Word Eater

Movin' On Up

2008-05-07T11:02:00.000-07:00

Well, sort of.

It was recently brought to my attention that I never alerted all three of my faithful readers that I have picked up stakes and moved to swankier digs, in terms of blog space, that is.

My new(ish) home is http://michaelprocopio.wordpress.com/

Otherwise known as Food for The Thoughtless. Why that name? Because I'm terrible at naming things.

I hope to see you on the other side...

Thanks,

Michael

Where the Blackberry is Never in Season

2008-04-02T13:46:00.000-07:00

Dear Miss Manners,

"When dining, does one place one's Blackberry to the right of the plate, or to the left, near the salad fork?"

The answer to this unsent question is, of course, never. I don't care if you're the Pope. Of course, popes don't use Blackberries. They use people who use Blackberries.

Hey there, Mr. Business Guy. Ho there, Little Miss Connectivity. You want to see a hand held device appropriate for restaurant use? Look down and to your right, it's called a table knife.

It looks a lot like the one with which I'll impale your (expletive) PDA if you use it one more time during your meal.

At some point a decade or so ago, P.D.A. went from meaning an improper "public display of affection" to "personal digital assistant." The employment of either P.D.A. is rude at the table, displaying a certain lack of respect for your dining companions. Would you like to watch your mother give good old dad a hand job during the salad course? No? Then what makes you think they want to see you texting friends or fielding phone calls over dessert?

It'ss not just Blackberries. Last night, I watched as two men ate dinner together. Not such a strange occurrence, except for the fact that one of the men did not take his iPod headphones out of his ears for the entire duration of the meal.

I saw a woman who was so busy texting someone as she walked through our very busy dining room that she hit the chair of a man who was rising from is seat. There was no, "Excuse me, I'm sorry," from her. She didn't even bother to look up. I was tempted to trip her to see what it might take to make her drop her machine.

It's certainly annoying when I have to repeat a litany of specials to guests who are too busy on their phones to pay attention to me, but I take that as part of my job. After describing something a second time (unless there is a genuine communication problem), I consider myself done.

But I'd be happy to text you about today's whole fish, if you like, you self-involved (expletive).

Like I said, it's an annoying aspect of my job, and I deal with that type of rudeness in my own way. What I find so terrible about all this abuse of take-it-with-you technology is the toll I see it taking on the other diners, and on basic human interaction in general.

For example, on Tuesday evening, I waited upon a young woman, her boyfriend, and her mother. The young woman kept her Blackberry on the table to her right. She'd eye it occasionally as her mother or her French boyfriend spoke. When dessert time rolled around and I came over to the table, the boyfriend said they had made their selections. The girl didn't take her cue to order because she was busy texting someone. He gave her a soft, sing-songy "Heeeey!" and waved his hand in front of her face as one does when one is uncertain of another's consciousness. She pulled away like a sulky toddler. I could see the mother squirm. I felt terrible for the boyfriend, but I wanted to smack the girl. Hard.

What's getting me so angry is that no one is doing a god damned thing about it. As a server, it's not my responsibility to teach people lessons in manners. At the restaurant, I will just give you a wan smile if you misbehave, though some days the urge is more difficult to resist than others.

I am not seeing the recipients of this technological rudeness-- the boyfriends, the business clients, the parents-- call these idiots to task about this rude behavior. Maybe it's because they themselves are too polite to say anything. Whatever the case, their silence is sending a very bad sub-text message.

How long has this complacency been going on? Not forever, fortunately...

True Hollywood story--

In the days when cell phones were called mobile phones and still somewhat of a novelty, John Lovitz, Julianne Moore, Phil Hartman, and two people I did not recognize sat down at a booth in my section of the slick Beverly Hills eatery I worked in while at university. Mr. Hartman entered talking on his phone. When I approached the table, I asked quietly if I should come back when he had finished. Miss Moore nodded. Perhaps, I thought, it was a very important phone call.

After a while, it became quite clear to me that he was just yammering away on his new gadget, rudely ignoring his dining companions, but I stayed away from the table, nevertheless.

After a few more minutes, Miss Moore motioned me over to the table. She quietly asked for a piece of paper and a pen. When she had finished scribbling, she handed the paper back to me with a "thank you" and a sidelong glance at Mr. Hartman. I nodded and excused myself to read the note. On the paper were Mr. Hartman's name, his phone number, and instructions for me to call him.

I marched over to the hostess stand at the front of the restaurant, dialed the number, and held my breath. He answered up my call with an abrupt, "Yeah?"

"Mr. Hartman? This is your waiter, I was just wondering if you'd decided on your order yet..."

Silence greeted me on the other end. Then a loud burst of laughter from both the receiver and the back of the restaurant. When I returned to the booth, Moore beamed, Hartman glowered. Fortunately, Moore picked up the check.

My love for her has never wavered since.

I think what the world needs now is more people like Julianne Moore. I'd suggest putting her at every dinner table in America if I didn't think it would be both exhausting and physically impossible. I'm sure she's busy enough as it is.

My point, of course, is that she got it. And she found a way to correct the bad behavior that was both funny and very effective.

I think that's what we all need to do.

I realize I've done a lot of name-calling this morning. I don't necessarily think the perpetrators are bad people, but their behavior is soul-killing. You want to invest in some great personal connectivity devices? How about turning off your iPhone for two hours and start using some eye contact instead? Face-to-face communication is far more effective than interface-to- interface.

As TennisPeter from Andover, Mass commented at Ask Annie, "Checking your Blackberry 24/7 doesn't make you important. It means you are insecure and lack the confidence to say, 'I'm not working right now.' " I am inclined to agree.

Oh, and while I'm on a rant, take that ridiculous Bluetooth thing out of your ear. It makes you look like some crazy homeless person who happened upon a dumpster filled with business casual clothing in his size. Sometimes, I like to pretend that these devices are hearing aids. I mouth my words with care-- slowly and with volume. And then I tilt my head and smile at the wearer in a way that says, "See? I'm sensitive to your special needs."

Can you hear me now?

I feel much better getting that off my chest. There is, however, one little favor I'd like you to do to do for me...

The next time you dine with the technology-addicted, kindly remind them that, for at least the duration of the meal, the phone gets locked back in its cell, the "i" retreats to its Pod, and the only blackberries allowed on the table have been baked into a cobbler. Smile when you say it.

If that doesn't work, gently place a ball peen hammer next to you on the table. Every time your tablemate touches his or her device, gently finger your hammer. If they pick up their phone, you pick up your hammer, and so on.

I think that might be one message they're sure not to miss.

Depression (Era) Food

2008-03-28T09:38:00.000-07:00

Yes, I know. The word of the hour is recession but, frankly, I don't know the difference. Nor do I much care, since I've never had much money to lose anyway.

I do, however, smell a trend.

On Tuesday, my cousin Stephanie sent me an odd little collection of cookbooks from the 1930's-- all three of them product-related (Heinz 57, Royal Baking Powder, and Crisco). They made me giddy. And then, out of nowhere, my friend Lyle hands me a book called Cheerio! -- a cocktail book from 1930. Published in New York in total contempt for the Volstead Act. If ever there was a time one needed a drink, it was the 1930's. Unless it was the 1940's, of course.

On Wednesday, Amy Sherman commented that online traffic to low-cost ingredient recipes has nearly doubled in the past three months.

And yesterday? While soaking in a bathtub full of gin before work, I noticed, as I flipped through the pages of Saveur magazine, that this month's issue is featuring items like Mock Apple Pie, Rabbit Stew, and pasta, pasta, pasta.

In case, you didn't know, that's poor people food.

Is the American mindset taking a turn towards the cheap? I think this will be rather fascinating to watch. History repeating itself often is. If one doesn't mind reruns, of course.

In the meanwhile, I think I'll just pour myself a Cholera Cocktail, put a little Al Bowlly on the Gramophone, and wait for all this anxiety explode into a delicious panic.

Have a lovely weekend.

The Pavlova

2008-03-21T08:07:00.000-07:00

Oh, it's Spring. What joy.

In honor of this turning of the seasons, I bring you a light little piece of fluff-- the Pavlova.

When I was cooking at a little restaurant in the Mission called the Moa Room, my favorite Kiwi and boss, Chef Jan Gardner often let me run off and do my own thing with our desserts, which was rather brave of her. But not so when she felt the call to make her Pavlova-- the most famous dessert to ever come out of New Zealand. I would stand back to watch her work, asking her to say things like "milk" and "bottle" so that I might be better able to imitate her accent as well as her dessert-making technique. She was a very patient woman who only occasionally would ask a co-worker if he or she wouldn't mind punching me in the neck.

This pleasant breath of fresh air is rarely seen on San Francisco dessert menus, which I think is a pity. It is as light and airy as the dancing of its namesake, the most famous of all ballerinas, Anna Pavlova.

There is some argument as to the origin of this dessert. Australians claim it was birthed by Herbert Sachse of the Hotel Esplanade, Perth, Australia, citing in 1935 that the dish was "as light as Pavlova." She stayed at the hotel while on tour in 1929. It just took him six years to come up with something clever to say about it.

New Zealand has an earlier, similar claim coming out of Wellington in 1926, when a hotel chef created a dish inspired by the shape of the touring dancer's white tutu with green cabbage roses and frothy netting. I'm no social archaeologist, but I'll just bet the farm he was gay.

Well, I love Australians, but I am siding with my friends from New Zealand on this one.

Pavlova

Jan Gardner shied away from kiwifruit, most likely because they are not echt New Zealand. To her, a kiwi is the smaller, non-extinct cousin of the moa. The Chinese Gooseberry arrived in the land of the dead moa from, unsurprisingly, China in 1904. The name "kiwifruit" was originally a marketing ploy. One that has worked all too well. Though this meringue happily supports a wide variety of fruit, I have used the kiwi because the original dish, as far as I can tell, contained them. Remember those green cabbage roses.

This is not Jan's recipe. I never got it. I could just punch myself in the neck for not asking for
it. The recipe listed below is a culling of several.

For a great run down on how to approach a meringue, read Shuna's take on the Pavlova.

Ingredients:

For the Pavlova:

4 large egg whites, room temperature
1 cup of superfine sugar (you can make this out of table sugar by whizzing it in your Cuisinart.)
1 teaspoon white vinegar
1 tablespoon corn starch
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract. Tradition does not call for this, I just like it in my meringue.

For the Topping:

3/4 cup heavy whipping cream
1/4 cup buttermilk. Again, this is not traditional. I just prefer a bit of tang to compliment the
über-sweetness of the meringue.
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Fresh fruit. Tart is good. Things like kiwifruit, strawberries, raspberries, beri beri. I don't care.
Passion fruit is really amazing with it, too.

Procedure:

1. Pre-heat oven to 300 F.

2. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Create and cut out a separate circle of parchment paper about 7 inches in diameter. Cut out a matching circle of cardboard. Attach the parchment circle to cardboard with a smear of corn syrup or whatever you've got handy to adhere. I'll bet even Elmer's glue would work, though I would not recommend it. (Note: this cut out circle business isn't absolutely necessary, but I find it helps me get a cleaner edge on the meringue.)

3. In the bowl of a stand mixer, whisk egg whites at slow speed (Thanks for the tip, Shuna), gradually increasing the speed as the volume of the whites increase. When the whites begin to hold a soft peak, add the sugar a little at a time to dissolve. Increase the speed and whip until the mixture is silken and holds stiff peaks.

4. Having made a slurry of your vinegar and cornstarch, stir to discourage any lumps. Sprinkle the slurry over the meringue and fold in.

5. Gently heap meringue onto your parchment disk, making certain to leave a shallow bowl in the center for eventual cream-and fruit-filling. Smooth the edges of the meringue for a clean look or make any sort of design you wish. Please email me if you've come up with anything interesting or vaguely obscene.

6. Place your meringue-topped cardboard parchment onto the lined baking sheet and place in oven. Bake for 15 minutes, turn off the heat and walk away. Baking should take about one hour, but it is best to peek in every once in a while to see how your creation is doing. The Pavlova should not brown, but take on a slight cream color. Leaving it in the oven to dry out a bit is a good thing.

The now-baked Pavlova will keep for up to a week when stored in non-humid conditions in an air-tight container.

7. For the topping, whip cream and buttermilk until soft peaks form. Gradually add sugar and vanilla, then whip a little more. You make chose to remove half the cream at this stage for spreading, whipping up the remainder for piping those tutu-like frills around the edge that I somehow failed to achieve.

8. Spread the whipped cream over the meringue. Top with the fruit of your choice, and serve immediately in the fifth position, thereby impressing your friends and family with your limberness of both lower body and culinary expertise.

Eat immediately.

Serves 6

Brenda's French Soul Food

2008-03-13T09:44:00.001-07:00

My friend Mark, who knows about everything before I do, has been wanting to go to Brenda's French Soul Food for months. He planned to take some people to brunch there a few Sundays ago. It was, however, closed. They don't do Sunday brunch. Who can blame them? Unless drag queens are somehow involved, the thought of Sunday brunch makes me cringe. The two of us hoped to have dinner at Brenda's last week. The only glitch in that little plan was this: Brenda's doesn't serve dinner. Rather than being miffed, I found that news heartwarming.

When I was a young and foolish California Culinary Academy student, one of my courses called for creating a restaurant business plan. My teammates and I decided that a breakfast and lunch-only venue would suit our tastes just fine, since you can really mark up egg dishes. We'd be doing what we loved-- serving up great food, but we'd have our evenings free-- enabling us to have a relatively normal social life. We could have our pancake, as it were, and eat it, too.

Brenda's, then, is a place after my own heart. It's exactly what I'd want to do if I were crazy enough to run a restaurant.

Located at 652 Polk Street between Eddy and Turk, Brenda's shares a stretch of road with two other food venues. On its right is Kentucky Fried Chicken-- a place of no culinary pretensions whatsoever. To its left and across the street is the California Culinary Academy-- a sad, musty diploma mill that churns out nothing but culinary pretension every few weeks. Hovering somewhere pleasantly in the middle, Brenda's has not disturbed that delicate balance of the block in the least. What it has done, thankfully, is bring great food to the neighborhood.

When I arrived at Brenda's on Wednesday morning, I was told I might sit wherever I liked by a tall, thin gentleman with a scruffy beard who was, it would seem, the sole server on the floor. I took a small table near the door, where I could have a clear view of the customers around me.

The restaurant is small. Two white-clothed tables for four in the center of the room, one small table in the window, and five small tables along the left wall.Counter stools populate the right wall, just below a bank of mirrors which runs the entire length of the place.

I ordered a coffee and dug into my portable Sherlock Holmes, which I placed on top of my little notebook. To my left was a man about my age with a scruffy beard, also reading, but near the end of his meal. Looking at my notebook and camera, he asked me if I was going to do a write up on the place. I cringed at my obviousness. That and the fact that every man in the place, including myself, was wearing a scruffy beard. I lied to him and took another sip of coffee.

There were two men sitting in the window. One was a handsome fifty-something Frenchman . His non-French breakfast companion was rattling on loudly about Napa wineries, San Francisco restaurants and who he knew just about everywhere else. Fortunately, he made his great show of saying goodbye to Brenda before I started eating.

I asked my server which beignets he thought were best. He suggested I try the beignet flight ($8.00) and decide for myself. I did.

From fore-to-background in the photo above: plain, Granny Smith apple with cinnamon honey butter, molten Ghiradelli chocolate, and crawfish with cayenne, scallions, and cheddar. It is the order in which I ate them. My server stated that people normally consumed the crawfish first. I am delighted that I didn't, because it was by far my favorite-- the chewy sweetness of the crawfish popping every so often through the ooze of the cheese, the heat of the cayenne, and the sharpness of the scallion. I am already planning my return to have a full meal of them.

They were all quite good, really. The apple beignets weren't overly sweet. They had a subtle saltiness to them I found appealing. I'm not an expert on these pastries, per se, and I've heard some people (Yelpers) whine that beignets in New Orleans are normally much bigger and cheaper. I would hardly call the portions here small. Or over priced. In fact, nothing at Brenda's is more than $10.00.

Wondering what to order next, I asked my server's opinion on the matter. Mentioning that I was intrigued by the Pineapple Upside Down Pancakes with Vanilla Bean Cream and Ginger Butter, he said that, while they were great, I might not want them after so much beignet. He was right, of course. When I asked about the Hangtown Fry special I noticed written in white grease pen on the mirror across the way, he smiled. That's all I needed. It doesn't take much arm-twisting to get me to order a Hangtown Fry. "Grits or potatoes?" he asked. "I'm kind of a potato guy," I said. I saw his smile fade a little. "But, I suppose I'd better have the grits, right?" His face brightened. I was grateful for my ability to read social cues. I told him I'd keep the menu, in case I wanted to order anything more.

It is obvious from the above photo where I placed the most of my gustatory enthusiasm. The grits. Buttery, lightly peppery, and just salty enough. The pat of butter I was given may have been intended for the biscuit, but mine ended up on the grits. I did not ask for instructions.

I never knew I liked grits. In fact, my two or three previous experiences with the dish had left me rather bored. In my thoughts, grits were an unseen province of salty, beehived situation comedy diner waitresses and they were meant to be kissed in some kind of submissive fashion. Well, I kissed Brenda's grits, and I'll kiss them again, happily.

While I was tucking into the fry, a man and woman dressed in chef whites wandered into Brenda's from the Culinary Academy. I thought how sad it was that they couldn't find anything worth eating over there. The man, I noticed, had one bright blue eye and one of milky hazel. I got caught looking, so I initiated a brief conversation with them about the school. I admitted my status as an alumnus and warned them to keep a wary eye out for people who do not understand the etiquette involved in walking around a busy kitchen with 10" chef knives. Their reaction to the pitying look on my face when I was told that tuition at the school had nearly trebled since my graduation eleven years ago indicated to me that our little interview should end as quickly as possible. I went back to reading The Adventure of the Copper Beeches and stuffing my face.

As I sat eating and reading, another man of my approximate age and scruffiness sat at the table beside mine. I really must shave. Unlike his predecessor, he seemed uneasy in his status as a single diner. He tapped is fingers and wagged his foot as though it had fallen asleep within the first ninety seconds of his being in a seated position. When his eyes weren't darting about the place, they were fixed upon his iPhone. I didn't know whether to laugh (on the inside) or cry. Few people seem really at ease with dining alone. It made me mildly depressed, but it did give me an idea for another blog post, which made me mildly cheerful.

The Hangtown fry itself was good, loaded as it was with salty, smoked bacon and fresh, fried oysters. But my delicate, hummingbird frame was challenged by the enormous portions of both dishes tried. Delicate, too, was the biscuit-- the flavor of fresh butter melted in my mouth as is the way with the good ones and it had a flakiness that, had the biscuit taken a human form, might be diagnosed as Brittle Bone Disease by medical students. I mean that in a good way.

I was unable to finish my meal, being as well-stuffed as one of those beignets from earlier in the meal. I took my remaining victuals home and had them for lunch. The grits were good even then, served cold.

My server returned, looked at the menu still placed on the table, and said, smiling, "Are you still planning on ordering more?" My brain said yes, but my stomach disagreed. I looked out the window at the Eastern Park Apartments, a retirement home that is neither in the East nor anywhere near a park. I thought to myself that, if I kept eating like this, I might not live to an age which might necessitate my inhabiting such a place. I sided with my stomach and asked, instead, for the check.

Now, I do not know Brenda Buenviaje, namesake of the restaurant. I chose not to introduce myself nor ask questions during my first visit. My photo-taking and journal entries made me look idiotic enough. When I took a closer look at Brenda's website, I read her profile and had a better clue as to why the food made me happy-- she is a former head chef of Sumi (the only good restaurant in the Castro, as far as I'm concerned) and of Cafe Claude (my I'm- hungry-and-tired-of-watching-other-people-shop/ I-need-a-drink place of choice). She looks like someone I might like to sit down with over a glass of wine. I only hope, should that occur, that I can stifle my desire to blurt out grits-kissing remarks.

I'll be back to Brenda's, and soon. There's a lot there that I still need to try, like the Grillades and Grits, the Egg and Bacon Tartine, and those Pineapple Upside Down Pancakes. But really, it's that crawdaddy beignet. Second only to relieving my bladder, it was the first thing I thought about this morning. Really, I swear.

Brenda's French Soul Food is located at:

652 Polk Street (at Eddy)
San Francisco, CA 94102

Telephone: (415) 345-8100

Hours of Operation:

Breakfast is served Monday through Friday from 8 am to 3 pm.
Lunch is served Monday through Friday from 11(ish) to 3 pm.
Brunch is served on Saturdays from 8 am to 3 pm.
Closed, for now, on Sundays.

Health Care Ordinance Infects Restaurant Industry

2008-03-07T02:15:00.000-08:00

San Francisco restaurants are suffering from what Michael Bauer at The San Francisco Chronicle called "another 1-2-3 punch to their already slim wallets." The first hit: a minimum wage increase to $9.36 per hour. The second: a sick leave law which states that employees receive one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked.

And then came the rabbit punch: The Health Care Security Ordinance, which mandates that businesses employing 20 or more employees to spend a minimum of $1.17 per employee per hour on health care. For businesses employing more than 100, that minimum increases to $1.76.

If one also factors in sharp increases in fuel costs, the doubling of wheat prices, and a public hyperventilating over dismal economic forecasts, the San Francisco restaurant industry isn't looking forward to a rosy-hued 2008.

The cost of business, my friends, is rising like so much expensive dough. How, then, are our local eateries attempting to punch it down?

A few are taking it on the chin, while others are increasing their menu prices to help absorb the costs.

And some are implementing an additional service charge, in the guise of either a percentage of the total bill, or a per person cover charge. With letters of explanation attached.

There are those among us who appreciate the transparency of these explanatory letters, even applaud them. Others find this new trend offensive. I sense that composing such letters and adding these charges was a tough call for those who have added them-- one made under the strain of coming to terms with a well-meaning, but essentially flawed ordinance. The result has become unavoidably political.

Personally, I don't want my dinner to be any more political than it needs to be. I make enough of those choices in my daily life as it is. Even the choice of which restaurant I go to is often a political decision. Once I enter that restaurant, however, I'm done. I want someone to greet me warmly, I want to be fed and watered well, and I want to forget-- for an hour or two-- the problems I purposefully left outside the front door. I want to feel taken care of.

If I want a full explanation of what goes into a Tripe alla Fiorentina, I'll ask my server, thank you. The same goes for any price increases. I don't need an essentially whining, buck-passing letter of explanation slapped in my face. It is the diner's role to whine, not the restaurant's.

If these letter writers were indeed so "proud to do business in a city that has chosen to test a landmark solution to this ongoing and serious national problem," these letters would not have been written in the first place. It is clear that the authors are distressed about the increased financial burden this new ordinance places on their shoulders. Of course, they are. But these letters just smack of insincerity. What's next? "Dear Guests, we are excited to announce that our rent has just been raised! We are proud to live in a city of astronomical real estate values..."

I think not.

For the time being, the health care ordinance is, for better or for worse, part of the cost of doing business in this city. There are many other restaurants here that have chosen to deal with this hit gracefully. And, yes, I think that a discreet increase in menu prices is graceful. It allows customers to make their own choices. Actually, it allows customers to feel more akin to what they should be feeling like-- guests. It offers a choice. It allows them to feel a little more in control of the dining process. If a guest wishes to pay x amount of dollars for a steak, he will. If not, he will opt to pay y amount for something else. Regardless, he is paying for his seat one way or another. Adding an extra math equation in the form of a service charges is anything but guest-friendly.

Great restaurants don't just fill the stomach, no matter how spectacular the food. They must satisfy an emotional need, as well.

Think of all the people who go out to dinner and then think for a moment about how these people have spent their day. Most likely, they have been working at their own jobs, seeing to the needs of others. How many people come into restaurants after hours of taking on the stress of their children, their bosses, or their customers? As a waiter and twenty-year veteran of the restaurant industry, I have to remind myself daily that it is my job to see that the people who walk into my place of work forget their troubles and get happy, even if it's just for the two hours they are under my watch. They've got problems of their own. They don't want to hear about mine. Or yours.

By writing these letters and adding this charges with little notes attached, restaurant owners are chipping away at the fragile-yet-necessary façade that a diner's needs are what matter most. By reading these letters, people of good conscience trade in a part of their much-needed role of the care-given, to that of care giver. It's a subtle shift, but it's important.

As diners, we know that we all have to pay in the end-- the check, I mean. But tacking on an extra percentage or per-person fee to the end of the bill will ultimately cost the restaurant industry far more than the money it hopes to recoup from the sting of this health care ordinance. Like goodwill.

The letters? To me, it's like reading the list of ingredients on the side of a pint of ice cream. I already know the basics of what goes into the mix, but do I want to know everything? Not always. Sometimes, I just want to treat myself to something that is going to make me feel good for a little while. If the machinery involved in the perfect churning of the cream is expensive to maintain, if the vanilla pods are of the best quality, I am quite willing to pay the reflected price for my indulgence. I don't want to read a god damned sob story about it on the side of the package.

What is most irritating to me is that these charges are being implemented by some of the busiest -- and most influential-- restaurants in the city. These chefs and owners have ridden mighty high in the good times. Now that the going has gotten tougher, they're still busy as hell but, rather than deal with their problems gracefully, these darling prime ballerine of the food press are bitching to the audience that their toe shoes are too tight.

If they want to play the Dying Swan, I suppose we should let them. However, to the best of my knowledge, no one ever paid Anna Pavlova to honk and squawk when she first performed it-- it is a role that is most effective when it is played in silence.

Yes, this is a troubling time for the city's restaurants, but if these restaurateurs could stop their covert complaining and blame-gaming long enough to realize that their integrity is potentially at stake, they might hopefully get back to the business of doing business. If these already-successful places keep providing us with the food and service they're known and respected for, we'll keep supporting them. If they need to raise prices to offset the costs of a harsh city ordinance, no one in their right mind is going to think they're greedy. I just want them quit their pandering, stick out their grease-encrusted chins, and remember that the show must go on.

Because it will.

Fish on Fridays

2008-02-29T09:31:00.000-08:00

Why is this fish sweating? He isn't. Fish can't sweat. They don't have sweat glands. But he does look rather distressed. Why does he look distressed? Because he was painted that way. He's not real.

If he did have the slightest understanding of human food ways, Fridays would be met with a great deal of anxiety indeed. There are more than one billion Catholics around the world.

And it's Lent.

My family was not the greatest model of a Catholic household. Neither son was an alter boy, holy days of obligation were not obligatory, and an experiment with Catholic school was an unmitigated disaster for my sister, ending with her prompt placement in a public school after her habit-wearing instructress was not-so-quietly removed in a piece of protective (for others) outerwear. So the story goes. But somehow, we always managed to eat fish on Fridays.

To my own horror, this invariably meant a tuna fish sandwich in my lunchbox, the smell of which permeated the plastic and even the skin of the accompanying brownish banana. I loathed this part of Lent. But, of course, Lent is about privation and penance. Lent is also about alms-giving, but try as I might, no one-- not even the poorest of my classmates-- wanted my tuna sandwich.

The one, bright, fish-related candle upon my Lenten cake was the occasional Friday foray to Anthony's Fish and Chips, a dark, wood panelled establishment housed in a mini-mall that smelled, unsurprisingly, of grease-- both from the fryer and from the heads of the old men that always seemed to be loitering around the place. My mother or sister would send themselves down the road to pick up a bright pink box filled with monoliths of battered cod and hot, steamy fried potatoes. Fish and Chips. It was the only seafood we ever saw as kids, barring the occasional shrimp cocktail. I loved it.

I had nearly forgotten how much I enjoyed fish and chips until it was suggested the other week that, while visiting friends in Redwood City, we all go have some for lunch.

We went to Al's Fish n' Chips on Roosevelt Boulevard, located in an unassuming mini-mall not unlike those of my suburban youth. It led me to question whether or not there was some sort of zoning law specifically targeting such establishments.

We ordered several items, but the fish and chips ($7.95 for a two-piece order) really stood out in my mind. It was (and I don't use this word often) perfect. A crisp, flavorful batter coating that complimented rather than competed with the tender, steamy cod inside. The chips were nearly the same. A tad thinner than the usual chunky chips associated with the dish, but still thick enough to produce both exterior crunch and inner steam. Everything we consumed there was fresh and really very good (the black beans? Yes, do try). I nearly wet myself with joy. And I cursed myself for not having my camera with me.

The following weekend, I rode up to Sausalito for a morning run to Heath Ceramics with my friend Mark. He suggested lunch at Fish nearby. There was no need to twist my arm. No guessing what we ordered.

I was a bit shocked at the sticker price-- $21.00 for beer-battered fish (3 pieces) and chips. It was, however, extremely good. I just had to tell myself that I was sitting in a restaurant in Sausalito and not in a suburban mini-mall. Perhaps the proximity of a bait and tackle shop adds incalculably more to property value than, say, a Tan n' Nails.

The final stop on my cod binge was a place in my neighborhood I've wandered by for years-- Piccadilly Fish n' Chips. A fire knocked it out of commission a little while back but it has returned. I ordered the 2-piece fish and chips, of course, for $6.95. Since this is classic English takeaway, I did just that. What made me happiest was the fact that my order was wrapped in newspaper-- the SF Weekly. I stifled any impulse I had to engage in Cockney rhyming slang, since I was the only person in the place apart from the sweet woman making my fish who is, I believe, Korean. And I'm not a Cockney. I took away my take-away.

When I arrived home, I found that the fish and chips had continued to steam as they snuggled in the Pink Section-- exactly what is supposed to happen. To my joy, the fish was still crispy, but not beer-battered. More tempura in style-- delicate, brittle and pock-marked. It was good. I ignored the small packets of tartar sauce and made my own impromptu condiment of mayonnaise, chopped sweet pickles and cider vinegar (since I didn't have the traditional malt vinegar handy). It worked in the pinch. Disappointing, however, were the chips. Rather soggy and bland. Of course, I am partly to blame. I was the first person in Piccadilly's door at 11:00 am and these were the first batch of chips of the day. I should have known better. The fish (and the price point) will bring me back.

All this battered cod and fries over the past few days. I'm actually not sick of it. Could you, my reading public (yes, all three of you) tell me of other, great places to go for a Friday Night Fish Fry? I'm all ears. And all stomach.

And now for the history lesson.

A Brief History of Fish and Chips

The potato has been known to the English since the late 16th century-- about the time that old canard about Sir Walter Raleigh introducing it to a grateful nation started making its rounds. According to The Straight Dope, the Irish refused to plant them, since potatoes were not mentioned in the Bible. They have since eaten their words. It was the French, naturally, who invented pommes frites, in the 1840's.

Fish has, not surprisingly, been known to the English for a much longer time. They live on an island, after all. Frying the fish is believed to have become popular in England in the early mid-19th century, even being mentioned in Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens.

There is a bit of controversy as to where the inspired idea of combining fried fish with fried potatoes first occurred. A Mr. Lees opened a fish and chip shop in Mossley, Lancashire in 1863 while a Mr. Joseph Malin opened his London shoppe in 1860. Or 1865. No one is certain. The National Federation of Fish Friers recognizes that both should share the Oscar. They ought to know, since an average of 300 million servings of fish and chips are served each year in Britain. That's six servings for every human.

