Pho Report #3 - Miss Siagon

Miss Saigon gets it’s own entry in Pho report.

This is really more of a love letter than a review.

The reasons that Miss Saigon occupies this place are only in a small way about there Pho’ but since that’s what this series is about I’ll go over that first.

The Pho’s here is just on the earthy side of perfect. The noodles are always well cooked, the broth is deep and meaty and the beef is a fine, fresh cut. The noodle soup served here is completely satisfying for any Pho’ aficionado.

Pho aside what keeps bringing me back here (besides it’s nearness to sleepwalkers rehearsal space) is something much more ephemeral. I have spent many a lunch and dinner sitting in the open dinning room of this peaceful oasis on the gritty corner of sixth and mission. Something about the fact that they fill the air with a CD of muzaked American folk songs that have animal sounds for interludes while an old MGM musical plays silently on the TV makes me never want to leave. In fact this restaurants is one of the few places in the city I feel at ease. Somehow when I sit there with my bowl of soup the chaos outside slips away and time stops.

Of Ruebens, wheat and Jews

I may be vehement anti-Zionist and a borderline self-loathing Jew, but still one of the things I miss most since realizing I couldn’t eat wheat is the Reuben sandwich.

The Reuben, for those of you who don’t know, is a hot corn beef sandwich on rye bread with Russian or thousand island dressing, Swiss cheese and sour kraut. Incidentally, much like myself, the Reuben is often thought of as Jewish although in reality it isn’t. In the Rueben's case it’s not Kosher because it’s against Kosher law to have meat and cheese on the same plate. In my case, I’m not Jewish because my mother wasn’t and that’s what counts.

Anyways, I’ve been missing Rueben's for the past few years until something hit me the other night while watching the sandwich obsessed TV show Chuck. I can make a Reuben I can eat! My favorite non-wheat bread, after all, was a rye. How this had never occurred to me before I’ll never know.

So I assembled my ingredients, made a quick thousand island dressing (ketchup, pickles and mayonnaise) slapped that thing and a frying pan with a little butter on the outside sides of the bread and before I knew it I was reading eating a Reuben and reading about how Jew’s can be stupid too in the New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/opinion/06chabon.html

Salmon Risotto A la Cooks Illustrated

This recipe is a hybrid and a variation of two of my favorite recipes from cooks illustrated. It’s a tribute in a way to one the greatest aids I’ve ever had to my cooking. A magazine who’s incredibly thorough process of finding the perfect recipe for each dish manages to be, more often than not, a lesson in cooking technique as well as a set of directions for a perfect meal

Enough of this gushing.

This weeks recipe is quite long and involved so I’d like to get to the recipe as soon as possible.

A few notes first though:

First: The two recipes I took this from are Spring Vegetable Risotto and Poached Salmon with Herb Caper Vinaigrette. I definitely changed them a bit but the cooks illustrated originals are pretty bad ass. You usually need a password to get these recipes on their website but I think they’re both free right now.

Second: I had tons to do the day I cooked this one so naturally I made it as complicated as possible to aid me in my procrastination. There’s no need to put to caramelized onions in per se’ or use so many different veggies but you know… that’s the way I roll. Plus this makes tons of really good food that you can eat for a week.

Third: This is really based mostly on what I had in the fridge that day. The risotto part of the recipe is actually a pretty good way to get rid of all the stuff in your crisper. Most of the stuff in step three of the Risotto section can be replaced by any moderately firm and hardy vegetable.

Four: When your cutting the vegetables remember to put aside all the best scraps (the woody ends of the asparagus, the green parts of the leeks, the carrot tops, the basil stems, the onion skins and such) as you’ll need them later.

So before further ado…

Ingredients

For the Salmon
2 Salmon Filets weighing about 1 ½ pounds.
2 Lemons cut into ½ inch think rounds
½ Basil Leaves, Chopped
1 Clove Garlic, minced
1 cup Dry White Wine
Salt & Pepper

For the Risotto
2 cups Water
4 cups Vegetable Broth (or Chicken if there’s no vegetarians eating)
1 Tbs Olive Oil
1 Yellow Onion halved and sliced thin
1 Tsp. Brown Sugar
4 Tbs Butter
½ Pound Asparagus chopped
1 small bulb Fennel trimmed and chopped
1 Carrot chopped
1 Leek (white part only) halved length wise and chopped thing
4 Cloves Garlic minced
1 ½ cup Arborio Rice
1 cup Basil Leaves, chopped
½ cup grated Parmesan Cheese


Poaching the Salmon

1. Arrange the lemon slices evenly in single layer across the bottom of a medium size pan. Sprinkle with garlic and basil. Pour on the wine until it just covers the top of the lemon slices. Salt and pepper the salmon filets and place them on the lemon slices skin side down.

2. Bring wine to a boil then reduce to a simmer. Cover and cook until salmon is just done, about 8 to 10 minutes. Remove Salmon to a plate and set aside.

3. Strain the poaching liquid into a bowl through a mesh strainer pressing on the lemons to extract as much flavor as possible. This should produce about a cup of liquid, if it doesn’t add a little more wine to it until it does. Set aside for later.

Making the Risotto

1. Place all the scraps you’ve set aside from the vegetables in a dutch oven with all the water and broth. Bring to a very low simmer. Cook for about 20 minutes. Strain liquid through mesh strainer into a large bowl, pressing on the veggies to release flavor. Cover liquid and set it aside.

2. Wipe dutch over clean. Heat olive oil over medium heat. Add onions, sugar a pinch of slat and pepper. Cook stirring often until onions are dark and almost caramelized. Remove to a plate and set aside.

