Margin Notes

Postcard from Saigon: snapshots from the market

2009-02-07T23:57:00.001-08:00

Moving Margin Notes.

2008-08-03T07:59:00.000-07:00

Same kitchen.

Same writing room.

New blog address: http://caseyellis.com/blog/

The sublime Sonia Simone of Remarkable Communications recently convinced me that Margin Notes needed to relocate. After I agreed, I nursed this lovely fantasty that once she and her team had done all the heavy lifting she'd fly from Colorado to California and sit by my side and guide my astonishingly-non-techy self through the final steps. No, I take that back. I'd hoped she 'd sit here in my study and do every single bit of the work on the first few posts herself while I played with her adorable three-year-old at the park.
Maybe even more than the first few posts. Maybe until her spawn turned into an adorable four-year-old.
Now that I've released this fantasy into the ether, I'm going to have to sit at this desk alone and actually create posts and they may be a bit, uh, funky for a while.
But, please, come on over to Margin Notes's new home. Once I figure out what-the-hell I'm doing I have some delicious stuff to share, including a recipe for the much-lauded butterscotch souffle from Murray Circle at Cavallo Point and a "4 Questions 4" from 2-star Michelin chef David Kinch of Manresa.
And, Sonia, it's not too late to book tickets.

A Beach Too Far

2008-07-24T15:00:00.000-07:00

One way I torture myself is by asking people about great places to eat even when I know said places are going to be geographically challenging. I mean, I'd love to go to Australia's Bondi Beach this winter, escaping the Bay Area cold rains for some Sydney sunshine, but it's not gonna happen. Yet Nigella made a little spot there called Sean's Panaroma sound so enticing I felt compelled to learn more about it.
To my great joy, I found chef-owner Sean Moran had written a cookbook called "let it simmer" -- a book filled with enticing recipes and photographs of food he describes as "Anglo-Italian...based on Australia's freshest seasonal produce."

I've only had the book a few days but I've already had one smashing culinary success from it: my version of Moran's "Good Chook, Roasted with Oregano." I used a plump organic chicken and substitued sarriette for the oregano, but stayed true to one essential ingredient: duck fat.
I'm not going to give you Moran's full recipe, partly because I think you should buy the book for yourself and partly because I do not love typing out long recipes, but if you just use this under-the-skin stuffing and your usual way of roasting a chicken you'll still have a very special dish.

Sean Moran's Orgasmically Good Roast Chicken Enhancer aka Damned Delicious Duck Fat
2 cloves garlic
2 generous handfuls oregano [Margin Note: fresh, of course. I substituted sarriette, aka summer savory, because my herb garden had lots of it and pitifully little oregano]
Salt
Freshly ground pepper
2 heaped tablespoons duck fat or butter [M.N.: forget that "or butter" bit; use the duck fat]

Peel the garlic cloves and pick oregano leaves, then grind to a smooth paste in a mortar and pestle with a generous pinch of salt and a few twists of pepper. Mix duck fat through paste.
With legs of the chook pointing towards you, slip your fingers under the breast skin to free it from the flesh, pushing carefully all the way down to the wing-bone joint on both sides, then slide seasoned fat under the skin, being careful not to puncture as you go.
Roast.
Let set a bit while the juices settle.
Carve and enjoy.

I found the next day's leftovers to be almost as wonderful as the just-from-the-oven meat.
And I still wish someone would whisk me off to Bondi Beach next November.

4 Questions 4 Nigella Lawson

2008-07-15T07:29:00.000-07:00

I've said it before: the single best day of my freelance writing life was the one I spent shopping and cooking with Nigella Lawson.

When I started this blog -- exactly one year ago today -- my friend Randall asked: "Is it going to be . . . more »

Pigging Out

2008-07-09T09:41:00.000-07:00

After living through a tad too much drama last summer with the cooking of a whole lamb, J and I turned to a pro this year, perusading our friend Tom McNary, the brilliant chef at Carried Away in Aptos, to perform the . . . more »

Dinner Party, June 2008

2008-07-01T20:46:00.001-07:00

Note to Self: When you get a great dinner partner, shut up and let him talk.

[photo by Dennis Lenehan]

Pretty in Pork

2008-06-30T18:29:00.000-07:00

Recently Michael Ruhlman blogged about staple meals:

I’m fascinated by what America eats at home—not by what people serve at a dinner party or the latest favorite recipe they’ve found, but rather by what America’s default meals are. What are the meals you return to again and again—meals that are economical, quick, taste good, feel good, meals you make without having to think much?

One of Ruhlman's staple meals centers on chicken, but at our house, pork is often the go-to protein--most often a small stuffed roast. My butcher shop labels the cut a . . . more »

Seattle Souvenir

2008-06-26T07:58:00.000-07:00

This appeared in today's San Francisco Chronicle Food & Wine Newsletter. If you like mussels and LOVE bacon, you'll join me in applauding the Seattle chef who created this quick and easy dish.

QUICK WEEKNIGHT DISHES

Seattle-Style Mussels
By Casey Ellis, Chronicle contributor

My husband and his relatives have always loved to schlep edible souvenirs home from trips. They tuck cheeses into carry-on bags, stuff sausages into briefcases and devote extensive duffel bag space to jars of olives and pickles.

Grandpa Koch once packed a large, frozen . . . more »

Radish Reversal

2008-06-16T20:30:00.001-07:00

Tucked into a farro and vegetables salad at La Posta recently (Yes, I do, too, eat at other restaurants, but I seem to get more ideas here to use at home), I discovered sweet young radishes with their greenery still attached. J suggested that the cook had blanched the greens by suspending them upside down in boiling water while holding the radishes high and dry.
I scoffed.
Chef Chris Avila said that was exactly what had occurred.
I hate it when J is right in cooking disputes.
The radish greens in the photo took about 45 seconds to achieve tenderness -- or, as J said: "to fry off the frizz."
For a second batch, I clasped the radish bodies in metal tongs, not as picturesque, but less likely to cause a steam singe to my hand.

In love with restaurants from an early age:

2008-06-09T20:54:00.001-07:00

The Stork Club, Manhattan, about 1952.

Waiter: "And what will the young gentleman have?"
My brother, Don : "What do you have?"
Waiter: "The Stork Club has everything."
Don: "Then I'll have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich."

Which, after a bit of a delay, was delivered to him. My grandparents -- who believed in taking children to good restaurants early and often -- later told me the kitchen had sent someone out to the corner market to buy a jar of peanut butter.

Crazy about Cardamom

2008-06-05T11:00:00.000-07:00

I tend to get crushes on certain recipes, falling in love with particular flavor combinations and cooking them over and over. My children used to greet new dishes with "This is good, Mom, but don't go crazy with it." Translation: "We don't want to eat it 3 or 4 times a week for the next couple months."

Sometimes the dishes igniting my infatuation are elaborate; other times, quite simple. This fennel treatment falls firmly into the latter category. It comes from Tamasin Day-Lewis's marvelous "The Art of the Tart." Intended to be swathed in creme fraiche and Taleggio cheese and baked into a tart, these fennel slices taste terrific as a side dish on their own.
And, a note to my grown and living-on-their-own children: I've been serving this only once a week.
Well, twice at the most. It's just so easy and so crazy-good.

Sauteed Fennel with Cardamom
3-4 bulbs fennel
2 Tb. butter
4 Tb. each olive oil, white wine and water
The crushed seeds of 8 cardamom pods

Remove the tough outer layers of the fennel (saving some of the fronds), then quarter the bulbs and slice thickly. Put the fennel into a heavy-bottomed skillet with the butter, olive oil, wine, water and cardamom seeds.
Bring to bubbling, reduce to simmering, cover with a lid, and cook gently until the fennel is no longer resistant even at the core, about 10-15 minutes. Remove it with a slotted spoon, reserve, and bubble the juices until stickily reduced and syrupy.
Pour the juices over the fennel and sprinkle with some of the chopped, feathery fronds.

Jam Time

2008-06-01T22:05:00.001-07:00

The hand that stirs the jam pot rules the kitchen.
(At least for a day.)

I love eating -- and hate making -- jam, so I'm wildly grateful that J enjoys the whole lengthy, oft-messy procedure. After Saturday's session with seven pounds of apricots, he not only cleaned up afterwards but also typed up the recipe. I may have to stay married to him for another 45 years.

Jack's Astonishingly-Delicious Apricot Jam

7 lbs apricots, not too ripe
8 cups sugar
1 lemon, whole, but peel removed
Cheesecloth and cotton string

Split apricots lengthwise and pit --reserve pits -- and place 2/3 of the fruit in a
large mixing bowl, reserving the rest. Cover with the sugar and squeeze the lemons into the bowl thru a sieve. Stir the mixture and set aside for 15 minutes.
Place sufficient well-washed canning jars and lids on a cookie sheet in a 225 deg. oven for at least 15 minutes.
Cut the lemon into 1/8ths and tie inside a cheescloth bag with a long cotton string.

Take the apricot and sugar mixture, which should have liquified, and place in a large stainless or copper pot. Set over high heat until the mixture boils; then reduce heat to medium, but keep a high boil. Toss in the cheesecloth with the lemon carcasses and seeds inside and tie the string to a handle. Boil the mixture about 20minutes, stirring frequently. It will create considerable foam and must not boil over, so control the fire.

When the foam starts to subside, add the reserved apricots.
While the jam is cooking, place the apricot pits on a heavy wooden chopping block and strike them gently with a hammer to crack them open. Remove the white kernels.
(This takes some practice to prevent kernel-smashing.)

Chop the kernels into fine dice, and add them to the pot once the reserved apricots have softened.
[Margin Note: Don't skip this step. The chopped kernel bits give the jam a nice almondy undernote as well as a bit of appealing crunch.]
Squeeze the cheesecloth bag against the side of the kettle to release the pectin from the lemons; remove the bag and discard.
Now test the jam for temperature and thickness. It should read 218-220 degrees with a candy or instant thermometer. Lacking one of these, take a small saucer from the freezer and drop a large drop of jam on it. Return to the freezer for 2 minutes and then push against it with a spoon. If done, the jam drop will wrinkle.
When thickened to your liking, remove from the fire and fill the canning jars hot from the oven with the jam to within 1/2 inch of the top. (A canning funnel helps.) Immediately seal the jars with a canning lid and ring and set aside to cool. When the jam cools, the jar lids should audibly pop to their sealed position. If this doesn't occur, refrigerate and use within a week or two.
[Margin Note: This is not a hardship. I've gone through half a jar in 3 days.]

Forget-You-Not the Flowers

2008-05-28T11:28:00.001-07:00

I made a significant sacrifice Saturday night: I shared the last of our chive flowers with dinner guests. Sprinkled over slices of yellow tomatoes, the purple petals provided both color contrast and a lovely light onion flavor.
Although the chive blossoms are gone, deeper purple flowers still top our sage stalks (particularly nice for garnishing cream soups) and before long the basil plants will provide small white flowers to scatter on sauteed zucchini ribbons and rounds of grilled eggplant.
I've garnished my warm-weather fare with these three herb flowers for years, but a recent visit to Love Apple Farm made me realize I've been overlooking other great sources of culinary flower power. J and I were wandering amidst Cynthia's meticulously manicured garden beds and noted a parsley patch that had gone to seed."Isn't this due to be pulled?" J asked, to which Cynthia replied, "No, David wants the flowers and the seed heads."
A big bed of rocket abloom with white flowers? Same answer. Coriander seed heads? Destined for a squash pudding amuse-bouche at Manresa.

When a two-star Michelin chef grants amnesty to elderly herb and lettuce crops I'd have condemned to the compost pile, I start wondering what I've been wasting from our garden.

So now we're letting the French dandelion flower -- I garnished a platter of poached salmon with the pale blue flowers -- and I'm experimenting with the intensely flavored yellow seed heads from purple mizuna.

My new cooking-from-the-garden motto: If you liked the leaves you're gonna love the flowers.

Green Grows the Garlic

2008-05-19T19:12:00.000-07:00

A brief post today because much of my time and energy is being consumed with caring for a sweet little boy felled by a shitty big virus. His mother graduates this week with a degree in graphic design (she did this blog's banner) and is slaving away at the installation of the Senior Design Show. While she paints and hammers and worries, I spoon pedialyte into a sad little mouth, sponge a hot little body and worry.
But I did want to report on the deliciousness of the green garlic dip in Daniel Patterson's article in the Sunday NYT Magazine.

I served it with raw florets of orange cauliflower (bought that morning at the Palo Alto farmers' market) rather than with artichokes, but I have enough left over to serve with chokes once I have time to cook again. For now, I need a blood-rare hamburger and a glass of Merlot. Maybe two glasses of Merlot

Tomato Wars

2008-05-13T15:01:00.000-07:00

J and I generally agree on the big marital issues: sex, money, travel destinations and the importance of always owning at least two dogs. But seemingly minor matters occasionally rock our relationship; high on the list is his insistence on purchasing crappy tomatoes.
I was taught at an early age that beef should be served rare, broccoli is bearable if blanketed in Hollandaise and tomatoes should be eaten only when they've been ripened on the vine, picked in the morning and bought at a New Jersey farm stand in the afternoon. Consequently, although I grew up in suburban Philadelphia, I ate tomatoes only at the Jersey shore and only from late June through September.
When The Jerseys came in, we ate them every day. Dinner began only after the pitcher of iced tea and the platter of sliced tomatoes were on the table.

The first time J brought home hothouse tomatoes I restrained my horror and asked him not to do so again. I explained that these flavorless orbs had no place in our kitchen, that I was morally opposed to the encouragement of picking green tennis balls and then gas-ing them into faux ripeness, and that some foods are worth waiting many months for. He nodded and the next time he went to the store he bought tomatoes. In December.
After decades of marriage, I've given up. He buys tomatoes from November through May and I complain and he ignores my complaints. A truce sets in as the first local tomatoes arrive at the farmers' markets we frequent and sweet harmony reigns all summer as the dozens of tomato plants in our garden bear fruit.
Two weeks ago he brought home some sure-as-Hell-not-grown-within-a-hundred-miles tomatoes and instead of ignoring them I decided to try to make them meal-worthy. I had a round of Flo Braker's sour cream and cornmeal dough in the freezer so I planned dinner around her Cheese and Tomato Galette, which she demonstrated years ago on the Baking with Julia series on PBS.
This is not a good recipe; this is a marvelous, mood-enhancing, marriage-mending recipe. Even so-so tomatoes ascend several levels on the flavor scale within the folds of Flo's tender, buttery, lightly crunchy pastry.
You can find not only the recipe but also superb step-by-step photos for the dough here -- a new-to-me blog that I immediately added to my RSS feed.
Once you have the dough made, the galette goes together quickly.

Cheese and Tomato Galette
[adapted a bit from "Baking with Julia" by Dorie Greenspan]

1/2 recipe galette dough, chilled
2 ounces Monterey Jack cheese, shredded
2 ounces mozzarella , shredded
1/4 cup fresh basil leaves, cut into chiffonade or torn
2-3 firm but ripe plum tomatoes, cut into 1/4-inch-thick slices
Fresh basil leaves for garnish

Position a rack in the lower third of the oven and preheat the oven to 400-degrees F.
Roll the dough directly onto a piece of parchment paper into an 11-inch circle. (This is a soft dough; sometimes I have to stop mid-rolling and put it into the fridge for a bit to firm up. )
Toss the cheeses and basil pieces together in a small bowl. Scatter the mixture over the dough, leaving a 2- to 3- inch border. Place the tomatoes in slightly overlapping concentric circles atop the cheese.
Fold the uncovered dough border up over the filling, allowing the dough to pleat as you lift it up and work your way around the galette. This happens naturally.
If you see a rerun of the PBS show you'll see that Flo's pastry pleats look like the hem of a Givenchy gown while mine, above, look like a sewing project from a junior high Home Ec class. If your tart look more like mine than Flo's, fear not. It still will taste sublime.
Bake the galette for 35-40 minutes or until the pastry is golden and crisp and the cheese is bubbly. Transfer the entire baking sheet to a cooling rack and let the galette rest on the sheet for 10 minutes. Slip a wide spatula or a small rimless baking sheet under the galette and slide it onto a second cooling rack. Serve warm or at room temperature, garnished with fresh basil leaves. Better served the day it is made; best served within an hour or two of baking.

Because I was working with what I had on hand, I used feta cheese instead of the Monterey Jack and mozzarella. Different but still delicious.

On My Coffee Table

2008-05-10T14:44:00.000-07:00

I usually don't play the meme game, but I couldn't resist this one from the Gorgeous Redhead at Gorgeous Things. Gorgeous Things is a sewing blog -- elegant, near-couture-level plumage. Those who know me well would be astonished that I hang out there, seeing as I haven't threaded a needle since The Horror that was Home Ec Class. How did I even find her blog?
I fell in love with her posts at Project Rungay, where her avatar shows her ear lobe to ear lobe with my boyfriend, Tim Gunn. (Does Tim know he's my boyfriend? No, but I plan to enlighten him soon. I'm confident he'll be thrilled.)

So: the rules:
1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

I'd been reading "Don't Try This at Home: Culinary Catastrophes from the World's Greatest Chefs" edited by Kimberly Witherspoon and Andrew Friedman. For a brief moment I considered cheating on the page # here--just a few digits lower would have put me into a Tamasin essay, but I'll do the right thing.
From "Hope for Snow," by Seattle chef and restaurateur Tom Douglas.

After the anger toward my pregnant wife subsided for "making it snow," I had a lemons-into-lemonade moment. Saigon Restaurant in the Pike Place Market, one of my favorite little holes in the wall, makes a delicious bowl of pork wonton soup. This must have been my inspiration, because somewhere during the first hour of service it occurred to me to make a lobster sausage with raw lobster meat and to fill wonton wrappers -- which we happened to have a case of in the refrigerator.

A nice little essay. But if you buy the book, DO NOT MISS Tamasin's chapter: an account of cooking a pheasant dinner in her Cambridge dormitory room. With a brace of pheasants that had gone hideously, maggotty bad.

Tagging:
Eric
Kevin
Sonia
Henry
Carol

Conversation with the Chef

2008-05-07T17:04:00.000-07:00

Another book recommendation, this one from Chris Avila, the chef at Soif and La Posta in Santa Cruz.
J and I were ensconced in our favorite table at La Posta, right between the front window and the bar, and Chris was polishing wine glasses while we polished off a platter of potato gnocchi with duck ragu.

We were chatting about restaurants and recipe sources when Chris said, "Let me show you the book where I found the recipe for tonight's dessert." He went back into the kitchen and returned with "Cucina of Le Marche" by Fabio Trabocchi.
As soon as I got home that evening I ordered a copy and when it arrived I found it contained not only the dessert recipe but also one for the gnocchi.

For the latter you'll have to buy your own copy, but here's the orange and raisin bread, described by Trabocchi as "unquestionably the most popular dessert in all of Le Marche."

Ciambella
[Sweet Orange and Raisin Bread]

1 1/2 cups dark raisins
1 1/2 cups finely diced candied orange peel
1/2 cup Italian anise liquer
7 cups Italian 00 flour or bread flour
3/4 pound unsalted butter, softened
1 3/4 cups granulated sugar, plus extra for sprinkling
15 large egg yolks
grated zest of 3 lemons
Grated zest of 4 oranges
1 1/2 cups whole milk

Combine the raisins and candied orange peel in a small bowl, pour in the liquer, and let soak for 30 minutes.
Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 350-degrees F.
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Sift the flour and baking powder into a bowl and set aside.
Combine the butter and sugar in the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and beat on medium speed for 3 to 5 minutes, until smooth and pale. Reduce the speed to low and add the yolks, a few at a time, and then the zest, mixing until incorporated.

Alternately add the milk and the flour mixture, beginning and ending with the flour. Switch to the dough hook and, with the mixture on low speed, add the raisins and candied orange, with the soaking liquid. Mix until fully incorporated.
Generously flour a work surface. Place the dough on the work surface and shape it into a loaf about 14 inches long. Place it on the prepared pan and sprinkle the top with sugar.
Bake the bread for 40 minutes, or until golden brown. Transfer to a cooling rack, and serve warm or at room temperature.

Chef Avila used golden raisins instead of dark and served the bread slices with a ramekin of homemade strawberry jam. A sweet finale to another splendid Sunday night supper at La Posta.

Brilliantly British

2008-05-05T12:25:00.000-07:00

According to my brother, I was born bossy. Since he didn't enter the world until I was nearly four, he clearly exaggerates. I prefer to describe myself as evangelical about my enthusiasms. When I find a book I love, for instance, I want others to love it too. Lots of others.

