Posted by Anita on 11.19.06 8:25 PM
Over on the always-delightful Becks & Posh, Sam challenges us to join her in a rather exhibitionist exercise: Photographing everything that passes our lips for an entire week, and sharing with our readers:
I hereby commit, starting from the moment I wake up on Monday November 20th, to the minute I go to bed on Sunday 26th November 2006, to take a picture of everything I consume… I think it will be a fascinating excercise, especially to be able to compare America indulging in Thanksgiving whilst others are not.
…We’ll aim to post up our pictures on our blogs on Monday 27th November.
We’ll be home the first part of the week, before heading out of town for Thanksgiving, then at Mom & Dad’s for the rest of the challenge period. My family already thinks I am crazy, and there shouldn’t be a lot of restaurant meals to throw a wrench into the works.
I promise not to post all the pix to MWD, but I’ll blog about interesting meals (as usual), and starting tomorrow I’ll put all the photos in a Flickr set. And, of course, there’ll be the full roundup next Monday.
family, geekery, holidays & occasions, other blogs
1 Comment »
Posted by Cameron on 11.10.06 6:48 AM
You can pick your friends—the saying goes—and you can pick your…um… poison, but you can’t pick your family. Happily, I have been blessed many times over through both blood and marriage. And so, while this Drink of the Week post is inspired by Mixology Monday #9 (bitters), it is dedicated to my brother-in-law Matt, who introduced me to a delightfully civilized drink: The Manhattan.
I had always been suspicious of The Manhattan, put off by crappy bourbon, unpredictable proportions, and those nasty, nuclear pink, jarred maraschino cherries that people actually eat instead of sticking on top of car antennas, where they belong.
But one night during a holiday visit many years ago, Matt commandeered the cocktail shaker and went to work with sweet vermouth, Angostura bitters, and Wild Turkey. I think. I’m a little blurry on the precise brand of bourbon, probably because we knocked off most of a bottle of whatever it was over the course of a gregarious evening.
In any case, my prejudice melted, and if I never sought The Manhattan out, neither did I avoid its presence. Those awful cherries, though. Ugh. Not a chance.
The next stage in my journey came this fall, when Murray of the Zig Zag Cafe promised us that if we brought a bottle of Carpano Antica vermouth on our next trip to Seattle, we’d be rewarded. When Murray speaks on things of a spiritous nature, my friends, I listen. Bottle in hand, we wafted in out of the northern night to be greeted by a Manhattan made with Carpano Antica, Rittenhouse bonded rye, and Bitter Truth bitters. Magic.
Since then, I (heart) Manhattan. It’s a drink that rewards customization with different ingredient styles and (carefully!) proportions. You’ll find recipes that recommend anywhere from one-half to two ounces of vermouth for two ounces of bourbon or rye. These days, I feel like anything less than a 2:1 ratio tastes like a shot, not a cocktail, but as I have written before, I am pigheaded, uncultured, and have displayed questionable drink-ordering skills.
The recipe below produces a very smooth drink, and is doubly appropriate for this particular MxMo, as it contains two bitter ingredients: orange bitters and Carpano Antica. The Bulleit bourbon lends body without calling attention to itself, and the fruitiness of the orange bitters (of which the Hermes is a difficult-to-find but excellent example) balances the extra bite of the Carpano Antica, which you could replace with regular sweet vermouth for increased mellitude. If you need fruit, soak dried Bing cherries overnight in whatever suits your fancy. I used brandy and…POW! Drunken Cherries.
Cheers, Matt! (And happy 5th Anniversary to you and P…)
Old Manhattan
2 oz. Bulleit bourbon
1-1/4 oz. Carpano Antica vermouth
2 dashes Hermes orange bitters
Stir with ice. Strain into a cocktail glass and garnish with a Drunken Cherry.
