Today’s picks:
1. Philanthropy has never been easier for the lazy. You can donate $10 to the Red Cross by texting “Haiti” to the number 90999. It gets even easier than that. If you went to Read more…

While I was eating $1.99 Safeway Organic tomato soup for lunch (don’t hate—it’s close to payday), here’s the menu city council members and staff were enjoying at their annual departmental retreat, held this year at the Read more…

Feeling hung over after last night’s festivities? A number of bars and restaurants all over the city are open today to help. Some of our picks:
Rob Roy, 2332 Second Ave., open 5 pm – 2 Read more…

Lest readers think my M.O. is to go to restaurants on opening night and slag on them for failing to live up to my inflated expectations, take note: I waited a full week to go to Read more…

This, in no particular order and chosen somewhat arbitrarily from memory, is my list of some of the best meals I made in 2009. Tellingly, perhaps, several of them are from the now-defunct Gourmet magazine, and none are from its putative replacement*, Bon Appetit.

1. Salsa Verde Carnitas (Pork Tacos with Green Sauce)

This recipe, an adaptation by Accidental Hedonist, takes this one from Simply Recipes (which calls for a four-hour-plus braise in salsa verde) and gilds the lily, adding a rub made from cumin, brown sugar, and sweet and hot paprikas. Let the shoulder rest in that mixture overnight, cover it with a mixture of salsa verde (canned is fine) and pork stock (cheating with beef or even chicken is fine, but I tend to have some of each around) and braise hell out of it until it’s soft enough to cut with a spoon. Toss in a handful of cilantro and a lime’s worth of juice, and that’s it.

The recipe I’ve linked calls for a brief crisping time in a low oven, but after trying that method three or four times, I recommend simply taking the pork out of the pot and reducing the sauce while the shoulder rests. Finally, shred the pork and serve it on warmed corn tortillas with radishes, crema, cotija cheese, red cabbage, and the reduced sauce alongside.

2. Turkey Meatballs (from Gourmet)

Yep, you read that right: Turkey meatballs. I was skeptical, too—repeatedly passing over the torn-out magazine page in my recipe pile for bolder, more exotic-sounding recipes—until I read this rave review on Smitten Kitchen, which declared these meatballs “impossibly good,” “possibly my new favorite meatball recipe”; and “crazy good” (she also said her life had been “woefully deficient” before she discovered the recipe… which even I can admit is going a bit far.)

But every other superlative? Right on. They’re that good: A deceptive simple mix of bread soaked in milk (standard, as far as I’m concerned, in any decent meatball recipe), ground meat, pancetta (that’s probably the secret ingredient), onions, egg, garlic, tomato paste and herbs. Chicken works, too (in fact, it’s what Gourmet recommends), but I find that turkey tends to have a higher fat content (and fat=flavor, as everyone knows). The peporanata included in the recipe are good, but not strictly necessary; feel free to skip this step if it’s impeding you from making these.

3. Stir-Fried Pork With Long Beans (from Gourmet)

This recipe combines several of my favorite elements: The challenge of difficult-to-find ingredients (fresh curry leaves, shrimp powder, shrimp paste, cilantro root, galangal…), an unusual (for me) method, flavors that are truly foreign to my American palate, and impressiveness: Not one person I’ve ever served this to has failed to ask for seconds.

The basic premise is fairly simple: Combine a dozen exotic ingredients in a large mortar, pound with a pestle for six to eight minutes until you have a smooth paste (and no cheating with a food processor!), and stir-fry, adding beans, boneless pork ribs (frozen for a few minutes for easier slicing), and a few more basic ingredients near the end of cooking. But the result is beguiling: The sharp tang of lemongrass, lime zest, galangal and lime leaves hits you first, followed by gentle umami notes from the shrimp paste, shrimp powder, and fish sauce. If you can’t come up with all the ingredients—even at Seattle’s Asian markets, Kaffir lime leaves are often in short supply—don’t abandon hope: just substitute more lime zest for the lime leaves, ginger for the galangal, and regular cilantro stems for the cilantro root. The only ingredients that are absolutely indispensible are the shrimp paste, shrimp powder, and fish sauce, for which there are no substitutes. Read more…