Fish has a rather entertaining website, its map is drawn on a napkin.

350 Harbor Drive
Sausalito, CA 9465 (latitude and longitude also given)
415) 331-FISH

Open seven days a week
11:30 am- 4:30 pm for lunch
5:30 pm- 8:30 pm for dinner

Piccadilly Fish and Chips

1345 Polk Street (at Pine)
San Francisco, CA 94109

Open seven days a week

Monday- Thursday 11 am - 11 pm
Friday 11 am - midnight
Saturday 11 am - 11 pm
Sunday 1 pm - 11 pm

Al's Fish n' Chips

2139 Roosevelt Avenue
Redwood City, CA 94061
650) 366-FISH

Open seven days a week

Monday - Thursday 11 am - 8 pm
Friday - 11 am - 8:30 pm
Saturday - 11 am - 8 pm
Sunday - 11 am - 7:30 pm

* Oh. A food person's fun(ish) fact about Lent. Marie-Antoine Carême's last name means "Lent", derived from the Latin quadragesima. Go now, and impress your friends.

From Lemons, Lemonade

2008-02-22T08:32:00.000-08:00

At some point in his motivational speaking career, Dale Carnegie uttered the famous, if misguided words:

"When fate hands you a lemon, make lemonade."

The fault is not so much in the sentiment-- making lemonade out of lemons is, naturally, a rather positive, productive activity. What bothers me is the underlying belief that there is something inherently unpleasant about this citrus fruit. Carnegie was not alone in his thinking. Used car salesmen have given the lemon a bad name over the years, associating them as they do with automobiles that are slick and shiny on the outside, but of dubious dependability under the hood, which is all rather pot vs. kettle when one stops long enough to think about it.

All I know is this-- Carnegie's family certainly didn't hail from a sunny, Mediterranean clime, or he would never have said it. He might instead have related his comment to the Germans or the idea of an eight-hour work day. When fate hands you a German... you can fill in the rest.

Of course, Carnegie was telling his audience that, when fate hands you something unpleasant, make the best of it. When fate hands me that kind of lemon, I would more than likely stare at it for a moment and say something like, "I don't think that lemon is mine," and walk away.

When fate or, more often than not, the supermarket checker hands me an actual lemon, I am more likely to own it. When fate hands me Meyer lemons, I get happy.

I am not about to delve into the history and genetics of the Meyer lemon today. Others have done it well enough that I do not have to. I suggest you let our own Amy Sherman tell you about them. Read her blog post on Meyer lemons.

If you want a few ideas as to what you can do with Meyer lemons, read another Amy's (Scattergood) fun list "100 things to do with a Meyer lemon" from the Los Angeles Times online to get some great ideas. Some are oddly practical, like playing fetch with them in order to freshen canine breath. If you can come up with other uses, please let me know. No one has mentioned the Meyer lemon as an elbow-softener. Perhaps there are few people who still care for supple joints as I do.

And if you really, really want to know everything you could possibly want to know about the lemon, its history, and its uses, by all means go out and buy yourself a copy of Much Depends on Dinner by Margaret Visser. It's quite a fascinating read.

Look, I just like lemons. Perhaps it's my Sicilian heritage and the fact that my ancestors actually earned their bread and marmellata exporting the little yellow fruits. Which leads me to wonder that, had Dale Carnegie been born, say, Dale Carneghi, he might have said, "When fate hands you a lemon, make limoncello." But he wasn't and he didn't, so I am stuck with making lemonade for the purposes of today's post.

It strikes me as a cruel twist of fate that a fruit which makes such a great summer thirst-quencher should reach its peak in the dead of winter, but that isn't going to stop me from making it. One still needs to stave off scurvy, even in the chilly months. What better way to pretend that winter isn't happening than to wear gingham, put some zinc oxide on your nose and pour yourself a tall glass of lemonade? It is denial perfected. After all, I believe it was Mr. Carnegie who also said, "Happiness doesn't depend on any external conditions, it is governed by our mental attitude." I am not going to argue with him about that. With that as my new credo, I shall chose to pretend it isn't raining outside, my complexion isn't pasty, and I haven't gained 10 pounds. Instead, you'll find me inhabiting my inner world, where it's perpetually sunny, and I am always tan and thin. Thanks for the motivation, Dale.

Meyer Lemonade

Meyer lemons are ideal for making lemonade. Lacking confidence in their own identity (half lemon, half mandarin), they share space well with others. Three flavors that blend well (in lemonade) with the fruit are mint, cucumber, and coriander. Yes, coriander. Don't ask me how I know. I have chosen mint today because it is pretty.

Ingredients:

1 cup freshly squeezed Meyer lemon juice-- about 5 to 6 lemons, depending upon size and juiciness. You can actually squeeze them the night before-- the juice won't separate like orange juice does.

1 cup simple syrup. Mint is added to mine here. I'm not telling you how to make simple syrup.

3 to 4 cups cold, clean water.

Mint sprigs and (very) thinly sliced Meyer lemons for garnish.

Ice cubes, if you're into them. I find they keep the garnish from floating to the top.

Preparation:

1. Take all the ingredients and dump them into a big enough pitcher. Stir and serve.

Or, if you want to be very French about it and serve it comme un vrai citron pressé...

1. Place lemon juice and syrup in the antique apothecary beakers you found for next to nothing at the marché aux puces in Dijon last autumn. Place on a tray with chilled, bottled Volvic, one pastis glass and spoon per person, and a pack of Gauloises Blondes. Let your guests prepare their own concoctions, according to personal taste.

Note: If you opt for cucumber lemonade, slice up a cucumber thinly, add to the water and refrigerate for 24 hours. For coriander? I haven't quite figured that one out. I'll let you know when I do.

Serves 4 to 6.

Dives I Love: Cordon Bleu

2008-02-15T09:25:00.000-08:00

Typically, when I heard the phrase "Cordon Bleu", I used to think in purely French terms. Mustachioed men in perfect white chef coats tasting expensive-looking dishes with silver spoons pulled from little pockets in their sleeves. Or I'd think of the literal translation, which is, of course, "blue ribbon", which I might mentally attach to one of the chef's coats. Since I moved near Polk Gulch four years ago, the little Frenchmen in my head have been replaced by thoughts of five spice chicken. And I couldn't be happier about that.

The restaurant isn't much to look at. In fact, there are those who are downright turned off by its distinct lack of physical charm, décor and, well, apparent hygiene. As far as I'm concerned, the unadventurous can keep their distance. It's not as though Cordon Bleu needs their business-- there's a line out the door every evening.

Why the line? Well, Cordon Bleu is tiny-- nine stools bolted around a formica counter, three small tables in the back, and next to no room in between. The real reason for the crowds, however, is the chicken, which they tout as... just read the sign:

I've never been to Vietnam, so I wouldn't know. Considering the fact that the jungle fowl-- the ancient proto-chicken from which all others derive-- originated in Southeast Asia, the Vietnamese have been able to take their time perfecting chicken recipes. The one at Cordon Bleu is pretty damned good, but the best? I'll take their boast with a grain of salt. And a pinch of five spice.

Chinese Five Spice, if you didn't know, is a combination of ground cinnamon (cassia), star anise, cloves, Sichuan pepper, and fennel. When rubbed on chicken, it gives Cordon Bleu the means to pay its rent.

When I visit the place, it's usually before or after seeing a film at the Lumière Theatre, depending upon the subject matter. I'd much rather fill myself here than with movie theatre fare. And possibly for less money than a coke, some popcorn and a candy bar.

The food is-- I hesitate to use the word cheap-- inexpensive. I can stuff myself silly for $8.25 with the "Number Five", which I think is the most expensive thing on the menu.

The Number 5 consists of one piece of "five spiced roast chicken" which, apart from roasting, spent a good deal of time on the grill, one pork and glass noodle fried Imperial roll, one "shish kebab" (which is neither shish nor kebab. It's very thin slices of marinated steak. The only common ground it shares with kebab is that it is meat that spents a good amount of time over a hot grill), country salad (shredded cabbage), and "meat sauce on rice".

Meat sauce on rice. Ground pork, peppers, onions, tomato. It's piled high on nearly every plate. I'm fond of its no nonsense name. And its flavor. It's no surprise to me why SF Weekly dubbed Cordon Bleu the Best Dive Restaurant of 2006. It's good food. And damned cheap.

The next time you're in the neighborhood, whether it be to see an art film, catch a drag show, or pick up a hustler, stop by Cordon Bleu. That is, if you can get in.

Cordon Bleu Vietnamses Restaurant

1574 California Street (at Polk Street)
San Francisco, CA 94109-4708

Phone: (415) 673-5637

Hours: Tuesday- Saturday 11:30 am- 2:30 pm, 5-10 pm.
Sunday 4-10 pm

Cash Only. No alcohol is served, so bring your own beer. Hell, bring some for the women behind the counter. The last time I was there they said they could sure use one.

Joys of Jell-O

2008-02-08T09:17:00.000-08:00

The title says it all. There is a world of joy in Jell-O-making.

I picked up this treasure written in 1963 at a garage sale years ago. I had always meant to prepare the recipes from it but, invariably, I'd just dust it off every once in a while to giggle over the saturated color photos.

Flights of 1960's culinary fancy fill the pages. Dishes such as Hawaiian Eyeful, Fruited Perfection, and Under-the-Sea Salad Keep me reading. Fantasies, Medleys and no fewer than five Surprises populate the book. The most surprising being the fact that someone discovered what pleasure combining stewed tomatoes, vinegar and strawberry Jell-o can produce.

I was fascinated by Jell-O's versatility-- a Twentieth Century aspic--especially, according to the company, how well it goes with seafood. The Sea Dream, in which a cucumber and vinegar-spiked lime Jell-O serves as the perfect pedestal for bay shrimp, was intriguing, as was the playfully named Ring-Around-the-Tuna (a "beautiful jewel-like entree salad for your luncheon or buffet table"). Luncheon. I wish more people said that word.

At some point during my latest perusal of this book, I realized that no one I know seems to make Jell-O anymore. Except my friend Karen. Granted, it still seems to be a mainstay of the Mid-western Junior League and the state of Utah, but the product isn't apart of my life as it was when I was a kid. And before you ask, I have never ever wrestled in a pool of it, no matter what anyone tells you.

In my household, there was never any ceremony to its preparation. No sophisticated layering, the special molds collected dust behind my giant playchest of Hot Wheels. One just added the boiling water, poured it into custard cups and shoved them into the refrigerator. At my grandmother's house, it may have been prepared solely and grudgingly for the purpose of entertaining grandchildren. A woman who made pastas, soups, sauces, and desserts entirely from scratch must have held this product in contempt, judging by the cracks and semi-petrified state which developed from lack of interest and/or consumption at the back of her ice box. I never asked her about it, I'd simply take one and eat it anyway--letting the super-hardened bits melt on my tongue. Texture is important to children.

I've gone a very long time without eating Jell-O. What makes this product so immensely popular outside my circle? Is it the watching of its wiggle? The witnessing of its jiggle? Perhaps there are more people with throat infections out there than I had previously thought.

This week, I decided to find out how much joy this gelatinous product could give me.

I thought I would tackle one of the more savory, aspic-like dishes such as Vegetable Salad (pictured below, right) with cauliflower and pimiento.

It was much more difficult than I thought. Rather than the looking somewhat like one of Hedda Hopper's spring hats, which is what attracted me to the dish in the first place, mine took on a rather sinister appearance. Growing impatient for the thing to gel, I had great difficulty in getting the vegetables to suspend themselves attractively. Lots of air bubbles ensued and the result looked more like cauliflower drowning in an algal bloom. It even tasted of futile panic.

And it turned my fingernails green.

I sat down on my couch, empty Lime Jell-O box in hand, and took a look at the ingredients. Sugar topped the list, followed by gelatin, adipic acid (for tartness), less than 2% natural and artificial flavor, disodium phosphate and sodium citrate (control acidity), fumaric acid (for tartness), Yellow 5, Blue 1, BHA (Preservative).

Adipic acid? I looked it up. Granted, this is food grade adipic acid, but the realization that it's primary, non-food use is in the production of nylon and Polyurethane made me a little uneasy. At least fumaric acid is found naturally in lichen and Iceland moss. BHA? Butylated hydroxyanisole, which the National Institute of Health considers reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen. I threw my little disaster away.

And yet, I still wanted Jell-O. I opted for something Jell-O-esque instead. Like real gelatin. I grabbed a box of unflavored gelatin from the store shelf and read the ingredient list: gelatin. That's it. I decided to make my own, with a little suggestive help from a recipe on the side of the box. Why not add real fruit juice for tartness? Why not indeed.

Making your own flavors gives you a lot more freedom to explore an exciting gelatinous world outside your door and inside your refrigerator. It doesn't really take any more time than the other stuff. And it wont give you cancer.

In all, I was more disturbed by Jell-O than over-joyed by it. Don't misunderstand me. I love to be disturbed by food items. I enjoy the idea of Jell-o, and there will always be room for it's cookbooks on my shelves, just not in my refrigerator.

Tart Cherry Gelatin

You can use whatever juice you want in this, provided you avoid pineapple, kiwi, ginger, papaya, fig, or guava juice-- the enzymes in these will not allow the gelatin to set. I just chose a tart cherry juice because that's what my mood dictated.

You may or may not wish to add sugar to the recipe. The sugar level of your juice-of-choice will tell you what you need. Just taste it first.

Ingredients:

1 packet (7 grams) of unflavored gelatin
2 cups tart cherry juice
1/4 cup sugar (or not)

Preparation:

1. In a medium bowl, sprinkle gelatin over 1/2 cup cherry juice, letting stand for one minute.
2. Add 1 1/2 cups of boiling cherry juice, stirring until dissolved. Keep stirring for about five
minutes.
3. Pour into vessels of your choice-- a two cup mold, dessert dishes, or wine glasses.
4. Chill for several hours or overnight until firm.
5. Garnish with whatever you feel like. I'm tired of telling you what to do. I chose a slightly
sweetened whipped cream and toasted almonds. Judging by the photo, a lot of whipped
cream.

Serves two.

Welsh Rabbit, Welsh Rarebit

2008-01-31T13:34:00.001-08:00

Always searching for a happy, late-night snack, I recently turned my attention to Welsh Rarebit, primarily because I'd never had it before. I'm not Welsh.

I'd heard tell of rarebit, garnering sufficient information to know that rabbit meat was not involved, yet not enough to understand that this was not some vegetarian variation on S. O. S. , also known as chipped beef on toast. I was certain of two things: 1) bread and cheese were involved and 2) the Welsh were not being flattered in the naming of this dish. I did a little research.

Yes, it was cheese toast and, no, praise for Welsh culture was not intended. Though ostensibly an English dish (other British and European cultures have their own versions), the original name of the dish was Welsh Rabbit. In England, rabbit was considered poor man's meat so, in a rather clever, back-handed way, naming the dish "Welsh Rabbit" suggested that, not only were the Welsh poor, as they were, but too stupid and/or lazy to go out and capture their own prey, thus having to satisfy their hunger with bread and cheese. It's 18th Century insult food. But it's good, both as an insult and as a dish.

Sometime in the late 19th Century, some forward thinking, politically correct person or personess took pity upon the poor Welsh and softened the name by changing it to Welsh Rarebit, taking with it much of the bite. In a sense, making it blander than it need be.

Personally, I think the Welsh are doing just fine. How can one not love a culture that has given the world Tom Jones, Dame Shirley Bassey, and countless vowel-shy place names that no one but an insider can pronounce? And I would argue that this dish is for the lazy. Lazy is a grilled cheese sandwich. Think of this as a grilled cheese sandwich that requires a bit more effort.

Welsh Rarebit with Apples

The rarebit recipe is taken directly from New York Times food columnist Mark Bittman, a.k.a The Minimalist. You can go directly to a video of him preparing the dish here, which is what made me want to make it in the first place. In fact, I spent so much time sitting at my desk, watching his videos I got very little done that day. I've always enjoyed reading him, but I am now an even bigger fan of his as a result of seeing him on camera.

There are a great number of variations on the rarebit-like, cheese on toast theme. I have chosen to prepare Bittman's because, apart from being extremely simple to prepare, it has a little spicy kick. I added sliced apples because I like apples, which is reason enough.

Ingredients:

For the Rarebit:

2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon dried mustard
a healthy pinch of cayenne pepper
1/2 bottle of good, dark English beer, like Guiness Stout
a few generous shakes of Worstershire sauce
1 pound excellent English cheddar, grated

For the Rest:

1 loaf of good, hearty wheat or white bread. I do not recommend sliced sandwich bread. The results will depress you.

1 tart, sweet apple, sliced thinly. I used Pink Lady, because I like their flavor, they're available and I loved the pop duo as a child. Granny Smith will do, too.

1 bunch scallion, chopped

Preparation:

In a saucepan large enough to contain all of the ingredients, melt butter over medium low heat and add flour. Cook the mixture, stirring with a wooden spoon, until it is dirty blonde in color and smells faintly nutty.

Add mustard and cayenne pepper, then pour in the beer, stirring all the while. Add Worstershire sauce (if you add the sauce before the beer, the sauce will burn, sending up blackish flecks as you stir, so I do not recommend it). Now add the cheese and keep stirring until your efforts result in a smooth cheese sauce.

Pour into a bowl, large ramekin, or containing vessel of your choice. The rarebit sauce will cool into a solid mass, looking just like a cheese spread, which is precisely what it is. The sauce will keep covered in your refrigerator for several days, which is precisely the idea-- it's ready for you at a moment's notice.

When the moment has notified you sufficiently, slice your crusty bread to its desired thickness, place on a sheet pan and put it under a broiler. If you place the bread slices under your broiler and you notice that no change has occurred to them in several minutes, make sure your broiler's heating element is turned on-- listen to the voice of experience. Toast the slices well on one side, remove the pan from the oven and turn the bread over, replacing them under the broiler and toasting them less thoroughly than you have the previous side-- this will be the upside to your rarebit.

Spread a little of the now-solidified cheese onto your toast. This will adhere your apple slices to the bread. Arrange apple slices over the cheese.

At this point, I like to warm up a bit of the sauce in my microwave on low, to make it softer, therefore easier, to spread over the apple slices. Cover the apples generously with the cheese. Place the hopefully well-constructed toasts under the broiler. Do not remove them until the cheese bubbles and browns. If you have a conventional, broiler-on-the-bottom oven and your kitchen floor is clean enough, I might suggest lying down on the floor with one hand propping up your head and the other clad in an oven mitt, leaving the door of the broiler open a bit in order to get a good view of the action. If you are prosperous enough to have two oven mitts, I would suggest wearing the second one on the hand that supports your head for added comfort.

Remove the toasts from the oven when they have reached the desired doneness, transfer to a serving plate and sprinkle with the scallions. If you eat them immediately, the cheese will very likely burn the roof of your mouth. The time it takes to walk to you refrigerator, grab a beer and pop it open is sufficient cooling time.

Russia House

2008-01-25T09:40:00.000-08:00

For years, I've driven by Russia House-- it's large, red letters and neon-framed windows staring me down every time I head south on highway 101. I've wanted to go there for a long time, but just never got around to it. This week, I finally stared back.

Very little information could be gleaned from a Google search of the place and no one I know had ever been there. The most information I could find was a list of seven comments on Yelp.com. The reviews were decidedly mixed. Rumors of all-you-can-eat (and drink) Russian food, dancing, and either a hostile welcome or no welcome at all were all I had to go on. To me, that sounded almost like a dare. I discussed the restaurant with a friend of mine who felt equally up to the challenge. In fact, she said she already had her Russian name picked out for the evening-- Katinka. While I googled her stage name (which I learned means "pure"), she made the reservation. We gathered a group of eight people together, figuring there was a certain safety in numbers.

While I busied myself snapping photos of the Russia House sign upon arrival, the three dining companions I showed up with were confronted by a man of about sixty dressed in blue jeans and leather jacket standing near a sign that read "Dress code strictly enforced." A cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth. He was anything but welcoming. After explaining that we had a reservation, we were allowed entry.

Once past the Russian Cerberus, we stepped inside the zodiac-themed blue doors and walked upstairs to the dining room. The first thing I noticed were the enormous crystal chandeliers that seemed to be in some sort of battle with the neon of the bar for who could throw off the most light. It was extremely bright.

The second thing I noticed was a little girl, maybe seven years old, in some sort of ice dancing outfit. My friend Gary asked if that was the RussianJonbenet. Several other children of varying ages were all dressed up and running about.

The third thing to capture my attention was the group of about thirty people standing about two banks of long, platter-filled tables. Some of them stared at us blankly. Others stared out the window, waiting for someone or perhaps something to happen.

The fourth thing I noticed was that no one came to greet us. After about a minute of standing around trying not to look helpless or uncomfortable, my friend Lyle stopped a waiter who was rushing past us. We mentioned the name of our reservation. He pointed to a table for four and said we could sit there. When we explained that more were joining us, he pointed to a larger table next to the large party with all that shrimp cocktail. We sat. And then we sat some more.

What was I hoping to accomplish by being here? Was this a big mistake? Was the big, Russian dinner I've been promoting among my friends going to be a big, Russian failure? I wondered.

After a thorough examination of a wall mural we decided could only have been inspired by Russian fairy tales filtered through the mind of a Chernobyl survivor,we tired of sitting without benefit of food or drink. No one had approached us for minutes. Lyle pulled some money out of his wallet and beckoned a blond woman who was standing under the neon sign of the bar to come over. He asked for her name and how we might procure some service. While he did this, he handed her the money. She handed the money back, telling us that she wasElya , the owner. When I asked her if she wanted the name of our party for reservation purposes, she said, "No, it's okay. I don't need that." At that point, I knew we needed some vodka. Fast.

We made our vodka selection-- not expensive, considering we had to buy it by the bottle, but decent. 750 ml of Absolut for $60. When it was brought to the table, we asked if there was any real Russian vodka to be had. Elya replied, "No, not yet. Soon." Lyle asked how long Russia House had been open. 20 years. Russian vodka must be harder to obtain than I had previously thought.

We also asked about the menu. We had heard of an all you can eat and drink feast, but what we had in front of us was an a la carte menu. She told us, yes, she did that sometimes on Fridays. Fridays? I told her we understood the restaurant was only open to the public on Saturdays. She shrugged her shoulders and said that sometimes she felt like opening on Friday, too.

When she noted the empty seats around our table, I explained that we were still waiting for the rest of our party.

"Your girlfriends?" she asked.

"Sort of," I replied.

"Are they Russian?"

"No. Not Russian." I thought of the fake Russian names they'd be using tonight.

"That's surprising," she said. "Ninety-five percent of the American men who come here have Russian girlfriends or wives. So why have you come?"

I thought about how to answer that one, but settled on, "To have fun!"

She smiled and got our waiter. I think at some point in that brief exchange, it was decided that we liked each other and the mood of the room shifted. The girls arrived, we settled into our first drink, and Lyle took charge of ordering appetizers.

What came to the table were baskets of soft rye bread and butter, platters of beef tongue, smoked salmon, smoked sturgeon beef piroshke, and shrimp cocktail. Lots of shrimp cocktail.

The beef tongue was good with a little mustard sauce and soft rye bread...

The beef piroshke was excellent. We were certain there was more that just meat in them. We briefly discussed which organs might have been included.

The best dish, to the unanimous decision of the table, was the smoked sturgeon. Salty, faintly smoky and butter on the tongue, it needed nothing but perhaps a little vodka to keep it company on its way down my throat. We had two platters. They even threw in more shrimp cocktail.

Our table livened up after some food, cold vodka, and soda water served in iced pitchers. I looked over at the birthday party next to us. I still didn't see anyone smiling. Just people milling about in fur stoles (women, naturally) and not touching their food. I thought they might be having a wake instead. Commenting on the brightness of the lights, my friend Gary looked to the birthday crowd and commented that he now understood why Russian women wore so much make up-- it was to hold up under those damned bright lights. He wondered where he could get a make up mirror with a Russian setting. I drank a little more vodka.

Then, suddenly, everything changed. Everyone's attention turned to the bandstand. A woman who looked remarkably like Jan Wahl started singing. The lights, mercifully, were dimmed. Everyone started smiling and moved to the dance floor. Apparently, the party had begun.

People danced, moved back to the tables to drink a little, and then danced some more. We watched from our table, since our main courses had arrived. Chicken Kiev, which seemed like a must-have since I frequently ate theStouffer's version as a child, was a bit of a dry disappointment, and shashlik -- kebabs of fish and chicken, we found tastier. Lots of potatoes made their way to our table, as did some excellent pickled vegetables. The hands-down favorite was the watermelon. The eight of us were stuffed and ready now to give our full attention to what was about to happen on the dance floor.

The little girl in what we thought was an ice dancing dress w as partnered with a dancing boy. Everyone in the restaurant crowded around the dance floor. We were shown the proper way to swing dance, fox trot, and just about every other kind of trot. The dancers were cute and we laughed and clapped for them, but the Russians looked on humorless, as if this were something to be taken very seriously, which doesn't seem so surprising when one considers that Russia has produced some of the greatest dancers the world has ever seen. Think Nijinsky, Pavlova, and Baryshnikov. I felt as though I might be missing something important. I had another sip of my vodka.

A much older couple then took over, showing us hot Latin-inspired moves that loosened up the crowd a little. Decency (or simply poor photography skills) prevents me from showing you the 13 year-old girls costume, but I can show you an example of her excellent hand movement...

Having been shown how it's all done, we took to the dance floor ourselves, working off the shrimp cocktail and vodka. Everyone else in the room seemed to have the same idea.

Back at our table for a little resting and watering, I saw that the birthday club had finally sat down to their meal. For a minute or two at a time. Some ran off to dance, some came over to flirt with a couple of my friends.

I thought perhaps we'd gone about our dinner all wrong. We ate then danced. The Russians danced, then ate. Perhaps there was sense in that. Do we see dancing as a digestive activity while they see it as an appetite stimulant? I wondered.

I also wondered what all the fuss about hostile service was about on Yelp. In my opinion, the people that walked away from the place weren't trying hard enough (Yes, I know-- they have a good point). I regarded the experience as a bit of travel adventure.

I'm certainly no sociologist, but given centuries of strong-armed governments, pogroms, and war, I don't think it strange that Russians might be a bit tight-knit, insular, and suspicious as a group. Once we got past the doorman and actually started talking to people, we found them warm and lively. It just takes a little while. To more pat generalizations about the Russians, I think that any civilization that has made such incredible contributions to literature, music, and dance is worth the effort to get to know a little better. And those littlematrioshka stacking dolls. Sigh.

What started out as a rather uncertain evening ended up being a hell of a lot of fun. If you can see yourself making it past the doorman, I say put on your (fake) fur hat and your dancing boots and just go.

Here's a sped-up video of the place. Stop at any frame to get a good look at the joint:

The Russia House is open to the public on Saturday nights. Please don't ask the hours, because I have no idea.

Russia House is located at 2011 Bayshore Boulevard in San Francisco, 94134

Call 415-330-9991 for reservations. Be strong.

Getting Serviced

2008-01-18T08:17:00.000-08:00

After a pre-shift service meeting at work the other night, a colleague of mine turned to me and said, "You know, when I go out, I don't even expect good service anymore." I found myself identifying with him.

The following evening he came up to me with a revision-- "Actually, I've come to expect bad service." I thought that was rather harsh, but it got me thinking...

How hard is it to find a good waiter around here? This is one of the great restaurant capitals of the world. Thousands upon thousands of foodies live in the Bay Area. Surely, more than a few work in the service industry.

Of course, being a foodie does not necessarily make one a great waiter. It might provide an excellent culinary knowledge base from which to build, but a great waiter also needs patience, an eye for detail, a battle-tested calm, great diplomatic skills, and human warmth.

Taking care of strangers' needs is a tricky business because, often times, the need goes beyond mere feeding and watering. Taking care of a woman who is trying to impress clients? A man attempting to seduce his date? A table full of women with scrapbooks and wrapped presents on a "Girls Night Out"? Grandma's 80th birthday? If you've been a party to any of those parties, you know what I mean. A great waiter can take any of those situations and turn them into triumph. A bad waiter can turn them into one of those horror stories you tell at cocktail parties.

We all have our opinions as to what great restaurant service is. I think a great waiter has the ability to either wholly incorporate him or herself into a guests dining experience or, if need be, create an environment where the needs of the guests are met with an almost Beauty-and-the Beast-like invisibility. And I am talking Cocteau, not Disney. As a server, I find that I am much more suited to the former rather than the latter.

Following my colleague's comments on the state of San Francisco's service industry, I thought about my own dining experiences. Had I had any great waiters lately? Mostly, I drew a blank. One only remembers the really good or the exceptionally bad. In the good category, I could come up with only two in the past couple of months and both examples occurred where I least expected great service. The best of those two was a young server at Kate's' Kitchen in the Haight. It's hard to pinpoint precisely what it was about her, aside from keeping the coffee cup filled, warning against my ordering too much food, her sense of humor, or her deft analysis of the pros and cons of the cheddar pancakes versus the hash. In my opinion, what made her a great server was all of this and that human warmth factorI have already mentioned. She actually seemed concerned, like her eye was on us, and not in an are-you-stealing-the-silver? sort of way. The fact that she managed this when the restaurant was packed to the gills with a waiting list half a mile long impressed me. I watched her. She wasn't just singling out my table for special service. She treated everyone like that. I think I was a little bit in love.

I'm not getting into the terrible service experiences I've had in the recent past because I'd be typing here all day and I've got another 200 or so people to help take care of at lunch today. I just needed to tell myself something positive about the service industry today because all I ever seem to read is about bitter waiters and bad experiences.

Have you unearthed any great waiters lately? If so, tell me who and where. I want details.

Getting Blood from an Orange

2008-01-11T09:27:00.000-08:00

Are you as tired of 2008 as I am? The stock market is tanking as miserably as the housing market, winter storms have left us without power for days (and, in one case I know, without a roof), and I just might scream if I listen to any more caucus coverage. The general mood is anything but sanguine. Is there any good news?

Well, yes. California's citrus crops have been doing rather nicely, especially when compared to last year's disastrous freeze. I realize this isn't the most exciting news in the world, but I feel the need keep my joys simple this year, and what could be simpler than a small, roundish piece of fruit?

Of all the known oranges in the universe, my favorite is the Citrus sinensis, or blood orange. There are three common varieties of which I am aware: the Sicilian Tarocco, the Spanish Sanguinello, and the Moro, which is grown right here. Not exactly "right here", but rather in San Diego. And Texas and Florida, but those are two states I generally try not to think about.

Blood oranges aren't exactly a revelation to most foodies today. In fact, some may think them overplayed and mildly pretentious (before you say anything, remember: glass houses). But, if you can reach back into your past, when you weren't so jaded about food a moment...

