An Briosca Mor

Then you didn't have three types of sausages, because as I said above rashers aren't a sausage. And BTW, white pudding is not actually white, it's light brown. Indeed it's often as dark or even darker brown when cooked than bangers are. Maybe Beckett's has some exotic recipe, but normally what makes a pudding white rather than black is the absence of blood, so calling something a "black AND white" pudding seems kind of misleading.

You apparently did have three types of sausage, but you've got your terminology a bit mixed up. Bangers are the Irish sausages served as links. Rashers are what looks like Canadian bacon. (What the Irish call bacon is more like what we call ham here in the US.) Black pudding and white pudding are two different things, both a form of sausage that's typically served by slicing the links into little hockey pucks before frying. Black pudding is the blood sausage, and white pudding is the sausage made with oats.

Actually, I did try Boardwalk Fries very early on in the 2008 season. Got fries there and went on to Ben's for a half smoke all the way. Must have been one of those Marlins games when the crowd was non-existent, even by first-year standards, for me to have been able to do that. Anyway, the Boardwalk Fries that night were actually okay, semi-crisp and tasty. Based on that experience, I went back to the Boardwalk Fries stand and tried again a couple of weeks later. That time the fries I was served were flaccid, cold and downright terrible. I haven't been back to that stand since.

Now that I think of it, the fries at Cantina Marina were actually pretty good - fairly crisp and nicely spiced. But that stand, which was next to Five Guys, is alas not back this year. Where is the Bavarian Nuts cart located?

I got this sandwich (called "The Big Catch" or "Crab Louie") once. At $18, it's probably the most pricy thing in the plebian sections of the ballpark. The crab sandwich part of it was very good, but I won't be ordering it again, for two reasons. (1) Because I've never had a decent (i.e. twice fried and crisp, not once fried and limp) french fry in Nationals Park I asked for onion rings as a sub for the fries, which they granted with no problem. The onion rings would have been good, but they were stone cold. (2) That two-foot long narrow cardboard basket they serve the sandwich in made me feel like way too much of a fancy boy as I strolled through the park looking for a place to sit down and eat.

Do you get a lot of elderly, pregnant women coming into your place? If so, will you still seat the entourage of reporters from the National Enquirer, etc, that are following her if they don't all arrive at the same time?

Take your friend to a strip club, and if questions arise just exclaim "Pass-ty? I thought you wanted to see some pasties!"

Three or four years ago I assisted for Carla at a class she taught at Sur La Table in Pentagon Row. It was kind of a weird topic, Vegan Thanksgiving, so I didn't get anything culinarily for myself out of the experience. But it was a fun night anyway. I think Carla's main gig is as a caterer, but I've heard she's also teaching some classes at that new CulinAerie place downtown. Maybe she still does classes at Sur La Table (I don't know, because I'm out of touch with their program) and since she's a graduate of L'Academie de Cuisine she may teach there also, although I don't recall seeing her name in their catalog.

Whole Foods sells soba noodles in multiple varieties, in the ethnic food aisle. Also, when I took a class at L'Academie de Cuisine in Bethesda and the menu included soba noodles, the instructor mentioned having bought them at the local Safeway. YMMV, and obviously neither of these places will sell them in bulk. You'll need to buy ten one-pound boxes and pay the price for that.

That strip is at least three or four years old. Older than that, really, as the strip storefronts themselves were repurposed from whatever building it was that had already been there for years. (I've driven by there several times a week for the last eight years, but damned if I can remember what it used to be. Vacant, perhaps.) Anyway, about four years ago a Dad's Backyard Burgers sign on a post went up near the building. That sat there for about a year with nothing seeming to occur other than the divvying up of the building into storefronts. Then permanent signs appeared above each of four storefronts, for Pilin Thai, zpizza, Carvel/Cinnabon and Dad's Backyard Burgers. Eventually the zpizza and Carvel actually opened for business, and maybe a year after that the Dad's Backyard Burgers finally opened - only to apparently close just a few months later. (It looked like the staff had cleaned up one night, put the chairs up on the tables, swept the place down, and then just disappeared from the planet instead of coming to open up the next morning.) Meanwhile, zpizza and Carvel were still up and running, and for a while a Caribou Coffee was carved out from part of the Pilin Thai storefront and was also doing business. Now they're all gone, along with any evidence that they ever were there. Except for Dad's Backyard Burgers, which still sits there looking like the morning crew overslept and didn't make it in to open up. Very weird.

