Food

I made these chocolate chip cookies again last night (on special request from E). Last time I made them, they came out thick and wrong, unaccountably. This time they were perfect. I did use the baking soda and salt this time. I also only let the butter cool for 20 minutes or so (in the past, I've been unsure how long to wait). And finally, I space them out better on the cookie sheet, which made it easier. And it definitely helps to let them sit for a few minutes after coming out before moving them to a cooling rack.

One realization: no eggs means you can eat as much of the dough as you want! it would be great for cookie dough ice cream.

Posted by Mike Perkowitz at 04:05 PM | Permalink

This is another recipe that isn't mine -- it comes from Rachel, many years ago. They're pretty much like the title says.

Continue reading "Deep Dark Chocolate Cookies" »

Posted by Mike Perkowitz at 05:08 PM | Permalink

I haven't made this recipe yet myself, only tasted of its sweet sweet fruit. Well, not sweet; chocolatey. This is one I want to try.

Continue reading "Molten Chocolate Cake" »

Posted by Mike Perkowitz at 05:03 PM | Permalink

The strip of University Way between 50th and Ravenna has a surprising number of interesting-looking little restaurants along it. E and I tried one of the more amusing ones last night, Jack's Tapas Cafe. The sign helpfully adds "mainly Chinese", and in fact it's entirely Chinese. The tapas in question are basically appetizers. The menu, plus the extensive specials board, contains a lot of interesting-sounding things (with scant descriptions). We ended up with a dish of chives, fried tofu, and shredded pork, which was unusual and pretty good. We also had ginger and onion beef, which was good, though not a standout. Fair pot stickers. The place gets good reviews, and I'm willing to believe there are some gems on the menu, but we weren't too overwhelmed.

Posted by Mike Perkowitz at 09:21 PM | Permalink

I like chicken, since it's healthy and is a good blank canvas for flavors. But, as much as I like to grill beef and pork, I usually don't get much interesting out of grilling chicken. The best I've found is to grill bone-in breasts, since the bone keeps them moist and the skin can get charred and smoky, but I haven't had much luck adding much additional flavor, except just sort of on the surface. I decided to do a sort of asian hoisin-soy-sugar thing, because I figured the thick sauce would form sort of a glaze, and the sugar would caramel a bit. Add some garlic and ginger.. should be great! And I had the idea that stuffing it under the skin, as well as using it as a glaze, might help the flavor absorb more. Plus, of course, chicken always likes to be brined.

Continue reading "Golden Hoisin Chicken" »

Posted by Mike Perkowitz at 08:56 PM | Permalink

I made this recipe. I couldn't find baking powder and skipped the salt, but it was otherwise the same, except that I baked them a couple minutes longer, and let them sit on the pan (silpat) for a couple minutes before taking them off with a spatula. I thought it was weird that the recipe has no eggs, and the consistency of the dough was strange at times during the process, but the final result was exactly as advertised: thin cookies that are crisp around the edges but chewy as well. really good.

Continue reading "Thin, Crisp, Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies" »

Posted by Mike Perkowitz at 11:32 PM | Permalink

A simple vegetable dish, good with rice and accompanying some grilled meat. Starting with the shallots and garlic on medium and including some butter gives it a nice flavorful base, and including a little sugar and maple syrup gives it a nice hint of sweet.

Continue reading "Stir-fried Baby Bok Choy with Mushrooms" »

Posted by Mike Perkowitz at 09:57 PM | Permalink

E and I were looking for a fairly simple and healthy meal to make for my parents that would show off some of our favorite flavors. We love Vietnamese food and are big fans of pork in all its incarnations, and eventually (after some debating in the aisles at the supermarket) devised this salad. Like good Vietnamese food, it's fairly simple and makes use of fresh ingredients (plus plenty of nuoc cham). Of course, not everyone takes to nuoc cham, so it's good to let people dress their own salads with more sauce and relish. We also accompanied the dish with some stir-fried vegetables and rice, as a nice contrast. It was a big success with my parents. And endless variations on the same basic themes will probably all be good, especially in warmer weather when a salad is extra welcome.

Continue reading "Vietnamese Pork Salad with Carrot Relish" »

Posted by Mike Perkowitz at 10:05 PM | Permalink

This recipe makes a simple relish which is good as a side with meat, or as part of a salad. I came up with the idea one day when I'd grilled some meat and wanted a side, and happened to have nuoc cham in the house. The flavors of the carrot and onion complement each other well, and by soaking in the nuoc cham for a while, they merge somewhat and the onion loses its edge. The peanuts complement the flavors and bind everything together.

Continue reading "Vietnamese Carrot Relish" »

Posted by Mike Perkowitz at 09:36 PM | Permalink

There are lots of recipes for nuoc cham, but this one worked pretty well for tonight's recipe.

