Mark Bittman's 30 Minute Chicken Stuffed with Mark Bittman's Whole Grain Pancakes

I know it sounds strange, but bear with me. For breakfast I made Mark Bittman's "whole grain pancakes that you actually want to eat." For dinner, I tried his 30 minute, "fast" roast chicken. I wanted to stuff it with something, and as I looked around the kitchen, I noticed those leftover pancakes just sitting there... Cubed, they went right into the chicken.

For breakfast, the pancakes were every bit as pillowy and ethereal as MB promised. As stuffing, they were just as good. Since I'd used blue corn meal and whole wheat flour and hadn't used any sugar, it really wasn't any different from a cornbread stuffing. And the hint of cinnamon and allspice was nice and interesting.

However, the chicken itself was still as raw as sashimi. Yes, I got the skillet hot. No, I wasn't drinking cooking sherry. If anyone has done this with success, let me know, otherwise I'll assume that Mark's trying to food-poison us all. Not in the mood for chicken tartare, or for diarrhea, I turned the heat down and kept cooking it.


How did it turn out in the end? Not as "fast" as I'd hoped, but still so good that I couldn't snap a Rockwellesque picture of the whole bird before it was devoured.

Green Rooibos

Rooibos is fine, but you're right to be suspicious of how often it's doctored up with vanilla and chai. Most tea shops now have a whole wall of kooky rooibus blends that appeared as suddenly as the dark chocolate wall in Whole Foods. The reason? It's not that impressive on its own.

So when I saw my first green rooibos, I bought it, grateful for a new twist that was actually more simple. Green rooibos is much like green tea in that it's fermented and oxidized for less time and boasts an even higher amount of those microscopic do-gooders that, according to studies, will make you immortal.

Unlike green tea, it's terrible. There's absolutely nothing interesting happening in it. Drink it if you're dying of hypothermia or dehydration, but even if it's a close call, hold out for better.

Avocado Frittata

It's a little known fact that you, like god, can make an avocado ripen. Just heat it up.

For this frittata, which is fancy talk for "omelette," I gently warmed some still rubbery avocado until soft, buttery and a deeper green. Then I got the skillet really hot - this is key - and poured in my beaten eggs. I topped it off with a little feta, black pepper and sea salt. Finished with a quick pop into a hot - also key! - broiler, and you've got a golden, puffy breakfast spectacle.

Working hot at both of those key junctures is what will make it puff up. Slide it out of your well oiled skillet and onto your guest's plate quickly, or it and your reputation will deflate.

Poached Egg Over Polenta

You really have no excuse not to eat this for breakfast tomorrow. It has to be the creamiest, heartiest thing you can make for under a buck. Simply drop a poached egg onto a fluffy little pile of polenta. Heck, you could even poach the egg IN the polenta. Keep it softly cooked and you won't know where the yolk starts and the mush stops.

Eggplant, Chevre and Feta Lasagna

Most lasagna is bad, but when it's good, it's actually good. Plus it lets you indulge your secret soft spot for grade school cafeteria food.

Much like having the daughter you always wanted after a few boys, we'd made some perfectly good lasagnas lately, but this one I really love. The trick was a better sauce, fully roasting the eggplant, enormous fresh noodles from Capone Foods, and choice of cheese.

Why does everyone use ricotta and mozzarella for lasagna? I know bland cheeses are really cool right now, but in time people will remember that more flavorful cheeses are more flavorful. Feta and goat go a long way in making lasagna, which is often as dull as a wooden spoon, sharp and interesting.

Also, we finally put some beef in it.

Honey Syrup Revani

For centuries, fans of the semolina cake known as revani, or ravani, have asked: why bake a moist cake when you can make a dry one and then soak the sh*t out of it?

A revani marries the coarse texture of semolina with a deluge of tooth-aching syrup. I followed Joyce Goldstein's recipe from her book "Sephardic Flavors," in which you bake the cake by folding in whites, yolks, butter, semolina and a touch of "regular" flour. Goldstein then juices hers up with a syrup made from sugar, water and lemon, but I opted for warmed honey with tons of fresh lemon juice.

