I don’t want to turn this (or my other) blog into a press release portal, but I have a new dance music release that just hit Beatport, and it is some truly hott business. If you like tech house/electro and have a taste for dirty, twisted tracks, you simply MUST check this out.

Listen and grab it here.

OK, so I’ll add a LITTLE food related content. I went to 99 Ranch market in Daly City last night for some weekend shopping, and really scoured the place for crazy new stuff. I saw two things I’ve never seen before:

Vegetarian Intestines:

…no comment.

Caltrops:

Apparently Caltrops are an evil-looking perversion of the humble, innocent chestnut. Raw, they often contain a very harmful parasite (and are you surprised? LOOK AT THEM!), so they must be boiled into submission, and then opened with an icepick, bowie knife, or the jaws of life. The flesh is described as “creamy”. Mmm hmm.

I bought a bunch of food, including a nice little slab of “sashimi grade” tuna. When I got it home, most of the veggies were far sadder than they looked in their (styrofoam and shrink wrap) packages, and the tuna was several shades past fresh enough to pop in one’s gob uncooked. Miffed but undeterred, I still got a decent meal out of the haul. I even cubed up the tuna, rolled it in sesame seeds and panko, and fried it ’til crispy. Served with a japanese mayo, lime and mustard sauce, it was pleasant, but not quite pleasant enough to keep my mind off the fact that I wasn’t eating it raw.

Such is life. I guess this is why I try to buy stuff at places where the scale of the store allows for better quality control. I don’t shop at Safeway for a myriad of reasons, but that’s one of them.

Filed under: Random, Meal Reports
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It’s that time of the year. The time when you cash in the remaining paid sick days you’ve accumulated at work and find yourself suffering from some miserable virus your coworkers/roomates/significant other has bestowed upon you. It is times like these that call for two things: someone to graciously listen to you whine about how awful you feel AND something spicy enough to knock your virus clear into next winter. For the latter I choose dishes with either gallons of hot sauce or mounds of chiles.

Last week, I was battling a vicious cold of epidemic proportions, and needed something cheap and quick that
1) made me feel better
2) could be made effortlessly on my meager amount of energy
3) capitalize ingredients I already had in my fridge.

While chicken noodle soup is fine and all, it doesn’t have the spice I require. I tend to order take-out Pho when I’m sick because of the abundance of broth and because the flavor goes so well with both jalapenos and rooster sauce.
After a recent trip to the asian market with George, however, I found Pho bouillion cubes that I’ve been wanting to try out. They look like this:

I can’t actually read the packaging, but it was vegetarian and seemed like you could estimate the water to cube ratio based off of what you would do with normal bouillion.

Rare steak pho is my poison of choice when I order vietnamese take-out, but I’m uncomfortable with the idea of trying it out at home. So this was a vegetarian dish all around. I already had baby bok choy in my fridge, as well as some thai basil, and a lime. Even though you would normally use a lemon, I chose to stick with my on-hand goods.

I did end up picking up fresh bean sprouts, some rice noodles and a jalapeno, totalling all of $2 at my neigborhood asian market. These places are gems. Locate one near you, if you can.

I estimated four cups of water to one pho cube and brought it to a boil. This seemed to be about right. You can add more or less depending on the concentration you want. After that I threw in the baby bok choy (I usually just cut the very ends off and let the stalks separate from there) and rice noodles. Both of these ingredients cook up quick.

Once cooked, I transfered them to a large bowl (in my case this was a large pyrex baking dish- all of my kitchen supplies play double duty) and garnished with lime slices, bean spouts and an entire diced jalapeno. I let the jalapeno soak into the broth for a while before I eat it. (IF you do choose to use meat, this would be the point where you throw in the raw meat and let it cook in the broth).

It made a huge 10 minute meal for under $5 and knocked my cold out like a heavyweight punch in the first round.

Finish with a grapefruit for dessert. YUM.

Filed under: Technique, Recipes, Meal Reports
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There comes a point in every fashionistas busy schedule when s(he) decides to host a most personal affair.

Enter the dinner party.

