Did I Tell You About Those Shrimp?

My apologies for my laziness in updating. I've been too busy eating cereal and chips and ice cream in bed and wondering why I can't fit into my jeans anymore.

Finally, I have found a thouroughly satisfying shrimp dish besides my favorite Salt and Pepper Shrimp at Royal Capitol Seafood. A couple weekends ago my folks were in town and Eric took us to PJ's Oyster Bed, a New Orleans-style seafood house here in San Francisco. I was pretty skeptical ,as usual. The sad excuse for "New Orleans" style decor inside the place was so trendy and over the top (in a non-French-Quarter kind of way). And, as usual, I accurately predicted that the food would be mediocre. The gumbo was watery, the barbecue beans syrupy, the roasted mussels puny and the baby back ribs ridiculously lean. Everything was, as I smugly expected, sub-par; that is except for the sizzling skillet of Voo Doo shrimp which my mom immediately zeroed in on when we walked in the door.

These shrimp are roasted whole, shell-on, with cajun spices, cream, garlic, sherry, and worcestershire sauce in an iron skillet just long enough so that the shrimp come to you piping hot, juicy, and succulent. The fire-roasting ingeniously cooks the shrimp at a high, dry heat to keep all the sweet, shrimpy flavor in every savory morsel. Furthermore, the use of high heat ensures that the shrimp can be cooked quickly so that they don't come out overdone and rubbery.

Despite the fact that the shrimp themselves were perfectly done, the sauce they were roasted with was absolutely beautiful. One might think, as I did upon reading the description of the dish, that the shrimp would be covered in this overwhelmingly thick and rich cream sauce. Actually, quite the opposite was true. It seems that the cream, along with the sherry and juices from the shrimp, sort of caramelized as a consequence of the high heat. The product is this light, buttery substance (the fat from the cream) with little browned tidbits of garlic, spice, and the cheesy solids from the cream. Delicious! I know I use the word "nutty" to describe too many foods, but I really can't refrain from using it here because it's the only way to describe the special flavor of those golden crumbs of cream-spice-shrimp encrusting the hot skillet. After I had finished all my shrimp to dab in that wonderful reduction and the busboy tried to take the skillet away I frantically reached out, like some sort of starving, feral monkey, because I wanted to eat the sauce on my corn-on-the-cob and rice pilaf.

It's funny, because I'm usually far too anal-retentive to eat food with my hands, let alone peel the skin off of whole creatures. I hate having grubby hands and smelling like food, but these spicy, buttery, slightly smoky Voo Doo shrimp really put a spell on me. By the end of the meal, I was sucking my fingers clean as passersby stared through the window at the barbaric girl who had gotten butter all over her hands.

Old Friends

Photos: right, Saint Agur blue cheese, I like it more than Cambozola (below), but it's harder to find.
I have this horrible habit of eating the same thing for 2 weeks straight because I've fallen in love with it, and then not eat it again for months, years even, because I've grossed myself out.

Thing is, when I return to my former addiction, it can be a beautiful thing to re-discover all the reasons I loved it in the first place. Today I had Cambozola, a luxuriously creamy blue cheese, and baby New York Empire apples. This is a snack that I enjoyed regularly until I moved up to Santa Cruz and would eat it for every meal when I was too lazy to shop for groceries. I soon tired of it and eliminated Cambozola from my weekly grocery list.

Perhaps I'm a plebeian for liking this cheese, whcih is mass-produced by machines in Germany, but it is such a delight that I am willing to accept my status as an unsophisticated cheese-lover. The beauty of Cambozola is the way in which it's creators artfully paired the mellow, buttery qualities of camembert with the tangy, fragrant qualities of gorgonzola. The result of this unlikely marriage is a mildly nutty, intensely briny, meltingly smooth cheese with a slightly bitter after taste. I used to eat this cheese with fuji apples, but I found that the New York Empire apples, being slightly more tart and less sweet while having all the crispness and juiciness, allowed the delicate flavor of the Cambozola to develop and stand out on the palate. Furthermore, the cool, juicy apples help to cut through the pronounced briny-bitter flavor of the cheese so that there is a perfect balance of sweet, salty, buttery, nutty tastiness.

Ah, the beauty of fromage.