I suspected all the separating and folding might be excessive, but apparently it wasn't enough. The cake turned out a bit tough and dry, the syrup not quite penetrating to the core. Still, it was mesmerizing to watch the inch-deep golden fluid slowly disappear into the cake.

Bottling Kombucha

An ancient beverage thought to date back to the Qin Dynasty in 250 BC, Kombucha has only recently tipped here in the U.S. Perhaps that's because it was a well guarded Chinese health secret, but more likely it's because it's weird and slimy.

Making it at home is much more rewarding and infinitely more cost effective than buying it. And like many homemade products, it's also usually much worse.

Until now. For fifteen bucks I bought a bottle capper and caps at a local brewery supply shop, poured the brew into beer bottles, and capped them off. The capping alone won't stop fermentation, so I stuck them in the fridge, except for one, which I left out for a few more days. That one was as fizzy as a Coke.

To avoid confusion, I labeled each of the bottles, which formerly housed my roommate's Amstel Light, with a piece of masking tape marked "kombucha." I wouldn't want him to get healthy instead of drunk.

Brave Brassica

I posted about some stragglers in the kitchen garden back in October, but this is ridiculous. Identified only as "mixed cabbage family" by the friend who gave it to me, the plant never grew much larger than this. Yet it's survived after being buried by feet of snow and thick crusts of solid ice. Most likely an heirloom variety, it seems more obsessed with survival than tasting good.

The Culinary Institutes of America: A Review

I've had the pleasure of visiting both the Napa Valley and Hyde Park campuses of the CIA this past month. The Napa Valley experience was much more pleasurable, perhaps because I didn't eat there. At Hyde Park's American Bounty, my meal was a series of service debacles and dishes on a scale of mediocre to fine.


I started with an appetizer called "Two Fat Tamales." There were two of them, and though bad they were tamales, but they certainly weren't fat. "Frail" would in fact be more accurate.

I much prefer any two dollar tamale I've had in Somerville than those served at this prestigious institution. They were in no way helped by a mango salsa and drizzling of sauce atop the husk. Unless you're Gerald Ford, these additions were useless.

My main dish, a pappardelle with chianti braised duck ragout, was fine. It was fun to eat such large noodles and the duck was extremely soft, though they'd let a few blobs of fat sneak in (which I was secretly very happy about).



The service was nothing short of bizarre. Our waitress said that one Washington state wine was from "D.C." When my companion noted the sooty ring his plate had left on the tablecloth, she hypothesized that "it must just be dirty." When I ordered a hard cider, she brought a warm, spiced one. She let me keep it, but I didn't want to. A mix of mostly water, an amount of cider so negligible that it could not be detected by taste, too much whiskey and too little cinnamon, it was terrible.

Since the restaurant was closed at the Napa campus, the only thing I ate was a leaf of French sorrel snapped from the herb garden. Soft and impressively packed with fresh, sour flavor, I preferred it to anything I ate at American Bounty, which despite it's name had an embarrassingly short list of local offerings.

Granted, it is a school. But let's hope the students learn a lot.

Stone Soup

We've all been there. You're hungry. You look at your supplies. You realize that you're about to be tested. Anyone can whip up a passable dish from a well stocked larder, but it takes vision to wring blood from a stone. On this occasion, I decided to wring fat from a bone.

It started with a pot of water and a River Rock Farm marrow bone frozen since it's purchase at the Davis Square Farmer's Market in Fall. As I've tried to stay local deeper and deeper into the winter, these bombs of fat and flavor have really helped me stretch things out. If you have a bone and some water, you've almost got a meal.

Then came a cubed butternut squash (also local, also put up since the growing season), three cubed potatoes (local to New England and remainders from a latke feast), a few bay leaves, and a cayenne you may remember me drying back in November. Once the vegetables were tender and the marrow had escaped, I added a can of pintos. It was now earthy and rich, but it lacked that snap that I and Ferguson Henderson agree every dish needs. A couple teaspoons of white vinegar and a can of crushed tomatoes took it there.

None of the ingredients had appealed to me on their own, but together they dazzled. Mostly local, mostly native, and made entirely from food I had on hand, this was the best soup of my life.

Water, bone, vegetable. It's a dish that's had little reason to change since we first made fire.

