à la poêle

Hometown-cooked meals

I have returned from my travels to the East Coast and my homeland of Montana. I also turned 24, so please feel free to wish me a happy birthday in the comments section so I feel loved and it looks like my blog gets comments. I am planning on revising the focus of this whole endeavor so that it might concern more pragmatic things. But before we get to that, here are some photos from two of my favorite places to eat in Billings, Montana: Caramel Cookie Waffle (first three images), and Bistro Enzo.

Pastrami sandwich

Chicken curry soup

Lemon bar

Beef short ribs

The Caramel Cookie Waffle bakes, cooks, prepares, and sells some of the most delicious and wholesome food I have ever had. Seriously, you can taste the love that went into its making. Well, maybe not so much in the Dutch candies they sell, but everything else there is simply and delightfully good. Aside from their sandwiches, pastries (savory and sweet), soups, salads, and baked goodies, they sell some seriously scrumptious stroopwafels. I already ate the 10 I brought home with me and thus have no photograph, but here’s the wiki article in case you have no idea what I am talking about. If you should find yourself in Billings and in need of a tasty, home-cooked style lunch, go here. Then buy a bunch of their cookies and give them to your friends so they will have no choice but to love you forever and ever.

Bistro Enzo has been a favorite of mine since they opened. The head chef is one cool dude, too. The food is consistently innovative and eco-conscious. They also have a kids menu and very talented servers - I’ve had worse at more expensive restaurants in San Francisco and New York. My lousy photograph in no way represents the melt-in-your mouth awesomeness of those (grass-fed!) beef ribs. I shouldn’t have ate all of them because of the crême brulée I was to eat later, but I did. And I liked it.

Now if you go to Billings you’ll know what’s up, at least for two meals. I have been eating at these places for years and they refuse to disappoint me.

Coming soon: packing your lunch.

Food / Photography / Recipes — No comments
16
Dec 09

Closer to breakfast

Closer to a “true American” breakfast, anyway. For those of you know my eating habits fairly well, you’ve probably heard of my aversion to eggs. Hate ‘em. I wish I didn’t because they seem so gosh darn versatile. But, they’re also the ova of another animal and that weirds me out. That and the smell, phew! Anyhoo. I make do for breakfast in America at diners and the like with either a collection of side orders or the homefries or some other starch. Like delicious, sizzling hash browns. Yum. I made my own scramble today that was sort of like homefries but not really? I don’t know what to call it. Home Sweet Potato Scramble Fries? Yeah, let’s go with that.

breakfast
Home Sweet Potato Scramble Fries

This serves one person, ideally enjoying a leisurely rainy morning at home during the holiday vacation:

1 small red onion, chopped
1 medium sweet potato, diced into 1/2 inch cubes
1 green onion cut into sections
1/4 cup quartered mushrooms (I used shiitake)
2 small links sausage, casing removed
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
salt, pepper, dried herbs of your choosing

I recommend having everything chopped up and ready to go - this is a minor stir fry situation.

Heat the oil in a skillet, a cast iron skillet is excellent for this if you are awesome enough to have one, and add the sausage. Stir it around a bit until it’s mostly cooked, then add the sweet potatoes. When they start to soften and get crispy and browned on the outside, toss in the onions and mushrooms. Stir often but not constantly until the onions start to soften, adding a pinch of herbs if you’d like (I used Herbes de Provence) and some S&P. Add the whiter parts of the green onions in the last minute or so of cooking, use the rest for garnish.

My sincere apologies for my lack of eloquence in recipe-writing. It’s really hard and I’m not good at ordering people around. In addition to eggs I hate coffee. Or, I should say, I hated coffee (see, past tense). During finals I got turned onto the stuff and I currently have TWO DIFFERENT KINDS of coffee in my possession.

coffee!
Caffeine

I don’t know coffee and I’m not about be a Blue Bottle snob. I’ve actually tried their coffee and you know what? It tasted like a lot like coffee. Between the two varieties in my kitchen, I think I like the Illy better. I bought the Roma stuff because it had a local address on it and it was cheap but not the cheapest at Safeway. Both contain adequate levels of caffeine. I can’t help but wonder - if I am now able to consume coffee, are eggs next on my list? Stay tuned. This is my birthday month and things are bound to get a little crazy.