And at said dinner party you need a dish that wows. Something that will impress and astound your guests. A twist on an old dish is often fine, but wouldn’t you like to add something extra to your arsenal? An entrée that will win you five stars and have your dinner companions impressed at your culinary expertise?

Might I suggest forgoing chicken for another feathered friend? Duck, perhaps?

Seriously? I cannot get enough duck. Some of you may have never tried it. Some of you might be afraid to try it… but I’m here to calm your fears. Duck is not only easy to cook, but it tastes great. Crossing that line from average poultry to extraordinary poultry, it should be tender and slightly sweet. Duck is notoriously a fatty bird, but if that concerns you, you can try my personal favorite: Muscovy duck. It’s a less fatty duck that you can find at most Whole Foods and other upscale grocery stores. Two duck breasts is enough for four people. You can pick any sort of sauce, depending on the meal you’re going for. Balsamic cherry reduction is great, but I’ve also experimented with a thai chili duck over a bed of chili onions. Select your cuisine, pick wines accordingly and go to town.

Purchase your duck breasts and bring them home. To cook them you need nothing more than a frying pan and a glass dish for the oven. a little salt and pepper for seasoning is fine… lightly rub it in on each side.

You’ll want to leave the fat on the duck breast for cooking. Score the fat with a knife, just cutting through it. Don’t pierce the flesh. It should be one long cut with three cross hatch cuts per breast, exposing the meat below.

Now that your breasts are ready (insert collective snicker here) heat the frying pan over medium high heat. You don’t need any oil, but place the breasts fat side down (ALWAYS fat side down) in the pan. You’ll want to cook it for 10-12 minutes. Pre heat the oven to 400 degrees while you are doing this. When you are finished cooking in the pan, flip the breast flesh side down in the glass dish and bake for an additional 12 minutes in the oven.

Whatever sauce you’ve prepared for duck should already be reduced and ready to go. Cherry balsamic reduction is one of my favorites, but feel free to experiment with brandy, huckleberries, etc.

Balsamic Cherry Reduction is:
2 teaspoons olive oil
2 teaspoons minced shallots
1/2 teaspoon minced garlic
1/2 cup dried cherries
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
11/2 cups rich duck or chicken stock
2 teaspoons chopped fresh sage leaves
1 tablespoon cold butter
Salt and black pepper

Get as saucy as you want! My girlfriends and I love getting saucy with our food. Many stone fruits make good reductions and the sweetness really complements the duck.

Now that your guests are properly loose from the lovely wine you’ve served them and are anticipating the meal that will follow the cheese they’ve been noshing on (Roaring 40’s with a baguette or perhaps Humbolt Fog with some rosemary crackers?) you can deliver the goods.

Slice each breast into medalions and arrange them on plate over your vegetable of choice. Spoon sauce over the duck and serve.

Donald would approve.

Filed under: Technique, Recipes, Meal Reports, Ingredients
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I don’t know quite what they put in this stuff, but it’s just about the best thing in the world. I’m pretty sure it contains illicit substances. I’m floating! Seriously, there is a kind of beverage symbiosis at play here that is bigger than coffee… Bigger than all of us. This is the sort of discovery that makes me thank my lucky stars I live in San Francisco.

Most people are afraid to make coffee you can taste. Coffee is too often a compromise, a shot at the lowest common denominator. This cup is as deep and earthy as it is brisk and refreshing. A perfect balance. When you go to a place like Blue Bottle, you’re making a choice against mediocrity, a bid for intensity of experience. You’re cutting a flaming swath through culinary boredom, just like you should. I’m proud of you.

I’ve been a Blue Bottle fan for a while, but had never tried this offering. It’s stellar. If you’re near San Francisco, get thee to 315 Linden St, on the double! Try the crystallized ginger shortbread, too.

Now we’re off to Petaluma..

Filed under: Meal Reports
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After a long week of fiendish busy-tude and no time to do my normal pretty elaborate grocery shopping (3 markets, at current), I was left drained, jaundiced, spiritually bankrupt, devoid of the thai and west-coast-hippie-gourmet-fusion food that keeps me going through the week. In the past few days, I had made dishes from all manner of lackluster pairings..

