If I Had a Salad, I'd Dress It All Over This Land

When I was growing up, my mom, my dad, my sister, and I had dinner as a family almost every night. Usually my mom cooked and included a protein, a starch, and a vegetable in each dinnertime meal. The vegetable was almost never salad; she's simply not a big fan of it. I, on the other hand, love salad, especially the dressing. When my mom does make salad, she prefers it undressed or maybe with just lemon juice. Fortunately, she made dressing for the rest of us on the rare occasions that she did make salad. When I started cooking dinner once a week for the family, when I was about seven-years-old, I wanted to make salad. My mom gave me this simple recipe for vinaigrette:

3 Tb olive oil
1 Tb red wine vinegar
juice squeezed from a wedge of lemon 1
(peeled) garlic clove (which should be removed before the dressing is poured)
1/4 tsp mustard
1/4 tsp thyme
freshly ground pepper

According to Michael Ruhlman, author of The Elements of Cooking and the recent Ratio, which was a recent housewarming gift to me from my mother, the ratio for basic vinaigrette should be three parts oil and one part vinegar. Mom taught me well. I use the recipe she gave to me as a base for other recipes. I almost always use olive oil or extra virgin olive oil. I have discovered that if I leave the garlic clove whole that the dressing is not garlicky enough, but if mince the garlic, the flavor is too garlicky. So I cut the clove into four pieces and let it sit in the vinaigrette and then press it with the back of a fork to release some of the "garlic juice." And I almost always add a pinch or two of salt and sugar. Ultimately, how I make the vinaigrette usually depends on what kind of salad I'm making.

For a standard french vinaigrette, which I usually use with a simple green salad, I use extra virgin olive oil, red wine vinegar, lemon juice, mustard, a garlic clove cut in four (as described above), salt, pepper, and a pinch of sugar.

For potato salad, I use the french vinaigrette plus a dollop or two of mayonnaise (low-fat is fine) and a couple of dashes of paprika. Sometimes I do mince and keep in the garlic because the potatoes can absorb it. The longer the garlic can sit in the vinaigrette, though, the more it cooks and the milder the flavor.

If I am making a spinach salad, I'll often use (regular) olive oil, balsamic vinegar, mustard, a drop of honey, salt, and pepper. Because the balsamic vinegar adds a heavier and sweeter flavor, I'll often omit the honey, but it depends on how sweet the particular vinegar is. I'll dress this salad a bit in advance to let the vinegar cook the spinach a bit.

With tender, tasty greens, such as arugula, I'll make a very simple dressing either with just extra virgin olive oil and lemon, or extra virgin olive oil and sherry vinegar, and sometimes a dash of mustard if I'm going with the sherry vinegar. My favorite arugula salad involves arugula, caramelized onions and finely chopped hard-boiled eggs that have been slightly undercooked. Greens like arugula are also often tasty with a nut-based oil rather then olive, like walnut oil.

For a Greek Salad, I'll use olive oil, red wine vinegar, lemon, dill, and a dash of mustard and a pinch of sugar.

For an Asian slaw, cucumber salad (I scoop out the seeds first), or even a green or spinach salad with julienned carrots, red peppers and cucumbers, I'll use sesame or peanut oil, rice vinegar, a couple dashes of soy sauce, fresh ginger, and some brown or white sugar, The fresh ginger should be minced. If you don't want a strong ginger flavor, let it sit in the vinaigrette a while and then remove it before pouring over the sald.

I adore Caesar Salad. (This is an aside, but the best and most affordable Caesar Salad I've ever had and I've had lots, is the one at Bodo's Bagels in Charlottesville, although be forewarned that sometimes they overdress or underdress, but they'll give you extra dressing when they underdress.) I use The Joy of Cooking's recipe as a base for my own Caesar dressing. The only difference is I use only extra-virgin olive oil and no butter and I don't add eggs and I change the ratios a bit to make it less oily and I add a dash or two of red wine vinegar. I do include anchovies, but use paste from a tube.

