KeithA

Latest ice cream batch was stracciatela - vanilla with the perfect chocolate flakes throughout. Of course I had this super common gelato flavor before and always thought of it as italian chocolate chip - however that disguises the unique way you make it. Unlike regular chocolate chip where you swirl in premade chips or shavings/chunks of normal temperature chocolate - with stracciatela, you melt the chocolate to a liquid and then drizzle in the hot/warm chocolate onto the cold churning ice cream. This results in the chocolate instantly hardening when it hits the ice cream and the machine churn breaks it up and distributes it into flaky ribbons that you further break into flakes when you scoop the churned ice cream into your storage container. I highly recommend because it is really easy and fun - just microwave some chocolate to melt and drizzle in the last few minutes of your churn. It also results in a much better flake distributed throughout instead of an often too hard chunk of a chip that doesn't really blend into the ice cream. One other note, for this batch I accidentally added a full cup of sugar instead of 3/4 cup and so decided I'd try throwing in a 3rd egg too. It was good but I didn't like the extra eggy-ness as much as when I do it with 2. Maybe because I use whole eggs and not just yolks but still not sold on the need to add 5-6+ egg (yolks) like some recipes call for. I also had a bunch of leftover cherries from my CSA and so I made a black forest sauce recipe I found in a preserving cookbook - simple syrup, cocoa, and pitted/halved cherries that you simmer together for 20 minutes or so. The idea being you can top this as a sauce on ice cream or cake. I was thinking this would solve the overly icy cherries in my prior Cherry Garcia attempt. The sauce turned out good but maybe was too sweet with too much proportion of non-cherry parts to cherries. In the end it tastes like ok chocolate syrup with a cherry undercurrent and soft cherries to chew. I think next time I would do a 2 - 1 cherries to other ingredient ratio to let the cherries really shine.

Had a very nice Father's day carryout feast from Sababa on Sunday. They were doing a mix-grilled special for the day which we enjoyed a lot - a big platter of hawaij-spiced rice with grilled harissa chicken kabob, chicken livers, sirloin steak, and lamb loin with charred shishito pepper, cherry tomatoes, quick pickled onions and harissa sauce and garlic labne. The chicken was especially good but all of the meats were good - although the other meats could have used a bit more seasoning. I tossed on both the harissa and labne. We also got the ever popular half-roast chicken but I guess they have changed the dish since the last time we got it awhile ago. Now the chicken has an herb blend rubbed under the crispy skin and it is roasted in a sweeter sauce and served with diced sweet potatos and walnuts. We liked the new version compared to the old more straightforward roast chicken with a pita underneath to soak up the schmaltz. We also had the fried cauliflower small plate with tahini sauce - this was good but not as good carryout as it got a little soggy. The hummus with tehina was really really good - lots of tehina for a smooth lucious spread. It comes with a good size portion so make sure to get extra pita. The overall menu is more limited than during normal times but it seems they have the hits still on the menu and they are open on their roof deck and street outdoor seating. Worth checking out for something different and good.

Recently made plain chocolate using a B&J recipe with unsweetened chocolate that produces a rich but maybe too bitter flavor. Anyone have a favorite chocolate base recipe that uses pre-sweetened chocolate? Also made B&J original recipe Cherry Garcia (i.e. sweet cream base with dark chocolate chunks and sliced cherries) - it is pretty good but with the cherries left whole, it seems like they got icy in the freezer and I'm not sure I like the texture.

I was at Hana Market in DC today and per usual there - they have a bunch of Japanese candies including kit kats - but the varieties are limited. I wasn't paying close attention but think I saw about 5-6 different types of kit kats - mostly matcha-varieties but I did see strawberry. They also have 5 or so varieties of Poki. They always have my personal favorite the Chocolate Koala bear cookies but the other varieties like banana, mango, etc. taste artificial and meh.

