Boulevard:Restaurant Review
Friday, July 30, 2004
Recently I had a chance to revisit Boulevard, a venerable San Francisco restaurant. Lee and I had a wonderful meal. The service was topnotch, the environment was festive and buzzing and the food showcased the best of California. You can read my full review, just published today at SF Station.
Have a great weekend!
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Good Guinness
Wednesday, July 28, 2004
I'm not much of a drinker. But I am a fan of Guinness stout. One of the reasons I like it is it works well with food. Guinness and oysters is a classic but it also complements smoked fish, and of course fish and chips.
Guinness is also a good cooking liquid. You can use it in broth for a beefy barley soup or in an Irish stew. I've even seen chocolate cake recipes that use Guinness. Actually it sounds pretty good to me!
Many people know about the reputed health benefits of Guinness. In Ireland pregnant women were given it to drink as a tonic as well as post op patients and blood donors. While currently pregnant women are not advised to drink alcohol of any kind, there was some sense to this recommendation. Guinness draught is very high in iron, and has about 10% of your required B vitamins. It also has trace amounts of protein. At 125 calories and 10 carbs per 12 ounce serving, it practically qualifies as a light beer despite its dark hue.
Recent research from the University of Wisconsin has actually been able to prove the efficacy of drinking Guinness. Due to antioxidant compounds similar to those found in fruits and vegetables drinking Guinness actually helps to prevent blood clots and slows the deposit of cholesterol on artery walls. So far the research has only been done with dogs, but I imagine there might be a few humans willing to offer themselves up for the good of science, right?
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Sunday Night Sandwiches:Recipe
Monday, July 26, 2004
Lots of people pooh pooh the George Foreman grill. Not me. I think it's great for roasting vegetables, making shish kebabs and grilling delicate things like fish. But most of all I love it for being a makeshift panini press.
Last night's grilled sandwich was mozzarella, heirloom tomato and pesto. Perfect with a green salad dotted with olives and shreds of parmesan cheese. It's the end of July and tomatoes are just starting to ripen in California. While I cook with canned tomatoes all year round, when tomatoes and fresh and in season I find the less you mess with them the better.
Heirloom tomatoes come in a wide variety of colors and shapes. But whether your tomatoes are heirloom or not, the best things to do with ripe fresh tomatoes is to make a salad out of them, add them to a sandwich or toss them with pasta. Cooking fresh tomatoes does not enhance them. When they are at their most sweet and delicious, eat them as close to raw as possible. That's what makes this sandwich is so terrific!
Sunday Night Sandwiches
serves 2
4 slices of sourdough bread
6 slices of fresh mozzarella
1-2 T pesto
1 medium tomato, sliced (blot slices with paper towel if excessively juicy)
Preheat the grill. Spread two slices of bread with pesto. Top the bread with tomato slices. Top the tomato slices with the cheese then put the second slice of bread on top. Spray the top of the sandwich with cooking spray and place on the grill, top side down, so that you can spray the second side. Close the grill and give the sandwich several minutes to grill until crispy on the outside and oozy on the inside.
Enjoy!
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How To Eat:Cookbook
Saturday, July 24, 2004
I was very fortunate to grow up in a household of eaters. My family genuinely enjoyed food, and still does. My parents grew fruit and vegetables and even raised chickens for a while. No one was a picky eater and we all ate dinner together every night. My mom did the cooking in those days and she was a fabulous cook. She even baked bread and canned fruits and vegetables and made jams. Later after my dad retired he took the lead in the kitchen. While his style is different than my mothers, he's also a talented and creative cook.
So often I meet people who have a difficult relationship to food. Their parents were not good cooks. They didn't enjoy each others company at mealtimes. They battled weight problems or health issues or childhood traumas that has lead to a diminished experience of food today. So who is the cookbook author for these sad folk? Nigella Lawson that's who.
Nigella Lawson not only loves food but wants to spread the joy. Her joy is of eating food, and being a home cook is a necessity and a pleasure. Her cookbook How to Eat: The Pleasures and Principles of Good Food is not just a "how to" but a "why bother" for those who perhaps never have bothered. Challenging conventional wisdom in regards to cookbooks, Nigella divides her recipes into sections such as basics, cooking in advance, one and two, fast food, low fat and weekend lunch. While those of us who love to cook might think this way about our recipes, it's refreshing for a writer to actually organize a book this way.
