Easy to cook. Hard to resist!

The mercury hit 113 F this afternoon*. Ooof.

I’ve been checking out the local ethnic markets. I found a decent Asian market and also a good Indian market. From the Indian market, I couldn’t resist this box of Kat-a-Kat Curry Mix:

Now with more brains.

In case you’re having trouble reading it, the box says, “Mix for stir fried chops, brain, heart & kidneys,” and the back of the box does indeed say, “Easy to cook. Hard to resist!”

You can buy it here, and they have a recipe, too, which calls for (among other things) 2 goat kidneys, 1 goat heart, 2 goat brains, and 3 mutton chops. I guess you’re out of luck if you only have one goat to slaughter — either that, or you’ll have to do with less brains. Sigh.

I’m going to make the Wimp’s Version, which substitutes chicken thighs for . . . well, for everything. Thighs aren’t too challenging. I’ll boil some potatoes and add those in, and we can pretend they’re brains.

I’ll keep you posted.

D.

*According to Karen, formally, the temps are checked in the shade. So it only maxed out at around 104 today. Does it make any sense to check it in the shade, when we drive, walk, etc. under the beating sun?

Necessity is the mother of garbage

We’re staying in temporary housing while we wait for this house deal to go through escrow. It’s a good-sized apartment, about 1000 square feet, with two bedrooms, two bathrooms, living room/dining room, kitchen with a gas range and granite counter tops, and a washer and dryer. Oh, and it’s furnished, too! Everything we could ask for (and now, with INTERNET!)

But the kitchen is a bit lean. I had to buy a cutting board today, and I have so far resisted the temptation to buy a decent butcher knife since we own two (at least) (but they’re both packed). I’ve had to restock the kitchen with staples, which I never seem to do in a logical fashion.

So . . . I wanted to make that rhubarb crisp dessert I told you about the other week (click on the food category if you missed it), this time with peaches and nectarines and rhubarb. But I forgot that I needed corn starch. Worse, the recipe calls for flour, and I only had oatmeal. And matzo meal. So I used matzo meal instead of flour*, and I left out the corn starch; I reduced the water to 1/2 cup and crossed my fingers.

I had the usual thought at this point. Maybe I’ve discovered a new recipe! Maybe everyone will talk about my amazing matzo meal fruit crisp!

I took the first taste, and I didn’t think it was bad at all. Nothing incredible. Not a recipe that will go viral. So I gave some to Karen and Jake, and soon realized that I had failed to take into account The Matzo Effect: if you’re Jewish, everything tastes better with matzo. That’s just the way it is. But it only works if you’re Jewish.

Two big fehs from Karen and Jake. They both tasted a spoonful, and both had strawberry ice cream for dessert.

I can’t quite bring myself to throw it out. I like it, but I shouldn’t eat this stuff — I’m kind of dieting. And exercising. But I’m still fat. Fat! FAT.

Fat.

D.

*Turns out I had indeed bought flour, but put it in the freezer to keep it fresh . . . and then forgot about it. I’d outsmarted myself.

Chinese Chicken Salad

I thought about writing some sort of “pros and cons of B-field” post, but honestly, I don’t know the town well enough yet. My list thus far:

Pro: We’re getting used to global warming way before our pals back in the Pacific Northwest.
Con: By the time they experience global warming, we’ll look like Raisinettes.

Pro: Thanks to the heat, women show a lot more skin here in B-field.
Con: Thanks to the heat, women show a lot more skin here in B-field.

Yeah, that’s all I have. That and Chinese chicken salad. This stuff . . .

Chinese chicken salad, the standard interpretation

Or is it this version?

Chinese chicken salad, all farfed up.

More below the cut.

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El Mansour

We had dinner this evening in San Francisco, at a Moroccan place called El Mansour. If you’ve never done it, Moroccan dining is a special experience. Most Moroccan restaurants strive to give their diners the feeling that they’re thousands of miles away, and El Mansour succeeds wonderfully in that regard.

You step in from a bright and unusually warm San Francisco afternoon and the place is a cave, cool and dark. Once your eyes adjust, you see low tables (though not as low as at some Moroccan places — you won’t be reclining on pillows here), billowy sheets draped across the ceiling, warm, rich colors everywhere. The waiter brings over hand towels and a sort of kettle, and he drizzles water over your palms because, yup, you’re gonna be using your fingers to fress here (unless you’re like the wimps next to us, who asked for forks).

