Marga's Foodblog

And you thought my blog obsession was over (at last count I have ten active blogs). Alas, it's not. My need to divide and subdivide, categorize and subcategorize is such that this blog obsession will only be over when MT (movable type, the company that creates the bloggins software) or someone else comes up with software that allow for subcategories. Now, wouldn't that be great? I could consolidate all blogs into two or three (one business, one personal, maybe one Spanish). Until then, more blogs it is.

And this one is on food. If you read my regular blog you know that I write a lot about food. Food is both a necessity and a hobby. As it's something that must be consumed daily, it's easy to obsess about it. As it's something that must be consumed daily, it's easily to de-obsessed. After all, it'll always be here.

With a new blog, I'll be able to categorize better. Recipes separate from restaurant reviews separate from restaurant reviews. Of course, it would be still better if I could subcategorize here as well, but c'est la vie. I'll keep dreaming.

So come on in, read my blog and tell me what you think.

My website and this blog have changed url's! From now on, you'll be able to find this blog at http://www.marga.org/food/blog/ and all my food pages at http://www.marga.org/food/ The old url's will be automatically redirected.

I haven't posted anything to this blog, or my other one, because I've been gone for the last week. Mike and I went down to Southern California, left Mika with my parents and took a 4-day cruise. It was relaxing and the food decent, though not actually good :) I hope to write more about the cruise and the food I've had lately, we'll see if I can manage the time.

Anyway, I just posted two reviews of San Leandro restaurants that I wrote before I left.

The Blue Dish is a small deli-like restaurant serving light American, Middle Eastern and Mexican menus. We tried the Middle Eastern stuff (prepared by a Latino cook) and our experience was mixed: Mike like his salad while I felt my shawerma was overwhelmed by the tahini sauce.

The Sandwitchery is, as it name suggests, a sandwich joint. They offer a large variety of sandwiches which are better, and more expensive, than those at the chains (there is a Subway and a Quiznos nearby) but otherwise not remarkable.

On a final note, I've heard that Cafe Zula closed. I'm not surprised given its out-of-the-way location and a menu that did not justify its prices. Unfortunately it isn't going to be replaced by another (better) restaurant, Trader Sports has expanded into that space.

Do you, anonymous visitor to my site, have a foodblog or a food website you'd like me to link to? If so e-mail me (marga@lacabe.com) your url or post it in the comments area.

Hope I hear from you!

I had a salad from lunch. Just a garden salad from Safeway with some blue cheese topping. It's the third salad I have in less than a week. No salads for 35 years, and then 3.

It's interesting how our bodies can sometimes take over. I guess mine needs salad.

A friend of mine sent this glossary of foods, and I figured it may be useful to keep it here for future reference.

I got peaches & plums at the farmers' market last Saturday. So sweet & delicious. Unfortunately I got too much fruit and some of it seems to have attracted fruit flies.

Grapes are finally in season and I'm still amazed at how sweet they can be. Delicious, for sure. And of course, he didn't buy enough :(

I really have a bone to pick with GraceAnn Walden, who writes the Inside Scoop for the San Francisco Chronicle. In this week's column she writes about how Zagat's ratings may be compromised by online voting. Her evidence for it? The results. She just cannot understand how a restaurant such as Zuni's Cafe or Masa's, who are given top ranking for food, are not in the top 10 for popularity and how Zachary's Pizza is. I don't read her column often enough to know if she's just a food snob, a pizza hater or one of those few people in the world who do not like Zachary's (yes, they exist, there are even a couple of those among my friends), but she only had to talk to a few of Zachary's fans to understand the "mystery".

Yes, Masa's and Zuni's have great food (well, I haven't been to Zuni's, but I've cooked from its cookbook and the food was great) but so does Zachary's. And while you may go to Masa's once in a blue moon, you can visit Zachary's much more often. Indeed, while I don't often think of Zachary's as my favorite restaurant - I can honestly say that I can't think of a restaurant that I would miss more if it was to close than Zachary's.

