San Diego Foodie Tourism

I went to San Diego for a few days for a liberry conference. It felt like a loooonnnngg trip since I didn't have my best liberry foodie buddies with me. I passed the downtime scoping out restaurants. I feel like I hit every eatery within walking distance, and some that weren't. How else would I spend my time? Reading books?

Some of the highlights:

Breakfast is served.

Peanut Butter and Banana Stuffed French Toast at Cafe 222. How could that be bad? I've since been on a peanut butter + banana bender, eating sandwiches made with that combination every day for lunch. Truthfully, when I tried this I thought what would make it even better would be to mix peanut butter with with some cream cheese, and go heavier on the peanut butter filling. I intend to test this hypothesis soon. At The Mission, I ate Chicken apple sausage, with crispy rosemary potatoes, grilled rosemary bread, and eggs. I do love rosemary!

Eating my own weight in seafood.

I heard Ted Danson speak at the conference. He was there to plug his book about saving the world's oceans. The main things I remember about that were that he said "literally" in every other sentence and that he said not to eat swordfish or tuna or other things I probably want to eat. So immediately following his session, I ate the best sushi roll I've ever tasted at Taka Sushi, that said with the caveat that I haven't eaten that much sushi, but I do like it. The special battera roll has fresh tuna, shrimp, crab, seaweed, rice, and orange caviar, then it's topped with black caviar and green onion. I went to The Fish Market the night before, where a friend and I tried Mesquite-grilled Ginger Lime Prawns with Cilantro Sauce, Swordfish with Roasted Vegetables and Parsley Potatoes, and Seabass with Roasted Vegetables and Cole Slaw. Take that, Ted Danson.

Mashed Potatoes on Pizza?!?

At Basic Pizza, they serve New Haven-style pizza, whatever that means. I understand the difference between Chicago and New York-style, but beyond that, I probably couldn't tell the difference. I opted to try the White Pie with Mozzarella, Mashed Potato, and Bacon. That's right, mashed potatoes. The pizza was heavier on grease and salt than taste. Nice place, tho.

Old Town San Diego Mexican Food

I went to Casa Guadalajara in Old Town, which had some remarkable fish tacos. I also tried Carne Asada Tacos with Chile Colorado Sauce, because I'm a glutton. I think the waiter even felt it was his conscientious duty to tell me that I ordered too much food for one person, but I proceeded anyway. Hey, I made two meals out of it. I also got horchata and they had some chips and salsa to munch on that were very good. I also thought the pictures I took here were some of the prettiest food pictures I've ever taken. They kind of put my point and shoot camera pics above to shame.

The desserts I tried will get a separate post. You didn't think I'd skip dessert, did you?

Gnocchi a la Parisienne for Two

Gnocchi. A word that's hard to spell or pronounce correctly. And if you asked me, hard to make at home correctly, too.

I recently started dating someone new, and I usually worry about how long I need to date someone before revealing the full brunt of my cooking and food obsessions. First dates usually consist of me interviewing the guy about food tastes and preferences, favorite restaurants, food allergies, etc. Maybe I'm the only person who sees picky eating habits as a bigger barrier than old relationship baggage, divergent political views, or whatever the deal breakers are these days.

I wondered how I was going to explain why I was spending a couple of hours on a weeknight after a long day at work on a random recipe to New Guy, who probably had never eaten or even heard of gnocchi. I invited him over for dinner, but I didn't get home until 7:30, then I needed to clean the kitchen workspace, and do some prep for the recipe.

Me: Are you okay with a really late dinner? Or should I make you something quick?
Him: Dinner won't be at 10 o'clock, will it?
Me: Uh, hem, hah, stammer...

Plus dinner was gnocchi, but he didn't complain. I used Dorie's recipe, which is incredibly similar to pâte à choux. Surprisingly there are no potatoes in this gnocchi. You boil the gnocchi, then top it with a bechamel sauce and cheese and bake it.

I didn't have great luck with this recipe. My bechamel was too thick; my gnocchi were crazy shapes and sizes. I blame New Guy for distracting me. (Sappy!) I even forgot to season the bechamel with salt, pepper, and nutmeg before putting it in the dish. Luckily, New Guy is super helpful in the kitchen. He stirred the bechamel and grated cheese for me.



I scaled the recipe for 6 down to make it for 2 people instead. And guess what time dinner was served? 10 o'clock.



This recipe got some mixed reviews from us. The bechamel was never quite right, even after baking. The dish as a whole felt really heavy. Come on, it's eggs, milk, and cheese! But I think with some added herbs, maybe vegetables, it could shine more.