I can't find it anywhere on the Nationals' web site, but the outside food policy was included in the package when I got my season tickets last week. Basically, it appears to be the same policy as last year at RFK.

I haven't been to a Johnny Rockets for maybe ten years, which was long before Snyder bought them. But I used to live just down the street from one of the original Five Guys (the one on Rt 7 near Bailey's Crossroads) back before they franchised and expanded all over, and now I live just down the street from the Five Guys franchise on Gallows Road in Merrifield. How do they compare? As I recall, the burgers and fries at Johnny Rockets were pretty nondescript. Not bad, just generic. A step up from McDonald's/Burger King, but not a very big step. The best thing about Johnny Rockets was the shakes and malts. They were made fresh to order from ice cream and milk, and were almost but not quite too thick to sip through a straw. Five Guys doesn't have shakes. Just burgers, fries, hotdogs and sodas. Back in the day at the original store, the burgers were truly made to order. You'd walk in, and as soon as you got in line the guy behind the register would ask you how many burgers you wanted so the fry cook could throw the meat on the grill, just like the barista at a coffee joint will ask you what drink you want before you hit the register. In the very early days at Five Guys you could even specify how you wanted your burger cooked, but that ended some time ago and now they are all cooked to a standard well done. Since they are cooked to order, though, they usually get pulled off the grill before they become true hockey pucks. As for the fries, they are also generally cooked to order and double-fried as they should be. If you eat them fresh from the fryer instead of carting your bag around for a while before eating, you really can't do better than the fries at Five Guys. The quality of Five Guys has slipped a few notches since they started to expand, and varies a good bit from one franchise outlet to another. As I said, it's been a long while since I ate Johnny Rockets but I can't imagine they improved any once Snyder bought them. And the worst Five Guys I've ever had was still way way better than the back in the day Johnny Rockets ever was. Except for the shakes, that is. If I was near a Johnny Rockets now, I might go by fairly often just to get a shake.

There is already a Five Guys just around the corner from the stadium, and from reading the carry-in food policy that came with my season ticket package it looks like you could probably get away with bringing a Five Guys bag in with you. Maybe if they start finding a lot of empty Five Guys bags in the ballpark trash they'll close the deal and get one inside the park too. I wouldn't think it would be hard for Five Guys to adapt their service model to the ballpark environment. While they do theoretically cook to order, they really don't any more now that all their burgers are cooked to well done. So they could continuously slap burgers on the grill knowing that they'll be slammed and those burgers will be sold the minute they're done. It doesn't take long at all to slap the toppings on and wrap one up. Same thing with the fries. As for the peanuts, a baseball park is by definition about as far away from a peanut-free zone as you're ever gonna get, even in this day and age. My big question about the Nationals Park food offerings, though, is where is Stan Kasten's favorite, the Capital Q brisket?

Tysons might make sense for them, given their "wait 20 minutes to eat the cupcake you really want now" policy. You could place your order, wander off and shop or eat elsewhere while your 20-minute clock is ticking, and then return for your cupcake. I wonder if they will give you a little beeper so you don't lose track of time. Nothing would be worse than having to eat a 21-minute-or-more-old cupcake....

