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eG Foodblog: therese - Hey, wanna play a game?


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So.. pot likker...some sort of southern stock?

Yeah, highly concentrated country ham stock usually, not really skimmed of fat. It's pre salted so it's used as a sauce for all sorts of things, as well as the base for lots of the stuff on the menu posted previously.

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Pot likker -- also the leftover juices after cooking greens. As in, "Darlin', let me give you a spoonful of this pot likker on your turnip greens. Now I'll jes pass you the vinegar to sprinkle on there. Good, that jes makes 'em go down better, doesn't it, sugar?"

"Yes ma'am, it does."

Edited by Lori in PA (log)

~ Lori in PA

My blog: http://inmykitcheninmylife.blogspot.com/

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"Cooking is not a chore, it is a joy."

- Julia Child

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I take it the smoked-turkey fad has yet to invade Atlanta?

(Yes, low-fat, health-conscious finger-wagging has even made it into the realm of Southern/soul food cookery. I have several acquaintances who have flavored the cooking water for their greens with smoked turkey butt instead of the traditional fatback or ham hocks. I've done this myself as well.)

Sandy Smith, Exile on Oxford Circle, Philadelphia

"95% of success in life is showing up." --Woody Allen

My foodblogs: 1 | 2 | 3

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I take it the smoked-turkey fad has yet to invade Atlanta?

(Yes, low-fat, health-conscious finger-wagging has even made it into the realm of Southern/soul food cookery.  I have several acquaintances who have flavored the cooking water for their greens with smoked turkey butt instead of the traditional fatback or ham hocks.  I've done this myself as well.)

And there isn't a thing wrong with it. The point of the smoked meat product is to impart saltiness and flavor to the vegetable and/or broth, not fat, so smoked turkey will work nicely. It's not traditional because of course farners don't usually go to the trouble of smoking a turkey, as turkey's aren't so big that you can't eat an entire one of them fresh. Pork is cured and/or smoked in order to preserve it.

The amount of fat added to vegetables by cooking them in this way is not enough for me to bother about it. And if I don't have any cured pork product around the house (though I almost always do, in the form of country ham), I find that this product works nicely:

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Can you pee in the ocean?

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So.. pot likker...some sort of southern stock?

Pot likker is the liquid left when you cook greens, generally with some sort of smoked or cured pork. If you've got enough of it you can serve it like a soup (as pictured in the Mary Mac photos).

Can you pee in the ocean?

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The Colonnade on the other hand is also a Classic Meat and Three - they still serve a wedge salad (iceberg with blue cheese dressing).  As Therese mentioned it is popular with men who do not appreciate the female form.  what Therese didn't mention is that it is equally popular with blue-haired old ladies - sometimes in the company of men who do not appreciate the female form.  Especially after Church.  it is definitely great people-watching.

The Colonnade's also got tomato aspic.

The last time we were there the menu had been gussied up with some distinctly non-southern sorts of things, and I think the kitchen was having trouble keep track of it all. The other thing that I really disliked about The Colonnade was the fact that you had to walk through the (incredibly) smoky bar area to get to the non-smoking dining area. Now that there's no smoking at all in restaurants here this will no longer be an issue, though I might want to wait another month or two for the residual fumes to clear.

Therese - after looking at your Mary Mac's picture - all i can say is I was totally robbed - that cornbread and Pot likker looks delish.

It was. And the chicken livers, tomatoes and okra, and creamed corn were also great. At dinner the breads are corn bread and these fantastic little cinnamon rolls. I save my cinnamon rolls and have them for dessert.

Can you pee in the ocean?

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Okay. But I want half-credit for Shmuel .

Credit hereby awarded.

Edited to add: might red have something to do with it? But are you sure you're not confusing a Latin root with a Greek?

Yes, it's the red that I'm talking about. And yes, it's entirely possible that I'm confusing the Latin and Greek roots (I think it's Greek in this instance).

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Husband finally moved furniture and grill back onto the deck today, just in time for me to make lunch:

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The grill is hooked up to the household gas, so we never have to worry about tanks. The third picture is the view off the back of the deck, towards the golf course. The brown patch of ground is the far bank of a creek.

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Here's some of our lunch on the grill:

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Finished eggplant:

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Corn on the cob. I wouldn't have minded having this a little more charred:

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I broiled the okra instead of grilling it:

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Tomato and basil salad:

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Can you pee in the ocean?

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The last picture (the tomato and basil salad) reminds that I've still got some watermelon that I could have for dessert. Hmm, why do tomatoes remind me of watermelon?

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Gorgeous yard, and gorgeous food.

Got any favorite tips on grilling or broiling eggplant? I can't seem to keep my slices from getting all soft and mushy, whether I do the salt-purge thing or not. (I do rather better when I grill or broil the long skinny Asian eggplants, because then I can split them lengthwise, and the skin helps hold them together.)

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Gorgeous yard, and gorgeous food.

Got any favorite tips on grilling or broiling eggplant? I can't seem to keep my slices from getting all soft and mushy, whether I do the salt-purge thing or not. (I do rather better when I grill or broil the long skinny Asian eggplants, because then I can split them lengthwise, and the skin helps hold them together.)

Thanks, mizducky.

No tips re making non-mushy eggplant, because I like my eggplant soft and mushy. The softer and mushier it is the less bitter I find it.

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Oh my, wonderful deck, deck furniture, grill...

This blog has been a delight. The week passed quickly! (Probably not for you. :smile:)

You, and readers, are welcomed to post into the night and morning, and then we will bid farewell. Thank you so much, Therese.

