"saveur" news and stories

This bag of potato starch has been in my cupboard for about a year and a half. I know that because I bought it after seeing it used in a recipe for beef negimaki (scallions wrapped in seared beef and dressed with a soy-mirin-sake sauce) in the November 2004 issue of Saveur. Our Spring Cleaning day seemed the perfect opportunity to finally make use of it. There's a recipe similar to Saveur's over at Epicurious, one of the main differences being that Epicurious's sauce is thickened by reduction while Saveur's is thickened with the potato starch. In doing the latter, I was really impressed with how the two teaspoons of potato starch diluted in five teaspoons of cold water created beautifully thick glaze in a matter of seconds when I added it to the barely boiling soy, mirin and sake. There were no lumps, as I often find with corn starch, and no added flavors it seemed. There's a picture after the jump.

The previous post on Saveur's April 2006 issue highlighted a short article on how college students are dismissing their standard dining halls, even if they're serving sustainable, free-range, organically grown, slow food, and turning to things like taco trucks and food carts. Maybe they're cheaper, faster, easier to get to than trekking all the way back up the hill to the dorm. College was a long time ago for me, but the article still got me thinking about some of the great (dinners out in the Bay area), some of the not so great (joints around Berkeley), and some of the downright horrific foods (stuff I "ate" at home) that made up my diet, er rather gave me a reason to diet.

1. Instant ramen -- not even the kind you have to boil water in a pot on the stove top: this was the stuff that you add hot water to from the Sparkletts water cooler, cover, and wait three minutes.
2. Steamed white rice with canned tuna and soy sauce -- I have no words. It hurts me to think about it, too.
3. Top Dog -- one bird dog = not so bad. Two bird dogs with everything, plus a bite of someone else's hot link at 2 am = very very bad.
4. Fat Slice vs. Blondies -- with an occasional treat of Zachary's if I found someone with a car
5. The baked potato cart parked at the edge of Sproul Plaza -- I think it was called Spud Brothers. A baked potato doesn't sound so bad, until you add butter, sour cream, mozzarella and Parmesan cheeses!
6. A full day diet of pure sugar -- starting with a bear claw (Go Bears! that was the excuse) from King Donuts, a sugar shake disguised as a "smoothie" from Fresh Blend (the store was later replaced by Jamba Juice), and then more sugar! Ice cream from Double Rainbow
7. Steve's Barbecue -- Wuan ordah numbah two! Dae-jee bulgogi when I really missed home, because steamed white rice with canned tuna doesn't remind me of home
8. Chez Panisse -- made up for four years of crap.

Now don't let me be the only one. I know you didn't eat grilled mahi mahi with pineapple mango salsa at 3 am in college either!

Given that Saveur's website is "stylishly useless," it's almost unfair to post all the wonderful things that are in the April 2006 issue of the magazine I just received. Consider it simply an express-view for you as you ponder whether to pick it up in the check-out line. (And I'll do my best over the next few weeks to post any adventures I have with the recipes).

• A look at the changing fare on college campuses, which are ditching the dining halls and favoring the carts and trucks that serve fast, cheap, and authentic ethnic food like falafel and veggie pakoras at UVM and kimchee and bulgogi accessible to a number of schools in Philadelphia. Of course, I know all about the In-N-Out truck on the UCLA and USC campuses once a year.
• Cookbooks under review are Jewish: The Jewish Kitchen by Clarissa Hyman and Matzoh Ball Gumbo: Culinary Tales of the Jewish South by Marcie Cohen Ferris.
• In the cellar, the wine of the month is madiran, a "dark, spicy, tannic expression of the French southwest."
• In a different kind of cellar, Campbeltown is Scotland's "other" whisky region.
• San Francisco chef James Schenk (of Nuevo Latino restaurant Destino) makes alfajores, South American butter cookies filled with dulce de leche.
• Stop all the debate. The original recipe for Buffalo wings from the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York!
• The feature of the magazine is Tuscan trattorias, with recipes for: arista di maiale (roasted herb-stuffed porkloin), fagioli sgranati (white beans with sage), piselli freschi (fresh peas with Prosciutto), pappa al pomodoro (bread and tomato soup), insalata di trippa (cold tripe salad - I doubt I'll be trying this one, but who knows?), pappardelle all'anatra (broad noodles with duck sauce), and fritto misto di coniglio e verdure (fried rabbit and vegetables - imagine serving that to your kids on Easter!).
• We love hummus, and who knew Saveur could dedicate six whole pages to the simple chickpea puree?
• Le Veau d'Or in Manhattan is "a real French restaurant: the music is terrible but the food is great."
• And finally, a look at the endagered Danish tradition of the smorrebrod (different from Swedish smorgasbord).

We can definitely tell it's March when every food magazine does a special on St. Patrick's Day, and Saveur goes all out by dedicating almost all of its March 2006 issue to Ireland.

Before we go jetting off across the Atlantic, we take a look inward, with a recipe for Red Velvet Cake from Cake Man Raven Confectionary in New York. This is something I may try, as I have long had a bit o' beef with red velvet - I never quite understood what red velvet tastes like.

There's a list of the ten best US chocolate makers, tasting notes of a dozen wines from the East Coast, and whether "blackened" catfish is really Cajun. I think we already answered that.

Thirty five pages dedicated to Ireland, plus a few end notes as well! Traditional recipes for the likes of colcannon and corned beef, obviously, but there are also interesting articles about County Cork, a veritable  mini-mecca of food.

The treasure in the magazine, though, is a mini-feature on Trinidad. My favorite recipe that I'll likely never get to make is for mango kucheela, a condiment made from dried green mangoes, shredded and pickled with habanero chiles.

Saveur magazine just released its "100 list" for 2006. 100 what? Since any explicit label would be too restricting, the annual list is simply described as Saveur's "favorite restaurants, food, drink, people, places and things", which certainly covers a lot of ground.

Making the eighth list this year are restaurants from India to Mexico City, as well as a variety of restaurants and chefs from Las Vegas, including Daniel Bouloud, Bouchon, Alex and Joel Robuchon. Favorite foods included Costco birthday cakes, Crispy Buffalo Wontons from Ruby Tuesdays (a US chain) and Rich Man's Purses at Gundel Restaurant, Budapest, in addition to duck eggs, spicy Thai kettle chips and Japanese freshwater crabs, while favorite drinks included California dessert wines, Hendrick's Gin from Scotland and cointreau.

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