Moral of the story: even if your recipe's not a winner, eat dinner with one.

French Fridays Paris Mushroom Soup

Today's French Fridays with Dorie recipe was the Paris Mushroom Soup. With a base of 1 1/2 large onions and 1 1/2 pounds of white mushrooms, you might have a few picky eaters that bow out of tasting this soup, but I really enjoyed it.

The hardest part for me was chopping the onions, simply because I'm very sensitive to them and they make my eyes tear up and swell shut. Pretty attractive!

I used an immersion blender to purée the soup in the cooking pot, so that I didn't have to deal with moving hot soup to and from a blender. That went a long way towards making this an easy recipe.

I did make a couple of substitutions. One of my perennial New Year's resolutions is not to waste food. Once again this year, I vow to be better at using ingredients I have on hand and not let things get pushed to the back of the fridge to spoil. For that reason, I didn't buy rosemary, chives, or crème fraiche for this recipe. I subbed a bit of dried thyme for the rosemary and some sour cream for the crème fraiche. I also would have preferred to use all chicken broth in the soup, but I was caught in a pinch and had to use 1/3 broth and 2/3 water. Fortunately, Dorie's recipes always seem to handle spontaneous substitutions well.

Everyone that tried this soup liked it... I only had one conscientious objector abstain on the grounds that he doesn't eat "rabbit food." Next time, I'll serve it with a beef tenderloin and see if that wins him over.

The Year That Was - 2010

For New Year's, we'll be eating black-eyed peas and cabbage, playing our shell game where you draw your fortune for the year, and making wishes on the flying wish paper. I'm on an unbelievable hot streak of getting what I wish for.

This year was wonderful, and I feel very blessed.

Here's my year in cities again. Looking at 2007, 2008, and 2009, I think this list may be my best yet. I traveled through 16 states and visited these cities in 2010:

Salt Lake City, UT
Provo, UT
San Antonio, TX
Windsor, CO
Estes Park, CO
Washington, DC
Canon City, CO
Loveland, CO
Denver, CO
Seattle, WA
(okay, these next 7 were on a cruise ship)
Vancouver, BC, Canada
Ketchikan, AK
Juneau, AK
Skagway, AK
Glacier Bay, AK
College Fjord, AK
Seward, AK
Anchorage, AK
Austin, TX
Portland, ME
Dover, NH
Sharon, VT
Wilmington, VT
Hartford, CT
New Haven, CT
Newport, RI
Cambridge, MA
Boston, MA

Honorable mention to Memphis, Tennessee, whose airport I flew through 6 times. It's unbelievably lame that I haven't blogged about my Alaskan cruise, especially considering that it was the best vacation ever. I need to get on that.

Please leave a comment with your year in cities (Even if you already did it on Facebook, you have to do it again.).

The First Fifth Annual Festivus

The annual holiday party at my house is a Festivus party. Some years I even throw a couple of Festivus parties. I held my first ever Festivus party the year I moved into my house. I don't remember now what prompted me to organize that first party, but I really started something - something that gets weirder every year.

The first 5th annual Festivus started with the weird invite

for which I drew my inspiration from a truly ugly website, that of Lubbock Power & Light.

On the menu:

• Spicy Chicken Sandwiches. Reference to The Jimmy where George starts speaking in third person.
• Atomic Subs. Sub sandwich with Black Forest Ham and Turkey, Gruyère Cheese, and mustard/raspberry jam spread, toasted. Reference to The Strike where Elaine gives her Atomic Sub punch card to Denim Vest.
  

• Roasted Vegetable and Poppy Seed Spread on Challah. Reference to The Shower Head where Elaine fails a drug test because she ate poppyseed muffins.

• Éclairs. Reference to The Gymnast where George crosses the line between man and bum and eats an éclair out of the trash.

• Snickers. Reference to The Pledge Drive where Mr. Pitt starts a trend by eating his Snickers bar with a knife and fork.

• Pretzels. Reference to The Alternate Side where Kramer has a line in a Woody Allen film, "These pretzels are making me thirsty!"
• Eggnog and other snacks.

After the foodage, we got the Festivus Pole out of the crawlspace and had airing of grievances and feats of strength. I tried long and hard to think of the most harmless, ridiculous grievance I could air, so I told Ian that I didn't like how he makes fun of the way I cut cakes (which is totally Wilton approved, by the way!), but it was still awkward. Feats of strength are usually board games, and we played Telestrations, which was very fun!

