little big al's Profile
Maine Lobster at 99 Ranch
Lobster is definitely something where bigger is not better. Years ago at a family reunion, my big brother,a real showboater ,made a big deal of having a nine pounder shipped in from our old home port of Massachusetts, and it was one of the toughest things (not just lobster,but anything) I have ever eaten. It would have been much better if he had gotten 6 "chickens" (under a pound and a half).
3 days in SF, non-fine dining experiences needed for this weekend
The fish and chips at Red's is o.k. and cheap, and the ambience makes it worth the trip, but otherwise Robert is right as usual. On the other hand it's hard to go wrong at Yuet Lee.
Recommended Stone Fruit Vendors at the Ferry Plaza Farmer’s Market?
If i might vent a bit,as long time,year round (no summer soldier I) patron of FPFM since the old days on Green St., I just experienced the worst case of sticker shock I've ever had at Frog Hollow. I had ordered some lamb from Marin Sun Farms and on my way to get it I saw apricots for $4.75 lb. I was going to do my normal week's shopping in spite of the yearly surge of "Peach People" (cf. summer soldiers) when I had an unwonted attack of parsimony. I picked up my lamb, some peaches from Tory, and a porchetta panino, and headed off to Alemany. Organic apricots $2.00
Your Perfect Sandwich
I just finished eating it. A porchetta sandwich from Roli Roti (a truck)in San Francisco. A whole pork loin is coated in salt and herbs and spices then wrapped in a whole pork belly and cooked on a rotisserie until the skin turns into cracklin's then sliced warm and served on a ciabatta roll with arugula or cress and sweet onion relish $9.50 and worth every penny.
Visitor -- Coffee? Chinatown? Good Bar for a Single Lady?
I'd give a big shout out for Spec's bar AKA Adler Alley Museum and Cafe across the street from City Lights bookstore. Authentic old timey San Francisco waterfront bar feel without the actual thugs. There's Old Overholt Rye Whisky and a cheesewheel-guillotine that dispenses an even slice every time.
Local Chinook Salmon in San Francisco (for the 2012 season)?
Prices? My first of the season I got at Real Foods on Polk for a shocking $28 lb. I would have waited, but I had made a rash promise. I did see some at the Blue Moon smokehouse stand at Alemanney (damn! I can never spell that) FM for a much more reasonable $18 lb. To my knowledge all fresh from the boat fish sales must by law be whole fish. If you think a whole salmon is hard to use up, how about a whole sea bass!
Best Clam chowder and Best Cioppino
As an old yankee chowdah head I can enthusiastically second or third Sotto Mare's version of the white. (Red chowder is not part of my universe. Even though I have embraced cioppino wholeheartedly, real clam chowder is white, thickened with potatoes, and lies flat in the bowl.) The whole notion of the sourdough bowl is an abomination and a crime against both chowder and bread. Most wharf chowder is straight from the can. I took a picture of a dumpster full of empty cans once near Alioto's #9.
Chez Panisse 2012
About a month ago I got a tray of grass or ghost shrimp at the small supermarket in Japantown. I had no idea what to do with them, but couldn't resist them because they were so fresh, actually jumping around in the container. I'm a little embarrassed to report that I ended up using them in a seafood stock,since they were so hard to peel. Next time I'll know better.
Cheeseburgers at Red's Java House [SF]
I'm a huge fan of Red's, but more for the ambience than the food. The cheeseburgers in particular are unexceptional little pre-formed patties cooked on a flat-top and served on a dull roll with yellow mustard. A better choice is the fish and chips (see if you get get them to put a little more "fry" on the chips ). The corned beef hash was a favorite for a while, but the last few samples suffered from wildly underdone potatoes. Sometimes there is a corned beef sandwich which should be good. But it's the real deal and I'd rather eat something second rate there than anything at that fake-o bushwa Fog City Diner. Explore the specials, and enjoy the scene.
Also the bar has a very generous pour on their moderately priced drinks.
