During my travels, I've eaten at high-end restaurants that made me so worried about which fork to use I couldn't enjoy the meal, and holes in the wall where waiters slapped down delicious food with all the charm of Dr House. But I knew I was going to like everything about Samuel's the moment Hybels explained his approach to running a restaurant. "I overlook a gas station," he says. "I have to be better at the table."

And by "table" he means not only the food, but also the service. I've moaned about how overlooking details can ruin an otherwise good meal, and Hybels ensures his customers, and all the little details, are looked after.

With this in mind, Hybels hires "food geeks" who "get" food. He turned down a server with decades of experience in favor of one who had never waited on a table. Why? When asked where they would take the chef for dinner (money being no object) the career server said, "Red Lobster or The Olive Garden." And the newbie? The answer, "Tapawingo or I'd cook for you myself," earned him a job. This gamble paid off. Samuel's offers a rare balance of professional yet unpretentious service.

While the linens are crisp and the wait staff immaculate, Hybels puts taste above looks. He turned these uneven heirlooms

into this...

He also puts taste above labels. The balsamic drizzle isn't an outrageously priced aged vinegar, but a flavorful reduction of a good quality generic brand. Hybels says reducing the vinegar by half caramelizes the sugars and increases the vinegar's flavor. Well, actually he says to keep reducing it "until you can't stand it anymore." Apparently the fumes "can put you on your knees." But so can the finished dish.

By now the heirloom tomatoes are gone and Hybels has moved onto the fingerling potatoes. As autumn moves to winter he'll adjust the menu, sliding towards slow roasted comfort foods, some of which require 72 hours stove time.

When I asked for the recipe for his carrot-ginger soup and his lemon-basil risotto, Hybels openly shared his technique but couldn't provide quantities. He works without a specific recipe."You go through the kitchen and see what you have, what comes to mind."

His willingness to work with classic pairings has inspired me to return to the classics. I'm still working on getting the right amount of ginger in my soup and balancing the basil with the lemon. And when I do. I'll share my recipe. After all, had I been applying for the server position, my answer would have been, "I'd cook for you."

The Japanese use dashi as the base for different types of soup much like folks in the Western world use chicken, beef, or vegetable stock. As Wikipedia notes: "Dashi forms the base for miso soups, clear broth soups, Japanese noodle broths, and many Japanese simmering liquids." Without dashi, the soups named above would be something else.

A typical dashi uses kelp and bonito flakes, but other dashis (and there are several varieties out there) can use dried sardines or mushrooms.

What are bonito flakes you ask? Dried tuna shavings is the short answer, and I have to admit to being a tad bit taken aback in their use. But I overcame my cultural filter fairly quickly and used them with little problem. When people state that Miso soup is not vegetarian, it is the bonito flakes that they are referring to.

Both kelp (called konbu) and bonito flakes (hana-katsuo) can be found in any friendly neighborhood market that serves the Asian population. However, many instant varities of dashi are out there. But as I made my own (and have the kelp smell in my kitchen to prove it), I cannot speak to their quality.

I have no picture of the Dashi. You can presume one of two things. A) Pictures of clear broth is as interesting as a photograph of a plain white wall. or B) I forgot to take a picture before using the dashi in something else of which I did take a photo.

This recipe comes from the book Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art by Shizuo Tsuji.

• 1 qt. cold water (plus an additional 1/4 cup)
• 1 oz. dried kelp
• 1 oz. bonito flakes

Place the cold water and the kelp in your soup pan. Heat the water, uncovered, to 200-210 degrees F. (The book suggests cooking the kelp in heated water close to, but not, water's boiling point). Cook the kelp until you can break the fleshiest part of the kelp with your thumbnail. This should take between 10-12 minutes.

Remove the kelp, and pour in the additional 1/4 cup of water. Immediately add the bonito flakes. Allow the stock to return to a full boil. Once full boil is obtained, remove the stock from heat immediately. Allow the flakes to settle on the bottom of the soup pan. Filter off any foam, and then strain the flakes out of the stock.

Voila! Dashi!

NOTE: If you want to make a dashi called Niban Dashi, save the used bonito flakes and kelp.

