Although I expressed doubt about kids-specific menu in the previous post, the NY Times article on kids' menu also reminded me of a restaurant staple--one that's designed specifically for kids--in Japan. Called "okosama lunch" (okosama rather politely refers to kids), this staple is available in many restaurants. Just like chicken fingers can be on the menu in Chinese or Italian restaurants, okosama lunch can be found on the menus of any kind of restaurnats that cater to families. Just thinking about okosama lunch, I'm starting to drool... forget what I said about kids-specific menus; this thing is fun!

The makeup of okosama lunch is pretty consistent. It's usually served on a special, often plastic, plate with kids-friendly patterns (like animals, cars, etc.) Sometimes, the plates can be shaped like a space shuttle or train. The usual suspects include ketchup-flavored rice (sometimes wrapped in a super-thin omlette), breadded-and-fried shrimps, a mini hamburger patty with demi glace sauce, ketchup-flavored spaghetti (somehow called Neapolitan in Japan), maybe an octopus-shaped sausage, a few fruits and a small salad. Many restaurants lure kids with such sweet extras as custard pudding or orange jelly, and some even go as far as accompanying their version of okosama lunch with a cheap plastic toy that's sure to be abandoned after ten minutes. (The image is an example of okosama lunch, served at Komeya Ryokan in Okayam prefecture.)

Though okosama lunches are nutritionaly questionable with a lot of fat and a lot of carbohydrates, it's kind of fun to get one every once in a while. (Yes, you could get one even if you're an adult--some restaurants do have age limit, but others don't. All it takes is some balls...) To attract kids, the chefs tend to be creative with presentation: the ketchup rice often boasts a miniature flag, while the color scheme of red ketchup, yellow eggs and green cucumber is decidedly festive. Best of all, since each food item is very small in amount, and an average plate holds about six or seven different items plus dessert, you get to try a little bit of everything. What not to like?

Now, if you're familiar with the "yoshoku" (Western food) tradition in Japan, you'll notice that most of the items on a given okosama lunch come from that tradition. In the late 19th century, when Japan finally opened its doors to the rest of the world, there was an influx of Western cuisine. Restaurants serving Western-style food sprouted up in large cities, especially in Tokyo, and were regarded as the hip place to dine. By the early 20th century, the chefs had modified traidtional French and other European cuisines to suit the Japanese palate and customs, and a few standard "yoshoku" items had been born. The ketchup-flavored rice wrapped in a thin omelette (called "om-rice," photographed below), hamburger patty served solo with demi glace sauce, and breadded-and-fried shrimps are some examples. These are items that invoke the sense of nostalgia in many a Japanese mind, despite their origin in alien cultures.

The concensus seems to be that okosama lunch was invented by a Taro Ando, a then-manager of the restaurant department of Mitsukoshi department store in Nihonbashi. Anecdote has it that he came up with the idea of serving tiny portions of the popular menu items of his restaurant to children, when a supplier of ceramics showed up to his office with a bunch of plates with kids-orientated design. This was in 1930. Despite the exorbitant price (it went for 1/3 of a yen, when a month of newspaper subscription cost a yen), and despite the economic hardship faced by most, it became an instant hit. Soon other restaurants followed suit. The original okosama lunch sported ketchup rice with green peas, spaghetti "Neapolitan," potato croquettes, a sausage, ham sandwiches, and a few pieces of tiny sugary candy as a dessert. Though the selection might seem like a nutritional disaster in the eyes of a modern eater, this veggieless dish could very well have appeared "nutritious" in the eyes of the early Showa-era Japanese, whose protein and fat intake was much lower. (The photo is a slightly higher-end version of okosama lunch, served to the guests of the Shodoshima International Hotel in Kagawa prefecture.)

Quite a few Japanese adults are still hooked to their sweet memory of eating okosama lunch in department store restaurants (one of the most likely places to find okosama lunch; not a surprise, given its origin). To appeal to these nostalgic diners, there are now some restaurants that serve adult versions of the okosama lunch. Each item may be a bit higher in quality (i.e., cooked from scratch, rather than dunking a plastic pouch into boiling water), and it may be modified to suit "adult" taste, but the adult version preserves the festive presentation and the fun of "little bit of everything." The nice thing about the adult version is that the quality tends to be much higher. With some notable exceptions, the quality of food involved in okosama lunch could be infuriatingly low, with many items made from frozen or canned stuff. But when you get the adult version, you know they can't cheat as easily, thus you're getting better stuff. Note to myself: next time we go to Japan, we have to do this...

Just Hungry has a nice recipe for om-rice, accompanied by her memory of getting okosama lunch at department store restaurants.

NY Times has an article on the prevalence of menus designed exclusively for kids. The writer, David Kamp, himself a father of two, laments the tight grip that ubiquitous chicken fingers have on his (and others') children. This article reminded me of a few questions I've always had ever since I noticed the über-greasy stuff that kids always seem to be eating in this country (even at restaurants that offer nutritionally and culinarily better choices for adults). Is it common for kids to eat differently from their parents, even after they're physically able to eat the same thing as their parents? Is this a traditional thing, or is this somehting new? If it's a new trend, how did this came to be?

According to the above article, the answer to the question #1 is Yes. For #2, it's a new thing. And for #3, Kamp offers an explanation: the advent of Happy Meal and McNuggets at McDonalds' fundamentaly changed the American idea about what kids should eat. Just like Kamp, who remembers his childhood meals as the same as his parents', I remember eating pretty much what my parents ate. When my parents ate broiled fish and miso soup, I ate those. When they ate curry and rice, I ate those, too. My mom probably altered the "adult" menu to suit my kiddy taste (i.e., more spaghetti with meat sauce, more potato croquettes, etc.), but the idea was for everyone in my family to eat the same thing.

Kamp's question about letting kids eat "kid cuisine" revolves (mainly) around the poor nutrition that "kid cuisine" tends to offer and around the arrested development of kids' sense of taste. When I think about the issue, though, there's another important component missing from his article. As Michael Pollan pointed out in his excellent Omnivore's Dilemma, eating is not just about nutritional intake. The act of eating is (or--has been, was, should be, could be, whatever you like) relational, in that by sitting around a table and eating the same food, you experience a certain kind of affirming relationship with the fellow diners, be it your family or your friends. The key here may be "the same food." Sure, we might have lively conversation over four different dishes at a restaurant, but as far as I'm concerned, the sense of communality is much stronger when we pass around our foods so everyone can try a bit of everything. When eating at home, sharing the same food that came out of the same pan can be a symbolic statement of the intimacy. (In Japanese, there's a phrase "buddies who ate rice out of the same pot," that refers to a profound and powerful friendship after a period of intense closeness, as on a ship or in a battlefield.)

On a more practical level, eating the same food can give us the opportunity to talk about the food we're eating. It may become a compliment to the chef, or it may wander off to a conversation about a specific ingredient, or a cooking method, which could evolve into a whole discussion of history and culture. Wherever the dinner table conversation flies off to, it starts at the sharing of the same food. As a kid, I had a lot of conversation, especially with my mom, about the food she cooked and we shared. My mom appreciated my feedback on her food, and I learned how to cook certain dishes I especially liked. (We also "traded" ingredients we disliked--my mom would transfer her tofu bits to my soup bowl, while I would scoop out all the green peas from my plate and move them to hers. This was an opportunity for my mom to "educate" me about the evils of picky eating...) If she'd had "adult cuisine" while I'd had chicken fingers, this sort of conversation may never have happened. (This sounds a lot like the familiar conservative nostalgia surrounding the perfect family, but it is more about sharing and talking about the same food than eating it with blood relatives.)

This leads me to suspect that some of the breakdown of cultural inhibition about food and eating (something Pollan argues in Omnivore's Dilemma) has to do with the separate eating during childhood. This is not to say, though, I oppose all the kids' menus. As Kamp points out, it's quite handy to have smaller portions for smaller wallet damage for kids when we eat out. (And I do take advantage of "kids' scoop" when I'm at ice cream shops!) It's just that flavorless, highly-processed, grease-packed "kids' menu" completely different from "parents' cuisine" seems detrimental to one of the fundamental relationships we develop between parents and kids: one over eating.

The veggie dish I touched upon in the previous entry features a spinach-like Japanese vegetable called "komatsuna" (photographed in the lower-left hand corner). I found a very fresh bunch in the stand of Henry's Farm in Evanston Farmers Market last Saturday, and couldn't resist. It's pretty rare to see komatsuna in Chicago, let alone a fresh one. Flavorwise, they're more subtle than spinach--komatsuna doesn't have that earthy, pungent flavor spinach has (or is supposed to have). The delight of komatsuna is more in the light, crunchy texture than in punchy flavor. Komatsuna is often used in miso soups, and marinated with ground sesame seeds, soy sauce and sugar (goma-ae). (By the way, other veggies in the photo are potted Thai basil, oyster mushrooms and asparagus, from the top, clockwise.)

I also had a fresh, firm bunch of oyster mushrooms, also from a farmers market stand. To use both of them and to enjoy their subtle flavors, I decided to lightly stir-fry them. The ideal recipe would call for real homemade chicken stock, but of course I didn't have one at hand, so I used the powdered Chinese soup mix. In heated oil, I sautéed a generous amount of minced ginger, and added the komatsuna and mushrooms. When they're about 70% done, I added some soup mix dissolved in about three tablespoons of hot water. (I wanted that restaurant-style wateriness; this worked well.)

The komatsuna was still nicely crunchy and the oyster mushrooms had soaked up the ginger and chicken flavors. I could have used all the komatsuna in the bunch; it was such a good accompaniment to steamed rice. The small bunch of komatsuna was (I think) about $3, so this isn't something we can do very often (which is kind of funny because I could easily spend $3 or even more for coffee in one day!), but it'll be quite difficult to resist the soft green leaves when we go to Henry's stand...

