Category Archives: food

Needs no translation…

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Sign seen in the restaurant last night:

MENO INTERNET
PIU CABERNET
ANONIMO
(SCRITTO SU UN MURO)

I’d trade a bit less internet for a bit more cabernet indeed!

And the restaurant? La Piola Sabauda: vino e cucina del piemonte dal 1966. It’s heartwarmingly authentic with an incredible wine list of Italian wines. One of the most unusual (and good!) meals we’ve ever had–but it was tricky. We had three of the only four items on the menu that have no mammal meat (cows, pigs, lambs, rabbits, etc.). This is definitely a restaurant for meat-eaters.

Hoi An – the Red Bridge Cooking School

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I don’t know how I let myself get talked into signing up for Vietnamese cooking lessons, but I did. And I’m glad of it. The cooking school is run out of this charming restaurant in the old town of Hoi An.

Here, we met our guide for the evening, who (as it turns out) would also be our instructor once we arrived at the cooking school. The school was the highlight of a journey that included a guided tour of the market and a delightful boat ride up the Thu Bon River.

The market building in the old city of Hoi An is a two-block-long structure filled with small shops containing merchandise of every description, overflowing into narrow aisles and piled high above our heads. We learned how to tell good vegetable peelers and carrot-rose makers from bad ones, and how long a container of freshly grated coconut is good for (answer below).

The answer is: two days. On the first day, the liquid around the grated coconut is clear. The coconut is good. On the second day, the liquid turns milky, and the coconut is still good. On the third day, the liquid becomes yellowish. Don’t buy that one!

After the market tour — no, we did not buy a vegetable peeler, a carrot-rose maker, or any shredded coconut — we hustled to the waterfront.

The cooking school, it turned out, was not at the old-town restaurant but rather at a place significantly up river. Wonderful! A ride on our very own boat to our very own cooking lesson, followed by dinner.

The boat dropped us off at a private dock. The building and grounds of the Red Bridge Cooking School were lovely. (And yes, there was indeed a red bridge!) After a welcoming drink on the terrace and a tour of the extensive herb garden, it was off to school!

Dan and I each had our own burner, and we worked separately, but side by side. Our instructor was very encouraging and helpful. We made rice pancakes. Using them, we made vegetarian spring rolls. Later, we used the rice pancake dough, cooked thin, and cut it to make rice noodles, which became the basis of another delicious course. There was also a chicken dish somewhere in there. And something involving shrimp and squid. Then, it was off to the terrace-restaurant for a final course of fish — a surprise dish that we were too full to do more than taste a bit of.

It was all delicious!

Beware of Greeks offering dinner

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Today we arrived in Chania, Crete, a delightful town with a great harbor and a old city. We are staying in the waterfront Porto Venezia Hotel. Having arrived at around noon, we asked for restaurant recommendations for lunch and dinner, and the friendly people at the front desk were happy to oblige. They helped us make a reservation at Ta Neoria restaurant for dinner, and recommended several less formal places for lunch.

By the time we unpacked and started out, exploring as we went, we ended up at the recommended Throubi restaurant for a late lunch at around 2 p.m. This, it turned out, was a meat restaurant; and we do not eat mammals. This limited the menu for us, but there were still plenty of choices. And, as usual, we ordered too much. Somehow, it took forever for the waiter to come take our order. More forever for the food to arrive. (And it was very good!) We each ordered a serving of wine (white for Dan, retsina for me), which turned out to be about a pint each; and after we finished eating, it took a while to find the waiter to ask for the check. And when we finally did–

Out came the gratis dessert. And a small but ice cold bottle of raki.

By about 5 p.m., we’d managed to finish lunch and pay the bill.

Back at the hotel, completely full from lunch, it seemed clear that our 7 p.m. reservation for dinner was too early, and we changed it to 8 p.m. We are beginning to understand why Greeks have late dinners.

We went to the excellent Ta Neoria for dinner, a seafood restaurant right on the harbor. Service was attentive, and the menu, extensive. Once again, we ordered too much food (octopus, Cretan salad, which is kind of like Greek salad, only more so–and more of it, and swordfish). We did the best we could with it, considering the huge lunch, and were considering asking for the check, when they came with the gratis dessert. All three complimentary desserts. And a complimentary bottle of raki.

