New Year's Ravioli

It's a new year, and that means another year to be filled with delicious foods! First dinner of 2012, homemade ravioli. It was my main dish at our Chávez christmas dinner, delicious but not so pretty. Back in San Francisco Mónico and I tried out the recipe again and finally got the knack of it, they were much prettier this time around. And very yummy, it was very hard to stop going back for just one more.


Pasta recipe very simple,

4 eggs
3 3/4 cup flour
3/4 cup water
1 1/2 tsp salt

Mix eggs, water, salt, and 2 cups flour until smooth. Gradually add the rest of the flour. refrigerate 20 minutes. THOUROUGHLY flour surface, and then Roll out 1/8 inch thickness, then flour some more.... and then a little more flour.

we used a biscuit cutter for each side of the ravioli then put filling on one side, brushed a bit of egg and water mixture on the other and pressed them together with a smaller ravioli cutter. they turned out very cute, don't you think?

Filling

Kinda just added a bunch of stuff together. Italian Sausages, browned sweet onion, spinich, tofu, salt, pepper, basil, and other things I am sure. All cut up really small. use whatever you want! yay

Delicious Delicious Meat

Meat and charcuterie seem to be running themes while Noel, James and Tara were in San Francisco. It was Tara's birthday week, we had lots of fun and ate lots and lots of delicious meats!


Tara's reese's peanut butter cup birthday cake!


I made breakfast one morning while the guys were still sleeping, the weather was beautiful and I was awake at 8 in the morning, so I decided to take a walk and get ingredients at Whole Foods, where I recently discovered their deli (meat) counter! Meat and cheese, yum!


North Beach meat!




We took home some meat! Yummy yummy meat, that we ate at three in the morning, with Lee's baguette after a few drinks.


Tommy's Joint on Geary and VanNess, lunch line style, bring cash, you will find strong drinks, meat and mashed potatoes, and delicious pastrami sandwiches.


Noel's first trip to In and Out. It's not your typical fast-food joint.


And it's burgers instead!


Mandatory trip to get salt water taffy after In and Out.

Revelations and a slew of crappy pics

It's been so long ago that this actually happened; I think I can only talk about the major points here:

1. Tara had some savory tarts while in Spain that inspired us creatively. We created flat ones, cup-shaped and pop-tart style tarts, filled with amazing things.

2. Actual caramelized onion and/or fruit is delicious. Previously, I believe anything I've ever had that claimed to be caramelized was truly only greased up and warmed. Don't get me wrong: warm and greasy can be just what I need sometimes- but these pears! They were something else.

3. Regular pie crust dough can be used for tarts but must be rolled as thin as you can possibly stand it.

4. I can drink the crappiest champagne in the world as long as I have raspberries to muddle.

5. My phone takes the crappiest photos in the world. Especially when you have food smeared across the lens and don't realize until the end of the night.

Detours

Went to Detour Cafe the other day and had the most delicious and eggy french toast, made with a housemade cardamom bread. Reminded me kind of this. It may be hard to tell from these grainy phone pics, but the place was super cute, with HUGE mimosas, little doll house booths and a rack of gourmet food magazines. Detour has huge family style dinners some nights, all at one table and some crazy cool egg sandwich specials during week days. Afterwards, we wandered around and looked at some streets covered in chalk drawings.

The Wonders of Paris' Garden (part 1)

I'm holding down the home steady for Paris, which means aside from feeding his carnivorous kitties, and plants , I also am caring for his community garden lot, which is full of goodies! I picked some of the swiss chard, which is getting a bit too big. I have a couple ideas for cooking it, but I started with a simple little soup.

swiss chard
Potatoes
carrots
mushrooms
rice noodles
chicken broth
usual yum yum spices
lots o garlic
fresh thyme!( I love having Paris' herbs available)


It turned out super yummy, but even though I added the swiss chard last, it was still a bit over cooked. The next day I heated the rest of it up(mostly potatoes and broth left). I put it in this cute little bowl, found through the vigorous cleaning of Paris' apartment, and then I put the rest of the chard in, closed the lid, and let it just sit for a bit.

It was just right! but I wish I had more rice noodles to add.

stay tuned for the Wonders of Paris' Garden part 2!!

K – Town shenanigans

So when Tara came to visit me the second time around we decided to go eat in K-Town! Korea town is basically just one measly block and right off Harold Square, but they do have some GOOD eats!

Here’s Tara looking silly and hungry and Peter looking irritated while we waited for Peter’s friend Adam outside.

The Restaurant is that window on the left, I was trying to take a picture of this guy, who is actually behind the guy walking by. The guy I wanted a picture of was on his phone talking loudly about sleeping with some girl and how everyone found out except her boyfriend and this girl named Josie and how it was really incredible because she was going on this trip to Cancun with her cousin who is also the girlfriend of this guy he went to school with! OMG, I know. It was all very fascinating. In the end though I didn’t get his picture, OR, a good picture of the front of the restaurant, but if you ever wanted to know what the door to the right of the restaurant looks like, this is a perfect shot.

The restaurant is called Kunjip and it’s always super packed, so they had us waiting for a table at the back and even took our order while we were still waiting. They are really pushy and probably would be even meaner if we didn’t have an actual Korean with us.

This is by far the best Korean food I’ve ever had, in a Restaurant I guess. Peter doesn’t know the phonetic spelling of the dishes but the one in the middle is this kimchi pork stuff served with tofu, and the one on the far left is kinda like pot roast type stuff only a thousand times better and Korean-y. Plus at Korean restaurants they give you all these little side dishes things and some of them are really nasty, like the pickled cuttlefish, but some are really amazing, like the seaweed and foamy egg soup thingy.

OK, this is already a really long post so, IN CONCLUSION: The Korean food at this place is AMAZING, but they’re really rude and kinda ignore you and kick you out as soon as you’re done. Bringing a big, rude, Korean speaking escort is sort of a must. Afterwards we walked to a bar/eat place called the Blind Pig. Pretty good. Although Peter was disappointed they didn’t have any Root Beer and I got pretty much soused off two glasses of Pinot Grigio.

The End.

Barcelona Burger

The little alley ways in Barcelona are filled with amazing little shops and restaurants. After a visit to the Picasso Museum my roommate Melissa and I set out to find food. Which was difficult because it was 5:30 and no one eats until 8, so not many places serve meals at that time

But then we stumbled upon this cute little restaurant "PimPam Burguers." I love that every restaurant, store, and pub here are a little "mom and pop" places, unless you go to the touristy areas filled with fast food joints. But this little place was exactly what I needed, Burgers!
The Burgers here are all amazing, with really great juicy patties. None of those thin blackened "hockey pucks," as we called them at Red Robin. And this place was no exception to fresh meat, homemade real potato fries, and a nice cheap draft beer! I know I'm gonna go back, because it was amazing!

under the patty was a delicious little surprise of carmelized onions in some cheesy and buttery sauce, I took it apart for a picture, but it just looks kinda gross here...but it was great


And the wall was covered in these cute drawings!! I love a place with good food even more when it's cute! yay




and I swear next post I'll put up pictures of authentic Spanish food... I had good paella, and it was so yummy I forgot to document.