3. Wipe dutch oven clean with a wet paper towel. Add 1 tbs. butter heat over medium heat until foaming subsides. Add asparagus, carrots, fennel and a pinch of a salt. Cook stirring regularly until asparagus is bright green and slightly tender and fennel is just beginning to brown. Remove to a plate and set aside.

4. Wipe the dutch oven clean one last time. Melt remaining butter over medium heat until foaming subsides. Add leeks and cook until soft, about 4 minutes. Add garlic and cook for 30 more seconds. Add rice and gook until edges of the rice are translucent.

5. Add wine/lemon mixture from salmon poaching. Cook stirring frequently until all the liquid is absorbed.

6. Add 3 cups of the broth/water mixture you’ve set aside from step one. Lower to a simmer and cook stirring fairly regularly until all the water is gone about 12 minutes.

7. Now comes the time of repeatedly adding water and stirring. Add ½ cup liquid at a time and stir constantly until it’s absorbed. Repeat this as needed until the rice has the right consistency. Creamy but still slightly al dente. Usually this will mean using all the liquid.

8. Finally add the onions, veggies you’ve set aside along with the cheese and chopped basil stir to combine. Remove from heat. Crumble in the salmon and continue stirring. Stir in juice from half a lemon.

Serves many and keeps well.

Inkas - Peruvian Food. Who Knew?

I think I need to get a world map and put thumb tacks on all the places who’s cuisine I haven’t tried. Then spend my life trying to remove all the thumb tacks. Every time I try a new nationalities food (usually one I’ve never even considered before) it’s always a sort of culinary revelation. I feel as though I’ve been cheated out of something I never even knew I was being cheated out of. Last time it was Indonesian food, this time it was Peruvian.

Apparently I’m not the only one upset about the lack of Peruvian food awareness. The second I arrived, with my partner in eating Kirsten Goldberg, at Inkas in the outer mission our server began working hard to get us aqainted with the ways of Peruvian cooking. After perusing the menu for only a few minutes he came by to make his suggestions. He suggested we start with a ceviche then went on to recommend and describe not one, not two but six different entrees leaving us much more informed but not all that much closer to a decision.

We ended up ordering the mixed ceviche for a starter. For our entrees Kirsten settled on “Aji De Gallina”, strips of chicken simmered in chile sauce with boiled eggs and potatoes and I had “Combinado De Cabrito” lamb stew with cilantro sauce. served with rice, beans and “salsa criolla” .

The ceviche was, for me, the star of the show. It was a simple mix of shrimp, mussels, squid and some sort of white fish marinated in a lime dressing with onions and cilantro. Served along side it was some marinated yucca, some sort of yam and a small pile of hominy corn kernels. The seafood was great, I have no idea what kind of fish it was but it was meaty and firm without being at all fishy and the dressing although very simple still had some unidentifiable quality that made it better than any lime dressing I’d ever had. Still it was the hominy corn kernels marinated in the same light lime dressing that I, for some reason, keep thinking of every time the meal comes to mind.

The entree’s where no less impressive, even if in my mind they’re a little over shadowed by the kernels from the previous course. Kirsten’s chicken was succulent in a nice orange sauce, both spicy and creamy. My lamb was both tender and juicy. Served in a dark greenish cilantro sauce it almost tasted like a curry. Our exuberant waiter, who returned a number of times during our meal to share tidbits of information about Peruvian cuisine, informed me that the sauce for my lamb contained a spice made from a ground squash that was not found anywhere outside of Peru. He even went as far as to explain that the only way the restaurant’s owners could get it here was in a dried form because of the ban on carrying fruits and vegetables across the border.

Finally at the end of our meal our server returned again to get to know us a little. I told him I lived in the East Bay and he excitedly went and got me a post card with dancing girls on one side and a list of Peruvian restaurants on the other. He suggested that I try La Furia Chalaca in downtown Oakland. I probably will end up checking that one out but if your looking for a introduction to Peruvian food I’d suggest you head out to Inkas. That way you can get great food and have it served by a true ambassador of the culture.

Artichokes Stuffed with Quinoa

On Artichokes
The artichoke is one of the central objects of my existence. It’s my favorite food and has been for as long as I can remember and to me that means quite a bit. In a way I practically worship it the way ancient cultures worshiped wheat. I seek it out on every menu. I’ve spent my life experimenting with every possible way to cook it. I even considered getting an Artichoke tattoo on my belly.

Being fixated with cooking and in love with the artichoke makes for some interesting, and sometimes frustrating, experiences. It’s not like being in love with the beet or the potato (both of which I’m very fond of). The artichoke proves quite a challenge every time you try a new technique of cooking it. After all there’s just as many ways to make it inedible as there are to make it edible.

On Quinoa
I am not a hippie nor a vegetarian. In fact I eat meat at pretty much every meal. I didn’t want to like quinoa. When someone tells me that there’s a grain out there that you can eat pretty much on it’s own for a meal and get everything you need my response is “Why the hell would you want to do that?”. After all variety is the spice of life and definitely the spice of the culinary world (actually I suppose spice is the spice of the culinary world but that just sort of drives my point home).

But the fact is, despite my reluctance, I do like quinoa. In fact I like it quite a bit. I like it’s chewy texture and slightly tangy taste. I like that a basic Quinoa salad can be eaten just as well either hot or cold and yes, despite myself, I like that this basic salad, eaten on it’s own for lunch, will leave me totally sated.

Stuffed Artichokes
If I was somehow in the position to have a signature dish the stuffed artichoke would be it. I’ve made it over a hundred times with probably just as many variations.

My father and step-mother were big foodies before the term foodie existed. I began teaching myself to cook shortly after I moved out in order to replicate all the amazing things I’d eat with them. One of the first of these things was the stuffed artichokes I used to get at Il Fornaio in Corte Madera.

