Oxford Revisited

(April 6th-12th, 2013) I seem to be trying to find any slight excuse to go back to Oxford.  I truly did love my stay there and have come to think of it as a home away from home. Kinda silly, I know, since I was only there for three months, but being able to live in the heart of town, walk everywhere, and just to be immersed in an academic environment with very few responsibilities was so liberating.  I think that last point is key though...very few responsibilities.  I know that when I return to academia that won't be the case...

But, I digress. At the start of April I found myself headed back to Oxford in order to attend a conference and to catch up with a few of my colleagues there.  While I was there for just about a week, which is never long enough, I managed to have a few productive experiences and to catch up with all of my colleagues.  Consequently, not too much sight seeing, but I did manage to poke my head into a few places that I hadn't been before.

 

A ploughman's platter and Young's Double Chocolate Stout on draft from the King's Arms.

The only way that I drink coffee...iced and mixed with tea, served with Malaysian noodles at Maken La.

The courtyard of Christ Church College, where my conference was housed.

And the interior of Christ Church itself.

The conference banquet was a beautifully presented meal.  First course was an oak smoked roast salmon nicoise (above), and the main course was poached chicken supreme with morels in a Madeira cream sauce with truffle mash, asparagus, and spinach (not pictured as I was too busy with work conversations...). My colleague at Christ Church, and the staff there, really outdid themselves to put on a good conference in this amazing venue.  And, as you can tell from the food, they knew how to be hospitable hosts too.

Last, but not least, we made a trip to Edamame, the best Japanese restaurant in Oxford. On Thursdays they have a sushi night.  Fantastic.  Though it's very small and there's always a looooooong line, unless you get there early.  Well worth the hassle to get in though.

Virtually whenever you go, the menu consists of the daily specials and not much else.  So, fresh, classic Japanese dishes, and always fantastically good!

Next stop: Boston.

The grass is always greener in Greenville

(March 9th, 2013) At long last I was headed home (well, to see family that is) to Greenville. For those of you that haven't been up to the mountains of South Carolina yet, I can't glow enough about Greenville. For runners, it has a fantastic trail system cutting through the city and their Falls Park. If one was so inclined, you could easily run 30 some miles point-to-point along the Swamp Rabbit Trail.  And the revitalized downtown - a surprisingly metropolitan collection of restaurants and shops that always leaves me wishing that I had more time to visit.

This trip was scheduled to coincide with the Swamp Rabbit Half Marathon.  This was the second year it was being run, and I was hoping for a new PR.  The course itself is fast and slightly downhill (though long by a few tenths of a mile despite what they claim about the measurements...), so always a good situation to try to run a new personal best.  A month before, while in Phoenix, I had set my previous PR on a rather hilly course, so I was enthused for this opportunity as a final tune up before Boston.

The race itself went well enough for me.  The man in black was drafting behind me almost the entire race (and not being very talkative either) until I got frustrated and took off with about a quarter mile to go.  I ended up finishing second and setting a PR by about 30 seconds, so it was a good race.  The organization of the race, though, was lacking.  Many of the half marathoners reported there being no water left at the aid stations as they were woefully under prepared. And the prize for finishing second overall was the same as all other prizes (such as finishing third in a random age group): a slightly broken thermos.

I've mixed feelings about running this race again, so I've decided to find other "excuses" to go back to Greenville to visit.

After the race, we all headed out to Salida, NC where we visited the Saluda Grade Cafe. Despite all of my travels, some of my favorite food in the world is the simple food that I grew up with...blackened fish, salads with vinaigrette and walnuts, and that certain charm that you don't find outside of the South...

What would you like to have...

(March 1st-3rd, 2013) There comes a time in everyone's life when you're presented with a menu that looked so good that they thought: "I'd like to have everything on the menu!" But, alas, prudence usually ways in and you settle for just one (or sometimes two) dishes.  Well, not on this trip to Seattle...

My previous trip to Seattle had taken us to Sitka and Spruce, a restaurant that I'm still raving about. This time around, we were in Seattle briefly for Katie and Leanna's wedding.  It was a very nice, well done affair, but that's not what I'd like to talk about today.  What I'd like to talk about is Sitka and Spruce's sister restaurant, The Corson Building.  We went to the Corson Building with two of Kim's friends, and as the four of us looked over the day's menu, everything just looked too good to decide.  When the waitress came around for our order, we made the off-handed remark of 'everything looks too good, if only we could have the entire menu.' Much to our surprise, she said that that could be arranged, and left us to wonder if we had over committed ourselves!

As plate after plate appeared out of the kitchen, we kept thinking that we had had the best of it, only to be surprised that there was another, even better dish to be enjoyed next. This was truly a treat, and a definite culinary highlight for the year for me.  Don't ask me which was my favorite...they were all fantastic, and too good in their own rights to really choose between them.

A salad of chicories and beets with tahini, pistachios, and ricotta salata.

Potted shrimp on toasted sourdough.

Blackmouth lox with labneh, pine nuts, and caper shoots.

Marinated mussels with carrots, sultanas, and walnut tavator.

Boiled potato with Dungeness crab, stinging nettles, and Dinah's cheese.

Chopped ham and artichoke salad with last year's pickles, fava beans, and ramps-aioli.

Smoked duck breast with roasted kale tips, parsnips, hazelnuts, and apples.

 

Roasted and braised Guinea fowl with Brussels sprouts, many mushrooms, beet-creme fraiche and mustard puree.

Petrale sole with braised celery, roasted endive, lentils, and fried seeds.

And, of course, after we finished everything on the menu, we had to do dessert...navel orange tart with warm butter, candied dates, and ricotta.

Afterwards, we headed for a drink at Quinn's Pub, the fantastic bar that introduced me to my favorite beer, Ayinger Ur-Weisse, last year.  We had put our name in for a table, but decided to just enjoy standing at the bar.  Much to our surprise, they found us a table while we were still there (an hour or so later), so we felt a slight pang of guilt about the thought of not ordering something.  Thus, we ended up with round two (much more modest in size though!):

Sauteed Swiss chard and farrow (an inspiration for me as I've been cooking farrow similarly to this ever since I first had it on my first visit to Quinn's), fries with fontina fonduta and veal demi-glace, and roasted bone marrow.

The next day, we headed out to dim sum, where we had soup dumplings at Din Tai Fung Dumpling House. What are soup dumplings?  Something wonderous...take a normal dumpling, fill it with both the meat mixture and also a soup broth, and seal it up.  You have to be careful when you eat it, lest the juices drain out, much to one's dismay.  The crew working to assemble them were a blur of action:

Also on this trip, two must visits in Seattle: the original REI: 

Through this forested landscape is a mountain bike trail circling the exterior of the building. Inside is even better than you'd expect an REI to be.  And lastly to Top Pot Doughnuts:

Yes, that is a Feather Boa doughnut.  Not quite as visually alarming as Voodoo Doughnuts in Portland, but fantastic nonetheless.