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Archive for the 'Food and Drink' Category

Pan of Steel

by psu

Everyone has their favorite pans. Mine are restaurant-style aluminum non-stick pans. I’ve used these for years, generally just buying another one when the coating on whichever one I had started to go south. The pans are durable (except for the coatings) and perfect for lazy people like me who don’t like cleaning frying pans. They are also really good for cooking eggs. Always important.
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Cinco de Agave

by peterb

Several years ago, with the help of Lidia’s restaurant we organized a tasting of Italian amari - bitter digestifs. It was a fabulous event, both informative and fun, and we immensely enjoyed writing about it in this space.

It was so much fun, in fact, that we decided to do another group tasting. This time, however, we chose a spirit from a little closer to home: Tequila. Read the rest of this entry »

Dottie’s True Blue Cafe

by psu

Dottie’s True Blue Cafe is a small place in San Francisco that sits right where the gentrification of Union Square ends and the Tenderloin begins. It is a neighborhood place that has become a destination through well-deserved appearances in every publication that has an opinion on where to eat in San Francisco. As such, you don’t really need me to tell you to go there. But I will anyway.

The next time you are staying the night in downtown SF, you should get up early and get to Dottie’s door by 7:20am so you can get in with the first group. Kurt, the owner and chef, will then serve you the best American breakfast you have ever had. If this does not happen, I will personally pay your bill.
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Egg-Flavored Booze

by peterb

I had to place a special order with the PLCB the other day to get a bottle of something for my mom. So, as long as I was placing the order, I ordered a bottle of Advocaat. Egg liqueur.

When you say the words “egg liqueur” most people will, instinctively, recoil in horror. There’s no need to do this: the liqueur can’t actually get you if you don’t open the bottle. Read the rest of this entry »

Rice Rice Baby

by psu

In the past few weeks the Tivo appears to have exhausted the current stock of Good Eats shows that are in heavy rotation. Rather than three or four a night, we are down to just a few per week. My original impressions of the show still stand, but I have one relatively minor complaint. He really doesn’t know anything about rice.

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Fried Red Snapper

by psu

This is a favorite that started out as an accident in graduate school. Obtain 2 full snapper filets. The best way to do this is to go to a good store and have them filet a whole snapper for you. In Pittsburgh, this means you should go to the Penn Avenue Fish Company in the strip, because no other store in Pittsburgh is even half as good. When you get the fish home you will note that it is in two filets, each about 4 or 5 inches long. The pieces have a V-shaped indentation on one end. Use a knife to cut along that indentation to get two or three pieces out of each filet. Go for pieces of uniform thickness.

Now we’re going to bread the fish and fry it.
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Brown’s Eats

by psu

I’m probably the only food dork who hasn’t been watching Alton Brown for the last 9 years or so. He became a fixture on the Food Network just about the time that I felt that I had learned everything I needed to learn, for the moment, about the whole food and cooking hobby. So it wasn’t until a couple of weeks ago when we were filling the Tivo at random while the flu rampaged through the house that I happened to watch Good Eats for the first time.

And I like it. It’s not so much the content or the recipes themselves I like. After all, he has at least one show where he tells me that brown rice tastes good (bah!). No. What I like is the visual and narrative style. Narrative style in a cooking show? Well, yeah.

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Size Matters

by psu

Tonight a simple tip: size matters, so make sure you give the food enough space. This tip comes with a story.
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Kyoto By Way Of Kansas City

by peterb

Those of you following me on Twitter know that I managed to find not just one, but three of the types of booze I’ve been looking for last night. This is one of the nice things about travelling out of state: I get to shop at liquor stores that aren’t run by people who are profoundly uninterested in selling liquor.

