eG Foodblog: mizducky - San Diego: A (Really!) Moveable Feast

[Susan in FL]

Wow. You are now receiving the greatest compliment that can come from me. I just read your entire blog so far. Read, as opposed to skimmed through, skipping parts that don't look so interesting and looking at pictures. Every word of yours is interesting and if my brain-fogged attention-deficient mind could stick with this for over an hour..... need I say more?!

I am so in love with San Diego. As you know Ellen, I fell hard as soon as my son moved to California for the Navy and I visited the first time. He's at Lemoore NAS and his girlfriend is at Miramar MCAS, so every time I've visited California so far, I've been to both places and several in between. We saw the New Year in in San Diego. That being less than a month ago, I didn't expect to get a visit back this soon. Your blog is taking me there.

I currently live in Clairemont Mesa, which for those of you not very familiar with San Diego is north of downtown, inland (east) a little ways from Pacific Beach, and just south of MCAS Miramar. It's also just west of Kearny Mesa, with its major agglomeration of (mostly) Asian restaurants and shops on and around Convoy Street. (I assume MCAS Miramar used to run convoys down that street, thus the name.)

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We might have been in your neck of the woods when we were there. Michael's girlfriend lives in a very nice apartment complex in an area I think called Spectrum Center...? I didn't get fully oriented while we were there, map-wise, but a lot of the street names and intersections you're mentioning sound familiar, which is cool! We spent two nights in a guest suite at her apartment complex and two nights in the Marriott at the Gaslamp District. Were we near you?

I want a New Toy (oh ay oh), to keep my head expanding (ta).

I want a New Toy (oh ay oh), nothing too demanding (ta).

--Lena Lovich (song originally written by Thomas Dolby)

I am now the proud owner of an Olympus FE-100, a basic little 4.0 megapixel jobbie that will be more than adequate for my relatively simple photographic needs.

I then took my new toy over to the aforementioned Convoy Street in search of lunch.

San Diego used to have an actual Chinatown, in the area now known as the Gaslamp District--back in the day, that whole area was known as the Stingaree and was basically the red-light district. But since then it's been all the way down and then back up as a gentrified tourist area, and all that remains of Chinatown are some lovingly restored buildings.......

It's so exciting that you're doing this while you are in the process of a move, AND you got a new camera!

There were some nice-to-look-at buildings in the area.

After a few more work-related errands, I'm now back home, and drinking some of this:

Pure cherry juice is the gouty carnivore's friend! I try to have some kind of real cherry product around at all times, because even with meds the little crystals try to gang up on me, and while I've cut my meat consumption radically I'm just not willing or able to go totally vegetarian.

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Really, pure cherry juice is the gouty carnivore's friend? I have a little bit of gout and Russ has a lot of gout. We really have not researched enough about the modifications we "should" make to our diets. We probably wouldn't follow them anyway, but when there is something to add rather than to take away, I'm all in favor of it.

And now, going from the sorta sublime to the fairly rediculous, here's what I'm drinking right now:

True confessions time: I drink this kind of diet swill by the gallon--almost literally. By doctor's orders, I'm supposed to drink a minimum of eight 8-ounce glasses of water a day and preferably more like twelve glasses--in other words, two quarts to three quarts daily. And I have the damnedest time keeping up with it, because I find just plain water ... boring. And somehow I never get around to making something healthy like herbal sun-tea, or even slicing up a damn lime to perk up all that water ... so my compromise is to buy these diet pops. They taste okay, and Von's is always putting them on sale. But don't let the pretty fruit pictures on the front fool you, these things are completely and totally artificial ("natural flavors" my Aunt Fanny!). Oh well. My kidneys may eventually start glowing in the dark, but at least they'll be *very* well irrigated.

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I drink a lot of Propel. I love the strawberry-kiwi, the peach, and the berry. But, it gets expensive when I drink as much of it as I do. Have you tried Propel, and if so do you have any idea what cheaper brand is close?

