Breakfast, Coffee, & Dinner: Culinary Delights in San Francisco

Hollywood Cafe

Our hotel was located  in Fisherman’s Wharf, so we started our day at the Hollywood Cafe – 530 N Point St San Francisco, CA 94133 Neighborhood: Fisherman’s Wharf

We found the restaurant through Yelp.  I love this website and use it all the time.  I like it when people recommend certain dishes on the menu.  Very helpful!  The cafe is located on a busy street in the wharf and you can either eat inside or outside of the cafe – so it’s a great place to people watch.  John had the egg scramble (ham, tomatoes, avocados, and cheese) and I had an omelette (mushrooms, and cheese).  The portions were generous and the service was great.  It was a nice way to start the day.

Buena Vista - Irish Coffee

By 10AM, we finished a good long walk along the pier and Fort Mason, so what better way to end the morning than with an Irish Coffee at the Buena Vista Cafe - 2765 Hyde Street (between Beach St & North Point St) San Francisco, CA 94109; Neighborhood: Fisherman’s Wharf

Supposedly, this is the birthplace of Irish Coffee in the U.S.  The drink was very strong, but it was an excellent.  Here’s a link to the recipe of Buena Vista’s perfect Irish Coffee.

Dinner that night was at Incanto - 1550 Church St (between 28th St & Duncan St)  San Francisco, CA 94131; Neighborhood: Noe Valley

Incanto serves “nose to tail” food, which are the animal parts that modern society does not eat (but you’ll probably unknowingly ingest them in sausages, ground beef, and hot dogs).  Basically, it’s the tasty parts of the animal that we no longer eat, but lately there’s been a revival of this type of cuisine.  At Incanto, it’s served deliciously here.  If you are familiar with the same fare that British chef Fergus Henderson creates, (he owns the London “St. John Restaurant”), Incanto is the West Coast equivalent.

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All of us sampled a bit of each other’s dishes, and there was nothing I did not like.  It was ALL delicious. We started out with the salumi platter and since there were six of us in our party, we ordered the “sow” size.  All the meats are made in house at Incanto, so everything was fresh.

For my entrée, I ordered the pork belly.  I have been craving for some kind of pork dish since landing in SF, so I was happy to see this on the menu.  The pork belly was slightly caramelized all around, and it contained nice layers of fat and meat throughout the cut.  It was like eating the largest slab of bacon.  Heavenly.

John ordered the tuna heart spaghetti, and again, everyone was pleasantly surprised at how good the dish tasted.  The tuna heart gave the dish a salty, briny, anchovy-like flavor to the pasta.

Daniel and James ordered the English ribs and they were so tender that you did not need a knife to cut the meat.  I can’t say anything more about the ribs because they were so good.

Jeanne and Sharon ordered the kidneys and sweetbreads and they both really liked it (though Jeanne became “kidneyed-out” toward the end of the meal).  I have never had sweetbreads before, so this was the  first time I tried them (the same for John too).  All I can say is wow.  I never knew what I was missing!

By consensus, everyone at the table really enjoyed the calf brain and bone marrow risotto.  The bone marrow gave the dish a nice full and slightly fatty flavor, while the calf brains gave the dish its creamy consistency.  Again, this was my first time eating calf brain and I was surprised by how nice it tasted.

For dessert, I ordered the bay leaf panna cotta.  I love panna cotta, especially if it is made correctly (firm, holds its shape well, and has a nice custard texture).  I have never had panna cotta flavored with bay leaf (usually it’s fruit), but this was refreshing for my tastebuds.  The herb gave the panna cotta a clean, palate-cleansing taste to my mouth.  It was a good light dessert to end a heavy meal.

San Tung & Mitchell’s Ice Cream: Culinary Delights in San Francisco

The following blog postings are going to be long.  Why?  Because we just got back from an awesome trip in San Francisco.  John and I are lucky to have foodie friends who live in the city.  Whenever we visit, our friends take us to the most exciting places to eat.  We left SF full, satisfied, and spoiled.  It also helps that John and I have been cleaning out the fridge and cupboards for 2 weeks before we left.  All that remained were condiments and pickles in our home.  We were HUNGRY!

San Tung

San Tung -1031 Irving St (between 11th Ave & 12th Ave) San Francisco, CA 94122; Neighborhood: Inner Sunset.

Ah…Real Chinese food.  In the Midwest, you can get decent Chinese food (Chicago has some good restaurants), but in San Francisco you get the authentic thing.  San Tung is known for the most delicious chicken wings.  My friends have been trying to recreate the sauce but have been unsuccessful.  I think some experimenting in Madison will happen soon and hopefully we can put our brains together and come up with a similar recipe to San Tung’s.

