Bánh cuốn at Phở Vietnam

Just when I thought that Phở Vietnam had totally blown my mind, the kind folks there introduced me to Bánh cuốn today. This is a plate of thin rice noodle stuffed with minced pork and spices, then topped with fried shallots and thinly sliced pork cake. Bánh cuốn sits in a tangy sweet bath of vinegar and perhaps nước chấm? and is topped with chopped fresh basil. At first Linda encouraged me to use the dark chile garlic paste to up the spice. I did so, but was then encouraged by my pal the handsome gentleman waiter (whose name I must learn very soon) to add the sliced, pickled jalapenos. The jalapenos are in a sweet pickle preparation that set off the delicate noodles, savory pork, and the fresh basil unspeakably well. I hear they also make my new favorite dish with shrimp. Needless to say I will try it in the next few days. Unbelievable food. I told Linda she needs to write a cookbook. "Maybe one day!" she said.

Chile Ancho Sauce Near Black Beans with Avocado Leaf

It's been raining and that makes me blue. This time of year always pushes my fingers from the ledge just when I'm feeling sane. In spite of the somber tone of the day I made one true thing, a beautiful sauce of chile ancho. It's amazing how something so simple could be so flavorful. This sauce has a smoky sweetness that is dusky and almost plum-like. The shriveled, dry chiles transform into a rich froth without butter or cream. That's part of the genius of Mexican sauces as opposed to say, French sauces. Without butter or a technique of reduction, Mexican sauces unabashedly brandish sophisticated and intense flavors of their contents, like chiles or nuts (pipian) or dried fruit (picadillo). But it would be foolish and dangerous to get into a debate about who has the better sauce tradition. This sauce is simple and lifts my mood when eaten with a side of black refried beans with avocado leaf. It is perfect for beef, pork, or chicken. Crass, thrifty cooks have been known to make a mean enchilada with it, too.

Ingredients

4-8 chiles, dried and roasted, deseeded and reinflated in warm water
one small, cunning white onion chopped
two cloves garlic minced
salt
corn oil

Instructions

First slip your chiles into the blender with some chile water and puree. Next sautee the onions and garlic in the corn oil until soft and translucent. Don't forget the salt or you might as well eat cardboard. Let the onions and garlic cool. Add the onions and garlic to the chile puree in the blender and blend again until frothy. Add water to the mix until you have around a pint or more of the sauce.

To make enchiladas, soft fry a small corn tortilla in oil on both sides, tuck in some shredded boiled chicken, and pour a little sauce in the pan. Fold the enchilada like a taco and serve covered with sauce and garnished with a crumble of fresh cheese. Feta will do well, especially the mild French kind.

With a side of black beans, the kaleidoscope of flavor in the sauce and the beans with their intriguing, almost anise-like note of avocado leaf, will leave you laughing even through tears.

Image: Chile Ancho uploaded to flickr by macmacmac

Pelmenis and gin and tonic

For roughly the first half of this decade, Jude lived in Juneau, Alaska. They were the longest years of her sweet short life. She remembers driving around aimlessly, as most people do when they first move there, looking at the sights of her new home, a place she'd only visited, years before, and always wanted to return. Many of those sights were hauntingly beautiful, something out of a dream she once had. Others were frankly puzzling. One of those was a little hole in the wall restaurant - at least it sort of looked like a restaurant - on the main drag through downtown, in the Hangar building.

A simple storefront furnished with State of Alaska surplus furniture and lined with hundreds of old LPs and decade-old magazines, Pel'meni was, and is, open odd hours, on a schedule that made more sense to Jude once she understood Juneau. It was, for example, open at 3 am, after the bars closed, and on weekends there was usually a line out the door. A pelmeni (or pel'meni, depending on where you look) is a Russian dumpling shaped like an ear. Or, for the squeamish, like a large tortellini, stuffed with various things. Jude never really learned what was in the meat pel'menis served in Juneau, and often preferred to order the potato-stuffed version.

People lined up for pel'menis, paying their five bucks and waiting for what seemed like eternity for a styrofoam square clamshell of little dumplings covered in a combination of vinegar, butter, Sriracha sauce, curry, and fresh cilantro, and sour cream, with a slice of bread to set it off.

Juneau and Jude are now separated by 700 air miles. Absence does not really make the heart grow fonder, but it occasionally makes one more resourceful. As it turns out, Eastern European Deli (601 W. 36th Avenue, Anchorage) sells frozen pelmenis in three pound bags for $13-14, depending upon whether you want chicken/pork, chicken, or beef. But the dumplings themselves are only a fraction of the show. Replicating the sauce was the harder part, but in itself, not really, thanks to the magic of the internet. Click here to read the recipe I used, possibly from the source itself, or at least someone who once worked there. Thanks to the author.

The only things we'd change, clarify or emphasize would be: 1) do NOT overboil the pelmenis, as they will fall apart; 2) be careful not to skimp on butter - saute the boiled pelmenis in enough butter and put a pat or so in the bottom of the bowl before you ladle the hot dumplings into it; 3) be sparing with the curry powder, and put it on before the Sriracha sauce; 4) vinegar should be maybe two Tbsp per serving; 5) lots of cilantro and sour cream. This is not a dish to make on a diet, Atkins or otherwise. Fifteen per person makes a good serving size.

