Round, red, bitter root – a post for CS majors

So – I was writing the last post.  And trying to remember what the name for the small, red, spicy/bitter, white inside, crisp, edible, often served thinly sliced raw in salads, root.  I had a complete brain fart, and simply could not come up with the word.  (It’s radish).

Right now, this is one of the remaining front-lines for search algorithms, AI, or machine learning – I’m no longer sure there is that much of a difference.  As is, given all of the information in the world about the radish, except its name, how would you go about learning its name though searching online?  If you figure out a Google search string that gets the result in the first page, post it in the comments – I just sat there for a while and eventually thought of the answer.

Also, if you can describe in lay terms how the state of the art needs to be improved so I could get this answer out of a computer, let me know that too.

This lovely veggie was for sale at one of the corner produce markets, the one which is more Asian and less Mexican, by the zip-lock sandwich baggie full, for a dollar.  And I’m a big fan of it.

Cultural Fusion

Alex was in town on his two month tour of (in my words) “cities that don’t suck” – you know – the Philadelphia, Austin, Chicago, Denver, Portland, Seattle, and so on.

Anyhow, we went out to dinner at Mi Linda Peru one night – it’s like four blocks from here, and had some good reviews, and I’m still at the stage where I’m enjoying the process of trying out new places.  (NOTE: Also guesting in the meal: Doug, who just moved out here)

I think that some of the best foods in the world comes from when two cultures intermingle.  This place was a tiny little joint, like a dozen tables, very casual atmostphere with great food, and pretty good service.

I’m totally going back there, even if Alex did fall asleep at the dinner table, and the waiter offered him a free 7-up as we were leaving because of how sickly he looked.

But back to cultural mixing and food.  In my book, the reason this place had such good food (besides the chef) is because the South American flavors (corn-salsa with the bread, fried plantains) and Spanish flavors (a wonderful seafood paella) mix well.

It’s also probably why food is San Francisco world-famous.  The entire concept of “California Cuisine,” (Wikipedia) which is my biased opinion, is about as good as food gets, is this same concept:

California Cuisine is a style of cuisine marked by an interest in “fusion“— integrating disparate cooking styles and ingredients— and in freshly prepared using local ingredients.

This sounds revolutionary!  This new great thing!  I call BS.  It just means there are a lot of immigrants here, and some of them made their restaurants go up-scale, and served whatever was grown around where they are.  I’m pretty sure that’s how all new food/cooking-categories (ain’t that the less high-falutian word for cuisine) gets made – people set up home somewhere new, and serve food to a group that they hadn’t ate with before, using the food of where-ever they are now.

It’s why the Chinese butcher we go to sells Mexican spices; why one of the cheap Chinese joints I walk by going to BART is titled “Chinese food and donuts”……  Why it’s okay to use a non-stick pan and olive oil to do a stir-fry, using french wine instead of rice-vinegar, wild rice instead of short-grain, radishes in addition to ginger, jalapenos in addition to Thai chilis, Italian sausage side-by-side bok choi, and so on and so forth – all things I’ve done recently.

What’s your favorite item from the complete wrong culture you put into a meal you like to make?

Dim Sum – the great cultural experience

Dim sum is a wonderful food – if you ever show up in San Francisco, I will invite you to go to dim sum – no, I will urge you strongly to go to dim sum with me.  Cristi had guests a week and a half ago, but they lamed out, so to satisfy my cravings I went with my mother.  Her favorite (and I don’t argue – she makes it look like I am not into food) is Gold Mountain at Broadway and Stockton – it’s our second favorite overall, after Restaurant Peony in Oakland’s Chinatown.

I put both into Yelp as I wrote this: some great laugh lines from people who said they were bad:

Service: I understand that we’re in the middle of China Town, but hardly ANYONE spoke English. We’d ask the wait staff what kind of filling was inside the dim sum and we’d get blank stares.

The wait for a Monday lunch for a table of 3……40 minutes!!!

Service is still atrocious.

That’s all completely true – both can be dirty, crowded, the servers (and patrons) don’t speak English, there’s a long line at the wrong times of day (11 AM – 1 PM).  But isn’t that half the fun?

When my mom and I were last there, a mother and daughter from Utah got there just as we were finishing up – they were the only white people we could see in the entire place, and the servers sat them next to us.  They were flummoxed by their surroundings – no idea how to order, what to do, and so on.

