mrbigjas

i ordered mine at the farmstand. You can call them I think -- google fair food farmstand. i would give you a link or something, but my internet connection is incredibly lame at the moment.

fair foods has them. i got one last year or the year before. it rocked. i got another one this year.

i would just like to say that i'm really enjoying these varying experiences and recipes--especially your recent problems, markemorse. it reassures me that i'm not crazy.

gamjatang = pork neck bone and potato stew sundae = blood sausage jokbal = pig foot. watch for an intro.

i have tess mallos' the complete middle east cookbook. it's big and heavy, but it rocks. i also have food for the vegetarian: traditional lebanese recipes and the few things i've made out of that have been good as well, although it does have the single least appetizing picture i've ever seen in a cookbook.

if only they'll add gamjatang, sundae and jokbal, it'll be perfect!

la creole's been that way for at least the 6-7 years since i've known it's existed. in fact, i hadn't been in a couple years and was recently wondering if it was still there, but hadn't gotten down there to check. thanks for the report.

the laban review is only about a month and a half old -- still recent enough that they could be laban followers, but the ones who aren't so adamant about getting there the next week. in the past when i used to actually be able to go out relatively often, you could see the laban influence for about two months after a review.

i bought one of these last week. a couple of things: 1. the crust isn't a pie crust, it's an all-butter puff pastry top. so really andrew's critique isn't a issue of quality, it's a difference of opinion on pot pie technique. i make a better pie crust than that too, since it's not a pie crust the way i think of it. incidentally i'm with andrew on this one. being of fine upstate PA stock, i like dough on the top and bottom of my pie, not just on top. 2. i like the filling. (edited: clarity)

rustica will deliver up there. i work in that neighborhood and we order from rustica for lunch relatively often.

yeah, slice rocks the house. i didn't know they delivered though. i might have to look into that tonight.

i haven't been there yet, but i have stopped in at the beauty shop cafe at 20th & fitzwater a few times now, and they get their coffee from there. they pull a short, intense espresso.

it was a good rant, don't worry! as andrew mentioned, try rustica. one thing it's never been in the dozens of times we've gotten it is undercooked -- it tends toward the other end of the spectrum in fact. when we used to order from this place in our neighborhood (randazzo's), we used to ask for the pizza well done to make sure they left it in long enough. that might help with some of the crappier places. it won't salvage generic craptacular greek pizza, though. nothing will.

see, this is exactly the type of recipe that has turned into glue for me for years. if you add 2 cups of water to 1 cup of bulgur, bring to a simmer and cook it over very low heat for 12-15 minutes, there will be plenty of water left. it will still be bubbling up through the bulgur. if you then continue to simmer it until the water is gone, you will have mush. i have tried it, numerous times. it's what ended up in the trash last night and prompted this thread. i mean, i don't mean to sound harsh to you, katie. it's not directed to you--it's just that that's the recipe that's never worked for me, whether for rice or bulgur. edited to add: adam, that's the line of thinking i think i'm heading for here. when i make tabouleh, i soak bulgur in water for 10 minutes or so and drain it. no cooking. granted that's fine bulgur and not coarse, but still, coarse isn't that different.

thanks all, this is all very interesting. i'll attempt again, till i get this working. of course i'm picturing my mother in law's oldschool 1950s style 'pilaf' which involves boullion cubes and cooks in the oven. pontormo, your note about not soaking the chana dal makes me wonder even more about this whole thing. this may be a larger issue than bulgur. i mean, people always recommend soaking beans overnight, and then cooking them for 1 1/2 to 2 hours. i put beans in the pan dry, cook them for that long, and they're done. what's up with the soaking? recipes involving lentils often call for cooking them for 45 minutes or so, or even soaking them ahead of time. lentils cook to mush in 45 minutes, unless they're lentils du puy, in which case they're still pretty well cooked in that amount of time. when i first started buying and cooking farro, recipes recommend soaking and then cooking for 45 minutes or an hour. again, the farro i buy cooks in less than that amount of time dry. is everything different now than it was when, like, every recipe was written? i've realized that this is probably a different thread. or not, whichever.

over the last couple years i have tried to make pilaf lots of times, and it always always always turns into a gummy mass. i've read and followed tons of recipes, and it's always the same. for instance, tonight i made the recipe out of 'the complete middle east cookbook,' by tess mallos, which i'll paraphrase: an onion. 1/4 c. of fat 3 1/4 c. of stock 2 c. of coarse bulgur sautee the onion, add the stock, boil, add the bulgur, boil, cover over low heat for 20 minutes, put a towel under the lid and leave off the heat for 15 more minutes. this recipe is very similar to every other i've seen and used, and they're pretty consistent with the 1.5 or 2 to 1 ratio of stock or water to coarse bulgur. and it, like all the others, is a gummy pile of gumminess, and i just threw it away in a fit of rage. here's something i'm thinking about: i make a lot of rice. nearly every rice recipe calls for a 2:1 ratio of water to rice. i have probably six kinds of rice in my cupboard and there isn't one of them that will absorb that much water without turning into a thick rice pudding. when you make risotto or paella, you use that much water, but you cook it uncovered and a lot of it evaporates. when i make regular asian-style rice, i use probably 1 1/4 c. of water to 1 c. of rice. i have making rice down to just the way i want it, by realizing that almost every recipe out there is just plain wrong. so is the bulgur i buy different than it should be? it's a lebanese grocer, it's not like i'm not going to the source here. or are my suspicions correct that bulgur recipes are just as outdated or untested--or SOMETHING, but either way wrong--as rice recipes are? what's the real deal? how do i do this so it doesn't suck? and in a larger sense, considering that bulgur and rice are staples for such a huge number of people, why are all the recipes still wrong?

it's on spring garden, near the railroad bridge. next to the gun shop

not order too differently than the whole menu? what else IS there?

now you're talkin. it's 8:30, do i have time to order my crispy trotters with parsley salad for delivery at 11:45? and a glass of cheap rhone red.

thanks y'all! i'll check those places out. the ikea would be perfect but they're bigger than i want. maybe a case of grolsch is in order.

hey i got some liquor i gotta bottle up here. anyone know of a local source of 375 ml bottles? does like, home sweet homebrew carry them, or that other homebrewing shop down at front & snyder? i've found a bunch available on line, but shipping a case of bottles around the country costs half again as much as the bottles do.

here's a nice article on sam consylman in the bulletin yesterday.

i bought a quart of their raw milk last week. it tastes really... milky. i mean, it's noticeably strongly flavored. like milk, i mean. if i liked to drink milk, i would be slugging this stuff back, even though it's kind of pricey at about $3/qt. (edited to add: but i'm still buying it from now on. the boy seems to like it a lot.)

you put a bluefish in your suitcase for the ride from here to ithaca? that is some serious dedication.

last time i went i was kind of disappointed in the blandness also. the dosai were good texture-wise, like they were properly made, but ... i expect that cuisine to be hot, and it wasn't.