I don't usually go for creamy dressings, the exceptions being creamy cilantro-lime dressing and blue cheese dressing. I don't make blue dressing myself because my husband is lactose intolerant, but I may try this recipe soon. The cilantro-lime dressing I managed to eke out using my food processor was inspired by the creamy cilantro-lime dressing they serve up at Sticks Kebob Shop in Charlottesville (but also in Richmond now, I just found out!!!) Unfortunately, I don't recall the specific recipe I used (probably because there wasn't one), but it included the following ingredients: freshly squeezed lime juice, red wine or apple cider vinegar, fresh cilantro, reduced-fat or no-fat sour cream, olive oil, a bit of mayonnaise, one or two cloves of garlic, paprika, fresh jalapeno, and some honey. I know the amounts of ingredients that I would put in as I was preparing the dressing, but I wouldn't measure them or anything. I would use relatively small amounts to start and limit the stronger-flavored ingredients, like the vinegar and honey to just a dash. Once I mixed them all up, I would taste it and see what it needed. This dressing can be used on salad, to accompany grilled meats or vegetables, or as a dip.

As for bottled dressings, most I don't care for, but there are a few I swear by:

1. Newman's Own Olive Oil and Vinegar Dressing, but I make sure to shake it thoroughly before pouring.

2. Newman's Own Lighten Up Sesame Ginger Dressing, but I add a dash of rice vinegar with it because I like vinegar like that.

3. Goddess Dressing. I had this stuff for the first time at a twin-twin play date in Oakland and I was hooked! Annie's Naturals makes this in a natural or organic version (not quite sure what the difference is), but Trader Joe's version is just as tasty and about half the price. I'll soon try the Full Circle brand version of it that I found at Ukrop's here in Ashland.

4. When I do have a hankering for blue cheese dressing, I shell out the extra few bucks for Marie's.

Enjoy!

Pardon me, would you have any Vrai Dim Sum?

Going out for dim sum on the occasional weekend morning was a tradition in my family growing up. Eventually, major events became excuses to go eat dim sum. That was a hard-won soccer tournament! Guess we better recoup with some dim sum. Someone got into college! Off to dim sum! Nowhere to go after Rosh Hashanah services? We'll have dim sum. Engaged? Let's give him the dim sum test. But when we started out, we always went with our family friends, the Eisensteins. In fact, Dave Eisenstein, an H.E.W. (Department of Health, Education, and Welfare) lawyer colleague of my father's, may have introduced my parents to the concept. In the D.C. area, where I grew up, the best international food is often found in the suburbs, which is not the case in many other cities where the international culinary paths go in the opposite direction, i.e., from the burbs to downtown. He led us to Tung Bor, which was located in Wheaton Plaza, in the Maryland suburbs.

On weekends my parents didn't rise before 11:00 a.m. and my friends were forbidden to phone our house before that time. The few that did call at the ungodly hour of 10:30 a.m. never dared to again after being sleepily admonished by my father. My mother, who's been known to say things like, "what's there to do in the morning?" didn't even hear the phone ring. Although it was a struggle, especially since my parents required that we dress in brunch-casual attire, we made an exception to our weekend habit for Tung Bor. My father would rouse my mother, sister, and I out of bed super early, which on a weekend meant by 10:00 a.m., so that we could get there just before it opened at 11:00 a.m., secure a spot in the front of the line, and avoid waiting for a table--they didn't take reservations.

Once inside the restaurant, the eight of us would be seated at a round table set aside for larger parties, usually one with a fence-like divider around it. The Eisensteins had two younger girls and with them, my older sister and I used to hang off of the railings and go, "Bang! bang!" at the waiters who would laugh and say "Bang! Bang!" back. But once the carts started rolling by and stopping at our table, we conserved our energy for eating all of the delicious rolls, dumplings, buns, and pastries that Tung Bor had to offer. The outrageous finale to our dim sum feasts did not involve fortune cookies, but a trip to the Dunkin' Donuts across the street from the Wheaton Plaza Mall. Initially my Dad would scoff at the idea of consuming more after our huge meal, protesting he couldn't eat another bite, but then would risk life and limb crossing one of those suburban parkways with Dave, returning with a half-eaten doughnut in hand.