Chicken / Food / Pasta / Photography / Recipes — No comments
14
Dec 09

Sweet and spicy rigatoni

Well hi! It’s been a very long time. The Fall Semester 2009 has finally destroyed itself and I finally have time to cook and photograph the foods of my labor. I can’t tell you how excited I was to go to the farmer’s market Sunday morning. Okay, more like Sunday afternoon but I still got some good stuff. In fact, my scallions and mustard greens were discounted to 75 cents each because Ms. $1 herb lady wanted to get rid of them so badly. Anyhoo. For this dish the only thing from said market was the onion, everything else came from Safeway and Bristol Farms, the bougie, ’spensive grocery store under the Westfield mall. Oh, and the sausage came from the little halal meat market on Geary at Jones, next to my all time favorite pizza joint Milan Pizza. I guess the apparent point to be made is that I buy my foodstuffs from all over. All of these ingredients could potentially come from the same place, however.

pasta

Sweet and spicy rigatoni (serves two)

1-2 small link(s) sweet chicken sausage
1 medium onion, chopped into smallish bits
1 clove garlic
1/3 cup spicy/zesty tomato pasta sauce
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
2 cups dry rigatoni
4-5 leaves fresh basil torn into small pieces
1 tablespoon grated Romano cheese
salt & pepper

In a small sauce pan, cook the onion, garlic, and sausage in the olive oil over medium heat until the chicken is cooked through and things start to brown slightly and/or start to leave little brown bits on the bottom of the pan. I was satisfied when it looked like this:

sausage and onion

Add the sauce, stir, lower the heat and continue to stir occasionally. Season with salt and pepper as well as the basil, but make sure to keep some basil around for presentation value later on. Meanwhile, cook your rigatoni. When it’s al dente or otherwise to your liking, drain it and return it to the pan. Pour the sauce over the pasta and mix well. Garnish with the cheese and remaining basil and serve!

While this meal is decidedly Italian in nature, I used a sausage seasoned with Middle Eastern spices. And apples, I think. Part of me thinks that Italian and Middle Eastern food can totally get together and make something delicious. If I pursue this vein of cooking, it would be a somewhat poetic joining of my family history (Italian) and my neighborhood (San Francisco’s Tenderloin district). I can’t think of any Italian-fusion restaurants, only French. And most of those are fused with Asian cuisine. Gee whiz, California. Way to think outside the box.

Photography / Words — No comments
24
Oct 09

Gone Camping

Someone reminded me last night that I have a blog. Who knew? Not me! That was a lie, I totally knew I had a blog. Yeah!

Last week I completed a 9 day camping trip that took place in the Sierra Nevada mountains and Death Valley. It was the coolest 9 days ever and I wish I could be camping all the time! When’s the last time you didn’t wash your hair for that long? We ate (and drank) surprisingly well each night, while lunch often consisted of slimy deli meats and bread heels because I was too polite and let everyone go ahead of me. Beautiful things were seen and photographed, and I have lots of stories and memories to keep me happy for a long time. Which is good because it has been completely depressing to be back in the city and living in my dark, expensive, dirty apartment. Feeling so fed up I completely rearranged and cleaned my room today. Fortunately it feels much more spacious but I can’t do anything about the neighboring building that blocks sunlight for most of the day. Maybe the earthquake will happen and shake it down, leaving my building perfectly intact and sunny.

Returning to the city meant returning to school and responsibilities in the form of midterm papers, exams, and astronomical medical bills despite having insurance. Can someone explain the logic behind a hospital charging an “after hours fee” for a visit to the emergency room? If my emergency occurred between 9 AM and 5 PM I would have certainly gone to a doctor, but it didn’t so I went to the hospital. That’s how they get you. Financial woes aside, I am writing a paper on Naomi Klein’s “No Logo” and studying for an art history exam. Well, obviously I’m not really because I have procrastinated to the point of blogging. Oh, this life.

Some photographs from the trip:

Words — 1 comment
29
Sep 09

Hey, Kids

I’m going to Las Vegas tomorrow! No, not for gamblin’ or collectin’ hooker fliers (although I’ll definitely bring home a few, those are great), I’m going to PSW and it’s going to rule. Well, I hope so. Again I feel a little badly for neglecting le blog here, but school is time consuming. I also had a horrible infection in my gastro-intestinal system. I won’t elaborate, as this blog is supposedly about tasty things. I didn’t cook much besides vegetable broth in those days, anyway. Imagine my excitement two days into the treatment when I was able to eat a banana! Awesome.

