mrbigjas

i think you all are right that they're pumpkin greens, and i thank you for your help. looking forward to cooking them up soon.

i put up a picture of a vegetable i just picked up at the asian grocery here: http://img421.imageshack.us/img421/971/mysterygreen6bj.jpg http://img302.imageshack.us/img302/4496/mysterygreen20pl.jpg (sorry about my fingers in the picture holding the leaf open) would any of you mind looking at those pictures, and telling me what it is, and how i should cook it? for anyone who can't see it, it is greens, cut about a foot long. the stems are about 1/2 inch or 1 cm thick and hollow, and they are slightly ridged and a little furry, like a nettle or a tomato stem. not all of the stems have leaves on them, but the ones that do, the leaves are large, spade-shaped, and wrinkled/veined. there are some tendrils here and there that are spiral shaped, like pea shoots. they smell like.... well, green, for lack of a better word. unfortunately they didn't have either the english or the vietnamese name on the sign, only the chinese, and i didn't have a pen to write it down. thank you for any help you can give!

i'm just back from a trip over the bridge to wegmans again, mainly because i wanted a really nice steak and the terminal isn't open sundays. got a dry-aged ribeye for $22 a pound; we'll see how it compares to ochs. and a good chicken for cheap--they also had d'artagnan organic chickens for $2.99 a pound, rabbit for $7.59 a pound, and duck breasts for about $10 a pound, i think. priced similar to the new dibruno's meat store, about which i have many questions. but that's another post. but we had a nice lunch there and i'm here to say that the already impressive store has improved from my previous visit on opening day. for instance: remember how i said there weren't many peppers? there are now long hots, frying, poblano, and habanero peppers along with the jalapenos (still no serranos, though, which are my personal preference for most any situation). however, just a little ways away were 10-12 varietes of dried pepper, from arbol to costeno to tepin. near the peppers, fancy mushrooms, from bluefoots and chanterelles at $20-25 or so a pound, to morels at $30, to hen of the woods and shiitake at $10. jersey blueberries at 2 pts/$3 was a great deal. big packages of about a dozen or 15 baby artichokes for $3. but what really caught my eye this time was the international sections, in the indian section there were all kinds of dal, from whole or split mung beans to red lentils, several types of chickpeas, and so on. and bottles of mustard oil! which i've never seen in a grocery store here. and next to that, the irish section, and the british section, where you can pick up hp sauce, branston pickle, and the like (i'm having digestive biscuits even as we speak). near there, the asian section, where you can actually get neoguri and many types of udon in the store (although they didn't have red vinegar, which necessitated a trip to hung vuong this afternoon, and there is a very high ratio of la choy products to others). all this is besides the massive goya section i mentioned in my last post. anyway, pretty cool stuff.

yeah so it was undercooked gratin, let's go with that. so anyway, wine notes. i managed to scribble down most, i think. started with that zin that capaneus loves that i can never remember the name of. it's big, over 16% alcohol, but pretty nicely balanced. not to be consumed with (most) food, but a good drink on its own. also moet white star, brought by andrew, which continued into the amuse bouche. with the escargot: the aforementioned latour la grande roche, i didn't write down the year. with the foie gras: a michigan warner liebestrauben, and a 96 d. de ambinos coteaux du layon that i have had and brought to a couple of dinners, and this time was finally drunk--and i have to say a great match with this dish, despite capaneus's previous objections to sweet wine with foie gras. why do they bottle these in 750ml bottles? so tasty, and inexpensive, but way too sweet to drink a whole bottle of, except in a 10+ guest situation. ahem. anyway.... with the scallops, a finger lakes wine: 2004 hermann wiener dry reisling--possibly better than the good doktor that philadining has brought to other dinners. with the mullet/roget: 2002 latour mersault, a fantastic pairing with the pigs feet: 2003 three thieves tempranillo. this is a wine that comes in a jug that looks like a moonshine jug. it's a simple wine, and just right with something like a pig foot terrine--enough acidity to cut through the gelatinous nature of the foot, but not to overwhelm its essential blandness. then we moved on to a 2004 belle glos santa barbera county pinot noir, which was much more interesting, but i don't have notes about, well, in what way it was more interesting. i do remember enjoying it. with the fig tart: 2002 bolla valpolicella, which was just right for that and the rabbit, i think, although we might have opened something else at that point as well, because, well, then i stopped taking notes, because then we had the moscato, and then... perhaps something else. damn you birthday overindulgence!

