new year

when I lived in SF, a real treat for me in the winter months (although there is no winter on the west coast, not after what I have seen up here) was Dungeness crabs at the peak of the season. How do I know when they are at the peak? when they are sold live all over chinatown for $2.99 - 3.99 a lb, live. I would get a 2 lb crab on a sunday, and just go to town, steamed, roasted, sauteed, whatever. Sure the meat of dungeness is not as sweet or delicate as the hairy crab or other smaller fresh water crab I ate as a kid, but it is definitely the best crab I can get in north America.

It has been at least two years since I have eaten one, so even though new years eve doesn't mean shit to me, I decided to use that as an excuse to indulge. Of course they cost more here, but at $5.79 per lb (from B.C.), it is not crazy. And after I plowed through the crab (sauteed and roasted with a pretty typical asian spicy seasoning that people use on a crab), I utilized the remaining sauce with some spaghetti noodles. the only downside of this meal is that the crabby smell in your fingers sticks around for a while afterwards.

happy new year.

you know your life is boring ...

when you get a little excited about a new coffee cup.

it is fucking cold up in this bitch

well, anyone who is in the north eastern part of north america at this moment will agree with me on this.

again, why the fuck did I move here in the first place? I am trying to look at the bright side, but I have not found one yet.

oh wait, here is one, I can still afford to heat my home and I have bourbon ..... good night.

duck ham and lentils

As promised, I attempted the duck ham and lentils from David Tanis' book (menu 23). what is funny was that on christmas eve (after I already brined my duck legs), I ate roasted duck at this dude Sanjay's house (part of a supposedly traditional Czech holiday meal, fantastic), so this is a lot of duck within a week, not that I am complaining.

the duck leg took longer to brown in the oven than I thought (still not that brown when I ate it), so the lentils were a bit overcooked. but the duck was delicious, very tender, if not overly complex in taste (mildly salty, rich), as a nice country ham would be. I started the meal with a salad of pig ears and radish, not exactly what Tanis' described for this meal, but a bit easier.

trash

I live in one of those building that has trash chute on each floor, two chutes, one for normal trash the other for recycling, located in a little room with a door. For things larger that won't fit in the chute, residents are supposed to take it down to the basement and deposit that shit in the large bins in the trash rooms.

simple enough, and people on my floor seem to be following this general guideline. but in the last few months, large cardboard boxes, and other random pieces of stuff that do not fit down the chute start to appear in this little room. The building staff would kindly clear this shit away, but the pattern continues. It is really fucking annoying because it clogs up this room and that makes the normal trash disposal difficult. what is even more weird and fucked up is that some of the stuff that is not putting down the chute are actually really trash (not just boxes) that rot and smell. Long story short, the trash chute/room on our floor are often inaccessible and fucking disgusting.

well, I sort of suspect the people right next to me as the perpetrators of these inconsiderate acts, since these incidents started to occur since they moved in a few months ago. Yesterday, the building manager distributed notices to the residents on my floor warning us that the ones who violate the rules will be charged for the extra clean if this does not stop. And this morning, I found 4 or 5 of these notices on or at the door step of the unit next to mine. I guess there were others with the same suspicion.

I really don't understand how hard it is to follow some simple guideline to throw away your trash in a manner that makes this place livable for everyone. I don't want to accuse anyone without evidence, but I hope to catch the trash that can't handle trash.

duck breast

I wanted to get a few duck leg and try the duck ham recipe in the David Tanis' more recent book - a platter of figs and other recipes. But the poultry shop I usually shop at in chinatown did not have legs for sale today by themselves. In an indecisive moment, I got a whole duck instead. It was a smallish peking bird, and at $15, not bad, and I figure I will get two meals out of the breast, two meals out of the legs, and save the bones to make soup later.

the breasts on these guys are not nearly as plump as the ones on Muscovies that are served at up scale places, but still, it is duck breast, and when you don't fuck it up, it is pretty fucking delicious. Well, it was more medium than medium rare (it is hard to properly sear anything, if you don't feel like setting off the smoke alarm in a small apartment), and I should have let it rest longer before I cut into it. But oh boy, I am happy right now.