Hazelphants

The other night I spotted this small herd of Hazelphants on the table and was able to get a couple photos before they lumbered off. Few are now seen in the wild, caught as they are between diminishing habitat and the rising cost of hazelnuts. Some of the Hazelphants appear to be juveniles, which is encouraging in terms of the future population. While chocolate shops are rife with their chief predator (humans), the shop is also known for its tendency toward speciation. Within a few generations, these Hazelphants could be another flavor altogether.

Review: Asia Kitchen

Today I had the pleasure of dining at Asia Kitchen in Owings Mills, Maryland. It squarely meets most expectations and exceeds the rest.

Thanks to the photographic evidence above, I'm sure the rest of the planet will soon follow in my decree of their having the Best Fried Eggplant on Earth (with Bengal Cafe in Camridge, MA a not too distant second, having stolen that title from the now defunct Peking Garden of Cleveland). A.K.'s comes in a serious, candy coated batter complete with citrus peel and disks of scallion. Somewhere in there is actual eggplant, but you don't care.

Their kimchee is also fantastic, and they once told me they make it right there, though twice they have told me that they do not. But their most impressive accomplishment is a deft hand with fake meat. Being a fake meat skeptic, I am also exposed to a lot of it from regularly traveling with a vegan and a vegetarian. (My skepticism is well informed by experience.) But Asia Kitchen's is dense, flavorful, and umamilicious, especially in the form of "Chicken" Cashew Nut. Go there.

Hojicha Kombucha

Quite serendipitously, I ate five fermented foods yesterday: yogurt with breakfast, eerily green Japanese pickles and miso with dinner, and a mid-day nosh of the homemade pink kraut. But the finest by far was this home brewed hojicha kombucha. Besides assonance, consonance, and a nice rhyme, it also had fantastic flavor and fizz, that golden (beige?) fleece of the kombucha homebrewer.

To describe the taste of kombucha is to risk insulting it. Vinegar, beer, wine and rot come to mind, and yet the taste is pure and clean. This particular batch has a distinctive, toasty, caramel flavor thanks to the hojicha. I was given a bag of it by a good friend and decided to stretch out the last few portions by feeding it to my kombucha mother. Apparently she liked it as much as I do, and now I'm drinking her delicious babies.

Fresh Date Scone

I recently had my first fresh date from a Far Mar in San Fran. Yellow, starchy and only barely sweet, it was not unlike a plantain in tostone form. But after a few days, the sugars took over, the yellow darkened to a grayish brown, and a sweet syrup collected in the bottom of the plastic grocery bag I was using as a carry-on. (In date speak, that's khalal to rutab.)

Back in Boston, we popped them out of their thin skins, popped out the pit, chopped them up, and tossed them into a basic scone recipe. If you think they were soft, sweet, fresh and delicious, then you're right.

Previously, my best experience with nature's candy - aka the world's finest fruit - was when I got to keep a handful of medjools dropped by an apathetic Whole Foods employee. As I've said in previous posts, it makes sense that juicy cacti spring from arid climates, but I have a hard time understanding how these little brown sugar bombs hail from palm trees. A desert food and a dessert one, it may be the only food that makes sense whether you use one 's' or two.

Dates might be the oldest cultivated tree crop, and have been found in the tombs of Pharaohs, thought to sustain the leaders from their death until the time Anubus, the jackal headed god, weighed their heart. The many functions of dates are staggering: using the syrup to seal pipes, the seeds for flour, the fruitless branch as a broom. But as far as I'm concerned, their high water mark in human history happened in my kitchen, padded with butter.

04 Yue Chen Yue

Whenever I brew a sample I hope I'm going to find something I love. Usually I find something I like. This time I was just bored. I tried brewing it every which way: short, long, pot, gaiwan. Nothing made it more than a pale sad version of my favorite ripe pu-ers. There were no off flavors, but nothing to keep my attention either. It was smooth, smooth and boring.

1997 Honey Orchid

I got up late today, falling back to sleep around 6AM after a early morning airport drop-off. Unable to get right to work I decided to brew a Dan Cong sample and browse some blogs. I've been enjoying Imen's latest round of samples, but I haven't posted about them. This is mostly because I have run out of adjectives to describe the subtle differences between types of Dan Cong, though it is also partly because I've just been working a bunch.