[racheld]

The pictures, the prose, the sights and sounds and smells---all these come through loud and clear. And so do the smiles and the heartbeat of your busy life. This is such a treat to look forward to, and with the time diff and your nocturnal habits, you keep it up longer into the evening...that's a bit of lagniappe to be savored.

I feel as if we've been zipped off to the tropics, Japan, semi-Sweden, and much of another place greeted with familiarity by so many, and with welcome newness by the rest of us. Quirky and fun...that's what this one is. I just re-read the whole thing, looking at all the pics anew, and it just dawned that you've cooked one pot of congee at home, and taken us on a rollercoaster of other cuisines and spices and markets and colors of so many foods and sights----what fun.

Big smile when I clicked on the menu and found "Vine Ripe Salmon":---only in California.

[mizducky]

Good morning, all! Or wait, I guess I should officially say "good afternoon" at this point. Yep, *so* not a morning person am I ...

I suppose it wouldn't be a totally true-to-life blog of my existence without doing some damage to the bod at some point. I woke up and discovered that my left knee was announcing it was officially on strike for the day. Nothing out of the usual, just being all owie, probably from testing IKEA mattresses a little too vigorously yesterday. So I am definitely going to play it real low-key today and try to stay off of my feet as much as I can manage. That still does not rule out either my cooking plans, or even a shopping jaunt. I usually drag a chair into the kitchen so I can sit while doing stuff like my mise en place, stirring long-simmering items, etc. And I have pretty well memorized which grocery stores in the immediate area have electric scooters--I'm already thinking of one or two ingredients I'll need to pick up for the evening's cooking projects.

Speaking of said projects: I truly hate to disappoint all of you who have submitted such lovely braised pork belly recipes, but my food-brain is still craving crispiness, so I think I'm going to go with roasting the piece o' piggy. I think I've sussed out a general method from the various recipes I've scanned on the web, and now just need to determine what flavor-direction I want to take the seasoning. (This is often how I cook, by the way--surveying a bunch of recipes and then hybridizing them. I almost never do a recipe "straight" as written, except if it's something like a yeast-raised bread, where the little yeast-beasts will get pissed off and die on ya if you don't treat them exactly right.)

But I do think I'll follow helenjp's suggestion to have fun with some kind of dipping sauce:

You could just grill the meat and eat it with a miso dip (3 tab ground sesame seeds (use black if you want it to look really evil), 2 tab miso (hatcho or dark red if you use black sesames, any type at all otherwise), 2 tab sake, 1 tab sugar, 1 tab mirin, 1 tsp - 1tab soy sauce depending on how salty the miso was).

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Lessee--I've got some red miso somewhere in the back of the fridge, and a variety of soy sauces. Would need to go pick up a fresh supply of sesame seeds--I'm assuming tahini won't really do here. Don't have sake or mirin on hand; I do have shaoxing wine and some inexpensive amontillado sherry. So I could either substitute like mad; pick up the recommended ingredients at the store; or perhaps keep the general idea of the dipping sauce and go some other direction with the flavoring based on what kind of flavor I rub into the meat itself.

[...](Remember, I still have those tomatoes and cucumbers I picked up at the OB Farmer's Market to do something with--not the ingredients one usually thinks of as a side dish for pork belly, but hey, who sez I have to play by the rules? )

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I could easily imagine a Cantonese dish that includes both sliced-up cucumbers and pork belly. It wouldn't surprise me if hzrt8w makes or at least knows of such a recipe.

Of course, you could instead use those vegetables in a salad...

Anyway, sleep well (which I wish I was doing at the moment...)

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Yikes, Pan, that was 4am your time when you posted this! Hope you did finally get to sleep okay. Yeah, what I'm thinking is some kind of chopped salad/pico de gallo kinda thang.

