Mr. Sulky Pants Notwithstanding

The short ribs turned out pretty darned yummy.

after they sat all night in the fridge to congealulate I took the pot out and gently skimmed off the fat chunks then put it on the stove on medium to simmer and reduce some more

while that was enthickalating I made some unctuous mashed spuds and my Bride oven roasted some brussel sprouts

nom nom de nom nom nom

I need to buy bigger plates.

Moinks!

They’re what’s for dinner

with some sauteed kale on the side

Of course a CERTAIN SOMEONE was far more interested in the short ribs I started tonight for Sunday’s dinner

and then he became all Mr. Sulky Pants when he felt short-changed on the short rib scraps

quick, call the ASPCA

Memorial Piggie Update

Why look who just came in!

nomnomnomnomnom

Memorial Piggie

Got up a tad earlier than I cared to this morning to get the 12lbs of pork butt on the smoker

The knockout roses are looking quite neony

and it was exceedingly pleasant sitting on the deck working my way through a pot of coffee

(gratuitous multi-grill pr0n)

A Cold Friday Night Meal…

…in freakin’ May.

Thanks Al. Tons.

Like many folks on the East Coast my plans of summeresque grilling evaporated, strike that, were washed out by this cold drizzly rain were under. May 24th and it’s in the low 40s. Global Warming my left shoe.

Anyhoo, so I needed to dig into the Warm Me Up Scottie bin:

Firstly, of course, was red wine

I picked this up the other night whilst the Bingleys were enjoyng some burgers with kcruella. It’s about $13 and is a very smooth velvety wine with soft tannins. A few glasses put me in the mood to brown about 1lb of italian sausage and 2 Pamelas (cut into bite-sized strips) in large straight-sided pan

I must herewith confess that I used turkey sausage; with the addition of a couple of teaspoons of fennel seed it worked perfectly fine, plus there’s no grease to drain off.

Once it’s reasonably browned add 3/4 cup each of wild rice and brown rice and a healthy amount of red pepper flakes

and 2 cups chicken stock, 1 1/2 cups white wine and 1/2 cup of water

and 3 cloves of chopped garlic

bring it to a boil then reduce to simmer, cover and cook for 45 minutes or so until the rice is mostly done (remember this is brown rice which takes a lot longer than white rice) during which time you will be studiously ignored by someone who in fact DID get a lot of chicken

a fact which he conveniently forgets

Once the rice is mostly done toss in a pound or so of fresh chopped asparagus

and cover and cook for 10 minutes or so until the asparagus is done but still crisp and eat

with more wine as appropriate, of course.

Spineless Chickens!

Taste pretty darn good, actually.

(although I admit it really is rather…nasty looking)

flatten the bugger out and merrily salt before grilling

oh and don’t forget the oven-roasted brussel sprouts!

Worthy Is The Lamb

…that was slain so I can eats him!

Thank you, Oh Bountiful Provider, for the Glorious land of Australia and all the cute, fluffy, wooly and oh-so-tasty creatures of Your Munificence that dwell therein

look at these bonesies! So nummy!

now you can easily slip the fileting knife betwixt the little rib segments you see above and get eight LambiPops thusly

now you do need to trim the excess bits off of the ribs. It’s not that complicated, especially if one’s kitchen comes equipped with a Trimmings Dispose-All Unit

You do have one of these, don’t you? Have can you possibly exist without one?

Anyhoo, you don’t need to be too exact on all the little scraps and such, as the grill will clean them bones up just fine

then toss those LambiPops into a gallon-sized ziplock with red wine, capers, garlic, rosemary, and just a little salt and pepper

then into the fridge to marinate for a few hours, flipping every hour or so

they cook on the grill very quickly (and you don’t want them past at most medium anyway)

and serve them up with whatever version of mashed potatoes you’re in the mood for and some steamed asparagus and Life, My Friends, is pretty good.

For dessert, I highly recommend a trip to your local orchard for some fresh made PAH

apple/cranberry in this case in a crust to DIE FOR washed down with several drams of hooch

from a little distillery in an area that THS used to frequent many many moons ago in her Moon-shining days.