The first time I encountered a blood orange, I was fascinated. Don't tell me you weren't. The stupid thought of, "It's an orange, but it's red!" popped out of my mouth. Thank God I was among friends. I think I also used the word "neat". The flavor was, of course, citrusy, but tinged with berries. The acid wasn't overpowering and there was a hint of bitterness behind the sweet of it. It was a fruit I could wholly identify with. I bought up several and ate them out-of-hand, I put them into salads, I squeezed them for juice, which I still do. Apparently, so should you. Read on:

Anthocyanin, the pigment, which gives the orange its distinctive interior color (and possibly gives the fruit its subtle berry-flavored notes), is a powerful antioxidant that neutralizes the effects of free-radical chemicals within our bodies. Free radicals, if you haven't heard, are in part responsible for cancer and, even more horrifying to some people, aging. Anthocyanins also help prevent ulcers and improve one's vision, so drink and eat up.

Blood Orange Salad

I want to thank Erik Cosselmon of Kokkari for this one. There are innumerable ways to slip blood oranges into salads, but this is my favorite method, by far. It's great to eat as either a salad course or as dessert.

Ingredients:

3 blood oranges (Moro are used here, but use whichever you want or can find)
2 to 3 dates (I used Medjools), pit removed and cut into slivers
1/4 cup walnuts, either toasted and salted or candied. I vote candied.
Olive oil for drizzling, the best you've got.
Rose water for more drizzling.

Preparation:

1. With a very sharp knife, cut skin from the oranges. Slice the flesh into 1/2-inch pieces, across the grain, so that they look rather like bleeding morning glories. Arrange on your serving dish of choice.

2. Sprinkle slivered dates and walnuts over and around the orange slices.

3. Drizzle with olive oil.

4. Drizzle with rose water (orange blossom water works very well, too, if rosewater reminds you too much of your grandmother). Be very sparing with the rose water, otherwise your salad will smell rather whorish, in my opinion.

5. Serve and eat. Exhausting recipe, I know. I'll do my best to present you with something easier next time.

Big Night Out: The Melting Pot

2008-01-04T16:49:00.000-08:00

Last week, my friend Lyle invited me down to the Peninsula to have a big fondue dinner with him and our friend Jack at The Melting Pot. Why? What else can one do when one's girlfriend is out of town except eat an enormous meal of melted cheese, bread, and hot oil-cooked meat? I took the Caltrain down to San Mateo, empty stomached and ready to be amused. The Melting Pot sounded quaint to me, like some homey, Americanized little Alpine restaurant. I had absolutely no idea it was a 33 year-old national franchise born in Maitland, Florida (just outside of Orlando, not surprisingly) with 130 restaurants in its partnership. Of course, I have absolutely no idea about a lot of things.

As we approached the restaurant, I worried about its size-- a two-story fondue restaurant with outdoor seating? On a cold winter night, I wasn't surprised to see no one dining al fresco. Then I wondered, who eats fondue outside? Give me an old pine table by a roaring fire, not an aluminum one under a portable heat lamp. I knew my hope for quaintness was about to be dashed to pieces upon the hardwood-veneered walls and Corian tabletops inside, so I checked that hope at the door with my coat.

When we entered, the first thing I noticed was The Melting Pot logo etched onto glass, sheeted with a constant stream of water immediately behind the host stand. I shuddered a little. I hoped that, should a grease fire occur at my table, no one would come to douse it with a cooling waterfall. The host standing in front of the image was very friendly and passed us to a server who gave us a table upstairs.

The decor upstairs was evocative of a suburban steak house-- leather banquets, pendant lamps that hang too close to the eyes- forcing one to look down at the table and not at one's dining comanions without sunglasses, and odd bits of painting hanging on the wall. My favorite is shown above. I suppose an endless glass of red wine and a woman who can bend herself any which way is a great night out for some.

Our server was the same woman who showed us to our booth. Over the course of the meal, I would come to decide that she was possibly the best server I'd had in quite some time (much better than the server we had the last time the three of us got together for dinner)-- funny, warm, always showing up when we might need something, and very knowledgeable about the menu. When I asked for the silliest cocktail available, she suggested the Tipsy Turtle, a beverage of various rums and juices. Knowing full well that this was not to be a traditional fondue experience, I accepted, it was refreshing, though I was too stubborn to remove the half of a pineapple wedged into the glass, so it kept hitting me in the nose and I dribbled a little.

Opening the menu, I was immediately depressed by the pull-out image of Marlo Thomas with two cute, smiling yet mortally ill children. I won't argue that St. Jude's Children's Hospital is a worthy charity, I just don't like being accosted for change as I'm settling into dinner, whether it be some man rapping on a window asking me for beer money in the Haight or That Girl. Perhaps most disturbing was the amount of airbrushing done to the photo. I flipped the advertisement over so I no longer had to look at it. That accomplished, I read the large, laminated menu.

Filled with photos, the menu told me what I could expect from The Melting Pot and "How [my] Melting Pot Experience Works". I was relieved to know, with the guidance of image number two shown above, that I was to simply select my salad and presumably eat it without dipping it in anything hotter than ranch dressing.

A four course dinner at the Melting Pot is called a Big Night Out. Mediterranean Cheese Fondue, a choice of salad, a choice of "featured entrée selections", and then a choice of chocolate fondue for dessert.

The Mediterranean Cheese Fondue was a concoction of Swiss Gruyère, a touch of shallot, garlic, white truffle oil, and-- perhaps for Mediterranean-ness-- chopped dates. To my knowledge, the peoples of the Mediterranean have no deep history of fondue. But, I thought, this is the Melting Pot. Cultures will mingle, blend smoothly, just like in this big, big country of ours, God Bless it. I gave it a go. It wasn't bad. I rather liked the dates. What I liked even more was the fact that our server mixed up the whole mess tableside. For one brief moment, it was Benihana with cheese.

The main course selection was rather disappointing. We selected the Fondue Feast platter at $84 per couple, because none of us could see the logic of ordering the Lobster Indulgence at $95 per couple. Who wants lobster fondue? Oh. You do. I'm sorry. I was rather put off by the fact that the price of the platters was listed by the "couple". I might have chosen to write "for two" rather than point a sharp stick in the eye of couple-less souls like myself. Besides, there were three of us. I might have been more impressed had the menu given a break to "throuples".

The platter was a collision of items: filet mignon medallions, citrus pork tenderloin, White Shrimp (?), garlic and herb chicken, vegetables, and balsamic-marinated sirloin which, as a result of sitting in so much blackish vinegar, looked more like liver than sirloin. Also on the platter was pasta. To fry? Jack experimented with one of the black and yellow striped ravioli, lost it in the hot canola oil and asked Lyle and me to help him "find Nemo" because he thought they looked like little clown fish. None of us saw any benefit to frying ravioli, but we ate compulsively.

After we had finished our main course, a gentleman came over to the table to remove the boiling oil from our sight with a fascinating little contraption, the name of which escaped me after a cocktail and a few glasses of wine. I thought back to the Canadian PSA that Mrs. Lucianovic had reported on a few weeks back. A very, very good idea.

Dessert was, to my mind, a bit much, but not out of place, considering where we were. I decided to just embrace this too-muchness and dive in. I selected the Flaming Turtle Fondue-- milk chocolate, caramel, and chopped pecans, flambéed tableside with Amaretto-- as a sort of gilded, lead-filled bookend to my Tipsy Turtle at the beginning of the meal.

A platter of brownies, strawberries, banana, cheesecake, pound cake and various marshmallows sat on our table.

For all my big city, I'm-a-bloody-food-snob posturing, I ate everything. Okay, the Oreo cookie crumb-dusted marshmallows were not palatable, but you can pretty much dip anything in chocolate.

It's little wonder Americans are so fat. A Big Night Out? Well, I felt so much bigger as the result of our dinner. When I returned to Lyle's house, I got on the scale and nearly cried as only a gay man or teen-aged girl can in such situations. I looked at my Melting Pot-belly and thought ahead to my New Year's resolutions.

I think the next time I opt for fondue, I shall do it at home. And simply. Cheese, wine, bread, apples. The warmth of a fire and a friend or two. Perhaps in my own couple. Of course, the only heat source in my apartment is the tiny radiator in my living room, so I may need to rethink the romance of it all. If you've got a fireplace, give me a call.

To visit a Melting Pot near you, visit their (rather bizarre) website. Take special note of the front page and click on a fondue pot or two. Please let me know if you decide to join their Club Fondue.

The Melting Pot in San Mateo is located at:
2 North B Street
San Mateo, CA 94401
(650) 342-6368

For directions, click here.

Hours of Operation:

Monday- Wednesday 5 p.m. to 10 p.m.
Thursday and Friday 4:30 p.m. to 11 p.m..
Saturday 3 p.m. to 11 p.m.
Sunday 3 p.m. to 10 p.m.

Lucky Pork

2007-12-28T09:41:00.000-08:00

Always looking for a little extra help with ringing in the New Year correctly, if quietly, I have turned to eating luck-giving food. I would consider 2007 a very good year, since I didn't die as I had supposed I would, on or before my last birthday. I'm not going to attribute my good fortune directly to the eating of Hoppin' John, but I won't entirely discount it either.

So I am continuing my consumption of pork in the New Year, given the fact that pigs are symbolic of good fortune and prosperity. Since most of the ones I've seen end their short lives being consumed by humans, I don't feel that their luck is personal, but rather that it radiates from within their own pot bellies, only to find its way into other pot bellies-- ours. There are, of course, notable exceptions, like Babe, Wilbur, and Arnold Ziffel. If our pig friends are aware of these porcine super-stars, I do not know. I can only imagine that it might mead to unrealistic expectations of salvation and celebrity lifestyle on the part of the pig, but who am I to judge? I still believe I am going to win the lottery and meet a special someone who isn't crazy.

The scientific reasoning behind pork's luckiness stems from the fact that, unlike fish that might swim away with your fortune, or fowl who could very well likely fly away with it (and are thus to be avoided), pigs tend to root out treasure, aiding in your well-deserved prosperity. Not being one to question science, I am upping my pork consumption next week. It seems to be working for my neighbor across the hallway. She looks as though she has spent a lifetime eating nothing but pork several times a day. Judging by the headboard-banging and fascinating vocalizations emanating from the other side of my bedroom wall at this very moment, she seems to be a very lucky woman indeed.

Pork Chops with Apples and Thyme

This is a recipe taken (but is not exactly duplicated) from a cookbook I worked on several years ago called New England by Molly Stevens, which was part of a series called New American Cooking by the folks at Williams-Sonoma. I was the food styling assistant on this book and was initially disappointed that we didn't photograph this recipe. Given the rather monochromatic nature of this dish, I now understand the wisdom of that decision. What this dish lacks in color, it definitely makes up for in flavor. It's seriously good.

Ingredients

4 or 5 fresh sprigs of thyme
2 tablespoons of unsalted butter
2 large tart apples, like Granny Smith, peeled, cored, and sliced
4 center-cut pork loin chops I chose the bone-in variety and, oh, 1 to 2 inches thick
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
salt and ground (fresh) pepper to taste
2 tablespoons of olive oil
3/4 cup apple cider
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
1 clove of garlic, minced
1/4 cup of heavy cream

Preparation:

1. In a frying pan large enough to hold all four chops, melt butter over medium-high heat. Add apples and sauté, shaking often (the pan, though if you've got the DT's this dish might help. Just pour yourself an extra glass of cider.). When apples have some lovely browning to them, remove them from the pan and transfer to an awaiting bowl.

2. Pat the pork chops dry with paper towels. Season liberally with salt and pepper. Put the flour on a shallow plate and place chops in the flour. Coat on both sides of the pork, shaking off any excess flour.

3. Return your pan to medium-high heat and add the oil. When the oil is very hot but not smoking, add the pork chops and brown evenly on both sides, about 1 to 2 minutes per sides, but no more than that, please. Add cider and vinegar, then turn heat to low. Add garlic and thyme. Cover tightly to cook. turning them once half way through the process. Cook until done, of course, which will take you anywhere from 14 to 18 minutes, depending upon the thickness of your chops. A slight rosy pinkness in the center is idea. In the center of the pork chop, that is.

4. Transfer the chops to a plate and keep warm. I suppose that might relate to both you and your chops. Remove thyme from the pan. Raise the heat to high, scraping the bottom of the pan to dissolve any caramelized bits, and add the cream. Boil until the liquid in the pan is reduced by half. Stir in the apples. Taste and adjust your seasonings.

5. Spoon apples and sauce over the pork chops and serve immediately.

Serves 4

Gravlax

2007-12-21T09:01:00.000-08:00

When the weather turns cold and Christmasy, what do you think about? Chances are you think about roaring fires, snowflake-patterned sweaters, or lacing the chestnut stuffing with arsenic. Me, I think about Scandinavian food. In particular, my mind wanders to gravlax.

Perhaps it's just a reaction against all the frosted sugar cookies and enforced glee, but the desire for something clean and salty that comes from a land prone to waves of alcoholism and depression during the long, dark, and cold winter months is irresistible to me.

Gravlax, gravad lax, gravlaks, graavilohi or graflax. However you spell it, it's salmon cured with salt, sugar, and dill. Traditionally, it is served with a gravlaxsas-- a sauce of dill and mustard, and with dense, dark bread or boiled potatoes, but Christmastime is no time to think of tradition, certainly.

Gravlax is a fisherman's dish, originally of salmon salted and the buried in the sand above the high tide line. If you hadn't made the connection between the Scandinavian grav and our word grave, then you weren't paying attention. It should now come as no surprise that the true meaning of gravlax is "salmon dug into the ground." If you, in turn, could now explain to me the true meaning of Christmas, I'll call us even.

The original dish was somewhat fermented, not unlike the way those clever Vietnamese make that lovely fish sauce I used to put into everything, but times have changed. Today, the only burying done to the salmon is in salt and sugar.

If you are as tired of cookies and fudge as I am, this is a great treat to take to a party or have at your own. It's remarkably easy, taking very little skill, which I appreciate during the Holidays. All that is required is a little forward planning.

Gravlax

There are hundreds of recipes for gravlax. I don't know why, since it's basically the product of very few ingredients. The one I used for the purposes of this blog is a good one, but everyone, especially Norwegians, is bound to argue about the exact ratio of salt to sugar. All I have to say is please, not on Christmas, Dawn, not on Christmas.

Ingredients

1 to 2 pounds salmon fillet, sliced into equal pieces. If you want to get fancy, buy center cuts. I, however, do not care.
1/4 cup kosher salt
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon of cracked black pepper
1 bunch of dill
a splash or two of alcohol-- Akvavit is traditional, but vodka or brandy works well, too.

Preparation

1. Remove pin bones, if any, from salmon with needle nose pliers or tweezers.
2. In a small bowl, combine salt, sugar, and pepper.
3. Rub both sides of salmon fillets with salt and sugar mixture. My salt and sugar, when preparing my mise en place for this blog looked very much like a granulated Maidenform bra when poured.

4. Spread remaining sugar and salt mixture onto the pink, fleshy side of the fillets and sprinkle with your booze of choice, but not too much.

5. Lay dill more or less evenly over one of the fillets. I like to crush it in my hands to release the essential oils. Place the second fillet on top of it to form a sandwich, with the salmon acting as the bread. If this is difficult for you to follow, I don't want to know you.

6. Place your "sandwich in an appropriately-sized freezer bag, removing as much air as possible. Close the bag.

7. Place your package in a shallow baking dish or pan and place a weight evenly over it. There is much disagreement about this step. Some people like 5-to-8 pounds of weight, others, none at all. Weighing down the salmon produces a denser finished (or Finnish, in this case) product. I decided to go for something lightweight in both the literal and literary sense.

8. Refrigerate for 2 to 3 days, turning the salmon every 12 hours or so.

9. After the appropriate amount of time, take salmon out of the bag, scrap off most of the dill and pat dry with paper towels. Once cured, the gravlax should stay "fresh", or at least, good, for a week, if refrigerated and well-wrapped.

To serve, slice at a 45 degree angle, as thinly as possible and leaving the skin behind. Drink a little glasas of Akvavit or vodka to toast your good fortunes. Or drink a bit of champagne, that pairs well, too. Did I mention that this is a great New Year's Eve or New Year's Day breakfast dish? No? Well, it is.

What's on Your Shelf?

2007-12-21T09:00:00.000-08:00

It seems to be Cookbook Week here on Bay Area Bites, so I thought I'd throw in my two cents...

I think there are entirely too many cookbooks in this world. Okay, in my world. Too many have been choking up my bookshelves collecting dust rather than grease stains, so I thought I would give my kitchen a little purge.

Before you start thinking that I'm just being a bit cranky this morning, I should state that I love cookbooks. Collecting them used to be one of my little fetishes. Fortunately, I've grown out of that little phase. Perhaps it's because I've been involved in the production of more than a few of them, catching authors' mistakes and even adding a few of my own to the mix, sometimes on purpose, just to leave my mark.

Lately, however, I've been wondering just how many cookbooks one actually needs? I don't think I need the one hundred or so in my collection. Some I shall keep for their kitsch value, like my Jell-o cookbook, others I'll let hang around because they're such a damned good read. Do I really need a book devoted exclusively to the baked potato? I don't think so. I don't even know how that one snuck onto my shelves. Out it goes. 100 Recetas Dulces by Sister Bernarda of Argentina? I don't even speak Spanish, but I'll keep the book because I think Sister Bernarda looks like a man. There is no clearly-defined criteria for this weeding-out process.

What I have come to understand about my collection of cookbooks is that there are only a few that I return to over and over again. These are the books I would take with me to my hypothetical desert island. Even if the island lacked a fully functional kitchen or access to a grocery store, these books are just plain great reading. Everyone has their own favorites and, since everyone seems to like lists, I thought I'd post my own list of favorites.

I'd like to know yours, too.

Five Cookbooks I'll Never Throw Away:

The Moosewood Cookbook by Molly Katzen

This was the first cookbook I owned. Actually, I just realized that I didn't own it originally-- it was my college roommate Craig's book. I am not a vegetarian by any stretch of the imagination, but this is the book that hooked our attention as neophyte cooklings in college. The recipes are simple, the ingredients are inexpensive and the handwritten copy is homey and non-threatening, just the ticket for those who might be intimidated by the cooking process(es). I return to this book when I am feeling broke, nostalgic, or both.

This book holds a permanent space on my shelf for another reason: Ten years after my introduction to this book, it was Molly Katzen (and very specifically, a lovely producer-woman named Tina Salter) who gave me my first job in food media on her show Vegetable Heaven. Thank you.

The Way to Cook by Julia Child

This is my go to for "how to". Full of no nonsense photos populated by Mrs. Child's skillful old hands and informative sidebars, this is the book I bought when I decided to get "serious" about cooking. I've never abandoned it and, more importantly, it has never abandoned me. It walked me through the first Thanksgiving dinner prepared my by own soft, lily white, hairy-knuckled little hands. Fool (me)-proof choux pastry? It's in here.

The Best Recipe by the editors of Cook's Illustrated

This is the book I read for "how not to". Any group of people who takes the time to find out and report what not to do when, say grilling a steak, is okay in my book. Walk-throughs of tricky or intimidating techniques like lattice-topping a pie are well-illustrated and, of course, the examination of how one might best avoid tearing up when cutting onions is priceless. This is one of my best-stained and highest-functioning volumes.

The Art of Eating by M.F.K. Fisher

This is not exactly a cookbook, but it has enough recipes within it to make this list. Her opinions on and recipe for oyster stew in the section entitled, simply enough, Consider the Oyster, made me get up off my ass and learn to shuck when I was younger. I've read it cover to cover at least five times and I return to it whenever I need to remind myself to stop eating Chinese food over the sink and take better care of my inner and outer self, when I am feeling sad or alone or both. Fisher's writing is thoughtful, self-obsessed and some of the best writing about food ever. Amen. My copy is quite literally falling apart, but I hesitate buying a new copy. I'd hate to get rid of this old friend.

Lunches and Brunches by the editors of Better Homes and Gardens (1963)

This book is a jewel. A gaudy paste-diamond perhaps, but a jewel, nonetheless. It satisfies all of my kitsch needs: garish, color-saturated photography, what-were-they-thinking? recipes, etc. And everything seems to have gelatin in it, like some sort of Mormon family picnic. It's a peek into the past-- a time when cream sauces were "fancy" and people drank coffee with every meal. Confetti Relish Mold? Yes, lemon-flavored Jell-o, scallions, radishes, beef bouillon, and sour cream sounds like a heavenly combination. You will have to rip this book from my cold, dead aristocratic hands..

Well, those are mine. What are yours?

Nog

2007-11-30T09:08:00.000-08:00

It's getting to be that special time of year again. I will leave the reasons behind its specialness open to interpretation. Holiday party invitations start showing up in one's mailbox the moment the turkey baster has been dried and tucked away in a drawer. Concurrently, this is the time of year when egg nog starts to muscle its way into your local supermarket's dairy case.

Egg Nog. It's a heart-stopping, cholesterol-laden, alcohol-spiked, phlegm-producing cup of Holiday goodness. And I'm a huge fan. I always have been.

As a child, the appeal was obvious; what eight year-old is going to say no to a sweet, creamy dairy product? I imagined I was drinking melted nutmeg ice cream. Given the ingredients, I didn't know how close to the mark I was. I would drink several glasses at holiday gatherings. If I accidentally got into the rum-spiked nog for adults (which was understandable since the crystal punch bowl full of alcoholic nog looked exactly like the cardboard carton that contained the booze-free liquid), so much the better. Open a container, pour out its contents, mix in a little rum, and get the party started. Egg nog punch is that simple. Or was, until I had my first taste of the real stuff.

It wasn't until I was well into adulthood that my family would pay a call on my stepmother's friend Charlene and her family, who had a sort of open house party every Christmas Eve. The house was always dressed to the teeth in holiday drag, complete with a sort of Christmas-on- Main-Street, U.S.A. recreation in miniature spread out over the tables in the living room and onto the grand piano. I'd peek into the tiny cellophane windows looking for any signs of domestic unhappiness or violence, but was invariably disappointed in my search. Booze-spiked cocktail wieners, prawns, and every kind of dip imaginable were there for the taking, and our hosts were always warm and in a festive mood, which is just the thing my family needs during the holidays. For me, the two main attractions of the party were the Presentation of the Egg Nog, and the Wheeling-in of Grandpa. This quiet old gentleman was missing one of his legs and an eye. At least, I assume he was missing an eye since he wore an eye patch. This in itself is nothing unusual, since it it very likely that he suffered from diabetes, though I never asked. What I always found interesting was the fact that he was always parked against the wall near the center of the main room, slightly to the right of a parrot cage, which hung near (but wisely not over) the dessert table. He was, to me, a sort of pirate centerpiece to the party.

The Presentation of the Egg Nog was not a heralded event, but one I always watched with interest. Charlene and her husband Bill would be in the kitchen fussing over the bowl, stirring in something here, adding a little nutmeg there. They'd do a little tasting, adjust favoring, do a little more tasting, add more booze, then Charlene would pick up the enormous bowl and walk it to the buffet table very carefully, the whitecaps of stiffened egg white gently rising and falling against the sides. When her mission had been successfully accomplished, people would grab their cups and huddle around the bowl, waiting their turn to dip in. It was a revelation, in terms of my nog-drinking experience. It was fresh and frothy. I finally understood where the egg part of egg nog came in-- the subtle yellow coloring from yolks beaten without mercy, the foam of egg whites folded in for body. It ruined my enjoyment of store-bought nog forever.

I won't assume that all three of you reading this have ever tried homemade egg nog. If you haven't, and you don't have problems consuming dairy, cholesterol or alcohol, I say go ahead and try it. It's really, really good. And you only get it once a year, so drink up.

Egg Nog

The rumor behind the word "nog" is that it derived from the English word "noggin"; a small, carved, wooden mug used to serve drinks in various taverns. The full name of this beverage might have been "egg and grog in a noggin", which does not sound especially appetizing. There also seems to be some disagreement as to whether the beverage is spelled as one word or two. I like two, it sounds more important that way.

Ingredients:

4 egg yolks
1/3 cup sugar, plus 1 tablespoon
1 pint whole milk
1 cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon grated nutmeg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup rum, bourbon, or whatever poison you prefer
4 egg whites

Procedure:

1. Beat egg yolks until pale yellow in color. Gradually add 1/3 cup of sugar until it is totally dissolved.

2. In a medium saucepan, over high heat, combine milk, cream, and nutmeg and bring to a boil, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat and temper the hot milk mixture into the eggs and sugar. Return everything to the pot and cook until mixture reaches 160 degrees F. Remove from heat, stir in alcohol and extract, pour into a medium-sized mixing bowl and chill in your refrigerator.

3. In a medium bowl, beat egg whites to soft peaks. Gradually add one tablespoon of sugar as you beat until stiff peaks form. Whisk egg whites into chilled mixture.

4. Put your now fresh and somewhat safe beverage in the noggin or vessel of your choice and drink up.

What Else You Can Do with Leftovers

2007-11-23T09:42:00.000-08:00

On my way home from Thanksgiving dinner, I walked down Capp Street in the Mission, fully bloated and lightly buzzed from an over abundance of great food, good wine, and a mild case of self-satisfaction over having won two games of Celebrity. I had just spent the past eight hours feasting and laughing with friends. As I turned the corner onto Mission Street, I saw a man sitting on the sidewalk. He stared at me and I stopped in my tracks and stared back for a moment. He didn't ask me for anything and I realized then that I didn't have anything to offer him. No leftovers, just a bagful of dirty dishes and a book of short stories by Saki. The warm, fuzzy glow of the evening I had just spent evaporated and all the casseroles, turkey, and pie turned to cement in my stomach. It was clear that our respective celebrations of the holiday differed. I felt thankful that his experience was not mine and impotent to do anything about improving his. The exchange lasted about three seconds.

If you are reading this, chances are you own a computer and pay for online service, which means that, in all likelihood, you can afford turkey and, if not all, then some of the trimmings. Like me, you probably spent Thanksgiving with friends or family or both, either sitting about a giant dining table stuffing yourselves silly, or milling about a party, drinking and grazing your way through relish trays and pumpkin cheesecakes (Please tell me you didn't spend the day locked in your bedroom, quietly drinking). Whatever the case, the chances are slim to none that all the food was consumed.

What can you do wth the leftovers? Apart from salivate over Madame Laidlaw's ideas from yesterday's post (I am a sucker for a good quesadilla), you might think about donating food to your local food bank, if your feast of plenty was too plentiful.

Of course, most places aren't going to accept a couple of slices of pie or a pile of turkey skin. Most food banks request items that are in some sort of packaging, but I wonder, since there was a shortage of deposits at local food banks this year, according to Maris Lagos of the San Francisco Chronicle. When you are shopping next year, buy an extra thing or two and just give it away-- nearly every grocery store has some sort of food drive happening.

I suppose we should think ahead to next year, not that one need only give on Thanksgiving. If you're saddled with cooking dinner for 20, why not push that number a little higher. Feed an extra person or two. Or twenty. If you are affiliated with a particular church or mosque or temple or glee club for all I care, find out if they are involved in any feeding programs, like Glide Memorial Church, for example.

If there are organizations that accept cooked food from private homes, I would very much like to know. Why not bake a pie for a total stranger? It's a not-so-random act of kindness.

If you are in the restaurant industry and have a surplus of holiday fare, contact Food Runners in San Francisco, they'll know what to do with your leftovers.

During this time of year, we're supposed to take time out of our lives to think upon what it is we are grateful for. Last night, among other things, I was grateful I wasn't that guy sitting on the sidewalk on Capp Street. I have promised myself that next year will be different. Not that I will be that guy sitting on the corner, mind you. I've just realized that I actually can do something, which is get up off my lazy, self-involved ass and give something, whether it be time, food, or money. Most likely time or food, since I don't have any money. I suppose it would be unethical to suggest that, while you are giving food and time to those in need, you make large monetary donations to me. I am thankful that I know better than to make that particular request.

Hangtown Fry

2007-11-09T08:35:00.000-08:00

Before I moved to San Francisco, I knew surprisingly little about the City, which suited me fine, since I have never felt the need for too much advanced knowledge about anything. And I had no desire to trade the fantasy I had of Carol Doda and a chorus of flannel-clad gay men singing the Rice-a-roni jingle from a cable car as it crested some hill or other with the reality of some homeless guy defecating in front of me on Capp Street as he ranted incoherently.

Once moved, I had a formulated a shortlist of what I thought were very San Francisco-y things I needed to experience. One: Visit Alcatraz, no matter how touristy. That I finally accomplished this year. Two: Read Tales of the City by Armistad Maupin. Still haven't gotten around to it, much to my friend Bill's irritation. Three: oh, there were lots of things on that list, but way down near the bottom of my to-dos was eating a dish called Hangtown Fry. Why? I think I read about it in a cookbook somewhere at some point and I got it into my head that it was more ur-San Francisco that sourdough bread. So I was wrong. But not by much. The Hangtown Fry is a very old school San Francisco dish-- take a look at the Tadich Grill menu if you don't believe me, but the hangtown in question was not, as I had hoped, our City-by-the-currently oil- streaked-Bay. That particular honor goes to Placerville, a charming little town in the Sierra Foothills formerly fraught with multiple crises of identity.

Originally called Dry Diggins by the miners who carted their dry soil from there to the river to wash out the gold, Placerville's second sobriquet was collected in a pique of impromptu vigilante justice. Tired of being robbed of their hard-earned gold at knife point, some merchants and miners of the area suggested making human swings out of three men accused of the crime. Since this was the first such recorded hanging in the Mother Lode area, the camp was rechristened "Hangtown", leaving its old name to blow away like so much dust. As the town grew up and struggled to become respectable, the best of their marketing minds came up with the more child and virgin-friendly "Placerville." I suppose they could have done worse.

It was at some point in the early life of Dry Diggins/Hangtown/Placerville that, as legend has it, a newly rich gold miner walked into the restaurant of the El Dorado Hotel and demanded the most expensive meal that could be had there, mumbling something about being tired of eating nothing but canned beans. What he was given was a scramble of eggs, oysters, and bacon. Perhaps the chef misunderstood him and made the richest meal he could think of rather than the most expensive. Whatever the case, he was charged a princely sum since, it was explained, "Canned oysters had to be shipped in from Boston, eggs were as scarce as pig feathers, and bacon was just as expensive." Of course, as read at Gold Rush Chronicles, "Eggs, bacon, and oysters were the only ingredients the chef could find. Chickens were portable so the camp had eggs early on, oysters were prolific in San Francisco Bay at the time, and bacon would keep without refrigeration." I somehow doubt this miner held onto his money for very long. At least he got a good meal.

Hangtown Fry

Many of the recipes I found called for the use of a non-stick pan. Since I strongly suspect the humoring chef at the El Dorado Hotel had no acquaintance with Teflon, I asked my trusty cast iron skillet to take on the job instead, to keep in the spirit of all things 49'er. Of course, it is also doubtful that he utilized a gas stove, overhead electric lighting, or an ipod. My spirit carries me only so far.

