What Gen Ate

Kale Malfatti at Home

2012-02-07T18:54:00.001-06:00

For dinner, I had some homemade malfatti, with a glass of primitivo.

They weren't quite as much of a pain to make as I expected. Malfatti are basically delicious little cheese blobs, often more palatably described as "ravioli without the pasta". These are from a recipe adapted from Al di La in Park Slope. I traded the chard for kale, just for fun, and idiotically forgot to buy sage. So I made a butter/shallot sauce instead. And then this happened...

Er, yeah. They are kind of spineless. I gave up and mixed it into a kale-y, cheese-y mush. Nice flavors- the nutmeg is really key- though the texture reminded me disconcertingly of salmon patties or crab cakes.

The wine was a standout, in the world of Trader-Joe's-under-$5 that I inhabit so often. Make no mistake, it's head-explodingly tannic, and quite rough around the edges. But I feel like I've been in an incredibly boring rut of malbecs lately, so it was a wonderful and jolting change.

Apple Tart at Home

2012-02-01T12:13:00.000-06:00

For breakfast (and lunch...), I noshed on a homemade apple tart, with some jasmine green tea to drink.

I baked it yesterday, just for fun. The recipe's super-easy, even though I'd never made pâte brisée before. I like that the tart doesn't contain anything else (looking at you, cinnamon) to distract from the simple apple flavor and rich, not-too-sweet crust.

The recipe calls for individual "tartelettes", and peeled apples, which I modified for prettiness. Also, remember all that lard? Perfect for adding a little extra depth to the apples. I replaced a bit of the butter with lard in cooking the apples; if you know it's there, you'll taste it, but it didn't scream PORK!

Finally, an equipment suggestion: I do not own a pizza peel, and always mourn this fact. But I don't have the space for an adequately-sized one, and it's sort of a ridiculous purchase, unless you have a wood-fired oven or something. If I'm making pizza, I heat up the pizza stone in the oven, then pull it out and build the pizza on the warm stone. With fragile tarts, I can't do that, and transferring them can be fraught with disaster. I solved this by sprinkling a wooden cutting board with cornmeal, building the tart there, and slipping it onto the pizza stone as if it were a peel.

A Very Delicious Thing I Will Never Make Fun of Again.

2012-01-31T16:07:00.000-06:00

Cheeseballs. Cheese balls?

Cheese ball. Yes.

Porridge at Home

2012-01-25T12:52:00.001-06:00

For breakfast, I had some semolina porridge with butter, molasses, and salt, and some Earl Grey tea to drink.

I was feeling creative, I guess. It was an odd breakfast, as I'm not a huge fan of breakfast, or cereal, or hot soupy things early in the morning. And I have awful memories of my grandmother making me Cream of Wheat as a snack and me dousing it in heavy cream, butter, and brown sugar, just to make it edible.

Even the dog wanted in on this. Weirdo.

Dousing did ensue, but the result was remarkably tasty. I don't think of semolina as having much flavor, but the molasses brought out a rich, earthy quality in it, and provided contrasting mineral overtones. Sort of a non-alcoholic morning Guinness. The meal was balanced beautifully by my Earl Grey: floral black tea flavors, with a refreshingly sharp citrusy zing that prevented the porridge's creaminess from becoming boring.

One cooking note: the ratio I found everywhere online is really wrong, assuming you want porridge and not semolina-flavored water. I used less liquid than recommended (2 cups water- our milk smelled funny...) to a quarter cup semolina, and it was still quite watery after 20 minutes of cooking. Maybe it has something to do with the grind of my semolina (pretty fine), but I'd go with 1.5 cups liquid next time, or maybe even less. I didn't miss the milk, though added a few tablespoons butter to compensate.

Odd Ingredient du Jour: Lard

2012-01-23T10:16:00.000-06:00

So, for someone who likes food a whole lot, I'm not really into the Cult of Pig that's hit the food world in the last few years. I like my jamón, I like proscuitto di San Daniele, I madly love these people. But I maybe cook bacon once a year. It's ok, but I could take it or leave it. Especially since lamb bacon is way tastier.

In any case, Jon decided to cook traditional Hungarian goulash last night. The recipe called for the meat to be browned in a few tablespoons of lard or shortening, and we had neither. The sensible thing would've been to buy that scary shelf-stabilized lard, or to buy a can of Crisco, or just use butter or oil. Or maybe even to head to the Dupont Farmers' Market and hope Red Apron Butcher had some posh lard on hand. Me being me, however, this went in a different direction.

That's two or three pounds of fat, skin, and god-knows-what the local Whole Foods nicely scraped up for me from their butchering remnants.

I knew my kindred spirit Chichi Wang over at Serious Eats had done a tutorial on rendering lard a few years back, so I figured it was manageable enough. Of course, I wasn't starting with a nice, pretty chunk of leaf lard, so I just loosely followed her procedure and hoped for the best.

First, I chopped that pile of pig into approximately 1" chunks. Next time, I'd dice them to get a faster render and maybe even some useful cracklins. The fat was still pretty cold from the butcher's cooler, but if I were dicing, I'd probably pop them in the freezer for awhile to make the process easier and less messy.

Then I tossed them in my large (4 quart?) dutch oven, and added 1/4 cup of water. The water's just there to help the fat evenly heat, and to prevent scorching at the beginning.

The tutorial says to start it over very low heat, covered, for the first ten minutes. Presumably this is to help it heat up quickly and evenly, but mine was over such low heat (stupid new apartment burners) that nothing really happened. I removed the lid and kept heating, stirring regularly.

10 minutes.

15 minutes.

20 minutes.

75 minutes.

105 minutes.

The whole process seemed to take forever. Especially between the 20 and 75 minute photos, change was very incremental and slow, to the degree I wondered if it was working at all. The important thing to remember is very low heat, at least until it has mostly melted. This yields a nice golden fat, without browning or developing off-flavors.

I quit at about two hours, though I could've gone longer and maybe yielded some cracklins. At that point, I (precariously) tipped everything through a mesh strainer into a measuring cup, then into jars for storage.

It's unfortunately a messy business.

It cooled to a nice creamy white, and made Jon's goulash extra-delicious. Now I just need to figure out what to do with the rest of it...

Holiday Food Roundup, Part II

2012-01-20T21:18:00.000-06:00

The deliciousness continues.

One of the more brilliant things I discovered over the holidays is the magic of dry brining. I'm a somewhat fanatical advocate for dry brining turkey, and was severely remiss for not recommending it in my Thanksgiving post, but hadn't ever tried it for other meats.

Enter, the Tenderloin.

My MIL was cooking Christmas dinner for eight. This was a seven-pound hunk of meat, which she chose to dry brine. Basically, toss a bunch of salt on it, and leave it in the refrigerator, uncovered, for a few days. The meat turns from an opaque blood red to a (slightly creepy) translucent dark burgundy. The texture gets leathery and stiff, and you wonder if you've just mangled an $80 piece of cow. We were both terrified. But it roasted into an addictive, amazing meal. The dry outer layer browned more easily and became a little crispy, while the inside cooked normally to a nice medium rare.

Also in the magical MIL bag of cooking tips? Roasting shrimp.

Unless you're making me gambas al ajillo, I'm not a huge shrimp person. But these were pretty tasty. The olive oil + roasting gives them a nice texture and a more interesting flavor than most cocktail shrimp.

This is plum cake, from the cookbook-that-shall-not-be-named. Apparently, it's the most-requested recipe in the history of the New York Times. I baked it with pluots, because plums are quite out of season. It's delicious, and extremely easy to make. Best dessert I've ever had? Nope. But if we're doing a results:time ratio, it's pretty far up there.

Finally, there's this:

We were spending the night in Fayetteville, NC on the way home from Florida. Jon had found some barbecue place online that sounded reasonably tasty. So we were wandering around darkened streets, when we passed this sign. Fred. Chason's. Grandsons. Intriguing. We drove another two miles or so, and gave up on barbecue. Fred Chason's. It just sounded awesome.

We walked in, and immediately saw a guy with a handgun in his waistband. I knew then we'd made the right call. It was a buffet. Maybe $12 a person? But oh my god, the food.

Really good fried chicken. Really good. Also mac n' cheese, greens, cracklins (which I'd never had before), sausage, pretty much every part of a pig you can imagine, and reams of cobbler (multiple flavors). Oh, and sweet tea. Your stomach might explode, but it's definitely worth a detour.

Spain in a Bowl

2012-01-18T17:28:00.000-06:00

For dinner, I adapted this Catalan fried noodle recipe. I made it more delicious, and, I daresay, more Spanish.

This was taken pre-paprika.

So, what is it? Cappellini noodles, tossed with olive oil and roasted to a toasty light brown. Then cooked in fish broth and topped with mussels, paprika, and garlic aioli.

I was on the fence about which seafood to use. The original recipe calls for neither, but it uses fish broth. Seafood broths usually only take a few minutes to make from scratch, and they're hard and expensive to find. Using shrimp would create a neat take on gambas al ajillo, but I like mussels better. Also, for some reason that doesn't even make sense to me, I find shrimp more viscerally disgusting to work with.

The results? Awesomely rustic, like something the little old rural ladies of Volver would make. The paprika, not normally my favorite spice, made it all come together perfectly. Next time, I'd pan-fry the noodles rather than roast, just for user-friendliness, and butter, instead of olive oil, might be interesting to try as well.

The best part of all this? I somehow, inexplicably, did the impossible and made beautiful thick aioli with only a bowl and a wooden spoon.

Blini Brunch at Home

2012-01-15T10:10:00.000-06:00

For breakfast, I made blini with blueberry jam, with coffee to drink.

Making blini is messy, as you can see. I based them on this recipe, from the ubiquitous (at least around here) NYT Cookbook. I, however, used Greek yogurt instead of sour cream, baking powder instead of soda, didn't provide for an overnight rest, and halved the recipe. They were still awesome.

The idea is to barely cook them through, so the middle stays super-creamy. The Greek yogurt added a sour tang that played well with the Bonne Maman wild blueberry preserves (my new obsession), but would have been too much otherwise.

The actual cooking process was frustrating- you have to flip them while they're still quite liquid, and they don't hold together very well. My first batch was easiest to flip because of the lower heat and slower cooking time, but the last batch developed a really nice buttery, crispy skin from the higher heat. I hate making most pancakes, due to the large number of ingredients and finicky behavior of most batters...it just seems unnecessarily combative to attempt something that complex when you're in a half-awake brunch daze. Despite their issues, I found these much easier to deal with, and would highly recommend them.

Completely Obsessed

2012-01-12T20:28:00.002-06:00

...with baking bread. Seriously, this old NYT recipe is so easy. And I've baked, and been frustrated by, a lot of bread. Easy. I googled around to see if anyone had put the recipe online (they had), and was really depressed to see everyone else is getting much prettier results.

Whatever. It tastes great, even when made completely from white whole wheat flour, and it takes no time at all. I mixed up a batch, walked the dog, rolled it around a little, waited awhile, and baked it perfectly in time for dinner.

Still warm, with some shallot butter? Brilliant.

[Digressive edit: one of those links, the one with the prettier-than-mine bread, is actually an awesome-looking blog. Jon's sort of crushed my longstanding live-in-the-Rustbelt-and-build-stuff fantasies, but now I know where to go to get my fix...]

French Onion Soup-ish

2012-01-10T21:02:00.000-06:00

For dinner, I kind of had French onion soup. Not nearly as deconstructed as this, but almost.

It all started when I tried to make a baguette. I'm still madly in love with the New York Times Cookbook, which I received as a Christmas present. And bread is one of those things I wish I made more often, just because you miss it if you don't have it, and homemade is always best.

So I used the Craig Claiborne/Pierre Franey recipe (couldn't find it online...buy the cookbook, you'll like it. Or borrow mine) for French bread. I used wine yeast, because I happened to have a little lying around. I don't think it really makes a difference though.

It has to be the technique. It's a really simple recipe, and, per usual, I messed with it by using mostly white whole wheat flour instead of white. It still turned out well. I was concerned that the inside was so dense in appearance:

But it turned out perfectly. The dense texture held well when I used it for almond butter & blueberry jam sandwiches at lunch, and was a nice counterpoint to the onion jam at dinner.

Onions?

It was sort of the same confit recipe as before. This time, I measured to make sure I was slicing the onions more or less uniformly at 1/4". My new general rule is to use approximately a tablespoon, or a bit more, of butter per pound of onions. And to cook them very, very slowly. These I removed from heat after 1.5 to 2 hours, when they had barely changed to a light toffee color. I added a little kosher salt toward the beginning, and a little red wine towards the end. This time, I also chose to puree them a bit in the food processor, to yield nicely uniform bits.

To make the "soup", I covered some caramelized onion puree with sliced cubes of bread and shredded Parmigiano-Reggiano and briefly heated it. I can't overstate how awesome slow-cooked onions are- it's pure umami goodness. You don't need to use a ton of butter for a smooth, savory flavor. The bread was also a success, though maybe I'd add a little more water next time- I always forget the white whole wheat flour soaks up more moisture and you have to adjust.

To drink, I had a Dogfish Head "Raison d' Etre". It's becoming one of my local-ish go-to beers for complex, interesting flavors. It has a Belgian feel, with some light banana/clove flavors and heavier 'green' flavors- apple, maybe pear? Unique and interesting and substantial, but it still goes well with most foods.

Holiday Food Roundup, Part I

2012-01-09T11:52:00.000-06:00

Over the holiday season, I had a lot of tasty, and/or bizarre, food. Here's a brief roundup, from the first part of my vacation.

I was tempted, but ultimately resisted, these freaky little things. I love red velvet cake (actually, one of my unspoken New Year's resolutions is to pin down a great recipe for the cake I so love), but this was just scary.

Instead, I had bread pudding French toast:

The location was Denny's, in case you were wondering. It was attached to our hotel, otherwise I wouldn't have been caught dead there. It's not snobbery, it's just that I don't remember eating at a Denny's without getting full-on, three-days-of-stomach-flu food poisoning. Not kidding; it had been ten years at least since I set foot in a Denny's. Thankfully, I emerged unscathed from this experiment. It was extremely dense, slimy yet dry, and strangely textured, but it didn't kill me. Success?

Once we got to Florida, I was intrigued by this bit of pretentiousness:

A "cranberry bog", from which you can fish your very own cranberries. Fresh Market kind of pisses me off for what they're up to in suburban DC, but I understand that they're a rare beacon of enlightenment in rural Florida. Still, pretentious.

Then there's the random office I visited with the in-laws. You know, you visit an accounting or legal office or whatever, and they ask you if you'd like something to drink? At this office, I was offered a menu:

Yeah.

Yay, cookware!

2012-01-08T19:19:00.001-06:00

Sorry I was gone so long! I didn't plan on that, but hooking up internet at the in-laws' proved to be more trouble than it was worth. Don't worry, I'll be punished enough when I try to make a roundup of all the tasty food I've had in the last three weeks.

In the meantime, I thought I'd talk about cookware. Fun, eh?

A few months ago, I was trying to candy some lemon slices, in my absolute favorite size pot. Favorite because it's perfect for everything but really big or really small jobs. It's a two quart Le Creuset, part of a 70s brown set I "borrowed" from my mother and never gave back. You can guess where this is going, no?

I was cooking them over low heat, and it was time to take my dog for a walk. And it was such a gorgeous day, the nicest day in so long, that I took her for an extra-long walk, completely forgetting my lemons. I came home to an apartment full of dense smoke, and an apparently broken fire alarm.

And this. This was taken after I spent about an hour chipping carbonized chunks of lemon out of the pot, actually.

I spent the next month chipping away, and zapping it with oxalic acid, but it just wasn't the same. I heard scary internet rumors of glass chunks in my food, and got freaked out about trying to rehabilitate it. So, on our drive back from vacation in Florida, we decided to stop at one of the Le Creuset factory stores for a replacement.

The store itself was an interesting cultural experience. Hello, dainty old southern ladies. Hello, temptation. I managed to escape just over $100 poorer, for the pot, a specialized potholder, and a large bottle of enameled cast-iron cleaner. Not bad.

The blue happened to be on sale, happens to go nicely with the chocolate brown 70s set, and is kind of sexy. Win.

But I noticed some interesting differences I feel compelled to note. Maybe it'll help out if you ever find a vintage pot somewhere and wonder what it is?

They started enameling the bottoms! As you can see from the wear on my 70s pot, this is probably a good thing. I'm looking forward to easier cleanup, without worrying about whether my pot bottom is fully dry. Also, the enamel surface is much easier to thoroughly dry.

They posh-ified the lids! Older lids don't have any markings, while the new one is cast with a large "Le Creuset". I guess this impresses people watching me cook? Yeah.

On less exciting notes, you can see that they slightly changed the shape of the handles, and that they still insist on selling pots with "phenolic" knobs. My 70s pot has a nice looking knob only because I've melted the plastic off the metal base with use over the years. You can purchase stainless steel knobs from Le Creuset to replace them for high-temperature oven cooking, but seriously?! I fail to understand why plastic-covered metal is still standard.

Holiday Fun

2011-12-18T19:47:00.000-06:00

Things have been busy lately. It's that time of year, I guess. We went to a great holiday cheese party, and a typical office party. I made these for the latter:

They're the super-simple cheesecake cupcakes I recommended for Thanksgiving. Pomegranates happen to be in season, and are gorgeous and delicious, so I added pomegranate seeds to half of the batch for color and excitement.

The cupcakes turned out deliciously. Unfortunately, I made way too many, so we are still trying to eat them all. Cupcake overload is awesome, but not during the holidays when everyone is already plying us with delicious food.

Anyone need some cupcakes?

In other news, we finally checked out the local kosher grocery today. We'd heard tantalizing tales of lamb bacon from friends, and had to investigate. We haven't sampled the bacon yet, but the experience was fun. We saw a congressman stocking up on ridiculous quantities of gefilte fish, and saw this sign on their canned fish aisle:

Seriously, you want to read that. Kind of gross, but great. One of the things I find fascinating about kosher food rules is how detailed they can be. Very, very detailed.

Pesto, deconstructed...

2011-12-06T17:30:00.000-06:00

...figuratively, of course. I try not to be pretentious like that.

For dinner tonight, I decided to make a quick pesto and some more onion confit, and alternately spread them on slices of bread.

The pesto I made is non-traditional, and it caused me to think about what makes a good pesto. I generally make non-traditional pestos, and they always turn out great, with a minimum of measuring or fussiness.

If you think about it, all you really need is something leafy, something crunchy, something fatty, and salt. I usually add something acidic and something aromatic for a little excitement, but it's not always necessary.

Tonight's is arugula, pistachios, olive oil, lemon juice, and shallot. I just tossed alternating handfuls of everything into the food processor, and voila. Another of my favorites is spinach, walnuts, goat feta, and garlic.

Easy and delicious. Though it does kind of look out of place on our plastic plates (did I mention we're moving?!)

Odd Ingredient du Jour: Rennet

2011-12-06T10:18:00.002-06:00

I am fascinated by rennet. I was first intrigued by its presence in my favorite vintage cookbook (of which I actually have two copies- 1943 and 1953).

The '53 version has the prettier cover.

I love Meta Given's voice. The cookbook has a ton of personality, heavily influenced by the early/mid twentieth century research on the new science of nutrition, Home Economics, and yes, the U.S. Government's recommendations, with a surprising dose of feminism. If you can't make it to What's Cooking, Uncle Sam?, this book pretty much captures everything you'd see there.

By the way, what is rennet ? It's a collection of enzymes used to coagulate milk proteins. The sources are unappealing- either derived from the lining of a calf's stomach, from microbial sources (mostly molds), or from bacteria genetically modified to produce the proper enzymes. Frankly, given those choices, I'll stick with baby cow stomach (sorry, cows).

Most people think of rennet as cheese-related, because that's primarily what we use it for today. The Modern Family Cookbook, on the other hand, mentions rennet primarily in the context of puddings. I found it intriguing, and a little odd. But, being an inveterate pudding-lover, I had to try it.