Originally I based my recipes off the ones from that restaurant. The stuffing from these was based around the use of high quality bread chunks placed in just the cavity of the artichoke as opposed to the traditional roman way with bread crumbs between all the leaves. Recently however I’ve developed an allergy to wheat and can no longer eat the bread part. This put a major crimp in my style.

I’ve tried wild rice and glutton free bread to varying degrees of success. I figured, with my new conversion to Quinoa, maybe a marriage could be made.

The Results
In the end. The marriage was successful if not harmonious. It was a decent meal for two, both components came out nice on there own, but in the end it wasn’t quite what it could have been. When using bread somehow the juices from the stuffing manage to seep a little into the artichoke leaving the meat of the heart with a pleasant garlicky, herbal flavor. For some reason this never works with any of the substitutes I’ve tried. Perhaps rice and quinoa somehow keep more of the flavor to themselves. Who knows.



I’ve included the recipe for the bread stuffing as well as the quinoa one:

2 Medium to Large Artichokes (preferably organic they’re much better)

1 cup quinoa any color (I prefer red!)
½ onion sliced
3 gloves garlic minced
1 medium carrot sliced
1 cup sliced crimini mushrooms
2 sprigs thyme
2 ribs celery sliced
½ pepper chopped
1 tomato chopped
¼ cup olive oil
½ cup some sort of wine vinager (I like champagne vinager but any type will do)
About 8 oz. blue chees

Prepping the Artichokes
Cut off the top 1/3 of the artichokes and the stem so it’s pretty much flush with the base of the vegetable. It’s good to err on the side of cutting less of the stem off than more as you don’t want them to come apart when you stuff them later.

Boil or steam the artichokes for about 25 minutes in a large stock pot or dutch oven. The simple rule to seeing if an artichoke is done is to use tongs and pull on the lowest leaves if they come off without any resistance there done. For this recipe it’s better to have them a little underdone since they cook more later when you put them in the oven.

Stuffing

1. Rinse quinoa thoroughly using either a very fine strainer or a courser one lined with a paper towel or coffee filter.

2. In a medium size dutch heat 1 Tbsp. olive oil over medium heat until shimmering. Add onions and cook stirring often until onions just begin to brown. Add garlic and saute until just fragrant, about 30 seconds. Mix in quinoa then two cups water. Bring to a boil then lower the heat to a simmer. Cook until all the water is gone or at least until the quinoa tastes done. About 15 to 20 minutes.

3. While quinoa is cooking saute mushrooms in a large pan with ½ Tbs. olive oil until just starting to turn brown. Add another ½ Tbs. oil to pan along with green garlic and carrots. Saute until the green garlic just starts to get brown stripes on it, about 2 minutes. Stir in leaves from one sprig of thyme. When quinoa is done add this mixture to it.

4. Mix together in a small bowl the olive oil vinegar and remaining thyme. Stir into the quinoa.

5. Mix into the quinoa mixture the peppers, celery, tomatoes and cheese. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Putting the Artichokes Together

1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Once the artichokes are done cooking drain them in a colander and put them under cold running water. When there cool enough to handle use our hands or a spoon to remover the spikey purple leaves and the choke. I prefer to use my hands to pull out the inner leaves then push out the choke with my thumb. A lot of people prefer to use a spoon which works well also just be careful not to scoop up too much of the heart with the choke.

3. Stuff the cavity of the artichoke fairly full. Be careful not to break the them open. Set aside any extra stuffing.

4. Arrange the artichokes in a medium size baking sheet. Place a small sliver of the remaining cheese on top of each one. Sprinkle extra stuffing around the bottom of the pan using it to help keep the artichokes upright.

5. Place them in the oven and bake for 15 to 20 minutes. The cheese should melt and form a crust.

Serve with dipping sauce, mayonnaise or a simple vinaigrette if desired

Bread Stuffing
4 cloves of garlic coarsely chopped
Kernals from 1 ear of fresh corn
¼ Bulb of fresh Fennel, ¼ Red Onion or ¼ Leeks
1 Green Onion Chopped
1 Cups French or Italian bread cut into 2 inch Squares
1 Medium tomatoe chopped
Blue Cheese or parmesan
¼ cup Olive Oil
½ cup Red Wine Viniger

Making the Stuffing
1. While the artichokes are cooking heat butter until foaming subsides then add half the garlic, the fennel (or red onion or leek). Sauté ingredients together shaking pan a few times until a few pieces of corn start to get dark spots on them. Remove from heat and set aside.

2. In a large mixing bowl mix together bread cubes, tomatoes, remaining garlic, 1/3 of the cheese, green onions, corn mixture oil and vinegar. Salt and pepper it to taste.

The Pho' Report Part One- The Friendliness vs. Quality theory

The Pho’ Report: In which I set out to review every Pho restaurant in the bay area (well really San Francisco and the East Bay)

Part One- The Friendliness vs. Quality theory

Pho’ Hoa - This small fast food looking place semi-chain in downtown berkeley was where I first fell in love with Pho’. I’d always liked Asian noodle soups but never really understood all the hubbub over this particular one until one rainy afternoon last year when I ducked in here after buying comic books.

I can’t really explain what happened. It was cold out so I figured soup would be good. This was the nearest place so I figured “what the hell”? I ordered the basic Pho’ Tai (vermicelli noodle soup with rare beef) and sat back with my comics. Sometime mid-meal a switch flipped in my brain. Afterwords I found myself craving Pho’ for nearly every meal.

So now a year later as I set out to write a bit about all the Pho’ I’ve eaten I figure this is the perfect place to start.