We might have been in your neck of the woods when we were there.  Michael's girlfriend lives in a very nice apartment complex in an area I think called Spectrum Center...?  I didn't get fully oriented while we were there, map-wise, but a lot of the street names and intersections you're mentioning sound familiar, which is cool!  We spent two nights in a guest suite at her apartment complex and two nights in the Marriott at the Gaslamp District.  Were we near you?

Yep, you were on the other side of Kearny Mesa from where I am. There's a whole bunch of corporate campuses and office parks tucked into that area--Lightwave Ave., the street on which Spectrum Center is located, is named after some company that I think does fiber-optic telecom or some such. And the photo of the big cubic Jack in the Box sign I posted earlier was taken in front of JITB's corporate headquarters, also in that area.

Really, pure cherry juice is the gouty carnivore's friend?  I have a little bit of gout and Russ has a lot of gout.  We really have not researched enough about the modifications we "should" make to our diets.  We probably wouldn't follow them anyway, but when there is something to add rather than to take away, I'm all in favor of it.

Totally really--it was even recommended to me with great enthusiasm by the pharmacist at my HMO, and right when I was picking up my first batch of prescribed gout medications too! I'm not sure exactly what property/constituent of cherries does the trick, but I've found that fresh cherries, dried cherries, and pure cherry juice all help stave off an acute gout attack when I start feeling that tell-tale tingle in my toes. For those of us who are dedicated carnivores, especially lovers of offal, gout is truly a royal pain (which is a bad joke at a couple of levels; gout was known in ancient times as a king's disease because in those days only royalty could afford to eat the extensively meat-and-booze-oriented diet that can precipitate gout in those genetically inclined to the disease). Here's a good in-depth overview of the disease, its causes, diagnosis, and typical modern medicine treatments. And this PDF file is one of the better and more detailed anti-gout diet recommendation sheets I've come across. Although when you read that sheet, you'll see why I don't stick very closely to its recommendations at all, unless I am in the midst of an acute episode--it basically puts a huge number of my favorite foods on the "avoid" list, and I'm sorry, that's a quality-of-life issue for me! So I work a series of compromises--I actually have a lot more meatless days in a given week than I'm showing you in my blog; the idea is that if I go meatless on some days, I can indulge with a bit more safety on other days, which seems to be working so far.

I drink a lot of Propel.  I love the strawberry-kiwi, the peach, and the berry.  But, it gets expensive when I drink as much of it as I do.  Have you tried Propel, and if so do you have any idea what cheaper brand is close?

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Y'know, I haven't really tried Propel or any of its kin--I have a distinct preference for carbonated beverages. I do have a deep fondness for flavored seltzer waters; Canada Dry and Schweppes (sp?) make good ones, though I miss the Talking Rain brand I used to get when I lived in Seattle.

[Behemoth]

...where I indulged in that iconic IKEA meal, the Swedish Meatball Manager's Special:

Heh. Methinks the chef needs a little brush-up course on his presentation skills.

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I love how that picture makes you believe that that dinner cost you 999,- dollars

Thanks for taking me to Ikea. I love their kitchenware department.. I can never leave it without buying something.

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You know, interestingly enough the meatballs are not the traditional IKEA meal in the rest of the world.

So, Klary, I assume they do the weird hot dogs in Netherlands too? My German was absolutely CRUSHED when we got past the checkout at IKEA chicago and there weren't any hot dog stands with the fried onion toppings. I think the US IKEA is going after more of a yuppie market than in Europe.

Having just googled it, this may well just be a German thing. It is a very specific sort of hot dog. Here is a link to a photo, for Ms Ducky:

link

We spent a lot of time in IKEA Munich last month. All I can say is thank god we had a good carpenter. Turns out our kitchen corners were 93 degrees...

Edited January 21, 2006 by Behemoth (log)

[mizducky]

Oh--one of the tomatoes from the OB Farmer's Market has already met its demise to make my brunch this morning ...