Here in Kansas City, Missouri, for example, there are at least two local chains that are worth visiting: the larger Berbiglia, and, my new favorite, Gomer’s. Why I like Gomer’s so much can best be illustrated by a short story. Read the rest of this entry »

Chicken Noodle Soup

by psu

The flu hit the household a couple of weeks ago, so just before I was taken down with fever, chills and that whole body ache, I stocked us up on the main defense against this sort of thing: chicken soup.

psu_20080308-00878.jpg

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And Another Thing…

by psu

You have to give the Japanese credit for two things. They know about knives, and they know about rice. After spending more time than is actually healthy for an responsible adult lurking in the insane asylum we call the knife forums, I finally gave in and picked up the relatively pedestrian Shun Chef’s Knife. You can already tell that I am suffering from forum brain damage because I feel the need to call this knife pedestrian.
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Demi-glace

by psu

Back in the distant past before Tony Bourdain was a TV personality jetting all over the world eating the more questionable parts of animals, I heard an NPR interview with him discussing Kitchen Confidential, the book that turned him into a TV personality who gets to jet all over the world and eat the more questionable parts of animals. He pontificated about kitchen knives, what pans you need, when to order fish and so on. Then he gave a radio recipe for something that is easy to do and makes people think you are brilliant: demi-glace.
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Accidental Discoveries

by peterb

Here’s a dirty little secret: I am kind of a sucker for Bailey’s Irish Cream.

Yes, yes, I know. It’s too sweet. It’s a girly drink. It’s like an alcohol milkshake. It’s sort of gross. I know all these things, and I agree with them, but I still kinda like it. What can I say: i have my guilty pleasures.

But, truth to tell, I never drink Bailey’s anymore, because I am embarassed to be seen buying it. So my overactive superego has thwarted my own pleasure principle. Until now. Read the rest of this entry »

A Short Ribs Rumination

by psu

From time to time I try to get ribs around Pittsburgh, or anywhere in the Northeast for that matter. I am usually disappointed. Now, I like ribs in many different styles. There are the Chinese ones my mom made. There are the slow cooked barbeque ribs in the South. There are the braised ribs at fancier restaurants of various types.

Tonight I got the ribs at Tessaro’s. Normally I would only get the burgers there, but you have to change up once in a while. They were tasty and satisfying, but one thing was wrong, which is the thing that always brings me disappointment. They weren’t cooked long enough.
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Legume

by psu

Legume is a new bistro-style restaurant in that increasingly glorious food corridor of Braddock avenue between the Regent Square theaters and the entrance to the Parkway East. I was suspicious of the place because the name conjures up images of a prison run by terminally smug pot-smoking NPR-listening hippy types whose mission in life is to convince me that quinoa (it’s pronounced “keen-waaah”, apparently) is a reasonable substitute for Japanese short-grain white rice. Happily this is not the case. Despite the name, the thing to get at Legume is the meat. The vegetables are OK too, but the thing is the meat.
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Imbibe!

by peterb

My personal copy of Imbibe! arrived from Amazon today.

Posts in the coming days may contain many misspellings and seem somewhat inebriated. I apologize in advance.

And, let’s face it, if the last 8 years have taught us anything, it’s that election night is a good night to start drinking heavily.

Building a Better Grasshopper

by peterb

The grasshopper is a classic sweet cocktail that, typically, sucks. If you order it at a bar, you’ll get a concoction made from bad green creme de menthe, worse white creme de cacao, and cream or half and half. It will be undrinkably sweet, but to make up for being too sweet it will also taste bad.

The mystifying thing about the grasshopper is that it should be good. Chocolate and mint is a great combination. So we here at Tea Leaves have come up with an alternative recipe that is, we think, infinitely better. Read the rest of this entry »

The New Iron Chef

by peterb

I’m not too much for spreading around YouTube memes, but I can’t let this one go without comment. It has to be seen to be believed.


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The Shopping Virus

by psu

Tonight I am upset with my co-writer, although it’s not really his fault. It all started when we had an innocent conversation over lunch where peterb told me his dad was going to buy him a cooking knife for his birthday. Until that point and time, I had thought about cooking knives perhaps three times in the last fifteen years, and each time it was to plot how to make my friend Erik sharpen my knives for me. For these fifteen years, I have used a nice 8 inch chef’s knife for everything in the kitchen, and it has always performed well without complaint. There is arguably nothing in this world I need less than another knife.