(Those are vanilla beans. Yes they look icky.)

Rennet puddings are super-easy to make. We all know I'm pudding-impaired, so that's saying something. This is a vanilla pudding I made last night, following a recipe that came with the rennet tablets. It was written by the homemade cheese guru Dr. Fankhauser. Interesting that the pudding recipes aren't even on his recipe page online.

Perhaps this is why.

The texture is not very appealing. It's somewhere between soft-boiled egg whites and yogurt, and rather confusing to eat. The above photo was taken after chilling the custard for two or three hours. After five hours, it had firmed up somewhat, holding its shape about as well as an egg custard:

I'm curious to try more rennet pudding recipes. Maybe next time with whole milk for better flavor. I'd definitely recommend using rennet if you're going for an egg custard feel, but can't use eggs. It's also way, way, way simpler to make than an egg custard- for this recipe, I heated milk, sugar, and a vanilla bean to lukewarm; added a dissolved rennet tablet, and chilled. That's all.

DC Beer Roundup

2011-12-03T19:16:00.001-06:00

After all that food rounding up, I think it's time to talk about the great DC beers I've had lately.

The collaboration between DC Brau and Epic Brewing, "Fermentation Without Representation" was much-anticipated at our house. Unfortunately, not so anticipated so that we were able to score any on tap. The tap version was actually brewed locally at DC Brau, while the bottled version was made by Epic, in Utah.

The beer itself is an imperial pumpkin porter. Pretty unusual for a pumpkin beer. It's not too sweet, and pretty intense, as might be expected from an imperial porter. Honestly, it smells and tastes mostly like tobacco to me. Also molasses, a little cola, and winter spices.

Then there's Chocolate City, one of the newer local breweries. This was actually the second week ever they're doing growler fills, so we headed to their facility by Catholic University.

Alas, I had our slightly crazy rescue dog in tow, so I was unable to take any photos of the inside. But the owners/brewers were extremely nice, and the brew facility looked good. The location and building (an old railroad depot?) has great potential as they ramp up production to become a weekend destination.

We got a growler of the Copper Ale, which is pretty nice. It's well-balanced, a little bitter, with pronounced malt and honeyed/wheaty/grassy flavors.

It should be noted that Chocolate City is still quite new. Maybe that explains the less-than-perfect reviews. I'd disagree with the vitriol- it's a very good everyday, medium-heavy sort of session beer

Then tonight, I had a drink that wasn't local, but still very interesting. We headed to the Queen Vic, on H Street, for drinks and snacks. They have a fascinating list of "cocktails", mostly consisting of beer/cider+liqueur. I had a hard cider with Becherovka, aka the "Harvest Apple". It was a nice break from beer, and not too sweet.

I also had marrow.

It was quite tasty and kind of disgusting, all at the same time. I hadn't had marrow in forever, and I think before when I've had it, it consisted of split, then roasted, bones. These were roasted whole, resulting in an off-putting texture. The marrow was fatty and gelatinous; some parts were whitish and greasy, while others were pink or red, with a more solid consistency. The dish came with bread, a side of flake salt, and a little parsley and onion salad to clear the palate. Delicious, but unappealing to look at.

Finally, on the beer side of things, there's Port City's seasonal winter offering, "Tidings". I have yet to try it, but am really excited to do so. I like that they utilized local ingredients, and that they chose to do something different- they went light, with a Belgian style blond ale, rather than dark like everyone else. I guess with such a tasty porter, there's no pressure to go dark.

Food Roundup, Road Trip Edition

2011-12-02T10:22:00.000-06:00

We've finally gotten out and about a bit on the East Coast. So I figured it was time for another exciting food roundup.

First, we headed to Philly a few weeks ago so Jon could run the Philadelphia Marathon. Before we left, Jon noticed a "Pancake Breakfast!" sign at a local church while jogging. It's incredible how every church basement in the U.S. pretty much looks and smells exactly the same, and I was reminded of my own many "cooking in church basements" experiences. It was kind of odd. But everyone was extremely nice, the food was good, they had real butter, and it was $6 all you can eat, including pretty decent coffee. And their china was adorable:

I'd go back. It sponsors the men's ministry, and I think they do it once a month. Regrettably, their website doesn't appear to have information about it at all, much less when the next one is.

In any case, we next headed to Philly. The city's gorgeous. The city center is actually inhabited. I visited a bodega for the first time, ever. And we had some awesome food:

We had dinner at Zavino, a few blocks from our hotel. It was a happy accident, as we'd intended to carb up at the pasta place next door. Their wait was insane, so we popped in to Zavino and sat at the bar. Pretty much everything on their menu looked fabulous; I ended up eating a sunchoke soup from their specials board, topped with truffle oil, crisp prosciutto bits, lemon, and garlic (a "proscuitto gremolata", as they called it), with a side of their roasted sherry Brussels sprouts, and a Victory Yakima Glory to drink. Apparently, I didn't photograph any of this (I really thought I had!), but it was all extremely tasty. I appreciated that the sunchoke soup wasn't overloaded with toppings, and still tasted quite vegetal, rustic, and filling.

The next day, post-marathon, we hit Tony Luke's on the way out of town. We'd wanted to hit up one of the more traditional cheesesteak places, but every other marathoner in town had the same idea. I had the roast beef Italian- beef on bread, with sauteed broccoli rabe and sharp provolone. I know it's anathema to the concept, but dipping the bread, Chicago-style would've made it great. And the rabe was delicious, but could've been better with more garlic. Also no photos. Also no clue why not.

The following weekend, we went on a daytrip to the Shenendoah Valley. It was surprisingly pretty- I forgot Virginia looked like that. Nearly mountainous. I had some dutch apple doughnuts from a gas station that were pretty decent.

Then last weekend, we went to Los Tios for brunch with friends. I had this delicious craziness: skirt steak with eggs, sauce, plantains, breakfast potatoes, rice, and crema. It was as tasty as it sounds.

Finally, I made another round of the lemon thyme chicken a few days back. This time with more thyme, as we had a ton left over from Thanksgiving. I tried to use less oil and butter, which worked out well, but the thyme was awful. I'm not a huge fan anyway, but it added this weird bitter off-flavor that crushed the lemony flavors.

Jon noted that it had a marsala thing going on when it was done. I think the fat levels were calibrated better this time to create that nice consistency without reducing the sauce. But the thyme? Never again.

Everybody Panic...

2011-11-21T21:32:00.002-06:00

...because it's almost Thanksgiving.

I had a lot of interesting and fabulous food this weekend, and I am surely remiss for not blogging about it right this minute. However, Thanksgiving is this week, and every food blogger on the planet is having all kinds of ridiculous freakouts over it. So I would be more remiss in not blogging some random thoughts about said notable cooking holiday.

My best advice is not to panic. And don't get all food-fetish Martha Stewart-y if that's not your thing. I always think it's an excuse to have fun, even the year I committed to cooking everything. It worked out great. Keep your sense of humor, play around, and everything will be ok.

This year, we're lucky enough to be invited over for the holiday. I will be making the salmon rilettes and the cauliflower gratin from Thomas Keller's Bouchon cookbook, and everything else is someone else's problem.

Still panicked?

If you need something easy to take somewhere, try Cooking for Engineers' garlic potatoes or cheesecake cupcakes. I've made them both multiple times, and they're foolproof and delicious. Or go for the garlic mashed potatoes. They're awesome, too.

If you want something a little more complicated or posh, check out Serious Eats' Thanksgiving guide. They have a lot of delicious-looking sides. Until I decided to tone things down for the possibly-less-crazy palates at our potluck Thanksgiving, I was going to make the Momofoku Brussels sprouts.

If you're looking for cooking inspiration, or just some crazy aspirational food porn, Gilt Taste has been doing a great job of that lately. They also have a holiday cooking hotline going at 877-445-9228 during limited hours through Wednesday. I almost want to call it, just to chat up the no doubt awesome food people on the other end.

And that pumpkin milkshake? I WILL make you. Preferably after I start training for a marathon or something.

So, you're not panicked. Maybe you're more worried about the booze?

I believe in beer with Thanksgiving dinner. Or non-traditional wine. Whatever floats your boat.

For beer, try going local first. Here in DC, I'd grab some of DC Brau's limited edition Imperial Pumpkin Porter. It's substantial, but not too heavy, and not sickeningly sweet or overly flavored like a lot of pumpkin beers. I'd also get some of Port City's porter, which is lighter than most porters, but really well-balanced.

If you prefer lighter, Schlafly's Kolsch is a winner. It's an excellent session beer, goes well with a variety of foods, and is subtle but a lot more interesting than most light beers. New Belgium's Abbey, Boulevard's Tank 7, or Abita's Harvest Ale are all nice choices.

Apologies for the lack of California beers- I'm trying for geographic diversity, but can't think of a great West Coast beer I really love. Bear Republic might have something good, or Anchor Steam, if you're into it. I think I like Firestone Walker, but haven't had enough experience with their beers to recommend anything in particular.

What about wines?

The traditional choice is Beaujolais. If you go this route, please go Villages and not Nouveau. Speaking very generally, the nouveau tends to be candy-like, treacly, thin, and awful. And it sells at a premium, because it's what *everyone* wants for Thanksgiving.

Honestly, I think something from the Languedoc is more interesting. Their wines are also relatively light, but tend to be simple, dry, and lower-alcohol, with more offbeat flavor notes- leather, graphite, violet, and the like- and gorgeous deep purple color. Or, if you're into white wine, go for a rousanne, viognier, verdejo, or similar. I'm a huge fan of mineral and marine flavors. Trader Joe's has a kosher white still that's pretty nice. Even a vinjo verde could be interesting, or a cava. And if you see Spanish or French cider, just grab it- it's bound to be perfect.

Onion and Andouille Pasta at Home

2011-11-16T14:27:00.001-06:00

For lunch, I had fusilli in a creamy onion sauce, with andouille sausage, and a persimmon for dessert. And a glass of red wine.

(My rant about Americans and lunch drinking is coming one of these days. For now, I'll just say that wine with lunch is one of the great pleasures of life, and if you don't appreciate it, you depress me. And that your Frappucinos and sodas are going to kill you a lot faster anyway.)

The onions were genius. They actually started yesterday as a precursor to French onion soup. But they smelled so fabulous as they were caramelizing, I couldn't bear to add anything to them. So instead I smeared heaps of onion confit onto slices of bread with dinner, and couldn't wait to use the remainder today.

Quick digression: if you want to make your own onion deliciousness, I made it by melting 3T butter in a large dutch oven, then adding two pounds of onions, sliced 1/4" thick or so. Specificity in slicing doesn't really matter, just the time and heat level. Lots of time, very little heat. Stir every 15 minutes, less towards the beginning, more towards the end. For 2-4 hours. Or you can even stop sooner, if you like the way things smell and it's reduced to a spreadable consistency.

Anyway. I woke up thinking about these onions. They're that delicious. I vaguely thought, in my half-awake daze, that they might be amazing with pasta. Then this afternoon, I was picking up my newly-sharpened knives from the local butcher (this is not nearly as virtuous as it sounds: this is the first time, ever, I've had them sharpened), and couldn't resist grabbing some andouille sausage, too.

Like the lazy food blogger that I am, I actually tossed the sausage into the boiling water while the pasta cooked, then pan-fried it in a little butter to get a little browning. I then tossed in the cooked pasta, a little pasta water, and the leftover onion confit, and mixed everything for a few minutes. It was the perfect meal for an overcast, ridiculously foggy day.

Oh, and the persimmons? So fabulous. They'll get their own post someday soon, too.

Provencal Sunshine

2011-11-10T19:57:00.000-06:00

For dinner, I made this tastiness:

Sort of a Provençal chicken dish, with thyme and super-bright lemon flavor. With green beans on the side, and a glass of red wine.

It was loosely based on this recipe, which is itself a loose approximation of an Ina Garten recipe, and which I discovered via Jenna Sauers' excellent twitter feed.

We all know how lazy I am. Baste? Oy. And whatever casserole dishes we may own are still stowed away in a box somewhere. So I decided to braise everything in my huge dutch oven instead.

I omitted: the fresh thyme, because it was exactly the same price as a cheap bottle of wine (I got the wine instead); the bacon, at the last minute, because I was curious to see what it would taste like without all that smoky richness; and a few other ingredients. I dusted a little dried, ground thyme into the pot, but would probably spring for fresh thyme next time.

The results were fabulous, as promised. The lemon flavors were so huge and sunny and bright; it would be an awesome mid-winter dish. Instant happiness. Omit the thyme, make some rice, and it sort of becomes Moroccan. Or add some salt-cured olives. Regardless of what you do, the broth makes an amazing sauce. It would work great on fish. Or anything. Jon was actually dipping pita chips into the puddle of sauce on my plate as I destroyed the wannabe leftovers.

If you want to make it my way:

Lightly coat the bottom of a large dutch oven with oil. Cook the chicken thighs in the oil for a few minutes. Then toss the onion, carrots, and lemons on top, very coarsely chopped, along with the garlic cloves. Dust some thyme on top, and plop on pats of butter (I used 3-4T), and some salt. Cover, place in your pre-heated 400-degree oven for 30 min. At that point, I actually lowered a steamer basket full of green beans into the top, lowered the heat to 350, and cooked, still covered, for another 20 minutes. I then removed the chicken with tongs, lightly dusted with smoked paprika, and broiled for 3 minutes or so, just to dry them off a little. At the same time, I reduced the liquid over high heat on the stovetop, and fished out the lemon chunks.

The $2.77 bottle of wine? Questionable, but not horrid. My quick test for how much a cheap bottle of wine is going to suck is to look at the ABV. The higher it is, the worse the wine. 14% or higher is a dealbreaker. This, the Oak Leaf Vineyard Merlot (rule #2: cheap Merlot is way better than cheap Cab), is 13%. It's pretty oaky, a little spicy, and not very complex, but at least not treacly. Maybe a step below Whole Foods' Three Wishes Merlot, and way above Chuck Shaw. Both of which are at similar price points.

Calling Marion Nestle

2011-11-07T08:53:00.001-06:00

This weekend, Jon made chili, and we had a little party. Chili is his thing, so he made his usual beef, lamb, and bean chili, and an experimental vegetarian version with portobellos, zucchini, and beans. We had a cheese plate (Trader Joe's cranberry-swathed goat cheese is A-mazing), and people brought over tasty appetizers and beer. It was delicious and fun, and something we should do more often.

Sadly, I didn't take any food photos. But while we were grocery shopping beforehand, I found some great blog fodder...

You know that public health vs. processed foods industry debate over food labeling? This is exhibit A in what's wrong with the current rules. Honestly, I don't even know what the current rules are. But any regs that permit labeling this misleading are, I think, categorically immoral.

If you can't read it, the copy says:
"Nutrition Rich Cookies...As much fiber as a bowl of oatmeal...As much calcium and Vitamin D as an 8oz glass of milk...As much Vitamin C as a cup of blueberries"

I'm sure that's all technically true. But let's check out the ingredient list.

Oh, and all the additional misleading comparisons above the ingredient list, too.

In addition to repeating the comparisons from the front, it says:
"As much iron as compared to a cup of cooked spinach"
"As much Vitamin B12 as compared to a cup of cottage cheese with fruit"
"As much Vitamin A as compared to an 8oz glass of tomato juice"
"As much Vitamin E as compared to two cups (16oz) of carrot juice"

Which all creates the illusion, for the less educated about food, that these cookies might actually be good for you. Who knew? indeed.

First ingredient? Sugar. Then flour (not whole). Then a mixed cocktail of vegetable oils, one hydrogenated. Trans fats FTW, y'all. Cocoa. Corn sugar. Polydextrose (which is apparently where those silly fiber numbers come from. Who knew?). Corn flour, then corn syrup. And a few other random things.

Then there's a separate list of added vitamins and minerals below the ingredient list. I mean, I guess that's what it's doing there. I didn't know it was legal to separate out ingredients like that. Kind of creates the illusion that there's something good for you in all this, like separating "active ingredients" out on medicine labels. Bottom line, you won't get a goiter eating these things.

So who makes this crap? I was really hoping for Nabisco. And who knows, there probably is some huge company hiding behind "Suncore Products, LLC". For a company allegedly based in Denver but distributing in the DC area, there's a serious dearth of info online.

Certainly, their own website in an exercise in ridiculousness. Maybe I should start working my way through their recipes starring said cookies?

And I should definitely be happy their FAQ answer to "can I stop eating fruits and vegetables if I eat your cookies?" is a no.

But hey, there's already a law firm on it. "If you or someone you know has been harmed by WhoNu? cookies or a similar product, please contact us to discuss your legal rights." Let me know if you go that route. I'd appreciate the referral bonus.

Sweet Potato Fries at Home

2011-10-25T11:35:00.001-05:00

For brunch, I had baked sweet potato fries, with an egg and some coffee.

The sweet potatoes were inspired by this recipe. But really, that recipe's way too complicated. Just cut your potatoes into spears, toss with a little olive oil and salt, and bake at 450 for 15min. I added a little chopped garlic at that point, tossed, and roasted them for another five minutes or so. They were exceedingly tasty.

To go with it, I pan-fried an egg in a little butter. These are posh fancy pasture eggs from Whole Foods, so I feel ok about eating them, even if eggs still gross me out. I'll work on finding some backyard eggs, but, until then, they're pretty decent. Maybe it was my imagination, but the yolks seem to have a distinct lemon flavor that would make a nice Hollandaise.

Odd Ingredient du Jour: Ginkgo Nuts

2011-10-20T17:13:00.001-05:00

First, a little botany lesson. Because I love ginkgo trees.

Their leaves are so pretty!

Ginkgo trees are classified as gymnosperms, which is the older method of seed-bearing among plants. Conifers are another common example (I'll refrain from geeking out about the cycads...just know that you never want to hit the botanic gardens with me).

Basically, it means their seeds aren't enclosed inside a flower, and instead are in cones or exposed on short stalks. And it means ginkgo trees are extremely ancient. That "living fossil" stuff biology teachers get excited about? That's the ginkgo.

More ginkgo porn. So pretty.

People have been noshing ginkgo biloba seeds for a long time, particularly in Asia. And it just so happens that the DC area is full of ginkgo trees, and that fruiting season is right now. In addition to the pretty leaves, you'll know these trees by the foul odor emanating from the sidewalk, and the squashed orange goo everywhere. Yes, the fruit reeks. But it's also a nice glowy orange color, and adorably wrinkled.

Naturally, I have some around the corner from my house in their full reeky glory. So I had to investigate. I just foraged them from the ground, because the putrescent flesh isn't what we're after anyway.

At this point, I had to consult the internets for advice, having neither tasted ginkgo nuts before nor any idea what to do with them. Instructables to the rescue!

Following the tutorial's advice, I soaked the fruit for an hour in warm water, then removed the seeds. (Also do be aware that ginkgo fruit technically contains urushiol, aka the chemical that puts the "poison" in poison ivy. I've never had issues, but if you're paranoid/sensitive/not a risk-taker, glove up)

This is what they look like, de-fruited.

I wanted to consume them right away, so I skipped ahead to roasting them in the oven. I cooked them at 400 degrees for just over ten minutes, not quite sure how to tell if they were done, because the outer shell does not turn green, just the inner meat. The explosion solved my little dilemma.

Seriously, if you want to scare someone, explode some ginkgo seeds in their oven. It sounded like a cannon went off in there. Maybe I'd try a lower heat next time, but the survivors were indeed done.

They look like slightly translucent olives when cooked and peeled.

And the taste? That was what I was most curious about, since most people dislike them or claim they're an acquired taste. The short version would be "they taste like buckwheat-flavored jelly beans". But they're actually pretty complex- kind of woodsy and earthy, with an odd chewiness. The second one I ate was significantly more bitter than the first, but there's a touch of bitterness to all of them. On top of all that, the toasty buckwheat flavors resound most prominently.

I'm not sure what to do with them next. Most recipes I see them in are very strange to the western palate- congee, eggy savory custards, and the like. I'm going to think about it and hopefully come up with something good. The flavor is unique enough make all the effort worthwhile at least a few times each year.

