Adventures in Charcuterie

I know it has been a while since I promised to tell you about my adventures with pork belly curing, but alas I never did. Luckily my less lazy than myself co-worker has put up a lovely post chronicling our adventure. I reccomend that you read it here.

Upcoming food porn posts for you to look forward to: B’s given me permission to post his amazing food pics from Japan and gettin’ out the grill for Memorial Day–Seafood Style.

My 100th Post

Really? It seems like I just started. I’ve been posting, under various guises–the long forgotten SeattliteSattelite and over at MetBlogs, for about a year now. A whole year of blogging about food. That adds up to about a 2 posts a week, not bad at all. But really, what is blogging, other than a self-congratulation, and who doesn’t want to self congratulate all the time?

No, seriously, I started blogging because I told Jonathan Kauffman over at the Weekly that I wanted to be a food writer, and this is what he told me to do. To be honest, I’d hoped for like, I dunno, a job, but what I got was the advice to start a blog. And a year later, here’s the blog. On that note, however, I have started food writing, you’ll see my work in the first issue of WINO Magazine, about Washington wine in early June and on Seattle.net or its sister site Seattlefoodweekly, when it launches.

I hope to keep working and making it further, but in the meantime, I enjoy writing on my blog, and I truly hope that, you, darling readers do to!

On Vegetarians

I wrote this a while ago, when Taylor Clark’s Slate Article first ran, but delayed putting it up because I had just done ranting on people who don’t like food. So I waited, but in light of Herbivoracious’ comments from the vegetarian standpoint, I decided I should put up my omnivorous ramblings.

 

I read this article about vegetarians. I mostly, from an omnivores point of view, agree with what he is saying. I think living in Seattle, I run into far less of the rampant demands upon vegetarians to convert than he describes. In fact, I think most of my vegetarian friends only hear from ME that they should convert. And I’m only kidding (really, guys, I swear).

I hold a beef (Ha!) with the article in two places. Ok, three, because I want to reserve my right to always give shit to my veggie loving friends. I personally love tofu, and shock of shocks, eat a decent amount of vegetarian food when at home alone. Which brings me to my two issues: the part about eating at someone else’s house for a barbacue and the part about eating out.

When I invite someone to my house for dinner, for grilling, for anything, I’m volunteering to be the hostess. I’m signing an imaginary contract saying I will provide them with food. Thus, if I knowingly invite a vegetarian to my house, I know full well I’m obligating myself to supplying a vegetarian option, which, in my book, should be at least as interesting and exciting as the omnivorous options. This means two things–1) if you are vegetarian you might miss out on my best dinner parties, because I simply don’t have interest in preparing an amazing pork belly stew with duck stock braised greens for someone who will not eat it and 2) Don’t tell me “you shouldn’t have” after I make you something amazing and vegetarian because the fact is that I should have. And beyond that I probably enjoyed the challenge of coming up with a vegetarian option and enjoyed preparing it. You are my friend, my job, as hostess is to feed you food which will please you. So please enjoy.

My other issue with the Slate article was with his complaint about restaurants. This is not a problem I see just with vegetarians, but with picky eaters everywhere. To them, I say, if you don’t like the food, then don’t eat out. Yes, I know it sucks to sit at home with your microwave instant brown rice (oops, threw up a bit in my mouth remembering both that this exists and that someone I know said she eats this), but why come out and torture a restaurant with your endless requests for sauce on the side and none of this, that and the other thing. What a restaurant serves is how the chef intended it to be. If there is nothing on the menu you like, eat elsewhere. If you are lactose intolerant, don’t eat at a pizza restaurant and expect them to remove the cheese. If you are vegetarian, don’t eat at Momofuku and wonder why you can’t get a pork bun sans meat. This is, from working in the restaurant industry, my biggest pet peeve. Customers think they are always right, but you know what? They’re not. Chefs work day in and day out to make the best thing they can from a variety of perspectives: taste, flavor, price. That means you know why there are no tomatoes on your smoked salmon in May? Because the dish would go up in price. So when you request those, you give the chef this decision: cater to you and add it to your bill, thus recouping the money he would lose, or, because he wants to keep customers, cater to you and lose money on the dish, or thirdly, don’t cater to you at all, and risk your table leaving. Not a good choice. Why make other people’s lives difficult? We don’t walk into your office and try to switch up your filing system!