Drink of the Week, drinks, family, Mixology Monday, other blogs, recipes
13 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 11.01.06 8:58 PM
As careful readers may have noticed, the last couple of weeks have been filled with dishes that indulge my dad’s food cravings. Since Pops’ favorites lean heavily toward the foods of his youth, finding a suitable entry for Retro Recipe Challenge #4 hasn’t proven terribly difficult. In fact, the hardest part has been choosing among this week’s roster of golden oldies.
Given the RRC4 theme, Fall Favorites, a clear front-runner emerged. Pops requested chicken & dumplings, and the recipe Mom uses dates from at least the early 1970s. Alas, the exact source is lost to the sands of time, but one look at the clipping and you can’t miss that 70s women’s magazine vibe — complete with a Kraft Squeez-a-Snak ad on the back!
Amazingly, we resisted the urge to tinker with the recipe; we even used the bouillion cubes. But the veggies completely disintegrated, so Mom simmered up some extra carrots and celery, and added them after thickening the sauce. The dumplings were surprisingly good; I’m not sure if I’d make the chicken again, though. The sauce definitely reminded me of Campbell’s Cream of Chicken soup!
Oh, and lest I forget: It was served with a Waldorf salad… how’s that for old school?!
Chicken and Dumplings
Chickens are still a good buy. Stretch the flavor and servings per chicken with this old-fashioned dish.
3-pound broiler-fryer, cut up
2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
2 celery stalks
1 onion, sliced
2 carrots, coarsely chopped
1 sprig parsley
1 bay leaf
2 chicken bouillion cubes
1/2 cup milk
1/3 cup flour
2 egg yolks, beaten
Parsley Dumplings (recipe follows)
Put chicken in a kettle or Dutch oven and cover with boiling water. Add salt, pepper, celery, onion, carrots, parsley, bay leaf, and bouillion. Bring to a boil, cover, and simmer 1-1/4 hours, or until chicken is tender. Remove chicken from liquid, and when cool enough to handle, remove meat from bones. Measure liquid and if more than 4 cups, boil down to 4 cups. Blend milk and flour, and gradually add a little hot [cooking] liquid to milk [mixture], then stir milk [mixture] into remaining hot [cooking] liquid and cook, stirring, until thickened. With spoon, gradually beat in egg yolks. Put chicken back in broth. Drop dumpling batter by tablespoonfuls [sic] into bubbling broth. Cook, uncovered, 10 minutes. Cover and cook 10 minutes longer. Makes 4-6 servings.
Parsley Dumplings
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. each sugar, salt, and celery seed
1 T chopped parsley
1/2 cup milk
Mix together flour, baking powder, sugar, salt, celery seed and parsley. With fork, stir in milk until just moistened.
cooking, family, magazines, other blogs, recipes
2 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 10.15.06 6:15 PM
There’s nothing sadder than fruit left on the vine at the end of summer, with no prayer of ripening. Our not-terribly-prolific tomato plant on the back porch finally got around to setting fruit just in time for autumn’s chill, so we’ve got an abundance — yea, a vertiable bumper crop — of green tomatoes that will never become red. Luckily, the theme for this month’s installment of Hay Hay It’s Donna Day (hostessed by JenJen at Milk & Cookies) is Fritters, a perfect excuse to sizzle up some fried green tomatoes.
We got an advance review copy of the Lee Brothers’ new cookbook last week, and we’ve been testing out a few recipes. Even though I am (technically) a daughter of the South, I find most Southern cookbooks rather ho-hum. I want to love Frank Stitt, and there’s a warm spot in my heart for Miz Lewis (and her port-roasted pork shoulder, specifically), but every time I test out a new collection of Southern recipes, my response is an unqualified “meh.”
This time, I thought I’d gotten lucky. Flipping through the draft, I noticed a ton of recipes that seem a little more interesting than the norm. Sure, there’s the obligatory receipts for pimento cheese, spiced pecans and whole country ham, but then there’s also a chile relleno stuffed with cheese grits, a smattering of cocktails that breaks out of the julep-and-punch mold, and a mini-section on preserving. More than a handful of recipes boast a Sunday (fancy) and Tuesday (easy) version, and each chapter offers “QKO”s aplenty — quick knockouts that turn out impressive-but-speedy weeknight suppers.