My packed lunches have been a bore like me. Salad greens from a bag with carrot sticks and ranch dressing, all courtesy of Trader Joe’s. Once I threw a little tofu in there – it didn’t taste very good. Hopefully I will encounter more exciting foods in Las Vegas this weekend. If I do, you will be one of many to hear about it.

Food / Pasta — 1 comment
09
Sep 09

Soup… ?

Yeah, so, school started last week and I was feeling just a little too busy to update the ol’ blog. But it’s never too late, right? Right.

Truth be told, I abandoned my soup challenge a bit. I have had a bowl of soup every day (although someone told me instant ramen doesn’t count, so if they’re right I am lying to you) but the whole documentary part sort of fell by the wayside. Tragic, I know. Will you ever get enough pictures of bowls of soup? I don’t know, I just don’t know. Woe is you.

Bright side! My schedule this semester includes three days that commence at 9 AM and continue to at least 3:45 PM, and I happen to harbor a certain love for bringing a packed lunch. The restaurants around school (including its own totally weird café) can be a little pricey and none of them are very tasty. So I’ve decided to make a big effort to bring my lunch every day because it will save me money and give me practice being a mom. Speaking of, my mom packed my lunch every day in grade school and I had the coolest pink lunchbox. It was shaped like a briefcase and had its own little pink drink cooler that, now that I think about it, was shaped like a coffin. A coffin for beverages.

So, for this week (shortened thanks to Labor Day) I made pasta. I cooked 1 3/4 cup (dry) of whole wheat penne pasta, sauteed 1/4 of a yellow onion, heated up some Bolognese sauce from Trader Joe’s, and tossed it all together. This made two servings of pasta which I separated into plastic, microwaveable containers. I wanted to label them “Tuesday” and “Wednesday” but thought the other art school kids might make fun of me. I haven’t really put much effort into rounding out my packed lunches, though. A piece of fruit? Little Debbie cakes? Carrot sticks? What do you think? I’d love to hear stories about how your mom or dad or legal guardian packed your lunch, and what were the best and worst surprises.

Food / Photography / Sandwiches / Soup — No comments
27
Aug 09

Soup and Sandwich

I promise I have been eating soup every day, but there hasn’t been much variety. A friend and I tried to make some peanut curry soup the other night, a recipe I found in Mollie Katzen’s The New Enchanted Broccoli Forest. She went to my school, you know. Anyway, it’s a vegetarian cook book and we agreed that the soup could have used some delicious chicken protein. The fried banana topping was probably the best part of the soup, which I have yet to photograph (it’s still sitting in some tupperware in the fridge). Aside from the peanut curry, I’ve been eating mostly ramen with various add-ons, like tofu, cilantro, scallions, Sriracha sauce, and mushrooms to help spice things up. Even without such relish I would still love that ramen, and at $0.39 a pop I can’t really complain.

San Francisco’s Tenderloin borders/engulfs/fades into Little Saigon, home to several banh mi shops, pho houses, and hole-in-the-wall markets. The quality and price of produce varies amongst these stores, but I’m usually looking for weird sauces and noodles. I picked up some tom yum soup paste a few weeks ago and while it’s extremely high in sodium, it really does taste like the stuff you’d get at a Thai restaurant. All the galanga, lemongrass, and whatever else is in there is all condensed into a brick red paste that smells faintly of shrimp (also in there). I added tofu, mushrooms, scallions, and cilantro. Before this challenge is over I plan to attempt to make my own tom yum, but probably not until I run out of ramen.

I also made a grilled cheese sandwich (possibly my next 30 day challenge…)

Food / Photography / Recipes — No comments
20
Aug 09

English Muffin Mini Pizzas

Time is money, and I have a lot of the former. This can be frustrating because in these dwindling days of summer vacation I often have nothing better to do than cook stuff and eat it. I’ll get an idea, spend some dollars on the ingredients, and make it. My spice cupboard is what it is today thanks to these one hit wonders throughout the past two years. But in light of yesterday’s credit card bill I am making an effort to eat all the stuff I already have. This means a lot more pasta and rice. And I mean a lot. I’m allowing myself to get fruits’n'veggies at the farmers’ market however, because I simply can’t eat buttered noodles every day. And I don’t want scurvy.

For lunch today I made pizzas on English muffins. I saw the tomato and basil spaghetti sauce, mozzarella, and fresh basil wasting away in my fridge and thought they might like to get together on dough generally reserved for breakfast. In fact, I had an English muffin this morning. They turned as well as can be expected.

