Vindication

This is not really a blog post.  It's an unabashed dissemination of my salt agenda propaganda:

For Supertasters, A Desire For Salt Is Genetic

I loved this article.  It's sciency and nerdy and foodie all at once.

I Scream.

Considering my last post was so negative, I thought I should try to maintain decent food karma with a more positive entry this time...

A few weeks (months?) ago I bought my ice cream maker and it has given me endless frozen creamy joyousness.  The initial experiment with tahini ice cream came out wonderfully, as previously noted, and the continuing results have been just as pleasant.

My sophomore ice cream creation was a batch of Earl Grey with a touch of vanilla bean.  It was, in my not-so-humble opinion, quite fabulous.  It had a nutty flavor reminiscent of coffee ice cream, but lighter, and with that refreshing hint of bergamot.  I simply simmered the tea bags in the sugar-milk mixture for the base custard.  It was very straightforward and very, very yummy.

After that experiment, I made a batch of strawberry jalapeño ice cream at the request of one of my friends.  I sliced up some fresh strawberries and a couple jalapeños and cooked them down with a bit of my vanilla bean simple syrup until they were reduced to a fairly thick consistency.  I made the sweet cream base and added the syrupy mixture approximately halfway through the freezing process.  The results were wonderful.  There was no spicy heat left from the jalapeño, but the distinctive flavor was definitely there and it played off the sticky sweet strawberry quite nicely.  I've had a few people wrinkle their nose at the thought of the combination, but I'm not sure why.  It was somewhat akin to one of my favorite pre-party snacks:  crackers with cream cheese and red pepper jelly.  Both combinations pair the "capsicum" flavor in a sweet syrupy mixture with a heavy, creamy base.  I will, without a doubt, be making that flavor again, although next time, I'll probably up the jalapeño a bit and maybe get a bit more bite from it.

My latest ice cream adventure was a nice traditional pistachio.  This was the most labor-intensive of the flavors, but certainly worthwhile.  First, a word of warning to anyone attempting such an endeavor:  ignore the fact that all recipes call for roasted, UNsalted pistachios.  Apparently, these do not exist.  At least in Alaska.  And if they do, apparently you need to relinquish a kidney as currency.  After much searching and hair-pulling and angsting, I decided to just use the roasted and salted pistachios that you can get in bulk from almost every natural food store in Anchorage.  They worked just fine.  In fact, the touch of additional salt probably helped.  (Anyone that knows me knows that I am addicted to salt and I'm past my stage of denial).  My friend Tony, (the strawberry-jalapeño requester) helped me with the shelling of the pistachios and then I went about trying to remove that papery outer layer so I didn't end up with gritty little flakes in the custard.  The interesting part about this ice cream is that you grind up most of the pistachios into a paste and cook that paste into the custard, simmering then straining it out before freezing it.  The paste manages to impart the pistachio flavor, and then, once the ice cream is mostly frozen, freshly chopped pistachios are added for that cruncy texture.  The resulting color was a bit dreary looking; greenish, but barely, so I cheated and added one drop of green food coloring.  The resulting hue was a perfect cheerful but subtle green and I had a beautifully traditional pistachio ice cream at the end.

Side Note: I was able to use the leftover pistachio/custard paste as a filling for puff pastry.  I added a little dollop of mascarpone cheese for some savoriness and created little turnovers.  If I do it again, I'll probably go the extra step and make a real pastry cheese for it, similar to what you'd find in a cheese danish.

So far I've been really pleased with all of the fruits of my ice cream labors.  There are still a few more combinations I'd like to try out:

Peanut, apricot and sweet red chili (Thai influence, perhaps?)
Black cherry with black pepper
Blueberry and pine nut
Vanilla and basil

Oh!  Speaking of basil... I have a little planter full of fresh herbs hanging on my front porch.  So far, they've survived a full two weeks.  They actually seem to be flourishing (except for the purple basil which I maintain was doomed from the start).  I also have a hanging basket full of nasturtiums which are also surviving, despite a rocky start.  I can't wait to throw together a nice summer salad with herbs and flowers.  Yum.  The Nikon D60 will have fun with that colorful little endeavor.

This week I'll be having a few folks over for a pre-race pasta party.  I'm aiming for quantity with a secondary goal of quality, but it should be relatively easy.  I have quite a bit of meat sauce and pesto that I had previously frozen, and I'm planning to make a marinara with wild mushrooms for an additional meat-free option, as well as a white sauce with parsley, clams and garlic.  There should be about 12 people in all, so I'm hoping to have enough variety for everyone to be happy.  I'll be pairing the dishes with a nice vintage of SmartWater so that we're all properly hydrated for Saturday's race.  Should be fun times!

Infuriating Instances of Incompetency and Severely Saddening Service

Aaaaaaannnnnnnd: I'm back!  It's been a while.  I appreciate all the prodding from people asking why I haven't been posting.  It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy to know people actually check for updates...

Unfortunately, this post will not be dedicated to any kitchen fiascos, nor creative culinary adventures.  Instead, it's a "venting post" into which I plan to pour some of my frustration with living in Alaska.