I'll probably use the rest of the bunch for miso soup one of these days. There isn't enough left to make the komatsuna a main feature of a dish, sadly.

On Memorial Day, the aroma of char-grilled burgers wafting from our neighbors' backyard (all the way up to our third-floor apartment!) was a torture. It made us crave for a few little things, all of which were denied for one reason or the other: a cute little Weber grill (no place to store), a place to grill (back porch too small, smoke detector too sensitive), etc., etc....

We thought about going to the Moody's and have a beer or two with their burgers in the outdoor patio, but this was a bad idea, too. I had a bunch of super-fresh veggies we got from the Evanston Farmers Market on Saturday, and considering I wouldn't be cooking on Tuesday, I wanted to use them now. Oyster mushrooms, in particular, were screaming to be cooked while still perky. Plus I had a chunk of fatty pork ribs (deboned) from Mitsuwa, and there was a dish I wanted to try with it. (What I did with the oyster mushrooms, I'll post tomorrow.)

The recipe (link in Japanese) I followed was Vietnamese, but a very similar dish, called "kakuni," exists in the traditional cooking of Kagoshima, a southern prefecture on the island of Kyushu in Japan. An excellent producer of the renowned Kurobuta (Berkshire black) pork, it is no surprise that Kagoshima has developed this simple but delectable dish of fatty pork simmered in soy sauce and raw cane sugar. Kakuni was never a part of my Tokyo-born mom's repertoire, but ever since I had a collapse-under-my-chopsticks tender kakuni in an izakaya (Japanese style tapas bar), I've been a faithful lover of this simple dish. (Kakuni goes superb with shochu, barley- or sweet potato- based liquor, another Kagoshima specialty. And thus, kakuni is often found on izakaya menus.)

The only reason I forwent Japanese recipe over the Vietnamese one is that I wanted to experiment more with the Vietnamese coconut caramel that I picked up a few weeks ago (and made an awesome fried rice). I was stunned to find the god-awful amount of sugar the recipe required, but since it was the first time I cook this dish myself, I faithfully followed the sucroseful recipe for two:

1. Marinate chunks of deboned pork ribs in 1 tablespoon of Nam Pla (or Nuoc Mam), 1 tablespoon of sugar, 1 tablespoon of caramel sauce, a clove of minced garlic and black pepper. Let it sit in the fridge for an hour.
2. Sautée the pork in a frying pan so that all the exterior is nicely browned.
3. Pour the remaining marinade into a pot. Add 3 tablespoons of Nam Pla, 2 tablespoons of sugar, one dried hot pepper, and place the pork in the pot. Add some water so that the pork chunks are half immersed in the sauce. Simmer for an hour or so.

I boiled two eggs and grilled (without oil) some sliced sweet potatoes and added them into the simmering pot at the end of the cooking time, but this is a tasty but dispensable flourish if in a pinch. (The original recipe only calls for pork and eggs. The idea of sweet potatoes came from the fact that Kagoshima, the birthplace of kakuni, also produces a lot of sweet potatoes, only some of which are brewed into shochu.) As the kakuni simmered down, the wonderfully rich aroma of fish sauce and caramel filled the kitchen and then the dining room, and mostly dispelled the annoyingly enticing smell of the backyard barbecue. I quickly made a few other dishes with the fresh veggies from the farmers market, and by 5:30, we were enjoying the fatty pork and sweet potatoes. By 6, we were happily intoxicated. Intoxicated enough, indeed, to watch an episode of A-Team, which both of us adored as kids. But alas, a bottle of Stella Artois was not nearly enough to stop me from remarking: "I have no idea why I loved this show! This is awful!"

We promptly switched to a few episodes of The Black Adder. No barbecue, but it was a good Memorial Day feast. At least there weren't any severed enemy heads on our table...

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Takkatsu is the best place to sample how good Kurobuta can be in a breaded-and-fried form. (Full review coming soon, since we love this place.)
161 W. Wing St., Arlington Heights, IL
847.818.1860

When my mom got the National Geographic's National Park Guide back from her friend after a long time, the book was accompanied by a nice surprise.

It was a sweets called "Kobato Mameraku" from a traditional sweets maker in Kamakura, Japan. The maker, Toyoshimaya, is a well-recognized name in Japan, for its long history from the Meiji period and its loyal adherence to the locality. (The dove shape has its origin in the numerous doves that roam the premises of the equally numerous temples and shrines in Kamakura.) In a small, rectangular-shaped paper bag with a single stamp that boasts the store's name, there are six little dove-shaped sweets. They're made of a special kind of unrefined sugar (called Wasambon) and powdered broad beans.

After playing with them for a while (i.e., taking pictures), we had them with a cup of coffee. A bad move--the subtle flavor of the broad beans was still there, but was almost overpowered by the coffee. The last time we had this traditional snack, it was accompanied by freshly prepared Maccha (powdered green tea). It still brought back, however, the memory of about half an hour we spent in a well-tended garden of the Engakuji Temple in Kamakura, sipping the green and bitter tea and nibbling on the simple yet flavorful treat. It was a nice change of pace after a typical tourist day of walking and exploring--for about $4, many temples and shrines in Kamakura let you sit in their beautiful garden and sip refreshing green tea, accompanied by some seasonal sweets. It's a fun thing to do while in Japan!

(The treat in question is next to the bowl of tea...)

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Toyoshimaya (Japanese link)
2-11-19 Komachi, Kamakura City, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan
0467-25-0810

I just started writing for a local web magazine Gapers Block's food blog Drive-Thru. My virgin post is on young garlic leaves that I procured at the Evanston Farmers Market.

With the garlic leaves, I made this:

Check it out!

Yes, ferns are edible. Well, some of them are.

Japanese people used to forage for wile mushrooms and plants in the good ol' days. Now, with too many people living too far away from the mountains, there are packages of pre-poached wild plants available at supermarkets. Some of them are mixtures: several different kinds of ferns, baby bamboo shoots and some mushrooms. Others are single-species, the most common of this being the royal ferns ("zenmai" in Japanese).

Koreans also make use of the royal ferns for their tasty namul (variously seasoned vegetables). So, it shouldn't have been such a surprise to find a package of pre-poached zenmai in the refrigerated section of the H Mart, but I was surprised when I did. It was a delightful surprise, though, because I love zenmai with fried tofu. I picked one up, and went home, already tasting the (imaginary) taste of this traditional Japanese dish.

When we were still in Japan, my mom sometimes got a big bunch of zenmai from her friends with connections with people in the country, most likely their aging parents or their siblings who stayed in the rural hometown. When she did, she would boil the stems of zenmai in water with baking soda to wash out the harsh, tongue-biting flavor. Then she'd dry them, occasionally rolling them under her palms to tenderize them. When she needs the zenmai later, she'd just have to rehydrate them. All this, of course, is a lot of work. This is where the pre-poached ones come in handy.

Your best bet is to blanch the pre-poached zenmai before use. This gets rid of the possibly odd flavor that it might have acquired while in the package. Squeeze the water out of the zenmai, and boil it for a minute or so. Drain. An important step here is to take a few ladles of boiling water before you put the zenmai in, and pour it over abura-age (thin fried tofu), to rinse off the excess oil.

To make my favorite zenmai dish, you use the method called "itame-ni." "Itame" refers to stir-frying, while "ni" refers to simmering in thin sauce. Stir-frying before simmering adds nice richness to the otherwise very light dish. So, start with frying chopped ginger in sesame oil. When the wonderful aroma of ginger starts to rise from the pot, add (boiled and strained) zenmai. Stir-fry it for a few minutes, until the zenmai is lightly coated with oil. Add small pieces of abura-age, and pour a few tablespoons of all-purpose fish stock. Let it simmer for a while.

Abura-age is that thin, fried bag of tofu that holds the sushi rice in Inari-zushi. I haven't seen them anywhere other than Japanese markets, but they may be available in other Asian markets as well. For some reason, they aren't as popular as the thick fried tofu, which could also be used for this dish. When using the thick fried tofu, don't forget to rinse off the oil, too!

All-purpose fish stock is usually sold with the label of "soup base for noodles" in Japanese and other Asian markets. (I've also seen an overpriced version at the Southport Grocery as well; it must be making its way into the mainstream market.) It's basically a mixture of bonito and/or konbu stock, soy sauce and sugar. Given its versatility and long fridge life, it's probably worth keeping at hand if you're interested in cooking Japanese.

Back to the "zenmai itame-ni..."

It keeps in the fridge for about five days. The pre-poached version has less of the wild, earthy flavor of the zenmai, but it's still quite good--even soothing for an exiled Japanese soul--with the familiar mix of bonito stock, soy sauce and sugar. Good with sake, this dish is also a "rice thief," as we call dishes that entice you to eat more rice with it.

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H Mart
801 Civic Drive, Niles, IL

Southport Grocery
3552 N. Southport Ave., Chicago, IL
773.665.0100

In the desolate food scenery of Chicago's downtown (unless you have lots of change to spare, or you love old-fashioned stake houses), Avec's interesting and reasonably priced food is a rare find. And it goes well with the vast range of Mediterranean wine the restaurant offers. I realized its existence during my short slave work (read: unpaid internship for English majors) with a women's magazine. According to the reviewer, the restaurant's concept sounded pretty cool. I made a mental note to pay a visit.

The first time we went there, we fell in love. The decor was beautifully clean and minimalist, with a long wooden counter and a long communal table stretching all the way to the back of the long and narrow room. At the end of the long room was a wall of various glass cubes, adding just enough splash of color to the otherwise natural/woody color scheme. The idea is that the space is communal, where you squeeze into your share of the bench, with your elbows almost hitting your (equally delighted) neighbors. Conversation may not take place between total strangers, and it may not be a small Mediterranean village outside of the large glass window, but the possibility is still there. (I especially enjoyed eavesdropping on the conversation next door, and watching people in slightly hip clothing.)

