I walked past this truck at Second and Pike on Monday and did a double-take. Eric was intrigued too when I showed him a photo later, and we went back to investigate yesterday.

They only opened a few weeks ago. As yet, the menu is limited. The Maximus is a pulled pork sandwich with a hot sauce, while the Minimus has a tangy sauce. They have a vegetarian sandwich, chips made from potatoes and vegetables, and hibiscus and ginger lemonades.

I don't much care for barbecue as a rule. The Minimus with a sprinkling of Beecher's cheese was good, but not outstanding. The pork was flavorful and not overwhelmed by the sauce. The sandwich was a little small and inevitably messy. The ginger lemonade was pleasantly tart. See Yelp for more reviews.

The pig is very cool and undoubtedly draws a lot of business. There's nowhere to sit near the Pig. We sat down at First and Union and looked down at the waterfront.

I'll be back. Occasionally.

We discovered Bistrot Bistro in Kitsilano on a previous visit to Vancouver. It's an agreeable little French restaurant just south of downtown. Emma suggested that we eat there again for my birthday, and it was a fine choice.

We ate from the prix fixe menu for $26 apiece. She had the carrot soup, roast chicken, and raspberry sorbet; I had the pate de campagne, a peppercorn steak, and a chocolate mousse. The prix fixe included a sizeable quantity of pommes frites. We added Brussel sprouts, a baguette with olive tapenade, and a half-litre of Pinot Gris, and walked away two hours later, pleasantly sated.

The last time we were there, it was full. This time, there were plenty of seats. I suspect a combination of Sunday night, wet weather, and the economy. The food was still good.

A good piece in yesterday's New York Times about sugar in the American diet:

How sweet it is! The American diet, that is. While the current recommendation is a maximum intake of eight teaspoons of sugars a day, one 12-ounce can of regular soda (or a 20-ounce bottle of VitaminWater) delivers eight or nine teaspoons. That means you are at or over the limit before you’ve eaten a single cookie or container of fruit-flavored yogurt, or even some commercial tomato soups or salad dressings with added sugars. The result is an average daily intake of more than 20 teaspoons of sweet calories.

Marshall Brain demonstrated the amount of sugar in soda. Eight teaspoons of sugar is a startling amount when it's placed in one pile.

In the early to mid-90s, I drank about a liter of Coke a day. It caught up with me. I long ago kicked that particular habit, to the betterment of my waistline.

I made royal icing last night for the Christmas Cake to put over the marzipan. A very tedious half hour with an electric handheld mixer to beat the egg whites until they were stiff, and then beat in the powdered sugar.

The recipe that I used from an old Joy of Cooking called for the juice of 1 lemon. I used ReaLemon which says that 3 tablespoons = 1 lemon. I added two tablespoons, which was quite lemony. The recipe that I've linked to calls for two teaspoons, which seems like a better choice.

I had drizzled whiskey over the cake several times to keep it moist. That was a mistake. The cake turned out to be quite damp.

Before baking the cake in November, I had also thoroughly soaked the dried fruit for a couple of days in hot water and whiskey. The fruit was very plump, but with hindsight, I think I should have thoroughly drained the soaked fruit for some hours.

Still, it tastes good, but it could be better.

Salumi's has the best selection of charcuterie in Seattle. The range and quality of their cured meats is truly impressive. The flavor, excellent. Their counter staff, friendly and family-like. The line goes out the door.

But. But. But.

Their service is wretched. That line moves at a glacial pace. I've never taken less than 20 minutes to get a sandwich; sometimes twice that. The staff are slow and inefficient. Their stations are badly laid out and they have to fumble around each other in their pokey little store.

Every time I watch them at work—and I always have plenty of time to watch them work—I want to drag them over to Jimmy John's or Bakeman's. Jimmy John's is fast, efficient, and cheerful. Bakeman's is fast, brusque, and serves up a side of attitude. But, by God, you get a sandwich in five minutes or less.

