Happy Birthday to my mom today!

Thanksgiving was great. The turkey was quite delicious; I enjoyed it without reservation, which is unusual for me. Usually when I eat meat I find it to be interesting and moderately good, but mostly just weird. Except for good salmon — I enjoy that completely. The turkey was like that too. I ended up eating turkey almost every day for six days, which is how long it took to get rid of the leftovers. But since then I have merely focused on consuming as many vegetables and apples per day as possible, in order that I use up the contents of one farm share box before getting another the next week.

Recently Toby and I went to a relatively fancy restaurant in Greenlake called Nell’s; Seattle does a Restaurant Week-esque thing that lasts for a month, twice a year, where many nice establishments offer low-priced prix fixe dinners and even cheaper lunches. We opted for dinner, and obtained a three-course meal.

For the first course, I chose a potato-leek soup. Toby got duck liver terrine, which he claims was good. I considered trying it, but didn’t know where Nell’s got their meat. My soup was quite delicious.

For the main course I chose a beet risotto, which continues my practice of always ordering risotto at relatively fancy restaurants. (I think this is the fourth time it has happened.) It was, as you’d except, a brilliant shade of fuchsia. It was tasty, despite its hilarious appearance. It also was completely loaded with Parmesan cheese (whence its tastiness). Toby’s main course was mackerel, which I did try. It was extremely fishy, of course. I didn’t really like it, but I guess I’m not completely used to fish yet. This particular serving of mackerel was wonderfully browned and crispy on the edges, so it was texturally great at least.

Dessert was good: I chose the pear cobbler with pear sorbet, and Toby got some sort of chocolate cake (I forget what distinguished it from other chocolate cakes) with brandy ice cream. The sorbet and ice cream were completely fantastic. We swapped desserts halfway through, because who wants to eat only one type of dessert?

With no warning the temperatures dropped below freezing here in Seattle, so that the overnight lows are now around 20° and in the day it only gets to 30° or so! I know this isn’t much by Midwestern standards, but a body gets comparatively wimpy after one Pacific Northwest winter. I find it cold indeed! I’ve continued to bike to school, though, because it’s still better than the bus in every way. I bundle up and don’t mind the cold while I’m pedaling, except for my poor thumbs. They felt as if they would freeze off this morning; they are separated from my fingers when I hold the handlebars and they get no warmth!

I’m sort of sad that there’s still an entire month of increasingly short days to go until December 21. At this point if I don’t leave school by 4:30 PM I bike home in the dark (safely; I have lights), and I never leave school by 4:30 PM. It also rains almost constantly, unlike last year, which means I get soaking wet twice a day. It feels like dinnertime at 3:30 departmental tea because of the dimming, cloudy sky, and I feel sleepy by 8 or 9! I don’t remember caring about the darkness last year. I don’t actually care all that much even now, but I was spoiled for all of last summer with incredible weather.

On the plus side, I had a great trip to the market last week. I bought a cup of hot apple cider from a stand selling several apple beverages; Toby and I got hard cider there once last year, and it was very good. They let me have a free refill of my hot cider when it ran out, and then they offered me a sample of a type of Asian pear they were selling. It was shockingly good and more flavorful than any Asian pear I’d tried before, and apparently it’s called a “rum pear”. I bought several, and also a bosc pear that looked good. It was, and in an interesting way: it had the flavor of a bosc pear, except stronger than usual, but it had the creamy texture of a slightly less juicy Bartlett. It was not remotely crunchy. Anyway, I will stock up on fruit from this stand again on Saturday, and probably enjoy another cup of hot cider. I must stuff myself with pears until the sad day when all that’s left is apples! Not that I dislike apples. But they’re less interesting than most fruits to me.

Toby and I keep getting leaves from our CSA, to the point that even Toby is a little leaved-out (and he loves leaves more than anyone else I know). I was leaved-out a long time ago. But it turns out there is a wonderful new way to prepare collard greens and, presumably, kale: sauteed with chiles and then covered in peanut sauce. The recipe comes from a Mennonite cookbook that Lisa gave me before I moved to Seattle. I no longer shrink in fear when confronted with tough, bitter winter greens!

