Some art, less food writing...no, reverse that...

Every so often I get to a point in a restaurant review where I really want to tear my hear out [editor's note: tear my "hear" out?!? Que? I am letting this stand just as a monument to bad typing. It should read "hair" by the way], or at least quit. I come upon a dish and realize that I have to describe it. I can't just say, "yummy" or even leave it at "well-made." Normally this is no problem. I just describe it (and many others ever single week) and that is that.

But then there are these days when I feel like I am writing a parody of food writing, that I have really used up all my food vocabulary and have devolved to nothing but cliche.

Subtle hints of red plum delicately lifted by a hint of shallot. Yawn.

Melanie's co-workers seem to have fun when I get in a rut. "Provides a perfect foil for the..." that one kept them giggling for awhile. The problem is that Melanie works for the newspaper, so all of her coworkers read me. Now we even get the newspaper delivered to our house, so even I read me. I can't help it. I am a compulsive newspaper reader, which is why I quit completely for awhile. Now the thing is on the doorstep every morning and it is safe to say that I have fallen off the wagon.

So not only do I have to face my writing on my own computer, but I get it in print.

Anyway, I really do like food writing, but there are those times when it just seems like I am spinning my wheels:

"You thought the hat was empty, but look at this lovely cliche!"

Then I think about my poor colleagues in the Sports section.

"Oh, you have some nerve, eating delicious duck rillette sandwiches and describing the texture of the friggin' ciabatta! Try making the thousandth double play sound unique."

Everyone knows that the best writing in any newspaper is found in the sports pages. You have to be good to write sports or you get out.

The best way to renew the springs of inspiration is to read non-food writing (and lots of it) and to read classics in food writing. Then, buy a good set of electrodes and program your word processor to send a painful pulse through them whenever you write "soft, yet able to stand up to..."

In college I had a brilliant idea for using electrodes and MIDI to produce better keyboardists. All you need to do is wire a sequencing program to a MIDI keyboard and a set of electrodes. Then you set the limits: dynamics to X%, rhythmic allowances for Y% (allowing for rubato only in the right hand, and carefully controlled ritardandi at the ends of sections, etc.). Then you play. If you hit a wrong note, or with dynamics outside the allowances, or the rhythm gets funny, a powerful charge of electricity rebukes you.

Like I said, brilliant idea, but for some reason I could never get a volunteer to try it out. You build a better mouse trap and the mice just complain bitterly.

Anyway, art is always fun to write about, unless it is crap like Jeff Koons, but that is not really art, so I feel safe ignoring it.

We went back to SFMOMA on Saturday. Amalia was asleep in her stroller, so Melanie and I got to go through the galleries at a much more leisurely pace.

I noticed something that I missed the other day: a beautiful Agnes Martin canvas. I suppose she was fresh in my mind, seeing as how she passed away last week at the age of 92, but I am still shocked that I missed this painting the other day. I have always liked her work. Anyway, having a few minutes (not enough, because Melanie has normal patience for taking long gazes at almost-minimalism) to look and think about this painting was fantastic.

Furthermore, it got me in the right mood to study a gorgeous Ad Reinhardt canvas in the next room, which all adds up to making my pique at the lack of Robert Ryman works all the more acute. And since for every reaction there is an equal and opposite anti-reaction, where are the Arnesons?!?

I want, no, I demand the extremes. Give me somber reflection of Ryman and Martin, and give me the goofball joy of Arneson. But get rid of the smug "irony" of Warhol or the goofball seriousness of Newman (for some reason the goofball seriousness of Still and Rothko never bothers me, probably because both men produced a few fantastic works).

We had a great visit (still a little shorter than ideal, but few people enjoy museum visits as long as my ideal), and Amalia woke up in the gift shop just as we were buying her Christmas present (oops).

Anyway, back to "sweet without being cloying." To quote Ian Shoales, "I gotta go."

Chamomile and Minnesota

Perhaps one of you can help me figure this one out.

For some odd reason, the smell of chamomile immediately conjures up Northern Minnesota (and I mean far Northern, the Gunflint Trail area to be precise). I am not sure why. I don't recall drinking chamomile tea or chamomile grappa on any of my trips there. Perhaps it grows wild up there? The olfactory memory is somehow linked with rain, but you frequently get afternoon rains up there, so it could just be the setting of the Boundary Waters that implies rain.

Are any of you from Grand Marais or have spent time up there recently? Does the stuff grow wild in the North Woods? If I don't get an answer I may just have to take a canoe trip and do some exploration. Wouldn't mind fishing for Northerns at the same time!

Anti-Thanksgiving Menu

The point of the anti-Thanksgiving menu is not to deny the need to give thanks for the good things we have. Instead, it is intended to give thanks without celebrating the Puritan arrival on the Continent. Practically, it amounts to an Italianate New World thanksgiving: by feasting and paying particular attention to the goodness of our food, we honor God Who, when he had created the world saw that it was good. It is to honor Christ, God made flesh, Who gives Himself to us in the Eucharist. As a result, particular honor must be made to bread and to wine.

To start with, how about an autumn salad of chicory, red lettuce, sliced persimmon, shaved pecorino romano, pomegranite seeds and toasted pumpkin seeds, all dressed in a balsamic vinaigrette?

Then, for a primo piatto, a pumpkin risotto (a basic risotto with pancetta, onion, carrotts, celery, then finished with chunks of roasted pumpkin, reggiano parmiggiano, and butter).

For a main course, one could go for young goose with a subcutaneous stuffing of goose innards, pancetta, fennel seed, garlic and rosemary (with a bit of fresh fennel, garlic and rosemary in the bird's cavity), or, if one is afraid of cooking goose, how about arista, a slow cooked loin of pork, stuffed with pancetta, garlic and rosemary.

On the side, with either dish, try fennel braised in milk, or roasted root vegetables.

For dessert, a panna cotta, with calvados persimmon sauce, accompanied by a vin santo.

For wine, start with a Puligny Montrachet to go with the salad, then a good Tuscan red to accompany the risotto and meat.

For a digestive, grappa or nocino would be perfect.

Take The Stinkin' Things Away!

I normally love cookies. All sorts of cookies: oatmeal chocolate chip, gingerbread, biscotti, ossi, Danish butter cookies, I mean all sorts of cookies. Yum. So I naturally look forward to the annual newspaper cookie recipe contest. Readers submit their recipes and the students of the restaurant program at a local community college bake them and then the food writers, food editors, and food photographers get together for a day of cookie tasting.

It is a fun event. For one thing, this is the one day that I get to hang out with all the food department. I work out of my home and NEVER have to go to the office for meetings or whatnot. They call, I eat, write and email, and they send a check. A weekly phone call with my editor is about all the contact I have with the department. However, food writers are fun, so it is a blast to hang out with them and nitpick on cookies.

Amalia gets to go to these, too, and having a three year old at a cookie judging is fun. She picks the cookies that have faces on them, the cookies that are bright pink and eats with gusto. She has the advantage over us. When she has had her fill (and then some, as toddlers are not known for regulating their cookie consumption, and that cookie regulating fascist father of hers is busy tasting and does not always say, "Amalia, don't you think that two merengue balls is enough?") she can run around the kitchen identifying the equipment and pointing out things that the rest of us fail to notice (or at least fail to comment on). The professional Wolf range, for instance, has blue fire! Pretty nifty.

