chez pim

Blog Day!

Today is Blog Day, the day everyone in Blogosphere celebrates our link-iness, which, to me, is one of our quirky charms. Blogs are many things to many people, but to me, they are little windows into our most fascinating world, full of different colors, textures, and flavors. Some may still think of us as navel gazing weirdos in the world unto ourselves, shouting monologues into the void, but I doubt that those naysayers have really spent any time looking at the myriads of amazing blogs that are out there.

For me, I started my blog way back when because some cool kids I knew had them (invented them, even). Chez Pim began as a way for me to share a little bit of my world with my circle of faraway friends, but it has become something else entirely, and has introduced me to many interesting people and places, made me more than a load of new friends, and even showed me the sides of the world I would not have otherwise seen. It has been a fun time in Blogosphere.

So today, I am celebrating Blog Day by sharing you a few new and newly discovered blogs that you may not know about. Have fun browsing and blogging!

Bad Things
I adore pedantry, and Max can out pedant just about anyone in Blogosphere. How could I not love him?

Algerian Cuisine/Cuisine Algerienne
I love Algeria, even though I've never been there. Some of my favorite writers (Albert Camus), philosophers (Jacques Derrida), and good friends trace their roots to Algeria. I know next to nothing about the cuisine, unfortunately, though perhaps just enough to know that couscous in America mostly suck. Quite badly. In fact. That is why I am quite excited that there is a blog dedicated to the cuisine from Algeria, and will be checking in regularly. I might even roll my own couscous one of these days!

Chubby Hubby
Aun writes from Singapore, one of the most exciting food towns. She does lovely photography, and hangs out in the parts of Asia I wish I could spend more time in, like Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Malaysia. A lovely new-ish addition to the food blogosphere.

Deep End Dining
Eddie wrote me asking to be included in my horribly out-of-date Not Flogs list when he started his blog. For some reason I've never got around to it, although I must admit I check in on his crazy adventures once in a while. It seems he hardly needs traffic from me these days, but I am listing him here anyway. Go check out his hilarious posts and watch him eat live octopus tenticles! Yikes!

Chez Ptipois
This one is in French. Ptipois is a well-known food writer in France. In fact she is so famous she hangs out with Anikin Skywalker on a regular basis. That's why she is writing with a nom de plume. I'll let you figure out yourself just who she is. Her blog, just like her person, is whimsical and always tells a good story. If you read French, or want to improve your French, I would add this to your blog roll.

Arts and Letters Daily
They have been at it -this linkiness thing- long before blogs are cool, and they continue to suck hours and hours from me every week. Reading Arts and Letters Daily is like having an intelligent and ultimately cool friend scouring the web clipping interesting tidbits for you to read. How fun!
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I just had to add another one.
Nathalie Bouffe
Nathalie works at favorite cheese shop in London, Neals Yard Dairy. She knows more about cheese than most people I know, and that is saying a lot. She promised me a while ago that she would do a series on all the fabulous artisanal cheeses and cheese makers in Britain. She has already begun beautifully by blogging about my favorite Caerphilly from a farm called Gorwydd. Fabulous. Indeed.

EoMEoTE: Greens, Eggs, and Ham

Did you say green, eggs, and ham?
Well, here I am.

And no, you cannot have them in a house -with or without a mouse. Nor can you have them here or there. But certainly they are somewhere. Three guesses?

Alkimia

In a chemically induced insomnia tonight, poor little me. I decided to make a good use out of my half awaken state by uploading a bunch more food porn from my last trip to Barcelona on my Flickr. These photos are from a lovely little place called Alkimia -strangely fitting name for my state tonight. Also another set from Gaig.

IMBB18: Khao-pad Panang Goong

Over there At Our Table, Linda is hosting Is My Blog Burning made for frying happy people. I am certainly one of those. When I was little, the only green stuff I ate willingly had been dipped in tempura batter and deep-fried, and I ate them with ketchup. Happily my palate has advanced somewhat since then. I still indulge in those golden, crispy beauties occasionally, most-notably in the early Spring, when Zuckerman farm sells their giant, piping hot, deep fried asparagus to warm up the cold foggy Saturday mornings at the Ferry Plaza farmers market. There is even ketchup on the side to transport me conveniently back to those carefree days.

As a home cook, I abhor deep frying. I am such a klutz around the kitchen I always end up hurting myself. You should see battle scars on both my arms from jumping hot oil. I will therefore refrain from doing anything deep fried here. Stir-frying, on the other hand, is so easy, not to mention much less life-threatening. When I am out of ideas for dinner I often resort to throwing a few things together, a stir-fry kitchen sink, so to say. It's also such a good way to use up your leftovers: rice, meat, even curry paste.

