Ali Eats San Francisco

ESF: The Last Supper

2009-05-15T11:55:00.001-07:00

Wednesday night was our final class meeting for Eating San Francisco, and it was bittersweet. Sweet because approximately 3 hours after class got out, I would be done with almost all of my work for the year, and would feel about 15 pounds lighter. Bitter because the bonds we forged and the things we learned over the course of this short class were a little tough to say goodbye to (not in the sense that the bonds and the knowledge are going to disappear, but in the sense that we won't have the chance to further them for 3 hours every Wednesday night any longer).

My memorial Flickr Set

For our last class, my fellow students and I embarked on a local, seasonal, delicious meal cooking extravaganza, resulting in a gourmet potluck meal that proved there is definitely no such thing as too many cooks in the kitchen (as long as we have our own kitchens...) when it comes to this class. My contribution? One of my favorite fallback recipes: a summer pasta salad, salty, sweet, fresh and tasty. A more complicated and hearty recipe could have been tackled, had I had more than one hour between work and class, but I was happy - a fresh pasta salad is more reflective of my cooking personality. I have been covering Rainbow Grocery for my Journalism class for the past month and a half, and know more about it than any ordinary person should. But gladly, because I knew it would be my one stop shop for my local, seasonal grocery list. Not everything on their shelves is local or seasonal, but the selection is pretty unbeatable. I set on my way with the following list: Bulk pasta, bulk olive oil, balsamic vinegar, tomatoes, basil, pine nuts, mozzarella cheese, and the elusive "whatever else sounds good". I came out with a pound of bulk rotini pasta, a little tub of local, lemon-infused olive oil, some 18 year aged balsamic vinegar from Napa, organic basil from Hollister, organic tomatoes from Chico, pine nuts from China (*SMACK* - That's you, David Silver, slapping me on the wrist. I know, but apparently our good old American evergreens don't produce adequate enough pine nuts even for the most locally focused grocery store), mozzarella from a Berkeley cheese company, and "whatever else" in the form an Oakland produced parsley/arugula pesto and two bottle of "Cheap Red/White Wine" from Morgan Hill. Here's how it all came together (a careful science):

Ingredients:
1 lb Rotini Pasta
Two handfuls lightly chopped Basil
Lots of olive oil (part lemon-infused, part regular)
Not so much balsamic vinegar
One handful pine nuts
4 chopped tomatoes (large chunks)
Mozzarella balls, chopped in half
A dash (aka spoonful) of the parsley/arugula pesto (in retrospect, a traditional basil pesto would have been better)
Salt, salt, salt, and pepper to taste

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil, and dump in all the pasta (the pasta I bought from Rainbow cooked quicker than your regular supermarket box). Chop up a good amount of the basil leaves, but not finely, just enough to release the flavor. Chop the four tomatoes into large chunk. Chop the mozzarella balls in half, or quarters depending on the size. When the pasta is soft (al dente, preferably), strain it and rinse the noodles with cold water. Put the noodles in a large bowl, and add the chopped ingredients and pine nuts. Begin adding lemon olive oil, regular olive oil, and a little balsamic vinegar to taste. Finish with some salt and pepper, seasoning to taste. It's a DIY kind of recipe - you can make it however you like it.

REMINDER!
I created an ESF Cookbook blo g on Wordpress, so log in and post your recipes please!
Login: ESFRecipes
Password: eatingsanfrancisco

When I arrived at the feast, a table of deliciousness lay before me, awaiting my addition. I was very pleasantly surprised to see that everyone had made something completely, and equally as enticing. There were open face steak sandwiches, chocolate covered strawberries, pita chips and salsa, salmon pasta, fruit salad, bite-size vegetable napoleons, couscous, fava bean dip, gnocchi, a fresh salad picked from USF's vegetable garden...I'll stop there. I'm getting hungry. We each grabbed a cafeteria boat and dug in, filling them to the brims. I don't know if it was the proximity, the seasonality, the freshness, or all three qualities of the ingredients we used, but it was, as Professor Silver said, the best meal we had all semester. Each dish made with different hands, different personalities, and it showed. I never doubted us and our new, or not so new interests in food, but this was beyond all expectations. Bravo, ESF, we done good. I couldn't have imagined a better way to close out the year.
Inspired by our meal's focus, I created a map using "MapMe" where we can pinpoint where all of our ingredients came from. I've already entered mine in, and uploaded some pictures to go with it. I've embedded the map here, but I want all of you to edit it and add your dish's ingredients so we can create a geographic picture of what we ate! The site takes a minute to get used to, but once you do it's pretty simple, so please contribute if you have a minute! I'll post it on our new ESF Cookbook blog as well.

