You can say, 'Tribute to Spain' if you want
I came across this sign at the Nob Hill Grille on Hyde & Pine a day or two ago and really, with Paul the octopus predicting that Spain will win the World Cup tomorrow, there is nothing wrong with saying that you've planned a menu around Spain's holy animal. Nothing wrong with that at all... as long as you invite me to the piggy feast.
10 07 2010 5 comments
Tags: food, football, san francisco, spain
Spaghetti is like crack-cocaine to rodents
It was the middle of the day. The middle of an unbearably hot, 43C, kick your ass right down in the shade and wait for evening kind of day. And there, when I strolled in to the kitchen (which works as an intergalatic amplifier for the sun) to get some water, this cheeky little bastard rat popped up out of a bag of spaghetti sitting on top of our backup water jerry cans. He glanced at me for just a second before tearing out of the kitchen, under the exterior door, which has a 2cm gap that exists soley for the purpose of transporting all manner of pestilence through it.
Thinking that I am vastly more evolved than a rat, I hung the spaghetti from a door handle before going to bed, smirking happily in thoughts of a stupid rat trying to get at hanging spaghetti. Well, the rat had deftly thought ahead of me in this spaghetti chess game and came equiped with his climbing paws that night. At somewhere around 01:00, #1 Fan and I heard the tell-tale rustle of plastic from the kitchen. "Fucker", I thought, "He has outfoxed me yet again, this rat." It was post-cut, so the power was out and bastard rat saw me coming with a flashlight before I was even out of the bed to chase him away.
Thinking that yet again, I shall outsmart this rodent, I then put the spaghetti two meters up in a closed cabinet in the bedroom. Returning to bed and being awoken to the sound of rustling plastic two hours later, I realized that there is some kind of addictive, crack element to spaghetti when it comes to rats. The bastard had not only realized where the spaghetti was, but he had somehow went out to the 24 hour Rat Market and bought even more enhanced climbing paws that allowed him to go up the side of the wall and in to this closed door. NIMH was coming to mind...
I yanked open the cabinet on him, he fell down to the floor and then ran off to his lair in the kitchen. Thinking that was the end of it, I went back to bed, yet 30 minutes later, bastard was back up there again. Yanking the door open and shining the flashlight at him, he glanced at me with this, "Oh hey. What's up? Yeah, you caught me." And then, he did what seemed to be a slow motion, Matrix-esque flying jump at me from the shelf. I sidestepped him, nearly yelping like a little girl. He seemed to fart in my general direction and again, he ran off in to the kitchen to plan some kind of evil revenge as well as new purchases at Rat Market.
Realizing the spaghetti was doomed, I put it up on a shelf in the bathroom that was surrounded by tile and then shut the door. At the very least, if he upgraded his climbing paws again, I wouldn't hear him in the spaghetti this time. In the morning, we gave up on this staple and tossed it out as we had previously dealt with some kind of weevil that had required picking out. It's a doomed pasta here in Africa.
The next day we set about getting rid of our rat. Driving around to all the shops in Abengourou, we discovered that nobody uses rat poison here. The suggestions all seemed to revolve around placing out some food, surrounding the food with glue and then killing the rat once you found it in glue. A colleague from El Salvador made the joke about catching a few of them and serving up a "brochette de viande de brousse" which you really don't want to imagine as that literally means a skewer of bush meat. Thankfully, this same colleague also had some poison left over from his own rat adventures which he gave us.
I've since put out the poison that the bastard devoured last night. I hate killing a creature this way as it's not the fastest death in the world, although I think it's a bit more humane than the glue solution. And forget about finding a trap, as they just don't exist here. Anyways, I hope that this will be the end of our rat adventures for some time as a) they spread all kinds of disease through their fur/crap/piss (and possibly sense of humor) and b) while you know that nothing will happen to you, all the noise that they make doesn't allow for a lick of sleep.
