Braised short rib, carrots, mascarpone smashed pee wee potatoes, arugula gremolata

Sometimes it’s easy to throw together a quick dinner using leftovers. This dish was assembled using things I had on hand from previous meals. The short ribs were left over from a previous fancy dinner. Of course, not everyone is going to have red wine braised short ribs in a vac-pack bag in the freezer, but you could have easily roasted a chicken breast or grilled a steak. I had some small potatoes sitting around, while the mascarpone came from a risotto I made a few days ago.

So, I boiled the potatoes in heavily salted water with 3 cloves of garlic (more on that later), then transferred them to a small pot with a couple tablespoons of mascarpone and some salt (I never make pepper part of the cooking process and use it only as a final touch over meats, eggs, raw foods, etc). I retained the cooking water, pulled it off the heat, and threw in the short ribs, which were frozen and sealed in a plastic bag.

The carrots, meanwhile, are a staple item–I simply sauteéd them slowly in some brown butter (again, leftover from a previous meal) and a pinch of sugar. If you don’t have brown butter, you can just brown some fresh butter before you put the carrots in the pan. The arugula gremolata–that’s finely chopped arugula, lemon zest, olive oil and the garlic that I cooked with the potatoes (because raw garlic is disgusting), with pine nuts thrown in for fun, is made of staple goods and some pre-existing arugula.

By the time I’d cooked the carrots, finished the potatoes and made the gremolata, the short ribs were reheated and ready to go. All I had to do was assemble everything. The whole meal took about 20 minutes to throw together, involved the use of only 3 pans, yet was satisfying, cohesive, and had a nice balance of flavors.

When I go there, I almost always get the same thing–chicken bowl, pinto beans, corn salsa, pico de gallo, a bit of hot salsa and a bit of cheese. I get this because it’s tasty and fills me up. Well, almost always fills me up. Here’s a photo of my order from Chipotle on Brookhurst in Fountain Valley, CA:

Normal-size chicken bowl.

Looks good. Was good. But I live in Long Beach, so I often patronize the Chipotle on Ximeno. But lately, something has been amiss with the size of my order. Take a look at the bowl I got on May 5, 2010:

A little bit smaller now...A little bit smaller now...

Even taking into account that I didn’t feel like having cheese that day, clearly this one is much smaller. It has a smaller base diameter and a lower apex. You can see that there is far less food relative to the size of the bowl, which I assume is the same at all Chipotle locations.

I thought surely this was a one-time transgression. Then I visited this same location on July 30, 2010. Holy mackerel:

Now with 50% less food at the same price!

It barely even clears the rim of the bowl! Again, there’s no cheese on this one, but still. I watched the burrito artist or whatever they call their employees portion out the chicken, and I thought I was back in bread line of mother country. In Soviet Chipotle, burrito eats you!

Every other Chipotle I go to makes me a bowl like in the first photograph. I pay my $7 or so, and walk away satiated. Not at this location, to which I shall ne’er return. I can’t imagine how an operation that is so standardized and regimented as Chipotle doesn’t have better portion control and consistency. Very disappointing.

• 1 small yellow onion, 2 carrots, 2 celery stalks, 6 cremini mushrooms, small dice (1/4 in)
• 3 garlic cloves, chopped (2mm)
• 1 tsp chopped thyme
• 1 Roma tomato, small dice (1/4 in)
• 1 cup red lentils, rinsed
• 1/2 cup beluga or Du Puy lentils, rinsed
• 4 quarts chicken stock or water
• Salt
• A squeeze of lemon
• 1 qt (a generous handful) baby spinach leaves
• 3 tsp. unsalted butter

In a 6 quart or larger pot, heat the butter until foamy. Add onion, carrots, celery, mushrooms, garlic and thyme, season with salt, cover, and cook over medium heat until onions are translucent (around 10 minutes).

Add both kinds of lentils, the tomato, and the chicken stock or water. Season with salt and bring to a simmer. Cook over low heat until the beluga/De Puy lentils are cooked through, around 45 minutes. The red lentils will dissolve, thickening the soup.

Just before serving, give the soup a final seasoning, and add the spinach and a squeeze of lemon to taste. Give the soup a quick stir to wilt the spinach, then serve.

Yield: About 3 quarts.

That’s right, a motherfucking Chinese restaurant in Alhambra!

The multi-course meal lacked the finesse of, well, Baja Fresh, but it made up for it in grease. Here’s the rundown:

1. A plate of cold jellyfish (soy-flavored plastic), cold pork, cold chicken, cold duck, cold something else, and another jellyfish-like substance. That was also cold.
2. Cooked shrimp, served hot, tossed in mayonnaise. Here’s the thing about mayonnaise: When you heat it, it turns into scrambled eggs+oil, unless it’s Homaro Cantu’s fried mayonnaise. Came alongside some nice caramelized walnuts, though.
3. Utility-grade beef masquerading as pepper steak.
4. Josh Groban seafood soup (bland and non-offensive, plus the whole baby octopuses looked like his hair)
5. Peking duck with pancakes made from bao dough. Kinda good.
6. A whole chicken, thrown in the deep-fryer as is, hacked up with a cleaver, served with the head.
7. ” ” lobster, ” ” ” ” ” “, ” ” ” ” “, ” ” ” “, tossed in a garlic sauce. Kinda good.
8. Noodles with minute quantity of slivered mushroom.
9. Fried rice. 9 courses in and we get rice. Smart.
10. A vaguely fruity custard.

