Category Archives: food

Kougin Amann

I stopped about Bouchon and to my surprise, they had kougin amann! I guess it’s the new popular trendy pastry, so I bought two. (And a strawberry croissant, on the left in the picture below:)

It was like a croissant with more butter and lots of crispy caramelized sugar. I could only eat about half of it before pretty freakin’ full. So I bought my mom the other one… It turns out that my parents had been reading an article about them. This morning, I woke up to my dad returning to the farmers market where he bought more kougin amann from Starter Bakery. True to form, I thought I’d compare the two —

Bouchon on the left (My dad already took a couple bites out of it), Starter Bakery on the right. (Plain above, pear below) The Bouchon one is significantly bigger. And the sugar is much darker.

The Starter Bakery kougin amann is a really pretty golden brown with visible layers and filling. (this one is pear)

Starter Bakery on the left, Bouchon on the right. Bouchon’s is much fluffier and croissant like. Starter Bakery is more dense, but equally buttery and sugary.

Conclusion: I prefer Bouchon’s. It’s fluffier and the sugar is more caramelized, making the flavors more complex. Also, it’s bigger. But, Starter Bakery is way more accessible, being in Oakland and not in Napa or Vegas. Also Starter Bakery has some with fillings! I’m definitely not complaining if Starter Bakery’s kougin amann showed up on my doorstep everyday.

Also, footnote, I tried toasting one of the Starter Bakery ones and it was super soft and warm, but fell apart more than I would have liked and lost it’s sugary crisp. Also, it was greasier. But both my parents preferred it toasted. I guess my tastes are weird.

Rich Table, Part II

Olives

Sardine Chips

Porcini Donuts

Brandade, Chicken Skin

Asparagus and chicken liver on flatbread

Lamb sausage with a sour orange sauce

Chicken giblet sausage and dandelion greens

Truffles. And butter.

White chocolate begniets

Caramelized sugar chocolate cake, jasmine rice icecream, kimquats

This is what happens when you ask your dad to take a picture of you.

Thoughts? Once again, the donuts were fantastic. The pastas, which I didn’t try many of last time, were mixed. The truffle one was delicious… as truffles tend to be. All the pasta noodley bits themselves are pretty good, but the chicken pasta was on the salty side… the lamb pasta was unusual, but I liked it (sourish pasta sauce?). My dad thought it was gross.

The dessert begniets were surprisingly unairy, given how good the porcini donuts are. The caramelized sugar chocolate cake was well flavored and I really liked the different textures — cake, toasted rice, icecream, kumquats.

Lers Ros

This last weekend, during one of our rushed Disposable Film Fest lunches, Patrici and I stumbled upon Lers Ros. I’ve read about it over and over, so I thought I’d give it a shot. Frankly, I thought it was disappointing. I can see why it gets rave reviews — everything is very well cooked, the beef is tender, the egg bits in the Pad See Ew aren’t over cooked… But the flavors were lacking. Perhaps it’s what we ordered, but I suspect not. I’ve had tastier Pad See Ew and Sauteed Beef (I forgot what they called it) in Berkeley, much less in Thailand. Disappointed. :(

Disposable Film Fest

This weekend, Patrici and I attended a film making workshop as part of the Disposable Film Fest 2013. We watched a bunch of videos and had a group project! I expected the workshop to be much more quackery… but it was pretty fun. As usual though, I took more pictures than I did video. Surprise!

It was hosted by the Bold Italic at their office in San Francisco. Their lobby has a cool sign. Unfortunately, my lens was not wide enough to capture the whole “San Francisco.”

Our shoes, because we’re silly like that.

We got some Schulzies bread puddding after lunch. That stuff is delicious. We tasted some samples and settled on the caramel, with chocolate chips. I should work on making bread pudding…

After the workshop, I had time to kill and walked around the area and stumbled upon Smitten Icecream. Their blood orange and pistachio shortbread icecream was amazing. Their ice cream making gizmo is pretty neat too… but the liquid nitrogen smoke plus the glare of the happy afternoon sun makes for some pretty bad photos.

