I have jars of pickled everything still left from last year — I might have gotten a little carried away. So I’m trying really hard to use stuff up, so I can reclaim a few scraps of fridge space… which means that today I made potato salad with two whole pickled onions, chopped up and added to the hot diced potatoes so the vinegar would absorb (this being the Cook’s Illustrated tip: boil taters in salted water, then sprinkle with vinegar while hot before adding the mayo dressing). The dressing was mayo and sweet Swedish mustard in about equal parts, plus a big handful of chopped dill.
It’s pretty awesome just licked off the mixing spoon, and I have high hopes for it alongside some smoked salmon for dinner tonight.
Author: foodnerd
at last, a truly great pasta salad
I love pasta salad, or at least the idea of pasta salad — cool pasta, tasty accessories, simple and fresh and filling. But it’s never like that — it’s either too full of stuff, or too oily, or too bland, or too something. So I rarely make it, other than to casually toss a few selected leftovers into a bowl of cold pasta for lunch on a hot day.
But my coworker made some for our office potluck last week, with basil, mozzarella and grape tomatoes, and it was awesome. I had some more for breakfast the next day, and was again struck by the yumminess. I asked her for the recipe, and it turned out to be just as simple as it seemed to be, but somehow the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. I made some last night and took it to a July 4th fireworks party, and at least 5 strangers came up to me and told me how awesome it was, so i know it’s not just me nerding out about this.
Here’s how to make it:
Boil a pound of orzo in heavily salted water. Drain and rinse and drain again. Add just enough olive oil to coat the orzo. Cut up fresh water-packed mozzarella into bite size dice (1/2″ or so) — I cut ciliegine into 4 bits each. Cut grape or cherry tomatoes in half, or in quarters if you feel like the halves are too big. Rip up a big pile of basil leaves. Mix it all into the pasta and add ground black pepper, and extra salt if it needs any (it will probably want at least a little bit). Let it sit for a while before serving for best flavors.
I think that I added a shade too much oil, so i splashed in just a little bit of rice vinegar, and i think that was a good addition, even though it wasn’t part of the original recipe. I also think that the trick is to get the flavorings in the pasta while it is warm enough to infuse the flavors, but cool enough not to cook the tomatoes or melt the cheese at all. The taste is quiet, but not bland — it’s somehow refreshing: creamy and spoonable from the orzo, basil-y throughout, and fresh from the tomatoes.
Happy Independence Day!
pure genius: naeng myun
The other day, it was hot and muggy and disgusting, and we went for dinner to the Korean/Japanese place here in town, Sushi Yasu. I ordered oshitashi (cold spinach with sesame), a bunch of nigiri, and “cold noodles,” confirmed by the waitress to be zarusoba, cold soba noodles with the most delicious dipping sauce known to humankind, and a perennial hot-weather favorite of mine.
But i think we had a language barrier situation, because instead of soba what arrived was mool naeng myun, the cleverest invention of Korean cookery: tasty noodles, tasty beef and egg, tasty julienned raw vegetables, in cold broth… WITH LOTS OF ICE CUBES.
I can’t think of any other food short of beverages that actually goes so far as to include the ice cubes in the food itself, thereby keeping it super cool and crisp so as to continually counteract the general icky sticky warmness of your being.
this n that
looks like they finally repealed the foie-gras ban in chicago. one american absurdity down, 4,999,999 to go.
John Harvard’s Brewhouse is pretty mediocre in general, though certainly serviceable and reliably open late — but they have an incredible chicken pot pie. Very nearly as good as the ur-potpie I had at the late, lamented Locke-Ober (before Lydia).
i think my favorite sausage from Paulina Market is the smoked thuringer. i am not alone in this, as at least one party guest remembered them from years past and requested them specifically. they are properly robust to stand up to party condiments, and they are just plain smokilicious. i also tried something new this year, a fresh hungarian sausage (very long, spicy with paprika, and pleasantly dry and crumbly in texture) and the german wieners (long skinny hot dogs, only better tasting than an average supermarket dog).
year-old wedding cake is pretty tasty stuff. the outer frosting tastes a little bit like freezer funk, but the insides are much as we left them.
a tasty beverage
went out to Eastern Standard last night (more on that when i have time to post photos) and before dinner we had a Whiskey Smash cocktail.
The cocktail menu at ES is deliberately obfuscatory, and there is no way to know wtf each intriguingly named item actually might be, unless it’s a classic like a Sidecar. However, I did eventually manage to determine, by talking to our heavily accented waitress, that a Whiskey Smash involved bourbon, lemon, simple syrup and mint, which seemed like just the ticket on a warm early-summer evening.
And it was.
Arrived in a lowball over piles of shaved ice. Tasted rather like a citrus julep. Quite refreshing, and not quite as diabolically alcoholic.
Hungry Mother
apparently everyone is going gaga over the new Cambridge restaurant Hungry Mother, and since we ate dinner there last night with a group of friends, i see why. We pretty much had one of everything, and all of it was fantastic.
They do a mini-starter course, which of course I am rabidly in favor of, then starters, then mains and dessert, and the wee post-dessert sweet that arrives with the check. Also cocktails, which are inventive and rather lovely — I had the #1, which is rye + dr. pepper + bitters, and the bitters override any overly-sweetness to make a pretty awesome drink.