The Pho’ here could be describes as average but I tend to think of it like this:

Pho is a food for which there is only so much you can do. It has a sort of glass ceiling but one too many places either can’t manage to reach or try too hard to break through. There is an ideal thing that you want when you order Pho. The noodles must be cooked just right, the beef must be sliced right and rare (or raw), the garnishes should be fresh and most importantly the broth should be simple but still extremely deep in flavor. Get all this right and you’ve satisfied most Pho eaters. This one for sure.

Too many places try and do too much with their Pho. This is not one of those places. Pho Hao manages to give you exactly what you crave when you order Pho’. Their simple noodle soup has sublime perfection to it. There’s something so great about getting exactly what you want when you want it.

On another note the people who work here range from completely uninterested in you too downright hostile. This is a central part of my “friendliness vs. quality” theory that I’ll talk about more in the next review.

7 - Mission - The people working at this tiny little Vietnamese place (on 7th at Mission of course) are beyond nice. Not only where they extremely pleasant with me they were patient above and beyond the pale of duty with, not just one but, all three crazy people who wandered in while I was eating.

Unfortunately their attitude did nothing for the Pho’ which is what I’m primarily interested in. The noodles where overdone and chewy which was bad enough but beyond that there was something seriously wrong with the broth. It took me a few minutes to put a finger on what was so familiar about the rather bad soup. Finally I realized it had the distinct taste of Top Ramen flavor packets. Could this really be how they made it???

My experience here combined with all my former experiences at Pho’ Hoa was what led me eventually to the following theory about Pho’ restaurants:

“Quality of the Pho’ gets worse in direct proportion to how nice the people are serving it”.

Top Ramen Packets????

(Vegetarian) Borsht!

I’ve decided to make a renewed effort to post to this blog every week. I’ll try to alternate between home cooking experiments and restaurant reviews.

Today’s home cooking experiment: Vegetarian Borsht.

I’m not sure how it came to mind but sometime Monday afternoon I was seized with the urge to eat Borsht and, since I’m yet to find a decent russian restaurant (or any at all really) in the east bay, I figured this was the perfect chance to try and make my own. Since I was cooking for Kirstin the borsht had to be vegetarian, which worried me a little. I was afraid the broth would be too one dimensional.

Before heading out to berkeley bowl I looked up a recipe online to see what it needed. I found what looked like a good recipe on cooksrecipes.com and set to and to my pleasant surprise I seemed to have most of the ingredients already in my fridge.

The recipe was fairly simple. Sauté onions,beets, carrot and parsnip with butter and oil in a large dutch over medium heat. When onions are softened add potatoes, garlic, canned tomatoes and broth. Simmer for twenty minutes. Stir in a little vinegar. Serve with chopped dill and sour cream.

Could it really be that simple? I was slightly wary. Weren't there some secret russian grandma tricks? In the end no there weren't. The only real problem I ran into was that I misjudged the quantity to such a degree that I had to switch everything over to a bigger pot before I could move on to the second step.

In the end me came out with a perfectly good giant pot of borscht that, thanks to the vinegar didn’t really suffer too much due to lack of meat. We’ve been eating it all week and I’m happy to say that it wasn’t until today (friday) that I got tired of eating it.

I’m not going to include my recipe for this since I pretty much followed this online one to the letter (vegetarian russian borscht). Maybe next time I’ll experiment a little with making a half batch and adding some other ingredients. Maybe kidney beans like they have at Odessa.

Ochazuke (or just chazuke depending on who you ask) with Clams

For our first meal after our return from New York I wanted to try this amazingly simple thing that we had on one of our last days in the city. A Japanese dish called Ochazuke. To put it very simply this is rice soup with tea. You just top some left over rice with whatever you want and then pour green tea over it. It’s real japanese comfort food. For some reason I’ve only ever seen it on one menu. That of the little Japanese place on St. Mark's Place called simply “Go”.

This is a meal mostly based on the idea of doing as little as work possible. The traditional toppings for it are all things that can be found in most Japanese pantries. Therefore most of my work took place in the international aisle at Berkeley Bowl. I bought some Umeboshi (Pickled plums), toasted rice, nori rice seasoning and some bonito flakes.

My real challenge was the tea. I’m fairly certain that the stuff we had at “Go” was not just Tea. There was something unquestionably savory about it. My first guess was to use a small amount of Dashi (japanese fish stock). I did a quick scan of the internet and of the few recipes I could find, a few did say something about Dashi, but almost universally they said to use soy sauce. I decided I’d try a little of both

Never satisfied not having at least one ingredient from the animal kingdom, and admittedly a little bored that most of the meal was made up of prepared ingredients, I decided to steam up some cherrystone clams for an extra topping.

Back at home with all my crazy ingredients I started by making some rice. I used standard Japanese short grain rice and my trusty little rice cooker. Once it was done I took the lid off to intentionally let it dry out a little. I figured this was the best way to replicate the “left over rice” suggested by most recipes.

While the rice was sitting and becoming leftoverized I turned to the broth. Not owning a tea pot I simply boiled some water in a sauce pan and added a couple tea bags. Unfortunately Kirstin informed me I’d already made my first mistake. Not being much of a tea drinker I kept the water at a high boil after adding the bags. This quickly made a liquid low on tea flavor and high on bitterness. Apparently I burned the tea. We threw it out and started over.

This time I let Kirstin take over the tea part. She manages to get a nice sauce pan full of tea, even if it was a little bitter (apparently tea gets bitter when it’s old and I’d had this stuff for months). To this I added a couple tea spoons of Dashi, still determined that this would make a better soup than soy sauce. One taste revealed apparently that no I didn’t know more than all the traditional Japanese chefs on the internet. The fishy taste of the Dashi overpowered the tea flavor and it still wasn’t really salty enough. A little discouraged I added a tablespoon of soy sauce and decided it was done.

