giant shrimp

i have heard that they have closed. have they?

i bought them from nina planck's mother, at the stand across from heinz. i am not sure it is the same farm these days and i haven't seen nina planck's mother around lately.

i was hoping to see them pop up again at the dupont farmers market, and now is the time. nettles taste like the way spinach must have been when popeye used it. they stain the water and they must be good for you. a few strands were floating around in the spring consomme at palena recently. the menu said they came from arlington. palena is also making a great foam these days -- from beets -- for the few of us, apparently, who still appreciate a good foam. when done right, it's the equivalent of carrying a strong flavor on air.

Running up to April 20, the saveurs de normande menu is made for raw spring days like this. The tripes a la mode de caen ($15.95) is small meal in itself, a warm and hearty casserole served in a clay terrine, the tripe soft but substantial in texture and surprisingly beefy in flavor, with low strands of meat attached to the non-honeycombed side of the stomach. Simple carrots and potatoes fill out the dish. While you wouldn't want to eat either of these alone, they catch the cider jus, which puts everything in motion. Along with calvados and aromatics that go sight unseen, the sauce adds muted sweetness and a thin breath of pepper. Café du parc's version of this traditional recipe is appropriately light, I would say, for a change of seasons, though it is good enough to suggest the rustic depths to which it might be taken in winter with the addition of hooves and other gelatinous parts the butcher might have hanging around. Sounding luxurious but a mixed bag, a demoiselle de Cherbourg a la nage ($24.95) comes to the table in a creamy, apple-laced froth that settles into a light, white soup. A small claw is perfectly tender, but other parts of the lobster can be stringier, or poached tough. If I hadn't been so full, I might have appreciated more a generously portioned, milky and uncrusted rice pudding ($8). I probably should have delved further into the small slice of mirliton by its side, which seemed to be a simple sugar cake, but perhaps was not. Apple cider sorbet cut through the sugar in the pudding, giving it a nice lift. A baked apple ($8) is also on hand, to dabble in melting green apple sorbet. (if your server asks if you know what tripe is, you can just tell him "please, do i really need to know?")

this is where i learned the hazards of leaning over a plate of chicken parmigiana wearing an unanchored tie and dipping it in tomato sauce. in high school i was there with a couple of my wild friends. when he got up to the register, one of them decided to pay, for the amusement of those following him in line, with a porky pig $5 bill. when the "elderly" cashier accepted it, which he hadn't expected, he snatched it out of her hand before it went into the till. he then handed her real money. "Make up your mind," she snapped at him. one of the best laughs i ever had -- and an indication of some of the clientele they had to put up with.

crab cakes, hydroponic lettuce only, no radishes but plenty of dairy. spring, apparently, was set back by the weather this week. i guess i must have just been dreaming about the charcuterie.

Ther's no better place than au pied de cochon to test them.

L'Express doesn't seem like the sort of place where you would need reservations, but it filled up fast when we were there this winter, and it would be a good idea to have them. the food was down-to-earth french cooking, good and hearty, everyday fare. we were there and noticed an american family a couple of tables away, but it seemed to me about as french as you can get in montreal and a nice place to meet the locals. i wouldn't go to schwartz's and au pied de cochon on the same day. the latter was also packed, and i would make reservations. lemeac is not on your list, but worth visiting, the cooking more refined than l'express; it was also crowded with locals, and i would suggest making a reservation, although i don't know if it's absolutely necessary; we have gone there twice -- on new year's eve (when surprisingly many restaurants in the city are on holiday).

putting olive oil on everything reminds me of the time prometheus tricked zeus by covering the bones with fat. but i do like it, and i hear you can even use it as a hair dressing.

i don't know much about the subject, but i assume that there are ways of farming morels, and almost any other mushroom. maybe somebody knows? i don't think the lack of flavor had much to do with the cooking. they didn't have their familiar smell, and there was just something too clean about them.

young beet green and lettuce salad with red grape tomatoes linguine tossed in butter and parmesan, with sauteed ramps and morels joel gott sauvignon blanc 2008 (the morels, bought at the dupont market, were pristine and beautiful, perfectly intact, but lacking woodland flavor. i assume this means they are cultivated. At $20 for a large handful, wildly overpriced, palely reminiscent of their funkier wild cousins. there are much more assertive mushrooms at the mushroom stand, cultivated or not, even crimini, at a lower high price. these were 100% clean, not a speck of dirt or hair or wing or dew of insect on them.)

