The Most Expensive Meal of My Life

I love food and experiences - I would rather share an incredible meal with friends in a foreign country after an adventure than have a bunch of giant flat screen TV's, a flashy car and bunch of Hermes Birkin bags (which is probably why you should never rob me since you probably don't want to steal a 35 inch CRT TV).

But I somewhat inadventently spent a fortune on dinner one night with some co-workers in Chicago. We knew we wanted to eat somewhere special while we were in Chi-town for training which meant that we were ready to throw down some serious coin. Nick and I had gone to Moto, after all. Kumar on my team suggested that we go to Charlie Trotters since this amazing Chicago culinary institution was closing this summer after 25 years of service.

Charlie Trotters is a pioneering restaurant which some say had put Chicago on the culinary map. It's a classic Mecca to fine dining and has launched the careers of some of the best and most avant garde chefs around. Unlike the casualness of Seattle dining establishments, it required jackets as well as exceptionally good manners. There were two incredible tasting menus: a meat one and a vegetarian one. I opted for the meat one with seafood only, which they were happy to accomodate.

Then, my former teammate Paul talked me into getting the wine pairings. "I don't really drink wine except when it's paired with dinner, " he said and then added convincingly, "And think about how amazing each course here would go with the right wine. This isn't something you do all the time, it's an experience and this place is closing." So rather than a single glass of wine or a cocktail, I chose to go with the pairing. "What the heck, this is a special experience," I thought... but I should have looked at the wine menu.

This kushi oyster first course was decadent, unctuous and almost obscene. It was paired with a crisp champagne - and I got several glasses of it. 

Unagi terrine with grapefruit. Seriously? This thing was pure art and foam. The crispness of the lime and grapefruit cut into the sweetness and richness of the unagi.

The guys got quail but I think I got trout. Whatever this was, it was delicious. Kumar got the vegetarian menu and for whatever reason, his plate always looked prettier. Not only was the meal more artfully arranged, but the actual china itself was cooler! However, the server informed me that this plate was specially gifted to Charlie so I won this round.

Here is another look at the plate - you can see that it has names of some of the most prominent restaurants around - Le Bernadin and French Laundry to name a couple.

This next plate reminded me of the Top Chef Texas Charlize Theron evil queen challenge - it was a beautiful plate with a violent splash of carmine-colored beet and the most buttery-rich Maine lobster.

This was Kumar's plate, which I had to take a photo of since it was so awesome looking. Below this slotted plate were other ingredients whose smoky vapors got up to what was on top. I don't know what it was but it sure looked awesome.

More lovely yumminess - I am a fan of a perfectly seared scallop.

This was the first dessert course which was refreshing and a bit of a palate cleanser. I am a fan of places that sprinkle crumbs on dessert since, let's face it, a little bit of crumbles go a long way.

More yummy desserts.

Each of these courses included generous pours of delicious wines. One course paired a sweet riesling but when coupled with the rich food, it was balanced and left a buttery mouthfeel. We had sweet wines and ports for dessert. Everything was phenomenally delicious. 

And then the check came. I choked a little bit. $420! That included tax and gratuity but I looked at it incredulously, realizing that the wine pairing was expensive enough to be its own meal... or two. I signed the bill, shrugged and texted Nick, "ZOMG, I just spent $420 on dinner!" 

He was in Austin, eating at Uchiko and texted back, "Oh that's not too bad, my dinner was $640." 

My reply was, "No, not dinner for the whole table. My dinner was $420 for just ME." Ouch.

Needless to say, I forked over my own BECU Visa and did not expense this dinner. I have never spent so much money on food but it was a worthy experience and one that people won't be able to have after this summer. I am sure someone forked over tens of thousands to dine at El Bulli before it closed its doors; this isn't even in the same stratosphere as El Bulli but it was for my price range. And if we hadn't gone to eat there, we all would never had learned how well riesling and bacon pairs together.

Mixing It Up At Revel

It's no secret that Revel is one of our favorite restaurants so I wasn't terribly surprised when Nick registered us for a series of classes there as a Christmas present.

The first class in the series was a cocktail-making class with the description, "Our Quoin bartender will teach a few tricks for fun cocktails and infused spirits."
What's more fun than sitting down to as many drinks as you wanted, along with a personal step by step description of the concoction? We knew the class would be epic when we were seated at the bar and our friendly bartender/professor Brian told us that we could order any drink. "Order what you want. It's included. We'll teach you how we make it too." As Brian mixed up the cocktail, he poured little tasting glasses of some of the ingredients for me - antica, which is a sweet, rich vermouth for example and could almost work on its own over ice.
Mojito expert Jesse told us, "We asked about how much we were allowed to serve and decided we'd just let you all drink as much as we could serve you. You two were very smart to have walked here."

