Un Chivo Delicioso: Goat Chilaquiles–kind of

I should have taken pictures, but my camera was out of battery, and really, there was no good angle. My goat chilaquile casserole, as I’ve decided to call it, looked like any baked cheese lasagna type thing from first glance. I could have taken a picture after I sliced it, but it looked as good as it tasted–like a goopy messy, drippy delicious pile of everything wonderful. Unfortunately, these things don’t translate well to photography. They look good to anyone in the vicinity, but I wouldn’t enter it in an art contest. There was melty baked cheese everywhere, thick homemade tortillas bathing in rich goat and roasted pepper stew and just thicker than runny egg yolks shining sunnily from the whole mess.

Chilaquiles are a traditional mexican brunch dish involving left over tortillas deep fried and layere with beans and cheese and sometimes eggs. I love chilaquiles, but am trying to be a little bit healthier, so I decided to do this a bit more like a casserole, and as a dinner dish.

I made the entire thing in a 9×6 lasagna pan, which was the perfect size. I put down a layer of homemade tortillas, one of goat stew, then cheese (queso fresco, of course). On top of this I cracked 2 eggs. Then layered more tortillas, more cheese, more goat. Then more tortillas and cheese on the top. Baked this for twenty minutes at 450 degrees. When it came out of the oven, I sprinkled it with a layer of cilantro.

A few things: Most any part of this could have been bought, I chose to make it all except the queso fresco myself, but that is because I like making tortillas and goat stew. The only thing I would say to not substitute is the queso fresco. It is simply the only cheese that fits here and is the most authentic (and delicious, but that is personal opinion).

Handmade tortillas: I used two cups of Maseca (corn flour) and one and a half of water, and a liberal sprinkling of salt. Mash this all together with your hands until it is one giant ball. Cover the bowl with a damp cloth and grab out about a one inch ball of dough. Many recipes will tell you to roll it out between two sheets of plastic (which has never worked out for me) or to use a tortilla press (and I don’t got one of those). I use the authentic method, and reccomend you do too, because for this, it was great to have the slightly thicker, smaller sized tortillas. Smash your ball of dough flat between both hands. Then, using a slapping motion, smack your palms together, but with your fingers from one hand making a right angle to the other hand (if this confuses you, put down the dough, put your hands together like a prayer position, then, keeping the palms touching, rotate one hand 90 degrees towards you, this is how it should be when you slap them). Slap the dough back and forth between your hands until it gets bigger than your plams (at this point, if you keep going you will get dough everywhere). layer the tortillas on a plate, keep them from sticking using plastic wrap. To cook the tortillas, simply heat a skillet, dry, and leave them on each side until they just begin to brown.

 Goat stew: I made my stew with roasted peppers, since I don’t like tomatos. I used a 12oz jar of fire roasted red and yellow peppers (thank you trader joes). I blended these with a small can of diced jalapenos and half a cup of chicken stock. I poured this into the lasagna pan that I later cooked the whole thing in, then added about a pound of goat meat. I left this in a 325 degree oven for 2.5 hours. I took it out, fished all the goat out and let it cool. I took out all the bones from the goat and chopped it all up real small, then added it back to the stew, which I put over a low flame while I made the tortillas. At the last minute, I added half a sauteed white onion, one chopped fresh jalapeno and a bunch of chopped scallions.

Seahawks and Salsa: El Tajin on Broadway: (11/13/07)

All I asked for was decent food and a TV to watch the Seahawks play some Monday Night Football. By decent food I meant anything besides pub grub. Usually my go to method here is the ID, but after 45 minutes of driving around looking for parking (No diehard seattlite would pay for parking), I hightailed it to Broadway, where I found myself in the bar half of the brand new El Tajin Mexican restaurant.

