No Reservations Episode 01 - “Why the French Don’t Suck” - Anthony Bourdain’s new show on the Travel Network.

So, anyone here had absinthe? Tony spends the first segment of the program drinking the stuff an an Absinthe bar. In the process, he ends up meeting with someone that happens to be a serious afficionado, and they end up cracking open an illegal bottle from 1910 or so. The segment ends with a rather cheesy but funny interlude of Bourdain sitting in his hotel pretending to be having a psychedelic adventure.

Aaaah, the fruit of the wormwood. In France, they call it La fée verte (the green fairy), which is kind of cute. Absinthe has had a large number of fans over the years, perhaps most notoriously writer Oscar Wilde. Indeed, on the subject of Oscar Wilde, Tony stayed at Hotel d’Alsace where Oscar spent his last days. Oscar apparently stated “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go.” Looks like the wallpaper won out.

I have had the stuff on a few occasions, and can report that it tastes just a little bit like a sweetened Sambuca. Pouring it comes with a crazy ritual in which the liquor is strained through a sugar cube and served straight. Unfortunately, as far as I know it is not legal in this puritanical nation of ours, so you gotta hit up your pals going to the Czech Republic for a few bottles.

After the Absinthe segments, Tony follows his nose to an old fashioned bistro, has breakfast (including several cigarettes) in a small café, and generally wanders around telling you that guidebooks are no way to see Paris. He brings us the the now defunct Les Halles market, the one time massive food market that served the entire city and surrounding area (and incidentally, the name of the restaurant where Bourdain is chef). Finally, no visit to France would be complete without a visit to the legendary catacombs of Paris.

At some point, the show gets to him and Louisa Chu (his local fixer and a cook at Le Crillon) visiting the French Market, a huge indoor facility that has everything you could possibly imagine… fresh game (in the episode, it is game season in France), boars still with fur, and a nice looking palette of pigeons. The french do indeed eat everything, and they like to do it in season, as Tony takes great pains to let us know. This segment was finalized by a scene at the on-premises cafe, where the workers are all drinking wine… at 7 in the morning.

I gotta move to France.

Anthony Bourdain gives one hell of a show. Much like his books, he uses comedy to encapsulate his message: eat good food! Enjoy eating good food! Understand where your good food comes from! These are all lessons that are likely lost on many Americans, but we are coming around… at least some of us.

I just sat down and watched “No Reservations” with my man Chris Hill.

Awe - some. More later, after the two hearted ales wear off…

Hey, dinners on me to whomever can finish the title with what Tony actually said… by 10AM tomorrow. (Central time)

Ravens Wood 2001 Old Wine Zinfandel - Sonoma County

In the interest of full disclosure, I would like to announce that casa de la shogunmoon is without central air conditioning. Non. Nada. Zilch. To disclose a bit further, we do have a single window unit upstairs in our “master bedroom”, the luxurious 12×12 suite that is shared by my wife, two dogs, three cats, and myself when it is this hot. We usually lock the critters out so we can get some sleep, but we are not cruel to our pets in this kind of heat! It has been around 100 degrees in our house for three weeks straight. I am afraid that my desk chair has permanent sweat stains. I have not cooked anything in days, and this week isn’t looking good either. Yea, I know, poor Minnesotan, so used to the sub zero weather. Boohoo for me. Well, I can make soup stock when it is below zero… warms the house up real nice! But there’s no real way to cool it down when it’s this freakin’ hot now, is there?

I would like to further preface this brief post with the fact that Fourth of July weekend, my crazy uncle Dave set us up with 11 cases of delicious locally brewed James Page beer. Hell yea, right? We are set for a few months, awesome! Turns out James Page Brewery, once a Nordeast Minneapolis institution, recently (as in the last two years) moved outta town, was subsequently sold, and is now made somewhere in Wisconsin. Uncle Dave’s pal is apparently some kind of distributer, and was unloading a lot of old product. For free. Of course, my uncle did what any member of my family would do, he said, “I will take it all.” Well, apparently that meant about 60 cases of beer, 11 of which have ended up benefitting us greatly.

