Restaurant Review: One and Three-quarters Thumbs Down

We ate last night at Sur Real, an upscale Latin-themed restaurant on Skyline Drive near La Costalotta. Reviews have been good, and the promise of Cuban flavors excited us. I knew we'd made a mistake when I couldn't hear the hostess welcoming us because of the loud "Latin jazz" band that overwhelmed the room. The band did sound vaguely Latin, although the only tune I really recognized besides The Girl from Ipanema was The Days of Wine and Roses with the rhythm distorted.

The partial thumb up is because it was South of the Border wine night, and all the South American and Spanish wines were $5 a glass. I had a Spanish garnacha and an Argentinian white I can't remember the name of, and Dad also fared well. They were all delicious.

Because of the band and the cheap wine, the bar was filled with younger people, and they were having a good time. It was definitely a mismatch for us--all the old people like ourselves in the place (Tucson is full of them, they're everywhere) had strained expressions on their faces, and were frowning and cupping their ears when the waiter spoke to them.

But, the food: We had acceptable empanadas for an appetizer, filled with chicken and sweet potato. I ordered paella and should have been alerted by the mention of arborio rice. Indeed, it wasn't a pilaf at all, but a leaden risotto dotted with little shrimp, cubes of chicken breast, and some salami-like sausage chunks which I swear were flavored with Liquid Smoke. Small clams sat on top. The thing weighed a good five pounds--its remains sit in the refrigerator as I write, like a doorstop. Dad's a good sport and will eat it for the next several lunches. Pray for him.

Diagnosis: Purple Soup

The strange cooking slump continues. This has never happened to me before for more than a few days: it's like I've lost both confidence and sense. I've made some good food and some crummy food, but I haven't felt right about any of it. It's like being a pitcher or shooting free throws -- something is off, and I don't know what, but the fact that I know it's off reinforces the offness of it.

Too abstract? Here's an exhibit.

I made chicken tortilla soup a few nights ago. Homemade stock, nice roasted chicken, green chiles, tortillas fried in a mixture of peanut oil and schmaltz [I have a newfound academic interest in schmaltz thanks to Melanie] -- good stuff. I had some red cabbage in the fridge that I wanted to use up. "Cabbage would be good in tortilla soup," I thought to myself. But my cooking sense should have followed that up with "Green cabbage, maybe. Red cabbage would turn the soup purple."

But that second voice never spoke, and indeed, the soup was purple.

Tasty, but purple.

Now that I've identified the problem, I think the only way to solve it will be to ignore cooking for a short time -- to keep doing it, but to just stop thinking about it. Again, exactly like shooting free throws.

So last night we had grilled cheese sandwiches with pickles on the side. They were excellent. For lunch today I'm having black beans from a can mixed with cheddar and hot sauce and heated up in the microwave. It hardly counts as cooking. That's the idea.

Meanwhile, in the absence of cooking mojo, there has been more knitting. I made Lawson a kickass scarf. And here is part of a hat.

Late Fall Food Doldrums

My cooking seems to be suffering lately, and I don't know why. Maybe I haven't adjusted to the shift in seasons. I know I'm still in mourning for fresh chiles. I haven't been to the grocery store as often these last few months. I'm oversalting, a kitchen problem I have that goes in cycles.

We eat takeout Thai food and Pizza Palace large pies with Genoa salami, mushrooms, onions, and peppers more often. My whole cooking habit is in need of some repair.

I illustrate my lameness with a picture of last night's dinner: leftover Thanksgiving macaroni and cheese and slow-cooked green beans, well executed but straight off any Southern buffet, alongside a grilled Italian sausage. Everything tasted fine, but it was all kind of fatty and bland and uninspired. Midwestern winter food. It wasn't Eva food.

I'll hit the grocery store tomorrow seeking inspiration.

Menu Lapse

I'm sorry to report that I made a bland and uninspired company lunch today.

We had:

Chardonnay
Chicken Tettrazini
Carrot/Raisin/Pineapple Salad
Eggplant Salad (Grandma made this, and it saved the day, flavor-wise)
Apple Crisp and Ice Cream

Julia Child would have been appalled. She wrote so persuasively about striking just the perfect balance between menu elements, and I could have done much better.

Also, it's hard to gear up for company lunch. I somehow didn't get the menu planned in advance, so at 9:00 a.m. I was heading for the produce market, and guests were due at 11:30. I had roasted a chicken and made broth the day before, but that's all I had.

I'm trying to think back to better lunches I've made--and they're usually salads.

