edenman

Had a great meal at the bistro last night. The veal sweetbread (which I'd never had before, and only found out later what it actually is) was excellent, and the fried oysters were an excellent touch. Split a crabcake appetizer, which was also quite good. My only gripe is that the pint of Old Rasputin Imperial Stout that I had to drink was $11. Granted, it's a high-alcohol beer, and one you don't see much in the area, but still....$11? When Bedrock had it on tap, it was $6 a pint (which admittedly, was a steal). Anyway, beer price aside, Eve is not someplace I can afford to return to frequently, but definitely keeping it in mind the next time I need a really good meal...the tasting menu would be perfect for a special event.

Apparently I just pulled that date out of my ass (no idea where I thought I heard Sept 2, but I definitely thought that was it). The grill is indeed open tomorrow and friday. All's well that ends...with a pork shoulder sandwich.

I just got mine for friday night. can't wait. the takeaway message for me from last time is to take notice of which ones are the most popular, and make sure you hit them before they run out. here's hoping they have some decent beers this time around...I'm not holding my breath, though.

Trekked out to old town this afternoon for some fried food at Eamonn's. Had the batter burgher (a generic hamburger patty coated in batter and deep fried) and a small fries, and split a fried snickers with a friend. Add in a Harp (they're serving beer and wine, but the PX isn't open yet), and I had a filling lunch for ~$16. The burgher was good, but the fries were the highlight for me, and I felt like I should've gone for the cod, it looked awesome. The various sauces were great, although the one that came by default, the curry, was not that great. I had the Chesapeake (simple, old bay + mayo), and my friends tried some of the others (Kitty O'Shea?) and also quite approved. And the fried snickers was a melted mess of absolute deliciousness. All in all, a winner, and I dropped off my knife at La Cuisine a few blocks away for sharpening. Now, I just have to return tuesday to pick it up, and decide whether I want to try Eve or just hit the Chipper again and try the cod this time. It's a good dilemma to have.

I find that after I drink a couple North Coast Old Rasputin Imperial Stouts at the 9:30 club, my bones ache less (or maybe they're still complaining but I don't care enough to listen). In my experience, people that like good food tend to be much more exploratory about things in all other areas of life, music included. Of course it doesn't always go the other way...plenty of my music nerd/snob friends are not at all interested in coming with me to good restaurants. Could be the budget thing too, though...they spend too much money on new albums to really eat out that much

Today's dilemma: scheduled to play racquetball at 12:15 (near impossible with a pork shoulder in my belly) and not enough time after racquetball to still make it to the grill. Solution: go buy sandwich at 11:50, head back to office, deposit in fridge, go play racquetball, return. Microwave the pork, throw the top and bottom roll on the foreman grill. When both have been rejuvinated, unite, and eat. Verdict: not as good as it is when fresh, but a damn fine approximation. Oh, and I heard Roberto say that the bread this week was purchased, not baked on the premises. Experimentation, but not in the kitchen...maybe trying to find a good supplier for when he may not have the facility that can bake bread anymore? Anybody know if the new space has a smaller kitchen?

from that article: "Wrap the meat in immaculately clean, large, plain white cotton dish towels and place it on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator - which is the coldest spot." this might be answered elsewhere, but I've heard conflicting reports as to what is the "coldest part" of the fridge. I understand that cold air is heavier and thus gravity tends to make the bottom of the fridge the coldest, but my mother (a nutritionist) had told me that the top shelf, just near the place where the cold freezer air enters the main compartment, is the coldest in most fridges. I suppose I should just leave a thermometer in each spot and check them to see, but does anybody have any insight into this discrepancy? Mom has been wrong before, but I get the impression that this is a much more fridge-model dependent thing than the normal literature would make it out to be.

For what it's worth (considering they close on what, saturday?), looks like they're experimenting with yet another new bread this week again. Contrary to last weeks (which was an artisan bread, very open crumb with hard crust), this one is much more sandwich-friendly, resembling a kaiser roll, and thus able to contain all/most of the sauce from a pork shoulder + mustard. I think I even prefer this bread to any of the previous ones...it's better sandwich material than last week's, and it's less greasy than the one from circa 1 month ago. Get your fix while you can.

Wednesday and Thursday this week

I've done this once, and we went with Union Meat in Eastern Market. I called ahead a few weeks just to make sure they could secure one, but I think you can get away with ordering as little as a week beforehand. The pig I got was frozen but they thawed it for me, so it was ready to go when I got it. As for cooking methods, I rented a rotisserie from Brooke Rental (they have a few locations, we got ours in Arlington). It was $75 for the weekend, and they didn't require any rigorous cleaning of the thing afterwards, just that we got rid of the charcoal. It took us 11 bags of charcoal and about 13 hours to cook an 80lb pig (which cost around $200 at union meat, although I think prices have gone up since then). I highly recommend it, although if your friends are as cheap as most of mine, it's not a cheap weekend

Yea, I second the So's Your Mom thumbs up. My only gripe with them is that they close at 3pm on Sundays, so when heading up to Bedrock for some Sunday afternoon pool, they're usually closed. And I suppose that's why the peruvian chicken place across the street (Granja de Oro) is my go-to on those days. mmm, fried yucca.

