Posted by Anita on 09.14.06 4:52 PM
We had the Prather chili last night. What can I say? Even a few days’ rest in the fridge didn’t make it taste much better. But, while puzzling over what to serve alongside it, I realized that we still had cornbread left over from a batch Cameron made with Bob’s Red Mill coarse-grain cornmeal. It was all dried out, but the more I thought about it, the more I felt terrible throwing out a batch of cornbread just in time to turn around and make a fresh pan. Too bad there wasn’t a way to revive it. Or was there??
Thankfully, I didn’t have to go far for inspiration: One of our favorite chef-type-guys, Tom Douglas, offers recipe for Etta’s Cornbread Pudding in his first cookbook, Seattle Kitchen. I made a few tweaks and voilá… recycled food at its most-utterly luxurious! Custardy, corny goodness with a kiss of cheesy love. Even Cameron — certified bread-pudding loather — licked the bowl clean and asked me to put the recipe in the permanent file.
Tom-Meets-Bob Cornbread Pudding
2-2/3 cups 1-inch cubes of leftover cornbread
– preferably made with coarse-grind, whole-grain cornmeal
1T butter (plus a little more for buttering the pan)
1 cup thinly sliced onions
3/4 cup grated Dry Jack or other semi-hard cheese
2 tsp. chopped flat-leaf parsley
1/2 tsp. chopped rosemary
1/2 tsp. chopped thyme
2 cups heavy cream
1/4 cup chicken stock or broth
4 large eggs
1 tsp. kosher salt
1/2 tsp. pepper
Preheat oven temperature to 350 degrees. Butter an 8×8* baking dish and set aside.
Melt butter in a sauté pan over medium-low heat and carmelize the onions very slowly until golden brown, at least 20 minutes. While the onions are cooking, cube the cornbread and place cubes in the buttered pan. In a large bowl, whisk together the cream, stock or broth, eggs, salt and pepper and set aside.
When onions are done, sprinkle them evenly over the cornbread, followed by the cheese and herbs. Pour custard mixture over the cornbread cubes, and let sit for 10 minutes to absorb. Bake until custard is mostly set and the top is golden, about 40-45 minutes, and serve hot.
* Note: A 9×9 square pan is too large; the custard won’t adequately cover the bread cubes. Use a pan with a maximum bottom area of 64 square inches. A deep 9-inch round cake pan would do, as would a 9-inch deep-dish pie pan. I happen to have a rectangular 6×8 inch Pyrex baking dish that worked fabulously.
cookbooks, cooking, recipes, restaurants, Seattle
1 Comment »
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 09.12.06 1:52 PM
Seems like today’s a big food-news day, and I couldn’t resist sharing some of the headlines.
Another hilarious coffee-related news article from Seattle: Baristas having a cow over dairy “thefts”.
The AP latches onto a blogosphere favorite: Waiters get miffed about the unfairness of tipping.
Do we need smart linen? The Chron reports on a new high-tech, E. coli-detecting napkin.
And apparently they’re eating raw crabs in The OC… and getting really sick.
coffee & tea, geekery, news, restaurants, Seattle, SoCal
Comments Off on Hot links!
Posted by Cameron on 09.11.06 3:57 PM
The food took forever to come out. It wasn’t good when it arrived. The servers were tripping over each other. There was a waiting list as long as your arm at 9:15 on a Sunday morning.
But hang up the sarcasm phone for a second and listen: we’re really, really pulling for Toast Eatery, a contemporary diner recently opened in Baja Noe Valley.
Ever since we finally threw up our hands over Al’s Cafe Good Food on Mission street, we’ve been longing for a good breakfast place that didn’t require a visit to the peninsula. Anita had been hearing about Toast’s debut so we planned an early (for us) attack on the corner of Church and Day streets.
