(Photo copyright Bennett Coleman & Co. Ltd.) I'd like to interrupt my…: squeeforme

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Aug 04, 2008 08:25

(Photo copyright Bennett Coleman & Co. Ltd.)

I'd like to interrupt my regular programming to mention this: a series of bomb attacks occured yesterday in Bangalore, India, scene of many of my happiest recent memories. I was rather worried about my many friends and associates in Bangalore, but thankfully, everyone seems to have come out unscathed. It's a damn shame that people all over the world feel the need to commit this kind of random and disgusting violence (but we shouldn't let it scare us, now should we.)

No one knows a motive as of yet: apparently the low grade weapons were set out for the primary purpose of terrifying the populace. Which they definitely achieved. Assholes.

A similar attack occurred in Jaipur while I was in India, and my utterly-uninformed self is wondering if the two were related. They don't know the motive behind the Jaipur attacks too, but they apparently were aimed at inciting sectarian violence.

My thoughts go out to all B'lore residents.

Ubuntu Restaurant and Yoga Studio
1140 Main St
Napa, CA 94559
(707) 251-5656

Vegetarian restaurants generally don't evoke images of culinary grandeur. Vegetarian food is associated with tofu, brown rice, and distressing, gloppy Hippie Chow - not the kind of scrumptious, decadent cuisine that really stirs the soul.

To combat these notions, I present Ubuntu, Napa Valley's glorious new vegetarian restaurant. Although the restaurant may rather curiously be attached to a yoga studio, the wife and husband chefs (who met while cooking at Manresa) give the place enviable culinary chops. Furthermore, the space is simply beautiful: an open kitchen set next to a well-stocked bar, a huge communal table running down the center of the room. This friendly yet hip vibe suits the restaurant perfectly: Ubuntu serves high concept and delicious food at reasonable prices and replaces Haute Cuisine snobbery with a healthy dose of wonder at what can be done with vegetables.

On our recent visit, we decided to sit outside to enjoy the perfect summer evening. Our server brought us menus, and we were immediately confused and intruiged by the menu: Ubuntu serves completely unique food. We decided to fire away and pick whatever sounded interesting: this proved to be a very good strategy.

First up was the "carta da musica" with truffled pecorino, mushroom chips arugula, and a good splash of super high quality olive oil and saba. Carta de musica translates into "sheet music" referring to the flat and flaky nature of the bread, and this was great: think of the lighest, airiest just baked cracker you've ever had, topped with decadent, delicious pecorino cheese, peppery, sharp arugula, and unexpected, smoothly buttery fried mushroom chips. This is a simple dish and just plain perfect: transforming flat-bread into something light as air and at the same time satisfying.

We moved on to the grilled peach and french bean salad, topped with burrata cheese, basil, and pesto and basil stem vinegar. This was also excellent: freshy and slightly squeaky blanched beans, tossed in a pesto so fresh you could just about feel the basil. The burrata cheese was also delicious, adding a bit of dairy decadence to what could be a slightly insubstantial dish. The grilled peaches are pureed into a tangy and slightly rich spread that goes just perfectly with the pesto, cheese, and fresh green beans: a great and unusual combination. Grilled fruit needs to see more attention on American menus.

This simple looking ramekin contained one of the most delicious things I've eaten this year. The menu describes it as "cauliflower in a cast iron pot," and it's a complex dish: cauliflower is roasted in the oven with vadouvan curry powder, pureed with plenty of cream and butter, and served raw in a granular "couscous", accompanied with coriander and toast. It's a triumph: the smooth cauliflower is almost impossibly rich, and when juxtaposed with the spiced roast cauliflower and the smooth, pleasing crunch of the "couscous" is innovative. This dish is great in that it takes richness away from the realm of animal or dairy preparations and hands it over to a new source: the humble cauliflower. You know you're eating something marvelous when you pause every bite to comment on how damn delicious it is.