But, I had contracted the shopping virus from Pete, so now I am doomed to shop until it either dissipates on its own or I buy a nice Shun Classic Nakiri that I don’t need.
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Hot Buttered Rum Triumphant

by peterb

I wrote, some years ago, an article about rum and its many uses. In it, I mentioned that I don’t understand hot buttered rum, because I’ve never found a recipe for it that resulted in something even remotely drinkable. Read the rest of this entry »

Beautiful, Sharp, and Mine

by peterb

Thanks to the generosity of my dad, I now own a really nice chef’s knife, a Kumagoro 210mm gyuto.

kumagoro

Gyuto - “Cow knife”

Dad decided to give me the gift of a sharp cooking implement for my birthday, on the condition that I research it and pick it myself. I suspect this was his own way of defusing his own lust for an ever-increasing number of knives.

There are a number of internet forums (of course!) discussing cooking knives, knife sharpening techniques, and accessories. At knifeforums.com you’ll meet any number of folks whose passion for collecting knives is exceeded only by their passion for talking about them. The forums at egullet.com are equally helpful. Read the rest of this entry »

Pot Sticker Update

by psu

Recently my pot stickers have been bothering me. It was a texture problem. The filling tasted right, but was not solid enough. Ideally the filling of each dumpling is an independent little meatball that just happens to be sitting inside the doughy skin. Mine were not like this, they were sandy and insubstantial. Clearly I had to ask my mom what was going on.
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This Old Nog

by peterb

Every year I make some homemade eggnog, which always sounds disgusting but ends up being pretty good. I’ve made versions with both raw, pasteurized and cooked eggs, depending on to whom it will be served. The raw egg version does taste noticeably different from the pasterurized or cooked versions, and has a thinner and more pleasant texture, but does carry a higher health risk. Life, of course, is full of tradeoffs, and this is one of them.

This year, I was doing a little research and came across a number of recipes for “George Washington’s Eggnog”. But something bugged me about this recipe. Read the rest of this entry »

Persephone Descending

by peterb

My experiments with homemade grenadine have paid off. First, let’s talk about how I did it, then let’s talk about what to do with it. Read the rest of this entry »

Grenadine Grenade

by peterb

So I have been following, with a mixture of horror and admiration, a thread on a certain internet forum called Stomping Through the Savoy. The Savoy in question is The Savoy Cocktail Book, a fascinating manual full of cocktails from the American Bar at the Savoy Hotel in London. The most interesting aspect of these drinks is that they are all, without exception, utterly undrinkable garbage. Read the rest of this entry »

Espresso Lessons

by psu

After better than ten years of happily avoiding the home espresso problem I finally gave in last week and bought a fancy home espresso maker. Unsurprisingly, I did not go into this with a great deal of enthusiasm, and I have to say that I am surprised at the general quality of the shots that the new device is providing even at my relatively novice level of practice. As usual, many lessons were learned in the process.
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Martini Glasses Are Stupid

by peterb

Finally, one of the videos we’ve been planning for a while is put to bed. Please enjoy our demonstration of why martini glasses are stupid (video after the break). Read the rest of this entry »

I’ll Take Manhattan

by peterb

I’ve been wanting to do this recipe as a video blog, but due to an uncharacteristic bout of responsibility, I sent Sony back their loaner HD camcorder and I just haven’t been able to work up the enthusiasm to use my somewhat dilapidated Canon. So this is a story I will have to tell in words. Read the rest of this entry »

Run My Drink

by peterb

This excellent web site cataloging and reviewing Japanese malt whiskies is making me want to try some. But the only Japanese whisky carried by the PLCB is Suntory “Yamazaki” 12 year, and it’s an SLO. Does anyone from a more civilized state want to help me obtain a wider variety to sample?

