Tuesday sucked. Though I'm all for working hard, 9am-10pm is just too much for me. And, since I was expecting a short day, the surprise call at 6pm did not leave me happy at all. That said, a wise man once told me: when life gives you coconut milk, make Thai curry! No curry recipes today, but I do have a related story:
As my coworker (Kevin) and I rolled our eyes about having to stay late (unexpectedly), there was a part of each of us that thought: "Now what should we order?" Our boss loves curry, so we decided to humor him by ordering from a Thai restaurant (on the client, of course). The way it works is we each have a $25 limit on the food. Naturally, then, ordering from a standard Thai place meant lots of food, especially considering that we knew our boss wouldn't eat much. The bill came out to be $74.88 on the following order:
1. 3 types of curry.
2. 3 orders of jasmine rice, 2 orders of brown (get those whole grains!)
3. 1 order Pad Thai.
4. 1 order Pad Siew
5. 1 order Thai BBQ Chicken
6. 1 order fried bananas with ice cream.
My boss ate half an order of curry, and Kevin and I made off with lunch for the rest of the week!
Friday, November 21, 2008
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Hot Hot Beverages
Since I seem to be somewhat fixated on hot beverages with the onset of winter, I'd like to add an addendum to my last post.
What is your favorite hot beverage? I'm picturing apres-ski (or shovel), frozen fingers wrapped around the mug, steam rising and a roaring fire, or a hot morning drink in the cold sunlight with slippers and robe...
What is your favorite hot beverage? I'm picturing apres-ski (or shovel), frozen fingers wrapped around the mug, steam rising and a roaring fire, or a hot morning drink in the cold sunlight with slippers and robe...
Winter has arrived
My culinary life has not been too exciting as of late. Exams are coming up, the student loan check is dwindling, and I think winter has officially set in (although it hasn't snowed yet). I've been dreaming of fireplaces, warm baths, and hot tea. The tea is easy and so comforting. For breakfast, chai or Earl Grey (still working on my supply!); in the afternoon, something refreshing like mint, spicy like cinnamon, oranges, and cloves, or bracing like Assam. At night before bed, it used to be chamomile, but lately I've gotten back to peach, which is fruity, calming, and uplifting.
What do you guys do when you don't have a lot of time to buy/plan/cook your meals ahead of time? Do you wind up eating out? Do you have favorite default meals, home-cooked or purchased? I tend to grab a turkey sandwich with cranberry chutney from the deli for lunch and either soup from Whole Foods (mmmm) or enchiladas verdes from the Mexican place in my neighborhood for a quick, tasty dinner. Here is Tuesday's rundown:
Breakfast: Kashi black currant and walnut cereal (SO good, but breaking the bank) and chai.
Lunch: Tomato & mozarella salad from Whole Foods, slice of potato and roasted red pepper frittata, Coke.
Snack 1: Heath bar (I'm totally feeling the English toffee these days)
Snack 2: coffee
Dinner: Greek lemon chicken soup with orzo, leftover butternut squash, mushroom and celeriac risotto. Peach tea.
Ciao e molto amore amici!
What do you guys do when you don't have a lot of time to buy/plan/cook your meals ahead of time? Do you wind up eating out? Do you have favorite default meals, home-cooked or purchased? I tend to grab a turkey sandwich with cranberry chutney from the deli for lunch and either soup from Whole Foods (mmmm) or enchiladas verdes from the Mexican place in my neighborhood for a quick, tasty dinner. Here is Tuesday's rundown:
Breakfast: Kashi black currant and walnut cereal (SO good, but breaking the bank) and chai.
Lunch: Tomato & mozarella salad from Whole Foods, slice of potato and roasted red pepper frittata, Coke.
Snack 1: Heath bar (I'm totally feeling the English toffee these days)
Snack 2: coffee
Dinner: Greek lemon chicken soup with orzo, leftover butternut squash, mushroom and celeriac risotto. Peach tea.
Ciao e molto amore amici!
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Oh snap!
Breakfast: macchiato. oatmeal with brown sugar, cinnamon and raisins.
Lunch: herb flatbread from acme bread (wouldn't be jazionesque without one of these!) in the ferry building with dry wine-cured salami. water.
Dinner: curried butternut squash soup. garlic bread.
Dessert: hot cocoa.
For all you working folk, how often do you bring lunch to work? I try to always do it, but as I weigh the pros ($$$-saving, home-made healthiness) and the cons (time, getting out of the office, and trying new restaurants), I'm not sure it's as clear cut as I imagined. Thoughts?
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Pink Chili
Looking for a car this past weekend, I stumbled into a Halloween Monster truck Rally. Cars. When you’re looking for a car, suddenly they all become so interesting. The more I read this, the more what you drive seemingly becomes a moral decision. Driving used to seem so freeing. Did you remember that mind whammy accompaning your first solo drive… leaven the confinement of parent dictated travel. Driven then was celebration. If my next car could just catch a glimpse of that, not quite in this way but maybe soma that --- just enough of that former road glory could be regained to make the gas sucking schlep tolerable.
