giant shrimp

to see if you really hate them or like them, slice off the stems and saute in a hot pan for a few minutes with a generous amount of brown butter and a splash of water, white wine of lemon and serve with the sauce over a handful of whole wheat pasta. salt and pepper, of course. they will get slimy when they heat up, if that's the way you want to look at them, and if they get too hot they will even open with the smallest of explosion. to disguise them a bit, you can also add some roma tomato roasted with garlic, herb and olive oil (sliced in half, face up, for two hours at 300 degrees) to the pot after giving the okra a minute head start.

these shows can be quite misleading about the abilities, and personalities, of those appearing on them.

heather c seemed to take everything in stride, including departing. still, i can see how a standard peanut butter cookie wouldn't make the cut. there were a couple of close-up shots of it, and it looked just so plain. couldn't she at least have made a sandwich cookie? the filling could have elevated it.

Has anyone been watching Just Desserts? I have not heard anything and haven't had the chance to watch online.

heather chittum is a contestant.

Chef Wiss makes seasonal and local accessible and unbelievably good. Today go get the Fall pizza, the pumpkin desserts, the half smoke, and the mortadella. In fact ALWAYS get what is new and seasonal on the menu, whenever you go.

as much as i like what comes in with the fall, i'm still holding out for summer as long as it lasts, which means heirloom zebras. i've had both green and red, there is a difference, the former have tang and the reds have a more classic tomato taste, but both are delicious. i have found the crusts deliver all the flavor i need, and i assume there is some salt in the dough, which doesn't mean it has to be salty. the salt comes with the toppings.

surprising for one of the best risottos i have had in some time at a restaurant (since palena), the braised pork shank risotto on the menu puts the spotlight on the meat, which is every bit as good as when it comes with the pasta, moist and succulent. pastas here are consistently al dente, so i didn't know what to make of the rice, which didn't have that bite, wasn't cooked to mush either, and provided more fiber than usual. eating an ample half portion you feel like you are passing from one season into the next.

Any word on whether this place is opening any time soon?

october 1?

One area I find weak on their menu is the appetizers, so far the only app I've really enjoyed have been the Bhaji, several of the apps that we have tried which are "drizzled" with chutney usually come swamped in chutney. Saturday we went with the Dahi Bhalle (lentil dumplings) which basically ended up being a plate of yogurt sauce, some cilantro and tamarind chutney, and four very small dumplings.

I look forward to the dahi bhalle, though I can see how some people wouldnt, for a number of reasons. You have to really like yogurt; the dumplings are buried in it. this version is sweet, assertively, as opposed to salty. The tamarind chutney, which is syrupy and mildly cloying, opens up in the yogurt, which carries it along with several other flavors a restrained mix of mint, heat and baking spice. These are ingredients that can pack a wallop, but they are reined in; otherwise the dumplings, which are pale in this version, would exist in texture only. I taste a hint of cinnamon, when I know it should be ginger and probably is. The flavors are there, but you cant quite get to them. Even the tang of the yogurt is sacrificed to the delicacy that reigns over this food. Its maddening because there is real earthiness here, but it is ambrosial and you can barely taste it. the menu describes the yogurt sauce as velvety, and it is. You get lost in it, and then you hit the dumplings, which are peculiar in substance, gone before you realize you are chewing them. I dont know how to describe the flavor, like fried flour and seed drained of some bitterness, rinsed and squeezed. You can read many things into what you are eating, the connotations are there, reminders, if you let them nag, of what you could be eating instead real cookies and cake, butter and icing. I put those things aside, and find as much contentment as you are ever likely to find in what amounts to a big mound of yogurt sitting on what are peaked and poor excuses for a doughnut.

