mrbigjas

internet wine maven!

oh i know--i'm one of them. i just loved the translation, is all. tonight i used the frozen favas i got from the asian market to make a fava puree, which had some mint and parsley in it, and which we served with pecorino. these favas were significantly larger than the fresh ones i usually buy in the pod, probably 3/4 of an inch long, and they had a much more noticeable fava-y, bean-y odor. not sure i liked this as much, but on the other hand i'm usually buying them fresh right when they come out, when they're young enough that you practically don't have to do the second shelling, so maybe this is what people associate with fava bean flavor. it's kinda like what we were talking about upthread with the limas, and the difference between baby limas and what most people think of as lima beans. i also made uova in brodetto, which is a recipe i found on that food network site of molto mario shows. i don't actually know if this is a rome/lazio recipe--is it? it was in the midst of several shows that seemed roman in theme, but this show itself was called 'eggs eggs eggs'--it included a carbonara recipe as well. another show that the same recipe appeared on was called 'scrippelle mbusse' which from my minimal research makes me think the dish might be from abruzzo? i also made a green bean salad, with lemon/oil dressing. this was based on a recipe i found on about.com's site about roman food, for green bean and tuna salad. but i didn't include the tuna, so yeah, tonight besides the favas, i guess it was my lamest night yet. the eggs were damn good though.

is anyone gonna cook this one? pizza stuffed with crackling fried scraps of pork fat ok really i just like the translation of the title. edited yet again to say that while a lot of the mario recipes on the food network site give you a 'recipe expired' link, a lot of the roman themed molto marios are still there. look for episodes starting with MB2C.... some interesting stuff there.

wasn't 1997 like, massive killer awesome year in montalcino?

and 4) philadelphia magazine is written by and for suburbanites

This may be a silly question, but if that's the case, how does one eat the water ice that your tongue can't reach? ETA: I may have been able to pull it off when I was much younger, but I think my face is now a little too big to get inside that cup. ← you squeeze the cup. by the time you're down to the very bottom it's mostly melted anyway and you can kinda drink it.

what's up with all the spoon usage? you don't eat water ice with a spoon...

wow! i've heard of monk's beard, but never have seen it here in the US. one quick question: what is 'fake asparagus'?

nice job this week, sandy. wish i coulda made the pizza/waterice yesterday; i do love me some marra's.

just this weekend i found frozen shucked favas at a local asian grocery store (vietnamese). i don't know that i've seen them in any dishes i've had at the vietnamese places, but they must be used for something. they were over with the frozen pandan leaves and horseradish leaves and turmeric. anyway, that's another source, if any of you have an asian grocer nearby. i think i'm gonna follow pontormo's lead and make vignarola this week, with the bag i picked up.

i always have too, but then two things happened: 1. i had some fresh little baby limas, and they were much sweeter and less pasty than the full-grown things. 2. i had a hoagie from a place that was reconstituted dried limas, which were marinated in vinegar and oil and herbs to make kind of a bean salad, and it was on a hoagie roll with lots of grated well-aged provolone on it... i posted about it here.

if they're frozen baby limas i don't see why that wouldn't be a perfectly acceptable substitute. sure it'll be a little starchier and less sweet, but what the hey, a green bean is a green bean...

(edited out my explanation because katie beat me to it) isn't frank's wishniak still made? maybe by that same dude that bought the champ cherry and levis hot dog copyrights? it's still in their online catalogue at tasteofphiladelphia.com and several other mail-order philadelphia places. actually, canada dry makes a black cherry wishniak nowadays, don't they?

when we were there, there was indeed another bartender--we asked him about a certain wine, and he replied that he had just started about an hour before, so maybe they recognized the problem. i miss a lot of these aspects of things because i tend to like to go drink wine right after work, rather than late-night. so crowds are always thin. for instance i've always gotten a seat with friends, every time i've been to tria, because i never get there after 6.

