Biotech

I don't know how many years ago this was, but the place has (IMHO) gone really downhill since one of the owners left about two years ago. My parents live in CP and went every week or so (bring us along sometimes). After the change, the quality suffered as did the service. They refuse to go back. Just my 2 cents.

I bought a Great Outdoors Smoky Mountain off of Bass Pro Shops. I tested it out and can get a very low flame with the dampers wide open. I plan on using apple wood on this batch. It's a pretty nice smoker/barbecue that can hold a great deal of meat. This will complement my 5 burner grill nicely. Now I can cook entire carcasses (something my wife and vegetarian nanny don't seem thrilled about). First run is Saturday.

My new smoker is a gas smoker that I can control down to about 100 degrees. The recipe I am following calls for smoking around the 130 range. I think i'm going to do the corduroy recipe with some of the rest.

I put another vote in for the KA Pro 600. I got mine at the Williams Sonoma outlet in Leesburg for $250 last fall and it was worth every penny. I make a lot of cakes and between batter and icing, it gives me very light airy texture to my baked goods. It's a treat to make bread now, and the grinder made sausagemaking a snap. It's an investment that is well worth it to me.

Bacon is curing in the fridge nicely, if not a bit messy (had a few leaks this week) and should be ready to hit the smoker on Saturday. It's my inaugural batch in the new smoker, so I need to season it first. Funny story about buying the pork belly. I went to Great Wall in Merrifield last week to check out their prices and they had not so fresh looking belly for $3.99 a pound. I then went to H-Mart (which seems to now be taking cleanliness seriously) and found the price to be less than $2.00 a pound, but not in slabs. After much gesturing about how I wanted 2 small slabs (around 2 pounds each), I ended up with two whole bellies at about 30 pounds total. So, I'll be looking for recipies that utilize pork belly.

I have XM in my kitchen, so it's usually the indie rock channels on all the time, but Thanksgiving was the Led Zeppelin channel (seriously, it's the only thing the station plays) If the kids are cooking with me, it's usually The Dandy Warhols or Sufjan Stevens.

We have also eaten here a couple of times since it became Kansai (was Kobuki before). The fish is pretty fresh, but I have no comparison to Yama as they were rude to us once when we were told no reservation was necessary and then were turned away with quite the attitude upon arrival. The only advice I'd give is to make sure you get the "good" waitress. She's the one who is always there. The "b" team player made the mistake of never putting in my 3 year old's order from the kitchen - Sydney was not impressed with a dinner consisting of miso soup and rice. They usually have two to three sushi chefs working at a time, so it doesn't take long to get your order (something that the previous incarnation couldn't achieve).

Wow, I'm surprised. We've had consistently good crust from Church Street. They are pretty friendly and I've asked them during rush times (weekends) to make sure the pie stays in the oven for a few extra minutes. They've always obliged. I usually don't order ahead, but rather go and wait. This was how we always bought pizza growing up in Jersey, so we could watch and make sure the crust was well done.

Green bean casserole with or without the french's onions? 'Cause that makes the difference. We never actually had that, but we do use the jarred gravy as a base to which we add pan drippings and stock cooked from the giblets and neck. I guess we've used it as a thickener more than anything else. For me, I'd like to get that apples and yams dish I mentioned in another thread off the menu. It's innocuous enough, I guess, but every year I've tasted it and every year remember why I don't like it. For Christmas Eve, it was always the pickled herring my grandmother would make us all put on our plates [shudder].

Ironically, yams and apples (no marshmallows in this one) and turkey. I do it for the family, but I'd be happy with a pork rib roast or ham for Thanksgiving.

I have some family members who aren't so hip on uber spicy, so I went with a mild sausage with just enough hot pepper to tell you it's there. I think I used only about 1 tsp ground caraway for 10 pounds. Caraway can be pretty assertive, so I used just a little. I'll have to see what it tastes like without. Also I found that Costco sells boneless pork shoulder for $1.39 a pound, so that is where I'm going to be getting my pork when i want a product with about 20% fat.

For the kielbasa, I was shooting for an internal temp of 155 degrees. They smoked for about 4 hours. The smoker was a feeble electric one from Home Depot. It only lasted about 6 uses. On the italian sausage, the spices were fennel seed, coriander, paprika, hot pepper flake, salt, sugar, black pepper, and caraway.

Pasta with Greens - Vegetarian Saute 4 cups sliced onion until soft and slightly carmelized Add 1 clove minced garlic, stir 1 minute Add 6-8 cups washed greens (kale, mustard, spinach, broccoli rabe) Saute until greens are soft Mix with cooked farfalle pasta and crumbled feta Serve with crusty bread.

