Salty toast

My mom said, “If you’re going to Whole Foods, pick Dad up some almond butter.” I did, and realized I hadn’t had almond butter in years, and it sounded good. So I grabbed a jar for us, too. Whole Foods sells its own almond butter for $6. There’s also some gourmet brand for–I kid you not–$18.

The almond butter was pretty tasty, but it’s unsalted and tastes like it. I briefly considered trying to stir some salt into the jar. Then I realized there was a better way. I spread some almond butter on toast and sprinkled it with kosher salt.

This was not only good, it was way better than salted almond butter would have been. And Iris loves helping to sprinkle the salt. Now I sometimes sprinkle salt on peanut buttered toast, too.

I highly recommend salting your toast, but if I ever start talking about putting fleur de sel on my toast, please kick me.

Random “I Heart Seattle” moment

I’m at the new location of [Espresso Vivace](http://www.espressovivace.com/), one of Seattle’s best espresso bars. It’s in an area of South Lake Union where everything is under construction. While I was waiting for my macchiato, a construction worker with a blue hard hat came in.

He ordered quiche lorraine and a tall nonfat latte.

Texas rules

When you have a kid, you start thinking about stuff that never registered much before. Like the beauty of a simple sunset and pretty horses and, wait, not that stuff. Stuff like, hmm, when I open my wallet, flies fly out. I wonder if I could lower my weekly French toast bill without compromising on quality?

I used to buy challah for French toast at Noah’s Bagels. It was good bread and made great toast. I think it was about $3.50, and it was baked fresh every Friday. Then one day they changed their formula and gave me a sad, flattened loaf. It was an April 1, I remember, because I wondered whether I was the victim of a many-braided bread hoax, another indignity visited on my people.

So I went to QFC and found they were selling much larger and less misshapen store-brand loaves of challah. The QFC bread was baked in a loaf pan, dyed yellow with annatto coloring, and not much fun to eat by itself, but by the time it in French toast batter, it was basically indistinguishable from the old Noah’s formula.

Then, a couple of months ago, the QFC brand disappeared, replaced with some natural-sounding local brand. It was good, just as good as Old Noah, but the loaves are tiny, not even enough for two weeks of toast. And the price is an outrageous $4.50.

It was time to try abandoning challah altogether and going right back to Texas. I bought a loaf of Franz Texas Toast, the thick-sliced white sandwich bread, and used my regular, Cooks Illustrated-derived batter.

As you’ve already guessed, this toast was just as good as any of the others, and the price is unbeatable. A loaf of Texas Toast is $2, and it has enough slices for three breakfasts. (Sliced bread is fine in the freezer, in a Ziploc, for several weeks.)

Here’s the recipe. Unless you’re partial to highly enriched bread for your French toast, like brioche or croissant, I’m willing to bet this is better than what you make now. All thanks to Christopher Kimball and the state of Texas.

**French Toast**
Serves 2 adults and 1 child
Adapted from The New Best Recipe

5 slices Texas Toast or other thick-sliced white sandwich bread
1 egg
2 tablespoons (1 ounce) butter, melted
3/4 cup (6 ounces) milk
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/3 cup (1.6 ounces) flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1/4 teaspoon table salt
additional butter

1. Crack the egg into a pie plate. Whisk in the butter, then the milk and vanilla, then the sugar, flour, and salt.

2. Place a ten- or twelve-inch skillet (not nonstick) over medium heat. Soak the bread slices in the batter for 40 seconds per side, and set them aside on a plate as you finish.

3. Melt 1/2 tablespoon butter in the pan. Cook the bread slices, two at a time, until nicely browned on both sides, adjusting the heat if necessary. I find it takes about 2-1/2 minutes for the first side and 1-1/2 for the second side, but subsequent batches go faster.

4. Enjoy, with fake syrup.

The little corner

This morning we picked up my parents at the airport, and we wanted to stop for lunch somewhere quick, cheap, good, and nearby.

The answer was obvious: [Taqueria El Rinconsito](http://www.elrinconsito.com), a local taco chain with branches all over south Seattle. We went to the one on International Boulevard in Tukwila.

I wish El Rinconsito had Starbucks-esque aspirations, because I think America is ready for it. They serve burritos and enchiladas and the like, but most people come in for tacos and tortas (Mexican sandwiches). The tacos come in all the usual taco-truck flavors: carnitas, cabeza (beef cheek), birria (shredded beef), adobada (spicy pork), pollo, and lengua (beef tongue). Iris loved the tongue. Laurie and I split a six-taco plate, with two each of carnitas, adobada, and pollo. We printed a coupon off the web site and got Iris a free quesadilla plate.

