5 second rule

Tasting Temescal: an Oakland, California Food Tour

(From left: Our hostess and tour guide, Sarah Henry; baker Brian Wood of Starter Bakery with his Kouign Amanns; Hannah Hoffman of Doughnut Dolly; the colorful tiffin at Juhu Beach Club; hanging citrus at Scream, a wonderful sorbet and ice cream shop whose fate is currently uncertain)

I can tell you about the food scene in Portland. I can tell you about the food scene in Mexico City. And I can tell you about the food scene in Israel. You want to know about the food in suburban New York circa 1985? I can tell you about that, too. (I hope you like diners and delis.)

But it was with some measure of embarrassment and shame that I recently realized how little I knew about the Bay Area food scene beyond the comfortable confines of Silicon Valley. 

Further north -- either up towards San Francisco or veering east toward Oakland and Berkeley -- tossed me completely and utterly out of my league. 

So I jumped at an invitation from my friend and fellow food writer Sarah Henry to join her for a media preview of a new series of walking-and-tasting tours run by Edible Excursions, a culinary tour company that matches food enthusiasts and travelers with knowledgeable guides for three-hour jaunts through particular neighborhoods. (Note: Tours cost $75/per person and include plenty of food to qualify as a full meal, with dessert, and then some. We folks on the media preview tour did not have to pay.)

Happily, now I can add the Temescal neighborhood of Oakland to the list of places where I'd be comfortable making dining recommendations. If you wander out of Temescal, though, you're on your own. Seriously, I know nothing. (Please weigh in below with other Oakland favorites.)

Here's where I went. 

Temescal Farmers' Market. We started our tour here, and since I'd arrived early (thanks to the excellent navigational skills of my co-pilot, Danielle), I stocked up on organic almonds, baby gem lettuces, purple kale, and tiny turnips before we met up with the rest of the group. The market's a community hub, and with good reason. Location: 5300 Claremont Ave, Oak. Hours: Sunday, 9a-1p, year-round. More info here.

(From left: Menu at Cholita Linda; Menu-board at Doughnut Dolly; men hanging outside the old-timey barbershop in Temescal Alley)

Cholita Linda. Co-owner Vanessa Chavez of Cholita Linda (one of the vendors at the Temescal Market) offers super-fresh, crisp, and colorful Baja fish tacos, carne asada, and a bevy of sandwiches, which you can wash down with a cool strawberry lemonade or agua fresca. This stall's so popular, Cholita Linda will be opening permanent digs -- called Cholita Linda Bistro -- on Telegraph Avenue in the coming months. More information here.

Starter Bakery. Even if you can't spell the famed Breton pastry Kouign Amann (I'm not sure I can), you should still eat one. Rich and flaky with more butter than you should probably consume in a month, this sugary indulgence -- available at the Starter Bakery stall also at the Temescal Farmers' Market -- is worth every caloric bite. The secret? Baker Brian Wood explains that using salted butter ("they should taste salty," he says), and brushing the baking pan with still more butter and dusting it with sugar gives the classic French pastry its characteristic flavor and irresistible, almost-caramellike chew. For those of you located near me, Wood says the pastries are also sold at Barefoot Coffee in Los Gatos. Website coming soon, but for now you can follow Starter Bakery on Facebook.

Doughnut Dolly. If you prefer your sweets with easier-to-pronounce names, head to Hannah Hoffman's Doughnut Dolly, a slip of a shop specializing in cream- or jam-filled doughnuts. Located on quaint Alley 49, site of a former horse stable, Doughnut Dolly offers tour participants tender doughnut holes filled to order. Props to her for raising more than $12K through Kickstarter for her business. Location: 482B 49th Street, Oakland. Website and video.

(Clockwise, from left: potato-puff sliders at Juhu Beach Club; banchan at Sura Korean; grilled cheese and tomato soup at Sacred Wheel Cheese; cold-pressed coffee with cream outside The Cro Cafe)

Juhu Beach Club. I admit it: I watch Top Chef, and have since the beginning, so the fact that the brand new Juhu Beach Club's owner Preeti Mistry competed on the show a few seasons back gave me a small thrill. More thrilling, though, were the pouffy mashed potato sliders with chutney and pickled onions, and the Darjeeling Ltd, an unusual blend of cilantro- and cumin-infused lemonade and iced tea. Mistry's colorful Indian street food is bound to be a big hit not just with urbane singles, but with families as well. She serves kids' meals in brightly-hued tiffins, the individual compartments filled with butter chicken, basmati rice, and fresh salad. Location: 5179 Telegraph Avenue. Website for further information.

