Alexandria, Virginia

I have been quite pleasantly surprised by the food here. And once again, I find that some of the best ethnic cuisine can be found, of all places, in strip malls. While the food in the DC area is generally expensive, in both restaurants and the grocery stores, I have found it to all be quite good.

Pho Viet Flare is a little shop serving only pho and bun (rice vermicelli noodle salad), with cha gio (egg rolls) and spring rolls. These are always my favorite. Somehow the pho is always better in a place that does only pho! I found the broth to be very good; rich and aromatic without being overly spiced. The bo vien (meatballs) were a little lackluster but the herb plate was fully loaded. Their spring rolls were fantastic! The texture was so perfect, maybe the best I've ever had. Their che (sweet bean parfait dessert) was also excellent. Something about the sweetened red beans, grassjellies, coconut milk and shaved ice come together to just complete a pho meal! Good to know I can get my fix for pho here.

My coworker Rachel Gilberti and I went to the Afgan Market Restaurant and Bakery. We both enjoyed it quite a bit. We both ordered kubedah kabob combos. I got a lamb kabob too (which was tender and quite good) but the kubedah was fantastic. Ground sirloin mixed with fresh herbs and spices rolled onto a skewer and char-grilled, served on a bed of basmati rice sprinkled with cinnamon served with a little bowl of tender garbanzo beans in an oily, spicy tomato sauce. This was served with a salad of romaine lettuce and tomato with a dressing of yogurt, tahini and lemon, and some oil-fried flatbread. It is located in a market where you can buy everything from rugs to hookahs to groceries to jewelry. They had some dumplings that looked like they'd be worth going back for too, but we were sooo stuffed when we left! They'll just have to wait until next time.

Satay Sarinah is an Indonesian restaurant located in the same strip mall as Pho Viet Flare. I started with the crab shomai fried dumplings. As I browsed the menu, I noticed they had Kopi Luwak on the menu. I have read about this before and had promised myself I would try it if I got the chance. Kopi Luwak is coffee made from coffee berries that have been eaten by the civet cat. The civet digests the berries but passes the coffee bean and, in the process, filters some of the harsher alkaloids from the bean. People collect the beans and the result is supposed to be the very finest cup of coffee in the world. The price reflected the labor-intensive nature of this drink ($10/cup!) but it is quite rare and thought I should take the opportunity when I had it. They made it by grinding the beans to an turkish grind, steeping it in hot water and hand filtering most of the grounds, making each cup individually. The result was a cup of full-bodied coffee like a cup of french-press, but not so strong as turkish, but with the sediment that turkish coffee has. The remarkable thing about it was that it was completely free of that final bitter note of coffee. It was strange to have a nice strong cup of coffee without that tang at the end. Like hearing the first three notes of Beethoven's 9th, and just kind of waiting for that fourth note that never comes. The caffeine was mellower too, not so jangly as it can be for me sometimes. Quite nice but worth the price? Maybe not but you gotta do it once... and truly it's not THAT much more than a latte, especially given what it is.

I moved on to the Rames village platter. Steamed jasmine rice topped with fried shallots surrounded by several bites of several things: coconut curry chicken, green beens in a spicy coconut sauce, a deep-fried hard boiled egg in a sweet chili sauce, a skewer each of beef satay and chicken satay, and some deep-fried shrimp chips, like a pork rind only shrimpier. The portions were a little modest but the attention to detail was nice, the flavors fantastic and I left with quite a nice little spice high. For dessert, I ordered the Es Campur. This is kind of an ideal dessert for me. The only thing that could have made it better was if it had been summer outside instead of 25 degrees. It is chopped rambutan, lychee, pineapple and jackfruit, cubes of grassjelly, and a hunk of young coconut all topped with shaved ice drizzled with a little condensed milk and plenty of pandan syrup. YES! Pandan is such an intriguing flavor, I can never quite wrap my mouth around it. It is made from the leaves of the Screwpine tree and used like vanilla but tastes nothing like vanilla. It tastes kind of fruity, nutty, grassy... very difficult to describe. Kind of like coconut maybe but kind of like buttery rice. Very delicate, almost floral, but earthy. It made for a delightful end to a very nice meal even if the service was kind of distracted.

Polish Cuisine in Brooklyn

My room in Alexandria, VA where I am working from had been overbooked for the Inauguration so I went to stay with coworker Anita Flejter and her husband Slawek at their place in Ridgepoint, Brooklyn. Anita is a fine art and architectural conservator and Slawek is a geologist working on an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico off Louisiana. They are such lovely people and such gracious hosts! In addition to giving me a place to stay and lovely company, they gave me a primer in Polish cuisine that I enjoyed immensely.

Ridgepoint has a sizable Polish community and they took me to one of their favorite traditional Polish restaurants, Bona. http://bonarestaurant.com/en/ A guided tour of Polish cuisine in the Polish borough? Hell yeah! I had the sampler platter: fried pierogies (potato filled dumplings) topped with some fried onions, a grilled kielbasa (the real thing, not hot-doggy at all), and golabki, a cabbage roll stuffed with pork and rice, covered with a thin tomato sauce that tasted like a very mild demiglace. All was served with a little plate of salads: coleslaw, sauerkraut, a pickled beet salad and a red cabbage & apple slaw. Quite good. Anita gave me some of her batter-fried fish in Greek sauce, a kind of sweet and sour carrot-based marinara-looking sauce. Also good. They drank hot beer. I had a sip and it tasted like Stella Artois with some allspice/cinnamon/nutmeg on it. They said it should have had some honey and an egg yolk in it to give it body but as it was bitter cold out and the beer was warm, it was good enough!

