Back to Basics

I love Ina Garten. Although I've only experienced limited success with her recipes, I love her show on Food Network. She makes the sorta food I want to eat. She's not overly chipper ala Rachel Ray, sexpotty like Giada or overly geeky like Alton Brown. No, she's the kind of woman I imagine being good friends with. I imagine her as friendly, smart and extremely generous. So this might be why I always refer to her cookbooks first whenever I decide I want to cook something up for myself that I'm unfamiliar with.

I own almost each of her cookbooks and they all live in my tiny kitchen so I can quickly refer to them. Even so, I wasn't feeling overly inspired by any of them lately. But Ina recently came out with a new cookbook called Back to Basics that I thought looked awesome. So awesome that I bought it was a gift for food buddy Caroline and was a little sad to give it away. So E bought it for me as a Xmas gift so I had a copy of my own.

I found a yummy sounding butternut curry soup inside and have been wanting to try it for a while now. It looked very simple and easy. And since I had a day off from work, I figured I might as well give it a whirl. I also decided that I wanted dessert too and was craving chocolate mousse. My craving is odd given the very bad experience I had with chocolate mousse in the 8th grade.

My 8th grade French class was having a party, and I was given the task of making chocolate mousse. How I ended up with this task is beyond me, because I had no clue how to make it. But sure, I told the teacher I'd give it a shot if she gave me a recipe for it. Too bad the recipe she gave me involved things that a 13 year old knows nothing about, such as brewed coffee, cognac and an ice bath. All I can say is that the mousse was a disaster and turned into lumpy chocolate soup sans coffee, cognac and ice bath. That was the first and last time I made chocolate mousse until tonight.

I, being an Ina devotee, checked to see if she had a recipe for chocolate mousse and she did. It, of course, involved two different types of alcohol. Given my experience with Ina's tiramisu and the sheer amount of rum in that dish, I decided that I'd use a different recipe. I wanted something fairly simple but with a slight depth of flavor. I looked in my Betty Crocker cookbook and found a recipe that involved a total of four ingredients: chocolate chips, sugar, egg yolks, whipping cream. And while the recipe was idiotically simple (why didn't my French teacher give me this recipe to make?!?!), I was afraid the taste would be dull as well. I decided to improvise a bit and added instant espresso to the cream I had to heat as well as some good vanilla extract too.

What resulted was an incredibly rich and light mousse with the exact depth of flavor I wanted as a result of the espresso and vanilla. Yum! It's the sort of thing that you can't eat a lot of, but boy, you really wish you could! Thanks Betty Crocker Cookbook!

So back to the curry butternut soup...it was simple, simple, simple. Roast cubes of butternut squash, onion and apple until they're soft and cooked thru, run it thru a food mill (or a blender in my case), add to chicken stock, sprinkle with curry, salt and pepper and garnish with coconut, banana and cashews.

I liked how easy the soup was to bring together, although I hate, with a passion, cutting the squash. It's just so boring to me and seems like it always takes forever to peel and cube. So I roasted and pureed and soon dinner was ready. E dressed the greens I purchased with a simple oil and vinegar dressing and I pulled out soup bowls.

The soup was nice. It was sweet because of the butternut squash. The curry flavor wasn't as apparent as I had hoped though.

I wonder if I'll always be kinda lukewarm about the actual outcome of my Ina Garten recipes. I mean, I love her so much, but everything I'd ever followed of hers, turns out eh. It's good but never great. Perhaps I love Ina so much, too much that nothing will ever live up to my expectations. Maybe I need to start building a lower pedal stool in my head for my Ina. I'll think about it...

Lunar New Year

Just to clarify before I go on, I'm Korean American. I was raised by a white family so my knowledge of Korean culture is limited at best. I do know that Korean's don't really get into the Lunar New Year Celebration. However that said, if I have to give offers to any sort of god, I'd rather have it go to a "Kitchen God" any day of the week!

At Lunar New Year, many Chinese families pay their respects to the Kitchen God known as either Zaowang or Tsao Wang. One of the most popular lesser gods and credited with the invention of fire, the KG is the one who oversees the virtues of a family. Why the kitchen? Well, the heart of any family tends to be here, in the kitchen.

