Ploafmaster General

Looks like you'll still be able to order pints in merry-old England. That's good, because "Gimme a half-litre of lager" doesn't exactly roll of the tongue.

Okay, so Mugs tipped me off that "sushi" doesn't really mean, "with rice." I still like the name I've chosen for my dish, and it's stuck now, since my creation is a reality!

Tonight I made four rolls, and I deviated a little from my master plan, but I wanted to make sure it would actually work first. I could make a few tweaks in the future, and I may have a serious dish on my hands with endless possibilities! Anyway, check the video below, and see the final product:
http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=287675&server=vimeo.com&fullscreen=1&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=1&color=00ADEF

Con Riso from ploafmaster and Vimeo.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention what it really tasted like :-)

The asparagus really balanced out the sausage, and both blended well with the risotto. I'm thinking of making sauces to go with future versions, such as a balsamic reduction and a white sauce. I may even sprinkle some toasted fresh bread crumbs on top. There really are so many directions I can go with this - I'm pretty psyched about it.

Alright. I can't stand Rachael Ray. It drives me nuts to hear her say, "sammies" and "EEE-VEE-OH-OH," and I want to wretch every time she laughs. I avoid her show as best I can, and would rather watch commercials on another channel than suffer through the last two minutes of her show while waiting for Good Eats to come on.

Last night, however, I came to respect the self-described, "cook, not a chef," a little bit.

Valerie and I had our friends Lindsay, Rob, and their little baby over for dinner last night, and in preparing, I told Valerie to find a recipe for a chicken dish. Where did she turn? A gift she received from a relative - Rachael Ray's 30-Minute Meals 2. The dish was supposed to be grilled, but worked just fine on the stove top, and involved chicken with an absolutely delicious honey mustard glaze (and I don't like mustard!) composed of apple cider vinegar, curry powder, freshly ground allspice, some red onions, and some brown sugar. Oh boy, was it juicy and delicious.

So while I still have no intention of ever subjecting myself to her television programming, I'm willing to ease up a little bit and try more of her recipes (for those few occasions when I cook from a recipe).

I never thought I'd ever do this. Call it peer pressure, call it a moment of weakness. Call it whatever.

After a modest meal at Galaxy Diner in Carytown, I shared some Deep Fried Oreos with some compatriots.

And they were totally worth it.

It was about five o'clock late yesterday afternoon when one of my best friends, Jake, arrived at my house with his girlfriend to watch a movie with Valerie and I. We watched Blood Diamond, a heart-wrenching story which revolves around illicit diamond trade during Sierra Leone's civil war, which was quite a good movie (and four out of five stars in my book).

By the time the movie was finished, however, it was near eight o'clock in the evening, and none of us had eaten dinner. I didn't really feel like cooking that late, so I suggested the four of us all go out to eat. Valerie, ever practical, didn't want to go out and spend more money at a restaurant when we'd already eaten out quite a bit during the weekend, but my suggestion won out (this time). We decided to try our luck with the ever-crowded Kitchen 64, even as the darkling sky threatened a storm outside.

As soon as we stepped out of the car I knew I'd made a fantastic decision because there, on the patio waiting for a table, were our friends Nikki and Joel, and Kevin and Tiffany. We hadn't seen these two fine couples in several months so we happily sat down with them after putting in my name for a table of our own.

The sky gave us a drizzle as we started to chat, and as that drizzle turned into rain-in-earnest, our four friends were called in to their table. Content with our serendipitous encounter, our original party continued to chat it up.

Not five minutes later, however, Joel popped his head back out of the door back on to the patio and told us to come in and squeeze into the huge booth they had acquired, and to our joy, our party of four became an octet. What followed was a fine couple of hours of reminiscence, food, wine, the news of Nikki and Joel's impending parenthood, and plenty of crowd noise in this young Northside hot spot.

