From Bakesale Betty in Oakland, CA — the sandwich that puts the McChicken to shame.
Buttermilk fried chicken topped with a slaw of jalapeno, cabbage, red onion and parsley.
PS — your humble ES editor is exploring San Francisco, Oakland and surrounds this month — mostly with my mouth, of course. Where to eat? Shout it out, ESers!
Update: Officially one of the ten best sandwiches in America.
Granola bars. Chex mix. Water bottles. Single portion packets of Motrin. Tissues. Mini bottles of Jack and Bacardi. That was the contents of my friends’ Katie and Joe’s wedding gift bag. My gift bag, however, included two additional items: black mustard seeds and udad dal split matpe beans.
Just a few weeks ago Katie drove out to the ‘burbs of Virginia or Maryland, I forget which one, and hit up an Indian grocery. She picked up extra goodies for me but in the craziness that is the weeks before a wedding we weren’t able to meet up. Brilliantly, she decided to drop it my gift bag. (Future brides take note!)
For a dinner my friend Raya hosted I decided to try out my newly received lentils.
Now I don’t usually pay for iPhone apps, but Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything is a gem. I googled around for dal recipes, even using its blog filter search, but I couldn’t find anything I wanted to try. I turned to Bittman. I trust him. And his laid-back, authoritative tone makes for good reading. Plus the app doesn’t require wireless to work.
Anyway, I used his “Simplest Dal” recipe as a guide.
And while I’m encouraged to play around with dal again, I haven’t mastered how to up the flavor. It didn’t have a great zing to it and at times tasted of tannins. Here’s what I did but please tell me what I should have done.
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– First up, congrats to reader Deanna, who won our spontaneous summer giveaway and is headed up to Good Commons in Vermont for a foodie-rific weekend. Thanks everyone for playing!
– Everybody loves tomatoes! But one recipe is a clear favorite. Greg:
Holy christ that “Scallop BLT” is probably the sexiest foodstuff I’ve ever seen! Ever.
– And going all the way back to the Top 10 Foods Only American Could Have Invented, TerryAnne defends the motherland (and her sandwiches):
I had a teacher from Kenya who told me that the tribes there lived on cow’s blood mixed with milk. I’ll take a reuben thank you very much.
(Photo: Bite Sized)
Clearly I was shaken up. Last week I welcomed the news of two engagements of very dear friends. The term “dear friends” is quite obnoxious, I know, but these are like super good friends, well, couples, and I am so excited. That must be the only excuse for this fuck up. Because unlike most other times I open up my oven to face a disaster, I actually followed a recipe.
My friend Hickey, of one of the engaged couples, came to DC from her home in Pennsylvania and I gladly made us dinner. I wasn’t actually sure what to put together but basically I stuffed a lot of crap inside this huge pumpkin-shaped eggplant. It was an elaborate, multi-step experience and while the inside concoction of corn, tomatoes, blended eggplant, ricotta and I forget what else was surely tasty, the outer shell of the eggplant did not cook fully and basically served the function of a ceramic bowl, which is of course not the point of baking food in something edible in the first place.
But that wasn’t even the worst part. Shit, the crappy Cook’s champagne wasn’t even the worst. T’was the kale.
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Top Chef pulled in a political heavyweight this week — Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, but that was by far not the only highlight of last night’s episode. Down to eight chef’testants, we were given what many of us consider the best elimination challenge the show has to offer — Restaurant Wars at Bethesda’s Redwood Restaurant & Bar.
But before you see which chef’testant was sent packing (spoiler alert!), lets take a moment to discuss which pant suit was better!
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For real, I’m not just trying to pimp out 100 Ways to Use a Tomato. I also am a tomato lover and need ideas on what to do with all of the tomatoes laying claim to my kitchen. Because I am a virtual worker I also have time to cook during the day, or at least be watchful of items while they are cooking.
This means I can finally soak and cook beans and not rely on cans. I can cook down tomatoes for a thick sauce. And while we’re on tomatoes, I can roast tomatoes in a low, slow oven. (And please give me suggestions for other dishes I can cook all day.)
I spied my inspiration in the third row, second column of the 100 tomatoes post: a parade of shriveled, red splotches.
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You crazy ESers asked for it, and you got it. After playing around with my SousVide Supreme and being rather underwhelmed cooking just meat and veggies, I asked you for some crazier ideas. My partner in crime gansie had a stroke of genius:
What about cookie dough? But don’t cook it long enough where it actually turns into a cookie, just so it heats through and kills any harmful crap. so it could be one gooey, warm, doughy, chocolaty, gushy thing. (Confession – i used to heat up purchased cookie dough in the microwave).
Hmmm…what about cookie dough? Honestly, I can never resist the temptation to lick the bowl, salmonella or not, but it does always scare me a little bit, and I know I really shouldn’t be doing it. So could we use the SousVide to cook the dough to just high enough temperatures where it would be safe to eat but still gooey and delicious? Well, we could certainly try…
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