I won’t declare Mexican food saved in Seattle, but let me tell you, this place is getting it on that track. This is not La Carta de Oaxaca high falutin’ small plates, this is some truck stop Mexican food, and I was impressed. The TV played the Seahawks game and the water never let my bottles of Sol get low, nor the BF’s draft Dos Equis. I was dissapointed they were out of the Chicharrones (mmmm…fried pork skin!), but I was happy to settle for the chilequiles. The menu covered every region of Mexico, with mole (Oaxaca), Huaraches (Vera Cruz), Tortas (DF), and Pepian (Southern, I’ve mostly had it in Guatemala). They had a lot of standard Mexmerican food, but they also had about all the traditional Mexican options one could want. And the balls to put fried pork skin on the menu.

Both my and my BF’s meals were reasonably good and big enough to feed a small army (I reccomend splitting one dish). I wouldn’t reccomend our individual meals, neccisarily (he had the combinacion tres valedores), but I do reccomend the restaurant as a whole. Why? The chips were clearly made in house, I know they used local tomatoes in the salsa because while the salsa tasted great, it also felt a bit like late fall tomatos. The food tasted like Mexico, even if it was portioned like America.

And the number one reason I want to shout the name “El Tajin” to the hills? Instead of coming with sour cream, as most Mexican restaurant meals do here in Seattle, they were served with true Mexican Queso Crema. Sigh….

Best Food Deals: Pork Belly at Maekawa–$5 (11/6/07)

Sometimes a dish just makes you wonder how it can be so delicious and yet still fit into your budget. This my first of what will hopefully become a series of the best cheap eats in and around the city.

We were at the bar at Maekawa, when my eye was instantly drawn away from conversation. These eyes don’t miss pork belly. Nor does this nose or tummy. It was flying by and I caught barely a glimpse, accompanied by a hard boiled egg. Searching the menu desperately for pork belly, I found this entry: Kakuni: Chunks of pork stewed with hard boiled egg. Hardly sounding appealing on the menu, I ordered it nonetheless. Luckily I was right and what was served to me was in fact two squares of pork belly, about 2in x 2in, braised to melting perfection and served with a dollop of spicy horseradish or mustard that cut the sweetness of the sauce. This pig clearly gave his life for a good cause.

Pork Belly sounds intimidating, but in reality it is just bacon, before it is cured–where the deliciousness comes from, because let’s be honest, everyone loves bacon. While the dish can be found on many fancy restaurants for 3 times the price (Cremant serves quite a lovely one), the meat itself is quite cheap (available at Uwajimaya and HT Mart for less than $3 a pound). However, cooking it takes a long time (braising overnight works well) so why not save yourself the effort and eat the version at Maekawa? (In the International District)

Enotria (10/2/07)

When the Union Bay Cafe shut its doors this summer, Laurelhurst lost a gem of a neighborhood restaurant. Having grown up in the neighborhood, I have celebrated many a birthday there, and was bummed to see it go. It was replaced by Enotria, an Italian restaurant run by a man named David Hahne, a recent import from Minneapolis. Lucky for Laurelhurst residents, he can keep the tradition of celebrating here alive–the table next to us was celebrating a 16th birthday of a son. Does it make me jaded that my thought was ‘crap! another teenage boy can legally get on the roads?’

Luckily my mind was quickly re-occupied by food (it rarely drifts for long). Because it was a sunday evening and a casual meal that we were in search of, I stuck with two items on the “small bites” section, one from todays special, and one from the back side of the menu (it took me a minute to find), on the everyday menu. The Tuscan style bread came out–Tuscan style means no salt, our waitress explained. So you’d think they’d at least have salt and pepper on the table, but no, I had to ask for it, feeling rather sheepish after the “Tuscan style” explanation. I am a self-proclaimed salt lover, and the bread was certainly quite tasty without it, though I felt a little like eating matzah–its not that it was bad, I just felt like something was missing. This also could have been fixed up with a better olive oil-blasamic ratio. A dipping plate comes with the bread, and our first was all balsamic, no oil, the second was the reverse.

My first small plate was veal sweetbreads topped with cheese and cremini mushrooms. You would be hard pressed to find someone who did not like this dish. Though, if they are squemish, don’t tell them they are eating the gland of a baby cow. But do tell them the price–these beautiful rounds of soft deliciousness were a mere $8. “Damn $8 for sweetbreads?” asked my high ranking chef friend. Oh yeah.

