Future pico de gallo

I suppose you’re all wondering why I’ve gathered you here today.

A few words about apples

It’s apple season, and I got a few opinions about apples.

What I like in apples: I like tart, and crisp, with additional aspects of flavor a close third in terms of criteria. A long shelf life and consistency across individuals also helps guide me. So if you like soft, sweet apples, this list will at least help you learn what to avoid.

Another note: I’m assuming that most people are familiar with Granny Smiths due to their ubiquity, hence they get mentioned a lot for comparative purposes. Heck, if you’re not amid the New England bounty of apples like I am, maybe that’s all you’ve got besides Red Delicious. If so, I am deeply sorry.

Anyway, let’s get to the part where I do some blathering about varieties.

Ambrosia: I tried one of these for the first time last winter. The name conjures an image of either Olympian pinnacles, or that freaky gelatin, canned fruit, marshmallow, and coconut salad that people always made for potlucks. Unfortunately I was kind of underwhelmed by the lack of a tart counterpoint to the ingratiating sweetness. Potluck, not pinnacles.

Braeburn: Tastes just like “apple.” Which is good. Very crisp, quite tart. Similar to Empire in its straightforward appleness (by which I mean no overtones of honey or exotic fruitiness as in Honeycrisp or Pink Lady). I ate my first one late last winter and I’m definitely pleased. It’s very high on the tart scale without the brutal characteristics of the Granny Smith (see below).

Empire: Back when I first opened my eyes to the crazy variety of apples and struck out from the familiar land of the Granny Smith, this was my next apple of choice. This is another variety like Braeburn that just says “apple” to me: crisp, slightly tart, and straightforward. Empires also seem to keep forever in the fridge. Ultimately, I’ve eaten so goddamn many of these that I’ve been off them for a while, thanks to taste fatigue. But this is a strong choice. In fact, here’s a not-great glamor shot of one I took last spring.


Ginger Gold: last fall I bought a 3-lb. bag of these out of curiosity, which is something I rarely do because I like to pick my victims by hand. Also unusual was the size of each apple: rather than the typical baseball size, these were small, maybe 2 inches in diameter. I ate them in pairs. Woe to anyone who cored or sliced them en masse, what a chore for the reward. Anyway, these were definitely outside the box in terms of what I usually like: not particularly crisp, with skins that were fairly soft rather than shiny. The taste, though, had a very pleasant spiciness that I liked a lot, and I forgave them their noncrispiness on the strength of the interesting flavor. Apparently the flesh browns fairly slowly, too, not that I spent time testing that theory. This fall I bought another big bag of GGs that were a more typical apple size, and I did enjoy them all over again. And despite my tales of excess, I recommend getting fewer at a time than I have, so you can eat them when they’re freshest.

Granny Smith: one of the year-round stalwarts, although it’s often hard to find a good one. Definitely avoid any that are shaped more like cylinders than the stereotypical heart shape—they tend to be mealier in my experience. Often too damn tart, with tough skin. My last resort apple. I heartily recommend slicing these before eating—I always feel like I’m getting a periodontal scaling when I try to bite into the skin, and slicing mitigates the amount of work your teeth have to do. This is the Arnold Schwarzenegger of apples: indestructible but in no way subtle.

Honeycrisp: If this is among my apple choices, then hands down I buy these over all the others. The name says it all: these are super-crisp and tangy, with an overlay of honey sweetness that offsets the tartness perfectly. Maybe I love these because the first one I had was at an actual orchard, but I haven’t been disappointed by ones at the store. The real tragedy is that they’re often a dollar a pound more than the other, lesser varieties. Bah. This must be Bill Gates’s apple, dude.

Macintosh: I love the taste of Macs, but dammit they aren’t crisp. The flesh has a fabulous perfume and subtle tang, but the skin is very soft, and did I mention they aren’t crisp? They don’t seem to keep as well as Empires, either, so I very rarely buy Macintoshes. If I were to see a particularly spectacular specimen that I knew was fresh, well, then I would probably buy it. Otherwise, eh, it ain’t worth it.

