Butter Flavored Topping

The Foundry + Sprinkles

2008-12-19T23:01:00.000-08:00

Last Sunday was my birthday. Considering I am still recovering from my wedding three weeks earlier (hence this being the first BFT post in 5+ months -- w00t!), I decided on a low-key affair consisting of: sleeping in, coffee infused with a cinnamon stick (inspired by Mexico honeymoon), passively watching football while tooling around on my new MacBook Pro, and finally getting up in the afternoon to hit up two Los Angeles spots I've heard much about.

I first heard of The Foundry from an admissions counselor at Kitchen Academy in Hollywood (I have and still do flirt with enrolling). They offer a fixed menu on Sundays. According to our waiter, Chef Eric Greenspan hits up the local farmer's markets and devises the menu that very day. Which is a bit of a lie since I peeked at the menu on their website on Saturday, and a large majority of it was indeed there on Sunday, but no matter. I really dug the vibe: Low key, sophisticated without being pretentious, with a bar out front that has just enough room to squeeze in jazz and blues acts. Chef Greenspan even came out a couple of times to make sure everyone was enjoying their food. Sure, you will be surrounded by entertainment industry conversations, and the valet is seven freakin' dollars, but the food... oh the food.

Finely crafted. Gorgeous. Flavorful. We stuffed ourselves on four courses.

Camille's 1st course -- Duo of raw fish: spicy albacore tartare, chestnut, persimmon / yellowtail sashimi, celery, kumquats

She says: "Fabulous. Phresh with a P-H. I really liked the salt on the yellowtail with the celery and the citrus." Note the tartare rolled up inside a date.

My 1st course -- Potato soup: gruyere and leek bread pudding / bacon / fried egg

They bring out the dish with the bread pudding, bacon, and egg by itself. Then they pour the soup right in front of you. The soup was flavorful without being too heavy. And I'm a big believer in topping anything and everything with a fried egg. When you think about it, it's like a classic diner breakfast in soup form. Except really elegant. The bread putting puts it over the top. Lots of different textures going on.

Camille's 2nd course -- Potato Gnocchi: swiss chard / figs / blue cheese

She says: "The best thing there." I had a bite. Twas most cheesy, in a good way.

My 2nd course -- Crispy pork belly: yams / fennel / raisins

Somewhat similar to one of my favorite Filipino dishes, lechon kawali. Which is exactly why I ordered it. It didn't disappoint. The pork belly was perfectly cooked, with crispy skin/fat that wasn't oily in the slightest, plus really tender and juicy meat. Camille suspects that, instead of deep frying it, they probably ladled hot oil to crisp it. The salty/crispy of the pork on top of the rich sweetness of the yam was delightful.

Camille's entree -- Crispy skin salmon: broccoli / walnuts / orange

She says: "Cooked perfectly. But it was 'eh.' Something you can get at any restaurant."

My entree -- Duck confit: squash / piquillo peppers / dried cherry / spaetzle

I was surprised they gave me two duck legs. At this point, after potato soup and pork belly, I was beginning to fill up. Crispy and juicy in all the right spots. I don't know what kind of salt is used, but it brings a subtle yet distinct layer of flavor to the duck. The fixings were fine, but not the melding of flavors that my previous courses had.

Dessert -- Eggnog creme brulee: dried fruits / orange sherbert

At this point we were about to explode. I didn't mention that between each course, a small bread was served. No more than two bites apiece, but we're four courses in, now. Woof. I really liked the addition of the fruit and especially the orange sherbert. The citrus helps cut through the richness and sweetness of the creme brulee. I wanted the sugar coating to have a more distinctive crunch... you know, the whole brulee bit. In fairness, I was done before this thing hit the table. Lots. Of. Food.

We had actually gone to Sprinkles beforehand to pick up cupcakes. You'd have to be a hermit to not have heard of Sprinkles. They were recommended by Martha Stewart at one point, which is basically like having the clouds part and God tell you you are his son. And as evidenced by the "coming soon" part of their site, they are going to be positively everywhere. Cupcakes are the new gourmet frozen yogurt, apparently.

And lo and behold, when we arrived, there was a 20-minute line out front. I am immediately distrustful of famous Los Angeles proprietors who flaunt their fame and have excessive lines (Pink's Hot Dogs can lick my ass), but I was won over by one distinct menu offering on Sprinkles' wall: a shot of frosting. Awesome!

We didn't actually get a shot of frosting, but the cupcakes were good. Firm and moist and sweet and all that stuff. They do a cream cheese frosting that's very nice. The red velvet cupcakes are one of their most popular, and for good reason. Even though I was stuffed, I plowed through one when we'd returned home. Most satisfying.

And to top it all off, they make dog-friendly cupcakes.

Maui, Part 2: Going Native

2008-06-19T08:34:00.000-07:00

Read Maui, Part 1

Before coming to Maui, the only agricultural product I associated with the island was the Maui onion. And then only because they make Maui Style onion-flavored potato chips. When I say "they make," I am referring to the Frito-Lay division of PepsiCo. in Plano, Texas. (If you want to find any of their "Hometown Favorites" products, use their nifty item locator.) According to the ingredients list, there is indeed some Maui onion powder in the Maui Onion-flavored chips. It's the 13th of 15th ingredient listed, ahead of Hydrolyzed Proteins and Caramel Color, but behind Corn Maltodextrin, Monosodium Glutamate, Malic Acid, and that classic and most sacred of culinary components, "Natural Flavor."

I don't necessarily have a problem with eating mass-processed junk food. After all, Camille and I stayed in early on our first night, our jet lag-induced slumber interrupted by a dinner that consisted of a bag of Natural Flavor and Maui Onion Powder. But there is something to eating fresh and local, as I found out.

Of course, this is the tourist's dilemna: to find that definitively, quintessentially local thing before it gets dolled up, appropriated, outsourced, and repackaged as Totally Local, Brah! Some recreations are worthwhile (like, say, a luau), but others, not so much (floral golf ball 3-pack). What I'll take away the most from Maui is a sense of what it truly means to go local, at least as far as food is concerned. Nevermind where the purveyors, chefs, and waiters came from. Much of the best stuff Camille and I ate was from the land and waters of Maui.

Imagine that, eating food before it gets packed and shipped off to Plano.

I was never really a farmer's market guy before. I simply didn't understand the difference between what Albertson's, Ralph's, and Von's featured in their produce section versus stuff that had not traveled thousands of miles. Before our trip to Hawaii, I had some gnarly peaches and pears that came from my local Los Angeles Albertson's via Chile. Certainly, I've had perfectly decent fruit from faraway lands before, but it's easy to accept "pretty good" when you haven't had "frakking fantastic" on a semi-normal basis. It helps when that frakking fantastic fruit is exotic and tropical, as with the cherimoya and papaya we procured from the weekly Maui Swap Meet. (Also picked up some cool and, yes, local t-shirts.)

I'd never even heard of a cherimoya before this trip. It's a custard apple with a sweet, semi-pungent smell, and soft, sweet, white flesh that truly has the texture of soft custard. I spent the entire trip in Maui hoping to get a taste of fresh passion fruit, but the cherimoya sated my exotic fruit desires. Frankly, it's the damnedest thing I've ever eaten. It's Jell-o grown by a tree. And you know what they say about Jell-o.

By the way, you can thank Google for Calimoya, a cherimoya, passion fruit, avocado, and dragon fruit grower in the Santa Barbara area. Expensive, but will ship 2-day UPS when the fruits are in season. Have I overused the phrase "frakking fantastic" yet?

One of the most popular ways to take in the local scenery of Maui is to drive the road to Hana, a twisting road along Maui's eastern coast that includes lots of lush greenery, hiking trails, waterfalls, and fruit stands that operate on the honor system. Sadly, I did not snap a picture of one of these fruit stands that consist simply of a shelf or two of produce, a menu listing prices, and a lock box with a slot for money. The best spur-of-the-moment purchase on the trip was at the Halfway to Hana stand (which also contained people -- boo), where we'd stopped for their much-lauded banana bread. A free sampling of toasted coconut was placed in front of me as my purchase was rung up. I'm not a huge coconut fan, especially dried coconut, but this stuff was something else. The perfect balance of that nutty coconut flavor with (light brown?) sugar. The banana bread was really good, but this sweetened toasted coconut stuff alone was worth half the trip to Hana.

However, unless you're satisfied grazing on mysteriously orphaned fruit at a fruit stand, you'll want to grab a picnic lunch before embarking on the Hana trip. We hit up the Hana Bay Juice Co. in Paia, which has scrumptious sandwiches and really tasty smoothies. They even offer coolers and ice packs. What I remember most about the sandwiches other than them tasting really good was the bread. Sure, I suppose eating a sandwich on a beautiful peninsula in paradise helps, but all the great sandwiches that stick out in my mind have had one thing in common: perfect bread that's crunchy on the outside, soft and moist on the inside, and holds up to the rigors of sandwich eating without spilling its innards everywhere. Camille had a smoked salmon sandwich with cream cheese and capers. I had roast beef. Good ingredients all around, but again, when it comes to sandwiches, it's all about the bread.

Returning from Hana, we stopped in Paia again to eat at Paia Fish Market. It's a casual, lively place that features some strong European accents from both customers and employees. The vibe is that of a quaint, all-night diner, with the cook having to shout order numbers over the loud din of conversation at shared tables.

In terms of their food, they feature a lot of fresh and tasty fish. I had ono tacos. The slaw of roughage in the tacos was, as you can see, a little overwhelming, but it was all good. A fine, messy meal. Bonus points for heating the tortilla so it was slightly crunchy. Camille's opah sauteed in butter, white wine, lemon, and garlic was good if a tad too well done. (Fine woman that she is, she chose the meaty opah in anticipation that it'd be overcooked, knowing it'd retain some moistness.) Okay, so ono fish tacos aren't quintessentially Hawaiian. And God knows who was the first to saute fish in garlic, butter, white wine, and lemon. But there isn't easy access to stuff like this in Los Angeles, so, in my mind, it's explicitly local to these islands. (Nevermind the fries and rice accompanying our dishes.)

No, the truly local part of our trip didn't begin until our tours into Kula.The Ali'i Kula Lavender Farm is a nifty place to start. (Or the 'AKL.' Not to be confused with the ATL.) Incidentally, Ali'i is a Hawaiian term for royalty or noble class. And the dude who started the farm goes by the name of Ali'i. Seriously, who names their kid "royalty?" Other than Michael Jackson? Moving on...

The AKL is 10.5 acres of serene, manicured gardens containing something like a kajillion types of lavender. Tours range from the free, self-guided variety (highly recommended) to a $12, 30-minuted guided walk and, lastly, an exclusive golf cart tour with grower Alii Chang. This last one is limited to five people per day, and for $25 bucks you'll have a dude whose first name is literally royalty talk your head off about a kajillion types of lavender.

The place is beautiful, don't get me wrong. There's something kind of mystical about Kula, all the lush, green rural land halfway up the slopes of a dormant volcano, and this farm is a fine place to stop and take it all in. But you can certainly do it for free with one of their photocopied guides to lavender, which we did. Camille and I had fun eating lavender scones and drinking lavender tea on the AKL Farm's quaint patio after perusing the many lavender-infused items in the gift shop. I recently used some AKL Farm lavender pepper to coat the skin on some pan-roasted chicken and also on shrimp, and it was good stuff -- a wise investment.

As for the scones... well, okay, they taste like scones. The lavender flavor in them could easily by in my mind. No, a more palpable and enjoyable way to eat the scones is to slather them with lavender lilikoi jelly. It's more than a dollar per ounce and we bought two jars. Sweet, tangy, and fragrant, it made the scones a delectable experience. Washing it down with lavender tea, which certainly does not skimp on the lavender, made for a wonderfully calming afternoon.

