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Ah Leung, I've noticed white pepper several times cropping up as an ingredient in the dishes you've presented in pictorials. Is the use of white as opposed to black pepper mainly for (lack of) color or because of a subtle difference in taste between white and black pepper, or is it just a personal preference?

The name is right, but the location isn't. Courtesy of www.superpages.com: Stuyvesant St. crisscrosses from below 9th to 10th, going precisely west to east from 3rd Av. to 2nd Av. It is the only street in Manhattan that actually goes due east/west according to the compass.

Vegetable or fruit, as long as you can peel it and eat the insides, it's likely to be safe to eat raw, assuming it's safe to eat it raw in general.

Well, according to Merriam-Webster, either form is acceptable for the plural. Ah Leung, your abbreviations are the ones I'm familiar with, for whatever that's worth. How salty and shrimpy does the ultimate dish taste? I'm not too familiar with that type of shrimp sauce and very familiar with the much darker Malaysian/Indonesian belacan/terasi.

Yes, I agree that you'd want your lamb to be a little pink as well. What makes lamb "gamy" is the fat. When my father cooks lamb, he cuts off all visible fat. The meat tastes great but has no gaminess whatsoever and could almost be mistaken for really good beef. My father usually makes uses the lamb in Indian dishes, where the masala (spices) gives it even more flavor.

That doesn't sound strange to me; it reminds me of some types of tagines.

T natty peanut butter? I'm not getting that. Interesting how you're working photos into this blog.

There has been some discussion of Del Frisco. I think it's fair to characterize the appraisals as mixed and somewhat weighted toward the negative side, but look at the following threads, and post there if you have more thoughts about this establishment. The Del Frisco thread. Del Frisco vs Wolfgang vs Ben Benson's

Flavor.

I have to admit, to a gourmand like me, yes using commercially available curry powder is a shortcut. However, it is commonly (and authentically) used all over Southeast Asia, just as much as soy sauce is, especially in a case like this when it is used to accent a recipe. In Thailand, one would find many spice shops selling wonderful house blends of curry powder, indefinitely better than the Madras version I use. However, my focus of the demo was on the pastry. Hence less time (and money) was spent on the spices. ← That makes sense. Thanks for the reply, and for giving so generously of your time!

The thought of someone trying to eat all that oil is very amusing.

Qing, how did you establish that these restaurants are the most famous in the world? Perhaps it's ironic that I've never heard of Mr. Chow.

Is that a joke, Chris? I'd have anything from Moishe's, my local kosher bakery -- including any of their least-good things -- rather than something from Au Bon Pain.

The thing that's fearsome to me about the fish filet dish is not the whole chillies but the amount of chili oil in the pot! I've happily ordered and eaten dishes like the second one, though. Hmm...second though, those aren't whole chilis, as in the dish I sometimes get at Grand Sichuan that has more chilis in it than chicken. When you put a bunch of whole chilis in a dish, it doesn't get as hot as when you chop the chilis in two pieces, as it looks like they might have done. I see chili seeds on the meat. So I think I'd eat that with a lot of rice (except that I don't like frog, in any case). I'm something like Yuki, in that I like food that has a pretty strong chili bite, but there are amounts of chili oil beyond which my stomach has problems. I do typically (and deliberately) eat up a certain number of the chilis in a dish, though.

Salad is very common, though. But I'd tend to agree that Americans generally eat more raw fruits than raw vegetables.

Did she have aspirations for sainthood? The saints who died of self-induced starvation are an interesting topic to consider (Catherine of Siena is the one that comes to my mind).

This is really neat, and everything looks good! However, I wonder whether the Madras curry powder is an "inauthentic" shortcut. I can't imagine a curry puff in Malaysia (for example) being made that way, though I could be wrong and stand to be corrected. I know that Thais use various curry pastes and don't always make their own, but do they use pre-made curry powders much? Yes, Wendy. Curry puffs are pretty much a kind of samosa.

Duck grivelach! I think my grandmothers would approve.

Frankly, I never liked panzanella that much when I was in Siena; I found it too vinegary. That said, what's that silvery thing near the bottom of your picture, slightly left of center?

I'm glad you're blogging, Stash. I'm sure you could snag a reservation at Lupa at short notice, if you want to go there this week. I dunno, probably L'Impero, too? Enjoy blogging.

It's amazing that you got a picture of the steam coming up from the boiling sauce! You are really cooking and shooting photos at the same time? I can see a cookbook in your future, if you want to do that. Your instructions are very clear, and the step-by-step pictures just add exponentially to the quality of the instruction.

Newer great thread started and with a bunch of photos by Adam Balic: Lithuania Food Images Also, this thread has links to all of hzrt8w's Chinese Food Pictorials (of which there are already several more than there were when I last posted to this thread). Also, I can't help mentioning that among all the great foodblogs, the latest one, by Chrisamirault, was one of the best.

Moopheus, I think they've decreased the amount of crystallized ginger in their ginger ice cream, or at least that was my reaction the last time I got some, within the past two or three weeks. Could this be a consistency problem?

I like lamb. In fact, I specifically ordered a lamb and tofu skin in casserole dish at Congee Village tonight because I thought it would be good. It was soothing and pleasant, and there was a lot of it, so I have leftovers for tomorrow.

It's fitting that the last dinner you'll be covering for the blog was beautiful. Thank you for giving so generously of your time this week.