babka

I hear that Dick von Dongen has been there a few times

Question for the mock porchetta fans: We did it last night, with a highly abbreviated sitting for the dry rub (6 hours instead of 3 days), and it was fantastic, but: At the end of 2.5 hours, the internal temp was only 170. We let it cook for another half hour, which brought it almost up to Roger's 185, but it tasted a little bit dry to me. Do you cook it up to 185? It sounds a bit high to me, but this was my first experience cooking any form of pig other than bacon.

I'd suggest that we make contact with America's Second Harvest very early in the development process. They are the biggest hunger relief organization in the States with more than 200 regional food banks, and they've got more frontline personnel than anyone. In my experience covering food and poverty issues, they've consistently been my best source of information, contacts, and referrals to specialists who can help me. And while they themselves don't do this kind of work from headquarters, they're the ones to help us avoid Fat Guy's warning about "We can't allow ourselves to be some out-of-touch ivory-tower organization that lectures poor people inappropriately and tells them to do things they'll never do. We will need case studies, real understanding and a grass roots approach." Their boiler plate description is below. If you'd like, I know the folks in their media office, and can ask for someone to put in contact with whomever is developing the materials.

Isn't the Johnny Apple article nice? He had quite a lot of positive things to say. ← yes, it is--the Apple piece is a lovely essay, of the sort that I wish our hometown paper did more of. The WP did a fantastic guide to Eden Center a couple of years ago, but cogent writing about food, culture, and geography mixed together isn't a regular strength.

the obvious, overplayed, cheesy, yet cheap option would be Trader Joe's: I head out there once every couple of months to stock up on dried goods, frozen dumplings, niman ranch bacon bacon, granola, and wine which most of our cohorts here would scorn.

eh, Burro's article is pretty good--she's reporting on the political scene at the restaurants, not the quality of the food itself, and she got the former right.

without commenting on just how damn long it took my satire light to go off, other than to note that coca-cola brined turkey isn't nearly the tipoff that you'd think, I'd suggest trying this Post article instead, which describes it thusly:

Tonic once had a wonderful dish, a rich, peppery chicken served with fine drafted beer. Then management, sadly and mistakenly thinking that it should update its menu for the neighborhood's incoming clientele, removed the spicy dish this fall, replacing it with a sad, bland, broiled chicken breast, much like that served in every other one-star wanna be in the region. The beer's still good, though, especially at 5 pm on the Monday of Martin Luther King Day. Maybe if we figure out how to ask, they'll even resurrect the poultry.

oh my. funny, I don't seem to recall Mr. Tunks mentioning nudie photos in last week's article about his weight loss.

zuni chicken with bread salad tonight, salted 3 days in the fridge. o my. Salt, I salute ye.

does Chef know about this yet? she SAID all kids needed was real food. (congratulations!!)

Would this work equally well if I made the tadka using bacon fat instead of oil or butter? a specific answer should come from those who understand Mr. McGee on the first reading, but I don't see why not--only concern would be that no particles in the bacon fat burn as you're warming the spices, no?

when might we expect that invitation?

I can't speak to the food, I'm afraid, but 8 years after the fact, a night at the ampitheatre of Oude Libertas is still the highlight of two months in Cape Town. We wandered through through the candle-lit tables of the restaurant to see a performance of Carmina Burana and everything--absolutely everything--was enchanted.

I'm going to learn how to cook meat as well as I can cook vegetarian dishes. Also, I'm going to shoot for something less than the three cases of food poisoning I gave myself last year in my less resolved attempts.

my super secret soup solution, for nearly any kind of soup, is stolen from Indian cooking: Make a tadka (?) of whatever spices you want to accent by heating either oil or clarified butter and tossing in X until everything's hot and fragrent, then stir it into the finished pot. cures most any ill, and I don't understand why more cusines haven't picked it up. I'd probably do a garlic, cumin, and pepper blend for the potato soup, because I'm just not a potato fan.

babka with dried cherry and almond filling, from Deborah Madison's opus. I didn't have time to make it for christmas gifts this year and had to field several questions about when, exactly, the babka would show up.