We said our extended good-byes afterwards, as friends often do, varying our farewells a little after just one more topic of conversation, lingering in the parking lot during a break in the rain storm. Finally we parted ways, returning to our separate places of residence, all attempting to mentally forestall the work week that lay ahead.

I just returned from a fine evening at Penny Lane Pub with my wife. Terry O'Neill's fine establishment is a Richmond landmark in my book, and represents the closest thing to a genuine English pub in our fair city (and indeed, one of a few real pubs in the area in general).

I've loved this place since I was old enough to drink and it was located on 8th street between Grace and Broad. Now, on East Franklin, Penny Lane is an easy stand-by when I want a tall pint or a well mixed drink in an environment that allows me to sit and hear myself think. While I wouldn't quite recommend the place for dinner (other than the tasty Cornish pasties), the drinks are more than reasonable, even from the top shelf. Best of all, the atmosphere is benign enough that even when Val and I have little ones running around we can still frequent the place; the traditional pub environment is open to families as well as tipplers.

So after making my own cannelloni from scratch, I was struck with a fascinating idea for a new dish based on several separate Italian components, but fashioned in a wholly unorthodox manner.

First, I'll create spinach pasta (the nice green sort) in sheets and roll it out to it's absolute thinnest, but I won't cook it (yet). Next, I'll cook risotto, probably with nothing more than some cream, white pepper, and some grated Parmesan cheese added to the typical preparation. Finally, I'll cook some spicy Italian sausage and cut it into thin strips. Perhaps I'll roast some asparagus for good measure.

Then I'll spread the rice over sheets of pasta, and place strips of sausage and asparagus across the rice, and I'll roll it up and steam it, slicing the end result into six neat pieces, much like makizushi. This is where my name for the dish comes in: Con Riso, the Italian phrase meaning, "with rice" much like the Japanese word "sushi."

I still have to finalize some of the details, and determine which flavors will really work well together. I'm also hoping that steaming the roll for a short time will be enough to make the pasta tender but not enough to turn the filling in to goop.

So here we go - uncharted culinary territory here! Unless somebody else has already done this...?

I don't like to brag, but tonight I think I've made myself quite proud.

I just consumed my own home-made cannelloni pasta filled with my own home-made Bolognese sauce and smothered in my own home-made beciamela sauce.

Now I have to say, before I continue, that most folks outside of Italy don't quite get what Bolognese sauce is supposed to be. Here in America, particularly, "Bolognese" typically refers to tomato sauce with meat, like ground beef. True Bolognese sauce, as I discovered in Italy, is still a meat sauce. Except it's a sauce made almost entirely of meat. I took veal, pork, pancetta (that's Italian style bacon), and a soffritto of onion, carrots, celery, and garlic, and I cooked it all for about four hours. This resulted in a tasty, fine-grained ground meat sauce that formed the filling to my cannelloni.

The cannelloni itself, for the unfamiliar, are pasta tubes. The dish with the same name is essentially a meat-filled version of manicotti. Now I actually made the pasta from scratch as well. It's super easy, super cheap, and ever since my first home-made pasta experience, it's difficult to buy the dried stuff at the grocery store.

Finally, I made a home-made besciamella sauce which is the Italian version of the French "mother sauce" called a bechamel. This sauce follows a nice 5-4-3-2-1 ingredients list: 5 tablespoons of butter, 4 tablespoons of flour, 3 cups of milk, 2 teaspoons of salt, and 1 healthy pinch of freshly ground nutmeg. While I heated the milk in one pot, I created a roux with the butter and flour. After cooking out the raw flour flavor, I added the simmering milk a little at a time to the roux and kept heating until the sauce was a nice thick consistency. I finished it up with the salt and nutmeg.

I piped the Bolognese onto blanched squares of my fresh pasta and rolled them up, placing each one onto a thin bed of tomato sauce in a baking dish. I covered everything with the besciamella and baked it in the oven for the better part of an hour.

