Chowbacca!

Europa Plus

2013-05-19T10:35:00.001-07:00

Супер русский рынок! В Америке!

Some weeks ago I made "drunk plans with friends"* to go vinyl shopping on a recent Saturday having resurrected the house turntable using a rubber band and a dime to weigh down the cartridge. I've always been an electronics hacker ever since Spielberg teased every kid in my generation with the Speak & Spell that could talk to aliens in E.T. The Extraterrestrial.

To the great dismay of all of our parents. Of course, my father had other ideas, and soon I was not only repairing electronics that had "gone under the knife" but building radios and primitive circuit boards ("bread boards" as they were called).

That's how I came to know the Deth Vegetable who was a central figure in the early 1990s Boston hacker scene. We would meet monthly in a pizza parlor overlooking Battle Street and Harvard Square for 2600 meetings, sponsored by the magazine of the same name. Aprés meetings we would often descend on Newbury Comics or one of several great local record stores (like the gone but not forgotten Second Coming Records between Harvard and Central Square).

Death Veggie joined me first for the gym and later after we had scurried to our respective homes and showered, brunch at the Alembic then Amoeba. That's where I found this awesome Jeffrey Osbourne album that I picked up for my other comrade-in-hacking, Invalid Media:

"On the wings of love only the two of us together flying high..." only $1.99 can you believe it?

[ * "Drunk plans with friends" meaning you make up a plan in a bar after a few drinks, wherein half or more will forget or bail for some reason. ]

--

I extricated myself about about a half an hour later having spent less than $100. I found a patch of sidewalk to stand and watch panhandlers, gutter punks, tourists and shoppers mill about on Haight street.

Some indeterminate time later Veggie came out of the record store with two very large crates.

"I have a problem."

"This is why I used to only take cash into Amoeba. If I hit my limit, I was done, whether it was $50, $100 or $300."

And they say people like us don't buy music.

"Hey dude, you want to stop by the Russian deli?" asked Veggie, loading into his 1979 diesel Mercedes, a car large enough to support his comic-book super villain frame.

"In the Richmond?"

"The same."

Game on. Pickled herring, I'm coming for you.

--

Car parks you in Soviet Russia.

Unfamiliar pastries and packaged goods lined the shelves as Russian grandmothers and grandsons bought celebratory pastries, items for Orthodox mass, smoked dried fish and all sorts of pickles.

--

Russian was the primary spoken language throughout the store, the man at the register dropped right into English when he saw me, thankfully, since what Russian I do speak is too vulgar to share in mixed company. Some of my friends seem to have an ear for the language, I've learned to tune it out: generally if Russian is being spoken around me by my friends I assume it is at my expense.

As I was checking out I noticed Veggie was wearing a vintage USSR (CCCP) Olympic hockey team tee-shirt. He didn't realize that until he got into the car. Oops!

I left with some items familiar and some not. Salmon roe (labeled "ikura", the Japanese name, as well as the Russian equivalent in Cyrillic) for $30/lb, smoked herring, canned smelt, Ukrainian sour cabbage (which is district from German sauerkraut by adding shredded turnips and currants), pickled tomatoes and meat pelmenis were all items I have encountered. I rolled the dice on some Ukrainian pastrami and "rib bacon", double-smoked bone-in pork back.

Having blown my budget on LPs (which I would gladly list here if I knew it wouldn't bring down editorial brimstone upon my head), there were a lot of items that I didn't pick up at Europa Plus that I would have liked to.

So stay tuned as we will continue our adventures into this Western frontier of San Francisco's pastiche of culinary options.

When I got home I immediately toasted up some black bread (from the captivating red head at the bakery down the road), added a nice pat of butter and a generous dollop of salmon roe.

наздаровя!

--

Europa Plus
5350 Geary Blvd
San Francisco, CA 94121

Taqueria Los Coyotes

2013-05-18T13:24:00.001-07:00

If you live in San Francisco chances are you have passed Taqueria Los Coyotes dozens of times and may not have even known it was there.

I was in somewhat of a rush to make a connection via Richmond to Amtrak and the thought, perished quickly thankfully, crossed my mind to grab something either at the adjacent Burger King or McDonald's.

Luckily my programming kicked back in and my better angels kicked my inner devil's ass. "You're on 16th Street, idiot, get a taco!"

Situated on the corner of Hoff alley and 16th Street, between two produce bodegas, across from Wells Fargo and a mere skip from BART.

Of course, Los Coyotes is just one of many oft passed by gems that exist in a Mission District many fear is changing - for the worse; upscale bistros and the flavor-of-the-week posh retail stores squeezing out traditional cheap mom & pop affairs that cater to the local community.

Cheeky foodies (the Bi-Rite, coconut water and cardamom gelato-crowd) might be expected to keep this place held close to the vest (coy with Coyotes), but considering the brisk and multi-socio-economic lunch crowd last Friday this taco is out of the bag.

When I arrived, shortly before noon, local Mexican workers in groups of three and four were busy discussing the days affairs over platas y tacos, glass cans of Jarritos and "Mexicoke". A cook pulled freshly pressed sopé dough out of a mechanical press and onto a hot griddle.

Within minutes scores of office workers, locals, hipsters, cops and construction workers had lined up for lunch.

Soon, my order of tacos cabeza, lingua y al pastor* was ready, served on a plastic plate with grilled onions, chopped raw radishes, sliced cucumber and a lime. I added another fist full of radishes from the salsa bar plus a couple varieties of freshly made salsa.

The tacos come laid out on two warm, white masa harina tortillas almost assuredly produced mere miles away at one of the peninsula's many tortilla factories. Crispy, slow cooked meats were garnished with a generous handfull of raw white onions, cilantro, a molcajete style salsa picante and a light dusting of queso cotija (by request).

This is food made with pride and love and made fresh daily. While each item probably does not boast a pedigree comporting to the (finicky, arbitrary and unevenly applied) standards of the modern yuppie ("...where was the beef raised? Are these radishes organic?") the food is certainly far and away better (healthier, fresher and more ethical) than those fast food monsters down the street that momentarily appealed me in my haste.

All for about the same price.

Just say no to McNotFood.

[ * Cabeza - "head meat", beef cheeks, tendons, eyes and glands. Lingua - slow roasted tongue. Puerco al Pastor - slow roasted, smoked BBQ pork. ]

--

Taqueria Los Coyotes
3036 16th Street
San Francisco, CA

Cocktails: The Gagger

2013-05-17T14:04:00.001-07:00

[ Editor's note: It has been pointed out that Michael Ruhlman also has a Friday cocktail feature (more regular than ours, even). While we admire Ruhlman and of like minds when it comes to adult beverages, schmaltz, salt, our love of Cleveland and a great many other things, I would point out they neither he nor we have claim to the Friday cocktail. Friday is for cocktails, for all.

"You got to, man, this America." -The Wire ]

Take that, wicked strawberry!

"Look at the size of this strawberry," exclaimed a wide-eyed Tuula, Canadian expatriate and drinkstress at Bender's Bar & Grill and more recently Mission Hill Saloon.

"It's big enough to gag someone!" said someone at the bar.

"That's what she said," countered Tuula without skipping a beat, as if the moment were rehearsed, and offered me the fruit nestled in a bar napkin.

"Rainbow," she assured me, as I eyed the berry skeptically. If it's good enough for her kid, must be good enough for us bar rats.

I ate it, it was sweet and tart, not too much one or the other. And it was an impressively large berry (that's what I tell all the girls).

"Let's make a drink," I said, moving in for another.

The Gagger (Strawberry Old Fashioned):

1.5 ounces of whiskey (in this case, Maker's Mark).
1 large strawberry, stemmed and quartered, mashed with;
pinch of salt, pinch of bar sugar.
Teaspoon of agave syrup.
Three dashes of old-fashioned bitters.
Soda water.
Ice.

Mash berry with salt and sugar in a whiskey tumbler (A.K.A. a "fuck-it bucket"). Douse with bitters. Fill tumbler with ice. Pour in whiskey, top off with soda.

Let the soda water do the mixing.

--

Mission Hill Saloon
491 Potrero Avenue,
San Francisco, CA

Bender's Bar and Grill
806 South Van Ness,
San Francisco, CA

Rainbow Cooperative Grocery
1745 Folsom Street
San Francisco, CA

Porkpocalypse II: Caitlin's Potato Salad

2013-05-16T09:21:00.001-07:00

My roommate makes a dilly, tangy potato salad out of red potatoes that is a crowd pleaser.

She's available for catering. Look her up on Facebook.

