YatCuisine

San Diego - Karl Strauss Brewing Co.

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 11:45:29 -0600

Beer-brined Pork Chops from Karl Strauss Brewing Company, San Diego

One of the cities to which I travel regularly is San Diego, to teach for Hitachi Data Systems. The HDS office is up the road from downtown, off of I-15, making the drive over to La Jolla in the evening after class fairly easy. Since the airport is right downtown and I usually try to take a redeye flight home at the end of the week, I get one evening in that part of town.

The Karl Strauss Brewing Co. is a small chain. I ate first at the La Jolla brewpub, and enjoyed it enough to try the one near the old Santa Fe (now Amtrak) train station. I'd spent the afternoon walking around the Embarcadero, noticed a Starbucks across the street from the train and trolley stations, so I parked nearby and did the coffee shop thing to check e-mail and twitter. While sipping my venti black tea lemonade, I googled the location, did a "search nearby" on "restaurants," and found Karl Strauss in the first hits. It was just a walk around the corner.

The location on Columbia Street was a good choice. The place had a good crowd, and the bartender was cheerful. I started with their red, aptly named "Red Trolley Ale." (The trolleys in the city's light rail system are indeed red). It was a flavorful, full-bodied ale, just as I remembered it from La Jolla. The Olympics were on one boobtoob, the Padres on another, as I enjoyed the pint and perused the dinner menu. None of the starters moved the earth for me, so I went straight for the entrees.

I'd had the "Lemon Hef Chicken" for my meal in La Jolla, grilled chicken with a glaze made with their "Windansea Wheat Hefeweizen" beer. It was a tasty combination that inspired me to try another entree that had a beer-based sauce. This time it was the Beer-brined Pork Chops. The chops came with a glaze made with Strauss' Scottish Ale (and the menu suggested that brew to accompany the dish, of course). As I ordered up the meal, the bartender didn't merely parrot the menu's beverage suggestion; before going over to key the order in, she stopped at the taps and drew a sample of the Scottish Ale for me, saying "you're going to want to try this, it goes really well with the pork chops."

The Scottish was tasty in its own right, so I let her pour me that for my next pint, as I we chatted casually and I twittered on the phone. My plate came out in due course, prompt service from the kitchen. The presentation was nice, the chops stood up on their sides, resting on a scoop of mashed potatoes, along with a side of skinny green beans. The glaze was lightly drizzled on the chops, and then a generous helping spooned onto the plate in front. Some mustard was squirted along the edge of the plate, an excellent addition to any grilled pork dish (and a nice color addition to the plating).

The pork chops were cooked just right and the mustard/glaze went well with them. The mashed potatoes weren't all that thrilling, but that's OK, I didn't need the calories of those and the baguette bread served with the meal anyway. The veggies were nicely steamed, crispy and tasty. The bartender was right, the Scottish Ale went well with the meal.

Even though she tried to tempt me with dessert, I decided to pass. After a good meal and good beer, it was time to head off to the airport, where I slept comfortably on the redeye, another successful trip to San Diego.

Breakfast on a MD88

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 11:31:04 -0600

(x-posted to YatTravel)

I've flown enough ion Delta Air Lines n the last two years that I get upgraded to first class fairly regularly, and this morning is no exception. This was my second trip in a month to New York City; HDS juggled teaching assignments last week, so I didn't go to Santa Clara as planned.

Delta has resumed non-stop service from New Orleans (MSY) to LaGuardia Airport (LGA) in New York. the MSY-LGA leg deaprts at 5:30pm. The LGA-MSY flight is at 7:30am, so I usually stay over after class is finished rather than have to put up with the hassle of both LaGuardia and ATL in the same evening. I get up around 5:30am, leave the hotel (in midtown Manhattan) around 6am, and am at LGA just about 6:30am.

When I'm fortunate to be upgraded for this leg, that means breakfast on a MD88. This plane, along with the B757 is the backbone of Delta's fleet. There are three and a half rows of front-cabin seats on a MD88, for a total of 14. The galley space isn't very extensive, but they're still able to put on a decent cold breakast.

Breakfast consisted of a bowl of sliced fresh fruit, canteloupe, grapefruit, and pineapple on this flight. Last time there were fresh strawberries. Then there's either a bagel or scone, warmed, but not toasted. When it's a bagel, there's plain Kraft cream cheese and jelly, when a scone, butter and jelly. One flight offered strawberry-flavored yogurt, and the other applesauce. There's also an individual box of cereal, usually Kellogg's Corn Flakes, along with half a pint of white milk and sugar.

