dcfoodie

I still believe we should put a soccer team together of Donrockwell.com.

It was great to see alot of people on sunday and I really had great time. to me the goat cheese with lavender was the winner of all the food. Thanks zoramargolis.

We should also put a cigar smokers team together.

Im looking forward to the next picnic. hopefully I`ll be able to wake up early and cook something.

I'd definitely be up for this. We should enter a team in one of the dc intramural leagues or something...I need the exercise bad!

The fried risotto balls or arancini that I brought are based on Michael Chiarello's recipe.

The only changes I made are the following:

Half the spinach

1 teaspoon of crushed red pepper or more if you want them hotter.

2/3 chicken stock, 1/3 vegetable stock

When adding the spinach add a couple tablespoons (or more to taste) of tomato paste.

Oh, I guess you might want to consider that I deep fried them on a propane burner.

Edited to add: This also makes a pretty kick ass risotto if you stop before the cooling process.

Do people usually bring pets?? I'm debating on whether or not to bring our dog.

Edited to say: DOH!

Amalah and I are dropping the crostini from our offering and adding baked beans, made from a recipe by a recently-found, long-lost relative from Alabama.

(Actually I just wish she was a relative.)

There's plenty of parking on the street around there. I should be leaving shortly.

A few of us are going to go to Bistro Lepic's Wine Bar for happy hour today if anyone is interested in going. They have good deals with 20% off all bottles of wine and a free wine tasting from 6 PM to 8 PM.

At Komi tonight I had guinea fowl stuffed with some sort of dried beef thingie and apricots, sliced and served on something that look and tasted like hen-of-the-wood mushrooms and fiddlehead ferns.

Dear God!

Whimmers:

What are you doing Tuesday night?  Come to Vidalia for happy hour!  Raconteur extraordinaire, owner's husband, and marketing manager James Browne of Hartenberg Estate in Stellenbosch will be conducting a happy hour tasting (with RJ's yummy bar snacks).  Rich and I will be there as well--a whole panoply of schnooks! 

We'll be tasting the 2004 Hartenberg riesling and chardonnay, the 2000 cabernet and (sneak preview) the 2003 shiraz.  In addition, Vidalia offers many happy hour specials, vinous and otherwise.  So come on down and see us, 5:30 to 7PM (or so)!

Hmm, I was going to suggest going to Bistro Lepic's wine bar this week, but this sounds like it'd be a lot more fun.

Ok, I'm joining in a little late here, but Amy, Noah and I are planning to come.

I avoided coming last year because my cooking skills are...rudimentary and I felt bad coming and leaching off of everyone elses cooking. However, I've actually been cooking lately (rather than eating out for every meal), and I think I might attempt to bring some food.

I brought up the idea of spinach and tomato arancini the other day at Corduroy and it seemed to go over well with everyone. The only thing I'm worried about is how fresh they will be after I cook them and then transport them to the campground. By any chance is anyone bringing a portable deep fryer? I read earlier that people were bringing some propane burners. If so, I'll just bring some oil and a pot and we'll be able to deep dry them there so they're fresh.

I've also been messing around with crostini lately (particularly fava bean and marscarpone cheese) and I was thinking of bringing a few baguettes and various toppings -- parmesan, mushroom or spinach pesto.

Just for that, I might need to go to Firefly really soon.

Mr P and I will be sampling Chris' concoctions at Dino for awhile.

Amy and I might be joining you.

For those of you interested in the Hartenberg Shiraz, please PM me.  Joe Riley has let me know that he will be able to make a very nice discount from the regular retail of $30-$32, depending on the total quantity ordered.

You already know I want some...Since we're not ordering cases, I'm in for 3 bottles.

Well since you started this thing pick a decent wine and lets get a deal going.

OK. I choose that Hartenberg Shiraz we had at the fundraiser the other night (Jake, did we have the 2001 or 2003?). Any takers??

The way the group buys work on the other sites is that the deal is offered by the dealer in increments or people, let's say increments of 5 or 10, and the more people we get in the group buy, the bigger the discount. It usually takes a lot of recruiting on the part of the people that get in early to get the price down.

I'll play along, on both sides (offerer and buyer).

So what are you offering Jake? Maybe one of those wines that you had at the fundraiser last week?