I agree with several of your observations. The ice cream generally forms and sticks some to the sides of the canister and the rest in the center is not liquid but is more of a soft serve texture. Once you freeze it for a few hours or overnight, it will harden nicely into a regular, scoopable ice cream. I also agree that with fruit flavor you need to amp up the fruit and potential use less eggs to get a more fruit forward flavor instead of a nice custard with hint of fruit. I also recently got wrongly optimistic that I could use my one pre-frozen canister to make two batches of ice cream in one go. I made two flavored bases and then churned one for 25 minutes- it worked like normal producing great ice cream (a smores like creation of vanilla with refrigerated mini marshmallows, chocolate chips and crush graham cracker piece). I then as quickly as possible scooped out the first ice cream into containers and minimally wiped out the canister and immediately set it to rechurn and poured in my second base (blueberry cardamon). I was hopeful the canister would be cold enough but I was wrong, after churning for 20 minutes it was still all liquid base. All was not lost though as I poured the liquid base back into a container and re-refrigerated and re-froze the canister overnight. The next night the base turned into another great ice cream. Lesson learned. I haven't done alcohol in the base and but it reminded me of this Serious Eats article about ice cream making myth busting: https://www.seriouseats.com/2015/07/ice-cream-myths.html

Yeah I used whole eggs (usually 2) and don't cook. This is the recipe: https://www.food.com/recipe/ben-jerrys-sweet-cream-base-77368 I've done it this way for years, but probably safer to cook the eggs first.

I totally agree. I don't care if it is traditional or not (I only eat bialys on occasion), but I like a good amount of the onion mix in the middle of my bialy - because that is what makes it special. I was happy to enjoy some good bagels from Bullfrog Bagel's very popular food truck in Tenleytown (next to City Bikes) over the weekend but disappointed by the bialy which had only a speck (two small bites) of onion mix in the center.

CSA provided a lot of strawberries so time for strawberry ice cream. Cut up berries, macerated in sugar with a bit of lemon juice, then after refrigerating for more than an hour, pureed them and poured into the sweet cream base. Turned out very creamy with nice strawberry flavor. We usually use the #1 Ben & Jerry's ice cream cookbook sweet cream base which calls for two eggs, which makes a nice custard for 1+ quart of ice cream. What are your thoughts on eggs - none, less, more?

We recently did coconut chocolate chip - using the Ben & Jerry's ice cream cookbook's sweet cream #1 base, then added 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract and a handful of shredded sweetened coconut. Let that all chill in fridge for a while and then ran through the Cuisinart ice cream maker. Added another 2 handfuls of coconut along with a bunch of 55% mini chocolate chips in the last 5 minutes of the churn. It was pretty good but next time I would add all the coconut at the end to avoid clumbs of it in some bites and use semi-sweet chips as the dark chocolate was too bitter. Still had good coconut flavor. Most recipes in the B&J book and elsewhere call for adding coconut cream, not shredded coconut so may try that next time but we kind of liked the shredded coconut.

We are planning at trip to Southern Utah in April to hit the 5 national parks (Arches, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, Bryce, and Zion plus other national monuments, state parks and other amazing wilderness). The only recommendations on the board are for Moab near Arches/Canyonlands and they are rather old and mostly non-recommendations. Anyone been more recently and have suggestions? One place we were told to check out is Hell's Backbone in Boulder, UT. Thanks.