I turned happily to the clams, something I knew something about. I placed all of them (I had bought a full pound, although we really only needed about 8) on the bottom of my big dutch oven, dropped in some garlic and chives, pushed ‘em around a bit. Then I poured in some sake a splash of Dashi and let them simmer on medium. When they where almost I threw in a big handful of sesame seed. The whole thing only took about 3 minutes.

Everything that needed to be was now cooked, all that was left was assembly. I scooped a good cup or more of rice each into two bowls, sprinkled some nori mixture and popped rice on them, arranged a few slices of Umeboshi and four clams on each. I then poured a ladle full of tea mixture over the rice and sprinkled them with Bonito flakes.

We sat down to eat and after a few bites I was mortified to hear Kirstin say something I’m fairly sure she’s never said before in her life. “It’s not salty enough”. I wasn’t sure if I’d completely failed in my cooking or finally won over her tender palate to my salt worshiping ways. A few bites of my own led me more toward the latter unfortunately.

Still, once everything was mixed up, the rice and broth managed to pick up enough salt from the Ume plums (sometimes refered to as “Salty Plum”) and after adding a little more soy sauce to the bowl we ended up with a hearty satisfying meal. I think after a few more tries I’ll be satisfied that I’ll never have to fly 3000 miles to eat this home style
Japanese food again. I can eat it in my own home.

Ochazuke with Cherrystone Clams

Serves 2 (If serving more double everything but the broth that you’ll have to figure out for yourself)

Ingredients

Rice
1 Cup Dry Short Grain Rice (Or 2 Cups of Leftover Prepared Rice)
1 Cup Water
Nori Seasoning
Popped Rice
4 Ume Plums

Tea Broth
4 Cups Water
3 Bags Green Tea (Preferably Genmaicha, Roasted Rice Tea)
2 Tablespoons Soy Sauce

Clams
1 Teaspoon Sesame Oil
8 Cherrystone Clams (Or any smallish clams)
2 Cups Dry Sake
2 Cloves Garlic (minced)
1 Tablespoon Chopped Chives
1 Tablespoon Dashi
1 Small Handful Sesame Seeds

To Pass
Bonito Flakes


For Rice
I’m only good at making rice in a rice maker so I won’t go into how to prepare rice just what to do with it once it’s prepared.

1. Divvy up rice between two bowls. Sprinkle each one with Nori Rice Seasoning and Toasted rice.

2. Squeeze out the pits of the Ume plums then slice them into four pieces each. Arrange them on the rice.

For Tea Broth

1. Pour water into medium size sauce pan. Set over high heat until boiling. Remove from heat. Add tea bags with paper tags removed. Let sit for three minutes. Remove tea bags using fork or slotted spoon pressing on them over the pan, if desired, to get the rest of the tea flavor out of them.

2. Bring sauce back up to a low simmer. Add soy sauce and cover. Turn off heat.

For Clams

1. Heat sesame oil in medium dutch oven or good size sauce pot over medium high heat. Add garlic and stir for just a few seconds. Place clams at bottom of pan. Sprinkle with chives. Stir to cover clams and chives with oil.

2. Add sake and dashi. Cover and lower heat to medium.

3. When almost all the clams have opened (probably about 2 or 3 minutes) lift lid and sprinkle with sesame seeds.

4. Wait until all or at least almost all clams are completely open then remove from heat. Discard any clams that refuse to open.

To Serve
Arrange four clams each on the bowls of rice. Pour over a small amount of broth, leaving it on the table so people can add more as desired.

Pass bonito flakes.

A new Aproach for the Eating Blog

Now that we’re back from New York (and have been for a while) our my essential focus for this blog, “To write about everything we ate in New York”, is officially over. However we still have this blog. And we still love to eat so I’ve decided on a new focus. At least a new focus for me.

We’ll still write reviews of the exciting restaurants we eat at but now we’ll add a new dimension to the blog. From this point on I will start writing brief explanations of my weekly experiments with home cooking.

At least once every week or two I cook a big dinner for me and Kirstin. I like to at least try one new thing each meal whether it’s a whole new recipe, a new technique or just a new recipe. Kirstin enjoys the eating.

In this blog I’ll cover my what goes right, what goes wrong, what the final product tastes like and looks like. In the end I’ll finish by writing a recipe, because I’ve always wanted to learn how to do that.

Hopefully Kirstin will also add to this by writing about her experience with the final product.

Epilogue

I'm not going to cover the last day in depth. This part of our blog was about our shared experiences eating in New York and she went home one day earlier than me.

I will say a few things:

Our last meal together was at the mediocre Mexican place "Bonita".

I ate dinner with James in Astoria the night before I left at a great little place on 34th Ave., S'Agapo. I had lamb fricassee with artichokes.

That made it seven times I ate lamb while here in New York

Four of those time where at Oasis.

That looks like this:

We had Japanese food seven times.

And to top it all off at around midnight, the night before I left I got to eat Souvlaki at my favorite Souvlaki stand in queens.

The Souvlaki Man's Stand has gotten bigger

But the Souvlaki is Exactly the Same!

Day 14 (The Ultimate Day) Tai Thai & Kefi

We started our last day the same way we've done the entire trip; arguing about the question of brunch vs. lunch. After tramping up and down Bedford for our millionth and possibly last time we finally begrudgingly settled on going back to Tai Thai, the quite good Thai Place we'd gone to earlier that on our trip. It was just as good and efficient as I'd remembered.

