Local Seasoning: recipes from theo's kitchen

Lamb tenderloin with tomatoes and white wine reduction

2011-08-06T10:36:00.000-07:00

Step 1: Travel to another country for a conference. Feel a bit lonely and sorry for yourself, because you miss your fiancé. Meet new people, work hard, and wish the local food were better.

Step 2: During the weekend break between the two weeks of the conference, walk to the local Farmers' Market with one of your new friends. Find a meat stand selling lamb tenderloin, and buy one (about 200g). Spend the afternoon hanging out and talking and having the best day all week.

Step 3: Call your fiancé on Skype. Crush four cloves of garlic and set aside. Slice in half eight plum tomatoes and set aside. Heat 100 ml cheap olive oil (the one the "guest house" stocks in your small shared kitchen) in a small sauté pan.

Step 4: With a sharp knife, trim the tenderloin of its membrane and remove the tendon. Meanwhile, discover that last night both you and your fiancé made whole wheat pasta with mozzarella cheese, tomatoes, fresh basil, crushed garlic, and olive oil. He had access to buffalo mozzarella and expensive olive oil. When the tenderloin is trimmed, add it to the hot pan.

Step 5: The tenderloin should begin to brown quickly. After a few minutes of discussion about bison steaks (your fiancé's dinner tonight, with sweet potato), turn the tenderloin. Pour yourself a glass of very cheap white wine, and a few minutes later add about a glass to the cooking meat (enough to get about 1/3 of the way up the side).

Step 6: The meat will cook quite quickly. Turn it once more, and check it with a knife: you want the meat still a little pink in the middle, but with no dark red. When it is cooked, remove it to a plate to relax. Add the halved tomatoes, skin side down, to the pan, all in a single layer. Sprinkle liberally with salt and white sugar. Cook for a few minutes.

Step 7: Destem some fresh thyme and add it to the garlic. When the tomatoes are starting to cook, turn them onto their faces in the wine-and-jus. Cook the tomatoes a few minutes longer, and then add them to your bowl with the mashed garlic and thyme. Toss to combine, and pour over the tenderloin.

Step 8: Bon appetite! You should eat everything in combination, but leave a pile of tomato skins on the side of your plate: the tomato flesh will separate easily, and the skins toughen with any heat. While writing up everything for your blog (you still miss your fiancé, afterall, and the blog reminds you of him), mop up the remaining juices with the leftover baguette from your bread-and-cheese lunch at the Farmers' Market.

Towards Duck Confit

2011-05-14T17:03:00.000-07:00

Today I broke down a duck. We bought the duck whole (cleaned) and frozen at Al's Meat Market, and thawed it in the refrigerator. Once thawed, we opened it up, and removed the giblets from the inner compartment. The neck, heart, and kidneys (with the last of their fat trimmed off) went into a gallon freezer bag for stock. The liver is in its own bag in the refrigerator, waiting for tomorrow's lunch.

I then took off the thighs, leaving on them a generous amount of skin, and set them aside. Next I skinned the bird. This took the most time, but it's well worth it: save all the skin and fat (and attached connective tissue) that you remove from the meat. Skinning the wings is a pain: it's worth removing them first and saving them for last. Once the duck was skinned, I took off the breasts, trimming them of any obvious fat and connective tissue, and saved them in the refrigerator.

I then set to work on the carcass. The point is to save any usable meat (but clean the pieces of connective tissue) and all the fat. The meat goes into a bag in the fridge or freezer for use in a soup or as chopped up meat in some other dish. The fat goes into the same bowl with all the skins. The bones and unusable meat go into the stock bag. Try to keep your stock lean — you will have to skim off some fat form the top anyway, but might as well avoid putting visible fat into the stock bag.

When the bird was finally completely dissected, it was time to render the fat. Cut up the skin into roughly 1-inch bits. Place all the skin and any other fat trimmings into a pot, along with about 1/2 a cup of water. Cover the pot and set it on the stove on very-low to simmer about an hour. The fat should render out. Remove the skins (toss with salt, or maybe fry again in hot oil first, and call them "duck rind", or just discard), and strain the liquids as best you can. Let the liquid cool in a measuring cup so that the fat and water completely separate; then pour just the fat off the top to save. You should end up with about a cup of fat.

Meanwhile, create an herb-and-salt mixture with about 1/4 cup kosher salt, a bay leaf, four cloves garlic, a shallot, and about 1 tsp each dried thyme, black pepper corns, onion powder, and tarragon; combine everything in a food processor. Rub the salt mixture onto the reserved duck legs, pressing it in. Place the legs snuggly into a nonreactive bowl, cover tightly with foil, and refrigerate one to two days.

Tomorrow I will make the confit. First I will rub the legs of any salt mixture and discard it. Then I will place the legs to fit snuggly at in an oven-proof container. I will reheat the fat so that I can pour it, and completely submerge the legs in fat. I will also add some more garlic and bay leaf to perfume the fats. Then I will bake this at low temperature. The goal is to cook the legs an hour or two at between 190 and 210 degrees Fahrenheit. Then I will store the legs in the refrigerator covered in their fat (they can also be canned and kept up to a year, or so I've read).

To serve, crispen the skin in a hot cast-iron skillet for a few minutes, and have on top of a salad.

Eating out in Chicago

2011-03-12T18:08:00.000-08:00

We've been in Evanston, IL, for three weeks now, and I'm finally recording some of our meals. Why are we in Evanston? Well, B is a Resident Fellow at the Newberry Library in downtown Chicago, and I'm a Visiting Predoctoral Fellow at Northwestern. During our first two weeks we went to four different shows downtown, and ate out each of those nights. The rest of the time, we've cooked in — we're house-sitting for a Northwestern professor, who has a beautiful house and two wonderful cats. I'll tell you about the restaurants now; the meals in will have to wait.

Shiroi Hana: Sushi

The first of our four restaurant dinners may well have been the best. We were going to StarShip, which was playing at the Center on Halsted, in Boystown. Lonely Planet recommended Shiroi Hana, and we do too. Pretty good fish at very good prices — we shared the "Sushi Sashimi for two", the vegetable tempura, and some teriyaki uni, along with a full carafe of the house white wine (they offer only wine, or BYOB).

The play was fun, but way too long, running at about 3.5 hours. Then again, we stayed the full time, so they must have done something right. These kids will make it big, probably sooner rather than later. If I were a producer, I would try to fund them, on the condition that I'm allowed to edit them for length.

The Gage: English Pub

Our least favorite dinner, at The Gage, was also our most expensive. Lonely Planet was pretty useless at finding us a restaurant downtown, near the Chase Auditorium, where we saw Wait Wait Don't Tell Me (amazing show!). At the restaurant, we gravitated towards the Prix Fixe menu, hoping that it would be tasty and cheeper, but alas. My "lobster soup" was mostly salt and pepper and canned-flavor, with little meat; B's "parsnip risotto" was largely flavorless. B's salad, with dried cranberries and walnuts, was good for coffee-shop lunch fare, and my white fish was the highlight, but they served maybe a quarter pound of meat (and the fish couldn't have been more than $10/pound). The dessert was supposed to be a peanutty riff on white chocolate cheesecake, but ended up tasting like peanut-butter-and-jelly. And a $12 bottle of wine for $40? That's a restaurant.

Silver Spoon: Thai

We quite enjoyed Silver Spoon, a BYOB Thai place behind the Thai Consulate and below an over-priced sushi bar. The restaurant is windowless and probably better for lunch, but the service was fast and the food tasty. We had shumai, spring rolls, and various curry-infused spicy dishes with catfish. Was was supposed to be the highlight was a deep-fried whole snapper; it was certainly tasty, but too spicy, and next time I need to remember to ask beforehand what "market price" is. After dinner, we saw Working, which was pretty much awesome.

Oysy: Sushi

Finally, Oysy sushi gave Shiroi Hana a run for its money. Or, rather, Oysy is a bit more expensive (we brought wine and paid the $10 corkage; there's no "sushi for two"; ...), but over all better fish. We began with miso and a slightly-spicy tuna tartar. From there, we moved to the sashimi platter. We ended on an eel-and-cucumber roll, very happy. Then we walked to Navy Pier for the Chicago Shakespeare Theater production of As You Like It, one of the most enjoyable comedies.

Dinner in Austin: Rabbit with orange glaze, sweet potatoes, broccoli, and pots de creme

2011-02-18T11:53:00.001-08:00

We've spent the last week in Austin, TX. I gave a talk, we went to the LBJ Presidential Library, and we've tried to get work done. S has given us her house for the week, as she spends most of her time at her partner's place. They're great cooks, so we've happily eaten with them most nights, but last night we got to have them over and show off our own cooking.

Go to the Farmers' Market in Austin, and check out all the meat stands (there are many, especially in winter). Hopefully, you'll find Countryside Farm, where you can pick up a whole rabbit. Defrost it in a bowl of water in the fridge overnight. Also look for broccoli and sweet potato, which are available in February even after a week of frigid temperatures (this week has been in the 70s, but last week saw highs in the 30s).

Main: rabbit baked with orange-honey glaze

A few hours before you're ready to eat, butcher the now-thawed rabbit. We prefer smaller cuts, so ended up with eight pieces: forelegs, ribs, sides and belly, and hind legs. Be careful to find and remove and save the kidneys, liver, and (if you're lucky) heart. Lightly salt and pepper the pieces, and set them in a single layer in an oven-safe pan.

Meanwhile, reduce three cups orange juice to one cup, and then whisk in juice from half a lemon, ¼ cup honey, salt and pepper, and add thyme and four cloves fresh garlic. Pour the hot liquid over the rabbit, and let the meat marinate an hour. Top the meat with sliced oranges and more fresh thyme. The rabbit needs to bake 25 minutes in a pre-heated 400-degree oven.

Sides: mashed sweet potato with ginger and sage; baked broccoli

Cube sweet potato, and boil in salted water until tender, 20-30 minutes. Mince some fresh ginger and lots of fresh sage. Drain the potato, and mash it with the ginger and sage, a little salt and pepper, and some butter. Transfer to an oven-proof casserole with a lid, so that you can warm the potato back up near the end of food-prep.

Cut up some broccoli, pack it into a casserole with a lid (we used a terrine), and add plenty of minced garlic, juice from half a lemon, and some grated or shaved parmesan cheese. Bake 20-25 minutes, covered.

Dessert: pots de creme de chocolat

You should make the dessert first. Preheat the oven to 300°F, and also bring a teakettle of water to a boil.

In a heat-proof bowl or large measuring cup, place 2-3 oz chopped (or chip) milk chocolate. Then scald between 1 ½ and 2 cups cream, and pour over the chocolate to melt. Meanwhile, whisk together 3 egg yolks with ¼ cup sugar and a pinch of cinnamon. Temper the yolks by whisking in a little of the hot cream, and then combine the cream and yolks. Whisking, heat the mixture over medium until it thickens enough to coat a wooden spoon.

Prepare a water bath by pouring the boiled water into a small lasagna tray or two loaf pans, just enough so that with four ramekins set in the water, the level is about 2/3 up the sides of the ramekins. Ladle the thickened egg mixture into four small ramekins, wipe down any spills on the outside, and place in the water bath. Bake 35 minutes at 300°, until centers are still a little jiggly. Cool a little on a wire rack, and then chill in the refrigerator for at least an hour — the centers will firm up the rest of the way.

For serving, whip some more of the cream and dollop on top of the pots de creme. Decorate with mint leaves if you have them.