24 02 2010 2 comments
Tags: food, pests
That's luvin' yer Camembert
It was time for another trip to Auchan up in Perpignan. Naturally, I didn't really take any photos of the store, but this one shot of the Camembert section was incredibly telling. Yeah, that's right, a Camembert section, whereas in the US we're thrilled if there is a Camembert. I don't know what took that portly fellow so long to choose as really you can't go wrong.
06 12 2009 0 comments
Tags: cheese, food, france
Spanish 'easy open' technology still in beta; maybe alpha
If you glance below, you'll see the result on my tempting fate and using the 'obertura fàcil' (or 'abre fácil' in Castellano if you will) tab for a package of pasta. Didn't turn out so well. This is not a surprise. Spanish food vendors know that 'easy-open' is the shit because they see it everywhere in the US. But that being as it may, they still have some back-to-the-drawingboard time to spend on their actual implementation of non-knife-needed packaging systems. Of course Spaniards are no where near as fat as Americans, so maybe it's for the better that you gotta fight to get at your food in Spain.
29 11 2009 0 comments
Tags: food, packaging, spain, the europe, us america
Welcome to Catalunya
If you want a larger version of this fine plate, go here.
03 11 2009 0 comments
Tags: catalonia, food, meat, spain, the europe
The different tastes of a language
It's often asked by those who just don't know if Catalan is a dialect of Spanish. It's not. They're both "dialects" of Latin, although at this point, one would go so far as to say that they're separate languages due to the fact that a Latin speaker and a Spanish or Catalan speaker wouldn't be able to understand one another. To those visiting, it probably seems that this isn't the case as there is a lot of overlap between Catalan and Spanish like they both say "hola" as well as things such as "adiós" and "bienvenido" being "adéu" and "benvingut" in Catalan. These are just a few of many, so you can see where people get this whole "dialect" idea from, although I'm guessing it has more to do with Catalonia being part of Spain than anything else. For instance, Macedonian and Bulgarian are mutually intelligible dialects of one another, but no English speaker would ever assume that as they're separate countries and no one from either of those countries wants to admit it.
But, when you actually dig down in to it and start really working with Catalan, many things are completely different. For instance while "dog" is "perro" in Spanish, it's "gos" in Catalan. But let's look at food, because it's in the language of food where you find the truth of a people.
"bocadillo con jamón y queso"
That is basically a ham sandwich with cheese, but it's oh, oh, oh so delicious as it's with Spanish ham and manchego, drizzled with olive oil. This isn't something limited to Castillian speakers though and it is widely available and vastly consumed in Catalonia as well, but there it's:
"entrepà amb pernil i formatge"
Look at that. There is nothing that matches up, yet it means the exact same thing. If you still think that's still a dialect of Spanish, let me know how.
There is some humor from this though as it is often the case that Catalan words end with the "ll" letter like "coll" which means "neck". It also happens that there are a number of words that are quite similar to Spanish, but that they drop an ending vowel such as "cat" which is "gato" in Spanish and "gat" in Catalan. So a dorky, polyglot joke in Catalonia is to ask for a:
"bocadill amb jamó i ques"
Quite ridiculous and it's a joke that really only makes sense for Catalan speakers, who will most likely smirk if you ask for it. But don't worry, it will taste just as good as a "bocadillo con jamón y queso" except that the bread will be rubbed with tomato and garlic, making it even better actually. Why do I bring this up? Because I'm heading there again for some work on Sunday and staying for the rest of the year and getting fat on pernil in all its heavenly culinary incarnations.
05 10 2009 0 comments
Tags: food, humor, language
Ending the summer at Lake Del Valle
Lake Del Valle (more here) is pretty typical of the artificial bodies of water that we have in California. It's decent-sized, has good road access, good amenities (like all important BBQ grills), flat, somewhat shallow, rather popular with people, and there's even a path for the trashy cheapskates to walk down to avoid the meager $6 per car to use the place. It also happens to be the result of damming off a small creek called Arroyo del Valle, so the name, which means, "of the valley" can be taken as "Ha ha you stupid creek, we went and dammed you up! Where's your valley now? Suck on that nature!" Of course, I'm the only one who finds that even remotely funny.
