A night out with Steamy Kitchen

Last night I had the good fortune to be invited along for a little foodie feeding frenzy.

Jaden Hair of the fabulous blog Steamy Kitchen, happened to be in town touring for her new cookbook. My sometime virtual friend and newfound real-life friend Ben, from Cooking with the Single Guy, decided to pull together a few local food bloggers to welcome Jaden to the Bay Area and was kind enough to include me and the husband in the festivities.

We met at Otoro, which may just be my new favorite sushi joint in San Francisco, where we ordered a slew of goodies, from seaweed salad to monkfish liver. Along with Ben and Jaden, we were joined by Stephanie from Wasabimon and Sean from Hedonia. Rather than recounting the entire evening, check out Ben's great post, complete with awesome action shots of Jaden serving noodles, as well as a group photo in which the husband towers like a giant over the rest of us dwarfs. Really, he's only 6'2" but in the picture he looks about 8 feet tall.

Thanks again to Ben for organizing a lovely evening out. It's so fun to meet new people who share a common interest. And how often do you meet strangers and 30 minutes later find yourself willingly sharing a bowl of communal ramen, particularly in the age of pig flu? Not often, I say. It was a great night.

The case for fried rice

This morning I woke up and discovered I was stranded without breakfast.

Usually I have some bread for toast, or something I've baked, or in a pinch I'll eat a yogurt, which I dislike but will eat under the assumption that it is good for me. Breakfast is definitely my least favorite meal. I'm not much for eggs, waffles, pancakes, French toast, oatmeal, or other typical breakfast items. Yet somehow those cartoons I watched as a kid about how breakfast was the most important meal of the day have really stuck with me. I try to eat something every morning to get my feeble Hungry Dog brain moving before heading to work.

I was about to resign myself to an apple when I remembered I'd made fried rice the night before.

Before you judge, let's break it down, shall we?

You've got your rice, which is a carb. Same as toast, right?

You've got protein: bacon and a little egg. 

And, you have lots of vegetables. I add whatever I've got on hand to my fried rice, which in this case was a veritable cornucopia: Napa cabbage, carrots, celery, red pepper, peas.

All the major vitamins and nutrients are covered. So when you really get down to it, homemade fried rice is probably healthier than what a lot of people eat for breakfast.

"But Hungry Dog," you're thinking, "fried rice is full of oil and salt. Not very healthy for someone on the sad side of 30."

Yeah, so? Oil and salt make the world go round. Let's live a little, people.

And you can't tell me this doesn't look good.

Pear crostata with cardamom

May I confess something to you?

I'm not much of a pear person. But it took me a long time to realize it.

I had a friend in high school who claimed early on that she thought pears were a disappointing fruit. Unlike a good apple, she said, when they're crisp they're absolutely inedible and likely to give you a stomach ache. But within a very brief period they become soft, bruised, and mushy. If you don't happen to be home and staring at your basket of pears during this critical window, which I am convinced lasts about 10 minutes, forget it.

So, after many years of eating pears as a child, as an adult I finally figured out I don't care for them all that much. I do appreciate the beauty of pears, though, particularly these stunning starkrimson ones we got in the produce box recently. Don't they look heavenly?

Since I don't care for them raw, I figured baking them into a sweet pastry was the way to go.

A few years ago I discovered this recipe which is simple and foolproof. The crust turns out perfectly buttery and flaky, and because it's free form, you don't have to worry about having the pastry skills of a kindergartener. This is great news for those of us who handle dough like monkeys. Really, when I make pie and tart crusts, I'm more like an angry monkey, because I get so frustrated with it sticking and ripping that I often find myself abusing the dough quite terribly. I think pastry brings out the temper in me.

Anyhow, I've made many different fillings for this crostata and swapped out various spices to enhance the chosen fruit. This time, I chose cardamom to go with the pears.

Have we discussed cardamom, and how I love, love, love it? I discovered it in high school when my family and I went to Sweden and Finland to find some long lost relatives. In addition to finding a few distant cousins, we also discovered sweet, spicy, gingery cardamom, which seemed to perfume most of the baked goods we ate while traveling, from coffee cakes to simple rolls to berry pies. Ever since then, I've had a deep love of cardamom, but I find it doesn't go with everything.

It does go with pears, though.

I'd like to find some savory uses for cardamom, but in the meantime, a pear crostata works just fine. And like many other fruit pies or tarts, if you serve it with vanilla ice cream it's a wonderful dessert worthy of guests, but with coffee makes a delicate, sweet, and slightly decadent breakfast just for one.