mrbigjas

good luck with that on a wednesday.

i have a question about asian noodle soups in general. unlike many pasta-based soups (i'm thinking italian and american traditions here), in asian noodle soup recipes, one doesn't tend to put dry noodles into the soup and let them cook there, but rather cook them separately, and then pour the soup over them. why is this? is it about preserving the color of the noodle? is it about the soup being the soup and the noodles being kind of a filler,for lack of a better word, and therefore not really part of the soup? like serving chili or gumbo over rice? or is there something else? just curious if there's something else i might be missing.

that really is the bomb. we went over there tonight and got one of these. you left off the chicken, which is included too. it's an insane amount of food, and all good. their banh xeo is my favorite in town. tonight we also tried the chargrilled lemongrass squid, which was tender with just a bit of char on the edges of the scored squid pieces. i didn't taste the lemongrass, though. and the phnom penh soup--a porky broth with ground pork, sliced pork, shrimp, dried shrimp, squid, and rice or egg noodles in it. served with pho condiments. not as fragrantly spiced as pho, but a good soup nonetheless. when looking at the soup menu, i noticed no bitter melon soup. i had it for the first time last year at nam phuong--bitter melon pieces stuffed with seasoned pork in a lightly flavored broth--and i could have gone for it tonight. wonder if it's available for the asking. but oh man, that vermicelli combo plate. lord have mercy that's some good stuff right there.

the sheraton over at the convention center there has karaoke on friday nights. it's an "authentic" chain hotel bar... oh and the scanticon across the way has this dude who plays covers on a big fancy sequencing keyboard thing on friday and saturday nights. don't ask me why i know this. ok i know it isn't helpful.

been a long time since folks have talked about marigold (except for the mention of their new website), so here's a quick report from last wednesday, when we went for the univ. city dining days. marigold was in the $30 tier (other restaurants in the neighborhood were $20 or $25), and i must say that unlike many restaurants, they admirably retained the majority of their published menu on their website. a few dishes were different from what's on there, but anyway... we started with the pink lentil soup with lamb-stuffed cabbage. the soup was thinner than i expected it to be, but the lamb-stuffed cabbage was fantastic--almost spiced like a merguez or something; a great sausagey taste. escargot were good too, fragrant and earthy from the mushrooms, and not chewy at all. the spelt/potato gnocchi were a little mushy for my taste, but the hen of the woods brought the flavor big time. lamb shank was a big ol' shank, falling off the bone tender and scented with prunes and basmati. fantastic. i had the pork, honestly the least exciting of the offerings. there was nothing wrong with it per se, it was just plain in comparison with the others. the candied kumquats that came along with it provided a sticky, tangy counterpoint to the pork and barley--if the dish had more of an emphasis on contrasts like that i would have been more interested. the star of the evening, though, was the scallop/oxtail combo. three gigantic seared scallops, the oxtail tagine over them like a sauce... the description on the menu doesn't begin to describe how good this dish was. desserts were solid too--i'm not much of a dessert person, but the creme brulee had a nice crisp top and a good ratio of custard to sugar. in addition, this was the first time i'd been seated upstairs, which was really nice, if a bit underlit. despite that every table in sight was full of us cheap dining days folks, service was impressively efficient. as i said the last time i was there, i think that they're doing a great job up there, but it's a different scene than the crazily inventive stuff that wowed everyone when they first reopened last year. it's just really high quality, well-executed, interesting food. and at $30 for dining days? a bargain.

i've never participated in a cook-off before, but marco_polo, you inspired me to make a completely bastardized and wrongheaded version of this soup tonight. lacking beef ribs or really any meat at all, i fried garlic and ginger in sesame oil, then added sugar and soy, and cooked it some more to caramelize the sugar some, then added some beef stock i had on hand, and let it simmer for a while. i made similar condiments for it--the omelet, the pickled cucumbers, some carrots in ginger/soy/sesame, some watercress instead of spinach. and of course kimchi. (oh and a haemul pajun, but without the seafood. it always surprises me how long these take to brown.) i'm going to make the real thing next time, because i know it'll be significantly better. but thank you for the inspiration anyway.

I would call it osso bucco. ← I thought of that, too, but osso bucco is really the name of a dish and not a cut of meat. It's also veal, not beef. those are called beef shins. or at least that's what i've seen it called at local butchers.

i forgot to add my congratulations and best wishes, glepore. hope things work out for you.

this is a great idea. i don't understand why more bars don't have this sort of thing on the menu. it's hearty to encourage more drinking, it's easy to just do up and have a big pot ready, and as far as deeply flavored dishes that wow people, it can't be beat. short ribs, osso buco, oxtails, beef cheeks, lamb/pork shanks, etc. seems like a win-win to me.

i love a good french onion soup at a pub/bistro, but only if it's done right. industrial beef-flavored broth doesn't count as 'done right.' i would love a place to have a jamon serranon on the back of the bar like they do at every bar in spain, where you just order a plate of it whenever. i guess that's actually kind of unrealistic, though. one thing i always thought it would be cool if a bar had was a cheese plate. not to the extent of tria, but having a selection of four or five decent cheeses around would be a great thing. when i'm sitting at home drinking and need a snack, a pile of cheese and bread is almost always the first thing on my mind. i know i'll come up with more.