When I lived in Brooklyn, New York, after graduating from college I didn't really have a consistent group of friends to go with (ah, the lonely years), and didn't go but once, so I can't speak to New York's dim sum scene, but I'm sure there are several places in Chinatown worth trying. By the time I moved back to D.C., Tung Bor had changed--changed locations and was buffet style. It had gone downhill, and was kind of depressing, reminding me of a cafeteria. The food wasn't fresh; there were no carts. I don't think it even exists any longer.

Following the recommendation of Yolanda Lee, a high school friend and fellow food lover whose family hails from Southern China and Hong Kong (where dim sum is a specialty), my parents and I tried a new place in the suburbs in Falls Church, Virginia, called Fortune Chinese Seafood Restaurant, which was fantastic, and had even more dishes, including vegetarian ones, and more seating than Tung Bor. Still, the experience didn't feel the same, and my parents seemed to lose enthusiasm for the tradition.

I moved to Charlottesville, Virginia, soon thereafter with my Ph-D-seeking fiancee. Charlottesville is a great restaurant town, but there isn't any dim sum there--at least there wasn't when we were there. I thought I had an opening when I found out that one of my Chinese students worked in his family's Chinese restaurant in town (I was an E.S.O.L. teacher--English for Speakers of Other Languages--at the time). One day, I pulled him aside:

"Kevin, we need to talk. Your family is sitting on a gold mine, not to mention sitting on the future of my culinary happiness here."

"Ah, gold mine?"

"Dim sum, Kevin. You should have dim sum. Saturday and Sunday mornings, although it could just be Sundays to start with."

"You know what is dim sum, miss?"

"Yes, Kevin, I do. And Charlottesville doesn't have any."

"Ha ha, Miss Levy. Nobody in Charlottesville eat dim sum."

"I eat dim sum, Kevin, I do. Look, do you want to be the first person in your family to graduate from American high school or not? You tell your parents that if they want you to graduate, that they will produce dim sum. I'm not playing around anymore, Kevin." Kevin passed my class, but there was no dim sum.

Once Cedar finished his graduate studies in the spring 2007, when my own sons were soon to be four years old and my daughter was five months old, we moved to Oakland, California. Although Oakland was far from our friends and family on the East Coast, I saw the bounty of produce, food, and restaurants in the Bay Area as a major plus. I was especially excited to finally pass along my family's dim sum tradition to my own children.

We moved in July and by the end of August, I had researched all of the dim sum options in Oakland. We went to one that came highly recommended and that seemed authentic: Old Place Seafood Teahouse. I'd never been to an old place seafood teahouse before and I was so excited. We arrived and waited a while, which was not easy with our preschool-aged boys and infant daughter. Once we were seated, there were no high chairs and it was hard to get the boys to stop pulling on the plastic sheet covering the tablecloth. Then we couldn't get anyone to bring food to us. Either the carts went by without stopping, or they didn't have anything we wanted (we eat fish, but usually no pork, beef, or poultry). The servers didn't understand our questions, nor did they describe the dishes to us. What we did have was tasty, but we couldn't get much service and the kids were getting restless, so we left still hungry and disappointed. I had gone on and on to them about the carts and the magical food. I was crushed and gave up on dim sum for a while.

Then in October 2007, when my sister was visiting from New York, we decided to spend a day in San Francisco. I looked up stuff to do in one of our travel guides, Fun Places to Go with Children: Northern California by Elizabeth Pomada. One place the book recommended was Yank Sing. The blurb in the book led with, "The world's best dim sum is not in China town" and then expounded how fresh the food was, how possible it was to have a vegetarian or seafood-only meal, and how kid-friendly the place was. It sounded perfect and it was.

