Andrew Fenton

City Paper's Meal Ticket blog has a preview of a couple of dishes from Chifa, Jose Garces' Peruvian-Chinese joint, set to open early next year. It definitely looks intriguing... I just wonder if they'll serve Inca Kola?

"Spanked" sage. Hilarious! That's a fun article- made even better by the inclusion of the Blackberry Beret recipe.

I've eaten at Buddakan and Tangerine a grand total of once each, so I'm no expert. But I thought that Tangerine was head and shoulders better than Buddakan. With Buddakan, I kept getting the feeling that I was eating dishes that were simultaneously gussied up and dumbed down; I could have them for half the price a few blocks away in Chinatown. Tangerine, on the other hand, had a consistent aesthetic: the dishes could stand on their own.

Wowie zowie! This is one of those times when I'm envious of the rural lifestyle. Perhaps some day, when I retire to my country estate, to become a gentleman of leisure... Anyway, what do you do with the bones? Is venison stock any good?

Care to elaborate on this at all? How spicy is it? Sounds like the perfect thing to get on a rainy, miserable day such as today. I'm on a mission for some type of good, spicy, hot pot/soup type of thing for later on. I've ran STH into the ground, time to try something different. ← As ICTD mentioned, it could have benefited from some more preserved vegetables, but it was tasty! Just very fatty (I know, pork belly: who'd have thunk it?). It's definitely worth trying, especially on a wet, cold day.

Well, after all that I couldn't not try Wokano, right? First things first: there are two menus. It's not that one is in English and one is in Chinese, either. There are just two menus: a bright and shiny one with your General Tso's chicken and wonton soup, and a smaller, slightly grubby one that has all the offal-y good stuff. I can't remember all the dishes we ordered-- if only somebody would post pictures to remind me-- but standouts included: - the black chicken and ginseng soup. This wasn't like anything I've had in a Chinese restaurant. Very light broth, almost underseasoned (a number of us added salt) with a slight medicinal flavor from the ginseng. It's a very simple soup, basically just the chicken and ginseng, and tastes like something your bubbe would serve you when you're sick, if your bubbe were Chinese. - very good Peking duck. I don't know where I'd rank it relative to other local ducks, but this one was very good. - deep-fried spare ribs. These are basically Rib McNuggets: you can actually hear your arteries creaking and hardening as you eat them. But so tasty! They'd be a great bar snack: the alcohol would both help clear out the grease and loosen your inhibitions about eating them. - pork belly hot pot. Did I mention that this dinner was sponsored by AstraZeneca, makers of Crestor ? At least, I deserve some sort of royalty. - the duck tongues, which, honestly... didn't taste like too much. Still, it's good to order them along with the Peking duck, just so that you can say you used every part of the duck. You know, like the Indians. There's a lot more on the menu worth exploring, though I may skip a crazy $400 dish, loaded with dried abalone and other fine seafoods. (I'm guessing it's the Chinese equivalent of that foie gras cheesesteak they were serving at Barclay Prime.) They also do dim sum; I'd like to try that one of these days.

Fortunately for me, I get off on free speech, guns AND booze. So really I had no choice but to show up at Chick's on Friday, get drunk, start insulting people and shooting holes in the ceiling, Yosemite Sam style. When not threatening Chick's liquor license with revocation, I managed to try three of the four all-American drinks Katie was pouring: the Ward Eight, Sazerac and Jack Rose. All of them were terrific, but I particularly enjoyed the Sazerac. Katie referred to it as "New Orleans in a glass," but you know, I've smelled Bourbon Street on a Sunday morning. And this was much, much better. My friend also tried the Blackberry Beret, which I can recommend to anybody who's looking for a drink that perfectly balances sweetness and fruitiness with herbal and almost savory notes. It's a great drink.

My understanding (which might be incorrect) is that black chicken is usually served as a soup. In another coincidence, I just had it for the first time last week, in soup with ginseng. It was a very mild broth, much less seasoned than other Chinese broths I've had, with a hint of herbal/medicinal flavor from the ginseng and a slight bitterness (either from the ginseng or the chicken, I'm not sure.) Tasted like something your Jewish grandmother would make, if she were Chinese.