Right now I'm preaching the virtues of "The Pedant in the Kitchen" by Julian Barnes -- a mini-book brimming with wit and wisdom. The much-honored author of "Flaubert's Parrot," "Arthur and George" and "Nothing to be Frightened of" describes himself as "a late-onset cook" who now cooks with pleasure, but "tense pleasure."

In the kitchen I am an anxious pedant. I adhere to gas marks and cooking times. I trust instruments rather than myself. I doubt I shall ever test whether a chunk of meat is done by prodding it with my forefinger. The only liberty I take with a recipe is to increase the quantity of an ingredient of which I particularly approve. That this is not an infallible precept was confirmed by an epically filthy dish I once made involving mackerel, Martini and breadcrumbs: the guests were more drunk than sated.

I admit to a positive prejudice towards British food writers. If you've read previous posts here you know I love Nigella, Nigel, Tamasin and the ladies of The River Cafe. Barnes's writing centers on novels, short stories and literary essays rather than cookery, but I find his tales of the kitchen just as irresistable as those of my other favorite Brits.

One more excerpt to whet your book-buying appetite;

Like most people I annotate my cookbooks -- ticks, crosses, exclamation marks, emendations, and suggestions for next time. In certain cases next time is never. My annotation of [Richard] Olney's Courgette Pudding Souffle (and I apologize in advance for the language) goes as follows: This dinner for two took me four hours, The mouli doesn't work as he says, and on turning out the souffle collapses flat and the sauce becomes a quarter deep layer on top of it, i.e. a fucking disaster, But all the same: fucking delicious.

In defense of Olney's recipe, Barnes admits he failed to use the right sort of mold. A dish designed to be cooked in a ring mold rarely transfers happily to a different type of pan. But doesn't the above make you want to sit in Barnes's kitchen and peruse the rest of his margin notes?
If you aren't invited to his home in the near future, your next best course is to treat yourself to a copy of "The Pedant in the Kitchen." It's a small book, with a small price tag, packed with entertaining prose. As soon as I finish writing this I'm going to call my brother and command him to buy a copy.

Food Festival: Finale

2008-05-01T20:48:00.000-07:00

Because our own garden is rich with lettuces and herbs right now, we didn't buy much produce at the Ferry Building Farmers' Market -- a couple of apples, a few fava beans, some heirloom tomatoes -- but filled our shopping bags instead with organic lamb and pork, several loaves of bread and eggs with pastel shells and deep orange yolks. But my favorite items came from the sublime Boulettes Larder.
By shortly after 10 am the little shop already had sold out of the stuffed quails I'd had my taste buds set on, but there was still a thick slice of pork rillettes available, as well as canneles as good as any I've eaten in France and some muhammara -- a Middle Eastern red pepper, walnuts and pomegranate molasses spread I adore.
Since we finished off the muhammara within a few days, I've been experimenting with making my own. So far, I like best this recipe from Paula Wolfert, found on David Leite's excellent website, Culinaria.

And since the two canneles lasted only a couple of hours after our arrival home, I'm contemplating making a batch of them as well -- although they'll require considerably more time and culinary skill than making muhammara does. I have the molds -- bought in Paris -- but not sure I have the requisite patience.

Oh, and if you think I bought this cheese mostly because I loved the label, you think the truth.

I've always believed

2008-04-30T08:27:00.001-07:00

that the person running the front of the house plays a major role in a good restaurant experience. But I guess I shouldn't plan on taking the border collies to Grayz.

4 Questions 4 Gray Kunz

2008-04-29T10:40:00.000-07:00

When I asked my friend Eric Gower -- a chef and cookbook author blessed with an exceptionally knowedgeable and discerning palate -- who he'd like to see answer four questions, his response was immediate: "Gray Kunz. The man is a genius."

1. CE: Early in your career, why were you dissatisfied with the traditional four tastes of bitter/sour/sweet/salt?

GK: There were too many tastes in-between that were as . . . more »

Food Festival, part the second

2008-04-27T21:48:00.000-07:00

After a breakfast of good eggs, great bacon and lousy service at Market Bar, J and I filled a few shopping bags at the Ferry Building Farmers' Market and then headed to Berkeley. Specifically to the parking lot of J's favorite wine merchant, Kermit Lynch, where he and Cafe Fanny were hosting Oyster Bliss XVII.
Lynch's flyer had read:

Iced oysters of the half shell and the wines to go with. "Bring 'em on," in the words of the courageous warrior chief known as The Decider. But when we say bring 'em on, we mean oysters and lofts of 'em. And why not some hot little grilled Bordeaux-style sausages on the side? As for the crisp, cold, minerally, dry white wines that go with, leave that to me. I'll be the decider.

The oysters were cold and sweet, the sausages (from Eccolo restaurant) hot and savory and the wines wonderful with both.

And although Cafe Fanny offered five or six different desserts, I knew instantly I'd select the same sweet I'd had at Oyster Bliss XVI: a wide wedge of strawberry-rhubarb galette. Perfection on a paper plate.

Note to Cafe Fanny: promise me that this galette will be back for Oyster Bliss XVIII. Thanks in advance.

Got plastic bags? Re-use 'em!

2008-04-26T11:21:00.001-07:00

Cabrillo College Farmers' Market

I left my waistline in San Francisco

2008-04-24T15:41:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting here staring at my lunch -- two hard-boiled eggs and a WASA cracker --while savoring memories of last weekend's food festival. Between noon Friday and one o'clock Saturday I had lunch at The Four Seasons, dinner at Salt House, breakfast the next morning at Market Bar, one perfect macaron at Miette for elevenses followed by lunch at Kermit Lynch's annual Oyster Bliss.
And then I went home and took a nap.

Friday's lunch was a belated birthday celebration with my favorite interior designer. An excellent but light salmon tartare with a watercress mayonnaise left room for two desserts -- shared, please note. Warm chocolate cake is a cliche,but this one was nicely done--with a touch of caramel sauce, which is always a good idea (The strawberries, however, were not Four Seasons worthy.) The blueberry supposed-to-be-financiere was less successful -- a pleasant enough little teacake, but lacking the almondy depth of a true financiere. "Blueberry porridge," sneered the designer. Despite these small flaws, the overall experience -- particularly the high level of the service -- was lovely.

At dinner time J and I walked from our hotel to Salt Box and the look on J's face when we arrived was one I know well --somewhere between mild apprehension and Edvard Munch's "The Scream." The entry space was tiny, the TGIF bar crowd huge and the noise level at 6 or 7 Chronicle bells. But the host led us immediately to a nice window-side table, our server was able to answer all our menu queries and she was prompt with the wine.
From there things just got better and better. My crispy shrimp with (very) spicy green beans, almonds and serrano ham was terrific and J loved the crispy egg with bacon, spring onions and English p--s. (MN: see final sentence in the "About" sidebar.)

Our entrees were superb: dayboat scallops with smoked trout, parsnip-bacon cake and manilla clams and, pictured below, petrale sole with artichokes, preserved lemon and a shellfish jus.

Perfect little linzer cookies accompanied an individual trifle for dessert. An altogether interesting and delicious meal.

To be continued...

4 Questions 4 Tamasin Day-Lewis

2008-04-14T12:35:00.001-07:00

At the beginning of February I wrote about Tamasin Day-Lewis's wonderful book, "Where Shall We Go for Dinner?" And now I'm eagerly awaiting an even newer work: a big fat compendium of her recipes -- 1,000 of them -- titled "All You Can Eat," due in May. To complete my personal Tamasin triathlon, she recently agreed to answer four questions. I could have asked her a thousand.

1. CE: Last year, I had a wonderful biking trip in Puglia including a delicious multi-course meal at the home of a man active in the Slow Food movement.

I know from "Where Shall We Go for Dinner?" that most of your culinary experiences in the region weren't nearly as happy. Was that one of your worst food trips?

TDL: No, the trip to Puglia was hellishly . . . more »

A Cake for Company

2008-04-11T21:09:00.000-07:00

Since I knew they were comin' I baked a cake.
And because they were coming from across the country (and, in the case of one of them, from across a lot of years) I wanted it to be wonderful. When I want wonderful, I frequently turn to Nigella.

Nigella Lawson's Clementine Cake
from "How to Eat"
4-5 clementines, about 1 pound total weight)
[Margin Note: Since clementines' brief season had passed, I used tangerines. Nigella notes that you also can use an equal weight of oranges]
6 eggs
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
2 + 1/3 cups ground almonds
1 heaping teaspoon baking powder

Put the clementines in a pot with cold water to cover; bring to the boil and cook for two hours. Drain, and, when cool, cut each fruit in half and remove the seeds.
Then chop everything finely -- skins,pith, fruit -- in the processor (or by hand, of course).

Preheat the overn to 375-degrees F. Butter and line an 8-inch springform pan. [M.N.: I buttered but did not line. I should have lined.]
Beat the eggs in a large bowl. Add the sugar, almonds and baking powder. Mix well, adding the chopped clementines. Pour the mixture into the prepared pan and bake for an hour, when a skewer will come out clean; you'll probably have to cover the cake with foil after about 40 minutes to stop the top burning. [M.N.: My cake was done in a little over 50 minutes. Start skewer-testing early.]
Remove from the oven and leave to cool on a rack -- but in the pan -- until cake is completely cold. I think this is better a day after it's made, but I don't complain about eating it any time.[M.N.: I think it's a *lot* better the day after it's made, which inspires me to get it done ahead, saving both prep and clean-up time the day of a dinner party.]

Nigella calls this "the easiest cake I know." Hmmm. I think Sylvia Vaughn Thompson's Fresh Ginger Cake might be easier -- it's certainly quicker -- but I'll concede that the clementine cake is even more delicious. Almost as delicious as spending a long food-and-wine-filled evening with old and new friends.

Postscript:Why no photo of the unmolded cake? Because I sent it to the living room but stayed behind in the kitchen for a few minutes to brew coffee. My plan was to join everyone, take a quick photo and then give each of them a thin, thin slice (it's a very rich cake)accompanied by a dab of lightly sweetened whipped cream and a big spoonful of raspberries.
There were eight of us. This cake easily serves 10-12. Coffee in press-filter carafes takes only a moment to make, but by the time I rejoined the party, Someone had whacked it into eight big pieces and served all but mine.
I try -- in this day of moderate eating and controlled sugar consumption -- not to force feed a guest a horse-choking-size piece of cake. No one, however, complained. And there were no leftovers.

4 Questions 4 Hubert Keller

2008-04-07T23:10:00.000-07:00

If I were going to cast a movie set in an elegant French restaurant I'd pound my desktop and bellow to my minions: "Get me Hubert Keller!"
And if said minions had been to San Francisco's Fleur de Lys, met the tall and handsome Keller and his stylish wife, Chantal, and enjoyed the food in the restaurant's gorgeous fabric-draped dining room, they'd immediately reply: "Brilliant, C.E.! Brilliant!"
And they'd even mean it.

Trained by culinary giants such as Paul Bocuse and Paul Haeberlin and then selected by Roger Verge to run the kitchen at Moulin du Mougins, Heller left France to become executive chef at Verge's Cuisine du Soleil in Brasil. After two years, Verge sent him to San Francisco to run Sutter 500. Deciding to stay in California, Heller became co-owner and executive-chef of Fleur de Lys in 1986.
Recently he has opened restaurants in Las Vegas and St. Louis, but Fleur de Lys in San Francisco will always seem, to me, like the jewel in the crown. It was the first luxury restaurant I visited after moving to California -- and I still love it after all these years.

I was sipping a delicious little cup of his white gazpacho with vanilla oil (pictured and praised here by Pim) when I asked Chef Keller if he'd answer questions for my blog.

1. What is the biggest challenge in running a restaurant as elegant and beloved as Fleur de Lys?

Over the last 20 years the dining public has changed. Twenty years ago there was a different expectation than that of the diners today. To find the balance between classic and fresh in order to satisfy both expectations not only has been a challenge but it's also been part of the excitement of the business which we've embraced as our life.

2. I know you were in Alsace earlier this year to celebrate your mother's 80th birthday. What did you cook for her while you were there?

Cooking for my mom is such a challenge that I prefer to take her out to friends' restaurants. Of course the most important thing was to be with her to celebrate her 80th, with the entire family. She was so, so happy.
[Chantal Keller added: "Even though HK is a chef, his mom will always tell him how to do things in the kitchen...really funny when you watch them."]

3. What is the most important thing you learned from Roger Verge about running a kitchen?

From Roger Verge I discovered a very colorful and happy cuisine, but also how to manage a 3-stars Michelin kitchen and to turn out a great food cost.

4. Your PBS series, "Secrets of a Chef," was delightful. When will we see new episodes?

We just finished filming at Jeriko Winery; now we have to do Las Vegas and St Louis. We double from 13 to 26 episodes. The new episodes will air in the fall, 2008.

Margin Note: Keller's web site has an extensive collection of recipes from earlier episodes of "Secrets of a Chef."

Loving Lola

2008-04-02T08:09:00.000-07:00

Last week I made a quick trip to Dallas, Phoenix and Barcelona.
OK, I lied about the Barcelona part. But the dinner I had at Lola Tapas in Phoenix was so evocative of my favorite Spanish city I kept turning to J and saying, "I love this place. I LOVE this place."

Housed in a tiny building, the interior is dark and cozy, with a pressed tin ceiling and a large, charming photo of the owner's daughter, Lola, on the far wall. All the seating is communal: most of it at two long wooden tables. Co-owner and co-chef Felicia Ruiz Wayne told me she and her husband, Daniel, consider the table-sharing as important as the food: "When we lived in Europe for a year, we loved the way many casual restaurants felt like family gatherings. Sometimes people come here early and sit at the far end of a table so they can be private, but as the restaurant fills up, they soon find themselves talking and laughing with strangers."

Of course they do. The food is so delicious you soon find yourself bonding with your tablemates over the excellence of the garlic shrimp or the lusciousness of the Tetilla cheese blended with honey and reserva sherry vinegar.
"We get everything possible from Spain," Ruiz Wayne told me. "The olive oil, the sausages, the cheese, the olives."
The menu is limited to nine tapas plus two especials del dia. J and I pretty much ran the list -- twas more than we needed, but since we don't get to Phoenix -- or Barcelona -- nearly often enough, we embraced our inner gluttons.

The following recipe comes not from Lola Tapas but from the Spanish city of Merida, via the superb "Tapas: The Little Dishes of Spain" by Penelope Casas. I served this at a housewarming and even though it isn't the most attractive dish (in fact, it looks a bit like a dog's dinner), my guests raved.

Sausages with Sweet-Sour Figs

Prepare the figs one day in advance
1 cup sugar
1 cup red wine vinegar
1 stick cinnamon
4 cloves
1 slice lemon
1 pound fresh small figs or 1 pound bottled figs in syrup, drained
Combine sugar, vinegar, cinnamon, cloves and lemon in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 5 minutes. Add the figs, cover, and simmer for 20 minutes if using fresh figs, just five minutes for bottled. Cool the figs in the syrup and let them sit, covered, at room temperature overnight.
The next day, cook 1 and a half pounds sausage (I use sweet Italian) in 1 tablespoon olive oil and 2 tablespoons white wine until the wine evaporates and the sausages are cooked and brown. Remove them to a warm platter and pour off most of the fat. Deglaze the pan with 4 tablespoons water and two more tablespoons of wine. Add 2 teaspoons of tomato sauce, salt and pepper and simmer, uncovered, for two minutes.
Drain the figs and discard the syrup. Add them to the pan, along with the sausages. Cover and cook briefly until the figs are heated. To serve, cut each sausage into 3 or 4 slices. Cut the figs in halves or quarters, depending on their size. Spear pieces of sausage and fig on toothpick and transfer them with the sauce to a serving dish. These can be assembled in advance and reheated, covered, when ready to serve.

"K.S., Call Home."

2008-03-24T07:32:00.000-07:00

I miss Kim Severson.
Oh, I know she writes regularly -- and wonderfully -- for the New York Times, but I miss her days on staff at the San Francisco Chronicle when she wrote about restaurants and chefs and food purvveyors closer to me, me, me.
If you don't know Severson's work, you'll find a terrific example of it in the recently published "Best Food Writing 2007." These yearly compendiums edited by Holly Hughes always contain treasures, and this one also includes pieces by some of my other favorite food writers: Colman Andrews, Daniel Patterson, John Thorne and the always fabulous Mr. Bourdain.

Severson's piece, "A Grandchild of Italy Cracks the Spaghetti Code," focuses her considerable investigative skills on her own family's cooking traditions and opens with these wonderful lines:

My Italian is so bad I have a hard time pronouncing gnocchi, but I grew up hearing enough of it to know when I'm being yelled at. And that's definitely what was happening at a table in a small roadside restaurant in Abruzzi.

Makes you want to keep reading, doesn't it?
The opening of Bourdain's "My Miami," on the other hand, made me want to stop reading for a minute and go punch a wall out of sheer writerly jealousy:

Like a heat-seeking missile, I can find my way to the finest steamed shark's head in Singapore or the best bun cha in Hanoi. Blindfolded, with one wrist cuffed to an ankle, I can drive you to the earthiest pig's foot-soup in the Dutch West Indies, or to the world's most sublime soup dumplings in Taipei. But in Miami, one of the most international of cities, I am pathetically up a creek.

[Hughes writes in her headnote to the Bourdain piece: "the man can craft a sentence," which is like saying that Thomas Kellar can craft a custard or Pierre Herme can craft a macaron.]
In my perfect reading-about-food world Tony Bourdain would keep a pied-a-terre in San Francisco to hang out in between travels and Kim Severson would move back to the Bay Area, never again to roam farther away than the Napa Valley or Carmel. At the very least they each could phone me to discuss the matter.

Quick and Easy Irish Soda Bread

2008-03-16T09:52:00.001-07:00

My friend Carolyn is one of the smartest, funniest people I know. A fine writer, gifted editor, good golfer and terrific cook, she's also incredibly kind. Correction: the kindness is limited to 364 days a year; on the day of her annual St. Patrick's Day party she turns mean as Cruella De Vil.
Oh, she hides it well. None of her other guests suspects a thing, but that's because they don't ask for the secret of her succulent, sensational corned beef. I tried to get the recipe for all of you but she merely replied: "The secret is that I'll never reveal the secret."
I tried bribery. She collects vintage postcards so I brought her the one pictured above. She'd been insanely busy in the days before the party, so I volunteered to bring my marvelous marinated shrimp for an appetizer. She pronounced the postcard "divine" and the shrimp "delicious." And then she went back to fixing the evening's feast.
Unfortunately the photos I took of her table settings (each of three tables was completely different) turned out either dark, blurry or a combination of both, so I can't show you the beguiling tablescapes she created using her collection of antiques and kitsch. My table included an Antiques Roadshow-worthy multi-tiered epergne crowned with an arrangement of white flowers, vintage silver napkin rings holding shamrock-strewn napkins and some whimsical little figurines of pink pigs.

Since I can't deliver the recipe for corned beef, I'm sharing my favorite one for Irish Soda Bread. I've adapted this a bit from the "Blueberry Hill Menu Cookbook," Elsie Masterton's sequel to her delightful first cookbook This goes together so quickly, you still have plenty of time to shop for the ingredients and bake it for tonight's dinner.

Irish Soda Bread
(makes 2 small loaves)

Sift together 4 cups sifted all-purpose flour, 1 tablespoon baking powder, 1/2 tablespoon salt, 1 tablespoon sugar and 1 teaspoon baking soda.
Mix in with a fork 1 cup currants. Add 2 cups buttermilk and blend with the fork until well mixed.
Flour your hands and knead dough on a floured board until smooth. It won't take more than two minutes of kneading.
Shape into two rounds and place on a greased baking sheet. (Masterton suggests using two heavy black iron frying pans, about 6 or 7 inches in size, but a regular baking sheet works fine.) Let rise in a warm spot for about 10 minutes Then slash the top of each round with a knife, shaping a cross and bake in a preheated 350-degree oven for 45 minutes or until lightly browned and dry within.
(Test with a sharp-bladed knife which should be as dry and shiny when it comes out as when thrust into the breads.)
If possible, bake right before serving and serve warm along with some truly great butter.

Fashion postscript: Since my wardrobe is 90% black with an occasional madcap touch of gray, I had nothing green to wear to the party. Armed with a book of stickers and one of my favorite Marni necklaces, I created this. At the time I thought it was rather witty. In the cold light of morning: not nearly so amusing.

The Sorrel is Always with Us

2008-03-06T14:46:00.001-08:00

The ancient plum tree standing sentry over our vegetable garden is shouting: "Spring is here, Baby!"
The lemon verbena begs to differ.

This weekend: the Official Change from Winter Garden to Spring Garden. Today the beds are mostly empty, waiting for chicken manure enrichment and planting. One broad band of greenery, however, remains. Ever and always we have sorrel.