Unfortunately, none of the recipes we’ve tried yet have been out-of-the-ballpark successes. We enjoyed the Pork Loin Chops with Pears and Vidalia Pan Gravy, but it seemed like a lot of prep work for a “quick knockout”. We both agreed we would try the Buttermilk Ice Cream again, although I’d probably add a touch of corn syrup to help with the grainy texture. (Still, if you put Fran’s caramel sauce and some toasted pecans on it, you’ll be so transported that you may not notice the less-than-stellar mouthfeel.) It’s sad that something so elemental as ice cream would need to be tinkered with, though.
Which brings us back to those tomato fritters, aka Fried Green Tomatoes. Now, my mama taught me that if you cain’t say somethin’ nice, keep your mouth shut… but just between you and me, the breading was so incredibly salty that we literally couldn’t eat the tomatoes. Which is a shame, really, as the texture was lovely, and the underlying recipe was very well planned.
It’s even more worrisome, though, that the super-salty “all-purpose dredge” used the coating is a master recipe, called for in fried chicken, fish, oysters and such. The accompanying buttermilk dressing was similarly flawed: oddly flavored and way too runny — as though the ratios were off here, too. I certainly hope that these issues are fixed in the final edition (which just hit the streets).
Here’s my modified version of the recipe:
Green Tomato Fritters
– adapted from The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
3 T stone-ground cornmeal
2 tsp salt
1.5 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 pound green (unripe) tomatoes (2-3 medium)
1 large egg, beaten well
1/4 cup whole milk
approximately 1 cup peanut oil
salt, to taste
Whisk all of the dry ingredients together in a flat bowl or pie plate. In a second bowl or pie plate, whisk the egg and milk until well blended.
Cut the stem ends off the tomatoes and slice them 1/4-inch thick with a serrated knife.
Pour the oil into a low skillet to a depth of 1/3 inch, and heat over medium-high. Meanwhile, heat the oven to 225°F, and set a baking rack over a cookie sheet on the top rack.
Place a plate near the stove, lined with a double thickness of paper towels; have more towels handy.
Press a tomato slice into the dredge, once on each side, and shake off any excess. Dip the dredged slice into the egg wash on both sides, shaking off excess, then back into the dredge on both sides. Shake off excess coating and place slice on a clean platter. Repeat with more slices until you have enough to fill your skillet.
With a spatula — not your fingers — transfer the first batch to the hot oil in the skillet. As the first batch cooks, dredge more tomato slices, keeping an eye on the skillet. Once the slices are golden brown on one side (about 2 minutes) flip them carefully and fry for 2 minutes more or until equally brown on both sides. When done, remove to the paper-towel-lined plate, sprinkle with salt as needed, and let sit for 1 minute.
Arrange the cooked slices in a single layer on the rack in the oven, until all slices are cooked. Serve hot, with your favorite creamy buttermilk ranch-style dressing as a dip.
(For more pix, check out our Fried Green Tomatoes photo set.)
cookbooks, cooking, dessert, garden, other blogs, recipes
7 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 10.13.06 8:24 AM
Meeta at What’s for Lunch Honey? is hosting this month’s Mixology Monday:
Topic for this event is Exotic Drinks — from the Bahama Mamas you order while on vacation to the ongoing exploration of Grog Log, this event is for the colorful, the relaxing, the vibrant.
Careful observers will note that today’s actually Friday, but DOTW traditions must go on! Just call us slightly ahead of the curve.
Picking our favorite exotic cocktail is easy: We stumbled — perhaps a bit too literally — onto the Painkiller during our first trip to Tortola, ages ago, at a beachfront bar called De Loose Mongoose (pictured above) The running joke as we mixed them up on the guest-house porch of Mermaid Villa was “hey, go easy on the orange juice!”… because the rum was so damned cheap and the OJ was imported by air from Puerto Rico.