So, while Amalia gets to take a respite from cookie consumption, we professionals have to keep tasting away. It takes about two bites to fairly judge a cookie, but there were 82 entries. We broke the entries into groups and teamed up, which brought it down to 20 cookies for round one, and then 10 for the final round. Needless to say, the 50 (some cookies, well, at first bite you really don't need to give them a second try to know that they are out of the running) bites of cookies add up to a lot of sweet dough sloshing around in the gut. Next year we need to bring more tasters.

Needless to say, I will probably not be craving a cookie any time soon!

Anyway, if you are going to enter a cookie contest remember that the judges will have been gnawing on an awful lot of cookies. That sweetness just builds and builds, so if you have a less sweet cookie, you will stand a much better chance of winning.

Also, adult tastes are a welcome relief from the gobs of chocolate (not to mention candies - although a few cookies with M and M's did make the final cut) that the judges will be tasting. If you are going to enter a chocolate cookie you will win points by: 1. Using dark chocolate and 2. Adding some other subtle flavor to the mix (subtle, mind you. Chocolate is a powerful blast of flavor. It does not need even stronger flavors to confuse things).

Another thing to keep in mind is that judges who have been eating too much like lighter textures. That super dense shortbread with frosting might be the perfect thing on a cold winter night, but when it is entry number 78 it probably will lose some of its charm. We are professionals, but we are also human and have human bodies. We can imagine eating a cookie in the correct setting, but the fact remains that we will have to actually eat and savor the cookie in the setting of the judging, so if you are intent on winning, keep that in mind.

The other thing to remember is that you might make your fantastic holiday cookies with candied citrus that you made yourself to exacting specifications, Remy Martin XO, Organic Unsalted Cultured Butter and Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla, but the chances are that the semi-commercial kitchen will use what they have, so it will be store bought candied orange peels, Christian Brothers brandy, cheap sweat cream butter (or shortening, if that is what the budget allows), and possibly vanillin. Our kitchen did a great job, but there were a few recipes that they had to use some substitutions in. They want their craftsmanship to shine, so they will do their best, but don't expect them to buy a bottle of Nardini Grappa just to perfectly recreate your recipe. So be simple. Use the commonest of ingredients and adjust your recipe to make them work.

Finally, the judges in a newspaper cookie contest are going to be foodies. We are a tribe that eats butter and foie gras and lots of wine. Your hippy coven might find the idea of cookies made out of birdseed and boiled linen a great way to connect with Mother Earth. We won't. So, if your recipe even hints at bran as an edible commodity, forget it. It doesn't stand a chance. Save it for the Whole Earth Christmas bakeoff. Likewise, cookies that substitute apple sauce for butter, cookies that use carob instead of chocolate, cookies that use grape juice instead of sugar. Forget about it. The closest to counting food that any of us will tolerate is perhaps Adkins, because foie gras and butter are allowed. We do tend to eat organic, but that is because organic produce outtastes the factory junk about seven to one. If we shop at hippy markets it is because they sell some great goat cheese that we cannot get elsewhere. Don't be fooled. Submit real cookies for real people.

However, anyone who bothered to send in a recipe wins points in my book, even if the recipe does basically mix KoolAid with merengue or call for wheat chaff or whatever those bits were that I had to floss out of my teeth. So, if you sent in a recipe, Bravo!

Anyway, it is now several hours after the tasting and I still would like to find a warm, sunny rock to lie down on to let the cookies digest. Since it is a late autumn night, a warm bed will have to suffice. Yodling will return later!

Oh yes, one last thing before I go back to writing about why you should use a fulfillment company...

I have been requested to post an anti-Thanksgiving menu, which I will. The anti-Thanksgiving menu is a Catholic, harvest Thanksgiving menu that is intended as an alternative to celebrating the arrival and survival of the pestillence of Puritanism on these shores.

I will also post a quality Thanksgiving menu for those of you who want to use the traditional ingredients, but would prefer a feast that actually tastes like one (without inedibles like Devilled Eggs - please, send them back to the Hell that they smell like, and metallic canned and pitted olives (look, I can put them on my fingers! Whoopee! It is a much better use than actually trying to eat the little turdlets), and the like).

I will work on these menus in between procrastination breaks from the editing project. Fortunately Amalia is quite pleased constructing some sort of kingdom in her room that involves a castle and horses and her green tractor, or else I wouldn't be able to get anything done.

Menus will be posted this afternoon.

More on Espresso

Have I mentioned how much I love the CoffeeGeek site?

This article on espresso cups is just about my definition of perfect recreational reading. Why, he even measures the thickness of the cup walls and compares the three vendors of porcelain that Illy uses, and has a mini rant against espresso pods (yet still gives proper credit to Illy as a company that really understands espresso)! This is good fun.

Now, I must get back to editing the work that my client expects at the end of the day, so read and enjoy the aritcle.

How to earn half a star

Dear Restaurateur,

I am going to give you a test question in advance. If you want your rating to jump by half a star, go read this article on the God Shot.

What is a God Shot? From the linked article:

"But what exactly is the God Shot? The answer comes naturally to me, so naturally, that I can't actually put it in words with ease, but I do know instinctively what it is. One thing it's not: it is not meant to be a slam against God, or the breaking of one of the Ten Commandments (Thou shalt not...). It is a homage to God in a way because when someone talks about a God Shot, it is something so special, so unique, so perfect, it's almost as if God Himself has blessed it. And since a long ago Pope proclaimed that God blesses and approves of coffee, it is only natural it could extend to the perfect espresso: the God Shot."

The author goes on to define the range of the God Shot as "by nature ... the double ristretto."

The article even gives precise descriptions of it.

I am not saying that it is easy. More often than not I fail in the God Shot, and I brew about four ristretto doubles a day. The line between a God Shot (or any good ristretto) and a stalled shot (drip by bitter drip, a two minute monstrocity that you drink anyway because, well the cost of coffee beans, you know...) can be fine. Too much pressure with the tamper, a couple of microns too fine a grind and STALL. But if you get it right, you serve the concentrated pure essence of coffee. Perfection. A taste of Heaven on Earth.

So, dear Restaurateur, if you are going to have your waitrons brewing the espresso, train them, make them read this article, make them brew espresso until they can make a proper ristretto in their sleep.

The restaurant I reviewed last week in Alameda (a neat little place called C'era Una Volta - if you are in the area, check it out. The review will run Friday in the Preview Section) served an excellent espresso, which earned them half a star on the overall meal, probably the half star deducted from the otherwise perfect Dopo in Oakland (actually I think we were using a different system when I reviewed Dopo, so the currency is not exactly the same, but it is the only reason that Dopo did not get a perfect rating, which was too bad, because that is a great little restaurant).

If you are reading this for home consumption, the first thing to do is to buy a burr grinder. Then, throw out the overroasted French Roasts (and Peet's Major Dickason's Roast as well -- too dark). Then practice on your machine. You can make good espresso with wretched machines, even the steam powered ones, BUT you must practice. With the worst of the machines you will need to practice so long that by the time you reliably get it the machine will be worn out.

For those of you who are wondering: I have a cheap Krups pump machine, the very cheapest pump-driven machine you can find. It took me a week (and replacing the portafilter with one salvaged off my old steam driven machine), but I can get realiably good espresso provided I use decent beans.

I even get a God Shot here and there!

