Let's Be Frank

It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon to spend at Chrissy Field (aka. Dog Heaven, as it was named by my sister). Sadly, we did not have a pup of our own to play fetch with, but we made do with delicious all-natural hot dogs.

The line was long but moved along briskly. There are three choices: All Frank (100% beef), Spicy Italian (100% pork), and Devil Dog (I believe it's your choice topped with spicy pickles).

J and I shared one of each, and S managed to eat one of each all by herself. Thus fortified, we spend a few hours walking around, taking in the scenery, admiring others' pets, and people watching in general.

Sausalito, as seen across the bay on a clear day.

None of us could figure out how this guy was balancing these rocks on each other, and he was so intently listening to his ipod that no one in the crowd gathered around him dared disturb his work. Are the rocks being held up by nothing more than physics?

Here's a shot from Golden Gate Park Yesterday, just because I liked the De Young Museum's free outdoor scuplture garden.

Afternoon Tea, Ritz Carlton

I took a little lady (that would be sister #1) to afternoon tea yesterday at the Ritz. Their Lobby Lounge is lovely! Despite the ultra formal furnishings, the Ritz manages to give off a cozy, inviting vibe. I think it's the warm lighting, abundant flowers, and harpist.

The lemon curd, we agreed, is the best we've had. Not too tart but imparting plenty of zesty lemon flavor, with a hint of good butter. The clotted cream was fine but not exceptional. Our favorite of the two teas we chose was the Eros, a black tea with citrus and vanilla. It smelled like oranges and butter!

The traditional tea nearly did us in. It may look like just a few snacks, but we weren't hungry until after four hours and a nice long swim at the Y. I haven't been to other afternoon teas in San Francisco, but I think the pastries and tea are head and shoulders above what's offered at the Peninsula in Beverly Hills. However, I like the sandwiches at the Peninsula more. Both are great, and highly recommended as a particularly civilized way to spend an afternoon.

Cafe Jacqueline's

One giant Grand Marnier souffle: $40.

Four happy people stuffed full of dessert: priceless.

Woodhouse Fish Company

We've been to Woodhouse Fish Company three or four times since moving back to SF. Obviously, it's a favorite. The three top dishes are definitely the lobster rolls, clam chowder, and deep fried Ipswitch clams.

Here's a mega lobster roll, which is enough for two to share. Everyone who's tried it says it's the best lobster roll they've tasted on the west Coast. The sandwich is a soft french roll topped with a mountain of unbroken, sweet, chunks of lobster claw in a mayo dressing. It must be an exceedingly heavy meal, but doesn't taste heavy at all.

The steamed mussels are cooked in what can only be described as a generous amount of white wine. J was tipsy after imbibing on the liquor with copious amounts of garlic bread.

The artichoke with dungeness crab and rock shrimp was disappointing, served with a lackuster slice of watermelon. Stick with the crowd favorites at Woodhouse; they never disappoint the way this did!

3 O'Clock Snack

A lot of people find it hilariously obsessive that I have a snack at 3:00 p.m. every day. It's just one of those habits that makes sense for me. The six plus hours between lunch and dinner is way too long for me to go without eating, and having a scheduled snack at 3:00 actually keeps me from snacking all the way from noon until dinner.

Snack isn't often fancy. Usually it's a fruit, a cookie, or in this case Trader Joe's Greek Style Yogurt with a drizzle of clover honey. But I do put it in a cute cup so I feel more civilized. Happy eating!

Waffle Party!

N came over for breakfast today, and we had waffles. Need more words be said?

We had bacon too, but I didn't take photos until after she left and I was hoarding the leftovers. You can tell I was running out of batter.

mmmmmmmm

Skirt Steak and Collards

This is one of those meals that looks fancier than it is. First, I sliced and toasted some bread.

Then, the steak. All I did was salt and pepper a skirt steak, sear it under the broiler for about seven minutes a side, let it sit while I chopped up some cilantro, and then slice it as thinly as I could. The only things to remember are that your steak should be at about room temperature (let it sit out for an hour or two), that it needs to rest, and that you should slice thinly against the grain. I peppered it, splashed it with a few dashes of Worchestershire, and we were good to go.

