ride the pig!

It was only a matter of time before someone started a Peruvian food truck, and even less time before I found my way to its blue plastic windows. Enter Sanguchon, the mobile food kitchen from the man behind three Peruvian restaurants in the Bay Area... I'd been to Piqueo's in Bernal Heights about two years ago and I found the food quite delicious. However, the marinated garbanzo beans - their version of free bread that was highly praised in an old version of the 100 Things to Eat List - was a huge letdown. Let's just say if you want to make garbanzo beans more appealing, don't serve them cold.

Anyways, back to the tasty matter at hand...

Sanguchon is decked out in their cute pig logo and Peruvian flags

how could you not want a lomo saltado sandwich!?

Even though it was raining and I had already brought a lunch and had to set it aside, I knew I had to seek out this vehicle of deliciousness at Truckstop. Here, Bunny shows off her lomo saltado sandwich...

bursting with lomo goodness

I must order a sandwich next time... if not for the lomo (which I already love) then for the adorable little wrappers!

That'll do, pig. That'll do.

Instead, I gave in to my craving for ají de gallina and chose the wrap. Ají de gallina is shredded chicken in a sauce made from the ever-present ají pepper but it's not spicy; the sauce is almost always thickened with some cream. There's also lots of rice, a few potato chunks, onions, and a squeeze of lime, another quintessential Peruvian ingredient. The wrap is comparable to Curry Up Now's chicken tikka masala burrito without the effects of feeling like you're going to burst at the seams.

Also, Sanguchon has the absolute best chicha morada I have ever had stateside. THE BEST! The purple corn is slightly sweet, the punch is spiked with just the right touch of cinnamon, and the little fruit bits make it look like sangria. And faking alcoholic beverages at work is necessary for maintaining that devil-may-care attitude. You know you want it...

ají de gallina wrap and chicha morada...
am I in San Francisco or Trujillo?

For dessert, Bunny offered one of her alfajor cookies to me... the dough is soft to the touch yet maintains its shape. The filling is more of a rich dark caramel than a dulce de leche flavor, which I enjoyed very much. A chewy, not-too-sweet ending to a very happy meal.

Do not pop entire cookie into mouth or you may find yourself unable to chew.

Now to properly represent Peruvian street food, all Sanguchon needs to do is add anticuchos to the menu!

Cuban lechón crisis

Having chosen Colombia over Cuba for my next adventure, I decided to check out what I was missing and try out Paladar, a Cuban restaurant on Kearny Street.

The interior was plenty nice... Cuban flag, brightly painted walls, and a healthy amount of customers...

The reviews for this place fall into the love-it-or-hate-it pattern... I'm still on the fence.

Last week I ordered the lechón asado, or roast pork. The pork was tender for the most part but at moments, it was tough as nails. It also lacked a lot of flavor... the plátanos were really mushy and bland, barely resembling any banana cousin in taste or appearance. The yucca was a weird mass of stringy fibers rather than a chunk or two of the root. The best part of the lechón plate was the congrí, the black beans and rice smothered with onions as it was the only flavorful component in the entire lunch. It's a damn shame when the filler upstages the namesake of the dish.

lechón asado leaves much to be wanted

Now I've read that food in Cuba tends to err on the bland side due to a lack of variety in the provisions available. In that regard, maybe Paladar is truly authentic to Cuban cooking and the food is meant to underwhelm you. Still, I don't relish the idea of paying $13.75 plus tax for dull pork and good beans.

Today I decided to give the place another try and get sancocho colombiano, a Colombian-style stew of rib meat and chicken. I got the stew to go and had to assemble it myself. Once you get over the ick factor of oil-drenched tomatoes flowing over a plastic cup, the stew is pretty good. The beef and chicken are tender and taste good, a revelation compared to the lechón! The broth is nothing special and the dish really depends on the tomato mixture to add a little kick but this stew definitely blew the lechón out of the water.

Still at $13.75 plus tax, lunch comes to a total of just under $15, which is a bit too much to pay for lunch.

sancocho colombiano is huge

Cuban food... quite the disappointment, really. At least this experience reinforces my decision to visit Colombia this August.

things we make

More oatmeal-maple-bacon whoopie pies... because no one (except my mom) can get enough. She always says "I don't like the oatmeal, make me chocolate." Then all the oatmeal pies are gone. Yes, go on and blame my brother for the disappearance.

Hosted a little dinner party where Tater and I made these amazing crab ravioli with lemon butter sauce... wonton wrappers makes the process go by much more quickly. These crab meat and ricotta-stuffed ravioli are downright criminal, courtesy of everyone's favorite jailbird Martha Stewart. A word to the wise: after boiling, place ravioli directly on dinner plates. If you store them on another plate, these babies will stick together like taffy and hair. It's quite a nightmare unsticking them.