Legen.... wait for it.... dary.


Infusions
Once class got started, we learned about infusions, which aren't a silly novelty at Quoin, but something they put an incredible amount of care into. The Quoin bartenders expressed their giddiness at the fact they had access to the Revel walk-in, which meant they had access to amazing, fresh and exotic ingredients to play with. The bartenders stepped us through the process of making syrup infusions like earl gray tea and simple syrups and how they can play a part in cocktails. Afterwards, we stepped through some of the available ingredients to make an infused syrup or soju infusion like the ones Quoin is famous for. Their best-known soju infusion was the pho infusion, which includes some pho ingredients sans beefy broth. (Although they had some extraneous ingredients - there is no lemongrass or ginger in pho!)


We decided to make soju infusions with some of the awesome ingredients and are steeping them in little mason jars. Nick's aromatic infusion has cardamom, asian pear, cloves, star anise and ginger. Mine is spicy with lemongrass, ginger, lemon zest and thai basil.


The Manhattan

The gang stepped us through some important bar tools and techniques including notable gems such as:

• Wood muddlers are the best. If you get a heavy or fancy one, you'll end up with a glass shattering in your hand.
• You don't need a fancy shaker - a pint glass and metal shaker cup works best
• Other essential bar tools include microplanes, cocktail strainers, a micromesh strainer, a stir spoon and vegetable peelers to make twists. If the equipment is expensive or heavy-handed, it's probably not very good.
• When you add ingredients to the pint glass end of the shaker, ice is the last thing you should top it off with before shaking.

We went through the basics of making a stirred manhattan, which originally was made with rye and served with a twist, not with cherries. They showed us many different bitters which can be used rather than the usual Agostura bitters. Who knew there were grapefruit bitters, lavender bitters and celery bitters?

The Mojito

Bartender Jesse was the mojito man - although they admitted that on a busy night, the mojito is the worse drink you can order. Nothing will piss off a bartender more than one of those in the midst of a rush. Duly noted.

This was fun to make and muddle so here are the delicious results:

The Margarita

They make margaritas like I make mine - with a smidge of orange juice! That's definitely the secret to delicious margs. Obviously, they use fresh and so clean-clean ingredients and great reposado tequila rather than the sweet fake margarita mixes and Cuervo crap that we're used to. The bartenders also swore by real Cointreau or Grand Marnier over Triple Sec, which they said doesn't have as much intense flavor.

I'm ready to throw a margarita party and bake a margarita flan cake. It's great for your taste buds, bad for your waistline.

Winning!

The cherry on the sundae was that got to play around and invent our own cocktails with full access to their collection of liquors and pantry items. The team's concoctions would be judged by the bartenders and the winning drink would be the special of the week. Inspired both by the pho infusion, the mojito and our trip to Vietnam, Nick and I decided to create a drink reminiscent of bun bo hue, a spicy beef noodle soup. It would be tangy, sweet, spicy and full of our cocktail-concocting passion!

Say hello to the Hue Jude:

The base is light rum with a ginger liqueur over muddled lemongrass, thai basil and pineapple, pineapple juice, all extremely well-shaken and topped with some soda water. We garnished it with a stick of lemongrass and a slice of pineapple dipped in chili powder for a spicy kick.

The judges tasted the cocktails although only Jesse and Brian got to have a bite of the chili dipped pineapple.

And we won by a slim margin! The Hue Jude was zippy and refreshing but not too cloyingly sweet. We were awarded with a trophy and a card for a free Hue Jude cocktail. Winning felt wonderful - or maybe it was the fact that we just had a few cocktails and a boatload of fun. Either way, we left feeling happy, extremely satisfied and ready for a little afternoon nap.

Eat Me!: Quick breakfast tacos

I'm in Austin, TX for SXSW this week. Obviously could devote umpteen posts to Austin street food, or our upcoming meal at Uchiko, but I'm here for bidness. And bidness calls. But before I check out, I got a request to publish my recipe for breakfast tacos.

So, the nasty little secret is that I don't have a recipe for breakfast tacos. I just whipped some up with what was around this morning. Luckily they turned out well, and folks appreciated them. So I'll just write up what I did.

Two asides before I dive into the recipe, too.

1. I fucking love Austin. It's basically what Portland would be if it had the UofO there, and better weather, and better music, and better food.

2. When cooking, don't focus too much on technique or wild recipes. You can make great food by just figuring out what would balance the flavors you want to achieve, and the textures you want to feature. If I'm thinking about making a salad with a tart grapefruit, I want to balance the tartness and fibrous texture out with a mellow, crispy element. Jicama. Asian Pear. It's just that easy.