You have to log in to edit it, so here is the info:
Go to: http://www.mapme.com/ and click Sign In
Username: ESFPotluck
Password: eatingsanfrancisco
Click "1 Map" under the My Maps heading, and get to gettin'.

Download: KML RSS | Create your own travel map on MapMe.com

Would you like to Supersize?

2009-05-13T15:25:00.000-07:00

"Oh, good sir, would I ever" may have been response in the good old days, at least if those golden, crispy, salty Micky D's fries were involved. Seemingly, things have changed. By no means was I ever a fast food junkie at any point in my lifetime, including the 7 or 8 years of that were spent in the dirty south (by this I mean Florida, which really isn't what one would call the dirty south, but it gives me a little more character to say so, doesn't it? - plus, regardless, people do eat insane amounts of fast food down there). However, when I was a kid I waited patiently, and sometimes not so patiently, for those mornings my mom ran out of time for cooking breakfast, and I would get my beloved, steaming sausage mcmuffin en route to school. According to vague memories, and my mother, that was all I wanted. Ever. Dependent on the toy of the month, I would usually forgo the venerable happy meal for that mcmuffin (the picture is inaccurate - I don't think they make my precious anymore). Just me, my muffin, and my strangely geometrical patty-o'-smooshed-beef-parts, come hell or high water. As I grew older, my tastes "matured", if you will. Upon moving to quaint little Laguna Beach, Calif. at 13, I lost immediate access to most fast food restaurants, and began developing an appreciation for the mom and pop restaurants (in retrospect, I realize there were two small, organic restaurants within 5 blocks of my home there, before which I had never experienced anything of the sort). Yet, still, there were the late-night, special excursions "over-the-hill" (our term for the dreaded in-land - a whole 15 minutes off the coast) with friends to In 'n' Out Burger. One Cheeseburger (or grilled cheese during my vegetarian bout), an order of well-done fries, and a vanilla shake to dip them in, and I was set for a month or two more sans greasy indulgence. The once or twice a year that I ever went to McDonald's (usually a sneaky trip inspired by my mother's southern junk food cravings, behind my stepdad's back), there was only one thing I ordered: Filet o' Fish Sandwich. I detect your cringing, but I assure you - if ever there was a time not to knock it 'til you try it, this is it. Now that I have provided you with the anthology of my rare moments of fast-foodian epicureanism (triple word score), I can get to the point. Throughout my life, I have considered myself healthy for the simple reason that I've avoided fast food to the extent that I ate it, at the very most, once a month. Living in San Francisco, that frequency has decreased even moreso. Sure, I have my frozen dinner, greasy Mexican food, I need a god-foresaken pint of ice cream moments, but overall, I really just like healthy food better. Or so I thought....

Enter Michael Pollan and his extensively researched "The Omnivore's Dilemma", the source of my dietary despair for the past two weeks. He, representing all of mankind and its conflicting blissful ignorance and passionate self-concern, is part of my story of a deliciously twisted love triangle. The other two parties are Zazie and McDonalds, both residing in the Haight-Ashbury/Cole Valley areas of San Francisco. These two represent two alimentary choices or directions, not the same, but not completely different either. Let me first explain the relevance of this triangle with the first paragraph: In the past two or three weeks, a time I'll remember being nose deep in Pollan's book, I have been struggling more than ever in my life with the phrase "you are what you eat". Specifically, on a recent outing to In 'n' Out, I could not bring myself to order anything made with beef without knowing where it came from. On recent trips to grocery stores, I have walked out empty-handed, dazed, bewildered, wondering what the hell I had even been looking at while wandering the aisles. Why Michael, why? A large hand reaches from the heavens, turns another page in my book, and I see why. From "The Omnivore's Dilemma" I have learned, well, a lot about corn - which before, I thought was just...corn. After reading Pollan's descriptive analysis of the contents composing the contents composing the contents of the grocery store, i was intrigued. Reading further, I learned that corn's roots go deeper than unnaturally fertilized soil. Life. Is. Corn. This is something I had never once thought about before I was told to. Now, all I can think about is the perverse and incestuous relationship corn has with the life cycle of everything I see. This may sound dramatic, and I certaintly will say that I am fresh off the Michael Pollan boat and haven't quite gotten my land legs, however I think this reaction is appropriate when confronted with reasonable arguments against the way I have been nurishing my body for the past 21 years. What have I been eating, and what kind of walking corn hybrid have I become? I know these frantic and dramatic questions will subside, but I'm not sure my concern will.