So apparently, KG duties include going back to heaven to report on how good the family is. And the idea is to bribe him before his big trip up. So families will put offering for him by the stove. Food that symbolizes sweet life, prosperity, longity, etc. I think wine is also set up in hopes of getting KG boozed up so he'll be even happier to sing the praises of the family once he arrives in heaven.

There is something so adorable about this practice and yet so familiar. It sorta of reminds me of the wine that Jewish families leave out for the holy spirit. Offering to gods and spirits cross so many culture borders and I really love that. But I love the idea of the KG so much b/c I love the idea of a god living inside my stove!

Perhaps, I should give my KG an offering so he will not only sing my praises in heaven but also so he can figure out how to get that darn electric oven to bake cakes evenly.

Even though this really isn't a holiday that I celebrate, I do plan on going to Chinatown next Monday to feast on clams, dumplings, pork and noodles! Yum!

Dinner at 180 Brookline Ave, A Cultural Study

Elizabeth's Dinner:

a sandwich, edamame and wine


My Dinner:

kimchee, edamame, diet coke

RIP

A fire earlier this week destroyed the restaurant block of Peterborough St. In total seven businesses including six restaurants and one dry cleaning business were destroyed. If Fenway Park is the heart of my neighborhood, well this block was certainly the stomach. I have so many fond memories of meals with friends on this block in the smmertime. Plus, at least a few of my weekly meals came from either Rod Dee or El Pelon (both of which I've mentioned on this blog).

One of my employees worked at the Sorrentos located on this block and everytime she walks past it (she also lives in Fenway) it makes her want to cry. It's pretty sad to see the black charred remains of what was once a vibrant and thriving space. It was a block that everyone in the neighborhood knew and to say that it will be missed is an understatement. The owner of the property said that he will rebuild but I guess it's now a question as to what will go into the spaces. I hope El Pelon and Rod Dee come back!

El Pelon suffered from a fire about 13 months ago and that forced them to close and rebuild, but they were able to reopen in the summer. I'm not 100% certain how fire insurance works but to have a fire again 13 months later, well it might be a case of the insurance company not covering the entire cost to rebuild. But I don't know. In any event, a big black hole is now part of my 'hood. Sigh.

2009!

Happy 2009 Everyone!

This time last year I made some resolutions that I was good about keeping for about a month. Yeah, so this year I decided not to make any except for maybe losing the 10 lbs I somehow gain between this time last year and now.

Weight has always been something that vexes me. Even when I was young, I was concerned I was "fat". In truth, I've never had to really truly worry too much about my weight. But I do have a comfortable range for myself and I'm a bit outside my range these days. Easy enough! It just means I need to curb on certain foods and step up some exercise.

And so it is with a heavy heart that I leave the Daring Bakers group. I learned a lot about baking from this blogger group and ate a lot of yummy things I made too. But with my new commitment to eating a little bit healthier I feel that my mission in life doesn't really align properly with this group.

Don't worry, I'm not closing down shop completely! I'm definitely going to try and keep up with this blog and tell you about some of the lovely things I get to eat.

Posted to Yelp: Review of Teavana

800 Bolyston
Shops at Prudential
Boston, MA 02199
(617) 262-1888
"If I could give this place negative stars I certainly would.

This afternoon I headed into Teavana with fiancée the purpose of buying my mom a gift. She's obsessed with the mint tea from Oleana and I've been on a search to find something as aromatic.

The store was busy and very chaotic. People tended to crowd around the free vats of tea. My fiancée and I scooted to the front to try and get help. It looked, at first, as though there were only two people working the counter and they were helping others already. So I went ahead and stood close to the counter and thought I'd wait for assistance.

My fiancée spotted an employee who was walking thru the crowd. His idea of "help" was to inform us that there were two lines in order to be served. I did get a chance to ask him if they had mint tea and if I'd be able to try a sample of either of them. No, he said but I could smell the tea. But I needed to wait here for help from the people behind the counter. "Okay," I thought, " No problem! I don't mind waiting for help".

But what happened next made me so angry that I actually just walked out the door and didn't make my purchase.