We hadn't intended to order dessert - we'd already hit Bouchon Bakery - but Ubuntu's food had blown us away so much that we had to give in. A good call: Ubuntu is doing amazing, amazing things with the sweet side of the menu. Here's roasted strawberries with lavender meringue, lemon cream, and frozen yogurt, presented creatively and gorgeously on a big old piece of slate. This was such an interesting thing to eat: the smooth, tangy lemon cream matched perfectly with the roasted, rich strawberries, creating an impromptu strawberry lemonade flavor - but don't forget the tangy, flash frozen yogurt medallions or the ethereal and sweet meringue chunks either. This is my kind of dessert: light, delicious as anything, and beautiful to behold. I have never wanted to lick a rock more.

Finally, we sampled the frosted feuilletine with bananas, keffir lime ice cream, and rum milk - the server described it to us as "frosted flakes for grownups" which sold us on the spot. And that it was: crunchy little bits of cookie, served with super-fresh banana and tangy, deeply interesting keffir lime ice cream: the way I wish my morning cereal was. The rum milk was served in a little ramiken on the side, allowing you to add it at will: a fun touch to an already interesting dessert. Excellent.

I really can't compliment Ubuntu enough. This restaurant is serving interesting, innovative and most importantly delicious food. Ubuntu also proves handily that thee is no deprivation inherent in vegetarian cuisine: vegetables in the proper hands can be just as deeply, primevally satisfying as meat, and just as pleasing to an avowed omnivore's tastes. I intend to come back as soon as possible to try everything on the menu and see what other surprises these chefs have in store for me. This is more then good food: this is interesting food, working at the edge of what's possible with vegetables and cuisine.

Mongolia Is Cooler Then You Think

Image from Boundless Journeys

I have had a curious lifelong fascination with Mongolia. Something about the idea of rugged warriors storming innocent villagers on the backs of blood sweating horses caught my young imagination, and the interest hasn't lifed: I still read books on Mongolia, listen to Tuvan throat-singing, and harbor a passionate desire to someday wander the steppes in real living color someday. Perhaps I was a Mongol warrior in a past life and just have a subconscious half-remembered desire to light fire to grass huts, intimidate innocent Polish people (they really did get that far) and wear silly hats. Perhaps.

Mongolia is curiously popular on the dirt bag tourist circuit. While staying in Beijing, I met a truly surprising number of people who had been to Mongolia and had nothing but good things to say about the experience. One guy did have his tent robbed, but he really shouldn't have left all his stuff in it and gone out to toodle around town so NO SYMPATHY. I also recall one gentleman who related an epic tale of hitching from Mongolia to Beijing on 15 bucks and eternal optimism, which leads me to believe Mongol people must be pretty nice indeed.

Certainly I should feel no shame at harboring interest in a land that spawned an empire which eventually subjugated 22% of the earth's total landmass. Mongolia may not have that type of political sway anymore, but it is still inhabited by tough-as-nails people with a unique culture, an interesting animist native religion, and some of the eeriest and most ethereal music on earth. I am afraid they cannot be credited for Mongolian Barbeque - I hear actual Mongol food is pretty damn dismal - but they do have a hand with the barbequed marmot. Perhaps I can do a graduate school dissertation someday on the cuisine of Mongolia. And exactly two people will ever read it.

Fun Facts:

- Although Genghis Khan was Not a Very Nice Chap, the Mongol empire did tolerate a surprising amount of cultural and religious indepence from its vassals. After they burned your city and killed most everyone. After that, they were cool.

-Genghis Khan's son began the Yuan Dynasty in China, which lasted for only 100 years because the Mongol ancestors had become too pussified by Chinese culture to maintain power. This adds credence to my theory that China is actually The Borg.

- Some scholars say that the death toll from the Mongol invasion of basically everything amounted to 40 million. Ouch.

- India's Mughals (you know, those guys who built the Taj Mahal under Shah Jahan) are descended from Genghis Khan.

- Mongolia is not exactly an easy country to get around in (no interstate highways back in the day), meaning that Mongol horsemen would drink small amounts of their horses blood when things got really rough. Yummy.

-Mongolia is the world's most sparsely populated country, with only 2.9 million people in a Very Very Big Landmass. It may be an ideal travel destination for the misanthropic.