The last time I drank the real Northeast deal was at our wedding, August 2003, at the Conservatory at the Walker Sculpture Garden. We had three 5 gallon kegs of James Page Amber for our friends, and one large drum of Budweiser for the fam, who swear it’s the only thing worth drinking (hey! speak for your own family! mine was busy clearing out the wine reserves! - the uh, editor). Next day, the Budweiser keg was nearly full, and all three James Page kegs were bone dry. My clan is a bit more fickle then they have led me to believe about their precious Budweiser.

Speaking of our wedding, we had the best cake of our lives, bar none. It was made by the pastry chef over at a little Minneapolis Restaurant that some people like to think is something special. Oh, and it is… I am not kidding when I say it was easily the best cake I have ever had. As anyone that knows me can attest, I do not have that much of a sweet tooth. The only information they had to go on was that I, prima-donna that I am, exclusively like chocolate in my cake and that Christie liked the idea of daisies as decoration. She ran with those ideas and created a chocolate raspberry confection of… well, words cannot describe this creation of divine beauty and deliciousness…

Getting back on topic… where were we? Ah, my uncle Dave gave us 11 cases of James Page. Well, now that we are done with pleasent thoughts of pleasant cakes, let’s let the other shoe drop. About that James Page Beer? It just so happens that it was 8 cases of James Page Winter Warmer, and three cases of Octoberfest, the 2004 batch. Fast forward to three weeks later, and that is all that we have been drinking. How is that for ya! It has been 100 degrees in our house, and we have a near unlimited supply of ice cold James Page Winter Warmer! AAaarrrgh! Is that irony? No, but it still isn’t refreshing lager. Yea yea, whining.

It is in this context that the bottle of Ravenswood Old Vine Zinfandel was opened. I received the bottle as a gift at my thirtieth birthday, and have been hanging on to it ever since for a good time to open it. This weekend, thank the good lord, has been relatively cool, at a casual 90 degrees in the house. Upon returning home from our evening outing to anyplace we can find that has AC, we decided enough was enough. We need something besides Winter Warmer! And, this being a Sunday in Minnesota, we are SOL as far as going to the liquor store is concerned. That is when I remembered that wine. This is the best red wine, hell, wine of any kind, that I have had in a long time.

THat just goes to show you, kids. The quality of a meal or a good bottle of wine has as much to do with the context of the situation as it does in the inherent quality of the wine or dish itself.

Regards,

Shogunmoon

PS - This bottle is quite good for its price class… full, spicy and richly berry-like. Would be good with a heavily marinated pork or a tender steak. Or, just great on the first day of 80 degree temperatures after two straight weeks of near 100 degree temperatures inside the casa de la shogunmoon.

I love lunch. There is nothing quite like it. I am the sort of person that will roll into work and ask everyone “what are you having for lunch?” as a greeting. I will spend hours at home cooking up a meal for the wife and I to eat over the next week. In an effort to make it so that I can seperate things like herbs, peanuts, and fish sauces for maximum flavor, I imported some Bento Boxes from Japan. Like I said, lunch is a hallowed time of day for me, and I take it very seriously. So on that note, I give you this.

Here is the deal- I work in Saint Louis Park. The dining scene around my office is not exactly dynamic, but hell, it beats Maple Grove. It does have a few choices for decent chow that are not overrated gut-busting McDonald’s subsidiaries. Ahem. In addition to the chain restaurants scattered about like the pollution and debris that they are, Saint Louis Park boasts two decent restaurants: First, the ever popular Thanh Do, and second, the much maligned Mojito. I have had lunch at Mojito a few times now, and I would like to say that they can whip up a half-way decent lunch.

