Burger'wich

Work has been crazy recently so unfortunately I haven't been able to post in a while and I'm sure the same is with Greg. But I had time to quick an easy lunch today which inspired this post.

I think my grill pan is one of the most useful pans I have. Recently I have been making a lot of varying panini's/grilled sandwiches on it. Today I went ahead and cooked a burger on it and then used a couple pieces of left over sourdough bread to make a burger sandwich. A little swiss cheese and a couple slices of tomatoes and I had an absolutely delicious and simple lunch.

It beats McDonald's every time.

East to West Eats: Tacos

After reading Greg's post today and mentioning tortillas it left me craving tacos. Fortunately, I had to go downtown today and I knew just the red truck to stop at on my way home.

I ordered two tacos, one chorizo and the other carintas. I love this truck because of how quick it is and how delicious the tacos are. Generous portions of meat, delicious corn tortillas, lime and salsa picante take me back to the time I was in Mexico City and had the best tacos of my life off of the street.

It only took 10 minutes out of my day and $5 out of my pocket. No wonder I love this place.
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Greg Responds:

This reminds me! A few weeks back Hannah and I were in the Mission district of San Francisco for Carnaval. For lunch, we stopped into a busy tacqueria that had been along the parade route and ordered one of each of the following tacos: al pastor, pollo asado, lengua, and cabeza. It was the first time I've tried cabeza -- head meat -- and I expect that I'll be ordering it whenever I have the chance to in the future. Just imagine incredibly tender chunks of pork!

Quesadilla with the kitchen sink

Fresh food expires. As it idles in my fridge, its biological clock ticks down with the passing of every hour. So it's always my goal try to use any leftovers or open ingredients before they grow fuzz or rot.

Meanwhile, Hannah and I attended Oaklavia on Sunday, an open-street festival in downtown Oakland. There, we popped into a busy Mexican restaurant to check it out. While Hannah went to the counter to order some horchatta, I was attracted to the grocery in the back of the restaurant, which stocked fresh corn tortillas cooked in Oakland earlier in the day. They were still warm! $1 for a dozen and we were back in the street to enjoy the rest of the festival.

We had some tasty black bean tacos with the tortillas later that afternoon, but that's not what I'm getting at here. Yesterday for lunch, I rounded up what remained of an old block of cheddar, a few slice of salami, some chickpeas (from the can I opened for the pasta dish below), and some tomatoes. Then I constructed a quesadilla using the still-incredibly fresh tortillas and fried it in the cast iron pan with grapeseed oil. I salted the finished quesadilla and ate it with some plain yogurt. What needs to be said: the freshness of the tortillas made for a super crispy and flavorful meal. Not a bad use ingredients that were just waiting to go bad.

Mexican Eats

For the past week I haven't blogged as I was in Palenque, Mexico. The best meals I ate were those that were out of the hotel and at little spots in the town. This is one of those meals. We ordered a lot of food including chicken enchiladas with mole and a torta with steak milanesa. Also ordered were delicious tostadas, guacamole, and a friend plantain dish which made an amazing dessert.

The simplest, home-made style foods are often

the most delicious. There was nothing fancy about this meal and the food was great.

Tuna sandwich on fresh-baked whole wheat

After the success of my first loaf -- half of which we gave away -- I baked another whole wheat loaf (the sourdough starter is still a work in progress) which was even better in most regards. (A little impatience got the best of me during the final rise, resulting in a funny shape in the oven)

Anyway, I made some tuna salad with leftover yogurt-onion dip in lieu of mayo, cut up some pepper jack cheese, tomatoes, and cucumber, and served it on some of the fresh bread. And yes, that's my ginger ale in the background.

What Makes a Sandwich?

I recently had this sandwich - a pulled pork panini with fontina cheese and roasted garlic aioli. It got me thinking, what makes a great sandwich? The aforementioned sandwich was so simple, yet so delicious.

