Busboy

Heather might have a different guesstimate, but I'd think 6-7 pounds. Not much at all (fortunately, it was a samll group. 35 lbs, btw was before it was gutted or whatever they call it.

Peas, glorious peas. Now I am happy. At Arlington (Gourmet Gardens?), Mt. P (Reid) and Dupont. But, big news of the week is surely the opening of a new market on one of those corners where the only marketing going on a few years ago was 40s and illicit substances. The Bloomingdale Market, at 1st and Q Street NW is fairly small -- 6 or 8 stands, but seem to have most of the basics covered, with Reid Orchards, Truck Patch (absent yesterday for Father's Day) Sunnyside and a couple of other familiar faces. It is, however, as far I know, the local site to get lamb fro the New Asbury Farm. I picked up a couple shanks and hope to test them out with white beans or maybe cous-cous in the near future. I think later this summer I'm going to get my Greek on, though, and try to do a whole lamb on a rotisserie. Cherries galore, although sour cherries were in short supply, and we turned out the first clafouti of the year which, along with some homemade cinnamon ice cream was the hit of the barbecue we attended. It's finally starting to be worth getting up in the morning to hit the markets again.

Interesting article in Slate on the emergence of contemporary wine descriptors. In his book The Taste of Wine, legendary French oenologist Emile Peynaud elegantly explained the conundrum. "We tasters feel to some extent betrayed by language," he wrote. "It is impossible to describe a wine without simplifying and distorting its image." This linguistic failure is surely one reason that numerical scores for wines have proven so popular; points are simplistic and distorting, too, but they at least give you something to hold onto—more so than, say, "spice box," "melted asphalt," or "liquefied minerals." So, how did such phrases become standard-issue wine nomenclature?

Shhhhhh....don't tell anyone. We'd like everyone to believe it was a complex and artful undertaking, to be successfully executed only by the culinary elite! The whole project fueled my desire to recreate an Alice waters meal for which she had a sow who had recently given birth almost entirely on garlic, which then got into the mothers' milk and from there into the hogs. Might also try a sheep, too. Heather is right, a 35-pounder is a little small, but the meat was like velvet, clearly different from that pulled off larger pigs. I'd also like to try a gadget with hood, so we could smoke it up some more. Altogether, though a thoroughly enjoyable evening and wjhatever errors we committed, the pig covered up for us quite nicely. The brine, for those keeping score at home, was apple juice, orange juice, anise, cinnamon black pepper and onion, and imparted and understated but excellent taste.

I don't get to Paris too often (all Parisians-in-spirit should catch the movie Paris Je t'Aime, btw) but when I do, I always picnic at least one evening. To me, hitting the traiteur and boulangerie and patisserie and... and assembling a wonderful meal to eat on the banks of the Seine or in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower is as much a part of France's extraordinary dining culture as eating in a classic bistro or 3-start temple. And there's no restaurant with a better view than you have sitting on the quais across from Notre Dame. Plus, its cheap, and you can use the money you saved to upgrade one of your subsequent meals.

I was in Paris, buying olive oil at some lovely shop just around the corner from Rue Cler, le Patron noticed my daughter with me and threw in a couple of liquorice sticks for her. She was unimpressed. So was I. I was in Courchevel, eating at a Michelin 2-star, and one of the desserts featured wedges of pear skewered on a liquorish stick, which was, in turn, standing straight up, anchored in a poached pear swimming in some sort of lime foam. I was told to chew the stick, then eat the pears. I was impressed.

Thanks, Anna. Maybe I'll have to hunt down an injector now. And a mop. What was your rub? And how long did you brine?

Interesting article here.

The thing about family dinners is this: for all the moments you may or may not be together as a family during a typical day, none of them are going to involve an hour, or an hour-and-a-half, or even two hours together face-to-face. In addition, after a certain age, the mundane chores assigned the kids -- setting, clearing, washing, a bit of cooking -- bring them into the process and give them a little stake and pride in dinner and gives them a kind of quasi-equal footing that fosters conversation. As does the meal itself. And I don't think time together just happens these days, and maybe it never did. If I waited for the family to coalesce naturally, we'd all be watching House or maybe buying popcorn at one of those rare movies that pleased The Snob, The Romantic, The Hipster and that the Teeniebopper can get into, or doing chores. It's not as though we're all bringing in the crops together or milking the cows; school and three jobs and all the delights of the city tend to have a centrifugal effect. Lacking any better excuse, mandated dinner brings us back together. Of course, like the girl (or me, when my hair goes awry) with the curl in the middle of her forehead, when it is good, it is very, very good. And when it is bad...