Before delving into the particulars, I should preface this vent with the fact that I have had the opportunity to dine in a multitude of countries and experience a fairly wide variety of cultures and cuisines.  I've had good service, impeccably pristine and artful service.  And I've had bad service.  Really really bad service.  Best service I've had was probably at Al Mahara, at the Burj Al Arab in Dubai, the only 7 star hotel in the world.  That was good service.  Mark's in Houston, also spectacular service.  I've also had bad service.  Really, really bad service.  Surprisingly, I had consistently bad service in Israel, possibly because I was one of those obnoxious American tourists.  France is known for their snarky service and the Parisian wait staff do an excellent job of maintaining that reputation.  Just about everywhere in the Former Soviet has pretty terrible service.  There's that general attitude of "you're going to get what we give you, and you're not going to dare complain."  Anything goes.  I thought I'd leave that behind upon repatriating to the US.  Alas, such was not the case.  I could write a book about the cultural and economic similarities between Alaska and the Former Soviet, but tonight I'll focus on the restaurant service.  The really really bad restaurant service.  I attribute it to the lack of competition here.  There seems to be this secretive conspiratorial collusion amongst the restaurants in this town to maintain an astonishingly, painfully low level of service.  They also seem to be very good at maintaining the ridiculously high prices that only "good" restaurants elsewhere would be able to charge.  I feel like many Alaskans don't even realize just how criminal this combination is, and if they do, they're powerless to escape it without boarding a flight for Seattle.

For you "outsiders" reading this, I know what you're thinking.  "You could get good service if you're just willing to pay for it.  There must be at least a few outrageously expensive, elite restaurants that you could get some good service at."  Well, there are a few outrageously expensive, elite restaurants here, but even those with generally decent service are fairly inconsistent.  The bar here is just so low...

This rant was brought on by my dinner experience last night.  A group of 7 of us decided to get a little dolled up and go out for a nice Saturday evening dinner.  We ate at an Anchorage restaurant called Romano's.  I'd heard mixed reviews.  It's supposed to be one of the nicer Italian restaurants in town, so I had been planning on trying it out for some time now.

There were so many issues with the service that it would be too emotionally draining for me to relive/recount them all right here.  I will say that we'd have to continuously ask for refills of water, we waited ages to have our orders taken, both for appetizers and for the main course, and we had the good fortune of being able to all sit around and listen to the waitress chit chat for a good 15 minutes with the table next to us while we were trying to get her attention.  When we finally managed to pry her away from her engaging conversation, much to her annoyance, we asked to order the stuffed mushrooms, inquiring, of course, how many mushrooms came in an order.  Six.  Six mushrooms per order.  Well, we clearly had 7 of us eating dinner, one of which had gotten up to wash his hands prior to eating.  We asked if we could get 7 mushrooms.  Much confusion and consternation ensued.  We offered to pay for the 7th mushroom.  Continuation of consternation.  "Well, you only have six people sitting here right now." "Yes, but there are seven of us, the other guy is coming back."  "Well he's not here right now."  "Ok... Can we get 7 mushrooms?" "He's late, he doesn't deserve a mushroom."  "Ummm... We like to encourage hand-washing.  Can we get 7 mushrooms?  We are willing to pay for it..."  "I'll ask."

Whew!  We did, in fact, get 7 mushrooms.  One of which was the size of a nickel.  They were moderately tasty.  About a half hour later, we were able to order our main courses.

When the main dishes finally came out, I had the added good fortune of finding a nice curly black hair nestled in the cream sauce of my fusilli.  Yum!  I tried to discretely let the waitress know, but she seemed extremely confused by the whole situation.  By the time she finally clued in to the reason for my outreached-cream-sauce-covered-hair-displaying finger, the entire table had figured it out.  So she took the plate, and grumbled, "I'll go get you another one."  We all sat there for a bit, no one eating, everyone trying to be polite.  I finally convinced folks that I'd be more comfortable if they just started eating.  They gracefully put together a collection plate of food for me which held me over until my plate re-arrived, sans-hair this time.  When my plate finally arrived, everyone had pretty much finished their food.

Thankfully, throughout all of this, I was able to self-medicate with a really nice Beringer cab.  I'm guessing it was a 2007.  The rest of the gang managed to keep things light-hearted and the humor rarely managed to crawl out of the gutter.

The bills come out, again, after much confusion and consternation on the part of the waitress, and this is what my date and I received:

This check was for two of us.  Please note the $1.50 "MUSH" and the $22.95 filet, (which was my dish).  I'm shocked that they didn't charge us for the hair.  I asked the waitress about it all and she said, "well, they made me."  Ok.  So I talked to the manager about it, explained that this really was pretty lacking in class to charge full price for a meal that had hair in it, and, on top of that, charge us for the single additional nickel-sized mushroom when there was a table of 7 people all drinking wine and eating food.  She said, "Oh, you sent it back?  That should have been removed from the bill, let me check on that."  I smugly returned to the table, feeling satisfied in the resolution.  The manager returned and said, "I didn't realize they brought you a new plate.  The charge remains..."

Seriously?  Wait, so let me get this straight:  you brought me food with hair in it, which means someone back there wasn't wearing a hair net (or worse...) and thus violating food code, and then, you make me wait 20 minutes while the rest of my party eats their food or worse, allows it to get cold, and then you charge us for an additional mushroom on top of it all?!?  Usually a restaurant that wants you to come back, or at least not bad-mouth them will comp your dish if not the whole meal.  They'll usually offer you free dessert or a gift certificate or SOMETHING.  Nope.  We got charged.  It was such an incredibly uncomfortable situation that I'm pretty much determined to shout my disgust from every digital roof-top available.  Like this one.

I will admit, I should know better than to expect anything different.

And on that note:  I'm going to go plan out my cooking for the next month, since I doubt I'll be eating out very much...