A few weeks ago, I got this urge to make my tocino, the sweet cured pork that’s a staple Philippine breakfast meat. It’s probably most commonly served as tosilog, which is portmanteau of tocino, sinangag (garlic fried rice), and itlog (eggs). (I discuss “silogs” in my Best Breakfast Ever post from a few years ago.)

Tosilog — the breakfast of champions (from Cherry Garden in Fremont, CA)

My first attempt at tocino used the simple salt/sugar/achuete cure from the book Memories of Philippine Kitchens by Chef Romy Dotoran and Amy Besa of New York’s famous-but-now-closed Cendrillon. but that recipe didn’t work for me at all. The tocino ended up being way too salty, and it was almost inedible. (There’s a good chance that the recipe’s failure was my fault, so I’ll have to revisit it one of these days.)

While discussing my tocino plans with a couple other food bloggers on Twitter, Mark Manguerra of No Special Effects said that he’d always want to try Simply Anne’s tocino recipe, so I decided to give it a shot. In short, the recipe is good and with a few adjustments, the tocino was exactly what I wanted.

Pork Tocino

(adapted from Simply Anne’s.)

3 lb. boneless pork shoulder roast
1¼ cups pineapple juice
½ cup ketchup
½ cup lemon-lime soda
1/3 cup light soy sauce
2 cups brown sugar
1 Tablespoon garlic, minced
2 Tablespoons salt
1 teaspoon black pepper

Directions

1. Freeze pork shoulder roast for an hour or so to firm it up so that it’s easier to slice. Cut 1/4-inch slices of pork shoulder and place in a one gallon zipper-lock plastic bag.
2. Mix the rest of the ingredients in bowl and then add to the meat. Seal the bag, doing your best to remove excess air. Let the pork cure in the refrigerator for a 4-5 days, flipping over the bag every day or so.
3. After curing, you can either cook the meat or portion them off into smaller bags and freeze them.
4. To cook the tocino, add a little water, marinade and a few slices of meat to a skillet. Over medium heat, let the liquid boil off and then fry the meat for a couple more minutes to caramelize it. There’s a lot of sugar in the marinade so make sure you don’t burn the meat.

   You can also grill the tocino, which is my ideal method, by searing both sides on a grill over high heat and then letting them finish cooking over low or indirect heat. You can replicate this method indoors using a grill pan to sear and a low oven (around 250F) to finish.

Pan frying tocino is traditional, but I prefer it grilled.

There’s a lot of tocino in that picture, isn’t there? I’ll show you what I did with it in my next post… :)

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I know it’s been awhile since I’ve written, and I could offer any number of excuses for my hiatus, but I’ll go with this one…

After more than five years of working in the sleepy suburban town of Livermore, CA, I started a new job in downtown Oakland last month, and this change of scenery has led to several adjustments to my daily life. I no longer drive my car to work and am happily commuting via BART. This requires both my wife and I, who are notoriously late risers, to wake up a lot earlier than we’re used to so that I can catch the train every morning. While the drastic reduction of our overall fuel consumption has been good for the soul, my new office has been excellent for my stomach. It’s location at Oakland’s 12th Street City Center puts me blocks away from dozens of great lunch options, a world away from the limited options available to me in Livermore.

Before my first day of work, I began compiling a list of recommendations from friends who knew the area well and I combined them into this Google map.

Downtown Oakland’s all about options. (click to open map).

I was most excited to be near Oakland Chinatown, which is smaller but generally better than the larger “tourist trap” Chinatown in San Francisco. Ironically, my two favorite places in Oakland Chinatown aren’t Chinese.

Cam Huong

Cam Huong is a hole-in-the-wall Vietnamese deli that serves up a variety of hot and cold Chinese and Vietnamese dishes, but I go there for the bánh mì (Vietnamese sandwiches) and fresh spring rolls. I went back the other day and got the #1, which is a cold cut combo with pate (hold the cilantro because I can’t stand the stuff). With the fresh bread, delicious meats and the pickled veggies inside, this is a perfect sandwich.

Cam Huong’s #1 is aptly named.

