Quenelle Plus

Sasha Yum Yum's Paris Cheesecake

2011-06-09T12:18:00.000-07:00

Sasha Finkesztajn's (a.k.a. Sasha Yum Yum) shop on the Rue des Rosiers in the 4th arr. was one of my first stops on my April trip to Paris. I love this place--when Kathryn and I were living in Paris, it was our favorite place to go for French food-terminology tutoring/picking up dinner.

One of my favorite things about it is the cheesecake. For a long time, I assumed because it was so different than American style cheesecake that this must be the fabled Russian vatrushka, but this time I noticed that the vatrushka was on a different shelf and are round instead of rectangular. So ... these babies are just simple, awesome cheesecake.

They're thick, nearly two inches, with a light crust base. The taste is creamy but light enough that you don't end up with dairy tongue. My favorite is the slight carmelized flavor of the browned top. It comes in flavors like framboise, citron, and cerise.

Skye Gyngell Has a New Cookbook!

2011-01-31T13:00:00.000-08:00

On Saturday, I got an email from Nancy with the news: Skye Gyngell has a new cookbook! How I Cook looks as promising and quirky as her last two cookbooks. To celebrate, Nancy proposed a meal, offered to make the main course, a lamb stew with peppers, tomatoes, and chick peas, and recruited Kathryn and I to round out the meal. Kathryn made slow-cooked courgettes that, on first bite, won over everyone at the table who had always been lukewarm on squash.

My assignment: rice pudding with sherry-infused prunes. Cool thing number one about the rice pudding was that it called for arborio rice. Great idea. Overall, it was a fairly simple recipe, with the primary ingredients of milk, cream, lemon zest (I used the first ripe lemon from my new tree), a split vanilla bean, and sugar.

It was everything I want in a rice pudding: creamy, rich and sweet but not cloying, with a perfect interplay of texture.

Picture to follow. For now, here's the recipe (caution: metric system ahead)

Rice Pudding with Poached Prunes

250g Risotto rice (holds flavor better than other types of rice)
900ml whole milk
1 vanilla pod, split lengthways
peel of 1 lemon
small pinch of salt
150g caster sugar
200ml double cream

Poached prunes:
150g plump, soft prunes
4 tbsp Pedro Ximenez sherry
5 tbsp boiling water

Rinse the rice well under cold running water, then tip it into a heavy-based saucepan. Add the milk, vanilla pod, lemon peel and salt and bring almost to a simmer over a medium heat. Now turn down the heat as low as possible (a heat-diffuser mat is useful here) and put the lid on, placing it slightly off center, so it isn't quite covering the pan. Cook, stirring every now and then for 20 minutes, or until the rice is cooked but still retains the slightest bite.

In the meantime, stone the prunes and place in a small bowl. Pour over the sherry, followed by the boiling water and leave to steep for 20 minutes.

When the rice is cooked al dente, stir in the sugar and cream and cook for another 10 minutes. The pudding needs to be creamy with a soft consistency--it should drop easily from a spoon.

Transfer the rice pudding to a serving dish and allow to stand for 5-10 minutes. Serve warm, not piping hot, topped with poached prunes.

Serves 4-6

Eton Mess

2011-01-30T10:31:00.000-08:00

Couldn't resist posting one more. This is the dessert that greeted us after our drive to the cabin: Kathy's Eton Mess. It was wonderful; decadent summer on a plate. I hope we get a similar welcome next year!

5-Minute Vacation: Summer Eating in Tahoe

2011-01-30T10:27:00.000-08:00

It's a cold and rainy morning, and I just came across this photo of one of the spreads from last summer at the cabin in Tahoe. Eating outside every night, surrounded by family that loves to cook and loves to eat, has come to be one of my absolute favorite parts of the year. I'm already looking forward to next August, and planning what I'll make. I'm thinking tamales might be in order, since I recently got (from Kerri) a recipe for the best pork tamales I've had in my entire life. Also, I think the ice cream maker will be coming along this year. I'd love to recreate the success of the mint julep ice cream I made by combining the Chez Panisse Desserts recipes for fresh mint ice cream and Bourbon ice cream. And I'd love to make an herbal ice cream sundae of some sort, with basil ice cream and thyme ice cream, topped with candied nuts.

Pie Photo Shoot

2011-01-25T20:12:00.000-08:00

Just published America's Most Unforgettable Pies. What a fun story to research, taste for, and write. Found out all sorts of interesting things, including the following:

- Most key lime pie is made from key lime concentrate, not fresh squeezed limes. And that can make all the difference.
- "Shoo-Fly Pie and Apple Pan Dowdy" is a great song that gets easily stuck on autoloop in the mind. But with lines like "Makes your eyes light up, your tummy say 'howdy'," it's not a hardship.
- You don't have to live in Northern Michigan to enjoy sour cherry pie from Northern Michigan. That's what overnight shipping is for.
- Buttermilk pie makes people weep with happiness.

Pictured above is the green chile apple pie with a cheddar crust and apple streusal from Chile Pie (& Ice Cream) in San Francisco. Last weekend, Joel and I went out for a little tasting and photo shoot. The operation was a success.

Taco Rainbow

2010-11-30T22:03:00.000-08:00

Found these cactus tortillas at Monterey Market, roasted gypsy peppers and steamed purple potatoes for an alternative to taco night. Sauteed leeks and chard, and added some of the pinto beans I made earlier in the day. The results aren't particularly authentic, but celebrate the best of what's fresh, and make for leftovers that I'm going to enjoy right now.

Grilled Pizza Success

2010-11-03T22:23:00.000-07:00

Put together a super-team for pizza grilling, with results bordering on perfection. I've grilled pizza before, but never have I ended up with such magnificent pizza: Thin and crunchy crust with just a hint of smokiness, toppings like chanterelles and tallegio.

One note for future reference: mature dandelion greens are really, really bitter. The sort of bitter that no advice from Mark Bittman about braising and lemon acidity can counteract. We ended up composting it because it was simply inedible. I'm stiking to young dandelion greens from now on.

Carnitas at La Costa in Brentwood

2010-10-06T08:53:00.000-07:00

We stumbled across this place (a local chain, as it turns out, in Brentwood) on our way back from Bear Valley a few years ago, and were blown away by the carnitas. Flavorful, chewy and crisp, we then talked about them for a year-and-a-half before planning a Delta trip with the purpose of eating here again. Here is the documentation of that second trip, this time with Monica, Frank, Matt (pictured), Kathyn, Nathan, and Joel. We took a rather strange naturalist-guided boat trip, stopped in at Locke and then at that bar with all the animal heads, and ended the afternoon with these carnitas.

Love for Old Kitchens

2010-09-12T21:44:00.000-07:00

At least in fabulous and well preserved historic homes. This one is from Vikingsholm in Tahoe.

Camping Food

2010-09-02T21:48:00.000-07:00

I call this Junk Food Chicken, because it has a sort of junk-food sweetness to it. It's a combination of shredded chicken, chipotles, vinegar, brown sugar, ketchup, soy sauce, and a few other ingredients, all simmered together and then put into tacos or burritos with some cooling avocado. I made a big batch for a lunch while we were camping.

Caprese with Burrata? Oh My Yes

2010-08-18T09:00:00.000-07:00

I spend most of the year looking forward to the dry-farmed tomatoes from SeaLevel Farms. To me, they're everything tomatoes should be: small, with a dense consistency, not an ounce of mealiness, and flavor that makes me, for a brief moment, believe that there is nothing in the universe beyond this one bite.

And while run-of-the-mill fresh mozarella is always a lovely accompaniment, I wanted to take it a step further and make it with burrata, since if I get in early enough on Saturdays, I have a great source for it.

Finish that off with the tiniest bit of arbequina olive oil, a little aged balsamic, some sea salt and freshly ground pepper, and I was almost there. I just needed a bit of basil.

For years, I had trouble growing basil. When I purchased the basil plant, it would be lush and thriving, but within weeks, it would wither. I experimented with different amounts of water and shade, put them in the ground and in pots, and just couldn't find the right happy basil equation. But then someone at the Schoolyard mentioned that basil likes to grow in the shade of tomato plants. I had immediate success with that approach, and now each year in spring I plant a large pot with one of two tomato plants (usually purchased from the Edible Schoolyard's Mother's Day sale) and a variety of interesting basil. And that ensures fabulous basil (not to mention tomatoes) all summer long.

The Joys of Research

2010-07-18T10:19:00.000-07:00

Ice cream is gorgeous. It's the supermodel of frozen desserts. Sure, its career is fleeting, but it's just so damned photogenic when it's at the top of its game.

I didn't really appreciate this fact until I wrote America's Best Ice Cream Shops, which published today. I've always known ice cream tastes delicious, but just look at the photos in this gallery, and you'll see what I mean. Ice cream transcends the medium, offering the hint of a taste even in its two-dimensional form.

Thanks to Kathryn for the picture!

Butternuts porkslap?

2010-07-06T10:49:00.000-07:00

Is it a yes please, or no thanks?

Instead of figuring it out, I opted for cilanto-lime soda with vodka.

Blueberry Galette

2010-07-06T10:43:00.000-07:00

I like to think of it as the lazy cook's pie. In the equation, I am said lazy cook. There's no trimming rolled-out dough to fit a tin, no weighting down, no crimping, no blind-baking before filling. It's little more than rolling out the chilled dough, heaping it full of fruit, folding up the edges, and baking. But it tastes perfect every time, and it's the pie equivalent of "Supper is dinner with its shirt undone. It's relaxed, languid, louche." (Yes, I just quoted from the Leftover Supper episode of Posh Nosh; watch it here.)

Blueberries seemed like just the thing for the Fourth, so trusty sous-chef (who said she feels like a little sister whenever she cooks at my house) Anna and I, armed with two quarts of pesticide-free blueberries from Stockton, created this one.

Details: After AJ said they don't use shortening at the bakery, I switched my go-to dough recipe from Macrina (which uses shortening) to the Chez Panisse Cafe version. Here it is:

(makes enough for 2 galettes; freeze one and you'll make your future self very happy)

2 c all-purpose flour
1 t sugar
1/4 t salt
6 oz (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter

Combine the flour, sugar, salt in a bowl, then cut the butter into 1/2 inch pieces. Add half the butter and work in with fingertips (or in the food processor- this recipe doesn't mention it, but I'm pretty sure I remember Mark Bittman saying it was okay) until the dough has the texture of coarse oatmeal. Add the rest of the butter and work into the dough until the biggest pieces are lima-bean sized. Pour about 1/2 c of ice water into the dough in several stages, tossing and mixing between additions. Don't try to dampen dough evenly; it should look ropy and rough. Stop adding water when there are still a few bits of dry flour remaining. Gather dough into 2 balls and wrap each tightly with plastic wrap, pressing down to flatten each. Refrigerate several hours or overnight before rolling (may be frozen for a few weeks).