Farmers' Market Report

We are definitely in a transition time right now. A few farmers were unloading their anemic looking tomatoes (time to go canned, folks), there are still some decent looking bell peppers, and we did buy some bartlett pears (probably the last we will buy this year, depending on the weather between now and Saturday), but mostly the good stuff is found in Fuji and Pink Lady apples, fuyu persimmons, chard, beets, and the like.

I am starting to see some really good Brussels sprouts, so I will probably be using those soon.

Meanwhile, don't forget the noble pumpkin. Last week we were carving them and found that one of them had walls that were about four inches thick. To better enhance the lighting, we thinned it and had a ton of pumpkin flesh leftover. I roasted it in chunks with some olive oil and served it as a side dish (very yummy) and saved a bunch of it for a risotto (also yummy - a basic risotto with carrots, celery, onion, dried porcini mushrooms, pancetta, garlic, mixed meat stock, butter, olive oil, then, when the risotto is almost ready, add the roasted pumpkin. Finish with butter, pecorino romano, and top with crumbled Amaretti and chopped parsley. Serve with a dry young red, like a Montepulciano d'Abruzzo).

At today's market I saw some other fall squashes that looked pretty good, too.

For salads, radicchio and red lettuce look the best, and go quite well with pomegranite seeds (also in season), persimmon, shaved pecorino romano, and a balsamic vinaigrette.

Also, there are still some good local table grapes. We bought a giant bunch of red seedless grapes, most of which will go into a foccaccia.

The Joy of Classic Cooking

I am writing a review of a restaurant that is really fun. The reason? I have had to consult Escoffier three times to check terminology. That is the sort of review that I like to write, especially when the food is as good as this place (the Montclair Bistro in Oakland). For more information, please be sure to get a copy of the Oakland Tribune, Tri-Valley Herald, The Argus, The San Mateo County Times, or The Alameda Times Star on Friday. Or better yet, why not subscribe? It would make circulation very happy. And when circulation is happy, we are happy. Besides, these are good local papers that cover local events much better than that Hearst job on Mission St.

Food Magazine Worth Reading

Most food magazines are mediocre.

There are a host of recipe-based ones that really don't offer much that you don't already have, if you have a decent cookbook library. Then there are the ones that are full of reviews of restaurants all over the country, which is great if you are on the road a lot. Some, like Gourmet do a good job of describing the food at those restaurants, so a creative cook can get some ideas from the reviews (Gourmet also has pretty good recipes overall).

I could easily do without the stack of food magazines that come in the mail box. I find that the only sometimes tedious part of the job of restaurant reviewer is having to stay current on food trends and kitchen gossip (although I still manage to avoid a lot of that - for instance, I really couldn't care less as to what Wolfgang Puck or Jeremiah Towers are up to). I also am always on the lookout for different ways of describing food, which is probably second only to sports writing in its difficulty. So, I read the food magazines, albeit reluctantly.

There is one, however, that I enjoy cover to cover. It is Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture, which is published by the University of California Press. As a semi-academic journal you do get the odd "you thought that X was good, but it is not. It is BAAAAAAAAD" sort of crap that is common in academia, but most of the articles, even the ones by cultural anthropologists, are pretty good, and the gems are really good.

For instance, if you go to the website, you can read a piece on the egg cream and the syrup racket in the 1930's (just the sort of thing that I can imagine reading about on Irish Elk). The cover price for Gastronomica is $10 per issue, which is steep, but it is a quarterly, and packs more content in a single issue than the advert-heavy food magazines pack in a year.

Also, they have great cover art, which earns big points from me. It is not a magazine for those looking for recipes (Cuisine at Home is the one I recommend for that), but it is one that should appeal to non-foodies as well as foodies and cooks.

Englischer Muffin Pizzas

Yesterday Melanie wanted to get Englischer muffins for breakfast, which was fine with me, since they are tasty and easy enough to prepare in the morning. But this morning rolled around and I was getting ready to toast mine and WHAM! It hit me. Memories of many happy childhood lunches. I pulled out the pizza sauce, sliced some chorizo, topped with mozzarella and baked myself an Englischer muffin pizza.

You know what? It tasted as good today as it did back then. I think that tomorrow, if I get up in time (Dante night, you know, sometimes goes into extra innings), I am going to rehydrate some dried porcini mushrooms, use goat cheese and finish it with white truffle oil.

It does bother me that these little things are called Englischer muffins. They taste too good for that. So, in the spirit of Freedom Fries, I am now going to call these little wonders by some other name. I thought of Blitzkrieg Buns, but that was probably a little bit to the edge of Just War theory, even if it was directed against England, so really shouldn't be honored that way. Perhaps something French, in honor of the nation that has been the biggest thorn in England's hide.

Suggestions?

Summertime!

In the Bay Area summer begins in late August at the earliest (oh, there are a few bluffing days, where we get a four day heat wave, but it always ends in chilly fog). We are now in our second week of summer, but there is a touch of autumn in the air as well. The leaves are starting to turn in Berkeley, which is always lovely.

Curiously, cooking at this time is both very easy (all those ripe figs, the rainbow of capsicum varieties, super fragrant late stone fruit, the best eggplant and tomatoes, etc.) and tricky. Part of me wants to jump into hearty autumnal food: duck confit with grilled figs, bean soups, etc., but the weather does not cooperate. It's too hot to eat that heavy stuff. So we stick to grilled wild salmon with tomato/basil vinaigrette (Chez Panisse Cafe Cookbook), and the figs go into my late summer barbecue sauce.

Oh? No? I have not posted the recipe for that sauce? Ah-hah-hah! Of course. You see, I am generally rather free with my own recipes, but there is this bug in the back of my head that is saying "bottle it!" Who knows, perhaps in a more generous mood I have already posted the recipe. Anyway, it is a lot of work, and if I ever do market it, it will be a lot easier just to buy mine. If I do or already have posted the recipe, just promise me that you will, at least once, try it on slow cooked pork loin. You may use it on chicken, beef, lamb, tvp, whatever, but at least once, slow cook your pork loin over smoking wood chips, basting it every ten minutes with apple cider vinegar, then, AFTER it is cooked, shred it and add the sauce. Eat it on Kaiser rolls.

Barbecue calls for slaw, but here is the problem: slaw disgusts me. So, my task for the season is to reinvent slaw. There is one at a restaurant in Sacramento (place called Banderas or something like that, it's on the other side of the river) that makes an Asian-influenced slaw that is quite tasty. Perhaps that is the direction I will go. I am probably going to shy away from mayo, but we will see. Maybe a homemade aioli instead.

Also, one should eat melon with barbecue, so let me recommend Persian melons. They are particularly good with a piece of jamon serrano or prosciutto di parma wrapped around them.

But the main thing about this time of year is the weather, which is beyond outstanding. It is perfect. The sky is blue. There is almost always a gentle, warm breeze. It stays pretty warm at night.

Amalia is right now armed with a bag of chalk and is demanding a piece of pavement to decorate. We need to go into the city for a bit, so I think that she might get to practice her work at Golden Gate Park. I love this weather.

OH YEAH: If you are one of my Bay Area readers, holler and I will be happy to show you how to make said sauce. There are benefits to living near me. Of course, to learn how to make said sauce, you must allocate quite a good part of your day. There is a lot to do to it.

The End of an Era

Californian Native Daughter Julia Child passed away in her sleep three days before her 92nd birthday.