Marshall Friends have a place near Marshall and so we've been through it a few times in the last year or so. It is a nice stop very close off 66 with a small strip of restaurants, thrift shops, grocery store and gas stations and a Tractor Supply & Co. We love Red Truck Bakery which has rightly received a lot of good press. We really like their large cakes - some of our favorites are the Orange and Kentucky Bourbon, the lemon is similar to the orange and also good. The Shenandoah Apple cake is well made but not as well-liked as the others. We haven't had any of their gorgeous pies but I bet they are winners too. The biscuits, granola, muffins, donuts, and cupcakes are very tasty too. I had a strawberry chocolate chip muffin over the weekend that a sweet and delicious. I haven't tried them yet but they also have ice cream pints with mixins from the bakery. A while ago we ate at Gentle Harvest and thought it was only so so for their dine in options. They do have a nice selection of market items but a bit high priced. We went for the first time to Whole Ox butchershop for lunch which was great for big, excellent fried chicken sandwiches and good burgers (great buns on both), the fries were ok but could have been crisper. It is a nice shop which is a meat lover's dream with all kinds of cuts to cook and other prepared foods including lots of good looking sausages. It has a small town feel but it is upscale with lots of gourmet goodies, nice small wine selections, and very nice service. We haven't tried it yet, but also on the little strip in Marshall is Field&Main which is a bit more upscale dining which I've heard good things about. Upperville A bit farther north of 66 (but really only 10-15 min drive) is Upperville with the very nice British pub, Hunter's Head Tavern. We went last year a couple of times and really enjoyed our meals. Nice selection for kids and grownups. When it is warm they setup a big tent on their patio which is nice too. I don't remember exactly what we got but think it was fish & chips, salads, fried chicken, burgers.

Last night stopped by for a quick dinner and had basically the same meal as last year. The cemitas torta without ham - great sandwich - crispy on the outside from grilling or panini pressing the bread and rich, multilayered flavors on the inside with a really nice fresh crunchy chicken milanese. Chips and salsas are still good. No queso this time but per my prior note I don't think I was missing anything. My friend had 3 tacos for his first time there and thought they were really good. I saw a lot of people getting plates of various kinds of fajitas that looked and smelled very good. This is nice strip with two of my favorite Mexican places in DC just a few doors apart.

I've been back several times in the last month to Tino's as it has become a close by favorite of my kids. They law the simple pie aka cheese pizza, which I think is pretty good too. I've enjoyed two of unique pizzas on a few occassions - Shrooming with lots of mushrooms for a savory dish with some sweet accents from roasted pear and the My Dear HoneyNut which is a really out there but good pie: " honeynut squash puree, charred honeynut, burrata, pickled delicata, pine nuts" It is very different and on the sweeter side but not with a nice balance from the nuts and extra rich creamy burrata. Last night we also got a cheese pizza with their pesto sauce instead of tomato - my wife and I really liked it. Lots of good but not overly strong flavor in the pesto. I'd get it again. We also had their endive, grapefruit, and hazelnut salad which was nice and light. So I think I recently wrote in the pizza forum, this is a great place to drop in or add to your local rotation but not destination dining. They also have a good rotating menu of desserts and a full bar. One night we got their smores rice crispy treat which was damn tasty (didn't see it last night but saw more sophisticated items like a pot de creme plus they always seem to have ice cream scoops).

Don your bar is set too high. Good pizza like any good food makes you go wow. After writing the above post, I headed to Vace and got two slices of onion and Wow! it was good (probably not wow head across town for but I doubt almost any pizza place is like that unless you are hankering for a slice already). Full disclosure - I needed to eat my veggies so I also had a spinach empanada which has the same filling as their spinach pie and it was pretty tasty too

Great article from Tim Carman of the Post on his 10 favorite DC metro pizza: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/food/best-pizza-dc/ Note Cleveland Park has 3 out of the 10 (hometown neighborhood pride). I haven't eaten at all 10 places but for the 3 in CP, I agree all 3 places deserve to be on the list but I personally would pick different pies at each. Vace - White with onions (hands down the best they make and one of my all time favs. Cheese is ok but Vace's white pizza is better - love the crisp crust either way) Tino's - Shroomin (although I don't eat octopus so Octopie from Carman's list isn't an option for me) 2 Amys - Magherita or Etna 2.0 (Calabrese is good but it was too salty last time I had it)

I've been a few times to Archipelago and really like this place. Foremost, the food is rather good riff on chinese food. The ground beef dan dan noodles are very good, the eggplant is also a standout. The tiki drinks are tasty and just downright fun. The whole place is very chill. I was there last night while they have a Sippin Santa pop up which means a bunch more of tiki drink specials with goofy xmas names like Xmas Eve of Destruction and Sippi Santa (both were good, but the latter was really good). Worth checking out for a fun time on U St.