Paula Red: I tried these for the first time last fall, buying a bag of them at the actual orchard. Apparently they have a very short season, so I’m not sure they’re worth getting in the store, since you might not be getting them fresh. But I was very pleased. They’re nice and crisp, and have a solid apple flavor that I liked a lot. When I see these in late August or early September, I definitely buy them.

Pink Lady: When the Honeycrisps are unavailable, this is my go-to apple at the moment. It’s got a blazing tartness, but there is a slight sweetness to offset. Also, the skin is more forgiving than Granny Smith, though thick enough that they keep well in the fridge. All around I dig this one a lot. It also looks nice in decorative fruit bowls, if you're trying to sell your house or are featured in Architectural Digest or something.

So that’s the lowdown on the Apples I Have Known and Formed an Opinion On. And what’s in the fridge right now? Two Honeycrisps and, uh, an Anjou pear.

Scotland recap, at LAST

Well, I must apologize for the month of August—life has interfered mightily with my duty to report on our trip to Scotland. And that created a logjam that led to a whole lot of not posting. So here, at last, is the scoop.

Once again I had a great time on a tour run by Bike Vermont. Seven days of touring, with six of them spent more or less on the bike, four different inns in four different regions, great food and some serious scenery. The two guides, one a Vermonter and one a local Glaswegian, were fun people and awesome leaders through everything. Just about all of the inns were top-notch too, although there are a lot of weird ideas about showers in the Old Country. The concept of the full shower door or curtain doesn’t seem to have caught on there. On the other hand, the electric towel bar is a grand thing—why don’t we have these in New England?

As for Scotland itself, I was impressed. Glasgow was a great little city, with tons going on and easy navigation. I really dig that you can order glasses of wine in two different sizes. Yeah, I’m easily wowed. The landscape, though, that’s the real star of the place. We saw the rolling lowlands of Perthshire, cycled our way up the River Tay, took a ferry from Oban to the Isle of Mull, and came back via the truly highland moors of the Ardnamurchan Peninsula. Pictures of each below, respectively. For the full spread of photographic record, see my Flickr link on the right over there. ->

Photo 1: Perthshire fields as viewed from the battlements of Huntingtower Castle

Photo 2: The River Tay, outside of the village of Murthly en route to Dunkeld

Photo 3: The port of Oban

Photo 4: A view of Duart Castle from the Oban-Craignure ferry

Photo 5: On the Ardnamurchan Peninsula

The cycling was a little nuts, I have to admit. I don’t think the terrain was significantly tougher than what I’d seen in Vermont (except for the day on Ardnamurchan), but there were fewer little towns to take breaks in, and most of the roads on Mull and in the highlands were what’s breezily referred to as single-track: in other words, a strip of road just one narrow lane wide, but used in both directions, with occasional tiny semicircles of shoulder where two vehicles can pass each other. That was quite nerve racking. But having a half pint of cider at lunch usually restored the courage.

In general I also thought the food was first-rate. Maybe that’s because we were always staying in swanky places, but I really ate and drank well. I also had haggis for the first time, which is very tasty! It’s funny that it has such a reputation. I ate weirder things in Manila, that’s for sure, heh. I also tried a couple of different single-malt Scotches, although hard liquor isn’t usually my thing. For the newbies to Scotch, I’d recommend the Tobermory 10-year, and if you’re into peaty, funky Scotch, the same distillery also makes Ledaig. Both were distilled at this here spot on the Isle of Mull.


So to sum up, it was fantastic. I was impressed by how beautiful the country was, with some very stark landscapes and amazing views. And the people all seemed incredibly friendly, too. Definitely worth a long visit, and I would go back in a second!

Recipe: Linguine with broccoli and sausage

In the midst of my very dire winter doldrums comes this dish that Swami and I make all the time. It’s relatively fast and relatively healthy, and might briefly make you forget your troubles. Especially if you drink some of the wine while you’re cooking!