With an 18-year-old working many nights and about to leave home, and a 14-year-old daughter who is sometimes sullen and distant in the way that teenagers (my wife would say teenage girls) seem especially good at, I've gotten to scheduling family dinners in advance: "you will hold Thursday and Sunday open to eat with your mother and I." Half of the reason is purely selfish -- nothing delights me more. But the other half is that -- given the random schedules the four of us keep, we might otherwise go days without a civil conversation amongst us. Overtime, soccer, dating, what-have-you...I think that these are not excuses to avoid eating together but reasons to make sure it happens regularly. It's also, though this is less a consideration, a regular lesson in everything from setting the table properly to not making intestine-oriented jokes during dinner. I do indeed feel guilty if we go too many days in a row without eating together, and I think I should. On the other hand, when my daughter says she's the only one of her peers who knows how to eat at a restaurant, and my son's friends parents say "Joey loves going over to your house; he says you eat dinner together and everything," it's a nice little stroke. Will all the other things I've probably screwed up at least we have this one corner of life nailed down pretty well. And one of which the whole family is a part.

Where's "around here?" Your recipes and sides seem very Latin/Caribbean -- much like our neighborhoods in DC (we have Mojo Sauce in the 'fridge). Hey -- you forgot to eat the cheeks! They're the best part.

Spatchcocking? ← I'm guessing, but I've never spatchcocked anything larger than a 4-pound chicken. Plus I wrecked my cleaver trying to get the brains of a pig skull once. Guess I'll have to by a new one and have my wife walk me through this. Too bad birds are related to reptiles and not mammals.

There are a few threads on how to break a 100- or 150-pound whole hog into 200 or so separate dinners (a list of them are on this topic). . But what about a cute little baby pig? Maybe not so cute, sitting there wedged upright in the fridge staring at you whenever you go in for a glass of milk. And maybe not so little, having hung at 34 pounds and probably running about 25 pounds now that its innards are being ground into the kind of hot dogs you only eat when you've been drinking hard (though hints on a pork liver terrine will be happily accepted, we have that and the heart). Picking up the pig from Truck Patch Farms at one of DC's many local farmers' markets. It appears HJShorter's renting a large charcoal/hardwood grill -- she and her husband declined to dig a hole in their yard -- and we have brining advice from Varmint (only 3-4 hours) and a brining recipe coming from local meat-chef legend Michael Landrum. But there are many variables. Like, once you get the soggy pig out of the brine, do you just slap it on the grill? How do you get him to lay flat? How long do you cook it? What's this about injecting stuff? Rubs? Do you cook it covered or uncovered? Hints, advice, amusing anecdotes and side dish suggestions all appreciated.

A "literately louche tour?" I'm very big on "louche." Sign me up.

not at all. if it doesn't detract from my service...then I could care less. if it does "hurt" me...then it's a sliding scale of merit. legitimate medical reasons, advanced seniority, that sort of thing...all good. while faux food allergies and vegetarians should never be accommodated. There's the rub, as the Melancholy Dane once said after a particularly bad batch of herring and vodka. Every second of time the waiter and chef spend on me, is taken from your account, and vice versa. If we are at adjoining tables, must we poll one another if, say, one of us wants another bread basket? More water? Well done beef? A substitute side dish? Our pasta course split in half? After all, all of these things take time and add nothing to the restaurants coffers. What if we're just in the mood for a special wine and end up taking a few minutes talking about the Burgundies rather than just barking out "bring me the Mersault?" Matter of fact, we'd all save time if customers just bossed orders at waiters and waiters just flung the food onto the table without art or grace. Or we could put the stopwatches away and, as we used to advise our customers at Le Pavillon (not the Le Pavillon), "sit back, relax and enjoy." And restaurants could accommodate special requests and customers could become loyal and we'd all grow old, prosperous and happy together.