Re: the food, this was my first attempt at éclairs. I used this recipe for the pâte à choux (my pastry cream and chocolate glaze recipes were pretty similar to the ones on that page, too). The first step in making the pastry is to bring the water, butter, and sugar to a rolling boil on the stove. Of course, I was trying to do too many things at once, and I accidentally bumped the pan of water, butter, and sugar, and spilled it all over the floor. That made quite an oil slick on my floor before the party. Nice! Improving my piping method would prettify my éclairs, but I was pleased with how they turned out.



The second 5th annual Festivus party was a fondue party. Since I can think of no fondue-related Seinfeld jokes besides the double dip, I'll leave it at that and sign out with a Festivus greeting from Jerry Stiller:

Speculoos

This has been quite a year of traveling for me, visiting a few cities in Texas, Utah, Colorado, Washington, DC, Seattle, Canada, Alaska, and around Boston and New England. And while I've never been to Memphis, I've flown through the Memphis airport six times this year, courtesy of Delta Airlines.

Have you flown Delta Airlines and tried those Biscoff Cookies they serve as an in-flight snack? They're crispy ginger cookies and they're delicious. I just learned that you can purchase a Biscoff spread, "Europe's alternative to peanut butter," which is made using crushed Biscoff cookies. I read that the spread was good here and here, and of course you can't buy it in Lubbock, so I ordered four jars to start with, intending to give some away at Christmas. I shared some with the family last time they came over for dinner. They liked it so much, that this week I ordered four more jars because I needed more stocking stuffers. I'm hooked on it, too.

Biscoff cookies are from Belgium, where they're known as Speculaas, and they are typically imprinted with a design, as shown here by Martha Stewart. In France, they're called Speculoos, and I tried Dorie's Around My French Table Speculoos recipe tonight. After binging on Biscoff spread for a few days, I was looking forward to tasting Dorie's version of the cookie.

Making the dough was easy. I followed the recipe closely except for using a little more ginger than called for. The dough was rather hard to work with after I rolled it out. I tried different rolling it out to different thicknesses but found I liked the very thin cookies best. Of course, the thin dough was the hardest to cut and transfer to a baking sheet without cracks or prints finding their way into the dough. I tried to get extra fancy and use a speculaas mold rolling pin to imprint shapes on some of the dough, which didn't work so well.



The designs were barely visible after the cookies baked, but they were still pretty good-looking. I guess my rolling pin technique needs some work. As far as taste, I expected them to have a stronger ginger flavor. Next time I will double the ginger, and maybe add some pepper or cayenne, to go for a spicier rather than sweeter cookie.



And speaking of sweets, these cookies are delicious when sandwiched around a layer of another European spread, Nutella.

Sweet and Spicy Cocktail Nuts

As much as I consider myself a cake baker and dessert maker, you know what one of my most requested recipes is? Spiced nuts. Seriously, right?!?

I've copied or emailed my recipe to my mom a few times. My sister called and asked for it just before Thanksgiving. The nuts disappear quickly at parties and are always welcome as a hostess gift. And get this, my teenage brother asked for spiced pecans for his Christmas present from me... more than once even! Now that's saying something!

For my recipe, I always use pecans, our family's favorite nut, tossed in egg whites and then a combination of salt, sugar, cumin, cayenne, and paprika. Heavy on the cayenne because we're good Texans.

I don't feel boastful if I say that I've become somewhat expert in the field. I've learned that you should roast the nuts on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Waxed paper will be a total disaster, and even a Silpat doesn't seem to work as well. Watch the timer and the baking process carefully. The nuts can go from underdone to perfect to burned in a matter of a minute. Let the pecans cool thoroughly before you touch or eat them. The spice coating needs a few moments out of the oven to get nice and set.

I tried a new recipe today from Dorie Greenspan's Around My French Table for Sweet and Spicy Cocktail Nuts (p. 18). Her base recipe calls for your favorite nut - almonds, cashews, pistachios, or pecans (the latter being the least French of the lot) - or a mix of several. They're spiced with sugar, chili powder, cinnamon, and a pinch of cayenne. The spices are interchangeable, too, and she suggests getting creative by using Chinese five-spice powder, curry, cardamom, or herbs.

I thought Dorie's recipe looked very similar to my tried and true one, so I opted to spice it up (har har) by using almonds instead of pecans and some of her alternative spice suggestions. Since I had some Chinese five-spice powder in my cupboard just aching to be used, I pulled it out for this recipe. It took only a few minutes to mix the nuts with the spices and get them in the oven.



They came out beautifully. I could certainly taste the anise and fennel from the five-spice powder, which tasted like a mild black licorice and reminded me of the little after-dinner Mukhwas you see at Indian restaurants. The almonds weren't too sweet or salty. I think the only change I'd make for next time is to use a full teaspoon of cayenne pepper instead of only a heavy pinch. I'm a good Texan, after all.

