Pan

PJ, I searched the Cooking board for "chestnuts" and came up with three pages of results. Some of the results are for "water chestnuts" or "chestnut flour," but some are for chestnuts.

This is called belacan in Malay and terasi in Indonesian. Belacan is used all the time to cook vegetables - especially green vegetables like kangkung (water spinach), petai, asparagus, bayam (something like spinach), and long beans or string beans. It is also used in a sambal with hot pepper and such-like for ulam, a dish of raw vegetables. Here's a useful link: Malaysian greens with shrimp paste

I'll have to go there after work one of these days. Do they sell them loose or/and in bags? Any unsalted ones?

Well, Sammy, they may indeed fail, but I had mediocre meals at Lutece, Chanterelle, and Bouley after they had been given 4 stars by the New York Times. Have any of those places closed? Restaurants don't even have to serve all comers good food, let alone great food, in order to stay in business. All they have to do is please enough people enough of the time. And I do think that sometimes, upper-end restaurants pay special attention to "big shots" and don't care about "ordinary" people. Of course, whether that will be true of these new restaurants, we can't possibly know in advance. There are some places that really do have pride in their work and serve wonderful meals to people who may never have a chance to come back (for example, Grand Vefour in Paris), and I hope the new places are among these. If they are, I hope they do succeed and flourish in New York.

Thanks, Sammy. That was very clearly put.

Sammy, Jo Jo used to be my favorite restaurant in the pre-renovation days. I went once or twice after the renovation and found the food a little off pre-renovation standards, but the service really deteriorated. Mind you, this is all at least several years ago and doesn't cover a large number of visits. Jo Jo used to be my family's favorite birthday restaurant, and there are 4 members of my immediate family, so that might have amounted to 3-4 visits a year at most.

A day later, I found out that one can pay for eating too much mujadara, or at least I figured that was what caused the excess of wind in my bowels. Of the foodstuffs I took home, I've enjoyed them all so far, except that the bagged Iranian pistachios have been a bit disappointing. I think the ones in bins up front are probably fresher and include fewer bad ones. Pity they don't have unsalted raw ones up there anymore. Last time, I got those and simply roasted them in my oven. Oh, FYI, those Iranian sour prunes are very good laxatives.

Yes, Lreda. Enjoy, and when you have a chance, please post a meal report.

Thanks for directing us to this interesting review, Soba, though the place is a bit expensive for me. I wouldn't worry about Atlantic Ocean water. I mean, do we really think our fresh water is so safe by comparison to ocean water?

Welcome to eGullet, Cephalopunk, and thanks for posting the link. I don't know the place, but I, too, am intrigued after reading that article, which really sells the eatery effectively. I'd encourage anyone to look at that review as much for an example of good food writing as for the more obvious purpose of reading about one particular restaurant.

That's a very interesting and quotable line. Please elaborate when you have a chance. Have you been to Chikalicious? Would you say Chika & Company's desserts are both interesting and delicious?

I almost chose that line as my sig. What kind of music, if any, is played on the sound system at Amma?

I guess there are benefits to hanging out with a chef.

Am I a salesman? No, and I don't have to be. While I was eating dinner, I read raves from the Times, Time Out New York, and the Post that were up on the wall. But if I'm not the first to discover the mujadara at Kalustyan's, I'm not the less appreciative because of that. As I told the counter man, that mujadara is easily 10 times better than any I've had anywhere else. If you've gotten mujadara in some felafel place and found it dry and uninteresting, get it at Kalustyan's. It'll be a revelation to you. I also got a Syrian-style dish with eggplant and chickpeas which was somewhat spicy in a pleasant way. That dish was also great, and the chickpeas were so fresh and high-quality! (But of course, you say, what other quality would they be at the premiere source for Middle-Eastern specialty goods in Manhattan if not the whole city?) I also ordered string beans in a tomatoey sauce that were just OK. The counter man included a salad with tahini on it, several olives, a couple of slices of pickled turnip (potent - don't bite a large quantity at once unless you know what you're doing) and some large cornichons on my tray. He later gave me some samples: A cup of delicious lentil soup; a great grape leaf - so fresh; and a piece of concentrated, aromatic felafel. The whole thing cost me $6.95, plus the two dollars I insisted the counter man take as thanks for those samples. Of course, I also spent $47 more on groceries. My normal approach to Kalustyan's is to enter without a clear idea of what I might buy and buy whatever strikes my fancy. The first thing I looked for were unsalted Iranian pistachios, which turned out to be in bags toward the back. I then got some masala cashews, which eventually turned out to cost more than I expected, and some Iranian sour plums. All the way in the back, I looked at the fresh goods and cheeses and bought some Armenian string cheese with hot pepper flakes and parsley. I then went upstairs and decided to buy the food I mentioned before and eat it there. I then asked the women at the counter what tasty bread they'd recommend and bought some methi roti. I have not tried any of the things I took home, but I look forward to it. One note about Kalustyan's as a place to eat: There are only three small tables. It ain't no restaurant. But the food is good and cheap - if you don't do a big shopping at the same time.