There was no person who had a greater influence on the American palate than Julia Child (besides, arguably, Ernest and Julio Gallo, due to their winning a place for dry wine on the American dinner table).

Even professional chefs will admit that when all things go wrong, you reach for Julia Child to figure out how to fix it. Not Escoffier, not Bocuse, nor even James Beard or Jacques Pepin, rather you reach for a book written by someone who did not take a cooking lesson until she was in her 30's.

I will think of a fitting tribute menu to cook sometime soon and will post it when I think of it.

The joys of being a restaurant reviewer

One of the perks of being a newspaper restaurant reviewer is, of course, all the food. One of the strangest aspects of the food is the stream of comps that come my way from restaurant PR firms. I suppose it makes sense, as it is always good for the critics to know your restaurant, but in a way it does not make sense, because I am rather impaired in reviewing a place where the servers and general manager know who I am.

So, they comp me and my guest a meal, but I can't write about it, because they know who I am, which means that what I get is an example of what they can do, not necessarily (often, but not always) what they usually do. Of course I can certainly generate buzz for the restaurant, particularly by recommending that one of our other reviewers take the place for an assignment, but it is kind of a shame, since it would really have been fun to review the place I just went to.

Since I will probably not review the place (they just got too good a look at me), I will do two things. First, I am going to highly suggest that the editor send another reviewer there. Second, I am going to tell you about it:

The restaurant in question is Fringale, a wonderful French Basque restaurant in San Francisco (4th Street). I have eaten there a few years ago, but it was under a different head chef. I loved it then and was not disappointed this time. Chef Marc Rasic, although from Luxembourg, clearly understands the food of the Pyranees.

If anyone wants details of what we ate, I will be happy to add that, but in the interest of brevity, let me just say this: frisee salad with warm bacon dressing, poached egg and toasted levain, beef carpaccio with arugula pesto and parmesan (Amalia devoured almost all of this), duck leg confitand carrot hachis parmentier (triple yum - there were two reasons that Amalia did not eat all of the carpaccio - this was one of them), Berkshire pork shoulder confit with cabbage and apples, soft chestnut flour polenta with olives, sun dried tomatoes and parmesan, some of the best pommes frites in the area, a peach tarte built on an absolutely incredible puff pastry crust, and berries and beaujolais compote with fromage blanc sorbet.

Couple this food with immaculate service and a pleasant, inviting atmosphere, and you have one more reason to visit the great city of San Francisco (or if you are already in San Francisco, another reason to brave ballpark traffic to get to that side of town).

Your Weekend Market Watch

I really need to get to bed, but here it is:

Farmers' Market Report for the Bay Area and southern Superior California:

1. Tomatoes are great looking. Saw some beautiful brandywines and German stiples, as well as plenty of lovely orange cherries. If you are dilligent, you should find good, organic heirlooms for $1 a pound. If you are less ambitious in your bargain seeking, then expect to pay $2, maybe $3 for really spectacular ones. If you pay more than $3 a pound, you are getting ripped off. For cooking, don't overlook the Romas, which are good right now (not quite peak, though), and dropping in price.

2. Stone fruit: still good nectarines and peaches. I bought our first batch of pluots this weekend ($1.50 a pound for organic, from Reedly in the central valley). Good flavor and balance between tartness and sweetness.

3. Zucchini: good and cheap. Keep your eyes open for zucchini blossoms. The best are grown in the Vacaville hills.

4. Table grapes: found some sweet, yet one dimensional red flames. Amalia liked them.

5. Eggplant and capsicum: these are finally getting to their season. Lovely eggplant, and the varieties of capsicum are beginning to come out. It is a little early for chocolates (my favorite), but the purple ones are ready, as well as the Hungarians and Italians.

6. Basil: yowza! Every winter I forget what a punch this herb packs. Good prices ($1 for huge, organic, roots-attached bunches), although I planted a good amount, so I am still harvesting my own.

7. Melons: one word in the melon department: ambrosia. Buy one and your call will smell of melon by the time you get home.

8. Corn: Still plagued by breeding problems (and will be for a long time). Corn is just too sweet and not corny enough. Stick with yellow corn from Brentwood. Price is still a bit high (3 ears for $1), but that should come down in a few weeks.

9. Apples: avoid like the plague. What are they doing trying to pass off stored winter apples at those prices? At this point they are only good for cooking. The farmers ought to be unloading them cheap. On a similar note, expect fresh apple juice to be fairly bitter and too earthy tasting.

10. Blackberries. There is no excuse besides convenience to pay for blackberries. Get off your lazy duff and pick your own. Sheesh.

Scottish cuisine!

In keeping with the accusation that I am a closet Scotsman, let me say that nothing is as satisfying as picking blackberries from a shady canyon in a city park, EXCEPT seeing poorer quality blackberries on sale for $2 for a little basket. Needless to say, our hands and tongues were quite purple this weekend. I think that Amalia and I will return to the berry patch Wednesday afternoon, as I keep having olfactory hallucinations of blackberry galette, which will not go away until I have one in front of me, preferably served warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

I also discovered a beautiful nettle patch. It is too late for these plants, but come winter, when the new shoots are up, I plan on being there with gloves and a sack.

Budweiser

As I expected, I have been getting a lot of guff from beer snobs over the whole Budweiser issue. So, what we need to do is a tasting. Not a blind tasting, which is really never much more than an ah-hah gotcha sort of exercise, but a prolonged, critical tasting.

Here is your challenge:

1. Buy a can of Budweiser.
2. Chill it properly (at least four hours in the fridge)
3. Wake up at 7am
4. Have a light breakfast with two shots of ristretto espresso (no milk of any sort, sorry).
5. Eat nothing until 10am.
6. At 10am it is tasting time:
7. Open the can of Budweiser.
8. Pour two inches into a decent glass.
9. Do not swirl, but take a deep sniff.
10. Without trying to evaluate, just write down what you smell. A hint of skunk? Floral notes? Whatever. Just be honest and as observant as you can.
11. Now, take a sip. Just a small sip. Run the beer over your whole tongue. Use your tongue to force the aroma into your nose. Really pay attention here: what do you smell? Spit. Repeat. Take notes, again avoiding "good"/"bad", but things like, "mineral notes, toast, small finish."
12. Now, take a decent drink and swallow. Note the body, note the nose, note the balance of sweet to bitter, note the acidity. Pay attention to the amount and size of the bubbles.
13. Now you can drink the beer on its own. How does it go down? What sort of aftertaste does it leave.
14. Post your notes in the comments box here and we can have a rational discussion of matters of the hop.
15. For fun, repeat steps 1-14 with whatever other beer you want (preferably a lager: apples to apples, you know). If you want to remain anonymous, please create a handle so we can communicate better.
16. No wine, tea, gin, coffee, or orange juice tastings here, please. Let's stick to beer for this one. No Lambic for now, as it is a different animal.

Fresh fruit alert - local food news

To my Bay Area readers: nectarines in the farmers' markets are outstanding right now, and the price is good. We bought both white and yellow, and they are fantastic. Last two weeks for apricots. Be selective. We are talking Fresno and San Joaquin County produce here. Brentwood still has good stone fruit, as does Amador (good luck finding Amador County stuff in the Bay Area, though).