Serving

Set the table lovely with dinner knife and fork on the sides of each plate, salad fork and dessert spoon above the plates, and white and dessert wine glasses. Also set out pads for hot foods. Time the baking so that you can remove everything from the oven a little after the guests arrive, or anyway to bring everything still warm out. (The casserole pans will hold their heat, and you really don't want to overcook the rabbit — it's ok if the meat cools a bit before serving.)

Begin with the meat and veggie sides, accompanied with a nice chardonnay. We discovered that Fall Creek Vineyards, a Texas winery, is quite good, and bottles are under $10.

Once everyone has eaten their full, remove the dinner plates and silverware and the food, and bring out smaller salad plates (we love salad between the main course and dessert; it's refreshing and light). Salad should consist of washed and dried red-leaf lettuce, dressed in something with plenty of minced shallots and just a little salt and acid (white wine vinegar or a while balsamic), with maybe a little honey mixed into the dressing. Salad's a great chance to continue talking, start digesting, and finish a second bottle of chardonnay.

Finally, remove the salad plates and forks to the kitchen. Whip the cream and decorate the pots de creme, and bring them to the table. Open a bottle of Fall Creek sweet moscatel, and enjoy the dessert slowly accompanied by good conversation.

Photos from downtown LA

2011-01-24T00:13:00.000-08:00

Of our three days in Los Angeles, we only remembered the camera our middle day, when we explored downtown. Enjoy the slideshow!

Walking and Tapas

2011-01-23T23:09:00.000-08:00

We woke up ready for a day of walking and cooking.

We took a long walk, starting downtown and heading along the river until the northern edge of the city.

We made a "tapas" dinner for my family. Olives, grilled peppers, goat and sheep cheeses, rabbit liver with onions, lima bean spread with rosemary, roasted garlic, canned mackerel, and the highlight: dates stuffed with manchego cheese and wrapped in prosciutto and broiled.

Photos from the Oregon Coast

2011-01-23T23:04:00.000-08:00

Most years we spend the week between Christmas and New Years at the Oregon Coast. This year, we stayed in a house about fifty yards south of the Oregon-California border — the driveway was under the "Welcome to Oregon" sign. Our camera got wet the second day of our trip, so we only have a few photos (it got better, but only after a week of thoroughly drying): the first few days were sopping rainy, whereas the end of the week was lovely and sunny.

Christmas pictures

2011-01-23T18:36:00.000-08:00

As I have already described, Christmas Eve dinner consisted of oyster bisque and crab, and Christmas dinner was rabbit with parsnips and Brussels sprouts. Between these two wonderful meals, we hung stockings and read 'Twas The Night Before Christmas; we discovered many presents below the tree the following morning; we took a lovely family walk and fed the neighborhood ducks and geese alfalfa-pellet chicken-feed (we used to bring bread for the ducks, but have since learned that this is very bad for them).

Photos from Spencer's Butte

2011-01-23T18:21:00.000-08:00

As always, I am a bit slow to post photos. Here are some from our ten-mile hike up Spencer's Butte:

Sushi!

2011-01-23T18:14:00.001-08:00

One of our best dinners in Eugene was the night we made Sushi for my parents and sister. We had noticed that one of the local supermarkets had good prices on sushi-grade tuna, sushi-grade scallops, and pre-made pieces of teriyaki eel. We served the tuna as sashimi, and also made California roles (cucumber, avocado, and imitation crab) and the unagi and scallops. We began the meal with cups of miso, and accompanied everything with an Oregon pinot gris. (Sorry about the low-resolution photo — it's the only one we took.)

Emu burgers with sweet potato fries

2011-01-23T18:00:00.000-08:00

Dinner over Christmas break, with my sister and B. My parents had received some "weird meats" as a gift, and encouraged us to eat up the (very gamey) emu in burger form, while they went out on a date. We served the burgers on ciabatta, with pepperjack cheese melted on top.

Dehlinger Wine

2011-01-10T14:44:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine makes very good wine. We drove up for their winter tasting our last weekend before heading to Oregon for Christmas. Since it gets dark early, we only got twilight pictures of the winery.

Lentil veggie and garden leek soup with pesto butter and homemade bread

2011-01-10T14:34:00.000-08:00

These pictures are from December 1. We took out all the basil and peppers and some of the leeks, and spaced out the other leeks better. The basil went into a pesto butter with garlic, butter, and almonds. The leeks went into a lentil veggie soup. We served the dinner with white wine and homemade whole wheat baguette.

Three days in Los Angeles

2011-01-10T13:47:00.000-08:00

We spent the last weekend in LA, so that B could attend a conference. I had not been looking forward to the visit — we hadn't been in Berkeley in more than a month, and I just wanted to go home, and I've heard more bad than good about the LA. I shouldn't have feared: the city is fun, and, more importantly, Los Angeles has some of the best food in the country (a fact that I had read, but didn't appreciate).

Our flight down on Thursday was delayed due to weather, and so B missed his main meeting. After checking in to the hotel, the Renaissance Hollywood at Hollywood and Highland, in, you guessed it, Hollywood (a nice, expensive hotel, where we got a good price because B has family who work for Marriott), we drove to West Hollywood to go to an Indian restaurant ("Surya") that Lonely Planet recommended. Unfurtunately, Lonely Planet Los Angeles is sorely out-dated — although the book is in a recent printing, most of the information seems to be accurate to about five years ago. In any case, Surya has closed, and is now a burger joint. Fortunately, next door is Robata Jinya, a fun and extremely popular Japanese grill and sushi joint. The fish was fine, but what you should go for are the grilled vegetables, which are delicious. Before dinner, we wandered through the nearby Farmers Market at the Grove shopping plaza. The market is open-air and open daily, but at least in January doesn't have a lot of local stuff.

On Friday, we slept in, and spent the afternoon hiking to the Hollywood sign (carrying a camera that was out of battery power). We stopped at a supermarket for breakfast supplies for the next two days, and then walked from the hotel to Palms Thai, on the edge of Thai Town. The restaurant, a Lonely Planet recommendation, was tasty if mostly west-coast standard fair. (The website is gross, though.) It filled up, so I'm glad we got there on the early side. As our act of spontaneity, after dinner we bought tickets to see the tour production of Hair, which was fun but not as good as the movie (they changed and dramatically simplified the plot, romanticizing Hippiedom and making the piece into little more than a very fun progression of songs).

Saturday was our day downtown. B stopped in at his conference, and then we did a walking tour of LA, roughly following the guidebook. Particularly worth seeing are El Pueblo de Los Angeles (the old town; you might as well check out the architecture at the train station while you're there), the two Museums of Contemporary Art, and absolutely go wander through the Public Library, where the murals are amazing. We had one of our very best (and cheapest) lunches, at Grand Central Market, a supermarket-sized place with a roof but no walls, with a mix of prepared food and grocery vendors. We went to the Mexican seafood joint in the middle of the market, and had fish tacos and ceviche tostada. You should absolutely go, and pick up a bottle of wine at the liquor store there, because the best dinner downtown is BYOB.

The best dinner downtown is Colori Kitchen, an amazingly good Italian restaurant, with good service. We arrived about ten minutes before they opened at six (dinner Wednesday through Saturday, lunch Monday through Friday), which turned out to be vital: we were the only couple to get a table without a reservation before about 9:15 that night, and we saw them turn away other diners. So make a reservation. We began dinner sharing the phenomenal Burrata, which was very fresh and served over tomatoes. Then we each had a plate of one of the specials: fresh spinach pasta with a sauce made from ground duck and kalamata olives. For dessert, I had their "cheesecake" (nothing like a New York cheesecake, but delicious), and B had the panna cotta. Colori, though, is another example of Lonely Planet is out of date: they think the place is cheep, and it isn't.

Sunday was our last day. We spent most of the day at The Getty, beautiful and worth a visit. (The food is fine museum fair, but nothing to write home about.) At the airport, we had better-than-expected (it was perfectly serviceable — keep your expectations low) tuna sandwiches and large glasses of white wine at the bar near gate 73, and then shelled out the extra money to board the flight an hour earlier than scheduled. It's good to be back in Berkeley.

Hiking in Berkeley and Eugene

2011-01-06T01:03:00.000-08:00

One of our favorite trails in the Berkeley area is the Nimitz Way Trail in Tilden. Many miles (we usually do three or four each way) of beautiful paved trail, shared with bikers, joggers, and people with dogs. One of our favorite trails in the Eugene area, where we were for Thanksgiving (and took photos only on this one walk) is the Ribbon Trail in Hendriks Park. We walked it with my entire family and a friend of my brother's.

Oat risotto with green onions and bacon

2011-01-06T00:57:00.000-08:00

Cook some bacon at the bottom of a medium pan until just starting to crisp and the fat has rendered. Set the bacon aside. In the grease, cook the whites of some green onions with some salt until tender. Add one cup oats and cook a bit in the grease and onions to coat. Then add two cups chicken broth mixed with white wine. Bring to a boil, and simmer on low, stirring occasionally, until tender. Check regularly, stirring in more liquid as needed. Oats tend to get very sticky without any effort. At the end of cooking, stir in grated parmesan cheese, the bacon, and the greens of the onions.

Macaroni and cheese and mushrooms and broccoli in a cast iron skillet

2011-01-06T00:53:00.000-08:00

Split pea soup with garlic toast

2011-01-06T00:45:00.000-08:00

Begin by sauteing a mirepoix of leeks and celery, and add some thyme leaves. Then add about a cup of dried split peas and about three cups of water. Bring to a boil and simmer until the peas start to get tender, ten to twenty minutes. Then add spinach or young braising greens. If using non-spinach greens, be sure to remove any tough stems, and use only greens: no amaranth or beets or rainbow chard. When the greens are tender, puree everything with the immersion blender, and adjust the salt.

Meanwhile, chop and toast some walnuts for serving on top of the soup. For an extra special soup, before adding the walnuts swirl (but don't thoroughly mix) in some cream or creme fraiche. Also, mash some garlic with a little salt, spread on bread, and broil briefly to toast.

Photos from Honolulu

2011-01-05T13:11:00.000-08:00

I have already written about our trip last November to Honolulu. But I've finally uploaded some pictures (click on the photos for the Picasa album):

Christmas Eve and Christmas dinners

2010-12-25T19:28:00.000-08:00

On Christmas Eve, or the day before if they will close, pick up two rabbits (about two and a half pounds each) from the butcher, along with half a pound of bacon. Have the butcher cut each rabbit into six pieces: the saddle into two, each hind leg, and the fore-section in half through the backbone (so that the forelegs are attached to the ribs). Each rabbit feeds four people, or three if they're very hungry.

From the fish market, collect live crabs (one per every two people) and oysters (small is easier; two to four per person).

Also have the following vegetables from the local organic market: lettuce for two nights, one head celery, a few carrots, some fennel, six or eight parsnips, and plenty of Brussels sprouts. I assume you have plenty of dried herbs and spices on hand, but be sure also to have some white wine for cooking, two pints of heavy cream, and your best wine for the table.

From the bakery, pick up a loaf of good bread for Christmas Eve, and another for Christmas for good measure (they'll be closed).

Early in the afternoon, prepare the rabbit. Remove the livers, hearts, and kidneys and set aside in a covered bowl in the fridge for some other project (the hearts can go in a bad labeled "soup stock", or saute them and enjoy; use the offal within a few days, says the internet). Transfer the meat to a large bowl, season generously with salt and pepper, and add ¾ cup prepared Dijon mustard, 2 teaspoons ground mustard seed, 2 cups heavy cream (or 1 ½ cup crème fraîche), 8 large garlic cloves (peeled and barley crushed), 4 bay leaves, 2 tablespoons fresh or 2 teaspoons dried thyme, and 2 tablespoons fresh chopped sage. Cut the ½ pound high-end thick-sliced bacon into ¼-inch lardons, and add to the rabbit. With your hands, smear the ingredients all over the rabbit pieces to mix and coat evenly. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.