The Painkiller
4 ounces unsweetened pineapple juice
1 ounce orange juice
1 ounce Coco Lopez coconut cream
2 to 4 ounces dark rum (preferably Pusser’s)
whole nutmeg
Mix all ingredients together, then pour into a highball glass filled with ice. Top with a grating of fresh nutmeg, and garnish with a wedge of pineapple, if desired.
Drink of the Week, drinks, Mixology Monday, other blogs, recipes, travel
6 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 09.15.06 8:33 PM
Tami of Running with Tweezers is the hostess of this month’s installment of Hay Hay! It’s Donna Day, a very cool meme dedicated to Down Under food-magazine diva Donna Hay. The whole thing was started by another antipodean, Barbara at Winos and Foodies. The blogger who creates the best entry for each month gets to pick the following month’s theme. And — happily for those of us who love the oven — Tami chose savory tarts for Donna Day #5.
Given how much we’ve been enjoying caprese salads and other variations on the tomato/cheese/herb axis this summer — and knowing that the end certainly must be right around the corner for both heirloom tomatoes and the basil on the back porch — it seems only fitting to honor Donna Hay’s “turn simple into special” tagline with a rustic tart based on all the flavors of late summer. Coming late to the party as always, I turned to store-bought — but 100% butter — puff pastry for my base, a truc that I know Ms. Hay would approve.
Caprese Tart
1/2 package (or 1/2 recipe, if you’re feeling more Martha than Donna) puff pastry
4 smallish heirloom tomatoes, preferably various colors
3oz. Crescenza or other soft-ripened cheese
rosemary salt, or coarse salt + herb of your choice
basil, preferably small leaves, for garnish
basil-infused oil, or good olive oil, for brushing
Preheat the oven to 400F. Briefly thaw the pastry as directed on the package, and cut to fit your tart pan(s) — I used four small 4-inch rounds — and press the dough into the pans. Alternately, go freeform and cut pastry into four rectangles. Dock the crust with a fork or a toothpick. (If you’re not using pans, leave the last 1/2 inch undocked, all the way around). Spread the cheese thinly over the docked portion of the crust.
Slice the tomatoes into shapes that make sense for your crust (about 1/4-inch thick, regardless), salt lightly, and set aside for a few minutes. Blot the tomatoes’ excess moisture, and layer the slices in alternating patterns over the cheese.
Sprinkle the tarts lightly with rosemary salt. Bake for 10 minutes at 400, then reduce heat to 350 and continue cooking until pastry is puffed and throughly golden brown — mine took almost 30 minutes more. Brush with the oil, then garnish with small basil leaves (or chiffonade, if your basil is large). Serve with a salad as a light main course, or as a side dish for grilled meats.
cooking, magazines, other blogs, recipes
3 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 09.14.06 5:52 PM
I promise not to do this very often, but I can’t resist a hearty “hear, hear!” to Sam over at Becks & Posh for her recent crankiness on a subject near and dear to my heart: The tyranny of online food communities. Reading about Sam’s recent (re-)disillusionment with the new-but-not-really Chowhound brought up a lot of old stuff for me.
Looking on the bright side — as Kevin from BaconPress quips in Sam’s comments — I suppose I owe the food-board troglodytes a thank-you note: This blog (like many others) was born out of our frustration with the politics and personality disorders that inevitably infest even the best-intentioned food communities, and from our desire to keep sharing all the fun food stuff we stumble across in our wanderings.
I dug up an email that I sent to a MouthfulsFood friend who asked me if I was ever going to return to the fold, after I staged a one-woman boycott following a vicious personal attack by one of the board’s resident nutjobs:
I am blessedly glad to be free of the axis of snivel; I hadn’t realized how much that negativity wore me down, day after day.
I do miss the community, and every now and then I have a pang of wanting to share something wonderful. But the more I think on it, the more I realize that (a) I’m not missing much in terms of useful info and (b) I don’t need the angst.
I’m lucky that I have the best parts of my online experience integrated into my ‘real’ life, now, and I realize that that’s where the biggest payoff is going to happen.