I followed this up with a plate of chard-wrapped truffled pecorino cheese. Chard=my favorite vegetable. Cheese=heaven. Trufflesmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Need I say more? As the waitress put them down she said “let me bring you some bread to mop up the sauce with. You’ll want it” And want it I did. And yes, this rich little treat was also just $8. A pretty cheap meal if you ask me. B went with a main dish, ordering some sort of pig stuffed with pig (wild boar tenderloin stuffed with sausage? Maybe? My memory is failing me). I can’t remember exactly, but I think it involved wild boar, because he said he later had a dream that the wild boar was chasing him. The tenderloin was perfectly done, no dryness at all, and the best part was the fall vegetable medley under it, all pork drippings flavored and filled with kale and zucchini. I believe this dish was cheap as well, under $20, if I recall correctly.

Where lies the problem? Well, the restaurant is a very dark color scheme, and the waitresses (who all appeared a little on the manly side of female anyways) were dressed in drab, oversized off-white colored coats, such that I mistook one for a chef at first. I do not understand why you would want to put your waitstaff in such an unpleasently ugly outfit. The service itself left a little too be desired. I never got a bread plate, resulting in a crumb-y table, and the previously mentioned olive oil inconsistency, but they got the necessaries done and were quite pleasant about it. Even more pleasant when I called in to ask if B’s credit card was still there (it was).

A terrific overall experience, that could be even more improved with a little more color in the room, a new outfit for the waitstaff and a little training on consistency. As long as they keep serving up the kind of food I ate at the prices I paid, I hope that they will be able to last as long as Union Bay Cafe did in that space. They’ve been open for two months now, so look for the reviews coming out in the papers soon.

Volterra: An evening out: (8/1/07)

Apparently the suggestions my boyfriend recieved from his coworkers as to where to take me for our dinner last night (looking for fancy Italian, I was being mean and testing his knowledge of me and not helping) were a cabaret show at the Can Can and the Melting Pot. Luckily my man knows that what I want is serious food, no frou-frou tricks or the such, and he had narrowed it down to the Pink Door (eliminated by virtue of us not wanting to go downtown) and Volterra.

So he passed the test, because serious food it was, as well as seriously good. We sat out on the patio, just far enough removed from the street in our treed enclave that we could people-watch the passerbys with out fear of them overhearing our biting commentary. Within moments of being seated, Laura our waitress was assisting us in finding a wine. BF got a kick under the table for his attempt at pleasing my love for white wine by asking about a chardonnay (it is an Italian restaurant!), but we hopped that curb and ended up with a lovely Italian white that I drank too much of to recal the name.The bread came out with a bottle of olive oil. The olive oil worked well with the herbed salt that sat on my table, however none of it could do much for the bread, which felt like it had been sitting, sliced for a little while, and was also too dense for what it was trying to be. When our cheese plate arrived, it came with more of the dense bread, but also with what BF dubbed ‘a giant cheese-it’, but was actually a great crisp parmesan cracker.

The cheese plate itself was both beautiful and amazingly paired, each cheese with its own taste enhancing partner, it recalled to me the scenes in Ratatouille in which Remy discovers the magic of combining two properly paired items. There was onions and spinach, berries, a shortbread with jam, and best of all, horseradish with beets. The other antipasto we tried was the special, a lamb tongue on the same parmesan crackers with a horseradish bite and a side of perfectly dressed spinach.

Service was impeccable, and at the exact right interval after our antipastos dissappeared, our entrees appeared. BF’s halibut was grilled to perfection, melting in the mouth along with the spicy red sauce that lay just towards an arrabiata. The broccolini could have used a knive, since they had taken ours after the bread service, it resulted in greens hanging down. The fingerling potatoes could have used a bit more heat, and I chose not to try the plastic looking cheese bread, but overall the heat of the food, both spice and temperature, made for a perfect fish dish.

