Casa Lucas Market (Number 2, the first one is in San Francisco) is a pretty cool Latin American market on East 14th in San Leandro. As you would expect they have a large selection of Mexican products, but they also carry an eclectic selection of other Latin American products. It’s a relatively small store, so their selection /is/ limited.
I usually go there to buy empanada shells (tapas para empanadas), they also have a nice selection of yerba mate (including in little bags) and a few canned jams and Savora mustard, for some reason. They only have small jars of dulce de leche, though. They did have Havana alfajores (no habannets, though), at $1.60 each they are expensive (about 3Xs what they cost in Argentina) but ooooh, so good.
Anyway, in today’s trip I was able to find cassava (manioc) flour which I need for my Bahian meal (they also have white & yellow corn flour, rice flour and even banana flour) and guaran
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This weekend we went to two African restaurants. Friday night it was Finfin
I love the restaurant reviews of the East Bay Express. When I’m looking for a new place to try for dinner, I check the Express first. They review all sort of interesting restaurants (here is where I found The New Zealander, Old Weang Ping and Tropical Paradise) and the reviews are well written and fun to read. They also tend to be much more thorough than those of the Chronicle (which are utilitarian but boring). So if you’re looking for a place to eat in the East Bay, check it out!
eastbayexpress.com | Dining
The East Bay Express has reviewed Xenia!, the new restaurant opened by the Vatran clan in Alamo. The review is mixed, the place still seems to need work, but I still want to go! Maybe in a few weeks, when I recoup from eating out so much lately.
eastbayexpress.com | Vatran’s Flying Restaurant | 2005-04-27
http://celestialcoupon.whitehorse.com/
Expires May 18th.
I finally got to go to Fleur de Lys for my birthday. The food was wonderful though the dinner was badly balanced, the the first three courses were small and the cheese and dessert courses overwhelming. There was also a problem with the pacing of the dishes (too brisk) and the table were they first sat us frankly sucked – though they did move us when I expressed my disatisfaction to a better location. But again, the food was excellent, familiar yet innovative and delicious.
And yet… I left disatisfied. I think I have to admit that I’ve become jaded with nice restaurants. My expectations are now too high, I want perfection for my $300. I think I’m going to put off going to nice restaurants for some time – though I’ll probably take Mike to Manresa for his birthday as he said that’s where he wanted to go. And I may go back to Acquerello, where the warmth and quality of the service awed me.
Of course, if anyone can suggest a superlative dining experience in the Bay Area (or LA, for that matter), I’d love to hear about it.
When ready, my review of Fleur de Lys will be at http://www.marga.org/food/rest/fleur.html
For Mother’s Day Mike decided to get us lunch at Gregoire and have us had a pic-nic lunch at Muir Woods. It was a rainy day, however, so we decided to eat the food in the car instead. Fortunately most of it lent itself to it. It was all delicious.
I couldn’t really see the cheese or the mushrooms in the cheesteak sandwich ($7.50), but the chopped beef was bursting with flavor, it reminded me of the taste of steak in Argentina. The lamb in the roasted lamb sandwich ($7.75) was also very tasty and “lamby”. Sharing half of each sandwich kept them from getting boring. Once again we loved the potato puffs ($4.25) and were less thrilled by the potato gratin ($4.25). I think next time we should try the french fries. I liked the mango red pudding ($3.75), it had a fresh, satisfying mango taste, but it became easily overwhelmed by the tartness of the berry coulis. They just didn’t go well together. Mike liked the chocolate mousse ($3.75) but it reminded me of the chocolate mousse I used to make when I was a kid out of a children’s cooking book.
Gregoire’s menu changes monthly, so if you want to enjoy these sandwiches you’ll have to do so in May 🙂
My international cooking project has been on hold for several months. A difficult pregnancy and a small baby are not really conductive to entertainment. But I miss it, and I want to get through those damn “B”s so I’ve planned a couple of international dinners in the next few weeks (Bahian and Berber) and decided to make this “Bolivian” week at the Marga household. Rather than cook a whole Bolivian dinner for my family, however, I decided to try a different dish every other night or so. I started last night by making Picante de Pollo or Spicy chicken, an easy yet very typical dish. I’d been meaning to make it for quite a while, but finding yellow pepper (aj
Our friends Eddie and Arthur suggested we get together for dinner at the Texas Roadhouse for dinner last night – but when we got there around 8 PM, the place was a madhouse. They told me there was a 4 hour wait, and while that seemed unlikely, it clearly did not make sense for us to stay there for dinner. So we suggested we go to Banyan Garden, we had liked it last time and we didn’t think the place would be so full.
Being mother’s day and all, we still had to wait, though only for fifteen minutes or so. We were then given a large table for 8 at the back of the restaurant. We ordered quite a lot of food and it was all good.
The Roti Canai ($2.50) was a very light, thin, flaky and somewhat chewy flat bread (thinner and lighter than a crepe). We all liked it, and I once again was won over by the spicy curry dipping sauce. The chicken satay ($5.50) was also a winner, with nicely marinated chicken chunks and a spicy, chunky peanut sauce. I’d definitely order both again.
We liked the mango chicken ($8). It was served on two hollowed mango shelfs and consisted of chicken pieces and slices of mango and red and green bell peppers in a sweet and sour tomato sauce. The sauce tasted fruity rather than tomatoish and was nicely spiced and quite good. The mango slices were too crunchy for my taste, however, they didn’t seem ripe enough. The sizzling beef ($12) was sizzling and spicy and quite good with their black pepper sauce. The thin slices were tender though in that pounded sort of way. The padang lamb ($10) tasted just the same as last time and the Malaysian short ribs ($9) also had that pounded consistency but were enjoyable. I didn’t get to taste the pineapple rice ($7) but others liked it, and the one noodle dish I did have (can’t recall what it was) was fine but not remarkable.
In all we had an enjoyable dinner and I’ll certainly go again.
I wanted to make something Mexican for Cinco de Mayo and Carnitas came to mind. I found this incredible recipe at Epicurious.com. It’s super easy and delicious and will likely become part of my repertoire.
As it turned out, we went to Pee Wee’s instead (that’s where our friend Percy wanted to go) so I made the carnitas the following day.
I made the recipe according to the instructions, though I used bone-in short ribs. The bones they had were very small in any case, I just cut them out, added them to the meat and removed them before serving. I found the recipe too salty, next time I’ll start with 1 tsp of salt and add more later if needed. I did use regular salt rather than the “sea salt” it asked for. You can also use chicken broth instead of water, if so you may want to use even less salt. You can also substitute good quality tequila or possibly another liquor for the brandy, and you can use pork shoulder or another (somewhat fatty) cut instead of the short ribs.
Carnitas
Instructions
Trim large pieces of fat from the short ribs and set aside. Put the short ribs, reserved fat, water, orange juice, garlic cloves, salt and orange peel in a wide pot or skillet. Mix and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer covered until the meat is soft, about 1 3/4 hour. Make sure the ribs remain at least partially submerged in the liquid, if not, add more water.
Uncover the pot, increase the heat and bring the mixture to a rapid boil. Boil until the liquid is reduced by half. Add the brandy. Boil off the remaining liquid, stirring frequently. When the liquid has evaporated, remove from heat. Cool down slightly, remove the fat and bones (if any) and serve.
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