Writing With My Mouth Full

Where to Eat in Raleigh, North Carolina: Poole’s Diner

Among the things in my list of to-dos is to visit an American city Iâ€™ve never been to before. Sadly, thereâ€™s a lot on that list, so I at least wanted to check two off in 2010. For my first effort, I recruited Lily to join me in my weekend shenanigan after an eat-and-bitch session about not seeing enough of our friends because theyâ€™re all in different places in their lives. (Read: babies) We ended up in Raleigh, North Carolina because the flight was within our budget and it had an outdoor museum I wanted to check out, plus a downtown with up and coming dining places.

Before I left New York, I had emailed the food editors of New Raleigh for their restaurant recommendations. When two of them suggested Poole’s Diner, I knew I shouldn’t miss it. The â€œdinerâ€ in the name did not deter me. If thatâ€™s what it’s like in places outside New York, Iâ€™ll still give it a chance. We had already decided to eat brunch at Poole’s but decided to pop-in after an oyster and mussel dinner the same night. I wanted a palate cleanser that wasn’t going to make me feel stuffed, but “mixed greens with your choice of dressing” didn’t really sound so good at the raw bar. We took the free R-line downtown and walked to Pooleâ€™s in the hopes that they would have better salad options even though it was getting close to 11pm.

At Poole’s, I read lettuce with shaved Parmigiano and vinaigrette on their blackboard and I told Lily that that was exactly what I wanted to finish off with. I was immediately intrigued by the dinner menu that consisted of braised pork shoulder and ricotta gnocchi (for that end of the month Italian superstition, of course), complemented by appetizers using the ingredients we saw at the NC State Farmers’ Market earlier. Sprite melon was a cocktail with Stoli and Contreau and corn was a velouté as a starter. I wanted it to be the next morning already so we can eat a complete meal! Lily indulged with a coconut tart and a Jamaican red bush hot tea before we called it a night.

After we checked out of our hotel the next morning, we parked our rental right in front and waited for Poole’s to open for brunch. We sat at the bar and watched as the restaurant filled up by 11:30am. By the time we started eating, there were already several couples waiting to be seated. The maître d’ from the night before recognized us, and so did our waitress, which then prompted a conversation about how we ended up choosing Raleigh as a place to visit. The bartender was told and so was the chef, Ashley Christensen. When there was a quick lull in the kitchen, she came out to say hi and introduced herself to us and we quickly talked about the New York City food scene. It turned out that she had just come from the Spotted Pig and is prepping for a partnership dinner and wine tasting with El Quinto Pinto. Learning about her work with two of my favorite restaurants in New York confirmed my suspicion about Raleighâ€”it will be the next city to explode in the dining scene.

My roasted beets came with a buttermilk blue cheese dressing on the side. I barely touched it because the mesclun was dressed perfectly with a balsamic-based vinaigrette. Lily’s zucchini frites were so lightly fried that the roasted tomato gravy didn’t seem so thick at all. Pickled green tomatoes were a surprising crunchy touch. (Noted to add to my repertoire.) My carpaccio of salmon served with avocado was brilliantly executed. I wouldnâ€™t have opted for salmon if I didnâ€™t immediately trust that the kitchen will represent it pretty well. A mango vinaigrette added a touch of sweetness, while slivers of Poblano peppers gave the dish a much-needed kick. It was easily one of the best brunch dishes I’ve had in a while and I’m not even a fan of salmon or avocados. The Bloody Mary was well done as soon as the bartender was legally permitted to serve it at noon and that made us request for the mac and cheese to-go which we ravenously enjoyed after we passed through airport security.

Pooleâ€™s Diner is at 426 South McDowell Street in Raleigh, North Carolina. No reservations are necessary for brunch, but there could be a wait. Call 919/832.4477 for upcoming dinner events and ask about the documentary they are working on about the Raleigh food scene.

