mrbigjas

this is killing me. "bartender? i'll have a hendricks martini, 4:1 with vya vermouth. do you have orange bitters for that? no, don't even look, i can tell you don't. here, i brought some, use mine. and are those... ? uh... you know what, i brought my own olives--you can just leave them in their plastic tub there..."

excellent job so far, lori--i'll be reading this one especially closely since i'll be in your neck of the woods next weekend for a wedding in abbottstown..

here's one: http://207.228.230.125/koreanfood/HTML/index.htm it's kind of focused on the NYC korean restaurant community, but it has pics and recipes and descriptions of common dishes as well.

do tell more! with pics!

iovine's also had green peanuts again this week. i may have been born a yankee, but i know what i like: boiled peanuts and sweet tea for an afternoon snack. aaaaw yeah.

goji. 20th & hamilton, behind the whole foods, across from the wawa. it's a little walk from the franklin/academy... actually it's a little upscale/pricey, so it might not be good with a buncha kids. although lunch is pretty casual...

intriguing! i'll have to check it out. wondra is indeed appropriately named.

i saw jacques pepin recently turn on the burner, put a pat of butter in the pan and say, 'by the time that butter melts, my crepe batter will be ready'; at which point he threw everything in a food processor, made batter and started cooking. for what it's worth. i mean, he IS jacques pepin after all.

i will never understand sweet potato fries. they never get crisp. i mean, they taste OK, but roasting slices of sweet potato would do just as well. and at places like good dog, it's like the gumminess of the sweet potato fries just screws with the potential goodness of the regular fries...

i've said it before and i'll say it again: when they're on, brasserie perrier has the fries you're looking for. i have, however, gotten them once or twice in the past when they were a little dark, or a little soft, or both. but when the kitchen is on, besides making one of the best burgers in town, the fries are perfect: about 1/4-1/3 of an inch, golden crisp outside, mealy inside, salted the right amount--fantastic. i've stated my disappointment with the famed monks/grace fries many a time, but if you go to the vendors that sell the same 'bintje' variety potatoes and cook them yourself, they do indeed make great fries. which makes the state of monks' fries all the more of a shame.

that's cool--just a month or so ago, i asked them about hanger steak, and he said that they don't carry it, because there's only one per cow and they usually get the side of the beef without it. and that the rest goes to restaurants. i may pick one up today for grilling down the shore tonight.

4-5 days sounds about right to me. one of the things i like about these cook-offs (and kevin72's italian threads) is how they jar me out of my routine. i make breakfast for the mrs most weekends, and she's been on a pancake/french toast kick recently. well, i mentioned this cookoff, and she said crepes sounded great. so this morning: crepes with banana walnut filling. this also gave me the first opportunity to try out the crepe pan i picked up on a whim at somewhere like ross dress for less or somewhere like that a couple months ago. it was under $10, and is a pretty nice heavy aluminum nonstick pan. i bought it because i was tired of making crepes in a skillet, with the sides getting in the way and screwing everything up. but for some reason i never used it till this morning. but that brings me to my point: i am gradually becoming convinced that proper browning of crepes and pancakes and french toast and other egg-batter things isn't related as much to the makeup of the pan (like it is with browning meats), as it is to having fat in the pan. (when i say 'proper browning' i mean getting that pattern of brown lines and spots on the first side of the pancake/crepe/whatever) as proof i offer this pic: (please try to ignore the third one back there, which she rolled up inside out) (and the fact that i should have put some powdered sugar or whipped cream or something on it) anyway, i don't have a ton of experience cooking sweets, but the filling was a real success. i just chopped up two bananas, put them in a pan with butter and a little sugar (and a pinch of salt), and grated a little nutmeg on them. partway through i added the walnuts. and that was it! the bananas melted into ... well, a great filling. i don't know why i've never done this before. anyway, good idea for this one chris. thanks.

to answer your second question: you can use a tortilla press for pretty much anything that needs to be pressed out that way. i saw martin yan use it to make dumpling wrappers one time. and your third: if you have a relatively heavy steel crepe pan, i don't know why you couldn't use it. it seems like the thing has to be capable of holding a decent amount of heat, though, so probably a thin aluminum nonstick crepe pan wouldn't work as well. a cast iron skillet, or a griddle if you have one, works just fine, though.

i have that one, and have made a few recipes out of it. my only problem with is is that it's about 14 inches tall, which makes it really unwieldy in the kitchen. actually i have one other small problem with it, which is that, in the openings to chapters, she talks about how the cuisine is changing and things are made differently now... and basically it's hard to tell what are 'traditional' recipes and what are her more modern kind of interpretations of things. for some reason i have a harder time with this cookbook than with some others. i mean, not that i'm interested in the authenticity debate. i just like to know what i'm cooking.

