drool worthy

I have a dark and shameful past. A period of my former life in which I could barely make rice in the electric rice cooker, consistently turned out rubbery tough scrambled eggs for Sunday's breakfast, and served guests frozen meals from a box and called it my own homecooking. This latter practice, however shameful and unspeakable it may be now, actually helped me to throw some of my most successful dinner parties. The first of Mr.S's birthdays that we celebrated together, I pulled one over on him with one of my slaved-over-a-hot-stove "home cooked" meal.

The menu consisted of braised lamb shanks in a rosemary-mint sauce, oat blinis with creme fraiche, and roasted root vegetables. I don't know if Mr.S fell for me that night or for the lamb, but he decided to stick around.
Luckily for him, I learned how to cook. Eventually I revealed my secret to him years later, that my fork-tender lamb shanks were actually store bought, precooked and frozen, from Costco.

These lamb shanks are some of the most delicious and succulent pieces I've ever had because they truly taste like they've been cooking away for hours. The meat is rich and tender, without the least bit of game, falling off the bone as you gently pry your fork into it.
The sauce is like a thickened au jus, sweet and intense, flavored with rosemary. I can never really fully taste the mint, but it's there, a soft nuance to balance out the richness of the sauce. After you pull away the meat, the invitingly attractive bone implores you to gnaw away at it; it's difficult not to give in.


These lamb shanks are made by a company called Cuisine Solutions, which specializes in a method of cooking called sous-vide.
In recent years, it's become a term more popularized thanks to shows like Top Chef and actual top chefs like Thomas Keller, Wylie Dufresne, and Ferran Adrià. Essentially, it's a purely scientific approach to cooking. Based on the molecular makeup of the food to be cooked, a combination of heat, timing, and cooling is used. All this, and a hermetically-sealed plastic pouch. The food is sealed in such a package, and cooks for hours, sometimes even a day, over the lowest heat possible, basically in its own juices. This is achieved by heating the pouch in a temperature-controlled water bath, then cooling it gradually. Accordingly, the flavors remain concentrated. They completely saturate the food, usually a protein, which maintains its structural integrity and keeps nice and tender because it retains all of its original juices.

Reheating is a breeze. For smaller servings, I heat up a large pot of water over medium-low heat and simply place the pouch, frozen, into the water. It will gradually heat up over 10-15 minutes or so. This is like a mock sous-vide setup in your home kitchen. Because of the low heat, the meat will heat up evenly and not seize up. For larger batches, say 3 or more large pouches (for a group of guests), I unwrap the frozen meat from the pouches, place them in a shallow pan, and bake at 375 degrees for 45 minutes or so. The lamb will form a nice crust from the dry heat, and the sauce will reduce down a bit.

You'd never expect a frozen meal to be much palatable, let alone mouth watering. But I've certainly discovered one that is all this and quite versatile. I usually always have a box of these sitting in my freezer on hand, ready for surprise guest visits, a quick weeknight dinner for Mr.S and me, or an upscale meal for myself and a group of discerning dinner companions.

Cuisine Solutions lamb shanks are available at Costco, Wegman's, and online through Peapod.

to market! to market!

I worked the farmer's market in Dupont Circle this past Sunday. Within seconds of stepping off the metro escalator, I was sticky and sweaty, but nonetheless excited to meet up with my friends from Atwater's (my old employer) to work our stand at the market. Lord knows how I made it through the almost 6 hours of working in the heat! (One of the girls working in the stand next to us actually fainted from heat stroke.)

Well, bread is one of those foods that holds up pretty well in hot, sticky weather (it did just come out of a 500 degree oven hours earlier); but chocolate chip pastries were a whole different story... Atwater's is the only vendor at Dupont that sells handmade artisanal breads, cookies, cakes, and our famous scones and granola. And so, no surprise that the lines to buy one of our breakfast pastries or a loaf of rustic sourdough were tortuously long.

our storefront

Atwater's breads have really made a name for itself, dense and chewy with a crisp crumb and well-developed gluten. We sold hundreds of loaves, maybe even a thousand or more. People, in general, just LOVE BREAD. Especially when they are beckoning golden loaves like these, whispering promises of wheaty, starchy innards, the perfect remedy to that Sunday morning hangover.

One of our bestsellers- sunflower flax seed bread

raisin walnut sourdough, another goodie

One of my all-time go-to's: the San Francisco sourdough, literally the best I've tasted anywhere in the country, as of yet.