It looks like Jay performed much better than Holli yet Holli got the job.

maybe her food was better. or maybe she won because she doesn't have blue hair.

and then they inevitably have punctured spots/discolorations/etc so i end up cutting off like a quarter of the tomato, which was rather expensive to begin with.

at $4 and more a pound, i've been examing the tomatoes closely and outside of the zebras, perfect heirloom specimens are hard to find. the bigger the tomato, the more extensive the damage. i don't think the excess heat has been especially helpful this summer, either. the tomatoes have been more perishable than ever. any apparent soft spots, and the entire tomato can start rotting within a day, and i have had more than a few that looked ok explode in the bag on the way home. i'm expecting to see better late in the summer. for taste and texture, all around right now, cherry tomatoes are the safest bet. considering their soaring cost, heirloom tomatoes can be frustrating.

the past couple of weeks, okra has been one of the standout vegetables at the market. i toss them in a hot pan with a little water, butter, oil and lemon for a few minutes, covering them to start, and they are great. their only drawback, like just about everything at the farmers market, they tend to be expensive.

I'm not sure where you get your information, but as a former ANC Commissioner and Chair of the ABC Committee for Adams Morgan, I can tell you that the idea that DC enforcement is predatory is not only unfounded but laughable (because there is hardly any). In any event, it is always the server's/bartender's responsibility to get ID. Being busy is not an excuse. But the idea that people are being 'tricked' into serving minors is obscuring the nature of undercover operations. Should undercover narcotics detectives making a buy show up looking like a cop? Of course not. Should they go stand on a corner where no one is selling drugs and wait for someone to show up? That wouldn't be smart police work, would it? So naturally they are going to go where they are most likely to have success-crowded, popular places, especially those that don't card everyone at the door. Although I can tell you that these 'stings' are an extremely low police priority, in my experience (in DC).

i have seen a number of prominent restaurants have their liquor licenses suspended, whether it is a priority for the police or not.

as for narcotics, as the unfortunate member of a jury a number of times, d.c. seems to give a high priority to prosecuting drug users for small amounts. The last case i was on it turned out to be $18 worth, a pebble of crack. the priority seems to be to go to parts of the city that are black and poor rather than white and affluent. of course, this is not from the perspective of an anc commissioner.

i know they do excellent sting operations in d.c. our son wasn't arrested when he fell for one of them, but he was suspended, so shortly thereafter left for blue smoke. and i don't recall the exact circumstances, but at the time i thought the deception sounded unfair.

many many moons ago, during my short time working in a restaurant, a waitress told one of her customers that she was not allowed to give wine to her teenage daughter, which she had been pouring in small amounts into her water glass. the mother ignored the server, who kept watching and the next time the wine was poured she rushed over and filled the water glass with water to overflowing. that ended the problem.

One question: If the chef from Heritage India is now at Masala Art, should I bother checking out the former? I've never been to the Glover Park location.

i don't see why you shouldn't. it's where masala art and passage to india both got their start. there's a great deal of heritage in masala art.

i have been going to heritage for years, and it has consistently maintained a high level of cooking from chef to chef. the vegetable samosas, chicken makhani and chicken tikka masala -- and a lot more -- carry close similarities to what's on the menu at masala art. even the half-price bottle of wine monday through thursday promotion is the same at both places. the heritage dining room has a more sumptuous feel, the servings are a bit larger and more expensive.

with the exception of the vindaloo, i have tried all of the lamb dishes at masala art, and they would be hard to surpass. i especially like the adraki lamb chops. but the rara gosht at heritage mixes lamb cubes with ground lamb, something you won't find at masala art, and it is worth ordering. (occasionally the lamb has been on the tough side.) it's also worth comparing the murgh entrees at both restaurants (as tim carman has done).

lately, heritage has been attempting to branch out. i have had very good dumplings there (and much better than is what available at the small chinese restaurant below it, where i finally had a meal, and it was just ok.) other special appetizers are probably worth trying out, as are the shammi kabab and dahi balle, both also on the masala art menu. special entrees haven't been as consistently good, but they are interesting. i haven't had the pulao at masala art, but i think it would be hard to beat the pillau at heritage.

heritage does have some problems. it seem a bit stodgy when it goes up against masala art or passage to india, both of which have broken out into wider and more exciting menus. the service is good, despite what you may have heard.

i feel a little guilty that i haven't been to heritage in at least a month because i have just started eating my way through the menu at masala art. it hasn't been prohibitively crowded in the last several weeks; its popularity is what kept me away after it opened. but i have been dazzled by the food and the cooking at masala art. and i have been intrigued by things here -- the tart interplay of the lemon and pomegranate with the potatoes in the aloo anardana -- that i never encountered at heritage.

if you are looking for the kind of place you can stumble into, la fonda del jibarito seemed to be a fairly reliable place to discover how they cook things locally. we went to a couple of fancier restaurants in old san juan, but this was my favorite. about as casual as they come, and lots of character in the dining room and on the menu. 280 calle sol is the address, on a residential backstreet with plenty of roving cats.

