mrbigjas

but devi's all the way out in exton, and uddupi dosa house is right up there on street road. it's like 20 miles vs. 40... (because after all this is all about me). UDH's dosas were browner/crisper than others i've had. but they sure tasted good.

apples, pears, and thick slices of cheddar cheese.

i kind of think of the lcb and moore bros and for that matter some place like total wine as different sorts of stores. compared to food stores, the state store serves as my go-to place, like a good supermarket. moore bros. is kind of a specialty store, that i go to for the more obscure stuff and the generally interesting, different buys; and total wine or canals like a big discount store, for deals on liquor. i mean, i know that doesn't change the legality of it. but that's how i think of it.

man i wish i coulda been there too. come back soon, we'll party.

they have chat buffet on wednesdays.

this place is up about a mile off street road in bensalem, and i finally got up there last night. you may or may not remember that i'm constantly bemoaning the lack of south indian vegetarian places in philadelphia, and while uddupi dosa house isn't close enough for me to go as often as i'd like, it's a hell of a lot closer than edison, NYC, or takoma park.... so lemme tell you, it rocks the house. from dosai as big as a tennis racket (one of those giant prince rackets, too, i mean--we had regular masala dosa and a spinach and cheese version that was listed as a house special and oddly enough had regular cheese in it instead of paneer), to non-greasy vadai, idly, pakora, to tangy, thin rasam, to spongy uthappam, spicy, slightly bitter dal full of curry leaves and red peppers, various vegetable curries (we had kadai bindi masala and malai kofta)--everything was excellent. waiters were uniformly friendly and helpful with the menu. i tried to encourage them to open a place downtown so i could go every week, but i don't think they bit. anyway, of course you can always order a thali, which for $9-11 gives you bits of a ridiculous number of things--app, soup, bread, rice, dal, poriyal (dry curry) kootu (a creamy sort of dish), raita, pappadam, pickle and dessert. we didn't get these, but that's a crazy amount of food and would give you a sense of what this cuisine is all about if you've never had it before. total dinner last night was about $19 apiece with a nice tip and we have tons of leftovers. as an aside: friday night is indian chinese night, and they have a buffet. we didn't do that last night because i was in the mood for south indian, but i'm gonna check that out soon--i've never seen indian chinese around here before. i'm going to go again, and soon. p.s. supposdly they have a website at http://www.uduppidosahouse.com but it's been down for a while. i wonder if they know.

beaujolais is also starting to increase in popularity because they're going on an all-out advertising campaign, from what i've read. i hope it works and more is available, for all the reasons brad said.

quoting rlibkind from the other thread: if you ask me, these folks had given up a long time ago. their sushi pretty much sucked, even for food court sushi. as an aside, bruce schimmel wrote a column about this in this week's city paper: "Terminal Politics"

cheesesteak fondue! pot of whiz, slices of ribeye, bread, lightly fried onions... PATENT PENDING i don't think we even wanna know how this turned out... or both!

no, that would definitely end up as something closer to raclette, i think.

you missed it! even the Dutch with their love of bland food would not go so far as to eat their meat without salt & pepper i knew i must have been crazy. i even read the post a couple more times to make sure i didn't miss it, and somehow missed it those times too... whoa. i may make this this weekend.

nice, thanks. next time i'm totally gonna do that. i'm really happy with this dish, i have to admit. is there anything greens can't do?

chufi, in that butter-braised-beef, i got to the point where it said STOP. DON'T ADD ANYTHING ELSE, and i thought, no salt/pepper? so, did i miss something or is there really no salt or pepper in that dish?

