Found at the San Sebastian market.
The label says ‘rape negro’.
Author Archives: me
Asador Exteberri
Mozarella of buffalo
Chorizo elaborated from acorn fed pork
Salted anchovy with toasted bread
Cracker with spring mushrooms
Butter of goat’s milk with black salt
Croquette
Goose Barnacles
Prawns from Palamos
Baby Squid with caramelized onions and it’s ink
Green Peas in it’s juice
Red Sea Bream and vegetables
Beef Chop
Reduced Milk Ice Cream with red fruit infusion
Sponge Cake with blueberries
Mignardise
Whoa. That was an amazing meal.
The drives from Bilbao to Axpe, then Axpe to San Sebastian were longer than expected. But Axpe was prettier than expected.
The food was overall, amazing. Very different from most of the “fancy” food I’ve had today. The chorizo was fresh tasting, which is weird to say of a cured meat — but it had none of the stale fat taste or chemical taste that most chorizo has. The peas were sweet, juicy and texturally unlike other peas I’ve eaten. The meats and seafood were also all very good, though in comparison to everything else, the fish was pretty boring.
My only complaint is that the sponge cake dessert was pretty strange. It was a sponge cake soaked in a lemon custard, almost like a tres leches! But the accompanying blueberries weren’t sweet enough (in fact they were pretty tasteless) to offset the tangy lemon. Oh well.
All in all, would drive to Axpe again to eat here.
And one last gripe, taking photos with a window behind you is hard. Shadows were wayyyy too strong. I can’t decide if dim light would have been preferable…
El Puertito
Yay Tripadvisor is my friend. Super fresh oysters, it’s like a rustic Swan Oyster.
1€ for the cheapest, 3.something€ for the most expensive.
Chuleton de Buey
Charcoal grilled rib steak for two. Apparently steaks in the area are from old cattle — which are therefore tastier. It’s surprising how different this steak tasted, in comparison to a prime US steak.
Nom nom nom. I was entertained that they didn’t even ask what doneness of steak we wanted. Rare or rare!
On the side, baby broad beans with foie.
Bilbao!
I’m in Spain! Bilbao to be precise.
The museum restaurant, the Guggenheim Bistro was surprisingly good.
Baby squid, ink and fideua
Raspberry ice cream, yogurt and “crispy stones”
And some of mom’s dessert —
Tiramisu!
A main, dessert and drinks for €18.
The museum itself was mostly meh. :/
Tres Leches!
It’s strawberry season! (And cherry season, and peach season…)
So I made this wonderful tres leches cake. I didn’t have a 9×13 pan, so I used a 9inch round and an 8inch round. The cakes turned out great, but a wee less soaked than I’d like.
Only modifications:
– No sugar in the whipped cream topping
– Added a pinch of nutmeg and a teaspoon of cinnamon
Banana Chocolate Chip Bread Pudding
We had a bunch of leftover bread at work a couple weeks ago… I took it home and froze it. So when I had two almost disgustingly ripe bananas last night — bread pudding! Woo!
Preheat the oven to 350F
Custard mixture:
2 cups milk
3/4 cup sugar
1 tbsp vanilla
4 eggs
Bread:
Slice (into 1/2in-ish cubes) enough bread to fill (but not heaping) a 9in pie dish
Toast briefly if your bread came out of the freezer (Since it’s probably a little soggy…)
Chocolate:
3/4 c semi sweet chocolate chips
Assembly:
Dunk all the bread in the custard, then fish pieces out to make one layer in the pie dish. Sprinkle chocolate chips. Slice the bananas and make a layer of banana (use up all the banana). Then another layer of bread (which should finish all the bread), then sprinkle the remaining chocolate chips over and bake!
Bake until set and slightly browned. Or an internal temp of ~160F.
The little pockets of custard near the surface took longer to cook for me, so most of it got to 180F before those hit a food-safe temperature.
TJ’s Kougin Amann, again
Trader Joe’s kougin amann, for the third time.
This time I really liked the shape — I smooshed them (pinched four corners together) into a cupcake pan. They cooked pretty evenly, except the bottom — which was likely due to the non-preheated baking steal that was under the cookie pan.
I think this, minus the baking steel, is probably my kougin amann baking shape of choice.
Tartine’s Frangipane Croissant
A cross-section of the best croissant ever.
That’s all.
Shamiq and I stopped by yesterday, and also picked up a raspberry chocolate croissant. They don’t make them often, and I suppose it’s probably a seasonal thing. I hadn’t even realized Tartine made seasonal items (other than the fruit with their bread pudding).
BUT NOW I KNOW.
Must go at all times of the year! In reality though, the almond croissant is better than the raspberry chocolate, but I’m not a big fan of chocolate croissants in general. I find that the chocolate is too heavy compared to the light buttery flavor of the croissant.
Newb SQL Time
Because this is a blog for notes and I’m forgetful. Here’s some SQL things:
1. Connecting to a remote mySQL server over ssh: (source)
ssh -L 3306:localhost:3306 raccoon@raccoonstar.com
Now you can use MySQL Workbench instead of just a command line! woo!
2. Now, to import my CSVs… Make the database
create database testdb;
Then create the table… (After stealing Shamiq’s cleverness and using find-replace to steal the first line of the CSV and replace with varchar(255s…))
create table TableNameWoo (
column1 varchar(255),
column2 varchar(255),
column3 varchar(255));
Now that your table exists, import dat CSV~
LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE '~/csvs/filename.csv'
INTO TABLE testdb.TableNameWoo FIELDS TERMINATED BY ',' LINES TERMINATED BY '\n';
mySQL then yelled at me: ERROR 1148 (42000): The used command is not allowed with this MySQL version
Google then revealed that I needed to start mysql with “–local-infile”, which worked! (Though I’m not sure why)ˇ
Now you have a table with your CSV in it! Woo. :D