pmfurdyn's Profile
ideas for boneless pork loin?
For a quick brine: Arizona sweet tea, about two hours will do. Dry off, oil, S&P, Roast at 220°F till about 140° in center. Remove from oven, jack temperature to 450°, when heated, place roast in oven and rubdown fat side with butter every 5 minutes for about 15 minutes, or until fat is brown and crisp. Remove, let stand to equalize juices, and slice. Not much gravy or sauce, all the juice will be in the meat. I've never had it fail me for what is one of my least favorite cuts of meat (meat, especially pork, should have bones).
Your Best Fried Chicken Recipe..or hint please
Alton Brown's fried chicken recipe on foodnetwork.com does it for me. I like it spicy, so the hotsauce added to the butter milksoak is an extra, but like the others said, it's not too hot. Sounds terrible, but lard will give you the lightest crisp end result. As long as you don't overcrowd the pan and watch the oil temperature, it'll come out great.
The best steak frites in the city?
I heartily second Les Halles. The frites are outstanding, as is the hangar steak.
Restoring ill-used cast iron
This is going to sound nuts, but I use an angle grinder with a knotted wire brush. You have to do the work outside, with a dust mask and protective eyeware, but it takes about 10 minutes to get to the bare metal over the entire pan. I then wash, dry, and season. To season, I coat the whole pan (inside and out) with vegetable oil, wipe off the excess, and place in a 400°F oven, upside down, over foil (to catch the mess). I turn the oven off after 10 minutes, and leave the thing in there until it's cool.
Wings Fresh Chicken/ Chinatown
David - Take it from a prior farm boy like me. The chicken you got was doomed (sorry) from the start. No different than the "free range" chickens that just about everybody was raised on prior to WWII. That's why if you can find these people alive, they'll tell you either they hate chicken, or used to hate chicken until they had a modern one, properly prepared. Anything meeting it's demise "squawking and screaminig" is going to be loaded with adrenaline, meaning the muscles are about as tight as they can be. Unless the meat "ages" (controlled rot, but it tastes good), it's going to be like trying to eat steel wool laced with metal cables. I'll spare any casual readers the detail what goes into a good(?) slaughter, but it involves a lot of sneaky and crafty (sometime sudden) manuevers so that the target entree doesn't know what happened until it's too late.
would you?
In Chinatown, try the Dim Sum (actually the name of the place), cheap and authentic. Get over to Brooklyn and in the Brooklyn Heights area try Montague Street, loaded with many really good and inexpensive places.
Seafood - Vermont Avenue Logan Circle Area?
Anybody have any suggestions? Didn't pack the good clothes, so it should be kind of informal. Can only make up so much with money. Thanks
Help with Tex-Mex please!
In my opinion, Chipotle on US1 College Park is better than any of the more classic restaurants I've tried in the area.
Chipotle
As people have said, it can vary from location to location. I've found that the ones near colleges and universities are better than ones than languish in suburbia, but then again, I've never really been to one that's been worse than good, with some being quite tasty.
Hampton Virginia- Any recs?
I've been to Hampton a few times. I the area where you are, there's lots of good restaurants in the area. One I've been too close by is Marker 20 in the harbor area. It's in a small cafe area with other bars/niteclubs nearby. Very casual.
Truly remarkable though are Cowboy Sids (upscale southern)in Newport News (10 minute cab ride), and the Smokehouse and Cooler (a little further, perhaps one of your associates would like to give you a ride and join you for dinner?) (upscale Barbeque in a roadhouse atmosphere) in Virginia Beach.