All I want to do is make lasagna (with homemade egg pasta) and crème brûlée (with a vanilla bean). In December I will!

My birthday was yesterday, and it was pretty nice. Toby made me an almond-orange cake with cloudberry jam glaze. I made the jam in August 2008, from berries that grew in the landscaping at North Seattle Community College. We cut off a large piece for ourselves and then put out the cake for the daily departmental tea and snacks, and it was instantly devoured.

On Friday I celebrated my birthday, even though it was three days early. No one wants to go out on a Monday, after all. After attending a colloquium, I worked on algebraic geometry problems for a bit and then stopped by the Solstice cafe, where a popular happy hour transpires every week, to pick up anyone who wanted to come out to dinner with me. It turned out that everyone wanted to come, so fourteen of us lumbered up the Ave as it rained steadily. We arrived at Araya’s, a vegan Thai restaurant on 45 st., in a group of fourteen sopping wet people with no reservation on a Friday evening. Amazingly, they seated us instantly at a long table! They were very nice to us. We gave them a list of fourteen dishes and they brought them out as they became ready. This is undoubtedly the best way to eat in a large group: we shared them all randomly, passing the plates up and down the table until they became empty. All the food was excellent, though many of the noodle dishes were very similar. For future reference, the “tofu larb” was particularly great.

Someone let slip that it was my birthday (or close to it), so our server brought out a large bowl of black rice and coconut milk with a candle stuck in it. Then everyone sang to me. (I’m not sure what exactly was in the rice, or if it was just a strange kind of rice, but it was black and somewhat gelled, yet runny.) It was an excellent dessert; I know I made it sound kind of weird, and it was odd, but it was also tasty and pleasantly textured.

So I enthusiastically recommend Araya’s restaurant if you are in Seattle; it is delicious, it is not expensive, and the staff are very friendly.

Then we went to the College Inn pub. Several other mathematicians braved the rain to join us, and it was very nice!

“November festivities, part two” will be a raucous Thanksgiving at my Wallingford home.

I’ve been thinking lately about which classes to take and teach next quarter. Currently I’m leaning towards the following schedule: real analysis + two reading classes, one in algebraic groups (which are groups that also happen to be algebraic varieties) and the other solely for doing problems from chapters I and II of Hartshorne’s Algebraic Geometry book. I requested to teach the UW equivalents of Calculus II or III, but ranked Calc I highly too. That’s what I’m teaching this quarter, and I like it.

Last week Toby and Greg and I went to Tutta Bella Pizzeria, which is practically next door to my house but which I’ve never visited before. It turned out to be a weirdly gigantic restaurant with the vibe of a giant chain like Applebees or something, even though it is not in fact a giant chain. (I think that in fact it is a pair.) We ordered a margherita pizza and a pizza with, among other things, eggplant, goat cheese and capers. The margherita pizza was actually quite fantastic. The other one was too full of toppings, but tasty nonetheless. I appreciated the black, burned bubbles on the incredibly thin yet flexible crust. Would that I could make such a pizza in my weak, 500-degree oven!

Aside from that, I have been dining on potatoes, rice noodles and cabbage. How autumnal.

After having two minor, low-speed bicycle accidents in as many weeks, I have resolved to be more careful on wheels. In the first accident, I tried to bump up onto an exceedingly low curb on 45 st, but took it at far too small of an angle and toppled over onto the sidewalk. No one was injured. The second was a little worse, but still not bad. I coasted slowly towards a red light and, inexplicably, squeezed the left brake. Of course this launched me lightly over the handlebars, and I flopped ungracefully onto the road (again, on 45 st). This was nearly a week ago. I have a giant bruise on my right leg from where it collided with the handlebar, to remind me never to abruptly squeeze the front brake again!