- 6 oz. uncooked pasta (linguine works best)
- 2 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
- 2 or 3 dashes crushed red pepper flakes
- 1 tbsp. minced fresh garlic (4-5 cloves)
- 2 c. broccolini or broccoli, cut into bite-sized pieces
- 2 plum tomatoes, cored, seeded and diced (optional)
- approx. 8 oz., or half a package, of fully-cooked chicken sausage or chorizo, halved lengthwise and cut into 1/2-inch slices (I’ve been using these)
- salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
- dry white wine, such as Pinot Grigio, Albariño, or Orvieto
- good-quality Parmesan cheese (for pity’s sake, don’t use the crap in the green can!)

Timing: Start boiling the water for the pasta before you begin prep. If you use linguine, the pasta takes about the same amount of time to cook as the sauce, so once you throw the pasta into the boiling water, you should start cooking.

Heat olive oil and red pepper flakes in a large, deep-sided pan over medium heat 1 minute. Reduce heat slightly and add garlic; stir 1 minute. Add broccoli(ni) and saute 4 min. (I usually add the salt and black pepper at this point.) Add tomatoes and saute 1 min. Add sausage and saute everything 3 more min. Deglaze pan with 1/2 cup to 1 cup of the white wine. You don’t want much sauce for this; add just enough wine to cover the bottom of the pan. Increase heat and simmer everything 2 min. Check seasoning and add more salt and pepper as needed. Sometime during this phase the pasta should be done; drain well and dump pasta into sauce. Toss to coat, then serve with lots of Parmesan.

Serves 2.

By the way, there’s no need to stint on the quality of your Parmesan. Just buy a big wedge, cut off what you need for the night, and throw the rest into a freezer bag and keep frozen. When you know you’re going to use it, put it in the fridge in the morning. It lasts forever this way.

Enjoy!

Ah, damn

Last night we were stymied in our attempt to see Slumdog Millionaire—the lines for tickets were waaay too long, I guess because of Notorious or somesuch, so we decided to hit dinner instead at the most delectable Rod Dee 2. Well, imagine the shock when we came upon its location on Peterborough St. The whole row of buildings that had once been a bunch of cool restaurants had burned down! Here’s the Globe story; here’s the Herald; here’s a blog post where in the comments many people mourn the loss of all those joints.

It’s really a drag, not even so much for us, since we went there maybe a few times a year, but for the neighborhood, which was made special by all that life packed into the narrow streets of the Fenway. But I really, really hope that I find Pad Ka Na somewhere that was as good as Rod Dee’s. Salty, spicy, with lots of Chinese broccoli…mmm. I did just learn that a third Rod Dee location appeared recently near Washington Square in Brookline, so now it’s imperative to check it out.

Once again life reminds us that things never freaking stay the same.

Disillusionment of the day

Hmph, I just learned over here that what everybody calls wasabi is not actually real wasabi, but some kind of concoction using regular horseradish. More can be read about this diabolical conspiracy here. I feel cheated!

Although this will in no way prevent me from having huge sushi cravings at least once a week. And there’s a restaurant in Waltham named Ponzu that serves little nuclear bombs called wasabi pork dumplings, which are basically (faux-) wasabi laced pork meatballs wrapped in wonton wrappers. They are evil, they are delicious, they will kick your ass and make you cry for your mommy. Who could refuse food that does all that? If you survive, you feel like the ultimate stud; if you die, well, you died eating a pork meatball. An anecdote for the ages!

Sometimes I wish I was Catholic

Relax, that’s a line from a song. So I’ve turned the big 35 today, and I got this awesome peep cake from the Swami earlier, so I’m totally jacked on sugar right now. I took the day off work, which was schweet—now that’s a constitutional amendment I could get behind, that everyone should get their birthday off of work. Paid, I might add. Who’s with me!