I scarcely need to mention that I drank lots of wine to get that all down. Of course, both the red and white wines were served ice cold.

When I have my own company and we have our holiday party made up of 50% white employees and their kids, I’m *definitely* going to serve them something everyone can enjoy. Duck testicles on warm tapioca, perhaps.

So I was wondering where to have dinner tonight, knowing that today was my last chance to eat the famous Icelandic lamb. I walked past several restaurants before I said “fuckit, I’m going back to Orange.” and while the second time lacked the personal service that comes from being the only one in the place, it was no less tasty or fun.

Basically I got a lot of the same gimmicks, but with different flavors. I also got Nina, the cutest waitress in the whole wide world. Here’s what she brought me:

Amuse: duck confit in a pickle jar.
Second amuse: roasted langoustine with confit tomato floating on a helium balloon.
1st course: Smoked artic char, apples, celeriac
2nd: wild deer soup, foie gras, mushrooms
3rd: monkfish, chorizo, olives, potato purée
4th: lamb, celeriac gratin, natural jus, sauce bearnaise
Dessert: brownie, skyr mousse, sorrel ice, liquid nitrogen ice cream

To prove that I’m internationally adept at crashing parties of large groups of women, a super-gaggle of Icelandic cougars bought me a green apple alcoholic slurpee. I also had a Dracula cocktail, made with blooberri, razzberi and red chile. Mmm and only 20 dollars! And when the kitchen was about to go down like a sack of shit, they stopped everything and the whole restaurant played Bingo for 5 minutes. Umm. Yeah. Let’s rock.

There are a lot of places that do this kind of gimmicky shit, but none can match the quality of food. Orange is clearly deserving of a spot on the top tier of restaurants worldwide.

Icelanders, you'd have more goal-scoring celebrations like this if you had better fight songs!

So, Iceland lost, 2-1, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. They had many more scoring chances, they had better kits, they had the home crowd. Why, then, apart from taking a stupid penalty and giving the Scots a free kick, did they lose?

In the eyes of this impartial observer, the answer is simple: Scotland had MUCH better chants. The main one seemed to be a version of “Let’s Go,” you know, clap, clap, clap-clap-clap, clap-clap-clap-clap, SCOTLAND! They also had a tight-knit version of “Hey Baby,” and some other melodic chants that sounded very well-rehearsed. They brought bagpipers, they were loud, they made the difference.

Iceland, meanwhile, has two lousy crowd anthems: “Island, clap-clap-clap,” and “Afram Island (Go Iceland), clap-clap, clap-clap, clap.”  What the fuck? If I were in charge of the Icelandic Sports Federation, my first duty would be to commission some new fight songs using a percentage of the 38% income tax and 24% sales tax everyone pays here. Icelanders, you deserve better results from your exorbitant tax rates! And another thing, if there’s any country in the world that needs its own national cheerleading team, it’s this one. Other countries would scarcely be able to focus in the face of gyrating, leggy, ridiculous-hot blonde girls! Get it together, Iceland.

After the match, which clocked in at a tidy 2 hours, I walked a couple blocks to Vox, home of lox that rocks your socks. Actually, I can’t speculate as to the quality of their smoked salmon, but the tasting menu I had was pretty good. They emphasize traditionl Nordic flavors and ingredients, but with soigne technique applied. It turned out pretty well, though it wasn’t as good or as fun as Orange. The Duckling was amazing though, paired with a Hautes Cotes de Nuits Pinot Noir. mmm.

First course is cured hamachi with cream cheese and some sort of jelly. Ummm. I like the idea of cured hamachi, and the cream cheese and jelly go great with the bread. At least the plate was cool.

Next up is tuna with pumpkin and sesame seeds, and my hopes are low. I should mention the techno-accordion music that’s pounding away.

But wait, the tuna saves the day! With a spring roll of eel and langoustines (of course), enoki mushroom and miso sauce, it’s effing delicious. A bit over-garnished (raw bok choy???), the fish gets a little lost, but all the flavors are there. Good. And filling.

Dessert is called savarin “I’m a donut,” which I hope is a reference to Eddie Izzard’s take on John Kennedy’s line, “Ich bin ein Berliner,” wherein he meant to say “I’m a citizen of Berlin” but actually said, right, “I’m a donut.”

And…the plate is covered with Pop Rocks!

Okay, sjávarkjallarinn, you win. This was a comeback of 2004 ALCS proportions, as you’ve keep my good food streak alive at 7 days.