The Cro Cafe. Watching Luigi Oldani pour cream into a glass of cold-brewed, drip coffee brought to mind Ed, a college junior who dated my freshman-year roommate. (In the dining center, Ed would meditate on the swirls of cream as they dispersed, zenlike, into his cup, his coffee changing from deep brown to milky blond. In retrospect, he may have been smoking something.) The Cro Cafe's flavorful java -- from Sightglass Coffee Roasters in San Francisco -- put me in a happy, caffeinated haze, and I'm not even a coffee drinker. I also like that Oldani named the shop after his daughter, Camille Rosemary. Location: Temescal Alley. Website for further information.

Sacred Wheel Cheese. This family-owned cheese shop had me at hello when it served a miniature grilled cheese sandwich (gruyere, Jack, and fontina, though the combinations change) with a tomato soup chaser. (The soup's surprise element? A Pabst Blue Ribbon reduction.) This two-year-old fromagerie and specialty foods store also offers sandwiches, and if I'd been at all hungry at that point, I may have been tempted by something larger. 4935 Shattuck Ave. Website for further information.

Sura Korean. Anyone who has trouble making decisions will find much to love in the Korean tradition of banchan, a colorful assortment of cold and often pickled dishes offered in many Korean restaurants. At Sura's, we sampled tiny bites of eggplant, fish cake, potato, black bean, yam, kimchi, daikon, bean sprouts, and at least 5 other piquant preparations before our main course of tofu stew arrived. Here, banchan comes gratis with every dinner entree. Location: 4869 Telegraph Ave. Website for further information.

(Abesha Ethiopian Cuisine.)

Abesha Ethiopian Cuisine. This three-year old restaurant is a newcomer to Edible Excursions' Temescal tour line-up, and while it joined in after my preview, I'm thrilled to share news of it here with you anyway. Why? Because Oakland is home to a large population of Eritreans and Ethiopians, and anyone who knows anything about me knows that I hold this region, its people, and its foodways extremely close to my heart. Sarah Henry (our guide) reports that owner Amesiyas Amha Wube offers tour-goers tastes of injera along with 5 to 7 different kinds of wots, or stews, "featuring lentils, chickpeas, tomatoes, cabbage, and collard greens." Abesha is an "important stop... because it represents a key and unique culture in the area and many of our guests may not be familiar with the cuisine," she adds. Prepare to eat with your hands, friends. Location: 4929 Shattuck Ave. Website for further information.

...

Can you go to all these places on your own? Sure, go ahead. They're all local businesses that deserve your patronage. But also please consider Edible Excursions. Going the tour route allows you to taste your way through the area and puts you in the hands of knowledgeable field guides. It's the prix fixe versus the a la carte option, the tasting menu versus the app and entrée. You'll spend a wad upfront, but for 3 hours in the pleasant California sunshine, it's actually a great value and a whole lot of tasty food. Plus, you get to commune directly with the owners/food artisans filling your bellies. That, as they say, is priceless.

(Temescal Tastes tours start this Sunday, March 10, and run every Sunday thereafter. More information on this particular tour, and other Edible Excursions Bay Area tours, available here.)

Nothing was falling apart. (part 4)

There comes a point in every trip where it all clicks, or it all falls apart.

Where what's in the soup matters less than who's around the table.

Where the flavor of the food takes second billing to the flavor of the room.

The Uri Buri Restaurant in Acre (or Akko, depending) is housed in a centuries-old Ottoman-era stone building. You could have served me dust bunnies in this room, and I would have been charmed. 

Fish and seafood are the name of the game at this spot in Israel's Western Galilee.

And the food was fine. It was. But if I'm being perfectly honest, I'll admit that the food didn't really matter, at least to me. I was too bowled over by where I was. 

I served myself some scallops, letting the excess sauce drain back into the serving bowl.

I'm not big into sauces.

And that's when Uri -- chef, proprietor, hotelier, and local personality -- leaned over to me, proclaiming:

"A scallop without sauce is like a kiss without a beard."

You can see why this was especially funny.

Meet Uri Jeremias.

Uri runs not only the Uri Buri Restaurant where we had lunch, but also the Efendi Hotel, a painstakingly restored property with stunning details and outstanding views of both the sea and the city. (I recognize that I'm gushing, but please know that we didn't stay there. We ogled, and then we left.)

Here's the rooftop bar.

And yet.

For all of the hotel's architectural, artistic, and luxurious splendor, I was more captivated by what I found when I walked outside, down on the street below.

The alleyways, for example, with signs of everyday chores and life:

and doorways that look like this:

So the cracks, the peeling, ancient walls, the rich history -- these are the reasons to come to Acre.

The food, the sea, the people, the charm -- these are just garnishes.