While debating between the famous wild boar tenderloin dish and a pasta dish, I asked our server what tagliolini was. She said it was like angelhair (which I don’t like very much) and I thought that my choice was made, until she said the magic words “and it tastes a little like bacon”. Well that pretty much finished that decision and Pork Jowls and Squash blossoms with tagliolini it was. When my dish arrived, I realized that I would not compare the noodles to angelhair, but rather to ramen noodles, only without the soup. They were a little more al dente, but the kinky curls lend that feeling to them. The dish was salty enough that even I, who salts everything, found it to be just perfect, though for the salt conscious, this dish, loaded with bacon-y pork jowls and parmesan, beware. The squash blossoms didn’t add much other than an interesting touch of color, however the fava beans were an excellent textural foil to the pancetta like pork jowls. I adored this dish, but the portions were large, and the BF literally had to pull the bowl away from me to get the rest boxed up, as I gripped it, trying to force my stomach to make room for more. Luckily it was just as good in a slightly congealed and cold form out of the fridge this morning.

So menfolk of the world, with food loving girlfriends, Volterra is a great place for fancy dinners.
Volterra is located on Ballard Avenue.

Iron Chef Seattle: Kitfo: (7/31/07)

When I first discovered kitfo, an Ethiopian dish involving raw ground beef, I thought I had hit food heaven. I have since been scouring the city in search of the best kitfo in Seattle, and have narrowed it down to the final two. Because dinner is not kitfo on its own, I rated each restaurant on multiple basis.

Entrant 1: Dahlak is actually an Eritrean restaurant (Eritrea being a small nation which seceded from Ethiopia in 1993 and thus shares culinary tradition), and is located on Rainier, just south of the Oh Boy Oberto factory.

Enrant 2: Meskel is right in the heart of Seattle’s Ethiopian restaurant district at the corner of 26th and Cherry–less than 100ft from at least two other previously eliminated restaurants.

While Meskel’s ambience is quite nice, the individuality of Dahlak’s is quite noticeable. Meskel is a pleasant room in what appears to be an old house, with a bar downstairs and a patio for pleasant outdoor seating outside. The rich colors of the room evoked a tribal feel, and the non-functioning fountain on the patio offered a European feel. The statue appeared to be a cross between the Mannequin Pis and Michelangelo’s David. Dahlak, on the other hand is built in an old strip club and retains a dull mustiness in the air from years of windows never being open. The air smells of the incense used in traditional coffee ceremonies. The TV constantly blares Eritrean television, which varies from pasta making to what has to have been the Horn’s version of the Telenovela. Winner here, based on originality and oddity is Dahlak.

The service at Dahlak has never been up to 5 star quality, but the only problem we have ever had is that they never seem to want to bring us the check. When we finish, they appear to assume we have no need to leave. Perhaps no need to pay? After much flagging, there is always much apologizing and the bill appears. At Meskel, the service appeared to lack any stars in quality. I’m usually quite patient with people who don’t speak English, as I have twice held jobs waiting tables in a foreign language and understand the difficulty. However, simply making no effort to understand nor be understood to me is almost insulting as a customer. When we got our beers, it appeared that one had come from a different batch–the ‘we got beat up on the way to the restaurant’ group of bottles. The Harar, Ethiopian beer, was quite tasty, the one bottle did taste different than the others, but not really any worse. However, despite the fact that by definition kitfo is raw (though our waitress at Dahlak always double checks that we know this), and despite our specifying RAW kitfo in our order (because they did have a second dish on the menu that was the same, but cooked), a food runner brought us cooked kitfo. When informed, she slammed the dish onto the next table, and looked like we had just told her that her child was ugly. While portioning the lamb onto our injera, she also dumped some into one of the beers. When she finally understood our explaination of this, she again gave us the ugly child look. She did bring a new beer, but not a new glass, nor did she remove the beer with meat floating in it. The edge here, mostly based on not making us feel responsible for servers’ mistakes, is easily Dahlak.