Bring water to a boil in every large pot you have. Get very good at pot-juggling.

Melt a tablespoon or two butter in a medium pan. Add most of a head of celery, chopped (save the rest of the celery in a bag labeled "soup stock"). You can also add a leek if you like. Salt the celery, cover the pot, and let it saute until the celery is very tender, about twenty minutes. When ready, transfer celery and 1 cup dry white cooking wine to a blender and puree until smooth. Return to the pot. Add another cup wine and one to two cups cream, and bring to a boil. Simmer a little, adjust the salt, and keep hot.

Meanwhile, wash the oysters, and then shuck them. (Or try to anyway. Discover that the shucking knife you bought at the grocery store is useless. Call all the neighbors asking to borrow a replacement, only to discover that none of your neighbors have ever shucked an oyster. Eventually get into the oysters with an old-fashioned can opener and a large flat-head screwdriver.) Provided you do not break two many shells, prepare a platter with some of the nicer oysters for serving on the half-shell as finger food while the family waits for dinner. Save the rest of the shucked oysters and their juices in a bowl set over a little ice.

When the water is fully a boil, cook the crabs. Twenty minutes is usually the right amount of time; drain them, rinse in cold water until you can handle them, and proceed to clean them out and break the bodies into two pieces each. Save the outer shells in a bag marked "crab stock". The yellow "crab butter" is good too (if you trust that your crabs came from a clean stretch of ocean), but not so much the mustard-colored stuff near the inner organs. Don't save the inner organs — the gills in particular you should throw away, as they accumulate pollutants throughout the crab's life. At the end of the meal, gather the shells for the crab stock bag.

Wash lettuce for a salad, and thinly slice the fennel bulb into it. Dress the salad lightly with a vinaigrette made with a nice white wine or champagne vinegar.

When the crabs are about ready, return the celery puree to a full boil, and add the shucked oysters and their liquid. Poach the oysters in the bisque for three to five minutes, and then serve in small bowls or tea cups.

Serve the oyster-and-celery bisque and the crabs with a good French or sourdough bread, and a fine white wine. The meal appreciates slightly sweeter table wines; this is a good night to have that expensive Riesling you've been saving.

Happy Christmas Eve!

Begin the following day with the traditional presents rituals and a large breakfast of quince pancakes with maple syrup.

In the mid-afternoon, remove the rabbit from the refrigerator and let it begin to return to room temperature. Preheat both ovens to 400°F, and get out every glass lasagna pan you have in the kitchen.

Transfer the rabbit to two 9x13 pans. The meat should fit in a single layer but fairly snugly. Pour all the sauce and bacon over the rabbit. Bake 1 hour, checking occasionally and turning the meat as it browns. The juices should reduce a bit; if they reduce too much, add some white wine or chicken broth or rabbit broth. The rabbit should be cooked throughout and browned on top when ready; serve in its pan and juices, and set a spoon out at the table along with the meat fork.

While the rabbit is baking, halve the Brussels sprouts and slice the parsnips into ¼-inch rounds. Butter two lasagna pans, one for the sprouts and one for the roots. Add the vegetables and mix each with some dried thyme and salt. Top each pan with slices of butter. Add some broth or wine to the Brussels sprouts, and cover them with foil. Bake both Brussles sprouts (covered) and parsnips (uncovered) for thirty minutes or so; check them occasionally, and stir them if you don't feel like they're cooking evenly.

Wash lettuce for a salad. Slice up some carrots and green peppers. Dress it with plenty of olive oil and red wine vinegar.

Open a very good bottle of red wine — we had the Cakebread merlot — and enjoy the company of your family while dinner is in the oven. Set the table with enough pads to protect the table from four different hot lasagna pans. Serve the feast.

Merry Christmas!

The rabbit in mustard sauce is from the inestimable Platter of Figs by David Tanis, and was definitely the high point of quite a few meals. The rest of the two dinners did not follow published recipes, but were also delicious.

Salad with red onion, cubed celery root, the last garden tomatoes, and seared tuna

2010-12-19T23:05:00.000-08:00

Pizza with the end of the garden basil

2010-12-19T23:04:00.000-08:00

Byzantine onion soup

2010-12-19T22:52:00.000-08:00

I'm finally posting food photos from November. The problem is that we're visiting Eugene, so I don't have my cookbooks.

About a month ago, we made a reasonably tasty "Byzantine onion soup" from a Greek cookbook we picked up at a used bookstore. I don't remember the exact recipe. Roughly, you saute onions in some butter with a number of "sweet" spices (cinnamon is the one I distinctly remember), and blend everything with the immersion blender. Then you do the whisk-in-an-egg thing to thicken the soup. We served the soup with freshly made croutons. It was tasty, but not something we'll repeat.

Roasted squash rancheros

2010-12-19T20:54:00.002-08:00

We mostly followed PPK's recipe for Butternut Rancheros. Mmm.

Walking in Eugene

2010-12-19T20:54:00.001-08:00

From the University neighborhood, head south on University St. After you cross 24th, the street ends at the Masonic Cemetery, which is a lovely graveyard and worth exploring, but you have a lot more walking ahead of you. So cross over the hill and end up on University on the other side. Continue south, and you'll soon see the bridge over 30th at Harris Elementary School. Cross over the bridge, cutting a block west to continue south on Potter. Turn right (west, downhill) on 32nd.

Pass Alder Street, but don't quite get all the way to Hilyard. Instead, find the alley behind Peace Health Medical Center, and turn left on it. A few buildings after the doctors' office is Hideaway Bakery, in the funny yellow building with Swiss-inspired trompe l'oeil that also houses Mazzi's Italian Restaurant. At Hideaway, order sandwiches to go. If you're willing to wait a little bit, I highly recommend the grilled tempeh sandwich.

Cross Hilyard over the the mulched Rexius Trail by Amazon Creek, and head south. The trail runs on both sides of the creek, with a number of cute bridges, so cross over a few times looking for the drier side. Walk all the way to the southern end of the Rexius Trail (about a mile; from home to Hideaway was another mile or so).

At the bus stop, look for a "dead end" street that continues south. It goes less than a block, passing some lovely mosaic-tiled gates, and then there's a sign for the Ridgeline trail system, which will take you to the top of Spencer's Butte. It's a nice climb through lovely forests. There's some forks in the trail, but they're all well marked. About a mile in, you'll get to the Fox Hollow trailhead; after crossing Fox Hollow, it's another two miles or so to the top.

Eat lunch at the top of Spencer's Butte. Admire the views of the Cascades to the east, and the rest of the Willamette Valley laid out in front of you.

Then head back down the hill. If you run a bit, and if you are me, then you might hurt your knee a little on the steep parts. Oops.

Continue back along the Rexius Trail, and follow the west side of the creek at 32nd towards Amazon Park. At 29th (the dog park), turn west up the street. Snake through the side streets until 25th, and then head to 25th and Willamette. Go to what used to be called Oasis, and is now Capella Market, a reasonably hippie grocery store, and pick up ingredients for dinner.

Then find out that Capella doesn't have clams, so walk back to 29th to go to the much larger Market of Choice, which used to be called Price Choppers. Then find that your knees really are hurting from the ten mile walk and the steep downhill run. So wait by the fire while your boyfriend does the shopping, and call home for a ride.

Some food from the weekend

2010-11-27T23:02:00.000-08:00

I'm not going to regale you with recipes for every Thanksgiving dish — everything was delicious, and almost everything is a favorite standard — but I thought it best to at least check in with a quick rundown of the weekend. On Wednesday we made pizza for the family (four cookie-sheet-sized pizzas, two with tomatoes, basil, and mozzarella and two with pears, walnuts, blue cheese, and mozzarella). Tomorrow night's plan is for stew with chickpeas, clams, and sausage. Tonight we had skate, very yummy baked fifteen to twenty minutes in a buttered pan at 400°, and then topped with browned butter and capers. We served the skate with brown rice and chard: bring a few inches of water to a boil in a large pot, and add a good handful of baking soda, and then stir in two bunches rainbow chard, cut into one-inch-thick ribbons; peel a couple cloves of garlic, mince them, and then add a large handful of salt to the garlic in a small pile on a cutting board and work the salt into the garlic with a knife until you have a nice paste; after about two minutes, drain the greens in a colander, dry them off a bit in a clean dish towel, and toss the greens with the garlic in a serving bowl.

On Friday, as we do every year, we made soup. My brother invited a friend from school to join us for the Thanksgiving weekend, and said friend is quite strictly vegetarian, so in addition to our usually turkey soup, we also made a vegan option. (The friend left today, hence the meaty dinners tonight and tomorrow.) Coarsely chop four onions, half a dozen celery sticks, and about as many carrots, and divide them roughly evenly between two pots. Add a few bay leaves, a few peppercorns, and a large handful of salt to each pot. In the larger pot, also add the saved turkey neck and giblets as well as the bones (break them up if you can with a cleaver to let the marrow out), but discard the skin and use the fat for some other project. Save any savable meat, of course. Cover the contents of each pot with water (but not more than enough to cover), place the lids on, bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and cook about an hour.

Dice another three onions. Place two of them in a large pot and one in a medium pot, and saute in a splash of olive oil with some salt. Also add diced carrot and celery to each to make two mirepoix. To the smaller pot, add three quarter pound sliced crimini mushrooms. Once the mushrooms start to release their liquid, add between half and a third of a cup of pearled barley to the smaller pot, and between half a cup and two thirds to the larger pot. Stir the barley in to coat, and then place a colander or sieve over the smaller part and pour in the finished vegetable broth, rescuing the cooked veggies to give to the backyard chickens (it was raining all weekend — that soup was from October). Then move the colander to the larger pot and pour in the turkey broth.

Bring both soups to a boil. After about ten minutes, add frozen edamame to each pot. Bring back to a boil, cook another ten minutes, and stir in a fair amount of saved turkey meat into the turkey-broth (non-mushroom) soup. Adjust the salt and serve with good bread and good wine.

You know you're in the Pacific Northwest when...

2010-11-23T17:19:00.001-08:00

B and I are sitting in the SeaTac airport, waiting for our flight, enjoying the remarkably-pretty (for an airport) food court between the C and B gates. We were amused to find that SeaTac expects its patrons to sort their table trash between recyclables, landfill, and (believe it or not) compostables!

The food at SeaTac is decent. I like PDX better for airport food, but this place isn't half bad.

There's snow throughout Oregon and Washington. When we were flying over Puget Sound, we were amused to see that the two blocks closest to the water were snow-free, but get half a mile inland and there's six inches of snow standing on the ground.

Autumnal pizza: onions, squash, kale, blue cheese, and walnuts

2010-11-23T12:04:00.000-08:00

We made one of our better pizzas a few days ago, when J and A joined us for dinner. As with our other recent meals, we forgot to take photos.

In the morning, make a pizza dough. Dissolve a tablespoon or so of honey in about a cup of warm water, and then whisk in a tablespoon of instant yeast. In the standing mixer, combine two cups white flour and a bit more than a cup whole wheat, and a tablespoon of salt. Then pour in the yeast mixture and mix to combine. You don't need to knead that much. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and place in the warmest part of your house. Since our heater isn't working, the best spot for us was in the oven (turned off) right above the pilot light.