See, by then, for me, things had already clicked.

And despite appearances, nothing was falling apart at all.

Scenes from an Italian restaurant.

Two weeks ago, my extended family gathered at an Italian restaurant in suburban New York to celebrate my dad and stepmom's 27-year marriage. There was a long table, a crisp white tablecloth, a convivial proprietress ("I will bring more eggplant!"), and wine. There were 15 of us, and twice as many platters of food. There was a 6-year-old child, a couple in their 80s, half-siblings, step-cousins, boyfriends, girlfriends, a fiancée. We all took part to toast this couple who fell in love in the 80s, when I was the age my older son is now.

My east coast family. This is what we look like. Halves, steps, old, young, coupled, uncoupled, recoupled, united.

Out here in California, things are different. We don't use tablecloths, for one, and the proprietress, while convivialish, knows she's the only one who generally wants more eggplant. Only four of us fit around the table: one mom, one dad, two pre-teen boys. We eat in t-shirts, jeans, and socks. We serve meals from pots on the stove. We spill milk, we pass bread, we roll eyes, we laugh. Some of us burp, but I'm not naming names. (OK, it's Alex.)

I often think about my kids, and how different their upbringing is from my own. In broad terms, things are similar: two loving parents, one close sibling, a piano in the living room. Games, books, papers, cards, all splayed out in various configurations around the house. Plenty of food, a safe home, a pretty, tree-dappled community.

But in other ways, things are different. When I was young, my grandparents lived within a short drive. We'd see them each month, and on holidays. We'd share soup with them, and bagels, and lox, and pie. We'd celebrate birthdays, eat candy from their jars, muss the fabric on the arms of their recliners. 

New York reminded me that I miss having my family nearby. I don't just miss the actual people, though of course that's part of it. I miss the very idea of relatives in close geographic proximity. And not just for me, but for my kids. For every quiet Sunday we spend at home, taking bike rides, hiking hills, reading, running errands, that's a day we're not with their grandparents, cousins, uncles, and aunts. And as lovely it is to eat Sunday dinner in our socks, just us, with paper napkins and spilled milk and a single, solitary platter of eggplant, or pasta, or chicken with rice, it might be lovelier still if there were 11 other people around that table beside us.

Tasting Oregon: a deeper look (pt. 2 of 2)

A tightly run, highly organized press trip is many things: fun, entertaining, and broadening. If you're lucky, you'll get to experience the very best a particular region has to offer.

And that’s great. But it’s only part of the story.  Oregon is an entire state, where there are kind people and jerks, sunny days and rainy ones, up-and-coming artists and those who can't make ends meet no matter how hard they try. To pretend otherwise, to pretend that this place is somehow uniquely devoid of the crime, poverty, hunger, and unemployment present in every other state of the U.S. would be silly.

A colleague of mine who has lived in Oregon for a decade and a half referred me to this article published just last week. Titled "Why are Oregon's children so hungry?," the piece notes that twenty percent of the state's population is on food stamps, and Oregon has the highest rate of food insecurity among children in the U.S.

And yet, she notes, the mayor of Portland is actually quite proactive in trying to combat these trends. "He's doing amazing work in making sure people at risk, in Portland anyway, have access to fresh local food. He's building orchards, taking the city's fallow land and turning it into gardens, getting funding for food stamp matches at farmer's markets, and even grows vegetables in his yard to give to the neighborhood." Pro.

There's also a high rate of homelessness: con.  And yet, "Most of them,” she says, “come here because the assistance for the homeless is better here than elsewhere." OK, so, pro. Meth is a big problem in the state: con.  And yet, treatment programs are available: so, pro.

I'm writing all this simply to provide some context -- a bit of a reality check, if you will -- for the wonderful food, wine, and genuinely impressive culinary artistry I encountered. It’s great, but let’s keep our feet on the ground while we enjoy it.

On to the food. As before, the descriptions below correspond to the slideshow above.

Father-daughter team Erica and Bruce Reininger of Arrowhead Chocolates represents the merger of two generations into a single, family-owned company. Bruce was a fish biologist, then a logger, then a web designer, and then he decided he wanted to learn how to make chocolate. So he studied like mad to master his craft. Erica is his apprentice. A graphic designer by trade, she helps her father create beautiful chocolates in the family's 1,500 square foot shop in Joseph, a small town in Eastern Oregon. Erica and Bruce taught us to make the dipped salted caramels pictured in last week’s slide show.

Jenn Louis of Lincoln Restaurant and Sunshine Tavern appears next. A former caterer, she operates two successful restaurants (her early efforts a few years ago tanked with the rough economy). In 2010, she was named a semifinalist by the James Beard Foundation for Best Chef Northwest. Her grilled octopus with mizuna, cucumber, and pimenton was outstanding.

