two. ate.

Our Christmas gift to my (Wm.'s) parents for 2005 was a day of sake tasting in Berkeley and dinner at a nearby restaurant.

Earlier in the week, we had arranged a time and picked a place for dinner. However, this morning we felt the need to wed our sake tasting a bit better to our dinner selection. We had originally selected Eccolo as it came highly recommended by Meriko. However, their Italian bent seemed at odds with an hour of sake tasting.

After doing a bit of searching and online inquiring, we hit upon a restaurant that seemed to fit the bill: Sea Salt on San Pablo Ave. in Berkeley.

Sea Salt is a fish and seafood restaurant tucked away into a nondescript block of San Pablo Ave. Well, as nondescript as having the Berekely branch of Good Vibrations and a Cafe Trieste on the corner...

What impressed us right off the bat from searching online was their menu: lots of innovative dishes (large and small), and equally innovative ingredient mixtures in lots of them. We were set...and Sea Salt was it...

...and being just under a mile away from the Takara Sake Company (and Tasting Room) made it even better. The restaurant doesn't take reservations for parties under 6 so we arrived for an early dinner. The room was minimalist and pleasant.

We started with oysters which are a chef's choice special from 4 to 6 pm. A dollar an oyster picked from five different varieties was a deal especially since we had designs on several of the dishes. We started with 8: four Quilcene Bay and four Effingham. The Effingham were the clear winners: plump and deliciously briny.

We continued with a bigeye tuna tartare and a plate of grilled sardines. The tuna was dressed with olive oil, orange bits, basil and diced olives. It came with housemade potato chips. The tartare was light and lively and chips were greaseless. The two went well together. The sardines were plump and grilled perfectly. Dressed with a pesto-like salsa verde and accompanied by roasted, marinated red peppers, they were amazing.

For mains, we had their fish and chips, the salt cod croquettes and pan roasted Alaskan cod. The fish and chips came with a malt vinegar aioli which was an interesting twist on the trad F&C accompaniment. Like the housemade chips, the fish (cod) and chips were greaseless, crisp, golden brown and delicious.

The salt cod croquettes were pretty amazing...three golf ball-sized balls of cod and potato with a lemon aioli and a parsley "sauce" which was more like a pesto: fresh and fragrant. This might have been the sleeper dish of the night...

The pan roasted Alaskan cod was set in a light broth surrounded by cockles and half-moons of chorizo from The Fatted Calf and strips of pequillo peppers. The mix of the light cod and chorizo with the cockles was clever creating a rich, slightly spicy and briny mouthful.

All of this was mated up with a bottle of 2003 Nina Albariño from Rias Baixas which was light enough for the tartare but could stand up to the salt cod.

For dessert, we chose the pear and huckleberry crisp and the trio of sorbets. The crisp had a creme fraiche sorbet and was mostly pears and not too sweet. The slightly sour sorbet went well with it but I wished it had more huckleberries. The trio of sorbets were green apple, pomegranate and clementine (orange). All good, perhaps a bit too icy, the green apple was the best with a nice tartness.

Sea Salt was a real find and their menu was so chockful of other things that we need to plan a trip back there in short order.

Posted by wm. christman at 11:35 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Our friend Soma and Kazumi sent us a "shogatsu" package from Japan this year which included an amazing dish that we ended up eating on New Year's day: unachazuke.

Ochazuke is a Japanese dish of ultimate simplicity: rice with green tea poured over it. Most ochazuke also has some sort of fish or vegetable on top of the rice which also flavors the whole package. Unachazuke is ochazuke with unagi (eel) on top of it...

...most commercial ochazuke contains a packet of soup-stock-like granules that you sprinkle on top of the rice before you pour tea over it. It serves to give particular flavors to the ochazuke: shiso, wasabi, tarako, sake (salmon, pronounced "sha-kay" not "sa-kay").

Our unachazuke was definitely a high-end set of ingredients and flavors. The soup packet was wasabi flavored with bits of nori and other dried seaweed. The second packet (the topping) was semi-dried unagi cooked in a mirin and soy sauce mixture.

Now for the tea application...

The combination of all of this over a bowl of rice was heavenly. The semi-dried unagi was revived by the hot tea and ended up very juicy, the wasabi-flavored soup base was delicately flavored but added a nice foil to the sweet-ish unagi, the nori rehyrated itself and added an extra earthiness.

Houston, we've achieved unachazuke...

It was a bowl of sheer delight and the best rendition of ochazuke we've ever had. And thanks to our friends in Japan, we get to enjoy all sorts of food like this...

Posted by wm. christman at 07:15 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Negeen is a Persian restaurant in Campbell...just 3 minutes away from where we live. There are, in fact, a couple of excellent Persian places nearby...

Negeen has the usual array of richly spiced vegetable dishes (mostly appetizers) and kabobs of all kinds of meat: chicken (ground and not), beef (ditto) and lamb. All of the kabobs are accompanied by more rice than humans are allowed to eat. A broiled whole (!) tomato is usually included....

...we ate this dinner with our friends Pat and Lizzie (who are also quite the foodie pair). They also live nearby and so we're forever trading tips about where we've eaten. We're resolved (for 2006) to have dinner every 2-3 weeks and Negeen was our first night out.

We chose apps of hummus and a bowl of eye-watering torshi. Torshi is firm vegetables marinated in vinegar and spices. It's not spicy, per se but it is very tart and goes well with flatbread (usually served with Persian food). You spread a small spoonful of the torshi onto the bread, wrap it up and nibble away. You pucker, gasp then say..."mmmmm...". Negeen's version is pretty good with lots of extra herbs floating about the bowl. The hummus is decent but nothing spectacular.

