Pumpkins And Egg Nog And Bourbon, Oh My

The holidays are coming up, which means it is time to figure out all the wonderful things you can do with egg nog and alcohol. Last year, I cultivated the mixture of egg nog and brandy or bourbon, occasionally cutting the egg nog with a little non-fat milk, which served both to make the egg nog last longer, and also to make it a little healthier. I would also sprinkle some ground nutmeg on the top, and I would sometimes make a version of a Brandy Alexander--1 oz Brandy, 1 oz Brown Creme de Cacao or Kahlua, 1 oz Half and Half, and 1/4 tsp of nutmeg--substituting egg nog for the Half and Half.

This year, I've ramped it up a little with some pumpkin liqueur, a wonderful concoction that I did not know existed. Trust Marina's unerring eye for strange and wonderful new sideboard candidates.

The liqueur can be enjoyed alone, over ice or neat. When mixed with egg nog, brandy, and maybe a dash of organic cream, it adds a tasty spice to a gentle, sweet and full-bodied drink which is perfect for a nightcap on an chilly evening by the ocean.

What are your favorite liquid treats for this time of year, alcoholic or non?

To Bean Or Not To Bean, That Is The Question

Last night's dinner marked several firsts: the first dinner I've cooked in Santa Cruz that merits a blog; the first time I've cooked green beans; and the first time I've set off a smoke alarm. I would say they are all important milestones.

You would think that green beans would be easy to cook. And you would probably be right. But all the recipes I looked up on Epicurious were very complicated, seating the green beans in the midst of a bunch of other ingredients, and last night, I was too tired for ingredients. I just wanted to cook something healthy that was not pasta, so I made a run to the local New Leaf grocery store, which is essentially a Whole Foods, or, for those of you in Montana, a Good Food Store. At New Leaf, I bought a boneless, skinless chicken breast, and asked them to cut it in half (note to self: next time, be sure to ask the butcher to cut it in half horizontally; cutting in half the other way doesn't give any advantages in terms of making the breast thinner for faster cooking time). I also picked up half a pound of fresh green beans--okay, I don't know that it was half a pound, but who's going to check?

In other New Leaf notes, egg nog is now available, which is the first sign of the holidays. I'm currently on my second egg nog and bourbon of the evening. Okay, okay, so it's my third.

Google mentioned sauteeing green beans, so I decided to wing it. However, it did mention trimming the strings from the beans, so I set to doing so. That took a while. And then it took a while more. It took me so long, in fact, that I realized that cutting green beans belongs in a French movie, perhaps featuring Marion Cotillard and Gerard Depardieu, chopping green beans and drinking melancholy glasses of red wine and brooding philosophically. After I finished trimming the beans, the couscous and chicken breasts were starting to cook rapidly, so I chose a haphazard strategy of piling up all the beans and slicing at them at random, which worked surprisingly well, probably better than I deserved.

It was one of my more chaotic cooking experiments, and that says a lot. Here's the evidence of chaos:





Pretty chaotic, considering all I had the energy to do was throw instant couscous in a pan and cook chicken in olive oil with salt and pepper, and cook green beans in olive oil. So chaotic that the smoke from the chicken set off the smoke alarm, which was a first. I think that means I've earned my stripes as a cook now, right?

I reckon this hasn't happened before because our old stove at the SF apartment had built-in fans for ventilation, while the new stove does not. Next time, I will open windows first.

Somehow, some way, order appeared from chaos.





All in all, not my best effort. I put too much water in the couscous, which caused absorption problems, and I had to drain and fluff and do some remedial heating to bring it up to the right consistency. The chicken was tasty and tender on the inside, but was perhaps excessively crispy. Still, it wasn't bad for being exhausted.

But short of baking green beans into a casserole, does anyone have good, simple ideas for spicing up their preparation?

A Relocation Of My Hunger For Knowledge (Pun Intended)

So we have moved from San Francisco to Santa Cruz, which changes the venue for the blog, but not the overall purpose. There are eateries to try, meals to cook, and beers to drink (and the local market stocks Moose Drool, my Montana friends! This makes me very happy).