reheating soups. since everything in a soup is all wet already, the soggifying effect of microwaving doesn't make much difference. and beans. make a big pot of beans of most any type--mexican style, baked, bean soup, you name it--freeze them, and then a couple weeks later take them out. there's no better way of reheating them than a microwave, and it doesn't affect the texture noticeably. same with greens. if you're gonna take the time to cook and clean a bunch of collards, why not freeze the leftovers? they microwave well. as far as the general uses that everyone seems to go by: melting butter in a microwave always causes explosions for me. i've never figured out why, but it's always a delicate balancing act between getting it melted and having butter all over. microwave popcorn sucks compared to popcorn in a pan. it really does. jacques pepin had a good tip for baked potatoes on his fast food my way show, where he said to turn your oven on, scrub your potatoes and put them in the microwave, and they'll be nearly done at the same time your oven is heated--then you can transfer them to the oven to crisp the skin for a couple of minutes. i liked that idea. that said, i want a smaller microwave. i'm not sure mine is worth the counter space it takes up--it's huge.

yeah, beaten egg or milk does provide a nice glaze on top of a pie--although i have to admit i only know that from my mom's pies. i don't have that much experience with the whole piemaking thing myself, which is why i followed mario's recipe pretty much to the letter. he had you brush the crust with an olive oil (or lard) and garlic mixture about halfway through. i'm not sure what that did, exactly. but i should clarify: i don't think a flaky crust is a bad thing! to me it's a sign that you've done things right, if you're trying to make what i consider a good pie crust. maybe this one should be a little tougher or... uh, solid? i mean holding together better, so it's more sandwichy and less messy. but the fact that mine was flaky and messy, i consider a success in light of what i was trying to do. p.s. there's a workaround for the imagegullet issue in the tech support forum.

what shalmanese said. there's a recipe in julia child that i've made a couple of times that works out very well.

i was actually thinking something similar, cdh. i could really spend a lot of money if that existed...

kevin, as i mentioned, i was inspired enough by your erbazzone that i made one myself, but of kale instead of chard, because that's what i had. i found mario's recipe here, and went ahead with it: i was happy with the lard-based pie crust--well, lard and olive oil, really, if you look at that recipe. i hadn't made one before--it was flaky as hell, although a little tougher than my mom's shortening-based crust, and i don't think i overworked it. next time i think i'd refine my technique a little bit, though, because i had kind of a big chunk of crust near the outer edge where i folded it over. it was kind of... how shall we say... 'rustic.' yeah, that's the ticket. anyway, thanks!

this is a damn good idea.

what's interesting to me about their new location is that it's in the same building as kate's place, which is a project home affordable housing (low to moderate income) building. so their closest neighbors aren't exactly in a position to be spending $4.50 on a small gelato on a regular basis. (disclaimer: i'm not saying anything bad about affordable housing, or disparaging capogiro, or doing anything of the sort. i'm just saying it's interesting--they're offering a premium product at a premium price, right there in an affordable housing apartment building... really i guess it's more interesting that project home can provide that much affordable housing that close to rittenhouse, but that's hardly a topic for that board.) either way i hope it works out for them, and i hope i can stop myself from stopping in EVERY DAY on my way home from work once it warms up again...

i drank a couple of bottles of that montes alpha syrah, with grilled merguez and couscous with veggies and olives preserved lemons, with plenty of harissa. it's a great wine to stand up to a smoky, hot, salty meal like that.

i drink several cups of tea a day, and i don't have a teakettle or an electric kettle. i use a pot on the stove--i got tired of always having to move the teakettle out of the way. and then it would get grease splattered on it from whatever else i was cooking, and was generally just a pain in the ass. am i insane? doesn't anyone else just use a pot?

wow, great job, shalmanese. thank you! i wonder if that last experiment you did with the oven roux (shaken into slurry, then whisked, and simmered for 30 minutes) would explain why my g-a-i-l used it for gumbo with good results. that's exactly the kind of treatment it would receive in a soup recipe...

hells yeah! (oops, edited to say, hells yeah for the first part; i'm all ears. i don't have any other specifics yet)

i had something that looked exactly like that in barcelona in march, and was told that they were sunflower shoots or roots, or something to that effect. but crosnes, huh? interesting.