mrbigjas

went there today. the thing about philly flavors is that their water ice is real sweet. it doesn't follow the italiano's way of making it taste as much like the fruit as possible. philly flavors is more like frozen candy. still good though.

what's the one at like 22nd & oregon? i went there and it wasn't so great.

thanks for starting this, percy. i was thinking about it before i started dinner, but unfortunately forgot to take a picture. anyway, this was one of the first things i learned from shola--that if you're making a soup with corn, you can use milk instead of cream, because the corn starch will thicken things up nicely when it hits a boil. tonight i did just that--i had some leftover sauteed chanterelles from the other night, and a couple of ears of that insanely sweet mirai corn they're selling at fair food farmstand, so i cut the kernels off, cooked them with just some water and milk (OK, and a couple tablespoons of cream that was all i had). then i pureed and sieved. a little salt, pepper and just a tiny bit of cayenne, because i like a little heat with sweet. the result tasted good but didn't have either the color or the texture i wanted. the chanterelles contributed mainly aroma and color--unfortunately the color was brown, so the soup wasn't as brilliant yellow as i would have liked. i knew this was going to happen, though. i think i need a smaller sieve or something, though, because it wasn't as super smooth as i'd have liked. it's interesting, though, because you could smell the mushrooms, and they left an aftertaste, but while the soup was in your mouth all you could taste was corn. another dish we had was beets and cheese, a combination i rediscovered at our last dinner at SK. the cheese wasn't a goat cheese, but a spanish sheeps milk cheese with a flavor similar to boucheron called cana de oveja, that i picked up over at dibrunos. a vinaigrette with thyme and walnut oil was on the beets, because i didn't have a microgreen salad to put on top... it's a damn good combo, and this cheese is freaking great, and $12.99 a pound over at dibrunos. go get some, everyone! it's pretty full in the mouth, so beets with their sweet earthiness are a good combo. no picture of that one either, sorry. it was just beets and cheese after all.

Do they have water ice in Pittsburgh? It is an Italian-American thing(ain't it?) so I can imagine it there, can anyone confirm? ← i was in pittsburgh maybe a month ago and didn't see any, but i wasn't really looking. there are italians out there, though. rita's was recently bought by a pittsburgh-based company.

replying to a post over a year old because i'm keepin it on topic: 1. philly flavors makes delicious water ice. we've been there several times since last year, and will go again tomorrow after lunch. their lemon and mango are great. 2. i have a new love: peach water ice at italiano's, 11th & shunk. it's got little pieces of peach in it, and is freaking great.

wow, i totally missed this post somehow. to tell the truth, i haven't spent that much time hunting for shola's ingredients. i usually figure it'd be too hard or expensive to find them. in this case, it's basically just a coincidence that he was using the same stuff. i bought them at downtown cheese because they were a deal. tell me more about this 'essence of corn' soup. i have some corn at home and tonight could be a good night for it. but i don't have a juicer. you think a blender/sieve combo would work? you can get smoked salt at the spice terminal in reading terminal market; it's not very expensive. of course, i don't know how it compares to what shola uses... i'm sure he does--us home cooks are no threat to his business. hm, we should start an 'inspired by studiokitchen' cooking thread.

check out the pennsylvania forum's studiokitchen thread for a recent example of this (lamb loin seared then poached sous vide, or the other way around, i don't remember): http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showto...ndpost&p=972403

to me lovage tastes like celery, but way more so. i have a couple bottles of that here, but haven't drunk them yet. it's funny, i don't know if it's the effective salesmen at moore bros. or what, but every year they have a hot rose or two that sell out right away. last year i think it was the bellevue le foret. wait that might have been the year before. sounds like a great meal folks. gives me some ideas.

i think you're right about the stone fruits. the early peaches have been really good, esp the ones from kauffmans. we bought some shiro and sugar plums from haltemann's yesterday but i haven't tasted them yet. i have high hopes. kauffman's tomaters are $2.99 for reds, $3.69 for yellows. i bought a tomato there yesterday that cost over $2, which, i mean, obviously it was nearly a pound, but it still caught me off guard. livengoods had fewer greens this week, but were loaded with colorful carrots, good lookin beets, and lots of green beans. i'm tempted to go out to their farm today, but i don't think i can make it. iovine's has their first local cantaloupes for $1 each. i do wish they'd stop styrofoam/saran wrapping their hot peppers, though. their serranos nearly always are starting to grow mold on the stems from being in there. i picked up a package of their not-so-pretty chantarelles, though, which were delicious. i love that they sell those imperfect mushrooms--those fancy varieties cost a mint, and i wouldn't be able to afford them otherwise.

today at the terminal: mirai corn at the farmstand. it's bred to be as sweet as the supersweet varieties, but as tender as the old stuff. and it's bright yellow instead of white. damn good. i'm still looking for the old school yellow corn though. someday.

coincidentally enough, in rome there is a sandwich/panini shop just off barbarini on one of those streets named after a saint or cardinal i never heard of, called bar rinelli. and while their sandwich isn't a hoagie and doesn't have all the fixins and whatnot, the spicy tuna (what the hell is the name of those sandwiches that aren't panini?) is one of the greatest sandwiches i've ever tasted.

that's why, most often, i get the mini cone. it's just a taste of one flavor, the cone is one of the few cones i've ever wanted to eat, and you can always go back for another... i mean, maybe combining is the point, but whenever i do, i usually enjoy one flavor more than another, or find one overpowering, or something. i think it's easier to just concentrate on one at a time. and those cones...

thanks for the info. geez, talk about unobservant--i must have walked by there a thousand times and never realized.