Old guys lunch or dinner in SF
Best place for old farts on a budget (I'm one too) would be U.S. Restaurant on Columbus. Friday special is a half order of calamari fritti (it's plenty, believe me) with surprisingly good vegetables or pasta for $9.00. Whole order is $13.00I think the rabbit is $15.00. Best deal in North Beach. Quiet too.
Where can I find real dolmas in the East Bay
When I was a tyke back east, my family used to frequent an "arabic" (their own description, I think it was Lebanese) restaurant in Lowell, Mass. called Bishop's. We thought the idea of stuffed grape leaves was very exotic,but they were better than anything I've had since. They were larger than most, freshly made and served warm. Best of all, they had meat in them. Little bits of chopped lamb accompanied some sort of very large grain,probably converted ,rice. They came on a platter of assorted vegetables stuffed with a similar filling. Anybody seen anything similar in the golden west?
Fourth and Sea Fish & Chips - destination worthy onion rings and milkshakes [Petaluma]
$21 is still too much to pay for fish and chips.
Thought experiment - What is chow worthy classic "Chinese American" food?
I've been living in San Francisco for more than half my life, and find myself perpetually craving an east coast thing called "pressed duck" which was boneless duck, steamed I think then coated in corn starch and fried. I've had some versions here but the were mostly some starchy paste with a little bit of duck attached. I'd commit a misdemeanor for the real thing today.
Subbing fresh / raw clams for canned clams in clam dip?
Saute little garlic in oil, toss in some white wine and cook briefly with a little parsley. I wonder what kind of clams they are. Howard Johnson's used to call clam strips, which I believe were strips cut from the neck of giant sea clams "Fried Clams". To a real Yankee they were an abomination.
Butternut squash soup -- seeking mix-ins
If you are in an area where fresh crab is available, toss it in there with some mild (or hot) curry powder and you have Jamaican Curry Crab Soup (or something like it).
MUST-BUYS at the ferry building farmer's market?
I believe that Roli Roti serves their exquisite porchetta panino on Tuesdays. Worth a trip just for that.
Fourth and Sea Fish & Chips - destination worthy onion rings and milkshakes [Petaluma]
Red's Java House, on the other hand, has moderately good fish and chips, albeit at a very low price.
Dio Mio San Giuseppe
So this year I went for Victoria Pastry's version. They call them Sfingi, but I think it's just a linguistic difference. They were available in custard and ricotta versions for about $4.50 each, but they were huge. I preferred the custard version, since the ricotta incorporated chocolate chips, which I consider an abomination.
Incidentally, bomboloni are quite different, and I agree with Hyperbowler's assessment that they are like an overpriced jelly doughnut, although there is a version available Saturdays at Ferry Plaza indoors which is very good, and at $2.50 almost the right price. They also make an interesting spin on cannoli, with a sort of yeasted fried tube filled with stuff. Since it's never crispy, you can't complain that it gets soggy sitting around, which is a problem with most Bay area cannoli.
Dio Mio San Giuseppe
I totally lost track of Feast Of St. Joseph and its' attendant zeppoli. Where are hounds picking them up this year? My former go-to Bao Necci (nee Danilo) isn't even open during the day anymore. What is a zeppophile to do?
Burgers and coffee, that's elf food, apparently -- your thoughts solicited
In The City for everyday burger craving I like Mo's in North Beach. The fries are thin cut from real spuds and fried crisp on the outside and fluffy in the middle. Le Garage makes a fine upscale (read "Kobe Style beef, about $15 with great, very French fries and Aioli) burger. No one has addressed the onion ring issue. To that end, consider the burger at Alfred's, a fine example of the genre available with fries and onion rings ("string" style). I still remember fondly one of the best french fries of my life from there. It was a french fry that had been sitting under the onion rings and had absorbed some of their flavor. ("Ants mouse worse waddling." from "Ladle Rat Rotten Hut".) Nothing better!
What is the biggest baking catastrophe you've ever had?
When my wife and I returned from our honeymoon we found a huge tub of sour cream that her sister had thoughtfully saved from our wedding reception, so she decided to make a couple of lemon cheesecakes with it. (There was really a lot!) It smelled a bit odd while cooking, but we don't have the cleanest oven, so I wasn't too concerned. Only after the first odd tasting bites did we realize that the sour cream was left over from the vegetable dip and was contaminated with garlic.