Videoblog: Guinness Ice Cream

by peterb

Today I met my friend Kilolo at the newly-opened “Oh Yeah Ice Cream & Coffee,” on Highland Avenue in Pittsburgh’s Shadyside neighborhood. While perusing their offerings, I noticed they had something they claimed was “Guinness Ice Cream (Adults Only)”. Skeptical as I always am, I asked for a taste.

And it was good.

I didn’t have a camera. I didn’t have a mic. But I had my MacBook Pro, with its built-in iSight camera. I grabbed it and started recording.

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The One Minute Sidecar

by peterb

I’m experimenting with trying to make these videos generally shorter, quicker, and tighter. Any comments would be appreciated.

I have to send the nice HD camera back to Sony soon, so expect a drop in video quality if I go back to plain old miniDV.

Videoblog: Navan Vanilla Liqueur

by peterb

Continuing my discussion of booze-related videos, here’s a review of Grand Marnier’s latest monstrosity, “Navan”:

You can find a higher-resolution version of that on .mac. Marvel in the HDness of being able to count the number of hairs on my chin! Or something.

Videoblog: Fazenda Mae de Ouro and Caipirinha

by peterb

Cachaça is a Brazilian rum-like sugarcane based spirit. Earlier this year I slammed Cachaça in an offhand manner, based on my experience in trying one brand. Dave Catania, aka “Cachaça Dave”, commented and challenged me to try the brand of Cachaça that he imports, “Fazenda Mae de Ouro”.

I’ve accepted the challenge. Here’s the full review:

I’ll be honest: the only reason I did this in a videoblog format is that a certain friendly company loaned me an HD-format dv camera, and I wanted to try it out. I apologize in advance for the poor lighting, the bad editing, and the general ugliness of my face, body, and spirit.

I also apologize for my tragically consistent mispronounciation of “cachaça”, which my friend Francisco tells me is in fact pronounced “cashassa”, and not “catchassa.” I guess this is my comeuppance for giving people grief about mispronouncing the italian appetizer as “brushetta,” rather than “brusketta.”

I Praise the PLCB

by peterb

After harshing on them last week for how clunky their SLO system is, I will take a moment to say something nice about them: my Special Liquor Order arrived today. That means that it took them less than a week to get 3 fairly exotic bottles of liquor into my local store, and they got the order exactly right, despite my snark.

So while it may be a painfully slow process to place an SLO, I have no complaints at all about the actual delivery process. I’ll just say “Thanks, PLCB!”

SLO as in “Slow”

by peterb

While on my recent trip to California, I visited a couple of liquor stores — the venerable BevMo, of course, and also the little diamond The Coach House, in Cupertino, where one can find Tequila Los Abuelos. While at the latter facility, I stumbled across a bottle of Amaro Nonino, perhaps my favorite Italian amaro. I considered bringing it with me, but I knew that Nonino was available via Special Liquor Order — aka SLO — in Pennsylvania. “I’ll just order it when I get home,” I said. “It’s been years since I’ve special ordered anything. Surely they’ve improved the process by now. How painful can it be?”

It turns out the answer is “Embarassingly painful” Read the rest of this entry »

On Donuts

by psu

This past week the Petes were both in Cupertino for a visit. The last few times I’ve been out there, I’ve been told to find a donut shop called Stan’s that is close to our normal Cupertino hotel. Because I am lazy and morally suspect, I never managed to do this. On this trip though, we girded our loins and made ourselves get out there one morning. So here is a shout out to Stan’s. If you are in the Bay Area and you don’t get donuts there, you are a fool.
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Yuppie Egg Cream

by peterb

The egg cream, as anyone over a certain age who grew up in New York will be happy to tell you, is a transcendent soda fountain drink that contains neither egg nor cream. A strict interpretation of the egg cream contains seltzer water, Fox’s U-Bet chocolate syrup, and milk. It invokes summers in Coney Island, open fire hydrants, and Steeplechase Park.

The dirty little secret behind the traditional egg cream, however, is that it doesn’t actually taste good: imagine carbonated Yoo-Hoo, and you’re not far off the mark.

