Cream Puffs a la J&J

I finally tried the pate a choux (puffs) out of the cook book Julia and Jacques: Cooking at Home.

The recipe is one of those time consuming, detail intensive ones that use only the most basic ingredients and have been around for ages. Something that was probably often made at home a few decades ago, but it considered too time consuming for the modern kitchen. The hand stirring of all the dough also requires a little elbow grease.

Milk, butter, sugar, and salt is boiled together, then flour is dumped in and stirred like crazy with a wooden spoon. The mixture is stirred over medium heat to evaporate liquid out of the mix; you're done when a white cakey film coats the bottom of the pot. The dough is set aside to cool for five minutes. At this point, preheat oven to 375.

Here's where the real elbow grease comes in. You have to stir in one egg at a time with a wooden spoon. The first egg will absorb fairly easily. Remember to keep stirring until each egg is fully incorporated before you add the next one.

Each successive egg will make the dough break apart into a sloppy, slippery mess. You have to keep stirring and cutting the dough with your wooden spoon (or chopsticks, like I used) to get it to absorb the egg.

After the second egg, the dough will start to look like a smooth paste akin to polenta. It needs to be thick enough to form into mounds, but not as hard as cookie dough. It's somewhere between a dough and a batter, if that helps.

Scoop the dough into a pastry bag fitted with a 1/2" plain or star tip. Pipe little mounds. For mini puffs, about 2-3 tablespoons per choux is good. For the big palm-sized ones, you'll have to pipe about 5 tablespoons' worth for each. Brush a little beaten egg on each one, smoothing down any points you might have made. Bake the little ones for 25 minutes, and the big ones for 40. They're done when they're browned all over and cracked on top. Leave them in the oven for another half hour with the door open a crack (about two inches). The dough doesn't need to bake further, but keeping it in the oven allows a little extra moisture to evaporate.

After they're cool, you can put the choux in an airtight container and refrigerate them for a few days or freeze them for a few weeks. They defrost well if you set them out in a cool place. I sliced this one open and put in a big spoonful of pastry cream so it was visible.

For neater and more transportable choux, I used a pastry bag fitted with a flat tip, stabbed each choux in an appropriate spot (somewhere there was already a weak line, for example), and filled. That way the cream didn't ooze out and I could put the choux in a box. For a cream puff, I think the best filling is pastry cream made the night before and cooled in the fridge, folded with some freshly whipped sweetened whipped cream right before serving and filling. The last photo is a choux filled with a whole lot of leftover whipped cream--cook's treat!

Pei's Slop

Okay, slop's a strong word, but I really did slop tonight's dinner together. Occassionally someone makes fun of my obsession with deliciousness and I feel compelled to show everyone that I do really eat normal food most of the time. But normal food isn't pretty, so usually I just forego the camera.

Though ugly, tonight's dinner was yummy. I sauteed some garlic in olive oil, picked out the garlic, sauteed shredded cabbage, turned off the egg, and stirred in two beaten eggs and covered them until the heat from the cabbage just barely cooked the eggs through. Slopped it all over rice and had myself a reasonably healthy dinner. Cabbage is actually one of my favorite vegetables, and this head from Capay Farms was especially sweet with a slight corn-like fragrance.

Dinners like this are how I balance my budget, but that's not to say a meal like this isn't tasty. Everyone needs simple home cooking with uncomplicated flavors; eating out all the time isn't fun for anyone, and even I don't have the energy to make several complicated new dishes a week.

Michael Mina Desserts and Drinks

So the bar at MM? Totally rocks. Nice selection of dessert wines and delicious dessert choices.

The room in general? Too noisy for my taste, were I having dinner and wanted normal decibel conversation with my meal. But for one of those nights when my friends ask me the whiny question, "Where can we get desssserrrrrrt?" it's perfect. The bar serves drinks, dessert, and an a la carte menu of snacks and entrees until midnight.

There are three dessert trios on the menu: this one's citrus-themed.The other two themes are choclate and banana. From the left: lemon ginger cake (with meringue top) with ginger ice cream, lemon cheesecake with meyer lemon sherbet, and key lime napoleon with saffron ice cream. The first pairing was the clear winner. They went together so well, and the ginger sorbet was the perfect consistency, concentration, and sweetness. The cheesecake and sherbet tasted a wee too much like cream cheese for me. The napoleon was crispy layers of pastry filled with lime curd and enrobed in sugar syrup. I would have liked it on its own because I like extremely tart desserts, but it tasted much too tart in comparison to the other desserts. Perhaps they need to put it on leftmost side of the plate so that people try it first and then move on to the sweeter desserts. Or maybe it's designed for right-to-left readers of Arabic, Chinese, and the like (?!). The saffron ice cream tasted nothing like saffron and had tiny strands of mint in it. Lisa didn't taste it at all (thought I was nuts, but hey what's new?), but I thought it had the distinct oceany smell of incredibly fresh sashimi. It really threw me for a loop. I can't explain it.

Root beer float, Mina style. Good root beer, sassafras ice cream, and sassafras sorbet (yes, there were both). As a lover of sassafras, I loved this. Yes, it was sweet, but the most prominent flavor was that of very strong, refreshing sassafras. The warm gooey chocolate chip cookies were amazing as well. Technically speaking, the cookies were less like cookies and more a mass of chocolate and chopped nuts loosely held together by sugar and flour. Awesome, even cold the next morning with coffee. So we kept asking the wait staff "What's so special about the root beer float?" and no one gave us a real answer. They need to just say it: it's GREAT! So comforting, so familiar, and yet so fancy. You've never had a root beer float like this, yet it really makes you feel like a kid in a candy shop. Fantastic. I would not hesitate to order this down home (for Mina) dessert again; it's the kind of thing that would pick you up on a blue day.

You're thinking, "7 desserts for two people?!" Yeah, it was overkill. We need to learn to share.

Michael Mina Website

Beef Bourguignon and Buttermilk Biscuits

I only ate foods that begin with B tonight.

Two excellent recipes to share with people today! First, the beef bourguignon recipe from Ina Garten's The Barefoot Contessa on the Food Network. I've never made this dish before, but if you like hearty beef stew this is the recipe for you. I'd never cooked with this much red wine before, and would use a lighter dry red next time. My wine, which was frozen in the freezer from a previous cooking project, was a bit too tangy. Maybe it'll mellow out tomorrow; I can't even remember what kind of wine it was. The best part of this recipe was setting cognac on fire. Having never made a flambe before, I was nervous. But it's easier than it sounds, and even if hte flames touch you a bit it doesn't hurt because alcohol doesn't burn that hot.

The buttermilk biscuits are a Deborah Madison recipe. As always, yummy and quick. Madison has a knack for writing recipes. I've said it before, but I'll say it again. Her recipes don't usually require anything particularly exotic, but they yield surprisingly delicious results. Additionally, her recipes don't look very long, but they're very detailed and leave little uncertainty. She doesn't just assume that you know what she's talking about the way a lot of cookbook writers do. Some say this makes her books elementary or boring; I say it's helpful. The ingredients:

• 2 cups flour (I used 1 cup all-purpose and 1 cup whole wheat pastry)
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 6 tablespoons very cold butter, cut into cubes
• 1 cup buttermilk (I used lowfat)

Preaheat oven to 400 degrees (some say 450). Sift the dry ingredients togther, and cut butter in until you form a coarse meal. I mash flour into the butter with my fingers until there are no big pieces left and it looks like a coarse meal. I might have gone a bit overboard this time. You don't want it to look like a fine meal, there should still be pieces of butter in there maybe a third the size of a green pea. At this point, you can add half a cup of cheese, or half a cup of chopped onions. I used one chopped up leek this time, white and light green parts only. Cheddar works well.