Which was excellent.

Naturally, we had to drink it.

And we managed to make it back to the hotel just before 11 p.m.

In summary, then, kind readers, I pretty much have to say that today in Crete, what we did was: we had lunch and dinner. And it took all day.

And it was very, very good.

Help! I’m trapped in the kitchen!

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I think this may be the penance I have to pay for escaping on a vacation to Spain during harvest season.

It all started innocently enough with a five-cent wine sale at our local big-box alcoholic-beverage store. Buy one bottle of certain specific wines, and you can get a second bottle for five cents. Now, as anyone who knows me will tell you, I am not one to turn away from a bargain easily. And besides, since we were preparing for our trip to Spain at the time, I had a hankering for a good Rioja. But how could I know if this particular Rioja that was on sale would be any good? Never fear, they told me. If you don’t like the wine, just bring back the unopened second bottle, and we’ll refund half your money.

This seemed like a good deal. We bought the wine.

It was pretty bad.

So we returned the second bottle, got half our money back, and were left with an almost-full bottle of wine in our refrigerator that no one wanted to drink, but we were too conscious of waste to throw out. “Never mind,” I told Dan. “I’ll use it to make coq au vin.” This traditional French recipe calls for a bottle of red wine to cook the chicken in, and it doesn’t have to be your best wine. Your leftover undrinkable Rioja will do just fine.

A little bit of research–this was tricky–led to a couple of recipes for coq au vin that did not call for pork parts. It also led to some pretty interesting ideas for side dishes: a hash of Brussels sprouts and leeks, and something delicious-looking called “smashed potatoes.” I needed leeks anyway for the chicken recipe, so I bought a couple more, along with some potatoes and Brussels sprouts, and now I was committed.

Only problem was that our garden was producing tomatoes about as fast as dandelions shoot seeds; there were more cucumbers hiding under the cucumber leaves than we had thought possible; several fat zucchini were working up the bulk for sumo wrestling, and our delicate purple-flowered eggplant plants had finally set fruit.

The refrigerator was beginning to resemble a hoarder’s closet. And I’m not sure I can escape.

I made coq au vin from a whole bird–meadow-raised and purchased at our farmers market from Rossotti Ranch. This was quite good but impossible to finish before we went away, so into the freezer it went. I made Brussels sprouts hash and smashed potatoes–both a bit of a disappointment, and into the freezer went these leftovers too. I made ratatouille, which had to be finished, and seemed to call for brown rice; and I made endless helpings of cucumber salad and cucumbers with yogurt,and tomato salad.

And no, I may never get out of the kitchen.

Gazpacho

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I have become interested in gazpacho lately. Partly, this is because we enjoyed some wonderful gazpacho while traveling in Spain recently. But more urgently, this interest arises from the overwhelming quantity of tomatoes we are harvesting each day from our garden.

Here’s what I have learned about gazpacho recipes.

They can be divided into those that use canned or jarred tomato juice or equivalent, and those that don’t. In my mind, the ones using canned tomato juice can be ignored. It’s not that it’s cheating (though it probably is), but rather that the whole beauty of gazpacho lies in the garden-fresh goodness of the tomatoes, a trait that’s completely lacking in the canned juice. And you can tell.

Among the remaining recipes, these can be divided into those that use bread in some form as a thickening agent, and those that don’t. There are reputable advocates on both sides of this divide, but I side with those who do not use bread. I am a tomato purist.

Among the recipes still remaining, there are those that call for the whole soup to be pureed to a silky smoothness, and those that prefer chunks. The gazpachos we enjoyed in Spain recently were the pureed type, and quite delicious. On the other hand, in the past we have also enjoyed very chunky gazpachos in both Spain and Portugal on a past trip to different regions. I like to have it both ways: noticeable chunks in an otherwise smooth soup.

After all this research, I ended up with five not-quite-right-for-me recipes from the Internet. I used features of all five, and what follows here is my own recipe. It came out with perfect all-tomato, no-bread, smooth-yet-also-chunky goodness. I hope you enjoy it, but be warned: Use the very best fresh, local tomatoes you can find. The better the tomatoes, the better the soup.