But tonight I wanted an egg cream anyway. Fortunately, I didn’t have any Fox’s U-Bet chocolate syrup, so instead I made an egg cream that tastes good. Read the rest of this entry »

Yo Ho Ho and a Bushel of Blueberries

by peterb

This weekend I went to heaven. It turns out that in heaven there are lots of blueberry bushes.

Heaven is just north of Ligonier, at The Berry Patch, a pick-your-own blueberry farm. The same week that Whole Foods raised their prices to $4/pint for berries shipped halfway around the country, I was picking fresh berries off the shrub for $2.50 a quart. I have a few quarts now. Quite a few. Read the rest of this entry »

Hold that Recipe

by psu

Today I am inspired by the sauce I just ate. But I’ll get to that later. My story begins with a long standing conflict that I have with my lovely wife. Karen, in general, has the role of telling me what to cook. Left to my own lazy devices I’d just eat ramen noodles and hot dogs every night. Thus, Karen spends her time making up shopping lists and handing me recipes for the dishes that she’d like to have that week. Then I look at the recipes and make the food however I want. This causes a certain amount of friction.

In my defense, all I can say is that I do this because in my experience the recipe is almost always wrong in various ways.
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Hodo Kwaja - now on YouTube

by peterb

It’s been a few years since I made a video of the fantabulous walnut pastry (”hodo kwaja”) machine in Toronto (see À la recherche du temps à noix, from 2004). I figured it would be a generally good idea to get the video on YouTube, just to make it easier to find and view. Enjoy!

Pokémon Battle Mehvolution

by peterb

Still in the throes of my newfound Pokémon addiction, I went overboard and picked up Pokémon Battle Revolution for the Wii.

Meh. Read the rest of this entry »

Make a Note Please

by psu

When I was a graduate student, I lived in North Carolina for a couple of years. I didn’t personally enjoy the area, although I can see why others might. One thing though. The fresh fish was fantastic. There was this guy just outside of town who would go to the coast every week and bring stuff back directly from the boats. In the summer, we’d gorge on snapper and live soft-shell crabs. Back in Pittsburgh, it’s been hard to find stuff that good. Until now.
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Fig Daiquiri

by peterb

Ingredients:

-Juice of a lemon
-6 fresh figs
-lots of rum
-ice
-about a tablespoon of sugar (depending on how sweet the figs are, adjust to taste)

Instructions: blend everything and pour into a frosted glasses. Makes 2 big drinks.

The good: The fig texture works with the ice to create a drink that will stay frozen for a while, even when there is a ton and a half of rum in the drink. It tastes like fresh figs. It’s refreshing.
The bad: Boy, this sure is expensive for something that isn’t that much better than a standard girly-drink strawberry daiquiri.

Summary: An interesting experiment, but not one I’ll do again.

Fresh Figs are Back

by peterb

…and tonight, I will determine if it is possible to make a cocktail with them.

Fishy Fishy

by psu

Fish is not hard to cook. We are just trained to think it is. Early on in my cooking “career” (graduate school) we picked up a large cookbook about fish that meticulously broke down multiple techniques with several examples of each and hints about which kind of fish which technique was suited for. I remember bringing the odd piece of fish home, thumbing through the book to try and figure out what to do and then throwing up my hands when I couldn’t find the right set of instructions out of the right list. Then I’d make the fish and it would come out overcooked and tasteless.
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Margarita’s New Toy

by peterb

Early this week, Tea Leaves’ industrious panel of dedicated tasters converged on Mad Mex in Oakland to try a variety of wonderful tequilas. I’ll be writing about that in detail, in the next few weeks. Read the rest of this entry »

Put a Cork In It

by peterb

Wine is a funny business. There are plenty of tangible resources that go into producing the bottle of wine that lands on your kitchen table: land, grapes, yeast, glass, and so on. And there are plenty of intangibles that go into making a good wine: knowledge, patience, and most importantly, process. But many people (or at least, many Americans) who buy wine are really trying to buy something else: romance. Read the rest of this entry »