1. poached char, white asparagus, endive in vinaigrette 2. escargots au pernod 3. foie gras terrine with spiced apples & almonds 4. marinated scallop, mint, pink salt 5. roasted red mullet with olive tapenade 6. pig foot terrine with shallots and microgreens 7. fig boucheron tart 8. called rabbit gratin, but seemed to me more like a rabbit shepherd's pie 9. the katie special: capogiro honeysuckle sorbet and moscato floats 10. boucheron, blue d'auvergne, and i forget the third cheese 11. crepes with fruit 12. i forget--chocolate pot du creme maybe? 13. ice cream with some kinda sauce that i forget and bergamot crunchies and fruit excellent stuff.

i just had a slice of pizzeria rustica's white pie "the mighty brussel" -- that would be roasted brussels sprouts and caramelized onions. and lemme tell ya it's delicious.

ok dredging up this thread from the past to do a self-correction--i had a slice of lazaro's last week and it was not at all as i remembered it; it was indeed big ol' floppy piece of pizza, and wasn't bad at all. the sauce was too sweet by half, and the cheese had that plasticky texture of cheap industrial mozzarella, but all in all it serves the purpose just fine, and i'll go back there when i need a slice.

for the weekly, i thought that moving beyond robin "here is a column listing the things i don't like" rinaldi was a step in the right direction--kirsten henri is miles better, even if she likes to take cheap potshots at us nerds here on the interwebs. rich, what does that mean, a hiring necessitated by the rules?

hm... i wonder what my 'one final note' was going to be....

For us geographically challenged, how long does one boil peanuts (and is there anything else involved in the process?) Thanks! ← wash them real good and put them in a pot of water with a buncha salt. bring to a boil. cook till they are soft, like a cooked bean--you have to keep taking them out and tasting; it'll take anywhere from an hour to three or so, depending on how green and soft the peanuts are to start. these were real raw, so they cooked in just over an hour. if they're cooked but not salty enough, turn off the heat and let them cool in the brine and they'll absorb more. that's pretty much all there is to it. eat with rc cola or sweet tea.

it always seemed to come out chewier when the corn was added too early. obviously some experimentation is in order. perhaps i can work on this early next week.

lori, i put a screenshot of tabbed browsing on my website here: http://mrbigjas.freeshell.org/pics/tabbedbrowsing.jpg see how near the top there's your foodblog, then gmail, then google? i'm browsing in three places at once, using tabs in one browser. mozilla firefox is the most common browser that uses this feature. ok sorry for the distraction, back to the blog.

question of the day: are we headed toward a year of stone fruit that can measure up to last year? if the pie cherries i bought at haltemann's this week are any indication, the answer is yes. (edited: haltemann's, not kauffman's. i got the sweet cherries at kauffman's)

thanks for the confirmation, christopher. i had a sense that the next level of herbal/bitterness from the real chartreuse would have kicked this over the edge into the sublime... i think that people who grew up when and how i did just aren't used to such an intense flavor profile. and it's just a matter of getting used to it on my part. as my wife said, 'it tastes good, but i feel like the drink should be mixed with a glass of seltzer.'

somewhere around here, there's a thread of mine about a batch of 10-year-old popcorn i made just a couple months ago. ah, here we go ok it was a year ago, as it turns out. so anyway, yeah, the shelf life is not infinite, but it's looooong if it's stored right. or even if it's stored KINDA right.

what he said, except for instead of peanut oil, i always use corn oil. i mean, it's corn, right? think of it like a very fast duck confit... ok that's a really bad analogy... anyway, popcorn was the first thing i could make growing up, since i was probably about 10. we always used this battered aluminum pot we had that was reserved for popcorn only. a tablespoon or two of oil, heated as chris mentions above. we used 1/4 c. popcorn. stir with wooden spoon. at the first pop or two, put the lid on and make with the shaking. the key thing is to get the oil frickin hot before you put in the kernels, and to use enough to coat them, but not enough to make the final product too oily. you want to get those kernels up to popping temp ASAP. also salt immediately after dumping it in the bowl--the hot oil on the popcorn makes the salt stick, and you need less. dumping butter in the hot pot will give you popcorn with black butter... if you like that it's cool, but i don't, therefore i say that IF you need butter, melt it separately, unless you're using a cheap battered aluminum pot like we did, which cools down very quickly.

tonight: a last word, as mentioned upthread and linked on drinkboy's site today. it's a damn good drink, but a little out of balance for my tastes. however, i suspect it's my fault, and i await your diagnosis. gin was broker's maraschino was luxardo (btw, have you ever looked at their website? they make TONS of fun stuff) lime was lime, of course potential problem: i only had yellow chartreuse, which i know is lower in both alcohol and flavor than green, but it was on super special for a little airplane bottle for only a couple bucks a little while ago the problem: i can taste the herbs, but the maraschino kind of overwhelms a lot of the rest of it. would this drink be a little more in balance if i'd used the green chartreuse? maraschino really kicks a lot of things' asses, flavor and aroma and texturally speaking. sometimes i find cocktails like this a little too too, if you know what i mean. like, i like it, but i feel like i might like it a little more if it was 1.5 oz gin, and 1/2 oz everything else. is this just a product of growing up in a non-cocktail culture, and i should just re-learn my tastes? thoughts?