So here’s my icecream, as I hold it, standing in a corner. It’s a good thing San Francisco is far away or I’d eat more of this and end up ice cream-scoop shaped.

Dinner Things

Things I made for dinner last night, using what my parents bought from Ranch 99 and the leftovers in the fridge.

Lobster noodles with vermicelli.

Roast duck fried rice. Apparently my camera decided to focus on the edges of the rice, so the center is out of focus. Shallow DOF ftl.

Moogle wasn’t for dinner, but he was certainly helpful in cleaning up the floor after dinner. Also, he really, really likes lobster. And duck. And rice.

Izakaya Yuzuki

I had dinner at Izakaya Yuzuki last night. It’s my third attempt at booking a table and making plans… and this time it happened! Overall, the meal was light and the dishes were interesting, but I felt like the menu wasn’t large enough and the food was unique but generally underwhelming. I ordered all the things I was interested in, but it wasn’t quite enough food, so we had to order some other dishes.

Disposable chopsticks ftw. Also, they have valet parking if you ask. It’s a secret.

I’m not sure I really understand this “koji” thing…

Housemade tofu. Best with a pinch of salt.

Seasonal veggies. From the left, yam with sesame sauce, asparagus and a slightly spicy burdock root.

Firefly squid over pickled cucumber and seaweed. A little fishy, but one of my favorites of the night.

Beef and tendons. Fatty and underseasoned.

Chicken meatball skewers. Not bad, nothing special.

Yuba and uni chawan mushi. I love chawan mushi. :3

Fried seasonal veggies. Not bad, but somehow I think it’s slightly underfried. Not as crisp as I’d expect?

Karaage. I’d read about this dish and was disappointed. I’ve found better karaage without too much difficulty.

Abalone sashimi. From the right, the frilly bits deep fried, liver mixed with soy and the muscle, thin sliced raw. The thin slices dipped in the liver mixture were great — the crisp raw shellfish and the rich salty sauce.

Seasonal rice — clams and tobiko. I’m not sure what they did to this rice to make it special, but it was pretty good. I could see eating a bowl of this as a rice heavy meal.

Ginger sorbet. One of the most memorable parts of the meal — a ginger sorbet that seems barely sweetened and has the throat-attacking spice of raw ginger. Pretty awesome.

Things I would order again:
Firefly squid
Abalone Sashimi
Ginger sorbet
Maybe the chawan mushi and rice

Satellite Republic

Dinner last night was at Satellite Republic, a Georgian food pop-up by Boris Portnoy. Google stalking reveals that he was the pastry chef at the Restaurant at Meadowood.

Woo poppies. I didn’t eat these. They were decoration.

Fenugreek spiced chicken liver, rye toast
I love liver. This liver had more of the “livery” odor than I’m used to tasting at western restaurants, but I really liked it. Also, more people should use fenugreek.

Imeretian Khachapuri, sourdough stuffed with cheese, adjika
NOM NOM NOM. I want to eat this everydayyyyy. I took a picture of the four spices together, like a small pizza, but it was a bad, blurry picture. So here’s a picture of the side oozing delicious cheese.

Badrigani Nigvzit, spiced eggplant, walnuts and pomegranite
Whatever the green stuff inside the eggplant was, it was delicious.

Pxali, minced beet greens and walnuts, moped tone bread
I’m pretty sure it wasn’t beet greens, but beet roots. Delicious nonetheless for those of us who like beets. Could’ve been served with more bread though.

Yogurt with pickled chanterelles, shiso, sesame
Want moreeee. We all ended up licking our bowls clean for this one. Or using our fingers to get every last bit of the yogurt/sesame/shiso mixture. Chanterelles were easy to grab with a fork.

Mount Lassen Trout, blood orange and fennel, sea grapes
This was a very orange trout. I wonder what it ate? Also a very well cooked trout. Just a smidge above rare, with a crispy skin. I wish it didn’t have bones though.

Duck tabaka, pickled green alliums
Duck and green things. Less unique than the other dishes, but still very well executed. I like alliums, I might be biased.

