mrbigjas

back in the day we used to go on tuesdays when they had the half-price sandwich night, and i'd get a spanish chicken but with cheese (or the... what was it, california? with the green chile and cheese? chicken but with jalapenos), and spanish fries. and i don't know if it's just that my heat tolerance has gone up since then or what but it used to cause me great gastric distress the next day. i don't think that would happen now. i guess it IS a lot of jalapenos though, all over the sandwich and the fries. i think i'ma have to check it out again soon.

their website doesn't make it seem like they are.

AAAAAGHH!!! You don't get the FROZEN ones at the Copa!!!Yeah, I've had the margaritas on the rocks too: my verdict? Melted Slurpee. Seriously, for the last year or two I've just been going to the Italian Market, buying 30 limes for like $3, and making my own margaritas. Way better than anything I've had at any bar or restaurant (even Lolita, and y'all know how much I like Lolita). ← ok i could be wrong, because it's been a couple years since i've been back, but i sat at the bar at copa too lots of times, and they always had a one of those plastic bar bottles (the ones with the long necks) of fresh lime juice there. or at least it looked and tasted like fresh lime.... i mean, it's been a couple years, but i don't feel like i'm misremembering. i always blamed the sweetness on the fact that the way they used to make them was they basically take the bottles of tequila, triple sec and lime and upend the three of them together--that leads to a whole lot more lime and triple sec than in a traditional recipe.

hey everyone makes some decisions in their youth that they wouldn't make as an adult... and i learned a lot from that time. and really, thinking back on it, with all the other damage i was inflicting on my body in college, eating healthy (and i did generally eat pretty well; not just pizza and mac and cheese) was probably a good thing. anyway, my favorite food truck back then was le anh, the big beige truck over by the franklin building. it wasn't that great, but they were nice and cheap and pretty OK. i also liked ali baba, specifically their lentil soup. but my FAVORITE favorite food truck was a completely nondescript one. it was in front of HUP and had a champ cherry umbrella long after champ cherry ceased to exist. it was run by a very nice pakistani couple, and was open all hours. they had an egg & cheese sandwich for $1, and they gave you a free pretzel with every order. so when you're heading home at 7 a.m. after a loooooong night, for $1.75 you could get an egg & cheese, a pretzel, and a cup of coffee that was about half cream and sugar. what's better than that? i ask you. cheaper than a pack of smokes. they're still there BTW, in the parking lot between HUP and the penn museum. but they have a different umbrella now. (actually the only better deal than that was the 85 cent 'dinner' at wawa, where we'd get a chili cheese dog and then go over to the soup bar and take huge handfuls of saltines--eat the chili and cheese with the crackers, then eat the hot dog. ah, college.)

nope. well, 'can't stand' is too strong of a statement for my feelings about them. but i don't actively like them. when i was a vegetarian for a few years in college i did, though.

Has anyone else commented on the olive question? I have seen whitish specks on the olives that I have taken for salt crystallizing on the surface. I think it looks unappetizing to put them in a bowl that way, but it disappears with a quick rinse. Fern ← hm, how about that. i always assumed it was the oil on the surface of the olive kind of solidifying and going cloudy, like olive oil does in the fridge.

i've only made a few pie crusts in my time, from various recipes, and have never had a problem with them. but the one i like best is my mom's, and it's all crisco--she says she got the recipe off a crisco can back in the day. 2 c flour, 1 t salt, and you take out 1/4 c of that and make a paste with 1/3 c water. then you take 7/8 c crisco, and mix it well with the flour till it's almost like clay. then gently mix the flour/water paste into that, so you can still see veins of the paste throughout the clay. i've never seen this technique anywhere else, but it makes for an awesome incredibly flaky not-sweet crust that is the best ever. well anyway, you asked...

we went by la lupe last night, and i had the especial de la lupe, which is the pork al pastor, topped with two fried eggs, some sauteed cactus and onion, and a little cheese and crema. for $10.75, this is about the most food i've seen in a long time. i finished about half of it, despite having no appetizers and it taking a long time to come. good stuff. i'm back on the lupe bandwagon.

i've been drinking a bunch of these recently, and have been really enjoying them. las brisas, hermanos lurton, etc. they are indeed GREAT food wines, and the price is definitely right.

