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Rare Burgers? Rarely
Ok, busy week but I'm back at last with a simple fish recipe for S. Daniels. I made it up a few years ago at the start of Copper River season (late May?) when I shopped at Jonathan's (oohwee baby!, how the other side lives!) and got a nice piece-a Copper River salmon and a handful of fresh morels (and a bunch of fresh favas in season for the side dish). The ingredients were so great they did all the work. (Obviously you can make the recipe with dried morels soaked to reconstitute -- not quite the same, alas. Any other fine wild salmon would work, or maybe even Scottish Lake Duarte salmon, which I believe is farm-raised but better than they do it here.) The amounts: Whatever you can afford. I had about 1/3 - 1/2 cup of morels after chopping, about 2 ounces, and a 12-ounce fillet to serve 2, about one inch thick. Copper River Salmon En Papillote with Morels Ingredients: Salmon fillet, fresh morels, unsalted butter, tarragon (fresh or dry), creme fraiche (cold). 1. Preheat oven to 350 F. Since morels don't drink up water like button mushrooms, you can wash them -- so wash them to remove any sand and grit, and dump from the strainer onto a paper towel to dry them a bit. Flip them onto a cutting board, chop them reasonably small but not stingy, maybe 1/3" pieces. 2. In a small heavy skillet, melt unsalted butter, add morels and a pinch of tarragon, and saute until softened, stirring often. Season lightly with sea-salt and fresh-ground white pepper and set aside. Now make your side dishes, 'cause you won't have a lot of time for them once the fish hits the fire. 3. Give salmon fillet a rinse in cold water (or lightly rub with cut lemon and rinse off, to restore pristine freshness). Season skin side with sea-salt and fresh-ground white pepper. If you are a craftsmanly type and know how to wrap things properly for a classic papillote, lay salmon on a piece of parchment paper. If you are a klutz like me, lay fish skin-side down in the middle of a sheet of aluminum foil large enough to wrap around the fillet. Top with morels and their butter. With a large soup-spoon, scoop out a generous blob of cold creme fraiche from the container (1/4 cup?) and top the mushrooms with it. Before it has time to melt and run off the fish, wrap the fish with your wrapping of choice, sealing well at the seams. 4. Place on an ovenproof whatever-you-like, and bake for precisely 10 minutes per each inch of the fish's thickness. Remove immediately from oven, place on serving platter, open wrap and serve. Side dishes for Copper River season: young fava beans or sugar-snap peas; for a starch if you need one, long-grain rice pilaf made with a big unpeeled clove of garlic added along with the broth. Brown jasmine rice (available at Trader Joe's) is even better than white rice with salmon, with just-right assertiveness.— October 14, 2009 7:09 p.m.
Rare Burgers? Rarely
Yak guys first: I checked your website and see you actualy are offering yak meat. While I prefer the slightly more delicate texture of water buffalo (assuming it hasn't been left outside unrefrigerated), I look forward to finding your critters at local restaurants -- where I am sure they will marinate them for teriYAKi and YAKitori. S. Daniels, good pen pal -- As you know, fish is not "mystery meat" like ground beef. Best, of course, is from Asian markets with live tanks and live butchers (not just Rancho 99, but the two huge ones in College/Rolando, e.g., at 54th and University, and a block north on El Cajon. But stuck with a supermarket: If buying whole fish, look deep into its eyes. Do they glisten and flirt with you? That's a good fish. But if they look at you with the glazed, blase espressions of junkies just after a fix, don't buy them. For fillets and steaks do what a good Jewish Mama does -- give 'em a good poke in the muscle meat of the side. It should bounce right back. If it stays dented, that's old fish not even fit for feral felines. No way I can tell whether the NYT is overstating this story, Pete. It's the paper of record. In follow-up stories I found I wasn't quite spot-on in which agency inspects meat -- it's the USDA (Agriculture) and alas, the part of its job it takes most seriously is to suppress any hints that US beef might be bad for people, thereby cutting into our huge export trade in industrial meats. I'm really teed off at Obama for appointing some slug of a Midwestern corn-state senator to head this despereately important department. The proper man for the job would have been Jim Hightower, former Texas Agricultural Commissioner (under Gov. Ann Richards, D.), a militant organic/sustainable promoter and honest man: "The only thing in the middle of the road is dead armadillos and a dotted white line." Also, forgot to mention in previous post Matt Rimel's butcher shop in La Jolla -- another great source for clean meat.— October 10, 2009 5:46 p.m.
