melkor

I braved the freezing cold (for San Francisco) weather and met a friend at Shin Toe Bul Yi in the sunset for dinner. They bring tea and a green onion pancake once you're seated. The onion pancake is a bit soft but makes a great mop for the spicy sauce. We ordered fried chicken (#67 on the menu "chicken small pieces - little spicy") and kalbi. Note #64 the skate wing - a dish that's in the running for worst thing I've been served in a restaurant. Raw bone-in skate wing served refrigerator temperature soaked in kimchi juice... it tastes almost as delicious as it sounds. The panchan (pickled cucumbers, kimchi, tofu skin, dried fish, bean sprouts, and the orange thing in the back I can't identify). The chicken inexplicably comes with a simmering pot of spicy and delicious tofu soup. Fried chicken, hacked into unidentifiable pieces - part of the fun of eating it is trying to figure out what part of the bird you've got in your hand before taking a bite. Every time I visit shin toe bul yi I get the chicken, it's always moist and delicious and crispy on the outside without being greasy. It's very different from southern style fried chicken, but it's also very very tasty. The kalbi is hit or miss, tonight it was good, other times it's been over cooked and chewy. Under the boneless slices are two bone-in pieces. This is one of the many random restaurants around the city where if you order correctly you can have a great meal, if you make poor menu choices it's impressive how horrible it can be. I'm also not clear on their corkage policy, sometimes we bring wine and they're happy to open it, other times they tell us we can't have wine there. Either way, this is my favorite Korean restaurant in the city.

I buy catapults, cannons, and giant nets from that Acme. The other Acme sadly only sells bread.

Ah, cheese board, ver brugge, la farine, market hall, cash and carry (for bulk flour/sugar/etc). Premier cru, north berkeley, and kermit lynch for wine.

I prefer whole milk, but I use skim so I can eat more foie gras and still fit into my clothes. The triple espresso is in a two ounce Illy alien cup and it's got a bit of milk in there. In general I've given up on restaurant coffee, it's almost always horrible so I've stopped ordering it. I've got to figure out what I'm eating this week at some point. Tonight looks like it'll be Korean food at Shin Toe Bul Yi out in the sunset. Saturday I'll likely stop by both farmers markets.

I usually just chuck everything into the dishwasher and cross my fingers. The stuff that doesn't go in the dishwasher we seem to alternate washing. I don't each much in the east bay - I like Pho 84 in Oakland, Chez Panisse obviously, some taco trucks, the ethiopian joints in Berkeley. I do more shopping than dining in the east bay.

Just in case anyone is under the impression that I'm 900 years old - the guy in my avatar looks to be about 50 years older than I am, though I think I owned that shirt when I was in elementary school . I'm a computer geek of some sort for a living, though most of my time is now spent working with customers selling and supporting high speed internet connections (DS3 and bigger) for medium-large companies.

I'm in the outer mission down towards Daly City. I fish out of Emeryville and Half Moon Bay - rockfish and lingcod from Half Moon Bay, everything else from Emeryville. Now that dungeoness crab season started I should go out again. I've got a freezer full of rockfish and salmon, but I only really use frozen fish for claypots, soups, and other stuff where the texture doesn't matter as much. I should check out this bayshore J'fish joint. Any clue what their hours are?

She is indeed a good cook - we both cook most of the time, splitting dishes somewhat at random. She's a much better baker than I am and for the most part I cook meat when it's being done stove top. I don't think either of us really have signature dishes, though I love making pasta and risotto. I need to call around and see if I can get my hands on some white truffles now that they're getting good. That would be a good excuse for some fettuccine alla chitarra.

I haven't. I've been to the Monterey Market and like it better than Berkeley bowl, but it's a hike from the city. I just need to find someone with a wholesale account at IMP in San Mateo and order through them

Just buy some organic vinegar and wait for something that looks like a jellyfish to start growing in it. Dump the vinegar and lump of slime into a glass or clay crock and start feeding it wine. You'll need red wine vinegar mother to make red wine vinegar and white for white so buy one of each or mooch some mother off someone who is already making vinegar at home. I've got both going in my kitchen, send me a PM if you're near SF and I'll give you some of each.