The big news is that our bungalow, two blocks from the ocean, comes with a yard and vegetable beds! In the months ahead, we will be plotting--so to speak--a strategy for what to plant and when. In the meantime, we inherited a few small, delicious, sweet tomatoes, and some vaguely yellow things which I am calling squash, for want of a more precise knowledge. Here are photos; could someone please confirm for me if these are squash, and if so, what kind?




And how does one cook a squash? I have vague notions that one slices and roasts or sautees it. Or one blends it up and magically converts it to soup or a stew. Anyone have any good recipes to try?

INTERLUDE IN THE NORMALLY SCHEDULED BLOG WHILE I COOK MAC AND CHEESE AND CHICKEN SAUSAGE FOR LUNCH: I just learned that I have tendency, when slicing chicken sausage, to pull the knife to the left. This means that when I am cutting four sausages at a time, if I want the sections to come out roughly even, I need to have the sausages furthest away from me lined up indented to the right compared to the others, which I argue is a great image to use when writing about food. I cook in paragraphs. Maybe that should be the new blog motto.

As far as our Santa Cruz dining goes, we've had some good experiences. Lots to talk about, but I'll start with the two places we've tried since we've been here that we had never tried before.

The Parish Publick House

You might not expect much from a pub located in a shopping center that includes, among other merchants, Panda Express, Chase, ACE Hardware, and Safeway. But let me just say that this is no ordinary shopping center. The Safeway is the most advanced and glamorous Safeway I can remember, with a huge wine selection and an olive bar. Let's just say it makes the Safeway on Mission Street in SF seem even more sketchy than it is, which is saying a lot.

The Parish is a Sharks bar, with lots of TVs for watching sports, particularly hockey. The decor is quite good, full of the dark lighting and dark wood paneling one would expect from an authentic pub, and featuring a pool table with red felt at the back. They also have an extremely strong beer selection, including Moose Drool, and they recommend pairings with their menu items. They are apparently famous for their shepherd's pie, and I have it on good authority that this dish is quite tasty. The salmon fish and chips are also thoroughly satisfying; if the onion rings are a bit too greasy, that can be forgiven. All in all, a good pub to have as the local pub.

Burger.

Sunday night, when The Parish was too crowded, we headed instead for the nearby and grammatically-interesting Burger.. See, already the extra period has thrown me off. It also leads to the grammatically-dubious quote on the website, "At Burger. ingredients matter."

You would think that a place so hip as to recklessly use extraneous punctuation would appeal only to the college students from UCSC, but there was a good cross-section of humanity on hand. Burger. also uses random celebrity mugshots instead of numbers; when we placed our orders, we got pictures of Mischa Barton and an unrecognizable dreadlocked guy whom we later learned was Tommy Lee. Clever, but like so many hip things, problematic when you think about it, because how are the servers supposed to see who you have from a distance?

It is definitely a popular establishment. We had to stake a claim to a single table and chair and send forays to the counter to order, until a couple nearby left and we were able to swoop like vultures on the additional seats. The place was lively, with big screens showing sports and a hefty beer selection that looked quite promising. They even offer beer-shakes, which seems good in theory but which I did not find appealing on the night.

As for beer, Marina tried a can of Fat Cat beer, but didn't like it much and passed it on to me. Clever name aside, I will probably not try this again, because it seems to be a hip version of Bud, Coors, Miller, etc. In other words, it tasted like mildly flavored water. We also shared a pint of Retribution beer, which was better, but a little too sweet for my taste. However, the Pink Burger that I ordered--a salmon burger with aioli and dill, was light and flavorful and satisfying, although the serving size of the burger and fries seemed slightly San Franciscan, which is to say, small for $9. Still, it was good enough that I would certainly go again.

Keeping Currant On The Philosophy Of Salad

I think what I like best about salad is the laissez-faire nature of its preparation. If you can eat it, you can put it in a salad. That pretty much sums up my perspective on salad.

That may be a bit simplistic. There are some things that don't belong in a salad, such as sawdust, or even worse, sauerkraut. Still, there is a lot of flexibility, and a salad is difficult to butcher, so to speak.