When I got home from work, I became determined to do something special, damnit- for myself and for my lovely girlfriend, who was off in her own tizzy of extreme overextension and wouldn’t be home ’til later. Not having time to hit an actual thai market, I bemoaned the fact that I would be without all of the stuff I rely on to make great curry- king oyster mushrooms, great beansprouts, thai limes, fresh kaffir lime leaves, thai basil, long beans.. I worried I wouldn’t be able to make things happen, blow minds, tantalize palates, you know, the usual. (j/k)

I stopped in at the corner store and surveyed the prospects: Decent-looking basil (though not thai.. *sob*), sad but servicable cilantro, white mushrooms (not my first choice by a long walk, but usable), green beans, baby brocolli, shallots, and garlic. I knew I had some of those quick-frozen Trader Joes shrimp at home, which are pretty darn decent, so I had my protein covered. I stroked my chin, thought deeply of Bangkok, and proceeded back upstairs.

I prepped all of my veggies, started soaking some jasmine rice, and plopped the shrimp into a lime juice-tumeric-fish sauce marinade to soak. The rice was put on to cook in a non-stick saucepan (one of the only good uses for it, to my mind- jasmine rice sticks like crazy). Once it seemed halfway done, the show began.
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Filed under: Recipes, Meal Reports
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You. You. Over there. Yes, you. You need one of these:

Thai Granite Mortar And Pestle

Why? I’ll tell you why. Because you have an innate need to pound stuff. To grind stuff. To forcefully reduce things to a pulp. Deep within your psyche, a little itch exists, maybe so small you can’t feel it. Still, it exists.

You need to beat the s*** out of some spices. You wanna cream some garlic. You need to make some ding-danged chili paste. You do! How do I know this? Well.. I’m gastronomically psychic, and I feel your vibes, (wo)man. Fa-rizzle.

Given such tasks, what would you rather do? Would you prefer to lug out some bulky, dusty hunk of plastic, plug it in, clean the bowl, load your precious goodies in, try like hell to get the right consistancy (but probably either chop too coarsely, or turn things into pudding), then have to clean the whole kit-and-kaboodle and stow it away again?

Or would you rather plop your lemongrass into a pretty stone thing that looks fabbo in your hipster kitchen, and get some aggressions out with a tool that looks like it’d find a good home lashed to a stick in prehistoric warfare? Does getting just the right grind on, then returning to your cooking triumphant and maybe a little flushed from the work after cursorially splashing a little water into the mortar for cleanup sound good to yas?

IMHO, food processors are about as sexy as their name. I wouldn’t mind having one if I was big into baking or cooking for a big family, as they rock for doughmaking and for grinding meat (which I don’t eat), shredding pounds of cheese and so on.

For smaller tasks like grinding spices, bruising herbs, and finessing the living hell out of whatever tasty stuff you can dump into it, I think the mortar and pestle is nature’s perfect food, er, tool. Uh… Well, it’s a really great tool, anyway.

For the tasks I love them for, you’ve gotta make sure to get the right type of mortar and pestle. You DO NOT WANT:

A Suribachi - Great for creaming miso and other gentle tasks. Doesn’t take overhead-swinging two-handed tiger power strikes too well. Tends to break when you release too much qi.

A little teeny wussy pharmacy-style M&P(mortar and pestle) - Probably just fine for normal dry spice-grinding tasks. Might hold about two chilis and one clove of garlic, and would probably be very polite to them. FORGET IT.

We are not here to be nice to our ingredients We’re here to crush, pulverize, mash, and bang the ever-lovin’ f*** out of them. Move along.

A Molcajete - Pig head or no pig head, this, too is the wrong tool. Generally made of porous volcanic rock, molcajetes absorb tons of flavors and are highly abrasive- very useful for making wonderful puree’d salsas and things like mole sauce.

Certainly cool to have if you’ve got space, but not, an everyday tool for my purposes. Gotta love the pig head handle, though!

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Filed under: Recipes, Tools, Meal Reports
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