I just made a fresh tomato sauce using red and orange cherry tomatoes and one large red-skinned tomato. A friend brought me a bagful of cherry tomatoes from his plants and I had some others from the Dupont market. After I had sauteed and softened the tomatoes with some onion and garlic, I put it all into my Vitamix blender and blended for a minute or so on high. I had considered straining the puree, but the skins were completely liquified and the sauce was creamy smooth. I put it back into the pan with some fresh herbs and reduced it for a while to thicken it.

liquifying the skin sounds like a good way to do this, although i was wondering how much more nutritional value you derive from keeping them in the sauce. the little quills the skin rolls up into don't ruin the sauce but i try to avoid them. i also try to avoid using a food mill (too much churning), so skin the tomatoes and seed them over a sieve, keeping the juice, before putting them in the pan. typically, i then add this to garlic sauteed lightly in olive oil and maybe add some butter.

deborah madison has you throwing cherry tomatoes into a hot pan until they break down, adding a little water as needed to prevent scorching. those are relatively easy to push through a sieve, and then you add the butter. it's smooth as silk.

my favorite this time of year, and i am just getting around to it, is tomato compote -- basically skinned tomatoes on a bed of basil, and some chopped garlic, drizzled generously with olive oil so it comes maybe a third up their sides, salt and pepper. you start them off at 375 degress for 15 minutes or so, then turn the oven down to 350 and cook them until they are carmelized, another hour or more. these do well in the freezer. you may want to whisk everything together if you are using them as a sauce, the oil picks up the juice. it can be runny for a sauce, and if that's a problem you can cook them down in a pan, or start out using less oil. anyway, they have a unique flavor and they have a really nice aroma when you are baking them, right up there with bread.

the cost of heirloom tomatoes this summer has almost caught up to what they charge for them at whole foods (which can be canadian and can come from greenhouses): generally, $4.50 a pound! it seems to me that the annual spurt in their cost is more related to demand than overhead. the dupont market has been mobbed lately, and people seem happy to pay these sky-high prices. i told someone at toigo that the price of produce these days is getting so high that the day will come when they will have to guard their fields. he said they already do, as much as they can, but there is still some theft.

Went up to Montreal over 4th of July weekend with a bunch of cousins for our annual Au Pied De Cochon dinner.

Since there were 6 of us, we ordered the Tête de Cochon for 2- a whole roasted pig's head- our came with a lobster stuffed in it's mouth and then the pig's tongue was stuck on the front of the lobster. Then, they took APdC mashed potatoes (loaded with cheese curds) and draped it over the pig's eyes like a blindfold. The meat just peeled off the pig's face. We tore through everything including the eyeballs and the very tasty brain which reminded me of egg yolk or firm tofu.

pics

looking at the photos, and from what i know about this restaurant, i am extremely impressed that six of you were able to eat this much food.

Just keep the skins on prepped tomatoes and reduce the amount of butter if you must, or use olive oil instead. Lycopene in the fruit protects your skin and I forget what it is about fat that enhances its properties, but there you go.

i have maybe a dumb question for you. at some point, do you remove the skins from the sauce? (the link to the recipe above shows the sauce going through a mill, which makes a luscious sauce if you want to go through the effort.)

this is an aversion and not a phobia. i hate drinking powdered milk, which my parents used to use when taking us on camping trips in france. no one seemed to have a problem with it except for me. there just seemed something horrible about it. i never could drink much but can still taste it, almost metallic, thin and medicinal and the white of the milk tinged with a disturbing wavery bluishness.

