Archive for December, 2009

Favorite 10 Posts of 2009

Thursday, December 31st, 2009

1. Bazaar gets 4 stars~* Because the pictures are pretty, and there are a lot of them.

2. The evolution of my animal photography skillz~* Because our darling hammie Cheeto died [RIP<3] on December 28th, and this is how I want to remember her – all piratey-eyed.

3. Four Winds II: Snorkeling in Molokini~* Because I enjoy mild sexual harassment.

4. The many uses of Otter Pops~* Because this was a joint venture between me and Daniel, and represents my happiest 5 consecutive days in 2009.

5. Pole Dancing Aerobics~* Because it had the most “likes” of my imported notes on Facebook.

6. icanhascheezburger launch party~* Because every time I look at my Top 5 lolcats I lol.

7. My CSA box~* Because this fucking post took an inordinately long amount of time to execute.

8. Bibleopoloy~* Because I was able to play it without bursting into flames.

9. Fleur de Lys~* Because it was the foodiest meal of 2009.

10. Victoria’s C-Face~* Because no other posts from 2009 are worthy of being on a Top 10 list, here’s one from 2006 that people seem to like a lot – an expose chronicling the time I spent working at a certain lingerie hocker.

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A Cook’s Tour – Anthony Bourdain

Wednesday, December 30th, 2009

Anyone who has read Kitchen Confidential (a book I recently recommended to RK who asked “What’s a book that anyone would like?”) falls in love with Anthony Bourdain – that cynical, drug-addled, rail-thin badass chef who is decidedly uncuddly yet still very much a teddy bear.

So I picked up another one of his books at Green Apple and dug in. It’s the perfect food book to read before bed, because oftentimes reading straight up food books at that hour precipitates grumbly stummies and an encore dinner.  A Cook’s Tour, however, is chock full of splendidly witty episodic descriptions, my favorite of which was not even about food (a common comment I get re: MTFB, by the way):

Chris has no particular reason to love me. I bullied him without mercy as a child, tried, in a fit of jealous rage, to bludgeon him to death as a infant (fortunately for us both, my chosen instrument was a balloon), blamed him constantly for crimes of which I was invariably the true perpetrator, then stood by and listened gleefully as he was spanked and interrogated.  He was forced to watch the endlessly unfolding psychodrama at the dinner table when I’d show up late, stoned, belligerent, a miserable, sullen, angry older brother with shoulder-length hair and a bad attitude, who thought Abbie Hoffman and Eldridge Cleaver had it about right – that my parents were fascist tools, instruments of the imperialist jackboot, that their love was what was holding me back from all those psychedelic drugs, free love, and hippie-chick pussy I should have been getting had I not been twelve years old and living at home. The fights, the screaming matches, the loud torments of my painful and pain-inducing early adolescence – he saw it all.  And it probably screwed him up good.  On the plus side, however, I had taught the little bastard to read by the time he was in kindergarten. And I did keep my mouth shut when he finally decided he’d had enough and coshed me over the head with a pig-iron window counterweight. (p. 30)

Maybe I resonated with this because I had a similar experience growing up with my own sibling, albeit a girlier and more AZN version.  And I don’t know who Abbie Hoffman is, nor Eldridge Cleaver.

The book takes you through his exploits as Food Network sends him around the world in search of the Perfect Meal.  It’s very meta.  You realize while vodka and ice baths in a Russian resort or hanging out in your childhood rustic French home or eating a still-beating cobra heart or a fuckin FREE meal at French Laundry all sound faboo, working a TV show is hard hard work. His favorite country by far, culinarily, seems to be Vietnam, which has firmly put that country on my must-go list.  Right below my MUST MUST GO place, which is wherever the nearest cobra is so I can end his life by nomming on his <3.

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Noodle Theory

Wednesday, December 30th, 2009

Ramen NOM.  Chestnut has a buncha Americaney places but not that many Asian places, have you noticed?  I’m not counting sushi because sushi isn’t a drop-in and eat kinda food.  That leaves Pacific Catch (BTW, THRILLED to be living one block from that place!) and Noodle Theory (BTW squared -cutest website evar), which has been on my radar for some time, mostly because every time I see it is when I am shakily weaving my way home from too many roundhouse kicks at Crunch every day, starving and freezing in my tiny gym clothes in the SF fog and rain.

So, when my sister requested to follow our Japanese X-day extravaganza with more AZN food, it was the natural choice.  They had a nice new take on edamame with this sweet soy glaze stuffaroo on top.  Not as splendid as Roy’s take on edamame, but an appreciated touch.

