Posted by Anita on 08.09.06 8:27 AM
Steve’s comment on the hash post got me thinking of chilaquiles, one of my favorite foods. I love ’em so much, I’ll eat them in just about any way they’re prepared, from haute to humble, rojos or verdes.
As I nodded off to sleep last night, I remembered that I had some leftover Flor de Junio beans in the fridge, and probably a small handful of good, thick tortilla chips. This morning, with no time to make salsa from scratch, I reached for a small can of the pretty-good stuff: Embasa salsa verde. I like it better than jarred salsas because it actually tastes like tomatillos, not citric acid, and you can see chunks of white onion in it. Alas, no crema on hand, but luckily a new round of queso fresco.
If you love chilaquiles but don’t ever make them at home, you should start. It’s a really simple process: For a single serving, put about a quarter cup of smooth-ish salsa in the bottom of a medium skillet — red or green, as you like it. Let it heat until it’s warmed through and sizzling, then add a handful of chips. Depending on their size and flatness (or lack thereof) you may need to break them up a little, and possibly add some more sauce. You don’t want them dripping, but you do want a good coating on all surfaces. Toss the chips with the salsa until heated through, then top with cheese: Queso fresco is good, as is any Mexican melting cheese, or even Monterey Jack in a pinch. Drizzle with crema, or a little sour cream thinned with milk, and cover for a couple of minutes until the cheese melts and the crema settles. (You can also wait and add the crema when you plate them; Chilaquiles is really an idea more than a recipe, and even in Mexico there are as many ways to make ’em as there are cooks.) Take them to the plate, consider topping with some chopped white onion, a little chopped cilantro, or nothing at all. I like ’em served with soft-scrambled eggs, or a side of homemade refritos.
UPDATE: As if this post wasn’t already enough of a Rancho Gordo advertisement… I sit down to eat my chilaquiles, and who do I find in Chron’s food section? Yup, Steve himself, waxing eloquent about heirloom beans. Talk about your synchronicity…
breakfast, cooking, Mexican, recipes
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 »
Posted by Anita on 08.08.06 10:49 AM
I’ll see your meat cake …and raise you a Treo.
The only inanimate thing I love as much as food is my Treo 650. So imagine my amusement when a coworker sent me a link to Engadget’s Birthday Cake Contest. All of the cakes were pretty cool, but the winning entry — a “working” Treo 650 cake, complete with video screen, SD card, functional buttons, and sound — is pretty amazing, both as a pastry project and as geek fetish.
Don’t miss the video.
baking, geekery, levity
Comments Off on Geek cakes, part deux
Posted by Cameron on 08.08.06 9:32 AM
Until today, Bill Watterson’s Calvin was the only person who I believed when they called themselves a genius. Or, to properly quote Calvin, a “Super-Genius”. But now, Vashti Ross, I genuflect before your greatness. Let’s listen to the artist’s moment of inspiration in her own words:
He went on to describe his ultimate wedding cake. “I hate that wedding cakes are all girly. There should be like a groom cake to go with the traditional wedding cake. A guy’s cake. Like..made out of meat.”
A lightbulb went off in my mind. “I could TOTALLY do that,” I exclaimed. “A meatloaf! With mashed potato frosting! OH MY GOD!”
Go and be amazed. Props to Don Carne for the tip.
baking, levity, meat
2 Comments »
Posted by Cameron on 08.06.06 7:01 PM
Hash is one of those dishes for which there is both one recipe and a million recipes. Most folks will nod along for the first couple of ingredients (cooked meat and cooked potatoes) and the method (cut up together and fried in oil). But after that, you’re on your own and buddy, you can call that pile in the pan whatever you want but it ain’t hash back where I come from.
The keen-eyed will notice that first picture is actually not hash. It’s summer succotash, graced with a skewer full of Prather Ranch pork. The hash of which I am about to speak came from the leftover pork and potatoes that accompanied the succotash.
When I’m making hash, I start with roughly equal amounts of onion, meat, and potato, all diced medium. Corned beef is my favorite, but any leftover meat will do. Onion goes in pan with salt and fat, which could be a butter and olive oil combo or bacon fat, depending on my mood. Saute until translucent and a bit soft, but don’t brown ’em (a little on the edges is okay) or they’ll burn later. I don’t bother with herbs if I have corned beef, but a little thyme here is good with plain pork. Black pepper also works.
