Happy Consumptive

Rum Cocktail: Buddah's Hand Syrup, Lime

2011-08-25T20:31:00.000-07:00

If you're like me, and your fridge has several jars of this and that that concocted for cocktails that you never got around to mixing, and you happened to score a jar of my buddah's hand syrup last Christmas, this post is for you. Turns out a 1:1 cocktail of that syrup, your rum of choice, the juice of one lime, and seltzer (to taste) is pretty good - even a little exotic.

An Overdue Entry On the Sazerac Cocktail

2011-03-05T19:58:00.000-08:00

I was on my own for a night in New York a few weeks ago and ate at Quality Meats. Waiting for my table to open up, I asked the bartender if he could do a Sazerac. He said he couldn't. "Don't have any rye." In a restaurant paneled with wood recovered from the Mississippi, there wasn't a single rye whiskey. Still, I had to appreciate his commitment to orthodoxy.

The history of the Sazerac cocktail is rich with speculation, old New Orleans establishments and family names, and an evolving ingredient list that sees French colonial influence giving way to American rusticism in the wake of the phylloxera epidemic that struck France in the late 1800s. Cognac replaced with Rye whiskey.

Other folks have outlined that territory more credibly than I can, even if everybody leans heavily on Wikipedia's Sazerac article for their narrative arc. With two trips to New Orleans under my belt, I didn't have my first Sazerac until last year at San Jose's Fairmont hotel. What I've been mixing up since last fall ignores a lot of Sazerac orthodoxy anyhow.

I've settled on a version of Esquire's recipe using Old Overholt Rye, a simple sugar made with Dark Muscovado, Peychaud Bitters, and St. George's Absinthe. I was looking forward to trying this with the Corsair Rye (Corsair's product page, K&L's product page or blog) we picked up a couple of weeks ago, but it was a non-starter. The flavor a mis-match. You can make the drink with any old bourbon in a pinch. You can use Angostoura bitters. In either variation it will be tasty, but it will not be a Sazerac.

Not These; Not These Either

2010-12-20T06:42:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks before the holidays, the baked goods and other sweets start to amass in our house. I have what you might describe as either a typically male or typically oafish relationship to these goods as they emerge from the oven. "Mine." Or maybe, "Fair game." These however we're not.

Two Days of Dessert and More On the Way

2010-11-28T06:22:00.000-08:00

Over the years I've posted photos of this or that dessert with the tag "Just for the heck of it." The idea being that this somehow got me off the hook for putting words together. Or that photos of tasty dessert can do their own talking.

Amy's Gingerbread Pear Upside Down Cake. I'm always amazed when this works, Amy uses an old school Magnalite frying pan we have laying around. Like a charm.

Penny's Pumpkin Spice Cake with Caramel Cream Cheese Frosting. The cake rode shotgun for our Thanksgiving Dinner dessert course.

We have one last cake engagement to squeeze in before it's back to work. A date with Pumpkin Cheesecake this afternoon.

Appletini

2010-11-21T14:20:00.000-08:00

I've been sneaking an Appletini into the line up once a week or so, mostly to make the next Sazerac taste better. I work with the IBA specified ingredients, but skew heavier on the apple pucker - which tastes exactly like an Apple-flavored Jolly Rancher. Goes down pretty easy, which is more than I can say for our recent addition.

Each Year, The Ferry Building

2010-11-21T14:03:00.000-08:00

Each year in the fall, work takes me across the bay to the Embarcadero Hyatt. Last year I grabbed lunch at Hog Island, this year I stocked up at Boccalone. If you're local and into that sort of thing, grab some Lardo Iberico De Bellota, the price to ship a chunk your way while keeping it cold is a real bluff caller.

India Tree's Dark Muscovado Sugar

2010-11-07T08:05:00.000-08:00

The India Tree Gourmet line of dark sugars is yours for the grabbing at Berkeley Bowl. My favorite is the Dark Muscovado, jam packed with molasses. It's also a real ding in any perceived aura of locavorism - hauled in from Mauritius. The Bowl has carried this stuff for years, but I don't get over there much these days.

I've been using the sugar like a philistine, i.e. just like anyone would use any sugar. Particularly as the basis for simple syrup in Sazeracs.

Belated Feliz Dia de Los Muertos

2010-11-06T07:51:00.000-07:00

We developed a soft spot for this holiday at some point. For me it happened around the time we moved to Oakland. Axel took his first unassisted steps at Oakland's Day of the Dead festival a few years ago. Most years we manage to snag some "Dead bread" at Arizmendi. Slightly orange-flavored, fennel seeds, those are chocolate chips that were his eyes.

Wine's Bargain Bin Still Getting Deeper

2010-09-15T06:46:00.000-07:00

I've been assembling a case of wine from our son's birth year. The idea is that when he's 21 we'll split it. He has to drink 6 bottles with us, and can do with the other six whatever it is a twenty-one year old does. No one particular wine, no one particular region.

2006 was a pretty good vintage if you're stretching your dollar and looking for wine that'll age for 15-20 years. There was flooding in Napa Valley, but there was a dry and hot stretch that got things mostly back on track. My view is there's only so bad that a bottle of wine from a reasonably distinguished producer can be. I don't drink J Daniel Cuvee or even Jordan Cabernet often enough to appreciate year over year change.

So we started with a few bottles of Bordeaux, and then moved on to California. My wife and I have fond memories of a lot of wines and wineries, and then there are the handful of cult winemakers that I'm cultish about. We maxed out our case before I could even get to Italy or Spain.

And as we get further from 2006, bigger and bigger name wines are finding their way into Wine Dot Com's close out channels. Like their Private Cellar (you can sign up for the emails using that link). You can't see the price for the private cellar wines until you enter a code. I also receive emails from a Wine Dot Com staffer with deals that are pretty good on wine that can be hard to find. You can only buy the wine directly from the email, it won't appear on the website or, at least, won't appear on the website at the same price. It's fairly targeted marketing and I'm falling for it about once a month.

I'm also buying wine that I had previously rationalized as uninteresting mostly because I couldn't afford it. I enjoy Ridge wines, but had always dismissed their Montebello cabernet until it was offered by wine.com for well under one hundred dollars a bottle. Similarly Caymus and Stags Leap. Come to think of it, I'd always found Wine Dot Com uninteresting. Their collection wasn't varied enough to keep me engaged, and the price point wasn't great - particularly once you factored in shipping; usually took a gift certificate to get me there.

In April of this year, in a post titled The Coming Carnage in the California Wine Industry, I read about Wine 'til Sold Out for the first time. Checking the link just now, they had an '05 Brunello that Robert Parker had rated at 90 points for 40% off.

Paw Paws: "The Largest Edible Fruit Indigenous To the Continent"

2010-09-12T08:07:00.000-07:00

Love-hate relationship with the paw paw in these parts. They are best at their ugliest, the blacker the better up to a point.

I lump them in with other fruits that I buy as soon as they show up, generally to wasteful effect. Not quite ripe, they languish until they are probably iffy. Then languish some more, until they are definitely iffy. Compost.

This is probably why I haven't written about them before, aside from this slight mention. I think they'd make great ice cream.

The guy working Lagier Ranches' booth at the Lakeshore market expects to have them for a few more weeks.

Second Level: Lagier Ranches Almond Milk and Bronx Raisins

2010-03-06T20:52:00.001-08:00

Years ago, when Doug used to work the Prather Ranch stand at Grand Lake Farmers Market, he introduced us to a three level rubric for understanding the degree to which food is being enjoyed. Something like this:

Level 1: Talking about how good the food is as it's eaten.

Level 2: Utter silence as the food is eaten

Level 3: Gently weeping as the food is eaten

As someone who regularly blogs and tweets about food, I have some kind of disposition to the first level of food enjoyment. There's hardly anything I won't wait to eat until the photos are snapped, the blog post drafted. No foodstuff that I treasure so much that I won't tell everyone I know, and a bunch of people I don't, where to get it. Until today.

I've been coming to the Grand Lake market for about seven years now, and had never seen Almond Milk (sweetened with dates) or Bronx Grape Raisins at the Lagier Ranches stand. I sampled, and then I high-tailed it home and shared with my family. No photos. No tweets.

Delicious.

New Fangled Old Fashioned Cocktail

2010-01-16T21:02:00.000-08:00

On my first trip to Lake Chalet, I ordered their Old Whiskey Cocktail. I'd struck out with their Dark and Stormy and didn't want to order a drink with a silly name. Also Lake Chalet uses rye whiskey for their Old Fashioned. While Wild Turkey is available in a rye version, I've had a soft spot for rye whiskey since The New Low Down poured me a dram of Old Potrero. How long ago was that?

For whatever reason, the Old Fashioned clicked this year. My first scrounge for a recipe went the usual way - everything I thought I knew about the old fashioned was wrong, because I hadn't read this. Tasty stuff:

'Young impudent sir, he screamed, '...Man and boy I've built Old-Fashioned cocktails these 60 years... and I have never yet had the perverted nastiness of mind to put fruit in an Old-Fashioned. Get out, scram, go over to the Palmer House and drink.' I was rebuked.

Me too. And the adulteration goes further. In place of sugar I like to add just enough cane syrup to get the cocktail slightly viscous. Please be tolerant of this backward, blurry, and uncomposed photo. I'll replace it one day soon:

My new-fangled old-fashioned cocktail recipe goes something like this:

2 full shot glasses of Bulleit Bourbon, aka the best of the cheap stuff at Trader Joe's. Here's Liquor Snob's review.
Angostura Bitters, three dashes plus that first splash that splashes out unbidden.
Water. Maybe 1/2 a shot's worth.
Blood orange if you've got it, an obnoxiously large wedge a la Cafe Van Kleef.
Depaz Cane Syrup, to taste and feel. At least 1/2 tsp.
Your favorite dried cherries. Will impart hardly any flavor, but are tasty after the fact. My digging for them, as I read in bed, has led to some grumbling from Amy who usually goes to sleep earlier than me.
Directions: Get your orange wedge into the glass somehow. It may take shoving, and some incidental juicing is encouraged. Don't go crazy. Cherries if you like. Then dash in the bitters. Pour in the cane syrup, then the bourbon. Then the water. Somehow 3 ice cubes always seem to fit into our Crate and Barrel highballs.

Peko Peko Guerilla Cafe

2010-01-11T16:45:00.000-08:00

Speaking of Peko Peko, just received email word that they're doing their pop-up izakaya thing at Guerilla Cafe in Berkeley. We plan on being at Camino that night for crab, but the izakaya poster does say "till late".

Happy New Year

2010-01-07T21:52:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year everyone, hangover-curing ham and cheese popovers at left there.

Time for that annual first post, full of promise and retrospection. While I'd planned on not addressing the specifics, the time that I had spent blogging was given over to other pursuits for most of 2009. There were vacations that I thought would get me back in the blogging saddle. Mostly I rode my bike instead. The accompanying weight loss has been a welcome benefit, though I'm also having an on-again off-again discussion with my physician about whether this renewed interest in cycling and the like has had the positive impact on my overall health that I suggest.

To be sure, we ate well last year. We signed up for a Fully Belly Farm CSA, kept at the Grand Lake Farmers Market, and ate and drank more than our share. I've been slowly assembling a case of wine from Axel's birth year, sampling as we went so we'd know that the cellar-worthy bordeaux and new world stuff were actually interesting. I tweeted about some of these things. Which means some of them wound up on Facebook. I got into the habit of visiting Boccalone once a month or so (Amy gave me a membership in their Salumi Society for my birthday), which got me to the Ferry Building Farmers Market for the first time - a former colleague described this as "going Hollywood".