And of course, the food was fantastic. I especially loved the crostini with puréed horseradish and parsnip, topped with arugula and shavings of parmesan-like cheese. So, when we went back to Avec the other day, I was eager to have that crostini again.

Now, part of Avec's concept is that the menu constantly changes, presumably to accommodate the ingredients in season (as well as to give the regulars little surprises every time). As such, the menu didn't have the parsnip crostini any more. (It was replaced by bruschetta with roasted beet.) The lesson: come prepared to be surprised, and don't form too emotional of a bond with any one item on their menu. (Of course I learned the lesson too late; I'm now determined to try replicating the crostini myself.)

Before I recovered from the initial shock of the loss of my beloved parsnip crostini, Patrick and his sister ordered a carafe of Italian white. Made from Pecorino grapes, Caldora was a wonderful white. It was very crisp and very dry, but had a subtle, citrus-like aftertaste. It wasn't on the menu, so we owe this pleasant surprise to our waiter. (We also owe it to the vintners as well, who have revived the cultivation of the rare, endangered Pecorino species of grapes.)

After a careful discussion, we settled on four of the small plates. Avec offers small ($4-12) and large plates ($12-18), which are perfect for sharing. Each small plate is about the size of a smallish individual entrée, so the larger the party is, the more you get to try. The first to arrive was the escarole salad with smoked pork and black eyed peas, with sherry vinaigrette. The smoky pork was quite wonderful, but I would say that the crusty, focaccia-like bread that came with it was even better.

The smash-hit of the night was the whipped brandade, a creamy, dip-like dish from France. A bit of research yielded that brandade is made with rehydrated salt cod, milk, fresh cream and (sometimes) potatoes. Our version has a bit of olive oil drizzled on top, and came with little slices of garlic bread to scoop up the hot, creamy goodness. The salt cod gave it enough oceanic flavor without overwhelming the concoction with fishiness, and the richness of the fresh cream was rather sublime. Considering how many calories and how much cholesterol this blasted thing must harbor inside, we probably shouldn't be eating this too often, but I could eat that thing every day, all day long. (Maybe not, to be honest--I'm not good at too much grease--but it was very good.) We would have licked the cazuela clean, had it not been so hot, coming right off the burner.

We also had house-made red wine sausage with pistacio and black grape relish (served with rosemary polenta) and Tasmanian trout "steak" with chili ginger sauce. Both were very good, but I'm omitting the details to keep the post within a certain length. Avec is a little brother of the people who run the renowned Blackbird (a few blocks down the street from Avec). At Blackbird, innovative, seasonal entrées go for about $30-35. I'm sure Blackbird has awesome food, but at that price range, it's a birthday-dinner kind of place. Avec isn't: the check for the three of us, which included four small plates, two carafes of wine, three coffee and a dessert (caramel coffee cake with espresso ice cream) was around $85, and we were quite happily full.

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Avec
615 W. Randolph St., Chicago, IL
312.377.2002

Blackbird
619 W. Randolph St., Chicago, IL
312.715.0708

I recently discovered an "atomic bomb of Vietnamese cuisine," as Patrick has put it.

We picked up the condiment in question in the South East Asian aisle at our beloved H Mart. When I spotted its rather simple label that said "Coconut Thin Sauce," I figured it would taste like coconut, which I absolutely adore ever since my childhood in the tropical Bangkok. The ingredients list was überclean: coconut, and water. It was cheap, too, at $1.19 for a little squeeze bottle. So we picked one up. Why not?

When we got home, I squeezed a drop of the sauce onto my palm and licked it. The sauce was pretty thick; I don't know why it's called "thick" sauce. It didn't taste like coconut, either. All the coconut flavor must have wafted out when the coconut juice was simmered down to its thick, brown reduction, I thought. Although the sauce was not what I'd expected it to be, it had an awesomely complex flavor of very good caramel sauce. Curious, I went online. According to the explanation on a Vietnamese cook's food site, Nuoc Mau Dua (as it's called in Vietnamese) is a caramel sauce widely used in Southern Vietnamese cuisine.

So what to do with this sauce?

I had half a head of purple cabbage approaching a sorry state in the fridge, so I decided to make fried rice with it. For seasoning, I simply mixed about a generous tablespoon of the coconut thin sauce with a bit less amount of Nam Pla (Thai fish sauce). The Nam Pla I have (from the Thai Kitchen brand) is extremely salty, so you might need more if you have a less salty version--just taste test the sauce before adding it to the food.

I sautéed minced garlic in oil, added cabbage, and stir-fried it for a few minutes. I spooned some sauce into a beaten egg and added that to the pan, while stirring. In went the rice, chopped green onions and cilantro, and when the rice grains were nicely separated from each other, I poured the sauce over everything. An appetizing aroma of bittersweet caramel and Nam Pla immediately rose to my nostrils, but it wasn't done yet. I turned the heat off, and crushed some roasted soy beans (in lieu of peanuts) to sprinkle over the fried rice.

I probably shouldn't be giving so many pats on my own back, but good god, it was divine. The bitterness of the caramel sauce added that extra depth that's hard to achieve in an amateur's kitchen. (I've used the combination of sugar and Nam Pla many times, but the caramely goodness just can't be beat with this very similar yet very different combination.) The fried rice tasted like it had been cooked in a real Vietnamese restaurant. I wish I had dried mini shrimps and real peanuts (instead of soy nuts) for real South East Asian flair, but even without these flavor enhancers, the coconut thin sauce more than held up this simple dish.

Apparently the Vietnamese cooks often keep a jar of (either home-made or store-bought) caramel sauce at hand, and that's what they use for their magnificent ginger chicken in clay pot (Gai Kho). I'm definitely going to try making that soon, for it's one of Patrick's favorite foods in the world (and I'm yet to try it). Nuoc Mau Dua is cheap, just about the easiest to use, and packed with butt-kicking flavor bursts, so I'm going to keep it around in my increasingly condiments-cluttered small kitchen.

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H Mart
801 Civic Center Drive, Niles, IL
847.581.1212

I got mine at the H Mart, but I'm sure the sauce is available in many Asian grocery stores that cater to the Vietnamese clientele. Viet Hoa Plaza at 1051 W. Argyle St. might be your good bet, too.

I'm rather conflicted about this. On one hand, this unusual bed & breakfast more than deserves a mention. On the other, I want to keep the awesome place to myself. Assuming that this site won't get too much traffic in the future (which it doesn't as of now), I'll share the information.

Due to a small number of inns and motels, it can be difficult to find a place to stay on Washington's verdant Olympic Peninsula. The Hoh Humm Ranch, the place that has won my profound affection, is just a wonderful option in such a case. Perhaps due to its low profile as a ranch house that rents out rooms and feeds you in the morning, the Hoh Humm tends to have an opening when other places are completely booked. (This was the case during our trip.) But the ease of reservation isn't really the charm of the Hoh Humm Ranch, which is located on 101 between the Ruby Beach and the Hoh Rain Forest.

The true charm is the fact that it's a real, working ranch house, run by an elderly couple of a former zoologist and former engineer. Before going to the ranch, Patrick warned me that it'd feel like we're invading someone's private place, like we're staying in a room that used to belong to one of the old couple's grown children (which probably is the case). And it did.

A ridge-backed black dog greeted us as we got out of our car. Upon opening the front door, I stumbled upon an old woman on a recliner in front of a TV (who turned out to be one of the two owners, Mary). There were animals everywhere in the large, open space that included the spacious kitchen, communal dining table with a dozen chairs, two sitting areas and a computer desk. Two cats slept on the couches, while a large, spotted dog raised its head to examine the new visitors (us). A wood stove emitted welcoming heat in the middle of the room. Mary's husband, Bob, in the traditional ranch outfit of a denim overall and a checkered shirt, took us up the stairs to our room.

The room was nothing to write home about, but it opened to a porch that stretched to the full length of the house. From the porch, the view was stunning. The ranch house stood on a cliff, and below, their 200-acre pasture extended to the west, surrounded by hills of various green hues. Cows strolled in a distant field. Barn swallows crisscrossed the sky and delved into their muddy nests on the wall of our room.

One possible drawback of the Hoh Humm is that it's not in a town, and thus lacks restaurants nearby. This wasn't a problem for us, for we swiftly fell asleep after taking a shower at around 6:30. It wouldn't, however, have been too big of a problem even if we hadn't: the Hoh Humm is about 20 miles from the town of Forks, which has a few decent places to eat.

The true fun of staying in a ranch house began the next morning. After a full twelve hours of sleep, we felt reinvigorated enough to explore the pasture, which the owners had welcome us to do so when we arrived. The grass was pretty dewy, so we put on our hiking boots. The ex-zoologist Mary was cooking our breakfast when we came down the stairs. We stole a cup of coffee from the coffee maker, chatted with her a little (while inhaling the stomach-squeezing aroma of sausages), and got out. The black ridge back from the previous day followed us.

The meadow was beautiful with the morning sun illuminating the wet grass from a low angle. And it was chock full of animals: a family of gray goose (with the father quacking proudly every once in a while, with his meaty tongue sticking out of his mouth in a slightly disturbing manner) marched by the fence, while a large herd of sheep intensely gazed at the suspicious intruders (us) from inside their pen nearby. A mallard duck couple took their downy goslings to a swim on a pond.

