We made a Fettuccine and Garbanzo soup from Molto Italiano. It called for a whopping 1 tsp. of saffron threads, which (of course!) gave it a lush, decadent flavor — even though the soup was entirely vegetarian — and turned the fettucine pieces a lovely shade of gold. It was very simple and tasty, although the quantity of pasta seemed way too generous; next time, I will reduce the pasta by half.
Finally got the Fernet Branca we needed to try the Porteño… my oh my, what a lovely cocktail.
It helps that it’s courtesy of my friend Murray, the best bartender in the universe. But I would love it anyway…
Jumping the gun on Mardi Gras a little bit, we made gumbo this weekend.I followed Mayhaw Man’s step-by-step from his eG foodblog, scaling down to about 1/3 of a recipe (4 chicken thighs and 13-oz package of Aidell’s andouille). Had to wing it a bit on the veggie ratios — it’s more of a pictorial than an actual recipe — but it turned out fabulously.
Another gumbo recipe said that you really want the veggies (onion, garlic, celery, pepper) to be really well chopped before adding them, and apparently using a food processor is more than OK in this case. I took that advice, and ended up with a gumbo with plenty of good mouthfeel and body.
Even with the scaled-down recipe, we had enough for 2 generous bowls last night, plus 3 lunch-size servings. We’ll definitely be adding this to the regular soup repetoire.
We had a lovely dinner at Mamacita for my birthday. The food was great, and the waitstaff was competent and helpful.
We started with an order of very good guacamole, then some chilaquiles. The latter was very spicy and a little odd — creamy chipotle sauce? — but reasonably tasty. I wouldn’t order them again, though. Good carnitas tacos, perfectly prepared Rancho Gordo frijoles de olla, and a surprisingly good bistek. We didn’t have room for dessert, not that they looked terribly interesting.
The server told us off the bat we’d probably only want 3 items for the 2 of us, so we weren’t surprised that we’d ordered too much food. Still, with 2 margaritas and 2 cervezas, the bill was really reasonable… somewhere in the $60-70 range. Considering the location and the level they’re playing at, we were very, very happy with the value.
I think the only downsides were the snotty hostess who kept talking to all the Marina chickies who came in after us before deigning to ask us what the hell we wanted, the clueless Marina clientele (I could almost hear them thinking “Ew, this isn’t like El Torito!”), the parking, and the lackluster margaritas.
We’ll definitely go back…
Mamacita
2317 Chestnut Street
San Francisco, CA 94123
415.346.8494
Last night, I made the world’s simplest Chinese soup: Egg Drop Soup.
Now that I know how easy it is, I’m sure I’ll make it a lot more often. Let’s see if I can resist the temptation to tinker with simplicity.
It took about 2 minutes… this was the sum total of my mise-en-place, not including 3 cups of stock.
The small dish is soy, a pinch of sugar, and a pinch of salt; the large one is simply a beaten egg.
(originally published as part of eGullet’s Culinary Memories of your Grandparents thread)
My paternal grandparents died when I was very young, so I have no memories of them. To hear my father tell it, though, I probably wasn’t missing much, culinarily speaking. They did live on a chicken farm on the outskirts of Monrovia, CA (near Pasadena), though, and that I would have liked to have seen.
My mother’s parents are a source of many food memories. They lived in Glendale, CA (northern L.A. county, near Burbank), so we got to see them quite a lot. My most vibrant food memory of G&G was their pantry, which consisted of 2-x-4s that Gramps had hammered in between the wall studs of the basement stairs. The wall was perfectly deep enough to hold a single row of cans and jars… it was great fun to explore!
My grams, a first-generation Italian-american was a good home cook; I still use her chicken stuffing recipe, and a few others that fit into the day-to-day, down-home American genre. I don’t have any of her Italian recipes, but I do have a few letters that her mother wrote to her when she was first married, nearly all of which end with a recipe for something she thought the newlyweds would enjoy. They’re written in a lovely phonetic Italian-English hybrid that never fails to bring me a chuckle.
Gramps was always something of a gourmet at heart. He loved Julia Child — I have his copies of Mastering the Art of French Cooking — and shopped at Trader Joe’s back when it was a single store with a funky selection of cheeses and wines. I also remember the aunts (including my mom) chuckling with amusement as he showed off the unglazed paving stones he’d used to line his oven for bread baking — this in the early 70s, when pizza stones weren’t yet something you could buy. After Grams passed away, my mom sent me to stay with Gramps for a week, probably over spring break. He made me tomato soup for lunch, from scratch… I’m ashamed to admit that I turned up my nose at the stuff, since it was nothing like the Campbell’s I was used to at home. (In my defense, I think I was about 6 or 7.)