I, of course, would never make illicit runs across the border to take advantage of differences in ages of legality to buy such things.

Never.

Good Friday Eats

“Virtue” being as you know my middle name I decided to make some fish for Good Friday.

Baked tilapia with a lemon/paprika/parsley coating, served with some chipotle-dusted roast potato wedgies and, of course, sauteed brussels sprouts.

Dang fine eats.

and washing it all down were a few lurvely bottles of Raymond Reserve Chardonnay

Runs about oh $15/bottle. A nice full velvety wine, with a joyfully piquant acidity playing a delightful dance in harmonious contrast to the fine butterscotch and late Spring melon notes that linger seductively on the palate, offering hints of untold delights that await the determined pursuer.

Ok, I made that up.

But it is none the less pretty good hootch.

I Am Sure That Right Now Sweet Baby Jeebus Is Eating One Of These

Pork roll, egg and cheese on a fresh-from-the-whatever-they-cook-them-in french toast bagel.

The perfect combination of sweet, salt and cheesey-eggy fat goodness.

nomnomnomnomnomnom

Grilled Tuna

It’s what’s for dinner

(though some prefer sushi)

Dang, Now I’m Hungry

His restaurant is only a few miles away…

While I Applaud Their Obviously Successful Business Model

…I HATESES IT.

HATESES, HATESES, HATESES IT!!!!

In-N-Out’s Billionaire Heiress Explains Why Her Burger Joints Haven’t Expanded All Over America

Much to the chagrin of East Coasters, the folks at the helm of In-N-Out Burger haven’t expanded the chain all the way across America.

Why’s that?

The Orange Country Register managed to get a rare interview with with Lynsi Torres the 30-year-old owner and president of In-N-Out.

Oh, my Banglacola Kingdom for a Double-Double with grilled onions and CHEESE!!!

And a chocolate shake, of course.

A Fine Caper

Well, lots of them actually.

All mixed up with olives, onions, mushrooms, tomaters, garlic and some red pepper flakes.

Now what to do with this steak I’m not eating…

“Monk Inspired”

GASTONIA, N .C. – When I heard about it, I jumped in the car and drove out to Gastonia.
I was not alone.
By noon Thursday, an admittedly early time to be drinking beer, the Brixx on Cox Road in Gastonia had already sold about a dozen glasses of Belmont Abbey Dubbel. They could only get a small torpedo keg of it, which holds roughly 50 glasses of beer.
They ran out by 5 p.m.

“We’ve never run out of beer that fast,”

Noon “early” to be drinking?

He’s never met Bingley.

Saturday Night In SP

After our light lunch we strolled around Paulista Avenue a bit and, in true Gringo fashion, stopped in a Starbucks to re-caffeinate. Oddly enough, despite Brazil being the largest coffee producer in the world and also having a total coffee drinking culture there just simply aren’t that many coffee shops on Paulista; in other cities there are lots of places but for some reason (perhaps the cost of the rent) not here. So Starbucks it was and, for the record, they make their latte drinks here a lot sweeter than back in the US.

Dinner that night was at Tordesilhas, named for the treaty in which the Pope divided up the world solely between the Spanish and the Portuguese.

How’d that work out, by the way?

Anywho, the neat thing about this restaurant is they have food from all the regions of Brazil, from the Amazon down south, so you can taste flavors and techniques that you might not find elsewhere.

I, for one, could not resist a white wine called “Utopia”

but sadly, as has always been the case, what has been advertized as Utopia turns out to be, well, somewhat less, shall we say. But hey, it was alcoholic and cold…

We had some various appetizers, including some delicious fried manioc balls with parmesan

and some pastels that had ground beef and some that had cheese

to enliven the flavor they provided various peppers in adorable little Jars of Doom

having previously (and quite humorously as far as my Bride and Daughter were concerned) discovered that my tolerance for spice was not quite as high as I imagined it to be I wisely limited myself to leeeetle drops of the oil on the pastels; very tasty drops to be sure but also very delicately placed ones.

All washed down with some very tasty caipirinhas

Quite tasty indeed.