Roll the ball into a 14-inch circle on a lightly floured board. Refrigerate the rolled-out dough for 1/2 hour before using (I always forget this step, but it still comes out well).

As for the filling, here's a good way to go for most fruit: Mix and sprinkle over the dough the following: 2 T sugar, 1 T ground-up almonds, 1 T flour. Heap about 1 1/4 fruit on top, leaving a 2-inch border to fold over. Spinkle fruit with about 2-3 T sugar. Fold up the border, then brush it with a bit of melted butter and sprinkle with sugar. Cook at 400 for 40-50 minutes. Let it cool for 15 minutes or so.

Tested: Sesame Chicken with Noodles

2010-06-09T12:24:00.000-07:00

Tested and loved these noodles with sesame chicken. This one is getting a place in the rotation.

Cucumber Spoon Salad

2010-05-12T09:34:00.000-07:00

I so wish this picture were better, because spoon salad is so pretty and so delicious, it really deserves to be properly celebrated.

I came across cucumber spoon salad at Oleana in Cambrige with Anne. We ordered the tasting menu, and this was my absolute favorite. It's so totally surprising, with layers like sorrel granita and flavors including cucumber, dill, red onion, and grapes. Love.

When In Nebraska ...

2010-04-12T09:28:00.000-07:00

Make vinegar rolls. Joel's dad's family reunion in Northeastern Nebraska brought all new culinary frontiers. I had been hearing about the fabled vinegar roll (a Depression-era holdover that Joel's dad's generation talks about but doesn't actually feel the need to make or eat anymore) for a while, and so when someone said they had the recipe, I volunteered to make it.

It was ... okay? In all fairness, I didn't follow the recipe fully. I just couldn't believe that you actually needed 10 cups of vinegar for this thing. So it came out kind of dry. Ah well, next time. Or not.

You Are: Delicious

2010-02-08T09:21:00.000-08:00

Sprouted garbanazo beans, lovely fresh dates, and crunchy almonds. A lovely way to greet guests. (Full disclosure: I had originally intended to fry/roast the garbanzo beans, but ended up not having time.)

Tapas in Puerto Vallarta

2010-01-30T09:10:00.000-08:00

Should have posted this one earlier, but just getting around to it now. We went to Puerto Vallarta to eat, mostly. We ate at taco trucks, traditional Mexican restaurants, and to mix things up, a vegetarian restaurant with this totally crazy (delicious) cactus juice. We also walked just up the street from our B&B to go to this off-the-beaten path tiny tapas joint for a light meal one evening.

Best Tacos We Had in Puerto Vallarta

2010-01-14T09:18:00.000-08:00

Little stand, lotta locals. We followed the scent for the last block, then ordered at the little window and grabbed two stools. The women behind the counter outfitted us with our tacos and three options of salsa (hot, hotter, and you-cannot-withstand-the-heat). The tacos were small but packed with flavor. And the flavor didn't depend just on the filling; the freshly made tortillas tasted of comfort and corn, and were so warm I needed the little piece of wax paper to pilot the taco. Both chicken and beef were slightly spicy and had the wonderful flavors of fire.

Boo

2009-01-28T14:13:00.000-08:00

Hershey is going to close down Scharffen Berger. But will keep the name. Now I regret always putting off taking the factory tour.

Scharffen Berger, you are dead to me. Charles Chocolates, hello!

Lunar New Year Gelato Flavors at Naia

2009-01-28T14:07:00.000-08:00

Gelateria Naia, the narrow little gelato spot in downtown Berkeley (there's also a location on the UC Berkeley campus and ... wow, I just looked and there are a bunch of locations all over the Bay Area now) has some yummy sounding flavors in honor of the Lunar New Year. They are:

- Five spice gelato. The five spices being anise, cinnamon, cloves, fennel, and ginger.

- Pomelo sorbetto. Pomelos are, according to the announcement email, a traditional and auspicious citrus fruit for the Lunar New Year.

Paris Chocolate tour

2008-12-15T15:08:00.000-08:00

A NYT article about chocolate shops in Paris...

Thanksgiving Table

2008-12-01T15:29:00.000-08:00

By the time the food was ready I had lost track of the camera, but here's a pic of the set table. The table is so abnormally wide that we managed to get almost all the food (turkey, mashed potatoes, two cranberry sauces, two vegetable dishes, biscuits, bread, two types of gravy, two types of stuffing) on the table.

Alexis' Turkey Cupcakes

2008-12-01T15:24:00.000-08:00

Alexis decided she was going to make turkey-shaped (but thankfully, just vanilla- and chocolate-flavored) cupcakes for the six kids we had over on Thanksgiving. Her creative process was complex, and ended up involving toothpicks and cut up bits of those weird candy peanut foamy candies (she cut them up to make the snood-and no, I did not know the flap over the beak was called a snood until I just looked it up).

They got six thumbs up from the five-feet-and-under crowd. Alexis was triumphant.

My Favorite Gravy Receptacle

2008-12-01T15:16:00.000-08:00

In France, Kathryn and I became obsessed with these antique gravy pourers that have a spout at either end and allow you to choose either the M side, which stands for "mince" or thin, or the G side, which stands for "gras" (I think...I'm sure I'll hear from Joel shortly if I'm wrong). The G side pours from the top, allowing more of the fat to trickle out, while the G spout starts at the bottom to keep the fats at the top from pouring out.

We moved back with a number of them, which we gave as gifts that year. At the time, I wasn't in a gravy-boat collecting space, but now I covet it and wish I had kept one for myself. Luckily, my mom still has the one we gave her, and I'm counting on her short memory and general disorganization when it comes to rarely used kitchen implements to buy me some time with this one. It came from one of the Paris flea markets (either Clingancourt or Vanves, I don't remember which).

Two Turkeys

2008-12-01T15:02:00.000-08:00

I'm a convert. We were a large enough group (19) to need two turkeys, and since it was my first turkey cooking experience, I asked Nancy and John to make a second one. They live close enough that it would only take a few minutes to zip over to our house once it was done, and I knew they'd do a great job on it.

I didn't order in time to get a heritage turkey, so I opted for a Mary's (localish) organic free-range turkey instead. I used the America's Test Kitchen recipe that involves turning the turkey four times to distribute the juices and brown the bird. It went well, even the turning part, which had me manhandling the turkey with paper-towel wrapped hands.

It was moist and delicious, but in terms of flavor my Broad-breasted White just couldn't compete with the Bourbon Red Nancy and John cooked. What's the difference? Well, to start with, it looks totally different:

And the meat tasted really good. Though I try to cultivate an appreciation for dark meat, I prefer the white meat, and on this bird, the flavor of the white meat was glorious. But, there's a lot less of it, which meant a quarter of the table didn't get to try the white meat. Which is fine if you have an even distribution of turkey-meat preference. But we trended light, which was fine since we had the second turkey.

In the end, the trade-off was worth it. Next time I'll plan ahead more, spend the extra money, and get a heritage turkey.

Salmon at Taylor Creek

2008-11-17T15:17:00.000-08:00

Finally, after five years of wanting to go to Taylor Creek in Lake Tahoe during the annual salmon run, Joel and I made the trip.

When I was at King's College in London, my friend Ben, who loved to cook, made some lovely salmon in a caper-lemon-cream sauce, little red potatoes, and green beans for me one night. We also had a lot of white wine, and that night when I went to sleep full and a little drunk, I had an extremely vivid dream. I was a salmon turning red, developing a hook jaw, and swimming up stream. I could feel my body starting to decay and I was surrounded by other salmon that were dying. To escape my salmony fate, I crawled up on the shore and caught a commuter bus towards a city I could see in the distance. I'm not a spirit animal type of person, but after that dream I didn't eat salmon for about two years. But I'm back on the pony now.

At Taylor Creek, you walk down this beautiful little path through aspen groves and past wetlands. Eventually you get to the stream, where you can go out onto the sandy bank and watch the fish. The creek was packed. Some fish were, as advertised, swimming upstream; others were just hanging out, guarding egg packets they had already deposited in creek bottom from other fish and hungry ducks. Already there were a lot of dead fish washed up on the bank and floating against rocks. I overheard a woman say that if you got there at five in the morning you could often see black bears come down to the stream and feast.

Test Recipe: Sole Francese

2008-11-17T15:05:00.000-08:00

This month's recipes to test included this sole francese from a new cookbook by a New York City Southern Italian restaurant. I've been trying to eat more fish, and more sustainable/not laced with heavy metals fish specifically, and Monterey Fish Market had a sole that fit the bill, so last night I made it.

An hour and many, many dirty pots, pans, and plates later, Joel and I sat down to dinner. I was a little worried because the sauce required a ton of butter, but didn't look thick or rich. Instead, it looked pale and watery. And the fingerling potatoes, which had been boiled in advance and left to sit (to be rewarmed in the oven at the last minute along with the roasted mushrooms and the sole), hadn't gotten properly warm in the amount of time the recipe alloted for them. And since this is a recipe test, I dutifully didn't stray from the instructions (a feat which has taken a lot of willpower. As it turns out, my natural relationship to recipes is to use them as a general roadmap and then alter according to my mood, gut instinct, and opinions).

The other thing that worried me was the amount of lemon I was supposed to put in the sauce. It called for the juice of two lemons, but I was halving the recipe, so I used the juice of one lemon. I think my lemon was larger or juicier than the writer had accounted for, because it masked with its intense citrusity any subtle flavors the sauce may have had.

All in all, I was underwhelmed. For the number of dishes this meal created, the amount of oil and butter it required, and the length of time it took to put it all together, I thought it was pretty disappointing.

Nantucket Tasting Tour: Oran Mor

2008-10-27T18:50:00.001-07:00

On the final night of our visit to see Sean and Sue, we went to Oran Mor, a restaurant they had been wanting to try. Good luck for us to have visited when we did.

The restaurant is a series of small rooms upstairs in an old converted house near the water in Nantucket Town. As elsewhere, the crowd was a little stuffy and we heard multiple people marvel at Sean's extended, pointy goatee (Sue calls him, alternately, Mr. Whiskers and ZZ Top), wondering if he was "in a rock and roll band."

Maybe to shake off the threatening clouds of formality, someone suggested ordering a lot of things and sharing them so that we all wouldn't be marooned, alone, in our personal three-course islands.

My favorite dish of the night was this: Hudson Valley foie gras served with toasted brioche and (I think I'm remembering this correctly) balsamic-pickled brandied cherries. Usually, foie gras is just so smoooth I find it hard to like, but here it was served with just the right combination of flavors and texture. The rich, buttery brioche was nice and toasty on the outside but still yielding and bready on the inside, and the unusual boozy piquancy of the cherries totally worked with it.