I know I'm not alone on this. People keep voting Zachary's as their favorite pizza joint year after year. Their pizza is unlike any other, the stuffed pizza is more like a cheese pie than any other pizza I've ever eaten, and for devotees, like us, there is nothing better. Indeed, I'm amazed that Zachary's hasn't made it higher in the popularity list - I can only imagine this is because many of those surveyed are people from other parts of the Bay Area who haven't had the pleasure of trying it.

A larger issue with the article is the whole attitude that Zagat's guide somehow isn't good enough because it rests on people's impressions of a restaurant rather than critic's opinions. The arguments made are, in themselves, valid. There is the possibility for ballot stuffing, you can create different accounts and rate a restaurant you haven't gone to or as a restauranteur you can ask your customers to go and vote for you. But neither is very convincing. While it's possibly to change the vote, why would anyone bother? The potential for backlash is unlikely to be worth it for a restauranteur, specially the ones that are so succesful as to get to the top of the list. Indeed, the largest evidence that this is not happening is that the top-10 restaurants that she mentions are indeed very popular restaurants, which receive great write ups not just on Zagat but at other restaurant review websites and at discussion fora in general. At least that's the case for Bay Area restaurants. Obviously Ms. Walden doesn't think the opinion of anyone but herself matters, and she didn't bother to check what people are saying about these places.

Her attitude is more clearly conveyed in parragraphs such as the following:

"When a two- star restaurant that is "good" beats out places rated by professional critics as "excellent" or "extraordinary," you can hear restaurateurs scream from coast to coast."

But who decides what a two-star restaurant is? Michael Bauer? Why must he and other critics be the sole arbiters of what's good? In my own ratings I gave Zachary's an Excellent and Masa's (under prior management) a Very Good. Why? Because you have to rate a restaurant against itself (what it wants to accomplish) and others of the kind. There is no better pizza in the bay area than Zachary's. There are better restaurants than Masa's (the French Laundry being the clear case).

Her contempt for the dining public is most apparent when she says "If the Zagat results are truly vox populi, then perhaps in the future, the top restaurants on Zagat's popularity list will be McDonald's, Burger King and Wendy's." It's not that she's necessarily wrong, if you look at the ratings in dine.com, a non-foodie oriented restaurant review website, you'll find that in some communities the top-spots in the ratings are achieved by fast-food joints. Indeed, in San Leandro Nation's, the burger chain which I've rated as Very Good, has achieved top honors. But Ms. Walden fails to understand that this merely reflects the quality of other restaurants in the area and, as I mentioned, the fact that restaurants must be judged vis a vis their peers and themselves. As burgers go, Nation's are great, in San Leandro there is no better place for burgers. And it's cheap, which makes it much easier to forgive its faults. Horatio's, the steakhouse which got the second highest honors, is also quite good - but given its prices you can fairly expect better. This issue of value has probably never occurred to Ms. Walden as she doesn't pay for her own meals - and apparently doesn't talk to anyone who does - but it's certainly in the mind of all of us who need to decide where to spend our dining dollars.

All this said, I neither like nor use Zagat's. For one, it's a paid website and I don't feel any need to pay for information I can find for free elsewhere, and for two, I'm much less interested in ratings than in actual reviews and Zagat's reviews are always too brief to be of much value. There are many better review websites out there. You can find links to many of these here.

Why, why, why, do soooo many restaurants in the Bay Area serve San Pellegrino as their only choice in bubbly water. San Pellegrino is sooo salty that I can only drink it when I'm otherwise dying of thirst. It's my friend Lola's favorite, so I buy it from time to time, but I'd never order it myself. Would it kill restaurants to offer both a highly mineralized water and a low mineral water? Or just some plain soda water, please!