Family holidays always started with hors d’oeuvres, known in our clan as “befores”… and Gramps usually brought them. The usual creamy dip with crudites (always including black olives for me), some cheeses, and ‘funny’ crackers.
Gramps was a bourbon drinker, and his kisses always tasted like Kentucky. It’s taken me a long time since his death to be able to bear the taste of bourbon — it’s just too closely tied to my memory of him.
I haven’t had time to download all the photos from our trip, but a couple of people have asked me about our experience with the Tsukiji fish market tour.
Nakamura-san and Yoshino-san speak fluent English, and they’re incredibly well-versed in the ins and outs of the market. They both used to work in Tsukiji for different wholesalers, and Yoshino-san lived in San Francisco years ago. I am sure that we saw things (like the uni showroom) that we would never have found on our own. Their explanations helped us understand the things we saw, rather than just being amused by the visual experience. If our guides didn’t know the answers to a question, they would ask the vendors and show genuine interest in the answers themselves.
The tour costs 7,500 yen (approximately $63/£35) per person. The only tricky part of the operation was the reservation, and even that isn’t hard. They’ve got major spam-blockers running on their email account, so you need to post their message board with your preferred date, and they will email you back.
The first morning, we ate at Sushi-sei, a traditional sushi bar in the outer market. We ordered the middle of the three set menus, and enjoyed everything very much. Nobody spoke any english, but it wasn’t a major problem… it just meant that we couldn’t chat with the sushi chefs! The second morning, Cameron went to Sushi-zanmai, a more-modern, casual sushi-place a couple of streets over. He said both were very good, but Sushi-sei was measurably better. (I, on the other hand, went to Yoshinoya!)
We ate a lot of soup in thailand… many were noodle soups, as one-dish meals, and we also had soup just about every night with dinner. Some of them were the hottest dishes of the evening!
Chiang Mai-Style Curry Noodles (Kao Soi) is actually more like a brothy noodle dish than an actual soup, but I loved them so much on the trip that I feel compelled to include a recipe.
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Update:I finally managed to scare up all the ingredients I needed to make Kao Soi! I pounded the curry paste this morning (and have the bright-yellow turmeric-stained digits to prove it).
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Update again: The kao soi turned out a bit too thick. It was nice, but it definitely didn’t qualify as a soup, or even “soup noodles”, so I thinned it with about 1 cup of chicken broth before refrigerating the leftovers.
At breakfast this morning, it was just like I wanted it.
Cameron was otherwise occupied yesterday, so I decided to head over to the East Bay and check out a couple of Thai stores in Berkeley. I wasn’t shopping for anything in particular yet, but I wanted to get a sense of what each store had, as I ramp back up to cooking Thai more often. Specifically, I wanted to know if I would be able to find Thai produce like young peppercorns, wild pepper leaves (bai chapoo), holy basil, pea eggplants and such.
Totally bypassing the theme of the afternoon, I started off the day with a stop at House of Chicken and Waffles (444 Embarcadero West, Oakland). I’d go into more detail here, but that’s a topic for another post. (Do you see my nefarious plan for blog domination taking shape? I knew you would.) Anyway, it’s probably a good thing that I was stuffed, or else I would have spent half the afternoon stopping at the taco trucks I passed along the way.
I hesitate to admit publically that I had never been to Berkeley Bowl (2020 Oregon Street, Berkeley), but I suppose I am among friends. I feel pretty safe in saying that this would have to be the best outpost that I’ve ever encountered for hard-to-find produce, including a wide variety of asian vegetables and ‘exotic’ citrus. Impressive bulk-foods section and competitive prices on everyday groceries, too. I wish I lived closer so I could bypass Whole Paycheck. Serious points off for the zoolike atmosphere and parking-as-combat — and remember, I was here on a Monday afternoon. God help you if you go on a weekend.
Next stop was Tuk-Tuk Thai and Asian Market (1581 University Avenue, Berkeley). They’ve got a pretty decent selection of thai foodstuffs in a clean, well-lighted store that won’t scare farangs. The size of a small supermarket, this place has nearly all of the ingredients you’ll need for a thai feast, mostly at prices that are competitive with Erawan and other local southeast-asian markets. (I found many things for less in the International Drive stores below, but you would have to make multiple stops in order to get everything you needed.) They have a small assortment of thai housewares, including special pans for kanom krok, and thai woodstoves!
