mrbigjas

have i mentioned recently my resentment about white castle's closing all their places around philadelphia? i mean, DAMN.

on the bright side, you can use that as an excuse to go buy yourself some fancy cookware at dehillerin!

i disagree. here's a good plan: budget yourself for three bottles. then buy six--two of each vintage. a couple years from now, have a vertical tasting with your wine loving friends. then decide you drank them too early, and leave the others in your cellar for far too long, and have them at one of those 'ancient and probably dead discoveries in our cellars' parties that wine geeks are known to have. see you in 2030.

egg white souffle! there's a recipe in julia child for a cheese version, but you can totally make it with any kind of vegetable puree or whatever. no need for egg yolks in a souffle. i might make one myself this week--i have a bunch of egg whites in the freezer too...

i don't, but that's not an omelette, or at least i should say, that's not how i think of one. haemul-pajun and bindaeduk are definitely more in the pancake universe, unless you want to define this cook-off as 'eggs, beaten, with stuff in them, including significant amounts of wheat and rice flour.' or in the case of bindaeduk, mung beans. there is definitely a korean dish that is beaten eggs, usually served in a small heated stone bowl with some boiling water in it. and they put all kinds of things in them--bits of sausage, scallions, etc. but basically it's a steamed beaten egg dish, and unfortunately don't know the name of it.

I'm sure there are plenty of chef driven restaurants of all sizes that have investors, whether they're BYOB or not. And whether there's magic or not is judged on the same scale as anyone else, I'd hope. What you're suggesting just sucks all the joy out of it for me though. ← totally. i just hadn't thought of that concept before. i don't know why it never occurred to me...

applesauce? how about that. all my years of eating scrapple and we always used syrup or ketchup--i'll have to try applesauce next time.

you know, i hadn't really thought too much about this aspect till now, but, is this the first case of a popular BYOB changing hands and trying to carry on as its original self? a symbol of, or preamble to, the corporatizing of the philadelphia BYOB, kinda? i mean, i'm totally overstating here. i don't mean it in any kind of bad way. obviously the Rx crew buying django is not like mcdonalds taking over chloe or something. but it seems that a lot of the concept of the whole philadelphia BYOB "thing" is that they're small, personalized, chef-driven restaurants, and when a chef bails, the place closes. but in the last while we've had chef changes at marigold, at rx, (probably at several others i can't think of)--and now django has changed hands and is still trying to remain django. i guess the question that is coming to mind is: has the marketing concept of the philadelphia BYOB caught up to the actuality of it, to the point where an investor can open a small chef-driven BYOB without being the chef? could we theoretically be on the way to the point where we could have a BYOB stephen starr? and if so, would the magic be lost? is there magic to start with? note to greg: you post here enough that i feel i should clarify that i'm not trying to bust your balls. this whole thing is just kinda interesting to me.

will do. but at the same time i feel so lame, like, suddenly i'm one of those people that only goes to a restaurant because the reviewer panned it....

i don't know--would we? has anyone gone? i mean, there are only 10 or 15 of us who post regularly here on the PA board, and i don't remember a single report on it. i just checked over on chowhound, and the one thread asking about it devolved into the standard 'oh i went and laban is crazy and it wasn't worth it' pile-on. maybe it's because greg salisbury posts here and people don't want to offend him, so if they've gone and haven't liked it they haven't said so. or maybe it's just that there are too many new places to visit to revisit old favorites as often as we'd like. either way, i'd like a report from someone else whose opinion i know well enough to interpret (besides laban's, which i'm pretty well acquainted with).

these are my favorite recipe reviews on sites like epicurious.com: "i tried to make this hazlenut torte with burnt sugar buttercream. but i was out of hazlenuts so i used peanuts. and i didn't have the amount of all purpose flour it called for, so i made up the rest with cornstarch and talcum powder. for the frosting i only had half the butter necessary so i made up the rest with bacon fat. and my cake pan was in use, so i baked the whole thing in an old running shoe i found in the basement. and my family hated it! i would definitely NOT make this recipe again, and i rate it one fork, but only because it won't let me give it zero!" uh... ok....

