Month: May 2010

brown rice onigiri

I couldn’t help it — today I was seized by an overwhelming desire for a rice ball filled with canned salmon and chopped kimchi, and I even waited to eat lunch until the rice was ready — but damn it if that rice didn’t collapse all over the place as soon as I picked up my nice pressed, molded treat. I have been buying the short-grain brown rice from Whole Foods. It’s tasty and easy to acquire in the course of normal food-gathering. However, I find that it is utterly useless for making onigiri — the grains don’t stick together for crap. This confuses me, because the grains are the same shape as the white short-grain rice I use for less-diet-friendly onigiri. However, that white rice I bought at the Korean market, so perhaps they are not the same varieties of rice despite their similarities. I would prefer, of course, to just buy one kind of brown rice, since it keeps much less well than white rice, but I guess I better trot over to the Koreans and see if they have any brown rice that can be used for my fiberrific rice balls. Or is it just that brown rice doesn’t work for this application? Maki at JustHungry claims that it does…

sweet holy hannah, achatz has done it again, damn his eyes

Check out the blurb on Huffington Post about Grant Achatz’s new restaurant and soon-to-come cocktail bar.

I already want to go to both real bad. The son of a bitch is gonna take MORE of my money, and I’m gonna enjoy it. Again. 🙂

ramping up spaghetti cooked in wine

Oh, what a wretched pun. Last night we made spaghetti all’ubriaco, the delicious pasta cooked in red wine that we ate in Florence, tipped off by E&O, our intrepid eating pals. And our other pal brought over a huge baggie of ramps that she foraged with her mom, and it seemed only logical to chop some ramps and add them to the pasta. Logical, and in actual fact, truly delicious. The ramps added a sharpness and savoriness to the buttery, nutty, fruity weirdness of that pasta, and made it even better. The other nice thing is that a bowl of chopped ramps makes your whole house smell terrific if you leave it out on the table for a couple of hours while you finish off some sliced salumi and bread and cheese and wine. Better than air freshener!

not-grilled cheese sandwich

I learned something useful today when I put Kosciusko mustard on bread, added some thick slices of cheddar, and stuck the whole thing dry into the toaster oven for a double toasting. And that lesson is that such a sandwich comes out even crispier, and stays crunchy longer, than a sandwich grilled in butter. WIN!

also: Kosciusko mustard is very likely the most delicious mustard on earth. yum.