Through winter rains and summer heat, the sorrel thrives. Would that I knew more ways to use it. I love the flavor but the olive drab color it acquires when heated is more than a little off-putting. Recently I searched one of my favorite cookbooks -- Richard Olney's "Simple French Cooking" -- for sorrel inspiration and found this oddly appealing little luncheon dish. I served it with some slices of Black Forest Ham from the deli and everyone pronounced it delicious, although one friend noted of its combination of khaki-colored cooked sorrel and browned Parmesan: "It looks as if it should be called Eggs in Camouflage."
I punished her by making her tote home a big bag of sorrel leaves.

Eggs Stuffed with Sorrel
(for 4)
1/4 cup olive oil
6 ounces tender young sorrel, stems removed, washed, sponged dry in a towel and finely chopped
6 hard-boiled eggs
1 cup freshly grated Parmesan
Salt, pepper

Oil the bottom of a gratin dish with 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Line with 1/3 of the chopped sorrel and sprinkle lightly with salt. Halve the eggs and, with a fork, mash together the yolks, the remaining sorrel, 3/4 of the cheese and salt and pepper to taste; then work in 2 or 3 tablespoons of olive oil--enough to bind the mixture. Stuff the halved whites with the mixture, packing gently and mounding the stuffing with a teaspoon. Arrange them on the bed of sorrel, sprinle with the remaining Parmesan, dribble over a bit of olive oil. and bake in a hot oven (400-425 degrees) for about 15 minutes.

4 Questions 4 Cat Cora

2008-03-03T10:00:00.000-08:00

Photo: courtesy Robert Quailer

In a witty homage to Dr. Seuss's "Green Eggs and Ham," Iron Chef Cat Cora delighted the judges last night with a dish of serrano ham, chimichurri sauce and a poached duck egg -- a dish that probably won her the match over Chef Lee Hillson. Prior to filming the show, Cora had been in Nicaragua working with Chefs for Humanity, the charity group she founded in 2004.

1. Tell us about your work with Chefs for Humanity: What's the most satisfying aspect?

Being able to personally touch the lives of people in need is so gratifying. I traveled with Chefs for Humanity to Central America where we adopted Wa Wa Boom, a village in Nicaragua that was basically washed away by Hurricane Felix. The people of Wa Wa Boom are living in tents made of tree branches and USAid plastic. They're trying to find the resources to help themselves in an area with few resources. We are raising funds to get what they most need to rebuild their village and put an end to their hunger. (Two hundred pairs of shoes and a chainsaw were the first things we bought.) Being there in person, doing hands-on work and getting to know who you are impacting is so moving, and we are looking forward to returning again this year. You can see photos of Wa Wa Boom at http://www.chefsforhumanity.org/.

2.What's the best dish you've eaten in the last 30 days?

I went out to dinner with some friends in NYC and had an amazing meal at Veritas, where my dear friend and respected sous chef on Iron Chef America, Ed Cotton, works. We had this great fluke sashimi, grilled octopus, truffle soup with lobster and seared smoked salmon with green curry.

3.What's your favorite piece of equipment in the Iron Chef kitchen?

A great set of chef's knives.

4. What's your secret shame food -- the item you'd rather not be seen eating by the Palate Police?

Peanut butter, straight out of the jar with a big spoon!

Back from the Land of the Blue-footed Boobies

2008-02-27T14:23:00.000-08:00

Despite lost luggage, a touch of turista, some seasickness and a painful encounter with jellyfish while snorkeling, the Galapagos trip was pretty damned fabulous. From our arrival at the ship's dock -- where we had to step over sea lions sunning themselves on the gangplank -- to the final day of swimming with adorable small penguins, we hiked and kayaked and snorkeled amongst fascinating wildlife -- wildlife that found us neither fascinating nor frightening.

Highlights for me were the famous blue-footed boobies and their fluffy white chicks and the magnificent red and green Christmas iguanas, but I also loved the bright red Sally Lightfoot crabs skittering across the black volcanic rocks, the flamingos bobbing for krill and the giant tortoises lumbering beneath the mangrove trees.

The food? Nowhere near as notable. We did have a first-rate fish dinner in Guayaquil, some very tasty roast pork from a whole piglet on our ship and some good ceviche at a hotel on Santa Cruz Island.

Plantain chips and popcorn

With the ceviche they served popcorn -- to be stirred into the ceviche to provide crunch. Sometimes it was typical movie-theater popcorn and at other times the kernels had been deep fried to a golden brown. Sounds weird but it was strangely addicting.

Lots of mousses, flans and platters of fresh fruit served at dessert time, but my favorite sweet treats were the fabulously tender shortbread cookies sandwiched with dulce de leche. Good enough to make one boogie like a blue-footed booby.

Mmmm, butter.

2008-02-15T16:50:00.000-08:00

A bit of butter inserted under a chicken's skin before roasting is a good thing; a whole lot of herb butter: even better. Uber-chef Alain Ducasse has a nifty method for placing an impressive amount between the bird's flesh and skin without leaving half the mixture on your hands.
Here's the Cliff Notes: mix plenty of chopped fresh herbs into softened butter; roll out between 2 pieces of waxed paper; chill for a bit in the fridge and then insert pieces of the butter slab under the chicken skin.
And the official version, from "The Good Cuisine" by Alain Ducasse & Francoise Bernard:

Mix 11 tablespoons of butter with 1 cup parsley, chopped, 1 cup chervil, chopped, 1 cup chives, snipped and 1 teaspoon tarragon plus sea salt and ground pepper. Spread a very thin layer of this herb butter between 2 sheets of wax paper. Refrigerate for 20 minutes. Make slits under the skin of the chicken. Insert small slices of the chilled herb butter between the meat and the skin.

This little herb butter truc from M. Ducasse not only produces succulent meat but also superb pan juices. I usually save part of the butter mixture to toss with the vegetables I roast alongside; fingerling potato halves, parsnip chunks and whole shallots were last night's trio. Ducasse suggests stuffing the chicken with a bread cubes, chicken liver, duck foie gras and bacon mixture. This is unlikely to happen chez moi. Last night's sacrificial chick had only a big handful of fresh tarragon in its belly.
Ducasse has produced an array of gorgeous big cookbooks, but this little volume -- a collaboration with Francoise Bernard (who describes herself as "the apostle of easy cusine") is a quirky delight. The book alternates their recipes and includes wonderful little bottom-of-the-page comments on each other's writings. Bernard gives a recipe for Sauteed Rabbit with Prunes that lists a tablespoon of red currant jelly to thicken the sauce. Ducasse notes: "Instead of red currant jelly, I suggest binding the sauce with a fine prune puree. Soften some prunes in warm tea, pit them and blend in a food processor."

In turn, after Ducasse's recipe for Oyster Casserole with Shallots, Bernard comments: "Combining two types of shallots adds a particular refinement to this dish, but I don't believe that it is absolutely ncessary. To reduce the cost, I would suggest replacing the champagne with a good dry sparkling wine."
Three hundred pages of this very opinionated, very French exchange: Mmmmm, delightful.

POSTSCRIPT: I am off to the Galapagos Islands for 10 days of traipsing through the tortoises and other adventures. New posts should resume at month's end

A Valentine for my Grandmother

2008-02-13T12:10:00.000-08:00

Although I was named for her, I have only a few items that belonged to my paternal grandmother: a tiny snapshot of her in a tennis outfit (complete with long skirt and hat), some pieces of her good china and a very worn and stained little leather notebook that held her recipes.
I'm guessing the entries date from a relatively short period; she married in 1912, had three sons by 1918 and fell ill shortly thereafter. Although she lived another 12 years, she was, for most of those, too ill to cook. But when she was a young housewife, raising a family in a tiny Pennsylvania town near Reading, she apparently cooked and baked and preserved with enthusiasm.
When I was given this little book a few years ago I had to gently separate the first page from the inside cover and what I found flooded me with pleasure: Her handwriting on that particular page looked exactly like my father's. The ink is too faded to be fully legible in the photograph but says:
Receipt Book
of
Mary Ellis Jones
"Every receipt in this book has been tried and proven to be good."
There's something about the emphasis of those quotation marks that just melts my heart.

The book has tiny alpahabetical tabs and, by far, the thickest section follows C. For my grandmother, C stood mostly for Cake: Chocolate Cake, Nut Cake, Marble Cake and Fruit Cake. Dandy Cake, Coconut Cake, Date Cake and Pound Cake. Cakes from Helen Epright and Maybelle Mowrey and Annie McCornwell and Lou Linter -- the last being the only cake recipe with the added note: "Very good."
It wasn't all cake, all the time, of course. Even the C portion also has recipes for clam chowder, chili sauce, homemade catsup and two ways to can corn: hot pack and cold pack.
I've yet to cook anything from this little book but I love reading the recipes.
Consider:

Make Corn Beef
Soak beef in strong salt water overnight, in morning drain
In morning put in crock containing salt water strong enough to float
an egg, 1 cup brown sugar and a little salt peter. Let stand 10 days before
using.

or, to celebrate early Spring:

Dandelion Wine
use 2 qts. of water to 1 qt. of flowers
scald flowers
let stand 1 hour then add 2 oranges and 2 lemons for each gallon
let stand 48 hours
than add 3 lbs. sugar to each gallon and let work

(how I LOVE "let work")

There was a large grape arbor behind the house, and apparently the grapes were very sweet, because her jam recipe is merely:

Grape Jam
1 pint grapes
1 pint vinegar
2 TB water
cook 20 minutes, put thru sieve
cook until thick

An odd-sounding dessert called a Marlow must have been *the* trendy dessert for a while as there are recipes for:

Chocolate Marlow
Strawberry Marlow
Grape Marlow
Lemon Marlow
Banana Marlow
Pineapple Marlow
Vanilla Marlow
Peach Marlow

The Coffee Marlow recipe is typical of the genre:

20 marshmallows
1 cup strong coffee infusion
pinch salt
1/2 pint whipping cream
Melt marshmallows in coffee over hot water, stirring to produce smooth
mixture, add salt.
When cold and slightly thick, add stiffly beaten cream.

How I'd love to time-travel back to Spring City on a long-ago Valentine's Day --before Cancer took my beautiful young grandmother from the kitchen and the gathering of dandelions and the picking of grapes -- and watch my father and uncles as little boys sitting around the table waiting for dessert. I like to think it would have been cake--chocolate cake. Undoubtedly Lou Linter's Chocolate Cake, because it was, my grandmother noted, "Very good."

4 Questions 4 Dorie Greenspan

2008-02-07T10:25:00.000-08:00

Passion fascinates me. Lead me to books or blogs written by people passionate about any subject from art to zebra-stalking and I'm interested. Of course, if the passion involves food, I'm very interested. And if the writing is first-rate, I'm a fan forever.
Dorie Greenspan's passion for baking has fueled an outstanding collection of award-winning cookbooks and her passion for the-life-well-lived (and well-fed) makes her blog one of my favorites. Somewhere between her homes in Manhattan, Connecticut and Paris, she took time to indulge my nosiness.

[photo by another passionate cookbook author, Paris resident and prolific blogger on all-things gastronomic: David Lebovitz.]

1. If you had a very generous – but not unlimited – remodeling budget, what would you change in each of your three kitchens?

My three kitchens are each different from one another, but they all lack one thing in common: enough storage! Actually, that’s not really true, because I have tons of storage in my New York kitchen, a fair amount in Connecticut and a surprising amount in my smallish Paris kitchen, but what I can’t seem to figure out in any of these places is where to put stuff like tomatoes, potatoes, onions, garlic, oranges, apples, big, funny-shaped squash and bulky bunches of bananas, the stuff that doesn’t go into the fridge and needs some air. I’ve bought bins, baskets and bowls, but still this produce seems to take up more than its fair share of countertop real estate. Aarrrgh.

Once my storage issues are solved, I’d use some of my very generous budget to buy second ovens for each of my kitchens. I’ve got fine ovens in each place (although, if the budget is generous enough, maybe I could squeeze a La Cornue in somewhere), but a second oven … ahhh … that would be both practical and luxurious. Oh, and while I’m at it, maybe second refrigerators and freezers, too, especially in Paris, where I’d like to have the fun of doing what every French homemaker does, i.e., shopping in Picard, the frozen-food supermarket, and having a steady stash of their salted-butter caramel ice cream, shelled fava beans and red-fruit coulis.

In her Manhattan kitchen

It’s funny, but while each of my kitchens has its limitations, I’ve learned to work within them and never really think about changing them. The Connecticut kitchen is airy and spacious and part of a big room that includes my desk and the dining area (it’s the only one of my three kitchens that I was actually able to plan because we renovated the house a few years ago); New York is a classic galley kitchen – I can stand in the center of it, stretch out my arms and touch both walls – and in some ways, it’s the most efficient, in the way that I imagine a submarine is efficient; and Paris is a square with great light and a huge window, but not enough room for anything we Americans would consider full-size (my refrigerator, although new, has a kind of “vintage” look, ditto my brand new oven, the interior of which is just 24 inches) – okay, the truth is, my husband and I have talked about changing this kitchen, but every time we get ready to spiff it up and get it more organized, we think, “Gee, it’s kind of charming just the way it is,” and we don’t do a thing. Each of the kitchens has its own style and I love moving from one to the other and adapting to each.

2. What was one of the most memorable moments of working with Julia Child on her baking book?

Of course, it’s almost impossible to pick just one moment, but … I lived in Cambridge for two months while we shot the Baking with Julia television series (it was shot in Julia’s wonderful Victorian house in Cambridge) and I used to love when we’d wrap for the day and Julia would ask me to stay and have a glass of wine with her. We’d sit at the high counter, which had been built for the set, and just gab – naturally, we’d talk about work, but we’d also talk about food and friends and France, which Julia loved so profoundly – and we’d usually nibble on whatever was left from the day’s shoot. One Friday night, after the crew had left and my husband had just arrived from New York to spend the weekend with me, Julia invited us to stay and her friend John joined us. We were sitting at the counter eating the leftovers from Lauren Groveman’s shoot – matzo, rye bread and chopped liver – and Julia’s favorite nibble, Pepperidge Farm Goldfish! (She’d buy them in great big boxes.) Julia would spill some of the Goldfish out onto the counter and every once in a while she’d scoot a couple over to Michael, my husband, and give him a sly little complicitous smile. She could tell she had a fellow salty-snack lover in the house.

There were so many great moments with Julia and all of them involve her warmth, intelligence and great good humor. Although, I did get a glimpse of her competitive side too. I won both James Beard and IACP awards for "Baking with Julia" and was thrilled, but the evening that the IACP awards were given out, I came down from the podium (having won both the judges’ and the people’s choice awards) and went to give Julia a hug only to find her agitated – she was outraged that I hadn’t gotten Cookbook of the Year as well!

3. If someone in love with food were visiting Paris for just three days, what should they do on day #2, after hitting the best known places the first day?

This is such a great question. Okay, having stocked up on pastries from Pierre Herme, having had lunch at Le Comptoir, tea at the George Cinq (with a little walk around the lobby to see the fabulous flowers), dinner at l’Atelier de Joel Robuchon and late-night drinks at the bar at Le Plaza Athenee, you’ve got your base and you’re ready for day #2.

You should start with the soft boiled eggs at the Café de Flore, one of the great literary cafes in Saint-Germain-des-Pres (my neighborhood). The eggs come with strips of baguette and a little pot of Echire butter and dunking is a must. Then go to one of the outdoor markets – depending on the day you’re there, I’d say go to the Sunday organic market on the Boulevard Raspail, the Saturday market on the Avenue Saxe where you have to stop at Joel Thiebaut’s vegetable stand) right near the Galliera fashion museum, or the bustling Marche Aligre any day.

Whether or not you still have room in your shopping bag, you have to go on a pastry tour, stopping at Pain de Sucre in the Marais, Arnaud Lahrer in Montmartre and Des Gateaux et du Pain in the fifteenth arrondissement. And get chocolates from Patrick Roger (on the Blvd. Saint Germain) and Pierre Marcolini (on rue de Seine). Oh, and take a little side-trip to Giles Verot (in the seventh and the fifteenth) for charcuterie (his terrines are fabulous) and stop for wine at La Derniere Goutte (again in my ‘hood), where the owner, Juan Sanchez, has a remarkable selection of wines from small producers, all of whom he knows. Wait, while you’re there, you should walk around the corner to the rue Jacob and Huilerie Leblanc and buy some of their pistachio oil – it’s sooooooo good.

At this point, you’ll have earned lunch and I’d suggest you have it at a great little wine bar, maybe le Verre Vole, near the Canal St. Martin, a kind of trendy neighborhood, the new (even if it looks ancient) Les Racines in the second arrondissement, or the quite elegant Legrand et filles, in the beautiful Galerie Vivienne behind the Palais Royale.

If you haven’t whiled away the entire afternoon at your chosen wine bar, you might be able to take a cooking or baking class at Pavillon Elysee Lenotre (on the Champs Elysee) or, for a more casual option, L’Atelier des Chefs. And you might have time for another tea stop, this time I’d suggest Mariage Freres, serving the most extraordinary teas in the most charming salons. (I dare you to leave without buying something – if not tea, then some gorgeous tea-related something.)

Now would also be a good time to take a walk in the Luxembourg Gardens or along the Seine or through the Tuileries because you’ll need an appetite for dinner. I think the best way to end this terrific day would be a late dinner at one of the city’s neo- or gastro-bistros. These are places opened by chefs who’ve worked at great Michelin-starred restaurants, but opted out for their own very casual, very reasonably priced bistros. There are lots of them in the city (Le Comptoir is one, and probably the most famous because the chef, Yves Camdeborde, was the first “renegade” chef and, as such, he’s the papa of this revolution) and among my favorites are: L’Ami Jean (in the seventh), Chez Michel (in the tenth), Les Papilles, which serves just one three-course menu every night and is also a wine shop (in the fifth), L’Orcine (in the thirteenth) and Les Cocottes de Christian Constant (in the seventh), which is counter-service only, but lots of fun.

Because this day is so full and because you’ll finish dinner so late, maybe you should skip your nightcap and just go back to the hotel and have one of your wonderful chocolates.

4. Actress Stephanie March confessed to eating some Tex-Mex specialties of which her chef husband strongly disapproved. What is your secret shame fare?

M&Ms. I never leave home without them.

A Valentine for Food-lovers

2008-02-01T21:16:00.001-08:00

I've collected Tamasin Day-Lewis's books ever since 1983 when I found "The Englishwoman's Kitchen" -- a slim little volume filled with extremely non-glitzy photographs of decidedly eclectic cooking spaces. I particularly love "The Art of the Tart" and "Tarts with Tops On" but treasure all her books -- not only for their splendid recipes but also for her impassioned and eloquent writing style. And then I got my hands on her latest.

Every once in a while I start to read a book and quickly realize it's a soup-for-dinner situation. Not because I discover a great soup recipe -- soup-for-dinner books usually aren't even cookbooks -- but because I am so engrossed in the reading that I abandon all possible household chores. Laundry remains unfolded, bills unpaid and the simplest possible dinner gets served. ("There has to be a container of soup somewhere in this freezer.")
"A Food Romance" chronicles the adventures of Day-Lewis and her American boyfriend as they pursue great food from Somerset to San Francisco, Puglia to the Pyrenees. She writes of her detemination not to let the tourist throngs spoil her time in Venice:

one has to consciously ignore and not be annoyed by the crowds as thick as they are down Oxford Street; likewise by the gawping and clicking, the bumping and jostling, the fact that even the hidden corners, the back-street restaurants, are full of people just like us also trying to avoid people just like us.

and of curing jetlag with fried chicken at Blue Ribbon on New York's Sullivan Street

maize-coloured parcels of insanely crisp, hot, spicy, battered chicken with buttery mash, collard greens and the infamous bowl of runny honey to dip your chicken into. Strange, but it's just the thing to order hot off the plane from England when the time clock is playing havoc and you need pots of comfort food and sleep.

She writes of brunch with Julia Roberts and school holidays with her brother Daniel (yes, that Daniel Day-Lewis), of her father, poet-laureate Cecil Day-Lewis and his great friend Kingsley Amis, of famous chefs and noted restaurateurs. But she also writes of people whose names you wouldn't recognize-- like Lidia, who had been making agnolotti for nearly 50 years for a tiny restaurant in the village of Valdivilla or Guiseppe del Console who makes an intensely fruity olive oil with the "aroma of artichoke and bitter almonds and olive leaves" in Corato, Puglia.
For a year, she traveled and ate and cooked and questioned and reflected and then she wrote about it all. I loved every page. Consider giving it as a Valentine's Day gift -- with love from you to you.

