The Food N00bs

Once a n00b, redux

By Sorcha

There I was in my kitchen, half-awake, fixin' to make myself some coffee. I poured the beans in the grinder, closed it, plugged it in and pushed the switch...

...and nothing happened.

"Bwa?" said I. I tried again. Nothing. Took the grinder to a different outlet - our house is wired in some bizarre Escheresque configuration that means two outlets on the same wall are likely to be on different circuit breakers. Still nothing. Just as I was berating myself for having bought the cheap grinder and trying to figure out where I was going to get the money for a new one, I looked again...

...and realized the damn lid wasn't latched.

Yeah. Just call me Brainchild.

In other news, if you missed the Cleveland ep of No Reservations, it sucks to be you. It was awesome. Ruhlman and Bourdain are terrific together, as always, and the episode is gritty, fun, and even heart-warming.

I read The Bobby Gold Stories last night. Great read; Tony manages to put in cool cooking stuff without it being obtrusive, and Nikki is fucking awesome - the closest most of us will probably ever get to meeting the legendary Grill Bitch. This one is going on my private shelf, though. While we're pretty liberal with what we let Littlest watch/read/listen to, I just don't think he's ready to find out that sometimes grownups like to put their tongues in places that are normally considered to be, ahem, off limits to tongues. (Kind of like the time we were watching "Family Guy" and the word "sodomy" came up. He asked, "What's sodomy?" After thinking about it a while, I said, "You wouldn't believe me if I told you. It has to do with sex, and that's about all you're ready to hear.")

Parenting, Food N00b style. It's a never-ending odyssey of learning, laughter, and "What the everliving fuck?"

An Update on Grant Achatz

MIchael Ruhlman reports in his blog that Grant Achatz is doing well and his treatment is going better than expected. The Food N00bs are still praying/sending healing energy for Grant, and it's wonderful to hear that he's doing so well. Thanks so much for letting us all know, Michael!

Sometimes food is all it takes

by Kal

I stayed up far too late last night -- a combination of discovering Starbucks' iced vanilla coffee and some quality time with my roommate, who's often hard to catch these days.  So it's been one of those mornings where I was thinking "oh God no" when the alarm went off, and I stumbled around without my glasses for a while before remembering to put them on, and so forth.

I made myself a breakfast of toasted raisin bread and a fried egg, and "Shivering Denizen" coffee Sorcha brought back from Long Beach.  Somehow, I managed to fry that egg just the way I like it, and managed to spill just the right amount of salt and pepper on it afterward.

That breakfast was so good.  I like my yolks runny but just starting to thicken up, and by the end of my meal I was hungrily rubbing the last of my raisin toast on the plate to get the last of that yummy yolk.  The coffee turned out good, too, and its thick, somehow chocolatey taste really went well with the meal.

My whole day looks different now.  I may not exactly be perky, but I'm wholly satisfied and rather content with life.  Good food does amazing things.

DOMA Part Dos

We've tried two more blends from DOMA - the Sumatra Gayo Mountain and the Tanzania Peaberry. Both are delicious, and I find myself delighted by the teeny little beans of the Peaberry. Though my usual blend is Stumptown's version of SGM, I liked the Peaberry even better.

That's all I wanted to say. Y'all can go about your business now.

Sorcha

Fishin'

by Kal

When I was a kid and we had fish for dinner, it was always salmon fillets.  Mom always cooked it in a glass baking pan, smothered in lemon and dill, served with microwaved baked potatoes and store-bought tartar sauce.

I loved fish night.

As I've continued my culinary journey, I've realized that this is not the only way to cook fish.  Indeed, some people find it inferior.  So I got this idea in my head: I wanted to cook a fish.  A whole fish.  Head and tail still attached.  A quick jaunt through my cookbooks yielded a simple recipe from Jamie Oliver, and Sorcha and I headed off to our local New Seasons for the buy.

The recipe called for trout, and sure enough, this being the Pacific Northwest, New Seasons had nice whole trout right there in the case, just the right size.  Gutted and scaled, but whole nonetheless.  I had a moment's doubt.  Graduating to whole chicken was one thing -- a whole chicken, yes, but without feathers or head or feet.  The idea of turning something so identifiable as a fish into food was a little daunting.

Every time I come to one of those moments, though, I think about Thomas Keller and his rabbits and I keep going.

