Alaska is Perty

Wow, it has been a while. Two main updates in my life:

1) Our house got robbed, but whatever.
2) I spent a (truncated) week fishing in Alaska. Sweet!

Alaska

So, my dad and I had planned all summer to go on a fishing trip in southern Alaska, Thursday to Wednesday. Wednesday night, I get home to a guilty looking dog, a broken window, and a half-eaten piece of pizza. The burglars broke a back window, took a piece of pizza out of our fridge to settle the big dog down, and proceed to burgle my Xbox, Dru's laptop, two bottles of wine, and a broken iPod. I understandably felt violated over the invasion of the fridge (for the pizza), really wanted to play some Halo to calm down, and had a "well, crap" moment. Several hours later, police report is filed, house is dusted for prints (really!), and Dru and I were trying the new Pho place in our neighborhood. In the end, our departure was pushed back to early Saturday morning, but we still had to come back Wednesday for a variety of reasons.

Up North

We traveled to Juneau via Salt Lake and Seattle and then took a float plane about 60 miles out to the lodge. The picture up top is the view from the dock...the peaks are the mainland and all the low hills and foggy area are islands in the channel. Alaska is totally awesome...where else can you see sea otters, whales, sea birds, porpoises, and sea lions in the same place? Here is a whole mess of sea lions, lounging on some very sharp rocks and hanging out in the water.

Just doing their thing

The fishing was fantastic; salmon, halibut and bass on the ocean, plus salmon and Dolly Vardens (a type of trout) in the rivers. The Dollies are probably the most fun, just because the salmon are swarming and everywhere...they literally bump into you in the river because they are so thick. The picture to the right is representative of a small group working up the river. All those dark marks in the water are fish. (Click to get a big version.)

Here's me in the river, waiting for a bump:

Like I said above...AK=perty.

Re: ocean catches, I brought back a fresh halibut (60 lb fish!) and several salmon. To the left , the partitioning of said fish.

Food on the trip, as you can imagine, was lots and lots of fresh halibut, salmon, bass, and crab. In fact, the folks we were with have several shrimp and crab pots in various places around the island, so our very last stop on the day we left was at the shrimp pots, for fresh shrimp to bring home.

All in all, I ended up with about three pounds of cleaned shrimp. It would have been more, except for a very happy octopus that was doing its thing in one of the pots...not too many shrimp in there.

So I leave you with an amused Ben and a floppy octopus:

Success!

I needed to post because we had a here-to-fore absolutely unheard of event occur. Are you ready? Ben uttered the words .... "I am a fan of this salad." Now, Ben is not one to praise any fruit or vegetable, and yet, here was unabashed enjoyment of several vegetables and one fruit. Again, normally it is a struggle to get this guy to eat anything that does not fall in the meat/potatoes/beer/cheese category and he complains if I make vegetarian anything. So as a public service to anyone out there in the same predicament, I offer this recipe for your enjoyment. It is a seriously good way to enjoy the summer produce and is all-around awesome.

Blackberry Vinaigrette Goat Cheese Salad

(serves 2 for meal or 4 as salad appetizer)

1 pint blackberries
¼ cup balsamic vinegar
1 T vanilla sugar (or plain white sugar)
Small handful of lettuce leaves (your variety choice), torn into bite size pieces
2 "baby" yellow crookneck squash, sliced into thin coins
¼ cup roasted pine nuts
3 oz of a semi-soft goat cheese
4 oz of grilled chicken, diced (optional)
2 medium size tomatoes, wedged into 8 pieces

Toss the blackberries with sugar and vinegar; let sit while the salad is prepared. Place lettuce in shallow salad dishes, sprinkle with squash coins, and dot with goat cheese. Place tomato wedges around the outer edge of the plate. Sprinkle pine nuts across the top of the salad. Add warm diced chicken. Use a slotted spoon to split the blackberries between the salads leaving a dozen in the bowl. Crush the remaining blackberries with the balsamic vinegar and split the mixture across the salads. Enjoy!

