Mostly Plants

K recently dazzled me with two big pans of lasagna, a food memory now slightly tinged by the fact that it had two pounds of the red stuff. Today I have to pat myself on the midsection, because except for two tiny, tiny slices of smoked ham I had a meatless day.

Lunch was at Wildflower, spendy and toothsome as always, and for dinner I scrounged around the fridge for the last of mushrooms and celery to sauté, tossing in a clove of garlic at the end. Meantime I prepped the assembly: First the tortillas, then the brie, smoked cheddar, ham, spinach new from the TJ's bag. Topped the stack with the veg, and in the same pan folded in the two torts.

Five minutes later, a flip. Five minutes later, they sit on a plate, and I scoop out half an avocado on 'em. Finish with some salsa from a jar, and feed.

The Reds

Whew! Now we've gotta push back on the other red flesh besides tuna. This food blog is going to to turn into a guilt blog by the time I'm done.

here's a money quote that dovetails with my "send the marketplace a message" mantra:

> If price spikes don’t change eating habits, perhaps the combination of deforestation, pollution, climate change, starvation, heart disease and animal cruelty will gradually encourage the simple daily act of eating more plants and fewer animals.

I heard long ago that Harris Ranch had 100,000 head of cattle, and now the New York Times backs me up.

Bistro East, Part 3

I'm a bit remiss in finishing the report of our trip to New York. The weekend got off to a rousing start when I met a certain ex-Kazakh gentleman Thursday eve at the venerable Knickerbocker Bar & Grill on University. We sat at the bar and kibbitzed with the harried bartendress, ate guinea-hen quesadillas (really), and ordered something like a few martinis. Whatever the final count, it was enough to prompt the 'tendress to offer us, unprovoked, a drink on the house.

By 8.30 my friend was piling into a cab to get to his next social engagement. I staggered back to the in-laws and tried to pretend to be half-sober. My cover was blown a couple hours later when Da Fanch opened the bathroom door and found me kneeling in prayer to the porcelain goddess.

The next day, work at the Madison Ave. headquarters of the Singular Capitalist was a bit rough. My head cleared a bit after a dash through the rain and lunch at a hot-pot pho joint on 32nd St. with my editor.

By evening, I was raring to go. After a tour of the Gray Lady's new armoire, my Riv-eting companion and I hit the West Village, which probably means a lot less today than it did, say, 25 years ago. We found a darling little spot run by Venezuelans, Flor's Kitchen, which was fairly cheap and down-home enough to serve gristly but super-flavorful steak and greasy but super-flavorful arepas. Just like Hugo's mama used to make it.

The culinary highlight of the trip, however, was served not at a restaurant but Saturday night in my in-laws' dining room. Cousins of Da Fanch brought venison from their upstate farm. We salted and peppered several steaks, seared them and finished them in a hot oven. It was meat the way off-duty chefs eat it: hot, browned outside, red inside, with a pan sauce that's half red wine and half blood. Chew on that for a while.

I've actually left out a few interesting meals, but like me after 10 days in New York, this post has had enough.

Show of Hands

Who's ready to cut back on fishy sushi? Anybody?

Parental Pizza

My first homemade pizza since parenthood -- no easy feat because of the logistics of rolling out the dough, heating the oven full-blast, and thus the kitchen, for an hour, and the general mess -- and it came out quite well. It helped that I was home alone tonight. Toppings: marinated white anchovies, slivers of roasted red peppers, and white onion. Damn.

Aziza Night

K and I popped into our neighborhood destination restaurant for a couple of the seven seats at the bar for a little drink and bite. In the middle of doing two of the things we enjoy best and two of the things our friends enjoy best, inspiration strikes. But first the rundown:

Kristen has her glass of sparkling rosé. I start with the gin ginger, a typically Azizan concoction. Imagine categorizing your liquors, then pairing them with fruit or what have you that can be muddled or infused. My mix starts with muddled ginger and squirts of lemon/verbena, then a healthy pour of Beefeater and some simple syrup. It's iced, shaken, served. Delicious.

For the nosh, we share the usual delicacy, grilled flatbreads with spreads: roasted eggplant, yogurt dill and now chickpea, a novel variation. Feeling toothsome, I go for the sardines. They are arranged in a star patten in an enormous, round pasta plate, filleted and grilled, atop lentils, chopped peppers and fennel. I don't say a thing until I scoop up the very last dash.