The fried dish I am doing for this IMBB is Khao-pad Panang Goong, stir-fry rice with prawns in Panang curry paste. When I make Panang curry, I always have a little bit homemade paste leftover. Many times, the tablespoon or two of the leftover paste would languish in the fridge until all sorts of interesting fungi turn the lovely red paste into a blue-ish, green-ish, black-ish, and positively furry lump, at which time it would be forcibly moved to the trash. At other times, when I am a little bit more together, I use the paste as a flavoring base for a delicious plate of stir-fry rice. I love to use prawns for this, instead of chicken or other land-animal meats, because the citrus note on the Panang paste compliments seafood beautifully. You are certainly allowed to use other meats, even tofu, if you object to prawns for whatever reason.

Culinary Russian Roulette: Pimientos de Padrón

Eating local is getting easier and more fun when local farmers are cultivating all sorts of interesting and delicious fruits and vegetables. I've said a few times before that even most ingredients for my Thai food are pretty easy to find locally. And recently I found something that got me all excited, Pimientos de Padrón, Padron peppers.

These little green pods are a staple at tapas bars in Spain, where they are simply cooked in lots and lots of olive oil over a slow heat until wrinkled and slightly brown, and served with a sprinkle of good salt. They are sweet, smoky, and delicious, with a light pang of heat. But that's not really the point of eating them, really. The entire point of eating Pimientos de Padrón, for a lot of people, is the culinary russian roulette aspect of it. You see, one in about ten of these deliciously mild peppers is super hot. Reaching Out For Beer Screaming hot. And the trick of it is, you never know which one. There is no physical characteristic or forensic clue to tell you, in plain view, which one is spicy and which isn't. You'll just know it when you bite into it. And it will always catch you by surprise, always. You begin with a little tentative step, taking a mini bite from the tip of each one, to make sure it wouldn't kill you before you eat the entire pod. And if you were me, before you knew it you'd be in the groove, eating a whole pod at a time in between bites of this and that, and perhaps a sip of beer or two. And that's when it hit, when you least expected. Got me every time. Don't say I didn't warn you.

A hick in critic's clothing

People in the city complain about their Bruni, while we in the other city moan about our Bauer. And Ced, dear Ced just goes on sans cesse about his darling Meredith.

But you know what? It's the Londoners who one up us all.

They are trumping us with this bloke Gareth McLean, the latest in the parade of oddly amateurish restaurant critics in the UK Guardian -some of whom have questionable knowledge of food and even less so of dining in general. In his current review in said paper, Mr.McLean had this to say:

Since I don't believe in foie gras, the ham hock and foie gras terrine was out of bounds. And since it's way too old lady to order soup in a restaurant, the leek and potato soup was also a no-no. That left crab ravioli and red mullet or honey-roasted duck confit salad. Here, my unshakeable belief that crabs are reinforced swimming spiders and so shouldn't be put near one's mouth was, well, shaken. Mainly because it's wrong to eat ducks. Not for the same reason it's wrong to eat pigeons (they're dirty birdies, even if the ones you get in restaurants are not plucked off grimy streets), but because ducks seem like nice birds and, despite often living in stagnant water, mostly look clean. So the ravioli it had to be, and it was very tasty.

With his peculiar -if not downright insane- sensitivities, one wonders what he was doing play-acting a reviewer in the first place. And I'm not even mentioning the part about picking bacon bits out of his teeth and contemplating mending the fly on his PJ. I Kid You Not.

We should all count our blessings, starting right about now.

Dirty Girl's dry farmed Early Girl tamatoes: or why you should shop at the ferry plaza tomorrow, part duh!

Our handsome Joe at Dirty Girl has got some beautiful dry farmed Early Girl tomatoes now. Lots of them. I've been getting them every week, either at the Ferry Plaza market or Santa Cruz market or sometimes borrowing directly from the farm when he's not looking.

Joe's dry-farmed tomato is the size of a plum, and just about the sweetest and yummiest tomatoes you could find, beating your fancy heirloom tomatoes by at least a mile. Not that there's anything wrong with heirlooms, per se, but just because some tomatoes are labeled heirlooms, and cost you five dollars a pound, doesn't mean they are any good to eat.

