Whenever I make anything, I can pretty much promise you it’s not a salad.  I’m just not that into them.  I enjoy some nice greens, but I never put any effort into them.  My typical salad generally consists of spring mix and a balsamic vinegarette, and turns out fairly boring.  However, I have learned one great fall / winter salad that’s inspired from Suzanne Goin’s Sunday Suppers at Lucques, and later at Park Kitchen in Portland.  It combines the sweetness of persimmons and the pepperiness of arugula.  Add a light nutty dressing, and you have yourself a nice fall salad.  Before getting to the recipe, I want to point out that because the ingredients are so simple, use the best quality you can find.  Also, some sliced Manchego cheese would be a great way to finish the salad.

Persimmon and Spicy Arugula Salad with a Shery-Walnut Vinaigrette

Serves 4.

4 Fuyu persimmons

4 handfuls (?, I have no idea to measure greens) of arugula, washed and dried

2 tablespoons thinly sliced shallot, plus 1 teaspoon finely diced

1 1/2 tablespoons Sherry vinegar

1/4 cup Walnut oil

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

1. Peel the persimmons and slice into wedges.
2. To make the vinaigrette, combine the vinegar with 1/2 teaspoon salt and diced shallots.  Let sit five minutes.  Slowly wisk in the walnut oil.  Taste, and adjust the seasoning or oil/vinegar ratio to your liking.
3. Toss the persimmons, sliced shallots, and arugula with the vinaigrette and serve.

Throughout my time in Japan, I was without a cellphone. The networks are completely different, so my cell couldn’t roam in Japan. It felt like I had traveled back about ten years. It is possible to rent a cell phone at the airport, but it still leaves the problem of actually being able to communicate with whomever I’d call since most Japanese don’t speak English. I knew my parents plane had been delayed due to an electrical problem, and I had no idea when they would actually arrive in Kyoto. I ended up just chilling in the hotel room because I was still dragging a little from karaoke. My parents finally made it to the hotel just after 9 pm, and we immediately went out for dinner. The concierge recommended a local okonomiyaki restaurant. I had eaten at one earlier in the week for the first time in my life. A common description is a Japanese pizza, but it’s more of a pancake. There’s a batter, cabbage, noodles, maybe some egg, squid or pork. There’s a number of variations, similar to different toppings on a pizza. They’re served on a hot plate that’s set into the table. They were very good, and it hit the spot that night. We were all tired, and it just felt like we were eating Japanese comfort food in a small restaurant. We called it an early night, ready for our first big day of exploring.

Unfortunately, our first big day was met with rain. Not a big storm or anything, just the persistent rain the hovers around and can completely ruin the day. It didn’t ruin ours, but we didn’t get to check out any temples. Instead, we headed indoors for shopping. But first, we had breakfast at the hotel. They had an Eastern and Western style buffet. I wasn’t in the mood for pickles and salted fish, so I went the Western route. I wasn’t too impressed with the buffet, but I could say that for any Western style food I had there (except the gelato, that was good). As an example, none of the pastries I had could match what you could get at a Starbuck’s in the US. That’s a pretty low bar. However, I’m sure Japanese visiting the US feel the same way about a lot of Japanese restaurants here.

After breakfast, we headed down to some of the covered arcades near downtown Kyoto. We wandered around and checked out a few shops. I bought some nice chopsticks, as well as a new hat. The hat is not a baseball cap. I’m not sure what the proper name is, but Alex said it looks like something Gavin DeGraw would wear. I would guess Tanner would refer to it as capri pants for the head. Whatever. I like it. After walking to the end of the arcade, we found the Nishiki market. It’s the big food market for Kyoto. We walked through about half of it and saw a bunch of weird stuff. I’m not sure how else to describe anything because I’m really not sure what everything was. We did find a Japanese cooking store, where I realized how seriously the Japanese take their knives. At a Williams-Sonoma, there’s always the one knife case with Wusthoff, Henkels, Global, and maybe Shun. At this store, there was an entire WALL of knives, ranging in price from 7,000 yen all the way up to 50,000 yen. I drooled. I thought about buying one, but everything I looked at was $250 or higher. We walked back to the arcade, ate some noodles, then trekked over to Gion. For those that have read the novel or seen the movie, Gion is the setting for Memoirs of a Geisha. Gion seemed like a very interesting area, but it was late and none of the temples were open. We gave into the rain and our tired feet and took a cab back to the hotel.

For dinner, we went out to Hamyco, a somewhat traditional Japanese restaurant in downtown Kyoto. We went with the set Kaiseki menu. I took pictures of all the courses, so if you’re curious as to what a kaiseki meal may look like, check it out. There were some interesting dishes, including a gelatinous soup with a rice cake at the bottom. I have mixed feelings about Japanese food, although that probably comes from my Western tastes. Like Umesh warned me, upscale Japanese food can be really good, or really bad. I think all the set menus left me somewhat disappointed.  I enjoyed eating at some of the low end places, like Ichi Ban, more than nicer ones.  After dinner, we headed back to the hotel and called it a night.  We would need the rest.  The next day was going to be filled with temples and a trip to Nara.

