Spanawaste.com

This was originally posted on Google+, but I haven’t been using it much since, so I thought I’d cross-post it here for posterity.

Lovely weekend. Little Alvin reached the three month milestone on Friday. Three months often marks quite a change in little babies as their brains develop and they begin to start paying attention to the world. A4 affirmed his acumen by intently staring and tracking the local flora during an evening stroll on Saturday. This was markedly different than say, a month ago, when he’d just either fall directly asleep or simply stare at the Mrs. or myself. Now he notices.

Saturday evening we dropped the little guy off at a friend’s house so that we could go see Deathly Hallows part 2, which was pretty much the best movie ever made (OK, I exaggerate; however, it was definitely very good). It was an action-packed end to the series, possibly imbalanced in relation to its own arc, but perfect within the context of all eight movies. I’m thinking of going to see it again, but in 3D next time.

On Sunday, after a brief trip to the mall, we decided it was time to join the real world again and take Little Alvin to a restaurant for the first time. We were mildly concerned about how it would go, because it was about an hour before he was supposed to eat and this is typically his most fussy time; he is tired and likes to catch a nap before its time to eat again (what a life, huh?). We considered trying a restaurant another time, because of the prevailing vision of a screaming baby, one parent not eating, the other cramming food into his mouth so that he may relieve the second parent, the second parent harried and facing a plate of cold food, and the other restaurant patrons looking on with disapproval. But we decided that we couldn’t always control the timing and environment and needed some practice dealing with baby adversity. We went for it.

The Legend of Little Alvin continues, where not only have we been favored with a child that sleeps 7 or 8 hours at night, who only fusses when he’s tired or hungry, who is very accommodating with laughs and smiles and coos (and gas and drool), who is often content to laugh and smile alone in his activity mat while we eat breakfast or have a cup of coffee, who cleaned my gutters, and who filed an amendment on my 2010 taxes that saved me a bunch of money, but ALSO was a perfect angel during our first restaurant venture.

He sat quietly and soaked up the environment while we ordered and ate chicken tacos while a baby at the next table screamed (as well as all the other things we worried about). I thought the best we could hope for was that he’d fall asleep and then wake up angry, but he was content to hang out. After the Mrs. finished her meal, she fed him a bottle, I finished my double margarita, and we left with peaceful hearts, full bellies, and a mild buzz for me.

A big knock on wood for the last three paragraphs.

Finished the weekend off by doing some grilling-in-the-rain with chicken and eggplant on my Smokey Joe (who can wait for the sun to grill during the Summer That Never Was?). True Blood, which is getting better with every episode, and then bed.

Lovely weekend.

I’ve registered the domain name alvinplus.com as a vanity URL of sorts for my Google+ page. I must admit (and perhaps I should whisper it to you, because I don’t want to make *this* blog jealous) that I’ve been tempted by blog sites like Tumblr (and even the less attractive Posterous) for casual, long-form blogging. There are times which I want to write in full sentences with actual punctuation and maybe multiple paragraphs and that’s why I have this blog. That said, WordPress is a bit cumbersome, I don’t like having to worry about updating it, it doesn’t have all the modern social parts to it, etc. etc. Google+ has come along and has provided a possible solution to my needs without explicitly jumping to another blogging platform. I won’t give up on spanawaste.com, because I’ve grown quite attached to it, but for the time being I think I’ll be posting to Google+ for a bit.

It seems silly to me that I’d talk about posting to one “blog” over the other, given I haven’t been posting to this one for a couple of years, but it feels right. It needed to be said!

Anywho.

That is all (for now).

I mean, I pay for hosting here, so maybe I could do some more long-form blogging, yeah? Maybe. We’ll see.

“Hey there Lois!” I exclaimed.

“Yeah?” She answered suspiciously.

“Do you wanna go for a walk?” I asked.

**sound of spring springing** !!!!!!

End.

A few days ago I was informed by the Mrs. that I’d be cooking dinner for ten that coming Sunday. I’m like, “Hm, it’s too bad I’m so bad at roasting chickens, because that would TOTALLY be a good idea to feed them.”

Whatever it is, I have to reproduce ten times. A 10-foot long submarine sandwich? A giant tuna noodle casserole?

I also wanted something kind of light-ish, seasonal tasting, pleasing in nice weather, delicious.

I got my rainman on and conceived of linguine tossed in a pesto-butter sauce with roasted cherry tomatoes and shaved parmigiano reggiano cheese. This with slices of chicken breast prepared simply. I could taste it. I could taste it in my brains.

I thought this specifically, because I knew I could make the pesto and roast the tomatoes the night before. The chicken I can do blind-folded; making the sauce and cooking the pasta I could juggle while building the salads.

