Rhapsody in Grey

Cool presentation of, and interaction with, food at Chicago's Alinea:
Adventures in Latex and Silicone - The Atlantic

Shag Your Date

Since I've moved to California I've fallen in love with dates, almond butter, and coconut, and eventually just stuck them all together.

1. Slice a Medjool date down the middle on one side and take out the pit, so that it unfolds open like a book.
2. Fill it with unsalted smooth almond butter (I recommend Massa Organic's creamy) in the middle so that it's overflowing out of the middle, but not about to fall out.
3. Top with flaky sea salt.
4. Shag 'em: hold the stuffed date over a container or plate of dried coconut shavings and sprinkle the shavings over the date a few times (so that they stick to the almond butter and the rest go back to the container).

David from Massa Organics started my addiction with their almond butter. I've never tasted anything like it. They started selling it in Oct-2008. Pick one up at the Ferry Building Saturday farmer's market.

The Meating Game

I just took out a book from college, How The Mind Works by Stephen Pinker, one of the first books that got me into reading about evolutionary psychology. It was one of my favorite classes in college and also where I met two terrific friends, Shannon and Eric.

Anyway, a paragraph from the book as it relates to food (and sex):

In all foraging societies, presumably including our ancestors', hunting is overwhelmingly a male activity. Women are encumbered with children, which makes hunting inconvenient, and men are bigger and more adept at killing because of their evolutionary history of killing each other. As a result, males can invest surplus meat in their children by provisioning the children's pregnant or nursing mothers. They also can trade meat with females for plant foods or for sex. Brazen bartering of the carnal for the carnal has been observed in baboons and chimpanzees and is common in foraging peoples. Though people in modern societies are ever-so-more discreet, an exchange of resources for sexual access is still an important part of the interactions between men and women all over the world (...) In any case, we have not lost the association completely. Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior advises:
"There are three possible parts to a date, of which at least two must be offered: entertainment, food, and affection. It is customary to begin a series of dates with a great deal of entertainment, a moderate amount of food, and the merest suggestion of affection. As the amount of affection increases, the entertainment can be reduced proportionately. When the affection is the entertainment, we no longer call it dating. Under no circumstances can the food be omitted."

Best bang for the dining buck, IMO

It's no surprise that many people are being more careful with their spending all-around. I've been a little more careful while grocery shopping and eating out too. But that got me to thinking about the more expensive restaurants in San Francisco I feel are worth throwing down for when I AM going to go out for a nice dinner, given the consistent quality of food and service:

Quince
Zuni Cafe
Aziza
Millenium

Just my four cents... pickiness during a recession is a good thing... and so is enjoying life.

Happy Christmas!

The Omnivore's Hundred

How many have you tried? See instructions below. Here's the original post.

The Omnivore’s Hundred

Here’s a chance for a little interactivity for all the bloggers out there. Below is a list of 100 things that I think every good omnivore should have tried at least once in their life. The list includes fine food, strange food, everyday food and even some pretty bad food - but a good omnivore should really try it all. Don’t worry if you haven’t, mind you; neither have I, though I’ll be sure to work on it. Don’t worry if you don’t recognise everything in the hundred, either; Wikipedia has the answers.

Here’s what I want you to do:

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

Creamy Pesto Shrimp

A few weeks ago I was looking for a great but years-old recipe for T while procrastinating at work when I realized that *GASP* I only had it in undigital format - on a piece of paper magneted to my fridge at home. Content not a Google away in the age of information? *PPBBLLTT* unheard of; it turns out this recipe made it to Allrecipes anyway, only slightly different (here).

I don't remember where I got the recipe - heck, it might have just been Allrecipes - but here is my version. It makes about 3 portions, and is not for the dairy-unfriendly *SOB*.

Creamy Pesto Shrimp

6 oz linguine
3 tbsp butter
3/4 cup heavy cream (can substitute half-and-half)
scant tsp fresh ground black pepper
1/3 cup fresh grated Parmesan
2 tbsp pesto (I love pesto, so I use 3 tbsp)
1/3 to 1/2 lb large shrimp, depending on how much you want.

- Cook linguine - in salted and unoiled water.
- In a large skillet, melt the butter - just under medium heat. Stir in the cream and pepper. Cook 6-8 minutes, stirring constantly.
- Stir in Parmesan gradually, until thoroughly melted. Blend in the pesto. Cook 3-5 minutes, until thickened.
- Stir in shrimp and cook until pink, about 5 minutes. Serve over linguine.

*MMM*

Somebody should try this with a non-basil pesto (arugula? cilantro? artichoke?), and tell me how it is!