For Europe, the end of summer is August 31st and if you try to go anywhere over there on that day, you might as well forget about it. For the US, the end of summer is Labor Day Weekend and as such, forget about going anywhere on the Monday following this weekend. So naturally, that meant heading out on Sunday with the Bosnians to tear up some of that lake with their 3hp boat. That's right. 3 Horse Power. And it's electric too. Obviously that makes it not screamingly fast, but at the same time, it saves your ass from having to do any real work like rowing, ewwww. But even though it's slow, tooling around and getting some end of the year tanning in makes for good times.
What also makes for good times is that those guys didn't tell me we were meeting up with a larger, super extreme group of Bosnian Nationalists. For an American this may sound scary, but in reality, it means that when they gather for their extremist gatherings, they cook their national food: meat. Unfortunately due to Ramadan being in full swing, it meant that I was one of the only guys drinking in the crowd. That's was okay as I can fly solo when surrounded by the deliciousness of the čevapčići. One could probably not be bothered if your foot was stuck in a bear trap as long as you had čevapčići, other than the fact it impedes your ability to get more čevapčići.
But here's the real rub in being the only Croat in the crowd; I felt terrible for not bringing the ajvar. Because, beyond religion and a slight dialectal language change, here's the key difference between Croats and Bosniaks: Croats eat čevapčići with ajvar and Bosniaks eat them with kajmak. Both the Bosnian čevapčići and kajmak as vastly superior to the Croatian version with ajvar, but seeing as how you can't find kajmak in the US short of making it yourself, you're often stuck with ajvar. It's no wonder everyone just assumed I was an American since all I showed up with was beer, chips, and peanut M&M's. The shame. I need to go wallow in a pljeskavica.
08 09 2009 0 comments
Tags: california, food, outdoors
The horizons are bright with homemade granola
Alright, so the truth is that the best granola out there is the stuff you make yourself and Bittman agrees. This has nothing to do with being cheap and more to do with making what is going to be a whole lot tastier granola.
Prior to actually making it myself, I was buying it at Whole Foods. Theirs granola selection is great, but Whole Foods is not. I enjoyed the "Rainforest Granola" the most and I thought that its mystical combination of ingredients would be impossible to copy. Turns out I was wrong and it's actually pretty easy to make once deconstructing all the flavors. Giving yourself one and a half kilograms of good breakfast material takes around an hour of time which is not bad when you work it all out. So, without further ado, here is the recipe (in metric of course) for "Rainforest Granola":
1kg rolled oats (not steel cut)
250g well-chopped cashews
100g all purpose white flour
10g salt
75g puffed rice (more if you like puffy, crunchy stuff)
350ml canola oil
350ml maple syrup or honey
15ml vanilla extract (more or less depending on your preference)
Mix all the dry ingredients together. Then mix in the oil, syrup/honey, and vanilla. Toss it all together well and make sure that everything is coated with the liquid ingredients. If not, your oats will burn and suck a good deal.
Preheat your oven to 150C (300F). Get out two nonstick cookie trays and spread the mixture over them evenly. Put them in the oven once it's to temperature. Pull out the trays and flip the mixture every 10-15 minutes. If you have a proper convection oven, total cook time is 30 minutes. If you don't, give it 40 minutes and alternate the sheets for even cooking. Bittman says to use 175C (350F) for heat and cook it for 30 minutes, but it doesn't work as it cooks too fast and is considerably less than desirable. Basically, you want that thin layer of sugars and oil on the dry ingredients to caramelize and be melted when you pull it out.
Take it out and let it cool very thoroughly and the melted quality will harden up quite fast. Chunk it up and store it making sure to devour damned near half of it in the process as fresh-out-of-the-oven granola is most likely in the buffet in heaven. Store it in a sealed container and it will probably keep long enough to last a nuclear winter.
Obviously, you can substitute in a good number of other things for the nuts, puffed rice, and vanilla to make whatever you'd like to have.
26 06 2009 0 comments
Tags: better buying, food, recipes
The thick blue line between fuck and you. Rainbow Grocery et al.