Clearly great bread and great meat / main ingredient for all you vegetarians is critical... but after that it's not so easy. Most of the time I think it's important not to over complicate things with too many ingredients, but I often do that. Maybe bland deli meats call for over complication to add flavor to an under flavor inspiring dish. But when you have something as simple and delicious as the pulled pork in the sandwich shown, it really doesn't call for much else. Some of the best sandwiches out there are the simplest, a philly cheese steak, a B.L.T. Is 3 the magic number for sandwiches? Keep the number of ingredients under three and you'll be golden?

Reformatted Leftovers for Lunch

Just as Scott had an excuse for not posting in several days, so did I. On Friday, my cell phone (Blackberry Tour) decided to stop working, and because of the holiday weekend, a new one didn't arrive until yesterday. And since I use my phone to upload pictures directly to the blog, that meant no more pictures of meals (with one exception which I'll get to later). Add to that, I was moving into a new apartment with Hannah on Monday, and we were rather busy. For most of that time, my meals were rather unspectacular- simple, quick, and filling to keep things going.

Finally, I cooked our first real dinner last night. And I guess in the excitement and fun of eating on our dining room table for the first time, I forgot to take a picture. We had stir fried cabbage over rice, and boiled pork and cabbage wontons with a soy-ginger dipping sauce. I had never made dumplings before -- it turned out to be rather tricky and time consuming. The entire batch gave me 55 (!) wontons, and we cooked up 20 of them for dinner in a pot of boiling water. When we finally sat down, the work appeared to be worth it -- the wontons were as tasty wontons from a good Chinese restaurant.


On that note, for today's lunch, I fried up the leftover cabbage stir fry and rice, along with some leftover broccoli, with an egg to make a simple fried rice dish. To go along with it, I fried up a small batch of the leftover, uncooked wontons. Fantastic! They were superbly crispy on the outside and didn't taste very greasy. Even better than our first batched of boiled ones.

After dinner, Hannah baked up some lemon bars using Meyer lemons we picked from the tree in her mother's backyard in SF on Sunday. Speaking of Sunday, Hannah and I had lunch at a Mission tacqueria, which I snapped a picture of. Maybe I'll get around to posting it at some point.

Another salad

Pretty much the same as my salad for lunch yesterday, but this time with some arugula and mozzarella cheese tossed in as well. Nothing special, but I was in a rush to eat something before a job interview.

Not Exactly a Gyro

Ever since studying abroad in London and discovering the ubiquitous "Doner Kebab" I have been obsessed. The problem of course being, you can't really find them here. I was fortunate go back to Europe last fall, to Spain, where I was able to indulge in my obsession. They weren't the same as the ones in my memory of London, but they were close enough.

Back in the States, the closest acceptable substitute is the Gyro. Scrounging up what I had in my kitchen, I made a substitute for that. Taking the leftover sausage from dinner the other night, I split it reheated that, took a slice of bread, some lettuce, cucumber, sprouts and whipped up a quick batch of tzatiki sauce using leaves from my mint plant.

Not a kebab, but today, it will do.

Salad!

Threw together a quick salad for lunch today consisting of various leftovers and farmer's market impulse buys. From the leftovers category, it contained last night's beets, some plain pasta, and a scoop of those rice and beans. I had gotten some romaine lettuce and snap peas from the FM, and included some parm and a simple vinaigrette that I whipped up fresh.

I know Scott will continue to give me shit over the vegetarian aspect of the meal. I'm hoping to get some meat in for dinner.

Scott's Sammies

I really enjoy making sandwiches - the secret is in the bread. I made this sandwich with tomato-basil bread from Panera (it's the most convenient good bread near my apartment). I figure I should try to cut back on some carbs, so I take the ingredients of a full sandwich and overload it onto half the bread.

Today's sandwich consisted of turkey, cucumbers, lettuce, sprouts, hot peppers, light-mayo, spicy brown mustard, and muenster cheese.

The sandwich was accompanied with a nice glass of home made iced tea - black tea and lemon only. Delicious.