I can try - I don't really cook from recipes and it'd be tough to argue that I'm much of a teacher, but here goes. Brown a bunch of short ribs on all sides in batches in a dutch oven (le creuset or whatever), deglaze with stock between batches and pour off the stock/fond somewhere safe. Chop a leek, carrot, and some onion - throw them in the pot to brown. Put the browned veg in a cheese cloth pouch (I use a jelly bag) with some fresh thyme, parsley, a few peppercorns, and some dried mushrooms if you've got them then tie the top of the bag. In the now empty pot empty a bottle of wine (I used a california pinot), bring it to a simmer and set it on fire. Once the flame goes out add a few cups of chicken stock, the deglazing liquid and then load the cheese cloth bag and meat back into the pot, stick a lid on it and stick it in a 250*F oven for about 3 hours or until it's done. Once the meat is done remove the cheese cloth bag, cool the meat in the braising liquid. Once it's all cold, strain out the meat, then reduce the braising liquid until about 1/4 of it is left. Shred the meat and strain the reduced braising liquid over it. Pour the filling into a shallow dish and let it cool until you've got horrible looking shredded meat jello. Make the pasta (100 grams of flour per egg - at least half white flour), stuff the ravioli with lumps of meat jello and cook them. While the ravioli is cooking heat some demi-glace (I use duck demi, because that's what I've got in the freezer) and some stock reducing it to a glaze. Toss the cooked ravioli into the glazed pan - the water on the pasta will turn the glaze into a sauce, toss the ravioli once or twice and plate.

Thanks! I'm using a Canon Rebel XT. I've been using the EF 50mm f/1.8 II lens for all the pictures today, it's nice and small and works well in low light. All the indoor pictures are at 800 ISO. I'm not sure how well it'll go over if I bring this brick of a camera to dinner - we'll find out tonight

Snack time. Leftover sweet potato pie and a double (triple) espresso. I've got no real plan for the week. We seem to be at one grocery store or another every day. I seem to be incapable of shopping for groceries with a list or shopping for the week in one shot. Tomorrow I need to run over to Oakland for work, hopefully I'll have time to make a stop in Rockridge and see what looks good at Ver Brugge and La Farrine. Dairy comes from Trader Joes. Cheese from 24th st cheese or the cheese board. Produce from either the Alameny farmers market or the Ferry Plaza farmers market. Meat from Drewes Bros, Bryans, Ver Brugge, or Tower Market. Bread comes from Tower, La Farrine, Acme, and Della Fattoria at the Farmers Market. We go down to Daly City once a month or so to safeway or albertsons for paper goods, bandaids, etc. I still haven't found a fish source I like, so I've been going fishing instead. We've got a small garden in the back yard, we grow all our herbs, apples, plums, and some of our veg. The winter garden is just getting going. Having read over where my ingredients come from it's no wonder I spend so much time shopping for groceries.

I'm originally from upstate NY, in the Hudson Valley. I moved to California after getting sick of shoveling snow. I haven't been back to the French Laundry in about a year. I used to go two or three times a year when I lived in Napa. My experience there has always been positive - I've had some incredible meals there and I proposed to my wife in the garden there before dinner one night.

I've been home roasting for years, I started with a counter top hot air roaster from sweet marias but I drink way too much coffee to roast 1/4 cup at a time so I built this roaster that does 1 pound batches. It's a pair of pencil cups, a clasp from a fence, and a cabinet hinge. Fill it with coffee, throw it on the rotisserie and set the grill on high, 20 minutes later in theory you've got a pound of roasted coffee. We've got a fuji apple tree in the yard so I had an apple as a snack while the coffee was roasting. Half way through, the grill ran out of gas. It's raining, I'm busy with work and so the coffee gets to finish roasting in the oven - the smoke alarm didn't seem too thrilled with this plan, but the coffee turned out fine. This is a batch of Sweet Maria's liquid amber.