Nantucket Tasting Tour: Sconset Market

2008-10-27T18:39:00.000-07:00

Sue then led us to the little general store up the street, where we got ice cream:

And ate it while strolling down the most charming seaside lane I've ever, ever stepped foot upon:

It seems like it would be utter misery to live there, because you'd always feel obligated to be doing something appropriately charming, and there's only so many hours a day you can tend flowers, whitewash a fence, or pour tea for guests out on the verandah.

This lane was so cute I don't even remember eating the ice cream. It's a total flavor blank. Charm-induced taste amnesia. Oh well.

Nantucket Tasting Tour: Summer House

2008-10-27T18:26:00.000-07:00

Our last full day visiting transient island-dwellers Sean and Sue, we piled in the Jeep and drove towards the long peninsula of sand that ends at the reconstructed and now solar-powered lighthouse. When I returned to California, I discovered all sorts of Scott-related things, like that his great-grandfather was the lighthouse keeper in the pre-pre-solar days. Back when the light was powered with whale tears or something similarly, authentically Nantuckan.

After getting lost, getting found (through Alexis' creepily Big-Brothery phone that knew where we were so could tell us where to go), driving along the beach, climbing the lighthouse, sticking our feet in the water, and driving back, we went to the Summer House for lunch.

We sat at the bar and watched the shiny people laze about in $3,000 robes by the pool. The bartender made me an approximation of a Pimm's Cup. And we listened to the bartenders gossip and ate lobster pizza, another version of a tuna tartare sundae, and crab cakes. With a microgreen hat:

Nantucket Tasting Tour: Boarding House

2008-10-27T18:10:00.001-07:00

A muddled but delightful combination of the aforementioned passion fruit cocktail, a comfortable table in the dining room, another bottle of wine, and the total willingness of the group to order and share everything anyone was even slightly curious about led to my favorite kind of full: the one where you had a few deliberate bites of many things and gotten to talk your way through it with other people who are as giddy about the tastes as you are.

We had an interesting antipasti plate with a tomato-pomegranate spread, a chickpea and raisin terrine, and something with carrot that I do not perfectly remember. We also tried a pizzetta (pizza named after me) topped with black truffle cheese and mission fig, a pretty pasta, the well-named chicken under a brick, and a few more dishes that I no longer remember. (Until I was in my late 20s, I could be counted on to always remember everything that I ate in social atmospheres, even years later. Alas.)

For dessert, we got something that I'm totally going to make sometime and people will, in turn, steal the idea from me and in this way thousands of people will end meals happy and satisfied, indulged but not overwrought. Nostalgic but hip.

It was this:

Warm chocolate-chocolate chip cookies and little milkshakes in generous shot glasses.

It's like a French Laundry sort of thing, like coffee and doughnuts or peanut butter and jellies, only it doesn't take 47 hours, a $100 chinois (how I covet thee, and Thomas Keller swears I would be a better person with you in my kitchen), six yards of cheesecloth, and 200 sous chefs to make.

Nantucket Tasting Tour: Boarding House Bar

2008-10-27T17:50:00.000-07:00

When you're with Sean and Sue, any trip to any restaurant begins at the bar. Often, if the seats are comfortable and the mood is right, things progress no farther, at least geographically. We had learned this much by the time we entered the Boarding House for dinner, about 10 minutes in advance of our reservation. We grabbed a corner of the bar and Sean led the charge by suggesting we order this particular passion fruit cocktail. Sean and Sue might, even as I write this, be opening a bar somewhere in the Caribbean, so for them, sampling the cocktails where ever they go is not just habit, it's forward thinking as well.

Oh my god it was good. I don't like sticky sweet drinks. In fact, a lot of the time I'm not even a huge fan of juice but this...this went straight into my top ten favorite cocktails of all time list. To me, most sweet liquids taste narrow and light. They hover lightly on the tongue as if both of us know they're not there to stick around for a chat, not there to titillate. They're just the forgettable delivery mechanism.

But this had flavors that roamed, that really worked the room. There was a bit of citrus, the mild natural sweet of passion fruit, the colder than cold efficiency of vodka. It was a sipping pleasure. And it came in its own little martini shaker. Love.

Nantucket Tasting Tour: Steamers

2008-10-27T17:41:00.000-07:00

Alexis and I, new to steamers, were unprepared for the sight. They seem normal and clamlike on the outside, even served in this case with an unintimidating slice of toast. But then you open them, and out pops this:

And it looks like eight kinds of gross. Add to that the phallic unsheathing that is part of the preparation for eating and it's amazing this is something it's acceptable to do in public.

Dipped in butter though, they're reasonably tasty.

Nantucket Tasting Tour: Captain Tobey's

2008-10-27T17:38:00.000-07:00

We sat down and kicked off the lobster roll quest. The first lobster roll coasted atop a glorified hot dog bun and some lettuce, piped with some kind of mayo-plus sauce, and served with seasoned bar fries. It was a pleasant eating experience, but I still suspected that there was just something New Englandy that I would just never understand enough to properly appreciate the lobster roll.

Speaking of cult foods of the salty Northeast, Sue then introduced us to steamers, one of the least attractive foods I've seen in decades.

Nantucket Tasting Tour: It Begins

2008-10-27T17:01:00.000-07:00

Our charming Nantucket hosts Sean and Sue are serious about two things: eating and drinking. No wait, that order isn't right. Drinking and eating. (Editor's Note: This all happened in August. It's been a busy few months. Marriage, obsessing about the election, etc.)

They picked us up from the airstrip in a Jeep all pasted up with those sticker permits that let you drive on the beach and we headed for the Cherry Pit (pictured here), a grey-washed little lean-to behind the larger house named the Cherry Tree on, of course, Cherry Lane, about a seven-minute walk from downtown.

We would eat our way through Nantucket, they promised. I was giddy. We started at the Brandt Point Bar at the White Elephant where we kicked things off with drinks, crispy crab and lobster cakes, and ahi tuna martinis. We sat at the bar outside, overlooking the harbor and its boats, its promenades, and its beaches teeming with children glowing with health, manicured mothers, and men in pink, ahem, Nantucket Red, pants.

We continued to hang out, discussing our food conquests yet to come and that's when I mentioned that, while living in Boston years before, I had only had a single encounter with the famed lobster roll. I described my memory of it--a slice of Wonderbread folded around lobster meat and drizzled in melted butter--and they jumped to assure me that there was more than one way to make a lobster roll. And then Sean got on the topic of steamers, which led us first to a bar on the waterfront and then, when we discovered that they were steamerless, over to Captain Tobey's.

Berkeley Turkey

2008-10-24T05:56:00.000-07:00

Joel and I are hosting our first Thanksgiving this year. Right now it's looking like we'll be about 18 people all together, and it seems like time to start thinking about the turkey.

Here's what I've discovered so far:

In the Michael Pollan high-five hierarchy, the things to look for in a turkey are: local, organic, free-range, and heritage. There are eight breeds of heritage turkeys. They differ from conventional turkeys in that they grow more slowly, are proportioned more normally (not like the Pam Anderson of fowl), and have a richer taste.

The Russian River Convivium of Slow Food is offering a limited quantity (180) of 4-H-raised heritage turkeys. You have to order early and go to Petaluma to pick it up. Turkeys are $7.50/lb
Order form

Slightly more affordable local options.

Mary's Free Range Turkeys: Available for pre-order at some grocery stores and butchers around town. According to some sources, they sell heritage breeds as well, but I don't seen anything about it on the website.

Willie Bird: Free-range and organic, but as far as I can tell not heritage.

Diestal: Family-owned farm and range-grown birds.

Other handy dandy links I'm keeping on-hand:

- SF Gate article about heritage turkeys: Yeah, it's from 2005, but it's a pretty good primer.

- List of local grocery stores with heirloom turkeys

Cloud Dessert

2008-10-23T14:50:00.000-07:00

Last year I saw this delicious looking cloud, and ever since have had my eye out for the equivalent dessert. Recently, Nancy gave me the cookbook A Year in My Kitchen, written by Skye Gyngell, head palate at the Petersham Nurseries Cafe in London.

In the autumn section, I found a dessert that looked a lot like clouds. And seemed like it might taste like clouds too. Last night, we did a Gyngell-inspired dinner over at Nancy's, and after feasting on the fantastic combinations of sweet, savory, and meatily complex flavors of lamb with prunes, corainder (cilantro), and spices; sweet potato puree with tamari, maple syrup, and chili; and roasted squash with roasted tomatoes, feta, and basil oil, we tried it out.

The cloud dessert is called apple and eau-de-vie snow. The quick summary is that you stew Pippin apples in a vanilla-sugar syrup, blend it in the food processor, whip egg whites until they're stiff, blend the two elements together, and then put the mixture in the ice cream maker. As it's turning into a frozen cluster of clouds you add the eau-de-vie (I actually added Calvados because it's what I had on hand). The result is a light, cold but not too icy, apple with a kick, truly white as snow dessert that's unlike anything else I've ever had. It is apple clouds.

Here's the recipe:

Put 8.8 ounces of sugar, 500 ml of water, and a vanilla bean pod split in half in a pot over medium heat. Stir to dissolve sugar, and then bring to a simmer.

Peel, core, and chop 6 Pippin apples, then add them to the syrup mixture and cook for about 5 minutes, keeping the syrup at a simmer, until the apples are tender but not mushy. Turn off the heat and let the apples hang out in the syrup until they are cool.

Remove the apples with a slotted spoon and blend in a food processor along with 2 tablespoons of the syrup until it's pale and smooth.

Whip eight egg whites (since they're eaten raw, look for free-range, small-farm, organic eggs) and a pinch of salt to firm peaks. Add the apple puree. Now here she says blend lightly with a whisk, but the weight of the apples doesn't facilitate an easy blending, so I'd suggest folding with a spatula instead.

Pour the mixture into an ice cream maker and process. This amount makes enough for two batches in a standard home machine. When the mixture starts to look like ice cream, add two tablespoons of apple eau-de-vie (or calvados) and continue to churn until it you have a "soft, feathery, light slush." Serve immediately.

Tomato/Tree

2008-10-17T17:35:00.000-07:00

A few weeks back, Monterey Market was selling these amazing (among the best tomatoes I've ever had) dry-farmed tomatoes from Sealevel Farms. Cutting them open, I found all sorts of resemblances. Here we have...tree.

Tomato/Lightning

2008-10-17T17:34:00.000-07:00

And here is lightning (the tomato is not mealy, it's just glistening)

Next stop: Nantucket

2008-09-10T15:49:00.000-07:00

From New York, we flew to Nantucket to stay in an appropriately named back cottage and eat and drink almost nonstop for the next two-and-a-half days. Details soon...