OK, rant over. Thanks for indulging me… not just today, but all the time.
Cameron says:
I’m so glad that Anita put this up. Superkudos and much admiration to Anita, Sam and all of those (special shout out to S. @ RG) who can absorb the acid and vinegar and still come out balanced and smooth on the other side.
food boards, other blogs
9 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 09.13.06 8:13 AM
Over at The Traveler’s Lunchbox, Melissa posed a challenge to her fellow food-bloggers: List the five things everyone should eat before they die.
Erin tagged us to participate back at the end of August, and we’ve been bickering about it ever since. Does it mean five natural foodstuffs? Five prepared dishes? Five culinary experiences? Five meals? Being a rather ecumenical gal, I’m inclined to interpret the question in the broadest terms; Cameron’s being a little more dogmatic, and — hey, no value judgement here — is not surprisingly having a very hard time coming up with his answers. I, on the other hand, am having a terrible time limiting myself to just five. Argh.
But, after a couple weeks of pensive nail-biting, I think I can safely say that you, my foodie friends, should go forth and eat the following five items. But don’t go dying on me any time soon, ok?
1. street food in Thailand, preferably breakfast at the Damnoen Saduak floating market. I recommend kanom krok, soup noodles, thai coffee, and a mango, but feel free to sample whatever’s being made by the ladies with woks in their wooden boats. We spent 3 weeks in central and northern Thailand this past January, eating street food every day. And while we did have some nice meals in restaurants, it’s the noodle-shop nosh and street-stall snacks that still haunt me.
2. heritage pork in Britain. Your choice: a pork & stilton sandwich at Borough Market, or roast middlewhite at St. John. Or both, hey… don’t let me stop you. Even the best pig I’ve eaten stateside is a pale, pasty shadow of the succulent swine they’ve got over in Blighty. Despite the weakness of the dollar and the superstrength of the pound, it’s a taste-memory that’s worth the cost of airfare.
3. tacos from a taco truck, preferably carnitas at the El Asadero taco bus on South Rainier in Seattle. This was the year I got over my fear of street food. I shudder to think of all the amazing food I missed. I’m not particularly squeamish or germ-phobic, but I am a total wimp when it comes to busting out of my cultural comfort zone. For some reason, having mastered the the taco truck experience over the last couple of years made it easier to go outside the boundaries and let 2006 become the Year of Eating Dangerously for this former fussy eater. So far this year, I’ve eaten sushi at 6am in Tokyo (prepared by chefs with whom I shared absolutely no common language), all kinds of crazy nutty wacky stuff in Thailand, escamole in Mexico, and a host of other oddities… and the year’s not yet over.
4. a meal made entirely from peak-season farmer’s market finds. Although I’ve always been dedicated to the idea of seasonal and farm-direct cooking, this summer was the first time we could honestly say that 100% of the ingredients for certain meals — including staples like oils and salts — came from the market. The cynical me is surprised that it really makes such a difference, but the nutty-crunchy side of me realizes this is one of them-there culinary no-brainers.
5. the tasting menu at The French Laundry. A quick glance at other blogger’s contributions to this meme shows I’m not alone on this one. But really… it’s one of the few high-end dining experiences that’s objectively worth every penny that you pay for it. This meal will genuinely change the way you think about dining out and — if you’re particularly introspective — about cooking as well. My photos certainly don’t do it justice, nor do any of the (admittedly plentiful and generally well-written) first-hand accounts you’ve read online. Clear your morning schedule, put the phone on speed-dial, and pray for an opening: I promise you won’t regret it.
————–
Oh, I almost forgot to pick the next five other bloggers — which is getting really hard, as it seems like nearly everyone‘s already taken a crack. So, tag… you’re it!