The last few days have been very busy. There’s been a lot of conference stuff during the day, and by the time I get back to the hotel after dinner, I’m usually too exhausted to write anything. I’m going to update more regularly over the next 5 days since the conference is over and I’ll be exploring Kyoto and Tokyo with my parents. I’m excited that they made the trip over. I haven’t had a proper vacation with them in quite some time. One perk of them traveling with me is a substantial upgrade of hotel rooms. My room at the Kyoto Dai-Ni Tower Hotel was a 9′ x 9′ (maybe closer to 8′ x 8′) room. There was a small space at the end of the bed, and another gap between the bed and “desk.” The bathroom was essentially one piece of plastic and the size of a port-a-potty.

My talk was Tuesday afternoon, and was called “M-plane InGaN / GaN Light Emitting Diodes on c-plane Substrates Fabricated by MOCVD Regrowth.” I was having trouble getting the presentation ready, and didn’t feel like it was done until about an hour before my session started. My problem was deciding what to say so people would understand the idea of the device I’m working on. Some of the work we’ve done, like using an offcut sapphire substrate to grow N-polar GaN, has only been done at UCSB. It was tricky to provide enough background information so the audience would understand, but not take up too much time to keep me from presenting our latest work. Umesh (my advisor) seemed pleased with how it went, and Jim (professor who probably will be on my PhD committee, whenever I qualify) told me I did a good job. Speaking of UCSB people, we were a serious presence at this conference. I think there were about 15 students, and 12 (13?) gave talks or posters. During the GaN optical devices session, 4 out of the 7 talks were from UCSB. During my session, 3 of the speakers were from UCSB. On top of the students presenting their research, Umesh and Bowers both gave plenary talks. And, finally, Umesh and Jim shared the Quantum Devices award for their work on GaN high electron mobility transistors. The winner of the young scientist award, Masataka Higashiwaki, is from Japan but working as a visiting researcher in our group. So, a very UCSB dominated conference.

After the talks on Tuesday, Umesh took some people from the group out to a yakitori place for dinner. Yakitori is basically small portions of grilled meats, most notably chicken. I remember reading about yakitori from Michael Ruhlman’s blog, so I was excited to try it. True enough, they grilled just about every part of the chicken, from the heart to the skin. Heart sounded a little weird, even for me (I had fried chicken cartilage my second night here), but I did go with the skin. I’m a fan. It tasted like bacon but with a chicken flavor. We also had some Japanese peppers stuffed with ground beef, grilled sausages, grilled shiitake mushrooms, crispy duck, and more. It was a great meal, and I think we all had a fun time.

Last night was the banquet. From what I’ve seen at other conferences, the banquet is usually the springboard for debauchery, usually because there are free drinks. This one was no different. It started with a Shinto ceremony and a sake barrel opening. The food was pretty forgettable, but there was free Asahi. Since we had a late lunch, I chose to drink my dinner. A major highlight from the banquet was being served by maikos, or apprentice geishas. Apparently, it takes about 2 hours to make their hair look the way it does, so they only do it once a week. They are very attentive. My glass was never empty, which is why things start to get a bit hazy. After the banquet, we decided to go to karaoke with Umesh leading the charge. There’s a great spot about a block away from the train station. Instead of singing in front of a lot of random people, we had our own private room. Umesh ordered (and kept ordering) rounds of beer for everyone. The singing started out slowly, as always. But once the beer kicked in, things got a little bit wild. One of the last things I remember is singing/screaming “Shot Through the Heart” with Nick into a microphone that may or may not have been working. It was a great way to cap off a wonderful conference.

This morning as I was sipping coffee, I thought it’d be fun to see what was on the Food Network. Even though I love cooking, I rarely turn to that channel. Why you may ask? Because of Sandra Lee’s No-Bake Daffodil Cake. I was curious as to how one makes a cake without baking it. The answer is to simply buy one that’s already been baked! Sandra Lee and her culinary prowess took a round cake with white frosting and put it on top of a sheet cake with yellow frosting. To decorate it, she placed nine cupcakes on top, then added daffodil cookies.  In case you’re unable to remember these complicated directions, the recipe is on the Food Network website.

No Bake Daffodil Cake

1 bakery-bought half-sheet cake, frosted yellow
1 bakery-bought 8-inch round single or layer cake, frosted white
9 bakery-bought cupcakes with white and yellow frosting
12 daffodil decorated cookies
2 tubes writing frosting

Place round cake in the center of sheet cake. Place 4 cupcakes on the top of the layer cake so that they touch in the center; then add 1 more cupcake on top of the 4 cupcakes. Place the 4 remaining cupcakes on the corners of the sheet cake. Decorate with cookies around cakes pressing gently into frosting and/or inserted into the cupcakes.