About an hour before you want to eat, remove the dough from the oven, and begin preheating to 450–500ˆ with the pizza stone inside. Divide the dough into two pieces and roll it out with a floured rolling pin. You want to let the dough rise a little rolled out, so if your kitchen is still very cold, place the rolled-out dough in the oven for just about two minutes (enough to get a bounce, but not enough to kill the yeast).

Thinly slice a large white onion, and saute it in some olive oil and salt until translucent. Set aside. Peel two delicata squash, cut into half- or quarter-inch rings, and poke/cut out the seeds. Heat some oil, and fry the rings of squash on both sides until just starting to brown. Bring to a boil a medium pot of water with a teaspoon of baking soda. Wash, destem, and cut into half-inch ribbons one bunch kale, and boil in the soda water for just a minute or two, so tenderize and bring out the bright green color (the soda is to prevent discoloration: what makes vegetables discolor when cooking is the acids released from the veggies). Drain the kale and rinse under cold water so you can handle it.

Cut a little less than a pound of mozzarella into thin slices. Begin assembling the pizzas: onions as a "sauce", then a single layer of squash, then the kale, then mozzarella. On top of that, crumble about half a pound of a strong blue cheese, and then top the pizza with fresh walnuts.

Bake each pizza between twenty and twenty five minutes. This type of autumnal pizza will pair with any wine or beer that you like, but cold weather calls for a hearty red.

Bacon, green onion, and barley risotto

2010-11-22T23:42:00.000-08:00

Add another dinner to the we-forgot-photos category. Last night's single-pot dinner was one of my favorite risotti. Begin by mincing about a third of a pound of bacon, and saute it in the bottom of a small or medium pot until crisp. Then set aside the meat, but save the fat in the pan. Add and saute the whites from a bunch of scallions with a little salt, and as they start to tenderize, add one cup pearled barley. Coat the barley in the hot fat (add more fat — butter or olive oil — if necessary).

Meanwhile, you should have been warming up two cups of broth. Add ½ cup white wine to the hot barley; it should sizzle immediately, but stir it in. Then add the two cups of broth. If it is already hot, it should boil pretty quickly. Reduce the heat, cover, and simmer twenty minutes, checking and stirring once or twice. Then remove the cover, and you might want to cook the barley another ten minutes or so if there's still too much liquid.

Then add the bacon back to the barley, along with with green parts of the scallions, minced. Stir in, a handful at a time, plenty of grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, tasting as you go. Serve with the same white wine you used for cooking.

Spanish stew with chickpeas, clams, and sausage

2010-11-19T00:42:00.000-08:00

We were four tonight at our table: joining us for dinner was Monica (of Gastromonica fame, and one of my favorite cooks and people) and her partner. A high-risk strategy for dinner, B and I decided to try a new recipe from Chez Panisse Cafe Cookbook: a Spanish-style stew with chickpeas, clams, and sausage. The meal was sufficiently fantastic that we forgot to take any photographs.

The night before you want this stew, cover 1 ½ cups dried chickpeas with plenty of water, and let soak overnight (beans will double in size). In the morning or mid-day, drain the chickpeas and add a small white onion, one or two carrots, a celery stick if you have one, some bay leaf, some fresh thyme, and 1 Tbsp of salt; cover with water, bring to a boil, and simmer on low 90 minutes. Let the beans cool in their liquids. When you start cooking, drain the chickpeas and discard the veggies.

In the bottom of a large pot, brown 1 lb pork sausage (we used the breakfast links from Highland Hills, as it was all that was left when we got to the market today), crumbled or cut into small meatballs, in 1 Tbsp olive oil. Remove the meat to a bowl, and discard the liquid. Meanwhile, finely mince a large white onion, or, more easily, chop it coarsely and then puree in the food processor.

Add a little more olive oil to the pot and cook the onion until lightly browned. Meanwhile, finely mince (puree in food processor) one fennel bulb and lots of garlic, and add to the onion, along with a little salt. Cook a bit longer, and add one medium-spicy pepper, in small diced, and 1 Tbsp paprika. Also add a handful of small or two medium-large tomatoes, cut into medium dice.

Clean 3 lb manila clams while the vegetables cook.

Finally, stir in the chickpeas and the sausage, and cover and bring back to a simmer. Then add ½ cup white wine, ½ lb young braising greens or chard cut into ½-inch strips, and the clams. Cover and cook five to ten more minutes, stirring once or twice, until the clams have all opened.

While the clams cook, lightly toast some slices of a nice bread, and rub each slice with a clove of garlic. Serve the stew in shallow bowls, with a slice of bread at the bottom of each bowl and the stew spooned over it.

Accompany the stew with good company, fun conversation, and a nice Pinot Grigio (also set out the remaining bread with some butter). After the stew, serve a lettuce salad with a sherry vinaigrette as a palate cleanser.

Open a bottle of fine Moscatel, and move from the dining room table to the living room couch. Set out a plate of figs from the neighbors tree, cut into quarters with a dollop of a nice sheep's cheese on each, and sprinkled with chopped almonds and honey. Conclude the meal with macadamia-and-white-chocolate cookies.

Four days in Honolulu, four and a half nights of Japanese food

2010-11-15T22:45:00.000-08:00

B had a conference in Honolulu this weekend, and so we flew here on Thursday (I'm starting this post from the Honolulu airport on Monday, as we wait for our flight, not really wanting to leave). We stayed in Waikiki, which is not known for great food. In fact, we enjoyed all of our meals, which I will detail blow. In brief: what you can be sure to find prepared well in Honolulu is Japanese food.

Thursday: overpriced, but tasty, sushi in Waikiki

We arrived at San Francisco airport Thursday with just barely enough time to catch our flight (they had started boarding by the time we were through security) — since we didn't have time to find take-out lunch for the plane, we were forced to go with the "snack boxes" that United sells. We've had better cheese and crackers. But our flight here went smoothly, and in spite of arriving on a national holiday, we managed to catch a bus to Waikiki.

After checking in to the hotel, we asked the receptionist for sushi recommendations, and he sent us to Doraku Sushi (warning: link makes sound, a nice place in an upscale shopping mall between our hotel and the beach (he also recommended Sansei Sushi, which Lonely Planet also liked, an probably we should have gone there). The dinner was tasty, but a bit more expensive than it should have been. B ordered a tuna-and-avocado tartar, and I had something with thinly sliced snapper. We were still hungry, so we had uni nigiri (I thought the waiter had said that the urchin was served in the shell, but, alas!), and then a fish-and-greens salad to close. With the wine and tip, the dinner was more than we had hoped, but not a terrible welcome-to-Hawaii dinner.

Friday: picnic lunch on Diamond Head, and menchankoin Waikiki

We had stopped into a corner market (every street corner in Waikiki has an ABC Store) after dinner to pick up some milk for our hotel-room coffee, but they didn't have acceptable food for breakfast. So Friday morning we walked to Lonely Planet's favorite diner, only to find them with an hour-long line, and so we found ourselves at Starbucks making do with their arm-and-leg yogurt-and-granola and a microwaved "spinach, feta, and egg white wrap". The iced coffee, though, was welcome.

Afterwards, we did find the one actual grocery store in Waikiki, Food Pantry (prices are about the same as at Andronico's), where we bought crackers, brie, and grapes for a picnic. From there, we walked to Diamond Head Crater. Well, actually, we walked all the way around Diamond Head, because we wanted to see the beaches. The crater is quite a sight, and has a fantastic one-mile mostly-stairs climb to an old military outpost, which I highly recommend. Unbeknownst to us until we got to the park, they have started repairs on the trail, and were closing the hike every weekday afternoon, so we were some of the last hikers in. In any case, we had a fun picnic at the top of the mountain, until the workers came to kick us off. Along with the walk back to Waikiki (the short way), we did about ten miles of walking and 800 feet of elevation gain.

After a brief swim, we consulted lonely planet and went to Menchanko-Tei, a fantastically good cheep Japanese joint. Menchanko is some kind of Japanese meal-in-a-bowl, like the ramens and udons that we're used to on the mainland. (It's a good thing that we've stopped being so strict about vegetarianism: every dish had pork and chicken in it.) All told, the food was delicious, and not at all expensive. However, the only wine on the menu (a serviceable Beringer) was $36. I would have been much happier paying the same total but with food priced higher and the drink lower: as it was, the wine felt like a rip-off. (Corkage is $18, so if you are in Waikiki, go for lunch or order sake.)

Saturday: Berkeley lunch and fantastic sushi

Having found the grocery store, we were set for breakfasts for the rest of our trip: english muffins with cream cheese, yogurt, orange juice, coffee, on the balcony of our tenth-floor hotel room.

After breakfast, we headed towards Chaminade University, where B had his conference. We had been planning on getting poke at a shop along the way that Lonely Planet recommended, but found the building razed (our Lonely Planet is two years old). So instead, after checking in to our conference, we headed up the street to Town, a local-organic restaurant where we felt very at home. B had an entree salad, and I had a tasty sandwich with beets, mozzarella, and arugula, and it came with very good french fries that were served with fried sage on top.

After B's talk, we walked through the campus of the much bigger University of Hawaii at Manoa, cooled off at Lonely Planet's favorite coffee shop (Glazers), and then went to Imanas Tei for dinner. The dinner was fantastic — not too expensive and absolutely our best quality-to-price ratio. We each ordered the "Nigiri A": after miso and salad, we were treated to a platter of two kinds of tuna, salmon, various white fish, and roe and sea urchin (the waiter says that if we want it served in its shell, we're better off looking near the urchin farms in California).

Sunday: Museums, dim sum, and take-out

For our last full day in Honolulu, we took the bus to Bishop Museum (an ok anthropology museum, but at $15 for students, not worth admissions), and then walked to China Town, where we had absolutely fantastic dim sum at Legend Vegetarian. If you go to Honolulu, you simply must go to Legend (they also have a seafood restaurant next door). Don't order from the menu (we started with a broccoli and mushroom stir fry and lemon chicken, which were good but not "best ever") — simply eat everything in the dim sum cart.

From there, we walked to Honolulu Academy of Arts, which is a nice art museum. The elegant building is laid out into thirty numbered "galleries", each of which tries to collapse a humongous amount of art history ("Italian Renaissance", "Korea") into one room. If you, like us, have been to many European and Euro-American museums, feel free to skip the first ten rooms: they're nice, but the museum has the requisite one Picasso, one Cezanne, one Goya, one Matisse, and you won't find anything you haven't seen (or seen better than). But if you, like us, have confined most of your art museums to Europe, then I highly recommend you check out the second two thirds of the museum. The style of one-room-per-topic is continued, so this is not a complete exposure to, say, Chinese art history. But there are pieces and styles that we'd never seen, from countries that aren't usually featured: nineteenth-century cartoon/comic style art from Japan, a wall of Indonesian masks, country-by-country exploration of southeast Asia (organized by pre-European-colonial nation, rather than post-), O'Keeffes from when she tour Hawaii.

Our original plan had been to walk back to China Town, or to find sushi near the Honolulu Academy. But we weren't excited by either prospect, and we weren't hungry enough to eat before it got too dark to walk back to Waikiki. So we returned to the hotel, stopping by a Safeway along the way, and looked up take-out sushi joints, eventually finding Sushi 2 Go. For take-out sushi, it was very good, and we had a lovely dinner just the two of us in our hotel room, with a bottle of Oregon pinot noir (compared to restaurant wine, even the expensive stuff at Safeway is great) and pineapple for dessert. We were pretty tired of eating out, and happy to have a meal just the two of us.

