Zumbar Coffee

I've been keeping a secret from the internets.  I've been a bit nervous to share my secret, as I don't want them to get too crowded.  In a non-descript strip mall, hidden practically under I-5 in San Diego, is probably the finest coffee place in San Diego.



You might hardly even notice it - it's labeled "Coffee Shop".  This is Zumbar.

Do you remember "Cheers"?  This place is like Cheers.  Only good.  And clean.  And with coffee instead of beer.  And with little pastries and rugelach.  You walk in, and the baristas yell "NORM!".

Okay.  Basically, it's nothing like Cheers.  But the clientele there is almost exclusively made up of regulars drawn from the local biotech community.

The real draw is the house-roasted beans that are expertly extracted to make outrageously tasty lattes.



And if froofy coffee drinks are your thing, like Mrs. Dude, they make a wicked caffe mocha.



Check them out.  But be warned: once you try Zumbar, you'll never go anywhere else for coffee.



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Bbq short ribs

The most relaxing days for me are days I can stay home and smoke some meat.  I tend fire.  Read.  Toss a ball around with Bbq Jr.  But I can't go far, because I have a fire to tend.  And a day that I don't get in the car is a success all around.

Today, it's beef short ribs.  This recipe is adapted from Smoke & Spice by Cheryl and Bill Jamison.  Start with 10 lb of bone-in short ribs (will feed around 10 folks, unless they're all 17-year old boys).



Bring them up to room temperature while you light a fire on your smoker. We're cooking with indirect heat today. Fire on one side, meat on the other. Wet some mesquite chunks for smoke, and then prepare the rub. It's a mix of:

¾ cup paprika
¼ cup freshly ground black pepper
¼ cup coarse salt
¼ cup sugar
2 tbsp chili powder
2 tbsp garlic powder
2 tbsp onion powder
2 tbsp cayenne

Mix.



Rub that good stuff all over those short ribs, and set them on the grill, bone-side down, away from the fire.



Tend that fire to keep it smoking, and keep the temperature around 200 °F.  You're going to need to cook 'em for 5 - 6 hours.  Each hour, you're going to open up the grill and mop the meat with a mop liquid (I've got a smoking box, so I don't need to open the grill to tend the fire).  The mop liquid will consist of:

1 bottle of beer
½ cup cider vinegar
¼ cup vegetable oil
½ medium onion, chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tbsp rub (from above)

Open each hour.  This is the first hour, pre-mop:



Look at that, starting to sweat a bit.  Yum!  Now, 2 minutes later, post-mop:



Hour 2, pre-mop:



Hour 3, pre-mop:



Meanwhile, make the glaze:

1 ½ cups ketchup
1 cup beer
¾ cup cider vinegar
¼ cup minced cilantro
3 tbsp brown sugar
2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 tsp ground cumin
1 ½ tsp ground anise
1 ½ tsp salt
1 tbsp Tabasco

You'll need this for the final opening.

Hour 4 ½, pre-glaze:



Hour 4 ½, post-glaze:



Hour 5 ½.



If that doesn't look crazy-good to you, you're a vegan.  Yum!  These are a nice, bright preparation of short-ribs.  Acidic, and slightly spicy.  Meat just melts in your mouth.  Really, really tasty.

Served with:

A lazy Saturday calls for...

a pomegranate cosmopolitan!

So, I appear to have arrived in the blogorama big times.  The lovely folks at PomWonderful sent me some free samples to play with (so take whatever I say about pomegranate juice with a grain of salt).  And you know, once you're getting free juice, you've arrived.

1 oz vodka
½ oz Cointreau liqueur or triple sec
¾ oz pomegranate juice
½ oz fresh lime juice

Mix over ice.  Shake.  Pour.  Serve.

This drink is a lot like a standard cosmopolitan.  Citrus-ish.  Bright.  And a tad sweet for my tastes, but I'm quite certain that folks who like cosmos will enjoy this.  Happy Saturday.

Lemon sorbet

A number of years ago, I travelled in Italy with friends. We would eat four hour, multi-course dinners. At one place, they served a sorbetto di limone that was absolutely outstanding. Bright, and acidic, it cut through some of the grease of the pizza we'd had earlier. We asked for another round of sorbet. "No! One is enough!". They cut us off. Of sorbet. They were appalled that we wanted more.

So now I make it at home.

Living in southern California really has its advantages.  We were at our friends' home this weekend, helping them with their garage sale.  Mrs. Dude and I started talking about grocery shopping, and I told her I needed a dozen lemons to be able to make lemon sorbet.

"We have lemons in our backyard, if you want."

"You do???"

These lemons were beautiful.  Lumpy and assymetrical, with more spongy skin than the thick-skinned grocery store lemons, they all smelled incredible.  We took a dozen of them home, and when I opened the bag they were in, our whole kitchen smelled of lemons.  Look at them, they're beautiful!



These made an incredible sorbet.  I modified the recipe in David Lebovitz' The Perfect Scoop.  For 2 quarts of sorbet:

5 cups water
2 cups sugar
zest of 4 lemons
2 cups freshly squeezed lemon juice (took 8 of these magical lemons, normally takes about 12)
2 tbsp vodka

Zest the four lemons.



Then juice them, plus however many more you need to make the 2 cups of lemon juice.



Place the lemon juice in a non-reactive container in the fridge.  Meanwhile, combine the sugar, 2 cups of water and the lemon zest.  Heat over the stove, stirring until the sugar dissolves.  Immediately add the cold water, cool to room temperature, add the vodka (the vodka keeps the sorbet from freezing too hard).



Chill in the fridge, 6-18 hours.

Mix the lemon juice and the zest syrup.  Run through a sieve, to remove the chunkies, and then run through your ice cream maker.



With the KitchenAid Ice Cream Maker Attachment, it takes about 25 minutes of mixing to get a nice, soft sorbet.  Transfer to a container, and freeze overnight to solidify.



Serve.

This sorbet is awesome. It's not very sweet, and the acid from the lemons comes screaming through. These lemons are particularly nice (I've made this recipe with grocery store lemons, which are nice, but nothing like fresh lemons). And no one cuts me off if I go back for more.