Using a fork, stir in the buttermilk until the dough just comes together and there's no dry flour left. I try to use a gentle folding motion. You don't want to knock all the air out of the flour or you'll bake hockey pucks. Dump the dough onto a lightly floured surface, and form it into a ball using floured hands. Be gentle and don't knead it too much or you'll get a stick mess. You just want the surface to be floured so it's dry and workable. You don't want to be kneading more and more flour into it. Form the dough into a disc and gently flatten it until it's about 3/4" thick. Also try to gently press out any cracks in the dough at this point. Make cutouts with a 3" round cookie cutter. An emptied tuna can or wine glass works well; I used a heart shaped cookie cutter because that's what I found first. You can work the dough a second time, but no more than that. I took the last scraps and gently formed them into a ball, just to not be wasteful. It'll be good for dunking even if it's not light and airy.

Place rounds on a slightly greased (or sprayed) cookie sheet about an inch apart. I need to research what distance is most conducive to rising. There's a scientific reason, like closer together=more steam=more rising (I think). Bake for 10 minutes, or until slightly browned on top and very brown on the bottom (left). You might need up to 15 minutes if you've added extra ingredients like cheese or onions. Hot, moist, buttery, airy biscuits in under half an hour. I prepared and baked these while waiting for the bourguignon to finish on top of the stove.

Perhaps because I simultaneously rushed (hungry!) and dawdled (left the mix sitting while attending to the beef bourguignon, allowing the butter to heat up on the counter), these biscuits didn't rise as much as they have in the past. This Washington Post article has pretty good guidlines and explanations for what makes a biscuit rise.

Churros

I'll never have to rely on a roadside cart or amusement park again.

All you need is:

• two parts flour
• one part water
• one third part oil
• salt

Thanks go out to "butterfly" on Chowhound for this recipe. I'll try one that uses egg next time to compare, but this recipe is already fantastic and uses nonperishables that almost everyone has in the kitchen. I might also experiment with different types of flour next time.

This time, I used a cup of flour, half a cup of water, a third cup of oil, half a teaspoon of salt, and a generous sprinkling of sugar and salt for good measure. That made enough churros for three people, so I gotta cut back next time. I used canola and olive oil because I didn't have enough canola. Olive oil is fine, but a neutral oil is better. Heat the oil to 375 degrees (medium/medium high) while you prepare everything else.

Sift the dry ingredients together. Bring the oil and water to a boil over medium heat, and immediately add the flour mixture. Stir quickly with a wooden spoon until the whole mixture comes together. Keep stirring until a cohesive ball of dough is formed, all the flour is incorporated, and a thin film develops on the bottom of the pot.

Let the dough cool a bit so you can handle it. Meanwhile, mix together some cinnamon and sugar. You can decide how much you need. Start with half a cup of sugar and a few tablespoons of cinnamon. I like to use a little at a time. That way if the oily churros make the mixture wet and clumpy, I can dump it and start over without wasting too much. You can use the color here as a rough guide. Also look at the pastry bag. It doesn't look like a lot of dough, but I used half of it and had enough for two people to eat for dessert. I plan to eat some for breakfast (hopefully the toaster oven will be good for reheating). The rest of the dough was refrigerated.

Pour the dough into a pastry bag with a large star tip. Mine was a bit thin even though I used a half inch star. It's fine for making little three inch dessert churros, but a huge impressive churro needs a bigger star. Pipe churros into as straight a line as you can. Chances are they'll curve, so maybe you want to get creative and pipe circles. Cut the dough with a knife or spoon, and fry until golden brown. You can see the difference between raw and ready churros in this pot.

Drain on a paper towel. I thought I could get away with putting the churros directly into the sugar. Nope. you need to drain it so the sugar doesn't clump into a wet mess onto the churro. You only need a light layer of sugar (way less than I thought).

I just had coffee with mine today, but I bet a nice thick espresso or decadent hot chocolate would be excellent as well. Or maybe ice cream on a hot afternoon. Serve these quickly; the difference in quality of piping hot ones and warm ones is immediately apparent.

And because comparing is fun, here's a photo of the famed Ame churro+hot chocolate. I think I did allright.

Sunday Supper for the Overindulgent

Tonight it was time to reign in the eating. Pasta tossed in butter, olive oil, and chopped garlic and topped with parmesan and pepper. I finished a bunch of huge asparagus that came in Wednesday's produce box. I usually prefer smaller asparagus, but these were extremelly sweet. I boiled them for about a minute after trimming the skin off the bottom three inches. Simple, cheap, and not too bad at all. I was just trying to use up things in the kitchen, but the asparagus and parmesan ended up complementing each other nicely. A good combination of salty, sweet, and that slight bitterness (for lack of a better word) of asparagus.

Bonus: I only used one pot and a colander to cook everything. I boiled the pasta and added the asparagus in the last minute. I took out the asparagus, drained the pasta, and heated up the oil, butter, and garlic in the now empty pot. I added the pasta back in, tossed until a little brown around the edges, and toped with cheese and pepper. Easy cleanup is always a reason to smile.

Chicken Broth Porridge 101

Hungryindc, this one's for you. No photos, since I have none from recent projects. I should have taken a photo when I did my turkey porridge. Sorry.

First, you have to roast your chicken. I suggest the Zuni Cafe method.

When you're done, save the bones. Little pieces of meat or tendon stuck on the bones is fine. When I'm only cooking for myself of JS, we just eat chicken off the bone and throw everything in a bowl. You'll need to figure out if you love the people you're eating with enough to do that, or whether you want to strip the meat off the chicken before you serve anyone.

Rinse any residual herbs and salt off the bones. It's not a huge deal, it just prevents the broth from having to many off flavors. Put the bones in a pot and cover with enough cold water to cover the bones. If you like, add a carrot, onion, and a stalk or two of celery. Cook, covered, until the water just starts to simmer. If you're going to be absent-minded about watching the pot, leave the lid off. You don't want the water to come to a complete boil.

Take the lid off and simmer for serveral hours, adjusting your stove so the water is always simmering lightly. This means tiny bubbles keep rising to the surface. If there's no visible movement you've got the stove on too low, but if you can hear the boiling it's way too high. Making chicken broth requires a copious store of patience. You need to skim the skum off the top of the water continuously. After three hours, start checking the bones. your stock is done when you can snap a thick bone (like a drumstick) in half easily. Usually I just taste the stock and use it when its strong enough. Don't add salt yet.

Strain out the bones and save the broth for when you're ready to use it. Freeze it if you have a lot and can't use it right away. You can use the stock for soup, or for porridge. For porridge, a cup of uncooked jasmine or Japanese short grain rice usually is enough for a quart of stock. Put both in a pot and simmer until the rice is cooked through. Jasmine rice will give you a thinner porridge that has a uniform consistency almost like watered down cream of wheat. It's like you'd get at a Cantonese restaurant. Japanese short grain (Botan, Calrose) is what my mom always used and will yield a much thicker, slightly sweet porridge with big visible grains of rice. I haven't often seen this in a restaurant, other than a few restaurants owned by Taiwanese owners who add sweet potatoes to their porridge. The simmering should take you at least 20 minutes, but an hour of cooking will really pay off if you have the time.