New Year's Eve Scones

This is a very long-overdue post - sorry for the procrastination, Aileen! Aileen, Bianca, and I headed up to Tomales Bay and Napa on New Year's Eve. It was an environmentally-conscious trip. Aileen drove her Civic hybrid, and we stayed at the Gaia Hotel in Napa, which was offering a special rate of $59 per night for two queen beds (despite what the site says, however, it is NOT a very romantic hotel). We wine-tasted about eight organic wines (thanks to a decreasingly sober and increasingly exuberant bartender) at Ubuntu, a "vegetable restaurant," bar, and yoga studio. Sounds weird, doesn't it? But this place seems to have gotten nothing but amazing press since we went, including making Frank Bruni's list of Top 10 US restaurants. In fact, it was mentioned first on this list. Anyway, we had a wonderful time ringing in 2008 here and at Uva Trattoria Italiana.

Because Bianca and Aileen were to come over to my place super-early on the morning of New Year's Eve, and in the spirit of the trip, I made them some organic whole-wheat scones. They were great in the morning with coconut oil slathered on and lingonberry jam. (Who knew a tropical oil and a Scandinavian berry would get along so well?) But where these scones really hit the mark was at Drake's Bay Family Farms, after a hike at Point Reyes National Seashore. Freshly shucked and with amazing homemade horseradish sauce, Aileen and I ended up eating a dozen oysters each, leaving a very briny taste in the mouth. So the scones balanced it out perfectly.

Aileen's been asking for the recipe, but I stuck it together from various sources and rather untraditional ingredients, so I hope this works. I used the Raspberry Mega Scones recipe from 101 Cookbooks as a base for the dough ingredients and Zuni Cafe Cookbook (I am beginning to think this is the only cookbook I'll ever need) for the technique. Oh, and Tartine for inspiration. ;) Both Zuni Cafe and Tartine have famous scones.

Here's the recipe:
4 cups whole wheat pastry flour
3 tablespoons baking powder
1 teaspoon fine-grain sea salt
1+1/4 sticks unsalted butter, chilled and cut into small cubes
2 oz. fresh lard
1/2 cup granulated sugar (the original recipes says more, if you like that)
1 1/4 cups coconut milk, and more as needed for dough (at least I think I used coconut milk. It might have been rice milk. If in doubt, Zuni's recipe calls for whole milk)
1 tbsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 375. Cut the butter and lard into the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt using knives and/or your fingers but be careful not to melt the butter or mix it in too much. Add milk and vanilla extract and form a dough, then divide into two balls and roll them both out into logs. If you want to, put some turbinado sugar or some other big-grain sugar on top. Cut logs into triangles and bake on parchment paper until golden brown, about 20-25 minutes.

Destination Restaurants

Speaking of restaurants that maintain and develop an identity, check out this passage from Rohit Bhargava's new book, *Personality Not Included. Useful for entrepreneurs of all types, including restaurateurs.

I had the pleasure of sitting next to Rohit at a speaker's dinner before a conference in DC last year and bombarding him with questions. He was kind enough to keep in touch anyway.

I received an excerpt of *Personality Not Included, and from reading it and a few other bits and pieces, including the one below, it seems like a great business book.

"When we talk about invention, we are usually referring to a new product or technology, as in Dyson's case. Invention can come in different forms, though, especially when it comes from mixing two disciplines that usually have little to do with one another. One of the most interesting examples of this is a type of cuisine inspired by physics and chemistry that takes center stage at what Restaurant magazine has rated the Best Restaurant in the World for the past two years running.

The restaurant is El Bulli, an uncommon destination located off a winding mountain road in Roses on the Costa Brava about two hours north of Barcelona. The head chef, Ferran Adrià, began his career as a dishwasher and now travels six months out of the year (during which time the restaurant is closed) developing his trademark 30-course tasting menu. He was recently named by Time magazine as one of the most innovative thinkers of the twenty-first century.

What makes El Bulli - despite being closed six months out of the year to allow the chefs to travel and redefine the menu - the best in the world? The answer is a technique pioneered by Adrià called molecular gastronomy, which helps him and his team of top chefs create food that seems inspired by science fiction to those who sample it. Adrià dislikes the term molecular gastronomy, instead referring to his creations as "deconstructionist" for how they break down flavors independently. His techniques include creating something called "culinary foam," which is described as taking natural flavors, mixing them with a gelling agent such as agar, and putting them through a whipped cream canister equipped with N2O cartridges. If it sounds complicated, it should. Only a handful of restaurants in the world use this method.

One of them belongs to José Andrés, a former disciple in Adrià's kitchen, and now a winner of the prestigious James Beard Foundation Award and owner of a range of restaurants in Washington, D.C. One of his restaurants is the iconic "minibar," often spoken of by locals (including me) as the most unique dining experience in D.C. The restaurant offers its own 30-course molecular gastronomy tasting menu in a small bar that seats just eight tucked upstairs at the back of Café Atlantico restaurant in downtown Washington. The entire experience of being presented with each dish as the team of four chefs behind the counter prepare it and describe it for you is one of a kind. You simply cannot dine at minibar without telling people about it.