Seriously, you've never really had great tomatoes until you've had dry farmed tomatoes. They are generally smaller and pack full of concentrated tomato flavors that have not been diluted by too much water while growing. The skin of a dry farmed tomato is a little stronger than that of the regular tomato, which is an added bonus because that means the dry farmed tomatoes don't bruise as easily. Joe's dry farmed tomatoes are seriously good, and good in practically anything. I have been using them almost everyday since the season began, in my stir-fries, pan con tamate, tomato tart, pasta, or just eating outright like a fruit. Because it is, in fact, a fruit.

And the height of the dry farmed tomato season is coming on fast and furious. So much so that Joe asked me to pass along a public service announcement. And by public service announcement I mean advertisement for my friend!

He's got tomatoes, ladies and gentlemen, Joe's got lots of tomatoes. And he wanna sell them. To you. Yes. You. Don't be looking over your shoulder. It's you I'm talking to.

Gratin de Framboises: or why you should shop at the ferry plaza tomorrow, part I

Last Saturday at the Ferry Plaza market Michelle of Ella Bella farm had some superlative raspberries, in the shades of bright red and blushing pink, or golden as the name claimed. I've been eating lots of raspberries this season, and they were all very good. But these, they stopped me right in my track after stealing a mouthful from the case David picked up for the restaurant. They were unbelievably fragrant and just delicious, like little flavor bombs going off in my mouth, one after another. David, the sweet David, said I could have a box from that case, but one box was certainly not enough for greedy little me, so I ran back to her stall next to Frog Hollow, knocking aside a nice old French gentleman and his wife as I made my way back to those sublimely berry goodness before others -surely less worthy than I- got to them all. Well, I did apologize. And I bought about an armload.

After I was done eating a bunch of them -a bunch of boxes, that is- outright, I started looking around for some fun things to do with them. I remembered an old cookbook I came upon a few weeks ago, with a beautiful and simple recipe for Gratin de Framboises, raspberry gratin. I thought I'd look it up and make one.

Therein lies a problem. You see, I have lots of cookbook. A lot. But David's collection put mine -or whosever for that matter- to shame. Stacks and stacks of amazing books, many of which rare and out of print from long dead French and Catalan dudes. Which one was it that I was thinking of?

Eat Local Challenge

A little late to the party, again, silly little me, this one is the Eat Local Challenge organized by Jen. I told her I would participate early on, but got a little side tracked at the beginning of the month when my fridge in the city broke, which made it a little difficult to cook, let alone thinking about the sources of the food I ate. Although deciding to get involved really wasn't that big a deal. David and I go out of our ways to buy and cook with local ingredients anyway. I have been going to the Saturday morning farmers market in San Francisco since it was on the street in front of the old Ferry building many moons ago, and followed when it moved to the parking lot further down the road, to when it returned again to the original location, this time inside the renovated Ferry Plaza where it continues today.

I know buying exclusively local is hardly possible. Self sustaining communities have never really worked: Masada eventually fell, hippie communes in the 60's ended up breeding rebellious yuppies, and Biosphere is now barely more than a glorified Disneyland. Even living here in fertile California, we cannot possibly grow and raise all the things we need. And then there are specialty things that are simply not negotiable, they just cannot be local. This Thai girl will always eat Thai Jasmine rice, always, for example.

But I am still a firm believer in buying local, perhaps not exclusively local, but more local would be good enough for me. I buy local because some things just taste better when they are not shipped across the country, soft, sweet, juicy, tree ripened peaches for example. I buy local because there are superb produce and products local to me that are better than what I can find anywhere else. I buy local because I believe in supporting my community, local farmers, and artisans. I know that being able to make this choice is a privilege, some people are far more concerned with merely keeping their families clothed and fed. But this is a choice I could afford to make, so I did.

Drink Local! Drink Bonny Doon

Lenn, who has always been a big supporter of his local wineries, gave us a cue to check out our own with Wine Blogging Wednesday: the local edition. The really local edition I must say, as the rule laid down by our WBW master was to drink wine from the winery nearest to our abode. Lenn even threatened to fact check if he had to.

Oh dear. It's a little complicated, isn't it? How do I know which winery is nearest to San Francisco? With the plethora of vineyards in this valley and that around the city, would I have to bring out my measuring tape to see which one would win? I haven't a clue. Oh well, I'm not in San Francisco this week anyway, I'm in Santa Cruz, so Santa Cruz wine it is then. Luckily, it's a tad easier to find the nearest winery to us here. Yes, you guessed it, the famous Bonny Doon vineyard, which is not only near us, but practically right on the mountain overlooking the beaches where we go surfing every week - and by surfing I mean, for my part, sunning on the beach. Anyhoo, can't get any local-er than that!