yeah chanterelles are pretty much done till summer at this point. as far as mushrooms go, lately i've been kind of obsessed with the mushrooms that iovine's is selling as trumpet royals. the reason i say "is selling as" is because i suspect that they're actually king oyster mushrooms. they're pretty similar, but this page over at cook's thesaurus and this page at hormel have photos that make me think they're the king oysters. especially the cooks thesaurus page, which shows the little bitty starter mushrooms that are around the base. but it doesn't matter! whatever they actually are, i slice them into planks (the entire stem is edible, meaty-textured, and mildly earthy flavored), sautee them in butter/olive oil till browned in spots, and serve them as is--or last week, doused them with a little cognac and served them over a romaine salad. they're great. and they're often packaged up and discounted to $12.99 from the usual $19.99 or $24.99 or whatever.

edited a second time to delete my crazy ramblings because you guys know better than i do. so what's the jawn at 43rd & spruce? was it ever known as vientiane?

it's the fraternity basement smell in the bar that turns some people off; the heady aroma of spilt beer, ashtrays, and a halfhearted attempt to mop it all up. having spent several years of my life in a fraternity basement, though, i find it rather nostalgic and not unpleasant. i do agree about the wonder of the wurst platter and their beer selection. i will admit that i haven't been real thrilled with the food in the restaurant part, though.

i'm sensing a competitive edge here... woo hoo, a cheese-off! wait, that doesn't sound right.

i haven't been recently, but we were there a few times in a row a couple of years ago--remember when everyone was all over tre scalini? i don't remember the pasta being oversauced... it had more on than pasta in italy did, but by no means as much as you usually think of when you think of oldschool red gravy places. and other stuff was always solid--a step above. i wonder if they could be resting on their laurels? or maybe you just did hit an off night. i'll have to head back... as far as the service issues, that's a pretty common complaint there; i would say they should address it, but it's always full, so why bother, i guess.

well, after more than a year, i have a new entry in the local scrapple market (or rather, probably not new,but like their bacon, i never noticed it before): harry ochs' scrapple. this week i was down there looking for some shin meat for a beef stew, and happened to notice small blocks of scrapple there on the shelf with the applewood-smoked bacon that i also hadn't noticed till recently. so i bought one. and let me tell ya: this is damn good. damn good, i say! when i got it out i thought it looked a little too mealy, like the 'scrap' portion of it might be a little meager, but after having it for breakfast this morning, i can say it's pretty close to exactly what i'm looking for. it's not bland (although it could be a little spicier), it's not too salty, has a decent amount of unidentifiable bits and pieces in there... good stuff! i recommend it.

here's what jacques pepin says about them in Complete Techniques basically, after cutting them uniformly to 1/4 to 3/8 inch slices, washing, and drying well, he says to: 1. deep fry them at 325 (while shaking the pan--!!) till they come to the surface and are blistered, then for one minute more 2. let soften for a few seconds, then directly into 375 degree fryer, which should puff up the ones that will puff. interestingly, he says that you can pull them out at this point before they've browned, and set them aside, drained, to keep for several hours. then you can take the successful ones that puffed up and re-fry them at 375 yet again to brown them at serving time.

hey, we were at carmen's for a late lunch today too, but couldn't resist the special italian, even with the soppressata right there. that's a good sandwich they make there. get the house roasted peppers on it, if you go.

i haven't stopped thinking about that goddamn pie since i first read it. i'm gonna have to make one soon. my problem is, since i've never had one i'm not sure if i'll be doing it right...

i am of course willing to debated, but i think every great dinner in the PA forum should end with that pic.

you know, i just thought of something: you guys are doing piemonte this month, and next month the olympics are in turin, so i'll be able to copy all these ideas for olympics-watching parties... nice timing!

damn, i thought this thread was going to be about making your own hot dogs...

thank you! there's practically no writing on the bag--i guess i picked them up by just going to the dried shrimp section and choosing what wasn't the cheapest, but wasn't the most expensive either. i'll go look for the others.

stopped by royal last night for a little dinner. first note: they have eliminated the philly standby of yuengling lager from the tap selection, which means all their beers are $5 or more. this is not a bad thing--their beer offerings are good, including selections from most of the usual suspects: sly fox, stoudts, yards, wild goose. anyway, we had four dishes: 1. salmon saffron soup was a good way to start--saffron earthiness and salmon fishiness combining to make a soup that was more than the sum of its parts. just slightly chunky, a little creamy, great stuff. 2. winter salad of bull's blood (a form of beet greens) and pea shoots, with sweet whole grain mustard dressing and jerusalem artichokes. while the flavors in this were great, the pea shoots were actually kinda woody in places. not so much that you couldn't chaw them on down, but it was noticeable enough. good stuff. 3. wild mushroom sautee with poached egg, microgreens and red wine reduction. a nice cylindrical presentation of the mushrooms topped with the egg and greens--good stuff. 4. each of those dishes was good, but they were all kinda app portions and i was still a little hungry, so i ordered another soup--the cream of asparagus. this was a lot thinner than i expected it to be; i don't know if it's just being brought up on campbells or something making me expect something a cream soup's not, but i coulda happily drunk this out of a mug. in fact, i would kind of like to, because the flavor was damn good. soup as beverage.... hm..... anyway a good night, with good food, even on a sunday. good stuff. sorry i can't report back on the bigger entree kind of dishes... next time.

Yes, dried shrimp comes in many sizes. The general rule is: the bigger the size the more expensive for obvious reasons. As far as which ones are better, I think it is more a personal preference. Theoretically the bigger the size the better. But sometimes they might be a bit hard. I personally like the tiny ones. They seems to be more flavorful and easier to cook. These tiny ones are the size of a dime. ← thanks. the last pack i bought (which i used tonight to make the stir-fried hairy melon and bean threads you posted in your pictorials) are even smaller than that--maybe half that size. they almost look like ... i don't know. did i buy something awful? the chinese equivalent of velveeta or something? they were only about $2.75. i think i will get slightly bigger ones next time...