–End of previously written part

I got a little ranty at the end. Sorry. I really did like most of what he says in the article. I have no issue, fundamentally with vegetarians. Though I do wish people who eat fish or meat and still claim to be vegetarian would just admit “I don’t like meat” rather than pretend that it is in some way verboten. Oy, I can’t stop ranting! Ok, but my point was that Jonathan Kauffman has an article in today’s Seattle Weekly describing the various tofu factories in town. It was timely, as one is down the street from my house, and as I left it on Monday, I thought how sad it is that people think of tofu as a replacement food, for meat or for health value, instead of as its own wonderful food, irregardless of the way it is used. I think a lot of people say they dislike tofu because they are used to it as plain, cold in a tasteless wrap. That said, I think a lot of people who dislike meat would feel differently if they closed their eyes and were not told what a spoonful of raw chopped beef was–I’m fairly certain they would love it. People are strange about food, I guess is the moral of my story. I just hope that I can open eyes and encourage people to try new things that they otherwise thought they hated, be them animal, vegetable or soy bean cake.

Restaurant Review 360 Round Up: Jasmine Provincial Vietnamese Restaurant

 

Photo courtesy of Michael at www.herbivoracious.com

Thanks to everyone who particpated in the Restaurant Review 360, it sounds like everyone enjoyed their food–even the Surly Gourmand seemed to have to keep their profanity to a minimum (by SG standards, anyways). I’m hoping we’ll get a few late entries, but I wanted to get this up for everyone to read, eat and enjoy!

Over at Herbivoracious, Michael was a little worried at first that he wouldn’t get veg-friendly food, luckily by the time he reached the end of the novel like selection, he found a novel vegetarian selection: about 20 options. ”Even better,” he says, “they seem to understand what vegetarian means.” He declared the restaurant victorious in the end: “I really noticed that the kitchen doesn’t take shortcuts. The dishes are made with that extra bit of attention and hand work that makes all of the difference. Combined with the attractive, modern, atmosphere, and good service, and I think you’ve got a winner.”

Meanwhile, over at the Surly Gourmand, they described the pink elephant in the room: “When you walk in the door the first thing you see is a humidifier which spits a thin ribbon of steam into the room. I foolishly thought it was a rice cooker until I realized that a high volume restaurant could never get by with a rice cooker the size of a toaster oven.” The whole paragraph is really hilarious, if you are the type who appreciates that type of humor (I am). Eventually it gets to the food, and while they, like I, enjoyed the shrimp on sugarcane, in the end they say “Jasmine is a strange motherfucking place. It’s mostly good…” Which I think is about the most dead on statement about the place I’ve read yet.

I fought the urge to compare everything to the Tamarind Tree. This dish is better, this one is worse and managed to write a little something up. Like Michael, I found the heart that goes into the restaurant changed my opinion, “this is a delicious, cheap restaurant where you are served by heartfelt servers. The owner was walking around, inspecting details with the care in his eye that you can sense as a diner. It does make a difference.”

In addition to these three posts (hopefully with more to come? anyone? Bueller?) I recieved an email from a blogger who had disliked her experience so much that she was unwilling to write about it. While I am disappointed both because I like the restaurant, and because I want all opinions represented, I felt that it was important to inform readers that such an experience had occured. I have no further information about the incident.

Thanks to everyone who particpated, and if you join in late, feel free to post and link, I’ll get you up on here!

Jasmine Restaurant Review: Trying not to eat the apple

Reviewing Jasmine Provincial Vietnamese Restaurant, I gave myself a parameter that I would try not to compare it to Tamarind Tree. It’s a little like Adam and Eve resisting the apple. It’s so easy, ripe, delicious, low hanging fruit. To use Tamarind Tree as a reference point when describing Jasmine would allow me to describe with out effort, but also with out poetry. Anyone can compare two like things, I am challenging myself to describe from the beginning. And it just isn’t fair–Tamarind Tree is one of the best restaurants in the city, and we want to compare just because it is also a Vietnamese restaurant. I like Nishino, but if someone opened a sushi restaurant near me, I wouldn’t write a review comparing it to Nishino. Ok, piece said. Here’s my take.

I first found Jasmine because I had forgotten that my much loved Lao-Thai restaurant, ViengThong, was closed on mondays, and the newly opened Jasmine was right next door. Recently, I returned to review it again for Restaurant Review 360. I had received and email from a fellow participant that she had a terrible experience there and would not be writing, and I panicked. Did I pick the wrong place? Aside from the ambience, I had rather enjoyed my meal there, but she had enjoyed the ambience and disliked the food. I was concerned, as I was bringing my family.