I love food. My 98kg weight is testament to that. Thankfully I'm not short or I'd probably be dead of excessive cheese intake. Part of the joy in food revolves around shopping for food. Walking in to a market and browsing through their offer is thoroughly pleasurable. I love doing this everywhere, especially France. But, it's in my home base of San Francisco where the fun of grocery shopping diminishes a great deal. The pleasure of discovering new types of tomatoes or thinking about what to do with a certain cut of meat is cut short by the "thing" that food shopping is in San Francisco.
This all brings me to Rainbow Grocery. It's only this year that I've checked it out a few times, but that was pretty much all I needed to permanently ex it off my list forever and ever as a black hole of the grocery realm. Outside of one idiotic customer service thing they do, I happen to like the staff a great deal there. Maybe they're more friendly because they're a coop or maybe they're just better workers, I really don't know. The few times that I've asked the staff about something, they actually do what staff do in that they help. The produce is quite stellar and a great selection. I love the fact that they drift much more towards having seasonal fruits and vegetables instead of just stocking stuff from wherever so that people can have strawberries in December (no, strawberries don't grow in the US in December). The cheese section is also quite good. Compact and nothing in comparison to the two aisles of fromage heaven at Auchan in Perpignan, France, but still rife with goodies. Meats? Well, they just don't have meats and that's one downfall, but I can live with that.
So, why on earth would I smote them as a no-shop zone? Simple: the customers. Never in my life have I seen such a smattering of every single type of person that I loath in San Francisco focused in one instance of a shopping experience. From the wispy, fragile feather people, to the middle aged space-out hippie moms, to the bald guys with ponytails, to the short dykes with a massive chip on their shoulder who have to slam their carts in to you, to the all important wankers talking to a mobile phone ear piece their entire shopping experience, to each and every one of the people who shop there, act all environmental, yet drive to the store in their SUV. These are the self-important, entitled douchebag Americans that have been rendered of the fat of our luxurious and easy lives that we lead in this country. And Rainbow is swarming with them. Locusts of annoyance swarming under every footfall one takes in the store.
One of the big things that attracts this type to the store is the fact that they have a massive vitamin and supplement section which all vegans graze from liberally as their diet simply is wont for proper health. It's the precious quotes from these people that are greatest. They are along the lines of, "Is this salt from organically certified oceans?", "Is this B12 supplement Fair Trade?", "Is this flour, cruelty free?", "I'm allergic to nuts, dairy, palm oil, olive oil, aloe vera, and gluten. Which skin cream should I get?" Obviously, these are people that would probably (and rightfully) die if they weren't in the US. At times, I think that the name of the place should actually be, "Special Needs Grocery".
After dealing with these types for an hour or so, the only thing on one's mind is blessed freedom from Rainbow. That however is stymied by the one, tremendous obstacle in that they have this thick blue line system (pictured below). This line is the demarcation between where you can stand and the three meters between that space and the actual register. In an attempt to keep their main aisle behind the registers free, they've invented this "brilliant" strategy, except that it then blocks all the side aisles. People don't get it because it's non-sensible. You walk up to a register only to be scolded by people behind the blue line and there isn't one blue line for each register. Sometimes one of these is for one register and sometimes for another. When one guy chided me for going in to another aisle (which I assumed was free) after I asked about a first one he was waiting for, I called him a pompous ass and told him to fuck off. I realized that I can't return to this store lest I beat one of these people to death with a 25kg sack of biodynamic wild rice. Somehow on my last trip through there, I managed to make it out without felony charges.
Given the popularity of Rainbow and my desiring to not shop there, what else does that leave? A great deal of choices actually, each with their own pluses and minuses which I've listed below from bad to good:
Safeway - Just bad. Bad food. Bad service. Bad customers. The one down at Church and Market can be okay. The main thing is that it's cheaper overall, but your pay for it in poor quality food.
Cala - Basically a step above Safeway. I shopped here for my first six months of living in San Francisco until I discovered that there were other choices that didn't involve shopping alongside hookers/junkies coming off a rough night.