tonight i made katie's red feather boa. kinda sweet for my tastes, but not disproportionate or something, just sweeter than i'm used to. grenadine really does turn everything red, doesn't it? i mean, it's crazy--.25 oz in that drink and there you go...

i thought of this thread recently when i was down in suburban station and stopped for a cup of coffee, and was reminded that one place in town consistently pulls one of the best shots you'll have: passero's. thick crema, never bitter or overextracted, and when they make a latte or cappuccino the proportions are right. the service is always great and the coffee's even better. i would say this is an undiscovered gem of coffee in town, but considering how long they've been there it's not undiscovered at all. as an aside, their regular drip coffee isn't nearly as good, although it's perfectly acceptable. and the passero's at broad and locust isn't as good as in the train station. seriously, give it a try. see if i'm wrong. because i think you'll be surprised.

had a drink with a friend at vintage yesterday after work--what a pleasant place! it's part of the 13th street revival that tony goldman promised us several years ago, and which now seems to be unstoppable. the space is kind of spare, with exposed brick walls, one of those giant iron wine bottle chandeliers, and wooden wine racks mounted directly on the wall. cork dividers and chalkboard menus complete the feel of the place. like many wine bars, the list is not extensive, but is obviously carefully chosen. sure, they have a house white zin, a concession to the non-wino that i think is unnecessary in this day and age, but hey, white zin is cheap so why not be friendly? their wines are categorized, as many places are, into flavor and aroma categories, with a 'new and exciting' section in each of red and white, which houses interesting wines like the 2004 ironstone symphony obsession. the symphony grape was a new one on me, a hybrid of muscat of alexandria with grenache gris--the wine is fantastically floral in the nose, and loaded with those kinda orange-y lychee-y creamsicle-y flavors that i associate with wine that have a chunk of residual sugar. not my thing for daily drinking, but it was interesting, and just what my friend was looking for. speaking of choosing wines, the owner (who i am sure is tired of hearing that she bears a striking resemblance to mena suvari) graciously allowed my friend to taste rieslings of german and californian origins, before she decided on the ironstone. besides their normal by the glass offerings, which hover in the $7-9 range, vintage offers several different flights per day, priced at $15 each. the nice thing about them is that when she creates them, she is obviously thinking about a progression, and about relating the wines to each other, rather than just 'here are three sauvignons' or something. for instance yesterday there was a flight of a chardonnay, a viognier, and a chard/viognier mix. there was a flight of pinot noirs, which were a ... damn i can't remember exactly, there was a pinot nero from italy, and a nice california one... anyway i ordered up the italian flight, a dolcetto, a salice salentino and a really tasty chianti classico. very nice job--my only complaint is that like many places their red was served too warm; it wouldn't hurt to have the reds in a fridge of some sort. and the flight pours were a little small for my tastes, but really not excessively so. besides the wine, they do have a fully stocked bar, with five or six beers on tap and liquor. the menu appears to be kind of a standard wine bar sort of thing--charcuterie plates, burgers, french onion soup. we got the charcuterie plate, which was a nice if small assortment of pate de campagne, sopressata, prosciutto for $14. other dishes are cheaper--there are plenty of snack type plates for under $10. so yeah, it's a nice place and i'll be back very soon.

