Author Archives: Renate Valencia

One garden tomato left

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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

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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.

Shanghai Gourmet in Richmond going downhill

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We ate at Shanghai Gourmet at Pacific East Mall (3288 Pierce) in Richmond today and found that the place had gone downhill.  How sad!  No more chicken with chestnuts — it was taken off the menu.  The braised meatballs (often called “Lion’s Head”) had limited richness of sauce, which was markedly lighter than in the past and floury.  The pork with bean curd sheets — which should be pork belly and bean curd knots braised in a clay pot with the usual suspects, like wine, rock sugar and soy sauce — was a memory of its former self.  First off, half the pork belly was replaced with another cut of pork, which sent my mother into a tailspin.  Second, the sauce was weak.  Stuff was missing or the dish was not given enough time to braise – maybe both.  All I know is that it should have been obscenely savory but fell flat.  Matt ordered pan-fried bean curd with shrimp roe, which was very good, but none of us were able to detect much roe flavor.  When we talked with our server about the state of the food, he claimed there had been no change in ownership nor chef.  Then what the hell happened?  This calls for some investigation.

Christmas leftovers

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Smoked pork chop in aspic german-style

We are eating Christmas leftovers now, and I am happily working through my Sulzkotelet stash.  Oh, beloved Sulzkotelets!  I ate them as a child and would be happy with nothing but pork and aspic products during the holiday season.  A Sulzkotelet is a smoked pork loin chop (Kassler Rippchen) in mildly sour aspic with a slice of egg, carrot and pickle.  All are set attractively in a little pork chop shaped mold.  They taste great with a nice sourdough or hearty rye bread or with boiled potatoes.  When the hot potatoes come into contact with the cold aspic you get some highly desirable melting action.  Karl Ehmer in Flushing, Queens, used to sell these when I was growing up.  Though the Flushing store is long gone, Karl Ehmer still has a number of retail stores in New York and also sells via mail order, though I am invariably told that they only produce this item “off and on” and have not been able to get them sent to me in California.  If you live near a Karl Ehmer retail store and like aspic products, I advise you to investigate their availability.  I generally order them from Stiglmeier’s, even  though they are skinnier and boneless, since Stiglmeier’s has other things I order anyway.  I am not sure if Schaller & Weber, another major producer of German sausages and cold cuts, carries Sulzkotelets these days. When I lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in the early 1990’s, I used to get them at their retail store off 86th street (1654 2nd Ave).

Christmas minus one parent

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Prime rib

This is my first Christmas without my father.  Although we hadn’t spent Christmas together in years, we always exchanged gifts and a barrage of cell phone calls during the holidays.  He always sent Amazon.com gift certificates, and this is the first year we won’t be seeing any in our email in-boxes.  The real loss was felt last night, though, since we celebrate in the German tradition, where Christmas Eve is the big deal.  In any event, our small Matthew and Jon at Christmas dinner in 2006 family unit produced a delightful prime rib dinner today.  We had toyed with sirloin of beef, and even went back and forth in the meat section of Costco with large pieces of beast until we finally said, “the hell with it, you only live once, we could be dead next year,” and carted the immense sirloin back to its section in favor of the boneless prime rib.  That is not to say there wasn’t a “bone-in” versus “boneless” conversation beforehand.  We roasted it at low heat to an internal temperature of ~130 degrees F., which is RARE, the only way to eat prime rib, really.  Since I wanted the full flavor of the meat to shine through, I rubbed only salt and pepper into the meat before cooking.  Happy Christmas!