Another element of this book that makes it unique is the attitude. Or lack thereof. Nigella has long proclaimed she is not a chef, and recipes such as the one that intersperses the instructions to "draw your bath" in between making the pasta and the sauce, loosen the strict rigidity of by-the-book cooking. While some of her recipes are particularly British like Treacle Tart, mostly they reflect the way we cook and eat today--buying the best products we can, in season and cooking them to bring out their best rather than to impress. If you've been looking for a book that will show you how someone cooks things in real life as opposed to a restaurant or a test kitchen, this is your book.
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Sugar Bowl
Thursday, July 22, 2004
In the morning there are three things you need. A kettle, a tea pot and a sugar bowl. Oh sure you need the tea and a tea strainer and a cup or a mug but your main hardware for preparing tea is the kettle, the pot and the sugar bowl. Our kettle is a gorgeous affair that my sister bought us as a wedding present. It's a Windsor whistling tea kettle which is nearly as lovely to say as it is to use.
Our teapot is nothing special, which is kind of funny because we have a collection of no fewer than nine teapots. Not all of them function as teapots, one is a candle and another is a kitchen timer, but all in all there are still plenty to choose from. For everyday purposes the one I use is covered with a tea cozy we got at the Empress Hotel on our honeymoon.
Which brings us to the sugar bowl. I looked and looked and looked for a sugar bowl to meet my specifications--a lid with a notch, preferably attached to the bowl, and a spoon. Seems simple enough but just try looking and you'll see that most sugar bowls don't seem to come with spoons anymore. And certainly not the type that poke out the side of the lid. Last Fall I did find one though. Then last week I broke it. Fortunately I knew just where to go for the replacement. While Zinc Details does not feature the Bee House sugar bowl online, it is a really great shop featuring wonderful and afforadable contemporary design from all over the world, worth visiting online regardless. Their non-virtual shops are worth going to as well. Especially if you are still looking for the perfect sugar bowl.
Zinc Details
1905 Fillmore Street
San Francisco, CA
or
1842 Fourth Street
Berkeley, CA
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Pomegranate Syrup
Tuesday, July 20, 2004
Are you convinced that it's a good idea to buy pomegranate syrup yet? If not, let me tell you about what I made for dinner yesterday. Eggplant and lentil stew with pomegranate molasses. The recipe is in an article written by Paula Wolfert in the July issue of Food & Wine magazine. It is a layered, slow cooked casserole of chopped onions, garlic, tomatoes, large chunks of eggplant and parboiled lentils stewed in olive oil and pomegranate syrup. Succulent and tangy this dish is a real keeper. The pomegranate adds a richness to the dish and a complexity. Served over rice for a very hearty vegetarian dinner.
The same issue of Food & Wine also included a similar Turkish salad to the one I created the other day also using pomegranate syrup. So it can work well as a dressing and as cooking liquid. I am looking forward to cooking even more dishes with pomegranate syrup. The pomegranate council has a number of interesting recipes including a version of a Persian recipe for chicken cooked in a sauce of walnuts and pomegranate syrup that looks good to me.
Let me know if you have any favorite dishes using pomegranate syrup, my ingredient of the week!
post to Del.icio.us | email this post!Sunday, July 18, 2004
It's that time again! Is my blog burning is a virtual event created by a fellow blogger Alberto who came up with the idea of many people cooking versions on a single theme in the space of a day. There have been IMBB events on themes such as tartines, rice dishes, and cakes among other things. This time around it's Grillers Delight .
I've written about pomegranate before, but I've never actually used pomegranate syrup. I've been thinking it would be good to marinate lamb with but I only had ground lamb in the freezer. I couldn't find any recipes for ground lamb and pomegranate so I improvised. I made Middle Eastern inspired lamb kebabs and a tomato, cucumber and sumac salad.
Pomegranate syrup is pretty easy to find in markets locally and one Lebanese brand Cortas is rather inexpensive. I bought a bottle for only $1.79. It is very thick and syrupy, a rich dark color and more tangy and astringent than sweet. It's very good with lamb since lamb can be greasy and the sharp tang of the pomegranate cuts through and enhances its flavor. Lamb cooks very easily on a George Foreman grill. Because it tends to be less lean, it doesn't dry out and the pomegranate helps create a crusty caramelized surface.
The salad is a perfect thing to make when you don't want to cook, or you just don't want to heat up the kitchen. You can serve it along side the kebabs or put it in pita bread with the kebabs and a spoonful of plain yogurt.