Day 2: Rice to Riches

2008-09-10T15:37:00.000-07:00

Walking into Rice to Riches ignorant of the name, you might think it was an ice cream store, a gelateria, maybe a new-fangled frozen yogurt shop. It's got the playful decor, the small tables, the colorful array of delicacies shielded by glass and guarded by young women offering little plastic-spoon samples. But what they're serving isn't cold, and it certainly isn't smooth.

You know, because it's rich pudding.

But it's good rice pudding. And in flavors it had never occured to me to imagine. And it's not like I haven't experimented with rice pudding before.

Cheesecake (yum), tiramisu (didn't sample), coconut, hazelnut chocolate, banana, and of course, sex-drugs-and-rocky-road. As it turns out, since rice pudding is all about texture, and rocky road is largely about texture, this one really works.

The portions are generous, but you can also pick up smaller versions of many of the most popular flavors in little to-go cups in the refrigerator case at the back of the shop.

Day 2: Cafe Habana

2008-09-10T15:19:00.000-07:00

The next day, we met up with Riba for lunch at Cafe Habana to-go. I had fond memories of the grilled corn-on-the-cob there, and Riba promised good sandwiches and fine limeade as well.

Riba ordered and got us

a chicken diablo torta (blackened chicken with roasted red peppers, chipotle mayonaisse, and a black bean spread),

a mole chicken torta (shredded chicken with the same black bean sauce), and of course,

the grilled corn coated in cheese, lime, and chili powder.

Eating all of this sitting on the bench outside the shop was as messy and chaotic as it was fun and delicious. We were all hungry, and so the passing around of sandwiches, corn, limeade, and hibiscus iced tea was frenzied and giddy. Afterwards we sat talking for a while, satiated and sticky handed, before heading off for the rest of our day.

The dessert truck

2008-09-10T14:56:00.000-07:00

For the better part of the last year, I've been reading with interest articles about dessert trucks. I've wondered: fad or wave of the future? Delicious or just novel? And also: why not on my block, why not in my town? Would a dessert truck work in Berkeley, or do people want seats with their sweets?

When I was researching things to do in New York, I looked up a few dessert trucks but then gave up trying to pinpoint them, figuring there was no way to plan a meeting with so little time available, it would just either happen or not. And frankly, I didn't hold out much hope.

But, just as afternoon was starting to give way to dusk, we crossed a street, either tired (me), thirsty (Riba), or in need of a pee stop (Alexis), and it was there, just sitting on the corner, bathed in delicious aromas and ready to make my dream come true.

Riba and Alexis made fun of me after the fact, because apparently I saw it, made a sharp turn towards it and said "Dessert truck. We're eating more," and then got in line. Riba and Alexis, as you know by this point, take declarations like that seriously, so they got in line too and we started discussing our options. Panna Cotta? Bread pudding? Most things seemed a little dense and warm for the humidity still in the air, but god, it smelled so good, so we ended up sharing a chocolate bread pudding with creme anglaise.

Even before the first bite, I was totally won over by the novelty. Handing over $5 in exchange for a hot foil ramekin heavy with dense chocolate and warmed sauce? A fine moment of commerce. The bread pudding was good, but tasted more like a dense custard than a bread pudding. I expect more variety in textures in my bread pudding, but as a warm chocolate dessert, it was rather good. Even though I always think I like creme anglaise, when it comes down to it, I think the taste is rather dull, but the variety was nice and it made the bread pudding look pretty. If I was making this, I'd swap it out for a creme fraiche sauce or a marscapone sabayon, or, if there were some way to make it not too sweet, a white chocolate and bourbon sauce of some kind.

Drinks: Verlaine

2008-09-10T14:54:00.000-07:00

We paused our tasting tour to take a walk through the Tenement Museum, which was really interesting and manages to pretty compellingly capture the mottled spirit of old New York, the tail end of which colored my dad's childhood experiences there (and made him move to California and never want to go back, but that's another story).

Afterwards, we walked to Verlaine for a few of its $5 lychee martinis. It was about 5:30 pm on a Sunday, so the place was mostly empty, though a lumbering and slobbering but very cute dog did insinuate itself into our group and flirt its way into the heart of Alexis.

I wish there was another word for martinis with fruit flavoring in them. They are so unlike actual martinis (and I say that as someone who doesn't have the grit or the dulled tastebuds or whatever it takes to savor a true martini) that it feels a little like riding a tricycle around and calling it a motorcycle.

In any case, the lychee martini was good, as they often are. They're not too sweet and the flavor has a lot of surface area. That is to say that lychee is a taste I like because it's got a lot going on. It's both forward and subtle. And, when combined with cold alcohol and served in a pretty glass, is just the thing for a hot sunny vacation Sunday afternoon.

Dessert 2: il laboratorio

2008-09-04T15:52:00.000-07:00

Ciao Bella is a common sight around the Bay Area. There's one just down the street from me in Berkeley's Gourmet Ghetto and another at the Ferry Building in San Francisco. As it turns out, our next stop was the latest cold/creamy venture of the guy who started Ciao Bella.

According to the clipped-out news article on the door, il laboratorio del gelato is the shop he has opened with his mother. It's a tiny sliver of a place with a window to order at facing the sidewalk. The flavors were interesting, and included an olive oil gelato that pretty successfully brought out the fruitiness of good olive oils.

However, olive oil wasn't an option since it reminded Alexis of the time I dragged her with me to Sonoma while I was researching a story about farm-to-table travel and made her sample olive oils. You're supposed to take a small mouthful, swish it around in your mouth, and then, in the tradition of wine tasting, either spit it into the nearby small, shiny bucket or swallow it. But unlike wine, it's hard to clear the palate after a sample of olive oil. Everything in your mouth is coated, and even if you don't end up drinking it, it's difficult not to leave with the feeling you need to scrub your mouth out with the most absorbent bread you can find.

So instead, we settled on a refreshing double scoop of fresh mint gelato and strawberry gelato. It was delicious, a combination that I'd like to replicate soon. I was particularly curious about the fresh mint, and how it would taste when made in large batches meant for commercial consumption. Except for the first time I had fresh mint ice cream (at the ice cream shop Christina's in Inman Square in Cambridge), I've always made it myself, so I've gotten to control the type of mint I choose and how long to steep it. Il laboratorio's was good, but I think for fresh mint ice cream or gelato, nothing beats making it yourself and eating it fresh.

On to dessert: Babycakes

2008-09-04T07:03:00.000-07:00

Last year, Riba was diagnosed as celiac, which meant no gluten. Since then, the diagnosis has been revoked, but during that time she got wise to all the gluten-free options within eating range. This is how she knew about Babycakes, which specializes in gluten- and refined-sugar free vegan (I know, unless your last name is Goodman, your hopes for this place are plunging with each adjective, but hold on!) baked goods.

Riba is on their mailing list, so she knew that they were giving away free frosting shots. Around the same time she mentioned this, she also told me that the ice cream sandwich I was eyeing was filled not with ice cream, or even sorbet, but with frosting. I began to have my doubts about this stop on the tasting tour.

But I didn't have to marry it, I simply had to sample a few items, and everything looked pretty, so I persevered. After five minutes of deliberation (there was a lot of deliberation at all these places since we were sharing everything), we settled on a carrot cupcake, a chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwich, and frosting shots all around.

Perhaps unwisely, given that it was pure sweetness with nothing cakey to mellow it out, we had the frosting first. The frosting was purple. I don't know why, I don't think it tasted like any sort of purple food. And it was sweet. But not too sweet, not headache-in-a-jar, needs-no-refrigeration, suspiciously-long-shelf-life pre-fab sweet. And not even tastes-so-good-even-though-I-know-how-much-butter-went-into-making-this buttercream icing sweet. I won't go so far as to say it tasted like a stand-alone dessert, but it tasted pretty good, and the texture was amazing: creamy and unusually smooth.

Riba and Alexis were sad to see it go so fast:

But they found consolation quickly:

The carrot cupcake was good, though a little dry. But that seems to be a pretty common cupcake issue, regardless of ingredients. It's hard to make cream cheese frosting without cream cheese though, so it lacked the deliciousness that comes from expectation and familiarity.

Even though it was a hot day, we saved the "ice cream" sandwich for last. But only about two minutes had passed since we paid and left the shop, so it hadn't had time to thaw, let alone melt.

Chocolate chip cookies are one of my favorite foods, and ice cream sandwiches rank pretty high up there too, and though this was novel and tasted pretty good, it paled in comparison to the real thing. However, say I had to go gluten-free or could no longer eat refined sugars for some reason, you can bet I'd reverse engineer the crap out of this recipe and make them at home.

The chocolate chip cookie was thin, almost like a lace cookie, and very very crispy. I now better understand the purpose of butter and eggs in the usual recipe. The frosting was cold, held the cookies together, and was creamy and smooth. But the frosting lacked that depth of flavor that you get from ice cream. Luckily, our next stop was the gelateria around the corner...

Next stop: dumplings

2008-09-04T06:41:00.000-07:00

As we were walking the few short blocks from the Lower East side into Chinatown (site of me almost getting crushed by the Sunday-night-to-Boston crowd while trying to get on the Fung Wah Chinatown bus years ago), Riba told a story about a historic synagogue in the neighborhood that, to celebrate it restoration and reopening, had a party for the neighborhood and served egg creams and egg rolls.

We were heading to Vanessa's for some dumplings, and we missed it the first time down the block because Riba was looking for a slightly dingy hole-in-the-wall but since she last visited the shop had expanded into the space next door and added tables and a long bar to stand against and watch them cook your order.

In this photo, Alexis is on the right, but I really took the photo to remember the insane woman on the far left. She was in line behind us, and was one of those crazy old New Yorkers (I'm related to enough to spot them) who spent the whole time in line complaining about the last time she had been there, and then took her first two minutes with the cashier relating the riveting story of how the dumplings had been lukewarm by the time she'd gotten them home the week before, and then when the cashier tried to get her to order, decided that the cashier must not speak English so she repeated her complaints, this time shouting slowly. Finally she ordered, and then hovered around the people making the food telling them to make sure the food was hot.

Watching all this was a good way to pass the time until our food came up. Here's what we got:

Starting at 11:00 and moving clockwise, it's pork buns, fried dumplings, and some seriously delicious wontons in a spicy sauce. Alexis ordered the wontons, and frankly I wasn't expecting much from them, but the spicy sauce, the chives and green onions on top, and the filling of vegetables and little shrimps was a winning combination.

First stop: Guss' Pickles

2008-09-04T06:24:00.000-07:00

Until a few years ago, I hated pickles. In high school, I almost threw up when I saw a guy on the side of College Avenue in Oakland chugging pickle juice from a jar.

But I do love vinegar, and so slowly I came around. Cornichons really paved the way for me. So when Riba suggested first stop pickles, and Alexis was across the street and sort of hungry-speedwalking towards the barrels set out under the awning on the sidewalk at Guss' even before Riba had finished her sentence, I happily followed.

