-
12Jan
-
11Jan
I must have been out of metaphorical room during the five seconds it took for mixed topping ice cream to become popular. I leave at 4:30 and everyone -
09Jan
Five years ago, almost to the day, I embarked on my semester abroad in Strasbourg. This morning came DCist’s mention of L’Auberge Chez Francois, an Alsatian restaurant in Vienna (whose owner is a friend of a gentleman who guided many of my travels through Alsace), and shortly after that, an email from an old friend (and fellow culinary adventurer), pointing me to this piece in the Times, hailing the virtues of Alsace’s signature dish, choucroute.
Now I’m hungry and desperately miss Strasbourg, with its cheap, plentiful, amazing food and even more mind-blowing wine (I was there in the better days of the dollar). The article does a nice job in describing how good choucroute can be – even I, shy of pork product and anything cabbage-like, cannot resist its warm, tasty allure – but of course sticks to its theme, and does no more than mention any of the other amazing foods available in this oft-invaded region.
Below is a recipe for one of my favorites, the above-mentioned Tarte -
09Jan
A big congrats to DCFUD bloggers and Bluestate DJ’s NM and rj3 for Sat night’s excellent shindig at the Black Cat. And thanks to everyone who stopped by! You all kick multiple rears.
-
07Jan
What’s 6- 8″ long, firm, and covered in smooth silky skin with a delightful velvety feel? Get your mind out of the gutter – we’re talking deep purple skin. We’re talking Asian eggplant.
These babies are more banana shaped than the familiar plump seedy Italian variety. They have no seeds to speak of, none of the bitterness, and the skin cooks up so tender that you never need peel it. The flesh has a luxurious texture. Naturally you can find them at any Asian grocery but sometimes chain supermarkets carry them too – make sure they aren’t wrinkly or soft feeling (I know what you’re thinking.)
Here’s a great recipe with a piquant hit of vinegar to help cut any greasiness. Asian or Italian, all eggplant absorbs oil.
Eggplant with Garlic Sauce- Mix 2 TB shaoxing wine or dry sherry, 2 TB soy sauce, 1 1/2 TB hoisin sauce (the Koon Chun brand is far and away the best), 1 1/2 tsp chili garlic sauce (most Asian groceries carry the Huy Fong Brand- with the green plastic lid. This is pretty hot stuff – you may want to start with less. 1/2 tsp ordinary red pepper flakes will do but the sauce will be better and worth it), and 2 TBSItalian red wine vinegar in a small bowl. Set aside.
- Add about 1″ oil to a large hot deep frying pan. Make sure oil is hot or the eggplant will absorb like a sponge and be indigestible. Prepare 3 Asian eggplants (about 1 lb) cut on the diagonal into fat round slices about 1″ thick. Place as many slices of eggplant as you can flat in the pan. As they lightly brown on one side, turn them over. When brown on both sides and gently softened (not mushy) remove to a paper town to drain excess oil. When the pan is empty, add more oil to make 1″, heat, then add remaining eggplant. Cook, remove as done before and drain on a clean paper towel.
- There’s probably no oil now left in the pan so if needed add another tablespoon, then add 1 generous TBS finely minced garlic and 1 generous TBS finely minced ginger. Stir fry for 15 seconds over medium heet – don’t burn. Mix sauce mixture, add to pan, stir, bring to a boil and reduce heat.
- Gently and carefully add eggplant back to sauce in pan. Spoon sauce over slices. Sprinkle with Asian sesame oil. Cook until tender, a few more minutes. Don’t overcook.
- Plate, and top with chopped scallions.
-MHF, Guest Blogger
-
06Jan
What are you doing on Saturday night? You’re going to drink high-quality beer (not PBR) at the Black Cat, that’s what. Why, you ask? Because DCFUD’s own contributors RJ3 and seeking_irony will be spinning records (or at least, scratching CDs) and, as loyal DCFUD readers, we know you’ve been hankering to drink and dance all week.
For more information, pop on over to bluestatedc.com.
-
06Jan
OK, I can’t let everyone off the hook without a little discursive note on the etymology of the word “chai”. It’s Hindi for tea as some of you may know.
Here’s where it gets interesting: think about various languages you speak, and what the word for tea is in those languages. Chances are it’s either some variation on “tee” or “cha”. The theory goes that some languages picked up the Mandarin version (cha) and some picked up the Cantonese version (people will specifically mention “Amoy” which is now Xiamen in southern China). Apparently when the Portuguese got to Asia they picked up the thee version and people who later traded with the Dutch East India Comapny mainly picked up that form of the word. To lift wholesale from wikipedia:
“Languages that have Te derivatives include Armenian, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Latvian, Malay, Norwegian, Polish, Tamil, Singhalese, Spanish, Yiddish, and scientific Latin. Those that use Cha derivatives include Hindi, Nepali, Japanese, Persian, Portuguese, Albanian, Czech, Russian, Slovene, Turkish, Tibetan, Arabic, Vietnamese, Korean, Thai, Greek, Romanian, Ukrainian, and Swahili.”