Nevertheless, my latest idea for a salad innovation was not attractive to Marina. In fact, it was so definitively NOT attractive to her that she left the country for a month in the hope that I would forget all about it.

I do not forget, however.

So last night, taking advantage of Marina's absence and resultant lack of veto power, I decided to combine crispy lettuce from a romaine heart, sliced radishes--which have become my favorite staple for salads due to their peppery kick--dried currants, and crumbled goat cheese.



I made just a small portion, a one serving size to go with the pasta and chicken sausage entree and a glass of Carmenere. As with most of my salads, I skipped any sort of dressing. A lot of people find this tendency of mine to be weird, but I would argue that salad nudists are people too, with a valid point of view.

The goat cheese had a heavy taste, slightly sour, but not excessively so, and it matched well with the sweetness of the currants and the bite of the radishes. I would call it a success.

What are the oddest combinations you have tried in a salad, and what were the results?

The Continuing Adventures of The Dining Out Amateur: Another Mission In The Mission

You might be surprised, but sometimes life gets a bit busy, too busy to check out new restaurants. Thus, the relative dearth of entries on this blog, particularly regarding new restaurants and my reaction to them. I even considered writing about eating pizza at Chuck E. Cheese in Sacramento for my future nephew-by-marriage's birthday, animatronic rodents and all. (Nephew-by-marriage seems awkward. Nephew-in-law? Bonus nephew? Mascot?)

This is not to say we haven't eaten. That's just not plausible. For one thing, even Chuck E. Cheese pizza can technically be considered food. But we have tended to rely on the standard choices recently, good as they are.

So yes, we've cooked, but we haven't dined out as much. But there are some days when enough is enough and you just have to get out and go to Rosamunde for gourmet sausage and delicious beer. And then when you find that Rosamunde is packed to the gills, you have to find a new place to eat.

La Traviata

We were on Mission Street, between the Bart Station at 24th Street and 25th Street, trying to decide where to eat. We talked about walking around to Valencia to Pi Bar, but we knew that might be crowded too. We settled on choosing between Italian and Mexican, and that seemed to present an obvious choice.

I've walked past La Traviata on Mission Street almost every day on my way home from work. Being a fan of Italian food--pasta and wine and garlic bread? Who, other than my crazy friend Jeff, wouldn't love it?--I've always been tempted by it. It has a small, modest entryway, a recessed alcove with a door oriented perpendicularly to the street, and a friendly, well-used wooden sign. It seemed a welcome prospect.

Or not. Yelp's review, which seemed favorable, assured us it was open at 5:30. The glowing red open sign was another good indication.

The locked door, however, was not so favorable. No signs in the window indicating closed for a private party. No sign of life when I tugged on the door. There was a small doorbell next to it. Maybe they wanted us to ring the doorbell, which seems paranoid. In any case, we decided to move on. If they didn't want our money, we didn't want their food.

I'm sure there was a reasonable explanation. But deny me Italian food and you've earned my enmity; there is so much good Italian food in this city, I feel like I have no reason to try La Traviata again.

So instead, we strolled down to 23rd and around the corner to the Velvet Cantina at Bartlett.

I had a couple doubts at first. The layout of the place, two separate, darkish rooms connected by a narrow hall, threatened to feel oppressive.

But two words: watermelon margaritas. Yeah. Words can't do justice.

The fish tacos were also quite satisfying, and I actually liked the rice and beans even more. It also seemed to avoid being too crowded; maybe because it was slightly off the beaten path. I guess writing about it could be risky, because now other people might be there when I want to go.

Yes, on that thought, I should tell you that I totally made up the Velvet Cantina. It doesn't actually exist. Forget I mentioned it.

Chicken Of The Forest

You've heard of Chicken of the Sea, which is actually tuna, and as Jerry Seinfeld pointed out, that's lunacy--chickens don't live in the sea; tuna is nothing like a chicken. But something that is like chicken is Chicken of the Forest, and that's because it is chicken.