On our final ESF outing, we visited the Haigh and Cole Valley neighborhoods, starting with dinner at Zazie, and finishing with some matching desserts at the ever-fascinating McDonald's on Haight Street. While there is better and worse food than Zazie and McDonald's, respectively, over the span of one entire meal, we probably traveled as far as one can imagine from one end of the spectrum to the other. Zazie is a small, quaint restaurant, with a simple, gourmet menu and wine list. We were there around 6, so natural lighting was provided by large skylights. The menu boasted that it sold beef from cows that lived locally on the coast and had a pleasant life "with an ocean view", and the menu items are changed to account for seasonal fruits and vegetables in the area. The food was amazing, and the service equally so. I couldn't help noticing that Kelli's pasta de printemps actually had flower petals scattered across the dish. Can't feel more natural than while you're eating that. Fresh was the most prominent word to describe our meal there, and even after reading most of Pollan's book, I don't think any of us were too worried about our orders. Then, we made the trek to the golden arches of Haight Street. Outside, young wanderers and old homeless men loitered in the parking lot and at the bus stop, and we all stepped into the sterile lights of McDonald's, our fin de la nuit.

Saturday Morning in Chinatown

2009-04-29T13:50:00.000-07:00

Check out the audio-slideshow Chris and I made about our most recent Eating San Francisco escapade to Chinatown:

When we started brainstorming for this project, Chris and I were leaning in the direction of paralleling the Americanization and "Disneyification" of Chinatown and how it depicts Chinese culture to visitors, with the similar deviation of Chinese cuisine from the traditional once it hit American soil, focusing on our Dim Sum experience. After doing some research, however, we discovered that while many facets of Chinese cuisine have indeed been Americanized, the ritual meal of Dim Sum seems to have been the only surviver of emigration.

Like we mentioned in our slideshow, and according to Information China, the Chinese people regard food as one of the most important things in life, according to an old proverb. The first restaurants and teahouses in the world were opened in China prior to 1000AD, where owners used steaming and boiling as their main cooking methods. The oldest book on food science in the world, a sort of cookbook and agricultural encyclopedia called "Qi Min Yao Shu" or Guide to a Wealthy Life, was recorded in China. Not only is food valued for nutrition and enjoyment by the Chinese, but also for medicinal purposes. Foods are cooked using healing herbs for certain ailments, for example: cinnamon and ginger for colds and flu, certain soups for stomach bleeding or insomnia, and gruels made with a Chinese berry for fevers. The drinking of herbal teas is also a valued Chinese tradition that has been upheld for thousands of years. China is the native place of tea, being the first country to grow and drink it over 3000 years ago. It is no wonder, then, that an activity ecompassing both steamed or boiled food and tea has grown into such an important tradition in Chinese communities around the world.

According to the Encyclopedia of China, Dim Sum literally means "heart's delight" in Cantonese. It is a tradition that got its start on Silk Road in China, along which tea houses opened as rest stops for traveling traders. At this time, and for a while after, it was against Chinese etiquette to eat while drinking tea, but when societies began discovering that tea aided in digestions, teahouse owners included small snacks in their service. Dim sum became a light snack to be enjoyed with afternoon tea in southern Chinese culture. The dishes were influenced by the region, and included steamed southern foods like meat dumplings, sesame balls filled with bean paste, spring rolls, fried meats and vegetables, and rice soup. As the size of the meal grew, so did the variety of the tradition. The people of China now enjoy Dim Sum lunches, have business meetings in the teahouses, meet for social gatherings around Dim Sum, and get together with their families in the mornings on the weekends passing dumplings around on lazy susans. There are no menus, only carts filled with steam plates pushed around by servers who keep track of the dishes you choose.

Though the mention of Chinese food in America usually evokes images of greasy chow mein, deep fried orange chicken, and soy sauce soaked processed potstickers, Dim Sum is the excluded Chinese culinary institution that preserves the time-honored fresh and natural cooking methods of China in America. In traditional Chinese cooking, the most efficient, natural foods are used. Soybeans, cabbage and other local vegetables, fish, poultry, pork, rice, and wheat are all common ingredients that yield a lot of food for little money. More metripolitan areas in China have been infiltrated by more processed and less local cuisine in this more global society, however it is a middle and upper class privilege. The traditional cooking methods still apply in villages and small towns in China where residents are less likely to have access to any ethnic or imported foods.

