mrbigjas
-
Posts
3,573 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Store
Help Articles
Posts posted by mrbigjas
-
-
I have a bottle of tiparos too but it's three years old. According to the table of condiments it only lasts five months.
Is this true? I've tasted a few bottles with a salt cake too. Are they over a year old? I think it tastes fine and does to the dish what I want it to do, but I wonder.
I read an article in the Economist about Vietnamese food and international conglomerates, in which... hang on I'll find it...
from the article:
...one impassioned Vietnamese argues, the comparison is inadequate, since fish sauce is a more sophisticated product than wine: only a tiny number of wines survive longer than 50 years, whereas fish sauce continues to grow in flavour and complexity indefinitely. The wood of the barrels in which it ferments, the quality of the anchovies and salt from which it is made, the weather and temperature during the fermentation process—all these factors, he explains with a faraway look in his eyes, affect the flavour of the finished product. -
On the goat topic, but not of direct relevance to roasting (and too late for icicle's party anyway, there was a mouth-watering article about meat eating in Monterrey, Mexico in Saveur #76 (Jan 2004, pp 38-51). This article featured some gorgeous photos of roasted and roasting goat, but no roasting how-to. There was one kid stew recipe that looked tasty, as well as some good information about suppliers, etc.
So, how did it turn out??
Wish I'd gotten that Saveur. The first time I had goat was about 10 years ago in Monterrey, and I've never forgotten it.
-
Here's the deal: Sue's on 18th & Sansom is on my way home. I've been going there for years, sometimes four or five times a week for this and that. Their produce is good: Since they moved across the street, they've expanded their selection to include a lot more local and organic stuff (including good tofu, milk, eggs, Peaquea Valley yogurt and more recently the jersey gold butter, and you know how I feel about that stuff). The owners are nice, and really know their stuff.
It's great to know that on my way home from work, I can stop in and, for instance buy herbs without having to go to the incredibly overpriced whitebread Rittenhouse Market. Or that on my way in to work if I don't have a lunch I can get a packed clamshell of washed spring mix, baby spinach, or baby arugula for $1, with a small loaf of Sarcones for another $1 or so. Or that sometimes they'll have those red bananas. Or that despite being a block off Rittenhouse Square, the place just isn't very expensive. Sure, they don't have the variety that Iovine's does, and they're nothing like Italian Market cheap. But the store is just right for what it is, and I love it. Props to Sue's for rewling the Rittenhouse Square produce scene. Please never close.
That is all.
-
If I am incorrect I hope Greg or Tim will point that out, but my plan is to try and get there for the first time (certainly not my virgin voyage to Rx) with Chef Tim at the stove before they go off on their vacations the 3rd week of August.
What she said.
-
You think so? I don't feel unsafe eating medium-rare pork, but I don't like the texture that much. I like it just pink in the middle, no more.
-
I also find this Jersey/Guernsey thing interesting. If I'm not mistaken, there's a state close to New York City that ought to have quite a few "Jersey" cows. Has a bottom-line-driven, maximum production strategy driven most such cows out of the Garden State?
Pequea Valley Farm, which is somewhere in Lancaster county here in PA, raises Jerseys. They are grass fed and out in the pasture now, and while I haven't seen the milk from them, I've been buying their Jersey Gold Butter this summer--it's the yellowest butter I've ever seen, and probably the sweetest. I want to eat it on everything.
-
Is this the best sushi in town?
Well, it isn't in town.
Is it the best sushi in the area?
Yeah.
Is Matt Ito a total kickass chef, the kind of guy who it's an unmitigated pleasure to sit at his bar for two hours and just let him feed you anything he wants, while talking with him about food, about life in Japan vs. life in the US, about sake, about anything, and in the meantime the conversation just enhances the fact that you're having the best sushi around?
aw yeah.
And finally, is it a pleasure to do these kinda things with our own Katie? Definitely.
Tonight's meal, 11 courses, follows. Katie will comment, I'm sure, but to my experience, the whole thing was about salt manipulation--four to five different kinds of salt were used, along with soy, and the general saltiness of fish combined with the sweetness of other ingredients were a major theme. Take a look.
1. Crab and Asparagus soup. A large lump of crabmeat in a small espresso cup of perfectly smooth asparagus puree, swirled with some kind of herbed oil that we couldn't identify, and that Matt didn't describe to us. superb.
2. A one-bite piece of sushi consisting of a small stack of rice, topped with slices of Japanese white shrimp, which were topped with Iranian osetra caviar, pink Hawaiian sea salt, and touched with truffle oil. This not-so-random combination of ingredients from all over the world was an insane touch of genius.
3. Three slices of walu (a.k.a. oilfish, apparently a deep-sea Hawaiian fish), with pieces of supremed ruby grapefruit, in a sauce of passionfruit juice, and more of the aforementioned pink sea salt. Bits of chives in there too. Walu is a meaty fish that can stand up to the grapefruit (and using ruby didn't hurt either, since it's so much less acidic and strongly flavored), and the sweetness of the passionfruit brought the two together. Yes, I sound like an iron chef reviewer. sorry.
