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Yeah, I know, I won't shut up about jamón. It's freakin' delicious and the only place I can get it in great abundance is in Spain because Spaniards love it so much that they don't want to export it to the US in any large amount. Now that's a smart people.       One of the first experiences (as well as the best) that I had with jamón was at this place in Figueres called, La Cabaña, which just means, 'the cabin'. They make their own jamón from the regular levels up to pata negra, which is one of the highest grades (and yes that does literally mean, 'black duck'.) The place readily makes up for its rather odd location and basic ambiance with delicious meats, cheeses, pan con tomata, and a good list of the local wines.       It's because of the outward appearance that a great many people would probably skip the place. Nestled between a couple of strip club/whore houses on the northern outskirts of Figueres, along the highway to the French border, most people would find it about as welcoming as a gas station bathroom. Dining outside means listening to the large semi trucks rambling down the highway in front of you, but who cares and I think the jamón makes you deaf to the noise anyways, so one can just eat and enjoy.       So, after so much chatting about it, how does one find this place? This is not easy and it's what makes the chase of this elusive house of meats so enjoyable. Their business card says, "At Kilometer 760, exit Highway Number 3 in the direction of Figueres." It's not the easiest place to get to. For those who are bold, I believe that on Google Maps, it's right here, but that's something of a guess without an exact address.

Nakládaný Hermelin is a type of cheese preparation that's eaten in the Czech Republic. I won't sit here and tell you that it's a national dish, because it's not. It's something that's eaten in bars most commonly. You order a beer and a round of cheese that's been soaking in a jar of oil, peppers, and spices. It's quite tasty and it also happens to be something that's easily made here in the US to enjoy with just about everything you can think of.       The Hermelin bit of it refers to the cheese, which isn't really something you can get here. But, you can easily substitute in any kind of softish cheese with a bit of a soft, edible rind to it like Camembert. Everything else can be easily gotten round these parts though and following is the closest approximation to the recipe we put together from this forum:       - 3-4 rounds of the cheese       - onion rings, garlic cloves, sweet red and green peppers       - olive oil, black peppercorns, paprika, red pepper flakes, and salt       Preparation:       - Peel the onions and cut them into rings       - Cut half of the garlic into slices/rings, leave the rest as whole clove       - Cut the cheese horizontally into 2 halves       - Sprinkle the inside of both cheese halves with red pepper flakes and paprika. Put on each half some of the onion rings, 3 slices of garlic, and - according to your own liking - also some grains of pepper       - Fold the halves back together again and pierce them with 3 tooth sticks to fix them       - After having prepared all the cheese halves like this, put them into the glass, adjusting them evenly in layers. While doing so, add garlic, onion rings, bay leaves, grains of pepper, grains of pimento and green pepper, and always cover with some oil.       After all cheese is finished, add oil up to the brim of the glass. Close it.       Ripening:       The pickled cheese has to "ripen" at room temperature. The duration is up to your liking, but the onions should become soft. In general, it may taste good even up to one week in the jar. As a rule, if you like the cheese less "ripe", 14 days will do. If you like it a bit "riper" (i.e. also spicier]), give it at least 3 weeks' time. If everything is starting to get kinda mushy in there, eat it as soon as you can.