For the entree itself both my Bride and I decided that after 10 days of seafood and beef we sort of had a hankering for…chicken. One of the oddest, funkiest trees I have ever seen is a native Brazilian tree called the Jabuticaba. The fruit is delicious but it grows…out of the trunk. It is the strangest looking thing, and it also happened to be ‘in season’ so the menu had “chicken in Jabuticaba sauce with parsnip puree and peas”

The jabuticaba has a concentrated sweet/tart grapey flavor, it was an interesting and unique combination. The parsnip puree was wonderfully smooth and creamy and the snow peas were sweet and crisp.

For dessert I had three types of sorbets made from Amazonian fruits: acai, cupuacu and tapioca

and probably another caipirinha.

A Paulista Saturday Lunch

So we had a weekend in Sao Paulo before flying back. The weather, even though it was in the very midst of the Summer, was cool and rainy, well call it drizzly really, so it actually was pleasant. A good friend recommended a driver so we took a little tour. First place we saw was the Cathedral.

here you can see the nice group of homeless ushers waiting to greet folks who stopped by

Brazilians like to joke that they truly believe in the Trinity; they are religious 3 times in their live: when they are baptized, when they are married, and when they are buried.

The rest of the time, not so much…as evidenced by the state of the holy water fonts at the entrance to the church

we drove around a little and saw the lovely Ibirapuera Park and strolled there but parks, whilst pleasant to stroll about, are boring to look at and anyhow all this walking made me think of food.

And if you’re thinking food at lunchtime then you are thinking the Municipal Market, a huge cacophonous den of amazing fruits (that are amazingly expensive), fresh meats, vegetables…

freshly made juices

and the absolute star of the show, what is perhaps the best sandwich you may ever have in your life, the Mortadella sandwich at the Hocca Bar

we also of course had perneil

and their also-famous bachalhau pastel

but really they paled next to the mortadella. The combination of the warm, salty, juicy meat with the slightly melted cheese on a warm, soft roll… Oh my. My Bride and I only got a few bites in before Daughter claimed the rest.

Punk.

The place was very very popular

The fruits here are just…well, bizarre

Some of them look like they were created by Dr. Seuss.

Like these:

those, my friends, are cashews in their natural state. Wild, eh?

As I’ve said, the market is loaded with all the fresh foods a well-funded cook could possibly desire, from fruits and vegetables to Happy Pigs

to all the bachalhau a feller could possibly desire

You’ll notice of course that they don’t list a “sodium content” for the bachalhau, as it’s approximately 100%…

Want some fresh suckling pigs or maybe a rabbit to impress that next date?

The market is a fun place to spend a few hours and have some great eats. We headed back to Paulista to walk around a little before dinner and there I saw one of those little things that just set my hear a-flutter

A happy day indeed.

How Now São Paulo

On a rainy Thursday we left Rio for São Paulo. The best part was this trip involved what may be my two favorite airports in the world.

We took off from Santos-Dumont

Santos-Dumont is basically an aircraft carrier, and the really neat thing about it is that when you take off from it the plane climbs and banks hard to the left immediately…

Because this is right at the end of the runway

then the plane curls around Pão and gives you a great view of Copacabana, Ipanema and Leblon as you head off towards São Paulo to land at Congonhas

Think of landing on an aircraft carrier floating in the middle of Central Park and that’s Congonhas: it’s set in the center of São Paulo and is surrounded by skyscrapers. You feel you could almost reach out and touch the buildings because, er, well you just about could. I’ve landed there in the midst of thunderstorms and it scares the bejeebus out of you.

It’s really cool.

So we arrived in São Paulo

and went to spend a few hours at MASP, the Museu de Arte de São Paulo. My goodness, what an incredible collection of really neat art they have: Rubens, Botticelli, Titian, Matisse, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Hieronymus Bosch!!!!!, Monet…it just went on and on. I really wish we had more time to spend there; it was great.

But we had to go to dinner.

One of my favorite restaurants: Figueira Rubaiyat.