The chicken was how I frequently do it: boneless, skinless chicken breasts seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic powder, cumin, and paprika. Medium-high heat in a cast-iron skillet, brown one side, flip over and then into at 400 degree oven for 14 minutes-ish. Rest for five and then slice when ready to plate.

The pesto is basically a classic pesto recipe that I put a little bit of extra love into. I believe that it was this pesto recipe I looked at. So its basil, olive oil, garlic, pinenuts, parm-regg, salt, and pepper. The extra love comes in where I lightly toasted the pinenuts to bring out a little more oil and nuttiness. I also poached the garlic cloves in the olive oil to take the harsh edge off of the garlic. Let that cool before using in the pesto recipe.

To toast cherry tomatoes you just put them on a sheet pan, drizzle with a good amount of olive oil, season with salt and pepper and put in a 400 degree oven. After about ten minutes I start to peek in every couple to see when the tomatoes look like they’re about to collapse.

To make the sauce I just combine some butter, the pesto, and the tomatoes in a pan and quickly heat it through. It only takes a few minutes.

I tossed the sauce and the linguine in a giant bowl and plated all ten plates noodles first, slice and plate the chicken, the Mrs. in to cropdust with chopped flat-leaf parsley, and shaved cheese.

Yeah, you know I like my own cooking, but I must say that the pesto sauce was very good. I managed to reproduce my fantasy of how this meal would taste, the roasted tomatoes carefully balancing the bitter, salty, nutty of the pesto with acidity and sweet. The chicken a clean palate, but with it’s own salty-smoky thing going on.

I was glad it all worked out. Our guests seemed pleased and all of the cooking was so simplified that I had the kitchen almost clean half-way through dessert (I did not make the dessert).

I’ll try to remember this one… though I guess I should actually WORK OUT if I want to be able to eat like this on a regular basis.

*Can’t wait to eat!

I’d like to be able to tell you that I can produce a delicious, perfectly roasted chicken 100% of the time. The fact of the matter is whole, roasted birds are a leak in my game. I’ve tried a number of techniques including using a brine, wrapping in soaked cheese cloth, covered, uncovered, nuclear physics, and black magic.

Usually the result is that the chicken is undercooked in the thigh and slightly overcooked in the breast and lacking that *something* flavor-wise.

This last attempt the other day was probably the best result:

But because of my cold I couldn’t verify if it actually tasted good.

I’m kind of hard on myself about this, and really, my chickens aren’t THAT bad; however, neither are the grocery store chickens you can buy for $5 (with zero time commitment and no clean-up). I need a pay-off. Why can’t I make a better chicken than Costco?

All I want in life is to be able to roast a chicken and have it be PERFECT. Is that too much to ask??

Seeing a sample of my newly-teenaged niece’s writing makes me wonder if all kids these days write in that horrific, txt-speak style when writing for personal recreation, or if my niece is specifically pioneering this nearly indecipherable, eye gouge-inducing written form. It takes me at least ten times as long to parse the information she is trying to convey than it would were I reading Mandarin or Arabic or Martian.

Given the proliferation of smart phones with actual keyboards, I’ve been hoping that using abbreviated English in long form writing would just DIE, but I’m really not so sure. And I hate to be one of those people who get all uppity about the “institution of English” and all that, but seriously? SERIOUSLY?

Real quick: I work on the 13th floor in the Southeast corner of University of Washington Tower. We have a gorgeous view of Lake Washington, the UW campus, Mount Rainier, and the Seattle skyline (including the Space Needle). We have a pretty nice telescope that exists as a permanent fixture in our office to supplement our enjoyment of this view.

This afternoon just after lunch I was peering through the telescope, head tilted and eyes squinted in concentration, and I was spying on a man operating a crane a number of blocks away. I lingered for a while, because at first I couldn’t make sense of what was going on in his little cab. He had his feet up and pressed against the glass and his hands behind his head. Curious, huh?

Turned out to be pretty harmless. He was just taking a little break, maybe a cat nap; unwilling to make the climb down from his towering office space. But then, just as I was about to move on he took off his shoes. And THEN to my shock and horror and no-I-would-not-be-able-to-look-away-until-I-found-out-what-he-was-doing, he took off his PANTS. His black boxer-briefs exposed to anyone high enough and in possession of a telescope. AND THEN??

He sat down in his chair and started operating his crane. His break was over and so no more messing around with shoes and pants. Time to get comfy and make some rent money.

OK, so not terribly shocking or interesting, but I seriously thought that working in your underwear was explicitly limited to:

strippers
underwear models
espresso stand baristas
teleworkers

What other jobs may you legitimately work in your underwear?

…

I learned the word “pandiculation” over the weekend. Pandiculation is the term for the act of stretching and yawning simultaneously. I like it when I learn a word that describes some specific action. Like, maybe there’s a word to describe the act of doing a back-flip into a swimming pool full of pork rinds.