It's Xmas already and I've gotten several food gifts:

-Prashad, Cooking with the Indian Masters - a cookbook by J Indor Singh Kalra (from Mike)
-The Best Ever Indian Cookbook (from David & Dana)

-White and black truffle oil, directy from Italy (from Mike)
-A bottle of fresh olive oil from the Marin's farmers market (from Lotty)
-A garlic oil & vinegar set (from David & Dana)
-A huge bottle of cheap balsamic vinegar (from Mike)

-Soup plates (from Lola & Iggy)
-A whole silverware set (from Kathy)

-Aprons (from my Mom and Lola & Iggy)
-Potholder (from my mom)
-Dish towels (from my mom)

-A gift certificate to Bay Wolf!!!!! (from Regina & Boris)

Last Sunday it was Camila's Welcome ceremony. I was going to make empanadas, but the store where I usually buy he shells was out of shells for baking, they only had the frying kind. My mom thought I should try them nonetheless but I figured it was easier to change the menu.

I decided to go with a Maghrebi theme and cook a couple of past favorites. The piece the resistance was a Chicken Tagine with honey and apricots. This was one of the first dishes I learned to cook, soon after I got married, and for many years was one of my staples at dinner parties. I've been on the cooking by the alphabet kick for several years now, so I hadn't made it in a long time, and I knew it'd be a hit. It was, though I overcooked it a little and the chicken was a tad dry. But the sauce is to die for!
I doubled the recipe, but used only 1 1/2 times the butter it calls for.

I also made an Algerian soup, from which I ommitted the chicken so it'd be vegetarian. It was a much less popular choice.

I also served bread, pita bread & crackers with hummus, brie, pate and salame and for dessert we had ice cream cake from Baskin Robins.

Why, or so why, are leeks soooo expensive? $3.60 a pound, which means only 2 leeks! It's really absurd for things that are little less than glorified onions.

In Argentina, where I grew up, tea time is an honored tradition carried out by grandmothers and elderly aunts everywhere. Families with children usually have a merienda, a meal that consists of a hot drink (tea, a latte, chocolate milk, hot chocolate, mate cocido) with cookies, toast or pastries, perhaps relegating tea time for weekends or for when they have guests. But practically everyone has a tea pot and a nice set of tea china waiting to be used.

When I was growing up, I had tea time at my grandmother's house twice a week or so, when I visited her. By necessity it was at a little after 5, when I got off school, though the more usual time for tea was 4 PM. Everyday tea, served in a regular pot, was served, like a merienda, with cookies and toast or scones with butter and jam. On special occasions, most commonly when we had guests, special pastries (masas finas) and delicate sandwiches (sánguches de miga) would be bought and enjoyed by all. During our last visit to Argentina, where we enjoyed tea time at the house of many relatives and friends, we literally overdosed on these - variety is not the spice of life in Argentina.

When we came to the US we continued celebrating this tradition at home but I had to drop it after I got married. It just doesn't work well with an American adult lifestyle. Mike doesn't get home from work at least until 6 PM, a time more conductive to dinner than tea. He's not a huge fan of tea either. When my little girls are a little bit older - say 5 and 7 - I may re-establish this tradition, but for now I sip my tea alone, from a tea bag (gasp!), and in the morning.

But I still like the idea of tea and on a couple of occasions I've convinced friends to join me at one of the British-inspired tea houses in the Bay Area. There are more than you think. Some of the nicest tea-rooms are, as you might expect, in San Francisco, and in particular I've been wanting to go to the Garden Court at the Palace Hotel. From the pictures, at least, the room looks fabulous. Tea there is pretty expensive, starting at $30 per person, so I've been thinking of going there for my birthday, and strongarming some of my friends to join me.

Once a week I take my little girls to a "field trip" somewhere that is Bartable and yesterday we went to Rockridge. Camila (6mo) is pretty cranky lately and Mika (3 yo) gets bored easily but all in all we managed to have a good time. We started by visiting Crepevine, part of a chain of restaurants serving sweet and savory crepes, sandwiches, soups, salads and pasta dishes. I had told Mika that we were going to a "panquequería" to have "panqueques" so when we got there she was disappointed that they didn't have any dulce de leche crepes, which is what I make (very occasionally) at home. Finally she accepted a banana with caramel rum sauce one. It was folded as an envelope and came with a large portion of whipped cream and ice-cream, which of course made her immediately happy. The crepe was pretty good, though I think a dulce de leche & banana crepe might be even better. It was nice sitting outside, even though it was a gray day, and there were other moms with babies. Still, Camila started to fuss and it was time for us to go on.