The same young man who informed me of the "line" for which I was next up took it upon himself to help a guy who wasn't even in line. He even had the gall to start putting together tea samples for him to try and pulling loose tea for this man. This was after I was tersely informed I couldn't sample the mint tea I wanted to buy and told to stand in line (even though I was first in line for help).

Now, I'm queer and I take a huge amount of offense at homophobia of any kind, but this Teavanna employee is the kind of person who gives queers every place a bad name. I basically was ignored because I didn't have a penis.

Another employee even asked, "Are you waiting to buy loose tea?" Yes, you motherf_cker! I'm trying to buy a gift for my Mom. And yet again I was informed that i needed to wait in one of the two lines forming. This was my cue to leave.

First of all, never have I been treated in such a rude manner at any store. If I could have avoided interacting with anyone there, I would have just grabbed the tea and left but the way the store is set up, you must interact with the employees. And that would be just fine if I had gotten some customer service instead of being informed over and over again about their made up bureaucracy of two lines, which I was standing in.

Secondly, being that I own stores, I'd think I would know a thing or two about about helping customers. And never would I ever skip someone tho the front of the line for being gay, a lesbian or proud owner of a penis. I was so completely ignored (except to be told about the stupid damn lines) that it made me feel that being nice and patient at Teavana doesn't work in one's favor.

Third, if you know I'm there buying a gift and I'm not a browser, it would be common sense that you'd want to help me make my purchase and be on my way. But it felt like not a single employee was interested in doing their job.

Lastly, this place sucks for hiring people who clearly discriminate based on sexual orientation. Trust me. And I'm usually the last person to use Yelp to write something bad about another place but my experience was so horrifying bad that I really had no choice."

With a Last Name Like Mine, Well the Burger Better Be Good!

I'm sorry that I've been so light with my posts these days. Busy busy busy. And by the time I get around to thinking about writing something either a.) I've forgotten exactly what it was that I ate b.) I don't have any pictures or any motivation to really pull something together. Sadly, my lazy ass ways get in my way too much in my life. But anywhooo....

Well, what sort of things have I been eating lately? A lot of homemade meals for sure. With the economy as poor as it is, E and I spend our monies buying groceries that allow us to not only economize but eat well too. Since we're both food lovers, going out for meals can sometimes be costly endeavors. But cooking at home allows us to enjoy some lovely meals for a fraction of the price of dining out, plus we end up with really fantastic leftovers for lunch.

Most of the meals we've eaten have already been documented here...homemade pasta and bolognese, pork chops but this week E made a really nice chili in the crock pot.




While the chili sauce/broth didn't really thicken up as much as what I'm use to the favors were still very good. And what really brightened up the flavor was a pear and orange pepper salsa that E used to top the dish. With cheddar cheese and fresh corn bread crumbled into the bowl, this dish was delicious, comforting and filling! I could barely finish my one bowl of chili. Maybe E will share the salsa recipe with you, or maybe not. But it's a great idea. I like the kinda homey comfort food chili paired with the freshness of raw pears and peppers. Sounds odd but trust me, it was very good.

As well as we've been eating at home, we certainly have been missing our stepping out for meals. Or at least, I have on occasion! I enjoy the act of sharing a meal at a bar or a restaurant with friends. And so last night E and I met our friend J and A for dinner. We decided to meet at Eastern Standard because they had some business to conduct as well as wanted to stop in for a pre dinner cocktail. I arrived and was famished. Since I hadn't had anything to eat, I decided to hold off on a drink right away. E arrived shortly after and we went back and forth about where to go for a nice meal. While E and I had a lovely quick conversation with Garrett Harker (I really do adore that man) and A + J called over to Tommy, the head bartender of Craigie on Main, to see if they had room at the bar for four. A and J have been raving about the burger, and well, I'm always in search for a good one. It turned out Tommie had room for us and after a short cab ride over the river to Cambridge, we arrived at the new Craigie Street.

What use to be a medium sized mediocre Italian restaurant had been transformed into a lovely cozy bistro style dining room with an open kitchen complete with a "chefs table" of a counter top and bar stools at the entrance. I didn't get to see much of the dining room portion of Craigie because we beelined it over to the bar to the right of the entrance. A little, fairly dark lit space, it oozed the word "cozy". We had a bit of a wait but soon enough we got seats and were able to properly greet Tommy. A and J know Tommy well, but I only know him because of his work at Eastern Standard. He would often take care of me and E. And when he first started she called him Dennis the Menace (a term of affection). Tommy was a very good young bartender. A pro at his craft with an easy manner and a very charming smile...he's a really good guy.

