Lemon-Orange Ginger Garlic Chicken!

Like, in a hurry!

A visit to Uwajimaya and the ID of course brings with it the wonders of food not commonly found in Safeway. Check it out! Grass jelly, on sale for 75 cents!

(I have eaten grass jelly in the past, and can aver, it’s pretty tasty! Slightly sweet, refreshing! Aaahh!)

I also particularly like the (Taiwanese) package design. It’s intimidating.

Just before it hits the oven:

The QFC is advertising $3.99/lb for wild Alaskan Copper River salmon.

No, that didn’t come out right.

The QFC is advertising $3.99/lb for wild Alaskan Copper River salmon!

Simply Red, by Mark Rotella: a long, tasty feature on the joys and fate of what I think of as red checkered tablecloth joints, hands down my favorite endangered restaurant species.

From the article:

And for someone like me, an Italian-American in his 30’s who grew up with Italian food as the ultimate comfort food, the old-style Italian restaurants offer service and food that, while not innovative, always satisfies. In the old-fashioned Italian restaurants, what many call red sauce restaurants, I know I’ll get Old World treatment – if not old Italy, then definitely old New York.

At these family-run establishments, the waiters – almost always male – are typically dressed in black bow ties and crisp white shirts. Stepping into them is like stepping into the early 20th century, the height of Italian immigration to the United States.

Mmm, I miss ’em. There was one here in Seattle – over in Queen Anne, God I loved that place. I think it was called “Louie’s.”

I learned about the death of Princess Di there, one September. Got drunk with the layoff victims of my first tech bubble burst. Oh, it was a little bit of heaven, murky lighting, brick interior and cheap wine.

I miss ’em. East Coasters – you don’t know what you got ovah deyah. Mangia!*

(*my apologies for any language mangling involved in this post)

There were no sources of meat protein available for under $2.99 a pound at the grocery store yesterday. Suddenly, the whole vegan thing pops into clarity for me.

Seriously, I remember being able to buy 99-cent ground beef here in Seattle ten years ago. It was the 23 percent lean variety, sure, but my unscientific sampling would indicate a ten-year inflation rate of 200 percent.

I switched to ground turkey when the beef went over two bucks – now, ground turkey’s appearing as some kind of boutique meat and runs $4.99, which is just ridiculous.

They do say that rice and beans are nature’s perfect food.

Over at Dent’s Glacial Erratics Single Malt Tasting is underway, via a clearly unorthodox method employed by Queer Barney.

I’m a longtime Laphroaig man (when I gots the cabbage and some quirk steers me away from the Mark), but Barney’s endorsement of the Balvenie Doublewood will certainly move me in the direction of the liquor store.

Barney has access to one of the all-time great liquor stores: Big Red Liquors, in three or more convenient locations all over Bloomington, serving first-time drunken sorority girls as well as snobbish alcohol-dependent academics for over three generations.

I see that the feature of the month is a $42.99 bottle of Glenfiddich 15 year.

Mmm, I can still smell the store today. Mmmmm.

Barney, it should be noted, is a groundhog. Is that like a woodchuck?

Frankenstein invites y’all over for soup, titling it White Lines, referring to the Grandmaster Flash side that was the B to The Message on the Sugar Hill 12-inch, back in the day.

Uhm-hunh. some fond memories involvin’ the ladies ensue. unh-huh. Well, one lady anyway.

Wha? Oh, sorry. Soouup.

Anne brings it. Oh, baby, it has aready been brungen. Let the soup be steamin’!

Meanwhile, my own previously acclaimed recette for Guiness Beef Stew aside, we’ve been eatin’ Smoked Salmon Chowdah chez nous these past few days.

These past few sunny, fifty-something, cloudless, walk-to-the-market-for-fresh-vegetables days.

How is it done?