Our lives’ barometers. They crop up in the most unexpected places. T’other night I had some harmonious moments strung together in the kitchen: measured in minutes, 120 of them. Inspired by my favorite freshly barred barrister, or maybe she’s a solicitor, (either way she reads briefs and regardless she’s an attorney). Now that we’re confused the meal was chili to be sure. Chili that looked and tasted so good it seared into my mind, a formerly chililess mind.
Now this dish, this pink chili, (the photograph above doesn’t nearly translate the flavor bud popping goodness), is an exceptional specimen; exceptional being meant not only as exemplary but rare. To be honest though, the whole meal was actually a glorious debacle. I was trying to make the barrister’s chili and combine it with a side of my roommate’s sweet potato sliced carrot mash-up but non-selective selective memory made for a wonky imitation.
So initially following a recipe, I spiced it like chili (coriander, cumin, chili powder, pepper), but then somewhere in the turning to the rotating contents within the fridge and cutting vegetables, all sorts of ingredients such as the usual onions, garlic, tomatoes and yellow peppers went in , plus the expected, queso, beans (red and pink), but then the unusual, beats (source of pinkness), corrots, broccoli, turnips, brussel sprouts, spinach, potatoes, honey and dill. Now maybe those ingredients aren’t so unexpected, I don’t know, because like cars, chili is new to my radar. But on these rain swept cool weather autumn days, the soothing belly warmth of chili might just be labeled edifying.
Rumor also has it T-ra put on another year, Happy Birthday
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
A Culinary Odyssey
So my parents just left after a 10 day visit, and 10 afternoons and evenings of eating out resulted in some pretty exemplerary culinary experiences. The highlights:
My dad wanted to try Milanesa, which is one of the staples of Argentine cuisine. It is, essentially, beef sliced very thin, battered in egg and breadcrumbs, then fried and I think ALSO baked--at least that's how my host family's housekeeper makes it, and hers is good. So I googled "best milanesa Buenos Aires" and came up with, suprise, surprise, an American food blog. A great blog, that is to say, called Matt Bites, and the recommendation for Milanesa was spot on--a really old-fashioned place that has stood its ground in the trendiest neighborhood of the city. We went one afternoon and had the best Milanesa I've had so far--flavorful beef, well seasoned bread crumbs, perfect proportion of meat-to-coating--along with Italian-style rolls, thick-cut french fries, and a salad of lettuce, tomato, and carrot, washed down with a 3/4 liter of Quilmes, the Argentine national beer, followed by a cafe (which equals espresso here) for my dad and a cortado for me (a cortado being an espresso with a splash of steamed milk).
Another afternoon was spent at one of the better known, bare bones parillas (grills) of Buenos Aires, where we had: asado de tira, which are beef ribs cut the long way, which is the Argentine way, and then grilled, of course, a salad of lettuce, tomato, and beets, french fries Provencal--with chopped garlic and parsley--bread, and, of course, more Quilmes. My dad loved Quilmes. This was his favorite meal but he couldn't stop looking over at the Argentines at the table next to us, who were having a seemingly neverending meal, alternating courses of meat and pasta. He liked the idea of having steak and pasta together--very Italian, he kept saying--which inspired the next meal I'll describe, which was probably my favorite:
We spent the day in this absurdly serene and picturesque farm/artisan town about two hours northwest of the city, called San Antonio de Areco. Lunch was in a beautiful, rustic parilla, sitting at the back next to a big window that opened into a sunny garden. We had the house salad, which consisted of lettuce, tomato, onions, peppers, red cabbage, and white cabbage, a plate of homemade egg tagliatelle with a simple, delicious tomato sauce, a big skirt steak, bread, mineral water, and Quilmes, with coffee for dessert. Afterwards we walked to the town museum, which is just about the only thing that doesn't close for siesta, and took a siesta of our own on some rocking chairs on the patio of the museum farmhouse. Later: ice cream. I had a refreshing limon (it was really, really hot outside) and dulce de leche granizado, which is dulce de leche-flavored ice cream with chocolate shavings mixed in.
One night we really wanted pasta--Buenos Aires has a rep for good Italian food--so we tried this place my host mother, and a guide book, recommended. We ordered three different kinds and couldn't decide which was worse--they were all truly heinous. My dad's spinach gnocchi might as well have been little pieces of green foam drenched in cream. My mom's pumpkin ravioli were rubbery, the filling completely tasteless--also drenched in cream and some chopped walnuts. Mine didn't even RESEMBLE Italian food--"whole wheat spaghetti with portobello mushrooms" turned out to be incredibly greasy, slippery noodles with mushrooms but also scallions, which tasted like a really average lo-mein, and then topped with parmesan--gross.