Some of our other sources:

Encyclopedia of Contemporary Chinese Culture

The Chinese Historical and Cultural Project

Dim Sum Wiki

American Chinese Cuisine Wiki

Cooking My Delicious Meal

2009-04-22T23:24:00.000-07:00

When my Eating San Francisco professor, David, told us we had to cook a delicious (the only criterion) meal to be shared with others, my first thought was, ‘No curry, Ali, anything but curry.’ I wanted to challenge myself to cook something I’d never cooked before. I’ve lived 8 years of my life in Florida, and most of the other 13 in California, so an affinity toward Cuban and Mexican foods is inevitable for me (I assure you, unless you’ve been to Cuba, you have not had a Cuban sandwich until you’ve been to The Floridian in Treasure Island, Florida). But in terms of cooking, besides many a fine guacamole batch, I’ve never gone down that road.

I decided to learn to make some carnitas cooked in a salsa verde braise and carne asada and set up a homemade, family style taco bar. My patrons? Ex-neighbors Dave and Unni, plus their new roommate Ken, plus my roommate Anna. Dave used to cook for my roommates and me all the time, being that he is a successful businessman and we were (are) starving college students. I felt I owed him.

You’ll be happy to know, after this self-indulgent rambling, that to document this I want to use mainly photos of the process and a few instructive words. In case any of you care to try to make any part of this meal, I know it is not in our generation’s nature to weed through paragraph after paragraph to finally understand what someone’s trying to tell you in the last 3 sentences. Thus, I shall try my best to go against my own grain and be brief.

I’ll start with how to prep the two meats, since these need to be started about 4 hours prior to eating time. These recipes are both from SimplyRecipes

Salsa Verde Carnitas :: Ingredients
3-3.5 pounds pork shoulder
2 cups salsa verde (I used a bottled brand from Safeway, but you can also make your own)
1 onion, finely chopped
3 cups chicken stock
2 teaspoons cumin seeds (I used already ground cumin)
1 tbsp fresh chopped oregano (you can use dried, but I prefer fresh)
½ cup chopped fresh cilantro
Salt to taste

First, I took the huge pork shoulder out and trimmed off the extra fat (I don’t have good kitchen scissors, but those probably would have worked better), and put it in a 6 quart Dutch oven.

I poured the salsa verde and the chicken stock into the dutch oven with the pork. Then I added the chopped onions, oregano, and cumin as well. I turned my burner on high and turned to the carne asada marinade while waiting for my pork braise to boil…

Carne Asada :: Ingredients
2 pounds of flank or skirt steak (I used skirt, tasted great but a little tough for tacos)
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 jalapeno (I left this out...not my bag...)
1 tsp ground cumin seed (again I used already ground cumin)
1 handful fresh cilantro, leaves/stems finely chopped
Salt and pepper to taste
2 limes, juiced
2 tbsp white vinegar
½ tsp sugar
½ cup olive oil
Cloves
Allspice
First, I got out a large metal bowl and my roommate combined all ingredients besides the steak, cilantro and garlic in a bowl. I was doing the chopping so I threw in the cilantro and garlic after. I substituted white wine vinegar for the white distilled vinegar, and added a little more sugar than called for. I also threw in a couple of cloves and some allspice for extra flavor – I like carne asada a bit sweeter.

I put the steaks into the bowl and coated each piece well, wrapped it in saran wrap, and put it in the fridge.

At this point my pork braise was boiling, so I turned down the temperature to low, and covered it to let it simmer until extremely tender – about 3 HOURS.

TIME OUT: it was approximately 3:50 pm, and I had a tech rehearsal at 4:00 for (shameless plug alert) the FREE Music Student Showcase, this Saturday at 7 pm in the School of Ed building! I left the steaks a-marinating and pork a-simmering for about an hour while I was gone.
When I got home at 5, the pork still had a lot of simmering to do, so I did some reading and took a catnap. At 6, I decided to start putting together some of the toppings for the tacos...

First: Marinated cabbage
I chopped up about a third of a head of cabbage (turned out not to be enough for 5 people, I’d do a half or 2/3) very thin. Since I had to move everything to Dave’s, I put it in a Tupperware and sprinkled some olive oil, seasoned rice vinegar, salt, and pepper on top. I tossed the cabbage and closed up the container to let it marinate.