So I'm making an executive decision: Alex and Jomo, mark your calendars and tell your sweethearts that I'm taking everybody out to dinner the weekend of Sept. 27-28. Table is for six. No excuses or contingencies. Final date is TK, and it'll be my treat.

Bistro East, Part 2: Otto

No way we could spend a week in New York and read Heat (full review later) without darkening one of Mario Batali's doors. So with Da Fanch's gourmand cousins in town from Norwich, all seven of us walked over to Otto, his pizza place.

In Heat, Buford reports that Batali took many weeks, maybe months to get the pizzas, cooked on a flattop griddle, not in an oven, to the point where customers stopped sending them back. ("There were complaints. They were too spongy. They were undercooked. They weren't crispy. You couldn't cut them with a knife. Joe wasn't sleeping: 'Everyone is suddenly a fucking pizza expert.'" - p.160)

We didn't send ours back, though we didn't think they were oh so molto. I had the bottarga and fennel; Fanch had the mushroom. We liked the crust; we liked the sauce; but both toppings were too salty, the mushrooms unpleasantly so. I fretted: perhaps they're supposed to be salty, and we're not eating them with the right appetizers, or something. Perhaps we're not good enough.

This was crazy talk, of course. Someone in the kitchen had a heavy hand with the salt. Period.

Everything else was top-notch. The apps came in large ramekins and several went around the table. All delicious, especially the cold lentils, the octopus, and the eggplant caponatina, all redolent of late-night outdoor Mediterranean dinners eaten ad hoc, dish by dish at the proprietor's whim.

The waiter showed great patience as we maneuvered the Schnoodle's stroller through a maze of tables, and again as certain members of our party took interminable amounts of time to decide what to order. We also had internal disagreements about the wine selection -- what seemed like hundreds of Italian wines to choose from, none less than $35 a bottle, and none of us knew a thing about them. The waiter was unflappable. He recommended a bottle, not cheap, and damn if he didn't match it to our criteria. We ordered a second bottle.

Stuffed to the gills, we ordered a couple desserts anyway: the olive oil and ricotta coppettas (coppette?). Olive oil gelato at first sounds like a candidate for a Yuck?, but it was sublime. Gotta get the A-Ron to put it on his menu at the next Page Street party.

One complaint, other than the pizza, was the noise level. I was sitting under a speaker, and the music, a mix of guitar rock and Brit-pop that might well have been streaming right from Mario's iPod, kept changing volume level with songs getting cut off in the middle. I know it's a pizzeria, but at these prices, the kids in the kitchen shouldn't be fighting over the stereo.

Coming soon, part 3 (mistakenly advertised in the last post as Part 2): Revenge of the Beefeater, a Venezuelan hideaway, and Oh! Deer.

Blue Fin?

We all know about the king of ska, but here we're talking about the end of the king of sushi. Take my word for it or take Bob Simon's, but the marketplace has to, has to push/pull back on the supply chain.

We don't need every other restaurant opening on Geary to serve raw fish. We will run out, without a doubt.

Bistro East, Part 1

Greetings from Gotham. (And photo by cpzhao -- click here to see more!)

Showing off the Monkeypants to friends and family has been a nonstop endeavor and no easy feat. We knew that from the get-go when, waiting for our delayed flight to board at SFO last Friday, the captain came out to the gate to say it was some of the worst weather he'd ever seen in his career. He also said the grounds crew couldn't even load baggage because they worried the wind would rip the cargo door from its hinges. Oh, and Lila was completely congested with her first-ever cold.

We finally made it with nary a scratch (not even a peep from Lila despite the congestion and pressure) and settled into bed Chez Fancher before midnight local time. Less than 24 hours later, true to form, we were stuffing ourselves at the Saigon Grill on University between 11th and 12th Sts. There were seven adults, one rambunctious toddler, and our Miss Monkeypants, and we all ordered a dish plus a few more. Plus a couple bowls of soup because, hey, it's winter and we all had colds.

Somehow it all disappeared. We have a major difference of opinion, however, as to the quality. I'm feeling magnanimous. I thought it was pretty good. Perhaps I was dazzled by the quantity and the friendliness of the staff who accomodated our requests for stroller parking, a booster seat, and a small plate of plain egg noodles for 2-year-old Ezra. The Fanch begs to differ: "It sucked," she said, which, when pressed to explain, she upgraded to "really really mediocre."