To redeem myself, I'm posting pictures of two good things I made this week: buffalo meatballs--just like regular Swedish meatballs, bound with bread crumbs and egg; and roasted peppers and a cucumber salad.

More Whining About the Sad State of Food in America

I went to a conference of piano teachers over the last three days. We opened with a three-hour meeting of the board, with a break for "dinner" (menu: sub sandwiches, an assortment of chips, soda pop.) I wasn't too worried because there was to be a reception for the guest artists and presenters after the meeting. Oops--menu: doughnuts, brownies, soda pop.

A friend and I went out for food supplements afterwards--beer and salad.

Fortunately, I am very paranoid about getting caught with nothing healthy to eat, so I had brought with me yogurt, raspberries and other fruit, Wasa, Jarlsberg cheese, and two bottles of wine. I resorted to these many times over the three days, and gladdened the heart of several fellow attendees with a glass of wine.

I ate dinner once at the hotel restaurant, which had a reasonably priced Chipotle Chicken plate. It had a large serving of fresh vegetables and a side of roasted red potatoes, the chicken was a bland breast fillet with a little sauce but it was cooked well--i.e., not dried out. That was the purchased meal highlight of the trip. Hooray to them for the fresh veggies!

I visited two chain restaurants because I didn't wish to be a problem to my companions. The first was Rock Bottom, a brew pub. I can't complain because I ordered a small Caesar salad and a pale ale, and both were pretty much as advertised (they didn't brag). We ate outside, always a plus in the southwest. The second was My Big Fat Greek Restaurant, where I ordered a Greek salad. Raymond had a pomegranate mojito. The place was generic in every way including the food, except for the very loud music--the same at all their locations, I understand. I wouldn't go again, although I didn't suffer any actual digestive or hearing damage.

How did I get to be such a snob? I promise to be more positive.

At home tonight I made pork chops, brown rice, and zucchini, followed by fresh pineapple. This is a quick and easy recipe:

Pork Chops with Green Chile Sauce

4 pork chops

Flour, salt, pepper
Olive oil

Dredge the pork chops in flour, salt, and pepper. Brown thoroughly on both sides. Add to the skillet:

3 or 4 chopped tomatoes (I used partly tomatillos)

1/2 sliced onion

3 cloves garlic, sliced

2 to 4 chopped green chiles

1 teaspoon oregano

More salt and pepper to taste

Stir and cook until things begin to wilt, then cover the pan and simmer until pork is tender, 30 minutes or more.

The Decline of America as a Superpower

It’s all because of this recipe, which was gushed about in the food section of yesterday’s Arizona Daily Star. It’s the family favorite, brought to every get-together, of the interviewee’s family (whom I never want to meet).

It’s plain to see where the country's epidemic of obesity and diabetes has come from: recipes like this. It has every preservative and additive available and is loaded with sugar. Plus, it’s just plain nauseating.

Cranberry Whipped Cream Salad

Layer in a glass bowl:

2 packages crushed graham crackers
2 cans jellied cranberry sauce, thinly sliced
1 tub Cool Whip

A civilization that can eat crap like this is doomed.

(Photo by Charles Armstrong, University of Maine)

Something Is Terribly Wrong Here

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/recipes/2008/03/19/smoky-slow-cooked-roman-beans/

Okay, it's great to make a vegetarian main course instead of ham for Easter dinner. But what went wrong here? I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around the concept of a bean dish that contains all three of these ingredients: truffle oil, Liquid Smoke, and a half a cup of honey!

Crowder Peas and A Poorly Composed Meal

We bought crowder peas at the farmer's market. I'd never even heard of them, as interested as I am in Southern vegetables, but Lawson told me his grandma used to grow them. They looked strange and beautiful:

They took me over an hour and a half to shell. And as there will be no more new Harry Potter books to read while I'm shelling crowder peas, I may never shell another crowder pea again. As you would expect, the drier purple pods had harder bean-like peas that fell right out, but the greener pods were spongy and delicate and so, so hard to pull apart to get at the pea inside. It was super-tedious.

Just last weekend I bought this book. I had high hopes: I've been reading reviews of it, and a quick glance showed me recipes for fig preserves and other such Southern foods. But the recipes aren't really Southern in cooking method -- they're more like things I would make out of Southern ingredients if I was feeling really fussy. I really want a solid Carolinian cookbook with Southern cooking methods. Sometimes I'm not a big fan of those methods, but I know there are traditional subtleties beyond just adding a ham hock to everything, as so many cooks do, and I want to know what they are.