I always supplement my sandwiches with a three-pack spring rolls, and I really like the variety pack with goi cuon, bo bia and bi cuon (summer roll, sausage roll, shredded pork roll).

A spring roll three pack.

The sandwiches are all under $3, and when you include the spring rolls, I get out of there for just under $6. This makes the Subway $5 Footlong look like a bad deal. Next on the agenda is the grilled pork and cha gio bun, one of my all-time favorite Vietnamese dishes. I hope there’s a table open next time I’m there.

Cam Huong Cafe
920 Webster Street
Oakland, CA
510.444.8800

Battambang

Battambang is a Cambodian restaurant just a few blocks down the street, and it’s already one of my favorite lunch spots. This is the dish that got me hooked…

Moarn Aing – grilled chicken skewers.

…and this is what I ordered on my return:

Lunch Combo – grilled chicken, beef, and shrimp skewers with fried rice.

I haven’t had a lot of Cambodian food, and I’m sure there’s more to the cuisine than grilled meat, but I’d seriously consider forsaking all other skewered meats to settle down with either of these dishes. If I had to choose, I’d stick with the combo for variety and the fried rice, but the spicy lime sauce it’s served with really pulls both of these dishes together. When I first saw it, I thought it was going to be similar to Vietnamese nuoc mam, which is one of my favorite things, but I really like the spicy lime sauce a whole lot more.

Looking over their menu, there’s a lot of other dishes I want to try, but the grilled meats keep me happy for now.

Battambang
850 Broadway
Oakland, CA
510.839.8815
Web site

I’m thinking of making Eating Downtown Oakland a running series, and there are a bunch other places around here that are worth discussion. Cam Huong and Battambang were fast favorites, and I can’t wait to see what else I can find in my new urban playground.

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Pastrami made with a short rib slab. (second attempt)

Pastrami is one of my favorite things to eat in the whole world, but it never occurred to me that I could actually make it myself until I read Asian Jewish Deli’s Pastrami Reuben post. What caught my attention was that AJD used a slab of short ribs instead of the more traditional brisket or beef plate that is used to make pastrami, and short ribs are my favorite part of the cow.

My own version of a short rib pastrami reuben.
I need to work on my sandwich building skills.

A couple months later, I was reading through Michael Ruhlman’s Ratio and in the chapter on brines, I saw a recipe for corned beef with an additional pastrami variation. I decided I would give that version a shot, especially since the dutch oven bread I made previously from Ratio turned out to really well. Ruhlman recently posted his version of short rib pastrami using regular boneless short ribs, but I kinda took the wind out of his sails a bit when I mentioned AJD’s version to him on Twitter a couple days before it went online.

Short rib pastrami made with a standard cut of boneless short ribs. (first attempt)

The pastrami-making process is broken down into three steps: curing, smoking, and steaming. Curing is basically how you make corned beef. When you smoke and steam corned beef, you get pastrami. In fact, if you bought a prepackaged corned beef at the market, you could easily make this into pastrami, but I’d bet that doing it yourself will yield a better result.

Curing takes four days and is usually done with a wet cure, i.e. brine. Ruhlman prefers brining, especially for larger cuts of meat like a brisket. I also saw some examples on other Web sites where a dry cure didn’t penetrate all the way to the middle of the meat, so I decided to stick with a brine. After brining, the meat is rinsed, dried and then coated on all sides with a ground pepper/coriander rub before it is smoked and steamed.

Brisket pastrami sandwich (first attempt)

The first pastrami I made used a brisket point, and it was good, but not as salty as I expected it to be. I also had a couple pieces of boneless short ribs that I threw on the brine, and those smaller pieces of meat were closer to the flavor I was looking for. Upon reviewing the recipe in Ratio, I found a typo in the recipe that affected the ratio of water to salt. I guess I could have figured out the math since tere is a specific ratio for brines, but math was never my strong suit. ;-) I mentioned the discrepancy and verified the correct ratio with Ruhlman via Twitter and proceeded to make a second pastrami a couple weeks later.