El Rinconsito should be everywhere not just because it’s good, but because it’s good for a snack. Often I’ll find myself wanting a snack but not in the mood for candy, chips, or fruit. Basically, what I want is a miniature version of a meal. Most restaurants don’t cater to that kind of craving. Good Mexican restaurants do. The tacos at El Rinconsito consist of two small corn tortillas topped with about two tablespoons of meat, with salsa, onions, and cilantro. Naturally there’s a salsa bar.

The prices at El Rinconsito are frankly insane. It’s like wandering into a country where the dollar goes farther, or possibly it’s like wandering into the 1950s, with tacos. The tacos are 79 cents. The six-taco plate, with a drink, is $5.79, and you don’t pay extra if you want tamarind juice or horchata instead of soda. Free refills!

Finally, is it wrong to feel an inner glow when you go to an ethnic restaurant and your party is the only one there not of the same ethnicity as the restaurant? I don’t even mean “the food must be good, just look who’s here.” It’s more a “some of my best friends” thing.

This is about as mature as thinking I must be really progressive because I rap along to De La Soul in the car, but c’mon, tell me you don’t feel the same way.

Iris enjoyed El Rinconsito, but then afterwards we took her through the car wash, which completely blew her mind. I think it was more exciting than the zoo, the aquarium, and pizza combined.

Big flavors

I got the new issue of [The Art of Eating](http://www.artofeating.com/) this week, and a letter from David Downie voiced a complaint I’ve heard before:

> During my travels in America I have been treated to so many overloaded, over-spiced, over-complicated dishes at homes and in restaurants that I’ve simply stopped commenting on the phenomenon.

Downie, who lives in Paris, contributes regularly to AoE (he writes about unsalted Italian bread in this issue). Something tells me he wouldn’t have approved of tonight’s dinner.

Dinner consisted of the remainder of the homemade poblano sausage, formed into patties and served on toasted buns (Franz cornmeal kaiser buns, which are great, and wouldn’t Franz the Cornmeal Kaiser make a great Sesame Street character?). For sandwich toppings, we had sauteed mushrooms and homemade tomatillo-chipotle salsa.

Downie doesn’t provide any examples of what he’s talking about, so it sounds to me like he’s elevating a personal preference–or perhaps a matter of physiology–to a moral standard.

Naturally, I wouldn’t profess to like “overloaded” or “over-spiced” food, but I think Thai food is one of the world’s greatest cuisines. I doubt this is a controversial sentiment anymore, and certainly not in Seattle. What makes Thai food special is often described in shorthand as “hot, sour, salty, sweet,” but that’s only half of it. Thai food is the culinary equivalent of Extreme Programming: it’s what you get when you take all of those delicious qualities and turn them up to eleven.

Now, part of the reason I like Thai food is the same reason I like any food: I had a good experience with it, and it resonated with my personal palette of psychological quirks. But another part of the reason is purely physical: I’m a nontaster. That is, I’m physically incapable of tasting the chemical known as PROP. Seventy-five percent of the population finds this chemical unpalatably bitter. My fellow nontasters and I could chug it like Miller Lite. Nontasters, who have far fewer tastebuds than average, tend to have a high tolerance for spicy and bitter foods, as well as extremely sour foods like grapefruit.

I can’t say for sure that Downie is a PROP taster, but it seems likely. He goes on to say:

> Instead of tasting the subtle flavors and rejoicing in the nuances, the respect shown for the unmediated flavors of the ingredients, this distinguished writer found blandness.

The key points that I think Downie is missing are: the cooking of different countries can be great in different ways, and often a nation’s greatest strengths are also its greatest flaws. America’s penchant for big flavors gives us the Big Mountain Fudge Cake with one hand and barbecue with the other. To take this metaphor in a totally gross direction, we can’t just amputate the fudge cake hand. (Big Mountain Fudge Cake is a nasty-looking dessert served at a chain restaurant. I saw it on TV. I am not opposed to fudge cake in general.)

Also, of course, America offers among the world’s best and worst food, and if you come looking to pick a food fight, you’ll find plenty of material.

I went to Paris once. I could have come back complaining that the vegetables were all overcooked, the food was bland, and everything was larded up with too much butter and cream. That would have been silly. Right?