Best Spots for Griddle Sweets

Despite my humongous sweet tooth, I have never considered a sweet breakfast a real breakfast. Perhaps this is because I grew up eating Filipino breakfasts of garlic fried rice, fried eggs, bacon, and fresh tomatoes every weekend. However, in my recent "research" on breakfast joints in the Bay Area I have come to realize that a breakfast without sweets, whether it's fresh bread with seasonal jam or a stack of pancakes, isn't a real breakfast either. In fact, I feel oddly incomplete if I eat a completely savory breakfast, unconsciously searching the cafe-lined streets for my sweet fix.

What has prompted me to write about our favorite dessert-like creations from the griddle is a recent, and rather sudden, embrace of pancakes. I have never really liked pancakes. Too often they are lifeless, mushy rounds, overwhelmed with baking soda, and drowned in cloyingly sweet syrup. The thought of such offensive concotions is enough to make my stomach turn as I write this. But how can a confection whose name brings to mind a buttery, fragrant, cake lightly fried in a pan possibly turn out bad? Whatever the reason, it is far too common, for a few experiences in the darling city of San Francisco have shown that the pancake can not only excel, it can be so beautifully done as to convert savory breakfast-eaters like myself.

When it comes to pancakes, I usually like a bit of fruit to break up the intensity of all that buttery goodness, but for those of you who are purists, Mama's in Washington Square serves up a plate of silver dollar pancakes tasty enough for me to order as a side, which I'll split with my very obliging dining mate. I usually opt for their artful omelettes as the main course such as the Farmer's, which is made with pancetta, leeks, spinach, and chevre, or the Dungeness Crab omelette with scallions and creme fraiche. They also have an impressive selection of fresh muffins, pastries, and breads which they incorporate in their extremely popular french toast dishes.

As I had mentioned, I like my pancakes best with a bit of fresh fruit, and I have had two amazing examples of fruit laced pancakes in San Francisco. For light, elegant pancakes in a fittingly swank bistro-bar setting, Absinthe in the Hayes valley makes banana and blueberry souffle pancakes so delectable that I can skip the eggs and potatoes, which are admittedly mediocre. Conversely, for a wonderfully dense, yet tender, cake with tremendous flavor served in an equally hip, yet eclectic-friend's-home setting Dottie's True Blue wins hands down for their blueberry and cornmeal pancakes. These pancakes are my favorite because the cornmeal adds heft and bite to the cake while lending a subtly nutty taste. When paired with the juicy bits of blueberry, these cornmeal cakes are heavenly and need only be dressed with the slightest amount of butter and maple syrup. I must add that their hotlinks, eggs, and homefries nearly had me tearing out of joy. These hotlinks were the real thing: smoky, spicy, and delightfully salty. Paired with slightly runny eggs and crispy-creamy potatoes, the hotlinks nearly had me singing praise, vaudevillian style, atop our tiny table.

For Southern California, I can't mention much for pancakes except that Fred 62 in Los Feliz has won several awards for their cakes. Lately however, my pancake consultant and passionate pancake afficionado, Shiri, has claimed that the pancakes aren't what they used to be. It's likely that a hurried cook in the kitchen is to blame, as most recently we have frequented that joint right after the bars close at 2 a.m. and it gets really hectic. Hopefully, catching a late breakfast there on a weekday would improve the quality of the pancakes, because I have tasted their pancakes on a good day, and they are truly a thing of beauty. As for everything else on the menu, steer clear of the over-priced and pretentious items and opt for eggs, hash browns, and bacon because they don't do very well on their other breakfast items, and I've found their sanwiches and burgers consistently dry, tasteless, and generally disappointing. The waffle conconctions, however, like the Bossanova (ice cream and dulce de leche) are pretty consistently awesome.

I'm pretty famished now. Breakfast may be the ultimate comfort meal, as I crave it at all hours. Unfortunately, Dottie's is only open until 3 p.m. so it looks like I'll have to keep myself pre-occupied until tomorrow morning.

The Magnificent Shaggy Parasol

3 days of San Francisco's persistent drizzle had put me in a funk. I was getting pretty disgusted by the litter-strewn sidewalks, and since it had been raining they were soggy-litter-strewn sidewalks. I figured that if one had to endure such crummy weather they should be picking mushrooms.

