No Beef with Goats

New York City: Minca Ramen

2009-03-26T09:42:00.000-07:00

Manhatten is undeniable. I may have my issues with the subway smell, the amount of screaming children in line for museums, and the dirth of good coffee, but you cannot ignore or deny that city. There is a life and soul to New York that is unlike anything else. It's an organism; a living, breathing animal that sucks you up and makes you feel a part of something. Last weekend I went to New York with the specific intent to eat, and boy, did I accomplish it.
My friend Frances accompanied me, and we both took the opportunity to relish in every availible morsel, as well as art and the all pervading culture that swarms the streets. We started off from Penn Station to Minca Ramen Factory on the Lower East Side. At eight on a Friday night it was packed; we squeezed in communally with a hip older Japanese man and his well dressed friend, and lost ourselves among the Sapporo drinkers and steam from the kettles of broth surrounding us. Ramen is a particular kind of beast, I ordered the standard and she the spicy ramen, with an appetizer of pork dumplings. The dumplings were small and pleasing, easy to eat with a nice amount of stuffing to dough ratio. Then came the ramen. In the vein of Korean bobimbap and pasta carbonara, the combination of starch, protien, vegetable and lots of saucy bits all mixed up in one big bowl is deeply, deeply satisfying. Served with your choice of broth, slow roasted pork belly, pickled egg, scallions and nori, the ramen noodle itself turns into a filling, soul affirming meal.
Ah! Alas the bell is about to ring, so I must scurry, but more about New York and consuming everything about it later I promise. There is sweetbreads to be discussed!

Braised Salmon! Yay!

2009-03-17T08:17:00.000-07:00

Thank the good lord for seafood. If there is a god, whatever form that might take, i am sure that mollusks, crustaceans and fish would have a definate place in heaven (although isnt it forbidden in the Bible to eat shellfish? Oh well). Fish in my house constitues about sixty percent of our total dinners, mostly do to the low prices of frozen salmon and tilapia fillets at Wegmans. Now, I know frozen fish sucks, I know there are ecological concerns, I know we should buy fresh, but for feeding a family, it works great. It also allows for myrid ways of making bland, boring fillets taste great. Last night, inspired by a chicken dish I'd tried last week, I made poached salmon in a white wine broth, over a bed of lemon and leeks and served it with garlic bread and feta. It was intriguing and delightful. The lemon lent a subtle, tangy air to the dish that worked well with the sharpness of the wine, and the leeks and vegetable stock made a fragrantly smooth broth for bread dipping. It was tasty success, and one that I am looking forward to trying out with more poachable foodstuffs and aromatic spices.
That being said, the thing that haunts me most about Seattle, and the thing that I am most looking forward to is fresh pink salmon. The first thing I am going to do when I arrive in June is wood grill the hell out of a whole fish and serve it with bruised tomatoes and lots of lemon and garlic. You're all invited, of course.

Whoa

2009-03-02T09:29:00.000-08:00

Ok. so its been a month since my last post. I suck. Anyways, that month has been one of the craziest, most bizarre in my entire existence. Life throws things at you so fast sometimes its hard to do anything except wait for the next day to come without freaking out. Basically: I will soon be transplating myself back west, to Seattle, and the best part of this situation has to be the availiblity of fresh seafood. Selfish, I know, but soo true.
Spontaneously two weeks ago, I found myself back there (details forthcoming) and feel it is my duty to record the fantastic things I consumed during those four days. I am a lucky, lucky bastard. So here they are in, in list form:
1. Egg torte with tomato coulis
2. Torrafazionne coffee
3. Fried goat cheese with baked wontons, pesto and lemon frisse salad
4. Ginger dark chocolate
5. SUSHI!! Haikkaido roll: citrus scallops with tempura asparagus and scallions
6. Tempura pinnapple
7. LIGHTHOUSE COFFEE
8. macadamia banana bread
9. Fresh pita with olive fig spread (with homemade feta)
10. Gargantuan prawns in muscat glaze
11. Apple torte with buttermilk ice cream and tangerine marmalade
12. Bartlett pears and rasperry scones

Mmmmmm. In conclusion: Life, though spontaneous, shocking, and very much humbling, always is delicious.