Caitlin's Dilly Potato Salad:

5 lbs of boiled red potatoes, cut into 1" pieces.
1/2 cups of mayonnaise.
1/2 cups of buttermilk.
1 tablespoon of Dijon mustard.
1 cup of celery, chopped (I prefer to use only the hearts, leaves included).
1/2 large red onion, diced.
3-4 stalks of green onion, chopped.
Salt and pepper to taste.
Fists full of chopped, fresh dill (up to half a cup); or up to 1/4 cup of dry dill.

ETA:

The Chickens or the Eggs?

2013-05-15T11:07:00.001-07:00

Isn't it funny that, when GMO labeling is mentioned, companies bring up the added costs such labeling will pass to the consumer. Yet, when companies want to put a "throw out by" date on products to improve their bottom line you never hear a peep from either the companies or the people whose fears of spoilage are being played upon.

Kale, Beet Greens, and Bok Choy Kimchi Style

2013-05-14T10:01:00.002-07:00

So many of the foods that we love today came from the necessity of not wasting food before modern storage and refrigeration. Kimchi has the added advantage of being a fermented food, giving our guts some healthy bacteria in addition to its nutrients and to saving some cabbage for later.

I had some bok choy in the garden that was in need of eating or storing but I also had some kale and other greens. Hm. Beet greens, kale and bok choy in a kimchi style preparation might be alright and more interesting and nutritious than even the usual napa cabbage version. A Google said that others had tried kale kimchi but the greens had turned out chewy.

I knew that greens were being served all over and that meant that something was being done to please the genteel crowds for whom the nature of greens was too indelicate. I looked at what restaurants were doing with greens in salads and discovered a couple of different methods. One involved coating them in salt in the fridge and another involved massaging the greens with salt and an acid for a few minutes. Since part of the kimchi process involves salting the vegetables I combined the two. First I salted the greens in a colander and placed the colander in a bowl.

After I'd let the greens sit in kosher salt overnight in the fridge I massaged them in white wine vinegar and salt before rinsing them and coating them in Huy Fong's Sambal Oelek chili paste and, going a little further off of the traditional path, Basque fish sauce.

What to do next? Should I bury it? Should I put it on the counter? A little consult with the local weather, which was going to be hot, and a query to 99% Bittersweet told me to put that jar in the sun.

Bittersweet told me to watch for bubbles, which would mean that the fermentation had begun. The first bubbles arrived the following day. She also told me that more bubbles meant that the kimchi would be more sour. I wanted it a good bit sour so I let it go in the sun for five days.

When it was good and bubbly I tried it out.

It looked pretty and smelled great. Next I had to see how it tasted. The first bite was unfortunate. Being so close to the lid had imparted a metallic flavor that was not fun. Removing the piece of offending bok choy I eagerly pressed on.

The next layer was Kale. Would it be chewy? Metallic?

It was great. Salty, sour and oh-so-spicy hot. It was even a little sweet, which was likely the fish sauce talking, and the bite wasn't any chewier than the napa cabbage kimchi I'd known and loved. Next up were the beet greens.

They were just as delicious and not at all tough or chewy. I'd call this experiment a success. When I've finished with this batch I'm going to do a larger quantity with even more variety. Something so delicous and easy is alive with possibilities. There are hundreds of varieties of kimchi in the world. Make one to call your own.

And remember:

EAT KALE OR BE DESTROYED!!!

The FBI. In Color.

2013-05-13T09:05:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite SF Thai places, in their heyday, had a combo that couldn't miss with me. Duck in yellow curry and the old FBI: Fried bananas and ice cream. Recently I'd wanted to recreate the fried banana and ice cream part for the Wee Wonder but the recipes I saw seemed perhaps more authentic but too complicated. There had been something simpler about the flavor that I had remembered.

Then it hit me. Pancakes. It was pancake batter that those bananas were fried in. A quick Google and sure enough, there were recipes for FBI with pancake batter and cinnamon. I tried it out and it worked.

Cinnamon, by the way, is great in pancakes too.

To make fried bananas yourself just make pancake batter, from scratch or a box, stir in some cinnamon, and cut up a banana into one-inch-ish chunks. Heat oil to 350 degrees. I used a combination of peanut, coconut and canola. Dip the banana into the batter and coat. Then dip the banana chunks a couple at a time into the oil. Pull them out quickly to avoid overcooking and place on a towel to drain off some oil. Serve while hot with ice cream.

The ice cream that I'd had on hand was vanilla but coconut would be even better. I might try messing with the seasoning in the coating too. How might nutmeg be? Or five spice powder?

I'll try the more traditional version some day, but for now it's quite a treat. Now I have to try and duplicate that yellow curry duck.

Moscow & Tbilisi Bakery Store

2013-05-12T10:55:00.000-07:00

Завтрак для чемпионов!

The sign was stark and plain: Russian Bakery. It was roughly a block from a shuttered movie theatre under grey skies and rapidly blowing, low hanging fog.

Forget the usual joke ("...in Soviet Russia sign hangs you?"), this had a more Gorky Park, The Russia House feel to it (William Hurt or Michelle Pfeiffer grimmacing against the grey skies... and Sean "I'm a Russian sea captain, as you can tell by my thick Russian brogue" Connery who is skipper to Красный Октябрь in March of 1990 and courting Katya Orlova in Moscow in December of that same year (on the big screen at least).

Surely as stunning as the fictional Katya was the comely red-head working the counter at the Moscow & Tbilisi Bakery Store in San Francisco's Richmond district.

I asked her what her favorite pastry was, motioning toward the piroshkies (not to be confused with perogies, a dumpling, piroshkies are like meat and cheese stuffed savory fried doughnuts). "This one, with meat and cheese."

I just wanted to prolong the encounter, so I could smile and nod and gaze into her captivating green eyes. Maybe she was Georgian (country, not US state), because she encouraged my friend to buy a quart of Georgian lentil soup.

Wherever she was from must be a land of magical, beautiful green eyed people silhouetted against grey slavic skies. The appeal of Lyndhurst, Ohio all of the sudden made sense, as it could be the scene of Cold War era thriller: grey, green and blue with towering public housing and huddled бабушки trudging through sleet and snow.

That said: just like the the tired cliché of "car drives you" the idea that eastern European women are warty, lumpy hags is a bon mot that should have died with the Berlin Wall. Slavic women are beautiful, and I am a fan.

I foresee having a sudden need of a loaf of black bread every week.

--

The piroshkies pervade everything they touch with the magical scent of onions cooked in schmaltz. I made quick work of the meat and cheese piroshky as recommended by our green eyed Georgian (or Lithuanian, or Latvian, or Ukrainian, or Uzbeki, or Polish or even Russian). *

[ * No, those are not all the Baltic states. Read a book. ]

A laminated puff pastry type dough with a similar schmaltzy meat and cheese filling accompanied salad for dinner (parsley and carrot with cider vinegar).

I picked up a quart of Ukrainian borscht and the ubiquitous loaf of black bread that would feature heavily in my breakfast of black coffee and salmon roe.

I veered away from the numerous sweets. One could fall into a diabetic coma just walking into the place.

The cold fog of the Richmond immediately made me yearn for the hearty eastern European soul food I grew up with on the shores of Lake Erie, and I thought of the words of Captain Ramius telling Jack Ryan how he would fish with his uncles and grandfather on a similar river, then, waxing nostalgic:

Captain Ramius: "... and the sea will grant each man new hope, as sleep brings dreams of home." Christopher Columbus.

Jack Ryan: Welcome to the New World, Captain.

--

Moscow & Tbilisi Bakery Store
5540 Geary Blvd
San Francisco, CA 94121‎

Accidentally Like a Pot-Sticker

2013-05-11T10:01:00.003-07:00

Red Jade pot stickers, among the best in the city of SF.

I'm months behind in my reading of the New Yorker, and the article I'm currently reading is called "Music To Your Ears" by Adam Gopnik.

Part of the article, which is rather technical, tries to address how the ear actually hears music - is it art? Or an artificial form on communication not unlike language? Many of the components of music do not exist in nature: harmony, melody; even notes (as understood in the Western musical canon) are rare to find.

"The two expressive dimensions whose force in music Levitin (a music producer and professor at McGill University) had measured and made mechanical were defections from precision. Vibrato is a way of not quite landing directly on the note; rubato is not quite keeping perfectly to the beat. Expressiveness is error."

This was a revelation, and got me to thinking immediately about what I had eaten for dinner: pot stickers.

--

Pan-frying a small serving for lunch.

On one hand there is a school of thought in "professional cooking" that seeks to train cooks to produce the exact same dish over and over - and there is utility to this, certainly.

However taken to it's extreme, sameness in cooking leads inevitably to mechanization of cooking, interchangeable parts, a sort of horrific Henry Ford vision of food as assembly line: the McDonaldization of food.

