iamthestretch

Jeez, one mention of roast pig and suddenly everyone wants into your pants. I will undertake to look into it. Any further announcements will occur, properly, in the "On a whim ... what are you up to? Um, eating roast pork 'till my farts go: 'Oink!'" thread.

I thought it was New Year that was the big scrum down?

We don't seem to talk that much about Chinese food on the DC board, maybe because most of it is so crappy around here. But lunch today at Hollywood East made me remember how good it can be. They've got a cool menu if you burrow into it and generally have even better specials on the go if you ask. Today, for example, there was shredded five-spice tofu, salt and pepper anchovy and baby cuttlefish in XO sauce. The cooking's also solid enough that you can order standard comfort food like crispy fried shredded beef if you feel like it without setting yourself up for a sloppy, gloppy mess. They also do a big trade in carry-out roasted meats if you're ever passing by. BBQ roast pork, pork ribs, crispy pork, roasted ducks etc. All the Hong Kong good stuff. There's one particular special order item I've been eyeing for years: Whole Roast Pig -- $168. I've got a big table at home and figure all that would be needed is another nine or so hungry volunteers and about six cases of beer...

Just got an email from Belga saying they are now open for lunch. 12-3, Tuesday-Sunday.

Actually, it's open today.

That's not water, connard Americaine. They're French. They piss in your martini! (*This is of course not true, nor should the Grenier family take the idea under advisement.)

I've had two indifferent lunches at the bar. Last time the cooks were flipping the owner off behind his back, which isn't usually a great sign.

The above post has a brief, sad, instructive corollary. Thinking about Mandalay made me want to eat my wife's leftover flat rice noodles for lunch, triggering the following sequence of events: Retrieve noodles from refrigerator, place in microwave for quick reheat, return to study to peruse latest foreign policy outrages in Post, smell something funny, dismiss as olfactory hallucination, idly wonder why dog has disappeared downstairs, there's that smell again ... almost like ... melting plastic, rocket out of seat, freefall down stairs to kitchen, find takeout carton on fire and smoke pouring from microwave, don oven gloves, evacuate blazing carton to back yard, extinguish flames, examine carton, belatedly note standard wire carrying handle, search memory for suitable string of expletives, examine microwave, find roof of said appliance thoroughly blackened, blistered and cracked, curse own stupidity, curse fate, curse ruined noodles, begin making alternative lunch plans.

Sod the historical perspective. Now I know they exist, I demand to be provided with one of these bad boys for my grilling pleasure. I wonder how hot those funky bath tap/burner controls actually get?

Visited Mandalay for lunch yesterday to try their Sundays-only special, DanPauk -- very tender whole chicken thighs in a thick onion curry served over raisin-studded basmati rice. Definitely worth the trip. I've also decided my favorite appetizer is the spring roll salad. Why choose one or the other when you can have them both smooshed together? Yum.

Damn, now I wish I'd taken some pictures, too! We decided against picking the meat off the bone and served the thighs up whole, after browning them in a saute pan with a smidgen of leftover oil. There was some initial squabbling over the resulting crispy skin, but it was so impossibly rich, being the only part that really tasted steeped in fat, that there was plenty to go round in the end. I'd be quite interested to know how much the wide range of cooking times influenced the final product. Ours appeared quite well done after three and a half hours on top of the stove at about 165 degrees. Anyway, thanks for the images, even if they made me fervently wish I hadn't already eaten all of mine.

So? What did you think? I guess it was either bad enough that you don't want to talk about it, or good enough that you're still sleeping it off.

In the spirit of post-mortem, here's what we ended up drinking: Nicolas Feuillatte Brut Rose Champagne NV. Weinbach Tokay-Pinot Gris Cuvee Catherine 2001 with butternut squash soup. Marvellous. I'm a convert to Alsace. Eric Texier Hermitage 2000 with turkey confit. This was recommended as "about as Burgundian as Syrah can get" and went well with the concentration of flavors produced by the unusual turkey preparation. Stellenzicht Weisser Riesling Noble Late Harvest 1998 and R.L. Buller Rutherglen Muscat NV with apple pie and bitter orange ice cream. I preferred the South African sticky, a bright gold, tangy, honeyed beauty. Now if only we had as much wine left over as we do food...

It appears that South African wines continue to have fairly limited distribution in the United States, with most of the mass-market brands that have been showing up primarily focused on infiltrating the low-cost, low-quality Yellow Tail niche carved out by the Aussies. This, unfortunately, obscures the vast increase in genuinely top-notch product now coming out of the country, as the inward-looking legacy of decades of economic and cultural isolation begins to mercifully fade away. The sharp appreciation of the South African rand against the dollar over the past three years hasn't helped much, either, but there remain some good values if you know where to look for them. One resource I use myself is the Southern Hemisphere Wine Center, a California-based, mail-order outfit that maintains a portfolio of well-selected and reasonably-priced South African product. Another indispensible reference for anyone interested in the range of the country's offerings is the John Platter Wine Guide, an online database maintained by South Africa's version of Robert Parker. As far as selecting individual wines, South Africa has traditionally employed an estate system, with certain select producers always representing a fairly safe bet. This has begun to change, with an invigorating explosion of small-scale boutique producers in recent years, but some names are definitely worth remembering: Fairview: You've probably seen their Goats Do Roam mass-market blends. Those are OK, but do yourself a favor and check out their premium, single-vineyard Shirazes if you ever see them on the shelf. Dynamite. Ken Forrester: The prophet of Chenin Blanc. Makes superb wines from South Africa's most widely planted, but little valued, varietal. Rust en Vrede: A top producer that has been whittling down their range to concentrate on a single, flagship estate blend. It's very, very good and, at around $35, can pass for really serious Bordeaux. Saxenburg: These guys have been getting better and better. Their Private Collection Shiraz is a dead ringer for a full-throttle Northern Rhone Syrah. I could go on and on about one of my favorite topics, but for those who just want a pocket guide to the best producers, here is South African Wine Magazine's shortlist of their top rated bottles over the last few years. Enjoy.

