You can find a pretty good transcript of the recipe here (but not quite complete, annoyingly), if you don’t have the cookbook. Note that you will also need her instructions on sauteing mushrooms (this one is a direct, complete copy) and brown-braising pearl onions (close enough), even if you think you know how to do these things.

Some notes:

• One of the best things about the original recipe is the detailed information on wine. It recommends pairing with “a fairly full-bodied, young red wine, such as Beaujolais, Côtes du Rhône, Bordeaux-St. Émilion, or Burgundy,” and using any of those or a Chianti to go into the stew.
• 3 cups of wine = 1 bottle. I doubled the recipe. Whoo!
• I bought pre-cut-up stew meat, some of which was cut a lot finer than the other, and on the whole big chunks worked a lot better for drying and browning.
• Conversely, I couldn’t find an unsliced chunk of bacon anywhere, and regular old thick-sliced seemed to work okay.
• I over-salted because I forgot, as always, to account for the massive amounts of salt in bouillon cubes. Use caution, or perhaps better beef stock.
• Blanching helps when you realize you have to peel 48 pearl onions.
• I couldn’t really get the sauce to thicken in the end, but it seemed to end up okay just letting it reduce a lot even if it never really reached light-spoon-coating consistency. =/

For extras, here is the rosemary bread recipe I have been fussing with of late. It’s sort of long but that’s because the procedure is the complicated part; sorry. Start this ~3 hrs before you want to eat it.

• 2 1/2 tsp yeast, which is~1 packet
• 2 c. warm water, ~110-115 F, which is warm but just shy of scalding
• 1 Tbsp sugar
• 2 tsp salt
• 4 c. flour. Bread flour is nice if you can get it, and if you do not consider extra gluten cheating.
• 2 tsp. minced fresh rosemary plus more for topping. Fresh is important! You can sub out some for fresh thyme.
• olive oil, corn meal, sea salt

Dissolve yeast in the warm water and sugar. If it’s NOT instant/fast-acting/bread-machine yeast, give it <5 min to froth up. Otherwise, immediately add flour, salt, and 2 tsp rosemary and stir until blended. Do not knead! Cover and let rise for 1 hour or until double in size; bonus points for putting it someplace slightly warm and moist.

Oil a baking sheet and sprinkle with corn meal. Perhaps try oiling your hands instead of flouring them, as the dough is super sticky, then divide it in half, shape each half quickly and loosely into a round by tucking the edges under, and place on the baking sheet. Cover and let rise another hour. The stickiness is again a problem; cooking-sprayed plastic wrap is the only thing I’ve managed to use that DIDN’T stick horribly and make the top of my loaves lumpy.

With bread, some last-minute rising happens in the oven and for that you want things hot and steamy (har). Start heating your oven early, maybe half an hour into the second rise, to 450 or “lots.” My oven here has no numbers on the dial between 350 and 500 so I use my imagination, but I don’t think getting it too hot is a possibility. If you have a pizza stone, put it in now. Also put a cast-iron skillet in the bottom of the oven (or something else which can be raised to high temps empty, then have cool water thrown in it without exploding).

When bread is again about doubled in size, brush with olive oil and top with more rosemary and plentiful crushed sea salt. Get yourself some water, maybe 1/4 cup, on hand near your oven as now you must act quickly! Put the bread in (just stick the pan on the pizza stone if using one, unless you want to get fancy and try to slide the bread onto the stone directly), dump the water on your previously-heated skillet or whatever where it will send up exciting clouds of steam, and close the oven door quickly. Bake 10 min, adding more water for steam if it runs out. Then turn the oven down to 375 and bake another 20 min or so until it’s golden-browny.

OPTION 1:
I think it would be easy to reduce crime if you told people that heaven were like dining at Orange Shabu.

OPTION 2:
I HAVE HAD WAGYU BEEF SHABU SHABU: BEHOLD MY WORKS YE MIGHTY AND DESPAIR.

SO GOOD

A few blocks away from Taipei 101, this place is a chic Japanese take on traditional Chinese hot pot. The receptacle was a copper pot heated over a gas stove in the center of each table. Tables were separated by linen blinds. While I’m not entirely sure I am even qualified to list all of the stuff that went into the hot pot, a couple of things stand out.