Monday: Flying

I'm finishing this post on the airplane, although I won't be able to post it until I get home tonight. For lunch, we had more takeout sushi, this time from the very serviceable Samurai Sushi and Bento in the Honolulu airport. Dinner will be crackers, brie, and fruit on the airplane, with the airplane quarter-bottle wine. There are worse meals. Here's to cooking at home tomorrow!

Mashed celery root, brussels sprouts, and broiled seabass with onion

2010-11-09T01:00:00.000-08:00

Gnocchi with blue-cheese-almond "pesto" and arugula

2010-11-09T00:33:00.000-08:00

Broiled teriyaki chicken with a stir fry of portobello mushrooms, red onion, and bok choi

2010-11-09T00:29:00.000-08:00

Autumn vegetable and chicken curry stew, served in kabocha squash bowls

2010-11-09T00:15:00.000-08:00

Here's a fine fusion dish for a cold autumn day. Find small, round, blemish-free kabocha squash, one per person. Carve off the tops as if you were carving jack-o-lanterns, and remove and discard the seeds. Save the tops (if they are particularly thick, cut off a bit of the flesh for cooking into the stew; sprinkle the inside flesh of the tops with a little apple cider vinegar if you're worried about letting them sit out for a while). Rub some salt into the flesh inside the squashes, wrap the outsides of the squashes with foil, and back upwards of an hour in a medium-temperature oven. You want the flesh to be tender, but the sides to retain their integrity, so check regularly with a fork.

Meanwhile, prepare the stew. Begin by sauteing onions in olive oil with some salt, a bit of ground allspice, and plenty of curry powder. Then add a few sour green apples, chopped up, and some peppers, and any other fall veggies you might happen to have (e.g. the extra squash from the top of the jack-o-lanterns). After sauteing a bit, add some vegetable or chicken stock, or, better, some blended squash soup (we found some in the freezer). (If you have lots of extra winter squash, you can make this soup before making the stew: onions, squash, broth, a little salt, cooked until tender and then pureed.) Bring the stew to a boil, and then stir in some pieces of chicken, to poach. Once the chicken has cooked, taste the stew and adjust the seasoning.

When the flesh of the kabochas is starting to get tender, remove the "bowls" from the oven and fill with the stew while still very hot. The heat from the stew will help cook the insides of the squash even more. Replace the tops and serve.

The point is to eat the soup, and also eat the bowls mixed into the soup from the inside out. We had been intending this for our Hallowe'en dinner, but ended up pushing it to All Saints' Day instead. This stew can go with almost any wine, depending on how cold it is outside.

Grilled lamb burgers sweet potato chips and all the fixings

2010-11-08T18:22:00.000-08:00

Having moved from vegetarian to marketarian, we have discovered a new favorite dish: lamb burgers. Mince an onion and saute it in a little fat, and then mix it with ground meat, maybe some minced herbs, and an egg yolk. Actually, don't use an egg yolk: for an extra treat, swap the egg for a dollop of homemade mayonnaise. Then form in to patties, dredge with flour if you like, and fry in the same pan you cooked the onions in, or grill.

Don't have homemade mayonnaise? You should. Our very easy recipe is from the great Julia Child: in the food processor, mix one egg plus two yolks, a heaping teaspoon of prepared mustard, a little salt, and a tablespoon of acid, for about thirty seconds. Then, with the machine running, slowly drizzle in between one and two cups oil (use a good oil, but it's fine to mix: I usually combine olive and peanut oils).

Our always side with burgers are sweet potatoes, in some sort of fry/chip form. Slice some sweet potatoes, one large or two small per person, and toss with olive oil, salt, paprika, and cumin. Then bake or grill them. Grilled sweet potatoes are lovely, and give you a chance to warm up the grill before cooking the meat.

For fixings, open some jars of homemade pickles and ketchup. For a quick dill pickle, clean some jars, and add a clove or two of garlic, cleaned sliced cucumber (be sure to remove the area right next to the flower, as it contains enzymes that make the pickle lose its crispness), and a tablespoon or so of dill seed, mustard seed, black pepper, and maybe a bay leaf or some fennel seed. Combine equal parts water and distilled vinegar, and maybe a third as much non-iodized salt (the iodine can throw off the pickling), over the stove until bubbling and the salt has dissolved. Pour the hot brine over the cucumbers, and either seal the jars in the canner or keep in the refrigerator. If you prefer sweet pickles, add plenty of sugar to the brine, and instead of garlic and dill use sliced onion and some whole cloves (keep the mustard). Ketchup is a bit more involved: cook tomatoes, onions, and a bell pepper with a bag of whole spices (allspice, celery seed, etc.); drain; puree; add vinegar, sugar, salt, paprika; cook until the correct consistency.

Slice up some cheese, a garden tomato, and some red onion. We usually make our own burger buns (your favorite whole wheat dough works well), but this time we had an "herb slab" from Acme Bread. Serve burgers with a hearty red wine on the sweeter side.

Inside the San Francisco ferry building

2010-11-06T19:12:00.000-07:00

Leek pie with seared ahi

2010-11-06T19:08:00.000-07:00

We found some pie dough that we had stuck away at the back of the freezer, and defrosted it overnight in the fridge. For a leek pie, clean and slice a few leeks and saute them in some butter, salt, and thyme. Heap the leeks onto a pie or pastry crust, fold up the sides, and bake until the crust is golden. Leek pie goes well with almost anything; we paired it with seared ahi tuna and a pinot gris.

Various veggies and couscous pilaf

2010-11-06T19:05:00.000-07:00

For a "what's in the fridge" dinner, had: sauteed green beans; steamed spinach; a saute of sweet peppers, onions, and Tokyo turnips; and couscous cooked with raisins and a little red wine.

Composed salad with homemade bread

2010-11-06T18:58:00.000-07:00

Rather than making our usual salad, we followed a recipe from Chez Panisse Vegetables, which asked for us to stew onions with wine, oil, slices of lemon, and fresh herbs/spices (whole garlic cloves, bay leaves, pepper corns), and then to add cauliflower florets. The cauliflower is cooked on heat only until it's just starting to turn tender, but then the stew is allowed to cool and refrigerated overnight before serving. We served the cooked lemon slices as garnish on the salad, and for the rest of the salad we included stewed beets, canned whole sardines, and green beans blanched in the onion stewing liquid.

We also made a whole wheat baguette, and set out butter and a wonderful Italian goat cheese that our friend M had given us.

Lunch: small lettuce salad with home-grown cherry tomatoes, Oregon cooked salad shrimp, baked beets, and kalamata olives

2010-11-06T16:06:00.000-07:00

Pork chops, roasted carrots with fennel, and caramelized radishes

2010-11-06T15:57:00.001-07:00

Radishes are a bit of a pain, because they are very tasty individually, but you never really want more than one. B sliced a bunch of radishes thin and sauteed them with onions, red wine, and brown sugar to caramelize them.

The roasted carrot recipe came from Cook's Illustrated (November & December 2010). A close paraphrase: "Adjust oven ract to middle position and heat oven to 425 degrees. In large bowl, combine 1 pound carrots (peeled, halved crosswise, and cut lengthwise if necessary to create even pieces), 1 small fennel bulb (cored and sliced ½ inch thick), 2 tablspoons unsalted butter (melted), ½ teaspoon salt, and ¼ teaspoon pepper; toss to coat. Transfer carrots to foil- or parchment-lined rimmed baking sheet and spread in a single layer. Cover baking sheet tightly with foil and cook for 15 minutes. Remove foil and continue to cook, stirring twice, until carrots are well browned and tender, 30 to 35 minutes. Transfer to a serving platted, and toss vegetables with ¼ cup toasted sliced almonds, 1 teaspoon lemon juice, and, optionally, 2 teaspoons chopped fresh parsley."

While the carrots were in the oven, B roasted the pork chops under the broiler. Before serving, he coated them with more chopped almonds.

Breakfast: French toast with homemade jams

2010-11-06T14:16:00.000-07:00

Homemade farfalle with tomatoes, basil, and ricotta salata

2010-11-06T14:09:00.000-07:00

Breakfast: salad with poached egg, toast with jam, and cappuccino with a heart on top

2010-11-06T14:00:00.000-07:00

Seared ahi tuna, steamed broccoli, and mashed potatoes with celery root

2010-11-06T13:57:00.000-07:00

Picnic before Much Ado About Nothing

2010-11-06T13:45:00.000-07:00

Dinner picnics are a wonderful treat, and live theater is another. The California Shakespeare Theater encourages you to do both, by surrounding the outdoor stage with beautiful hills and a lovely picnic ground. We have seen two shows with CalShakes, and were unimpressed with their Twelfth Night last year, but this summer's Much Ado About Nothing was wonderful.

For dinner, B made a seeded baguette, which we had with Fromager d'Affinois and radishes. I made a light entre salad: blanched green beans, carrots, Oregonzola, fantastic heirloom tomatoes, and a shallot dressing.

Almost always, you should serve red wine at a picnic, even if you are serving food you might pair with white at home — the temperature starts to drop as you are finishing your meal. The CalShakes theater is happy to let you bring drinks in (they sell wine, coffee, and hot chocolate), so bring a half-bottle of something sweet for the show.

Quinoa and hippie saute

2010-11-06T13:41:00.000-07:00

On an unplanned night, B threw together a wonderful "what's in the fridge?" dinner. Over a bed of black quinoa, he served a saute of onions, beet greens, tomatoes, ground lamb, spices, and the odds and ends of the vegetable drawer. The dinner was odd but delicious.

Moussaka

2010-11-06T13:37:00.000-07:00

We love moussaka, that wonderful Greek casserole of eggplant, tomatoes, and ground lamb. But I do not recommend the recipe from Joy of Cooking. It does not taste particularly Greek — it just tastes like Joy. Gruyere as the only cheese? Currants?

Stuffed delicata

2010-11-06T13:26:00.000-07:00

Wash, remove the tips from, halve, and scoop out the seeds from two delicata squash. Rub some salt inside the squash, place the squash halves face-down in an oiled glass pan, and bake ten to minutes. Meanwhile, in a food processor combine onion, apples, walnuts, mushrooms, and a little salt and oil, until coarsely chopped. (If the onion is particularly piquant or the mushrooms a little touch, saute them first.) Remove the squash from the oven, turn upright, and stuff with the onion-and-walnut mixture. Sprinkle grated cheese on top, and return to the oven for half an hour.

Steamed greens, Israeli couscous, tomatoes, and jumbo prawns

2010-10-10T21:38:00.000-07:00

We regularly buy prawns from Mike and Yvette Hudson, and usually the prawns come without their heads but otherwise intact and weight about 1/28 lb. Last week, however, Hudson's supplier couldn't fill the order with the large prawns, and so included jumbos at the large rate. So we were treated to some very tasty, very large prawns: one pound consisted of only 14 prawns. "Shrimp" these are not.

We peeled and deveined the prawns as we usually do and boiled them in enough water to cover for a few minutes, so that the flesh turned pink throughout. Then we tossed the cooked prawns with chopped up heirloom tomatoes (a dark red one and a bright yellow one), some lemon juice and salt, and lots of diced garlic.

Meanwhile, we washed one bunch each of kale and green chard. We removed the stems from the greens, and ripped the greens into pieces. Working in batches, we steamed the greens until they were very bright green. We drained off some of the garlic lemon dressing from the prawns and used in to dress the greens.