A little further afield, we could see the morning mist rising among the trees around the estate. Nearly black-and-white in silhouette, the trees looked as if they were in a Japanese sumie painting. The air was absolutely fresh after a midnight rain that had washed away what little contaminant in the air, and the slight chill was just delightful. Patrick kept an eye on his watch, lest we miss out on the communal, all-you-can-eat breakfast. We snapped a few shots of the cows in the farthest field, and made our way back.

The breakfast was on the table when we came back into the house. The twelve-seater table had literary no open space, cluttered with steaming-hot goodies like homemade hash browns, sausages, cornbread, homemade "freezer" jam and a large Dutch baby. (There was also a hot oat meal, but I ignored it.) We piled our plates with these, poured some orange juice in our glasses, sat down and ate. It was all very good in a very homey way, but the best thing was the fluffy Dutch baby with a spoonful of raspberry jam poured on top. The slight saltiness of the Dutch baby went great with the sweet-sour jam, which, the former zoologist wife told us, was made by freezing the fruits without ever cooking them. (I have to try this trick sometime--the jam had a freshness that's impossible to achieve with the traditional simmer-down method.) There was a large number of people, both guests and the owners' family, and the food quickly disappeared. Good thing we came back on time.

After breakfast, we went out again to see the Japanese "shika" deer that they keep in a pen. I have no idea where they got the idea of keeping a herd of exotic deer, but then again, Mary was a zoologist, so she should know. (She was the first female student of zoology in the university she attended--she had to fight her way for her dream job, for the then-male-dominated industry simply rejected female applicants.) Mary gave me two hot dog buns to feed the deer with. Bob said that the deer "will squeak at ya," which indeed they did. Remembering my school trip to deer-filled Nara Park fifteen years ago, I fed chunks of the bread to the two eager deer. Their warm, moist lips enveloping my fingers felt strangely relaxing. (And their gentle eyes! Oh, boy, they were very cute.)

A magnificently colorful chicken commanded a sweeping view of the meadow below, as we headed out for the third day of our trip. The Hoh Humm Ranch isn't an agriturismo inn, for they don't feed you with the produce and dairy grown on the premise, but it does have the wonderfully relaxing and refreshing feel of one. Everything is quite low-key, and you get to experience the fun side of the ranch life (animals, beautiful scenery, tasty home-cooked food) without the rough & tough part of it (cleaning the barn, stacking up the infinite 50-pound bundles of hay, having to tend the animals 365 days a year, etc.). For $45 a room, I think it's an awesome deal.

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Hoh Humm Ranch
171763 Highway 101, Forks, WA
360.374.5337

When we staggered out of the Quinault River Trail in the Olympic National Park after a 13-mile, overnight backpacking trip, we were dusty and hungry (and slightly on the grumpy side as a result). It was around 2, and we still had a few miles of drive to the B&B we were to stay for the night, so we decided to find something hot to eat in the little town of Quinault.

Across the street from a quaint-looking, shingle-covered inn on the South Shore Road, we found a promising neon sign for a snack bar. It was a little snack counter tacked in the back of a general store, and the owner had to go find the lady who runs the snack bar part of the business, but we were lucky enough to get our afternoon bite.

Patrick went for a cherry cream soda. Apprehensive, I settled for a boring glass of Diet Pepsi. On a whim, Patrick got small curly fries, on which he sustained himself in his poorer days in Florida, while I went extravagant with $2.95 onion rings (my recent addiction). We both got salmon burgers.

We took our seats in a closed-in porch and waited for the food, studying a world map with about a million pins sticking out to show where customers of the little establishment have come from. It was a pretty impressive array of places of origin: quite a few people had come from Africa, Asia, the Pacific, and of course Europe and the North America. There was a pin or two even on the Madagascar Island, and I was delighted to note some standing (rather crowdedly) on the tiny islands of my home country. Beside the map was an odd "recognition of support" from a troop stationed in Fort Lewis. The framed "recognition" sported two soldiers clad in Japanese samurai armor, with their swords up and ready for a quick attack. Why in the world did they use this image instead of that of an American military figure, I do not know.

The lady kindly brought our food to the table and said we'd be ready for the rest of the day. We nodded and digged into our baskets. The onion rings were on the greasy side, but the salmon burgers were surprisingly good, considering the location and the clientele. When the burgers were gone, we licked our fingers clean, took the last sips form the soda, and headed out. My calves complained when I stood up form the chair, quite understandable after a long hike and a short while of sitting, but my stomach was quite happy with the first "real" meal after more than 24 hours.

So, having refueled ourselves in Aberdeen, we started our overnight backpacking trip at the Graves Creek trailhead in the Olympic National Park. The Enchanted Valley (East Fork Quinault River) Trail followed an old road for the first few miles, and descended steeply into the bed of glacier-fed Quinault River. The trail was rated moderate, and true to the rating, it was mostly flat with a few ascents and descents. Until our pathetic backs got used to the load of the backpacks, though, even a slight ascent was a torture.

We moseyed on, stopping now and then for quick sips of water and photographs. The trail had been badly damaged from the severe winter storms that attacked the Olympic National Park. The first three miles were clear of downed trees and re-equipped with foot bridges, but beyond that point, we had to either clamber up the gigantic trees or squeeze underneath them. (In the former occasion, I loathed my shortness; in the latter, I delighted in the same physical feature.) One major creek (Fire Creek) in our itinerary had had its bridge washed out, so we had to tiptoe on the rocks and logs.

The rain forest was stunningly beautiful with golden moss gently covering the gigantic tree trunks and countless varieties of smaller plants on the ground (including dwarf dogwood and numerous fern species). Since we started relatively late around three, the sunlight was low enough to make everything glow with golden light. All along the way, we heard strange hootings--very low "woot, woot, woot" sounds that we heard more with our torso than with our ears, it seemed--from somewhere overhead, and wondered what they were. When we came out of a brush, we came across a big brown bird perched on one of the branches of the brush. It recognized us, but didn't make any attempt to fly away--the bird was truly wild, oblivious of the human presence. Similar indifference to human presence was still intact in the three magnificent Roosevelt elks we came across about half an hour later. The elks were munching on the undergrowth about fifty yard from the trail, and when we emerged, they glanced over at us and kept munching without changing their elegant poise. (The hooting bird turned out to be the blue grouse, which also was the big brown bird in the brush.)

By the time we set up our camp near O'Neil Creek, darkness was quickly descending, and by the time we had our trail dinner of apple sauce, smoked hot sausage and slightly stale bagel, we needed headlamps. (Thus no picture, again.) When we were done, we put all our food and trash in a plastic bag and hung it from a branch of a tree away from the camp, as the ranger told us, to deter the bears.

I poured some water on a towel and wiped off what little sweat and dirt I could, and inched into my sleeping bag, still feeling the grime on the back of my knees and around my face. I could do a two-day hike, but wasn't sure I'd survive the filth of a showerless trip any longer than that. I fell asleep in a while, but could hear some unidentified wild animal strolling around our camp site. As Bill Bryson convincingly documents in his hilarious book A Walk in the Woods, when you are pretty much alone in the dark woods, even a subtle rustle of fallen leaves can sound like a large bear sniffing around your tent. So I had no way of telling what was making the sound, and had to force myself to not mind it in order to fall asleep.

When I woke up around 5:30 (being still accustomed to the Chicago time), the sky was already white with morning sun, and the rain fly of the tent was moist with dew drops. I quickly went over to the bear rope setup, and was relieved to find the food bag intact. I took the bag down, and we sat down on a fallen log by the blue-hued Quinault River. Our breakfast was (slightly more) stale whole wheat bagels, a few pieces of grass-fed cheddar from Whole Foods (which survived the lack of refrigeration just fine), another smoked sausage, and a few dried prunes.

We also had a cup of cold coffee, made with a packet of Java Juice coffee extract and water. (We don't own a stove.) Considering the fact that it came out of a little plastic pouch and was diluted with plain cold water, the coffee tasted surprisingly good--just like coffee from yesterday, right out of the fridge. The stale bagels were a pain in the neck to swallow--we'll stay away from bagels for the next trip. The food may not have been that attractive had we not been in the beautiful wilderness (sky-high pine trees, beautiful blue water, birds chirping, silver-green moss hanging down from branches, absolutely clear and crisp air... the list goes on), but the environment more than complimented the lack of hot meals and coffee.

We cleared the camp and trekked back to the trail head, with our backpacks slightly lighter (with much of the food and water gone). As we ran out of energy, we snacked on Larabars and trail mix, and drank about 5 liters (1 1/4 gallons) of water between the two of us.

Some of the (obvious) surprises during the hike were as follows:
a. cheap crackers (that we got on our flight) taste much better than bagels
b. apple sauce is the best thing when you're too tired to move your jaws (I was)
c. mixing a few salty snacks among sweet ones is a good idea d. electrolyte-conscious drink tablets (like the ones from Camelbak makes you less exhausted

We've done our first overnight backpacking trip, and have made it back home in one piece, sometime around three this morning. But before going into the food situation on the trail, I have to talk about the lunch on the first day. On Thursday, we caught an early flight to Seattle, arrived there at 9:30 and drove to the Olympic National Park via I-5 and 101. Before setting out to the 14-mile hike (round trip) in the rain forest along the Quinault River, we stopped at the town of Aberdeen, Washington, for lunch. I'd come across a favorable review of the Mallard's Bistro on Chowhound, so it was our first aim. We then discovered that the restaurant doesn't open for lunch, and opted for a Chinese restaurant next door.

When we opened the door, I felt like walking into a Veteran's Hall or something of the sort, for it was a large, dimly lit space with the ceiling two-story high and a wrap-around balcony overlooking the dining area. Quite a few number of elaborately carved teak tables were arranged around an open space in the middle, and booth-style seats accompanied the tables. Along the green, tiled wall were a bunch of decorative Chinese furniture, statues and scrolls, some for sale, others not. The wrap-around balcony was supported by faux-Doric columns, which gave an odd sense of lost grandiosity to the space. We should have been dancing in our best 50's-ish clothes, instead of eating Chinese food in hiking outfit, it seemed.

