My output of late is depressing. I apologize. The only thing more sorry than this meager epistemoblogical offering is the nutritional value of the crap I ate yesterday. Not to give a way to much of a spoiler but when most of the actual nutrition value of your day comes from a bottle and a half of VitaminWater, you're probably not balancing your pyramid too well.
Starting, naturally enough, with breakfast, I managed to leave my breakfast sitting out on the oven where I set it to cool. It was a Jeno's combination frozen pizza. Much like you, my dear reader, are not surprised by this choice of breakfast, my roommate was not surprised that I left it sitting out as I rushed off to work. At least I turned the oven off. He was kind enough to wrap it in foil and put it in the fridge for me, after our cat, addled by drugs and one of those "don't lick yourself" cones as she recovers from being spayed, jumped off the top of our kitchen cabinet squarely into the middle of the pizza. That probably was not intentional on the part of the cat. Probably.
I did remember my coffee, though: Oren's Roast Sumatran brewed in my French press. It was a black coffee day, although some calories would have been nice. Skipping any real breakfast and drinking coffee, my guts were screaming for something to beat up on besides themselves. I had a little plastic baggie with some peanut butter Cap'n Crunch and a butterscotch pudding cup in my bag that I had intended to be snacks. They didn't do much by way of sustenance, but eating them slowly, I managed to make it through to lunch without noticeable ulcer development.
I thought I might go to a ramen joint in the area of my assignment, but on my way out of the office I caught a whiff of someone's deli sandwich and a pickle and my mind was made up. It was the pickle that did it more than the sandwich, so when I got to the deli, I ordered their cheeseburger deluxe special: one cheeseburger, grilled fresh, about 7" across with lettuce and tomato, french fries and a pickle on the side for $5.50. That's a good food value for buying lunch out in Manhattan. The cheeseburger was so big, I didn't really feel like eating anything the rest of the day.
That may have also been due to nerves. Last night was my first time performing on stage in over 5 years. It was my friend's final writing piece of the semester at Columbia University and she was directing it herself in a writers' showcase. It was about as low-pressure as theater gets, but I still got very nervous beforehand, and as showtime got nearer, my insides got smaller. I had a Charge VitaminWater and half of an Energy VW, trying to stock up on B-vitamins to help with stress response. I only had half of the Energy because, as my castmate pointed out, they contain caffeine, which does not tend to lower stress levels. It wasn't so much that I was afraid of stressing and having a heart attack, as much as the fact that I had to play a drunkard, and I was afraid me hopped up on caffeine and the thrill of an audience after so long without would play more as a crackhead than a drunkard. Even when I acted on a regular basis, speeding through lines was always a problem of mine.
In an attempt to build some sort of nutritional support without inducing pre-show nausea, I had a cup of Whole milk yogurt, some triscuits, and a lot of water. I also had a piece of a castmate's hazelnut banana bread. My wired must have been really crossed, though, because when I first stuffed it in my mouth, it tasted like sashimi. No one else who tried the bread could corroborate my fishy impression, though, so I think I was just going crazy.
The show went off very well. We made a great mess of the stage area, as was our goal. Afterward I could manage to finally put things other than water in my stomach in any considerable volume.
I had a bottle of Odwalla Superfood while watching the rest of the performances in the showcase, then I went home to polish off that pizza that had been waiting patiently, wrapped in foil, perched atop the egg carton and sour cream. It struck me that it was possibly the first time I'd ever had a Jeno's pizza cold before; not tepid from being left to sit on the counter while you took a shower, got dressed, watched some anime on youtube, went to the kitchen to get a glass of water and then realized you'd made a pizza, but cold from being refrigerated all day. Besides being the first time, though, it was pretty unremarkable; not something I plan on doing again any time soon or possibly ever on purpose.
And just to make sure I covered all of my food groups, I knocked back a 22 oz. bottle of Preferred Stock Malt Liquor and some cheese curls as I watched the second disk of Battlestar Galactica, Season 2. At least 70% of that combination comes highly recommended as a great way to spend a Thursday night.
Friday, May 16, 2008
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Saturday in Boston, er, well, Davis
This weekend I decided to take advantage of BoltBus's ridiculous prices and wifi-laden busses and abscond to Boston to visit a friend and hopefully force some productivity out of myself while trapped in a tin can for four hours on either end of the trip. I am actually writing this post on the return journey. For those of you in major cities on the east coast, you should check out www.boltbus.com I don't have ad banners for them or anything, but they let me change my departure times twice and I've been very happy with the whole experience so far.
But this is about food, and I ate somethings yesterday that I am obligated by law to describe to you in writing.
