Teich.Net :: All In

My mother warned me when I told her about the tomatoes I had planted this year that yellow pears were lousy. I had already put my plants in the ground, didn’t think about the opportunity costs for the space, and didn’t really believe they could be that bad — I usually love cherry tomatoes! My mother was right; no surprise. One of the farmers at the California Ave. market put it best when I asked her honest opinion on them: “they’re just filler.” She was right too. They are amazingly prolific plants, and they are pretty, but their raw flavor is bland and dull.

Fortunately, they do improve with cooking: so far we’ve made them into a lovely tomato soup and roasted them with curried cauliflower. Next up: pasta sauce.

As for next year: I’ll be using the yellow pear’s spot for a more interesting varietal. Stay tuned for the judgements from this summer’s many tastings.

Zagat’s 2008 New York City Gourmet Shopping & Entertaining Survey just released their list of five best chocolatiers in New York City. I’ve been to numbers 1, 2, and 5 on their list (clearly time for another trip) and Kee’s Chocolates as top pick is no surprise. This of course begs the question: what would this list look like on a global scale? Perhaps it’s time to start compiling…

Ever heard of Noka? I hadn’t, but it’s “the world’s #1 luxury chocolate” and one of the most expensive foods you can buy. Dallas Food has an outstanding investigation into the question: “Are Noka’s chocolates worth the money?” The ten-part report includes some of the best critical analysis I’ve seen of anything in the food industry, plus great chocolate history and trivia, valuable tasting notes, and it had me laughing out loud. (Thanks to Owen for the link.)

I friend just gave me the scoop on 86 Recipes. She said the recipes look amazing. Of coursee the design is fantastic as well (by the agency she just joined). I already ordered one as a gift for my sister (free shipping right now too!) but I’m holding out for the San Francisco editition (coming in January) for myself.

O and I were dining at one of our favorite local joints recently (Iberia tapas bar) where a TV was on over the bar.  Much to Olivia’s annoyment sometimes, I think I’m a normal male: when the TV is on, that’s where my attention is.  The sound was off, but some cook was going through all the steps on how to fry a turkey.  It looked cool.

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Some places lend themselves to hyperbole. Anything less fails to do justice to their character. These are the sorts of places you just have to try for yourself so that you, too, can join in the fun and excitement of extravagant statements like this: Di Fara is the best New York pizza you will ever taste. Everything you have read or heard is true.
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Today’s Daily Candy SF article “The Straight Scoop” leads me to believe that Ici, inspiration for failed quests, may finally be open. Their website is no help, with the statement “opening late August 2006″ still up on this, the 5th of September, but a quick phone call confirms that they opened their doors this past Sunday. Time for another pilgrimage!

Congrations to all the excellent food bloggers featured in Best-Shot Blogs in the August issue of Food and Wine. Their related story “Shoot First, Eat Later” included a tip from one of my favorite food photographers, Heidi of 101 Cookbooks. I was a little disappointed that the ideas in the article were so elementary (wiping the edges? yep, got that one already) so I was excited to find that Heidi also posted a few more technical and specific suggestions than those in the article. I’ve already sent it on to the food photographer in my house, though he’s definitely already got spending more on equipment down. Hopefully we’ll come up with something good enough to entire in the F&W Food Photo Contest. Happy shooting!

How good do these look?

Filling an entire glossy page in the oversize San Francisco Magazine (July, ‘06) and accompanied by a blurb about how the custardy, seasonal fruit ice creams are perfectly mated with fresh-baked cookies by a Chez Panisse alumna, we couldn’t help drooling, or planning a pilgrimage.

We fought through the East Bay’s SF-bound weekend traffic to make our way to Ici, but instead of being rewarded with perfect ice cream sandwiches, we found only this sign:

Opening in early August.

Didn’t anyone tell them that ice cream season is now?! Or that we were counting on sampling both July’s berry flavors and August’s stone fruits this year, as SF Magazine had casually implied we should? We were devastated.

Now I may have no choice but to buy my own ice cream maker… Damn that glossy picture and Ici’s quick-draw PR rep.

That sign — hopefully to be replaced with something more than just visions of the perfect ice cream sandwich — is located at 2948 College Avenue in Berkeley, California.

Photo from July’s San Francisco Magazine, reprinted on their website.

This post was supposted to start with evidence upholding the adage that the things you work for — in my case this weekend, berries picked in the hot sun and plums I climbed a tree to reach — are more satisfying than something more easily gotten, say, from a grocery store. Then Oren and I got to debating the idea. Then the post became a he said, she said. But the discussion, abreviated, sounded trite. So here I am, left with telling you about the history of what this post almost became.

Quality and provenance being equal, maybe you, like Oren, would choose to buy fruit rather than pick it, or eat out rather than cook, but when time permits, I still find it tremendously gratifying to harvest and make my own food. Maybe it’s my feminine gatherer instincts. Maybe it’s just the mark of my mother, long-time queen of hard labor to produce all manner of edibles.
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