But I want to be open on Sunday because over 30% of my business comes from food. Looks like it's time for a Philadelphia lawyer. ← totally--i wonder how that's gonna play out.

once i met this guy, very strange but kinda fun, interesting weird musician type. he was telling me about how one time it was his birthday, so he made himself a chocolate cake. and then he wondered what it would be like if he added old bay seasoning to it, so he did. he said it was terrible, unsurprisingly enough.

sweet! for children, or just for those of us who are immature (and cheap). i'm there.

personally i'm just hoping that whatever happens with this, i won't be subject to the same annoying, shrill, tired arguments yet again about the subject. we've all heard them before, a thousand times, when NY banned, when CA banned (twice!), when NJ banned, when boston banned, when Ireland banned, when Italy banned... in fact, i promise that if the debate on whether or not this is a good thing starts yet again, i will argue against both sides vehemently. at the same time.

speakinawhich, someone over on chowhound reported that there's a permanent dollar dog stand, down in the phanatic fun zone or whatever. smaller dogs, but only $1, all the time! i'll be investigating soon and will report back.

yeah, i saw that in paris too, but have never tried it at home. gimme about five years of pancake and french toast making, scraping with a metal spatula to get this new lodge griddle smoothed out, and i'll give it a test.

i've made mu-shu pancakes a couple of times. it was surprisingly easy. but i don't know if i'd consider them crepes, really, since they weren't made with a liquid batter but rather with a dough. (the procedure is that you take two pieces of dough, oil them and then press them together and roll two at once, in order to be able to roll them thin enough. then you cook them on a hot pan and separate them) actually they're similar to tortillas or pitas or nan in that way--dough cooked on a hot surface. i always think of crepe-esque things as being made from a batter that you pour on a griddle. so yeah, banh xeo, dosai, crepes, and what we always called 'swedish pancakes' growing up (which were, now that i look back on it, just crepes) all count... of course that's just my definition of things. i could very well be wrong.

i agree with bob here about walking around the rittenhouse square area. in general it's a beautiful place to sit and have an outdoor lunch. here's a little two-hour eating/hanging thought: for a midmorning coffee, la colombe at 19th & walnut. then down to dibruno's at 18th & chestnut for cold cuts and cheese and bread and whatnot. walk back to rittenhouse square, and have lunch outside. when you're done, head up to 20th & sansom for capogiro for a little gelato dessert, becuase it's gonna be hot next week. from there it's an easy walk up the parkway to spend your afternoon at the art museum, natural history museum, etc. if that's what you're into. or you can walk straight up locust (passing some nice old townhouses on the way; you could go along spruce as well to see more of old philadelphia architecture) to the schuylkill river and walk up to the museum area and into fairmount park along the new river path.

the park is about 1/2 mile down a very crowded ballpark-y kinda street (pattison ave) from the final stop on the southbound broad street line. when you leave the stadium, hoardes of people will be walking back to the subway, and several trains leave in rapid succession. in short, yes, you definitely can get the subway back to center city, and should--it's the quickest way, esp. if you get an express. cabs will be harder to come by down there, and will get caught in traffic. if you go to italiano's, you're going to get it one stop up from the end, at oregon ave. i hope it's open at night...

agreed with this part. when you go to italiano's, continue up shunk to broad, and get the subway back to center city.

can i ask a stupid question? ok i'm just gonna go ahead. supposedly the winner of this show gets handed the reins to a very expensive restaurant in vegas. now, i know it's not 'hell's kitchen' since that 'restaurant' is obviously set up for the show, not to be a real place. but this is the second season. i didn't watch last season--did last year's winner get the restaurant? is it still in existence? i mean, how real is this 'reality' show?