This morning we had another library sale, and as usual I bought a bunch of cookbooks. Cookbooks that I have nowhere to put in my house (what a convoluted sentence). Here they are:

Coastal Carolina Cooking - by Nancy Davis & Kathy Hart
The Cooking of Japan [Foods of the World Series]
The Frugal Gourmet Cooks with Wine - by Jeff Smith
Monet's Table: The Cooking Journals of Claude Monet - by Claire Joyes
Natural cooking the finish way - by Ulla Käkönen
Savor the Flavor of Oregon - by Junior League of Eugene
Tapas: The Little Dishes of Spain - by Penelope Casas, 1987

I just came back from the Sausages & Suds festival, San Leandro's version of Oktoberfest. For some reason I decided that a bbq tri-tip sandwich sounded better than a hot dog or sausage - so I stood in line for 15' at Moe's BBQ on Wheels for such a sandwich. What a waste of time! The meat seemed boiled rather than grilled, the sauce tasted commercial and the whole thing was too salty. To make it worse, I think that this is where I ate last year! Oh, where has my memory gone?

In any case, now I know not to eat there next year :-)

San Leandro Restaurant Reviews

I made Cabernet-Braised Short Ribs with Dried Apricots today, from a Sunset magazine recipe at MyRecipes.com. It was delicious. It was incredibly easy to make, requiring only the chopping of one onion and a few cloves of garlic (no carrots or celery, thanks god, I'm quite tired of short ribs braised with carrots & celery). The apricots melted into the sauce, making it a bit too sweet (next time I'll reduce the apricots by a third), but delicious nonetheless.

Well worth trying - specially now that short ribs tend to be on sale every couple of weeks.

My favorite recipes

Mike wasn't too excited Friday when I suggested that we go to Luke's Grill for lunch. Though we hadn't been there in years (thus my reason for wanting to return), he didn't have particularly good memories of it. Still I convinced him, and we ended up with an OK meal.

Mike had the chicken gyros, which he said were pretty good. I didn't try them, so I can't comment. I had the beefteki, which now comes in a pita bread with lettuce, tomato and feta cheese. The beefteki itself is a large, oblong piece of herbed burger. I thought it was OK, but nothing beyond that. The whole composition was too salty - largely the fault of the cheese - and the beef was too dry. I didn't really enjoy it much.

Both dishes came with fries, which were just average.

In all, I won't be rushing back to Luke's Grill, but I may give it a try again in a couple of years.

Luke's Grill Restaurant
1509 East 14th St.
San Leandro
510-614-1010

Original Review

San Leandro Restaurant Reviews

I got this Argentine wine at Trader Joe's a few weeks ago. Being Argentinian, I'm always in the look for promising & cheap wines from my country. This wine is one of those perfectly drinkable, not challenging and yet not empty wines that occupy the middle of the road of the wine world. It's a perfectly fine dinner wine, but not one you'd sip for pleasure alone.

It has a medium body and very light tanins. Flavors of dark cherries and blackberries, a dry fruitiness. It has a smooth finish and very light pepper.

How the hell do you open a coconut? I bought a peeled coconut today at an Asian market, thinking that it'd be easier to open as it didn't have the skin. Lord, was I wrong. It was too hard to cut through (I don't want to think about the damage I've done to my newish knives!). I ended up hitting it with a hammer, but could only make a smallish whole. Well, it was large enough to get my hand through it - and then I discovered that the sides were very soft! I guess it was a young coconut, but definitely they were not shredding material. I had nothing else, so I used them anyway. Let's see how dinner (coconut pork) turns out.

I felt like baking yesterday, but I didn't have many ingredients around, so I tried this recipe for peanut butter cookies. It couldn't be any easier, and it was quite good. Really, the recipe just calls for peanut butter & sugar, so that's all what you are tasting, but lord, is that good! The original recipe said it'd made /70/ cookies - I got 18 out of it. With the modifications I made, this is the recipe:

• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 cup natural peanut butter
• 3 Tbsp. flour
• 1 tsp. baking soda

Preheat oven to 350F

Grease two cookie sheets

In the bowl of a mixer, lightly beat the egg. Add the sugars and mix well. Add the peanut butter and mix well. Add the flour and (yes) mix well. Add the baking soda and once again mix well.

Roll small balls of dough in your hands, place onto the cookie sheets and flatten with a fork, making a criss-cross pattern.

Bake for about 7 minutes.

In the last few weeks I've been cooking ethnic food on a semi-daily basis. I would like to get through the C's by early next year, which means I need to hurry. The latest menus are:

Cantabrian (a region of Spain)
Chihuahuan (a region of Mexico)
Cowboy

Chicken with lemongrass sauce from epicurious. Mike liked it, I thought it was OK but I couldn't really get the lemongrass in very small chunks, even though I have a good food processor. And the little lemongrass stalks were pretty unpleasant to chew. I wouldn't make it again.

I made this roast chicken w/ rosemary orange butter recipe last night. Perhaps it would have been good with the sauce, but the vegetables burnt (my fault, I forgot to stir them), so I couldn't make it. Without the sauce the chicken was pretty tasteless. My regular rotisserie chicken is better.

As usual, I'm just recording this so if I come across the recipes again, I will know not to make them.