Whoops, my bad! Anyway, I was able to read that .pdf file (but only with Adobe Reader, not the software I usually use.) The first direction is to remove the salivary glands, which sound like the bubbles or nodes you noticed. So it sounds like you did the right thing. Good luck with the guanciale! I haven't made it yet-- it'll have to wait until I get a curing chamber set up in January or February-- but I'm looking forward to giving it a go myself. Be sure to report on your results!

Check again; it's on p. 47 in my edition.

If you want to add sugar, you add sugar. That's why they set it out, often in convenient little packets. And I wouldn't worry too much about foam art. Like coffee, or life itself, it's beautiful but fleeting.

Well, he's famously (and maybe notoriously) a Whole Foods shopper and arugula eater: Does that make him a foodie? Pretty darn close, anyhow...

I used to go to Famous 4th Street for lunch, before heading on a transatlantic plane flight. Half a pastrami sandwich for lunch, then the other half, washed down with a bottle of milk, once I was on board the plane, meant that I'd fall right asleep and not wake up until I was in Europe. Best sleep aid ever!

Chris, that is some gorgeous salami! You know, I'm always amazed when I see home cooks, or charcutiers, turning out such professional-looking products. It probably shouldn't amaze me the way it does, but there you go. Oh, and I'd also be curious to know about what sort of wine fridge to get for making charcuterie. Maybe it deserves its own thread, if there isn't one already.

Right! I ordered from Plan Eat Thai tonight. The green curry is indeed terrific. Spicy, but well-balanced flavors, great vegetables. I'd get it again in a heartbeat. The tom yum soup is not bad at all. Spring rolls were only so-so (though they improved after I stuck them in the toaster oven to crisp up a bit); according to the menu there are also "Thai" spring rolls (for $2 more) which I'll order next time. I was disappointed by the pad thai, which was a little overcooked and too sweet for my taste: I prefer the version over at the eponymous restaurant on 2nd Street. So there's a range from so-so to first-rate. But the best part: it's DIRT cheap! $20 for two entrees, soup and spring rolls. Portions aren't huge, but I'd rather have less food for less money. Now that I have a menu, I'll be ordering from them again, and looking deeper into the menu.

Good Thai recommendations are always welcome! I may just give them a call later this week. I can't find a menu online- any other recommendations on what to order?

Here's my $.50 sociological explanation for Hazan's observations: I suspect the shift in terminology from "cook" to "chef" has a lot to do with the shift in how Americans eat. People eat out much more than they used to. Americans' palates have become more sophisticated, in large part because of the increased prominence of food in media: think of Top Chef or any of the dozens of other prime-time cooking shows, or movies like Ratatouille (which wouldn't have been made a decade ago), or books like Michael Pollan and Bill Buford which get national attention, or food-related websites. Food, and sophisticated discussions of complex food, is everywhere. At the same time, cooking itself has increasingly become a hobby for a few. The net effect is a professionalization of cookery: people associate good food with something cooked in a restaurant, by a chef, not a cook, whether that's the guy at the hot bistro downtown, or the celebrity chefs we all know and love, or Iron Chef Italian or whoever. So they that's the term they use. Finally, while I agree that the loss of distinction between the two words is a shame-- it makes the language less precise-- I don't think there's any going back. Chefs will have to find another way of distinguishing themselves from mere cooks.

From daniellespencer.com, here are the winners of the 2008 Turkey Jell-O Mold competition. Some real creativity on display, from the ones you might actually eat (cornbread & chicken ragout turkey) to the clever (the meta-turkey), to the mildly disturbing (chewing gum turkey). Enjoy!

In their usual inimitable style, PETA has created a parody of Cooking Mama. It's filled with all kinds of interesting information about how to cook a turkey. For example, I did not know that eggs bleed. (But in PETA's universe, everything bleeds! Hooray!)