Ideally they are organized here almost the same way that the events are. People could reply in and say yes I want in. Paypal is generally the best payment method. Then all payment is collected in advance and it's just a matter of picking up the product or for people not in the immediate area, shipping.

Perhaps there are legal implications...

I'm on a couple car boards, and they always have group buys for expensive car parts where like 20 people get in and buy a high performance muffler or new rims for their car and they get a discount because they're buying in bulk.

Anyway, has anyone brought up the idea of doing that for wine? I know that I normally get a discount for buying wine by the case, but if we organized group buys on this board with groups of of like 20 people or more buying a specific wine would a wine store be willing to give us a bigger discount than the nornal by-the-case discount?

. . . this is so true.  BTW has anyone noticed that dcfoodie in his avatar has done something unnatural to poor little Noah?

There's no way I was letting those delicious fat little thighs go to waste...

This evening I polled 47 people coming out of 2 Amys, and fully 39 of them responded that they had experienced 'moderate-to-severe' denting in the second finger of their right hand over the course of their meal.

"The ridge in your finger can provide for some outstanding masturbation," one woman told me, "but it's imperative to hurry home before it stops throbbing."

Her husband agreed, in a hurry to get to his car:  "It's the difference between a donut and a cruller," he said.

It's time for 2 Amys to get some sharper knives, no?

Cheers,

Rocks.

The problem is that people are using knives and forks.

Repeat after me.

Grab crust. Fold in half. Insert in mouth.

It's very easy.

I had a late lunch @ 2 Amys yesterday, and while most of the items were great as usual the special pizza was probably the best pizza of the many amazing pizzas I've had here.  It came with Pipe Farms goat cheese, fontina, cacio di Roma, chives, garlic & truffle oil.  It was a little cheesier than their pizza usually are, but I thought the combination of the goat cheese, the garlic and the truffle oil was amazing.  Maybe I was just dazzled by the toppings but the crust seemed even better than usual too.

I don't know how long they'll offer this (they may even have had it before) but it was so good that I'm gonna try to go back early in the week to have it again.  They also (as of last night) have the same goat cheese in one of the pannini specials.  The butterscotch chocolate chip ice cream & raspberry lemonade sorbet were great too.  This is another area in which I think this restaurant really excels, the sorbet in particular is consistently amazing & among the best I've had.

Interesting...I was there as well yesterday but I didn't get there till about 2. I had the other special pizza with the 2 Amys sausage, sweeties, hotties, roasted garlic, and fontina. I know what you mean about the pizza dough -- yesterday, it was probably as good as I've ever had it there.

Balduccis had them yesterday. I shelled and peeled them today. That was a lot of work.

I'm going to try to stop by on the way home from work. Should be around 6ish.

So what happened last night?  There doesn't seem to be any announcement or news anywhere about the DC honoree.  (If you search for "best new chefs" in Google News, however, you will find that most of the other honorees got immediate coverage in their local papers.)

Do I have to wait for the TomChat to find out?

Read this...

edited to say:

Ugh. I should read more carefully.

I would also agree that the rabbit doesn't quite live up to the rest of the entrees. There's something about the texture of the rabbit that I didn't quite like.

The last time I was at Komi, Johnny had a goat shoulder on the menu...cooked very much the same as the suckling pig, but with not quite the same boldness of flavor. I came with roasted artichokes and fingerling potatoes (Honestly, I'm not quite so sure about the fingerlings, so don't hold me to that. One too many glasses of Dolcetto and Rosso.) It was quite excellent. Where the suckling pig comes at you with a frontal attack that breaks your nose, the goat sneaks up on you from behind and suddenly your head is hanging off the curb out on 17th and you're wondering what happened.

I was also very happy with our pasta courses - a pappardelle with favas and radish and an agnolotti stuffed with veal and pork (sorry, fuzzy memory again...) I was especially fond of the pappardelle which had a bit of a kick to it due to the crushed red pepper that it contained. Once again, this had a subtle start and then suddenly you were looking for your glass of water.

What was he wearing?

A bear suite.

Edited to add...

Amy and I were there last night and both of us had the filet with the brandy cream sauce. There's no better steak in the area in my opinion and we're very happy that Michael decided to reopen.