It was time to move to Dave’s so my roommate and I packed everything, pork still in the pot, and steaks still marinating, and hit the road. I called ahead to have him preheat his oven to 400 degrees…

Once there, we moved the pork from the dutch oven (I wouldn’t stop picking at it) to an aluminum roasting pan and I used two forks to shred it into large-ish pieces. We stuck that in the 400-degree oven to brown around the edges for 20 minutes.

The dutch oven full of braise was to be reduced to about 2.5 cups so I could later mix the crispy carnitas back into the salsa verde sauce, so I put it on a burner on high heat (YAY for Dave’s gas stove) and let it boil as long as it needed to. Note: Skim excess fat off the top of the braise and it will go MUCH faster.

While all that was cooking, we placed Dave’s huge griddle over two burners on medium heat to get the steaks going. Once it was hot, I put all three of them on, and cooked them for about 8 minutes (they were pretty rare).

While they cooked, Dave, Anna and I team-worked on the other toppings/sides to get them out at the same time:

Pico de Gallo (amounts very depending on how much you want to make and what ratio of onions:tomatoes you like)
Chopped onion
A few chopped tomatoes
Chopped cilantro
1+ limes, juiced
Salt and pepper

Grated Monterey Jack cheese (although Cotija Mexican cheese is preferred but not available at Safeway)
3 chopped avocados with salt, pepper, and fresh lime juice
2 cans black beans heated on the stove top

When the steak was cooked and sliced and the braised had reduced and the carnitas was browned, I mixed the pork back into the braise reduction and got ready to serve. I heated up some corn tortillas in the microwave and we set all the bowls of toppings out. Everyone did an assembly line through the kitchen.

And who could forget a little chilled Reisling for the hot night…

The tacos came out like so:

They were very tasty – I was particularly proud of the carnitas, which was insanely flavorful with a little spice. The carne asada tasted wonderful, but the texture just wasn’t right for taco meat. We ended up eating it by itself. That marinade recipe is great. We ate and drank in silence, watching the Laker game with salsa verde dripping down our fingers.

Once we had digested, my roommate Anna had planned a dessert her dad used to give her as a kid. She made a bittersweet chocolate sauce by melting bittersweet cooking chocolate with corn syrup (takes about 2 minutes and tastes so good on sweeter stuff), and we dribbled it over Haagen-dazs vanilla ice cream and topped it with raspberries. It was perfect – not too rich and refreshing in the heat.

I’ve cooked meals I know for friends before, but after putting as much work into this meal as I did, there was something so much more gratifying about watching them struggle to keep their tacos in one piece, and their content, munching faces once they succeeded. Now that I’ve learned that carne asada marinade recipe I am certain I will use it again, just maybe not for tacos. The carnitas was time consuming but so worth it. I’m hoping to make it one of my staples now that I know how to do it.

The Castro: Now and Then

2009-04-15T21:52:00.001-07:00

Hey hey! Check out the movie Joel, Teresa and I made for our Eating San Francisco class on the Castro. Cheesy, but in a good way... blog to follow in the next few days...

Here's the YouTube link as well.

My stomach: A day in the life.

2009-03-18T00:09:00.000-07:00

I woke up yesterday morning at 7 am to the feeling of dread. Dread for the midterm-class-work-midterm kind of day I was starting. And no breakfast. Thanks to my upcoming trip to Egypt (tomorrow), I have to take one tiny pink capsule filled with live Typhoid fever every other day for 8 days. I can’t eat for two hours on either end, and even after the two hours are up I feel incredibly nauseated and don’t really want to eat anyway. They’re super. However, I’ll trade four days of nausea for 9 days of Egypt in a hot second. I digress. I took my pill, crammed as much information about media audience research as I could into my brain until 9, and went off to begin the day.

After my test, which was not nearly as daunting as I had anticipated, my two hours were up and I had time to go grab a coffee and a tiny overpriced cup of soggy fruit. I tend to stay away from USF’s cafeteria as much as possible, but Mondays are limited since I’m on campus from 10 am until 9 pm. If any of you have ever tried the French Vanilla Latte type drink dispensed out of the big metal box in the “caf”, you will know that it is much closer to simple syrup with a half cup of coffee poured in than a latte. I don’t have much idea what’s in it, and am admittedly certain it is terrible for me, but I had a lot to do, and that stuff gets the job done.