Chef Wylie Dufresne's WD-50 restaurant on the Lower East Side in Manhattan offers a similarly talkable experience. Chef Wylie was even a finalist on the popular television show Iron Chef in 2006. At WD-50, guests with a party [of] 14 can schedule a private dining session in the kitchen with Wylie himself as your guide through the meal. In May 2006, Fast Company magazine also ran a cover story on this new science of cuisine, featuring a chef named Homaru Cantu and calling him "Edison of the Edible." Cantu's Moto restaurant in Chicago is regularly on the list of hottest up and coming restaurants and his mission, as he described it in the Fast Company piece, is to "change the way humans perceive food."

Clearly the idea of molecular gastronomy captures the imagination of foodies and travelers everywhere. It may be the most innovative new trend in cuisine of the past 50 years. Just about every restaurant ever opened is the result of someone somewhere who is passionate about food. What each of these inspired chefs have managed to do is tell a story of invention that makes their restaurants more than just places to eat. They are now destinations."

Two videos showing deconstructionism at El Bulli are included in this NYTimes article, in case you're curious as to how these things work.

Shakshuka

While looking through the May issue of Food & Wine, I came across an article on a chef's tour of Israel to bring the best versions of the everyman's food back to the US for Zahav, his new restaurant in Philadelphia.

One of these recipes is shakshuka, a much heartier (and infinitely more traditional) version of the Eggs in Heaven in the last post. They call it "Tomato-Pepper Stew with Poached Eggs and Harissa" and it's the kind of recipe you can almost taste while reading. Especially if you love harissa.

Quoting from the article: "One of Solomonov’s goals was to show his colleagues how different cultures have shaped the food of Israel. “In 1948, the year of Israeli independence, many Bulgarians moved to Jaffa, so you really see that influence in the food,” he explains. “The Armenians and Eastern Europeans have been living in Jerusalem forever. And we’re seeing more North African flavors.” The result is a cuisine that’s been enhanced by a vast array of exotic spices and a wide variety of cooking techniques."

If Israeli cuisine is one of the oldest in the world, and in more recent history has been incorporating the best ingredients and techniques of surrounding regional cuisines, it's gotta be good.

Zahav has a blog backed by The Philadelphia Inquirer documenting the development of the restaurant.

I've been seeing these a lot recently; two favorites include the simple photostream from Blue Bottle Cafe on Flickr and the in-depth Typepad blog for L.2O. Blue Bottle Cafe has now opened in San Francisco's Mint Plaza with its $20,000 attraction, and L.2O is opening May 14 in Chicago.

They're both great in different ways, and certainly build tastebud anticipation... an-ti-ci-pay-ay-tion...

Eggs in Heaven

There is a possible silver lining to rising food costs, and egg farmers are having their day.

Egg prices have increased fastest among major staples. So I decided to appreciate my eggs a little more. I tend to gulp down scrambled eggs in a flash, let the yolk of a sunny-side up egg run out, and can't make an omelet to save my life. But poached eggs, like the one I ate in a Nabeyaki Udon Saturday night, never seem to be wasted or their flavor engulfed by whatever they're paired with, if paired correctly.

I got to thinking about a great Sunday brunch I had a few months ago at a new Roman restaurant, SPQR, in Pacific Heights. It was called "eggs in purgatory" (but sounded much more poetic in Italian on the menu) and I figured I'd try it, having just come from church. (Huh?) It had two poached eggs in a spicy red pepper and tomato sauce with pork belly. I skipped the torment and suffering and went straight to heaven. But it did taste like fire.

Well this is the lazy version of that meal. Having nothing in the fridge except eggs and a carton of roasted red pepper and tomato soup, I poached the eggs in the soup, added some spices, and now I'm addicted and making the same thing tonight, deliziosa e semplice, eggs in heaven!

(Continued from last post:) The good news

... is threefold:

1. COOKING (this may be obvious, but I'll say it anyway) for yourself and/or with friends means you get to pick how much you want to serve yourself based on things you know better than anyone else: how hungry you are at the time, how much would fill you up (and how much you'd want to be filled up with what you'd be eating, if you have food sensitivities, or particularities, or phobias), and whether you'd like seconds.

Thus, it's most possible to customize portion sizes when the server is the eater; when you know just how big your stomach is, and adjust accordingly. (It also helps to know how big your proverbial "eyes" are, and further adjust accordingly.)

2. DOSA, a restaurant in San Francisco's Mission serving South Indian cuisine that I visited Friday. Dosa has a tasting menu that for once didn't leave me feeling like I stuffed myself up to the esophagus.

But that just means the portion sizes were perfect for me, and that it was refreshing to find a good restaurant offering a tasting menu in my personal stomach size. If you have a place or a dish that fits your size, tell me! I'm curious, because a healthy number of restaurant reviews on Yelp or Zagat say something about portion sizes, many times disagreeing.