We ordered four burgers off the bar menu (all of them medium rare expect for me. I tend to like my meat as rare as possible) and an order of pate to share as a starter.

The pate was lovely. It was served with small dollops of grainy mustard, minced gherkin pickle, minced shallot, salt and black peeper and a tiny salad of frisee and baby greens on the plate. We all got served good sized bread points (toasted and big!) so we could spread the pate on. I was a little cautious at first and just took a little bit in case I didn't like it. Too bad that wasn't the case! It was absolutely delicious. It was meaty, fatty and creamy. The texture was both smooth but not so smooth that you didn't think it was house made. If I could have toast always spread with this stuff, I'd probably never eat anything else ever. That pate was so good and it truly didn't need any of the other stuff on the plate. I guess the salad was there to break up the meaty fatty richness of the pate but I didn't eat any of it and didn't want it. I was fine with fat and meat pulverized and spread on my toast!

The burgers came soon after. And they were lovely to behold. The buns were so perky and the sea same seeds looked as though they had been lacquered so the bun appeared to be almost looked fake. The burger came with fried sweet potato threads and more of that frisee salad. Tommy said that the buns were made in house especially for the burgers.

Okay so first thoughts: I wasn't happy that traditional french fries weren't served with it. I also wasn't happy that we weren't offered ketchup or mustard. I also forgot to ask for bacon for my burger for which I'm sure I would have been stoned by the chef. Anyway, all that aside...

The burger was very seasoned with salt. I liked that but I could see how that might be off putting for some people. I mean, I like salt and have been known to add salt to potato chips at times so that should tell you something. The meat was very loosely packed almost to the point of falling about too easily for it to truly be a "burger". While I don't love a dense pack, I do like a burger that holds together well. The meat was almost fork tender in terms of texture. Apparently it was a mix of lamb, beef, marrow, fat. It had a very good meaty mouth feel and I liked the amount of fat they used. The taste was everything a burger should be but the texture of the patty threw me a bit. I was pretty happy with it and thought it was so delicious that I didn't need mustard or ketchup but like the pate we were served prior, at least the grainy mustard was on that plate so I'd like to offered those staples.

The fried sweet potato fries or threads were very good but not my favorite. They got very cold fast and I actually found them hard to eat. I gave most of mine to Elizabeth (who loved them!) who traded me the other half of her burger. The little salad was a nice touch and I enjoyed it as a way to break up the meatiness of eating one and a half burgers. At this point, I also order a regular coke so I could enjoy the sugary sweet carbonation against the backdrop of the burger. I get a little nostalgic when I eat burgers. It reminds me of Dad grilling burgers when I was young. And the drink of choice back then? Well, regular coke, of course!

Overall, I enjoyed the burger quite a bit. I felt that it was well made and actually worth the $19 price tag. Yes, I would go back for the burger and definitely rate it higher than the Radius burger hands down!

However, is it possibly the best burger I've ever eaten? No. Burgers serve all sorts of different purposes for me from the nostalgia of Dad grilling to my poor college student days at Mr and Mrs. Bartleys eating a triple "Clinton" burgers elbow to elbow next to my fellow starving student friend to a relax burger at brunch with friends just because I can! I think that Craigie's burger certainly has its place and is possibly one of the best in Boston for sure. But I also think it shows the caliber of Craigie (it was very thoughtfully made and well executed) and made me more hungry to try other things on their menu. I want to go back for the chef's whim menu and some of those Nova Scotia smelts (think they're better that New Castle, PA smelts?).

But what made the evening so great was being able to share the meal with E, J and A and Tommy too. I will definitely rate that evening at Craigie very highly for the company and the food. So everything combined, the evening rated a perfect 1o for sure!

And on closing, I will say I finally had a drink after my meal. Tommy mixed what I think was called a 50/50 with this beautiful Vermouth I think that was called Doylton. It was a perfect end to a lovely night out with friends and loved ones.