le blog de tranny

My visit to Berkeley, as usual, was characterized by mass acts of all day drinking (etc) and gorging ourselves with delicious food from various sources. The night I arrived, the plan was to have a full-blown bbq rib-fest with all the fixin’s and all our frenz at Caroline’s house. Caro and I made the trek to Costco, twice, and returned to her apartment with ribs that smelled like rotten eggs (aka that WERE SPOILED), twice. FUCK YOU, COSTCO. Naturally we had to scrap the rib idea as it was already getting late by then. Luckily Kev had an abundance of sirloin steak in his freezer that he brought over. Caro and I proceeded to make our respective side-dishes of sauteed chard and potato salad, as planned, and Patrick picked up some pork shoulder at the store to make up for any meat deficit. The resulting feast was fantastic. Let me lay it down for you. Note the progression and composition of the courses was dictated by preparation time.

The First Course.

Angela brought over some delectable cheeses and carb-y accompaniments (bread & crackers) as well as some tasty curried cauliflower. The apricot cheese was especially delicious with some honey drizzled on top, while the blue cheese she brought was pretty dang smelly, just the way I like it!
Norm cooked five-ish artichokes to perfection and served them with mayonnaise and a wonderful herb butter that many (including myself) enjoyed in particular.
Baby Jane, who was too busy to cook this week due to obligations to student politics, graciously provided chips and guac that were devoured (though I know I would’ve enjoyed her cooking more because I’ve tasted it!).

The Second Course

Kev transformed his perfectly-cooked medium sirloin steaks into some generous fajitas.

Caro’s famous sauteed chard (which I know the lady to have prepared for many a joint dinner <— double entendre har harr) paired surprisingly well with this southwestern dish, and many of us opted to have the chard in the fajita rather than on the side. Good thing we’d bought those corn tortillas at Costco!

The Third Course

Patrick’s barbecued rib shoulder, though I only had a taste of it, came out really well.


I think the fact that it was devoured so quickly in spite of the fact that everyone was already full from two courses was a testament to its deliciousness. He made it with a standard bbq rub, which I believe had salt, pepper, brown sugar, paprika (which we substituted for with cumin and cayenne I think) and celery seed. The bbq sauce was just a standard apple cider vinegar based sauce with tomato paste (instead of ketchup), onion powder, worcester sauce etc. I think it was loosely based on this recipe: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24729236/

As for the potato salad, I’m proud to say that it’s a recipe I improvised myself, based on Caroline’s mother’s potato-french bean salad recipe and Xander’s Russian grandmother’s beet-potato salad recipe. Can you guess my ingenious variation on the two? WHY YES, I put potatoes, french beans AND beets in the salad! I needed some help in recalling this recipe as I got a little too faded while I was cooking and frankly, kind of stressed out . I undercooked the beets a little because my sense of time was off. I also made way too much food (as I tend to do when I’m feeding other people in general) but even the leftovers ended up being devoured a few days later.

Basically, I chopped, cooked and peeled the potatoes and beets (this was the most time-consuming part) and cooked the french beans (I’m a fan of the microwave). I combined these things into a big bowl and added mayonnaise and some buttermilk. Some recipes call for lemon juice but since we only had limes and Andronico’s charges an infuriating one dollar for a lemon, I substituted buttermilk for yogurt/cream/more mayonnaise. I put a dab of dijon in there and then seasoned with salt, pepper and fresh chives. And by pepper I possibly mean lemon pepper, which even if I didn’t do that, sounds like a pretty delicious idea in retrospect. The resulting salad was a beautiful bright (almost unreal) pink color.