Assembled in the USA from 100% Chinese parts.

R.F. O'Sullivan & Son
282 Beacon St, Somerville, MA 02143
http://www.rfosullivans.com/
Phone:(617) 491-9638

Open daily · 11:00 am – 1:00 am
Kitchen closes at 10:30 p.m.

#nationalburgerday #internationalburgerday

Today is Lantern Festival (元宵节).

In Hong Kong and Taiwan, Google has a Doodle for it:


Traditionally one celebrates the day by, among other things, eating tangyuan (汤圆), also called yuanxiao (元宵). I always liked them but often burned my mouth when I was a kid because I couldn't wait for them to cool down.

Perhaps I'll try and find some today. And try wait long enough not to scald my mouth. :)

(Google has a number of doodles today. In some countries, the doodle is for Momofuku Ando, founder of Nissin Food Products and inventor of the instant noodle.

In other countries, it is for Gerardus Mercador, inventor of the cartographic projection which bears his name, and the man who coined the term "atlas" for a collection of maps.)

I'm getting all sorts of reminders that today, the 27th of February, is National Milk Tart Day. (I have a lot of South African sites on my feed.) Here are two links to recipes for melktert, or milk tart, a custard-based tart with a shortbread crust:

http://capemalaycooking.me/2014/02/27/national-milk-tart-day/

http://www.jacarandafm.com/post/happy-national-milk-tart-day/



Looks tasty! I think I need to try making this.

I missed this when it came out last summer, but C.A. Pinkham gets quite a rant on about artisanal toast:

You've got to be shitting me. Artisanal Toast? "Artisanal" goddamn TOAST is a trend now. There's officially no reason to try to save our species. Let's just send the Earth crashing into the sun and be done with it.

...

The most rage-inducing part about Artisanal ferretbuggering Toast has to be the price: The Mill sells theirs for $4 a slice, and I think a blood vessel just popped in my brain. Apparently, there are places in LA and New York which sell pieces of toasted fucking bread with ricotta and jam on them for upwards of $7. Like you do for toast.

...

This is a step too far, Hipsters. This is a step too goddamn far.

Also, “Artisinal Kool-Aid” is on a page referenced in comments.

Also this:

ETA: Yes, guys. I'm now aware that there was an NPR/This American Life/other media outlet story about the lady who invented Artisanal Toast, and that it was inspirational and uplifting and incredible and that it brings unicorns back to life and travels through time to go kill Hitler. You can stop linking me to it now, please.

---

Finally, I found this from Hannah Goldfield in The New Yorker:

In the case of artisanal toast, the backlash seems directed more at the societal phenomenon it evinces than at the food itself. Who doesn’t like toast? The economic and moral objections to it could be used against many of the things we consume in restaurants—coffee, for instance—and Clement admits that the toast she sampled at Tallulah’s, a café in Seattle’s Capitol Hill, was excellent. Artisanal toast is hardly the first harbinger of our food obsession, or even necessarily the most egregious, but it’s become a scapegoat for a growing, broader cultural backlash; the toast that broke the camel’s back.

It irritates me that it's so much harder to find single-serving packages of full-fat yogurt in American supermarkets than in many other countries.

Making steel-cut oats in the rice cooker is a little less fire-and-forget than steaming corn on the cob. I think it's because the cooker only has two settings: "cook" and "warm". "Cook" results in a merry rolling boil in the steam heater, while "warm" simply keeps the food warm.

"Cook" seems a little too high for steel-cut oats and in any case doesn't last very long, whereas "warm" seems like it would never cook the oats at all.

I ran the cooker through a couple of cycles in "cook" and feel the consistency of the oats is a little less smooth and creamy than I get from my overnight crock-pot recipe. The crock-pot recipe produces excellent results. And having to run the cooker repeatedly, adding water to the steam heater (not the oats) each time, is more attention-intensive than using the crock-pot, which really is a "set it up and leave it alone for six hours" kind of process.

Both the rice cooker method and the crock-pot method result in pots with some pretty seriously stuck-on oats.

More experimentation is required, I think.

I'm really sold on this whole pan-frying with cast-iron business.

Mmmm...lamb chops...

This just in from Chocolats Favoris:

Vous avez GAGNÉ! Et oui, notre célèbre saveur surprise "Caramel Fleur de Sel" est là pour rester. Elle deviendra une saveur permanente et sera donc disponible pour la crème glacée lors de l'ouverture des glaceries le 25 avril prochain! Deux nouvelles saveurs surprises seront disponibles sous peu... vous devinez? Partagez la bonne nouvelle si vous êtes contents. :)

As far as I'm concerned, it's all well and good that "Caramel Fleur de Sel" is becoming a permanent flavor, but the real news is that their ice creamery will be starting up for the season on the 25th of April.

Quebec road trip!

I visited the Hophouse/Kimchi as part of my continuing attempt to visit Asian neighborhoods in world cities. Dublin's Asian community is small, but the neighborhood along Parnell Street was mere blocks from where I was staying, so it was an easy walk. Hop House/Kimchi Restaurant turned out to be a reasonable choice for dinner.


Hophouse/Kimchi
160-161 Parnell Street
Dublin 1, Ireland
Tel: +353.01.872.8318 / +353.01.872.8536
http://www.hophouse.ie/

Mo-Th: 12:00 - 23:00
Fr, Sa: 12:00 - 23:30
Su: 12:00 - 22:30

Dublin Bus 40b, 40d, 120: Parnell Street, Gate Hotel (Stop 6004)
Dublin Bus 40b, 40d: Parnell Street, Marlborough Street (Stop 6071)
Dublin Bus 4, 7, 7d, 8, 40b, 40d, 120: O'Connell St, Parnell Street (Stop 4725)
Dublin Bus 1, 38, 38a, 38b, 44: Parnell Square, Gate Theatre (Stop 265)

It's really not hard for me to work out the exact day I last ate at the Kimchi restaurant. The Hop House was full of cheering fans watching a football game. To be precise, it was full of fans watching the Brazil-South Korea Olympic semifinal. That means I was there on 7 August 2012, starting sometime after 19:45, as the game was already on when I sat down.

Service was as a result more distracted than usual, both from the game itself, which could be heard from the adjoining Hop House pub, and because the staff were busy keeping up with all the orders from the fans. The Hop House and Kimchi Restaurant are really one big room with a wall partially dividing them. Normally, I'm pretty sure the place isn't particularly noisy but this night was special. I think a good chunk of the Korean community in Dublin was watching the game here.

South Korea went on to lose 0-3 to Brazil, which in many ways constitutes a kind of victory. They later beat Japan in the consolation round to win the Olympic bronze medal.


Aside from the distraction the service was actually quite good. As was the food. I had bulgogi (€12.90), which the menu says is their signature dish. There wasn't a grille at the table but it was fine nonetheless. It came with the usual pickled side dishes and rice. I also had a half from the bar but I can't remember which beer except that it was Irish, not Korean.

All in all, a fine choice if you're in Dublin and you want Korean food. It's not Seoul, or even Koreatown, but for where it is it's an entirely credible choice.