I know mrbigjas is out of town for a few days, so he can't continue the conversation right away, but I'll be interested to know if that makes sense to him. yep, it sure does. miso can definitely do that. definitely just a misunderstanding based on the menu prose. i was expecting a combination of carrot and miso flavors, while shola was... well, he said it himself right up there.

it's hard to describe just how porky this pork was. it was like pork times 10. agreed. it was quite a contrast after the sweeter blanc de noir. probably the highlight of the evening for me, wine-wise. as capaneus said, when you taste this you wonder why folks from california even bother trying with chardonnay.. agreed. this was an excellent dish, although as others have mentioned i almost preferred the parts of it separately to together. it also showcased the one thing that shola does that doesn't agree with me, which is that sometimes his flavors are TOO subtle--i didn't taste a lot of the miso flavor in the carrot-miso puree, for instance. a stronger miso paste might have been more assertive, a red miso or even a barley miso. but i think that's just a matter of preference; it's not like his technique is bad (obviously) but he just tastes a little different than i do. i liked the SB on its own, but that cat pee-y flavor profile they have, to me, is really accented by some seafood (in this case the crab) to an almost unpleasant level. the dish, though, knocked my socks off, so much so that after our discussion of the various rices for risotto, i bought a package of carnaroli today at dibrunos. it's different from arborio, for sure. incidentally, if anyone's interested that arbequina olive oil that he used is available at downtown cheese, along with the other varietal oils from the same company (picual and manzanilla), for $25 for two bottles. dibruno's carries them too but they're more expensive there. the thing about this was that the syrah had that funky, slightly organ-meaty character that some of them do, like one of those kinda stinky cotes du rhones or something. and it really really worked really well with the lamb. just super. i would have liked that nebbiolo with a grilled veal chop or something. something quite meaty but delicately flavored, like veal. know what i mean? i quite enjoyed it. oh and can i say that those beans were possibly the best beans i've ever had. good lord. i eat a lot of beans and legumes of all sorts, and i don't think i've ever had any that were quite this creamy, quite this white... wow. i know it seems silly to wax poetic about beans when you're paying $100 a head and having a meal with spanish smoked paprika and fennel pollen and $55 lamb loins and triple cream cheese ice cream and scallops the size of small burgers and foie gras two ways, but good GOD those beans were good. went well with the nebbiolo, too--i found myself switching back and forth between the two wines with the two parts of this dish. drool... old chenin blanc. another highlight. good stuff there. i liked this dessert, but to me it suffered from the same subtlety issue that the carrot/miso puree did--chaource is a triple cream brie-like cheese, and i couldn't taste it over the lemon in the ice cream. it was fun meeting y'all too. we should get together and drink through your cellars more often.

i don't know that it would be the same, since fish sauce is fermented while anchovies are just cured/preserved. they do kinda serve the same purpose though, i guess. but if you don't want to have a can of anchovies around (although i'm not sure why anyone wouldn't), you could get a tube of anchovy paste. i wouldn't use anchovy paste for anything where you care about actual anchovy flavor (because it's made of the bits and pieces and whatnot), but for things like this where you want anchovy to add a depth of flavor without actually being tasted, it's a good secret ingredient.

wait there's a cafeteria in that church? i been living in and around here since 1991 and no one ever thought to tell me this?

i've definitely found it to be the case with the chili peppers. the tom zap soup last night (with chicken on the bone, although it's also available with beef, and deboned) earned its 3 peppers, though. the waiter and waitress we had last night spoke perfect english, and i've decided that next time i'm going to a) ask for a taste of the ant egg soup so i can find out if i like it without spending $9 on a big ol' bowl, and b) ask them what would be a normal set of courses for a laotian dinner, instead of just picking a random bunch of stuff off the menu.

aaah, looking more closely i see what you mean. optical illusion! thanks. i'll make it tonight.

OK we went last night, and i had a cassia leaf curry that i'd never had before. it's full of bitter cassia leaves, and fragrant kaffir lime leaves, and pieces of beef or pork which are basically unnecessary. it's pretty hot, and the heat is tempered by the sweetness of coconut milk and the bitter of the cassia, and overall it's just a pretty great dish. check it out if you're down there. in addition what they call tuna laab is an interesting dish: a large flower of marinated spicy raw tuna perched on a pile of fried rice noodles, sprinkled with globs of caviar of some sort, and with russian dressing tasting orangey mayonnaisey sauce around. quite odd. but that cassia leaf curry... woo.

can we talk about this a little? i picked up some baby eggplants this weekend, and i'm thinking of making it tonight. couple questions, if you don't mind: 1. 'a few hours' -- so would, like, two be enough? 2. is that basil on there? or mint? or something unexpected? 3. what's the white stuff? yogurt? cream? melted cheese? thanks

can i just yoink this thread to the top by saying that i went over to rembrandt's for lunch today, and had the best pizza i've had in a while. their latest version of rustica sports sopressata, chopped plum tomatoes, and is topped with (besides the mozzarella) a sprinkling of grated asiago and mint. my only complaint about their pizza is that either the crust is a little TOO thin, or else they put on too much topping or something, because just right in the middle the dough gets soggy. but at the outside? a gorgeously risen, charred crust. and the saltiness of the cheese, the mint... good lord. it was delicious. edited to add: i forgot to report that they no longer are carrying their clam/prosciutto white pie. so sad.

ok i've got one: assuming that i hadn't burned the coating on my fried chicken last night--which i did, so this question is actually moot, and merely a preparation for next time--would i have been able to reuse the crisco, if i filtered it? or is it not like deep frying oil that has a few uses in it?

i was about to offer to come over and pick it while you were gone, but SE missouri is kind of a long detour between here and home...

i wonder if the acidity of the mojo marinate/baste has anything to do with the tenderness of the skin? quick question: in your pics that meat looked pretty much raw. is there something i'm missing, or is it just an artifact of a cameraphones crappy lens?