At least I own the bike now (yay!), so I don’t need to feel too terrible about scratching it a bit. This will only make it look less desirable to a thief!

School has been pretty good. I spend my weekends solving measure theory problems from the real analysis textbook, and I spend my weeks attempting (and occasionally solving) problems from books by Hatcher and Hartshorne. I think I aspire to be an algebraic geometer.

I’ve come full circle in my diet since last autumn: back then I purchased a quarter pound of astoundingly good cheese per week at the market, to eat on homemade bread for lunch at school. I also bought large bags of apples to eat throughout the week, and I made squashy lentilly dishes for dinner to eat with rice. I went through many phases since then, and actually did not believe that I would want the predominantly bread/cheese/apple diet again, but in fact I do and it’s what I’m eating now. It’s kind of nice. Cheese from the market is amazing.

On Saturday Toby and I bought a fresh fillet of wild keta salmon (also known as “chum”). We soaked it in a marinade of soy sauce, chiles and various other delicious substances for a few hours, and then cooked it in a pan with the sauce. The result was completely delicious and wonderfully textured, probably the second best fish I’ve had since becoming a nonvegetarian. (The best was sockeye salmon at a barbecue at my house last summer; it was unsurpassable.) Mmm, salmon.

Yesterday we made an apple pie with a lard/butter crust. The lard was from a giant tub that Toby bought at the market on a whim. It’s from Mangalitsa pigs, a Hungarian breed renowned for their delicious and abundant fat. I have wanted to cook with lard since the instant I became a nonvegetarian, so this was pretty exciting. The next thing I want to make is a batch of tortillas!

Summer is definitely over here. It rains on most days, and has become Seattle-cold. Occasional days are almost crisp, and that’s nice. The leaves are gorgeous, much more colorful than I remember last year. On Saturday, late afternoon, I biked along the Burke Gilman trail and saw that the orangey, evening sunlight exactly illuminated the leaves that had turned color. It looked as if the sun had just turned the green leaves yellow.

After the real analysis exam (which I did not take), several of us went out to a Korean restaurant on the Ave near campus. I had been there once before and, although my server at the time was exceptionally nice and the space was pleasant, I was not so impressed by my food. It tasted fine, but was surprisingly boring. It was some tofu and vegetable dish. Anyway, it turns out I’d made a grievous error that time: I had failed to order from the “Korean dishes” section of the menu, choosing something from the “Vegetarian” section instead. (At least one dish in the Korean section is in fact vegetarian, so I didn’t need to shy away from that section. I was vegetarian at the time.)

This time, though, I made no such error. I ordered a dish called “sauteed squid” from the Korean section of the menu and it was astonishingly great! I had squid once before and thought it was weirdly chewy and not so pleasant, so I was surprised by how tasty and nicely textured this squid was. Anyway, I have become an enthusiastic champion of this restaurant. Just order from the Korean section if you go.

Today was the second-to-last Wallingford farmer’s market. Alas! My favorite fruit stand of all is there, and I don’t know where else they sell. I must ask them next week. Today they gave me a free peach, and I was incredibly charmed. They know me well because every week for months now I have shown up with a large basket to purchase $10-12 worth of peaches and nectarines. Once a few weeks ago they gave me $2 off for being a frequent customer. They are really nice. They also have the best nectarines that I know of, and I will be really sad when my Wednesdays don’t include them anymore.

I attended the Fremont Oktoberfest last weekend, which is a large beer tasting event. It’s pretty neat. You pay for admission and receive a certain number of tasting tokens and a little cup; then you redeem the tokens by filling your cup at various booths with beers to sample. It’s actually quite recent that I like beer, you know. But I have learned to now and the Northwest has amazing beer. Not all the festival samples were from the area, but I think most were. Anyway, I was proud to correctly identify the main taste in one of Toby’s samples (coffee — actually, I thought it was coffee or licorice, but I count that as correct) and also enjoyed an extremely fruity sample of Leinenkugel’s Oktoberfest. It tasted like orange juice, but in a good way. The best was probably the golden ale by Lazy Boy; it was completely delicious.