Spatlese

it is not often at all that I get to drink wines as old as this. Older vintages are typically very expensive retail, simply because cheap wine is not usually worth aging and it cost money to keep wine around for a lone time.

but I spotted this at a LCBO a while ago for around $30 I snatched a bottle right away, and while I usually drink red on saturday nights, I decided to open this last night for reasons that now elude me.

I had no idea how LCBO came up with this, and with older wine there is always more of a chance that the bottle is fucked, but fortunately not in this case. The wine was still very fresh, still have plenty of fruit to balance the formidable acidity in it, and the sweetness that often distract in a young Spatlese is now much much more subtle, this was very enjoyable.

barley wine

when I lived in seattle, one of my favorite event of the year was the release of the barley wine ale at the Big Time brew pub in early December. This high alcohol, rich, complex brew always brings great cheer (and drunkenness) to me and other regulars at that place. It was a neighborhood holiday party of sorts.

In the years since then, I have enjoyed many barley wine ale from different brewery at different places, some great and some not so great, but nothing quite compare with the memories of drinking barley wine back in those days at Big Time.

I have had this Mill St. barley wine twice now, that means this is my second winter in Toronto. How many more, I wonder?

escarole

I finally realized 'what is for dinner' is such a fucking stupid phrase, one that cattle raising folks used to sell beef.

so no more, fuck that.

escarole is one of the more underrated vegetable. I think it's limited utilization in everyday cooking partially because people don't know what the fuck it is. It is like lettuce, but much more sturdy, and it is also nicely bitter like chicory, and that is the family where it came from.

hence, it need some cooking, and some fat/sweetness/spice to balance with the bitterness. but there is not doubt that it is really delicious. Sure I also ate lamb chop and roasted carrots (it is the holiday season after all), but the star on this plate was the green vegetable.

what is for dinner - tofu

I have been thinking quite a bit about korean food lately, partly because of the momofuku book, partly perhaps due to the wintery weather on the way.

with the temperature taking a shit from 5 C to -10 C this week, a spicy tofu stew seem like a fine idea. I used the remaining juices from a jar of kimchi I bought a while back, some pork, cabbage, carrot and bacon dashi from the momofuku recipe. it wasn't great, but really good enough, considering it did warm me up.

first snow ...

of the winter, I don't know many things as depressing as that.

what is for dinner - belly

pork belly and bacon have become a culinary fad in the past few years, I am not sure how it happened, but it sort of make sense, it is cheap and when done well, the flavorful fat - crispy/tender meat would please any carnivore. But what really elevated pork belly and bacon beyond the ethnic cookery / breakfast table territory into the main stream middle upper class dinning scene is the creativity of many cooks have applied to this humble piece of meat.

but there lies the fucking problem, nowadays, hacks who have no idea how to cook anything properly are putting pork belly on menus. the results are often disappointing to say the least. But it may be a relief that now it will fade away back to where it was, for people who really now how to cook them and who really enjoy them.

I have to add, the sous vide pork belly I ate at the late scott howard (the restaurant, not the chef) in SF was possibly the best bite of porcine containing food I have had so far. So, fuck the trend, keep eating pork belly!

thankful

Spent the thanksgiving weekend in the bay area. Had thanksgiving dinner at kevin's on thursday night. I don't know what the fuck we were thinking when we picked up this turkey the day before (26 lb). We also made stuffing, couple of vegetables and two pies. It was a great time, but a little disappointed at how little of a dent we made into that bird.

rest of the weekend was a blur, actually, I am pretty positive it was a full blown disaster (I spent parts of two evenings with The Disaster, so the outcome was not surprising). Saw some friends, ate more food, drank too much, and the time flew by too fast.