The pot sticker (simplified Chinese: 饺子; traditional Chinese: 餃子; Japanese: 餃子(gyōza); Vietnamese: bánh chẻo; Nepali: म:म: or ममचा) is a humble dumpling and, thankfully, no two are ever exactly alike.

The pot sticker surely came to being on accident: a dumpling braised in water or broth until the liquid disappears, burning the bottom of the dumpling as it scorches against bare metal.

It is also my standard barer for the mark of an acceptable Chinese restaurant (paging chef Danny Bowien, you would instantly be my hero).

Naturally they are not too difficult to make at home.

--

Wonton Gourmet, Cleveland

If you live in a city with a large enough Asian population you will likely be able to find wonton wraps fairly easily (possibly on the supermarket shelves).

You want round wraps, like these: http://www.nasoya.com/products/asian-style-wraps/round-wraps.html - coming in packages of a few dozen to over 100 wraps per package.

After opening, if you do not use all of them, wrap with a damp paper towel and place that in a resealable plastic bag. Use within a week.

Basic Pork and Shrimp Pot Sticker Stuffing:

1 lbs ground pork.
1/2 lbs peeled, deveined shrimp (grind at home in a food processor).
1 cup of chiffonade of Napa cabbage that has been rinsed, salted, and drained (pressed) of excess moisture.
3-4 green onions, chopped.
1 teaspoon of brown sugar, agave syrup or brown rice syrup.
1 tablespoon of kosher salt.
1 teaspoon of ground white pepper.
Optional 1 teaspoon of ground "pink peppercorn".

Mix and make a small patty to fry up in a pan to test for seasoning. Adjust sugar/salt as needed.

This recipe assumes a 3" diameter round pot sticker. If you are using the smaller, square wonton wraps then halve the amount of stuffing.

Wet edges of your wonton wrap with water. Place 1 teaspoon of the mixture in the center.

Fold over the wrapper, carefully pushing out any air that may be trapped.

Crimp the edges*.

[ * Or don't. I haven't mastered this yet, but when I do, I promise I'll post a video. Otherwise, look online. You can't go wrong with Martin Yan. ]

Arrange on a sheet pant dusted with cornstarch or rice flour to prevent sticking and allow to air dry before cooking in batches.

Vegan Pot Stickers, the Dry Duxelle:

1 shallot.
3 cups of chopped button or crimini mushrooms.
1 cup of chopped shiitake mushrooms.
Optional: dry porcini mushrooms, chopped.
Sliced canned water chestnuts (or fresh if you can find them!), drained and chopped.
3-4 chopped green onions.
Optional: 1 egg (no longer vegan, oh well).
1 teaspoon of sugar, rice syrup or agave syrup.
2 teaspoons of kosher salt.
1/2 teaspoon of crushed white pepper.

Cook shallot and mushrooms and a pinch of salt over medium heat until dry. Remove from heat, add remaining ingredients.

Pot Sticker Preparation, the American Way:

1 searing hot #9 Lodge cast-iron pan.

I don't own a wok (currently), nor do I have the BTUs (British Thermal Units) to power one properly. I do have a cast-iron, which is both a "non-stick" surface when properly seasoned (as is a wok), but give nice "wok hei" to the end product by transferring lots of nice charred carbon bits to the dumpling.

Heat the cast iron. Add a small amount of fat (this is a perfect application for duck fat, or more traditionally pork lard) and arrange dumplings flat side down.

Add a small amount of water or stock, about 1/3-1/2 cup, and cover with lid for about 4-5 minutes. Then uncover and allow liquid to boil off completely.

Dumplings will release as pan cools, using a metal spatula.

Basic Dumpling Dipping Sauce:

2 tablespoons of soy sauce.
2 tablespoons of rice wine vinegar.
1 chopped scallion.
1 teaspoon of dark sesame seed oil.

Of course there are a million dipping sauces in the naked city. The components I like are salty, sweet, sour and savory (sesame seed oil is full of that good "umami"). Try youzu sauce, lime juice, simple vinaigrettes, soy and chili paste, vinegar and chili paste, etc, etc.

--

Red Jade
245 Church Street
San Francisco, CA

Wonton Gourmet & BBQ
3211 Payne Avenue
Cleveland, Ohio

Friday Cocktail Bonus: Cardamom Old Fashioned at BUILD Pizzeria, Berkeley, CA

2013-05-10T17:16:00.001-07:00

I've been liking this Friday Cocktail feature and decided to do a little bonus for the West Coast folks. I asked my friend Jay Crabb of BUILD Pizzeria in Berkeley about one of his favorite cocktails and to tell me a little about BUILD. Here's what he had to say about the cardamom old fashioned pictured above. Take it away, Jay:

Single Barrel Bourbon, a blend of bitters and sugar. We combine the cardamom and sugar element together using a cardamom tincture added to sugar syrup (sugar and water). The drink is stirred over ice to chill it, and then served either "up" in a coupe glass or "on the rocks." If you choose for it to be served on the rocks, we offer regular cubed ice, or we have the option of a large, hand-carved ice sphere (we call it SFERA GRANDE ICE) for an additional $1.50. The hand-carved ice chills the drink without over diluting. It can be re-used 2 to 3 times because it melts so slowly. The cocktail is finished with a large orange peel. The oils from the orange zest add a layer of complexity to the drink.

A note on the hand-carved ice: we pick up large blocks of crystal clear ice from an ice company in San Francisco each week. We then cut down these large blocks into smaller squares using a chainsaw. We then use a bread knife to carve the block into a sphere. Pretty cool process!

All of our cocktails are hand-crafted using fresh, often times locally sourced ingredients. Our bar prominently features locally distilled spirits from artisanal producers. We have an extensive whiskey, gin, and amaro portfolio, a great happy hour, 12 wines on tap, and 16 craft beers on tap. We offer wood-fired pizzas, and guests have the option of ordering off of a set, specialty pizza menu or building (hence the name BUILD) pizza."

We currently offer 11 different labels of Amaro with more to come in the next several weeks and an Amaro Flight in the works for our Bar Menu. A great happy hour. Hand-crafted cocktails created by myself and Scott Beattie (famed mixologist and author of the book Artisanal Cocktails). 16 craft beers on tap and 12 wines on tap. And of course, some truly delicious pizzas!

Cheers,

Jay

BUILD Pizzeria

2286 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, CA

http://www.buildpizzeria.com
Tuesday-Sunday 5:30-10:30

Happy Hour weekdays 4-6

$3 Craft Beers and 20% off cocktails

Friday Cocktail: Tee Many Martoonis

2013-05-10T13:14:00.001-07:00

Poke all of the fun you'd like at the world's mixologists, but at least making their own bitters and brandied cherries requires some effort, unlike the slacker bartenders of old who, apparently, just switched out components of various drinks and passed around the same old names like so many cases of herpes. Here at Chowbacca! we're not standing for it. Nor are we sitting or falling down for it.

How many "martinis" are there? How many "Manhattans"? I've covered examples of both on this blog and now here is an adult beverage that might make things a little more confusing: The Martini Rossi Rosso, which is ... are you ready? A VODKA MANHATTAN. Sort of.

Created, I've read, at La Bottega in NYC and named for the ingredient Martini brand sweet vermouth, and not a proper martini, this cocktail can be made with any old sweet vermouth. Since you'll want some flavor you won't be getting from the vodka I'd suggest skipping the Martini brand and using either Carpano Antica or Punt e Mes.

What's in it?

4 1/2 Ounces Vodka

1 1/2 Ounces Sweet Vermouth

1/8 Ounce Orange Bitters

1 Orange Rind Twist

The creators call for a shake, but I say stir. Pour the results into a chilled glass and add the twist. Like many less-than-creatively-named cocktails, it is also delicious.

Frankie's Brandied Cherries from Art of the Bar

2013-05-09T13:03:00.001-07:00

Cherries are back and it's time to make my Manhattans sing with another batch of brandied cherries. You can make some too.

Full of delicious cocktail recipes, beautiful photography and bar knowledge, Art of the Bar is a great and useful coffee table book by the bartenders who helped put San Francisco's Absinthe on the cocktail map in addition to the culinary. It also includes some great garnish suggestions including my favorite brandied cherry recipe as you'll see below.

I dialed down the recipe for a pound of cherries. If you like this recipe you should get a copy of the book. There are some truly tasty drinks in its pages. Did I mention that you should buy this book?

Da pits

Simmering

The right price

I've used apple brandy for this recipe and it turned out great. This time out I just went with the old Korbel. You could use something pricier, but I can't see any difference in flavor being worth the extra money. You are mixing it with water and cooking it, after all.

Ready to garnish

Watch for a new cocktail recipe this Friday! Tomorrow!

