Everyone knows what an instant-read thermometer is. It’s a thermometer you stick into a piece of food and it instantly tells you the temperature. Right?

You wish. An instant-read thermometer is any thermometer that doesn’t have to be stuck into the food *while it’s heating up* in order to get an accurate reading. My old Taylor instant-read took about a minute to get a reading. When I break out the thermometer, it’s because I want to know whether something is done *now,* not so I can stick my hand into a hot oven for a minute like a jackass.

So I got a Thermapen. The Thermapen lives up to the phrase “instant-read”: you stick it in, and it tell you the temperature in four seconds, max, and usually more like two seconds. It has a range of -58°F to 572°F. It comes in colors, like the late iPod mini. There’s an optional belt holster, which of course I bought, because in my book there’s no such thing as an *optional* holster.

No thermometer is perfect, and there are a couple of downsides to the Thermapen. First, the quick reading depends on the thermometer having a thin, sharp tip. You could poke your eye out, but more to the point, it’s delicate. I don’t think it’s going to be a problem, but if this is something you’re worried about, you can order a Thermapen with a thicker tip that is hardier but takes ten seconds to read.

Second, you can’t switch the Thermapen between Fahrenheit and Celsius. You can get a Celsius-only model, but only in gray.

Third, and I know you’re waiting for this, the Thermapen costs a bundle. The thermometer itself is $85. Throw in the holster and shipping, and you’re close to $100. Do you really need a $100 thermometer? Maybe not. If you cook meat, make candy, or deep-fry regularly, the Thermapen will save you many headaches. If you don’t eat meat, candy, or fried foods, probably you gave up on this blog weeks ago. So I guess you need a Thermapen.

You can order the Thermapen from [Thermoworks](http://www.thermoworks.com). I haven’t had the occasion to use their tech support yet, but this is an encouraging sign:

> When you call, we don’t need to transfer you to a half-dozen different folks before you get what you need. We promise, no transfer or one transfer. And, we have real people answer the phone. No automated reception software.

We enjoyed our Vancouver vacation so much that Laurie and I are talking about renting a downtown condo for a week or two next year. It’s one thing to admire kaffir limes and chilaca chiles, quite another to be able to actually cook with them.

“We could even invite some people over for dinner,” said Laurie.

“I have a better idea,” I replied.

A couple of weeks ago I was listening to The Splendid Table with Lynne Rossetto Kasper. A caller described a new Paris trend: *restaurants éphémères*, or temporary restaurants. A top chef (such as Pierre Gagnaire and Alain Passard) will open a restaurant and keep it open for a week or two, taking no reservations and serving high-end food at low prices. It’s a way of having fun and keeping the chef’s name in the headlines. Here’s Chocolate and Zucchini’s post about dinner at Végétable, Passard’s ephemeral restaurant of last spring.

So I figure I’ll open my ephemeral restaurant in an undisclosed downtown Vancouver location for one week during winter vacation every year. You’ll have to reserve years in advance. There will be a single menu served to all guests with no substitutions. It would be called Aux Racines et Vers. Iris will open every dinner with a toast, or possibly several pieces of toast.

Okay, I don’t have to guts to do this, and I’m not a good enough cook, but if you want to come by for dinner next December, let me know.

We’re back from Vancouver with some good contraband. On Wednesday took the Aquabus to Granville Island. Iris loved Granville Island, partly because when we said we were taking a ferryboat to the Island, she said, “Just like Frog!” There’s a Frog and Toad story where Frog wants to spend some time alone, so he goes and sits on an island. So presumably Iris was imagining an island of a few square feet in the middle of a pond where she could sit in solitude.

Instead, she ran around the public market building, got extremely rained on, and played at the Kids Market. We played many games of Skee-Ball and won a slinky. I also loved the Island, because I went to Oyama Sausage, which has the most incredible charcuterie case I’ve ever seen. We needed snacks for the trip back. How to decide? I ended up getting some spicy wild boar salami and goose breast prosciutto. The goose prosciutto was especially good, and it tasted remarkably similar to ham. Similar enough, in fact, that when we got to the border, I declared our meats, and our remaining salami was confiscated, but the prosciutto was waved through on the grounds that, “The prosciutto is okay because it’s just ham.”

I also stopped at South China Seas Trading Co, a small Asian imports store that seems to specialize in products that are hard to find elsewhere. They had beautiful looking fresh kaffir limes and, amazingly, fresh green peppercorns. I have been missing fresh peppercorns since our last visit to Thailand in 2001, and here they are. I don’t know if it’s illegal to import them, but I conveniently forgot to mention them at the border, so now they’re in my fridge. I keep reaching in, twisting off peppercorns, and snacking on them. A fresh green peppercorn tastes like a mild tropical fruit (such as green papaya) infused with black pepper. Tomorrow I’m going to put them into a curry.

Note the fresh chilaca peppers on the right; these are the fresh version of dried pasillas. Since I haven’t been to Mexico (other than Tijuana), I’ve never seen them *anywhere* before.

This is not my first adventure with potentially illegal peppercorns, but it’s the best yet.

