xmas pizza

At my house, we're not what most people would call traditionalists. We do have our things that we do though. Like pizza for breakfast on christmas day. It started at my mom's house, back when I was vegetarian. She normally makes ham and crap, but she happened to have some frozen pizza crusts around, so she whipped up some pizza.

The idea stuck.

it's homemade pizza

It's "homemade" in that it is assembled in house, but these days most ingredients come prepared. The sauce is from a can, etc. I'm sure you'll be surprised to hear that I don't make the cheese from scratch either. I know, scandalous right? I do srhed the cheese myself. Also, I cut vegetables. The crust is one of those frozen dough balls. I don't use none of that boboli crap; it makes the baby jesus cry.

Green Eggs

I'm not the only person in my house that thinks about food all the time. Rakka's suspect and fugitive involves the nosh quite frequently. She has a pretty different perspective than I do, though. And, of course, she tries not to waste stuff. So...

Green Eggs in Pan

Yes, my eggs are green. And why? Well, 'american ferrera' had to go somewhere.

American Ferrera on Suspect and Fugitive

If it was amusing in the pan, it was frightening in the eggwhich it was destined for. But it was just food die, so it tasted fine. It's like that green ketchup they had for a while.

Green Eggs and Fake Ham

So, if you're the one reader who hasn't seen S&F, now you have no excuses.

Happy Teriyaki

There are two things you go to Happy Teriyaki for: quantity and speed. Also, it's cheap.

To be honest, I have a rather unflattering nickname for the place. I stand by it, but as I do actually like the place, I won't actually spell it out. Suffice it to say, it rhymes with "Happy Teriyaki" and starts with "Cr".

Spicy Chicken

It may seem strange that I disparage the place with stupid names, but still claim to like it. Or maybe not. You probably expect this type of thing by now. Any place that packs a large styrofoam container (though maybe not for long, what will happen in january? ooOOoo!) for less than $8 is bound to find itself in my good graces some days.

And it's not bad, for what it is. And it's fast. Everything's ready when you get there. The rice is already in the container. You tell them container size and choice of meat and it's assembled almost as you finish talking. When the line is out the door it still only takes 5 to 10 minutes to get through. When you're big hurry and you've a big hunger, you can't really beat it.

I should mention, if you get tofu or fish (breaded) they fry it up fresh. It takes longer, but it's good. Nice and crispy.

[where: 823 3rd Ave Seattle, WA 98104]

chikindon (gyudon but with chicken) [adventures in japanese cooking]

Remember last month I got that 'Japanese cooking for Americans' book and then made some stuff from it. Yeah. That was great.

chikindon

No, seriously, it was. Which is why I'm fiddn ta keep it going. There's a recipe for gyudon, which looked pretty freaking fantastic. But I'm not down with Gyū (beef)*, so I adapted it for toriniku (chikin (chicken)). This was a complex process with many steps, they were:

1. Replace beef with chicken

Hard, right? The rest of the thing was pretty easy too. Basically just some onions simmered in soy sauce and sake with a bit of ginger, sugar and garlic. I'm probably leaving something out, but it was easy.

The end result was sweet, winey deliciousness. I had mine with extra yum, in the form of a raw egg on top.

when in doubt, crack an egg on top

The only question now is: what's next?

* I know a 'no mammals' policy is weird. It's an arbitrary place to draw a line. All lines are arbitrary. so thhhbpht.

meeting "the man" (Dixies BBQ)

The big thing about Dixies BBQ is this super special hot sauce called "the man". Typically, the owner walks around with a pot of sauce, asking if you've met "the man". If you haven't then you get one tiny drop from the end of a single tine of a fork. The idea is: it's hot.

menu

The thing about the man is it's basically dave's insanity. Maybe it's home made, maybe it's purchased and dressed up, but the theory is identical. It's tomato paste with pure capsaicin extract mixed in. If you haven't encountered it, there are two things you need to know about Dave's. 1) the extract makes it hotter than hot peppers. 2) it tastes like ass. The same applies to "the man".