i remember two terrible sandwiches from my early school years involving combinations of ingredients that i would never want to encounter again. first, made by our german housekeeper, was canned tuna on thick butter, the dairy fat bringing out rancidness in the fish oil and the texture of the butter sliding discordantly against the tuna. the second, prepared by a friend's mother sharing her son's favorite, combined sliced banana with a liberal smear of mayonaisse. there was nowhere for the dressing to go except into the soft sandwich bread, rendering it gummy and wet on the surface of its underside. and what a banana was doing between two slices of bread in the first place was beyond me, although i did learn a bit later in life that peanut butter was acceptable in smoothing this out. my friend's mother, many years later killed in a car crash in virginia returning from a holiday party at a work acquaintance's home with her inebriated husband behind the wheel, excused me from continuing after the first bite, a little surprised by my revulsion, which must have been plain enough to see. you have to watch that gag reflux in children or there can be some unpleasant cleaning up to do. the banana was on the green side, as well. bananas raise a number of predilections, and mine is for a state of ripeness marked by brown speckling on the peel.

I assume that you saying that you would not make one for less than $12 as the ingredients are rather inexpensive.

i probably could make a pizza for less than $12. however, where i come from a ball of buffalo mozzarella costs $7 or $8 just to start. and i would add parmesan and a third cheese. i like to use good tomatoes when they are available. at the farmers market last week, tomatoes were selling for $4.50 a pound (and they weren't that good, they are still coming in. fingerling potatoes from the same stand, which i used in a nicoise salad, were the same price.) i don't have a garden, so basil would probably be another couple of dollars. olive oil costs, yeast costs, flour costs, meat costs if i decide to add something like a salami

i haven't made pizza in maybe five years, and i would usually make two at once, but even in the winter when i was using sauce i paid more for ingredients than $24. i will admit that my pizzas are overloaded, you probably would never find them in a restaurant. actually, i like them better than what you can find in a restaurant, and i am fairly certain that at the price you would have to sell them for, you would put yourself out of business even if your customers thought they were the best pizzas they had ever eaten.

anyway, a 12-inch pizza should be enough for two people. if you can find a really good one for $12 and you don't have to make it yourself, that's a bargain.

the home-made pizza above looks good, i would expect to pay at least $12 for it in a restaurant and i know i would spend more than that making it at home.

if i were to round up all the ingredients to make a pizza at home tonight i doubt i would do it for less than $12.

summer is very much on the menu now.

heirloom tomato gazpacho is cool, light and completely smooth, silky with a drop of olive oil here and there, and some vinegar moving into the background, but dominated by a bright juicy tomato flavor supported by submerged halves of whole grape tomatoes and tender ciabatta croutons.

along with the usual pecorino shavings and sharp dark green smidgens of something taking over for the ramp seasoning, the pork shank fettucini is now packing in the flavor with small chunks of local summer squash and sweet local corn that marry well with the pasta and the light broth that gathers at the bottom of the bowl. the pasta itself is both chewy and supple, a rarer combination than it should be, highly satisfying, still hearty but with a pronounced seasonal accent.

more unusual -- at least i've never seen it before -- is the combination of prosciutto and melon topping a special pizza. halves of small uncooked cantaloupe balls provide more sugar than you would expect to find on a pizza, but they are used sparingly, one or two to a slice. they are decorative as well, adding festive orange polka dots to the pie, which is pulled together by fontina and ricotta and strewn with basil after it comes out of the oven. this pizza provides more of an allusion to the classic combination of melon and prosciutto than totally the real thing; there's not enough melon to do otherwise, and it's not what you would want on a pizza in the first place. if anything, the melon interrupts the flavors of the other ingredients because it's the one thing that really doesn't belong on bread -- in this case, radius' reliably crispy, sturdy crust -- but its small appearance does give this pizza its unmistakable summer disposition. this is also a moderately light pizza, well attuned to appetities diminished some by the hot weather.