Wonderful steak, wonderful wine, impeccable service, all served under the arms of an absolutely amazingly ginormous Fig tree.

I took advantage of being in Brazil to have a great bottle of Argentine Malbec: Catena Zapata Angelica

They don’t sell it outside of South America. It is amazingly yum.

It went exceedingly well with the huge steak Daughter and I shared

Look at the size of the branches of the fig tree

and the trunk is just insanely huge

I didn’t want to be too Gringo-y and use the flash…

São Paulo has a much more formal vibe than Rio: there was nobody walking around in havaianas, everyone was dressed quite nicely for dinner. There’s much more of a professional New Yorky sort of feel to it, whilst Rio is more Miami in flavor.

But the eats in both are divine.

Sitting In A Rio Sidewalk Cafe

So back to Rio after 2 glorious days in Buzios, time for some real local flavor at a popular tapas-style bar Chico e Alaide …this looks tasty

I hoped this would be tasty, in a different sort of way

it tastes completely different from Guinness; this has a sweet caramel fruity flavor, not a lot of carbonation despite the thick creamy head. Didn’t do a lot for me but it was cold and alcoholic, so it covered 2 important categories.

It was raining a bit so happily we were under the awning

and the beer and squid salad was arriving

very yum, not at all fishy or rubbery

followed by

which was a deep fried flavorful bean composition topped with bacon. Oh yeah.

And then some pulled beef atop potatoes and a rich gravy

Daughter devoured a very very tender pounded thin steak and fries

I had as many chopps as I could (“chopp” (pronounced “schop”) is the Brazilian style of serving draft beer: a light lager served very cold in smallish (6-8 oz) glasses that get refilled very often; a great refreshing way to have beer in a hot climate. As a family we vowed to go “chopping” as often as possible!)

the next morsel they brought was simply divine tasting and beautifully presented:

isn’t this awesome? A small pumpkin filled with shrimp, herbs and catupiry cheese

it was adorable to look at and even more adorable to consume. Woe to the next folks I have over for dinner at Chateau Bingley, for ye shall be eating out of gourds!

and we had more chopps

as a side note, we had to laugh as we were sitting there drinking beer and eating all these wonderful little plates of food because right next door to us was…

oh yeah, sign me up for that…

as a final nibble before we left I decided I really needed some sausages fried with onions

I did! I really really did!

Keeping with our theme of “never stop eating” for dinner that night we went to Sushi Leblon for, er, sushi

all very very good and fresh. The real fun was the people watching, especially Brunette de Vil who was fiercely guarding the door and not letting just any old riff raff in to scrounge for a table.

Which meant lots of people had to wait outside in the summery showers.

It Was So Nice

We spent a full day there doing no kinds of nothing

One funny story: there was this odd group of people, who were writers/editors of some sort, and they were sitting all day just to the left of me here in this photo working on one fellow’s novel. He was a oh a mid-late 50s shortish, dumpyish, somewhat potbellied (more than moi certainly) sort of of fellow with spiky white hair. When Daughter wandered over to join me for lunch she said “That guy give me the skeevies. He’s trying to convince those girls that he’s Simon Cowell (editor’s note: Claude looks more like Simon Cowell than this guy did) and he can get them on America Idol. He’s pathetic.”

So that was our entertainment for lunch.

and then we went over to a friend’s house for some yummies

cheese, bacalhau, various types of cured ham, wine…

and finished the evening at 1 or so at a beachside bar.

I could get used to this tropical lifestyle.

Not Busy In Buzios

The next day we drove to the resort town of Buzios, which is about 2 hours or so east of Rio.

When we got there we were hungry, shockingly, so we stopped at a lovely tropical-style place called Restaurant Gisele.

Pasteis with shrimp

smoked little sausages sauteed with an onion broth

grilled pork loin with fried bananas

“shrimp” really isn’t the right word for these beasts, is it?

they were ginormous. And good.

And they really set us up nicely for the view from the Hotel

what’s not to love about flower petals…in the toilet

Buzios is an extremely relaxing town.