It was pretty exciting. There were all sorts of pickles as well as other sorts of pickled vegetables, and once we agreed on our selection, the guy behind the barrel reached in, bagged them up, and traded us some small change for some good pickles.

First, we tried the sour pickle:

As you can see, it lived up to its name. As did the spicy pickle, which was next in this particular pickle flight. They were bright tasting, slightly cool, and very crunchy.

We finished those standing on the sidewalk, and were ready for more. So Alexis shelled out the thirty cents or so it took to procure a pickled tomato:

Okay, the face was a bit gratuitous because it wasn't very sour. In fact, it didn't taste like much. Maybe pickled tomatoes is one of those acquired tastes, or perhaps it's a food whose actual time has come and gone and which is drifting along on the nostalgia of another generation.

Lower East Side tasting tour

2008-09-04T06:04:00.000-07:00

When my sister Alexis and I were in New York, we visited my friend Riba.

Riba and I have a long history of mutual food obsession. In high school and college, we worked in the same restaurants, and when we traveled together the summers after my first and fourth year of college, we'd fall asleep every night talking about food- reliving the food conquests of the day and fantasizing about still more foods we wanted to eat.

So really, it makes total sense that when we went to stay with her, we'd end up turning the day into a roaming food festival. It started simply enough: sleeping in after a late flight in the night before; a breakfast of waffles, eggs, and homemade jam; and the decision to walk across the Williamsburg Bridge and go to the Tenement Museum, which I'd been wanting to go to for years.

When we got to the Tenement Museum, we discovered that the tour we wanted to go on (it's not really a "museum" so much as a gift shop where you buy tickets to one of the many building tours they offer) wasn't for an hour and a half. So we had some time to kill. Or to eat. So we embarked on a whirlwind tasting tour of the neighborhood.

The tasting team:

Riba, our fearless leader

Alexis, aka Frosting Shot

And me, "have spoon, will travel"

Homegrown CSA

2008-08-18T06:57:00.000-07:00

I was over at my mom's house the other day, harvesting the extreme bounty of her yard. At one point, I was up on the roof, picking the oranges that were too difficult to get from the ground or a ladder. We ended up with four large paper bags of oranges, and the tree was still full of them. We also picked quinces, pears, figs, and grapes, and I snipped some fresh herbs before leaving, because, you know, they tend to come in handy.

Spent the next two mornings drinking copious quantities of fresh-squeezed orange juice, though I still need to wash out the terra cotta that rubbed off on my pants as I was climbing around on the roof.

Chili powder

2008-08-18T06:51:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Mark Bittman's words of encouragement (and instructions), I now make my own chili powder. This time, however, Joel totally caught on that I'd been using the coffee grinder to grind the spices after toasting them in the pan. The conversation went a little something like this:

Joel: (walks outside holding coffee grinder) Did you grind something other than coffee in this?
Me: Why?
Joel: The inside is stained all red.
Me: You didn't notice last time!

Then a long pause before he started laughing. After that I offered to buy him a new grinder and just use that one as my occassional non-coffee items grinder. I also tried to talk up the merits of "spicy coffee." I mean, it works with hot chocolate, right?

Here's the recipe:

Put 2 T ground ancho (or other mild chile) powder, 1/2 t cayenne, 1/2 t black peppercorns, 2 t cumin seeds, 2 t coriander seeds, and 1 T dried Mexican oregano in a small skillet over medium heat. Toast (stirring or shaking occassionally) until you start to smell all those delicious aromas (about 3 minutes, maybe longer). Grind until powdery (but then clean out the grinder really quickly to avoid the worst of the tell-tale red stains.

Pretty plum

2008-08-18T06:44:00.000-07:00

Not unripe, just green. Thanks Monterey Market!

Caldo Verde soup

2008-08-15T06:45:00.000-07:00

I love kale. I'm a huge fan of most leafy greens, including chard, collard greens, mustard greens, bok choy, amaranth, and so on. So when, a few years ago, my boss described to me Caldo Verde, the ubiquitous soup of Portugal, whose main ingredient is kale, I was intrigued.

Since then, I've been keeping my eye out for a chance to try the soup. But unlike in Cambridge (our fair city), there aren't a ton of Portuguese restaurants in Berkeley (a very minor trade-off, in my opinion), so I haven't stumbled across it.

However, on Leite's Culinaria (which has become part of my trawling-for-recipes circuit), there's a whole Portuguese recipes section, and Caldo Verde is at the top of the list. So last night I made it, and really liked it, though there are a few things that need working out before I attempt it again.

Since I'd never had it before, I didn't know if it was supposed to be as thick as it was. I cut the recipe by 2/3s, but then didn't do the best job calculating out what that meant for every ingredient, and I wonder if it's perhaps supposed to be a bit soupier instead of the stew-like consistency it was. Also, I chiffonaded (can this be a verb?) the kale, so it was in nice thin strips, but I should have also cut the strips into shorter sections so I didn't end up with knotty kale nests in the soup, which made it difficult to eat.

But it was delicious...and garnished with chorizo.

You got peanut butter in my chocolate

2008-08-15T06:20:00.000-07:00

The other night I made chocolate sauce (chocolate pieces melted into cream) to top the mint-basil chocolate-chip ice cream, and there was a ton left over. It's so good that I've been dipping a spoon straight in to the sauce, which, when cold is a lot more like ganache. But Joel, who isn't a huge straight-chocolate fan, pioneered a new treat the other night.

Last December, my grandma brought over some empty chocolate cups (the package showed them full of delicious things and she thought that was what she was getting), which have been sitting in the cupboard since then. Joel grabbed those and some peanut butter and assembled little homemade reese's, much to the delight of my nine-year-old cousin Donella, who was over watching the Olympics with us.

Peanut butter cross-section

2008-08-15T06:16:00.000-07:00

Cross-section of the peanut butter and chocolate dessert.

Mint-basil chocolate ice cream

2008-08-13T18:52:00.000-07:00

I'm not totally sure what cookbook this recipe is from, because I only have a photocopied page of it that I got from Nancy after making it over there last summer.

Usually, I alter ice cream recipes that don't call for eggs because I love the rich, custardy consistency you get from using them. However, I decided to follow this recipe from beginning to end (which also meant putting in spinach...more on that in a sec), and it called for cream and milk but no eggs, and I was surprised and happy to taste the results, which were as creamy but lighter than ice creams made with eggs. And that worked really well with the refreshing combination of mint with undertones of basil and flecks of chocolate. Writing about it now I'm sad I only made a half batch.

So about the spinach. Steeping mint and basil leaves doesn't really alter the color of the ice cream base. To get that brighter green color, this recipe suggested adding a bit of spinach. It ended up a cheery grass green, though Joel swears he could taste the spinach. I'm not attached to the color, so I'll most likely omit it next time.

Here's the recipe:

Combine 2 c whole milk and 1 c sugar in a saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring to disolve the sugar. Transfer the mixture to a bowl, cover, and refrigerate (if the milk is hot when you add the spinach, the color won't be right).

Combine 2 c heavy cream, 40 peppermint leaves, and 12 large basil leaves in a saucepan. Bring to a simmer over medium-low heat. Remove from the heat, cover, and let the leaves steep in the cream for a half hour.

Now for the spinach part. Blanch a handful of spinach leaves in boiling water for 20 seconds, then transfer the spinach to a bowl of ice water. Wring out as much of the water as possible (you can use a dish towel for this). Chop the spinach.

Put the spinach and half the now-cool milk mixture in a blender and blend well. Add the remaining milk and blend a bit more. Strain the milk mixture through a fine-mesh strainer lined with damp cheesecloth into a bowl. Wring the rest of the liquid out of the cheesecloth. Then strain the cream mixture into the same bowl, and stir. Cover and refrigerate at least 2 hours.

Churn the ice cream, folding in 6 ounces of chopped semisweet chocolate at the end. Freeze for a bit to firm it up before eating. Good with chocolate sauce (especially homemade).

Make-your-own BLT bar

2008-08-13T18:27:00.001-07:00

This is photo proof (thanks Ross!) of the BLT bar at Alexa's birthday party. It was only right that bacon should have a starring role in the party, and BLTs were the perfect bacon delivery mechanism. All the elements were delicious, including the homemade mayonnaises.

I had already eaten (a lot), but I couldn't resist the allure of the BLT bar (or later, the allure of a carrot-cake cupcake, a ginger cookie, and a chocolate chip cookie).

Poblano potatoes au gratin

2008-08-07T18:18:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday, our last night of vacation, we all went to King's Beach to eat at a restaurant called Caliente, and I enjoyed almost all of the food (the guacamole being the exception). Kathy ordered this ancho chile beef shortribs with poblano potatoes au gratin. The shortribs had great flavor, but the gratin really stood out. It was unusual and it worked. I like that combination.

Caprese al fresco

2008-08-07T18:13:00.000-07:00

Caprese salad always tastes so good when eaten outdoors. Is it because you're on the tomatoes' turf?

S'mores ice cream cake slice

2008-08-07T18:11:00.000-07:00

Behold the all-important cross-section! With warm chocolate sauce. Eaten outside under some very tall pine trees.

S'mores ice cream cake

2008-08-07T18:09:00.000-07:00

This was the first in a year of birthday desserts made from Emily Luchetti's A Passion for Ice Cream cookbook. Mina chose it in honor of her upcoming 11th birthday.

A quick tour of the layers: the bottom is a graham cracker crust, made by crushing a cup and a half of graham crackers and mixing it with melted butter.

The middle layer is chocolate chip ice cream. It was supposed to be cappucino-chocolate-chip ice cream, but I was afraid of what coffee ice cream would do to four nieces and nephews at 8:00 pm. On top was a combination of marshmallow fluff (which I've never used before) and marshmallows, broiled to puffy toastosity. I'll follow with a photo of a slice topped with warm chocolate sauce.

It was a hit, but I hope someone in the birthday rotation requests this brown-sugar ice cream roulade soon- that's the one I really want to try.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

2008-07-25T06:56:00.000-07:00

Yes, this is a post inspired by the recent David Leite article in the New York Times.

I love chocolate chip cookies to distraction, and I like David Leite's site Leite's Culinaria (it's a great resource for recipes from newer cookbooks), so I was excited to try this recipe, though I'm always skeptical of articles touting perfection. Along with articles promising secrets or anything in list form, they're click-through gold, but it's pretty hard to live up to the claim.

I made the dough on Friday with the intention of bringing them to the Sommerfest at pub in the woods (The Tourist Club). Each time I opened the fridge during the two-day chilling process, I grew giddier.

On Sunday morning, I heated up the oven and got out my scale, ready to measure 3.5 oz portions out onto the cookie sheet. The scale ended up being vital because I would not have made the cookies that large without actually seeing the weight. The recipe very coyly says that the cookie dough balls should end up being the size of a golf ball, but 3 1/2 ounces is more like a small baseball. I pressed a bit of sea salt onto the top of each cookie before putting them in the oven.