APARTMENT SALE!!

Regular readers, please ignore this eyesore and indulge me as I use this web hosting space for non-food purposes. I need to divest myself of quite a few worldly belongings. Craigslist readers, now you know about a brand new food blog!

Huge apartment sale. Photos will be added to this post in the upcoming weeks, so if you're in the market for random items for your apartment, bookmark the link and check back!

All prices negotiable, location is around Post/Jones Streets in San Francisco. Please e-mail chezpei@gmail.com and entitle the e-mail APARTMENT SALE for details.


Cleaver: $10 (center)

All others have been SOLD.

Cuisinart ice cream machine, with freezer bowl and paddle (in other words, fully intact and usable, almost brand new): $35

Foreman Grill: $30

Brookstone Neck Massager: $20

Futon with basic cushion (no springs, you can have the cover too if you want): $40

Huge box fan $7

Personal sized blender/food processor ($10)

Mintek DVD Player $30: Like new

To be posted (if not already):

Breadman ultimate machine with manual: $50

12-cup coffee maker (with two matching mugs): $5

4-cup metal stovetop espresso maker: $12

$40 a Day with Jo and Pei

Jo visited me in SF today; her visits are always a hoot and a half. I took a break from photos today since I took her to my neighborhood favorites, but I'll link to past posts as I go along. Think of this as a quick tutorial of eating well in my neighborhood. In fact, by day's end, the two of us were extremely full and had spent almost exactly $40 each, including tax and tip. Personally, I think we ate way better than you-know-who ever does on her show.

We started off the day at Canteen. I had a lamb scallopini sandwich with a side of tossed raddichio, she had the strawberry french toast, and we each had a cup of chai. The lamb was thin, tender, and cooked rare. I'm getting really picky with Canteen after going there so many times, but I think the lamb pieces could have been cut for more conducive sandwich eating. Huge chunks kept slipping out of the bread. The other quibble was that the sandwich might have been a tad too buttery, even for this butter eater. My breath tasted like butter for hours. I couldn't decide if that was good or bad. The strawberry french toast was nice; not too sweet, well done. I kind of regret that neither of us ordered a dish with eggs. Canteen's staff all have the magic touch with eggs. The gingery chai was great, as usual. $15 each.

After a morning of shopping, Jo picked up a few bottles of wine at K&L Wines (no, this isn't in my neighborhood, but we ended up there anyway). Laden with wine and ready for an afternoon break, we headed to Hung Ky for banh cuon. To our dismay, they were out. We settled for a chicken salad, but it's really no substitute when you're aching for banh cuon. $4 each.

After resting up and eating some thin mints, we headed to The Hidden Vine. I need to dedicate a post to The Hidden Vine some time. They are really exceptional. The space is warm, inviting, yet formal, and the owners could not be sweeter. I'll do a long post on them soon, I promise. Tonight Jo had a flight of three white bourdeaux all blended from the same two grapes. One was 90% sauvignon blanc and 10% semillon, the second was about 50/50, and the third was 90% semillon and 10% sauvignon blanc. It was really fun to see that the three wines tasted completely different from each other despite being from the same region and containing the same two varietals.

I was recommended a glass of 2004 Hahn Meritage Red Table Wine from the central coast of California. It contained almost all of my favorite red wine grapes: 42% merlot, 38% cabernet sauvignon, 7% cabernet franc, 7% petite verdot, and 6% malbec. Basically, anything that contains cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, and petit verdot tends to go over extremely well with me. This wasn't a fancy or expensive wine, and it wasn't particularly refined. It was just completely drinker-friendly. It's the kind of wine I crave and envision when the words "I want red wine" escape my lips. Just the right balance of fruitiness and dryness. $11 each.

After chugging down a copious amount of wine, we were hungry and eager to get to Tajine. As in the past, Mohammed was an amazing host and helped us make good food choices and leave completely full despite not cleaning our plates. $10 each.

It really amazes me that I was able to end the evening so full, so tipsy, and so thoroughly entertained for so little money. All the places we went today were convival, casual, and owned by super friendly people who care about the food they serve and are willing to share their vast knowledge about their respective cuisines. We really did take a culinary trip around the world, all while never leaving a two block radius of my apartment.

The only place I had hoped to hit today but did not was EURA, which usually ends up being $5-10 a person depending on whether I just have tea or grab a snack as well. One can't do it all, though I suppose we should have tried!

Tajine

Tajine, you might be my new favorite neighborhood dinner spot. Canteen for brunch, EURA for afternoon tea/snack, Tajine for dinner, and The Hidden Vine for drinks is now my idea of "don't walk more than two blocks" perfection.

I'm going to collapse commentary from a few different visits, so please don't think I'm a total heifer. Or rather, go ahead and think I'm a total heifer, but not based on this post alone. Above is some of the bread that comes with the meal. The one I photographed was pretty mediocre, but once time they baked it more and it was really sensational with a dark crispy crust.

Mint tea ($3.50 for a large pot): how did I forget to photograph this? It's delightful. My friend and I dubbed it "Doublemint" tea, because if Wrigley's started making a tea this is what it would taste like. But really, I mean that in a good way. I personally might like it a little less sweet, but the sugariness goes really well with the savory dishes. The handle on the pot is dangerous though. A few of us got burned by it during various visits.

Chicken Bastilla ($6.50): a classic Moroccan dish, second in fame probably only to cous cous. So famous that it gets two photos! The first is of its presentation: chicken and herbs wrapped in filo dough and dusted with cinnamon and sugar. They make a pretty heart here! The inside was piping hot and yummy. One point in Tajine's favor: despite the cinnamon and powdered sugar, this dish was not too sweet. Aziza, as much as I love the restaurant, puts way too much sugar on their bastilla (basteeya).

Harira (lentil soup with vegetables and spices, $3.50): very hearty and filing the way a good split pea soup is. This must be Moroccan comfort food. It tastes hot and familiar even though it's completely different from any soup other soup out there.

Chicken kebab ($6.95): I've never really understood the allure of kebabs. I like food on a stick as much as the next person, but kebabs tend to be made from poor cuts of meat and overcooked until burnt on the outside. Not so at Tajine. This chicken, cut into small pieces, was perfectly charred to smokey wonderfulness on the outside and hot and juicy on the inside. It was also well seasoned and marinated. You can get this as a sandwich, but we got two large skewers on it with a side of shermoula (bell peppers, tomatoes, and garlic sauteed in olive oil until it's like a thick sauce) and a mountain of french fries. Ladies, the fries here they are good.

Reghaif (baked bread suffed with sauteed spicy ground beef and onions, $4): WOW! WOW WOW WOW. I could make a meal of this alone. It comes with a spicy tomato salad/salsa thing that tastes slightly like chili. It's probably cumin. Really, this is the flavor and bargain leader of the pack for me.