Salumi's could double their speed and still be Salumi's. I wish they would.

I made my Christmas Cake back in November, but am only now getting around to putting on the icing. I've kept it moist with several applications of whiskey.

Last year, I made marzipan from scratch. Never again! It was a huge amount of work to blanch the almonds and the stiff mixture of sugar and almonds caused the food processor to seize up more than once.

I didn't use up all the marzipan that I made that time. I put the remainder into a sealed container, placed it in the fridge, and forgot all about it. When I took it out of the fridge yesterday, it was still good. Oh, the top half-inch had hardened and the rest was a tad dry, but it was good enough to use. I rolled it out and draped it over the cake.

I'll add a layer of royal icing at the weekend and let it harden overnight.

And then I'm going to eat it.

I'm Irish. I was raised on butter. Not margarine. Butter. Good Irish butter. Yellow, creamy, with a little salt.

Melted onto toast. A soft yellow layer on bread. A pat of butter on your potatoes. Fry your eggs in butter. Let butter melt on your chips.

I knew butter was important in baking, but I didn't realize until today how carefully it should be treated:

The most common mistakes made by home bakers, professionals say, have to do with the care and handling of one ingredient: butter. Creaming butter correctly, keeping butter doughs cold, and starting with fresh, good-tasting butter are vital details that professionals take for granted, and home bakers often miss.

Butter is basically an emulsion of water in fat, with some dairy solids that help hold them together. But food scientists, chefs and dairy professionals stress butter’s unique and sensitive nature the way helicopter parents dote on a gifted child.

“Butter has that razor melting point,” said Shirley O. Corriher, a food scientist and author of the recently published “BakeWise: The Hows and Whys of Successful Baking” (Scribner).

For mixing and creaming, butter should be about 65 degrees: cold to the touch but warm enough to spread. Just three degrees warmer, at 68 degrees, it begins to melt.

“Once butter is melted, it’s gone,” said Jennifer McLagan, author of the new book “Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, With Recipes” (Ten Speed Press).

Warm butter can be rechilled and refrozen,but once the butterfat gets warm, the emulsion breaks, never to return.

More, with cookie recipes, at the NYT Dining section.

We saw a production of David Sedaris's Santaland Diaries at the Bathhouse Theater tonight. Funny stuff.

Afterwards, we walked over to the Greenlake Bluwater Restaurant to get a spot of dinner. We both ordered Tuscan White Bean soup for a starter, Emma had the Turkey Pot Pie, and mine was the Fettucine.

The soup was fine and my fettucine was okay. Emma's pot pie had problems. The potatoes were raw and it had a funny lemony aftertaste. She pushed the plate away and waited for the waitress to come by. The waitress apologized and brought Emma the menu. Emma opted for the meatloaf, since that would come quickly. The manager apologized and offered us a free dessert.

The meatloaf arrived promptly and Emma was happy with it for a while. Then she got into the center and it was all but raw. At this point, she gave up on the grounds that it wasn't her night. The manager came over to apologize again and told us there would be no charge for the meal.

We left a tip—the service was attentive—but I don't think we'll be back. We've never had a really good meal at any of their restaurants, and none of them are particularly convenient for us.

There's little that I miss about Irish cooking. One notable exception is Brown Bread aka Brown Soda Bread. I don't know of any bakery that makes it in the States, though I've found it at a couple of Irish pubs. The main difficulty in making it is finding the coarse-ground wholemeal flour. The usual fine-ground stuff has the wrong texture.

I know of only one place in the Seattle area that carries the right flour and that's The Grainery, 13629 1st Ave S, Burien, WA 98168; (206) 244-5015. I bought some flour there today, made a loaf, and brought the loaf and a 10lb bag of flour to an Irish friend's birthday party.

This recipe is adapted from Best of Irish Home Baking by Biddy White Lennon. The quantities shown here make a 6" loaf.