Pomegranate Lamb Kebabs
serves 2
1/2 lb ground lamb
1/2 t cumin
1/4 t salt
several grinds of fresh pepper
1 clove minced garlic
1/4 c bread crumbs
2 T minced white or red onion
2 t pomegranate syrup
Mix all the ingredients and form 6 long flat meatballs. You can thread these onto skewers if grilling outdoors, but there is no need to if grilling on an indoor grill. Grill for several minutes until nicely browned on the outside and cooked through.
Sumac Salad
serves 2, generously
1/2 English or hothouse cucumber, diced
1/4 c diced onion
1 medium tomato, diced
2 T flat leaf parsley, chopped
1 t sumac
1 T olive oil
Mix all the ingredients together and taste. If you need to you can add salt or lemon juice but if the tomatoes are flavorful you probably won't need to.
Enjoy!
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Za'atar:Recipe
Friday, July 16, 2004
When I find a new ingredient I am intrigued. So it's not unusual for me to buy something I have absolutely no idea what to do with. Lately I have have been drawn to the Middle Eastern ingredients I've discovered in a fresh produce market. Last week I bought both a bottle of concentrated pomegranate juice and a spice called sumac.
Sumac is a plant with bright red berries. When dried and ground up they are sour and tangy, almost lemony. Sumac is the main ingredient in a spice blend called za'atar. It is composed of sesame seeds, thyme, sumac, salt and pepper. But it varies depending on who is making it. It might also include marjoram, oregano or cayenne. From what I've read za'atar actually means "thyme". It's often mixed with oil and served a dip with veggies or pita, but you can put it on almost anything, meats, eggs, potatoes, fish, salads or in a vegetable tagine. It's great sprinkled over feta cheese or over sliced white onions. I am crazy about it on toasted sourdough bread with a little butter.
You can buy za'atar in Middle Eastern grocery stores, spice store or online at your favorite spice seller but I think if you can find sumac (also available online or in Middle Eastern grocery stores) it's more fun to experiment and make it yourself. If you have difficulty finding it, at Penzeys you can get za'atar or sumac. Sumac is much cheaper at MySpicer but you have to buy in larger quantities.
Za'atar
2 T sesame seeds
2 T ground sumac
1 T powdered dried thyme
1/2 t salt
pepper to taste
Roast the sesame seeds in a dry skillet over medium heat for a few minutes, stirring frequently until toasty golden brown. Allow to cool, then mix with the rest of the spices.
Enjoy!
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Semi Steamed Salmon:Recipe
Wednesday, July 14, 2004
Wild salmon is in season and it is amazingly good this year. When I was growing up we didn't call it "wild salmon" we called it "pop's-going-fishing-so-we're-probably-having-salmon-for-dinner". If he caught a lot, we took it to a smoke house and made lox. But most often we just ate our fresh delicious salmon and thought little more about it.
But now the source of our fresh salmon is something we need to think about. As salmon has increased in popularity and it has gotten easier to buy inexpensive farmed salmon from Chile, Canada and Norway in the supermarket, the environmental and health costs have risen dramatically. While fish farming may seem sustainable, raising salmon in net pens releases fish waste into the water and can spread disease and parasites to wild salmon, so it may play a role in destroying non-farmed salmon. Even more frightening, according to independent laboratory tests commissioned by the Environmental Working Group just last year, seven of ten farmed salmon purchased at grocery stores in Washington DC, San Francisco, and Portland, Oregon were contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) at levels that raise significant health concerns.
Fortunately farms have decreased the use of antibiotics and pesticides that were making headlines a few years back, but for right now, wild salmon is still by far the best best. For more information about which fish is safest for you and for the oceans, download a "Seafood Watch Pocket Guide" compliments of the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
If you've had wild salmon you know how much tastier it is than farmed salmon. It is also more delicate and so cooking it demands a little more care. After experimenting, I have found a technique I like very much. I call it "semi-steaming". This salmon is good with mashed potatoes and is excellent over a salad of mixed greens and chopped Napa cabbage (and an Asian style dressing).