We were completely unsuccessful in beating the crowds that inevitably surround any halfway-viable brunch joint in Noe Valley. The interior isn’t large, but Toast boasts a number of sidewalk tables. A little flexibility bought a significantly shortened wait for seating: we scored two stools at the bar, a choice that paid dividends later in the meal. The interior is invitingly painted and tiled, and sports cute light fixtures and accoutrements. It’s a clean, well-lighted place for grinds.
The menu at Toast could be taken from any one of a million diners across the nation: scrambles, omelets, pancakes, french toast, eggs benedict, corned beef hash, and chicken fried steak. Lunch/dinner options include soups, salads, burgers, and sandwiches, with plenty of traditional favorites: french dip, club sandwich, cheese steak, hot pastrami, and chili.
We chatted with one of the proprietors who was running herd on the front of the house and handling the counter traffic. I asked if they had real maple syrup, and he said that they were planning on adding it for an extra charge, but they hadn’t yet. Major points. I encouraged him to follow through. In my book, real maple syrup is one of the simple things that a breakfast joint can do to rise above the crowd. I’m happy to pay the extra buck, and I won’t order pancakes without it.
The servers were obviously still getting their act together, but everyone was hustling and mostly friendly. Anita ordered chicken fried steak and some orange juice, while I went for eggs benedict and coffee.
Half an hour later we’d finished the Sunday paper, I was on my third cup of coffee (not bad tasting, nice big cups), and we were hungry. When the food finally appeared, it became clear that the kitchen is still getting its act together, too. The hollandaise was a strange dark brown color, watery, grainy, and inedibly salty—as if it was made from a mix and someone used a cup of powder instead of a tablespoon. Anita’s food was no better: Sysco battered steak patty cooked with zero love and covered in gravy from a mix. Our hashbrowns were just barely cooked. Finally, in a barely believable bit of irony, the english muffins on both our plates were completely…wait for it…unToasted.
Sigh.
I complained (nicely) about the benedict and our seating choice paid off. The man in charge got instant feedback, and I was quickly supplied with a replacement (bagel with lox and cream cheese). Anita struggled through her plate, as there wasn’t anything returnably wrong with it. The scrambled eggs weren’t bad, at least.
We’ll almost certainly return, for two reasons. First, we badly need this kind of place nearby. With the exception of Joe’s Cable Car, it’s impossible to get a non-ethnic meal in our neck of the woods for less than $70 (for two)Â that doesn’t suck five different kinds of ass…and even then you’re taking your chances. Emmy’s Spaghetti Shack doesn’t count because you have to be on the ice to score and if you don’t take credit cards, you get to stay in the penalty box. Plus you can end up waiting for an hour for a table if you don’t whack someone first.
The second reason that we’ll return is that I think the folks at Toast have their heads on straight and they’re very obviously still sorting out their kitchen. The response to my complaint was fast, professional, and there was genuine interest in what went wrong. Plus, there were lots of positive little we’re-paying-attention details: organic, Fair Trade coffee served from thermal carafes instead of left cooking on burners; a small, low-end, but intelligent wine selection; very cool silverware; and, of course, real maple syrup on the way.
No guarantees (witness the continued incompetence and eventual fall of Chez Maman Bernal), but consider this review a bug report and give Toast a try after they’ve had a chance to pump through a few release candidates.
breakfast, Noe Valley, restaurants
9 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 09.11.06 2:17 PM
This just in from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer… Starbucks’ original logo causes an uproar:
A Kent elementary school principal, according to a local TV station, asked teachers last week that if they were bringing their daily joe to school that they make sure they get a sleeve to cover the image of a topless mermaid on Starbucks cups.
The Seattle-based coffee giant, as part of its 35th anniversary, this month put its original logo with the bare-breasted mermaid on its cups in stores in Washington and Oregon.