Upswing

The last few weeks have been slowly crushing my soul, what with late winter weather (crappy, with extra crap on weekends) and some actual work at work (the horror!). But today was a much-appreciated break. Swami managed to scrape us both out of bed and we went cycling for only the third time this year. Even though it was only 30F, the sun was up and the roads were dry. Oh, and the wind was calm. All three are pretty much key for riding this time of year, believe you me. I absolutely cannot wait for the weather to improve, because getting on the bike seems to be critical to my soul’s happiness.

Then for lunch I hit an Indian joint named Punjabi Dhaba, which was damn good cheap Indian food. It reminded me of the best over-the-counter Indian place I’ve eaten, Flavors of India back in Columbus. That place was manned by just one dude and a woman I assume was his wife. I thought he was either really cranky or really rude, until one day I realized he was just insanely laid-back. He had this graceful method of ladling the food onto the plate, with just a little too much flourish to be blandly efficient. And the food, well, yum. Even with my stomach still full of dal and parathi, I still can get a little drool on thinking about Flavors of India. It’s good to know I can get that kind of fix here, just a 15-minute walk from the office.

So for now, the universe seems to be in alignment. Let’s hope it keeps up.

Oh, also, by the way, shouting out to a friend, good luck with the thing tomorrow. I’ll happily give you all the good vibes I got over here.

Buko tarts and final thoughts

I’ve been meaning to write one more post about the Philippines trip, and finally have gotten around to it. Ignoring any sense of narrative, I give you a completely unorganized list of things that I remember the best, now that it’s been a whole month since we got back.

Tropical tennis: One of the most fun things we did while we were there was play tennis with Kaskasero and his parents at their club. The courts were covered with crushed gravel and shell, which was kind of like a clay court in terms of play. It was nice to play some doubles for the first time since last summer, even though my internal clock was telling me it was three in the morning! And as the sun went down, any tennis ball that was hit high in the air was immediately dive-bombed by bats wondering if their sonar was pointing out the biggest insect of all time. So neat.

The ring of fire: My number one goal of the trip (besides seeing Kas get married, of course!) was to see a volcano—a trip to the Pacific Rim wouldn’t be complete without that. So the day after the wedding we drove to Tagaytay, a bustling resort town a couple hours’ drive outside of Manila. The town is perched on the ridge of a huge volcanic crater, at the middle of which is a big lake with Taal Volcano in the middle of it. Totally awesome views.

The town itself kind of reminded me of the Cape around Hyannis, with lots of people and lots of places selling stuff. You could get all kinds of food by the roadside; this photo shows some people selling hot corn on the cob.

But the number one thing you’ve got to eat in Tagaytay is the buko tart. Buko is young coconut, and the tarts come packed in boxes so you can grab a stack to go. Definitely tasty. Here’s a fellow blogger’s account of a buko tart from Tagaytay.


The wedding: Of course, the main reason we went to Manila was to see Kas get married. I’m so glad we did, too. The whole thing was really great, seeing him and meeting his fiancee/wife for the first time. They’re really good together and I wish them all the best. Congratulations, you two!

Beer for breakfast, and other indulgences

It’s high time I talked about one of my favorite subjects in the context of the Philippines trip: food. I consider myself pretty adventurous for an American, which I admit isn’t saying much, here in the land where ketchup is considered by some to be spicy. But growing up, we ate all kinds of weird things: tongue, liver, kidneys, and every imaginable vegetable, including the infamous brussel sprout and ones you ain’t even heard of like kohlrabi. So I was well prepped for Filipino food, which seems to consider just about anything edible, including crickets. (Note: it is damn near impossible to Google anything about the eating, rather than the sporting, kind of cricket, so no link for you.)

First off, let me be clear that I did not try the crickets. And I didn’t cross paths with balut, although I admit that after a beer or two I might have actually tried it if someone had plunked it in front of me. But I was spared. Anyway, having said all this, the food was consistently awesome. Besides the daing na bangus I already mentioned, another seafood standout was inihaw na pusit (grilled squid). Just damn good. I was also glad to have tongue again, which I haven’t had in ages. Yay kaskasero for having it at your wedding! Also great was sisig, which is probably best when you have no idea what’s in it. (Everything is chopped up nice and small, though, which helps with any urk factor you might feel.) You can see the squid and the sisig in the picture below: sisig on my plate, and squid two serving dishes away from the camera.