Frankly-faux Cheese Souffle

2008-01-29T13:37:00.001-08:00

Souffle Tuesday is not dead -- just taking a long winter's nap. One of these weeks I'm going to test and post a true souffle recipe again, but a few nights ago I was feeling too lazy to whisk and fold egg whites and so trotted out this dependable old war horse from my stable of favorite recipes. It was so good I made a half-size version for lunch today.
The original recipe comes from Helen McCullough's excellent "The Low-Carb Cookbook." My copy is on loan to a friend, so I fixed this from memory and if it wasn't exactly as written in the book, it worked out just fine.

The basic procedure involves buttering a shallow baking dish and then coating the buttered surface with ground Parmesan. Beat 6 whole eggs until yolks and whites combine, stir in 1 cup of heavy cream and a cup of grated cheese. Season with salt and pepper--perhaps a bit of grated nutmeg, if you like. Pour the mixture into the prepared dish and bake in a 375-degree oven until puffed and well-browned. Serve at once for the full visual effect, but it tastes just fine after the fall. In fact, I love it cold and fully deflated the next day.

Most often I make this using a fairly sharp aged Cheddar, although the little luncheon one in the top picture (a half-portion of the recipe) had Feta cheese with a good dash of za'atar and the larger, lazy-night dinner version -- based on my unwillingness to go out in the rain to the store -- relied on a mixture of grated Gruyere eeked out to a full cup with a couple tablespoons of Parmesan.
This sturdy little cross between a proper souffle and a crustless quiche can incorporate up to a half-cup of cooked bacon, sauteed pancetta cubes, minced ham, etc. I've successfully tossed in chopped cooked spinach, sliced mild chiles, sauteed mushrooms, leftover cubes of cooked eggplant--you get the idea -- but I've come to feel its simpest form is best: a warm amalgam of eggs, cream and cheese that looks and tastes like far more than the sum of its parts.

Wild Child at The River Cafe

2008-01-23T15:05:00.000-08:00

The first -- and only -- time I ate at London's River Cafe, I set the carpet on fire. The blaze was small and quickly extinguished by J, and our waiter was lovely about the entire episode, but my heart still pounds when I think about what-might-have-been.

It's just that I'd waited so long to go there, having been enchanted by all the laudatory press and delighted with every recipe I'd tried from the cookbook, that I got a tad over-excited and when one of the pastry chefs set a fresh-from-the-oven lemon tart on the counter of the open kitchen, I jumped up from my seat to get a closer look. Apparently I tossed my napkin onto the little spirit lamp on our table and the fabric instantly ignited. Why didn't I scoop it up and immerse it in my water glass? Who knows? Flinging it onto the floor probably spared the tablecloth but definitely spoiled the carpet.

I cook frequently from all the River Cafe cookbooks, but the first one remains my favorite. As the Bay Area weather gets colder and wetter (Isn't January over YET?) this simple but succulent recipe for lamb shanks never fails to satisfy.

Slow-Cooked Lamb Shanks
(slightly adapated from "The Rogers Gray Italian Country Cookbook" by Ruth Rogers and Rose Gray)

6 small lamb shanks
flour for dusting
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tablesppons olive oi
6 red onions, peeled and sliced fine
1 handful chopped fresh rosemary leaves
4 garlic cloves, peeled and choppe
3/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1 + 1/4 cups red wine

Preheat the oven to 300-degrees.
Dust the lamb shanks with seasoned flour.

In a heavy-bottomed pan with a lid, heat the oil and brown the shanks on all sides, then remove. Lower the heat heat, add the onions, and cook for about 10-15 minutes, until light brown. Add the rosemary and garlic and cook for another couple of minutes. Raise the heat and add the balsamic vinegar and the wine. Reduce for a couple of minutes.
Return the shanks to the pan, reduce the heat and cover with a piece of moistened parchment paper and the lid. Place in the oven, lower the heat to 275 or even 250 and cook until the meat is very tender -- start checking after two hours, but I usually find it requires *at least* two and a half hours at this temperature.

While they cook, check the shanks from time to time, basting with the juices or adding more wine if they look too dry. Serve whole, with the onion strands and pan juices.

Here's what remained from tonight's dinner:

Although these look as if a famished Henry VIII had attacked them, they still had enough lamby flavor to thrill the resident Border Collies.

Birthday Fare

2008-01-20T07:58:00.000-08:00

This year my birthday was a four-day festival, gastronomically bracketed by polenta and pork. Thursday night's dinner at Village Pub in Woodside was pretty-near perfect, from the oxtail consomme with marrow dumplings right through the dessert beignets, followed by superb mignardises -- my favorite new French word, learned from the sublime Clotilde at Chocolate & Zucchini. But the entree was particulary wonderful -- one of the best plates of food I've had in months.

I learned from our waiter that the chef marinates an entire rack of pork in apple cider for several days, sears it on the hardwood-fueled grill and finishes it in the oven. A thick slice nestles in a bed of creamy white polenta, caramelized apple wedges go alongside and a salad of shaved fennel and pink lady apple adds a finishing garnish.

Sunday's polenta and pork were part of the family-style Sunday night dinner at La Posta in Santa Cruz. This time they appeared in separate courses: the polenta with braised tripe as the primi and the pork roasted and accompanied by sweet and sour red cabbage as the secundi.
And even though this meal included an endive and persimmon salad to start and a slice of warm apple crostada to conclude, I still went home and ate a thin sliver of the devil's food cake (with mocha buttercream and raspberry jam) left over from the family celebration earlier in the day.

Thus endeth the Birthday Festival for 2008. Twas grand.

Farewell, Old Friend

2008-01-12T22:18:00.001-08:00

We had some good times; made some good food. I learned to cope with your thermostatic infidelity, but when you stopped self-cleaning the relationship was over for me.

Murphy's Law of Kitchen Remodeling: The space vacated by the old appliance will be exactly one-half inch too small for the new.

Hello, Gorgeous!

Low-carb; High-pleasure

2008-01-08T21:17:00.001-08:00

After three weeks of Karen's double-ginger biscotti, Nigella's pomegranate ice cream, Diana's marvelous miniature coconut tarts, my own homemade cookies, a gift box of caramels covered in white chocolate and topped with fleur de sel and one final, fabulous slice of left-over Buche du Noel for breakfast, my clothes are too tight. Quelle surprise!
Time to go back to lower-carb eating for a spell. Last night's dinner included baby rib lamb chops atop a little arugula plus broccoli from the farmers' market, dressed with browned butter and Meyer lemon juice. For dessert I made the above dessert from a cookbook by one of my favorite French chefs: Guy Savoy. I reduced the sugar a bit, but the rest of the ingredients were completely low-carb-friendly.

J thought the result was fabulous -- company-worthy. My enthusiasm was more restrained. It certainly was better than no dessert at all, and it was more interesting than a bowl of raspberries with a dollop of creme fraiche on the side, but I'd have enjoyed it more if it had been labeled "Raspberry Gratin" or "Warm Creamy Raspberry Thingy." But a clafoutis is a cake--a very simple cake, actually a glorified pancake -- and this recipe lacked that comfortingly cakey texture.
Still, zipper-poppers can't be choosers.

Raspberry Almost-Clafoutis
(slightly modified from "Guy Savoy; Simple Recipes for the Home Cook")
Serves 4

3 large eggs
3 tablespoons sugar plus 1 tsp. for coating the dish
Butter
4 ounces creme fraiche
1 tablespoon framboise
1/2 pound fresh raspberries

Preheat the oven to 350-degrees.
Whisk the eggs, 3 tablespoons sugar and creme fraiche together until smooth and emulsified. Stir in the framboise.
Lightly butter a baking dish large enough to hold the raspberries in one layer. Sprinkle with the teaspoon of sugar and shake to distribute evenly. Layer the raspberries onto the dish. Pour the creme fraiche mix over them. Bake until puffy and browned in spots. This might happen in 20 minutes if you're using a copper gratin dish; my heavy pottery dish required closer to 30 minutes

Remove from the oven and cool slightly, but serve warm. Powdered sugar dusted on top or vanilla ice cream served alongside would be lovely if you were a more disciplined diner over the holidays than I.

From Puglia

2008-01-04T08:47:00.001-08:00

The Slow Food dinner in the countryside of Puglia began with 17 appetizers, including freshly-fried little croquettes of I-know-not-what, sauteed zucchini slices, marinated peppers of various hues, olives, radishes and one bowl containing pale green slices of what looked like cucumber but tasted as if a melon had been frolicking in its gene pool.

J got that I-have-to-grow-this look in his eyes, while I gave silent thanks that there were no visible seeds for him to scrape into a napkin. Our host wrote the name "Carosello barese" on a small piece of paper and J tucked it into his wallet. Two days later, when we arrived in Bari, I knew that museums, churches -- even lunch --were on hold until we found a seed store.

Our taxi driver had a small English/Italian dictionary that did not consider the word "seeds" a necessary term for tourists to translate. We pointed to the word "plants" and acted out seed-sowing and vegetable picking, managing only to mystify the poor driver. We then pantomimed "just drive around through the shopping district."

Who knew Bari had so many Bennetton stores?

Finally the driver found a policeman who spoke Engish and sent us off to a garden shop near an industrial area. Fearful we'd have trouble finding another taxi, we took the driver inside with us--and when J showed a salesclerk the carefully saved paper, the cab driver went into full operatic mode with much arm-waving and forehead slapping and sentences that began "AAAAHHH: Carosello!" and continued with -- I think -- statements that if we'd just told him we wanted carosello seeds in the first place he'd have known exactly where to take us.

So now J grows not only 'carosello mezzo lungo barese', but also 'carosello bianco leccese' and 'carosello tondo di fasano cianciuffo'. And every bite reminds me of a banquet in Puglia and a crazy cab ride and a driver who probably still talks about the weird Americans who spent their only day in Bari looking for vegetable seeds.

Thanks to the glories of the internet, you can find the seeds without traipsing to Puglia.

Garden Dreams

2008-01-03T11:12:00.000-08:00

The deluge of seed catalogs has begun. J will be spending many a January evening pondering, planning and ordering while I graciously maintain spousal silence over the fact that he already has enough seeds to sow 157 gardens in addition to our own.
Certainly the vegetables, herbs and edible flowers he grows make my cooking easier and more interesting. If only the seed procurement were restricted to ordering from catalogs.
I love the tomatoes he grows from seeds liberated from Alain Ducasse's garden in Moustiers; I didn't love hiding the bathroom tumbler filled with water and seed goo at hotels throughout France. I find it charming that some of our artichoke plants started as seeds purchased from a little old lady in a tiny shop in Sienna; I find it uncharming that some of these plants have thorns designed to rip the skin off your leg as you walk by. And my least-favorite seed-acquisition memory: sitting at a business dinner in Tokyo where dessert consisted of exquisite little melon halves. As soon as I noticed a few seeds clinging to my portion, I knew what would happen. Hoping I was wrong, I glanced over at J, who was, indeed, flicking melon seeds into his napkin while several fellow guests pretended not to notice. And I pretended not to know J.

Tomorrow: a seed quest in Puglia involving a taxi-driver who spoke no English, a couple who speak no Italian and an deeply inadequate English-Italian dictionary.

Two Easy Nibbles: One Savory; One Sweet

2007-12-20T16:04:00.000-08:00

From amongst all the delicious hors d'oeuvres and desserts I sampled at recent holiday parties here are two I'll be serving my own guests:
*A few days ago I baked a batch of cream puff shells, each just a bit bigger than a silver dollar. They're stashed in the freezer to be warmed and crisped a bit before being filled with halved cherry tomatoes, sprigs of watercress and pieces of freshly cooked bacon. I'll serve them with drinks when friends stop by to exchange gifts early Sunday evening.

Miniature Coconut Tarts

*To sit on a tray next to the coffee pot on Christmas Eve, I made a batch of my friend Diana's addictively-good miniature coconut tarts. After lining tiny muffin tins with pastry (I used my homemade pate brisee but a sour cream pastry or even a good-quality commercial pie dough would work here - but not puff pastry) I lightly beat three whole eggs and stirred in 1 cup sugar and 3 ounces of shredded coconut. I spooned this into the pastry shells and baked them at 375-degrees until set and golden brown on top. These freeze perfectly once they've cooled.

And the photo at the top of this post? The entryway to the same hilltop home where we enjoyed the harvest dinner in September. The two-year-old pictured in that post was at the Christmas party in full red-plaid-and-black velevet regalia. As a group of us stood chatting on the dance floor she came up to us and said, politely but firmly: "You're standing on my stars." Sure enough, a special light fixture overhead was casting a starry pattern onto the floor. We immediately moved, the band began playing and the young lady danced amongst her stars.
Have a lovely holiday weekend -- and don't stand on anyone's stars. They might need the dancing space.

Sprouts Salad: Warm and Wonderful

2007-12-17T21:52:00.001-08:00

Sublime Sprouts Salad

In the not too distant past I avoided brussels sprouts almost as assiduously as I did (and do) peas. Almost. And then, at a Christmas party six years ago, J cajoled me into trying this warm salad of shaved sprouts and pancetta. Twas bliss in a bowl.
I'm going to be very honest with you and admit that if you're making this for more than three or four people, the prep is a PITA, but I promise you on my love for Jeremy Irons, Kris Kristofferson and my border collies that the result is worth the work.
Oh, and if you aren't willing to search out duck fat, you'll never achieve the taste nirvana of this dish, although chicken fat probably would work *almost* as well. You need only two ingredients in addition to the sprouts and fowl fat: pancetta and white pepper. No salt: the pancetta does that duty.
This is one of those annoying no-quantities-specified recipes--you have to play around with it a bit to discover the proportions you like best, but as long as you apply a modicum of common sense, you're going to end up with a delicious result.
The basic method: fine-chopped panecetta is sauteed in a bit of duck fat until it is browned but not yet crisp and then a mound of shaved-as-thin-as-possible brussels sprouts is added to the pan, tossed just until wilted, seasoned with white pepper and then served promptly.
The PITA factor? You have to shave the little sons-of-cabbages on a mandoline or Japanese slicer to get truly thin strands and, god, it gets tedious after a while. But, no whining. The chef who gave me the recipe prepares it for the staff Christmas party each year and he told me on Sunday that he'd spent an hour and a half that morning slicing enough sprouts to satisfy a hundred people.

Don't Make this Recipe

2007-12-12T19:01:00.000-08:00

"I love the smell of shrimp shells in the morning."

I mean it. Do not make this recipe unless you are willing to follow my instructions EXACTLY.
It's not as if I'll be asking you to prepare puff pastry from scratch or shuck a bushel of oysters or bone a grouse -- instead I submit for your consideration an extremely easy appetizer that will bring you raves -- raves, I tell you -- if you will do EXACTLY WHAT I SAY. OK, I'll stop yelling now. But this is one of my most cherished recipes and it breaks my heart to see it screwed up -- and I've seen it screwed up twice in the last few weeks. So, do what I say and do what I do and you'll have an outstanding addition to your recipe repertoire.

I learned how to make this from Charlotte Combe, an excellent teacher at the late lamented Jack Lirio Cooking School in San Francisco,

Charlotte Combe's Marvelous Marinated Prawns

Combine:
1/4 cup good mustard
1/2 cup wine vinegar
1/2 cup truly excellent olive oil
1/4 cup chopped parsley
1/4 cup chopped shallots
salt & pepper
2 teaspoons red pepper flakes
***
Bring a large, well-salted pot of water to a boil and drop in 2 lbs. prawns, still in the shell. When they turn pink, they're probably done. Do not overcook them; a tiny bit underdone is far preferable to even a little overdone.
Drain and, as soon as they're cool enough to handle, peel the prawns and then mix them with the marinade.
Refrigerate overnight. Drain very well before serving.

Sounds simple, right? Well it is. But people like to take shortcuts and said shortcuts will ruin this dish. Here are the shortcuts you MAY NOT TAKE:
*No pre-cooked prawns
*No semi-peeled raw prawns
*No cheap-o olive oil
*No dried parsley flakes
*No omitting the red pepper flakes
*No trying to get away with a less-than-overnight marinade
*NO FORGETTING TO DRAIN THE PRAWNS REALLY WELL BEFORE SERVING. They should not be sitting in a pool of marinade at serving time.

You are permitted one substitution: scallions sliced thin for the shallots. The rest of the instructions are to be considered commandments -- carved on stone tablets, broken only at the risk of infuriating the gods of gastronomy
And me.

4 Questions 4 Michael Ruhlman

2007-12-08T09:26:00.001-08:00

Much of my holiday gift shopping involves books, and this year each cook on my list is getting a compact little compendium of kitchen wisdom called "The Elements of Cooking." Written by one of my favorite authors, Michael Ruhlman, "Elements" is a departure from his best-selling narratives like "The Making of a Chef" and "The Soul of a Chef" or cookbooks like "Charcuterie" and "The French Laundry Cookbook."

I've been sitting here trying to write some lines that would whet your appetite for this elegant little book, but I cannot escape the fact that Anthony Bourdain has, in the introduction, done a better job than I ever could:

Eight essays on vital, primary concepts like stock, sauce, salt, eggs, heat and tools...and an absolutely rock solid definition of every term professional chefs should know as a matter of course after years of working in professional kitchens; now you will learn them easily and concisely -- without burning yourself, cutting yourself, or having your ass kicked in the process

.

Ruhlman was en route home to Cleveland from a month-long book tour when he took a few moments to answer my questions.

CE: The book's impassioned first chapter on the importance of well-
made stock has almost -- almost -- convinced me to take on the
making of veal stock. Do you swear on your love of Cleveland that
"It's no more difficult than chicken stock"?

MR: Absolutely. Though don't buy ten pounds of bones, just two or three will do. Buy a veal breast at the grocery store and have them cut it up; it's
perfect for veal stock.

CE: One of my most-loved cookbooks is the stunning "A Return to Cooking," your collaborative work with chef Eric Ripert. The recipe for snapper with caramelized and braised shallots on a puree of fresh cranberry beans is an entire cooking lesson captured on a few pages,as are so many of the other recipes. If Eric suddenly phoned and said he was coming to Cleveland for a brief visit, what would you cook for him?

MR: Pork belly, of course!

CE: I've read nearly all of your books but my favorite is "House: A Memoir." Having survived several long and gut-wrenching remodels of a 1910 so-called "summer cottage," I raced through "House" on an empathetic surge of I'm-not-putting-this-down-until-I've-reach-the-end. One of the many delights of the Cleveland episode of No Reservations was the glimpse inside your home. Are there still rooms that need work? Certainly the kitchen looks spectacular. And, if you'd known at the beginning what you do now, would you still have undertaken this project? And would your wife, similarly knowledgeable, have agreed, fled or murdered you in your sleep?

MR: While the kitchen and my office are splendid, the living room looks
half like a living room, half like a studio and half like an office,
something you'd find in NYC in SoHo. The guest bedroom fireplace and
hearth are still bare concrete; must tile it this winter! Our bedroom is
bare and unfinished. But all in all I feel like a king in my house
and would not change any decision we've made. Donna may at any moment
come to her senses and murder me in my sleep.

CE: I was intrigued to read that you "started writing at age 10 and have written something almost ever day in the ensuing years." I've also read that while a student at Duke you studied with Reynolds Price. (When I was a Duke I never had the courage to take one of his courses: a major life regret). Early next year Duke celebrates Price's 50 years of teaching. What specific impact did he have on your writing?

MR: You missed a great opportunity to study with Reynolds--that man is connected to the source. His impact on my writing? Were it not for him, I'd never be able to make a living at it, and so I'd long ago have had to cut my throat. He taught me how to sit down and do the work. I wasn't very good, and he gave me the tools to keep working at it until through stubbornness I figured it out.

Cooking Nude

2007-12-06T19:25:00.000-08:00

Ever since the New York Times published chef Anna Klinger's recipe for malfatti back in November, 2002, I've loved eating these fat little pillows of ricotta, chard and nutmeg and loved part of the process of making them. Also known as gnocchi gnudi (nude gnocchi) these require no rolling, cutting or flicking off fork tines. You just plop a tablespoon of the gnocchi mixture into a wineglass, twirl the glass wine-snob-style and watch the rather sticky little glob turn into a perfect little oval. That's the part I love.
Here's the part I don't love: preparing the chard:

Bring a large pot of water, heavily seasoned with salt, to a boil. Trim the (4 pounds of) chard, removing all stems and large ridges. Add half to the boiling water and cook until soft, about 3 minutes. Fish out and plunge into a bowl of ice water. Repeat.
Squeeze out chard with your hands. On a dish towel, spread the chard in a circle the size of a pie. Roll up the towel and have someone help you twist the ends to squeeze out as much moisture as possible. Pulse in a food processor until fine. Squeeze out in a dish towel once more, until very dry. You will have about one cup.

