Teich.Net :: All In

The whole family visiting for a week is a great opportunity to pamper my grandparents. My grandmother and I got to talking about what they normally eat and what they would love to have and one of the things that came up is how much she misses lemon sole, which is apparently hard to come by in Southwest Florida. When I was in the fish market later that day, it just so happened they had a bunch of beautiful lemon sole fillets received by mistake that morning in place of their usual gray sole. Chardonnay, one of our favorite restaurants in Naples, makes an excellent Sole Meunier, so I decided to risk making something with a little spice and prepared Santa Barbara Sole.
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A few of this year’s home-made chocolate truffles.

Wishing you all a very happy holiday, whether you’re enjoying it in peace and quiet or family chaos.

We’re visiting my grandparents in Naples, Florida this week. These trips tend to turn into a sort of sadistic competition for who can be the bestest, sweetest, caringest family member with the most holiday spirit. On the food front (one of the primary judging categories), Oren and I are holding strong this year with our preparation of Santa Barbara Sole and baked apples on Monday night, several delicious odds and ends, and red beans and rice tonight. My mom entered the race strong last night with grilled lamb with a fantastic English mint jelly. Best of all though may be what my grandparents themselves brought to the table this year (with some strong suggestion): a bottle of 1990 Opus One.
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Maybe you guessed from the abundance of animal photos in our gallery or the foster dog posts, but I have a serious weakness for cute animals. As extreme as my affection may be, it’s now clear that I’m not alone: Cute Overload is exactly what the name implies and I love it! In addition to ridiculously cute images from all across the Web, the commentary is amusing too: this photo (picked almost at random from the abundance of heart-melting images) is captioned “The Paws up can kill you — Don’t look!”

Don’t let yourself be fooled into thinking that all Italians share the Slow Food crowd’s respect and protection of their food heritage, even in Slow Food’s own back yard. Forget about the rich Piemontese gastronomic tradition that made famous the Alba truffle, Barolo and Barbaresco and is the source of two of the best dishes I’ve ever had. Why, you ask? Because McDonald’s will be the official restaurant of the next winter Olympics in Torino. As if Torino needed more than the 13 McDonalds’ already established there.
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I quietly crossed The Blue Plate off my To Try List about a month ago without posting a word because I thought my meal there must have been a fluke. It has gotten universally positive reviews: 4.5 stars on Yahoo! Local, highly recommended by Citysearch, lots of glowing snippets on OpenList, comments that sound worthy of more than 13/20 on Gayot, and a 22 for food on Zagat. All that aside, it was just too amazingly good for a place it seems like no one I know has heard of. I only found out about it from a friend who thought it was great when he went years ago(!). We, on the other hand, went back at the first opportunity and had an equally impressive meal. One review on Yahoo! Local mentioned that The Blue Plate is where chefs and restaurant workers go to eat on their off nights–trust them, they know good food at a great value.
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I haven’t been feeling great and have had about all the tea and soup I can I take, so I decided to make some quick and easy comfort food since Oren won’t be back from visiting his sister in Boston until late tonight. I had an organic eggplant and some Maui onions in the fridge, as well as as assortment of pastas, a new jar of a new-to-me Italian marinara, and a nice bottle of Barbaresco already open.

I started sauteing the diced eggplant with the onions, herbs, and some garlic, thew some capellini in the pot, and went to open the jar of sauce. No luck. Ran it under steaming hot water. The lid still wouldn’t budge. Knocked it on the counter a few times, ran it under more hot water, wrapped a towel around it, still no luck. I’m no weakling and have never been bested by a jar before. Five minutes later, with the pasta draining in sink the the eggplant falling apart tender, I finally thew in a can of diced organic tomatoes and some more spices. Not exactly what I was hoping for, but still pretty tasty.

The jar is still sitting there, laughing at me. It’s nice having someone to hand these sorts of challenges off to. Maybe it’s time I buy a jar opener.

Anyone looking for cookbooks to give your kitchen-dwelling friends–as well as those who may need some coaxing to go near a stove–has no dearth of Favorites and Recommendations lists to consult this year, including Heidi of 101 Cookbooks‘ article for NPR and Barbara’s commentary on the big newspapers’ roundups at Tigers and Strawberries, a blog I recently discovered through the Food Blog Award nominations I urged you all to check out last week. I’ll leave the cookbooks to them and share instead my list of beloved books about food and wine.
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Food blogging quasi-newcomer Apartment Therapy - The Kitchen (parent blog Apartment Therapy has been around awhile longer) is all about cooking. In addition to some very nice photos (like the one shown here), the team posts recipes that both inspire and remind us of simple pleasures too easily forgotten. Next time you’ve got the oven on, roast some garlic to smear onto hot crusty bread dipped in olive oil or spread with goat cheese (my personal favorites) or follow any of their other excellent suggestions. Though it’s no longer the season in most of the country, I also love roasting garlic on the grill. However you do it, don’t forget to slice before cooking: it’s much more difficult to cut through the skin without making a mess after the cloves soften.

The Hidden Vine, a dark, clubby little space tucked into the back of the Fitzgerald Hotel near Union Square, is one of many wine bars that have opened in San Francisco in recent years. Although it’s not the biggest, or the showiest, or in the most likely location, or even have the deepest cellar, it has generated more buzz than the rest of the pack. The throng of young, attractive female customers after Daily Candy spread the word had me thinking this was the ultimate destination for my single male friends. (For those of you just now heeding my recommendation, I imagine the prevalence of that particular demographic must has since leveled off.)
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