So, I decided to head back to Santa Cruz to go hunting for some food. Perhaps chantrelles would be growing on the east side of UCSC campus, I thought. No luck, all I found were some gopher holes and a nearly complete deer skeleton. I didn't enjoy the idea of being a cougar's next dinner, so I headed down to some cypress groves near the beach to seek out the Giant Cypress Agaricus, a cousin of the common button and crimini mushrooms we buy at the market.

It was nearly five p.m. when I got out by the beach, and the drizzle hadn't let up. After trudging around and finding nothing but garbage under the dense, dark canopies of the cypress, I thought I'd dig around the beach instead as it lookel like the tide was a bit low. Besides, I had my garden spade, maybe I could dig up some clams for dinner.

I must have looked incredibly silly on the beach in my slicker, a giant hat, and my wicker mushroom basket in hand. I had gone down to the dog beach and it was right around that time when people get off work and take their dogs to the beach to run around and sniff each others butts. I immediately put my basket down and set out on the glassy shores with my spade. I dug patiently in the remarkably smooth sand. Occasionally one of the dogs would come running up to sniff me and shove their curious heads into the empty basket before running off again. After digging in several spots and finding nothing but two very worn clam shells I began to feel very stupid. Surely one of the natives would have told me that there are no clams on this beach if I didn't look like some scary schizo in my big coat and summer hat.

Thus, I headed back up the cliff to my car empty handed and slightly soaked from the waves. I wasn't unhappy, though, as I had made quite a few canine friends. I smiled to myself as I walked back and thought of how much I liked dogs for their jovial dispositions, curious natures, and...shit...there was dog shit on my boot. Eeeew. I hate poo. I proceeded to stomp my foot and scrape it along the grass when under one of the cypresses in the parking lot I spotted them: large white bulbs poking out of the humus. They were perfectly sheltered and dry under the low branches of that coastal conifer, so I had to crawl in the dirt to get to them. When I finally unearthed a few of the larger specimens, I began to notice that there were quite a few of these beautiful, pristine mushrooms all around me. They were not Giant Cypress Agaricus, but Shaggy Parasols or Lepiota rachodes. I gathered perhaps a couple pounds of them, and returned home, beaming. I had never tasted Lepiotas, but I heard they were delicious, and I was ecstatic to have come home with such a bounty.

When I got home I immediately cleaned them and sliced them up to be sauteed. The best way to cook mushrooms is to dry sautee them. This means that you cook the mushrooms over a high heat in an open pan with no oil or butter. Adding salt to the mushrooms as they sautee helps to draw out the moisture and define the flavor of the mushrooms. What the dry sautee method does is draw out all the excess liquid from the mushrooms and concentrate their flavor. This is a particularly good method for wild mushrooms as they tend to be dirty, and you can wash them with as much vigor as you please without worrying about the final product being water-logged. Some say this treatment washes away the flavor of the mushrooms, but I have not noticed a lack of flavor in washed mushrooms. Besides, nothing kills my appetite like a bite of dirt or grit.

As the mushrooms sizzled in the pan, their broth leached out and the steam filled my tiny studio with their faint scent. I wondered if I would like them very much. I had cooked the savory oyster mushroom, the sweet, maple-scented candy cap, and the exquistely fruity chantrelle, all among the most esteemed wild fungi out there. When the pan was dry, and the mushrooms were shiny and golden brown, I turned off the heat and sampled one of the meaty slices in the pan. There was no way I could have anticipated the immense flavor that filled my mouth! The mushrooms retained a firm, almost crisp, texture, and their flavor was quite unparalleled by any mushroom that I have cooked in this house. They were at once sweet, nutty, with a subtle mushroomy flavor. Having only been sauteed with sea salt, I was amazed at how tasty they were. I realized then, that I had the makings of a fantastic meal in the pan so I took the mushrooms out, fried some butter and garlic together and made a simple bechamel in the pan so I could get as much of the mushroom flavor in the sauce, adding the cooked mushrooms at the end and allowing the sauce to cook down to a good thickness. I ate the mushroom "ragu" over same pasta and savored every impeccable bite. The toasted garlic brought out the nutty flavors of the Lepiotas and the bechamel helped to distribute the natural sweetness throughout the dish. It was simply lovely, and impressive enough to motivate me to hunt for mushrooms throughout the rest of the rainy season.