Cobalt Edge

My wife is visiting friends with the kids this week, during my daughter's first week of spring break. I'm home doing a lot of work, but it's also a real rarity that I'm home when I'm away from my family (usually it's me who's traveling). Anyway, I'm definitely doing some cooking, as well as will investigate one or two "sketchy" Mexican taco places (I scout them out, and then take the fam if good :) They're sketchy in appearance (hopefully not in food). But, for me, the sketchier, usually means the better. But I digress...

Tonight I made probably the best steak I've made in a long time, definitely one of my best ever. Not a new recipe, but just perfectly executed, if I do say so myself. Combined with it was an experiment with chard; recipe of my own on-the-fly creation.

The Steak

First I went and got an absolutely top quality ribeye from my local meat market (Long's, here in Eugene). A Roughly 1lb beauty. Then I ground up some fresh Blue Bottle Roman Espresso coffee (ground at a setting approx between drip and French Press, so on the course side, but not huge chunks). It is absolutely key to use fresh coffee beans, and grind them, none of this canned or pre-ground crap. Also, the better the coffee, the better the result. I could go on a long time here, but I won't (because I'm working on a blog entry about Blue Bottle :) Next, combine that with a pinch or three of either kosher salt or Fleur de Sel or similar salt of your choice. And then, add fresh ground pepper to the mix - about 1/3rd as much as you have coffee (more or less to taste I suppose - but don't put so much that you drown out the coffee). Liberally coat your steak with that - hide the steak in it.

I then recommend grilling the steak over a very hot grill. I use a gas BBQ, with my burners all on high - about 500 degrees on average. For the thickness of steak I had tonight (1.25"?), I cooked it just short of 11 minutes - about 5 minutes a side or so. This yields a medium-rare steak, and I mean truly medium-RARE, plenty of pink, but not bleeding. Once done grilling, pull it off and let it rest a few minutes. Stellar.

The Chard

I'm a big fan of chard, usually sautéed. Tonight I had some organic red chard. At Long's I'd also picked up some prosciutto, although a last minute decision to try something new, yielded some green peppercorn infused prosciutto cotto (cooked). First I sautéed some chopped red onion, with a pinch of Napa herbs, fresh ground pepper, and a bit of the helpful chunky grey garlic sea salt (go light here, this is not a garlic thing). A bit of red wine (a bottle I had open, oddly enough a tempranillo-syrah blend). Saute and fry that prosciutto up a bit.

Next, I separated the stalks from the chard, as they need to cook longer. Toss those in with the above mixture and steam/saute a bit to soften the stalks up. Then, put the chard leaves in, and essentially steam until done. Doesn't take long. Given that I made this up while I was cooking it, it worked out really well. Of course, most things with prosciutto do :)

Drink

I went with the easy choice here, although unexpected. I think most people would expect a nice bold red wine, and I do have some nice ones in the wine fridge. But, when I'm alone and not at a restaurant (thus not opening a bottle, or ordering by the glass) I'll go with a cocktail. My standard favorite is gin rocks with onions. Tonight this was Zuidam dry gin (battling for top spot with my usual favorite No. Ten by Tanqueray), and the best cocktail onions, Sable and Rosenfeld Tipsy Onions. I prefer my gin over just a couple large cubes of ice, so that it's not so cold as to take away flavor. Good botanical gin has a myriad of wonderful flavors, and I think shaking it with ice just kills some of that - No Ten is FAR better just slightly cooled over a couple cubes of ice.

All this, while listening to some great jazz (not typical for me, but "completed" the evening), and sitting at the bar-counter in our house. I felt like I was in a great restaurant, eating a wonderful meal at the bar, only it was in the comfort of my own home, relaxing, and loving it. I guess it was my own great restaurant; how nice!

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I'm in San Francisco this week to assist with the RailsQuickStart seminar on Wed and Thurs. But, in the mean time, I'm enjoying the food and drink scene. Monday I spent with my good friend Matt, who recently moved from SF to Silverton, CO, but was back in town for a while selling some houses. Matt used to go out essentially every night, and really knows the scene. He picked me up at the airport at 9:30a, and we began our tour.

