Pine nuts are used in pesto dishes and many Mediterranean dishes. When toasted, they impart a nice flavor to other meat and vegetable dishes. But are they really from pine trees? The appearance of the pine nut doesn’t necessarily hint at any relation to the tall evergreen tree found around the world in northern climates.
Well, the answer is yes. Pine nuts are the seed found inside pine cones.
At the store, pine nuts may have high price tags, due to the high cost of processing. Today at the local supermarket, pine nuts were going for $20/lb. Luckily, most dishes do not require a full pound of pine nuts. Even a small amount can add a nice touch to your dish.
Mark Bittman, aka “The Minimalist,” wrote about the blandness of ordinary bar nachos, and took it upon himself to update this classic with a slight spin. Pita wedges, hummus, ground lamb, cucumber, onion… you get the idea.
Tiger Tail is an amalgamation of Seattle greatness. A first-timer might walk in and see the dark blood-red interior and mistake this place for a swanky cocktail bar. But the loud punk band on the stereo and the people hanging out here will tell you otherwise.
The staff from Sonic Boom Records will drink here after closing shop. On another night, I saw J. Tillman (of Fleet Foxes) and Damien Jurado walk in with their ladies and order some food.
Set along Ballard’s sleepy strip of bars on 65th Street, Tiger Tail offers Asian-influenced small plates, cocktails, and boasts a large selection of beers from the Far East.
Sitting at the bar, my friend and I were looking at our menus. The special was the Tiger Burger, a beef patty served on a croissant with pepper jam.
“It’s really good. You should try it.” said the chef in the kitchen, speaking through the square-shaped hole in the wall connecting the kitchen to the main room.
He ordered the burger. I ordered the venison meatballs, served with orange-peanut dipping sauce. Each dish was served with simple garnish, and satisfied our palette.
This wasn’t my first trip to Tiger Tail, but it had been awhile since my last visit. The menu has expanded, and they’ve focused their decor (they got rid of the arcade games). As I stumbled the five blocks home (another plus), I made a mental note: visit Tiger Tail more frequently.
In Basque country, they do crazy things, like put a T right next to an X and then expect you to know how it’s pronounced. The people in Seattle will take it at face value and say “Tixorry”.
I will save you the embarrassment: it’s pronounced “chor-ay”, and they serve delicious wines, cocktails, and tapas in Belltown. The environment is clean, modern, and friendly. My dining partner and I chose to sit at the bar, where we could see the chefs in action, preparing the small, beautiful plates for the Friday night crowd. They were helpful when deciding what drinks to try (recommended: the red wine/Coca-Coca sangria), and one chef even shared his knife-sharpening tip: 14 degrees.
We tore our way through a half-dozen dishes, ranging from chorizo sauteed in white wine, tender pork shoulder topped with peppers, tortilla Espanola, goat cheese and apple sticks, and much more. All the dishes are reasonably priced, from $2 for the smaller dishes, to $10+ for the more substantial plates.
While it’s no place to get a large, hearty meal, it’s a perfect spot for having drinks, trying a variety of tasty plates, and catching up with friends, old or new.
Taco Del Mar is selling a 5 lb burrito for $18. If you eat it within 30 minutes, you get a $20 gift certificate and some TDM schwag. At first, I maybe thought I could do that. But I was having trouble picturing a 5 lb burrito in my head. It seems like normal burritos are at least a pound… this one can’t be much bigger. But then I found this video:
I’ve taken food challenges before, and I’ve learned my lesson: NEVER AGAIN. At a large group dinner in college, I was coaxed into getting the mega Italian platter at a local restaurant. It had a pile of spaghetti, lasagna, a sausage, chicken Parmesan, sausage… it was $25 if you couldn’t eat the whole thing. I obviously couldn’t do it. I was stuffed before finishing my second sausage, and still had enough leftovers that sustained me for three days. And believe me… I love sausage.
I made everyone chip in $1 because I was poor, and they got some entertainment out of the deal at my expense.
I think I’ll be skipping this challenge. No thanks, TDM!
Madame Ks, that cheeky brothel-themed pizza place on Ballard Avenue, is closing.
Last year they shot to the top of my list when I learned they were serving gluten-free pizzas to poor saps like me who suffer from lame dietary restrictions.