Why does it matter? ← Not answering for anyone else, just for myself: How do you picture taking four different plates of entree and whatever sides might happen to be on those plates, splitting all that stuff into four and dividing it among four plates? It's hard to imagine a scenario where that would be appetizing at all. Why does it matter? I can think of a number of different reasons. It's going to have to be pretty time-consuming, and it's (IMO) likely to result in something that's not going to be attractive. I don't think a chef has to be a hopeless prima donna or have a resentful attitude towards customers to be unwlling to present a meal that way. It's a continuum here, in my opinion, between a kitchen that won't change things one iota and one that will try to cook up anything anyone asks for. It's all in how a restaurant chooses to define itself. There's room for everything. As a customer, I think it's silly to go into a restaurant and ask them to be something they are not. ← I suppose I can't provide a detailed description of the plating not knowing what the dishes in question were. I do know, however, that chefs are very good at putting food on plates rapidly, and that -- while the aesthetics would surely suffer and no patron has the right to expect otherwise -- the amount of additional time would likely be marginal. The people who ordered it appear not to be too sensitive about these things, so whether you or I could picture it being appetizing is not important. And I think a chef should be flattered that his food or her food appeals not just to the culinarians (as it were) among us who know how these things are "supposed" to be done, but to unwashed masses as well. I don't think these people were asking the restaurant to be something it wasn't. They didn't go into a Chinese restaurant and ask for French food; they didn't hunt for a vegetarian tasting menu in a steakhouse. The just wanted to share what they apparently believed would be an excellent dining experience. As a customer, I think it's silly to go into a restaurant and expend them to be so rigid that that they won't do odd little favors for you every now and again if you ask politely and tip well. As a youth, I had the opportunity to work FOH for a couple of excellent restaurants for chefs that showed up in national magazines from time to time. Never did they shy away from honoring special requests if at all possible, to the point of keeping a bottle of ketchup in the larder of the most expensive French restaurant in town. Very slippery slope here. You're saying that restaurants should never give special attention to others?

and on top of it all, to have on the same plate each of those 4 mini portions. its not about being a fussy chef, its about having some integrity and not letting customers clamor for what ever they want. this IS the service industry, not indentured servitude or something of the sort... ← God help the restaurant industry if customers should start "clamoring" for what they want. Why, they might get it, enjoy themselves and go out to dinner again. And then -- all that work! Just like indentured servitude!Hey, I think the 4-plate split is odd and would firmly stand by a chef's right to decline to do so in the middle of a a crush. The GM compromise seems fair. On the other hand, taking an ideological stand against on the grounds that taking requests is akin to involuntary servitude strikes me as absurd and not a bit egotistical. Goodness knows, they might have been a bunch of old ladies who find it more gentile to eat that way as opposed to passing plates hither and thither, or a bunch of university kids who didn't know any better. Why not take a moment to make their night more pleasurable? Why does it matter?

Capitol Hill (of which Eastern Market is a sub-section) is widely and justly considered something of a Culinary wasteland. Fortunately, the lovely Montmartre is just a few doors down from the fire-damaged market and may be the best mid-range French place in the city. Belga Cafe is well-regarded, down near Barracks Row, but gets crowded fast. Sonoma is also well-regarded, and reputed to be a good place to begin or end an evening with wine and cheese/charcuterie. When I think of "cocktailing" I think you should leave the Hill and head to Penn Quarter, where there are more hip lounges and good restaurants than you can shake a Manolo Blahnik at. But if you are up for "drinking" The Hawk and Dove just got named one of Esquire Magazine's "50 best bars in America" and The Tune Inn is legendary; both are dives that have nourished -- if you can call it that -- generations of underpaid Hill rats in search of a cheap burger and cheaper buzz. They both smell bad, and that's the way we like it.

I don't know you or your work, or the exact circumstances of the meal in question, so please assume that I'm speaking generally rather than personally, but I have a problem with chefs who find themselves such artistes that they can't be persuaded to accommodate reasonable requests because it compromises the integrity of the dish or some such rot. If it's too much of a pain to do during a busy part of service, or the customer is abusing the system ("I'm allergic to beans, can I just have more steak?") shutting them down gently is appropriate. Otherwise, accommodations should be made. It is called the "service" industry, after all.