Lavender, by the way, is native to the Mediterranean, not Hawai'i. Strictly speaking, next to nothing is native to Hawai'i except dried lava. But one of the fantastic things about Hawaii that's very evident in Maui -- and especially in Kula -- is the fertility of the land. I couldn't really tell you what a microclimate is (though I'd hazard a guess that it means "really small climate"), but they got 'em in spades in Maui. Which is a good thing for farmers.The Surfing Goat Dairy is a fun little diversion. It was founded by two German expatriates (seriously, what is it about Maui that attracts the Europeans?), but we were toured around by a kindly, portly, limping Polynesian lady wearing a muumuu. She reminded me of the cafe owner in 50 First Dates. Hopefully, no one has said this to her face, but hey, I don't have a lot of pop culture references for kindly, big-boned Polynesians.

The tour is short and sweet: see milking equipment, see baby goats, see adult goats, see pot-bellied pig humping rocks, taste cheese. If we had the means to keep it cool, we would have definitely bought some cheese to bring home. Not to belabor the point, but all the cheese was super fresh, and in their relatively short time as a dairy, the Surfing Goat has certainly mastered ways to combine their creamy cheeses with some local flavors, like the lilikoi quark.

What I really liked more than anything else was realizing just how small an operation the Surfing Goat Dairy is. It really is just one family with a few hired hands, and in this day and age, it's admirable to see them pull that off. They even resist selling their older goats for meat, simply letting them retire to pasture for the rest of their natural lives. I have no idea if there are undiscovered local farms in the Los Angeles area, but I sure hope so, because it's something I'd definitely support.
The lavender farm features a very specific food chain. If you're not interested in any type of lavender, much less countless variations of them, but you are interested in really good food and the food chain that supports it, then you owe it to yourself to take the tour and have lunch on the O'o Farm (which is literally down the road from the AKL). It's an organic farm growing much of the produce served at two of Maui's acclaimed, upscale restaurants, Pacific'O and I'O. They'll take you around and teach you about their organic practices, let you taste stuff straight out of the ground, and then serve you a lunch prepared almost entirely with ingredients they've grown (the exceptions being bread and fish, which cannot be grown in dirt).

The tour is really informative and the meal is great, deliberately kept simple to highlight the assorted harvest. The place attracts a really interesting crowd, too, from agriculture and nutrition students to foodies on the hunt. The tour/lunch is limited to about 15-20 people, so do make a reservation early. It's a little pricey at $50 a person, but this is a whole lot more than gawking at lavender. This is food at its most elemental. The label "organic" gets tossed around so easily, so to see a living, breathing example of an organic farm is incredibly edifying. I had no idea what "compost tea" was, but I do now, and I think I'm a better eater for it. To see everything go from the ground to the table is more fun than I could have imagined. Beets never tasted so good.

Plus, how often do you get a chef de cuisine from a highly rated restaurant to cook everything for you on an outdoor, wood-burning stove? Seriously, how cool is that?
Coming soon in Maui, Part 3: The other end of the O'o Farm food chain, plus the stuff I couldn't neatly tie into Parts 1 or 2.

Hana Bay Juice Co.
111A Hana Highway
Paia, HI 96779
(808) 579-8686

Paia Fish Market
110 Hana Highway
Paia, HI 96779
(808) 579-8030
paiafishmarket.com

Ali'i Kula Lavender Farm
1100 Waipoli Road
Kula, HI 96790
(808) 878-3004
www.aliikulalavender.com

Surfing Goat Dairy
3651 Omaopio Road
Kula, HI 96790
(808) 878-2870
surfinggoatdairy.com

O'o Farm (reservation required)
Waipoli Road
Kula, HI 96790
(808) 667-4341
www.oofarm.com

Maui, Part 1: Kalua Pig & the Plate Lunch

2008-05-13T07:31:00.000-07:00

Aloha! Let it be said that Camille and I aren't huge fans being in water. Which would probably present a problem for us when visiting Hawaii, except Hawaii has awesome food. Also, it's sunny and warm and lush and beautiful. But you knew that.

We went a year ago for a wedding and visited the Big Island and Oahu. It was a trip that laid the groundwork for this blog, but despite the endless pictures of food, I never got my thoughts down to clearly write about it. So, some real quick recommendations...

Big Island

Merriman's in Waimea. Chef/owner Peter Merriman is one of the twelve founding chefs of the Hawaiian Regional Cuisine movement, and this restaurant really lets the local ingredients shine. However, Merriman's Market Cafe in the Waikoloa resort/mall is very underwhelming. If you're interested in a great sandwich, head down to Island Lava Java in Kona and get yourself some coffee while you're at it. If you're in the market for some coffee beans, you'll have plenty of options. Mountain Thunder's very nice.

Oahu

The best plate lunch in Honolulu is Yama's Fish Market. It's not really near any tourist strips, which is a good thing. A wide variety of plate lunches (very good lau lau) to choose from, as well as a vast selection of poke. Matsumoto Shave Ice is an enormous tourist attraction in the North Shore town of Hale'iwa, and for good reason. They shave the ice down to a perfect, snow-like texture that you don't have to chew. I'd recommend adding ice cream and red bean, and hell, buy yourself a T-shirt. (By the way, any place on the island that offers "shaved ice" is a fraud.) On the way to Matsumoto's, you'll probably see the shrimp trucks parked along the road. Giovanni's Shrimp Truck loads on the butter and garlic for a great shrimp scampi. And if you bring a sharpie, you can scrawl your name on the graffiti-covered truck. If you're looking for fine dining and another one of those Hawaiian Regional Chefs, I highly recommend Alan Wong's in Honolulu. It's in a nondescript office building that you'll surely miss on first pass, but inside is terrific food terrifically served. I'm pretty sure we had a guy who's only job was to introduce the dish and suggest the ideal way of eating it. You'll pay for this type of thing in the end, sure, but it's always nice to have one fine dining night on a vacation.

This year, we had another wedding to attend, this time in Maui. In the chain of islands, Maui sits between the Big Island and Oahu. In terms of energy and culture, I found Maui to be an interesting mix of Oahu's urban paradise vibe and Hawaii's lava-fields-with-beach-resorts thing. If I had to pick one word to describe Maui, it'd be rural. And if I had to pick a second word, it'd be immigrants. The locals who didn't work the tourist trade all seemed to work the lands. And in stark contrast to Oahu's markedly Asian demographic, a great many locals in Maui are, well... I believe the politically correct term is "whitey." Some of the Hawaiians who waited on us hailed from Huntington Beach, Irvine, and the Czech Republic. After returning from the lush road to Hana, we ate in the quaint town of Paia and were enveloped by European accents from all over. I have no hard data to back this up, but it sure seems like the people who decide to move to Hawaii end up choosing Maui. So it is that some of the best local food we had was prepared by a Seattle-raised sous chef and German goat cheese makers.

One of the most iconic things about Hawaii and Hawaiian food is, of course, the kalua pork at luaus. It's fast becoming one of my favorites, in part because of its simplicity: salt the pork, wrap, and roast for a long time. If you don't have the time, space, or inclination to dig yourself an imu, heat some stones, and bury a whole pig on top of it with some earth, then you can google yourself a recipe that will require liquid smoke and several hours in your oven.
One of my favorite ways to have kalua is part of a mix plate. The plate lunch is another deeply Hawaiian dish, with Hawaii's immigrant history literally on display right in your styrofoam container. Kalua, teriyaki, fish, whatever you fancy, it's all there with scoops of rice and macaroni salad. As with any region's famous food, mix plates have become ubiquitous in Hawaii to the point that you may encounter a place with hurried, bland food. Such is the case with the oft-recommended Aloha Mixed Plate, a restaurant in Lahaina that inhabits every tourist flyer and dining guide at the airport.

I wouldn't say it's bad. In fact, the appetizer of coconut prawns was a very promising beginning to our trip. The sweetness of the shrimp and the nuttiness of the dried coconut go really well together, and for a deep fried food, it wasn't terribly oily. Combine that with our table right at the edge of Aloha Mixed Plate's cozy, oceanfront patio, and it sure seemed as if Pele was smiling down on our arrival. And then the plates arrived.

The lomi lomi and macaroni salad were fine enough. I didn't like the poi, but I've never liked poi, so I don't hold that against anybody. At first, I couldn't figure out what bothered me about the kalua, but after several fork fulls in my mouth, I slowly realized what was missing: some flavor. Way under seasoned. No smokiness at all. Even a little on the dry side. I tried some of Camille's pork lau lau, but it was the same. The ti leaf wrap adds a nice layer, but it was still bland. She noted that there wasn't much fat, and certainly lean pork might explain some of this, but at the end of the day, it was severely lacking.

I wonder if Aloha Mix Plate was having a bad day, because their sister establishment right next door, Old Lahaina Luau, had pretty solid food. Considering Old Lahaina Luau serves 500+ people every night, you'd think they would have the bland food. Then again, they actually make their kalua in the traditional way.

Again, Aloha Mix Plate ain't bad. But you won't regret skipping it, either. My vote for best plate lunch goes to local chain Da Kitchen. They really pile it on. Lots of choices, big servings, and pork the way I like it: salty and fatty and juicy. Yum. Plus, bonus points for wrapping their lau lau in an outer layer of leaf and knotting it up. You could probably attach it to your belt loop if you were so inclined. Not saying you'd be cool or anything, but it's physically possible, that's all.

Surprisingly, the most satisfying kalua goes to Kula Sandalwoods Inn & Cafe. It's possible I was desperate for some good pig after the disappointment of Aloha Mix Plate, but this quaint, mellow place in the sleepy town of Kula really hit the spot. I felt a little bad that the place was so empty because it was simple and spot on. The kalua sandwich I had hit all the points on my kalua flavor checklist, plus the clever addition of hoisin sauce to "butter" the bread. Camille's grilled ono sandwich was similarly simple but with the little touch of goodness that is chopped tomatoes. The place is only open for breakfast and lunch, but if you're in Kula (and you should be), you'll be served by the family that owns the place and have a wonderful view of west Maui below you.Some plate places will offer a loco moco all day. You certainly can't go wrong at any time with a loco moco, but it's supposed to be a breakfast dish, and we had a very good one at another Kula stop, Cafe 808.

What kind of place is Cafe 808? From what I could tell, it's very no nonsense and caters mostly to locals. They don't even have a website. I mean: THEY DON'T HAVE A WEBSITE!!! If that's not antiquated and cute, I don't know what is. They also use fold up tables, feature some very old wood paneling, and generally have the look of an old community center/gym hybrid. In other words: a hole in the wall. I loved it.

Kidding aside, they make a mean loco moco. Camille and I usually try not to order the same thing for the sake of adventure, but getting up at 3:30 am and racing the sun up to the top of Haleakala in a rented Corolla is adventure enough for us. We wanted filling, we wanted comfort, and we wanted it with a scoop of rice. Enter the loco moco, Hawaii's wonderful entry into the comfort food lexicon. A juicy beef patty topped by a fried egg (cooked to order, I like it runny), and the whole thing bathed in gravy. Those looking for a hearty breakfast can't ask for much more. If I lived in Kula, I'd probably eat here twice day, every day.
Probably the best bang for your buck as far as plate lunches would go to Honokowai Okazuya & Deli. It's a tiny carry-out place in a strip mall with a Pizza Hut and a AAAAA Rent-A-Space, so it doesn't inspire much to look at it from the street. But the food is on par with most sit down restaurants, and if given the right location and ambience (like, say, the oceanfront locale of that tourist whore, Aloha Mix Plate), the owners could easily charge more. Instead, they pile the stuff into styrofoam boxes with plastic utensils and pass the savings onto you.
I went with the fish 'n' chips. The fish is panko-crusted, which is a delicious change of pace, making it light and crunchy. The real winner, though, is Camille's plate lunch of grilled fish in a lemon, butter, garlic, and white wine sauce. As Camille noted, it easily could have been a $20 dish at an entry-level fine dining establishment if it's served on a plate with real flatware. It's downright sinful as carry-out, rich and savory without being overbearing with the flavors. It wasn't just a pan full of butter -- which is delicious in its own right -- but a balanced combination between the wine, garlic, butter, and lemon. It was damn good.
Sorry, Aloha Mixed Plate, if that "tourist whore" comment seems harsh, but by comparison, you ain't nothing. You are dead to me. Up with Da Kitchen and Okazuya!