Also appreciated was the plasma TV set to Food Network, which is a brilliant move akshully since seeing the food on Best of Iron Chef made our stomachs roar. We decided to buck ordering taboos and both got the kim-chi ramen with pulled pork and poached egg.

Do you remember that scene in Julie & Julia – Julia’s first meal in Paris, when she is struck speechless after her first bite and can only say, while gesturing at her plate, “I mean…?”  That’s how I felt, before I had eaten any of it, just from the way the poached egg burst under my chopsticks and I watched the yolk slide down into the hot broth and ooze into a cloudy curdle.

And when I actually ate it – slurpin’ unabashedly like the Japanese ojisan that I am – I felt like I was getting filled from the toes on up with warm and soul-satisfying MMMMMMM.

3242 Scott Street
San Francisco, CA 94123-2606
415.359.1238

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Miracle Fruit on Miracle of Jesus Day

Sunday, December 27th, 2009

GoooOoooOOOO JESUS!  Seriously, very fancy with that coming back to life stuff.  Wowa-wee-wow.

To celebrate the Jesus’ hatch day, ie X-day, my sister and I went to Nijiya and impulse-shopped our way to Japanese feast heaven.  On the menu: nikujaga (cooked by Shiru – literally, “meat & potatoes” – the kind of soul-satisfying dish that hits the spot on a cold day), nasu-miso (miso eggplant), salad with Pietro dressing and Rigen oil free ginger dressing, napa cabbage & enoki mushrooms, dipped in goma-shabu and ponzu sauce. A random-ass assortment of food that my mom in Japan would be horrified of (but think it’s kinda cute).

And for dessert, miracle fruit!

Miracle fruit is a tropical fruit that changes, temporarily, one’s taste buds to taste all sourness as sweet.  Even tho the wiki page says the fruit has yet to be commercialized, I think that that’s about to change with Mberry (above), which showed up on my doorstep, sent to me by my collaborator (thanks Mr. Healer) in New York to cheer me up re: my hellishly publish-or-perish lifestyle as of late.  It was also around at that nerdy party that I went to, and my sister had done it too, at two separate events.  Basically it’s miracle fruit ground up into tablets, like this:

In preparation, Shiru and I cut up four kinds of citrus – lime, lemon, mandarin, and grapefruit (pictured top).  She insisted that the lime would be the best. We both feared that our stomachs would die from acid overload (actually a common problem with “flavor tripping” with miracle fruit), so I had both Tums and Zantac at the ready.

I popped a tablet in my mouth and we sat around looking at each other while it dissolved.  Then I picked up a wedge of lime and somewhat trepidatiously (word?) licked it.  Don’t know why I was surprised, but – sweet!  I went for it.

AWESOME!  So this is why the word lime appears in sublime.  All of the citrusey punch of the lime, but with none of the tart.  And since you’re eating it straight, in a way that you’ve never eaten a lime, there were other tastes that I’d never picked up on before…oily, piney, metal-ey at the back of your tongue, but all in an achingly delicious way.  The lemon was accurately described by Shiru as just like lemon candy, so nothing super special there.  The mandarin – same thing; tasted like a very sweet mandarin; almost too sweet.  The grapefruit was just sweet and bitter; probably regular grapefruit is better.

Moar! We read online that people also do beer (!) and hot sauce (!!), so I ran to my fridge and busted out my green tabasco (stolen from Squat & Gobble on my second day in SF) and the bitterest beer in my fridge.  The tabasco morphed into something like a spicy tamarind sauce, but…not in a good way.  Anchor Steam tasted no different, though my sister thought otherwise.

Damn her.  She was right all along.  Limes nom.

I only wish it lasted longer.  Online they say 30 minutes but the half-life for me was 5 minutes.

I popped another one and looked around greedily like what else what else what else!  What’s sour?

Like a junkie, I grabbed my bottle of balsamic vinegar and a spoon and served it up to my sister Mary Poppins-style.  Elixir of the gods!

The wiki article said that dieters in Japan use miracle fruit.  Smart!  I think?  Does miracle fruit make only sour taste sweet, or does it intensify sweets too?

My eyes flicked over to the last cupcake leftover from a batch of Giada’s mascarpone strawberry cupcakes I made the day before…SHOULD I DO IT?  Or is that…Pandora’s box?

I went for it.  Yep.  It was the box thing.  The spirits flew out, up my tongue, and rolled my eyeballs up and towards heaven.

You should try it.  Get some here.