A few nights later we left La Monkeypants with her grandparents for our first date night. Nervous as we were, we went all of two blocks away to a swanky tapas place, Alta. Lovely room, adventurous, extensive menu, but then there was Dean.

Dean was the first waiter who addressed us (though others later would bring dishes and take follow-on orders), and he was an idiot. "Excuse me," I asked, pointing to one of the menu items, Danish Pork Ribs roasted with kecap manis & coriander. "What's kecap manis?"

"It's the stuff it gets roasted with that makes it kinda sticky," was roughly his explanation. Not very descriptive, I thought, but I moved on.

"What's 'fideos vermicelli'? I don't know what fideos means."

"I dunno," said Dean. "I'll go ask."

He came back a while later and said, "Some kind of pasta."

I formulated how to proceed, and Dean -- a very busy man -- started to turn. "Um..."

"What?" he said. Not "Yes?" or "Sorry" or "Pardon me." "What."

"I figured that from the 'vermicelli' part," I said. "But I don't know what fideos means."

I think he shrugged and walked away. I was too stunned to think clearly. It was the most unprofessional act in a nice restaurant I'd ever seen. I wondered if he was the half-retarded son of the owner. There could be no other explanation.

The food was good, the Spanish Manhattan was one of the few $10 drinks I've ever felt was worth it, and the tapas were often spectacular and never dull except for the avocado relleno with crabmeat and shrimp. Silly us: to New Yorkers an entire avocado artfully sliced and stuffed with spicy seafood salad is $11 worth of exotic in January. To Californians, it's an easy 4-pack mesh bag at Trader Joe's.

The Fanch was so appalled with Dean, that a $50-per-person meal could be served by such a dolt, she mentioned him to the maitre'd on the way out. How did we know his name? On my way back from the loo at one point, I passed him trying to chat up one of the waitresses outside the kitchen. She was adding up a check and was barely listening, but another waiter passed by and said with a little passive-aggressive laugh, "Get back to work, Dean."

Part 2: Revenge of the Beefeater, a Venezuelan hideaway, and Oh! Deer

Kirin Chicken

Either it was boot camp Tuesday or the guy sitting behind me on the bus Wednesday, but by noon Thursday I was pretty much toast from a cold. The Limited brought me all the way back to where I started the day, 25th and Geary, and woozy as I was I was not going to pass on Kirin.

The room is a few notches above lots of other Chinese places, with a mix of incandescents and CFLs instead of factory-floor fluorescent tubes, but the brown carpet has got to go. At any rate, I beelined for the lunch special won-ton soup with shredded chicken. The shredded chicken is in fact a nice mix of light and dark meat julienned with the cleaver, piled atop of a steaming heap of won tons and choy sum in broth. A couple dashes of hot chili and you have what the doctor would order.

p.s. Chinese cuisine of the Kirin type goes in and out of favor with people -- whether it's the grease, quality of ingredients, dining experience, whatever. I understand, at the same time that I recognize it as a little picky. This is soup, rice plates, vegetables whipped in a wok in a flash. In my condition, how could I endure anything else?

Cioppino Secret

New Year's Eve dinner with my dad, stepmother and their friends in Santa Rosa: the featured meal, their NYE tradition, was a hearty cioppino. Why so good? The chef let us in on a little secret: crab butter. No, it's not a flavored dairy item. I had to google around a bit to figure it out.

California-Arizona Travel and Life

The banana bread mix from TJ's is in the oven and I'm due for Satchmo's red beans and rice at Elbo's at 4, so here are some quick road-trip notes.

Foodies and winos, you know this is a wonderful state. In Palm Springs, of all places, I got turned on to a knockout Galician white. (Fanch, take note.) In Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo, the wine bars were on par, if not better, than any place anywhere else. On the other side of the epicurean coin, there's something to be said about the comforting sameness of Mexican restaurants.

The best table salsa was that place on Rosedale in Bakersfield, although the joint in Parker, Ariz., across the Colorado River had a nice mix in its salsa bar. (All beverages also clocked in at 96 ounces. No wonder ... O, you know.) Tacos came hard and soft. El Rancho de Tía Rosa in Mesa, Ariz., took the cake for its succulent meats and also appears to be the most consistently crowded, for good reason.

