The secret of the universe

As it turns out, it's cottage cheese pancakes. The 1959 edition of the 1896 Fannie Farmer Cooking School Cookbook explains all that weird stuff called "life" on page 290.

Don't be fooled by the foxy look of my book's cover, left; be convinced by the ingredient-encrusted page of my book, shown below.

Don't plan to make them if you can't serve them hot, immediately as they are made, i.e.if you have too many people or for some other reason can't be in production mode.

Nothing is better (You'll hear me say that about a few things, but not too many).

Put in a bowl:
I cup cottage cheese
3 beaten eggs
2 tbs butter
1/4 cup flour, sifted   <--  Not 3/4 cups as I mistakenly told a superfriend!
1/4 tsp salt

Beat only until blended.  Cook by tablespoons on a hot griddle. Spread with tart jam or drizzle with real Vermont maple syrup. Serve. Makes 12.

I made a little bit of that up. The actual printed recipe doesn't specify my home-state syrup (instead saying you can serve them with jam rolled up and sprinkled with confectioner's sugar) and tells you to serve them as dessert. I prefer a tangy, eggy, best-ever breakfast treat. The tang of the cottage cheese with the syrup is the secret of the universe.

Gifts from abroad!

Arriving in San Francisco just in time for middle school in the heart of Chinatown — such an impressionable age — greatly shaped many of my tastes and ideas about "Things Chinese."

My brother began studying with T'ai Chi master Simmon Kuo at 11, and I followed in his footsteps with more lackadaisical flair several years later, for a bit. The pleasure of the studio on Portsmouth Square was deep, and Mrs. Kuo's brutal, funny, and loving criticism was equally deep.

I discovered palmiers (by a different name) in Chinatown, and they became a lifelong love. Whenever there was a dollar or two, there was a need to brush flaky, buttery crumbs from the front of my school uniform before entering the building.

Then there were the vitrines with snakes and whatnot in clear urns filled with formaldehyde — thrilling, mysterious, repulsive. And strange medicinal herbs and practices. When I visit SF I love them still, and they are marginally dustier 10-20 years later!

Big family lunches, birthday dinners, Christmas celebrations at a venerable restaurant that made the Chinese Chicken Salad that has made me very underwhelmed by most suchlike since.

Those are the upsides of living cheek-by-jowl with a vibrant tourist-dependent and by-now-indigenous Chinese community in one's formative years. The downside is that because much of the retail in San Francsico's famous Chinatown is aimed at tourists or offered at prices anyone can afford, many of the goods on display are frighteningly cheap in both senses of the word. So I guess I grew a bit of a sense of Euro superiority when it comes to manufacture and marketing/design quality, a sad vestige I have been trying to stamp out since. I mean, really, Apple: "Designed in Cupertino, California, Made in China"? What do you mean by that..."Not really MADE in China?"

Imagine my delight when my dad and his [second] family returned from Taiwan bearing a food gift of gorgeously rigorous little pastry blocks filled with pineapple. The website was as design-forward as the product and its packaging, but developed in such a way that Google did not offer to translate it for me into English :-(. I learned from my dad's wife that Taiwan is a nexus of design-centric operations. I love that! Inspired? Explore sunnyhills.com.tw.

Tiramisù

I hear this dessert's name is loosely translated from Italian as "Pick Me Up." Cool.

I have loved making it since working at Café Esprit in San Francisco, in the 80s, when visionaries transformed an old industrial garage into a hip dining spot on the grounds of the Esprit de Corps Outlet in the crumbling, transitional, very accessible Mission Bay neighborhood.

The menu was so simple and modern, even for today: 4 salads (Cobb, Niçoise, Caesar, and 1 other classic), 4 pizzas (Margherita and 3 other classics), some other like-minded stuff, a soda fountain serving egg cremes and other exotica with authenticity, an espresso bar par excellence, and yummmy wines.

I was on tiramisù duty, and loved layering the mascarpone, espresso, marsala, and ladyfingers (Savoiardi). We didn't trifle (pun alert) with the zabaglione, or whipped cream...why bother. I still kind of agree....it's not strictly necessary or worth the time and effort when you can make a stunning (Ramsay-speak) tiramisu without it.

HOWEVER! I made tiramisù today and leapt through all the hoops.

A lot of people today (marion Gordaon, etc) like to make individual tiramisùs, but I am a fan of the trough. Scoop and enjoy. Or slice and enjoy.

Here's the super-brief photo diary:

Zabag + whipped cream

Marsala and espresso-soaked ladygingers in layers between layers of the above

The yield: 2 beautiful, refrigerated tiramisùs, one for us to eat with family members returning from a jaunt to Asia (stomach trouble ahead) and one to send with friends to a party we can't attend due to relative influx.

Field Trip to Salumi!

A rare opportunity brought me to the hallowed doors of the Salumi storefront in Pioneer Square, Seattle.

I offer step-by-step instructions for the to-go version of a trip to Salumi:

1. Arrive a hair before 11 to wait in line for the opening. The Picky Lunch motto is, after all, "Tasty lunch is always at 11:00"
2. Ogle the curing cavern as you wait to place your order, and entertain some fond memories of Izzy and her window-side gnocchi-making.
3. Buy a salami with your lunch, stuff it in your purse or manbag.
4. Take a picture of your glorious sandwich featuring, perhaps, daily-made house fresh mozzarella and exquisite mole salami. (or not! The place has plenty for vegetarians to love as well.)