Ginger’s Own Summer Gazpacho

4 servings

Ingredients

  • 1 English cucumber, peeled, seeded
  • ½ large red bell pepper, stemmed, seeded
  • 1 small hot red pepper (such as cayenne), minced (optional)
  • 2 garlic cloves, minced
  • 2 – 2 ½ pounds very ripe red tomatoes, peeled
  • ½ large onion, chopped (chop about 1/3 of this coarsely, the rest finer)
  • 2 Tbsp (or more) sherry or red wine vinegar
  • Salt and pepper, to taste
  • 3 Tbsp olive oil, more or less
  • Quartered cherry tomatoes (optional), chopped chives and basil (for serving)

Preparation

Cut 2-3″ of the cucumber into ¼” pieces and set aside; coarsely chop remaining cucumber and place in a large bowl. Cut one-quarter of the bell pepper into ¼” pieces and set aside; coarsely chop remaining bell pepper and add to bowl with chopped cucumber. Chop one-quarter of the onion into small pieces (1/8”) and set aside; coarsely chop the rest and add to the large bowl with the cucumbers and peppers.

Cut the tomatoes into four or six wedges and seed them over a strainer set above a bowl to catch the liquid. Squeeze liquid out of the seeds.

Transfer about ¾ of the tomatoes and all of the juice to a blender. Add about ¾ of the cucumber mixture. Add garlic, hot peppers, vinegar, salt, and oil; and purée on medium speed until smooth. Adjust seasonings with salt and vinegar, if desired. Add the rest of the tomatoes and the cucumber mixture from the large bowl, and puree only briefly so that coarse pieces still remain. Add the pieces that have been set aside. Transfer to a large bowl or pitcher and chill at least an hour; overnight is better.

Divide gazpacho among bowls. Top with cherry tomatoes if you use them, chives, and basil.

Aunt Shirley’s Apple Cake

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My mom’s sister Shirley was an intense personality worthy of an entire blog post all by herself. Probably more than one. But I want to focus here on one small memorable thing about her: she made the best apple cake I’ve ever eaten. I’m sure many of my cousins remember, as I do, her gifts of apple cake wrapped in foil direct from her freezer, where she always seemed to have a supply. 

Aunt Shirley passed away many years ago, but her apple cake lives on. And now that Dan and I have an apple tree of our own, Aunt Shirley’s apple cake has become a necessity in our lives. We make batches and batches of it in the fall. It freezes well and lasts into the following spring.

Coincidentally, I have unearthed considerable archaeological history of this cake, including facts that may be unknown to our family until now. The recipe, or its nearly identical antecedent, reappeared in my life shortly after Aunt Shirley let me copy hers. It came to me on the Usenet newsgroup rec.food.cooking in 1988 and credits “an old issue of Gourmet magazine.” The magazine article credited a Mr. John Kram, who owned a bakery in East Baltimore in the 1930s. This rings true to me: Shirley grew up in East Baltimore and might have still been living there in the ’30s. Shirley, however, called her recipe “Helen’s Apple Cake.” I don’t know who Helen is. I have also seen a version of this cake called “Jewish Apple Cake”; the Jewish Museum of Maryland may have published a version.

Without more ado, but with relevant commentary where I have made modifications, here is:

Aunt Shirley’s Apple Cake

This makes three bread pans’ worth of apple cake, and I get 8 to 9 slices per pan.

Ingredients

about 10 apples (Note 1)
2 tsp cinnamon
3 Tbsp sugar

3 C unsifted flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

4 unbeaten eggs
2 C sugar (Note 2)
1 C cooking oil
1/2 C orange juice (Note 2)
1 Tbsp vanilla (Note 2)

Preparation

Prepare the apples:

Core and peel the apples, and slice into wedges no more than about 1/4″ thick. Mix with the cinnamon and 3 Tbsp of sugar.

Make the batter:

In a medium bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, and salt. (Note 3)

In the bowl of your mixer, beat the eggs, sugar, oil, orange juice, and vanilla all together. (If you haven’t already done so, now would be the time to grease and flour the baking pans.) Then add the dry ingredients to the mixer bowl, and mix just enough to blend thoroughly.

Assemble the cake:

Pour about 1/6 of the batter into the bottom of each of the 3 greased-and-floured pans, using about 1/2 of the batter in all. Layer in apple slices vertically as tightly as you can. Pour another layer of batter over the apple slices, and end with another layer of apples wedged in tightly.