Next time, we'll try frying them!

Now we didn't make this but Tater bought the biggest apple pie she could find. It doesn't look extraordinary from the top...

...but when you look at the side, you can tell that this is an extra-deep-dish pie.

This dinner party was thrown last Sunday and I still have some delicious cinnamon-laden apple pie in my fridge.

"getting your ears lowered"

Remember the Nicktoon Doug? It was a bout the life of a teenager in a sweatervest and his assortment of wildly pigmented friends. His best friend Skeeter just happened to be a wild shade of blue. And "getting your ears lowered" is what Skeeter referred to as a haircut.

Anyways, I finally decided to chop off the wavy locks. There are many good reasons for this... for one, I have not brushed my hair in years and I comb it about once every two months at best. My sister found this so silly that one year for Christmas, she gifted me a 99-cent comb in my stocking.

Another good reason to cut my hair: I have tons of split ends, which happens frequently to curly-haired girls because it's so hard to keep the strands moisturized.

And lastly, I've decided that though having long wavy-curly hair is pretty, it is an easy sort of pretty and does not really fit my wacky style or wackier personality. So following in the footsteps of Milla Jovovich, Halle Berry, and other beautiful women who have gone short, I walked in to my 1 o'clock appointment yesterday at Overland One Salon on Noriega Street.

So here it is... before:

And AFTER!

Rosie was my stylist and she did a fantastic job. She was in love with the curly texture but was willing to cut it off and give me a cut that would look good straight and curly. She also used a blow dryer to dry it straight so I could see how it looked that way (I use a flat iron once in a blue moon to straighten my hair and it just doesn't give any volume.) I love it, and my dear Mumsy isn't a huge fan, so I love it even more!

Today I washed and let it air dry for curls (and oh did my hair dry quickly today!) I liked the curly bob look...

... and I love it more when I muss it up, like so:

Let's hear it for fabulous, low-maintenance hair that looks fun and sassy... ooh, we love adding "sassy" to hair, don't we.

The price of this wash and cut service at Overland One Salon was $40... nowhere near the crazy rates at a hip salon with fancy Aveda products but about four times the price of a cut at your average Chinese-owned salon. However, in my opinion, Overland One Salon is well worth it if you have curly hair. No bargain stylist, no matter how much they love my crazy mess, really knows how to deal with curly hair.

Hey Mumsy, it'll grow back!

that explains it

Most of the articles produced by Yahoo! are poorly-researched, somewhat illogical, and riddled with grammatical errors.

However, the site has just redeemed itself with a rather enlightening article on popular diets... the only thing worth reading here is the last sentence under the "What's missing?" portion of the Paleo Diet:

The Paleo Diet is also low in carbohydrates-and there's research that shows limiting or eliminating carbs impacts your memory and your mood.

So that's why I remember everything! All hail the mighty potato and the royal court of pasta, rice, bread, and corn!

birthday extravaganza

Late winter is usually a busy time for my family... both my parents have birthdays in late February and I have been busy celebrating.

Take today, my mother's birthday. She shares a birthday with my friend Speedy, the adorable Josh Groban, and the late Elizabeth Taylor. I made her a special edition of the blackberry-apple cake to commemorate a very special birthday...

"a love letter to cinema"

If you haven't seen The Artist, then maybe a few Academy Awards will convince you that this movie is worth seeing. You know, if the prior awards and high praise from critics and common moviegoers alike hasn't convinced you already.

A dapper hero who becomes his own enemy! A darling ingenue! Film and Hollywood! Romance! Comedy! A faithful friend! Vintage cars! Money politics! Man's best friend! Dancing! Inevitable change and the ways we push through! Black and white picture! Ladies with sass! What more do you need? I don't go to the movie theater very often (I can confidently say it's less than once a month) so I've become rather choosy when deciding whether I want to see a movie for $12 or wait for it to air on TV. Without a doubt, The Artist is one of the best cinematic investments I've made and I encourage all to do the same.

Bérénice Bejo and Jean Dujardin
as Peppy Miller and George Valentin in The Artist.
Everyone needs a beauty spot!
Courtesy of google image search

It's amazing how much sympathy this film draws out from the audience, even more so given the lack of dialogue.

same thing

Easy recipe for milanesas:

Pound or cut your chicken cutlets into thinner cutlets.

Dip in flour, then egg, then breadcrumbs, just like eggplant parmigiana.