Well, if they were on their game there during the Super Bowl itself, they sure weren't during the pre-game show. As it happens, I made my first-ever visit to 2 Amy's this past Sunday afternoon. And coincident with your review here, I also had the margherita extra (w/cherry tomatoes). However, I wouldn't call the pizza I had excellent. It looked good, with a paper-thin crust in the center of the pie and a nicely puffed-out and char-spotted outer crust, but it didn't eat good. Rather than being crisp as it should have been, the outer crust was gummy and rubbery. The thin center of the crust was a soggy mess. It was an ordeal to cut slices off the pie, even with the serrated knife that was provided. Two simple things would have eliminated these issues if only the kitchen had been on top of things. First, a few more minutes in the oven until the crust was properly done. Second, the cherry tomatoes (which were not nearly ripe enough to be served) had been cut in half, but the seeds and liquid from them had not been removed before placing them on top of the pie. Whether this was done before or after baking, I don't know, but it doesn't matter. How could any chef expect a paper-thin crust not to get soggy when dumping several teaspoons of liquid on top of it? If I was in the kitchen, I would not only have seeded and drained the cherry tomatoes but also raosted them separately before placing them on the pie, so as to bring out whatever flavor was lurking in them despite their lack of ripeness. A little more salt either in the dough or on top of the pizza would have helped as well to enhance the flavor of a pie that was pretty bland save for the basil. All in all, this was a very underwhelming pizza, especailly given the praise this restaurant has received in print for several years now. To be fair, though, the eggplant parm starter and the cannoli I had before and after the pizza were quite good, verging on excellent. The eggplant was as expertly seasoned as the pizza was not.

There was an article (or maybe it was a Marc Fisher column) in the Post a month or two ago about a place where they are making signs for Nationals Park. The Ben's Chili Bowl sign was one of the signs being made there. Sounds like a done deal to me. Now, the Gifford's ice cream is nice, but it had better be served in a miniature helmet or there will be hell to pay among the fanship.

But Costco is open for more than eight hours a day. At least for the West Ox Road/Lee Highway store, I believe they open to resale customers at 10:00, general customers at 11:00, and they close at 8:30. That means they need to have the checkout lines covered for 10.5 hours every day. So either they are having their employees work 10.5 to 11 hour days (and I guess if they work four-day weeks that would work with a half hour or an hour off for lunch), or they would have to have staggered eight-hour shifts to cover the whole day. Which is it?

Does this place also carry black pudding or white pudding? I've been looking for a local source for those items. Or if this place doesn't sell them, anyone know of somewhere that does?

I took this 6 week course last Jan-Feb at L'Academie, and I see it is indeed in the catalog again for the current fall semester. It is a great course, and unlike the savory-side recreational classes, in the pastry course they let you take home all of your unconsumed pastries and unbaked doughs from the class. Health department regulations forced them to quit letting students take home food from most classes a year or two ago, although some instructors live dangerously with L'Academie management and don't enforce the rule. But apparently the regulations don't have a problem with pastry leaving the premises. Chef Theresa advised us to bring a large Tupperware container with us every week to take home anything we wanted after class. I still have some puff pastry and croissant dough in my freezer from the class that I should probably use pretty soon, come to think of it. There was a follow-up to this six-week course offered last spring, which would have covered mousses, custards, and other stuff not in the first course, but they made it a prerequisite that Course I be completed first in order to take Course II, and not enough people signed up so it was canceled. If more people go through Course I this fall, maybe they'll be able to offer Course II again next spring and get enough registrants to make a go of it.

A friend of mine talked me into getting a CSA half share from Waterpenny Farm in Rappahanock County VA. This will be my first go at CSA, and I'm going to try to blog about it each week during the summer. I've just posted the results from Week 1 at http://anbrioscamor.blogspot.com/search/label/CSA, if anyone's interested.

Any idea when the Merrifield location of Pilin Thai and the burger place are supposed to open? There has been signage on this little strip mall for well over a year for four tenants: Pilin Thai, zPizza, Carvel/Cinnabon and Dad's Backyard Burgers. The zPizza and Carvel shops opened about six months ago, but the other two have been boarded up and dormant looking the whole time. There has been a new burst of signage there for the burger place within the last couple of weeks, though, so maybe something's happening there. But the RFP you included as a PDF on your post is all about the relocation of these four businesses as well as other nearby businesses hard up on Gallows Road, presumably due to the long-awaited reconstruction of the Lee Highway-Gallows Road intersection. This makes me wonder if Pilin Thai and Dad's Backyard Burgers will ever actually open. There's only a small parking strip between the building and the road, and if that's taken for road construction I don't see how any business could viably operate in that building. So the state must be going to relocate them somewhere else per the RFP you referenced. I agree with you about Pilin Thai being good food in an unpretentious setting, and since I live not far from this little strip building I was looking forward to having them come in there. Also, I was curious to see if this Dad's burger place would be any competition for Five Guys and Elevation Burger which are both nearby.