4. Pacific Orchard Oyters. A half dozen of these oysters which a little web research has shown me are from British Columbia. Matt said they were from a similar area to where they get Kumamotos, or something to that effect. People, please believe that I am not exaggerating--in fact, am probably understating--when I say that these were simply the most stunningly delicious oysters I've ever had. they were fat, creamy; they had none of the random slimy layers that other oysters do; they were briny, nonmetallic; and he served them with a miso mignonette that complemented them perfectly.
(at this point we switched from sparkling riesling to sake, and they brought us a small dish of salt to take pinches of after drinking the sake, to emphasize and finish the sweetness of the drink. Katie will elaborate)
5. Yellowfin tuna nigiri. Great fish.
6. Sea bream nigiri, with sour plum (ume) paste. Again, just great fish.
7. Yellowtail nigiri. see 5 and 6.
8. Salmon and Amberjack nigiri. See above. I missed parr of the conversation at this point but I could have sworn Matt said that he cured the salmon and froze it overnight in order to give it a flavor that I've never had in salmon sushi before. Great stuff.
I don't want to deemphasize these four courses just because they're standard sushi restaurant fare. They were amazingly good pieces of fish, expertly put together; didn't even need the fresh ground wasabi that was offered (although we had plenty of it anyway. the difference between that and the usual paste you get is always remarkable).
9. Scallop nigiri two ways: the first was topped with spiced codfish roe, and the second was with smoked salt. Yes, smoked salt. This was an example of how the delicate flavors of sushi can be radically altered by their toppings--the same fish, the same rice, were strikingly different, while only the topping changed. The weird thing was I had seen smoked salt just yesterday for the first time somewhere, and here I was having it. It tastes like a campfire.... it's.... kind of indescribable.
10. Finishing up the savory courses with a cooked dish: a half a roast squab, scented with curry and served alongside a seared slice of foie gras, a spoonful of mashed potato, a slice of cucumber, and a stalk of yu choy, I think (some kind of asian green, anyway--could have been chinese broccoli or something). All sitting in a truffle butter sauce. Amazingly good after all that sushi.
11. Dessert was a very tasty key lime pie topped with whipped cream... and a little salmon roe. At this point we were pretty sure Matt was messing with us, since the waitress said, "whoa, you actuall like that?" And yet in some weird way it worked. And if he was messing with us, I'll put up with it for the courses that came before it.
Conclusion: for some reason, up in the land of no-tell motels on 130 in Cinnaminson, a master at his craft has been running a sushi restaurant for 25 years (seriously: his 25-year celebration is in October sometime). By going in there and allowing him to serve you whatever he's in the mood for, you'll get a meal that will kick your ass from beginning to end. And the price? Let's just say I'm not entirely sure how he's charging that little for the meal we had--the oysters alone could easily run a third of the price of the entire meal at another place.
Good god everything was excellent. Thanks to Katie for organizing it.
That is all.
-
FF, maybe Andrew was talking about the dish they refer to as molcajetes at Tequila's. It's pork, chicken or beef (pork is by far the best) in a thick-ish spicy sauce, and they serve it in a molcajete which has been heated in an oven, so as you eat it continues to boil away. By the time you're done, the sauce is nearly boiled dry and concentrated... damn it's good.
Anyway, I don't know if Moroleone serves that.
Anyone know the name of the taqueria... maybe it's mixteca... I don't know. Anyway, you're driving down Rt 1, and you get off at Avondale, I think. And then you make a left, and then... ah nevermind. It's connected to a grocery. I had good and very greasy barbacoa there.
-
33 is the standard beer in Vietnamese restaurants in the U.S., in the same way that Singha is the standard beer in Thai restaurants and Tsingtao is the standard in Chinese places.
-
the bad mexican food was at guapo's in tenleytown, my friend dragged me in there
You know, I actually really like Guapo's for what it is (does that make me a bad person?). My biggest problem with them is that I always leave smelling like a fajita.
Guapo's is probably the restaurant I've eaten in most in DC, for various reasons (e.g. grandmothers with false teeth who only eat crab imperial or cheese enchiladas; things like that).
I agree that it's totally fine for what it is. I also couldn't agree more about smelling like a piece of mesquite-grilled beef when you leave there. One last thing: I always get ridiculous heartburn in the middle of the night after eating there. I don't know what it is that causes that, but it's invariable.
-
It's not that hard; just call first.
-
Remember they used to make saltines so that they were four square, perforated, and you had to break them apart? When did they make the switch to individual crackers in sleeves? They didn't used to call them sleeves when there were like 10 four-up saltines in a stack.
That's what I wonder.
fifi, we always had saltines with chili, but my family is a buncha yankees from upstate Pennsylvania, so I assumed that we were in the wrong.
