I'm not going to regale you with recipes for every Thanksgiving dish — everything was delicious, and almost everything is a favorite standard — but I thought it best to at least check in with a quick rundown of the weekend. On Wednesday we made pizza for the family (four cookie-sheet-sized pizzas, two with tomatoes, basil, and mozzarella and two with pears, walnuts, blue cheese, and mozzarella). Tomorrow night's plan is for stew with chickpeas, clams, and sausage. Tonight we had skate, very yummy baked fifteen to twenty minutes in a buttered pan at 400°, and then topped with browned butter and capers. We served the skate with brown rice and chard: bring a few inches of water to a boil in a large pot, and add a good handful of baking soda, and then stir in two bunches rainbow chard, cut into one-inch-thick ribbons; peel a couple cloves of garlic, mince them, and then add a large handful of salt to the garlic in a small pile on a cutting board and work the salt into the garlic with a knife until you have a nice paste; after about two minutes, drain the greens in a colander, dry them off a bit in a clean dish towel, and toss the greens with the garlic in a serving bowl.
On Friday, as we do every year, we made soup. My brother invited a friend from school to join us for the Thanksgiving weekend, and said friend is quite strictly vegetarian, so in addition to our usually turkey soup, we also made a vegan option. (The friend left today, hence the meaty dinners tonight and tomorrow.) Coarsely chop four onions, half a dozen celery sticks, and about as many carrots, and divide them roughly evenly between two pots. Add a few bay leaves, a few peppercorns, and a large handful of salt to each pot. In the larger pot, also add the saved turkey neck and giblets as well as the bones (break them up if you can with a cleaver to let the marrow out), but discard the skin and use the fat for some other project. Save any savable meat, of course. Cover the contents of each pot with water (but not more than enough to cover), place the lids on, bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and cook about an hour.
Dice another three onions. Place two of them in a large pot and one in a medium pot, and saute in a splash of olive oil with some salt. Also add diced carrot and celery to each to make two mirepoix. To the smaller pot, add three quarter pound sliced crimini mushrooms. Once the mushrooms start to release their liquid, add between half and a third of a cup of pearled barley to the smaller pot, and between half a cup and two thirds to the larger pot. Stir the barley in to coat, and then place a colander or sieve over the smaller part and pour in the finished vegetable broth, rescuing the cooked veggies to give to the backyard chickens (it was raining all weekend — that soup was from October). Then move the colander to the larger pot and pour in the turkey broth.
Bring both soups to a boil. After about ten minutes, add frozen edamame to each pot. Bring back to a boil, cook another ten minutes, and stir in a fair amount of saved turkey meat into the turkey-broth (non-mushroom) soup. Adjust the salt and serve with good bread and good wine.
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
You know you're in the Pacific Northwest when...
B and I are sitting in the SeaTac airport, waiting for our flight, enjoying the remarkably-pretty (for an airport) food court between the C and B gates. We were amused to find that SeaTac expects its patrons to sort their table trash between recyclables, landfill, and (believe it or not) compostables!
The food at SeaTac is decent. I like PDX better for airport food, but this place isn't half bad.
There's snow throughout Oregon and Washington. When we were flying over Puget Sound, we were amused to see that the two blocks closest to the water were snow-free, but get half a mile inland and there's six inches of snow standing on the ground.
The food at SeaTac is decent. I like PDX better for airport food, but this place isn't half bad.
There's snow throughout Oregon and Washington. When we were flying over Puget Sound, we were amused to see that the two blocks closest to the water were snow-free, but get half a mile inland and there's six inches of snow standing on the ground.
Autumnal pizza: onions, squash, kale, blue cheese, and walnuts
We made one of our better pizzas a few days ago, when J and A joined us for dinner. As with our other recent meals, we forgot to take photos.
In the morning, make a pizza dough. Dissolve a tablespoon or so of honey in about a cup of warm water, and then whisk in a tablespoon of instant yeast. In the standing mixer, combine two cups white flour and a bit more than a cup whole wheat, and a tablespoon of salt. Then pour in the yeast mixture and mix to combine. You don't need to knead that much. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and place in the warmest part of your house. Since our heater isn't working, the best spot for us was in the oven (turned off) right above the pilot light.
About an hour before you want to eat, remove the dough from the oven, and begin preheating to 450–500ˆ with the pizza stone inside. Divide the dough into two pieces and roll it out with a floured rolling pin. You want to let the dough rise a little rolled out, so if your kitchen is still very cold, place the rolled-out dough in the oven for just about two minutes (enough to get a bounce, but not enough to kill the yeast).
