Yearly Archives: 2007

New kitchen

Yixing and other teapots I collect

Yixing and other teapots I collect

The akitachow pack is moving to a much bigger house soon.  Given that my cooking paraphernalia, cookbooks and teapot collection are crammed into a 930 square foot bungalow right now, this is A Very Good Thing.  No more moving 20 clay pots to get the correct one out for congee!  No 300 crashing lids when I take out the sauté pan living under those lids!  Room for a 36-inch gas range!  OK, so the kitchen is decorated in two God-awful and clashing designs of flecked, dark brown ceramic tile, but who really cares when you can have a BIG-ASS GAS RANGE.  It is amazing, though, that a person paid to have those tiles installed.  Actually selected them for a recent kitchen renovation.  Two different designs of dark brown for an already-dark space.  Tiles are already a problem for me since I won’t have a smooth work surface, but I would really rather not need 3-D glasses to enter the room.

One garden tomato left

Tomato plants in the yard from summer of 2007

Incredibly cold in the SF Bay Area — we are having thick frost daily! — but I still have one garden tomato left on my countertop.  When I was in Binghamton my mother picked the remaining green ones (it was a productive but sloooooow season) and brought them inside to ripen so they would not be subjected to the rainy season or a freeze.  She also picked all the lemons and gave them away at the Albany Senior Center, claiming “they were not doing well and needed to be picked.”  I tell you, you leave for 6 weeks here and find all your lemons gone when you get back.

Boulud’s Braise

Braised fish from Boulud's book Braise

I received Daniel Boulud’s Braise for Christmas and spent the afternoon putting together the Mackerel with Herb Curry (pg. 158), having been seduced by its glossy representation.  The Spanish Mackerel looked pretty sad at the fish store, so I substituted a small, whole, white-fleshed salmon that was on sale at 99 Ranch Market for $1.99 per pound.  $11.61 and ‘fish cleaning option #3’ later, I arrived home with a bag full of fat salmon steaks, head and tail.  Even though I did not have a Kaffir lime leaf nor tomato juice nor a red bell pepper nor the plum tomatoes, the dished turned out to be a big hit here at Chez Akitachow.  I substituted fish stock for the tomato juice (yes, there are people who have fish stock around but not tomato juice — so shoot me!), a green bell pepper for the red and beefsteak tomatoes for the plum.  To hell with substituting for the lime leaf.  I also added a whisper of Spanish paprika to make up for the loss of the red bell pepper.  Serve this baby with rice and you’ll convert even those wimps who never before looked a fish steak in the eye.