   

If you were going to stay and eat in, I'd add this step:

• Pay for a couple of tumblers of wine, as there are bottles on the cheek-by-jowl communal table, and it is a pleasure to empty a couple as you dine. Or, buy a single glass, and if you end up enjoying more, just pay for any overage as you leave!

This isn't an eat-in step, but it's something I did one time and am glad I did:

A couple of guys across from me had ordered a cold tomato soup that I had been interested in but hadn't ordered. As they got up to leave, I asked if I could taste the dregs. Yum.

Summer veg in Western WA

August 10, and finally the first "real" vegetable delivery from the farm comes in...so welcome, so overdue, so WA. Chard, Kale, small tomatoes, green beans, lettuces, and a few herbs to die for.

     

And on August 9th I met up with a friend new to gardening for some downtown happy hour drinks/snacks, and what utterly sweet giftu did she unexpectedly provide? A lovely lemon cucumber, a summer squash, and a neat little packet of basil all from her home plot. Yum, and thanks.

Wish I'd photographed them too before devouring.

Fancy & Interesting

Fourme d'Ambert cheese with melon terrine ~ Courtesy of Ideas in Food via Twitter. Sometimes it pays to fire up the ol' Tweetdeck.

Uncommon food

It's quite rare we go out...financial constraints join the fact that a lot of dinner food to be had out there is simply not so great, compared to the home thing.

However, there's a gem of a local restaurant we love and we decided to grab a bite on, of all things, a work night.

Here's what Hitchcock served up. To start with, the perfect summer menu and and some pastis (Pernod and water to make drinks from).

         

Then we raged through small plates, all based on the kind of summer we're having in Seattle (Sorry, Texas, Missouri, East Coast, et al.), which means, shortest growing season ever for sunloving things!

These are local oysters dressed lightly with the likes of olive oil, hyssop, pickled watermelon (grown on Bainbridge Island, not sure how you do that!), etc.

And OMG the tempura- fried smelt! Delish whole small fish served hot and light over fried fingerling potato slices...fish 'n' chips? Yes.

Also: watermelon and cheese salad and the pickled turnip with bagna cauda dressing.

Bun!

Picky Lunch went for Vietnamese takeout today, little knowing there was a pan-office plan to dine together. The day was all meetings, so it was just as well I grabbed lunch on my own before I heard about the plan. Plus, I had to leave early to avoid the predictable SeaFair traffic melée.

I went to a place I hadn't tried before, Pho Tai. I thought it was a little pricey for the strip-mall location, but look what wonders I got for $7.50!

Urbanspoon reviews of the place are pretty bad, and it wasn't the pinnacle, but it was a hearty and happy lunch with nice sparkly veg & cilantro alongside the "variety-pack" of meats and noodle base.

Welcome email

It's rare that a business sends you email (whether you subscribe or not) that you actually welcome. I love the email I get from Big John''s PFI (Pacific Food Importers).

It's a great offbeat — and off-the-beaten-track — location in Seattle to buy bulk olives and whatever kind of edible wonders you may or may not be looking for. For instance, they carry my favorite packaged pasta, Rusticella d'Abruzzo (brand) Croixetti (shape) pasta I crave and can no longer get at my local grocery, as well as surprise finds I cannot resist.

As a visual designer, I cannot say I love everything about the email. It is intensely hard on the eyes. And I am utterly amazed that somehow they manage to send their email as an embedded image rather than HTML or text. Wow.

But, it's kinda cute in a "Que?" kind of way, and it makes it way easier to share here, and it's worth your and my read (Click to see larger:)

A perfect bite

A slice of Italian sausage and an equal slice of jalapeno. Umami meets its counterpoint.

No, that knife handle was not always bare wood. I don't remember what it used to be actually, after so long.

N

Office drinks brought to you by Facebook

It all started with a Facebook post by my former boss.

I shared it with a co-worker who had long been daydreaming about instituting "tea time" in our design group's office. A concept stolen from our previous stint on a design team at Microsoft. You know, certain Thursday afternoons after 4...

So, starting Friday, tea time it is at the office. Cute story, but that's just part of it. 

Thanks to the power of Facebook to create truly strange happenstances, my mother is now ordering Armenian brandy online and having a geography-independent tasting with my former boss who — if I recall correctly — she's never met.

One of the much-touted attributes of Google+ is that your mother is not there yet, and I love me some Google+, but I don't want to live in a world where this doesn't happen:

Ad-hoc, defining summer dinner

Look who's having me over for dinner! A dear friend is a longtime favorite urban caterer and going to her house for a casual, stolen bite is always a revelation.

First off, I got to see the innovative table design her amazingly creative team is putting out. I want these terrarium balls on my table every day. Fat chance, but hey.

And then we had clams she quick-steamed with not so much butter, which turns out to be not a bad thing. Not at all, they had their own true flavor. Followed by an amazing shared plate of shrimp, quinoa, and diced veg that had sparkle and panache. An incidentally homey lean meal that had all the jollies. Mmmmm.

This, along with unrepresentatively (this year) sunny summer weather, all the backdrop to great conversation, some work ;-) and some great wine I don't remember from Garagiste. Heaven.

Invite me over again!