Thinly slice a large white onion, and saute it in some olive oil and salt until translucent. Set aside. Peel two delicata squash, cut into half- or quarter-inch rings, and poke/cut out the seeds. Heat some oil, and fry the rings of squash on both sides until just starting to brown. Bring to a boil a medium pot of water with a teaspoon of baking soda. Wash, destem, and cut into half-inch ribbons one bunch kale, and boil in the soda water for just a minute or two, so tenderize and bring out the bright green color (the soda is to prevent discoloration: what makes vegetables discolor when cooking is the acids released from the veggies). Drain the kale and rinse under cold water so you can handle it.
Cut a little less than a pound of mozzarella into thin slices. Begin assembling the pizzas: onions as a "sauce", then a single layer of squash, then the kale, then mozzarella. On top of that, crumble about half a pound of a strong blue cheese, and then top the pizza with fresh walnuts.
Bake each pizza between twenty and twenty five minutes. This type of autumnal pizza will pair with any wine or beer that you like, but cold weather calls for a hearty red.
In the morning, make a pizza dough. Dissolve a tablespoon or so of honey in about a cup of warm water, and then whisk in a tablespoon of instant yeast. In the standing mixer, combine two cups white flour and a bit more than a cup whole wheat, and a tablespoon of salt. Then pour in the yeast mixture and mix to combine. You don't need to knead that much. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and place in the warmest part of your house. Since our heater isn't working, the best spot for us was in the oven (turned off) right above the pilot light.
About an hour before you want to eat, remove the dough from the oven, and begin preheating to 450–500ˆ with the pizza stone inside. Divide the dough into two pieces and roll it out with a floured rolling pin. You want to let the dough rise a little rolled out, so if your kitchen is still very cold, place the rolled-out dough in the oven for just about two minutes (enough to get a bounce, but not enough to kill the yeast).
Thinly slice a large white onion, and saute it in some olive oil and salt until translucent. Set aside. Peel two delicata squash, cut into half- or quarter-inch rings, and poke/cut out the seeds. Heat some oil, and fry the rings of squash on both sides until just starting to brown. Bring to a boil a medium pot of water with a teaspoon of baking soda. Wash, destem, and cut into half-inch ribbons one bunch kale, and boil in the soda water for just a minute or two, so tenderize and bring out the bright green color (the soda is to prevent discoloration: what makes vegetables discolor when cooking is the acids released from the veggies). Drain the kale and rinse under cold water so you can handle it.
Cut a little less than a pound of mozzarella into thin slices. Begin assembling the pizzas: onions as a "sauce", then a single layer of squash, then the kale, then mozzarella. On top of that, crumble about half a pound of a strong blue cheese, and then top the pizza with fresh walnuts.
Bake each pizza between twenty and twenty five minutes. This type of autumnal pizza will pair with any wine or beer that you like, but cold weather calls for a hearty red.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Bacon, green onion, and barley risotto
Add another dinner to the we-forgot-photos category. Last night's single-pot dinner was one of my favorite risotti. Begin by mincing about a third of a pound of bacon, and saute it in the bottom of a small or medium pot until crisp. Then set aside the meat, but save the fat in the pan. Add and saute the whites from a bunch of scallions with a little salt, and as they start to tenderize, add one cup pearled barley. Coat the barley in the hot fat (add more fat — butter or olive oil — if necessary).
Meanwhile, you should have been warming up two cups of broth. Add ½ cup white wine to the hot barley; it should sizzle immediately, but stir it in. Then add the two cups of broth. If it is already hot, it should boil pretty quickly. Reduce the heat, cover, and simmer twenty minutes, checking and stirring once or twice. Then remove the cover, and you might want to cook the barley another ten minutes or so if there's still too much liquid.
Then add the bacon back to the barley, along with with green parts of the scallions, minced. Stir in, a handful at a time, plenty of grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, tasting as you go. Serve with the same white wine you used for cooking.
Meanwhile, you should have been warming up two cups of broth. Add ½ cup white wine to the hot barley; it should sizzle immediately, but stir it in. Then add the two cups of broth. If it is already hot, it should boil pretty quickly. Reduce the heat, cover, and simmer twenty minutes, checking and stirring once or twice. Then remove the cover, and you might want to cook the barley another ten minutes or so if there's still too much liquid.
Then add the bacon back to the barley, along with with green parts of the scallions, minced. Stir in, a handful at a time, plenty of grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, tasting as you go. Serve with the same white wine you used for cooking.