Bake at 350 degrees for 1-1/2 hours (90 minutes), or until a cake tester comes out dry. (Note 4)

Wrap in foil and freeze the whole cake (as Aunt Shirley did), or cut into 8 or 9 slices, wrap each slice individually in wax paper, and freeze in a zipper freezer bag (as Dan and I do). Or eat it all up without freezing–it will keep about a week in the fridge.

Notes

(1) In the history of this cake, there has been some disagreement about the number of apples. John used 5 cups, about 1-3/4 pounds. Helen used 6 apples. Aunt Shirley said to use much more than Helen did. Dan and I are on Shirley’s side on this. Cram them in. It just gets better.

(2) Shirley and Helen used 2-1/2 cups of sugar, but I find this much too sweet. I side with John on the sugar; 2 cups is plenty. Shirley and Helen used 1/3 cup of orange juice, but John used 1/2 cup. I’ve tried them both; either works fine. As for the vanilla, John used only 2 tsp; Shirley and Helen increased this to 2-1/2 tsp. I am a vanilla extremist, so I use 3 tsp (1 Tbsp).

(3) There is a strong divide when it comes to process. The article in Gourmet magazine alleges that John went through an elaborate procedure worthy of the magazine’s title, specifying what went in first, second, third, and so on. Shirley and Helen, on the other hand, just said, “Beat all together until smooth.” I’ve tried this a number of ways, and I’m generally in the Shirley camp. However, I’ve noticed that in the presence of the orange juice, the baking powder starts activating. So I like to wait to add the dry ingredients until everything else is ready and the cake can be assembled.

(4) John used a tube pan and baked the cake for only 50 minutes to an hour. Helen baked the cake for an hour and a half, but I don’t know what kind of pan(s) she used. Shirley baked the cake for 1-3/4 hours. Maybe my oven is different from hers, but I find that 1-1/2 hours works perfectly for me, every time.

Dinner at The Atlantic Inn

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This Sunday Dan and I finally got around to our celebratory thirtieth-anniversary dinner. We were about three weeks late, but we have a long tradition of being late in celebrating our anniversary. This is because we have a long tradition of not being in the same city on our anniversary. Heck, there were times we weren’t even on the same continent. So we’ve gotten used to a certain degree of freedom when it comes to important celebrations, preferring to fix them in space rather than in time.

In this case, we decided to return to The Atlantic Inn on Block Island. This decision was a blend of nostalgia and a really tempting new menu. The nostalgia part dates to the early years of our marriage: The Atlantic Inn was where we stayed on the island before our house was built. The inn’s porch is still one of our favorite places for a drink because of its stunning views over the rooftops of the town and over the harbor to the long sweeping curve of the northern neck of the island and out to sea.

But the restaurant is a different story. At some point the menu switched from a la carte to a multiple-course prix-fixe-only menu with disappointingly few choices for pescatarians like us. On the few occasions when we ate out on the island, we always ended up going somewhere else. But now the menu had changed. A-la-carte options had returned, and lots of them. The menu sounded wonderful.

I wish The Atlantic Inn would get around to posting a current menu on its Web site. But they haven’t yet. I actually considered scanning the entire menu and posting it here because it ought to be posted *somewhere*. But this is not the right place. Are you listening, Atlantic Inn Webmaster?

I will, however, post the menu items and descriptions of what we had.

First, I do have to say that I told them it was our anniversary dinner. I did this so that we could get our favorite table, the one in the corner at the far end of the room overlooking the sunset, the harbor, and the sea. And they were happy to oblige us in this. But we weren’t expecting the complimentary celebratory glass of champagne. This is a class act!

We also weren’t expecting the amuse-bouche of a tiny glass of powerfully delicious gaspacho with a lime froth.

Here’s what we were expecting, and ate with pleasure:

Appetizers

Frisee aux Lardon (sans Lardon)

Baby frisee, slow-poached Blazing Star Farm egg, housemade pancetta lardons (omitted for us), grapefruit and truffle vinaigrette

White Tuna Sashimi Tasting

“Sea essence”, citrus-galangal pearls, ikura, dashi-hijiki, served with prawn crackers

Entrees

Spring Bounty

Polenta cake, wild mushrooms, spring peas, fiddlehead ferns, Fontina Val d’Aosta, garlic essence and baby greens

Halibut Cheeks

Lightly seared, garlic bagna cauda, escargots, English peas, fiddleheads and wild mushrooms

(Note: These two items sound similar but in fact were quite different, and both delicious.)