Fry until browned in one-quarter inch of canola oil.

Parmigianas need sauce, milanesas do not. Enjoy as is!

Oh, and don't be afraid to salt the flour. Salt is important for good-tasting food.

what more could you ask for

Yesterday - Valentine's Day - was more or less the 50th anniversary of the recording of "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" by the incomparable Tony Bennett. Why, there's no better soundtrack for my mother to enjoy whoopie pies!

S'more whoopies: marshmallow fluff and chocolate buttercream
tucked in between graham cracker cakes

virtual love

Just in time for St. Valentine's Day, some people out there made a list of the 10 greatest video gaming romances of all time. The fact that I only know the first three couples speaks to my drop in playing video games since college but it's still fun to read.

I admit I clicked on the link because I saw one of my favorite franchises...

courtesy of google image search

Other lists from years past give some substantially stronger reading on the couples and show which pairs have consistently topped the list... well you know Super Mario and Princess Peach will always be No. 1 but other couples are repeats on the list.

the bright side

What to do while waiting for your tires to be changed at Costco? Go shopping!

Saw this cookbook, Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi, on the book tables between the frozen food and the heat lamps and you know what? The suggested retail price is $35. During the holidays I saw it on a website - I think it was anthropologie - for $50. But Costco, good old thrifty Costco, is selling the book for $21.99.

And it's a good thing Costco offered this cookbook at such a low price because even though it looks very tasty and seems to be the hot cookbook around, I would not pay $50 for a vegetarian book. That's just me.

Apparently the author is of a similar (but not the same) hue; he is an omnivorous food journalist and restaurant vet who decided to put all of his veggie recipes in one place and create a book that celebrates vegetables (and some fruits, too.) He recognizes that there are many different types of vegetarians, from those who cannot stand meat and beyond to those who choose a vegetarian or mainly vegetarian diet for health or ecological reasons. Very nice introduction to a very beautiful book.

I already found a few recipes I can't wait to try... here, Saffron tagliatelle with spiced butter!

Saffron and pine nuts? Say no more!

bake me a cake

After 25 years of existence I still haven't shaken the sweet tooth the way my friends and family have. I am one of the few who always want dessert after dinner - sometimes lunch - and I drink sweet tea like it's going out of style. My dear father has mentioned a few times that my ever-popular whoopie pies are, at times, a bit too sweet.

But I have found a compromise we all can enjoy! After flipping through old cookbooks I found a recipe for Blackberry and Apple Cake, a cake I had always wanted to try but put off during college and forgotten about afterwards. Forgotten no more! This cake has much less sugar than any other sweets I've made yet it is flavorful and scrumptious, sort of like moistened pannetone. The book recommends sprinkling a little raw sugar on top before baking to achieve a slightly sweet-crunchy texture but I prefer a more classic topping: frosting. I don't use any ordinary frosting on this cakelet; through some miracle I came up with a rich mascarpone frosting that is also (relatively) low in sugar. Read on my hungry friends!

Oh the possibilities!

Now the first time I made this cake a lot of it ended up sticking to the pan, even though I buttered it. An easier solution is to line the cake pan with some parchment paper... this will result in an irregular side but I like the way it looks. Here I used some Martha Stewart parchment-foil paper. It's a little pricey so I save it for the good stuff.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit and line the pan, foil side down.

The amateur book I was following doesn't order you to mix the wet and dry ingredients separately before integrating all elements. I tried adding the ingredients one by one and it was actually more difficult to mix the butter and sugar... I guess Crisco (I use half Crisco and half butter for the whoopie pies) makes everything go down more smoothly.

Anyways, the ingredients and recipe are so simple I could make this cake in my sleep. Mix

• 6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) butter
• 1 cup flour
• 1/2 cup almond flour (I used almond meal, it worked just fine)
• 2 eggs
• 6 tablespoons apple juice
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• a few drops of vanilla extract

Blend until smooth.

Peel and chop one Granny Smith apple and wash one cup of blackberries. Fold the apples and blackberries into the batter.

Honestly I found one entire apple and one cup of berries a bit overwhelming for the batter so I ate a few pieces. Don't be afraid to do the same.

Pour the batter into the parchment-lined pan...

.. and bake away! Set your timer for 50 minutes.

Why so long? Because this cake is pretty moist and you don't want it to be undercooked or it will fall apart. Big cake fail.

Let the cake cool for a good long while... I took the cake out, turned off the oven, and let the cakelet sit for over an hour. Cakes that are not properly cooled can also crumble upon impact. Ever since I was a little girl, waiting for the cake to cool has always been difficult for me. But patience pays off.