Djaj Mqali (chicken with olives and preserved lemons, $8.50)): winner of the funkiest name of the evening award. But it's basically pronounced like the name of that has-been star of the Home Alone movies, but with more of a "qua" sound. the lemons were interesting. Alone, they tasted a bit like the way lemon Palmolive smells, but a bite with the chicken brought the whole dish together. The sauce, obviously chock full of turmeric, was sopped up with bread because it was so good.

Vegetarian cous cous ($6.95): This came with a lot of squash, carrots, and cabbage cooked until spoonably soft all the way through, yet not mushy. It was very fragrant, and the cous cous had been infused with nice strong vegetable stock flavor. I think it was actually better the next day as lunch. The photo above is of chicken cous cous, which the owner whipped up especially for us after regretfully telling us he was out of both lamb tajine and chicken kebab. The chicken, which was the chicken from djaj mqali, was delicious in the cous cous.

Brochette Royal (combination grill of lamb, chicken, and kufta kebabs served with soup an salad, $11.93): first of all, our order came out quite different. They ran out of chicken. That's right. RAN OUT. It's like that time I went to a gas station and watched them run out of gas. Or when Canteen ran out of milk (I'm not kidding. Breakfast at a cafe named CANTEEN, and they run out of milk.) I'm telling you, chicken is this kitchen's forte. I mean, they're running out of it, right? Or maybe it was just Friday night shortage. They also thought they were out of a few other dishes, but luckily they were not.

We ended up with two lamb kebabs, a kufta kebab, and two salads. I'm not sure what was going on with the soup, or if they just figured salads would be easier to share. The lamb was nicely flavored but couls have been rarer. The kufta kebabs were good, but I'm one of those people who will forever see them as just meatballs. The salads were nice. Very nice. The shalada is tomatoes, oninons, and parsley with lemon and olive oil. I loved the crunchiness with the different meat. The beet salad had only a very mild beet flavor and had a nice vegetabley sweetness that helped offset all the meat, especially the lamb.

Tajine Bakkri (beef with artichoke hearts and peas): I think they should take the beef out of this, drop the price, and serve it as a vegetarian tajine. But that's because I love peas and artichoke hearts. The beef in it was a little tough, but the vegetables had great flavor.

I need to copy down the name of this pastry dessert. It's flour, sesame seeds, and almonds. Crunchy, covered in sugary syrup, and sort of remniscent of baklava. I was too full to eat much of it, but it was a nice way to finish a meal.

Price confusion: I've listed prices off the menu, but I'm pretty sure the chalkboard in the restaurant lists everything as being about fifty cents more. I wanted to give everyone a rough idea how much it costs to eat there, but I would say $12 if you're only reasonably hungry or if you know a few cheap favorits (reghaif), but no more than $20 after tax and tip even if you go crazy.

Tajine
552 Jones (just south of Geary)
4150440-1718
Closed Mondays

Thin Mints

Wow. Just wow.

The Girl Scouts' best kept secret: Thin Mints are easy to make. No, really. They're easy to make. And with this recipe from 101 Cookbooks, they're ever so slightly healthy (whole wheat pastry flour only). Of course, they're way more healthy than the kind out of a box since they have no trans fat or preservatives. And the higher the quality of chocolate you put into it, the better I think they'll taste. These were made with pretty good cocoa powder (Ghiardelli) but totally cheap chocolate coating (Baker's Chocolate), and were still great. A good chocolate bar would probably have given me a much shinier end product.

Just to show you what options you have, this is my "double boiler." It's a stainless steel skillet set on top of a pot that it happens to fit perfectly. Set the water to medium so it simmers and you won't have to worry about the chocolate burning. A metal bowl that fits on top of the pot without its bottom touching the water also works. Alternatively, you can microwave the chocolate (not in a metal bowl, of course) and stir it every 30 seconds.

The baked cookies. I realize they're misshappen. I don't care. They're for eating, not for a museum. I'm pretty terrible at baking cookies in general. My cookies always lose their shape, come out too soft, get burnt around the edges, etc. So for these to have come out anywhere near edible would have been surprising. For them to come out as deliciously as they did is a full on miracle. And look how ugly they were before they were coated with chocolate. Hideous.

I'm going to say it again: these are some of the easiest cookies I've baked to date. The dough comes together in under 10 minutes, you put it in the freezer for 20, bake for 10, and coat after it's all cooled down. If you're busy, mix the dough one day and put it in the fridge. Bake the cookies the next day, and coat the third. Bake half the dough now, freeze the rest for next week. Whatever! It's really very simple. Everything can be done in under an hour if you're quick in the kitchen.

The recipe is very well written, but I did make a few adjustments so your cookies may look different. I only had regular sugar, so I food processed a cup of it with a tablespoon of cornstarch to create homemade sugar. I'm not on crack; the Cook's Thesaurus says you can do it (the site also has fun pictures of more kinds of sugar than I knew existed.) And it turned out fine. I also didn't use a cookie cutter to cut out circles. Instead, I took Claire's advice and rolled it into a log, froze for twenty minutes, sliced misshapen circles, and popped it into the preheated oven immediately.

And no, I didn't share these with my rabbit. Chocolate can kill little animals; it makes their hearts beat too quickly. He did get all the strawberry leaves, though.

Bunny Food For Everyone

Look! A rabbit!

No, I did not eat the rabbit for dinner, however that may relieve or disappoint you. Yes, that's my little rabbit, enjoying a fresh pesticide-free berry from my produce box. These little berries are incredible. The scent of them hit me as soon as I opened the box. They weren't blood red, but the flavor was very concentrated. The natural combination of sweetness and tang made it almost like drinking strawberry lemonade without adding anything. Incredible. Rabbits love berries, including the leaves and branches. I always leave him a little bit of the berry with the leaves, but he looked so forlorn I gave him a whole strawberry this time.

Guest Star: My Friend Claire

Your eyes deceive you not.

Behold, home made Thin Mints. As Claire said, who needs Girl Scouts? Tell those trans-fat peddling hussies in green to take a hike; home made Thin Mints are the new wave. These babies were hand crafted by a certified personal trainer who's not afraid to eat real chocolate, butter, cream, and sugar but doesn't want to die from eating trans fats (links to reputable studies are listed by John in the comment box. Hey, I can't be expected to blog early in the morning AND find this stuff all the time). Care to share a recipe, my fabulously talented and so-ripped-it-makes-boys-cry friend?

Edit: recipe linked here

Thanks for keeping me honest, John. I almost spat up my afternoon snack when I read your comment. I assumed my original link would be horrid enough to elicit some better responses from the science-minded among us--muahaha, I was right.

Taqueria Chili Verde

I love it, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. Taqueria Chili Verde, situated on the ultra-unsavory corner of 6th and Market, is a favorite lunch spot for me.

$2.50 pollo asado super tacos are all I ever get. I don't know why; I've tried a few other tacos and the burrito mojado (covered in sauce), but the pollo asado super taco is what keeps me coming back. It comes covered in lettuce, salsa, and avocados. Fancy it's not, but filling and delicious it is.

Taqueria Chili Verde also serves one of the best green salsas I've ever tasted. It's great because there's plenty of avocado in it. However, sometimes I think they can't find reasonably priced avocados and they think it's okay to compensate with extra jalepenos. The salsa on those days is shockingly spicy. It's still very good, but I prefer plenty of creamy avocado in my salsa verde.

