slkinsey

Ask if they have pea shoots. If they do, then get them stir fried with garlic. They also do a good baby bok choi in a similar style. Look under "seasonal vegetables." I also like the "green parot with red mouth" which is an interesting cold dish. Spinach leaves and stems (separately) are layered on top of each other and drizzled with red oil. I like the Sichuan pickled cabbage with red oil appetizer, but it is very spicy. You can also get it without the red oil. At a buck fifty, you almost can't afford to not order it. There are several good potato dishes. Sour string beans (actually long beans) with minced pork is excellent. The preserved trunip [sic] Sichuan style is a nice spicy appetizer. And, if you want to eat Klingon food, try the spicy and reppery [sic] mung bean noodle appetizer. The vegetable dishes are also a great way to temper the spice of some of the other dishes.

Interesting article in New York Magazine about what some NYC places are doing for iced coffee. It seems that using frozen coffee cubes is catching on in a big way.

My experience is that you don't need to let the batter rest as long if you make it in the blender. Just long enough for the bubbles to come out of it.

I think you answer this question yourself below: (Emphasis mine.) I can't stress how important this can be in making a good pizza at any level, regardless of the quality of the ingredients. Loading on the cheese (and any other toppings) is a sure-fire way to a mediocre pizza -- especially when you consider that it's often a huge pile of crappy cheese. Also, if you are using crappy cheese, and I'm not saying Johnny's does, using a light hand with the cheese and a decent sauce can go a long way towards getting the most out of the ingredients. And, you're right. . . there's no reason 75% of the pizzeria in the greater New York City area can't be turning out pizza on this level. In fact, I think overall quality would take a huge leap up if pizzeria owners simply started using half the cheese they're currently using. Sounds like an interesting place.

I would argue that the preponderance of the best scientific evidence we have on lobsters does not agree with this assertion. See, e.g., this thread. I don't know how long they spend in tanks. I would assume that it might, in some circumstances, be as many as six months. However, again, we have to be careful not to anthromorphize here. We're talking about a situation that is not dissimilar from keeping a big box of scorpions or cockroaches. This is to say that what seems like an "awful environment" to you and me, may not be so awful to the lobster. The one thing I do know about lobsters is that they apparently stop eating once they are in captivity (sorry, I don't have a citation). This places serious limitations on how long lobsters can be kept in tanks prior to finding their way to the table, and the quality if the meat declines the longer the lobsters spend in the tank. On the other hand, there is no substitute for live lobster. Frozen or cooked and refrigerated is not even an approximation, even to lower quality too-long-in-the-tank lobster. So, what is one to do? If we decide to eliminate lobster tanks, that would be fine with me, I suppose. I'm from New England and I live in NYC. I have plenty of access to short-time-out-ot-the-ocean lobster. But, although they can be found as far south as North Carolina, the range of decent quality Homarus americanus is more or less from here and North (with quality generally increasing in the colder waters of the North) on the East coast only. Eliminate lobster tanks, and Keller's sous vide lobster will only be available at Per Se. None of the fancy California restaurants will be able to serve lobster, lobster will be unknown in the better dining establishments of Chicago. People in Texas will never be able to eat lobster. Etc. Interestingly, lobster was once known as trash food for the servants. At one time there was a New England law that you could feed your servants lobster only three times a week. Anything more was considered inhumane. It was only with the development of modern transportation (and live tanks) that lobster came to be considered a luxury food.

Yea, the beauty of carbon steel is that it's so inexpensive it's not a big deal to buy a specialized pan (omelette, fish, crêpe, etc.) that really isn't useful for anything else.

Some good points all around here. For me, small and local has always been more important than organic. But, on the other hand, I am in a demographic where I can afford to pay for that sort of thing. Speaking more on the subject of local, rancho_gordo brings up an interesting point with respect to WF selling organic cherries from Chile and that sort of thing. This makes me wonder, however, just how much we can really feed this country with strictly local foods. For someone living in, say, Wyoming or Minnesota, the selection of available local fresh produce is not very good most of the year. It is, of course, easy for someone living in or around the Central Valley to proclaim that we should all be eating fresh and local year-round, because those things are available most of the year in that area of the country (that said, especially in the Southern part of the valley, much this agriculture is hardly what I'd call "sustainable" considering the effect of all that irrigation). So... is there really that much difference between someone in Austin buying organic cherries grown in Chile and someone from Chicago buying organic lettuce grown in the Valley? I'm not sure either way, but it is a question that's been on my mind, especially since I don't think many people are aware of the ecological issues of Central Valley agriculture (and that's where much of the year-round American-grown produce comes from). Should we all be eating preserves in the off-season? That's got to be a pretty tough situation for someone who lives in a colder climate.