I will miss them.
In a serendipitous twist, a new take-n-bake pizza place, Zaw, opened up no more than two blocks away. On their menu: a you-bake gluten-free crust that they’ll top with whatever you want.
Mark Bittman’s food blog at the NY Times is always a go-to read for me. He presents a demystifying, no-nonsense view on food that always informs and entertains me. Best of all, it keeps me thinking about new ways to look at ordinary food. Today I stumbled across his column about rethinking breakfast. He offers up a handful of ideas that will make you never again crave sugary cereal or Pop-Tarts in the morning.
Take for example breakfast risotto (!), saffron chickpeas with chorizo (!!), migas (!!!), and breakfast polenta pizza (!!!!). I could hardly think straight by the end of the article. My brain was overloaded on breakfast ideas for weeks to come. I passed the article to my friend Phil and he got the same reaction. Approximately 80% of conversation between Phil and I is food-related. I highly recommend reading this article. I plan on road-testing some of his ideas as soon as this weekend.
I am glad Bittman mentioned breakfast pizza. I want to quickly touch on this. There are times when the subject of breakfast pizza comes up and I’m greeted with funny looks. “Breakfast? On a pizza?” they say. When I was growing up, breakfast pizzas were readily available at gas stations all over the midwest. There was a chain called Hot Stuff Pizza and they usually shared a space with a gas station. On early morning hockey trips or visits to the grandparents, I would eagerly run inside, past the clerk at the counter and over to Hot Stuff’s corner of the store, where I picked up a mini breakfast pizza. Joy.
Now I have to make the stuff at home, thanks to being gluten-free. No biggie — it’s an enjoyable thing to eat.
Every time I make a special meal, I snap a picture before I dig in and start eating. I haven’t been taking these snapshots for long (one, maybe two years?), but friends have started to ask me why I photograph my food.
Allow me to explain.
I noticed a big spike in my food/photo fetish when I got a new digital camera last fall. Right away, I discovered the macro feature and saw how it could highlight all the intimate details of the meal I was about to eat. Sure, we all look at our food before we eat it… but do we really ever LOOK at our food up close before we eat it?
Viewed on my computer monitor at four times the size, I was delighted at how the juices glisten on sliced pieces of steak, or how an army of quinoa gets stuffed into red peppers. The beautiful mess of toppings on a freshly baked pizza. Yes, that new camera helped me capture forever all the details that made all my meals so… appetizing.
The food I photograph is diverse, but there is one common theme in all those meals I’ve had: all the food is gluten-free. More than two years ago I went on a gluten-free diet after being severely sick. I feel great now, and I want to tell people that eating gluten-free does not mean eating poorly. I eat well. Very, very well.
Finally, when I photograph my food, I am honoring my food. It’s my bizarre way of saying thanks. Thanks to the farmers for harvesting the fruits, veggies, and grains I eat, and to the animals who die for my nourishment. When I consider what all food eventually becomes after digestion, I think it’s a nice thought to remember it as it was, before I ever took a bite, momentarily appreciated on my plate.
One of things I love most about travel is eating food from different parts of the world. I like seeing how other people live. Vancouver is only three hours north of Seattle, but many parts of my recent trip there made me feel like I was far from the comforts of home.
This dense urban oasis, surrounded by mountains to the north and water everywhere else, seems to be thriving with good things — from public transportation and a pedestrian-friendly downtown core, to a diversity of dining and recreational options.
Upon recommendation by a friend, I found myself at Guu, a Japanese tapas/izakaya restaurant just off bustling Robson Street. The experience was worldly. I was an American in Canada, but once seated, I could have been in Japan.
The waitstaff hurried by with plates of food for other tables, and then quickly took our order. Our young waiter shouted our order in Japanese to the chefs, who were working diligently in front of us, and they shouted back. Minutes later, I was handed my first dish by a young female chef. Grilled pork short ribs.
Next came chicken wings, and then some delicious kimchee fried rice.
After seeing a nearby couple munching on squid tenticles, I decided I wanted to try them as well. They had a tasty grilled exterior and a firm, chewy consistency. They came with Japanese mayo, a sweet tangy sauce that offset the sharper edge of the grilled squid.
This was a fine way to start our evening in Vancouver.