Spring lamb stsvadi gripped over grape vines, sour plum sauce
Soft chunks of tasty lamb with a sauce. I liked the smokey flavor, but Shamiq thinks it was under flavored.

Honey and coconut cake with milk jam
Milk jam == dulce de leche? The cake was good, but too sweet for my tastes. Probably my least favorite dish of the meal, but still not bad.

And a second order of the khachapuri because it was so tasty. (And because Shamiq smiled nicely)

9 courses for $50 + tax (I thought pop-ups didn’t charge sales tax, but maybe that’s just in San Francisco?)

The verdict? The food was great, but it felt like a series of starters. I was full enough by the end of the meal, but I didn’t feel like I’d eaten a whole meal as much as had a series of very tasty snacks. The last serving of the flatbread helped, but more bread served with the lamb or maybe just on the side would have made this much more filling.

The Forge, Oakland

I love pizza. And The Forge is a great place to acquire pizza. I went the opening weekend (over a month ago. Man, I’m behind) and it was crazy busy, but it seems to have calmed down some. I tried the fried cheese curds (absolutely delicious!), the potato skins (nothing special) and a pizza. In particular, I had a pizza of nettles and potatoes, it was everything I want in a pizza — a chewy but flavorful crust complemented by interesting toppings. Pizzaiolo and Delfina Pizzeria both tend to have long waits and lines, so I’m excited to have a tasty alternative.

I am excited. And silly.

I baked too much.

And here’s the evidence…

Total list of things prepared:
Turkey + swiss filled croissants
Cheese & mushroom quiche with a ritz crust
Fried mini donuts (misshapen donut holes?)
Awesome brownies
Smitten kitchen brownies
Other brownies
Brownie mosaic cheesecake
Spiced TKOs
Passionfruit meringue pie
Chocolate blueberry mochi cake
Chocolate chip yogurt coffee cake
Blood orange marmalade yogurt coffee cake
Slutty brownies

I was left with a batch of croissant dough and a lot of cookie dough in my fridge. My eyes are bigger than my friends’ stomachs.

Soft-boiled Eggs in Cake, Part 2

After being defeated last weekend by the Chocolate Egg Cupcakes, Shamiq and I tried again. This time, we started with two sets of frozen eggs — softboiled for four minutes, and raw.

Plus some Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix…

For the softboiled then frozen eggs, I dunked them in hot water for a little bit to warm up the outside. My thinking was that an icy egg may release too much water and interfere with the corn muffin’s baking. The texture of a frozen egg white is pretty weird. It’s almost spongy.

I put the eggs in the corn muffin batter, then baked…

Lo and behold! A runny yolk. Victory was delicious.

Another shot of the runny yolk, because… why not?

Documenting the science:

Eggs used:
Egg 1: Soft boiled for 4 minutes, then refrigerated
Egg 2: Soft boiled for 4 minutes, then frozen*
Egg 3: Frozen raw
Egg 4: Refrigerated raw egg straight into the batter

Results: (After being peeled, and baked into corn muffin batter)
Egg 1: Yolk was more set than I’d like, but not quite hardboiled. It was at that… pudding like stage. 17 minutes.
Egg 2: Runny yolk! Hurray. Muffins baked for about 17 minutes to reach this state.
Egg 3: After about 20 minutes, the yolk was starting to set, but there was still some raw batter under the crackly surface of the top of the muffin. I scooped it out and the remaining muffin was pretty good. But raw batter is meh.
Egg 4: Yolk gets pretty set, and the egg white disappears into the corn muffin, for the most part.

Shamiq’s Notes on Peeling Frozen Eggs:
1. dip egg in tap water
2. crack shell by whacking with edge of a spoon
3. whack one particular part with rounded part of spoon until shell is removed, then “push” upwards.

* There was a second round with an egg that had been in the freezer for a few days, the muffin baked and the yolk came out still-frozen. I think freezing for a few hours is probably the sweet spot. Clearly more science is needed.

raccoon*

adventures of a cosmic procyonid