Mango and Avocado Salsa

2013-05-08T08:01:00.000-07:00

Playing around with strawberry avocado salsa recently made me miss my old favorite mango avocado salsa. That, and the abundance of ripened mangos and avocados in the house. The version pictured is missing the Jalapeños because, well, the Wee Wonder's aversion to spicy food. Next time I'm going to try it with pink peppercorn. I'll let you know.

One mango, skinned and diced
One avocado, (Haas or Pinkerton), skinned and diced
One Jalapeño, seeded and diced
1/4 Medium Onion, chopped
The juice of two small limes
Fresh cilantro, chopped
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
Kosher salt

Put the cilantro in the olive oil while you prep the rest. Then mix it all together in a bowl and let it sit a while before serving. I like mine over pork chops or tenderloin. It also goes well with seafood.

Recipoos: Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes

2013-05-07T08:54:00.000-07:00

Rachellle B couldn't be bothered to pick up some Irish whiskey. Lynchburg Land Mine, y'all?

First of all, let me mention, again, that one of the things that I loathe about the vast majority of home cooks and home cook/food bloggers is their "this thing that thing" mash up crap. You know, unimaginative types who confuse mashups for creativity. Mash ups are not creativity. Mash up foods are what corporations do in order to give the illusion that they are full of fresh ideas and innovation and food bloggers do because they're boring. Taco Pizza? Why? A hamburger pizza, a pizza hamburger, a hamburger pizza bagel, hamburger pizza bagel sliders ... it's all the same crap. Make a good pizza. Make a good burger. Make a good taco and please leave the noble bagel out of your infantile meddling. Spaghetti in a pan? No. Why do you hate spaghetti? If you're mimicking the desperate acts of corporations you aren't creative, you're a marketing victim.

I'm not looking at you, avocado fries. Deep frying things into a more delicious state is genius. Pizza burgers and burger pizzas make a foul mockery of both foods. The turduken was more innovative. Deep fried? Even more so.

Secondly, IRISH CAR BOMB CUPCAKES??? Are you fucking kidding me? It isn't bad enough that some insensitive ass hat came up with a bile-flavored-get-drunk-quick-shit-shake of a drink and then named that mess after something that destroys lives, but then you thought "gee, that would be a fun CUPCAKE"??? Seriously?

If I told you I'd come up with this great drink called a Boston Marathon Pressure Cooker you'd break a fucking nail typing your scorn into the comments section as you soaked up your righteous tears with a flag. My big jerk face would be all over Facebook faster than you can hit "like" because you hate cancer. But since you don't live in Ireland, and don't know anyone in Ireland, and most of all because it didn't happen in AMERICA, who fucking cares. Right? "It's fun. Don't be so stuck up!"

Why not whip up some Legless Vietnamese Orphan Cupcakes, you thoughtless ghouls? I'll bet that your Iraqi Drone Strike Muffins will be a real hoot at the next ... wait. To what, exactly, kind of occasion do you bring these cupcakes? Baby showers? Sweet 16? Office parties? Wakes? No, wait, there it is in the Smitten Kitchen ... ugh ... comments section where it all began. Superbowl parties. Of course. Where the lowest common denominator gathers to get shitty. That's your place to shine, cupcake jerks. Let's just hope that no one brings a truck bed full of fertilizer to your next tail gate. Superbowl Massacre Muffins could be the hit of some other country's bake sale. That is, if there's another country full of thoughtless drunkard bakers like you.

In conclusion, shame on you, and you, and you, and you, and all of you. Get a clue. Better yet, get some compassion. Whether you drink the swill or eat the cupcake you're an asshole.

Just Talkin' Bout Tilapia

2013-05-06T09:12:00.001-07:00

As I write this, surely someone is thinking to themselves: "we should hike the price of tilapia."

Tilapia is a name that can apply to dozens and dozens of similar species that are laterally compressed fresh-water (mostly) vegetarians that grow quickly and have a good yield when prepared for sale in the fish market.

The group of fish labeled tilapia originates in Africa but has been successfully farmed elsewhere.

The meat is extremely lean and had been considered an undesirable fish until recently when improved farming techniques coupled with increased consumer concerns about fish sourcing lead to an uptick in the fish's popularity.

Some folks take umbrage at what they consider the blandness of the fish. In my mind this reminds me of the marketing slogan "the chicken of the sea." It occurs to me that anyone swayed by that likes neither chicken nor seafood.

I like tilapia, and I think it has a lot of character. Moreover, I think there are endless applications that can be applied to the fish.

I set about to make fish tacos for dinner. I spotted a bag of raw almonds some shopper had abandoned on top the glass deli case at Duc Loi. I knew what I had to do: dust chunks of tilapia with ground almonds and flour.

One filet of tilapia could easily make dinner for four people, but me and my friend made quick work of that filet before I could think to photograph them. (For the record, about 50/50 finely ground almonds to all-purpose flour, and a dash of kosher salt).

The second filet (by the way - total cost for two filets, about 2.3 lbs of fish, $5.40-something) was dusted with flour and the left over dry-rub from Porkpocalypse II.

Fried Tilapia Fillet:

1 tilapia filet, cut into roughly 1" pieces (or longer strips for the thin dorsal segment).
1/3 cups of a fry-mix: almond flour, flour and salt, flour and BBQ dry rub, rice flour, chickpea flour, etcetera...

Dump raw fish pieces in a stainless steel bowl with the fry rub and toss to coat evenly.

I'm frying my fish today in a 2 quart saucier with about 3/4 of a cup of "mystery meat fat": the saved fat from chickens, beef, pork or duck that has been rendered out, strained and reserved in a lidded glass jar.

Heat oil until it just begins to smoke very slightly then reduce heat to low. Add 3-4 pieces of fish at a time and adjust the heat back to medium-low. Cook pieces for about 3-4 minutes at a time, turning once or twice to brown evenly.

The fat will be very foamy so be careful to keep an eye on it.

Remove pieces to a wire rack and salt lightly.

I like to dust zucchini squash with any left-over fry rub and fry those up too.

This is great on brown rice, or on top of a brothy bowl of noodles (Asian preparation) or with corn tortillas for fish tacos (Cinco de Mayo edition). Serve on a buttered, grilled hot dog bun with cole-slaw and hot sauce and you got yourself a stateless tilapia po' boy.

--

Duc Loi Supermarket
2200 Market Street
San Francisco, CA

Your Ultimate Chowbacca! Cinco de Mayo Party Kit

2013-05-05T11:32:00.003-07:00

At Chowbacca! we have a lot of fun with Hallmark and beer company holidays, (nothing holy about them unless you worship the almighty dollar, folks). However, we're also not ones to spoil a party. So, here are some ideas for your Cinco de Mayo celebration whether you are ambitious or lazy.

Let's start with the ambitious options. First off, yet another Not-A-Manhattan (pictured above) courtesy of liquor.com:

Distrito Federal (Tequila Manhattan)

2 Ounces Reposado Tequila

1 Ounce Sweet Vermouth

2-3 Dashes Orange Bitters

Lime Twist

I made the one in the pic last night and it was tasty. Feeling more like a margarita?

Try your hand at a variety of margaritas perfected by some of our favorite San Francisco bartenders with A Story of Four Margaritas.

Need Something a little fruitier? Más fruta!

With the drinking should come the eating. Tired of tacos y burritos? Why not make pozole?

Not feeling ambitious? "Screw tradition, let's get drunk?" Chowbacca! has you covered like a serape, honkies y honkitas!

How about a Gringo-Rita, gringo?

Got a blender? Grab some sorbet and crank out some Lazy Ritas!

Yes, you get to eat too. How about some quick, easy and unauthentic chips and dip? Or, if that's too much work, there's always meat in a bag.

Happy Cinco de Mayo to anyone of Mexican heritage among our readership, (especially those from Puebla)! To the rest of you: Party responsibly, culture Borg!

Cinco De Mayonnaise: Chips for Dips

2013-05-04T08:09:00.002-07:00

Leave it to privileged caucasian Americans and their beer companies to turn someone else's commemoration of the causes of freedom and democracy into yet another drunkards' carnival. I suppose that the co-opting of of Cinco de Mayo was inevitable since by May 5th it has been weeks since the streets were fetid with fratbilly puke following the shamrock shit shake of St Patrick's Day. In the spirit of "diversity means dressing up as a stereotype of another culture and putting on a drunken shitshow" I present to all of you honkies y honkitas something to put into your stomachs tomorrow besides mixto tequila and cheap beer.

You start with tortillas. Corn. Flour. Whatever they have at the store. Just be sure to get the smaller ones you'd use for tacos if you could make a taco. NO, not the curvy, crunchy ones. The flat, floppy ones. Cut them like little slices of pizza and put them on an oiled cookie sheet you borrowed from your mom. While you do this your oven should be heating to 350 degrees. No, not the microwave.