DC Food Roundup

2011-10-19T21:18:00.000-05:00

Our friends got married here in DC last weekend, and the in-laws came out to join in the festivities. So naturally we ate out lots. Hence, a roundup.

PS, the clouds were really gorgeous yesterday:

Anyway.

The standout for the week, both for sheer absurdity and for tastiness, would be the "BBQ Burger" from Del Ray Pizzeria.

I hadn't had enough time with the menu, and our waitress had been great about beer recommendations (didn't get her name, but the chick with long black hair and purple streaks is great), so I took her rec on this, too. It's shredded pork shoulder, on a burger, covered with cheddar and jalapeño. Otherwise known as completely awesome.

Also delicious this week was Super Pollo. The Andean countries of South America have an obsession with chicken. Sometimes fried, sometimes rotisseried with spices. This stuff is the latter. Pretty cumin-heavy, rubbed inside and out before cooking. Sort of like the Mexican spice rubs I'm completely obsessed with.

The chicken at Super Pollo is the best we've had in town, but their sides leave something to be desired. I had fried yuca, which was decent, but is much better at Señor Chicken in Alexandria. The green sauce is always to die for- pretty spicy, no idea what's in it. But excellent on anything and everything.

We also ate at the Cheesetique again. They seem to have enlarged their menu lately, and that's a very good thing. I had a "Madrid Melt"- Manchego cheese, Jamón serrano, and membrillo. I love all those things alone and in combination. So I was shocked to discover how well they meld when heated together. The jamón's slight mustiness and the manchego's creaminess complemented each other perfectly. The quince added a sweet note that my mother-in-law, who ordered the same sandwich, but had never had jamón or membrillo before, described as grape jelly-like. That, for me, was the most fascinating thing- everything was so well paired, it became something completely different and new and brilliant, and none of the components were very distinguishable. That's really rare, and a great achievement in its own way.

Odd Ingredient du Jour: Naranja Agria

2011-10-10T11:11:00.001-05:00

With lunch ("multigrain pilaf" from Trader Joe's), I had some of this, mixed with sugar and soda water to make a tasty beverage. It's an unusual ingredient, but one I find pretty useful, so I thought I'd discuss it here.

It's mock bitter orange juice, bitter orange being an integral ingredient in many Latin American recipes. I first heard of it trying to make Rick Bayless' jicama salad in "Authentic Mexican", but it's also common in meat marinades. Real bitter orange juice comes from Seville oranges, which produce extremely sour citrus flavor (apparently it's reminiscent of grapefruit) and are generally unavailable in the U.S. Bayless suggests using a mixture of lime and grapefruit juice, in addition to orange zest, as a substitute rather than bottled mix. I did that the first time I made the jicama salad, but it was expensive and a huge hassle. Next time, I bought this huge bottle of mock bitter orange instead. It contains orange juice, Seville orange oil, grapefruit juice, and a variety of preservatives. And it's huge. I don't make nearly enough Mexican food to use up this bottle in a timely manner, so I started experimenting with it. It works well in homemade vinaigrettes, but my favorite use is cocktails and mocktails. It's extremely bitter, but flavorful and a little floral. I haven't tried making tinto de veranos* with it yet, but I bet with enough added sugar it could function as a stand-in for the orange Fanta.

(*Tinto de veranos are the best drink ever. But the Wikipedia page is kind of wrong. I lived in Spain for a summer, traveling and drinking widely, and always saw them made with orange Fanta, never with lemon soda. And definitely never with Sprite)

In Defense of Pi

2011-10-07T10:09:00.000-05:00

...the pizzeria, not the number. I suspect 3.14159...can hold its own.

So, Pi is a pizza place in St. Louis that specializes in deep dish. You may recall the kerfuffle back when Obama shanked Chicago in the heart by calling it the best deep dish he'd ever had. Pi is pretty damn good, so we were happy to hear that Pi would be opening a DC outpost around the same time we moved out here.

We ate at Pi DC a few weeks ago. To clarify: I, not a Chicago native, ate there with three Chicago natives. Who love their deep dish. We all found it extremely tasty, though I thought they were still ramping up to full Pi deliciousness as compared to their St. Louis locations. I didn't take any photos, and didn't blog about it. So why now?

One of my fellow dining companions from that night emailed me the WaPo food critic's assessment of Pi DC.

I generally appreciate food critics in the cities we've lived. We've been lucky to have a slew of good ones- Jason Sheehan, before he moved on to Seattle; Katharine Shilcutt in Houston; Ian Froeb in St. Louis. You may note these are all the alt paper critics: somewhere along the way, we discovered they represented our food interests better than the newspaper critics. Perhaps that's my problem with Mr. Sietsema. I'm still trying to figure out the DC food scene, and what perspective everyone brings to the table. But this review just leaves me puzzled.

First, I think there are some unreasonable expectations. We're talking about deep dish born in St. Louis, purporting to be Chicago-style. As anyone familiar with restaurants should know, cuisine is a product of where it's created. Go try some Italian food in St. Louis, for example. No Italian would ever mistake it for their cuisine. Frankly, I'm from America and had trouble recognizing it as Italian food. It's not Italian food; it's St. Louis-style Italian food. Think deep-fried, breaded ravioli ("T-ravs"), pasta cooked to death, thin, sweetish red sauce on everything. It's peculiar, and some of it is disgusting, but you can see clearly the blending of Italian ingredients with Midwestern sensibilities.

Now let's talk about deep dish. I've only had it in Chicago a few times, but it has a few distinctive characteristics. The biggest one, I think, is density. Chicago deep dish is a meal. Eating an entire pie might kill you. They're laden with cheese and meat, and collapse into an oozy, artery-clogging pile on your plate. The crust is crisp, and has a deep-fried appearance that often spits grease as you bite in.

If we're talking "authentic", I'd say the best deep dish in St. Louis is actually from Black Thorn Pub. It's dense, it's oozy, one slice hits you like a load of bricks to the head. Jon had two, and had to go home and pass out afterward.

I guess all this leads up to the big tell: Pi isn't really Chicago-style deep dish. It's *better* than Chicago-style deep dish. If St. Louis didn't already have an eponymous pizza style, this stuff could hold its own. Maybe a better name would be "St. Louis deep dish"?

So what's different about it? It's less dense. It's a drier pie. Less sauce, less cheese, but still more of both than a conventional pizza. It tastes healthier, even if it's probably not. That alone to me means it's not real Chicago-style deep dish. The crust is better, too- it keeps the crispiness, and a light greasy sheen, but it's no longer soaked in the stuff.

So why do these dumb Chicagoans in DC seem to love it if it's not Chicago-style, and if it's allegedly *SO* awful? I have two theories that I think explain it better than delusional "homesickness".

1)The urban professional class (ie, Pi DC's target market) is more concerned about their health, generally speaking, than Midwesterners. Pi's pizza has healthier topping options, and tastes less greasy, than most of what's available in Chicago. Chicago transplants enjoy the nostalgia of deep dish, in a tastier, possibly healthier package, maybe more than they would enjoy the real thing if it were available.

2)Expectations. I've lived in Texas, I know great barbecue. Do I expect to find it in DC? No. Would I be really happy to find good barbecue, even if it's not Luling City? Would I maybe go a little crazy and evangelize about how awesome it is? Um, yeah.

And sure, there's a little homesickness wrapped up in it, too. I can't help but wonder what Minnesota-raised Sietsema's review would look like should a hot dish place open in the District.

Simple Breakfast at Home

2011-10-05T08:34:00.001-05:00

For breakfast, I had ciabatta rolls, with almond butter and datil/raspberry jam, and pumpkin spice coffee to drink.

These cute little things are actually homemade sourdough ciabatta rolls from (again) "Ideas in Food". It's due back at the library (again) this week, and I just don't want to let it go. Perhaps a book I'll be buying.

The rolls need improvement, flavor-wise. There's not enough sourdough in the recipe to be noticeable, and I used all white flour for texture reasons, so the result is really bland. But beautiful. And they were relatively easy to make, and about on par with the ciabatta rolls I'd buy at Trader Joe's.

On to the good stuff.

I covered said ciabatta in almond butter and this stuff. It was kindly brought back from Florida for us by our friends Brian & Stephanie, and is unbelievably delicious. Especially for something I'd never heard of before. Datil peppers are pretty spicy, but have a nice round, fruity flavor that goes perfectly with the raspberries. This jam has way more depth than most pepper jams, and is really fabulous with almond butter. Dangerously delicious, indeed.

The coffee, Trader Joe's pumpkin spice blend, is odd. The first time I made coffee with it, I used the recommended 2 tablespoons per cup, and it nearly killed me. I've toned it down since, but the flavors are just really strange. I think it's intended for people who add lots of sugar and cream to their coffee; maybe then the flavors would be mellow. Black, it's extremely astringent and bitter, with heavy overtones of nutmeg.

Finally, a cooking note.

I don't care what any cookbook says, everything gets cooked on my pizza stone (left) from now on. I've had a few bread mishaps lately, so put my ciabatta head to head on metal baking sheets and the pizza stone to test whether that was the issue. The pizza stone bread is fully cooked, with a crisp bottom, while the baking sheet bread is just cooked, yet burned on the bottom. Pizza stone wins.

Vanilla Pudding at Home

2011-09-28T08:24:00.001-05:00

For breakfast, I had some vanilla pudding, with a cup of tea.

Well, "pudding". As longtime readers may have noticed, I have serious issues making pudding. And I adore pudding, so this really is a tragedy. Usually I chalk it up to me not following recipes, per usual. In fact, the last three or so times I've had pudding failures, I've used this recipe, but altered it in drastic ways. I had never made this pudding actually following the recipe.

So, having scored some vanilla beans at Penzey's (love Penzey's), I decided it was finally time to make real vanilla pudding like an orthodox little recipe-follower (or at least, I tried; I still cut down the sugar, because 2/3 of a cup sounded disgusting and deadly). It was supposed to be dessert last night.

And...failure. The same failure as always, oddly- the pudding won't set up. I am at a loss. It's probably not my milk (1%, sometimes 2%), because pudding is supposed to be made with milk, not cream, and many recipes call for lower fat milks. It shouldn't be my cornstarch, which is within date and stored in a ziploc baggie (but maybe it is? Too much humidity?). The sugar? I don't think so. My theory is that it has something to do with my heating technique, but I tried to be really careful this time, and it still happened. Yes, I have a food blog, and I still can't make Bittman's "practically foolproof" pudding.

So, breakfast was a delicious vanilla pudding beverage. It reminds me quite a bit of Oreo cookie filling in flavor. Next time, I would pare down the sugar even more- even half a cup is way too much for me. I'd also love to try the chocolate variation (again) once I know what my problem is.

The tea was pretty tasty, if a sad substitute for nice coffee. We are out, and I'm too lazy to schlep across town for great beans, but too sick of crappy coffee to settle for bad grocery store beans. Enter Morning Thunder. It's different enough from straight black tea to be drinkable in large quantities, and the black tea leaves mellow out the usually astringent and straw-like flavor of pure maté. And, even though Celestial Seasonings is technically no longer a local Colorado company, their art is still adorable.

Making a Map

2011-09-20T21:11:00.002-05:00

This week, I had more cooking ideas floating around in my head than usual. I blame Ideas in Food.

Ordinarily, I shop for groceries for a specific dinner. Pretty much every day, if I'm going out of my way to cook a halfway decent dinner. Yes, this is pathological. I've even been known to visit three grocery stores for hard-to-find ingredients, though that's somewhat rarer. I like to grocery shop, just as much as some people loathe it (hi, mom). Regardless of how busy my life is, I like to preserve the illusion that I'm a Parisian who simply must visit individual purveyors every day.

But this week, I decided to be different. To facilitate my crazy ideas, and to see if it results in decreased food waste, decreased expenses, or more general happiness. Out of curiosity.

First, I brainstormed all the crazy ideas floating around in my head into a nice little map of related ideas. And then went shopping. My loose plan, if you can't tell from the pretty colored pencil ravings above, was to make fesenjan one night, Rick Bayless' tomatillo sauce another, a veggie risotto a third, maybe some lentil burgers a fourth, then make a few minor dishes, and make some things to stockpile for later (ie, stock).

My initial experience was pretty awful. I found it stressful to have to keep so many required ingredients straight at the grocery store (even though I had a list. What can I say, I'm a little ditzy). Plus, one of my grocery store neuroses is that I refuse to use a cart. They're cumbersome and ridiculous, and I'd rather develop wire-shaped bruises from a handbasket (yes, this has happened before...and may have happened today) than be chained to a ridiculous cart and hemmed in by slack-jawed and slovenly shoppers, carts piled high with frozen dinners. I still had to visit two grocery stores, but was faced with the additional obstacle of volume. I found myself fantasizing about those handcarts middle-aged European ladies schlep to the market, but somehow managed to get everything upstairs in one go.

The food, however, has been ok so far. Tonight, I made foccacia from Ideas in Food. The texture was gorgeous, the flavor pretty good. Next time I'd try using the pizza stone so as to not slightly burn the whole mess.

To go with it, I used up some cannelini beans that have been tormenting me from the pantry for months. I simmered them in some chicken stock and wine until tender, then smushed in the food processor with some olive oil and salt.

Then the main dish, the scariest tofu you've seen in awhile. Except I forgot to upload an image. You're lucky I forgot. It looked pretty awful. Basically, I made a batch of Rick Bayless' quick tomatillo sauce, then casseroled it with tofu cubes and chopped gordita tortilla chunks, all covered in cheddar and parmesan. It miraculously ended up tasting pretty good, though the dish was really intended to be my passive-aggressive protest against the megapacks of tofu Jon keeps buying at Costco. We have two more packs to go through before they expire in a week. Somebody help me.

Costa Rican Rice-A-Roni and the Return of the Brownie Cookies

2011-09-19T18:52:00.001-05:00

For dinner, I had glorified DIY Rice-A-Roni (I had to google how to spell that), with a Yuengling to drink. And a brownie cookie.

That mess is a take on our usual quasi-Costa Rican rice+beans+egg dish. I had an odd desire to clean out the fridge this week, as well as clear the pantry of Jon's repulsive canned baked beans. So I cooked some sad frozen peas with the rice, added some seasonings, and topped the mess with an egg and the now-ubiquitous Aleppo pepper. Jon ate his toxic-smelling, slightly neon-hued beans instead of the peas, which he dislikes. The dish was somewhere between serviceable and decent, and far better than Rice-A-Roni, but I was too busy baking cookies for five hours to really care.

So, the cookies.

They're good, but I can think of a dozen other cookie recipes I can make with less mess, and in less time. They taste like brownie edges, crispy, with a chewy middle, and maybe a bit of macaron shatter when you bite into them.

Unfortunately, I might have to make them again out of curiosity- I "mixed" rather than "folded" at a critical step, and I'm now wondering if the texture would be significantly better had I folded. Maybe not. Also, they're so devastatingly chocolaty you'll come away from baking hating chocolate (yet covered in it...) At least they make the whole house smell great, until you succumb to the fumes.

The Chocolate Pudding Caper, part I

2011-09-19T12:01:00.000-05:00

This week, I've been reading Ideas in Food. Finally, I've found people as crazy as me.

I've roasted pasta...I've pre-soaked it in tomato water...The book is gloriously experimental, with a ton of interesting ideas. This morning, I decided to make their Crispy Chocolate Mousse.

My mother has a recipe from the 1960s built on the idea of a meringue/cookie hybrid, and it makes the most fabulous cookies ever. However, she hates to cook, and periodically loses said recipe. I haven't seen it in fifteen years, so I decided to try baking these in the hopes they'd be similar. They actually take five hours to bake, so I'm not sure how they are yet. (And in the process of writing this, I've realized I forgot to add the vanilla) But if noshing the leftover pudding-like batter directly out of the bowl is any indication, they're kind of awesome.

That said, it's the first recipe I've made in months that makes me remember why people hate to cook. It's a meringue and not a meringue at the same time, so lots of finicky egg pampering is required. Because egg whites require an absolutely clean bowl for proper whipping, and because the yolks are mixed with something hot, a minimum of three large bowls are required. And that's all before you have to scoop the whole mess into a pastry bag/ziploc for piping. The process of transferring between bowls has left me with a variety of delicious leftover chocolate goos to surreptitiously sample, but there's a lot of waste. And I'm covered in chocolate byproducts and feel about five.

Gordita & Hummus & Tips to Set Your House on Fire

2011-09-08T12:41:00.000-05:00

For lunch, I had an extra-thick tortilla, aka gordita, with homemade hummus. I also ate a leftover roasted yam from last night, sprinkled with salt and aleppo pepper.

Homemade hummus is awesome, if you get the ratios right. Sadly, I'm not sure what those are right now- I couldn't find our usual recipe, so bumbled around yesterday with some tahini, garbanzos, olive oil, lime juice (I forgot to buy lemons), garlic, and salt. It's edible, but too thick, a bit chalky (too much tahini?), and generally shy of awesome.

The gorditas were an almost disaster. I bought them because they sounded yummy, but store-bought tortillas are always dry and gross without proper preparation. Wanting to make them edible as expeditiously as possible, I recalled my secret tortilla weapon: the toaster.

Not the toaster oven (I don't own one), the toaster. Note that I learned of this tip when a friend complained on Facebook about his Spanish wife setting the kitchen on fire again, so please don't sue me when your kitchen goes up in flames. It's kind of dangerous. But it works quickly, and perfectly, to heat a few tortillas. I rub with a light (light!) coat of olive oil, then pop a tortilla in each slot. Stand there and watch it, and unplug if your toaster starts smoking. You'll probably need tongs to get the tortilla out, as they tend to get slouchy. Don't forget to unplug your toaster before poking around in there. In this case, the gordita wasn't flexible enough to fit into the slot, so I cut it in half. But it was fast, and I got a nice crisp outside and warm, steamy inside without the hassle of heating a skillet.

Techniques: Breakfast Potatoes

2011-08-31T19:34:00.002-05:00

This morning, I made some breakfast potatoes, mostly because I discovered a forlorn, half-empty bag of yellow roasting potatoes on top of the refrigerator. I guess "breakfast potatoes" is kind of a generic term- to me, they're bigger than hashbrowns, smaller than homefries. The point is, they're the right size to cook relatively quickly, without the hassle of grating (I don't even own a grater of the size appropriate for hashbrowns, and I suspect many others don't, either. Microplane rocks my world).

So how did I get good breakfast potatoes, without taking decades?

-Cut the potatoes in small (about 1/2cm), uniform cubes so they cook quickly in a pan. This can be the world's largest pain in the ass, or extremely fun, if your knife is sharp and you're a little OCD.

-Think about regulating the heat. First, preheat your pan and preferred fat source. I did butter, but there was a little pork fat residue in the skillet I could taste on the potatoes. This was a good thing. The big key is to preheat for way longer than you think you need to. Try a couple of minutes. Watch to make sure nothing spontaneously combusts. But you want that pan hot.

-Speaking of which, skillets. My personal opinion is that a nonstick skillet works just as well as my old-school cast iron. Sure, the one that's a pain to season and clean looks cooler, but I don't notice much difference. Maybe you'll get a little more color, faster, with the cast iron, but it seems cosmetic.

-Do you want them crispy? I did a mix of crispy and smushy. I started with high heat to develop some crispiness. The important part, however, is covering them so they'll steam and cook thoroughly faster. Preferably at lower heat, so they don't burn. If you want really crispy, start with the steaming and then crisp at the end. Mine were a happy medium.

For fun, I tossed a little freeze-dried green onion on top when I was done. They didn't overpower the delicate buttery potato flavors, and I didn't have to worry about food poisoning from fresh ones.

News from Gen's Kitchen (Cue the Food Geek)

2011-08-31T16:34:00.001-05:00

Ok, so I mentioned awhile back that this format is getting boring (for me, and probably for anyone else reading). After some thought about what might make this more interesting, especially in light of the billion-and-a-half "look at what I ate!" blogs out there, I've decided to go educational. But creatively, and hopefully not too obnoxiously.