Friday, November 19, 2010
Spanish stew with chickpeas, clams, and sausage
We were four tonight at our table: joining us for dinner was Monica (of Gastromonica fame, and one of my favorite cooks and people) and her partner. A high-risk strategy for dinner, B and I decided to try a new recipe from Chez Panisse Cafe Cookbook: a Spanish-style stew with chickpeas, clams, and sausage. The meal was sufficiently fantastic that we forgot to take any photographs.
The night before you want this stew, cover 1 ½ cups dried chickpeas with plenty of water, and let soak overnight (beans will double in size). In the morning or mid-day, drain the chickpeas and add a small white onion, one or two carrots, a celery stick if you have one, some bay leaf, some fresh thyme, and 1 Tbsp of salt; cover with water, bring to a boil, and simmer on low 90 minutes. Let the beans cool in their liquids. When you start cooking, drain the chickpeas and discard the veggies.
In the bottom of a large pot, brown 1 lb pork sausage (we used the breakfast links from Highland Hills, as it was all that was left when we got to the market today), crumbled or cut into small meatballs, in 1 Tbsp olive oil. Remove the meat to a bowl, and discard the liquid. Meanwhile, finely mince a large white onion, or, more easily, chop it coarsely and then puree in the food processor.
Add a little more olive oil to the pot and cook the onion until lightly browned. Meanwhile, finely mince (puree in food processor) one fennel bulb and lots of garlic, and add to the onion, along with a little salt. Cook a bit longer, and add one medium-spicy pepper, in small diced, and 1 Tbsp paprika. Also add a handful of small or two medium-large tomatoes, cut into medium dice.
Clean 3 lb manila clams while the vegetables cook.
Finally, stir in the chickpeas and the sausage, and cover and bring back to a simmer. Then add ½ cup white wine, ½ lb young braising greens or chard cut into ½-inch strips, and the clams. Cover and cook five to ten more minutes, stirring once or twice, until the clams have all opened.
While the clams cook, lightly toast some slices of a nice bread, and rub each slice with a clove of garlic. Serve the stew in shallow bowls, with a slice of bread at the bottom of each bowl and the stew spooned over it.
Accompany the stew with good company, fun conversation, and a nice Pinot Grigio (also set out the remaining bread with some butter). After the stew, serve a lettuce salad with a sherry vinaigrette as a palate cleanser.
Open a bottle of fine Moscatel, and move from the dining room table to the living room couch. Set out a plate of figs from the neighbors tree, cut into quarters with a dollop of a nice sheep's cheese on each, and sprinkled with chopped almonds and honey. Conclude the meal with macadamia-and-white-chocolate cookies.
The night before you want this stew, cover 1 ½ cups dried chickpeas with plenty of water, and let soak overnight (beans will double in size). In the morning or mid-day, drain the chickpeas and add a small white onion, one or two carrots, a celery stick if you have one, some bay leaf, some fresh thyme, and 1 Tbsp of salt; cover with water, bring to a boil, and simmer on low 90 minutes. Let the beans cool in their liquids. When you start cooking, drain the chickpeas and discard the veggies.
In the bottom of a large pot, brown 1 lb pork sausage (we used the breakfast links from Highland Hills, as it was all that was left when we got to the market today), crumbled or cut into small meatballs, in 1 Tbsp olive oil. Remove the meat to a bowl, and discard the liquid. Meanwhile, finely mince a large white onion, or, more easily, chop it coarsely and then puree in the food processor.
Add a little more olive oil to the pot and cook the onion until lightly browned. Meanwhile, finely mince (puree in food processor) one fennel bulb and lots of garlic, and add to the onion, along with a little salt. Cook a bit longer, and add one medium-spicy pepper, in small diced, and 1 Tbsp paprika. Also add a handful of small or two medium-large tomatoes, cut into medium dice.
Clean 3 lb manila clams while the vegetables cook.
Finally, stir in the chickpeas and the sausage, and cover and bring back to a simmer. Then add ½ cup white wine, ½ lb young braising greens or chard cut into ½-inch strips, and the clams. Cover and cook five to ten more minutes, stirring once or twice, until the clams have all opened.
While the clams cook, lightly toast some slices of a nice bread, and rub each slice with a clove of garlic. Serve the stew in shallow bowls, with a slice of bread at the bottom of each bowl and the stew spooned over it.
Accompany the stew with good company, fun conversation, and a nice Pinot Grigio (also set out the remaining bread with some butter). After the stew, serve a lettuce salad with a sherry vinaigrette as a palate cleanser.