Cousins Kim and Tyler Malek operate Salt & Straw, a “farm to cone” ice cream company that has enjoyed a sharp uptick in local and national interest in an extremely short time. The pair started with a cart on May 26, 2011, and upgraded to a brick-and-mortar “scoop shop” less than 3 months later. We tasted a flight of ice creams, among them lemon-basil sorbet, strawberry ice cream with coriander, and melon ice cream with coppa, an Italian-style dry-cured pork. Fatty, creamy, unique, and very, very tasty.

Stephen McCarthy is a distiller, and we got to visit the orchard where he sources the pears for his liqueurs and eau-de-vies. Because pears grow on the end of long branches, McCarthy and his staff affix bottles to the trees -- so that the pears actually grow inside the bottles. Walking the property is both amusing and surreal, with bottles hanging upside down everywhere you turn. Among several other fruit-based spirits, McCarthy’s Clear Creek Distillery also makes a Douglas Fir eau-de-vie, which is bright green, and very boozy. It tastes like a tree.

Another chocolatier brings up the rear of the show. David Briggs founded Xocolatl de David 2½ years ago with $50 from his paycheck as a savory chef at Park Kitchen. He grew his business and acknowledges the enormous amount of support he has received from other local chefs and artisans. His “savory-forward” chocolate-making style means he’ll incorporate ingredients like chiccharrones, which he makes himself, into his chocolates, many of which skate on the  less sweet side. I’m not much of a pork-in-my-chocolate kind of girl, but I’m crazy for his two-bite Raleigh Bars. These blocks of pecans, nougat, caramel, and chocolate, with a hint of fleur de sel, are ridiculous, and I’ve been hiding them from my family.

The trip ended late Saturday night, September 10^th. This meant I would be flying home the next morning, on the 10^th anniversary of 9/11, a fact that gave me tremendous anxiety and pause. I got to the airport early, bought a cup of tea, and heard a woman playing guitar. I wandered towards the music, unchaperoned for the first time in days. A sign said her name was Gayle Ritt.

She sang Home on the Range, and it was slow, and beautiful, and haunting. My shoulders relaxed. Then she sang America, The Beautiful, sweetly, and softly. I breathed in. I breathed out. When I boarded my flight 30 minutes later, my stress was gone.

When I got home, I emailed her. I told her how much her music meant to me on that particular day.

She emailed me back.

I asked if I could use her music behind my slideshow.

And she said yes.

And that part – that part was totally unscripted. That part was pure Portland.

Tasting Oregon: land of freekeh, cow parsnips, and verjusette (pt. 1 of 2)

Last weekend, Travel Oregon invited me and about 20 others to experience the culinary scene both within and beyond Portland's borders. Disclosure: they paid for everything.

My hope is that even though my expenses were paid, I can still provide meaningful, informative food coverage of some locales worth visiting. I try to be thoughtful. I try to approach these experiences with a critical eye. But whether I've succeeded is ultimately for you to determine yourselves.

Below is a key to my photos, which appear in the slide show above. In a follow-up post, I'll introduce you to some local artisans and their food crafts, and give you my sense of this changing, growing, youthful, and very quirky city -- warts and all.

Frame 1. Lovely Mt. Hood on a clear September day. Kayaks drifted. Trillium Lake sparkled. Flowers flowered.

Frame 2. A picnic bench at Penner-Ash Winery (15771 NE Ribbon Ridge Road, Newberg, OR). Dusk. I wanted to lie on that table, flat on my back, and gaze at the sky.

Frame 3. Powell's (flagship: 1005 W Burnside, Portland). I wandered the 68,000 square-foot bookstore, then got lost walking back to the hotel even while using the turn-by-turn on my phone's GPS. This is not unusual for me.

Frame 4. Dinner at St. Jack (2039 SE Clinton Street, Portland), named 2011 Rising Star of the Year by the The Oregonion. Highlights included the crispy-salty frites, chicken liver mousse, and...

Frame 5. ...a dessert of plums and vanilla poached pluots.

Frame 6. I like tea. This is no surprise. Portland is home to a fine little shop called Steven Smith Teamaker (1626 NW Thurman Street, Portland), which I'd toured back in 2010. Pictured is one of their herbal bags (Meadow?). I'd like to tape it above my desk, for art. It's prettier than what's up there now, which are some crappily framed postcards I bought when I was 17.