Finally, we chopped an onion and sauteed it in some olive oil, and then added one cup Israeli couscous and 1.5 cups salted water. We cooked the couscous for five minutes, and then drained off the extant water in a sieve.

We plated the dinner in the kitchen: greens, then couscous, then tomatoes and prawns. We served the dinner with a pinot gris from Concannon; it's reasonably good, and right now Safeway is charging the same for Concannon as for Firefly Ridge, our standard nice wine (and a Safeway-owned brand).

Grilled dinner: corn, tuna, and summer squash

2010-10-10T21:24:00.000-07:00

Salad with beets, potatoes, eggs, shrimp, celery, carrots, and heirloom tomatoes

2010-10-10T21:21:00.000-07:00

Picnic near Coit Tower: grilled sea bass with potato salad and dill pickles

2010-10-10T20:14:00.000-07:00

Mayonnaise, it turns out, is as easy as anything. We followed the recipe from Julia Child and Company (1978): "Using the metal blade (I never use the plastic one for anything), process [1 whole] egg, [2 egg] yolkds, [1 teaspoon Dijon] mustard, and ½ teaspoon salt for 30 seconds. Then add 1 tablespoon lemon juice or vinegar and process half a minute more. Finally, in a very thin stream, pour in [2 cups olive and/or peanut] oil. When all has gone in, remove cover, check consistency, and taste for seasoning."

So make your own mayonnaise. Also halve a pound of fingerling potatoes and boil them in salted water until cooked but still al dente. Dice a stick or two of celery and about a third of a large red onion. Combine the potatoes, celery, and red onion with some mayonnaise, and maybe some salt and some sherry vinegar. Transfer to a large tuperware container.

Check two half-pound pieces of seabass for scales, and then coat them in a few spoonfuls of mayonnaise. Heat up the grill and cook the bass evenly on all sides, adding some fresh tarragon near the end of the cooking. Let the fish cool slightly and then move to a tuperware.

Finally, prepare a final salad (not pictured) with heirloom tomatoes, garden basil, and a little salt, olive oil, and just a touch of balsamic vinegar.

Pack a cooler with the dishes, and add also a jar of homemade dill pickles (use a recent batch that still has some bite). Find a beautiful picnic spot, and enjoy an early dinner with a nice bottle of red wine.

In particular, find a spot just below Coit Tower by cutting off the trail up a little early. Start dinner around 3:30pm and eat for an hour, and then discover that you don't have time to climb the tower. Instead, head down to Pier 33 for the ferry to Alcatraz Island. Watch Hamlet on Alcatraz, arguably the best Shakespeare production you've seen (and you've seen shows at Ashland — it helps that Hamlet is such a good script). Encourage all your friends to go too, although it looks like they might have sold out.

Tomato, basil, and mozzarella pizza

2010-10-10T20:08:00.000-07:00

Heirloom tomatoes from Riverdog, basil and basil flowers from the garden, fresh mozzarella from Belfiore.

Chicken soup with rice

2010-10-10T20:01:00.000-07:00

Whenever you cook a chicken, you should save all the extra inner parts in a bag in the freezer. You should save also the scraps of celery and onion and so on that you don't want to eat directly (wash all veggies before placing in the freezer).

On soup day, combine in a large pot the carcass from your cooked chicken (take apart your leftovers, saving any good meat), the giblets and veggie scraps from the freezer, a coarsely chopped onion, one or two halved carrots, a stalk or two of celery, and some black pepper corn and a bay leaf. Cover with water and bring to a simmer for about an hour.

When the stock is well-flavored, strain out and discard all the solid stuff. Saute a mirepoix of onion, celery, and carrot in just a little olive oil and add to the stock. Add also one cup of white rice (and some extra water if necessary) and bring to a boil. Cook the rice for ten minutes, and then add cooked meat cut from your leftovers. (The only part you don't want for any step of the soup is the fatty skin: the skin itself toughens a bit in boiling, and soup should not have much fat in it.) Cook another ten minutes. Then adjust the salt and serve.

Rigatoni with heirloom tomatoes and garden basil

2010-10-10T15:00:00.000-07:00

Riverdog has been giving us beautiful heirloom tomatoes in all different colors, ranging from wine to lemon. And our garden has produced a bouquet of basil with light greens but also eggplant-purples. Toss tomatoes, basil, minced garlic, and olive oil with al dente rigatoni, and serve with a grated parmesan or romano.

Lunch salad with watermelon agua fresca

2010-10-10T14:38:00.000-07:00

Cut the flesh of half a yellow watermelon into pieces, and place in a blender. Pulsing, being careful not to cut up the seeds, macerate the melon, and then pass it through a sieve. Combine the watermelon juice with plenty of lime juice (this is vital), a little sugar, and some water, to taste.

Mash a shallot and some salt to a paste in the mortar and pestle; add some lemon juice and olive oil. Slice a bulb of fennel, and toss with the dressing. Divide the fennel between two shallow bowls. Pick two or three small ripe tomatoes from the vine, and add the halved tomatoes to the bowls. Divide in two and add also one carrot, sliced; one stalk celery, cut up; and an eight once tub of cooked salad shrimp.

Later, smile when B makes you a cappuccino with a heart drawn on the top.

Chicken Provençal

2010-10-10T12:38:00.000-07:00

When B and I read Sassy Radish's recipe for Chicken Provençal, we knew we had to try it. So we bought a four-and-a-half-pound bird from Highland Hills Farm (who don't seem to maintain a web presence, but do produce organic free-range chicken, beef, goat, lamb, and boar). Riverdog, from whom we get our veggies, also produces chicken, which we haven't tried (they don't bring them to the Thursday market); we'd like to, because we think that Riverdog's pork sausage is even better than the (very good) sausage from Highland Hills.

Begin by combining vegetables — lemon (very thinly sliced), tomatoes (in pieces), onions, whole garlic cloves, prepared olives, herbs — and a little salt in a 9x13 glass pan. Let the veggies cook and render their juices in the oven while you disassemble a chicken. Once the veggies have cooked down, snuggle the chicken parts amidst the vegetables. Cook the chicken another twenty to forty minutes, until the top is browned and an instant-read thermometer measures the interior temperature of the chicken to be at least 175°F.

Serves many. Save everything for a chicken soup later.

Grilled prawn and halloumi salad

2010-10-09T20:10:00.000-07:00

Peel and devein prawns. Collect cherry tomatoes from garden. Cut halloumi into squares. Separate the layers of a small red onion (not pictured) and cut into squares.

Put prawns, cherry tomatoes, cheese, and onions on skewers, and grill the ingredients until cooked (prawns should be pink throughout; cheese should be barely charred; tomatoes should be starting to burst; onions should be softening).

Wash and rip lettuce. Add a sliced Armenian cucumber, maybe some fresh oregano and mint, and the roasted ingredients. Toss everything with a lemon-olive-oil-garlic dressing. Serve with chardonnay or your favorite rose.

Lemon souffle omelet with huckleberry jam

2010-10-09T20:04:00.000-07:00

Separate four eggs. Beat the whites, with a little cream of tartar, to stiff peaks. Into the yolks, whisk a little lemon juice and a little lemon extract, and then fold in the whites.

Preheat the broiler. Melt some butter over medium-low heat in a cast iron pan, and pour in the egg mixture. Cook on the stove-top until the bottoms just start to set, and then move the souffle into the oven under the broiler. Bake until the top is browned and the omelet has started to separate from the sides of the pan.

After separating the souffle omelet onto two plates, top each with some homemade huckleberry preserves. Serve with cappuccino.

Roast goat

2010-09-24T00:02:00.000-07:00

Long-time readers of this blog know that a few years ago we were fairly committed vegetarians — I used to be the kitchen manager at a vegetarian/vegan co-op! But we have in the last few months started eating fish at every meal, and "lapsing" further: pork from our CSA, rabbit in Spain. I think we're currently not so much "vegetarians" as "Farmers' Marketarians".

To this end, for our second and final dinner with my dad in Eugene, we brought home two and a half pounds of leg-of-goat from the Eugene Saturday Market. We also bought potatoes, for mashing with garlic from my parents CSA; beets, onions, and carrots, for roasting with the goal; and green figs, for pickling. Yes, pickled figs: a week ago or so, B's uncle took us out to eat at Revival Bar and Kitchen (the new restaurant started by the owner of Venus), where I ordered the goat, and it was served with pickled figs. So, while I was out getting my hair cut, B began by bringing to a boil equal parts water and vinegar, with salt and whole cumin, and pouring the mixture over quartered figs packed into a jar.

Then he prepared the roast. (Did I mention that B did all the cooking, and made it all fantastic?) He chopped the root vegetables and layered them in a glass baking pan. We had some shallot-and-sage butter from the previous night, and he used it to stuff and tenderize the meat. The roast and a bouquet garni followed, and then red wine. He baked the roast for about an hour, basting it regularly. He added about half the figs near the end of cooking, and the acidity provided a nice counterpoint to the sugars in the root roasted root veggies.

Finally, B mashed some potatoes with the roasted garlic from the previous dinner. My dad broke out a particularly nice bottle of wine for the occasion, and we had a wonderful dinner.

Seared ahi tuna with fennel and radishes

2010-09-23T23:43:00.000-07:00

My dad loves fish, and particularly barely cooked tuna. For our first of a mere two dinners in Eugene, we made one of our favorite fancy dinners. Press fennel seeds into boneless sashimi grade ahi tuna. Heat a cast-iron pan until it is very hot, and then sear just the outer half-centimeter or less of the fish, leaving the middles that wonderful tuna purple. Slice very thin a bulb of fennel and some radishes, and slice the fish into quarter-inch-thick (or less) strips. Layer the fennel, the fish, and the radishes in the kitchen, and cover with a very strongly shallot-y sherry vinaigrette. Serve with sourdough bread, sage-and-shallot butter, roasted garlic, and an Oregon pinot noir.

Picnic at the airport

2010-09-23T23:16:00.000-07:00

Last weekend we visited my dad in Eugene, leaving Thursday evening and returning Sunday. Our flight from Oakland was delayed almost three hours, which was annoying. But it wasn't as bad as it could have been: Oakland International Airport is reasonably comfortable, with free wireless, lots of plugs, not too many people, and a decent (if airport-priced) wine bar.

We had planned on a small picnic at the airport and then desert when we got home, although the latter meal turned into wine and olives at the wine bar. The picnic was wonderful, though. While B taught his morning class, I put together two small composed salads in disposable tuperwares. In the salad we had sliced armenian cucumber, heirloom tomatoes, beets, corn cut from the cob, olives, capers, hard boiled egg, basil from the garden, and shallot vinaigrette. To complete the "appetizer picnic", I also sliced a wedge of gouda and gathered up some crackers. If only I had thought to pack the camping wine glasses, we could have bought some wine at the already-mentioned wine bar to have with dinner! Next time.

Wheat berry with red sauce

2010-09-22T21:56:00.000-07:00

Pan-fried snapper, sauteed peppers, and Israeli couscous pilaf

2010-09-22T21:54:00.000-07:00

Pesto with garden basil

2010-09-22T21:48:00.000-07:00

Composed salad with beets, fingerling potatoes, shrimp, capers, heirloom tomatoes, and hard boiled egg

2010-09-22T21:43:00.000-07:00

Brunch: baked eggs in tomatoes

2010-09-22T21:36:00.000-07:00

Select unblemished, firm early-girl tomatoes, and hollow them out: remove the stems and scoop out the seeds and pulp. Sprinkle a little salt on the inside of each tomato, and set them in a muffin tin. Crack an egg into each tomato, and sprinkle the top with grated parmesan or romano cheese. Bake under the broiler about fifteen minutes: the goal is to cook the white most of the way through but leave the yolk runny.