Rare Burgers? Rarely
This piece on ground beef safety was written in a tearing hurry and heroically rushed into print by the Reader management to save our readers from suffering what the New York Times’ “case” did from the mutant, virulent strain of E-coli – coma followed by paralysis. Sunday night is no time to play investigative reporter, and I had to write at short length, so I’m sure many questions remain. Ask, and I’ll answer as best as I can. (Remember, I’m no scientist – just a Jewish Mama here.) Fast food burgers? Food snob that I am, I didn’t even think about them. Doubtless, in days to come, we’ll see full page ads from all the giant sawdust-patty companies touting their healthful practices. Read critically. Meanwhile, the only fast food burger company that grinds its own from all muscle-meat from high on the cow (front shoulder chuck) is In-N-Out Burger, to my mind the best gamble for safety (and flavor). Local burger joints? Here, YOU get to play investigative reporter: You might give ‘em a call before you eat to find out where their meat comes from. Odds are that restaurant suppliers are more safety-conscious than supermarket purveyors – one paralyzed person is a helpless midget in a lawsuit against, say, Cargill Meats (the villain of the NYT story, which hasn’t even apologized!), whereas numerous restaurants ruined by sick patrons have more clout and money for a class-action lawsuit. The classiest So-Cal meat wholesalers are Hamilton Meats and Newport Meats -- plus Chicago Steaks in Illinois. I don’t know if they test already-ground beef for E-Coli (as Cosco does), but generally I’d tend to trust those companies more than some anonymous mass purveyor. For retail ground beef, if you’re lucky enough to have a nearby market with live butchers (e.g., Iowa Meats, Diestel Meats) who grind meat on the premises – especially if they grind it fresh to order -- well have yourself a time! (Rare, even!) Trader Joe’s sometimes carries Niman ground beef, which I’d also almost trust with my life. Also look for local Hallal butcher shops (I’ve spotted one in passing in North Park, for instance). They will definitely NOT be selling junk-meat. And a bit more on the magical lemon-scrub treatment for cleaning meat: Since many of my meals are at restaurants or using up doggie-bags, often the little meat I buy is at or past expiration-date by the time I get around to cooking it, and has started to smell a bit funky from the beads of moisture on the surface. After the vigorous lemon-rub, it typically smells fresh again. (If not, well, bye-bye.) The technique is something of an instant, secular “Kosher” or “Hallal” treatment in terms of cleanliness – all surface blood removed. (By the way, my Trinidadian friend Rosie, my Port of Spain “landlady” and cooking teacher whenever I go there, isn’t Islamic but shops at a Hallal butcher, and then does the same lemon rub on meats that my Haitian friend Teresa did in Oakland. Tropical wisdom!)— October 7, 2009 4:45 p.m.
Crab Bag
It wasn't the corpulence, it was that birthday party with nobody talking to each other -- noses in their feedbags.— September 29, 2009 4:29 p.m.
Have It Your Way
Thanks, Mr. Istrian -- your info about speck is tremendously useful, much better than I can find in most "food dictionaries." (Now I'll have to memorize this new definition for future appearances of this delicious stuff.)— September 29, 2009 4:24 p.m.
