Thank You, India(n Americans)

Sometimes Thanksgiving is a disaster. People don't get along, the TV does little to take the edge off of the social awkwardness, and the food is obligatorily stodgy and heavy, quickly reaching room temperature and drying out faster than you can say "factory farmed."

This was not one of those Thanksgivings.

The old standards were there, of course, but they were given an appropriately Bay Area foodie twist.

The turkey was a heritage breed (ordered from D'Artagnan). Obscenely pricey, but hey, I don't eat meat that often any more, and also the dark meat was LIKE BUTTAH. The white meat tasted like Really Good Pork. It was prepared simply - a rub the day before with salt, pepper and thyme, then roasted to an internal temperature of 160 degrees Fahrenheit. Andy and I greedily ate the oysters at the counter. They were gamey, dense, fine-grained and moist - as though made into pate.

Mashed potato stuffing, a cunning portmanteau of a dish, accompanied the turkey. Cheese, mashed potato, breadcrumbs, stock, thyme and butter.

The gravy was given substance by thinly sliced king trumpet and shiitake mushrooms, and thickened with corn starch rather than wheat flour (because one of the guests was off gluten. I know, I know. Don't go there.)

Squash soup was tweaked with some garlic, parsley, thyme and bay (this doesn't sound like much tweaking, but the original had only squash, leeks and ginger - a bit too sweet for some palates). It was finished with creme fraiche, natch.

Green beans got parboiled then sauteed with olive oil, chopped shallots and thinly sliced Buddha's hand. Meyer lemon juice finished off the quick pan glaze.

We started with a salad, which was actually pretty standard - lettuce, walnuts, blue and goats cheese, avocado and a delightful vinaigrette a la minute by Andy. I got some flak for not tearing up the lettuce leaves into smaller pieces.

Poached pears took a turn for the adult, as Ron upped the amount of wine in the recipe, and put in fresh ground cloves.

Ursula's apple galette was perfectly cooked, and yes, the crust was flaky AND tender.

Burger Queen

Inspired by Michael Procopio's* post over on Bay Area Bites about his own foodie-challenged childhood and his current endeavors at creating fries and a shake, I'm going to recount my years as a frequent Burger King diner (gasp!).

*I used my cyberstalker skills to track down his other blog, but sadly, it has nothing on it right now. I did find a soulfully depressed European Existentialist picture of him on his blogger profile, though.


YUM! Has someone thought about compiling a Hot Foodies calendar? If not, then YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST, FOLKS! Speaking of which, I am eternally grateful to Urse for pointing me to this picture and interview with Fred Schilling of Dagoba. Here he is, surrounded by Mason jars full of beans (Cacao beans and Mason Jars - can you get any foodier?):



I'd like to wrap my foil around his chocolate bar.

Also on this list would be Gabriel Roth, who writes Edible Complex for the SF Bay Guardian. I can't find a good photo of him on the internets, in part because there is a musician named Gabrielle Roth who is sucking up all the google hits. Good for her, though. You'll have to take my word for it.

Actually, of all the people in this post, Gabriel Roth is the only one I've seen in real life, and so his hotness-reliability-index is the highest of the lot. For me, anyway. What is hotness-reliability, you ask? It's the quality of being and staying hot from all angles and over periods of time, not just after a team of make-up artists and photographers have worked you (or after taking 45 different pictures of yourself in the bathroom mirror and finding the one where your stomach looks naturally flat, and not like you're sucking it in, which you totally are). If you've seen tabloid pictures of the New Britney Spears, you know what I mean.

Ilan Hall, one of the contestants on Top Chef, should be in the Calendar also. His look has sort of a hipster-meets... umm... well, okay, fine, he just looks like a hipster. No photo of him on here, just in case we get sued by Bravo. I think he's going to win. He's basically a revamped Harold. Oh hell, here's his photo, clearly cribbed from the Top Chef site. FAIR USE, I say, FAIR USE:



Okay, that was supposed to be an aside, but it's turned into a whole post. Maybe I'll talk about my childhood in Burger King another time. Actually, you know what, I can sum it up in a few sentences: I was a kid with thousands of years of Imperial Chinese cuisine as my ethnic heritage, growing up in Southeast Asia, where three or four of the world's best cuisines came together in a syncretic miracle of deliciousness, and all I could think to eat almost every other weekday for lunch was a Double Bacon Cheeseburger, fries, and a Coke, in the sticky-floored, poorly-ventilated basement level Burger King that was closest to the D&D bookstore. Also I was fat.

Ooh, ooh, here's the link: sometimes when I read other food blogs or watch TV and see talented, good-looking foodies and food-writers, I am once again the fat kid eating bad burgers and dreaming about being (or screwing) a paladin.

Oh, another aside: I recently heard somewhere, or maybe I read (damn it! I can't remember where now) someone describe another person as "the kind of guy who derives additional pleasure from eating meat because he can make fun of vegetarians." Sadly, Gabriel Roth seems to fall into this category (I'm not saying the column ain't funny though). Then again, so does Anthony Bourdain.