Don’t forget the rice, of course! Rice with every meal including breakfast. And everything is eaten with a spoon in one hand and a fork in the other; you use the fork to push food onto the spoon. And if you’re paranoid about food safety like I am, you wash everything down with San Miguel, which is a pretty good beer considering that I pretty much hate beer. (Even Jet Li and Stephen Chow like it, so who can argue?)

As for nonnative food, well I have to laugh, because there are heaps of American chains in Manila, and I studiously avoided them all just like I do at home. Shakey’s is apparently popular there, which is amusing because I think they have almost no presence in the U.S. these days. And how funny is it that I traveled almost 9000 miles to eat the first Krispy Kreme doughnut I’ve had in a long while?

I leave you with a link: This article has a lot of interesting stuff in it about eating in Manila. And based on my own experience, I have no doubt that it’s all true!

Daing na bangus and traffic

I’m back on the blog at last! First, a technical note. At first I thought of methodically going through each day of the trip, but then I wondered whether it might make more sense to do themes instead. In the end it looks like this first post has a little of both. Anyway, over the next several days I hope to post as much about the trip as possible, and if it appears at all organized, so much the better. If not, well, ya got tags you can use to find your way through.

The first full day of our trip got off to a good start, with what’s apparently a typical Filipino breakfast: daing na bangus at a local chain, Pancake House—yeah, quite the exotic name! Anyway, the dish is a fried marinated fish served with a pile of garlic rice that has a fried egg on top. Awesome hangover food, I imagine, and good jet lag food as well. In fact, after just one plate of this I wish I could have it every morning. (Here’s a recipe, here’s a pic.)

The first day also gave us the trip’s theme song, which is good—every trip needs a theme song. Thanks to kaskasero playing it incessantly in the car, it was track 9 from this disc: “Awitin Mo Isasayaw Ko”, a disco song covered by Pedicab. (Not that the band name means anything to me!) The beat moves a hell of a lot faster than the traffic in Manila, believe me. In fact, if you had to choose one word to describe Manila, it’d be traffic. Goddamn, I have never seen such traffic.

It’s hard to describe. Imagine a four-lane road, with at least six cars abreast. Imagine mopeds buzzing in between all the cars. Imagine a huge fleet of these crazy vehicles called jeepneys, full of people and decorated with all kinds of wacky designs. (Pic below.) Now imagine everything traveling at about 5 mph. Oh, and diesel smoke and pedestrians everywhere. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that there are people who live in their cars permanently, trying to get to a house they haven’t been able to reach in years because of the awful traffic. In fact, traffic is so slow and heavy that vendors just roll their carts of stuff in between cars and hawk everything from peanuts to cigarettes. Totally insane.

Girl Scout Cookie conspiracy

It’s Girl Scout cookie time again, usually a source of joy and calories that I have always looked forward to. But there is a dark side to those disc-shaped delectables. When I moved to my current state of residence in 2000, I was surprised to find out that the old familiar names were gone from the boxes I saw for sale. The most majestic and tasty kind, the Samoa, was suddenly called a “Caramel Delite,” although everything else about the purple box seemed to be the same. In need of my cookie fix and willing to keep an open mind, I bought a couple boxes and took them home.

Well, despite them looking almost identical to the Samoas of my fond memory, they didn’t exactly taste like them. And a lot of the caramel had oozed out of the cookies and stuck to the inside plastic tray of the box, so that it was a huge pain to pry them out in order to taste their inferiority in the first place. “Egad,” I lamented, “They changed the name and the recipe too!” And I thought I was screwed.