recently: buck's fishing and camping. chicken breast and waffles were standing up to those at marvin, and a truly ample portion on a slow night. deviled (mustardy?) eggs and chicken liver with pickled carrot are now combined as an appetizer, so you can have a truly chicken dinner. no chicken dessert however. more than anywhere, this place fries right. this weekend: palena cafe. for two weeks in a row, the fish on the cafe menu has been hitting the spot: swordfish one week, speckled bass the next (or maybe it was striped, it's hard to tell after they remove the skin), and i believe the source had sustainability in mind. maybe they didn't catch them with their hands but at least they baited the hook? spring is coming into view with the consomme: morels and ramps (both also now appearing at the farmers market, morels for $20 a small container and ramps $5 a small bunch). bacon and eggs have made a reappearance, it's pig and pasta, the goose lays the golden egg. it's time for some new desserts, not that i have any trouble finding something i like. hazelnut cake is most reminiscent among the offerings on the menu of ann amernick, assuming the cookie and caramel plate is a given. sushi ko. tuna jaw with salt is a favorite, but not on the menu last night. so it was the old reliable tuna five ways nigiri. flounder carpaccio with truffle oil is a good way to start, but at $15 it works out to $3 a slice. engawa (fin muscle) nigiri ($6.50 for two pieces) is the more intriguing way to go, light, fatty, chewy and with a few strings to pluck in your mouth. green tea ice cream: sweet laced with grassy bitterness and fun clay in the texture. (what's been going on in rockville put me in the mood for indian cooking, and i really should have gone to heritage across the street, which has been slow on sunday nights, but i know the menu too well and just didn't feel like getting that full, or intoxicated -- a couple of their martinis and you will fall down the stairs on the way out. you're likely to sustain worse injuries if you fall down the really steep stairs at sushi ko, and you are likely to be sent upstairs if you were too lazy to call for a reservation. however, you will at least be halfway lucid after sharing one of their iced bottles of onikoroshi sake ($18). (small gifts: on the way down the hill to the restaurant, a maybe five-year-old girl was kind enough to hand me an inch-long twig. she had several of them to distribute, remarkably uniform. you could tell her mother had some reservations about it. i thanked her, and i have it here with me at my desk. actually, i came in early because i have a lot of work to do, so i had better get started.) on the way back up the hill: clamor is spilling out of the open windows at kitchen and i wonder if their food has improved, though i am unlikely to find out for myself. timing means a lot at surfside: watch out if you are into prime dining time, there is too much activity to deal with, i.e., children climbing the windows, and scouting for a table is a chore.

surprisingly for such a young restaurant, just about everything was under control at a recent meal here. the platings are modern, decorated with fairly precise, exclamatory markings of sauce and random daubing and smudging of small flavors. main ingredients are the center of attention, with at least a few things going on around them -- a meaty, succulent filet of cobia at the helm of a deconstructed seafood stew with bits of octopus sounding the sharpest notes ($22). a delectable chocolate mousse similarly holds the center of the plate, a sturdy timbale that could be looser, but in good company with fig and other sweet diversions ($8). blasted thick terra cotta-tiled walls, a black and night-blue color scheme and soaring ceilings are impressive, though maybe hard to warm up to. the wine list is almost entirely from the americas. we ordered glasses of joel gott sauvignon blanc and morgan syrah/grenache ($9), lively and a little boozy and good accompaniments to the food, the former with a heaping plate of rich lobster tagliatelle ($27). the prices, while moderately high, are a good deal.

i tend to buy more than i actually need at the farmers market, but spoilage per se isn't usually the issue. most perishable things purchased on a sunday morning, wrapped up in wet dish towels, can be stored fine at the bottom of the refrigerator at least through the middle of the week. i try to cook first the food that goes the fastest. what turns out to be the waste of money are the things that are still there one week later when it's time to clean out the bins and make room for fresh stuff. i am just coming out of winter hibernation and reliance upon whole foods for produce, which is good enough, i suppose. but the difference between what you can usually find at the grocery store and what you typically find at the farmers market can be startling. the radishes at the market yesterday were good enough that you could make a meal out of them. i have found radishes in the store almost as good, but rarely. no matter whose advice i follow, i have had rotten luck with keeping basil longer than a day or two. vegetables at the market are expensive, but not as expensive as meat and fish, which -- with a few exceptions -- i primarily eat at restaurants and not at home.

crab cakes, lettuce, radish and bread. charcuterie? wait until next week.

price check last night: $15.99 at p street whole foods.

i always get the munchies when i am in amsterdam. (there's a mother/daugher coffee shop along the canal heading to the museums, painted in van gogh, that bakes some pretty mean brownies. i hope they are still in business.)

and whole foods grocery stores. i am not certain of the exact price, but i am fairly certain it is below $20. the wine is listed at woodberry kitchen for $33 a bottle. how much is it at cafe du parc?