black truffle. i imagine it would be interesting as a tiny little scoop at the end of a studiokitchen type meal, but i can't imagine eating much more than a bite or two.

public house is a new bar where dock street used to be.

there's a butcher and market called joe's, which is on jenkintown ave, i think, between dresher and glenside. my parents go there a lot, and they were the first ones who sold us a flatiron steak, sometime last year. i had never heard of it before, but it was very tender and flavorful. so i don't know if you're in the northern suburbs, but if you are, you could try there.

so, if you got one of those little mini fridges, the kind that are like 3 ft high, and put nothing else in it except a bowl of that dessicant stuff (to make sure it's really dry) could you cure the stuff in there, if you turned it up nice and high so it wasn't too cold? i've thought about doing this...

you've got certain things in abundance that we have very few of, though. reasonably priced french bistros, for one thing. we have, like, one of them.

someone i know went to marigold on saturday and said the same thing--that the food was great, but it was really hot in the place. and that the person she talked to said the AC was working. it would be kind of a bummer if that were the case--that because of some infrastructure issues (namely old, inadequate ACs), it would put the restaurant at a disadvantage during the summer. it would kinda be like my house...

i've had drinks at bridgewater's several times, and i'm always surprised that the beer isn't phenomenally overpriced. and last time i was there the menu looked intriguing, but i blew it off because after all it's just a smoky bar in the train station. i'll check it out more thoroughly next time!

i'm not sure what it is, but capogiro really hits the nail on the head with their nut-based flavors. i think that really they're the best of the varieties, as a group. the pistachio tastes more like pistachios than pistachio. the cashew is slightly salty and ridiculously flavorful. the black walnut is super fragrant. the hazlenut is crazy. the... ok i can't think of any more nuts right now. but man they're good.

bummer

yeah--poach for about 2 minutes, shock in ice water. the couple of times we've served them, we always get a couple extra "test" eggs if we're cooking them in the shell. Poaching is a bit surreal, but the vinegar in the water trick keeps them relatively compact. I'm glad I read down the thread before I made a crass commented on the missing olives. And though I'm sure it's not traditional, sometimes I sprinkle some capers on top if I want the extra piquancy, and some fresh basil en chiffonade just because it's delicious. But am I reading this correctly, some of you use POACHED eggs in a salade nicoise? ← no, that was just me making logic jumps--bond girl mentioned quail eggs and i recently had a dinner where i used them both poached and hard boiled in the same meal, so i yapped about both procedures...

yeah--poach for about 2 minutes, shock in ice water. to hard boil takes about four or five minutes i think. rachel perlow started a thread on them a while ago but i can't find it now... you have to be a little careful not to break the yolk when you open them; the membrane inside the shell is really thick.

if you haven't left yet, be sure to check your local asian market. around here quail eggs are like $4/10 at the market (and i'm not sure why they always seem to come in packs of 8 or 10 instead of a dozen), but they're $1.29/10 at the asian supermarket.

This looks (and I don't use this word lightly) stunning. I see how the edges could be a bit tighter - there's room for geometric refinements but it is a very exciting plate. Could you please explain a bit more thoroughly how this is prepared? ← what he said!

oh man. kevin, do you have a recipe for this? some basic guidelines, if it's a secret? rhubarb season is just about over here and i think i need some...

i thought i was the only person here who gardens in pots... oh the life of the rowhouse dweller. i have three tomatoes in 16" pots taking up much of my backyard. one brandywine, one pineapple, and one that my neighbor gave me which is some heirloom variety that he says is long like a pepper, very dark, and nearly seedless. but he doesn't know the name. i'm pretty psyched, and i hope it works out. in the five summers i've had at this house so far, i've gotten a little closer and a little closer to actually making tomatoes in pots work for us. with this insanely nice spring we've had, and with the crushed eggshells i put in the planting holes and the tomato food and the mulch and whatnot, if they don't work out this year i'm giving up. besides that, english thyme, basil, ashe's savory, mint (the variety was called 'mint julep' but i can't seem to find anything more about it), rosemary... the usual stuff. all in pots.

that is excellent news. i haven't been to deep blue, no. but i have heard good things also.