2 hours later, after sitting through a review of the midterm I had just taken early, I had time to grab a quick salad from the vegetarian bar (stop # 2 at the caf...sin) to bring to work and eat before running around to photograph some extremely thrilling MBA workshops. Note the artichoke hearts. I. Love. Artichoke. Hearts. I tend to like to put a lot of stuff in my food - since I was a kid, so says my mom, I just mixed all my foods together. This possibly explains my affinity toward salads, casseroles, and complicated sandwiches. In between workshops, I snuck in a few Jolly Ranchers from the undergraduate business office.

Now Monday is a blissful day at work, because Monday is free cookie/brownie/coffee day. The business school puts out tables of these snacks for their students every Monday evening and Tuesday morning to reward their hard work. The other business school workers and I get first dibs because we're the first to hear the screeching of the tables being rearranged for the epic display of sweets while the actual business school students are in class. "2 cookies Ali...2?" you question. But to be fair, I don't eat any sweets during the week, so these two cookies are my treat of treats. I counter the refined sugar with my vice of vices: orange juice, con mucho pulp (imagine its beauty, because I was so excited I drank it before I remembered to document it).

As my work day came to a close, I crammed once again for my 6:30 midterm in Journalism. Post-writing-heavy-exam, I returned home to discuss philosophy and the meaning of life with my roommate. Both tired from long weeks, weekends, and days, we did said bonding over a few Wyder's Pear Ciders (that is our fish, Mrs. Featherbottom). They taste like sprite and I can't say I am a true fan, but it's what she needed. I realized I hadn't eaten in 8 hours and was suddenly starving. We'd worked bartending at an engagement party the previous Saturday night, and the hosts had given us an enormous chunk of the leftovers of a 6-foot sandwich: toasty french bread, mozzarela, roasted red peppers, pesto and sundried tomatoes. After attempting 3 bites, it was just too difficult to handle, so I gave up to go paint. By 11 pm the hunger was becomming irritating, so I turned to the traditional.

Almost every single night, I eat vegetables and rice with curry sauce. I heard rumors long ago that curry is addicting, and rolled my eyes at this impossibility. I now stand humbled and corrected, one year after my curry addiction began (it is also rumored that eating curry results in crazy dreams... At the risk of sounding crazy myself, I am living proof). I threw together some yellow squash, mushrooms, zucchini, and broccoli (I usually use potatoes but we were out), and created my favorite meal that literally could never get old. Here's how I usually do it:

Ingredients:
Third Yellow Squash, sliced
Third Green Zucchini, sliced
Small Red Potato, sliced thinly or bagged Trader Joes Broccoli
Handful Crimini Mushrooms
White Rice
Trader Joes Yellow or Red Curry Sauce
Trader Joes Coconut Milk

The directions are simple. I sautee the ingredients in olive oil (EVOO as our muse, Rachael Ray, would say...kidding), salt and fresh garlic (garlic salt/powder is a sin, please remember this), keeping the lid on as much as possible to allow the potatoes to cook all the way through. This usually takes about 10-15 minutes on a medium stove setting. After the vegetables are almost cooked all the way through, I add some coconut milk and the curry sauce and put the lid back on, turning down the heat and letting it simmer for about 5 minutes. If I need to reheat already-cooked rice, I throw a serving into the pan as well because rice dries out in the refrigerator, but it's best to cook it fresh (directions are on the bag: it usually takes 20 minutes so it's best to put that in first). When the sauce is hot and the potatoes and other vegetables are soft, serve however you like.

You might not all become addicts like me, but this is a really great, cheap comfort food that doesn't require much cooking skill at all, and is much better for you than ramen or other quick-cook meals.

The Mission: Recipes of Mexico

2009-03-11T17:16:00.000-07:00

CHECK OUT MINE AND NICK'S MISSION PROJECT VIDEO ON HIS BLOG!