All that trimming and boiling and draining and squeezing is, to be honest, a pain in the butt. And since most of the time my only kitchen companion is Georges the cat, the have-someone-help-you-twist-the-towel-ends step is challenging. Georges is a very dignified cat; he does not twist chard-filled towels.
Recently I've been substituting spinach for the chard and finding I make this variation a lot more often. Georges approves.

One more reason I love these malfatti (which translates as "misshapen"): they taste like pasta but are relatively low-carb. As I'm a bit misshapen myself these days and am dining with the ghost of Dr. Atkins at the table, they soothe my pasta yearnings.

Anna Klinger's Malfatti--Modified

1 pound best-quality fresh ricotta
salt
Enough fresh spinach -- blanched/extremely well-drained/chopped super-fine -- to equal 1 cup
8 ounces butter
1/4 cup flour, plus more for shaping
1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
4 large egg yolks
1 large whole egg
Freshly ground black pepper

For serving:
Butter
Fresh sage leaves
Parmesan cheese

Drain the ricotta in a sieve lined with cheesecloth overnight in the refrigerator. [Do not skip this step] Measure out 1 + 1/4 cups.
Blanch enough fresh spinach to equal one cup, post-blanching. [I have no idea how much this is -- if you've ever cooked fresh spinach you can eyeball the amount. If not, buy more than you think; spinach is cheap. I get the already trimmed baby spinach from the salad greens section of my market.]Drain it very well, but towel-twisting really isn't necessary.
Melt half the butter. Mix spinach and ricotta. Add melted butter, 1/4 cup flour, 1 heaping teaspoon salt, the nutmeg and mix again. Drop in egg yolks and whole egg, pepper and mix again.

Sprinkle a cutting board with flour. Shape into 1-ounce balls, about 1 tablespoon each, dropping them on the cutting board. You should have 25 - 30.
Put a teaspoon of flour into a narrow wineglass. Drop in a ball and swirl until it forms an oval. Repeat. (You'll need to add bit more flour along the way or even change to a cleaner glass.) You may freeze them at thes point.

To serve, bring a pot of salted water to a boil. Drop in the malfatti and cook at gentle boil until they float. Watch carefully; this can happen in a matter of moments and the delicate malfatti can disintergrate if overcooked. (Straight from the freezer they will take only an additional minute or two.)While the gnocchi are cooking, brown some buttter until it smells nutty. Add fresh sage leaves and cook 30 seconds. Add a bit of salt and use the sage butter to sauce the drained gnocchi. Top with grated Parmesan.

4 Questions 4 Stephanie March

2007-12-02T20:14:00.001-08:00

As Margin Notes approaches its half-year anniversary, it's time for the first of a series of mini-Q & A interviews designed to indulge my nosiness about the things people I admire cook, eat and pursue with passion.

Broadway, film and television actress Stephanie March is the daughter of my dear friend Laura -- and if you could meet the mother, you'd immediately know the source of the daughter's beauty. In the early years of Law & Order, SVU, J. and I used to Tivo each episode and then fast-forward it to the last 15 minutes so we could watch Stephanie -- as ADA Alexandra Cabot -- work her court room magic.
Laura is a terrific cook, but when your son-in-law is Bobby Flay, it does give you a moment or two of menu-planning anxiety. Once Laura e-mailed me: "What do you make for Bobby Flay?" and I replied: "Room in the kitchen for HIM to cook."
I caught up with Stephanie when she was just back from Africa.

CE: My secret source (aka your gorgeous mother) told me you recently were in Africa working with a charitable group called One Kid One One World.
How did you get interested in this particular organization?

SM: I became involved with OKOW through one of my dearest college girlfriends. Her husband is a comedy writer in Los Angeles and his writing partner, Josh Bycel, started OKOW about 3 years ago. The idea behind the organization is so simple that it's brilliant. It is basically this: "What could you and your friends and your friends' friends do to help someone if you all gave $100?" The answer is: A LOT. The organization focuses primarily on girls' education and health and it has been a real honor to participate. I just returned from our trip to Kenya where where we witnessed the completion of the solar power project that will allow the girls to have lights, computers, a library, and a chemistry lab. It was extraordinary to see the first bulb turn on and the looks on the girls' faces at that moment. I'll never, never forget it.

CE: You're married to a chef; your mother's a great home cook and your sister graduated from culinary school. You have access to so much great food; what is your secret shame fare? Little Debbie Snack Cakes? Peanut butter on squishy white bread?.

SM: I have more than one secret food shame and it really is something I have to be kind of cautious about around the house. First of all, I love, and I mean LOVE, the Double Jalapeno Cheeseburger at the Sonic in San Angelo, TX. It is so cheesy, greasy, spicy, mustardy and decadent. I have to eat it in the car by myself so Bobby won't catch sight of me with fast food.
My second secret shame fare is chili con queso....but made the real Tex Mex way with Rotel and Velveeta. Yes. You read that correctly. Velveeta. My sister (who has no shame about this because it's her hometown delight, too) made it once in my apartment and Bobby was mortified. He begged me to throw it out and then went about making his own queso fundido type dish to try to lure me back to "the light."

CE: One of my favorite Food Network episodes is the one where you cook Bobby dinner on his birthday. Is there a story behind that killer peach cobbler?

SM: That peach cobbler is out of the Junior League Cookbook from Jackson, Mississippi. If you are looking for it its proper name is "Peach Cobbler Supreme," and I always insist on calling it by its real name. My Mama made it when Charlotte and I were growing up and even to an 8 year old who generally prefers anything chocolate, it was a pretty spectacular treat.

CE: It's always a treat to see you on Bobby's show, but where else can we see you performing in the near future? Broadway, perhaps?

SM: I would love nothing more than to do another Broadway show, but my accountant would prefer for me to get a job on TV. I just did a spot on Grey's Anatomy and was up for a big show, but now there's this strike and things are completely on hold. I am supportive of the writer's for sure (we are all in this together) but it's making the industry pretty sluggish right now. Cross your fingers.

CE: Fingers crossed.

No-hassle Holiday Gifts

2007-11-29T09:46:00.001-08:00

For holiday gifts, some people bake cookies. I booze cherries.
A few years ago I was on deadline for a Boxing Day story and needed more column inches. Remembering the marinated fruits on the cheese cart at Campton Place, I ransacked my pantry, found some dried tart cherries and macerated them in brandy to pair with a wedge of Stilton I had in the refrigerator.
Result? Fabulous.
I've since made these for all kinds of occasions:
*as take-home favors from an 80th birthday party, with tags that said "Like M--, these just get better with time."
*as table favors for a New Year's Eve dinner with tags that re-worked the above line to "Like friendship, these just get better with time."
*as a hostess gift for an ice-cream-loving pal with the note: "Thanks for having us. Tomorrow you can relax with a bowl of ice cream topped with these."
*as a birthday gift for a friend who likes to bake, accompanied by the recipe for Flo Braker's cornmeal pound cake. (from "The Simple Art of Perfect Baking.")

The procedure is too ridiculously simple even to be called a recipe. You simply fill a glass container with *tart* dried cherries and then top off the container with decent brandy -- although I often use Tripe Sec for a slighly sweeter variation. Stick the jar in the refrigerator (I know. I know. It'd probably be fine stored on a pantry shelf, but you're not going to get botulism from a suggestion on *this* blog) and give the fruit at least a couple days to absorb the booze. My friend Brady -- a great cook and a playwright with a gift for concise dialog -- summed up the procedure perfectly:
"Pour booze over tart dried cherries in a jar; close jar; try to wait."

A Venetian Supper [with Mental Margin Notes]

2007-11-26T10:03:00.001-08:00

Back in August I posted about my affection for La Posta restaurant in Santa Cruz, particularly the 4-course Sunday dinners, served family-style. The menu is fixed -- no choices; no substitutions. I never call ahead to ask what's being served; I like the surprises. But this past Sunday, my initial reaction to the menu was disappointment. Return with me:
The hostess seats us at our favorite table in the front corner near the bar and hands us the night's menus. First course: a radicchio salad with marinated anchovies. [Ho-hum. I make radicchio salad at home all the time.]
J orders a plate of the house-made salamis. [Because we've been eating so lightly all weekend we need five courses tonight instead of four.] The salamis are excellent. I eat more than my share [Because I'm just going to pick at the boring salad.]
Only, the salad is spendid. Tossed with the radicchio leaves are sprigs of flat-leaf parsley -- "Very Nigella," our friend R notes -- and the anchovies are the plump white boquerones I love.
The second course is risotto with squid ink. [I'd been hoping for pasta. Preferably a repeat of the pasta with duck we had here a few weeks ago] Of course it is delicious and certainly isn't something I make frequently at home. Like: ever.
Next comes petrale sole marinated in sweet and sour sauce. [Is there a more boring fish in the sea than petrale sole? And I hate sweet and sour sauces.] Ok, once again I decide chef Chris Avila is a genius. I LOVE this dish, redolent with mounds of sauteed onions, plump raisins and a perfect balance of sweet and sour notes. A side dish of kale with pine nuts is a fine complement.
Dessert is seckel pear poached in white wine. [Waah. I want my pears swathed in caramel or tucked between layers of pastry.] And my record is now 4 for 4 in the boy-was-I-wrong department. Each of us gets a perfect wee pear, perched jauntily in a pool of poaching liquid which tastes of lemon zest and cinnamon. Bliss: start to finish.
Dear Chef Avila: I shall not doubt you again. [Unless, of course, on some tragic Sunday you make a dish permeated with peas.]

And in a small spurt of serendipity, today's mail brings a beautiful new cookbook by Anna Del Conte: "The Painter, the Cook and the Art of Cucina." I turn to the "Veneto" chapter and find, on adjacent pages, a recipe for Risotto Nero and another for Sardines in Sweet and Sour Sauce. Perhaps I'll try them. Or perhaps I'll hope Chris Avila repeats last Sunday's menu before too long.

Twas the Night before Turkey

2007-11-21T21:02:00.001-08:00

Blood orange/shallot butter

The sweet potato pudding is defrosting in the refrigerator; the pie crust is resting in the freezer and the cranberry/orange relish is getting damned tasty after its week-long marinade in Tripe Sec. Despite a day spent here at the beach house last week getting a head start on the Thanksgiving preparations, tomorrow will be a marathon -- and despite my joy at spending the day with people I love, the meal itself probably won't be proportionately tastier than the one I fixed tonight in about 15 minutes, start to finish.
J and I rarely eat steak anymore, but sometimes a New York strip just calls our names. Besides, steak, broccolini and salad was the simplest meal I could think of. To jazz it up a little I made a quick compound butter: minced shallots marinated for 10 minutes in red wine vinegar and then blended into soft butter along with some minced parsley. Dolloped generously onto thick slices of black-on-the-outside-and-ruby-red-on-the-inside steak, it was fabulous.
A few weeks ago I used a blood orange (from J's beloved little tree) in a butter to top grilled fish. Minced shallots, again, this time marinated in a little blood orange juice for 15 or 20 minutes, then blended into soft butter along with a generous amount of grated rind. Twas lovely as it melted over the hot sturgeon.
If I were more organized I'd make a variety of savory compound butters into logs and store them in the freezer.
And, if I were really organized, I'd have taught my daughters to cook and I'd be watching them fix Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow while I sipped champagne and nibbled almonds. Instead I'm immensely thankful that they are angelic about doing the dishes. And equally thankful that I have reservations for dinner out on Friday.
Happy Thanksgiving.

Do-ahead Sweet Potato Pudding

2007-11-14T22:02:00.001-08:00

Once again, as I have been for the past two Thanksgivings, I'm thankful for Marian Burros and her splendid recipe for Spiced Sweet Potato Pudding. Any Thanksgiving recipe that can be made way ahead and still taste fabulous on The Day, is gratitude-worthy, but one that eliminates my mashed potato meltdowns of years gone by earns my deepest thanks.

Spiced Sweet Potato Pudding
from the New York Times 11/16/ 2005
(with margin notes)

3 pounds sweet potatoes (I use yams)
3 eggs
3 tablespoons maple syrup
1 1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves or to taste
salt to taste
4 teaspoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon grated lime rind (don't even *think* about omittimg this; it's essential)
4 tablespoons regular or low-fat sour cream (low-fat sour cream? ugh.)
creme fraiche for topping, optional (I omit this)

*Peel sweet potatoes (yams) and slice 1/8-inch thick. Cook in water to cover; bring to boil and cook until potatoes are fork tender, about 10 minutes. (I just cut each yam into two or three big chunks and toss them in the pot with the skins still on. Takes a little longer to cook, but no tedious slicing and the cooked skins slip right off.)
*In food processor, process the potatoes slightly; add remaining ingredients, except creme fraiche, and process until smooth. (I made this yeasterday at my beach house where there is no food processor, so I smashed the potatoes vigorously with a gorgeous masher I bought mostly because I liked its looks. I then beat in the rest of the ingredients with an electric handmixer. Worked just fine.)
*Place mixture in greased baking dish and refrigerate for 2 or 3 days or freeze for longer. (I froze mine, first laying cling wrap directly on the surface of the potato mixture and then overwrapping with foil)
*To serve, bring to room tmeperature and bake in a 350-degree preheated oven for 30 to 40 minutes. Dot with creme fraiche, if desired.
Yield: 8 servings. (Not at my house, Marion. 6; maybe 7. Maybe)

Radicchio di Castelfranco

2007-11-12T21:59:00.001-08:00

I was heading to the far corner of the vegetable garden to cut the last dahlia of the season -- a bright red blossom I'd spotted from the kitchen window -- when I found this gorgeous radicchio tucked among the kale plants. It perfectly illustrates Anna del Conte's description of this variety: "a beautiful cabbage rose ...flecked with magenta spots -- as if from the brush of Jackson Pollock."
In all honesty, my radicchio recipe repertoire is severely limited. Nine times out of ten I julienne the leaves and toss them with crushed garlic, olive oil, red wine vinegar and crumbled blue or feta cheese. The tenth time I rough-tear a few leaves to add a slightly bitter undernote to a mix of sweeter lettuces.
But this weekend I discovered a terrific new (to me) use for radicchio: slivered angel-hair thin and piled onto bruschettas spread with a mash of white beans, garlic and great olive oil. A plate of these plus a flute of well-chilled Prosecco reminded me once again that Ruth Rogers and Rose Gray of London's River Cafe are geniuses. If you don't own every single one of their books, your Italian cookbook collection is sadly incomplete.

True Love --- at last.

2007-11-10T17:23:00.001-08:00

Over the years I've wasted silly amounts of money in search of the perfect containers for fridge and freezer storage, but my long, frustrating quest is over. My heart now belongs to decor tellfresh containers -- made in Australia but available from the Container Store's website. They're dishwasher safe, relatively inexpensive, come in a variety of shapes and sizes and stack beautifully. To my surprise, the smallest (3"x4") have proved so useful that I've reordered them twice. All the sizes come with nifty little reusable labels that work well for fridge storage but are often dislodged by the hurly-burly of traffic into and out of my freezer. Masking tape and sharpies remain my choice for long-term labeling.

This afternoon J. did his bringing-in-the-sheaves number with most of the basil plants. He even plucked all the leaves so the subsequent pesto-making was way less tedious than usual. A mammoth bowl of basil leaves yielded only three small containers of pesto -- one for the fridge and two for the freezer -- but their summery flavor will be a welcome brightener to winter fare.

Thanksgiving Countdown

2007-11-08T10:28:00.001-08:00

Here's my dining room table, already set for Thanksgiving. Well, I *did* co-write a book about organization (with San Francisco interior designer Randall Koll) and what could be more organized than setting a holiday table two weeks early?

OK, so there are a couple little lies in that first sentence. It's not my table, not my dining room and I haven't even ordered my turkey yet, much less figured out my table decor. Years ago, J and I were fortunate enough to attend a harvest luncheon at Iron Horse Vineyard, and I still savor the memories of the exquisite food, the flowers and this luxuriant table setting. (You can read more about Iron Horse and the Sterling family in a delightful little book titled "A Cultivated Life: A Year in a California Vineyard.")

The second photo is much more recent: Halloween dinner at the home of close friends--but the table would be just as striking at Thanksgiving. Note the small pumpkins hollowed out for votives and the large one used to hold the flowers.

Finally, minimalism, c'est moi. This is my table from last Thanksgiving when J and I were at our beach house with nary a relative nor guest. Four little artificial birch trees I'd found at a gift shop, straw mats and French jacquard napkins in tones of orange and gold were my nod to the holiday; the best part of the decor was the late afternoon sun setting over Monterey Bay.
If you're the host at Thanksgiving this year -- whether you're using four tiny trees or forty pumpkins to bedeck the table -- it's really not ridiculously early to give it some thought. And I urge, URGE, you to set the table the day before. You cannot believe how much this helps dilute the pressures of The Day.

Pears Perhaps-Pepin

2007-11-05T10:54:00.001-08:00

Years ago, in a Houston cooking class taught by an elegant woman named Neva Paul, I learned a delicious and simple recipe for caramel pears. So simple that I soon stopped referring to the printed recipe and just tossed the ingredients together from memory: peel, halve and core firm pears; place them cut side down in a buttered baking dish; sprinkle generously with sugar and dot liberally with butter; bake on the bottom shelf of a fairly hot oven until the pears begin to get tender and the juices have mingled to form a light caramel; pour a little heavy cream into the baking dish and let it all cook until the pears are fully tender; spoon pears and caramel-like pan juices into serving dishes and serve with whipped cream and toasted almonds.

Then, in a spate of sorting old recipes, I found the one for these pears. And at the bottom of the ingredients list were three puzzling items. What was I supposed to have done with the second portion of sugar, some water and a pinch of cream of tartar? And did the recipe title -- Poires Pepin -- mean it had originated with The Sublime Jacques? I suspect so, as I found a recipe for Pears in Caramel in La Methode which required making a separate caramel and simmering pears therein.
Clearly I was supposed to make a caramel with those last three ingredients and then add it to the partially-baked pears. If I ever included that step, doing so is lost in the mists of memory. It probably produces a transcendent dessert, but one that no longer fits my definition of Super Easy.

So, I'll continue making my mis-remembered recipe, unless Jacques shows up in my kitchen some afternoon. If he does, I'll make the Official Version -- as long as he's willing to help by making the caramel.

Halloween Fare

2007-10-31T16:25:00.001-07:00

Halloween in downtown Los Altos, where ya could die from the cuteness.
Chiquita Banana

Gorgeous Green Bean

Cutest-ever Chili Pepper

Morose Macaroni and Cheese

And, my favorite: a dog named Truffle, posing as a sushi platter

Chez Panisse; Chez Moi

2007-10-27T11:24:00.001-07:00

Every Saturday afternoon I consult with the chefs at Chez Panisse about menu ideas. I tell ya, they're geniuses at this. Each session revs up my enthusiasm to try new combinations and twists on old favorites and reminds me what's likely to be freshest and most flavorful at the market.
Of course, it's a cyber-conversation and a one-sided one at that: They write; I read. You're welcome to join us; just go to http://www.chezpanisse.com/pgdownmenu.html.
Last week I liked their suggestions of leek and spinach souffle with wild mushrooms, swordfish alla siciliana with currants and pine nuts, red pepper pasta with rosemary, pancetta and rapini greens, and red wine-poached Comice pear with sweetened mascarpone. I only managed to make the swordfish and the pears, but I still plan to try both the souffle and the pasta combination. This week they're serving grilled duck breast with roasted figs, pearl onions and green beans on Tuesday, an apple and quince galette with creme fraiche on Thursday, and a salad of curly endive, persimmons, hazelnuts and Roquefort crouton on Friday. Versions of all three dishes are candidates for the table chez moi.

Even though I own all the Chez Panisse cookbooks, I rarely try to track down the exact recipes. My leeks vinaigrette with pickled beets and farm egg will be a kissing cousin rather than a twin of the plate served in the restaurant this Saturday, but I know the flavors will work together.
I print out each week's menu, store it in a binder, and sometimes I read the saved printouts with no intention whatsoever of cooking from them, but just for the pleasure of savoring the food in my mind. They're serving huckleberry ice cream profiteroles at Chez Panisse this Friday evening and spiny lobster ragout on Saturday. I won't be there, but oh how I envy the diners who will.

World's Greatest Pot Roast

2007-10-21T16:10:00.001-07:00

The dish J. and I call World's Greatest Pot Roast isn't a pot roast at all. More accurately it is my candidate for the World's Easiest Short Ribs, but the recipe started as one for pot roast and then morphed into the meat and method I use today.
Years ago I read a few lines in Laurie Colwin's "More Home Cooking" about chuck steak -- the preferred pot roast cut in my mother's and grandmother's kitchens. I remembered their fussing with carrots and onions and a bay leaf or two, but Colwin was saying I had no need for all that: "Get a large very thick chuck steak from the butcher," she wrote. "Take this steak and put it into a large baking dish. Season it with salt and pepper and cover it very tightly with tin foil. Stick it in a 275-degree oven and leave it for six hours."
So I did, and it was good. And God knows it was easy. But as the years went by and beef got younger and leaner, the once reliably streaky chuck roasts no longer seemed as succulent, no matter how low-and-slow they cooked. J. and I began fork-dueling for the meat closest to the bone, relegating the rest to unloved leftovers.
Then one day I spotted some beautifully marbled, thick English short ribs at the butchers' counter and decided to cook them via Colwin's method.