3. BREAD PUDDING. Is it just me, or is it becoming a staple on American restaurant menus? Many of the new restaurants I've been visiting, especially those serving "American" or "New American" food, include some form of bread pudding on their dessert lists. It's obviously a great use of leftover bread, and as noted before is one of those wonderful dishes that have been formed over long periods of time to make economical use of leftovers in a cultural-geographic pocket (fried rice, shepherd's pie, ribollita, for example). When Azania first told me, practically drooling, what bread pudding was, I said "eww. Soggy bread and runny stuff?" But that's when I thought bread = Pepperidge Farms or Wonder; I'm converted now!

A couple of my favorites in the past year are at District (I can't remember if it was brandy/spice or butterscotch bread pudding) and The Monk's Kettle (peanut butter and chocolate - obviously a winning combination, and sharing-size). Some friends have also picked up on the trend: John made Amaretto bread pudding and Jessica made Nutella bread pudding. Big props to Jessica for making it out of leftover fondue bread cubes at Artisanal. And of course, bread pudding works great with leftover savories. Personally, I'd love to try a sweetbreads bread pudding someday... but if you'd like to take it down a notch, there are plenty of savory bread pudding recipes online.

If only we could measure good recycling of unused food, like an epicurean version of RecycleBank. I guess until then it's a great reason to patronize restaurants that reuse their day-old bread, and you get a great dessert as a bonus, while encouraging a larger recycling trend. I still have to figure out what restaurants do with the untouched bread in bread baskets though...

Food prices are going up for a while. It wouldn't hurt to overserve ourselves a little less often.

Portion Sizes

We Americans have been trained to eat with our eyes, not with our mind. "Finish what's on your plate." The problem is... how much is on your plate?

When my former boss and I worked long nights and weekends, we would often say, "sigh. We've just got too much on our plate." And that was considered a bad thing. When one literally has too much food on one's plate, however, one tries to eat all of it anyway.

America probably has the widest range of people-sizes, excluding outliers (so Inner Mongolia doesn't count). Add to that the fact that a full third of Americans are obese. Restaurants need to estimate how much an average person would eat, and it seems that most then add more to the portion size - better to overserve than underserve, as is the case in many American industries. Horsepower in cars, for example, or gigabytes in iPods.

Over-horsepowering a car bulks up its marketing value (towards men at least, according to Mark Penn in Mictrotrends) and perhaps wastes some time in the research and development department, but probably contributes to further and greater R&D and only causes marginal waste in usage of horses as far as I know. In the same way, unused gigabytes in iPods don't end up in landfills while people starved of gigabytes or even measly megabytes suffer in malcapacity.

In contrast, when it comes to eating US-averaged-and-then-overestimated serving sizes, how much are we wasting? The 8 ounces of the 22-ounce Prime Porterhouse steak that you couldn't finish are not going anywhere but the trashcan. City Harvest (which I have long admired), for good reason cannot accept food served to you but then left on the plate.

I'd like to contrast two meals I've had this weekend. One was at Yabbie's Coastal Kitchen in San Francisco's Russian Hill, the other at Envy Steakhouse in Las Vegas. The former a small neighborhood seafood restaurant, the latter a(nother) hot new Vegas steakhouse.

At Yabbie's Coastal Kitchen:
- shared oysters (I had three)
- shared mussels in smoked tomato broth (I had three)
- bread (I ate 2 slices w/ butter)
- scallops with creme fraiche risotto and huckleberries (2 huge scallops, 2 tbsp huckleberries, and about 1 cup risotto, of which I ate 3/4 cup)
- shared desserts: butter cake, molten chocolate cake, and vanilla/banana fritters (I had 1/2 of the butter cake, 1/4 of the chocolate cake, and 1 fritter)
- shared sparkling and white wines (I had three glasses)
- shared cheese plate (I had two bites with small bread slices)

Very little wasted - maybe a little of the deeply savory smoked tomato broth when we ran out of bread to soak it up with, and about 1/4 cup of my risotto. A very satisfying meal (with the even more delicious company of Mariah, Brian, and a few new friends).

Now, let's move on to Envy:
- raisin-walnut bread (I ate two small slices w/ butter)
- figs stuffed with goat cheese, crispy pancetta, and spinach (two small figs and about 1/2 cup of pancetta/spinach salad - I ate it all)
Bouillabaisse:
- 1 huge crab leg (I ate 1/2 of it)
- 3 lobster abdomen-sections (I ate 2 of the 3)
- 2 jumbo shrimp (I ate 1/2 of one)
- 3 mussels (I ate 2)
- 3 clams (I ate all 3)
- 2 huge scallops (I ate 1/2 of one)
- 3 crostini (I ate all 3)
(I would like to interrupt [myself] to note that at this point I was pretty full, and have lately been trying to suppress my dessert addiction. So I ordered a trio of desserts for the table (10 of us), but ended up eating about 2/3 of it anyway - all the grown-ups around me being a bit wiser and perhaps more in control of their sweet teeth. So this took me from "yum" to "oof"; I thoroughly take the blame for my present beached-whale feeling)
- trio of desserts (I ate 2/3)
- Kracher Cuvee Beerenauslese, Illmitz, Austria 2003 (a small cordial glass)