... topping a simple open-faced melted cheese sandwich. This is another of my lazy skinflint's breakfast dishes: the bread is one of the more granola-heady brands I see all the time at my local Von's, called Country Hearth--this variety is alleged to be stoneground wheat with hazelnuts, and it actually does have some impressively big bits of hazelnut embedded in each slice. The cheese is that supermarket cheddar again--I was unsure of the melting properties of the kashkavel, and besides I'm enjoying that cheese more just eating it au naturel (nice sheep-milky tang to it, interesting texture, just ever so slightly grainy).

Back to this here cheese sandwich: the only things I did to it were to first toast the bread, then layer on the other ingredients, sprinkle some kosher salt on the tomatoes, and then run the lot under the toaster-oven's broiler until the cheese got all melty. Simple but gooooood.

[mizducky]

You know, interestingly enough the meatballs are not the traditional IKEA meal in the rest of the world.

So, Klary, I assume they do the weird hot dogs in Netherlands too? My German was absolutely CRUSHED when we got past the checkout at IKEA chicago and there weren't any hot dog stands with the fried onion toppings. I think the US IKEA is going after more of a yuppie market than in Europe.

Having just googled it, this may well just be a German thing. It is a very specific sort of hot dog. Here is a link to a photo, for Ms Ducky:

link

We spent a lot of time in IKEA Munich last month. All I can say is thank god we had a good carpenter. Turns out our kitchen corners were 93 degrees...

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Interesting! I guess I hadn't really thought of how IKEA restaurants in other countries targeted their menus to different populations, though of course that makes perfect sense. I guess IKEA decided to focus on meatballs in the US because often the only Scandinavian foods most Americans have heard of are Swedish meatballs and lutefisk, and the lutefisk probably wouldn't go over all that well. (I myself have actually eaten lutefisk, at a Sons of Norway dinner no less, and not only did I live to tell the tale, but I actually rather liked the stuff. ) Now, Costco--there's where you go to get some mighty fine hot dogs in their cafes. Behemoth, I highly recommend grazing at Costco the next time you find yourself in the States--between the free food samples and the offerings at the cafe you can make a terrific lunch out of it.

And as to the peculiar charms of assembling IKEA furniture--heh. There's a reason why I'm going to be paying the extra fee to have somebody come and put the damn things together for me. I may be a skinflint, but I also value my sanity.

[Susan in FL]

And the photo of the big cubic Jack in the Box sign I posted earlier was taken in front of JITB's corporate headquarters, also in that area.

Yes! I went by that when I was out for one of my walk/runs while we were staying in Kathleen's complex! I recognized it upon second look at your photo of it. ...And across the road from it is something like the National Institute of Exercise building or the American Council on Exercise or some such thing that shamed me into walking/running a bit further. I started daydreaming that I was doing research for them, but the daydream soon turned into doing research for Jack in the Box.

Like you, I am one of the easily amused, and I am getting such a kick out of knowing a little of the area you're talking about!

Another thing we have in common: We love those open face melted tomato and cheese sandwiches, only we put the cheese on top. It does get the toast a little soggy, but I love the cheese to get all gooey in with the tomatoes.

I've never been in an IKEA, so I enjoyed that; and I've never had pork belly, so I'm looking forward to that.

Take it easy... I was having sympathy exhaustion for you just reading about all your travels during the past few days.

[Susan in FL]

Oh waitaminute... Could we have gone into an IKEA when we were in Denmark... I just don't remember it being that big, if we did, but I do remember wonderful kitchen stuff wherever it was.

[Swisskaese]

You know, interestingly enough the meatballs are not the traditional IKEA meal in the rest of the world.

So, Klary, I assume they do the weird hot dogs in Netherlands too? My German was absolutely CRUSHED when we got past the checkout at IKEA chicago and there weren't any hot dog stands with the fried onion toppings. I think the US IKEA is going after more of a yuppie market than in Europe.

Having just googled it, this may well just be a German thing. It is a very specific sort of hot dog. Here is a link to a photo, for Ms Ducky:

link

We spent a lot of time in IKEA Munich last month. All I can say is thank god we had a good carpenter. Turns out our kitchen corners were 93 degrees...