I found they didn't need six hours--more like three to four. But oh, sweet memories of childhood, this was marvelous meat, needing only a few spoonfuls of the pan juice, a generous lashing of chopped parsley and a side dish of creamy horseradish. Usually I accompany it with a salad of sliced radicchio dressed with olive oil, red wine vinegar and crumbled blue cheese or feta.
In summary: Make sure the short ribs are at least two-inches thick. Brush a heavy baking dish with olive oil, nestle in the ribs in a single layer, sprinkle on generous amounts of salt and pepper and cover the dish *tightly* with foil. Place in a 275-degree oven. (Make sure your oven doesn't run hot; many self-cleaning ones do.)
Start checking them after two hours or so, but there is absolutely no need to baste. If I start these early enough in the day, I usually reduce the heat to 250-degrees after the first hour, as I think slower and longer gives a better result. After the initial check-in, I peek at them every half hour or so, stabbing a piece with a sharp fork. They should be almost-falling-off-the-bone tender, but not mushy. I never try to have these finish precisely at dinner time, but aim for at least an hour ahead and then re-heat them just before serving.

This is a dish I make only when the weather turns cooler. Because each portion includes three chunky bones, our Border Collies enthusiastically endorse its return to the repertoire.

Beach House Baking

2007-10-16T11:01:00.001-07:00

I'm sure there are people with second homes who always know the pantry inventories of said abodes. I am not one of those people.
I try. I'm pretty good about the freezer, making sure it always holds puff pastry, butter and bacon -- life's true essentials. But our beach house pantry always seems to have too much of one thing (EIGHT cans of anchovies?) and not enough of another (there MUST be a jar of za'atar here somewhere).
Late last Saturday afternoon I decided the strawberries I'd bought at the farmers' market that morning would make a nice little tart. I rolled out a rectangle of defrosted puff pastry, marked off a 3/8-inch frame with a sharp knife and then stabbed the center section with a fork to keep it from puffing. I baked it until browned (checking after ten minutes to see if any bubbles needed further fork attacks) and then let it cool. Since I don't particularly like either making or eating pastry cream, I planned to coat the center with a thin layer of currant jelly before topping it with the sliced berries.

Only the jar of jelly that I'd have SWORN was on a pantry shelf was gone with the wind. I contemplated the other possibilities: Chocolate pecan sauce? Noooo. Homemade apricot jam: a little too sweet. Maple syrup: way too sweet. Frustrated, I searched the refrigerator and came up with a nearly-empty jar of homemade blood orange marmalade. I scraped the chunky contents into a small saucepan, added a few spoonfuls of water and a splash of ginger liquer and heated the mixture until it blended into a light glaze. I spooned this onto the tart shell and let it set.
Right before serving, I layered the sliced berries over the glaze and dusted them with confectioner's sugar. The strawberries weren't red-to-the-core and I was drinking Prosecco and singing along with Emmy Lou Harris while I worked, so the resultant tart was a bit of an ugly duckling. Or, *rustique* as one kind commenter described one of my less attractive souffles.
But true to the tale of ducking becoming swan, this rustique little tart tasted sublime. One of the most delicious I've ever made. The slightly bitter marmalade played beautifully against the sweetness of the berries and the slight undertone of ginger added a bit of complexity.
Ahhh, the bliss of baking -- and the serendipity of an ill-stocked pantry.

Demolishing My Low-Carb Vows

2007-10-12T09:27:00.001-07:00

Oh, I am loving this book from the chef/owner of San Francisco's Citizen Cake. Gorgeously photographed, sassily written and stuffed with exciting recipes, "Demolition Desserts" is one helluva book. Even the back cover blurbs are impressive: Mario Batali calls it "crazy, smart and beautiful," Pierre Herme claims to want to try all the recipes and my favorite baking guru, Dorie Greenspan, writes "every recipe is bold and imaginative, yet each delivers ... a big serving of old-fashioned comfort."
How could you not love a book written by someone who has made chocolate chip cookies at least once a week since junior high school? Someone who combines manchego churros and paprika almonds in a dessert called Spanish Quincition or covers a cake with shredded coconut and names it Shagalicious. Someone who keeps dreaming up some of the most addictive cupcakes in the Bay Area.

I'd like to claim I made this chocolate cupcake from a recipe in the book, but I was in San Francisco for a day so I was buying rather than baking. A year or so ago, a friend introduced me to Citizen Cake's little outpost on the third floor of the Virgin Megastore near Union Square. Called Citizen Cupcake, it's my favorite stop for great grilled cheese sandwiches and the irresistible cupcakes.
But since I don't get to San Francisco as often as I get a yen for great cupcakes, I'm excited that Faulkner has shared not only recipes but also "the tricks and equipment tips to make rock-star cupcakes with attitude."

Bought or baked, these are cakes worth every single carb.

Sort-of Souffle Tuesday: Pops rather than Puffs

2007-10-09T12:11:00.001-07:00

Making good-enough popovers is simplicity itself, but consistently producing near-perfect popovers -- crisp on the outside, moist and tender within and, of course, puffed both high and wide -- is a goal I've found maddeningly elusive.
I've tried various cookware -- muffin tins, ceramic ramekins, special iron popover pans --and both hot and cold oven starts. Based on suggestions in the Neiman-Marcus cookbook, I've warmed the milk and also let the batter rest. Sometimes this seemed to help and then another batch would disappoint.
Finally, after a morning of trying different recipes one after the other and actually making some, uh, margin notes after each batch, I think I've cracked the code.
The baking temperatures and times I'm now using come from a sweet little tome I recently unearthed from my attic stash: "Blueberry Hill Cookbook" by Elsie Masterton.
Written in the 1950s and 60s, Masterton's books are a delightful read. The first, "Nothing Whatever to Do," chronicles her becoming a cook "through sheer necessity." The Vermont inn she and her husband bought and planned to operate as a ski lodge was in an area not blessed with sufficient snow. In desperation they turned it into a summer getaway, promising, in a small Saturday Review ad, "Lucullan food."

My attic carton yielded both "Blueberry Hill Cookbook" and "Blueberry Hill Menu Cookbook" but not "Nothing Whatever to Do," so I'm off to the on-line used book stores.
And from now on, this is my popover procedure:

Truly Impressive Popovers
(adapted from "Blueberry Hill Cookbook" by Elsie Masterton)

1 1/4 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 extra-large eggs
1 tablespoon melted butter
1 1/4 cups milk

Pre-heat oven to 425-degrees.
Whisk the eggs; add flour, salt, melted butter and milk and whisk well. Let batter rest for 30 minutes or so.
Generously grease a muffin tin. (Don't cheat on this.) Place the tin in the hot oven until it is quite hot, and then quickly fill each section about half full. (The batter probably won't fill all twelve spaces).
Bake for 15 minutes, without opening the oven door. Reduce heat to 350-degrees and continue baking for another 10-15 minutes, depending on how moist you like your popover interiors.
Remove popovers from the tin immediately. Left to cool in the pan they tend to stick.
Makes 10-11 popovers.

Shortcake like Mother Never Made (unless Mother was an Italian Pastry Chef)

2007-10-06T13:54:00.001-07:00

Amongst shortcake fans you have your biscuit-lovers and your sponge-cake devotees. Cake people are wrong, of course; in shortcake, biscuits are better. But every once in a while even my strongest convictions have to be altered.
After the Strawberry & Peach Shortcake I had recently at Willi's Seafood & Raw Bar in Healdsburg I now concede that if the cake is made with cornmeal and topped with a toasted pine nut brittle I can be lured from biscuit loyalty. (Of course, just to confuse matters, Willi's menu describles the shortcake base as a cornmeal biscuit, but to my tastebuds it was a cake.)
My first thought was that pine nuts, butter and sugar had been layered on the bottom of the pan, the batter poured on top and the cake flipped over for serving -- sort of a variation on pineapple upside-down cake.
A phone call to Willi's chef Matt Laurell erased that quick-and-easy theory. Seems that first one must toast the pine nuts, use them to make a pine nut brittle (known In Italy as *crocante*), scatter bits of the brittle atop the raw batter and then bake. Fiddly work, as Nigella would say, but oh-so-worth it.
Laurell said his brittle uses brown sugar, molasses and corn syrup. The closest-seeming recipe I could find was on the food network's site, but I suspect that any brittle recipe would give a similar result. Before the last of the peaches and nectarines vanish from the farmers' markets, I'm going to give this a try.

Souffle Tuesday -- two days late

2007-10-04T08:59:00.001-07:00

When it comes to matters culinary I'm pathetically suggestible. Let one of my food gurus mention an unusual spice or helpful gadget or pricey pan and I immediately NEED it. Occasionally I don't have to go shopping: the must-have is an already-have, a purchase made weeks, months or years ago that has been sitting, unused, on my pantry shelf or at the back of a cabinet drawer.
This copper tarte tatin pan was a birthday present -- one of those oh-how-did-you-know-I-wanted-this? gifts. (Perhaps the Williams-Sonoma catalog left open with the item number circled in red helped.) I was thrilled and immediately hung it, in all its French gorgeousness, on my pot rack and then never took it down except for polishing. Any time I'd think about making a tarte tatin, I'd think again and make a far-easier galette instead.
Then I saw the clafouti photo in "Nigella Express" -- with my pan's exact twin -- and read: "I use (my tarte tatin pan) for so many recipes, including roasting small birds, I can't recommend one too highly." Down came the pan that very afternoon and I've been roasting poussins and baking savory souffles in it ever since. I've always preferred a fairly shallow container for savory souffles, as Resident Gardener likes lots of brown top crust.
And *I* like imagining that Nigella will stroll into my kitchen one day and be filled with admiration for my choice of copperware.

Crab and Almond Souffle
(adapted a bit from "Gourmet's Menu Cookbook")

Butter
Fresh chives
1 cup bechamel sauce, warmed
1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
Salt and pepper
2 cups flaked crab meat
1/4 cup + 1 tablespoon shredded almonds, divided
4 egg yolks, lightly beaten.
6 egg whites

Pre-heat oven to 400-degrees and butter the souffle dish well.
Season the bechamel with the dry mustard, salt and pepper. Stir in the crab, the 1/4 cup almonds and the egg yolks. Beat the egg whites with a dash of salt until firm but still moist peaks form. Stir about a quarter of the beaten egg whites into the crab mixture and then gently but thoroughly fold in the rest. Pour the batter into the buttered souffle dish, scatter the remaining tablespoon of almonds on top, place in oven and immediately reduce temperature to 375-degress. Bake for 30-35 minutes. The souffle will be puffed (but not as high as a sweet souffle) and deep brown in color.
While the souffle is baking, clarify some butter and then add some snipped chives. Serve this as a light sauce. Of course, if you felt like making hollandaise...

Pat is in the Details

2007-09-30T21:04:00.001-07:00

The fish tacos I had for dinner Friday night at Nick's Cove on Tomales Bay were so good I was tempted to order them again Sunday morning at brunch, but the "you must be kidding" look I got from across the table made me pick eggs Benedict instead. Thus bullied into choosing conventional breakfast fare, I skulked off to the open kitchen to watch the cooks.
"Do you make your own hollandaise sauce," I asked, realizing the absurdity of the question as soon as it left my lips. Every head in the kitchen snapped around as if jerked -- hard-- by invisible cords. I had just won "Stupidest Customer Inquiry of The Week." Bottled hollandaise sauce in a Pat Kuleto kitchen? Not very damned likely.

"These just came out of the oven 10 minutes ago," an adorably baby-faced cook said, holding up a pan of big, flaky biscuits that would take the place of the more common English muffins. Then he turned back to the cooktop and cracked eggs into the poaching water, and I scurried back to my seat, knowing that those eggs would soon be headed my way.

Less than five minutes later the eggs you see in the photo were placed in front of me. What you can't see is that nestled between the Hollandaise-swathed egg and the meltingly tender biscuit is a mound of sweet fresh crabmeat.

And look at the color of the egg yolk. The flavor of truly fresh eggs is so splendid it makes you want to swear off supermarket eggs forever. Quite simply, these were the best eggs Benedict I've ever eaten. And a reminder that even the simplest dishes can be supremely satisfying when attention is paid to each component detail.
(Of course, sitting on a porch alongside Tomales Bay, with sun sparkling on the water and kayaks gliding by, makes any meal more memorable, but I've had many a mediocre meal at restaurants with great views.)

Is is so much to ask that someone at Nick's deliver me an occasional meal in this little red truck? I live a mere two hours away.

You Say "Flatbread;" Soif Says "Farinata"

2007-09-26T21:18:00.000-07:00

No matter how many "small plates" I order at Soif, I always include the farinata -- the luscious little chick-pea flour lovechild of a crepe and a pizza crust. Similar to a French socca, it's cooked to order and arrives at the table piping-hot. Usually perfumed with fresh sage, last Sunday's version sported fresh basil. And olives. And every bite made me want to moan with delight.
I adore Soif, a Santa Cruz wine bar and restaurant with a kitchen directed by the talented Chris Avila, whose food at La Posta I raved about in an earlier post. Soif's menu changes frequently, although a few dishes are nearly always available: crostini with pumpkinseed chevre and pomegranate molasses, boquerones atop perfect aioli, piquilla peppers stuffed with manchego cheese and sublime little lamb meatballs with almond sauce. (According to our waitress one evening, the lamb meatballs get a major flavor boost from caramelized onions incorporated into the mix.)
Most farinata recipes I've researched call for a combination of broiling and baking the batter, but I've come closer to replicating Soif's version by starting the batter stove-top, in a well-heated crepe pan, and then finishing it under a hot, hot broiler.
(Margin note: When I asked one of Soif's cooks for advice, he stressed the importance of letting the batter rest for several hours before cooking it.)

Farinata con Salvia (Chick-Pea Flatbread with Sage)
(adapted from a recipe from Gourmet Magazine)

2 cups chick-pea flour
1 1/2 cups cold water
2 teaspoons salt
1/3 cup olive oil
Fresh sage leaves
Coarsely ground pepper

Gradually whisk flour into water. Whisk in salt and oil. Let batter stand, covered, at least two hours, preferably three.

Now, at this point Gourmet instructs you to pre-heat the broiler and set the oven rack about 5-inches from the heat. Oil a 13- by 9-inch flame-proof baking pan (preferably with olive oil) Stir batter and pour into pan. Tear sage leaves into bits and sprinkle sage and pepper over the battter. Broil farinata 5 minutes or until top is speckled with brown spots. Reduce temp. to 450-degrees and bake farinata 5 minutes more, or until set and pulling away slightly from pan sides. Cut into squares and serve immediately. Serves 6 as a snack or accompaniment.

OK, that's the safe and tested-in-Gourmet's-rigourous-kitchen approach. Mine is a tad different -- and a lot less precise. But I like the looks of mine better.
I, too, get the broiler very hot--although I haven't measured how far my top oven rack is from the heating element. Next I heat a six-inch crepe pan, add olive oil and heat til the oil almost smokes. Then I pour in enough batter to make a pancake about a quarter-inch thick, toss on the herb leaves and, occasionally, some cooked veggies.(At Soif the farinata often sports caramelized onions.) After a minute or two, I peek at the underside. If it's well-browned, I stick the pan under the hot broiler until the top has plenty of dark spots. I tip the crepe onto a warm plate and then repeat with more batter. Then I yell at people to eat them RIGHT NOW WHILE THEY'RE HOT, although I tend to mumble because I'm already eating a piece myself.

You can find out more about Soif on its gorgeous website: www.soifwine.com

Souffle Tuesday: Chocolate Challenges

2007-09-24T20:08:00.001-07:00

Those tidy little dishes in the first picture? They're the "Before." No way are you seeing the "After." Suffice it to say that my previous proclamation about always filling souffle dishes to the rim should be ignored with this recipe -- unless of course you want to make them for a luau and label them "Oozing, Half-burnt Chocolate Lava Mounds."
Actually, the parts that managed to stay in the dishes were quite tasty, but the overall appearance: UGLY.
However, one of the reasons I wanted to try this recipe was the headnote promising the uncooked souffles could be frozen and then baked straight from the freezer. So, two ramekins went into the oven and the rest were wrapped tight and frozen. First, the recipe:

Do-Ahead Chocolate Souffle
(from Cooking Light Magazine)

butter (instead of the cooking spray suggested by C.L.)
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar, divided
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cups fat-free milk
3 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 large egg yolk
6 large egg whites

Preheat oven to 425-degrees.
Generously butter the interiors of 6 (8-ounce) souffle dishes. Sprinkle with the 2 tablesppons sugar. Set in refrigerator.
Combine remaining 1/2 cup sugar, flour, cocoa and salt in a saucepan over medium heat, stirring with a whisk.
Gradually add the milk, stirring constantly with a whisk, and bring to a boil. Cook 2 minutes or until slightly thick, whisking constantly. Remove from heat. Add the chopped chocolate and stir until smooth. Transfer mixture to a large bowl; cool to room temperature and then stir in the vanilla and the egg yolk.
Beat the egg whites util soft peaks form. Stir in 1/4 of the egg whites into the chocolate mixture and then fold in the remainder..
Spoon mixture into prepared dishes; place on a baking sheet and put on lowest shelf of the pre-heated oven. Immediately reduce oven temperature to 350-degrees. Cook for about 35 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in the side of a souffle comes out clean.

Two days after the flowing-over-the-rim-and-baking-solidly-onto-the-ramekin-sides episode, I pulled one of the frozen souffles from the freezer, scraped some of the frozen batter from around the inside edge of the dish, baked it about 5 minutes longer than the unfrozen ones and had a far happier result. Witness Photo #2. Now if I could just remember to set out the camera before I take a souffle from the oven I might actually get a picture at full poof.

Under the Saratoga Moon

2007-09-23T14:19:00.001-07:00

Now *this* is the way to cook a whole pig/lamb/ox/water buffalo: on a sturdy grill with a rotisserie that actually turns and an experienced pro standing nearby. (Contrast with the lamb-on-the-beach July entry on this blog.) The resulting roast pork was just one course of a splendid wine harvest dinner I attended Saturday evening in the Saratoga hills.

Before dinner, some of the guests actually picked grapes. Seeing this little cutie pick a few, eat a few, pick a few, eat a few was the best kind of pre-dinner entertainment. As the sun set, we sat at long tables on an outside terrace and dined on the splendid fare of San Francisco caterer Paula LeDuc. (When I know I'm going to be eating a dinner prepared by LeDuc's crew my mouth starts watering about breakfast time.)

The Tuscan-style dinner began with passed platters of calamari salad, marinated cauliflower and heirloom tomatoes with mozzarella. Next came moist cod, followed by platters of the spit-roasted pork. A trio of chocolate desserts completed the meal -- although some of us wandered over to an outdoor fire pit where ingredients for s'mores were laid out -- including incredibly delicious home-made marshmallows. An American classic proved the perfect ending for a meal inspired by Italy.

Manresa Does Tomatoes, continued:

2007-09-21T09:40:00.001-07:00

I always harbor a little guilt when I eat bunny, but the next course -- a rabbit daube with basil surrounded by a tomato vinaigrette and garnishes of new zealand spinach -- was so good that I banished mental pictures of Peter Rabbit and Thumper. The following dish was the only one I didn't love:a deconstucted "ratatouille" and sheep's milk rictotta with sheep's milk as a sauce. The ingredients were impeccably fresh and certainly each was delicious; I just didn't see the scattering of ingredients across the plate as "ratatouille" -- even with the qualifying quotation marks.
Following this slight disappointment, came a suprise course that at first rang my HO-HUM bell: three tomato wedges -- a red, a yellow and a pink-- drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with salt. OMG, it was fabulous. The olive oil was French; the salt was seaweed based and the combination with the tomatoes had us hailing the bus boy for yet more bread. Not a one of our plates went back to the kitchen with a drop of olive oil or tomato essence remaining.
And the food kept coming.
Roast duck and foie gras with caponata was simply magnificent, as was the dessert: caramelized brioche and a slow confiture of tomatoes plus vanilla olive oil ice cream. (Our friend, a sophistacted and long-time owner of numerous restaurants, was softly chanting "More brioche; more brioche")
Lovely LeRoy wines throughout the meal, exquisite Numi teas at the end and Manresa's marvelous little black olive madeleines: What's not to LOVE?