I'm not sure where my breaking point was on the American custom of tipping. Perhaps it was the 18% I automatically had added to my bill for a dinner for two at Chez Panisse. Or maybe it was a recent meal with friends where they insisted on leaving what amounted to a 33% tip. I'm not really sure, but my ire towards the system of tipping in the US has swelled to an indefinite point of frustration and to a large degree, disgust. No, I'm not disgusted with friends who leave large tips (I used to do this as well), but more our society as a whole wherein we feel compelled and forced to leave large tips for any variety of reasons (they make no money, I know how it is for them, you can afford it, etc.) My disgust also lies with the restaurants who seem to revel in this practice as it allows them to pay squalid wages to their employees, thusly levying the salary of their workers solely upon the backs of the customer.       As you can see in the Almighty Wikipedia link above, the origin of the word came from, "to give unexpectedly". My, but how we have strayed from the original intent and naturally this is something that varies greatly by region. My preference is often for the European models where it is still not an expected item, but more a bonus for a job well done. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against tipping; I'm just against it as a constant when doing anything outside of your home and having a service charge that is part of the price is fine too. But my favorite tipping model overall has to be from the Japanese, "...tipping is rare, it is usually assumed that if you liked a restaurant you will reward them by returning." I have never seen logic in a more easy to digest form than that.       I don't really don't need to rant anymore about tipping I suppose, as Mr. Pink in Reservoir Dogs did that oh so well. But even there, he was eventually cajoled in to putting in a tip, which seems to be the way it goes for all of us eventually. Having gotten sick of this practice, I'm starting to see why my cousins in Slovenia flat-out told me to stop when I went to leave a 10% tip. I know what you're thinking, "I'd hate to work in that country.", but the difference is that people who work in service jobs are paid a lot better. The tip is again, back to its root of being "given unexpectedly". Ah, but how can we do this in the US? People earn so little here in restaurants! To which I greatly beg to differ. Servers in San Francisco will often earn up to $60,000 a year and for what? Bringing my plates to me? Honestly, I could do that myself if it were allowed. And then of course there are bartenders who make even more than that because of tips drunken idiots shower them in. I mean, why does some guy get a 25% tip for opening a bottle of beer for me in a place where they're charging $4 for it and it costs them around $.50? Yeah, I know, you're paying for ambiance which is most likely the reason I've all but stopped going to your typical bar.       It's all a ridiculous circle that ends only when we as the customers say, "Enough! Charge me the actual cost and be done with it!" To this end, I feel like taking a first step and when at restaurants where there is good service and an actual reason to do it, leaving a 5% tip. I do acknowledge that peoples' salaries come from this, so I would never suggest ended it all overnight, but maybe that would be the straw that broke the crappy system.       No more tipping at the damned bars until the bartender has actually done something worthwhile and not just stared at my lack of hipster apparel when I first enter. And that's it. This is a systemic deep-rooted problem with the culture in the US by which we put our fingers in our ears when it comes to knowing the full cost of something (ex. sales taxes, cleaning fees, extended warranties that are added on to the price tag) but if we can get past this, then, as silly as it sounds we can actually have systems like national health care. Explaining that is for a future post.       Okay, yeah, everyone is going to start throwing eggs and booing me at this point, but I don't care. I'm done with this system. You can even call me Dutch if you want, but I can take it and my 5% tipping is coming soon to a table near you even if that means I get called out in a forum.       

In honor of our political race yesterday, I would like to present the, iJam. No, it is not that i-jam like we'd say it in English, but actually, iJam with the 'h' sound for the 'j' in Spanish because it is from Spain. For those who don't know, jamón is basically Spanish ham. Sometimes those uninformed compare it to prosciutto, but that's dead flat out wrong since prosciutto is not only Italian, but nothing like jamón.       I have officially begun my descent in to Spanish transformation as upon leaving Spain at the end of summer last year, I began to pine for jamón. It is extremely hard to get in the US (inversely prosciutto is quite easy to get making it suspiciously inferior to jamón.) Maybe it's for the better as I'd just eat it all the time if it was here and get fat(ter). Anyways, because of this, I found iJam site to be incredibly funny as it spoofs Apple and jamón and does it very well.       This rather brilliant advertising firm in Spain called, Shacketon put the whole thing together with little other reason it seems than to have a laugh. Obviously they want to start up some kind of viral marketing to draw attention to themselves, which I'm more than happy to point their way. I saw it when it was still just in Spanish which caused a good deal of the jokes to be lost on me until Number One Fan did some translation. I was even ready to translate the whole thing out in this post so that it could be shared, when lo and behold they put English subtitles on the demonstration video you see a link to from the home page in the lower left. Good stuff. Check it out. If you're ever in Spain, don't taste the jamón unless you want to be hooked.

This year marked the start of something I could see as being a new tradition for me, which is to actually celebrate Groundhog Day. Once past grade school age, we pretty much forget about the little marmot popping out each year to check his shadow, but the tradition does carry on regardless of our ignorance to it in our fast-paced "adult" lives.       A co-worker had been having this party annually for something like a decade and invited me this year to attend my first ever Groundhog Day party. You might ask what you do on such a party and I'm glad that you did ask, even if you didn't. Basically, you sit around and roast a groundhog for about four hours. They start to get really tender at that point, but of course, by the time the hog is ready, you're really drunk anyways, so the eating of the hog is pretty much just ceremonial. Just make sure you've gotten one that's been acorn fed. Those grass fed ones taste like vegan...       In all truthfulness, the festivities revolve foremost around drinking (as do any true festivities). You eat a bunch of snacks, such as delectable, "fat balls" (basically baked dough around pepperoni, cheese, and a looming heart attack) and then you watch Groundhog Day which is a movie which when watched once a year, never gets old. That's about it. Oh yeah, you also have a trivia quiz before the movie, based on "facts" that your host has rounded up.       I'd have to say it's enjoyable overall and I don't know why more people don't do it. February 2nd is such a dead date otherwise. There are no real holidays for weeks before and after and it gives single people something to do instead of dreading the encroachment of Valentine's Day that makes them hit the online dating like locusts.       Now that I've finally picked the hast bits of hog out of my teeth, I'm already starting to itch for next year's hog-a-thon.