This is for them.

If you want, ask for water; ask for a fork.  Everyone pushing a cart piled high with baskets of food is yelling what the contents are, but in Cantonese.  They don’t speak English, but if you ask they know to lift the lid and let you look and how to say what animal(s) are inside the dumpling or whatever.  If it looks good, take it, but only if you don’t already have a dish in front of you.  Otherwise you suddenly end up with a million dishes all rapidly getting cold.

Other advice:

Do not be a strict vegetarian.  Hell, it’s best if you eat cows, pigs, vegetables, shrimp, and pieces of random edible plant, animal, and mineral things and unknown sauces.  Be unafraid to stand up for yourself.  Be okay with crowds, even if you cannot communicate with them.  Enjoy the experiences you’re having, even if they’re not ones that you are used to.  Take big bites.  Well – this list is a good list of life advice, wrapped in a steamed shrimp dumpling with green veggie bits.  If you see someone more confused than you are, such as a random couple from Utah, be helpful.

What other comparisons or pieces of advice apply equally to life and to a dim-sum restaurant?

Safeway is retarded

Safeway is a retarded store – this is what living here for three weeks has taught me.

Safeway buys in bulk; lots and lots and lots of bulk.  They make their own products, cutting out a middleman.  Their staff is terrible and paid badly.  Thus, by all logic, they should be the cheapest store for most things.

Not even close.  My apartment is at Cesar Chavez aka 26.5th and Mission.  Between it and one block past the 24th and Mission BART station there are three produce markets/general bodegas and two meat/fish markets.  Cristi comes from that BART station every day coming home from work.  Safeway is at 28th and Mission – there’s another produce market before you get there.  Across the street from Safeway is a Big Lots.  The meat markets have cheaper and better fish and meat, the corner stores have better produce for much cheaper (and groceries for about the same price), Big Lots is cheaper for anything it has.  I don’t get it at all.  The difference cannot be entirely because the staff at the local stores speak Spanish as their native language – what do you think causes this discrepancy?  I’m a pretty good judge of quality, and the produce is top notch, and the meat is about the same as what Safeway has.

Is it the added costs associated with the brightly lit store with a parking lot?  Paying health insurance?  Stocking a larger inventory?  Just being asshats who take money from the customer who doesn’t comparision shop?  I will still go there for the items it has cheapest, like milk, ice cream, and eggs, but a one-stop-shop it ain’t.  Hell, it ain’t even a Stop&Shop.

And that’s my third post, and with that I’m going to lightly publicize this blog.  If you read it, PLEASE comment at least once on something you see.

Avocado is a saturated fat; Salmon rocks

Cristi IMs me: “I’m going grocery shopping – want anything?”  I say “brand-name Q-tips – the cheap ones aren’t the same, and I’m in the mood to cook – buy ingredients for something you want to eat”

She suggests doing fish Tuesday, but since Alex dislikes fish, we decide to do it that day instead.

(NOTE: I just decided to not talk about the un-interesting parts of the meal like the steamed veggie, and add more of the life around the meal when I write).

She comes home with a lovely pound of salmon and an avocado, amongst other things – apparently she once made an avocado remalade – which is probably spelled less wrong – basically a blended avocado topping for the salmon. She also comes home with a story about having Dave try new foods when paired with something familiar – in this case, salmon with an avocado remalade (how do you spell that word) paired with Easy Mac.

I decide to run with the idea – I marinade the salmon in garlic powder, lemon zest, honey, lemon juice, soy sauce, salt, pepper, chili pepper until we decide we’re impatient and hungry and pan-grill it in my new cast-iron pan.  At the same time, the marinade gets microwaved to kill any bacteria and blended with the avocado, some green onion, and some more lemon juice and zest.

It turns out tasty – if/when I do this again, the salmon could be marinaded longer, and the marinade shouldn’t go into the avocado – the soy sauce browned the bright green of the avocado, making it less visually stunning.  And the whole thing could use a few dashes more chili powder.

Dinner for Thirteen

(This post has turned out quite long – I doubt that will be standard, but we shall see)

So – the people who are awesome – in this context, the Alpha Delts who have moved to SF in the last year and a half and Betsy and a couple of others – do a weekly Thursday night dinner party, hosted by, until now, Bill and Jes rotating.  Now that Cristi and I have an amazing apartment, we’re joining the fun.  Our first night was last Thursday.

