World Dinner Club

World Dinner Club
World Dinner Club

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Judith's Dungeness Crab Cioppino Recipe - Michael Mina | Food & Wine

Judith's Dungeness Crab Cioppino Recipe - Michael Mina | Food & Wine

One of my favorite food memories is trying cioppino in San Francisco with my friend Niff. It's the dish I most closely associate with the Bay Area now. She often told me stories when we were Peace Corps volunteers in Cameroon about how her family would eat it around the holidays growing up in Ventura and I was excited to try for the first time 5 years ago.

Here's a easy recipe from Michael Mina in Food & Wine to make it with that great San Fran crustacean the Dungeness crab.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Grant Achatz Sketches the Alinea Fall Menu: Restaurants + Bars: GQ

Grant Achatz Sketches the Alinea Fall Menu: Restaurants + Bars: GQ

Further proving the point that there is first rate food in the second city!

I love the idea of smoldering leaves with one's pheasant, but think I would eat it with some trepidation.

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Eating through Tanzania: Swahili food on the roof of Africa

We started our October trek of Kilimanjaro on what I think was a Saturday that would take us six days.  We were joined by a noisy rabble of six Canadians and a couple extra solo travelers and began our ascent up to the Roof of Africa. 



The food was better than I expected.  The porters brought up bread and fruit and some bacon for the first two days.  We ate in a mess tent where we would try and warm up with tea and instant coffee or Milo.  The water was tapped from springs or streams on the mountain and boiled and remarkably there were few digestive issues!  Although, the diamox we were taking for altitude sickness makes one pee a lot.


Exhaustion should have made us hungry, but the effect of altitude was that one’s appetite was extinguished.  This was worsened by the repetitiveness of the meals. Unfortunately, the steady diet of porridge, soup and the same vegetable base sauce use to coat rice and pasta became unbearable by the end and we were relieved to get down the mountain and eat a pizza and drink a cold beer.



Monday, December 6, 2010

First rate food in the Second City

Chicago is often unfairly derided as America's Second city. But there's no reason one can't have first rate food there.  I had an extraordinary meal at Naha in Chicago last week.  Dinner began with a coddled organic hen's egg with sweetbreads and some beans.  My veal sweetbreads were crispy and certainly a little sweet.  The dish was sauced with a rich beefy reduction that was just perfection.  
Our waiter graciously helped me with the wine list and we got a very drinkable, but really moderately priced Duero Valley red to wash it down.

Next came the masterpiece: a superb roast squab with  seared Duck foie gras and a noodle "cake" scented with raisins, Armenian rose petal marmalade, pink peppercorns (seriously?) and anise.  It was a crazy and fun mix of different flavors that managed to all co-exist in something short of harmony.

There was barely room for dessert, but I did manage some of the homemade eggnog ice cream and a glass of 20 year old Graham's tawny port. Just the right thing to warm me up before facing the cold weather outside.




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