Ethiopic gets the Sietsema Treatment - Two Stars

he liked the croaker least, but plain with lemon is the way i usually find it served, as a supplement to the fasting vegetables. i thought ethiopic's was better, moister than etete's. and most of our vegetables did not benefit from the layering of flavors he mentions in his review. this is a longer bus ride for me than etete, but worth the trip (a 10 minute walk from union station). he is definitely right that the tables are too small.

If you’re looking for big, pillowy curds, you’ve found them. The home-made cottage cheese is billed as savory, but it is on the bland side, neither tangy nor sour, but creamy, definitely yes, and last weekend was picking up flavor from a small salad of the first good sun-blasted cherry tomatoes of the season, basil and baby oak-leaf lettuce. What’s special about them is the way they chew; they push back, in a way, like dairy farm bubblegum or gnocchi in texture, promoting soft smacking. You feel you are eating something substantial, when you are not, is what heidegger might have said about it. Cut this big, I am assuming rennet is involved in the process, so they wouldn’t be vegetarian. I’ve never had the pleasure of running into a cottage cheese quite like this one before, made with a homespun touch by someone who clearly knows how to spend – I am guessing – her time in the kitchen.

I found it fascinating that T. Dean was harshly judged by Eric Ripert for leaving the skin on his rockfish--it seemed to be the primary reason he was included in the bottom-scored group. However, that seems to be the locally "traditional" way to serve rockfish: pan-crisping the skin and then oven roasting until the fish is done. That is certainly the advice that the fish chefs at BlackSalt always provided. So--is this an example of outsider "experts" not being attuned enough to local food? The challenge was to present a dish that represents where the chef is from--it seemed to me that Timothy Dean had done that.

when they were called up for the final decision on who was to pack up their knives, tom colicchio faulted him for his choice of rockfish from all the better possibilities for representing the region's cooking, didn't he?

topped with the great little crunchy chocolate bb-sized balls. The contrast of the crunch with the smoothness of the mousse itself was a presentation I have not seen before in a mousse and was quite effective.

central does this. i haven't entirely made up my mind what i think of it.

these days when i go to the multiplex i typically wouldn't know the name of the movie i am seeing if it wasn't up on the time board at the ticket window. and i am really bad at directing people to farmers market stands by name. all i know is that when i want to buy lamb at the dupont market, or lamb tagine, or chicken stock, i go to the lamb man. if i want crab cakes, i send my wife to the crab cake man. (she calls him chris, and usually always tells me if he is in a good or bad mood that day; irresolute food samplers, apparently, can get under his skin.)

anyway, next sunday i am going back to the stand where they had the early loveage that mysteriously disappeared just as everybody started looking for it and that is just down from blue ridge (the mozzarella cheese stand around the corner from the milk people), and i will be hoping that they still have the snap peas. i don't know why, probably because they are not even half as good at the grocery store, but i have been turning up my nose at these. so it was a small revelation how good they were, sauteed with butter, salt, a splash of water and a squeeze of lemon in a small, crowded pan (the one i usually use to toast $20-a-pound-plus! pinenuts or brown butter) for a few intense minutes. the result was perfectly sweet and tender peas preceded by the soft crunch of their pods and a first and only impression of their own, unique -- and fleeting -- mint flavor.

you do have to pull their strings off, but it is much easier than what you have to do to prepare english peas and do twice to fava beans.

While everything was delicious, the following dishes should not be missed.

Spring Pea and Pistachio Gazpacho - wonderful. Olive oil brought out all of the flavors of the peas and the pistachios.

Mushroom soup

Potato and Nettle Gnocchi

Pici - fat spaghetti with duck confit. A tad too much salt, but otherwise, a wonderful dish.

i would add the cucumber bavaroise, a light and creamy slice of the pureed vegetable topped with a mint gelatin, heading toward an aspic. i've already forgotten the accompaniments even though it was a few days ago, although i am certain they were good, but this is the best presentation of cucumber you would ever hope to eat -- a veritable creamsicle, unfrozen, with an unlikely ingredient shining through. the depth of cucumber flavor, as far as it goes, is quite unexpected, coming largely from its juxtaposition with the cream, which is sweet-bellied.