I got to go to L'Astrance for my birthday this past November and loved it. We got reservations for a Friday lunch on a few days notice, but it took a couple of calls, which I think was due less to the restaurant's being full than it was to my abominable french. $80 euros fixed price for the small lunch menu, I think, but be careful if you're watching prices--the champagne they offer you at the onset of the meal turned out to be $20 euros a glass!

have I seen geese biding their time at the Eastern Market Butcher?

merci a tous le monde! I'm a quarter of Mel's Paris companions, and I just started digging through Ms. Wells today. just to make life more interesting....one of our foursome is vegetarian. Cheese and eggs are fine, but he's unhappy at restaurants where he's limited to a salad and sides, and my all-too brief memory of Parisian cafes is that he's going to be unhappy more often than not. While much of our food will be at the apartment, and while I'm happy to venture out to vegetarian restaurants a couple of times, any advice for maneuvering neighborhood joints?

if you stay through Monday, hit the Greek Deli downtown--1120 19th street. if you're near the lunch hour, it's the joint with the line heading out to the street. homestyle & good & greasy & good. (get the moussaka--it's enough for a couple more meals.) definitely eastern market.

oie! This isn't a multiple-choice test of a) Palena service is gracious and perfect and kind; or b) Palena service sucks ventworm nuts. personally, I've seen both, though more frequently experienced the former than the latter: when a boy and I went while hovering in the googly-giggly-gazey phase of a date, the service slowed down to let us close the joint down and many blessings on 'em for it. when my mother and I got the same measured service--but without offers of water, wine, or, for far too long, food, in a rather empty Monday evening cafe, I swore off the place for months. when I accidentally slammed their already-slammed cafe with a party of eight, including one Southeast Asian anorexic, one Italian fresh off of dental surgery, one vegetarian German, and one meat & potatoes American, they didn't blink, didn't slow, didn't scream, and everyone left happy and content, a feat unrepeated (and unattempted) since. edited to add: that said, last night Palena's golden oasis beckoned off of Connecticut Avenue's cold and rainy night. Everything was so very fine.

We drank my last bottle of Amano tonight in tribute. Thank you, gentlemen, for the wine courses and the cheese and the sweetbreads and the wierd-ass creme brulee in the strangest oasis of beauty that foggy bottom offered.

oy. Gentlemen, avert your eyes for the following paragraph. Ladies: If your male dining partner should mistake the chipotle floating on the willy wonka chicken soup for a morel, ingesting it whole and thereby claiming to see god every few minutes into the continuing conversation, I implore you to be gentle in your ensuing diplomacy. Ask simply for a tortilla for yourself, for they are good enough--soft corn mashed and then sizzled--that your request won't seem abnormal. Pass it, without comment, to your companion, who will devour it and shortly thereafter return to normal. Do not explain the situation to your kind waiter, if he is male. Apparently, there is testosterone at stake in these things. This is my new favorite restaurant. Our waiter, Nicolas, was kind and smart and shared everything he knew about dragonfruit as currency and the anatomy of an ox, and the sipping tequila to which he directed us put my Macallan scotch--the bottle I keep at the back of the pantry and only let out a few times a year--to shame. Have one frufru drink first, only to taste the chili-mixed salt mixed with the ground worm, and then go to the goodstuff for every drink thereafter. We tried everything that's already earned raves here, and none disappointed. But be careful with your dishes, if you're the type that savors: Eager staff try to whisk them away before you've scooped the last drudge of goodness. We learned to guard them, which earned me a laugh from Nicolas at the end of the evening as I threw my arms around the heavenly chili chocolate cake dessert. "Like a cat," he said, but we'd warded our treasured chicken soup off from no less than six attempts to take it, and I wasn't playing that game again.

bah. fey on the feckless Derek, already a faded memory with the fabulous Jeff grinning behind the bar. and fey on Frank and Evan, too, for the kitchen did just fine without 'em on Monday night: soft cushions of broccoli exploding on the tongue, with fat juicy mussels swimming in garlicky butter scooped up with chewy bread. and that spinach soup! and the cheese....we didn't lick the plate, technically, though it wasn't for lack of temptation from Carolyn's spread. go. the joint was far too peaceful.