Stick Blender Experiences?

I'm thinking of buying this Cuisinart Smart Stick Blender. My apartment is currently under-served in the chopping to pureeing department. I'm getting tired of being stuck between grinding ingredients to a pulp in my mortar and pestle and chopping up a mess. Also, I have space issues and I can't stand gadget clutter on my counters or kitchen tables. Even better, I would love to be able to puree soups. I need all the space I can get, especially in my tiny New York kitchen. No counter space for a blender or food processor. Stick might be the way to go. Anyone else have a stick blender? How has it worked for you?

White Rabbit Candy Back as Golden Rabbit

Standing at the checkout counter at 99 Ranch, I noticed a vaguely familiar white bunny. But wait, this bunny was anthropomorphized. The face looked the same, but clothes? Blasphemy! I knew that White Rabbit candy had been hit by the melamine milk scandal back in 2008, but I had assumed it returned back to the market after resourcing its milk.
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Well Shanghai's Guan Sheng Yuan Food did indeed bring back the iconic candy with milk now from Australia. It looks like in an effort to distance itself from poisonous candy, it changed from what most people remembered:

Photo Credit Mike Gonzalez/Wiki Commons
Now it's Golden Rabbit Creamy Candy. Gone is the plain white motif. I do wonder though, what makes the candy "golden." After all, the candy's the same color, right down to the translucent piece of rice paper.

Did you know that the candy was first branded with a red Mickey Mouse when a British merchant opened a candy plant in Shanghai? Or that Premier Zhou Enlai presented a bag as a gift to Richard Nixon on his visit to China? This white candy has its hands deep in China's culture. Wonder if billion-plus Chinese can handle a rebranding.
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RN74: Michael Mina's Wine Bar

Clack, clack, clack. I felt like I was in a train station instead of a Michael Mina wine bar and restaurant in the middle of San Francisco. Above my table, an old-fashioned schedule board with rotating letters, flipping to display the next bottle of wine. The board was a nice touch for the all-too-common semi-exposed industrial motif of modern restaurants. I could tell from my first step in the place that they took their wine seriously. Now I was curious about the food.
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I have yet to dine at Michael Mina's namesake restaurant, nor XIV, his Los Angeles venture. I didn't set out with the intention to follow him, but discovering that the darkened, rather non-descript restaurant on my commute every morning was associated with him, I thought this might be a good introduction into his culinary kingdom.

RN74's Executive Chef is Jason Berthold, a young chef as inspired by the wine pairings as by the ingredients in the regional French and contemporary American dishes on the menu. Maybe I didn't do him justice by forsaking full wine pairings for my dishes, but I did indulge in RN74's "Summer of Riesling" promotion by ordering a glass. I asked for something semi-dry, and got a glass almost too sweet to drink with any food. The waitress was kind enough to replace my drink after noticing my reaction. That said, their seasonal Pimm's 74 Cocktail,a blend of housemade Pimm's, ginger beer, campari and prosecco, was appropriately sweet for a summer drink.


The bread and butter came out. I absolutely can't get enough of San Francisco sourdough. And when I say San Francisco sourdough, I mean it. The local wild yeast makes the best bread, something that I have yet to see replicated elsewhere.


Since it is a wine bar, the endless winelist easily dwarfed the simple one-page food menu. For the first course: soft shell crab (celery leaf remoulade, citrus, ginger). The remoulade was not as creamy as I had hoped, but the crab was fried well, without any greasy weight of most soft shell crab dishes.


The sauteed pork belly & stuffed squash blossom (heirloom tomatoes, bacon, basil, lemongrass) consisted of fairly standard pork. I have yet to find a pork belly that is notably deficient in flavor. Mostly, I'm looking for the right crispy texture along the edges of my pork belly. The novelty of this dish was the squash blossom. Seemingly solid, it cut apart to reveal some delicious, unidentified filling. The texture was somewhat like fish cake, but with bits of bacon embedded in the white cushion. The tomatoes had enough sweetness to cut through the fatty pork, a requirement when dealing with pork belly.


Main course #1: sauteed Alaskan halibut (gnocchi a la parisienne, cherry tomatoes, celery, ginger, mache My first impression was the quality of the fish's seared crust--crunchy and savory while hiding a delicate white flesh. This was a sign of a well cooked fish. The blanched and peeled tomatoes added the sweet component to the dish. The gnocchi were especially notable. Reflecting the texture of the halibut, each gnocchi had a bit of a crunch, but a soft interior making a pleasant mastication experience.


As a rule, I typically do not order chicken at restaurants. I generally like to see the restaurant's skill at handling more interesting fare, but supposedly the mark of a quality French restaurant is in its roast chicken. Very well then, bring on the roasted naturally-raised chicken (cornbread, mission figs, gold corn, cippolini onions, braised bacon, watercress). First off, not too dry for a chicken breast. And beneath the breast lay pieces of what I suspect came from the darker nether regions of the poultry. The cornbread was an odd complement, but the sweet figs were a welcome addition. Was it good dish? Certainly. Would I order it again? Sorry, chicken, but I'll have to side with your aqua-bound brethren and choose the Liberty duck breast next time.

No dessert for me this time, but I was plenty satisfied without satiating my sweet tooth. The dishes were fairly large, at least larger than I would expect at a wine bar. I'm sure the bar menu items are smaller, better for multiple courses and pairings. My experience with the restaurant menu was stellar. I'll have to come back and sample a variety of small dishes with the appropriate wines and let Chef Berthold and Wine Director Rajat Parr show me where this wine bar should really shine.

RN74
301 Mission Street
San Francisco, CA 94105
(415)543-7474
~$15 appetizers, ~$28 entrees, ~$11 small plates

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