The next night Slawek made bigos. This is a very traditional Polish dish known all over Poland that he put his own spin on. It is made with about half and half sauerkraut and fresh cabbage, although proportions vary. To this, he added onion, shredded carrots, chopped dried prunes, dried cranberries and some chopped pecans (the nuts are their own innovation). This is stewed all day or for several days, Slawek said, it keeps getting better and better. Traditionally, it is made with a meat base; bacon, kielbasa, pork, even chicken. But as Anita is vegetarian, Slawek and I just added some grilled chopped kielbasa to ours before serving. I liked this dish alot. A stick to your ribs winter dish that soothes the soul. Real farm-style comfort food. The kind of thing you hope is waiting for you when you come in from the cold. Interestingly, I had just been reading about making lacto-fermented sauerkraut a few days before ( http://boingboing.net/2009/01/12/making-sauerkraut-is.html ). I will definitely be trying this out once I get back to my kitchen!

Thank you Anita & Slawek!

Ode to (Her) Pho

Mother of the grace-brown broth
Closed her kitchen last April
A small shop with orange vinyl and mirrors

Everyday she slow simmered bone
From a Vietnamese family recipe, pulling
Marrow like espresso

From a contentment of herbs—
Star anise, Saigon cinnamon, charred ginger
And cloves

Her brew was not for the fainthearted
Served with brisket or tripe
Fatty flank, tendon and meatballs

But her shop was our mid-winter apothecary
Where we accepted her steaming distillation
Like a spa treatment

Lovingly garnished each bowl of soup
With the kindness of Thai basil
Bean sprouts and lime

We still mourn the closing of her store
Looking all over town for something to compare
We suspect we will have found it

When the Pho tastes like silk

North Sudanese Lamb

Lovely friend and neighbor Kim dropped by some amazing food that was made by a woman she works with, a refugee from Northern Sudan.

Kim has given me some amazing food from the different populations she serves with her work at Heartland. Last time she brought me the cooking of a Karen man from Burma... curried goat and deep-fried(?) hard-boiled eggs. Very very very tasty.

Today is Northern Sudanese Lamb. I love dishes like this. Clearly made with love and straight from the heart, this was simultaneously mysterious and comfort food. The thick sauce was full of spinach and a variety of spices that continue to elude me as I keep tasting it. It is exotic but mostly, you can taste tradition. You get the distinct sense that the air smells very different where this came from, the quality of light is different...

Home cooking from far-flung locales is about the best food in the world. Thanks, Kim!

Tulie Bakery

My friend Kate is opening a new bakery and I got some of the test pastries last night! Oh boy, were they good... I can't wait to spend money there. I went by today and the space looks great. She looks tired but really happy. Kate says they'll be opening slowly starting next week. The website will be http://tuliebakery.com/
I got croissants and morning buns.

The croissants were robust and buttery. I decided to take them over the top. Stefanie's coworker had given us some wild duck breasts minus the skins. I guess it's easier to field harvest just the breast of the duck. But I didn't really know what to do with them without the fatty skin. S. found some duckfat in a tub from Liberty Hts. and so began a perfect storm. I sliced about 8 duck breasts and put them in a little glass casserole with a far too generous scoop of duckfat, some minced shallots, salt and red wine. An hour and a half later, they became this rich, tender almost-pate. So rich, almost like liver without the mineral flavors. I dolloped the duck onto hunks of the croissants. I love rich food but these should seriously be controlled! Too too good. My tummy still hurts a little.

For breakfast, I had the morning bun and coffee. The buns are really an ideal breakfast food. Sweet but not too sweet, spice... just right, with a hint of orange. Ridiculously peckish to the point of probably being dangerous. So good.

It's good to have good friends who love good food.

changing leaves

pictures from East Canyon last week... such nice colors.

I've been doing tomatillo sauces this week too!

I'll fry a couple pieces of bacon, remove the bacon then throw a chopped onion into the hot grease. Fry that up golden or a little darker then add a bunch of chopped tomatillos, salt and sprinkle with some smoked paprika, barely cover with water and cook until the tomatillos change color and get a little transparent... like 10 minutes. I then put that into the blender with some fresh cilantro and a couple of fresh garlic cloves and then blend. Viola! No chiles for Ms. Slade's palate.

Tomatillo's stickiness is always a bit of a wonder for me. They will just sudse and sudse under the water. I like husking the papery chinese lantern shells. They look so fresh and new under their husks.

In one batch I put a dollop of that Indian Patak's Garlic Relish in the blender too. It totally transformed the distinctly southwest flavor of salsa verde into a light and delicate indian sauce, very... ummm... authentic tasting... sophisticated. Like salsa verde was adopted and raised in India, some blend of karma and fate making it a new native. still have some if you want a taste? I served that on some salmon on a bed of baby arugula and lettuce dressed with lemon juice and a bit of walnut oil, my preferred blend for arugula. Yum yum.

Your canning story is lovely. Can't wait for more. Mmmmmm. Elderberries. Wanna read, wanna taste.