Yes, they do serve “chow mein.”  And no, this is not the typical chow mein that is served over a bed of (instant) rice with overly crispy noodles that come from a bag.   These are homemade noodles and they were delicious.

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Mitchell's Ice Cream

We ended the night with dessert at Mitchell’s Ice Cream – 688 San Jose Ave (between Valley St & 29th St) San Francisco, CA 94110; Neighborhood: Noe Valley

Even at 9PM and 55 degrees outside, there was a huge line for ice cream.  Mitchell’s specialized in “exotic tropical” flavors– you know, Filipino flavors.  This includes avocado, buko (baby coconut), macapuno (sweet coconut), mango, ube (purple yam)-pronounced “ooh-bey,” not “oob” and langka (jackfruit).  They also have “halo-halo” flavor (again, not pronounced as how you see it!)–sorry, no corn or cheese in this mixture If you are familiar with Magnolia brand ice cream, you’ll love Mitchell’s.  We all decided to choose a variety of flavors, and I have to say that ube was my favorite. (Sorry no pics of the ice cream! I think Sharon took some, so as soon as I get them, I’ll repost!)

When Cooking, Read the Recipe First!

Pre-Risen Cardamom Bread

The art of bread-making is so interesting to me.  I’m entranced at how yeast  makes bread into a most wonderful thing to eat.  I also think bread-making is a skill that one can learn and perfect through lots of practice.  You need to know what ideal temperature of water is most conducive for the yeast to activate, how much do you knead the dough–what is too little or too much (in the past, over-kneading was my tendency; and that resulted in tough breads) and how much flour is too much or too little.  I bow down to my local bakers and bakeries because this is tough stuff to learn!  But I guess as with everything in cooking, practice makes perfect; or at least you practice and practice until you feel comfortable doing something.

In my cookbook collection, I have a book that is full of Scandinavian recipes.  One of my “Titas” (or “aunties,” in Tagalog) is famous for making cardamom bread every holiday season.  One day when she was visiting us in Madison, she found the cookbook and saw the recipe.  She said it was exactly like hers and I should try it sometime.  Well, I did and got pretty good results–considering that the recipe should make 3 loaves—not one!

Oh well, even though I ended up with a GIGANTIC loaf of cardamom bread, I still think it was a good learning experience, because even though my cooking skills are consistently getting better, I still need to take the time to do the elementary ground work–that is, to read a recipe first!  The bread turned out well, and the recipe is a gem.  Here are some pics of cardamom bread-making.

After the First Rising

The picture on the right was taken after the bread was allowed to rise.  This was when I thought that something didn’t look right as the bread was massively HUGE.  After a quick check on the recipe, I found out that this loaf is actually made of three loaves.  Oops!

End Results

So as you can see, even though I didn’t read the recipe correctly, the bread still came out great.  The only adjustment I had to make was to lengthen the cooking time, otherwise I’d have a really gooey loaf of bread.  I also think the egg wash helped the bread retain moisture in the inside of the loaf.  The outside had a nice crispness (it didn’t have that burnt taste, as some homemade breads can) to it.

Since the loaf was so big, I cut it apart and divided it –some into the freezer and others in the fridge.  I was afraid that the cold temperatures would affect the texture of the bread, but a quick warm-up in the microwave (10 secs.) helps to bring it back.

I’ll probably attempt this recipe again, but not in the near future.  John and I still have to finish eating this gigantic loaf first!

Siopao!

Lately, I’ve been trying to challenge myself to learn how to cook Filipino foods, especially the “traditional” dishes.  But one thing about Filipino food is that it takes an enormous amount of time to prep and cook the dishes–this is why I don’t try too often to cook these foods.  Don’t get me wrong, the results of a whole day of cooking are awesome, but who has more than 4 hours in a day to make food?

Siopao is a dish I thought I would try to make.  What is siopao?  Basically, it’s a steamed bun that is filled with marinated meat, such as chicken or pork.  Sometimes a slice of hardboiled egg is added (as John says, it’s one of those odd ingredients Filipinos love to add to their food as a “surprise”).  The buns are usually made from a sweet dough.  Siopao is like “on-the-go” food (like empanadas or pasties), so they are very portable–though  I do recommend heating them up in the microwave (covered by a damp paper towel) before consuming.

I received a recipe from Sharon for siopao dough and attempted to make it (twice), but failed miserably.  The recipe is from her sister and her siopao is THE BEST. Unfortunately, it didn’t work for me.  I’m not too sure if it’s the weather or the humidity, but I ended up with a gooey messy dough.  I almost gave up, but I was so determined to make siopao, so I did the next best thing—I called my mom.