Trek Extra
Hey, Bill, you shoulda left this for me so I could taste all that Nawlins stuff. Anyway, Linda is wrong about what part of Africa okra and slaves came from: Not Ethiopia (in the northeast, the Horn of Africa) but from West Africa. ("The Middle Passage" was the route straight across the Atlantic from West Africa to the Americas.) A slave ship starting at the East African coast would have to sail all the away around the Cape of Good Hope before reaching the Atlantic. By that time, most of the "cargo" would be dead, given the conditions on those boats (with a huge mortality rate even on the shorter, direct route). So this is why American "soul food" includes okra gumbo but not doro wat, cornmeal grits (foo-foo) but not injera.— September 26, 2009 1:35 p.m.
Rei Do Gado Churrascaria
OMG! How totally embarrassing! This is the total opposite of what we want to be. As the ship Captain (James Cagney) yelled over the loudspeaker in classic film "Mister Roberts" after discovering a prank at his expense -- WHO DID IT? WHOOO DID IT? Well, I found out who -- a temp, no longer among our staff, who was hired to enter this sort of data during the crunch when the new improved website was going up. I've asked our systems people to correct this listing, presto-ASAP-STAT. We (the actual foodies on staff) DO know the difference between Mexican and Brazilian. For that matter, between Bahian (coconut milk, dende oil, fish & seafood, African influences) and Rio (feijoada completa) and churrasqueria-stye, although I've forgotten the Portuguese word for "cowboy country." Anyway -- profound, abject apologies, speedpanda. And good for you for catching this bonehead error. -- Naomi Wise, Food Editor— September 1, 2009 5:13 p.m.
Top of the World, Ma!
Thanks! A delicious review. Obviously I've got to get back to Whisknladle somehow -- they still have my favorite starter but all the rest sounds like it's really leaped ahead. And fun to read Abe again.— August 15, 2009 11:14 p.m.
In the Realm of the Senses
Josh -- As a film critic in the old days (before I became a food critic) I felt okay about giving star ratings to movies, in a way that doesn't feel okay with food. Why? Because a movie is a DONE DEAL! It's out there, finished, what's on the screen is what you get. Two nights or two weeks or two months later, still the same film. Twenty years later -- still the same film, even if your own reactions may have changed. And even the theatre it's shown in doesn't make much difference, so long as the print isn't fatally scratched and the projectors and sound systems work. I saw most film classics at scrungy cheap "art" theatres, often in 16 mm prints cut down from 35. Or Westerns and horror flicks in Times Square grind-houses, back before urban Disneyfication. Enchantment still happened. (Of course, critics mainly see films among colleagues in nice screening rooms, so no 7-foot tall basketballer or trannie in a tutti-frutti hat is going to plunk down in front of you just after the credits.) Whereas food is mutable, changing night by night, even with the same chef and kitchen crew and (not always) the same menu. Even your fellow-diners can affect your subjective reaction,e.g., an invasion of stilleto-heeled shrieking banshees or hard-drinking stentorian businessmen can poison your palate. That's why the Michelin guys give it six tries over a year, similar for the NY Times. I, too, have a faint sense that Marine Room's food isn't quite what it used to be, but I can't check that without time-travel. Chef Bernie is all over the place, now -- today New Zealand, tomorrow Macy's Cooking School, so he surely can't be paying full attention to his kitchen. And his lobster bisque is constantly changing (every single time I've eaten there except these last two, in the space of 10 days, it was different) so I don't know whether you and I sipped the same bisque. But: Sandra Bullock in a romantic comedy I don't even have to see to know it's 1 1/2 stars. That's a given. Marine Room's lobster bisque: What's it today, compared to yesterday and tomorrow?— July 29, 2009 8:18 p.m.
Top of the World, Ma!
I didn't see any reason to fully research a chef who's gone (and whose cooking got slammed in our local daily.) I don't have an infinite number of words per review. If he's now working with Martin Berasategui, he must've been good, so this sounds like, once again, San Diego lost yet another hot chef to local conservatism and hostility to creative cooking. But say -- you mention a rave from Abe Opincar (who used to review for the Reader as "Max Nash." Always liked his writing -- where's he been writing more recently?— July 29, 2009 7:23 p.m.