Cristi was going to be at a softball game until right before dinner, so I was cooking mainly on my own.  And somehow EVERYONE (Minus Frog) invited said yes – so I had 13 people for dinner.

We had 8 chairs.  Our dining table only comfortably fits 10 (not bad for a two bedroom place).  But, we scrounged another four chairs, and I set out to figure out what I wanted to make.

I ended up with a dish I’ve made for big groups before, most recently with Doug at a Freshman Unit re-union party before graduation, as the main course, along with a vegetable side and two fresh fruit pies.

Let’s start with the pies, because as Sonia has wisely put it, there’s nothing more important that Pie.  Betsy was over the night before, and we took the mounds of fresh peaches, necterines, and plums and made two traditional pies – they turned out amazing, but that was because it’s hard to mess up homemade fresh fruit pie.  The crust, only so/so – one of the few things our apartment lacks is a rolling pin, so we used a bottle of wine, and it wasn’t flaky enough. Pies with a variety of fruit in them rock, as does the addition of a tiny bit of chili powder.  If anyone has a really fool-proof crust recipe, let me know – I have a hard time getting that perfect flakiness.

Main course: I once saw this recipe: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/05/dining/052grex.html – and still use it as inspiration.  Major changes include: I use egg noodles (you know, the Jewish kind) instead of rice noodles.  I use a crapton more fresh veggies – usually multi-colored bell peppers, some snap peas, whatever else looks good when I went shopping… and more chicken.  The sauce isn’t fussy and can be modified at will – I add Soy Sauce and don’t measure anything – the key is a lot of Oyster Sauce and Fish Sauce.  This leaves a recipe of (numbers are approx ratios):

2 Oyster Sauce
2 Fish Sauce
1 Brown Sugar
1 Soy Sauce
1 rice vinager
1 Lime Juice
0.5 Red Wine
0.5 Mirin
Chili Powder
Other chopped up fresh chilis (to taste)
Black Pepper
fresh ginger
lots basil
medium amount cilantro (Basil and cilantro to be added after cooking)
Other options: substituting most sauces, adding Worcester sauce, sherry, lemon zest, lime zest, lemon juice, gold mountain sauce, honey, cayenne pepper, garlic, and so on.

For this one, I used
6 lbs cubed chicken breast

3 lbs egg noodles

4 heads baby bok choy
4 handfuls chopped walnuts
3 red bell peppers
3 orange bell peppers
1 bunch green onions
1 lb sugar peas
probably some other veggies

stir fry everything, make pasta, mix with sauce and fresh herbs.  Serve out of a pot so big that when 12 people have had firsts, you still have a vast amount left.  The walnuts are really good at adding a crunch to the dish – some raw veggies would help too.

Luckily, I had Laura and Royce willing to help chop then watch over the various pans stir-frying.

The other item was a lot of long-beans and green beans, stir-fried with a lot of garlic and ginger and black pepper and onion.  They went really fast – it was supposed to be all long-beans, but some of the long-beans were bad, so I went out and got green beans. As Cristi said – when she went to buy them, all the little Chinese ladies were avoiding them, so they were a bit risky to begin with.  The trick to this is to use really high heat and blacken the beans some.  And to always trust little Chinese ladies at corner produce markets.

I also had one damn vegetarian (Skip) who was visiting – I modified some of the noodle dish for him – I would not recommend it.  It’s dull without fish and oyster sauce.

The most amazing things of the night:

A) people, especially Royce, helped so much with dishes that Cristi and I barely did any, and the kitchen was clean.
B) multiple people saw The Big Lebowski for the first time.
C) There were leftovers after everyone was full.  (maybe not so amazing).

Other trivia: As cooked, 6 people said it could have been more spicy, 4 said it was just right, and 1 (Maribeth…) thought it was brutally hot.  And Dave doesn’t particularly like pie.

Welcome one and all (just one?)

I decided to start a blog.  We’ll see how this goes – I have a topic – the intersection of food any my life.  Since no one reading this doesn’t know me pretty well, this is a broad topic.  Anyhow, I’ll try to write regularly, at least until I get bored – and I really, really, really, appreciate comments.