Despite the over-the-top space and decoration, the lunch specials were reasonably priced at $5.95. My broccoli chicken came with fried rice and sweet-and-sour shrimps, while Patrick's Mongolian beef came with the same fried rice and sweet-and-sour chicken. (By the time we got to Aberdeen, I was starving, and I wolfed the food down as soon as it arrived--thus no photograph. Sorry!)

The ingredients were fresh and the seasoning wasn't too bad. The only thing that took me aback was the color. The sweet-and-sour sauce was brilliant vermilion, thickly draped around the battered shrimps. The sauce for the broccoli chicken was less exciting yellow, but quite stunning nonetheless. Fried rice looked more like Spanish rice, in its bright orange tint. The all-natural, deep green of the broccoli added the finishing brush strokes to this Gauguin-esque canvas of colors. All in all, I felt like I was eating Americanized Chinese food from thirty years ago. Here's a photo of the mostly finished, one-plate lunch--behold the Technicolor goodness.

Again, this is not to say that the food was bad. It was a decent, passable Chinese. The sweet-and-sour sauce was a bit on the sweet side, but then again, it's supposed to. So, except for the stunningly vivid colors, there was nothing wrong with the food. (I'm sure it was chock full of MSG, but coming from the additive's country of birth, I don't believe in its harmfulness.) Combined with the odd space in which it was served, the lunch in Aberdeen was quite an experience.

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If you want to know which Chinese restaurant I'm talking about, leave a comment--I don't feel like badmouthing the restaurant in an overly public manner. The people there were very nice. When Patrick asked for direction, all the servers (and the daughter of one of them) milled around our table and discussed it, and when all of them couldn't be certain which way it is, they pulled out a local phonebook to show us the local map.

We're taking an extended weekend trip to the Olympic National Park till Sunday.

This is what I look forward to while in the Pacific Northwest, food-wise:

a. fresh fish just off the ocean
b. Russian stuffed bread right out of the oven at a bakery in Pike Market that Patrick's been telling me about
c. good coffee, in abundance (I hate Utah on this regard)

This is what I don't particularly look forward to, food-wise:

a. gnawing on Clif Bars and dried fruits while on the trail
b. morning coffee from a little pouch diluted with cold water (better than none)
c. bears eating our food
d. bears eating us (and there are cougars, too)

NibbleKibble will be closed till we come back. Happy eating till then!

Monday was our first summer day, with the temperature in the mid-80s. The sky was blue with a few thunderstorms in the horizon. It was too nice of a day to waste indoors, working at computers. So we decided to pack a picnic lunch and spend our lunch hour at the lake.

I had a small red cabbage, half a carrot, and a bunch of snow peas (among other things) in the fridge, and I'd also wanted to experiment with cole slow with an Asian twist. Back in April, when Tom and I had an Iron Chef Battle (the not-so-secret ingredient was garlic), Tom made a fabulous Asian slow, and I had that in mind.

Recently Tom had also given me a portion of Szechuan Peppercorn from Spice House, so I decided to use it as the flavor backbone. Often used in Ma Po Tofu, Szechuan peppercorns have moderate heat and wonderfully refreshing, slightly minty aroma. This was actually my first time to see them in their original shape (I'd only seen them in ground form), and I really liked the reddish shell with subtle bumpy texture and the creamy green seed that showed between the cracked halves of the shell. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to remove the shells. Out of sheer laziness, I decided to just ground the whole thing, removing only a few conspicuous twigs from the ground peppers.

I shredded all the veggies, and made the vinaigrette:

1 table spoon of olive oil
1 table spoon of vinegar
1 chunk of ginger, minced
1 pinch of Szechuan peppercorns, ground
2 tea spoon of soy sauce
2 tea spoon of sugar

When I tasted the vinaigrette right after mixing, olive oil dominated everything else--even the Szechuan peppercorns. Since I thought the flavors might settle better as the veggies soak up the vinaigrette and the flavors from the veggies in turn seep into the dressing, I tossed the veggies in the vinaigrette and let the slow sit in the fridge for a while. Meanwhile, I baked the (frozen, out-of-the-box) battered cod in the oven and also warmed two pieces of French peasant bread. When, after about 20 minutes, I took out the bowl of cole slow from the fridge, the olive oil had been tamed by other flavors. Hooray!

We packed our lunch, stuffed a backpack with a beach towel, two cans of soda and eating utensils, and headed for the Evanston beach. It was a quiet day at the beach, and we managed to secure a park table. It might have been a bit too windy--while we ate, the tree above us kept adding its leaves and bark pieces to our salad--but it was nice to be out. A little boy raced on the lake shore path back and forth, back and forth, on his colorful training bike, while his mom read by the small mobile crib of his little sister. An older couple were having their brown-bag lunch at the table next to ours, and a young couple sweettalked, leaning on a rock. (It was so relaxing that I forgot to take a picture of the finished lunch box!)

We had to head back soon, but if we hadn't had to, we would have spent the whole afternoon there on the green grass, reading and talking. The Japanese say "I feel like my hair is being pulled back" when she doesn't want to leave, and it was one of those "hair being pulled back" moments.

One of our favorite breakfast (and late-night dessert) place is the Taste of Heaven in Andersonville. Patrick took me there early in our relationship, and there's a good chance that this place won me over for him. Joking aside, this is a great neighborhood bakery café to nurture your romantic relationship, to start the first chapter of that epic novel you've been planning to write for years, or to just have a chat with friends over a cup of coffee and tasty treats.

Between the two of us, we've tried pretty much everything on the menu, and we're deeply fond of most everything. One of our perennial favirutes us the Silverland Breakfast, a sort of a modern take of the classic biscuits and gravy. Biscuits and gravy is relatively new to me (a recent expat from Japan), and I still hesitate when faced with some of them, especially when the gravy looks mucousy and contains unidentifiable gray meat. But the Silverland Breakfast is now high on my list of Awesome American Food.

As you can tell from the photo, their gravy is thinner than most, and has a nice kick from a blend of spices. I seem to taste some tomatoes in it, but I'm not 100% certain on this. It's served over scrambled eggs and two corn biscuits, and the biscuits are truly a piece of art: they're flaky, slightly sweet, and absorb the gravy wonderfully.

A recent discovery is this homemade granola with greek yogurt. I'm not a granola person. I'm not a yogurt person, either. I'm not even a healthful woman when it comes to breakfasts. I'm more of a gluttonous eater who wants her breakfast nice and greasy (eggs, bacons, potatoes), or nice and sugary (pancakes, French toast, you name it). But one day, I was in a rare mood for something lighter and refreshing, so I settled for the homemade granola.

When the granola showed up in one of their signature blue cups (that are at least as big as ramen bowls), it looked so good I stared at it, saliva dribbling down my chin, before I started digging in. The golden-brown granolas were dotted with generous amount of dried cherries, juicy strawberries and plump blueberries. The combination of the striking blue cup, red strawberries and snow-white yogurt was beyond appetizing.

And when I started munching, it was even better. The granola's honey sweetness, tart cherries and refreshing strawberries--it was rather heavenly. The portion was a bit more than I'd wanted (they're notorious for their gigantic portions), but I finished it all. Ah, well.

Although we tend to go there for breakfast, Taste of Heaven is pretty versatile. For lunch, they have soups and creative sandwiches (though I wouldn't go for the meatloaf sandwich--I've had better ones elsewhere). For dinner, which they recently added to their operation, I love the old-fashioned beef stew served on potato pancakes, but there are other options in the comfort-food department (like sandwiches, super-popular spinach lasagna, etc.) as well. And it being a bakery, Taste of Heaven is good for light munchies as well. Though I'm always tormented when it comes to picking one from their wide array of baked goods, I'm particularly fond of their humongous slice of white cake with whipped cream cheese and lots of berries. Ahh, just writing this makes me drool all over my keyboard!

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A Taste of Heaven
5401 N. Clark St. Chicago, IL
773.989.0151

Saturday night, after a Chinese feast for lunch, we knew we shouldn't be hungry. But being gluttonous foodies, we found ourselves slightly snacky around 7:30. I didn't want anything too heavy, but I didn't want to snack on things like chips or cookies (both of which we have plenty at hand, despite our rational side telling us not to). And we had an open bottle of white wine in the fridge. That needed to be consumed before it turns sour. So I quickly made a few veggie-based munchies to go with the Chardonnay.

Curried Tomato and Egg Salad
I used six of the mini Roma tomatoes from Whole Foods for this, but any one large tomato of preferably a sweeter kind should work just fine. Boil two eggs and let them cool. Meanwhile, cut the tomatoes into bite-sized chunks. Dressing is a mixture of mayonnaise, lemon juice, salt, pepper and Ras El Hanout that I used for this fish dish. When the eggs are not too hot, peel the shell and cut them into wedges. Mix all the ingredients in a bowl, chill and serve.

I also added some Caribbean Calypso spice mix from the Spice House, but it had lost most of its orangy zestiness (been sitting in the cupboard for too long). I still think that the orange flavor might be good with the Arabic curry, so the next time I make this, I'll add some flesh orange zest (or get fresh Calypso mix).

Quick Japanese Cucumber Pickle
This is a quickie. All you need for this recipe is some sesame oil and what's called "ponzu." Ponzu is a traditional Japanese condiment that combines soy sauce, fish stock and citrus juice. It has a wonderfully refreshing flavor of a Japanese citrus called "yuzu" (although the ones available in the U.S. seem to substitute this distinctive citrus with lemon), and the fish stock adds nice depth to any dish. Bottled ponzu tends to be on the sharp side, but hey, I can't make it from scratch every day (that would involve finding the elusive yuzu, making stock from bonito flakes and konbu, and other time-consuming steps), so I rely on the less-than-perfect ready-made ones. Ponzu can be used as salad dressing or dipping sauce for broiled fish, but today, I used it for this quick pickle.