For dinner we went with Kirstin's friend Sandra to a great Greek place on the Upper West Side called Kefi. The food was very good and priced pretty much as reasonably as anything I'd had back in my beloved Astoria.

We ordered four appetizers for the table; an amazing sort of califlower/tomato salad, a feta caper olive concoction and some sardines. Everything came with caperberries and feta cheese on it witch was just great by me.

I also finally got the branzino I was hopping for. It just the way I wanted it; perfectly pan fried and served with a nice mix of roasted tomatoes, potatoes and olives.

A meal full of feta and love.

Sandra and a large amount of food

My beloved Branzino

An Ouzo sour, the only drinkable ouzo I've ever had

Day 13 (The Penultimate Day) The Simple Cafe &

For lunch we went back to the Simple cafe of which I have nothing new to say. I ate the exact same thing and had a very similar experience. Grrr... if a salad's $10 I do not want it to be "simple".

The accursed burger with no-bun of the wheat intolerant.

For dinner me and Kirstin Planned on splitting up. A plan I'm glad to say we failed in because we ended up going to a place I've been wanting to go back to for some time. A little Japanese place on St. Mark's called "Go".

All the food I've had at Go has been good (except the time I tried Natto there, but that was the Natto's fault). The one thing I wanted to go back for was the Ochazuke, a Japanese "peasant dish" made by pouring green tea mixed with dashi over rice and topping it with varying ingredients.

We ordered the Umeboshi one. It's deep hearty dish that you can just imagine tastes even better in the cold winter months of Kyoto. I've never seen it on any other menu in the U.S. and I've been looking for it for years. Having finally gotten to taste it again I think I've figured it out and I'm intent on trying it at home. In fact I bought all the ingredients today.

Day 12 Samurai & Fish

Kirstin wasn't feeling that well this day so we didn't make a big thing out of lunch. I just got myself a bento box at a mediocre Japanese place in Williamsburg with the mediocre, obvious name Samurai.

Literally nothing to write home about.

We had dinner with Kirstin's friend Hilary in this place in the west village I'd been really looking forward to called simply "Fish". (To know why I was so excited refer to the picture of a sign Kirstin posted below)

I ordered the oyster special and a "Down East Lobster Feast". The oysters where great (especially considering the price). The lobster feast was truly decadent. It came with a pound and a half lobster, four steamed clams, french fries and corn on the cob.

This was truly an orgy of sea-food, starch and melted butter.

Day 11 Google & Khyber Pass

For lunch we went and visited our friend Greg Travis at Google New York. A truly bizarre place full of strange corridors and razor scooters.

Greg brought us to the cafeteria where their was such a huge variety of food I couldn't see why anyone working there wouldn't just bring there laptop in there and eat all day. That's what I would do even if the food was a little mediocre.

I can't really remember what I had, some salad and soup and some rock hard chicken. I do remember that when I followed the arrow pointing to the bathroom I was led to a strange area that seemed to be part of another building. I couldn't get out of this area without a security code. I almost panicked then I just followed someone else in, even if there where signs everywhere saying "beware of tailgaters".

Weird!

Dinner was also a weird environment but with much better food. We ate at Khyber Pass, an Afghan restaurant in the heart of St. Marks Place.

I'd never had Afghan food before so I was exited to try is out. I got a sort of lamb spinach stew thing. It was quite tasty. It was like a cross between indian food, middle eastern food and for some reason Philippine food.

The weird part of the visit was the thing we sat on. It was an elevated sort of booth/coach that your supposed to sit cross legged at like at some Japanese restaurants. The only problem was there was literally no place to put your feet. It was the most uncomfortably seating situation I've ever had and it looked so comfy at first.

Anyways the food was great and we sat at the only table that had this strange set up so I'd still suggest it.

Day 10 Coney Island & PT

If yesterday was all about the places on my list that involved food, today was about the one thing that didn't. Unless you count fried clams and corn dogs as food. Today was the day we went to Coney Island.

Food wise it was a little unremarkable even if otherwise it was awesome. I ate a corn dog and fries at "Beer Island" immediately after arriving then we walked the full length of the board walk and got some food at a Russian place called Tatiana that had live fish in aquariums under there dance floor.

I ordered a quite good shrimp cocktail although looking at every one else's plates I wished I'd ordered something more complex. There whole fish looked great, hell even their salads looked amazing.

For dinner we went to a place called PT right next to our apartment. It's a very classy looking Italian place with a beautiful outside garden in the back. I was enticed by the promise of bronzino on their menu, a fish I love that we don't get much of on the west coast.

We where headed to a street festival later that night so we figured we'd order just a few lighter sides and leave some room for street food later. We shared a salad of assorted boiled beets, shaved carrots and a fantastic italian gorgonzola and an almost too cheesy (as if that's possible ) asparagus "gratin".

Kirstin got an eggplant crostini that looked awesome. I got a dish of chopped baby artichokes and home made sausage. Artichokes are by far my favorite food and something I order whenever it's on the menu. These where not the best I've had but they where well cooked, sliced and sauteed. Not exciting but so much better than some of the overcooked boring chokes I've eaten.

In the end we ate nothing at the street festival.

Day 9 Raj Mahal & Kabab Cafe!

Me and Kirstin both had lists of all the things we wanted to do on this trip. Most of mine involved eating. We did two of those things this day.

For lunch we headed to 6th St.. between 1st and second to eat at one of the many Indian restaurants that line that block. This area is famous for there meal specials for just $6 at lunch and $7 for dinner you can get an entree an appetizer some muligawany soup, nan, Papadam, rice and a desert. I ate here often when I lived in the city.

All the different restaurants ran together in my mind so we just picked one at random. The place that had the most enthusiastic guy outside, a little place called Raj Mahal.

