Pan

Miracle Grill, here in New York, makes a flourless Ancho Chocolate Cake which is really good. The subtle smokey bite of the ancho chili with the rich chocolate really works.

Thanks for that link, Alinka! The post by Надюля at 10.09.2005 - 20:25 on p. 16 of the thread is pretty interesting. Fried eggs with tomato slices fried with the eggs. I can't read Russian, so I don't know what Надюля wrote about the dish. Is that one you're familiar with? Also, anything more you can tell us about what MaKosh posted at 18.08.2005 - 16:26 on p. 13 (2nd-to-last post on the page)? Looks like some kind of terrine of fish layered with thick plain omelette, accompanied by sour cream, mint, and some flowers that I figure are just for decoration. Another one: What are the berries in the omelette with asparagus spear alongside it that Зоя posted at 9.08.2005 - 08:55 on p. 12? (There's another dish further down that page that might have tasted good but would belong on the "Dinner II" thread here.)

They didn't weigh it down with extreme amounts of salt, like everything I ate in Galicia? I've had some terrific, unrubbery octopus at Greek and Italian restaurants. I've also had some good octopus dishes in Chinese restaurants, but cuttlefish is more common in Chinese restaurants here in New York. And Chinese like more chewiness, so keep that in mind if you're thinking of ordering squid, cuttlefish, or octopus at one. You are unlikely to get the kind of perfect texture I get every time at a good Greek restaurant like Pylos, which is in my neighborhood.

Good night. Thanks for sharing a few days in your life. It was interesting and I definitely doubt any other foodblog will be much like yours.

I had dinner at Chinese Mirch today. I was not that impressed. Before I start the main body of my report, I'll note that small containers (shotglass-sized or so) of red chili paste and bird's eye chilis pickled in light vinegar (as you'll find in places like Chao Zhou) were on the table. It was good that they were. I started off with Crispy Okra. As I was eating it, I was thinking "This would be good bar food." It tasted of the oil that it had been fried in, salt, and some spices, but had essentially no chili bite. And this in a dish that had been given one star as "moderately hot." I told the waiter "This is good, but it needs more chili powder." My solution was to use the red chili paste as a dip, which improved things a good deal. For my main dish, I had ordered the Honey Chili Lamb, which got two stars as "hot," but the waiter told me it was kind of sweet and that if I wanted hot, I should get the Crispy Szechuan Lamb, which was spicier and better, so I agreed to that. Well, the Szechuan Lamb was not that great. It didn't have a very complex taste, and though it had pieces of three bird's eye chilis, the chili bite hadn't distributed much throughout the rest of the dish. My solution was to use the bird's eye chilis pickled in light vinegar, which also benefitted the dish by adding some sourness to it. I got a dessert: Two pieces of flatbread stuffed with date paste, with a chocolate sauce that was perhaps too strong and some vanilla ice cream. Dessert was pleasant, and constituted the best part of the meal. It seems that the restaurant does not lack for customers, many of whom are Indians who no doubt miss the Chinese food they used to get in India (but are they really getting it at Chinese Mirch?), but I think that this establishment may be missing their bet. I think that they should expand and put in a big bar, so that they can make money selling more drinks and people can have things like the crispy okra and the chicken wings and battered shrimp with what looked like sweet chili dips as accompaniment for their drinks. The type of music they were playing and its volume level (not really, really loud but loud enough for a bar) also was suitable for a bar, but they'd need a separate section with lower lighting, and just plain more space. As a restaurant, well, it cost me including tip $40, and I could have gotten a much better meal at Grand Sichuan for closer to $25, so I don't think I'll be going back soon.

TP, looks like you all had a big feast! Where is the establishment located? I'm also curious about the musicians: Were they hired by the store or did they play for tips?

And beautiful flowers and leaves. Good luck with the hurricane! I hope it doesn't hit Florida and goes back out to sea and dies out, somehow.

Fresh lychees are available in the US in large part because they're grown in Florida, though I've also bought Israeli ones. I guess Israel doesn't have Medflies?

Joie, what's the sour element in that dessert?