Called a ‘cake’ in many homes and just brown bread in others, this is the national loaf. It is made with varying amounts of wholemeal and plain white flour and (depending on the mood of the cook) small amounts of extra ingredients like wheat germ, wheat bran, oatmeal, or various seeds. Sometimes a small amount of butter, or even an egg, is added and occasionally, a little treacle/molasses. The exact amount of buttermilk needed depends on the flour and the weather–I mean it!

Pre-heat the oven to 200C/400F/Gas 6. The reaction of bicarbonate of soda [baking soda] and buttermilk is swift and the duration of their interaction short—speed is of the essence.

Mix the flours, salt and soda in a mixing bowl. Add only enough buttermilk to make a soft dough. [The original recipe calls for one scant cup of buttermilk; I always need more than a cup to absorb the flour.] Flour your hands and the work surface and knead lightly (by hand, never with a machine) until the dough is smooth. It is important to understand that this is quite unlike making a yeast-risen dough. Shape into a circle about 4cm/1½ inches deep. Take a sharp, well-floured knife and cut a deep cross in the top. Place on a baking sheet and bake for 40–45 minutes.

To see if it is fully cooked test by tapping the bottom and listening for a hollow sound. Cool on a rack or, if you like a soft crust, wrapped in a linen or cotton tea-cloth. Eat the same day.

[Best eaten with butter or jam. Great when toasted too.]

Variations

A slightly more open texture may be achieved by adding two heaped tablespoons of wheat or oat bran and enough extra liquid to absorb the bran (about 60 ml/2 fl oz/¼ US cup).

Adding grains and seeds

There are probably as many ‘secret’ additions to the basic loaf of soda bread as there are home cooks (and chefs in restaurants who pride themselves on baking bread daily). Pinhead oatmeal and oatflakes are common additions, so too is wheat germ. While sesame seeds and sunflower seeds probably head the list of common additions today, caraway seeds have a long history in Irish baking, particularly in seed cake, sometimes known as Convent Cake probably because it continued to be made in Irish convents long after its popularity waned in ordinary households. Caraway seeds are still, occasionally, added to soda bread as a surprise extra.

Just in case you need some tips for tomorrow's feast.

We're hosting a dinner. My Irish friends, Paul and Maggie, who moved to San Jose at the end of last year, have come up for a few days. It will be their first Thanksgiving together in the States. We'll also be joined by Frank & Lyndol, Raven & Iain, and Peter & Carol.

We're cooking the turkey at high heat, using Barbara Kafka's 500F recipe. The others are bringing everything else. Yum.

Herewith several articles that I've read lately for which I'm not going to write individual posts.

• Bruce Schneier has railed for years against security theater, ostensible security measures that have little real effect, but are performed to be seen as doing something — airline security being the most wretched example. Patrick Smith wrote a good piece on airport security follies at the NYT airline blog. We should all be protesting loudly at this nonsense, but no-one does because of the fear of ending up on a no-fly list.

• Also in the NYT, Harold McGee wrote a particularly interesting article on the hidden ingredient in cooking, heat.

  That’s the basic challenge: We’re often aiming a fire hose of heat at targets that can only absorb a slow trickle, and that will be ruined if they absorb a drop too much. ... No matter how efficient an appliance is, the cook can help simply by covering pots and pans with their lids.

  ... 

  Once a liquid starts to boil and is turning to steam throughout the pot — the bubbles of a boil are bubbles of water vapor — nearly all the energy from the burner is going into steam production. The temperature of the water itself remains steady at the boiling point, no matter how high the flame is underneath it. So turn the burner down. A gentle boil is just as hot as a furious one.

  ... 

  In fact it’s easy to save loads of time and energy and potential discomfort with grains, dry beans and lentils, and even pasta. But it requires a little thinking ahead. It turns out that the most time-consuming part of the process is not the movement of boiling heat to the center of each small bean or noodle, which takes only a few minutes, but the movement of moisture, which can take hours. Grains and dry legumes therefore cook much faster if they have been soaked. However heretical it may sound to soak dried pasta, doing so can cut its cooking time by two-thirds — and eliminates the problem of dry noodles getting stuck to each other as they slide into the pot.