Ok, so per my note let's ignore that I ate that much dessert. Besides that, both meals were really great dinners. Tasteful, creative, even beautiful to look at, with great service. Yabbie's entree was perfect for me. I am an average-height, average-weight American woman and at 7:45pm on a Friday was "averagedly" hungry, not famished. But I didn't feel good about the Envy meal. Because with the meat from 1/2 a crab leg, a section of lobster, almost two huge shrimp, and a few shellfish, with the addition of some linguini and 10-15 minutes, I could cook up a nice frutti di mare pasta for tomorrow's dinner, instead of spending over $40 and wasting another half of a massive entree.

Yes, Vegas is the land of the big (casinos, buffets, people, cheese). But back to everyday life. Think about the lunch spots in the Financial Districts of every city across America; they have to cater with utmost efficiency, having only a 1.5 hour business window to make the majority of their sales, to serve lunch to time-starved, stressed, sometimes obnoxious customers who will then take it back to their desk (thus essentially eliminating the opportunity for second helpings). So, most of them take the average and round up. There's no time for asking "how many slices of seared tuna would you like? About what size burger will satiate your hunger today? And what about the bun - are you carb-conscious and just going to throw away the top half anyway - should I even give you the standard three servings of fries then?" Nope; they are designed for efficiency.

Well, I just realized what time it is and I have to get up early for a conference. Sorry if this half has been disheartening; good news on the next post.

Shared Meals

Anyone that has known me for more than a day knows that I am a big Michael Pollan fan. I became a reader of his elegant writing after coming across a New York Times Magazine article on nutritionism about a year and a half ago. I liked his writing style so much that I picked up his book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, which I highly suggest to anyone who can read English. It's still on the NYTimes bestseller list and is now available in paperback. I won't say much more about it here, as you can click through to read the 400 Amazon reader reviews.

I especially wish my mother would read it. She is very much into reading the latest news on the newest star nutrient or magical food packed (or laced) with omega-3s, just like a few of my friends' moms are. Today it's grapefruit, tomorrow it will be beans, then salmon, walnuts, etc. Sadly, The Omnivore's Dilemma is too long for her to read. Luckily, Michael Pollan's new book, In Defense of Food, is a shorter guidebook to much of the findings and practical lessons learned in The Omnivore's Dilemma. So I'm reading it quickly and then sending it to her. If you want a more in-depth and entertaining narrative, I'd strongly suggest The Omnivore's Dilemma over In Defense of Food.

My favorite part of each of these books is when he gets to the link between eating and culture. Actually, "link" isn't even the best word to use here, as it implies that eating and culture are two different things. Here, Michael Pollan, a REAL journalist, puts it into better words:

"Shared meals are about much more than fueling bodies; they are uniquely human institutions where our species developed language and this thing we call culture" - from In Defense of Food, page 189.

Oh, and "meals" don't include two steps, like "add cereal to milk" or "put in microwave and zap." There are reasons we gather and savor food and wine, as the preacher at St. Dominic's said on Easter Sunday. Amen.

So imagine my delight when my friend Talitha called and was coming over for dinner the day after I read this. Supper was great, but the company makes it a "meal" above and beyond the other basic requirement that it's made of real food.

Here's the loose ingredient list for the easy, pre-travel, cabinet-cleaning tuna pasta with capers and dill we ate. (serves 3:)
Whole-wheat pasta (1/5 of a 1-lb package) - I think the kind I used looked like ridged elbow macaroni.
2.5 tbsp olive oil
1/2 small onion, minced
1 can tuna, drained
capers, about 1.5-2 tbsp, some chopped if you like
dried or fresh dill (however much you like - I used about 2 tsp)
salt and pepper to taste (lots of pepper!)
0.5 tbsp butter for richness if you like

White beans would probably go well here, but I forgot to add them (long day at work!). To make Mama proud, next time I will add grapefruit zest. And use salmon in the place of tuna. And top it off with toasted walnut pieces. I am joking, but actually now that is sounding kind of good...

Best Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipes

On Serious Eats, there is a fun post listing two very very good (but "best" is subjective, don't you think?) chocolate chip cookie recipes. One of them is a recipe from Megnut that was calculated as the average chocolate chip cookie recipe taken from twelve favorite recipes. Even if you can't follow it, it's an interesting read. The search for the favorite recipe that yielded this average are here. Or, just use the one on the back of your bag of chocolate baking chips - they always seem to work.

And while looking at Serious Eats (a great site to browse, by the way), I saw Carrots in Marsala - I can't believe I missed it when I had Five Pounds of Carrots! Oh well, next time.