We sat outside, I got the Tandoori chicken and Kirstin got the Sag Paneer. The food was all pretty average. Not the most exiting Indian food in the world but with the aid of the small price, the large amount of nostalgia and the large amount of food I wasn't about to complain.

Dinner was at a place that held another very special place in my heart. The Kabab Cafe!

Located just one block from where I used to live in Queens, this legendary restaurant has only five tables. It also only has two employees or really one employee (a prep chef) and an owner.

The owner Ali, a large gregarious Egyptian man comes to your table and tells you what he has that day. Once you order he goes over to the tiny kitchen in the corner and cooks it for you then brings it back and often scrapes it directly from his pan onto your plate.

We ordered a beet salad (something I'd eaten here before and tried unsuccessfully to recreate ever since) and some sardines to start. The beets I've already expressed my excitement over but the sardines where just as good, in truth better. Oily and just fishy enough. We ate them and left little skeletons on the plate reminiscent of the cartoon Heathcliff.

For entrees me and James got meat. I got grilled baby lamb chops and james got half a duck. I tried James' but really I couldn't tear myself away from mine. Such a simple dish. I hinted in my first post that grilled lamb can only get so good. That comment was truly put to shame this day. These where the best lamb chops I've ever had and I eat at least one lamb chop a week.

Day 8 Bonito & Nobu

Our only concrete plan before we left for New York was a reservation we had at Nobu for 6:30 on the 13th.
I woke up late but I still had to eat something before our reservation. I headed down the street to a little Mexican place Bonito I’d noticed to get some tacos.

Being from the bay area I normally I avoid Mexican food in New York at all costs but this place had something about it that suggested authenticity. Maybe it was the plastic lobster and steak sign above there awning.

Immediately after entering the door I half wanted to flee. The waiter was an overly friendly tattooed white person, everything was too clean, and tacos where listed at $10. I asked the white guy how many Tacos came with this and he gave me a long description of all the different tacos you could get, why didn’t they just have this on the menu?

As it turned out you got three tacos is you ordered the steak ones, not a bad deal. You had to pay for chips and salsa but at least it came with three different kinds of salsa and tons of home made chips.

One small hispanic woman made up the entire visible kitchen staff. She was an amazingly fluid person to watch. Throwing tortillas here and there with one hand and scooping sauce with the other. I was hypnotized.

I took the Tacos home and ate them. They where good, fresh and light with a nice chipotle sauce. Still they lacked something, something that is missing from all east coast mexican food, not something I can put into words, but it’s absence is always conspicuous.

Anyways Nobu was really the point of this day.

I’d been there before over ten years ago. Still I figured I might as well get the second tier tasting menu since I’d already tried the first one. To describe everything we ate would be too much of an endeavor but I will try to at least list the courses.

Drinks:
First I ordered the “Cucumber Martini“ a delightful combination of lychee, cucumber puree and vodka. A drink so clean and clear it didn’t even taste like I was drinking alcohol.

Later I got a “Matusuhisa Martini” with Hokusetsu Sake, Vodka and ginger because I wanted something I could feel.

Our tasting menus where as follows:

First coarse: Cold Appetizers

Me: Some sort of Japanese oily wrapped around stalks of asparagus drizzled with Yuzu (Japanese Citrus) sauce.

Kirstin: A yellowfin tar tar served in a wasabi sauce with some sort of frozen stuff on top.

Both dishes came topped with Caviar and accompanied by a Yamamomo the “Japanese Apricot”

Second Coarse: Salads with Sashimi

Me: A micro green salad with a light ponzu dressing and a raw sockeye salmon which I gave to Kirstin because I don’t like Raw salmon.

Kirstin: Seared Ahi on a bed of mixed greens with sesame ginger dressing. I ate the Ahi, it was perfect brushed with a small amount of white and black petter corn.

Third coarse: New Style Sashime (a food invented by Nobu owner Iron Chef: Matsuhisa)

Me: A lightly seared bonito topped with chopped onions and cilantro in a with some sort of amazing dark green jalapeno sauce.

Kirstin: A japanese snapper seared very quickly with a high temperature blow torch drizzled with yuzo, oil and chives.

Fourth Course: Fried Things

Me: An amazing piece of Japanese style fluke battered in a wheat free batter and flash fried. Served with a skinned cherry tomato salad.

Kirsten: Bay shrimp tempura in a bowl. Sort of like Japanese pop corn shrimp.

Fifth Coarse: Main Coarse

Me: Rare Washu beef with a wine-miso sauce served with roasted baby vegetables and a piece of fried lotus root topped with poached Foie Gras.

Kirstin: Nobu’s signature dish. Miso glazed black cob with pickled baby ginger. Fish that tastes like butter.

Sixth Course: Sushi

We each got six pieces of perfectly fresh nigiri served with a bowl of extra complex tasting miso soup (I’m sure they make the dashi themselves) with baby clams in it.

Last Coarse: Dessert

I couldn’t eat much of mine (a super chocolaty mouse thing topped with shiso syrup) or Kirstin’s (Some sort of ‘smores thing) so you’ll have to look to her post for this one.

At the end of this day one basic thought came to mind. Sometimes some of what people tell you about New York really is true. “You can’t get good Mexican food” and “you have to try Nobu if at all possilble”.

Day 7 The Rabbit Hole, Philoxenia

This morningwe had a completely opposite experience of the Rabbit Hole from the one I’d had the night before. We walked in and said we wanted to use our computers so they sat us in the bar with another guy and his computer.

I opened my computer and clicked on there network but I still wasn’t able to connect to the internet. Kirstin had the same problem so we asked the other guy there how his was working and he told us it was fine until about five minutes ago and that they probably just needed to restart their modem.