Open a bottle of fine Moscatel, and move from the dining room table to the living room couch. Set out a plate of figs from the neighbors tree, cut into quarters with a dollop of a nice sheep's cheese on each, and sprinkled with chopped almonds and honey. Conclude the meal with macadamia-and-white-chocolate cookies.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Four days in Honolulu, four and a half nights of Japanese food
B had a conference in Honolulu this weekend, and so we flew here on Thursday (I'm starting this post from the Honolulu airport on Monday, as we wait for our flight, not really wanting to leave). We stayed in Waikiki, which is not known for great food. In fact, we enjoyed all of our meals, which I will detail blow. In brief: what you can be sure to find prepared well in Honolulu is Japanese food.
Thursday: overpriced, but tasty, sushi in Waikiki
We arrived at San Francisco airport Thursday with just barely enough time to catch our flight (they had started boarding by the time we were through security) — since we didn't have time to find take-out lunch for the plane, we were forced to go with the "snack boxes" that United sells. We've had better cheese and crackers. But our flight here went smoothly, and in spite of arriving on a national holiday, we managed to catch a bus to Waikiki.
After checking in to the hotel, we asked the receptionist for sushi recommendations, and he sent us to Doraku Sushi (warning: link makes sound, a nice place in an upscale shopping mall between our hotel and the beach (he also recommended Sansei Sushi, which Lonely Planet also liked, an probably we should have gone there). The dinner was tasty, but a bit more expensive than it should have been. B ordered a tuna-and-avocado tartar, and I had something with thinly sliced snapper. We were still hungry, so we had uni nigiri (I thought the waiter had said that the urchin was served in the shell, but, alas!), and then a fish-and-greens salad to close. With the wine and tip, the dinner was more than we had hoped, but not a terrible welcome-to-Hawaii dinner.
Friday: picnic lunch on Diamond Head, and menchankoin Waikiki
We had stopped into a corner market (every street corner in Waikiki has an ABC Store) after dinner to pick up some milk for our hotel-room coffee, but they didn't have acceptable food for breakfast. So Friday morning we walked to Lonely Planet's favorite diner, only to find them with an hour-long line, and so we found ourselves at Starbucks making do with their arm-and-leg yogurt-and-granola and a microwaved "spinach, feta, and egg white wrap". The iced coffee, though, was welcome.
Afterwards, we did find the one actual grocery store in Waikiki, Food Pantry (prices are about the same as at Andronico's), where we bought crackers, brie, and grapes for a picnic. From there, we walked to Diamond Head Crater. Well, actually, we walked all the way around Diamond Head, because we wanted to see the beaches. The crater is quite a sight, and has a fantastic one-mile mostly-stairs climb to an old military outpost, which I highly recommend. Unbeknownst to us until we got to the park, they have started repairs on the trail, and were closing the hike every weekday afternoon, so we were some of the last hikers in. In any case, we had a fun picnic at the top of the mountain, until the workers came to kick us off. Along with the walk back to Waikiki (the short way), we did about ten miles of walking and 800 feet of elevation gain.
After a brief swim, we consulted lonely planet and went to Menchanko-Tei, a fantastically good cheep Japanese joint. Menchanko is some kind of Japanese meal-in-a-bowl, like the ramens and udons that we're used to on the mainland. (It's a good thing that we've stopped being so strict about vegetarianism: every dish had pork and chicken in it.) All told, the food was delicious, and not at all expensive. However, the only wine on the menu (a serviceable Beringer) was $36. I would have been much happier paying the same total but with food priced higher and the drink lower: as it was, the wine felt like a rip-off. (Corkage is $18, so if you are in Waikiki, go for lunch or order sake.)
Saturday: Berkeley lunch and fantastic sushi
Having found the grocery store, we were set for breakfasts for the rest of our trip: english muffins with cream cheese, yogurt, orange juice, coffee, on the balcony of our tenth-floor hotel room.
After breakfast, we headed towards Chaminade University, where B had his conference. We had been planning on getting poke at a shop along the way that Lonely Planet recommended, but found the building razed (our Lonely Planet is two years old). So instead, after checking in to our conference, we headed up the street to Town, a local-organic restaurant where we felt very at home. B had an entree salad, and I had a tasty sandwich with beets, mozzarella, and arugula, and it came with very good french fries that were served with fried sage on top.