Okay, after all that build up...it is SOOOOOOO good :-) So good that Jake would be cracking up at the sight of me shaking my hand in the air.

Oh yeah...and I have lots of leftovers...

Whole Foods is finally coming to Richmond!

Well, Short Pump, really. No word yet on when it's opening, but I can bet securely that it'll be in all that new development across the street from Best Buy. I'm pretty jazzed about this - even though it's even farther from my house than Fresh Market, it's going to be WAY larger and should carry quite a wide range of traditional and hard-to-find ingredients.

My hope is that it will also drive prices down a tad at these upmarket food stores since it will be competing somewhat with Tom Leonard's, and directly with Fresh Market and Joe's Market.

Maybe we'll get a Wegmans in the future? I've heard good things about those joints...but that's probably just wishful thinking for this foodie :-)

I think if I knew I was going to die tomorrow, I'd eat this today:
[youtube [www.youtube.com/watch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfbTO0GlONU&w=425&h=350])

Oi - today for the first time (I think) I ate Thai food.

I met my buddy Patrick and many of his cohorts at Thai Diner in the West End of Richmond. I don't know if it's really authentic Thai food or some Americanized approximation, but I do know that I enjoyed item R14 on the menu - "Amazing Thai" (that's really what it's called!) with Pork, peanut sauce, vegetables (all of which I like, except for the mini corn), and white rice. I opted for "American Hot" as far as the spice level was concerned, and boy was it intense. The zing of those chilis lingered in my mouth long after I returned to the office. Perhaps next time I'll be daring enough to try the "Thai Hot."

Tonight I dined at Akida in the Fan district of Richmond. Some awesome sushi indeed.

This place was TINY. Maybe 20 people could comfortably eat here, but it'd be cramped and noisy if that happened. Luckily, showing up at 6 pm on a Thursday night meant we were finishing up just as business started to pick up. But you don't care about the crowd, I suppose.

The food...wow. I supped with my hombres Dave and Nate. Dave had ordered an appetizer of steamed dumplings which appeared to be filled with a mixture of chicken and at least scallions, I believe. They were surprisingly light, and while I wasn't a fan of the accompanying dipping sauce, the fellas seemed to enjoy it. Nate ordered the seafood udon which turned out to be a gigantic bowl filled with a colorful and appetizing mixture of broth, noodles, vegetables and sundry types of seafood ranging from clams to salmon. I believe there was even a whole egg that'd been dropped in, poached by the soup itself.

Dave and I each ordered two rolls. We both ordered one of the specials off the board called a Dragon Phoenix Roll which consisted of a California-roll style (rice on the outside) maki roll with spicy salmon inside, spicy tuna on top, and crispy tempura flake on top of it all. This roll had that delightful sort of spiciness that I enjoy so much where it builds slowly on your tongue without overwhelming the taste buds, and was easily my favorite roll of the evening. My second roll was the spider roll - a traditional maki roll containing tempura-fried soft shell crab and a little cucumber, topped with some eel sauce. Each piece actually had a note of sweetness at first, balanced by the saline eel sauce. Quite good. Dave's second roll was the eel roll, containing eel, cucumber, and topped of course with eel sauce. This was also good and quite mild.

I finished off my meal with a piece of tuna nigiri. The fish was delicious and fresh - perhaps a bit too thickly-sliced, and a little too much rice, but still quite tasty.

The restaurant itself, while small, was just my kind of place. A bit dive-ish on the outside, but cozy inside with high ceilings and the expected Japanese decor. The table service was quite nice, actually, consisting of more substantial chopsticks instead of the cheap bamboo snap-apart variety. Pretty dishes for the soy sauce, appetizers, and sushi complemented the excellently presented food.

Ultimately I was glad to find a good sushi place so close to my house. This location is the original of two Akida restaurants in Richmond, and is situated on Robinson between Grace and Broad Streets.