Click here to read Part 2: Going Native.

Aloha Mixed Plate
1285 Front Street
Lahaina, HI 96761
(808)661-3322
www.alohamixedplate.com

Old Lahaina Luau (reservations required)
1287 Front Street
Lahaina, HI 96761
(800)248-5828
www.oldlahainaluau.com

Da Kitchen
Rainbow Mall
2439 South Kihei Road #A107
Kihei, HI 96753
(808)875-7782

Triangle Square
425 Koloa Street #104
Kahului, HI 96732
(808)871-7782
www.da-kitchen.com

Kula Sandalwoods Inn & Cafe
15427 Haleakala Highway
Kula, HI 96790
(808)878-3523
www.kulasandalwoods.com

Cafe 808
4566 Lower Kula Road
Kula, HI 96790
(808)878-6874

Honokowai Okazuya & Deli
3600 Lower Honoapiilani Road #D
Lahaina, HI 96761
(808)665-0512
www.mauihawaii.org/restaurants/okazuya.htm

pan-roasted chicken with li hing mango salsa

2008-04-15T17:33:00.000-07:00

Poor Li Hing Mui. Always a bridesmaid, never a bride.

Apparently it's a dried plum. I've never seen it in its natural state. For all I know, it could be the by-product of slipper production deep in mainland China. Or dried lava from the ever-erupting Kilauea volcano. What you'll likely find if you venture into the dark heart of your local Asian market is a bright orange powder that's popular in Hawaii as a coating for dried fruits or candy. A quick Google search uncovers a shortbread, cakes, and li hing as accent on a cocktail. I think it's tremendous stuff. Sweet and sour and savory and really, really good on gummi bears.

But rarely is li hing found in an entree dish of any kind. Perhaps chefs of the world think the sweet-salty tang is too strong for proteins. Aloha Airlines offered a tomato-cucumber salad with ling hing mui vinaigrette from Alan Wong. And then they filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and no longer operate passenger service. Coincidence? Hey Alan Wong, the next time an airline asks for a Hawaiian dish for in-flight service, man up and pair li hing with the main course.

In fact, you can take my recipe if you like! I'd tried previously to integrate li hing into a cream sauce. Um... yeah... this isn't that recipe. This one I'm actually kinda proud of.

pan-roasted chicken with li hing mango salsa

Ingredients -- 2 servings

2 chicken breasts, bone in and skin on
2 ripe mangos, cubed
2 scallions, chopped
2 shallots, minced
1 garlic clove, minced
5 garlic cloves, smashed
1 tbs. li hing powder
1 tspn. cumin
1 tspn. paprika
salt and pepper
1-2 tbs. olive oil
2 cups rice (optional if you are not Asian)

Equipment
12-inch oven-proof skillet
mixing bowl

Fire up the rice cooker. Preheat oven to 400-degrees. Heat the skillet on medium-low heat with the olive oil.

Season the chicken breasts with the cumin, paprika, salt, and pepper. Place them skin-side down in the pan. It should give a slow sizzle (if not, turn the heat down). The next step after this is the most important: don't f-ing touch the chicken breasts again until we're done. If you value crispy, browned, savory, delicate, heavenly chicken skin, then we're pretty much done here -- just let the heat do its thing. Brown the skin on the stove 4-5 minutes (okay, fine you can peek, but real quick), then transfer to the oven. Pop the smashed garlic cloves into the pan. Roast for about 30-35 minutes.

While you're doing absolutely everything you can to not disturb the chicken, cube/chop/mince the mangos/scallions/shallots/garlic and combine in a bowl. Add the li hing powder and mix. You might want to add the li hing a little at a time and taste it, because a little goes a long way.
When the chicken's done (If you're paranoid about germs and whatnot, the FDA recommended internal temperature is 160-degrees), remove and let cool for a few minutes. Plate and serve.

Maybe I'll be daring enough to actually put the li hing on the chicken directly next time. But until then... huzzah li hing!

PB&J Trio

2008-03-06T21:59:00.000-08:00

I just had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for an entire day. Four of them. One for breakfast, one for lunch, two for dinner. Camille went out of town on business. What's a Food Network-educated chef to do without someone to cook for? Other than indulge his base desires?

I've always thought the comforting mush that is soft white bread, mashed peanuts, and jam could be dolled up into a pseudo-gourmet novelty. So, after my cheap, lazy ass got through two-thirds of the day with PB&J, I figured I'd go for the trifecta at dinner. And do it Iron Chef style.

PB&J Trio

Ingredients
four slices white bread
peanut butter
strawberry jam
grape jelly
guava jelly
sliced bananas (optional)

Equipment
sandwich maker or panini press

Plug in your machine and preheat. Slather two slices with peanut butter. Slather one slice with your preferred jam. Split the other slice between the remaining two flavors. If you're using a sandwich maker, be judicious with the fillings as they will become a superheated mash that will explode over your face. A panini press does a better job of melding everything together, so if you've got one (and you should), then go crazy.
Add banana slices. Assemble the sandwiches and cook, 3-4 minutes. Let cool a minute before halving. If competing on Iron Chef, plate with a fruit garnish (preferably one representing a jam/jelly) and sprinkle with powdered sugar.

I only used banana slices on half the sandwichs, so it's actually a PB&J Triple Trio. One thing I wanted to accomplish was eat grape PB&J and strawberry PB&J side-by-side and settle that argument once and for all. Of course, I grew up on the strawberry version, so I'm biased. But in my mind and in my mouth, the grape flavor is too distinct and doesn't meld well enough with the peanut butter. In grape's defense, the fact that it was jelly and not jam makes a huge difference. Jellies are generally too sweet and runny.

Interestingly, the bananas really dominated the strawberry jam and guava jelly. The guava was especially eye-opening. I brought the Hawaiian Sun guava jelly back from (drum roll...) Hawaii on my last trip, only to find it was exceptionally sweet. However, against the peanut butter and paired with the banana, the guava flavor almost disappeared and actually served to brighten the banana flavor.

The banana-strawberry was a little underwhelming. The two fruits always go together so well, and here I thought the starch of the banana would balance well with the sweet jam and creamy peanut butter, but the banana flavor tended to dominate. Also, the heat and pressure of being pressed softens the banana texture, effectively turning it into another jam and undermining my scientific hypothesis for including them to give the sandwich some bite. Thankfully, this science experiment still tastes good and remains cheap and comforting. The master stroke of this preparation is the crispy texture of the bread, which turns an old school comfort food into a warm, crunchy-gooey culinary pleasure. That's how I'd describe it if I were on Iron Chef, anyway.

Surfas Restaurant Supply & Valentine's Day

2008-02-20T23:09:00.000-08:00

It seems there's a frozen food for every level of foodie. Convenience stores have those wonderfully cheap Tina's frozen burritos. Supermarkets take it up a notch, with everything from Michelina's (my college preference) to Lean Cuisine and Smart Ones (Camille's work food of choice) to those frozen pasta bags that actually resemble real food after some time in a frying pan. Trader Joe and trader pals Jose, Ming, and Giotto have stuff that you could seriously fool people into thinking was more expensive.

And then there's Surfas Restaurant Supply in Culver City, which is more expensive and could seriously fool people into thinking you're some kind of chef. In fact, when I went to buy my Valentine's Day dinner ingredients, the kindly clerk asked, "Are you a chef?" Apparently, duck confit, dried figs, juniper berries, and foie gras are not the normal purchases of, say, aspiring screenwriting foodies who blog in their spare time.
I found Surfas because they are one of the few places in Los Angeles that sells foie gras, which Camille and I tried for the first time a couple months back and which I've been anxious to cook myself. It's insanely delicious, and not just because it makes you sound like a peace-mongering Frenchman when you say it. Rich, creamy, smooth, delicate -- it tastes absolutely sinful. And according to animal rights activists, it is sinful. Look, if these geese and duck had watched The Shawshank Redemption, then they'd know to get busy living and fly away. Really, it's their fault.

Anyway, I'd planned on only buying foie gras, but being in Surfas is being the proverbial kid in the candy store. The fridge and freezer section alone contained numerous items of culinary holiness like creme fraiche, duck fat, rillettes, and, yes, frozen duck confit. Confit is another dish I've wanted to try, except it's one of those things that requires a lot of lead time, what with the curing in salt for days. Now, in the time it took me to grab the frozen duck and foie gras out of cold storage, I had pretty much finished my main dish. And get mistaken for a chef, no less!

Duck confit, seared foie gras, fig and port charoset, pine nut cous cous.

This dinner is incredibly rich. The duck confit is wonderfully crisp on the outside, juicy within, and savory all over. It could easily be replaced by a lighter poultry dish to help offset the richness of the foie gras and the figs and port. I mean, if you're a wimp like that.

The thing that puts seared foie gras over the top is the texture. Yes, it's creamy and rich, but searing it properly gives it a crust and a lovely bite. It crunches slightly, then melts in your mouth. All geese should have the good fortune of exiting the world in this fashion.

According the the Epicurious recipe I got, the fig and port charoset is apparently a staple of Jewish seder. I don't know anything about that, but it ends up being a sweet, sticky fig chutney mush which works really well as a side dish. Plus, you'll have an open bottle of port begging you to finish it off while you're cooking, which is just fine and dandy.

The first two ingredients are cheats. Of course, cous cous is insanely easy, so it's not much of a shortcut to buy the prepackaged box. As for the confit, there's that curing in salt business. Yeah, no...

Ingredients
2 confit duck legs and thighs
1 package pine nut cous cous
1/3 lb. foie gras (about two 1" slices)
1/2 cub dried figs, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
1 cup port wine
3 tbs. vegetable oil
1 tbs. butter

Equipment
oven
2 small pots (seriously, who calls small pots "saucepans?")
1 frying pan

Preheat oven to 375.

Place duck confit into the oven and bake 20-25 minutes. Good job, chef.

Combine port and figs in small pot #1, bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, heat the oil over medium-high heat, add the onions, and cook, stirring often, until the onions lightly caramelize, about 15-20 minutes.

Place the onions in a bowl and let cool slightly, add the port and figs, and mix. Add pepper to taste. Set aside.

Cook the cous cous. It should take about 6 minutes tops.

Turn the oven off, flip on your broiler, and move the duck confit to the top rack just underneath. Broil for 1-2 minutes until the skin is crisp. Remove and let rest.

Wipe down the frying pan (or use a fresh one) and melt the butter over high heat until the bubbles subside. Lay in the foie gras slices and sear for about a minute. Flip and repeat. In order to quasi-sear the sides, tilt the pan so the butter pools in one end, then use your spatula to splash the hot butter over the foie gras. Remove to a paper towel to drain.

Plate and serve.

BFT is on the Foodie Blogroll!

2008-02-07T15:56:00.000-08:00

So, I've been added to the Foodie Blogroll, which is organized by The Left Over Queen. Check her out, or go on a foodie adventure by scrolling through the member blogs in the right margin (underneath my labels).
Huzzah!

Kare Kare

2008-02-06T00:59:00.000-08:00

Get a slow cooker.

If I've learned one thing over the short life of this blog that I can impart, it's that. Get a slow cooker. It's like cooking but... not. For some reason, I used to associate slow cookers with gimmick culinary contraptions like salad shooters, knuckle guards, or the Ronco Food Dehydrator (it makes turkey jerkey!). In fact, it probably does less than all those Magic Bullet-type devices. The only thing it does is slowly but surely heat whatever you put inside it.