Moroccan restaurants are always a bit on the pricey side because it’s a price fixe meal, five courses in this case. It’s worth it, though. I can’t think of anything else quite so unique. I guess dining at a sushi bar might feel special the first time around, but we’ve been there and done that. Moroccan? I can count the number of times I’ve gone out for Moroccan on one hand. They’re hard to find, for one thing. A couple of ’em in San Francisco, one in Palo Alto (I’m not even sure that one is still there), at least one in L.A.

Here were the five courses:

* Lentil soup and bread
* A dish with four separate salads, each themed on a different vegetable: cucumber, carrot, eggplant, and tomato. And more bread.
* B’stila. B’stila is everything that’s good about food, and if you’re not familiar with it, go read Dean’s post on my b’stila.
* An entree. Jake had chicken and couscous with mixed vegetables, I had a fish tagine, and Karen had the best dish of the three, chicken in a honey sauce with prunes. To die for.
* Dessert: fried bananas and a little pastry thingie made from the same filo-like sheets that they used to make the b’stila.

Let’s see . . . there’s the tea-pouring ritual, too, and then the belly dancing. Our belly dancer had a real Barbara Eden thing going. She was great at pulling her audience into the show, although she made no headway whatsoever with my rather dour son. (At that age, I would have found a way to collide with her softer body parts, but it seems my son is not as sex-obsessed as I was.) Smokin’ hot body, by the way.

Over at Yelp, some moran complained about small portions. Admittedly we’re little people, but for us, there was more than enough to eat. We brought home leftovers. And now I’m dying to see if I can copy their chicken in honey and prunes recipe. Oooh, this recipe looks close. I’ll have to perfect it for the next time Chris and Dean have us up to their private island 🙂

What a fun evening.

D.

More food: Blueberry-Rhubarb Crisp

AKA Rhuberry Crisp. Adapted from About.com’s Southern Food section’s rhubarb crisp recipe.

Ingredients:

* 1 cup dark brown sugar, firmly packed
* 1 cup all-purpose flour
* 3/4 cup quick cooking rolled oats
* 1/2 cup melted butter
* 1 teaspoon cinnamon
* 3 cups blueberries
* 2 cups sliced rhubarb
* 1 cup granulated sugar
* 2 tablespoons cornstarch
* 1 cup water
* 1 teaspoon vanilla

The problem with blueberry crisp is that it’s too overwhelmingly sweet. The problem with rhubarb crisp is that it’s too damned sour. The combination works as well as chocolate and peanut butter . . . hey, I wonder if anyone’s ever done anything with that idea?

Here’s what you do: preheat the oven to 350F, then

1. Combine the brown sugar, flour, oats, cinnamon, and melted butter, and mix well with a fork. Take half of this mixture and use it to make a bottom crust in an eight-inch-square baking dish.

2. Combine the water, corn starch, and white sugar in a sauce pot and whisk well. Cook over medium-high heat until thickened and nearly clear. Stir in the vanilla. Alternatively, you can mix the vanilla in with the remaining oat/flour mixture. Doesn’t seem to matter.

3. Put the mixed fruits over the bottom crust, then pour the corn starch/water/sugar/vanilla mixture evenly over the fruit. Finally, layer the rest of the oat/flour/butter/brown sugar mixture evenly over the top.

4. Bake for 55 minutes. Let it cool until it is warm, not hot, and serve with vanilla ice cream. Or not. Tastes great either way!

And now the recipe becomes eternal, at least until the next hack.

D.

Yammykins

The wife and I prefer sweet potato pie to pumpkin pie, candied yams to mashed sweet potatoes. Yes, I’m pretending yams and sweet potatoes are interchangeable, and I know they’re not. This is a garnet yam:

Garnet yams. Note the red skin and orange flesh.

And this is a sweet potato:

The sweet potato: light brown skin, yellow to orange flesh.

If I slip and say “sweet potato,” I mean “garnet yam,” AKA “the tasty one.” And that goes for sweet potato pie, too: when I make it, I use garnet yams. Similarly, my version of pumpkin ravioli in sage brown butter sauce uses garnet yams, not pumpkin (although I have used canned pumpkin in a pinch).
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Eating jellyfish

Watching people eat jellyfish, you would think it wasn’t a delicacy. What is the matter with these folks? This stuff is good eats.