If you’ve not guessed it from the ingredients of that cocktail, there is a strong appalachian theme to the cooking at this restaurant, combined with fine dining service and presentation, and strong haute cuisine execution. The overall feel is comfortable and rich, relaxed and refined.
The mini-starters:
deviled eggs, satiny, spicy and fresh-tasting, the equal or better of my own, topped with crispy bacon.
very spicy pimento cheese with toast triangles and celery sticks. i could eat vats.
boiled virginia peanuts with gray sea salt. lovely with the cocktails, i must say.
the “real” starters:
shrimp & grits, dark, savory and spicy with very nice creamy grits.
salad greens with radishes and almonds and goat cheese – sounds boring, wasn’t.
barbecue ribs with some sort of orange-peel relish and cornbread with no sugar, huzzah!
summer sausage & tasso ham with fantastic pickled peppers and ramps, spicy grainy mustard and more grilled toast.
fried oysters, dear sweet jesus, so yummy. The equal of the amazing ones we had on the California coast at Duarte’s Tavern. Came with some sort of buttermilk-dressed salad, also tasty but I was distracted by the oystery goodness.
the mains:
roasted chicken with kale and beets and red-eye gravy. delicious, just a shade oversalted.
flatiron steak with super-creamy roasted yukon golds & crispy fried vidalia rings.
french gnocchi with peas and mushrooms and pea tendrils.
fried catfish with mustard-caper sauce (yum), rice and collards.
grilled bluefish with olive sauce, potatoes, arugula and sea salt.
the desserts:
bourbon pecan sticky bun with sorghum ice cream
perfectly light yet rich chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and a glass of milk
buttermilk pie in a graham crust, lemony and creamy
fantastic rhubarb sorbet with strawberry sauce
It was all very good, but if I went back tomorrow, i would get the eggs, the pimento cheese (maybe two), and two orders of the oysters and call it a (very happy) day. Yow!
for the records: Cupertino Chinese Mall
I am clearing out my email, and i ran across something i wrote up for a colleague going out to do some work at Apple. When I was out there, I was there alone for long periods of time, and I consoled myself with the free happy hour cocktails at The Cupertino Inn, but mostly with constant meals at the chinese mall nearby. I’m posting the notes here so I can find them again, and so you may find them useful.
The chinese mall is at the intersection of Homestead and Wolfe in Cupertino (or possibly just over the town line into another town, but close enough). If you are staying at the Cupertino Inn, it will take 20 min to walk there, or a really quick cab ride.
Places to try:
A&J – good chinese caf
oh noooooooo! RIP Bright Food Shop
One of my favorite foods is no longer available to me. The green posole at Bright Food Shop is no more, because Bright Food Shop is no more.
This is VERY BAD.
Every time I would go down to New York to visit friends, I would try to finagle an excuse to head over and get posole. Sometimes I would just get takeout and schlep it home on the bus. One friend lived just a few blocks away and I could walk there. I have a photo of me and the tallasiandude, early in our dating, standing outside the Bright Food Shop just after lunch, and I am grinning like a fool, doped up on love and delicious soup.
Some of their Mexican-Asian fusion seemed a little weird. But everything Mexican on the menu and in the little grocery/takeout shop next door was terrific, not that i ventured much past the posole myself — that posole was my first introduction to the soup, and I’ve never seen the verde style with greens and turkey anywhere else, despite an ongoing addiction to posole in general ever since that first bite.
The place was jammed every time I went. Now, if a tiny little joint like this that packs ’em in and also offers takeout can’t make enough money — in CHELSEA — to pay their rent… then the rent is TOO FUCKING HIGH, assholes. Stupid greedy jerk landlords.
I am sad.
o’coco’s: stupid name, great chocolate taste
I was at the mall with my mother, and was overcome by hunger at one point — and of course my mother has random bargain-store snacks with her at almost all times. So i got a taste of a packet of “O’Coco’s” chocolate crisps, which really should be awful, but in fact are deeply chocolaty, shatteringly crunchy, and quite good indeed.
And they’re organic and low in calories. Wacky.
Apparently the secret is that they use cocoa powder, which makes the chocolate flavor dark and intense. And I am a pushover for anything crunchy and crispy. And if i can jack up two pleasure centers at once for 90 calories, all the better.
sprouted brown rice from Trader Joe’s
Last time I was at Trader Joe’s, I saw they had several products made with sprouted brown rice. I’d recently been reading that sprouted grains are much more nutritious than unsprouted, which I guess makes botanical sense. And one of these products was just too preposterous to pass up:
shelf-stable prepared ready-to-eat sprouted brown rice in a plastic bowl with sesame-seaweed sprinkles.
I mean really. That is possibly the yuppiest, health-nut-on-the-go, 21st century food you could ever dream up. So I bought it, for the sheer entertainment value.
And I’ll be damned if it wasn’t absolutely delicious. Nutty and chewy, with that distinctly japanese taste of nori and sesame and salt.
I’m unlikely to buy this much, because of all the packaging it entails, but I will certainly be much more likely to buy some regular uncooked sprouted brown rice, cook it, and whip up some seaweed-sesame-salt furikake of my own to mix into it. Yums.