-Mongol wrestlers are extremely scantily clad. The story goes that during a big wrestling match many years ago, one competitor was discovered to have been a woman. The male wrestlers were as you may imagine totally mortified and since then, near-nudity has been the way Mongolian wrestlers do. I bet they get chilly.

Mongolian Music is absolutely unique and deserves much more attention then it currently gets. Mongolian and Tuvan music has a deep, dark primeval quality to it that is absolutely bewitching: you can really feel humanity's simultaneous loneliness and exaltation at occupying the big wide open of Mongolia's plains and mountains. And it just sounds cool.

Throat or overtone singing is Mongolia's best known sound - it is really quite impossible to describe what it sounds like, so download some of the mp3s offered below. It sounds completely bizarre and your neighbors may wonder what the hell you are listening to, but this stuff is addictive. And gorgeous in a primitive, fascinating way. By the way, Tuva is a part of the Soviet Union, but shares a cultural identity with Mongolia and Mongol people, and many Tuvans live within Mongolia's borders. So now you know.

Not all Mongolian music is steeped in tradition, of course. If you saw the recent Mongol movie (which was quite good), you might have noticed the interesting rock/throat singing song that played over the ending credits. This kind of fusion music is gaining popularity in Mongolia and the Soviet Union and really does sound awesome. I like Yat-Kha, a Tuvan band that has toured internationally, and does a great job of integrating a rock and punk sound with that eerie throat singing sound. If you think about it, throat singing and the traditional death metal scream aren't that different. Download the mp3s off the website: you won't be sorry.

Bouchon Bistro
6534 Washington St,
Yountville, CA 94599

Thomas Keller is America's reigning culinary deity - the creator of Yountville's French Laundry, widely hailed as the country's best restaurant. The mighty French Laundry itself isn't exactly accessible to the common man: prix fixe menus start at 210 dollars and reservations are only obtainable by, say, selling your soul. (Presumably to Keller.)

There is an option for the (relatively) poorer among us: Bouchon, Keller's casual Yountville bistro. Featuring classic French fare served in a noisy and laid back setting, it's Keller's kickback joint, the kind of place where rich people trying to Lay Low hang out in t-shirts over wine and oysters. This does not mean you will get a break on prices, mind you, but you will feel more like the kind of robust French countryman who just happens to be able to drop 32 bucks on a lunch entree. Because you are Earthy.

Bouchon's dining room has a nice, slightly ornate look to it, but the tables are very close together, creating a very present danger of elbowing the people next to you if you make any quick movements. As my mother commented, we live in America: we have the ability to build restaurants big enough to allow people to eat without invading each others personal space. If they're really going for authenticity, they need to pipe in some body odor, issue cigarettes to all customers, and install a bidet, and I don't see them doing any of that.

Our friendly server was able to seat us ahead of our reservation. Menus are rather cute and come wrapped around the silverware. Specials are listed on a big blackboard, and change every day dependent on what's fresh. (This is totally a rule in Northern California.)

The menu focuses on good French home cookin' - none of the super contemporary touches Keller plays with in his flagship restaurant, but lots of hearty, classic flavors. I am not well versed in French cuisine and was happy to get a chance to try the real deal.

We began with appetizers. I chose the Canard salee et Confit ($14.50), composed of cured duck breast and leg confit, on a bed of frisee, pickled turnips, poached cherries, and spiced honey vinaigrette. This really was a beautiful dish: the combination of meaty, rare duck breast, fatty and decadent confit, and tiny, salt fried duck skin strips was perfect, and I deeply enjoyed the wine-infused cherries that accompanied the meat. The honey vinaigrette was also masterfully subdued and lovely, not too sweet or cloying: I want the recipe. It is always nice to have a duck dish that does not overwhelm with fat and grease, and this is it: understated, sophisticated, good.

We are a family of leek aficionados, so my mom chose the Salade de Poirexau ($12.50), composed of grilled leeks, new potatoes, haricots verts, spring onions, and a lentil vinaigrette. This was also excellent: fresh leeks provided an earthy, garlicky juxtaposition to the brilliant green haricots verts and onions. The lentil vinaigrette was especially interesting: the lentils provided an interesting texture difference. It's a nice, fairly simple dish, and a refreshing way to begin a meal.

