curry

soup today was coconut chicken and red curry. it wasn't even close to being spicy enough, but the flavour was right and it was sprinkled with large clumps of chopped cilantro leaves, vermicelli, and roast chicken. what it tasted like more than any other thing was laksa -- all that was missing was the handful of thick rice-flour noodles and a sprinkle of chopped laksa leaf (Persicaria odorata, related to buckwheat and also known as vietnamese mint even though it is nothing of the sort).

soup and sandwich

'soup and a sandwich' may be the most riffed-upon comfort food theme i know. thomas keller's version is now famous and features a cup of early-girl tomato water and a brioche toast sandwich stuffed with aged farmhouse cheddar. baudrillard would be proud. today, in no-name, i saw a tray of what looked like toasted rice cakes. i figured they were croutons and got a cup of ramp and potato soup (like a hot vichyssoise, but better -- ramps are garlic greens and have that same spicy aromaticity as garlic but with a more vegetal overtone) and put one in it. john came up behind me and suggested that i try one on it's own: it turned out to be a circular sandwich of thin-sliced brioche and cowgirl creamery goat cheese, toasted and then brushed with clover stornetta butter infused with butter.

basil, frisee, pineapple, jicama

sam, who puts together the vegan selections at dinner in no-name, made a skewer composed of a slice each of jicama and pineapple, sandwiching a leaf of frisee and sweet basil. very nice, more so because i hardly ever encounter jicama in large enough slabs that the natural sweetness and juiciness is apparent.

dairy products

the morning lineup in no-name now includes a cheeseboard that, to be honest, is quite extravagant. yesterday the cheeseboard featured a triple-creme brie that had been aged to the point of near-explosion, a tomme de ma grand mere, a huge port salut, and an unidentifiable but really good blue cheese. they've also taken to making the yogurt with straus organic whole milk; coincident with that change, the yogurt became tangy and balanced, smooth and unctuous. the degree of improvement is almost difficult to believe and is probably at least partly due to raelene getting more familiar with how this yogurt culture works.

transports

ill-effects from yesterday's chili onslaught: none. no-name has had these tiny peanut-butter cookies filled with a dab of house-made banana jam for about two weeks now. completely gluten-free, they dissolve in my mouth and make it happy. for dinner, sam had also made phyllo cups and filled them with chevre whipped and then lightened (honestly) with whipped cream and topped with shreds of pickled red onion. there was, in addition, a tray of deconstructed brownies that were deep and dark, tasted vaguely alcoholic, and produced a slow-growing, subtle heat. further investigation revealed that the unfamiliar flavour was a combination of madagascar vanilla and five-spice powder -- sichuan peppercorns (not really a peppercorn), star anise, cloves, cinnamon, and fennelseed -- and the heat from smoked cayenne.

chili

we had a chili cookoff today. our judging team ("looks good, but how would you market it?") was by far the most organized (some would say anal) of them all. i don't think i've ever eaten more different kinds of chili in a single day. there was plenty of excellent chili, and the best entries were standouts: the midwest chili connection had made their own buns and sausages for a minneapolis-style chili which was itself a little underspiced but which had a rich, full flavour. robert morgan's 3 day smoke in your eye, make your grandma cry chili featured beef that had been first smoked and then grilled before being stewed in an almost adobo-like sauce (he tied for first place in the "traditional meat chili" category). at one end, in a bowl of ice, josef desimone had a large mound of rare ahi chunk chili, with cubes of pico de gallo gelee -- not chili, but really good. a team of brazilians tried to pass off a creamy seafood moqueca as chili in the "where did you grow up" category (it wasn't chili either, but was pretty good on rice), and team bunny diablo made a rabbit-based chili that had the same thready texture that ropa vieja has. special mention to the tasty, vegan, locally-grown chili made entirely with sun ovens-- it took 2 days and 3 sun ovens to separately cook the beans and the other vegetable components.

hiatus, followed by beets

after a long hiatus spent mostly in portland, i returned to the fold today to find, at lunch, tiny cups filled with tiny cubes of steamed rainbow beets (the ones striated and splashed with gold, red, and purple) and shreds of shiso. a steamed beet is a beautiful thing. in slice, the improbable smoothie of the week was The Pineapple King: pineapples, sandpiper strawberries, agave syrup, spearmint, crushed ice, and macadamia nuts. improbable but marvellous.