But I was mistaken. When I complained (okay, whined) to my sister about it, she said that they still sold Samoas where she lived. And she sent me a box. (This has assured her entry into heaven, if there is such a thing.) Imagine my relief when I opened up a box of those Samoas and found the same delicious coconut and caramel extravaganza that I’d always loved.

So what gives? Turns out there are two different companies licensed to make Girl Scout cookies, and I can say with confidence that one of them produces lousy-ass cookies. Unfortunately, in my area all the councils seem to contract with the purveyors of demonic Caramel Delites, rather than the bakers of wondrous Samoas. So now I have to rely on my sister every year to send me boxes of the real deal. And whenever I walk by a table of Girl Scouts selling, I take a look at the purple boxes. Delites? No dice.

Bicycling, blueberries, and booze

With that threesome it can only mean that last week was our mostly annual trip to Maine. If you don’t know anything about Acadia National Park or Bar Harbor, start Googling. This year was the fourth visit, and it was great to be back. Now let’s break down the three Bs.

Bicycling: Most of the cycling potential in Acadia is on unpaved carriage roads, so we usually rent mountain bikes so it doesn’t matter when they get outrageously dusty and banged around. But this year we brought our road bikes with us and had ambitious plans to ride the Park Loop Road. That’s a 20-mile loop that rings the eastern part of the park, with fab ocean views and more than a few serious hills. This is the first year I’ve been fit enough to ride that kind of distance, so I was looking forward to seeing how tough it would be. We tackled it on Day Two, and it turned out to be fantastic. There were three climbs that totally kicked my ass, but they all paid off with amazing views of the ocean or one of the lakes at the top. People driving by us were giving us the thumbs-up and calling out encouragement, which was really great. And I hit my fastest speed ever on a descent: over 33 mph.

On Day Three, which was supposed to be recovery day, we rented the aforementioned mountain bikes and hit some of the more difficult carriage roads. I’d been on some of them before, but we did two sections that we hadn’t done before and that had some great views. It’s really satisfying to dog up a hill and realize that it’s the same one I had to walk the bike up a couple of years ago. And we went much farther in terms of distance than anything we’d tried before.

So all in all, because we had gone on a ride the day before we left for the trip, it was a week with over 60 miles of riding. Boo yah!

Blueberries: It’s not a trip to Maine without those little blue things appearing everywhere. I think the breakfasts at the B&B managed to include them every single day. Then there was the always divine Blueberry Oolius smoothie at Gaucho’s, and the blueberry-lemon tart at Eden that rocked my world. Somewhere in my head I hear Yosemite Sam exclaiming, “New England boiled blueberries!” Of course, right now in the fridge there’s still some Bar Harbor Blueberry Ale—which leads us naturally into the third B.

Booze: The best part about biking (or
hiking, since we did some of that, too) to exhaustion every day is that you have no guilt when it comes to dinner. And man, dinner was way over the top every single night. The mood was international: a South African sauvignon blanc, a New Zealand pinot noir, California merlot, a viognier from that largish country in Europe where they make a lotta wine, and oh yes, the Cuban mojito. There was food paired with all of those beverages, but frankly, the details are a bit hazy. I raise my glass to restaurants that let you recork your wine and schlep it home, by the way. And another toast (hic) to New Zealand for making screw-top bottles, which facilitate schleppage.

So now the real question is, should I quit my job, move to Bar Harbor, and become a mussel farmer? Because as I drag my carcass back to my damn desk job, that’s looking mighty appealing to me...

Cilantro-Lime Rice

Last night was Homemade Burrito Nite, which is an extravaganza of burrito-making that results in three delectable dinners’ worth of burritos. And the key to success? Cilantro-lime rice. Cook your rice, and when it’s done, mix in some fresh-squeezed lime juice and a fistful of chopped fresh cilantro. Mmmmmm. I know that there are strange people out there who hate cilantro, but you all require counseling.

This discussion of rice reminds me, Raoul now has a blog! Welcome to the Intarnets, Kaskasero. And why do you hate America, anyway? The economy is collapsing without your shopaholism!