Chicken of the Forest--which is my description, not the recipe's--is composed of chicken breasts rubbed in rosemary and oregano and then pan-fried in olive oil. It looks like a chicken breast was dropped through a pine tree and a shrub. I wasn't sure this what the recipe intended when it said to rub the rosemary and oregano into the chicken, along with salt and a little pepper:



It just looked wrong, but in my gung-ho culinary adventure mode, I plowed on, damn the twigs and stems. This came after I sliced the chicken breast apart and pounded the resulting four pieces into roughly equal thicknesses with a meat mallet. That is strangely satisfying, and possibly a worrisome statement about my psyche, but what happens in the kitchen, stays in the kitchen, except when I want to write about it on this blog. Moving on . . .

As the olive oil started to whisper and pop, I slapped the chicken pieces down in the iron skillet. While I was attending to this, Marina was attending to the appetizers of cheese--Drunken Goat and a Havarti--and crackers, a little bit of wine, and the salad I placed on the table:



Say what you will about chicken draped in pine trees and shrubbery, it sure smells good in a frying pan, and as Marina pointed out, we would just scrape off the herbs when eating the chicken:



I was a little concerned about the flammability of this project. After all, if the forest metaphor was accurate, what would you imagine would happen if you put a bunch of trees in the midst of hot oil and turned up the heat? Exactly.

However, with the magic of cooking, no conflagrations appeared, and the chicken breast cooked exquisitely and was soon ready to be paired with couscous in a healthy, tasty, and flavorful entree.



As we ate, and before we finished, I asked Marina if I should bring out dessert. She concurred, but instead of the cookies I so cleverly mentioned, I brought out this:



As you can tell from the picture, she said yes.

Apparently, though, this was not the surprise twist I thought it was. Apparently, she suspected this was going to happen when I had declared a week earlier that I was going to cook that night. Considering how regularly I cook, I had thought this would not be a giveaway, but apparently I have no poker face. She knew for sure when I served crackers and cheese. I guess I'm not as good at surprises as I thought, although I would argue that she was probably on high alert for possible surprises, since she and I had visited the artist who made the ring about a month prior.

In any case, a very special dinner. Also tasty. The chicken, that is, not the ring. We didn't actually eat the ring, even if it was dessert.

A Mix Of Mystery Vegetables

As part of our ongoing quest to fool ourselves into thinking we are adults, Marina and I like the notion of eating vegetables, by which I don't mean ketchup. Readers of the blog will remember our earlier escapades with vegetable roulette. Once again, we took part in a guerrilla vegetable purchase from the same farm, although this time, dealers and buyers were so brazen that all the transactions took place in full daylight.

We received a selection similar to our previous endeavor, but with bonus strawberries. Bonus strawberries make any day a good day, in my opinion. This time, it was maybe a little heavier on the greens, some of which did not fare so well while waiting for Marina to return from Mexico; the same fate befell a few carrots.

However, we still had a decent selection. We toyed with the notion of a stir-fry, until we realized the only soy sauce we had was a bit past its prime. In truth, the vegetables we decided to use did not seem totally compatible with the notion of a stir-fry: miniature potatoes, a bright orange cauliflower variant, and broccoli. I suggested the radishes, which I love for their peppery bite, but Marina gave me a look and I thought better of it.

We decided to do a saute of sorts, as a stir-fry substitute. We cooked some rice from Whole Foods in the fancy rice cooker I acquired from Peter and Roni before they sailed into the West--New Zealand, that is. While that was cooking, I melted butter and some vegetable oil in an pan, added pepper and a dash of salt. I would have added some minced garlic, but here we ran into an unexpected obstacle: the most insidiously-impossible-to-open jar I have ever seen. Do not buy this brand:



I say this not just to warn you, but also out of spite, because I really wanted some minced garlic. Oh well.

There was some question as to how well the potatoes would fare in a saute, so I sliced them finely and put them in well before the other vegetables. Then I realized they were almost getting too done, so I had to rush to turn down the heat and add the other vegetables.

It actually looked quite colorful at this stage:



This dish turned out surprisingly well, and by surprisingly, I mean that I was surprised by two things: the potatoes took on the texture and appearance of the chicken apple sausage that we love so well, and the cauliflower turned yellowish and looked like scrambled eggs. It even fooled my taste buds to an extent.





All in all, it was a success and a pleasant surprise.