Also (drum roll, please), tomato season has officially begun. I finally had a tomato that was so good it almost made me cry. So far the Cherokee purples and green zebra grape tomatoes have been the best. I have a couple of brandywines that look promising, too. Tomorrow they will be used in an ensalata caprese, so I will be able to give a rating to them afterwards. Hint: Look for Napa Valley tomatoes. So far they have been the earliest good ones. Vacaville is not quite there yet, and it is way too early for Molina Creek.

Garlic: excellent right now. Probably at its peak. Now is a great time to make aioli or pesto (and do yourself a favor and buy a mortar and pestle, and do it right. It is much better than stuff that is whirred through a machine). Vacaville is blowing Gilroy out of the water for garlic this season.

Spotted: black figs, at $1.50 a basket. Still way too expensive for me (although since I generally get flats of figs for free, that sets what I am willing to pay at the market really low), but they looked good, and it is good to know that one has options if one absolutely has to have figs stuffed with chevre, wrapped in pancetta and grilled over a hardwood fire.

Greens: Have been enjoying some good Napa Valley greens, but went back to our Salinas family's European mix. Lots of bright radicchio, green butter lettuce, purple oak leaf, not too much spicy stuff, which is fine, since I have been overdoing that.

Corn: The first crop is good, but suffers from poor breeding. Too much sugar, not enough corn flavor. BORING. The trick is to pick, cook and eat it right away. Then you can have good, sweet corn. If you want shelf-life, then forget it. Corn is not the right vegetable. Try potatoes. Just kindly stop pushing the farmers towards these dull over-sweet varieties.

Fish: fresh wild salmon has been great. Grill simply. Eat. Yum. Drink Bonny Doon's Big House Pink (or Mactarnahan's honey ale) with it. Extra yum.

Some Advice For Young Foodies

Since it is graduation time, it seems that everyone and his dog are offering advice for young people. It seems only fair, since I offer a source of temptation for foodies, that I offer some cautionary advice to those young people who are of a foodie bent.

First, how do you know if you are a foodie?

If you wake up in the middle of the night with an experimental recipe gnawing at your brain, if you smell a dead skunk and study the aromatic profile of it, if you find yourself on vacation, without a kitchen, but still have the urge to check out the produce section at the local market, you probably are a foodie.

If you would buy a mansion in a posh part of town and grow tomatoes in the front yard, because the light is best, you probably are a foodie.

If you learn botany, organic chemistry, zoology or any other science just to get a better grasp of your ingredients, you are a member of the club. If you can name more chefs than you can quarterbacks, you probably are one of us. If you can elaborate on the specific contribution to the world of food from each of the chefs, you are deep in it.

If you are a vegetarian, forget it. You are no more a foodie than I am an expert gymnist. If you think that bran tastes good, then you are a lost cause.

So, you are a foodie?

At some point you must make the decision of whether or not to turn pro. My general advice is don’t. If you don’t believe me, then read Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential. Bourdain is right when he says that people become professional cooks when they can do nothing else.

Bourdain talks good sense, but you need to hear it from a Catholic point of view. Professional kitchens can destroy you. If you are at all wishy washy in your faith, if you too easily succumb to the temptations of sex and heavy drinking and drugs, then you need a career in the kitchen as much as a modern university needs more Marxists.

When I graduated from college I had to make the decision. I had been doing some catering and was beginning to find my voice in the kitchen. Career opportunities for harpsichordists were dismal, and retail was wearing me down. I had a good friend who was a sous chef and it seemed inevitable that I would go that route. My friend put it this way: “a kitchen is a place where you put a bunch of demented bugs and let them play with fire and sharp knives.” It sounded fun.

I can only attribute it to Grace that I managed to avoid this career path. I have successfully stayed out of restaurant kitchens. I worked in a food lab (a great place for a foodie to work), and eventually ended up as a restaurant critic. I take on gigantic cooking projects for friends and family, and that seems to keep my unwholesome impulses in check.

If you are a young Catholic of sufficient faith and formation to withstand the life of a professional cook, plan on doing these things to stay that way:

1. Pick your chemical indulgences well. You will be surrounded by drunks and drug addicts. If you can honestly handle a fair amount of drinking, then great. Work out a drinking regimen that will keep it under control (something like Mencken’s rule of never drinking when the sun is up is a good start). Pay attention to how much you drink, and if it is within the bounds of relatively good health and good morals, then stick to it. If you have a desire towards stimulants (again, you need to figure this out in advance), then cultivate an espresso habit. It is legal, works well, has good health benefits, and will help you avoid the ever-present cocaine and meth. If you like tobacco, then settle on a good amount to consume and stick to it. Do not take a dualist view of smoking. Most professional cooks smoke, and you probably will as well, even if you don’t plan on it. Don’t divide the world into chain-smoking and non-smoking, because then if you find yourself enjoying a post-shift cigarette, you will label yourself as a smoker and will find it difficult to establish limits. The language of the addiction recovery business is rooted in the horrid philosophy of Calvin. Avoid it. There are many levels of consumption between zero and a pack a day. Ideally, I would advise young cooks to smoke cigars, as they have all the benefits of tobacco (focusing thought, giving aromatic pleasure, etc.), but take a more contemplative turn (it is much harder to absent-mindedly light and smoke a good cigar than it is a cigarette, and absent-mindedness is the cornerstone of a bad smoking habit). I would not recommend a pipe for a cook, as there is too much fiddling around with the works for someone in this milieu.
2. Plan on attending daily mass and weekly confession. The devil finds work for idle hands, and the pace of a kitchen is such that what used to not seem like idle time, becomes idle time. It is amazing the amount of mischief a cook can get into in a five minute lull in a hectic shift. You need all the fortification you can get in this environment.
3. Look for restaurants that came out of the Chez Panisse world. The philosophy you will encounter in those places has much more in common with Catholic thought than some of the flashier places.
4. Make an exit strategy. Figure out how to turn a kitchen job into a food lab job or something with a more sustainable pace. You probably don’t want to be on a line six days a week when you are in your late sixties.

Beyond that, good luck, God bless and all that. Cook well (but not my steak, thank you).

For those of you foodies who are not going to go into the business, you will have to come up with some way of dealing with your foodie impulses. You will probably need to find a spouse who is somewhat of a foodie, but not so much that you compete. Your non-foodie spouse will need to eventually cede the kitchen to you and realize that some dishes must be prepared by you, because you get fidgety if someone else cooks them in your kitchen.

Your spouse must appreciate or at least tolerate your enthusiasms for strange ingredients. The spouse must tolerate your turning the kitchen into an abattoir when you come upon a five-prong buck or twenty pounds of beef liver. She must get used to, or feign getting used to, lifting a pot lid and having a pig’s head stare at her. She might set limits on your farming experiments, but should be reasonable. And remember, she has every reason to be a bit miffed when your escargot farm turns out not to be as secure as you promised. Also, she is not betraying you when she decides to pass on the delicious grasshopper flan you made, nor is she betraying you when you are out for the weekend and you come home to find empty cans of chili.

On the other hand, if she is secretly eating Chef Boyardee, then you need to do an intervention.

Also, I don’t think that a marriage between a foodie and a vegetarian will work, nor between a foodie and a teetotaler. If you can’t share a bottle of 1995 Kenwood Jack London Ranch Cabernet Sauvignon with the perfectly made venison saddle with a huckleberry/demiglace reduction that you are serving, then you probably need to think about counseling. There are limits to the mixed marriage, and it is good to understand those going in.