Serves 6, but really, use it as stock for other dishes

I'm home ill today. I'm not sure why I'm telling you all that, as it has very little to do with food. But, eh, people have been telling me to be a little more personable on the blog. Consider this you getting to know me better. :-P

Tara and I spent the part of the day on Saturday shopping at Uwajimaya, possibly my second favorite place to shop in all of Seattle. The best part about this place is that it is the place to find imported foods and products from East Asia. If you want Pocky or any other of Mass Produced Japanese products, this place is Nirvana.

Which is how I came across this soda. It's an imported Japanese soda, and it's perfectly, beautifully, horrible. Here's what I think would be the recipe if one wanted to make this drink at home.

Take 300 ml of carbonated water. Place in eight packs of Bubble Yum. Allow to set overnight to extract the bubble gum flavor.

The next morning, remove the gum, add twenty-seven servings of cotton candy. Allow to melt. Add one drop of blue food coloring. Serve.

It is so sweet. SO sweet. I have no idea on the taste for sweets held by Japanese children, but I've never tasted a drink like this. For all of my kvetching about American Soda, there's little in comparison to this.

A couple of weeks ago, I went to Minnesota for the first time. I had never been to the Midwest, but one of my best friends was getting married, and so I headed out to Minneapolis and hung out for a week.

Every region in the States seems to have its own chains. Pharmacies vary from Walgreens to CVS to Duane Reade to Rite-Aid, supermarkets can be Cub, A and P, King Kullen. Fast food is the same way. I know no one aside from people who have been to upstate New York who has ever been to a Roy Rodgers. Tim Hortons is reserved to Canada and those states close to it. For Midwesterners, the place of choice is Culver's.

Culver's is famous for its butter burger (a burger fried up in real butter) and its frozen custard: one of my best friends from high school swore by Culver's frozen custard and claimed it was better than any ice cream she'd ever had.

I can't vouch for any of these things, but I can say that they sell an amazing alternative to mozzarella sticks: deep fried cheese curds.

Yep, those little orange and white balls that sometimes appear atop poutine and that I received once as a gift from the same aforementioned Wisconsin buddy are coated in breadcrumbs and deep fried to create the perfect snack. Much better than french fries, in my humble opinion.

If you ever find yourself near a Culver's, I recommend checking these out. Does anyone else have any regional fast food joints that make something ten times better than what the local McDonald's and Burger King offer?

emiglia
Tomato Kumato

(h/t to Scott)

Favorite Aromas

• Freshly Baked Bread: I have yet to meet anyone who despises the aroma of bread straight from the oven. Even the Wonder bread bakery in just north of Downtown Columbus, Ohio had wonderful aromas wafting from their bakery. The nutty/grain smell gives me such a warm feeling. Nothing even comes close to making me like I'm home.
• Just Popped popcorn from a kettle: A movie theater just would not smell the same without popcorn. However, I rarely eat the stuff.
• Sage: Out of all of the aromatic herbs out there, sage is the one that resonates with me the most. It smells like autumn and the woods. It makes me salivate just thinking about it.
• Garlic and onions: I put these two together because I believe that they go together like peanut butter and jelly. When I go into a persons house and smell these aromas, I know that there's a fair amount of cooking going on.
• Coffee: Is there any food or drink out there that smells better than it tastes? And I love the taste of coffee, so that should demonstrate what I feel of its aroma. Everytime I get a whiff of it and its hearty woodsy/chocolate notes, I get a definitive sense of time and place - breakfast and my favorite coffeeshop or diner.
• Fresh Whiskey direct from the still: Those of you who have ever been around a spirit safe will know exactly what I am talking about. Hints of the grain, both sweet and lascivious. If ever there was a aroma that defined "temptation" fresh whiskey from the still would be it.

favorite Food Aromas

• Microwave Popcorn: For as much as I love the aroma of kettle corm, Microwaved corn makes me ill. It's a little more astringent I believe, but really it comes from too many people burning microwave corn. It has turned me off of the stuff completely.
• Kim Chi: I love me some Kim Chi, but oh lord does it stink. Fermented Cabbage? There's simply no good aroma there.
• Cowgirl Cremery's Red Hawk Cheese: This is a great cheese, don't get me wrong. But when I brought it to room temperature, it had the subtlety of a old gym sock. Stinky cheeses have a place in my heart, but even I recognize that the aroma can be a bit offputting.