It sucks that you had a lousy time at Yummy Noodles, but at least as far as their food is concerned, I found it quite acceptable tonight. I got the Pig's Heart Casserole again. It may indeed be significantly saltier; I think the sauce may have included Worchestershire Sauce, but I enjoyed the dish anyway. (Except for the absence of any noticeable star anise taste, it is otherwise as I described above.) Anyone thinking of ordering it should note that the heart is rather chewy, which is to a Chinese taste. Only at the end was a piece or two tender, after continuing to cook in the casserole while on the table. I also had Chinese Vegetables Noodle Soup, which was basically broth with bok choy and noodles -- not that interesting, but a good companion to the salty, gingery, garlicky casserole. Besides, when I added some hot oil to the broth, it improved greatly. Service was such that I decided it wasn't worth it to do what would have been necessary to get a second cup of tea while still eating, but otherwise, it was OK, and the bill was $13 and change plus tip.

Ditto. I'm eager to hear what you'll be having with that salsa. Where did you get takeout from?

Wow, that looks terrific!

Sweet potato fries, right? What's the seed on them?

Pleasing yourself is all that counts when you're eating by yourself, so I agree that there's nothing to apologize for.

And it worked. Yer creapin' me out Pan ... AAAACK! ← So, you didn't eat your snow peas, eh?

Islands like Bali and peninsulas like the Malay Peninsula have also traditionally depended on the sea for a lot of their sustenance.

How would the recipes in it be different from Julia Child's?

Leave that to us. If you ever come out my way, I'll point you toward a place that will serve you squid and octopus so unrubbery, it'll really open your eyes. I'm sure other members in other locations could do the same for you, though perhaps not in Duluth.

Stash, you use Mrs. Dash a lot. Have you tried substituting some other spices for that? For example, some of the time, you could roast your chicken breasts with cumin and ghee or butter instead of broiling them with olive oil and Mrs. Dash. And you could have your cottage cheese with some good Hungarian paprika. But perhaps you do change things from time to time.

Those daikon sprouts are beautiful! Could you describe the taste? Earthy? A touch of bitterness, like daikon root?

Apicio, I know that the Spanish used to rule the Philippines from Mexico, odd as that sounds (or at least that the two territories were in the same province). Is the Day of the Dead celebrated by Catholics in the Philippines?

I hope the idea is that the chicken came from a kosher butcher and, therefore, is being held up as being selected to higher standards than the average chicken. However debatable that claim is, the other possibility is very bad: Claiming that kosher-slaughtered chicken served in treyf dishes or subject to contact with treyf items is still kosher would constitute fraud, and I believe that would be illegal and punishable under fraud laws designed to protect consumers in certain U.S. states, such as New York. In other words, like Melissa said...

Michael: I think perhaps white pepper is favored by the Chinese. All the cookbooks I've read, TV shows I've see all call for white pepper. Very rarely is black pepper used in Chinese cooking. Examples of such exceptions are Cantonese style beef strips with black pepper sauce, bell peppers and onions, and crab stir-fried with black pepper and fermented black beans. Perhaps the reason is we grow only white pepper in China? It is also my personal preference too. Black pepper tastes "wilder", and white pepper is more tame I think. White pepper seems to go better with Chinese food, especially to a Cantonese who doesn't favor things being too "spicy". ← All that makes sense. But I didn't known that white and black pepper were from different varieties of plants, or that pepper was grown in China.

And it worked. I can't think of anything in my past that's really analogous to the tales you all have told, but....When I was a little kid, I didn't like any part of the chicken except the skin and giblets (I wouldn't eat the meat), and my mother thought that was unhealthy, so she snuck little cubes of white meat into soup she fed to me. She thought she was tricking me, but when I realized what she was doing, I didn't care because the soup tasted good to me.

I agree that cattle are hardly omnipresent in Southeast Asia, especially as compared with India. Cows do exist in Malaysia, but were traditionally used to pull ox carts and for meat -- as far as I know, never for milk. And as of some 30 years ago, beef was uncommon and expensive, whereas goat and waterbuffalo (not to mention pork, for non-Muslims) were more common, and fish was by far the main source of protein for most people. Milk meant either canned sweetened condensed milk, for use in coffee or tea, or evaporated milk, which I don't remember people using much. I don't know if that answered your question, though. But I can tell you that as a 10-to-12-year-old in the Malaysian public school system (Sekolah Kebangsaan), I had a glass of teh o (black tea with sugar and no milk) during recess every day, and the choices were pretty much teh o or te susu (tea with sweetened, condensed milk). It's no wonder that milk was not a choice in the school canteen, which had no 24-hour electricity and, therefore, no refrigeration, but the absence of milk there or any time I visited anyone's house surely shows something about rural Terengganu culture c. 1975.