Going Greek

Just wanted to put in a good word about a new restaurant I went to this evening - Zavo's, the greek place across from the Family Wash. This space used to be a sketchy biker bar, but they have cleaned it all up and put in sleek modern decor. I have heard good things about this place and they were recommended in the Scene awhile back, and heck, it is like, a mile away. Mari-etta and I went and shared the Mediterranean platter, kafeteres, and a salad. The platter came with warm "pita" bread - actually a flat bread with more oil than your normal pita - but all the better to sop up the hummus, babaganoush, tzatiki, feta, and olives. The kafteres (or something like that) were banana peppers filled with melted goat cheese - spicy and different! And the salad was tomatoes, shallots, cucumber, feta, and olives, a perfect accompaniment to the other tastes. To finish - baklava, and a big piece too. Not to cloyingly sweet, nice and nutty. Yum!

Reasonably priced, and they have a special every day. The only downside is that there is no wine, but I did enjoy a Fat Tire and they do have all the Yazoos. Four stars (Ben, make that 4.25). We'll be back for sure :)

Una epifanía de los tacos - Mas Tacos Por Favor!

Holy crap! I was in the midst of a new San Francisco post, when I had una epifanía (an epiphany) regarding tacos (los tacos). As many who hang out in East Nashville know, there is a taco truck that parks at 5 Points most nights, in the midst of all the bars over here. (Perfect business plan...drunk hipsters + 11 PM + hungry = $$$)

The truck & business is called Mas Tacos and you can find out all about them on twitter & facebook (twitter.com/mastacos, etc.). They tweet/post the menu every night. I've been meaning to try it out for the last few months, but I'm never hungry or around when the truck is parked out on the street. Also, Dru thought the idea of food from a truck is totally sketchy, even though she (thoroughly) enjoyed the Silver Truck and Haven Bros. up in Providence.

Tonight I had a 9 PM hockey game, which makes for a hungry ben around 11...a perfect storm. I convinced Dru to get dressed and walk over with me. On the menu tonight:

• Chicken with grilled onions & roasted tomatillo salsa
• Fried tilapia with lime-marinated red onions and a spicy yogurt sauce
• Quinoa with roasted potatoes, grilled corn, red cabbage, cilantro, sour cream & roasted tomatillo salsa

After much hemming and hawing we decided to try one of each, on the condition that sweetie had to have a bite. The tilapia was perfectly spicy, with the creamy sauce mellowing and melding the flavors. The chicken was falling-apart soft, almost like pulled smoked chicken, and was delicious.

The quinoa though, was the best by far. For those who don't know, quinoa is a grain from South America and is pronounced "keen-wah." It is cooked and looks like couscous, and works as a substitute for that or for rice, but it has a rich, nutty flavor and is much more nutritious than the alternatives. Below, I've shamelessly ripped off a picture of cooked quinoa from a blog I found on the web. (The post is at http://mmm-yoso.typepad.com/mmmyoso/2007/12/quinoa-salad.html. Check it out, it is a food blog out of San Diego and they have some good recipes and reviews.) Anyways, the quinoa taco was sweet and spicy and smoky and was totally delicious...good for Mas Tacos for having a real vegetarian option.


So! I highly recommend and I think Dru is a convert too. Come over to East Nash some night to eat a taco and drink a beer.

San Francisco - Day 1 (and Day 0)

As you may have guessed from the creative title of this post, we took a vacation to San Francisco for the 4th of July weekend! Above, the canonical (that's for Gregg) SF picture. (Note: I'm going to write SF instead of the whole city name from now on...too many letters and C's that sound like S.) We spent three full days there, arriving very VERY late on Thursday and taking an 11 PM flight out on Sunday night. Getting there was a travail, as well as travel.

Arriving at the Nashville airport, we heard that all of the United computers at Chicago O'Hare had gone down on Thursday morning, and that the agents there were issuing tickets by hand...big mess that we avoided by going through Denver, which made us very happy. However, we ended up stuck in a holding pattern over Colorado, which the pilot neglected to mention. He finally did come on the intercom (and I hadn't realized that we had been in the air so long), and opened with this:

"Good evening everyone, this is the pilot speaking. We have a fuel issue."