English muffin mini pizzas (serves 2)

2 English muffins (split or cut in half)
1/3 cup grated mozzarella
4 tbsp red sauce
olive oil
fresh basil

First give your muffins a light toasting in the toaster oven. Remove them to your food prep area and turn the toaster oven to broiler mode and set it to 350 degrees. Spread the red sauce onto each half, about a tablespoon each. Sprinkle on the mozzarella and one or two drops of olive oil. You can add other things at this point (I put some onion slivers on one) but make sure they are small enough to get properly cooked. Place your little pizzas back into the toaster oven and let them cook until the cheese bubbles and starts to brown. Garnish with the basil and serve. Aren’t they cute?

Food / Photography / Restaurants / Soup — No comments
19
Aug 09

Not Quite Sick of Soup

No, no .. not yet anyway. I have been eating soup every day but not photographing it. Did you know that soup is really hard to photograph? It reflects light in weird ways, the steam will fog the lens, and the utter roundness of the bowl isn’t very interesting. I had some pho at Pho Tan Hoa the other day and it was delicious as usual. The other three days I consumed Maruchan instant ramen. Sometimes I add tofu, cilantro, Thai basil, and sriracha. No matter how you dress it up, it’s good.

In other news (because let’s face it, you might getting sick of soup) I dined at one of San Francisco’s recent additions to the pizza scene, Flour + Water. None of their pizzas featured meat save for sparsely scattered anchovies (one friend ordered the Pizza Bianca) and the salad menu was lacking in leafy greens. Maybe it was my fault for being in the mood for those things. Or maybe it’s because every pizza restaurant ever has those things and I had reasonable expectations, even from a menu that changes daily. So, anyway, pasta = back-up plan. All of their pastas are made fresh daily (yeah!) and mine was really good (I had the green something with pork cheek). The fried peppers were good albeit oily, and while I don’t care for sardines the presentation was nice. So yes, I enjoyed my pasta and our appetizer, but let’s get to my biggest gripe: the wine. Or rather, the wine glasses. Flour + Water probably had a decent list (I know next to nothing about Italian wines) but I really like my red wine served in a glass made for red wine. It’s unpleasant to try and stick your nose into a white wine glass and if I am going to shell out $12.50 for a drink I best be able to inhale its oaky nuances pain-free.

Food / Photography / Soup — No comments
15
Aug 09

Cream of Tomato

Yesterday I made cream of tomato soup based on a recipe in the aforementioned book “Soup” by Anne-Catherine Bley with photographs by Akiki Ida (please check out that website - you won’t regret it). I bought this book at Anthropologie sometime last year and never used it because I bought it at Anthropologie. I mean, they sell a lot of things dedicated to looking adorably feminine and “vintage” so I demoted my new cookbook to coffee table status and left it at that. My decision was validated later when I once tried the recipe for French lentil soup and it came out looking like purée of mud. Now that I no longer have a coffee table in my new apartment, “Soup” resurfaced and looked pretty good in the light of this challenge.

Here’s to fresh starts: the very first recipe in the book is for cream of tomato soup. I have no idea if I am allowed to replicate Bley’s recipe sans permission, but this blog isn’t really about recipes anyway. It’s about what I eat. The recipe calls for 2lbs of very ripe tomatoes or 28oz/796mL of canned tomatoes. I bought the canned stuff and my soup tasted an awful lot like canned tomatoes. Ashamed of my mistake, I braved the crowds of the Ferry Plaza farmers’ market this morning and bought 3lbs of real “#2″ tomatoes for $1.50. Those are for tomorrow, let’s get back to yesterday and today.

I bought all this bacon earlier this week and, lo and behold, bacon is something Bley suggests you add to your cream of tomato soup. She recommends spiking it with Marsala but I decided against this and added mozzarella instead. Melted mozzarella in your tomato soup is, in a word, bomb.

04 Cream of tomato soup with bacon and mozzarella

The amount of cream of tomato I created yesterday was good for three bowls. So today I again used the mozz and some fresh Italian basil (also purchased at the Ferry Plaza farmers’ market for $2.00) for a delicious lunch. I was delighted to discover that the soup lost most of its canned flavor overnight. I really hope this means my refrigerator is magic.

05Cream of tomato soup with mozzarella and fresh basil

à la poêlefood & photography

Hometown-cooked meals

Closer to breakfast

Sweet and spicy rigatoni

Gone Camping

Hey, Kids

Soup… ?

Soup and Sandwich

English Muffin Mini Pizzas

Not Quite Sick of Soup

Cream of Tomato

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