Not a bad start to the morning!

Food Meme

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 10:28:18 -0600

Usually I don't do memes in my MT blogs. I'm a full-blown meme-ho on LiveJournal, though, as my LJ-friends will attest. Since this meme came from outside LJ (from Saintseester), I though I'd do it here so I can share it back with her.

* Bold all the items you've eaten
* Strikethrough any items that you would never consider eating
* Italicize the items you'll eat if given the chance

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea - I'm with Saintseester on this, I don't know why I would
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare - ah, the "Cannibal Special" at Camellia Grill!
5. Crocodile - i'm saying yes here, because gator is close
6. Black pudding - yup, boudin is blood sausage
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush - there's a restaurant in San Diego, Sadaf, on 5th St. in Gaslamp, great Baba Ghanoush
11. Calamari - Drago's or Bacco...mmmmmmm
12. Pho - all the rage in NOLA
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi - i think i've eaten this
15. Hot dog from a street cart - well, duh, the guys in the red-stripe jackets in Da Quarters.
16. Époisses de Bourgogne
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes - Orange wine from Plaquemines Parish, and Boone's Farm, of course.
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans - Buster Holmes!
25. Brawn or head cheese - yes, but I don't like it.
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters - believe it or not, Hooter's in Metairie usually is a good place for raw erstas. The ultimate are the Bienville at Antoine's, char-grilled at Drago's, or po-boy from Parasol's.
29. Baklava
30. Bagna càuda - now i'm very curious about this one.
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar - does Cognac with a fattie count? :-)
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. ~~Oxtail~~
41. Curried goat
42. ~~Whole insects~~
43. Phaal
44. Goat's milk
45. Malt whiskey from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald's Big Mac Meal
56. Spätzle
57. Dirty gin martini - just how I like them
58. Beer above 8% ABV - "doubles" and "triples" in Europe, yummy
59. Poutine- it sure sounds like something bad, but the description is good.
60. Carob chips
61. S'mores
62. Sweetbreads - had some good ones in Den Bosch
63. Kaoliang - sure. If it's booze, I'll try it. ( love Saintseester's attitude)
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs' legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake - Beignets are not something you get at a State Fair. They are an art form.
68. ~~Haggis~~
69. Fried plantain
70. ~~Chitterlings or andouillette~~
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe - need to do another Absinthe meet-up, f'sure.
74. Gjetost or brunost
75. ~~Roadkill~~ - No. nyet. nein. Na ganna happa.
76. Baijiu - booze, yeah...
77. Hostess Fruit Pie - only if there are no
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict - my preference is Eggs Hussarde, a Brennan's variation.
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a 3-Michelin-star restaurant - if I ever get to a 3-star restaurant, sure.
85. Kobe beef - had Kobe beef mini-burgers at Sammy's in La Jolla last week. Had for-sure-real Kobe beef at a teppanyaki place in Tokyo as well.
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. ~~Horse~~ - If I have, i didn't know it
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft-shell crab - last ones were at Galatoire's
93. Rose harissa - this sounds interesting.
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor - not a fave, but i've made it
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake - - probably not for me

Never thought I'd hear this at McDonald's

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 12:48:26 -0600

There's a McDonald's across the street from Hitachi Data Systems' European Education Center here in Waardenburg, NL. OK, I know most of yomu regard it to be an abomination to eat at the Plastic Arches while in Europe, but it's either that or the company cafeteria (we're in an industrial park).

I go up to the counter and order "Menu 2" which is the Quarter Pounder Value meal. (And no, unlike the French and "Pulp Fiction," the Dutch call it a "Quarter Pounder." The assistant manager rings me up (€ 5.50), and says something foreign to me, in English:

"We are cooking your Quarter Pounder, please have a seat and we will bring it to you."

whoa :-)

Five Tips On Cooking For/With Children

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 09:46:13 -0600

Family cooking can be a challenge when there are small children in the house. Adult tastes and kid tastes can be so totally different. Here in New Orleans, the challenge can be even greater, because our Creole dishes can be complex and unappealing to kids. With that in mind, here are some tips for cooking with kids:

1. Creole seasoning is your friend. Not a lot, but just a bit can start kids on their way to appreciating spicy food. Try baked/broiled chicken where you sprinkle just a bit of creole seasoning on the pieces before putting them in the oven. They'll come out with a bit of a crust, and cooking with a bit of salt helps cut back on a diner's craving to put more on at the table.