Jewish rye, as storebought as possible, is the second best accompaniment. The best, as it turns out, is a nice gin and tonic. That recipe is below. Have both.

If you're ever in Juneau, locate Pel'meni and visit them yourself. It is rumored that the Hangar building is set to be torn down, though this rumor has persisted for at least a decade now. The likely replacement will be an even larger cruise ship dock, complete with more Tanzanite stores, tour bus parking, and T shirt shops. That's what the powers that be in Juneau (i.e. the cruise ship industry) are pushing for, so they will likely get it. When the Hangar is torn down, it will not only take out a large piece of Southeast Alaska history, but two of the best restaurants in Juneau (Pel'meni and Pizza Roma.) It may be that the global recession currently killing cruise ship profits is the only thing that saves the original Pel'meni and the best garlicky pizza crust in the PNW. Someone really needs to chain themselves to the place and refuse to move for the bulldozers, and I can think of a few good candidates for the job.

Here's Cait's gin and tonic, compliments of Liz at Gastronomy Domine. While Jude thinks of pelmenis as winter food, because she went there for lunch frequently in the winter and because it's always sort of winter in Juneau, Cait's G&T brings pelmenis into the torrid Anchorage summer.

Gin and Tonic

1 shot Hendricks gin
1 cap full of Rose water
shards of fresh cucumber
ice

Shake the gin and rosewater and pour over ice and cucumbers. Add tonic. Love your neighbor as yourself (unless you live near that cranky old codger who lived by Jude in Juneau and always had a rude comment for her. But he's probably in a home by now.)

Gomasio Rice Salad with Baby Spinach and Sweet 100 Tomatoes

What in the world has happened to my sense of eat? I have always been into wretched excess, a slave to my senses. But lately my sense of what I like to eat has changed so that I crave strange flavor combinations of fresh and crisp over stodgy and gooey. Better take a picture to mark the occasion. This kind of healthy inclination won't last forever. Tonight I devised a salad of painfully healthy ingredients that turned out to be memorable. Here it is:

Gomasio Rice Salad with Baby Spinach and Sweet 100 Tomatoes

Ingredients:

brown basmati Rice
a tiny pat of butter
baby Spinach
sweet 100 cherry tomatoes
miso dressing
gomasio (gomashio (hiragana: ごま塩; also spelled gomasio) is a dry condiment, similar to furikake, made from unhulled sesame seeds (ごま, goma) and salt (塩, shio)

Instructions:

1. Prepare a few cups of rice, then stir in a tiny pat of butter and let it melt.
2. When rice cools a little, toss the rice with spinach, a handful of tomatoes, and miso dressing.
3. Garnish with gomasio.

Charlie's Bakery and Chinese Cuisine

Charlie's is the place for dim sum and wedding cakes, kal bi and red bean sesame balls. Like the Tibetan place in Spenard or the Eastern European Deli with fresh pelmenis to go, Charlie's is an oddity so authentic that you'd think it would only exist in a bigger city, but in fact, it is the epitome of Anchorage. It's in a strip mall on "C" street across the street from Wells Fargo By the B & J Store that sells fishing knives and has a grimy marquee advertising rubber boots for breakup. I have spent many of my Saturdays in Anchorage since I moved back to my hometown trundling to Charlie's for their dim sum menu, but my current craze is Spicy Braised Beef with Noodles. This dish is a soup with a rich, chili-laden broth, swollen with long noodles and slow-cooked beef. Like all the best soups, the Spicy Beef has a complex, well-developed base, in which I struggle to pick out particular flavors and fragrances. My guess would be beef and bones, chili, garlic and scallions. The generous chunks of braised beef are velvety and tender to the fork. A scattering of shredded green pickle lends the soup a tart dash. Take advantage of the brisk days of breakup and order the Spicy Braised Beef with Noodles.

Charlie's Bakery and Chinese Cuisine
2729 C St, Anchorage - (907) 677-7777

Black Beans with Avocado Leaf

This recipe is a secret but I have never been good at keeping my mouth shut so I tell people about it every chance I get. As if my indiscretion weren't enough, I have taken to changing the recipe whenever I like so the recipe I am giving here is not, in fact, the traditional, secret recipe. Sometimes I add chipotle or chile seco and sometimes I don't. Sometimes I add epazote and sometimes not. Today I used diced onion, sauteed with sliced fresh jalapenos, a small amount of ground cumin, and a large pinch of avocado leaves. The broth almost sings with the earthy flavor of the black beans made elegant with the tender, enigmatic anise notes of the avocado leaf. The avocado leaf should inspire a perfume. It has the bouquet of lotus tea and a teardrop in a rainstorm. An odd but delicious combination is to serve the beans soupy over sushi rice. Sticky and more solid than other rice, sushi rice cradles the soupy beans and soaks up their irreplaceable flavor.