• Obama stump speech strategy of conciliation considered harmful:

  Krugman has a problem with what Obama believes about the relationship between politics and economics. ... The bottom line (says Krugman): Politics drives economics, and not the other way round.

  ... 

  Obama presents himself as post-partisan, but partisan politics are needed. ...  So why on earth would Obama think that “tearing down” the Conservative Movement and “lifting this country up” are opposites? They’re the same! And we need the kind of politics that treats them that way. When the Swift Boat guys smeared Kerry, Kerry should have “torn them down.”

  Obama wants to “reach out,” but that strategy has already been tried. Obama says he wants to “reach out” to Republicans. But Reid and Pelosi “reached out” to Republicans, and that strategy was a miserable failure.

  [Read the rest at corrente.]

  I like Obama and I'll certainly throw my full support behind him, should he win the nomination, but Edwards' unabashed confrontationalism is more to my liking.

• Our military spending ($623 billion) is horrendous: more than the rest of the world put together ($500 billion) and ten times as much as the second biggest spender, China. All the leading candidates, both Republican and Democratic, favor expanding the military.

Last night, I unwittingly bought some habenero peppers when I was shopping for ingredients for Afghan Chicken. They tasted hot, but not too hot, when I nibbled a couple of small pieces. I cut them up with my bare hands. By the time that I was finished, my fingers felt as if they had been burned! As if I had burned them with steam or something. It took several hours for the pain to go away. Fortunately, I didn't rub my eyes or more delicate mucous membranes, while I still had the habenero oils on my skin.

The chicken itself was fine: not too spicy. The cooked-up onion marinade had a definite burn, but adding fresh yogurt kept it manageable for the spice wimps.

I'll pay more attention to what I'm buying in future.

Michael Pollan, in a long article in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine, writes about Nutritionism

In the case of nutritionism [an ideology], the widely shared but unexamined assumption is that the key to understanding food is indeed the nutrient. From this basic premise flow several others. Since nutrients, as compared with foods, are invisible and therefore slightly mysterious, it falls to the scientists (and to the journalists through whom the scientists speak) to explain the hidden reality of foods to us. To enter a world in which you dine on unseen nutrients, you need lots of expert help.

... 

Another potentially serious weakness of nutritionist ideology is that it has trouble discerning qualitative distinctions between foods. So fish, beef and chicken through the nutritionists’ lens become mere delivery systems for varying quantities of fats and proteins and whatever other nutrients are on their scope. Similarly, any qualitative distinctions between processed foods and whole foods disappear when your focus is on quantifying the nutrients they contain (or, more precisely, the known nutrients).

... 

But what about the elephant in the room — the Western diet? It might be useful, in the midst of our deepening confusion about nutrition, to review what we do know about diet and health. What we know is that people who eat the way we do in America today suffer much higher rates of cancer, heart disease, diabetes and obesity than people eating more traditional diets. (Four of the 10 leading killers in America are linked to diet.) Further, we know that simply by moving to America, people from nations with low rates of these “diseases of affluence” will quickly acquire them. Nutritionism by and large takes the Western diet as a given, seeking to moderate its most deleterious effects by isolating the bad nutrients in it — things like fat, sugar, salt — and encouraging the public and the food industry to limit them. But after several decades of nutrient-based health advice, rates of cancer and heart disease in the U.S. have declined only slightly (mortality from heart disease is down since the ’50s, but this is mainly because of improved treatment), and rates of obesity and diabetes have soared.

He concludes with some recommendations:

To medicalize the diet problem is of course perfectly consistent with nutritionism. So what might a more ecological or cultural approach to the problem recommend? How might we plot our escape from nutritionism and, in turn, from the deleterious effects of the modern diet? ... So try these few (flagrantly unscientific) rules of thumb, collected in the course of my nutritional odyssey, and see if they don’t at least point us in the right direction.