2. Cook easily-assembled foods. Bagel pizzas and quesadillas are great possibilities. Even if you make tacos with one of those everything-in-a-box kits, the kids can help. Individual pizzas using bagels or english muffins as a "crust" can be tailored to each member of the household. Same for quesadillas or fajitas. There are no rules for toppings and content, everyone gets what they want!

3. Use wine when cooking for kids. Try this--slice boneless, skinless chicken breasts into tender-size pieces. Sprinkle both sides of tenders with creole seasoning and saute in a bit of olive oil until brown, just a couple of minutes per side. Put them in a glass baking dish. De-glaze the saute pan with a bit of white wine and pour the wine/drippings back onto the tenders. Bake for 20 minutes at 350F. You get chicken tenders with a much more complex flavor. The alcohol in the wine evaporates while in the saute pan, leaving the flavor and enabling you to cut back on the salt you use.

4. Make it fast! There are a lot of easy alternatives to cooking from scratch that don't involve a lot of work. Buy some pre-cooked chicken tenders. Warm them in a pan and add a bit of white wine, heavy cream, and white seedless grapes. Serve over pasta. Don't put the sauce on the kids' plates. Instead of microwaved chicken, you now have a creative meal!

5. Serve your food to the kids. Take a look at my Chicken Bonne Femme. OK, kids aren't going to get into the sauce, with the onions, mushrooms, diced ham and wine, but they will get into fried potatoes, chicken, and bacon! Go ahead and cook for YOUR palate and dumb down the meal a bit for the kids. Creole cooking is great for this, because the recipes add complex sauces to otherwise simple dishes. Cook crawfish in a cream sauce for you, but pull some of the mudbug tails out before adding them to the sauce. Dust them in a bit of flour, saute, and you get popcorn crawfish!

If you follow the principle of refusing to eat what YOU like, you can let your imagination run wild with ways to accomodate the kids.

And it'll be fun!

Chicken Bonne Femme

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 11:46:56 -0600

"The Good Wife's Chicken" has a number of names. The base dish has been around since antebellum days. Local restaurants have created their own variations on the dish, such as Chicken Clemenceau at Antoine's or Tujague's, or Chicken Pontalba at Brennan's.

I did a podcast on Chicken Bonne Femme back in 2005, but didn't accompany it with any photos at that time. My firstborn, home for the summer from the Georgia Institute of Technology, has been regularly requesting that I cook classic Creole dishes for the family, since he doesn't get much of that in Atlanta.

The Ingredients:

(Full recipe is at the bottom.) The classic recipe calls for two whole chickens, cut up. When I make this dish for just wife and I, that's how I do it. She'll eat the white meat pieces, I'll go for the dark. The boys complicate this, though, because they're also white meat people. For this meal, I went with "chicken breast tenders." Zuppardo's Supermarket sells not only boneless, skinless chicken breasts, but they also cut them up into tender-sized pieces. This has some pluses and minuses. On the plus side, there's less fat in the dish this way, but that fat is also part of the flavoring. I also cheated by using diced-up ham, the kind you buy for omlettes and such. That helped speed things up in cooking.

The starch in Chicken Bonne Femme is fried potatoes. We call them Brabant Potatoes when served as a side course. The usual way to cook the potatoes is to cube and deep-fry them. Rather than deep-frying in vegetable oil, I usually convection-bake the potatoes in a bit of olive oil. This way, I don't have to pull out my deep-fryer, which makes the house smell like a fast-food restaurant for a day or two.

Cut up bacon into small pieces and fry. When cooked, remove bacon and reserve the fat for cooking the chicken.

Lightly dust the chicken with flour and fry in the bacon fat. I usually add a bit of ground thyme and creole seasoning to the flour.

Saute the onions and green onions until they are translucent. Add the ham, mushrooms, Tabasco, worcestershire and wine. Simmer for a few minutes. Once the mushrooms are cooked, add the potatoes. Sauce is ready to serve when the potatoes absorb the liquid.

Melt the stick of butter in a saucepan. Remove from heat, skim off foam, and add chopped or pressed garlic.

To serve, spoon some of the sauce onto a plate, Place the chicken on top of sauce, then drizzle garlic butter over chicken. Top with bacon crumbles:

Some variations of the dish will call for placing toast or a Holland rusk on the plate first, then the sauce. This helps absorb some of the sauce if the dish is a bit runny.

Congratulations, you've cooked Creole!