The last handful of posts here were about the food we were eating in Ukraine. I'm not sure I recovered and I'm not sure what the affliction is. If it's that eating well continues to be too privileged, then surely all these newfangled food trucks represent progress?

Photo credit shout out to Rob Peterson, food truck fan and sometime partner in crime.

Or the community vibe of Radio Africa Kitchen. Or the lack of pretense involved in picking up Peko Peko at some random storefront. When I showed up with Axel to pick up bento the first time, they couldn't make change. So, they offered me a beer while they went to go find some. Commis may hold out a different kind of promise for people getting over the pretense surrounding serious food. Haven't gotten around to going though, in part because it seems so self-conscious.

Our first order of Peko Peko bento for two, with bonus peaches.

It's not the pretense or privilege though; I found ways to cope with that a while ago. I had a great time at l'Atelier de Joel Robuchon - even if the cocktails aren't as good as what Grand Tavern serves up (Mai Tai). I even manage a soft spot for Lake Chalet (Old Fashioned Whisky Cocktail).

Window display at Bitter & Zart in Frankfurt on our way back from Ukraine.

Mostly it's the blogging itself. Which is necessarily what I make of it. Still cracking that code.

Lviv and Being Resourceful

2009-03-16T12:09:00.000-07:00

A few days ago Amy showed up at our apartment with the package of eggs you see below - cut to fit for six and tied together with the entrails of a cassette tape. She also had a Fanta bottle filled with raw milk. We'd walked past old timers selling it on the sidewalk and I hadn't even noticed that the bottles were being reused.

As a westerner it's tempting to read more than common sense and resourcefulness into this, maybe something in the spirit of the creative reuse noise emanating from Africa. That temptation has something to do with how hard pressed we are to accomplish basic behavior change in our own society. For me it also has something to do with how bats folks went at the Grand Lake Farmer's Market when vendors asked everyone to bring their own bags for Earth Day.

Ultimately a culture is either resourceful or not. Americans may be inventive and driven but this isn't the same thing. I submit as a kind of Exhibit B this tapestry at Lviv's Ethnographic Museum, the shiny bits of which are also cassette tape material. While examples of exactly this sort of material resourcefulness may abound in rural or economically depressed areas back home, Lviv isn't strictly speaking rural.

It's maybe obvious but still worth pointing out that being resourceful is no indication that a culture will stay that way. Last week I posted some photos of vegetables tied together with sewing thread. It's probably acrylic and who knows whether it's better or worse for the environment or you than rubber bands. But could you imagine a city of 700,000 in America where the majority of folks selling stuff from farm stands would have string enough on hand for it to make sense?

Ramp Season in Lviv

2009-03-15T13:09:00.000-07:00

Our stay in Lviv happened to coincide with the arrival of ramps. We noticed them for the first time a few days ago, invariably old women with huge bags full of little ramp bundles.

Not sure what the locals make of them. I heard a seller pitch them to a passerby other than us as lettuces. When Amy picked up today's batch another customer asked what to do with them. The woman selling them said that she disliked them and that people who bought them cooked them as they saw fit. Somehow this didn't deter the prospective buyer from requesting a couple of bunches, in response the woman selling them said that she'd be cooking them herself and should pick them out herself as well.

They were the real deal though. Very garlicky. Our pantry is pretty meager here, no olive oil even. When Amy asked me what I cooked them in I replied,"Bacon." Three bunches of ramps, a pound of pasta, three batons of bacon, and some peppercorns.

Purple Beans

2009-03-15T13:04:00.000-07:00

A pot of beans that Amy found at one of the markets here in Lviv. More purple than the picasa'd photo suggests.

Café Veronika - Lviv, Ukraine

2009-03-10T05:46:00.000-07:00

We had a mid-morning snack at Café Veronika this morning. Won't say too much about this place other than that our snack was delicious, cost more than dinner had two nights before, and that most of the people dining there were either business men or well-heeled women meeting other well-heeled women. The pastry case was an awfully compelling mix of seemingly traditional fare like cabbage-stuffed puff pastry and slicker modern-looking cakes and tarts. Amy and I tucked into our quiche while we tried to convince Axel not to touch the lace table cloth with his chocolate croissant fingers.

Another Market - Lviv, Ukraine

2009-03-09T22:26:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we schlepped over to a train museum that turned out to be closed. We licked our wounds in a cafe alongside this market. We'd walked for half an hour at this point and the espresso, cake, and buttered toast with cured fish were very welcome. The guy one table over had more or less the same and supplemented with a vodka shot.

A cold or wet morning will more or less wipe out the weekly markets back home. This daily market was humming along with six inches of snow on the ground and a stiff wind ripping through the flimsy umbrellas. Apples looked amazing in all that snow. We got four cucumbers, half a squash, three potatoes, a few bananas, 500 grams worth of clementines, and the leeks and turnips for about three bucks.

Amy lugged Axel around on her back. In exchange for this service I carried her China Town Batz-Maru purse.

Through our first few days here, the only green things I ate were parsley and dill. We waited a long time for these cucumbers, while the woman in front of us bought a big bag of grapes. The vendor picked out each of the bad ones.

Every meal we've eaten, whether at home or our and about has been served on this scalloped white place setting. The Krakow Cafe, a fast food pizza place, and the cafe yesterday.

I mentioned the herb bundles tied together with sewing thread, but turns out bundles of jut about everything are tied together with it.

Strysky Market - Lviv, Ukraine

2009-03-08T06:31:00.000-07:00

Getting my sea legs after two days of travel. I've thrown together a blog to capture all of my navel gazing about our trip to Lviv, but will still be posting food-related items here. Long time readers will wonder why the heck I've somewhat customized this new blog and still intermittently plug away in the minima template here. A good question which might be in need of an answer this year. In the mean time, some shots from the market we've been frequenting.

This sign reads Strysky Market. The market sits at the bottom of a hill where Strysky Park begins.

The market is housed in a permanent structure that's flanked along one side by flower stands and a guy who sells fresh fish from a truck - just like those ladies at the Old Oakland Friday market.

Inside the walls of the market there are permanent stalls for dry goods, toys, you name it. Some of the food vendors occupy these as well, but most of the action is on long tables. The box of what looks like gelatinous blood is actually a tasty apricot paste. More wet than membrillo but the same idea.

It's Been a While

2009-03-01T13:14:00.000-08:00

I missed some can't miss blogging opportunities during my hiatus - something to do with Facebook, Twitter, and work. There was a meal at Weihenstephan (the oldest brewery in the world), Flora & Camino cracking my line-up of cocktail destinations, and a clutch of foodstuffs and drink better than I have a right to - Bodega Bay Cheese Gouda and a Boccalone subscription come to mind. Some of you may take issue with me promoting Camino as a cocktail destination, but house-made bitters and curaçao mean someone's playing ball.

I've spent the last few days getting ready for a trip to Lviv, Ukraine. Mostly this getting ready has meant meeting friends for food I'm not expecting them to have in Lviv. Drinks at Flora a couple of nights ago, sushi at Tanuki last night, and lunch at Cam Huong.

A fried halibut, unagi, and shiso leaf concoction from Tanuki.

All this eating and drinking out is admittedly an indulgence. But over the last month we'd eaten a startling number of CSA box derived dinners. I've been softening the leafy green blows with cured meat - saucisson sec and duck prosciutto. Lviv should be more of the same I think. Amy's been there for a few days already. She called to say that I would love the markets. More soon.

Fall in Oakland, Our Blackberry Bush

2008-10-04T13:44:00.001-07:00

I'm gonna let the my 3 month hiatus go largely unaddressed this time around. Rest assured, we're all eating well... and are plotting to eat even better (or more locally) for at least the next year.

So, while the bony remains of several Soul Food Farms chickens simmer down to stock, while a batch of Wild Boar Farms tomatoes roast in the oven, and while a bunch of duck legs and thighs sit under 3/4 of a teaspoon of salt each in the fridge, thought I'd post a couple of photos of the blackberry bush in our backyard.

A couple of weekends ago I noticed that the bush was, all of the sudden, more than a foot shorter. As summer really gets going, the bush towers over the iron stake running through the middle of this photo:

A very slight rain perked it up some a day later, but we're not getting much fruit off of it these days. Still, the fruit that is there is flavorful and heavy with sugar.

MoNo Jack London Square Oakland :(|)

2008-10-04T12:43:00.000-07:00

We ate at MoNo last night, down by Jack London Square. This space used to be a lunch-crowd stalwart called Cuckoo's Nest, a place I'd never eaten at but that I knew of indirectly - having worked at a place that did some concrete table tops for them. That place was Concreteworks Studio, which moved a few years back - incidentally, the old Concreteworks space is now Linden Street Brewery.

My nostalgia for the neighborhood, the proximity to home, and the availability of crudo all factored into our looking past a menu that seemed to promise what the East Bay Express described as,"standard global-fusion, small-plate, local-purveyor razzmatazz."

And the food was pretty good. We stuck to small plates and had the salumi, a watermelon salad, asparagus with eggs and prosciutto, and two of their three crudo. They were out of the arctic char, which I'd been wanting to try largely so I could compare it with the arctic char at Bar Crudo in the city.

The day boat scallops were tasty, but the micro bulls blood green contributed a taste which A. immediately identified as muddy. The ahi tuna crudo didn't work so well for me (a lot going on, way too much soy sauce, etc.) but it was topped with a show-stopping jalapeno granita.

We were so enthusiastic about this granita that our waiter confessed to sneaking it by the spoon-full, and then brought us a small bowl of it to go with dessert.

Truth be told, the bowl of granita was probably exchange in kind for our sitting for nearly 10 minutes while each of the waiters thought the other had our table. If you're familiar with either Cuckoo's Nest or Mono you will appreciate how odd this is. It's a very small space for folks to lose track of a table in. In addition to the granita, we were treated to marcona almonds and olives and two rounds of drinks.

Photo credit, Yelp user Pooh T.

Restaurants, Oakland: Camino

2008-06-28T22:00:00.000-07:00

A few weeks before Camino opened, I happened to be looking through the window, when Russ walked up and asked if we wanted to go in.

Another way you can tell that I'm not a blogger with food journalist ambitions, is that I didn't say,"Sure! Let me get my camera!" and then blog about it weeks before the restaurant opened. I was also mildly surprised that Russ was inviting us in even though I had my son with me - Axel was 20 months old at the time, and the restaurant was very much under construction. The 30' long communal tables were there already, so was the cladding for the bar and open kitchen - salvaged from a friend's house. And of course the fireplace.

Years ago, Russ told me that if he ever did his own thing it would need to be very specific. He didn't want to fall into the routine of cooking Chez Panisse food. He said,"Something like cooking everything in a fireplace."

I mentioned that I'd dropped by to a friend, and he offered up that the painted sign out front was kind of bad ass. I agreed, the happy confluence of American roadhouse, and as John Sarriugarte would put it Basque boarding house. Luck would conspire against my wife and I - we missed the opening party. Still, the invite was very fetching.

Yelpers seem to be splitting the verdict on Camino. Some folks think the bar that only serves the drinks on the menu is weird. I admit I didn't know how this worked at first. After having a rum drink, I asked if they did a Caiphirinia. I was told that what I'd had wasn't a caiphirinia but that they'd be happy to bring me another one. There's seems to be a prevailing opinion that the drinks should come in bigger glasses. I come and go on this. The drinks can be potent enough that the small glasses don't bother me. Some folks think the restaurant feels like a cafeteria, with a very limited menu. Whatever.

We've been a few times now, and the fact that I don't have to drive outside of Oakland to eat food like this trumps any foibles yelper's might care to point out. It's odd to find parking in front of a restaurant that serves food this good, and then walking in to find a packed bar of people waiting for a table.