Today's 10 year aged Dan Cong is worth special mention. The first infusion tasted highly roasted and subsequent infusions have slowly revealed the honey orchid flavor. The brilliant orange liquor captures both the tension and fusion of these two facets. I really am a sucker for this type of complexity. There is also a slight astringency that puckers up the lips.

Pink Kraut II

A boyhood wish has been fulfilled - I finally have all the sauerkraut I want!

About a month ago I chopped up the remaining good parts of the eleven heads of green and red cabbage I bought at the season's last FarMar.



Salt plus time plus magical wild yeast, and poof! Fresh, living, zingy pink kraut. This one doesn't have the same snappy, fruity flavor that my last batch did, but I think it's just because the cabbage was pretty pooped by the time I got around to it. It's still great and a thousand times better than any of that pallid shred you get from a can or jar. Plus, I've managed to stretch out locally grown veggies deep into a Massachusetts winter.

Aloe Drink

My grandmother swears by drinking aloe, and judging by her health as an octogenarian, I probably should too.

To ensure an affordable, consistent supply, she basically ran her own small aloe farm from the eleventh floor balcony of her North Miami Beach condo. I copy her recipe whenever a leaf from the plant in my bedroom becomes damaged. I slice it off, chop it up, cover with boiling water and let sit overnight. At first the pieces dance up and down, as captured in the photo above. The liquor then becomes yellow and deepens to red.

Maybe it's not for everyone, but I find it thrilling to consume something that's grown in my bedroom. In fact, I like it so much that I just ordered a bunch of heirloom seeds for a little bedside salad garden.

I haven't had enough aloe to comment on its medicinal properties, but rest assured that a quick google search will yield plenty of wildly contradictory, crackpot testimonials.

As a drink, aloe is slightly astringent, with a familiar flavor like strong mineral water. The raw gel is gag-reflux bitter, and I always thought the drink was too. But after my last brew, I took one sip of Honest Tea's plain, iced green and realized how much nastier an incompetently brewed comellia sinensis is. Like the avocado leaf tea and the hibiscus, it's a subtle and wild taste that probably predates the cultivation of tea, or frappuccino.

Breaded Pork Chop, Fried Potatoes, Black Pepper and Cheddar Oatmeal and Steamed Watercress with Homemade Ginger Apple Sauce, Meyer Lemon and Sacrilege

Incidentally, that's the absolute size limit for a title on a blogger post. It sounds like a lot, but I hadn't had a square meal in a couple days and it's what I conceived of while driving home. And it didn't take long: a half hour after entering the kitchen, it was in my mouth.

While buying supplies at Pemberton Farms, I was faced with a moral dilemma (this happens to me a lot while food shopping). I could buy a chicken breast, which, coming from an animal considered Kosher by Jewish law, was much more in my comfort zone. Or, I could buy a pork chop. The catch was that the pork was naturally raised, while the chicken, despite having the lord's okay, was not.

I was suddenly confronted by the dichotomy between kosher and what some now call eco-kosher. I could eat something that had been factory farmed with quantifiable damage done to the environment via pollution, chemical additives in feed and in preservatives, not to mention inhumane conditions for the animal, but which was allegedly sanctioned by word of god some thousands of years ago. Or, I could buy meat from an "unclean" animal which had been raised in a humane and environmentally friendly manner. The moral imperative was clear.

I was very happy with my choice in this meal, and it was very good. As of this writing, god has yet to strike me dead, which he/she could easily do through the homemade applesauce, which you may recall had no guarantee of not being tainted with botulism.

Pizza with Truffle Oil and Sun-dried Tomatoes

Truffle oil just always sounded too expensive and silly for me. Then I tried some. Once I discovered that I could get an affordable small bottle at the grocery store, I went for it. A small bottle is all you need, because adding just four drops of truffle oil to this pizza changed it into a mushroom pizza. The heat allowed that the sun-dried tomatoes to fry in their own oil, so they were crisp.

