The United Steaks

Need Proof?

Yahoo! recently launched a dedicated portal to food: food.yahoo.com. Recipes, Restaurants, Wine, Entertaining, and Cooks.

Chicago Tribune writer Renee Enna tested pizza cutters recently.

She likes Kitchen Aid’s stainless-steel 4-inch cutter due to its tremendous heft and well-situated finger guard; it also is dishwasher-safe.

My first sourdough loaf from a homegrown starter that is.

A few years ago when I was baking bread regularly, I had a starter with origins from the Bay Area. Those days are past and I don’t even remember when that starter was sent packing. I recently decided to try my hand at getting my own starter going and I was shocked at how quick it took off.

1/2 Cup Whole Wheat Flour
1/2 Cup White Bread Flour
1 Cup warm water.

I mixed the initial batch on a Sunday night. The next night, I discarded half and fed it another 1/2 Cup of White Bread Flour and 1/2 Cup of water. When I got home from work Tuesday night, it was alive.

The above photo is the first loaf. The proofing of my sponge was a bit abbreviated as was my final rise to the loaf. However, it had a good spring in the oven and turned out nicely. The final product had a good flavor, but was a bit lacking in the sourness - which is most likely a result of my shortened proofing stages.

I’ll probably make a few more loafs from this starter and then split it off into a whole wheat starter and a white starter.

Contributing to my success:
The Basics by S. John Ross
The Fresh Loaf

Courtesy of Flickr user, Alaina.

A Full Belly is a weblog about eating well, edited and published by Alaina Browne.

I am not a Foodie, Food Critic, or Food Expert, but I am a food lover and the editor and publisher of A Full Belly. I moved to New York City in November of 2002 and immediately became enamored with the city’s food culture and fascinated by the possibility (and feasibility!) of eating at a different New York City restaurant every night for the rest of my life. Not to mention the wonders of delivery and takeout! Now in San Francisco, I’m discovering a whole new world of food, and I can’t wait to share it with you!

From Contra Costa Times:

Pressing olive oil is one of the most ancient activities known to mankind; one thinks immediately of Greece, Italy or Spain. But, increasingly, California is moving to the fore with artisanal oils noted for their flavors, freshness and designer price tags.

Olive oil is nothing new in California, nor is this the oil’s first brush with stardom. Olive trees were first planted in California about 200 years ago by Spanish priests. Ever since, as Judith M. Taylor relates in her book, “The Olive in California: History of an Immigrant Tree,” the interest and the money have seesawed back and forth between olive oil and table olives.

A hot commodity in the 19th century, olive oil took a back seat to whole olives for much of the 20th century because of shifting consumer taste and competition from cheaper imports. Now California olive oil is in the spotlight again, gaining the respect that eludes California table olives.

About 300 artisan growers and producers are involved in California’s olive oil trade.

Dan Freeman, a.k.a. “Bar Man” visited 1000 bars in a single year’s time, completing his task just before New Year’s.

According to the NY Daily News, Freeman, who retired from the consulting firm he owned, said he had always wanted to sample as many city bars as possible. With time on his hands, and his wife’s permission, he embarked on a drinking man’s dream.

I had a fine piece of pepper-encrusted Wahoo last Friday night.

No doubt, I have the fish itself to thank. But the Johnson & Wales-trained chef was no slouch. We were dining at Delaney’s Bistro on St. Simon’s Island, along the Georgia coast. Everyone’s food was outstanding.

Japanese Flickr user, twin_lens takes beautiful photos of food.

Blogging power couple, Meg Hourihan and Jason Kottke are back from their trip to Asia, where they ate (and blogged about) some wonderful food.

Here’s a selection from Meg’s report on their Thanksgiving dinner in Vietnam:

For our Thanksgiving the other evening, we headed to Le Bordeaux in Ho Chi Minh Ville (I love that ville, all the French restaurants say that on their menu) for a special dinner. Once our taxi driver actually located the restaurant, things were very nice, if a bit more than I’d anticipated.