Yes. Great quality ice cream with good standard flavors and some good creative flavors. Go ask for tastes and you'll probably find several you like. I like the brambleberry. Also there fresh waffle cones or waffle cone pieces are good.

Best use of leftovers - knishes filled with mashed potatoes, caramelized onions, cranberry sauce and a bit of turkey. Second best use of leftovers - knishes filled with stuffing, cranberry sauce, and a bit of turkey. Even better - add some dijon and spicy or whole grain mustard to left over cranberry sauce and use that to dip the knishes in. Knishes for the win. Not as good but quick alternative - instead of making knish dough (which is super easy, I use Smitten Kitchen recipe), use store bought puff pastry or empanada wrappers.

Went back to Spices twice in the past two weeks - once for weekday dinner and for lunch yesterday. I think people including me to need to reassess their views. I had two rather good (worth it if in the area but not destination dining) meals. The rainbow salad was very good, the tofu "fries" are a bit addictive, and the pad see yew was the best I've had. I usually don't like pad see yew because it is way too sweet but here it was only lightly sweetened and very nice. Check it out again.

Going to in-laws this year and so my cooking duties are limited - but I'll probably make those dishes they don't make that I like - homemade cranberry sauce and stuffing. I may turn the stuffing into a knishes as a way to sneak in my favorite part of thanksgiving. I figure they all like my potato knishes and so if I also happen to make a few stuffing knishes no one will mind. Always tough dealing with the cook who refuses to let anyone bring anything.

Recently returned from a short visit to Prague and Kantyna is still a great spot for meat lovers. It is a butcher shop in front where you can pick out chartucherie or a steak for them to cook to order for you, then you head back and order food from a hot food counter with huge, good steak tartare, popular carpaccio (we didn't get it but saw lots of orders), brisket slices (really good), chopped beef (only ok), and a bunch of pork options I didn't try. Also key is here you can get a platter of roast vegetables that are very tasty. It is hard to find non-cabbage vegetables at traditional Czech places. They of course also have a good beer menu which you can order at the beer section or go sit and a waiter will bring you drinks. At the end after you are stuffed, you take your ticket which has been stamped for every order, and pay as you leave. Kantyna is one of over a dozen restaurants owned by the Ambiente group which have their own foodie map of all their places in Prague. We went to several and all were very good. You could easily stick solely to this map and eat/drink great the whole time in the city. We went to their micro-brewery for good beers, their coffee shop for nice coffee and tea plus good apricot cake by the slice, and got good strudel and pastries from Cafe Savoy their very popular breakfast sit down restaurant (which we did take away since we didn't know reservations were needed for weekend brunch). We also had really good but oddly described dinner at Cafe Imperial Next Door. I think the odd descriptions were less than perfect English translations. This is the more modern Cafe Imperial across the street from the famous original but with a more upscale vibe. My brother's roast duck was delicious and sliced beef in creamy sauce with bread dumplings (sounds boring but it was hearty and great with a thick brown sauce). Slices of cake were good too but I would say the savories were better than the sweets. We stayed in Mala Strana/Lesser Town and the front desk of our hotel told me to check out Beseda around the corner for my first meal in town. This bar restaurant was cheap and has interesting beer options - you pick your amount of foam from zero, quarter, half, or all foam and I had a great roast duck with sweet cabbage and both regular bread dumplings and the even better carlsbad-style bread dumplings. Also upstairs is an old school jazz club that has all different kinds of music now. I ended up at a pretty good blues rock show for $10 after i saw all of these people streaming in. In the Karlin neighborhood, we went to Bistro Nejen for drinks and appetizers. Great smallish wine bar with a small foodie menu. The smoked eggs and mushrooms were good and the potatos swimming in a cream sauce were excellent. The main tourist dessert here is the Treldnick - bready doughnut-like chimney cake. They are ok but make sure you get a fresh made one that is still steaming, much better than the stale-ish one we first tried at the bottom of the castle in a tourist carryout. We also went to the great outdoor farmer's market on Saturday morning along the river, south of the Old Town. It was huge with all kinds of produce, baked goods, some crafts, drinks, etc. We didn't get any but very interesting to see the homemade booze and wine being sold in reused soda bottles or growler-like refill your own. We ate some good strudels and excellent hot, spiced apple cider that was pressed onsite at the farmer's market.