Frame 7. Dr. John Kallas led us on a leisurely forage through the woods and took care to point out several leaves and berries that would cause hemorrhaging and instant death should we consume them. I'd had romantic visions of piling a wicker basket high with chanterelles, or pretty twigs, but there was something equally pleasant, and less taxing, about listening to him speak knowledgeably about huckleberries, thimbleberries, baneberries, and cow parsnips, the lower stem of which can be peeled and eaten like a banana. I bet you did not know this.

Frame 8. A foraged salad at Timberline Lodge (27500 E Timberline Road), a ski lodge founded in the 1930s in the throes of the Great Depression under Roosevelt's New Deal. If you're an architecture buff, you'll enjoy this place and its historical importance. There were a lot of old people milling about, but that didn't faze me because a) I enjoy old people, and b) I was fed a salad of smooth yellow violet, indian paintbrush, wild ginger, tiny tomatoes, bush berries, huckleberries, and verjusette. I swear I did make any of that up. Executive Chef Jason Stoller Smith knows how to make food plucked from the forest taste like it came right from the earth. Oh, wait.

Frame 9. He also knows how to make ice cream threaded with pineapple weed, which pairs especially well with peaches and something he casually refers to as vanilla-olive oil powder.

Frame 10. Picturesque McCurdy Farms orchard (2080 Tucker Road, Hood River). The pears here grow in bottles. I'm not kidding. They grow inside bottles. More on that next time.

Frame 11. Here is a pear. I do recognize that this one is not, in fact, growing inside a bottle.

Frame 12. This man is making burgers on the roof-deck of the Wieden+Kennedy Ad Agency, which  handles accounts for Nike, Kraft, Target, and (dingdingding) Travel Oregon. The building itself is crazy-ridiculous and security guards about the same age as my kids are apparently keeping all kinds of corporate secrets very safe. I'm glad they were there protecting me, too, since I was very busy eating sliders.

Frame 13. Sliders! These are the beef ones from Chef Gregory Denton of Metrovino (1139 NW 11th, Portland). They had a fancy sauce. (The menu actually said "fancy sauce.")

Frame 14. A close-in, mildly disorienting look at a gorgeous freekeh salad with toasted hazelnuts, pickled cherries (!), and borage flowers (!) from Chef Scott Dolich of Park Kitchen (422 NW 8th, Portland). Freekeh is a grain. Borage is a flower. They are both real things.

Frame 15. Dark chocolate-dipped caramels with sea salt. I dipped them myself. More on those next time.

Frame 16. And this is the real spirit of Oregon right here. There were 3 unscripted moments in the trip, all on the last day. Passing this sign while boarding my flight home was one of them. You'll have to wait for the other two.

Go on now.

Get out of here.

Just a little bit closer.

You know how when you hear your own voice on an answering machine, you do a double-take? Do I really sound like that? Yes, in fact, you do. You sound funny.

And when you see a picture of yourself, it's either, That's not a flattering picture of me, or Wow, that's an awesome picture of me! Rarely do we see a photo and think, Yup, that's exactly right. It captures not only how I look to others, but how I see myself.

And I think it's because there's a disconnect between the way we truly are, and the way we'd like to be. Sometimes we see the gulf for what it is, and sometimes we don't, and it catches us by surprise.

Now take eating. Studies based on self-reported data are notoriously unreliable because it's very difficult for people to recall (and admit) with accuracy everything they've eaten in the course of a day. The 1/2 cup of trail mix you sucked down was probably a cup and a half, and the 6 servings of fruits and vegetables were more likely 5, or 3. Plus, the cookie you ate before noon doesn't count because you ate it standing up. Right?

And then, of course, there's fish. I love fish. I love everything about it. I especially love salmon. In my head, I eat it often. I order it at restaurants, buy it at the store, and cook it for my family every single night.

Except, of course, I don't. The ideal me eats wild Alaskan salmon, plucked straight from the Copper River, several times a month and doesn't inhale so much cheese. The ideal me doesn't pile her dirty dishes in the sink. The ideal me drinks kale smoothies, avoids white sugar, and wakes up at the crack of dawn to run in the mountains where the air's still, and crisp, and the dew glistens like tiny disco balls in the pale morning light.

But I'm not the ideal me. And maybe you're not the ideal you.

And yet, every day, when we open our eyes, we can try as hard as we can to inch just a little bit closer.

...

Recipe for Olive Oil Poached Salmon with tomatoes and rosemary

Using this salmon poaching technique, you can create a supremely simple lunch or dinner that's also good for you. You will need to use quite a lot of olive oil, so be sure to choose an everyday bottle rather than a fancy finishing oil. FYI: This dish tastes just as good cold the next day, or you can tuck the leftovers in this salmon sandwich.

