Pan

BrennaMorgan, thanks for reviving a fun thread. Off the top of my head: Joseph Haydn (a great wit), Fred Rodgers (such a nice man), Leonardo da Vinci (possibly the most well-roundedly brilliant person of all time), and Alma Mahler (what stories she could tell!). And for good measure, Groucho Marx to tell jokes, and Rabbi Hillel to talk about his philosophy, Judaism, and what he thinks of the new religions that have sprung up in the 2,000+ years since his death.

When you talk about potted meat, I assume Pot Roast is such a recipe. My mother cooked a very good pot roast fairly often when I was a kid. The ingredients I remember were stew beef, potatoes, carrots, celery, tomato sauce, red wine of some kind (I think Burgundy was normally used), plenty of peppercorns, some salt, and bay leaves (I'm doubtless leaving out something here). There is nothing wrong with pot roast when it's done well.

Merci, Louisa.

In Malaysia, I always had them cooked, usually in Sayur (a savory side dish for a meal, which involved boiling various kinds of vegetables in coconut milk with plenty of hot pepper). They never tasted bitter and never tasted like banana peel. But though they were kind of fun to eat, I always found them more special to look at on the tree.

Could anyone please tell me if Michel Vignaud in Chablis kept his one star?

That's a great idea!

Wonderful! I look forward to that!

Fascinating stuff! Are there any known ancient Indian, Chinese, Arab, Jewish, Greek, Mayan, Incan, etc. recipes that hadn't been cooked for hundreds or thousands of years and have been revived?

I like Cafe Mogador on St. Mark's Place between 1st Av. and Av. A. It's Moroccan but French-influenced.

What is "relative affordability" in this context?

Is any crab good enough to be worth $100?

This was a very large purple flower, yes?

Are you sure it was fresh? I've never prepared what Malays call "jantung pisang" ("banana heart"), but it should taste like a fresh vegetable, not banana peel! I wonder where those restaurants are getting fresh banana blossoms from. Maybe you could ask them next time.

Why do you think she didn't give it three stars? Because of her objections to the things that "need rethinking"? The review seems like pretty much of a rave until paragraphs 4-6 on page 2.

When was Christmas Day for Serbian Orthodox Christians who keep the new calendar?

Yes, the artichokes are still on the menu. The menu really looks the same as it's been for a long time. There was one special today: a soup that featured canellini beans and I forget what else (pasta, I suppose). I thought of getting it, but my dining partner didn't want it, and I preferred to share everything with her.

I went back to Col Legno tonight with my a friend. There were very few people there on a Tuesday night, and I guess we arrived around 7:30 or so. I would sum up our experience as "Same as it ever was." And that's definitely a good thing. We shared an appetizer of Grilled Wild Mushrooms. I've always liked this. There are a few different types of mushrooms, the largest of which is one portobello. Flavorful mushrooms grilled in extra virgin olive oil with little shreds of fresh basil and a bit of salt. We then shared a Pizza with Sweet Sausage and Mushrooms. It was a very nice pizza, cooked up in the wood oven we were sitting close to (it was warm and toasty for us). My only criticism of it is that I thought the crust was too thick on the outside. It had been divided into four pieces and, thus, was easy to share. Following that, we shared a portion of Papardella con Ragu' di Cinghiale, which was again as good as I remember, which is to say excellent, in this case. The dish is made with good tomatoes, a good deal of rosemary, chopped wild boar meat (cinghiale), and a fair amount of cayenne pepper. I liked the sauce very much and added a relatively small amount of fresh Parmigiano to it, so as not to obscure the taste of the sauce. The staff was kind enough to divide the portion in two and bring out two bowls of half-portions for us, since we had told them we were sharing everything. We also shared a portion of Tiramisu, which had a strong and appealing coffee flavor, was nicely layered, and was not excessively liquid. Service was gracious as usual, and we ate and talked at a leisurely pace and added a couple of extra dollars and change to our tip. With the meal, I drank a very good Chianti (I don't remember the specific name), which had a pleasant woody aftertaste. It would have been a good vino da tavola in the Chianti Country, and at $6/glass, was well priced. I have some sentimental reasons for enjoying a good Chianti because I love Siena and often drank Chianti when I was there. I asked some of the staff whether the restaurant had seen an increase in traffic since Asimov's review appeared, and they laughed and said no. I expressed a little concern about the small number of customers, but they said the restaurant makes money on weekends. This place is worth patronizing, regardless, and I hope some of you choose to go there sometimes instead of waiting for a table at some of the more popular Italian eateries in the East Village. Final point: There was no dish with Ragu' d'Agnello, so either that was a special at some point or I ate it elsewhere.

From robyn: You've gotta go to some cheap Chinese (perhaps especially Chao Zhou) and Dominican restaurants more often and take note of the Pig Ears, Pigfoot Noodle Soup, Pig Intestine dishes, Tripe with Black Bean Sauce, Mondongo, etc. These items are not expensive in such settings. I agree. I am not indignant over the review. But I do think her critics have a point.

If you said that after pouring tea on me or worse, I'd react angrily. I'm sure you disliked management at Disney. Actually, I loved working for Disney. And I wouldn't be so foolish as to pour tea on any of my guests, when I worked at Disney or currently. But beans, don't tell me accidents that required an "I'm terribly sorry!" never happened there. You mean no-one ever poured or dropped anything on a patron? Or they did and said "I understand your concerns"?!

That doesn't make sense to me. In the noonday sun of a Malaysian drought season, you are not going to exert yourself, and if the hot pepper makes you sweat more without tiring yourself out, how does it manage not to cool you?

You could just as easily substitute "Malaysia" for "South La." and make the same statement, and millions of Malaysians would agree with you.

Green peppers. They're lousy for my digestion and don't taste good. At least ripe bell peppers taste good, even though they're still hard on my digestion (though not as bad as green peppers). Hmmmmm...well, mealy peas, mint in any form except for the leaves (mint leaves are delicious and mint tea is one of my preferred drinks). I dislike colas but haven't had anything cooked in them. I'm starting to draw a blank.

If you said that after pouring tea on me or worse, I'd react angrily. I'm sure you disliked management at Disney.

robyn, a few more or less random thoughts: There are rich people in every country in the world, but if you investigated the percentage of Americans who pay more than $200 on dinner on even an occasional basis, I'm willing to bet it wouldn't pass 1%. You're using the word "garbage" advisedly because it used to mean "intestines." It doesn't matter to me whether people eat offal or not, but the question is whether a critic needs to eat offal at a place where that's a specialty, and I think it's probably best to focus on that narrower question. If you'd like to start a thread of "offal machismo," I think the General forum is probably the most appropriate place for that. Ms. Burros, thanks for commenting in this thread.

Leah, you mention Moussaka with ground pork. To my knowledge, I've always had it with ground beef, not pork. Assuming you're sure it was in fact pork, do you think using pork might be part of a regional Macedonian version of the dish?