Big oops. That's how you start a panic, right there. He then proceeded to explain weather in Denver, holding pattern, blah blah blah, and oh, by the way, we're going to Omaha. So we proceeded the wrong direction across the country for an hour, landed, gassed up, and went on our merry way, only arriving about 3.5 hours late. United was kind enough to automatically rebook us on the next flight, which we missed, being in Omaha, and we ended up sneaking on the last flight to SFO much later that night. All in all, instead of landing at 8 PM and getting to enjoy a nice late evening meal, we landed at midnight and got to enjoy Quizno's in Denver. Bleh.

In SF, Finally

Ok, so we get there and check in. I booked us at the W Hotel near the convention center (swanky, eh?). If you are not familiar with the W, take an ultra-modern-looking hotel lobby, add techno music, a DJ (the good kind, not the wedding kind), and a bunch of expensive-looking twenty- and thirty-somethings. When the cab dropped us off, Dru had to ask to make sure we were entering the hotel with our suitcases, and not some club.

If you have never been to San Francisco, it is TOTALLY AWESOME. It is certainly the most liberal city in the US and probably the greenest as well. Every shop, restaurant, and museum has at least three waste cans: Recycling for plastic, glass, paper, etc., regular trash, and compost! Even the little plastic spoons that you get with your gelatto (more on that later) are bio-degradable! Plus, in the "awesome" column, they have good beer, better wine, and great food.

So, what did we do, already?

Well, we got up late and had breakfast at the hotel. We decided to take a long walk, so we went north, up through Chinatown and into North Beach, which is an Italian neighborhood. We walked up a giant hill (betcha didn't know they had those in SF) to a building of the SF Art Institute, where we heard they had a Diego Rivera mural, which they did. The building was a converted mission, with a tower, a gorgeous courtyard with fountain, and a great view over the city and of Alcatraz.

The mural was really neat. It filled the end wall of a vaulted room with high windows and big wooden beams...looked like it might have been the chapel back in the mission days. The rest of the room was a gallery with a half dozen pieces each by two artists (students?). You can check out a bad photo of the mural here.

Bring on the food!

By now, we had worked up an appetite, since it was at least 11:30 and we hadn't eaten since 9 AM. We had a few places on our list, and we started at a small chocolatier called XOX Truffles (www.xoxtruffles.com). Sweet! In a bitter way! The shop was itty-bitty, and basically sold chocolate and coffee. We got a sampling to try. On the left are Caramel, Earl Grey Tea, and Vin Rouge, and on the right are Matcha and Cinnamon. All of them were spectacular. Dru's favorite was (and I quote): "The caramel was really good. The green tea was really good. I don't really have a favorite. I want chocolate NOW." The matcha was probably my favorite...it was a truffle that is actually covered in matcha (powdered green tea), which made it super bitter but also rich and delicious. We had a conversation with the owner, who had been there for 13 years (!), making truffles with her husband. She made sure to mention that you could order them online, so check them out if you need a Valentine or Sweetie-I'm-Sorry gift.

Next, we tried to get lunch, at a little pizza joint called Cinecitta (cinema city). Unfortunately, it was noon and they didn't open until 12:30 (what??). So we dropped into the outpost of the Rogue Nation next door for a well-deserved beer (hey, it was like 3 minutes past noon at that point). At 12:30 we headed back and got served fantastic Roman-style pizza by a sassy Roman lady. Dru elected spinach, mascarpone, ricotta, and pancetta, and I went for homemade meatballs and mozzarella.

Finally, we headed down to get some gelatto as a second desert. In the picture, gelatto plus happy-Dru with gelatto:

We wrapped up the day with a visit to SFMOMA, the SF Museum of Modern Art, which was conveniently located next door to our hotel. In addition to a spectacular permanent collection and a new roof-top sculpture garden, they were running a joint show with Ansel Adams and Georgia O'Keefe, both of whose works we love.

The two were apparently life-long friends who impacted each-other's works. For example, after meeting Adams and several other photographers in Taos, O'Keefe began playing with viewpoints and angles, and even went to the length of creating lens effects with light...painted effects that you can only see through a lens, not by eye. We got an audio-guide for the show, which was fascinating, as it featured interviews with the artists, Adams' son, and historians. I wish we had some pictures to show, but photos were verbotten. Definitely worth a visit if you go to SF this summer.