Carefully scoop the cooked tomatoes (and any white the spilled out) out of the muffin tins, and serve in shallow bowls. Garnish the baked tomatoes with capers and nicoise olives.

Baked snapper with onions, tomatoes, and herb chiffonade; corn on the cob

2010-09-22T21:34:00.000-07:00

Pasta with green beans, fennel, and smoked tuna

2010-09-22T21:29:00.000-07:00

Summer soup for the Harvest Moon

2010-09-22T20:51:00.001-07:00

Tonight we were treated to a once-in-three-decades event: a full moon on night of the Autumn Equinox. Every year, the Harvest Moon is the full moon closest to the equinox, but this year "closest" means "five and a half hours" rather than "ten days".

We began by making a hearty whole-wheat bread. Combine three cups whole wheat flour, one tablespoon wheat gluten, two teaspoons salt, and one tablespoon yeast. Also mix in one cup cooked wheat berries. Our flour and berries are from the always excellent Massa Organics, and after tonight's bread, we need to buy more of both. Then slowly add about one and a half cups water, mixing while you go. Knead a little bit and let the dough sit for a few hours. Bake the bread for about fifty minutes if you make it all into just one loaf, and let cool ten to twenty minutes before slicing.

Our soup was really more of a vegetable stew. Begin by sauteing half a red onion and some garlic in salted olive oil. Then add two bunches turnips, thinly sliced, and three quarters cup wine and six cups water, and adjust the salt. Bring to a boil and add one cup dried French green lentils. The lentils should cook a total of about thirty minutes, so take a short break and do dishes.

In a separate fry-pan or wok, heat some olive oil into which you have ground some black pepper. When the oil is hot, fry about half a pound thinly-sliced summer squash. Add the squash to the soup.

Also add the corn cut off of two or three ears, and one bunch greens (some quick-cooking kind: red chard, which is what we used, is particularly pretty; alternately, use the greens from the turnips if they are still fresh). Cook about ten minutes while you finish setting the table. Right before serving the soup, stir in two very fresh heirloom tomatoes, cut into wedges.

Serve the soup with the whole-wheat bread, butter for the bread, grated grana padamo for the soup, and a chilled white wine.

First batch of tomatoes for the year

2010-09-11T18:26:00.000-07:00

Riverdog Farm, from whom we get our weekly vegetable box, offers bulk veggies too. In particular, they have an amazing deal on Early Girl and Roma tomatoes: 20 lb for $25. (These tomatoes go for $3/lb at the market.)

In order to be well-stocked until April or May, we expect to can about seventy pounds of tomatoes, all together, and while they're fresh eat another ten pounds at least. So for four weeks this month, we'll be canning tomatoes, seventeen or eighteen pounds at a time. This week, we filled eleven quart jars.

Get the canner heating up on two burners. On a burner in the back, keep the tea kettle ready in case you ever need more boiling water. On your last burner, bring a medium pot of water to a boil. Also prepare an ice bath in a large pot.

While waiting for things to come to a boil, make sure your jars are clean, and add 1 teaspoon salt and 2 Tablespoons lemon juice to each quart jar. If you like, add also some strongly flavored herbs to the bottom: whole peeled garlic cloves, bay leaf, etc.

Working half a dozen at a time, drop whole clean tomatoes into the pot of boiling water. Wait ninety seconds and remove them with a slotted spoon, plunging the tomatoes immediately into the ice water. After about thirty to sixty seconds, you should be able to handle the tomatoes without difficulty, and the skins should slough right off. It's important to peel tomatoes before canning, because the skins turn very tough when cooked. Remove the tough part right around the stems, halve the larger tomatoes, and pack the jars, trying to squeeze as much tomato into the jars as possible.

Bring that tea kettle back the a boil, and pour boiling water into the packed jars to fill them up, leaving half an inch of headspace at the top. Tap the jars on the counter a little to dislodge any air bubbles. Add clean, unused lids, and screw the rings on only very loosely: they're there just to keep the lids in place while canning, but you want air to be able to escape.

Boil the jars fully submerged in the water for forty five minutes. This will cook and sanitize the tomatoes (boiling is at 212°, sanitizing is about 180° for five minutes, so you're just trying to heat the jars through, really). It also makes the air in the jars expand and escape. The rings have a wax coating on them, so once the air leaves, they attach down. Then, after you remove the jars, air can't get back in, and there's enough pressure to keep the jars closed, even without the rings. After canning, let the jars cool twenty four hours, and then test all the seals. Those that don't seal you should keep in the refrigerator and use within a few weeks. Those that do can sit on the shelf for about a year, and should be refrigerated after opening.

(Botulism bacteria, which creates a lethal toxin, can survive boiling, although dies at boiling after about ten hours. But it cannot grow in high oxygen environments, which is why it doesn't hurt us usually, although its spores are everywhere, and more importantly, it can't grow in acidic environments, which is why you added the lemon juice (tomatoes are almost but not quite acidic enough on their own). Nevertheless, never eat an exploded can. Don't even touch it. Wear gloves to move it into a plastic bag, seal the bag, then put another bag over it, and tie it off, and bleach the kitchen, and don't let animals get access to the spoiled food, even at the dump. Botox should be treated as hazardous waste. But it is very rare that this is ever a problem; just take basic precautions and you're fine.)

Breakfast: sweet omelet with a trio of homemade jams

2010-09-11T17:55:00.000-07:00

We have had such a success at preserves this summer. Yes, the strawberries were a failure, but the cherries, olallieberries, and huckleberries were (and continue to be) all fantastic. So most mornings our breakfast consists of poached eggs, toast, and jam. But occasionally we have no bread in the house, and want to try something different.

Over low heat, melt a tab of butter in a wide non-stick pan. Whisk together thoroughly two eggs and just a little flour. When the butter is melted but not yet bubbly, pour the eggs. Let the eggs cook over very low heat, slowly thickening from the bottom. In your mind, divide the circle of eggs horizontally into four strips of even thickness. When there is a full layer of cooked egg on the bottom, place small mounds of homemade preserve (one to two teaspoons each, depending on how much, and how many, jam(s) you have) in the second strip from the end. When the eggs are done (I like them still just slightly runny on top) run a soft, plastic spatula along the edge of the pan to release the now-mostly-cooked eggs, and fold the eggs over the jam: begin with the first strip (the one between the jam and the edge) and then fold the remaining half-circle over everything. Place a plate over the pan and flip the omelet onto it, and finally fold the remaining strip over the omelet.

If you are feeling particularly fancy, transfer to a cast-iron pan, or do everything in well-seasoned cast-iron, and, after cooking and wrapping the omelet, sprinkle it with some sugar and stick it under a very hot broiler. (We weren't feeling that fancy.)

Serve with cappuccino.

Salad with fingerling potatoes, beets, garden cherry tomatoes, shrimp, capers, and a soft-boiled egg

2010-09-11T17:54:00.000-07:00

Ladybugs!

2010-09-11T17:47:00.000-07:00

Pizza with corn, tomatoes, and fennel

2010-09-11T17:43:00.000-07:00

We have yet to eat at Summer Kitchen, but we read their menu every time we wait in line at Ici. A few days ago, their pizza consisted of a combination that we knew we had to try: tomatoes, corn, and fennel. Sure enough, at least when B made it, the pairing was great (so good that we forgot to take any pictures).

Quince Cake

2010-09-11T16:03:00.000-07:00

I occasionally come across recipes I wrote up in a private journal before starting this blog. Here's one from October 2007.

Makes enough for a review session with 15 students; in fact, I doubled this recipe, and had a little more than necessary, but not too much more.

Preheat oven 350°F. Wash and core

1 large or 2 small quinces

and chop into small slices. Place in saucepan, and add enough water to not quite cover. If quinces are not extremely ripe, add a handful of sugar. Set over high heat, bring to boil, and reduce to medium. Cook ten minutes or so, while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.

Prepare a couple loaf pans or one 9x13-inch pan: grease, then line with parchment, then grease again. Or a bunch of muffin tins, spray-greased. In standing mixer with paddle, combine (all numbers rough)

2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1 cup sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp nutmeg and/or clove

Mix thoroughly, then pour in

1/2 cup vegetable oil

and let combine fully. In a liquid measuring cup lightly beat

3 eggs

and pour into flour with mixer running; beat 30 seconds, scrape down sides, and beat again (or skip that part).

When quinces are easily mushed, scoop quinces into batter, one third at a time. Batter will be very liquidy. Pour into prepared pans, filling about 2/3 to the top. Bake 20-40 minutes (muffins are done in 20; glass lasagna pan takes about 25-30; large metal pan will take longer). Cake is done when tester comes out clean. Let cool before cutting for a stable, moist crumb, or enjoy a sticky gooey treat.

Remove from pans with parchment still on the bottom. Slice and load into tupperware, using parchment (or wax paper) to separate layers. Bring to review session, in an effort to bribe your students.

Lunch: Greek salad and cappuccino

2010-09-07T21:55:00.000-07:00

In the salad we had an Armenian cucumber from Riverdog, sliced and dressed in balsamic vinaigrette; cubed French feta cheese; and early girl tomatoes, fresh basil, and fresh oregano from the garden. The coffee, as always, is made with Straus milk and Blue Bottle espresso.

Pasta with tuna confit and beans

2010-09-07T21:53:00.000-07:00

We followed the recipe for tuna confit from Alice Waters' Chez Panisse Cafe Cookbook. We began by slicing a one-pound piece of tuna into four pieces and liberally salting everything. We placed it in a medium mixing bowl with about half a head of garlic (crushed but not peeled), one or two fresh bay leaves, a small hot red pepper, some whole pepper corns, a handful of fennel seed, and a few sprigs of thyme. We covered everything in olive oil (about 2.5 cups — Alice says 3), covered the bowl with saran wrap, and refrigerated the fish overnight.

The next day, we transferred everything to a pot, and warmed it on medium-low. The fish should cook ten to fifteen minutes, until it is don't on the outside but still a little pink in the middle. (Actually, we cooked it through, but Alice prefers it pink in the middle, and so do we.)

Meanwhile, we prepared a pound each of green beans and fresh cranberry beans. Following the instructions, we simmered the shelled cranberry beans for half an hour in lightly salted water with a sprig of thyme. This got the beans mushier than we like — next time we'll do twenty minutes. Alice likes her green beans parboiled two minutes, but we like them softer: between six and eight. We also boiled a pot of water for pasta: whole wheat penne from Barilla.

After draining everything, and reserving the oil (passing it through a sieve), we minced a few scallions (Alice wants shallots) and whisked in a liberal dose of the flavored oil, and then mixed this with the beans and pasta. We should at this point have flaked the tuna into the pasta as well, but instead we decided to serve the tuna in steaks. It was very good, although a bit too salty for steaks, and had a taste of the very best canned tuna you've ever had. Grated cheese for the pasta, of course, and white wine.

Of course, it was enough food for at least four as the main course.