Adapted from Marco Canora's Salt to Taste from this recipe in the New York Times

Makes 2 lunch servings (or 3, if you really want to stretch it)

3 sprigs thyme
1 sprig rosemary, stripped
3 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed
2 cups olive oil
3/4 pound skin-on salmon fillet (I used wild Alaskan sockeye), seasoned on both sides with salt and pepper
2 big handfuls cherry tomatoes

Place the herbs, garlic, and olive oil in a 10-1/2 inch nonstick skillet. Heat the oil to a very gentle bubble over medium-low heat (take its temperature if you can -- it should be around 180 degrees). Slide in the salmon, cover, and cook gently on very low heat for about 4 minutes. Carefully add the tomatoes, cover again, and finish cooking until the fish is just opaque, about 10 minutes longer, keeping the heat as low as possible.

Serve immediately, drizzled with some of the poaching oil, or let the fish stand in the oil, uncovered and off heat, for about 10 minutes while you toss a salad or set the table. After serving, cool any leftovers to room temperature, then store the salmon and olive oil together in the fridge.

printable pdf

Mexico City: I like you. (part 1)

Over the next few days, I'll be trickling out photos and details of my recent trip to Mexico City. Grab a Mexican hot chocolate, an agua fresca, or a Tecate beer, and come along for the ride.  Start, please, with the musical slide show above.

Some quick background: Every now and then I'm offered trips to go places and cover them in my writing. I pass them up 90 percent of the time -- often, the topic is something I wouldn't normally cover, or it isn't consistent with my eating habits or values.  Also, the very idea of press trips tends to make me uncomfortable. I did accept a trip to Cordova, Alaska in 2009 to learn about Copper River salmon. I'd been writing about sustainable seafood a lot at the time, so I considered the trip a relevant educational opportunity. And it was.

This time, I was invited to learn about the food culture and exploding culinary scene in Mexico City on a trip sponsored by Avocados from Mexico. Having just written a book about produce (releasing March 2012), and having written, too, about the importance of travel and experiencing new cultures through food, I accepted.  I came away with a broad taste of Mexico's capital city, an even greater appreciation for avocados, and a renewed spirit of adventure.  Also, I ate ant dust.

Here's a key to the photos in my slideshow, frame by frame. (The music, by the way, came from a recording I made on my iPhone of the mariachi band singing at the Arroyo Restaurant, where we had a leisurely lunch. More on that in coming days...)

1. A view of the Central de Abasto Wholesale Market, the world's largest wholesale produce market. The place was enormous, and I may devote a whole post to the produce, grains, beans, and Whiskas cat food they sell there. Stay tuned.

2. The lovely Mónica Moreno Arellano, one of our intrepid organizers and leaders, enjoying a fresh mango at the market.

3. A plate of lengua (beef tongue) tacos with an avocado/onion/tomato garnish at the Cantina la Guadalupana.

4. Bulk bins of dried beans, including frijol negro (black beans).

5. Huge displays of chicharrón (fried pork skin).  I wrote about my first time eating chicharrón in southern California on iVillage back when I was a columnist there.  In Mexico City, they're sometimes served in place of tortilla chips alongside guacamole.

6. Dried guajillo chilies.

7. Display of papas (potatoes).

8.  Boxes of fresh guavas.

9. A giant stoneware tub of guacamole.  I thought about swimming in it.

10. Mixiote -- lamb wrapped in cactus/agave membrane -- served with beans at El Arroyo.

11.  A woman selling fresh squash blossom salad, in bulk, at the Tianguis de Lomas de Sotelo outdoor market.

If you've ever been to Mexico City, or elsewhere in Mexico, share a little about your experience below.  Ultimately, I hope to aggregate information not just from my itinerary but from your comments, and then at the end of this little series I can provide a bunch of links for any of you who may choose to visit in the future.

Come back soon.  There's más.

Show Me the Whites of Your Eyes.

A recent Bits column in the New York Times titled McDonald's Makes Subtle Play for Children Online opens with these words:

McWorld, a Web site for children sponsored by McDonald’s, offers visitors the chance to create characters, decorate digital treehouses and go on a quest in a virtual world.

French fries, hamburgers and apple pies are nowhere to be seen...

Oh, McDonald's, I beg of you: please bring the French fries, hamburgers, and apple pies back to your advertising! I want them out in the open, where I can keep my eyes on them. I want to see them like I want to see the eyes of the creepy guy who lurks in a dark alley. Because when I see his eyes, I know for sure where he is, and that he's not following me.

