cooking, eating Recently i've been cooking meat -- I almost never cook meat. But since I've been cooking for other people who eat meat, I can do so -- and it's really fun! Last night I made the North African Beef and Lamb Stew (which has some cool name I can't remember off the top of my head) out of Cooking for Mr. Latte and it was quite excellent. After simmering away on the stove for two hours the chuck roast and the lamb shoulder just melts away in your mouth. I really love the spices, the combination of cinnamon and ginger. I tried the Roasted Beet and Vidalia Onion Salad as well -- which I'm saving for wednesday -- and that too turned out excellent, even though I substituted sweet italian flat red onions for the vidalias. Last week I went to Pesce in Russian Hill, which is an Italian seafood tapas kind of place. We started with the Smoked Salmon Bruschetta with Horseradish sauce and capers, but it was a little underwhelming, probably because the horseradish was on the side buried under the sliced onions. The dungeoness crab tower was good but not stunning. The squid ink risotta was quite delicious. Our last item before dessert was a red snapper filet which was amazing. It came with pesto mashed potatoes and I forget, something else on the side, and it was a fabulous combination of flavors. At the recommendation of my cousins, who have an illustrous apartment in Russian Hill, two blocks down from the curvy part of Lombard street, we ordered a bottle of the prosecco which was as delicious as they had said. We ended the meal with a molten chocolate cake ('volcano' chocolate cake, I think they called it) and bread pudding -- the cake, disappointingly, had been overcooked and was not very volcanic.