The photo above was snagged from the Wikipedia article on yawning. 1. I LOVE the painting of this pandiculatin’ man AND 2. I love reading random-ish articles on Wikipedia.

You may know by now that cooking is one of my absolute favorite things to do. Well, let me clarify: EATING is one of my absolute favorite things to do and cooking is the best way to accomplish that. I still consider my experience to be somewhat limited and I have a ton to learn and I make mistakes all the time, but I make it a point to cook every day. I am my own favorite cook. I enjoy the process of cooking and I enjoy learning new things using a hands on approach. I feel that cooking food and eating your own cooking can be a very personal experience. You should strive towards self-gratification through cooking food with YOURSELF in mind and eating the hell out of it.

Yesterday evening, after a long day of working out in the yard, I decided to make use of some turkey drumsticks that the Mrs. brought home from the grocery store. While prepping food for dinner (I decided to use some cedar wood chips in one of those metal smoker boxes)*, I thought through some very simple, obvious cooking tips and trends that naturally revealed themselves over time just through the act of cooking regularly. Here are the first ten things that came to mind:

1. 80% of everything I cook on the stove top is cooked at just above medium. It’s like the sweet spot for heat on my stove. For example, its hot enough to perfectly caramelize onions, but not burn them. Find this sweet spot on your stove. Then find this sweet spot on your stove for each of your individual pans.

Anytime I cook mushrooms, it’s a perfect example of cooking something for just me. The Mrs. HATES mushrooms. She doesn’t even like the smell of them. This is a gift and a curse, because while she’ll never want me to incorporate mushrooms into our dinner, when I DO cook mushrooms, I can cook them with only myself in mind.

2. If your knife skills aren’t as quick as you’d like them to be, employ mis en place to avoid rushing. Cooking can be a rhythm game. There can be a moment when it is appropriate to do the NEXT thing. If your food isn’t ready you may find yourself rushing to make it ready and rushing can lead to mistakes. A mistake may involve you cutting your finger off. Or worse: food getting overcooked or burned!

3. You should use mis en place anyway. To be honest, I don’t always have the foresight in what I’m cooking to properly prepare all of the individual components of the dish, but for the things you KNOW that you’ll be cooking, it’s a good idea. Plus, it helps keep things nice and clean.

Mis en place will save you from having your eggs overcook while you frantically cut up the ingredients that make up your omelet.

4. If you find yourself wondering why restaurant food often tastes so much better than your cooking at home, use more oil and more salt and see what that does for your outlook.

5. Get your pans on the units to heat up ASAP so that you aren’t tempted to put food in your pans before they are at the right temperature. That’s the worst. The WORST. And use enough oil.

6. Taste your ingredients before incorporating them into food. You wouldn’t want something that is off or spoiled to ruin your whole dish. This will also help you balance your food, knowing how each component tastes.

7. Taste your food before serving it to someone else. Maybe it’s under-seasoned, and that’s OK, because that can be fixed. The cooking phase ends when its on the plate and in front of the eater and you won’t be able to make any adjustments at that point. Though I have been known to add more salt to someone’s plate after it had been served.

It’s OK if you don’t always have access to the freshest, organic ingredients from the fanciest markets. Dress up a frozen turkey patty. Make it delicious.

8. Hearing, touch, and smell should never take a back seat to seeing and tasting. When food is caramelized, you can smell that. When food hits the oil in a pan that’s at the right temperature, it has a RIGHT sound to it. And get your fingers into the food. That’s generally the best way to tell if it’s done or not. But first, make sure your hands are clean.

9. Keep some sort of receptacle within reach to dump your waste. This receptacle should not require you to use your hands to open it. I generally use a plastic grocery store bag that I leave on the counter throughout the entire process of cooking and cleaning. It’ll save you time, keep your work area cleaner and reduce the number of times you’ll have to wash your hands.

10. Use kosher or sea salt instead of plain, iodized table salt. Learn how they differ from the plain table salt you may have grown up with. Salt brings out the flavor in food, but I find that table salt adds a metallic, funny taste to it.

They’re not always going to be gems. The meal above? I didn’t like it too much. I think that my description on Flickr was less critical than my actual experience upon further reflection. But that’s OK. You’ll never be able to cook perfect food every time. But doesn’t it look good? A bonus tip: You eat with your eyes first.

So yeah, none of this is exactly rocket science, but I find that a lot of people don’t do these simple things that could enhance their cooking significantly. The way I see it, food is multi-dimensional art that one can appreciate with all five of the senses. The act of cooking is creating artwork and this process is both how the art is created AND consumed. It’s the process.