As advertising to kids becomes ever subtler, parents will  have an increasingly difficult time teaching their children to be savvy consumers of digital media. It used to be that when a flash ad for Deep-Fried, Sugar-Coated, Highly-Processed Fat Balls appeared on the screen, we could tell our kids, "That's an ad. The Deep-Fried, Sugar-Coated, Highly-Processed Fat Ball Company paid your favorite website a lot of money to try to sell you that product. Just ignore it."

But now, the Deep-Fried, Sugar-Coated, Highly-Processed Fat Balls might appear as colorful balloons, or swollen raindrops in a dreamscape, or even soccer balls in an online tournament.  No longer relegated to the sides of the screen, the images are working their way into the web pages' very essence, and even the most discerning kids may have a difficult time recognizing them as ads.

In his Bits column, writer Joshua Brustein notes that Mark Smale, who works with the company that created the McWorld site,"said in an interview that companies are realizing that, when going online, the best strategy is to forgo immediate sales in order to build lasting emotional relationships with children."

I want my children to have lasting emotional relationships. I really do.  Just not with multinational corporations that cover the whites of their eyes, making them largely invisible as they try to seduce my children.

...

Recipe for Soba Noodle Salad with mixed vegetables, peanuts, and mint

I dream of a world where kids can play online and off, confronted with nothing more sinister than a tangled noodle, a crunchy peanut, or a sharp scallion.

Serves 4

2 bundles (about 5 ounces) soba noodles
3 cups (packed) fresh spinach leaves, rough chopped
2 tablespoons peanut oil
2 tablespoons seasoned rice vinegar
1-1/2 teaspoons (packed) freshly grated ginger
1 garlic clove, minced
1 Persian cucumber, julienned
1 carrot, julienned
2 scallions, finely chopped
1/2 cup chopped peanuts (I use roasted peanuts from Trader Joe's with 50% salt)
Handful fresh mint leaves, cut in chiffonade
Sriracha for serving, optional

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Drop in noodles and cook for 3 minutes. Add spinach and cook with noodles for one minute longer. Drain and rinse under cool water.  Give the spinach a squeeze to remove excess water.

Meanwhile, whisk the oil, vinegar, ginger, and garlic in the bottom of a large salad bowl.  Dump in the noodles and spinach and toss to coat. Add the cucumber, carrots, and scallions, and toss through.

Garnish with the peanuts and mint, and serve room temperature, or even cold, passing a bottle of Sriracha, if desired, alongside.

printable pdf

Vancouver

So far as I know, I am American.  My parents were both born in New York, as was I.  And yet, as a friend recently pointed out, both my older brother and I have a thing for Canada.  He was a rabid Wayne Gretzky fan, and I, well, I own the Celine Dion album D'Eux. 

Last week, after my husband finished up a conference in Vancouver, my kids and I flew up to meet him.  It was a whirlwind four days, filled with impeccable manners (not mine), fantastic restaurant recommendations, brisk walks through city streets and parks, and some cool but charming Canadian rain.  True, Canadians call their coins "loonies" and "toonies" (no, I am not making this up), and there are 90 Starbucks in the city of Vancouver alone.  Ninety.  Seattle has 71.  Please explain this to me.

We had such a lovely time, and such splendiferous culinary adventures, that I'd like to share the details with you in case you're ever fortunate enough to visit this fine city.  (I'll pop a printable pdf at the end of the list for your archival pleasure.)

Here are Vancouver's top tourist and culinary destinations, according to me.  Do I know enough to make such confident, sweeping proclamations?  No.  But here they are anyway.

Stanley Park.  With beautiful fall weather on day one, we looped along the park's circular path and strolled beside the boat-flecked water.  Go here to marvel at stately totem polls and trees in a riot of deep, autumnal reds and oranges.  Like Central Park, but more Canadian.

The Vancouver Aquarium.  Accessible on foot via Stanley Park, this is a great spot for families with kids.  Make sure to lunch on the fish & chips made with sustainable Pacific halibut. 845 Avison Way, (tel) 604-659-3552.

The Gourmet Warehouse.  I can safely say that if you are even remotely affiliated with the culinary arts, you will hyperventilate when you enter this store. 1340 East Hastings Street, (tel) 604-253-3022.

Barbara-Jo's Books to Cooks.  A fantastic independent bookstore devoted to cookbooks and other food and wine-related reading material, both popular and lesser-known.  Hat tip to Dianne Jacob for recommending this place to me, and a big thank you to owner Barbara-jo McIntosh for her very warm welcome.  The store sports a small kitchen for tastings, demos, and classes, and I plan to return when my book hits the shelves.  1740 West 2nd Avenue, (tel) 604-688-6755.