Today Val and I are heading to the Lebanese Food Festival at a Maronite Catholic Church in the West End.

I hope to have more details afterwards, and I sure as heck hope the food is good :-)

UPDATE:
Meh. It was alright - if you're a big fan of Mediterranean food other than the Italian variety, you'd probably really dig the food. Standard fare like shwarma, kabob, falafel, etc. was present, and the desserts as well. Those tasty pastries were pretty good, though - especially the macaroon and baklava.

I don't post often about food, and my few posts have spanned the full range of culinary quality - from a sandwich at 821 Cafe, to the fine dining of 1 North Belmont.

Today, though, I have to opine about Wawa and their quality eats. Yes, Wawa is a convenience store, but man. Their food is a huge step up from their immediate competitor, Sheetz. Wawa eschews variety for quality, limiting it's menu to an assortment of sandwiches and subs, made fresh to order. They use good bread, real cold cuts, and fresh toppings. I'd have to say that the toasted chicken Philly sub has become one of my favorite subs in town.

The side items make the whole meal better, however. Wawa offers up a huge variety of snackable items such as apple slices with caramel or peanut butter, yogurt, fresh fruit cups, or pepperoni slices with cheese cubes and crackers.

It's fair to say that I've had too many meals at Wawa over the past few months, but I've enjoyed every one of them.

Score! I put 65 cents into the vending machine at work for some Junior Mints.

The box dropped, the auger kept spinning...

Another box dropped! The machine then tells me that I still have 65 cents and should make another selection! I figured, what the heck, I'll try for two more boxes of Junior Mints! It tells me to pick something else, however, so I opt for some Starburst...only one pack this time :-)

As much as I prefer the local cafe, I just read an interesting memo from Starbucks' chairman Howard Schultz lamenting the loss of his company's "soul" over the years.

The memo, and the article in Slate in which I read it, are worth a look.

Valerie is zonked out in bed, but I can't go to be right after a big meal, so I don't feel bad staying up to write this post on Valentine's Day.

Tonight Val and I had an 8:30 reservation for dinner at 1 North Belmont in the Museum District of Richmond. WOW.

This was one of the best dining experiences I've yet had in my short quarter century, and as I really do mean "experience" I'll start with the service. One word sums up the staff, and that is attentive. I felt as if my wife and I were guests of the whole crew, each of whom made sure we were not without cocktail, bread, or water. The timing was perfect, neither rushing us through courses nor waiting too long to check on us. One gentleman in particular, Terry, was absolutely friendly without being intrusive while the bar tender was a master of his craft, personally delivering his alcoholic alchemy to our table.

And the drinks! We didn't have many, but each of Val's two Cosmos (with Grey Goose) was consistently perfect, while my Tanquaray No. Ten and Tonic was expertly mixed.

But we didn't choose this restaurant for the service and mixology. Chef/proprietor Frits Huntjens crafts a frequently changing selection of impressive appetizers and entrées. Valerie and I both started out with the Bisque aux Fruits de Mer - seafood bisque. Our bowls were brought to our tables nearly empty at first. In each was placed a piece of jumbo lump crab meat, a shelled and deveined shrimp, fresh chopped tarragon, a drizzle of cream, and a small piece of cheese, I believe. A waiter then came to our table with a serving dish full of the bisque and ladled two generous scoops into each of our bowls. A few drizzles of Pernod were added to each bowl, and what a difference it made! I've had my share of bisque, but the liqueur really set off the expertly blended flavors of the lobster, shrimp, and crab.

Next came the beautifully presented main courses. Valerie chose the bacon-wrapped beef tenderloin which included a potato croquette and some wonderfully decorative and culinarily complimentary vegetables. I ordered the tuna.

Pardon me while I gush.