Slidermania

They've been a craze for a few years by now, but sliders are getting more attention than ever before. According to The Dallas Morning News, they are in chain restaurants like T.G.I. Fridays, fast-food stops (besides the Slyders at White Castle), and at the supermarket. Recipes for sliders and their infinite variations are exploding. Not just bar bites and appetizers anymore, sliders make great entrees at upscale or casual restaurants when done right and in the appropriate setting. There are even dessert sliders, although, in my opinion, it would be a stretch to call the dessert formerly known as Whoopie Pie or Ice Cream Sandwich a "slider." (It just occurred to me that the last time I made whoopie..... pies with my friend John, when I told friends about the whoopie pies they would seem slightly confused. I just looked it up on Wikipedia and, sure enough, it's a Pennsylvania Dutch thing. Donchaknow?)

Here's a cool way of preparing sliders that I came across on Beef Aficionado. It makes the bun soft and the cheese gooey. Hummm...

Of course, reading this gave me the most intense craving for In-N-Out at 2am the other night. In-N-Out burgers are sliders for people I happen to know with extraordinarily large mouths. They eat about eight per sitting.

But anyway, I am really hoping that someone opens a slider restaurant or food stop or even food truck, or, heck, even a cooler cart like the Tamale Lady! (Well, nah, nothing should or could compete.) I think San Francisco would eat it up. You could choose out of an amazing assortment of sliders, customize your condiments, mix and match. And of course, since they are sliders, you get to pick your meal size simply by picking the number of sliders you want.

(Barney's was fun, but I always felt that I was wasting lots of food because I could never finish. Also, they use corn-fed beef - sigh.)

What kind of tasty variations, you ask? Just check out the menu at this actual slider restaurant, Slider Station, in the Middle East. If I ever find myself there, I'll have these sliders:
- Ostrich Club: Ostrich steak with bacon, boiled egg, tomato and lettuce; serviced with black truffle dijonaise
- Ancho Maple Braised Short Ribs
- Chicken Liver with Pomegranate and Sesame on Rocca Bed
- Peking Duck with Spring Onion and Hoisin Sauce (ok, it's an odd riff on the Chinese time-honored duck in the sweet white roll, but I gotta try it)
.... gulp, smack, burp. I will then have tasted cuisines from four corners of the world in one sitting.

But why fly 7,769 miles to Kuwait when a perfectly good business opportunity awaits in San Francisco or New York? ;) If you are reading this and do decide to do something about this slider-shaped hole in my stomach, drop me a line - you'd make a good husband.

And *hint hint* truffled fries on the side wouldn't hurt...

Five Pounds of Carrots

Mama says: "Eat carrots! Good for eyes!"

With a fever of over 103 degrees and a partially torn ligament in my right knee, my ultra-sweet Sabrina dropped off some groceries for me. Not only that, but she knew I preferred natural or organic ingredients and so went out of her way to get organic groceries - so thoughtful!

There's a recent post on Foodie NYC that describes the frustration of a cook at dinner guests who assume that they are reaping the benefits of someone else's narcissistic hobby. Cooking for friends involves much thoughtfulness about personal tastes and situations, he proposes. Don't take it for granted. I couldn't agree more, even though I've rarely encountered the ignorant friend. I may not hit every preference or know all my friends' favorites, but I love cooking for people I care about because it is a tangible expression of that care. It also happens to be fun. So anyway, ingredient gathering as important as cooking, that post made me doubly appreciate Sabrina's taking my food preferences into account while I was essentially immobile and would have gratefully accepted any kind of groceries.

One of the things I asked for was carrots - and since there was a limited selection at the store, I received a 5-pound bag! At first I thought, "I LOVE carrots, and I go through them so fast, so no problem." Then I realized how many carrots comprised a five-pounder and thought, "better look up some different carrot recipes." Not hard with Allrecipes.com. It turned out to be an awesome secret ingredient (for you Iron Chef junkies).

1. Chicken Noodle Soup: This is a good basic recipe for the flufighter. Since I wasn't measuring, I won't write out my version of the recipe, but I highly suggest using the suggestions offered in the reviews for this recipe. I also added garlic, thyme, and a bay leaf.

2. Easy Morning Glory Muffins: A favorite of mine to make back in New York, because the baking scent lingers forever in a Cozy! Charming! 250sf-studio-apt. A few notes: make sure you're using the "wet" kind of shredded coconut if buying packaged coconut; substitute some or all of the AP flour with whole wheat flour; and the recipe calls for too much oil in my opinion, which makes the muffins greasy, so use applesauce. For substitution tips here's a quick summary. Although I never use corn syrup and rarely use vegetable oil, many of the tips are useful for a beginner baker.

