Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Monday, March 30, 2009
Lebanese food
In my never-ending quest to try food from all over the world (or possibly just find new GOOD food from somewhere!) I recently tried a great little restaurant in Westwood called Sunnin Labanese Cafe. I don't think I had tried Labanese food before this so it was cool to try something new. It is pretty much "middle eastern food" but definitely really really good! Split their beef swarma which was perfectly cooked and expertly seasoned and their "b'stilla" which was really distinctive and mouthwateringly tasty. I had never heard of a b'stilla before, but theirs is a big round ball of crispy phyllo dough filled with a mix of seasons chicken, pistachios, cinnamon and other goodness. Definitely a great flavor I have never tasted before, which is something I am always on the lookout for!
Check it out if you are in the Westwood area!
Check it out if you are in the Westwood area!
Seattle Food part 2
Continued the food tour blog a bit, wanted to make sure you can still read it in order so I just edited the first post, go check it out.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Seattle Food part 1
Seattle was a lot of fun (though cold and a little rainy as is to be expected), as promised here is my review of the food tour:
The tour I went on was Savor Seattle's Pike Place Market Tour. It was a fun and different way to spend a vacation morning. As with the NYC tour, the guide was peppy and friendly and talked about enough history and local stories to be interesting but not so much as to be boring. There was a bunch of interesting history mixed with local myth/color but since this is a food blog I am mostly going to discuss the food. My perspective on Pike Place market itself is that while it is somewhat touristy it is definitely also a real working (and useful) market that locals visit despite the tourists. Other cities have similar markets (SF comes to mind) but from the limited exposure I had, Pike Place seems to be a much better market both in diversity and quality (like having a local farmer's market every day!). Anyway now on to the food! :)
The tour started at the Seattle's Best Coffee at the market, not like you couldn't have it someplace else but I guess at least it is from Seattle and it was an easy place to meet. As we got introduced to the tour, we got samples of their new Blackberry Creme Latte:
I don't really like Lattes in general (I prefer black coffee with sugar if needed if I want coffee, or some kind of mocha frappuccino(ie icecream drink) if I really want desert) so my opinion may be biased, but I was not a fan of these, they were REALLY REALLY sweet.
Anyway, next we walked through the market a bit and went to Daily Dozen Doughnuts which was a cool little stand with its own mini-doughnut machine:
These were great; warm, fresh mini-doughnuts hot out of the fryer.
Next we moved along to a really cool store called MarketSpice. This place is great! The have a really huge selection of specialty, fresh, handmade teas, spices, coffee's etc. I mean come on, they have 16 kinds of salt and 14 kinds of pepper alone! As someone who really likes adding interesting flavors to foods I really love finding a good spice shop. They sell almost nothing online, but fortunately I got their catalog and they ship; though it sounds like the selection changes regularly so hopefully they send out new catalogs! We tried their specialty "Market Spice Tea" which was really a interesting cinnamon, citrusy flavor plus some other hard to place tastes. In addition I learned that clay teapots should only be used for simple unflavored teas (mostly Chinese black, green and oolong teas) and only one type of tea should ever be used with a specific pot because the pours in the clay soak up the flavor. We also tried their 'Salish Alderwood Salt' which is a black large grained salt that has been smoked over alderwood to give it a really nice smokey flavor (real smoke gives a much richer flavor than the 'liquid smoke' you get sometimes). I bought some of the Alderwood Salt, some spicy Vindaloo blend, and some of their Shichimi blend(apparently it is actually spicy, the stuff I have gotten from Asian markets generally doesn't have enough pepper in it).
(forgot to get a picture of the salt, doh!)
Next we went around the corner to the famous "Pike Place Fish" stand where they yell and throw fish. They have a good selection of fresh caught fish and other seafood.
We tried some really good smoked salmon, some even better "garlic pepper smoked salmon" and some salmon jerky (which I didn't even know existed but was a cool twist). Note, it is hard to get pictures of any good to turn out looking good (professionals get paid a LOT of money to make food look good on tv) and smoked salmon definitely doesn't look as good as it tastes but I am going to include the pictures anyway for completeness and you can just take my word for it that it was delicious!
