to grip them - the tolerances are not that fine. It might be better to add the red chiles later, or start by making 4X the amount. - Chile skins in general are the grinder's weak point - both with dried and fresh bird chiles, I would find flecks of unpounded red and green chile in the paste. This may work better with larger quantities - As Chris mentions, you can use the paddle while the machine is running to flick back ingredients into the mix - in my experience you HAVE to do this, because there are plenty of places for ingredients to get caught when you add them to the grinder. - In addition, you must occasionally stop the grinder, lift out the blades, and flick back bits of garlic, galangal or chile that get caught under the central spoke. - Also, the blades each have 2 grooves cut in them - this may be useful for grinding corn and other whole grains, but for curry paste it's a pain because they of course fill up with paste that is tough to get out at the end - It's hard to get all the paste out at the end - there are so many places in the mechanism where it gets caught - lots of clumsy scraping, lifting and pouring All this said it's still much easier and faster than pounding by hand - unless you're doing a simple paste, especially those in small quantities, such as Su-mei Yoo's "Big Four" paste (cilantro roots, garlic, white peppercorns and coriander seed), or David Thompson's garlic-ginger paste that gets added to his jungle curries alongside the jungle curry paste. I look forward to trying to make masa next. ALSO - two more questions: 1. Can this really be used as a dry grinder? The instructions seem to assume you're going to add water with the first ingredient. I haven't done this, because enough moisture is squeezed out of the garlic, but can it be used on totally dry ingredients? 2. Are the parts really dishwasher-safe? It doesn't say that in the manual that I could see.

There used to be so many excellent places... and now there are really very few indeed. You could try Patsy's on W. 56 St. (Not the pizzeria - no relation.) Avoid anything newfangled on the menu. Linguini con vongole, spaghetti with meatballs, lasagne, chicken scarpariello on the bone with sausage (not listed but they will make it for you). I would have pointed to you to Andy's Colonial Tavern on 116 St. and Second Ave. back when Sal cooked there, but alas, both restaurant and Sal are long gone. In Brooklyn the old-style options open up a bit.

Dinner is sounding pretty incredible.

Ah yes! This reminds me of a time I was staying at a friend's family's house with a serious wine cellar. The people preparing the food and the guy choosing the wine were in two totally different worlds, and we ate very spicy smoked pork ribs with a 1982 Haut-Brion and a 1985 La Tâche. The food was delicious, but I was going to the kitchen to wash my mouth out surreptitiously so that I could try to taste the incredible wines!

I enjoy Kerrygold - we used to get it when my family lived in England in the early '80s. Of the European butters available over here, I think I slightly prefer unsalted Lurpak to Kerrygold - plus the Lurpak doesn't have the flimy Kerrygold packaging which just shreds into slivers (quibble I know). Plugra is absolutely awful - I'd rather get Land O'Lakes. And Echiré blows all of the above out of the water.

Not blasphemy at all especially if you're an experienced chilihead. I guess the capsaicin kinda dulls out your tastes buds after a while and all you taste is vinegar Now here's a use for cooking science (and apologies if this has already been addressed in another thread): is it true that long-term use of capsaicin dulls the tastebuds?

It's vague on purpose. Many of the best cookbook authors are less precise just so you will learn to use your senses to learn to cook new dishes. This may not work for baking, or for certain modernist dishes, but I don't believe that terms like "simmering" should be relegated to history. Nor volume measurements or terms like "a pinch". If everything could be scientifically determined, we can look forward a future where machines do all the cooking and we just wait in the dining room! Not much fun

I've posted about Sam's Grill elsewhere and I concur.

Oh my god that looks so incredible rro.

I don't think anything is close to St. John - there are definitely imitators like Hereford Road, but they are simply neither as interesting or as good. I dined at the new St. John near Leicester Square twice this week and both meals were astounding. An utterly simple dish called Carrots, Barley and Curd (had at both meals) - a salad of fresh young carrots, barley and a spoonful of sour cream - was one of freshest spring dishes I've had in years. A grilled Gloucester Old Spot pork chop was tender and packed with porky flavor missing even from heritage breeds in the US like Berkshire pig. Superb veal tongue. Potted pigeon with pickled prunes on the side - a sort of rillettes with a sweet and sour hit from the juice of the prunes. And more. I'll reiterate my recommendations for fish restaurants in London, which I believe blow away any pretenders in NYC: J Sheekey, the incomparable Sweetings (lunch only), and Wiltons. There are more - I just ate at the relaunched Bentley's Oyster Bar where Richard Corrigan is chef. Wonderful oysters (Maldon Rocks and two other kinds I can't remember), and gull's eggs, which I'd never had before - only in season briefly apparently, they are tiny eggs with yolks that are nearly scarlet. Hope these suggestions appeal!

As someone who frequently cooks from David Thompson, I've always wondered whether the recipes had been converted to US tablespoons for the US editions. On the other hand, if the proportions remain roughly the same (3 tsp = 1 tbs), then I suppose it doesn't make much difference. It should all be to taste anyway!

Perhaps the miracle that most of us (including myself, too often) actually eat them.