Also, some of those cocktails are just delicious. Rum, orgeat, bitters, and absinthe. Really. I may muster a review at some point, or I could just say that they some times have duck cracklins on the menu.

Lagier Ranches Sour Cherries at Grand Lake Farmers Market

2008-06-28T13:33:00.000-07:00

For the first time in my blogging life, I wish I'd set up some blogging widget on my phone or had one of those Twitter accounts. Lagier Ranches had sour cherries this week. They tend to not be around for long, and I know they have a following.

I'd scooped up a pound or so before the guy working the stand had his signs out. He asked if I knew what they were. I said yes, and then handed one to my toddler who managed an enthusiastic mmm sound even as he scrunched his face.

Hog Island Oyster Company

2008-06-24T21:59:00.000-07:00

Given my fondness for oysters, and the amount of time we spend around Tomales Bay, it may seem odd that I'd never made it to Hog Island Oyster Company in Marshall (Population 50, Elevation 15). This past weekend I made the trek with our not quite two-year old, while my wife took BART to the city and then biked up to Point Reyes Station. We grabbed a dozen Kumamoto oysters and a dozen extra-small Clearwater oysters for a picnic in Inverness. They were delicious, averaged about a dollar a piece, and the biodegradable bag they came in was branded with that slammin' logo of theirs.

Grazie

2008-06-24T21:52:00.000-07:00

Back when I started Happy Consumptive, I would browse past more established food blogs trying to locate my tribe. It hadn't occurred to me yet that blogging could be a more or less solo act. I had this idea of spending a few years building a modest encyclopedia of ingredients before expanding into preparations of my own. Dabbling occasionally in big food ideas. There were a handful of food bloggers that everyone seemed to mention, and one of these was Becks & Posh. Some recent self-googling turned up that they'd linked here - almost a year ago. Somewhere along the way Happy Consumptive also found it's way into the "delicious food blogs - local" sidebar on Food Hoe. This sort of thing probably isn't newsworthy for most bloggers. Given the relatively low number of visitors who stop by here each day though, I have to assume that these folks like a good watermelon mojito with their sabelfish crudo.

Greens: Purslane (aka Miner's Lettuce or The Gardener's Curse)

2008-06-22T13:18:00.000-07:00

Last October, purslane showed up in episodes of Top Chef and Next Iron Chef. Highlighting what I tend to view as the obvious differences between the audiences of the two shows, Dale featured purslane in a scallop dish for the Top Chef finale while Michael Symon bestowed it on Chris Cosentino as a kind of culinary curse.

It turned at the Farmer's Market two weekends ago, piled high in the Ledesma Family Farms stand, a page of recipes helpfully displayed next to it. I was surprised to see purslane recipes from Gourmet dating back to 2000 on epicurious.

When it came time to prepare ours, I was short on ingredients for those recipes. I marinated some shaved fennel in lemon juice and a little white wine vinegar, tossed the purslane with olive oil, salt, and black pepper. What wikipedia describes as the 'mucilaginous' quality of purslane was evident, but the bright flavors stood out. No photos of the salad though. I'd opened a bottle of syrah by then.

Cherry Pit Vodka Tonic

2008-06-19T21:56:00.000-07:00

Cherries showed up at the farmer's market over a month ago. Back in April, I'd overheard a vendor tell someone that they expected to have their cherries in the third week of May. When I bounced this date off of Brad Gates at Wild Boar Farms, he responded that the third week of May was,"the sort of date someone pulls from an almanac." Hidden Star Orchards and Hamada Farms cherries showed up sooner than that. Brad brought his first batch on May 31 and said that in a week they'd be off the charts.

In what has to be considered a pretty odd coincidence, the following weekend someone showed up at his stand with a brix meter and more or less verified this claim. An average cherry apparently measures in at 16 brix, Brad's cherries measured in at 25 brix. He offered up that this wasn't a fair comparison. That an average cherry is grown for yield, whereas the fruit on his eighty year old trees which have never been sprayed with pesticides is not. Still, 25% sugar.

Anyway, as I ate my way through the last 6 weeks of cherries, I deposited the pits into a glass of vodka. I'd had some vague idea of attempting to recreate Tord Boontje's cherry pit necklace and figured the vodka soaking would help somehow when it came time to cleaning them up. Two weeks ago I noticed that the vodka had taken on some of the cherry taste though, and well - tonight it was hot.

Owing to some over-indulgence in caipirinhas last night all I could muster the courage for was a cherry pit vodka tonic. Refreshing though. If you're of a mind to try it, I'd recommend at least two weeks of soaking.

Culinary Coincidences: Paths Cross with Notable Chefs

2008-02-09T11:51:00.000-08:00

Timing for my trip to Tokyo was pretty good. Caught the first snow storm of the year, an event which would later figure in Edward Tufte's' video criticism of the iPhone's Weather application. The Emperor's Cup was up for grabs in the Summer Grand Sumo Tournament. And Garrey Reynolds of Presentation Zen just happened to be giving a talk while I was was there. About those chefs though...

While I was sneaking in as much food as I could during my business trip, one of Anthony Bourdain's production guys was spending as much time as he could on his high-tech toilet seat. My hotel was equipped with these. Each time I looked at the buttons and helpful diagrams, I was daunted.

Shortly after I visited Tsukiji Fish Market, Bay Area chef and Next Iron Chef participant Chris Cosentino visited the Honolulu Fish Auction. 82 pounds is a whole lot of opah.

Coming and Going: Volume 03

2008-02-02T21:08:00.000-08:00

Despite the run of international posts, there are a lot of places opening in Oakland right now.

Biking to work the other day, I pedaled past what looks like a bar opening at (don't quote me on this) 338 14th street. There's a slick-looking black rock wall, and some oblong windows a la Pearl. Still taped up as a of a couple of weekends ago, I'll try to drop by tomorrow.

Franklin Square Wine Bar
Franklin Square opened up at 2212 Broadway avenue. The SF Gate points out that the location is "near 22nd Street" in their first look - this annoyed me for some reason. Is that really more helpful than saying the best way to get there is actually from Franklin street? Plenty of interesting wine to drink but the food was only good. House-cured bresaola with artichoke hearts and greens stood out, a liberty duck breast was mostly gray, cauliflower risotto was creamy but seemed like it hadn't been stirred while cooking. All of which, given the prices, adds up to you could do worse.

Flora
I ate at Flora for the first time. It's been almost two years since I wrote that this place was coming. At the time it was supposed to be a tequila bar. Instead it's a deco'd out place, complete with an absinthe fountain on the bar. I ordered a $13.00 Vietnamese-style chicken salad that my lunch guest said looked, "like a side salad." He ordered pasta with meat balls for $19.00. I might have expected to see these prices at dinner. I haven't headed back for dinner because I'm worried that it will cost a lot, be only alright, and now that we have to pay a baby sitter to do this sort of thing.

Camino
Closer to home, I'm hearing that Camino will open at 3917 Grand Avenue in the next month or so. I'm friendly enough with the folks involved that I haven't engaged in much rumor mongering about this one. The Chronicle wrote it up nearly a year ago, and the Grand Lake Guardian wrote it up at about the same time.

Vine Wine Bar
Vine Wine Bar opened on lakeshore recently, but I'm going to reserve comment for a bit. I considered the huge bottle of 1996 merlot in the front window to be a bad omen. I've also heard grumblings about the food, but the night we tried to go the place was packed.

Dinner in Tokyo, Day 2: Gonpachi (Nishi Azabu)

2008-02-02T12:02:00.000-08:00

On our second day in Tokyo I woke up at 5am. Looking out the window of my hotel room, I saw what looked like snow. I grabbed my coat and headed down to the 4th floor terrace, where a 7-11 with an ATM machine was supposed to be. The snow was light but steady. I ducked into the 7-11, past a big styrofoam sushi roll, as the guys behind the counter bowed slightly and said,"ohayo gozaimasu." I would spend the rest of the day in an office building looking forward to dinner at Gonpachi.

I'd read in my guide book that it was the inspiration for the restaurant scene in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill, also that Japan's Prime Minister Koizumi had taken our President Bush to Gonpachi for dinner. I was sold on Kill Bill from the opening credits, and couldn't wait to check it out. By the time we left the office for our cab, the snow was mostly gone and a steady rain was falling.

While reviewers tend to describe Gonpachi as a Disney-style riff on rural or old Japan, it looked pretty cool in the rain. Designed to resemble a kura (which I've seen translated as warehouse and treasure house), the exterior featured rock walls and massive wooden doors. Entering through a deep doorway on the second floor, we had a view of the bamboo-covered and lantern-lit dining area on the first. A hostess made a stern face as I approached the railing with my camera, you can see some photos here. Our table was in a more formal dining area on the third floor, beyond a large garden. Open to the sky, the garden had been closed off with sheets of plastic. I wish I'd taken pictures of this now, at the time I worked to keep tarps out of my shots. Anyway, the food.

Some folks from the office ordered for us. Two large plates of sashimi, some yakitori, sushi nigiri, and then sushi rolls. Looking around the web, it seems that not every type of food is available on the first and second floors of the restaurant. The sashimi selections included a crisp, dense, chunk of golden fish eggs. I believe this is typically served at the new year. I don't always fare well with the more dense textural varieties of sushi, but I did okay with these. I was much more enthusiastic about what was described to me as a wedding dish of, "fish from very deep in the ocean with a big eye." My favorite of the nigiri were the young sardine fillets - bright silver and very tender.

A couple of nights later, we caught up with a friend of mine who had worked in our Tokyo office for a few years. He'd left to open up an English language preschool in Yokohama. He was not surprised that we'd been to Gonpachi, but described the food as "very international." It wasn't hard to see what he meant. Aside from the freshness of the ingredients, and some of the presentation aspects, the food was a lot like the sushi we eat in the bay area. Our Japanese colleagues were consistently surprised by how familiar we were with the language of their food, and in particular that we would make sushi at home. The most international of the foods we ate however, would have to be the foie gras nigiri.

Given the quality of the food and formality of the dining, I was surprised to learn that prices here are --by Tokyo standards-- reasonable. This is an important distinction to make in a town where a hotel buffet breakfast for three can set you back $80.00.

Dinner in Tokyo, Day 1: Oli

2008-02-02T11:39:00.000-08:00

Background: Two weeks ago work took me, my boss, and a recently hired colleague to Tokyo for a week. We had three and a half days of meetings, punctuated by lots of great meals. Most of these were japanese, a couple were Italian, and I managed to miss the only clunker - a chinese lunch. I'll post as much as I can about these given that I rarely ordered the food, don't know the names of several places we were, and wasn't always able to work out the English words for things with my Japanese colleagues.

On the way to SFO, thumbing through Time Out Shortlist Tokyo, I realized that Narita airport was seventy miles from our hotel. Our flight would arrive at 2:30pm. The very detailed itinerary prepared by the marketing manager in our Tokyo office (30 minutes blocks allocated for checking email, etc.) began with dinner at 6pm. By the time our bus pulled up to the hotel, dinner had been pushed back to 7:00 and we had 20 minutes to pull ourselves together.

We ate at one of the hotel's six restaurants, an Italian place called Oli. I ordered an amarone, described the process used to dry the grapes, and earned wine-ordering privileges for the rest of the trip. No easy task when traveling with a guy who was raised Italian and describes himself as,"the one who usually grabs the book." I had a spot-hitting carpaccio and then pasta with braised guinea fowl.