The formal recipe:

Ingredients

4 slices bacon, cut into 1 inch squares
2 chickens, about 3 1/2 lbs., quartered
2 Tbs. flour
1/2 cup ham, cut into tiny dice
1 cups chopped green onion tops
1 cup chopped yellow onion
2 cups sliced fresh mushrooms
1 cup dry white wine
1 Tbs. Worcestershire sauce
1/4 tsp. Tabasco
2 lbs. white potatoes, peeled and diced
Vegetable oil for frying
1 stick butter
8 cloves garlic, chopped
Salt and pepper to taste

1. Fry the bacon in a large skillet until crisp, then remove. Drain excess fat, leaving about a teaspoon.
2. Dust (don't dredge) chicken quarters lightly with flour. Raise the heat to high and brown the chicken pieces on all sides. Remove the chicken pieces and keep warm.
3. In the same pan saute the ham, green onions, and yellow onions until the latter turn translucent. Add mushrooms, wine, Worcestershire, and Tabasco, and bring it up to a boil. After a minute, lower to a simmer.
4. In a separate skillet, fry the potatoes in 390-degree oil until very lightly browned. Drain them well and add to the ham, onions, etc. (The bonne femme garnish.)
5. Continue simmering sauce until all of the liquid is absorbed; lightly stir to distribute ingredients. Remove from heat.
6. Heat the butter in a small saucepan until it starts bubbling. Lower the heat, skim the foam off, and add the garlic. Cook the garlic in the hot butter for about a minute.
7. Put the chicken pieces in a broiling pan. Spoon the bonne femme garnish over and between the chicken pieces. Spoon the garlic butter over and salt and pepper the lot. Crumble the bacon over the top.
8. Put the pan into a preheated 400-degree oven and cook for 7-12 minutes. Turn the pieces, redistribute the sauce, and bake for another 5-7 minutes. If the white meat is cooked, remove it from the pan and keep warm. Continue cooking the leg quarters until the juices run clear when the thigh is pierced. Return the breasts to the mixture, and serve with lots of the garnish. Serves four.

Abita Dinner Thursday - Tweetup Time!

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 09:55:47 -0600

I can't think of a better place for us to have an evening Tweetup than NOLA:

ABITA DINNER SERIES 2008

Thursday, June 12th, 2008

NOLA Restaurant

534 Saint Louis St.

New Orleans, Louisiana 70130

(504) 522-6652 for reservations

$70 all inclusive (dinner, beer, tax & gratuity)

Beer Tales: 6:30pm

Seating: 7:00pm

Full details on the Abita Website.

What say you, tweeple?

New Travel Mug from PJ's

Thu, 29 May 2008 21:23:31 -0600

Of course I had to buy it with a streetcar on the front!

Lunch at Lafitte's Cafe

Thu, 29 May 2008 15:56:17 -0600

Lafitte's Cafe
6325 Elysian Fields Ave
New Orleans, LA 70122
(504) 284-7878

(Not to be confused with Cafe Lafitte in Exile on Bourbon Street)

The location has some fond memories for me. In the 1970s, the place was Luigi's Pizza Parlor. In the 1990s, it was a Bud's Broiler. The Bud's closed just before the storm, sign on the door said they lost the lease. Lafitte's opened in this location last year.

This was my second visit to Lafitte's. We went for dinner after one of my kid's band concerts about a month ago. I had one of their combo deli sandwiches with ham, pastrami, and roast beef. It was good, but way overkill in terms of mixing the meats. Kept it simple this trip, with the hot sausage po-boy you see above.

If a place uses Patton's hot sausage patties for their po-boys, I'm all over it. There's just nothing better for a hot sausage po-boy. Next trip, though, I'll tell them to leave off the fries. They were good, and I don't need those calories.

Service was excellent. I bought my computer in, so I could do some writing while I ate. The waiter saw my HP tx1419 boot Ubuntu, and we immediately got into a discussion about Gutsy and Hardy. He had some trouble upgrading to HH, and we compared notes. It's the sort of thing one encounters at a restaurant near a college campus.

Lafittes is open early for breakfast, and closes at 10pm nightly. They have an espresso machine, so they're a coffee house as well as a sandwich place. They also do the breakfast menu all day on Saturday and Sunday, for those who want a weekend brunch. Give 'em a try if you're out near UNO.

finally made a logo for this blog

Wed, 28 May 2008 10:03:29 -0600

My friends on twitter loved this photo when I made it an avatar, so it's now going to rep this blog. :-)

Don't Eat The Dead Ones!