My mom is the Minnesota Siopao expert in our circle of family/friends and she gave me a recipe for a basic siopao dough.  It turned out wonderfully on the first try. Here are the results!

Siopao

The results of a day of siopao making.  They started to look better the more I made them and I could figure out how much filling goes into each bun.

Using a Rice Cooker as a Steamer

Unfortunately, we do not own a steamer in the Thomson Household (which is surprising since we own almost any kind of kitchen gadget out there).  I thought of going out to buy a steamer, but thought that I should make sure the siopao turned out ok before investing in another kitchen item that I’d probably only use once.  I tried setting up some pots and pans into a steaming contraption, but the best thing I could think of was to use our rice cooker as a steamer.  It worked very well, but it sure did take forever to steam the siopao (I could only steam 3 at a time).  The results were still good.

Repeat of the Oscar Cookie

Forgive me that I haven’t posted anything new lately.  I was having digital camera problems, but now all is well.

I tried another batch of Oscar Cookies and I have to say they look beautiful (and they were good to eat).  I included a pink doggy tongue on some of the cookies, but the pastry tip was a bit too large for what I intended to do so the cute pink tongues I had wanted to make looked more like pink blobs.  Oh well, we can only learn from our mistakes, right?  I figured out how to make Oscar’s tan color and used a toothpick to make the fur swirl into the white icing. I bought more pastry bags so I can practice my decorating skills.  I think next time my next experiment will be to add other flavorings to the royal icing (or cookies)–possibly some almond, peppermint, or orange extract.  We’ll see what happens!

Oscar Cookies

During Sharon’s visit, we went shopping on State Street and I found a cookie cutter that was in the shape of Oscar’s head.  So before Sharon left, we made some Oscar cookies using a basic sugar cookie recipe.  The decorations consisted of chocolate chips for the eyes, melted chocolate for the whiskers/nose, and royal icing for the rest of the other colors.  I plan to experiment a bit more this weekend, but I thought I’d share some pics of our product (cookie photo courtesy of Sharon Paray).

Our Inspiration

Our Creation

Food Heaven and Madison Restaurant Week

This week, a very good friend of ours (Sharon) stayed with us.  Sharon is a fellow foodie and lives in San Francisco (which I think is one of the BEST cities to find/eat/taste food), so we were very excited to take her out for some good eats in Madison.  The best part–Restaurant Week started in Madison too, so it was awesome timing for all of us to try some places (we visited Harvest and Quivey’s Grove).

Here are some of the restaurants we dined at…it was gluttony at its fullest…

Marigold Kitchen: Our first time here–why haven’t I eaten here before?? A great place to eat breakfast/brunch in Madison.  The food was excellent.  I recommend trying out some of their pastries.  We split a cinnamon doughnut and it was heaven.

The Old Fashioned: Hands down, this is probably the  best hamburger I’ve ever eaten.  The fried egg is the best  part of all (the hickory-smoked bacon, aged cheddar, and  garlic sauce also add a bit to the meal too).  A very messy  eat, but SO worth it (photo courtesy of Sharon Paray).

Harvest: Madison Restaurant Week is awesome because many wonderful fine-dining restaurants participate–which means a diner can eat a lovely 3-course dinner for only $25.  It’s a steal!  Here is our main course — braised beef short ribs.  I think the beef was cooking all day because it simply melted in my mouth (photo courtesy of Sharon Paray).

Quivey’s Grove Stone House: This was our first time at the restaurant and I wondered why John and I never ate here before (especially when we used to live so close by).  The portions were ginormous and delicious.  Unfortunately, the lighting was quite dim in the restaurant so the best pic we had was John’s dessert (apple bread pudding).  I would definitely go back here again.

Branching Out

At the urging of many of my friends, I am including in this blog my cooking/eating/dining adventures.  I’ve posted pictures on my Facebook account, but what better way to enhance my blog by including food here.  So, stay tuned as I add some pics and fond food/culinary memories to this blog too.  I have some catching up to do!

The Kindle’s Accessibility

UW-Madison and Syracuse University are in the news in regards to Amazon’s Kindle, because the electronic device is not accessible to visually impaired students (read the NPR article linked above for more info). Amazon’s response is that, “The company is working on it.”

I find it odd that even with Amazon’s capability to make an electronic instrument,  they did not even think about accessibility issues regarding the Kindle.  It also makes me wonder that if more people could afford the Kindle, would the accessibility issues come up sooner and would the problems be repaired more quickly?  “Working on it” doesn’t give any clues on a timeline…

Quick Follow-up!

UW-Madison is also testing out the Kindles here on-campus for a history course.