You don't have to live here to come by and visit!

It was a very satisfying meal. That tofu definitely had ground sesame seeds in it. Hiroko said she figures the sesame seeds were put in at the same time as the beans, which would account for the uniform tofu/sesame texture and taste. It is truly a gourmet food!

For a late dinner tonight, I wanted something light and not too hard on the stomach, so I suggested this place on E. 9 St. between 2nd and 3rd to a friend I was out with. When I'm by myself, I won't wait a long time to get into a restaurant, but our wait of "20 minutes" turned out to be a good deal less than that. My friend is Japanese, and I asked her to order for me. I didn't take notes and can't find a menu online, so please bear with my descriptions, as I am no expert on Japanese cuisine and don't know the names of everything by memory. My friend got some buckwheat beer, which was rather good. I generally dislike ordinary beer (and I like lambic but drink it in small sips and have a hard time finishing a glass), but I liked this combination of beer and the unique dark taste of buckwheat, and had no trouble quaffing a couple of glasses. We had an appetizer of tofu that had been made from a mixture of sesame seeds and soybeans. It was rich, cheesy in a good way, and kind of spectacular (impressive). The other appetizer was Konnyaku, and it, too, was great. Those in the know will be able to describe it much better than I, but I understand it's made from a root vegetable. The result is chewy, tasty shreds, combined with slivers of ginger, shreds of cucumber, vinegar, sugar, water, and I suppose soy sauce. For mains, two soba soups were ordered. One is a river fish soba soup that Hiroko told me is a specialty of Kyoto. The other one, which I ate, had sticky yam paste in it, though not much of it. Hiroko is from Shikoku, where the food is salty and not sweet, whereas in Tokyo, the food is sweeter and less salty, she says. She was not entirely satisfied, as she felt both broths were too sweet (to Tokyo taste, probably) - and she found her fish too salty. To my taste, the fish was excellent, and both broths were tasty, though the one with the fish was a bit sweeter than the other one and I liked my broth better. I was surprised by the aromatic taste of the leaf in the soup, which I had expected to be cilantro or parsley - it was a moment of the spectacular in a subtle noodle soup. Hiroko found the soba itself tasty, and I enjoyed its texture. For dessert, we shared some black sesame ice cream, another thing I had never had before. At first, it tasted like vanilla; then, the black sesame seeds kicked in; and then, some bits of sesame crackle on the dish below the ice cream kicked in. So the dessert was both subtle and spectacular. A couple at the table next to us had their dessert during the early part of our meal. They had different ice creams, but one of them was clearly green tea, and it came with some kind of caramely walnuts or something and looked well worth having some other time. The tea we were served was also very good. Hiroko commented that the soba is better at Soba-Ya than at the much more expensive Honmura in the West Village. Do you agree? I haven't been there so I have nothing to say other than that my dinner at Soba-Ya was pleasant and worth repeating. One other thing Hiroko mentioned was that she usually has soba with dipping sauce at Soba-Ya and didn't even realize they had soba soups.

Sounds lovely. What's the cheese that they use in the soup like?

Fat Guy: And people who just walked in, like me. Yep. Cool!!!! SobaAddict70: I don't like duck's tongue, but gimme some cold jellyfish anytime!

Welcome to eGullet, stringcheese. One caution about posting recipes: As I understand it, eGullet's copyright-protection policy is that recipes cannot be copied directly out of a book or quoted in full directly from a website, but you are permitted to paraphrase the recipes.

Fat Guy, there was something I wanted to add about Grand Sichuan Chelsea (which, of course, preceded the Midtown location by several years): I think the Chinese clientele came as word got around that the chef had moved from the original Canal St. location to 24 St. I don't think they were attracted by the preexisting non-Chinese clientele to any great extent. Of course, this is all guessing on my part. What do you think?

You make a lot of sense, Fat Guy. And yeah, I think you're right that there weren't so many Chinese people eating at Grand Sichuan early on, though one could also say that neither location was nearly as crowded generally as now, either. Actually, I tried the Chelsea location simply because I had passed the place a few times. I was shocked at how good it was, whereupon I told my parents, posted to Chowhound, etc. (No, I'm not claiming credit for the restaurant's success!)

Does anyone use Ada Boni's Il Talismano della Cucina anymore? That was my mother's basic Italian cookbook, and it has good basic recipes in it. Very practical, too. My parents claim that that was the classic Italian cookbook when they got it (back in the 50s, I guess).

Alicia, if your husband eats eggs, what about a souffle? Oh, too much egg texture, I guess. The other thing I thought about was something with corn and beans (which together give complete protein). A vegetarian chili with that cornbread?

I essentially agree, Hest88. A restaurant with all or mostly Chinese people in it can really suck, but if I see nothing but non-Chinese faces in a Chinese restaurant, I take that as an indication that the food, if not bad, is probably not authentic (there, another loaded word) and that I probably wouldn't think much of it. Probably an especially good sign is when there are several 4-tops or some big tables taken by Chinese people in a restaurant in an area outside of a Chinatown. And I give Grand Sichuan in Chelsea as an example of that.