Too true. And they had a real butcher counter with pretty high quality aged steaks. Now no butcher counter. Todaro's is excellent for sopressata, salame, all the salumi and its cheese is surprisingly good too, even though much of it is plastic-wrapped. Good selection of dry pastas as well. The meat is not bad either, though it is definitely on the expensive side. I really miss Koglin's German Hams at Grand Central - that place was one-of-a-kind. It's good to have Murray's and Penzeys. Murray's Greek olive oil is my standby. Btw - for cheese, the counter at Artisanal on 32 St. cannot be beat - that's very close to you. High-end of course, but I think it's actually less expensive than the Murray's in Grand Central for many cheeses, and it may be the best in the city (competes with Saxelby's Cheesemongers and Di Palo's I supposed, but those are more specialized shops). Fresh Direct is actually good for produce? I ordered when they first opened - maybe I'll give it another try. It scares me when I can't actually pick out fruits and vegetables with my own hands & eyes.

robirdstx those look absolutely gorgeous. And delicious. The ingredients glisten with freshness and health. Are you based in the Southwest by any chance? [edit: whoops, looked at your description and saw it's Southeast Texas.]

Hi Bruce, Bit of a delayed reply here... I don't think those substitutions would make a huge difference, though as I'm sure you're aware that cilantro roots really do have a deeper & earthier flavor than the stems. I rarely can get enough roots myself so am constantly filling them out or substituting stems. Aside from your flavor rebalancing it's interesting that it tasted better the next day, because I found the same thing. Possibly on the model of Texan chilis, French stews & certain Indian curries that improve after a night in the fridge? I wonder why that is the case. (edit - my partner cannot handle full Thai spice either - I'm constantly trying to walk the tightrope. But it makes sense that with only 4 bird chiles the dish would lose complexity... I do think there's a certain minimum spice level for many Thai dishes. I've seen your earlier posts on this topic and sympathize.)

Kenneth, I'm going to guess that you're a Murray Hill dweller like myself? That Food Emporium actually has the best produce in the neighborhood, though as you point out that's not saying much. That basement Gristede's is truly awful. I'm closer to the two D'Agostinos up the street, and they are even worse in their selection, although the freshness can be OK (with the emphasis on "OK"). Finding quality meat is another problem. I work downtown, so I get to the excellent West Village butchers when I can, but of course all of them close at 6, so it's nearly impossible to get there after work. For many ingredients (but not produce), Todaro Bros on Second Ave. is a lifesaver. Also Grand Central Market (but again, not for produce, and emphatically not for meat at Ceriello's either).

It is about the balance in this dish. How spicy did you go? It benefits from the full 20 bird chiles in my experience. What substitutions did you make? (No stranger to them, as you'll have seen in my recent post on the dinner thread...)

Last night I made Julie Sahni's fragrant yogurt-braised chicken (dahi murghi). Utterly delicious, but I find it impossible to photograph this dish attractively, so no visual proof. Tonight I tried pat prik king (dry curry of pork with snake beans) from David Thompson. I had no rendered pork fat so used coconut oil; no grachai so used young ginger; no pla grop so used crumbled crispy fish from a Thai snack package for the paste; no holy basil (impossible to find in NYC right now!) so used Thai basil. Despite all the substitutions, this turned out well. Served with sticky rice. Btw, I wanted to make something like the dry curry of lamb and pumpkin I had at Jitlada in LA recently - this was not it; this recipe (as the name makes clear) is more akin to the "spicy beef basil" (insert name of protein in middle) available in American Thai restaurants. I wonder whether anyone has a recipe like the southern curry from Jitlada? Bone dry and blisteringly hot, with the pumpkin and lamb flavors fully to the fore.

Sakagura on E. 43 St.

I was recognized at the original Palm on Second Ave today and given one of those huge booths by the bar for a party of 3! Love those guys... For smart ordering here, the ticket is the double strip for 3 people, rare.

What about sopa de lima? One of my absolute faves. There's a recipe in Kennedy.

rarerollingobject Color is such a huge part of food, and Thai food especially. The salad looks amazing and I'm sure tasted just incredible. I've used pomelos in a recipe from Cracking The Coconut called galloping horse (mah haw) - nope I'm wrong, they were tangelos! And pork cracklings feature in the crying tiger recipe from the same book. I think you've coaxed me into cooking Thai again tonight. Last night was kheema with fried onions from Madhur Jaffrey's first book... served with basmati rice, homemade tomato chutney, lime pickle and steamed spinach. That kheema is my go-to last-minute recipe because all I ever need to go buy is the ground beef (or lamb). No good photo today.

Bruce that sounds excellent (and very Jitlada-esque coincidentally). What kind of fish did you use?

Just 3 recommendations from me: The Ipswich Clam Box is an absolute must. Way out of the way, but your view of fried clams will never be the same. On Saturday between 11 and 2 on Huron Ave. in Cambridge, the barbecue at Formaggio Kitchen (and then go inside and buy some of the best cheeses available on the East Coast). Locke-Ober for one of the oldest restaurants in the US, with incredible interior detail. It's not the same (or as good) since Lydia Shire took it over, but still worth it for a dress-up dinner. It's like stepping back in time. Order a Ward 8 at the bar (invented there).

ojisan, I think the old Jitlada was a different operation... located up on Hollywood Blvd right? I ate there a couple of times and it was just OK - that would have been in the '90s, maybe past their prime. The "new" one is on Sunset, and opened in 2006 or so. The Southern Thai portion of the menu (the last two pages), which is their specialty, was originally only printed in Thai. A Chicago blogger posted a translation, and people would print it out and bring it to the restaurant. Now that section of the menu is in English too. It is extraordinary cooking. See this Chowhound post from 2007 (" Wipe away all memories of the old Jitlada, print out Eric's translation"): http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/414265 and then the life-changing Jonathan Gold review: http://www.laweekly.com/locations/jitlada-thai-restaurant-117084/ I'm from NYC. I'd unhesitatingly put this in the top 10 restaurants in the country, and it's an unpretentious spot in a mini-mall!