I haven't tried durian yet, so it's not on my list. I've had no problems with natto nor with the fish sauces I've come across. These are the ones that get most people.

What are your favorite and least favorite aromas?

The issue with Ranch Dressing wasn't that there was so much of it. It's that what was so much of what was generally available missed the mark on what made the dressing so interesting to begin with. Ranch Dressing is simple: Buttermilk + Mayo + Herbs. Of course the better these ingredients, the better the dressing.

But this isn't what we're given by the folks at Hidden Valley. What we get is this:

Vegetable Oil (Canola Oil and/or Soybean Oil), Egg Yolk, Sugar, Salt, Cultured Nonfat Buttermilk, Natural Flavor, Spices, less than 1% of Garlic (Dried), Onion, Vinegar, Phosphoric Acid, Xanthan Gum, Modified Food Starch, Monosodium Glutamate, Artificial Flavors, Disodium Phosphate, Sorbic Acid and Calcium Disodium Edta As Preservatives, Disodium Inosinate and Disodium Guanylate.

I'll give them a liberal benefit of my doubt on the mayo (represented here by the vegetable oil and egg yolk), but using nonfat buttermilk is like using splenda in a Snickers Chocolate bar. If you're going to use buttermilk, the fat is one of the things that makes it better. Then, of course, is the typical list of agri-chemical nomenclature found within the ingredient list.

So instead of getting Buttermilk + May + Herbs in our bottles of ranch dressing, what we get is little more than salty and sweet white mayonnaise like-sauce with a bit of spice thrown in. People like me offer little respect to ranch dressing because it doesn't bring anything new to the table, not because it's overused. The chefs out there experimenting with it are heading back to the actual recipe, not trying to recreate the travesty of mediocrity that is what we find in the grocery store.

Jus' sayin'.

(h/t Chow).

Proofing yeast. Have you ever watched it work? It’s dorky, I know, but I’ll stand at the counter watching it bubbling, thinking “It’s alive!”

Licking the spoon. Raw brownie batter is almost as good as the finished product. Raw cookie dough is legendary among women, and I would hope some men, as a stress reliever and all around fabulous treat. Why wait 12 minutes for the cookies to come out of the oven? It’s all right there in the bowl.

Making gravy. Besides the fact that gravy should be one of the seven wonders of the world, watching it thicken while I stir is pretty wonderful all on its own. I know it’s chemistry, but it seems like a miracle to me.

Fresh coffee beans. Open the bag for the first time, and the scent comes wafting out like something from heaven.

Making lasagna. OK, I’ll just agree ahead of time that it’s not a small thing, but it’s not all that hard either. There are a lot of steps, including the Grating of the Cheese, which I’m already on record as hating. But when it comes out of the oven, all melty and pretty, it’s worth the work. Lasagna is love.

Sauteing onions. For something to go from tear-inducingly acrid to tear-inducingly sweet is another “I-know-it’s-chemistry-but-it-seems-like-a-miracle” moment to me. How does that happen? I don’t know, and I don’t care (so no chemistry lessons, please). I just know it smells fabulous.

Watching my small garden grow. It’s mostly in pots, and I don’t grow a huge variety of produce, but I’m a little proud of myself for making even a small effort. Seeing the arugula start to poke out of the dirt gives me a huge thrill.

Taking bread out of the oven. Each and every loaf has been a beautiful sight when I’ve opened the oven door and seen it for the first time. After baking bread for almost 30 years, it’s still a surprise to me that I know how to do it.

The moment during dinner when Logan looks at me and tells me he’s so glad he married me. Objectively, I know that cooking in and of itself, and cooking just for me, should be enough. But finding myself in the role of housewife, after growing up believing that I could have more than that often thankless job, and after a lifetime of having a real, live, actual, paying job and taking care of myself; and having those things taken away from me because my body has turned on itself to the point where I sometimes can’t cook dinner, it’s more than good to know that he realizes how important cooking is to me, and that he appreciates this thing I love to do.