Be prepared to make multiple batches. You'll want to snack on some and have enough left over to share them with friends, and they're highly addictive.

Come, Ye Thankful People

I am giddy about Thanksgiving. As Ina Garten said, "Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year. All I have to do is cook." However, as previously mentioned, I am dictatorial when it comes to planning the menu and assigning entrée responsibilities. I am a little bit like this letter writer... Or maybe a lot like that writer. I'm writing this post for myself and posterity. I always like to look back at pictures and menus from previous holidays and see what we did, what worked, what flopped, etc. I think this year's meal could go down as one of the best.
Menu:
Roasted Turkey and Gravy
Cornbread Dressing
Mashed Potatoes
Roasted Sweet Potatoes
Pumpkin Stuffed with Everything Good
Green Beans
Cranberry Salad
Rolls
Apple Pie
Pumpkin Pie
This year I didn't try to get fancy with the turkey. I can't believe that a couple of years ago, I served my turkey with chimichurri instead of gravy. That's sacrilege! I usually rub some butter and spices under the skin. This year was no different, but I used cumin, smoked paprika, and ginger this go-around.



I watched this video a few times to refresh my memory on how to carve a turkey and also because I like New York accents.





I would drink that gravy on its own.



I don't think I've made a pumpkin pie before this one. I like pumpkin, but I usually put it in a cheesecake for Thanksgiving. I haven't had many good pumpkin pies, but this one was a worthy competitor.



Nancy got to lick the beaters from the whipped cream. And eat a drumstick the next day.

Clean out Your Refrigerator Crème Brûlée

It's only Tuesday, and I've already had a heckuva week, my stress culminating with my freezer/refrigerator dying. I have a bad habit of skipping breakfast and lunch and overeating when I get home. In a desperate attempt to clean out my fridge and freezer, today I had eaten two or three yogurts and a frozen dinner by lunch time. I should invite everyone over for a clean out the fridge feast. Although I'm not sure we want to eat whatever's in the back of my fridge.

Need a way to use your cream and eggs before they go bad?



When life hands you lemons, make Crème Brûlée. Recipe

Update: November 15 is Clean out Your Refrigerator Day. I was ahead of the curve.

Boston in the Fall

"Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns."

~ George Eliot

I read that quote on one of my favorite blogs and loved the sentiment so much that I decided to post it here as well. Autumn is all well and good in Lubbock, but I learned firsthand that the season is completely magical in New England.

Leaves' colors changing on the trees - apparently that's a real thing in some parts of the country.







Leaves there fell gently and slowly to the ground one by one, drifting downwards as if they're in control, rather than becoming brown, lifeless projectiles hurled around in a West Texas windstorm.

I never before understood the literary romanticism of cemeteries, but after seeing dozens of overfull burying grounds with headstones from the 1600s embellished with skulls and winged creatures, where witches were once put on trial, where the sun sets early and brightly colored leaves dance in the chilly breezes, I can see how the setting is perfect for a haunting.



Whilst in Boston, I ate at Ariana, an Afghani restaurant in Allston-Brighton. I tried their Kaddo Bourani appetizer, and it was one of my favorite things I ate during my trip. They took a pumpkin, baked it in sugar, then covered it with yogurt and meat sauce. Since tasting it, I've wanted to find savory pumpkin dishes to make for myself.

Katie tipped me off to a wonderful recipe with which to celebrate fall's bounty and make use of all those pumpkins you purchased to decorate the house for Halloween: Pumpkin Stuffed With Everything Good. And it's another Dorie Greenspan recipe, this one from Around My French Table.

I was actually able to make the recipe with ingredients I had on hand. Even better. Start with a small pumpkin (around three pounds; don't use the big jack-o-lantern pumpkins), cut the pumpkin top off, and scrape out the seeds and stringy bits. Salt and pepper the inside. Toss bread, cheese, garlic, bacon, chives, and thyme together and fill the pumpkin with the mixture. Pour a mixture of heavy cream and a pinch of nutmeg over the filling.



Top the pumpkin with the cap, and bake at 350° for about two hours. Remove the cap for the last 20 or so minutes. The filling will be lightly browned and the pumpkin skin will be dark and can be easily pierced with a knife.



The dish can be impressively cut and served at the table. Plate the pumpkin and cut it into wedges, ensuring that each has a good amount of the filling.



As Dorie said, "Who wouldn't love this?" I'm planning to use this as a Thanksgiving side. Why should the only pumpkin on the Thanksgiving table be in a pie?