BACON CRÊPES?!?! Must. Have. Bacon. Crêpes. And I can make them sound exotic, possibly even healthy if I call them spekpannenkoek.

I think I'm going to make one of these.

It's a difference in pans, recipes, techniques and goals. For something like the Keller dish BryanZ posted, my usual crêpes would never work. You need something lighter and more delicate. My crêpe recipe is fairly robust. It is also the case that a nonstick pan can create crêpes that are both thinner, more evenly colored and overall less colored than a those from a traditional crêpe pan.<br>Here are some examples of different crêpe batters.<br><br> <table> <tr> <th>SLK's Standard</th> <th>Delicate Dessert</th> </tr> <tr> <td>1C AP flour</td> <td>1C AP flour</td> </tr> <tr> <td>1 1/3 C milk/water</td> <td>2 C milk</td> </tr> <tr> <td>3 eggs</td> <td>4 eggs</td> </tr> <tr> <td>3 T melted butter</td> <td>4 T melted butter</td> <tr> <td>(no sugar)</td> <td>4 T sugar</td> </table> <br>As you can see the second recipe, which makes a thinner and more delicate dessert crêpe, has more egg, more liquid and more fat. There are many variations. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that those really light, thin crêpes of Keller's have even more egg and liquid (and also that they are cooked at a lower temperature on nonstick).

FWIW, I like the Al-Wadi brand of pomegranate molasses, which is what most of the good bars around NYC seem to use. Flatiron Lounge seems to have quite the way with pomegranate. Seems like I've had a number of drinks with pomegranate there over the years, including their outstanding "pomegranate martini" which I believe is called something like the Persephone.

Cool! I remember this place from back in 1981 or so. It was tiny and all in one room... including the kitchen and the dishwasher. I remember one day my mother came home from eating dinner there and she had to hang her coat outdoors for a week to get the squid smell out of it! And yea, these guys were selling squid (in the early days, that's practically all they cooked) long before it caught on in America.

That will come with more experience and tweaking on your part. I doubt it's a fault of the ceramic cooktop, because the crêpe pan should be perfectly flat and therefore have uniformly good contact with the cooktop. More likely what it has to do with is just not spreading the batter around quickly enough. My technique is to pour all the batter into the center of pan all in one go while holding the handle with the other hand, then lift the pan off the burner immediately and tip the pan to swirl the batter evenly around the pan. Usually, by the time I finish swirling, the crêpe batter is almost completely set and it's just a matter of waiting a few moments for the crêpe to start looking "done" on the top before flipping it over. Keep in mind that my stack was the result of a quatruple batch at least! I also use 1/3 C in my pan. But you have to understand that we have large crêpe pans. There's no way you could fill that pan with 2-3 T of crêpe batter. These look pretty good to me. I think anyone would be happy to have crêpes like that -- especially on your first real use of the pan. You're definitely getting the hang of it. As I'm sure you can see, once you get going it's easy to just bang them out. I think you nailed this one in suggesting that it might not be that helpful in the context of a home kitchen. Unless you are either making crêpes for one or have a big stove and multiple crêpe pans. Any advantage that would be gained from this (excellent) technique would be lost by holding the crêpes in a warming oven while the others are finished one at a time.

From the Pegu Club thread in the NY Forum: This is one drink where the brand of gin makes a big difference. There really is no substitute for Junipero in this one, although Tanqueray might do in a pinch. ← The name of this drink is curiously commonly misspelled, even on bar menus. It is Juniperotivo, after Junipero gin, but one does see Juniperitivo. Regardless, it's a tasty drink and, like the Last Word, is fairly friendly to modification with other spirits.