For the record, I have never eaten dinner there, though I did once do happy hour… shrug. I do like the happy hours, as long as they go until seven. I have no time for happy hours that only go ’til six. I have a day job, you know what I mean? (Ed-Mojito’s has a 7PM happy hour)

The lunch-time menu is a fairly brief affair, as it probably should be. It contains a few salads, some sandwiches, and some specialty items. The main specialty at Mojito is the Rodizio, wherein the cooks wander around with spits of meat and large sword-like knives, slicing whatever strikes your fancy onto your plate. This generous offer comes with salads and some other items… one of these days I will eat it, and let you know how it turns out.

What I have had is the Carnitas. Twice. And will certainly have again. The Carnitas is delicious pork slow-fried in a fancy iron skillet, and served with corn tortillas and ramekins of pickled onions, guacamole and pico de gallo. This is good stuff. The pork is tender, having been simmering in gravy for however long it takes, and has a nice delicious savory taste. Mixed with the accompanying pico and tortillas, you have yourself easily the best tacos in Saint Louis Park.

Speaking of tacos, Mojito also has a “Taco of the Day” on the lunch menu. For those of you that would rather have your tacos pre-assembled, this is something to take a look at. You get three tacos, each with two tortillas just like at a real Mexican restaurant. You still get the pico de gallo and the guac, and are offered a choice of yucca fries or tortillas. That choice is a no brainer. You have guacamole, so you need the tortilla chips. The time I ordered this, the meat of the day was steak, and it was quite nice. It was a very tender and rich tasting mound of finely chopped steak. As far as tacos go, these really are world class. If you are used to the steak at Don Pablos, you have had nothing like this.

Finally, let’s have a word about guacamole. Not specifically Mojito’s guac (which is just fine, clearly made fresh and all that, though not fresh table side like you see occasionally these days) but guac in general. Guacamole is heavenly stuff when it is fresh, and especially when the chef thoughtfully adds a good amount of cilantro. The thing is, there are a lot of people who DO NOT LIKE GUACAMOLE! I kid you not. What is that matter with these deprived people? Did you get beaten by an avacado as a child? This is as incomprehensible to me as people who refuse to drink for no good reason. I mean, come on! A well made batch of guacamole is one of the few guilt-free pleasures to be had on this mortal coil.

Anyhow thank you, thank you, I will be here all week. Next time, it’ll be the Rodizio meat-on-a-stick thing, and I shall let you in on whether it is good, bad, and/or dangerous. Me, I am hoping for dangerous. If there is one thing happy safe Saint Louis Park needs, it is a healthy dose of danger… and some more restaurants that have a chef on premises.

-Shogunmoon

Mojito

4656 Excelsior Blvd
St Louis Park
(952) 922-6656

FitDay is a free online diet and exercise journal that I’ve been using for the past couple of months. I’m not overly concerned about my weight, but I wouldn’t mind being a little more svelte. Anyway, it’s pretty cool, you basically log the foods you eat and the exercises you do every day, either by selecting from the site’s database of common foods & exercises, or you can add your own custom items. FitDay tracks your progress towards whatever goals you set and compares your nutritional intake to the recommended daily allowances. I imagine this would be useful for folks who have special dietary needs, or if you just really want to know how much selenium you’ve gotten in the past month. I personally have discovered that it is nearly impossible not to exceed the recommended daily allowance for sodium without dining exclusively on grass clipping.

I like bananas, and I think it is pretty cool that I can walk
into any grocery store and procure a banana, especially since I live in a part
of the world where no amount of science could coax that banana out of the local
florasphere. But it takes a lot of energy to ferry bananas from the tropics into
my smoothie here in Minneapolis, and at a time when the consumption and ever increasing need for energy
is screwing both the environment and geopolitical stability, what is the real
cost of all this variety?  Why are we carting
food all over the planet when there are perfectly good things to eat in our own
backyards?

Well, the short answer is because we like bananas and mangos,
and fine wines from places whose names we can’t pronounce, and all of these
things enrich our lives and enhance our hipster credibility. But in spite of all
that, these courageous folks have decided to try something they call The 100
Mile Diet, in which for one year they will only consume foods that are grown or raised within
a 100 mile radius of their home in Vancouver and document their efforts.