Yes, all hail the quesadilla. While about as authentic as the burrito in the form we make them in the US, we all know that they're damned tasty. You just can't beat them for the convenience of feeding your hunger at any point; especially when drunk.       Of course, when hitting up Europe, the lovely gooey cheese of the quesadilla becomes a fond warm memory one waits to return home to. But, it is possible to travel dilla-enabled if one so desires. Tortillas are everywhere and the cheeses can get close enough to what enjoy stateside to still taste really good. Our success in creating the dilla was so good that we actually ended up making them for any friend or family member we stayed with for more then three days.       In Serbia, we made them for my cousin and he loved them. Of course, he just loves eating, but he actually asked the recipe to make some day in the future, since it is perfect bachelor food. And yes, you can actually get everything you need for a quesadilla in Belgrade. They have tortillas and all the necessary ingredients. The only tricky thing was the cheese, which we ended up finding in the form of a great Dubliner from Ireland that worked wonders.       In Slovenia, the dillas were again a hit. For my cousin there, we made them, he and his girlfriend loved them, and they even made them again after we had visited. The tortillas were easy to find at the local supermarket, which was a shock given that Slovenska Bistrica is a pretty small town in eastern Slovenia. Cheese was the oddball again, but we found that Edamec (Edamer in Slovenian) worked pretty well and while not as robust as cheddar is, was still quite tasty.       Lastly, we hit Spain while traveling the Dilla Train. Americans might be surprised to find that Spaniards haven't heard of quesadillas, but I must again emphasize that Spain is not Mexico. The word makes sense, but people don't really know what it is unless they've been to a Mexican restaurant, of which there are few. But even though Spain is not Mexico, tortillas are definitely easy to get. We didn't take any chances and went with Edamer again like we did in Slovenia. End result: delicious.       So, this being one of our favorite "dishes" and our having prepared it in several countries outside North America, I present:              The Quesadilla Survival Recipe       Ingredients       - Find tortillas or any kind of thing from northern Africa that looks like a tortilla, but isn't pita bread, because that's just too thick.       - Get meat. This can be pork. This can be chicken. It can basically be anything as long as it's ground meat. When in the Balkans, try a "čevapčići mix" and put together a half ground beef and half ground lamb mix.       - Get tomatoes and onions, then dice them up.       - For spices, all you need are garlic, salt, and pepper which you can get anywhere.       - Cheeses are the hardest part. Ideally you want a sharp cheddar and in an ideal work, a touch of blue or Gorgonzola, but these last two are unneeded if you can't find them. In place of the cheddar, most firm or hard cheeses with a good degree cheddar-esque qualities to them will work. Like I mentioned earlier, Edamer seems to work surprisingly well. Gouda wouldn't be so good nor would Ementhaler. Just smell the cheeses and think about if you want to eat a melted pile of what you're smelling. If so, get it.       Instructions       - Cook up the meat, tossing in the onion, garlic, salt, and pepper. I like about a head of garlic to a kilo of meat, but that might be too much for some folks. If in the Balkans, avoid added paprika. It doesn't go so well with the cheese.       - Find a heavy skillet or steel plate or something that can be a dense, as opposed to intense, heat.       - Toss on one tortilla. Put on the cheese. Put on the meat. Put on the tomato. Put on another sprinkle of cheese. Dust it with the blue or other cheese you might have.       - Let it melt. Toss on the other tortilla and flip. The other side will cook pretty fast, so your dilla is nearly there.       - Take it off once the other tortilla gets crisp. Let it sit and cool until the cheese congeals a little, then cut it up and serve. Don't worry if it's a little black. That's to be expected and the mark of a good dilla, because it's been cooked, but not completely burned. It's about one 'normal' (about 20cm across) tortilla per person to fill people up, so plan accordingly.

As I pointed out earlier, Maui has got the beef. But of course, a lot of people make a beeline for all the other foods you can get on the islands, which include a great many things that you can get on the mainland like Italian, French, Mexican, and Chinese. Since I can get these readily in San Francisco, it begs the question as to why on earth I'd eat them while traveling. I mean, apparently, the offer is quite good, but again, why not try what the locals eat?       Thus we found the ultimate culinary path to the plate lunch and saimin. The plate lunch is ubiquitous around Maui and tends to consist of some form of meat with rice and macaroni salad of all things. It has its background in the fact that multiple cultures (like Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino) mixed in with the Hawaiian culture to create a lunch that they shared amongst each other when they were working on the plantation. It's quite good and I find my favorite to be either the pig or the chicken. These elements are both prepared in a truly Hawaiian manner and give the dish a touch that make it worth seeking out, as you're not going to find this on the mainland very easily. Even in San Francisco about the only thing I can find is Samoan plate lunch down in the south city, which is also great, but a good deal different. When on Maui, head over to Lahaina, to the north part of the town where you'll find Aloha Mix Plate. It's a nice setting along the water and offers a good selection.       Then there is saimin, which I can only really compare most closely to a Vietnamese pho. It is a noodle soup of saimin noodles (thus the name) with any variety of meat tossed in there. The test of a good saimin lies in the broth that they use and this place on Kress Street in Lihue, Kauai called, Hamura Saimin makes up the bestest. Apparently they serve up some 1,000 bowls of saimin a day and it's not touristic at all, with locals comprising the majority of the clientèle and a greasy spoon atmosphere to the joint that gives it some street cred.       I suppose the real reason I bring these options up is because when visiting an area, it's best to try the local cuisine. But, it's also the case that eating out in Hawaii tends to run a bit more expensive than on the mainland and these local dishes prove to be some of the cheaper options available. Cheap, filling, tasty, and good always make for a winning combination with the foods that I eat.