The biggest hit were the rib-eye "sliders" at Intermezzo, the wine bar I found wandering in the Paseo off State Street in Santa Barbara. Biggest flop was the Caesar at the Parker Palm Springs (purloined pic of porte cochere is above), which I tell everybody is Merv's old place, although the management did email me asking for feedback. Now they've got it.

Review: Balboa Sushi House

Is there a restaurant more inviting than the Balboa Sushi House? With its profusion of house plants standing in pots and hanging from hooks, its fish tanks, and assortment of lamps, baubles and knick knacks everywhere, it feels more like a college-town coffee house than Japanese restaurant.

The service -- that is to say, the friendly lady who runs the place -- is no different: warm, comfortable, relaxing. Last night we had to see some folks on Balboa, and by the time we were done, we figured we might as well grab a bite in the neighborhood and pray that La Malita Monkeypants wouldn't get too cranky.

She got cranky. We had to hold and feed her, which meant putting the hot soup to the side. After bringing our orders, Mrs. Balboa Sushi House did a remarkable thing. She cooed a bit over Lila then asked to hold her. Uh...well...sure! we said. There was only one other customer, so she held her for at least fifteen minutes. We ate in peace and listened as our hostess showed Lila around the room and spoke universal baby-language with her.

As for the food, it's run of the mill Japanese. My hot soba had nice large pieces of broccoli and cauliflower and didn't skimp on the chicken. The gyoza were light but devilishly crispy. Fanch's bento box was nothing special. It was nothing to make a detour for, and there are much better sushi options within a block or two. But it's a great place to go when your priorities are a cozy room, a hot bowl of noodles, and a few minutes of babysitting.

Puck Me? No, Puck You

Here's Anthony Bourdain on Wolfgang Puck's bone to pick with foie gras. Typical Fight Club sandwich:

"I think he should stop worrying about cruelty to animals and start worrying about all the customers he's flopping his crap on at airports. ... He got squeezed and pressured and phone-called from all angles, and like a good German shopkeeper he folded and sold out the people hiding in the cellar next door. I got no respect."

http://tinyurl.com/2z6b26

Yuck? Pork Tri-tip and Broccoli

Maybe this is a yuck stretch, but it's something that meets the main criterion for this kind of post: impromptu combination of leftovers. I heated up a cast-iron pan where I roasted a split chicken breast the night before, adding a little olive oil to the caked-on spices and fat. Chopped up some thin slices of pork tri-tip into diagonals, and threw them in when the pan sizzled. Then tossed in steamed broccoli and about a tablespoon of dry sherry to deglaze. Two or three minutes later, I spooned out a stir-fry of sorts.

Yuck? Scrambled Eggs and Anchovies

I used white anchovies, the kind marinated in a vinagry brine, not the salty brown slivers from the tin. This is probably cheating, because I can eat anchovies all by themselves. But I wondered if the textures of scrambled eggs and soft salty fish would mesh. They did, but I think a key is to scramble the eggs to firmness with even a bit of brown around the edges. Runny scrambled eggs and anchovies would be less appealing, though it certainly wouldn't stop me.

Review: Kazu Sushi

The world's pelagic fish population might not be around when Miss Monkeypants is old enough to eat sushi, so we figured she should at least have some exposure before it's too late.

Friday night we bundled her off to Kazu Sushi on Irving between 9th and 10th -- it used to be Chika, and it's unclear if the ownership or just the name changed.

It had a few problems. The room was chilly, and the space heater deployed across from our table didn't help much because -- oops! -- it wasn't plugged in, as I found out about half way through the meal. Not surprising -- the staff was a bit scattered. But they remained friendly and happy to coo over a newborn. They were impressed, as were the couple at the next table visiting from Portsmouth, N.H., that she could take the hubbub; at one point she sat in my lap, sipped from a bottle, and surveyed the scene. (For what it's worth, the Portsmouth woman's brother, who lives here, told her Kazu was his favorite sushi place. I didn't ask for his name.)

The food was better. The numerous specials were all in transliterated Japanese. I asked our waitress to describe them in English, but it was rudimentary information at best. (A typical exchange: "What's this?" "Rrr, mmm, how to say, eh...pork." "Pork?" "Yessu. Pork. Glillu.")

