Dibs: making ice cream easier to eat.
Solving a problem I didn’t realize I had
Category Archives: Food
Our Dinner at Ame
We celebrated our twelfth wedding anniversary last night with dinner at Ame. It was our first visit and we did it up: we shared a tasting menu, several other dishes, and a flight of wine and sake. That was right as a way to explore the restaurant, but I look forward to going back and just having the hamachi tataki and, especially, the black cod. If you’ve never had marinated black cod, it’s just a sublime dish, and this is a perfect rendition of it: soft and warm and lucious, with no one part overpowering the others. (To think that this is the same fish as the sable we got from the deli when I was growing up; also delicious, but very different.)
The dining experience is a bit of a contrast: the look is fashionable and stark, but the service was casual, friendly, well-informed, and helpful, offering tastes of this and that as we went along. I think some softer edges in the design would have fit the restaurant better. We’ve been to Terra, Ame’s older sibling, a couple of times. Ame’s food is at least as good and doesn’t require a two hour drive. I wonder if the more modern design of Ame was meant as a contrast to the rustic, homey Terra? In any case, we’re definitely going back.
A first for me in the kitchen
I was a vegetarian* for 16 years, which included the time when I learned to cook. So, I’ve never learned to cook meat and most of the meat I’ve cooked has been on a George Foreman grill. (It’s a supersized waffle iron on an angle, but the results are surprisingly good.)
Since I started eating meat again, though, I’ve loved short ribs, which I was introduced to at Charlie’s cafe. So tonight, we cooked the short ribs from Judy Rogers’s Zuni Cafe Cookbook. And, I have to say, I’m very pleased with how they came out: tender and savory.
The cookbook is different from most I’ve used. The prose sections are a lot of fun to read. As Deborah Madison says in her blurb, the introduction alone is worth the price of the book. The recipes are also more textual than algorithmic, if you will — prose descriptions of what to do, rather than more mechanical steps. And it seems to demand a little more from a cook; for example, you need to understand the adjectives she uses (“scant” appears a lot; how much do you cook something to brown it “gently?”). But at the same time, it’s actually a very easy recipe to execute and I felt confident that the dish would turn out well the whole time.
[* Actually, I was, as a friend describes, an ovo-lacto-pescatarian. That is, I still ate dairy, eggs, fish, and seafood. Within that, though, I was very strict.]
A cheese worth making a trip for
When we were recently at the Ferry Building, we picked up some burrata mozzarella at the Cowgirl Creamery shop. Eating it is an amazing experience. It’s soft, it’s sweet, it’s salty. A few tomatoes — even if there are no good tomatoes this time of year — and a good bread, with a little bit of olive oil, and you can’t do better.
It’s worth going out of your way to try this out. I’ve heard that, in the bay area, the fabulous A-16 serves it, but that I can pick it up and take it home makes me happy.
Sad news
From Inside Scoop:
Sept. 1 will be a sad day for fans of chef Sachio Kojima of Kabuto A&S Sushi (5121 Geary Blvd., near 16th Avenue) in the Richmond District. He has sold the business to Jinsoo Kim and Eric Cho, who own Ariake Japanese Restaurant, just a block away at 5041 Geary Blvd. (at 14th Avenue). Until Aug. 31, Kojima will be training Kim’s and Cho’s chefs in his style.
Last year Kojima gave up his lease at his popular Japanese restaurant and moved it across the street to a smaller space. The idea was to downscale and operate the new place with his wife and children. Now Kojima plans to move about five hours north of San Francisco, near Mount Shasta. He said his wife, Ayako, who has cancer, needs to drink pure water, and that that area has it in abundance.
In the early 20th century, travelers came to the region to “take the waters” from the many springs. Kojima plans to open a small sushi bar there. Kim, one of Kabuto’s new owners, is an experienced sushi chef, having worked for seven years at Ebisu in the Sunset. He also has cooked French and Japanese cuisine for many years. He says the partners plan to close the restaurant for just a short time, reopening in early September and keeping Kojima’s style.
Dinner will be served nightly except Sunday; lunch might be added later. Currently, Kabuto is open for lunch and dinner Thursday through Tuesday.
(Originally not posted to my blog, but sent to friends and family via email.)