cabbage – M's Adventures

The Honey Shot and Food Lust

August 24, 2020M's Adventures

The honey shot — a riff on the money shot. I was scrolling through old photos from back when I “lugged” around my DSLR camera and this got me thinking about name calling. While I understand where it comes from… I think it’s sad that the hobby of food photography is called, “food porn.” Maybe we could call it “foodlust” so that it’s more about the passion and less about bodily fluids. Equally so is the term, “money shot” which derives from the same business (and it is a business), so I posit the term, “honey shot” instead to denote something sweet and in keeping with the food field.

In that vein, I present to you, one of my favorite honey shots. It’s a photo of home made cabbage salad and egg pie from a picnic in New Zealand. Hark, how regal (purple is a royal color) and how glorious (gold like honey) it is!

Lettuce, Lettuce, Let Us Eat Lettuce!

January 5, 2019M's Adventures

At the start of every year, and indeed at most other times of the year, there is someone who wants to eat salad. I was asked to do a posting about salad which I took to be about salad with lettuce. So, let us eat lettuce!

Cosme: “Col” salad at Cosme. This large (larger than most main courses) salad is served on a ten inch wide plate and is large enough for a main dish or to be shared as an appetizer. It is listed as an appetizer on the menu at Cosme. The salad has raw shredded red cabbage, alfalfa, cashews, hearts of palm, artichoke, cherry tomatoes, lettuce, avocado, and the dressing is a yogurt based dressing so you feel healthy when eating it.

Matria: Also has a decent salad. It’s pretty and actually makes you want to eat salad.

Osso: Although Osso is a steak house, there is a selection of salads including an attractive wedge salad (in real life, in the close up above, the wedges rise like the Andes covered in mint green and dusted with bacon and candied pecans). The second salad mentioned, “salad #3” contains tiny deep fried cheese balls. I recommend keeping the dressing on the side, and foregoing the song and dance of the waiter pouring and tossing, so that you can enjoy the fried cheese “croutons”. The salad is called #3 because on the old menu, it was the #3 (at least, I think that’s why).

Cafe Mozart: Located in San Borja, this cafe has an all-you-can-eat salad bar. The salad bar has a full selection of cooked items including pasta salads and many other salads to put in the salad.

La Mora: They have several salads. They also use a classic European mustard vinaigrette. Because the olive oil is whipped/emulsified in, the dressing has the thickness of an aoli (mayonnaise in plain language).

Cafe A Bistro: The head salad is like an iceberg wedge salad, but you get all and not only the wedge (the photo doesn’t do the salad justice as the salad is more impressive when viewed in profile).

Antica: One of the salads uses butter/bib lettuce and has wedges of oranges among other things making it a decent salad.

La Panka: This chain restaurant has large salads. The one below is with roasted veg and chicken. The salad is the size of small hot tub.

La Linterna: Also has a decent house salad with ham and pecans.

Taller Razeto: Has good salads (melted cheese on a bed of lettuce in the photo below), but the restaurant is out in La Punta so not a daily destination unless you live there.

Pardos Chicken: Has a lettuce salad but I like their “cooked salad” with cooked carrots, beets, beans, and avocado. But, we were talking about lettuce.

Poke Pacifiko: As you can order exactly what you want, I imagine you can make your own salad. I’m sure you can get it without fish.

Plus, I would guess that most of the vegetarian and vegan restaurants have lettuce salads.

Asian Vegetables in Bogota

August 17, 2015August 17, 2015M's Adventures

The Chinese porcelain cat with the waving paw is the give-away. In the U.S., it’s called “napa cabbage” but in Bogota, it’s called “Chinese cabbage.” Whatever it’s called, it’s almost impossible to find in Bogota, I guess because it’s not a normal part of the diet here.

I went on the hunt. I’m not sure if it’s my imagination but I feel like in the months that I’ve lived in Bogota, more and more grocery stores are offering “Asian” vegetables like napa cabbage, daikon, and leafy greens other than spinach. But, in most of the stores, the Asian vegetables are droopy and expensive (whenever I buy bok choy in the market, it’s never the tiny ones served to me at Gran China but I guess they, as a restaurant, get preference). It’s better to go to Paloquemao. In particular, “Peter’s Fruits and Vegetables – Chinese Products Available” which I call “Peter’s Chinese Vegetable” just because I think it would sound better. There are quite a few stands in the same area of the market selling asparagus, giant daikon, arugula, chives, and leafy greens.The last time I went, I bought two large backpacks worth of vegetables and it cost me 24,000 pesos (about $11). There is a separate lady who sells nothing by chiles. The other “Asian vegetable” which is hard to find even in the U.S., is perilla leaf. Maki Roll on Carrera 11 sells that.

Japanese-Korean seafood pancake with long green onion-chive vegetables.

As an aside, Peter’s also sells sweet potato (yams to Americans and “Peruvian camote” here — a sweet potato with an orange color, used in Peruvian ceviche and North American food) and kale. Some of the vendors even use the English words and if they see a foreigner, they’ll call out “kale” or “sweet potato” to attract customers.