Dessert

Lemon-Chamomile Pound Cake

Fresh blueberries, lemon curd sauce and honeyed creme fraiche

When you’re celebrating your thirtieth anniversary at a restaurant that has been a recipient of the Wine Spectator‘s Award of Excellence for the last nine years running, how can you not splurge on the wine? We selected a Far Niente 2005 Chardonnay. The wine was as wonderful as the meal.

Our heartfelt and full-bellied congratulations to newly promoted Executive Chef Aaron Wisniewski and to pastry chef Linda Rondinone for an evening we’ll remember for a long, long time.

Ginger’s Cranberry Margarita

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This started out as my friend’s friend’s best-ever recipe for a cosmopolitan. And it was a good enough cosmo, except that I’m not really a great fan of vodka.

“This might be better with rum,” I suggested.

But there was no rum in the house. It was, after all, a second home, and the liquor closet was only half stocked.

“Brandy?” I persisted. “Cognac? How about tequila?”

It turned out they had a surprisingly good tequila. Now, I am (she said modestly) a master of the true margarita. And thus was born Ginger’s cranberry margarita. The drink for which everyone was willing to abandon their cosmos.

—

Ginger’s Cranberry Margarita (recipe makes two drinks)

Mix the following:

  • Juice of one lime
  • 2 jiggers of cranberry cocktail (added sweetener is okay, but not the cranberry-apple stuff. Try to avoid high-fructose corn syrup or indeed any corn products in anything you eat or drink.)
  • 2 jiggers of triple sec or cointreau or one of each (add more if you have a particularly juicy lime or a drinker with a particularly sweet tooth; this is your main sweetener in this drink)
  • 3 jiggers of reposada tequila (never, NEVER use anything less than “100% de agave” tequila for anything where tequila is the main ingredient. Certainly not for any margarita)

Stir. Check for balance. Pour into two margarita or martini or, hey, even wine glasses. Add ice to bring the liquid level to the top of the glass.

If you want to be fancy, decorate with a thin slice of lime on the glass.

Enjoy!

mmm — Milliways

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It doesn’t happen very often that Dan and I dine in a restaurant so extraordinary that we are put in mind of Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe. (For those of you who don’t already know about Milliways, the best short description of it can probably be found here; scroll down to ‘M’.)

But tonight, we were very, very close.

The name of the restaurant is Tidal Raves, in Depoe Bay, Oregon. Okay, so we didn’t deposit a penny a million billion years ago to pay for the meal, but even with wine and a martini, dinner for two came to less than a hundred dollars. The service was outstanding. The food (fresh wild coho salmon with dungeoness crab risotto; wild Pacific snapper with smoked salmon potato cake; summer vegetables; salad with berries and shrimp) was superb. And the view…

Well, that’s what makes Milliways Milliways, isn’t it?

We sat at a corner table by the windows and looked out over the Pacific ocean as the evening descended.

depoe-bay-tidal-raves-view-from-window

And there were grey whales breaching in the waters just outside. It just doesn’t get any better than this.

Cruelty to Animals

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I try, I really do, but for the life of me, I cannot understand how some of the people I know who make the biggest protestations about loving animals and hating to see them suffer can eat meat. And not just any meat, but the meat processed in industrial slaughterhouses, where the animals are kept in small pens as they wait for their turn to become a raw material. Where, my friends, do you think that chicken parmesan comes from? That juicy hamburger? That sanitized styrofoam tray of meat in the supermarket?

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying people shouldn’t eat meat. But in this country we vote with our money. Let’s eat the meat from farms where we know that the animals are treated humanely and live in a way fairly normal for their species up until when they die for our steak dinner. Or let’s not hear any more of your whining about the “poor animals”.

Wendell Berry said it better than I can:

“Eating with the fullest pleasure–pleasure, that is, that does not depend on ignorance–is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world. In this pleasure we experience and celebrate our dependence and our gratitude, for we are living from mystery, from creatures we did not make and powers we cannot comprehend.”