I decided to go all light on this business and went with the Salade de Carpaccio Fume ($13.50) - smoked beef carpaccio with tomtato confit, celery branch, and green olive bread spread with creamy horseradish. This was quite nice though not as substantial as I'd been hoping (and I wish there was more tomato confit.) Still, it was beautifully presented and the super-fresh beef had a nice meaty flavor.

I also ordered the Ratatouille ($6.50) as a side dish, and NOT BECAUSE I ENJOY MOVIES ABOUT ANIMATED RATS. This was very tasty - probably because there sure was a lot of oil in it. Now, it tasted delicious and I ate all of it, but I felt a bit queasy afterwards...not that I regretted it. They could tone down the oil, but then again, it might not taste so good. I hate these kind of tradeoffs.

There's a dessert menu, but most people head next door to the equally famous Bouchon Bakery - which is exactly what we did. It's a tiny little place full of European tourists, but it certainly turns out good and classic French pastries. I had a tasty, super fresh fruit tart - light and airy, with a nice buttery crust. We also tried a raspberry macaroon, which was really quite delish: intense raspberry flavored cream, squishy yet crunchy cookie - just the perfect sort of sandwich cookie. Keller also makes upmarket Oreos with chocolate sable cookies, sold at the bakery. Well, next time. (I maintain Oreos don't actually taste like anything so the only way to go is up.)

Special note: Presentation of dishes is just beautiful at Bouchon. Somehow the colors and shapes combine to create appetizing, rustic compositions that would be worthy of any food porn magazine. It's food that is pretty but not too pretty to eat, which I find to be a terribly important distinction.

Conclusion: Bouchon is turning out excellent, detailed, and lovingly created renditions of French bistro food. Is anything innovative going on here? No - this is not food that will blow you away or make you think. But it is simple and soul-sustaining food taken to a superlative level of quality and freshness, and that in and of itself is worthy of praise. Bouchon is an excellent choice for rustic French food - what you see is exactly what you get.

I had a very nice birthday. Mom and I left at a decent hour for Napa. Surprisingly, traffic in Napa actually isn't that bad in the summer on a Wednesday, and we got to drive around and look at things in relative peace. We made Bouchon Bistro right on time (a little early) and had lunch....I'll post in detail about that later.

We also made a lovely stopover at the new Oxbow Market, which is sort of like a foodie's vision of an ultimate, surpassing food court. It's a collection of many of Northern California's best and most well known artisan food producers, and a really excellent boon for food nerds: one stop shopping for the real deal. Everything from produce to coffee to seafood to tacos is on offer.

I was particularly taken with the Fatted Calf, where I talked food nerd shop with the affable lady behind the counter and sampled various protein-ridden delights. They had just taken a giant, fatty, decadent meatloaf out of the oven and I had a bite....absolutely delicious. I fully intend to return soon to buy some meat to take home and cook. I considered purchasing a duck and bullying my dad into smoking it, but it would have become vile in the car ride home. We should have brought the cooler.

The other shops at Oxbow are also excellent - I particularly enjoyed browsing the racks at the WholeSpice outlet, which carries an impressive selection of weird and esoteric fresh-ground spices from around the world. They even had my elusive curry leaves.. The owner is a rather strange Israeli guy and he teased me gently to my mother as I happily snatched up aforementioned curry leaves, harissa, and zhoug - "She's a bit weird, isn't she?"

"Oh, yes."

I remain unembarrassed. He even was kind enough to mix me up a spicy Israeli spice mix which I intend to muck about with in the near future.

Ritual Coffee Roasters also supplies good stuff, though admittedly I do not know enough about coffee to properly evaluate it. I do know that the barista was 1. cute and 2. had a couple of 25,000 dollar Clover coffee machines, the last ones sold tot he public before Starbucks snapped up the rights. This is probably terribly important to coffee addicts so I will relate it here.

The rest of the market has such delifghts as a roti chicken joint, a speciality tea seller, a fishmonger, fine chocolates, and a lovely wine and cheese area with drop-dead gorgeous charcuterie platters. I considered buying a very very stinky Epoisses but no one wants their car to stank like that.