We’re taking our first-ever family vacation with Iris. This morning we caught the train to Vancouver and are currently ensconced at the [Hotel Le Soleil][LeSoleil], which seems very nice so far. The location is perfect (a couple blocks off Robson and right by to a major transit hub), and it’s amazingly cheap (CAD 125/night for a suite).

We hit [Vancouver Kidsbooks][VKB], where Iris read many books and kissed many stuffed animals, including dinosaurs, poodles, sheep, and a great horned owl puppet. Then we caught a bus to [Vij’s Rangoli][VR].

[LeSoleil]: http://www.lesoleilhotel.com/
[VKB]: http://www.kidsbooks.bc.ca/
[VR]: http://www.vijsrangoli.ca/

Pretty much everyone considers Vij’s (the parent restaurant, as opposed to the Rangoli) one of the best Indian restaurants outside India, and I agree. It’s a full-on experience, though: they don’t take reservations, and the wait is long. While you’re waiting, they ply you with free chai and fried breads, but it’s still a wait. Also, Vij’s is incredibly loud. Plus, they’re closed this week.

Vij’s Rangoli is Vij’s lovable new kid brother, located right next door to the original at 11th and Granville. I was going to say it’s less hip; actually it’s just as hip but in a different way, less dark and more Euro. We got there at 5:45 and were seated almost immediately. Iris liked poking her head into the kitchen, which was behind her, to see the billows of steam.

We pushed Iris to her limit today–up before dawn, a long train ride, then another train ride, then a late nap in a weird crib, then a bus ride, and so on. I was worried she’d refuse to eat, or only gnaw on bread. I had insufficient faith in Vij. We had vegetable samosas, wild salmon cakes, and pork curry with fennel and yogurt. Everything came with sides and chutneys.

Iris gobbled it all. She ate a bite of fishcake. “Spicy!” she declared, and took a big drink of water. Then she ate more. Later, there was one fishcake left, and I said to Laurie, “I’ll split it with you.” I ended up splitting it with Iris. They really were incredible fishcakes, spiced with ajowan and garam masala. The pork curry was sublime. I think curries must be one of the hardest dishes in the world to make really well. Most any Indian restaurant serves pretty good curries, but to take them to the next level, from pretty good to “I want to mainline this sauce” good, I have no idea how you do that. Vij’s does.

The Rangoli is inexpensive. It was $42 Canadian for the three of us. Most amazing of all, nearly everything on the menu is available in frozen or refrigerated takeout pouches, and prices range from about $7-$10. If you live in Vancouver and you don’t have any Rangoli in your fridge, some kind of culinary secret police should be knocking on your door right now.

Last night I was chatting with some friends about pizza, and there were many harsh words directed at Pizza Hut and its ilk. In principle, I wanted to agree.

In practice, however, I would gladly debate the merits of the Associazione Vera Pizza Napoletana rules while eating a Supreme Personal Pan Pizza that has been sitting in the warmer for two hours. I don’t say this as a boast or a *mea culpa*, but I’m glad that I’ve maintained the ability to enjoy low-road pizza while exploring high-road pizza, a trend that is just beginning to take root in Seattle.

My favorite pizza in Seattle–my favorite pizza ever, in fact–is indeed a high-road pie, made at Via Tribunali on Pike Street. Via Tribunali is an über-Neapolitan place. They import their flour and their pizzaiolos from Italy, their menu is printed only in Italian, and at one point they were strongly implying that they were injecting minerals into their water supply to better approximate the hard water of Naples.

In his book American Pie, Peter Reinhart argues that the best American pizzerias don’t try to ape any particular style or chase a certification, but use tradition as an inspiration. Obviously, Via Tribunali is exactly the kind of ape Reinhart is talking about, and when it debuted it garnered reams of bad notices on the food discussion boards: the knives are dull (pizzas at Via Trib are unsliced); the center of the pie is soggy; the mushrooms are canned; the crust is underdone; you set my hair on fire; etc. As a friend of mine wrote, “Via Tribunali reminds me of an Italian motorcycle that I once owned: beautiful, but deeply flawed.”

I went in with low expectations. And indeed, Via Trib’s salami pie is greasy and unexceptional. Luckily, we also tried the Primavera. Crust, tomatoes, fresh mozzarella. When the pizza emerges from the wood-burning oven, it is topped with a handful of arugula and crumbles of Parmigiano-Reggiano. Any greasiness from the cheese is balanced by the peppery bite of the greens. This is a single-serving pie (it’s fairly large, but the crust is very thin and made without oil), and I’m already thinking about when I can next ditch the family and get over to the bar at Via Trib for a Primavera and a glass of wine. As much as I liked having dinner with Laurie there, this is the perfect solo Seattle dinner. (Also, VT is not at all kid-friendly.)

If you’re wondering what the pies at VT look like, I found a photo of a couple (though sadly not the Primavera) on Flickr.

So, I’m looking forward to seeing how the pizza scene in Seattle matures. In the meantime, I’m equally thrilled with the Primavera and with Pagliacci‘s Works Primo, available every other Sunday at the Broadway location. The Works features pepperoni, sausage, onions, green peppers, and olives–better known as a Supreme, and it’s supremely good.