To make this light pickle ("asa-zuke" in Japanese), cut the cucumbers into bite-sized bits and sprinkle some salt on them. After a few minutes, gently squeeze the excess water out of the cucumber, and pour some ponzu over them. Drizzle a touch of sesame oil, and let it sit in the fridge for ten to fifteen minutes. When the cucumber bits are slightly brown from ponzu, it's ready to serve. Today, I used some cilantro for garnish.

The ivory-colored dish in the front is the oven-roasted russet potatoes with garlic and rosemary, which came out wonderful. I should have made more of those, but then again, the idea was to eat light after an indulgent lunch, so a potato and a half for the two of us was just fine.

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A Seattle Times article describes a Seattle-based chef's experiment with ponzu, and is much better at explaining what the condiment tastes like than I am.

For Patrick's birthday, my parents had planned a Chinese lunch on Saturday. We dropped the stuff we got from the annual organic plant sale in my parents' backyard and drove off to the restaurant in Glenview.

"Their food is really authentic," my mom raved in the car. "It may not be as good as in Chinatown, but you wouldn't think it's a restaurant in a suburban mall." Even with her rave review, I was skeptical, and so was Patrick, who politely kept his mouth shut. But we were to be pleasantly surprised. The food at the restaurant owned by a Taiwanese family, misleadingly named Szechwan North, was fantastic.

It was before noon when we walked into the dimly lit, overly decorated restaurant (there was a giant jade sculpture of a dragon-shaped sailing ship, about three feet tall, in the entrance, to give you an idea). A middle-aged man with decidedly unfashionable glasses came out from the back, and greeted my father, who immediately struck up a conversation. They both spoke stuttering English, but seemed to be having fun. The man told us (via my father) that he was from Taiwan, but named the restaurant Szechwan North because of the name recognition. My father told him that he'd been to Taiwan several times on business, and mentioned the name of an entertainment district in Taipei, which cracked up the restaurant owner. After a bit more of lively conversation, my father got beer for all of us, and the owner disappeared to the kitchen, still smiling.

The disappearance of the owner was immediately followed by an appearance of a similarly middle-aged woman in a white shirt and black apron. Strikingly red lipsticks seemed a little out of place on her otherwise childlike face. She hastily gave us menus, placed plates and chopsticks on our table, promised us to come back with water and disappeared quickly. Then, another woman, this time in a loose, white, collarless shirt and with her long hair tied into a pony tail, approached our table.

To my surprise, she started to explain what she had at hand for the day. She could steam a fresh, two-pound water pike she just purchased this morning and dress it with her special sauce. We should add a plate of stir-fried pea sprouts, she said, which she also got this morning. We nodded our heads in agreement, half perplexed by the burst of attention we were unexpectedly receiving. To those main courses, we added a bunch of goodies and waited with excitement. The brisk recommendations by the staff made it feel like we came to our regular hangout, where chefs and staff knew what we liked and cooked to our taste. The only thing we ordered right off the menu was our appetizer.

My parents got hot and sour soup, and the younger generation (us) got chicken corn soup. Both were excellent. The hot and sour soup was hot and sour (duh), but it didn't have the nasty, stinging sourness that I'm not very fond of. Our chicken corn soup was a true comfort food, with the slight sweetness of the corn and the robust flavor of from the chicken. I loved the thick texture of the soup as well.

This is the only thing we ordered off the menu: scallion pancakes. The thin wheat pancakes had bits of scallions inside (could have been more), and were served with sweetened soy sauce and hot chili sauce. I think the pancakes were baked with sesame oil, and the combination of the sesame oil and the sweet soy sauce was fantastic in a junk-foodish way.

The female cook (or the woman we assumed to be one) seemed to know that Japanese people tend to order stir-fried noodles at Chinese restaurant. So she included a combo noodles in our main courses. The noodles was the least impressive of the dishes we had at Szechwan North, but that's not to discredit the noodles. They were decent noodles, but the competition was way too harsh for them.

To accommodate Patrick's deep love of black bean sauce, the chef cooked up stir-fried beef with black bean sauce. A dish not on the menu, it had plenty of succulent beef pieces along with fresh onions and scallions. The pungent flavor of the black bean sauce was balanced out with the soy sauce, fresh garlic and ginger, and some sugar. It was one of the best black bean sauce beef in my life. (The dish in the back is the pea sprouts--lightly stir-fried with chicken broth, ginger and garlic. It is truly amazing what a satisfying dish this could be, considering how simple it is...)

Then came the main course--the steamed water pike.

The cook herself delivered the fish, cut the tender fish with a fork and a spoon, and distributed the pieces to our ready plates. When she said she was going to steam the pike, I was slightly apprehensive: I've had enough bland steamed fish in my life. But it turned out that the fish was deep-fried before it was steamed, just to give it the kick of oil (which we're all addicts of) and to coat it with a layer of flour. This extra layer of flour worked as a sort of sponge that picked up the sauce, which otherwise would slide right off the fish. The sauce contained large chunks of ginger, scallions and whole cloves of garlic, and the fish was covered with yellow chives, cilantro and green onions. These aromatic ingredients eliminated the fishy odor that the pike might have had once in his afterlife and worked well with the soy-sauce-based brown sauce.

Mr. Pike disappeared pretty quickly, leaving only his cheek-less head wondering where the rest of his body went. (He was cheek-less because cheeks are often the tastiest part of a fish's body. They tend to be much more succulent and firm than any other parts of the body.)

The tab came out to be about $100 for the four of us (including alcohol and tip). According to my parents, they don't always shower you with recommendations and other assistance. We might have bee just really lucky, coming to it when it was empty; people who came after us were given regular menus and were pretty much left to their own. So, the two recommendations when visiting Szechwan North are A) go there for lunch, and go there early to catch their "we're so bored, we want customers to chat with" mood, and B) if you're lucky enough to get this kind of attention, follow their advice, and don't hesitate to ask for stuff you like (like Patrick did).

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Szechwan North
2857 Pfingsten Rd., Glenview, IL
847.272.0007

We got up relatively early this morning to visit the organic greenhouse in the Kilbourn Park. The purpose was to catch the annual organic plant sale before all the cool stuff (like Green Zebra tomatoes and Jamaican Hot Chocolate peppers) sell out. My mom joined us from the suburbia, and the three of us stuffed ourselves into my car with coffee mugs in hands.

When we arrived at the park about thirty minutes before the opening, there was only one person waiting in front of the chain link gate to the greenhouse. It was perfect out: the sky was blue, the air was still chilly but crisp, the grass moist under our feet. Birds chirped in the trees that lined the nearby streets, while little league kids run around the baseball field. A muscular guy was doing endless push-ups in the training field by the greenhouse.

A beautiful cat appeared out of nowhere and kept us entertained as we waited in the line.

A few minutes later, a woman started to set up a bake sale table by the line. I eyed at the golden scones and small bags of homemade granola, but we'd just had breakfast (a piece of French country bread each, lightly toasted with a slice of Provolone), so I behaved myself. The young mother in front of us walked up to the table and got a small bag of cookies. Sensing our curious gaze, she graciously gave one--a rosemary pine nut cookie--to Patrick. My mom, Patrick and I each took a bite off the crisp, tiny cookie. The lone pine nut fell on the ground when my mom took her bite, but the rosemary and the buttery-sugary cookie was a surprisingly nice combination.

Just before the greenhouse opened, the husband of the cookie woman returned with their kids, whom he picked up and placed in the plastic trolley. (A very well-prepared family!) They were the first to walk into the greenhouse, closely followed by us.

While we waited, we'd drawn up our battle plan: my mom and I would go to the peppers section while Patrick would take care of the tomato business. We did. I piled up the plastic tray with Thai hot pepper, Serrano Chilli peper and Poblano pepper, while my mom went overboard with Bolivian Rainbow, Sunrise Orange Bell pepper, and an ornametal pepper. (Yes, we got much more than we planned.) Meanwhile, Patrick got two Green Zebras, a Legend and Three Sisters tomatoes, along with some herbs (including a beautiful bronze-colored fennel).

The gardeners who gather for the rare opportunity to buy heirloom tomatoes and exotic peppers are, for the most part, pretty nice. But it does get a little hostile, for there's only so many plants and the concrete aisle are too narrow to get past someone who's intently picking the best plant out of the closely grouped clusters. This year, the experience was much more pleasant, mainly because we were done with picking by the time the main wave of people hit the greenhouse. Getting up early and spending half an hour before the greenhouse opens is definitely the way to go: especially when the weather it nice, thirty-minute wait in a beautiful park is more a delight than an annoyance.

When we came out with our hands full with green, happy-looking plants, the back of the brick-and-glass greenhouse had beautiful flower containers--which, considering what the building is, shouldn't be a surprise. Since both my mom and I left our purses in my car, poor Patrick had to pay for all the plants. Luckily for him, they were quite reasonably priced--most tomatoes were $3 each, while most of the herbs and peppers were only $2. As we drove back home, the entire car was filled with that summer smell of tomato vines. We entrusted most of the tomatoes and peppers to my mom, who has a tremendous advantage of a backyard: Patrick and I live in a very sunny apartment, but compared to an outdoor garden, our plants never get as much sun. We kept one container-friendly tomato (the Legend) and the herbs to ourselves, and are planning to give one of the Green Zebras to the Southern Branch. I'm hoping that this year won't (again) prove my incredible aptitude as a merciless killer of potted plants...

