charlotteann

I love this stuff. I know I’ve said it before several times on this blog and certainly in person. I don’t think people think of me as being a fiend for ramen as much as they think of me as a nut for pizza or Chinese food, but my appetite for this stuff is becoming insatiable. So insatiable I am willing to risk indigestion by putting %80 of a bowl of ramen for dinner on top of a large, late lunch. Whether its gluttony or hedonism, I enjoy ramen at restaurants and in the comfort of my own apartment at least twice a week. And last week a friend and I finally had our second ramen dinner together at Norikonoko in Berkeley, CA.

A fellow ramen f(r)iend

I had brought this friend to my personal favorite, Tanpopo in San Francisco’s Japantown, where we enjoyed two enormous bowls of awesome before he suggested we try his favorite spot. After our dining experience at Norikonoko it looks as though we’ll be trying to one-up each other, a challenge for which I am more than excited (and think I am winning already, hah!). Norikonoko is a very cozy restaurant with a sliding door and maybe ten tables. It’s a bit beyond the hubbub of that mess of retail stores and coffee shops that exist for UC Berkeley students on Telegraph avenue inside of a dark wood grotto of restaurants and shops. Although ramen isn’t exactly a main feature on the menu (I’d say the robata dinners had that spot), there were four options available. In my experience, the fewer options you have for a particular dish the better: the restaurant isn’t trying to please everyone and (hopefully) as a result prepares those few variations very well.

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Hey gang. Times are tough and I know you’re sick of hearing about it. But there are relatively healthy solutions out there for those of us enjoying funemployment and/or trying to make it as an artist. Even if they aren’t very healthy you can at least feel comforted by them. Take for example the humble yet satisfying grilled cheese sandwich.

Grilled cheese sandwich with swiss and goat cheese

The grilled cheese is not only really easy to make, but you can also put whatever is in your fridge cheese-wise on it and it will all melt together in harmony. Some people like to put green things in their grilled cheese sandwiches (I did last May) but I am finding myself less inclined to do so. I think this is because I am actually using my salad spinner and eating actual salad! I hope my mom is reading this…

Just cheese

Then of course we have noodle soup. As much as I love it, instant ramen takes a toll on your system. I know I shouldn’t use the spice packet, but I do and love every salty, chemical-ridden bit of it. So as I as trying to pick out the least horrible of the instants today at the store, I noticed some fresh noodles in the refrigerated section.

Cheap noodles!

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Well, hello! It’s been awhile. You know why? I do. I had school. It seems that I have difficulty blogging during classes. I recently completed a two week long intensive summer course called “Art On Paper.” I made some nifty illustrations inspired by/drawn from old photographs of mine. Click here to check ‘em out.

But now that that’s over, I have time to cook again! Or at least cook something other than instant ramen. And by “something other” I mean “instant pho.” Happy Pho*!

I know what you’re thinking: no way that could be good. Vegan pho? It’s an oxymoron, I thought, as I tossed the $4 box of instant noodle soup into my shopping basket at Whole Foods. I also thought it would be great to blog about, so here we are.

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I love char siu (aka Chinese BBQ). It’s cheap because I live near Chinatown and it tastes like pork candy. If I don’t nibble my way through the 1/2 lb (~$3.00) I typically buy every other week or so, I’ll use it in fried rice (see previous post) or soup. So today I bring you a little photo montage of this soup-making process.

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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…)

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.

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

The soup challenge continues! As promised (?) I have consumed a bowl of soup every day since August 12th, 2009 and I am so far still a big fan of soup. Let’s hope my enthusiasm does not wane with the moon. Or whatever. I purchased five different kinds of Koyo brand instant noodles at the SOMA Whole Foods Market the other day. They will not only be my soup for one sixth of this challenge, but also fodder for a blog entry later on comparing all the flavors, not to mention a discussion of instant ramens in their glorious entirety. But until that day comes, I must write of other things… Like my new iPhone! It’s sleek and buttonless and just plain awesome. Somewhat inspired by Greg’s tumblr I started my very own tumblr for daily, iPhone camera photos of the stuff I eat when I’m out there, doin’ my thing.

My last two bowls of soup (both vegetarian) were okay but, like these photographs, rather boring. That book acting as placemat (Anne-Catherin Bley’s “Soup”) has a recipe for cream of tomato soup with bacon. Cream of tomato soup is hardly rocket science, but I just bought some bacon and feel like I should try and cook something more challenging and wholesome than instant ramen.