You may think that when traveling to Boston one is obligated to eat beans, cream pies, and the fists of Red Socks fans who can smell the dust of Shea Stadium on your sneakers. I am all to happy to disappoint you, dear reader. I did not eat any of these things this weekend.
The morning started with a bowl of Golden Grahams and a few cups of coffee. I'm not much of a cereal guy, but in the ridiculous debacle that was the night before, we failed to procure fixin's for biscuits and gravy. We managed to stifle the disappointment enough to enjoy our coffee and beat down any lingering shadows of hangover.
The coffee was a Kona bean from Oren's Roast in Station Square Market. The beans were roasted on Wednesday and we ground them fresh just before brewing the coffee in a French press. As much as I love my French press, my friend is a bit obsessive about his brewing process, even controlling the temperature of the water at infusion to make sure his brew timing is as consistent as possible. I often forget that I've started my press brewing and come back after 15 minutes to depress the plunger. I'm not such a connaisieur as much as I just like interesting coffee that doesn't taste like urine steeped with burnt cardboard, or at least doesn't have a flavor that makes me imagine urine steeped with burnt cardboard, not that I've ever actually tried such things. This was good coffee, even black, although I did take my second cup with a liberal splash of heavy cream and a touch of sugar.
Then we went shopping for lunch fixin's. The coffee really had my digestive system going, though and so before we even got home to prepare lunch I had eaten a fried chicken thigh and a stick of celery with peanut butter while walking home with our groceries. This involved digging directly from the peanut butter jar with an unwashed stick of celery while also carrying a bag of groceries, but it was worth it. Seriously, try it, eat it everyday.
Lunch was two bowls of a sausage and cannellini soup that we made. I stared by browning a pound of sweet Italian sausage in the bottom of the pot. Then I reserved the sausage and added 5 cloves of sliced garlic and half a Vidalia onion, finely diced to the rendered juices with a little olive oil. Next came 3 stalks of celery and 2 carrots, all sliced. I seasoned it with about 2 tsp. each of thyme and dill, 1 tsp oregano and a touch of basil, then I covered it and let everybody get to know each other better.
After a few minutes I introduced a dash of balsamic vinegar, two big cans of cannellini and a big can of chicken broth. I don't know the actual measurements, but if you try this at home, add as many beans as you want and enough chicken broth to cover plus an inch or two over the top. I brought this to a boil, reduced it to a simmer, then added the sausage, now sliced into 1/2" pieces and a green and a red pepper, chopped. We let the whole thing simmer while we made a sculpture of my friend's right hand out of plastic wrap and packing tape as part of a larger project to create a full-sized sculpture of himself with plastic wrap and packing tape.
Over the course of the afternoon I also had three Reese's peanut butter cups and a snack-sized Butterfinger bar. You leave these things around and I'm going to eat them. I could have restrained myself, but why bother, really?
Dinner was thoroughly satisfying as only a pulled pork sandwich and a pint of beer can be. I had these things at Redbones, a barbecue joint in Davis, the town north of Boston that cradles the Tuft's campus. The pulled pork was one of the best I've ever had. It was almost impossible to pick up for all the grease and barbecue sauce the bread was sopping up. I ate it much faster than I thought I would, since I was only slightly hungry, but the structural integrity of the sandwich demanded decisive action with every bite. A liberal piling of onions, slaw and pickles right in the sandwich were a perfect touch. Great barbecue, especially considering it's in a preppy suburb of Boston.
The beer for the night was originally going to be Six-Point Brewery's Rye Ale, but the sample glass I had proved a little too sweet for my first drink of the night so I went instead with Offshore's Amber Ale, which provided a simple yet sturdy solvent for the pork grease. My first beer also proved to be my last as the prior evening's liver damage and sleep deprivation started to catch up with me very quickly. I had few sips of Sam Adam's unremarkable summer ale just to say that it was indeed unremarkable with some modicum of authentic judgment, but otherwise it was off to crash on my friend's couch in anticipation of my early morning rise to get on my bus in downtown Boston before 7:30 the next morning.
Ah, yes, fear not. The gap in my writing for this blog, I have not forgotten how to churn out unwieldy run-on sentences.
But this is about food, and I ate somethings yesterday that I am obligated by law to describe to you in writing.
You may think that when traveling to Boston one is obligated to eat beans, cream pies, and the fists of Red Socks fans who can smell the dust of Shea Stadium on your sneakers. I am all to happy to disappoint you, dear reader. I did not eat any of these things this weekend.
The morning started with a bowl of Golden Grahams and a few cups of coffee. I'm not much of a cereal guy, but in the ridiculous debacle that was the night before, we failed to procure fixin's for biscuits and gravy. We managed to stifle the disappointment enough to enjoy our coffee and beat down any lingering shadows of hangover.