But, oh, the magic it did for my latest batch of kare kare.My recent foray into Filipino cooking was inspired by my recent Christmas trip home to the Bay Area. It was the first time I'd ever spent Christmas day without my parents, who flew south for the winter. So, when I wasn't officially upgrading Camille from girlfriend to fiance or playing Guitar Hero, I was watching Camille's mother cook. Because she's the working mother of four kids, she has an amazing shorthand for pinoy dishes that are notoriously laborious. And using only two burners and a turbo cooker, to boot.

I'd previously tried kare kare, the peanut-based oxtail stew, once before using a recipe from Memories of Philippine Kitchens, which has more traditional leanings in terms of flavor and preparation. The recipe calls for an initial stewing to soften the meat and make a broth, cooling overnight to separate the fat for use the next day while cooking an assortment of veggies. It also uses equal portions of peanuts and peanut butter while more contemporary recipes pour on the peanut butter for a richer flavor and texture.

Camille's mom? She cuts onions and minces garlic, tossing them into a hot pot as she goes, then sears off the oxtail, boils it down, dumps a combination of sauce and flavor packets, then the peanut butter, then bok choy and longbeans. Hour and one-half, two hours tops. She has kids, she says.

And it works. It's really good. Sweet and savory, beefy, peanut buttery goodness. The gooey thickness of the peanut butter sauce with balance from the mildly sweet, leafy bok choy and the bite of the green beans. Except the oxtail meat is just a tad too firm. I wanted to do a hybrid of the two methods, but unfortunately there's really no short cut for breaking down beef into a tender, juicy wonder.

Enter the slow cooker.

Ingredients
2 lbs. oxtail, cut into 2-inch pieces
5-6 cloves of garlic, peeled and mashed
2 medium onions, chopped
1 1/2 - 2 cups peanut butter
2 handfuls (about 1 lbs.) longbeans, trimmed and halved
4-5 heads baby bok choy, rinsed
3 tbs. oil
2 eggplants, halved and chopped into 3/4" pieces (optional)
steamed rice

Equipment
slow cooker
large, heavy pot

(I bought a Le Creuset dutch oven a few years back that's big and heavy and beautiful. There are probably cheaper dutch ovens that are reasonably comparable performance-wise, but they ain't as good and they're definitely not as beautiful, and no one brags about their reasonably comparable and ugly dutch oven. My point: go cheap everywhere else, but indulge yourself with at least one Le Creuset.)

My cousin recommended slow cooking overnight, which I did by simply placing the oxtail in, filling the crock pot with water, covering, and setting to low. No need for refrigeration or fat-skimming or any of that. In the morning, the meat was still a touch on the firm side. So, I just left the thing on and went to work.

When I returned home, the oxtail had been slow cooking for about 18 hours, resulting in suitably beefy broth and meat that was fall-off-the-bone tender. Not a figure of speech, it was falling clean off the bone. The fat and cartilage melted away and the meat fiber sloughed off when I tried fishing it out of the crock pot, leaving white, clean bones that looked like a cross between a biplane and an X-Wing fighter. Cool.Set aside the oxtail, heat the oil, and saute the onions and garlic about five minutes. Add the peanut butter and the broth. I used about eight cups of broth, but if it's not enough you can add more later. Let simmer until the peanut butter has incorporated well, then add the oxtail and eggplant. Continue to simmer for about 10 minutes.

Add the longbeans and bok choy and simmer another 10 minutes for the flavors to combine. Taste and adjust the texture to your liking by adding either more broth or more peanut butter.

Portion rice into bowls, then ladle the kare kare into it. Now, all you need is a spoon. Though Camille and I have been on a brown rice kick lately, I found that the dryer, nuttier brown rice wasn't able to soak up the stew as well as white rice.

Lechon (or, How to Commit Suicide by Deep Frying)

2008-02-01T11:17:00.000-08:00

Lechon Kawali

One of the most iconic traditional pinoy dishes is lechon, the spit-roasted pig. Sadly, I have neither a whole pig, large skewer, nor a large fire, not to mention the wherewithal to clean, season, and skewer a whole pig. Which is why I opted for lechon kawali, the indoor version that involves boiling, drying, and deep-frying pork belly.
It's a celebration of fat. Making it helps you realize it's basically a bacon slab deliberately cooked in such a way so the thick layer of fat under the skin doesn't melt away. You want that fat. You need that fat. It's good eating, that fat. Looking at lechon kawali is looking at a chunk of boiled, deep-fried fat that's been seasoned with a touch of meat.

This is atypical Filipino family party food, but my mom never made it at home. And now I know why. My soon-to-be mother-in-law taught me her simplified method that replaces frying with a turbo broiler, but since I don't have a one I had to mix and match various methods.

You will need...

3-4 lbs. pork belly, cut into strips
salt & pepper
cane vinegar (sukang maasim)
a large pot
a lot of piping hot oil for frying
acceptance of your own mortality
a splatter shield
a draining station (paper towels, or a slotted baking sheet set over paper towels, etc.)

Cut the pork belly into long strips, about 1 - 1 1/2" wide. Season with salt and pepper. Boil for about an hour, until the meat is tender and the layer of fat has swollen considerably. Remove the strips and let dry on paper towels for at least one hour.

The proper post-boiling step as taken from the terrific book Memories of Philippine Kitchens...

"3. While simmering the pork, preheat the oven to 400. Using tongs, transfer the pork to a roasting pan fitted with a wire rack, pat the pork dry with paper towels, and brush on both sides with vinegar. Transfer to the oven and roast for 20 to 30 minutes to dry, turning onces with tongs. Remove from oven and keep in a cool place to dry for another 4 hours."

Then fry the pieces about 6-7 minutes until the skin is crispy all the way through. Set aside to drain and cool.

Now, I'm making a point of referencing and quoting because that isn't what I did.

Following the boil, I gave the strips several pat downs, cut them into large chunks, and popped them into the freezer for about ten minutes while I heated the oil. Despite the vast majority of recipes I looked up -- you know, the recipes based on generations of experience -- recommending to dry the pork for a prolonged period, I went with the one recipe that said one hour of air drying would do the trick. Yeah, not so much.

Quick and dirty science lesson if you've never thought about why hot oil goes batshit crazy when water is introduced: water and oil do not mix (clearly I am a genius). When molecules of water are surrounded on all sides by hot oil, the water instantaneously boils. The resulting vapor then goes racing up towards the surface and looks around to see there's a microwave and a floor and my face within reach, and explodes like so much nitroglycerin.

Of course, I knew this and figured all the drying was for this exact reason. But, damnit, I wanted lechon kawali NOW!

Well, it seems pig fat does a reasonable job of holding a lot of water. I'm going to estimate that the top of my microwave is about three and a half feet above the stove. Scorching vegetable oil exploding through a splatter shield and above the microwave might possibly be the scariest thing I've witnessed in person.

Anyway, be sure to fry the pieces until they are crispy and don't give under a little pressure from tongs. Lechon sauce would be nice (like Mang Tomas "All Purpose Sauce"), but Camille simply likes to drizzle some vinegar over it. The crispy, rich fat and the lean meat, combined with the acid saltiness of the vinegar makes for some addicting, life-affirming food.
Paksiw Na Lechon

And it doesn't stop. No, the real beauty of lechon is the leftovers can be cooked into a completely different dish. Most Filipino restaurants are casual turo turo joints, which means "point point." But when I'm in line with my tray, staring down at my choices, I'm always looking for one thing: paksiw na lechon. (As for the Filipino trend of doubling up on words... don't don't ask.)

Using vinegar, soy sauce, brown sugar, and a whole lot of "All Purpose Sauce" to stew the meat and reverse all that drying and deep frying, paksiw na lechon is more hearty and savory. It's absolutely required to have rice on the side to soak up the juices (not that any Filipino would be caught dead eating this without a side of rice). Unlike lechon kawali, the meat takes center stage. The pork flavor really comes to the fore with the sweet and tangy stew, the richness of the fat working more as a balancing counterpoint.

I used a recipe from pinoycook.net which basically calls for letting the meat break down in the stew, then adding All Purpose Sauce (which, by the way, is used for all purposes lechon, but nothing else) to smooth things out. In restaurants, it's usually fairly thick, but this preparation is runnier, more in line with most stews.
Salty, sweet, savory. I love this stuff.

Bar Crudo propositions

2008-01-29T17:15:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately, San Francisco's quaint, little raw restaurant Bar Crudo is too unpretentious, endearing, and charming for bright lighting that befits a point-and-shoot camera, so I don't have pretty photos of their simple yet beautifully presented food. I would have brought my digital SLR, but seeing as how I had a gift-wrapped 11th Anniversary iPod in one pocket and an engagement ring hidden in another, I did not have the room nor the inclination to bring the super duper camera. More on that in a bit.

First of all, this may sound silly, but Los Angeles is just too sunny. Even when it rains, it's sunny. So, my annual Christmas trip back to Northern California is always a breath of fresh, brisk, damp, jacket-required air. Camille once visited Bar Crudo without me and sang its praises, and I coincidentally read a review at Eat, Drink, & Be Merry (which includes terrific photos), so I figured it would be a nice, romantic spot for our anniversary. My imminent proposal was a big factor in the decision, too -- I didn't want to break out the ring only to have the bill shoved in my face by a harried waiter at a bigger, busier restaurant.

Bar Crudo is an intimate place featuring a tiny kitchen and bar downstairs, and a loft up top containing about nine or so tables. In my experience, raw food is presented without too much adornment, the more to highlight the single flavor/texture being presented. Bar Crudo's menu is a selection of mostly raw seafood, but sushi this ain't. Each dish is a sublime and subtle yet complex layering of ingredients. It is food preparation of the highest order, but using differing ingredient combinations instead of cooking techniques to create the flavors. In some ways, this is even more difficult than running proteins through a gamut of searing/braising/roasting/frying because these dishes require a high foodie vocabulary. I get the sense that chef/co-owner Mike Selvera has tried all of these ingredients every which way you can imagine, and knows how best to play them off of each other. Absolutely sublime.

Small Seafood Platter
Well, it's a plate of shrimp, crab legs, oysters, clams, and mussels on ice. I love this stuff with the exception of the clams (there's a reason "clammy" is an adjective, and a bad one at that). When oysters and mussels fresh, and they were, then they are sweet and delicate, without that rank sea smell you get at supermarket seafood counters. Very good, but I'm not going to go on hyperbole overload (yet). I will, however, stand up and cheer for Bar Crudo's various types of tobiko. The seafood platter comes with the standard sauces you'd expect (cocktail, vinegar, etc), and then there was the familiar snow-like look of tiny, briny fish roe. Except it was bright yellow and tasted distinctly of lemon.

I had no idea you could flavor tobiko. When it comes to movies I like, I can typically point to one scene that wins me over, where in my head something clicks, I tell myself it's a good movie, and the film can do no wrong from that point on. I had that very feeling when I first spooned the lemon tobiko onto a tiny, juicy oyster and sucked the thing into my mouth. Bar Crudo can do no wrong.

Crudo Sampler
I warned you about the hyperbole and here it comes. The Crudo Sampler is like a canvas of fish with various produce and sauces as paint. The flavors compliment, amplify, and otherwise kick things up a notch. This is where things got eye-opening for me.

First up is the Rhode Island Fluke, topped with fennel, orange, and pomegranate seeds. At first, I thought the fluke was yellowtail. It's similar in color and texture and has a mild sweetness. Fennel has a vague licorice flavor (I guess anise would be the proper culinary term) and smells almost like citrus, so it pairs well with orange. The pomegranate provides not only an extra bite, but a tangy, sweet punch.

Next was the Arctic Char, a fish in the salmon family. For some reason, salmon and dill go together. A dab of creme fraiche blends things together more and also balances with the second flavored tobiko of the night, wasabi tobiko. Seriously, who knew you could do this to tobiko? And this wasn't colored horseradish masquerading as wasabi, this was full-on, balls-out, spicy wasabi tobiko. It's like gourmet pop rocks.

Following this was a raw scallop topped with a celery root puree and finished with a fairly standard but still delicious classic, tuna with soy, ginger, and scallions. Basically a big, single piece of ahi poke. All in all, a tremendous single plate of food.