This particular recipe is an artery clogger, near as rich as anything one might care to put in one's mouth. I decided to go for broke, otherwise, what's the point, really? There are lighter versions of this dish, certainly, but the spirit of the thing is it's richness. This was made at the request of a man who stumbled upon a gold strike after months of eating nothing but beans, after all. Life expectancy rates were lower then and no one knew the meaning of cholesterol. Shave a few months off your own life and try it.

Ingredients:

3 whole hen's eggs (if using Plover's eggs, 4)
1/4 cup heavy cream
1/4 teaspoon of salt
1/8 teaspoon of nutmeg
a turn or two of your pepper grinder
6 small oysters, alive and in their shells

enough flour for dredging the shelled oysters as they lay dying
1 tablespoon of cow's butter
1 tablespoon chopped parsley (I use the curly kind because I have finally rejected my previous
rejection of it)
3 strips of thickly sliced bacon

Preparation:

1. Into a pan heated to medium intensity, place your bacon and fry until crispy. Remove to a paper or cotton tea towel to drain and cool. Reserve the bacon drippings.

2. Combine cream, salt, pepper, nutmeg and oysters in a bowl and beat until egg yolks are
just incorporated.

3. Drop shelled (you may have to do that yourself if your mother is not available to help you)
oysters into flour to coat lightly and suffocate. Tap off any excess flour.

4. With the bacon grease still hot in the skillet on mediumish heat, introduce the oysters to
the fat and brown on each side. About 45 seconds to one minute per hemisphere. Do not
overcook, since a certain degree of juicy sweetness is desired of them. Remove from heat
onto paper or other materialed towel.

5. If the bacon grease is hissing and spitting at you, I find the best way to deal with such
rudeness is to ignore it. Return to it once it has cooled down sufficiently to introduce it to
it's new fat friend, butter.

6. Add egg mixture to the butter/grease melange and treat suitably, as one might treat an
omelet, say. When half way cooked through, crumble in some of the bacon, add the oysters, and cook the other half of the way.

7. Remove your newly developed Hangtown Fry to some sort of plate and have at it while it is still warm.

Hellenic American Imports

2007-11-02T09:51:00.000-07:00

Over the past several years, I'd wandered past Hellenic American Imports on Mission Street many, many times, never bothering to go in. Mental notes were made and promptly filed away. If I ever had the need for a Greek flag or an evil eye charm, I thought, I'd know just where to go.

After lunching with a friend in the neighborhood a few months ago, I found myself in front of the store. As I peered through the plate glass windows and past the statuary, I saw something that caught my attention-- food for sale. A sucker for interesting markets, I found myself compelled to enter.

After browsing the cheeses in the refrigerated case at the back of the store, a young woman descended a little staircase to the right to welcome me.

"Let me know if you need anything," she offered, "My name is Greece." Was she serious? About the name, not the offer of help, I mean.

"Your name is Greece?" I asked, thinking how fortunate she was to have found just the right occupation for her name.

"It's actually Griselda, but they call me Greece here."

And why not? I continued to browse, working my way over to the wines.

As I wandered a bit more, grabbing a box of Dumplings with Yeast (Loukoumades. It sounds better in Greek.) here and a can of giant beans (Gigantes) there, I recognized a man I had waited on before coming down the staircase from the office that looks down upon the store. I said hello. He introduced himself as Savas Deligiorgis, the owner of the store.

After chatting for a few minutes, he mentioned that he had some work to do for his radio program. Radio program? Savas, it turns out, has been producing the Hellenic American Broadcast-- the only Greek radio hour west of Chicago-- for the past 43 years, which is as long as he has owned the store. Journalism is a passion of his. It's what he studied in school. He then excused himself and went back upstairs into the office.

I was intrigued. I made my purchases, thumbed through some Greek VHS tapes for amusement, and left, quite glad I had decided to wander in.

When in Greece last month, I got rather hooked on taramosalata, a spread made of fish roe, oil, and bread. I remembered Savas carried the stuff, so I made a pilgrimage back to his store.

He was there, up in the office. I waved hello and was invited up. As I sat at his desk drinking Amita brand peach juice surrounded by office walls lined with photos of Savas posing with the likes of Jerry Brown, Anthony Quinn, and several Greek dignitaries, we talked about the changing demographics of the Mission. When he bought the store 43 years ago, there were still many Greek and Italian families living in the neighborhood. Now that most of them have moved away, he still serves to hold the community together through his Monday-to-Friday radio hour. Greek-relevant interviews, news, commentaries and music are all on offer. While we talked, the other half of his radio team, Tonia Demitriadis, arrived and we all chatted a bit more.

Back downstairs with Savas, I noticed some cookies dusted with powdered sugar. "Hey! What are these called again? The lady I stayed with in Santorini would make these for me." I said, excitedly, but not very gracefully.

"Kourabiethes. Take some. The one's in the box are better." I took some home and had them with my coffee, powdered sugar blown like talcum over the front of my shirt and in my beard. But they were good and worth the wiping for.

Again, I thanked him for his time and wandered the store while Greece busied herself arranging merchandise. A bin of ouzo candy wrapped in shiny metallic blue paper caught my eye. I plunged my hand in as if it were a barrel of pinto beans and hoped no one would notice. I did not purchase any candy.

I went back to the cheeses. Manouri, feta, myzithra. The back walls were lined with products I'd seen in markets on the Greek islands I'd so recently wandered. Cookies, dakos, calamari, Nescafe, and frappe shakers. It's all there. I was glad to know it.

I moved on to the non-food-related areas, contemplated buying a book or a video. I wondered how funny I might find a Greek comedy. If the phrases "thank you" or "I'm sorry" or "where is the toilet, please?" were said in a particularly hilarious fashion, it might be well worth it. Otherwise, it would be a purchase entirely lost on me. I took my cod roe, cookies, a little wine, and left.

I'll be back as soon as the roe runs out.

Hellenic American Imports
2365 Mission Street
San Francisco, CA 94110

Tel: (415) 282-2237

Open Monday through Saturday from 10 am to 6 pm

The Hellenic American Broadcast airs at 8 pm Monday through Friday on KTVO- AM 1400

Vincent Price Cooks

2007-10-26T16:11:00.000-07:00

In case you didn't know, yesterday marked the 14th anniversary of Vincent Price's death. I hope everyone took a little time out of their busy schedules to remember him. Since this post falls conveniently between his death day and Halloween, there is no other possible topic for discussion, as far as I am concerned.

As a poster child for classic American horror films, one might expect Vincent Price to have had more blood in his food than the other way around, but I assure you that is quite untrue. His father, Vincent Leonard Price, founded the National Candy Company, which did not, as I had previously thought, invent wax lips (that honor goes to the American Candy Company). I was crushed to learn that Mr. Price was not, in fact, a scion of the House of Wax Lips. I realize it's a horrible joke, but it's early and I'm just having my coffee.

Price was, however, the grandson of Dr. Vincent Clarence Price, creator of the first commercially manufactured baking powder in the United States, which must count for something.

Though most famous for his roles in horror films, Price was a well-known art collector and gourmet. A Yale graduate with a degree in Art History, he appeared on the $64,000 Question as an "expert" contestant in the same category (He won half that amount), and was an avid collector and promoter of art, founding the Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College in 1958-- the first "teaching art collection" owned by a community college.

As a gourmet, Price made his rounds on the talk show circuit in the 1960's and 70's, once chatting up Johnny Carson while demonstrating how to poach a fish in a dishwasher. (Note: I gleaned that information from wikipedia, so I hope it's true. Please do not suggest I punch myself in the face again). If any one happens to own that clip, I'd give anything to see it. The man had an odd sense of humor.

On a slightly more serious food note, Price and his second wife Mary produced a small number of cookbooks, one of which, I have in my own collection.

I found Come into the Kitchen quite by accident as I spent a lazy afternoon browsing The Abandoned Planet Bookstore on Valencia Street with a friend. At the time, I had no idea Mr. Price was an avid cook. As a lover of kitsch cookbooks, I immediately bought it without much reading it, simply noting the rather odd style and choice of illustration, as seen below...

When I got it home, I found that this book-- which is as old as I am-- was filled with bits of odd information, like the facsimile of the "Public Dinner Given to the Honorable James K. Polk" at the St Louis Hotel dated March 22nd, 1849. Given the expanse of the eleven course dinner created in his honor, I am not at all surprised that, weakened by diarrhea and severe intestinal cramps, Polk succumbed to an outbreak of cholera a few weeks later. No. that is not mentioned in the book.

What is in the book, odd tidbits aside, is a collection of American recipes, collected at a time when American food was not fashionable among "foodies". Fish balls a la Mrs. Benjamin Harrison is a favorite and one I shall be making in honor of our next inauguration. Check it out, if you are so inclined. It's worth it.

That's it for this week. I leave you with a clip from the film Theater of Blood, which I think perfectly combines Price's status as a horror film icon, his love of food, and his famously dark sense of humor.

Warning: This clip, though amusing, is rather violent, but not in a blood-and-gut-spewing way. If you are the queasy sort, or can't stomach the thought of anyone hurting puppies, do not view.

Foraging for the Apocalypse

2007-10-18T15:40:00.000-07:00

Last week, still heavily under the influence of my jet lag, Shannon, my oldest friend in the world, whisked me down to Redwood City late Saturday night so that I might spend some time with her family, make breakfast, and later accompany my goddaughter to a community theater production of Annie Get Your Gun. Typical, wholesome Sunday fun.

When I awoke to the various sounds of three children trying not to make noise-- enjoyable to someone like me who merely borrows the children of others but does not have to live with them-- I wandered into the kitchen to find that, not only had the morning's menu been decided, but preparations had been made in advance-- enjoyable to someone like me to whom the words "let's make breakfast!" are sometimes uttered, but the planning and execution are invariably a solo effort, in which case I try to dirty as many dishes as possible.

Craig, my college roommate and the man Shannon had the good sense to marry, announced that he and my goddaughter had been foraging for acorns. Acorns. When I think of foraging, if at all, my mind goes to truffle pigs and strange old men materializing back around the kitchen door with boxes of strange looking mushrooms in their arms and cigarettes dangling from their weather-beaten lower lips. Acorns call to the mind irritatingly industrious and moralizing rodents of fable. I had always thought of foragers as edgy, marginalized, or borderline crazy. Modern foragers do not go to spas for Rolfing sessions or have cable television. I was now faced with performing a quick and rather drastic reassessment. The only two foragers I actually knew were standing in front of me with a bowl of acorns-- a 38-year-old man and an 8-3/4-year-old girl. Based upon the new information at hand, I had to decide that foraging was not necessarily a desperate reaction to hunger performed by those who are either too chicken or too lazy to go out and hunt wild animals. Nor was it necessarily a rejection of supermarket commercialism. As I looked into their proud faces, I decided that foraging was painfully cute. It was an act, in this case, of optimism and resourcefulness.

Shannon mused that she was glad to know she would now be able to feed her family in the event of the Apocalypse. We spent the next two minutes explaining what the Apocalypse was to my goddaughter. She was unimpressed.

Suddenly, foraging for acorns seem like a very, very good idea. I was saved from spending too much time figuring out how I would survive in San Francisco when the world finally goes to Hell by the fact that there were three hungry children and an equal amount of adults who needed to be fed. With acorns.

Though I am technically 1/8 Native American, genetically speaking, I received none of the famous resourcefulness of these ancestors. Neither did I inherit their characteristic lack of body hair or intolerance to alcohol, but those are topics for other blogs. Besides, my ancestors were from the Great Plains. They couldn't walk ten steps without falling over a bison. I had no idea what to do with acorns. Fortunately, Craig has an intimate understanding of both the Internet and how to read cookbooks. He did a little research and got some ideas, the best of which was pancakes. Acorn pancakes.

According to Siouxme.com, acorns were once the main food staple of nearly 3/4 of the Native Californian population. The most common oak trees found in the Bay Area are the Tan Oak, the Black Oak, the Live Oak, and the Valley Oak. (If you don't know why I'm talking about oak trees... please say you know why I'm talking about oak trees.) The Pomo Tribe preferred the acorns from the Tan Oak, feeling that they had superior flavor. The Miwoks preferred Black Oak acorns, because it took less leeching to rid them of their bitter tannic acid. The conflict between what is good and what is convenient is as old as the ages, it would seem. These original food snobs of the Bay Area pronounced the acorn of the Live Oak as "too wormy" and "too easy to get-- nothing that plentiful can be very good."

Craig performed a similar experiment and came to basically the same conclusion. I am also grateful that he took the time to leech the acorns himself, sparing me the effort. So, with thoughts of feeding his hungry brood, he handed me a bowl of acorn meal and recipe for pancakes, Shannon turned on the griddle, and I proceeded to make the pancakes.

The results were great. The meal had a flavor reminiscent of chestnuts. When combined with honey and butter? I would use an expletive here to convey how good they were, but I thought better of it.

I have always admired Craig's sense of adventure, his optimism and natural curiosity. Hell, I've been a bit awed by Shannon's nurturing qualities, blinding creativity and rapier wit for the past 33 years. Fortunately, I can see a bit of both parents emerging in the personality of my goddaughter. Perhaps the best thing I can wish for this little acorn is that she doesn't fall too far from the family tree.

Three cheers for acorn pancakes.

Acorn Pancakes

If foraging on your own, look down-- you want the ones which have fallen from the tree. You might consider wearing protective headgear, since Autumn is the only time to gather acorns and, since one invariably spends a good amount of time directly beneath the canopy of oak trees when one is gathering the goods, odds are decent that some might leap to their death from the branches and on to one's head. Lawsuits against oak trees can be costly and, most likely, pointless.

Speaking of headgear, look for acorns still wearing their "little hats". Those found without these hats are likely to be infested with weevils, which some might consider appealingly value-added, in terms of protein content. I doubt these would add much value to pancake batter.

Ingredients:

1 cup acorn meal *
1 cup white flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 eggs
1/4 cup of oil (vegetable or some other neutral-flavored type.)
1/2 cup honey
2 cups milk

Preparation:

1. Preheat griddle to medium heat.
2. Combine dry ingredients in whatever large bowl you like. One with a spout is most welcome.
3. Combine oil, honey, eggs, and milk until smooth in consistency.
4. Combine the wet with the dry ingredients into the large bowl.
5. Adjust by adding more milk if the batter appears too thick, more flour if too thin. The nature
of all acorn meal is not equal. The batter should be thin enough to pour, but not runny, as
one might imagine.
6. Drop an experimental dollop of batter onto griddle. Adjust heat accordingly.
7. Griddle dollar-sized pancakes until the bottoms are browned and the top side bubbles.
About three minutes. Flip and cook until cakes are barely firm to the touch.
8. Remove pancakes to a warm plate. I hold mine in a warm oven covered with a towel until
all the pancakes have been made.
9. Serve hot with butter and honey. Or whatever you feel like. I don't really care. As long as
it makes you happy and harms no one.

Makes about 36 dollar-sized pancakes. I was not anal-retentive enough in this case to count them. We were too busy eating them as they came off the griddle to get an accurate number.

* I know I have not walked you through the process of leeching acorns, but I have not walked down that road myself. Go do an internet search or something. It's not like you have anything better to do, seeing that you've managed to waste enough time reading about my pancakes.

Philoxenia

2007-10-12T10:22:00.000-07:00

In the months prior to this post, I'd been working extra shifts at the restaurant in an effort to save up some extra cash for my holiday in Greece. The closer I got to the date of my departure, it would seem, the further I removed myself from the guests entrusted to my care. As pleasant and down right friendly as I was with my guests-- most often genuinely, I suppose the strain of too many shifts was beginning to seep trough the cracks of my smile. The people who sat at my tables were losing their status as welcomed guests, becoming now customers with open wallets whose purpose was to fund my impending trip. I started muttering unpleasantries under my minted waiter's breath over the slightest inconvenience. Perhaps that's going a bit too far, but I could feel it happening and that's not good, especially in my line of work.

I began to sincerely question the wisdom of running myself into the ground physically and emotionally so that I might be more able to relax on vacation. As a front line player in the hospitality industry, I was losing the sense of what it means to be truly hospitable.

And then I met Dina.

A colleague of mine arranged for me to stay with an old family friend of his in Oia, Santorini. She had a couple of apartments to let. "Great," I said, "How much will it cost? What's her email?" When I asked if I could take a look at her website, my friend gave me a pitying one might offer a person who has sustained irreversible brain damage. No website. No email. What I didn't know about little old Greek ladies could have filled... I don't know what it could have filled, but it would have to have been big.

"Just trust me. I spent my honeymoon there. You'll love it." Trust me. That's what he says to guests who tell him to select a nice Burgundy for them. Given his rather expensive taste in wine, I had the feeling Dina's place would probably suit me just fine. He made a call and arranged everything for me. "You'll meet her in front of Restaurant 1800 on the 20th between 9:00 and 9:30 pm." That's all the information I had.

I was exhausted when I arrived in Santorini after spending twenty sleepless--thanks to a well-meaning Philipina woman who kept poking my Ambien-drugged arm to tell me not to forget my shoes. As if I were somehow going to walk off the plane for some fresh air over Greenland-- hours wedged into three different plane seats and as many airports and taxis. I showed up at the restaurant with two equally exhausted friends in tow. As we stood in front of the restaurant, I realized that I had just come half way around the world to stay with some woman I've never met, whose accommodations I've never seen let alone received an address for, and that we were meeting her at a rather vague hour. What if she didn't show? I felt rather helpless over the situation and entirely responsible for the well being of my friends.

9:00 came and went. So did 9:30. I began composing my apology to Michael and Dan, who were leaning against the wall of the restaurant, trying to smile. Where else could we stay on such short notice? As I began mentally calculating my now-plummeting credibility rating, a small woman of about 60 in a sleeveless dress came straight up to me.

"Michalis?" she asked. "Neh?", I responded with one of the twelve Greek words I knew. It was Dina. Everything else she said to me was in Greek except "sorry". She was sorry for being a little late, but her explanation was completely lost on me. I didn't much care, I was just so happy to see her. She led us off into the dark streets and down about one hundred steps to our apartment.

As we put our bags down and settled in, Dina talked and talked. I wondered if she thought I spoke Greek because I had been able to say "yes" in her language. That, and the fact that my friend who made the arrangements for us was Greek. Whatever the case, it didn't really matter. I found her fascinating, even in my exhausted state. She brought out a bottle of ouzo, three glasses and some ice. It was clear that we understood each other. Words were unimportant.

In the morning, we were greeted again by Dina's sing song voice. She told us to have a seat, or so we gathered from her hand gestures. The sun was very bright and we were somewhat stunned at the beautiful view we had of the Caldera and surrounding little islands. She opened a large table umbrella to shade us as we sat down to breakfast.

I was expecting some bread and jam with a little coffee-- the typical European breakfast staples. Bread and jam did, in fact come out, but now how I expected...

Dakos, a barley rusk bread from Crete arrived smeared with fresh island tomatoes of a concentrated flavor and fresh feta cheese. She'd even picked the tops off her basil plants to garnish every piece.

The apricot jam she made herself arrived both in a giant glass jar and inside these little cookies she had baked for us while we were sleeping...

Rounding things out nicely were the tiropita she made-- little triangles of phyllo filled with cheese and served with Greek honey, which also accompanied the Yogurt, which is unlike any other yogurt I've tasted.

In the evenings, if she saw us sitting outside, she'd pull out an unlabeled bottle of local white wine, pour us each a glass and leave the bottle or grill us up some octopus. A little pat on the shoulder for me in the afternoon, a fresh towel at night, a cup of Greek coffee in the morning. Everything Dina did seemed to be touched with a sense of grace and humor. She was as warm as the sun on our yet-to-be-burned shoulders. The words she spoke to me weren't necessarily understood, but her meaning was always clear. "You are most welcome."

The Greeks have a word for it, but don't they seem to have a word for everything? In this case, the word is philoxenia. Philos= love, xeno= stranger. Essentially, the word means "hospitality" but that definition is too facile. One enters a Greek household and one is immediately offered a drink and something to eat. Taking care of a guest's wants and needs is deeply ingrained into the culture. There is a sense of generosity that seems completely unstrained. As a guest of Dina's, even though this was ultimately (and I do not mean this cynically) to be a moneyed transaction, I found her kindness was not something that was paid for. My stay with her completely refreshing in every sense of the word. I felt restored. And I am most grateful.

One of the reasons I am grateful is that I was given a refresher course on what it means to be truly hospitable. I think that this souvenir of Santorini is much more valuable to me and my work than any t-shirt or postcard could ever be, certainly. While I'm still basking in the glow of my vacation and as-yet-unfaded tan, that sense of hospitality and warmth is easy to share. But as the tan disappears and I head into foreseeable pressures of the oncoming holiday season, I will remember Dina and how she treated me, and be able to keep smiling as I go get that side of ketchup for that woman who wants to taste about 15 different wines after she's finally settled to the fourth table she's tried on for size. She is a guest, after all.

Kill It and Grill It...

2007-09-18T11:55:00.000-07:00

... or The Carnivore's Dilemma.

Originally, I had thought to do a little post on yet another odd celebrity cookbook, this one by Ted (Cat Scratch Fever) Nugent and his wife, Shemane. I thought I might be able to write an entire piece on the cover photo alone. Or Her name. Shemane.

I was immediately drawn to the cover photo with its creepy magenta-red side lighting, as though the blood from an elk Ted had just shot was seeping from the carcass, onto the hood of the truck where it was tied, and over the headlamps like some macabre gel. They may have thought the light looked pretty, so they got out of the truck and had their son take a picture. Or used a self-timer. That seems a more appropriate technique given this book's subtext of self-sufficiency.

I was also intrigued by the fact that, though Ted may be holding a long phallus of a rifle, Shemane holds an infinitely more sinister-looking instrument of torture. Something that might be a large hunting version of a tomato knife. And a spatula. Of course, with the spatula, she looks more the kill-it-and-griddle-it-type.

Kill It & Grill It is an entertaining read, whether one agrees with Nugent's politics or not. Just take a look at an excerpt from Chapter 16: Limbrat Etouffée:

"Kill tree-dwelling vermin, remove PJs, take to flame, chow down. Drive safely. It's really that simple to get a good meal of squirrel. Limbrat whackin' is truly bigfun [sic] any ol' way ya choose it-- bow and arrow, pistol, rifle, scattergun, slingshot, falconry, grenades, and my favorite, flamethrower. How can ya go wrong? Squirrels are, after all, rodents, so have fun blasting away. That there exists a season or bag-limit on the little shits is mind-boggling to say the least."

When he's not busy telling Democratic presidential candidates to either sit on or fellate his AR-15 rifles, Nugent spends a good deal of time hunting his own animal protein. He reportedly has not bought meat for decades. He hunts, he shoots, he eats what he kills. Outspoken arch-conservative or not, he is a man of strong opinions. He's caused me to take a moment and think about my own meat-eating ways.

I am a carnivore. Okay, I'm an omnivore. I could never give up bacon however I might try. But I've often thought about how far removed I am from the proteins I ingest. Would I, as an eater of animal flesh, be able to hunt down and kill my dinner?

In some cases, yes. If the animal isn't cuddly. I have in the past hunted, killed, and dressed lake trout. Cold blooded animals can be offed by me, naturally, in cold blood. A chicken? I've never seen one in the wild but, though unpleasant the task might be, I think I could do it. Maybe it's that animals whose eyes are on the sides of their heads are less unpleasant to slaughter due to the fact that they cannot look at you with both eyes at the same time.

I once had a lunch date with a man who turned out to be vegan. He was very pleased with his choice of lifestyle, as one should be. Having once dated a vegan in college, I knew that, no matter how wonderful this person might be, we could never have what I would consider a normal dating life. Vegetarianism I can happily accommodate. I eat vegetarian meals quite often. But the minute someone tells me I shouldn't eat cheese or that consuming honey is morally wrong because it represents bee enslavement, I want to remark that I think narrow-bandwidth thinking and a joyless, hyper-sensitive lifestyle is morally wrong because it results in human boredom.

Fortunately, my lunch date was a bore, or not that cute. I can't remember. My response to him was adolescent, at best. I ordered a pork dish and started talking about how, as Americans, we needed to start taking more responsibility for the meat products we eat and, should it become necessary, I would be willing look a cow in the eye and slaughter it on the spot.

It was perhaps the quickest lunch I've ever eaten outside a fast food restaurant.

And now I realize that, though my statement to the vegan was meant to provoke, it was utterly untrue. I don't have the guts to kill any animal cute enough to name. Yet I will happily eat from its flesh if someone else has done the dirty work. I am a hypocrite, yes, but a hungry one.

Though I am not a fan of guns, Sean Hannity, the current war, or much of anything loved by Ted Nugent, I have to give a grudging amount of respect to anyone who puts his money where his mouth is. Or his mouth where his bow and arrow have been. He, by and large, feeds his family on what he himself kills. I go to the store and ask if the neatly packaged chops that were once were part of whole animals had been humanely treated in their lifetime. Sometimes. Other times, I forget and am shamed. I am aware of my own hypocrisy. Nugent occasionally makes others aware of their own. The fact that Animal Rights activists (in this case, extremists) have issued death threats against Nugent's children is a rather delicious irony.

By the time you read this post, I will be roaming the island of Santorini. Perhaps I might take the time to spear my own lavraki and throw it on a grill. Or perhaps one might catch me beating an octopus senseless on the rocks in order to tenderize its flesh in time for dinner. I doubt it. I'll let someone with a little more animal integrity to that for me.

I will be living such an aimless lifestyle for the next to weeks.

Apart from the angry comments from vegans I am likely to receive as a result of this post, I am curious to know the thoughts of you out there who are experiencing the same, or similar, meat-eating moral dilemma.

I'll see you in two weeks.

Valrhona: The Cultivation of Taste Seminar

2007-09-13T10:28:00.000-07:00

This week, I was invited to a Valrhona chocolate seminar at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in San Francisco. Since I'd never been to a chocolate seminar, let alone the Ritz, and since someone was kind enough to invite me, I decided to go.

When I walked through the front door and into the lobby, I was greeted politely and pointed in the direction of the elevators, which took me down to the terrace on the second level. What I found there was a courtyard filled with tables piled with Valrhona information packets, cocoa pods and nibs, and perhaps the most sophisticated tent structure I've seen apart from a circus, which was what I half-seriously expected, only more tasteful. This is, after all, the Ritz-Calrton.

Inside the tent, I quickly found a seat near the front. I've never been one of those people comfortable sitting in the front row-- I don't want to be called upon unnecessarily-- so I took a seat in the second.

As I was claiming my spot, a woman dressed in third world fabric accessorized with an equally ethnic-looking woven headband rushed in to claim her seat at the front of the nearly empty tent. "Oh! They're playing chocolate music!" she said to no one in particular. Since I was the only other person in her general vicinity, I thought I should respond. When I asked her what she meant by "chocolate music", she slowed her pace and spoke to me very carefully. "It's music from chocolate producing countries." An "of course" was, if not spoken, implied. I thought about how other music collections, compiled solely on the basis of a common national export might sell. Boron music probably wouldn't do so well. And I didn't want to know who would be interested in guano music.

At least I was clear on the day's theme.

While waiting for the seminar to begin, I chatted with some people I knew and then sat down to talk to my neighbor, who I didn't know-- an amateur chocolatier from Marin. When she mentioned how excited she was about her purchase of a new chocolate tempering machine, I knew I was in alien territory. "You mean they have machines to do that?" I asked, sadly in all seriousness. It was clear that what I knew about chocolate could fill a diaper. I've formulated opinions about chocolate in my life, to be certain-- which types and brands I prefer and why, but I've never given the art of making chocolate much thought. I knew, of course, that chocolate is derived from a pod that thrives in equatorial climates, but the rest was a complete blank.

Fortunately, that was about to change...

When the tent was filled and everyone had finally taken their seats, the audience was introduced to Pierre Costet, Valrhona's chief cacao sourcer and Vanessa Lemoine, their sensorial analysis expert. With the aid of headphones and simultaneous translators of both sexes, we were kept informed-- and entertained-- for nearly three hours.

There is entirely too much to recount for the purposes of this blog, so I will give you what I think were the highlights...

In a short, dramatic re-creation, Costet, wearing his field cap and wielding a knife, took us through the process of sourcing cacao beans, after which he handed a prop burlap sack to Lemoine for analysis. Not exactly Comédie Française material, but I enjoyed the effort.

After explaining the process of cacao analysis, which included extras holding up their assessments to the audience, Lemoine then handed the sack back to Costet who explained that, if the cacao was found suitable by Valrhona for making chocolate, it must then be determined if the source of the beans is stable. Stable? Equatorial countries are not typically known as stable sources of trade, whether the reasons be political instability (Ivory Coast), political hostility (Venezuela), or a proneness to uninviting weather phenomena (Malaysia). If the source is determined to be stable, Valrhona then proceeds to hammer out a deal with the new grower, opting to set prices directly rather than deal with middlemen and the fluctuations of a volatile cacao exchange. According to Valrhona, this leads to more money for the growers and, hopefully, higher wages for the laborers. In Venezuela, for example, plantation owners must pay wages competitive with those offered by the government-- they actually have to entice labor.

Our political correctness satisfied, we could now move on to what we all really came for, tasting chocolate...

We proceeded to examine les coulisses du Grand Chocolat. A coulisse is (not surprising given the nature of the day's lecture) a theatrical term. It refers to either the wings of a stage or the place where backgrounds are stored. Lemoine was determined to set the stage, to have in place the proper background, before we began to actually taste chocolate.

We were instructed to hold a series of liquids under our nose to examine its odor, which is taken directly into the nasal passage. Did I smell apple? Melon? Dog biscuit? Next, we sipped each the liquid, holding it in our mouths, which helped us detect its aroma, which we learned is information taken indirectly or post nasally. Apparently, 90% of what we think of as taste is actually aroma-- information received through the nose, not the tongue. It is little wonder then, I thought, that the French are so tasteful. Then I thought again. Aromatic would be the correct term.

True taste is detected by the tongue. Conventional Western wisdom long kept a short list of four true taste sensations (sweet, salty, bitter, acid) and only recently allowed a fifth (umami) onto the team. According to Lemoine, there are more than 1,000. We tried a sixth distinct taste (licorice). I was disappointed we didn't get to discuss this point further, but I think that might have been a bit overwhelming.

How To Taste Chocolate:

Look at it. Is it dark or milky? Is there a sheen or a matte finish?
Hold the chocolate to your nose and take in its odor.
Break a piece between your fingers. Is there a sharp snap or is there some give? A good snap is a sign of good tempering.
Put a piece of the chocolate into your mouth and assess its texture.
Allow the chocolate to melt in your mouth. Press it against your palate with your tongue. More of the aroma will now be released. Unless there is something very wrong with you, you will begin to salivate due to the chocolate's acidity. As you wait for the tang to subside, pay special attention to the back of your tongue. Is bitterness detected? Please limit your thoughts to the chocolate, not your life. Or your neighbor.
Repeat as often as necessary.