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They have hot dogs and meatballs at the Ikea in Israel and they also had them at the Ikea in Switzerland.

[Behemoth]

Oh waitaminute...  Could we have gone into an IKEA when we were in Denmark...  I just don't remember it being that big, if we did, but I do remember wonderful kitchen stuff wherever it was.

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It would be pretty obvious to you if you were there. They are almost always giant blue and yellow (swedish flag) warehouses just outside of city limits. You walk through a bunch of showrooms and all the furniture has funny names. It is kind of a day trip as it takes ages to get through the thing, plus I always seem to get stuck in the kitchen area...

Actually there was a german website I saw once where they discussed the IKEA naming system. eg, the lamps always have boy names, bookshelves have girl names or whatever.

[maggiethecat]

Ducky, your open-faced cheese sandwich was a standard Saturday lunch when I was growing up. We kids loved it, and I do still. My mother called it a "Cheese Dream." When she used crumpets instead of bread, and added bacon it was a "Cheese Dream Supreme."

IKEAs in Chicagoland have the restaurant with the meatballs and smoked salmon and such, but also a snack bar that sells hotdogs and frozen yoghurt.

[Susan in FL]

Oh, OK, thanks. I'm thinking then that I did not go into an IKEA. ( )

[Behemoth]

It's a very particular sort of hot dog. I think it is supposed to be danish. Long skinny with a snap but rather bland. Chicago just has regular american hot dogs.

Sorry, this really isn't that interesting...just something we were amused by at the time. Oh, BTW, the Philly IKEA (the old one in the burbs) didn't have hot dogs, but always had these incredible cinnamon rolls near the exit. Maybe they added the hot dogs later, haven't been to the new one.

Edited January 21, 2006 by Behemoth (log)

[mizducky]

Oh waitaminute...  Could we have gone into an IKEA when we were in Denmark...  I just don't remember it being that big, if we did, but I do remember wonderful kitchen stuff wherever it was.

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It would be pretty obvious to you if you were there. They are almost always giant blue and yellow (swedish flag) warehouses just outside of city limits. You walk through a bunch of showrooms and all the furniture has funny names. It is kind of a day trip as it takes ages to get through the thing, plus I always seem to get stuck in the kitchen area...

Actually there was a german website I saw once where they discussed the IKEA naming system. eg, the lamps always have boy names, bookshelves have girl names or whatever.

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Heheheh ... Fearless Housemate and his girlfriend jokingly say they refuse to go into IKEA ever again, because they wanted out about halfway through and couldn't figure out how to get off the showroom track and to an exit. Every time they'd get "helpful" directions on the shortcut out of the maze from an employee, they'd find themselves not at an exit but back at the start of the maze. Girlfriend said it was just like the movie Labyrinth. And see my comment about IKEA making me feel like I'm on one of those Disneyland rides where the cart whisks you past tableaux full of cheerfully singing animatronic critters.

And I always wondered about the IKEA product naming system. While some of them do seem to be names, some--at least in the US--seem to be odd transliterations of English words. For instance, there was a sofa-bed I was looking at the other day named BEDDINGE--okay, is this actually a Swedish person-name, and thus a cute pun, or did they just make this one up?

[Behemoth]

By the miracle of google:

IKEA NAMES

An english website with a link to the original german article in STERN magazine, and a rough translation. Enjoy!

[Pam R]

though I miss the Talking Rain brand I used to get when I lived in Seattle.

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I have become a Talking Rain aficionado in the last month. I found some at Target in North Dakota and Sam's Club - then got back home to find them at Costco (called Ice something in the club stores). If they have them here, they're sure to have them down your way.

Greatly enjoying your blog - take it easy, feel better and blog on!

[Zucchini Mama]

I too was up at 4 AM reading your blog. I guess it was insomnia night for eGulleters. It was very nice to have something fun to do at that time in the morning! Okay, I see two potential subjects for spoken word pieces: 1)You doing the gravy demo in your college dorm and 2)You tripping the light fantastic through Ikea, ending in a spagettinga and meat ballinge feastjes. What do you think?

