English Biscuits

Bina, from London, UK:

So here are some recommended prepared cookies if you are ever in London around tea time:

Grisbi - Fruit Cherry: These cherry filled biscuits are delicious! I think they are actually Italian, made my a company called Parmalat. A light cookie crust surrounding a sweet but not too sweet cherry filling. Delightful!

McVitie's Plain Chocolate Digestives: Despite their unappealing name, these cookies are great, and satisfying when you're hungry. The first ingredient in them is wheat flour, so you can pretend they are good for you!

"The Best Martini in the World"

First in the series "Snack Tracks: Snacking Abroad" - Bina reporting from London, UK:

If you have about £13.50 to spare, consider hitting up the Duke Hotel Bar on St. James Place (off the Green Park tube stop), reputably home to the best martini in the world. According to our testers (Nilay & Emil), the vodka version is superiour to the gin.

My favourite part (other than finding the place after entering two dark narrow streets; after all it is Easter Monday) is the way the proper old bartender comes to your table to prepare it for you - in a frosted martini glass, he adds first a dash or two of vermouth, and very slowly and deliberately fills the glass to the brim with vodka (or gin). He then cuts a generous zest from a lemon, grasps the two ends carefully and gives it a quick twist. After slowly grazing the edges of the glass with the lemon zest, he drops it into the drink and serves.

My other favourite part is that two martinis later, Emil wants to buzz-dial friends in the States. Alas, we cannot wake them! It is only 5 PM in California.

Cheers!

Classical Snack: Greek Salad

An Ode to Greek Salad
O great Hellenic pile of veg
You bring me back from the edge
Of starvation every Thursday night
Without you, The O.C. wouldn’t feel right.

Tomatoes, cucumber, and feta cheese
No goddamn romaine on top of thee
“I love you, fair salad!” I’ve often said,
“I’ll serve you with some crusty bread!”

Ingredients:
(serves 2)
1 cucumber
1 tomato or 1/2 basket cherry tomatoes
1 small handfull kalamata olives (sans pits, duh)
a few slices red onion
1-2 oz. feta cheese, crumbled
a few Tblsp olive oil
a few Tblsp red wine vinegar
salt
freshly ground pepper


1. Peel and slice cucumber; chop tomato (or halve cherry tomatoes).
2. Combine all ingredients, toss.
3. Serve with bread and two episodes of The O.C.

Snack Tracker: Bina

Bina on snacks, sandwiches, and dealing with the disappointment of having to miss the Napa Mustard Festival this year:

"The sandwich recipe is way too basic for the blog: wheat bread, plochman's natural stone ground mustard, mayo, cucumber, butter lettuce, tomato (with a little salt and pepper), alfalfa sprouts, red onion. I don't know if it's reportable.

"Ooh, but I did also set up a mini mustard festival for myself - bought some rold gold braided twist pretzels to dip in the plochman's, noyo reserve sweet garlic mustard and that chipotle honey lime mustard you got me. A small consolation, but not bad."

While traveling in Europe, Bina will be writing installments for a Snack Blog series, "Snack Tracks: Snacking Abroad." She will also be bringing back a large assorment of euro-snacks for the Snack Blog editorial department to sample and review. Thanks, Bina! Happy traveling!

The Second Post, and already off topic

Okay, so pizza isn't really a snack. It's a dinner, and not something one would likely make to dine on alone, or even for two.

But it has a practical side. The dough can be made ahead of time and kept around for a few days for a future meal, or leftovers can be used for a pizza redux. The pizza itself can be made ahead of time; leftovers are good baked, toaster-ovened, or even microwaved. And you can use extra dough to make calzones, which can be filled with random vegetables and sauces that you have lying around, baked, frozen, and saved for later.

But really, I just made a pizza last night, and it turned out pretty good, if I do say so myself. And I just wanted to post the recipe.

The idea for this recipe is stolen from the now-defunct Jupiter Walnut Creek, the superior of the three Jupiters (Berkeley's has inferior food, and the actual planet has no pizza at all), and still my favorite WC restaurant, despite having closed its doors about 5 years ago.

Artichoke Lemon Pizza
This recipe can easily serve 3 people if you use the dough to make one big pizza. It can also be stretched to serve 5 or more if you divide the dough, and make several thinner pizzas and serve with a salad and dessert (and, personally, I think it tastes better with a thinner crust).