The drive over the Bay Bridge from Oakland was a blast for the kids, plus there is free parking on the weekends for Yank Sing customers in the Rincon Center garage. If public transportation is preferable, there is also a BART station (Embarcadero) right near Rincon Center, as well as a ferry to and from Alameda. We always made a reservation for before the rush started at about noon and left extra time for parking and checking-in. Otherwise, we'd have had to wait a long time for our table. Once we were seated, the carts were always full and always circulating--the food arrived as soon as we were ready for it. And it was SUPERB. The menu features traditional dishes such as pot stickers, several types of dumplings, spring rolls, shrimp toast, Peking duck, won tons, sesame balls, and egg custard tarts, but also more unusual items such as red cabbage salad with walnuts, delicately flavored sea bass, and coconut cream rolls. The vegetables were fresh and cooked just right--not overdone and not raw. The service was excellent. Water and tea were served and refilled promptly. When we couldn't find something we wanted on one of the carts, we just asked for it and out it came. The servers, even if they spoke limited English, were able to answer our questions about the food easily, and when they couldn't, they would smile and get someone who could.

The restaurant is bustling, so we didn't worry too much if the kids were a bit noisy. At the same time, it wasn't so loud that it drowned out conversation. Our kids loved the food so much that they spent most of their time eating. When they needed a break, they watched the carts go by and all of the surrounding action. If they needed to stretch their legs, we took them to Rincon Center's atrium to visit the famous rain fountain. Relative to what Oakland and San Francisco's Chinatowns offer, Yank Sing is pricey and it's not as authentic--it's almost corporate and we usually spend twenty to thirty dollars per person. But it's so kid-friendly and delicious that it's worth every penny.

Another former H.E.W. Civil Rights Division chum of my father's, Paul Grossman (I'm starting to wonder how much got done in that office with the employees so busy talking about Chinese food), a long-time Oakland resident and East Asian food afficioando, says that it's pretty hard to go wrong in Chinatown Oakland for dim sum, but that his favorite is Hong Kong East Ocean in Emeryville.

Once we moved to Ashland, Virignia, this past summer I started researching dim sum options in Richmond, which is about twelve miles from us down I-95. The consensus on Yelp! and other on-line food forums seemed to be that Full Khee was the best (and really, only) option for dim sum. So, I told the kids: I found dim sum! We were all very excited.

When when we pulled up, I was apprehensive. I saw that the sign was missing and the building looked abandoned and run down. But then I shooed away my concerns and reassured myself, it's just got that hole-in-the-wall-run-down charm. It's adventurous! Authentic! Out of the way! When we went in, by the kitchen I saw a duck strung up and also lobsters and shellfish in an aquarium. And most of the patrons looked Chinese. All good signs. But there were no carts. One review had said to get there early (before 11:00 a.m.) because otherwise we'd have to wait; it was practically empty. The again, it was a weekday. But then we had to order on a photocopy. Our waiter was impatient with us. Then I reassured myself, again, that rude waiter = tasty dive. We ordered two types of shrimp dumplings, spring rolls, sesame balls, turnip cakes, and a noodle and vegetables dish, and eagerly awaited the arrival of our feast.

Well, I'm sorry little, probably struggling, family-owned restaurant; I'm sorry to do this to you (don't worry, no one reads this blog and anyway no one eats dim sum around here anyway). I know you don't concern yourself with decor and I really respect that. I really wanted things between us to work out better. But with the exception of the sesame balls, your food was disgusting. It was crunchy and gritty in all the wrong places. There was this weird musty taste to the dumplings. It was awful--we couldn't even finish our meal. In fact, the only thing I could eat for the rest of the day was a cleansing plate of raw vegetables. I had to exorcise the taste and memory by going for a long run. The meal threw my sodium levels off so much that I thought I was going to require dialysis.

