Hassouni

I just eat the hell out of my watermelon in big-ass slices. That's my max use, or to use econ terms, how I derive maximum utility out of said fruit

After a month's travelling in Lebanon and Georgia, I attempted to make some Georgian food: Grilled branzino with pomegranate herb sauce, khachapuri (ubiquitous Georgian cheese bread), ubiquitous Georgian tomato-cucumber salad, spinach pkhali (a paste of spinach, walnuts, and herbs), and some excellent Georgian wine - Shumi saperavi Tonight, in Lebanese mode (OK French but there's a lot of overlap), I made a textbook salade niçoise: Very refreshing after all the delicious, but huge and heavy meals in Georgia

I've mentioned it a few times, but Nawal Nasrallah's Delights From the Garden of Eden is a lengthy and exhaustive masterwork on Iraqi cuisine. You'd be surprised, our food is quite varied and kicks ass http://www.iraqicookbook.com/contents/intro/main.html

W&N and Ting!

"Does leaving a stew overnight really improve the flavour?" I dunno the science behind it but HELL YES it does! Especially chili or anything with tomatoes (Iraqi stews are prime candidates for aging, as it were). Somewhere, possibly on Good Eats, or possibly in article by Kenji on Serious Eats, it was recommended braised meat be cooled overnight and gently reheated before serving. Something sort of along the lines of what you said here: "settles the texture of the meat giving it a chance to re-absorb the liquid", but I understand resting meat to be more about letting the juices gel a little and to help prevent further moisture loss on carving."

Make all three!

Just got a Kitchenaid 5 speed blender, 670 watts, and man, it made some SMOOOOOTH stuff using canned hummus (by which I mean whole chick peas), skins and all.

Be advised U Vejvodu is more focused on beer, but it was prob my favorite place in the city, I went twice on a 5 day trip. That being said, almost every drinking den has food.

Here are pics, if it helps:

So I think I realized why it was being given away - lots of rust and gunk. (Just inspected it closely today). The charcoal grate is falling apart with rust, the charcoal ring is starting to have a bit of rust, the middle cooking grate has a decent amount of rust, and the top grate is starting to get rust spots. The vent bolts are rusty and the vents wouldn't turn, but WD-40 fixed that. Additionally, the water pan is really gunked up - looks like it was never foiled. The previous stuff is all fairly cheaply replaceable. So I'm not concerned about that. More concerningly, the bowl, or bottom section of the body, seems to have rust. How is this possible? I thought the enameled surface, which still appears intact, won't rust? I managed to scrape and wipe a lot of it out using WD-40 and an old towel, but I didn't get all of it. Could it just be settled, condensed rust particles from the exposed parts (grates, bolts, etc)? Half of the coal grate was sitting in the bowl in the form of flaked off splinters of rust.

Tonight ran the broiler to make oven tortilla chips for some impromptu chilaquiles. Easy, quick, no mess, no smell.

U Medvidku and U Vejvodu pop to mind, as does U Pinkasu. Czech food is heavy as hell, just a warning

Ooh, yes I forgot about charring peppers. I do that a lot.

Interesting... how does it compare to cooking pizza in a normal 500F oven? How does the crust turn out when the heat source is only coming from the top? Do you preheat the oven first? Two ways to use a broiler for this, off the top of my head. The first is yes, preheat the oven as high as it'll go (in my case 550), bake the pizza as normal but switch on the broiler for the last minute or two to really brown and crisp the top. The second way also involves cast iron, and has been written about extensively around the web - again get the pan hella hot, slap the pizza in and put it under the broiler. The immense retained heat should work with the broiler to cook both sides of the pizza relatively evenly. The third and most awesome way involves the self-clean cycle, which also uses the broiler, but that's a different subject. Another great use - eggplant slices. Many recipes (at least in Middle Eastern cooking) require fried sliced eggplant, which is delicious but LOADED with oil. Brush eggplant slices with oil and broil them - you get a similar effect but far less oily and therefore far fewer calories.

Fish fish fish. Seriously, turn on the broiler, heat up a cast iron pan super hot, throw a whole fish or a filet in, and slide it right under the broiler. My favorite cooking method for fish. Rather similar to Japanese fish grills, from what I understand. Also good for making pizza in the oven

So in a shocking bit of coincidental luck, I found an 18" WSM being given away for free by someone in the neighborhood right when I was considering buying one for a few hundred bucks. It's now mine! I've only ever smoked some jerk chicken drumsticks on a Weber kettle grill, but I do love barbecue. I've read the eGCI smoking lesson and Q&A, but I have a few questions: 1. What to cook first? 2. Right now the house only has 2 people living in it. Can I smoke only a pound or two of meat, or is that just wastefully inefficient? 3. Can non-meat items be cooked on a smoker? Thanks!

Can anyone confirm whether or not the CK barspoons measure a teaspoon?

How well did the piloncillo dissolve? Maybe there were some impurities floating at the surface that ended up growing mold? It was completely dissolved, from what I could tell. Ah, crap. Hah. I should note that all my other syrups a) go straight in the fridge and b) get a shot of vodka, and I've had zero problems with them, and they've been in their for months and months and months. I figured 2:1 was invincible....

Yeah I did by volume, but the sugar was pretty tightly packed.

OK, what gives, I thought a 2:1 syrup was essentially immune to mold? My 2:1 piloncillo syrup has barely been sitting around a week in a sterilized container, and the surface is COVERED in mold!

Surpriiiiise, it's hot, I love rum, it's a daiquiri! FdC Extra Dry, lime (duh), and evap. cane sugar syrup stuff, 4:2:1. Next time gonna notch down the sugar some, it's not quite as dry as I'd have liked.

Mint sprigs from the garden

OK, so I went to Rice Paper last night, and having to wait for a table sucked (never have to wait at Hai Duong despite it always being full!), but the food was quite good. Had cha gio and goi cuon, which were on par with my standard places, but also bo la lot, ground seasoned beef wrapped in wild betel leaves and grilled - those were DIVINE. I had some kind of bun soup, bun mam something something, I guess - fish, pork, squid, and I can't remember what else. It was very good, and reasonably placed I guess the fancy places can do a good job. I think either that or Vy Bistro will be my go-to places for taking Vietnoobs (ha!), unless it's pleasant outside, in which case I do still like the patio of Viet Bistro

Inspired by what I DIDN'T order at dinner at the Eden Center last night, I made Bún Tôm Heo Nướng, one of those Vietnamese bún dishes, the sort of cold rice noodle salads, this one with shrimp:

It's fuckin hot in DC. Mojito hot.