You will inevitably have non-foodie friends who fancy themselves foodies, and you must cultivate patience. They will invite you over to dinner and attempt to impress you with dishes far beyond their abilities. They are not your students. When they ask what you thought of it, they don’t necessarily want to know. NEVER phrase constructive criticism with “you might want to…” Instead say, “I had a dish like this at XXX. It was a little different…I think they did…, but I am not so sure. This is quite good, though.” These types of folks inevitably get something right, so complement them on it. It will mean more to them than you will ever know.

If you are really unlucky you will end up in a situation where you will have to cook with one of these non-foodies. This will take a more pro-active approach. You will have to instantly evaluate their knife skills. If they are slow and inaccurate, then you will need to assign them other tasks. If they think that garlic powder is a valuable spice, then you will need to keep them well away from the seasoning. Be polite, but there are limits.

Sometimes a dish simply cannot wait for their dilly dallying. Sometimes they will hover around the stove dangerously. You will need to cultivate a firm command position. You might be tempted to kill them, but that is a mortal sin. Instead, as they drift around between the stove and the sink, and you need to move a heavy, hot pot along, use standard restaurant warnings: “Hot, behind you.” Then, after the danger has passed, bump them with an elbow, but do not make it look intentional. Not enough to hurt, but enough to remind them of their corporeal existence in a hazardous environment. If they still do not get it, you may have to knock them over. Again, do this with charity and love.

The final relationship to work on in a foodie household is with the children. They are your serfs and students as well as your flesh and blood. As soon as they are old enough, they need to be taught knife skills. Mostly they will learn from example, but they might need explanations as well. Always convey that cooking is a fun adventure, and that the market and kitchen and family dinner table are privileged places. Remember that they will think of washing dishes as playing in the water if presented right. This stuff will probably come naturally. What you need to really worry about is teaching good manners when eating at other people’s houses.

The time will come when you are at someone else’s house and the kids are served some wretched mess of overcooked meat, overcooked green beans, watery potatoes, all served with that horrendous concoction known as iced tea. They must be taught to eat everything and to appreciate it, even to ask for seconds of the limp, drab beans. If the food is really inedible (deviled eggs come to mind), then they should be coached in realistically feigning grave illness or making the plausible explanation of severe allergies. Remind them that the grave illness escape only works in the rarest of situations, and that if repeated too often, folks will expect them to actually die. They also need to realize that the allergy excuse is blown if they eat some dish later that has the allergen in it (so, if allergy to eggs is cited, merengue cannot be eaten with relish – of course my own excuse (which is completely true) is that I had a childhood allergy to eggs and never have been able to develop a taste for them, unless they are sufficiently masked in souffle, quiche, etc.).

Children should know that the consequences of picky eating at someone else’s house are dire and can even involve having to observe the Eastern discipline of Great Lent for months at a time. They must always know that it is a blessing to grow up in a foodie household, but that blessing can be taken away for the sin of ingratitude.

If your children develop strange affinities for such dreck as canned spaghetti, Velveeta, and so on, have no fear. They will do this, and will grow out of it. Don’t make a big deal of it, but don’t go out of your way to indulge it, either. If they like cheesewhiz, they can eat it when they are at someone else’s house. If they try to weasel out of the family meal to watch sitcoms, on the other hand, they should be threatened with being turned out and deprived of the family name.

Explore, cook, and eat well!

Variety Meat Recipe Research

I have been looking around the Internet for fun recipes for beef liver (I have two giant beef livers in my icebox) and the like. I came accross this one, and am linking to it. I have not checked the recipes yet, but anyone who refers to Rocky Mountain Oysters as "Montana Tendergroin" is OK in my book.

UPDATE: the recipes look good (or at least can be used as the basis for good eating). Be sure to check out "Ranch Fry."

Beef and cattle

Today Amalia and I were at my godfather's ranch for a cattle slaughter. I am a firm believer that one should know the source of one's food. If one cannot bear to see cattle being slaughtered and butchered, one should ask why (likewise, if anyone thinks that bullfighting is particularly cruel, then one should probably question their commitment to eating meat of any form).

There is a great side benefit to participating in your food from pasture to the table in that you understand the complex flavors of the food much better. Beef is a very complex flavor. When you can trace certain notes from the grass to the smell of the freshly butchered animal to the cooking to the final dish your understanding of beef cookery deepens.

Certain smells are almost overpowering when encountered in the natural state. I will not gross you out with details, but first there is a wave of unpleasantness. Then recognition hits: "ah hah! I know that smell, as it is one of the components to the beef flavor." Suddenly that smell falls completely into place and ceases to be all that unpleasant.

Part of the deal of this trip was that I got to take home all the variety meats (although the Mexican ranch hands had dibs on the heads, so no beef cheeks, and I was only able to come away with one tongue). I have to admit that I was a little disappointed to find that one of the bulls was not intact. My platter of criadillas will have to be a little smaller, but I can hardly complain, since even the Oakland Housewives Marketplace doesn't stock these. I ended up passing on the tripe, because the ranch does not have running water, and I was not about to transport tripe that hadn't had a blast from a high pressure hose first. Also tripe preparation is lengthy and difficult, so the 69 cents a pound that I can buy pre-washed tripe suddenly looked pretty good (commercially they wash tripe in machines that look like cement mixers, so they can do massive amounts cheaply).

When I got home I had the taks of trimming and packing all of this exciting stuff, which is a further chance to explore the smells of what eventually ends up on the table.

On a parenting level, I have to admit that I really had to think about whether to take Amalia to the actual slaughter. In the end I decided that it was a great learning experience, and I am glad that she saw the whole thing. She asked a million questions and only seemed bothered by the sound of the gun. She also was fascinated by the cleaning and trimming at home. She is very much looking forward to "eating the bull."

Last night at my godfather's house we were looking at his bovine library. He had a book on bulls that had some good bullfighting pictures. Amalia is keen on going back to the bullfights now. I was proud of her when she would not let me go on to the section on breeding, because she wanted to look at the bullfight pictures some more (she was especially smitten with one of El Cordobes on one knee, passing the bull with the muleta).

Anyway, I now have more beef liver (not calves' liver, but the full-flavored thing from three year olds) than I possibly know what to do with, so expect some beef liver experimentation reports. I will also be making a big batch of Oxtail soup, so you can demand a recipe for that as well (I make mine in a modified Alpine/Hungarian style with paprika, tomatoes and red wine, finished with dry sherry). Also, expect some reports on beef heart experiments.

Tomatoes

I gave in to temptation at the farmers' market and bought a couple of tomatoes. Too early. Let them ripen on the vine for another two weeks at least. They were getting there, but not quite there yet. Summer is just around the corner, though.

Savory Cheesecake Experiments

You may have been noticing a long-running battle between a couple of my regular comments' box denizens and myself over the issue of fish and cheese. One of the partisans is a dogmatic anti-fish and cheese person, reflecting the basic culinary rule. Two of us are on the side of evaluating each case individually. In the process we have come up with the name Cheddar-on-Trout, which we figured must be in the Lake District.

Other than that we have been working on recipes that combine cheese and seafood without doing damage to either (and we are not aiming for neutrality, rather dishes where the two sides actually improve one another - otherwise why bother?).

The obvious combination was smoked salmon and cream cheese (or caviar and cream cheese) and that led to thinking about savory cheesecakes, and that has quickly become an obsession. I have yet to don my lab coat and start mixing, but I am thinking of a crisp potato crust, a mildly garlic/herb chevre and smoked salmon or smoked sturgeon in layers.