I asked the bartender if he could restart it and he told me they didn’t really offer wireless on the weekends so “it was probably just off” then he pointed a sign by the door as proof. The sign read “In order to maintain a more pleasant atmosphere we ask that all computers be put away by 5:30 p.m.” It said absolutely nothing about weekends.

I had a burger with no bun and fries which was fine but they really didn’t want to give me any ketchup. Kirstin had her usual eggs with fruit instead of potatoes. Half way through our meal, already feeling rather unwelcome, a woman came up to Kirstin and said “we normally don’t do that.” I had no idea what she was talking about. Was this about the ketchup? No it was about the fruit. She wanted Kirstin to know not to expect to be able to substitute fruit whenever she wanted to.

This was not the pleasant atmosphere I’d experienced there just 12 hours earlier.

For dinner we went to Philoxenia in Astoria, Queens. A little Greek place I’d gone to last time I was in town and have fond memories of. Having lived in Astoria for years before moving back to the bay area I was very familiar with Greek food and I missed it more than anything else about New York.

We sat outside on the patio at the same table we’d sat at last time. Me, Kirstin and Erin shared everything we ordered and we ate it all down to the last drop of sauce.

We had beets with skordalia, a Greek potato garlic dip, a green salad, grilled octopus, mussels with feta and Ouzo tomato sauce and lemon potatoes. Everything was perfect and just what I wanted. The beets served as a welcome and unexpected vehicle for the garlicky "skordalia" I’d missed so much (Erin says she’s going to give me her Greek grandmothers recipe). The salad was a mix of chopped romaine and olives perfectly tossed with a lemon oil dressing and fresh dill. The sauce for the mussels made me wonder why I don’t mix tomato sauce and cheese more often, the octopus was grilled perfectly tender and not at all rubbery and the potatoes, although not as good as the ones at their more famous neighbor Uncle George's, were still better than anything I’ve had back home.

This eating experience brought me back to my years living here in Astoria. The years where I first learned about food and cooking. Eating the simple elegant Greek fair I remembered again the joy of marveling at food you can just barely figure out how they made but could never make yourself.

Day 6 Five Points, The Rabbit Hole

The ongoing lunch vs. brunch battle between me and Kirstin was unnecessary this morning. We’d had plans all week to have brunch with her friends at a place in the Village called Five Points. We even had reservations.

I couldn’t eat much at this place, I ordered a salad with hanger steak, a perfectly good little item. Not really what I wanted at the time but my only other option was another burger with no bun.

The egg dishes I saw other people consuming however where pretty amazing looking. They seemed to be eggs cooked in almost tagine like terra-cotta vessels along with various other ingredients like tomatoes, goat cheese and spring onions. I was a little jealous.

For dinner me and Kirstin ate separately for the first time since our arrival. She went out with her friends in the east village and I went back to Williamsburg to get a little done and meet up with my friends later.

I had dinner across the street from our apartment at a place called the Rabbit Hole. At first I’d hoped to get some food and post some of these blogs since they advertised free Wi-Fi and our connection was still down. When I asked them about it they told me they didn’t allow laptops after 5 p.m. A perfectly admirable policy. I went elsewhere to check my email then decided to head back there for dinner.

I chose this place because it was relatively laid back and empty. I had no idea how long it would take my friends to get out here so I wanted a place I could sit, read comic books and drink wine as long as a wanted.

I walked in and ordered steak frites from the bartender, a big goofy guy who kept calling me “mang” like he was Tony Montana. The steak was actually quite good, served pre-sliced with a very nice red wine and peppercorn sauce, the fries where shoestring style, well cooked and great when dipped in the sauce and steak juice.

The atmosphere was very calming. The bar area was entirely opened up to the street allowing it to have a pleasant airy feel and we where far enough south to avoid being overtaken by hipsters or anyone else. I could have sat there and drank wine all night.

Day 5 Ella Cafe, Odessa, Oasis

This was the day we planned on going to the Natural History Museum but first we had to have breakfast/lunch. We ran into the same dietary obstacles as the night before only this time I was very cranky from lack of sleep and food.

After a long very unpleasant search up and down Bedford ave. we finally settled on a new agey overly modern place called Ella Cafe. I got a ordered the tomato soup with meatballs and a small green salad. Both of these where entirely bland and to add insult to injury the meatballs where strangely rubbery. I suppose places that advertise themselves as organic and healthy are just as suspect here as they are back home.

That night we had planned on having a dinner meeting to work on our Cultures of Wonder project. We needed a place we could sit and drink at for a long time. Where better for such a meeting than the legendary East Village Russian diner Odessa?

Between the four of us I think we ate close to fifteen pounds of food. I ordered the Odessa combination plate which came with a kielbasa sausage, a giant pile of sour kraut, a huge potato pancake and four perogies which I gave to Kirstin. I also ordered a bowl of borsht.

I know that of the two major Russian restaurants in the area Veselka is considered the better. I can’t really remember the difference from when I lived here but I can’t see how any home style Russian food could be better than what I ate that night. To a certain degree Russian food is simple enough that there really isn’t too much space for flare or nuance. At the end of the day a kielbasa is a kielbasa and a potato pancake is just a really good patty of hash browns. Still living on the west coast and not spending a lot of time in the Richmond district I’ve truly missed this type of food. This was a meal to rival any I’ve eaten in all my culinary adventures.

Later that night we headed back to Oasis. Once again I got the grilled lamb plate and ate the whole thing. I think there’s a good chance I ate more meet in a twenty four hour period this day than I ever have in my entire life.


Lamb Kabob from Oasis