3. Cinnamon Carrot Bread: I cut down on the sugar to make it more of a bread and less of a cake, added 1 teaspoon ground cloves, and some fresh grated ginger, and used walnuts instead of pecans. So it was more of a spicy carrot-ginger bread. Yummy with honey spread on top. Carrots, ginger, cloves, honey - all good for a flu and sore throat!

4. Carrot Cake: This version is pretty close to my mother's, which is the ultimate comfort food. Again, I used whole wheat flour, applesauce to replace most of the oil, and also used less sugar, mostly brown. And added ground cloves (always seems to increase the number of exclamation points after "yum" and enhances the spiciness without overpowering). For the frosting, I definitely suggest using much less sugar - maybe 2-3 cups of the confectioner's sugar - I used the suggested 4 cups and thought the frosting (icing) overwhelmed the cream cheese flavor.

I take any excuse to make this cake, like Swapna inviting me and some girlfriends over for an awesome pre-party dinner. (Bruschetta, then capellini w/ roasted red peppers and really good turkey sausage. Hotness.) But, since shredding carrots and chopping pecans gets time-consuming, engage an unsuspecting friend to do one of these (thanks Talitha!).

5. Carrot Souffle: I had almost two more pounds to use at this point and only a few more days to use the carrots. I'm so glad I found this; it was my favorite discovery during this carrot era. Wow. So. Addicting. Only use half the sugar (it tastes so much better to top the souffle with some brown sugar or marshmallows rather than to mix it into the souffle), and make sure to use butter instead of margarine. It took forever, but it was worth it. Oh, and add cinnamon and cloves if you like. (I like.)

So there you have it. Soup, muffins, quickbread, cake, and souffle, and of course crudite all along the way, all from one vegetable. I look forward to the next carrot cake or souffle... but probably not for another few months.

CB&A

96% of PB&J eaters put the peanut butter on the bread first. Not that this is useful or even that entertaining. I just happened to come across this in a book called The Age of Speed (which is actually useful and entertaining, unless you are Amish).

I wonder if this is different for people who use Goober. I am not endorsing this product. Richard had this unfortunate substance in his fridge when we were in college, but luckily I converted him to fluffernutters, which I am craving right now.

But I am really pointing out this statistic because it gives me an excuse to broadcast the newest love of my life, the CB&A at Bouchon. It's more than a subconscious reason that I book the hotel across the street from Bouchon in the Time Warner Center when traveling to New York. CB&A = Cashew Butter & Apricot jam on toasted brioche. It's huge, so fork up the $6.75 and save the other half for breakfast ;)

Other variations are discussed on this Chowhound thread. I call a tasting!

King Trumpets at Far West Fungi, Lard, Fried Rice, ZOMG

This funny dude* working at Far West Fungi in the Ferry Building was cracking me up yesterday. I bought some shiitakes, and he gave me a freebie king trumpet mushroom. It had a very rich texture and was a tad sweet. It was huge (a hand's length and about 2"-diameter stem)! so I chopped it up and very lightly fried it in lard** until a little golden, then added prepared bacon/scallion fried rice*** over it. ZOMG**** so good.

* I especially appreciated the funny and generous dude because I had gone to the Ferry Building to get some movement in my legs after tearing my right knee's MCL and by that point everything hurt... so bad. It was a much-needed diversion.

** I could, as my friend John knows, spend a good portion of a car trip from Lake Tahoe to San Francisco talking about lard/butter/coconut oil vs. synthetic fats. (The reason for that speech was that I was exhausted and had to keep myself awake while driving, but the point is that there's a lot to say about it). A more entertaining and concise way to get the quick scoop on lard is in this article in Food & Wine, or this article in The Seattle Times. I buy it at Prather Ranch Meat Co., even though it's expensive, because it's the only place I can find fresh-rendered, non-hydrogenated lard in San Francisco. If you want to order a lot, I'd suggest Dietrich's Meats, a cow's holler away from where I grew up.
By the way, a couple of weeks ago, when a bunch of friends and I gathered at our buddy Kevin's apartment to make 200 dumplings/potstickers and 40 baked curry pork pastries (for which I was using lard), it occurred to me that if you sprinkle a little finely-ground pepper on the tub of lard I'm sure some sucker will dig a spoonful of the "tahitian vanilla bean ice cream." Maybe I'll get back at my friend who in elementary school gave me "animal crackers" which turned out to be dog biscuits.

*** One of my most favorite comfort foods ever - my grandmother used to make ham/scallion fried rice a lot (that's all it is: rice, scallions, diced ham, oil, salt). It's much better with chopped Chinese sausage. It's a great use of leftovers - I used leftover bacon and garlic - AND an awesome vehicle for other leftovers, like ground pork or eggs/mushrooms reaching their expiry.