But the most important thing: Just cook. Don’t worry about having the best ingredients or the most expensive equipment or fear of failing. If you have a can of tuna, an onion, some mayo, and some other miscellaneous ingredients, make the best damn tuna sandwich you can make for YOURSELF. Appreciate that YOU like specific flavor combinations and run with it. Do it for you. That’s delicious. THAT’S cooking.

*This didn’t turn out exactly how I had imagined it in my head. I think that I wasn’t quite able to balance heating the smoker box to a sufficient temperature to provide smoke while keeping the temperature of the grill low enough to cook the turkey legs at the speed I desired. I’ll make some adjustments to my approach and try again in the near future.

A few months back a new soondubu (soft tofu soup) joint opened up in the U District here in Seattle. It is simply called “Korean Tofu House.” I have a love/hate relationship with Korean restaurants in the area. I have documented some of this in previous posts such as here, and here. Most of the time they are in some ways compromised by the likes of teriyaki or orange chicken or any number of non-Korean cuisine. I understand this. I understand that the goal is to run a successful business and often one needs to include chicken katsu on the menu to make it more attractive to the Western palate.

My understanding of this concept; however, does in no way help me get decent Korean food in the U District. There’s Sunney’s Cafe up the street, but I dunno, it has never really done it for me. $7 for a bowl of ramyun? No thanks. There used to be a decent place to get nengmyun: Cold, unyielding buck wheat noodles that often simultaneously occupy your mouth AND your throat; basking in ice cold, sweet and savory broth, and a sliced hard boiled-egg), but that place closed down. A few others have come and gone. Most of them had “gyoza” on the menu. Again: No thanks.

So the Korean Tofu House opened up and I ignored it, deferring the inevitable disappointment I’d experience once I had a chance to sit down and have a look at the menu.

But today, randomly and decisively, I decided that today was the big day. No meetings this afternoon (since I clearly smell like an entire bulb of garlic now, I’m sure), it had been a while since I’ve had soondubu, and otherwise, I probably would have ended up with a giant portion of french fries somewhere instead.

The restaurant, located at 4142 Brooklyn Ave NE is small, but not constricting. The menus were simple and to the point, but to be honest, I already knew what I was ordering and so I didn’t linger over the menu very long. I am happy to report that I don’t *think* there was teriyaki on it.

I ordered the pork soon dubu, which, in my opinion is a MUST when evaluating soon dubu. You gotta have the pork (or, you know, beef is OK too).

The banchan usually comes out first. For me, the arrival of the banchan has always been a study in personal style and hunger level at the table. If one starts digging into the banchan right away, even before the arrival of the rice, then I figure he or she either has impulse control problems or is very, very hungry. Me? My mother always told me to wait, because the banchan is just too salty to eat by itself. I (almost) always listened to my mother.

When the banchan arrived I was pretty excited. Typically, U District banchan consists of two, maybe three side dishes. THIS place had SIX. Probably two or three dishes short of what I typically experience at a Korean restaurant in South Tacoma or Lynnwood, but nonetheless very, very exciting.

Starting at the top left and moving clockwise there were bean sprouts (the way I like them, not too watery, and just salty enough), onion pancake (pretty good), Ggakdugi (well seasoned, perfect age, maybe not hot or “smoky” enough), spicy bean sprouts (these were a’ight), marinated fried tofu (pretty good, actually: the sauce was just about right), plain ol’ kimchi (pretty much the same complaint as I have about the ggakdugi).

Overall, the banchan was pretty good. I’d say that for the most part, each dish sort of ventured towards too salty. I like salty, so it works for me, but others might not feel that way.

The soon dubu arrived at my table moments later, violently bubbling and twisting about like a fiery cauldron overflowing with spicy black magic. The waitperson, upon receiving my consent, cracked a raw egg into the center of my blistering hot soup. I always enjoy that.

The soup itself didn’t disappoint. It certainly wasn’t the best soondubu I’d ever eaten, but it was far from the worse. The tofu could have been softer, the soup could have been spicier, but the balance of the ingredients was on point and I was definitely not mad at it. It lacked the smoky, rich endorphin-inducing heat that other soups often have in them, but again, it all worked well enough.

My total bill was less than $9. And I have leftover soup.

I’m going to go back. Soon. The next time I go I may opt to order one of the staple Korean meat dishes (bulgogi or spicy pork) or perhaps see how well they do bibimbap (which, incidently, you can get a decent bowl of at a couple of places here in the U District). I will also be sure to examine the menu a little more carefully to determine whether they have nengmyun, since it’s going to be in season soon.

It wasn’t perfect, but today, my heart was warmed by the presence of an uncompromised Korean restaurant serving uncompromised Korean food. I hope they keep it up and ignore the confused looks and nervous questions they receive from their less adventurous patrons. I hope they don’t ever, EVER serve teriyaki. Soon dubu diluted with the salty tears of the ashamed are definitely not good eats.

Join me next time?