Next you'll need to oil up the top side of the chips with a combination of canola oil and lime juice. I have this handy spray thingy for that purpose. You can brush it on, lightly, if you have a food-safe brush. If not, just rub a little on with a paper towel or something. No paper towels? You can get those from your mom too. And don't forget, Mother's Day is coming up. No, you shouldn't dress like your mom and get drunk.

If you don't already have Lawry's Seasoned Salt around the frat, get some. Mom might have that too. Sprinkle it on your chips until they look like the picture at the top of the page.

Put the baking sheet of chips in the oven for 7-15 minutes. The chips are done when they are crisp but not burned. Pay attention.

Finally, the dip. I KNOW that you have sour cream, mayonnaise and cheap taco sauce in the fridge. Mix them together in a bowl. Put that bowl next to a bowl filled with your chips. Open some beers and hope that a few ladies show up. Eat.

Does this picture look blurry?

Have a safe and happy Cinco de Mayonnaise. Party responsibly, culture Borg.

Friday Cocktail: Gringo-rita

2013-05-03T12:12:00.002-07:00

Tin lime press, the only way to juice.

Look people, it's hot. I mean, really hot in SF. I know, I grew up in Cleveland, I know from hot. But it's like, 90ºF here, which never happens here in May. It's 100ºF in the apartment. Allow me then to basically phone in this post. Here's my mark-up notes:

cesar chavez
non-organic strawberries are bad
mexican independence is in september
cinco de mayo is for "high fivin' mother fuckers"

I was going to wax political about Cesar Chavez and the plight of migrant workers. I should leave it to people who have more of a stake. Needless to say, the food you eat every day is picked by people who some folks in this country are eager to kick out, but are also unwilling to pay fair wages for the work. So, remember that when you tuck into a bowl of cherries next time.

Second, do not ever buy non-organic strawberries. They are loaded with toxins - pesticides, pollutants, ground water. Capillary action pushes all that crap right out to the berry, where it concentrates. Eating commercial strawberries is like licking the floor of a pesticide factory. Organic only, and that should be a general rule but I ain't made of money either so, you know... But I make no exceptions for strawberries. *

Cinco de Mayo celebrates an unlikely victory in Puebla, Mexico against the French on the 5th of May (naturally) in the Battle of Puebla in 1862. This is not, repeat, not Mexican Independence Day (September 16). It is mostly celebrated in Puebla and not as much in the rest of Mexico but for some reason it's a huge deal in America, where frat boys are given an excuse to guzzle Cuervo Gold and well, do as frat boys will do.

Speaking of, here's Michael Shannon reading the now famous "Delta Gamma" letter: http://FunnyOrDie.com/m/7yruhttp://FunnyOrDie.com/m/7yru

I'm going to make myself some blender drinks and stay indoors, far away from the fray. You people scare me, especially on alcoholidays. Chowbacca! has waxed philosophical on this subject here and here and here.

Drink responsibly, and get off my lawn!

Gringo-rita:

2 ounces 100% agave tequila blanco.
1 ounce of triple sec.
Juice of one lime.
5-7 whole frozen organic strawberries.
Fist-full of rough chopped cilantro leaves and stems plus a leaf to garnish. **
1 teaspoon agave syrup or honey (adjust as needed).
Optional: splash of orange or pineapple juice.

I'm using El Jimador, the cheapest tequila I could find at the posh 26th and Guerrero Market on the border of Noe Valley, Glen Park and the Mission. They have organic frozen strawberries - something I wasn't guaranteed at Duc Loi despite it's move to cater to "that crowd."

Also, I was in the area to visit my buddy Steph at the Dovre.

Half fill a pint glass with ice, half with the frozen strawberries. Dump into a larger vessel such as a large metal cocktail shaker.

Add remaining ingredients and hit that with the stick blender until it is smooth.

If you must salt your rim, consider using a flavored salt: salt with lime zest, salt with cayenne pepper and sugar, smoked salt, and so on. Personally, I frown on the idea.

[ * This claim is apparently more controversial than I expected, however I choose to play it safe. ]

[ ** I like cilantro because it lends a nice herbal, floral note. Some folks don't care for it. You can try mint or basil, or leave it out entirely. Just trying to expose you folks to new ideas. ]

--

Post script:

Flipping around cable TV at 1:30AM looking for something to watch while all the fans in the apartment circulate some cool air so I can finally sleep.

I came across an old favorite of mine, "Lone Star" by John Sayles. The film opens with a skeleton found buried in the sands of an abandoned Army firing range, murdered. Sheriff Sam Deeds is tasked with solving the crime, and in so doing digs up many more figurative skeletons in a small dusty Texas border town.

Sayles expertly navigates the intricacies of border town politics in this film. The conflicts that arise between settler and indigenous peoples are themes that can often be found in Sayles films: Silver City, The Sunshine State and even The Brother From Another Planet (okay, the last one is stretching the metaphor, but you get the idea).

Watch it, it's got a wicked plot twist at the end.

Parts Known

2013-05-02T05:52:00.000-07:00

Sundays at 9PM, after your folks have gone to bed. On CNN, in case you forget.

At first glance, if it weren't for the CNN in the lower corner, one might think that Zero Point Zero produced "Parts Unknown" was simply a new episode of "No Reservations", Anthony Bourdain's previous ouvre on Scripps Network's The Travel Channel.

That series' seven season run ended last year in a flame-out with a kerfuffle between the network and it's now estranged star over a car endorsement the star insists he never made. Suffice it to say, chef Tony will be ordering the Rolls Royce of margaritas from now on.

I flipped over to CNN (perhaps for the first time in the history of my cable receiver) to watch an episode, but was instead greeted by the yearly high fives and glad-handing White House Press Correspondent's Dinner: an anual parading of news "celebrities" and "journalists" (a term that can only be applied to the uncool PBS, NPR and Al Jazeera tables these days, echoing host Conan O'Brien's "high school cafeteria" metaphor).

A tony affair to be sure, featuring catered banquet food, booze and winking, clannish guffaws like this knee-slapper: "...if the president laughs, everyone laughs. If the Fox News table laughs, a little girl just fell off her bike...".

The "doctors" mingle with the "patients" and everyone has a good laugh.

The only reason this event is on anyone's radar is because of Stephen Colbert's scathing performance during the 2006 event in which he bravely eviscerated both press and pol alike in a speech that deserves eternal fame:

Of all the gaffes in recent presidential history, failing to properly vett the host of the dinner will not be one repeated any time soon.

Following the Correspondent's Dinner coverage, CNN reran the episode where Bourdain visits Colombia. I took notice when Bourdain, engaging his Colombian counterpart on the subject of the cocaine trade, summarizes several keys points the mainstream media (which, I suppose, Bourdain now is a member of in good standing) are too spineless to discuss: the war on drugs is a failure and a waste of money, and causes irreparable damage to the Colombian countryside and people.

The idea is entertained that many of Colombia's problems would clear up if the war on drugs were to be called off, something Bourdain dutifully parrots "will never ever happen." Sadly, Bourdain may be right, and Bourdain is no tea-totaler nor moral hand wringer on the subject, himself a former crack-cocaine addict. "I'm with you, but it will never happen. The US will never allow it."

Commercial break, and we're back: eating street food in one of Bogata's mercados. "Hang over food," repeated for emphasis, "I know hangover food." We know you know, Tony.

Bourdain meets up with acclaimed author Hector Abad whose recent memoir, "Oblivion," is about the author's murdered activist father. They sit down for tamales stuffed in banana leaves.

The subject of the drug war comes up again.

Regional and local politics are discussed, along with past wars and the future of Colombia.

Abad, whose father was killed asking "for clean water, a glass of milk, an arepa for every child," has only questions, but no answers. Still, the questions are being asked, and I'd rather it be by Tony Bourdain than dreamy airhead Anderson Cooper.

--

Compare Colbert's performance at the Correspondent's Dinner to Bourdain's introduction to the world-at-large in his 1999 essay published in the New Yorker, "Don't Eat Before Reading This."

A few years ago, I wasn’t surprised to hear rumors of a study of the nation’s prison population which reportedly found that the leading civilian occupation among inmates before they were put behind bars was “cook.” As most of us in the restaurant business know, there is a powerful strain of criminality in the industry, ranging from the dope-dealing busboy with beeper and cell phone to the restaurant owner who has two sets of accounting books. In fact, it was the unsavory side of professional cooking that attracted me to it in the first place.

Let's just hope that Bourdain has the good sense to beg off any invites to next year's Correspondent's Dinner; on the same hand, let's hope he can control his rage (which is mighty and oft justified) better than cast-aside former opinion-maker Keith Olbermann who like Bourdain was unafraid to shed light on the unseemly underbelly of their respective professions (restaurants and cable news, both replete with scum, critters and varmin).