After B's talk, we walked through the campus of the much bigger University of Hawaii at Manoa, cooled off at Lonely Planet's favorite coffee shop (Glazers), and then went to Imanas Tei for dinner. The dinner was fantastic — not too expensive and absolutely our best quality-to-price ratio. We each ordered the "Nigiri A": after miso and salad, we were treated to a platter of two kinds of tuna, salmon, various white fish, and roe and sea urchin (the waiter says that if we want it served in its shell, we're better off looking near the urchin farms in California).
Sunday: Museums, dim sum, and take-out
For our last full day in Honolulu, we took the bus to Bishop Museum (an ok anthropology museum, but at $15 for students, not worth admissions), and then walked to China Town, where we had absolutely fantastic dim sum at Legend Vegetarian. If you go to Honolulu, you simply must go to Legend (they also have a seafood restaurant next door). Don't order from the menu (we started with a broccoli and mushroom stir fry and lemon chicken, which were good but not "best ever") — simply eat everything in the dim sum cart.
From there, we walked to Honolulu Academy of Arts, which is a nice art museum. The elegant building is laid out into thirty numbered "galleries", each of which tries to collapse a humongous amount of art history ("Italian Renaissance", "Korea") into one room. If you, like us, have been to many European and Euro-American museums, feel free to skip the first ten rooms: they're nice, but the museum has the requisite one Picasso, one Cezanne, one Goya, one Matisse, and you won't find anything you haven't seen (or seen better than). But if you, like us, have confined most of your art museums to Europe, then I highly recommend you check out the second two thirds of the museum. The style of one-room-per-topic is continued, so this is not a complete exposure to, say, Chinese art history. But there are pieces and styles that we'd never seen, from countries that aren't usually featured: nineteenth-century cartoon/comic style art from Japan, a wall of Indonesian masks, country-by-country exploration of southeast Asia (organized by pre-European-colonial nation, rather than post-), O'Keeffes from when she tour Hawaii.
Our original plan had been to walk back to China Town, or to find sushi near the Honolulu Academy. But we weren't excited by either prospect, and we weren't hungry enough to eat before it got too dark to walk back to Waikiki. So we returned to the hotel, stopping by a Safeway along the way, and looked up take-out sushi joints, eventually finding Sushi 2 Go. For take-out sushi, it was very good, and we had a lovely dinner just the two of us in our hotel room, with a bottle of Oregon pinot noir (compared to restaurant wine, even the expensive stuff at Safeway is great) and pineapple for dessert. We were pretty tired of eating out, and happy to have a meal just the two of us.
Monday: Flying
I'm finishing this post on the airplane, although I won't be able to post it until I get home tonight. For lunch, we had more takeout sushi, this time from the very serviceable Samurai Sushi and Bento in the Honolulu airport. Dinner will be crackers, brie, and fruit on the airplane, with the airplane quarter-bottle wine. There are worse meals. Here's to cooking at home tomorrow!
Thursday: overpriced, but tasty, sushi in Waikiki
We arrived at San Francisco airport Thursday with just barely enough time to catch our flight (they had started boarding by the time we were through security) — since we didn't have time to find take-out lunch for the plane, we were forced to go with the "snack boxes" that United sells. We've had better cheese and crackers. But our flight here went smoothly, and in spite of arriving on a national holiday, we managed to catch a bus to Waikiki.
After checking in to the hotel, we asked the receptionist for sushi recommendations, and he sent us to Doraku Sushi (warning: link makes sound, a nice place in an upscale shopping mall between our hotel and the beach (he also recommended Sansei Sushi, which Lonely Planet also liked, an probably we should have gone there). The dinner was tasty, but a bit more expensive than it should have been. B ordered a tuna-and-avocado tartar, and I had something with thinly sliced snapper. We were still hungry, so we had uni nigiri (I thought the waiter had said that the urchin was served in the shell, but, alas!), and then a fish-and-greens salad to close. With the wine and tip, the dinner was more than we had hoped, but not a terrible welcome-to-Hawaii dinner.
Friday: picnic lunch on Diamond Head, and menchankoin Waikiki
We had stopped into a corner market (every street corner in Waikiki has an ABC Store) after dinner to pick up some milk for our hotel-room coffee, but they didn't have acceptable food for breakfast. So Friday morning we walked to Lonely Planet's favorite diner, only to find them with an hour-long line, and so we found ourselves at Starbucks making do with their arm-and-leg yogurt-and-granola and a microwaved "spinach, feta, and egg white wrap". The iced coffee, though, was welcome.