Lobster & Beet Salad
What really sold this dish for me, aside from the perfectly-cooked lobster and fresh beets, was the addition of the pistachios. There was burrata cheese and figs amidst the arugula and a vinaigrette, too, but the pistachios really punctuate the salad and, in the words of The Dude, really tie the room together. The whole thing was sweet, fresh, buttery, juicy... and then the pistachios knock it out of the park. This is what I'm talking about when I say a high foodie vocabulary -- I never would have thought to put lobster, beet, fig, and pistachio together. Yum!

Seafood Chowder with Smoked Applewood Bacon
Again, perfectly-cooked fish that was still juicy and flaky despite having been stewed for God knows how long. It's a nice, rich take on clam chowder, and the smoked bacon flavor is subtle but distinct. It's the perfect soup for a damp San Francisco night.

So, back to that proposal business. We had a pretty late reservation, so by the time we were finishing the chowder, we had the loft entirely to ourselves. I gave Camille her anniversary gift, the iPod, which I preloaded with a video slideshow featuring pictures of us and our various adventures. Except for the handful of photos at the end, which were pictures of me taking an engagement ring out of a bag and offering it up to the camera.

Camille actually looked a little confused, which was when I plopped the ring down on the table in front of her. She offered up her hand, I slid the ring on, and that was that. Pretty smooth, if I do say so myself.

It's worth noting that I never verbally asked the question, and she never verbally responded. Good thing I have a really expensive degree in film to help me communicate these things. Perfect woman, perfect meal, perfect night.

Thanks, Bar Crudo.

603 Bush Street (at Stockton)
San Francisco, CA
415.956.0396
www.barcrudo.com

Bulalo

2008-01-17T15:14:00.000-08:00

That's bu-la-LO. Don't worry, the first time I read it, I mispronounced it, too.

I really enjoy the notion that food is true living history, even though 99% of the time it's, you know, dead. The term "comfort food" doesn't quite capture what happens when a dish not only works on your senses and sentiments, but connects you to a culture. Especially when said culture is "your" culture. Nostalgia from childhood is one thing. Realizing that thousands of people for centuries have eaten what you're eating is oddly transcendent.

I'm a first generation Filipino-American. I don't speak Tagalog. I despise pinoy movies. Some of the food even scares me. At least, it used to. My mom didn't make too many Filipino dishes while I was growing up, but one staple she always fell back on is bulalo. I did reference a recipe when I made it recently, but I mainly went along with my mom's beautifully simple directions. Beef shank. Bones. Water. Cook it.

It's about two parts water to one part beef material, then reduce it down and taste as you go. Whole peppercorns and sliced onions add a nice layer of flavor, but really all you're making is beef broth that's savory and rich from the bone marrow and melted fat. While it's probably a good idea to skim some of the fat, that's precisely what makes bulalo into lip-smackingly good stuff. Toss in some cabbage and potatoes to go along with the tender, stewed beef, and then ladle the stuff over rice, and you've got a cheap meal fit for fine, upstanding immigrants. Suddenly, I was ten again.
I specifically remember my dad spooning and eventually sucking the marrow out of the bone. This always freaked me out to no end, but now I know better. The bone marrow is by far the best part of the dish. It's where the flavor in the broth comes from. Camille and I tried foie gras recently, the fattened goose liver that's always prevalent in the menus on Top Chef. It's creamy and rich, well deserving of it's reputation.

Stewed beef marrow is kinda like that. Concentrated, decadent, fatty beef flavor. Not quite as creamy, but just as guilt-inducingly good. I don't know what kind of fat and cholesterol takes to my veins after eating this dish. I don't want to know. All I wanted to think about after scraping the last vestiges of marrow from the bone was more efficient ways to get it out from inside the hollow. If you handed me a stewed bone and a wide straw, I'd totally go for it.

Bacon Days, Part 2: Bacon-Wrapped Scallops

2008-01-09T23:45:00.000-08:00

Oddly, I can't think of a restaurant where I've had bacon-wrapped scallops, or even a cooking shown where I've seen it prepared. I certainly didn't invent them, but somehow it's entered my bag of tricks. Maybe because it looks fancy and makes a good impression. Though it's a little time-consuming because of the bacon, it's pretty straightforward.

I use the frozen scallops from Costco, which are actually pretty large. Each one's about two or three bites, so while I think of it as an appetizer, three or four of these bad boys on a plate with some greens and some vegetables would make a solid meal, too. The light sweetness of the scallops and the savory, rich, crispy bacon are a natural fit. It's light and fatty surf and turf (kind of). And I'm telling you, it's a conversation starter.

16 scallops (1 bag from Costco), thawed. Fresh is nice, too.
16 slices of bacon. Most packs of bacon are not 16 slices, so you're screwed here. Buy two.
16 toothpicks. These also don't come in boxes of 16, so you're screwed again.

Obviously, you can make more or less, but you're pretty much guaranteed to have extra bacon or extra scallops and definitely extra toothpicks.

Be sure to remove the toothpicks you need before you touch anything raw, or else you'll end up with 484 toothpicks with raw bacon/scallop juice drying on them.

Cook the bacon first. You can do this in a frying pan, but I'd recommend cooking them in the oven. Especially if you have one of those oven grill pan deals that'll let the bacon fat drip down into a pan. A lot easier.

So, preheat your oven to 350 while you're getting everything else together, and then cook the bacon 4-5 minutes, about halfway. Don't cook them all the way as you want them pliable. They should turn from their raw, pale pink into a slightly-cooked, pale light brown. Set aside and let cool.

Heat a frying pan on high heat.

Once the bacon is cool enough to handle, tightly wrap one slice around each scallop, securing with a toothpick. Revel in their beauty.

Make sure the pan is hot, then cook in batches. Sear, cooking about 3-4 minutes on each side until browned. The scallops will shrink slightly and little gashes will open up. Cook until the juices stop running. Set aside to cool slightly. Season with salt and pepper if you want, but you don't need to.

If you're feeling saucy, lay down a bed of greens on a plate and place the scallops on top. Serve and revel in your guests' gushing remarks of your culinary prowess.

Orange-Cranberry Sauce (Eat it, Williams-Sonoma!)

2008-01-09T22:05:00.000-08:00

I can't remember a Thanksgiving where someone in my family actually made cranberry sauce. We've had roasted turkey and deep fried turkey and turducken with all sorts of stuffing and sides, but never a homemade cranberry sauce. After a lifetime of this, I just assumed a homemade cranberry sauce was too difficult or simply never compared to the scientists at General Mills or whoever makes those store-brand cranberry-flavored jelly-type substances.

In recent years, Camille and I have resorted to a $10 jar of orange-cranberry relish from Williams-Sonoma. It's mighty good, but for our recent Christmas party I bought a package of fresh cranberries to make my own cranberry sauce.

Well, it didn't happen for the party, but I finally did it. We had turkey breast in the freezer (also left over from the party) so I finally took my crack at the elusive cranberry.

And boy, oh boy, it was exceptionally easy. So easy, I nailed it on the first pass. And it's good.

Seriously, this is the first attempt. Go ahead, jar it up and sell it for $10 a pop if you want.

3 tablespoons butter
2 small yellow onions, chopped
12 oz. (1 bag) of fresh cranberries
1 1/4 cups sugar
3 clementine oranges or 1 regular orange, roughly chopped.
salt, to taste

In a pan over medium-high heat, melt the butter. Add the onions and saute 4-5 minutes. Add the cranberries. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the cranberries begin to burst and break down into a sauce. Add the sugar and continue to cook for 2-3 minutes. Add the oranges and cook about another minute or until the sauce has thickened to your liking. Add salt, to taste.

See? I told you it was easy. This must be what it felt like to have "invented" bottled water.

Bacon Days, Part 1: Bacon-Wrapped Hot Dog

2008-01-05T23:59:00.000-08:00

When you start a conversation about hot dogs in Los Angeles, talk invariably turns to Pink's. And, in a way, Pink's does represent all that is Hollywood. Lots of glamor, lots of hype, and an ultimately empty experience. Pink's is like watching a cool trailer for a big summer movie 10 months in advance, waiting with dreams of how awesome it will be, and clawing for seats on opening night, only to realize it involves an annoying CGI character named Jar Jar who speaks quasi-ebonics with a cartoon Jamaican accent. In a word: disappointing.

While I plan to do some serious, in-depth hot dog research, just off the top of me head I'll name four hot dogs better than Pink's: The Wiener Factory in Sherman Oaks, Dodger Dogs at Dodger Stadium, Costco Polish Sausage at your local Costco Wholesaler (yes, THAT Costco Wholesaler), and the bacon-wrapped hot dog carts orbiting most sporting events.
Speaking of sporting events, allow me to serenade Pink's with my most favorite stadium chant...

Over-RATED! (clap-clap, clap-clap-clap)
Over-RATED! (clap-clap, clap-clap-clap)

Back to the bacon-wrapped dog, which apparently is a Mexican creation. If you don't think encased meat encased in more meat is appetizing, also consider that the kindly, Spanish-speaking illegal immigrant purveyors typically transport the dogs, sliced onions, and sliced bell peppers in used plastic grocery store bags, untying and dumping as needed. This is probably why the LA County Department of Health folks don't give permits for such things. But don't worry you're pretty little nose off with such details.
If the kindly, Spanish-speaking illegal immigrant asks if you want it with everything, "everything" typically includes grilled onions and peppers, mayonnaise, and mustard. The dog itself is pretty standard fare, most likely whatever was on sale that week at Ralph's or Vallarta or the back of some truck. It's the crispy bacon coating that elevates the entire affair to high levels of sublime. It provides a crunchy texture, a fatty richness, saltiness, and a seared smokiness. The bacon brings bite. It turns an everyday, ordinary hot dog into a... well, a multi-layered extravaganza of animal parts that you wouldn't otherwise eat. The bell peppers provide sweetness, the onions do that airy heat thing that onions do, the mustard adds a little tang, and the mayo goes all mayo on you.
It's victory in a bun. If these people sold horchata, I'd probably get lost in a daze of culinary goodness and stumble into traffic.

UPDATE: Bacon-wrapped hot dog vendors fight for their rights!

That'll do, salt pig. That'll do.

2007-12-09T09:44:00.000-08:00

So, last night Camille went out on a company excursion to an LA Kings game that involved alcohol, a party bus, and a luxury suite at Staples Center. I stayed home to write and bake cookies.

It did not occur to me until this morning that, basically, Camille went out for a late night of boozing and sports with the boys, while I stayed in the kitchen and baked.

That's right, I am a domestic god.

In other news, those Nestle Tollhouse break-and-bake cookies are the bomb.

So, my latest purchase from the Church of Williams-Sonoma: a salt pig. It's basically a wide-mouthed container for kosher salt, providing easy access to the flavor-enhancing mineral whenever I'm in a pinch. (Get it? Salt in a pinch? Tip your waitresses.) As it is a pig, I've decided it needs a name. The product is manufactured by Emile Henry, so a quaint French name will do.

I thinking Toulouse.

Capellini Shrimp

2007-10-24T16:12:00.000-07:00

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Consider yourself flattered, C&O Cucina.

One of my favorite things to make at home is "inspired by" (or, in Hollywood-speak, "a homage to") the Capellini Shrimp dish at the Marina Del Rey ristorante. My take on it is a tad different, but still beautifully simple, sublime, sweet, and easy. I overload it with garlic because, seriously, is there such thing as too much garlic? However, the real kicker is the sun-dried tomatoes. DO NOT make it without sun-dried tomatoes. Shrimp is inherently light, almost bland. Sun-dried tomatoes give the dish the proper richness it needs to enhance all the other light flavors.

I think I almost made this in thirty minutes once. Eat it, Rachael Ray!

The software...