Our next stop was Rockridge kids, where I got a toy for Camila and Mika had a wonderful time playing with dolls and such. She's now past the age of playing with "babies" and more into grown up dolls - pretty cute.

We then went to the Marketplace to buy some cheese for my "salon" tonight. The french-accented attendant was very helpful and very knowledgeable, I pretty much went on his recommendations on what to get. We'll see the results tonight.

Mika was a pain at the store, she wanted to get into everything and those bins with pasta were irresistable - but I was able to bribe her (I hate doing that) with the promise of a cookie. We'd been there before with Mike and she'd gotten a cookie so of course she wanted one again. She's very much a creature of habits, do something once, it's become a tradition.

She was happy with her flower cookie (they also have butterfly ones), I got a chocolate chocolate chip one that I didn't like, it was too dry, and almost tasted stale. Eating cookies there won't be a tradition for me.

Then it was time to come home - Mika is already asking to go again. We'll see.

My friends and I are now getting together monthly for tea. In May, we celebrated my birthday with tea at the Ritz. In June, Regina was supposed to host but she was too busy (poo poo her!). In July, we celebrated Lotty's birthday at Lovejoy's and this month it was time to celebrate Vienna's birthday at my house (we are out of birthdays for September!).

Our experience at Lovejoy was so positive that I modeled my menu after their own. Of course, I knew I wasn't going to be able to replicate those incredible fluffy scones, so I decided to make a ginger scone recipe that has been getting raves in the Craigslist food forum. They were very, very good, even though I overbaked them a little bit. I served them with European-style butter, clotted cream (available at Joaquin Deli), orange marmalade, raspberry jam, lemon curd and dulce de leche. The dulce de leche was by far the most popular toping (ha!). I was glad that I got to use the little bowls that I bought at the Japanese restaurant again.

I also served three types of tea sandwiches: cream cheese & cucumber, chicken salad and Stilton and apple - all inspired by the offerings at Lovejoy's. The cucumber sandwiches were the least popular, apparently traditional cucumber sandwiches have cucumber and butter, not cream cheese. Next time. The chicken salad ones were great and the Silton worked very well with the thin apple slices. I'd originally meant to make them with pear, but the pears available at Safeway are just not very tasty this time of year. I used white sandwich bread to make them and cut the crusts myself, which made them look not very neat. Unfortunately, Safeway no longer stocks Ironkids Crustless Bread, which I LOVE. Does anyone know a source?

Finally, I got a tripple-mousse cake from Safeway, which was delicious.

Lotty brought crumpets, but we never got around to them.

The teas were Akbar Yellow Gold and an Orange Pekoe Tea that I got at the 99-cents store. Both are from Sri Lanka, and both were delicious. I suspect I drank too much, as Camila had a pretty restless night.

In all, we had a great time. The tea started at 3pm and went on until 8pm. It won't be my turn to host again for several months but I'm looking forward to the next time.

I haven't blogged in a long time. I'm not sure why - or rather, it's become quite clear to me that I can no longer juggle all aspects of my life: house, children, family, husband, work, friends, entertaining, cooking, writing, reading, etc. I can handle a few at the time, but not all. I can't short change my family, but everything else must be put aside from time to time. Lately, I've done a good job of keeping the house clean, planned our upcoming trip to Argentina, threw a big Halloween party and a small screening of the Wal-Mart movie, and done quite a lot of other things. I haven't cooked much, though, and have done absolutely no writing. It's time for that to change.

So let me start by writing about turkey. I hate turkey.

I love the concept of turkey, don't get me wrong. It's a beautiful bird, perfectly golden it dresses a table as nothing else. I love the traditions around it, the idea that people all over this country are having variations of the same meal tickles my traditionalist bone.