This approach to tasting chocolate struck me as very similar to the way one approaches the tasting of wine. The information is processed in very much the same way and in the same order. Just as there are those among us who can pick out a Griotte- Chambertin in a blind wine tasting, there are people, like Lemoine, who could spot the Araguani in a crowd. Both, in their own spheres, are given the title Grand Cru. The Griotte-Chambertin is a true Grand Cru, with its own A.O.C. designation. Valrhona's "Grand Cru" is more of a pretention, but one that tells the public that this is serious chocolate-- chocolate identified by terroir (another allusion to wine), cacao varietal, and blending.

I must admit that a chocolate glaze poured over my brain at about the second hour. To read about the different chocolates we tasted, I am sending you over to Dorie Greenspan, who took better notes on the subject than I did. She went to the seminar in New York the day prior.

All the chocolate we tasted was excellent, naturally, but the item I was most excited to try was basically chocolate detritus-- the cacao pulp. When fresh, as we tried it, the texture and flavor reminded me of a slightly underripe mango. The bean, unfermented and unroasted, was bitter and unpleasant. I wondered how anyone ever got the idea to turn this bitter little seed into something so utterly sensual and desirable as chocolate.

After the three hours of lecture and tasting, I was ready to stand up and stretch my legs. There were more Valrhona-related treats to be had, prepared by Yann Duytsche (who was plugging his book, Diversiones Dulces at the event)...

...and Valrhona USA's Derek Poirier. A tasting of five rather playful desserts, including a cocoa nibs foam with candied asparagus, Tainori jelly with tomato and basil, and an Abinao hot chocolate with Cramique brioche and aubergine jam (my hands down favorite)...

The confections were playful, to say the least. I was surprised at how well items like tomato and eggplant lent themselves to sweet dishes, but it all made sense to me upon the realization that they are classified as fruits. The green asparagus did nothing for me, but I enjoyed its culinary pretension.

Stephane Lacroix, sommelier at the Ritz-Carlton, paired a Muscat de Beaumes de Venise with the desserts. I'm afraid I am unable to remember the other wine he chose to pair with them because I was too busy imagining asking for my own private pairing with him. Apologies. Saturated with information, having had my fill of sweets, and with unsavory thoughts now filling my head, I thought it best to leave.

All in all, it was a very fun afternoon. I learned more about chocolate-- how it is sourced and processed, and how to approach tasting it-- than I ever thought I would. Critically or not, I'll let each piece melt on my tongue, let myself salivate for a while, and think of Vanessa Lemoine, and all the growers, roasters, sourcers, sensory analysists, and chocolatiers huddled together in every bite. Maybe not every time, that would be exhausting. But sometimes. I promise.

To find out more about Valrhona and their line of chocolates, please visit their website:

Valrhona.com

Avedano's Meats: Local People, Local Food

2007-09-06T12:02:00.001-07:00

I've been to Avedano's Meats on Cortland several times since its grand opening on July 15, mostly just to poke around, but I could never remember the name. My friends who live in Bernal Heights would say things like, "Have you checked out that new place around the corner?" and, "What's that place called again?" I'm terrible with names (and evidently in this case, so are my friends), which is a great liability. I have to play word association games to remember anything these days. I knew the place was a meat market, in the sense of selling meat, of course, but I was also aware that they sold much more than that. Did they sell skincare products? Doubtful, unless one considers animal fat an excellent facial hydrating agent. Aveda? No. Now you might understand why I am exhausted all the time.

At least now I won't forget the name.

Avedano's is the dreamchild of three women-- Tia Harrison, Melanie Eisemann, and Angela Wilson. Harrison, if you didn't know, is also the chef/owner of Sociale (which happens to be a subject of this week's Check, Please! here on KQED). And, if she's not busy enough running a restaurant and a quality meat store, her new baby occupies the rest of her time. That is what I would call energetic. I am shamed by my own lethargy.

The location, 235 Cortland Avenue (at Bocana), has been a butcher shop ever since it opened as Cicero's Meats in 1901. More recently known as Bleuss Meats, its faded streamline moderne sign leant a charming sense of decay to the Bernal neighborhood for years, but I never saw the door open for business. When the place was (minimally) reinvented as a butcher/ sashimi store, I was filled with hope-- one just doesn't find many good butchers operating independently of a supermarket these days. Sadly, the former owners were using this retail-only space to run a wholesale business on the sly, which isn't exactly legal. So the mini-blinds were pulled down and the door closed again.

The name Avedano derives from Harrison's grandparents, whose family emigrated from Asti to the Bay Area in 1906 to what I would consider a dramatic welcome. One hundred and one years later, there's a fresh coat of paint on the old sign with their name on it and the door is once again open. This time, however, I am more than cautiously optimistic.

You won't find the refrigerated meat case brimming with animal proteins yet, but what is there is excellent: Grass-fed beef from Estancia and Strawberry Mountain, Mary's Chickens, and wild, local seafood like Monterey sardines. The trio at Avedano's is currently working to source more local, sustainable meat and fish for their store, so look for more variety in the near future. Until then, enjoy what they've got. Just get there early and take a number.

Someone stole the number 1 ticket, which should not be taken as a symbolic gesture since I have yet to experience being treated like number 2 here.

In addition to quality meats, Avedano's sells a variety of other items...

Such as rarely seen (in San Francisco) pastas like Croxetti from Liguria...

...stamped with a family coat of arms on one side and a cross (hence the name) or a boat or some such symbol on the other. They look like Holy Communion wafers.

Sea salt: $5.00 a jar...

Cupcakes, cookies, and other sweets from Tia's other, other business, Lucky Cooky Company...

For those of you without time to cook for yourselves, Avedano's has fresh soups and sandwiches available, which are perfect for lunchtime. If you want dinner, prepared meals like their popular fried chicken and potato salad...

... or gypsy peppers stuffed with Oaxaca cheese are available after 3 pm. If you are of an age group not known for having teeth, or if you simply have a preference for soft foods, like my friend Patrick, they make their own baby food, too. Just inquire.

Sundays are a special treat-- fresh tacos. My friend Mark and I sat on the bench outside the store last week inhaling hot, Berkshire pork wrapped in corn tortillas, dripping with lime juice and pickled cabbage for $2.50 a pop. I gave them a rather messy thumbs up.

If you hadn't guessed by now, I love Avedano's. For me, it's one thing for a place to have good, fresh food. Pack a place with nice folks and quirky (and unselfconscious) detail and I am an instant fan...

Avedano's has got this Holy Trinity of charm in spades. In fact, the last time I was there, I was so wrapped up in the details (like the fact that these women had the store's walls painted with colors found in vintage advertising leaflets) that I barely took notice of the meat. I just wish I'd taken a clear photo of the magnet that stated, "It's okay to put fish in your hair" on their magnet board (the stick figure in the green triangle dress at the top center of the photo below).

And this photo of the floor is now the desktop image on my computer...

There's a lot going on at Avedano's, but there's more in store in the near future. Look for more prepared foods, more locally sourced organic products, and maybe even a small cafe or, say, sausage-making classes in the small storefront next door. We'll just have to wait and see.

Avedano's
235 Cortland Avenue (at Bocana).
1-415-285-MEAT
Open Tuesday through Sunday, 11 am to 8 pm
http://www.avedanos.com

Luxury Bong Water Now Available

2007-08-31T08:16:00.000-07:00

Several months ago, our local bottled water purveyor brought two executives from Pellegrino into our restaurant for dinner. As they sat at the bar digesting their meals with alcohol and animated chatter, I stopped by to say hello.

"Have you seen our new product?" the rep asked as she produced a bottle of water from her bag. "We're very excited about it."

I held the bottle, thought to myself how good it felt in the hand and noted that it was "ribbed for her pleasure", which is what I say to myself whenever I see anything ribbed, thanks to a condom advertisement I saw in an adult magazine I should not have been looking at as a child. What I enjoyed most about the bottle was its name, 420.

Were they serious? I pictured the Pellegrino executives lighting up, ties loosened and calling each other dude in Italian, or whatever the equivalent would be. I said nothing, but started to snigger.

"What's funny?" she asked, puzzled. I wiped the smirk from my face and, as seriously as I could, asked one of the pezzi grossi, "Tell me, what made you decide to name this water '420'?"

"I like the way the numbers look. The '4' looks like an 'h', as in 'h20'," he responded. I could tell he was proud of his Northern Italian sense of design. Oh dear. Did I have the heart to tell him?

Of course I did.

"Do you know what '420' means in American slang?" He did not, so I told him.

For those of you not in the know or pretending not to be, "420" is shorthand for marijuana. The term is believed to have originated in the early 1970's at San Rafael High School, where a group of teenagers would meet after school at 4:20 p.m. around the statue of Louis Pasteur to smoke marijuana. I am assuming they were mindful of Pasteur's Germ Theory and washed their hands prior to their illegal activity. How this tradition became widely accepted is unknown to me apart from the fact that, when stoned, people seem to think just about anything is a good idea. Whatever the case, the tradition spread and today April 20th is a day of much celebration and binge-snacking throughout the nation, though somewhat on the sly.

I explained this to the surprised and unsmiling Pellegrino people. I dug myself a slightly deeper hole by telling them that their product might be perceived as luxury bong water, but that this wasn't necessarily a bad thing, since they would have a built-in sub-culture market.

After explaining to them what a bong was, I thanked them for the bottle and went back to waiting on my tables.

Had I just just come across the liquid equivalent of the Chevy Nova? There are far worse examples, certainly.

Recently, while cleaning my desk (where the bottle has been used as a paperweight/ conversation piece), I noticed a website address printed on the back of the water bottle, www.fineh2o.com...

"Luxury by the liter." I had hoped they might opt for "ounce", but that would be too American.

Clicking for more information about 420, I was informed that this water comes from the Southern Alps of New Zealand and was deposited when my "great, great grandmother was the same age as [me]. Which is a fabulous story to tell someone [I'm] trying to pick up in a bar."

I somehow doubt any of my great, great grandmothers were concerning themselves with luxury water. Unless one considers irrigating crops a luxury. They were too busy occupying themselves with things like losing social status in the aftermath of Italy's unification, crossing over from Spain to marry into Sicilian crime families, and not assimilating well into white culture, preferring to sleep on bearskin rugs with trappers in Montana who were not their husbands.

And if I were to pick up anyone in a bar, I most likely wouldn't be talking about water, let alone drinking it. But that's just me.

Another fascinating brand of water from Fine H2O is Heartsease, from Wales, where the Heartsease Pansy grows. In my mind, heartsease is two letters away from heart disease, so it makes me uncomfortable, no matter how cute the pansies are. I think I'm just a little surprised that these two unfortunately named products come from essentially Anglophone countries.

I admit that I am no water snob. Apart from an extreme loathing of Chicago tap water-- which tastes of exhausted Zebra Mussels, I am happy to drink from the local tap, especially ours. I do, of course, realize that there are differences in the flavors and textures of water from various sources-- rainwater vs. spring water, etc.-- I'm simply too occupied with other things to pay these differences much mind. I left such things to my brother who, on one occasion, spent an entire day at Vichy running around the various fountains excitedly sampling every type of h2o he could find, while the invalids who flocked there to take the waters for their health sat around with graduated beakers waiting to take sips in measured amounts at appointed intervals. He even brought home water from Lourdes in a plastic Virgin Mary-shaped bottle to be enjoyed later. Given current airline restrictions pertaining to liquids, I wonder if the good people at that holy shrine have adapted to the times with a 3 oz. version of Our Lady. Perhaps the local priests might go so far as to bless the clear Ziploc bags in which she must now travel. That would be a nice touch.

I have not seen the Pellegrino representative in our restaurant since that evening. I would like to assume that she was allowed to keep her job, since she wasn't the one responsible for naming the water. Of course, the Pellegrino people evidently don't care about the alternative meaning behind their water's branding. Not enough to change it, anyway. I'm rather glad. I was so disappointed when Coors abandoned their Spanish translated slogan of "Turn It Loose" once it was learned that the phrase was read as "Suffer From Diarrhea".

To purchase a case of 420 for your next social event, call 1-888-24-WATER or email them at info@fineh2o.com. Just please don't tell them I sent you.

Brini Maxwell: Drag Queen of Domesticity

2007-08-24T08:40:00.000-07:00

I wish I'd thought of that little tag line, but I didn't.

Sometimes, I think I spend far too much time sitting in front of my computer. Instead of doing something beneficial to myself, like exercising or cleaning my refrigerator, I troll sites like neatorama and thesuperficial.com. I've wasted hours online staring at folks making shadow puppets, shuddering over videos of people with unspeakable deformities, and chiding myself for trying to understand someone as crazy as that former Mouseketeer, Brittany Spears. You never saw Annette getting into that kind of trouble. No way.

Fortunately, there is an occasional payoff to my time investment. Enter Brini Maxwell.

I have no idea how she got onto my computer screen, but I am very glad she did. Full of chat, recipes and household tips, Maxwell calls upon the spirits of domestic icons past like Donna Reed and Florence Henderson yet manages to steer clear of mere caricature. As graceful as Dina Merrill (whose delicious strawberry pancakes seem like a slap in the face to her Post cereal heiress mother) and more helpful than Josephine the Plumber, I think she defies comparison, which might suit Maxwell just fine, especially when the occasional attempt has been made to label her the "new" Martha Stewart. As she told The Advocate in 2004:

"I don't consider myself the next Martha Stewart, I consider myself the next Sue Ann Nivens! I just think it's like comparing apples and oranges. We talk to different types of people--my audience tends to be very urban, and I think that Martha's audience is more suburban."

I don't see how anyone with such an impressive collection of vintage cookware (not to mention her inexhaustible wardrobe) could be accused of being a "new" anything. And anyone who uses Sue Ann Nivens as a role model is aces in my book.

Here's a teaser for the episode Meatloaf a la Janet Leigh...

Swedish meatballs, deviled eggs and bridge sandwiches? You'll find out how to make them along with advice on how to maximize your urban living (and entertaining) potential-- on a budget. It's a "how to" show delivered by a "can do" gal-- fortunately one with more than a teaspoon of wit and a hell of a lot of style. I can't wait to try out her recipe for Crown Roast of Cheese.

Brini Maxwell (created by actor Ben Sander, by the way) has been wildly popular for years in New York-- I've never claimed cutting edge. I just feel that, given the appalling social skills I've witnessed among certain communities in this city, San Francisco needs a good dose of her-- like, immediately. Think of this as a public service announcement.

I just subscribed to her NPR video podcast, so I won't miss a thing. I suggest some of you do, too. And I mean now. You know who you are.

Now why didn't you think of that?

The Mother of All Cooking Shows

2007-08-16T09:27:00.000-07:00

This week marks both the birthday and deathday, if there is such a word, of Julia Child. The fact that no one in my culinary circle has mentioned either event upsets me. Where are the parades? Is anyone laying a wreath of Bay Laurel on her grave?

Some people old enough to do so talk of where they were when they heard of John F. Kennedy's assassination. I am not that old, so I had to come up with my own where-was-I memories. Karen Carpenter? I was on my way to the newly opened EPCOT Center, the day marred by the endless loop of Superstar running through my brain. Jacqueline Kennedy? Don't get me started.

The most vivid death for me was Julia Child's. I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing. I was sitting in a traffic jam owing to a fallen tree, crammed into a rental car with five friends near Jemez, New Mexico.

It was a Friday in mid-August, 2004. We were returning from a hike in the mountains and a soak in the local hot springs where, the moment we shucked our clothes and hopped in the steaming water, a hailstorm hit us. And I do mean hit us. It was as though God had opened his comedy closet filled with ping pong balls right onto our heads. Hailstones the size of mothballs screamed down from 10,000 feet, striking us directly or ricocheting off rocks to pelt us in the face. The only safe place was a crag already occupied by a tiny, freakish man-- a naked troll with golden dental work-- who sat there safe and grinning at his good luck and our misfortune. The couple soaking below us held an oversized umbrella over their heads. Everyone seemed prepared except us. When the attack subsided, we dressed and slumped back to the car, some of us bloodied, all of us bruised.

We were singing stupid songs and fogging up the windows, going nowhere very slowly and laughing about the terrible afternoon we'd just experienced. I had written the word "buffalo" with my index finger on the windshield which, for some reason, was funny only to myself. As I considered explaining to my fellow travelers exactly why it was funny, a radio newscaster announced the death of Julia Child, two days shy of her 92nd birthday.

My first thought was a sad one-- Now I'll never get to meet Julia Child-- egocentric, I know. I thought she'd had a good run of it, at least.

My attentioned turned to math, briefly. Two days shy of her 92nd birthday? Since, the day was Friday, August 13th-- which would explain the afternoon we were having-- that put her birthday at August 15th, my brother's birthday.

My brother and I had had a competition going about who's birthday was more significant, his or mine. I touted the fact that I shared my birthday with not only Sally Struthers, but our maternal grandfather and, what I thought was my trump card, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. I liked to throw in the fact that World War One officially started on that date for good measure. He countered with Rose-Marie and the fact that his day was a holy day of obligation in the Catholic church- the Feast of the Assumption (which, as my friend Bill loves to point out, is called Maria Himmelfahrt in German). Since nuns came to pin medals on his pillow the day he was born, he always claimed victory. He never mentioned the fact that he shared the day with Julia Child. I wonder if he ever new. I'd give him the crown for that coincidence alone.

We weren't a Julia Child-loving family. No one to my knowledge watched The French Chef. I'd watch re-runs of the Galloping Gourmet, but only out of the corner of my eye because I was too busy building mazes for my hamster out of Lincoln Logs. To me, Julia Child was just some tall lady with a funny voice who cooked and everyone from Dan Ackroyd to John Candy made fun of. I'd always thought of her as some grande dame, her nose as far above the jokes and pokes as her 6' 2" body would hold it.

I'd bought The Way To Cook when I was in college, as did many of my friends, because I was serious about cooking. It was and is a serious cookbook-- step by step and about as how-to as they get. But I only sought pointers, I knew nothing of finesse and had no sense of humor about cooking-- I was too intimidated by it. I certainly didn't think I'd find either in the work of Julia Child. Of course, I'd never seen her television program.

It wasn't until several year's later when I fell into a job working for Jacques Pepin that I heard she had a sense of humor. Pepin, fresh from taping a television show with Child, told us stories of how, when wine-maker sponsers visited the set of their show, she insisted on serving beer. Other stories followed that fairly shattered the previous image I'd formed of her. She wasn't the droning, Yankee bore obsessed with detail I'd made her out to be from her book and my own imagination. It's hard to imagine that I never remembered seeing her on television before, but it's true. The humor and charm that Pepin described surprised me, but it was her puckishness that left me wanting more of her. However unbearable the rest of my experience on Pepin's show, I came away with that wonderful knowledge.

It wasn't until last year that I was finally able to see episodes of The French Chef. My friend John recieved a DVD boxed set of the series' best episodes for his birthday. An ace home cook and successful cookbook author in his own right, he kindly invited me over to his place for dinner and a viewing. We watched her on his kitchen television as we drank martinis and cooked or, rather, he cooked, I drank martinis. Most memorable were the episodes detailing how to roast a chicken and how to make a tarte tatin. Or how not to, I'd say.

Take a moment and watch her talk about chickens (Sorry, I cannot imbed this video, so follow the link. I'll wait. And now for those of you too lazy to follow a link outisde this page...

It was then that I felt I finally got her. Thank you, John.

Having participated in the production of a number of cooking programs before the onset of their cable television-induced proliferation and, therefore, banality, Child was a trend-setter. I think we can all agree upon that. What impressed me most about her program was it's low- budget, public television feel. Child preformed each show-- from start to finish-- in one take. Along with her many successful dishes prepared on air were many flops, but all were taken in stride and with great sense of humor. Whether blaming her choice of apple for the failure of her tarte tatin or simply explaining, by way of each failure, what went wrong and why, she turned her gaffes into, if not always triumphs, at least into moments of sheer enjoyment. The knowledge that even Julia Child was prone to error on occasion gave courage to her audience, removing much of the fear involved in the making of, say, a Gateau Saint-Honore.

At a time when we, as Americans, generally deferred to the French in all matters gustatory , ignorant of or perhaps in part ashamed of our own culinary heritage, Child not only translated the French way of cooking into a language we could understand and into ingredients we could get our hands on, she served as an entertaining tour guide of French Culture along the way. And she managed all this without dumbing things down-- least of all, herself.

In an age where cooking shows are all but shoved down our throats, where any annoying personality is set free to run amok inside our televisions, it can be said that no one can best the original or imitate the inimitable. For better or worse, the Food Network owes its very existence to her. Have they ever said thank you? I wouldn't know, since I'm not paying attention-- I don't have cable and can't really stomach cooking shows anymore, with a few exceptions. Nothing would say "we care" like a TV marathon devoted to her original, groundbreaking program. Perhaps WGBH in Boston has already taken the idea and run with it. All I know is someone should.

Granted, Julia Child was practically beatified by the likes of the James Beard Foundation, COPIA and even the Smithsonian Institute while she was alive, but I'm voting for full canonization now that she's gone. I'd like a new holy day of obligation to supplant the one that no one celebrates anymore. Except Bavarians and my brother, were he still alive. Let's build a cathedral, a Notre Dame de la Cuisine, say, in her honor-- a place of worship where one can go to pray for, if not culinary inspiriation or courage, at least deliverance from evil. Like the fact that Emeril Lagasse has his own band or the mere presence of that squawking Anti-Christ, Rachel Ray.

The Old Clam House

2007-08-09T09:37:00.000-07:00

There are a number of restaurants in this city that have captured my imagination-- restaurants about which I know absolutely nothing, apart from the clues given away by their often antiquated signs and odd locations. Russia House and Julius' Castle come to mind. I am not typically curious about what's new and exciting. I leave that to other, hipper bloggers. Show me a restaurant that has survived fire, earthquake and food trend and I'll be there. Sooner or later. It's not as if they're going anywhere.

I've driven by the Old Clam House for years. Or, rather, been driven by it-- I don't have a car. It has captivated me for a number of reasons. First, it's location-- a rather depressing stretch of Bayshore Boulevard, near the stretch of the 101 called the James Lick Freeway-- a fact not lost upon me. Next, it's age. The Old Clam House has been in business since 1861, making it second only to (please correct me if I'm wrong) Tadich Grill in terms of senility. Lastly, the name itself-- The Old Clam House. Does the word "old" modify "clam" or "house"? I assumed the latter, but refused to dismiss the former. A home for retired prostitutes also came to mind, naturally. My friends and I talked of going there for a long time.

Finally, after one near miss a few months ago, my friend Bill thought it high time to gather up the menfolk and wander down Bernal Hill for a special dinner-- my birthday dinner-- at the Clam House. As I sat with a cocktail opening birthday cards, I noted that a card from one friend read "To an (old) clam." Everyone, it seemed, was ready for the evening ahead.

When we arrived for our reservation, the seven of us were greeted warmly and offered our table promptly, but we paused long enough to note the Wall of Fame lined with celebrities either gracious enough to bestow autographed 8 x 10 glossy publicity photos they just happened to be carrying with them at the time or desperate enough in their ebbing careers to think that any publicity is preferable to none at all. I couldn't decide. One of my favorite Old Clams to grace the wall is pictured below. Please forgive the light reflection obscuring her face. I feel that, out of kindness, I must obscure her identity, however lightly.

Once seated, we were greeted by our server with water, baskets of sourdough bread and individual cups of hot clam broth which my friend Dan, who swallowed his fear of clams (the actual meat, not clam byproducts or the idea of clams) to come to dinner, declared it good. And it was-- subtly flavored. Briny and fresh tasting without being too, well, clammy. It struck a good first note.

While figuring out what to have for our main courses, we contented ourselves with beer and ordered two plates of fried calamari. My friend Bill and I ordered cups of clam chowder, which seemed like a too obvious choice, but a good one, nonetheless. The clams inside the chowder were plentiful and tender; the potatoes had enough tooth to them without being undercooked. I could smash the chunks on the roof of my mouth with my tongue. If I wanted to. However unsubtle it may have been, I introduced Bill to the pleasure of adding tabasco sauce to chowder. I like the heat it gives and the pretty pink color, naturally. The fried calamari was exactly as it should be, too. Crispy and ungreasy with just a little bit of chew. I normally avoid cocktail sauce and go straight for a squeeze of lemon, but I dipped a few tiny tentacles in, since the sauce was homemade. I might have stifled a yawn, but that's just me. It was good cocktail sauce, if you like that sort of thing.

While browsing the menu, I noticed that the restaurant served Scalone Bordelaise. If you are among those fortunate enough never to have run into this terrible shotgun marriage between bivalve and gastropod, scalone is a mixture of scallops and abalone-- two wonderful mollusks when kept in their separate corners-- usually ground together and frozen into patty or steak form. They must be pan fried directly from the freezer, in my experience, or they will do what is only natural-- separate. The only reason I know this is that this dish was served as an annual specialty at the Bohemian Grove camp I worked at last summer. We referred to the dish as Scabalone which, to us, is what it looked like when sufficiently browned on the griddle. Our campers ate it with a squeeze of lemon. as though to sanitize. I can imagine that adding a creamy sauce to it would only make the scab look infected. I moved down the menu.

I opted for the Mescalanza because it had a bit of everything in it-- crab legs, clams, prawns, Oysters Rockefeller. That, and because the name made me think of Mario Lanza singing "Be My Love". Impossible to refuse, in my book. I think I made the right choice, at least in terms of the dish's theatrical value...

Flaming seafood. An attention-grabbing entree is always in order on one's birthday. I thought about making a wish by blowing out the clam, but thought better of it.

I'd never had a seafood bordelaise before. The sauce itself was fine, but made an already rich dish obscenely so. I nibbled at the Oyster Rockefeller slowly, since there was only one and, to me, the star attraction. To my surprise, I actually liked clams drowned in sauce, but I think the other bits of seafood suffered, like the prawns and crab. Though impaled on skewers suspended above the bowl on what looked like a dumb bell rack, it was impossible not to coat everything I touched with bordelaise-- it was all over my hands. When my butter-coated fingers dropped a prawn into the bowl, I discovered a bit of sunken treasure-- an ear of corn. I think the fact that an ear of corn can go unnoticed at the bottom of one's bowl for several minutes illustrates either the immense size of the bowl in question or the limited observational powers of the person eating it. I vote for the former but won't rule out the latter. Shaking off as much sauce as I could, I bit into the corn. The corn juice released from the now-damaged kernels mingled with what sauce remained, not so much running down my chin, but getting absorbed by my beard. The corn was abandoned.

The other dishes ordered by my dining mates were just as gargantuan. The clam linguini was enough to feed all seven of us and was actually delicious. My friend David's Lazy Man's Cioppino was served in the same oversized bowl as my Mescalanza. We questioned why the dish was named "Lazy Man's Cioppino". Since the crab legs were uncracked and the prawns still in their shell, we assumed that the lazy man in question was the one who prepared the dish.

As we finished our dinners, or at least tried to, I asked our server for a hot towel, since my hands and part of my left forearm were coated with bordelaise. She said yes, but returned without one. I asked someone else for an extra napkin and was given a few small ones of the paper kind. I was wedged into the middle of the table and didn't feel like getting up to go to the bathroom, so I just moistened the paper napkins with what little water was left in my glass and cleaned myself up as best I could given the tools I had. I had hoped that someone might think about clearing our table of dirty plates, but hope accomplishes nothing except the heightening of future disappointment.

I am very glad I didn't get up to go to the restroom. As we abandoned our dinner, my friend Gary turned to all of us and said, "Keep an eye on the door of the Ladies' Room and see what comes out. It's good."

We all tried to keep up our conversations, but everyone kept staring at the Ladies' Room door. A couple of minutes passed. Nothing. A tall, fifty-something blonde entered and then exited two minutes or so later. Was that what we were supposed to be looking at? No, of course not. We'd all stared at her as she went in.

As my attention was beginning to flag, out came a rather tall woman with enormous breasts that were so ill-contained by her overflowing tank top that her aureolae peeked over the top, though her shirt was partially covered by what looked like an open Janet Jackson Rhythm Nation 1814 leather jacket. Her stride was confident across the restaurant, even in her high heeled boots. She wet her index finger with her tongue and wiped the corners of her mouth as she walked. Someone at my table intimated that she might be a working girl. I thought perhaps she was just having the same issues with the excess of bordelaise I was.

Then a man came out of the Ladies' Room adjusting his pants. I knew then that the joke I'd made about the the restaurant being a home for retired prostitutes wasn't too far off the mark. I'll just have to omit the word "retired" the next time I tell it.

Considering the fact that this woman was a practitioner, one assumes, of the world's oldest profession, I thought her behavior best suited for the Tadich Grill. Since I don't know what the world's second oldest profession is, I was at a loss to give her any restaurant-appropriate career advice.

No dessert was offered to us, though I had heard tell of flan being available. It would have been nice to have had a candle to blow out, to make a wish for my 38th year, but it seemed so obvious to me that this woman stole my birthday thunder. There was no way in hell I was going to out-blow a professional, so I let her have the honor. I just wonder what she wished for. I hope it was something nice.

Eat This: 1,001 Things to Eat Before You Diet

2007-08-03T08:52:00.000-07:00

Summer reading should be pleasant fare. Though I had found perverse comfort earlier this season in Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror-- the wars and epidemics of our own century seem paltry when compared to the Hundred Years' War and Bubonic Plague of the 14th-- I felt that, just perhaps, I should read something slightly more upbeat; something that didn't cause me to frequently check myself for lice, fleas or imaginary buboes. Something fun, something food-related.

I was saved from reading MFK Fisher's The Art of Eating for the 17th time when Ian Jackman's Eat This: 1,001 Thngs to Eat Before You Diet fell into my hot --but plague-free-- little hands.

Jackman spent two years writing about and several more eating his way through farmers markets, hot dog stands, panaderias and testicle festivals-- and any place else that serves up food in this country. The result is an entertaining, mind-blowing catalogue of regional American food traditions and obsessions.

Eat This satisfies my criteria for pleasant fare-- something I can pick up and put down, jumping from chapter to chapter without getting lost. Though not a comprehensive work (which is impossible be given the expanse of this country, so don't cry about the omission of scuppernongs), it is a work of astonishing breadth, fascinating food facts and inspiration for many a future food hajj.

When I first flipped through these 382 pages of information, I was overcome with regret that no one ever uttered the words "road trip" to me. Not once. "Vegas" was about as far as it went, and culinary adventure was not the motivation behind that utterance. As I browsed further, skipping about between chapters in Part One: Eating In that seem organized like sections in a supermarket, I came across bits of food history I could relate to-- my father's fascination with Tastykakes in the Bakery chapter, my aunt's penchant for feeding her dog on Chateaubriand while the rest of us ate pasta in Meat.

Part Two: Eating Out is crammed with information not only on what to eat and where to eat it but, for example and (to me) much more fascinating, how a national dish such as the hamburger varies from region to region. A Sloppy Joe-like Dynamite? Go to Rhode Island. Butter Burger? Try Solly's Grill in Madison, Wisconsin. I'll need to ask my Madison contact about that one.