Zuke

[dockhl]

Oh--one of the tomatoes from the OB Farmer's Market has already met its demise to make my brunch this morning ...

... topping a simple open-faced melted cheese sandwich. This is another of my lazy skinflint's breakfast dishes: the bread is one of the more granola-heady brands I see all the time at my local Von's, called Country Hearth--this variety is alleged to be stoneground wheat with hazelnuts, and it actually does have some impressively big bits of hazelnut embedded in each slice. The cheese is that supermarket cheddar again--I was unsure of the melting properties of the kashkavel, and besides I'm enjoying that cheese more just eating it au naturel (nice sheep-milky tang to it, interesting texture, just ever so slightly grainy).

Back to this here cheese sandwich: the only things I did to it were to first toast the bread, then layer on the other ingredients, sprinkle some kosher salt on the tomatoes, and then run the lot under the toaster-oven's broiler until the cheese got all melty. Simple but gooooood.

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Miz Ducky~

I've had exactly that same breakfast......down to the bread ! Yum.

BTW, I used to get the Talking Rain at the Costco in C'bad. Have they stopped carrying since I left?

[Pan]

[...](Remember, I still have those tomatoes and cucumbers I picked up at the OB Farmer's Market to do something with--not the ingredients one usually thinks of as a side dish for pork belly, but hey, who sez I have to play by the rules? )

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I could easily imagine a Cantonese dish that includes both sliced-up cucumbers and pork belly. It wouldn't surprise me if hzrt8w makes or at least knows of such a recipe.

Of course, you could instead use those vegetables in a salad...

Anyway, sleep well (which I wish I was doing at the moment...)

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Yikes, Pan, that was 4am your time when you posted this! Hope you did finally get to sleep okay.[...]

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I was still digesting my supper. I love those spicy beef tendons at Grand Sichuan, but I have to keep in the front of my mind that they really don't love me. In the end, I suppose I got about 45 minutes of sleep in the morning before teaching from 9 to 3 with an hour's break for lunch. Saturdays are often like that for me, and I usually manage to teach well, anyway. And Sunday is pretty much a day off, so I sleep in.

Getting back to my stomach, it tends to have trouble with really high-fat things like pork belly. Are you also Miz Iron Stomach, or do you have to do anything to counteract the effects of the fat?

[mizducky]

though I miss the Talking Rain brand I used to get when I lived in Seattle.

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I have become a Talking Rain aficionado in the last month. I found some at Target in North Dakota and Sam's Club - then got back home to find them at Costco (called Ice something in the club stores). If they have them here, they're sure to have them down your way.

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Okay, two mentions now to look for Talking Rain at Costco. And now I'm going "D'OH!" -- of course Costco would have it, their headquarters are in the Seattle area, after all. So now I have a reason to renew my long-lapsed Costco membership so that I can pick up this golder elixer.

Okay, I see two potential subjects for spoken word pieces: 1)You doing the gravy demo in your college dorm and 2)You tripping the light fantastic through Ikea, ending in a spagettinga and meat ballinge feastjes. What do you think?

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Yeah--both those ideas have definite possibilities! I am reminded of a wonderful moment towards the beginning of the one-woman play "The Belle of Amhearst," in which Emily Dickinson explains her celebrated brown bread recipe--as this is a formula for making a bazillion loaves all at once, the quantities are huge, and the image this evokes of this little (seemingly) mild-mannered spinster-woman wrestling with this huge vat of raisin-and-molasses goodness made the whole audience break out in a fit of giggles. If I can get that kind of giggle-fit out of people with gravy or meatballs, I'd count the piece a definite success.

Yikes, Pan, that was 4am your time when you posted this! Hope you did finally get to sleep okay.

