Jakob's Bowl

Pass The Ketchup Please...

 

It's very often tough to take foodies seriously!!!

Wanton Self Absorption 2010

Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.

John Steinbeck

I’ve typed out a lot of words over the last year, and while I’ve been pleased with some of them, just as many have disappointed me. But my point here is not to offer any excuses or apologies, after all, I’m writing mainly to attenuate my own perplexity, to pass on the wisdom and knowledge of past generations, and occasionally to amuse…myself. Anyway, here are a few posts for 2010 that I don't think you should have missed:

Pork Juice Reconsidered: Look in just about any cook book of ‘Western’ cuisine to find a recipe for pork stock or pork broth and you'll be out of luck. You won’t find any discussion about making a soup base from the most popular meat in Western Europe - although you will find some soups from various regional cuisines in France, Spain, and Italy that have pork or pork bones as the first ingredient. Indeed, Marcella Hazan, the Grande Signora of Italian cooking, steers her readers away...more

It’s In the Bag(uette): The growing number of bakeries in the Seattle over the last four years has had me on quite a rollercoaster ride between expectations and realizations, the variability in the quality of bread has tied my mind and my palate in knots. ..more

Let Them Eat Macarons: When is a cupcake not a cupcake? When it’s a macaron, silly! If I read one more online article or blog post about French macarons as the new ‘cupcake,’ I might go ballistic. Yesterday’s post in SFoodie, posed the question again because of the writer’s discovery of Kentfield's Atelier Kawashima a new macaron shop in the Bay Area. This is at least the third time in eight months here on the West Coast that a discovery of this nature has been cited as a portent,...more

The Trojan Food Truck

PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN.

The Wizard Of Oz, 1939

About a month ago, my friend Don Sellers sent me the link to the notice of a new food truck about to hit the Seattle scene, Buns on Wheels. It was going to be offering “all natural gourmet burgers” made from grass-fed beef. The proprietors were going to have a promotion on a Friday several weeks hence, free burgers all evening, but you had to contact them and reserve a burger. It all sounded very enticing, but I thought it was a bit odd…giving away an entire evening’s worth of income. I suppose it wasn’t totally impractical from the ‘priming the pump’ marketing view. The thought of assembly line ground meat products and fighting crowds kept me from signing up. A week later I changed my mind, but the link to the notice had been taken down, and I assumed they reached their capacity. A soft opening was planned for July 29th, so I decided to wait.

One task or errand followed on the heels of another today and before I knew it 7 PM had rolled around, and I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. With absolutely no desire to cook this evening, Buns on Wheels came to mind again, and so I checked their website to find out where they would be today. Their location calendar was blank, which I didn’t find totally strange, after all they had only opened a week ago. I checked their Twitter page: "We are on Alki Beach (Alki Auto Repair) again all weekend"...not on the street or in a parking lot like most food trucks, but I suppose repair shops have small parking lots. I packed Kazmer in the car and headed to West Seattle.

The Heart Of The Past

I hadn’t intended buying much at the Capital Hill Farmers’ Market this past Sunday, just some fresh sheep cheese, and if Tonnemaker’s Family Orchards had any left, Regina Cherries. I had already decided what I was going to do with the young cabbage I bought the day before, more Central European fare involving cured pork of some sort and spätzle. It just so happened that the Willapa Hills Cheese booth was next to the Dog Mountain Farm Booth and that’s when I noticed the “chicken hearts $3.95/pound” written on their chalk board, something I didn’t remember seeing before.

The chalkboard stirred many primal memories of childhood since duck, turkey and chicken giblets were the ultimate savory treat to just about everyone in the family, with the heart the choicest of all the morsels. We argued over them, cut cards for them, tried to reserve them in advance, and even pleaded for them. They were usually simply simmered or roasted, but the flavor and slightly chewy texture made them so satisfying. A few of my older brothers belonged to a local mens’ club, and every year they would take my younger brother and I to its summer outing. It wasn’t the corn on the cob, grilled burgers and dogs, root beer, and freshly cut watermelon that excited us as much as the big pot of giblets in spicy tomato sauce simmering on the outdoor stove, I could never get enough.

As I paid for my cheese the thought of using Dog Mountain Farm Redbro chicken hearts in my cabbage and spätzle dish seemed a foregone conclusion. I assumed that they would be in one-half pound or one pound blocks like a number of the other poultry vendors sold. I ordered a pound, and David rummaged around his cooler to find only three bags of hearts remaining, and they totaled just-under one pound. They were closer to IQF that a solid block, and they looked like they had just been frozen. I set them to thaw in the fridge, and about six hours later I began to prep.

Frosted At The Ice Cream Truck

I finally had some spare time late this afternoon, and the foresight to check the schedule for the Parfait Ice Cream truck. As I turned the corner off of Ballard Avenue, I could see that the line was short, only three people. By the time I reached the truck it had melted down to one, a woman who appeared to be in her late 30s. She was torn between the Butter Toffee Crunch and another flavor and was inquiring about the merits of each. The young woman in the truck stated that they were both delicious, and offered to let her decide by sampling each flavor. There was a clear winner and she ordered a small cone. With the tip cup not more than 12 inches away from her face, the she paid with exact change and walked away. As a matter of fact, she was standing in line with the exact change in hand, never intending to leave a tip, and this incensed me.

It was pretty clear to me that the woman knew just how special the "small batch, made from scratch" ice cream was, and her response of surprise and delight when she was offered the free samples made it pretty clear that she realized she was getting service that was beyond the ordinary, and yet she walked away without leaving a tip. Beware, next time I cause a scene.

A Single Malt Sob Story

There is no such thing as bad whiskey. Some whiskeys just happen to be better than others. But a man shouldn’t fool with booze until he’s fifty; then he’s a damn fool if he doesn’t.

William Faulkner

Having come to Single Malt whisky late in life via my experience with wine, I learned a hard lesson in 2009…when the sign says ‘limited to 815 bottles,' waiting to re-order something quite delicious leads to  nothing but sorrow.

I’ve acquired a taste for spirits relatively late in life, most likely delayed by slamming shots of Canadian whiskey on the sly during my late teens. Oh yes, I consumed my share of rum and coke at frigid football games, high balls, gin and tonics and what have you during my early twenties, but just a whiff of any brown spirit straight up would make me gag. Later in life, when I had acquired a love of well crafted wine, I believed that a civilized person just had to be able to appreciate Cognac and Armagnac, so I had to give brown spirits another try! Many of my trips to Europe connected through Heathrow, and I found myself buying a single malt or cognac in the duty free shop, bringing it home, opening it, taking a sip and gagging. Eventually, I had about a dozen bottles each with barely a sip missing. It just wouldn’t go down.

About five years ago, I became intrigued by two artisan spirits from the New World, Blue Agave tequila and Rhum Agricole, either because of an article I read or a documentary I saw, but I no longer remember which. I found that if I approached them like a glass of wine, focusing first on the nose, with a lot of inhaling, not only was there no gagging, but I actually really enjoyed them. At the time, I made no connection between this discovery and all the bottles sitting in my cupboard, that is, until about a year later when I gave away a bottle of single malt, Glenmorangie 18-yr old actually, that I had bought at least 15 years earlier. A few days later, I tried a small glass of Balvenie Double-Wood just as a lark, approaching it as I had Blue Agave, and with just a few sips I was hooked.