~1 package (16 oz.) capellini
~2/3-ish lb. shrimp, roughly chopped
~5-10 garlic cloves, minced (I don't give myself points for subtlety, so I use 10+)
~a handful (hell, I dunno, 3/4 cup?) of sun-dried tomatoes, chopped
~one package (hell, I dunno, 1 1/2 cups?) grape or cherry tomatoes
~olive oil
~grated parmesan or romano cheese

The hardware...

~one large frying pan
~one pot 'o boiling water

The program...

I should mention that I use the sun-dried tomatoes that are stored in a jar with olive oil and herbs. I guess you could use the truly dried ones that need re-hydrating, but for me "re-hydrating" is the exclusive domain of astronauts and marathon runners.

Okay, so, get some salted water into the pot and throw it on high heat. I use frozen shrimp (this dish is always on-call in my home), so now's a good time to throw those in a bowl of water to defrost. Chop up all that needs chopping, which is everything. I usually have medium-sized shrimp that I chop into thirds. This way, you can evenly disperse the shrimp throughout the plate and, hopefully, have some shrimp with every bite.

Heat the frying pan and olive oil. I usually cover the majority of the pan with olive oil. I know that sounds like a lot. You could make a white wine butter sauce like C&O does, if you know how. Or you could use a buttload of olive oil. I bet you the buttload of olive oil is healthier. And olive oil tastes good, anyway.

So, get the olive oil up to temperature. Unless you're a meth addict or an Iron Chef, the water should be boiling by now. Capellini cooks fast compared to other pasta. Time it so you finish cooking everything else at the same time as the pasta, like so: Drop the minced garlic into the olive oil and let it cook for about thirty seconds, then get the chopped sun-dried tomatoes in. The olive oil should soak up all those lovely flavors, and you'll definitely be smelling it. Please resist the urge to lap up that piping hot oil.

Throw the shrimp on there and cook, killing the heat as the shrimp gets close to opaque. Shrimp also cooks fast and gets rubbery when overcooked. Keep in mind that it'll sit in the piping hot oil until you dump in into the pot of steaming hot pasta, so don't worry about serving a lukewarm salmonella factory. It'll cook through.

Reserve a cup or so of the starchy pasta water before draining, so you can add as necessary later if the pasta gets too dry. After draining, return the capellini and then dump the whole works from the pan into the pot. Mix it as best you can (I find this to be the hardest part, actually) and then plate what you need.
Now add the fresh tomatoes. I drop a healthy handful onto each plate, so you get the light, juicy sweetness of the fresh tomatoes against the richer flavor of the sun-dried ones. Sprinkle the cheese, as parmesan and/or romano cheese will add a nice undertone of saltiness. And there it is. If you're feeling saucy, you can chiffonade some basil for garnish (also known as the "rolling a joint and chopping it" technique). But really, it's pretty enough, so have at it. Enjoy the tomatoes and get ready to breathe garlic for about an hour.

Chicago, Part II

2007-10-21T14:44:00.000-07:00

Click here to read Part I.

Even though it's a pretty widespread chain, Lonely Planet recommended we eat at The Original Pancake House for breakfast. And whatever Lonely Planet wants, Lonely Planet gets, so Camille and I went in our Sunday Best and trekked to the closest one.

If the name Pancake House doesn't give it away, they're known for breakfast, specifically pancakes. They have all the standards (buttermilk, silver dollar, short stacks, etc.), but their specialties caught our attention. Camille ordered the Apple Pancake, which is a dense pancake with granny smith apples piled high and smothered with a cinnamon glaze. It looks like a deflated football steaming with apple-cinnamon goodness. I went for the Dutch Baby, a pancake that's baked until the edges shrivel and reach toward the sky, effectively making a huge bowl that gets slathered with butter, lemon juice, and powdered sugar. These might be the two tallest pancakes in existence.
It's good. It's heavy. It's like a genuine, long-term relationship in that they demand attention and hard work on your part. Dear God Almighty, it's an assload of pancake. Despite the heaviness, the Dutch Baby has a relatively light flavor thanks to the lemon juice. It's as simple as you can get, and if this is how they eat in... um... Dutchland, then I'm definitely hitting them up at some point in my life. (Wikipedia claims the country of the Dutch is called the Netherlands. It should be noted that Wikipedia isn't always accurate.)

We ended up skipping lunch due to The Original Pancake House's cargo now in our stomachs. We took a long, slow walk down Michigan Avenue towards the Theatre District to catch a show, along the way crossing paths with a long line awaiting the opening of local franchise Garrett's Popcorn, apparently the popcorn of choice for Chicago local Oprah. As luck would have it, there's a Garrett's right next to the theatre where we watched Wicked (I'm not a musical guy, but good stuff). After the show, we ended up with a combo bag of caramel and cheddar popcorn. We also stopped by local coffee chain Intelligentsia, where they have a fine collection of organic coffees, and headed east to Millennium Park to snack away. I didn't think caramel and cheddar popcorn would go together, but the combination of the salty and the sweet was insanely addicting. I've never tried any form of crack, but I think this is the culinary equivalent. It's like the only way to counter the salty cheese is to swamp your mouth with the sugar. And when that's too sweet, more salt! It's a vicious cycle.

After walking west to Sears Tower (which was deceivingly far. Stupid big building looked so stupidly close...), we decided to head back toward our hotel. Over the course of the day, we'd walked pretty much the length of central Chicago and didn't want to go too far for dinner. Since Garrett's pretty much refilled us to post-Pancake House levels, we wanted something easy.

Portillo's Hot Dogs is across from the biggest McDonald's I've ever seen, a two-story, two-drive-thru-lane monstrosity that was calling to us with it's slick convenience. But we were in Chicago and it'd been over twenty-four hours since we'd had encased meat of some kind. While the sign outside the building proclaims Portillo's, the space is actually a food court with a number of fast food options to peruse. Not that we did much perusing. We had hot dogs on the brain and complete and utter trust in our Lonely Planet guide. Has it steered us wrong yet?

Not really. Portillo's is pretty straightforward. Chicago-style hot dog with all the fixings, crinkle cut fries with a cheese dipping sauce. Not spectacular, but it's fast and it hit the spot. The hot dog itself is pretty nondescript. I guess that's where the avalanche of toppings comes in. Hey, not everything can be fabulous. Fed, bed, next.

The next day we enjoyed our hotel's continental breakfast. Someone please tell me what makes these things "continental." Does every continent serve a variety of pastries for breakfast? Is that the tie that binds humanity across the face of the earth? There's got to be at least a sub-continent somewhere that goes carb free in the morning. Wikipedia's breakfast article lists continental breakfasts under the European region, but what have we learned about Wikipedia?

After visiting the fantastically free Lincoln Park Zoo, which I should stress is a free zoo, we hit up the Pasta Bowl for lunch. Normally, I stay away from pasta at restaurants since pasta is the simplest, easiest cuisine to throw together at home. Some people think bottled water is a con. Me? Pasta Roni, total scam. If I do ever order pasta, the ingredients should shine together, and they had better be good ingredients. Grilled chicken linguine alfredo? Please, I can smother Ralph's-brand alfredo over some noodles and frozen tenders at home, thank you. But I digress.
The Pasta Bowl is the kind of place I sometimes idly dream of having if lack of money, middling work ethic, limited skill set, and other, more pressing dreams were not an issue. The space is really cool, one of those long, thin dining rooms dominated by a counter, kitchen in full view behind it, and the manager doing double duty as our waiter. It's the kind of chill restaurant you see in mobster movies where the local don holds court in the back booth... except there wasn't a local don holding court. And the neighborhood is really nice. Again, I digress.

Camille and I are both suckers for seafood, and she especially for frutti di mare. The Pasta Bowl cooks shrimp, scallops, and mussels in white wine before serving with marinara and spaghetti. I went for clams capellini, the shellfish also cooked in white wine before being tossed in some angel hair with red pepper flakes. Now, having said all I've just said about how easy pasta is, there is some skill in making really good pasta, and this is really good pasta that's also really fast and really cheap. My clams were perfect, soft but not rubbery, and the red pepper really pops in the white wine. It's a nice, smooth spiciness. It did built as I ate, getting spicier and spicier, but nothing a fork full of angel hair couldn't handle. Camille's was equally good. I might sprinkle red pepper flakes over every pasta meal I do from now on. It's a nice, ass-kicking compliment to what is otherwise sublime food.

We had some time to kill before heading up to Wrigley, so we went west to Sweet Mandy B's, a bakery with some terrific cupcakes. I had the peanut butter and jelly, which is yellow cake filled with strawberry jelly and a peanut butter cream frosting. If ever the phrase "sweet Jesus!" was apropos, it is here. The frosting is decadent, creamy without diluting the peanut butter taste, the cake is moist, and the jelly brings it all home. I actually wish there was more jelly, as it was really just a drop, but oh well. I resisted the urge to order another since there was more encased meat to devour.

Wrigley Field was everything I hoped it would be. As intimate as ballparks can get, sunk right into an old Chicago neighborhood. You literally leave the rail station, turn a corner, and you're there. And the fans in the bleachers were the best, well deserving of their fevered reputation. Probably the funniest thing I've ever seen at a sporting event took place during Giants batting practice. Every fly ball into the deep outfield elicited a cry from the crowd for Giants players to throw up a souvenir. Most of the players turned a deaf ear, but one eventually gave in and lobbed the ball up into the center field bleachers. Though they had pleaded shamelessly for the ball, these were Cubs fans and this was a baseball from the Giants, and so, they threw it right back onto the field and cheered mightily.

Stadium food is always a risky proposition, but Wrigley had foot-long brats with grilled onions, plus all the toppings one could want off to the side. It was the eighth inning by the time I got to them, so the brats were nice and seared and wrinkly. Fantastic stuff. The sweet relish, the tomatoes, the grilled onions, the fact that it was 12 inches long, plus the friendly confines of Wrigley all make for some good eating. I love you Hot Doug's, but this is some sausage right here. My hands were sticky with mustard/relish/brat juice all the way back to the hotel. If there's one true test of a hot dog, it's got to be hand stink. Wrigley brats just set the high water mark for sticky stankiness.

The next day brought us to The Billy Goat Tavern, a restaurant bar most famous for inspiring an old Saturday Night Live sketch with John Belushi telling customers the only available item on the menu is the "cheezborger." The place is a true dive, in an area around the Chicago River where there are two street levels, the lower perpetually in the orange glow of artificial lighting. It's grimy, it's dark. And the guy taking orders is a true character. I don't know if he's The Guy that inspired the sketch or if he's just keeping up the reputation, but he's a goof. Despite the decent number of items on the menu, every transaction with customers, including us, goes like this...

"Cheeseburger."
"Double cheeseburger's the best."
"Okay, double cheeseburger."
"Double cheeseburger!"

A bit later, the following was overheard...

"Double cheeseburger's the best."
"Double cheeseburger."
"Triple cheeseburger's better."

The cook, of course, has a line of burgers going on the grill. They put the burgers on kaiser rolls instead of standard buns, which is a nice touch. Service is pretty straightforward. You order at one end of the counter and slide down to the other. There's a pile of butcher paper on the counter where he assembles your burger and nudges it over to you. Toppings to the side. The walls are adorned with news articles detailing the billy goat curse that supposedly haunts the Cubs. During our meal the guy turned to two customers sitting at a table without food.

"Can I help you guys?"
"We're just waiting for someone."
"Well, I get off in a couple of hours."

It's that kind of the place. Not the best burger ever. In fact, it's not too far above cafeteria food. But that'd make this the coolest cafeteria ever.