Tomatoes Triumphant: A Special Dinner at Manresa

2007-09-19T22:57:00.001-07:00

On Tuesday evening I treated my tastebuds to a tomato orgy and they've been thanking me ever since. This tomatoes-in-every-course feast had four of us swabbing out plates with bread crusts -- a reaction that won't surprise anyone familiar with the cooking of Manresa's chef David Kinch and his staff and the exquisite produce grown for the restaurant by Cynthia Sandberg at her Love Apple Farm.
But let's get a disclaimer up here: Resident Gardener and I are investors in Manresa -- as are numerous other devotees of Kinch's food since his days at Sent Sovi. I don't write for newspapers or magazines about Manresa or Kinch, but here, well: it's my own space and I'll blog if I want to. And if these Tomato Feast posts send any of you running to Manresa it'll probably mean all of another 27 cents in our next investor's return check.

Back to the tomatoes:
We began with parmesan churros, served with an anchovy-tomato "hot bath" for dipping. I could have eaten a basketful. Next came a seaweed-citrus granite with a crisp little nori cracker --all atop "corn and tomato vers.4.2." [Another day I'll blog about "corn and tomatoes vers.1.1" - a Kinch dish friends and I are still talking about a mere 11 years after we first ate it.}
Following those savory little amuse-bouches we had "a delicate gel of tomato and ripe melon, a tisane of herbs and flowers flavoring crab and shellfish, and golden raspberies" which was a lovely lead-in to an absolutely sensational plate of
assorted cherry tomatoes with steelhead roe (cured in oak smoked salt) surrounded with roast tuna juice and a sprig of purslane.
I took one bite of the cherry tomatoes, turned to Resident Gardener and said: "Do not think that just because this is so good it's going to inspire me to PEEL CHERRY TOMATOES." An elegant touch, though.
The next course was one of my favorites of the night: fresh Monterey Bay spot prawns, cooked on the plancha, "perfumed with a rare virgin argan oil," and accompanied by tomato slices with beets and rucula sylvetta. I don't even *like* beets. Hell, usually I hate the little buggers. But in this dish they were wonderful. And the prawns were sublime. David told us they were split in half while still alive and then set on the hot plancha for a mere 10 seconds. Much more heat than that, apparently, can turn the delicate flesh to mush.

Thus endeth the first half of the meal. To be continued...

Souffle Tuesday: Lemon Souffle Gratineed

2007-09-17T22:02:00.001-07:00

I know. I know. This photo is DARK, but I wasn't about to mar the candle-lit Friday night ambience at Bistro Elan with a camera flash. Yet this little souffle was so amazing, I had to capture its image.
Fresh huckleberries were nestled between two layers of lemon souffle and then a crackly creme-brulee-like topping finished off the dish. To discover how the topping was accomplished I'm going to have to sit at the counter of Bistro Elan's open kitchen and quiz the pastry chef. Until I do, I'm at least going to experiment with layering some berries in a dessert souffle. Perhaps raspberries in a vanilla base. Or diced super-ripe plucots between layers of strawberry souffle.
And when I discover the topping technique I suspect I'm going to have to buy a blowtorch.

Mmmm: Meatball Sandwich

2007-09-16T17:06:00.001-07:00

No, I did NOT eat this entire sandwich. but I could have. The piece I *did* consume could serve as a Platonic ideal for sandwiches -- moist meat, sauteed onions, fresh basil, roasted red pepper sauce, provolone cheese and arugula. The layers of flavor and freshness of ingredients were typical of the splendid sandwiches available each day at Carried Away in Aptos, California.
Owners Tom McNary and Mima Lecocq met while working at Chez Panisse, which immediately tells you a lot about the philosophy underlying the fare at this sophisticated little take-out shop.
The soups are just as good as the sandwiches; the entrees are imaginative and delicious, the cookies addictive and the pizza my favorite in the Bay Area.

One weekend we served Tom's Gorgonzola, roasted red onion and walnuts pizza to houseguests for Saturday lunch. On Sunday morning our chums told us they had to leave early because of pressing chores at home. Their bags were packed and standing by the door when one of them asked, "By any chance is there some of that pizza left? And if there is, were you planning to serve it for lunch?"
When I replied that it indeed would be on the lunch menu, they suddenly decided they didn't need to depart quite as quickly as they'd thought. After lunch would be fine.
The moral of this story: Only serve Carried Away's food to houseguests you want to linger.

If you can't get to Aptos you can find some of Carried Away's recipes on their website: wwww.carriedawayfoods.com.

Almost-Autumn Galette

2007-09-14T15:26:00.001-07:00

I hope the rotten little squirrels who snarfed every single fig from our tree are now rolling on the forest floor in gastro-intestinal agony. Fortunately, local farmers' markets are rich with figs at the moment, so after a recent foray I was able to make one of my favorite quick desserts: a raspberry fig galette.
All this required was the defrosting of a little round of pate brisee from my freezer, a quick quartering of figs, a scattering of raspberries on top, a sprinkling of sugar (this time I used brown) and some dabs of butter. Pleating the edges of a pastry round to make an open-faced galette is one of baking's pleasanter little tasks.

Almost as pleasant as eating the galette -- still fragrant and warm from the oven. I served creme fraiche with a bit of brown sugar sprinkled on the top alongside. Softly whipped cream or a dab of ice cream would have worked equally well.
I adore fruit galettes.

And I hate squirrels.

Mad about Majolica

2007-09-13T11:00:00.000-07:00

I have this tiny little food-related addiction, aka a passion for pottery. To me, sliced tomatoes look more delicious when served on a green majolica platter, madeleines more evocative of France when piled onto a Quimper plate, even olives more appealing in a little terra cotta tapas dish.
Amongst my favorite pieces are the fruit and vegetable inspired creations of Rhode Island potter Barbara Eigen, particularly her signed work from the 70s and 80s.
Here her fennel pitcher holds breadsticks and the little fennel-heart dish contains a roasted red pepper dip.

The driftwood-grey walls of my beach house kitchen work well (she said, modestly) with the majolica's matte finishes. Here a much-loved radish platter hangs near a similarly-sized row of Eigen-depicted asparagus. I know she produced corn cob platters around the same time, and although I haven't been able to locate one yet, I SHALL.

The rhubarb platter is huge, more than twice the size of the radish cluster and has a ditinguished provenance. For years it resided in the kitchen of baker extraordinaire Flo Braker -- San Francisco Chronicle columnist and author of outstanding baking books. (I cannot imagine anyone who cares even minimally about pastry-making not owning Flo's "The Simple Art of Perfect Baking.")

Every time I entered Flo's kitchen I would glance at this platter and remind her that I expected it to be left to me in her will. One day we were to meet for lunch at an elegant restaurant. I was already seated when Flo walked through the dining room with this big chunk of pottery tucked beneath her arm. She plunked it down in front of me and said, "Now please stop hoping I'll die."
I've treasured it ever since and feel sure Flo now will live to at least 110.

Souffle Tuesday: How Not to Write a Recipe

2007-09-10T20:05:00.001-07:00

Seduced by a gorgeous photo in "Gourmet's Menu Cookbook" and my immoderate affection for leeks, I decided to make the book's hazelnut and leek souffle. I quickly discovered that the actual recipe was ridiculously vague about the main ingredient: "Chop finely 10 trimmed leeks (let's not even go into the grammatically incorrect "finely" for "fine")and 1 onion" --uh, this is not a soup or a stew, this is baking and baking requires at least a nod in the direction of precise measurements.
What size leeks? Pencil-thin? Fat as billy-clubs? And what size onion? Maddening.

To deal with this I turned to the basic Julis Child souffle formula I posted last Tuesday, fiddled a bit with other parts of the recipe and settled on this:

Leek and Hazelnut Souffle
inspired by a recipe from "Gourmet's Menu Cookbook."

Butter a 6-cup souffle dish and coat bottom and sides with grated Parmesan cheese. Place dish in refrigerator and pre-heat oven to 400-degrees.
Chop fine enough leeks to measure 2/3 cup and simmer them in 1 cup milk for about 5 minutes, drain the leeks, reserving the milk. Make a thick white sauce with 2 1/2 tablespoons butter, 3 tablespoons flour and the reserved milk.
Remove from the heat and stir in 4 beaten egg yolks. Fold in the leeks, 1/3 cup chopped hazelnuts and 3 tablespoons grated Parmesan, 1 tablspoon minced parsley and salt and pepper to taste. (Remember that the seasoning's intensity will be diminished by the egg whites)
Beat 5 egg whites until they start to foam; add 1 teaspoon of salt and continue beating until soft peaks form. Stir 1/4 of the whites into the base mixture and then fold in the rest. Gently spoon into the prepared dish and place in pre-heated oven. Immediately reduce the heat to 375-degrees. Bake until golden brown and no longer wiggly.

Not the prettiest souffle --the interior is rather drearily beige--but delicious. I made a sort of a sauce for it by melting some unsalted butter and stirring in a generous amount of minced chives. Chive blossoms would have been even prettier, but our garden has fallen behind on its chive flower production.

Tomato Tasks

2007-09-09T13:39:00.001-07:00

So this is how I spent most of my Sunday afternoon: cutting plum tomatoes in half, scooping out their gooey ribs and seeds with my fingers and roasting the hell out of them. All the tomatoes in this basket came from one ridiculously fecund plant, a fecundity I rather resented about half-way through the slicing and scooping. But, come winter, when I pull a little package of these intensely flavored morsels out of the freezer and toss them with some pasta or lay a tomato-y ribbon across a sauteed chicken breast, I'll be glad I did the Ma-Ingalls-preserves-crops-for-Winter bit. Even though I really just wanted to lie on the couch re-reading a Donna Leon mystery.

Oven-charred Plum Tomatoes
Don't use this method for any but ripe-yet-still-firm plum tomatoes; most other types just cook down into a soupy mess.
Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil and brush with olive oil.
Cut tomatoes in half length-wise and remove the ribs and seeds. Place on the pan cut-side up. Sprinkle gernerously with salt and dizzle with olive oil. Place in a 425-degree oven and roast until shriveled and charred black along the edges. This usually takes a little over an hour in my experience, but YTMV.
After about 45 minutes, toss in some whole cloves of peeled garlic and check to see if a few of the smaller tomato halves need to depart the oven earlier than their bigger brethren.
When fully roasted, remove from oven, cool and store in small, freezer-friendly containers. I usually put one container in the fridge and freeze the rest.

An Artist Bakes the Ginger Cake

2007-09-07T21:22:00.001-07:00

I don't have an artistic molecule in my body but I'm a great appreciator. My friend Stella -- with whom God was generous with artistic gifts -- baked this cake soon after I posted Sylvia Thompson's recipe. I adore the way she finished it, converting the suggested dusting of confectioner's sugar into an elegant row of white stripes and contrasting the cake's rich brown color with the green tabletop. Gorgeous.

A Recipe ( and Book) to Treasure

2007-09-05T17:49:00.001-07:00

"The cake has become perhaps the most valued in my repertory," wrote Sylvia Thompson about her Fresh Ginger Cake in one of my most treasured cookbooks: "Feasts and Friends."
"It's easy and foolproof and can be handed round in not much more than three-quarters of an hour after I've thought to make it," she continues. "Once I even got the cake into the oven *during* a party."

I've never understood why Sylvia Thompson's food-writing isn't as well-known and revered as Laurie Colwin's. Both display the same wit, warmth and wisdom -- in fact, they were dear friends. Thompson's book is subtitled "Recipes from a Lifetime" -- a lifetime of a passionate cook whose father wrote for the Marx Brothers, whose mother was a movie star and revered hostess, and whose godmother was MFK Fisher.
I could babble on and on about Thompson, but I want to get this terrific recipe posted. Consider this just Part One of my musings on a brilliant and delightful food writer.

Fresh Ginger Cake
1 stick butter, plus a little softened for the mold
1/2 cup water, cool
1/2 cup (firmly packed) light brown sugar
1/4 cup light molasses
1/4 cup dark corn syrup
1 extra large egg
Fresh ginger the size of an egg, grated medium-fine
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus a little more for the pan
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
Sifted confectioner's sugar for the top
(Thompson calls for a teaspoon of quatre epices, but I omit it)

Heat oven to 350-degrees F.
Choose any mold with a 6- to 8-cup capacity. (Thompson uses an 8-inch square; I use a 6-cup ring mold) Brush with butter and dust with flour.
Melt the butter in the water in a largish saucepan over medium heat. Don't let the water boil.
To the butter/water, whisk in the brown sugar, molasses, corn syrup and then the egg. Whisk in the ginger, discarding any long strings the whisk brings up. Add the flour, baking soda, quatre epices if you're using it, and salt. Whisk a minute or two until lumps dissolve. Pour into the pan. Rap gently on the counter to knock out any air bubbles.
Bake until a skewer thrust in the center comes out clean and the top, when tapped, springs back--Thompson suggests about 35 minutes, but my ring mold version is usually done in 30. Gently turn out onto a dish to serve warm or onto a rack to cool Finish with sifted confectioner's sugar.

[At high altitude, use 1/2 teaspoon baking soda and bake at 375-degrees. A double recipe, according to Thompson, may be "handsomely baked" in a 10-inch square pan at 375-degrees for 35-40 minutes.]

"I serve [it] warm or at room temperature with only a drift of confectioner's sugar and a flower on top," Thompson writes, "but there are times when a plop of whipped cream and just a few slivers of candied ginger are lovely. Past that, toppings such as ice cream or fruit sauces seem to me to distract from the cake's fineness."

In my experience, the cake is best when served within a few hours of baking. After that, it's still extremely tasty, but the consistency becomes more like gingerbread than a delicate cake. I usually serve it, as Thompson suggests, accompanied only by softly whipped cream -- unless I have some very ripe Comice pears on hand, which I will slice and heap into the center of the ring-shaped cake. I hope she wouldn't consider that a fruit sauce distracting "from the cake's fineness."

No-Souffle Tuesday

2007-09-03T08:47:00.001-07:00

Between the heat and the holiday, souffle-making fell off the To Do list last week, but I have several interesting recipes to test and hope to have one to share next week.

I saw on the Chez Panisse website that lucky diners there recently got to enjoy a corn and chanterelles souffle. How luscious does *that* sound? Or corn souffle with zucchini blossoms? When I attempt to reverse-engineer a savory souffle recipe from a mere mention I usually start with Julia Child's "General Proportions" chart:

For a 6-cup mold:
Thick bechamel made from 2 1/2 Tb butter, 3 Tb flour and 1 cup liquid
4 egg yolks, beaten into sauce
3/4 cup cheese/fish/meat/vegetables
5 beaten egg whites folded in
(if the meat/vegetable component is particularly dense, I'll often add a sixth egg white)

But for the next couple weeks I'll be sticking to full recipes rather than educated guess work. Particularly if this damned heat spell breaks soon.

A Charlie Brown Apple Tree

2007-09-01T16:22:00.001-07:00

At the back of our property we have two small apple trees: Pink Pearl's fruit is as luscious as it is beautiful, while No-Name's apples are cute but sadly deficient in the flavor department. So guess which tree managed to birth all of TWO apples this year and which one produced more than two dozen? A clue: the apples in this photo do not have pink flesh. And there are more than two of them.
Poor No-Name was never intended to be judged on its fruit; its purpose in life was to be a rootstock tree, providing life support for some fancy grafts, but the grafts failed and Resident Gardener hasn't had the heart to shovel-prune the host.
Yesterday I decided to make a little apple galette with No-Name's progeny, figuring that with a good homemade crust and plenty of butter and sugar even B- apples could make a good dessert. I followed Jacques Pepin's instructions in "La Technique": just good crust rolled very thin with thin slices of apple laid on top in overlapping shingle style, a sprinkling of granulated sugar, dabs of butter and plenty of time in a hot oven. (I like my galettes to have the very dark crusts you find in most French pastry shops).
When the galette was cooked, I glazed it with our homemade apricot jam -- it wasn't exactly pretty (note that there's no photo here of the finished pastry) because I didn't bother to strain the jam, but -- accompanied with softly whipped cream flavored with a slug of vanilla -- it tasted just fine. More than fine.

Cool Tool

2007-08-30T20:56:00.001-07:00

I found this overgrown micro-zester last week at my local kitchen shop and have been merrily grating cheeses and citrus rinds at every opportunity. It requires a little restraint when used on lemon skins, lest its Big Boy teeth slice down into the bitter pith, but basically it does a splendid job of making slender strands of rind.
This afternoon I bought some lovely fresh scallops at the Los Altos farmers' market and decided to serve them with a lemon risotto reminiscent of one I'd tasted at Myth in San Francisco. I kept it super simple: I sauteed chopped shallots in olive oil, sweated the Arborio rice in the oil and then added a few slugs of vermouth. Once that was absorbed I finished the cooking with vegetable stock and, at the last minute, I stirred in the juice of half a Meyer lemon and then blitzed the pan with grated lemon rind.
This went onto hot plates while I quickly seared the scallops and then arranged them atop the rice. No one would have mistaken the dish as coming from Myth's superb kitchen, but it was pretty damned good for a suburban patio dinner on a hot Thursday night.

Eagerly Awaiting Nigella

2007-08-29T10:29:00.000-07:00

Be of good cheer, Nigella fans, as I bring you tidings of great joy: "Nigella Express" will be serialised in The Times Magazine, starting this Saturday. And since it's the London Times, the first installment should be posted sometime Friday, US time. I'll be at the computer obsessively logging on to www.timesonline.co.uk from Friday morning on.
The single best day I've had in my years of freelance writing was the one I spent shopping and cooking with Herself. Usually I find it's not a great idea to meet your heroes; too often they are shorter, plainer and grumpier than their public personnae. Nigella, however, was smarter, funnier and ridiculously more gorgeous in person.
OK, enough of this babbling like a 1960's teenage girl who once touched Paul McCartney's jacket cuff. Back to cookbooks. I've had terrific success with dozens of Nigella's recipes and "How to Eat" is high on my list of "Cookbooks I'd Want if Stranded on a Desert Island or Confined to Prison for Poisoning Dick Cheney."
When I heard about "Nigella Express" I immediately posted a request on one of the online used book sites -- my technique for getting early copies of books I crave. It's no secret that book reviewers for magazines and newspapers sell their review copies this way and I've had 100% success in getting books before they hit retail shelves or appear on Amazon.
Until now. Not a single copy -- even though the British edition will be in stores in September, which means there are books in existence. Why haven't they made it to my beloved cyber stores?
And then I realized: every danged reviewer is holding on to his/her copy. Reading it. Cooking from it. Loving it.
Selfish; selfish; selfish.

Souffle Tuesday: Pears A-Plenty

2007-08-27T12:18:00.001-07:00

These Comice pears on the tree just outside our kitchen window won't be ready for picking for another few weeks, but good pears are beginning to appear in the markets, which means I'll soon be making one of my favorite dessserts: Poire William Souffle with Fresh Pear Slices.
The recipe is an adaptation of Christopher Idone's Chartreuse Souffle from his aptly named book "Glorious Food." For years I made it just as Idone instructed, but the mocking comments on an on-line community called The Well ("Chartruese tastes disgusting" being one of the milder gibes) led me to substitute pear liquer for the Chartruese and fresh pear slices for Idone's rich creme anglaise.
If you happen to have a 9 x 13.5 x 1.5" tin-lined oval copper pan, you'll find your souffle will look gratifyingly similar to the gorgeous photo in Idone's book. Lacking that particular pan, use any shallow oven-proof dish that comes close to those dimensions.

Poire William Souffle

9 egg whites
Pinch of salt
6 tablespoons superfine sugar
Pinch of cream of tartar
4 egg yolks
1/2 cup Poire William
Confectioners ' sugar
2 ripe pears -- preferably Comice -- sliced

Preheat oven to 400-degrees. Butter the souffle pan and dust with granulated sugar.
Beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt until fluffy; then add 3 tablespoons of the sugar and the cream of tartar; continue to beat until soft peaks form.
In another bowl, beat the egg yolks until smooth and lemon-colored. Fold in the remaining 3 tablespoons of sugar and then fold in the Poire William.
Stir one heaping spoonful of egg whites into the yolk mixture; then lightly fold in the remaining whites.
Transfer the mixture to the souffle pan, shaping the surface into peaks.
Place the pan on the lowest shelf of the oven and bake 12-15 minutes or until the souffle is puffed and browned on top.
Dust with confectioners' sugar and serve immediately, accompanied by a bowl of the sliced pears. Serves 6.