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Bibleopoly

Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009

Soo I was off the grid in a cabin in Big Bear for a little while. Highlights included wall to wall to floor to ceiling to wall Christmas decorations, two stray dogs that somberly looked through our windows the whole time with their melted chocolatey eyes, drinking relay races that involved an icy and terrifying sled run, random wafts of baby diarrhea smell (there were nineteen of us, after all), and…Bibleopoly.

Instead of “GO,” you have “In the beginning.”  Instead of dollas, you have “offerings.”  Instead of Boardwalk, you have, naturally, Jerusalem.

Instead of going to jail, you go…meditate.

At first I thought it was a slam against the meditating religions, like Buddhism?  But then someone who grew up in one of those households where they didn’t have a Christmas tree because that was “worshipping a false idol” piped up and said, “NO it’s like, go meditate on your sins.”

Ohhhh OK.  Makes sense.  The other one makes sense too, though. Crazy game.

Instead of deeds to property, you “tend” certain cities.  Each card has a description of the city which may have spelling errors.

The ultimate goal is to build a church?  But to get a “cornerstone” (ie your first house in regular Monopoly) you have to give one of your cities to another player (something to do with utterly confusing verses like 2 Cor. 8:9. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich?), and that has to also serve to complete the other player’s trio of same-colored properties.  Then you build it up with bricks, and then you win by placing your OWN game piece on as the steeple!  I wish I was in the pitch room when they presented this tidbit as the piece de resistance and the guy said, “BOOM!  LOVE IT!  PRINT A THOUSAND!”

Rather than “Chance,” there’s “Faith/Contingency,” whatever the fuck that means.  Sometimes these cards make you donate one of your properties to the community, where someone can scoop it up if they land on Free Parking, which in this game is Rejoice/Community Celebration.  The four railroad stations are called “Abyss” – aptly named if you ask me.

BECAUSE THIS IS THE ABYSS CARD I DREW!  Ahem.  My nickname happens to be “Satan” and I have absolutely no Bible/Christian knowledge.  In fact, I am the kind of girl who once played a drinking game with a Bible (drink every time it says “Lord”).  So how the fuck am I supposed to name FIFTEEN Bible Cities?

I came up with “Jerusalem” and “God…ville?”

Luckily, 15 spots back took me to some tony properties on the rich side of the board, and I got to pass “In the Beginning” again for 10 more offerings.

Satan FTW!

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My favorite hatchday meal

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

So.  I did it.  I turned the big THREE OH NO!  My celebration / lamentation, all told, was quite an extravaganza, taking place in three different cities, with food running the gamut from Costco Take-n-Bake ‘zas to nomalicious tacos to Michelin star dining that could only be described as “transcendent.”

My favorite meal of all, however, was the concoction above, cooked for me bashfully by R2.  There was actually like a two-week lead-up of “please don’t judge my cooking it’s awful” which intensified in the days and then hours before the actual meal.

I think this is what R2 cooks for himself when it’s just him.  We all have those kinds of meals.  For example, right now I roasted some cabbage with butter, and am only eating the burninated parts.  That’s it.  That’s my dinner.  Totally weird but totally delish.

Much like the concoction.  I think it’s different every time he makes it, but this time it was spinach, beef franks, yellow onion, green onion, red onion (stoplight!), several different kinds of hot sauces, topped with a sunny-side-up egg (and gigantor “30″ candles) laid over toast, finished with a side of bacon.

Gosh it was good, and I’m not saying that because I know he will read this post (hi).  It’s just totally indulgent.  The yolk runs everywhere once you poke it with your fork, making it this glisteny, creamy, salty mess that then you must follow up with the crunch crunch of bacon.  Repeat, repeat, repeat.

Thank you to R2 and everyone else who made my hatchday special.  I <3 you guys.

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Bottega Louie

Wednesday, December 9th, 2009

Bottega Louie is, in the words of Simon, “oh this is that uber bourgie looking place on the corner that looks out of my price range lol.”  Yes, yes indeed.  I was there the day after Tday with Cara, who is the proud new owner of THE most gorgeous downtown loft space.  She’s living the fucking lifestyle, dude.  Urban living, clopping through the streets of downtown LA in designer boots, strolling over to Bottega Louie for “a bite to eat” which includes, invariably, at least two martinis.  Ahhhh, jealous.

The interior of BL has the same aesthetic as these photographs.  White white white, airy high ceilings, light gold accents dripping all about, so much twinkling conversation everywhere in a huge space that the whole place is so shimmery.