As always, save when discussing synth-heavy Britpop bands, I agree with everything Heather said, adding that if you hit 2Amy's go early or late and not at all on a weekend evening. Washington Augusts are not suited to standing line line outside for 45+ minutes (nor are august Washingtonians, but that's another post). My wife and I prefer to sit at the bar and watch the charcutrier(?) do his work, ordering by pointing at whatever looks good. (Actually, now that I think for a moment, 2 Amy's is planning to expand rather dramatically in the near future. Check here to see if they've been able to hold onto the magic while shortening the wait.) On a meta level I'd suggest that it's kind of a "safe" list: 2 to 3 star food, mid-priced safe neighborhoods. Maybe consider spending one night eating cheap Ethiopian or Salvadoran food and then use the money you've saved to splurge. Two of the best restaurants in town offer bar menus as well as their main menu in the bar. Maybe go to Palena (early) for their burger (eh, but others love it) or whatever else is on the cafe menu and splurge on something expensive from the main menu to see what recent Beard Award-winning chef Frank Ruta can do when price is no object. Similarly, dressing up a touch, heading over to the less-crowded Marcel's, kicking back to the piano music, getting the Gruyere pizza with a side of the greatest boudin blanc on earth or whatever else looks delicious on the main menu. Where are you coming in from?

How old are your daughters?

We always blanch the favas before peeling the membrane off the bean because it goes about twice as fast. Yesterday I bought $18 worth of the little buggers -- four or five pounds -- and needed up with just over a pint of beans. You gotta really like thse guys to go through the effort. In Greece, where fava beans from the island of Santorini are considered a modest source of national pride, favas are commonly pureed and served like mashed potatoes, with capers, chopped red onions (or chopped, browned shallots) a wedge of lemon and olive oil.

Sadly, I have no lackeys at my disposal, although I've always wanted one. Actually, the highlight of the many markets I traversed this weejend was discovering that Red Rake farms at the Arlington/Court House market had peas and will have them again this weekend.

At Curlz request I took one for the team and wandered over the Five Guys that sprang up like a mushroom on cow poop about 80 feet from my office. Years ago, when there were only two or three Five Guys, it was a huge deal in my (previous) office to collect a few bucks and send someone on a Five Guys run. I never actually did this, because I was never hungry for a burger (hangover food) on the days it was offered. But then they started winning all these (notoriously unreliable) Washingtonian Readers' Choice Best Burger things, so I got curious but they were in the 'burbs and I wasn't so who cares; I only go to the 'burbs for Asian food. Then they opened a branch in Georgetown and my son started ducking into it for lunch and raving about it and one day when I had to pick him up early he dragged me in and I had to say... What the hell is all the fuss about? The free peanuts? (But first, the stupidest thing I've seen all week: a sign on Five Guys Door saying "Due to the possibility of allergic reactions in children, please do not carry peanuts or shells off Five Guys' premises." ) So, today, I wander down, grab a bacon cheeseburger, a dog and the fries and head back to the office. The fries are pretty good -- thick cut, nicely browned, treated with respect. Cajun fries available for them as likes 'em. Hot dog (a "bow-wow"):split, grilled, stale bun, nice spice, pleasant surprise. They forgot my mustard, and didn't have any of the little packs. Burger: two patties fried to grey death, garnished with two slices of 'Murcan cheese, on a soggy, sesame seed bun. I mean, it was basically a double quarter pounder with cheese, only served in an atmosphere that made a lunch hour McDonald's seem calm. I don't know if they do it on purpose, or just in city locations where space is tight, but the narrow rooms, low ceilings, open kitchen and employees screaming out order numbers at the top of their lings make the place awfully unpleasant. Let me know how it goes for y'all in the Garden State.

I think the notion that servers are all getting rich while the wage slaves in the back suffer for pennies. This is likely more true at the relative handful of high end places in the world, but for the majority of servers who toiled in the trenches -- and my son, now working at a decent local mid-scale place, confirms this -- there are a lot of slow nights and crappy days. It's pretty easy to walk out of a lunch shift with $15 dollars in your pocket and a dinner shift with barely $25.