Aguas frescas here are also pretty good, and only $1.10. There's always horchata and one other flavor that changes (pineapple, strawberry, cantaloupe, etc.) I think Taqueria Chili Verde falls into the "Pretty darned good, and so cheap you can't complain when it's just okay" category. Almost everything on the menu is under $5, and I saw a guy eating a huge bowl of soup with assorted seafood in it. I've also considered eating the chicken soup here. But whenever I walk in, the pollo asado super tacos call to me...

La Salette (Sonoma)

After several months away, I got a chance this weekend to head to Sonoma and enjoy some gorgeous weather and beautiful wine. First, a shout out to Gundlach-Bundschu winery. This was the only new winery we hit, and it did not disappoint. Beautiful, dry, and fragrant were used to describe both the viognier and gewurtztraminer. Their cabernet sauvignon had distinct notes of pepper and tobacco, and was a very classic rendition of cab. Very decently priced wines; the only one the group did not like at all was the merlot. The adorable duck pond atop a hill overlooking the vineyard was a huge bonus.

We stopped for lunch at La Salette, which serves contemporary Portuguese cuisine. Food was fine: $14 got a soup of salad and one of eight lunch special choices. A good number of our group got the bihana, a sandwich with either pork slices or linguica (above).

My friend and I shared Dungness crab crepes off the appetizer menu and a seafood risotto and duck soup off the lunch specials menu. The crepes were fine, but the tiny pieces of chopped up raw bell peppers reminded me of airplane food. I found it incredibly distracting and not at all harmonious with the rest of the dish. The grapes didn't really blend in either. I dislike when restaurants add colorful things to make a dish pretty without considering whether it improves the flavor. The crab meat was tasty and there wasn't any cheap filling taking up space inside the crepes, so the crepes would have been great had they just left off the grapes and bell peppers. Nancy wished the crepes were crispier, and I would add that I thought they should have been thinner as well. But really, it was nicely done.

The seafood risotto was a little bland. The texture of the rice was good because I don't mind risotto a bit on the soft side. Overall flavor was good but there needed to be more seafood oomph in the dish. The duck soup tasted like curry, which was strange though not unpleasant. Again, tasty things that don't go together (at least not in my opinion) were allowed to occupy the same plate. My favorite thing of the whole meal ended up being the rolls: hot, dense, spongey bread encased in incredibly thin crispy crust. I should have taken a picture of that with some good butter. It was steamily delicious.

Overall, the lunch specials were fine but not remarkable. Perhaps dinner or non-specials are the kitchen's forte, but if a restaurant is pushing certain dishes they should put a little more effort into their endeavor. Given the choice, I would return to The Girl and the Fig or The Fig Cafe before eating at La Salette again. Having said that, the only vocalized disappointment at lunch was over a very small plate of salt cod cakes. Three ping pong ball sized cakes atop a handful of lettuce greens stood out in stark contrast to the other lunch specials, which were appropriately sized for one person with a normal appetite. The kitchen really should standardize the sizes of lunch specials, because the cod cakes really did look like an appetizer when compared to the risotto or sandwiches. And a server who's asked for his recommendation of a good dish really should warn a 6'2" guy that the cod cakes might not fill him up unless he orders something else as well.

La Salette Website

Turkey, Day 5

Yup, time for another turkey post. They'll be more spaced out now, since I have all the remaining pieces in the freezer and there's no rush to finish all of it at once.


I roasted up a large section of the breast and have been using it mostly in cold dishes and as a last minute addition to porridge. This sandwich, however, was photo worthy. It's one of my buttermilk dinner rolls sliced into three sections; the bottom layer is turkey with creamy mustard and the top is a fried egg with a runny yolk.

In the special features section of the movie Spanglish, Thomas Keller (yes, French Laundry's Thomas Keller) teaches Adam Sandler how to make "The world's most perfect sandwich." It was crusty country bread spread with mayo and topped with bacon, a fried egg, good salt, and lettuce. Simple yet delicious, with the runny yolk as the star. Ever since I watched that I've wanted a sandwich with a runny egg yolk in it. And even though my sandwich was amusingly tower shaped, lacked lettuce, and was on the small side, it made me happy.

Healthy Mid-Day Eating

I need my mid-day snacks. At work, that means 3 o'clock snack. On the dot. People know not to come bothering me at 3:00. On weekends, since I wake up later, mid-day snack usually falls around 4:00. All of this is neither here nor there. Point is, the last few days I've had a very nice snack of buttermilk dinner rolls and cauliflower puree.

I'm still working on the perfect buttermilk rolls, so I'm not going to post the recipe for these unless someone really wants one. You take any basic buttermilk dinner roll recipe. After the first rise, you split the dough into sixteen pieces. You then split each piece and make three one inch circles and roll them smooth. Grease a cupcake pan and drop three balls into each cup. Cover, let rise for half an hour or until doubled, and bake. A cupcake pan only has twelve cups, so I made twelve cloverleaf rolls and four circular rolls. I topped some with poppyseeds and some with sesame seeds.

The most fun part of baking bread is definitely shaping the dough. There are so many fun options. I just did cloverleaf rolls and a basic round with two slashes in it, but they're both so cute despite being simple. With dinner rolls you can make long twists, crescents, ovals, or go crazy and make a bunch of different shapes.

Cauliflower puree is pure genius. Whoever thought of this first deserves a prize. It's so easy: steam or boil an entire head of cauliflower. Puree in a food processor or blender until smooth, adding a tablespoon of butter if you like. I mixed in a few crumbled pieces of cauliflower for texture, but next time I would make it completely smooth. I also added one cooked potato because I needed to use it up. But even without the potato, the puree was like a very soft version of mashed potatoes. If it had some gravy on it, I don't think most people would even notice what they were eating. It occured to me that with some good chicken stock added, this puree would make an amazing cauliflower soup. Perfectly smooth and creamy, intensely flavored, and thick without the help of any heavy cream or roux. A great soup for anyone who's eating healthy or lactose intolerant but enjoys creamy soup.

Favorite SF Restaurants

So I've been thinking about what restaurants would make it onto my top 10 list, and it's been tough. There are just too many restaurants in SF, and it's hard to decide because a lot of them are places I've only been once. All restaurants have good and bad days, right? And it's not like I've been to an incredibly impressive number of restaurants. But I needed some rules, so I used the following requirements:

• I like the food enough that I've been back several times.
• Well-priced. There are plenty of other places that are amazing but not affordable. You can eat at all of these places for around $25-35 for dinner or $15-20 for lunch, depending on how hungry you are and whether or not you share. Of course, you can hit $60+ if you insist on three courses, the most expensive items, and drinks. But it's easy to eat for $25 if you're with a group, share, and don't go crazy.
• Unique enough that I want to take visitors, but not so precious that I need to save it for a special occassion.
• Places that I find myself craving.

This is a work in progress, so think of it as me just thinking out loud. And do remind me if you know of a restaurant I love but have somehow overlooked. So this list is going to be far from all-inclusive, if you go you'll have a great time.

• Canteen (best value and chance at getting a seat are at lunch/brunch; dinner is reservations only and a bit pricey)
• Coco500
• Fresca
• Mezes
• Spices I
• Tamal (caveat: I've only been once, but it was so amazing I want to go back)
• ...to be continued...