The next night, we tried again. This time I looked up a place on the B.A. equivalent of the Zagat Guide, Guia Oleo. Good decision--this time the pasta was extraordinary. I had homemade vegetable fettucine with mixed vegetables, chicken, and fresh basil, my dad had a spinach ravioli topped with warm chopped tomatoes and fresh basil, my mom had squid-ink and sundried tomato ravioli filled with crabmeat.
Buen provecho!
My dad wanted to try Milanesa, which is one of the staples of Argentine cuisine. It is, essentially, beef sliced very thin, battered in egg and breadcrumbs, then fried and I think ALSO baked--at least that's how my host family's housekeeper makes it, and hers is good. So I googled "best milanesa Buenos Aires" and came up with, suprise, surprise, an American food blog. A great blog, that is to say, called Matt Bites, and the recommendation for Milanesa was spot on--a really old-fashioned place that has stood its ground in the trendiest neighborhood of the city. We went one afternoon and had the best Milanesa I've had so far--flavorful beef, well seasoned bread crumbs, perfect proportion of meat-to-coating--along with Italian-style rolls, thick-cut french fries, and a salad of lettuce, tomato, and carrot, washed down with a 3/4 liter of Quilmes, the Argentine national beer, followed by a cafe (which equals espresso here) for my dad and a cortado for me (a cortado being an espresso with a splash of steamed milk).
Another afternoon was spent at one of the better known, bare bones parillas (grills) of Buenos Aires, where we had: asado de tira, which are beef ribs cut the long way, which is the Argentine way, and then grilled, of course, a salad of lettuce, tomato, and beets, french fries Provencal--with chopped garlic and parsley--bread, and, of course, more Quilmes. My dad loved Quilmes. This was his favorite meal but he couldn't stop looking over at the Argentines at the table next to us, who were having a seemingly neverending meal, alternating courses of meat and pasta. He liked the idea of having steak and pasta together--very Italian, he kept saying--which inspired the next meal I'll describe, which was probably my favorite:
We spent the day in this absurdly serene and picturesque farm/artisan town about two hours northwest of the city, called San Antonio de Areco. Lunch was in a beautiful, rustic parilla, sitting at the back next to a big window that opened into a sunny garden. We had the house salad, which consisted of lettuce, tomato, onions, peppers, red cabbage, and white cabbage, a plate of homemade egg tagliatelle with a simple, delicious tomato sauce, a big skirt steak, bread, mineral water, and Quilmes, with coffee for dessert. Afterwards we walked to the town museum, which is just about the only thing that doesn't close for siesta, and took a siesta of our own on some rocking chairs on the patio of the museum farmhouse. Later: ice cream. I had a refreshing limon (it was really, really hot outside) and dulce de leche granizado, which is dulce de leche-flavored ice cream with chocolate shavings mixed in.
One night we really wanted pasta--Buenos Aires has a rep for good Italian food--so we tried this place my host mother, and a guide book, recommended. We ordered three different kinds and couldn't decide which was worse--they were all truly heinous. My dad's spinach gnocchi might as well have been little pieces of green foam drenched in cream. My mom's pumpkin ravioli were rubbery, the filling completely tasteless--also drenched in cream and some chopped walnuts. Mine didn't even RESEMBLE Italian food--"whole wheat spaghetti with portobello mushrooms" turned out to be incredibly greasy, slippery noodles with mushrooms but also scallions, which tasted like a really average lo-mein, and then topped with parmesan--gross.
The next night, we tried again. This time I looked up a place on the B.A. equivalent of the Zagat Guide, Guia Oleo. Good decision--this time the pasta was extraordinary. I had homemade vegetable fettucine with mixed vegetables, chicken, and fresh basil, my dad had a spinach ravioli topped with warm chopped tomatoes and fresh basil, my mom had squid-ink and sundried tomato ravioli filled with crabmeat.
Buen provecho!
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Apizza
Go to the grocery store last night and I didn’t know what I was buying. Some of everything but afterwards the run and shoot Kitchen offence was one of those divine rhythms otherwise reserved to art.
Everything that crossed the counter-top could do no wrong, ingredients just assembled themselves. Tomatoes into sauce, herbs and onions onto beans, brocs, shrooms, shredded carrots, kale, cheddar, Colby, moz all tumbled outta grocery bags across cutting boards under knives and onto spinning olive oil soaked dough. The oven warrants preheating this whole time (as high as it’ll go), especially if you’re living in an Antarctic apartment like those of us who are trying to beat last October’s heating bill with a sans heat strategy.
The wheels, to borrow a term if I may, blaze. Were talking five alarm. To add some kerosene, we chased that baby with some chocolate chip ricotta roll but that’s deserving of a post unto itself. For some omega-3 fatty acids, half a Za, (or due to the shape of our pans: rectangles), got some Mahi-Mahi.
The fat lady sings…
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