The next day our host would say that he was trying to take it easy on us by starting with Italian food, but I think he also wanted to demonstrate the degree to which he and Tokyo were international. The wine list featured a lot of well-known wines, dinner started off with an amuse bouche, and the flavors were definitely mediterranean. We all passed on dessert and coffee and headed back to our rooms for sleep.

Tsukiji Fish Market Photos

2008-01-29T22:13:00.000-08:00

Work took me to Tokyo last week. Have more to say about the trip, but for now some photos from Tsukiji Fish Market. Didn't make it into Sushi Dai, but knew just looking at the line that they were playing for keeps.

Table full of a scallop-like shell fish. My hosts used the term "shells" to describe all kinds of shell fish.

Never did find out what these were. They were intensely red, I think I saw them being pried out of a bivalve shell.

I was not intimidated by the community chopsticks, but didn't try any of these sea weed salads. Yet another experience any food blogger worth their salt wouldn't have passed up.

I saw two stands selling tofu. This one had great packaging for the soft varieties.

Food Business: A New, Global Oil Quandary: Costly Fuel Means Costly Calories

2008-01-19T12:57:00.000-08:00

This week's Saturday NYT article on food A New, Global Oil Quandary: Costly Fuel Means Costly Calories made it to the front page of the paper. In it Keith Bradsher details a handful of factors that are pressuring the global market for cooking oils, especially Palm Oil. Not surprisingly 1st worlders are part of the problem; local solutions across Asia --including subsidies, price caps, and rationing-- have created a gray market for palm oil and, in one case, contributed to a riot that left three people dead. Over cooking oil.

In a nutshell, the demonizing of trans fats here in America (which I'm not opposed to at all, but is no real replacement for a diet with health benefits) and the rising consumption of oil-derived biofuels here and in Europe have contributed to a 70% jump in the price of palm oil over the last year. I take the rising cost of food for granted. It's most visible to me when Arizmendi raises the price of their cheese rolls by twenty five cents, their pizzas by three dollars. A bourgeois data point that, in its banality, smoothes over some pretty rough edges:

The food price index of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, based on export prices for 60 internationally traded foodstuffs, climbed 37 percent last year. That was on top of a 14 percent increase in 2006, and the trend has accelerated this winter.

The article goes on to say that the great thing about oil palms is that they are incredibly efficient producers of oil. In some kind of couldn't make this up crisis of conscience for Whole Foods shoppers, plantation owners in Malaysia are slashing and burning tropical forests to make room for more oil palms, destroying habitats for endangered orangoutangs, and dispossessing the indigenous peoples of Borneo as they go - spurred on by the protein-oriented food demands of emerging middle-classers from China to Africa.

Few things suggest more fully the degree to which the availability of relatively high quality cooking oil is taken for granted here than Rachel Ray's reductive reduction of Extra Virgin Olive Oil to, EVOO.

Least surprisingly, the article paint a very different picture from the fetishized production of local organic olive oils we see here in the bay area. Still, in its locality, this does suggest one course of action.

Photo Credits: 'Oil Palm Nursery' by Flickr user wajakamek, 'Oil Nut Press' by Flickr user raysto, both are licensed under Creative Commons.

Food Business: On 'Curing What Ails Starbucks'

2008-01-13T17:21:00.000-08:00

I'd been thinking about regular features I could write for the blog this year, when it occurred to me that the New York Times runs an article about food in their business section most Saturdays. Lest you think I'm some mutual fund obsessed food dilettante, I know this because the business section happens to also be the sports section.

This week's food article is Jose Nocera's Curing What Ails Starbucks. Should be interesting - I'm approaching this as a dyed-in-the wool Peet's fan. I pretty much only go to Starbucks when my wife competes in a triathlon someplace that doesn't speak Peet's. I was given a $20.00 Starbucks card in a white elephant gift exchange and, despite my daily coffee habit, I've used it just once. I purchased a large iced coffee for $2.50.

I had to wait five full minutes to receive my beverage while that automatic espresso machine spit out lattes. The coffee didn't taste as good as it does Peet's, it cost .70 more than it does at Peet's, and it took me at least five times as long to get. I made the switch to iced coffee a few years ago and have not looked back. It's easier on my stomach, less prone to lid issues, and at Starbucks I drink it black. I don't want it sweetened or blended. They have drinks that are sweetened and blended icy things, and they call them something else.

I'll recap Nocera's article this way, the founder of Starbucks hates the fact that they feel like a huge chain operation, so he's named himself CEO to restore the "romance and theatre" of a Starbucks experience that has become "watered down". Nocera's view is that this a bad idea, and that the competitive landscape has changed too much for Schultz to turn the ship around without doing things that he is unlikely to want to do - i.e. compete on price.

Along the way Nocera mentions some old news - apparently Schultz let the Stabucks executive staff hear about his unhappiness last year, in a memo that found its way to Starbucksgossip.com. Schultz writes,"we have had to make a series of decisions that, in retrospect, have lead to the watering down of the Starbucks experience, and, what some might call the commoditization of our brand."

The culprits include stay-fresh packaging that prevents Starbucks stores from smelling like coffee, and automatic espresso machines. In addition to eliminating the need for a barista to perform the act of creating an espresso drink, these new machines are tall enough to block,"the visual sight line the customer previously had to watch the drink being made, and for the intimate experience with the barista."

These decisions, combined with the ubiquity of the product, have resulted in Starbucks becoming what non-customers always thought it was - an over priced strip-mall version of an actual cafe where everything costs a lot more. Of course this makes sense to people like me, who think of drinking there as settling. What seems to be keeping Howard Schultz up at night is that is starting to make sense to people like my co-worker who treats himself to coffee there each Friday.

Premium brands and ubiquity don't get on well. This was on Seth Godin's mind last month.

The San Francisco Ferry Building Marketplace

2008-01-01T11:49:00.000-08:00

This is the second in a handful of posts that will fill in some gaps from last year. Posts that didn't quite happen, thoughts that didn't get expressed. If I was sure there would be 10 of them, I could call them the Top 10 Missing Posts of 2007.

We do most of our shopping for each week at the Grand Lake Farmers Market. Domestic rituals being what they are, this make's it difficult for me to get to the Berkeley Farmers Market let alone the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market.

When we met friends at the Ferry Building for a September trip to Angel Island, it was the first time I'd been in the building. We got to the Prather Ranch shop, hoping to score some bacon, just in time to see them counting money and avoiding eye contact.

We went back last weekend, a string quartet was playing Eleanor Rigby. We browsed and had lunch at Lulu Petite. My bowl of butternut squash soup was rich and smooth, our green bean salad was heavy on the herbs and vinegar, and a homeless guy sat on the stool next to us muttering angry.

An Autumn Afternoon at Eccolo

2007-12-31T12:52:00.000-08:00

This is the first in a handful of posts that will fill in some gaps from last year. Posts that didn't quite happen, thoughts that didn't get expressed. If I was sure there would be 10 of them, I could call them the Top 10 Missing Posts of 2007.

In the third week of September, I headed to 4th street in Berkeley to pick up my son's birthday gift. It was late afternoon, sunny and mild, I was feeling like an escapee. I'd ducked out of work half an hour early. I walked past the patio of Eccolo where Christopher Lee was sitting at a table under the trees, in his chef's whites, with a glass of something. I think he may have even had a towel thrown over one shoulder.

I had preconceived notions about him that this still-life complicated in unexpected ways. My wife worked as a busser at Chez Panisse while Chris Lee had been there. I understand that he established the tradition of serving fried chicken there on Martin Luther King Day. A few years ago, someone told me that his salumi depended on a nitrite crutch.

I can't even tell you what a nitrite crutch is, let alone if the claim is true. Blogs make fragments of description like this public, at least findable, without any journalistic imperative on the part of the author to address their veracity or implications. Mario Batali was getting at this when he wrote that he hates bloggers:

Many of the anonymous authors who vent on blogs rant their snarky vituperatives from behind the smoky curtain of the web. This allows them a peculiar and nasty vocabulary that seems to be taken as truth by virtue of the fact that it has been printed somewhere. Unfortunately, this also allows untruths, lies and malicious and personally driven dreck to be quoted as fact.

An equally one-sided assessment of traditional media would have to address it's proximity to corporate dollars, an almost mechanical objectivity that keeps the discourse in the shallows, and a tendency to reduce human complexity into a handful of quotes. There's something to be said about the currency of personal professional relationships too.

However little it matters, what I felt when I saw Chris Lee that day was that he'd made it about as much as a chef makes it. That the scene was a kind of perfect. I'm not saying I'm right, or that it means anything, but I was happy for him.

Photo Credit: Ingrid Taylar.

Release Day: St. George's Absinthe Verte

2007-12-23T11:31:00.000-08:00

This past Friday I stuck out the three hour wait and picked up four bottles of the first legal batch of absinthe produced in the United States in nearly 100 years. The parking lot at St. George's Spirits was sliced by a line of a few hundred people. I saw my plumber there, along with a guy who used to work for me, a woman who works at Speisekammer, and a handful of other familiar faces from around the East Bay.

The wait began a few weeks ago when a friend forwarded me a link to this New York Times article on absinthe's comeback. Laboring under the delusion that absinthe was still illegal in the states, I was unaware that two european brands (Kubler & Lucid) had been on sell for months. With the ban lifted, and after years of experimentation, the folks at St. George's Distillery in Alameda would be bringing theirs to market on December 21 - which just happens to be my birthday.

I'd had some serviceable absinthe at a party in New York during the summer of 1997, listened a year later as a friend described being served homemade absinthe at a party in Berkeley ("My senses all stopped working sequentially, like lights going off on the bridge during an attack on the Star Ship Enterprise..."), and with both of these things in mind I passed on some that a friend had "scored" online. Still, I was intrigued and I was not the only one.

The San Francisco Chronicle published an article on St. George's absinthe efforts. Googling turned up blog posts, announcements on Yelp!, and a thread over at the Republic of Absinthe forums.

So, just before lunch I made the short trip from my employer's offices on the island of Alameda, over to St. George's Spirits. My first inkling of what I had gotten myself into came as I pulled into the parking lot. A line of 200 to 300 people snaked out from the door, through the lot, and out through the gate. Through the gate.

The line moved five people at a time
As people came out with multiple 6-bottle cases, we learned there was no bottle limit. Of the 3,000 or so bottles that had been released in this batch, only 1600 were available. The line gasped audibly as a guy came out with a dolly-load of cases. Spirits were bolstered when people came out with single bottles wrapped in popcorn bags. The line constantly assured itself that the staff would let us know if there was no hope, that a limit might be imposed as supplies dwindled. The length of the line seemed to always be right around two hundred people.

We wondered what the street value of a bottle would be by the end of the week as women dressed in militaristic uniforms (with absinthe spoons in their pockets) came out to pour the line hot chocolate. While the Bay Area Bites blogger who posted on the release didn't flash their press credential, the line seethed at a woman who did flamboyantly flash hers. This prompted a group of guys near the front of the line to shout that they were part of the Photoshop development team, and that a swap for software was not out of the question.

Entirely Worth It
We drank some with our friend Jenny that night, dropping water into our glasses one drop at a time. It was thicker than we'd expected, very complex tasting. Each drop trailed oily legs through the glass. No one claimed hallucinations, though the flames in our fireplace seemed brighter than usual to me. I also dreamt that I could see through the blanket I'd pulled over my head.