Then I stopped by Theo Chocolate, which was practically across the street, to sample every bar in the store and choose a couple to take home. I did something I have never done before: I chose milk chocolate over dark. It was weird. But the milk chocolate at Theo is not only acceptable, but actually amazing.

In other news, Toby and I made a chocolate almond cake recently (the Julia Child recipe) and it came out quite well. There were leftovers the next day and I had cake for breakfast. I want to make several more cakes now that the exams are over.

I think I’m taking the following classes: algebraic topology, algebraic geometry, homological algebra. I might switch in real analysis for the last, though, depending on the situation in a week. I ordered my textbooks for the first two classes and have already received one.

Classes start next Wednesday, and I start to teach next Thursday. That should be fun. I am a little apprehensive about presenting calculus problems to impressionable young adults because I forgot everything about calculus and might lead them astray (”no, you don’t actually have to compute the solution; all that matters is that a solution exists!”), but I’ll probably be fine.

Oh, and I made cookies today. With chocolate frosting and almonds on top, though!

Here are the remains of the world’s hottest chile pepper, with a dime for scale:

Okay, that’s probably an exaggeration. But it is painfully hot. I put half of it in a sauce yesterday along with coconut milk, garlic, sweet chiles and fish sauce and served it over bok choi and naan (none of which are spicy, note), and it was really hot. I have no idea what to do with the rest of it. In fact, in the course of arranging this photograph I inadvertently touched the chile with my finger and then apparently brushed my finger against my lips, because my lips began to burn intensely and still do. That was fifteen minutes ago. At least I didn’t pick my nose or insert contact lenses!

So what should I do with this guy? I guess as a last resort I could feed it to my worst enemy.

Toby, Erik and I made mussels yesterday. They were quite delicious, although also very weird to me. It was a Julia Child recipe, with a sauce of bread crumbs, onion, parsley, butter and white wine. We also wanted to make a chocolate almond cake, but decided to delay that for three and a half weeks until after our exams.

Yesterday was actually one of the best culinary days imaginable. In the morning I went to Bagel Oasis in Ravenna, a fantastic bagel shop. Then I went to the market and bought an embarrassing quantity of fruits and vegetables, including a melon, several peaches and nectarines, three cups of blueberries, a few plums, and pounds of tomatoes. I have the most enjoyable diet imaginable these days! Then I went to Chocolati Cafe for several hours to work on an algebra exam. It did not go well at all, but the hot chocolate I got was delicious.

I ran into my classmate Elliott at Chocolati; he asked if I would please come over and take away 25 pounds of plums from his backyard. I instantly agreed. The plums were squishy and perfect for boiling into sauce, so now I am the proud owner of six quarts of red plum mush (like applesauce, only with plums) and almost a gallon of thick, tart plum juice! Before boiling the plums, though, we made the mussels and then went out for ice cream at Molly Moon’s. All in all, it was a very delicious day.

I don’t think I’ll have days like this again until after the exams, but that is okay. After the exams I will do nothing but eat delicious food!

Last Friday I enjoyed an amazing meal at Tilth, the ninth best restaurant in the country outside of New York City*. We had several small plates of food, which were all incredibly delicious and interesting. Most of the ingredients are local and organic (except of course for those that cannot possibly be certified organic, like wild mushrooms, foraged plants and fish). I will attempt to discuss each dish I sampled. They were many.

*Or so saysFrank Bruni, the food critic for the New York Times.

First I had my second restaurant amuse-bouche ever, which was as delightful as the first one. (I have of course prepared an amuse-bouche or two of my own, most notably a mushroom and cream souplet with Wendell back in 2006.) This mouth-amusement was a tiny pile of large couscous with mint and cilantro, and a little dab of very thick and sour yogurt. It was really good; I love mint.

