Blasted Principles Getting In The Way Of My FOOD... >|

So we have this local fishmonger who has INCREDIBLE deals on live uni (sea urchin), and I was super stoked to have found him after we lost our previous diver source (he quit).

Rooks rike no more rive uni for now... :(

But lately, he's taken to using Asian T&A to selling his wares - one of his latest fb posts was a pic of two Asian female employees wearing tight tees with his logo on them with the caption "YOU LIKEE?", followed by another pic of them in yet more tight tees, captioned "<SO&SO's> *GIRLS*," in a truly slimy and pimpish implication.

And we ALL know how I ruv my rive uni...

And I thought to myself for a moment that maybe I shouldn't let this get in the way of an incredible food find, but then I thought a moment longer and concluded that I'm not such a retarded whore for food that I would advocate or patronize this kind of bullshit.

Dude, just get back to selling good seafood at reasonable prices so I can not be totally skeeved by what you think are clever business practices.

PREEEEEEEASE.

Sankyouberrymuch,

shinae ^^

20 Minute Angel Hair With Bacon & Tomato Sauce

Continuing on with my fast-er food explorations, today's lunch is angel hair pasta with this 20 minute bacon and tomato sauce made with whatever stuff I could find in the fridge and cupboards that makes sense.

20 MINUTE ANGEL HAIR W. BACON & TOMATO SAUCE
Serves 3-ish

- 8 oz. angel hair pasta (you could also use spaghetti or spaghettini), cooked in the shallow water method
- 1 15 oz. (or so) can tomatoes, with the liquid (I used whole because that's what I had on hand, but chopped is fine.)
- 4 strips of bacon, sliced into 1/2" strips
- 6 or 7 sprigs of parsley
- 1 teaspoon dried basil
- 1/2 a medium onion, very thinly sliced
- 3 cloves garlic, finely chopped or thinly sliced
- 3 Tablespoons olive oil (or whatever cooking oil you have on hand)
- 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt to start
- 1/8 teaspoon black pepper

1) Bring the oil to medium high heat in a saute pan and add bacon, onions, and garlic, and let them cook about 4 or 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the onions are nice and translucent.

2) Add the parsley and basil, and stir to coat with the oil already in the pan, then add in tomatoes, salt, and pepper. Stir gently a few times to evenly incorporate all ingredients, turn the heat down to medium low, and simmer, uncovered for 12 to 15 minutes while you boil the pasta.

3) Boil the pasta using this method:

Part 1 of the post:https://plus.google.com/u/0/105466596306740968847/posts/RgGnKbzsH9U

Part 2:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/105466596306740968847/posts/cKp4aGjy89F

4) Drain pasta, and spoon sauce on top, and there you have it - 20 Minute Angel Hair W. Bacon & Tomato Sauce!

For our side salad, I just served some spinach and arugula mix out of a bag topped with some sauteed mushrooms and dressed with a mish-mash vinaigrette from a container where I keep all the leftover unused and somewhat neutral vinaigrettes (red wine, white wine, lemon, balsamic) for a rainy and/or lazy day.

I'm really starting to become a bit of a roly poly mess now (and let's not talk about the acid reflux out my nose last night :|), and I'm hoping the Pod doesn't get too, too big before she decides to hatch.

shinae

Sweet & Spicy Thai Inspired Maple Glazed Salmon

While I've had the luxury to indulge in all kinds of leisurely cooking for the past couple of years, I realize that that will likely come to a temporary moratorium once the Pod hatches. And also that lots of peeps here already have very compelling reasons to find quicker and easier recipes than some of the recipes I post.

And when it comes to proteins, nothing says quick and easy like seafood or chicken breast. And while I'm not a huge fan of chicken breast, I could eat proteins from the water all day.

So when The Man asked me to make something Asian inspired, sweet, and spicy, and with a kick for dinner last night, I came up with this salmon recipe to serve with some jasmine rice and slaw with which I am REALLY pleased. 

And the entree itself only takes 20 minutes.