Panini of Hot Salami, Brie and Cornichon

I wish I came up with this sandwich recipe because it’s truly the most complicated-tasting sandwich I’ve had in a very long time. I think a sandwich is never enough for a meal during the day, but this Salume-inspired panini put together all my favorite tastes and textures in my mouth in one seating. I remember eating this for the first time and wondering why I paid $10 for it, but also rolling my eyes back after the first bite. There’s that soft brie that’s even better when melted; the hot and spicy salami for that depth and chewiness and then the sourness and crunchiness of the cornichons all held up by sturdy whole wheat bread. It’s not exactly the $10 Tropea sandwich that I love ordering from Salume here in New York City, but I think it’s a pretty close adaptation considering I spent $20 to make four of them in one week for both the beach and for lunch.

I bought the hot salami from Di Palo’s–just ask for one of the hanging saawsages from their ceiling and have them slice it so you don’t have to worry about the thinness of each piece. The Vermont brie was from my Holton Farms CSA and the whole wheat panini bread was from Whole Foods. I highly recommend good quality cornichons here because you definitely don’t want to miss out on the crunch. Add a jig of Tabasco sauce for extra spice and you’re good to go to spend the last few weekends of the summer on the beach.

I used my trustworthy iron grill press here, but if you don’t have one, pressing on it using a heavy lid that’s smaller than the skillet will do. Otherwise, find a small, clean brick and wrap it with foil for a do-it-yourself sandwich press.

Ingredients:
a couple slices of Brie, rind removed
8 pieces of hot salami, thinly sliced
6 pieces of cornichons, halved
Tabasco sauce
1 whole wheat panini bread, halved
a small knob of butter

1. Assemble your sandwich. On one half of the panini, lay out the Brie evenly. Top with the salami and then the cornichons. If you want it extra spicy, add a few jigs of Tabasco sauce. Cover with the other half of the panini.
2. Melt half of the butter in a large skillet and heat the panini. Press with an iron grill press. After about two minutes, turn the sandwich gently with a spatula, making sure the cornichons do not spill out. Add the rest of the butter and distribute it around the sandwich while it melts. Press again for another minute and remove to a chopping block. Let it rest before slicing in two and serving.

Robataya

231 East 9th Street between Second and Third Avenues
212/979.9674
$135 for two, with a drink, without tip
♥ ♥

Clair and I didn’t have reservations at Robataya when we walked in so we missed out on the whole scene up front where you point at the produce you like and the robed guys sitting on their shins grill them for you. We ended up sitting in the back with all of the Japanese salarymen where we enjoyed our food sans the show.

I haven’t flinched at a bill in a very long time and boy, did I flinch when I got this one. We ate well, but things added up quickly that we lost track of all the $11 grilled unis sliding down our throats. A six-piece sashimi dish of tuna, salmon and sea urchin was $35. Grilled vegetables of okra, enoki mushrooms and shishito peppers ranged from $5 to $8 per plate. The kamameshi, or rice cooked in an earthenware pot, included small fish with black dots as eyes served two and cost $15. Two pieces of Aussie Kobe beef fillets cost $9.

Everything was delicious and the service was warm and attentive, but man, did it have to cost that much?

Related post/s:
Inakaya is also a robatayaki

Hiking Kilimanjaro Day 5: Barafu Hut to Uhuru Peak to Mweka Camp

I just summitted Kilimanjaro. I just summitted Kilimanjaro. I just summitted Kilimanjaro.

I still can’t believe we did it! After five days of hiking from camp to camp we finally made it to Uhuru Peak, the top of Kibo and the highest point in all of Africa at 19,340 feet.

Around 11pm, I heard Peter M call my name right outside my tent. It wasn’t hard to wake up because I spent a sleepless and an uncomfortable night. Barafu was our highest and coldest camp yet. I met Scott and Christopher in the mess tent where we had our usual first meal of hot tea and coffee–it was both too late and too early to be eating porridge. After the porters handed us our water supply for the eight-hour summit, we suited up and started our walk out of Barafu Hut and into pure darkness.