For dinner that night we just ate at the fancy pizza restaurant at the hotel. We ordered a bottle of wine and then perused the menu, noticing that they had a ‘special’ where you could get two pizzas plus a bottle of the house wine. We ordered that and the waiter was sort of embarrassed and said that, ahem, the bottle of wine we had already ordered and were demolishing wasn’t part of that special, to which we laughed and said “no worries, bring the second bottle because it won’t go to waste!”

And it didn’t.

Bira Bira on The Wall

Sometimes when you’re on a vacation the last thing in the world you want to do is get in a car and schlepp about on a Sunday morning, especially when it’s 90+ outside and there are scurrilous and unfounded rumors about that you were drinking at a samba club until 2am the previous evening.

But there are also in life some things that you simply must do, and in this life if you are in Rio then you must get in the car and drive 45 minutes south to a little seaside village glued to a steep slope over looking a nature preserve. The town’s name is Barra de Guaratiba.

The restaurant is Bira de Guratiba.

My Bride and I first came here in 1998. We were in Rio for basically a long weekend. We flew overnight, got off the plane, were picked up at the airport, dropped our bags at the hotel and drove down to Bira for our welcome lunch. Whether it was the jetlag or the 5 caipirinhas or some mystical combination of both it was one of the finest meals I’d ever had and I knew on this trip we had to go back. I admit I was somewhat nervous that after all these years it would understandably not live up to our memories and Daughter, after hearing us talk about it for so long, would not be amused about being dragged about so.

The drive took longer than anticipated, as there were some accidents plus a lot of Sunday beach traffic but we got there and the view was everything we remembered

you can see the ocean to the left and then as we pan in see the estuary. Much of the seafood here is caught here; it’s amazingly sweet and fresh

it’s also a very civilized place, as you can see by this floating bar

speaking of which

One of the glories of Brazil is the language: Portuguese mixed with indigenous Indian vocabulary and sprinkled with enough English to make you giggle. The above is a perfect example. In English we call it ‘passion fruit.’ The Brazilians call it “maracuja”, and even better they pronounce it “mah-rah-koo-ZHA” which just rolls off your tongue in a delightful fashion.

But even more delightful is the above, a caipirinha made not with lime but with maracuja. Oh my oh my, is that ever tasty.

And it led nicely into the first appetizer, which was a platter of fried prawns with garlic and oil

They were huge.

And tasty.

And soon gone.

and followed by what to me is one of the simplest yet finest dishes I’ve ever had: the Vinagrete Misto

so elegantly simple: fresh shrimp, octopus and mussels in a vinaigrette with chopped onion, tomatoes, lime and some cilantro. So simple yet so completely dependent on the freshness of the seafood, and this was as fresh as it could be, with that sweet slightly salty tang of the ocean still clinging to every morsel.

the orange ones are the females, btw.

But then it was on to the main courses:

a Moqueca de Camarão (shrimp with coconut milk)

Moqueca de Robalo com Camarão (fish and shrimp with coconut milk)

all served with a hearty amount of Pirão (which is a creamy manioc/fish based sauce)

plates don’t get much happier than this

and we just ate and ate and enjoyed the views, the nature. It was and still is fabulous.

After such a wonderful meal we drove languidly back to Rio and stopped on a seaside overlook just south of Leblon for a few pictures

This is a fancy Sheraton resort tucked into the cliffs; I’ve always thought it rather oddly sited

and this is a view the other way, back towards Leblon with Ipanema on the far right

I’m sorry to say that for dinner that night I forgot to take the camera, which is a pity. We ate at CT Boucherie, which is a french steakhouse not far from where we were staying. It was outstanding. It was so good in fact that Daughter annoyed me greatly by eating all of her steak, all of it, and leaving none for me.

Dang.

Saturday, Here In The Jardim

Rio has many many wonderful charming old buildings that really show some classic architectural lines. Sadly, she is also cursed with a lot of modern crap.

Like this thing

Yes, that’s the cathedral. Blech.

For most folks the sight of that place would be a stomach-turning event. For me it reminded me that my stomach wanted food. Oh sure, we went to Corcorvado and the monastery of São Bento (which is simply STUNNING, by the way: founded in 1590, the current building was finished in 1671 I think. The woodwork is divine. When we got there there was a service in progress: 10 monks chanting. It was very very lovely. But no photos allowed.)