Lablabi Is Very Tunisian

2007-12-16T11:12:00.000-08:00

I'd been meaning to post a follow-up entry on lablabi for a couple of weeks now. Turns out my original post ran roughshod over the dish, by attributing it to Algeria rather than Tunisia. The friend who introduced me to lablabi pointed my gaffe out this morning, and observed that a Tunisian friend of his wanted this corrected ASAP - by the Eid certainly, or a fatwa would be forthcoming. Edits made, I'll include this handy map:

I also considered a Jam Phat style chart or graph on where they make lablabi and where they wouldn't dare. I'll go with one of the classics instead:

Here's the thing I wanted to say about lablabi - if you make mediterranean food a couple of times a month you almost certainly have what it takes to whip up a bowl of it lying around your kitchen. And yet it will taste new. This overlap was the point, really, of Mario Batali's ill-fated cooking show Mediterranean Mario.

Or to put it another way, some of you know that I toiled briefly as an independent video game developer. I play video games rarely these days but I do still follow them, and I do still read Penny Arcade - a webcomic and blog that focuses on video games. In one of their blog entries, they discuss open source digital video recorders and offer up that most people reading could probably make one out of stuff they have in their closet. This is how I feel about my readers and lablabi.

Editor's note: At the risk of starting another international incident, I can't let mention of a fatwa pass without sending you here.

One Last Day Of the Dead Photo: Axel's First Calavera

2007-11-29T21:41:00.000-08:00

The colored wax on this skull was more vibrant a month ago, and it's starting to dissolve around the edges. Still, it is my son's first art project and there was no way it wasn't going to be photographed. Just in time too, I've started to see ants in the kitchen.

Making Tortillas on El Dia De los Muertos

2007-11-27T22:21:00.000-08:00

Not sure why I'm posting these photos now. They were shot at this year's Dia De los Muertos festival at Oakland Museum. I've had Oaxaca on the brain for a couple of years, and the New York Times "36 Hours in Oaxaca" caught my eye over the Thanksgiving break. Tonight we stopped at Cancun Taqueria on the way back from Tilden Park. Who knows, next I'll probably be posting my long-overdue review of Tamarindo.

Close-up of corn being ground into paste on what I want to call a molcajete. Not sure if a molcajete is ncessarily round-bottomed or not.

One of the things that stayed with me after the festival was the way that you would notice someone's painted face on a second or 3rd glance, through a crowd, or after you'd already photographed them grinding corn for tortillas.

Don't remember exactly how this corn kernel basket worked, but the cheap irony of the little girl wearing a Cornell shirt lingers on.

Lablabi: Something New to Do With Your Turkey Carcass

2007-11-25T22:31:00.000-08:00

On Friday we were invited to a Tunisian breakfast that our host described as a poultry broth with cumin over day-old bread. Only in this case he'd be using the turkey carcass from his Thanksgiving dinner. I phoned back to say that Amy had plans for a bike ride, but that it sounded right up my alley and that Axel and I would be there with bells on.

We met our hosts recently, and knew that both of them had spent time in northern Africa. First with the Peace Corps and then later to work on a documentary in Sierra Leone. Their twin girls are one month older than Axel. It was cold Saturday morning, Forty-one degrees when we piled out of the car and up the steps to their house. I could smell turkey broth through the front door.

Lablabi was as described but also included ras el-hanout, olive oil, lemon, capers, olives, harissa, and diced onions. Some of these were on the table as we sat down, and others appeared as Rob remembered them. He offered up that a more authentic version would also include a soft-boiled egg, that his non-traditional addition of choice is avocado, and that "ras el hanout" translated literally into "head of the shop".

You can dig up a handful of lablabi recipes through Google, but nowhere near the number of results you get for —say— tagine. I'm guessing there would be more recipes out there if the dish required some specially-shaped pot that Sur La Table et al could sell you. I'll be trying a version this week with a chicken carcass, and might have more to say about the various recipes then.

You can watch a video of the dish being prepared —egg and all— here.

Images are courtesy of, and linked to, harissa.com and andycarver.com respectively.

The Night Before Thanksgiving and No Wine

2007-11-23T23:37:00.001-08:00

Somehow, despite my well documented interests and habits, the 21st of November arrived and we had no wine appropriate for Thanksgiving dinner. Last year, we nipped this problem in the bud by hosting a kegger. But we'd committed to bringing something red and something bubbly this time around. So at 6:00pm on the day before Thanksgiving, Axel and I headed down to Lakeshore Avenue with a $50.00 budget.

This didn't necessarily mean that I was phoning it in. On the north side of Lakeshore Avenue, across the street from Blockbuster Video sits the shoe-box sized Buckingham Wine and Spirits. You can drop by there now and pick up a bottle of Opus One or Silver Oak, something from Praeger Port Works, or a bottle of Rosenblum's Rockpile Road Zinfandel. Until recently you could even pick up a few bottles of Williams Selyem Pinot. Someone seems to have rescued those from the dusty shelves opposite the beer cooler.

Still, I figured I should check out the wine aisle of the new Trader Joe's. During a recent hotel stay in Santa Rosa I'd grabbed a bottle of England-Shaw Vineyard Syrah there, and it was good enough that when I spilled the little plastic cup of it that I was drinking on a hotel patio I nearly wept.

The Lake Shore Trader Joe's opened on October 26. On weekdays in the half hour before nine, you can see people queueing up outside the front door. I've dropped by a couple of times to pick up 3.00 goat cheese and it is almost always busy.

The night before Thanksgiving, no fewer then 10 people were milling in the wine aisle. Someone had managed to get the attention of the "wine guy". As soon as he spoke, every prospective wine buyer in the store took a step toward him. As we walked toward the exit I could hear him saying, "Spicy? This one is the least spicy. This one is spicier, and this one is really spicy."

At Buckingham, the guy behind the counter tried to get Axel to wave at him. I took a while to browse, before deciding on a 1999 Anzivino Gattinara and a non-vintage Beaumont des Crayères Champagne. You never really know how its going to go there. If the 8 year old bottle of some obscure nebbiolo is gonna pan out. I wasn't sure even after Googling. Most pages described the wine as dry and complex, garnet tending toward orange. It was great with turkey, and the lightest of three reds we had. Considerably more austere than the Ici/La Bas Les Reveles pinot.

Djemaa el Fna Square, Marrakech

2007-11-19T21:39:00.000-08:00

Editor's Note: Since we began working together two years ago, Kurt Smith has been one of the most enthusiastic supporters of this blog. Kurt left the bay area for Barcelona earlier this year, and he has busted my chops transatlantic-style ever since over the lack of new material here. We'd talked about him guest-blogging on Barcelona's markets for months. Then, without warning, I receive this post via email yesterday morning on Djemaa el Fna Square. As Kurt would say,"And now for something completely different..."

I just returned from an all too quick visit to Morocco where one of the highlights was my visit to Djemaa el Fna square and market place in the Medina quarter of Marrakech. Mychal frequently writes about his trips to the Grand Lake and Jack London Square farmers markets and as I stood in the middle of the Djemaa el Fna I realized how far away I was from both.

The square has been listed by UNESCO as a "Masterpiece of World Heritage" and is undoubtedly the center of daily life in Marrakech.

The square is surrounded by the Souk (the traditional Arabic market place), small streets and alleys, hotels, cafes, and restaurants. I visited the Cafe Glacier for a cold coke (no booze allowed) and from their 4th floor terrace that overlooks the entire square you can watch the smoke rise from the food stalls amidst the ever changing world of snake charmers, magicians, storytellers, beggars, jugglers, musicians, monkeys and dancers. The aroma of grilled meats, cumin, and turmeric rises up as your ears are filled with a mixture of drumming and singing, Berber, Arabic, French, and Spanish. The whole experience is wonderfully intense.

As I left the relative safety of the cafe and ventured into the square, I quickly realized that there is a very active street that runs almost smack dab through the middle of the square. I just missed getting hit by a moped who was avoiding a taxi who had stopped for a donkey cart carrying who knows what. Kids on bikes swirl around everywhere as well as thousands of pedestrians. I made my way towards the smokey food stall area where locals and tourists were dining. The most popular stands serve snail soup, seafood, kebabs, grilled meats and vegetables and the local speciality, Sheep's heads. All of the food is prepared right before your eyes and since this is such an important area for tourism, the food is fresh and the stalls are clean.

The rest of the square is unofficially divided into different zones, orange juice sellers on one side and dried fruit and nut stands on the other. In between are Arabic and Berber story tellers keeping their ancient tradition alive, old women selling henna tattoos, musicians from both Arab and African lands playing all sorts of home made instruments, magicians, and just about every other form of entertainment you can think of. I even saw the old three-card Monte trick performed right before my eyes. All of this and I had not yet entered the Souk, which is literally a whole different story.

If you ever get a chance to visit Morocco and Marrakech I highly recommend it. I look forward to returning to Djemaa el Fna soon.

PS In case you are wondering I did have the Sheep's head and it was really really good.

Next Iron Chef: My Money Was On the Wrong Guy

2007-11-12T20:07:00.000-08:00

So, my wife and son have been visiting family in Miami. Other guys may do other things when their family is out of town, but I see it as opportunity to watch a lot of football and braise a lot of meat. It also means I had to come to terms with the Next Iron Chef verdict in monk-like solitude. Congratulations are in order. I'll even withhold the lengthy judgement I nearly published a few minutes ago. Still, it does feel like the big game reserve of the Food Network, where they kept a certain old toothless lion, is now also home to something more domesticated. I quote:

"A dream," says Alex Trebek to the doctor with circumflex brows. "I have this dream where I'm standing smiling over a lectern on a little hill in the middle of a field. The field, which is verdant and clovered, is covered with rabbits. They sit and look at me. There must be several million rabbits in that field. They all sit and look at me. Some of them lower their little heads to eat clove. But their eyes never leave me. They sit there and look at me, a million bunny rabbits, and I look back."

Buffalo osso bucco with butternut squash hash and beet greens.

I'm gonna take a sip of a certain hard to come by zinfandel from dry creek valley, and assure my friends and loved ones that I'm keeping it all in perspective. We're talking about a Food Network show which featured a bunch of successful chefs, one of whom has over 300 people working for him, in a made-for-TV contest to see who will get the full weight of the Food Network's marketing machine pushing their culinary point of view on a willing consumer public.

Next Iron Chef: My Money's On Besh

2007-11-11T20:23:00.000-08:00

I'll probably update this after I see the episode, but here goes...

Some of you know that I'm a big fan of Iron Chef America, Top Chef, and (to a lesser extent) Next Food Network Star. I've enjoyed moments of Next Iron Chef, which is drawing to a close tonight. Apparently some wiki has already spoiled the conclusion, but I haven't looked. Honest. And my money is on John Besh. This is an optimistic bet, based on the fact that I think he's cooking on a very different level from other show participants. This is not a bet based on who I think Food Network will want us to see and see again.

Each episode of Top Chef is supported by blogs from the judges, hosts, and food world notables. Next Iron Chef doesn't host blogs for the participants, and I've only enjoyed the entries from Michael Ruhlman.

I posted my take on the Next Iron Chef match-up in the comments of Ruhlman's blog, I'll quote myself here:

Coming to this conversation late, but I can't be the only one that thought the very likable Symon got his backside handed to him by Morimoto. Morimoto hamming it up and laughing that Symon didn't deserve to make sushi rice in a kitchen with him was it? Besh and Batali seemed close, even though the ingredient was right in Besh's wheel house.

Symon's mutant ability --everyone has one after all-- seems to be making good reads on situations. Cooking rather than warming his salmon with airplane oven, serving a drink with his plate of grilled birds. That knack will serve him less well in a show where the format doesn't change.

Based on the recent coverage, I'd say Besh's mutant ability is entrepreneurial. That's not necessarily a bad thing. It's certainly something he has in common with Bobby Flay and Mario Batali.