Semi Steamed Salmon
serves 2
1 large wild salmon steak (3/4 lb or so)
2-3 T soy sauce
1 t sugar (white or brown)
1 t Chinese chili sauce, any type, optional
water
Saute pan with a good fitting lid
Lay the salmon steak on a plate and douse with the soy, most of it will end up on the plate. Sprinkle the sugar evenly on top. If you want to add the chili sauce, spread it on top of the fish as well. Let marinate for 5-10 minutes. Heat a non-stick pan over medium heat then spray with cooking oil. Place the fish in the pan sauce carefully, sauce side up, and pour the soy from the plate into the pan. Saute until the soy reduces and the fish begins to sizzle, less than a minute. Add about 1/4 cup water and place a lid over the pan. Simmer the fish with a minimum of water until the water reduces. Add more water as needed to keep the pan from drying out. The fish will cook in less than 10 minutes. When the fish is almost cooked, remove it from the pan to finish cooking with carryover heat. At this point you can reduce the liquid to make more of a glaze, but the fish should be nicely glazed already. Remove any bones from the fish and remove the center bone to separate the 2 halves for serving.
Enjoy!
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Salt Cellar
Monday, July 12, 2004
Reading the autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini in college made me want to live in Florence. It brought the renaissance period to life. Filled with art, crime and intrigue it was gossipy and a great read. The cover featured a photo of one of Cellini's few surviving masterpieces, a gold salt cellar. According to Cellini, the figures that decorate it represent earth and water, although other sources claim they depict Neptune and Amphitrite, additional reclining figures, representing winds and the times of day, are carved into the base. At the time I'd never even heard of a salt cellar. But just like Cellini's writing, it is an over-the-top work of art.
Lately as I've spent more and more time in places like Sur La Table, it dawned on me that I really really needed a salt cellar.
You can't underestimate the importance of salt. Salt makes all the difference in cooking a great meal. Having salt at your fingertips is key so that you can season your food as you cook it. Just seasoning at the table doesn't do the job. In fact, adding salt at the table is most often considered an insult to the chef. If food is properly seasoned while cooking, it shouldn't need any additional salt. For example, pasta. If you don't season the water with salt, your pasta will taste slightly dull. No amount of salt at the table will fix it.
My sister sent me a beautiful white salt cellar for my birthday. I have no idea where she got it. It's not like the Cellini salt cellar, it's a white ceramic one made to sit near your stove and its main feature is accessibility, in fact it's not ornamental in the least. And that Cellini salt cellar? Turns out it was stolen last year from a Viennese art museum. The reward is 70,000 euros. And the value of the piece? Would you believe 58 million dollars? No salt included.
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My Yahoo
Saturday, July 10, 2004
Do you Yahoo? I do. My home page is a "My Yahoo" page. And the Cooking with Amy email is a Yahoo address. Now Yahoo is offering RSS headlines for My Yahoo.
Without getting too techy, RSS is a format for syndication, but it lacks a simple way for ordinary folk to use it. The current "XML" and "RSS" buttons may make sense to tech-savvy visitors, but can be confusing to everyone else. All you really need to know is that if you would like to see headlines from this blog as content on your "My Yahoo" page, click on the "Add to myYahoo!" button on the left hand navigation under the heading of Syndication. Since February, Yahoo has been testing support for syndication formats like RSS and Atom, so give it a try, and see if you like it.
post to Del.icio.us | email this post!Thursday, July 08, 2004
Cinnamon toast makes a wonderful comfort food. It's only bread, cinnamon, sugar and butter but it sure smells good. If there are just a couple of spices to always have on hand, cinnamon is one. Cinnamon is found in a variety of cuisines--Mexican, Middle Eastern, Greek, Moroccan and Scandinavian. It can be used in baked goods, spiced fruits, pumpkin and yam dishes, rice and noodle pudding, in meaty stews, mulled wine, coffee, cocoa, and sugared nuts.
The problem is many spices are not as versatile as cinnamon. You buy them, then use them once, maybe, then they go stale before you can use them again. If you would rather buy a smaller amount of certain spices or dried herbs, the Occasional Gourmet is offering very small packets that stay fresher much longer. Most of the single spices range from two to six gram packages and cost around a dollar fifty each. That's way less than what you'd spend at the grocery store! I think these packets are perfect to give to a novice cook or to take on vacation when you know you'll be cooking but don't know what you'll find in the kitchen.
The Occasional Gourmet also sells a number of spice mixes, designed to allow someone to make a sophisticated meal without a lot of complicated technique. The most unusual of these blends might be Dukkah. Dukkah is an Egyptian spice blend and it usually contains some combination of hazelnuts, salt, pepper, coriander, cumin and sesame seeds, but it can vary greatly. It can be sprinkled on meats, vegetables, or mixed with olive oil to make a dip for breads and fresh crunchy vegetables. If you'd like to give it a try, there will be two tastings in the Bay Area this month:
in San Francisco at Bi Rite Market on Monday July 12th from 5pm to 8pm
in Los Altos at Draegers on Friday July 16th from 12 to 5pm
Or you can also shop by mail order.
