Diancecht

oatmeal with raisins, walnuts, unsalted butter, salt, cinnamon, milk, date molasses, and rosewater

sunday minestrone. green salad with champignon mushrooms, shallot vinaigrette. macedonia di frutta for dessert.

saturday chicken braised in wine, with leeks, mushrooms, and cream; green salad, shallot vinaigrette; roasted potatoes. strawberry in red wine for dessert.

it’s too bad this was an april fool’s joke

we bought some lamb shanks from guerra’s quality meats. they’ll be roasted for a few hours and served with potatoes and horta. the latter, this time, will be beet greens and spinach. hubby is visiting my father-in-law next week (who you may recall is in assisted living in new jersey). i said “we’ll see you in a few months” … so i have been following your adventures in the “places to be curious about” thread with great interest 😉 because we’ll follow that visit with a trip to nyc.

technically this was brunch yesterday pernil with black beans, rice, salad, fried plantains at boogaloos (3296 22nd (valencia)) hubby had an omelette and a friend had eggs benny.

pasta with scallops and asparagus

these scallops cost twice the ones i paid earlier at the sf ferry building farmer’s market

we visited a fine foods eatery in parkside

looks like this topic struck a nerve on reddit a while back

vegetable plate: hummus, babaghanoush, armenian potato salad, tabbouleh, pickled vegetables, greens, with feta cheese and green shatta unsweetened iced tea

it’s been a long while since i went out as a solo diner, but i’ve never felt any of the stigma being discussed in the article. maybe i’m the odd one out. 🤷🏻

hmmm “I love the romantic ideal of going into a restaurant and sitting at the bar and striking up a conversation with a bartender,” he said. “But oftentimes in practice, I am just consumed with anxiety” about standing out. This is part of the paradox of solo dining. Even as Americans are spending more time on their own, many find eating out alone to be rife with awkwardness and judgment. And many restaurateurs, who already run their businesses on thin profit margins, worry that tables for one will cost them.

one potato, two potato Bar Contra in the Lower East Side introduced a potato ice cream sundae to its menu shortly after it opened last summer (or reopened, after the original Contra closed). Here, workhorse Kennebec potatoes are transformed into a silken ice cream and, as of the latest iteration, topped with foamy sabayon and blackberry. The ice cream didn’t have much flavor beyond vanilla, but bits of fried shoestring potatoes were like clandestine French fries in my ice cream, that cheffy favorite salty-sweet, high-low combination.

Last year, the London culinary institution St. John, run by the chef Fergus Henderson and known for its nose-to-tail British cooking, celebrated its 30th anniversary. Now the younger chefs who’ve passed through its kitchen and that of the similarly influential Rochelle Canteen, founded in 2004 by the chef Margot Henderson, Fergus’s wife, have begun to open their own restaurants, offering fresh takes on the canon. “Everyone criticized [us] because our food was so brown,” says Margot, 60, of the response to her and Fergus’s early dishes. “But we love brown food. It’s about letting it be.” She’s become known for remastering English standards like boiled ham with parsley sauce and Lancashire hot pot, a stew of lamb, potatoes and onion. “British food is gentle and so simply [made],” she says. But “simple is not easy.” is british food still a joke?

pasta with cabbage, bacon, and mushrooms

shrimp scampi, served with horta (braised greens (chard, cilantro) with lemon and olive oil)

trout, stuffed with flat-leaf parsley and lemon slices, seasoned with salt, then baked atop sliced potatoes and onions (which were seasoned with olive oil, salt, and pepper). the fish was baked for 35 minutes at 350 f/175 c. broccolini with lemon.

minestrone, served with sourdough bread and irish butter

meatballs with tomato sauce; green beans with onion, herbs, and lemon. i overestimated the amount of fresh breadcrumbs i would need for the polpette. oops.

fried egg bagel sandwich with arugula, red onion, chile crisp, aioli. mint tea with milk.

the larger restaurant space coming soon sounds more enticing. i read that review and immediately thought of “the reincarnation of momofuku ko”

The chefs pack so many smart ideas into even the simplest of dishes. Chicken bouillon powder was whisked into the sauce of the eggs mayo for a savory burst. Chewy, marshmallowy chunks of toasted Pavlova were hidden, like Easter eggs, in the orange-lemon sorbet. Even the bread was its own revelation — baguettes from the French bistro Balthazar warmed in the combination oven, which steams and softens the interior while giving the crust extra crackle. Not a single dish played it safe. The black pudding’s rich, meaty essence was enlivened with pickled kumquats, Thai chilies and a base of puff pastry as delicate as tissue paper. That classic French standby, crème caramel, had a bitter avalanche of coffee granita sliding down the wobbly custard. click

probably my new favorite way to eat oatmeal: with milk, butter, salt, date molasses, rosewater, cinnamon, and chopped nuts or dried fruit, or both. today was a sprinkle of pine nuts.

bialys with cream cheese, lox, and cucumber, tomato, and onion and some salads from mollie stone’s