Picnic in the city

We regularly attend concerts at the San Francisco Ballet. On 27 March, before seeing The Little Mermaid we had some extra time to wonder the city, and took the requisite tourist pictures:




Rather than spend exorbitant amounts of money for mediocre food at the restaurants near the Opera House, we have taken to bringing in picnics. Sometimes the picnic is nothing but two dozen oysters and a baguette and brie, but on March 27, we brought in all the fixings for a composed salad. Namely:

• Lettuce dressed in a light vinaigrette
• Golden beets, marinated in red wine vinegar
• Rockfish, steamed and broken into chunks, mixed with diced red onion, sliced carrots, and capers
• fresh raw extra-small oysters to shuck

You can't beat the dinner, and it's hard to beat the view.

Rockfish with green garlic; steamed broccoli; sweet potato chips

Salade Niçoise

In the salad:

• Chioggia beets, cooked in the oven, then halved and marinated in salted red wine vinegar
• Asparagus, cut on the diagonal and roasted in the broiler in a marinade of balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt, and black pepper
• Eggs, hard boiled 12 minutes, then plunged in ice water, peeled, and halved
• Nicoise olives
• Anchovy fillets
• Lettuce tossed in a garlic vinaigrette.

As we usually do, we served the salad with fresh bread and a rosé.

Cabbage gratin and prawns with parsley and garlic

Prawns are delightful when deveined, boiled until pink, and tossed with olive oil, minced parsley, and minced garlic. We served the prawns with a cabbage gratin from Joy of Cooking that was ultimately a bit too eggy for our taste. But the flavor pairing of the gratin — cabbage with caraway seed — was nice.

Farfalle with peas, cream, and smoked tuna

Rockfish with parsley butter, wheat berry with garlic, and stewed greens

Clams

One of our favorite television shows to watch before bed is Floyd on France, in which Briton Kieth Floyd wanders around France with his cameraman Clive, get drunk, and cook very good food in the kitchens of random French women. Oh, and it's all in the 1980s. In any case, Floyd gives very simple instructions for how to cook shell fish — mussels in his case, but it has become our clam recipe. Namely, coarsely chop onions and saute with a little salt and pepper in butter, and after not very long add plenty of white wine, the scrubbed shell fish, and coarsely chopped garlic and parsley. You do not need to cover the shellfish in the wine — you only need enough to provide some steam. Cover, cook about 10 minutes until the shellfish have opened, and enjoy.

Stir fry with mushrooms, chard, spring onions, and egg

Pizza with spinach, mozzarella, and canned whole tomatoes

Salade Niçoise

In early Spring, the farms around here start selling tiny artichokes. The best are chokeless and tender enough to eat raw. Trim off all the outer parts and submerge immediately in lemon juice to prevent discoloration. The raw artichokes end up tasting a bit like apples.

Also in our salad we had beets, defrosted frozen green beans, broiled butterfish, canned anchovy fillets, and olives. The lettuce was tossed with a garlic vinaigrette, and we paired the meal with a rosé and a ciabatta.