One dish that is considered standard to judge an Ethiopian restaurant by is the vegetable combo. A large platter of injera is spread with a variety of vegetarian dishes. The platter at Dahlak is enormous with many huge mountains of various dishes: okra, red lentil, yellow lentils, salad, etc. All are good (though my personal favorite is the yellow lentils) and the mustard greens are somehow the best green thing that has ever passed these lips, but alas, they are the same things that you find on many menus in this city, albeit the best versions of them. The veggie plate at Meskel arrived with promise of new adventures–garlic sauce rubbed injera (possibly a wat?), the cooling cheese I know from kitfo, something that tasted a lot like peanuts (possibly their version of Shiro, though it was a yellower color than shiro I have had before). Many more sauces and fewer large mounds of food. For originality, I select Meskel as the winner here.

And the final contest, is of course, the dish that is by far and away the best invention in all of food, Kitfo. Kitfo is made of raw ground beef topped with hot butter and berebere, an Ethiopian spice. You wrap the spicy meat up in a piece of injera, the bread, and add a little of the fluffy, cool cheese to act as a foil to the spiciness. And then there is a party in your mouth. The meat at Meskel was somewhat brighter of a red, giving it a more fresh taste and a juicier feel in the mouth. The meat was not spicy when it arrived, but it did come with a parmesan shaker full of berebere, which we applied liberally. At Dahlak, the meat comes spiced and a small spoon and bit of berebere are provided, though often unnecessary. The butter seemed to have absorbed into the meat better at Meskel, as the bottom of the bowl at Dahlak allowed for viewing of the leftover grease, which was not what one needed to see. The cheese, as far as I could tell, was identical, though we did not quite have enough to get through all the meat at Meskel. The winner here, for freshness and quality was definitely Meskel, bucking my roomate’s and my thoughts that after Dahlak, the search was over.

While this ends, thusly in a tie, I have to give the Iron Chef: Battle Kitfo to Dahlak, because while their food was slightly less good than Meskel’s, it was by a smidge, where as their service was worlds ahead. Either way, kitfo maybe the gift of the Ethiopians to the daring Seattle eater, so I reccomend getting out and trying some, if you have a love for raw beef or might like to.

**To quote the health department warning at the bottom of the menu at Smith: Raw meat can kill you.
***I love raw meat. And it hasn’t killed me yet. If you wanna preach to me about the dangers of eating this, be aware that I have no interest in hearing it. Wuss. Get out and try sushi and carpaccio and tartar and all the other delicious things you are missing out on.

When White Girls go to Dim Sum: Tea Garden: (7/16/07)

If you live anywhere besides in the International District, Dim Sum has just gotten a little bit easier to get to. Located at the corner of Ranier and Dearborn, Tea Garden is a mere block off the freeway and has its own parking lot, making access easy for those of us coming from the north. Despite the difficulty of getting to dim sum in other areas with a bad hangover, I have had dim sum many a time. We always joke that they treat non-asians differently, giving us lots of water, or offering us a fork, but I have never felt like I was treated so differently until Tea Garden. Unfortunately, like an abuse victim, I know I’m going to overlook this downside and return many times because the food was so good.

As we walked in, all eyes in the place fell upon us, including a conspicuous glare from a table near us. It was an odd feeling, like I had walked into a secret meeting that was actually about what a horrible person I was. We were seated quickly at a table set with our tea cups and chopsticks, but shortly thereafter a pile of forks and knives were uncerimoniously dropped onto the table. The service was prompt, and they offered a choice of tea, which while common in other areas, I have not seen much in Seattle. Carts came by quickly and we could see them being refilled in the kitchen often, despite the fact that there was fewer than ten tables of customers at the time. However, towards the end, I realized that one of my favorites, Phoenix Claws (chicken feet with a brownish-red sauce) had not come by. As I saw another type of chicken feet go by on a single tray and be offered to every table besides ours, I had a realization. Sure enough, as I walked out, I saw that every table of Chinese people had their delicious Phoenix Claws on the table.