Refuel Neighborhood Restaurant & Bar.  Thanks to Barbara-jo's lunch recommendation, Denise (more on her in a minute) and I ended up at the bar devouring a perfectly cooked scotched egg with preserved plums and frisee.  Watching chef de cuisine Ted Anderson cook inspired me to also order a side of Brussels sprouts.  What this says about me I'm not sure, but I'm serious when I say this: she who has not tasted Ted's Brussels sprouts has a big, giant, Brussels sprouts-shaped hole in her life. 1944 West 4th Ave., (tel) 604-288-7905 (UPDATE: UNFORTUNATELY, REFUEL HAS SINCE CLOSED.)

Campagnolo Restaurant.  If you like Refuel, you'll love Campagnolo.  We did, and here's why: they're both owned by proprietor Tom Doughty, a friendly lad who chatted with us after lunch and sold us on his sister restaurant for dinner.  Guess what?  This small, stylish-yet-unpretentious Italian eatery did everything right, from allowing us to seat four kids at their own table to the server treating them like adults to bestowing upon us the freshest, most beautifully cooked pappardelle I've tasted in, well, ever. 1020 Main Street, (tel) 604-484-6018.

Subeez Cafe.  Another hit, though this one was pure dumb luck.  We passed it, we were hungry, we went in.  With a very hip, urban vibe and gently throbbing house music, we once again enjoyed terrific, warm service and remembered, albeit briefly, what it was like to be 25.   891 Homer Street, (tel) 604-687-6107.

Granville Island Public Market.  What The Gourmet Warehouse is to kitchen accessories, this place is to fresh, local fare.  It's the Vancouver equivalent of San Francisco's ferry building, writ large.  You'll find fresh produce, artisan meats and cheeses, locally caught seafood, specialty teas and coffees, and much, much more, including a lady handing out tasty samples of Holy Crap.  1661 Duranleau Street, (tel) 604-666-5784

Denise Marchessault of French Mint.  No recap of my Vancouver escapades would be complete without mention of my culinary partner in crime, Denise.  Longtime 5 Second Rule readers will recognize Denise from this prior post, but for newcomers, I encourage you to add her Victoria-based cooking school to your vacation itinerary.  Yes, Victoria is a good 90 minute ferry ride from Vancouver, but it's well worth the sojourn.  Can't get to French Mint?  Watch Denise make a chocolate-mousse filled charlotte with handmade ladyfingers and sugared cranberries in this video on Eat Magazine's website.  French Mint Cooking School, 814 Royal Oak Avenue, Victoria. (tel) 250-294-4500.  

Thanks for reading.  Now please excuse me while I find a home for these extra loonies.

printable pdf of The 5 Second Rule Culinary & Visitors' Guide to Vancouver

Iconoclast

Did you guys read Elizabeth Weil's article in Sunday's New York Times Magazine about the Humphry Slocombe ice cream shop in San Francisco?  I did, and I reacted with equal parts fascination and revulsion.  Fascination, because ice cream flavors like Malted Milk Chocolate, Candied Ginger, Cinnamon Brittle, and Brown Butter sound so good that I seriously considered hopping in my car and driving up to San Francisco to try them.

(Okay, that was a total lie.  I loathe that drive.)

But then I kept reading, and I learned that the owner and mad scientist behind the shop also makes prosciutto flavored ice cream, foie gras-gingersnap ice cream sandwiches, and a coconut caramel sorbet with candy cap mushrooms. 

I said mushrooms. 

Now I love mushrooms more than the average person.  In fact, I sliced up a fat portobello last night and topped it with a knot of spaghetti.  What I did not do, however, was churn that fungus into a creamy, iced, dairy dessert. 

But Jake Godby of Humphry Slocombe did, and does, apparently do such things with mushrooms, and jalapenos, and cheese, and pork. And, according to the NYT article, he's both despised and beloved for this barrier-breaking artistry, and his chutzpah.  Godby didn't appear out of nowhere, either, simply to shock. He honed his pastry chops at some of San Francisco's most revered, high-end restaurants.

Since I haven't eaten there, though, let's broaden the discussion to one about originality, and whether, and how much, you and your palate like to experiment.  I mean, do you essentially make the same 10 or 15 dishes over the course of a month?  Do you eat at the same restaurants over and over?  When you hit the cereal aisle, do you, or do you not, always reach for the same familiar box?

Maybe we'd all be better off if we shook things up a little. 

Given the list of ice creams at Godby's shop, tell me which 2 or 3 you'd order, and which 2 or 3 you would, quite simply, not, even if offered large sums of cash money.  Be honest now.

As for my profiteroles above, I won't tell you what kind of ice cream I tucked inside.  Use your imagination.

(Maybe it's Vanilla Motor Oil.)