Don't forget that you want to reseason the pan just before using it. My crêpe recipe goes something like this (based on the recipe from Julia Child's "The Way to Cook"): 1 cup : AP flour 3 : large eggs 2/3 cup : milk 2/3 cup : water Pinch : kosher salt 3 Tbsp : melted butter Liquids and eggs into the blender. Turn it on and drizzle in the flour until combined. Let the crêpe batter sit preferably for an hour before using it. You can thin it out with more water for a thinner, more delicate crêpe.

My crêpe batter tends to bubble somewhat immediately after it hits the pan. It's usually a race to get the batter spread out over the whole surface of the pan before it sets up. You're talking about an offset spatula. I've never found them to be particularly useful for making crêpes. The spatula shown in my picture is called a Peltex spatula. I like this one for crêpes because it's thin enough to get under the crêpe with ease, and the wider surface area affords more support. The Peltex is also awesome for delicate fish. That said, if I've really hit the groove, I don't need any spatula at all. I just shake the pan to loosen the crêpe after it has set up, and then flip it in the air. No spatula required. I've never had a sticking problem. If you are having this problem, it may be partly due to undercooking the crêpes (this is a guess based on thinking that your cooking temperature may be too low). I also have a procedure I use when making crêpes in bulk: When a crêpe is done, I slide it out of the pan onto a thick, clean dishtowel. The crêpe then cools off while I am pouring the batter for the next crêpe. After I have flipped the new crêpe, I transfer the cooled crêpe to the stack and then slide the new crêpe onto the dishtowel. This allows each crêpe to "steam out" a bit before being added to the stack, and I think it helps to reduce the risk of sticking.

I'm not exactly sure. Around 9 or 10 inches, I'd say. Yea. You season carbon steel just like you do cast iron. Sometimes if I haven't used it in a long time, I'll scour it a little bit with steel wool and reseason it. In fact, you're sort-of supposed to reseason the pan every time you use it. Heat it up with some shortening in the pan, let it stay hot for a while and then wipe it out. I find that getting the temperature just right is key to avoiding sticking, but once you hit that sweet spot you can easily bang out crêpe after crêpe after crêpe in short order.

Some action shots with the black steel crêpe pan:

There's actually an article on snopes.com about the various legends surrounding the creation of the champagne coupe. According to the article, it was designed in England around 1663. That would rule out any inspiration from Marie Antoinette, who was not born until 1755.

Interestingly, the jist of what I got out of the "Good Pigs" panel at this years Big Apple Barbecue Block Party is that what the pigs are fed and how they are treated has a much larger impact on the flavor of the pork than breed -- exactly what jsolomon says. As one of the panelists mentioned, "when it comes to pork, there is Spanish pork and there is everything else." What makes Spanish pork so great? Well, some of it is breed, but a lot of it has to do with the fact that they are free roaming and fed on acorns. And let me tell you, when you bite into a piece of jamon iberico, you can absolutely taste those acorns (among other things, it produces a softer fat). American pigs used to be fed on peanuts, but this is virtually unknown today. Interestingly, one of the panelists brought up the essential unsustainability of the current system in use today and pointed out that 150 years ago there were just as many pounds of meat on the hoof in America as there are today, but it was all grass-fed and free-range in the form of bison.

Exactly. I'm terrible at math, so I tend to avail myself of my Palm Pilot's calculator just to add the 20% and divide it up into equal shares. But it's interesting to observe that people who will niggle over a couple of bucks are often the same ones that will go cheap on the tip. For this reason, I like to be the one figuring out shares of the bill so I can make sure the tip percentage is appropriate.

Like many of us, I tend to just split the bill evenly unless someone's order is significantly lower priced. Usually the difference isn't more than a couple of bucks either way. For example, had the OP's check been split evenly, her share would have been $8.50 instead of $7 -- not enough to worry about for most people. This makes it easy for me to simply whip out my Palm Pilot, multiply the total by 1.2 (this adds 20%) and divide by the number of parties at the table. So, in this example, I would have simply said, "it's about ten bucks and a quarter apiece." I'd be likely to do this if we were splitting the bill item-by-item as well. Again, in this example I'd say something like, "okay, with tip it comes out to twelve bucks for you and eight-fifty for me." If someone complains, that gives you an opportunity to say something about the basis for tipping 20%.