Bourdain has signed on for another season of The Taste, thank the TV gods.

Olbermann writes an excellent blog about baseball.

Slim's - Built To Spill

2013-04-30T21:07:00.000-07:00

Dedicated to the memory of Dr Albert Hofmann.

Boz Scaggs owns Slim's, now in it's 25th year, and is a co-owner of the Great American Music Hall.

Like the Great American Music Hall, you can buy a "dinner" ticket for usually around $25 on top of the price of general admission for the privilege of sitting in a reserved balcony section. This includes salad, an entrée and dessert.

We were seated, presented with a menu printed on thick stock paper and asked for our choice of dressing (always ranch). I scanned the menu - something with chicken, roasted tri-tip, fish and chips and cheese ravioli with marinara. Sorry, vegans, nothing for you.

I picked the fish and chips, my date the tri-tip.

I should have ordered the tri-tip - juicy and medium-rare, with roasted potatoes.

The chips were hand cut, skin on and insufficiently crispy. The fish, a single filet of what looked to be tilapia, was fried with a cornmeal crust. I don't mind the choice of fish, but I would have preferred strips in beer batter - the fish and chips of my ancestry. [ Editor's note: the fish of choice in London was plaice, although originally it was Atlantic cod - fished nearly to extinction in the 19th century. ]

San Francisco may struggle to produce a passable bagel, but I know at least they can do "fish 'n chips" having had the real deal at Edinburgh Castle many years ago (served in newsprint by the lovely Koreans who ran the friers).

Never mind the dish came with ketchup (arguably a legitimate fish sauce, given its Asian origins, but not a traditional fish'n'chips sauce - although apparently Britons love it), at least they provided malt vinegar and a home-made tartar sauce. This almost made up for the dry, bland corn meal crusted filet. I ate half and gave away the left overs.

--

Slim's gets points for serving reasonably priced drinks - which is to say they do not gouge you like other music clubs. A locally brewed bottle of Anchor Steam is $5 and not $8 or $10 as I've seen in some places I will not name.

We bought a bottle of pinot noir that was drinkable for $25 (my date tried to beg me off, stating the $35 version was far superior - in hindsight I should have listened).

Slim's also has a pretty good sound system and competent engineers.

So, don't come for the food. Do come for the music.

On April 27th and 28th, I went to see Built to Spill and opening bands Junior Rocket Scientists, Slam Dunk and San Jose's Ugly Winner.

--

"I see Doug (Martsch) at the local food co-op all the time," said a former co-worker from Boise, Idaho, from whence Built to Spill hails.

They share a drummer with Caustic Resin, so says Katie, my local bartender who grew up in Boise.

Rearrange the members, I pointed out, and you'll end up with Tree People, the band Martsch originally fronted in the late 1980s.

You either love Built to Spill or you don't, and I emphatically do.

I first encountered their music when my co-worker CF came to my cube one day, excited, and proclaimed, "dude! this is the best cover of Cortez the Killer ever!"

"Cortez the who?"

"Cortez the Killer... it's a Neil Young song. I thought you liked good music," he responded incredulously. He had thrown down the music nerd gauntlet -- was I some kind of rube? I don't like Neil Young? Built to Who, What?

Until that day, Neil Young was someone I always found vaguely irritating - his voice, such that it was, squeaked like an un-oiled wheel; his guitar work was rugged and unrefined (so I thought).

I was 25 and I was just starting to really listen to music. CF made me put on my headphones and proceeded to smile and nod at me as I went down Built to Spill's Cortez rabbit-hole, emerging 21 minutes later in some real sense a changed man.

--

Slim's
333 11th Street
San Francisco, CA

Built to Spill

The Perplexing Puzzle of the Pink Peppercorn

2013-04-30T11:39:00.001-07:00

We have a "Pepper tree" in the yard. I hadn't given it much thought over the winter but now that it's covered in red/pink berries that rain down on my back deck it has my attention. Berries, eh? Can I eat them? Having a summer source of spice had appeal. I decided to do some research.

It turns out my shade and berry giving friend is a Schinus Molle, or Peruvian Pepper Tree, a.k.a. California Pepper Tree or Peppercorn Tree. You may have seen its fruit in spice stores labeled "pink peppercorns", although it is not related to true pepper at all.

Looking a little further I found that in the 1980s cases of certain "intestinal discomforts" among small children and poison ivy-like symptoms in adults caused a temporary ban of their sale in the U.S. but French sources claimed that no such problems had been documented on their soil and the ban was lifted. The ban was even more interesting when I read that "pink peppercorns" had been mixed into other ground pepper for some time without ill effect.

So, yes. I could eat them, but not without a little risk*. Still, the risk was so small and cases long ago that I decided to try them out. These same berries, after all, had been used for culinary and medicinal purposes throughout history.

Husking the little buggers was a project. Although mostly dry on the tree, being berries they contain a bit of moisture which causes the husks to stick. They were also unevenly dry. Some berries were dry and the husks just fell off, others not so much. I dried them out in a 350 degree oven for a few minutes and the husks came away easier but there were still bits sticking to the "peppercorn". I used a strainer basket to rub off the remaining husks and wash the berries.

With the husks removed I repurposed a Trader Joe's Lemon Pepper grinder although I'll move them to something that grinds a little finer when I can.

The flavor was quite peppery for a non-pepper. It also had a delightfully pleasant sweetness. I'd read that they go well with seafood. Shrimp, ho!

A little butter, olive oil, sweated garlic and sea salt together with ground pink peppercorns was really something. The flavor of those little backyard berries made a great snack special. Can the flavor of a peppery non-pepper be considered rich? The mouth feel was certainly rich.

So far the only effects of the berries have been the production of delicious memories and thoughts of uses to come. I'll give it a full 24 hours to be sure but I'm already planning on husking and drying a good supply over the Summer to have stock through the coming Winter. I'm also willing to call this food experiment a flavorful success. The back yard just keeps on giving. I can't wait to try the non-pepper on some trout and some greens. I also hear they're great in preserved Meyer lemons.

Mmmm, mmm

*I'm not recommending you do the same. Use your own judgement.

Chili Pickled Eggs Huy Fong Style

2013-04-29T14:56:00.001-07:00

With all of the Sriracha lovin' going on people sometimes forget that David Tran's Huy Fong Foods also makes some other fine products. I've done ribs and pork tenderloin using Huy Fong's Sambal Oelek, chilis, salt, vinegar, preservatives, as the main ingredient in the past and decided to try out pickling some eggs in it. For this batch I used 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar and 1/2 cup water along with, 1/4 cup Sambal Oelek, 1/4 cup chopped onions, and four crushed garlic cloves. I let the eggs sit for five days before trying one.

It was worth the wait. The result was spicy and delicious. I'm going to "devil" a couple with some Sriracha this evening.

Hot Sauce: Tabasco Smack Down

2013-04-28T15:45:00.000-07:00

Let me start off by telling you what some may have already figured out: This competition isn't fair. The fix is in, the deck is stacked and all of the cards are marked. One of these things is not really like the other and it never had a chance.

Which one? McIlhenny's well-known Tabasco brand sauce, of course. Frankly, I've never cared for it as a sauce. It's thin, weak, and tastes more of vinegar than hot sauce. I use it to flavor soups and chilis. One look at the label will tell you why. The first ingredient in Tabasco brand pepper sauce is distilled vinegar, and a lot of it by the look and taste, which makes it more of a hot liquid seasoning than a hot sauce in my kitchen.

The first ingredient in Louisiana Gold brand tabasco pepper sauce, however, is red peppers and number two is tabasco peppers. Vinegar comes in third and Louisiana Gold uses spirit vinegar, which is distilled before the acetification process is finished, leaving a small amount of alcohol present and improving the flavor. The difference really comes through when you taste them side-by-side.

I know. A lot of hot sauces list water as the first ingredient, but the best I've found all list peppers first. There are exceptions, but not many. I don't know how much vinegar Tabasco brand uses over Louisiana Gold, but you can see the difference.

The Louisiana Gold has a full, rich pepper flavor that Tabasco just can't match. It's also thicker, so it doesn't run away from your eggs in the morning.

You can even see the difference.

Will I keep them both around? Of course. Each has its place. I wouldn't use Louisiana Gold in a chili or soup any more than I would use a fine aged tequila in a margarita when an un-aged 100% agave tequila will mix nicely.

The Coast Starlight

2013-04-27T12:26:00.000-07:00

For Jim, Tom, Patty and Mom and their loving parents, Helen and Thomas.

Between Davis and Sacramento.