Since my goal at the outset was to make short rib pastrami, I set out to find some a slab of short ribs for the second attempt. I found one at Baron’s Meats in Alameda, but if you can’t get your hands on one, you can simply use boneless short ribs since these are easy to find at your market or butcher. Also, since boneless short ribs are smaller, they’re much easier to handle than a short rib slab or an unwieldy brisket.

PASTRAMI RECIPE
adapted from Michael Ruhlman’s Ratio
This version of the recipe corrects the typo in the first edition of Ratio and converts the corned beef recipe into dedicated pastrami variation.

INGREDIENTS
1 4-5 pound brisket, short rib slab, or boneless short ribs.

Brine
2 liters water (half gallon)
25 grams of pink curing salt* (1 ounce or 5 teaspoons)
50 grams sugar (1¼ ounces or scant ¼ cup)
100 grams kosher salt
10 cloves garlic, flattened with the flat side of a knife
1 teaspoon whole black peppercorns
1 teaspoon yellow mustard seeds
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
1 teaspoon dried red pepper flakes
1 teaspoon whole allspice
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 cinnamon stick, crushed or broken into pieces
3 bay leaves, crumbled
1 teaspoon whole cloves
½ teaspoon ground ginger

* The key to preserving pastrami’s familiar red color is using pink curing salt (i.e. sodium nitrite). You can order it online at butcher-packer.com. You can omit it, but the pastrami will be brownish gray instead of red.

Dry Rub
Equal parts ground pepper and ground coriander, preferably freshly ground (enough to cover the meat)

DIRECTIONS
In a pot large enough to hold the entire piece of meat, combine all the brine ingredients in a large pot. Simmer and stire until the salt and sugar are dissolved. Remove from heat and cool to room temperature before refrigerating. When the brine is completely chilled, place the meat in the pot. Use a plate to keep the meat submerged, if necessary. Refrigerate for four days.

Remove the meat from the brine and rinse well. Dry the meat and then cover completely it in the pepper/coriander rub. Smoke the meat until the internal temperature of the meat is 165F. This will take a couple hours or so. After smoking, steam the meat for a couple more hours until tender.

If you’re eating the pastrami right away, you can remove it from the steamer and start slicing it up. If you’re not serving the pastrami right away, you can let it cool and then wrap it up in plastic wrap and refrigerate it. Cooling the pastrami also makes it easier to slice thinly if that’s how you like it. Whether you keep it whole or slice it up, steam the pastrami for 5-10 minutes to warm the meat and give it a bit more moisture before serving.

I normally prefer a traditional New York-style sandwich of pastrami on rye bread with brown deli mustard or a pastrami reuben with melted and sauerkraut (as pictured above).

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• Cook the Book: Ad Hoc at Home – Blowtorch Prime Rib

We’re currently in Southern California visiting my parents, and as I was researching places to eat, I found a Chowhound post detailing afternoon tea at Gordon Ramsay at The London West Hollywood. Having afternoon tea had never really been on my radar but I knew my wife would be interested, and it seemed like a great way to see what Ramsay had to offer, especially after it was awarded a star in the 2009 Michelin guide.

The main dining room at Gordon Ramsay is a really beautiful space. In the daytime, it’s bright and has a decent view considering its located in the middle of West Hollywood. In relation to the picture below, we were seated at the farthest table in the blue booth where the window meets the wall.

Photo by Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times

Here’s the menu we were served.

Here’s the whole spread as it arrived at our table:

My wife had the tangerine tea and I ordered the earl grey. I normally drink my tea straight up, but since we were doing a British-style tea, I added warm milk and sugar. The tea was really smooth and very soothing. I may start doing the milk-and-sugar thing more often.

We started with the plain and raisin scones, which were served warm and went perfectly with the creme chantilly and blueberry jam. One bite and you understand why this is a staple British treat. Here’s a close up of the raisin scone.

Of the tea sandwiches, the prosciutto/mozzarella/pesto butter (below) was a standout along with the goat cheese/watercress/sundried tomato. The smoked salmon and prawn cocktail sandwiches were also very good.

Tea service ended with salted caramel truffles and a pineapple pate de fruit. They really were as good as they looked.