The coffee was a Kona bean from Oren's Roast in Station Square Market. The beans were roasted on Wednesday and we ground them fresh just before brewing the coffee in a French press. As much as I love my French press, my friend is a bit obsessive about his brewing process, even controlling the temperature of the water at infusion to make sure his brew timing is as consistent as possible. I often forget that I've started my press brewing and come back after 15 minutes to depress the plunger. I'm not such a connaisieur as much as I just like interesting coffee that doesn't taste like urine steeped with burnt cardboard, or at least doesn't have a flavor that makes me imagine urine steeped with burnt cardboard, not that I've ever actually tried such things. This was good coffee, even black, although I did take my second cup with a liberal splash of heavy cream and a touch of sugar.
Then we went shopping for lunch fixin's. The coffee really had my digestive system going, though and so before we even got home to prepare lunch I had eaten a fried chicken thigh and a stick of celery with peanut butter while walking home with our groceries. This involved digging directly from the peanut butter jar with an unwashed stick of celery while also carrying a bag of groceries, but it was worth it. Seriously, try it, eat it everyday.
Lunch was two bowls of a sausage and cannellini soup that we made. I stared by browning a pound of sweet Italian sausage in the bottom of the pot. Then I reserved the sausage and added 5 cloves of sliced garlic and half a Vidalia onion, finely diced to the rendered juices with a little olive oil. Next came 3 stalks of celery and 2 carrots, all sliced. I seasoned it with about 2 tsp. each of thyme and dill, 1 tsp oregano and a touch of basil, then I covered it and let everybody get to know each other better.
After a few minutes I introduced a dash of balsamic vinegar, two big cans of cannellini and a big can of chicken broth. I don't know the actual measurements, but if you try this at home, add as many beans as you want and enough chicken broth to cover plus an inch or two over the top. I brought this to a boil, reduced it to a simmer, then added the sausage, now sliced into 1/2" pieces and a green and a red pepper, chopped. We let the whole thing simmer while we made a sculpture of my friend's right hand out of plastic wrap and packing tape as part of a larger project to create a full-sized sculpture of himself with plastic wrap and packing tape.
Over the course of the afternoon I also had three Reese's peanut butter cups and a snack-sized Butterfinger bar. You leave these things around and I'm going to eat them. I could have restrained myself, but why bother, really?
Dinner was thoroughly satisfying as only a pulled pork sandwich and a pint of beer can be. I had these things at Redbones, a barbecue joint in Davis, the town north of Boston that cradles the Tuft's campus. The pulled pork was one of the best I've ever had. It was almost impossible to pick up for all the grease and barbecue sauce the bread was sopping up. I ate it much faster than I thought I would, since I was only slightly hungry, but the structural integrity of the sandwich demanded decisive action with every bite. A liberal piling of onions, slaw and pickles right in the sandwich were a perfect touch. Great barbecue, especially considering it's in a preppy suburb of Boston.
The beer for the night was originally going to be Six-Point Brewery's Rye Ale, but the sample glass I had proved a little too sweet for my first drink of the night so I went instead with Offshore's Amber Ale, which provided a simple yet sturdy solvent for the pork grease. My first beer also proved to be my last as the prior evening's liver damage and sleep deprivation started to catch up with me very quickly. I had few sips of Sam Adam's unremarkable summer ale just to say that it was indeed unremarkable with some modicum of authentic judgment, but otherwise it was off to crash on my friend's couch in anticipation of my early morning rise to get on my bus in downtown Boston before 7:30 the next morning.
Ah, yes, fear not. The gap in my writing for this blog, I have not forgotten how to churn out unwieldy run-on sentences.
Picking up, moving on.
Sometimes your life just gets away with you. As someone endeavoring to pursue creative, er, endeavors, you might think I am a fickle creature of whimsy that rides ethereal currents of inspiration as flowers bloom where I poo.
As a wee'un, that's how I assumed the life of creative professionals must be. This whole blog project is an attempt to get my chops back for an altogether different process, that of actual ongoing creative production. The key aspects of this, for me, seem to be stability and routine. In this case, not having to spend time job hunting and actively seeking assignments provided me with an excellent opportunity to start working on this rather ambitious blog, humble in these infant stages though it may be.
Writing about everything one eats one day after the fact is more challenging than you might think, than I originally thought it would be when I started. I mean, I eat a lot, and I have some sort of obligation to make this at least moderately entertaining if I'm bothering to invite you, the reader, to come along.