I just remembered something else about saltines: in the spring, when the chives first came up, my mom would cut up a bunch of chives and whip them with cream cheese, and we'd eat it on saltines. I still associate that taste with spring--it has to be fresh chives, though, not that horrible cream cheese with chives that they sell in the supermarket, where they're all these slimy dark olive green bits in the cheese.
-
Saltines are a wonderful thing. We ate so many of them growing up--I remember potato soup, loaded up with cheese and saltines; clam chowder loaded up with saltines to the point where you could eat it with a fork...
and slbunge, the american cheese jawn? aaaaawwww yeah. all the time.
My only interesting tidbit about saltines is that I've eaten them my whole life and didn't realize until very recently that they're almost nutritionally void.
-
But since Corian is hell on knives, there's no contest when it comes to cutting boards. All the minutia of non-porous vs. inherent bacteria fighting properties is moot, really.
Let's not talk about your heretical electrical knife sharpening machine then, there, Speck.
hahahaha uh oh.
-
I'm sorry to hear that about Hot Dog Johnny's. I haven't been there in probably nearly 20 years, since I was in late junior high or early high school, and we used to drive up from Levittown to hike the gap. We would always stop at Hot Dog Johnny's.
Looking back on it, maybe it's significant that I remember the root beer on tap and the town's name more than the hot dogs.
-
Two words: Mini Thins
-
I was wondering about that as well. That's nasty.
-
So far I have heard the most positive reviews about Lacroix but also a consistent statement that portions are small. But then again, we're not looking to leave feeling like we're going to explode (I hate that).
I didn't find the portions that small. I was stuffed after the three-course meal. But I admittedly am not a real big eater.
-
Can you nip them in the bud, so to speak, by picking flowers as they appear?
Zucchini/courgette fritters were always a favorite in our family.
What do you mean by "boats?" You mean stuffed? Because stuffed with rice or another grain, well seasoned, maybe with a little hard cheese browned on top, they're a meal in themselves.
-
Kewl. Well, she went and bought SOMETHING today, but not from Claudio's, since the mozz shop isn't open on sundays. Whatever she got is what I'm using.
-
There is an overly crowded (but loaded with cool stuff) store called Kitchen Kapers there, however. I didn't really plan to buy anything, but I left with a new (bigger) Moka pot. So that makes two Moka pots in one week.
NulloModo, I don't know if you care about this sort of thing, but if it makes you feel better about, uh, regional stuff, Kitchen Kapers is based out of Cherry Hill, right outside of Philadelphia. So you're kinda sorta buying local if you buy stuff through there.
Or not.
As you discovered, it ain't a cheap store. However, it does have a lot of cool stuff.
You might want to talk to them about getting your knives sharpened. You might also check there for sharpening stones if you want to do it yourself. I know the one here in downtown Philadelphia has both the stones available and a sharpening service. Again, it's not cheap--something like $1 an inch or something, and a week turnaround. Or maybe that's Foster's. I can't remember.
-
I just made pizza dough. I think I'll try to get the mrs to head down and buy some of that tomorrow for pizzas.
-
Today's selections: strawberry with pernod, and lancaster county sugar plum. If you haven't had these plums, go to any of the lancaster county farmers--they're an early variety that has been around for a couple weeks now, although they're starting to be taken over by the yellow plums now. These are both sorbettos (sorbetti?). Go get them now. now!
-
I've been eating some combination of these for lunch most every day and find that in situ assembly is obviously best. I've taken a paring knife but i feel a bit silly bringing that and anything i've ever taken camping has been cheap shite that rusts away in a season so i'm ready to take the plunge and purchase something worthwhile and of course i turn here for advice. Ideally it would not exceed 4", fold shut and lock open. Also, some of these online seem rather pricey, how much ought something like this reasonably cost (there is no such thing as reasonable cost when dealing with cooking knives)
thanks
I've been carrying a knife very similar to this since I was about 10 (similar because I don't see the exact model I have blade-wise, but the size is the same and the main two blades are also the same). Very convenient for everything, not just food.
Looking for post-Cirque matinee dinner ideas
in Pennsylvania: Dining
Posted
Yeah, Ralph's or Villa di Roma was the first thing that came to my mind too. But that precludes the "interesting" part that sagestrat asked about.
So now I'm thinking Cucina Forte or Vesuvio might fit the bill (both on S. 8th St, near Fitzwater or Catharine). Cucina Forte is a little more family-esque than Vesuvio in my mind. They definitely have things like a giant veal chop or something for the atkins dieter, and pasta for the kid. Maria's dream soup is interesting and freakin delicious. The only problem is that it's BYOB, and I don't know how you feel about leaving your wine in the car on a hot friday afternoon (since I don't think cirque's gonna let you take it in with you). Of course, you could stop at a liquor store and pick something up on your way there.