I've now completed two-10 pound batches of sausage - a beautiful and excellent version of smoked kielbasa and a very good mild-hot italian. The first was made using the Rytek Kutas recipe as a base and doubling the garlic. I skinned pork picnic and used that, stuffed it into the italian sausage size casing instead of the larger traditional kielbasa size. We smoked it over cherry chips and the result was an excellent first attempt. My family is Polish and my dad swears this is better than the guy in Baltimore makes and rivaled the stuff from Linden, NJ (where we used to get all our kielbasa). I need to get my pictures uploaded. The second version was made solo this past weekend. I made a mild-hot italian using pork loin. Now I realize that pork loin can be very lean, but I left all the fat on and used parts of either end of the loin to get a mix of lighter and darker meat. The result was somewhere in the neighborhood of 85/15 meat to fat. I could have bumped it up using some fat I had stored in the freezer, but left it where it was since I was planning to not stuff into casings and use it as loose sausage for Thangsgiving stuffing, lasagna, etc. The result was a moist product when shaped into patties or fried plain. My 3 and 6 year olds devoured the patties for lunch and the rest was shrink wrapped for later use. My smoker just crapped out on me as I was trying to smoke ribs this weekend, so I'm now upgrading to a gas smoker.

The current issue of Cooking Light has an article dedicated to using up Thanksgiving leftovers. There is an article for homemade turkey stock using the bones and using this as a base for turkey pho utilizing the leftover meat as well. It's interesting enough that I'm going to give it a try as turkey is one of my least favorite leftovers (actually one of my least favorite birds).

This is where I got mine at the same price around a year ago. Excellent deal. Sadly my only color choice was lilac.

I have a small marble one I rarely use these days and a thai one that is my daily took for crushing and grinding spices. It isn't porous at all and I got it at my local thai store in Vienna for a very reasonable price. I've had a variety of mortar and pestles over the years and this was the best investment of them all.

When my lebanese great aunts used to make this dish (every sunday for brunch) they would make sure they went to the same butcher, got the lamb that morning, ground it ice cold, and served it immediately. Leftovers were tossed or fried up on the spot. I think a lot has to do with how the meat is processed and where it comes from. My aunts used to get the meat from a lebanes butcher in Newark, NJ whose reputation and livelihood was at stake if anyone got sick by his hand. I'm not sure I'd make kibbeh nayyeh without a reputable butcher I trusted.

I'm in Tysons too and I just put my order in for the seasonings for a batch of kielbasa. I got the sausage maker attachment last year for my KitchenAid and have been saving pork scraps and odd cuts for a few months in the freezer. I'll give it a whirl when I get my spices. The biggest problem I see is that the hopper for the KA grinder is small, so it will require constant feeding to avoid voids in the casings.

on Mill street in one of those industrial looking buildings. It's in the same strip as the Vienna aquarium store.

Slightly off topic, but Ali Baba bakery in Vienna makes pita in house that they sell retail in the front of the store. I don't know to whom they distribute, but it is quite tasty. Full size in both white and whole wheat and small sandwich size in white flour only. The store recently underwent a change in ownership, but the pita hasn't changed.

I'll second balut and the egg I'll add: Natto simply because I like tofu, soybeans, and miso and this would ruin it for me. Birds nest soup and of course "Donner, Party of 1"

I've actually developed a taste for Red Bull, but I'm drinking less and less of these drinks these days (drinking less soda too). Recently, on a 7 hour road trip, I tried Coca-Cola's version called "Full Throttle." It was pretty good, tasting a bit like Mountain Dew with a bit more sour bite to it. I haven't branched out beyond this, and probably won't.

I just stopped by and got the bulgogi for an early lunch. This is a gianormous portion for $6.95. Yesterday's lunch at Delle and Campbell was kinda pawltry for the same price. Bulgogi is decent as stated by earlier posters. Kim chee is starting to wither. Definitely blow your head off hot, but pretty nice. I think they were surprised I asked for extra sriracha. Not a terrible walk from 13th and F, so it will be added to the rotation. Very nice mom/son (by the looks of it) owners. Very enthusiastic.

I made it over to Dell and Campbell's for lunch today. You can definitely tell they got written up yesterday. There was a fairly healthy line at 11:45. We got our orders (3 of us) by 12:20. Each of us got a Shawarma for $7 which comes with chicken and lamb sausage and a side of chips. Two of us split the hummus roll ($3). Overall it was a good lunch, albeit one you shouldn't plan on if you need to get back in the office quickly. The hummus roll is very light on filling to bread ratio and while the chicken on the shawarma was good and moist, the sausage was a bit dry. The way it works is that one of the owners takes orders (only 5 at a time) and the other does the cooking/assembling in the cart. You wait in another line until it's finished and delivered to you. Very limited menu with four items on it.