The bits of trivia Jackman picked up along the way are filling up the few remaining parts of my brain as yet unsaturated with useless information, which suits me just fine. From Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation, Jackman shares a wonderfully creepy burger fact:

Q: Which two American institutions were founded in San Bernadino, California, in 1948?
A: McDonald's and The Hell's Angels.

If you tell me that information isn't going to slip out of your mouth at the next barbecue you attend, I won't believe you.

Of course, for every one item I've tasted or place I've visited (or worked at, for that matter-- four are mentioned in this book), there are 20 listed that I haven't-- a fact I regard with hope rather than frustration. Pancakes at the Original Pantry in Los Angeles? Check. Hungarian Hot Dogs at Tony Packo's in Toledo, Ohio? On my to do list. My friend Gary's family is Hungarian and from Ohio. I've heard the stories, I've seen the photos. Jackman's credibility rating shot way up when I read that. Not that he needs my approval.

In a country I have often viewed (from my cultural bubble of San Francisco) as alarmingly homogenized, where the lingua franca has been peppered with phrases like super-sized and non-fat venti, Eat This simply proves that there are still a lot of lumps in the American Melting Pot. Thank God.

As I step up the planning of my impending holiday in Greece next month, my thoughts are already turning to the next trip. I'm thinking somewhere more exotic. Like Vienna, Georgia. I've never been to the Big Pig Jig Barbecue Contest. I smell a road trip coming on but, this time, I won't wait around for someone to utter those words to me. I'll say them myself.

Peaches, Herb and Melba

2007-07-27T08:25:00.000-07:00

Before getting to the meat of today's subject matter, I'd like to explan something-- the evolution of today's post.

I'm off to my 20th high school reunion this weekend so, naturally, the song "Reunited" by Peaches and Herb has been crowding my brain. The initial idea was to exorcise this R & B demon from my head by making a salad containing, naturally again, peaches and herbs. I thought that by taking matters into my own hands, uniting these two ingredients and then consuming them might give me some sort of edge. However, I became frustratingly uncertain as to which herb was the right Herb. Peaches might react unpleasantly to, say, marjoram or, even worse, dill. Rosemary sounded nice, but my hunch told me that herbs with feminine names wouldn't appeal to her either. The goal here was a reunion that feels so good.

I abandoned Herb, but I kept Peaches with me. I thought about explaining where she came from (China, not Persia as her botanical name Prunus persica suggests) and how she came to whet our appetites with just a little shake of her sequined groove thing. I was surprised by both her strength and her depth-- much more depth than I think your Friday morning attention span can handle.

So I decided to make Peach Melba instead.

That's Nelly Melba in the clip above. Sadly, she's not making her peach dish. Instead, she's making a cake for the Duke and Duchess of York, later to be known as King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. I couldn't find any other footage of her, so this will have to do.

Born in what is now a suburb of Melbourne, Australia in 1861, Helen Porter Mitchell grew up to ditch her son-of-a-baronet husband and infant son, change her name to Nellie Melba (in honor of her hometown) and become one of the greatest-- or at least most famous-- sopranos in opera history. She has inspired not only the above mentioned dessert concoction, but toast, thereby making her the most eponymed woman in modern food history. Why such honors?

It wasn't her sweet disposition. Apart from abandoning her family, she was also known as a fickle, upstaging attention-grabber. The consummate diva, when asked to answer for her own bad behavior, the words "I am Melba" always passed from her lips. That, she believed, was enough explaination. She was also given to physically shoving other performers downstage if they got in her way. She was, not surprisingly, detested by her peers.

She was, however, loved by her public. One man in particular-- Auguste Escoffier-- adored her.

While appearing at Covent Garden-- her operatic home for more than twenty years-- and residing at the Savoy Hotel where Escoffier was master chef, she sent him (possibly as a thank you for previously naming the toast in her honor) a pair of tickets to see her in Richard Wagner's Lohengrin. Escoffier was so taken with her performance that he created another dish (if toast can indeed be called a dish) for her-- Peche au Cygne (Peach with Swan)-- peaches and vanilla ice cream served alongside a dramatic swan ice sculpture which mimicked the swan-shaped boat featured in the opera. It was not, however, called Peach Melba. He renamed the dessert a few years later, after his move to the Ritz Carlton, adding both raspberry sauce and the Melba name.

Legend has it that Melba was concerned that eating ice cream might constrict her gorgeous vocal chords, which is why I have chosen to serve the peaches below slightly warm. I know what it's like to piss off a diva, believe me.

Peach Melba:

Ingredients:

3 yellow peaches. Not too ripe. Freestones make life easier.
4 cups water. You may also poach the peaches in white wine. Frankly, I'd rather drink the wine
than poach with it.
2 cups sugar
2 cups raspberries (fresh or frozen). Fresh raspberries are ideal for garnishing.
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 tablespoons of sugar (taste the raspberries before adding sugar. I prefer the sauce to be tart,
like la Melba herself)
Vanilla ice cream. (I'm using vanilla sorbet because I have to lose 10 pounds by tomorrow for
my reunion.)

Some sort of wafer cookies for garnish and a little crunch.

Preparation:

1. Slice a shallow "x" on the bottom of each peach to facilitate peeling. Blanch the peaches in the four cups of simmering water for about one minute. Or two. Is the skin starting to peel away along the edges of the little "x"? If so, take them out and place fruit in an ice bath to cool them. Let sit until well cooled, then excoriate. Set aside.

Add sugar to the simmering water, stirring lightly to dissolve. Return the denuded peaches to the simmering syrup. Turn off the heat and walk away for a while. Some swear by slicing the peaches before poaching them. I'm not a fan-- the edges of the peaches become too soft and feathery. Do so at your own risk. I like the center of the peach to have a little bit of give to it. Probably because I have teeth.

While the peaches are doing their thing, make the raspberry sauce. Place berries, 1/4 cup of sugar and 1 tablespoon of lemon juice into your cuisenart or what-have-you and pulse. I had some berries in the freezer and did not bother to wait until they thawed before I pureed them. I ended up making a sort of soft-serve sorbet as a result, which I let melt to become spoonable and saucy. Set aside and wash your blending apparatus immediately, if only to save yourself from flicking bits of seed stuck to the plastic with your fingernail later.

When the syrup has cooled to slightly warm, remove the peaches and slice in half, removing the stones.

To Assemble:

In parfait glasses or whatever you have handy-- vessels with pestles, flagons with dragons-- spoon a little raspberry sauce on the bottom. Of the glass, please. Place one half of a peach, which should be slightly warm on top. Spoon vanilla ice cream over that, drizzle with a little more raspberry sauce. Garnish with whole raspberries and cookie. Serve immediately.

*Fun Fact* Nellie Melba died on 23 February, 1931 as a result of complications from a botched plastic surgery.

Fried Gallus Gallus

2007-07-19T14:26:00.000-07:00

Every summer, I become mildly obsessed with frying chicken. I think of the beautiful childhood picnics I never went on. Laying out my hand-stitched quilt on a grassy patch of park free of dog feces, the well-timed automatic sprinklers offering me a refreshing spritz of mist at 15 minute intervals, drinking freshly squeezed lemonade and eating my Grammy's homemade fried chicken.

How I miss Anaheim.

If a summertime picnic was to be had, it was generally done in my backyard on an old, frayed electric blanket (not plugged in). Just myself and my dogs, Cindy and Penny, who were not, as one might think, named for Cindy Williams and Penny Marshall. The coincidence of my childhood with Laverne and Shirley is simply bad timing. No sunscreen. We didn't feel the need for such things in those days. All I needed for a (temporary) deep, golden tan was the mayonnaise dripping from my bologna sandwich. I know what you're thinking. Eew. Well, you're right. My neighbor Kim and I once slathered Best Foods all over our bodies and then baked ourselves in the sun. We thought nothing of it until we began to smell. That was about the time Kim's mother found us and screamed something about us being walking salmonella and wasting her good mayonnaise. She then sprayed me down with a hose and sent me home.

But I digress.

The point I am feebly trying to make is that we were not, by nature, fried chicken eaters. The occasional Shake n' Bake assisted fried chicken was ingested, but without relish. Or mayonnaise, for that matter.

I think, though, that I had always wanted to be a fried chicken eater. Perhaps it was the trappings that went with its eating-- red checkered picnic cloths, watermelon, big, happy families. Maybe even a sack race. That seemed like a great summertime sort of lifestyle.

My understanding of the dish didn't occur until well into adulthood. I had invited my cooking school partner Todd over for dinner one summer evening and thought fried chicken sounded like a good idea. As I took the chicken legs out of their plastic seal and began to place them directly into the flour mixture I'd made, Todd cocked is head like a confused dog and asked, "What are you doing? That's not how my Mama makes fried chicken and my Mama knows fried chicken." His voice had suddenly developed the long, rounded vowels and deep base of an imaginary Kentucky Colonel-- decidedly un-New Jersey-like, the state in which Todd learned to speak. He explained that his mother was from West Virginia. Oh. We went to the market to purchase what he needed to make proper fried chicken, then I stood back and watched him work. Since the chicken needed to soak overnight, I think we went out for burritos that night in stead. He came back the next day to fry it all up. I was floored and humbled by the results.

Now I realize that everyone thinks they know what the perfect fried chicken should taste like. Well, you're wrong, plain and simple.

Thank you Todd, wherever you are. And thank you, Mama Webb, for showing me into the light.

Mrs. Webb's Fried Chicken

Ingredients:

12 pieces of chicken (I like thighs and drumsticks. Breasts just seem like a waste for frying)
1 quart of buttermilk (low fat will do just fine)
a generous amount of salt
1 onion, sliced into rings or Lyonnaise style, if you like-- you're the one eating them
3 cups of all purpose flour
1 to 2 tablespoons cracked black pepper
1 tablespoon cayenne pepper
1 1/2 quarts vegetable oil for frying (corn, safflower or whatever. Don't get fancy with the oil or people will laugh at you). Or, if you prefer, vegetable shortening.

Preparation:

1. In a large bowl, coat the chicken pieces liberally with salt. This not only salts the chicken, it draws out impurities, preventing unsightly blood spotting as you fry. Let the chicken sit in the salt for one hour.

2. Rinse the salt from the chicken. Rinse the bowl, too, for reuse.

3. Return chicken to the bowl and add the sliced onion. Toss together and cover with buttermilk. Cover and set in refrigerator overnight or for one full day.

4. In a skillet, pour one inch of oil and heat to 325 degrees. Try not to let the oil get hotter or the chicken will burn. I use a thermometer to guage the temperature. I suggest you do, too, since the oil temperature drops significantly when the cold chicken is added.

5. In another large bowl, combine flour, 2 tablespoons each of salt and pepper and the cayenne (truth be told, I've never bothered to measure the amount of this I use. Just suit yourself).

6. Remove all the chicken from the buttermilk-tainted bowl. I don't care where you put it as long as you put it somewhere clean. Shake excess buttermilk from a piece of chicken and roll it in the flour mixure. Dip the chicken back into the buttermilk and once more into the flour. A double crust is, for me anyway, de rigueur. Add the chicken to your pan as you go, skin side down. I find that adding the chicken gradually to the pan helps to maintain a more constant oil temperature. Just make sure you have some sort of system for knowing which pieces have been in the longest. I work clockwise. You do what you want.

7. Fry the chicken until golden brown, about 10 to 12 minutes per side. Make sure you've got some music appropriate for frying playing. This is going to take a little while.

8. As each piece finishes frying, place on a rack to drain. Why waste paper towels?

9. Now you have these wonderful onions to fry up. Proceed as with the chicken, battering and double dipping. How nice to have a side dish built right into the recipe.

Serve hot or cold. Not the onion rings, of course. I like the chicken cold. For picnics, you know.

Serves 4 to 6 people.

Tempura

2007-07-13T07:59:00.000-07:00

Thank you, Catherine Tate.

Battered veg. With spicy jam. That works for me. I love anything fried.

Thai tempura, or Hoi Tot, is a style of deep fat frying similar to that of the Japanese but suited of course to the climate, palates and product availability of the Thai people. Food from Thailand.

The Japanese themselves learned to batter and fry food from Portuguese missionaries who arrived on the shores of Japan in the mid 16th century-- just enough time for the trend to take hold, via street vendors, before the country turned its back on the rest of the world for the next 250 years. Before the arrival of the Portuguese, the Japanese had apparently no knowledge of deep frying and only limited understanding of the frying process in general. But, as with so many other things, the Japanese turned an inherently foreign concept into something very much their own. Like the automobile, imperialism, or anything cute.

The word tempura is derived from the Portuguese tempero (seasoning). The character used for writing tempura is the same as is used for "heaven". On a brief side note, the Japanese word for thank you, arigato, is said to be derived from the Portuguese obrigado. Although this bit of etymology is fascinating, I find it difficult to believe that such a polite society didn't know how to say "thank you" until the Portuguese came along. I now also wonder if tempura and tempera -- the most popular type of paint from ancient Egyptian times until the 15th century when oil paints were developed-- stem from the same root, since they are both egg-based media. Of course, egg is now seldom used in the making of tempura batter and tempera paints are such a bitch to work with that painters tend to avoid them. Coincidence? I think not.

I had planned to make and photograph my own tempura, but that's a rather tricky feat taking action photos of oneself. Especially when hot oil is involved. Besides, I found someone better, or at least more experienced, but probably better, than myself. Say hello to Reiko at VideoJug.com. Hell, say hello to everyone at Videojug, though I'm not sure they can hear you.

Warning: There is no spicy jam in this video.

VideoJug: How To Make Vegetable Tempura

Saving My Cherry for a Rainy Day

2007-07-06T07:36:00.000-07:00

People have been ranting and raving ad nauseum about how great stone fruit season is shaping up this year, beginning with cherries. Far too many exclamation marks have been typed, causing an unfortunate cramp in the left hand in the most rabid of us, blogging their praises. I prefer to save my left hand for other, more important activities...

If your mind has made its way back from the gutter now, that's wonderful. Thanks, but I was referring to activities like practicing good penmanship and chopping down cherry trees.

I'm afraid I was not among those singing gospel-strength love songs to the cherry this season. In fact, I think I've actually shrugged my shoulders and rolled my eyes with an "Oh really?" dropping from my lips in response to their purported greatness. It's not because I'm a cherry hater. Quite the contrary.

I am merely a jealous lover. If everyone gorged themselves on cherries this season, would there be enough left over for me? An act of self preservation, plain and simple.

How fascinating that I should mention preservation and simple in the same sentence, since they are the essence of my post today.

In May and June, if one looked in my refrigerator, one would find among the cheeses, mustard, beer and long-forgotten yogurts, a bag of cherries. Sometimes two because I'd forget that I had purchased a bagful the previous day.

The cherries are for eating out of hand, mostly. If I'm feeling ambitious, I'll pit and stew some with sugar, water and a little vanilla extract for pouring over my ice cream. Or make clafoutis, a dish my friend Karen refers to as a "no-brainer." Indeed it is and, therefore, the perfect dessert for me.

By the end of June, I am sick of cherries. Or sick from them. I am, by then, ready for some summer loving. My attention wanders. A bit of peach fuzz catches my eye and my taste for cherries sours.

Until next year when the fever hits me again, sometime around April.

This year, I celebrated Easter with some old friends from cooking school. Doralice, our organizer and chiefest food pimp, brought with her a jar of her vodka cherries. I thought to myself, "That's just about the smartest thing I've ever heard of: fruit and alcohol." I made a mental note to do the same this year. I'm glad I didn't forget.

If you are anything like me and have no patience whatsoever for jam-making, preserving fruit in alcohol is just the ticket-- or tonic. I may be tired of them now, but come winter, I'll be glad I have them to remind me of warmer days. In fact, they will inspire much warmer nights since I will use them to garnish Manhattans, my cold weather cocktail of choice.

Here's the recipe. I hope it doesn't prove too difficult.

Brandied Cherries:

Two important things you will need for this recipe:

a 4 quart glass or ceramic container
a lot of patience

Ingredients:

1 cup simple syrup
6 cups dark sweet fresh cherries (most would suggest pitting, I disagree for aesthetic reasons)
2 cups vodka
2 cups brandy

Preparation:

Place cherries, simple syrup, brandy and vodka in container. Cap tightly or cover snugly with plastic wrap. Store in a cool dark place for three weeks. If you tell me there is no such place in your home you are kidding no one but yourself. Swirl the mixture around in the container every three days.

After three weeks, I imagine (I say imagine since I've never done this before) I will taste the liquid (my container comes with a very convenient spigot at the bottom) and adjust the sweetness should I choose to do so with more simple syrup, or maybe add a vanilla bean or some whole allspice or whatever strikes me as a good idea at the time.

Then I'll let them sit some more. That is, until it turns cold and I start craving a Manhattan.

Biodynamism (sort of) explained.

2007-06-29T15:17:00.000-07:00

The first time I heard about biodynamic wine, it sounded, to me, like some odd French marketing gimmick. Not an unreasonable thought, considering the fact the bottle of wine being discussed was from Chateauneuf-du-Pape, a place known for prohibiting flying saucers or, as the French call them les cigares volantes from landing in their vineyards. I find it reassuring to me to see the French senses humor and creativity so alive and well. Of course, such laws also illustrate an equally French no non-sense approach to what fuels these qualities-- wine.

All we knew at the time was that biodynamic winemaking had something to do with the full moon. We all had a good laugh. My boss kept asking if various items around the restaurant -- it could have been a chair or a dog for all he cared-- were biodynamique. He just liked to say it. In French.

Biodynamism was, we thought, similar to organic winemaking, only more hippie-like.

I feel so ashamed of myself, I could just spit. It might be hippie-like, but it is definitely worth taking seriously.

So what exactly is biodynamic winemaking?

It is a category of biodynamic agriculture, which is essentially an organic farming system based primarily upon eight lectures on anthroposophy given by Rudolph Steiner in Germany in 1924.

Even in 1924, when man's faith in better living through chemistry was picking up speed, Steiner was convinced that the quality of food was being degraded by the use of artificial fertilizers and pesticides. Sounds very much like our modern, and fortunately blossoming, organic agricultural movement. What set Steiner and his biodynamism apart from the organic philosophy was more than his belief in the spiritual shortcomings of a chemical approach to farming. Steiner considered the world and everything in it as simultaneously spiritual and material in nature, that living matter was different from dead matter. He also believed in the influence of planetary events on agricultural crops. Ah, there's that moon reference.

Biodynamism is, more or less, a very holistic approach to organic farming.

You are, at this point, either yawning or scratching your head. If the former is the case, go get yourself a coffee and come back when your caffeine has kicked in. If the latter is true, read on and follow these links pertaining to biodynamic agriculture, vitalism and Demeter International and then get back to me. I'm happy to wait. It's a rather complex topic. One, with a slight bow to irony, not easily digested.

Two days ago, my fellow co-workers and I were fortunate enough to have someone explain it all-- or, at least his application of biodynamism-- to us.

Fresh from his stint as cover model for next week's Wine Spectator, Mike Benziger took some time out to both explain his biodynamic approach to winemaking and to let us taste the results-- his 2004 vintage Tribute.

He began his talk by asking us about various alcoholic beverages. What does beer do to you? He mentioned that it made one tired and gassy. Tequila? I muttered something about how it renders one stupid and causes one to sleep with people one might otherwise regret sleeping with sober. And wine?

"Wine is a high energy substance, it changes the spirit of the room as soon as the bottle is opened. Wine connects us to the sun, to the earth and to each other."

In two sentences, Benziger encapsulated what I belive to be essence of biodynamic winemaking, in as much as I can gather. Wine just might be the poster child for this approach to agriculture-- a mingling of living and dead matter that, if you will forgive me for saying, creates its own life force, therby enhancing our own. Unless, I thought, one drinks excessive amounts of it and dies of alcohol poisoning, I reminded myself that biodynamism is about cosmic balance and the thought passed.

To Benziger, biodynamism is about a personal connection to the land. And he is certainly connected to his. He's been working his 85 acres for the past twenty-five years. Only forty of which are planted with vines. The rest, in the closed farming tradition of biodynamism, are occupied by such things as stables, insectaries and pasture.

Biodynamism considers the environment more important than the plant, the whole trumping any of its parts. In Benziger's vineyard, one might be overwhelmed by environment, or at least cataloging it. His vines are planted in a circle created naturally by volcanic crater. Over the years, Benziger has recognized thirty-one distinct microclimates within that circle-- each contributing it's own particular qualities to the final blend of his wine.

Biodynamism dictates that man work within nature's boundaries rather than bend it to his own will. This, of course, is a dictum impossible to follow since agriculture is essentially a system created by man to exploit and propagate that nature which serves him best and eliminate--or at least exclude-- that which does not. Those rabid enough to adhere to such a strict construction would be reduced, in my opinion, to hunting and gathering. Fortunately, Benziger and, I'm sure, most other biodynamic farmers approach this idea with a more practical spirit.

To eliminate a dependence upon chemical pesticides, plants are planted to attract beneficial insects to the vineyards. Insects are neither purchased nor physically transported, but rather invited onto the property by means of what Benziger refers to as "bug highways"-- swaths of specific plants that lure the insects directly into the vineyard.

In addition to insects and creative planting, various animals are utilized to keep down the number of pests-- chickens and owls, for example. Grazers, such as Scottish Highland cattle and sheep keep weeds in check and remove any need for chemical fertilizers. "Sheep are a great viticultural tool." quipped Benziger, "They do three things for us: they eat, shit and turn the soil with their hooves." Who needs a tractor?

With the removal of chemical pesticides and fertilizer comes the eventual return of native yeasts, which are, he believes, essential to the character of his wine.

The goal with biodynamic farming is a closed environmental system. The borders between natural and farmed areas eventually merge and begin to speak, as Benziger says, "the language of terroir." Which, of course, is also essential to the character of his wine.

And how does biodynamism apply to the process of winemaking?

Here's where the moon comes in. Don't cringe. It makes perfect sense. Wine is racked only under a new moon. Why? sendiment is at its most compact at this time. The tidal pull of a full moon causes it to puff up.

Biodynamic regulations, as laid down by Demeter International, also dictate that no yeast or malolactic bacteria may be added to the wine though sulpher dioxide is allowed. Apologies, I forgot to ask why this was so., I was busy drawing the Demeter logo in my notebook, since the logo on Benziger's bottle did not photograph well:

The logo sums it up, I'd say. From the top left and working clockwise around the four quadrants are: fire, air, earth (which I drew somewhat inaccurately) and water. Everything in the universe, according to the Ancients, was comprised of some combination of these elements. What the logo does not show, however is a fifth element; one created when the four other elements get together-- spirit. It does sport a rather intriguing symbol directly under the name Demeter. Being the strong fertility goddess she was to the Greeks, I am not certain if the symbol represents some sort of budding plantlife or not. I prefer to see it as a highly stylized hermaphrodite. One with enormous breasts and a penis dangling between its legs. How much more fertile can one get than that?

Okay. We've heard about how the vines were tended and how the grapes were vinified. But what about the taste? Benziger poured.

It was good. It was more than good, truthfully. Everyone in the room agreed. I must add here that I am talking about a room full of people who have, at one time, more or less rejected California Cabernet Sauvignons and blends thereof as showy and often juvenile-- an embarrassment to be around. Not that they all are, but more in the spirit of rejecting one's parents as an embarrassment in one's teenage years.

Benziger's 2004 Tribute is a well balanced wine, with soft-but-present tannin, hints of cedar, black cherry and, not surprisingly given todays topic of biodynamism, a certain earthiness. The finish lingered. It doesn't try to out-macho its neighbors with an over-powering amout of oak. Silver Oak is a man who wears too much Brut and tells time by his gaudy Rolex. Tribute stands by its own, natural masculine scent and tells time by the position of the sun in the sky. Orthe moon, depending upon the time of day.

More importantly, I imagined I could taste everything that went into making the wine-- the volcanic crater, the bees, even the Scottish Highland cows. Not literally, mind you but, knowing the effort and, well, the love that went into making this wine made the experience of drinking it even more pleasurable.

After the Benziger's talk, my wine director was excited. "You're going to see a lot more of these wines coming along." I'm glad. It's the wave of the future that many winemakers are considering riding. Wave of the future. Odd how a technique older than Charlemagne can be considered futuristic. Winemaking has now made a full circle-- or is it full cycle?-- like the moon that rules over the biodynamic process. It's about time.

I'll stop giggling now. I promise.

*Note. The pyramid diagram is borrowed from the Benziger website.

The French Laundry: Heavy on the Starch

2007-06-22T08:51:00.000-07:00

There are some things in this world best left to the imagination; people, places or events so idealized they could never live up to the expectations built up around them -- your wedding day or a mènage a trois with a pair of identical twins or, in this case, dinner at what has been referred to as the best restaurant in the world-- The French Laundry.

Ten years ago, a friend organized a chauffeur-driven pilgrimage to the French Laundry. Being fresh out of culinary school, I could scarcely afford the dinner, so I politely declined the invitation. Besides, I had been taught that limousines were for funerals and diplomats, so riding in one was out of the question. I was anything but diplomatic in those days and, had I chosen to spend what little money I had from my $8.50 an hour kitchen job, the only funeral I would have been attending would have been my own after my parents decided to kill me.

I'd regretted not going ever since. I've since wondered what it would be like to dine there. When my friend Lyle invited me to join him in place of his mostly vegetarian and largely non-drinking girlfriend, I said yes. Two days later, I went to see Thomas Keller interviewed along with Dorothy Cann Hamilton at the Commonwealth Club. I enjoyed hearing him discuss his philosophies regarding life, food and a life in food. I was excited that I would soon be sitting in his dining room eating what he had to offer.

I don't think anyone living beneath a certain sky-high tax bracket can go to The French Laundry without making it into some sort of event. It is not, by it's own design, a place one goes to grab something to eat. When we visit, we pack our emotional baggage full of inflated expectations and drag it behind us through the little garden and into the front door. It is the one thing the hostess who greets you is unable to check.

My fellow diners and I arrived on time for our 6:30 reservation and were whisked into a little side room, dimly lit and cool like a cave with walls of river rock, where our table awaited us. A little window cut into the rock showed off the wine room. If this was, as I had sensed, a place of worship, we were seated in its chapel.

Two couples shared our space. One pair dined with such grim seriousness that I thought one of them-- or their relationship-- might have only days to live. The other couple, from Houston as I gathered from their limited conversation, looked a little bewildered and on their best behaviour. I leaned into the center of our table and whispered to my dinner companions, "Why is everyone so quiet? No one seems to be having a good time!"

It was true. Except for us, of course.

Our waiter soon introduced himself, explaining and expanding upon the nine course menu. He was aware of the two bottles of Burgundy we had brought with us and suggested that we might start with a bottle of champagne, since it went so well with the first four courses. Lyle was presented with a wine list and we were given a moment to look it over. Lyle passed the list over to me and I browsed. We had agreed amongst ourselves that we weren't interested in champagne, but some sort of white wine was definitely in order. I saw a short list of Austrian wines that interested me. When the waiter returned, asking which champagne we might prefer, I told him we were interested in drinking a still white wine instead. Feeling rather dense, I said as much and handed the list back over to Lyle. Our waiter once again suggested champagne. We once again declined.

Enter the sommelier. We assumed he was the sommelier, since he was very knowledgable about wine, but he did not introduce himself as such. I explained that I was looking at Austian wines. Lyle mentioned his preference for crisp minerality, for something interesting at around $60. The gentleman returned almost instantly with precisely what we were looking for-- and Austrian Riesling. We were very delighted with his selection.

The food began its slow, steady dance to our table. And I do mean dance. Movements are choreographed. Servers perform what is known as ballet service-- dishes are served in synchronized sweeps by, in our case, two people. Plates from the left hands glide down in front of diners one and three followed by plates from the right, supplying diners two and four. It is all seemless, perfect. A simple, well flavored gougère here, a doll-sized black sesame tuille cone filled with Scottish salmon served there. Both charming. The two amuses seemed to carry with them bold-faced bullet points in what I imagine to be Thomas Keller's mission statement: the former promised a mastery of understatement, while the latter promised the evening of theater that lay ahead of us. Conflicting messages certainly, but not incompatible.

Our food selections were noted and our deciphering of lampshades applauded by our waiter.

Wash. Do not use bleach. Iron. I wondered how many of the other diners in the restaurant had an intimate knowledge of laundering. We turned our attention briefly to the linen. Not a crease or stain to be found. I noticed that my napkin was the size of an adult diaper and was, in fact, folded as such over my lap. I quietly tucked the edges around my hips and under my crotch and hoped no one noticed as I looked down to admire my handiwork.

With the meal under way, our conversation turned to food, as it invariably does with foodies. "There's a slight bitterness to the foie gras. What is that?" ."Lyle? Okay. Did that little Tokyo turnip just explode in your mouth like it did in mine?" "Did he say Jurassic Period salt?"

And such like.

I am pleased to tell you-- pleased to tell myself, at any rate-- that I was too busy enjoying the company of my dining companions and the food before us to be snapping many photos of the food. I did manage one or two, like the one of the Line-Caught Atlantic Halibut shown below:

I made an attempt to capture the pretzel rolls-- Lyle's favorite thing-- on film, but it looked rather unappealing in the photograph. "Did you try a pretzel roll yet? God! It tastes just like a pretzel!" We then explained to him that it was, in fact, a soft pretzel which merely lacked a knot.

As we finished off the bottle of Austrian Riesling and tucked into a beautiful Volnay given to Lyle as a birthday present, our conversation became more animated. So, too, did the main dining room. I actually heard laughter from some place other than our table. I turned around to see a room full of 55 to 65 year-olds dining and chatting. Over my right shoulder, a table of European businessmen with deep voices and, surprisingly bright-colored socks. I wondered what they were talking about and where they would go after dinner. I made no plans to join them.

Back at our table, the conversation turned to Evelyn Waugh-- Brideshead Revisited and my favorite character, A-A-Antoine. He had a stutter. Lyle's friend Jack and I offered our impersonations. I asked if he had ever seen or read The Loved One. He offered a detailed rendition Liberace's brilliant upselling of funeral services at Whispering Glades. I was impressed. Later in the meal, I learned why Jack took such an interest in that scene-- he's a funeral director.

At this point I went up the narrow staircase-- a staff member nearly hurling himself over the bannister to make way for me-- to wash my hands for the second time and, for the second time, found the single occupancy room empty and spotless. It seemed as if it were merely for show-- toilet tissue wrapped in silk ribbon, unused. Cute, but I wondered if people in polite society ever rid themselves of unneccesary body weight, or if they had people to do that for them. I returned to our table to find my diaper folded neatly on the table. We finished our sixth course -- a Snake River Farm "Calotte de Boeuf Grillée"-- with not too much comment. It was excellent. Techinically perfect. Of course it was.

Yet something was not quite right. At least to me. I couldn't quite put my finger on it. The food was uniformly beautiful, flavorful and perfectly executed to the detection of both my eyes and palate. The dishware and silver were often conversation pieces. The rooms were lovely-- well-appointed and understated as though to counterbalance the fact that this building once housed a brothel.

And the staff? A sudden chill came over me. Or was that the Glacé de Fruits Exotiques set before me after the cheese course?