An Apple You Can't Get Anywhere Else

2007-10-21T21:41:00.000-07:00

Just days after our last haul from Hillview Farms, Amy came home with a bag full of apples from our friend Penny's tree. I'd had one of her apples before and remembered it being very good, but didn't recall what variety they were. Under normal circumstances I'd have been worried about us getting through all of them, but we've been eating 5 to 7 apples a day ever since.

Under normal circumstances I would also tell you what type of apples these are, but I can't. Penny did ask a bona fide Chez Panisse forager, but he wasn't sure. I'm guessing something in the Arkansas Black family.

Looking for Apples In the East Bay?

2007-10-21T16:44:00.000-07:00

If apples are your thing, head to the Jack London Square Farmers' Market and find Joe Stabile's Hillview Farms stand. Tell them whether you're looking for a tart or sweet apple, a cooking apple or out of hand apple, and then take their advice. They grow 200 varieties, many of the heirloom or antique, and I've been blown away by the 6 I've tried. I say this as a life-long citrus fan.

As a child, my lunchtime fruit was almost always some type of orange. Oranges were not necessarily a choice, I went shopping with my mother infrequently once school started. But, I had a preference for them over apples - the other school yard fruit option. It's worth pointing out that we're talking about conventional, grocery store fruit here. Purchased at the nearest Ralph's, available year round and with very little positive variation in taste.

During college I began to like Fuji Apples. They were the first apple I encountered that was not a red delicious, yellow delicious, granny smith, or pippin. Over the last couple of years, I've been exposed to a lot more apple varieties. I picked up my first Arkansas Black at Berkeley Bowl, Sun Downer and Pink Lady too. I'm always happy to see Crimson Gold when they start showing up, but I have not looked forward to them.

Last month we wound up at the Jack London Square market by accident. There were a lot of prepared food stands, some farmers that we shopped from at the Grand Lake market, and then there was the Hill View farms apple stand.

These apples were immediately recognizable as things that grew in a real place with weather, and most of them had names I'd never seen before. He had Thomas Jefferson's apple of choice the Esopus Spitenzberg, red-fleshed apples like the Hidden Rose and Pink Pearl. Last week I grabbed some Jonathans and Winesaps. Less exotic than the red-fleshed Hidden Rose, but more complex and delicious than any apple I'd ever eaten.

So, all things being equal, given the choice between an apple and an orange - I'll go with the orange. But my conversion to a seasonal produce shopper means there are at least two months where that's a choice I don't have to make.

Photo credit: Len Vaughn-Lahman / Mercury News

Paw Paws, Bronx Grapes, and the End of Summer

2007-09-01T11:48:00.000-07:00

Axel and I bumped into friends at the Farmer's Market this morning, they were in the process of polishing off of a pound of Lagier Ranch Bronx Grapes. One offered up that he was sad to have decided he liked them during the last week that they would be available. So I seemed to have failed in my annual duty to alert friends and other browsers to the availability of the "Rolls Royce" of table grapes. There's a chance you'll be able to grab some next week, but it's no sure thing.

I should have know really, the Lagier Ranches stand also had Paw Paws today. A quick scroll through the archives suggests I haven't written about these before. The largest fruit native to North America, Paws Paws have a dense, creamy texture and taste something like a cross between a banana and a mango.

There are other indicators that summer is drawing to a close. Lakeshore Avenue was thick with people wearing Cal Bears gear. Big game against Tennessee tonight. In addition to the Gala apples we'd been eating for a few weeks, there were Fujis today. I was able to bring some home because Amy was out on a bike ride. If she'd been there, she would've insisted that she wasn't ready to have them in the house yet. Wild Boar Farms should have their Evan's Purple Plum tomatoes next week. And Andy Roddick just made quick work of an early round opponent at the U.S. Open, dispatching Thomas Johannson of Sweden in straight sets.

Housekeeping: Fall '07 Edition

2007-09-01T11:11:00.000-07:00

A while ago, the not evil folks at Google changed their search mechanism. This seems to have broken the handful of "Filter" links I'd provided at right (pesky 500 errors). My blog roll suffers from my not really being much of a blog reader. The two blogs that I do link to couldn't be more different. A bunch of the wines that Alder writes about over at Vinography are press samples these days, while Jessica of Feed and Supply suspects that her handful of readers must surely be friends and family (we've never met, but mutual friends from Chez Panisse and a former colleague of mine all have very nice things to say about her).

This blog has accomplished a few things that I am proud of. It holds the top Google rank for searches on "sabelfish", if not "sabel fish". I've helped get the word out about Brad Gates and his tomatoes. I've also managed to capture a share of the online market for Watermelon Mojito recipes - far and away the most visited page of the site this past month despite a Page 2 Google rank.

There's more I'd like to do though and, despite the various pursuits that are consuming my time, I'm optimistic that as summer turns into fall and fall turns wet with rain I'll be able lavish attention on my fledgling food publishing empire.

On Vacation: Back from Hog Island

2007-07-14T15:07:00.000-07:00

Wanted to let you know I'm alive and eating well. We're recently back from an extend stay in Pt. Reyes Station and, like last summer, vacation zapped my posting mojo. There's a lot I'll try to say about Pt. Reyes and its food culture at some point, but for now enjoy this bay-side picture of six oysters on the half shell (+1), with a lime cilantro mignonette. I'd just paddled by kayak from Marshall to Hog Island (map | history) and back, with enough cash in hand for lunch at the Marshall Store.

In year's past, when I'd ask if the Marshall Store was a good lunch spot, the staff of the kayak rental shop had always said that eating there was way risky. Ownership seems to have changed though, and multiple patrons were served their food by Blue Waters Kayaking staffers. The oysters were tasty and also available BBQ and Rockefeller.

Watermelon "Mojito"

2007-06-12T22:57:00.001-07:00

I am uncharacteristically going through a fruity drink phase. Perfect for after work, particularly when I've taken my bike into the office on a hot day. I'll only say that the fresh watermelon in this drink gives it a slightly more sophisticated taste than you might expect and that in public I still drink Ketel One martinis. Up with two olives.

In a break with Happy Consumptive tradition, I'll also approximate a recipe for this concoction:

Ingredients
1 cup watermelon chunks
1/3 cup Rum: A flavored rum adds some aromatic oomph, but is not neccesary.
1 lime
2 long sprigs of mint
Sparkling Water: We use Calistoga with lime flavor
6 ice cubes

Directions
Add watermelon chunks, the juice from one half of the lime, the mint leaves from both sprigs of mint (leaving only the top-most leaves on one spring, for garnish), the rum, and 3 ice cubes to a cocktail shaker. Shake vigorously (at least 20 times). Using a cocktail strainer, pour the contents of the shaker into a pint glass. Watermelon pulp and mint shrapnel should make it into the glass. Add the remaining ice cubes, the juice from the remaining lime half, and top off with sparkling water. You might also want to stir.

Orthodox Mixology
This drink runs enthusiastically afoul of orthodox mixology where Mojitos are concerned. Those of you who have read the Lime and Mint Cocktail recipe in Chez Panisse Fruit, or were there when we developed the recipe, probably won't be surprised. Here are the transgressions:

There's no muddling of the mint leaves with the lime juice. You could muddle if you like, but it's not necessary.
Mojitos tend to be made with soda or tonic water - not sparkling water. But, in season watermelon is sweet enough that either seems like over kill.
There's probably also a school of mixology that would take a dim view of tossing all of those things in a cocktail shaker. In this particular recipe, the shaker is the blunt instrument of a refreshing policy.
Some believe that cocktails should be shaken exactly 20 times, but with this recipe there are a lot of solids to get cold. It may take 4 to 6 more shakes than usual.

Farmers Raving About This Year's Stone Fruit

2007-06-05T21:20:00.000-07:00

My intention with this post is to encourage all of your Nothern Californians to find your way to a famer's market this week and buy some cherries, some apricots, basically any fruit with a pit. My assurances that tasty stone fruit were there for the taking last year were based on a lifetime of experience eating grocery store fruit, and a concerted few years of eating farmer's market fruit.

This year's fruit blows last year's away to a startling degree. Startling that is, unless you happen to be a fruit farmer. In which case you probably know that the last couple of years have been good but not great, or maybe even okay but not really good. If you've only recently acquired serious food religion, this is the sort of thing you can't know.

Two Saturdays ago I was surprised to see the Wild Boar Farms booth at the Grand Lake Farmer's Market decked out with cherry tree boughs. I asked Brad if he'd had cherries last year, and he said that he only got a crop every two or three years - when the conditions were just right. As I grabbed a sample cherry, he had Bings and Rainiers, a woman who was arranging to have a case of them delivered to her restaurant offered up that they were the best she'd ever tasted.

This past weekend I stopped by the Lagier Ranches booth and made small talk about how well cherries seemed to be doing. The guy working the stand bellowed,"Finally!" He went on to say that he expected it to be a great year for all stone fruit. As service-oriented as anyone I've ever encountered at the market, he went on to offer to "call John" to find out when Sour Cherries would be available.

It's not just cherries either. One of the guys at the Blossom Bluff Ochards stand, described the taste of their apricots as completely out of left field. I had sampled the fruit and wasn't completely convinced, but there I was at work yesterday looking at a puddle of apricot juice on my desk - unsure of whether or not I could resist slurping it up.

Incidentally, I did not have the guy working the Lagier Ranches booth ring John Lagier at 9:30am on a Saturday morning. Probably the surest sign that I am not cut out to be a high profile food blogger.

Interview with Brad Gates of Wild Boar Farms

2007-05-19T13:11:00.000-07:00

Chez Panisse Vegetables pegs bay area tomatoes as a late summer phenomenon, but I wasn't hooked on Wild Boar tomatoes until my first taste of an Evan's Purple Plum in October of 2005. Like any self-respecting internet professional, I headed to Google to see what I could find out about the source of these intensely flavorful tomatoes. I couldn't find out much, other than that Brad Gates also sold lilacs. Of the three reference guides I have consulted, all maintain that it is not advisable to grow lilacs in the Bay Area.1

Last year, unable to find an email address to send my well wishes, I printed up the handful of blog entries I'd posted on Wild Boar tomatoes and dropped them off at Brad's farm stand. Over the months that followed we struck up an email correspondence that exposed me to several online outposts of the tomato cult, revealed that Brad had been meaning to look into the Slow Food movement but hadn't yet, and that (all my ramblings aside) terroir wasn't really on his mind."Is that a dog breed?", he asked.2

None of which is too surprising when you consider that Wild Boar Farms, and its six thousand tomato plants, are largely a one-person operation. Brad does hire one person to help him out during the picking season and has been known to bribe his kids to help out, but otherwise from January to November he's the primary care giver for all those plants. When I dropped by the farmer's market on May 19th, he described the previous work day as having started at 5am and having wrapped up at midnight. I think I replied something like,"Oof." To which he responded,"You've gotta cast your net while the grunion are running."3

This year it shouldn't be quite so difficult for folks to get the goods on Brad and his farm. He recently launched an online store for his seeds, and is hard at work on a website. He also agreed to this interview, which we conducted in April. Given how infrequently I've been able to post this spring, I suppose the editorially shrewd thing to do would be for me to break it up over a couple of weeks, but the content doesn't really lend itself to doing so. So here, in it's entirety, is my interview with Brad Gates of Wild Boar Farms.

How did you get started with tomatoes?
I worked for a summer selling tomatoes for a friend at farmer's markets. I was doing landscaping at the time, because I love plants and love to be outdoors. People are not that appreciative when you do landscaping work for them but people kept thanking me for bringing them tomatoes.