Risotto

2009-01-30T07:37:00.000-08:00

Something good was happening in my kitchen last weekend. Something thats warm and comforting and rich as all hell. It's winter people, not the time for grilled fish and cucumber emulsions. Winter food means thick and hot, not diet friendly or even healthy. Winter food means risotto.
Risotto has always had a special place in my heart. Everyone I've spoken to about it echoes the same sentiment, "Oh risotto! I love risotto, but its so time consuming, so finicky, i really hate making it." I am ardently on the opposite side of the fence. I love making risotto. The first time I ever tried my hand at it-when I was thirteen or fourteen-I followed a recipe and it turned out fine. The next time, many months later, it was at ten at night in the fit of some sort of teenage pathos and all I did was shut up and start sauteeing. After that night, I was hooked. Whenever I'm in the mood to do some serious cooking, mostly for a large group, its risotto or something risotto like. Last weekend, it was a massive pot of mushroom and butternut squash risotto, perfect for breakfast the next morning or one of my personal favorites: a paella-esque dish of day old risotto in a cast iron skillet with chicken broth and lemon wedges. Actually, I think the best part of making risotto is the part most people hate: after stirring in the wine, when you have to stand endlessly at the stove adding broth. I love the meditive qualities of that motion, the way the stove looks covered in steaming pans of this and that, the smell of the evaporating wine mixed with onions and rosemary, the relaxation of such careful repetition. I've learned the one basic tenant of risotto is this: risotto is not something you can keep to yourself; it must be shared.

Mullings and Tributes

2009-01-20T11:36:00.000-08:00

Alright lets face it. My unwavering dedication to the art of blogging in the new school year has not been as ardently attended to as I might have liked. Life gets ahead of you and you end up wondering where that half hour you had reserved went. Alas, the real sorrow in that is all the wonderful culinary adventures that go unrecorded.
The past month has been lost to traveling, family, music and various school related activities. I spent a lovely holiday break that commenced with a Inferno-esque O'Hare experience and culminated in the most epic tamale feast ever. Really. This blog is therefore devoted to tamale husks and Portland Oregon.
It is rare to find a place that truly culls up some latent sense of your existence, more so, your humanity, and I am lucky to have found that place in the Pacific Northwest, where I was born and unfortunatly must return to in-all-too brief periods of time. Portland, Seattle, and the whole Northeastern seaboard seem to beckon to the bleakest, wettest and most vital parts of the soul. The people themselves are a part of the skyline and the convergence of mountain, earth and ocean makes for a distinctive palate of tastes, textures, and experiences. The food from that part of the world is much (rightly so) lauded, and if your interested in local eating then look no further than the wonderful plethora that is Washington and Oregon. My home is there, my people are there, my tastebuds most certainly are looking forward to going back.
Anyways, these tamales. On my last day there this January, we spent the day drowning ourselves in food. Louise (my other mother), from which all delicious, nutritious gluten free foodstuffs flow from and I decided to cook up a Mexican influenced feast, which quickly grew from a small family gathering to all out party. The menu: Spanish rice and beans with cojilo cheese, tomatillo and red salsa, chicken tamales, posole (provided by the equally talented caterer/chef extrodinaire Jennifer), tamarid mixers (all thanks to another Jennifer), plaintains, homemade tortilla chips and pecan pie and leftover buche de noel for dessert. It was phenomenal, one of the most enjoyable evenings I have ever spent, and in the company of the most heartwarming people I know. I left the next morning after three hours of sleep, full of the taste of tamales with hot sauce, the scent of strong bitter coffee and the memory of some of my dearest loved ones to carry with me back east.
So there, a vingette from the holidays; something that made going back to the dismal, metallic grey of Rochester that much more bittersweet. Oi veh. Hopefully there will be more posts in the new year, that sounds like as good a resolution as any.

An Unorthodox Thansgiving

2008-12-04T07:40:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving is a time for reconnecting. Food, warm drinks, fir trees, first snows and fufilling that most basic of human needs: companionship. This year, I had the immense pleasure of taking my thanksgiving in new and different way, one that turned out to be a food and love filled weekend to be reckoned with.
I traveled to Vermont- the closest state in the US to Canada-a place where everyone is friendly and aware of their carbon footprint. The Burlington airport is one of the best I have visited, an easy, unselfconcious place where air travel might be considered enjoyable. The friends I was staying with are a variety of poets, artists and writers, all of whom are very well versed in culinary pleasures. We spent the days roaming around, discussing Walt Whitman, listening to Aretha Franklin and most of all EATING. We took our culinary satisfaction in many ways: pecan pie and coffee ice cream, hard little pears, molasses cake, eggnog french toast, thick cappuchinos, thai chicken soup, warm goat cheese and roasted tomato salad, apple cinnamon pancakes and much more. The food we ate was made all the more sweeter by a New England early winter, snow spread across the ground and vast amounts of stars at night, steam filled kitchens and bright morning hikes. It made for a new way to define the holiday, and one that I much prefer to sticky family parties and awkward reunions. All in all, I learned that home has a myrid of meanings, and that most often it is found in a hot pot of coffee and a good friend reading the New Yorker.