1. Eat food. Though in our current state of confusion, this is much easier said than done. So try this: Don’t eat anything your great-great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food. (Sorry, but at this point Moms are as confused as the rest of us, which is why we have to go back a couple of generations, to a time before the advent of modern food products.) There are a great many foodlike items in the supermarket your ancestors wouldn’t recognize as food (Go-Gurt? Breakfast-cereal bars? Nondairy creamer?); stay away from these.

2. Avoid even those food products that come bearing health claims. ...

3. Especially avoid food products containing ingredients that are a) unfamiliar, b) unpronounceable c) more than five in number — or that contain high-fructose corn syrup.None of these characteristics are necessarily harmful in and of themselves, but all of them are reliable markers for foods that have been highly processed.

4. Get out of the supermarket whenever possible. You won’t find any high-fructose corn syrup at the farmer’s market; you also won’t find food harvested long ago and far away. What you will find are fresh whole foods picked at the peak of nutritional quality. Precisely the kind of food your great-great-grandmother would have recognized as food.

5. Pay more, eat less. The American food system has for a century devoted its energies and policies to increasing quantity and reducing price, not to improving quality. There’s no escaping the fact that better food — measured by taste or nutritional quality (which often correspond) — costs more, because it has been grown or raised less intensively and with more care. ...

“Eat less” is the most unwelcome advice of all, but in fact the scientific case for eating a lot less than we currently do is compelling. “Calorie restriction” has repeatedly been shown to slow aging in animals, and many researchers (including Walter Willett, the Harvard epidemiologist) believe it offers the single strongest link between diet and cancer prevention. ... To make the “eat less” message a bit more palatable, consider that quality may have a bearing on quantity: I don’t know about you, but the better the quality of the food I eat, the less of it I need to feel satisfied. All tomatoes are not created equal.

6. Eat mostly plants, especially leaves. Scientists may disagree on what’s so good about plants — the antioxidants? Fiber? Omega-3s? — but they do agree that they’re probably really good for you and certainly can’t hurt. Also, by eating a plant-based diet, you’ll be consuming far fewer calories, since plant foods (except seeds) are typically less “energy dense” than the other things you might eat. Vegetarians are healthier than carnivores, but near vegetarians (“flexitarians”) are as healthy as vegetarians. Thomas Jefferson was on to something when he advised treating meat more as a flavoring than a food.

7. Eat more like the French. Or the Japanese. Or the Italians. Or the Greeks. Confounding factors aside, people who eat according to the rules of a traditional food culture are generally healthier than we are. Any traditional diet will do: if it weren’t a healthy diet, the people who follow it wouldn’t still be around. ... In the case of the French paradox, it may not be the dietary nutrients that keep the French healthy (lots of saturated fat and alcohol?!) so much as the dietary habits: small portions, no seconds or snacking, communal meals — and the serious pleasure taken in eating. (Worrying about diet can’t possibly be good for you.) Let culture be your guide, not science.

8. Cook. And if you can, plant a garden. To take part in the intricate and endlessly interesting processes of providing for our sustenance is the surest way to escape the culture of fast food and the values implicit in it: that food should be cheap and easy; that food is fuel and not communion. ...

9. Eat like an omnivore. Try to add new species, not just new foods, to your diet. The greater the diversity of species you eat, the more likely you are to cover all your nutritional bases. ...

This recipe comes from my mother, who has used it for many years.

Fruit-based Christmas cake is considered a treat in Ireland, not a thing of horror, as so many Americans regard it.

Makes 9" round cake in a 3" tall cake pan.

Note: For the raisins, you can substitute stoned muscat raisins or valentias if you wish. Be careful to only take the stone and leave the flesh. I usually cut them in half as they are big.

Soak all fruit overnight in some whiskey (approx half cup) or brandy. Stir and cover.