Although cultures from many countries of Central and South America are represented in San Francisco's Mission district, the most well known is Mexico, and more particularly Mexican food. As Nick and I mentioned in our video, Mexican food at the hot spots in the Mission and in most of America is a consolidation of cuisines from all of the regions of Mexico. Mexico is typically split up into four regions: Southern Mexico, Northern Mexico, the Yucatan, and the Baja peninsula. I did a little research on the foods from these regions that the Mexican food we are used to pulls from. I found four authentic recipes for meals/sauces most typical in each region. Here they are - try them out!:

The Yucatan: Poc Chuc
Ingredients:

6 (10-12 ounce) pork blade steaks, 1/4 -inch thick
16 ounces sour orange juice (or 16 ounces regular orange juice with 1/2 cup lime juice)
1 1/2 ounces achiote paste (see recipe above)
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon black pepper
4 cups water
5 medium purple onions, very thinly sliced
8 ounces white vinegar
1 bunch cilantro, chopped
1/4 habanero pepper, roasted and finely chopped
salt and pepper

Directions

Blend all marinade ingredients in blender or food processor. Marinate pork at least 3 hours.
Bring water to boil in deep saucepan. Add onions and blanch for 1 minute. Drain and place in stainless steel bowl. Toss with vinegar, cilantro, chile, salt and pepper.
Grill pork steaks on barbecue.
Serving Suggestions: Serve with Mexican Yellow Rice. Garnish with habanero chile peppers and cilantro.

Southern Mexico: Traditional Mole:
Ingredients

12 guajillo chiles, roasted, skinned, stemmed and seeded
3 tomatoes, roasted and peeled
1/4 cup lard
1 onion, peeled and sliced
8 garlic cloves
1 stick of cinnamon torn into small pieces
1 tablespoon Mexican oregano
1/4 cup unsalted peanuts or unsweetened peanut butter
1 clove
1/4 cup masa
1 teaspoon cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon thyme
1/4 teaspoon anise seeds
1/4 cup raisins, soaked in water to soften (optional)
3 peppercorns
4 cups chicken broth

Directions
Note: The traditional way is to mash all of the ingredients except the broth, with a molcajete (mortar and pestle) but a blender will also do the job just fine.

Heat the lard in a large saucepan. Add in the onions and garlic and cook until translucent. In a blender, puree the peanuts then add in the oregano, cinnamon, anise, peppercorns, thyme and cloves and blend with the tomatoes. Puree to make a smooth paste. Add in the onions and garlic and puree again. Finally, add chiles to blender to puree into a smooth paste.

Add the chicken broth to the pot and add the pureed ingredients. Make a roux, by mixing the masa with a 1/4 cup of the chicken broth. Mix the roux into the broth and whisk until mixture is smooth. Add the pureed ingredients and simmer for 1 hour, covered and then simmer uncovered until sauce has thickened.

Northern Mexico: Barbacoa
Ingredients

1 pound onions, peeled and diced
1 pound firm-ripe tomatoes, rinsed, cored, and chopped
4 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
3 ounces fresh jalapeño chilies (about 4 total), rinsed, stemmed, seeded, and quartered lengthwise
2 dried bay leaves
1 cup fat-skimmed chicken broth
1/2 cup lime juice
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
2 teaspoons dried thyme
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon dried Mexican or regular oregano
About 1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon coarse-ground pepper
1 boned, tied beef chuck or boned pork shoulder or butt (4 to 5 lb.)

Directions

1. In a 9- by 13-inch pan, mix onions, tomatoes, garlic, jalapeños, bay leaves, chicken broth, lime juice, vinegar, thyme, cumin, oregano, 1 teaspoon salt, and pepper. Rinse meat, place in pan, and turn to coat. Cover and chill at least 3 hours or up to 1 day, turning meat occasionally. Seal pan with foil.

2. Bake in a 300° oven until meat is tender enough to pull apart easily, 4 to 5 hours. Supporting with 2 slotted spoons, transfer meat to a platter. Pour pan juices through a strainer into a 12-inch frying pan or a 5- to 6-quart pan (discard bay leaves; reserve remaining vegetable mixture); skim and discard fat. Boil juices over high heat until reduced to 1 cup, 25 to 30 minutes.

3. When meat is cool enough to handle, in about 10 minutes, discard string. Use 2 forks or your fingers to pull meat into shreds; discard fat and connective tissue. Add meat and reserved vegetable mixture to pan with juices. Stir occasionally over medium heat until steaming, about 5 minutes. Season to taste with salt.

Baja Peninsula: Traditional Fish Tacos

Ingredients

White Sauce:

1 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup milk
4 tablespoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon garlic salt

Fish Tacos:

Oil
2 packages Tempura Batter Mix
1 can beer
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon garlic powder
24 ounces boneless cod, cut into 2-inch pieces
6 corn tortillas
2 cups shredded cabbage
2 limes

Directions

Mix all sauce ingredients together and set aside.