But it was lunch time, and we had heard about a lovely area of Rio called Santa Teresa. There, tucked in against the hillside, is the wonderful Restaurante Aprazivel.

Daughter and I were in heaven when they brought the appetizers of little grilled sausages inside pão de queijo

My Bride appreciated the reasonable size of the beer bottles

then we had some grilled heart of palm

with some pesto drizzled on, natch

Daughter had some fish with okra, rice and beans

My Bride had some lovely picanha with beans and farofa

Me? I had some goat and mushrooms.

As I said, the place is tucked into a hillside and plays perfectly into the tropical vibe

There are several different eating levels offering different views of the city down below.

The kitchen is fairly open and centrally located so the smells waft hither and yon most enticingly.

Speaking of enticing, when one is one vacation one must have dessert: Daughter had mangos

My Bride had sauteed bananas and ice cream

I had guava gelato

Ah, the stress I encumber myself with for You, Dear Readers!

After lunch we decided we needed a nice walk, and there is no place nicer than the Jardim Botânico for that.

But first, to help you navigate the park, please allow me to translate some of the signs there for you.

First:

This is an especially important message for small children, for it says “Don’t piss off Granma”, and if you want that ice cream at the end of a hot day walking around you’d better follow that advice.

Now I know Rio is a big city and one hears a lot about crime there. And it’s true, the crime can be bad. Here in the Jardim they have developed a special Elite Anti-Crime unit:

“Warning: These Turtles Are Murderers”

Now that you’ve gotten a feel for the Portuguese language you can fully appreciate the lovely 3 foot wide lily pads

oddly-shaped trees

ginormous stands of bamboo

that are scattered about, as well as all the lovely tropical bromeliads and orchids

and really really tall Royal Palms

But plants get boring, so we went back to the hotel, took a nap, and stayed out until 2 at the Rio Scenarium, listening to Bossa Nova and Samba

fun stuff all around!

Flying Down To Rio By The Sea

Ah, Rio! Rio by the Sea-o!

Hey, Bambino, turn that ol’ jet turbino…

The flight into Rio’s main airport isn’t the thing of legend or romance, is it? But hey, who cares? Because an hour later we were in our hotel, the girls were powdering their noses and I was staring at this

the first of many, I can assure you.

Our hotel was right on Leblon, and the view (when it wasn’t raining) out the dining room window was exceedingly pleasant

It was raining on and off when we got there so the beach wasn’t too crowded, and more importantly it was cooler: the week before we arrived Rio hit 115, and I was not looking forward to that!

For dinner the first night we ate at Satyricon in Ipanema. After being on a plane for a gazillion hours we wanted something light, so we stuck with a simple meal of caipirinhas, lobster sushi

and shrimp they called ‘scampi’…lots and lots of them

and some mussels that looked like they had grown up near a nuclear plant

everything was very simply prepared and amazingly sweet and fresh.

Yums all around.

National Pah Day!

Taking her cue as always from Sis, whose Inspirational Pah Opus is a thing of heart-wrenching beauty, Daughter informed me I too must make Pah. Tonight. Right now.

So using my Go To Gals template I went to town.

Soak the currants in orange juice and bourbon; soak me in bourbon

six Granny Smiths seems to work out about right

core/peel/slice the apples and mix in a bowl with blueberries, cranberries, the drained currants (but reserve the soakage!), some flour, cinnamon, fresh nutmeg, sugar and salt

fill them shells

schmodge together the flour, brown sugar, butter and tablespoon of cinnamon (which ain’t in the recipe)

say hello to Mr. Hanky

now I have no idea how she gets it to crumble when she makes it, as this has the consistency of Play-Doh so I end up armor plating the Pah

and now they’re in the oven so I have several hours to wait to eat.

dang.

Your Swill Moment of Highbrow Culture

Pah Haiku

I also make pah.
A portrait of the last piece.
I ain’t sharing it.

~ ths