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Kilbourn Park Organic Greenhouse
(They are very helpful when you have questions about organic gardening, and even about how to use the exotic herbs and peppers you get from their sale.)
3501 N. Kilbourn Ave. Chicago, IL
773.685.3351

When I came home around five, starving, I found two tamales in the fridge. Patrick got a six-pack yesterday for dinner, and left two for me. I boiled some water in a pot, placed a Chinese steamer (the bamboo-made ones you see in dim sum places) on it, and steamed the tamales in it. Kind of an odd way to steam Mexican food, but hey, it worked.

The place we get our tamales is on Clark Street. It's a mom-and-pop place (I suppose I should call it mama-y-papa place, though) called Tamales: Lo Mejor de Guerrero, and it only has tamales. Well, they do have some other stuff like horchata, and they do weekend breakfast (which we haven't tried), but their main thing is the tamales. When the orange-awninged place opened up last year, we were pretty excited--it's always reliable when a restaurant really specializes in something. This place isn't an exception. Their tamales are gigantic, cheap (six giant tamales for a mere $5.45), and yummy.

Their tamales are moist and the corn masa still bears some lingering sweet, nutty flavor of the corn. There are seven different varieties, costing only a dollar each: hot or mild chicken, hot or mild pork, cheese with beans, cheese with jalapeño and sweet with strawberries or pineapples. My favorite (by far) is the boring-sounding cheese with beans. I do like the meat versions, but the cheese with beans hits that soft spot for simple, comfort food. None of the three ingredients assert itself too loudly (unlike the pork and the hot green sauce, which sometimes obscure the subtle flavor of the corn dough), and the richness of the cheese blends wonderfully well with beans and corn masa.

While the tamales steamed in the Chinese steamer, I opened a bottle of Kirin Ichiban (a Japanese beer) and took swigs from it. The green leaves of the big tree outside of our kitchen window, I noticed, had turned to the real, summer green from their nascent light green. After all, it was approaching mid-May. Finally done with all the papers for the semester and indeed with my BA work, I waited for the heavy cast of stress melt in me. It felt good to be done. It felt good, although it was only a beginning of my life outside of school--a life that I may not enjoy as much as I did all the learning and thinking inside of the academia, but for now, it felt really good to have no paper to write, no required reading that I'd have to rush through.

When the tamales were heated through, I placed them in a plate, took a few pictures and wolfed them down. I probably shouldn't have eaten both--they were pretty sizable--but they were yummy, and with the help of the beer, the tamales finally managed to undo the knot of stress that I'd been feeling for last two weeks of my last semester in school. Perhaps it's not too surprising that these tamales did such a great job of soothing my papered-out brain. In the back of the restaurant, there are several Mexican grannies (presumably from Guerrero) cooking the meat in sauce and stuffing the corn husks with masa. It's the kind of place where you order a few tamales and the girl at the counter walks into the kitchen, asking her "tia (aunt)" if she still had the kind you asked for--all in Spanish, presumably with Guerrero accent. It's very homey, and that relaxing atmosphere of a family-run restaurant certainly translates into the tamales they create.

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Tamales Lo Mejor de Guerrero
7024 N. Clark St., Chicago, IL
773.338.6450

We were very glad that this restaurant managed to survive the recent neighborhood fire unscathed. The fire consumed a few stores right next to the Mejor de Guerrero, which included another of our neighborhood favorite, a Colombian rotisserie place called Pollo al Carbon.

For culinary tidbits about the Guerrero region of Mexico (and where to get their specialties in Chicago), see this fascinating Chicago Reader article.

Yes, I'm still stuck in the apartment, trying (desperately) to add ten more pages to my last paper. It must be done by Friday, or I won't be able to graduate!

But of course, I need a break--which is why I'm here, writing this post. The only problem is that I haven't had much time or energy to explore restaurants or cook new stuff. (My lunch was a frozen pizza, which I stole from Patrick's freezer.) So, I'll dig out a recipe from before...

I wonder if anyone has been wondering about the small green peppers on the top corner of the page. They're called "shishi-tou" in Japanese, which means "lion-sized pepper." It might sound odd that they're thought to be lion-sized, since they're much smaller than the American green peppers; shishi-tou's are only about two to two-and-a-half inches long. What they're compared to is the red hot peppers. Compared to them, shishi-tou's are much bigger--lion-sized, indeed.

Flavor-wise, shishi-tou's are more bitter than hot. (Though sometimes you run into stray hot ones.) I used to dislike them as a child. My mom used to grill them on a dry frying pan, and my father loved to dip them in soy sauce with grated ginger. They're great friends of a beer drinker, he used to say. But I just couldn't take the bitterness.

As I grew older, though, I started to enjoy the bitterness, and shishi-tou's are now one of my favorite summer veggies (although they're available all-year-round now). I often stir-fry them in sesame oil with ginger, and season them with Japanese fish sauce. But when we were photographing the shishi-tou's for this web site, I decided to go for something else.

First, I marinated chicken pieces with salt, ground pepper, and sesame oil, and coated them with a bit of corn starch. (This is easily done in a small sandwich bag. Throw everything in, and knead the bag a few times. The corn starch and oil help keep the moisture in the meat from escaping. A great neat tech from the Chinese cuisine.) Then I made the sauce: I simply mixed a generous tablespoon of miso (fermented soy beans), a tablespoon of mirin (sweet rice wine for cooking) and a little splash of soy sauce in a smal bowl. I cut up the shishi-tou's and removed the seeds, and also cut up some eggplants.

When everything was ready, I heated oil in a frying pan, threw some grated ginger (yes, they're ubiquitous in my kitchen), and browned the surface of the chicken pieces. Then I added the veggies, stir-fried them a while, pour the sauce in, and cover the pan to let it simmer for a few moments. I served the whole thing over rice, but they can also be served separately. Bon apetite!

Shishi-tou's are available in Asian markets, often under the generic name of "small sweet peppers" or some such. Just be careful not to use those murderously hot ones from Thailand (or Mexico, for that matter)!

Okay, I spent enough time on this--time to go back to Uncle Tom's Cabin and "Benito Cereno"... Oh, the wonderful world of slave literature!

I've been locked up in the apartment, writing my last term papers for a few days now. Yesterday, I skipped lunch. I was completely papered out and didn't feel like cooking anything. That was a bad idea--by the time Patrick came home, I was pretty grumpy. Even worse, I forgot that it was Patrick's birthday. (Low blood sugar can do a multitude of harm to you...it's not that I stopped loving my lovely boyfriend...you're reading this, Patrick, right?) At any rate, no lunch is a bad idea particularly for me.

So, today, not to repeat the same mistake within 24 hours, I decided to make something quick for lunch. I remembered that we had a large bag of frozen Kimchi (or Kimchee--spicy Korean pickled cabbage) dumplings in the freezer. The dumplings came from our friend H Mart in Niles, a gigantic Korean supermarket with rows after rows of frozen Korean and Chinese dumplings we have yet to try. I also had half a daikon radish and a handful of wakame (Japanese seaweed you most likely find in your miso soup), so I went for a quick dumpling soup.

Because I'm a lazy chef (especially when I'm cooking for only myself), I didn't bother making my own broth. I simply boiled some water and threw in a teaspoon of Chinese chicken soup mix (the red can in the photo). This brand isn't my favorite--this soup has an unpleasant odor of (probably) chicken, and the artificial flavoring in it tastes like, well, artificial flavoring. So I added a bit of minced ginger to tame those unwelcome flavor elements.

Then I cut up the daikon into thin, fan-shaped bits, threw them in, and while they danced in the hot water, I chopped up some green onions. I also washed the preserving salt off the fresh wakame and cut them into small pieces. When the daikon bits were close to being done, I took out a few frozen dumplings and slid them into the boiling soup. (It takes about 6-7 minutes for the dumplings to cook from the frozen state.)

Toward the end, I added the green onions and wakame bits, ground some black pepper into the pot, and drizzled a bit of sesame oil (a must for any Korean dish!). All in all, it took me about twenty minutes from the start to the end, and that includes the time-consuming photographing part, so you can safely bet on cooking this delicious soup within fifteen minutes.

The dumplings could have been a bit spicier, but otherwise, it was a very satisfying meal. My brain is up and running again, and I won't forget Patrick's birthday--only that it'll be a year from today! I'll have to keep my brain well-fed for quite a long time now...

The salmon pink of the kimchi showed beautifully through the half-translucent skin of the dumplings. Yum!

I seem to be alive and fine, so it is now confirmed that Thai eggplants aren't poisonous. Hooray! (For context, see the previous post.)

To celebrate my continuing life, I'll share a recipe for a super-easy and refreshing cucumber salad. I believe my mom got the recipe from one of her tennis friends, whose carpenter husband was extremely demanding when it came to quickly producing yummy little dishes for his drinking pleasure. He must have been one of those classic Japanese husbands who flips over the low dining table when he doesn't like the food served. Bowls of rice and mis soup flying everywhere while the horrified yet obedient wife apologizes, kneeling on the tatami-matted floor...

Now, enough of that stereotypical sxxt, and for the cucumber salad. You MUST use Japanese or Persian cucumbers for this recipe. The American cucumbers don't have enough moisture, and their skin is too tough for this dish. Now, cut the cucumbers into small logs, and place them in a bowl. Pour about a tablespoon of soy sauce and a little bit of sesame oil over the cucumbers and stir them so all the pieces are coated with the marinade. Let them sit in the fridge for twenty to thirty minutes. And voila, you have my mom's cucumber salad right there.

It's so easy and tasty that this has become one of our summer staples. For me, it brings me the soothing image of a lazy summer evening, chatting with my family on the wooden veranda while a mosquito coil keeps off the annoying insects. (Our modern house in Japan didn't have a wooden veranda, and a mosquito coil would be just too feeble a force before a battalion of fierce, rural mosquitoes, but it's fantasy that counts, right?)