SWEET & SPICY THAI INSPIRED MAPLE GLAZED SALMON
Serves 3 to 4

- a roughly 1.5 pound salmon fillet
- salt & pepper to season
- 1 Tablespoon oil for searing salmon

- 1 large clove garlic, minced (just under a Tablespoon)
- 2 Tablespoons shallots, thinly sliced
- 5 to 7 stems cilantro, chopped (stems and leaves)
- 1/2 a jalapeno, thinly sliced (or if you like hotter chilies, you can certainly use another kind)
- 1 Tablespoon oil for the glaze
- 3 Tablespoons maple syrup
- 2 teaspoons chili garlic paste (I use Huy Fong.)
- the zest of half a lime
- 1 Tablespoon lime juice
- 1.5 teaspoons fish sauce

1) Preheat the oven to 400F and prepare an oven safe dish or baking sheet in which to bake the salmon. I like to line the dish or sheet with foil for easy cleanup.

2) Season the salmon filllet lightly on both sides with salt and pepper.

3) In a bowl, combine the garlic, shallots, cilantro, jalapeño, and oil, and toss to thoroughly coat. The reason I do it in this order instead of just stirring all the glaze ingredients together is that coating the aromatics with the oil first gives them a toastier, more caramelized flavor when they're cooking in the oven on top of the fish.

4) Add the rest of the glaze ingredients together and stir to mix thoroughly.

5) In a non-stick pan, bring the cooking oil up to medium high temp, and sear the salmon fillet for 2 minutes per side.

6) Transfer the salmon to your oven-safe dish, pour the glaze evenly on top, as well as any remaining cooking oil from the pan.

7) Bake the salmon on the center rack for 6 minutes, then turn the oven onto broil and place the salmon so that the top of the salmon is about 5 inches away from the broiler heating element, and broil for another 4 to 5 minutes.

That's it!

Serve with steamed rice and slaw like we did, or atop a bed of salad greens dressed with some of the glaze and a squeeze of fresh lime, and it's a quick 30 Minutes (or fewer) meal!

Our slaw from last night: green cabbage,
white onion, cilantro, jalapeño, and red
bell pepper, tossed with some dressed up
nuoc cham, extra lime juice and zest, & oil.

P.S. I think this is probably a pretty good recipe to convert salmon haters. :)))


Here's another: "Miso" Salmon.

shinae

Lers Ros - Civic Center/Tenderloin, San Francisco

Dinner on our last day in San Francisco...

Sometimes people ask me why I open myself up so much on the interwebs when it often subjects you to trolls and stalkers and other kinds of bad juju. But when I had to walk away from just about everything from my old life except my parents and my children about 5 years ago, opening up on the interwebs in a number of ways often saved me from a sense of utter loneliness and disconnectedness.

pad kee mow with chicken

It was an opportunity to start fresh and often find comfort and healing in the kindness and camaraderie of strangers with whom I had no baggage and who had no expectations of me, or a need for me to be any number of things for them that took a toll on my psyche. People who accepted and understood me for the person I had partly chosen and was partly forced to become.

koong chae nam pla
(fresh raw prawns with chili, lemon grass,
a fish sauce/lime based dressing,
fresh mint and sliced raw garlic)

A small handful of those many kind strangers would become trusted friends - something I desperately needed after a long period of wondering if I could trust myself to choose friends anymore.

And one of those friends is my friend Maria, whom I met through chowhound and whom I got to know over a series of chowhound posts that diaried our daily meals and little tidbits of our daily lives. And then through a series of facebook posts that diaried even more of our meals and even bigger tidbits of our lives. And then eventually through almost daily communications of some kind or another where we shared even more of our lives, characters, and personalities, and where I often found myself feeling like a girl who had girlfriends again.

larb ped yang (duck larb)

So you can imagine how super fucking excited I was to finally get to sit down and actually share one of those daily meals with her on her turf. 

And since she knew I'd been craving some really good Thai food for the longest, Maria treated me and Dean to the best meal of our trip at Lers Ros. And we proceeded to have one of the best Thai meals I've ever had over almost five hours of great conversation and laughter and a little bit of Sauvignon Blanc for me, a little bit more of it for them. :)

koh moo yang
(grilled pork shoulder w. chili & rice powder sauce)

Each dish was beautifully seasoned and balanced and felt elevated in its preparation in a really clean, comfortable, casual, and unassuming environment that doesn't look or feel like it's aspiring to anything - which is really rare these days in a sea of restaurants that often look and act like they aspire to some kind of greatness and don't really deliver. And their menu is a wonderfully staggering selection of dishes you don't often get to see on a standard Thai resto menu.

pad kra prow moo krob -
stir fried pork belly with crispy rinds
and fried basil leaves

I can't recommend this place highly enough for really excellent Thai food, regardless of where you think you've had great Thai food before.

shinae

Lers Ros Thai
730 Larkin St.
San Francisco, CA 94109
415.931.6917
www.lersros.com

Ferry Building Marketplace - San Francisco

Lunch on our last day in San Francisco...