It may sound a bit extreme, but appropriating various aspects
of their concept might not be a bad idea. In addition to the PC karma and local
economy benefits, eating foods that are locally grown is a tenant of the über healthy
Macrobiotic Diet, and are probably better for you in general since they most
likely don’t contain all the pesticides and preservatives that would be
required for a transcontinental journey.

So, anyone here like to cook? Well, I do, and I am going to tell you all about, at great length, and without regard to your patience level, how much I like to cook. Capisce? I kid, I kid… but trust me, we are going to be talking about some really tasty and relatively easy to make foods.

It all started back a few months ago when I received the June copy of Gourmet Magazine. It had those saucy Vietnamese recipes in it, and damn they were GOOD. So, I was left with no choice but to attempt to create some more of the stuff myself. Another factor that led to my interest in Vietnamese cooking was Anthony Bourdains “A Cook’s Tour” wherein the man gushes about the food and the culture. Bourdain is not one to gush about something that doesn’t deserve to be gushed about, so I have the fullest confidence in his assessment. If you have not read his books, I am ashamed of you. Also, since I was getting real sick of the rather boring stir fries I was working with, I figured a healthy dose of Real Deal authentic Vietnamese food was in order.

That is where Mai Pham steps in. Her book, Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table, is a great place to start not only with Vietnamese cooking, but Southeast Asian cooking in general. She outlines all the herbs, sauces, and equipment you need with a generous selection of descriptions, pictures and illustrations. This book, while perhaps not for the true novice, is one that someone with fairly humble culinary skills can get a handle on, for the most part.

Mai Pham also prefaces every chapter with a nice little story about her experiences returning to Vietnam in 2000. She grew up in both Vietnam and Thailand, but had to flee to the US in 1975 during the fall of Saigon, as a teenager. She left her grandmother in the doorway of her ancestral family home sobbing and banging her head against the door frame. Needless to say, an extremely grim situation.

The book starts off with her returning to Saigon to see her grandmother, who is still alive and living in the same house the family fled 25 years before. Each chapter starts with a little anecdote about the author’s many return visits to her homeland, and include some nice photos taken by her. It ends up being a sweet love letter to her grandmother. Indeed, the vegetarian section is all about the grandma, as she stopped eating meat early in her life when her husband died, and she went without meat so she could afford to raise her family alone.

Each recipe also starts with a little story. Things like the author visiting a noodle shop that she remembers as a kid, and finding it still there, with the daughter of the original proprietor running it much as it was 25 years ago. She explains, through the recipes, the differences in cuisine between Northern (Hanoi, home of phở), middle (Hue, the old Imperial seat of Vietnam,) and Saigon (Ho Chi Min City, the largest and most cosmopolitan of the cities in Vietnam.) You get a good sense of true Vietnamese culture, a nice break from the American ideal of the Vietnamese as VC soldiers in black pajamas roaming through jungles.

This book definitely helps with what can be a most daunting task, shopping at an Asian grocery store. Mercy me, they have chickens with heads still on! They have bins full of duck and chicken feet! The Vietnamese definitely share something with the French- pride in the national cuisine, and a penchant for eating every little bit of an animal once they slaughter it. You will have a hell of a time cooking anything in this book without visiting one, so if you do not live in a city with a sizable Southeast Asian population, it’s mail order city, sweetheart.

Me, I went to Shuang Hur, a fairly large shop across the street from Quang, on Nicollet avenue. I had very little trouble locating all the sauces and herbs I needed. The herbs at Shuang Hur are very inexpensive. Prices that grocery stores and co-ops charge for herbs are nothing less then criminal extortion. You will get three times the herbs for half the cost compared to those crappy plastic little boxes you see elsewhere. On my way out, the young fellow at the register told me about how he liked eating at all the restaurants on Nicollet, including the Taquerias, the greek place, Harry Singh’s, and Pho Tau bay. Thanks for the tip buddy! The cost of my groceries? About $20.