Preheat a fryer or a deep pot halfway filled with oil to 375 degrees F.

Mix 1 of the packages of batter, but only use 1/2 the required amount of water and use beer for the remaining amount instead. Add the beer until the batter becomes almost like a heavy cream consistency.

Using the other package of batter add salt and garlic powder, coat cod pieces with the dry mix, then dip into prepared batter. Deep-fry for about 3 minutes, or until golden brown and cooked through.

Place fried cod pieces on warmed corn tortillas, add white sauce to fish, a little shredded cabbage and a squeeze of lime, to taste

Obviously you guys probably don't have a deep fryer for the fish tacos, or access to all of the ingredients, but this gives a good idea of the different ingredients available to the local people of these regions. It also demonstrates how narrow our view and interpretation of Mexican cuisine truly is in this country. With some substitutes, I'm sure any of us could make these recipes into something great. Until next time!

Mission Crue: The Details

2009-02-28T20:34:00.000-08:00

Hey ESF Crue!

I'm posting on behalf of our wonderful Mission Crue. We just got back from the Mission district and had a lot of fun checking things out. Here are some pictures documenting what we found. Check out the video at the bottom for your instructions on where to meet. See you Wednesday!

P.S. Note the picture of the car crashed into the Wells Fargo Bank. This is what we witnessed on our way back to the car on Mission Street. We heard some street talk about what happened, but it was a pretty gruesome story and didn't want to share it until it hit the press.

North Beach Photobook

2009-02-25T12:06:00.000-08:00

Hello my fellow ESF crue members!

Before I forget: this building to the right (the Coppola building we discussed but couldn't remember the name of in class) is called the Sentinel Building.

With the help of our adventures in North Beach and a little program called Smilebox, I've created a fully digital photobook for your viewing (and hopefully listening) pleasure. When I was in high school, we had a family friend who was homeless/unemployed 50% of the time, and spent many nights on our upstairs couch. His name was O'Malley Jones, and the other 50% of the time he was a fairly successful James Brown impersonator (rightfully so, he was one talented vagrant). His other skill, which was not really a skill at all but a way of life, was to speak only in jive talk. Although I could not understand half of what he said, this was one of the cultural novelties brought to the North Beach area by the wanderlustful beats, along with many other forms of art and poetry. In homage to the beats, I was going to attempt to restrict the text in my photobook to jive only, but even after the many hours and days I spent in my kitchen nodding while O'Malley talked at me I apparently learned nothing. Still, I made sure the text is in some sort of poetic form (in other words, it rhymes - I'm still a novice, OK?).

While I was brainstorming for this project, I got to thinking about the beats and the counterculture they represented during their time. They were and are seen as a drastic, bohemian contrast to the traditional ways of life in the 1950s. It occurred to me that they established this reputation simply by thinking, and manifesting their thoughts into creations. Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs wrote novels and free-verse. Cassady rapped and free-flowed (and adulterated). Jackson Pollock flung paint across his canvas. All of these things they were doing were considered radical and against the grain of society. They were a tight-knit group of nonconformists, and the gap that separated them from the doctrinal part of society was deep. Now, it seems, popular culture is continuing a process of coalescing with counterculture, and they are sometimes indecipherable. I don't want to delve too far into the many causes/effects of this apparent merge, but it is something to think about. We live in a culturally diverse city and have a unique opportunity to be ourselves free of the judgment we might suffer in another locale, but it is also a time when the depth of our media technology allows for the obscure and nonconforming to gain such far-reaching recognition that it becomes part of what we call "pop culture." Is it possible, with this rush of progress and global connectivity, for us to create a counterculture movement reminiscent of the beat generation without it becoming mainstream "cool?"

But, I digress! Can't wait to see everyone's projects, and without further ado...

Make a Smilebox photobook

P.S. Short review of the Smilebox program: Lots of options! But you have to stick to their formats, and pay 3$ for the full screen version (however, when you pay for a certain format design you have it forever and can make as many photobooks using that design in full screen as you want). Check it out! They have digital slideshows, scrapbooks, photobooks, etc. Also, I am aware of and apologize for my overuse of parenthetical statements, but I will not stop (we all have our thing).

The Dough Flinger

2009-02-21T13:18:00.000-08:00

My first blog post...ever! Here's a short little stillframe video I made from photos at the awesome Italian French Baking Co. using iMovie. It's small, I know, but blogger wouldn't let me upload the full quality size. Enjoy.