I encountered my first turkey at my first Thanksgiving dinner, a mere month or so after first arriving to this country. I don't remember the food as well as I remember the discomfort of the situation. We were having dinner with the family of the husband of the sister of the nun who had taken care of my sister when she'd been a baby. They were people we didn't know and who, other than the sister, didn't speak Spanish. I was 12, an age at which I didn't want to be around adults, much less complete strangers. Still, it was a good introduction to the holiday.

In the following years, my dad would sometimes get a turkey for Thanksgiving. Supermarkets often given them out for free, and my parents are not people to reject a free gift. I ate leg meat and in general I was fine with it. At least I don't remember any differently.

It wasn't until my last year of college that I cooked a turkey myself. My best friend had come for the long weekend and for whatever reason we decided to have Thanksgiving dinner. We were joined by J., another friend from Egypt, and an Egyptian friend of his. I found a recipe in the newspaper for orange glaced turkey, and even though it was my first big meal, I had no problem following it. The results was a perfectly cooked turkey with the yummiest, most beautiful skin ever - and turkey-tasting meat underneath ( to make the glace mix orange juice with honey and brown sugar and baste the turkey every 20 minutes for the last hour or so). But hey, the skin was worth it.

In the years to come I roasted turkeys a few more times and continued to be unexcited about the meat. I also ate turkey cooked by others with the same reaction. A couple of times my friend Lola made goose for Thanksgiving, and I loved it - but the times I tried to cook it, I didn't do a very good job of it. When I went back to hosting Thanksgiving dinner a couple of years back, I forwent the turkey altogether and made a Basque dinner featuring chicken instead (along with foie gras and other goodies).

Then last year I decided that I had to give turkeys one last try. I wanted to get a Heritage turkey, but I didn't order on on time and instead I bought an organic free range turkey. I brined it, made a good recipe and the turkey was good - for a turkey. But it was still a turkey. And no matter how much I want to like turkey, it's still a dry, tasteless bird.

Needless to say, this year I'm not making turkey.

I do want to make something special, however. I like the idea of celebrating Thanksgiving with something that I'm not going to make at any other time of the year, something that will have us all look forward to it all year. Like turkey - but actually good. I want it to be something big, that can make a great centerpiece at the table, and that I can make year after year.

Prime rib roast could be a logical choice, but I made that last Xmas eve and I think it'll become our Xmas eve tradition. I first thought about making lamb shanks - a braise seemed like a logical thing for this time of year and I've yet to cook lamb shanks at all. Plus, they could be served with all the traditional Thanksgiving side dishes. But hard as I tried I couldn't get excited about lamb shanks. They are not big, they are not rare and they just don't scream "special occation" to me. So I decided to make a lamb rack instead. It's not particularly big but it's high price tag (about $13 a pound for a cut that is mostly bones) guarantees that I won't be making it often (indeed I have yet to make it, precisely for that reason). And it can have a beautiful presentation. So I looked up recipes on the internet and I settled on the following menu:

-Jerusalem Artichoke Soup with Lemon and Saffron
-Rack of Lamb with Red Currant Wine Sauce
-Toasted Israeli Couscous with Pine Nuts & Parsley
-Sweet Corn Tomalito
-Green Beans Almondine

and some storebought dessert

I tasted an amazing Jerusalem artichoke soup at Aziza last year, and I'd love to try it again. The lamb recipe got high accolades at epicurious - and I'm pretty fond of sweet sauces in general. Which such a delicate meat and sweet sauce, however, traditional Thanksgiving side dishes wouldn't work so I spent quite a while figuring out what to serve (now that Camila won't let me read while I feed her, I have plenty of time to think of things as she nurses herself to sleep). Couscous is my starch of choice when serving sweet dishes, and the one time I had Israeli couscous I loved it. Plus it's pretty popular now when regular Maghrebi couscous has become passe. The corn tomalito is another sweet yet gentle dish that I love but have never made, and while it won't look too different from the couscous, it'll have a completely different flavor. Asparagus might work best as the vegetable - but Mike doesn't like it, so the very simple green beans almondine seemed like the best choice.

The menu seemed both mouth watering and well balanced and I was excited about cooking it - until today. Today, is when I went shopping for the ingredients.