I don’t think I realized at the time what eight hours of hiking in the dark could and would feel like. I felt that I was just along for the ride. After only four hours of sleep, I felt groggy as soon as I started to hear the crunch of gravel under my boots. Unable to see anything except what was being illuminated in front of us by our head lamps, there was nothing to keep us entertained; nothing to keep our minds off the robotic process of climbing Kibo in the middle of the night.

Crunch, crunch, crunch.

It was cold but I don’t remember freezing. I had thick snowboard gloves on over my usual winter gloves. I had a borrowed ski jacket (I stupidly forgot to pack mine!) on top of five layers of winter garb; four layers of pants helped my knees from feeling cold and two pairs of socks supported my feet without being too uncomfortable.

I don’t remember freezing maybe because I was literally sleepwalking the rest of the way. Godibless led the line and he kept turning around to give me a slight push on my shoulder to wake me up. Cia, no sleeping. Cia,don’t sleep. I asked if we could stop and rest several times so I may nod off, but Godibless stopped granting my request after the second one. I turned around a few times too to see if Samuel and the boys were still behind me. I barely heard a peep from them and I began to wonder if I was the only one having difficulty staying awake.

I also don’t remember feeling any pain because of the high altitude. I was just numb. As we gained a total of 4,140 feet, I started hallucinating. In my field of vision, I would see a pair of walking poles leaning against the boulders we were skirting around. I expected to see another group resting in front of us whenever I would look up from the poles, but no one was ever there. This happened twice until I finally realized that there was never anything in front of me except rocks. I started to talk to myself to stay awake and aware of my real surroundings. The funny thing is that I knew enough not to say anything to Samuel or Godibless lest they send me back down because I was going crazy.

Crunch, crunch, crunch.

The sun started to rise on our way to Stella Point which was named after the wife of Kingsley Latham, the South African king, who could only make it this far of the hike in 1925. All of a sudden, everything around us was orange and violet and everything in me was awaken. To my dismay, we still had at least 45 minutes until the summit. I felt like I just couldn’t walk anymore. I needed to lie down, rest and sleep.

We started to see the glaciers people have been talking about all these years. Samuel confirmed that they have indeed receded from his ten-year experience hiking Kibo. Everything was so white that it hurt our eyes to look directly towards them as the morning sun illuminated the sky. The snow towards Uhuru Peak look like merangue puffs because of the wind. A single trail of dirt that cut through the ice led us to the finish line.

I was unable to speak when I finally got close to the infamous wooden sign of Uhuru Peak. (And not just because my face was wrapped in a ski cap and a scarf.) We stood close by waiting for our turn to take photos. The dots of light ahead of us when we were hiking belonged to these early risers–those were not part of my hallucination! We all made it this far and this high up and everyone congratulated each other for surviving; everyone was patient and waited for their turn in the spotlight.

When it was finally our turn to take photos, we posed, jumped, smiled, laughed and celebrated our accomplishment. Hugs and shaking of hands were exchanged and thank yous to Samuel and Godibless were delivered for helping us get up there. (The rest of the porters stayed in camp because they do not have the proper licenses to summit.)

What killed me was that we had to hike back down to Barafu Hut for the next four hours. You’d think that walking down a “short-cut” would be easier, but the trail was made up of ground rocks that felt like rough sand. All I kept thinking was, I’ve done what I wanted to do, now get me out of here. I couldn’t believe that I still had to keep working even after accomplishing that feat. Without enough sleep, I was extra crabby and whiny. Every other hiker slid down past me, seemingly enjoying their fast descent, but my left knee was acting up and I just couldn’t get the momentum to slide and go down all the way back to Barafu Hut.