**** Ask Kevin for the formal definition, but it's a severely emphasized "OMG."

Energy Bars

On a couple of the snowboarding trips to Tahoe this season, some friends and I taste-tested a bunch of energy bars, mostly Larabars (Sports Basement in the Presidio has a sneaky trick of putting a large assortment of them near the cash register). My personal favorites are the Chocolate Coconut and Pecan Pie, and Gingersnap is growing on me. Each of my friends have their own favorite. So you're just going to have to try them all!

Last weekend I munched on a Gingersnap Larabar at the top of Heavenly's Sky Express (awesome views!), and two guy friends called it a "girly bar." (Luna bars are even more girly :) .) Makes sense... but made me think about just how much marketing plays into energy bars. There's one in almost every niche now, with about 10 flavors each. They can be aimed at body-builders, athletes needing concentrated energy, yogis, women's morning nutrition needs (daypart isn't just a media broadcast time divide anymore), supplement junkies, the gluten-intolerant, and of course those looking to lose weight.

Anyway, a while ago I took a look at the ingredients of some of these and some really aren't too different, although many have "branded" ingredients which are also named with marketing in mind. Disclaimer: I haven't looked at that many energy bars.

And because of that I've narrowed my energy bar choices down to Larabars, where the ingredients are recognizable as foods, not foodish products recombined. It adds just a little peace of mind.

But I was excited to see this post on Mighty Foods, which reviews real food energy bars. If you're looking to try one of these, here's a good start to recommendations. They tried bars from the following brands: Larabar, Larabar Jocolat, Clif Nectar, Smart Monkey, Think Organic, Ruth’s, ReBar, Go Raw, Vega, Raw Organic Food Bar, and Gertrude & Bronner’s Alpsnack.

Banana Bread

Overripe bananas... I wonder how far you could slide down a steep San Francisco sidewalk (Jones from California to Pine, perhaps?) if you tie the stem end to the front of your shoes.

Anyway, I tried this recipe because a recipe that is 90% perfect after 3,390 votes should be tried. Besides, if you look at your fruit bowl and realize your poor bananas have missed their window of opportunity, you've probably got all the other stuff you need for this bread if you've ever baked anything. And like recent stuff I've been posting, it's super-adaptable (add walnuts, coconut, applesauce, make into muffins, make denser, use spices, rum, etc.).

I added a tsp of vanilla extract, halved the recipe (you need 6 medium-sized overripe bananas for the below scaling; I only had three), and used a small round cake pan, cuz it's cuter.

1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg, beaten
3 overripe bananas, mashed (about 1 cup and 2 tablespoons)

- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly butter sides of a pan - whatever pan fits your scaling of this recipe; just make sure there's about an inch between the batter and the top edge of the pan.
- In a large bowl, combine flour, baking soda and salt. In a separate bowl, cream together butter and brown sugar. Stir in eggs, vanilla, and mashed bananas until well blended. Stir banana mixture into flour mixture; stir just to moisten - don't mix too long. Pour batter into prepared pan.
- Bake in preheated oven for (about 35 minutes for my 7" diameter round pan; more for a a big 9x5 loaf, less for muffins); until a toothpick inserted into center of the loaf comes out clean. Let bread cool in pan for 5-7 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack.

I spread honey on top while the bread was cooling, which made a pretty glaze. Served it with peanut butter and some red grapes and now going back for thirds.

It's That Time of Year - You Know, Leftover Season

After ...
shopping my heart out at the Ferry Building,
practicing with dough types I normally don't work with (like scones, mostly based on this recipe from 101 Cookbooks),
enjoying a decadent dinner at Lark Creek Steak (no fewer than eight courses, courtesy of Brian - thanks Brian!),
and drinking lots of Riesling Christmas Eve and Christmas Day...

There were tons of great leftovers in my fridge tonight and I had just finished making plans for a little New Year's road trip - so I looked at the food and thought, if I couldn't keep them, I had to eat them, right?

The leftover cow from Lark Creek Steak was gargantuan, and that was after I had already carved out some for breakfast the day before. It was a 16-oz grass-fed 8th-rib steak, which has little or no marbling but a big cap of solid fat.

I don't eat corn-fed/grain-finished/etc. steak. I figure marbling is just a way of getting a more evenly-distributed portion of fat in every bite. Cow fat tastes good. The amount of marbling is a big part of USDA grading - I say, forget all that! gimme all the fat in a distinct piece so that I can enjoy tasting the glorious fat melting in my mouth to the fullest extent, not spread out indiscernably across an otherwise flavorless chunk of flesh. Save me from boredom and save the cow from bloating.

Sorry for the rant, and back to the steak. I made a riesling-rosemary sauce that I didn't expect to be good but was surprisingly yummy. Yes, I did riesling with steak - like I said, I was surprised (pleasantly). Even now, my brow is furrowed as I type. The gravy sauce was with onions, crimini mushrooms, leftover flour, rosemary, and a nice riesling from the Finger Lakes in New York. Since I was throwing stuff together I don't remember enough to put together a recipe, but I had to write the ingredients down, because IT WAS GOOD!