There also was bread to start. It was very sour sourdough, which was delightful because I haven’t had sourdough for a long, long time! The butter was itself a bit sour (in a good way!); we inquired as to its origin. I wondered if it came from Golden Glen Creamery, the only local buttermakers I know of offhand. It turns out Tilth makes their own cultured butter, which I think is neat. Mmm, butter.

The first actual dish was a little plate of sweet corn flan, topped with orchid petals and little corn shoots. There was also a sauce consisting of the juices you get when you smash up kernels of sweet corn. This was quite good, which pleased me because I was really excited for it.

Next was a morel risotto with peas and a pea sauce. This was very earthy. I think morels are good but weird, and I haven’t quite become used to their bitter flavor. (Once I tried to make a dish of morels, quinoa and asparagus, and it was way too much. I didn’t like it until I added a bit of brown sugar, and even then it wasn’t so great.) But I love risotto (see my previous restaurant posts for evidence) and this was pleasantly thick.

Then, the most adventurous dish of the night: sweetbreads! (Also known as pancreas or thymus glands. These in particular were thymus glands of a cow.) Now that I eat the muscles of responsibly raised animals, I may as well eat the glands of responsibly raised animals too, so I dug in bravely. They were actually pretty good, though I didn’t want more than a couple morsels. The outsides of the pieces were beautifully crisped. It was a good introduction to organ meats, methinks.

Next we had two fish courses: sablefish and salmon. According to our server, sablefish is variously known as black cod and butterfish. It was prepared sous-vide, which is a cooking style in which you place the object you wish to eat in a vacuum-sealed bag and heat it at a relatively low temperature for several hours. It yields an incredibly soft texture. The sablefish came with tasty mashed potatoes. They were good enough to come from Olsen Farms, but I failed to ask.

The salmon came on top of a cake of chickpeas, which I liked a lot. The edges of the chickpea cake were crispy and excellent. I also thought the salmon was really good: it was my third try at non-smoked salmon and I still think the taste is a little weird, but I enjoy the texture and most of the flavor.

After cleaning up the fish, we had a small plate of chicken with roasted potatoes. The chicken was incredibly moist, and the potatoes were again fantastic. I think chicken is hilariously bland, but this was really good. We also had some asparagus on the side, which was great. I love asparagus.

I think my very favorite dish — or possibly second-favorite after the flan — was a plate of ricotta dumplings. They were really, really soft. The dumpling skin was incredibly thin, and the cheese inside was squishy and delicious.

Dessert was spectacular. We all tried each others’ choices, so I got great variety here too. I ordered panna cotta, which was very good but not quite as spectacular as the one I had in Brooklyn back in March. It was different, though, and thus hard to compare. This one was less creamy and more gelatinous than the other, I think. Then I sampled the following: avocado mousse, three little scooplets of ice cream, and tapioca brulee with cherries. The tapioca brulee was especially nice; I had briefly considered ordering it myself, in fact. I love tapioca, and all blowtorched foods.

All in all, this was definitely the most exciting and excellent restaurant meal I’ve had. I might return sometime for their brunch or their prix-fixe dinner, which I believe happens on Mondays. In the meantime, I think I should learn to make flan and risotto, and maybe even dumplings!

This is the second part of a trilogy of restaurant posts. The finale will describe the best restaurant in Seattle, where I had my first taste of organ meats, and that post will appear here later today or tomorrow. Now I leave you in suspense.

Northwest Tofu is a Chinese restaurant located in the Central District/International District area, on S Jackson St at 19th Avenue. (1911-13 S Jackson St.) Our server told us that the restaurant was recently reviewed in the Seattle Times, and indeed it was, but I already knew about the place from my friend Louis! I biked there from my apartment, which is just about 2.5 miles. The first eight or so blocks comprise an occasionally [very] steep uphill, after which I had a straight, fast ride down 18th Avenue, which is very flat, all the way to Jackson. The ride was quite fantastic, and very easy after the first mile or so. I did not quite conquer Capitol Hill, as I needed to push my bike up the last half of each of the two steepest blocks, but that will come with practice.