Capitol Q is located in the Terrace Food Court at RFK, which is right above the main gate. This is the food court that was added last July when the Lerners took over. The one where Hard Times Cafe used to be. In addition to Hard Times, I think there is at least one other vendor missing in that food court since last year. I went up there last Saturday just before the exhibition game, and boy did that place look empty. Until I got right up on it, I thought maybe it wasn't even open. I ended up getting a sausage wrap for $8 from Capitol Q, which was spicy and tasty. Although I don't know why they call it a wrap, because it was served in a bun. On Opening Day, due to the crowd I opted instead for a Dominic's sausage from the stand on the 300 level near the main gate. There was a line, but it moved rather quickly. (This was about a half hour before the game started.) The sausage was nicely browned, unlike some that I got from the same stand last year which were cooked but not brown at all. A foot-long sausage for $6.75 - not a bad deal in a ballpark, actually. (The Capitol Q sausage is tastier than Dominic's, but only regular size and costs more. There's your tradeoff.) Then I went up to my seat in the 400 level along the right-field line and stayed there through the whole game. I must be the only one who does that, though, because before the game the concourses were so crowded you could barely move even though the stands were relatively empty. I can only imagine what it must have been like when all those folks were standing in line for multiple innings waiting for a cold raw hot dog. But perhaps if they'd gotten there early like I did (by taking Metro) and gotten their food before going to their seats, there would not have been so many problems. Or maybe my life would have been worse, so perhaps I should scratch that last comment... My prediction for next year in the new digs where the food choices will be much better and easier to get, and the concourses will be wider and designed so that the field can be seen from there: People will be complaining because there is no space at the concourse ledge to see the game, because three rows of tall people are blocking their view. But if that's so, I'll be happy - because I will be in my seat watching the game!

Hmm, I wonder if this might be WF store policy? Twice now at the Vienna WF I have shown up in the checkout line with a pepper in my basket. The checker asks me what kind of pepper it is, and I say I don't know - because I honestly don't know, since WF has this annoying habit of not labeling their produce either with name or price. But that's another rant. The checker then mumbles "Okay, it's free" and tosses the pepper past the scanner. Both times, it has been the same checker that did this. So now whenever I check out there, I look for her line, hoping to get lucky again. Am I wrong?

Mold has to be a concern any time you attempt to store a cheese, even if you refrigerate it, and no matter what kind of cheese it is. I have had mold appear on a block of Parmiggiano-Reggiano that was double wrapped in ziplock bags and stored in the coldest part of my fridge. Granted, it was a large block (hey, I shop at Costco) that had been in the fridge many, many months, during which I had periodically unsealed it to carve off a smaller working chunk. But I did indeed get mold. Perhaps it somehow got exported from one of the other chunks of odds-and-ends cheese that I always have wrapped and stored in the fridge. (I tend to use cheeses mainly as an ingredient rather than as a destination food, and stores never sell the exact amount you need for whatever it is you're making. This is a product of the same conspiracy that produces hot dogs in packs of 10 and buns in packs of 12.) But you know what I did to solve this problem? One day in Costco I bought a FoodSaver. It costed around $125, IIRC. Now I vacuum pack all my leftover bits of cheese, and have had no mold whatsoever. I'm sure I eventually will make back the cost of the FoodSaver just on the savings from not having to throw out moldy cheese, if I haven't already. And there are dozens of other food applications where vacuum packing makes sense, even if you don't venture into sous vide cooking. (You could certainly vacuum pack grated Parm Reg cheese, and might even be able to get away with not refrigerating it - but I think I would keep it cold myself just to be sure.) And I second the recommendation on using a microplane grater on ParmReg. That has to be the most perfect kitchen tool ever invented - although from what I've heard it wasn't invented as a kitchen tool but rather imported into the kitchen from HomeDepot by some enterprising chef.