Why educational? I love reading cookbooks that explain techniques, rationales for a particular process, and unusual ingredients in-depth. I'm also obsessed with vintage cookbooks, for what they say about food, but also culture and how it's changed over time.

I'd like to think all this semi-arcane knowledge is useful. I find having a fuller understanding of ingredients and techniques makes it much easier to spot issues in my cooking, and take into account factors people who don't read a lot of cookbooks might not notice. That's why I do so many odd and crazy things, and yet generally come out with an edible result. And, of course, there's always more to learn- sometimes it's fun to see how I fail, and to explore why.

And maybe there will be a lazy What Gen Ate post sometimes. I still have to eat, after all.

(I also apologize for the lack of visual interest in this post. I was going to do some cool MS Paint thingy like all those other cool blogs out there, but I discovered it's actually really hard. Computer artist, I iz not.)

I'm Secretly Dutch

2011-08-26T15:21:00.000-05:00

For lunch, I had falafel and fries from Amsterdam Falafel, with soda water to drink.

You may recall that I dislike falafel. [This whole excursion, which also involved CaBis and me cursing vociferously at the many drivers in the bike lane, was Jon's idea.] But this place is delicious. Their falafel is inoffensive (high praise from me), and the toppings are fabulous. They have pickled radishes (the fuschia things you see in the photo)which I love on Middle Eastern wrapped things, and excellent, very garlicky hummus. There were also a variety of interesting toppings, such as sweet veggie salad, minced jalapeño, beets, and fried, caramelized eggplant. Perhaps the only improvement would be labeling all the cool toppings, so we don't have to guess.

In any case, I didn't have to guess, because the dude manning the counter was either a very proud owner, or the best employee ever- he gave great service, and excitedly explained all the toppings. I was a little skeptical of his description of arduously prepping all the toppings from scratch every morning, but accidentally poked my head into the kitchen later, looking for the bathroom. Sure enough, there were huge piles of veggies, and an employee chopping away.

The fries were classic vlaamse frites. They're somewhat fat fries, crispy on the outside and fluffy inside, with a good amount of salt and served in a traditional paper cone. There were a few yummy sauces available at Amsterdam Falafel, including "garlic cream" (heaven) and peanut. The peanut sauce had a nice touch of vinegar, but I found it needed a little heat- add a bit of the minced jalapeño, and it's perfect.

Finally, the soda water. I love that, in addition to taking Euros and being located in a very Amsterdam block of rowhouses, they still have soda water in their soda machine. It seems like that's getting more and more rare. It's refreshing in the summer, and way better than actual soda.

Yucatecan Salmon at Home

2011-08-25T21:43:00.003-05:00

For dinner, I had some coho salmon, with fava beans, plantains, tomatoes, and a glass of shiraz.

The salmon was interesting. I took a mild risk by dousing it in one of the Yucatecan spice rubs("recados yucatecos") I've been obsessed with lately. They're quick to make, and pack a huge punch of warm spice flavor.

This particular one, adapted from Rick Bayless, contains garlic, cumin, coriander, cloves, cinnamon, oregano, black pepper, and achiote, aka annatto, all ground with apple cider vinegar and flour to form a paste. I added some olive oil to make a better rub for fish, and rubbed away.

The rub worked really well- I went kind of light with it, figuring the flavors would be a bit heavy for the salmon. It paired nicely with the wine, a rather heavy Australian shiraz that had an ABV higher than I'd normally go for. I figured the label art went with my Mexican theme at least:

The wine was awful by itself, though slightly better slightly chilled. Paired with food, it was average. It was described as "heavy fruit" by the Trader Joe's wine assistant; I knew at the store it wouldn't be a wine that appealed to my somewhat spare, minimalist, subtle, low ABV self, but somehow we ended up with it anyway. Oh well. Like I said, cute label.

The favas and plantains were nice- the favas (actually a fava/garbanzo mix), were canned, from our local Middle Eastern grocery, and a little salty. The plantains, from our local Mexican grocery's freezer case (Goya ftw), were a little sweet. So it all balanced. Maybe they would have been better with a little crema.

The grape tomatoes were tasty- I've recently discovered they're awesome roasted in the oven with some olive oil and salt. Pretty much every veggie is. Maybe that's why I love veggies so much lately.

Poaching at Home

2011-08-20T09:00:00.000-05:00

For breakfast, I poached an egg, with Aleppo pepper and butter, and had coffee to drink.

What possessed me to poach an egg? More food geekery. Someone asked a question about poaching technique this morning, and it reminded me of an article I'd read about quick microwave poaching. So I googled, found this, and went for it.

As with most novel techniques, it has its benefits (namely, speed and ease) at the detriment of others (quality). I found the cup used for poaching retained (absorbed?) heat at the edge a higher rate than the center, leading to a rubbery ring of egg at the edges. Despite draining, the egg stayed watery, more so than with conventional poaching techniques. And it's hard to tell when, exactly, the egg is fully poached but not overcooked- after one minute, there was still a large area of raw white visible. After 1:25, there were no clear areas of white. But things looked a bit translucent, and the yolk appeared completely uncooked. I let the cup sit outside the microwave for a minute, wondering if the continued cooking would be enough to finish the egg. It didn't appear to progress, so I cooked it for another 20 seconds.

Keep in mind my microwave is a beast made in 1998, but this is what 1:45 looked like. I'd say it's a bit overcooked for poached, though about half of the yolk was a nice semi-solid consistency. The white remained oddly watery. Next time, I'd try cracking the egg and then gently adding water (and maybe a little acid, like vinegar or lemon), and try a slightly shorter cooking period. It's definitely less of a pain than poaching in a full water bath.

This morning's coffee was Mayorga, purchased in bulk at Costco. It's locally roasted, and the bulk price wasn't bad. But I'm not a huge fan- to me, it's just average, boring coffee, but definitely serviceable. Jon noted excessive bitterness, maybe because he grabbed a cup well after the brew cycle was over. I'm curious to try their beans in our Moka Pot or coffee press and see if my impressions change. But I definitely miss Qualia's beans.

Pasta Leftovers with Tomato

2011-08-15T18:55:00.001-05:00

So, I just spent a few weeks in Florida. And I may do a roundup post of odd Florida food someday (it's a retirement community, there was TONS), but not today.

Today for lunch, I had garlic linguini with butter, Aleppo pepper, and grape tomatoes.

It was extremely tasty, especially considering the pasta has been sitting in our freezer since mid-June's excursion to the Cheesetique. It tasted much more like shallot than garlic, which makes sense because garlic flavors mellow extensively upon freezing (did I mention my in-laws' huge stack of Cook's Illustrated, aka my primary means of entertainment for the last two weeks? I am FULL of food dorkage right now).

I also tried a strategy gleaned from CI in my saucing technique- after draining mostly cooked pasta, I returned it to the warm pot, added a pat of butter and some pasta water, and let it absorb by cooking over low heat for a minute. This created a much tastier sauce, because it coats the strands well, while also integrating into the pasta itself. A sprinkle of Aleppo pepper added color and a nice spicy counterpoint to the super-creamy sauce.

I swear I don't have a hangover

2011-07-23T11:36:00.000-05:00

For lunch, I had tater tots with crema salvadorena and low-calorie grape Gatorade.

I feel like I've posted too many elaborate and healthy things lately. This is just a friendly reminder that yes, sometimes I do eat weird, unhealthy stuff too. I'm not hung over, just low on groceries. I looked in the freezer for sustenance, and decided greasy potato chunks might be tasty. They were ok.

I rarely eat this stuff (the tots are really Jon's- he kind of loves them), and the flavors reminded me why- they just taste fake. The G2 Gatorade was slightly better. It was purchased for our anticipated 8-mile (Jon) or however-far-I-can-run-without-dying-mile (me) run, but it was 86 degrees at 7am, so we canceled that. The laziness was a good call, as apparently there was a heat-related cardiac arrest in the park this morning.

Saturated Fat at Home

2011-07-21T11:25:00.000-05:00

For breakfast, I had bacon and eggs. With coffee. This never happens.

Why? I'm actually not a huge fan of bacon. And I despise eggs, with the occasional brief, tentative foray into thinking maybe I might sort of like them. There's also something about packaged bacon I find irrationally repellent- the slime layer of saturated fat on the packaging, that then transfers to my hands and never comes off; the odd, synthetic aroma of uncooked bacon in plastic. And, invariably, there's leftovers, which are even worse.

Alas, I had leftovers. The bacon originated from Tuesday's stuffed dates adventure. It wasn't really that the leftovers were mocking me, or that I wanted bacon, so much as I wanted to re-season my cast-iron skillet. Bacon is absolutely magical for that.

The result was pretty decent- I like my bacon super-crispy, almost burned, and I was able to accomplish that well with the skillet. The egg was, well, an egg (ick), but some salt and chives made it tolerable.

The coffee was luckily delicious.

I am a little obsessed with Qualia. But their coffee is that good. Today, I actually finished off the Sidamo beans we'd had lying around for about three weeks (and were thus not "fresh" anymore, by Qualia's use-within-two-weeks standard). The coffee was still extremely tasty, with gorgeously complex chocolate/fruity flavors. Oddly, I had the Sidamo last time we drank coffee in-house, prepared with their pour-over method, and Jon had the Guatemala. I find the Sidamo doesn't taste great that way, but is perfect in my coffeemaker at home, whereas the Guatemala was a.maz.ing. in-house and just ok in my coffeemaker. Because the beans are so freshly roasted, the flavors change a little from day to day, so I'll be curious to see how the Guate tastes over the next few weeks.

Pollo Pibil at Home

2011-07-19T19:58:00.000-05:00

For dinner, we had pollo pibil, with jicama salad and stuffed dates. Oh, and some pricey whole wheat sourdough from Whole Paycheck I bought the other day completely by accident (it was mixed in with the cheap baguettes).

I'm slowly easing my way into Rick Bayless' world of terrifyingly complicated, anthropologically correct Mexican food. Now that I'm cool with a simple tomatillo sauce, I decided to branch out into the Yucatecan-style rubs.

Lessons learned? When Rick Bayless notes achiote seeds (aka annatto) are impossibly difficult to grind, believe him. I accidentally dropped and broke my metate, and was afraid all the bashing would break my molcajete as well.(By the way, I just found this article about molcajetes and seasoning them, and it is awesome.)

I'd never worked with achiote before, and was also surprised to note the scent. Despite what Wikipedia says, it's more like a light, complex lemon aroma than a peppery/nutmeg thing. I didn't find them to have much flavor, just aroma.

The rub was relatively quick to make, and made the house smell fabulous. If I'd felt like more work, grilling would have been the perfect cooking solution. The actual recipe recommends wrapping in banana leaves and steaming; instead, I poured the remaining marinade over the chicken thighs and baked them. They turned out delicious, but would have benefited from more sauce. More delicious, aromatic, garlicky sauce.

To accompany, I made a loose version of Bayless' jicama salad with bitter orange juice, red onion, chilis, and cilantro. It's refreshing and a great example of the magic of powdered chilis. I added cucumber instead of the recommended canteloupe, but next time I want to try mango.

Finally, the dates. It was sort of a crazy idea, based on Penelope Casas' recipe and my experiences with the gorgeous dátiles from Modesto. Unfortunately, despite living in Arlibamba, surrounded by Latino grocery stores, no one sells membrillo. And damn if I'm going to spend $8 on a tiny little tub of artisanal quince paste from Whole Foods. So I merely stuffed them with manchego, wrapped them in bacon, and broiled away. They turned out well, but we definitely missed the membrillo.

DC Food Roundup, in which I almost barf.

2011-07-14T13:12:00.001-05:00

I ate a ton of interesting food in the last few weeks.

To recap:

For the weekend of the 4th, we went to The Passenger, a pretty fabulous cocktail bar. They roasted an entire pig, served with delicious potato salad, coleslaw, beans, and chips, for the occasion. I also had a perfect rye old fashioned to drink. My photos are kind of sad, because the interesting former-theater-turned-pretend-railcar venue was on the dark side. But it was amazing.

I got a random extreme mussel craving, so made some mussels in a fennel sauce, with a side of ravioli and a glass of white wine. Fennel is delicious, but it was a bit odd with the mussels. I wasn't a huge fan, even though there are plenty of mussel and fennel recipes out there (ie, it wasn't a crazy Gen idea).

Perhaps most noteworthy, I discovered a food that makes me want to barf. I don't think this has happened in the history of What Gen Ate- I'll try almost anything, and I don't *hate* any of it. Even McDonald's didn't faze me. Steamer clams, however, apparently do.

I'm not an East Coast girl, and mussels are a lot cheaper out west, so I'm much more familiar with those bivalves. I'd had deep-friend clam strips before, and steamed Cherrystones, once. So I thought clams were much smaller, and chewier. Which is what persuaded me to order a whole bucket of them in Annapolis.

Turns out, they have huge squishy insides that remind me exactly of a soft-boiled egg yolk. Did I mention I don't like eggs? And Jon does not eat bivalves, period. So I found myself trying in vain to choke down an entire bucket- we're talking close to thirty- of these huge bastards. As repulsive as peeling skin off the siphons was, at least they were chewy and bland. I eventually gave up and focused only on the siphons, and succeeded in not vomiting.

Ok, that was gross. Let's end on a happy note.

We also finally checked out Port City Brewing in Alexandria, which is awesome. Seriously, they've been open for less than six months, and their beer is perfect. Especially their pale ale (Jon's pick; great session beer) and their IPA (my pick) are fabulous. I highly recommend their beers- get a growler at their facility and go on a tour to check out their hop cannon, or find it at Whole Foods in NoVa, among other places.

This is Bill Butcher, PC's founder (who gives the tours sometimes- how cool is that?) with the hop cannon, a brilliant invention of theirs to dry hop without oxidation.

Athena Pallas Leftovers at Home

2011-06-28T11:27:00.002-05:00

For lunch, I had some leftover dolmades, with rice pilaf, bread, and an IPA.

No photos. I'm feeling lazy, and it's all pretty ugly, as I didn't bother to re-heat it. The "avgolemono" sauce it came in (really more of a schmaltz-flavored bechamel, if there is such a thing)is grotesquely congealed in a solid mass on the dolmades, and the rest is pretty monochromatic.

The dolmades are mostly filled with meat, and taste heavily of pickle, when they don't taste like dense mystery meat (beef, pork, lamb, or some combination thereof).The bread is gorgeous and probably homemade, reminding me a lot of the recently departed, much-mourned (even from a thousand miles away) Central II. Central II had such amazing food, and the most fabulous waitress in the world; it's tragic it's gone. But Athena Pallas has the potential to become my DC-area replacement.

The IPA is a leftover half glass of Dogfish Head that's been sitting stoppered in the fridge for a few days. Normally I don't feel guilty about drinking with lunch, and think America would be a much better place if we made that normal. However, being unemployed and day drinking is vaguely more awkward. But it balanced the fatty sauce really well, so I stand behind my decision.

Athena Pallas is a great DC-area find- reasonably priced, nice but not stuffy atmosphere, and a gorgeous little patio that will surely become my summer wine drinking locale of choice. Their tarmasalata kicks ass, and their roasted chicken dish is really good. I just kind of wish I'd gotten that again instead.

Pike Pizza in Arlington

2011-06-26T13:48:00.000-05:00

For lunch, I had Bolivian soup, with Mocochinchi to drink.

I would be more specific, but I don't remember what my soup was called. I first tried to order a tripe dish, but was told it's only available Mondays and Wednesdays; then I tried to order a different dish (but decided against it when the waitress mentioned it was a soup) before settling on this particular dish (which is also, oddly, a soup). It contained large chunks of pork, tons of hominy, some chuño,and small, green-colored pepper slices. The broth was a bit oily, but very richly flavored and filling, kind of like pho broth. The hominy and pork were really nice together, and the chuño (aka blackened, "preserved" potatoes) was not nearly as funky as the stuff I had in Bolivia- it tasted more or less like a normal potato, with a slightly chewier texture.

To drink, I had mocochinchi, which is sort of like a Bolivian agua fresca. Apparently, it's made by soaking dried peaches in very hot water, then adding copious quantities of sugar. It was pretty awesome, with a slight cinnamon note, and came with its very own dehydrated peach:

It looked like a shrunken head, but was extremely tasty.

I'd definitely go back to this place- Bolivian food is always hearty and comforting, and the atmosphere was very cheerful. Jon ordered a salteña (which is, I think, where the "pizza" comes from in their name- they do not serve any pizza) and a lomo montado sort of dish (fried meat, covered with fried eggs, on top of rice, with some pico and sometimes fries), both of which were extremely tasty.

Looking forward to more Bolivian around town- this part of Virginia has a huge number of Bolivian immigrants, and is sometimes known as "Arlibamba" for the large percentage who hail from Cochabamba. Also hoping for cheap airfares to Bolivia someday- it's a fabulous place to visit.

Lazy Yuppie Crack

2011-06-23T17:48:00.000-05:00

For dinner, I had some mac n' cheese from Annie's.

I initially planned on eating it with an arugula salad, but laziness and a determination to consume as many delicious carbs as possible subverted the arugula. (Maybe next time jog after dinner?)

It was quite tasty- I miss the neon orange of Kraft just a little bit, but eating it makes me feel gross. There are very few foods that, due to the complete lack of any redeeming nutritive qualities, just *feel* disgusting to consume, but that's one of them for me. The Annie's is perfect because it is as healthy as mac n' cheese can get- 100% whole wheat, without a weird texture or flavor, and decent-tasting cheese powder that's readily traceable to actual cheese. It was a little salty, but whatever- it's not like I had to make a bechamel or anything. Sometimes lazy is ok.

To drink, I tried a glass of crappy California moscato, on the McDonald's theory of wine pairing, but in reverse- fancy mac n' cheese with crass commercial wine. I also thought the sweetness of the moscato would play off the slight sweetness of the mac n' cheese. It was okay. The moscato has a slight acidity, and isn't as overwhelmingly floral as ones I've had before. But the pairing wasn't great, and I'd probably rather buy another bottle of last week's white lambrusco over this.

Salmon Bocadillo at Home

2011-06-17T11:56:00.000-05:00

For lunch, I made a salmon and cream cheese bocadillo.

Ok, so not the most traditional bocadillo. Bocadillos are little sandwiches they make in Spain for a light packed lunch or snack. They're just a slice or two of meat, maybe a little butter, on a small baguette. My host Señora (Hola, Pilar!) used to make them for me. They're also usually the cheapest street food you can find.

I had leftover "pan francés" from the Mexican grocery, sort of a rich, sweet, soft baguette that doesn't at all resemble French baguettes, but decided it would make an interesting bocadillo. It would have, except for the horror that is Trader Joe's low-fat cream cheese (which I accidentally bought, assuming it was Neufchâtel). It was tangy and oddly grainy, and completely disgusting. Kind of ruined the sandwich. I hope I don't get sick, but I think it was just gross, not actually spoiled.

Completely Obsessed with the Cheese Shop Down the Street

2011-06-16T18:11:00.001-05:00

For dinner, I had some red pepper pappardelle with garlic & olive oil, finocchiona, and a 60 Minute IPA to drink.

The meal was a fabulous spur-of-the-moment impulse I had while walking home from the (very far away) metro stop. I was annoyed, thinking about having to drive to the grocery store, when I did a double take and recalled that my friendly local cheese shop sells more than just cheese.

Wine. Cheese. Pasta. Beer. Charcuterie. Bread. Specialty jarred things. Chocolate. Is there a better business plan anywhere? I could move right in. They even sell my much-obsessed-over Iberico de Bellota. Oh, and the aroma in there? Saying it smells overwhelmingly of cheese sounds kind of gross, but it's actually the most delicious thing ever.

The pasta was pretty good, though the lemon fettuccine I had a few weeks ago was even better. I tossed it in a little grated garlic and olive oil, and shredded copious quantities of parm-reg on top.