My maternal grandmother and grandfather lived in a two story ranch house in Stow, Ohio, raising my mom, her two brothers and kid sister. When the children had all left and the work had been finished, the two spent the next few decades traveling - at one point even owning a mobile home.

Grandfather was an air-ship man by trade, but he loved to travel by boat, by car, by air and especially by train.

They remained in the ranch house in Stow until my grandmother passed away. My grandfather remarried (a fellow widow he befriended in church). He was in his 70s, and the two widowers moved in together, into a modest prefab, to take care of one another in their twilight years.

He had a few more good years before cancer got him too, but he died surrounded by loved ones and family.

The ranch house in Stow was sold to a young family. They would have their own stories, create their own memories.

Often we would travel to the house for holidays. Grandpa had endless kitschy memorabilia from his days at Goodyear, where he worked after the war in their dirigible division. Oak clusters on a Goodyear baseball cap commemorate his service in the US Navy.

We'd run ourselves, our parents, aunts and uncles ragged until we tired ourselves out playing with Goodyear toys. Pun intended.

Davis at dawn.

Full of carbs and turkey at the end of the night, we'd greet or be carried into the cold Stow air. Stow, Ohio smells of wood fires, wet leaves, snow and pine trees.

It sounded like silence.

I'd put my face in the window and watch as the trees disappeared behind me as we would make our way back into "civilization".

Ohio State Route 8 to Interstate 271 to the Chagrin exit and finally down tree-lined South Woodland (itself a state route) and up our snow covered driveway.

The air smelled different in Shaker, full of marshes and the smells of neighboring Cleveland: gasoline, fast food, lawn chemicals.

Sometimes I take the train between Portland or Seattle and the Bay Area.

Halfway through the journey the train enters the dead of night.

The southbound train stops for a last "fresh air" break in Klamath Falls, Oregon. Folks huddle in the night air and smoke cigarettes.

Afterward there is lots of nothing punctuated by brief stops: Dunsmuir, Redding, Chico and finally "civilization" again, Sacramento.

I cover my head with the curtain to black out the dim safety lights of the train, listening to quiet acoustic music on my headphones and pressing my face into the window as I watch solitary pine trees pass me by.

Ghosts of trees occupy the empty spaces. I wish I could smell the resin and feel the chill of the night. When the moon is full, the snow glows blue illuminating endless stretches of pristine forest.

This is how I mark off the hours.

Eugene, OR at dusk.

--

Amtrak connects to the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit, connecting the East Bay with San Francisco all the way down to the San Francisco Airport in Milbrae). The connecting points are Oakland Coliseum, Jack London Square and Richmond, at the end of the Richmond line.

I left hours early to ride out to Richmond but was delayed over an hour due to the final, tragic act of a disturbed man. In the career of an average Caltrain conductor, he or she is expected to strike and kill an average of two human beings. Suicides by BART are less frequent.

In my duffel bag were a beer and a bit of whiskey, I would be on the train for 18 hours.

When I got to the Amtrak boarding area in Richmond the 14 Northbound Coast Starlight was running a little over an hour late. I cracked my beer on the platform and waited.

The 14 Northbound Coast Starlight leaves from Los Angeles Union Station every day at 10:25AM and heads up the coast through Simi Valley, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo (SLO as the locals call it), Paso Robles, Salinas, San Jose, Oakland, Emeryville, Richmond, Martinez, Davis, Sacramento, Chico, Redding, Mt. Shasta, Crater Lake, the Cascades, Eugene, Portland all the way up through Olympia and finally Seattle.

By the time the 14 rolled into Richmond I was hungry again. At 11:30PM your options are even more limited than usual and you have a window of time before the cafe car stops operations for the night.

Two breakfast sandwiches with eggs, cheese and sausage on English muffin was the order of the day, and a Dr Pepper to mix with my Jim Beam. The sandwiches were wrapped in cellophane and microwaved. The Dr Pepper was warm, served with a plastic glass and ice.

Probably a few cubes were lost in the jostle as I made my way through the coach car and back to my seat.

I settled into my seat, finished my food. I kept my Jim Beam out of sight from the young family traveling nearby, a tweenaged daughter, her younger brother and exhausted father.

When they settled into sleep, I finished my whiskey hoping I would join them in slumber.

Waiting for emergency crews to clear BART, the Saturday before Halloween.

--

14 Northbound

About halfway through watching the heartbreaking documentary "The Devil and Daniel Johnston" that follows the trajectory of a severely mentally ill singer-songwriter of improbable acclaim, somewhere deep in the Cascades and out of range of any phone signal, I realized that I hadn't eaten in about 8 hours.

MAX Light Rail, Hillsboro, OR.

Riding in coach, you can buy your way into dinner at the end of the night, supplies permitting, that is served to the sleeper car passengers as part of the cost of their ticket (at a premium - a basic sleeping car offers little in the way of amenities besides privacy and just enough room for a human much smaller than myself to sleep).

Whatever meals are left at the end of the night are sold first-come-first serve, and entrées generally cost between $15 for a dinner salad and $30 for steak dinner. The quality of either is somewhere between Denny's and Stouffers.

I take that back. I would much prefer Stouffers.

If you have a reserved sleeper car (and are paying up to 5 times the amount in coach), you are usually allowed to bring your own beer or wine to the dining car, and you are allowed to drink it up unabated while in your sleeper room.

No such luxury is afforded coach, at the mercy of the concessions folks on the train, forced to choose mediocre beer and wine at criminally inflated prices.

Maybe Vice President Biden can address this too in his second term, or his first term as president (it's never too late, Joe!).

Eastbound RTA Red-line out of Hopkins Int'l.

--

11 Southbound.

After Dunsmuir, I figured I could no longer keep dimming the screen to my laptop without inevitably waking someone. I knew I had a couple of hours until Redding.

Redding was always trouble.

Switchyard outside of JFK in Queens, NY.

Redding, California.

Turtle Bay on the Sacramento River features a charming museum and hiking trail featuring the area's riparian environment. Spanning the river is the stunning Sundial Bridge. Redding is the county seat of Shasta County and the fourth largest city in the Sacramento Valley. Summers are hot and vacationing Northern Californians like to dip into the river or nearby Whiskeytown Lake (best name ever?).

Redding also has it's share of bad press: an depressed area with high unemployment, high rates of methamphetamine and OxyContin addiction, high crime rate (especially regarding violence and sexual assault against women).

Dangerous contraband.

Redding passes by unseen at night, the last major whistle stop in the dead black of night before the 11 Southbound continues on toward dawn and civilization.

Oftentimes passengers embarking and departing in Redding are of the sort my hippy friends refer to as "shady."

Lucky for me my neighbor embarking at Redding, aside from nudging me half awake so I could adjust my legs (sprawled across the row that had been left empty since Klamath Falls), fell promptly into deep sleep.

A troublesome newly embarked passenger, a woman in her late 40s, could be heard chasing down a conductor with questions and complaints. The questioning and complaining drew closer and closer still until to my horror she settled in directly behind me. Close enough to smell the tequila on her breath.

I am not prone to violence but many murderous scenarios were entertained in the theatre of my now wide-awake mind's eye after she first tapped me awake (for the offense of snoring) and continued to complain at any movement throughout the cabin (it's a train, lady, they're noisy).

Even my previously asleep row mate was woken, and we exchanged pained glances. I eyed the call button, weighing out in my head the consequences of ratting out a fellow passenger and possibly worse, stranding this obnoxious woman in a drunk tank in a strange town along the route.

This time I resisted the "nuclear option." Eventually she trailed off, and when we pulled into Sacramento everyone around me was happy to help her off the train (quickly). An collective unvoiced sigh of relief was exchanged when we continued our roll down the coast in peace and quiet towards the Suisun Bay.

It was only a few days earlier that I myself had been relieved of a large format IPA bought in Portland for the purpose of drinking in the few hours trip to Eugene.

"Sir, what is that?"

Eugene, OR

"It's a beer what does it look like?"

"We're going to have to take that sir."

"What? Why?"

"You can't bring your own alcohol on board."

"What? Since when?" I had truly never heard of such madness. Not being allowed to drink on the train?

"Sir, we have already kicked off a few people for non-compliance."

"Okay," I said with a certain eye-rolling passive aggressiveness, "just take it."

Throughout the trip, the public address reminds me that Amtrak is a family-friendly service and that public intoxication is not allowed on board.

An onlooker comes up to me after having my Lagunitas taken. "Sorry, bro, but glad it was you and not me." He opens a can of Guinness.

Another passenger quietly cracks open Corona after Corona as I seethe.

Nearing Eugene, I reached for and defiantly slammed the PBR I had hidden in my bag. I smugly glared at the conductors down in the next car as I slipped the can into the recycling and disembarked.