The Only Reviewers Worse Than Game Reviewers…

by peterb

are wine reviewers. Imagine if game reviewers wrote game reviews the way that thesaurus addled hack Robert Parker reviews wine: Read the rest of this entry »

Rehabilitating Vermouth

by peterb

I mentioned it as a one-off joke in an earlier article: “Oh, yes, there’s this little bar in Madrid just north of the Gran Via that specializes in Vermouth. They serve anchovies and olives as tapas — you really should go, dahling…”

But here’s the thing: I wasn’t kidding. That bar really exists. You should go there and drink sweet vermouth. But if you can’t go there, you should drink sweet vermouth anyway. Read the rest of this entry »

Old Friends

by psu

For various reasons, we hadn’t been getting to the Strip as much as we used to. Maybe it was some stress at work. Maybe it was the worse than normal patented Pittsburgh early spring freeze. Maybe it was that when we did go things weren’t really the same. But the last two Saturdays, we finally made it down there again became reacquainted with some old friends.
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Fixing the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board

by peterb

I’m an adult who, on occasion, enjoys drinking in moderation. Since I live in Pennsylvania I am forced to purchase liquor through what is charitably described as the very worst state-owned liquor monopoly in the entire universe.

I’ve written about this in detail before: the painfully unhelpful staff at many stores, and that the system seems more interested in punishing you for wanting to buy liquor than in trying to sell it. I’ve used some fairly immoderate language, because I think the State Stores deserve this sort of intervention: Pennsylvania clearly doesn’t want to sell wine and spirits, so they should do us all a favor and get out of the business of doing so.

But given the amounts of money involved in this gigantic government jobs program, I don’t really expect that to happen. So, in the interest of trying to help them do a better job, I’m going to explain how they can make one simple change to the system that will fix it. It will make the system easier to use and will help them sell more product, all at the same time.
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Quick Review: Cachaça

by peterb

Cachaça, a foul-tasting sugarcane based spirit, may be the best reason yet to go to war with Brazil. I have had homemade moonshine made from cat barf that did less damage to my psyche (and liver).

I Met the Maple Queen

by peterb

For several years now I’ve had issues with the Meyersdale Maple Festival. Namely, I always intend to go but then always forget. Sometime in June I’ll ask my friends “Hey, when’s the maple festival? I want to meet the Maple Queen.” and they shout “March!” and I say “Oh, oops, maybe next year.”

This year, the 60th year of the festival, I finally remembered to go. And I met the Maple Queen. Read the rest of this entry »

Eating Unique on Craig Street

by peterb

Since our office moved closer to Oakland, Craig Street is the most convenient place to get a bite to eat or a cup of coffee. This is somewhat tragic, since Craig Street has always been covered with a miasma that makes food served in the area merely adequate. The best example of this is the Coffee Situation. Read the rest of this entry »

Service With A Scream

by peterb

Travelling to Europe ruined me in several ways. One, of course, is that I’m compelled to constantly demonstrate what an insufferable poseur I am by placedropping (”Oh, yes, there’s this little bar in Madrid just north of the Gran Via that specializes in Vermouth. They serve anchovies and olives as tapas — you really should go, dahling…”). The other is that I can’t enjoy a meal at a restaurant any more, because I can’t stand being interrupted while I eat. Read the rest of this entry »

A Few Food Shorts

by psu

Tonight a few recent discoveries, none all that long, but each very pleasing.
Read the rest of this entry »

Flax Seed Cracker Addendum

by peterb

I’ve been doing more experimenting, and I’ve made the following modifications to my earlier recipe:

(1) Use a nonstick cookie sheet instead of parchment.
(2) Spread the flax seeds thicker
(3) 275 degree oven
(4) Leave them in for a much longer time, around 3 hours.

This is yielding me crackers that are a lot snappier and better stand up to the pressure of spreading stinky cheese on them.