The finocchiona was ok. I am still in denial/withdrawal from Salume Beddu's finocchiona. Theirs is so perfect, with a mellower, floral, more rustic flavor. I also prefer the thicker slices at Beddu. I know it's not a food mag, but believe Forbes when they say Beddu is the best cured meats place in the country. They are, and I fucking miss them.

Requisite cured meats rant over, I can now discuss the beer.

Dogfish Head's IPA is pretty worth the hype. Hailing originally from Denver, and never having lived east of the Mississippi, DH has always been one of those mythical things. Maybe I tried it at the GABF once, but I would've still hated IPAs back then. So it's new to me, and pretty decent- floral and slightly citrusy. It might be better with a bit more bite? Next time I'll have to try the 90 Minute.

McDonald's Party is Surprisingly Delicious

2011-06-12T20:54:00.000-05:00

For dinner, I had McDonald's. With wine. Please don't exile me from foodie blogland. But it was surprisingly decent.

The impetus was this article, discussing pairing wines with McDonald's food. We thought it would be interesting to approach bad fast food in this way, with pairings gleaned from Trader Joe's cheap wine selections (because pairing with Boone's Farm is taking irony too far).

The first course consisted of chicken nuggets, paired with a rosé (Cotes du Rhone) and a white (the macabeo I've been all over lately)

(Thanks to Brian and Stephanie for hosting, and for the lovely china. I'm really sick of our plates, and I'm sure the two people that read this blog are as well)

The nuggets were better than I remember. Apparently, they've changed the recipe since I've had them, many years ago. The dipping sauces were also interesting- a pretty nice buffalo sauce, and a very good sweet chili sauce. I liked the rosé best with the nuggets, but there was no consensus at the table. The only thing I feel comfortable generalizing about is that wine makes McDonald's better.

The next course was the Filet O'Fish, with the same two wines. It should be noted that, if I am stuck at McDonald's for some godforsaken reason, the Filet O' Fish is my go-to order for its inoffensive and vaguely healthy nature.

It was ok. I usually get it without the tartar sauce, but we ordered everything in its ordinary state. The tartar sauce was extremely briny and intense, and the fish was fishier than usual. I preferred the macabeo with the fish, but again, there was no consensus.

The third course was the McChicken. It was peculiar- very flat and compressed looking, with flecks of black pepper and an excess of mayonnaise. In fact, someone was compelled to comment that the quarter pounder (proposed next course) would be a palate-cleanser, given the extensive use of mayonnaise.

On to the reds. With the red meat courses, we tasted a meritage
and a zin. Honestly, I strongly preferred the meritage as a drinking wine. The zin was extremely "hot" to me, and had an extreme ABV. Interestingly, it did pair well with the heavier meat courses.

The Big Mac was surprisingly tasty- the consensus at our table was that the sauce provided a compelling counterpoint to the sandwich that made the entree extremely good.

Next came the McDouble, a double cheeseburger that was probably the overall evening favorite for taste and value. The melty cheese and meat proved a strong counterpoint to the heavy zin.

Our final main course was the Angus Mushroom and Swiss Burger. I was a bit disappointed in the overall quality, though we are unsure if this can be partially attributed in part to its long tenure in the oven through our other courses.

The mushrooms tasted like they came from a jar, and there were heavy umami/MSG/"fake" overtones. The meat itself seemed more substantial and flavorful than that of the other courses. The burger, still, was puzzling- as someone noted, this isn't the kind of burger you'd seek out at McDonald's. It's a peculiar, and probably unfruitful niche product at a fast food place better known for cheap, flat patties.

Finally, the dessert course. We sampled the apple pie, with and without the addition of cheddar, with a white lambrusco and a port.

The port was tasty, but a bit sweet to pair with the sugar-saturated pie. The lambrusco was nicely balanced, and had a great apple note that echoed the apple dessert. The cheddar is highly recommended, as it added a sharp, tangy note to cut through the sweetness.

Overall, it was an interesting experiment, and one we will have to recreate in the future with different cuisine. I found particularly interesting how persistent flavors can be across time- I recognized their "spicy mustard" (it's not spicy) sauce from my own childhood nugget-dipping days- and how oddly compelling even bad fast food can sometimes be.

Pupusas at Home

2011-06-12T11:25:00.000-05:00

For brunch, I had a pupusa with tomatillo sauce, smoked salmon, and coffee.

The pupusas were courtesy of our local well-stocked grocery store. It's nice to live somewhere with a surfeit of Latin American foods again. I cooked them in the toaster. Toasters are extremely useful- watch carefully for flames, but almost anything can be cooked in one. Covered with leftover tomatillo sauce from my little Rick Bayless adventure, they were extremely tasty.

The salmon was an afterthought- initially, I was going to make a pupusa stack, but the salmon by itself seemed like it would overwhelm the pupusa. If I had been extremely hungry, a stack of pupusa, salmon, and crema may have been tasty.

Sammy Scramble at Home

2011-06-11T08:38:00.001-05:00

For breakfast, I ate a salmon scramble, with coffee to drink.

The secret to a good scramble is low heat and fatty dairy. We have tons of 'crema Salvadoreña' left from a Rick Bayless recipe I made earlier this week, so I thought it would be a good way to use the remainder.

I'm not sure if crema Salvadoreña is distinct from crema Mexicana, crema Hondurena, etc., or if style names are merely an appeal to national allegiance. The basic idea is a thickened, soured dairy product resembling, but more delicately and richly flavored than, sour cream. It has a buttery flavor, and is sometimes compared to creme fraiche.

I scrambled the eggs over low heat with a tablespoon or so of the crema and shreds of smoked salmon until soft-set, and finished with a sprinkle of freeze-dried chives (I have no idea why we have freeze-dried chives).

It turned out pretty well, although I need to learn to not buy TJ's salmon- there's always something wrong with it- either too mushy, too greasy, or way too salty. Today's is too salty, which I will take over mushy. I also just learned not to research TJ's salmon online (ewww).

Omelette at Home

2011-06-08T08:54:00.000-05:00

For breakfast, I made a potato, green bean, and mushroom omelette, with coffee to drink.

I used TJ's "country potatoes" frozen blend, which is a mix of the aforementioned veggies in a garlic-parsley sauce.

The potato blend is pre-"pan-fried", so it was sufficiently oily that I didn't need to do anything special to my cast-iron skillet. I covered and steamed the potato blend, in the hopes it would cause them to cook faster, then uncovered for a few minutes in an effort to develop some crust. It didn't really work- I got some nice char from the skillet, but only minimal crispiness. After cooking thoroughly, I added an egg. The result was pretty tasty overall, though the mushrooms seem to have been chosen for prettiness rather than flavor. Nevertheless, it was certainly faster than chopping and cooking my own potatoes.

The coffee was less successful. It's the dark French roast from TJ's, aka their cheapest coffee blend. I used to drink it, but after a few years of drinking better stuff (ie, Northwest Coffee) it's awful. So now I'm looking for a palatable, freshly roasted, and inexpensive local substitute. Any suggestions? So far, I have heard good things about Mayorga and M.E. Swing.

Happy Chinese Food Coma at Home

2011-06-07T19:42:00.001-05:00

For dinner, Jon made some truly delicious homemade Chinese food.

Definitely better than Trader Joe's. It consisted of pan-fried tofu, with water chestnuts, mushrooms, and red onions, in a mirin and soy sauce. The overall effect was one of heavenly glutamate deliciousness.

To go with it, I made some basil ice cream with leftover basil from Sunday's panzanella.

The flavor is not at all like the amazing basil ice cream I had years ago at some posh restaurant in Santa Fe, the name of which escapes me. It's actually rather bitter. Which I attribute to my sad basil leaves, and not the recipe I used. The upside is that I never before realized how awesome my ice cream maker can be when I use eggs- lots of eggs- in my ice cream. The consistency is gorgeous, and exactly like commercial ice cream, but better because it's fresh.

To drink, I had a glass of red wine from La Granja. The tempranillo is my favorite go-to cheap Spanish wine from TJ's. Under $4 a bottle, and a decent, nicely tannic red. Pretty shocking for cheap wine with a cute label. (Dear flickr users: why do you take unoriginal photos of wine labels and reserve all rights? I already threw away my bottle.)

Italianish Pasta at Home

2011-06-06T18:49:00.002-05:00

For dinner, I made some pasta with rapini, with white wine to drink.

I'd never had rapini, aka "broccoli rabe" before. I'm going to stick with rapini here, because it's not broccoli, and is actually related to the turnip. In any case, a quick search of the internet reveals disdain and loathing for rapini. People complain that it's bitter and awful-tasting. I, however, found it extremely tasty. And pretty.

I prepared it with a quick blanching, then sauteed with aleppo pepper, garlic, and olive oil, before mixing in the cooked penne and adding grated Pecorino Romano. It had a mellow, buttery flavor that reminded me a bit of asparagus. Here and there, I got a slightly bitter leaf, but the overall effect was delicious.

I ate it with a glass of the leftover Chardonnay/Macabeo, which paired nicely with the rich pasta.

Gorditas at Home

2011-06-06T12:27:00.000-05:00

For lunch, I had a gordita, with a glass of pineapple-coconut juice.

The gorditas are from TJ's frozen section. I heated mine in a cast-iron skillet, per package directions, to get a crispy exterior.

The result was on the slightly questionable side of passable. I guess if you're a fan of Doritos, you might enjoy them, as the effect of the skillet was to turn the outer layer into a massive corn chip. I, alas, am not. The filling- cheese, beans, and roasted chile- should've been tasty, but was not. There were only two bites in which I could distinguish some mild chile flavor, and the cheese seemed skimpy for how bad they are for you (very bad). As with the majority of TJ's prepared foods, this one's a definite pass. A similar result could be had for fewer calories and less cost by simply making a quesadilla with corn tortillas.

The juice, however, was very good. We bought TJ's not-from-concentrate pineapple juice to make popsicles with, and I had some extra coconut water in the fridge. I mixed them, 50/50, for a nice tropical drink. Relatedly (dear Blogger, why don't you recognize so many real words as words? Like "relatedly"?), they do also make great popsicles. Next time, due to consistency issues and general adoration for sweetened condensed milk, I'm going to try adding it in 1:3 to make even more awesome popsicles.

Shake Shack in Dupont

2011-06-04T16:27:00.001-05:00

For lunch, I had a cheeseburger with onions, and frozen custard. The cheese fries were Jon's, I swear.

It was our first experience at a Shake Shack. Thank god we don't live closer, because I'd get even poorer, and start schlumping around like this, despite our awesome Capital Bikeshare memberships:

(We took a breather at the Natural History Museum before lunch)

Or maybe it's what's really going to bring about Judgment Day.

(The subway still contains these awesome ads)

It's like a yuppie version of This is Why You're Fat. Perhaps most illustrative of this, because I don't think you can see how soaked my cheeseburger bun was with grease(butter? animal fat?), is today's frozen custard flavor.

Coffee. And. Doughnuts.

Yes, really. Completely brilliant, and going to kill us all. It consisted of coffee-flavored frozen custard, studded with large chunks of glazed doughnuts. It was as amazing as it sounds.

The burger was also pretty good. Somehow most of the (copious) grease ended up soaked into the bun, or on the surface of the wax paper baggie that held it, rather than on the burger itself. This made it tasty without being truly disgusting.

Although we didn't sample their beer, wines, or other custard creations (I am SO ordering a Washington Monu-mint next time), I wanted to try basically everything on the menu. Like I said, it's a good thing we don't live in the neighborhood.

Kitfo at Meaza

2011-06-03T19:21:00.002-05:00

For dinner, I had an Ethiopian food coma. I ordered my standby, kitfo (ie, that disgusting raw crap I love) which came with some housemade cheese, and a side of lentils.

As you can see (bad photo, but that thing's a large platter), portion sizes were huge. This photo is actually from halfway through the meal, after we'd descended upon the huge pile of meat like this:

Meaza was the locale. I really wanted to go to Meskerem, my known known of DC-area Ethiopian. But the vagaries of living in a large urban area interceded- we figured a 20-minute walk to the metro, 20 minutes on the metro, a 10-minute walk on the other end, and god knows what kind of wait. So we were lazy Americans and drove five miles instead.

The kitfo was ok. I was excited to discover it was appropriately spicy, because it usually isn't spicy enough. And they included extra berbere and spicy sauce if I wanted more. But three bites later, I was depressed at the cloying seasonings. It was a heady mix of the usual berbere, a huge punch in the mouth of cardamom, and maybe even some pepper. Really intense. It had a pleasant burn, without being overwhelming, but the actual flavors were quite overwhelming. I especially like kitfo for the musty, green undertones (no clue which particular spice it is), but this stuff was cardamom-heavy and lacked balance. The restaurant was convenient and cute, and I'd go back, but would probably order something else. Jon's meal, some kind of beef-with-injera-tidbits thing, was delicious.

Clearly the food was pretty decent. I also brought home leftovers...

Chinese Food at Home

2011-06-02T19:50:00.002-05:00

For dinner, I had some sweet-and-sour chicken, with brown rice and a glass of white (gasp!) wine.

It all came from Trader Joe's (hello again, delicious corporate overlords). The chicken is from their freezer section. Made with thigh meat, it comes breaded and fried, with a side of peculiar sauce. The first time I tried it, I hesitantly sampled a few drops of the sauce alone. It was awful- vinegary and acrid. But somehow it magically turns gingery and fragrant when tossed with the chicken. It's not the best thing in the world, but it's about as good as decent Chinese takeout, and less trouble.

We made a side of brown rice to go with it, in our new rice cooker. Sadly, the old one died a few months back. I made the mistake of replacing it with a smaller one, thinking it would take up less space. It does, but it also completely sucks. I failed to account for the surface area issue, so it takes FOR.EV.ER. to heat up. Other lesson learned? Don't overfill it. Especially not with sticky things that stain. Yes, it's still covered with blobs of fuchsia from the time I tried to make cranberry sauce and it exploded everywhere. In any case, the rice turned out nicely nutty and chewy.

The big surprise tonight was the wine. It's Terrenal label from Spain, made with an equal mix of Chardonnay and Macabeo grapes. It's also kosher, and $4.99. I bought it because I'm always curious to try unusual grapes, especially ones from Spain. The TJ's wine guy gave me a dubious look and warned me to "chill it...a lot!", even though he'd never actually tried it. Duly warned, I was surprised to discover how interesting it is.

The caveat is that I never drink white wines, and never Chardonnay. So maybe I've just forgotten what they're like. But this one is fascinating- it has sort of a ripe-nearly-to-rotting cantaloupe meets green apple aroma, with licorice, honey, and maybe a little violet as it warms up, plus the richness of Chardonnay. I think the sign said it was unoaked, and I don't taste any. I had another glass before dinner with some aged Parmigiano-Reggiano, and it was equally fabulous; next time, I'd probably pair it with a rich fish, or maybe mac n'cheese, and not funky Chinese food.

Turkey and Arugula- in DC

2011-06-01T13:54:00.000-05:00

Ok, so I'm back blogging again. Hopefully permanently. Because I moved to DC, and there's a lot of delicious food here to eat and discuss.

For lunch, I had some arugula and deli turkey, with mint tea. I'm currently jobless, and have found myself grazing rather than eating complete meals. The upside is that I'm not tempted by convenience foods, so things have been relatively healthy during the days. I daresay a little crazy, as well. For example, I had a sweet potato for breakfast, left over from last night. That's just unreasonably healthy.

I also did a little lunchtime cooking by attempting the infamous NYT no-knead bread recipe

(actually, the whole-wheat modification). It turned out puck-like and awful. Exhibit A:

The crumb wasn't much better.

Extremely dense, with a crust that, though quite crispy, is a menace to dental work and unpleasantly dry. Kneading isn't that big of a deal; I'll keep looking for a whole-wheat standby, because this is definitely not it.

Dear food blog, I miss you....

2011-02-14T21:17:00.000-06:00

Ok, so maybe I'll start blogging here again sometimes.

Every time I have a really awful meal out somewhere, I wish I had the passive-aggressive satisfaction of being able to blog about it. I actually had photos of a horrific fish sandwich from Brandt's, aka the *worst*fucking*restaurant* in St. Louis (you know something's wrong when the header on their website is "New Year, New Brandt's"...in February) sitting around on my iPhone for months, before wondering why someone who doesn't food blog anymore would do that, and deleting them. I know Brandt's is also a bar, and that they have a good selection of Belgian beers. But, for the love of God, please go to Cicero's instead. It's right down the street, the bartenders are actually nice, the food is actually good, and their beer selection is better (if less Belgian).

I was again reminded of blogging yesterday, when we were at The Fountain on Locust. Despite the boisterous children quotient, I love that place. It's like Panera, but without the grossness, and with better decor and more local love. Not to mention made-from-scratch food, the best ice cream in the city, and retro cocktails (which I still have yet to try). Oh, and the country's best bathroom of 2010. How do I know this? My father-in-law made sure we knew. Yes, world, St. Louis has America's best bathroom. And also great ice cream.

Sometimes A Grain is Just A Grain

2010-06-10T20:01:00.008-05:00

Sorry for the long lull in posts. I'm getting a little bored with the concept, but have yet to figure out what's next. If anyone has ideas, let me know!

But I had to post about tonight's meal, because it epitomizes the freakish nature of my best weird meals.

I had stuffed peppers for dinner, with a side of toasted ravioli and scotch.

Not weird, you say? The pepper was stuffed primarily with oatmeal...

I have been experimenting with fermentation for awhile now- first a sub-par cider, then a strange grape concoction. I approach it with the same disregard of rules I apply to cooking, so I'm comfortable producing sub-par things, as long as it's kind of educational.

In any case, this morning I started my first quasi-beer by boiling some grains in water- about 60% oatmeal, 40% red wheat. I made my quasi-wort, then wondered what to do with all the leftover grains. Needless to say, I don't have a cow (which is where brewers ditch the byproducts of beer-making), but the grains weren't overly mushy. I ate some for breakfast, a la cereal, but had a ton left over.

Around dinnertime, I realized I had a ton of veggies I needed to eat. Stuffed peppers sounded good, but I didn't want to have to cook quinoa, kasha, or rice. And then I remembered the oatmeal.

I was grossed out by the concept, but a little curious. And in the end, it was a great call. I added a little mozzarella, then baked them for close to an hour. The cheese made the grains taste sufficiently savory, to the degree it was very tasty. I couldn't have distinguished the grain primarily as oatmeal based on taste.

We'll see how the quasi-beer turns out in a few weeks...In the meantime, my Glenmorangie is pretty decent.

Stuffed Peppers at Home

2010-04-25T20:00:00.006-05:00

First, a note. I have been super-busy the last week or so, but I wrote a guest post last week over at CardioFoodie about packing lunches (Jon says I sound like Martha Stewart, so I apologize in advance). I know CardioFoodie, aka Karissa, from our time living in Texas. She always has a lot of awesome advice about healthier eating and fitness, that I aspire to (and sometimes successfully do) integrate into my life. So go check her out.

In other news, Jon decided to go pesca-veggie last week. Completely out of the blue. I know it's healthy, I am no stranger to alternative proteins, and I love whole grains and veggies, but it's a little weird coming from him. Not because I don't think he can sustain it (apparently he was quasi-vegetarian for several years in college), but because I'm used to being the fiber-conscious, veggie-pushing nut around here. I might go a little crazy. We'll see.

In that context, tonight's dinner was roasted red peppers stuffed with quinoa, mushrooms, onion, cashews, cumin, and cinnamon, with a TJ's brand Dunkelweisen to drink.

Jon actually cooked dinner, despite being in the midst of finals. As you might have guessed, he is amazing. He was able to minimize the active cooking time by making the quinoa in our rice cooker (yet another reason why my rice cooker is the best thing ever).

It was SO tasty. The cashews made it very hearty and filling, and the red quinoa we used was super-healthy, with a great, slightly chewy texture. It allowed me to eat a ton of healthy crap, without the slightly hungry, nauseous feeling I usually get from eating a ton of veggies.