While the cake cools, make the mascarpone frosting! Mascarpone is pretty much Italian cream cheese... being Italian, it has a richer flavor than regular cream cheese. Empty the contents of an 8-ounce tub of mascarpone into a bowl along with 3/4 cup of powdered sugar and a dash of vanilla extract. Give it a whirl with the hand mixer and voila! Super-easy homemade frosting.  You could use more powdered sugar but it really isn't necessary with the mascarpone.

Transfer cooled cake to a plate. I like to flip it upside-down since the bottom provides a flat surface for frosting and I am no good at leveling cakes.

Pile on the frosting...

... and smooth out. I kept the sides bare but feel free to cover those up, too.

When finished, serve to someone you love. Awww!


Recipe for the Blackberry and Apple Cake from The Redwall Cookbook by Brian Jacques. My sister and I loved reading this series when we were young and I even taught a Pass/No Pass class on it in college. The children's books are superfluously descriptive, due in part to Jacques original intention of creating stories for blind children. Now with The Redwall Cookbook (snatched used on amazon.com) those famous Redwall feasts that fill fifty or so pages of each episode can come to your dinner table!

Recipe for the mascarpone frosting derived from various ice cream recipes by a drunk British woman who preferred ice cream made with the cheese and my plentiful experiences with whipping up homemade frosting.

the replacement

A long time ago in a land far far away, before scandals of anti-Semitic career-enders and domestic abuse, Mel Gibson was the go-to man for a certain mother I know and love. But Mel fell out of grace a long time ago.

Mumsy references Chef Fabio Viviani so much that maybe he's the new dreamboat... or maybe she just likes clicking on his web show Chow Ciao! because it's property of Yahoo and Mumsy's homepage is Yahoo. Whatever the case, the emergence of Fabio in my mother's life has brought an abundance of even more delicious food, and I don't have to cook!

One delicious dinner:

Chicken piccata with marsala sauce
and Fabio's Italian mac 'n' cheese

I can see why Mumsy loves watching the web show... Fabio is talented, couples delicious food with simple explanations, and always has a funny anecdote or two about being Italian. For instance...

To be honest, I never had this [marsala sauce] in Italy, well not too often, 'cause my grandpa used to drink the marsala needed to make this recipe. So you can't do this when my grandpa's around 'cause he's gonna knock off the marsala.

Click on the chicken piccata link below the photo and skip to 4:20 to hear it yourself.

The accent isn't too heavy and Fabio is quite the looker, too!

"I know you like mac 'n' cheese," says Mumsy. "So I made two pans."

Genius!

first-world problems: get that grease

San Francisco is so green that it hurts. Only here would the theft of leftover cooking oil make the news.

courtesy of google image search

Those biofuel drivers sure are cutthroat!

whoopiebowl

Happy Superbowl Day! Who will win? The blueberries or the bacon-maples? Both wear oatmeal armor so this match is all about the filling.

game of the year

For those of you who do not care for the Superbowl, the commercials, or getting together with friends, this afternoon is a great time to go shopping.

tourist traps and tricks

There are many in San Francisco... visited a few Friday night:

The price of a one-way cable car ticket is now $6... and you don't even get that postcard memento anymore. So glad that the cable car fare is included in my monthly fast pass!

Climbing up California Street on a cable car

A few years ago I heard rumors that the famed Tonga Room in the Fairmont Hotel was closing. Well those rumors proved false as the tiki-themed lounge is still serving up its famous Mai Tai... my speech professor might've said that the Mai Tai was invented in this bar in San Francisco... I'm not sure anymore, my memory isn't what it used to be.

L: Tonga Tart. R: Mai Tai

the Lava Bowl, a drink for two
but consumed by one!

The Scorpion, another sharing drink.
Despite the name, this cocktail packs no sting.
It's very sweet with a hint of coconut... never saw that coming!

During happy hour, the drinks are a steal at $7.50. Besides, the drinks make the fake rain seem almost real!

In the Tonga Room, they literally make it rain!

Lounge band boards boat and plays 90s beats.

After we'd had enough fruity drinks we could take, a group of us shuffled to nearby Grace Cathedral. On the way I saw an old friend:

Love that the EA bus prominently features a zombie from Plants vs. Zombies!

Pardon the image, it's difficult for my six year-old camera to take nice night shots but you get the gist of the cathedral tower rising up to touch the moon.

Even at night, Grace Cathedral is a lovely place to hang out. The Labyrinth maze is thoughtfully laid outside for all to enjoy, and that's just what we did. To mix it up, have a friend start in the center while you make your way in. Where will you meet?