Oxbow is a really nice place to hang out: the people who work there are all friendly and passionate about food, and it's easy to get into discussions with interesting people over delicious, unique comestibles. We need more places like this.

We proceeded from there to Ubuntu, which was just incredible and I cannot say enough nice things. A review will of course be forthcoming. I will state for now that my meal at Ubuntu was the only time in my life where I have licked a rock of my own free will.

In short: an ideal birthday for me, which mostly involved eating a lot. I'm angling for the French Laundry for my 21st. Better start calling for reservations now.

I am 19 years old. I just went through a rather unpleasant transfer process from my previous college to another. With an eye toward staying in California, I applied to four UC campuses and a few state schools, as well as Claremont Mckenna. I won't go into boring detail, but at one point, I had been accepted nowhere due to one untransferrable (and required) math class, and things were looking pretty grim. According to the media, I was another good student caught up in the "bubble": a record breaking number of qualified kids seeking admission to the same handful of elite schools. Had a great injustice been done to me?

I take a pretty keen interest in college news, and of late, I've noticed a whole lot of handwringing over the competitive storm that has swept over America's elite and not-so-elite campuses. Harvard is accepting basically no one, including baby Nobel Prize winners and valedictorian quadriplegics with big sad eyes. Same goes for the other Ivies, and things aren't looking much better at the UC campuses, Stanford, or any of the other big name schools. Even schools that were formerly considered backwaters are now seeing hordes of applicants and cutthroat competition. Kids that would in the past be considered young Future Captains of Industry are being left out in the cold or even being forced to go to community college.

What's a soccer mom to do to get her decidedly Above Average little Blaire or Taylor into an Ivy League school? (Another aspect of my generation: we are unable to do anything for ourselves, being transformed into compliant video game playing rag dolls by our very loving parents. But at least we have plenty of Self Esteem!)

Seems to me that this situation is a symptom of something good: more kids are getting the chance to apply competitively to America's very best schools. Back in the good old days Cyndie Q. Soccer Mom laments, nowhere near as many kids had the option of going to those elite schools. Kids from crap backgrounds or with blase parents or recent immigrants or what have you languished and never even got a chance to go near that there IvoryTower. Our education system may still be a mess, but it's achieved good things: we are producing more and more kids who are capable of meeting the challenges top instutions produce. As college admissions counselors frequently note, kids are often picked for entry to top schools more on chance as much as anything else - many rejected kids are just as capable of performing the work as those that are admitted.

I think it's a good thing to give a leg up to kids from tough backgrounds. I think it's a damn good thing. A kid from the ghetto or the country who will be the first in her family to attend college needs that elite education a lot more then a privleged child of suburbia like myself does. If I don't go to an elite school, it doesn't matter much: I still have access to connections, support, and a nice financial cushion in case I mess up. To someone hailing from a tough background without these perks, a high-caliber education at a "name" school could mean a lot.

I also hope that this nasty little reality check will finally snap America's middle class out of the notion that a good education may only be obtained at a handful of institutions that People Will Know About. Being able to wave around a diploma from a fancy institution may make you feel more like a man or deeply intimidate your irritating next door neighbors, but it actually doesn't count for much in the corporate world. Thankfully, the business world still relies (mostly) on one's performance and ability, more then it does on who you were drinking buddies with at a big fancy school. (There is of course a powerful network encompassing graduates of Ivy League schools, but it is certainly not the only path to success.)

Finally, my generation has been overprotected, coddled, and reassured to an extent I believe unequal in American history. We have been told throughout our lives that we can achieve anything if we work hard enough and that we are special and perfect and wonderful no matter what we do, leading many of us to hold onto a deluded fantasy that we really are all of these things. When the rejection letters start coming in and reality sets in, we are absolutely devastated. This can only be good for us. We cannot have whatever we want whenever we want it, and sometimes no matter how hard you work, the world will still kick your ass. These are lessons we need to learn.