Introducing Rijsttafel: Julia’s Indonesian Kitchen: (7/15/07)

Having been to Amsterdam twice in my teen years to…tour, and like, you know, stuff, I have had the pleasure of traditional rijsttafel more than once. So, needless to say, I was pretty excited to hear that an Indonesian restaurant was moving in less than a mile from my house that would actually serve this feast of a dish. Born, like the Vietnamese Baguette sandwich, Bahn Mi, of colonial influence on native society, rijsttafel was the feast invented by the Dutch to eat the local foods on Indonesia. While I didn’t expect the rijsttafel at Julia’s Indonesian Kitchen to be served by 40 half-naked man servants, as it described the tradition on the menu, I had a few other surprises, some good and others less so.

The first (most pleasant) surprise was the lovely appetizer that came out shortly after we ordered, which appearently came with the dish. Little stuffed pancakes satiated our appetites, dipped in peanut sauce while we waited for the main dishes.

Rijsttafel, as I knew it was like a mini-buffet on the table, complete with heat under the warm dishes, so I was a little surprised at Julia’s to see that we were served individual spots of food on our dishes as well as the traditional individual piles of rice. This was nothing to complain about, though I did find it bought in to the American large sreving theory, as each pile on my plate was the size they gave of each item for 3 people in Holland. This also meant less variety of items, which is what bothered me a little more. The food was all quite pleasant, with the stand outs being the tempeh dish and the sweet and spicy sambal to go on top. To Seattlites who enjoy Vietnamese or Thai food, this will be a new spin on old favorites that will be fun for adventorous eaters.

There were also a few drawbacks to the restaurant, many of which I am hoping will fade away over the course of time. The heat, which was hot outside, became nearly unbearable in the corner we were seated in, with the two open windows offering little draft and the low ceiling a little claustrophobic in the heat. Luckily the waiters were attentive with water, which helped a fair amount. The rice, a basic part seemed like it had been placed on the plate when the order was given, as opposed to when it was served, giving the outer parts a bit of a dried out texture. When eaten with the sauce of the rendang (slow-cooked beef) or sambal, this became less of a factor. The small portions of the dishes surrounding the rice all seemed to have cooled on their way out, giving them a luke warm temperature upon eating, which I found slightly off putting.

All in all the experience, like the waitstaff, was friendly, upbeat, and clearly eager to please. I hope that this place learns quickly and can turn around their minor problems to offer Seattlites a new food to try.

Jack’s Mainly Deliciousness: (7/12/07)

This was my week at Jack’s. Jack’s Mainly Chinese Tapas Cafe, that is. As a lover of Chinese food, I have been trying to convince my boyfriend of its worth, but given that he had only been to buffets in his native Indiana, I had been having trouble getting him into them. Now we’ve had Chinese 3 times this week, all because I stumbled upon Jack’s.

The atmosphere might not be traditional, and you have to eat in to be able to pick specials off the whiteboards, crowded with things you’ve never tried before, but the daring are rewarded, as the best dishes were blind shots in the dark. Saturday night I took a safety with veggie stir-fried hand shaven noodles. It was amazing, usually I feel that the veggies or meat get in the way of the doughy goodness of the noodles, but not here. The crunch of the veggies was perfect to offset the doughiness, and the size matched the noodles well. On the waitress’ suggestion we took a chance on yu-choy and shitake mushrooms. This was a true winner, vegetables I was less than familiar with bathed in a sauce so light in color it was not visible on the plate–a far cry from the lumpy, sweet gravy bathing all too many americanized Chinese joints. In the style I have been told is customary, we forwent the rice in favor of using the scallion sesame flatbread to mop up sauces and pick up food. I found the bread somewhat ordinary, but, like the rice, it was there to pick up the enchnating flavors of the sauces.

I reccomend this place, locate just north of 50th on the Ave to all adventurous eaters out there, and if you’d like to read some more dish reccomendations including ‘Jack’s on the beach’, keep reading.
After Saturday’s food fest, I told my friend Kate about this place. We made plans for Wednesday, to eat Chinese. Then it was going to be 98 degrees, we made plans to go to the beach. Unable to forgo her Chinese food, she asked if we could bring it with to the beach. It turned out to be a moot point because she had a massage appointment and had to cancel.