could it be your walnuts? sometimes walnuts can be bitter unless blanched or toasted, and especially if they're starting to turn.

i love me some taco bell as much as the next guy, and i think the crunchwrap is great, and i'm no chile-head, so please don't get the wrong impression here when i say this: no it isn't. nothing at taco bell is 'very spicy,' by nearly any definition of the word 'spicy.' i would say the minimum level of spiciness that can be considered 'very' in the fast food world is defined by the wendy's spicy chicken sandwich, which neither taco bell's 'hot' or 'fire' sauces approach.

interesting, thanks. i think i'm going to try it again, but only using the oven, to see if i can get them more evenly roasted without all the burned spots i got the other day.

You might just have created a new entry in Chinese snack food! Thanks mrbigjas. I will try it with some fu yu next time. That's wonderful! I love this feedback loop! ← oh i get it now--i didn't know the name of the spicy kind. so 'yu' is the name for fermented tofu? and 'nam' is the red, and 'fu' is spicy? got it. can i ask one more question? why roast them in the pan at all? why not just toss them with the nam yu sauce and put them in the oven, stirring occasionally and adding more nam yu sauce once or twice during the roasting process? does the pan do anything?

OMG dutch quesadillas!

ok a quick followup: sweet vidalia was indeed very nice, keeping up with trends serving escolar (and poaching it! an underutilized technique) and tomato tartar and things of that nature. as always with shore dining, entrees cost about $5 more than they would in town (high instead of low 20s). but definitely a good place. props to our waiter who accidentally broke a wine glass on our table and soldiered on throughout the evening hardly missing a step, and to the chef who managed to cook my wife's scallops through without drying them out (only a few more weeks of this 'avoiding raw things' thing). greenhouse cafe in ship bottom is indeed a solid contender for the pizza itself. however, the senior-citizens-diner-ish aspect of things is kind of weirdly offputting--i'm down the shore, i want beach pizza, not people sitting around talking about the fiber content of the terra chips they serve with their sandwiches... but good. (as an aside, we did a seaside heights jaunt one day for a little boardwalk while it was drizzling, and i treated my wife to the beach pizza memories of my youth: sawmill pizzeria, the biggest pizza on the boardwalk. i hadn't been there in ... oh, 15 years? during which time i've eaten a lot of pizza, learned to cook myself, etc etc. and i was amazed to find that not only is it the biggest pizza on the seaside boardwalk, but it's DAMN GOOD PIE. seriously. i was quite thrilled about that. i didn't get to stop at the white castle in toms river, though, which was a shame since they've closed all of them in philadelphia) OK back to LBI and environs. dinner one night at mud city crabhouse, actually on the mainland side of the bay just off the causeway. even at this time of year there was about 45 minutes wait at 730 at night. crabs were totally solid; i don't know if they were local or flown in from the gulf, but i am a believer in the fact that blue crabs are blue crabs. one thing i thought was kinda funny was how everyone commented on our pile of picked crabs--we were the only people in a crowded place called a crab house who were actually picking crabs. i've never understood why the crab-picking culture couldn't get across the gulf between lewes and cape may--especially when you consider that these are the crabs people are crabbing for when they go crabbing. what do they do with them? it's a mystery. the brauhaus and la spiaggia didn't look real open quite yet. okie's is indeed a very nice butcher. bell & evans fryers for $1.79 a pound made a nice dinner one night spatchcocked and grilled, and excellent homemade hot dogs, both in beef and (my preference) the more traditional beef & pork. we did go to the chicken or the egg twice for breakfasts, as recommended by rooftop1000 up there. perfectly acceptable breakfast food; i can't speak to the rest of the menu. they'll fry you up some pork roll and some scrapple though. speaking of jersey/NY/philly things, we did spend one evening at the terrace tavern (as it turned out we were staying in beach haven terrace). the phillies were playing the yankees, and they had the game on the philadelphia comcast channel on one TV, and the same game on the yankees YES network on the other. and there were eagles and giants paraphernalia on the walls right next to each other. now that's just wrong. free wings on monday nights with quizzo, though! thanks again to all. one final note:

i made these on sunday and they are SO GOOD. i didn't have the red nam yu, but i do have the spicy white kind--i don't remember seeing the red kind at the store but i'm going to look for it next time. this stuff is like a miracle ingredient. it makes everything better. i can't get over how good it is.

there's a lot at 9th & vine--i know in the evenings it's like a $5 flat rate. i think during the day it's noticeably cheaper than most other lots in the area as well.