Moonlight White

Buying a few Rishi teas is what initially made me tea crazy, so it was a little sad when I finished my last bit of my last tin. (Well, I continue to store much of my tea in the tins so Rishi is never too far from my mind.) Moonlight White is an organic Yunnan white tea. The leaves are among the most autumnal I've ever seen: just look at the mingling red, green, and brown. The tea is tasty, though not nearly as nice as the leaves. It is viscus and fruity but, above all, refined. The flavors don't come out and hit you at all, you have to chase them. Nice tea, though I'm not heartbroken that it's all gone.

Haixin Yiwu Mature Ripe 2001

It started with an unpleasant fermented taste, but after the third infusion that was gone. Left was a rich, smooth, and sweet ripe pu-er. 10 infusions later it was still going: I tired before the tea. If it wasn't for the unpleasant start, I'd rush to buy more.

Showy Desserts, Part 3

Showy yet simple, this apple tart is so easy to make that's it's almost intuitive. If an elaborate cake is a machine gun, this dish a crude, but effective, sharpened stick.

Make a pie crust. (Equal parts flour and butter, enough water, pinch of salt if you're butter's unsalted, we like Kate's.) Toss two cut up apples in very little sugar and a dash of nutmeg and arrange to impress. Even this late into the winter, we managed to find some local MApples at Pemberton Farms.

This tart also proved that you don't necessarily need to peel apples before baking with them. We ate it, and nothing bad happened to us, except when we realized there wasn't any more.

Pierogies for Lunch

There are lots of great things about Karen, but right now I'm focused on one: that she occasionally drops off a few baggies of homemade pierogies. I had forgotten about her latest batch until lunchtime today. Not wanting another sandwich for lunch and not knowing what else to do, I trolled my freezer. Luckily, I found Karen's pierogies hiding behind some stock. I sauteed an onion while boiling water then browned them. The outsides were buttery and chewy and insides were rich and creamy. Mmmm.

Mission: Taco Tour. Part V - La Corneta

The last stop of our tour, La Corneta, was also the worst.

By this point I could no longer contain what I can only hope will be a life long obsession with tamale. Although these were tough, dry, and bland, the fault may have been my own. When you're on a taco tour, don't get tamales. In other words, it was probably the least popular item on the menu, and therefore the least fresh. Another valuable lesson learned on Mission: Taco Tour. No matter how hard you try, after 9pm on a Sunday, your Mission will terminate.

Our guide acknowledged that La Corneta was considered by some to be a "McTaqueria," but assured us that everything else was better than the tamales. This was true of the crumbly, sweet and slightly gamy alfajoles.

We'd come a long way (though not physically) from the wagon wheel of meat at La Vallarta, the free skin at Rancho Grande, the watery guac of the Guadalajara, and the enormous spike of meat at San Jose. In the end, my favorite taco goes to the tender al pastor at Taqueria San Jose. But they were all good, because they were all taquerias.

Mission: Taco Tour. Part IV - Taqueria San Jose

Here, at the Taqueria San Jose, I finally had the taco al pastor that I wished I'd had at the Guadalajara. It was as soft as my grandmother's brisket.



Mouth ablaze, I surrendered to the glow of the official drink of the Mission taquerias: carrot-orange juice. It made my taste buds sing and my hypoglycemic index rocket.



Despite not having some of the more exciting items on the menu (fish tacos and menudo), the staff was extra friendly and even let me sneak into the kitchen for a shot of their demonic looking meat spike. I did not, however, enjoy Sprite.

Broiled Eggplant with Zatar (or Za'atar)

Besides a wood fired grill, there is no better way to cook eggplant than thinly sliced, brushed with oil, and under a broiler. There's also no other way that's faster or that uses less fat.

Thinly sliced, broiled eggplant actually takes less time to make than ordering a hamburger. I had a few slices left over from a lasagna and popped them in the oven while reading Mark Bittman's new blog. I sprinkled them with some za'atar from a huge, cheap box I picked up at a co-op in Ohio and they were soft yet crispy in no time. I threw them on an arepa, because I had one, and because I thought they'd look nice on something white. They did.

By the way, if you have a charcoal grill, and you have some wood, you can have a wood fired grill. Just make sure you don't use any kind that's poisonous.