omg as a member of the baking ignoramus community, i have wondered about that for YEARS--why would i want the thing to come out clean, when what was coming out on it seemed like delicious cake/muffin/bread/whatever. thank you! (edited to change 'dumbass' to 'ignoramus' due to seeing the vigorous protest from baking professionals on the thread...)

i totally did that the last time i fried them too. just turned my back for a couple minutes and it was all over.

i made one of these earlier tonight, but i accidentally grabbed the bottle of peach bitters instead of orange bitters. (yes i do realize how ridiculous that sounds. but a bottle of bitters is only like four or five bucks, so why not buy them all? there are only a few different kinds) anyway. it's a totally different drink. sweet and oddly light considering it's mostly liquor. but with the orange bitters, it's far better as is--the bitters and the maraschino and the cointreau all play off each other in a really interesting way that just isn't there when you use the peach bitters. this was one of my favorites from the first time i made it*; a drink that epitomizes a lot of what i think a cocktail should be. *admittedly just a few months ago

Just wait until you start haunting hole-in-the-wall liquor stores, and travelling to the far corners of the globe in search of rare liqueurs. ← ha! don't encourage me...

welcome to the forum, kevin. i haven't tried the abadia yet, but may check it out shortly. please continue to post your notes!

why do we have to choose? hahaha

i'm no italian expert, but i'm pretty sure it's pronounced basically gwahn-CHA-leh.

sweet, i just got the vintage book and the degroff book. thanks katie, i can't wait to spend yet more money on obscure liqueurs and mixers i use .25 oz at a time....

i've sung the praises of iovine's 'not ready for prime time' packages of wild mushrooms for a while now. to give an example, here's a pic of a pan full of a mixture of yellowfoot, black trumpet, and hedgehog mushrooms. my point is: this is a 12" fry pan, and the mushrooms cost about five bucks: now that's a deal. i read so many recipes that call for large amounts of wild mushrooms, and i always think--do they really expect me to spend that kinda dough on mushrooms? this is the answer. if you're interested, be sure to go early-ish on a saturday, because they're mostly gone after lunch or so.

it's also $10.87 on amazon, and if i get my order up over $25 i get free shipping (cue host with eG-friendly link). so, imagine i love me some fun oldschool recipes like a pegu club and an aviation and a fancy free and whatnot. and imagine i only have one bartender book. what else should i buy to get my order up over $25? anyone?

i was going to warn you about this aspect of beluga lentils, but i figured you already knew. while they do hold together better like lentils du puy do, they unfortunately do not stay that lovely shiny black color, but rather turn browner and more like regular lentils with cooking. they're still nicer than regular lentils, but it was a disappointment to me the first time i cooked them...

fried shallots. slice, toss them to coat in seasoned flour, corn starch or wondra and fry them at a lowish temp for a long time, until they're browned and crisp through. a great topping for anything--a salad, for instance, or good to mix in with mashed potatoes, or to sprinkle on a squash soup, on a steak with the pat of butter, really anything.

after the wine tasting at shacke's, i was talking to peg from the 19th st store about this very product. i really like it, and she said they kept discontinuing it and then bringing it back, and whenever they brought it back she'd sell out of it right away, and then they'd not carry it again for a while, and she'd have people asking for it.... anyway yeah, i agree, it's good stuff. sometimes i include it in a drink similar to what we used to get as a 'french martini'. use a mild gin like beefeater, a little each of m&r bianco and lillet. i haven't had one of these in a while, and now i'm wondering if a dash of orange bitters wouldn't hurt...

i know it goes totally against the concept of the dish to even think about the health aspects of mac & cheese. i know, and therefore i apologize in advance for this post. BUT. i was in the store a while ago and noticed a box of barilla plus elbows, which i've used to make mac & cheese twice now. and it's good! really! even though it's got, like, actual fiber and whatnot in it. i don't know if the texture is quite right--i don't know if i'll be using it for more pasta-centric dishes than mac & cheese, but for this it's totally fine, and you can for a moment pretend that you're eating something healthy even though it tastes good...