My amazing dinner consisted of pan-seared sashimi-grade Ahi tuna split by an asiago cheese crostini (what essentially looked like a rough-edged potato chip, but all broiled cheese) and served on a bed of creamy saffron risotto. To the side were some delicious roasted string beans and young carrots. Surrounding the fish was what really made my dinner, however - a ginger-infused beurre blanc sauce. Oh my. The tuna was fine on it's own, but almost demanded to be dipped into this perfect creamy compliment. It's easy to have too strong a ginger flavor present, but the balance was expert. Rarely has tuna tasted so incredible.

I could not, however, stop at dinner. I needed dessert. Valerie was mostly full at this point, but tasted some of my chocolate mouse. The dish was served in an edible chocolate cylinder with raspberry coulis drizzled across the plate. Amazingly fresh berries and freshly whipped cream joined the confection on the plate.

Were I a richer man, I would surely be a regular of this fine establishment rather than a once-a-year special occasion diner. I'm always tempted to experiment with the more adventurous luxury foods such as fois gras or sweetbreads, but at these prices my proletarian paycheck forces me to stick to the foods I'm confident I'll enjoy. But oh my, did I enjoy this.

Cheers, and Happy Valentine's Day, two minutes before midnight!
Daniel

...and funnier than many stand-up comedians. Guest-writing on Michael Ruhlman's blog, Bourdain pretty much nails down how I feel about the Food Network these days - and even shares many of my opinions about their cadre of stars.

I do believe I'll be scouring Da Webs for more of his writing. I have to force myself to stifle my laughter whenever I come across any of it.

Today I decided that I wanted sushi for lunch. Now I've eaten sushi before, but only once, and at a dedicated sushi restaurant. Today I was at Ukrop's - the Richmond area super market chain.

I really wanted something with tuna, because I know I like that raw. I was hoping to try something with avocado since I'd only barely tasted some with a piece of Dave's sushi the first time I went down this road. There were only a few that had avocado, but every piece had it so I decided against it in case I didn't like it. As for the tuna...well...the closest I got was half tuna, half salmon. I grabbed my chopsticks and a little cup for my soy sauce, and went to pay and eat.

Halfway through, I realized...there was not enough soy sauce. There were no more packets when I grabbed my food, so I had to deal with the single, undersized packet I had. I pretty much ran out after about two thirds of my food. No big deal, I thought, and I plugged on.

A plain tuna roll is pretty freakin' bland without soy sauce.

For realz. I still want to have sushi again. In fact, I may grab some this evening. But wow, I'm gonna make sure I have plenty of soy sauce this time.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Beer! I finally started enjoying beer a few years ago, and since then I've always enjoyed trying out new ales and lagers at such fine establishments as Capital Ale House, and well, anywhere in Prague :-)

Though much of what's on Wikipedia is of dubious accuracy, I found their entry on beer to be exceptionally informative. Containing links to more info, as well as a thorough categorization or brew types, the entry was an easy entry point into further beer nerdery.

My parents are truly lucky. Nestled in the middle-of-nowhere town of Keysville, VA, they have access to pizza and Italian food that's hard to beat until you travel north of the Mason-Dixon Line. Pino's Pizza serves up some of the finest pie outside of New Jersey, and certainly better than most anything I can find in Richmond. I have to drive at least 15 minutes to find passable fare while my country-dwelling parents are about a mile from a treat.

I gathered new appreciation for the joint today, however, when Val and I took my mom and step-dad to Pino's for lunch in celebration of Mom's birthday. See, we used to get pizza there almost every Friday evening when I lived at home, and Mom and Paulie continued that tradition even after all the kids were out of the house. I found out when entering the restaurant, however, that my parents had stopped going regularly in the interest of preserving their collective health. Mimo, the proprietor, chided Paulie in a thick Sicilian accent for his absence, but was clearly happy to see us show up. Discussion, as between friends, followed for a few moments about zeppoli (an off-the-menu treat), life, and work before we were told to sit wherever we liked.

