The Cloning of the Egyptian

Up until about a month ago, there was a great Egyptian restaurant called Aladdin's Palace on Hamilton Avenue in Trenton. They made their own pita which would come out the size of a pizza, so hot you'd burn your fingers as you'd go to rip apart its steamy soft goodness. Imagine the best fresh-from-the-oven bread you've tasted, the kind you dream about -- that was this. It was also my boyfriend's and my favorite hummus -- incredibly smooth and tahini-centered -- though some of our friends wished it had more lemon or garlic. Other favorites were mousaaka so luscious it could have been dessert, lamb shank that fell off the bone, chicken liver rice. The inherent charm of the low-rent Disney Aladdin decor and the friendliness of Imam, the hostess/waitress and proud creator of a secret special garlic sauce, all added to making it a favorite.

Well much to our dismay the place shut down suddenly, and we thought all was lost, until they reopened last week "Under New Ownership." Those dreaded words -- it's like having a loved one be cloned with all the same traits, but just not being the same person. We were encouraged when they told us they still made their homemade pita, it was still piping hot when it came out, but it was just different. The old pita had a perfect balance of fluffy vs. chewy, while the new pita was unevenly doughy, with a more yeasty flavor. (We still managed to eat 3 of them between 4 people -- I think there's just some hard-wired pleasure in eating hot bread...) The hummus was different as well, more like what you'd find in any decent Middle Eastern restaurant. Everything was good -- we had foul, kibbe, baba ghanoush, shish taouk, koufta kebab -- but those were never what drew us back time and time again, it was that pita and hummus. It's still a solid Middle Eastern restaurant, it's still miles ahead of our other local places with their store-bought pitas. The new staff is welcoming and friendly, but sadly there was no sign of the secret-sauce nor it's inventor.

Standard critic practice is to always go twice, in case they had a bad day. Some friends from Philadelphia may be coming to town, so we're going to take them and give it one more chance.

Peking Eastern House in Rockville, MD

This is mostly going to be a picture post because I suck at translating the names of these Chinese dishes- so apologies in advance.
I went with some relatives yesterday to the Peking Eastern House in Rockville for lunch.
It wasn't very crowded- three other large parties were there eating and us. Started with some nice cold appetizers. We had some spicy marinated tendon and cold noodles in spicy oil, soy sauce, and ginger.
The first big dish was Lion's Head Meatballs. They are pork meatballs slow cooked with cabbage. I may be biased, but these are the best meatballs across the board- Italians are too heavy, Swedish ones are way too small. I challenge any meatball to combat and I assure you a Lion's Head will destroy it.
Next up were Pipa Tofu. A Pipa is a Chinese musical instrument, and I'm not sure why the tofu was named after it. This dish was really good. The outside skin is fried, but remains very light, and the inside is soft and delicious. The sauce had black beans in it. I think I ate a third of this plate with my rice.


We also had a fish dish recommended by our waitress. My uncle called it fish risotto, because the fish was cut up into delicate bite size pieces sauteed in a light sauce with peas, carrots and pine nuts.










The pièce de résistance of the restaurant was it's scallion/sesame seed pancake, no more like pizza. This took the longest to prepare, and it was worth it. It's really delicious. This is what Marco Polo stole from the Chinese that became Pizza in the West. See, the Chinese invented pretty much all of Italian cuisine: pasta, pizza and meatballs.

Peking Eastern House
16041 Frederick Rd
Rockville, MD 20855-2217
Phone: 301-527-8558

I Have Sheep Guts in my Freezer

It won't be quite as extreme as the Vice magazine's "Eating an Entire Cow" (after all I'm not gonna eat my sweater just to be able to say I ate the wool too, nor will I attempt a 24-hour feeding frenzy), but for the first time, I have an entire 4-legged mammal in my freezer. The Chinese say that anything is edible as long as its back faces the sky, and of course everything inside it. This freshly slaughtered lamb was delivered yesterday by our friend, on whose farm it lived its short life. Can't wait to get started, I've been clipping lamb recipes for months! I'll have to dig a little harder to figure out what to do with the innards though...

Fatty Crab

So I've been reading about Fatty Crab in NYC for a long time, but the gods have kept conspiring against me when I've tried to eat there. In fact on Friday, I first showed up for lunch only to find a sign on the door saying they were closed until dinner -- undaunted, I wandered the West Village for 4 hours and returned promptly to chow down.
The dishes aren't huge so even with only 2 people we got a nice variety. A green mango with chili-salt "snack" was simple and refreshing -- Asian wisdom knows that the salt brings out the sweetness in an otherwise tart fruit. The other "salad" (which usually implies healthy...) was pickled watermelon with crispy pork. The striated cubes of fatty pork were deep-fried, so when you bit into them the fat melted in your mouth like butter.
Our two main dishes were Sambal clams: which included one huge succulent razor clam and over a dozen cherrystones simmered in a spicy, pungent sauce. I wasn't familiar with Indonesian Sambal sauce, being more used to Chinese chili-garlic sauces, but I'm gonna look for it next time I'm at the Asian market; and the fatty duck: large chunks of duck that have been brined, steamed, then fried had a wonderfully peppery flavor, crispy outerskin, luscious fat layer, and nice meaty flesh. They were topped with crisp pickled cabbage, thinly sliced red chilies, and served over fragrant toasted rice with a rich sweet sauce. The sweet teeny rice flour cakes they brought out with the check were nice too. We were pretty fatted-out, so for dessert we just grabbed a couple lovely little Valrhona chocolate cookies at Three Tarts. They sell gifts, collectibles, cutesy baby things too -- everything in the store was just precious.

Rutt's Rippers

We'd been dying to try Rutt's famous deep-fat-fried hotdogs ever seeing them on the New Jersey episode of No Reservations. So finally finding ourselves in north Jersey to meet up with a friend from Nebraska who was in Newark for work, we had no more excuses.

Called "Rippers" because the dogs rip apart from the heat of the frying, they were crispy, juicy, and not at all greasy. The onion rings on the other hand dripped with deliciousness... The counter staff were hilarious and the people-watching was excellent. Lovely view overlooking Route 21, too.

Missed dinner and had to get a hot dog at the movie theater the other day - man, I don't know if I can go back to boiled dogs...

Welcome to Our Food Blog

Welcome to our new food blog, "This is Gonna Be Good". We take inspiration from our culinary hero, Tony Bourdain's, motto whenever faced with some outrageous new dish like beating cobra heart or sheep's testicles. These will document our small adventures in food.
This picture, I took in 2004, when driving through Phoenix, I went to the Pizzeria Bianco, James Beard winner for Pizza that year. The pizza is the ROSA, Red Onion, Parmigiano Reggiano, Rosemary, & AZ Pistachios. We added mushrooms based upon the waiter's recommendation. Delicious.