I shouldn’t have had a second thought. While the service seemed to lack a little professionalism, I appreciated that it appeared to be more out of naivety and sincere effort, as oppose to bad service from wanton apathy. Unfortunately they were out of ‘333′, the Vietnamese beer I had heard good things about, and offered us Tiger instead, a Singaporean beer which we declared the South East Asian Bud Light. From there on in things looked up. We started with a few appetizers, prawns on sugarcane sticks, baby clams with rice crackers (a favorite of mine, with just a hint of spice) and green mango salad. The green mango salad did have mangos, however they were fully ripe, not green, so they were a touch sweeter than they should be. Each dish came with its own distinct sauce, a peanut based one for the clams, a slightly sweet one for the mango, and I don’t know what the prawn one was, but it truly made the dish a much better one when dipped.

Our first two entrees had both had great flavor, thought they were a touch chewy. It was not enough that it made a difference to us, as they were delicious (”its pretty hard to screw up when you have this many dishes entitled “chile something”–mama gastrognome). That was the chile lemongrass beef and the chile garlic squid. I would definitely sit down to both of those again in a heart beat. But the true winner was the grilled eggplant, which were impressively good. Soft and melty on the inside, with a nice char on the outside, these were wonderful.

One thing I wanted to address was the portion size. These are quite small portions compared to the dishes you would order family style at many Thai or Chinese restaurants. For me, this is perfect, because the four of us were able to share a large number of dishes, but I would warn a big eater that they will need to order many things. Luckily you can keep ordering, the prices are not very high. For the four of us, including beers, it was $70 (before tip). Guys, my friends, that is very cheap. And very good.

The ambience is…odd. Some aspects are very fancy (piano in the corner), some are gaudy (stuffed green chairs on the raised level down the side) and some are downright strange (flat screen TV playing rotating images of art, some classic. Some not). 

Overall though, this is a delicious, cheap restaurant where you are served by heartfelt servers. The owner was walking around, inspecting details with the care in his eye that you can sense as a diner. It does make a difference.

Crispy, Crunchy, Balls of Spring

Radishes, of course! They are wonderful. One of the few culinary tips passed on to me by my mother, each spring our fridge would always contain a bowl full of crisp clean water with radishes, trimmed and ready to eat, happily bobbing up and down in the water. I don’t know the scientific reasons behind refrigerating them in this manner, but I do know when you open the fridge for a snack in spring time and you see these beautiful, bright red spheres bouncing about, there is no way to resist. Biting in to a crispy radish, the satisfying crunch, the spiciness of the flavor giving a little bite right back. A true way to begin the season. The french mellow the flavor with butter and salt, but this is one of the few foods I keep unadulterated, even as much as I always love a vehicle for butter and salt. Something about the clean crunch of a radish I don’t want to alter.

A homemade PAP Sandwich (better than it sounds)

Take a long look at this sandwich. Notice anything different about it? Eeeew, just cuz I put that in the title? No, PAP stands for Pancetta, Arugula and Parmesan, the ingredients in this tasty morsel. But even better than that, I made it all. I baked the bread for the sandwich last weekend (didn’t post on it, not as good as it ought to be. Will be trying that one again). My co-worker, Lauren over at CheeeseToast and I had cured the pancetta. Either she or I will post the details on that shortly, but it was an extremely fun and scrumptious experiment which we will definetly be repeating. Then I added some arugula from last weeks farmer’s market and a bit of parmesan, and I had my own perfect little homemade sandwich. A PAP Sandwich.

Does Serious Eating Run in the Family?

My little brother is coming to town this weekend. Here is the conversation between the brother and myself:

from N

to B

date Tue, May 13, 2008 at 9:59 AM
subject Schedule of Events

Ha! I’m scheduling you in for events since  my usual partner in crime will have abandoned me for Japan for the week. Please let me know what you do or don’t want to participate in.
 
Sunday: There is a cheese festival at the pike place market. It’s supposed to be nice out. And there are cheeses. And wine. Should be a good time. I’ll need you here, you don’t want to be at a cheese festival with a wussy eater.
Monday: I don’t work. I’ve never had a paseo sandwich and was considering a culinary research trip to fremont to investigate. Evening: I’m probably doing a review of the new Vietnamese place next door to that Thai place we went last time you were home, I’ve been before, it is pretty good and there are delicous spicy baby clams.
Tues: Perhaps a trip to ballard for pub trivia at the place I used to give them? I have like $100 in free food/beer there. I wouldn’t eat the food though. That’s a lot of beer.

from B

to N

date Tue, May 13, 2008 at 11:06 AM
subject RE: Schedule of Events
  yep, sounds great sign me up.