The first batch came out with molten-dough middles, which was good except for the salmonella fear. I kept the next two batches in a few minutes longer (20 minutes as opposed to 18), and the results were better.

The verdict: They were good, but the best? No. They tasted like bakery chocolate chip cookies, or like...mall cookies. Rich, melting, well-engineered, surely, but not transcendent.

Butterscotch tree

2008-07-14T16:19:00.000-07:00

This weekend in Lake Tahoe, we went on a tour of the Hellman-Ehrman Mansion at Sugar Pine Point. I've been picnicking on the grounds dozens of times, but had never gone in the house. We met our tour guide outside under a tree, and she pointed out some of the native pines. The sugar pines are the ones with the long pinecones hanging at the end. And pinecones are nice and all, but it's kind of hard to compete with a tree that smells like butterscotch. And that's what the nearby Jeffrey Pine has to offer. Even before the tour guide had finished the word "butterscotch" I was heading towards it, ready to take a sniff. And it did! Joel reported smelling marshmallows, and apparently others detect various other sweet scents (vanilla, etc.), but to me it was all yellow-wrapper-hard-candy.

Nectarine shortcake

2008-07-14T16:11:00.000-07:00

Nectarine...is kind of a weird word. The individual parts (nectar/ine) flatter it, but the word as a whole doesn't do the fruit justice.

The biscuit recipe in the current Cook's Illustrated? Fun and delicious. The dough comes together in this exciting way, and instead of stamping out the biscuits, you oil a 1/3 cup measuring cup and scoop them into the requisite form. They're so smart.

One final note here: I didn't have a hand mixer handy and couldn't get Joel to commit to whipping the cream by hand (and I wasn't going to do it), so we ended up using spray whipped cream, the taste of which I just don't get, because it manages to take the richness out of dairy and just make it cloying. But it was still a satisfying dessert.

Brandied cherry chocolate tart

2008-07-14T16:02:00.000-07:00

This tart, oh, this tart. Even Joel, who lacks enthusiasm for both cherries and chocolate loved this one, and was disappointed when he returned home from work to discover that I had given the rest of it away (part to a neighbor, the rest to my aunt).

This recipe cemented an obsession with the Macrina Bakery and Cafe Cookbook (breads, pastries, and sweets edition). Kathryn bought me the cookbook after eating at the bakery and cafe in Seattle during her U.S. road trip honeymoon. Looking through it, I got the food tingle- that sensation where my brain and my taste buds start jumping around in unison just-won-the-lottery style.

Cooking from it gave both brain and buds even more giddy pleasures. And it solved, in one easy step, my biggest problem with tart/pie crusts. Though I handle gently and chill often, I still tend to get crust shrinkage. But the flaky pie dough recipe (flour, salt, cold unsalted butter, chilled vegetable shortening, and ice water) called for me to roll a slightly larger circle, leave 3/4 inch overhang, and then build a double-thick crust. No shrinkage, and more glorious crust!

Next, I simmered cherries (they were supposed to be all bing, but it was the last bing cherry dessert of the season, and I had to add a few rainier cherries) in a brandy simple syrup, then drained them, sprinkled them around the pre-baked tart crust, and then whipped up a chocolately custard which struck that perfect balance of rich-but-not-oppressive.

I baked it, let it cool, sprinkled a bit of powdered sugar, and served it alongside a dollop of only faintly-sweetened whipped cream. I really liked it because each of the three elements (crust, cherries, custard) was delicious, complimentary, but also able to be tasted and appreciated in itself.

Apricot and cherry galette

2008-07-14T15:45:00.000-07:00

Though it's counterintuitive, my CSA farm box has caused a softening of the middle as of late. I currently sport a small innertube of fat that wasn't there before I started receiving weekly shipments of gloriously sweet and juicy fruits that were so ripe they needed to be used within a day.

Inspired by summer fruits, I turned to the two cookbooks that are more likely than any others to the root of my diabetes diagnosis in a decade or so. Tartine and Macrina.

This apricot and cherry tart featured a flaky crust and fruit that required very little sugar so the fruit flavors could really shine through. I love what happens to the flavor of apricots when they're baked. They go from being sweet but timid to bold and complex. Like getting a shy art history student drunk.

I started with the Tartine flaky tart dough recipe, which relies on a very simple ingredient list of a teaspoon of salt, 2/3 cup of very cold water, three cups plus two tablespoons flour, and one cup plus five tablespoons cold unsalted butter. Incorporating these ingredients requires strong arms and a big rolling pin, and then there are various pauses for chilling the dough, but the end result is great. Flaky and delicate, though I did have a slight problem with crust shrinkage.

Do you like chapati?

2008-07-07T15:33:00.000-07:00

I like chapati, do you like chapati? With a bit of whole wheat and regular flours, some water, and a little salt, you can chapati all you like. Ate these the other night alongside nut burgers (yum, see below). I almost took Mr. B's advice and grilled them outside (he promised "rustic, smoky, and puffy"). But it was chilly, and Alexis was helping, so I rolled them out and she cooked them over high heat (so high there was an incident with a spatula) in a pan on the stove.

I was worried they would be too dense and I would end up feeling like a chronically unsatisfied pioneer, but they were great—light and thin enough to complement the nutburger without turning every bite into the-land-of-one-thousand-chews.

Nut burgers!

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

Who knew that with a food processor, a measuring cup, and a few staples you could pull together a bizarrely delicious and incidentally meatless burger? Mark Bittman, that's who. But take a look at his newish cookbook, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, and it quickly becomes clear that there is very little Mark Bittman doesn't know.

For a long time, I casted about, looking for a good vegetarian cookbook that would offer me recipes that didn't make me feel like I was going to starve or endure a sad side-dish subsistence diet. This cookbook is what I was looking for and then some. It's huge, the recipes are great, and it encourages the sort of free thinking that will allow me to start to internalize the recipes and, if someday I am confronted with, say, a bunch of carrots, one can of beer, and a small baggie of flour, I could confidently pull together something delicious inspired by this book.

Here's my version of the nut burger recipe (because he's Mark Bittman, he gives you lots of ingredient options):

Grind one medium onion in a food processor (not too much- you want it to be chopped, not liquefied). Add a half cup walnuts and a half cup almonds, a half cup oats and a half cup brown rice, then blend some more. Then add a tablespoon of ketchup and a tablespoon of tahini, a teaspoon of chili powder (Mr. B has a recipe for making your own that results in a highly addictive concoction), some salt, pepper, and an egg, then blend a bit more. Let it sit for a few minutes, shape the mixture into patties (I usually get about 6 or 7 out of a batch, but I like thinner patties), and then add a bit of oil to a cast-iron or nonstick skillet and cook them on medium heat for about 5 minutes on each side.

Then eat and trip out on how good they are. And then wait three days until you start to crave them again, and repeat.

Beet and garbanzo bean salad

2008-07-05T22:20:00.000-07:00

Roasted yellow beets, then sauteed garbanzo beans in a bit of garlic and olive oil until they had a lightly browned crispy blush, and then added a bit of salt. Cut up a red onion, sliced the beets, and then tossed it all together with some red wine vinegar. I love this salad.

Amaranth!

2008-07-05T22:16:00.000-07:00

More than an ancient grain, it's a green that you use like spinach. I happened upon it at Monterey Market the other day, and couldn't get past: 1. the sheer size of the bunch they were selling for $1.39, and 2. how pretty it was. I asked the produce guy about it, and he told me to treat it like spinach. So I took it home, heated up a pan, threw in a bit of olive oil and a crushed clove of garlic, and then lightly sauteed the amaranth leaves to slightly wilty, but not spineless. They were fantastic. They've got this unusual flavor with a sort of earthy citrus undertone.

Summer vegetable latkes

2008-07-05T22:12:00.000-07:00

So good. Shredded really fresh new potatoes (3), a yellow onion, zucchini (2), summer squash (1 or 2), and carrots (2). Squeezed out the excess water, added a beaten egg and a bit of flour (about 2 tablespoons) until it could hold together the proper shape, added salt and pepper, and then cooked them in a pan with a bit of olive oil. To finish: some homemade pesto and a dollop of sour cream. I'll be eating it again soon.

Parsnip gnocchi...

2008-06-17T17:46:00.000-07:00

in a sage brown butter sauce. I'm a convert. Why did we ever bother with potatoes?

A note on cape gooseberries

2008-06-17T17:38:00.000-07:00

They're much better fresh than dried! No footy odor or taste. I sampled one in the school garden where I volunteer, and am now a gooseberry convert.

And just last week, I got to try mulberries. Also delicious. They look like small, peaceable blackberries without the seeds. They taste gently of berries and summer. I ate them off a fresh grape leaf plate.

Bees bottoms, wobble, and scurvy

2008-06-17T17:26:00.000-07:00

A few of my favorite quotes from the Fergus Henderson and Justin Piers Gellatly cookbook Beyond Nose to Tail:

- Victoria Pudding: "gastronomically as exciting as Prince Albert."

- Brigade Pudding: "When I stayed the weekend with Tanya and Piers Thompson, she produced this delicious pudding, somewhat reminiscent of a bee's bottom with stripes of suet pastry and mincemeat. As well as being a dab hand at pastry, Tanya is a joy to dance with."

- Steamed lemon and vanilla syrup sponge: "Keep the scurvy at bay."

- Damson Jelly: "Jelly doesn't fail to please. No one can resist that wobble."

- Little chocolate buns: "There is nothing finer than warm little buttock-like buns."

- Prune loaf: "Onomatopoeically a joy."

The empress of all cookies

2008-05-06T15:15:00.000-07:00

In my very early childhood, my grandmother used to come out from New York with giant cardboard boxes full of food she'd made or brought to make. She'd get off the airplane with pounds of frozen lamb, with barrels of olives, and with these goraybe cookies.

I don't remember any of it, but my mom tells the story well, and the few memories I do have of this grandmother are all pleasantly mingled with an overwhelming sense--that reduction of scent and memory--of food.

I have seven different versions of this recipe, all hand-written, all from different great-aunts, second cousins, or grandmothers. The ingredients are all the same, but the batch size and ratios are different. At some point this summer, I'd like to compare the recipes.

Goraybe (also sometimes spelled Ghoraybe) has just three ingredients: butter, sugar, and flour. But the butter is clarified and the recipes call for both powdered and superfine sugars. The effect is incredible. The cookies are dense but delicate with a texture that falls into that space of perfection between the poles of soft and brittle. The nuttiness of the clarified butter (you brown the milk solids just enough to give the butter the flavor) balances the sweetness to produce what I think is a totally transcendent cookie experience.