I cheated and looked in Sunset, which featured a smoked salmon chowder on the cover – but they both portioned it for a huge party (with about seven pounds of raw ingredients) and requested 3 pounds of fresh fennel heads, which honestly, I might be able to pick up at the Pike Place Market. But dude. Uh, not this time. Walkin’ to Safeway, OK? Not drivin’ the damn Jag.

So here’s theirs:

Leek and Fennel Chowder with Smoked Salmon

and here’s my variation.

• halve quantities in the Sunset recipe (except for the salmon).
• screw the fennel, substitute a tablespoon or so of fennel seed. Grind it – I used a mortar and pestle.
• Green onion stalks are a good substitute for the chives.
• Use whole milk. Yum.

Trim and chop the scallions and the leeks. In a saucepan, sauté them in the butter with the powdered fennel until limp.

Heat the broth (at half quantities, that’s about 2 and 1/2 cups) in a deep soup pan. Add the bay leaf and transfer the limped greens to the broth. Rinse the saucepan.

Cut up yon taters. If you want to add some vegembles, do so. I added chopped carrots and corn. Add to broth-pot, which should be merrily a-boil. Let it rock for a moment, then turn it down to a simmer.

Prep the smoked salmon by slicing into strips, unless it’s already sliced (if you bought the lox, for example).

Here’s the tricky part. Add 1/2 cup flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/8 teaspoon pepper to the flour. Add a bit of milk to the flour in a mixing bowl. Whisk until smooth. Add the rest of the milk – total should be about 2 1/2 cups.

Once you have this smoothly whisked, add to the simmerin’ stock. Cover the salmon to the cats don’t get at it, and grab a beer or some vino or somethin’. Come back in about 20 minutes.

Serve with the salmon on the side – tossing it into the chowder will make it quite salty, and it’s extremely rich. Let your soup feeders dose themselves.

Soup out!

“Safe Treyf”: New York Jews and Chinese Food (via everyone’s favorite superhero, BoingBoing) explains the relationship between two of my favorite things. I’ve taught a Jew how to make bagels, but my wok-slingin’ needs work.

Seriously, my parents taught me the wonders of both cuisines: I learned the chopsticks, not without struggle, under the tutelage of them and one Harry Liu, a restaurateur who had a location in downtown Lafayette, Indiana. Hmm, man his food was the best. He was an old school, sit down with the family restaurant guy whose family owned a very fancy place in Boston (possibly closed, no Google trace seems to exist) called Peking on the Mystic.

Later, he moved to Boston to run the place when his dad died, but came back to Lafayyette and opened a new restaurant, also not found when googling.

(Upper case? Lower case? Should it be Googling?)

Interestingly, as I noted in an earlier entry, we lived in Brookline (a Boston neighborhood) for a year in 1972, which was noted for its’ Jewish population and from the web traces I found for the other entry remains so. Mmm, Jack and Marian’s knishes! The Sunnyside Deli’s bagels!

Ah, yummy.

I recieved an email from a reader requesting a review of The Two Towers, which I’m considering; but I have some sort of illness that kept me from it at the moment.

NEXT WEEK, however, will be Man Conquers Space Week here, as I publish a five-part interview with David Sander, the creator of not only the mockumentary of that name but of a near-functional Apollo space suit replica. This interview is the first of what I hope will be several with creative persons of interest to me, ME, MEEE – and hopefully to you as well.

Sunday will introduce the project, the weekdays will consist of the interview itself, and Saturday will provide me an opportunity to wrap it up, including, possibly, an update from David.

Keep watching the skies!

Did you know if you walk into our Safeway at 6pm on New Year’s Day, they’ll basically pay you to haul their Christmas candy overstock away?

We got eight packs of Reese’s “trees” for a quarter each, a big bag of York patties for a quarter, several large chocolate Santas for a quarter each, and so on.

Mmmmm. Choc-lit.

This entry inadvertently sponsored by Hershey’s and the Safeway inventory controls department. Thanks guys!

(Non-candy lovers may wish to review Hoppin’ John, my family’s sort-of New Year’s tradition, followed this year by my parents but not by us here in Seattle.)