Berkeley Day

Last weekend my friends and I made a day of it in Berkeley, from 11:30am to 10:30pm.  Basically the whole day revolved around food.  It was fun, as Berkeley always is.  Highlights:

  • Tour (or more like a lecture) at the Charles Chocolates factory in Emeryville
  • Berkeley Bowl market, where you can find something like 30 varieties of apples (among other things)
  • Cheeseboard pizza...yum!
  • Gourmet ghetto on Shattuck
  • 4th street shopping, esp the Crate & Barrel outlet and bizarre kitchenware at Sur la Table
  • Dinner at Nan Yang, a Burmese restaurant in the Rockridge neighborhood
  • Dessert at Ici ice cream, by the former pastry chef of Chez Panisse

Foodie Tuesday: Cauliflower, the way nature intended

"Cauliflower?" you ask.  Because it's one of the most ordinary vegetables out there.  What I wanted to point out though, is there is a certain way to cook it that really takes it to another dimension.  People might try to stir-fry, steam (bland!) or eat it raw (shudder!), but what the Google cafes taught me is that the only way to really eat cauliflower, except perhaps pureed in a soup, is to roast it.

Somehow, roasting cauliflower brings out a beautifully flavorful sweetness, and the texture is the perfect mix of tender and a bit crispy on the edges, and the whole experience is altogether extraordinary.  It's like meeting a completely new vegetable.

Did I mention I also got an entire, gigantic head of cauliflower at the local Mexican market for only $1?

Simple Roasted Cauliflower

Cauliflower, cut into florets
Crushed garlic
EVOO
Salt & pepper
(optional) Parmesan cheese for sprinkling at the end

Wash and cut cauliflower.  Drizzle olive oil.  Toss with garlic, salt and pepper to taste.  Roast at 425 degrees for 20-25 min.  Remove from oven and sprinkle parmesan, if desired.

9pm dinner for one

I made the most delicious chicken tonight.

1 large chicken breast, center cut
Extra virgin olive oil
Sea salt & fresh ground pepper
Lemon juice + lemon zest
Chopped Italian parsley
Crushed garlic
Capers
(optional) Sprinkling of cheese, if you want

Gave the chicken a nice coating of EVOO (my mom later told me I should have put it on last), sprinkled all the ingredients on both sides, then baked, covered loosely in tin foil so that it "steams" rather than actually bakes, at 350 degrees for between 20-25 min.  It came out so tender and juicy I hardly knew it was breast meat!

Small bone to pick..

..with Mr. Jason Mraz.  There's a line in "I'm Yours" where he says, "it's your God-forsaken right to be loved..."

I think what he actually means is "God-given."  I mean, why would God forsake (M-W: To renounce or turn away from entirely) one's right to be loved?  That doesn't sound like something God would do.  So either Mr. Mraz needs to brush up on his English-language idioms, or he has a very peculiar and twisted notion of God.  -______-

One of the most indulgent kitchen items I've bought in a while.

Maybe ever. Meet my new silicone jar spatula, which I bought yesterday for $4.95 from the Crate & Barrel Outlet in Berkeley.  I'm in love with rubber spatulas and food scrapers in general, because of the very neat way they clean all the stuff out of a mixing bowl to minimize waste.  For the uninitiated, it works a lot like a rubber squeegee does on your window.  Satisfying.

I only started using them recently -- baking at my parents' home as a kid, I always found myself scraping the sides of a bowl about a million times with a wooden or metal spoon, and never being really happy with all the batter left behind, and sometimes having to scrape manually, with my fingers (not pretty).

I am usually a passionate detractor of dumb kitchen utensils/appliances that have just one use (I'll save that for another post), but when I surveyed the racks of kitchen utensils yesterday and came across this, I knew I had to have it.  How many times have you been frustrated by the globs of jelly or peanut butter or mayonnaise that you can never really get out of the bottom of a jar with a mere knife?  Well this baby is designed just for that - more slender than your garden-variety spatula to get in the most narrow-necked of glass and metal jars.  

Crystal asked the pointed question, "So, with what you save getting that last bit out of your jars, how long does it take for this thing to offset the cost?"  I said to her, "My dear, you forget that the pleasure and sheer satisfaction you get from it, rather than the actual peanut butter or jelly salvaged, is more than worth the price."

Meet: This guy draws girls.

Well, not just girls -- he does monsters, superheroes, and other characters too.  But I think pretty girls is what he likes drawing best (I mean, his website is www.idrawgirls.com)

I randomly found him on YouTube while searching for old episodes of Smallville.  It is astounding what he can do with a digital painting program, more than what most people can do with traditional pencil and paper!  Check out this awesome A to Z video of him drawing Kristin Kreuk as Chun Li:


And a bunch of his other work including drawings of Natalie Portman and Iron Man (click for more amazing video demos):

Happy Chinese New Year

...from my mom!  I love my mom.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: My mom
Date: Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 4:18 AM
Subject: Happy Chinese New Year
To: Me, my brother, and a bunch of family

HAPPY HAPPY GREAT CHINESE NEW YEAR
BE HEALTHY &  WEALTHY THROUGH OUT THE WHOLE YEAR
MAY GOD BLESS  U & YOUR FAMILY WITH   HIS  WISDOM
&  ALSO  KEEP  U SAFE  ALLWAYS
MUCH LOVEEEEEE
M----

Foster's Market Scones

This recipe I can actually share because it is already out there in the Internets.  This is for the basic scones but you can add a bunch of delicious things like berries, pineapple, chocolate chips/espresso, cinnamon-apple.  Today I made blueberry-lemon.

I first encountered this recipe through my former boss, Arlene.  She made the best scones ever--moist, flaky, not at all dry.  I begged her for the recipe before the company shut down.  She obliged by making a photocopy. I never actually made the scones until today...I've been meaning to make them all week, because I had a bunch of blueberries that were slowly going bad in the fridge. 

I was very tempted to reduce the butter when I saw how much the recipe called for, but resisted the urge and actually followed the recipe exactly (except I halved it, and it was still a lot - 8 good-sized scones).  

Good thing I did, because they were as deliciously crumbly and flaky as I remember.  Plus I got some good practice cutting in butter with two knives, the oldschool way (new school: use a pastry cutter or food processor).

If you loved City of God...

...I'm pretty sure you'll love Slumdog Millionaire too.  We'd been trying to watch it for weeks and weeks!  I don't think I can say anything really original about it--it's just fantastic filmmaking from Danny Boyle, compelling storytelling from Simon Beaufoy (based on the novel), and images that moved us to tears more than once.  Run, don't walk, to go see it before it disappears from the theaters!