There’s even a small boutique of hilltribe textiles at the front of the store, and a real tuk-tuk in the middle of the place, looking cleaner than you ever saw one in Bangkok. My first impression wasn’t all that good: the hot-food counter looked pretty sad when I was there (lunchtime on a Monday) — it’s pretty nervy calling it a food court! — and the produce section was abysmally empty and overpriced. You’ll need to stop by Berkeley Bowl on your way home: bird chiles and kaffir lime leaves are twice the price at Tuk-Tuk, and other, more exotic items are non-existent. Still, for packaged dry goods like noodles, curry pastes, and coconut milk, they’ve got you covered.
A couple of blocks further down University, I reacquainted myself with Erawan Trading Market (1463 University Ave). Their tiny storefront about the size of a walk-in closet stocking an amazing array of thai groceries, magazines, and videos. My motto here is: “If you don’t see it, ask” — This isn’t the sort of place that carries 25 bottles of each brand, so you might have overlooked it. Their produce selection wasn’t as good as I remembered it being 3 or 4 years ago, but the folks working there were just as friendly and sweet as ever. I think the free parking at the motel next door is a new addition. The only thing I saw here that I didn’t find elsewhere was Thai cardamom.
Deciding I had some more time to kill, I surfed over to Kasma Loha-unchit’s List of East Bay Markets with Thai Ingredients. I’m probably going to come in to work late on Friday and hit the Old Oakland Farmers’ Market, so I deliberately bypassed the Chinatown listings in favor of those under East Oakland.
First stop was Sun Hop Fat Supermarket (501 East 12th Street, Oakland). Recently relocated to the other end of its block, the new store is a warren of formerly-separate stores. One houses a pretty good selection of produce; another is the dry-goods section; the last is the butcher shop and fishmarket. Oddly enough, it was in the latter that I found the day’s best prices on coconut milk, both Mae Ploy and Chaokoh.
Next was Sontepheap Market (1400 International Blvd., Oakland), which Kasma lists as a 2-star market (excellent). I wasn’t all that impressed — their produce looked especially sad — but maybe I didn’t know what I was missing. They did have a fun little housewares section.
Two tiny shops further down International were a little more interesting. Lao Market (1619 International Blvd.) had a nice selection of produce, including wild pepper leaves and pea eggplants (no wing beans, alas). May Kong (1613 International Blvd.) is just 2 doors down, and seemed to have pretty good prices on dry goods, and stocked my favorite kind of Tianjin preserved vegetable, in the ceramic crock.
Closer to home: Today on my lunch hour I went to Battambang Market (339 Eddy Street, San Francisco) in the Tenderloin, where I got to see a shooting down the block. Three ambulances, eight cop cars, and a few dozen homeless/gawkers. Oh, and fresh turmeric, and cilantro with the roots on, too. I used to shop here for the things I couldn’t find at mainstream markets, and it (along with 99 Ranch in Daly City) will probably still be my go-to market for most things. I was sad to see that the formerly-decent market around the corner, variously known as Angkor Premiere Market or Tenderloin New Market (225 Leavenworth Street) has gone way downhill.
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Updated 4/07: A few dozen people a week wind up on this page when searching for Kanom Krok recipes. If that’s ywhat brings you here, my teacher Kasma Loha-unchit features a Kanom Krok recipe on her excellent site, Thai Food and Travel.
As promised, a wrapup of yesterdays trip to the House of Chicken and Waffles.
I’m about to commit blasphemy, but I think I actually like this place better than Roscoe’s. Cute decor with an air of space-age diner; bright colors and clean as a whistle.
I opted for the Angie’s Delight: 1 chicken breast, 1 waffle, plus grits.
The waffle was tasty, with a hint of spice; the chicken was nicely fried, then ‘smothered’ (actually dipped) in spicy chicken gravy. At first I thought I was going to have to ask for butter for my grits, but found a huge pool of butter lurking near the middle of the bowl… righteous!
Service was super-friendly, although it took more than 30 minutes to get my food (at 2pm… not exactly the lunch rush). And it’s not cheap: With a soft drink, my bill came to $11.
House of Chicken and Waffles
510.836.4446
444 Embarcadero West (near Jack London Square)
Oakland, CA