Regular:
Garlic Pepper:
Jerky:
Next we moved on to Frank's Quality Produce, a stand with various fresh local produce. Looked pretty good, your standard farmers market fare except that you can get it any day of the week! We tried a fresh and very flavorful local variety of pear and apple:
Next we walked over to Pike Place Chowder. This place was amazing! They have apparently won New England clam chowder completions all around the country including becoming a member of the "Great Chowder Cook-off Hall of Fame" in Newport Rhode Island after winning "Nation's Best Clam Chowder" three years in a row. Not bad for "New England" Clam Chowder from the west coast! We tried both their award winning new england clam chowder and their seafood bisque, both were rich, creamy and delicious:
Next stop was Chukar Cherries. A local cherry company that makes a variety of cherry related products.
The first one we tried was a cherry salsa, it was a nice change from your normal mango sweet salsa. As with most sweet salsa it could have benefited from a little more heat but it was fresh the flavors were there:
Next we tried a set of their chocolate covered treats, dark cabernet chocolate covered cherry, chocolate covered espresso bean, chocolate and powder sugar covered honey pecan, and a dark chocolate covered chipotle cherry (probably my favorite):
To be continued!
The tour I went on was Savor Seattle's Pike Place Market Tour. It was a fun and different way to spend a vacation morning. As with the NYC tour, the guide was peppy and friendly and talked about enough history and local stories to be interesting but not so much as to be boring. There was a bunch of interesting history mixed with local myth/color but since this is a food blog I am mostly going to discuss the food. My perspective on Pike Place market itself is that while it is somewhat touristy it is definitely also a real working (and useful) market that locals visit despite the tourists. Other cities have similar markets (SF comes to mind) but from the limited exposure I had, Pike Place seems to be a much better market both in diversity and quality (like having a local farmer's market every day!). Anyway now on to the food! :)
The tour started at the Seattle's Best Coffee at the market, not like you couldn't have it someplace else but I guess at least it is from Seattle and it was an easy place to meet. As we got introduced to the tour, we got samples of their new Blackberry Creme Latte:
I don't really like Lattes in general (I prefer black coffee with sugar if needed if I want coffee, or some kind of mocha frappuccino(ie icecream drink) if I really want desert) so my opinion may be biased, but I was not a fan of these, they were REALLY REALLY sweet.
Anyway, next we walked through the market a bit and went to Daily Dozen Doughnuts which was a cool little stand with its own mini-doughnut machine:
These were great; warm, fresh mini-doughnuts hot out of the fryer.
Next we moved along to a really cool store called MarketSpice. This place is great! The have a really huge selection of specialty, fresh, handmade teas, spices, coffee's etc. I mean come on, they have 16 kinds of salt and 14 kinds of pepper alone! As someone who really likes adding interesting flavors to foods I really love finding a good spice shop. They sell almost nothing online, but fortunately I got their catalog and they ship; though it sounds like the selection changes regularly so hopefully they send out new catalogs! We tried their specialty "Market Spice Tea" which was really a interesting cinnamon, citrusy flavor plus some other hard to place tastes. In addition I learned that clay teapots should only be used for simple unflavored teas (mostly Chinese black, green and oolong teas) and only one type of tea should ever be used with a specific pot because the pours in the clay soak up the flavor. We also tried their 'Salish Alderwood Salt' which is a black large grained salt that has been smoked over alderwood to give it a really nice smokey flavor (real smoke gives a much richer flavor than the 'liquid smoke' you get sometimes). I bought some of the Alderwood Salt, some spicy Vindaloo blend, and some of their Shichimi blend(apparently it is actually spicy, the stuff I have gotten from Asian markets generally doesn't have enough pepper in it).
(forgot to get a picture of the salt, doh!)
Next we went around the corner to the famous "Pike Place Fish" stand where they yell and throw fish. They have a good selection of fresh caught fish and other seafood.
We tried some really good smoked salmon, some even better "garlic pepper smoked salmon" and some salmon jerky (which I didn't even know existed but was a cool twist). Note, it is hard to get pictures of any good to turn out looking good (professionals get paid a LOT of money to make food look good on tv) and smoked salmon definitely doesn't look as good as it tastes but I am going to include the pictures anyway for completeness and you can just take my word for it that it was delicious!