 

***

In non-brother related news I was on a run yesterday and started thinking about how I don’t own a kitchenaid stand mixer. Yes, this is pretty much what I think about like 20% of the time. At least 20% is on my next meal, and another 20% is on the the meal after that. That leaves 20% for future meals and another 20% for not tripping and falling on my face. But back to the mixer, or lack there of. Then I got to thinking about how I currently have a cruddy hand held mixer that only has one beater. It was a hand me down, and I was only handed down one (small) beater. There were also two large ones, but upon investigation, these did not fit into the mixer I was given. There is a line in a Bloodhound Gang song where they just sing “The drummer from Def Leopard’s only got one arm” over and over again. Well, while I ran I sang “The mixer in my kitchen’s only got one arm” over and over, to the same tune.

I am such a food nerd. I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed running to it.

Sundays are Good Days

I woke up this morning and went up to the first day of the Broadway Farmer’s Market as it opened at 11am. Perusing the market, I actually managed to get out with out spending ridiculous amounts of money, but with a large amount of delicious food. I’ve only been home for about an hour and I’ve already had two different kinds of arugula salad. Here are my variations for home use: anchovy filets, sauteed in olive oil, hot oil poured over the top of the arugula to wilt it, then crisp up asiago cheese in the oven and sprinkle for crunch. Salt, pepper. Version two, used oil left clinging to the pan to make an egg white omelette (had eggs whites leftover from making ice cream yesterday), stuffed the omelette with a whomping pile of arugula and a touch of parmesan, sprinkled with red pepper flakes. 

Now that I’m suitably fed, I want to tell you about the corner store by my house. “Don’t go there late at night!” warned a friend of ours. She is from Arizona, so I don’t really trust her on these things, but still, I must admit that this place has its fair share of crack addicts and hangers on sitting outside at all times. But in I wandered, on a tip from B that they had all kinds of spices and stuff. Yeah, all kinds. Saffron boxes for 3.99 (usually about $6.50) and bulk spices of all kinds–turmeric, star anise, you name it. I bought sardines in tomato and chile sauce, because they intrigued me. It was amazing, from the outside your average ghetto mart, but inside an Indian grocery store. I resisted buying any of the many kinds of chutney or Indian dinners they had, but I know I’ll be back. There is nothing as great as wandering on a sunday and making a great discovery.

On People Who Don’t Like Food

I know I’m a snobby person. This has never been a doubt in my mind. Snobby in that if people don’t agree with me, I have trouble keeping my sharp tongue in check (this never gets me in trouble. Ever.). As I recently got into good food (you noticed?) I have become snobbier about food. I try to claim I don’t dislike foods, that I’m willing to try anything–though you’ll rarely find me ordering marinara or chicken. But the biggest change is how snobby I have become towards people who don’t enjoy food.

This weekend, in Vancouver for my half-marathon, Vancouver my favorite food destination for delicious Izakaya treats and dim sum delicicies, I discovered I was with three food haters. They don’t come out and say “oh I don’t like food” but they don’t enjoy good food. They eat for the sole purpose of survival, not for enjoyment. It hurts me to watch. I hadn’t yet realized the extent of this when I suggested my favorite quick cheap dinner spot in the area, Legendary Noodle. The vegan (who eats seafood) among us ordered steamed chinese broccoli hold the oyster sauce add extra broccoli. I hung my head in shame. Other culinary disasters that were ordered included pan-fried dumplings, but steamed, and with chicken. Chicken, my friends, was not made for dumplings. If it must be in them, frying them can save it, but this, this was not saved. I can’t begin to recount the many culinary travesties that were commited this weekend (”Can I get the smoked salmon appetizer, but as my meal. And can you add something to it so that it isn’t just salmon?”), but there were alot. A favored meal for the weekend was accomplished by a trip to the grocery store: white bread, sliced chicken breast, provolone cheese (no condiments please), for one girl, plain whole wheat tortilla with bean dip for another.

So what is my point? In my striving for great food, have I lost the ability to enjoy food with normal people? Or are these girls abnormal? I make fun of vegetarians for sport, but let’s be honest, my friends that are vegetarians eat well, they still love food. Maybe I don’t have a point and I just wanted to complain about my weekend. Maybe I’m internally chastising myself for being unable to resist snarky comments about what these girls wanted to eat. Or perhaps I’m just said nobody understood why I was upset when my tagliatelli came and was actually fettucini and when my croque madame had tomatoes on it!