Okay, I stopped by one Asian supermarket*: chicken feet were $1.69/lb. Old chickens, for comparison, were $.89/lb. They have a butcher shop there, but I can't tell if either was previously frozen. * Bob: it was 1st Oriental Supermarket, at 5th and Washington.

No, I'm afraid I didn't do my due diligence and check out the Asian supermarkets. It makes sense, of course, that feed would be cheaper there (like everything else): more interesting would be to know how expensive they are relative to other cheap chicken parts (like necks).

So I made a batch of chicken stock not too long ago, and decided to include some chicken feet for extra richness and gelatin. I noticed, though, that while chicken backs, necks and assorted leftover bits are dirt cheap ($.79-$.99/lb), feet are over three times as expensive ($1.79-$1.99/lb). Obviously there's a supply and demand issue here. Only two feet on a bird, and while I don't think there are that many stock and stew makers, there is a good-sized Chinese population in Philadelphia who want feet for dim sum, etc. So feet are at something of a premium. (And $1.99 is still cheaper than thighs or breasts or the other, "standard" chicken parts.) But I'm curious about how much demand varies from place to place, and whether prices vary to match. Are chicken feet cheaper in places without a Chinatown? Or is the chicken economy integrated enough that feet are shipped to places with more demand, evening out prices? How much do chicken feet cost in your neck of the woods?

Lamb bacon sounds amazing. I'm drooling at the thought of it. Anyway, yesterday I made pate de campagne from R&P's recipe. It's meant to be served at Thanksgiving, but I tried a little bit this morning and am very pleased. I may just have to have a pate sandwich for lunch today. I do have two minor complaints: first, R&P are a little misleading about the size and shape of cooking vessels, saying that it doesn't really matter. I used a wide-ish loaf pan, which meant that the outside of the pate was done a good while before the inside was. Not a huge problem-- pate seems pretty forgiving-- but in the future I'll make a point of using a long, narrow pan. Also, the volume/weight listings in the recipe are way out of whack. For example, the recipe calls for minced garlic: 1 1/2 tablespoons or 24 grams. I weighed everything out: 24 grams of minced garlic was at least three tablespoons. The same goes for other ingredients (onion and parsley in particular). Again, it's not a huge problem (especially if you enjoy a garlicky pate, as I do), but in a book that elsewhere is very careful about measurements, it strikes me as an odd slip-up.

Today's City Paper has an interesting review of Wokano, a Chinese restaurant at 11th and Washington. (If it's the space I'm thinking of, it used to be an okay Mexican restaurant-- Rio Grande? Rio Bravo?-- and then a Chinese seafood restaurant which I never tried.) Anyway, it sounds like a good spot for Chinese eats without compromise: Well, that piques my interest! (Also, tongues have bones? Who knew? But there you go.) Anybody been to Wakano?

I'd been driving by Kaffa Crossing for ages without knowing it was even there- it's a narrow storefront on a not-especially-inviting block of Chestnut on the border of University City, and is easy to miss. But lately it's been getting some favorable press (including two bells from LaBan), and tonight I stopped by. It's a coffee house, mostly: when I was there, the tables were occupied by earnest-looking West Philadelphia types tapping away on their laptops. They've been around for a few years, but have recently (or relatively recently) started serving very good Ethiopian food as well: what more could you ask for? I picked up some food (and a pound of coffee) to go, starting kik aletcha (yellow split peas). One of my favorite Ethiopian dishes, this was the only (mild) disappointment: when I've had it before, it has been chunky, with discrete peas. This is pureed, and while it's tasty, mild pureed peas are a little too... baby food-esque for me to eat too much at once. Fortunately, the other dishes were excellent: a rich okra stew and buttery beef tibs. This is the best Ethiopian food I've had in Philadelphia, and I'm looking forward to going back and trying more dishes. That's a proposition made even more tasty by the prices: three entrees set me back only $25. Can't beat that. Kaffa Crossing is at 4423 Chestnut. They also have a website.