Sat, 17 May 2008 18:24:11 -0600

It's that time of year, when the weather in Southeast Louisiana is nice (when it's not raining, of course), and crawfish are cheap and plentiful. Those are the perfect ingredients in making a crawfish boil.

The Raw Materials

We start with live crawfish. You can buy them by the sack from most seafood stores in New Orleans. Some seafood places "purge" the mudbugs for you, by hosing them down with cold water before they're sold. If yours weren't purged of the mud from which they get their name, then best to soak them in a pot of cold salt water for a while.

One of the weirdest things you'll ever hear a New Orleanian say is "don't eat the dead ones!" What they're admonishing you not to do is eat crawfish that were dead before they hit the boiling water. You can tell the difference because the "dead ones" tails don't curl up in the boiling water.

Next we prepare the water in which the bugs will be dropped. Everyone has their own family or secret recipe for crab/crawfish boiling, but many are based on a prepared seasoning mix.

This is Zatarain's Liquid Crab Boil. It's a highly concentrated seasoning mix that is so strong, it's not a good idea to let it come into contact with your bare skin for an extended period of time. The directions on the label suggest using one tablespoon for 5 gallons of water. The basket in the photo above is for a 40-gallon pot.

Some folks opt for the dry seasoning packages, which you can just drop into the water. Along with crab boil, toss in some ears of yellow corn, cut in half, a few pounds of red creamer potatoes, along with a few onions, some celery, and lots of raw garlic. Fill up the pot with water (careful to factor in the crawfish in their basket), and bring to a boil.

When the water's boiling, lower in the crawfish:

Let them cook for 8-10 minutes, then turn off the flame to the pot.

Allow them to soak for another 10-20 minutes, then raised the basket to drain:

The easiest way to serve crawfish is to cover a table with newspaper, dump them out, and let everyone have at it!

We're not done with spices, however, because you need some cocktail sauce to dip your berled bugs in:

Combine Ketchup, Worcestershire Sauce, Horseradish, and Hot Sauce:

And now you're ready to dip your crawfish as you peel them. Enjoy the corn, potatoes, and garlic as well.

Such is spring in New Orleans, and yet another reason why we get a bit upset with people from less-civilized parts of the world when they wonder why this city must be saved.

Carnival Brands Creole Crab Cakes

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 15:03:45 -0600

There's one frozen-food case at Zuppardo's grocery on Veterans, right by the cold cuts and hot dogs, that has a bunch of specialty frozen items from local/regional companies. It's an interesting selection of items, and these caught my eye:

I'm always on the lookout for good frozen-food items, because, like many families, we're running around with school actitities, music lessons, and Boy Scouts. (Also, Mrs. YatPundit doesn't cook much when I'm traveling.) The package felt heavy for two so they looked worth experimenting with. Opening up the package, they looked pretty good. Directions were to either pan-saute for 3 minutes on either side or to pop them into the oven for 15 minutes. Keeping with the notion of making this easy, I put them in the oven; no frying pan to clean.

The package also had a small seasoning packet to use for a sauce. The instructions said add some water to the seasoning:

Then some mayo to make a sauce:

After 15 minutes they were indeed ready:

Taste was pretty good, not too spicy, but not bland, either.

Carnival Brands is on the web, and these (and other items) can be ordered from them.

Lunch - Mini PoBoy

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 17:10:15 -0600

One of the side benefits of cooking a rump roast is the leftovers can become a roast beef poboy later. I had some Binder's pistolettes, so I made a mini-poboy today. Roast beef, gravy, a little mayo and hot sauce.

Lee's!

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 23:04:17 -0600

I was out running errands today, and stopped at a Lee's Hamburgers to pick up lunch. Lee's is a local chain of 5-6 stores (not sure how many exactly survived the storm). Their burgers are hand-formed, sort of like when you order a hamburger po-boy at a place like Johnny's or Short Stop. What makes Lee's special (well, at least in New Orleans) is that they press chopped onions into the burgers. Add homemade onion rings for a platonic meal.

Thoughts on Photography

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 22:48:50 -0600

When I shoot photos while I'm cooking, I'm not trying to be a food photographer. No doubt that is painfully obvious to everyone. Have you ever seen what professional photographers do to food to make it photogenic? We're talking about raw turkeys painted with shoe polish, that sort of thing.

I'm not going to win the "plating" category on Iron Chef, either, mainly because family is hungry and wants food! They're only willing to indulge this blogging thing so much. :-)