Well... a "Marie Antoinette" glass is really a curved champagne coupe -- so called on the false premise that this stemware shape was modeled after the shape and size of Marie Antoinette's (presumably rather diminutive) breasts. I'd say that a Marie Antoinette is more something like this, maybe even a little more shallow:

There is a point to be made here that not all fast food is bad and not all fast food is bad for you. They have been making fast foods in Mexico and Singapore and Vietnam and lots of other places all over the world that are perfectly healthful and absolutely delicious for centuries.

So... a little while back, I noticed that a new restaurant had opened up on the Southeast corner of 109th Street and Broadway where there had previously been a filthy fried chicken shop into which I had never ventured. The restaurant was called Rack & Soul and purported to be a half-barbecue, half-soul food restaurant. The barbecue side of Rack & Soul is designed and overseen by John Wheeler, a homebuilder and competitive barbecuer from Mississippi who comes in once a week to tweak the smokers, etc. The soul food side of the restaurant is run by Charles Gabriel from Charles' Southern Style Kitchen in Harlem, where he is known for his pan-fried chicken. I was eager to give it a try. The first time I visited, with Eric_Malson, was unfortunately a disappointment. The restaurant had just opened, and was slammed with customers (interestingly, they were around 75% families of Israeli Jews out for some smoked pork after the end of Passover). We were told it would take at least 30 minutes for our food to come to the table. It didn't take that long, but when the food arrived it wasn't particularly impressive. The menu has no appetizers, but each dish comes with two sides from an interesting list, and all the sides are available as invidiual orders. They were already out of pulled pork, so we each ordered the combination platter of fried chicken and baby back ribs with collard greens and macaroni and cheese. The ribs were undercooked, with none of that "pulling apart tenderness" you'd like to see. The fried chicken was not particularly crisp. More to the point, everything was critically underseasoned. I left feeling like I'd give them another chance, and hoping they'd learn how to use the salt and pepper shakers by my next visit. On several subsequent visits, I have not been disappointed. The fried chicken, as expected from someone with Mr. Gabriel's pedigree and reputation, has been crispy and tender with a nicely salty skin. The barbecue has been performing at a much higher level. I have so far tried the pulled pork, baby back ribs and beef short rib from among their barbecue offerings. All were nicely smokey and cooked properly, although the pulled pork could have bee fattier/moister for my taste. The beef short rib is particularly well done, smokey, sticky and unctuous. They also offer bbq chicken wings, bbq salmon and a bbq half chicken. I'll probably try the salmon one day, and they also offer ox tails which I'd like to sample in the future. The sides have also been very good. Long-cooked collard greens have clearly benefitted from spending time in the pot with copious amounts of salty pork products. Asparagus comes heaped in a ridiculously large pile of green stalks. They even have excellent Belgian waffles, creating a serious temptation to double-order the waffle sides with a full order of fried or smothered chicken. Other offerings include broccoli, string beans, baked beans, black-eyed peas, lima beans, candied yams, cole slaw, stewed okra, mararoni and cheese, yams, white rice, mashed potatoes, potato salad and french fries. I've bad the baked beans, mac & cheese and potato salad since my first visit. These have been good to very good. Must-tries for me are the rest of the legumes and the mashed potatoes. Rack & Soul does have a modest and interesting wind list, including some barbecue and fried-chicken friendly wines like reisling. There are also several interesting beers on the menu, such as Gosser and Abita. I wouldn't know about any of this, because I always have a bottomless glass of either lemonaid or iced tea. These are seriously old-school concoctions, and heavy on the sugar in a way that can sneak up on you after a few glasses. More than a few times I've left Rack & Soul feeling like I needed an insulin injection. So far I have tried two of the desserts: rather uninteresting and dry pecan pie and an delicious, moist and absolutely gigantic slice of red velvet cake that is not to be missed. Be forewarned, however. This is easily enough cake for three to four people, and it is very sweet. So... Rack & Soul is a nice neighborhood place and a welcome addition. I wouldn't say that they're quite on the same level as Dinosaur, but the relative ease in getting there and getting a table for those of us on the Upper Upper West Side more than makes up for the difference. If you're in the area, I encourage you to check it out.