We also sold a few types of our pastries and sweets. I set up this table; kind of looks like the display just threw up a ton of sweets, doesn't it... (I was going for the whole cornucopia look)

cookies, granola, scones, pound cake, tea cakes, brownies and streusel bars

These little loaves are Atwater's famous scones- filled with golden raisins, dried cherries, and sometimes currants. They flew out of the case; we were sold out by 10:30am. Proof that people love buttery things.

Of course then, there's the produce at a farmer's market. Summer's colors were just screaming to be taken home, in all sorts of incarnations- succulent peaches, brightly hued berries, firm summer squashes, deep leafy greens still with a hint of frost...

golden currants- super sweet little jewels that pop in your mouth

these fat little fingers of carrots were hard to walk by without admiring

There were vendors who also sold prepared foods, like made to order crabcakes and chilled gazpacho. Also quite a few dairies whose poor cheeses and yogurts were sweating and melting under the heat. But that didn't stop me from sampling... I discovered a delicious handmade sheep's milk cheese called Stony Man from Everona Dairy (Rapidan, VA). It was similar to a Manchego, very dense, buttery and salty, with a surprisingly sweet aftertaste.

the Piedmont cheese with add-ins: cracked black pepper, sun-dried tomato, and a beautifully-layered vegetable ash

plain Piedmont- very nutty and tangy

Also found these gorgeous, sweet, red onions. The woman who these belonged to (who was quite protective of her purchase, naturally) told me how wonderfully sweet and mild these are. She went on to extol their many virtues; and I seem to have forgotten their name... If anyone knows, please help me out!

Working a farmer's market is completely different from shopping at one. You really get a sense of the commaraderie that connects the vendors and producers, the sense of a shared purpose, and a sweet justification that all your labors and love of the land have really paid off. I went home with an eco-friendly (anything less would have gotten me deathly stares here) sack of goods, some purchased, some traded for loaves of bread: homemade cherry pie, peaches and pluots, a bunch of lemon basil, a jar of local honey, maple yogurt, a loaf of cranberry-pecan sourdough, a quart of chunky gazpacho, fruit and nut granola, and some baby watercress and arugula.

Next stop: the farmer's market at the Ferry Building in SF!

ninja express sushi

Brillat-Savarin once said "Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are." Well if this is true, then I should be a 5'2" walking slab of raw fish. I've been eating a lot of carry-out sashimi and sushi lately. If anything, this new diet has only increased my craving for the raw stuff, not quell it.


My sushi supplier is currently at the top of my all-time-favorite people list. Soft-spoken and kind, he believes in high quality ingredients. No, this is not an upscale Japanese restaurant, but a small "sushi corner" located in the prepared foods area of Lotte supermarket. The small venue is called Ninja Sushi. Operated at most by 2 chefs at a time, the small 3-seater restaurant is easy to miss. There's an easy to follow order-by-picture menu posted above the wall, but since the chef is so accomodating, he can usually make whatever you want, depending on the availability of his ingredients, of course.

We ordered carryout last week for dinner- the 18 piece sashimi entree ($14.99) with salmon, tuna, and white tuna (escolar).

We were happily surprised to find not 18, but 25 glistening pieces of sashimi in our box! The chef had thrown in a few extra slices of salmon and hamachi, and seaweed salad. The rolls are standard fare, but very good, and again, he doesn't skimp on the ingredients. (My mom always orders a special warm and crispy salmon skin roll.)

My favorite is the white tuna sashimi, though that is a misnomer, since the fish is actually escolar. It is extremely buttery, yet clean tasting, supple and soft on the palate.

Interestingly, escolar has been banned in Japan since 1977 because in some individuals, it has been known to cause bad digestive issues and diarrhea. There's a high level of wax esters in escolar flesh, very much like Olean (in fat free Pringles) that just passes right through you. In some people though, it can cause some transient, but nonetheless, nasty GI issues. Luckily, not me!

There's no website for Ninja Sushi, but I have posted their menu here. (click on the image below)

toro!

An interesting little side article in the Wall Street Journal today- the average price of two pieces of toro sushi around the world. In case you've been living in seclusion somewhere and have no idea what toro is, first let me preface the description by mentioning that toro means "to melt" in Japanese. And that is precisely what this cut of meat aims to do, in your mouth. Toro refers to the fatty belly portion from the bluefin tuna. Depending on the degree of fat marbling through the flesh, sushi chefs will grade toro into 2 categories: chu-toro and o-toro.

