- the real, italian stuff - is amazing. the american version, produced by the wisconsin-based cheesery bel gioioso, is mostly an “eh”: nice enough mozzarella, but nothing to write home about.

it’s as though someone explained to bel gioioso what burrata is, without letting them taste it. so then they made it… and completely missed the boat. it is, in fact, what a nutrimatic dispenser would give you if you simply asked for burrata: a globe of white cheese in water that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea burrata.

so, no more schlepping out to wegmans for a fix. if they don’t have it at the italian store, i’ll have to do without. because a caprese salad made with burrata… omfg. it doesn’t get any better than that.

i’ve had many cakes from cakelove over the years, as a dc resident and former classmate of warren brown’s. and i’ve enjoyed most of them. so i wasn’t worried when i ordered the raz-ma-tazz (”my downfall” with raspberry buttercream between the layers) for a colleague’s birthday.

first, the good things: the buttercream is raspberry-iffic, a perfect medley of sweet and tart. the chocolate ganache melts in your mouth. the cake itself, still whole, was a pretty little thing (i ordered the 6″, serves 4-8): gentle swirls of ganache and a trio of fresh raspberries in a cluster near the edge.

we cut the cake, room-temperature (as recommended by cakelove), and served it with ice cream. and it was a good thing we did: the actual cake was heavy, dense… and dry. it also isn’t very chocolatey. in fact, when i had a small slice, solo, the next day, it was downright disappointing.

if i had my druthers, i’d probably soak the layers with a simple syrup before assembling the cake. it would improve both the texture and the flavor, as well as adding a little to the shelf life (not that it needs it - as it was, there was almost nothing left of the cake in 24 hours).

overall quality of cake: B-
quality for price: C

first, the food, because that’s what i said i’d post. i started off with the chilies and yak cheese served with bhutanese rice. the red rice is the bhutanese rice; i gathered from other sources that the white rice was added as filler. all in all, it was pretty good - a bit like queso dip, actually. only somewhat runnier. i ate almost all of it, and was still hungry.

so then i meandered down to the viet-tex fusion tent (”texas noodles,” i think is the name of the place) and ordered some steamed pork buns. they were the spitting image of dim sum pork buns, but the filling was a bit more western barbecue-like. also yummy.

but what was really neat to see at the folklife festival was the buddhist monk working on a sand mandala:

so if you’re in dc, go check it out the festival. it’s pretty cool.

today’s the first day of the smithsonian folklife festival, so i headed down to the mall (america’s front yard, apparently) for a sampling of bhutanese cuisine. and i have one thing to say: yak dri¹ cheese - pretty good.

photos to follow.
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¹ i have been informed by a highschool classmate that you can’t get cheese from a yak, b/c yaks are male. the female of the species is apparently a “dri” or a “nak.” why he knows this, i have no idea.

james‘ apple pie. heated. with free trade vanilla ice cream.

it’s what’s for breakfast.

dah-DUM!

i made a modified feijoada for dinner. slow cookers can make anything.

no farofa, though. didn’t want to bother, and didn’t have a banana to add to it.

i’m eating leftovers right now. let’s call it an early lunch, rather than a late breakfast, shall we?

for the last several weeks, maybe months, my 12″ powerbook has been out of commission. something about the power input thingy needing to be replaced, according to my friend jesse who diagnosed it - not unlike the cartalk guys - from my verbal description. (”i plug it in and nothing happens. nothing happens no matter which of the 3 power cords i use to plug it in. and they all work on the other powerbooks in the house.”)

so i sent off to ifixit for the proper piece (according to jesse), and it arrived faster than expected.

and jesse came over yesterday to jessefixit.

i won’t bore with all the details, but turns out the last time the powerbook had been stripped down totally - likely when the CD/DVD drive was replaced twice, and when it was still under the applecare warranty - the idjits who “fixed” it botched the job. the heat sink was missing one of two screws it needed to hold it down to the motherboard, and the other screw had come undone and was floating about the innards of the machine. beyond that, the thermal paste had cracked and moved from where it was supposed to be, likely accounting for the excess heat in my lap whenever i had my ‘puter on for more than ten minutes.

luckily, g and james went out to get more thermal paste (and more potatoes and lemons, so there would be enough starch for dinner and i’d be able to make hollandaise for the asparagus), and jesse was able to complete the repair, mostly. the heat sink is still held down by a single screw - hopefully this time it won’t migrate - and i’m under strict instructions not to drop the ‘puter again.

then i made dinner, and it was good. pan-fried trout in butter, garlic, and fresh thyme; oven-roasted rosemary red potatoes, and steamed asparagus. all with as much hollandaise as you could want. james, not liking of the fish, made himself a steak. and gave the snuffster the bone. the snuffster was happy, perhaps happier than the laloca at the prospect of a functioning 12″.

and there ya go. a productive day, despite the disturbing way it began with me developing a nasty allergic rash to something in the bulb section of the merrifield nursery.

from my great-grandmother:

…except, it seems, ginger snaps. the disappointment on his face was comical. he’d gone through so much trouble to reach them and tear open the bag!

he still seems to like plastic pen caps, though. dumbass.

my cousin gave me a vosges exotic candybar gift set for christmas. (yes, for those of you saying christmas hasn’t happened yet, and aren’t you a nonpracticing jew anyway, or maybe a unitarian, no wait, you’re not anything, religious-wise, you shouldn’t be celebrating christmas to begin with! anyway, for you, my family does this pre-christmas one-person-one-gift affair where as much of the extended family as can get together does. the cousin in question drove in from chicago. that’s a helluva drive. anyway, back to the chocolate.)

wow. i’m eating two squares of the calindia bar. indian green cardamom, organic california walnuts, dried plums, venezuelan dark chocolate. (we’ll ignore the annoying marketing fad of calling prunes “dried plums” for now.) it. is. chocolate heaven. and i thought i wouldn’t like it, being that i’m not a huge cardamom fan. and they’re biiiiig squares. (standard size bar, though.)