Honorable mentions go to favorite non-restaurant places:

• Ritual Roasters for coffee
• Tango Gelato and Sketch (in Berkeley) for gelato
• Delessio and Tartine Bakery for desserts and snacks
• Cav and The Hidden Vine for wine

Kombucha Report

A glass of kombucha made from high mountain Taiwanese oolong tea (courtesy of my aunt's tea shop). This particular batch had a fragrant honey flavor, light fizz, and champagne-like color.


Four batches of kombucha in, I'm ready to give a full report on kombucha brewing. Please let me know if anything is unclear so I can edit my instructions. I plan to send this to people who ask me how to make kombucha in the future, so I want it to be very precise.

Reminder: you can click on any of the photos to enlarge them and get a good look at what's going on.

First, a quick lesson: kombucha (translation: kombu tea) is usually considered a new age Japanese health product, but it's been used all over Asia for hundreds of years. In a nutshell, it's fermented tea. Some people call it mushroom juice, others tea wine. You'll understand why these names were chosen if you decide to keep reading.

To make kombucha, one needs the following:

• kombucha culture (parent culture)
• 1 cup kombucha
• 1 gallon clean water
• pot big enough to boil a gallon of water
• enough tea for 8 strong cups of tea
• 1 cup granulated sugar (brown sugar works too)
• clean glass container able to hold a gallon of water, no lid necessary
• paper towel or clean hand towel
• rubber band
• Enough glass bottles with lids to hold all the liquid. The lids need to be plastic.

If you're brewing for one and/or only have smaller cooking vessels, cut the amounts in half (half a gallon of water, half a cup of sugar, half gallon sized glass jar, etc.). I've tried this and it still works well. In fact, the first time it worked so well I decided a little extra sugar and old kombucha in the new brew was a good idea. Extra food for what might be a slightly week culture.

I got my kombucha culture from a friend. Kombucha owners are happy to share, both because it's really fun to pass on knowledge and because if you make kombucha regularly you create more cultures than you can possibly use. The culture, which is a symbiotic living mass of yeast and bacteria, is about a third of an inch thick and rubbery. To me, it feels sort of like a large raw squid. The color is slightly off white like a very clean, thick layer of lard. However, the culture will darken depending on what kind of tea it's soaked in and darkens with age. Kombucha culture is also sold on line, and I've heard some health food stores sell frozen cultures. The one in this picture is floating in some fairly sour kombucha, which smelled almost like pure vinegar.

Before you begin, clean everything including your hands and forearms with hot soapy water. Cleanliness really counts for this kitchen project.

To start, boil a gallon of water and brew your tea in it until the tea is nice and strong. Alternatively, you can boil a few cups of water, make extra strong tea in it, add the cup of sugar, make sure the sugar melts completely, and dilute the liquid with clean bottled water. Since the water needs to be sterile, however, you don't want to brew a small amount and then add tap water. And since I don't spend money on bottled water, I find it easier to just boil a whole gallon of water and let it cool down to body temperature before I start.

When the tea is warm, strain out the tea. Put in the kombucha culture and a cup of old kombucha. I haven't measured the temperature exactly, but the tea needs to be cool enough to comfortably put your hand in for at least twenty seconds. It's important not to kill the culture by burning it, but the culture won't like cold tea either. Anything between room temperature (70) and body temperature (98) should be fine.

At this point, your culture might sink, float, or stand up vertically like the one in this photo. Don't worry about it. Cover with a clean towel and wrap with a rubber band. This will keep stuff from falling in. Keep the kombucha in a cool dark place with plenty of air. I keep mine in an ajar cabinet, but any dark corner is fine. You want to avoid places with a lot of fumes (garage) or too much grease (open area of kitchen).

Leave the brew alone for at least five days. Since my apartment is relatively cool, every batch of kombucha I've made has taken at least seven days. It will be faster in hot weather and slower in cold weather. I've heard it can take between one and three weeks, so that's your window. Things that can slow down kombucha maturation include but are not limited to:

• cold weather
• a very young parent culture
• a very old parent culture
• a weakly formed parent culture (thin, uneven)
• oil in your tea (such as bergamot in Earl Grey)
• oil on any of your cooking utensils
• fruit in your tea (again, with the oil)
• you used brown sugar
• you didn't use real tea (chamomile, mint, apple, etc.)--this won't work at all
• you didn't add enough old kombucha
• your old kombucha was a little weak

As your brew ages, the culture will create a "baby" culture on the surface of the tea. The culture, which is alive, begins to process the sugar and caffeine in the tea. That's why you need to use real sugar and real tea. No Splenda, no decaf. Don't worry, your final product will be both sugar and caffeine free. The sugar and caffeine is there for the culture to eat. Not you. What you will be ingesting is the "waste product" of the culture. These waste products include a myriad of acids, B vitamins, vitamin C, various forms of yeast, and some bacteria. Just as the flavors of wild yeast caught for bread or beer will differ depending on environment, your kombucha's flavor will differ depending on what's floating around in your home.

The appearance of the "baby" is an indicator of the health of your "parent." The first few days it will seem like nothing is happening. Then, a white ring will begin to form around the edges of the tea, clinging to the glass jar. Then, usually overnight, a thin layer will develop on the surface of the tea, like in this photo. This layer will thicken and become quite solid by the one week mark. Weak baby formation is caused by one of the causes I mentioned above.

I've also noticed that if you haven't strained your tea through a fine mesh, sometimes little tea bits will float to the surface and get caught in the baby. Sometimes this makes ugly bubbles, or dark blotches on the baby. It's really ugly and undesirable, so strain your tea well. Even better, use loose leaf tea. Tea bags are made with broken up, sometimes powdery tea that is too low quality to sell as loose leaf. If you use loose leaf tea the large leaves will stay intact during brewing and there won't be residue to get caught in the baby.

Kombucha is one funky looking creature. As it brews, different things start going on. My first brew started bubbling furiously after about five days. I could see bubbles rising from the baby culture up to the surface. I also accidentally knocked the jar, displacing the layer that had formed on the surface. What happened was that a new layer formed, so my new baby was two thin cultures instead of one thick one. Lesson: don't jostle the kombucha! Another time, I noticed cloudy webs floating in the tea, linking the old culture to the baby culture. Kind of like a Creation of Adam thing going on in my cabinet. You can see shadowy strands in this photo. The color of the tea will also change. It might get a little cloudy from the yeast, and it will lighten from the acid in the kombucha.

After day 5, use a spoon or straw to taste a little of your kombucha. It should no longer be sweet. Instead, it should smell and taste a lot like apple cider vinegar. You want there to be a faint tang, and if you're lucky the kombucha will be fizzy as well. If it's pretty tangy, it's time to decant. Otherwise, leave it and taste it every day until it's what you want.

It's hard to know what's right for you the first time around. Just keep in mind that the kombucha should not taste sweet. If it's still sugary, the brew's not ready. And it will mellow out after decanting, so remember that if it tastes a little tangy it will lose some of that quality before you drink it.

To decant, you need some clean glass bottles with plastic lids. I use old alcohol and juice bottles. Glass is best, plastic is fine. Metal will kill kombucha. Before you start, set aside the old culture and baby culture in a few cups of the kombucha. Keep the tupperware in a cool dark place, slightly ajar so the cultures can breath. I was going to start a new brew right away so I put the baby culture and a cup of tea back in the glass container. This bottle looks a little darker than it actually is because of the dark wood table, but it's kombucha made from oolong so it's actually lighter than apple juice.