• Oh my god wagyu beef. Soooo delicious.
• We had a special kind of pork, but the language barrier prevented me from understanding what made it special. It was served with a creamy sesame sauce, though, and that was phenomenal.
• Fresh shrimp and fish balls made by plopping the raw materials straight into the hot pot out of a piece of bamboo.
• We were served a special kind of tea, which tasted kind of like echinacea, but gentle and not medicinal. Its intention was to cool the body down after the hot pot.
• The almond tofu was like no almond tofu I’ve ever had. It was still silky and delicious, but held together much more firmly than almond tofu from a box.
• Instead of putting cellophane noodles into the broth at the end of the meal, they made it into porridge. Who was too fat to eat a lot of the porridge? This kid. However, we reserved a ton for breakfast tomorrow.

I was treated to hot pot because my aunt insisted that I should go easy on the greasy disaster on day one. Taiwanese food is less flavorful and more gentle than mainland Chinese food–she was worried that the broth would be too light for my boorish American taste buds. However, the broth we made (using, among the other ingredients, a combination of napa and white cabbage) was aromatic and complex, and made an excellent porridge at the end of the meal.

Tomorrow: the adventures of Chinese barbequed sea cucumber, aka, Jo’s most favoritest dish in the world.

Lunch bonus!: Taiwanese beef bourgignon is not nearly as good as Sophiese beef bourgignon.

Anyway, we really wanted to go to Uva, my favorite place in SF ever—it’s an Italian small plates/wine place (an “enoteca”) in Upper Haight. Cav was much closer to Davies Symphony Hall, so we ended up eating there instead (after deciding Bistro Clovis was not “for us”). I had never been or had any reason to believe Cav would be any good, but it was amazing. The waitress had lots of opinions and advice to offer, and she was SASSY as all get out. (Also I’m pretty sure she was flirting with Chris! the hussy!) We took her advice and had a selection of the appetizers, followed by the cheese and charcuterie plates. No pictures of the appetizers, unfort (*sniffle*) but they were:

• Braised baby octopus with roasted garbanzo beans and cherry tomatoes. Delicious! The garbanzo beans were still somewhat green; this gives your teeth just enough resistance and keeps its flavor “nutty.” The other stuff on the plate was really good too.
• Beer-batter tempura squash blossoms with mahi mahi ceviche and tempura zucchini. Good, but honestly was somewhat over-fancy. Maybe I’m just not easily impressed with $12 plates of “deep fried stuff,” but it was definitely the best of this time-honored appetizer genre I have tasted. Also, I’m not a huge fan of ceviche, mostly because I can never tell if it’s too citrusy.
• Crispy pig trotters with poached quail eggs, frisée, pickled vegetables, and mustard vinaigrette. Om nom nom. I was scared they were going to bring us a whole pig foot, but no, it was three circular disks of deep fried pork… and it was oh so good. The quail egg went perfectly with the pork (though I was sad there were only two of them), and the vegetables also matched quite well. The vinaigrette might have been a tad more sour than I would like in an ideal world, but in our imperfect world this was a formidable appetizer.

The cheese plate! (A choice of three from the list.)

(Picture was on Chris’ phone, which was not made by Steve Jobs… for shame.) There’s lots more than cheese on the plate, obviously. The cheeses were (from left to right)

• Queso Azul de Cabrales. (The cheese of my people!*) A Spanish blue made from a mix of sheep and goat milk! Ours was this interesting deep brown color, and true to both its blue cheese and Spanish cheese roots, it was very very strong. Chris figured out that you have to close your mouth and just let it sit a while, because the pungency sort of tingles your tongue and stimulates different taste buds as it melts… some sort of interesting, unfolding evolution of flavor. The wikipedia entry reports that some cheese tasters report a “numbing sensation” to the tip of the tongue after eating it, and I totally believe this. A++, would buy again.
• Brillat Savarin. A triple cream brie from Normandy named after a French political figure and gastronome (thanks WP!). The texture was amazingly rich and velvety, and it tasted like heaven. It reportedly pairs perfectly with champagne, and I’m going to have to try that sometime if I can hunt some of this cheese down. :9 Maybe the Cheeseboard stocks it? Preparing it en croûte (baked in a pastry shell) would make it even better I imagine… it would come out all nice and oozy. (Oh god.)
• Québec Seven Year Vintage Cheddar. The name says it all… this was our waitress’ choice, and she did not disappoint us. Certainly you all know the difference between the cheez-its white cheddar and the much tastier stuff you can get in blocks at Whole Foods—this cheese was light years away from all that. It was set seven years ago and this is definitely reflected in the taste.