Afterwards, we did find the one actual grocery store in Waikiki, Food Pantry (prices are about the same as at Andronico's), where we bought crackers, brie, and grapes for a picnic. From there, we walked to Diamond Head Crater. Well, actually, we walked all the way around Diamond Head, because we wanted to see the beaches. The crater is quite a sight, and has a fantastic one-mile mostly-stairs climb to an old military outpost, which I highly recommend. Unbeknownst to us until we got to the park, they have started repairs on the trail, and were closing the hike every weekday afternoon, so we were some of the last hikers in. In any case, we had a fun picnic at the top of the mountain, until the workers came to kick us off. Along with the walk back to Waikiki (the short way), we did about ten miles of walking and 800 feet of elevation gain.
After a brief swim, we consulted lonely planet and went to Menchanko-Tei, a fantastically good cheep Japanese joint. Menchanko is some kind of Japanese meal-in-a-bowl, like the ramens and udons that we're used to on the mainland. (It's a good thing that we've stopped being so strict about vegetarianism: every dish had pork and chicken in it.) All told, the food was delicious, and not at all expensive. However, the only wine on the menu (a serviceable Beringer) was $36. I would have been much happier paying the same total but with food priced higher and the drink lower: as it was, the wine felt like a rip-off. (Corkage is $18, so if you are in Waikiki, go for lunch or order sake.)
Saturday: Berkeley lunch and fantastic sushi
Having found the grocery store, we were set for breakfasts for the rest of our trip: english muffins with cream cheese, yogurt, orange juice, coffee, on the balcony of our tenth-floor hotel room.
After breakfast, we headed towards Chaminade University, where B had his conference. We had been planning on getting poke at a shop along the way that Lonely Planet recommended, but found the building razed (our Lonely Planet is two years old). So instead, after checking in to our conference, we headed up the street to Town, a local-organic restaurant where we felt very at home. B had an entree salad, and I had a tasty sandwich with beets, mozzarella, and arugula, and it came with very good french fries that were served with fried sage on top.
After B's talk, we walked through the campus of the much bigger University of Hawaii at Manoa, cooled off at Lonely Planet's favorite coffee shop (Glazers), and then went to Imanas Tei for dinner. The dinner was fantastic — not too expensive and absolutely our best quality-to-price ratio. We each ordered the "Nigiri A": after miso and salad, we were treated to a platter of two kinds of tuna, salmon, various white fish, and roe and sea urchin (the waiter says that if we want it served in its shell, we're better off looking near the urchin farms in California).
Sunday: Museums, dim sum, and take-out
For our last full day in Honolulu, we took the bus to Bishop Museum (an ok anthropology museum, but at $15 for students, not worth admissions), and then walked to China Town, where we had absolutely fantastic dim sum at Legend Vegetarian. If you go to Honolulu, you simply must go to Legend (they also have a seafood restaurant next door). Don't order from the menu (we started with a broccoli and mushroom stir fry and lemon chicken, which were good but not "best ever") — simply eat everything in the dim sum cart.
From there, we walked to Honolulu Academy of Arts, which is a nice art museum. The elegant building is laid out into thirty numbered "galleries", each of which tries to collapse a humongous amount of art history ("Italian Renaissance", "Korea") into one room. If you, like us, have been to many European and Euro-American museums, feel free to skip the first ten rooms: they're nice, but the museum has the requisite one Picasso, one Cezanne, one Goya, one Matisse, and you won't find anything you haven't seen (or seen better than). But if you, like us, have confined most of your art museums to Europe, then I highly recommend you check out the second two thirds of the museum. The style of one-room-per-topic is continued, so this is not a complete exposure to, say, Chinese art history. But there are pieces and styles that we'd never seen, from countries that aren't usually featured: nineteenth-century cartoon/comic style art from Japan, a wall of Indonesian masks, country-by-country exploration of southeast Asia (organized by pre-European-colonial nation, rather than post-), O'Keeffes from when she tour Hawaii.
Our original plan had been to walk back to China Town, or to find sushi near the Honolulu Academy. But we weren't excited by either prospect, and we weren't hungry enough to eat before it got too dark to walk back to Waikiki. So we returned to the hotel, stopping by a Safeway along the way, and looked up take-out sushi joints, eventually finding Sushi 2 Go. For take-out sushi, it was very good, and we had a lovely dinner just the two of us in our hotel room, with a bottle of Oregon pinot noir (compared to restaurant wine, even the expensive stuff at Safeway is great) and pineapple for dessert. We were pretty tired of eating out, and happy to have a meal just the two of us.
