Eating around Georgia Tech: 5th Street Ribs n Blues

5th Street Ribs n Blues is one of the restaurants on Tech Square. It serves a fairly classic barbeque menu---pork and chicken in the form of whole animals and chopped meat. Today, purely for research purposes, I had a half rack of pork ribs. One of the key controversies in barbeque is doneness---al dente or fall-off-the-bone. 5th Street goes for the al dente style---it takes just a little effort to tease off the meat. Their sauce is not overly sweet and easy to take. I have learned the hard way that BBQ is not the cleanest takeout meal. All that sauce has to go somewhere. When the meat is wrapped in paper, somewhere becomes everywhere. But barbeque is not a meal for the fastidious.

Ambience is blues and sports. They have good blues playing over the speaker plus plenty of monitors tuned into sports events.

One sign of authenticity---they're closed on Sunday. Everyone knows you can't get decent BBQ on Sunday.

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Eating Around Georgia Tech: Ecco

Our Texas Instruments colleague Cathy Wicks was gracious enough to host several of us at Ecco tonight. This is one of those restaurants that has been on my list for a long time. Even though it is within easy walking distance of Georgia Tech, I hadn't made it there until tonight. The menu is a combination of Italian, Spanish, and French that make use of some local Georgia ingredients. The combination of those three countries is sometimes a little forced, although the georgia ingredients (fruit, cheese) were all great and perfectly appropriate. We started out with a meat and cheese board. This actually reverses the French tradition, where cheese usually follows the main course. Everything was excellent. The Georgia cheese was a big hit, as was the French cow/goat cheese. I thought the sauscisson was very subtle and very good. The waitress said that the roast pork pasta was their signature dish, so I had to try it. It had traditional broad pasta (fresh, of course)

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Pressure Cooker Candied Ginger

I made candied ginger a few years ago. It's not something I would do every day but I had a lot of fun doing it. I recently acquired a pressure cooker and it inspired an interesting idea to me: why not make candied ginger in the pressure cooker? It should be very soft and flavorful. Here is the result. I peeled two large ginger roots, cut them into small cubes, and put them in the pressure cooker with heavily sugared water. The traditional method first boils the ginger in plain water to soften it and then again in sugar water to candy it. The resulting candy was very tender but still with the characteristic ginger texture. It was also sweet without being overpowering. The traditional method leaves a lot of sugar crystallized around the ginger. The pressure cooker gives a much more subtle result. The ginger stays moist even after it cools but you can dry it in the oven at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes. That inspired me to dip it in chocolate. While I was in the b

Atlanta etc.: Marilyn Wolf's Food Blog and Restaurant Blog

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