Breakfast Tacos:

• 12 flour or whole wheat tortillas (The fresher, the better. I can't stress this enough - buy fresh flour tortillas from Whole Paycheck. It will revolutionize your Latin American cooking)
• 1 red onion
• 1 cucumber
• 1 small squash
• vinegar
• sugar
• salt
• whole peppercorns
• 12 eggs, room temperature (take your eggs out of the fridge 1 hr before cooking)
• 3 avocados, diced
• 1 lime
• cheese blend - jack & cheddar works, but splurge on cotija if you want)
• 12 strips of bacon

1. take eggs out to get to room temp

2. make your pickling mixture: small handful of salt, small handful of sugar, 3 parts water, 1 parts vinegar.

3. small dice on the cucumber and red onion. reserve half of the onion. drop cucumber and red onion into the pickling mixture, along with about 12-15 whole peppercorns. cover and refridgerate for at least 30 mins.

4. thin slice squash; heat skillet to medium w/ olive oil. add last half of red onion and squash, saute until translucent and then reduce heat to low.

5. begin cooking bacon in pan over medium high heat. remove when it starts to crisp. cover in paper towels, and put in the microwave. blast it for 1 min right before serving to warm it up and crisp a bit more. reserve a small amount of bacon grease.

6. heat large pan on medium, use bacon grease..spread so thinned, not pooled. this will give your tortillas a little bacon-y flavor and be slightly greasy. deposit tortillas, sprinkle cheese on, wait til cheese melts but doesn't bubble.

7. while this is going on, heat another small pan to medium, coat conservatively with butter, and fry egg. i like my yolks runny, but feel free to cook them however you like. just know that if you dont cook them easy, you suck at life.

8. plate tortilla, combine egg, diced avocado, pickled cucumber & onion, sauted squash & onion, diced bacon.

9. put taco in your pie hole. rub tummy repeatedly.

The Great Seattle Breakfast Challenge



My normal Sunday morning view

Like Ted Mosby, Architect, we too love brunch.

We decided to embark on a mission with friends to find the best breakfast/brunch in Seattle! We have our usual list of beloved brunch places, namely Smith, Revel and Toulouse Petit but there are so many places in Seattle with wonderful breakfast dishes. So who makes the best eggs benedict? Where do you find the best pancakes or the most delicious omelet?

We'll find out and we'll let you know.

Here's a list of dishes we'll rate:

Eggs benedict
French toast
Shrimp and grits
Omelets/scrambles
Hash
Pancakes/crepes
Classic breakfast
Specialty dish
Bonus additions - best biscuit, best hashbrowns or potatoes, best gravy, best coffee, etc.

We'll score each dish on the following guidelines, on a scale of 1-5, 1 being terrible and 5 being awesome-sauce. We've already looked up and created standards at which they should be evaluated on.

·         Taste/flavor – 1 being either very bland, boring or so completely overseasoned/oversalted/too sweet that my tastebuds were blown out. 5 is extremely flavorful and well-balanced.  

·         Presentation – 1 is totally sloppy and chucked on a plate without rhyme or reason, 5 is beautifully and artfully presented. 3 would just be neat.

·         Preparation and quality  – 1 is it’s totally not to standard (eggs poached solid, something is totally burnt or super undercooked, etc) and 5 is made perfectly to standard, with quality ingredients. Fresh things should be fresh – spinach should be fresh and not frozen, bread should not be old or stale, cheese should be quality cheeses and not processed, etc.

·         Creativity/originality – This is the uniqueness of a dish and this category will only be used for a specialty dish.

Feel free to comment back and let us know where you think we should go and what we should eat there.

The drug that is a Paseo sandwich...

Is there anything more delicious than a Paseo sandwich?

Perhaps. I just can't think of anything right now.

I don't want to brush my teeth because my mouth still has the faint taste of garlic aioli or whatever crack sauce they slather on their sandwiches.

Here is a haiku:

Crispy, sauced baguette
Onions and prawns haunt my dreams
Paseo 'wichcraft

As a side note, I posted a mobile photo of this to Facebook and got 13 comments and perhaps 15 likes in the matter of a couple of hours. Everyone loves it too. 

Meatless in Seattle

Let me start out by saying, I am not preaching.

Gnocchi from Tavolata w/ English Peas

I'm a pescatarian and many of my family members are vegetarians. I don't expect you to stop eating meat if you like eating meat and I don't really care if you eat meat. I would never stop you from eating meat and adding bacon to everything if you deemed that medically necessarily. Bacon and meat are delicious. Also, for the record, I don't find meat to be disgusting (although I suppose I should define what sorts and cuts of meat but for the purposes of this discussion, let's consider it fairly normal meat you can get at a grocery store, specialty store or butcher). I am Asian and I've been raised to love and appreciate fine culinary pleasures of many cultures which means I've probably eaten nastier bits of offal than you have.