We started with a Champagne aperitif and enjoyed some kind of crab amuse in a spoon with dill and a mayonnaise-life creaminess holding the chunks of firm crab together. For my appetizer, I ordered a “Foie Gras Three Ways” (which Jason, ha ha ha, called “ménage à foie”). There was a slice of terrine, a poached sliver, and then a crisply seared chunk. Each was nearly the size of a typical order of foie gras, so when they put the plate down before me, I was both overjoyed and a bit overwhelmed. It was a lot of foie, but it was delicious!

I love foie gras but it’s so rich. Moreover, it’s so special. For me it’s a few-times-a-year indulgence, and something I really look forward to. Each bite is a nibble of magic. Eating that much at once caused some of its magic to diminish, as if I’d exceeded the foie gras limit. Because I believe for everything, even the yummiest most delicious amazing foods, there is a limit. Six oysters is perfect for me. 18 would not be. Two glass of Champagne is about enough. Three or four glasses and something is lost. A nice chunk of foie gras is just right, and I don’t need three.

It reminds me of Thomas Keller’s philosophy and the diminishing returns one gets upon successive bites of the same food. The tongue fails to distinguish; the Champagne’s bubbles blur or a BBQ pork’s tang recedes. Eventually it’s just another sip of liquid or bite of liver. And I don’t ever want to feel that jaded about anything I eat, be it foie gras or liverwurst. There’s a magic that happens when we put tasty food in our mouths, and I don’t intend to lose it.

If you can see this post, the server transfer is complete. We will resume our normally scheduled programming momentarily.

I initially started BeerAndPizza.org a couple years ago to chronicle my experiences with food and drink. Shortly after getting started, I found I just didn’t have the time to give this site the attention it deserved and it slowly wilted away.

But now I’m back and refocused. To keep things moving along, I’m setting up the site initially as my beer log and hope that will allow me to fill in the other pieces.

tastingmenu.com is giving away their cookbook All About Apples free in PDF format.

Judging by the PDF, this should be in hardcover as it is worthy of bookshelf space from any food enthusiast.

Last week I whipped up a batch of my infamous (at least to my friends and neighbors) pizza dough and captured the results on the digital camera.

With the unseasonably cool weather this past Friday, and an expecting wife demanding I make her a batch of my chili, what else could I do but comply with her orders. I’ve the got the write-up and a couple photos to get posted here as well.

On Saturday, my wife and and I ventured out to a local BBQ RibFest event. I have a couple of reviews I need to polish up and get posted.

And finally, there is beer to talk about. Specifically, Boulder Brewery’s Pass Time Ale, Genesse Cream Ale, Curve Ball Kolsch, and Hopalleuia, from the very small brewery, Spilker Ales in Cortland, NE.

This blogging thing is harder than I thought, ha!

My wife and I spent the Fourth of July in New York visiting friends and had the good fortune to find ourselves invited to a rooftop dinner party with a front row view of the fireworks. The evening was catered by both an Italian restaurant and an Italian bakery. On the desert menu were the typical Cannolis, strawberries with a mascarpone-based dipping sauce, and brioche rolls with ice cream.

Since then, my quest to find a local source for the brioche rolls has dead ended at every turn. Not to give up without a fight, I spent this past Sunday on my own baking adventure.

The result:

Served warm, sliced in half with a generous scoop of chocolate ice cream.

As a regular reader of Food-related blogs, I decided to start one of my own.

Tristan’s the name and I’m a marketing/advertising guy by profession. Outside of work however, I spend quite a bit of time in the kitchen. I guess one could call me part of fast-growing class of people labeled as “foodies.”

When not dining on pizza, my tastes run the gamut:
Italian (favoring Northern Italian cuisine)
Greek
Spanish
Classical French
Thai
Traditional Mexican and Southwestern
Americana (Brewpubs, BBQ, and Tailgating)

As for the beer, I’m always open to trying a new brew. My preferences lie with flavor, whether it be a larger commercial brewer or craft brew. It’s all about the taste. Currently occupying shelf space in my fridge is my regular brew, Shiner Bock, accompanied by a couple Abita TurboDogs and a lone bottle of Brooklyn Lager, leftover from my latest jaunt to NYC.

Wine is also in the mix, usually Reds.

Thanks for stopping by.
Tristan