The rest of the group made it down in three hours. Samuel stayed with me and my whimpering for an extra hour until I was able to drag myself from the bottom of Kibo, down some more sharp rocks and back to my tent at the edge of Barafu. It was noon and the sun was out in full force. All I wanted was to take my clothes off and sleep in my tent but then I heard Samuel say, Take an hour nap and then we go. It was a shock to me that even after eleven hours of hiking with only four hours of sleep the night before, we were still expected to hike another four down to our final camp. It made sense that we had to come back down on altitude and also go to a camp with a reliable water source, but not only was I not physically ready to keep on hiking, I was also not emotionally prepared to psyche myself up to continue to the real finish line.

I slept like a log for that hour until Peter M woke me up again to eat lunch. I never felt so beaten. We haven’t washed our hands and faces for a full day and my contacts were so dried up after wearing them continuously during and after summit. Scott and Christopher showed such strong resolve that I knew I just had to shut up and do what we came to do. So more crunch, crunch, crunch until we made it past Millennium Camp and then to our base for the night, Mweka, where we bought the entire group cold bottles of Kilimanjaro beers to celebrate our week together.

Braised Whole Chicken with Green Peppercorns

The Dr. tuned me into the new Cooking Channel when he came in from Boston to visit. I’ve stopped watching the Food Network a long time ago after I’ve noticed that most of their shows were targeting eaters that are not too adventurous. It seems that the Cooking Channel is their way to separate that content from the ones that involve personalities and cuisines of different origins. In a few hours alone, I saw segments shot in Vietnam, India and Italy which did not involve any screaming or bleached blonde hair.

My favorite so far is Luke Nguyen mainly because he’s traveling all over Vietnam with that ridiculously curious Vietnamese-Australian accent. He was in a green peppercorn farm that reminded me so much of the Philippines countryside. I actually remembered seeing the peppercorns the last time I was in Kalustyan’s but had no idea what to use them for, so after watching his show, I made a return trip to buy a packet.

The recipe also called for chicken. I had ordered a whole chicken from Holton Farms in Vermont who’s currently running an ingenious idea on how Community-Supported Agriculture could change the way we buy produce. My neighborhood in Harlem became one of their test spots after I convinced them to deliver in my neighborhood in exchange for getting them new customers who also live in my building. When I saw this recipe on TV, I thought it’d be a relief not to make another roasted chicken.

You can buy green peppercorns from Kalustyan’s, the heavenly spice store on Lexington Avenue in Curry Hill here in New York City. While there, pick up a sachet of annatto powder as well, but really, I didn’t think it added any thing special to the dish except for some more reddish-orange color. The original recipe called for oil, but the powder was less expensive so I opted for that instead. I also forgot to pick up tomatoes, so I ended up using half of the small can of tomato paste I had in my pantry.

I imagined this to be richer in taste, but it was subtle in flavor. Perhaps it was the coconut juice that made it a tad sweet and differentiated it from other tomato-based stews I’ve made before.

Ingredients:
green peppercorns
3 cloves of garlic, minced
salt
1 tbsp sugar
1 whole fresh chicken, washed, patted dry with a paper towel
oil
4 tbsps tomato paste
2 small carrots, chopped in bite-sized pieces
1 tsp annatto powder
4 shallots, sliced
3 cans of coconut juice
a splash of fish sauce

1. Lightly bruise 4 tbsps of peppercorns in a mortar and pestle. Remove and transfer to a small bowl. Add half of the minced garlic, a dash of salt and sugar and mix. Use this as a rub for the chicken and massage all over. Cover and marinate in the refrigerator for 1 hour.
2. In a large Dutch oven, heat some oil and sauté the remaining garlic and 2 tbsps peppercorns until fragrant. Set aside in the pot and add the whole chicken. Brown chicken on all sides for some nice color and then carefully remove to a plate.
3. In the same pot, add the tomato paste, carrots and annatto powder. Stir to combine and then add shallots, coconut juice and fish sauce.
4. Bring the mixture to a boil and skim off any impurities that rise to the top. Return the whole chicken and simmer, covered, for about 40 minutes. Turn the chicken after about 20 just to make sure the other side is also submerged into the coconut broth.