 

Afternoon tea is served from 3-5pm between lunch and dinner service. Our reservation was right at 3 and there were still from stragglers from lunch in the dining room. Tea service is $28 per person, which is a bargain, especially when you consider that at Ramsay’s The London Bar in New York City, it costs $40 per person.

INFORMATION
Gordon Ramsay at The London
1020 N. San Vincente Boulevard
West Hollywood, CA 90069 map
310.358.7788
Web site

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When my group leader at work told me that she made it through college by eating peanut butter and bacon sandwiches, I was immediately intrigued.

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Some of you might remember my previous post on the infamous Cheeseburger in a Can. They’re sold by a company in Germany, and they weren’t taking direct orders directly from America. A couple months ago, my wife told me she had a friend in Germany that could order this oddity for us. I asked for two cans, and they arrived earlier this week. Why two cans? One was for our collection of weird food, and one was…to eat.

Here’s how the product looks according to the Trekking Malhzeiten Online Store:

Did the actual canned cheeseburger possibly resemble that picture? Not even close.

As you might expect, the lettuce, tomato, and cheese that appear in the promotional image are nowhere to be found.

How did it taste? I thought it was pretty gross. The meat didn’t taste like a burger at all and was more like a sausage patty in both flavor and texture. The top bun piece looked fairly normal, but when you removed the burger from the can, the bottom bun was soggy and disgusting. There was a fairly strong cheese-like odor, as well.

Overall, I thought it was like a really disgusting school cafeteria hamburger. It was so bad that I actually needed a beer…at 11am. I don’t normally drink, and when I do it’s not first thing in the morning, but I really wanted some alcohol to disinfect my mouth. Luckily, I had some leftover beers from a party still in the fridge.

(For the record, my wife didn’t think it was as bad as I did, but the general consensus was that it was disgusting.)

Here’s the full picture set:

 

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Our first trip to Bakesale Betty was kind of an accident. We had about 45 minutes to kill before our reservation at Pizzaiolo, and Bakesale Betty was still open, so we decided to walk over and see what was happening over there. We’d heard about their famous fried chicken sandwiches, but with dinner looming, we decided to have dessert first. Nothing wrong with that, right?

We split a really big strawberry shortcake with fresh strawberries and whipped cream. It was nice and light, and we didn’t want to fill up before dinner. I had to get a chocolate cupcake and it was pretty good. The cake was a little dry, but the chocolate buttercream was great, extremely light and perfect (buttercream is usually a big turnoff for me). I washed it down with a lemon ice that was nice and tart, just the way I like them.

We also got some pastries for breakfast the next day (pear ginger scone for my wife, lemon raisin scone for me), and two handheld chicken pot pies. The scones were excellent, but I want to talk about the chicken pot pies. You just pop them in the oven for 45 minutes and you’re rewarded with an amazing handheld meal. I never knew a chicken pot pie could be this good…it was one of the best things I’ve eaten in weeks.

We had Betty’s famous fried chicken sandwich on our next visit and when paired with a lemon ice and some cookies, it’s a perfect summer lunch. The bread is fresh and the perfect boneless fried chicken breast is topped with a really nice vinegary cole slaw. It’s a very messy sandwich and you could argue that there’s a little too much slaw, but overall, it’s an excellent combination. The egg salad sandwiches are pretty good, too, but if given a choice, the fried chicken sandwich wins every time.

Last weekend, we bought a fresh-out-of-the-oven blueberry pie, and it was excellent. You can really tell the difference between a fresh pie and overly sweet mass-produced pies you normally find.

Whenever we’re in the area, side trips to Betty’s are always in the back of our mind, and sometimes we’ll think of excuses to drive up to Oakland so we can pop in for bite to eat.

INFORMATION
Bakesale Betty
5098 Telegraph Ave
Oakland, CA 94609 map
510.985.1213
Web site

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When I’m home in SoCal, heading out to Eagle Rock isn’t normally on the agenda, especially for food. But when some friends told me about The Oinkster’s house-cured pastrami sandwiches and ube milk shakes, Eagle Rock started sounding mighty nice.