Also, in a very real lesson to myself on the practicality of daily journalism, I found out how small problems tend to snowball when you let production lapse. As I worked to get back on schedule, I was still eating things. As I tried to get through a very food heavy weekend, I found that I was eating myself into a hole from which I wasn't likely to escape. The things I have eaten and have not written about are to the point that things will be lost. I'm sure the course of human history will march on unscathed, and so must this blog. Before I get too overwhelmed trying to explain to you my exploits on my birthday or on a visit to an Old Country Buffet, let me start again fresh, from yesterday...
As a wee'un, that's how I assumed the life of creative professionals must be. This whole blog project is an attempt to get my chops back for an altogether different process, that of actual ongoing creative production. The key aspects of this, for me, seem to be stability and routine. In this case, not having to spend time job hunting and actively seeking assignments provided me with an excellent opportunity to start working on this rather ambitious blog, humble in these infant stages though it may be.
Writing about everything one eats one day after the fact is more challenging than you might think, than I originally thought it would be when I started. I mean, I eat a lot, and I have some sort of obligation to make this at least moderately entertaining if I'm bothering to invite you, the reader, to come along.
Also, in a very real lesson to myself on the practicality of daily journalism, I found out how small problems tend to snowball when you let production lapse. As I worked to get back on schedule, I was still eating things. As I tried to get through a very food heavy weekend, I found that I was eating myself into a hole from which I wasn't likely to escape. The things I have eaten and have not written about are to the point that things will be lost. I'm sure the course of human history will march on unscathed, and so must this blog. Before I get too overwhelmed trying to explain to you my exploits on my birthday or on a visit to an Old Country Buffet, let me start again fresh, from yesterday...
Friday, May 2, 2008
Long Overdue: Everything I Ate Since Last Thursday, pt.2, Saturday
Not surprisingly, I woke up Saturday with a bit of a hangover. As my glands tried to suggest possible remedies by sending secret coded symbols that my subconscious tried franticaly to translate into reason, I became overwhelmed with a desire for sausage, greasy, swilly sausage delivered via some nice starchy sponge that would be transformed into ambrosia as it soaked up all those swilly fluids the sausage would release. Yes, I hadn't even put on my boxers but the truth was plain to me. Sausage grease would set me free.
Some people, when they get a hang over, they go to McDonalds or they have someone else prepare their fatty starchy gutbomb for them. Maybe because this hangover wasn't too severe, and maybe because I'm just that kind of guy, but this probably more involved than most people's hangover meals.
I started with a few links of spicy Italian sausage that I browned over a medium heat in my everyday pan. I then reserved the links and added about 7 cloves of garlic, sliced about 1/8" thick and a few tablespoons of olive oil, reducing the heat to low and making sure to get all the juicies and sausage gunk up from the pan and interacting with the garlic.
At the same time I cooked some tortiglione pasta. This kind of looks like your common elbow macaroni extended into a spiral shape about an inch and a half to two inches long. These are pretty sturdy pasta that can take a lot of tossing and can also trap a fair amount of sauce and whatnots.
Into the garlic and oil I added some baby spinach and red peppers, then let that take on the oil a little bit before adding some diced tomatoes and the sausage cut into 1/2" thick pieces. I made sure to scrape all the oil that escaped from cutting the sausages back into the pan as well.
Once the pasta was starting to pass for au dente, I drained it and added it to the everyday pan and stirred it in with everything else. I then added adobo seasoning, dried basil, dried oregano, parmesean cheese, goat cheese and enough milk that the whole thing would stir. I tossed this while still cooking at a medium high heat to thicken a little bit. I had a huge bowl with some adobo garlic toast and then promptly crawled back in bed for a nap. It was exactly what my glands had been clamoring for.
That evening for dinner I went to dinner with the girlfriend's family in a Portuguese restaurant in Newark, NJ. The dinner was served in several big courses. Somehow I never really got near the salad, if there was one, but I did dig in to the appetizers. There was a bowl of shrimp in garlic and olive oil, sliced Portuguese choriço, and an assortment of some traditional Portuguese deep-fried delights.
Most recognizable to those unfamiliar with Portuguese cuisine would be the lules, m.c.k.a. calamari, or fried squid. That was two days in a row that I was eating squid and it definitely marks my highest post-Japan squid intake.
In another Japanese-Portuguese food connection, there were also beef croquettes in the fried Portuguese sampler platter. These were not quite the same as the ones I ate regularly in Japan. In Japan, the croquette, or "koroke," is more of a patty of mashed potatoes covered in panko bread crumbs and then deep fried. In the case of "beef koroke" it's usually the case that the mashed potatoes were flavored with beef stock with very little actual beef involved. The Portuguese versions, in contrast, were much smaller, about the size of mini-egg rolls, and they definitely had a good amount of finely shredded beef mixed in with the potatoes. The texture was much drier than the Japanese version and somewhat off-putting. This would have been a great time for some kind of sauce or gravy. The calamari would have also benefited from having something to dip them in. I experimented with a few liberal spoonfuls of choriço oil and shrimp-and-garlic-infused olive oil, but I didn't want the gf's family to realize what a fat junky I am just yet.