That was a major blow, but I have not yet lost hope and as I explained to my sons, we can't stay in the Bay Area just for Yank Sing (or for the strawberries or the avocados or the burritos or the bakeries), no matter how good it all is. We're back in Central Virginia to stay; I'm not leaving just because the dim sum is lousy. In the meantime, I can always head to D.C. to get my fix. My friend Yolanda is back on the case and recommends the following places:

1) Oriental East in Silver Spring, close to the D.C./Maryland border. It's very popular, so it's best to get there at 10:30 to line up for a table. They have dim sum on Saturdays and Sundays only.

2) Wong Gee in Wheaton. I actually went there with Yolanda that last time it was there and I thought it was excellent (and inexpensive, especially because Yolanda treated). It's very informal.

3) Mark's Duck House on Route 50 in Falls Church. This is one of Yolanda's parents' favorite places. It's authentic, but small and crowded, so get there early.

4) This is not from Yolanda, but my friend Julie treated me to Tong Cheng's in D.C.'s Chinatown to celebrate the impending birth of my third child. I thought it was pretty good, but then again, I was pregnant at the time and living in dim sum-less Charlottesville.

Enjoy! And if you've never had dim sum, remember, you're never too old or too young to try.

Oh, bagel, why do you forsake me?

After graduating from college, I moved to New York City and was in bagel heaven. I made the pilgrimage to H and H Bagels on the Upper West Side, but I didn’t need to. There were bagel places on almost every block. By the time I moved back to D.C., Chesapeake Bagel Bakery had less of a presence in the area. I tried Einstein Bagels but was not impressed—too big and too greasy.

I’m not sure how to describe the qualities of a good bagel; I just know one when I taste it. As with a bottle of wine, I can tell when one is bad and I know what varieties I don’t like—banana nut and strawberry are not for me just as I rarely drink white zinfandel and chardonnay. Growing up with a Jewish father from Brooklyn and a Protestant mother from the mid-west with gourmet tastes, bagels were a regular part of my D.C. family’s food repertoire way before bagel mania swept the nation in the 1990’s. We didn’t have a lot (okay, any) of the foods teenagers crave, but my friends were always excited for our bagels.

My paternal grandparents, who retired to Hallandale, Florida, always had bagels on hand for our visits, usually from Pumpernicks or from Sage Deli. Otherwise, Lender’s frozen bagels, which helped to spread the bagel concept nationwide, were a fixture in our and my grandparents' freezers. For special occasions, my father would go to Posin’s on Georgia Avenue and get bagels with all of the fixings: lox, herring, and whitefish salad. We always had cream cheese, although in my father's family, lox was accompanied by butter, not cream cheese. Then Chesapeake Bagel Bakery came to the D.C. area and we replaced the Lender's with their day-old bagels. Once Posin’s closed, what was Toojay’s and then Krupin’s and then K’s New York Deli and now Morty’s, was our Jewish deli of destination, but I'm certain that if Posin’s were still around we'd still go there.

My father always purchased a variety of the traditional flavors—plain, sesame, poppy, onion, pumpernickel. The other kinds pretty much offended him, but gradually he accepted the cinnamon raisin ones and more recently, blueberry and will eat them when available, although he claims never to have purchased them. Chocolate chip remains an outrageous perversion of the bagel, although I don’t really understand the difference between chocolate chip and blueberry.

When I first got to college in the fall of 1991, I was shocked that although the school was supposed to be one-third Jewish, the bagels in the dining hall were terrible: bread in the shape of bagels. Enough people must have complained because sometime between the end of my frosh year (they don’t use the term “freshman” at Wesleyan and unless you don’t mind a righteous lecture, you’re better off not saying it either) and the beginning of my sophomore year, they got good bagels at MoCon, the main dining hall (which has since been torn down—R.I.P.) The best were the spinach ones, or maybe they were herb. Either way, MoCon was where I discovered bagels with cream cheese and tomatoes (thanks to one of my gentile hallmates), although my husband Cedar, another D.C. native and gentile, and his family used to get them at

So's Your Mom in Adams Morgan.