The Oinkster is the brainchild of Andre Guerrero, a Filipino American chef who’s a veteran of the Southern California restaurant scene. His other restaurant, Max in Sherman Oaks, offers contemporary Pan-Asian fine dining that’s a stark contrast to The Oinkster’s laid-back, order-at-the-counter vibe. (We also took my parents to Max for a Mother’s/Father’s Day dinner, so basically it was an Andre Guerrero weekend.) We ended up going to Oinkster twice in four days and were able to try a good cross section of the menu.

The Oinkster Pastrami sandwich is a thing of beauty—pastrami with Gruyere and a red cabbage slaw. The pastrami is cured for two weeks (the old-fashioned way) according to a recipe Guerrero developed over a period of two years. It’s not a melt-in-your-mouth pastrami like they have at Katz’s in New York, but it’s definitely the some of best pastrami I’ve had on the West Coast.

Aside from the sandwiches, the pastrami also tops the Royale burger, and it’s also featured in their excellent chili. If you’re from Southern California, you’ve likely had a chiliburger at one of the many Original Tommy’s hamburger stands that are down here. Tommy’s chili is legendary in L.A., so it may be blasphemous of me to say this, but…The Oink’s chili is so much better. In fact, I don’t know what I really saw in Tommy’s chili other than the novelty of it. I went back to Tommy’s with my wife a few months ago, and on its own, the chili reminded me of dog food. It really needs to be paired with fries or a burger. The Oink’s chili can definitely stand on it’s own, and it has a freshness that you’ll never get from Tommy’s chili.

The BBQ Pulled Pork sandwich features soy/honey-brined pork that’s slow roasted and smoked and topped with red cabbage slaw and caramelized onions. The pork is nice and tender on its own, but my wife said it’s like Kalua Pig without the salt. When you pair it with The Oink’s own vinegary Carolina BBQ sauce, it’s just about perfect. Make sure you get some at the counter when you’re getting your other condiments…the first time we went, we forgot the sauce because we didn’t know it was on the counter and the bottles weren’t labeled very well. Instead, we used the house-made Oinkster Mustard as a substitute, which was fine, but not as good as the Carolina sauce.

Guerrero prides himself on using Kennebec Potatoes for his Belgian Fries, which he says are the same potatoes used at In-N-Out. I know many people who don’t like In-N-Out’s fries, but I’m definitely a fan, and I liked The Oink’s fries a lot. They use the traditional Belgian double-fry method to keep the fries crispy and fluffy, and they pair up nicely with The Oink’s chipotle ketchup and garlic aioli, and of course, it goes great with the aforementioned chili. The rotisserie chicken, also pictured above, was really good, but I like my birds to have a crispier skin a la Zankou Chicken.

There’s a wide selection of other desserts all baked by Guerrero’s pastry chef girlfriend, Jan Purdy. They include the excellent peanut butter and jelly cupcake, a very popular item so snap one up if they’re in the dessert case, and a nice carrot cupcake. Next time, i’m going to try the brownies and the lemon bars.

But if it’s your first trip to The Oink, you must christen the occasion with an Ube Shake. Ube’s going to sound weird to most people because it’s a purple yam native to the Philippines, but it’s actually very popular in desserts, especially ube ice cream. The ube shake is rich and creamy and is a beautiful shade of light purple. If you’re not very hungry, I think the Ube Shake could actually serve as a meal replacement instead of dessert. Think of it as a Filipino Jamba Juice.

I’m going back to SoCal in July for a wedding at Occidental College which is very close to The Oinkster. Sounds like I’ll need an ube shake to cool off just before wedding.

INFORMATION
The Oinkster
2005 Colorado Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90041 map
323.257.3892
Web site

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When I walked in the door tonight, my brilliant wife presented me with this amazing sandwich of fried egg topped with two slices of bacon and melted Pepper Jack cheese on a Dutch Crunch roll.

My wife grilled the inside of the bread with some butter, filled it with the bacon, eggs and cheese, and then put it in the toaster oven to melt the cheese and toast the bread. She made the whole thing up on the fly, but it was one of the best sandwiches I’ve ever had. Bacon and eggs are a given, but I really loved the spicy kick from the Pepper Jack.

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