The pasteis de bacalhau ("pastry of codfish," sort of a deep-fried codfish meatball, but more bread than fish) were a little less dry than the beef coroquettes, but not by much, and not nearly as good as my gf's mother's so I only had a enough to show my general acceptance of codfish as food.
And the last of the appetizers, and my favorite, although again, not as good as my gf's mother's, were the rissois de camarão, small empanada-esque pastry pockets filled with shrimp. I could easily eat two dozen of these in a sitting, but I think I managed to contain myself to three or four.
The entree was a sirloin steak with fries. I'd ordered mine medium rare. My girlfriend asked for hers well done. There was absolutely no perceptible difference between the two. It's hard to argue with a waiter over the quality of a free steak, though. It's not like I didn't eat the entire thing and most of my girlfriends, especially all that charred fat and gristle I love so much.
Then, deserts; this shouldn't take too much longer than appetizers did...
Let's see, stuff you're likely to recognize by name: a slice of chocolate cake shaped like an Eagles football helmet, rice pudding, slices of pineapple and flan.
The cake was a swirl of chocolate and white cake. I don't know if the white bit qualified as vanilla per se, so I won't make any such audacious assumptions. It was cake. You've had it before and my description here probably won't be worth reading.
The rice pudding was also very simply good, no big tricks like raisins or shavings of chocolate truffle, just a dusting of cinnamon over the top. The consistency was perfect, though. The rice wasn't too hard and obtrusive, the pudding itself was very sturdy and creamy. It was a nice transitional desert course.
The flan I didn't finish. Flan is one of those things, like horchata, macaroni and cheese or meatloaf, where the vast majority of it commercially available is mediocre at best if not an insult to the homemade versions so near and dear to true fans of the stuff. This flan was crap. As my girlfriend repeated several times, her aunt's flan is so much better. The flan itself tasted empty and the caramel sauce was noxiously cloying where it wasn't bitingly chemical. Blech.
As far as things you probably don't recognize the name of unless you are or are dating someone who is Portuguese there was serradura and pasteis de nata, both fantastic.
Serradura is somewhere between meringue and custard, with crumbled Maria cookies over the top. It manages to be creamy as well as fluffy and hits all the sweet and rich desert buttons you have.
Pasteis de nata are also very rich. To call them a heavy desert can be taken fairly literally. For their size these 3" custard cups do weigh your hand down. You could probably throw one across a football field and still hit someone rather solidly in the head. The crust is a dense layering of flaky pastry dough filled with a very rich egg custard. I am a big fan of the variety where the custard is tinged with lemon, though there are also your standard plain custard versions available. These were the lemon, and sadly there just was not room for two of them inside of me. I managed to hold myself to one and let that tangy custard hang on my palate as I sat trying to
soak up Portuguese phonetics and smile and nod when everyone else was smiling and nodding.
I should also mention that through the course of dinner ran a pleasant stream of a white wine with a pleasant subtle sparkling edge. Describing this wine would be a lot easier if you knew what "vinho verde" was. Literally, the name means "green wine," but they are most usually actually white in color. The "green" part refers instead to the exuberant, youthful character of the wine and its short life in the bottle. They are not a "sparkling wine" as defined by the International Cartel of Wine Fascists, but they do have enough disolved CO2 to have a noticeable fizz or, as the VFCI calls it, pétillance. They are a regional wine, coming from the Minho region of northern Portugal. They are intended to be enjoyed within a year of bottling. There, that's more than you will likely ever need to know about vinho verde and you probably still can't pronounce it properly. ("veenu vairday," but with faster vowels, not like you're from Georgia)
This was not a true vinho verde, as it was produced in a more southerly region of Portugal, but it was still a nice dinner wine. It was maybe a little too sweet to be carried through all courses of a meal, but I made do. Red wine would have left me with an even worse hangover than the one I woke up to today. This wine was very light on alcohol and as such it was very easy to find and maintain that sweet spot of muscle relaxation that allows the stomach to comfortably distend that extra inch without stirring up any real retaliation from my body's chemical defense systems.
It was a very welcome compliment to the meal and language barrier, and since everyone else was drinking mostly the red, I drank more than 2/3rds of the bottle.