We found the recipe using Whole Foods Recipe App, which is- despite my skepticism of food apps and general dislike of following recipes- also awesome. They have a ton of great recipes targeted to our urban-foodie-freak demographic, indexed according to selectable categories like "vegetarian", "gluten-free", etc., as well as an ability to search by ingredient.

The Dunkelweissen was also pretty good. I couldn't remember which TJ's beer I liked best from the mixed 12-pack we got last month, so I bought some of their Vienna-style in addition to the Dunkel. I definitely prefer the heavier Dunkel, although all of their beers I've tried are decent.

Spinach and Tortellini at Home

2010-04-11T15:10:00.002-05:00

For lunch, I had leftover tortellini, with a spinach salad and mint-water to drink.

Pretty boring and basic. I started making mint-water a few months ago in an effort to drink more water. It's working pretty well. I just use a few splashes of mint extract to give water a little flavor. It's even better with citrus slices.

In grocery news, it looks like produce is finally starting to pick up. I went shopping for veggies to make a quasi-ratatouille to go with tonight's salmon, and ended up with ridiculous amounts of fresh veggies because they were so cheap and tasty-looking.

I was going to write a big long post about poverty, obesity, crop subsidies, fresh produce, WIC, and my theories about all of the above. But I really don't have anything new to say. I'm sure everyone here knows all that. I just found it interesting that, at least at certain times of the year, it IS more economical to buy a boatload of produce than processed crap. I got two pounds of spinach, a large eggplant, a pound of organic carrots, three grapefruit, three zucchini, 3/4 pound of 'bella mushrooms, three tomatoes, a gallon of (scary) milk, and almost two pounds of steel-cut oats for under $20, including St. Louis' astronomical sales tax. I easily could have added some tofu, beans, and whole-grain pasta, and poof, two weeks' or so worth of meals.

Even more interestingly, my local grocery store is the typical semi-urban, WIC-heavy place where I usually see carts piled high with complete crap (sorry, I do judge) and morbidly obese children/teens/young adults. But today, I saw considerably less cart-piling, along with somewhat prominent signs highlighting the healthy produce. Maybe people are finally figuring food out.

Not So Lucky

2010-04-10T21:26:00.007-05:00

For dinner, I had some TJ's tortellini with bolognese sauce, a glass of malbec, and some cookies. Really cost-effective and tasty dinner, that I've discussed recently.

No, I want to talk about the wine I had with dinner. Only because I've finally found a bad malbec. Not an okay one. Not an indifferent or neutral one. A BAD one.

Honestly, I didn't know bad malbec existed. Malbec is a gorgeous wine, mostly from Argentina- fragrant; full-bodied, but not overpowering. It goes with everything, and is cheap to boot. Malbecs are like the rainbows and bunny rabbits of the wine world- you just can't hate them, even if they're not perfect. But hate I do, despite the label's cheery duck.

To be fair, it's $3.97 malbec that came from Wal-Mart. And it's not any worse than TJ's Charles Shaw wine (aka "Two-Buck Chuck"), which many people actually like, and which costs about $4 here in Missouri. It's not sweet. But it is very poorly-balanced and smells heavily alcoholic (despite a 13%abv), with undertones of cherry soda. One-note. It's the kind of wine that makes me wish there were more stringent labeling requirements for wine flavorings and additives, because it tastes pretty fake.

In happier news, I managed to find a lone Girl Scout selling cookies today. It's like they were hiding from me all season- I would hear rumors about them, and they'd be gone by the time I made it to the local grocery store.

Success! I am mostly a Samoas girl, with a segue into Do-Si-Dos occasionally. I LOVED Juliets circa 1997, but the Turtley deliciousness was discontinued in favor of some bs "healthy" raisin cookies that tasted like cardboard and were promptly discontinued.Ouch, I just Googled, and there is a Facebook "Bring Back the Juliets" petition group...with only 22 members. Bring back the Juliets!

Brunch in Clayton

2010-04-04T14:01:00.009-05:00

For brunch, I had a crepe-elette, with coffee to drink.

What on earth is a crepe-elette? Awesomeness.

I'd held off on visiting First Watch, they of the crepe-elettes, because their website looked too damned cheerful, and because their menu is very egg-heavy (I hate eggs).

In fact, I discovered today that their restaurant is too damned cheerful for me, regardless of my state of caffeination- bright colors, airy high ceilings, and cutesey food names. For example, the special I ordered this morning was actually the "Hamma-lama-ding-dong" or some such. Not kidding. And I actually made up the term "crepe-elette" because, although it reminds me of epaulets, it sounds much better than their trademarked term "crepeggs". First Watch reminds me of Le Peep, with better food and worse decor.

In any case, my crepe-elette was amazing- crepe, filled with scrambled eggs, mushrooms, diced ham, asparagus, and tomato, and covered with Hollandaise sauce. The crepe cut the egginess, the veggies were all super-fresh and properly cooked. Even the diced ham (which scares me, and I have never, ever, ever eaten before), although salty, was the perfect flavor to balance everything.

Their sides of breakfast potatoes and English muffin were good, although they lacked grape jelly (in favor of blackberry, of all things). The coffee was also good enough, but had a weird cinnamon undertone that was either a bad attempt at flavored coffee beans, or burnt beans.

My meal was delicious enough that I would brave the unfortunate decorating choices and cheesy menu names again.

In other news, I spent the rest of the morning making pie shells.

Dinner tonight is my aunt's amazing spinach quiche recipe. Hers uses extra cheese, fewer eggs, and drained frozen spinach so it turns out firm rather than watery. It also freezes well for lunches, and is healthy compared to traditional French quiche- no cream here. Usually, I just pour the quiche batter into prepared pie shells, but TJ's prepared pie shells were as ridiculously unhealthy as the pecan-and-cheese-based shell she sometimes uses, so I decided to go for the tasty homemade original.

I ended up with some extra crust material, but only have one pie plate, so made some savory mini-shells.

Usually I'm not a recipe poster, but it's really good.

Auntie Ann's Spinach Quiche

pie shell
2c. shredded cheese (mozzarella is best)
2tbs. flour
10 oz. frozen spinach, thawed, drained, and squeezed. Get all the water out!
1c. milk
2 beaten eggs
salt and pepper

Toss the cheese and flour, mix everything together well, pour into 9" pie crust, and bake for one hour at 350.

The Unhealthy Crust

1c. flour
1c. shredded sharp cheddar (I actually modified this and used mozz and parmesan)
3/4c pecans, chopped
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp paprika
1/3c vegetable oil

Mix everything, stir well, press firmly into 9" pie plate (either my pie plate is small, or this recipe is giant).

Bake at 350 for 12 minutes, cool completely before filling.

__________________________________________________________
Edit:
here's the finished quiche, along with a glass of my finished cider. The cider is not quite as awesome as I was led to believe, but it's not a bad start.

Tortellini at Home

2010-03-28T20:52:00.006-05:00

For dinner, I had some pesto tortellini with bolognese sauce, chicken meatballs, and a glass of malbec to drink.

I was very skeptical of the tortellini, but it was pretty tasty in the end. Jon found it at TJ's, on the dry pasta aisle. I had never had a dry stuffed pasta before (the concept scares me), but they rehydrated really well. The texture was as good as fresh tortellini, and the pesto was refreshing and pungent. The meatballs were likewise good. Even more surprising, the sauce was also good. I have trouble remembering which pasta sauces I like at TJ's, and I haven't been impressed with very many of them (and I generally dislike bolognese), but theirs was well-balanced and fruity. Maybe the tiniest bit sweet, but it was still very good.

The malbec, 2009 La Finca, was likewise decent. It was young, and could have used more air (or aging), but not bad. It was a good pasta/pizza red.

In other news, my cider experiment is quickly going south....

I saw this blog post awhile ago, and finally got around to trying to ferment cider. It sounds so darn easy. And maybe it will turn around yet. Basically, all you need is yeast (champagne or beer; I used champagne because it was cheaper; bread yeast will work, too, but apparently makes your alcohol taste like boozy bread), juice, a stopper, and an airlock.

Less than $2 at the beer supply store, plus the juice, and I was in business. It's been sitting around for eight days now, so I decided it was time to sample. It sucks. It's definitely drier than it was before, and carbonated, so it's clearly fermenting. But it lacks dimension, and hasn't been bubbling vigorously. This is completely a learning experience for me, and I had low expectations anyway. Based on nothing more than a tiny bit of chemistry/biology knowledge and my proclivities for wild cooking experimentation, I added more yeast to the mixture this evening, based on the theory that maybe I didn't let the yeast bloom enough before adding it to the juice initially. We will see.

TJ's Win

2010-03-21T14:37:00.009-05:00

For lunch, I had some "multigrain pilaf" from TJ's, along with a huge mug of tea.

I don't like the vaccuum-packed Indian meals as much as Jon does. I'll eat them, but I get sick of them quickly, whereas he could eat them for months on end. Happily.

So I was skeptical about this, which is basically a grainier version of those. But I couldn't pass up the uber-healthy ingredient list: two kinds of millet, cracked wheat, and soybeans, with some tomato, onion, and spices. Huge amounts of fiber and protein.

Given the caveat that I love whole grains, it is AWESOME. I'd heard talk of TJ's Harvest Grain mix a few weeks back, but balked on buying it because it's actually not that healthy (Israeli couscous= white flour; orzo= white flour); this is much healthier, and much easier because it's already prepared. Win. It tastes just like a generic Indian vaccuum-pack meal (tomato+onion+turmeric+garlic), but with better texture and substance. It's slightly more expensive than the Harvest mix per serving, but that's okay- it's still under $3 for two generous, filling servings, and it's hassle-free. It would be a great vegetarian main course.

The tea was also nice. The dog and I walked to our favorite coffee shop in the rain to buy more beans, ~~about 3mi round-trip~~ 4.6 miles...I knew I was tired (with a nice little detour into Forest Park), so the tea helped me defrost.

Celestial Seasoning's Tension Tamer is perfect- spearmint, catnip, and eluthero, mostly. It really does help with stress, and I know a number of professionals who are addicted to it.

Restaurant Roundup

2010-03-19T17:45:00.012-05:00

I was going to make a not-entirely-eating-related post about urban gardening. And then I noticed all the random restaurant photos I had floating around. So, here's some restaurant opinions, then the gardening...

Blueberry Hill. Good, cheap food. Great burgers. Chuck Berry plays there once a month. And the place is full of kitschy collections.

This is the lucha libre-themed Mexican bar we went to a few weeks ago. It could be the set of a Quentin Tarantino film. And their margaritas weren't bad, either.

I have no idea what it's called. I thought it was something like "Bar Mexico City", but it's not very Googleable. We just ended up there. Wander down Washington Avenue, and you'll find it.

Then there's the hookah bar:

Petra, on South Grand. Doesn't look like much, but it's the best. Very laid-back, with yummy appetizers and good prices on hookah. They also have BUBBLES! Smoke-filled bubbles are awesome and fun.

On to the gardening...

I used to think gardening was intimidating, but it's actually really easy. I haven't had a yard since I started a few years ago, so it's all about well-drained pots- the cheaper, the better- and some dirt.

This year, I found some cool windowbox-style planters that hang off the deck nicely and conserve space, along with strawberry rootlets, at Wal-Mart. I also bought some summer squash and chive seeds, to go with the bush bean and dwarf cucumber left over from last summer.

Today, I planted a few of everything in these little red cups left over from our Superbowl party. In a few weeks, I'll transfer whatever's thriving into my planters. Pretty low-stress.

The strawberry rootlet was weird. It was a random impulse purchase, and I was expecting lots of little roots. No, it was a giant clump of roots and shoots. So I planted it. Presumably it will turn out okay.

Mi Ranchito en St. Louis

2010-03-18T21:09:00.006-05:00

For dinner, I had mole ranchero from Mi Ranchito, with some chips and salsa.

No me gusta. This was our second visit to the little ranch, and I recalled not liking it last time, but I couldn't remember why. Instead of ordering something else, I ordered the same thing I'd gotten last time. Oops. To be fair, I really can't resist mole, and the rest of their menu looked boring. Except for their taco plates, which DID look delicious, but I refuse to order on principle- almost $11 for three little tacos and no sides is not cool.

On the good side, their salsa is pretty nice- it has a bit of a garlic-onion glow that wakes me up without off-flavors or sourness. Also on the good side is that their website is somewhat in Spanish. I have a mostly worthless degree in Latin American Studies, so things like that make me happy...

But the mole? So sad. It's not the worst I've ever had (that would be grainy, oily mole sauce from the grocery store), and I think it's homemade, but it's too sweet, really thin, and not very complex. Oddly, it also has that cornstarch shine I associate with Chinese sauces, though does not taste of cornstarch (thank god).

Even worse, they have a bad habit of never asking about tortillas. I strongly prefer corn, and they always bring flour ones. I just forget to request corn, but it's a little annoying they never ask. As flour tortillas go, they weren't bad.

The big cooking project I've put off for far too long is making a mole from scratch. I have Rick Bayless' recipes for it, but the thirty or so different spices and chiles each kind call for have scared me a little. It looks about as involved as Indian from scratch (which I have done, and which is rightfully delicious). I'll hopefully have a lot of spare time in the next few weeks, so maybe I'll try making a mole and post about it. Maybe it will give me a new respect for homemade moles, crappy or not.

Tom Yum Laziness

2010-03-15T20:20:00.003-05:00

For dinner, I had a "Trader Ming's Tasty Thai Meal" and a glass of nero d'avola.

My TJ's infatuation is beginning to fade- they just make it too easy to be lazy. At the same time, it's impossible to stop going there- when I go somewhere else, to buy "real" groceries (like, you know, produce), I invariably find something I want, grab it, look at the price, and *damn*. It's twenty cents cheaper at TJ's. I know my compulsion to not buy them, then go to TJ's directly afterward to save twenty cents each on three or four things is neurotic and insane, but I really can't help myself.

In any case, we went to TJ's today, and found ourselves stocking up on all the lazy prepared foods we shouldn't buy (and never used to buy), but somehow got lulled into buying because TJ's is so darn charming.

Come dinnertime, it was lazy, scary prepared food, or spend more than an hour roasting sweet potatoes and defrosting frozen salmon. Scary food won. It was pretty scary: tom yum sauce with rice and those pickled mini-corn things. They were apparently going for Thai. Not awful, but overwhelmingly salty, and not nearly spicy or flavorful enough. The topmost layer, which I apparently didn't mix with the rice effectively, had very strong sour flavors, like Indian lime pickle. I was also getting strong undertones of cheesiness throughout the dish. With the carby rice, it could have been some strange midwestern take on mac n' cheese, a la Minnesota's hotdishes. Not a repeat TJ's purchase on my part, but maybe Jon will like it.

Carnitas at Home

2010-03-03T20:21:00.005-06:00

For dinner, I had beans, rice, and carnitas. With another bad beer.

This was a lazy meal- the only thing I had to cook was rice. And I have a rice cooker, so that doesn't really even count. Don't worry, to make up for this laziness, I made cookies after dinner.

The black beans came from my freezer- I pre-cooked a ton last month to facilitate packing lunches. I hate boring sandwiches, but also hate salty/pricey/weirdly gelatinous canned beans.

I heated the beans, added some rice, a little salt, butter, and Marie Sharp's, and topped the whole thing with some carnitas from TJ's. TJ's seems to have discontinued their delicious garlicky carnitas. These came packed differently and were less tasty- really dry, not as flavorful. Why does TJ's have to discontinue everything tasty?

In other news, I discovered these today at TJ's.

Dried hibiscus flowers. I bought them to eat, but, upon further examination, discovered their true use- art!

They're not very tasty. Too dry. Kind of like a dry cranberry. BUT- they're gorgeous. Translucent, in really nice deep red shades. Some are very structured, like this one, while others resemble little octopi or grassy fronds. They brought back memories of my panicked freshman-year art class final, in which I had to come up with a still life and draw it. Being an inveterate procrastinator, I waited until the night before it was due, only to discover the only thing still-life-ey I had around were some extremely grim and dessicated calmyrna figs. Needless to say, I didn't do very well. But maybe if I'd had some of these, I would have.

Fuul at Home

2010-03-02T19:38:00.003-06:00

For dinner, I had fava beans and a few slices of Ryvita, with a Bud Light to drink.

It should be noted I haven't grocery shopped in weeks, and was feeling too lazy to go tonight. Hence the obscure pantry foods.

The canned favas were another item we picked up at the ethnic market a few weeks ago. They're always really tasty, so we get them a lot. Just watch out for some of the flavors- they're obliquely named, so it's hard to know what it will taste like- unless you're an expert on Middle Eastern cuisine, which I am not. I like Palestinian-style, but once we bought Egyptian-style and they tasted (and smelled) like vomit. I could barely stand being in the house while they were being heated, much less eat them.

The flavors also seem to vary by brand. Tonight's wasn't even labeled with a "style", just "foule medames" (which I presume might mean it's Egyptian-style, because that's mostly their dish). It was way spicier than any other canned favas I've had, but the spiciness was great.

The Ryvita was also good. I love Ryvita, and was somewhat blind to the fact that everyone thinks they're gross (also didn't realize they're the British dieter's equivalent of rice cakes. Thanks, Wikipedia, for making me feel even more freakish about my snacking habits), until I broke them out at our Superbowl party and got a lot of confused glares. Yes, they're bland and dry, but they're really good for you and make a nice base for sweet or savory toppings (after which they're still dry, but at least tastier).

And the crappy beer? Also left over from the Superbowl party. A case of it has actually been living on our back porch since then, forgotten, but it's been so cold out the beer's fine- at least as fine as Bud Light can be.

Toast for Breakfast

2010-02-27T11:14:00.008-06:00

For breakfast, I had rye toast with jam and coffee.

Yesterday, I made a loaf of sourdough rye from Beard on Bread. The starter had been fermenting merrily away all week in my kitchen, so although I wasn't really feeling like baking, I had to.

The texture turned out better than any bread I've made before, and the flavors were good, but it's not remotely sour. Maybe this all has something to do with my lackadaisical baking methods?

Jon doesn't think he can bake, nor do his parents. I am always enlisted to bake holiday cookies because they think they can't bake. Which is silly. I believe that if you can read, you can bake. Probably well. Now, if you tinker with the recipes before actually following them once all the way through, you'd be a bad baker like me...

I really can't help myself. I modified the Beard recipe by using white whole wheat flour instead of the all-purpose called for in addition to the rye flour. I also decided to add a little yeast to my starter on day 3, instead of adding yeast to the dough on baking day, along with a little honey to feed them. I hoped this would combat the boozy dough flavors I usually get by giving the yeast time to develop a little.

I don't know where I went wrong, flavor-wise. I've had incredibly sour rye bread before, so I know it's possible. And the texture was really nice- substantial, without being dry, with a great crunchy crust. But it's just not sour. I'll do a little research, and try it again.

But for breakfast, it was pretty tasty. I ate it with a little butter and some awesome Austrian rosehip jam we found at the ethnic market.

The coffee is Ethiopian Yirgacheffe from Northwest Coffee. I ran out of their house blend last week, and happened to pick this one. The Yirgacheffe is milder than their house blend, and I'm not quite used to it yet.

More Penne at Home

2010-02-25T21:13:00.004-06:00

For dinner, I had penne, with a side of pita bread, and some hot chocolate for dessert.

I am bored with pasta sauce, and wanted to try the aji amarillo paste we bought at the extremely well-stocked ethnic market last week. Aji amarillo is a pepper used liberally in Peruvian cooking. It is SPICY. I mixed it with a little olive oil and some parmesan, then added some whole-wheat penne.

It tasted like a spicy, slightly fruity version of mac n' cheese. Kind of weird, but I'd eat it again.

The pita was also from the market. Our favorite kind of pita comes encrusted with za'atar, a Middle Eastern spice blend that usually involves sesame seeds, sumac, and oregano, along with sundry other assorted spices. This was the last of ours. I'm contemplating making some from scratch, as we have some packaged za'atar left over from a trip to Phoenecia in Houston, and several recipes for pita and naan. Speaking of making bread, I've had this lovely starter sitting on my kitchen counter since Monday, fermenting. Yum...