This restaurant is hilariously located in what appears to be an office. It is open for lunch. There are a few small tables and one very large, lazy-Susan-equipped table at which I have previously dined with several other mathematicians. (This was my third visit to NW Tofu.) In back of the restaurant is a tofu factory, so their tofu is the freshest possible.

It’s best to order several small dishes and share them with the whole table, because this affords greater variety and greater risk-taking. But complete risk is not necessarily desirable when certain dishes are particularly good, so I will tell you right now what are the three best dishes, which you absolutely must order if you try this place:

1. Mushrooms Foon
2. Hot and Spice Dry Tofu
3. Tofu pudding, cold (for dessert)

Those three are truly marvelous, and I’d excitedly devour them anytime. I am not the only person who feels this way. Aside from that, you can order whatever you want. There are lots of choices, several of which involve pork. (The three above are, as far as anyone can tell, vegetarian.)

Next I’ll describe the three best dishes, and also some other ones I’ve had:

Mushrooms Foon is a hilarious dish. I don’t even know what it is. It’s a noodley base topped with a thick mushroom sauce. The noodles are the confusing part, because they aren’t really noodles. Rather, they are thick, bunched up sheets of some starchy material that resembles rice. When you try to serve yourself from the communal plate of Mushrooms Foon, you grasp a piece of the starchy substance with your chopsticks and pull, and it just stretches. So you end up with a large piece. This is a good thing, because the starchy substance is completely delicious, and so is the sauce.

The other required main dish is Hot and Spice Dry Tofu, which is only subtly spicy and not very dry. The tofu appears to be pressed in some way; it is thicker and less watery than “fresh tofu”, which might be of similar consistency to supermarket silken tofu. Dry tofu is still quite moist; the qualifier “dry” is clearly relative. The texture of this dish is quite good, and it comes with a sauce. Alas, I can’t remember what was in the sauce.

For dessert you must order a bowl of tofu pudding for just $2. It is a large bowl and the contents are delicious: sweet, cold and refreshing. (I think you can also order it warm, if you prefer.) There is a sweet, very watery, slightly gingery sauce that surrounds the incredibly silky and soft tofu. It’s a good way to finish a meal.

At this particular visit we also had a green onion pancake, which was not bad but also not so exciting (I note with some amusement that the Seattle Times reviewer independently agrees!), and we had some mustard greens with soy sheet, which were a little more exciting because they included whole soybeans and a few very hot chiles. The soy sheet was a flat piece of severely pressed tofu, which I liked, but there was too little of it in the dish! Then we ordered another plate of mushrooms foon. At previous visits I’ve also had the Ma Po Tofu without pork, which was also not so exciting to me; it was just chunks of fresh tofu and soybeans in a thick sauce. We had a good plate of steamed bok choi once, and Vegetarian Potstickers, which I think were also tasty. That’s all I can remember at the moment, but I’m sure I’ve tried others.

Most of the food is between $2.50 and $4 per plate, with the larger entree-size plates going for about $5 or $7. This means that several mathematicians can gather to eat an exciting lunch here, including dessert, for about $10 including tax and tip. I find that to be quite remarkable, and am still not quite sure how it’s possible. But it is! The secret is apparently to order just a couple entrees and several small plates, and pass everything around.

You can also order the factory’s tofu to go, which I strenuously recommend that you do. Blocks of fresh tofu are 80 cents each, but you should eat them within a couple days or freeze them. (I opt for eating immediately, because I don’t really like previously frozen tofu.) Dry tofu is $2.50 for four little blocks; I just purchased those for the first time and have not yet eaten them. I’m excited to, though, because I just bought snap peas and fava beans at the market, and I think they will go together nicely!

If any of you visit me in Seattle, we are definitely eating at Northwest Tofu at least once.