The "bubble" may cause America to realize that small and less well known institutions can deliver an excellent education (and a more personalized experience) then many big and famous schools can, that little Blaire will not be a life-long failure because she didn't go to a school with a lot of pretty Ivy on the walls. America, thankfully, has a large number of excellent if little known institutions that turning out smart and happy students: they will survive and succeed and will (astonishingly) suffer little ill effects from being denied their Ivy birthright. Perhaps my teenage brethren will even realize that kissing ass and systematically whipping themselves into perfection to enter a Name School just aint' worth it - maybe we'll start living a little again, instead of keeping up our unfortunate reputation as America's least rebellious generation since WWII. We can only hope.

As for me? I got very lucky. I applied to Tulane University at the very last minute, filling out my application online from a blinking internet terminal in Bangalore, not really expecting to be accepted. To my surprise, Tulane admitted me. I was even more surprised when Tulane sent me a letter to inform me that I had been awarded a not-inconsiderable scholarship on the basis of God Knows What. I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, and now I'm extremely happy to be going to New Orleans: land of my ancestors, cultural mecca, America's delightfully third world city. Tulane has been knocked around a lot in recent years but it's making a brave effort to get up on its feet again, along with the rest of the city: I'm happy I'll be around to see it happen. (And eat oysters.)

In the end, I did get admitted to a nice school, one that people might even know about - but I do believe those weeks in India where I was simultaneously enjoying myself in the Sunny Climes and confronting a possible admission-less reality taught me something important: college isn't everything, and attending a famous institution is even less important. There are a hell of a lot of ways to get where you want to go - Harvard is by no means the only path to happiness or success or money or what have you. Community college, vocational school, the local state institution, lighting out on your own: those all work too. My generation will figure that out in the course of their lives, just like I did.

Seriously. We'll be fine.

Wangfujing, site of many over-heated mall runs.

Tomorrow (well, tonight) is my birthday. I don't have much planned. It'll definitely be an improvement over last year, where I ended up sniffling into a sub-par bowl of beef noodles in Beijing's Wangfujing district and elbowing through a scrum of over-stimulated Chinese eleven year olds to examine the new Harry Potter book. Then I ended up having an awkward dinner with a bunch of Russians, where I attempted to be interested in their complaints about basically everything. (We did have some tasty Peking duck.)

Things looked up around evening. I wandered over to my usual haunt, the Sakura Bar near Qianmen. In the course of the evening, I fell in with a couple of friendly Mexican grad students. We ended up getting drunk and talking about how awesome Cypress Hill is late into the night over magnum bottles of Tsingtao. Now that made up for a lot.

There was, however, absolutely no cake involved. I imagine birthday cake can be obtained in Beijing, but it will probably be red bean flavored and have demented, overjoyed looking Olympics mascots on it.

Mom and I are going to Bouchon tomorrow for lunch, then will pursue exciting retail opportunities in St Helena and Napa. Napa features such delights as excellent shoe stores so I'm looking forward to it. A post on Bouchon will DEFINITELY be forthcoming.
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I have nothing to do this summer.

Due to a sad confluence of events and a crap economy, I haven't been able to find a summer job. Further more, I am going to New Orleans soon to pick out an apartment (oh boy!) and employment prospects are not looking good.

Of course I am looking forward to going to New Orleans. Very much. It is one of America's great cities, the home of my ancestors, and also has delicious food, including such wonders as oysters Rockefeller, soft shell crabs, and po' boys as big as Sammy Sosa's thighs. Tulane University decided to 1. accept me and 2. give me a big scholarship, and since I am not one to turn down Free Money, I took it. I am very happy things turned out that way.

Which leads me to the gist: I want to take a new route with this blog. I want to be able to post something every day, and since it's hard even for me to think of something to say about food every day, I'm going to diversify my portfolio and begin writing about all sorts of stuff.

I am interested in a lot of things beyond food, ranging from cartooning to Mughal history to Utahraptor predation methods, and I would like to talk about them. If I find something interesting on the internet, am excited about something, or simply want to complain, it'll go here. I make no claims about anyone on the entire internet actually wanting to read it but it'll keep me out of trouble (and maybe even out of prison!).

I will still post often about food, mainly because food occupies an embarrassing amount of my mental space and I am relocating to New Orleans, where apparently people are just as food obsessed as I am. I cannot wait.