However, many of my friends are deciding to eat less meat for whatever reason: health and diet concerns, environmental impact reasons, religious preferences, whatever. So here are some principles for vegetarian cooking and vegetarian diets that are important so you eat and cook awesome food and most importantly, are satisfied.

A winning artichoke 'crab' cake dish

1. The key to vegetarian cooking is you don't want to miss the meat. Obvious, right? Craft a meal or entrees in mind that evoke the textures, flavors and satiety of meat so when you're done eating, you don't feel like running out and ordering a Big Mac or a steak. Most restaurants seem to get this wrong but vegetarian cooking isn't necessarily about vegetables or side dishes. I love pasta and salad and all, but just omitting meat doesn't necessarily make a good meal.
2. Think about the flavor. I would argue that the most important flavor when you don't have meat is umami. Think about ingredients that will lend an umami richness like oyster mushrooms, shitake mushrooms, toasted nuts, soy paste, miso, sundried tomatoes, etc that will impart an umami savory flavor.
3. Protein! Your dieting and nutrition obsessed friends will understand how important protein is to keeping you full, as well as developing your muscles and all but some vegetarians don't get enough protein because they mostly eat carbs. Protein is nutritionally important but is that other missing link to feeling satisfied by the end of the meal. I LOVE many of the 'fake meat' options they have out there. Morningstar, Torfurkey, Quorn and other companies make mock meat that imitates the texture and flavors of meat pretty convincingly. Trader Joes even makes frozen vegetarian corndogs which are a pretty awesome midnight snack. However, some of these products are fairly processed so you want to limit your consumption somewhat. You can also get protein from beans and legumes, tofu, seitan and other sources that can be easily dressed up in delicious ways.
4. Tofu is not meant to be eaten raw. It's literally tasteless. Asians don't understand why other people eat raw tofu cubes to add protein and cringe while they eat it. Nonvegetarians in Asia eat a lot of soy products and tofu and love it; we even pair it with meat because it wasn't necessarily only a meat or protein substitute. Mapo tofu is an excellent example of a wonderful meat and tofu pairing. The wonderful thing about soy is that it takes on other flavors really well so you can cook it in a number of ways to get it to taste like something. It also comes in varied textures. But whether you fry it, bake it, stir fry it, sear it, cook it please.
5. Do not give up on your favorite foods. Try making a vegetarian version of it. I am a crabcake fanatic and I also happen to love the artichoke cakes they feature at one of my favorite vegetarian restaurants, Cafe Flora. This recipe is a great example of rule #1. My team did an Iron Chef challenge at Blue Ribbon Cooking School and team vegetarian won with a variation of that recipe. Seattle Food Geek made a leek marrow in lieu of actual bone marrow. This would be a great Top Chef challenge; take something traditionally meaty that you love such as Fried Chicken or Meatloaf and make a vegetarian version of it.
6. Be creative. Being a vegetarian is truly not a limiting factor. I tell my friends that anyone could be a vegetarian if they lived with my family for a week because we have never sacrificed eating well because there is a lack of meat.

Some yummy dish from Spring Hill with Hen Of the Wood Mushrooms

Best French Toast Spots in Seattle

Seattle Weekly posted a blog about the best French Toast spots recently: http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/voracious/2012/01/seattles_top_5_french_toast_sp.php



The summery french toast @ Smith. They change it seasonally.

While these are really excellent suggestions, I'd like to add a few spots that offer amazing French Toast. When it comes to breakfast, I am both an eggs benedict and a french toast connoisseur. French toast has to have a nice crust on the outside, yet be soft and fluffy throughout. The common issue with french toast is that a lot of cooks don't soak the bread in the batter enough so you get dry spots in your toast. Of course, if you soak the bread for too long, your toast gets soggy. 



Here are other notable spots:

Smith
If you're friends with Nick & I, you know we go here just about every Sunday. For a reason. I sort of don't want to spoil it by letting you know about this place and have it be overcrowded. On second thought, go to Coastal Kitchen across the street.

Citizen
They only do it on weekends but their bread pudding style toast is custardy and amazing. 

Hi Life
If you're going to hit up a Chow Foods nosh spot, I would try Hi Life's french toast. The toasted, sugared hazelnuts and vanilla espresso marscapone is a winner here.

I would post Patty's Eggnest's peanut butter banana stuffed French Toast as one of the suggestions but I'm pretty sure that gave me a heart attack or type 2 Diabetes or something like that.

What other places give good toast? Let us know!