Stand back, I've got bottarga and I'm not afraid to use it!
Except I'm not sure how. I was able to convince the counter woman to cut me off a small chunk ( about an ounce, or ten bucks worth) of tuna bottarga. Should I just grate it over some pasta ali olio or what?I've been curious about it ever since attending a great food fair in Certaldo, Italy, where the truffle folks and cheese people were giving out free tastes, but the bottarga man was only giving out free smells.
ideas for hake?
Hake is in the same family as cod (merlucidae?) and should survive any treatment that you inflict on it. In Boston, it is one of the things you might get when you order "scrod". A funny story is that my pops, the late Big Big Al had an associate known as "Jake The Hake". When I asked him why they called him that, he looked at me like I was simple and explained "Because he's a hake!"
Sausalito lunch on a Monday - which restaurant of these 5 would you pick?
Weird vibe??? Kitti's place is the most consistently friendly place in that whole damn town. I eat there once a week, which is more than I can say for any other place in that strange little burg that I have gradually grown to love. The food is creative, and, for the quality,very reasonably priced. Kitti himself is a soup genius,( unlike a lot of other chefs who use soup as a source of free revenue from stuff they'd otherwise throw away.) and the soup of the day is always worth a try.
Having said that, it is far and away the farthest away from downtown. In 30+ years working in Sausalito, I have never eaten at Poggio (although I mean to some day) Horizon's or The Spinnaker. Fish is overpriced, in my opinion, (I think fish and chips is around $24,wow!) Le Garage is also quite a hike, but the atmosphere/view is fine, and it's right next to the Bay Model, which is free and definitely worth a visit.
Weird vibe indeed!
Tommy's Joynt: One I can check off the list [San Francisco]
I realize this is dangerously close to home cooking, but lamb shanks are pretty cheap, and ridiculously easy to cook at home. Unlike leg or rack, you cannot overcook them. My favorite secret is it is not necessary to braise them. Stuff them with little tampons of garlic, rosemary and anchovy (no one will ever know about the anchovy but you and I, trust me) and coat generously with coarse salt and pepper ,and roast in a moderately hot oven for about 2 hours or so. You can't wreck them.
Your help in transitioning me back to eating meat.
In the words of "The Bacon Song".."you can live without veal parmegian, chicken tarragon, beef bourgignon or filet mignon. Life will still be sweet if you give up meat,it's easy... you can even try to give up bacon"
Your help in transitioning me back to eating meat.
This is way out from another field, but how about bacon? Mind you, I'm talking humanely raised field pigs, but it smells so great cooking, that by the time it's cooked, you want to eat it. Start with a bacon,LETTUCE, AND TOMATO sandwich, and work your way up to a BACON, lettuce and tomato sandwich, and then the sky's the limit. It's good as a main course, or just as a "spice" in a batch of beans.
Grass shrimp, how to cook?
I just got a small box of very frisky grass shrimp at a Japanese market, and have no idea what to do with them Google just yields recipes for Lemongrass Shrimp. Any tips ? Must they be peeled?
What should I cook in North Beach
Go to Fishermans' wharf for the crab, but go early in the day and buy ONLY at Alioto -Lazio (not Alioto's Restaurant),at the west end of the wharf. They deserve your business, and will have the freshest product, whether you choose the live (recommended) or cooked version. They also have a pretty good selection of other stuff if you should want to make a cioppino. They aren't the cheapest, but shopping around will only save you a few bucks, and they are dependable.
How to use a roasted pig knuckle?
Amusingly enough, this part, in Italian, is called "stinco" (pronounced "stink-oh"). My advice is to use the bone in a bean soup,add the meat later, and crisp the skin on a rack in a HOT oven to use as a topping . But often if I'm feeling lazy, I just put the whole thing on a rack in a HOT oven and chop it up when it's re-crisped. I don't have convection, but it seems to work just fine.