Monday: Flying
I'm finishing this post on the airplane, although I won't be able to post it until I get home tonight. For lunch, we had more takeout sushi, this time from the very serviceable Samurai Sushi and Bento in the Honolulu airport. Dinner will be crackers, brie, and fruit on the airplane, with the airplane quarter-bottle wine. There are worse meals. Here's to cooking at home tomorrow!
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Autumn vegetable and chicken curry stew, served in kabocha squash bowls
Here's a fine fusion dish for a cold autumn day. Find small, round, blemish-free kabocha squash, one per person. Carve off the tops as if you were carving jack-o-lanterns, and remove and discard the seeds. Save the tops (if they are particularly thick, cut off a bit of the flesh for cooking into the stew; sprinkle the inside flesh of the tops with a little apple cider vinegar if you're worried about letting them sit out for a while). Rub some salt into the flesh inside the squashes, wrap the outsides of the squashes with foil, and back upwards of an hour in a medium-temperature oven. You want the flesh to be tender, but the sides to retain their integrity, so check regularly with a fork.
Meanwhile, prepare the stew. Begin by sauteing onions in olive oil with some salt, a bit of ground allspice, and plenty of curry powder. Then add a few sour green apples, chopped up, and some peppers, and any other fall veggies you might happen to have (e.g. the extra squash from the top of the jack-o-lanterns). After sauteing a bit, add some vegetable or chicken stock, or, better, some blended squash soup (we found some in the freezer). (If you have lots of extra winter squash, you can make this soup before making the stew: onions, squash, broth, a little salt, cooked until tender and then pureed.) Bring the stew to a boil, and then stir in some pieces of chicken, to poach. Once the chicken has cooked, taste the stew and adjust the seasoning.
When the flesh of the kabochas is starting to get tender, remove the "bowls" from the oven and fill with the stew while still very hot. The heat from the stew will help cook the insides of the squash even more. Replace the tops and serve.
The point is to eat the soup, and also eat the bowls mixed into the soup from the inside out. We had been intending this for our Hallowe'en dinner, but ended up pushing it to All Saints' Day instead. This stew can go with almost any wine, depending on how cold it is outside.
Monday, November 8, 2010
Grilled lamb burgers sweet potato chips and all the fixings
Having moved from vegetarian to marketarian, we have discovered a new favorite dish: lamb burgers. Mince an onion and saute it in a little fat, and then mix it with ground meat, maybe some minced herbs, and an egg yolk. Actually, don't use an egg yolk: for an extra treat, swap the egg for a dollop of homemade mayonnaise. Then form in to patties, dredge with flour if you like, and fry in the same pan you cooked the onions in, or grill.
Don't have homemade mayonnaise? You should. Our very easy recipe is from the great Julia Child: in the food processor, mix one egg plus two yolks, a heaping teaspoon of prepared mustard, a little salt, and a tablespoon of acid, for about thirty seconds. Then, with the machine running, slowly drizzle in between one and two cups oil (use a good oil, but it's fine to mix: I usually combine olive and peanut oils).
Our always side with burgers are sweet potatoes, in some sort of fry/chip form. Slice some sweet potatoes, one large or two small per person, and toss with olive oil, salt, paprika, and cumin. Then bake or grill them. Grilled sweet potatoes are lovely, and give you a chance to warm up the grill before cooking the meat.
For fixings, open some jars of homemade pickles and ketchup. For a quick dill pickle, clean some jars, and add a clove or two of garlic, cleaned sliced cucumber (be sure to remove the area right next to the flower, as it contains enzymes that make the pickle lose its crispness), and a tablespoon or so of dill seed, mustard seed, black pepper, and maybe a bay leaf or some fennel seed. Combine equal parts water and distilled vinegar, and maybe a third as much non-iodized salt (the iodine can throw off the pickling), over the stove until bubbling and the salt has dissolved. Pour the hot brine over the cucumbers, and either seal the jars in the canner or keep in the refrigerator. If you prefer sweet pickles, add plenty of sugar to the brine, and instead of garlic and dill use sliced onion and some whole cloves (keep the mustard). Ketchup is a bit more involved: cook tomatoes, onions, and a bell pepper with a bag of whole spices (allspice, celery seed, etc.); drain; puree; add vinegar, sugar, salt, paprika; cook until the correct consistency.