We sat at the bar and spied around, waiting for the cute manager to show up (Cara is quite the regular).  After living in SF for four months, where the boys are…cute…but not quite so…dazzling? it was fun to look at all the actor wannabes.  I so took it for granted before!  So…groomed.  I also forgot that LA people are meaner and dumber than in SF.  For example, our bartender part II (we were there so long that our original bartender went off her shift) could barely be bothered to get our drink order (mean! also, does he not get that this helps HIM make more money?). For another example, when the sleek blonde babe next to me at the bar asked the other bartender how to spell Bottega Louie, he had to consult a menu, and upon discovering that the name of the resto was not actually printed on the menu, said, “Hold on – Imma go ask somebody.”  Unless he’s new (even IF he’s new!) that’s some dumbass shit.

Perhaps he was new. Perhaps BL has just undergone a hiring binge.  That would make sense, because as I looked around the gigantic restaurant, I noticed with a start that there were SO MANY employees!  I counted TWENTY NINE, and that was just the ones I could see and not counting anyone in the kitchen.  Crazy.

Anyway, the food.  You know the food is good when the worst part is the prosciutto.  Pictured top is an order of the white anchovies –  both my and Cara’s favorite of the afternoon/evening/night.  The microgreens were not an afterthought or a pretty-but-meaningless garnish – they put just the right amount of volume and roughage into the tart and chewy little anchovies.  We largely ignored the tomato that comprised the anchovy dais.

Next was corn, swiss chard, and bacon.  I was so happy to has a corm.  Sweet, sweet corm.  They were a little light on the swiss chard (do you even SEE it in the picture???) but no matter.  I’ve gotten swiss chard two weeks in a row in my CSA box so I was thrilled to have this recipe idea, and my version will be stuffed with 1 full pound of chard since that’s the amount I keep receiving.

The worst part, as I mentioned earlier, was the prosciutto.  Not to say that it wasn’t good, it just seemed, what?  Heavy?  Unnecessary?  Uncouth?  I ordered it on the strength of the sage (the full description was prosciutto, mozzarella, and sage crostini) but I didn’t love the meat (rare for me, wink wink) and Cara didn’t love the cheese (agreed).  I was hoping for more sage (have you ever fried sage leaves in olive oil and sprinkled them with salt?  Better than potato chips, everyone, utterly addictive), but as with the chard I guess BL wants you to die so they won’t feed you your dark leafy greens.

And finally, roasted beets with goat cheese! Golden beets, though, which was an interesting change.  The beet cuts were much too big, though, so I was like, “am I eating a sweet potato?”  (which actually got me excited because those also keep showing up in my CSA box, as well as butternut squash which I am roasting in the oven right now and they are nowhere near done and it’s past 11 pm fuck me).  The cheese was sharp and smooth as only goat cheese can be; the arugula stridently bitter in a good way, and the beets mellowing everything out with their sugariness.

I should mention also the cocktails we got.  I started with a vodka Sling: Gin or Vodka, Carpano Antica sweet vermouth, lemon juice, simple syrup, Angostura bitters, and club soda.  Awesome.  Brought both me and Cara back to our high school days in Tokyo when we would get Singapore Slings in a can out of the vending machines and get drunk on the streets.  She had a Jack Rose: Laird’s Applejack, lemon juice, simple syrup, and grenadine, and followed that with a Dark & Stormy: Dark rum, spiced simple syrup, Elixir G ginger mix, and club soda, while I followed my sling with a devastating Vesper with Imperial vodka, Beefeater gin, and Lillet.

How did we follow up our posh and grown up LA-ey evening?  By going to see New Moon of course, she for the second time lol.  I’m firmly, firmly on Team Jacob.  You?

Bottega Louie

700 South Grand Avenue

Los Angeles, CA 90017

213.802.1470

Posted in Drink, Food | 1 Comment »

Le Zinc

Monday, December 7th, 2009

I was just thinking: when the eff did I become a coffee drinker?  Thinking thinking.  Well, I’m now out of grad school and in that extreme limbo state of postdoc-dom – not quite faculty (not anywhere NEAR faculty, akshully) and no longer a baby doctoral student.  The novelty of choosing “Dr” from pull-down menus when booking flights has worn off.  The slight bump in approval from parental figures has safely subsided into normalcy.  And, while I had six years in an office with the most delicious napping couch, I now am owner of half a cubicle at one institution and one-third of an office at another.  This means: NO NAPPING.  It also means: EVERYONE CAN SEE YOU (and more importantly, YOUR COMPUTER SCREEN) ALL THE TIME.  So when fatigue hits, surfing over to Cute Overload to jolt your system (with an involuntary shout of “squeeeee!”) is not really recommended.

That leaves coffee.

But coffee = addiction.

So there I am.