ok things have been a little slow recently, and there are a couple of new places i've been. so why not post about them? last friday lunch we headed over to goji japanese restaurant, on hamilton at 20th, kind of across from the wawa (and from mr. chicken). this place purports to be tokyo cuisine. now, i've never been to tokyo, but i know tasty stuff when i have it. the menu at lunch mainly consists of a few entrees, several noodle dishes, a few salads, and sushi of several kinds. not inexpensive, but not outrageous either. we had salmon rolls, spicy tuna, eel (for the one among us who can't eat raw fish at the moment). all rolls were inside-out style, and were about $6 or so, for eight pieces. they're smaller than regular maki for lunch. the rolls were... a little sloppily made, but they tasted great. i wonder if they wouldn't present better being rolled regular style. one in our party ordered the 'funny fun-gai' salad (many of the dishes have silly names), and was brought a salad rife with mushrooms of several varieties--shiitake, oyster, enoki--and a tangy dressing. great stuff, the warm mushrooms and the cool greens contrasting well. 'steamin soba' was presented with a large tempura shrimp on top, the bits of tempura batter spooned into the bowl by the waitress where they crackled. 'chillin soba' was similar; the main difference is that it was loaded up with so much onion that i could taste it the next day. the waitress pointed out that if i liked less onion i could move it aside--well, obviously, but boy was there a lot of it. otsuyu sauce served in a small pitcher on the side. these dishes were damn good, but really for 10 bucks shouldn't you get more than one tempura shrimp, even though it's a nice big one? come on now, soba noodles don't cost anything... chicken fried rice was presented in a nice bowl shape and was raved about by the person who ordered it, and the ubiquitous (well, not here in philadelphia, but other places) white miso-glazed black cod was devoured by the person who ordered it--he nicely offered to let us all taste it before it came, and then grew strangely silent as he ate, and next thing we knew it was gone, and none of us had a bite. service was good, with the exception that the dishes were brought as they were made, which made for a moment of awkwardness as i sat around waiting for my lunch after everything else was delivered. it's one thing to do that at a chinese restaurant where everything is assumed to be served family style, but these are individual dishes, so they should be brought out together. i assume they'll work things like this out. no liquor license yet, but they welcome BYOB. i notice that their dinner menu is pricier. conclusion: this city has a dearth of japanese restaurants, and there is plenty of room for several more. goji is a damn good addition, and i'll be back soon to do a much more extensive exploration of the menu (read: dinner). the one sad part about this is how our very enjoyable lunch merely reinforced what a loss it is for dining in philadelphia that paul couldn't make it work out with his place.

believe me, i would if i could

here you go: click here

I'm hesitant, too, because while I'm pretty strict about the way I cook and work, I don't want to be constantly b*tching at people to wipe stuff up, and I don't want to have to think about it. The surfaces I'm looking at using this on are for prep/staging only, and a wet bar.I've got three samples; the darkest (which I like best) is still holding onto a drop of oil that I wiped up after five seconds. The red wine, soap, and vinegar drips give it a little "character." I'll look forward to your report on actually working with the stuff. ← yeah that sort of thing is what worries me--i was painting a cabinet above the aforementioned fireslate countertop with oil based paint, and a drop missed the dropcloth. i cleaned it up with thinner, which worked to pick up the paint, but immediately spread into a big ol spot on the counter. then the thinner evaporated and it ended up being fine. but the thing about the oil situation is, if you're going to be rubbing a bunch of tung oil into it every while, you're not going to notice cooking oil on it. so i'm not sure that's the best criterion to judge it on. the acids thing is more worrying to me. i'm not that neat when i cook...

this is what i do. well, i don't spray, i just run some water in the plates. microwave for a minute, and it'll heat a stack of four to the "pretty damn warm" level.

i've got friends who have it. they love it, but caution that the company isn't kidding when they say that acids will mark it, and that it scratches. they like that it gets a 'lived-in' (read: marked up) look, and are happy with it overall, but i'm pretty hesitant about it. i wanted to look into it for my upcoming renovation, and am actually going over to their place to do some work on it sometime soon so i can tell how i'd like it. i'll report back.

i looked this up when i made it the other day, and i think what i found was that which it was called had something to do with where people are from. like, in central italy it's referred to as bucatini, and in the south it's perciatelli? something like that, anyway. there are a bunch of pastas with different names depending on region, aren't there?

i loved project's posts. they made me laugh, and were totally awesome. where did he go, anyway? also, i agree with everyone here--both woks wouldn't take up that much more space than just the one...