Melanie volunteered me to cook a multi-course dinner extravaganza for our nephew's prom this weekend. This will be up in Redding where there is a paucity of examples of the culinary arts (although they have two places that are worthy of food pilgrimage - Buzz's Crab Stand (yes, I would recommend going from the Bay Area three hours inland for seafood - it is that good) and Bartell's Giant Burger), so I am trying to keep things tamer than I would for a similar gathering in Berkeley, where I would expect the teenagers to have their own preferences for which duck farm to use for confit.

I am thinking about springing something like this on them as an amuse bouche. Has anyone out there made a savory cheese cake before and have any reports of what worked and what didn't?

My Easter Menu (second draft)

A lot of this depends on availability of ingredients. For instance, finding stinging nettles is easy, if I have the time to harvest them, which I might tomorrow. I know of only a couple of folks who sell them, though.

Antipasti - mixed cured meats, olives, ceci with balsamico, thyme and olive oil, grissini, and lardo bruschetta.

Soup - Green garlic soup from the Chez Panisse cookbook

Primo - Pancetta and stinging nettle risotto, served with fresh pecorino sarde OR Fresh fetuccine with pancetta and fresh peas.

Secondo - Roast leg of lamb (possibly roasted over a potatoe gratin, following the recipe in Patricia Wells's Bistro Cooking, perhaps just with an herb rub. It depends on my mood)

Vegetable - ragout of fave, garlic and rosemary
Vegetable - parboiled and sauteed asparagus spears
Vegetable - sauteed pea shoots with garlic and anchovy

Salad - mixed spring greens in shallott vinaigrette with toasted pine nuts and avocado.

Colombina - Italian Easter cake baked in the form of a dove. We buy ours from the Victoria Pastry Company on Vallejo and Stockton in San Francisco.

The menu is subject to change. If anyone wants a recipe for the things that are not directly from commercially available books, let me know and I will post them.

Green Garlic!

I know that Easter approaches when beautiful green garlic shows up at the farmers' market. Melanie picked up some Italian green garlic, which looks like leeks. When I make out my Easter menu, I always have green garlic soup on it, so I have to start keeping an eye on my favorite farmers. Fortunately this year it looks better than ever. For the recipe, I use the one from the Chez Panisse cookbook. It is a great start to a good meal. I am still up in the air as to which lamb recipe to use. When it gets firmed up, I will post the menu with recipes.

In other exciting news, the friar in charge of decorating the church decided to cover the statues instead of removing them altogether. What makes this exciting is that I have spent the last five Holy Saturday mornings hauling the statues back out to the niches. This year I will be mercifully relieved of this duty. All we will have to do is pull off the cloth. Yipee! It is amazing how heavy plaster can be when you are on the tenth statue.

I love the tradition of draping the statues, though, not just because of laziness. It definitely conveys the gravity of the Passiontide, probably better than removing them altogether, which just gives the church a vaguely Calvinist feeling to it, like some stripped and desecrated Dutch church (or the work of Richard Vosko, except that we don't rip out the tabernacle, turn the church sideways, surround the altar with chairs, give pride of place to the organ pipes and then ignore the instrument for the tinkling of a piano and the strumming of guitars).

Coffee Geeks

As many of you know, I am a complete espresso fanatic. I recently bought a new espresso machine, giving up something like 18 years of hard-won practice of making tolerable espresso on a steam-powered machine for the ease and joy of a pump-driven unit. The old Frankenbrewer, a patchwork of parts from my old machine from high school and Melanie's college years machine, was on its last leg. I had been looking at a decent espresso machine/burr grinder by La Pavoni, but we decided to go with a super cheapo pump machine, rather than a mid range one that will only make me long for the amazing thing of beauty that will someday sit on my counter. Anyway, after pouring about a pounds' worth of espresso down the drain (thank God for Trader Joe's cheap beans - the only option for learning the ins and outs of a new machine) and replacing one of the parts with something from the old Frankenbrewer, I have been able to get a consistantly excellent espresso.

Anyway, with my new espresso machine, I have been experimenting with blends, and that gets me back into the habit of reading coffee literature. So it was with great delight that our paper ran a story about home roasting that mentioned Coffee Geek. What a website! They are geeks. They review grinders and tampers and are the sort who use terms like "heat exchanger" in casual conversation. My kind of folks. Needless to say, I am adding them to the links section!

Lenten Recipes

I should post some decent Lenten recipes, but I am feeling pretty uncreative these days, due to being the only one in the house not afflicted with a cold. I actually had little traces of it Wednesday, which I wrote up to staying up too late Tuesday, but by the end of the day it was pretty clear that it was an old fashioned cold. Melanie and Amalia had coughs and fevers and all that, but it missed me other than a little bit of a runny nose.

So, cooking has been a matter of old standards and leftovers. I have a restaurant to review Saturday night, but other than that I hope to be back in the swing of things. From what I saw at the market last week I am predicting that I will be cooking with root vegetables still, various greens, perhaps crabs, probably some sort of fish or another (I owe a good friend some tilapia recipes, so I might buy some tilapia and do some experiments).

Also, I am always open to requests if you want some ideas on any ingredient I can probably come up with something.

Balance

Last night I was up until 11 making gumbo for the National Shrine of St. Francis of Assisi's Mardi Gras Fete. I got home and Melanie said, "you smell like fish." It must have had to do with peeling pounds and pounds of shrimp and crabs. So, tonight for balance, I got to stay up until 11 eating said gumbo. Yum.

The not-so-secret to a good gumbo is the dark roux, which is a tedious thing to make if ever tedium were encountered in the kitchen. Beyond that, the sky is the limit as to what you put in: rabbit, chicken, shrimp, greens, goose, hephalumps and woosles, whatver. We used chicken, shrimp, crab, andouille sausage, ham, mustard greens, lacinato kale, and la trinite: a blend of capsicum, onion, and celery. For seasonings I used dried thyme, dried basil, dried oregano, cayenne pepper, sriracha pepper paste, garlic, and finished with file powder. I boiled the shrimp and crab shells to make the broth for the gumbo, so it was really seafoody. If anyone really wants the detailed recipe, I will be happy to provide it, but it is long and I ask that it only be requested if one has an inkling to actually make it. If it is just idle curiosity, then please look at a few gumbo recipes first and then, if you have any questions, feel free to ask.

For some good recipes in a book, I recommend The Commander's Kitchen by Ti Adelaide Martin and Jamie Shannon. This is the cookbook for the Commander's Palace in NOLA, which is a fantastic restaurant, well worth a stop.

Happy Mardi Gras!
Laissez les bons temps rouler!

My apologies to Alicia...

Especially as she celebrates her 30th Anniversary!

BUT...

She commented that she misses the California produce, particularly the strawberries in April and May, and, while I feel for her, I must report that we are getting the first spring strawberries from San Diego County at our farmers' market and they are lovely. Irises are blooming in our backyard, the asparagus is good again, and it still looks like autumn two blocks away.

So, for all of my readers stuck in the permafrost of the East, let me invite you to fly over here and have homemade strawberry shortcake with us!

Toddler Iron Chef

Last night Amalia had rabbit for the first time. My mother cooked it for us (we were in Sacramento for the day), and it was delicious (served with tomato sauce over polenta). When it arrived at the table I exclaimed "Rabbit! I love rabbit!" My mother gave me one of those horrified looks and a "shhhh." You see, Amalia is at that age where animals are all cute and cuddly.