The only thing that took a long time was the slow cooked greens. However, I saved myself a lot of energy with a $2.29 mixed bag of turnip, mustard, and collard greens from Trader Joe's. I sauteed some bacon and onions, then added a can of vegetable stock, two cups of water, a four mashed cloves of garlic, and the greens. It smells very sharp and bitter at first, but after a few hours on very low heat everything mellows out into a sweet Southern dish.

Waffled Grill Cheese

My husband is always nagging me (lol, I do believe that's the first time I've ever started a post with that cliche) about unnecessary appliances, and because he doesn't like waffles he has a vendetta against our waffle iron. He just has to live with it, though, because homemade waffles made from a nicely risen yeasty batter are one of my favorite treats. But I understand where he's coming from about appliances that only serve one purpose, so today I tried using our waffle iron to make a pressed sandwich.

I think J's going to enjoy this new use for waffle irons. The man loves his sandwiches, and the waffle iron has the edge on traditional sandwich presses because it makes more crunchy grilled bits. This is just filled with cheddar, but next time I'm going to try some ham or bacon. The only thing to remember is that since a waffle iron doesn't have an adjustable hinge, the side closer to the hinge will cook more quickly. I just turned the sandwich over halway through cooking to even things out.

We had a lot of leftover mint from mojitos yesterday because both T and I bought some. So today there's minty iced tea! half a bunch of mint leaves, ripped, muddled with two diced lemons. The tea, of course, is Luzianne's tea cooked with about half a cup of unrefined cane sugar.

Tartine's Lemon Buttermilk Pudding Cake

[edited for errors, with additional photos]

So beautiful. It may sound silly, but for the first time in my life I have a window sill wide enough on which to cool things fresh out of the oven. It's intensely satisfying.

In a word: divine. I tweaked the recipe a little so these are actually tangerine buttermilk cakes, but the light-as-air cake sitting atop a layer of pudding is an incredible combination. I baked these early today for a dinner party later. The recipe says they keep well overnight, and I wanted to make sure I got the recipe right rather than risk a last minute disaster. But having tasted them fresh from the oven, I'm sad that my guests won't be able to taste them piping hot!

Here's a shot of the cross section of an inverted cake. The top is sort of a cross between a souffle and a Japanese style cheesecake, and the bottom is a gooey custart. Here's the recipe for the adventurous:

RECIPE
1c sugar
1/3c a-p flour
1/4 tsp salt
4 large eggs, separated
1 1/2 cups full fat buttermilk
2 tsp lemon zest
1/2 c lemon juice

Preheat oven to 325 degrees and prepare a waterbath.

Whisk flour, sugar, salt together. In a second bowl whisk together egg yolks, buttermilk, and lemon zest and juice. Make a well in the flour mixture and pour in the egg mixture. Whisk until smooth.

Whisk egg whites until they hold soft peaks. Scoop 1/3 into yolk mixture and stir. Gently fold in remainig whites. Transfer to a clean 2 qt souffle dish (for one large shared cake) or six 3/4 cup dishes.

Place in water bath, make sure water reaches up to 3/4th of the souffle dish, bake for 30-40 minutes until golden on top, or 20-25 minutes for the 3/4 cup dishes.

Gratuitous eye candy for your inner lush. T brought over 10 Cane rum (my favorite) and other mojito ingredients, so I have a pitcher of muddled ingredients ready to go: just add club soda!

Kara's Cupcakes

After a gloomy morning, the sun burst through the clouds around noon and I decided it was the perfect cold-but-bright weather for a jog up to Ghiardelli Square.

Since I made it the whole 1.5 miles (uphill, no less) without overexerting myself, I decided I deserved a cupcake from Kara's. The store is cute, but in kind of the same way that all the trendy cupcake shops are. Can't someone think of a new way to display cupcakes? It's kind of like how all the new frozen yogurt shops look like Pinkberry, and most new coffee shops are sort of Starbucks-ish. Boring!

I had the fleur de sel cupcake, which is dark chocolate cake with dark chocolate ganache and a caramel filling. The caramel filling has bits of fleur de sel in it. I have to say, this is some of the best chocolate frosting I've ever tasted. It's incredibly smooth, like the filling of an expensive truffle. Even though my photo is blurry you can tell how much darker, denser, and smoother it is than most cupcake frosting. It was a thing of beauty. The cake itself was pretty good though nothing to rave about. Cupcake shops should all have one rule: only sell fresh cupcakes. So many places (Sprinkles, I'm looking at you) sell stale, dried out cupcakes mixed in with their winners. Not nice, folks. Not nice!