Tomorrow will be my first-ever attempt at a sourdough-style bread. I love my sourdough super-sour, and no one seems to make it that way commercially anymore. Hence, my stinky kitchen enterprise.

But back to dinner. Why hot chocolate for dessert? I'm not even a hot chocolate person, really. But I found this blog entry yesterday, and was curious to see if it could replicate the amazing pudding-like hot chocolate we had in Eastern Europe a few years back. It's close. Tonight, I had to have more. The secret ingredient, brilliantly, is cornstarch. It's basically a watered-down pudding recipe, but it's delicious and way healthier than the "drinking chocolate" that's in vogue.

Lasagna at Home

2010-02-22T19:00:00.003-06:00

For dinner, I had spinach lasagna, with a spinach salad and a glass of malbec.

The lasagna was from the frozen section at TJ's. They also make a grilled eggplant parm, which I like better; the lasagna noodles are limp and sad, and the filling is on the salty, grainy side. That said, they contain very few weird preservatives compared to most frozen food, and it's a passable dinner for when cooking seems like a pain.

The salad was eaten plain. I don't need dressing to like spinach, so I usually don't use any (Annie's Shiitake Vinaigrette being the occasional delicious exception...)

The best part about dinner? Using my creme brulee torch on the cheese! I didn't get the nicely browned bubbles I hoped for, but the slightly burned cheese did add the nutty flavors I wanted.

Pappardelle at Home

2010-02-21T20:00:00.007-06:00

For dinner, I had lemon pepper pappardelle with arrabbiata sauce, a glass of malbec, and zoolbia for dessert.

The pappardelle and arrabbiata came from TJ's. Both were ok. I dislike pepper, but it added a nice burn, without being overwhelming. Sadly, the arrabbiata, which I actually like overwhelmingly spicy, was not.

The malbec was also, come to think of it, from TJ's. It was Funky Llama malbec, $3.99, and actually good for the price, unlike the myriad other cheap TJ's malbecs I've bought recently...It's still a little watery, but the flavors are substantial enough- dry cherry with a little violet and maybe licorice.

On to the best part of dinner- ZOOLBIA!

Zoolbia kind of mystify me. I know what's in them, I know how they're made, but I still don't understand. Imagine funnel cake, but not cakey- translucent, crispy on the outside, syrupy on the inside, and soaked in honey.

They're apparently made by frying flour-based dough, then soaking the cakes in a honey-rosewater glaze. But I don't understand how the texture happens. I appreciate interesting texture in food, so these are really exciting for me.

Peppers and Eggs at Home

2010-02-17T21:05:00.004-06:00

For dinner, I had some red and yellow peppers, raw, and a Cadbury's orange creme egg. Okay, two creme eggs...

I had a late lunch of kasha and salmon, so I wasn't terribly hungry tonight. Moreover, our journey to the grocery store was not very successful. I've been craving lots of veggies lately, and Schnuck's had very few. I suppose it's in between seasons? I'm still craving roasted fall veggies like squash, beets, parsnips, and carrots, but their squash and cauliflower were really sad looking. The parsnips looked great, except for the creepy wax coating. I really don't like peeling my root veggies, so that was a dealbreaker. I didn't even see the beets. I ended up with some peppers, carrots, and onions.

Then I saw the Easter candy. I LIVE for Cadbury's creme eggs. The dilemma was choosing a flavor. So many good ones...

While perusing the Easter candy, Jon told me I should get some Peeps for the Washington Post's Peeptest (Peeptacular? Peep-o-rama?), but I know they no longer accept entries from outside the DC metro area, and I HATE Peeps. DC people, this is your reminder. Start Peeping. I will blog about it if you do...

Funky Pizza at Home

2010-02-16T20:11:00.004-06:00

For dinner, I had homemade pizza and beer from TJ's.

The pizza started as an adventure, and ended as an adventurous mistake. I didn't feel like opening a can of pasta sauce, or using the sketchy ("craz-ee"?) HFCS-laced tomato sauce can leftover from a Chef Boyardee Pizza Kit. Instead, I attempted a sweet-savory sauce by mixing dijon mustard with boysenberry preserves. I topped it with pesto chicken sausage from TJ's and some Kraft sprinkle cheese (I know, I know, naughty food blogger). The whole thing looked a little sparse, so I poked around in the refrigerator. I try not to keep cheese in there, because I love it way too much- I could live happily forever on a diet of cave-aged Gruyere, dark chocolate, and red wine. As you may have guessed, I used the Kraft cheese because we had none. Except. There, in a back corner, I found a plastic tub of blue cheese left over from this Superbowl weekend dip. I dumped the rest on my pizza. MISTAKE.

I hate blue cheese. Jon hates blue cheese. Tangy blue cheese + tangy dijon= FAIL. It was kind of overwhelming. On the good side, the dijon/boysenberry mixture would've been really nice without it. And my beer, TJ's Vienna-style lager, was pretty decent as well- we bought their 12/$12.99 mystery pack, and were not disappointed.

Chipolte in the Loop

2010-02-03T20:32:00.004-06:00

For dinner, I had a burrito from Chipotle. And a blueberry scone.

I had remained blissfully burrito-free since last January. To summarize that post, Freebirds is not great, the best burritos in the world are in Colorado (at Big City Burrito- their logo is the best, too), I really hate most burritos, and I really, really hate Chipotle.

Unfortunately, Jon loves Chipotle. He stealthily snuck a "maybe we should go to Chipolte" into our heated discussion about who leaves the mail in which inappropriate place in the house while we were on our way to Panera. I was too distracted to notice where we were (their parking lots look identical, and they're about a block apart) until we'd parked. I decided to give Chipotle another try, rather than walk to Panera or try something else. I'm open-minded like that.

Never again.

First, the employees were incredibly stoned. I'd like to think that was the problem, anyway. The first guy assumed I was having chicken, and was thisclose to dumping chicken all over my burrito, before I said anything. Is it because I'm a girl? It was weird. The second dude somehow managed to scoop my pico without trouble, but became bogged down in Jon's request for corn salsa.

I got my usual burrito order- black beans, no rice, pico de gallo, and protein (carnitas or barbacoa- tonight, carnitas). With the first bite, my legion of reasons for hating Chipotle came back- the salt overload; the flaccid, moist carnitas; the lack of whole-wheat wrap option. There's also the weird stink, sort of like a wet, oniony dog, that always seems to plague their burritos.

Guess who has oniony wet dog breath? It's awesome.

The last bit of weirdness was the black pepper. My burrito tasted overwhelmingly of it. Jon concurred, although we couldn't figure out where it was coming from. Our best guess is that Stoner 1 and Stoner 2 accidentally added an extra half-cup or so of black pepper to the chafing dish of beans.

I had a blueberry scone at home to complete the meal. It was flavorful, with nice, crispy edges, and good texture. It was much better than the burrito. The sad part? It was a scone I bought yesterday morning, promptly forgot about, and just found this afternoon at the bottom of a bag full of crap.

Bosnian in Bevo Mill

2010-01-31T00:02:00.005-06:00

For dinner, I had goulash, chicken livers with polenta, Slovenian beer, a bite of cheesecake, and a cappuccino.

Sorry for bad photo quality, but it was dark. I don't usually even like taking photos of my food in public, but, well, there was something else I wanted to photograph for the blog so it was ok. More on that in a minute...

We went to Laganini, my favorite local Bosnian restaurant. St. Louis is the home of 30,000+ Bosnian refugees, so there is a great neighborhood here called Bevo Mills, that is full of Bosnian deliciousness. Laganini supposedly also has some of the best pizza in our (pizza parlor-saturated) town, but the rest of their menu is so interesting I haven't managed to try any of it yet. When I do, their intriguing-sounding tuna fish pizza is first on my list.

In any case, their goulash is simple but tasty. The chicken livers were kind of ill-conceived on my part- as I get older, things I used to eat without thinking about I now think about, and get grossed out by. I'll still try anything, but certain odd meat products are less and less appetizing. Maybe I could've managed it without the goulash, but it was just too rich and I gave up. The polenta, which I generally don't like, was really nice, with a little more texture than I'm used to and some underlying complex flavors (perhaps onion and schmaltz?). The beer was Lasko, which actually has a caron (thank you, Wikipedia) over the "s", and is thus pronounced "lahshko", was pretty good. A friend described it as Heineken with more hops, which is apt. I had a bite of someone else's cheesecake, which was delicious (and homemade). The cappuccino was nice, too, but could've used a little more foam.

Beyond the really good food, the good prices, the pretty decor, the great (and yes, dudes in my group, very pretty) waitress, there is the best thing of all. Something worth taking photos of.

Singing! On Saturday nights, the owner and a friend break out a guitar, a keyboard, and various computer synthesizer thingies and go to town. It is awesome. We had a great time drinking our coffee and listening to Balkan synth-folk.

Bread from Beard for Breakfast

2010-01-29T09:56:00.004-06:00

For breakfast, I had some homemade bread with butter and boysenberry preserves, and some coffee.

I ran out of white whole wheat flour a few days ago, so I'm trying to get rid of all the weird, adventurous flours I have on hand before I buy more. Specifically, I have graham flour and dark rye flour on hand. I decided to tackle the graham flour first, with Beard on Bread's graham bread recipe.

Graham flour, interestingly, is just normal whole-wheat flour milled differently. Instead of being milled whole, the wheat is separated into endosperm, bran, and germ, and milled to different degrees of fineness before being re-mixed. Stupidly, I somehow expected it to taste like graham crackers. It did not. But it turned out reasonably well.

My only complaint is the overwhelming smell of fermentation my bread always has. Sort of boozy. I've heard it's from too much yeast, or too much time rising? Next time, I want to try the overnight refrigerator rise that bread bakers advocate for more developed, nuanced flavors.

Regardless, I added some butter (not Cabot's, needless to say), and boysenberry preserves from TJ's, and it became delicious.

The coffee is TJ's pinon blend. I still don't like it, but it's almost gone. I can't wait, so I can buy some beans from Northwest Coffee instead.

Garlic Soup at Home

2010-01-27T18:27:00.005-06:00

For dinner, I had homemade garlic soup, with a roasted acorn squash half.

I had leftover garlic, olive oil, and anchovy pasta for lunch, so I figured my breath was already shot for the day (Jon confirmed this. Rapidly.) Then, while we were grocery shopping, I remembered reading this and this awhile back, and decided to give the concept a try. Did I actually bother to call up the recipe on my new iPhone while at the grocery store? No. I laugh in the face of recipes.

So, of course I come home and realize I don't have the baguette I need. Nor sherry, sadly. I actually like fino sherry and usually do have it on hand.

Forget recipes, I decided to read a few different ones for context and then improvise. I ended up cooking perhaps ten cloves in olive oil, then adding chicken broth (half from a leftover box, half homemade!), and simmering it for awhile.

I decided it needed body, so, with much trepidation, I tried a technique I've never tried before- adding an egg to the hot soup. Embarrassing blogger confession, but eggs make me really nervous. My mayonnaise always sucks. Custards are even worse. And poaching? I can do it, but I usually don't want to eat the result.

The technique is to add the hot liquid to the egg in very small increments while stirring furiously. To my surprise, it actually worked, and I got a nicely emulsified soup without any egg chunks.

The result was very Japanese to me, and not at all garlicky. The flavors were incredibly subtle, with a silky, chickeny creaminess that makes it seem like dairy was involved, without any heaviness. I did not cook the garlic long enough to render it mushy, so the cloves remained whole in the soup. They had been thoroughly cooked, so added only a very mild, mellow flavor. I added some leftover arugula to the soup, and a bit of lemon juice and salt to balance it all.

Cunetto's on the Hill

2010-01-25T20:14:00.006-06:00

For dinner, I had pasta in a garlic, olive oil, and anchovy sauce, with a small salad.

Cunetto was actually the first Italian restaurant we tried in St. Louis, back in August. None of us liked it, although I had less strong feelings about their food than Jon and his parents, who uniformly hated it. Now that I've eaten there again, I agree with them.

The salad at least was okay. Their house Italian was tasty, and the lettuce was crisp. There was no Provel that I noticed. The croutons were boring and the meat (dried ham? NO idea) was not very flavorful, but the whole thing was not bad. It helped that I'd had nothing to eat all day but a banana and a granola bar.

The first problem is that my menu item's pasta is described (in two languages, no less) as "macaroni/maccheroni". Macaroni, in English, is generally thought of as shortish, tubular pasta. See: macaroni and cheese. What does it mean in Italian, you ask? I speak close to zero real Italian, but, unfortunately for Cunetto, I speak enough Spanish to comprehend written Italian.To summarize: "Il maccherone è tipicamente un tipo di pasta corta.". And yes, there are regional terminology shifts within Italy, but why on earth would you confuse people on purpose? Because what I received looked an awful lot like spaghetti. I know this was not a random fluke, because it's what I ordered in August, and the same thing happened (at which point, I assumed it was a fluke). Can you imagine being on, say, a blind date, or a job interview, and choosing the macaroni so as to be less messy?

The second problem was the salt. Oh god, the salt. At first I thought they'd done a poor job of soaking their anchovies, but Jon's carbonara was just as bad.

The third problem depends, I guess, on your perspective. Their portion sizes could kill a large mammal (if the sodium doesn't). One serving of pasta is 1/2 cup, about the size of a scoop of ice cream. Their entree is easily four cups. Maybe more. Also, they serve it in an oblong server that can barely hold it all, which no doubt leads to more blind date/job interview fun. At under $10 for that many servings, their menu items are a great deal, but it's so much, it just ends up being grotesque and excessive.

I could complain more, but why bother? It's a St. Louis institution, and family run, and cute. I want to like them. They're packed on the weekends, and in no danger of going anywhere. Good for them. But will we be going there again? NO.

PIzza at Home

2010-01-23T21:22:00.007-06:00

For dinner, I had homemade pizza with some arugula and a glass of red wine.

On a whim, I decided to try TJ's white (as opposed to their whole wheat) pre-made pizza dough. I'd tried their whole wheat dough before, with unimpressive results, so my expectations weren't high. In my mind, the mere act of making pizza is an apathetic way to clean out the fridge, so my expectations are never terribly high.

I had a disastrous time finding toppings (turns out my fridge wasn't as full of leftovers as I thought), and an even worse time wrangling the dough onto the pizza stone and topping it (as you may recall, I do not own a pizza peel).

And yet, it turned out reasonably well. The crust was perfect- crisp on the outside, chewy and fluffy on the inside. I was very impressed, and wonder if I hated their whole wheat crust because I followed their cooking instructions rather than my gut pizza stone instincts. Next time, I'll try their whole wheat crust, but bake it at a higher temperature and see if it yields better results.

Ooh, pretty crust...

I topped it with a garlic/olive oil sauce, smoked chicken sausage from TJ's, and some baby Swiss left over from a fondue experiment a few weeks back. I wish I'd had another, more assertive cheese to blend with the Swiss. I was trying to get rid of the chicken sausage, because it tastes like hot dogs. Gourmet or not, kosher or not, I do not and have never, ever liked hot dogs. The sausage is slightly better than a hot dog, and tasted fine on the pizza, but it will not be a repeat TJ's purchase.

The wine was Albero tempranillo from TJ's. It's inexpensive(under $6), and made with organic grapes. It's also weird. My best guess is that it's too young to drink. I like tannins, but it's downright bitter, after two hours of breathing.

In other news, I made some muffins this evening. Chocolate chip mini-muffins, with white whole wheat flour. They turned out nicely, except that it is impossible to thoroughly grease my mini-muffin tin without significant effort. And I am lazy. Hence, decapitated mini-muffins.

Also, I am still grossed out about the crappy butter I have.

Yuck. This is the butter with "natural flavors" added that make it smell and taste like movie popcorn butter. Even Jon noticed the weird smell, and he has notoriously bad smelling acuity. It's not terribly noticeable in baked goods, but I'm still irate with Cabot's.

Kasha at Home

2010-01-22T13:40:00.005-06:00

For lunch, I had a big bowl of kasha and a glass of soy milk. I LOVE kasha.

Kasha, not to be confused with Kashi the cereal company (although apparently "kashi" is also the plural of "kasha" when the word is being used in its more generic Eastern European meaning of groats or porridge), is toasted buckwheat.

Kasha comes in different granulations- whole, medium, and fine. My favorite is medium, which seems (anecdotally, over years of kasha consumption) to be the most popular to carry at grocery stores. Unless that grocery store is my local Whole Foods (ie, the same place that doesn't carry bulk semolina). Thanks to them and their weird stock choices, I have whole kasha on hand.

After prior trial and error with the whole granulation, I've found the best way to prepare it is to follow the microwave prep instructions from the medium granulation box. Following the non-microwave instructions from either box, or following the whole granulation's microwave instructions both yield mushy, gluey kasha.

The secret is an EGG. The basic procedure is to mix a raw, whole egg with the dry kasha kernels and microwave it. It turns into a hockey-puck-like blob, which you then break into the tiniest chunks you can with a fork. I usually break down and use my hands, steam burns be damned. Then you add hot water, cover, and microwave until the water is absorbed. The egg protein appears to keep the individual kernels from smushing (with apologies to Ronnie) together and getting gluey, which makes the texture interesting rather than icky.

The kasha was pretty good. I prefer medium granulation over whole because whole kasha kernels have a slightly dusty taste that overpowers the nutty, toasty flavors. The cooking technique minimizes the dustiness, but my light toss with a little butter and salt didn't completely eliminate it. It might be interesting to try using whole kasha in a grain salad, dressed liberally with vinaigrette, to remedy the problem.

The soy milk is from, of all places, Costco. We have a membership solely because they have the best prices anywhere on eyeglasses, and otherwise shop there maybe twice a year. We happened in a few weeks ago, and discovered they were selling 32oz. containers of organic soy milk in packs of 12 for under $12. It was too good to pass up, but it means I'll be drinking a lot of soy milk.

PS- no picture on this one, because kasha looks pretty boring and gross. I am a kasha evangelist, and y'all are probably more likely to try it if I don't put up an unappetizing photo...

Soup at Home

2010-01-16T21:26:00.007-06:00

For dinner, I had some homemade potato-leek soup, with bread and a glass of red wine.

I wasn't actually going to blog about food today again, but I found this photo in my inbox, from Jon. I can take the hint. Did I mention HE made it? Maybe if I blog about it, Jon will cook cool things more often. I can hope.

It is pretty soup. And it was pretty delicious. Jon followed a modified Julia Child recipe for potage parmentier, chosen for its simplicity (we found several that required fifteen ingredients, which is ridiculous). This one contained only four real ingredients, although he modified it by using chicken stock instead of water. It took less than an hour of mostly unattended cooking, and turned out really well. It was very creamy, even though Jon used butter in lieu of heavy cream, and managed to be very filling. It's reasonably healthy, but doesn't taste "healthy". After my breakfast, and some crazy tallow-fried chicken for lunch, I was grateful for something light but substantial.

The wine was good, considering it was less than $4. It was a strange/slightly sketchy bottle we picked up at my favorite Italian market. It's bottled under the "Lost Vineyards" label as a Portuguese table wine. It definitely wasn't as robust and rich as my beloved Portuguese reds, but it was an inoffensive dry red. I'm tiring of TJ's international selection, so it's nice to find cheap, good wine that's new, even if it's not amazing.

Federhofer's Bakery in St. Louis

2010-01-16T10:56:00.005-06:00

For breakfast, I had caramel stollen with soymilk.

St. Louis is a city of neighborhoods and municipalities, many of which haven't seen any changes since the 60s or 70s. At ALL. There seems to be a huge belt of neighborhoods like this on the south side of St. Louis, running out to the suburbs in a south-west swath- Marlborough, Sappington, Crestwood, and Affton. It's very confusing and time-warpey the first time it happens- you're just driving along, and suddenly everything is old. Bowling alleys, vacuum repair shops, hairdressers. And little family bakeries.