02 Koyo brand instant ramen noodles (lemongrass and ginger flavor).

03 Udon noodles with tofu and cilantro in miso broth.

I am a big fan of soup. Growing up, Campbell’s chicken noodle was frequently requested of my mom and baby sitters. I remember the day I was educated and curious enough to examine the label and found myself feeling incredibly indignant, borderline outraged. How was it that a soup marketed as a cure for the common cold (or for slurping princesses or as being full of wholesome “stuff”) had such a high sodium content? I was all like, “Hey ma, isn’t sodium the same thing as salt?”

“Yeah.”

“And doesn’t that dry you out? Like … anti-water?”

“Hmm-mm.”

“THEN WHY ARE YOU FEEDING ME THIS!? I’m sick! I’m supposed to drink water, not SALT!”

Whatever her response, I know what mine would have been faced with such an incredulous, sniffly daughter: “That’s not the point, honey. The point is you feel better.” Right you are, mom! Soup caters to lots of grown up problems, too, like hangovers and breakups. I go for pho and tomato, respectively. Born a chicken noodle kind of girl, my arrival in the Bay Area nearly two years ago brought me around to different kinds of soup. Wonton, ramen, pho, udon, and a ridiculous variety of dried noodles with spice packets wrapped in vivid packaging all appeal to my senses and emotions. You probably noticed (you astute reader, you) that I mentioned soups with roots in the continent known as Asia - probably because I am slurping princess! I don’t have a problem per se with Western soups, but I prefer the clear-broth-with-noodles-and-sliced-ingredients thing to chunks-of-vegetables-and-meat-in-watery-paste thing.

So this month I am going to eat a bowl of soup every day. Two months ago I was looking for the best galette in San Francisco. I love galettes and all but I think I was setting myself up for disappointment. I love soup, too, and it’s definitely something I enjoy almost every day anyway so this month should be much more exciting. The soup pictured above as Soup No. 1 is Top Ramen "Oriental" flavor with chicken, mushrooms, and cilantro, accompanied by hot tea and sriracha hot sauce. It was good, but Top Ramen spice packets aren’t quite as punchy as other brands. I assume this is because a lot of white people eat Top Ramen, most notably my little sister who shunned my chicken noodle but was clearly on to something.

It’s been awhile since my last entry because I was in Boston. I went to Cape Cod, too, but that’s for later. As very few of you probably know, I have never lived anywhere for longer than a year or so (not including my hometown of Billings, Montana). My current residency in the Bay Area will have endured two years this September and I am not quite sure I want to call it home. The truth is I have no idea where I want to end up. New York is too big, San Francisco has a boring climate, states in the mountain time zone are pretty but rural, and Europe is too far away. You can probably see where this is going: I really, really liked Boston. They have a Chinatown, beautiful brick buildings, mass transit, and no shortage of young, straight men. I also miss snow and my family - two things much more likely to visit Boston than San Francisco. This decision has at least a year and half to figure itself out however, so let’s talk about what I ate this weekend.

Pho at Le’s Restaurant in Allston


I went with yelpers on this one. That it was 2 blocks from my friend’s apartment went into consideration as well. Allston seems like a relatively cool neighborhood, although I have only visited twice and I have a very soft spot for Asian restaurants and supermarkets. It reminded me a little of Washington Heights in New York but with smaller buildings and a highway.
The pho was quite tasty and considerably “cleaner” than my go-to spot in San Francisco. The beef was plentiful and lean, but everything was cooked by the time it reached the table. My friend chose a vermicelli dish with impeccably fried imperial rolls. Her veggies were crispy and accompanied by tasty sauce. She mentioned several times after we finished busting our guts that she would be returning. If I lived in Allston I would, too.

Pizza at Pizzeria Regina in Boston’s North End

If I did move to Boston, I would try my hardest to live in the North End. Potentially weak nightlife and difficult parking aside, it’s beautiful and home to Italian stuff, like pizza. Ah, pizza, my one and only love …
Pizzeria Regina is quite popular. I selected it based on an article on Serious Eats from last year. There was a serious line outside when we arrived (around 1 PM on a sunny Sunday) and we waited around a half hour for a table. They serve pizza exclusively which is totally fine with me. We ordered the Capricciosa (prosciutto, mushrooms, ricotta, parmesa, mozzarella, and fresh basil) and our own concoction that wasn’t very good. Theirs was delicious with the crust and the ricotta-to-parmesan-to-mozzarella ratio as notable wins. The decor and paper plates make for an excellent time warp to the 90’s, so if I end up in the North End I’ll definitely be back with a better camera.

I ate some other things, too, but it’s time to stop blogging. I maxed out a memory card between Boston and Cape Cod and there are plenty of stories to be told. Stay tuned!