Where is Wild Boar Farms located?
I farm in the Suisun Valley in Solano County. I have grown tomatoes in three counties, Napa, Yolo and Solano. Yolo is nice for real early tomatoes but to blazing hot in the summer, Napa is great for grapes but not quite as warm as tomatoes like, so my best tomatoes came from Suisun and I stayed.

The soil is unbelievable also, I grow on class I soil (the best). Places with 10 feet of topsoil are considered excellent, Suisun Valley has topsoil that is almost 100 feet deep thanks to receding glaciers that shaped the region.

Restaurants serving Wild Boar Farms tomatoes

Brad sells his tomatoes to distributors and re-sellers who supply many local restaurants. He sells directly to the following Restaurants:

What do you figure the climatic variables are for the flavor of your tomatoes?
I have noticed that some varieties do good no matter if it is cool, hot or whatever. So, I may have to rely more on those varieties. Water control is also very important in tomato flavor.

You and I talked a few times about how whacky the weather was last year, in your experience is there such a thing as a typical growing season in the bay area?
I have been growing for ten years and the last two where the most challenging with last year taking the crown. Soaking rains till May and three weeks of 100-115 degree temps for three weeks straight are not what made California a produce mecca so lets hope that does not happen again for a long while.

In our conversations about what you do, you've mentioned colleagues from around the world. Is there a perception on the part of these folks with regards to climate change?
I have noticed people from other parts of the world mention odd weather. I know that in at least parts of New Zealand they did not even get summer this year. I heard of 50 something day tomatoes taking almost 100 days.

How many varieties of tomato plants do you grow each year?
I have grown 50-100 each year. Some of the varieties I am working on that are unstable may give me 50 different tomatoes, thats just from one working variety so thats a lot of tomato variables. I have made many trades from around the world this year so I am adding over 100 new trial varieties to the 100 or so I was already going to grow.

Two years ago my wife and I were all about your purple plum tomatoes. Last year it was the Berkeley Tie Dye. Do you find that a given variety changes much from year?
There are so many variables that, yes, the flavor can even change day to day. But there are other factors, like when you first tried Evan's Purple Plum I think it may have been late in the season, well that variety hangs on the vine well late season and takes on a rich flavor that usually only shows up in October. It's is a stand out flavor that very few have ever experienced. Berkeley Tie Dye does great mid season but does not like to much cool weather and does not hang on the vine so I have learned to plant different varieties at different times.

Do you have a personal favorite?
Too many good tomatoes, well, Pink Berkeley Tie-Dye.

You turned me on to Tomatoville.com, and you recently began selling your seeds online. How has the internet influenced what you do?
There is a lot to learn from a cult tomato group like Tomatoville.com. Always hearing about new varieties, seeing how people react to your varieties, sharing varieties around the world, endless ideas.

As near as I can tell, you and other members of the tomato cult gather for a mid-summer tomato tasting. Can you describe the sorts of tomatoes that show up at these events?
Actually I have missed my local tastings because they have been held on Saturday's. Every Saturday is spent selling tomatoes. So this year I am offering to have the tasting at my garden on a Sunday so I can go.

You've described a few of your varieties as being basically unique. I'm thinking of Brad's Black Heart and the various 'furry' tomatoes. Can you describe the process of arriving at these one of a kind tomatoes?
A lot of them have been lucky finds which I attribute to growing tens of thousands of plants and actually being the one going up and down the rows doing the work to notice them. Once you find something unique with a lot of plants to choose from you can get some pretty bizarre looking tomatoes, the key is selecting for flavor to go along with that unique look.

Places you can buy Wild Boar Farms tomatoes:

The Grand Lake Farmer's Market (Saturdays, Oakland)
The Fairfax Farmer's Market (Wednesdays, Bolinas)
Piedmont Grocery (Oakland)
Village Market (Oakland)

In addition to yourself, I'm a big fan of Prather Ranch, Lagier Ranches, and County Line Harvest. Are their other farmers whose work you admire?
That's a tough one, because I do not get a chance to really get to know to many other farmers and see what they are about. Probably the smaller they are the more I admire them. The bigger they are, the more likely they are to promote bad labor practices and unfair pay for hard core work. The one employee I have I pay almost twice minimum wage which is a lot more then anyone else I know in this business. I admire anyone actually doing the farming.

Anything else you'd like to say?
Support small farmers - buy local and in season for the best tasting, most nutritious produce.

Footnotes

1 At the very least, growing lilacs here is considered challenging. Sunset's Western Garden book refers to the Bay Area as Zone 15, and says it is possible to grow them here despite their preference for decidedly chilly winters. In addition to the climatic challenges posed by our mild winters, Sunset also warns against leaf miner, scale and stem borer. Brad agrees that conditions are not optimal, but maintains that, "If you grow lots of varieties and lots of plants you will get some nice blooms." It's worth reinforcing that this philosophy isn't so different from how he approaches tomatoes.

2 Compare this to the folks at Knoll Farms, who promote their brand of 'organismal' farming under a folksy abstraction of terroir ( Tairwa´).

3 An informal survey of several friends and family members suggests that, particularly in the context of agriculture, this is a relatively obscure reference. I'll provide a link to the Wikipedia entry for grunion and let you draw your own conclusions. However, I will also take a moment to point out that Brad has a particular way with words. One weekend he brought several mature Tomato Horn Worms with him to the Farmer's Market. In response to multiple squeamish inquiries, he offered up,"I usually just squash them, these worms don't have it so bad - making the trip down to Oakland and getting to spend time with all of you nice people."

Blue Crab Comes to Berkeley

2007-05-18T18:27:00.000-07:00

The eVite we received promising blue crabs direct from Maryland had 10+ names on it. Still, I was unprepared for the sight of nearly one hundred crabs piled into a baggage-check grade styrofoam cooler.

Our friend Spencer had picked them up on his way back from a visit to Baltimore, and offered helpful reminders about which parts to eat and not. He also pointed out that despite everyone's enthusiasm for his imported regional delicacy, that this was not high brow food. Tubs of Safeway potato salad and bags of Kettle Chips rounded out the spread.

Spencer'd expected each of us to eat six, and despite our best efforts several folks headed home with bags of bonus crab. With our leftovers, I threw together a ceviche based on the flavors of one they serve at Tamarindo Antojeria — lime, cumin, and achiote.

Scharffen Berger Looking for a Marketing Manager

2007-04-01T11:44:00.000-07:00

A friend passed along this job listing for a Marketing Manager at what appears to be Scharffen Berger. Or at least an Artisan Confections Company in Berkeley that is owned and operated by Hersheys. What with me content to be building and plying my marketing skills at a certain publicly traded Device Software Company in Alameda, thought I'd share it with all of you folks (whomever you are).

I'm curious to see how this marriage of Hersheys and the Scharffen Berger people and brand play out. At Peet's this morning I noticed Scharffen Berger easter candies. You know, egg-shaped milk chocolate in silver wrappers, even something described as an egg with chicks inside. I suppose there's some money to be made there, but if it happened to be Easter and I was wanting an "artisan confection" I don't think I'd care what shape it was in. Wouldn't it make more sense to do something seemingly seasonal? In our house that would probably mean mint or lavendar.

Naia Rueda Verdejo and Viña La Playa's Axel Cabernet

2007-04-01T09:43:00.000-07:00

Food and wine and the life of our newborn intersect more often than in most households. It's tough for me to know which of our blogs should play home to posts on such topics. But, as I've been remiss in documenting my consumption lately, here goes...

I spend a considerable amount of time waiting for Axel to be more interested in food. He'll suck on apple chunks (Fuji's from the farmer's market), reportedly likes pears (a non-descript Bartlett I think), and wants nothing to do with either bananas or avocados. Yesterday he seemed to know approximately what to do with a hunk of baguette. I caught myself ogling a toddler at Cafe Fanny, who purposefully clawed at the scone her mother had ordered, with something approaching jealousy. My mood was compounded by the fact that even though she was clearly older than Axel, he was nearly twice as big as she was.

And speaking of jealousy, it was with something approaching it that I observed our friends' finding a bottle of wine that shared the name of their daughter Naia. The wine's description seemed to suggest a mediterranean future for her, where she'd be the life of some warm, sandy party: The 2004 Naia Reuda Verdejo has bright, ripe peach, fresh apricot and honeysuckle aromas, with traces of lime and orange zest. On the palate, there’s zingy acidity that begins as tart, white peaches then develops into rounder, sweeter honeydew and cantaloupe melon flavors. The wine’s bright fruit and electric acidity are a real palate cleanser and the wine is very refreshing. All of which is pretty spot on, as I found out when they served a bottle at the first dinner we had at their place after our friends brought their little girl home.

After six and a half months, I was happier than I should have been to stumble into Buckingham Wine & Spirits and discover a Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon named Axel; the relative rarity of the name (to say nothing of La Play's corporate clout) reinforced by a small but proud ®. Wine Enthusiast offered up this 92 point assessment:The surprise of the moment from Chile has to be this full-throttle keg of dynamite Cabernet. It’s a cellar wannabe with credentials. First off, it’s brilliantly ripe, with forceful black cherry, cinnamon and wood spice on the palate. Huge tannins, poking acids and a couple of floors’ worth of depth make it praiseworthy. Imported by Cabernet Corporation. Cellar Selection. I'd only add that the wine is awfully bright at first blush. I'd recommend decanting even if I took the more prosaic route of having a glass and re-corking for a night.

Culinary Gifts from Indonesia

2007-03-26T21:19:00.000-07:00

To the extent that my social identity has a lot to do with food, and given that we entertain quite a bit, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that we receive a lot of culinary gifts. To mention just a few of the gifts that I haven't already posted on, there's been wild blue berry jam from our friend Pete, sourwood honey and Jacques Torres chocolates from my colleague Mia, and more wine from more folks than I can sensibly list.

Still, I was surprised when our friend Karla came back from indonesia with the salt and vanilla pictured below. I have not tried either yet and, as always, will hope to have time to say more later.

Just for the heck of it: Amy's Banana Cream Pie

2007-03-24T22:58:00.000-07:00

Wild Boar Farms Tomato Seeds Available Online

2007-03-04T09:20:00.000-08:00

I recently received an e-mail from Brad Gates of Wild Board Farms letting me know that he'd begun selling seeds for some of his tomatoes online. You can check out his selection here. All of my favorites are available including Evan's Purple Plum, Pink Berkeley Tye Dye, and Brad's Black and Brown Boar. Direct from the fringes of heirloom tomato genetics you can also even buy seeds for Brad's Black Heart and "fuzzy" tomatoes - tomatoes with a variegated matte finish.

While these last two varieties in particular are probably unique in the world of tomatoes (I encourage you to check out the R&D thread at Tomatoville on this point), I believe the entire Wild Boar project borders on revolutionary.

Brad's raising and refining thousands of plants a year here, and has a colleague raising and refining thousands more in New Zealand. The rare combination of location(s) and skill that go into these tmatoes cannot be underestimated. I've sampled the goods of other folks offering comparable looking tomatoes, that fell plainly flat when eaten - they tasted like something I could do.

My belief that these tomatoes are a unique expression of where they are grown isn't going to keep me from raising seedlings, probably much later than someone who knew what they were doing would really advocate, and throwing them in the ground in Oakland.

I'm Reading: 'Heat,' by Bill Buford

2007-01-21T17:33:00.000-08:00

Years ago a friend of mine insisted that I read a New Yorker article on Mario Batali. It was the first piece of any length that I'd read about a food personality; at the time I knew of Batali only as the guy who concocted the 'white prosciutto' the same friend kept bringing up. What the article compellingly described was the larger than life personality that Batali brought to the table. Epic bouts of drinking and eating. Feeding a pig nothing but cream, walnuts, and apples and then serving people the fat from that pig. Showing up at a Giant's game to the delight of east coast male football fans.

