I’m having a wine & cheese “salon” tonight and these are the cheeses I’m serving. The descriptions are from the web, not mine.
From The Marketplace at Rockridge
Tomme Crayeose
Tomme Crayeuse is a cheese from Savoie (along the Swiss-Italian Alps) in France. Tomme basically means wheel, although it is a generic word for piece or section. The rind of Tomme Crayeuse is grayish brown with yellow moldy patches that develop as the cheese ages. The taste of the cheese is slightly soft with citrus notes and somewhat earthy flavors
Fleur Verte
The “green flower” of the Loire Valley in France. Fresh, milky white goat cheese dusted with dried herbs that beautifully highlight the tangy sweetness of the cheese. Spread on a baguette and serve with a crisp, tart sauvignon blanc or a light fruity red.
St. Agur Blue Cheese
A medium strong creamy blue cheese, made from cow’s milk in Auvergne. It is excellent with full bodied red wines, great on bread for a snack or in a salad. Hard to find and extremely likable. Could be used as a more delicate substitute for Gorgonzola in sauces when Dolcelatte is out of season or too strong. The cheese has a very strong and spicy taste when rippens.
Le Tonneau
Le Tonneau is a new cheese from Switzerland. Its rind is dark in color, with grooves that resemble a barrel. Along with the character of a large cheese, it has a unique taste with a full, fruity flavor. It has a novel consistency and a softness, creaminess and delicacy never known before in a true cheese.
Midnight Moon
Aged one year, this firm cheese offers loads of flavor, including a hint of salted caramel. Intriguing and addictive, it is essentially a goat’s milk gouda. Named “Best New Product in Show” at the 2002 Fancy Food show.
And from Trader Joe’s, I got a:
Author: marga (Page 91 of 112)
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 “panquequer
A couple of nights ago I made this very easy recipe for pork roll, an Uruguayan classic I took from the Barbecue Bible cookbook. The recipe below serves 4, I halved it for the two of us. Note that pre-packaged pork tenderloins usually come two to a package. I served this with a salad and leftover grilled corn.
Cut the tenderloins in two cross wise. Butterfly each half and pound it until it’s about 1/2″ thick. Cut the provolone cheese into thin slices. Core the bell pepper and cut it into thin strips. Place chese slices and red pepper strips on the middle of each butterflied tenderloin. Roll it and tie it up. Brush olive oil on each roll, season with salt and pepper.
Oil the grill. Heat the grill to medium-high. Grill each tenderloin until done, about 4 minutes in each of its four sides.
Yesterday I wanted to make something French to celebrate Bastille day and as it’s summer we are grilling. I looked into my dear Barbecue Bible for something French and came up with this extremely simple recipe which, according to Steven Raichlen at least, can be found all over Provence. It was very good, so much so that my 3 yo asked me to make them again tonight.
Basically, mix 1/4 cup of olive oil with a tablespoon or two of lemon juice (I didn’t bother measuring anything). Baste the lamb chops with the mixture, season with salt and pepper and herbs de provence. Let rest for 10 minutes at room temperature and then grill on a high until done, 4 minutes per side for medium-rare. You can baste the lamb while grilling but we didn’t bother to.
2013 Update
Over the years, East 14th Bakery or “The Chinese Bakery”, as we call it, has become a frequent destination. It was recently sold to a new family who is introducing a few new items.
My items of choice here are the pork buns and the other buns. They are very bready, but quite good and not much more expensive than when the place opened.
Original review
A Chinese bakery has finally opened a few blocks away from my house and I’ve been going almost daily. Yes, this is a habit that has to stop, but it’s so easy to pick up a pork bun or a curry beef bun for lunch on my way home. They offer a large variety of buns with all sorts of fillings, they are huge and under $1. Of the ones I’ve tried so far the curry beef one is my favorite, the ground beef filling is somewhat spicy but very tasty. I love BBQ pork buns but these ones are not the best, their pork seems chopped rather than sliced and they are not very sweet outside. Still, the owner is very eager to please so hopefully he’ll take my suggestions.
Of the sweets, the mini coconut cupcakes are my favorite. They are very coconutish and not too sweet. Their cakes taste mostly like out-of-a-box cakes, not really my favorite but Mika likes them.
In all, I’m very pleased they’re around.
Note that if you pick up a take-out menu they come with a coupon for a free 1st birthday cake – though expires on 9/30.
East 14th Bakery
1780 E. 14th (@ Elsie)
San Leandro, CA
510-351-7318
Everyday 7am – 6 pm
I saw these little bowls in the window of a Japanese restaurant on East 14th and I fell in love with them. Fortunately they were for sale ($17 for the set). They are made in Japan and they’re sooo cute. Now I need to figure out what to serve on them. I figure I’ll debut them at my salon in a couple of weeks. I’m planning to serve just wine and cheese, what can I put in the bowls? Some olives? Some almonds? They’re pretty small, bear in mind.
We haven’t had a Thai restaurant in San Leandro since we’ve lived in this city, so it was with much anticipation that we awaited the opening of Thai Satay, at the old Strizzi’s location. We were a tad apprehensive, as Mike has gone several times to the Thai Satay in San Mateo (same owners) and the pad thai is always clumpy and not very good (and yet he keeps going). It’s true that he always goes after the lunch rush, but that’s no excuse for clumpy pad thai.