Nata de Coco

Wandering around today, I stumbled upon a jar of nata de coco in a corner market. Now that I've noticed it, I know I've walked past it countless times in Chinese markets but never stopped to pay attention. It's always in the Southeast Asian food aisle or the Asian section within canned fruits, near the canned lychee and coconut milk, just down from the fish sauce.

The texture isn't as bouncy and the flavor isn't as subtle as whatever they use at Sno:LA as frozen yogurt topping, but it's not bad. Maybe I'll be able to find tastier brands now that I known where to look.

Thai Temple, Berkeley

I took a break from the city yesterday and spent a gorgeous Sunday catching up with L and P in Berkeley. Our first stop was Sunday brunch at the Thai Temple. The crowds were intense, the food was fine: heaping plates of Thai curries and large bowls of soup noodles for a good cause, though it is simultaneously true that people were there to socialize and help out the temple more than to find the best Thai in the Bay Area. You really can't be eating in the sun on a gorgeous day, though.

The one thing that did kind of blow me away were these little coconut desserts, which I photographed secretly while L and P were still in line (ha, L, you thought I didn't take any photos). I've never had anything like it before. P said they're just sugar, coconut milk, and green onions cooked in little metal molds. Anyone know where I can find them in SF, or what they're called?

We Have Internet!

After a long and sanity-sapping battle, we finally have DSL. In celebration, I'm changing my blog template. Isn't it so much more cheery and bright?

Today, I'm heading to the Thai Temple in Berkeley for their Sunday lunch. I'll report back later!

Home is Where the Plants Live

As I continue my quest to obtain functional AT&T dry circuit DSL, I present to you a photo of a little corner of domestic tranquility:

It's not much, but it calms me. More photos of our new digs to follow.

Cookies and Cheesy Puffs

Posting off a public server sucks, but we all deserve some pretty photos!

Lemon sables (shortbread cookies) encrusted with sugar crystals. These are delicious because lemon zest was ground into the sugar before baking!

Cheddar gougeres (savory giant cream puffs that are hollow, herb-spiced, and encrusted with cheese) from the Tartine Bakery cookbook. These are amazing. We had some with grilled fish for dinner, and then I had some for breakfast and J brought a few for lunch.

Like the view of the alley from my kitchen?

Still No Internet...(and Keetsa!)

I'm about to kill someone at AT&T DSL. Hello? It's been THREE WEEKS since I first called to activate service. Sure, they have all these excuses about how they're backed up and it was an unforeseeable problem (one which still hasn't been clearly described to me) but c'mon. Who waits three weeks for DSL in this day and age?

Anyway, bottom line is I have no internet at home. The topic today: THE KEETSA CLOUD.

Keetsa is a new company we stumbled upon while mattress shopping around Harrison and 4th. I know what you're thinking: "Pei, let's talk about food, eh?"

Well, get this: Keetsa mattresses are stuffed with green tea. That's right, I'm sleeping on green tea. Most of the mattress is still foam filler and memory foam, but the materials aren't as heavily treated with potentially toxic chemicals, and there is green tea in the core. In a nutshell, Keetsa is a company that's been developing eco-friendly mattresses that are made with non-toxic, sustainable, recyclable materials, and one of the things they use is green tea for its antibacterial properties. After all, mattresses can be breeding grounds for mold and mites.

In addition to being all green and tree-huggy, Keetsa mattresses have a 20 year warranty, a 30 day money back guarantee, and come in a box small enough to fit in the back seat of a Prius. GASP! Yes, they vacuum pack each mattress so that even a small person like myself is able to roll one home and drag it up a few stairs all by myself.

But, and this is most important of all, the Keetsa is comfortable. We bought the Keetsa Cloud, which is their memory foam answer to Temperpedic's more famous mattresses. The Keetsa Clous is firmer, cheaper by hundreds of dollars, and more eco-coscious than the Temperpedic, which literally helps me sleep at night.

So even though I want to rip someone's head off over at AT&T, at least I'm getting a good night's sleep on a dream mattress.