The charcuterie plate!

I have less to say about the plate of meats, though it was also quite good. Cheese is just so interesting and fun to describe (despite the difficulty of conveying gustation and olfaction through clumsy ol’ words). Anyway! Counter-clockwise from the center bottom: (1) Prosciutto, (2) Coppa, (3) Leonese chorizo (The sausage of my people!), (4) Duck prosciutto (I think), (5) Salami, (6) Pancetta, (7) Duck liver pâté, (8) Pork liver terrine, (9) Roast beef tongue with horseradish, (10) Another liver pâté (?), (11) Head cheese, (12) Pheasant gallantine. If it’s not clear, (1-3,5,6) are pork and (11) is beef. In the center of the plate are a bunch of garnishes, including pickled pearl onions, shallots, gherkins, fig jam, and olives, and three mustards: A smooth dijon, a whole grain with crème fraîche, and a whole grain with apple cider.

Steve (the one on the left in the first picture) is from England, so he got to eat most of the stuff I wouldn’t touch (Chris is braver than I), including (11), which sounds pretty gross already (if you don’t know what it is, I do not suggest looking it up). I also shied away from (9), only because I don’t really like the texture of tongue. Everything else was very good though! Number (12) was probably my favorite (first time eating pheasant!), and (4) definitely wins the “decadent sounding food product” prize. I also discovered while in Germany that I really like mustard now. My favorite on this plate was the apple cider one. :v

Unfortunately I had to run out the door before we got to dessert (Chris and Steve only got port, though). But I will definitely be back to see what’s on that menu. =D Also, the wine list looked fantastic, even if none of us were in the mood.

Oh, brunch was tasty, too. (And much cheaper.) We went to Sugar Café where I had the “Tex Mex Scramble,” which I ordered because it involves fresh avocado. (Om nom nom.)

* Well, a bit further north from my people… but close enough. I do have cousins who raise pigs and turn them into chorizo and jamón serrano, though. Apprenticing to one of them is Escape From Grad School Plan #344.Lower

I like this recipe because it starts with lettuce and tomatoes. It’s a salad. Therefore, healthy!

The lettuce is easier to eat if you chop it. Likewise the tomatoes. Serve yourself a generous helping; you’ll forget that these things are in there, anyway.

Part 2: BEEF

Actually, you could make this just as well with ground turkey or ground veggie burger, but I am a beef fan, personally. Brown the beef (or turkey or veggie burger), get rid of the extraneous fat if necessary, and add one packet of taco seasoning. I usually use Old El Paso.

Part 3: The Good Parts

Guacamole. Cheese. ‘Nuff said. Well, I guess I could also say that I usually use either shredded cheddar or a shredded Mexican mix for the cheese. You could also add olives or onions or whatever else you like on your tacos and have handy.

Part 4: The Purpose of This Whole Endeavor

Like my taco dip, the main reason you make this is because it gives you an excuse to eat corn chips. As with taco dip, I favor the Hint of Lime Tostitos variety. Spread them over the salad and crunch them up with your fork.

The best thing about this recipe, aside from the excuse to eat corn chips and pretending to be healthy, is the variety: cold tomatoes and hot ground beef. Soft guacamole and crunchy chips. It’s also colorful, and every successful ’50s housewife knows that a colorful meal is a nutritious meal.

It was an exciting day when I realized that corned beef & cabbage is not actually that difficult to make.

Of course, I haven’t actually tried corning my own beef or anything like that, but throwing things in a pot I can do, and did last Friday. Thought I’d beat the St. Patty’s Day rush? Someday I will have to experiment with corning, because grocery stores hardly ever sell corned beef brisket except in early March.

I put potatoes, carrots, and cabbage in mine. I chop up the potatoes and carrots into about bite-sized pieces, but you cook them long enough that they get pretty tender anyway.

The beef takes a couple hours to cook, so I usually put it on (water at a rolling boil) for an hour and a bit, and then chop the potatoes and add those, then chop the carrots and add those. The cabbage only takes about fifteen minutes to cook to the right consistency, so it goes in only once the potatoes and carrots are soft when you poke them with a fork (about 30 or 40 more minutes).

The pot typically gets very full. Lots of leftovers! Or enough to feed a large party, which I am rarely called upon to do.

One of these days I will learn to plan ahead and start cooking at, say, 4 PM; on Friday I didn’t get home from work/grocery store run until after 7, which meant I wasn’t eating until 9 PM. Oh well!