Review: 2 Vine

2008-11-18T09:35:00.000-08:00

Lets face it, Rochester NY is no temple of gastronomy. The most interesting thing we have going to for us culinarily is something called the "garbage plate". If this isn't indicative of the mindset of the entire city then I don't know what is (perhaps the Greece Ridge Mall being the largest tourist draw?). Anyways, we brave and hardy foodies in upstate are forced to cling desperately to any and all relatively decent food options that we may have. Of late, our choices have improved drastically thank god, but one of the original real restaurants (with gasp, a concept!) in Rochester: 2 Vine, remains a solid, if not rather smarmy place to eat good food.
By now, 2 Vine has built a reputation on several things: its pricyness (nothing compared to New York), its steak and its clientelle. The typical Saturday night bar crowd consists of vaguely overweight buisness types getting drunk on overpriced cocktails, while scoping the bar for plently of inversely proportioned younger women looking to snap up the next heir to some upstate media fortune or just "have a good time" with the girls from Pittsford Mendon High. Perhaps I am being unfair. Occasionally you will run into an old friend or someone you want to see, but this can only add to the "sceney-ness" (rarely used in conjecture with Upstate NY) of the place.
The food however, is more than decent. I often end up ordering a hodge podge of appetizers and sides when I go out, and while the entrees are acceptable but rather usual, it is in the specials and other bits that the menu really shines. The brussel sprouts, roasted to Maillard perfection, are well seasoned and warming; paired with the sausage and escarole over white beans, a perfectly filling wholesome meal is able to be had for almost six dollars off of a main course. We also ordered the appetiver special of sauteed calamari, cooked in an interesting carrot broth which I am still trying to excavate spice-wise.
The other person with me (my lovely grandmother) ordered the plat de jour rib eye steak with mashed potatoes. The steak, when it arrived, was almost as big as my forearm and significantly thicker. It was cooked perfectly, you could cut it with an ordinary butter knife it was so tender, and appropraitly fatty around the edges. With the table bread and a cup of black coffee, it made for fine Saturday out, save for the incessent noise of the Kodak louts to my left.
The service is adequate. The waiter was not overbearing and prompt, though at tiems there was a sense of rush that threatened to overwhelm affected tranquility of a structured dinner. All in all however, 2 Vine rates high for quality of food, service, proximity to evening activities, and any light in the dim gastronomical bulb of Upstate NY.

On Foam

2008-10-28T09:26:00.000-07:00

Something immense has occured. Before last week, the idea of any sort of caffinated beverage that had been whipped, frothed, or lathered I found entirely unappealing and even mockable. Now however, I must admit I am total caffine hippocrite and have become addicted to drinking a cappuccino between four and nine at night. The sensation of foam and milky coffee is perfect after the school day, when you want something to sooth and lift, but not jack your heartrate like the morning.
On caffine and coffeeshops: It's a sad fact that they now are symbols of hipness and bygone romanticism, instead of remaining in their rightful place in history as places to drink, talk, learn and study. Pop culture distorts traditions into cliques. People have been meeting in coffeehouses for as long as trade routes between east and west have been open. During the spice trade, Turks and Ottomans brought the tradition of communal coffee drinking to Europe, where it was initially viewed as unhealthy and even sinful to indulge in caffine. Soon though, men began to gather around the coffeepot to talk and read and often discuss the unhappy political affairs of the day. In this way, many of the worlds revolutions were born out of coffeeshops, to say nothing of the art and literature movements propagated there.
Nowadays your more likely to come across some indie kid updating his facebook page than the next Robespierre, but I like to think that in my cappucchino there are some vestiges of intellectual revolt. The closer reality however, is just sitting in a cafe late on a school night, drinking a cappuccino and getting lost in some overstuffed chair.

Beginnings

2008-10-21T18:39:00.000-07:00

Hello all!

Well after such a long hiatus from the other blog, I decided to start from scratch in hopes of motivating myself to post more. So here it is! No Beef with Goats, a Life in Caramelized Onions, which is as good a mantra as any.

Pictures are in the works, though I will need the help of any camera-handy friends or family to aid me, as I am sorely lacking any photographic prowess. Any takers?

Just to start things off I leave with you with this quote from one of my favorite books, Insatiable by Gael Greene, a fantastic memoir and palate exciter: "I lived to eat and ate to love and loved to delicious excess." What more is there to take from life?

photo credit: frances cannon