Ingredients:
pizza dough (see recipe below)
red sauce (see recipe below)
juice and minced zest of one lemon
2–3 cloves garlic, minced
2 Tblsp olive oil
1 can artichoke hearts (not the marinated kind in the glass jar)
2–3 handfuls grated fontina cheese
1 medium chunk of goat milk feta cheese, crumbled
cornmeal, if you’re using a pizza stone

1. Preheat oven to 500°F (if you’re using a pizza stone, make sure it’s at the bottom of the oven, and that the other rack is as high as possible, so it won’t be in your way when putting the pizza in and getting it out).
2. Combine olive oil, garlic, lemon zest, and lemon juice in a small bowl.
3. Divide dough and stretch it out to desired thickness in an oiled pizza pan (or on a baking peal dusted with cornmeal if you’re using a pizza stone). It is my strong opinion that thinner is better.
4. Spread sauce on dough; sprinkle with fontina cheese. Add artichoke hearts and feta cheese. Drizzle with the lemon/garlic olive oil.
5. Bake for 8–15 minutes, depending on how thick your pizza is. The cheese should be melted, of course, and the crust should be lightly browned and crispy. Test if the crust is done by lifting up the edge of the pizza with a fork. It should be sort of rigid, not floppy.

Pizza Dough
This recipe makes enough dough for 4 small pizzas or 2 medium ones (or 1 medium pizza with a thick crust, 1 large pizza with a thin crust, etc.).

Ingredients:
2 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp salt
some ground pepper
7 oz. water at 105–110°F (should feel warm on your wrist but not hot)
1 Tblsp honey
1 packet active dry yeast (I prefer Rapid Rise)
olive oil

1. Dissolve the yeast in the water. Add the honey and stir. Let it sit for about 5 minutes; it should get foamy on top.
2. Combine flour, salt, and pepper in a large bowl. Make a well in the middle. Add the water to the well and stir it in.
3. Knead dough in the bowl until it sticks together. Turn out onto a floured work surface and knead for 10 minutes, adding more flour as needed to prevent sticking. Dough should be smooth and elastic when done. Shape dough into a ball.
4. Grease a bowl with olive oil, place dough in bowl and turn a few times to coat surface (this prevents it from drying and cracking—covering the dough with flour before letting it rise is not a good idea). Cover bowl with plastic and let it rise in a warm place for about two hours.

Red Sauce
I made this sauce up on the spot, because I haven't found a pre-fab red sauce that I actually like. If you have one you like, you can use that instead to save time. This one has a mild flavor though (don't over-spice), which doesn't overshadow the flavor of the pizza toppings.

Ingredients:
about 10 Roma tomatoes
1/2 white onion, minced
1–2 cloves garlic, minced
olive oil
chili flakes
dried basil
salt
pepper
sugar

1. Peel and core tomatoes. The easiest way to peel a tomato is to slit an X into the skin and plunge it into boiling water for about 30 seconds.
2. Place tomatoes in a blender or food processor and pulse a few times. I actually did this with a hand blender and a bowl. It didn’t work that well, but the idea is to get a chunky puree. You don’t want your tomatoes liquefied, but you also don’t want them just chopped. You need them partially pureed to get a saucy consistency.
3. In a large frying pan, heat up 1–2 tablespoons olive oil with the garlic. Add onions when the oil is hot. Season with a little salt and pepper; stir for a few minutes until onions are translucent.
4. Add tomatoes to pan and stir. Add basil, chili flakes, salt, and pepper to taste. Don’t go crazy with the salt; you can add more at the end.5. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally. When the sauce has thickened (10 minutes or so), taste it and add some sugar (I used 1-1 1/2 teaspoons probably, but some tomatoes are sweeter than others, so be careful and add a little at time). Add more salt to taste.

The First Post

Welcome to the Snack Blog.

I am starting this blog for purely selfish reasons. Today, March 1, 2005, marks the second anniversary of my debut in the world of office work. The 731st day in which I've sat down in an office chair to spend the next 8 hours looking at the computer screen, and thinking about eating.

I've gone through many snacking phases over the last two years, all of which have ended for one reason or another. Candy bars, for example, are a tempting snack, but do little in the way of fulfillment or nutrition. Despite what advertisements might say, a Snickers bar does not really satisfy. My drug of choice during the short-lived candy phase was Violet Crumble, a (relatively) low-fat Aussie import, made of nutritious things like compounded chocolate and sodium bicarbonate. Mmm...

Other snack ideas fail because of cost. Organic Fuji apples and Societe Roquefort bleu make a lovely snack (do yourself a favor and let the cheese get to room temperature before eating it), but alas, are not financially feasible for one in my industry.

But, even if I had a high-paying job, a fantastic metabolism, and a personal trainer, I would not be able to eat the same snack every day. Any food eaten routinely wears out its welcome faster than fruitcake at Christmas.

Thus, the point of this snack blog is to create a well of snack ideas, something to refer to when pondering the question, "What do I want to eat?" Different occasions call for different snacks. Most times we want something cheap, somewhat nutritious, and not terribly fattening. But occasionally, Friday afternoon calls for an indulgence (dietary or financial), so snack ideas of all kinds are welcome here. I hope this proves useful to at least a few other people.

Itadakimas!