Continue reading "Nuoc Cham" »

Posted by Mike Perkowitz at 09:33 PM | Permalink

My last attempt at pho was pretty good but, I thought, needed a bit more depth and complexity to the broth. I decided to look for other recipes, and think about simmering the broth overnight instead of just for 90 minutes. What I ended up trying this time was sort of a combination of that recipe, suggestions from E (roasting the bones first), and some other recipes: this one (esp. charring the onion and ginger, and parboiling the bones), this one (charring, and toasting the spices, though I didn't try that this time), this one (similar to the others), and this one (peppercorns, roasting the bones ahead of time).

Continue reading "Pho" »

Posted by Mike Perkowitz at 01:11 PM | Permalink

Taking our Hoi An cooking school clay pot recipe as inspiration, I decided to do my own clay-pot-ish thing. My main idea was to use the idea from that recipe of simmering water with smashed lemongrass in it for flavor. It was snowing and I didn't want to go to the store, so the recipe was based on what I had in the house. In case you're wondering why I chose this combination of flavors. It was pretty good!

Continue reading "Shrimp "Clay Pot"" »

Posted by Mike Perkowitz at 11:03 AM | Permalink

This recipe came from my Hoi An cooking school. It was pretty good, which was saying a lot since I don't like eggplant. What I liked best was the way the lemongrass flavor came through -- I love lemongrass but haven't really worked out how best to use it in cooking, so this recipe gave me some ideas.

Continue reading "Asian Eggplant in Clay Pot" »

Posted by Mike Perkowitz at 10:56 AM | Permalink

This was my first attempt at making pho. I used a recipe from Nina Simonds's Asian Noodles book. I didn't have everything handy and had to make a few changes: garlic for the shallots (next time I'll use both); anise for star anise; cinnamon for cinnamon sticks. The anise and cinnamon just didn't work, because they floated to the top and basically got skimmed off with the fat. Anyway, I've got the right supplies for my next attempt. the pho came out pretty well for a first try, especially once it was well-garnished. if it had one weakness, it was the broth -- a bit thin and not quite as tasty as good pho. So next time, I'll work on the broth a bit.

Continue reading "Pho" »

Posted by Mike Perkowitz at 11:12 PM | Permalink

Another try at your basic pasta with tomato and meat sauce. I think this might be my best fully-homemade sauce so far (i.e. not relying on a flavor packet or anything). and the whole wheat shells were an entertaining change from my usual vermicelli. this makes a lot of pasta and sauce.

Continue reading "Shells with Bolognese-Tomato Sauce" »

Posted by Mike Perkowitz at 11:52 PM | Permalink

Following in my usual habit of making simple chicken for both meals and leftovers, I decided to try roasting chicken breasts in a pan directly on top of vegetables instead of using a roasting rack. This makes a simple one-pan dish, and a lot of flavor soaked into the veggies. The chicken itself probably needs a marinade for additional flavor, though the dish itself does result in some sauce (more like a broth -- maybe trying to thicken it up into a sauce after cooking would be good). The combination of black pepper, jalapeno seeds, and fennel turned out to be a perfect fit to the chicken and the vegetables I used.

Continue reading "Roasted Chicken Breast and Vegetables" »

Posted by Mike Perkowitz at 03:15 PM | Permalink

E took me to Marazul for my birthday last night. It's a sort of asian-latino fusion, which can be a great combination. The menu is big on small plates and combos of trying different things. we opted for several small plates and one entree. The small plates were all good, with interesting sauces and flavor combinations. The entree, beef short ribs, was a bit heavy and not that interestingly flavored; we should have gone for the skirt steak, pork, or something else. The truffle cake was, for a dense block of bittersweet chocolate, uninspiring. Still, I'd go back, though it doesn't make the top of the list. You could at least sit by the windows, drinking rum and eating tapas.

We had:
- rum cocktails (dark & stormy for E, something sweet and girly for me)
- ahi tuna ceviche (with "watermelon, yuzu miso sauce")
- thai ginger beef satay (with "three chilli lassi sauce")
- chicharron de calamari (with "sriracha aioli")
- jerk pork pot stickers (with "guava plum dipping sauce")
- beef short ribs (with "spiced orange sauce, cassava, boniato mash")
- chocolate truffle cake

Posted by Mike Perkowitz at 05:21 PM | Permalink

and PS, after writing my review of pegasus pizza, I actually looked up deep dish pizza on wikipedia just to see, technically, what that thick-fluffy-crust stuff is what deep dish is supposed to be. seemingly not, though perhaps it's "pan" pizza, as defined there. regardless, what I like is thickish dense crust, like you find at atlantic street (found I should say; it seems to be gone after the owner died) or, sort of, at Stacia's if you choose the whole wheat crust.