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The New Food Lover's Companion
Tuesday, July 06, 2004
As you may be able to tell from reading along, I love doing research. Just the other day I was asked to name a fruit or vegetable that started with an "H". Don't ask me why, I'm sworn to secrecy. But I knew just where to look to find out.
The New Food Lover's Companion is a definitive guide to all things culinary. It includes nearly 6,000 definitions of food, drink and culinary terms. Needless to say, it lives on my desk. Even when I think I know what something is, it can be helpful to look it up and see for sure. And if I need even more information, the appendix includes a list of food information sources that ranges from alligators to yeast. I can also view a directory of additives to find out what polysorbates are doing in my food. And I can check out the pan substitution list to see if the 9" x 9" x 1 1/2" square pan is equivalent in volume to the 8" x 8" x 2" square pan (it is exactly the same).
If you have access to a computer, you can look up most of the definitions from the book on Epicurious but if that's not good enough for you, I highly recommend buying this book. It is unbelievably comprehensive and will answer questions and settle disputes. Best of all you can figure out what varaq is and impress your foodie friends.
By the way, there are only two fruits listed that begin with the letter "H". Can you name them?
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Double Blue Pancakes:recipe
Sunday, July 04, 2004
Summertime is when all sorts of berries appear. Strawberries first, then raspberries and blueberries and eventually blackberries. Right now you can buy big baskets of blueberries for only a couple of dollars. They are sweet and turn your tongue blue if you eat too many.
A classic recipe for blueberries is blueberry pancakes. It's rather incongruous because pancakes are flat and blueberries are often big and round. As a result you can run into some real problems. Cooking pancakes with blueberries may start out fine, but then when you go to flip them, the berries stick up from the batter and they never cook quite right. So first off you need a thick batter. You also need way more blueberries than most recipes call for. After all, the blueberries are the main event.
But since it is pancakes we're talking about, the next thing you need is a really tasty batter. If not, you'll wonder, why not just eat the berries and skip the pancake altogether? A grainy cornmeal batter makes for a great blueberry pancake. I particularly like using finely ground blue cornmeal. And a little lemon peel is also very nice. My best tip for making any kind of pancakes is to use a Chinese soup spoon to pour the batter onto the griddle. It has a flat bottom so it is easy to keep from dripping all over the place, and if you fill it up, it makes the perfect sized pancake every time.
Amy's Double Blue Pancakes
Serves 2--double the recipe for 4 people
1/2 c flour
1/2 c blue cornmeal
2 t baking powder
1 T sugar
pinch of salt
1/2 c blueberries
1/2 c milk
1 egg
1 T oil
1 t grated lemon peel
Mix the dry ingredients. Add the blueberries to the dry ingredients, this will prevent clumping. Mix all the wet ingredients in a separate bowl, then add to the dry ingredients. Mix well. Pour by the spoonful on a greased, preheated non-stick skillet or griddle. Cook until bubbles form and pancakes turn brown on the bottom, then flip and continue to cook. Serve with maple syrup, preferably warmed.
Enjoy!
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Food Museums
Friday, July 02, 2004
I admit it. I am one of those people who believes that many trends begin in Japan and then make their way here to the US. So it is with a balance of trepidation and excitement that I share with you the latest culinary trend in Japan--food theme parks.
The food theme park that sparked my interest in the concept is one featuring ice cream. The wackier world or Japanese ice cream to be precise. Apparently the Japanese have taken to ice cream and developed flavors that no one else had considered, such as oyster, seaweed, spinach, garlic, miso, and of course, chicken.
Ice Cream City, a new attraction at the theme park Nanja Town follows the success of two other food theme parks that opened in 2002--the Ikebukuru Gyoza Stadium where up to 23 restaurants serve different styles of the Japanese dumpling (similar to a Chinese pot sticker--see the photo above) and Naniwa Kuishinbo Yokocho which recreates an entire "gastronomic alley" that typifies Osaka dining.
If a trip to Japan isn't in the cards for you, while you wait for the fad to hit our shores, be sure to check out the web site of the first food theme park in Japan the Raumen Museum in Yokohama which opened in 1994. A Chinese noodle soup that was adapted to suit the Japanese palate, ramen is a favorite dish of mine and the site is so good, you could develop an appetite just surfing, unlike further explorations into Japanese ice cream...
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