the press release above says the special is for lunch and dinner: "the Normandy specialties will be offered for lunch and dinner. A three-course region of Normandy prix fixe menu is $34.95, and items can be ordered í la carte."

tony caputo's market is interesting. i picked up a good sandwich and there is an impressive assortment of dried pasta, etc. downtown also has a good used book store along the tram line, and there are movie theatres within walking distance. go early to a mormon tabernacle choir rehearsal and they will take you on quite a tour.

we went there the week after christmas and all i remember is that i started off with some of the best carrots i have ever been served at a restaurant. also, the steak was the one item on the disappointing side, and there were interesting wines from maryland. the walk from penn station takes roughly an hour. it is a mind-bending excursion through some of baltimore's intriguing neighborhoods (and also past the ace of cakes place, which is dressed up like a mean castle where you would expect to run into leather men). there's an easier way back; the light rail stops an easy block or so from the restaurant and leaves you off a few blocks from the station. we definitely will go back.

the list of small plates seemed to be thinning down this winter, but on the new menu last night it was as long as i remember ever seeing it. a shrimp and white bean salad in olive oil speckled with lemon and orange zest, green herbal confetti and a sneeze of red pepper was a paragon of the refined rustic simplicity that shows this kitchen at its best. it was also mildly and satisfyingly fishier, or shrimpier, than you might expect. (is this a trend? in a visit a month or two ago, the oval room seemed to be making an effort to make fish taste fishier, or does this take no effort at all?) a special small plate of lamb meatballs, with a hint of cinnamon and packed with a few raisins, was bathing in a mellow yet sturdy, strained, smooth tomato sauce. there is enough of it to toss with a mound of spaghetti and too much to mash into the meat, but unfortunately there is not a strand in sight at this kitchen that i know of. however, the sauce is good enough to eat with a spoon if you are hungry. carrot cake was a dessert variation on the meatballs, similarly brown and flecked with ingredients, though a different shape, a little crusty, a little chewy to lend it a nice sweet spine.

you can still take cooking classes at bebo through the end of april.

a marcella hazan classic cooking night: spaghetti in garlic, tomato and tuna sauce, with last-minute butter and parsley -- our all-time favorite canned tuna recipe. and broccoli. she doesn't favor al dente vegetables, and in the case of broccoli who does? these are boiled until about done, five minutes give or take, (in salted pre-pasta water) and later added to a pan where garlic has been sauteed in good olive oil to pale gold. the broccoli is tossed in the oil and finished off in the pan for a minute or two, not losing the bright green. a little salt and it's ready, the best broccoli ever, sweet and even an imaginary trace of lemon. hazan is great at providing simple techniques that really do wonders, and her recipes generally don't allow you to lose your way.

what's up with the salty steak? by the end of the week it was still salty, only saltier. i only tasted enough of the soy and caramel sauce to know it was cloying and excessively salty, and a couple bites of the two generous, perfectly cooked pieces of meat revealed that they were heavily salted as well -- which was really too bad because they looked beautiful. maybe the sauce recipe is a high-wire act, taking salty soy and salty salt to places it has never gone before, but prone to disaster with less than 100 percent agility. i don't know, but the poached salmon that replaced this dish was swimming in the same direction atop black beans, avocado and sake dressing salted just up to a tolerable level. surprisingly, the salt wasn't that detrimental, rounded out by the sake, i suppose, kicking up some delicious flavoring where the two ingredients met. the salmon itself was in the pink, tender, uncommonly good. shrimp chorizo was a star on the restaurant week menu, served with persimmon, a modern smear of avocado on white porcelain and an intriguing black olive crumble that provided a strong wow factor. a small rectangular plank of warm rum-braised pineapple showed off just how good the desserts are here. it was sprinkled with sexy sugar, and i should have asked what makes sugar sexy because now i am wondering, although i do know that it added some mite-sized red sparkle. a mojito sorbet was too sweet, but too small to matter much and with a sprig of cilantro i was able to turn it into a plaything. aside from the obvious -- a somewhat scaled-down menu, no amuse-bouches and about a 25 percent to 30 percent lower check -- the restaurant week meal here was fairly close to what you would experience any other week of the year. the cooking played it a little safer, there wasn't nearly as much fusion with fish sauce and fun with foam that i remember from a previous dinner, not as many test tube ideas. the service here is smooth and got us through an unexpected rough patch in the cooking without a hitch. all in all, of the three places we visited over the weekend for the restaurant week promotion, this was the best -- with vidalia running close behind and an accommodating teatro goldoni dishing out good and sometimes complex food but hamstrung by a tightly limited menu and the reminder that during restaurant week you usually wind up getting what you paid for.