Not that Kent is the most progressive of Northwest communities, but do they really think that elementary-school kids have never seen boobies before?
coffee & tea, levity, Seattle
1 Comment »
Posted by Anita on 09.11.06 1:20 PM
Ok, I guess it’s fall. Where the heck did our typical gorgeous Indian Summer go? (For those of you elsewhere, the Bay Area usually enjoys its best weather in the early fall. Just as everyone else in the country is resigning themselves to wool trousers and coats, we’re finally breaking out the linen.)
Well, the weather may be all messed up, but I’m not really complaining. It’s fun to have cooler weather when the fall produce starts coming, and plenty of excuses to try those autumnal recipes that have been waiting for their chance in the spotlight.
The farmer’s market this weekend was full of fabulous finds, including the white pomegranates pictured above (they didn’t taste like much, unfortunately.. but they were too gorgeous not to ogle) and some luscious heirloom apples. Even our friends at Primavera busted out with some less-summery breakfast options: chilaquiles verdes, plus pork picadillo-filled chiles rellenos made on a griddle — que macho! Unfortunately, we’d been out partying the night before and slept late, and they sold the last chile to the woman in front of me…
For our first fall recipe, we tried out the braised meatballs and gorgonzola polenta featured in the wine section of Friday’s Chronicle. Man, they were good — definitely one for the “keep” file. We also made a batch of chili from the Prather Ranch blog. Hmmm: It’s very tomato-y and the black beans are a strange choice for such a red bowl of red. This one reminded me why I always make half recipes of new things. Oh, well… maybe it will be good over burgers?
cooking, farmers markets, Mexican, shopping
4 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 09.11.06 1:01 PM
I never met a recipe I didn’t want to futz with. I suspect many people suffer from a similar affliction, but I had no idea how bad a case I had until yesterday.
I’m helping a friend test a recipe — which in turn is a mashup of two other recipes — for an article he’s writing, so I resolved to follow written directions to a T. Doesn’t seem so hard, does it? But it’s actually a lot more difficult than I’d imagined. No substiting homemade beans for canned? Damn. No leaving out ingredients that offend my purist sensibilities? Argh. And — because he specifically asked me to keep an eye out for missing steps and oversimplifications — no turning to the original recipes for clarifications on ingredients or descriptions. I think my brain might explode. At least the recipe allowed for roasting peppers on the grill, offering the standard broiler method as an alternate. Woo-hoo!
Are you a tinkerer, too?
cooking
6 Comments »
Posted by Cameron on 09.10.06 8:57 AM
I’ve been on an old movie binge for the past couple of months, but after trying and failing to make it all the way through “The Third Man” and “Some Like It Hot” over Labor Day weekend, I decided to give Cinema Appreciation a break for while. Instead, I queued up season two of The Wire, a police drama set in Baltimore.
I think that when there’s a scene in a screenplay that involves food, the writer might as well wave a big red flag and yell, “Character development!” Why else would anyone ever film one? Food scenes are messy and hard to coordinate, and it’s almost impossible for anyone to look good while they’re eating. But because of the intimacy and specificity of food, it’s a great way to establish a character or add context.
The second episode of the The Wire is titled “Collateral Damage,” but it might as well be called, “What’s to Eat?” Early on, two of the main police characters share a meal in an interrogation room. Once partners and still friends, McNulty and Bunk gnaw their way through a mess of crabs that McNulty caught while on duty in a patrol boat. Seafood is expensive, but if you have access and knowledge you can harvest your own, and the meal is sloppy, unpretentious, and obviously delicious. The shells are strewn in piles across a table covered with newspaper, washing up against a rack of cheap beer in cans. McNulty is the founder of the feast, and it’s at least partially an apology for having recently added to Bunk’s responsibilities. Bump is both fastidious and a connoisseur of carnal pleasures. At one point he corrals a crab body and, after razzing McNulty for letting it go to waste, dips his paw into the shell and dispatches a handful of guts, unselfconsciously licking his fingers clean. The entire process is quick, neat, and something that only Bunk could make look graceful.