On our last full day in The City, we decided to head down to the Ferry Building Marketplace, which, if you've not been to San Francisco in a loooooong time, is the upscale foodie restoration of the Ferry Building that began back in the late 90s.

And it really is a nice little collection of food shops, specialty purveyors, and restaurants, albeit a little spendy, and well worth your while if you've never been, specially on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays when they have the farmers market going on outside as well. (Tuesdays and Thursdays are mini FM, Saturday the full one.)

The monsters each got $25 to spend as they liked at the marketplace, and Mads spent her first three bucks to buy Joey a bottle of this Original brand ginger ale that he discovered the other night when we went to dinner at Heaven's Dog, another $5 for gelato at Ciao Bella. Joey spent some money on white Balsamic and olive oil with which he plans to cook dinner for us when we get back home this weekend. 

Then we met up with my girlfriend Gen and her adorable baby Dio for some lunch, and since Mother Nature smiled on us today, we dined al fresco, with everyone picking and choosing what they wanted from the farmers market food stands.

And +Dean Robinson and I, while big fans of the Bay Area municipal transportation system, are really glad we opted to drive down to the Ferry Building on our last day here to minimize Grandpa related grumpiness and/or complications. :P

We were going to try to make it to the giant rock slide in Golden Gate park with the kiddos, but we're planning to meet up with some friends for dinner (our only chance to sneak away just the two of us during the entire trip), and we know better than to wipe ourselves out before then.


Full album of more goodies to be found at the Ferry Building Marketplace! :)

Now to sit back and chill on this comfy bed for a while.


AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH...

Ferry Building Marketplace
One Ferry Building
San Francisco, CA 94111
www.ferrybuildingmarketplace.com

Sam's Diner - Civic Center/Tenderloin, San Francisco

Dinner on Day 3 in San Francisco...


So when we first arrived to the hotel on Monday after a longass drive with my parents arguing in the car on the very last stretch and everyone being incredibly frustrated with the Market Street NO LEFT TURN situation for what seemed like miles, we were first greeted by the incessant chattering of a front desk person who would not SHUT THE FUCK UP like a crazy tweaker person and then a bellman who would not SHUT THE FUCK UP but more like a cokehead. And I determined that afternoon that I would not listen to one fucking word either one of them was saying, least of all the bellman's restaurant recommendatioN, Sam's Diner being it.

But then last night, my mom got a hankering for fried chicken to eat with some of these pickled jalapeños she packed (to eat with her mobile ramen), and assuming that my dad was going to be going out to dinner with us, we wanted to find the closest place possible that served fried chicken. And Sam's Diner, right across the street from our hotel, was it.

And at first, we were just going to let my mom order her chicken to go to bring back to my dad whom she left in the room because she'd had enough of his bitching for the day and just get some crap at Burger King right down the corner, but there was something quirky and inviting about the place that made us decide we would rather sit down and eat there. 

I'm not sure what did it for Dean, but for me it was first the Korean Tacos special written out on the sidewalk sign and then seeing an actual Korean woman working the counter and what I think was an ensuing mild fascination that this woman was running a diner with a menu that was 99% All American Diner, but managed to incorporate a couple of little Korean inspired dishes to it. 

You may ask why I assumed that the Korean woman working the counter was the owner and not just an employee. I'll tell you why. Because she's Korean, and it's simply not part of the national character of Koreans not to be self-employed or at least absolutely abhor the notion of working for someone else. And even if they're not all that good at being self employed, they're usually even worse at being an employee. :P


Turns out I was right.



Yelp Review

And it appears her Korean tacos are a big hit with lots of people who've tried them. I can now count myself among them.

My mom's fried chicken and +Dean Robinson's French Dip were not necessarily stellar examples, but they were absolutely reliable.


But beware the incredibly slow service.


shinae

Sam's Diner
1220 Market St.
San Francisco, CA 94102
415.626.8590
www.samsdinersf.com