My dream (in terms of cooking) has always been to be able to create dishes based on whatever ingredients look the best.  I feel like I’m finally starting to understand what it takes to create a dish from scratch, not just in terms of ingredients and a recipe, but also an idea.  Today I feel like I created a recipe that is actually mine.  When I was wandering through Lazy Acres, I decided I needed to make something with corn to go with my very expensive salmon.  I also wanted to make a risotto, so I thought why not combine the two?  I’ve learned to make a pretty decent basic risotto from my previous cooking experience, and I’ve also learned the method for making a more complicated risotto.  The engineer in me wants to come up with a term for this, such as a compound risotto, or maybe even a hetero-risotto.   You know, like a heterostructure?  I’m sure the humor was lost on about 99% of the people that read this blog, which probably puts it at a fraction of a person.  Let’s settle with compound risotto, since it’s really not that complicated.  A compound risotto is a basic risotto with an additional ingredient mixed in at the end.  So, I turned to one of my stand-by corn recipes for that additional ingredient.  I originally got it from a Mark Bittman recipe published in the New York Times a couple years ago.   I’ve made it so many times with so many different variations that it feels like its become my own.  So, tonight, I attempted to make a roasted corn risotto…and it worked!  I’ll post the recipe later this weekend, once I get a chance to actually write it down.  There aren’t a lot of things I’ve made that feel like my own and were actually good, but this is one of them.

Somehow I missed this in the New York Times on Wednesday. There’s an article by Frank Bruni about people who drink too much at fine dining establishments. In it, he also mentions an intriguing book by a former waiter at Per Se called Service Included: Four-Star Secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter. It’s an interesting read for anyone that enjoys fine dining. I’m sad to say I haven’t seen anything as crazy as described in the article, but I did enjoy this quote by a former sommelier at Daniel about a woman using a pole like a stripper:

She was not necessarily attractive or young, so it was disruptive. If she were beautiful, it might have been different. People might have been cheering her on.

As a rule, I hate reality TV. I never watched the first Survivor and am quite proud of that. I avoided it like the plague until I got sucked into the first season of The Apprentice. I was ashamed to be watching it, and after the final episode of the last season, I swore I would never watch it again. Because of this, I missed the first season of Top Chef. A friend convinced me to tune into an episode of Project Runway. It wasn’t bad, and I liked the competition aspect. I thought, “Wow, they should make a cooking show like this!” Little did I know, Bravo already had. To make things even better, one of my favorite cookbook authors, Tom Colicchio, was the head judge. How I missed the boat on this I’ll never know, but I have since watched every episode.

So far, I’ve enjoyed season 3. I pull for Tre every week because he’s the chef de cuisine of my favorite restaurant, Abacus. Surprisingly, I like Hung…at least for now. He seems to back up most of the smack he talks, although if there’s another Arroz con Pollo debacle I’ll be jumping off the bandwagon very quickly. I’ve agreed with most of the judges decisions with regards to eliminations. The only person I thought would be around longer is Lia, the sous chef from Jean-Georges. I think Brian, the guy from Oceanaire in San Diego, is another strong contender. I’m just curious how he’ll do once he’s forced to do a meat dish.  I know Howie has won two elimination challenges, but I’m not sold yet.  I think his time management issues will eventually catch up with him.

For all the Top Chef fans that read this, I have stumbled across some good stuff while perusing the internets. First, everyone interested in the show should read the blogs on Bravo’s website. There are some interesting perspectives from Tom, Harold, Sam, and others. Since Colicchio is opening Craft in LA right now, Anthony Bourdain is guest blogging, which is always an entertaining read. LA Eater has been interviewing some of the contestants (I refuse to use the made up word “cheftestants”…it sounds ridiculous) including Hung and CJ, as well as Colicchio himself. Colicchio has a lot of praise for the LA food scene, and apparently was at the Hollywood farmer’s market the same day I was. I rarely get star struck, but if I had run into him I probably would have been giggling like a school girl.

My friend Brooke flew into town to relax for a few days before graduating next week.  Just before flying out here, she was offered a second interview in San Carlos at a middle school she’s interested.  So, instead of hanging out in Santa Barbara, we headed up to the bay area for a day.  We stopped in Paso Robles on the way up for some wine tasting.  I had never been tasting there, and my feelings so far are mixed.  One of the wineries I had heard of is Justin.  I had their famous Isoceles at a Nu in Santa Barbara, and thought it’d be fun to try out there other wines.  The problem is the winery is you have to travel about 15 miles on winding roads out to the middle of nowhere.  The wines were very nice, especially the syrah.  Our next stop was Robert Hall.  Some of their reserve wines were nice, but the tasting room was big and didn’t have the intimate feel I’m used to at the Santa Barbara wineries.  Also, we didn’t see a strip of wineries that makes it easy to try a couple different vineyards without having to drive for miles.  I’m not sure if it doesn’t exist, or we just missed it in our rush to get up to the bay.