I regularly (at least during late spring, summer and early fall) get away to a cabin that also has no electricity, and is 45 minutes from a paved road. Heaven on earth! We forage for grouse and blueberries. (Oh, and our place also has no running water.) Do tell about your favorite local bread, please! ← This cabin had running water and a propane tank to run the gas range and lanterns. We were thinking about camping for thanksgiving but most of our gear is light weight backpacking stuff - it'd be hard to roast a turkey on an msr whisperlight stove. I've got several favorite local breads. La farrine in rockridge makes my favorite baguette. Acme walnut bread is my favorite with cheese, their ciabatta is also excellent. Della Fattoria in Petaluma makes great round loaves, their campagne and rosemary meyer lemon bread are my favorites. The breads at Model Bakery in St Helena and at the Bouchon bakery in Yountville are also great, but I only get them when I'm in the north bay.

Lunch it is. Leftover braised shortribs, reduced braising liquid mixed in with the shredded meat and mixed with some demiglace for a sauce. A quick batch of pasta (65 grams white flour, 35 grams semolina, an egg, and some salt). And I'm not starving anymore. I like making ravioli with sauce inside, the only real hassle with having the sauce inside is that you need to toss the ravioli with something to keep it from sticking or drying out. My default choice would be browned butter, but it ends up looking like an oil slick on the plate once some of the sauce from the pasta gets out. Next time I make this dish I need to either reduce the liquid I'm tossing the ravioli in more or do a better job of draining the pasta - it ended up having more sauce on the pasta than in it. Some acme ciabatta bread soaked up all the extra sauce I roasted a batch of coffee this morning also, I need to grab the pictures off my camera - I'll post them soon.

Ritual is my favorite for espresso in the city, though some of the shots the Blue Bottle guys make at the Farmers market on the lever machines can be pretty incredible. If I'm over in the east bay this week I'll stop by the cheese board and see about espresso nearby.

So today, like all days when I'm not traveling starts with an espresso drink of some sort - latte today with a slice of meyer lemon tart (from the French Laundry cookbook). My has changed a little since my last foodblog, MsMelkor and I got married and moved to San Francisco about six months ago. Much has stayed the same - nearly everything we eat at home we make from scratch (both of us work from home). Later today I need to roast coffee for the week and do something with the leftovers in the fridge for lunch. We spent thanksgiving in Mendocino in a cabin with no electricity 45 minutes from the nearest paved road. Our trip in theory was to forage for mushrooms but the hour and a half road trip to the highway left us with only one half day to forage - we came home with a couple of pounds of porcini and chanterelles, enough for us to feed ourselves and 7 guests last night. The mushrooms are gone, but there's some leftover braised shortribs that will likely end up as much lunch. MsMelkor is off today through Wednesday night traveling for work so I'm fending for myself the next several meals. Monday after a long weekend is always hectic at work, so I'm off for now. I'll post again around lunch time.

The magic that fuels me every day.

Pacific Super on Alemany a mile or so down from the Farmers Market is a good alternative to 99 Ranch. The Daly City 99 Ranch is larger, but I don't think it's better. Kuk Jea in Daly City is the best Korean market in the area and it's right off the freeway. I'm also a big fan of the Alemany Farmers Market - though at the peak of summer, I prefer the Ferry Plaza.

I'd like to point out that in San Francisco a budget of $3k will cover going to Ikea, buying a few new cabinets and installing them yourself... If that's the budget the original poster was working with then it seems unlikely they'd be willing to part with $500 for design services and this topic never would have been started.

It'll work fine - it'll take longer than duck since the pieces are larger, but other than that there's nothing to it.

Grilled slices of bread topped with some aioli and anchovies is always good. They're also good on their own, with some oregano, chili flakes, salt, and pepper sprinkled on top. Mashed up in caesar salad is good. You can use them to make bagna cauda. Pasta with a quick sauce of anchovies, olive oil, chili flakes doesn't suck. Put them on top of home made pizza a minute or two before the pizza is done. I've almost always got a tray of them in the fridge. I've made them from scratch before but the store bought version had a better texture so I've been buying them since.

Eric Ripert is the chef at Le Bernardin.