First stop, and top priority, was the new Blue Bottle cafe in the Mint district. Luckily the line was minimal, an we ordered our cappuccinos and poached eggs & toast breakfast. The cap was awesome of course, and the food was quite good too. Blue Bottle is just really good with capuccino - superb micro-foam and great afteraste. It was also cool to see their new siphon bar in action. It's a trippy, chem-lab looking setup. I don't know if I'll have a chance to try it on the trip, but will do so if I'm in the cafe again this trip. We almost ordered another drink, but decided the line was a bit long by now, and so headed over to Ritual Roasters.

Arriving at Ritual, we were greeted with a huge line out the door. But, it moved fairly quick, and we each ordered a doppio. However, we were extremely disappointed (which is saying it nicely)... the espresso was crap. Straight up, they should have been embarrassed to serve us those totally sour shots of under-extracted, under-temperature espresso! This was surprising to both of us, although it sounds like Matt has found them declining for a while (maybe they need to go back to using Stumptown - go Oregon! ;-) Yuck, we left them on the bar and skedaddled.

As the lunch hour arrived, we both didn't want to pass up the opportunity to hit the taco truck(s) over by Best Buy. Good authentic, simple tacos. I went with carnitas, Matt had carne asada and ate all his jalapenos. Back to his friend Jeff's house to meet Jeff, do a quick email session, and check the status of the day's Tour of California stage. Now it was time for me to check in to my hotel and then head out to dinner with some of Matt's friends.

We hit Chow in the Castro. I'd say this part of the day was just average. Food was decent, but nothing special, average atmosphere, etc. We were joining his friend's who have small kids (2 and 4), so I get that aspect completely (Chow was kid friendly), but since I'm traveling and in SF, I'm of course wanting to go to the really great places, or different or unusual or whatever. From there we split from his friends, picked Jeff up, and headed out to a wine bar.

Hotel Biron is a small wine bar, tucked away on an alley, sporting just a small "B" sign. Definitely the kind of place I was looking for - somewhere you wouldn't just stumble across, small, great wine, and oh-my-gosh, you could actually hear people talk in there! What a concept! We even sat on a comfy leather couch. The wine was also great. Had a nice bottle of malbec, and some glasses of Chilean (which I skipped, as I'm kind of a lightweight). Oddly enough, earlier in the day we'd seen the owner, Chris, walking across the street carrying a bicycle wheel. He looked like a bike messenger or something - no clue he'd have been a wine bar owner, but that's SF for you (Matt knows him, thus the reason we could spot this).

At this point we thought we were going to call it a night, but it was still fairly early, so as we were in the area, and a lot of other things were closed, we went to A 16. Matt claims A 16 is the second best Italian restaurant in SF. Continuing the small world aspect, as we saddled up to the bar, the bartender turns around and Jeff realizes he knows him. Of course this made for an even better night. Tim is a sommelier, travels the world, and was a fun guy to talk to. He poured us some great wines to go along with the pizza and prosciutto plate we snuck in as a last minute order before the kitchen closed.

After a while we decided an espresso might be in order, and knew it might be ok, as they used Blue Bottle beans :) Of course we needed to have some dessert to go along with that. We ordered the two most interesting looking desserts, which were the chocolate tart with olive oil and sea salt, and the pecorino gelato with buckwheat brownie. I was unsure how well the pecorino gelato would combine, but damn if that dessert wasn't awesome! The buckwheat brownie was superb, and combined with the gelato was just a fantastic dessert. The pecorino was strong, and I think Matt and Jeff were less enthusiastic about it, but if I went back to A 16, I doubt I'd leave without ordering that dessert again! Also, the desserts came paired with dessert wines which were outstanding. Everything there was great, including all the excellent info and wine Tim provided. I can't help but agree that A 16 was a great stop, and definitely an ideal ending to our evening.