Chu-toro is only moderately fatty, and is the more affordable of the fatty cuts of tuna. It is light pink, and the marbling resembles webbing throughout the flesh. O-toro is the fattiest part of the belly, and on a cross-sectional cut, looks almost like a light pink bacon, with it's heavy striped marbling runny along strips of flesh. (Looks like a candy cane.) Because of the highly prized degree of fat, o-toro can really tear a hole in your wallet at good sushi restaurants.

pure fatty delight: o-toro

I've not been fortunate enough to have tasted o-toro, but by the looks of it, I'd have to pay about $20 for 2 pieces in New York. If I jet-setted over to Singapore, I'd have to fork over $35, but the ultimate deal would be dining in Manila, where 2 pieces cost a mere $8! What a steal!

An interesting fact about tuna fat and why, from a physiological standpoint, it's so special. Tuna fat is not at all like the fat on nearly all other fish, which tends to be concentrated only in one area of the body. Instead, tuna fat marbles the whole section of the tuna where it's found. Chu-toro, for instance, is a whole layer of fat-marbled flesh that wraps around the inner musculature of the body, twice. Because of this, tuna have the unique ability to raise their body temperature up to 18 degrees above the temperature of the water around them. And because of this structural quality, toro tastes oh-so-wonderful...

toro image from visualhistory.blogspot.com

longest starbucks order?

On the occasion, I make a Starbuck's run. Today I ran out of milk at home, and didn't feel like drinking any of the usual weak stuff at the office. The one on the way to work was packed this morning with caffeine and sugar-starved souls (me being no exception), I even had trouble finding a parking spot! The lines were long but moved relatively quickly.

The reason I'm rambling on about this is because I'm always self-conscious that my usual drink order runs on the long side. I'm typically not such an eccentric espresso drinker, but honestly, Starbuck's has kind of spoiled me by accomodating all my particular drink needs. I usually always get the same thing: "double, tall, nonfat, extra-hot, wet capuccino." Having worked once as a barista in a coffeeshop, an order like this on a busy morning would have had me steaming at my ears.

Today however, I didn't feel so bad. The woman in front of me literally ordered something to the following effect: "quad, venti, half-caff, one pump sugar-free vanilla, two pumps sugar-free hazelnut, extra-hot, ristretto latte, with half soy, half lowfat organic milk, with two paper cups." Who does that?? Needless to say, I was more than a bit peeved at her custom drink order, but the guys behind the counter surprisingly, remained nonplussed. I'll never know if they got her drink exactly the way she wanted it, but she walked out of the store, drink in hand, with no complaints.

This leads me to the question- what's the longest coffee drink order you've ever heard, given, or received?

image from starbucks.com

soon doo boo jigae

I often get asked the question, what's your favorite type of Asian food? (Or in rare instances, "Oriental food," asked by completely oblivious non-asians...) Anywho, I have to say, I have no answer for this rather complex, yet general, question. I like it all. Put it in front of me, and I will eat it.

I go through my phases of course. Recently, I've been waking up at night with the sushi sweats- longing for a bowl of rice topped with grilled unagi and fresh hamachi. This past winter, I went through a mild obsession with Cantonese-style congees, especially congee with dried scallop and 100-year old egg. My love for Thai and Vietnamese cuisine is everlasting. They all satisfy my cravings in different ways.

On a recent night, we went out for Korean spicy tofu soup. Soon doo-boo jigae. Kind of rolls right off the tongue, doesn't it? Served in a hot earthenware casserole, it's a bubbling brew of spicy stock (pork or seafood), shrimp and oysters, pork, or kimchee, and the soon doo-boo: the deliciously creamy silken tofu. I like mine with an egg cracked on top, left to firm up in the hot soup.

I always forget just how satisfying Korean food is. It's like eating a box of chocolate liquors in one go: intensely intoxicating, heady and bold. Korean food is proof that a good sweat can work wonders to cool down the body. Everytime I leave a Korean barbeque or finish a hot bowl of jigae, I feel as if I've just come out of a bathhouse- calm and sedated, mopping away at my brow.

2941 restaurant

This is the story of an oasis. An oasis within an office building in suburban northern VA. Wherein, a classically trained French chef, who's previously worked with Daniel Boulud, now serves up innovative dishes using seasonal ingredients. I suppose I've lived in the city for too long. I've been under the false impression that any restaurant with valet parking and a thoughtful tasting menu couldn't possible be found in suburbia. I stand corrected.