Add the potato and meat, stir it up and get it warm, then add enough heavy cream to bring it all together. Don’t go overboard. You’re making hash, not sloppy joes. Taste and add more salt if necessary. Press the hash into a single layer and cook until the bottom is brown and crisp: 10 or 15 minutes depending on the stove, the pan, and the ingredients. Here’s where you’re going to get in trouble if you really browned your onions. In any event, go easy on the flame and watch carefully, because there are few things sadder in the morning than burned hash.
At this point, most recipes will breezily say something like, “Flip the hash over and brown the other side.” But I’m not like them and I’m not going to lie to you. You can try the flip thing and if you manage it then you’re a better man than I am. I usually just scrape it all up, give it a mix, and then pat it flat again. Cook until crispy, and serve with eggs, poached if you’re feeling orthodox.
breakfast, cooking, meat
7 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 08.05.06 9:25 PM
I had a meeting Saturday morning in Los Altos, and — knowing full well what the answer would be — I asked Cameron if he wanted to head south with me and go to Fiesta del Mar.Those of you who’ve known us for a while can probably skip this post; there’s no new information here. What did we have? Same thing we always do: A #15 combination ($12.50) for me — the world’s best chile relleno, and an excellent chicken tostada — and Camarones a la Diabla ($16.95) for Cameron — “jumbo shrimp sautéed in spicy hot chile de árbol sauce” says the menu, which really doesn’t do justice to the tangy, garlicy, spicy love that surrounds the prawns. How was it? Just as fabulous as always, and maybe even a little bit better than usual. In fact, over the years we’ve been going here (heading on 10, now) I can only recall one meal that wasn’t stunning.
We’ve been known to plan our arrival times into SFO based on whether we’ll make it back in time for dinner at FdM. It’s one of the few old standbys that’s actually stood the test of time.
Fiesta del Mar
1005 N. Shoreline Blvd.
Mountain View, CA 94043
650.965.9354
Mexican, restaurants
1 Comment »
Posted by Anita on 08.04.06 7:24 AM
In the process of moving my content off of MouthfulsFood and eGullet, I put a few appropriate snippets onto Yelp — figuring that their Seattle content needs all the help it can get. Much to my amusement, my writeup of La Carta de Oaxaca has been voted Review of the Day in Seattle.
For those of you in Seattle, this is great news: Yelp’s still a wild frontier up there, where even moderately well-written stuff gets noticed and appreciated. Go forth and Yelpify!
food boards, geekery, Seattle
Comments Off on Shameless Yelp-promotion
Posted by Anita on 08.03.06 7:23 AM
After 8 months of keeping The Liberty Cafe in the penalty box, we decided to give it another whirl. See, we talk a good game as unforgiving food snobs, but we’re really good sports. (Actually, we’re just desperate for better food close to home…)
Here’s a review I wrote on Yelp last year:
10/27/2005
Food was good, but not amazing. The butter lettuce salad’s bleu cheese was bland, hazelnuts were a touch rancid, but pears were lovely and the vinaigrette perfect. On the other salad, the too-tough mache was garnished with grapes, walnuts, pecorino.
I’d had the chicken pot pie before, and I also make it at home from the recipe that the Chron published a few years back. It was just like homemade — decent, nothing special — only I don’t burn my puff pastry. The “fancy mac-and-cheese” was short tubes (nice) with arugula (nice, but skimpy) and pine nuts… which sounds like a good idea but ended up tasting like uncooked peas. Bleh.
There wasn’t anything wrong with our pale caramel pot de creme, but it would have benefitted from deeper, richer caramel flavor.
Service was all over the map. One server was sweet and clueless, the other was sharp but snarky.
Maybe it’s just a matter of ordering well. Or that they do better with summertime produce. Or we caught them on a good night. Or lowered expectations… But we had a pretty good dinner last night. Still not worthy of the endless praise that gets heaped on this place from near and far, but good, solid neighborhood chow.
I started with the heirloom tomato salad ($9): Ripe but not perfect tomatoes, solid slices of mozzerella (which needed more salt), fresh basil leaves and a cloying basalmic reduction. In theory it was supposed to be garnished with grey salt, but I only noticed it on one bite. Cameron opted for the mixed greens ($8.50), which featured hazelnuts — happily, not rancid this time — nectarines, and a fromage-blanc crouton, which he said were very nice.