Life is short; eat the cheese course first.

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did you marinate those eggplant Therese?  and if so - with what?

Nope. In fact, it was only as I was getting the basil out to make the salad that I remembered that I had eggplant, and so just sliced them and brushed them with olive and salt.

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One last meal, and maybe overnight somebody will tell me what watermelons and tomatoes have in common, apart from the fact that they're both red. Oh, hold it, they're both red...

Anyway, dinner tonight was at Table 1280. The restaurant's located in the Woodruff Arts Center, which houses the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the High Museum of Art. We were there to see a play at the Alliance Theatre (which happens to also operate a summer camp that my daughter will be attending later this summer).

This is the lobby of the Arts Center that serves both the concert hall and the playhouse:

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If you walk through this lobby and through the doors at the far end you enter a new courtyard surrounded by several building which are new, designed by Renzo Piano. It's a very pleasant space, and I'm looking forward to seeing this insides of the buildings (which are part of the High). This photo is taken from the courtyard, and shows the patio at Table 1280.

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The restaurant feels very much like a museum indoors, as it's very light, with white walls and lots of natural light. We arrived at 6:00, so there aren't any people in this picture of the bar. That situation changed quickly.

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The kitchen is in a corridor. Here we're looking from the reception area through that corridor and into one of the dining rooms. The kitchen's on the left, and we're about to sit down at the last table in corridor:

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Here's a shot of the kitchen from our table. You can see the chef, Shaun Doty, in the middle of the picture. He's been on the restaurant scene in Atlanta for years and I'd recently heard that he was leaving Table 1280. Our server gave us the very good news that he'd be opening his own place in Inman Park, excellent news since it's very close to us:

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And here is a shot of the ceiling, which looks like an egg carton:

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Okay, enough scenery, on to dinner.

We started with champagne (well, sparkling wine). I remembered to photograph it, but only just. Notice that these tables have a great view onto the courtyard:

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Our starters were smoked salmon with risotto (me) and gazpacho (husband). Both were excellent, but the gazpacho pic illustrates one of my pet peeves, messy soup bowls:

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Mains were ricotta gnocchi (aka gnudi) with fava beans, tomatoes, and pancetta (for me, a half serving) and crab cakes (husband). Both excellent, with the gnocchi verging on amazing:

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Desserts were honey yogurt sorbet with rhubarb and tapioca (me) and Meyer lemon bar with blueberry sorbet (husband):

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My dessert was my least favorite part of the meal, as the rhubarb had been cut with something, maybe an apple or pear puree, so the essential rhubarb-ness of it was missing (though a lot of people don't like straight rhubarb) and there were only a few large, slightly too soft tapioca pearls (but then I suppose many people aren't fans of tapioca).

I did have a dessert wine, an Oriel Sauternes:

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The dessert chef here (assuming it's the same guy that's been there for the last few month) has a name that recalls one of the first trivia questions posed in this thread. Can anybody tell me who it is?

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The dessert chef here (assuming it's the same guy that's been there for the last few month) has a name that recalls one of the first trivia questions posed in this thread. Can anybody tell me who it is?

His name is Edouard Fenouil, which is reminiscent of the discussion on fennel ... :wink:

Watermelon and tomatoes are both high in lycopene ...

Melissa Goodman aka "Gifted Gourmet"

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Thanks for the pot likker answers..one more question..a pullman plank..from pullman loaf of bread maybe? Oh and great blog therese.

So.. pot likker...some sort of southern stock?

Pot likker is the liquid left when you cook greens, generally with some sort of smoked or cured pork. If you've got enough of it you can serve it like a soup (as pictured in the Mary Mac photos).

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Thanks for the pot likker answers..one more question..a pullman plank..from pullman loaf of bread maybe? Oh and great blog therese.

Thanks, demiglace.

I don't know about the pullman plank (from the Watershed menu up thread).

Can you pee in the ocean?

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The dessert chef here (assuming it's the same guy that's been there for the last few month) has a name that recalls one of the first trivia questions posed in this thread. Can anybody tell me who it is?

His name is Edouard Fenouil, which is reminiscent of the discussion on fennel ... :wink:

Yep. Truth is stranger than fiction.

...maybe overnight somebody will tell me what watermelons and tomatoes have in common, apart from the fact that they're both red. Oh, hold it, they're both red...

Watermelon and tomatoes are both high in lycopene ...

And that's what gives both of them their red color. Lycopene's name derives from the botanical name for tomatoes, lycopersicon, Greek for "wolf peach." Lycopene's been in the lay press a lot in the last few years, credited with all sorts of health-improving benefits.

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So, thanks to eG for playing along this week. I was a last minute replacement for another blogger and didn't have the opportunity to do any advance planning, so apart from not having any entertaining planned this was a pretty typical week at our house.

I did plan on showing more photomicrographs (like the picture of bone marrow in the first post) but things were too busy at work and home to manage that. And I didn't get to the Morningside Market yesterdat either (but did interview a new housekeeper, who starts Tuesday, so I'm pretty excited). This morning I have to do a few loads of laundry, pack my daughter's things for a week of camp, and drive to Athens, GA to drop her off.

Fortunately we've already arranged to eat while we're there (at Hugh Acheson's five and ten), and I may stop at Super H Mart on the way back into town.

Hmm, maybe we'll detour and check out some cars...

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One last meal, and maybe overnight somebody will tell me what watermelons and tomatoes have in common, apart from the fact that they're both red. Oh, hold it, they're both red...
Edited by tryska (log)
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