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| Zuill Bailey, cellist and international man of mystery |
I get the sense that he's not discouraging fans from appreciating his swoon-factor. Oh well, whatever fills the seats, and the concert hall was amazingly full for a Thursday night. The only thing that possibly marred the performance was some intermittent banging coming from backstage that we could hear during quieter moments ... Darcy and John speculated that it was either a vent or the pottery wheel from the nearby art department. To me, it sounded like my dad ritualistically beating his coffee grinder with a spoon (he tends to do this every morning at 5 unless we're lucky and he remembers to do it the night before). Arrhythmic banging aside, it was an awesome concert, and Zuill is a rockstar in the classical music world. And he apparently had a recurring role on HBO's Oz? See, this is why you need to get into classical music. Celebrity Cellists – They're Just Like Us!
I'm trying to figure out how to start a conversation about this without making my blog devolve into a whiny rant about how much I miss Seattle, but I'll just go for it. The food kind of sucks in Fairbanks. Not, obviously, the food coming out of the Johnson kitchen (Arroz con Pollo for dinner tonight!) but the Fairbanks restaurant scene, in general, is lackluster and nothing to write home about. We did have a great (and free!) buffet dinner at Bobby's last weekend (prime rib, dolmades and more) and I enjoyed my steak from Silver Gulch a couple of weeks ago. And I always like Lemongrass (still haven't made it to the Thai House) ... but nothing here compares to the food in Seattle. Sure, Fairbanks can do steak and halibut nuggets, but if you require anything more subtle than deep fried or grilled proteins, you're SOL.
I miss La Carta de Oaxaca. Oh, for just one bite of their beefy (and crack-laced?) tostadas! I miss Serafina – brunch, lunch, dinner and cocktails (really, how can any meal go wrong when it starts with a tall, cool flute of prosecco laced with elderflower or parfait d'amour liqueur?). I miss the vietnamese sandwiches from the Seattle Deli. Hell, I even miss the phở from Than Brothers (enough so that I go to great lengths to copy and paste those little squiggly accent marks on the "o" in phở). Oh gosh, I just remembered the signature fresh rolls from the Tamarind Tree and started to tear up a little.
My food envy is not helped by my recent spate of watching Top Chef DC reruns (sigh, there's just no place in town to get a decent parmesan foam) ... I'm fighting the urge to attempt a spring risotto with wheat berries that I sampled off Andy's plate at SAM's Taste Cafe a few months ago. It was served with some kind of sweet/savory reduction sauce and for the life of me, I want to duplicate it by simmering Knudsen's Razzleberry fruit juice and chicken stock ... what is wrong with me?
In an attempt to recreate the wood-fired, thin-crust pizza I'm used to in Seattle, I bought a baking stone (or rather, my mother bought it) and I tried my hand at throwing a pie with homemade dough. Whoops that the baking stone wasn't rated oven-safe to 550, but the pizza actually turned out pretty good. Not Serious Pie good, but adequate ... oh, who am I kidding ... I'm just going to chop down the few remaining birch trees in the condo complex yard and stuff some wood into the oven to really get the kind of intense fire I need for a good crust. Or ... someone needs to send us a box of Tom Douglas crisp doughy goodness via Alaska Airlines Goldstreak. I swear I'll make it worth your while.
In actuality, my next food challenge will be to create a cake sans sugar and butter that's worth its
I love olive oil cakes! I've made a couple of different lemon/Meyer lemon ones, and I was intrigued by this recipe, but haven't gotten around to it yet -- http://www.saveur.com/article/Recipes/Orange-Scented-Olive-Oil-Cake (Side note: are you anti-Orangette?). I know a lot of people use Splenda as a sugar substitute in baking, although I've never tried it.
ReplyDeleteAs for non-wheat flours: this is hard because a lot of the alternatives lack the protein (hello, gluten) to create the right texture and structure. You often get something ridiculously dense and/or a sandy, crumbly crumb (crumbly crumb!). The book Good To The Grain is pretty sweet. I have it and read through it a few months ago when I first got it, but haven't made anything from it yet. From what I've read so far, the author tends to do blends of flours to get around the texture/structure issue, but I can't remember if her blends always involve wheat flour or not (this would obviously not work if you're baking for someone with a gluten allergy). My first suggestion would be to look into almond flour, since it's used in a lot in European baking, especially Italian and some French. I'll take a look at the book later and send you an email if I have any breakthroughs. :)
I empathize re FBX restaurants... Gambardella's has gone down lately, but the Pump House (dinner side) was actually quite good last time I went there (for the first time in a long time). Silver Gulch Brewery also good. But cooking it yourself is the way to go... try the new locavore-tastic meat/cheese place off Airport/University!
ReplyDelete@bdiggs - almond flour! Yes! Great idea. I actually forgot that almonds were an ingredient in that first cake I made. I neglected to describe the ultimate so-so success of the endeavor ... my food processor didn't have enough horsepower to perfectly grind the orange peel up, and I added the almonds kind of late to the mixture, so now I'm remembering a less than velvet texture to the whole affair. But I think with proper technique (like, not having a bottle of wine before baking), I should be able to pull it off this time. I would love to try your meyer lemon cake someday. I really miss meyer lemons. I'm hoping Fred Meyer stocks them up here when they come into season! I made some preserved meyer lemons this winter (recipe from Zuni). And no, I'm not anti-Orangette, I love it, I just want it to be known that despite how awesome Molly Wizenberg is, she's not my only inspiration!
ReplyDelete@selena - Homegrown is the meat place off Airport. I've got my mom hooked on it. :)
I'm sorry that you have moved to a restaurant desert, where the occasional mirage of amazing food flashes before your eyes. Come visit me in DC and I will ply you with tasty food and stuff your suitcases with treats.
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