Line tin with buttered greaseproof paper (two layers) on sides and bottom. Must be 3" taller than tin. Put brown paper around outside to prevent burning: prevents base being burned.

Cream butter and sugar very well: about 10 mins in a beater. Whip eggs together and sieve flour. Gradually add eggs slowly and alternate with some flour (it might be better to do this by hand to prevent curdling). Add rest of dry ingredients. Lastly add soaked fruit. Stir and pour into lined tin.

Before putting into oven, make a 3" wide scoop in centre of top; glaze cake with some milk to prevent cracking. Cake takes approx four hours to cook. If getting too brown, put some paper on top for last half hour. Don't open oven before that.

Cook on 2nd shelf from the bottom. My oven in Dublin I cook at 300F for 1 1/2 hours and reduce to 250F for 2 1/2 hours.

While still warm, pierce top several times and pour in a little whiskey. Leave in tin overnight.

The cake may be made several months ahead of time. Keep in an airtight container. Every few weeks, drizzle a little whiskey on it to keep it moist.

In mid-December, the cake should be covered with a layer of marzipan icing. It should then be decorated with a layer of royal icing.

Update: 2008/03/31: Emma posted several blog posts about the Christmas Cake that I made in 2007: making the cake, making marzipan, and icing the cake.

Some recipes from the back of a bag of Trader Joe's Southern Greens Blend (Mustard Greens, Turnip Greens, Spinach, and Collard Greens).

Simple Greens -- Serves 4

Saute garlic and onion in olive oil in a pot large enough to hold greens. Add vegetable broth and tomato juice. Bring to a boil.

Add greens and seasonings. Cover and cook over low heat for 35 minutes or until tender. Sprinkle with parmesan cheese and serve.

Mediterranean Greens -- Serves 3-4

(Note: The original recipe called for half a cup of each of the three types of olives, which we found overpowering. I've halved the quantities to one-quarter cup each.)

Combine olives, sun-dried tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, and pepper in a large pre-heated skillet. Cook over high heat for 6-8 minutes, until boiling. Blend in roma tomatoes and heat 2 more minutes. Add greens and broth and continue to cook for 25-30 more minutes. Stir in pine nuts and salt to taste. Serve at once as an accompaniment or spoon over pasta and serve as a main course.

Louisiana Style Greens & Sausage -- Serves 3-4

Over medium heat, cook onions in olive oil until soft in a 4 quart pot. Add the sausages, greens, and chicken broth, stirring to blend all ingredients. Simmer gently over low heat for about 35 minutes or until greens are tender. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

I found this recipe for dressing on the back of a bag of cole slaw.

Mix sugar, ground celery seed, and milk into mayonnaise. Add cider vinegar and whisk until smooth. Add to cole slaw.

One of my favorite shows is back on the TiVo. Barbecue University is Steven Raichlen's show about all kinds of grilling and barbecue techniques and recipes.

I love this recipe for Afghan Game Hens, although I always substitute chicken(s) for the game hens. This recipe convinced me to buy a rotisserie. It's been a huge hit whenever I've served it up. It's not the easiest meal to prepare, so I don't do it often. Note: I cook the marinaded onions in a pan and serve them with the chicken. Yum!

Beer Can Chicken, on the other hand, is very easy. It also works well in the oven. Last year, I found a stand which holds the beer can; it's far more stable than propping the chicken just on the can and the leg tips.

I made this recipe for Thanksgiving. It was a big hit.

Mustard-Mushroom Soup recipe from CDKitchen.com:

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup butter

• 2 pounds mushrooms, thinly sliced

• 4 cups chicken stock (preferably homemade)

• 1/2 cup dry Sherry

• 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

• Salt and freshly ground pepper

• 1 cup whipping cream

Directions

Melt butter in heavy large saucepan over medium-high heat and cook until lightly browned. Add mushrooms and cook until liquid evaporates, stirring frequently, about 10 minutes. Add stock, Sherry and mustard and simmer briskly 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Add cream and warm through. Serve immediately.