When we think about India, however, let’s not forget other contributions to English, including shampoo, khaki, and sandals. -
05Jan
So you -
04Jan
The latest step away from bricks and mortar commerce?
The latest $500 “lifestyle enhancement” Steve Jobs has suckered you into?
It’s how you pronounce the name of my little enamel lifesaver.
My Ibrik is the preferred method for making coffee everywhere from Albania to Uganda and Algeria to Afghanistan. Ya’ll are going to recognize the drink* it makes as “Turkish Coffee”, probably.
Normally on a weekday I’ll brew a pot of drip or nice little french-press and on the weekend I’ll bust out the nespresso or the hand tamped espresso machine. But I’ve been moving house for the last six weeks** and it’s meant that my many means of caffeination have been sequestered in paper and cardboard.
Now, I haven’t gone even 10 hours without coffee since I was 17. I set the coffee maker to go off before I get up and make drip coffee with extra espresso grounds. I’ll be damned if a little elbow grease is gonna be what stands between me and good teeth grinding, red-eyed, itchy-palmed case of the jitters***.
I have a two cup Ibrik, so if you’ve got a different size you can use those math skills your teachers promised would matter later in life and figure out how to adjust this.- Take 2 heaping scoops of fine ground coffee****
- Take 2 heaping scoops of sugar
- put in in your Ibrik with enough water to come up to the neck
- Put it on the burner on a medium flame (or about 3/4s heat electric) and start stirring with a non conducting spoon like it’s your new hobby.*****
- You’re going to stir until the coffee sludge boils just to the top of the ibrik but not over.
This may take a couple tries but don’t worry you’re just slow learner. - Now pull it off the heat and let it cool until the foam goes away and it isn’t going
-
03Jan
So, since everyone posting seems so gosh-darn set on writing about food in Baltimore, Little Rock, and Rockville* (to name just a random sampling of recent posts), I guess a post about a shopping trip to the suburbs isn’t so out of place.
As background: I recently tried to go shopping at the awesome Indian Spice and Gifts on Pollard Street (halfway between the GMU metro stop and Ballston on the Orange Line for fellow metro-ers) but it was sadly closed for renovation. So to soothe my ruffled foodie-soul I took a quick hop, skip, and jump over to the Giant there (I will admit that there was a brief perusal of the Arlington Main Library along the way**). Keep in mind that I ordinarily shop at my local ghetto rip-off Safeway in the city. It turns out that there is produce in the world! I grabbed a quick bag and then rushed home to impart the realization that there really are better grocery alternatives within (albeit far away) Metro access.
I planned the next weekend feverishly. We would go to Harris Teeter at Pentagon City and drop off a camera with a friend who had left it at our New Years Party. I like killing multiple avians with one basaltic nodule.
We broke out the granny cart and got ourselves there with no problem. The aisles were wonderfully large, the produce divine. We picked up 10 habaneros for the jerk chicken I made this evening (good ole Irma S. doesn’t shy away from the spice despite her Germanness) with no trouble. There were multiple brands of organic peanutbutter to choose from! All was bliss.
We headed out the door, full cart in tow. We negotiated the “no pedestrian zone” with aplomb. We snagged the elevator to the metro-level of the mall just as a stroller-wielding young mother came out. We drove through the mall with the granny-cart and garnered not a couple of perplexed gazes. We took another elevator to the farecard-reader level. Then we took a new (urine-scented) elevator to the tracks. Then we took it back up, and switched to the elevator on the correct side of the tracks.
Here’s where tactics come into the story. As those of you who Metro on a regular basis know, there are very few chances in DC to determine your own route. Either the train goes there or it doesn’t, and there’s usually only one line that will do so. However, from Pentagon City to Eastern Market you can either take the Yellow Line to L’Enfant and transfer to the Blue Line, or just ride the Blue straight. The drawback to the former is obviously the transfer, but the latter is six stops longer. It’s generally much faster to take the transfer. So we did, cart in tow.
It turns out that to transfer at L’Enfant being good metro-citizens and not taking the cart on the escaltors takes not one, not two, but three elevators. This is not even mentioning the narrow hard-to-manuver paths which those wheel-challenged are channeled through. So we gave up two-thirds of the way through and attempted to drag the cart on the final escaltor. Bad move. But that’s another story, and happily no one is permanently injured.
Final thoughts: It was sobering to experience in any small way what transfering in Metro is like when you’re mobility challenged.
Grocery stores really are bigger in the ‘burbs.
Granny carts suck.
*Yes, I meant to use the serial comma there. Also known as the Oxford Comma (primarily in the UK, for obvious reasons) it is a perfectly acceptable thing to do. Actually either way is fine in my book, but for heaven’s sake be consistent!
**As a DC resident you are entitled to library cards not only in the DC system, but also in Fairfax, Montgomery County, and Arlington. As a US citizen you are entitled to a card at the Library of Congress.