Posted by Mike Perkowitz at 10:48 AM | Permalink

Recovering from a dinner party extravaganza and a day of pajamas and football, E and I decided to get pizza at west seattle's much-praised Pegasus Pizza. If I hadn't known it was well-regarded, I would have been worried when we walked in, since the place exuded every cliche of the cheezy/crappy pizza place, down to the walls, like, painted to resemble the crumbling walls of ancient roman ruins. maybe it's ironic, I thought. the style there is "deep dish" whatever that really means; in this case, it means that sort of thick but fluffy (i.e. not dense) crust, which I'm not really crazy about. Maybe if you like that, you'd like their crust. But crust aside, I thought the sauce was anemic and the whole thing was drowned in cheese. You could barely find the sauce in all that cheese. The sausage we had was pretty good, but the mushrooms were sort of.. well I don't want to use the word "slimy" but they were unusually moist. And to cap it all off, the menu doesn't let you just choose your own toppings, but you have to choose from 20-30 standard combos (sausage and mushroom! sausage and pepperoni and mushroom! but eg no sausage and onion). does that, like, really save them any time or money? whatever. oh and ps, pizza this thick in cheese really does not fare well the next day; and I consider next-day pizza one of the hidden perks of getting a good pizza.

Imagine my surprise to find that this place has five stars on citysearch. it seemed so improbable I figured they'd written their own reviews, but no, they look real. No wonder seattle doesn't have better pizza -- people don't know it when they see it.

Posted by Mike Perkowitz at 10:34 AM | Permalink

I wanted to make a simple soup using corn for the main flavor and sweet potatoes for support and consistency. I like blended soups, so I took the usual approach of sauteeing, then simmering for a while, then blending everything. A little curry paste to add some interest and heat. Unfortunately, it didn't really work. The consistency was wrong and the flavor uninteresting. Oh well.

Continue reading "Corn-Sweet Potato Soup" »

Posted by Mike Perkowitz at 10:49 AM | Permalink

I've pretty much got the fried chicken wings down by now (I use the little wing drumettes, coat them in a mix of corn starch and spices, heat the oil to 6 on my stove, and fry for 12 minutes), but I wanted to experiment with more flavor. In the past I've put spices into the corn starch mix, but it usually doesn't come through very strongly. This time I ground up a fair amount of salt, pepper, cardamom, and coriander and actually combined that mixture about 3:2 with corn starch. The chicken was definitely more flavorful, and looked good as well, with dark flecks of pepper and cardamom visible in the coating.

I figured as long as I had some left over corn starch mix and the oil sitting there, why not try frying other things? So next I sliced up some tofu and tossed it in the corn starch. Then I sliced up some cheese (asiago and fresh mozzarella) and tossed that as well. I dropped both into the oil, figuring on giving them 6-8 minutes. Well I don't know how they make those fried mozzarella sticks at crap restaurants like Chili's or whatever, but mine was an utter fiasco. The cheese, non-surprisingly, melted and got all in the oil and stuff. I managed to scoop the tofu and globs of the cheese out. The tofu was actually pretty good -- the coating had formed a fairly distinct skin, and the tofu inside was kind of soft, almost a fried cheese stick effect (probably because I ended up having to pull the tofu out before it'd been in the oil very long). The cheese, of course, was a lost cause. So, tofu good, fried cheese needs some study.

Posted by Mike Perkowitz at 11:58 PM | Permalink

Kroot experiments continue. This one uses sweet potatoes for the bulk of the filling, with some mushrooms for a little extra interest. For a little interesting contrast, I added a bit of fresh peach and some mango chutney. As usual, the kroot concept makes for a nice-looking plate.

Continue reading "Sweet Potato Kroot with Peach" »

Posted by Mike Perkowitz at 11:48 PM | Permalink

I've been wanting to cook more with sweet potatoes (good tasting and good for you!), and with today containing a definite hint of fall on its way, I thought I'd try some soup. I just followed one of the basic soup procedures: cook some vegetables in some broth, blend, add some spices. I thought the curry paste would make a nice flavoring, but I added a bit much (a teaspoon at the beginning and a teaspoon with the milk; I reduced it in the recipe I wrote up here, and maybe it should be even less). It probably would have benefited from whole milk or half and half (or third and third and third), but I tend to have skim in the house. It's good with the fried skins and a hunk of dark sweet bread (and an episode of Deadwood).

Continue reading "Sweet Potato Soup with Fried Skins" »

Posted by Mike Perkowitz at 09:47 PM | Permalink

Another of E's necessary SF stops was Bi-Rite Creamery, "featuring small-batch artisanal ice creams". On our first trip (we would have gone every day if we could have fit it in), E had the salted caramel, which is pretty much the king of gourmet ice cream flavors. It's a perfect blend of flavors, especially if you like the salty as much as the sweet. This one was really good, a smoky caramel flavor with hints of salt. I had a peanut butter with fudge swirls. I love me some chocolate and peanut butter and this one was good, not too sweet or overwhelming, but a good subtle peanutty base.

Continue reading "Bi-Rite Creamery" »

Posted by Mike Perkowitz at 10:55 PM | Permalink

Another of E's planned stops was at Delfina, a packed, friendly Italian place in the mission district. The place was loud and jolly, though just short of being too loud. Everything here was good. The menu is grouped into antipasti, salads, sides, pastas, and main courses; we didn't feel up to tackling more than a couple of appetizers and some pasta (and planned on going to Bi-Rite for dessert). We had:

Continue reading "Delfina" »

Posted by Mike Perkowitz at 10:52 PM | Permalink