Cooking can seem like a grand gesture, but it’s made up of a lot of little steps, from picking up your favorite knife to the final squeeze of lemon juice over the piccata. It’s the shock of the new and the comfort of the old. It’s using all of our senses, and reveling in the scent of freshly chopped garlic. We might not love every step all of the time, but the combination of all those steps can create something beautiful.

I've finally gotten my hands on a bottle of Coca-Cola produced in Mexico. The part of my id that reacts to novelty jumped with glee. I am a huge fan of colas after all, loving their savory undertones mixed with an excessive amount of sweetness. Over the course of my lifetime I've consumed dozens of different brands, and have had a place in my heart for the soft drink, even after middle-age forced me to curtail my sugar intake.

Coke and Pepsi have never been my favorites. After their switch to High-Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) in the 80's (and I would like to forget both New Coke and Crystal Pepsi), I had pretty much written them off, prefering to stick to the even-more sweetened RC Cola. Even more recently, as my palate changed, I found myself drinking China Cola, which is far less sweet than most mainstream brands, and a little more cola-esque (for lack of a much, much better adjective). Over the course of my research/web search in regard to HFCS, people alerted me to both Kosher and Mexican versions of Coke, which I had to try. Finding the Kosher Coke was not difficult. Mexican Coke was a little moreso. About a week ago, Tara found a shop in the South Park neighborhood of Seattle that sold the stuff, and picked up several bottles.

Let me make this clear, there IS a difference between Mexican Coke and the American version. Where the difference is most noticeable is in the finish and aftertaste of the drink. The Mexican Coke is far crisper, cleaner if you will. The American version's aftertaste is cloyingly sweet and sits on the back of the tongue for a while before dissipating. If forced to choose one over the other, I'd pick the Mexican version as my preference, but I would choose other colas even over Coke's Mexican version. And I believe that both Mexican and American versions are different from the Kosher version, which seemed a little more astringent upon my tongue and teeth.

The only true conclusion I can draw is that Coke's claim that they all taste the same is bunk. The sugars provide flavor, and if you use differing amounts pr different types of sweetener, the flavor will vary. This seems obvious to me, especially in light of seeing it written out, but Coca-Cola has invested a lot in keeping up the appearance of the equality of quality throughout their world-wide production facilities, but I just can't agree with their position.

But do you know what really struck me about the Mexican Coke? The glass bottle. I realize that this is more of a psychological thing, but it does bear repeating that having a product in a glass bottle influences a consumers perception of the product. I can't help but think that part of the reason people think Mexican Coke is better is due to the fact that it's in a glass bottle rather than the cheaper (and cheaper looking) plastic ones that are oh so pervasive here in the States. I'm guessing that providing cola in a glass bottle increases its production costs, so it's unlikely that we'll ever see glass bottle dominate the soda market again, but I can't help but think that the soda companies sacrificed a bit of a perception of quality when they moved to plastic bottles. I'm also quite sure that there's a handful of folks out there that will swear up and down that glass bottles result in a better tasting product over plastic. While I buy that argument when it comes to cans vs. glass or plastic, I'm not convinced that the great majority of Americans can taste the difference between cola from a glass bottle and cola from a plastic one.

The other conclusion I've drawn from all of this? I think WAAAYY too much about these things.

This is the season of bounty, with a crisp chill in the air that you could swear that you smell. The leaves change, frost is more prevalent, and most importantly, harvest time.

In western Pennsylvania this meant apples, and lots of them. Depending upon the school district, either the kids in Junior Achievement would be selling fresh apple cider, or the kids in Future Farmers of America. Apples could be had from small stands found on the sides of the roads in the more rural areas.

It also meant hunting. You don't mess around with the hunting schedule. This is an area of the country where the first day of deer season is taken so seriously that it's a school holiday. If you had a decent hunter in your family, you could be assured of venison in December. If you had a serious hunter in your midst, wild turkey could be had as well.

But what makes the Fall so important to me is the fact that the three great food holidays all line up in three straight months. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas. If one wanted to look forward into the deeper recesses of winter, you could count New Years Day and Super Bowl Sunday as additional food holidays.

It is now October 1st. My favorite season is back.