Cameron’s main course — a pizza ($10) with taleggio, proscuitto and arugula, plus a small scattering of Sweet 100 tomato halves — was tasty. Although the crust (like all of the bread products) was heartfelt but a tad amateurish, the toppings and preparation were spot-on. My flank steak was cooked to a perfect medium rare, but its presentation was rather scary: the entire plate was covered by a quarter-inch pool of (very tasty) infused oil. Slices of steak scattered with herbs sat atop a small stack of sauteed spinach and a few potato halves. Needless to say, it’s a good thing I am not on a low-fat diet… and I still was taken aback.
Overall, the food was good, if slightly homespun. It’s the sort of thing that if you cooked it at home, you’d be delighted. You’d turn to your partner and say “Hey, that’s pretty good! Let’s make that again.” But it doesn’t feel like restaurant food, which is a blessing and a curse. I’m not sure I’m willing to regularly spend $75 for a dinner that I (or most of my friends) could make at home just as well. On the other hand, if they can keep the food as consistently good as it was last night… well, I’m obviously torn. But I am glad to have had a nice meal there, if only because now I see why everyone says we’re so lucky to live so close.
Service, once again, was a bit off the mark. One of the waiters (the snarky one) was familiar to us; the other may also have been the “sweet but clueless” lad of our previous visit. Although there was no snarkiness on offer tonight, the older waiter did seem to be a bit bossy to his co-workers; the younger one was having a rough night, coming back to ask us our order after having forgotten what starters we ordered, and then again with the wine. I heard him do the same to the people at the next table over. And then at the end of the meal, he bumped the table and sent a glass of ice water sailing toward Cameron’s lap.
Which brings us to the setting: It’s cozy in there, to be sure. But it’s also a tad cramped and not a little unfomfortable. The chairs are hard and awkward, and the tables placed just a touch too close together. Liberty’s well-known for its tolerance of smaller patrons (notice the stack of highchairs in the bathroom), and our dinner was interrupted numerous times — even approaching 8pm — by shrieks and howls from a tot seated across the room. I realize this isn’t strictly the restaurant’s fault, but it is something to keep in mind. If you have a low tolerance for screeching during dinner, this probably isn’t your place.
The Liberty Cafe
410 Cortland Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94110
415.695.1223
Bernal, restaurants
Comments Off on Decent liberties
Posted by Cameron on 08.02.06 4:51 PM
If there’s anything wrong with wandering around in the sun all day and drinking a bunch of different kinds of beer, then I don’t want to be right. I was up in Portland last weekend for a bachelor party, and as part of the festivities our crew spent a lazy Saturday afternoon at the 19th Annual Oregon Brewers Festival.
I’m not sure which was more impressive, the number of brewers in attendance (50+), the number of people in attendance (50,000+ per the Fest organizers), or the number of Grateful Dead cover bands you can safely book in succession without inciting a riot (I lost count).
One of the things that I miss desperately about living in Seattle is the reverence that the Pacific NW has for beer. Two of my favorite brewers and my single favorite beer purveyor are located in the Seattle city limits, and that doesn’t even scratch the surface.
Now, I’m not knocking the Bay Area beer scene. I felt strongly enough to blog about it way back in the day, when real men wrangled HTML with their bare hands. But my Portland trip was like a return to the promised land of cerveza.
Now if I could just get “Touch of Grey” out of my head.
beer, Portland, Seattle, travel
2 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 08.02.06 8:23 AM
In addition to selling her luscious marmalades, conserves and fruit butters at the San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmers Market on Saturday mornings, June Taylor now also opens her warehouse/kitchen for retail sales on Fridays, and on select weekend days for classes.
I took a class back in late winter that featured three-fruit marmalade, which I loved. Last weekend, I followed up with June’s summer preserves class, which focused on peaches and nectarines; we made a preserve with “Summer Sweet” white peaches. Was it good? Let’s just say the jar I brought home is already gone — it was the most gorgeous rose color.
The classes are pricey ($125) but you go home with a good understanding of how to create your own preserves, plus a jar of the goodies that you and your classmates make in class under June’s direction. And you’ll never balk at paying $9 a jar again after you see what goes into it.
June Taylor Company/The Still-Room
2207 4th Street
Berkeley, CA 94710
510.548.2236
Update 08.14.06: June’s classes got an endorsement today from Shuna at eggbeater.
classes, East Bay, farmers markets, preserving & infusing, shopping
2 Comments »
Steve’s comment on the hash post got me thinking of chilaquiles, one of my favorite foods. I love ’em so much, I’ll eat them in just about any way they’re prepared, from haute to humble, rojos or verdes.