All of us chose kabobs. We had chicken (ground and whole), whole beef and lamb. The spices used for all of these is similar with the ground meats picking up much more flavor. The whole pieces of meat get a nice char because they're whole. So any way you go, you get ground meat - flavorful to the point of overload (not a bad thing....) and whole meat with more caramelization and a nice amount of flavor to compliment it. I prefer the ground chicken kabob as it has an amazing texture and picks up lots and lots of flavor.

Negeen's kabobs are among the best of the three Persian restaurants nearby. They're large and juicy and have a powerfully addictive aroma and flavor. The huge mound of rice serves to merely soak up their juices. The broiled tomato (once semifork mashed into the rice) also add a nice tartness to the party.

Food-wise, we were sated. However, it seemed like the waitstaff wanted to rush us along for some reason. We had to tell our server that we "needed a few more minutes" three separate times. We received menus and 30 seconds later were being asked for our orders...it was kind of ridiculous. Once we made ourselves clear, then things got a bit better but there was kind of a weird feeling to it all. But it didn't end there...

On Friday evenings, they have entertainment (this evening, it consisted of a keyboardist and hand drummer) and at one point we felt like we stepped into a Persian speakeasy. It was kind of interesting and annoying at the same time. As it got louder, it got more annoying from a sheer decibel standpoint although the music was real exotic and cool sounding.

All that aside, the food at Negeen is really good and worth returning to.

Posted by wm. christman at 12:32 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

At the end of 2005, we usually host 2-3 dinners for our friends. 2005 was very busy for us and we were frankly a bit burned out and wanted to just relax during the last week of the year. But the urge got the best of us and we hosted our friends Pat and Lizzie, and Mary and Phil for a last dinner of the year bash. It was a "bistro" theme as I have been doing that style (if you can call it that...bistro food is just simple cooking...and therefore, very satisfiying) for most of the year.

Our menu included a few things inspired by our trip to France earlier in the year...especially our appetizers...

...in early December, I made rillettes (read about that here) and we finally had an occasion to serve them to our friends. Some toast points, some cornichons and one unmolded rillettes and we're good to go.

Mmmmmm, porky...

Our trip to Paris took us to a fantastic charcuterie which made an equally fabulous lentil salad. I used black lentils (the charcuterie in Paris used green ones...) and cooked them until tender, force-cooled them and dressed them with a dijon vinaigrette and tossed in some carrot on a small dice. Served at room temperature, this dish is another of my "comfort" foods.

Black lentil salad...

We also like to provide some small finger sized munchies to provide counterpoint to apps on plates. One dish had mixed unsalted cashews and hazelnuts rubbed with a small handful of fleur de sel. The other plate was oil cured French olives and "peppadew" red peppers. The peppers are especially tasty: a bit spicy and sour being marinated in vinegar...

The black and the red...

Posted by wm. christman at 10:24 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Every year for the past 10 years, we celebrate "shougatsu" and make and eat mochi. Shougatsu is the celebration of the New Year, Japanese style. Although we don't do absolutely everything for shougatsu, we still hold on to several traditions.

Osechi Ryouri (御節料理)
This an eye-popping spread of specially prepared foods just for the new year. Fish cake (kamaboko), black and white beans (kuro and shiro mame), chestnuts (kuri) and other delights are all cut up and arranged artfully on a huge-ass plate. Lots of the food is "preserved" in some way as the "real" celebration involves this food sitting out for anywhere from a 1/2 day to several days.

This year's (somewhat) small osechi plate...

We also make Ozouni (お雑煮) which is a traditional New Year's day soup made from dashi (Japanese fish stock), chicken, carrot, mizuna (or spinach), fish cake and toasted mochi. It's easy to make and very delicious with the addition of toasted mochi.

The whole spread including the ozouni (in the small brown bowls)...

You can read and see more about making mochi (餅) by following the link below...

Mochi (餅)
Mochi is pounded sweet (glutinous) rice. Traditionally, this rice is cooked and then put into the top of a semi-hollowed out tree stump a then pounded on with giant wooden mallets until it is a sticky, unform mass. During the pounding, there is a very brave soul who moves the mass around inbetween whacks of the mallet. I am positive that there are some injuries that happen every year...suffice it to say that we don't do this. We use a commercial mochi maker.

Our mochi maker looks like a loaf-shaped rice cooker. It has a super-non-stick bowl (believe me you NEED super-non-stick for mochi) with an impeller mounted in the bottom of it. You wash and soak the rice (for 6-12 hours) then drain it, then cook it, then "pound" it.

Washing by sifting the uncooked rice through your fingers...a very zen experience...

The rice looks like very small pearls when cooked...now onto "pounding"...

The pounding is achieved by the impeller which starts mush-ifying the rice near it. The rest of the rice follows suit and 10 minutes later...you have mochi.

The non-stick bowl and a six-cup batch of freshly pounded mochi...

Mochi and the impeller. Notice how sticky the rice has become...

After the pounding is done, we pull small, two-bite sized pieces off of the whole mass, pat them into rounds, dust them with flour and let them cool.

Pinching off a small piece to start with...

Our "preferred" size: about two bites. Well, for me at least...

After they cool completely (and harden a bit), I "polish" them to rid them of excessive flour. They keep for about 4 days in the fridge and pretty much forever if you freeze them right after they cool.

All mochi formed and set to cool and eventually be "polished" and set to eat or save for later...

You can toast them over a flame and drop them into soup, heat them in a microwave and dip them in soy sauce, boil them until soft and dredge them in kinako powder and sugar...they're carbo-rific but delicious. They're also a challenge to eat as they are so sticky.

Posted by wm. christman at 12:33 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)