Anyway, I used the Lee Brothers' crowder pea recipe, which involves a short boiling and a very basic vinagrette. This disappointed Lawson, who thought I should have tried the real Southern way after spending all that time shelling peas. The real way, you'll be unsurprised to learn, involves a ham hock.

The crowder peas in vinaigrette formed the base of this ill-composed meal :

Everything tasted fine, but nothing fitted; there were too many foods on the plate, cooked too much the same way. The pork chops were marinated in rosemary, sage, vermouth, wine vinegar, and olive oil and then grilled -- my favorite method and one of the first recipes I invented (though in this case the grill died and I finished them in a pan). But then the okra was broiled, as were the figs. The jalapenos were broiled, too, and it did nothing but make them unbearably spicy. Too many foods, too much heat, too many grill marks, too many hot juices running out of things. There were no contrasts. Sometimes meals that fall together out of Lawson's and my brains work out just fine, and sometimes they do not.

My mom is on a trip, in case you're wondering why she's not posting. She, my dad, my brother, and my brother's girlfriend will be here in South Carolina in a few days. There may be a lull in posting, but maybe we'll all throw together a post or two. Because my parents are traveling in a car, without their camper, they will be desperate for homemade food by the time they reach us.

My House Smells Bad

I tried a Cook’s Illustrated method for roasted chicken breasts tonight. It involved loosening the skin and massaging herb-and-garlic butter into the flesh underneath, then brushing the skin with oil, and roasting on a rack at 450 degrees for half an hour. Two thoughts: the house stinks to high heaven from the dripping chicken fat at high temperature; and for chrissake!!--the only reason to eat chicken breasts in the first place is because they’re LOW in FAT. The flesh was succulent, I’ll admit, but for a protein fix I’d rather eat a handful of almonds, or my favorite bowlful of canned tuna/cottage cheese/curry powder/green onions.

With the chicken I served vegetable lo mein starring Dad’s snow peas, pak choy, and green onions. That was lovely.

Bad Cooking

I made dinner last night for the first time in almost a week, and it was pretty bad! I had a bunch of broccoli rabe that I needed to use up, and looking through cookbooks and online I found several mentions of a traditional recipe involving broccoli rabe, orecchiette, red chiles, garlic, anchovies, olive oil, and sometimes sausage. And lo, I had all those things, including a small amount of Italian sausage I also needed to use up.

The problem wasn't in the recipe; it was in the execution. I added way too many anchovies and red chiles-- I didn't know such a thing was possible, but the dish was far too salty, and the chiles blocked the other flavors. I think sweet Italian sausage would have been better, too -- broccoli rabe is so intense and bitter that it needed something else for balance. The broccoli rabe soaked up all the anchovy salt and was almost inedibly bitter and salty. I managed to finish off the dish at lunch today, but it was not very good.

Fortunately, I made your lemon bars to go with it, and they were phenomenal. That is a perfect recipe. I used up the last two Meyer lemons you sent, and tried to use one off our sad little indoor tree, but it was large and bitter, not at all sweet.

The proposal I'm helping write at work has gotten huge and scary, and today I found out I might not have any weekends off for the next month -- just Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. That means I won't be cooking much. That makes me sad.

Bad Cookbooks

There are some bad cookbooks out there. Grilling cookbooks are probably the worst overall, but tonight I finally made dinner from a Filipino cookbook (whose author shall remain nameless) that I got for Christmas a few years ago. Now, I’ve had excellent Filipino food in Hawaii--especially lumpia, those wonderful little fried taco things served with vinegar and chile sauce—but these recipes were surely written by a non-cook. I suspected it, and I should have trusted my instincts. The pictures were beautiful.

First, there was Fish Adobo, basically poached in garlic, vinegar, and bay leaf. This combination managed to make a mild Mexican snapper taste really fishy. Then a noodle dish very similar to Pad Thai, but inexpertly explained: the snow peas went in the skillet long before the carrots, so they were pretty slimy by the time everything else was done. The only seasonings were salt, pepper, and soy sauce.

Dad liked the meal well enough (that’s the kind of audience a cook needs—ultra-appreciative but not ultra-critical), but I was mad at myself for trusting the cookbook.

On a much happier note, I made Sonoran Enchiladas last night. We had tried them at two Mexican restaurants, and it made me curious. Instead of a corn tortilla, you make a plump masa cake and bake it on a griddle, and then cover with good red chile sauce, cheese, and green onion, and put it in the oven just long enough to melt the cheese. Mmmm.

It dropped below seventy degrees by the cocktail hour tonight, so we fired up our new chiminea.