However, I will not give in to Bambism, and I always try to show Amalia examples of animals eating other animals, with rational explanations that some animals eat other animals, that people eat animals, and that this is what God intended. So I had to make it clear that we were indeed eating rabbit.

I have to admit that I was a little worried that Amalia would react poorly, as seeing the rabbits at the farm is one of her favorite things. She didn't really react other than wanting to eat that yummy looking stuff in front of her. She wanted more, so I gave her a scoop of polenta and sauce, as a bed to put the meat on. Before I had a chance to put the meat on, she looked at me and said, "Babbo, I want more rabbit."

The long and short of it is that Amalia is a confirmed rabbit eater. When asked what we should have for lunch, she did not give me her usual answer (sausage), but said rather enthusiasticly, "rabbit!" So I guess that the next time that we play Toddler Iron Chef, she is going to have me stewing rabbit.

Of course, eating rabbit makes me crave paella with rabbit, seafood and chorizo, so the first thing I did when we got home was to take an inventory of the required ingredients. We may have to take a drive to Galvan's or the Spanish Table tomorrow.

Speaking of the Spanish Table, I bought a jar of cardoni over there a while back. When I made fondue the other night I thought that it would be fun to dip cardoni in it. I was a little nervous, as I had never had the jarred variety. They were quite good, although they are cooked to the point of falling apart, which made them a little tricky for fondue. At $2.99 for a good sized jar, I highly recommend them. Preparing cardoni is a labor intensive task with lots of peeling and paring and parboiling in acidulated water. I will still do it, mainly to encourage farmers to keep growing the stuff (and I do like the way that the fresh ones hold up), but with a jar of them on hand, it makes a cardoni gratin a snap. I will probably put them on salami sandwiches, too.

Kitchen terror

I am not a baker. Melanie usually does that. If I use an oven, it usually involves a gratin or roasting some hapless animal. Once in awhile I will bake something, but it is rare. I have little patience for levelling cups of flour and poking at cakes with a sharp knife to see if there is any goo on the end. I get my kneading workout on fresh pasta dough, and I can buy great bread easily in the Bay Area. Sure, I'll make a pastry crust for a pate or a pie crust for pheasant, polenta and cheese pie, but generally I stick to the stove top.

However, Melanie enjoys baking, and she is good at it. Often she bakes some sort of yummy thing for our Monday breakfast on Sunday night. Today she and Amalia were down with some sort of cold and I was too lazy to rush out to buy breakfast food (go figure - too lazy to drive five minutes, but not too lazy to bake something. My laziness is probably more of a desire to stay in my lair). I thought that it would be fun to make panettone, but we were out of sultanas, and that brought up the driving issue.

Melanie wanted coffee cake, since I had nixed panettone. Fine. Coffee cake. Who doesn't like to start the day with a good, spicy coffee cake and a side of bacon? Sure. Then it hit me: this is one of those horrid recipes that confounds my every instinct.

The secret to a good coffee cake is to have a good "biscuit hand," which is a light touch with the mixing. To me, a proper coffee cake batter looks like lumpy dreck and conjures up images of biting into clumps of raw flour. Of course it doesn't work that way, but I have to seriously fight the temptation to just beat it into perfect smoothness.

But I resist! I pour this ugly, lumpy, oatmeal-looking goo into the buttered dish and put it in the oven and by some miracle or other, a good coffee cake comes out. It happens every time I have to make one of these things. I look at the batter and think: "nothing good will come out of this" but then it turns out fine.

There is a lesson in this, and a fairly basic one at that. Here is something that I know from experience, from authority (all good cookbooks stress undermixing biscuit-type batters), from history (watching others do it), yet it still confounds my every instinct and sets up my expectation of failure. And when the results confirm history, experience and authority, it still seems like something of a miracle.

When the object at stake is bigger and more consequential than a dollar or two of raw ingredients and 15 minutes of my time, yikes.

Two exciting finds at the Farmers' Market

Yesterday I bought white beetroot with greens attached and sugarloaf chicory, both new to me. I will give a report on those when I have experimented. I am probably going to roast the beets, sprinkle them with vinegar and serve them with their short-braised greens. The chicory will probably get wilted and served in a warm salad (the farmer's suggestion). Full report later.

1946 cocktails

One of my Christmas presents was a 1946 edition (sixth printing) of Mr. Boston's DeLuxe Official Bartender's Guide. Oh what fun! The cocktail has greatly improved along with the tastes of most Americans. Most of the drinks in the book are way too sweet.

Of course we have to understand that a lot of these cocktails came about during Prohibition, and the booze was of questionable quality. To mask this, plenty of additives were needed. For instance, the martini was once a very heavily vermouthed creation, which makes sense when you consider the quality of bathtub gin. I imagine that I might even enjoy a vodkatini if it were doctored up with vermouth and bitters, as this book suggests doing to the noble gin.

The other reason that these drinks were so sticky is that they were being served with food that borders on the bizarre. The section on snacks is a veritable catalog of what Lileks calls "regrettable food." Of all of the recipes, only a couple look remotely edible. What is really amazing is how labor intensive all of this junk was, mostly due to overly fussy presentation. I suppose if I had to eat and pretend to enjoy these things, a few sloe gin fizzes would have been essential.

I have always been puzzled over the disdain that European cookbooks have for pre-dinner cocktails, since I have never found the pre-prandial martini to be a sufficient impairment to tasting the dish, but looking at what folks were drinking back then, I understand. Americans were novice drinkers for the most part, often indulging in grotesque excesses of syrupy booze.

I cannot imagine any chef complaining about diners drinking one or two well-prepared modern cocktails (and knowing the chefs that I do, the idea of them complaining at all about alcohol consumption is really pretty funny).

Speaking of overindulgence in liquor, I continue to be baffled by New Year's Eve. Watching folks stagger (or worse) around North Beach is incomprehensible. They really don't seem to be enjoying themselves, rather they drink to the loss of reason as some sort of obligation, although to what I will never know. After dinner, I went with Amalia's godfather and one of the priests who was concelebrating to Mass at the National Shrine of St. Francis of Assisi. After Mass we had espresso and a couple of hours of pleasant conversation. Unfortunately mass ended at midnight with the blessing of the city with the relic of St. Francis, and a couple of hours meant that I was walking to BART at the same time that the bars were letting out. It seemed like one of those moralizing etchings of a parade of fools. Do the Mormons encourage this sort of thing so they can paint all consumption of liquor with the same brush?

If my own experience with booze was this, I would probably join the Temperance Movement too.

Anyway, Mass was beatiful as usual, but walking through the flood of drunks in the rain made me envy Melanie and Amalia (who were too tired after dinner to join us at Mass). When I got home they were sound asleep in the warm house, while I was cold, wet and baffled by the behavior of presumably otherwise intelligent folks.

I was also a bit miffed by the rain, as part of my New Year's Eve tradition is sprinting up Telegraph hill after the blessing to watch the fireworks. I was discouraged by the weather and was thus deprived of my annual exercise. I guess I could have made the run after Mass on Sunday, but it is a painful sprint up a steep hill and without fireworks, it just seems futile (I only believe in running for very good reason). I suppose I will have to go swimming or something to make up for it this year. Or perhaps carrying Amalia around (at 33 pounds) is doing the trick.