Thus after a particularly un-fun mountain bike crash on Tuesday, I suggested the best comfort food I could think of to eat while lacking skin on my right arm: Jack’s. The BF prevented me from ordering the same thing over again for the virtue of variety, so I went with a classic Chinese favorite of mine, Eggplant with Basil, and a new branch out off the board, and our first foray into meat: Marinated Tofu with chinese sausage. The traditional eggplant was very similar to what you would get in any decent Chinese place, which is why I found it funny that the BF immediately singled it out for mediocraty. The tofu and sausage was zingily spicy, with two chewy textures that combined to be a great mix. Plopped on to a piece of sesame scallion bread, this was like the world’s best Chinese pizza.

Oddly enough, this connects to the next night, when Kate got her priorities straight and canceled her massage in favor of the beach and chinese food. Our take out scallion bread came, cutely enough in a Pizza box. “Next door?” Kate asked, referring to the Pizza Ragazzi next door, with a disgusted squint in her eyes. No, no, I said as I introduced her to the new Chinese treat. Of our beach going foods, some faired better than others. The veggie shaved noodles, worked well, in their compact, easily eaten form. However, the generals tso’s her BF ordered had to be dumped on his fried rice in order to be eaten. Her Szechuan pickles were like a hint of sweet in your kim chee, and made a great snack with beer for the picnic. Our water spinach with garlic sauce was good, but like the Tso’s, was so drippy and compacted in to the container that it was unviable. Perhaps that’s an eat-in option. However, the predominant winner of what to bring on your next picnic to the beach was the Cold Noodles. Not the best noodles (the hand shaved easily are), but topped with a slightly spicy dressing, these come with jullienned cucmbers, carrots, tofu and a healthy helping of cilantro. This veggie laden dish has just become a picnic classic. In 98 degree weather, eating this refreshing dish while relaxing on the shore, life couldn’t get much better.

Has it really been almost 24 hrs. since I posted on sushi?: (5/9/07)

I’m an honest person, thus I am embracing (Freudian Slip: I actually wrote embarrassing) my love of raw fish. I was recently tipped off regarding a Korean dish called Hwe Dup Bop. I was told it was essentially a chirashi bowl with raw egg on top.
So today I moseyed on down to the new King’s Teriyaki at the corner of Broadway and Denny and ordered a #31 (I didn’t dare try to pronounce that). Because I ordered to-go, I am not sure how this would have looked if I had gotten it in the appropriate flatware, but I took it back to my office and unwrapped my bundle like an excited kid on Christmas morning. First there was a small bowl of miso soup. Decent, not the best miso ever, but a nice little snack on the way to the main course. Next there was a package of white rice. Lastly there was a large styrofoam container featuring a veritable garden of odds and ends. Before I get to that, I also got two sauces in my bundle: the first I smelled, it was sesame oil, I put that aside. The second one, of which I used all of in the end, was, as far as I could tell a mix of ketchup and siracha. Or maybe teriyaki sauce and siracha.

In the main container, I identified watercress, cucumber, iceberg lettuce and onion. On top of this was an ice cream scoop of crab salad. To one side of this was an enormous pile of tobiko (the little orange roe) and to the other side was a large pile of chopped tuna sashimi. It was chopped fairly small, like the way you get it in negihama hand rolls sometimes. This may sound like a huge pile of very odd things, but I just started picking at things, bit by bit, trying different combinations, and eventually discovered that it was all delicious all together. I would pick up some bits, dip it in the ’sirchup’ sauce, and eat it all together. Noticeably, there was no raw egg on top, as I had been informed there was. I think the egg could have enhanced the flavors even more, in all parts except the crab salad, which already had a richness to it. I’m thinking raw egg with ’sirachup’ would have been amazing.

This whole mess of food cost me a grand total of $11 (that includes my parking). I’d be interested in learning more about the use of sashimi in new ways. Anyone know where else does a version of this?