Fried Dough Faceoff

We attended the American Indian Festival at the Gwinnett County Fairgrounds---a wonderful family experience by the way. This turned out to be our chance to not only indulge ourselves in fried dough but to compare two different types. Fried dough is a staple of world cuisine and it's always interesting to see what different peoples do with it.

Funnel cake is a carnival staple. In case you don't know, the dough is put in a funnel and dribbled in swirls into the grease. The result is a cake with a lot of texture and crunch. Our fried dough was a class example.

The next booth had Indian fry bread. This is a large pat of dough, about the size of a small pie tin, that is fried in dough for several minutes. Unlike funnel cake, fry bread is tender all the way through. You can get it with all sorts of toppings, both sweet and savory, but I chose honey. I thought that fry bread was a superb accompaniment to the honey---the cake is simple enough to allow the floweriness of the honey to come through. To me, the fry bread won the faceoff hands down, but it's hard to beat fried dough in any form.

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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)

DCA: Cava Mezze Grill

Cava is a DC area chain with light Mediterranean food. Saibal encouraged me to try lunch at their airport location and I was very happy with the experience. I ordered falafel on SuperSalad with assorted other toppings. The falafel was tasty. The SuperSalad was light, flavorful, and very easy to eat. Overall, a healthy and enjoyable lunch, something you can't always say about airport eating.

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

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