A weekend of beef

Saturday Lunch:

Pineapple teri burge at St John's. They really do have the best burgers in town.

Saturday Evening:

Lots and lots of kalbi at Palace BBQ Buffet. I'm impressed by Gene's technique to process as many ribs as possible in the most efficient way on a tiny grill. The law of diminishing returns sets in after a bout 10 of these.

Sunday Evening:

New England boiled dinner. Who can't like corned beef? It's soooo good. It is a good thing it takes so long to cook, or else I'd eat it all the time. This is the only time all year I ever eat cabbage.

Time to slow down and eat some other animals.

Ugly Vegetables

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Could you eat ugly vegetables or are you so acclimated to eating the biggest, most perfect looking veggies? BBC recently talked about some excessive restrictions on vegetable appearance that is creating a stir in Europe. I'm very proud of this article because it uses the term "wonky" in its title and that is deliciously British. I do like deliciously British things.

There are only beautiful people on TV, so why can't we only eat beautiful veggies? There are children's books about ugly vegetables to teach diversity lessons. There are even ugly veggie competitions.

This is such a good chance to go into a moral rant that I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader. Just try not to think about your prejudices against 3 pronged carrots and curved cucumbers and how that makes you a heartless person as they are sent off to the juicer instead of your salad plate.

Uni: Sea Urchin Sushi

I remember growing up and going down to Natural Bridges State Park to go tidepooling. One of the most common things you'd see there were sea urchins.


I'm not an expert of culinary sciences, but as a kid I never really wanted to pick one of those up (for fear of impaling myself) and eat it. It just doesn't look good.

For my birthday, I went out to an excellent local sushi restaurant and ate the sushified version of sea urchin or uni. For what its worth, most online references to uni say that "sea urchin sushi uses the gonads of the sea urchin". I'd image that in this context, the word "gonads" means "tastiest part" instead of any of its usual meaninges. It looked something like the image below which is more or less a yellow tongue.


Because it was my birthday, I tried it. When you eat these guys, the tongue texture dissolves in your mouth and it gives way to a fatty paste of sea urchin deliciousness. It has a very strong taste that I've heard described as "buttery" but I"m pretty sure that isn't the word. I've also seen it written as "sweet", but I can't quite put that word on it as well. I keep thinking it is something like raw egg yolk.

I know a lot of sushi eaters can't stand uni, but if you get the chance you have to try it because the taste can be best summed up as "one of a kind".

Nothing better than a Sunday roast

When I was traveling in Britain, I remember one of the hosts I had asking me if Americans did "Sunday roasts" to bring in a new week with a big chunk of slowly cooked meat. One can make a good argument that British cooking is bland, but one thing they do well is roast different sorts of animals.

I love doing roasts. A couple of my favorite things to do is take a chuck roast, surround it with tomatoes and mushrooms and put it in the oven for a few hours. I also like making tri-tip roasts with my special teriyaki sauce. Today, I took the easy way out and bought a pre-marinated turkey breast roast and it was quite good.

The great thing about roasting is it takes a long time, which forces you to not rush though dinner. It becomes an experience instead of an event. You spend hours smelling your roast which prepares you quite well to eat it.

Sundays are great because you can watch football while your meal cooks. In general, Sundays tend to be some of my most relaxing days which makes them perfect for roasting.