Flatiron Steak

I've been sitting on this one for a bit but wanted to put it out before we leave on Wednesday for Napa, where I will eat everything in sight. I rarely cook red meat; my family in Arkansas raises (largely naturally) wonderful beef, yet it was always cooked to chewiness when I was young, so I don't exactly crave it. But I'd been hearing about this trendy new (to the U.S) cut of meat for some time and wanted to try it. I finally found it at Whole Foods, where I never go because, really, you may as well hand them your wallet when you walk in and have done with it, but this was surprisingly reasonably priced and in the butcher's case, which I vastly prefer to cyrovac.

So, 1 flatiron steak, 1 gift-registry Lodge cast iron grill pan, 5 minutes each side, and you have bloody deliciousness. Yes, I realize that 1 tip is raw - don't worry, I took care of that. It's much more flavorful than flank steak, its nearest competitor. Slice thinly, add baked potatoes and salad, express surprise at the more-conventional-than-usual meal you're eating, and enjoy!

Farewell, Tup....

...We hardly knew ye. Actually, I was quite familiar with ye during and after an introduction in 2002 in a little town near Charlottesville, VA. Tuppers' Hop Pocket was developed by a Maryland high school teacher and his wife who then convinced Dominion Brewery to produce and bottle this super-hopped beer. Unlike other hoppy IPAs that over-do the malty sweetness to 'balance' the hop, Tuppers' just lets it all hang out, and I love love love the clean bitterness that results. Sadly, Dominion will no longer participate in the process due to the price of hops and the labor-intensive and multi-barrel-occupying process. It's possible that another brewery will pick it up, but who knows....
Anyway, I had many a Tup while sitting on the back porch of the 1850s farmhouse I lived in ouside of Charlottesville. We were nestled in a little valley (the house was named the 'Dell House'), and looked across rolling pastures up to the Blue Ridge. It's treated me right here in D.C. too, where I recently came across a six-pack - before I knew it would likely be my last.

2007 Silver Thread Pu-er

The first time I brewed this I treated it like a typical pu-er: boiling water with short infusions. It was bitter. This time I treated it like a white tea: water around 175 and infusions starting around 45 seconds. The result was a thick and fruity brew that reminds me of my favorite whites. It has a bit of a tangerine taste and kept going through 6 infusions. It is kind of amazing that this is even a pu-er, it is so different than the typical young raw cake. The tea is similar to the Rishi green tuo cha that I posted about, though this is better tea at a very small fraction of the price.

2004 CNNP Old Tree Pu-er

China National Native Produce and Animal By-Products (CNNP) is hardly the small mom and pop operation that I like to imagine produces my pu-er. Nonetheless, I've had some excellent CNNP tea and I generally trust their products. This young raw cake has had time to mellow out and it shows. There's no bitterness at all and the smoke flavor gives way to a pleasantly sweet and fruity flavor. I found it unremarkable, though surely pleasant.

Mission: Taco Tour. Part III - Taqueria Guadalajara

Taqueria Guadalajara had a different vibe than the first two stops on our taco tour of the Mission. The biggest difference was that there were more hipsters. Despite that fact, we stayed.


Sometimes guacamole has a watery texture, and I like it. That was case with the guac at Taqueria Guadalajara. The guacamole was fresh and cooling, with just the right ratio of fruit to heat, salt, citrus, and lilly family (garlic, onion). The pico de gallo was watery in a bad way, but the salsa verde was as light and fiery as the blast from an alien's ray gun. The chips were on the stale side, and made me long for the fresh tortillas at Rancho Grande.

Good guacamole is so different from bad guacamole, which is often marked by the addition of sour cream, blue and yelow dye, and sometimes has no actual avocado.

The good stuff is so rich, so fatty, it's no wonder the word "guacamole" comes comes from the Nuahatl for "testicle sauce."

Mission: Taco Tour. Part II - Rancho Grande

I was excited to see a taco de nopales on the menu, having developed a fondness for eating cacti ever since spending a month in Colorado some years ago. Their gooey texture reminds me of okra, and it makes sense that people in hot, arid climates have incorporated these juicy plants into their diet. I was also relieved that at least one of our tacos that night would have something in it that didn't have to be slaughtered.