These cookies are so good that, when I was sixteen, I crashed my car after a platter of them spilled on my passenger's seat and I tried to pick them up while driving. I learned an important lesson that day: Before driving, always put the cookies in a container that seals.

Chocolate scales

2008-05-04T13:09:00.000-07:00

I was cutting up chocolate while preparing to make truffles and had to take a photo of the pretty pattern the thinly sliced chocolate made on the knife.

Finally, pretty French macaroons

2008-05-04T13:03:00.000-07:00

Yay! It took a few failed attempts, some disappointing recipes, and a lot of selfless sampling, but the French macaroons (from this recipe off of David Lebovitz's blog) came out pretty and looking just right.

Crisp on the outside, with a smooth unblemished top, a good foot, filling that moistened the interior of the cookie- these were everything I had been striving for. I made them extra small, just bite-sized, but noticed that people still took two bites- to savor and perhaps to get a look at that kick-ass cross-section as well.

The macaroon mystery

2008-05-04T12:52:00.000-07:00

Same batch of French macaroons, so why do they look so different? There are two differences, and one must hold the key to success.

I piped the dough onto two cookie sheets, and then put one sheet in the oven at a time. The macaroon on the left went into the oven first, and before putting in the oven I rapped the sheet firmly on the counter probably 15 times, in an effort to get out air bubbles that would burst through and ruin the smooth, pretty top.

The one on the right sat on the counter while the first pan was in the oven, and just before putting it in the oven, I lightly tapped the second sheet on the counter.

Based on this, it seems reasonable to suppose that the key is either letting the cookies sit before baking for 10 or so minutes, or lightly tapping instead of firmly rapping the tray. After I experiment with both variables I'll post again with a definitive answer. Although I've learned that French macaroons are so finicky that there may not be a definitive answer.

Little strawberry shortcakes

2008-04-22T14:39:00.000-07:00

This was one of the things I made for Kathryn's shower. The basic idea came from this recipe.

But I wanted to use a more interesting pound cake. After a disastrous pound cake attempt out of the "I Am Almost Always Hungry" cookbook, I decided to go way traditional, and tradition led to...Elvis. This recipe claims to have been Elvis' favorite pound cake, though I don't imagine he ever met a pound cake he didn't like.

Feet and height = a better macaroon

2008-04-03T17:08:00.000-07:00

So late yesterday afternoon I was feeling tired and hungry and casting about for an activity which didn't involve Masterpiece Theater reruns (go the complete Jane Austen!), I decided the time was right to try my hand at another round of French macaroons, this time guided by David Lebovitz' chocolate macaroon recipe.

He was very Cook's Illustrated-meets-Jeffrey Steingarten about it and prefaced the recipe with the saga of failures and frustrations that preceded the ultimate triumph of baked goods over raw ingredients. Which was not only entertaining but helpful, since it helped put me in that state of mind one really needs to be in (tentative but quietly determined) before folding beaten egg whites into batter.

And though I let the first batch cook too long and lost that core of moisture that reemerges after the filled macaroon gets to sit and think about things for a few hours, they looked rather nice and tasted good too. They got that necessary foot at the bottom, and even though I didn't have the right tip for my pastry bag (the only one wide enough to do the job had frilly points), the top came out relatively smooth and shiny. The photo shows an unassembled half.

So I'm feeling back on track again, and have totally rethought what I'm going to make for Kathryn's bridal shower. Macaroons, goraybe (a Lebanese shortbread cookie), possibly a checkerboard shortbread, truffles that may or may not be flavored with kumquat (I have to try it out first), little carrot cakes that I also need to try out (and will document here), and pound cake squares topped with strawberries and cream.

But not petites fours. My experimentation with that yielded a one-dimensional, rather ugly, sickeningly sweet little square of regret.

Why are these macaroons so flat?

2008-04-03T16:47:00.000-07:00

That's a good question. Certainly not because I intended them to be slipped under doors or smuggled in the pages of books. I'm not sure what happened on my first French macaroon attempt, but the end result was disappointing. I should have known better than to use a Martha Stewart recipe, since they tend not to be standouts (though if their main purpose is to be pretty, things generally go okay). But I found this version and decided to try out the strawberry version, since I would love to make pretty spring-colored (I was originally thinking strawberry and pistachio) macaroons for Kathryn's shower.

The more into the recipe I got, the more warning bells went off in my kitchen-brain: too many egg whites, weird proportions, and I was pretty sure it was going to end up too sweet. I love a breakfast cake called visitandines, which relies on similar ingredients to the French macaroon, so I have a basic understanding of the combination of almond meal, egg whites, and sugar. And things were not seeming right.

This story ends in disappointment, so I'll just cut to the end and say they didn't taste that off, but they were the saddest, flattest macaroons I have ever seen. This happened on the same day of the supremely disappointing petites fours, so I decided to wait a week or so, and then jump back in with the David Lebovitz chocolate macaroon recipe. Which went much better. More on that soon.

Baked penne

2008-03-17T14:19:00.001-07:00

This particular food event happened about a month ago but I had to wait for Alexis to send me the photo before posting a description of this fine meal Sean and Sue (Sue by doing the dishes afterward) cooked up for us.

When I was a cold and hungry exchange student living on very little money in London I owned one pot and one pan. Those things were enough to do a very basic version of baked penne, and I loved it because is was warm and cheesy and made for great leftovers.

However, I never took it to the next level the way Sean did here. After eating it, I craved it for three days straight. He made it with a sort of spicy chicken sausage, a sundried-tomato-based sauce, and three kinds of cheeses. I'm missing ingredients because this really was about a month ago, but I'll ask and append the remaining vitals.

Good, easy, and fairly healthy comfort food

2008-02-29T16:02:00.000-08:00

Asking my mom for a recipe is always an exercise in ambiguity. Her favorite measurements are some, a good amount, and a little. So it took me a while to get this one just right, even though it's basic.

For two people, I poach one or two chicken breasts in either stock or water. When it's done, I let it cool enough to work with and then I shred it into hearty pieces. I make up a biscuit batter (I haven't found one that I love yet, so I choose a different one every time) and preheat the oven to whatever temperature the recipe recommends.

Then I saute an onion in a pot, then add broth and cut up potatoes. It doesn't really matter whether the skins are on or off. Wait a minute, I'm getting pretty vague here and starting to sound like her. So when the potatoes are inching towards ready, I add green beans and whatever other vegetables suit my fancy, throw the chicken in to warm it up. I thicken it with flour or corn starch, then put it in a casserole dish (for two people I use the little square one), and then scoop drop biscuits and place them around the top of the stew. Into the oven to bake the biscuits, wait until the tops are golden, and there you have it.

The chard taco experiment

2008-02-26T14:59:00.000-08:00

I don't remember how I first found this approximation of a recipe on the Bunny Pie blog, but it struck my fancy, so I printed it out and filed it away for future use. Well, the future was last night, after I took my new bicycle down to Monterey Market (walking, I never realized just how completely downhill it is one way and totally uphill it is on the grocery-laden way back) and picked up tomatillos, chard, and though it wasn't mentioned in the recipe, a sweet potato for good measure.

Since the recipe I was working off of had no measurements (she wrote it down as she was watching Rick Bayliss' show on PBS), I'll summarize my version here. I took 10 tomatillos and roasted them in a 350 degree oven for an hour. I should have used more, say 20, and left them in the oven for closer to 40 minutes. Ah yes, and at the same time, I roasted a garlic clove. When everything was nice and soft and golden-topped, I let it cool for a bit and then threw it in the food processor along with a canned chipotle pepper (I happened to have opened a can of the chipotles in adobo sauce to make a delicious, junk-foody chicken taco filling just a few days before) and a bit of the adobo sauce, and made salsa.

Next, I chopped and grilled a yellow onion, then washed and removed the thick spines of two bunches of swiss chard, then rolled the leaves together (Whenever I do this some part of me pretends I'm rolling cigars. Or dolmas.) and roughly chopped it before adding it to the onions and wilting it. I tossed in a bit of salt at the end, and then assembled the tacos.

But I'm forgetting the sweet potato! It wasn't in the recipe, but I thought as long as I was making a chard-based taco, which is already a little unusual in my book, that a little thinly sliced sweet potato might be good. And it was! My mom is always going on about how well sweet potatoes cook in the microwave, so I called her and asked her how to do it. She said wash, poke, then put it on the potato microwave setting. I didn't have that setting, so I put it in for five minutes, which worked perfectly.

So then I heated corn tortillas, laid down a foundation of the chard-and-onion mixture, balanced a few thin slices of sweet potatoes on top, added the salsa and a bit of sharp aged cheddar, and (pronounced a la Mr. Dyson, inventor of the Dyson vacuum, in those commercials where he details making thousands of suction-losing prototypes before getting his first-vacuum-that-doesn't-lose-suction version right) I had it! I was surprised at how good it was: hearty, savory and a little sweet, slightly spicy, and texturally complex.

Family-style at Walzwerk

2008-02-21T16:46:00.000-08:00

For Kathryn's birthday, we went to the Tactile Dome (fun, but also scarier than I remember from my visits as a wee lass), and then to the East German restaurant Walzwerk. If you've got 10 or more people, you can preorder a family-style dinner that provides a ridiculous amount of food (not a true cultural experience, I suspect). Bratwurst, Sauerkraut, and braised red cabbage aren't really my thing, so I've always assumed that I just don't really like German food, but getting to try so many things in one sitting meant I actually found stuff I liked, and would eat again.

Kathryn is holding one of two giant plates of delicious and heart-attack-inducing cheese spätzle that came along with all the other salads, appetizers, and main courses that you get for a rather reasonable $20 a person. Other newly discovered favorites include Thüringer Salad, Matjes herring in sour cream with apples, onions and pickles, and a particularly good rendition of potato pancakes with chivey sour cream.

That's the second time I've been to Walzwerk, and again because I came as part of a larger group, we had to sit in the cold, linoleum-tiled, folding-chair-and-metal-tables back room, instead of the cozy and lively front. So family-style is sort of a trade off. Yes, you get more food choices, but the ambiance is maybe a little too authentic.

The menu

2008-02-19T15:34:00.001-08:00

Here's the menu for Joel's birthday menu. Instead of gifts, people brought a wine pairing for each course:

Wild mushroom ragout on crispy polenta

2008-02-19T15:30:00.000-08:00

So the first course was the rather addictive merguez tarts, and this pretty dish was the sit-down appetizer. The wild-mushroom ragout on crispy polenta with comte cheese was delicious and a good dish for a multi-course meal because, except for crisping the polenta squares and adding the last-minute seasonings to the mushroom ragout, everything could be done in advance. It was reasonably light and very flavorful, and it paired well with the La Crema Pinot Noir Alexis brought. And it was pretty fast to plate, so everyone got to eat it while it was still warm.