Dinner Time

For dinner, the hotel concierge got a reservation for us at a new restaurant called Waterbar, with a seat by the window with a great view of the Bay Bridge. They focus on raw bar and seafood, was was delicious. We went for oysters and a selection of appetizers, tapas style: Hamachi ceviche with coconut milk and lime, Australian Kingfish sashimi with golden beet relish, shaved fennel and snap peas (pictured), and octopus with cucumber and paprika oil. Epitome of class: knowing that we were splitting the dishes, they actually split them and served two plates, instead of putting the whole serving in the middle of the table.

Dinner was accentuated by a bottle of sancerre and wrapped up with a brown butter cornmeal cake, served with roasted apricots and sabayon.

Whew! Days 0 and 1 were epic! Tune it tomorrow for fish, butterflies, and hippies.

Sunday Dinner @ City House - Pork Snacks!

Hi! I'm pretty excited about this post, because I get to write about pork snacks and various offal. This is not a post for those with a fear of the swine or the parts of the animal that you don't normally consume.

Dru's parents took us to dinner on Sunday night for our birthdays at City House, where we sat out on the patio...beautiful summer evening with a multi-course meal to work through. If you are not familiar with City House, it is a great restaurant in Germantown with a modern-Italian flair. Every Sunday night, they do a custom menu with "pork snacks" and various experimental dishes. I enjoy eating with Dru's family, because they (especially her Dad) have a healthy appetite and like a WIDE variety of food (just like me).

We started the meal with one plate of each pork snack:

• Ciccioli sliders
• Braised pork belly
• Sausage stuffed pepper with pecorino
• Crispy pig ears with wing sauce

Wow! All four were great. Ciccioli, which I had never had or heard of before, is pounded pork meat and skin fat, with a consistency something like pulled pork. The sliders came on little sweet steamed buns and yellow mustard. The flavor was very much like a rich pulled pork sandwich.

The pork belly was a little chunk that had been braised, so a lot of the fat and tissue had been rendered out. For those that don't know, bacon is smoked and thinly sliced pork belly...think of a cube of that meat about 2 inches on a side. This was a little, tender, fatty chunk of delicious.

The stuffed pepper was also great, but was very tame and conventional compared to the other three dishes.

Finally, the pig ears were incredible! They were very clearly fried ears, but smaller than you would expect. They were rich and wonderful, especially with spicy wing sauce for dipping and celery sticks on the side. As Dru says, you could fry anything with hot sauce and it would be good. We have bought rawhide pig ears for the dogs before, which are these enormous flaps, so we were expecting big ol' chunks. The ears at City House were much more petite...maybe two or three bites each. I really wish I had pictures, but we didn't document until the next course, which was...

Pizzas!

• Pizza with Manila clams and marinara
• Pizza with salt cod and potatoes

Both pizzas were quite good, though the general consensus at the table was that the clam pizza was better. The clams are cooked right on the pie, and they specifically did not cut it before serving because they did not want the clams' liquor to flow off the pizza.

Plus...

• Fried squash blossoms
• Lamb's tongue with mashed potatoes

Now, the lamb's tongue is shown above. To the untrained eye (i.e., mine), it kind of looked like a well-done pancake served over mashed potatoes. I have had raw beef tongue several times and enjoyed it immensely, so I was looking forward to this delicacy. The tongue was seared and was actually quite good, though it had a very fibrous consistency. That is, it was very difficult to cut and it wanted to come apart along the grain of the muscle, but the taste and feel of the meat was succulent and smooth.

All in all, our waitress was pretty excited that we were ordering all of these things that most people wouldn't touch. I don't want anyone to think that City House is focused on fringe food items, because they really aren't. Even on this "experimental" night, there were a number of things on the menu that you might find at any nice restaurant.

All in all, City House gets four big thumbs up from us. The first two times that we ate there, the food was way too salty, but they seem to have corrected that...everything was well balanced, with the exception of the salt cod, which you (obviously) would expect to be very salty.