Ingredients

two tablespoons of corn oil
onions (either the outer layer of half an onion beneath the papery layer or a diced handful, whatever you please)
one small bag of black beans
one pot of water
sliced jalapeno or a bit of chile seco or chipotle
one large pinch of dried avocado leaf, crumbled between finger and thumb


Instructions

1. Saute the onion in the corn oil until soft and golden if using diced onions and until almost brown if using the outer layer of half an onion. Add salt. Do not refrain from salting your food or the blahs will get you.

2. Discard the onion if using a single piece.

3. Add water to the pot and pour the beans in. The water should be double the level of the beans to allow evaporation over a slow cooking.

4. Add chile to the pot.

5. Boil the beans for a long time until soft. This can take hours. Add avocado leaf to the pot about 15 minutes before ready to serve either with rice or by its magnificent self.


Buen Provecho.

Image: a test of your depth perception in the form of a photo of dried avocado leaf

What was I thinking

I know better, I really do.  We all know what to expect when we darken the door of local Mexican eateries, don't we?  Most are - diplomatically - Not Good.  Most people don't really go to Mexican restaurants north of the border -- or for that matter north and west of the northern border -- because they want to eat good Mexican food.  That is a shame, because Mexico produced one of the world's great cuisines.  It is the interpretation of that cuisine (for Americans who go to Mexican restaurants to have an excuse to drink tequila and various syrupy tequila drinks) that sucks. 

Generally, Americanized "Mexican" fare consists of a puddle of yellow cheese smothering something fried, unidentifiable, or both.  It should be illegal to operate such an establishment without a portable AED at each table.  Authenticity is clearly not a goal.  Here's a rule I ignored tonight, and I know better, really I do: if you walk into a restaurant - any restaurant - and everyone eating there is over the age of 70, turn around and walk right the hell back out. For any restaurant that isn't a steakhouse or a cafeteria near a church in the Deep South, this rule of thumb cannot be repeated often enough. 

But sometimes, you just want a margarita and some chips and salsa, which was my only goal when Cait and I visited a local Mexican-American restaurant this evening.  I'm not going to name names, except to place it way out in an industrial area off Lake Otis Parkway that I associate with deadbeat dads who work under the table.  Again, this obviously falls under the category of "you should have known better." Most "Mexican" restaurants fall into this category, and they are virtually indistinguishable from each other, so it doesn't really matter. 

Here is what seems to be required to operate a typical Anchorage "Mexican" restaurant. These factors may be required to get a license out of the ABC board, for all I know: 

1. Large plastic menu sticky with someone else's salsa.  Sometimes it's fossilized on there; sometimes, for a real treat, it's still today's salsa.  At this evening's fine dining establishment, I am surprised I wasn't charged for this as a side dish. 

2. Serves Pepsi products.  Really, make it stop. It conjures the image of  Item #3 on the "standard fellow patrons at ANC restaurant" list: a hypercaffeinated 8 year old smearing something - you don't want to know what, exactly - on every surface within a radius of 30 feet in between sips of Mountain Dew while his parents bliss out on cheap booze. 

3. What is served is rarely, if ever, what was ordered.  Invariably, the server makes sure you quickly understand that sending the order back is going to be a hell of a lot more trouble than just eating whatever they brought out. And invariably, what was brought out includes the inevitable Big Puddle o' Cheese that you carefully sifted through a sticky menu to avoid. 

4. 50 point bonus if the server serves it with a filthy oven mitt and says "Careful: this plate is really hot" (translation: this plate was in the microwave for 4 minutes to melt the Big Puddle o' Cheese you didn't order). 

5. It's an added bonus if the entertainment wafting over from the bar consists of a friend of the owners "playing" an electric keyboard while wailing 80's hits half an octave off key.  It is was like someone's demented uncle found the karaoke machine.  This was a bona fide plus tonight, perhaps the only upside to this venture.  You'll just have to believe me on this one, because... 

6. the margaritas were not good. Actually, they were bad. Chips were OK, though.  It's hard to screw up chips, though I have experienced a few places in this town that managed just that.  Oh, and Cait's shrimp thing was decent, she said.  That's a relief, because it sure didn't look that way.  But margaritas are just about the only reason anyone in their right mind would choose to visit any of the local Anchorage "Mexican" spots: our Puritan heritage apparently demands that we restrict liquor licenses to those who promise to feed us an entire barnyard worth of fat with our poison.  

The bill for all this?  Over fifty bucks for two (one drink each) with the standard tip.  Yes, the service was as craptastic as everything else, but everyone needs to make a living and stiffing a waiter in this economy is unconscionable.  Even if she richly deserved it. 

In short: everyone should know that the Taco King now delivers, if actual edible Mexican food is desired. Except for the occasional cheesy excess, none of the above applies to the Taco King, which remains the only purveyor of edible Mexican food in Anchorage. It of course, does not serve alcohol, but for a lot less than what was spent this evening, you can get a decent dinner for two -- in most cases, the ones you actually ordered! -- and a decent bottle of tequila.  Long live the King. It's a recession. Stay home and make your own damn margaritas.