Regular:
Garlic Pepper:
Jerky:
Next we moved on to Frank's Quality Produce, a stand with various fresh local produce. Looked pretty good, your standard farmers market fare except that you can get it any day of the week! We tried a fresh and very flavorful local variety of pear and apple:
Next we walked over to Pike Place Chowder. This place was amazing! They have apparently won New England clam chowder completions all around the country including becoming a member of the "Great Chowder Cook-off Hall of Fame" in Newport Rhode Island after winning "Nation's Best Clam Chowder" three years in a row. Not bad for "New England" Clam Chowder from the west coast! We tried both their award winning new england clam chowder and their seafood bisque, both were rich, creamy and delicious:
Next stop was Chukar Cherries. A local cherry company that makes a variety of cherry related products.
The first one we tried was a cherry salsa, it was a nice change from your normal mango sweet salsa. As with most sweet salsa it could have benefited from a little more heat but it was fresh the flavors were there:
Next we tried a set of their chocolate covered treats, dark cabernet chocolate covered cherry, chocolate covered espresso bean, chocolate and powder sugar covered honey pecan, and a dark chocolate covered chipotle cherry (probably my favorite):
To be continued!
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Food tours
So I don't know how many people know about these, but I had never heard of the idea until I was looking for fun stuff to do on a trip to NYC a few years ago.
I think I went on this one: http://www.foodsofny.com/greenwichvillage.php and it was great! Not only does it give you something fun, and only semi-touristy (touristy enough that you learn a little about the city which was cool, but you're not hitting up the standard tourist destinations), but you also get to taste a variety of great food!
I am now determined to try to catch a food tour whenever I travel to a new city (I also need to remember to see if there are any good ones around the LA area), definitely look into it if you are traveling (just good food tours and the city). I will be going to Seattle soon so I will try to write up a review of a food tour there if I can find one that fits my schedule to go on! Enjoy :)
I think I went on this one: http://www.foodsofny.com/greenwichvillage.php and it was great! Not only does it give you something fun, and only semi-touristy (touristy enough that you learn a little about the city which was cool, but you're not hitting up the standard tourist destinations), but you also get to taste a variety of great food!
I am now determined to try to catch a food tour whenever I travel to a new city (I also need to remember to see if there are any good ones around the LA area), definitely look into it if you are traveling (just good food tours and the city). I will be going to Seattle soon so I will try to write up a review of a food tour there if I can find one that fits my schedule to go on! Enjoy :)
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Drinks...
Saw this online:
Definitely sounds interesting! I am not a very sophisticated drinker really but definitely sounds worth a try, I will let you know when I try it out (though probably one with something other than the cherry heering since I generally can't stand anything artificially cherry flavored).
I also had no idea what Chartreuse was when I read this (like I said, not a sophisticated drinker) so I wiki'd it and found that it was a French liqueur composed of distilled alcohol flavored with 130 herbal extracts. Will need to try that one :) Also in looking it up I found this - Some drinkie's blog... He talks about a drink with raw egg in it o_0 (doesn't sound great but hey I'll give it a try some day), but actually more interesting for me was this:
In the April issue of Esquire, drinks correspondent David Wondrich offers another handy formula for creating cocktails on the fly—one that calls for two ounces of spirits, one ounce of a fortified wine, a teaspoon of liqueur and a dash or two of bitters. Ancestral relatives of the Manhattan and the martini often follow this formula, with excellent results, and best of all, it’s amazingly versatile.
In addition to your standard players in the liquor aisle, you can introduce fortified wines ranging from port to sherry to vermouth to Madeira; while the wine-plus-spirit match may not be perfect, a little teaspoon of Cherry Heering or Chartreuse (or most any liqueur you can lay your hands on), along with a dose of bitters (Angostura is probably your most useful candidate here), tends to smooth everything out and make all the flavors get along.
Definitely sounds interesting! I am not a very sophisticated drinker really but definitely sounds worth a try, I will let you know when I try it out (though probably one with something other than the cherry heering since I generally can't stand anything artificially cherry flavored).