Pictured above is a lovely lovely cappuccino from Le Zinc – an equally lovely little place on 24th street in Noe Valley.  I was there for brunch with R2 recently, from whom I (coincidentally) lifted the phrase “the bean – she is a cruel mistress.”  Le Zinc is the kind of place where the owner is your server, and she is a willowy Frenchwoman.  We were seated in the charming courtyard, next to a table of guys who looked to be serious Ed Hardy connoisseurs who were demanding gin and tonics at 11:00 am at a place with only a wine/beer license.

R2′s order is above - fried eggs with bacon & garlic tomatoes. I had scrambled eggs with smoked salmon and toast.  Now, I know that in every kitchen is the same Mexican worker as at every other restaurant, but I just had a hunch that as a pretty authentic-seeming French place that I could expect great things.  It was.  Skillful AND beautiful to behold.  LOOK at those eggs.  And th-those tomatoes!  Don’t they make you weep?

My eggs:

Sigh.  So so pretty.  I made R2 look at my perfectly browned toast, but he didn’t marvel nearly enough so I made him look again; still not enough wonder and amazement so I insisted that he look and try again, which prompted him to say, “YEEEES THE TOAST IS AMAZING LOOKING GOOD LORD.”  And the smoked salmon, which is so often dried out in eggs (and usually tastes like you’re chewing on the end of a straw) was succulent and glisteny.

Sigh again. San Francisco is just FULL of these types of places.  I think my honeymoon phase is safely over with SF, so this enduring love and adoration must be something real.  That, as Professor Farnsworth would say, is very “good newwwws everyone!”

Le Zinc Bistro
4063 24th St
SF CA 94114
415.647.9400

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Blue Barn Gourmet: World’s Best BLT?!

Saturday, December 5th, 2009

I’m blogggin on a jetplane.  Now until Jan 15th there’s free wifi on Virgin America, yo.

Which officially gave me absolutely zero excuse to not post anything.  I was like, “Shit, mayne, is been a while,” and I thought that whatever post I come back with has to be pee-in-your-pants good, but then I realized that probably all people want is a pretty picture and a chuckle and that’ll do, pig, rather than anything lifechanging.  So this post will be whatever I finish in the short flight between San Diego and San Francisco (67 mins not counting getting up to and down from 10,000 feet).

I thought about just sneaking in this post like I hadn’t been neglecting MTFB to the point where it’s grown hair like the Warlock’s Heart.  Kind of like how sometimes, when I’m visiting someone’s apartment complex and I am too lazy or am unable to ascertain which exact apartment I should call up to to be buzzed in, I just ring the first apartment and, when they answer, say, “It’s me! I’m here!”  And when they say, politely, “Wait, who is this?” I just shout “MEEEE!” and more often than not they buzz you in.

OK.  Yelp says that Blue Barn Gourmet, which is just the charmingest, preciousest little joint on Chestnut street, has the world’s best BLT.  When I read that I said aloud, in a voice full of wonder, “THE WORLD’S BEST BEE ELL TEEEE?” like Buddy the Elf.  I didn’t buy it.  For one thing, it’s a fucking seasonal sando (they call them “sandos” so that redeems them a bit, but STILL).  If it’s so signaturey then it should be on their menu as their Greatest Hit Special!   Now that I look at their website, I realize they actually do give it a special name: The Barn BLT.  I still reserve the right to be growchy.  Because, make up your mind.  If it’s so signaturey as to be your eponymous sando, then stop it with this seasonal business.

Inside: Niman bacon, mixed greens, heirloom tomatoes, goat cheese, and pesto on country levain.  Ah.  Makes sense.  This would be the world’s best BLT to someone who fancies themselves a foodie food critic but is actually a rube publishing their first review on Yelp with trembling fingers.  I mean, Niman Ranch meat X… “greens” instead of lettuce… “heirloom” making its requisite appearance… hello again goat cheese – you seem to be everywhere even though I see no G or C in BLT… finally, an unfamiliar type of bread that probably just means sourdough?  Foodie-by-numbers, Foodie Mad Libs.

Not that it wasn’t delicious. My favorite touch was that the whole shebang was pressed, with butter, and the bacon was juicy but not stringy.  However.  I really love that classic diner BLT – on shitty Wonder Bread, slathering of full fat mayo, sad iceberg and crunchy tomato (in all other arenas, a tomato should certainly never make a sound when you bite into it), and bacon that has been nuked to shattery goodness in the fridge.  That’s MY world’s best BLT.

Blue Barn Gourmet
2105 Chestnut (at Steiner)
SF CA 94123
415.441.3232

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