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I was still digesting my supper. I love those spicy beef tendons at Grand Sichuan, but I have to keep in the front of my mind that they really don't love me. In the end, I suppose I got about 45 minutes of sleep in the morning before teaching from 9 to 3 with an hour's break for lunch. Saturdays are often like that for me, and I usually manage to teach well, anyway. And Sunday is pretty much a day off, so I sleep in.

Getting back to my stomach, it tends to have trouble with really high-fat things like pork belly. Are you also Miz Iron Stomach, or do you have to do anything to counteract the effects of the fat?

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Alas, while I used to have a cast-iron stomach, that too seems to have deteriorated as I proceeded through my forties, culminating in my first GERD attack about five years ago. In fact, the main reason I pretty much gave up coffee was it was majorly aggravating the situation. Fortunately, fatty foods per se don't seem to give me a lot of trouble, but spicy foods unfortunately do--which is a damn shame, because I adore spicy food, used to be a total fire-eater in my 20s, and I just can't get away with that the way I used to. So I just ration my indulgences sparingly, take my prescription proton-blocker med religiously, and keep a good supply of Maalox and Tums on hand for when I stray over the line. It's helped a lot that I've learned a whole lot more about how to cook with chiles--in fact, you'll see in a little while how I modulate the heat in a fresh chile so I get the flavor and lose a bunch of the heat.

Okay--I just returned from a semi-frustrating supermarket run--had to hit three different places to find a market whose electric scooters were (a) not all in use by other customers, or (b) not sitting there broken down or un-charged. But the third time was the charm, and now I'm going to start cooking (and documenting) dinner so I hopefully don't wind up eating at midnight. Feel free to keep those comments coming, and I'll keep checking back as things progress.

[christine007]

mizducky, your cheese tomato toasts have been a favorite in my family for years.. so good!

Thanks for sharing your amazing blog, and those awesome sandwhiches!

[Kouign Aman]

MizDucky, what fun it was, to follow your day yesterday. I really enjoy your use of language as well as your POV. I hope your pork belly crisped nicely and your knee is calling a truce.

I like those IKEA meatballs too. Panda Country, exactly, except for the House Special Shrimp. That recipe may be americanized, but its fabulous. It is head and shoulders above the rest of their food. Mildly spicy and crispy.

Three farmer's markets I know of:

- Pacific Beach, at that foodcourt/mall on Mission, between Grand and Pacific Beach Drive. Havent been in years. Used to have good flowers and herbs. One day a week, not sure if Sat or Sun

- Poway, on Midland, adjacent to Old Poway Park. A bit of a schlep from Clairemont, but a straight shot up 15 from AG area. It runs from 8- ? (after 11 anyway) on Saturdays

Both of these are very small and are set up in a parking lot.

- down town San Diego, in a huge warehouse bld. Cant begin to describe where. :embarrassed:

Those public-access scooters really do take a beating from all the inexperienced drivers/riders. I wonder how hard it is to transport them by car?

New digs - if you head up Zion past the Vons, at the top of the hill is a whole new assortment of places to eat. Never got that far. Maybe on your next blog you will tell me all the wonders I missed.

Khyber Pass, not cheap. Absolutely delish. Parking is a major pain. Food Court at Sorrento Towers (805, Miramesa Blvd exit, first left and first left again) has a decent Afghani "stand" which is quite inexpensive. Lots of inexpensive Ethiopian places around now, most not too far away (south of the 8).

Ok, I'll shut up now. Probably should have half a post ago . Ciao, cant wait to hear how dinner worked out. <is there a lip-licking icon?>

[mizducky]

Everywhere there's lots of piggies

Living piggy lives

You can see them out for dinner

With their piggy wives

Clutching forks and knives to eat their bacon.

--George Harrison, "Piggies", from The Beatles (a.k.a. "The White Album")

As a duckling who loves to eat duck, I have an especial appreciation of the metaphoric cannibalism in the above lyric.