I don't normally eat too much red meat. I don't know why I got on this kick, but it probably had to do with the fact that it's one of the least healthy meats you can eat in the US. Of course, every so often, I get a steak or a burger, if I know the meat is incredibly high quality, so I'm not adverse to it; I just don't make it a lifestyle.       For the current trip here in Hawaii, this has all changed. Why? Because the beef here is simply some of the best tasting meat that I've ever had. It's just succulent and full of flavor. It's like that that ad where they say, "Happy cheese comes from happy cows and happy cows are in California." Well, just think how happy a cow is for being in Hawaii. You can taste that happiness with each tasty bite.       So far, we've only had the beef offer in Maui and that may be the best. Whether it's a steak or a burger or a plate lunch in Lahaina, it's all damned good stuff. But, the fact that this is so good has even made me branch out a bit and I've been eating some fish as well because it has turned out to be really good as well. It is true that nothing is super cheap. For instance, lunch in a basic place is going to be a minimum of $8 a person without drinks, but for now, it's all worth it.       Oh, and happy 31st birthday to me!

Growing up, two things came to mind when I heard the name, "Michelin". One was tires. The other was that fat marshmallow man that they used for their uh... mascot or whatever you want to call him. It wasn't until the last two years that the name, Michelin means so much more.       For one thing, it's French. For another, they make a massive series of restaurant guides that are, from all accounts, considered to be the finest there are. Inclusion or exclusion from their guides can mean feast or famine for a restaurant because so many people take them to be the bible of fine dining.       So it was that last year, their first guides entered the US with New York City and San Francisco being their entries in to the market. I didn't get to read the 2007 guide, but took more of an interest this year as they're introducing Las Vegas and Los Angeles. Also, the director, Jean-Paul Naret was at a local bookstore to promote it a bit. So, I went down to see it.       The event itself was more than a little frustrating. Even though Jean-Luc was there before it was supposed to start at 6, the event actually started at 6:30. While this is not enjoyable, it forced me to be privy to a quartet of gay guys sitting behind me letting loose an endless, driveling stream of auditory diarrhea. Thankfully the event did eventually start, as I can only take so much of, "And so, like, for Thanksgiving, maybe London is that, you know, or perhaps I was thinking Moroccan tonight, but it's too spicy, so, like maybe it's just that we should drive up to Napa tonight..." Seriously, I kid you not.       But, listening to Jean-Paul Naret was amusing. He's a very charismatic fellow and very, very French. With him, for some reason they had Marcia Gagliardi of Table Hopper there to talk as well. She's a nice girl and likes her food, but her and Jean-Luc are in such different leagues that it would be akin to the president of the neighborhood watch and the president of the US talking on the same panel. Although, this is something of a misnomer, since I don't want to compare Jean-Luc to our current monkey at the desk.       The questions were okay from the crowd. There was one point when one of the boys in the quartet naturally had to ask make the accusation that the Michelin Guides are biased because they don't seem to grace any Asian restaurants with three stars. Jean-Luc deftly answered that they're not biased, they just haven't found one yet and that Masa in SF is a Japanese restaurant that is two stars.       Of course I bought a copy and now that I have the book, I want to eat everywhere that's in it. Chez Panisse is looking quite good...

I know there are a lot of blogs out there that will promote other sites on a regular basis and I do it as well sometimes, but really, not that much. I have no blogroll and my links section only has a few sites listed in there. It's not that I find the practice useless, it's more that I am extremely picky in the sites that I like or feel worthy to recommend to others.       This is what brings me to Airline Meals.net. This site is nothing more than a collection of meals on airplanes, a lot like my Praving Gallery is a collection of crappy (yet admirable) ways to fix things. But I respect this site and I like it as it celebrates the glory and the folly of dining in the clouds.       We've all had crappy meals on flights (and if you haven't you don't fly much) and I enjoy the fact that I can see how some really good meals look (like those on Air France) and commiserate on the really bad ones, such as my most recent flight back to the US on Virgin Atlantic. It does appear that they're revamping the site a bit currently, so I'm curious how the new one will add up with its 19,000 or so pictures of food on trays.