- Sean at Hedonia
- Lucy at Lucy’s Kitchen Notebook
- Cheryl at Cupcake Bakeshop by Chockylit
- Matthew at Roots & Grubs
- Mary at Jalapeño Girl
breakfast, cooking, farmers markets, meat, Mexican, other blogs, restaurants, Thai, travel
6 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 08.31.06 10:45 AM
In addition to being my dad’s birthday (Happy B-Day, Pops!), August 31 is also BlogDay 2006. What’s that, you ask? I’m so glad you did! Here’s a clip from the BlogDay site (which seems to be overwhelmed with traffic at the moment):
What will happen on BlogDay?
In one long moment In August 31st, bloggers from all over the world will post a recommendation of 5 new Blogs, Preferably, Blogs different from their own culture, point of view and attitude. On this day, blog surfers will find themselves leaping and discovering new, unknown Blogs, celebrating the discovery of new people and new bloggers.
BlogDay posting instructions:
- Find 5 new Blogs that you find interesting
- Notify the 5 bloggers that you are recommending on them on BlogDay 2006
- Write a short description of the Blogs and place a link to the recommended Blogs
- Post the BlogDay Post (on August 31st) and
- Add the BlogDay tag using this link: BlogDay2006 and a link to BlogDay web site at http://www.blogday.org
Given that the only blogs I read until recently were Hedonia and SFHomeBlog, I’m basically thinking that any blog is pretty much fair game as “new” in my book.
As most everyone else who’s participating has said, it’s hard to pick just five. But here, in no particular order, are the five new-to-me food blogs I’ve put at the top of the pile, the ones that I read on my Treo on the way in to work.
- Anyone who’s already reading food blogs knows about Becks & Posh. Sam’s a fellow Bay-Area gal (albeit a transplant from England) and those who know tell me that I am rightly very sad that I missed my chance to shake her hand at the Bay Area Food Bloggers’ Picnic last weekend (which we had to back out of attending at the last minute).
- After rekindling our romance with cocktails during the Seattle Experiment, we found ourselves a bit adrift when we moved back to San Francisco: Where were all the decent watering holes? We should have gone trawling for a site like Cocktails with Camper English a long time ago. Love it.
- One of our friends from the Seattle food crew, Matthew Amster-Burton is also a food writer of local reknown. He’s also dad to one of Seattle’s cutest toddlers, Iris. In Roots & Grubs, Mamster chronicles his often hilarious interactions with his budding foodie of a daughter.
- Speaking of Seattlites… during the course of a shared dinner at Union, Molly struck me as someone who I’d be reading about some day. Little surprise to catch up with her, a couple of years later, and find that her Orangette has become one of the stars of the food-blog world.
- I always knew Shuna Fish Lydon was a blogger: her review of Range for the KQED blog got caught up in a (ahem) spirited debate over on MouthfulsFood last fall. But I didn’t know she solo-blogged until I met her at a June Taylor marmalade class earlier this year. When I put out my call for blog recommendations earlier this month, multiple people suggested eggbeater …and I could no longer keep my head in the sand. Now I am hooked on this quirky little slice of Shuna’s brain.
ps: Thanks for the link, Sean. 😀
bar culture, drinks, food boards, geekery, other blogs, Seattle
2 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 08.09.06 12:01 AM
So… here’s the deal: We’re doing this food-blogging thing in a vacuum. Sure, we read a couple of food blogs written by friends — hi Sean, hi Matthew! — but frankly the world of food blogging used to seem a little redundant to our other culinary life online — we got all the stimulus we needed from sites like eGullet and MouthfulsFood.
Once we dropped off the food communities, the blog seemed like a great place to stash those scribblings that just can’t be left unwritten, the photos that must be shared. But even when the blog occasionally gets interactive via comments, it’s still not enough input to feed my media jones. And the NYT Food Section only comes out once a week.
I’m sure it comes as no surprise to anyone (my naive self included) that there are something close to, oh, a bajillion food blogs out there, and I have no idea where to start! So, I wanna hear about your must-read food, cooking, dining and drinking blogs. Which do you read first, before all the rest?
(And yeah, I know… I can’t believe a vegan blog won the Bloggie, either.)
food boards, geekery, other blogs
1 Comment »