This entry took me over two weeks to nail down. It's gigantic and way longer than your average internet attention span. I apologize. I'll try to make the Old Country Buffet entry a little easier to digest. BAHAHAHAHAha-a. Yeah, nm. sorry.
Most recognizable to those unfamiliar with Portuguese cuisine would be the lules, m.c.k.a. calamari, or fried squid. That was two days in a row that I was eating squid and it definitely marks my highest post-Japan squid intake.
In another Japanese-Portuguese food connection, there were also beef croquettes in the fried Portuguese sampler platter. These were not quite the same as the ones I ate regularly in Japan. In Japan, the croquette, or "koroke," is more of a patty of mashed potatoes covered in panko bread crumbs and then deep fried. In the case of "beef koroke" it's usually the case that the mashed potatoes were flavored with beef stock with very little actual beef involved. The Portuguese versions, in contrast, were much smaller, about the size of mini-egg rolls, and they definitely had a good amount of finely shredded beef mixed in with the potatoes. The texture was much drier than the Japanese version and somewhat off-putting. This would have been a great time for some kind of sauce or gravy. The calamari would have also benefited from having something to dip them in. I experimented with a few liberal spoonfuls of choriço oil and shrimp-and-garlic-infused olive oil, but I didn't want the gf's family to realize what a fat junky I am just yet.
The pasteis de bacalhau ("pastry of codfish," sort of a deep-fried codfish meatball, but more bread than fish) were a little less dry than the beef coroquettes, but not by much, and not nearly as good as my gf's mother's so I only had a enough to show my general acceptance of codfish as food.
And the last of the appetizers, and my favorite, although again, not as good as my gf's mother's, were the rissois de camarão, small empanada-esque pastry pockets filled with shrimp. I could easily eat two dozen of these in a sitting, but I think I managed to contain myself to three or four.
The entree was a sirloin steak with fries. I'd ordered mine medium rare. My girlfriend asked for hers well done. There was absolutely no perceptible difference between the two. It's hard to argue with a waiter over the quality of a free steak, though. It's not like I didn't eat the entire thing and most of my girlfriends, especially all that charred fat and gristle I love so much.
Then, deserts; this shouldn't take too much longer than appetizers did...
Let's see, stuff you're likely to recognize by name: a slice of chocolate cake shaped like an Eagles football helmet, rice pudding, slices of pineapple and flan.
The cake was a swirl of chocolate and white cake. I don't know if the white bit qualified as vanilla per se, so I won't make any such audacious assumptions. It was cake. You've had it before and my description here probably won't be worth reading.
The rice pudding was also very simply good, no big tricks like raisins or shavings of chocolate truffle, just a dusting of cinnamon over the top. The consistency was perfect, though. The rice wasn't too hard and obtrusive, the pudding itself was very sturdy and creamy. It was a nice transitional desert course.
The flan I didn't finish. Flan is one of those things, like horchata, macaroni and cheese or meatloaf, where the vast majority of it commercially available is mediocre at best if not an insult to the homemade versions so near and dear to true fans of the stuff. This flan was crap. As my girlfriend repeated several times, her aunt's flan is so much better. The flan itself tasted empty and the caramel sauce was noxiously cloying where it wasn't bitingly chemical. Blech.
As far as things you probably don't recognize the name of unless you are or are dating someone who is Portuguese there was serradura and pasteis de nata, both fantastic.
Serradura is somewhere between meringue and custard, with crumbled Maria cookies over the top. It manages to be creamy as well as fluffy and hits all the sweet and rich desert buttons you have.
Pasteis de nata are also very rich. To call them a heavy desert can be taken fairly literally. For their size these 3" custard cups do weigh your hand down. You could probably throw one across a football field and still hit someone rather solidly in the head. The crust is a dense layering of flaky pastry dough filled with a very rich egg custard. I am a big fan of the variety where the custard is tinged with lemon, though there are also your standard plain custard versions available. These were the lemon, and sadly there just was not room for two of them inside of me. I managed to hold myself to one and let that tangy custard hang on my palate as I sat trying to
soak up Portuguese phonetics and smile and nod when everyone else was smiling and nodding.