Zora, what do you use for the "drip/steam" tray? I'm definitely going to have to start using my "I didn't want to pay for a real 22inch weber" grill to do some smoking, and this definitely sounds like the sort of thing that it would be perfect for (although I want to try making pastrami at some point)

Just found this thread. The reuben is one of my go-to order things when I'm looking for lunch joints. The Luna Grill version is currently one of my faves, but for takeout, there are several that are accetable: Best Sandwich Place, Capital Grounds, and Sunrise Cafe are all pretty good. More details at the site in my sig (just do a search on "reuben") </plug>

Hey, I resemble that remark But seriously, good food, good times. The veggie delight may well have been the highlight for me, although those potstickers were pretty excellent (and the spicy cucumber was a nice start). The value for the dollar at this place is the real story for me. You can eat well for $10, and you can feast, as we did, for $15. I can still taste that smoked chicken

I've got no idea about the Gaithersburg location, but the only place I've been able to find it was at the P st Whole Foods. I heard reports that even Chevy Chase liquors didn't have any (granted, this was around a month ago). Probably best to call WF before you make the trip, though. I only saw it there on and off and I haven't looked recently. As for the beer, it's not my favorite of theirs (and I liked it much better in its previous incarnation, Prescription Pils), but it's not a bad imperial pils. Still got a bottle in the fridge, waiting for next time I have somebody over who will appreciate it. Or maybe I'll just keep the bottle as a collector's item, as I've heard that the name's approval has been revoked for the next round. Anybody suprised?

When contemplating my first batch of mayonnaise about a year or so ago, I thought about using irradiated or pasteurized eggs...though a little research doesn't seem to indicate they're the same process, the results on salmonella seem to be the same. Anyway, I looked at Safeway and Whole Foods, and at the time, neither carried them. I used normal eggs and they were fine, but if I were making mayo for a 71 year old, I might've hunted more. Haven't noticed recently if any have started showing up in stores.

Well, mark me down as coming...I've got one offer for a ride from rockville. Still soliciting offers from somewhere closer to Dupont, but I'll be there regardless.

Anybody else in on this? I'm tempted to get one at $85, but if we can get em for $71 I'd obviously much prefer that.

Anybody willing to pick me up at the rockville metro? (it's 1.7 miles, dunno if i really wanna walk it) or even better, anybody willing to pick me up at dupont?

Ah, now it makes sense why the P st WF always has two-bottle packages that involve the bottles being wrapped together with tape. Always confused the heck out of me since I had seen single bottle sales at other locations. It's sorta annoying when you just want to try a new beer that is packaged in 22oz or 750ml bottles, but heck, the convenience of being able to get good beer at reasonable prices is well worth it. Whoever runs the beer selection at the P St location gets a tip of the hat from me: they've almost always got something that I either haven't had or just haven't had in a while. Yesterday it was the Lagunitas Sirius, a "high-gravity cream ale". Not the best Lagunitas offering, but not bad.

Wow, that's excellent, thanks for the info. I see a zipcar trip in my future. 3) One downside of living in the city is having no "yard" as such I've got a courtyard but my neighbors might not approve if I started installing bird feeders in the common area. 4) A friend of mine undertook a project to make bacon, and she got her pork belly from Wagshall's (they had to order it for her). I imagine it's cheaper to get it from the Asian markets, I'll tell her to try there next time too. Again, thanks. Google only gets you so far, and then local expertise is really helpful in getting started in these sorts of things.

I've never actually been to chicago, but I've been to the airport a few times now, and if my layover is long enough, I always head to this little hot dog stand in between two terminals where they have Goose Island Honker Ale on tap. It's a bit dumpy, but for that two hour layover, it's not a bad spot to hang out. The hot dogs aren't great (they don't have sauerkraut either), but they could be worse. And the beer's good

Ah, watergate safeway, could you have been any worse? Terrible selection, useless produce section, and very questionable meats...thank god I live near a Whole Foods now. That place is awful and I imagine it will take a huge hit when the TJ's opens up...the only people that will still go there are the elderly folks who live in the Watergate and don't want to walk the very few blocks to the TJ's. If the TJ's takes Colonial Cash (the GW food points, might be called something else by now, who knows), the effect will be tremendous. Signed, BS/MS-CS, '04 (lived on campus the whole time)

I got my mason jars at the Ace hardware in Dupont (on 17th south of R), and pectin at safeway, when I tried to make orange marmalade. I also use the "quick process" method for my pickles, although fermenting them is obviously on the horizon. I'm not particularly into sweets, so my canning needs are fairly light, although I do need to get a jar lifter at some point...I haven't done any boiling of my jarred goods.

So I had lunch at Kinkead's for Restaurant Week today, and had a soup that had duck confit in it (which was tremendous). I wasn't familiar with duck confit except by name, so I looked up a ton of recipes online and plan on making this one of my next projects (it's not fermented, but cured is close enough, right? ) A few questions: 1) Raisa or anyone else, do you have any particular recommendations for places to buy the fatty ducks necessary for confit? I live in Dupont and have no car, so something metroable is preferable, although I can zipcar if there aren't any metro-friendly options 2) Zora, how much fat do you generally get off a given duck leg? In particular, how many do I need to make in order to render enough fat to cover the legs? 3) Whenever I buy chuck roasts, I tend to trim off a portion of the fat as I'm cutting the roast into smaller pieces, and I have been saving the fat in the freezer. From reading around online, I've found conflicting reports on the culinary value of beef tallow (rendered beef fat)...most places say it has no flavor and thus doesn't contribute much, but then I've found a few places where people claim it is useful when frying, etc. Anybody tried this? If not, apparently tallow makes great candles 4) If I were going to make pork lard, would it be better to just buy the pork belly, or would it work to just save my pork fat trimmings for a while in the freezer and do the rendering once I've got a respectable amount? (or: how long will pork fat keep in the freezer?) God I love stuff like this. Food project!