Paulie and my mom are each half Italian which is rare in a small Southern town, so perhaps that enables such camaraderie, but it was pleasant to see a business owner treat a regular (or former regular) with such genuine friendliness. In honor of my mom's birthday, ALL OF US were offered a serving of tiramisu. While I paid for the meal at the front counter Paulie, Mimo, and I discussed off-the-menu ideas that would bring my parents back to regular status.

I left with a feeling of connectedness to that establishment - a mutual feeling of provision, in that we provided a portion of the success of Mimo's business, and he our gastronomic pleasure. I felt a real desire to foster that feeling of neighborliness - an Old World interconnected sense of community, whereupon each citizen contributes to each other's well being. A sense of community that's fading even from the small towns here in the American South, where you know the tailor, the butcher, the restaurateur, the mail man, the sheriff, etc.

This is what draws me so to small businesses. I want to operate one. I want to work with them. I want to help them succeed. I want them to help me succeed. I'm not talking about a veiled form of nepotism here - I'm talking about community.

Yes, it's puerile. Yes, it's gross. Yes, I probably shouldn't link to such a base web page on my site, but here I've gone and done it.

Why? Because my wife has been to a bachelorette party, and so have countless other women out there, and if they'll suffer no worse than some blushing faces at the reading of the article, then everyone else can certainly handle it. Fellas, if you're not familiar with the sort of things that happen at bachelorette parties, then crawl out of your hole, read this article, and laugh your fanny off.

Who'd've thought I'd be farting a hole in my seat because of dried apricots?

Well, at least, that's why I think it's happening.

So far today, I've had nearly my entire day's worth of dietry fiber, and it's not even half-past-three. And a whopping 60% or more is from dried apricots. Since this morning (mostly this morning, in fact), I've eaten more than half a carton of these things (mostly to stem hunger before between my morning granola bar and lunch), and just realized that each of the "11 servings" in the can contains 12% of my RDA for dietry fiber.

Now I usually get plenty of fiber - between the bread and pasta I ingest, I'm sure I get plenty - but I don't think my body is used to the fiber over...um...load I dealt it today.

Alright...that's enough for this puerile post.

I love pancakes. Jake might even say that I freakin' love pancakes.

Tonight, for the second time, I came to the realization that Galaxy Diner in Carytown has the best flap-jacks in Richmond. There are two reasons.

1. These pancakes actually taste, well, cakey. I don't know whether they make their own batter or found a way to perfect Bisquick, but it sure is a rich, moist, cake-like texture - not the semi-dry and crumbly stuff you typically find in an American household.
2. These puppies are cooked perfectly. Really - in addition to the moist and soft texture of the interior, each pancake was cooked to a satisfying crispiness on the top side without being burnt on either.

I suppose it'd be fair to place pancakes in that same venerable category as pizza and biscuits; while not as simple from an ingredients standpoint, pancakes are quite as deceptively simple to prepare. Few eateries, however, seem capable of getting it right.

Ahhh...it's a fine thing to rouse yourself from a groggy Saturday morning slump with the fine cappuccino of Cafe Gutenberg.

I'm sitting here this morning, quarter-to-nine, having just finished a breakfast panini, and I can't help but love this coffee/book shop even more in the AM. It's quiet, and the few patrons here are dicussing books, the past week, or what-have-you, their muted voices comingling with the hiss of the espresso machine and the traditional jazz on the speakers.

It's a fine continuation of my weekend, too - last night I witnessed some of the finest musicians of my young life: John Winn, Robbie Sinclair, and Daniel Clarke of the John Winntet, and formerly of VCU as well. These fellas know jazz like they know breathing, and the seven dollar cover left me feeling like I was cheating them out of something.

As if the music itself wasn't fantastic, I was treated to the comfortable atmosphere of Bogart's back room lounge for - amazingly, in my nearly four years since turning 21 - the first time. I plan on returning frequently.

Now I turn from my laptop to my second cappuccino, and after that an espresso :-)

Ciao!