We got there around 7 PM and the place was packed, which tells you how much in need of good restaurants San Leandro is (if you’re a restauranteur thinking about San Leandro, there is a place in the Marina that the city wants to develop into a restaurant, serve good food at approachable prices and I guarantee you your place will be packed). We were given a table for four at the entrance of the smaller room that should be replaced with a smaller table, as it was the waiters kept squeezing in by my husband when the went by. The place is not much change since it was Strizzi’s a couple of weeks ago. They don’t seem to have repainted and the carpets are still those dark green and pink flowered ones that were there before, but they’ve added some Thai looking wood panneling to the walls, a few framed Thai pictures, the obligatory portraits of the king and queen and a wooden Thai-framed bus station. The whole thing really doesn’t work well together, but it could be worse.
Thai Satay’s menu is just like that of its sibling restaurant in San Mateo. Indeed, the menus we were handed had the San Mateo address in print. Its quite extensive with 83 items, though most of its focus is on seafood. It only has four each pork and beef entrees. While it features many of the most commonplace Thai dishes, I was surprised to see that it didn’t include panang curries or pra-ram chicken (the chicken with peanut sauce served on a bed of Spinach), two of our favorite dishes. I’ve written to the owner to ask why that’s the case. Appetizers are $6-7 and main dishes $9-13, a little too steep for Thai food but then again, this is San Leandro. Rice is $1 pp and sodas $1.75, expensive considering that there are no refills.
Mike and I split an appetizer of chicken satay (see picture). The skewers were pretty small and I thought the chicken was chewy and not flaky enough, it also wasn’t very tasty. The sauce was OK, too runny for my taste and served in a tiny portion. I don’t think I’d order it again.
The massamun nuer ($9) was much better. The beef was very tender and there was a good proportion of potatoes to meat. The sauce was darker and spicier than most massamuns I’ve had, but it was rather nice and I enjoyed it very much. I’d order it again.
The bar-b-que pork ($9) was quite tasty, both by itself and with the sweet & sour sauce it was served with. The slices were a bit tough, but that’s a common problem with pork, bbq chicken or beef may be a better bet. Still, we quite enjoyed it.
The dessert list is very limited (fried bananas, ice cream, tapioca, sticky rice) and we didn’t have any as I wanted to get to the library before they closed, I’ll probably try the fried bananas next time.
We’ll certainly be going again, though I’ll wait a few weeks before I write a “proper” review of the place. For being opening night I think they did quite well.
Yesterday we had a BBQ at our house. It was a great excuse to clean up our patio (finally!) and have friends over. In particular, we hadn’t seen Ralph and Ruth for a year, I have to make sure to invite them over for dinner soon. Well, not too soon, I don’t think Mike can handle more than one dinner event per month.
I wanted a complete no-work menu (no work for me, that is, Mike still had to do the grilling 🙂 so I settled for:
-Chips & dip (storebought)
–Red Potato Salad
which I like ’cause I don’t have to peel the potatoes to make it.
-Apple & chicken sausages
which I found out are not very good on hot dog buns
-Tri-tip
I sprinkled kosher salt on it, let it rest for a couple of hours, and it was absolutely delicious. Like all my beef, I bought it at Costco.
-Apple pie
from costco
-Dreyer’s Ice Cream
which Ralph appreciated as he works there
Ralph brought some Chinese sausage and some salchichas, and both were wonderful. Sandra brought some very popular green salad.
All in all we had a wonderful, relaxed time in the patio, and now that it’s clean I’m planning to entertain there more often – plus start grilling a lot of food. Meanwhile I have 3 lbs of sausages to get through.
Everett & Jones, our favorite BBQ joint. I was afraid for a while it had closed, but apparently it was just for remodeling (not that it’s too evident what they did). Anyway, it’s back and just as good as ever.
Cafe Vasiliki, a run-of-the-mill coffeeshop in Hayward that only stands out by its extensive, but not too exciting, salad bar.
Piperade, an update on this hip French Basque restaurant in San Francisco
La Bella Italia, update on this Italian restaurant in San Leandro
Aroma Kitchen, another BBQ joint in San Leandro that just doesn’t get it.
The San Leandro Public Library is one of the those gems that make living in this city worthwhile. It’s a pretty big library for a town this size, and despite horrendous budget cuts which, among other things, eliminated the monthly “Family Fun nights”, it still offers a wide variety of books and other media in an inviting atmosphere. Moreover, it’s the only library I know that features a used bookstore, a gift shop and a cafe.
The Bookmark Cafe is small, though rarely crowded. It offers both indoor and outdoor seating, though the outdoor tables are not shaded so we usually chose to sit inside. They sell a wide assortment of food items, though most of them are the pre-wrapped kind. They do have a coffee machine and a variety of coffee products, but as I’m not much of a coffee drinker I’ve never tried any. I have tried their smoothies, which suck (they seem to be made with syrup rather than actual fruit). They serve lunch items, though it appears they are mostly frozen/microwaved ones. A BBQ rib sandwich could only be described as edible.
So we usually stick to sodas, milk and its Otis Spunkmeyer cookies. The latter are great, the chocolate chips melt in your mouth as you eat them. Mika is a huge fan of them.
We go to the cafe practically every day. Mika has become quite addicted to the experience, and while I feel somewhat uncomfortable about giving in to her daily, I love hanging out there as well. And I know it’s a nice memory I’m creating for the future 🙂
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