After visiting the Art Institute and the Married... With Children fountain a.k.a. Buckingham Fountain, where I paid a homeless guy five bucks for a free newspaper after he took our picture (he was a salesman, what can I say), we went to a place right down the street from The Billy Goat, Shaw's Crab House.
Up to this point, all of our food had been, for lack of a better term, peasant food. Pizza, hot dogs, pastas, burgers -- I feel like we got a fairly representative take of how locals eat on a semi-regular basis. Shaw's Crab House is in that same vein, except people here are wearing suits. Seafood tends to demand a higher price, but again, Camille and I are suckers. And Shaw's had an oyster bar with a happy hour. When in Rome...
It's overwhelming how many different types of oysters Shaw's has. And if that wasn't enough of a drain on the wallet, we had a terrific waitress who was friendly and quick with suggestions. I couldn't begin to tell you what was what, but they tended to be smaller oysters, all delicate, sweet, briny, but not too gritty. We downed two dozen of them before even so much as perusing the rest of the menu. If the thought of oysters scares you as it did me once, then suck it up. Literally. Use the little tinny fork, drink the juices in and suck up the meat. It's easy. Sure, it's a little slimy and cold and mushy. It's kinda like sweetened seawater. Suck it up!

We followed up the oysters with a creamy, savory lobster bisque before getting to our separate entrees. Camille had a combo plate of grilled shrimp, scallops, and a crab cake. I had a less inspired soft shell crab sandwich, which continues my love-hate of soft shell crab. The bread was a little charred and the soft shell was way too overcooked. I will forever be wary of soft shell in the future. It's an almost exotic food with the pricetag to match since farming them is so delicate, but even when it's cooked correctly, there isn't a lot of meat and there's a whole lot of edible but bland shell to chew on. No matter. I was on an oyster high. And we had a really good key lime pie for dessert.

The next day was our last, and between Shaw's and The Parthenon, we finished our food adventure on a real high note. The Parthenon is a Greektown requirement. Not that we visited any other Greek restaurants, but the place was so good I was truly blown away. The meal starts with the pizzaz of saganaki, which is a platter of kasseri cheese that gets doused with brandy and set aflame right at your table. It's warm and gooey and, like any flame-cooked food, a tad crispy on the outside. The burned parts are, naturally, the best. We also started with pan-fried baby eggplant, which probably takes the cake over Giordano's zucchini fritters for battered and fried appetizers. Crispy, that peculiar sweetness of eggplant, juicy, not excessively oily. It also came with some kind of mashed something. We think cauliflower. Whatever, I'm eating it. When in Athens...

The menu is absolutely loaded with lots of tempting food that was completely foreign to me. We thought we'd go with the ever-popular gyros, savory roasted slices of lamb and beef with onions to be eaten with pitas. In my mind, The Parthenon can do no wrong after those appetizers, but this was right on. We stuffed ourselves silly, all the better to fly home.

Thank you, Chicago. Rich, flavorful food. As many encased meats as one could dream of. And, oh yeah, a beautiful city to boot. We left heavier than we came.

FYI: we brought two half-cooked Giordano's pizzas onto the plane for consumption at home. So, when packing for a trip, keep in mind that you cannot hand carry more than three ounces of hair gel or toothpaste, but you can bring almost five pounds worth of deep dish pizza. Because if we can't bring pizza onto planes, then the terrorists have won.

Chicago, Part I

2007-10-15T15:52:00.000-07:00

Chicago takes its name from a French mis-transcription of a Native American word for leeks. In other words, Chicago is named after food. So, when Camille, the lovely girlfriend of Butter Flavored Topping, redeemed a free Southwest ticket to the Windy City, it's only natural that we immediately started to salivate in anticipation.

Our primary planning tool for exploring the city was, of course, movies. Sadly, two out of three movie-inspired tours fell through. The High Fidelity tour of hipster hood Wicker Park was doomed from the start due to a lack of big tourist attractions. Sorry, Rob Gordon, but when it's your first time in a city, you've got to stick to the big draws, don't ya? Camille's intended My Best Friend's Wedding tour of Chicago was rendered incomplete, with only photo stops outside the Drake Hotel and inside Union Station accomplished. It's a shame as I really wanted to do the Chicago River tour. I privately considered Union Station to be a part of The Untouchables tour, anyway, so a Julia Roberts-inspired excursion will have to wait until next time.

Which leaves us with the Ferris Bueller's Day Off tour, which was a success. We hit the Art Institute of Chicago (where Ferris kisses Sloan and Cameron is hypnotized by a girl in Seurat's "A Sunday Afternoon on La Grand Jatte"); Wrigley Field to watch my lowly Giants lose ("Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Suh-WING batta!"); Sear's Tower ("I think I see my dad."); and Chez Quis, where I proclaimed myself the Sausage King of Chicago. Actually, Chez Quis isn't real, but we had some good eatin'. Speaking of which...
The first thing we ate was pizza. People speak of Chicago's deep dish pizza as if it were the little baby Jesus holding his own Holy Grail. After weighing various opinions about which restaurant makes the best pie, we decided to hit up Giordano's Pizza. We pre-ordered and put our names in line for the requisite hour-plus wait, cruised up and down Michigan Ave to kill some time, cursed the fact that we opted for a rental car with our travel package (parking is expensive, pay by the hour hell in this city of fine public transportation), and finally got our table.

We quenched our thirst with some pretty solid mid-west beer, Leinenkugel's Honey Weiss. I actually didn't have much beer here, sadly, so who knows how this compares, but we were thirsty, it went down easy, and it's called Leinenkugel's. Seriously, with a name like Leinenkugel's in the capital of the mid-west, how can you go wrong? They get bonus points for spelling it "bier."

We ordered zucchini fritters as an appetizer. Crispy but not oily, kinda burns your mouth like good, freshly deep fried food should, the mild sweetness of zucchini with the bread crumbs... I'm not sure I can fully encapsulate how good these were except to say that the little baby Jesus drinking Leinenkugel's Honey Weiss from his Holy Grail would be pleased.

We ordered the special stuffed pizza, which has sausage, mushrooms, peppers, and onions, plus we added pepperoni because, hey, why not? It's very good, although I didn't have the religious orgasm that most people do. The pizza is stuffed mostly with mozzarella. A lot of mozzarella. It's pretty much like eating a wheel of mozzarella cheese that's been breaded, then covered with a thin layer of sauce. It's good mozzarella, but I was hoping for a little more tomato sauce. The sausage is good stuff, though. Cheese and sausage just might do it for me next time.

We ended up with leftovers that we took back to the hotel. Oddly, our reasonably-priced fancy dancy hotel didn't have a microwave. Ideal location, complimentary breakfast, free happy hour, no microwave. When we wanted to finish off our pizza a couple of nights later, we tried vainly to heat it with a hair dryer. Yeah, not so much. But it did taste mighty good cold. In fact, almost as good as when it was hot, which is a testament to the quality of the ingredients Giordano's uses.
The one time in five days I was happy to have a car was our trip out to see Frank Lloyd Wright's home and studio. Along the way (in a roundabout, let's-use-our-car-damnit kinda way) is Hot Doug's, a popular joint that cheerfully refers to itself as "The Sausage Superstore and Encased Meat Emporium." It's the kind of place that has a table for local bands to dump flyers about upcoming gigs or to sell used instruments. There was a line wrapped around the building, but not the same tourist line mobbed around Giordano's. No, with my eavesdropping skills, I knew I was among locals (or, at least, other tourists who chose the cooler, more discriminating Lonely Planet over Let's Go! when buying their travel guides).

Other than pizza, the most talked about Chi Town food is the hot dog, which has a strict recipe of toppings: onions, tomatoes, sometimes cucumbers, sometimes lettuce, sometimes bell pepper, pepperoncini, relish, mustard, and celery salt. Considering the semi-gourmet treatment Hot Doug's has with their various dogs, it can be a little intimidating, but thankfully Hot Doug's loses all pretense of snobbery with kitschy decor and hot dogs wryly named after celebrities. The Keira Knightley is a "fire dog" described as "formerly the Jennifer Garner and Britney Spears." They have fries cooked in duck fat on Fridays and Saturdays. You get the feeling the owner -- I'm gonna go out on a limb and call him Doug -- went to culinary school, got exposed to high end ingredients, then realized, "Wait, I like hot dogs," and created this place.
Camille had The Dog with all the proper fixings while I went for The Elvis, a polish sausage with all the fixings, plus sauerkraut. The duck fat fries were a bizarre creation. Camille said she could taste the duck in them. Me, not so much, but the texture of the fries was definitely different. Duck fat is richer, and the fries reflect that. Still crispy, but rich and somehow thick, even though it's a standard cut. If McDonald's fries are a light beer, these duck fat fries are Guinness. Take from that what you will.

The Elvis was juicy, good stuff. The Chicago mix of toppings is all well and good, but the real clincher? The celery salt. Seriously, this is what sets everything apart. It's the icing on a sweet and salty mess of slop. Kinda tangy and sweet, the celery salt really jumps out from the assault of other condiments.

For dinner, we hit up Navy Pier, where there's a cool and, more importantly, free stained glass museum beneath the carnival setting. There's also a free fireworks show. A lot of the food choices were kinda generic (nothing says Chicago like Bubba Gump Shrimp!), but thankfully there was the southern-style Joe's Be Bop Caf e, which enticed me with jambalaya and a live band. Our plans to hit up a genuine Chicago jazz club were pretty low on the list, so we settled in. The Jambalaya was nice with a good amount of spice and great sausage, though everyone around us was having ribs, so I was having buyer's remorse. Camille had the crawfish etouffee, a creamy, buttery, and spicy cousin of gumbo that was very, very good. Now I was downright jealous. Considering the tourist-centric locale, I was afraid the place was going to be flavorless and plain, but the food was good and, surprisingly, so was the jazz. No elevator music here, the place was rockin'.

If you're not keeping score, the standout ingredient after a day and a half of eating is sausage.

I like Chicago.

Click here for Part II.

Pseudo-Memories of France

2007-10-03T10:39:00.000-07:00

Ah, comfort food. I love a dish that's warm, hearty, savory, and brings back fond memories of my childhood in provincial France playing marbles, cycling, and thumbing my nose at those dimwit American tourists.

By France I am actually referring to quaint little San Lorenzo, California and quaint, ridiculously suburbanized Castro Valley, California (East Bay!) where I never so much as sniffed a French bistro. Probably a good thing as San Lorenzo and Castro Valley are not exactly culinary havens. I did trek to Paris (among other European stops) after graduating college, though. Here's a tip if you're backpacking through Europe on the cheap: Don't go to the Moulin Rouge. I know, I know... I, too, loved Baz Luhrmann's filmic ode to bohemian love, and I, too, have a silly man-crush on Ewan McGregor. Just keep in mind that Montmartre is on the outskirts of Paris, so when you finally get to the Moulin Rouge and realize it costs at least $200 for dinner and the show, you'll smack yourself in the head, decide to pass, and look around and see that there's merde to do in the immediate vicinity. My buddy and I visited the various souvenir shops and settled in at a restaurant across the street that, judging by the English menu, catered to tourists. It was here I had my first croque monsieur, the egg-less sibling of the croque madame. I've tried to replicate it in the past without making bechamel sauce, one of those French "mother" sauces that scare the bejeezus out of a novice cook like me, and boy is that a mistake. Without bechamel sauce, the croque monsieur/madame is just a dry sandwich. So, grab your whisk, it's sauce making time. Your wrist will hurt, but you'll feel like a chef afterwards.

Before you start the sauce, though, start your broiler and place your oven rack right up under it. Huzzah for pretty blue flames!

I used a bechamel recipe from Williams-Sonoma. You're basically going to make a roux (French word alert! It's the thickening agent behind every sauce and gravy made from butter and flour. And it's pronounced "rue.") and then whisk in milk and cheese. The recipe calls for gruyere cheese, which is some salty good stuff. If you're wondering if you have to continuously whisk the entire time... yes, absolutely. Do NOT stop whisking! I stopped for ten seconds to peruse the recipe and the sauce burned slightly. Since I'm a lazy mofo, I pushed on with the lightly toasted bechamel. It's still good, it's still good.

If you're saying to yourself, "Butter! Milk! Cheese! How healthy is this?!" The answer to your question is: You clearly don't love food. Go eat a carrot.

After making the bechamel sauce, the hard work is done. All that's left is to do the math, as we used to say in Calculus (not bragging, I barely passed). Assemble your dish.