My junior year of college, which I spent in France, was bagel free although I was told I could find them in certain parts of Paris, but I was in Southern France, in Aix-en-Provence, for most of the year where my sister had also spent a year two years before me and I remembered her recounting the horror that the French people looked at her with when she explained what I bagel was. “Boiled bread? That's disgusting! And You miss this? How can this be?” So I didn't bother to explain the beauty of the bagel while I was there. The French, while followers of a delicious and healthy cuisine, can be very rigid about their food. I won’t get started on their reaction to the coffee my roommate and I offered at a dessert party we hosted in our little apartment.

After some years in D.C., I joined Cedar in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he was doing his graduate studies. There is actually a fabulous bagel place there, with three branches (yes, Charlottesville aficionados, the Corner locale finally opened) called Bodo’s Bagels. Besides bagels, the menu features soups, salads, sandwiches, and frozen yogurt. The place is cheap, informal, and has very good bagels; it's a great place to go with kids. I heard that each of the stores is now independently owned—sold to managers by the owner--and I wonder if the quality and consistency of the food will change because of this. Though I didn’t notice a change when we were there recently for a visit.

When Cedar finished his Ph.D. at the University of Virginia and got a job at Mills College in Oakland, I was expecting to be back in bagel heaven, or at least a satellite heaven. After all, the Bay Area and the East Bay in particular has a large Jewish population and is known for its high-quality food. The dining service at Mills, where we lived in faculty housing, while superior in many ways to most college dining food I’ve had, had the same bread-in-the-shape-of-bagels bagels I had in college. I incredulously asked around and was told that of course, there were good bagels in Oakland—hadn’t I been to Berkeley? Berkeley? That’s not Oakland. I live in a west coast city of 400,000 with at least three synagogues and I’m supposed to travel to a nearby city just to get a decent bagel? I tried Noah’s Bagels and I wasn’t impressed at first, but they grew on me.

Posh Bakery bagels on Piedmont Avenue are also alright. A Jewish bakery, the Grand Avenue Bakery, is one of my favorite food places in all of Oakland—even if the dead-head-meets-observant-Jew proprietor vacillated between hitting on me and growling at me (in his defense, I did ask him if he made a pumpkin challah for the fall, although if you ask me, he’s sitting on a gold mine)--but they don't make bagels. The GSB does make the best challah I have ever tasted (although I highly recommend heating at 200 degrees for fifteen minutes or so first before eating it), and sells an assortment of other baked goods, treats, and prepared foods. Another friend recommended the bagels at the Oakland Whole Foods, which she said were imported from you guessed it, Berkeley, but the idea of going specially to Whole Paycheck for my bagels didn’t seem right.

Now, we live in Ashland, Virginia. There are decent bagels in Ashland Coffee & Tea but it’s not like I can go in and get a dozen. At the Science Museum of Richmond’s Café Portico, where I recently spent a morning while my boys were in camp, I inquired hopefully “Hey, where do you get your bagels?” The sulky teenager behind the counter shrugged her shoulders and said “I don’t know. Maybe Cysco.” Ouch. It tasted like it, too.

So now I am on a mission for bagels in the Richmond metropolitan area. Some Northerners might wonder how I could find any decent bagels in the South, in the neighborhood of the former capital of the confederacy, but as my sixth grade Hebrew school teacher from Kentucky proved, there is a sizable and long-established Jewish population in the south, and Central Virginia is full of surprises, as Bodo's showed me. And I know bagels are not as popular as they were fifteen years ago due to carbo-phobia, but that's not enough to deter me--I don’t snack on them. As a fellow Jewish friend explained to a non-Jewish friend in high school, “You don’t understand, for a Jewish person, a bagel is like a meal.”

I hope I find my meal soon and having a bit of my father in me, I hope it's not oozing with Asiago cheese.