Using the rest of the kombucha, fill the bottles to the very top, leaving no room for air. This will help the kombucha develop fizziness, and keep the bottle from exploding from the built up pressure. Leave the bottles in a cool dark place for five days, then transfer to your refridgerator. I've been pretty good about finishing my kombucha, so I'm not sure how long it lasts if you don't open it. Some people say a few months in the fridge. I notice that opened bottles start tasting pretty sour after two weeks, so I wouldn't keep opened bottles around for too long.

You can start a new brew right away with one of the cultures. It's up to you whether you want to use the new baby (which will now become a parent) or the old parent. Here is a picture of a brand new baby culture with a cup of just-made tea. You can see that some fizz formed when I poured the tea back into the container. I don't know if it's luck or what, but I've always had very fizzy results. This combination of tea and culture is what you need to start a new brew. Just add a gallon of lukewarm strong tea that has a cup of sugar melted into it.

Parent cultures are good for about a dozen brews. The performance of a parent takes on the shape of a bell curve. The first few babies it makes will be a little on the thin side, then it will make a few great babies before it starts getting old and is ready to be buried in the back yard or thrown in the garbage. If you find yourself with two very thin parents, use them both in the same container to make your next brew. Hopefully you'll end up with one great baby. Like I keep saying, everything's trial and error with kombucha, so go with your gut. Ideally I want to keep two or three healthy cultures going at all times in case I kill one.

What tea is best? You can use any black, green, or oolong tea to make kombucha. As you can tell from my photos, I've used tea that's almost black as well as tea that's a pale honey color. The important thing is to use caffeinated tea and tea without a lot of oil or fruit in it. I tried using passionfruit black tea once. It eventually worked, but the fruit oils in the tea made the baby very thin and uneven. The kombucha itself was mild and not very fizzy. If I use passionfruit tea again I would cut the amount in half and use a good black tea as well.

I've had the best luck with high quality Taiwanese high mountain oolong (It's the one in the glass in the first photo). Great flavor, beautiful pale color, and an extremely thick, white baby (it's the perfectly round one in photos above). The best cheaper alternative has been Stassen jasmine green tea bags, available at most Chinese markets.

A closer look at an especially well-formed kombucha baby. Because it was made in a jar of oolong tea, the culture wasn't darkened by dark tea. It's the color of lard, and smooth and shiny all over. I was really proud of this one.

I've heard that people flavor their tea when they bottle it. Some people put in a few pieces of dried fruit or fresh ginger. I'll report back if I do a ginger infused kombucha. I'm hoping it will be like homemade ginger ale. So far, I've noticed that extremely dark black tea makes a hoppy brew sort of like beer. A lighter tea makes a tea that tastes more like an unsweetened wine cooler. I notice that the bubbles in kombucha are smaller than bubbles in soda. Best of all, kombucha will create a little carbon dioxide even after being opened, so it stays bubbly for over a week instead of going flat like soda.

Taiwanese Food 101

People often ask me "What's Taiwanese food like?" Despite having grown up on and loving Taiwanese food, I find myself hard pressed to give a clear, concise answer. Today, someone on Chowhound posted a site that has an answer so beautiful it makes me want to cry. It's by no means an exhaustive study on Taiwanese food, and not all the descriptions will make full sense to someone who's not familiar with Taiwanese food. There could definitely be more photos, though the ones they do have are beautiful. Still, if you're wondering what Taiwanese food is or don't know how to explain it to someone else, this page is a great starting point.

Taiwanese home cooked meals almost always include the following, though of course not in the same bowl: hot brothy soup, garlic, seafood, pork, a stunning array of leafy greens, and some of the best fruit on the planet. Strange animal parts like blood, intestine, and offal also often play a role.

Night market food, which is the reason most people leave their homes at night, tends to be unhealthy: deep fried everything, starchy soups, sugary desserts. Food on a stick gets bonus points and includes: deep fried fish balls, steamed pork's blood rice cake, candied cherry tomatoes, ducks' tongues, chickens' butts, and fresh fruit are just some of the things you can find on a stick. The things you can get in a bowl, wrapped in paper, in a bag, or in a napkin are countless. It's "walk while you eat" heaven.

Dessert is usually fresh fruit pieces if you're at home, but if you're eating out it might be something like a sweet bean soup or grass jelly. In the summer, dessert almost always includes shaved ice and fruit in some combination.

Taiwanese breakfast is one of the most delicious yet hardest to describe parts of the cuisine. I'll have to remember to take copious photos next time I encounter it.

Anyway, I now present this site in all its glory. Read it and weep: Eating China (you can surf around for information about other regional food, naturally).

PS. Blogger's not cooperating with me. I have a few posts backlogged because the site won't let me load photos. This happens from time to time. It's my punishment for shortcutting by using Blogger instead of a real web design program. Bad Pei!

Schnitzelhaus

I can't think of much to say about Schnitzelhaus. It was fine. The food was good; I've certainly had much worse German food. It wasn't greasy or heavy. In fact, the breading on the schnitzel was pretty light, and the stews were well done. I just don't think this is the kind of food that inspires me to say a lot. There aren't many ingredients to describe, and it's not the kind of food you sit there and dissect.

It's good hearty food that feels comforting on a cold night, especially when you're with a crowd of friends and have loud polka music blaring in the background. It's definitely as much about the atmosphere and ambiance as the food, meaning we had a raucous good time but weren't waxing philosophic over our dishes. And the beer selection's not too bad either. But I like German beer.

Potato dumplings: very medium great. Kind of gummy and dense, without any kind of fragrant potato-y-ness.

Goulash: tender meat, slight vinegar flavor. Spatzle was fine: firm, elasticy, nice for dousing in beef broth.

Schnitzel with bell peppers in the sauce: crispy breading, nice and hot. The owner said this is his favorite dish on the menu.

Wiener Schnitzel: listed as the house specialty. Again, nice job on the breading. The potatoes were interestingly smokey. Despite feeling extremely full I felt compelled to eat a few.

Venison: I didn't get enough of a taste to form a coherent opinoin on the sauce, but I thought it was pretty tender for venison. That is to say, not tender enough for me to really want a lot of it.

Rabbit: tasty, but like a lot of rabbit had too many annoying little bones.

Schnitzelhaus
(415) 864-4038
294 9th Street
San Francisco, CA 94103

Tartine's Olive Loaf

Tartine Bakery's fresh bread has a cult following. Every day around 3 p.m., fresh loaves of bread come out of the oven. Within minutes, a line develops out the door, and sometimes around the corner and down the street. After an hour or two, they always sell out. Hungry bread lovers must then leave the bakery dejected and empty handed, or else go to Delfina next door to get Tartine bread served before their dinner.

Honestly, I never cared. I'm not a big fan of hard-crusted rustic bread, and have found even Tartine's legendary croissants to be too burnt on the outside. However much I love most of the goods at Tartine, rustic breads just aren't for me. But when the stars align to place me at Tartine Bakery when bread is available and there's a line of fewer than five customers, I know better than to reject my karma. I bought half a loaf of olive bread ($2.50), which was described by the gal at the counter as "Out of control." The other choices were walnut, sesame, country, herbs de provence, and lemon zest. I think, after trying pieces of the samples, that I would get walnut next time.