You can add a pinch of red hot pepper (or a few drops of hot pepper oil) if you like it hot. Goes great with beer, too!

In case you're wondering... the bowl I used for the photo is a sesame-grinding bowl that I stole from my mother's kitchen. It's sort of like a mortar, except that the inside of the bowl has rugged furrows so that you can grind the sesame (and sometimes other things like shrimps or wild yam--and yes, we wash it throughly!) with a wooden pestle. A pestle made of Sansho, prickly ash, is considered the best because the fragrance of the wood is transferred to the ground sesame as the bowl's surface scrapes off a bit of the pestle each time you use it. Next time I go to Japan, I'm planning to get one of those.

I came home from the Writing Center work early today, and found Patrick working at his computer. It was about lunch time. Since I had a few Thai eggplants at hand, I decided to make Thai-flavored quick lunch for the two of us. (The small roundish veggies with beautiful green net pattern are the Thai eggplants, available in some ethnic groceries. We got ours at the H Mart.) To the ingredients in the photo, I added a bunch of cilantro, a bit of ginger and chicken thigh. I prefer chicken thigh in stewed dishes, because thighs have more flavor--I know that extra flavor comes from the extra fat, but, hey, if you eat meat, eat the tasty part, that's my philosophy.

So I cut up the veggies and the chicken, and heated the coconut oil (the part that separates from the solid white mass in a can of coconut milk) in a pot, then threw in the ginger bits. When the oil was hot, I sautéed the chicken, added the veggies and stir-fried them until they were slightly cooked. Then I added the remaining can of coconut milk (stirred) and a generous spoonful of green curry paste. It took about twenty minutes for the ingredients to cook, which was enough time to cook the jasmine rice and brown rice. I added a bit of brown rice, just because we were low on jasmine rice. Just before serving (and photographing, of course), I added a bit of nam pla (Thai fish sauce) and a pinch of sugar to boost the flavor.

The curry turned out fine, but there was a surprise. It was my first time to cook with Thai eggplants, so I figured I would use them just as I do with Japanese or Italian ones. When I bit into the soft flesh of the eggplant, though, I noticed that it was much more bitter than the ones I was used to. The bitterness almost felt biting. Could this be poisonous? I thought. Maybe there was a specific procedure to drain of it its poisonous content, like one need to do with some ingredients. Uh-oh, are we going to have horrible stomach aches later?

I ran to the computer and looked up the Thai eggplants before we ate too much of it. To my relief, none of the entries said anything about them being poisonous or requiring some esoteric procedure to tame them. Some Japanese people like to let their slices of eggplants swim in cold water for a while before cooking them (to release the bitterness), so I figured the Thai eggplants have more of that bitter stuff than the Japanese ones. In fact, once we got used to the bitterness, it became sort of addictive. It's been only a few hours since we ate all our eggplant curry, so it remains to be seen if we'll get sick or not, but I'm pretty certain we'll be fine.

If this blog suddenly gets abandoned, maybe that's when you know you should be careful about those Thai eggplants.

I know I've been writing about bakeries a lot, but I can't skip this one.

This morning, we went back to one of our recent finds--Tre Kronor ("three crowns" in Swedish). Chicago Reader's restaurant review summarizes Tre Kronor as an "Albany Park Swedish restaurant very popular for breakfast, and they're right. When we arrived there around 8:45, the restaurant wasn't open yet. One of the wait staffs poked her head through a crack of the door and told us that they'd be open in about ten minutes, so we killed the time peering into the windows of a Swedish shop across the street (little red rocking horse, plates and bowls with Moomin Troll illustrations, boldly patterned fabric from Marimekko, etc). Then Patrick noticed that there were at least four other groups milling around the restaurant. We quickly returned to claim our place in the semi-line.

The restaurant opened about five minutes before nine. By then, there were six parties waiting (including us). By 9:05, all but one table on the first floor were taken by happy patrons sipping coffee and chatting while waiting for their food. By 9:15, even the seating upstairs became full. Two guys who came in around that time decided to wait outside; there's a convenient bench on the tree-lined street next to the restaurant. So, the Reader review isn't lying. Tre Kronor is extremely popular for breakfast. I'd recommend being there before nine, or aim at the time when the first wave of diners has subsided.

Another good idea, when you're someone like me who gets grumpy when hungry, is to get one of their Swedish pastries to nibble on. We got a cinnamon roll, which kept Patrick and me gracious enough while waiting for the real meal (not that they were slow; we were VERY hungry this morning.) On a normal day, one of their cinnamon rolls and coffee would be a perfect breakfast. Tre Kronor's fluffy cinnamon roll has a refreshing twist. The warm glaze was scented with citrus--probably lemon. I'd much prefer this cinnamon roll over Ann Sather's hyper-sugary version.

For the main fair, I got a Belgian waffles with seasonal fruits and whipped cream. The fruits turned out to be about one whole pack of strawberries and one whole banana, and I can bet my best hat to the whipped cream being a whole carton of fatty goodness. Shouldn't have finished all of it, but I did, with a help from Patrick's cosmic stomach. Patrick had an omlette with spinach and blue cheese, served with breakfast potatoes. I refrained from most of it, due to my mild dislike of blue cheese, but Patrick said the melty blue cheese was awesomely aromatic. (Stinky, I'd say, but we all have different tastes, I suppose.) The spinach looked very fresh, and barely cooked.

One possible reason (beside the fresh ingredients, inventive creations and cute Swedish decor) for their popularity is the reasonable price. The Belgian waffle went for $6.95, while blue cheese omlette was only a dollar more. The last (and the first) time we were there, I got an orange-vanilla French toast (another recommendation), whose damage to our wallet was a mere $5.95. When we got out, the morning sun shined on the young green leaves of the trees in the nearby North Park University campus. Several people walked their dogs. A dog sniffed at a dandelion on the foot of a blooming cherry tree. Tre Kronor is a wonderful little breakfast place in a relaxing, green neighborhood, perfect for starting a lazy weekend. And of course, keeping up with their meaty tradition, they have things like potato sausages, veal sausages and cured salmon, so those of you carnivores, don't worry!

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Tre Kronor
3258 W. Foster Ave. Chicago, IL
773.267.9888

My parents live in Glenview, a north suburb of Chicago. It's a pretty boring suburban village with lots of chain stores in posh-looking malls. Not much tasty food when it comes to the bang for the buck, and no coffee house to speak of (well, that's not a surprise, I suppose).

The village has recently seen a sizable change, since the redevelopment of the huge Naval base now called "The Glen." Lots of expensive-looking stores and restaurants moved in, and the traditional downtown area is feared to be drained of its customers. Downtown Glenview is not that interesting, anyway (an old town feel without the old town charm, I should say), so I haven't been there for a long time.

In that context, you can imagine my surprise when we walked into the Sweet Dreams Organic Bakery & Café, just to see what it's like, well prepared to be disappointed. We'd noticed the bakery before and figured it'd be just another storefront bakery, but since I'd started this blog, I figured we should at least take a look. I pulled into the narrow parking lot behind the brick building, while a guy in a black Audi backed up to let me pass (with a pastry in his hand, I noticed). Squeezing between the car and a dumpster, we walked into the store through the back door; it was a whole another world.

The first thing that jumps to your eyes when you walk into the Sweet Dreams is its pink walls. Then you'll notice the carefully arranged, comfy-looking armchairs (some are woven wicker, others are leather) around a fireplace. Then comes the showcase. When we visited the bakery, the two showcases on both sides of the register were brimming with appetizing goodies like peanut butter cookies, flaky apple strudels, loaves of chocolate pound cakes, flourless espresso torte with its top cracking open, orange sponge cake with lots of berries and whipped cream, dense cheesecakes--the list goes on and on. Some of the cakes and cookies were vegan or gluten-free, and others were 100% organic. After drooling around for a while, we decided on a veggie strudel and a slice of chocolate & walnut torte with espresso butter cream.

Unfortunately, though, the food looked better than it tasted--at least that was the case for what we got. The organic veggie strudel had a nicely flaky, buttery shell. Inside was shredded carrots, zucchini and shiitake mushrooms with soy sauce-based seasoning. The strudel came with thick and rich peanut sauce. Each of the three component were all very good. The sad part is that the didn't work together too well. The stir-fried veggies were great by itself (I can imagine eating a ton of it with a bowl of steamed rice--yum!), but didn't go well with the buttery shell. The peanut sauce, on the other hand, had too much of a kick to complement the strudel. It probably needs something with a stronger flavor, like beef, to balance out the peanuts.

The torte, though beautifully presented with a geometric doodle of chocolate sauce on a white square plate, left a spacious room for flavor enhancement. The cake part--chocolate sponge and walnut sponge--tasted like normal sponge cake without chocolate or walnuts powder. Even more disappointing was the espresso butter cream, which, if they hadn't told me it was supposed to be espresso-flavored, I wouldn't have guessed it in a million years. I might be being a little bit mean--for a family-run bakery in the United States, their baked goods were pretty good. It's just that they look so good that the actual flavor and texture cannot live up to the expectation that their appearance creates.

Croatian-style pastries, which Mary Spocic, the owner of the bakery has been baking for most of her life, both in her native country by the Adriatic Sea and in the United States, might be a better choice. The grilled veggie sandwich that a guy was having when we walked in looked very tempting as well. Given the extremely cute and cozy interior (and don't forget the free wi-fi), I might go back there just to give it another try, maybe in the savory food department next time. It is just very nice to see an environmentally conscious café--and a very cute one at that--open in an otherwise bland suburbia where I frequent, and I do feel an urge to sup