Huckleberry Weekend

2010-09-06T20:02:00.000-07:00

Friday

JB is a good friend of mine from college. She's in the area, and she joined us for a wonderful afternoon stroll through Huckleberry Botanic Regional Preserve, one of the East Bay Regional Parks (we're working our way south). The park is not large, but includes a beautiful two-mile nature trail, with wonderful plants. In particular, we were amazed to see the eponymous bushes filled with berries. B and I decided to make sure to go picking the following day. Here's the slide show of the park from our two days of hiking:

Saturday

We brought a picnic with us for our second trip to Huckleberry Preserve, eating at the bench by #6. The dinner consisted of kumamoto oysters from Hog Island, Fromager d'Affinois with homemade baguette, and salad.

Sunday

We filled two yogurt containers with berries — close to eight cups. We processed all the berries into preserve: huckleberry preserve from the Huckleberry Preserve. This morning (Monday) we had some of the jam at breakfast. It is, perhaps, the best jam we've made.

Pan-fried perch with couscous and fresh tomatoes

2010-09-06T18:05:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, we find ourselves with ingredients but absolutely no plan. Sometimes these are the very best dinners, especially when they also come together within a matter of minutes.

Mince a lot of garlic. Put half of it in a medium bowl, and the other half in a small pot with a well-fitting lid. To the small pot, add curry powder, cumin, raisins, and almonds. Add also a cup and a half of water, and bring to a boil. Remove from the heat and whisk in one cup couscous. Let the couscous steam itself, covered, off the heat for at least five minutes. Fluff right before serving.

Heat a little oil in a wide pan, and cook some thin fillets of perch, about two minutes to a side.

To the bowl with the garlic, add a sliced ripe tomato and a liberal handful of capers. Mix the tomatoes, garlic, and capers together.

Plate everything in the kitchen: fish, couscous on the side, and the salsa over the fish so that the juices run into the couscous.

Seared tuna with steamed corn

2010-09-06T18:00:00.000-07:00

It's been hot out here, so we've been looking for dishes that don't require a lot of cooking. Seared tuna and corn each take all of about ten minutes on the stove. Marinate the tuna in a mix of olive oil, minced garlic, minced rosemary, salt, and white wine. Place the corn in a steamer, and cook six to ten minutes. Heat a little oil in a pan, and when it starts to shimmer add the tuna. Cook a few minutes to a side. Plate the fish and corn, and continue to heat the oil remaining in the tuna pan. Pour in more of the marinade and reduce. Pour the reduction over the fish and corn.

Saag paneer and dal

2010-09-06T17:47:00.000-07:00

Begin by mincing a fair amount of garlic, ginger, and turmeric. Also dice a very large white onion. Separate the onion into two pots, and saute with a little butter and salt until tender, adding in the spices as soon as the onion begins to release its juices. Add also a fair amount of curry powder to each pot.

To the smaller of the two pots, add a cup of red lentils, and about a cup and a half of water. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and cook twenty to thirty minutes until the lentils are very soft. Stir it occasionally and check to make the lentils are not sticking, replenishing the water as necessary.

To the larger pot, add the washed, sliced greens from a bunch of beets and also a bunch of rainbow chard (remove most of the stems). Put the greens in a bit wet. Cover the pot, and steam the greens until they have reduced; stir them into the soft onions. Cube a brick of paneer or haloumi into and mix into the juices, watching as the turmeric stains the cheese yellow. Open a two-cup tub of sour cream, and mix in a lot of curry powder and a lot of cumin. Stir the sour cream into the greens.

Serve both dishes warm and a bit gloopy.

Pizza with apples, walnuts, and blue cheese

2010-09-06T12:15:00.000-07:00

This pizza, with sauteed apples, mozzarella and blue cheese, and walnuts was very tasty, but would have made a better lunch that dinner. Somehow, without the tomatoes or another sauce (sauteed onion would have works well), the pizza didn't really feel full enough for a dinner. But it was very good, and I do recommend the combination: in general, anything that can go on a salad can go on a pizza.

Snack: berries and gouda

2010-09-06T11:26:00.000-07:00

Niçoise salad with homemade bread

2010-09-06T11:21:00.000-07:00

Ratatouille lasagna

2010-09-06T11:06:00.001-07:00

We love the flavor combination of ratatouille: tomatoes, eggplant, summer squash, supplemented with onions, garlic, peppers, and herbs. But the vegetable mix is never satisfying as a dinner: you eat and eat and eat and never fill up. Much better is a lasagna, layering the vegetables between cheese and pasta. So we decided the have the best of both worlds.

We began by slicing and lightly salting the vegetables (eggplant, onions, bell peppers, zucchini) and spread them in single layers in pans to roast uncovered in the oven. Meanwhile, we made a pasta dough with one part white flour to two parts semolina, a little salt, a couple eggs, and enough water to hold it together but not so much as to make the dough tacky. We rolled the dough through the hand-cranked pasta maker and let it dry on a rack. Then we put together our cheese mixture: minced garlic, grated mozzarella, grated romano, fresh thyme, grated black pepper, and ricotta. Finally, we diced some tomatoes, saving the juive, and mixed in some diced onion and chopped basil and a little salt.

Ingredients prepared, we started layering the lasagna. Begin by putting a splash of oil and just a little of the tomato juice at the bottom of the pan, and then a layer of noodles. Then some of the tomato mixture, a layer of zucchini, and a layer of cheese, with some of the roasted onions and peppers dotted through. On top of all this, another layer of pasta, then tomatoes, eggplants, cheese, and continuing in this way until the casserole is assembled. End with noodles and a thick layer of cheese, decorated with some roasted onions and peppers.

Cover the casserole with a tent of foil, and bake about half an hour. Then remove the foil and cut it into strips to wrap just around the edges of the pan, so that any noodles showing don't crisp too much in the oven, and bake another half hour. Let the casserole cool about ten minutes before slicing and serving.

Barely seared tuna, sliced thin, with fennel, radishes, and onion vinnaigrette

2010-09-05T20:29:00.000-07:00

Cold corn soup with popcorn and salsa

2010-09-05T19:50:00.000-07:00

We had a strange but tasty lunch at Eugene City Bakery, and decided that we just had to make it at home.

Begin by sauteing one large onion and two yellow bell peppers, coarsely chopped, in some olive oil until tender. In the saute, include also some salt (to help the onions tenderize) and ancho chili powder. Cut the corn off of three or four ears and add to the pot, along with just enough water to cover. Bring to a boil.

With an immersion blender, puree the veggies. Also mix in one four-cup tub of non-fat plain yogurt.

Do not reheat the soup: the idea is to have it cold. Do, however, add a lot more spices — your tongue is less sensitive when the food it is tasting is cold, and you probably have spiced the soup for hot. In addition to a bit more salt and ancho, blend in a some curry and tarragon (both of which go wonderfully with cream).

Pop a pot of popcorn, and flavor the popcorn with salt and paprika. Also make a fresh salsa of tomatoes, onions, and garlic. Serve the soup cold with popcorn and salsa mixed in at the table.

As odd as the pairing might sound, this dinner was one of our best.

Camping: farfalle with red sauce

2010-09-05T19:23:00.000-07:00

For our last night camping, we made pasta. For the sauce, we sauteed onions and garlic, added bell peppers, mushrooms, and tomatoes, and topped it off with herbs we had brought from our garden at home. We served the dinner with the Pinot Noir from Territorial, a Willamette Valley vineyard.

Camping: tomato, basil, and fresh mozarella sandwich on the top of a mountain

2010-09-05T19:17:00.000-07:00

Camping: Grilled zucchini and tuna with tomato-onion salsa

2010-09-05T18:37:00.000-07:00

Camping: poached eggs on sliced bread

2010-09-02T21:49:00.000-07:00

Camping: roasted sweet potatoes and bean burgers with all the fixings

2010-08-30T23:10:00.000-07:00

Salmon baked with honey-mustard glaze; scallion mashed potatoes

2010-08-30T22:38:00.000-07:00

Whenever we visit Ashland, we like to stay at the cute Columbia Hotel. Most of the rooms do not have private bathrooms — there are showers off the halls — but the room we stay in does have a kitchen (although it is small, with only a minifridge, and minimally equipped). Having a kitchen is a huge benefit when traveling: between dinner and breakfast, we save $40 or $50 per night, and we get to enjoy the cooking and the better food. Columbia Hotel also offers free wireless.

In previous visits to Ashland we've shopped at the Safeway. This time, we looked online, and found the excellent Ashland Food Coop. Organic almost-everything, decent wine selection, good produce and cheese — definitely the supermarket for us. We bought some Alaskan salmon and red potatoes; we baked the salmon with a glaze of mustard, honey, garlic, and olive oil, and we boiled the potatoes and mashed them with olive oil and minced scallions. To pair with the dinner we had a Pinot Gris from Montinore Estate, a Willamette Valley vineyard. It's amazing how much better Willamette Valley pinots (gris and noir) are than similar wines from almost anywhere else.

Camping and Shakespeare

2010-08-29T22:59:00.000-07:00

For the final trip in our trip-full summer we drove to Oregon. If you ever find yourself driving between Oregon and the Bay Area, there are two fantastic places to stop for picnics. First is Castle Crags State Park, about four hours north of Berkeley. If you are too hungry, stop instead at William B. Ide Adobe State Historic Park for a lovely lunch along the river.

We arrived in Ashland, home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, in time to go shopping, make dinner (when we visit Ashland, we stay at the very cute Columbia Hotel, which has a room with a kitchen), and attend the evening, outdoors performance of Merchant of Venice. The next morning we drove to the Applegate River area, south east of Jacksonville, about an hour from Ashland, where we found a beautiful campsite at Jackson Campground. Hiking and swimming ensued.

The next day, the third on our trip, we returned to Ashland for more shopping, a walk through Ashland's lovely Lithia Park, and a matinee: a cute adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. We finished our camping trip with a day hike and after a night in the hotel and three nights camping we packed up and drove to Eugene, just in time for me to attend a week-long conference while B hung out with my family.

Composed salad with soft-boiled eggs, cooked shrimp, beets, orange cherry tomatoes, fava beans, yellow haricots verts, niçoise olives, and anchovies

2010-08-29T21:55:00.000-07:00

The haricots verts, favas, and cherry tomatoes are from the garden. The baguette is homemade.

A fantastic way to cook eggs for salad is to bring water to a boil and simmer the eggs for only five to six minutes, depending on the size. Plunge the eggs into ice water to help the protein retract from the shell. Carefully crack and peel the eggs without blemishing the white, and serve them whole. The idea is that the yellow is still completely runny, so that it mixes with the lettuce when the you begin to eat the egg during the meal. (This is particularly nice for composed salads in which the lettuce is very strongly dressed — since I don't dress the rest of the veggies much, I tend to mash a clove of garlic per person into the lettuce's dressing.) For a yellow that's completely cooked through, I like to simmer my extra-large eggs twelve minutes (less time for smaller eggs).

The best way to cook beets for a salad is to remove all but half an inch of stem, wash well, and wrap the beets unpeeled and still wet in foil. Bake for at least an hour (you'll need the oven hot for the bread anyway), and then plunge in ice water. The skin should slough off easily.

We've tried various tins of anchovy fillets, and been somewhat unhappy with all of them. Part of the problem is that each tin has about twelve fillets, whereas even three fillets per person is generous. Our only really good anchovies have been from the cafe at Berkeley Bowl, but they only seem to come wholesale in tins of many hundred. In any case, this tin of anchovies-rolled-around-capers was OK, but very meaty-fishy tasting, and too overpowering for our tastes. If you have a favorite inexpensive anchovy fillet, please let me know.

Hand-made pesto with hand-made semolina egg noodles

2010-08-29T21:17:00.000-07:00

Two of the odder things in our neighborhood

2010-08-29T21:14:00.000-07:00