It would probably have been a better idea to have Mike drop me off at the different supermarkets while he did something else with the kids. As it was, they were both very tired, very grumpy, and very loud. I usually like shopping, but tonight it was sheer torture. So much so that I realized that I'm just not emotionally ready to cook a big meal on Thursday.

I always look forward to cooking as something fun and relaxing. I often try to do too much so it seldom is (and soon I'll blog about my Halloween party, when this became very clear), and often time it becomes stressful rather than fun. Though usually I can revel on the fruits of my efforts at dinner time. But still, I haven't started cooking yet and I'm tired and stressed - that's how I'm supposed to feel at the end of the cooking day, not the day before! Of course, part of the stress is that I couldn't find some of the key ingredients: the Jerusalem Artichokes, the Israeli couscous and the rack of lamb. OK, they had the former, but I thought the ones at Costco looked better so I was planning to send Mike to buy it tomorrow.

So I decided I have to simplify things. Instead of doing a rack of lamb, I'll do a leg of lamb. That's something that we make during the year, but I have a recipe which is both simple and delicious. Plus I can serve it with the typical Thanksgiving dishes, so my new menu is:

-Persimmon soup (as I have so many persimmons)
-Armenian Roast Leg of Lamb
-Sweet Corn Tomalito (already bought the masa)
-Garlic Mashed Potatoes
-Baked apples & yams (maybe, if I have time, for the girls)
-Stouffer Stuffing ('cause it's easy and I like it)
-Green Beans almondine

Some Safeway bought dessert.

and that's that. Won't be grand but I'm sure it'll be better than turkey.

A new Dutch study shows that consuming chocolate or cocoa products helps reduce blood pressure.

Ok, ok - it doesn't really, it just shows that healthy, elderly men who ate more chocolate had lower blood pressure than those who ate less. And as we all know correlation does not necessarily mean causation.

But other small studies have shown the same effect and cocoa beans contain flavanols, which are thought to increase nitric oxide in the blood and improve the function of blood vessels.

Arch Intern Med -- Abstract: Cocoa Intake, Blood Pressure, and Cardiovascular Mortality: The Zutphen Elderly Study, February 27, 2006, Buijsse et al. 166 (4): 411

If you are a fan of free range chicken hurry up and eat to your heart's content - because you won't be able to do it for much longer. A couple of days ago I was watching a German news program where they interviewed chicken farmers about the bird flu, which has already hit Germany. The flu has forced them to keep their chickens inside, and they don't anticipate they'll be able to let them out for a long time. Therefore the free-range chicken industry in Germany will be, for all intents and purposes, dead.

I can't imagine the same thing won't happen in the States. The bird flu hasn't hit here yet, but it's only a matter of time. When it does, it will be too dangerous to keep birds outside as well, where they can get in contact with flying birds carrying the virus. Sure they can keep them in large cages, but as the German farmer said, a cage is a cage, and you don't have free range chicken when you keep it in a cage.

So let's fill up on free-range chicken now, 'cause we may not be able to have it again.

Today it was all about food. I don't think I consciously meant it that way - though I wanted to celebrate Mike's birthday - but I guess that's where my mind, and my kids, led me.

It actually started yesterday at the supermarket when I was deciding what to cook for dinner. Mike wanted pork chops, and that's what we got - but I saw some spareribs on sale and I suggested that for tonight's dinner. Then they had huge sea scallops on sale so I wanted to try those too. And then I thought of French toast - how long has it been since I've had French toast? And I love French toast, so... you get my drift.

Not actual cocoa butter if American manufacturers get their way. They want to be able to replace cocoa butter with vegetable oil (yuck!) and still call it chocolate. And you know, that the Bush-appointed industry-friendly FDA will probably be all for it. After all, making our food less food-like is their whole mission. Well, this should be a reason *not* to buy American chocolate, just in case.

But you can still submit your comments to the FDA on this issue. You can find a link to it at Guittard's "don't mess with our chocolate campaign":

http://dontmesswithourchocolate.guittard.com/

Guittard protests proposal to allow vegetable oil in chocolate