Thumbs up for the Marvelous Market apple pie. Very nice. It was eventually served together with one of our German guests' superb homemade bitter orange ice cream, which he confessed to having cribbed from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung's food critic. "A complete prick, but he knows his food!" Perhaps this is an invariable part of the job description?

I managed to get five nice 1 1/4 lb thighs from Whole Foods up here in DC, though I confess to having never seen them before in the poultry case when it's not Thanksgiving. As for the recipe, I left out the juniper berries and went a little harder on the star anise without any noticeable detriment. We drank some nice Hermitage with it and everyone was very happy.

Much kudos to Sandy D'Amato, whose turkey confit recipe turned out absolutely delicious today. My wife was a definite sceptic watching the turkey thighs ever so slowly simmer in the olive oil: "Eww, won't it be really greasy?" But not a bit of it -- they were tender and juicy and succulent in a way no roasted bird has ever approximated, in my experience. Served them up with wild mushroom bread pudding, roasted cauliflower a la eGullet and haricots verts with all the implied butter. There wasn't a crumb left over -- and not because I didn't make enough, either!

Oddly enough, the bog standard Singha on offer in any Thai restaurant is usually also labeled as malt liquor rather than beer, I guess because of its sneaky alcohol content. I like the name of the brewery behind it, too. Boon Rawd. Sounds like an exotic curse.

On the above recommendation, I just purchased a rustic apple pie from the MM on my way next door to MacArthur Beverages, where (as always) I spent more than originally intended. So it goes. I can confirm the pie looks fucking awesome -- tasting will have to wait until tomorrow. By the way, in between those two fine stores is that new BLACK*SALT seafood place owned, I think, by the Grillfish people. The sign says they're opening in December and promises it will be "Washington's Most Exciting New Restruant!" Not sure quite what that means: the chef is AWOL? The good food will never show up?

I happen to agree with John on this. There is also the argument that the amount of resources devoted to persuading consumers, particularly young consumers, to eat fast food so grossly dwarfs the amount spent on educating them about healthier choices as to render any debate about 'freedom of choice' essentially meaningless. A quick Google search turns up these 2004 media spend numbers for the big fast food firms: McDonalds -- $629 million. BK -- $296 million. Wendy's -- $231 million. Pizza Hut/Taco Bell/KFC -- $550 million. That's an awful lot of persuasion. It's interesting to examine the disconnects in the culture over this particular issue. I happened to be there on March 11 this year when the House of Representatives passed the so-called "cheeseburger bill" -- explicitly designed to shield the fast food industry from any future obesity related lawsuits. There were a lot of impassioned speeches about common sense and parents' ultimate responsibility for controling their kids' dietary habits. A few hours later, the same august body passed another law to massively increase (by more than 20 times) the fines TV stations face if they broadcast material judged to be obscene, amid cries of: "Won't somebody think of the children?" Because, obviously, parents can't be expected to control their kids' viewing habits, for heaven's sake!

I'm cooking for 3 Germans, 2 Brits and 1 3/4 Americans. Menu is set to include Wabeck's butternut soup with pickled onions -- or, most likely, a poor imitation thereof -- confit of Turkey thighs (anyone know where I can find some whole star anise?), roasted cauliflower, wild mushroom bread pudding and a green dish to be named later. (Frisee au lardons? Can you get frisee this time of year?) Dessert dropped out when our Japanese guest had to, so that we're going to have to buy. On the wine front, Rocks decrees Hermitage, but I might cheat and slip in some South African shiraz.

They're definitely pulling a good crowd, as evinced by the chaos on Saturday night when they closed down for a family wedding and everybody who had turned up not knowing this then tried to squeeze in to Thai Derm across the street, making me have to wait an hour for my carryout. On the plus side, I had panang gai for breakfast this morning.

While you all were at Corduroy, me and the missus snuck out for a little bonding in the cozy window two-top at Bistro D'Oc. At 7:30 p.m. it was full but not frantic and we were welcomed as warmly as always. For dinner, we split an order of the pate special -- Languedoc peppered duck liver -- and then went half-and-half on an onglet and an order of duck confit. Both were irreproachable. Dessert was crepes suzette and we (OK, me, though since it's a French place no one harrumphed when the pregnant woman also enjoyed a small glass) got through a nice bottle of St. Chinian, Domaine de Sacre Coeur, a fruity Grenache, Syrah, Carignan blend. By the way, they've finally fixed the friggin' road outside and we were even able to park right in front. Not many excuses left not to go!

Thanks Dave. I think I may give this one a try, though who knows where I'm going to find the juniper berries?

Man, last time I was in there I was so drunk. And they were still really nice to me. You guys won't do anything to besmirch the good name of eGullet, will you?