Ugly but Tasty

2007-08-26T16:50:00.001-07:00

My dislike of carrots holds only a weak candle to my abhorrence of peas, but if Bugs Bunny's favorite snack should vanish from this earth, I'd shed no tears. The Resident Gardener, of course loves carrots and insists on growing them -- not just the basic orange variety but also yellow and purple ones. Now you can call a carrot 'Yellowstone' or 'Cosmic Purple' but it's still a carrot and I'd still rather not eat it.
This weekend, however, I found a dead-simple way to cook our home-grown carrots that resulted in my actually liking both the taste and the texture: I was fixing Nigella Lawson's Loin of Pork with Bay Leaves from "How to Eat" and didn't have enough onions to make a sufficient base for the roast. I rummaged through the vegetable bin and pulled out some particularly gnarly yellow carrots. With my favorite little cheap-o Y-shaped vegetable peeler I made slim carrot ribbons, mixed them with the pitiful little pile of sliced onions and then topped the vegetables with bay leaves and the pork.
By the time the meat was cooked, the carrot ribbons had braised in it's herby juices and were, I must admit, extremely tasty. Resident Gardener claims it was due to superior basic ingredients but I think of it as The Miracle of the Pork Drippings.

Sunday Supper, Italian-style

2007-08-23T13:25:00.001-07:00

La Posta Restaurant, Santa Cruz

I'm still purring with delight at the memory of last Sunday's dinner: a four-course, set-menu meal served family-style at La Posta in Santa Cruz. Describing the menu makes the food sound prosaic: tomato bruschetta, followed by a zucchini frittata, chicken caciatore as the main course and a melon sorbetto for dessert. But the bruschetta was topped with a cascade of fresh cranberry beans, the frittata was tender with young zucchini, the tomato sauce on the chicken was rich with olives and the sorbetto was made from aromatic Charentais melon. Oh, and with the chicken came a bowl of perfect -- perfect, I tell you -- polenta. We scraped the sides of the serving bowl to get every bite.

I'm a huge fan of chef Chris Avila's food, which always shows a dedication to the Italian traditions of simplicity and seasonality. I asked him if he'd spent extensive time in Italy. "Just one trip," he told me, "but I look at a lot of cookbooks." High on his list of favorite cookbook writers? "I really like Mario Batali," he said. And I suspect that if Batali should visit Santa Cruz, he'd really like the food at La Posta.

Souffle Tuesday: Showcasing Fresh Thyme

2007-08-20T21:18:00.001-07:00

Souffle sur un plat

Four varieties of thyme are thriving in our vegetable garden right now --and all of them work well with goat cheese. To showcase the lemon thyme I took an unusual souffle recipe from the lovely cookbook by Sally Clarke of Clarke's -- a school-of-Chez-Panisse restaurant in London -- and doubled (at least) the amount of herbs. Not subtle, but delicious.
The twist on traditional souffle-baking here is the use of shallow individual soup dishes which gives you souffles with lots of golden top crust.

Goat Cheese and Thyme Souffles for Two
(adapted from "Sally Clarke's Book: Recipes from a restaurant, shop & bakery")

A few tablespoons of melted butter
3 ounces grated Parmesan
2 eggs, separated
5 ounces soft goat cheese
3 tablespoons heavy cream
1 tsp -- or more -- fresh thyme leaves
Salt & pepper

Butter 2 shallow oven-proof soup bowls. Brush them with the melted butter and sprinkle the bottom and sides with some of the Parmesan.
Beat the egg yolks until smooth; beat in the goat cheese and then stir in the thyme and a dash each of salt and pepper and half the remaining Parmesan.
Beat the egg whites to the soft peak stage and fold them into the yolk/goat cheese mixture. Spoon the mixture into the soup bowls and sprinkle the rest of the Parmesan and a few more thyme leaves on top.
Place the bowls on a baking sheet in a 400-degree oven. Immediately lower the heat to 375-degrees.
Bake until the souffles until puffed and deeply golden -- about 10 minutes, although smaller, deeper bowls may take a couple minutes longer. These must be served immediately, but you knew that.

I had lunch at Clarke's nearly a decade ago, but have no notes as to what I ate and remember only a superb pate as the first course. London is not on my regular dining circuit, but a visit to Clarke's website (www.sallyclarke.com) is a small gift I regularly give myself.

Charcuterie of My Dreams

2007-08-19T12:59:00.001-07:00

Crepinettes : The Real Deal

I've been to three farmers' markets in the last eight days -- despite having my own rather substantial vegetable garden. But I've been seeking sausages rather than late summer produce. Sausages and bacon and mortadella and the savory little patties encased in caul fat that the French call crepinettes.
The source of all these porcine delights is an artisan enterprise called Severino's -- a labor of love and skill by butcher/chef Justin Severino and his wife Hilary. Their output is small: they sell only at farmers' markets in Santa Cruz and the South Bay and if you arrive late at the market, many items will be sold out. (Read more at www.severinos.com)
Many years ago I had a simple but delicious lunch in the French village of Blois. The weather was so beastly that J and I chose the restaurant mostly to escape the driving rain. There was a fire in the fireplace, a nice local wine available by the carafe and grilled sausages that still haunt my memories. The sausages crafted by Justin Severino are every bit as wonderful as those I ate in Blois. And, if you live within 50 miles of Santa Cruz, a lot easier to find.

Belated Birthday Musings

2007-08-17T09:37:00.001-07:00

Wednesday was Julia Child's birthday.
She taught me how to cook. Who knew there was an easy and efficient way to chop an onion, julienne a carrot, roll an omelet? Truth be told, I'd never seen or eaten an omelet before opening "Mastering."
One of the many things I loved about Julia was the way she shared credit with Paul. After she signed my copy of "Julia Child & Company," she immediately handed it to him. Nearly 30 years after that evening, looking at this signature page still makes me smile.
August 15: Shouldn't it be a national holiday?

Honey Lemon Souffles

2007-08-14T07:36:00.001-07:00

Damn these were good! And I'd had low expectations: I wanted to play around with some souffle techniques, didn't want to trek to the store and had the ingredients in my pantry. I set out some vanilla gelato and a bowl of olallieberries and raspberries as accompaniments, but the souffles were so delicious that we completely ignored the gelato and added only a scattering of berries.
The dishes are French charlotte molds -- these measue 4-inches across the top and are 2.5-inches deep.

Honey Souffles for Two
(adapted from "Omelettes, Souffles and Frittatas" by Lou Seibert Pappas)

3 eggs separated + white from one additional egg
dash salt
1 Tb. powdered sugar
1/3 cup honey
2 tsp. coarsely grated lemon zest
1 Tb. flour
1 Tb. butter, melted

Place a baking sheet on the lowest oven shelf and preheat oven to 400-degrees. Lavishly butter 2 individual souffle dishes; dust the bottoms and sides with sugar and then place them in the refrigerator.
Beat the egg whites until they just begin to foam ; add the salt and powdered sugar and beat until *soft* peaks form.
In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks until thick and pale in color. Whisk in the honey, lemon zest, flour and butter. Fold one-fourth of the beaten egg whites into the yolk mixture and then fold this into the remaining egg whites.
Spoon into the prepared dishes, filling them to the rim.
Place on the baking sheet in the oven and immediately reduce the heat to 375-degrees.
Cook until well-risen and browned on top. Mine were perfect after 10 minutes, but if you use ceramic dishes rather than metal charlotte molds, I suspect they'd take a bit longer.I also suspect that my oven runs a little hot. Once I get my gorgeous new Viking ovens installed I'll be able to provide laboratory-accurate oven temps and times.
Of course, I have to order the ovens first. Details, details.

Inaugurating Souffle Tuesday -- part the first

2007-08-13T11:05:00.001-07:00

It was, after all, a five- (maybe six-) inch souffle dish, certainly an adequate portion for two. But the next time I'm in Paris I'm going back to Le Recamier and have a caramel souffle ALL TO MYSELF.
Le Recamier is a delightful little restaurant in the 6th arrondisement, just across the street from the Hotel Lutetia. Souffles are their specialty, which meant that the waiter didn't arch an eyebrow or curl a lip when we ordered savory spinach souffles for a first course and then followed our veal shanks entrees with the aforementioned caramel souffle. Caramel au fleur du sel, to be precise.

Since it may be quite a while before I return to Le Recamier I've decided to explore souffle-making with a tad more intensity than my usual pace of one-souffle-every-other-month and will report back here on my successes and failures each Tuesday.
Tonight I made a very simple dessert souffle ( flavored with honey and lemon zest) to see if two tips I'd learned recently would make any noticeable difference in my quest for souffle success.
First, in rereading an old New York Times article, I found this from Amanda Hesser: "With sweet souffles it is helpful to add a little powdered sugar at the beginning (about a tablespoon for every four egg whites). This helps the whites form tight bonds and for the finished souffles to rise evenly in tall, firm cylinders."
Second, I decided to ignore the usual cookbook advice to fill souffle dishes only to within an inch or so of their tops. A visit to the kitchen at Le Recamier had revealed cooks heaping the souffle dishes to the rims -- even, in some cases, mounding the batter into pyramid-like peaks above the dishes' centers.

I incorporated both suggestions into tonight's individual souffles. Results in the next post--because Computer Guru is still frolicking in Maine, far from any internet service, and I still can't figure out how to incorporate multiple photos in a single post.

Eric's EZ Lemongrass Maple Granita

2007-08-10T16:09:00.001-07:00

Here's another granita recipe that was intended for last Wednesday's Chronicle FOOD story. This one hit a hurdle in the testing stage: the oh-so-convenient Gourmet Garden prepared lemongrass had all but disappeared from supermarket shelves. Since a recipe that began with "Beat the hell out of lemongrass stalks, puree them and then beat them again" hardly fit the article's premise of quick and easy desserts I asked cookbook author Eric Gower for another suggestion.

The resulting Ginger Maple Granita made it into print, but I still loved the lemongrass idea. Recently I found that the prepared lemongrass is again widely available, so I'm delighted to share this recipe from one of the most creative cooks I know. His beautiful new cookbook, "The Breakaway Cook," ranks as one of my favorites of the year.
Yes, that is a pile of his books sitting on my desk - a pile that soon will need replenishing, as I'm finding the book to be a perfect birthday/shower/host gift.

LEMONGRASS MAPLE GRANITA

Unlike most granitas, which require four or five hours of freezing time and periodic tending, this granita takes just a few minutes, start to finish. For a creamier version, add a tablespoon of plain yogurt to the blender.

2 cups ice (about 10 medium-large ice cubes)
2 tablespoons prepared lemongrass*
2 tablespoons maple syrup
1 cup very cold sparkling mineral water

Place all the ingredients in a blender, and puree until smooth, scraping down the sides if necessary. Transfer to bowls and enjoy right away, or transfer to a plastic tub and freeze for later.

* Gourmet Garden lemongrass, comes in a refrigerated tube (sold in the produce section of most supermarkets)

I'd add three more footnotes:
*The Gourmet Garden tubes are about 5-inches long, have green lids and often are located near those little plastic packets of obscenely overpriced fresh herbs.
*My puny circa-1987 blender wasn't up to the task of creating instant granita, so I used the standard freeze-and-scrape method.
*Chill the serving bowls for a while before making the granita.

Loving Lemon Verbena

2007-08-08T14:44:00.000-07:00

Lemon verbena is the herbal equivalent of The Eggplant that Ate Chicago. It starts out as a wee little slip of a plant in a 4-inch container and by mid-summer it's taller than corn in Kansas. I like how it looks both in the garden and in flower arrangements, but I never made much culinary use of it other than steeping a few leaves in tea.

Then Michelle Polzine -- the brilliant and adorable pastry chef at Range in San Francisco -- gave me this recipe for an article. The article appeared today in the San Francisco Chronicle's food section , but -- because of space constraints -- only the recipe for Polzine's delicious raspberry granita made it into print.
Her lemon verbena ice also is terrific, so I'm happy to have a place to share it. If you don't have the herb in your own garden and can't find it at a farmer's market, check to see if a friend is growing it. I'll bet you a dinner at Range that said gardener will have plenty to spare.

Lemon Verbena Granita

1 scant cup simple syrup (equal parts sugar and water)
1/3 cup lightly packed *small* lemon verbena leaves
2 cups spring water
2 tablespoons lemon juice
¼ teaspoon salt

Whirl lemon verbena leaves in blender with cold simple syrup until only small green flecks are visible. Strain through a coarse sieve, pushing most of the non-fibrous bits through. Add spring water, lemon juice and salt. Pour into a shallow pan and set in freezer. Every 30-40 minutes, rake icy portions until entire mixture is frozen into feathery flakes.

Perfection Found

2007-08-06T15:56:00.001-07:00

Should Heston Blumenthal be planning a sequel to "In Search of Perfection," he doesn't have to crisscross the world in search of the perfect hoagie. It exists, as it has for 53 years, at a tiny storefront in Ocean City, New Jersey.
Usually I welcome culinary debate. Are the macarons better at Pierre Herme or Laduree? Which crab meat is sweeter: West Coast Dungeness or East Coast blue? Is Humboldt Fog one of the five top cheeses of the world or does it only rank in the top 10? I have my opinions, but well-reasoned arguments and numerous comparative tastings might sway them.
But my Hoagie Manifesto is carved in granite. Until you have tried the Basic Italian -- with hot peppers -- at Voltaco's, you simply have not sampled the Platonic Ideal of hoagies.

There's been plenty of twaddle printed in Mid-Atlantic newspapers and magazines as to what determines hoagie quality, with most articles including quasi-mystic references to the bread -- in particular, the water used to make the bread dough. Balderdash. As the attractive young woman I spoke to across the counter a few days ago said, "We use the best quality ingredients, more meat and cheese than most other shops and make the sandwiches only to order."
So, if you ever find yourself anywhere near Ocean City, proceed directly to 975 West Avenue, order the largest size hoagie and refuse to share it with anyone. And if you should run into Heston Blumenthal, expect to see an enormous grin of delight on his face.

Sweeter than Mother's Love

2007-08-01T07:33:00.001-07:00

My feelings about yellow-kernel corn on the cob can be summed up by a question a French friend once asked: "Is that not something one feeds to the horses?"
But corn with tiny white kernels -- grown in South Jersey, harvested early in the morning, heaped on a wooden table in a vegetable stand a few hours later and cooked that night -- heaven.
This summer J has been grilling the corn and we're all loving it. No more cauldron of water steaming up the kitchen--just sweet, tender corn steamed in its own juices and rushed to the table.

To prep the corn, J pulls back the husks, removes all the silk (well, most of it), closes up the husks and wraps each ear in aluminum foil. These packages go on the gril for about 15 minutes, with one turn about halfway through the cooking time.

And each time she takes her first bite, my mother -- who has been eating sweet Jersey corn for nearly 90 summers -- sighs and says: "Sweet as Mother's love."

Littleneck Clams Gone to Glory

2007-07-29T19:36:00.001-07:00

A more devoted blogger would have taken a picture of a bowl heaped with tonight's pasta with clams, but I'm annoyingly obsessive about eating pasta while it's piping hot, so I didn't even look for the camera until the clams were a delicious memory.

J. is reading Bill Buford's “Heat” and decided we should make linguine with clams, Babbo-style. In a large sauté pan I cooked onions, garlic, chili flakes and bacon (instead of the suggested pancetta; I'm still in the land of marvelous beaches and mediocre food stores) in olive oil and then added white wine and butter to make what Buford describes as a “messy buttery mush.”
In a large pot of heavily salted boiling water I cooked the linguine for about five minutes and then dumped the clams into the buttery mush pan . When the linguine was a minute or so from the al dente stage, I pulled the linguine from its pot – letting some of the starchy cooking water cling to the strands—heaped it on top of the clams and added a large handful of minced parsley. A couple quick tosses and then I followed Buford's instructions to “let the whole thing cook for another half minute or so, swirling, swirling until the sauce streaks across the bottom of the pan; splash it with olive oil and sprinkle it with parsley: dinner."
And, I'd add: delicious.

Retro-souffle

2007-07-20T18:03:00.001-07:00

I'm off at an ungodly hour tomorrow morning for the East Coast and two weeks "down the shore." Although our menus will revolve mostly around hamburgers, corn, Jersey tomatoes, Jenny Lind cantaloupes and peaches sweeter than any ever found in Georgia, I'll also be fixing this sort-of souffle. The recipe sounds awful, but the results truly are tasty and the ingredients are easy to find in Ocean City's rather limited food emporiums.
Don't try to improve this by substituting posher ingredients -- creme fraiche for the sour cream and artisan cream cheese for the Philly briquettes just produce a souffle (and I use the term loosely here; it's more like a puffy pudding)that lacks the original's retro-charm.
Because I still must pack and pay bills and deadhead the roses, I'm going to take a shortcut and reprint the recipe from a write-up I did for the Chronicle's FOOD section last year.

Speedy Cheese Souffle

I like to serve this with a large green salad that includes some bitter greens to play against the souffle's slightly sweet undertone. I usually use a 13- by 9-inch ceramic oval dish, but any shallow dish will work as long as the souffle batter fills it no more than 1-inch deep.

INGREDIENTS:
Butter for greasing baking dish

Fine-grated Parmesan cheese for coating baking dish

6 ounces cream cheese, preferably at room temperature

2/3 cup sour cream

2 tablespoons honey

Salt to taste

3 egg yolks

4 egg whites

INSTRUCTIONS:
Preheat oven to 375°. Generously butter a 10-cup baking dish and coat it with a thin layer of the grated Parmesan. Put the dish in the refrigerator while you prepare the souffle mixture.

In a large bowl, beat together the cream cheese, sour cream, honey and a pinch of salt. Add the egg yolks and beat until mixture is smooth.

In a separate bowl, with clean beaters, beat the egg whites until foamy. Add another pinch of salt and continue beating until soft peaks form, about 3 minutes. Do not over-beat.

Stir about a third of the beaten egg whites into the cream cheese mixture and then gently, but thoroughly, fold in the rest. Ease this mixture into the prepared baking dish, set the dish in the oven and immediately reduce the temperature to 350°. Bake 17-20 minutes, until the souffle is puffed, set and golden brown on top. Serve immediately.

Serves 4

Roasting Lamb; Eating Crow

2007-07-17T07:15:00.001-07:00

I said: "We absolutely are NOT going to cook a whole lamb. On the beach. With 35 people coming for Bastille Day dinner."
He said: "Yes, we are."
I said: "The meat will be burnt in some parts and raw in others. And every dog in Santa Cruz county will be racing down the beach to attack the carcass."
He said: "Relax. I'll handle it."
(In this marriage "relax" means "stop your yammering because my mind is made up.")

The yammering, of course, continued. It accelerated as I fretted over whether UPS would deliver the lamb in time. It veered dangerously close to whining as I helped lug a 40-pound carton from house to car to beach house. And then I gave up and shut up, other than to ask, "WHY do you want to do this?"
"Because it's a challenge," I was told.

Should anyone want to undertake a similar challenge, I'd urge the rental of a professional grill with motorized spit. Do as I say; not as He did. Our lamb roasted on a MacGuyver-like contraption of two pieces of 3/4-inch T-top water pipe driven into the sand with a five-foot length of hollow, square steel rod threaded through the T-tops.

Securing the lamb onto the spit required sewing, balancing and cursing. Turning the spit immediately overwhelmed the wimpy little motor borrowed from our home grill. Instead, someone had to sit by the fire and hand-turn the beastie every five minutes. For five hours.

And the result? Some of the juiciest, tastiest lamb I've ever eaten -- redolent with the rosemary and garlic sewn into the carcass's cavity and steeped in the olive oil and lemon juice marinade.
A triumph, damnit. Murmurings of "a pig next year" already have me biting my tongue; yammering would be futile.

Whisk to the Rescue

2007-07-11T21:41:00.001-07:00

Browning butter: it sounds simple but the task often frustrated me. Let us not enumerate the pounds of butter I watched turn from pale tan to bitter black. Let us further not enumerate the attendant curse words. When I discovered an article in Gourmet in which the author suggested watching for the butter to start bubbling and roiling and then whisking the hell out of it, I figured I had nothing to lose but yet another stick of butter.
It worked like a charm.
Now I am the Queen of Perfectly Browned Butter. Bring me your steamed lobster, your fish fillets, your broccolini yearning to be free. I lift my whisk beside the heated pan.

Is there some technical reason why this works? Beats me. Perhaps it’s just a case of making the cook stay pan-side and attentive. I care not for Alton Brown-like explanations; I care only that luscious, nutty-brown butter is now reliably in my repertoire.

Call brown butter by its French name – beurre noisette -- and combine it with ground almonds, egg whites, sugar and flour and you’re ready to bake the sublime little French teacakes called financiers. You’ll find a foolproof recipe on one of my favorite food blogs: “In the Kitchen and On the Road with Dorie” and in her book “Paris Sweets.” Be warned: Reading Greenspan’s blog is as addictive as eating financiers.