How do I describe it, though? That’s not easy, but I’ll try. First thing you have to realize is that jellyfish has little or no flavor of its own; it acquires flavor from its marinade. Typically, this is a mild sweet/sour liquid accented with sesame oil and green or red chili peppers. The jellyfish I had tonight at Tin’s Tea House Lounge (cuz I was too lazy to walk the extra block to P.F. Chang’s) was nicely salted, too, and they served it on a bed of sweet beans. Mung beans? Azuki? I have no idea. I liked them, though.

So yeah, the flavor isn’t difficult to imagine, but the texture is more of a challenge. Closest thing I can compare it to is fresh cucumber pickles — it has that same vegetable crispy-crunchiness (but NOT the crunchiness of a carrot, for example). Watching those YouTube videos, you might think jellyfish is slimy or chewy. It’s certainly not slimy, but chewy? Well, YEAH, you need to use your teeth on this one, but it’s not chewy the way geoduck, abalone, or calamari are sometimes chewy.

I don’t understand why folks have a problem with this. If people are able to stomach durian, they ought to have no problem at all with jellyfish.

I’ve only ever had to spit out one food in my life. My high school girlfriend’s mom said it was fish stomach and I believed her. It had the texture of phlegm. She called it jook, but I have since learned that jook is a rice porridge and does not have the texture of phlegm (or at least it shouldn’t). I think her “fish stomach” comment predetermined my response.

How about you — what did you have to spit out?

Keep it PG-13, please 🙂

D.

Eating Portland part deux

I think interviews went okay today, but I always feel like I’m either blathering or too quiet. For this interview, I tried to err on the side of too quiet. Perhaps it’s like the early stages of a romance, when mystery is a good thing, so that your date is free to imagine anything she likes about you. Blathering ruins the mystery.

On the other hand, I blathered like hell on my first date with Karen, and she still married me. It must have been especially entertaining blather.

We dined at an upscale joint tonight. I’m not sure my salad is on that menu. Spinach, check; roasted beets, check; Walla Walla onions? I don’t think so! And there was blue cheese, too. Tasty salad.

For dinner, I had the Petrale Sole, also not on that menu. It’s hard to pay attention to the food when you’re focused on staying engaged and looking like you have two neurons to rub together, but my sole was excellent. Tender flesh, thin crisp crust (perhaps from a thin layer of flour and finely ground bread crumbs, but dammit I really wasn’t paying attention, so I’ll never manage to replicate it!), side of sauteed root vegetables, a nice pilaf beneath, and a saffron beurre blanc. Yes, I would return.

Good food. Good company.

I’m catching the red eye tomorrow: 6:20 AM. Folks in the department tell me that TSA doesn’t even show up until 5, so there’s no point getting there two hours early. I’ll get up at 4:30 . . . that should give me plenty of time.

Waiting game follows.

D.

Eating Portland

As usual, the appetizers were the best part of dinner. That and the view.

I began my evening at a place recommended to me by the realtor who shlepped me around town today: the Portland City Grill, a surprisingly* tasty eatery on the 30th floor of the US Bank building, AKA “Big Pink”:

I made it in time for their Happy Hour, and ordered a margarita and an oyster salad. The latter consisted of two small fried oysters topped with a citrus/mango salsa, served on a bed of mixed greens tossed with a balsamic vinaigrette. I could have easily made a main course of it.

From there I walked a few blocks east to the original McCormick and Shmick’s, where I ordered fried calamari with three sauces, and the rainbow trout entree. I found it mildly amusing to imagine ingesting a fish bone and asking my interviewers tomorrow to please pleeeeease scope me and pull the damned thing out. Won’t that make a fine first impression! Especially when I whine and complain with every centimeter of the scope’s passage.

The calamari was top notch: tender, not chewy. Two of the dipping sauces were standard, a tartar variation and cocktail sauce, but the third was cilantro and green onion, sweet and tart. As for the entree, it wasn’t bad rainbow trout but it wasn’t anything spectacular, either. Some sort of beurre blanc, topped with bay scallops and teensy tomatoes. The vegies (mashed potatoes and green beans) were perfect, though.

Interview tomorrow!

D.

*A killer view and good food? Yup.