Despite its odd location, 2941 Restaurant provides a serene and gorgeous backdrop to an upscale dinner experience. Easily a favorite with wedding parties, there are waterfalls, gardens, and koi ponds that help to create nice photo-ops.


We started with a salad of local baby beets, goat cheese, endive and chives. I enjoyed the addition of the chives, both for color and flavor. Beets are one of those foods that really sells itself- deeply rich in colors and earthy sweet.


The next course was a lMaine lobster claw, served two ways- poached, and chopped in a loster cake/nugget. It was served with a long bean and bibb lettuce salad with tamarind-anise vinaigrette. Amazing is really all I can say about this dish. I love long beans; they tend to be used more in home-style cooking and rather underused in restaurants. The lobster meat was sweet and supple.


The main course was a pan-seared halibut filet with braised baby carrots and sugar snap peas (from California), in a light sabayon sauce with morels. The sabayon was wonderful- light as air, and simply melted on your tongue. I've never seen morels paired with fish, but it works beautifully, like a double dose of umami for the tastebuds.


For dessert, a pear-almond cake, with a frangipane base, served with almond cream. The buttery crumb of the cake was delectable. My mom ordered the molten chocolate cake with vanilla bean ice-cream and a dark chocolate tuile. In general, the desserts were less impressive than everything else; they lacked a certain edge and creativity.


We ended our meal with coffee and the house's complimentary serving of citrus beignets, which were glazed (!), light, and just the right size. What I really miss is the ethereally light, cotton candy that 2941 used to serve to all its guests after dinner. Tall, freshly-spun, light blue mounds of fluffy cotton candy used to be a fun and whimsical part of the dining experience here, but not anymore.

2941 is a great special-occasion restaurant (my parents take me here for my birthdays), as well as an escape for a seriously nice lunch or a weekend brunch. The service gets slow on weekends when the place is usually quite busy. Reservations, as well as a jacket for the gents, are highly recommended.

Update: A new pastry chef was brought on in June 2008, and upon inspection of the new dessert menu, it looks to be a much more impressive selection of sweets. However, the cotton candy is still nowhere to be found. Please bring it back!

Note: The menu items from this review are from April 2008, and thus reflect the seasonal selections at that time.

our garden grows

wildflowers budding

I never doubted they would grow. They were just going through a slow phase, I suppose. I was a bit of a worried parent as I tended to my cucumber garden last weekend. The flowers and vines were particularly sparse, and there was just the faintest splattering of mini-gerkin sized cucumbers.

When I went out last night, it was as if life had just exploded overnight. Dense leafy greens, thick and robust stems covered in its protective layer of fuzz, bright yellow flowers, and more cucumbers than I could count. Granted they were only the size of cocktail weiners, but I know what's coming next week- the first big harvest.

I cut down 4 medium to large cukes for dinner. We made a Chinese cucumber salad with fermented black bean sauce. The other dish was a stir-fry of diced cucumber and scrambled eggs. Beyond these uses of cucumbers (in additional to pickling), I'm plain out of ideas. And I anticipate bushels of cukes this summer, most of at which I'll be scratching my head, trying to figure out how to eat them. Any ideas?

jamón' it up

probably the world's costliest pigs, sniffing out a lunch of acorns

Approximately 3.7 million pigs perished or disappeared in the earthquake of Szechuan, China in May. This statistic greatly saddened me, as I realized the agricultural and economic toll it took on villages and farmers (the Chinese are the world's largest consumer of pork). And, honestly, I really adore pigs. They may be loud and may prefer mud over human companionship, but they're noble creatures, and gentle most of the time.

Now let's imagine if this magnitude of loss had happened in Southern Spain, the home of the famed black-footed pigs, that are turned into prized hams- jamón ibérico de bellota. Unlike their American counterparts, who are strictly fed grains and other feed, these Spanish piggies are let free to roam outside, feeding primarily on wild acorns that are indigenous to the region. As a result, their flesh retains a high degree of marbling of fat, attributing to its nutty and meaty flavor. Can you imagine the financial losses?

I had the occasion, not to mention the luck, to taste the rich and fatty cold cut last summer in southwestern Spain. My dad unveiled a small package wrapped in butcher paper, purchased at a local specialty deli. He and I oooed and ahhhed at the thin, streaky slices of meat while my mom took a peek and turned her nose at us, asking "what's the big deal about ham?" More for us. And thus our lunch that day consisted of 8 slices of jamón ibérico de bellota, duck pate, crusty white bread, and some local beers.

