holy m

this morning, we had a small regiment of smoked mackerel benedict plates in the specials line at no-name -- mackerel hot-smoked long enough for the fat to render, then topped with a poached egg (admittedly, a little over-cooked) and a perfect hollandaise, all on a piece of tender biscuit. coconut water goes very well with smoked mackerel. who knew?

salad days

there was barely time for lunch today, but what food! when i ducked into no-name towards the close of service, the grill line was unstaffed but there was a heaping tray of strips of perfectly-cooked beef tenderloin and a thick, softly-crunchy sauce of yogurt, cardamom, and pistachios to go with. the only salad left was of arugula and rocket, dressed with pine nuts, olive oil, some champagne vinegar, and shavings of pecorino.

beef

kobe beef burgers at lunch today. they taste more like normal beef burgers than i'd thought. these also had remarkably little flavour -- my hypothesis is that they weren't cooked enough. burgers need a total of a half inch or more of cooked meat in them, so a half-inch burger needs to be almost fully-cooked, with only a thin stripe of pink in the middle in order to have a rich, round, beef-y taste to them.

excellence in flavour awards

excellence in flavour award goes to the roasted mushrooms -- crimini, beech (hon-shimeji, apparently), and porcini -- glazed in white miso. these were cold, crunchy (but not crisp, an important distinction), and just salty enough. tonight, we are especially looking forward to the minted lamb burgers. i would have served them with a yogurt, cucumber, and cumin sauce, but i guess feta and hummus are good choices too.

zucchini

in no-name there were small pancakes of shredded zucchini and a little bit of thyme, browned on the flat-top and served with a large bowl of creme fraiche. zucchini is a great vegetable to grate -- it's got more body than cucumbers and doesn't collapse into a soggy pile, and it also has the most beautiful colour transition between the deep green skin and the paler inside. shredded, individual sticks of zucchini go from forest, through chartreuse, to avocado.

cod

everyone's favourite thing should be a well-cooked (which is to say, just barely cooked) piece of fish. tonight, at no-name, thick filets of black cod, pan-fried with matchsticks of carrot and bean sprouts. these were crusty and caramelized on the outside and, at the centre, nearly translucent. the salad of roasted golden beets, toasted walnuts, and goat milk creme fraiche was also very good. in the dessert line, there were halved passionfruit looking unfamiliar and mildly disturbing (after the initial confusion about what they were, the tray was mobbed) and cups of goat milk yogurt with toasted almonds and dried blueberries.

proche-orient

the foods of the near east: this was today's theme in no-name. there were slim filets of swordfish, hashmarked from the grill and marinated in a turkish mix of paprika, parsley powder, and lemon juice. i don't really understand the appeal of swordfish. on the side, a salad of fingerling potatoes, boiled, then grilled and tossed with olive oil, roasted tomatoes, garlic, and wine vinegar. the real winners were oven-roasted kale (crunchy, light, slightly smoky -- they have enough internal structure to not wilt in the oven, and a low enough water content that they dry out quickly enough to not scorch) and adas bil siq. this last was a lebanese soup of green lentils, chard, cilantro, onions. warm, slightly grainy, comforting, and full of soft shreds of chard, and with a bright note of lemon.