Don't buy sliced bread for this. You're not eating it with your hands, so get a nice, fresh bread that'll sop up the sauce but still hold together. In other words, slice it thick. I bought some organic deal from Whole Foods, not because it was organic so much as it was round. Thems round loafs is fancy! It smelled good and was slightly soft. It ended up being some kind of sourdough, which wasn't in the recipe but works splendidly.

I used a croque madame recipe from, yes, Williams-Sonoma, but it called for black forest ham, which I didn't have. I did have a bunch of leftover rotisserie chicken from Costco... perfecto! (Perfecto is not a French word.) Toast the bread first, then pile on chunks of chicken and ladle the bechamel over the whole thing. Top with more grated cheese. Throw it back in the broiler until the cheese begins to melt and brown. At this point, you've pretty much got a croque monsieur that's waiting to be madame-ed. Get a pan with oil going and fry an egg.
You probably think you can fry an egg. I used to think so, too. But I never did it the same way twice. Then I realized that once the egg is down in the pan and frying... leave it the hell alone. Let it cook. Don't flip it yet. Just don't do it. Leave it be until the whites are all, you know, actually white. Not partially white. White. If you want over-easy, flip it once. It's not a steak, there's no reason to flip and flip and flip. Cook it through on one side, flip once, cook it to your desired doneness on the other. Camille doesn't like runny yolks, so I let hers go a little longer before flipping to make sure the bottom of the yolk is cooked.

Okay, so the broiler has probably done it's business by now. Take out the sandwich, plate it, top it with an egg. That's it. The recipe calls for topping each piece with another slice of bread to make a sandwich, but the tourist trap eatery across from the Moulin Rouge made it open-faced, and since I'm sentimental, I did the same.
The bechamel turns what is otherwise a mundane, dry meat and cheese combination into a rich, creamy, hearty, comforting dish. Savory chicken, tangy bread, cheese... that stuff hits the spot. Even better, as hearty as it is, it doesn't weigh you down. It brings back fond memories of France that I don't really have (damn you, Moulin Rouge! Damn you to hell!). Mmmmm, sentimental sandwich.

Ginger-Crusted Scallops, Take 1

2007-08-29T15:58:00.000-07:00

It's hard to choose a favorite culinary experience from my recent Hawaii trip. There's just too much goodness there, and all of it comes with a side of rice, so bonus points for that. But if you were to hold a gun to my head and make me choose, I'd have to go with the Ginger-Crusted Onaga I had at Alan Wong's. I don't think I've ever had a better cooked piece of fish: flaky, juicy, tender, and with the ginger crust and miso sauce base that complemented but didn't overpower the meat.

Now I'm back on the mainland, wearing socks and shoes again and seriously jonesing for some good lau lau. The idea of getting fish that good here is almost laughable. I mean, the Costco's in Hawaii had the freshest albacore and ahi tuna I've ever laid eyes upon... the Costco's! My local Ralph's rarely has decent tilapia. What's a poor haole to do?

Whole Foods is a good start. During a recent stroll through my temple of organic goodness, while drooling over the sea bass and grouper selection, inspiration suddenly hit me (as it's prone to do when staring at fish priced at $18/lb or more). Why not try to mimic the ginger crust, but do it on something I'm a little more confident cooking... scallops.

Thank Google there's a recipe online for Alan Wong's masterful dish, so I used that as my basis. I had some mini bell peppers from my local Costco in the fridge (they only have farm-raised salmon in Canoga Park. Pssssh...), so I decided to go for Ginger-crusted seared scallops and broiled mini bell peppers on a miso reduction.

The crust recipe calls for minced ginger and scallions, but I didn't have scallions at home, so I substituted it with sesame seeds. Per the recipe, I heated 1/4 cup oil until smoking and poured it over the crust mix. It boils over like lava -- very cool -- and cools off to the side.

I started to chop the mini bell peppers, but as they were barely a few inches in length, I just tossed them whole onto an oven pan, drizzled with sesame oil and sea salt, and broiled on high until it just starts to char, them removed. I dusted with a little dashi soup powder for more seasoning. Done.

With oven pre-heated to 350-degrees and a hot pan with smoking sesame oil inside, I seared the scallops for about 30-45 seconds on each side, then topped with the ginger/sesame crust, and threw them into the oven for about six minutes to get them medium-rare. Meanwhile, I had a couple teaspoons of miso paste in about a cup or so of water that was reducing down to a thick paste.

Plating. I dropped a circle of the miso reduction on the center of a plate, arranged four scallops per plate on top, then fanned out the mini bell peppers around the scallops. If I had scallions I'd use them to garnish, but then again, if I had scallions, they'd be in the ginger crust.

The results? The cooking time for the scallops is perfect for medium rare, though the baking causes juices to run and muck up the lovely sear that was created. They were juicy with the muscle strands just starting to show. Sadly, the ginger wasn't minced fine enough, and it really overpowers the sesame seeds. Maybe next time, the sesame seeds should be toasted and used as a garnish. The peppers were almost perfect. They basically cook in their own juices, and biting into them causes a burst of sweet flavor to drizzle down all over yourself. Okay, not the cleanest thing, but damn tasty. I didn't put enough dashi powder, but so what, these were a success. Next time, I might nix the ginger crust altogether and drizzle the miso reduction over the scallops, instead.

I'd give myself a solid B for my efforts.

When Vegas Bites, Bite Back

2007-08-29T00:57:00.000-07:00

There's only one thing you can do when Vegas chews you up and spits you out. No, not find an ATM. Get your money's worth out of the town and eat it all back.

So it was when I reached my pre-determined loss limit halfway through my recent trip to Sin City. I was actually doing fine until a late Saturday night visit to the craps tables. For me, it's the most exhilarating way to lose your money: quickly, but with the promise of getting it back with one hot roll. Alas.

Sushi Roku @ Caesar's Palace

Okay, it's a chain, no big discovery here. But they make damn fine sushi (and stiff cocktails, to boot). Camille and I initially ordered oysters for an appetizer, but thanks to a plague of red tide in the Pacific, we ended up with Tofu Three Ways, which featured bites of soft tofu with: scallions and sesame oil, white truffle and truffle oil, caviar and lemon oil. My favorite was the caviar/lemon oil, the combination of the salty roe and the citrus over the smooth, soft tofu was the proverbial party in my mouth. I was most looking forward to the truffle when we ordered, as that was the first truffle experience for me, but it was far too subtle against the blank canvas of the tofu. Kinda like looking at an off-white painting on white canvas: underwhelming.

For sushi, we went with: ikura (the orange/red salmon roe), yellowtail-scallion roll, eel-avocado roll, spicy scallop roll, soft shell crab roll, albacore-garlic roll, and sweet shrimp sushi (which is raw) with accompanying fried shrimp head. I don't know what exactly it is about unagi, the freshwater eel, that I love. It's got a meaty-fishy taste and is almost pasty in texture. When combined with the equally mushy avocado and against Sushi Roku's very good sushi rice, it's fantastic. It all melts together so nicely. When I'm old and toothless, please stuff this into my mouth roll by roll so I can gnaw it till I'm in the grave. My other favorite is the yellowtail-scallion. Yellowtail is one of the least "fishy" fishes, and when it's mild creaminess is countered by the green onion, it's another little bit of awesomeness. Everything else was a fantastic pair of contrasting flavors save for the soft shell crab roll, which was fried too long and a tad burnt. I'm consistently a sucker for soft shell crab and have had it in a variety of cuisines, but I can't think of a time when soft shell was as satisfying as I imagined it to be. Nor can I think of a time when I won at the craps table. But off I always go, loading the back end of the pass line and covering the six and the eight like every other sucker. The lesson here: be wary of soft shell crab. And craps is lots of fun. Try it!

The Aloha Specialties Restaurant @ The California

This trip, we kicked it way old school and stayed downtown at "The Cal." It's just off of Fremont Street and populated predominantly by aging Hawaiian tourists, many of which lug their own oxygen through the smoky innards of the casino floor. And where there's oxygen-deprived Hawaiian pensioners, there's Hawaiian food! After promising runs at Pai Gow and blackjack didn't pan out, it was Loco Moco time.
Hawaiian cuisine is a mish-mash of the various immigrant cultures that worked the lands over the years, though I have no clue where the Loco Moco came from. Rice topped with a hamburger steak (aka a hamburger) topped with a fried egg topped with gravy. So, uh, yeah... there's the cultural history of the Sandwich Isles on a plate!

The hamburger was cooked to be juicy inside and slightly crispy outside, which gave it a wonderful bite when combined with runny fried eggs and the beef gravy. This dish triggers nostalgia points for me because it reminds me of the simple breakfast my mom used to make of rice and a fried egg all mashed together into a big, yolk-y mess. So, my youth + cultural history of the Sandwich Isles on a plate = supreme satisfaction. It's one savory plate, but the egg whites and rice balance it enough to stave off immediate onset of food coma. I can't quite figure out what spices they use in Hawaii for the beef and the gravy, which seems to be the real key to the dish. I came close to unlocking that puzzle, but then I fell asleep in my room watching SportsCenter on a loop. Mmmmm, food coma.

Chang's. 4760 South Decatur Blvd.

If you're sick of buffets at the hotels... well, then, you're no friend of mine. But if you want a reprieve from the incessant jingling of slot machines and don't want bottomless plates of king crab legs two days in a row, head west on Tropicana. Go past the erotic supply store, turn right at the trailer park, and stop at Chang's for some brunch, dim sum style. The place is always bustling, and the staff will keep pushing plates of goodness at you. You really have to turn your table into a well-oiled eating machine, clearing off plates in a timely fashion to allow for the arrival of more steamed and fried bites.

The specialty here is the XO noodles, chow fun noodles fried in a type of chili oil-based sauce and accented with pepper flakes, scallions, and sesame seeds. It's slightly crispy, but the noodles are still soft. The spice hits you but relents, letting you shovel as much as you can without fear of tearing up like a little girl. All the dim sum staples are here and in fine form. Mine and Camille's favorite is the taro dumplings, which are chopped pork stuffed inside dumplings of mashed taro, which is then breaded. Even though the taro is still a starch, it's a terrific change of paste from the noodles and buns.

I finally worked up the courage to take on chicken feet, which is cooked in a black bean sauce that turns the skin red. If you can get over the fact that it's chicken feet, it's actually quite good. It's basically the best part of the chicken, the skin, except instead of meat underneath, it's all knuckle and toe bones. It's delicious but awfully tedious to eat, as you basically have to bite a toe off, gnaw the skin loose, and spit the bones out. Strategically speaking, it's an excellent "breather" food that lets you take a break from stuffing yourself while you're still eating. At Chang's, you can stuff yourself for about $15 a person, so you'll be ready for either another food coma or a run at Let It Ride.

Mermaids @ Fremont Street

This is the saddest of sad casinos, all slot machines and posters beckoning you with novelty drinks. Yet, I went in because some of those posters tantalize you with the elite of fairground food: deep-fried Twinkies and deep-fried Oreos. I slinked past the two feathered showgirls out front offering the complimentary slot machine spin and beelined for the food counter at the back.
The truly ridiculous thing about the deep-fried Oreo basket -- if you can accept that three Oreos covered in sweet batter and deep fried for 99 cents is normal -- is that it's topped by powdered sugar and chocolate sprinkles. The frying does change the texture of the Oreo, partially melting the cream and softening the chocolate cookie, so that the whole thing feels like a doughnut hole stuffed with Oreo preserves. It's not as sickeningly sweet as you might think, and pairs fantastically with a cold root beer (also 99 cents). It's like a chocolate sweet cream sandwich bite, and while it was born at a state fair, it's right at home amidst the neon and LCDs of Fremont Street. It's also the perfect exclamation point to a weekend of reckless gambling. Vegas may have my money, but I got paid back in the form of free cocktails, Hawaiian history, and deep-fried sugar sandwiches.