The side dish was to be prepared first: thin slices of potato patted dry, slicked with olive oil, salted, peppered, and roasted in the oven for 15 minutes.  This was so easy and so delightful that I'll be doing it all the time now -- it's like slightly meatier potato chips.  Fantastic.

The fish was quite simple to prepare -- just rinsing, drying, scoring the skin, and then rubbing with olive oil and S&P.  And some thyme and lemon slices in the cavity.  15 minutes later, I had a beautiful, perfectly-cooked fish, along with some broccoli I threw in at the last minute, a roll (from the store, I confess) and Jamie Oliver's creme fraiche/horseradish/walnut sauce.

This was absolutely worth it.  So terrifically tasty!  Though the recipe said that a one-pound trout was a serving size, my trout, at about 3/4 of a pound, was a HUGE dinner.  I also would not recommend loading your plate up as full as I did in the photo, as the lack of a spot to put the pin bones became a bit of an issue.  The pin bones were an issue in and of themselves, too, but I learned throughout the meal how to navigate them best, and I suspect people who eat fish on the bone a lot end up with pretty crafty techniques. Also, Bourdain was right (as usual) -- the meat closer to the head is indeed tastier.

This was a good, important step for me in terms of coming closer to the sources of my food.  It was a little unnerving to handle the fish at times (especially when I went to reposition it on the plate and discovered that squeezing the head slightly opens the mouth!).  And while I convinced myself to remove the eyes with my fork and knife, I wasn't quite feeling brave enough to eat them.

I'll be making this recipe frequently.  It's very tasty, very simple, and relatively cheap for a fish dish.  And now I'm not squeamish about cooking whole fish anymore! 

A Short Walk On a Long Beach

by Sorcha

This week, the Sorcha family has been relaxing on the Long Beach peninsula in Washington. Mr. Sorcha's folks live here and there were relatives visiting from Planet Kiwi, so we came up to join in the festivities. In between playing tag with the sea, having a staring contest with the bald eagle that hangs out on the beach near the house, and polishing off Chuck Palahniuk's new novel, I got the idea to post just a snippet about a couple of places here worth checking out if you're ever around.

Heading into Long Beach, there's Surfer Sands Sandwich Shoppe, on your left just before you enter the main drag. (It being a peninsula, you'd probably be coming from the south, unless you like, sailed across the bay from the mainland.) The sandwiches here are huge, fresh and tasty. My favorite is the Philly, though I get them to make it with provolone instead of American cheese. Not authentic, I know, but I'm picky.

Long Beach Coffee Roasters is a little way north of the Surfer Sands, in a little strip mall that also boasts a tattoo shop and a psychic. The coffee here is excellent and they do their roasting on the premises. At the end of the month, they clean out the roasting equipment, and the resulting hodgepodge of coffee beans cannot be sold. It will, however, occasionally be given to their regulars. My father-in-law, being one of those regulars, got me a bag of it. He calls it the Shivering Denizen blend, and it's actually, well, pretty good. Very, very strong, but good.

We never leave Long Beach without hitting the Cottage Bakery at least once. The pastries are enormous and delicious. My favorite is the devil dog. They also have deli sandwiches, which I haven't tried yet. The coffee's only middling, though - better to get your coffee at the Roasters first, then hit the bakery for your pastries.

The Castaway Seafood Grille has decent burgers, good clam chowder (according to Littlest) and phenomenal fries.

South of Long Beach, in Ilwaco on the waterfront, there's The Imperial Schooner. Teeny place, great food, and you can see some of my in-laws' paintings on the walls.

Not really food-related, but no visit to the Long Beach peninsula is complete without visits to Marsh's Free Museum (home of Jake the Alligator Man) and Jack's Country Store. (Their motto is, "Contrary to popular opinion, we do not carry everything." This is not entirely true, my friends - I'm pretty sure they actually do. Once, I needed an ethernet cable to hook into my in-laws' internet router. I asked one of the store employees if they carried them, and even as she was replying, "No, I think you'll have to go over to Fred Meyer's in Astoria," I spotted a single lonely, lovely blue cable in a bin behind her.) There's even a goat dairy where you can taste artisanal cheese - I haven't been yet, but it's next on my list.

The weather is cool here even in August, I've eaten well, and the ocean and I were glad to see each other again. It's been a lovely week.