I should also mention that through the course of dinner ran a pleasant stream of a white wine with a pleasant subtle sparkling edge. Describing this wine would be a lot easier if you knew what "vinho verde" was. Literally, the name means "green wine," but they are most usually actually white in color. The "green" part refers instead to the exuberant, youthful character of the wine and its short life in the bottle. They are not a "sparkling wine" as defined by the International Cartel of Wine Fascists, but they do have enough disolved CO2 to have a noticeable fizz or, as the VFCI calls it, pétillance. They are a regional wine, coming from the Minho region of northern Portugal. They are intended to be enjoyed within a year of bottling. There, that's more than you will likely ever need to know about vinho verde and you probably still can't pronounce it properly. ("veenu vairday," but with faster vowels, not like you're from Georgia)
This was not a true vinho verde, as it was produced in a more southerly region of Portugal, but it was still a nice dinner wine. It was maybe a little too sweet to be carried through all courses of a meal, but I made do. Red wine would have left me with an even worse hangover than the one I woke up to today. This wine was very light on alcohol and as such it was very easy to find and maintain that sweet spot of muscle relaxation that allows the stomach to comfortably distend that extra inch without stirring up any real retaliation from my body's chemical defense systems.
It was a very welcome compliment to the meal and language barrier, and since everyone else was drinking mostly the red, I drank more than 2/3rds of the bottle.
This entry took me over two weeks to nail down. It's gigantic and way longer than your average internet attention span. I apologize. I'll try to make the Old Country Buffet entry a little easier to digest. BAHAHAHAHAha-a. Yeah, nm. sorry.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Long Overdue: Everything I Ate Since Last Thursday, pt.1, Friday
I am staring down the barrel of this entry and the longer I put it off, the more it's going to suck, so here goes my afternoon. Since my last post, almost a week ago, I have eaten about 2.3 weeks worth of food. I'll try not to bury you in the weight of it all, but you may want to get a fresh beer and open a new SlimJim for this one.
Well, we go way back to Friday, April 25, 2008. Sadly, I have no notes, but it was a pretty memorable food day, so I think this should be fairly accurate, plus or minus a tortilla chip or two.
Breakfast was one of my favorite things in the world, leftover Indian food and eggs. I love making omelets with chana masala and munster or a pub cheese. This morning it was chana masala and keema kurma with scrambled eggs and munster cheese as a burrito. I ended up making way too much stuff for the insides and had to make 4 burritos to fit it all. I ate two of them myself and gave one away to an office mate. The other lady in my office wasn't feeling so adventurous, though, so it ended up getting thrown away. Most days I would have just eaten it or saved it in the fridge, but today was a day apart.
It was my last day on that assignment, and happened to coincide with the annual departmental staff luncheon. We were all going to a paid lunch at a nearby Italian restaurant that afternoon and I wanted to keep space open for some fancier coal in the chemical furnace that fuels my life.
Speaking of fuel, I do believe I accelerated the burn a bit with an additive known as "Green Mountain Coffee's Sumatran." I couldn't point at Sumatra on a map, but man, do I love the coffee that comes out of that place. I guess that qualifies me for a probationary Typical Yuppie Scum membership card. I've got to head this off at the pass. I'll donate to NPR, support local farming and what's that? It's only getting worse. Well then I guess I'll just have to give in a buy that French press, burr grinder and Ethically Sound Business Practice Coffees of the World of the Month Club membership. (now available on weekly and bi-weekly plans)
Then there was Italian food with a pleasant side of drinking with your boss. It was all a little bittersweet, since I really enjoyed working here. The bosses in question were great to work for and the other people who worked in the office were also a lot of fun. It was a nice send off, although they would have been doing it disirregardless of my ever having worked there.
Apetizers galore came pouring out first. I ate enough calamari to fill a pair of crew socks. That is a lot of calamari when you think about it. Calamari is one of those special foods that defies politeness and dainty portions ettiquette. You have to bite while the squidflesh is hot or it turns into this sad rubbery mass of self-loathing, resenting it's former glory as its proteins continue to bind and the fat coagulates until there is nothing but jaw-thwarting piteous disappointment. To prevent this sad fate, Calamari must be eaten while still succulent and tender in that halcyon moment between too hot to taste and too cold to chew.
There were also battered, deep-fried wedges of mozarella on a bed of battered and deep-fried vegetables. I can't be sure what all was battered and deep fried, but I believe zuchini, carrots and parsnips were the chief culprits. The batter was a delightful light texture while also being incredibly bold with garlic and herbs I couldn't quite pinpoint. It provided an amazing counterpoint to the moz and veggies that just broke my heart. If there were enough of that to fill three pair of crew socks I would have eagerly devoured it all, defying the probable heart attack to take me swiftly in my grease-addled euphoria.
Of lesser note was an antipasta plate that was still very good. The center-piece was a bowl made from fried parmesian full of cubes of parmesean. There was an assortment of meats around the edges, two different cuts of prosciuto, capicola ham, beef carpaccio and salami. The olives were not so good, but the meats provided some nice options to play with the bread and ubiquitous plate of mozarella, tomato and basil.
Well, we go way back to Friday, April 25, 2008. Sadly, I have no notes, but it was a pretty memorable food day, so I think this should be fairly accurate, plus or minus a tortilla chip or two.