The incident in Redding put this into perspective, however: drunks ruin the fun, and that's why we can't have nice things (or beer on the train).

I'll have to scratch Amtrak off my list of transportation methods with lax rules about casual drinking.

Southbound through the Cascades, Willamette Valley, OR.

Dawn, just south of Chico, CA.

SFO Terminal G.

Anyone who has flown lately knows to check the schedule prior to leaving for the airport. United, I am looking at you.

Of course I can't simply call out a single airline. While United has gone to shit for a variety of reasons that remain in their control, usually scheduling mix-ups are entirely out of the carrier's control. (FAA regulations about required pilot downtime, fueling conflicts, alternate emergency landing airport runway availability and other planes, like other people at breakfast, being Hell). United is not alone in the general decline in satisfaction in air travel, joined by American and Delta as well as the budget carriers like Southwest and JetBlue.

The exception seems to be Virgin America, and only time will tell if they continue to live up to the bar they have themselves raised.

Likewise, trains can fall victim of a number of realities that are largely unavoidable due to our 19th century train infrastructure (and 1950s trains).

Do you hear me Mr Vice President? Let's not waste time this second term. I want my high speed rail.

In the east, Amtrak and other public transportation agencies anticipating Superstorm Sandy shut down services prior to landfall and turned around service in record time.

Starting almost immediately after Halloween and throughout the weekend Amtrak's twitter feed came alive with announcements of restored service, bus bridges and status updates.

We may not have been delivered transparency in all areas of government as we had been promised when the current administration took over in 2009, but here was a stunning example, played out in real time, of functional government, public and private sector cooperation, bipartisanship, the planning and execution of government's raison d'etre.

It is that direction, east, that I look as I pull out of Sacramento.

Amtrak is far from perfect. I fear that in the wrong hands it will be cynically privatized into oblivion.

The men and women that keep these machines running, that clear the tracks and restore the power and allow average citizens, and the vice president himself, to freely explore this beautiful country deserve our appreciation.

I must be a tough job, and it requires a lot of love to do it. So, I'll keep my beer to myself next time.

Speeding past the Ewoks on Endor.

--

Post script:

7:20AM and the conductor is announcing Suisun Bay, the Martinez Mothball Fleet, a secret mission to retrieve an Üntersea-boot during World War II and to gather your belongings if your final destination on this train is Martinez.

In the booth next over, two Vietnam veterans talk about growing up in the Pacific Northwest, this years college football teams, towns that no longer exist in Oregon and the war.

Whole families embarking in trips, some like our yearly trek to Stow, some leaving home forever; soldiers returning home; folks going to work, folks who have long been out of work; me, The Devil and Daniel Johnston; camaraderie and illicit beers; magical pre-historic forests, lakes, snow capped mountains and more California's gold that you can shake Huell Howser's awed ghost at.

When I left my mother's house last trip home I picked up Grandpa's hat off a bookshelf and discovered an old paperback edition of "California's Zephyr," now with color photos. Grandpa travelled all over the world. Sometimes my father wonders where I get my wanderlust.

Me and Grandpa, we know.

Old iron bridge overlooking Tremont, Cleveland, OH.

Suisun Bay

--

Coast Starlight - www.amtrak.com

More Manhattan Madness and Other Cocktails

2013-04-26T12:52:00.001-07:00

The Shirley Temple of Doom

Boy, how about this heat (apologies to those in the Midwest recently dusted with April snow)?

Well, it's unusually hot in the Bay Area, which is fun for beach goers and people who like to show a little skin (but not all of it - at least not these days). It's not so much fun if it keeps up and half the state burns down like it did in recent years. With that in mind, and in light of the world going mad, I decided I should get out of the house and have a nice bike ride.

Pedaling around my normal haunts over the weekend I would have been remiss not to stop by Lucky 13 on Market to spend some quality happy hour time with Lotta.

Delirious with heat, we concocted this monster:

The Shirley Temple of Doom:

Pint of ice.
2 ounces of vodka (this is one of the few allowable instances were flavored vodka could be permitted; I recommend the blueberry, citrus or pineapple varieties).
2 ounces of Lindemann's Framboise Lambic.
Juice of 1/2 lime.
Soda to top off.

Enjoy responsibly, lest ye be Shanghai'd onto the Good Ship Lollypop, arr!

--

March madness. It's not NCAA basketball, but it's the post-seasonal affected disorder pre-birthday mania that has become part and parcel of the month of my birth. Truly beware the Ides of March - for that is when us Aries and myself in particular start to become feisty.

This year I came through it with only nominal injury to myself - a few cuts and scrapes from cooking and prepping food for our Aries party, a couple burns the day of, a few nasty hang overs.

As the distance between myself and age 30 grows more vast and the gap between me and age 50 grows narrower and narrower still I've learned to slow it down and appreciate moments, not so much manufacture them. To delight in finer things.

On my actual birthday I cooked rib eye steaks for myself and my mother and her two cats, who got the trimmings, while watching the season premier of Game of Thrones. This lead to a relaxing soak in the tub and a nap. When I awoke, it was no longer my birthday.

For once in years I had a legitimate reason to not remember what I was doing at midnight on my birthday.

Upon returning home to my apartment in San Francisco, I was greeted by a parcel from Bolton Landing, New York. I had only to pick it up, judging it's weight, to know what was inside.

--

Manhattan is located where Hudson river spills out into the Atlantic, formerly a primary trading post for the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam ("...it's become much too much..."). Since those days the region has transformed into the super city it is now, which is why its namesake cocktail, a chilled glass of rye sweetened with vermouth and a dash of bitters, is incongruously enjoyed best at a relaxed pace.

It seems too idyllic a beverage for the Big Apple's muscular, sharp toothed and cut-throat image: a city that will crush all those who stand still for two seconds. The city that never sleeps.

And yet, in darkened speakeasies and mahogany board rooms one can doff your hat, put your feet up and sip this ironically named beverage at one's leisure.

The drink is much more fitted to the pace of life my cousins, aunt and uncle live in the upstate, in the lush forests that line both sides of the Hudson, that spread themselves along it's rocky valleys, into the hills of the Adirondacks and abutting those black, placid lakes.

--

Inside my birthday parcel, as is almost every year, is the boiled down sap of thousands of maple trees. Every day from the end of January to mid-March my cousin almost single-handedly collects the sugary sap one tin bucket at a time until there is enough to boil down.

The sugar shack the the structure where a wood fire boils the sap for hours on end until it reaches the color and intensity desired: Grade-B Adirondack gold. The good stuff.

All this work still produces less than 100 gallons a year of maple syrup.

Close your eyes and attempt to hear the crunch of pristine snow beneath your feet, cold mountain air, hard limestone laden streams and the smoke of hardwood fires. Good maple syrup is not simply delicious, it is poetry in hydrocarbon form.

All my local friends and acquaintances mysteriously start showing up around April at my house, hoping I will be making waffles or pancakes. That's all very well and good, but I have a wandering mind.

Of course, Chowbacca!'s fearless leader's ruminations about the glorious Manhattan cocktail got me thinking: how great would a little maple syrup be in the drink?

The Lake George Cocktail (based on the Manhattan):

Jigger of rye*.
Teaspoon of sweet vermouth.
Teaspoon of dry vermouth.
2 teaspoons of maple syrup.
Orange peel for garnish.
Optional - pinch of salt to "wake up" the maple.

If you don't have a proper Maraschino cherry or rum-soaked cherry, skip it.

Mix ingredients over cracked ice, stir and strain into a cocktail glass. Flame orange peel and garnish.

[ * A Manhattan is traditionally rye whiskey, but I suppose you can use Bourbon. Pope of Mission Hill Saloon likes Bulleit. I've had it with Knob Creek Bourbon, which is a touch dry, and I'm told the Knob Creek Rye is bone dry and smokey. Maker's Mark would likely be rather cloying. ]

The Bixby Cocktail (based on the Old Fashioned):

Jigger of Booker's Bourbon Whiskey (or Basil Hayden's if you are a lady).
1 Maraschino or rum-soaked cherry.
1 slice of orange.
1 tablespoon of maple syrup.
Two dashes of old fashioned or Angostura bitters.
Splash of branch (or soda water).
Orange peel for garnish.

Muddle cherry and orange in a tumbler, cover with cracked ice. Pour in remaining liquid ingredients and stir.

Flame orange peel and garnish.

Mission Hill Saloon will be serving these while supplies last. Premium rye Lake George, $12 and up, Booker's Bixby, $17 Basil Hayden's $11.

--

Bixby's Best Pure Maple Syrup
Sam Caldwell, 518-636-9792
bixbysbest@gmail.com

Mission Hill Saloon
491 Potrero Avenue
San Francisco, CA

Lucky 13
2140 Market Street
San Francisco, CA