Tuesday will be more relaxed as I'll be doing some work, but I'm sure will be heading for Blue Bottle and some other cafes again. Another report to follow...

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Well, really, I hope they aren't actually "killer", but I am talking about knives, and spinning blades...

I recently attended a knife skills class, and during the class got to try a slew of different types and brands of knives. I came away very impressed with Shun knives. Great feel, cut briliantly, and the food just falls off - no need for the hokey hollow ground divots, etc. Also, I was able to try the "Ken Onion" Shun knife in particular. This knife has a specially designed bolster/handle area, where your fingers can sit in the proper style. It also rocks really well while cutting. And technically, there is a whole range of Ken Onion knives know, it just seems that this one was the first and thus is what folks refer to as the Ken Onion.

A few weeks later I picked up a Ken Onion, a paring knife, and their cool new serrated "Ultimate utility knife" (I couldn't find this on Shun's site, so the link is to the online store of the place I bought it from). I also took in my Wusthof Grand Prix knifes to be sharpened. These have been great knives, but I actually think I will sell the two cook's knives and paring knife now that I have the Shuns. Eventually I will replace the others as well.

I returned a bit later to pick up my Wusthof's, and low and behold, the Shun rep was there for the day. I talked to him for maybe 10 minutes (I was actually in a hurry at the time). Luckily he clued me in that "diamond fingers" sharpeners, which work rally well on German/stainless steel, shouldn't be used on VG10 steel of Shun knives. I thus got Shun's sharpening steel, which handily has a properly angled bolster on it to help you be certain you are maintaining the proper angle on your edge.

Finally, somewhere in all this, I also picked up a Viking immersion/hand blender. I got a chance to use it for the first time tonight, and WOW, that thing rocks! Made itself worth it in one use. I was making potato leek soup, which needs to get pureed, and previously I had to do this by taking stuff out in batches and putting it in a food processor/blender - a total pain. With the immersion blender, obviously, you just pop the thing in the soup pot, and blend for seconds (it probably took me 20 seconds). This is going to be one nice addition to the kitchen tool chest.

Oh, one note on the Viking vs. others. The Viking is extra powerful and has two speed settings. The first speed setting is what most immersion blenders can dole out, the second is turbo. Also, it's blade guard/bottom area is a nice design that lets the food flow out much better than many of the others that have holes, but where those holes aren't open to the bottom. It also comes with a whisking attachment, and others are available (I got a mini-chopper one with mine due to a current promotion).

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I only learned about CSA's (Community Supported Agriculture) this year. They are beyond plentiful in Eugene, with I think something like 40-60 providers. We signed up for a fall CSA with Groundwork Organics. What this is, is a weekly delivery of locally, and with our choice, organically grown produce. In the spring we will likely sign up for multiple of them, with potentially one doing dairy and/or meat as well. Anyway, it's been really great so far. They provide a bunch of things that we wouldn't usually buy, or in some cases, have never even heard of!

We've had I think 3 deliveries now. Each week we've gotten 1-2 pounds of lettuce/greens (lots of spinach, field greens), a bunch or three of carrots, and then things like parsnips, beets, dill, Italian parsley, watercress, squash, potatos, onions, arugala, garlic, leeks, and more. The apples we got last week are the most flavorful apples I've had in a long time (they were "Liberty" apples I believe).

The delivery we got today included leeks, red potatos, and dill, with a recipe to go along with it (they always include recipes). It also included "Delicata squash" (roughly 8-10" long, white with green veins, and tubular, maybe 4" in diameter), with a recipe, and we'll try that out. I don't think we've bought salad greens at the market for a month due to this, which is great.

We've tried several things we have either never had, or needed to go find recipes to figure out what to do with it, etc. (the roasted parsnips were yummy). We used a bunch of the salad greens, carrots, etc. tonight, and I roasted up 4 heads of garlic as well.

I can't wait to see what the next one brings us, as well as what we sign up for in the spring (when the real CSA season occurs).

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