Slice up some cheese, a garden tomato, and some red onion. We usually make our own burger buns (your favorite whole wheat dough works well), but this time we had an "herb slab" from Acme Bread. Serve burgers with a hearty red wine on the sweeter side.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Leek pie with seared ahi
We found some pie dough that we had stuck away at the back of the freezer, and defrosted it overnight in the fridge. For a leek pie, clean and slice a few leeks and saute them in some butter, salt, and thyme. Heap the leeks onto a pie or pastry crust, fold up the sides, and bake until the crust is golden. Leek pie goes well with almost anything; we paired it with seared ahi tuna and a pinot gris.
Various veggies and couscous pilaf
For a "what's in the fridge" dinner, had: sauteed green beans; steamed spinach; a saute of sweet peppers, onions, and Tokyo turnips; and couscous cooked with raisins and a little red wine.
Composed salad with homemade bread
Rather than making our usual salad, we followed a recipe from Chez Panisse Vegetables, which asked for us to stew onions with wine, oil, slices of lemon, and fresh herbs/spices (whole garlic cloves, bay leaves, pepper corns), and then to add cauliflower florets. The cauliflower is cooked on heat only until it's just starting to turn tender, but then the stew is allowed to cool and refrigerated overnight before serving. We served the cooked lemon slices as garnish on the salad, and for the rest of the salad we included stewed beets, canned whole sardines, and green beans blanched in the onion stewing liquid.
We also made a whole wheat baguette, and set out butter and a wonderful Italian goat cheese that our friend M had given us.
Pork chops, roasted carrots with fennel, and caramelized radishes
Radishes are a bit of a pain, because they are very tasty individually, but you never really want more than one. B sliced a bunch of radishes thin and sauteed them with onions, red wine, and brown sugar to caramelize them.
The roasted carrot recipe came from Cook's Illustrated (November & December 2010). A close paraphrase: "Adjust oven ract to middle position and heat oven to 425 degrees. In large bowl, combine 1 pound carrots (peeled, halved crosswise, and cut lengthwise if necessary to create even pieces), 1 small fennel bulb (cored and sliced ½ inch thick), 2 tablspoons unsalted butter (melted), ½ teaspoon salt, and ¼ teaspoon pepper; toss to coat. Transfer carrots to foil- or parchment-lined rimmed baking sheet and spread in a single layer. Cover baking sheet tightly with foil and cook for 15 minutes. Remove foil and continue to cook, stirring twice, until carrots are well browned and tender, 30 to 35 minutes. Transfer to a serving platted, and toss vegetables with ¼ cup toasted sliced almonds, 1 teaspoon lemon juice, and, optionally, 2 teaspoons chopped fresh parsley."
While the carrots were in the oven, B roasted the pork chops under the broiler. Before serving, he coated them with more chopped almonds.
Picnic before Much Ado About Nothing
Dinner picnics are a wonderful treat, and live theater is another. The California Shakespeare Theater encourages you to do both, by surrounding the outdoor stage with beautiful hills and a lovely picnic ground. We have seen two shows with CalShakes, and were unimpressed with their Twelfth Night last year, but this summer's Much Ado About Nothing was wonderful.
For dinner, B made a seeded baguette, which we had with Fromager d'Affinois and radishes. I made a light entre salad: blanched green beans, carrots, Oregonzola, fantastic heirloom tomatoes, and a shallot dressing.
Almost always, you should serve red wine at a picnic, even if you are serving food you might pair with white at home — the temperature starts to drop as you are finishing your meal. The CalShakes theater is happy to let you bring drinks in (they sell wine, coffee, and hot chocolate), so bring a half-bottle of something sweet for the show.
Quinoa and hippie saute
On an unplanned night, B threw together a wonderful "what's in the fridge?" dinner. Over a bed of black quinoa, he served a saute of onions, beet greens, tomatoes, ground lamb, spices, and the odds and ends of the vegetable drawer. The dinner was odd but delicious.
Moussaka
We love moussaka, that wonderful Greek casserole of eggplant, tomatoes, and ground lamb. But I do not recommend the recipe from Joy of Cooking. It does not taste particularly Greek — it just tastes like Joy. Gruyere as the only cheese? Currants?
Stuffed delicata
Wash, remove the tips from, halve, and scoop out the seeds from two delicata squash. Rub some salt inside the squash, place the squash halves face-down in an oiled glass pan, and bake ten to minutes. Meanwhile, in a food processor combine onion, apples, walnuts, mushrooms, and a little salt and oil, until coarsely chopped. (If the onion is particularly piquant or the mushrooms a little touch, saute them first.) Remove the squash from the oven, turn upright, and stuff with the onion-and-walnut mixture. Sprinkle grated cheese on top, and return to the oven for half an hour.
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