Category: Cucina

We had a great Thanksgiving yesterday with Ed and Gina. This was the first time they had a dinner party in their new house, and we were happy to contribute. We did the first course, Risotto a la Milanese, which is a basic white risotto with pancetta and saffron. We then kicked around pitching in here and there on the turkey and other food while drinking wine, which means that the rest of the afternoon while we waited for the food to finish was just a happy warm feeling.

Almost forgot to mention: Ed is a computer monster. With something like six PC towers around, two PS2s, two PS1s, an XBox, a Dreamcast, a Saturn, and shelves full of old Intellivisions, Colecovisions, 2600s, and an Apple IIe for good measure, the place is full of gear. Plus software. Suddenly my 900 CDs don’t seem so bad.

No, not the Futurama kind, though I’m sure it will strike many as close enough.

Lisa is back east for training this week. Unlike past weeks where I got super ambitious with food, I thought I’d make it simple tonight. Bratwurst and leftover mashed potatoes.

Except after browning the brats I decided to make gravy. With beer. Bert Grant’s Fresh Hop Ale, to be exact. I let the brats cook down in the beer, then added mustard for flavor and flour for thickness. As Neko Case sings, “It looks a lot like engine oil and tastes a lot like being small.” Except it’s like nothing I ever had when I was growing up. I think I had to wait till my first trip to London to taste it.

Yes, I’ve now mastered pub cuisine…

The Julie/Julia Project may have its Spicy Thursdays; I have, at least while Lisa is on the road, Leftover Tuesdays. In this case, though, the leftovers were steaks from a beef tenderloin that had been roasted in an herbed salt crust (for the curious, you dispose of the caked salt—it just ensures consistent temperature distribution, retention of juices by the meat, and some small amount of seasoning).

Being a fundamentally masochistic person, I decided that I couldn’t just do leftovers. So (after using our new random-orbital palm sander to buzz off the trim in the Gold Room prior to tomorrow night’s painting) I tried cooking mashed potatoes with parsley and chive oil (it’s in this month’s Gourmet, but probably won’t be on Epicurious for another few months). I halved the recipe but had proportion problems. For instance, I decided to substitute sautéed shallots for chives, since we only have one very small pot of the latter. And I probably didn’t have enough parsley (though our parsley plant is overproducing, I didn’t want to cut off every leaf). So as a result, the potatoes that were supposed to be bright green and presumably bursting with herbaceous flavor…weren’t quite. Still good, but next time I’ll stick to roasted garlic.

I wasn’t going to blog any more today, but I gotta brag. I was talking to someone today about Lisa being on the east coast this week, and she said, “Oh, so you’re eating a lot of pizza, huh?”

Yeah, right. With Lisa out, I can cook risotto and pork chops and all the other food I really like that she doesn’t like on a regular basis. So that’s what I did. Basic white risotto with pancetta (from Boston, natch), rosemary, and sage. Grilled pork chops with a splash of balsamic vinegar. Fresh string beans on the side.

The pork chops are a revelation, actually. I left a few in a brine of sugar, salt, juniper berries, and peppercorns for about 48 hours and then grilled them. (Well, technically they’re pancooked, but the pan has grill ridges, so that counts, right?) The resulting flavor is too intense to describe. Tony can keep his birthday lapdance from Christina Aguilera; I’ll stick with my risotto and pork chops, thanks.

On a friend’s recommendation, we went back to Wild Ginger for our anniversary last night. This was a complete 180 from our last visit. We were seated promptly, the service was attentive and knowledgable, the wine steward was brilliant, and the food was exceptional.

Today our friend Shel is visiting. We’re about to go to the public market for ingredients for a vegetarian feast, after eating bread, cheese, and a salad made with greens from our garden (arugula, dandelion greens, frisée, etc.). Shel is the sort of friend who can make a drizzly Northwest day a lot of fun.
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We watched Mario Batali make orecchiette with sausage and broccoli rabe yesterday afternoon in front of a large crowd at the Festa Italiana Seattle. He was appropriately fun and informative, explaining the rationale behind using hard semolina flour for his orecchiette, then busting a little on Emeril (he added a clove of garlic to the sauce he was cooking and said, “Bam. Now you’ll notice that’s the only ingredient that makes a noise going in…. Don’t get me wrong, I like Emeril a lot. But we have different styles. I prefer to let the food do the talking.”)

Mario also managed to set a towel on fire. He had been letting his saute pan heat over a gas burner, and as soon as he added oil flames jetted up a good two or three feet into the air. He said, “Now when this happens in our kitchen we don’t get loud or panicky. We just say, ‘Smokey, put that fire out!’” He then proceeded to try to smother the flames with a towel, which promptly caught fire. He tossed it to the stage and stomped it out into the green plastic carpet. Afterwards his dad (who runs a great salumeria in Seattle) crept onto the stage to retrieve the towel and could be heard saying, “It’s stuck…”

Afterwards we tried out some of his dad’s salumi, which were tremendous, and got an autographed copy of Babbo, Mario’s cookbook. It was a good time.
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WSJ: Beer may actually be good for you (registration and payment required). Quoth the article: “it seems beer not only lifts spirits, but also delivers protection against major ailments such as heart attacks, stroke, hypertension, diabetes and dementia.”