There was, below the smooth, perfect surfaces of the French Laundry, a subtle uneasiness; a tautness under its skin, like that of a woman fresh from a facelift-- eager to please her wealthy lover and unable to relax her facial muscles.

I scanned the members of the staff. Everyone was clean, very attractive and well tailored. They all smiled, but not too widely, as though no one should have a better time than the guests. Eye contact was always just narrowly avoided. Or did I imagine that? If our waiter would attempt levity, he would say, "I am only joking" before any of us had even the time to react. The fear of offense was fascinating. There was a Stepford-like quality to the members of the front-of-house staff that I found troublesome.

When he spoke at the Commonwealth Club, Thomas Keller stated that "Cooking is about repetition-- the perfection of the task at hand." I would agree with him there. Mr. Keller has perfected his cooking through strict repetition. But that repetition seems to makes its way into the dining room as well, which is unfortunate. When our food was brought to the table, it was described in marvelous detail, but it the delivery of information gave the impression of having been memorized, scripted and completely uniform. No color. Words like gougère and gratinée were mispronounced.

When our bill was presented, we were disappointed but not terribly offended that we had been charged $50 for uncorking the bottle we'd brought and had opened for us. In my experience as a waiter, if a guest brings a bottle of wine yet purchases a bottle from a restaurant's wine list, the corkage fee is waived. But I do not make policy and we were already of the mind to pay it before we even sat down, but it struck a slightly sour note at the end of our evening.

As we looked over our bill, Jack made a generous offer-- that he would pay for the food if the rest of us took care of the rest. Then the waiter, who happened to be standing between Lyle and Jack, offered that he would be happy to split the check four ways, if we liked. Jack replied that that woulnd't be necessary and that we just needed a minute to figure out the bill. Instead of leaving us alone with our bill, our waiter picked it up from the table. I cannot remember why, but I'm sure there was a logical reason for it. Lyle asked what the total was and, in what I hope was an attempt to be helpful, our waiter then read our bill-- which was, I'm sure quite conservative by French Laundry standards-- out loud.

"Food: $1,020... Wine: $166..."

We were pleased to know that everyone in the room knew how much we spent. Perhaps our waiter thought that a guest at one of the other tables might avail us of his or her superior math skills. We were, all of us, quietly horrified.

The check was paid. Shortbread cookies and copies of the night's menu were distributed, two round coasters with the restaurant's name on them that reminded me of dress shields were pocketed and we left.

On the drive home, we talked about our experience. We all enjoyed it very much. The food was wonderful, but only the little Tokyo turnips and chocolate-covered macadamia nuts were hailed as "amazing." We were well-sated bodily. Just enough food, just enough wine. But none of us saw it as truly fantastic. Not the best meal ever.

And that is our own damned fault. Or mine, at least. There must be such tremendous pressure to operating a restaurant like The French Laundry. It's an institution. It's a shrine to which so many come expecting the greatest meal of their lives. With food prices of $240 ($270 if one opts for foie gras), one almost demands it. How can one restaurant satisfy all the unspoken expectations of, well, everyone who has ever dined there, or ever will? It can't.

Perhaps Mr. Keller is correct in his approach of uniformity and repitition. It seems to be working for him and, I'm sure, the majority of diners there. It is his consistency that has kept his machinery well-oiled and running more or less smoothly since 1994. I just don't think it's for me. Which I can accept as either my own virtue or my own flaw. Whatever the case, it is my own.

I am, however, extremely glad I had the opportunity to dine there. I applaude Keller's food, his technique and his sense of fun-- at least on the plate. Now if he could just get his waitstaff to loosen up...

The Best Cooking Show Ever

2007-06-15T09:07:00.000-07:00

There is very little that needs to be said about Posh Nosh. It speaks for itself.

Earlier this week, I was dining with friends at the most expensive restaurant in the universe when the topic of Posh Nosh came up. I had to fess up to my ignorance regarding the show, but I was intrigued.

Twelve or so courses of food and a one-hour-and-twenty-minute car ride later, I made my way back to my much loved computer and searched YouTube for anything I could find on the programme.

Jackpot.

I may be the last person on earth to have heard of Posh Nosh but, if I am able to bring this laser-sharp beacon of light into anyone's awareness, mine will have been a life worth living.

Do yourself a favor. Take the time to watch this episode.

Getting Stuffed

2007-06-08T09:38:00.000-07:00

I've been feeling a bit nostalgic lately, which isn't terribly surprising considering the fact that I am usually found in a state of past-reflection. That's not to say that I can't focus on the present as well as others. I can, especially since paying close attention to the here-and-now comes in handy when, well, the here-and-now eventually becomes the there-and-then.

A short while ago, I made a comment to friends that my mother didn't really cook. What I meant was that, unlike the fantasy version of my mother I wish I had had (culinarily-speaking), my real-life mom was never seen floating about the kitchen baking pies or putting up strawberry preserves from fruit picked ripe from our garden. We did, in fact, have strawberries growing in our back yard but, in the heat of summer, it was generally a race to see who could get to them first-- us or the garden snails. Besides, one was never certain if one of the dogs hadn't peed on them.

The truth is that my mother did cook. And she did it rather well, I think. It sounds noble of me, I know, but I have forgiven her lack of enthusiasm for daily meal preparation. The fact that she, as a single mother, managed to feed two sullen teenagers and a hyperactive pre-adolescent without relying heavily on fast food take-out while working 40 hours a week now strikes me as utterly amazing.

Often, she was time efficient-- making large batches of food stuffs that froze well. She'd make a gallon of pasta sauce and meatballs and freeze them in empty plastic containers that once housed whipped topping or Country Crock margerine. Though the former contents may not have been especially noteworthy, her red sauce and meatballs were as good as my Sicilian paternal grandmothers-- apparently, learning to makethem was a pre-condition to marrying my father. Not bad for a white girl.

The traumatizing effects of stew night aside (I would sometimes cry when I saw it simmering on the stove top, spend dinner time loading mouthfuls of it into my heavily-napkined lap and request to make repeated trips to the garbage can), dinners were generally tasty affairs. One of my favorite non-special occasion meals she'd prepare was stuffed bell peppers.

It struck me as odd that I would remember this dish as one of my favorites, considering the fact that the peppers in question were invariably green as they pretty much all were thirty-odd years ago. I still don't much care for them. What I loved about them was the fact that the pepper (which I ignored) was simply a bit of negative space waiting to be filled by what was basically my mother's meatballs, but with a little rice mixed in to make it stuffed-peppery.

I'd never made stuffed peppers before, but I decided to give it a go this week. What I find appealing about stuffed peppers is that, basically, one can stuff them with whatever you want. As long as it's edible, I mean. I take that back. Stuff them with whatever the hell you feel like stuffing them with. I would hate to be accused of stifling anyone's creativity.

Mexicans have probably been stuffing peppers ever since they began cultivating them some 6,000 years ago. When they were brought to Europe from the New World, the Italians, Greeks, Hungarians and Spanish took a liking to them. When they made their way back to the Americas (yes, they were here the whole time, I know), Southerners took to stuffing them, too. Meat, rice, bulgar wheat, cheese-- you name it-- has made it's way into the sweet pepper with more or less successful results.

I chose a somewhat Greek approach to stuffing a pepper. Perhaps stating that I used typically Greek ingredients, for the most part, might avoid unnecessary giggling. I just thought my particular attack was tasty. Remember, there is no right and there is no wrong. At least, not that I am willing to get into this morning.

Stuffed Peppers

Ingredients

4 red bell peppers (or whatever color most pleases you and your budget)
1 pound ground lamb
1 yellow onion, finely chopped
4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 zucchini, diced fairly small
3 tablespoons of olive oil
1/2 cup cooked white rice, cooled
1 teaspoon salt
a rather large amount of black pepper
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon gound allspice
1 large egg
1/4 cup feta or goat cheese

Preparation:

Pre-heat oven to 375 F.
Saute (or sweat, in this case) onion and garlic in one tablespoon of olive oil on medium heat until translucent. Set aside. Turn up the heat and add the second tablespoon of oil and then the ground lamb. Brown, please. Add third tablespoon of oil and then zucchini. Cook until just slightly softened and a tad brighter in color. Toss the onion mixture, lamb and zucchini together.
I suppose before you've taken on steps one and two you could have washed and sliced the tops of the peppers and, if they aren't behaving as they should and sitting up straight, you might cut their bottoms and forcibly make them do so. Free them of their seeds and ribbing. I choose to blanch the peppers as well, which cuts down on oven time.
Add salt, pepper, allspice, nutmeg, egg, cheese and rice to the stuffing mixture, combining well.
Fill the empty inner spaces of the peppers with the stuffing and place in a casserole or dutch oven-- something not too shallow. Peppers are fairly social creatures, so keep them close together, but do allow them some space-- they need to feel the hot oven air circulate around them. Oh, and add some water or stock to the bottom of the dish to prevent the peppers from burning. At this point, I rub the tops of the peppers with olive oil and salt and place them in a pan to roast along side the peppers themselves. Not necessary, but I don't see why not.
When the peppers are sufficiently roasted (like, in about 30 minutes), dot the top of the stuffed peppers with more cheese and place under the broiler to brown.
Serve hot.

My mother, and lots of other people besides her, serve peppers with some sort of tomato sauce. I decided to accompany mine with something a little lighter and sharper. It's almost completely mindless...

Garlic and Mint Yogurt Sauce:

Ingredients:

1 cup plain yogurt (Greek is good, but I think too thick for this. Save it for eating with honey)
4 cloves garlic, minced
several leaves of mint, chiffonaded
a pinch pr two of salt

Preparation:

Mix all the above ingredients in a bowl and whisk together. Serve. Or, better to let this sit in the fridge overnight so the flavors can get to know each other better. I hope you took notes on that one.

High Camp: Dining in the Great Outdoors

2007-05-31T10:19:00.000-07:00

I did not grow up in what could be even remotely considered an outdoorsy household. Yes, of course we went outdoors, but generally only to get ourselves to some other indoor venue.

Sure, we'd go to the mountains, but we'd stay inside our cabin, unless we needed to go and get more jiffy pop or Sarah Lee Butter Streusel Cake. Our cabin, Molar Manor (go ahead and make fun of the name, we all do) was very near some great skiing, but none of us skied. My father once signed me up for lessons, but when it was learned that my cousin Celeste injured herself at the sport, my lessons were traded in for a bowling ball. At least it was monogrammed.

We'd spend summer weekends at Catalina, but generally under a canopy, complete with folding table and chairs, so my father and his friends could play bridge or pinochle or whatever it was he played with the other adults on the beach at Avalon while they drank beer or gin and tonics. Or whatever it was he drank with the other adults. I was too busy protecting myself from the sharks in the water and the sand creatures lurking underneath my beach towel to notice.

We'd go to the desert, but I was pretty much relegated to the air-conditioned comfort of my aunt's too, too white-and-blue home in Palm Springs while the adults played golf and my brother and sister refused to go outside in the baking heat to supervise my diving for Fischer-Price people in the pool. Wherever we went, there was always a television to distract us from nature and a hair dryer to combat the effects of outdoor mussing and damage. We really were not a fussy family by general standards. We just didn't care to endure what others might rightly call "roughing it."

Imagine my surprise when, at the tender age of thirty-four, I discovered I liked camping. In a tent. On the hard ground.

I have fallen into a group of fellows who, for better or for worse, love to go camping. And now, so do I.

I find a certain pleasure in curling up in my own sleeping bag; in being lulled to sleep by the sound of the surf, or night birds, or even the sound of my snoring fellow campers. I rather like smelling like cold-smoked salmon from huddling around a campfire for three days. And, lacking mirrors, I am comforted by the fact that I can see myself solely through the eyes of my companions. Even when one of them has to tell me I have somethng unpleasant dangling from the end of my nose. I find I can endure many hardships while camping that might surprise my family members. But there is one thing I cannot bear, even in the wilderness...

Bad camping food.

Though admittedly the biggest food geek in our camping set, I am relieve to report that no one among my camping set would ever subject his fellow survivors to stale buns or canned meats. For this, I am truly grateful.

Gary, the most organized human I've ever met, typically breaks down our days away into meals-- which ones we shall eat together and who will prepare them. We divide the work as evenly as we can. Last weekend, I got to make Saturday dinner.

The bar was set high the previous evening with a marvelously successful turkey chili with lime, scallions and baked-that-morning corn bread to crumble on top made by our resident New Mexican, Bill. And my friend Dan fortified us properly for our dead marine life hike on Manresa Beach with piles of hot challah french toast with fresh berries and syrup Saturday morning.

The pressure, felt by no one but myself, was on.

I've been known to blow my food budget on camp dinners before. I was determined to provide something great with a minimum amout of effort and cost. When I say minimum amount, I am speaking in purely relative terms. To myself, I mean.

I decided to prepare fish, in the spirit of my friend Adam's "[I'm]Keeping with chicken and fish these days" memo. I saw some beautiful wild salmon at my local Whole Foods, but balked at the $90.00 it would cost to the feed six of us. I managed to spy some butterflied trout while still reeling from the salmon sticker shock and opted for that instead.

The trout would be easy enough to prepare. I knew I'd have to keep it nice and cold, since I was purchasing fish on Thursday to prepare some 54-odd hours later. That wouldn't be much of a problem-- I'd just store them flat on a bag of ice in my cooler. But what if the fish wound up smelling, um, fishy? I took the fish home, washed them well and kept them soaking in buttermilk, which prevented that problem while giving the trout's flavor some subtle, yet flattering backlighting. Now what to stuff them with?

I didn't want to make this too complicated. Trying too hard is embarrassing and makes one the subject of (internal) ridicule. I decided to caramelize onions with a little olive oil and finish them of with a splash of apple cider vinegar and be done with it. Apart from giving a bit of sweetness to the dish, the somewhat slimy characteristic of the onions, I thought, would add a wonderfully morbid touch to the dish, being somewhat reminiscent of the trout's now-discarded viscera. A little salt and pepper and some well-soaked skewers to keep the fish together and prevent the mock entrails from seeping and they were all ready for grilling.

Except for one, minor thing. The grate over the campfire was small, deformed by what I imagined to be years of abuse and rather disgusting. I shudder to think what sort of cheap food stuffs has carbonized over that metal. We drove to (it's cheating, I know) a KOA camp store (Before you ask, we were not staying there. Remind me to tell you about my one and only stay at a KOA campground some other time which involved a rather amusing lesbian stripper.) where we purchase a grilling grate, throat lozenges, aluminum foil and facial tissue, not all of which were used in the preparation of dinner. Problem solved.

To accompany my fresh water friends, I cut some smallish organic red potatoes in half, coated them in olive oil, salt and pepper and wrapped them very well in aluminum foil. I then buried the potatoes in the ash of the campfire and pretended as though I knew how to make campfire potatoes. While I waited for the fire to do its share of the work, I broke open the three liter box of Jean-Marc Brocard Bourgogne Blanc I brought along for the dinner, sat back on a folding camp chair and tried to look relaxed.

When I randomly pulled the potatoes from the fire to find them thoroughly cooked and crispy around the edges, I tossed them with some peppery watercress, olive oil and lemon dressing, buttermilk bleu cheese and crumbled bacon while the fish grilled very quickly over the newly purchased grate. I prayed that the fish were uncontaminated and that my friend Gary, who was ill, would not be made sicker by a bad trout. I was grateful that this campsite had flush toilets close by, just in case.

The dinner, I am happy to say, was a success. At least, no one sniggered or became violently ill. I am sorry to report that I did not have the presence of mind to photograph a well-plated and uneaten version of my camp supper. It was only after we had finished and my friend Bill began piling up the fish heads on my plate that I felt I had something photo-worthy.

For dessert, my plan was a simple one. Fresh, chilled organic Bing cherries (everyone, it seems, decided to bring cherries. We had approximately one pound of the fruit per person), chocolate truffles and candied, toasted walnuts to nibble on while playing a rousing game or two of Uno. Only we didn't play Uno. We had a rather lengthy discussion about the female reproductive system as we sat around the campfire instead. We might as well have been talking about aliens.

I had purchase a rather fascinating (to me) loaf of chocolate cherry bread to consume with dessert but, upon returning from cataloging the decaying wildlife on the beach earlier in the day, returned to discover that I had not stored it safely away. I found its bag on the ground near my tent, but the bread itself was gone. Taken by either a racoon, a bear or, more likely, the brazen little girl from the campsite next to ours who decided to use our water spigot as her personal bidet. In front of us. In broad daylight.

I very much look forward to the next time I head off into the Great Outdoors with my friends. If anyone has a line on where to find collapsible camping martini glasses, drop me a line. Please.

A Conversation with Dorothy Cann Hamilton

2007-05-25T07:51:00.000-07:00

Dorothy Cann Hamilton, host of the PBS hit series Chef's Story, was kind enough to pay KQED a visit prior to her appearance with Thomas Keller at the Commonwealth Club last week.

When I was approached to interview her, I immediately said, "Of course I'd do it." When I hung up the phone, I realized that I had absolutely no idea who she was. I don't have telvision reception. Excluding internet access, one might think I lived in a technology-deficient cave.

I also remembered that I had never interviewed anyone before.

Not knowing anything about someone you are about to interview might be considered a handicap to some. Probably to many. Mercifully, I was given sufficient time for research.

As I Googled and studied, I wondered how, as a self-proclaimed member of the food world (though, admittedly, marginally so), could I have not been aware of this woman? Listing but three of her many credentials is enough to make anyone with professed food-worldliness who remains unaware of her existence lie through their teeth and say "Of course, I know all about her.":

She is the founder and CEO of the French Culinary Institute.
She is the Chairman of the James Beard Foundation.
She hosts "Chef's Story" on PBS.

When my father called last week, I mentioned the interview. "That's not the ice skater, is it?" he asked, only half seriously. I cringe to think how often Dorothy Hamilton endures that question. My father wasn't the only one who made that crack. I was a bit embarrassed that I had never thought of it myself.

As I sat in a KQED conference room waiting for Hamilton to arrive, I thought to myself, "How bright is this for me, who has never interviewed anyone in his life, to be interviewing a woman who interviews famous people on national television?"

It may not have been bright of me, but it was fun. Dorothy Hamilton is not just a doer, but a talker-- and an entertaining one at that.

Here are some excerpts from the interview:

MP: You're the CEO and Founder of the French Culinary Institute, you're the president--

DH: Chairman.

MP: Chairman of the James Beard Foundation, you're involved with Abraham House, you are now the host of a television show. Do you ever take a day off?

DH: That's an issue. (Laughs) I don't get a lot of time off, but I don't want a lot of time off. I really enjoy what I do and so I'm happy to do it, and that I have it to do.

MP: So no time to play pétanque? When you do get a day off, what do you do?

DH: I garden if I'm in the countryside. I like to travel. I like to hang out... do nothing-- or putter-- maybe that's a better word. I remember when Emma Thompson won her Academy Award she really made an impression on me because when they asked her what she was going to do and she said "I'm not getting out of my pajamas tomorrow. I'm just going to stay in my pajamas all day" I thought that sounded like heaven.

MP: Well, there's a definite art to puttering... I've been doing a lot of reading about you in the past week or so-- I don't mean it to sound like stalking or anything like that-- but I'm just curious how a girl from Brooklyn ends up founding--

DH: -- a French school.

MP: Yeah.

DH: And I'm not even French!

MP: Well, not just a French school, but a French culinary school with one of the best reputations in the world.

DH: Well, there's a lot of great people who have come from Brooklyn-- a lot of creative people.

MP: Oh, I'm not knocking Brooklyn...

DH: It is odd because everybody thinks I'm French and I'm not. How it started was my father ran a trade school in New York. I came from the type of family where my grandparents came from Europe, so I'd heard a lot about it, but I had never been there. And so, in high school, I used to just dream about getting on a plane and going to Europe and the only way I could get my parents to pay for it was if I figured out a way to go to college there. So I got myself into a British University, I got myself a student loan and went over to England.

I was very happy to be in England except for two things-- the weather and the food. They were both terrible. It was during the Vietnam War, so everybody hated Amricans-- a bit like today--... and so I actually befriended the French girls, because they hated the French, too. (Laughs)... they taught me how to make a Dijon vinaigrette and they got me to eat cheese that wasn't American cheese. They introduced me to yogurts. When we'd get really fed up with [England], we'd all go to France. It was beautiful. The weather was so much better and the food was light years better than the English food, so that's really where I got turned onto French food. I kind of lived in France during vacations, because I didn't have enough money to come home. Particularly in Burgundy. I had one friend whose parents were professors of English, so that made it very easy for me because they were showing me the culture. And her sister was a famous movie star, Claude Jade... I met people like Jacques Brel. It was quite fun.

I then went in the Peace Corps (in Thailand) because I didn't want to come back to the States-- the whole war thing was going on-- and I still had my wanderlust.

When I eventually came back-- it was about eight years later-- I had a Liberal Arts degree in English, a former Peace Corps volunteer, it was 1974 and we were in a recession in New York City and nobody would give me a job, so my father had this trade school and I went to work as a receptionist. I worked my way up through the administration and eventually got to be an expert in student financial aid. I sat on the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators and I also sat on the board of directors for our accrediting agency for all the trade schools in the United States, and because of that, I was invited to see the top trade schools in Europe and, in France. They showed us the top professional cooking school, run by the French government.

See? There was a method for all this madness walking you through this.

So... I convinced my father that we should open a cooking school and use the French school-- not only as a model--but we actually paid the French government for the curriculum, they brought over the teachers and they maintained the quality control. The French chefs in New York went crazy because it was the same training they had. They just couldn't believe it was going to be made available in America... The very first class, I had Bobby Flay in.

MP: I heard he was trouble.

DH: He was voted the least likely to succeed. He has since made a scholorship at the school
for kids who hate high school, because he hated high school. When we did this-- we did the scholarship with the City of New York, with the Board of Education-- and he sat down with all these superintendants and high school principals who were so excited to meet him, he just sat there shivering and said, "Any other time I've been with a principal was not for a good thing."

MP: I hear you like to entertain. What are some Dorothy Cann Hamilton signature dishes?

DH: I have a house on a lake... up in Connecticut...

MP: Is this connected with the Inn?

DH: Well, the Inn only existed for a year.

MP: Awww...

DH: Yes, we said it was like a fire hose with dollar bills coming out of it. It's a seasonal
business and you really have to be an owner/operator to make that thing work and we had day jobs, thank-you-very-much, so we realized we'd better cut our losses. It was great while it was there. People still talk about it...

MP: I didn't know it only lasted a year. I had this image of you and your husband running around like Bob Newhart and Mary Frann except, you know, in better sweaters.

DH: We did run around. And not necessarily in better sweaters...

But anyway, one of the things I loved to do... I'm afraid to swim across the lake...I love to swim, but there are so many boats. I'm just afraid I'm going to get hit by a boat, because you can't really see people swimming. So I came up with this thing called The Ladies' Swim Across the Lake. There's about twenty of us who stay over on a Monday. We get the men in rowboats... and what-have-you on either side-- sort of like an honor guard-- and we can swim the whole lake. They all swim across and back and -- I like to swim, but not that much-- so I swim across and say, "I have to go cook." and I jump in a speed boat and come back before everybody and get all cleaned up and I make paella. I have one of those outdoor stands.--and I don't make the seafood one, I make the chicken one because everyone can eat chicken-- and it's absolutely delicious and now everybody looks forward to that in the summer.

MP: Any Dorothy Cann Hamilton signature disasters?

DH: Oooh.... you know, I burn things every now and then. You know, what I burn all the time
are pinenuts... Fifty percent of the time, I forget they're in the oven. I'm not a toaster pinenut person. I like putting something somewhere and coming back and it's done. Like a chicken.

MP: You talked about living in England. That was in Newcastle, right?

DH: Right. The coldest place in the world!

MP: Practically Scotland and, therefore, possibly worse food. Do you think their cooking has changed at all? Do you still feel the same way?

DH: You know, I'm going to offend a lot of English people--

MP: Oh, go ahead...

DH: They go on today about how good the food is in London. And I know Marco Pierre White is going to be here next week and he has done a lot for English food... however, the general cooking in England I still find to be...really quite disturbing. The old, traditional food I thought was fantastic. Potted shrimps, the beautiful cheeses, you'd go into a pub and get a Ploughman's Lunch. A really good roast beef... If you look at the products in England, they're so fantastic. I go to London and there are better restaurants, but they're not at the level of, say San Francisco or New York...

MP: What are some of your favorite restaurants in San Francisco?

DH: Well, I went to A16 lsat night-- I really loved that. And I'm and old time Judy Rogers
freak. I love going to Zuni. And I think Gary Danko is a really inspired chef.

MP: Is there anything you won't eat?

DH: Oh yeah. I hate liver. Not only will I not eat it, I won't sit at a table with someone else
eating it. I think it stinks. It smells.

MP: Even in pate form?

DH: No. I love foie gras. Now that, to me, is one of the world's mysteries... Of course today,
we have this issue in the United States with foie gras.

First of all, there's the history of how foie gras came about is a bird fell out of the sky--
do you know this story?

MP: No, I don't.

DH: Well, this is how they discovered foie gras. The Egyptians discovered it. The geese used
to migrate and, occasionally, one of the geese died-- had a heart attack? I don't know-- and would fall out of the sky and they would eat the goose. When they opened the goose up, they'd see this enlarged liver because what [the geese] would do before they'd migrate is force a lot of food into themselves. The French people, when I was learning abou this would say (in a French accent), "Hey, you know, they just eat a lot." They don't have a gagging mechanism.

The thing that surprised me is that geese get attached to only one person. Only one person can feed them and when this woman-- I was on a goose farm [in France]-- came out, these geese came running to her. You know, they couldn't wait to be fed because it wasn't painful, they were just getting fed more than they should to enlarge their livers. I didn't see any cruelty on the farms in France.

Now, the way chickens are raised, and the way beef is being produced in this country, I totally agree. I think there are issues there and we have to get very activist to make sure the food supply is properly taken care of, properly treated and properly slaughtered. But I think to have a blanket notion that foie gras is painful and inhumane... I know otherwise, if it's done on a farm level. I can't really speak for the mass production level.

MP: You mentioned being Burgundy, which is a place I've always wanted to eat and drink my way through. Is there some place in the world that you haven't been to that you'd love to eat your way through?

DH: I was thinking about that the other day-- in one of my puttering moments-- and I would love to go to Germany for the white asparagus festival... they don't have a green flavor, they have a nutty flavor and then that asparagus flavor, but it's much more subdued... it's very subtle.

MP: I suppose we should talk about the show.

DH: Oh, the show! Yeah, that's why I'm here, and this is KQED, isn't it? (Laughs)

MP: So... twenty-seven guest on twenty-six show. Anyone you missed?

DH: Oh, lots! But it wasn't so much that we missed them. I think it was a couple of things. We did all twenty-six shows in three weeks. This is public television and you do not have have a huge budget and you have to make hay while the sun shines, and we did. Some of these people had conflicts and they just couldn't get there. So, bye bye Mario Batali, bye bye Emeril Lagasse, many of them had conflicts. And then there was the other group of people, the "Dorothy who? You're doing what? I don't think so." It wasn't so much in a snotty way, and it wasn't them per se... but it's their handlers. Nowadays, they have agents and this is a brand new show...so a couple of people decided not to go out of the box on this one. But that being said, one of the first people who signed on was Thomas Keller so, once the others heard Thomas was going to be on, they wanted to be there, too.

MP: And you're speaking with him tonight.

DH: Yes, I am! He's an incredibly generous man.

May is Coffee Cake Month

2007-05-10T12:36:00.000-07:00

Last week, my friend Thrasso told me it was Coffee Cake Month. When I asked how he came by that nugget of information, he told me that it was, at least, Coffee Cake Month in his world. It is quite simply a ruse to get people to give him cake.

It isn't as though he only shared that information with me, he shared it wherever we went during his visit here; to bartenders, shopgirls, friends. He pretty much told everyone it was Coffee Cake Month. I think the woman behind the counter at Tartine nodded and gave him a wan "I knew that" sort of reply and bagged our non-coffee cake purchases. I wonder how many people took his announcement to heart?

I did, for one. God protects those too easily open to suggestion.

I Googled "Coffee Cake Month" and came up with little more than monthly cake offers. I did, however, manage to find Coffee Cake Day at Rumela.com. The site is vaguely creepy with side bars and ads daring me to click on things like "The Fart Button. Press it. You know you want to." and "Mate 1 Intimate Dating." How these things are related to coffee cake, I am uncertain. Here is what I was told about Coffee Cake Day. The grammar is theirs, not mine.

Every year we celebrate Coffee Cake Day on 7^th April, it is an important event to all people because cake is a fantastic food to us at any time we love to eat it, not only a testy food it's have a good food value. However indulge and pamper yourself with loads n loads of yummy and delicious treats, and share the taste of fun with all your friends, family and sweetheart also make the day more attractive with some beautiful coffee cake.

So that's what fun tastes like. How edifying.

I wonder if this is how holdays get started. Some random person comes up with an object to celebrate and tells two friends, then they tell two friends, and so on, like some Faberge Organic Shampoo commercial. Or, in Thrasso's case, this coffee cake business might be a Canadian thing, though I tend to think of them as eating daintier cakes with the tea they drink after stirring a bit of milk into their china cups with their 1981 Royal Wedding commemerative spoons. No angry comments from my Canadian readership, please. I know all of you have one of those spoons. All 33,098,932 of you.

Since my Canadian ami's birthday falls exactly one month after the "offical" Coffee Cake Day (perhaps that is why he wants a full month of celebration?), I have baked a coffee cake.

Since there are literally thousands of coffee cake recipes out there of varying types, I feel I can only assign the one a number. It's too early in its developmental stage to be given anything but. As you can see in the photo, the crumb is good, but it is not swirly enough. Mine is too subtle, and coffee cake should not, in my opinion, be too subtle. I think I'll make it a bit more crumbly next time. Please humor me. No recipe. It's not worth repeating. Yet.

Now, a little back story on the coffee cake, so one might better understand its need for a holiday. Or not.

Coffee cake can be traced back to the 17th Century in Europe, since that is when coffee was introduced there. In fact, it was made fashionable in Paris at Le Procope, a favorite haunt of my family when in town, for reasons I am certain you will understand. Sadly, we do not get a family discount, those bastards. And I do not believe they serve coffee cake, either.