Whenever you try out a new recipe, or worse, start improvising from recipes, it's a bit of an experiment and a gamble. When you cook when you're a little on the tired side, as I am, the stakes get a little higher. This is all by way of saying you'll be witnesses as to whether I manage to screw this up or come out sailing. I type this because I just now realized, as I'm sitting here with the pork in the oven, that I left out a step or two in the process I was following. Oh well--I think this is probably going to work okay anyway. But we'll all see that together, now won't we?

Okay, so what I've been doing for the past hour or so:

Here's my chunk of pork belly: 2.2 pounds, could have a bit more fat layers to it but this will do, skin-on ... and yes, that is a nipple protruding from the skin at the right. Hey, they're mammals, y'know? I vaguely recall reading that the Chinese, in their usual poetic way, call a piece of pork belly that has five nipples on it Five Blossom Pork or some such. Certainly does sound less ... clinical that way, huh?

The method I wound up going with is actually pretty darned simple, which is a good fit with my energy level at this point. First you pour a potful of boiling water over the pork skin--I put the meat skin-side up in a colander and poured away. Then you rub the skin with a tablespoon of salt and leave it to sit uncovered for 45 minutes. (Editorial aside: I had originally mistyped "20 minutes" here--I indeed let the salted pork stand for 45 minutes.) My understanding is that these steps help make the skin crisp up.

Then ... well, you're supposed to score the skin, and poke several holes in it with a skewer. But, as Steve Martin used to say, I forgot!

Moving right along, the next step is to apply a rub of 1 tablespoon soy sauce and 1 teaspoon five-spice powder to the meat side of the piece of pork belly. I decided to augment this rub with a big clove of garlic, minced fine:

The meat gets covered in plastic wrap to sit and marinate for an hour.

Meanwhile I got on with making my pico de gallo-esque chopped salad. First, a single jalapeno, cleaned of all seeds and white fibrous bits--that's where the bulk of the heat resides:

Then a couple big cloves of garlic, minced, and three scallions, sliced:

Hmmmm ... the rest of that series of photos didn't upload for some reason. Excuse me while I attend to this ...

Edited January 22, 2006 by mizducky (log)

[mizducky]

Okay, back again. Also took the opportunity to check on the belly in the oven: the skin seems to be crisping up nicely, and the entirety of it appears to be cooking okay too. I also started a potful of rice cooking--with any luck they'll finish cooking at about the same time.

Back to the chopped salad:

The cucumbers from the OB farmer's market were incredibly yummy--best cukes I've tasted in awhile. The skins were clean and unwaxed, and I happen to like the skins, so I cubed 'em skin and all:

At the last minute I decided the remaining OB farmer's market tomato was better off being kept as a slicer (possibly for another breakfast), so instead I cubed three Roma tomatoes I'd bought right before the blog started and chucked those in:

Then a bunch of cilantro, minced (including the stems, which I like), the juice of a couple of limes, a sprinking of salt and a glug of olive oil, and mix well:

I covered it and put it into the fridge to mellow together a bit.

And now we're just waiting on the piggy, which may well be done in another 15 minutes or so.

[mizducky]

The belly has spent 20 minutes at 450 deg. F, followed by 50 minutes at 400 deg F -- actually that latter was more like 380 deg F according to my oven thermometer, but with this Heisenberg oven (any temp adjustment sends the internal temperature careening off in some other unpredictable direction), I count a 20 degree difference as close enough for folk music.

Before and after photos:

The belly just before going into the oven:

Just after coming out of the oven:

Notice how much shrinkage happened. Also notice that I got most, but not all, of the skin to crisp up. No doubt it would have done better if I had remembered that bit about slashing the skin so the fat layer below could have percolated. I probably could have also run it under the broiler for a few minutes to force the crisping ... but it's getting on towards 10pm here, and I'm getting *hungry*. So--a learning experience for next time

The belly is now resting (and pining for the fjords? Sorry, couldn't resist--a misspent youth watching way too much Monty Python). Soon will come plating, and devouring!