The flavor was like nothing I've ever had before, barely even reminiscent of prosciutto di parma. It was deeply nutty, with obvious hints of woody acorns and hazelnuts, very little salt, and a subtle gamey finish. The streaks of fat seemed to melt on my tongue, while the leaner portion was surprisingly toothsome. It was like the first time I tasted Kobe beef or my first bite of fatty toro- divine. And thus is the innate human response to fat. We like it. Dad and I tried to devise plans of sneaking a pound of two back through Customs, but never had the wit or balls to do so.

Never fear, this much sought-after jamón, as of this week, has been approved by the USDA, and is available in the U.S. through a small number of purveyors. At specialty online stores like La Tienda and HotPaella, enthusiasts were allowed in previous weeks to put down a deposit of $150-$199 to reserve their 15-lb full-size hind leg, with the final cost totaling to $1400. That works out to be about $94 per pound. You can also purchase in store, at specialty butcher shops and delis (like Dean and Deluca, but not through their online store) and certain restaurants as well.

Personally, my purse pockets are no where deep enough to support such a diet, but I do recommend everyone to at least have a taste. At the bare minimum, you can say, with confidence, that you've eaten the world's most expensive slice of ham.

Images from jamoniberico.com

rocking horse cafe

A bit of a college reunion this past weekend in New York... we gathered for our good friends' wedding on Long Island. It's not often that you attend a wedding and you know both the bride and groom so well, but we were lucky enough to know both of them and were witness to their relationship through the years. We ate Indian buffet at each meal, danced barefoot, and posed for the obligatory photos. You know, wedding stuff.

A few of us went out to brunch on Sunday at the Rocking Horse Cafe, which came recommended for good nouveau Mexican dishes. Chelsea, on a Sunday morning, was quiet, probably on a break from the night before. The RHC was a welcome haven from the dreariness outside, a colorful haven no less, conjuring up scenes from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. The walls were coated in hot pinks, fuscias, and azure blues- a sure way to jolt awake any sleepy diner before their AM caffeine.

Most of us ordered the prix fixe brunch ($14.95) which consisted of a cocktail/juice, coffee/tea, and your choice of a brunch entree. We were starved after a long morning train ride back from Long Island, and basically tore into the chips and salsa.

The dunkability factor of the salsa was low in comparison to the massive size of the chips; it arrived in a small shallow bowl. I'm a staunch advocate for huge pails of salsa at Mexican restaurants, don't you agree? It was finely pureed, and reminded me of pasta sauce. Anyway, it was good, and I was famished.

I took these pictures really quickly before we ate, since my fellow brunch companions all looked glassy-eyed from hunger.


Migas- scrambled eggs with tortilla chips, chorizo, sauteed zucchini and onion, with roasted tomato salsa. Mmmm, egginess. The egg/tomato combo is one of my favorite flavor duos. I would have preferred for the chips to have been broken up more, and then scrambled INTO the eggs. This was more like an egg and tortilla chip salad, though I still found it delicious.



Huevos Rancheros- a tortilla topped with refried beans, fried egg, chihuahua cheese, with red and green salsas. Look much like the Mexican flag? This thing came smothered; that's what I appreciate about Mexican food- it's really quite indistinguishable what is underneath all that melted cheese and salsa, but after cutting into the amorphous shape, it's (mostly) always flavorful.


Huevos Beneditos- poached eggs on sweet corn cakes with chipotle hollandaise and a side of hash browns. The hollandaise, upon first inspection, reminded me of Velveeta, but it tasted much better. We were a bit dismayed at the portion size here, after just a few bites, Mr.S's plate was clean. The combination of the sweet corn with the rich egginess was great, just not enough to satisfy a hungry bruncher.



"Croque Senor"- chipotle pulled pork sandwich with poblano peppers, avocado, melted cheeses, and a side salad. Most impressive dish of the morning. It definitely required the aid of a fork and knife since it was just plain grande. I suppose the side salad was only there to offset some of caloric value of the sandwich, which was dripping in cheese, pork, and avocado. Not such a bad thing for the tastebuds, but healthnuts may easily call this a heart attack on a plate. I don't particularly participate in this school of thought; bring on the meat!

Brunch in general tends to be quite filling, and after all the cheese, beans and sour cream, we were a happy, satisfied bunch, especially after a weekend of eating nothing but spicy curries, chickpeas, rice and naan. Though it's billed as contemporary Mexican fare, the dishes at RHC are still incredibly hearty, and a good deal for the wallet.