Coffee cake can be traced to Northern Europe where, as foodtimeline.org (I love this website) writes:

Coffee cake (aslo sometimes known as Kuchen or Gugelhopf) was not invented. It evolved...from ancient honey cakes to simple French galettes to medieval fruitcakes to sweet yeast rolls to Danish, cakes made with coffee to mass-produced pre-packaged treats.
Food historians generally agree the concept of coffee cake [eating sweet cakes with coffee] most likely originated in Northern/Central Europe sometime in the 17th century. Why this place and time? These countries were already known for their traditional for sweet yeast breads. When coffee was introduced to Europe (see notes below) these cakes were a natural accompaniment. German, Dutch, and Scandinavian immigrants brought their coffee cake recipes with them to America.
The first coffee cake-type foods were more like bread than cake. They were simple concoctions of yeast, flour, eggs, sugar, nuts, dried fruit and sweet spices. Over time, coffee cake recipes changed. Sugared fruit, cheese, yogurt and other creamy fillings are often used in today's American coffee cake recipes.
"Much of the American appetite for sweet rolls and cakes comes from these specific Germans as well as from the Holland settlements that had so much influence on early New York, New Jersey, and Delaware. All of those colonial cooks made fruity, buttery breakfast or coffee cakes from recipes that vary only slightly from methods used in the twentieth century. They also share some of the responsibility for the national zest for doughnuts..."
---American Food: The Gastronomic Story, Evan Jones, 2nd edition [Vintage Books:New York] 1981 (p. 91)
"...Scandinavians were perhaps more responsible than anyone else for making Ameirca as coffee-break-conscious as it is, and for perfecting the kind of food that goes well with coffee. German women had already brough the Kaffeeklatcsh to their frontier communities, but it was in the kitchens where there was always a pot brewing on the back of the stove that Scandinavian hospitality and coffee became synonymous...The term coffee klatch became part of the language, and its original meaning--a moment that combined gossip with coffee drinking--was changed to define the American version of England's tea, a midmorning or midafternoon gathering at which to imbibe and ingest....Like the cooks from Central Europe, most Scandinavian cooks have prided themselves on simple forms of pastry making that include so called coffee breads, coffee cakes, coffee rings, sweet rolls, and buns..."
---ibid (p. 163)

Try making your own sometime. They are fairly simple to make and, like I said, literally thousands of recipes of varying degrees of palatability. Go on. Do it. And please join me at next year's Coffee Cake Film Festival which I will be hosting as soon as I can find enough films in which this underappreciated cake is featured.

And tell two friends.

Celebrity Bake-off.

2007-05-03T09:27:00.000-07:00

Like many of you out there in the land of food geekdom, I enjoy reading cookbooks. I do not enjoy reading all cookbooks, however. I am generally bored to tears by the big, slick coffee table tomes. Charlie Trotter? Forget it. It's nothing personal, they're just not my thing.

What fascinates me are the smaller cookbooks; those by someone's grandmother or, say, the Junior League of Salt Lake City. Those, to me, are fascinating. They tell a story without a publicist or, quite often, even an editor breathing down the creator's neck.

Perhaps even more fascinating to me are the collections of recipes published by larger-than-life or, at least, larger-than-my-life celebrities.

Over the past few decades, many a celebrity (and by celebrity, you must understand that I mean anyone who was capable of having their agent obtain them a booking on Match Game '74, Hollywood Squares, Battle of the Network Stars or any such show or better) offered up a recipe or two for a charity cookbook or an appearance on Dinah! Others seem to have been written by actors who aren't doing so much acting any more. Sometimes, the submissions are See?-we're-just-like-you-poor-non-famous-folk annoying or painfully (and by painfully, I mean amusingly) self-delusional and chock full of irony.

Such standouts include Paul Lynde and his Diet Waffles or even Tori Amos and her Glazed Turnips (the recipe given to her by her personal chef). Very few celebrities, by comparison, have managed to produce their own cookbooks.

And so... I present to you...

Liberace Cooks-- A Cookbook! The exclamation point is his, not mine.

I should note that this book was not written during his lifetime, but compiled by the people who love him the most-- those woman who unsmilingly devote themselves to his memory. Okay. That was bitchy. I was thinking of the stories I've heard about the women who work at the Liberace museum in Las Vegas who seem to think that the faithful, obsessive polishing of rhinestones might actually bring about his resurrection. This cookbook was published in 2003 by the Liberace Foundation for the Performing and Creative Arts. Any organization that has managed to award more than $5,000,000 in scholarship money to deserving students isn't going to get the harsh treatment from me. Not too badly.

The 59-page book(let) is filled with a wide array of recipes from the ethnic Polish Radish Salad to the what-was-fancy-in-the-60's-and-70's dishes Boeuf à la Mode en Gelée and Coq au Vin.

When I received this book as a gift from my friends Gary and Bill, I just thought it was a funny gag. It's still pretty amusing (you should see the photos of him with starlets mooning and drooling over his, um, cooking), but this feels like a real, personal cookbook. This man was in the kitchen a lot. These are dishes he actually made. These are recipes passed down from his mother, and we all know how much he loved his mother.

And now, here's a recipe published with what I can only hope to God was a wink and a nod.

Liberace Sticky Buns

What I find so wonderful about this recipe is that it is, without any trace of self-mocking humor, his own. It is very easy to make, I assure you. The only change I've made is in my choice of raisin, and that is only because I didn't feel like hunting for little boxes of white raisins (a dried fruit more popular in the 1970's that it is today). A friend assured me that red flame raisins seemed much more appropriate to use in this recipe, given that its creator was such a bright, shining star who burned out much too quickly. I must say that I agree with him.

If the preparation reads like a never ending paragraph, it is because that is exactly how it was written. I am as faithful to Liberace as I can be.

Ingredients:

1 cup white raisins (or, of course, flame)
1/2 cup light rum
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
1/2 pound (two sticks) unsalted butter
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon each of ground nutmeg, allspice, cloves, and ginger
3 packages (18 buns) Pillsbury crescent dough.

Preparation:

Soak the raisins in the rum over a low flame. Set aside. Preheat oven to 325 F. In a saucepan, melt butter and stir in the spices and the brown sugar until the mixture becomes a bubbling syrup. Unroll the crescent dough, keeping each package in one flat place. Drizzle one quarter of
the syrup over each individual piece of dough, reserving the last quarter for later. Sprinkle one third of the raisins and spread one third of the chopped pecans [Pecans? Liberace seems to have missed something fairly important in his ingredients list. Please excuse me while I go back to the store to buy some nuts.] on each of the three sheets of dough. Roll up each section of dough, jelly-roll style and cut into 1-inch pieces. Grease two eight-muffin pans or three six-muffin pans with butter. Put a scant teaspoon of the reserved syrup and a few whole pecans in the bottom of each muffin mold. Cover with the individual jelly-roll pieces, cut side up. Bake in preheated oven for the time recommended on the Pillsbury packages. While pans are still hot, invert them on a sheet of heavy aluminum foil allowing the buns to be released. Replace any of the syrup and pecans that cling to the molds on the individual buns. You should serve the buns while they are still warm and have that fresh-from-the-oven taste.

My notes:

Apart from the omission of pecans from the ingredients list, I might substitute water for butter in the making of the syrup. It would make for a much smoother, lighter and yes, stickier syrup. Otherwise, this was a freaking easy recipe. I'm not even embarrassed to have used Pillsbury crescent dough-- it's been far too long since I've experienced the joy of whacking that cardboard tube against the kitchen counter.

If I knew you were coming, I'd have baked a cake.

2007-04-27T08:26:00.001-07:00

Well, I knew he was coming, but I didn't bake one. I bought one instead. Do you think I could make a cake as precious as the one below? Perhaps, but not under stress.

I thought about baking him a cake, but I've been known to impart too much meaning into such baked goods before. I thought about this one a little too much. So much so, that I ran out of time. So I bought one, which is nearly as good, meaning-wise, but less pressure, which is better.

I have a visitor arriving this week. A rather special one. He hasn't spent much time in San Francisco and so it is up to me to show it to him. I'll show him what I consider to be my San Francisco. The tricky part is figuring out just what that is.

I imagine there are those of you out there who have faced this problem before. A guest arrives. Their idea of San Francisco dining might consist of eating chowder from a sourdough bread bowl. Or Rice-a-roni. Perhaps you're fortunate enough to have a guest who's heard about dim sum and is game for it. That's one meal out of the way. My guest will be spending nine days with me. That's twenty-seven meals together. Hopefully together, anyway. What about the other twenty-six?

The pressure has been building. Inside my own head, I mean. I know it's absolutely silly. I just want to show him, food-wise and other-wise, what it is I love about this city and what it has to offer. I will take him to a few of my favorite places, places that have meaning to me. I will offer him local foods that I love. The rest, I imagine will take care of itself. I will not be rigid. I will go with the flow.

To start things off, I've got a few of my favorite things already laid out for him when he arrives. Enter one Miette Sharfenberger chocolate cake, as pictured above. Also enter a selection of Michael Recchiuti chocolates as somewhat fuzzily pictured above. Nothing says "nice to see you" like a good sugar buzz.

We'll have our first dinner at Frascati. The constant clackity-clack of the Hyde Street Cable Car line just outside the front door will send a rather rhythmic, not too terribly subtle message that, well, he's not in Vancouver anymore (Such a world-class city!).

There are lots of other restaurants I want him to try, but time and budget won't allow us to visit them all. Three more we'll definitely be going to are:

House of Nanking, becuase I want him to get bullied by a waiter into eating great Chinese food.

Florio, because that's my favorite little neighborhood haunt and the chef is a man who made me like tripe.

Kokkari. My guest's family is Greek, so this visit is unavoidable. Besides, I want to eat smelt and lamb's tongue again.

The rest will play itself out. Cowgirl Creamery, Blue Bottle Coffee, breakfast at Tartine, studiously avoiding Delfina, all that stuff will likely follow.

I would like to hear some suggestions from you, dear reading audience (sound of crickets chirping). Hellooooooo?

Really.

What smacks of this city to you? What is your San Francisco Treat? I'd like to know. I've got a few more meal slots to fill.

Fungal Love

2007-04-19T14:02:00.000-07:00

As Shuna announced at the beginning of April, this is poetry month. Initially, that thought made me whince, but I enjoyed her poem and thought... hmm... perhaps I should contribute something. Ten days later, Amy mentioned a tofu haiku contest, which I entered (and will most likely receive an angry letter from the Soy Board). Now it's my turn.

I admit to having written poetry in college. Precious little, which is most likely a good thing. Somewhere in the universe, there are notebooks dotted with odd and pained verses brought on by reading too much Plath and listening to too much Bauhaus. I cringe at the thought of their discovery.

Last year, my friend Doralice handed me a copy of a poem I wrote in culinary school. I thought it was all but lost. You may wish it was, too, after reading it.

It was performed in front of our Safety and Sanitation class at the California Culinary Academy in early 1996. I was asked to give a presentation on, and here's what the 3 x 5 card said, "Interesting facts about fungi". It was read in a Dr. Seuss-like manner because, well, it has a Seuss-like rhyme scheme. I was surprised at the poem's reception-- no one threw anything at me or threatened to beat me up after class. Enjoy it or, at least, give me a fake smile and a polite golf clap. Letting the world read your poetry is no easy thing.

Fungus

With fungus, there's mushrooms,
There's molds and there's yeasts.
We've so much to learn
From these wee tiny beasts.

They aid in our whiskies
And hot steaming toddies.
They hide in our bathrooms
And inside our bodies.

There's fungus on puppies
And bunnies and cheeses.
There's fungus involved
In sexually transmitted diseases.

It lives where it wishes.
It grows where it pleases.
On the best petrie dishes
We find many diseases.

There's Cryptococcosis
And Histoplasmosis
There's ringworm and thrush
And Blastomycosis.

There's rusts and there's smuts
That grow in our grains.
There's even a fungus
That alters our brains.

Which fungus, you ask?
Please let me elucidate.
It's called Psilocybin.
It makes you hallucinate.

It's taken orally
Or it is injected.
(The legality of said fungus, however
The U.S. has rejected.)

I learned from the most
Reliable of references
That fungi abound
In all sexual preferences.

There's heterothallics
And homothallics.
(The latter you'll note
That I wrote in italics.)

When treading with naked feet
In gym showers,
Beware, for it's there
Tinea pedis flowers.

To cure it, make haste
Use something fast actin'
Most sufferers choose
To use Tinactin.

Mycotoxin (a fungus-tainted food derivative)
Perennailly bad-ish
Was considered by villians
A weapon quite faddish.

Biological warfare
Was used by Hussien
Who upon Kurds and Persians
Poured toxins like rain.

In the 1970's
Mycotoxins were got
By a genocidal despot
By name of Pol Pot.

In his part of Asia
He caused great commotions
B y using them on
Cambodians and Laotians.

Rhizopus nigricans,
Or bread mold, will thank
Any fool who puts bread
In a place dark and dank.

The truffle, one teaches,
Prefers it much damper--
Round oaks and some beeches
Where the truffle pigs scamper.

To many a man
There is no sight more dear
Than a woman in hot pants
Bringing him beer.

If said woman ne'er washes
Nor changes, at least,
Could be more than the beer's
Been affected by yeast.

In France and elsewhere
Sweet wines are got
By a wond'rous mold
That is called noble rot.

Botrytis cinerea--
Its true appelation
Dehydrates grape juice
Into high concentration.

Without such a beast
How then could we try
a glass of d'Yquem
or my favorite, Tokaj?

The gods are with you, fungus,
And so I am told
That when they made you,
They broke the mold.

April Fool

2007-04-12T09:54:00.000-07:00

Yes, I know. It's not April 1st. I'm not that stupid. I have a calendar in front of me. It tells me today is Friday, April 13th. I just choose to pretend it is otherwise.

April Fool's Day. I'd always wondered what was especially foolish about that particular day. I thought it might have to do with the first whiffs of spring in the air-- causing hormones to surge, making people do idiotic things. As it turns out, it has more to do with the calendar and boring papal policy change than anything else.

You can blame the French, if you like. They were the first country to switch from the Julian to Gregorian calendar in 1582. The new New Year's Day moved to January 1st from the previously celebrated April 1st. News did not travel fast in the 16th century and those who missed the email still celebrated the first day of the year in April. They were called fools.

Personally, I rather like celebrating the new year in Spring. It makes much more sense to me; the sun begins to warm us again and flowers begin to bloom-- all that fluffy, happy stuff that happens about now. I'm generally exhausted come January 1st, what with Christmas and all. I consider it a rather lame idea to celebrate the New Year when everything about us is cold and dead with worse to come. Call me a fool if you like. You certainly wouldn't' be the first person to do that.

In honor of this old New Year, I'll give you three guesses as to what I'm making.

Yes, a fool. No lame plays on words please. Although, since I am working from my own kitchen and not wearing gloves, there will most likely be traces of my own DNA in the dessert. Therefore, and quite truthfully, I could be able to say that I am indeed making a fool of myself. That's as far as I am willing to go.

The fool is closely related to the trifle and the syllabub. So closely related, in fact, that they are practically sisters. With parents who had an interesting talent for naming their children, of course.

The fool is possibly the oldest and certainly the simplest of the trio, dating back to at least 16th century England. It is whipped cream and fresh or cooked, pureed fruit. What could be more English than that? Okay, a couple of things, I'm sure, but it's still pretty English.

Here's my recipe.

Strawberry Rhubarb Fool

Ingredients:

For the puree:

1 pint strawberries, slices or chopped
2 stalks rhubarb, sliced in 1/4 pieces
2 tablespoons sugar, 1 for the strawberries, the other for the rhubarb, or to taste, depending
upon the sweetness of the berries.
2 tablespoons Grand Marnier, because I said so.

For the Cream:

1 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup buttermilk
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Preparation:

Place rhubarb, 1 tablespoon of sugar and perhaps (these things are never precise) 1/2 cup of water in a sauce pan. Cook over medium heat until rhubarb is soft, releases its pink and is generally rather unattractive looking.
Put into shallow dish and cool.
Toss strawberries with 1 tablespoon of sugar and Grand Marnier. Let sit while the rhubarb cools.
Toss, or place gently, rhubarb and berries into a food processor and blend until smooth. The mixture doesn't have to be too terribly smooth, some lumpiness may be desired in certain dessert circles. Set aside.
In a bowl, combine cream, and buttermilk. Whip. About half way through the process, add sugar and vanilla. Whip until fairly stiff peaks form.
Combine half the fruit puree with the same amount of whipped cream and fold together. A real fool will have some streakiness to it, as though perhaps pressing matters of Empire might have gotten in the way of a thorough folding.
Into your selected glasses (parfait glasses are preferred, but I don't have any), place a tablespoon or two of the fruit at the bottom. Next, layer the cream and fruit mixture on top of that. I like a final layer of whipped cream on top, like the final flourish of non-dairy topping that finished off the Jell-o parfaits of my youth.
Cover and refrigerate for as long as over night. Garnish with fruit or mint or bullets or whatever you want.

Serves 4 to 6, depending upon the glasses you use.

For a slightly healthier alternative, do away with the cream entirely and substitute yogurt. It will be like fruit-on-the-bottom Dannon or Yoplait, except you know exactly what you put into that fruit and, therefore, exactly what you're putting into your body.

To learn more about the Fool and her sisters, please visit In Mama's Kitchen because mother knows best.

The Easter Egg

2007-04-05T09:43:00.000-07:00

This year, the East (Greek and Russian Orthodox) and the West (Roman Catholic and its breakaway Protestant faiths) have booked the same banquet room, as it were, for Easter. The last time this happened was 2004. It will happen again in 2010. That date sounds marvelously futuristic. 2010.

As a child, I loved Easter-- it meant candy, cannoli, watching Judy Garland and Ann Miller and, quite possibly, money. My family's Easter rituals were nearly interchangeable with our Thanksgiving ones. We just traded in the turkey for a ham and wore brighter colors. Of course, there was one notable, Easter-specific activity...

The Easter Egg Hunt.

There was a certain lack of enthusiasm for the hunt at my house. My brother and sister were much older than I and, therefore, largely bored by it. While Betty Ford was busying herself on the South Lawn showing children how to roll Easter Eggs, the only things rolling at my house were the jaded eyes of my siblings. At least they were kind enough to humor me.

Saturday night was spent breaking out the Paas egg dyeing kit, creating two-toned eggs and trying to somehow work the accompanying decals onto the eggs without tearing them. My brother sometimes attempted to create narrative tension on the surface of his eggs, which is a challenge when pastel colors and bunnies are involved. I believe one year my sister dyed one egg blue and painted the original movie poster from Jaws onto it. If anyone could make an Easter egg look menacing, it would have to be my sister. Once finished, we would admire our handiwork until the nausea induced by the acrid smell of the Heinz white wine vinegar wafting up from the egg dyeing cups finally drove us away. And then, at some point during my sleeping hours, the eggs would go into hiding.

I never really understood why the eggs felt the need to hide themselves-- it's not as though anyone in my family really enjoyed eating hard boiled eggs. They were in no real danger. I would have preferred to decorate my bookshelf with them or plant one in the back yard and pray that something interesting grew from it. Perhaps they were afraid of being buried alive.

So they hid. Usually in the same places every year. One always found its way into the piano bench, another in the chandelier which I could never quite reach. We always made an even dozen. When ten or so were found, the already low level of enthusiasm would wane. My mother always stepped into the Judas role, betraying the hiding place of one of the eggs. Eventually, one hiding under the living room sofa or concealed in a recycled Country Crock margarine container would betray itself by its own putrefaction. Usually sometime in May. Or June.

This year, thanks to my new-found interest in things Greek (or, at least, my interest in one particular Canadian of Greek descent), I am embracing the Greek Easter egg. I made a dozen of them yesterday. Why I keep making an even dozen, I'll never know. I suppose it would be more correct to make thirteen, since there were thirteen people present at the Last Supper and that, it would seem, is what got this whole Easter ball --or egg--rolling. Remind me to do that next year.

The traditions involving the Greek Easter egg are much different from our own, and much more no-nonsense than, say, the Russians'. The Russian Easter egg is far too expensive to be produced yearly, but they are a good investment if you have the money. The Greeks don't bother to hide their eggs. Why hide food you know you're going to eat later? Unless, of course, one is re-enacting an historical event and therefore hiding it from the Turks or the Germans. No, they just dye them blood red and put them in the middle of their dinner table. There's more to it than that, of course. There's a power game involved.

What to do when confronted with a Greek Easter egg.

Show no fear. This egg will most likely be presented to you by a Greek person. They can smell fear almost as well as they can smell lamb or a bargain. Just keep calm, smile and say "Kalo Pascha."
This egg now in your possession will be given to you after a dinner of spit-roasted lamb and many glasses of wine or ouzo. Take it and partake in a symbolic and faintly violent game of egg smashing.
One person will turn to another participant seated next to him and say something in Greek. The other person will respond, also in Greek, and they will smash the pointed ends of their respective eggs together. The participant whose egg emerges uncracked moves on to his next victim.
If that next victim is you, he will say to you "Christos Anesti!" (Christ is risen!) to which you must respond, "Alithos Anesti!" (He is truly risen!") and smash your egg into his.
If you are victorious, repeat this process until all eggs except one are cracked. If that egg is yours, it means that Jesus likes you better than anyone else in the room and that you will have good luck throughout the year.

What it all means.

The red coloring of the eggs represents the Blood of Christ to the Greeks. I just happen to think they are highly attractive.

The cracking of the egg symbolizes Christ breaking out of his tomb as he rises from the dead. If this is true, then I don't really understand why the person with the uncracked egg is favored. If there is a crack anywhere, in my opinion, it is in the logic of this game. Perhaps the others are simply masking their grief for the damned soul of someone who is now certain never rise to heaven.

If you decide to play the game but are somewhat uncomfortable with so much Jesus talk, you might try substituting your own ritual call-and-response during the game. Something non-religious, yet still meaningful. One person shouting out a love for corduroy while his challenger announces his preference for suede is one such suggestion. I find the Greek tradition of being in such strong verbal agreement with each other while engaging in such aggressive behavior unconvincing and lacking in any real dramatic tension. I suppose if the first person shouted out the usual "Christ is risen!" and the second person responded "Actually, I think he's still napping" or "Christ was a Turk", there might be some tension. It is undoubtedly to my own advantage that I don't know how to say those things in Greek. But it might be exciting to witness, nevertheless.

How to make Greek Easter eggs if no one else is willing to make them for you:

First off, I must implore you not to follow my example. I read the badly translated instructions off the back of a Greek Easter egg dye package, which called for a cold dyeing. I was unwilling to go out and buy more eggs and dye them properly. I already have more hard boiled eggs than I know what to do with. As a result, my eggs look more like the pocked surface of Mars than the pure life force of a Savior whose blood is said to have come directly from King David on his Mother's side and, well, whatever flows through His Father's side of the family.

Here is a better recipe:

Ingredients:

12 uncooked eggs
Water
3/4 cup white wine vinegar
1 package of Greek Easter egg dye
Olive oil

Preparation:

Carefully wash and dry each egg (I missed this part, so it must be important).
Set a large pot of water to boil. Add egg dye and vinegar to the water and bring to a boil to dissolve dye.
Set water aside and let cool. Refrigerate for all I care. It seems that every recipe I've read calls for putting uncooked eggs into boiling or near-boiling water. This sound plain crazy to me. Perhaps it is some odd, Greek act of faith. Perhaps it is precisely because I lack that faith that my eggs came out spotty.
Set now-cooled water over stove and carefully add the eggs. Bring water to a boil and turn off heat.
Let eggs sit for 10 minutes, remove them carefully and allow to cool and dry.
Wipe eggs with olive oil-soaked paper towels.
Wipe now with a clean, dry soft cloth to remove excess oil and to polish.
Place them on your Easter table and let the fun begin.

Great Moments in Cinematic Baking

2007-03-29T12:53:00.000-07:00

I love food. I think the fact that I maintain a food blog might hint at that. I also happen to love film. If we suspend our disbelief for a moment and pretend that food and film were women and that I were somehow straight, my relationship with the two of them would go something like this...

Film was my first love. She was wild, emotional, larger-than-life. We dated through high school and most of our university years, but we'd grown apart by our senior year. We loved each other but just couldn't commit ourselves to a serious, exclusive relationship.

Along comes Food, who'd been there all along, to console me. Stable and nurturing with both feet planted firmly in the earth, I thought "Oh, how blind have I been not to have seen her all my life?" She moved in straight away and we started planning our future meals together.

Several years later, Food and I are still together, but part of me misses Film and always will. I confess sneaking off to see her every once in a while. Food pretends not to mind too much when she finds the theater stubs in my coat pocket. We've talked about my problem in couples therapy and, to my surprise, she confessed that she's always wondered what it felt like to be on Film.

Food, Film and Me. That's my idea of a three-way.

Are you nauseated? No? Then continue...

Food on Film. That's the topic for today. Yes, we've all seen Babette's Feast (30 times), Like Water for Chocolate, and Eat Drink Man Woman. All of these films appeal to us (or, at least me) for one reason or another. Food is center stage. Appetite as metaphor for human desire, etc. Another thing these films have in common is a central character for whom food is his or her primary outlet of expression. Cooking is action. They are, all of them, cuisine-driven cinema.

What has interested me lately are films in which cooking is not the central theme. I like to watch people who are not supposed to be food professionals preparing meals. For me, watching characters not known for their cooking abilities attempt to bake or boil is far more fascinating and often more telling. Think of Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's. If you own it, watch the scene in which Holly Golightly attempts to make dinner for Paul Varjak. Perhaps I read too much into things, but notice the way she tosses the salad. She doesn't know what she's doing. She's in over her head, which is entirely appropriate, considering the character. It's actually rather heart-breaking. The tension of the scene finds release when the contents of her pressure cooker ("Chicken and saffron rice with chocolate sauce, an East Indian favorite.") explode all over her kitchen. So the foreshadowing and symbolism are a little heavy-handed. Food-focused people get the sense of what's about to happen.

This week's pick comes from the rather odd little 1970 Jacques Demy musical, Donkey Skin. Based on the the fairly tale of the same name (well, the french Peau d'âne) by Charles Perrault. I saw this film with my friend Dan a couple of years ago. Sadly for him, I associated the name of the film with his own. Po' Dan. I don't' remember who dragged who to see it, but I'm grateful to either one of us. It is marvelously bizarre and wildly anachronistic (the resident Fairy Godmother descends in a helicopter, naturally). And then of course there's not one, but two Catherine Deneuves in a musical baking number.

A film could not be more up my particular alley.

In the scene below, Deneuve (the Princess/Donkey Skin) prepares a "love cake" for the object of her affection, a lovesick prince. The importance of this cake is illustrated by the fact that she feels the need to don her dress "the color of the sun" to prepare it. It matters little if you understand French. I just want you to take note of her baking skills. And, possibly, the movement of her full, lace-trimmed sleeves as she works. Whether Demy intended it or not, Deneuve's unconvincing technique speaks volumes. Remember, this is a fairly tale and a French fairy tale musical at that. The suspension of one's belief is critical. How else can Catherine Deneuve baking in that gown be explained? Of course, my belief has been suspended for so long that I am convinced that she can do just about anything, like turn Susan Sarandon into a vampire by merely rolling around half naked with her and exchanging fluids.

Enjoy the clip.

Time to make the doughnuts

2007-03-22T10:15:00.000-07:00

First of all, it's doughnut not donut. Let's give this pastry the respect it deserves. I suppose Mr. Doughnut is a bit much-- this treat is far too familiar to most of us for such formality. By familiar, I mean taken for granted. We've invited doughnuts into our homes often enough and spent endless hours with them in coffee shops, but what do we know about them? Have you ever bothered to ask one anything about itself? Of course not. They've infiltrated our children's schools, yet I doubt any County Administrator has ever bothered to do a background check on a single one.

Well, I have. Sort of.

You can say dank u to the Dutch. While you're at it, you might also want to thank them for cobbler and the koekje (cookie, if you couldn't figure that out on your own). The Dutch brought their recipe for olykoeks with them to the New World, where the name easily translated to "oily cakes"-- balls of sweet dough fried in pork fat. Sound like heaven on earth. Sweet dough and pork fat. I'm not kidding.

Somewhere in history, the oily cake hired an image consultant and changed its name to doughnut, most likely because they were, quite simply, little nuts of fried dough. Washington Irving mentions them as early as 1809. He seemed to know a lot about Dutch Americans.

There are a few tales, some of them tall, about how the doughnut got its hole. The best and most famous is that of one Captain Hanson Gregory whose mother sent him off to sea with-- what else?-- fried pastry. During a violent storm, Captain Gregory needed both hands free to man the wheel of his ship, so he impaled his doughnut upon the top spoke of the wheel, thereby creating the center hole.

Believe it. Or not.

A more likely explaination is that the center of the pastries had been notoriously hard to cook thoroughly. They usually ended up a doughy, oily goo. By punching a hole in the center, more surface area is created, therefore allowing for faster, more even cooking. But if you prefer to believe the first expailation, by all means do.

For a really good read about doughnuts, please visit Mr. Breakfast. I think he might be my new hero.

The Dutch, and through them, Americans, are not the only people on earth in love with puffy fried dough. The Argentines have their facturas, the Austrians love a good krapfen (giggle, it's okay), the Chinese go for youtiao (though it is not sweet), and the French, of course, are dating the beignet.

Wherever in the world you may eat them, eat them warm and fresh. A doughnut made yesterday dunked into this morning's coffee might be fine, but it really cannot compare to a doughnut still warm from the fryer. I almost typed friar, which might say a lot about me.

The last time I made doughnuts was in June of 2001. I must have been in love or something. I was going to my boyfriend's cousin's annual oyster party on Limantour Beach. I wanted to make a favorable impression on them and, for some reason, doughnuts seemed the perfect thing to make. Perhaps I had hoped that, had the wind kicked up a bit too much, no one would notice the sand that would stick to the pastries, camoflauged as they would be by their coating of granulated sugar. My boyfriend thought I was crazy to go to so much trouble. Maybe I was, but everybody still remembers the doughnuts.

Try making a batch for yourself. They're really easy. I mean it. You'll need a good thermometer though. The temperature of the oil is key.

Buttermilk Doughnuts

What I like most about this recipe, which has been borrowed from Epicurious.com, but altered slightly, is that the sweetness is rather subtle. I'm just not a super-sweet fan. I tend to regard these doughnuts as, well cakes, though hopefully not oily ones. I like these served up on a plate with a bit of fruit sauce. Blueberry compote works really, really well. It's sort of like a lazy man's version of a jelly doughnut. Or, looked at in a more positive way, a healthy (or healthier) man's version.

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 1/4 cups sugar
3/4 cup buttermilk
2 large eggs
2 tablespoons solid vegetable shortening, room temperature
3/4 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/4 tablespoon almond extract
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt

Vegetable oil (for frying)

Powdered sugar

Preparation:

Place 1 1/2 cups flour and 1 1/4 cups sugar in large bowl. Add buttermilk and next 7 ingredients. Using electric mixer, beat mixture until just smooth. Beat in remaining 1 cup flour. Cover and refrigerate at least 1 hour and up to 6 hours.

Turn dough out onto floured work surface; roll to 1/2-inch thickness. Using 3-inch round cookie cutter, cut dough into rounds. Using 1-inch round cookie cutter, cut hole from center of each round, making doughnuts. Gather scraps and reroll dough, cutting additional doughnuts until dough is used up.

Pour oil into heavy large pot to depth of 5 inches. Heat oil to 350°F. Add 3 doughnuts at a time to oil and fry until golden, turning once, about 6 minutes total. Using slotted spoon, transfer to paper-towel-lined rack to drain. Repeat with remaining doughnuts. Cool. Sift powdered sugar thickly over doughnuts.

Makes about 10.