Girly Drinks

by peterb

I wrote about Margaritas a little while ago. I stuck to describing the “canonical” recipe, rather than giving my own, because I hadn’t really perfected the drink. Since that time, I’ve been touching up and refining my recipe until, if I do say so myself, it is almost entirely perfect. The other day I was in a Dave and Buster’s, and had the opportunity to drink on someone else’s tab. Without thinking, I ordered a margarita on the rocks, and was given something well-nigh undrinkable. I knew my Margarita recipe was better than what you find in most bars, but I didn’t realize just how much better it was until I had refreshed my memory.

I’ll give you my Entirely Perfect Magarita recipe in a little while, but first let me wander afield and talk about something else that happened recently. It starts, as so many stories do, with my friend Nat. Read the rest of this entry »

Carrots with Honey Butter

by psu

Tonight my brain can only handle writing down a small recipe. I’ve never had much use for carrots outside of using them as a partner to potatoes in stew. But here’s a fun way to do them. I must have stolen the recipe from someone, but I can’t remember who. My wife says it was Bittman, so I must have changed something because I don’t like Bittman.
Read the rest of this entry »

Whole Flax Seed Crackers

by peterb

Lately I’ve been trying to limit my intake of white starch. Most whole grain crackers seem to be 1% whole grain and 99% white flour. But the other day at Whole Foods I found a yummy little package of flaxseed crackers. They were crispy, flavorful, they held up well to cheese, and were otherwise nearly perfect. The only problem was that they cost something like $6 for a tiny little package.

So I figured out how to make them myself.
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Saturday in the Strip

by psu

It was another Saturday in the Strip. La Prima and Il Piccolo Forno were as full as always. Actually, they were even more full than usual, especially for a weekend in Janurary. There was coffee coming out of the cafe. There were baked goods and other food in the bakery. People milled around outside. People shuffled in and out of the doors. People enjoyed each other’s company in the presence of the best combination of coffee and baked goods that the city has to offer. But this Saturday was different. The pastry wasn’t right. The pastry wasn’t right because Antonio passed away last week. The pastry will never be right again.
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Buona notte, Antonio

by peterb

Ti mancheremo molto.

Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron

by peterb

“Nobody owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death.” –William S. Burroughs

Last night while cooking on my ancient, somewhat crappy electric range I heard an ominous “pop!” Some magic smoke came out, and the circuit breaker tripped. I switched burners, reset the breaker, and went back to cooking. But afterwards, I wondered if this was a Sign that I should be looking at a new range. So after dinner I did what any right-thinking American would do. I did some online window-shopping.
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Foods That Sound Like Sexual Positions

by peterb

Wikipedia may have a longer list, but here at Tea Leaves we know that size doesn’t matter. Much.
Read the rest of this entry »

Susan Stamberg Delenda Est

by peterb

I’ve written about it before, but every year around Thanksgiving, Susan Stamberg gets on NPR to pimp her family’s disgusting cranberry relish, and so I feel that it is my duty to protect my readers: Mama Stamberg’s cranberry relish was revolting the first time it was made, it was revolting the last time it was made, it is an inherently revolting recipe and if you make it, and claim to enjoy it, you are an overprivileged and self-deluded yuppie wretch.

Make my relish instead. Happy Thanksgiving!

Trader Joe’s In One Paragraph

by peterb

Buy the yogurt, the chocolate, the mustard (sometimes), and the olive oil. Pete says that the frozen dinners are good. The cheese is hit and miss; it’s a much more restricted selection than you’ll find in either Whole Foods or the Strip, but on the other hand it’s very affordable. The deli case is a travesty, particular the box meat presumably distributed from the same place that supplies Wal-Mart. But the prices on Nova lox can’t be beat. I’m still bitter that I can’t buy wine there. But that’s not their fault.

In summary, anything that makes Giant Eagle paranoid is, on balance, a good thing.

Trader Joe’s

by psu

All the foodie people in Pittsburgh probably know, but Trader Joe’s is opening tomorrow in East Liberty. Some people I know were saying “meh” about Trader Joe’s, what with Whole Foods just down the street. I, for one, am excited because finally there will be a place in town to get fancier foods without all that attitude.
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