Hassouni

http://www.aldoukan.com/acb/showdetl.cfm?&DID=7&User_ID=6647506&st=7246&st2=-89916537&st3=88600964&Product_ID=3865 how about that?

Be aware the Mahlab and Sahlab (Turkish: Salep) are two entirely different things. The former are the ground pits of a certain kind of cherry, whereas the latter is the orchid root crushed into a starch to make a thick drink also called sahlab, as well as a thickener for classic Turkish and Levantine ice cream. They taste quite different.

More Georgian food last night. In addition to the usual cucumber and tomato salad and some Teliani Valley Saperavi wine, I made tabaka, which is poussin spatchcocked and seared in a pan under a brick or other heavy weight (I used my Thai granite mortar inside a pot) Also made BY FAR my best khachapuri yet, achieving the results by winging it, when using recipes failed me in the past. This one is Mingrelian-style, or megruli, which has cheese both inside and on top:

It's pretty good, but honestly I can't eat any sort of fried chicken after having Bon Chon. Kenji needs to do a food lab on that!

Thank you sir! All that glistening is beef fat, which makes me think it wasn't as lean as the butcher said...

braised daikon with ground beef, stir fried napa cabbage, tomato and arugula (because I guess it's like mizuna) in a sort of fake ponzu dressing, and silken tofu and spinach miso soup

Where did you get the passion fruit syrup?

Indeed he is, the question is, what happens to the failed attempts?

Been making a few Japanese meals, most of which I haven't documented. Last week made my first ever real Japanese-style teriyaki, in this case with some super-fresh mackerel and homemade tare. It was beautiful and exquisitely delicious. Made some green beans and carrots in shira ae, some quick cucumber pickles, and a fresh corn, spinach, and tomato misoshiru. I then picked up a Made in Japan Zojirushi Neuro Fuzzy rice cooker, and a bag of Kagayaki California Koshihikari...Today made this: the koshihikari rice (which cooked up way softer than I expected on the "regular" setting in the Zojirushi), daikon and tomato misoshiru, gobo tataki (which was delicious, only tataki-ing the gobo with a surikogi sent gobo bits flying across the kitchen), and some chicken negimaki - I didn't have time to go to a good grocery store, so was unable to get good quality suitable red meat for it. I think red meat would have been better though, the chicken totally fell apart. Gratuitous closeup:

Been making some Japanese food lately and not documenting most of it - here's some chicken negimaki - pounded chicken tenders wrapped around scallions, marinated in homemade tare (aka "teriyaki sauce") and seared. I wanted to do this with beef, but that's the only thing the crummy Safeway had organic.

I basically fried the lengthwise eggplant slices (in rather a lot of oil), set them aside to cool and drain, then ground up the walnuts, a bit of garlic and water, added some ground coriander, fenugreek, and chili, and mixed in chopped coriander leaves. There are several ways of doing it in Georgia that I saw, but I think the most attractive is what I did: spread the paste on half the slice of eggplant, fold it over (good observation!), and then spread more paste on the exposed part. Often they don't do the top surface, or they make it more rolled around the paste vs. folded. I should say that I used WAYYY more oil than had I been cooking for myself, but of course eggplant can never have too much!

Made a small Georgian barbecue dinner for some friends, most of which is not pictured since it all came together last minute. However, here's a picture of the badrijani nigvzit, fried eggplant slices stuffed/topped with a paste of walnuts, garlic, spices, and coriander: Also made some khachapuri, or cheese-stuffed bread, pork shoulder mtsvadi, or kabab, and the ubiquitous Georgian salad of cucumbers, tomatoes, and onions. Next time I'll have more pictures!

Made some mtsvadi with pork shoulder - removed the excess fat as best I could, which still left a lot in the chunks - marinated in salt, vinegar, and onions. It came out just about perfectly! It wasn't fork tender or anything, but the fat and whatever else in the shoulder kept the meat moist and delicious, and not too tough for a knife and fork. Thanks for suggesting shoulder!

Merci, Princesse! My reasoning for using S&C is that the original used 17 year old W&N, which I'm sure had tons of funk and hogo. My thought is that you get the sweetness, mellowness, and oak of long aging with the Appleton, and the gnarly Jamaican character of the S&C - I'm guessing this is something close to what the original rum would've been like.

Long time no mix, so here we are: Mai Tai with 1 oz El Dorado 15, 1.5 oz Smith & Cross, 1 oz lime, 1/2oz + a bit Cointreau, 1/4 oz homemade orgeat, and a mere suggestion of 2:1 simple. Next time gonna up the orgeat and maybe switch back to Appleton 12 instead of the ED15

I just bought the 5.5 cup Zojirushi Made in Japan Neuro Fuzzy, since I had a gift certificate for Super H Mart, who happened to be discounting it. It came out to well under 50% of the cost of their same-sized IH model. Let's see what it can do!

it's the same size as a 10 pence piece, if that means anything....

Also having been a student and giving up on cafeteria food after the first month, I can recommend the following: Second for the Helmand - this is probably the most distinctive place Bmore has. Also, you get the novelty of eating at a place owned by Hamid Karzai's brother. Go to Alewife, their smokeburger is absolutely ridiculous, beer selection very eclectic and interesting. Brewer's Art has far fewer beers but they're all made on the premises and very reasonably priced. They do good cocktails too. Haven't been in a while, but I remember Kumari having pretty good Nepalese food (similar to North Indian but appreciably different to make it interesting). Blue Agave in Federal Hill has a rather good, mostly-authentic Mexican menu If you want crabs, Bmore's favorite place, I guess, is Obrycki's, but you should head to Annapolis for Cantler's Riverside Inn, the real deal.

You have both? Is there a noticeable difference? The Neuro Fuzzy is a lot cheaper...

Well, getting to the state of the first pic in this post was a massive pain

One hint for making your own: get pre-skinned almonds. Skinning them yourself sucks and makes the process take twice as long.

Having eaten pork kabab (mtsvadi) in Georgia recently that was obviously from very recently-killed animals, I can say that for unprocessed pork, the fresher the tastier.

Try in the oven, as if it was cast iron. Be careful of the wooden handle, thought, you may want to wrap it up

Update: the grill definitely did it

Brought home a chicken from my local organic butcher, and it seems as if it wasn't totally plucked, i.e. parts of the skin have what appear to be short black hairs, which i assume are just pars of the feathers that wasn't pulled out. I'm planning to grill it, butterflied. Should I leave it as is? Will the "hairs" char off?