But good and fun. Recommend it after i was there on recent trip. Also recommend the Crack Shack - a fried chicken place that you enter from the strip (not inside a hotel). Had a nice lunch meal at the greek place in the Cosmopolitan which has an expensive but value deal for LV standards.

We went a few weeks ago right when they opened. We also had the all green everything pizza and the four cheese pizza. I thought they were good solid pies with a sturdy, not soggy crust and very nice staff. The flavors were only good, not great. If I had a choice between them and 2 Amys, definitely go with 2 Amys. That being said, I welcome them to the neighborhood and plan to try to their other options to find something I like better. Not really in competition with Vace as it is different type of pizza, pricing, and restaurant.

Having lived up the hill in CP for many years, we have regularly ventured down to Woodley Park to eat when we wanted something different. I agree with the general sentiment that Woodley is not a foodie destination, but it does have some good eats. Duke's Counter next to the zoo can be very good (especially the burger and drinks), Baked by Yael is a good grab and go dessert place, Lebanese Taverna has good food and since it was renovated a few years ago, very nice atmosphere inside (excellent baba ghanoush, ouzi lamb that comes with lamb-stuffed grape leaves, spinach fatayer, etc.), Tono Sushi while only ok sushi has rather good non-sushi Japanese items such as zaru soba (perfect on a hot day), tempura, etc., and Open City is what it is - I'm not a big fan but my wife and kids like going there - she likes the housemade veggie burger. I've been to Umi also a few times for a quick lunch and thought it was also a decent option - note it is a small restaurant. Afghan Grill was really good but I haven't been in a number of years since I had a lackluster meal - maybe time to try again. Also, it does have a real ice cream shop, not froyo, aka Baskin Robins, which while it is not artisanal gelato - it does have one of my all-time original, favorite flavors World Class Chocolate (a very creamy, not super rich chocolate blend available at every BR for last 30 years or so). So I get the complaint, but don't right it off completely. Also nando's isn't half bad for fast casual food. Also regarding the grass is greener comment about CP, I won't quibble that overall we have better restaurants but some of our "new" restaurants in the last few years include the not great Mr. Chen's Chinese that moved from Woodley to CP. So it is not all great.

Really delicious lunch today for my first time at this restaurant at the Dupont location. Me and my buddy thought 3 dishes were excellent and the 4th good. The excellent were the half-a-cado salad (which a different friend had recommended as her go to dish that she gets every time she comes) - this was nice as a vegetable, lighter balance to the meatier/spicier other dishes. I agree though with my friend I could easily eat this by myself for a light lunch. Also excellent was the wok friend green beans with the best garlic ssamgjang sauce, and my other favorite was the cumin stir fried lamb noodles - good chewy noodles, lots of tasty lamb (some crispy bits and mostly soft braise) with nice slow creeping heat. The 4th only good was the smoked salmon rice bowl which comes with gochujang on the side. The ingredients were good quality but the flavors weren't as exciting as the other 3 dishes. Also the egg in the rice bowl looked good but wasn't very great - just tasted like hardboiled egg, not the soft soy poached egg I expected and it looked like. Can't wait to go back and try more. The people next to us ordered the huge fried chicken sandwiches - really thick pieces of chicken. Easily enough for 2 to share.