Pan

I'd tend to agree with jkonick on this.

I'm a little puzzled by the idea that bottled water is basic in the U.S., other than places with horrible tap water, like Santa Barbara. In Europe, yes, as mineral water, but in the U.S.? I also don't relate at all to the idea of boycotting a restaurant in a city with good tap water because it refuses to serve bottled water. Just how is that such an important issue to you?

You look great! (And just for everyone's information, I met Ellen 100+ lbs. ago in the summer of 2005, when she took me to a very good Afghan restaurant and gave me a little tour of some nice parts of the city that I wouldn't have seen on public transportation.)

I'd like to see the report here, but I'd like to see it anywhere and I'm glad that your trip was a good one and not a downer.

But that too could be problematic if insiders see him as the cause for the leaks - and not the leeks he used in his desserts. ← He used leeks in desserts??

John, do you know how the Uros people prevent fires from burning up their reed islands when they cook?

I'm really enjoying the photo-laden reports! I gave up on Mingala well over a decade ago. I wonder if you think I should give it another shot, and also whether speaking Burmese might have made a big difference. My experience is that Mingala used to be a solidly good and dependable restaurant until something around 1993 or 94 and then, with them having changed chefs (the waiter confirmed that for us), it turned into what tasted like a mediocre Chinese-American restaurant. I have to wonder whether they changed chefs again at some point, because the nature of the dishes that used to be our regular orders (Golden Triangles and some salad and noodle dishes -- can't remember which at this point [Rangoon Night Market Noodles?]) had radically changed, such that we thought they had given us the wrong order, and they had not.

I like that dessert at Gnocco, but I'll note (and I think you'll agree with me) that none of their other desserts are anything special at all. The Budino di castagne is unsweet and it's only the combination with the sweet chocolate sauce that makes it a dessert.

The St. Marks location is also very good, but the menu at the 24th St. location is much more similar to that of the ~50th St. location.

Rogan Josh is neither a spice nor a paste, but a dish (and a tasty, rich one at that). Here are Google results.

Not to hijack this great blog, but there are some problems. First of all, cilantro is used a great deal in certain kinds of Indian food, as well as in Cantonese food, etc., etc. Ginger is used in South and Southeast as well as East Asian food. And "curry" is not an ingredient in Indian food, but rather, essentially a catchall term to describe various kinds of dishes -- many of which we'd think of as similar to stews -- using a masala (blend of spices, but one which isn't normally bought already blended in a store).

May, with all the great local fruits you have there, have you considered making pastries with rambutan? Limau nipis? Mangosteen? Mata kucing? Just wondering. If you do, I'd love to see the results!

The neighborhood is called the East Village, and it's the best neighborhood in Manhattan for a diversity of good-value restaurant food. The problem is that many restaurants in the neighborhood don't open until 6. Consider having a snack before the show and a real dinner afterwards. If you want to go that way, get an order of gyoza at Menkui Tei on Cooper Square (extension of 3rd Av.) between St. Marks and 7th St., and then afterwards, you'll have your pick of hundreds of restaurants, depending on what you'd most like to eat and how much you'd like to spend (etc.).

I see. So it wasn't invented until the 18th century, well after Dutch independence. Thanks!

John, thanks for explaining the prices on the menu at MAP. I'm assuming that the food there was several multiples more expensive than the cost of your average meal in Peru? Very interesting-looking meal. Thank you, and I look forward to what I'm sure are beautiful photos from the Altiplano!

I've always liked butterscotch blondies with butterscotch chips and no chocolate. Caramel sounds good too, but not noticeably salty would be to my taste. Other good variations include cappuccino or mocha brownies. I've never had a cheesecake brownie that I've liked. I prefer more of a chocolate taste, and brownies seem to be too small to get enough of a cheesecake flavor or texture for my taste. Then again, I know how much amazing talent there is here, so it's very likely that if one of YOU made the cheesecake brownie, I'd love it!

Brownie and raspberry jam sounds amazing! I'd love to try that. Was the raspberry swirled into the batter?[...] ← No. As I remember, it was in a layer right near the top, with just a bit of dark chocolate over it.

Miss Grimble's was awesome for cheesecake, but they closed their retail outlet years ago and only do a catering and special order business nowadays. I like Two Little Red Hens' cheesecake very much but also like things like their lime/coconut bars.

Dulce de leche Dutch style? Is this a legacy of the time when The Netherlands were a Spanish possession?

I haven't found the e-fu dishes to be very interesting. I like the ginger-scallion lo mein, though.

I won't be baking anything for this thread, but as a consumer of brownies, I can weigh in here: The richest, most delicious brownies I've ever had were raspberry brownies that, believe it or not, I used to buy in a now long-defunct convenience store just east of the corner of 42nd St. and 6th Av. in Manhattan. I don't know where they got them from, but they were made with very fudgy, very dark chocolate and delicious raspberry jam. I gained a lot of weight (14 lbs., I think?) the year that I ate those regularly after classes at CUNY Graduate Center, which was in a building about halfway between 5th and 6th on 42nd St. in those days (1987-88). I definitely agree that cake and brownies are and should be mutually exclusive. Nuts are fine, but I prefer them to be really good nuts like pecans or perhaps hazelnuts, not walnuts, and I'd probably prefer them fairly finely chopped. But I think it's better to use that space for more chocolate or more of some other delicious but non-crunchy ingredient. If you want crunchiness, use some chocolate chips that remain in chip form or crisp the top, as others have said. Hazelnut butter instead of crunchy nuts might be interesting, though.

Those fruit shakes used to be called "Ice Juice" back in the 70s when I visited Yogya, and they were also popular in other parts of Indonesia like Kabanjahe in the Karo Batak country of Sumatra, where I had a wonderful avocado and chocolate ice juice! I loved Mendut and Prambanan and also had the good fortune to see performances of Wayang Wong in Solo and palace dances with the gamelan of the Kraton Yogyakarta that just happened to take place while we were visiting the Kraton. I don't remember if there was also food associated with the dances, but I do remember eating well everywhere I visited in Java. Do you know if there are still performances of Wayang Wong (also called Wayang Orang, if I remember correctly -- usually performances based on the Mahabharata, with Arjuna as the hero) in Solo?

You're guaranteed to be told what you're having at Chinatown Brasserie, but you have to order it. Anywhere else, you're not guaranteed. I know that on weekends, there are carts at Oriental Garden, but I'm not sure how much that's true on weekdays. I don't think the big dim sum eating halls in Chinatown are very good, though. There are relevant threads, but I'm too tired to search them down right now. At least two are "THE BEST" threads, and there are links to them near the top of this forum.

I have to say, I would highly recommend NOT going to Ollie's! Surely, you can get mediocre American-Chinese food at home! For dim sum, the best I've had in New York was at Chinatown Brasserie, but I think that a place in Chinatown may be more fun for your kids (as well as a lot cheaper!). I've liked Oriental Garden best of the Chinatown dim sum places, but they may rush you more than some of the bigger eating halls. One possibility is to show up for an early breakfast at 9 o'clock or so at a place like Harmony Palace. If you do, you can all relax, you're much more likely to get good service, and all the food will be hot. You'd get better dim sum in Flushing than in Chinatown, though, and the subway ride might be fun, because of the views of the Manhattan skyline and also the diversity of the riders on that line. Gastro888 seems to be the foremost authority on Flushing dim sum on this board.

Well, in the foreground from the right, we have ground turmeric and ground chilis, I daresay.