mrbigjas

that's a royal trumpet, or king oyster mushroom. they are pretty bland, but i love them. if you slice them and cook them in a really hot pan in clarified butter, they kinda squeak as they cook and have a meaty texture that's just great. here's a link from hormel's food glossary they do look like porcini, kind of, but they're something else entirely.

over on phillyblog someone mentioned a $20 or $25 tasting menu thing they're doing.

their ropa vieja is the standard by which all other local versions should be judged IMO.

winesaps and macouns pretty much do the trick for me as well. north star orchard grows a variety called 'liberty' which is a macoun cross and tastes very similar. fantastic.

well, i waited another day actually, because just... well, i didn't have time, and logically i couldn't see how it would hurt. and indeed it was fine. but it wasn't a dessert, it was a little ol' pie stuffed with beet greens and pine nuts and currants and this great local chevre, so i'll post the pic here, just to show everyone that this topic is indeed extraordinarily helpful:

i was there for brunch in mid july, which was what, a month and a half after dude retired? and at that point it had exactly the same strengths and weaknesses it had always had. the raw bar was abundant and high quality. the appetizers and salads and whatnot had several very high points and some 'eh, why bother' moments--dessert bar was the same. the hot buffet in the kitchen had the same issues--things under heat lamps had been overcooked but the basic principles were the same classic stuff. i haven't been back for dinner since though. maybe we should...

i haven't been to pastoral in probably a year. it was fine the last time i went there, but as you mention, empty...

ok i've got another one (chrisamirault, have i thanked you lately for starting this thread? if not, thanks!): what happens if you let a pie dough rest too long? just a regular all-butter dough, i mean. all the recipes say, let it sit for at least an hour in the fridge, or up to a day. what happens if you let it go two days? i made a small batch of dough yesterday and didn't get a chance to roll it out today--is it really going to be ruined tomorrow? i can't imagine why it would, but as always i await the collective wisdom of the eG pastry & baking crew, and thank you in advance.

yeah, what she said!

carp stuffed with garlicky lard. fantastic. ← Do I sense sarcasm?? Don't mock the lard! Lard is good. Bacon tastes good....pork chops taste good.... (name that film) ← hells no! you should know me better than that by now...

click here and you'll see they're selling it on line. here's the cheese in context of other dutch cheeses they sell. i mean, i'm no gouda expert, but dibruno's is a reputable store so i have no doubt that what they're selling is what they say it is. the phone number is there on the page i linked--why not give them a call and ask if it bothers you?

we were in the neighborhood today and it was cold out, so we stopped in for lunch again at giwa. things to report: 1. no kimbap on saturdays. 2. mool mandu are delicious--the mixed pork and vegetable are packed with spinach as well as pork. spinach! i don't think i've had that in a dumpling before. 3. kimchi chigae tastes great, although it's kind of a small bowl and not packed with pork and tofu as it could be for like eight bucks. served in a stone bowl so it comes to your table boiling, it's a perfect sinus-clearing bowl of soup for a cold and blustery day like today. what giwa may lack in some of the quality aspects (the aformentioned issues with pajun and dolsot) it more than makes up for in being a nice place to have lunch, and being run by really nice people--and by being right on my saturday shopping route...

like shakshuka? i'm certainly with ya on this one.

yeah, holly and i have lamented this very fact many a time on here.

carp stuffed with garlicky lard. fantastic.

miran's bibimbap has been really good every time i've had it.

i've had two meals at vetri. the first was when i was a relative newbie to fine dining, probably back in 1997 or so, and the couple hundred it set us back kind of overshadows a lot of my memories of the meal itself. the last time was just a couple of years ago, and i had the roast goat, which remains to this day one of the more memorable pieces of meat i've ever had. fantastic.