Actually cooking from this book was very nice. Mai Pham has no problem comforting you, and holds your hand every step of the way. It almost seems as if she is there in the kitchen with you. She goes into great detail with not only the shopping list of items and equipment that you need, but the recipes themselves. I tried quite a few of the recipes in the book, ranging from the Bun noodles salads served with grilled meat and fresh herbs to a stir fry with delicious lemongrass and chilies, and I tell you what, every one of them came out perfect, with one exception… er, let’s just say my spring roll rolling technique needs more then a little work. All in all, very nicely flavored stuff, and pretty dead-on compared to the dishes at Vietnamese restaurants.

The one thing I have not attempted is the Vietnamese national dish, phở. It requires that you make stock first, which is no big deal. I generally make my own stocks… IN THE WINTER. It has been 90 degress on a daily basis for a few weeks now… But the stuff is good. I would recommend the phở at Pho Tau bay… they have some serious air conditioning.

Sooo, ladies and gentlemen, Mai Pham knows what she is talking about. If you have the urge to create for yourself delicate and ultra fresh foods with a nice balance of hot and cold, sweet and sour, savory and salty, frequently all in the same dish, there is no better place to start.

This book is phở-king good stuff!

***

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pho

Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table, by Mai Pham

Shuang Hur Oriental Market

2710 Nicollet Avenue South

Minneapolis

612.872.8606

Here is a list of what I tried, just to wet your pallette a little. Yea, I am a bastard.

Ga Bop, (Hue Chicken Salad) 79 Yummy! Cold summer salad. Great on the rice noodles

Dua Leo Ngam Giam, (Cucumber Salad) 81 This is very simple, and on of my favorites.

Goi Cuon, (Rive Paper wrapped salad rolls) 95 Good, but man, the rolling is hard

Bun voi rau thom, (Rice noodles with fresh herbs) 119 Mmmm.

bun bo xao, (lemongrass beef) 120 Super tasty stir fry. Hint- Make sure your lemongrass is FINELY diced, otherwise it will be crunchy in the dish.

com chien, (fried rice) Odd take on fried rice, uses ketchup and butter!

ga xao xa ot, (stir fried chicken with lemongrass and chilies) 145 Super tasty! I served it with the fried rice and cucumber salad. The wife was most pleased. This is the picture I took of it.

Accompanying Sauces.

Nuoc Cham, Dipping Sauce, you can serve this with pretty much anything

Tuong goi cuon (Bean dipping Sauce, page 28)

Nuoc Mau (Caramel Sauce, page 34)

My coworkers and I split a Papaya Salad and Beef with Lemongrass from Thanh Do. YUM!
Just thought I would share… oh wait IT IS ALL GONE.

Sorry

Thanh Do Restaurant - (952) 935-5005 - 3005 Utah Ave S, Saint Louis Park, MN 55426

So here is a nicely organized list of recipes
that are healthy, take under 30 minutes to make, and are still probably more
impressive then anything your parents ever cooked for you. Most of these have
10 or fewer ingredients, and are things you can find at your local big box
grocer without having to ask anyone for help. Good if life gets a little
crowded and you don’t want to live off  frozen waffles and hot pockets.       

Over 100 Quick and Easy Healthy Foods

For those of you who have never had the pleasure of waiting tables for a living, Waiter Rant has a tutorial on
the proper etiquette for paying your tab. My favorite is Number
3:

"Don’t fight over who’s paying the bill. Sometimes your friend wants to pay for dinner. I say let them. However, if you anticipate a "fight" over whose the more generous party please keep the waiter out of it…"

This actually happened to me while minding the register at Café Latte - a cafeteria style restaurant in St Paul where I used to work. These two nut jobs were squirming all over each other trying to get to the check, holding up the line and causing a scene in the process. I suggested that if they really wanted to be all Minnesota Nice about it, they could have both paid and let me pocket the difference - A tripple win situation as far as I could tell. Unfortunately, logic did not prevail and I ended up snatching the closest guys credit card while rolling my eyes a little.

Waiter Rant - Check Please