(no subject)

[oyceter]

Wow, I feel like it's been a while since I wrote up a food post.

Food highlights of last week include meeting up with cofax7, laurashapiro and other people not on LJ, watching Buffy S7 (alas, the beginning of the long slogging part). Everyone brought food, mostly lots and lots of cheese and bread (yay!). One person made a Moroccan pie with filo dough and butter and chicken and spices and OMG it was so good except I don't remember the name of it. But it was tasty! And I brought over heirlooms (I cannot believe there are still heirlooms at the market), bread, praline spread, and jonquil's marvelous raspberry jam, which everyone agreed was quite divine.

At work, I discovered the joys of Hershey's Special Dark Truffles, which while not being fancy and Swiss are still very good. I also discovered that eating approximately five in a row makes me slightly sick to the stomach. On the other hand, this didn't prevent me from doing the exact same thing the next day. Truffles trump learning curve?

Today, I went to a little sushi/izakaya place with excellent sushi and izakaya food (rachelmanija, I will take you there next time you are in the area! You will like it!), in which I had kabocha croquettes, yaki onigiri, assorted sushi, roasted gingko nuts still in cracked and salted shells (really good), kimchi tofu soup, and something called age mochi. It's basically agedashi tofu, except with sticky rice instead of the tofu, and it's hot and flavorful and sticky and chewy and so good! I was quite happy.

Unfortunately, I seem to be getting sick (again), so my nose isn't working so well. Otherwise, I would probably be raving about the food even more than I am now.

Comments

[oursin.livejournal.com]

From my reading of Claudia Roden, I think that Moroccan thing is called bistilla or pastilla (depending on who is doing the transliteration), and I'm v envious, because it sounds delicious and I've never had it, North African restaurants in London seeming to rely heavily on couscous as their signature dish. (On which subject, Woes! the Algerian restaurant near here, which had been going for nearly 30 years, has gone, cry Woes! Woes!)

[oyceter]

Yes, I think that's it! It was so good!!!

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

Heh, I've had salted roasted gingko nuts but they were not to my taste. But the other stuff sounds very good. Especially the Moroccan pie. I adore Middle Eastern foods.

[oyceter]

I'm strangely fond of gingko nuts, despite the sort of odd flavor. The Moroccan pie was so excellent.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Yesterday I went to Hollywood to visit Amoeba and buy Supernatural DVDs cheap, and sat down at Sanamluang Cafe for a quite late lunch. The waitress, who remembers me well even though it's been three years since I lived in the neighborhood and went there regularly, reminded me that I had the barbecued pork (ie, Chinese sausage, deep-fried belly pork, and cha siu-style sliced pork) over rice last time (like, three months ago!), and would I like that again?

I was about to say yes when I noticed, at the next table, a plate of rice and deep-fried pork and Chinese broccoli with a supremely delicious-looking fried egg on top, with the edges all golden and bubbled-crisp, as restaurants can do (probably because they have a deep-fryer) but I can't. I ordered that.

The egg was indeed crisp around the edges with the deep orange yolk perfectly liquid, so it could spill into the rice and pork and broccoli, all of which was moistened with a garlicky soy sauce and a touch of vinegar. It was exactly as good as it looked.

[oyceter]

Mmmmmm! I love the fried egg on rice thing!

I need to forward your itinerary to my mom, am so looking forward to the trip ^_^.

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

The Moroccan pie is called b'stilla. I finished off the last of it this week. P. can cook!

So glad you made it. It was great to meet you in person.

Sorry to hear you're unwell. ): At least you have truffles to comfort you.

[oyceter]

P. is an excellent cook!

It was really great seeing everyone as well!

[hysteriachan.livejournal.com]

Mmmm, food post. (I'm about to finally eat something, so I'm more susceptible than usual to your foodie wiles. ^_^)

Good luck fighting off the attempted-sick! *sympathies*

[oyceter]

Hee, I have foodie wiles!

The sick just keeps sort of lingering and not quite getting worse and not quite going away.

[umadoshi.livejournal.com]

Indeed you do. ^_^

But blah to the vague ongoing sick. -_-

BTW, I keep meaning to ask whether you've given Kokumono a try--it seems like something you might like.

[oyceter]

I haven't! Is that the one that you and kagedreams and co. are working on? What's it about?

[umadoshi.livejournal.com]

It is! (Well, one of 'em, now. ^^) We started working on it partway through the run, so we've been going back and filling in earlier episodes as we continue doing new ones, but we've *almost* got all of the older material done. I just greenlit episode 6, and that and ep. 7 will fill in the hole. (It's up to 27 eps. so far, and the other one we're working on right now is 21.)

Anyway, let me see . . . I'm notoriously bad at summaries. *laughs* It's set in a fictional country called Saiunkoku, which went through a bad period of fighting for the throne and ended up with a fairly young emperor who shows no interest whatsoever in actually ruling. His advisors are in despair over the fate of the country with this foolish emperor in charge, so one of them basically bribes drafts the main character, Shuurei, to come to the palace and make him shape up--which, since women aren't given positions of authority, means bringing her in as a concubine.

Shuurei is from a noble family that's fallen on pretty hard times, and she's very intelligent; she teaches kids at the local temple and works odd jobs with the family retainer to keep food on the table, that kind of thing. And she *hates* being poor, so she accepts the advisors' offer. (Her seiyuu plays her as occasionally shrill in the first ep. or so, but thankfully the performance calms down quickly. O_o)

All of that's just the initial set-up. (*laughs* No one will ever claim I write short summaries. ^^) The story goes some really interesting places, and has some pretty awesome characters; it gets political, but the characters themselves are always the focus. It's also got supernatural elements, but they're incredibly downplayed. Whole storylines go by when I forget about them. ^^ It's based on a series of novels, and there's a lot left to happen (although I'm unspoiled past where we are in the work, so I don't know what that might be).

[oyceter]

Oh, that sounds interesting! Hrm... may have to ahem this one, after I get through Ouran.

[umadoshi.livejournal.com]

^_^ Yay! We're working hard on this one, so it's extra-cool when people I know check it out.

The work I (well, all three of us ^^) do for Shadow is a series of editing/smoothing passes on her translation, with very minimal changes. This is kinda interesting to me because I've started thinking more in terms of adaptation, which is definitely not what I'm doing here; it's fun comparing what I'm doing with what I'd do if I were making more significant changes. Even if it's only in my head, I like the exercise. [/tangent]

[gwyneira.livejournal.com]

Moroccan pie with filo dough and butter and chicken and spices

Mmm, chicken bastilla. I need to learn how to make that -- I've had it a couple of times and loved it.

[oyceter]

It looked a little complicated to make, but I suspect that's because of the filo dough. So good though!