The next food scene is set in the prison cell of a drug kingpin caught and sentenced at the end of the first season. When one of his foot soldiers visits from another part of the prison, Avon Barksdale offers him food from a spread of Kentucky Fried Chicken. The message is clear: Avon is in control and plans to stay that way. He has the contacts and money to make his stay at least slightly more comfortable. And, even though he has been sentenced to seven years in prison, he intends to find ways to shorten that time, and he is determined to live his life as normally as possible.
In the last food scene in the episode, we catch up with members of the stevedore union at their favorite bar at 9am after a spectacular booze-up the previous night. The dock workers huddle around the bar, nursing hangovers until one man shows up with a carton of eggs. The men crack raw eggs into glasses of beer and then gulp the mess down: breakfast and the hair of the dog in one go. This, we gather, is how they live — hanging on from paycheck to paycheck while the port dies around them.
movies & tv
Comments Off on They are what they eat
Posted by Anita on 09.08.06 12:13 PM
I’ll cut to the chase: I think Pearl’s — the newish SF outpost of a Mill Valley icon — has a lot of potential, especially if you order correctly. Someone’s obviously put a lot of thought into the menu, where you’ll find gourmet-ish upgrades like buffalo burgers and natural beef (for an extra $1.25-$1.50) and seasonal fresh-fruit shakes, alongside Pink’s-style gutbombs like The King: “A 1/4 pound burger crowned with a hot dog, cheddar, American cheese, and thousand island dressing.” Whoa.
The place is clean and crisp, without feeling sterile. Counter service was on the ball, and the prices seemed in line with similar joints: We paid a bit more than $20 for the two of us. You could see the fresh fruit for shakes in pourable containers in a little fridge near the register, and everyone backstage looked like they knew what the hell they were doing. They even offered frings, so I didn’t have to choose between two equally appealing side orders… sa-weet.
Unfortunately, I was so distracted by the surprise option of fries with rings that I didn’t specify what kind of cheese I wanted on my Pearl’s Deluxe, so I got some particularly nasty American technicolor-orange stuff. The theoretical 1/2-pound patty was flat, machine-made, and downright industrial. It came with a decent, but obviously store-bought bun, plus nice leafy lettuce, cardboardy tomato, and sliced onions. The meat was cooked to medium — as they said it would be by default — but tasted manky enough that I don’t think I’d dare order it again.
Cameron wisely opted for the natural-beef upgrade on his mushroom-bacon burger; his Jack cheese tasted a little less processed than the American, the ‘shrooms were good (although they paled in comparison to those at Joe’s), and the patty looked like it had been formed by human hands. Unfortunately, they’d cooked the living daylights out of it. Medium? Nononono… this poor patty was scorched to fare-thee-well-done. Still, it remained reasonably juicy and definitely worthy of another try.
How ’bout those sides? Both fries and rings were from a bag, but actually tasted like someone had bothered to find the best premade versions they could get, rather than the cheap, sugar-coated nasties you find most places. Similarly, Cam’s vanilla malt — although made with soft-serve ice cream — was actually creamy and malty, without the gloppy texture you usually find with extruded dairy.
Will we go back? Probably, yeah. But I’ll stick with the natural beef, make sure to specify real cheese, and ask for my burger to be cooked medium-rare.
Pearl’s Deluxe Burgers
780 Post Street (at Jones)
San Francisco, CA 94109
415.409.6120
downtown SF, meat, restaurants
Comments Off on Pearl’s of promise
Posted by Anita on 09.08.06 7:46 AM
I know, I know… not very creative. But even though I’m back in foggy ol’ SF, I feel like I’m permanently parched from the Vegas jaunt. And — as if I needed another excuse — it’s Mom’s favorite.
Gin & Tonic
Fill an 8-ounce highball glass 1/2 to 3/4 full of ice. Add 1.5 ounces good (but not great) gin, and top up the glass with tonic. Garnish with a wedge of lime, squeezed if desired.
Drink of the Week, drinks, family, recipes
9 Comments »