We happened to drive by Federhofer's Bakery in Affton yesterday on our way somewhere else, and it looked so intriguing we had to loop back around to check it out. I haven't been in a dedicated bakery in years, so I was dumbfounded with the array of treats on offer. We ended up with a caramel stollen and some doughy crescent-shaped pastries filled with a chocolate-like substance (maybe a thin layer of chocolate pastry cream?).

The stollen is pretty good, if a bit sweet. There is coconut in the caramel glaze, which I find a little distracting, flavor-wise, but it adds a nice crunch. The almond filling is subtle, and the bread does its best to balance all the sweetness. Federhofer's prices were also great. It's quite a trek back there, but it's worth the drive for an occasional treat. I'm curious to try their fabulous-looking fresh breads next.

Lion's Choice in St. Louis

2010-01-13T15:07:00.005-06:00

For lunch, I had a cheddar roast beef sandwich, fries, and a root beer.

I've been wanting to check out Lion's Choice since we moved to town months ago. It's a local chain, started in the late 1960s, with kitschy signs and intriguing menu items.

It wasn't bad. I'm not much for fast food, and rarely order a "meal" somewhere because I hate most fast food fries and don't really drink soft drinks (Chick-Fil-A's fries and lemonade being the exception).

In any case, I ordered their #8, which is a roast beef sandwich with "cheddar". To my glee, "cheddar"= nacho cheese sauce; unfortunately, it obscured the flavors. I wish I'd ordered it plain to actually taste the beef (which, impressively, is sliced to order and cooked to a default medium rare). There was also a slightly absurd amount of salt sprinkled on the beef, so some bites were wildly salty and others merely over-salty. Underneath all the crap, the beef itself seemed to taste good.

The fries were okay. They were in the vein of McDonald's fries, which I do not like, but, it being a roast beef restaurant, there was glorious creamed horseradish sauce everywhere, which makes everything delicious. Especially fries.

To drink, I had a Barq's Root Beer. I usually just get iced tea when I eat fast food, but every once in awhile I figure it's good to throw up my hands and embrace the HFCS monster. It was likewise okay. I've seen sassafras drink mix at Schnuck's that I'm curious to try, and I like root beer as those things go, but I just can't handle drinking this much sugar at once, even after my prophylactic filling-the-cup-95%-full-of-ice trick.

Cookie Wedge for Breakfast

2010-01-08T10:12:00.002-06:00

For breakfast, I had a chocolate chip cookie wedge and some coffee.

The wedge is the last slice from the giant cookie I made last week.

Hi giant cookie. I made giant cookie because this recipe's dough spread a ridiculous amount while I was baking it last time, and I ended up with a blobby sheet of cookie amoebas. I figured same result, less work.

Sort of. I purposely made them more dense because I was going for a cookie cake sort of texture. It worked well, but the density obscured some of the more delicate butter/brown sugar flavors I liked.

The coffee is curious. I want to say horrendous, but I'm trying to stay open-minded until I try it a few more times. It's New Mexico Pinon Coffee from TJ's. Maybe I'm making it way too strong? If anything, it reminds me of Starbuck's (grammatical digression: if the coffee chain is named after Melville's character "Starbuck", the chain should be "Starbuck's Coffee", not "Starbucks Coffee", no? Am I missing something?) cold-brewed iced coffee- very strong, with blunt, bitter flavors.

Pork and Rice Krispy Treats at Home

2010-01-07T17:02:00.011-06:00

For lunch, I had leftovers from last night's pulled pork sandwich and some bad fake rice krispy treats.

The sandwich was from The Shaved Duck. So tasty. Also tasty? Their chili sampler (including a smoked duck white chili), their mac n' cheese, and their duck fat fries. That's what I had for dinner last night. I can't wait to go back and try the duck confit. Or maybe just have some more chili and fries...

The krispy treats were less successful. I was wandering down the cereal aisle at Schnuck's, looking for muesli (which no one in this city sells, apparently, not even Straub's, the posh grocery store), when I was struck with a bizarre krispy craving. I haven't had actual homemade ones in perhaps fifteen years. But I just couldn't bring myself to buy Rice Krispies. I hate those things- what was I going to do with the leftovers? So I decided to try making them with Kashi instead.

I was seriously underwhelmed by the final product. I'm not sure if it was the fact that the marshmallows were old, my cereal substitution, or the butter.

The butter, you ask? Sweet, innocent butter?

I am a huge label reader. I never buy a processed product without examining the ingredients in detail. I'm just weird like that. But I never imagined I should examine the butter label. I check that it is butter, not margarine, and whether it is salted or unsalted. But what could possibly be in butter, other than cream...maybe some salt or vitamin D?

Yeah. I'm still not quite sure what this means, only that the butter reeks of fake movie popcorn butter. Unfortunately, I bought two pounds of it because it was on sale and I've been baking a ton lately. Fine with me, Cabot's just lost my business forever. The least they could do is label it appropriately. Maybe some people want movie popcorn butter.

Chicken at Home

2010-01-05T17:30:00.003-06:00

For dinner, I had leftover chicken with peppers and a glass of malbec.

The chicken was from Trader Joe's, and labeled "chicken serenada". I had to go look at my photos again, because I misremembered it as "chicken sonesta" which sounded like a pharmaceutical to me- antidepressant? sleep aid? But no, it's serenada. Which merely sounds like something you'd find on Olive Garden's menu.

The day I bought this, I was feeling open-minded and bought a bunch of things I don't usually like or have only recently come to like- among them the green and red peppers in the serenada, and some Camembert (which I hadn't had in fifteen years but, to my dismay, still hate). The serenada came frozen, and consisted of two chicken breasts in sauce. I bought it mostly because I wondered what such a strange array of ingredients would taste like together. Alas, I just took out the trash, but I recall red and green peppers, onion, jalapeno, coconut milk, garlic, maybe some lemon juice? The package touted Caribbean-European fusion or some such nonsense.

I was decidedly unimpressed when I made it yesterday- although I now like red peppers, I still really hate green ones. Plus, the sauce was incredibly watery and flavorless. I drained off most of the sauce and piled the veggies on top of the remaining chicken breast to save. Upon reheating the whole mess tonight, I was very surprised at how much the flavors had improved. I still don't think I'd buy it again, but it wasn't bad. It's certainly easy.

In other news, I don't even have to spend $7 to find a good malbec at TJ's. Tonight, I am drinking the Fuerza 2009 malbec, $4.99. It doesn't have amazing structure or complexity, but it's nicely dry, a little spicy, with soft berry flavors. It tasted much better when I opened it yesterday; as of now, it's a decent table wine, although the alcohol is starting to overwhelm it a bit.

Shredded Wheat at Home

2010-01-03T09:55:00.004-06:00

For breakfast, I had a bowl of frosted shredded wheat and TJ's holiday spice coffee.

In other news, this is not me, but it may as well be. I am the person who judges you for your groceries. But I only judge if they're more than 40% or so bad. Everyone needs a good snack.

From Postsecret.

New Year's at Home

2009-12-31T19:00:00.009-06:00

For dinner, I had leftover chicken and apple sausage, with a side of glazed carrots and a glass of cava.

Jon is still in Florida, and most of the people we know are still out of town. Despite a fleeting desire to check out roller disco, I decided to stay home and hang out with the dog for the night. I planned on roasting a chicken and making ratatouille, but I lost my appetite after making these cookies. Not because they're bad, but because they're so full of butter I felt stuffed after two cookies (and some cookie dough....)

I don't really like carrots, but I happened to buy some the other day. I blame this. I used it merely as inspiration, because I was feeling too lazy to make a production of glazing carrots.

I melted a little butter, tossed the carrots around for awhile (hoping to brown them a bit, which did NOT happen), added a little water, and tossed them around a little more. Drizzled in a little lemon juice, threw in some thyme, salted, and done. I didn't add any sugar, and I wish I hadn't added any thyme, which was too heavy. They were still ok.

My new favorite thing: the multi-pack of herbs. Pretty cheap, lasts for weeks.

The cava was likewise ok.

I prefer big, manly red wines, but go for silly girly whites when I drink them. I love a good vionier. Vinho verdes are nice, but that is about as sparkly as my tastes get. Next time, I'll be less festive and get something more exciting.

And no, I don't own champagne flutes. I don't even own glasses for white wines anymore. Sorry.

Light Snacking at Home

2009-12-29T20:56:00.004-06:00

For dinner, I had some chicken and apple sausage from Trader Joe's, with a glass of red wine. I've been grazing all evening, so I guess "dinner" also includes some pfeffernüsse cookies, some maple yogurt, some pasta sauce (I snack on it sometimes like soup), and maybe even the roast beef I snacked on as a late lunch. I am currently snacking on more (addictive) pfeffernüsses. Damn you, TJ's.

In other news, I just got back from a week in Florida, and a week in Houston before that. While at the in-laws' house in Florida, I devoured their large stack of Cook's Illustrated magazines. Great articles, but I found myself losing patience with a certain bow-tied individual's overly cutesey-folksy introductions. My grandfather was born in a one-room schoolhouse in rural Vermont, then raised by a single mother there during the Depression. I'm just as bitter about the encroachment of rich New Yorkers and loss of community as he is. If anyone would appreciate his brand of cutesey, you'd think it would be me. But no. It grates.*

However, I think his introductions would make a great drinking game for wonky cooking types.

Take a drink every time he mentions:

-charmingly rural townsfolk by name (+1 if it is one of the "old" families)
-maple syrup (+2 for sugaring stories)
-a cute story about one of his kids
-hunting (+2 if he smugly refers to the cycle of life or the thriftiness of rural folk)
-"hardiness"
-his childhood (+1 for missing the old days; +3 if it involves outhouses or a lack of electricity)

I'm sure I'm missing a lot. Any suggestions?

*Which is not to dis the man. I hear he is incredibly nice, and I love bowties. And New England.

Light Lunch at Home

2009-12-11T12:39:00.003-06:00

For lunch, I had smoked salmon, cranberry compote, and butter on a roll from Whole Foods.

The salmon is leftover tidbits that are getting old; the compote is basically thick cranberry sauce I made last night out of leftover Thanksgiving cranberries. I was curious to try WF's "seeduction" roll after some friends made a DIY version as part of their Thanksgiving dinner. The combination was pretty tasty. My inspiration was the Sironia turkey sandwich from the late, much-mourned JD's Art Cafe in Waco, TX (don't laugh- rumor has it JD was married to an amazing French-trained pastry chef, and I'll be trying desperately to track down her gorgeous cake recipes for the rest of my life). The Sironia was the historic building's name, and the sandwich was allegedly based on one served at a cafeteria in the building in the 1950s. I have no idea how I got smoked salmon and butter from turkey, cream cheese, and cranberry sauce, but whatever. I see the Sironia is back, in the form of an antique mall, apparently.

Sashimi at Home

2009-12-09T22:41:00.003-06:00

For dinner, I had some swordfish sashimi, a baked potato with butter, brown sugar ice cream, and a fuyu persimmon. And lambrusco, god help me.

Trader Joe's claims their frozen fish is sashimi-grade (which I am fully aware means close to nothing), so I took them up on it. Again. Turns out, swordfish doesn't make very good sashimi. It was certainly an easy meal, but it had a bitter aftertaste and a slightly soggy constitution. The texture was so varied from one side of the swordfish steak to the other that Jon (already skeeved out by raw fish outside of a legit sushi restaurant) refused to eat it. He has finals right now, and thinks that my recent raw fish propensities are some kind of sabotage mechanism. I have to agree with him about the texture issues, but portions were edible.

The potato was unobjectionable. The brown sugar ice cream was not homemade, but tasty nonetheless. In case you haven't noticed, I love anything browned- brown butter, brown sugar. Penuche fudge is the quantum singularity of awesome browned foods in my world.

The persimmon was the result of my afternoon venture to Whole Foods. I sort of felt like I was cheating on Trader Joe's, and their prices look particularly insane after months of TJ's shopping, so I didn't buy a ton. But their persimmons were very ripe and on a huge sale, so I bought a bunch. I'd never had a ripe persimmon before. Bitter ones, yes. Dried ones, yes. My grandfather's much maligned and much missed holiday persimmon pudding, yes. But fresh? Never.

Oh MY GOD, I have a new favorite fruit. It's like apricot meets medjool date, with amazing textures- the skin, the little segments inside...I can't even describe it. Just go find one. I ate all three, and plan on going back for more tomorrow.

The lambrusco was likewise experimental. My mother doesn't really drink, but she occasionally orders sweet lambrusco out at Italian restaurants. I saw some at TJ's, and wondered if "real" lambrusco was like that. Sort of. It's carbonated, not as sweet, but still not dry. I caught a lot of pear flavors, and a little raspberry. Not bad, and I can definitely see how it could be popular with pizza or at a summer barbecue, but it's really not for me. I might consider using it to make sangria. Maybe. But I like Spanish wines much better.

Tuna at Home

2009-12-06T19:30:00.002-06:00

For dinner, I had sauteed tuna steak with roasted garlic potatoes and a coffee stout.

I realize the beer doesn't match the food. I totally failed to plan ahead, even though I should have known better, since the tuna steaks have spent the last 24 hours defrosting in my refrigerator. To be fair, maybe it's just the pairing, but I think Schlafly's Coffee Stout is just gross. It lacks substance and heaviness, and reminds me of that vile coffee-flavored soda.

The food, thankfully, was much tastier. At the last minute, wandering around the kitchen with a large slab of raw tuna in hand, I located some leftover panko in the pantry to use as a crust. I sauteed it in butter, and added a little fresh thyme to the skillet. I'm still working my way through leftover fresh herbs from Thanksgiving; not usually a thyme fan, but I figured it was better than the leftover rosemary. In the end, it added a delicious lemony tang that complemented the tuna nicely. I haven't had a burger in forever (this excellent article sort of turned me off), but this was a nice substitute. I'd rather ingest parasites from partially-cooked fish than E. Coli, I guess.

Foam Coffee in St. Louis

2009-12-05T14:46:00.003-06:00

For breakfast, I had a cappuccino and a "savory croissant" from Foam Coffee in (across the street from?) the Cherokee-Lemp Historic District.

The coffee was delicious. My cappuccino tasted vegetal and intensely grassy, to the degree that I wondered if they roast in-house. Nope, their beans are from the Northwest Coffee Roasting Co. (which I totally need to try, and happens to be on my running route. Now I have a new reason to go for a morning run.)

My croissant was good, although it was described to me as 'bacon and gruyere'...instead, I caught some serious moldy cheese funk. I think he meant to say 'gorgonzola'. I hate moldy cheese, but it was otherwise tasty- flaky, with an onion-heavy filling.

The decor is gorgeous- I could move in and feel right at home. Exposed brick wall, distressed wood floors, and an attractive mix of mid-century and traditional-style furniture. Jon noted the aesthetic is reminiscent of Snooze.

The only thing marring our morning? The roomful of screaming children. I felt like I was in some Park Slope-esque circle of hell. I do not mind children in public. I respect that sometimes parents need to get together in an adult space and bring their children. But I also expect them to try to control their children, and not to be selfish fucks who think a coffee shop is an appropriate venue for a playgroup. Screaming ensued. Running ensued. Toy car races down the ramp running the length of the coffee shop ensued. Parental attempts at control most certainly did NOT ensue. Really? There is a park, with a playground, like two blocks away. Come buy your morning coffee, and then go there. I promise your little snowflakes won't wilt in the thirty-degree weather if they are properly dressed.

I don't blame Foam for the irritating swath of humanity we encountered there, and will be back for more tasty coffee in the future. But, for Foam's sake, I hope Saturday morning playgroup is not a regular thing.

Lou Boccardi's on the Hill

2009-12-04T21:13:00.002-06:00

For dinner, I had chicken marsala, with a nice side salad and pasta with marinara.

The location was serendipitous- I did a little research this afternoon, trying to find an interesting Italian place we hadn't tried yet, but came up empty. Everything looked either average and run-of-the-mill (key indicators: heavy use of Provel; exceptional reliance on pizzas and toasted ravioli) or intriguing but pricey (small plates; $260 bottles of wine (pdf)). In the end, we just went to the Hill and drove around, and somehow came across delicious Italian magic.

Lou Boccardi's had the lost-in-time feel I like in family-run Italian restaurants. The silver tinsel garlands, Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack, and neatly clad waitstaff added to the atmosphere. The menu listed slightly toward the Provel-and-toasted-ravioli end of things, but with one big difference- they did it really, really well. Jon ordered some toasted ravioli as an appetizer, and they were amazingly crispy and chewy and delicious.

The salad was pretty good, a typical iceberg affair with a tomato half, grated Provel, and house Italian vinaigrette. Their other house dressing is "anchovy celery", which Jon tried. It was interesting...it needed more lemon juice or vinegar to cut the fish flavor- and I LIKE anchovies.

The marsala was incredible, but not at all marsala-ey. The sauce looked suspiciously thick and glossy, but it tasted like pure essence of chicken, like the best chicken soup ever. The only thing I can figure is that lots of chicken fat was involved.

The pasta side was the only disappointing part of the meal. The marinara was thick and exceptionally good, but the pasta was seriously overcooked. I don't blame the restaurant, considering no one in St. Louis seems to know the meaning of al dente. It was just a surprise because they were above average in so many other ways.

Pizza at Home

2009-12-02T20:41:00.004-06:00

For dinner, I had pizza and a glass of malbec.

Pizza is a great way to get rid of lingering leftovers. Plus, I'd heard good things about Trader Joe's pre-made pizza dough and wanted to try it. I chose the whole wheat dough- my whole grain obsession rears its head once again- and paired it with garlicky, herby olive oil. I'm not a huge fan of tomato sauce. I added some chopped roasted red pepper, black oil-cured olives, goat cheese, parmesan cheese, and spicy italian-style chicken sausage.

The toppings were good, and the dough didn't stick to my pizza stone as much as I thought it would. But the dough was barely ok- really dense and grainy. Moreover, it smelled like wet paint when I first removed it from its plastic bag. Too much fermentation? I'm curious to try their white flour dough, but I can make tastier whole-wheat pizza dough at home with my white whole wheat flour.

The malbec was La Finca, also from TJ's, $3.99. There are a lot of gorgeous Argentine malbecs in the $7-10 range, and next time I might just spring for one of them. The La Finca wasn't bad, but it was watery and undistinguished. It reminded me of bad California Pinot Noir.

In other news, I ordered a DSLR. It should arrive tomorrow. I have high hopes for more impressive food photography, and hopefully fewer battery issues. It's used, but 6.2 megapixels is still a step up from 3.1 megapixels.

Pho in St. Louis

2009-11-23T20:37:00.004-06:00

For dinner, I had pho and spring rolls.

We went to Pho Long, having heard they make better pho than Pho Grand (they have a website, but it's annoying flash). I need to try them both again to be certain, but I think Grand might be better than Long.

The spring rolls were tasty, but the wrappers were a little dried out. No big deal, but not perfect. The pho was likewise decent. For me, the most important pho component is the broth- it should have very deep flavor, and a clear, non-oily appearance. I prefer a ton of star anise, along with complex, warming spices. Theirs was not as deeply-flavored as Grand's, although their noodles and meat were equally delicious.

In other news, I am excited for Thanksgiving. I'm pretty casual and non-OCD about it, so I just figured out what I'll be making today. Actually, I figured out the sides and dessert. I still have no idea what kind of turkey product I'll be preparing. Jon suggested turducken, and Schnuck's even sells them, but the price tag is not cool- $75. If anyone has a great idea, let me know (also, if anyone in St. Louis wants to come over, please do...we are lonely). Right now, I'm leaning toward a roulade or some kind of modified DIY turducken configuration. Or maybe I'll spatchcock it. Tomorrow, I'll go check out the posh grocery stores and make a decision, then go wine shopping.

The sides? Sweet potato leek gratin with candied bacon topping, assorted cooked greens with bacon, sausage/apple/sage/dried cherry stuffing, and pumpkin gooey butter cake for dessert. The dessert alone requires two sticks of butter. Like I said, exciting.