(Note the forks!) Tangy, slimy and tasty, this was the only taco I had in the Mission that was built atop a fresh, handmade tortilla. We broke the rules and also got a pupusa, because who doesn't want a pupusa? I, for one, wish that I was eating one right now.



The cook confirmed my suspicions about the floppy thing hanging above the range: they use the heat from the stove to dry out pork skin before frying it into chicharrones. The woman working the juice bar handed me a sample, and I quickly realized that it was the crunchiest, and loudest, thing that I will ever eat.

2003 Ripe Xiaguan Toucha

Things taste better when you're in a good mood. This tea is smooth and a rush of sweetness hits your tongue just after the liquor does. I was smiling immediately, but maybe it was for other reasons. I have enough in the sample package to brew it a few more times. Maybe I'll wait until I'm pissed off and see if it is still as smooth.

Mission: Taco Tour. Part I - Taqueria Vallarta

While visiting San Francisco's Mission district, Elise and I decided to take a local friend up on a thorough tour of the area's infamous taquerias. We went to as many as we could before they closed for the night, all three of us sharing one taco at each locale. Saving our disposable silverware from the first stop, we did a good deed for the environment and developed what proved to be the best way to tour a neighborhood: with outstretched fork in hand.

Our first stop was the Taqueria Vallarta. The large sit-down section was packed, but there were even more people standing in line for a quick bite at the specially designed grill by the door. From above, the grill would look like a wagon wheel, each spoke representing a divider separating different fillings. The center was thereby kept clear for warming tortillas, which were rapidly filled with different kinds of meat, doused in grilled onions and sauce, and sprinkled with cilantro, more raw onion, and served with a lime wedge. We ordered an al pastor.



The flavor was fantastic and made even better by the strong accoutrements, though the texture was a little chewy. While it tasted great, I know how tender such slowly cooked meat can be, and was a little disappointed, though only in that aspect. We discussed the "pastoral" origins of the dish and the general (and thankful) disappearance of those hard shelled tacos we'd each grown up with on "taco nights" in our respective homes. As with all good taquerias, the price was inconsequential.

2003 Keyixing Yiwu

Raw pu-er that has fermented into maturity is prohibitively expensive. It is slightly more affordable to drink a raw tea that has matured just enough to mellow and remind you what fermentation does. 5 years of aging has replaced the bitterness of new tea with a pronounced sweetness. The tobacco has mellowed out without disappearing and you can taste the range of flavors in a way that young tea doesn't allow. I'm tempted to buy an entire cake and drink this all the time.

Lancang Black Gold Purple Bud

I'm fighting off a bit of a cold today, so this young raw pu-er complements some ginger tea and raw garlic. My taste buds are a bit off, but I've had it a few times already so I can go from memory. What's striking is just how dark the leaves are. While most young pu-er looks golden and autumnal, the dry leaves of this look, well, purple. (Follow the link and check out the pictures, you'll see.) I initially thought that it was cooked so I was surprised to see it produce a cloudy yellow liquor. Tastewise it is pleasant but unremarkable. Its mellowness makes it easy to drink, and the characteristic tobacco flavor is present though it is weak and accompanied by almost no bitterness.

Heirloom Beans

I should say first that beans, like cantaloupe and sweet potatoes, are among those things that I have forced myself to like because they are good for me - and because I read disliking foods as childish and annoying. The job is done for both cantaloupe (it's better with a little salt) and yam (I like them best with Indian flavors), but I still don't get too excited about a mess o' beans. I got a big push, however, in the right direction last week: I ordered a sampler of heirloom beans from ranchogordo.com, which sells about 20 types of dried 'heirloom and heritage' beans.

I'm willing to allow that I may be more inclined to like these pedigreed beans because I'm a fool for food marketing, but they really do seem to be a better bean: The Runner Cannellini was creamier and more deeply flavored than a typical cannellini. I stewed them a bit with a mirepoix, kale, lemon, and veggie broth, then poured that around a piece of seared tuna. Everyone seemed pleased - more later on the rest of the shipment: I'm thinking a ham and bean soup on Thursday night...