Movies to skip, plus another pot roast

The husband and I have had some bad luck with movies over the last few weeks. Here is a list of ones we attempted to watch recently and stopped part-way through:

"Rachel Getting Married"
"Cadillac Records"
"Elegy"
"Paul Blart: Mall Cop"
"Tropic Thunder"

Yes, I'm embarrassed about #4. But I included it to show that we really are not movie snobs--while I may love Pedro Almodovar films, I also liked "Old School."

We've been wanting to watch something funny, since we're both battling self-diagnosed cases of Seasonal Affective Disorder. It's been gray and foggy and downright depressing here for days. I'm not kidding when I say that if someone offered one of us a job in L.A., we'd be packed and barreling down the 5 before you could say "Mystic Tan."

On the bright side, crap weather is good for one thing: comfort food. Last night I reprised the pot roast of a few months back. This time our local butcher gave us a slightly different cut of meat than what we have gotten in the past. The husband was the one who picked it up but he couldn't recall what it was, otherwise I would tell you. The recipe calls for "chuck" which is always good for a few laughs in our house at my expense because for some reason, my dad would sometimes call me Chuck when I was little. The husband thinks this is very funny and always wants to know why my dad chose that nickname when it bears no resemblance to my real name. Why? Who knows. Old DJ took that one to the grave.

In any case, it was cut like more of a roast than a slab. Stop me if I'm getting too technical here. Along with lots of wine, I added spring onions from our produce box, plus carrots and peas, and served it over buttered noodles. It turned out pretty well and I'm pleased to say momentarily lifted us from our bad-movie-bleak-weather funk.

Strawberry, rhubarb, ceviche

In addition to grilling, Memorial Day seems to require some kind of fruity dessert. Although the weather in San Francisco has been decidedly wintery--we've been wearing sweaters and cranking up the heat all weekend--we're still enjoying summery produce. Apparently, somewhere the weather is nice enough to grow things like strawberries and rhubarb. So, I decided to make a crisp to bring to the BBQ at my mother's house.

Simple enough, right? Armed with my best recipe, I was feeling cocky. I'll just swap the berries and rhubarb for the apples, I thought. Easy peasy.

The husband wandered through the kitchen as I chopped up the fruit and tossed it cavalierly into a bowl with sugar and vanilla.

"What recipe are you using?" asked the husband.

"Oh, I'm just basing it on the Baking Illustrated apple crisp I always make," I responded breezily. "It's just about a method," I assured him patronizingly.

Method, indeed. Good thing I decided to get bloggy and take this photo pre-topping, as it was the best this stupid crisp ever looked.

I crumbled the lovely cinnamon and walnut mixture over it and into the oven it went.It emerged bubbling and golden, if maybe a little juicier than I expected. Perfect, I thought smugly. Rustic!

Unfortunately, the crisp had to travel. I let it cool for close to an hour, as long as I could wait, before covering it gently and driving it to my mom's house, 40 minutes away. By the time we arrived, it looked terrible. The once-crumbly topping had sunken into the fruit and what was left on the surface looked shiny and a little soggy. And it was becoming evident that the fruit below was too juicy.

By the time we dug into it, it was a mess.

"It looks like jam," my mother said, more observantly than unkindly.

The flavor was good--I liked my additions of vanilla and cardamom, and thank goodness I'd decided to add a little tapioca to the filling--it was the only thing that made it a jam and not a juice.

At the end of the night I covered what remained of the "crisp" for the ride home. I knew it would make a one-night pit-stop in the fridge before getting tossed the next day.

I guess I'm not quite as good an improviser as I thought. As my wise mother reminded me, strawberries and rhubarb have a much higher water content than apples, so the recipe couldn't have worked out exactly the same just by copying the method. Oh well. It actually tasted decent, and wasn't it Julia Child who said that the best thing about cooking was that you can eat your mistakes?

And, the dessert was only a blip in the evening after perfectly grilled steaks and sweet corn. But the dark horse of the evening was my mother's shrimp ceviche, which she cobbled together from two recipes. Marinated in lime and dressed up with tomato, avocado, and, surprisingly, tarragon vinegar, the ceviche was a perfect balance of bright and tart without being acidic. She also added her own touches, including toasted pumpkin seeds and cooked sweet potato, an homage to her childhood in Peru. The result was absolutely addictive. I guess I have a bit to learn when it comes to playing fast and loose with recipes, but maybe observing my mother in the kitchen is a good place to start.

The Hungry Dog Reviews: Nopalito

Usually I don't emerge for lunch on workdays. It's a little sad, I admit, but if you worked where I work, you might not either. Sometimes I don't feel like getting an extra look at the colorful folks stumbling out of the Rodeway Inn across the street, occasionally shoeless and often fighting over some kind of, shall we say, relationship problem.

Anyway, back to lunch. My colleague and I had an event the other night so we decided to get ourselves a good lunch for sustenance. We pretended to think about where we might go, all the while knowing we'd end up at Nopalito.

Nopalito is the little sister restaurant to the larger Nopa a few blocks away, which (I hear) is excellent comfort food. Nopalito, as the name suggests, is Mexican. The place is smallish, with lots of natural light. The feel, like the food, is clean and uncluttered, but warm. Service is enthusiastic and informative.

I have now been three times, which I think is a good number to judge a place, although the first two times I got the the same thing, the enchiladas de mole, because they were so delicious I could not stop thinking of them. This time, however, branching out was in order. My colleague and I split three items, all of which, two days later, I am still mooning over.

We shared a delightfully tart and sweet salad of grapefruit, blood oranges, and queso fresco. Then on to the pork tamale with spring onions. I'm no tamale expert, but I've had some that seemed starchy and leaden. This tamale had the lightest masa and the deepest flavor: I could have eaten two by myself, no problem. (Let's be honest: I could have probably eaten three.) And finally, the dish that has me debating about taking a cab over there today, the carnitas, pork braised in cinnamon and beer, served with cabbage salad and warm tortillas.

I was a bit in shock when the carnitas arrived. We had shared the lively citrus salad, and the smoldering tamale, both delicious but moderate in size and scale. When the carnitas arrived, I fell deeply in love. This dish could, and perhaps should, be their signature dish. Nestled in a deep ceramic bowl, the carnitas are served in large, fork-pullable pieces, deeply spiced, with the perfect amount of fat. Wrapped in a warm tortilla with tomatillo salsa, they disappeared quickly and silently between the two of us. This was one of the best dishes I have ever had, and it was lovely for two.

Meals at Nopalito are rounded out with simple but elegant touches: spicy toasted chickpeas to start you off, and buttery, crumbly Mexican wedding cookies to send you on your way. There's something about this place that really gets me. It's not the most exciting atmosphere, and I'm not sure I'd be interested in going there for dinner--it seems more like a lunch place. But the menu is conceived of and executed with great focus, and the food is direct and pure. Nopalito gets an A from the Hungry Dog.

Nopalito is located at 306 Broderick Street in San Francisco.