We got into San Francisco around 7:30, and tried to check into our hotel, the Parc 55 Hotel near Union Square.  I had gotten a nice deal off Priceline, but I couldn’t choose between smoking or non-smoking.  We had to wait 45 minutes so they could get a non-smoking room ready.  After finally getting to our room, we walked over to Canteen for a 9:15 reservation.  I was looking for a nice restaurant within walking distance of our hotel that wasn’t outrageously expensive.  I stumbled upon Canteen through the SF Chronicles Top 100 restaurants.  It’s tiny.  Very tiny.  There are only 20 seats in the entire restaurant, so they try to get 3 turns per night.  They also have a very limited menu because the kitchen is more of a nook than anything else.  There are only two people cooking the food.  For an appetizer, I had oxtails that had been braised then shredded and mixed with a little horseradish.  It was quite tasty and amazingly light.  For an entree, I had the sea bream in a saffron-fennel broth served with some bulghur and corriander orange slices.  Brooke went with the oil-poached pork tenderloin with lentils that looked amazing.  We had an Andrew Murray Estate syrah, a reasonably priced wine from the Santa Ynez Valley.  We had been tasting at Andrew Murray at the end of last summer, but their tasting room had just been re-painted, making every wine taste the same.  It was nice to finally be able to taste what a good Andrew Murray syrah tasted like.

For dessert, Brooke had the strawberry compote with a buttermilk sorbet.  It was a twist on strawberries and cream.  I would have tasted it, but was too busy demolishing my vanilla souffle.  I think one of goals this summer will be making a good fluffly souffle.  Every attempt I’ve made has failed miserably, but it has to be the recipe, right?  Overall, we had a very enjoyable meal at Canteen, and it was a great way to end after a long day of traveling.  We’re heading back to Santa Barbara today.  Because of my ridiculous work schedule of trying to get some good data for a June 1 deadline, my posting of recipes may be limited for the next couple weeks.  My parents will be in town next week, and we always go to a couple nice SB restaurants.  My next post will probably be about that.

So I’ve decided I’m going to start blogging again after a 4 or 5 month hiatus. I really haven’t had anything all that interesting to talk about. I’ve been fairly bored in Santa Barbara, and have become even more bored updating this thing with some of the mundane activities of a given weekend. I’m going to try to change the focus of this space to something I really care about, and that is food. I’ve spent a lot of my free time in the past few weeks reading cookbooks and cooking. I would be eating at fancy restaurants, too, if I had a somewhat reasonable salary. In essence, I have become a “foodie.” I’m the guy that looks down on others for using pasta sauce out of a jar. Make it from scratch, it’s really not that hard. Start with large can of tomatoes, an onion, a few cloves of garlic, and some fresh herbs. You’ll already be closer to good food than some goopy red shit that comes out of jar. So, instead of going through the usual updates of what went down over the past weekend, I’m instead going to talk about what I’m cooking. I’ll post some recipes of thing I’ve cooked, along with some photos, and talk about why the dish worked or didn’t work.

But before I get to that, I’m going to write about San Francisco. I’m staying at the Palace Hotel with my parents. My mom is here for a national school board convention, and my dad and I are tagging along just for fun. Tonight we went out to a hot new restaurant called Ame. I don’t know much about the chef, but if I had to guess he’s Japanese with classical French training. To start I had a octopus bolognese over potato gnocchi. For a main course I had grilled lobster tail, scallops, and cuttlefish. My dad had a pork chop that I thought was the best dish of the night. The pork most people are used to is from the supermarket, and has been robbed of most of the fat that makes pork taste like pork. This was definitely not supermarket pork. It looked and tasted more like a meaty veal chop than the pork chops I’m used to. It was served with “mac & cheese.” The cheese was a hard chedder, a little bit of Parmesan, and some black truffles. Overall I thought our meal was excellent, and definitely one of the more memorable meals I’ve had.

While my mom is working tomorrow, my dad and I are going to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. They have a Picasso exhibit comparing his works to the American artists he inspired. We’re planning on meeting up with my mom for lunch at the Slanted Door, a popular Vietnamese restaurant at the Ferry Building. For dinner we’ve got reservations at Aqua, so I’m sure I’ll have a post tomorrow (or Sunday) about that.

The first paper that I have significantly contributed to was published online today.  It’s some exciting stuff.  Here’s the title and abstract: