and curiously – Page 19

I ate a lot in Minnesota.

For my birthday, I visited my best friend from high school + her fiance in St Paul / Minneapolis. In a perfect celebration of my making it around the Sun one more time, we ate a lot of flour-based food. And went to the Mall of America. What more could you want?

Vreniki from Moscow on the Hill — Vareniki from Moscow on the Hill

Started the trip off with these little potato and cheese filled dumplings. Topped with sour cream because why not. The Russians are a people who understand me. And yes, I did eat all of them.

Look at the cute little scoop! At Izzy’s, you get a tiny scoop on top of your normal scoop, which perfect for me, because I always want to try more flavors. The best part of this — when I got to the bottom of the cone, I found a chocolate malt ball sitting down there, presumably to keep the ice cream from dripping out. I shrieked like a child, “There’s chocolate in here!” It sort of reminded me of those Japanese soft drinks that have a marble in the neck of the bottle.

In the background, you can see the special dishware they have to hold pieces of toast (and also Phil’s arm, hi Phil). It’s beautiful. We topped with fish in a creamy sauce and a variety of spreads including fresh ricotta, toasted seeds, and jam. I could basically eat this all day.

I’m devoted to popovers. And I finally tried some ramp (in the background)! I’ve basically been scouring Bay Area farmers’ markets for years trying to find it… who knew I just had to go to the Midwest?

Lobster and egg bruschetta from Bar La Grassa

This was as good as it sounds. All soft and savory and a little truffley. You can see the chunks of cream cheese in the foreground. Oh my God. I want another one. I have to move on because I am literally drooling.

Gnocchi with cauliflower and orange zest from Bar La Grassa

Pillowy and rich and bright from citrus. I love pasta! Bar La Grassa offered half portions of pasta, which was perfect, because we could try a bunch of them.

We ate much more (of course), but these were the only even moderately acceptable photos… maybe I should get a real camera. We also watched an entire season of Scandal, which I consider a great achievement.

Thanks, Victoria and Phil for a wonderful visit!

Sweet potato hash

Breakfast is so often beige, don’t you think? And, I mean, let’s not pretend that golden brown isn’t my absolute favorite color for food to be, but, sometimes you need a little more nourishment. By which I mean, I was about to go get my butt kicked by a mountain I intended to walk up and down, and I figured my usual method of eating bread and bites of leftovers wasn’t going to cut it.

Thus, sweet potato hash was born. And it was delicious.

Sweet Potato Hash

1 large-ish sweet potato
(optional) 1 “sausage” – I used Field Roast because I am addicted
1 egg
1 stalk of green onion
salt & pepper

Cube the sweet potato into small pieces — tedious, but they’ll cook faster, so you can eat faster. It’s the morning, and I generally wake up hungry. And groggy.

If you’re using real sausage, you may want to brown it in a pan, breaking into small pieces as you do so, and then remove it. Field Roast is made of grains and seasonings and crack and chemicals, so it technically doesn’t have to be cooked… but it does have to be sliced before you add it to the pan.

Oil a large pan generously and let it get quite hot, until the oil shimmers. Add the sweet potato cubes to this pan, spread them out, and wait. I find not moving the potatoes around to be key to keeping them from sticking. I feel like I got this tip from a Mark Bittman post in his column in NYT, but I can’t find it.

After an unbearably long time of waiting, move the potatoes around and season lightly with salt and pepper. When the potatoes are nearly done, add the sausage in and fry until both are done.

At this point, I would just push the stuff to one side of the pan (or tip it onto a plate) and crack an egg in there. Nobody needs to do extra dishes.

Top the hash with the fried egg, and top again with sliced scallions. Season with a little more salt and pepper to taste.

It’s a simple “recipe,” but weirdly, sweet potatoes as hash felt like a revelation to me. It’s great — feels like a treat but also like good fuel for the day. That said, I ended up eating an entire burrito later that day before my hike (bad idea), but, you know.

Sorta Sourdough Success!

You guys! This is the best sourdough, yet!

My sourdough attempts have been varied and numerous, but I think with the help of numerous cookbooks, mind melding with other bread people, and combining Starters, I’m finally close.

Low-key chirashi

On Wednesday evening, I attended a talk by a very fancy-sounding professor who discussed the importance of sleep for mental and physical well-being. Ever since, I’ve been sort of anxious about sleeping and actually sleeping less well… which is new, since I basically never make it through a movie without dozing off a little.

But, anyways. I made and ate some stuff!

Chirashi without any exotic ingredients, because, tired.

For my vegetarian and weekday version of chirashi, I made do with pantry staples and ingredients available at our little corner store, because, being an adult is cutting corners.

For the base, I made some simple sushi rice with short-grain brown rice.

3 cups short-grain brown rice
5 cups water
1/4 cup rice vinegar
2 or 3 tablespoons of sugar
about 1 tablespoon of salt

We cook our rice in the pressure cooker, but whatever works. while it’s going, dissolve the sugar and salt in the vinegar (You might need to heat up the vinegar a little to help it along, but be careful if you do this, since it smells very strongly.) Immediately when the rice is done, drizzle the vinegar mixture into the hot rice and mix around.

Let the rice cool to about room temperature, and then top. I did:

cucumber strips and shredded carrot and radish (To dehydrate slightly, cut, then sprinkle with salt and let sit for a few minutes. Then, squeeze out the water. To quick-pickle after this, submerge in leftover sushi vinegar for a few minutes.)
egg strips (make a thin omelette and then cut into strips)
diced avocado
toasted sesame seeds
strips of nori

I realize that this is essentially Rice With Stuff On It, but, that might be my favorite category of food, honestly.

I have tried the cragel, and it was glorious.

CRAGELS! The unsavory-sounding croissant/bagel hybrid is tastier than it sounds (food should not remind you of a “pelvic floor exercise” if at all possible), combining two of my favorite things in the world.

I ventured out to House of Bagels in the Richmond (in San Francisco) to go bring home some precious cragel manna, in both plain and cinnamon sugar. It was my duty.

0505_crageltop — I sliced it in half before remembering to take a photo. Sorry.

I was so excited that I was shaking a little bit. and I also sliced it in half to share with my roommates before remembering to photograph. Food blogging is hard, you guys.

So, yes. The cragel. It’s huge. You can see it taking up pretty much all of my palm, and I have pretty average-sized hands. My order of a dozen (yeah.) didn’t fit in my large purse. They’re actually really impressive-looking, with pretty twisted dough and great color. Is it deranged to think bread is beautiful? It’s beautiful.

Plain cragel, sliced in half, untoasted.

The interior of the cragel is layered and chewy. It sort of tastes like chewier challah or brioche. You can definitely taste that it’s buttery or somehow enriched. My guess is that they start with normal bagel dough (and maybe boil it) and then sort of laminate/layer it with some butter.

Delicious, but oh my god, it’s transcendent if you toast it. It’s like seeing God.

This time I basically blacked out eating 3/4 of it until I sort of halfheartedly took a photo. It was so good. The bottoms of the cinnamon sugar ones become sort of caramelized. It’s like the corners of monkey bread. And also bagels. And also a croissant.

Side view of toasted cinnamon sugar cragel.

Anyways, cragels. While they could have probably been called the more appetizing-sounding bassant/boissant, they’re still really tasty. The 3 of us ate 8 cragels in less than 24 hours, so, there’s that endorsement. Get thee to House of Bagels. (And report back about the NYC version if you’ve had ’em!)