The bread was great fresh. Thick crispy crust, incredibly spongey inside. If this style of bread is what you like, I don't see how it could get much better than Tartine's. Personally, I like a light-colored and very thin crust with an airy interior. Like a baguette or epi loaf.

The bread was great for a sandwich the next day. This is some leftover fried chicken torn off the bone, lettuce, mayo mixed with mustard powder, and a light sprinkling of salt. Not very good cold (bread's too chewy), but great after some time in a toaster oven. The bread's crust crisps right up even after a night in the fridge in sandwich form, which really speaks to the skill of the fine craftsmen and women at Tartine.

Michael Bauer's Bay Area Top 100

I'm bored at work, so I looked up Michael Bauer's 2005 Top 100 for Bay Area restaurants in The San Francisco Chronicle. If you're curious, the link is here.

59 of the restaurants are within San Francisco proper. To date, I've eaten at 16 for either lunch or dinner. There are five more restaurants where I've had dessert and/or drinks but not a full meal. Not bad, I think. Some food nuts make it a personal mission to finish the list every year, but I simply don't have enough time or money. 100 restaurants a year would be about two expensive meals each week, and would leave me no time for the myriad of wonderful eats that didn't make it onto Bauer's list for whatever reason.

If I listed the ten best meals I've had in San Francisco, I don't think more than half of them would be at restaurants that made Bauer's top 100. Our tastes are too different, and I don't have his eating budget. It's a fun list to glance through, but I'd rather make my own. Hmm...now y'all are going to want me to make that list. Give me some time to think about it.

Delfina

After years of hearing about Delfina, I finally got the chance to try it tonight. In a nutshell: amazingly enthusiastic kitchen staff, friendly wait staff, delicious food, fair price, and I would go back to give people a taste of San Francisco but am not chomping at the bit to become a regular or anything.

Thinking back, I enjoyed the meal as much as I did at least partly because the room was charged with the positive energy of people who had waited in the rain to get in and were excited to be eating at on of the City's most popuar restaurants. I try not to focus on ambiance over food, but the cheerfulness of everyone in the room was unmistakeable. The fact that the food didn't disappoint after all the hype just made me even happier.

Tripe al Florentina: the best thing I had all night. It's ugly, but was utterly transcendent. First of all, it comes to the table still bubbling, and it smells of meat, smoke, tomatoes, spices, and only very faintly of offal. The tripe is sliced very thinly, mixed with tomatoes, carrots, celery (?), and spices, then sprinkles with bread crumbs and baked in a wood oven. The smokiness of the wood oven was very apparent; I almost wondered whether some smoked bacon was involved in the dish. I sopped up all the sauce with chewy, crisp-skinned country bread from Tartine Bakery (which is next door to Delfina).

Gnocchi with nettles and chanterelle mushrooms: nice, but too much for one person. I just can't eat that much gnocchi by myself. I can eat a whole plate of pasta, but gnocchi is too dense. That's not to say that these gnocchi were in any way heavy. They were very light, delicate, and obviously home made. I'll never understand the fuss over nettles, but the chanterelles were nice and slightly crunchy. The best thing about this dish was the light flavor of lemon. It took me awhile to decide that there indeed was lemon in this dish. Perhaps this solved my question, "What are meyer lemons good for?" Meyers always seem pointless to me because I like my lemon desserts to be extremely tart, and Meyers have the scent of lemons without so much the tang. In this dish, however, the mild tanginess and fragrance of Meyers kept it from becoming a sour plate of gnocchi. It really was just right, adding sort of an elusive fragrance to the dish.

Buttermilk panna cotta with candied kumquats: Delfina's panna cotta is famous in San Francisco. Velvety smooth, it's thicker than yogurt but softer than flan. Again, I don't think this is something I would eat alone. It's just too much dairy. Then again, I can't finish a container of yogurt by myself either because it's too thick for me, so maybe people scarf this down all the time.

Funny story: the caramel sauce on this was very bitter. At first, I thought "Oh, burnt caramel." As I kept eating, the sauce got more and more bittter. I literally could not eat more than a drop of the sauce with every spoonful of panna cotta. I thought it was strange, but assumed the kitchen was experimenting with some kind of new bitter sauce. By the end, I couldn't eat any of it because it was much too bitter, like someone had added very bitter citrus pith to the sauce. When my waiter asked me how I liked it, I said the panna cotta was great but I was curious what they put in the sauce to make it so bitter. I figured if I could learn their secret it would be a shortcut to burnt caramel sauce. He was confused too, so he went back to ask the kitchen. Turns out someone had slightly burned the sauce--I'm not crazy! To Delfina's credit, our server took the panna cotta off the final bill.

Delfina Menu (changes frequently)

18th and Guerrero

Brillat Savarin: Sunny Saturday Snack

Now that is a beautiful chunk of cheese. Brillat Savarin is a French triple cream cow's cheese. Triple creams are intensely smooth because extra cream is added to the milk curds used to produce them.

Brillat Savarin, is one of the most luscious I've ever tasted. The texture is much softer and richer than brie, which is good but is sometimes a bit rubbery if you get stuck with an inferior brie. The batch I found at Whole Foods this weekend had been perfectly ripened. Sometimes stores sell cheese before they're 100% ripe, meaning the cheese is a little harder than it should be and the flavore aren't fully developed. Most people can't tell/don't care about the difference, and keeping cheese at the right temperature for ripening runs the risk of cheese going bad before stores can sell it. So stores just keep the cheese super cold until they can unload it, at which point it's too late for the buyer to ripen it at home.

Lucky for me, the Brillat Savarin was perfect. Dense and creamy in the center, very runny around the edge, with an exceptionally thin and edible rind and just a slight pungent taste. Previously I'd only had Brillat Savarin in a truly transcendent dessert souffle, but spread on some wheat crackers it was a nice savory snack to enjoy on this brilliantly sunny but chilly day.

TVP Curry

I'm like Oliveto: each day's menu consists of new items to entice and impress, but items from the day before stay on to comfort and reassure you. So I went from turkey to turkey curry to curry with TVP. Will I eat TVP with something else tomorrow? Wait and see!

Okay, I'm nothing like Oliveto. That's just my runaway ego talking. But I did segue flawlessly from meateater to vegan in less than a day, thanks to TVP (textured vegetable protein). I'm pretty spittin' happy with this curry. The flavor and texture are very close to that of Indian eggplant curry (Baingan Bharta), so it totally satisfied my craving without separating me from $8 of my money.

TVP is a great way to increase your protein intake without a lot of fat, plus it's dried so you don't have to worry about it going bad. This recipe is also an easy way to get rid of any vegetables lurking in your fridge, threatening to go bad.

• 1 onion, finely diced
• 1 cup grated vegetables
• 2 Tbs. curry powder
• 1 clove garlic, grated
• a dash of dried ground ginger
• 1 cup chicken stock
• 1 cup plain yogurt
• salt
• pepper

To use TVP, you have to re-hydrate it first. Follow the instructiong on the package. Mine called for a cup of boiling water to be poured over 7/8 cup of TVP, then covered for 5-10 minutes. The TVP will get fluffy and crumbly, sort of like broken up wet croutons.