So, as gimmicks go, it'll work on me the once.

But if I'm not going back for "the Man", am I going back for the BBQ? In a word, no. It wasn't really any good. Average at best.

Chicken BBQ

Also, the atmosphere is extremely uncomfortable. You wait in line forever, then you finally get into the kitchen and you find out why. It is run as a model of micromanagement. There's this huge lady sitting at the cash register directing nearly each movement of everybody else in the place. "Cook, you will make two pork rib plates. Now put them there. Now make three 520s. Line them up next to the other orders. Now stop. Now make two potato salads. Stack them, no, on that counter..."

Hey, it's potato salad.

And for some reason, they arbitrarily group 5 or 6 orders together before they hand them out. So you've paid, your order is sitting there a foot from you, and you're expected to wait for the 5 suckers behind you. Bah.

at least they have big tables

To cut a long story short, I don't expect to be visiting Dixe's again anytime soon.

[where: 11522 Northup Way, Bellevue, WA 98004]

belltown pizza

I walk by belltown pizza all the time, but I've never been in? Why is that? Probably because it seems from the outside like a crappy, touristy, sports bary place with no redeeming qualities. But you know that thing they say about book covers, right?

You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

It's dark inside, so I don't have a lot of great pictures. As devoted as I am to you, dear readers, there are some days when I'm incapable of being 'that asshole with the flash photography'.

But enough about that. We're here for pizza. And it's good pizza. The Fire in Belltown is my new favorite pie. Of course, you already know that any place that puts the hot sauce on the pizza for me is going to surge ahead in the rankings. It's almost like cheating.

Hot sauce? I'm home.

It's not just the hot sauce though. The ingredients all seemed to be high quality. The cheese stood out as particularly good, having enough flavor to stand up to the hot sauce and roasted red peppers without being overpowering or vulgar.

good vinaigrette, this

The salad even caught my attention. The vinaigrette was just right; vinegary, but not too vinegary. An impressive feat that continuously eludes me. The croutons were almost too crunchy though. Couldn't get a fork in them.

[where: 2422 1st Ave, Seattle, WA 98121]

adventures in Japanese cooking

A couple of weeks ago Rakka and I stopped in at Kinokuniya (the one in Uwajimaya) and, purely on impulse, we picked up "Let's Cook Japanese Food".

It's written by an American lady who married into a Japanese family, and then spent a bunch of time in Japan learning to cook from her mother in law. I'm not exactly in the target audience, since I have no ambition to be a housewife (Japanese or otherwise), but I'm close. After all, I am an American whose exposure to Japanese food is mostly limited to sushi restaurants. And yes, I am interested in simple home cooking that real people make on a regular basis.

Ok, so lets start with Ebi no Chiri So-su (shrimp in mild tomato chili sauce). This was surprisingly easy, and would have been more so if I had sprung for pre-shelled shrimp.

shelling shrimp

There were a ton of ingredients (yes, there's ketchup hiding in this picture), but putting them all together only took one bowl and one pan (and one dish to temporarily hold the cooked shrimp).

ingredients (labeled)

As you can see, it came out pretty good. It was slightly sweet, subtlety spicy and nicely shrimpy.

Ebi no CHiri So-su

The ketchup thing threw me for a minute. According to the book, a lot of everyday food in Japan is adaptations of other cultures' food. This is heartening. Now, when I head into the kitchen to bastardize some traditional japanese dish, I can feel like it's a trade instead of a theft.

So the shrimp was last week. Last night I tried my hand at Tsukune (grilled ground chicken skewers). This, even more than the grilled corn, justified the indoor electric grill that the book made me get.

Indoor grills rock

It came out a little more meatloafy than I expected, and a little more chary. All in all, pretty good though.

Tsukune

There are still 100+ recipes in the book, and there's a whole Kinokuniya full of more cookbooks. I think my adventures in Japanese cooking will continue. And, of course, they'll be obsessively documented right here.