Breakfast was one of my favorite things in the world, leftover Indian food and eggs. I love making omelets with chana masala and munster or a pub cheese. This morning it was chana masala and keema kurma with scrambled eggs and munster cheese as a burrito. I ended up making way too much stuff for the insides and had to make 4 burritos to fit it all. I ate two of them myself and gave one away to an office mate. The other lady in my office wasn't feeling so adventurous, though, so it ended up getting thrown away. Most days I would have just eaten it or saved it in the fridge, but today was a day apart.
It was my last day on that assignment, and happened to coincide with the annual departmental staff luncheon. We were all going to a paid lunch at a nearby Italian restaurant that afternoon and I wanted to keep space open for some fancier coal in the chemical furnace that fuels my life.
Speaking of fuel, I do believe I accelerated the burn a bit with an additive known as "Green Mountain Coffee's Sumatran." I couldn't point at Sumatra on a map, but man, do I love the coffee that comes out of that place. I guess that qualifies me for a probationary Typical Yuppie Scum membership card. I've got to head this off at the pass. I'll donate to NPR, support local farming and what's that? It's only getting worse. Well then I guess I'll just have to give in a buy that French press, burr grinder and Ethically Sound Business Practice Coffees of the World of the Month Club membership. (now available on weekly and bi-weekly plans)
Then there was Italian food with a pleasant side of drinking with your boss. It was all a little bittersweet, since I really enjoyed working here. The bosses in question were great to work for and the other people who worked in the office were also a lot of fun. It was a nice send off, although they would have been doing it disirregardless of my ever having worked there.
Apetizers galore came pouring out first. I ate enough calamari to fill a pair of crew socks. That is a lot of calamari when you think about it. Calamari is one of those special foods that defies politeness and dainty portions ettiquette. You have to bite while the squidflesh is hot or it turns into this sad rubbery mass of self-loathing, resenting it's former glory as its proteins continue to bind and the fat coagulates until there is nothing but jaw-thwarting piteous disappointment. To prevent this sad fate, Calamari must be eaten while still succulent and tender in that halcyon moment between too hot to taste and too cold to chew.
There were also battered, deep-fried wedges of mozarella on a bed of battered and deep-fried vegetables. I can't be sure what all was battered and deep fried, but I believe zuchini, carrots and parsnips were the chief culprits. The batter was a delightful light texture while also being incredibly bold with garlic and herbs I couldn't quite pinpoint. It provided an amazing counterpoint to the moz and veggies that just broke my heart. If there were enough of that to fill three pair of crew socks I would have eagerly devoured it all, defying the probable heart attack to take me swiftly in my grease-addled euphoria.
Of lesser note was an antipasta plate that was still very good. The center-piece was a bowl made from fried parmesian full of cubes of parmesean. There was an assortment of meats around the edges, two different cuts of prosciuto, capicola ham, beef carpaccio and salami. The olives were not so good, but the meats provided some nice options to play with the bread and ubiquitous plate of mozarella, tomato and basil.
My entre was the saddest part of the whole affair. I ordered veal medalions topped with prosciuto and parmesean on a bed of spinach with a wine reduction sauce. The veal was only passing fair and the greens were terrible. I was so full after the appetizers, I could hardly bring myself to wrestle with finishing the veal and left all of the spinach on my plate. That was a sad end to a great meal, and the last thing I ate till well after midnight.
In the interim were a few glasses of wine during lunch at the Italian place, and then many, many beers. I had a nice pint of Bass around 6pm. Then, later in the evening I had quite a bit of Budwiser because we were playing beer pong at a bar and that was the cheapest beer they had. After beer pong came a trip to PAPAYA DOG! (emphasis added by author, Ed.)
If you have never lived in NYC, you may very well have no idea what I'm talking about. They are chain restaurants that specialize in hot dogs. The standard hotdog is cooked for a good long time on a metal griddle. They have a great crispy texture to the outsides similar to Rutt's Hut's deep-fried hotdogs. Papaya dogs can also be pretty cheap which is why they are so special. I had a chili-cheese dog with mustard and onions and a corn dog with mustard. Both felt exceptionally amazing sloshing around in all of the cheap beer I'd "won" at the pong table. I finished the night off on what should have been a nice pint at O'Hanalan's Irish Pub with their house ale, the dark, but it was so malty and heavy and I was already so full of cheap beer and swill that it took me the better part of 45 minutes just to get through the one pint. It is quite possible that it's just not a good beer, but I'm withholding judgement until I can give it a more fair tasting.
Whew. Ok. Friday down. Satursunmontueswedthursfriday to go...
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