Our next post will probably be from San Francisco, where we are traveling for the 4th of July weekend. Foodie prospects: excellent!

Recipe - Pasta Sauces!

Tomatoes are one of the most wonderful vegetables (yes, it's a fruit, I know), because of their versatility and breadth of flavor. Cooking is all about bringing certain flavors to the forefront and combining those in harmony. Tomatoes are both sweet and acidic, which gives you a lot of flavor combinations: spicy, acidic marniaras, bright and clean tomato consume, sweet tomato tarts, and so on.

While there are millions of saucing possibilities, I am going to cover a few variations on a single good base tomato sauce. As always, you should experiment with your food. The marinara below can be the starting point for anything from rich, creamy sauces, to spicy arrabiata, to "funky" flavors. I've used this base and added cinnamon and other "sweet" spices, and used that as a savory sauce for chicken sausage.

This is one of those basic recipes that should be in everybody's repertoire. Stop buying jars of tomato sauce! They're full of sugar, taste bad, and cost a lot more than making the sauce below. This sauce can be ready in 15 minutes if you are in a hurry, or let it sit for 45+ minutes to thicken and bring out some depth of flavor.

Basic Tomato Marinara

1 - 22 oz. can of crushed tomatoes. Tomatoes ONLY. Don't get canned tomato sauce or tomatoes with spices added...that stuff tastes like crap.
2 cloves of garlic
2 tablespoons (?) olive oil
Fresh (preferred) or dried basil and oregano

Peel the garlic, crush it with the blade of your knife, and then mince. Heat the oil in a sauce pan until it shimmers (but don't let it smoke). Turn the heat down to medium and saute the garlic for a few minutes, stirring frequently, until it is aromatic...if the garlic browns or burns, then the oil is way too hot.

Pour the can of tomatoes into the pan and stir to mix in the garlic. Immediately add a generous amount of basil and a few pinches of oregano, plus a pinch of salt and pepper. (You don't need much, or any, salt with canned tomatoes, because they have already added some.) Generous means 2-3 tablespoons of dried basil, or a good sized bunch of fresh basil that has been chopped up. I generally shake the container until most of the surface of the tomatoes is covered in basil. Stir in the spices and let the sauce simmer, stirring occasionally, while you prepare your pasta. The longer this sauce cooks, the better it will be.

That's it! How easy is that, huh?

Variations:

• Try sauteing a small onion (diced) or a minced shallot with the garlic.
• Try this with fresh tomatoes! Take about 2 pounds of fresh, and blanche them to easily peel. Discard the skins. Cut open the tomatoes, and seed them. Save the seeds, water, and goo that comes out, for thinning the sauce later. Dice the seeded tomatoes and proceed as above, adding some of the tomato water to the pot as needed. This will need to cook much longer (1 hour+), to break down the tomatoes. You can serve this as a chunky sauce or throw in a Cuisinart to create a smooth sauce.
  
• Try different spices...crushed red pepper for a spicy arrabiata, less or no basil, or marjoram and sage for a more savory flavor.
• Add a tablespoon of cream for a pink sauce...delicious, but more filling as well.
  

The New Hotness

The New Hotness is a favorite variation of ours, using spicy Italian sausage and red pepper. Start by sauteing about a pound of hot Italian sausages. I prefer to remove the sausage from the casing and crumbling it, but you could also cook them whole and then slice the sausage for the final sauce. (It's called the New Hotness because we came up with the recipe on a night that we watched Men In Black II, back in the day. Remember Will Smith saying he was going to drive? "Old and busted....new hotness.")

Once the sausage is cooked, remove and drain the grease (both from the sausage and the pan). Proceed with sauteeing garlic and onions above, adding just a touch of olive oil to the pan if needed. Add the tomatoes and herbs, but also throw in a dash of cayenne pepper, or a few dashes of crushed red pepper to taste, plus generous black pepper. Also add the cooked sausage back to the pot at this point.

So there you go! Easy-breezy-lemon-cheesey, right? (No lemons required.) Enjoy!