It’s good to have confirmation by the Wall Street Journal, but they’re not exactly breaking a scoop with this story.
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Before I went to Ikea to get a replacement cabinet side, I put dinner in the oven. We had some brisket that I needed to cook, so looking over my newly unpacked cookbooks, I found a recipe idea from one of our James Beard cookbooks that looked good.

I put a long piece of aluminum foil in a roasting pan, sliced an onion and a half thinly and put half down in the foil, laid the brisket on top, put the rest of the onion on top with salt, pepper, a little olive oil, and a splash of red wine. Then I sealed the aluminum foil over the meat, put the whole thing in a 250° F oven, and forgot it for the next four hours. As I was putting rice on the stove, I just peeked into the foil after verifying the meat was up to temperature: it’s swimming in juices and smelling heavenly. Pot roast in a pan. This James Beard guy knows what he’s on about. (Surprising I don’t have a “food” category—I guess I’ll need to start one.)
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The WSJ says that housing purchases were really up last month. Glad that we bought when we did.

Dinner at Todd English’s Kingfish Hall tonight. Much better than the Rustic Grill across the way. Great wine list, excellent seafood, beautiful outdoor seating. Bloated now, but happy.

Finally, I’m grateful to announce that this site has the #1 hit for the term “sammiches” on Google (including Google Belgium, from where the referral hit came that tipped me off). For the uninitiated, a “sammich” is related to a “sandwich,” only with much less lifting of pinkies in the consumption thereof.

New York Times: In Boston. Julie Flaherty reports about the state of Boston, including dining out.

I agree about the Daily Catch (and note that it’s possible to find a meal for two for much less than $50, especially if you’re not shy about trying unusual calamari dishes—they range from the normal fried squid to squid meatballs!). It’s long been one of my favorite restaurants. It’s got about eight tables around an open kitchen, where olive oil and garlic is in splattery abundance. House wine is served in plastic cups and a really excellent pasta con seppie nero (black squid ink) is served in a hot sauté pan. Don’t go if you don’t like smelling like your dinner; it took a week for the garlic odor to come out of the coat I was wearing the first time I went.

There are plenty of other excellent options, though, like Taranta (where we talked to a few of the wait staff about living in Campania), Mamma Maria (which had some really outstanding pappardelle with rabbit), Limoncello (which is next door to us and served so much good food and limoncello that I don’t know what to write about), the newly opened Carmen (a wine bar next to Limoncello that has $3-$4 wine plates, an enormous wine list, and outstanding pastas), Trattoria à Scalinatella (run by the owner of the Wine Bottega), Artu, Antico Forno, Assaggio,Terramia… and then all the pizza and sub joints…

Man, I’m going to miss living in this neighborhood.

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New York Times: Chug, Don’t Sip. Relax, they’re talking about tea. Suddenly my wife’s habit of returning from weekend trips to London with enormous Harrod’s shopping bags full of loose tea seems sensible:

Those who drank the most tea — about 19 cups a week — were the least likely to die in the three to four years after [a heart] attack; they had a 44 percent lower death rate than nondrinkers.

Now if there were only advice on how to keep one’s teeth from browning under that regimen…

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It’s been a great weekend. Primarily because I’ve procrastinated.

Friday I got in a solid chunk of work on a project for New Product Development. Then I crapped out. We made an Italian meatloaf — that’s made with ground beef and Italian hot sausage, with hard-boiled eggs in the middle, and some other good stuff that I won’t discuss now, then covered in the tomato sauce that Lisa canned this summer. Saturday I got a little work done — mostly just hung out with Lisa, shopping etc.

Today was the real red-letter day. It was the first snow of the winter last night–supposedly two inches, though the ground was too warm for accumulation. Lots of pretty flakes with no side effects–my favorite kind. We got up early, went shopping. Came back with Lisa’s Christmas present. We definitively decided — she’s a Tiffany girl. Did some cooking afterwards: a killer pork rib roast. Dry rub the pork with salt, pepper, cinnamon, rosemary, fennel… wet roast it in beef stock and wine with quartered oranges… serve it with more sliced oranges and reduced roasting sauce. Oh yeah. I’m delighted to report that two years in business school haven’t killed my cooking abilities.

So this week will be miserable. That’s ok. The weekend was worth it.

Got this list in an email from our friends at the Wine Bottega (who still don’t have a Web site; hmm, maybe I should do something about that). It’s excerpted from Wallpaper magazine:

Buying Wine

There’s one golden rule when purchasing wine: buy it by the box. No, we’re not talking about wine in a box but 12 tempting bottles packed into a cardboard container. While this does involve a little planning and is perhaps not as spontaneous as nipping out for an extra bottle of Kent Rasmussen you should remember that:

1. You will always drink more than you planned
2. A box demands you try new varieties.
3. You usually get a discount for buying volume.
4. For every degree the thermometer drops in winter, the wine shop moves another block away.
5. It will never go to waste.
6. You always have something to bring to impromptu dinner parties.
7. Carrying home a single bottle of wine after work makes you look like an alcoholic.
8. Walking out with a full case suggests you have your intake under control.
9. You never know what you are going to cook, so diversity is important.
10. Boxes usually mean delivery. Delivery means delivery boys (or girls). You fill in the rest.