so as i mentioned that i might do, i had some leftover escarole/ricotta/olive/caper/currant/pinenet filling from the other day, and truth be told the flavors had melded, so even though the ricotta was a couple days old, the filling was actually a little tastier than it was on sunday. so decided to fry up some calzones tonight. i had used mario's recipe for the filling, but i hadn't used his dough recipe at the time, sticking with a more standard pizza dough recipe. but i thought it might be convenient to use for a weeknight dinner, because it had a little wine in it and some honey, so it got the yeast going real fast and only needed to rise 45 minutes--i could get home, make the dough, and have a little while to hang out before making/frying the calzones, assuming i had the filling made. which i did, as i mentioned, and indeed that turned out to be the case. plenty of time to work things out. now, i don't know if my oil was a little old (it was) or if it was the sugar in the dough, but these things darkened up real quick. of course, you know a fried calzone is done when the cheese melts and leaks out the cracks where you didn't seal it QUITE enough, and causes massive splattering in the oil. anyway, delicious. and on the menu again sometime soon...

SPTG, i don't think you would have wanted to see the pics of this custard. while it tasted good, i just can't think of a way to make it look very good. all brownish yellow and custardy, with a browner crust on top...

definitely. it's just that i had someone over for the football and baseball games, and it was just too much effort. plus the whole 'deep frying in extra virgin' thing is a little pricey for me. well, it was until i found a source of oil that is about $8/L. figure a liter for frying, use that three or four times, it only adds a couple bucks to the cost of the meal. WORTH IT.

i know i'm a day late, but i made the escarole/ricotta calzones today. they were good. but kevin, i'm sure you'll be disappointed to hear that i baked them. i have some leftover filling though, so i'll probably make up somea that fancy dough per the recipe and deep fry them on tuesday.

we stopped by giwa for lunch yesterday, and man oh man, if i worked downtown i would be there all the time. we had the dolsot bibimbap and a haemul pajun, which were good if a little sanitized. the dolsot bibimbap tasted great, but where was the raw egg? i'm going to ask for it next time; i didn't realize i would have to. when i say sanitized that's what i mean--also i recognized every vegetable in there; when i go to the kind of restaurants where they don't speak english there are always piles of unknown (to me) shredded vegetables on there. mountain this, root of that, things that you have to call by their latin name because there aren't english words for them.... but anyway it was good! the haemul pajun was also solid, gummy from the rice flour, crisp around the edges from being pressed in the pan, with some squid and some krab and whatnot in it. (but as always i'd like to state for the record that i think every korean restaurant in town needs to go up to pojangmacha in upper darby and get a taste of the ultimate version of haemul pajun. if you do you'll always be disappointed with any normal version.) anyway, good korean food, quick, not expensive, open for lunch--i'm gonna have to get a job downtown, i think.

don't worry about it, matt. we all have those moments. welcome to the forums. anyway, ok folks, i haven't seen this one on the thread, and i'm gonna spare you all the ignominy of googling 'gooey buns' -- seriously, don't do it. it's a bad idea. this is the recipe. i haven't had these in probably 20 years, but i'm about to hook that shit up this week, i'm thinking. seriously, grinding up bologna and cheese.... oh man..... ok this is... not good. i gotta nip this in the bud.

i always thought that if you heat it up to 160F, it'll kill the bacteria that cause botulism, and if you remove the garlic it shouldn't be a problem. botulism happens when the bacteria do their thing in an anaerobic environment and produce the toxin, which isn't destroyed by heat. so basically putting room temp garlic into oil and letting it sit is bad. if you're putting the garlic in, heating it up to the point where they're killed, and removing the garlic, i wouldn't think there would be an issue. hmm... this site says that the toxin IS destroyed by high heat. how about that. and did you know the name of the bacteria comes from latin botulus, meaning sausage? anyway, there are tons of botulism threads around here. back on topic: my rigatoni 'ncasciata turned out OK the other night. i had some issues--i think my proportions of eggplant to pasta were off, and i didn't have enough cheese in it i think. i mean it tasted fine but... actually, i am gradually coming to suspect that i don't like baked pasta dishes all that much, finding them fundamentally unsatisfying as a main course. but that's another story.

i don't think that's the case--we've brought as much pressure as we could. i think it's more likely that we, the wine-loving citizens, make up too small a percentage of the state's populace to make a difference in a 73 year-old, unionized, highly political, and extraordinarily profitable entrenched bureaucracy. i mean for each of the six of us talking on this thread on egullet, there are 100,000 people who just don't care.