I also had no idea what Chartreuse was when I read this (like I said, not a sophisticated drinker) so I wiki'd it and found that it was a French liqueur composed of distilled alcohol flavored with 130 herbal extracts. Will need to try that one :) Also in looking it up I found this - Some drinkie's blog... He talks about a drink with raw egg in it o_0 (doesn't sound great but hey I'll give it a try some day), but actually more interesting for me was this:
The technique of fat washing is an example of what I mean: you take some bacon, for example, and steep it in bourbon for a while. Remove it, fine strain out the solids, and then freeze the bourbon. The spirit itself won’t freeze, but the fat that’s suspended within it will rise to the top, which makes it easy to remove and discard–or reuse, I suppose, if you’d like some bourbon-flavored lard for any reason. Think about chilling a chicken stock after you’ve made it; same thing happens with stock that happens with bourbon.He is referring to this, which I haven't read yet but want to soon. Sounds like an interesting thing to try, sort of a food + science or Molecular Gastronomy kind of thing and anything Molecular Gastronomy sounding interests me haha, anyway, Enjoy :)
My first food post...
Ok so I created this blog to do general food related blogging but the post I had in mind when I created it is actually drink related, but I don't want you to get the wrong idea (I am even less of a drink..ie(?) than I am a foodie) so I wanted to post SOME kind of food related post first :)
Lets start with cooking, Since I love food, I also love cooking good food. There is a fun, easy recipe for popovers (I didn't even know those were) that I saw on Good Eats a while back (that show is awesome, science + food, woot!) which I made and it was warm and fluffy and good so check it out: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/good-eats/basic-popover-recipe/index.html. On the cooking note, there are two different chicken dishes I can make that I like, one with mustard and grapes (sounds weird I know!) and one with yogurt that I want to post up on here sometime soon...
Next burgers and beer! As much as I love complex and subtle and interesting food (and believe me I do!), a really good burger together with a really good beer has to be up there with the best meals ever... And for the lucky ones of us who live in Southern California, an amazing bar is here to completely and utterly satisfy on both levels: Father's Office. If you are in the area and have not tried them, you NEED to go... Disclaimer: I have only ever been to the Santa Monica location and not the new LA location, but I don't have any reason to believe the new one is any less awesome. They are a great little bar with the most amazing gourmet burgers I have ever had (no substitutions allowed) along with a GREAT selection of craft (many Belgian, and specifically Trappist) beers on tap. They also have great sweet potato fries (anywhere with sweet potato fries gets a big plus in my book!) and just as good garlic fries to go along with the burgers.
Anyway that's it for now... Enjoy!
Lets start with cooking, Since I love food, I also love cooking good food. There is a fun, easy recipe for popovers (I didn't even know those were) that I saw on Good Eats a while back (that show is awesome, science + food, woot!) which I made and it was warm and fluffy and good so check it out: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/good-eats/basic-popover-recipe/index.html. On the cooking note, there are two different chicken dishes I can make that I like, one with mustard and grapes (sounds weird I know!) and one with yogurt that I want to post up on here sometime soon...
Next burgers and beer! As much as I love complex and subtle and interesting food (and believe me I do!), a really good burger together with a really good beer has to be up there with the best meals ever... And for the lucky ones of us who live in Southern California, an amazing bar is here to completely and utterly satisfy on both levels: Father's Office. If you are in the area and have not tried them, you NEED to go... Disclaimer: I have only ever been to the Santa Monica location and not the new LA location, but I don't have any reason to believe the new one is any less awesome. They are a great little bar with the most amazing gourmet burgers I have ever had (no substitutions allowed) along with a GREAT selection of craft (many Belgian, and specifically Trappist) beers on tap. They also have great sweet potato fries (anywhere with sweet potato fries gets a big plus in my book!) and just as good garlic fries to go along with the burgers.
Anyway that's it for now... Enjoy!
Welcome
Welcome to my "food appreciation" blog! First a little about me, I'm not really a hardcore foodie, at least not to the obsessive level of some people on the internet. I appreciate food at every price range. I am not looking for the most gourmet high-class meal out there, just some new flavors/sensations and generally good food. I feel that instead of being overly critical of food, it is better to appreciate it on as many levels as possible. This will then increase your enjoyment. I do have a great appreciation for good food/drink and generally love food so I decided I wanted a place to write down all the food related stuff that interests me. I figured if it interests me, then it might interest you as well. This is that place, Enjoy :)
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