Molly Stone's - A better quality of food without a doubt, but you pay for it. Staff can be all right sometimes, although generally in a state of mental geostationary orbit. The customers are all snobby types. Really no reason to go unless your income is in the six digits and it's next door to your house.
Whole Foods - Definitely some of the best foods, but depending on the store, the freshness is a massive issue. They're also sneaking in a great deal more non-organic foods to offer "choice". The prices are quite high overall, at least 15% higher than smaller, organic stores in the area. Staff are crap; probably the worst. They're a bit hippie, but more hipster and incredibly full of themselves for working at the store. They're no help. The customers can be difficult. They're nothing like the Rainbow customers though. You'll see a lot more mobile phone earpiece conversations though and people are just flat-out rude, but there is no pretension otherwise. They honestly believe they are worth more than anyone else.
Andronico's - About the same quality of food as Molly Stone's, but the prices are slightly better. These are more common in the East Bay, but the one out in Sunset in SF has a wicked olive bar. A pretty mixed, normal crowd shops here.
Bi-rite - Good selection, but swaddled in hipsterdom. This makes for a pretty bad shopping experience. Especially to be avoided any day there is warm weather. Also to be avoided any weekend.
Real Foods - A good mix of hippie store, decent prices, normal people shopping, and pretty good selection. The only thing they have going against them is their general size. I can find just about everything I need at one of these stores, but it always feels like they're missing one or two things that I need. Their cheese selection is terrible, but their bargain wine selection is good.
Trader Joe's - The best mix of everything and my main store for shopping. There's a reason this chain is spreading so fast. They have quite good prices. A great mix of foods. A great selection of more exotic foods. Their prepared foods are fun. The staff is good--not amazing, but good and laid back, taking their Hawaiian shirts a bit too seriously. The customers are pretty normal folks as well. Earpieces are at a minimum, which for San Francisco says something. I'm not crazy about their excessive packaging, not being able to weigh anything, and the amount of foods they import off-season, but what are you gonna do? Just not buy it. Oh, their wine selection is hit and miss. Sometimes they have great bargains and then other times, it's loathsome.
So anyways, end of rant. Rainbow just killed me and it just reminds me how little of their urban American I can stand at times and how I need to really figure out that second home in... elsewhere.
01 05 2009 0 comments
Tags: better buying, food, ramblings, san francisco
Ah Setrill. How did I live without you?
For those who think they have a complete kitchen, get buggered, because unless you have a Setrill, your kitchen is far from complete. Most of us in the US are convinced that when it comes to pouring oil, this fellow is all you need. This is far from the case. While the tall dispenser is fine for lathering a pan in oil, it's not a refined pouring implement. You get a bit of a glug of oil at a time and when it come to making Pa amb tomàquet with this dispenser and it does more harm than good. You know how all the famous TV chefs out there cover half the tip of one of these things to control it better? That's because they're trying to emulate the Setrill and it's vast pouring superiority.
While the Setrill may be a funny shape and exist in a format where no two look alike (they're hand blown glass), they give you all the control in oil that you could want. To be honest, I don't know how I lived without one before. Hell, even chefs, like Daniel Olivella at B44 and the new Barlata recommend picking one up in Spain. I'll let you in on a little secret in that department: they're a pain in the ass to bring back without breaking and you can buy them in the US at places like Cole Hardware on Polk for the same or less than you would in Spain. Cole Hardware carries ones that were actually made in Spain and it makes life a lot easier.
Oh and if you're thinking that the traditional type is a bit too funky for your tastes, there are more modern ones such as this or in a matched set with a Vinagrera like this. Just don't like like what one of my family members who shall not be mentioned did and buy something like this for oil. That's for balsamic vinegar. It doesn't pour right to be used as a Setrill and that's what it comes down to; having a nice dispenser to lay down the perfect bead of olive oil on whatever it is that you're rightly makin' mo better with the oil.
27 03 2009 0 comments
Tags: catalonia, food, spain