I ordered a couple mystery dishes, just for the hell of it. It's one of my favorite activities: sampling apps that only a native Japanese might love. (Monkfish liver pate is one of these that have tentatively crossed the line into sushi-bar acceptance in certain American quarters.) The gamble paid off with the shishamo, small grilled anchovies or smelt, perhaps, that were eaten whole, head and all. It fell flat with the cold soggy pickled... I think they were sardines.

I loved the sushi we ordered: nothing too wacky, a white tuna tataki roll and a dragon roll with spicy salmon.

Coming soon: The Fanch reviews an invasive species, the grand opening of Pacific Catch where the beloved Canvas Cafe used to be.

Gary Danko Wants His Umami

The video I shot recently got good play over the weekend on WSJ.com:

Yay! This was a heck of a lot of fun. My colleague Stacey Delo also makes a lot of the work look easy. Have me over for soup and ask me about it.

Review: House of Banquet

I am a simple man. On Sundays, unless I've committed to beaten eggs in my Calphalon, I'm crazy for the cuisines of the Far East -- particularly those heavy on the dumplings. Doing errands on foot and on the early side yesterday, I sought out the sit-down places of inner Clement. After a false start across the street (dim sum for take-out, or for taking into a separate seating area, meh), I ended up at House of Banquet, a double-decked establishment that I never conceived of visiting before.

The hostess sees me coming and opens the door to let me in. She smiles when I ask if dim sum was being served. "Upstairs," she said. "Every day." OK, sold. I head up.

As you can see from this image, courtesy of House of Banquet's Web site, you could have a little fun with the dining room's interior desecration. Gold drapes over mirrors, octagon-shaped light wells, chairs in orange, blue or beige upholstery set off by a massive mural: all the design touches of Johan van der Smut, a Dutch scalawag better known as Goldmember. At the very least it's stimulating. The piped-in music is some R&B station, so I'm taking this all in to Junior Walker's "Shotgun" and then "Good Times" by Chic. Yeah, baby.

Here's something else that's interesting: These kinds of establishments apparently are up to certain other standards. Not saying anything. All of the chairs at my table, for example, were stained. (Orange isn't that good at hiding blotches of soy sauce or who knows what.) My plate and tea cup were chipped more than once; you couldn't miss it. The headwaiter approaches, and he seems like a nice guy, looking good in a jacket and tie with a blue collared shirt. He's really nice, asking me if I want anything in particular. Yes, I say: I'd like Shanghai-style pork and ginger dumplings. He'll get that for me, he says. I can't help but notice that his jacket is soiled, enough so that you can tell even five feet away. He could get it laundered, but maybe he's busy and keeps this one handy at the restaurant. I don't think he minds, and he stops at the table of three Chinese ladies next to me to kibbitz every now and then. They love it and don't seem to mention it. Just saying.

The carts start making their way across the floor with their pork buns and porridge and chicken feet and assorted other delicacies, and the waitress makes an effort to try to translate, with the help of the Chinese ladies. They have a few laughs and don't come up with anything in English. No matter; I know this drill. I pick up a couple things I've had before and some newish things, like chive dumplings and a variation of siu mai that looks like Japanese gyoza. My neighbors giggle. I'm having fun eating the buns with my hands, listening to "1999" followed by Big Boi's "The Way You Move."

The headwaiter stops by a couple times, checking on my teapot, asking "Everything OK here?" in a casual manner. Yes, it is. I end with a special dessert, four green-tea puffs in little crinkle cups, with poppy seeds and paste inside. The ladies approve, going "Waaah!" when they're brought out. I'm sure they're flash-fried, but are not oily at all, capping the steamed indulgences earlier with savory-sweet decadence.

I put a $20 into the tab booklet and head out; the headwaiter gives me a head bob and thanks me again. The hostess downstairs smiles. "How was everything?" Great, I say. See you next time. Bye bye.

Yuck? Dover Sole and Croissant

Thawing a chicken to roast and yet peckish, I take out the last fillet of sole left over from the improvised cioppino the other night. I cut a croissant from Schubert's in half and toast it quick. Topped it with the warmed fillet, which was pan-fried in a little butter and seasoned later with lemon juice. A little taramosalata, and bam!

Very good. Croissants make most things very good.