And I don't know what's going on in the photo with those forks. It happened in another photo too, and all I can say is I swear they started out in the right place.

Roast beef tenderloin with port sauce

2008-02-19T15:17:00.000-08:00

Nervewracking but worth it. I very rarely cook beef, so I wasn't feeling super-confident about turning a rather expensive piece of meat into a perfectly cooked main course, especially since the thermometer we had stopped providing accurate readings after we left it to monitor a piece of meat in the closed grill last summer. (As it turns out, you're not really supposed to do that. I know that now.) But, armed with a new thermometer and the promise of a delicious reduced port sauce, I attempted this roast beef tenderloin with port sauce anyway, and it was a smashing success.

In the photo, you can also see the mashed potato-and-celery-root quenelles I devised as a cunning way to do most of the prep work in advance but still end with warm food. Using the Cook's Illustrated mashed potato and root vegetable recipe from a few months ago, I cut out most of the cream (which would have made it too soft) and formed them into quenelles, which Alexis (of course) and I put on a parchment-lined baking sheet and brushed lightly with olive oil. Then, once the beef came out of the oven and was resting, I just popped the waiting quenelles in, and they were hot by the time we plated the main course.

And finally, I made haricots verts with herb butter from this Gourmet via Epi recipe. Monterey Market had some perfect beans for the job, and the herb butter was delicious (though the recipe made waaay too much and now I'm looking for other ways to use up the herby butter).

Oscar speech

2008-02-15T15:30:00.000-08:00

Six courses turns out to be a lot, logistically speaking. But everyone was really helpful, and the pacing of the meal ended up being good. Alexis came over way early and helped (and when there was no helping to be done, sneaked away and took a small nap), Joel also did a ton before the party, Alexis helped again in preparing the mushroom and crisp polenta appetizer, Matt and Alexis (I'm going to stop mentioning Alexis now, just assume that she helped the whole time) swooped in and kept everything going for the main course, and Frank pioneered the cheese slicing with fishing line technique and created a lovely cheese plate for everyone while Kathryn and Nathan foraged for glasses and put the beer out.

Behold the cheese course and beer pairings

2008-02-15T15:12:00.000-08:00

I only managed to get photos (thanks Alexis!) of some of the courses during Joel's birthday dinner, but I thought I'd post the ones I've got.

Behold the cheese course. With beer pairings.

In the foreplate, Humboldt fog, paired with a Saison Imperial Belgian Farmhouse Ale.

To the left, a Point Reyes Blue, accompanied by Chimay Grand Reserve (the blue cheese gave the Chimay a sweet taste!)

And to the right, a modest slice of Westcombe English Cheddar, alongside a Lagunitas IPA.

The only thing I hate about this photo is that there are two forks on the right side. Strange utensil placement haunts another photo I'll post as well. I can only tell you that when the table was set, everything was in the right place. I had no control over cutlery migration over the course of the night.

First in a series of decadent chocolate desserts

2008-01-31T08:12:00.000-08:00

These are the very quick and easy flour-light chocolate cakes we made when coworkers and I escaped the Las Vegas Strip during the annual company trip and went out to the Cordon Bleu cooking school for the day. Incidentally, they are a lot like the cakes I had made only a week earlier to impress my four- and seven-year-old cousins. (It worked.) Here's the recipe:

Chocolate lava cakes

9 oz semi-sweet baking chocolate (70% dark chocolate)
9 oz. butter (diced, room temperature)
4 eggs
6 oz. granulated sugar
4 oz. flour

2 oz. butter for ramekins

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Melt chocolate on low flame in a double boiler.
Stir in diced butter until it melts.
In another bowl, beat eggs and sugar until the mixture starts to whiten.
Stir in melted chocolate and then the flour.
Butter 6 individual (may make a little more, depending on ramekin size), and pour in chocolate batter.
Cook for about 12 minutes.

Pairing beer and cheese

2008-01-24T14:36:00.000-08:00

36 hours ago I knew nothing about how to pair beers with cheese. But, like a ~~sponge~~ ~~bar towel~~ sponge, I have soaked up the surprisingly vast amount of information available online about pairing beers with cheese.

Have you ever seen that documentary about bonobo monkeys in which it's apparent in the first 58 seconds that bonobo scientists and enthusiasts are in this one-sided competition with chimpanzees? The bonobos seem to the the only ones without a major inferiority complex, and everyone interviewed spends the bulk of their screen time talking about how much smarter, more loving, more complex, more peaceable, and just how all-around better bonobos are than chimpanzees.

That's a little bit the vibe I got from the beer pairing aficionados. They were so aware of the comparison to wine tasting that talking up beer and cheese pairing while talking down wine was a recurrent tic. Instead of "bonobos are smarter" it was "beer has more complexity than wine" or "beer isn't as sweet and doesn't mask cheese flavors" or one of a half a dozen other repeated beer-is-better mantras.

However, once I got past the stream of unsolicited justifications, I found a lot of good information out there about how to pair beer and cheese. Here are a few that I found particularly useful:

SF Chronicle's Beer and Cheese, see-what-I-mean subtitled "Forget wine and cheese parties -- the true soul mate for fromage isn't made from grape juice"
Beer Advocate's pairing theory and suggestions
Brewtopia pairing suggestions
Beercook.com Wisconsin beer and cheese pairings

The only disappointment was that some of the sites I found downplayed cheese variety. My guess is that's because they're concerned with alienating beer drinkers by suggesting varieties more exotic than those you'd find in the specialty cheese case of local supermarkets. But seriously, if you're reading about beer pairings, you're probably aware that there are more than five types of cheese in the world, right? Pairing in itself is a fairly fussy endeavor, so making suggestions for what beer to pair with jack cheese seems either disingenuous or affectedly prosaic.

Merguez recipes

2008-01-24T14:20:00.000-08:00

I've been on the lookout for a great merguez appetizer recipe, and it turns out that they are few and far between. The reason, I think, is that most recipes calling for merguez, that spicy Tunisian lamb and beef sausage, are for bold main dishes, couscouses, soups, stews, and pizzas.

I'm working on a culinary arc for Joel's birthday, when I'm going to do a tasting menu based on foods and flavors he loves. And so the merguez needed to be either the amuse bouche or the appetizer to fit into the meal.

I wanted to share some of the ideas I found, because though, in the end, I decided to forge into uncharted territory and try to make a version of Lebanese meat pies with merguez, I'd like to later revisit some of the recipes I found in the search.

Grilled merguez with fresh prune chutney from the Figs Olives Wine blog
Fig and merguez salad from Big Oven
Stuffed grape leaves with merguez sausage from Gourmet, via Epicurious

I also stumbled upon a suggestion on Chowhound about where to buy merguez in the Bay Area.

Chicken tikka masala

2008-01-22T15:46:00.000-08:00

Yeah, maybe it was invented in England, not India, but I don't love chicken tikka masala because it's authentic, I love it because it tastes so good.

I get it pretty much every time we go to the House of Curries on Solano. I don't even really bother with the chicken, I just pour the sauce over rice or scoop it up with naan. I can't resist that combination of smoky, creamy, sweet, and savory. I had it last night and writing about it now makes me want to eat it again. Right now.

Ingredients of 2008

2008-01-09T13:40:00.001-08:00

Not a definitive list by any means, simply a way of tracking those slightly unusual—or at least not previously so prevalent—ingredients that come up six or more times in a month in recipes, magazines, articles, cooking shows or classes, and so on.

Tarragon: In the last year or so, I've been seeing tons of tarragon, especially as part of pan sauces. Sure, this isn't the first time in recent decades that tarragon has risen in the ingredient pop charts, but there's definitely a current resurgence. This was the inspiration for this post because I just got the recipe for the cooking class team-building company activity I'll be attending next week and what's on it? Yup, Pan-Roasted Chicken Breast with Rice Pilaf, Mushrooms, Green Beans and Tarragon Supreme Sauce.

Brown butter: Brown butter has gone from good idea/important part of a basic repertoire to belle of the dairy ball in the last two years. I see brown butter ice cream and brown butter hand lotion in the near future. Watch out clementine.

Elderberry: I love elderberry. Eva introduced me to it years ago when she took me to a tea shop in Windsor. It was a warm day and she said the cool, refreshing elderberry drink was an acceptable alternative to tea during summer. At least that's what I remember her saying. For Kathryn's engagement party, Nancy bought elderberry liqueur and made elderberry-champagne cocktails. And after going ice skating in Oakland with Riba and Zoey and Zoey's PTL, we went across the street to Flora to get drinks and I got a grapefruit, elderberry, and vodka drink. Delicious.

Belgian beer: Are Belgian beer bars taking over the world, or does it just seem like it? That would be ok with me I think, though I hope this isn't just part of some complicated emigration ploy in the face of the separatist movement.

I need to start writing these down, because I know there are more that aren't coming to mind right now.

What's next? My predictions: Buddha's hand. Raclette. Icelandic food.

Homemade granola

2008-01-08T06:26:00.000-08:00

I love granola, but don't buy it very often because most of them are packed with fat and sugar that, frankly, I think is better enjoyed later in the day in another form. But a few weeks ago, I found this recipe for less-bad-for-you granola, and so this weekend I made it and now get to look forward to barely-heart-attacky-at-all breakfast every morning. It was really easy to make and I felt like an pioneer lady cooking up something from scratch that I usually buy already made.

It's not as sweet as store-bought granola, which I like, and it was easy enough that I will probably add and adjust ingredients next time for a more customized granola experience.

Forbidden rice pudding

2008-01-07T15:57:00.000-08:00

So in the end, I made polenta and chili as the vegan meal, and for dessert, we had this forbidden rice pudding. It's the rice that's forbidden, not the pudding, by the way.

I've made it before, using this very simple recipe, and really liked it. It's creamy and sweet and the texture is very down-home rice pudding chewy, but the rich purple color and suble coconut flavor give the whole thing an exotic twist. And, the pudding is good both warm and cold.

Last night I topped each dish with some mango, which was both pretty and delicious, but there was no more mango by the time I took the photo today.

The best recipes in the Bittersweet cookbook

2008-01-03T11:38:00.000-08:00

My friend and coworker (and co-Bay-Area-remote-worker) Erica also happens to be the most chocolate-oriented person I know. Her great love of chocolate makes my affection for it look like a mere schoolgirl crush.

So when she wrote to me yesterday after reading this mid-December post about my frustration with the format of the Alice Medrich Bittersweet cookbook, I took her suggestions not as informed opinions, but as a road map to the best of the book.

Here's what she wrote:

"Here are totally winning recipes because there's no useful TOC in this book:

PB/Chocolate Torte p. 114

Bittersweet Deception p. 170

Marble cheesecake p. 266

Raspberry-laced chocolate cupcakes p.272

Saucepan fudge drops p. 285"

Thanks Erica!