It was this article, along with the first few episodes of Iron Chef America that I saw, that put Batali's Babbo at the top of my list during a trip to New York a few years back.

The article's other personality was that of Bill Buford, the guy writing it. What I accepted as a transparent literary device, his parlaying his editorial assignment into a full-time gig as a kitchen slave at Babbo restaurant, turned out to be an earnest re-assessment of the author's priorities and interests. Lasting not only for the duration of his assignment, but to this day.

Heat expands on the terrain of the New Yorker article considerably. Charting Batali's rise from guy working in a pizza shop, to Italy, to food celebrity. Detailing the story of Buford's going pro in the world of food. Each story is a good read, though I preferred the chapters on Batali to those where Buford elaborated on the nature of a food stuff (short ribs, polenta, etc.).

As he starts doing time in the Babbo kitchen, Buford commits innumerable mortifying gaffes - lost in ways diverse and confounding. As a self-described talented amateur, I may be brushing up against the walls of my roomy glass house, but I'm here to tell you that the way you pull short ribs out of a pan of spattering oil is with tongs.

It's impossible to meaningfully address either of the book's dominant narratives without also addressing Italy, which for Buford means (among other places) the small village where he learns the art of butchery. The 27 different cuts of meat that Tuscan's understand to be in the leg of a cow. If this is not the sort of thing that interests you, you may be cheered to know that this section of the book is loaded with examples of Tuscan men --young and old-- creatively referring to each other as types of dickhead.

On the Nature of Consumption

2007-01-03T20:03:00.000-08:00

"It is not good to be profligate, lazy and obese, but neither is it good to be a miser, a workaholic, or an anorexic." - Jim Holt, in 'The New, Soft Paternalism', New York Time Magazine

A couple of weeks back I came across an interview with Daniela Edburg over at The Morning News. The thirteen photos in her series Drop Dead Gorgeous are right up my alley. They feature folks that have already been, or are about to be, done in by too much of a good thing.

Leaving aside for now the issue that all of these folks happen to be women, the photos illustrate the considerable downside of an opportunity that a lot of Americans seem to be availing themselves of (60+% of us are apparently overweight). Ever aware of the various wings in my sprawling glass house, this blog makes clear that I avail myself of plenty.

The various types of angst that I subject myself to as a result are familiar territory for folks who write about food, and have been at least since M.F.K. Fisher's Serve it Forth. I have a hard time deciding whether I am more 'intellectually gastronomic on a bicycle' or likely to offer up posts that 'crumple under the weight of well-known names'.

Consumptive Year In Review

2007-01-02T19:02:00.000-08:00

I missed the chance to be reflective before we embarked on the New Year. If, as Garrison Keillor offers up in Robert Altman's A Prairie Home Companion,"In Radio you never look back, that's the beauty of it", blogs seem to be all about looking back - but only by hours or days. Still, I'll take a seasonal liberty and point out a few memorable posts.

January
One last plug for my post on Satsumas. I thought briefly that I might find a wider readership if all my posts had that vibe, and then thought better of it.

February
I was reminded of the night we made Beef and Chicken Liver Ravioli, in the style of Babbo, when our friend Seth offered up that of all the dinners he'd attended at our digs (even more than paella cooked over an open fire) these ravioli stood out.

March
A post on the perils of preparing crudo at home. One of these days I'll get to southern coastal Italy, or at least Esca, and see how this really gets done.

April
Availability for ramps is very limited, and April isn't that far away.

May
This Market Recap featured the year's first appearance of Sour Cherries. A year-old lively discussion of how and where to score sour cherries is still attracting comments over at Bay Area Bites.

June
After ten-plus years in the Bay Area, I manage to prepare Cardoons for the first time, in June.

July
Not gonna say too much about Ceviche Three Times a Day.

August
The first weekend for Bronx Grapes fell in late August.

September
Bacon-Dripping Ginger Snaps remain their own reward.

October
October was a slow month following the birth of our first child. Still I did managed a post on This Summer's Harvest.

November
Just wouldn't be a year-end recap unless November's entry was our Thanksgiving Kegger.

December
Along with many Bay Area Food Bloggers, I offered up some thoughts on Bar Crudo and the hard times that had befallen the staff of the restaurant.

Manka's Inverness Lodge Closed by Act of God

2007-01-01T14:06:00.000-08:00

Manka's Inverness Lodge was at least temporarily done in by the high winds that swept over the bay area last week. A tree toppled into the building that housed the restaurant and lodge, and apparently ignited a fire as it went.

Our friends Maya and Leo held their rehearsal dinner at Manka's, and while we didn't make the list for that particular meal, they were kind enough to invite us there for dinner a few weeks later. This was during the time when the most notable thing about the restaurant was how local the food was. Nearly all of it caught, raised, hunted, or gathered within 15 miles or so of inverness. Sunday was locals night, where folks who lived nearby could stop in for burgers.

As we waited in the homey space adjacent to the dining room, a large dog milled about with the guests. On the way to our table, we walked past a cake plate topped with a wheel of Pt. Reyes Blue Cheese that looked for all the world like some massive chiffon cake. We ate pig, duck, rabbit, salmon, and deer that night before downing espresso and braving the drive back to Berkeley. Rooms tended to be about 300.00 or more a night after all - I'd looked up the rates on their steadfastly idiosyncratic website (tiling plaid backgrounds and antler them prevailed). Hence, a soft spot.

When we returned for dinner a few months later, we were startled to find that the dog had been replaced by actual front of house people. The cheese wheel was there, but someone had decided that the dining room ambience would be enhanced by if they played Enya very loudly. After being sold a sparkling wine to start and a dessert wine to wrap up, dinner for two came to just over 400.00. The restaurant began to get mentioned more frequently in the national press. Mentions usually included a line or two about the celebrities you might run into there.

I have no ill will for Margaret Grade or Daniel De Long. I've not met either, but the anecdotes of friends who have more than earn them the benefit of the doubt. So, I'm not sure that He struck down upon them with furious vengeance for selling out, I am sure it will be rebuilt. Better, faster, stronger. The current and steadfastly New Age website, replete with loon and running water soundtrack, suggests it. Here's hoping they get the mix right. Find a way to make the money that it takes to make their food, without going (more?) obnoxiously corporate.

Bar Crudo Benefit Tomorrow

2006-12-09T07:47:00.000-08:00

Last week my co-worker and constant reader Kurt sent word of the car accident that killed one of the employees of Bar Crudo and severely injured two others. The whole story can be read here.

I'd been trying to find time in our Sunday to attend Crudo's benefit since it was first mentioned in the Chronicle, but had neglected to promote it here. However, a reader left a comment last night that prompted me to. So, the details:

Sunday December 10 from 12-6
Bar Crudo

Suggested donation $10 - $25
Proceeds will go to the victims and their families.

We'll be serving oysters, crudo, wine, beer, and guest hors d'oeuvres. Hog Island Oyster Company has generously donated 800 oysters to be served at this event (that's a lot of oysters people, we need your help!), Range, and Le Petit Robert will also be donating food, with other restaurants and business's soon to join in support of this benefit.

My co-worker also asked if I knew any of the people involved, and I don't really. But I was struck by how quickly someone can go from holding up two sea urchins and asking me and a friend which one we wanted to eat, to finding themselves in a hospital, un-insured and in need of surgery, with a broken jaw and ribs. To say nothing of how quickly someone can go from bringing a meal to a table to being violently dead. The truth is that you know all of these things already, that the world is a brutal place and that there are greater calamities befalling people even as we type and read, but something about this particular incident overwhelms base cynicism.

There's something I'd like to say about how unique the food and atmosphere of the place is, that ultimately this is a reflection of the people involved. About how few places I've eaten in the last year where I've interacted with a chef to this degree. I think you get the idea.

What I will say is that among other hypocrises of eating well in the bay area, very few of the people who prepare and serve the food we appreciate so much have insurance or retirement plans that folks who can afford to eat out regularly may or may not be taking for granted.

If you get a chance to drop by on Sunday, please do.

Lots of Citrus For the Taking

2006-12-04T12:31:00.000-08:00

Wanted to take a minute to encourage my less far-flung readership to get themselves to a farmer's market this weekend, and take home some citrus (though I'd certainly be intrigued to hear what's available in Haifa, Singapore, and parts of Australia?). I'll run down some of the options available to you if your farmer's market of choice happens to be the venerable Grand Lake.

Hamada Farms has Satsumas, Navels, and Cara Cara oranges for your peeling pleasure. They also have "Buddha's Hand" Citrons and Meyer Lemons. No link to my post on satsumas would be complete without a disclaimer that it is somewhat out of character. As for the Navels, if you've been eating Pixies, Kishus, and other obscure orange things, a really good Navel Orange may surprise you. Meanwhile, Cara Cara oranges continue to have pride of place in our house. I grabbed four for the week, and we have one to get us through the next 5 days. Something's gotta give.

Lagier Ranches had Paige Tangerines this week. Last year, it was Satsuma before Paige for them. Not sure what givces, but will try to find out this Saturday.

Many of these varieties were around until April of last year, so there's no hurry. But for the first time this year, the variety and quality of the fruit on offer are heading toward critical mass - just in time for those of you planning holiday dinner parties, preparing food-based gifts, and otherwise on the prowl for seasonal goods.

Thanksgiving Kegger

2006-11-26T14:44:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving snuck up on this year. We were pretty sure we'd wind up as guests, offered instead to host, and in the week-long uncertainty leading up to the big event we bought a boneless leg of lamb. Complicating matters considerably, our sink was refusing to drain. There was also our newborn, and his many and diverse needs.

As every frat guy knows though, there are few party-planning complications that cannot be overcome by a keg of beer.

You may recall last year's post on New Belgium's "2° Below Winter Ale". Here's the description our friendly neighborhood Bay Area Beer Ranger provided at the time:

A bright warming blast of Sterling and Liberty hops along with tawny-roasted malts. We push 2° Below into a final, nearly freezing, state which gives its ample structure developing brilliant clarity. Dry hopping during fermentation creates a rosy, floral nose with a hint of pepper spice and subtle estery undertones. 6.6% abv with 30 IBU's.

The beer bought time for the lamb and our friend Jenny's turkey to get just done enough to serve, and side dishes were accounted for by talented friends and strangers.

Your Meal Plan May Vary

2006-11-05T15:03:00.000-08:00

Among our friends, we've either come late to the baby-having party or are breaking new ground. So, some of the social rituals associated with having kids in the Bay Area (elsewhere too no doubt) are unfamiliar to us. One of these social rituals is the meal plan - wherein friends sign up to bring take-out meals to new parents. No fewer than three friends swore that meal plans preserved their marriage in the early days of parenthood.

I consider it a validation of our way of life, or maybe just our division of labor, that instead of take out we were treated to a crate of food. Carrots that found their way into mire poix for an oxtail braise, mangos that became sorbet, tomatoes that were blended into gazpacho. The riches of Berkeley Bowl delivered to our door step along with a bassinet - belated thanks to our friends Maya and Leo.

There would be more food gifts. Home made preserves and a tomato relish from my new boss, a pot of meatball and chard soup from our friend Jenny. We shared the soup with her as we watched Iron Chef America - just like old times.

This Summer's Harvest

2006-10-17T21:51:00.000-07:00

Back in June we picked up a bunch of vegetable plants for the garden from Home Depot.

In the past I've gone whole hog and raised heirloom varieties from seeds, but time was of the essence this year. Planting season snuck up on us before a Seeds of Change catalog did. We managed a lot of tomatoes that palpably paled in comparison to the many splendors of Wild Boar tomatoes.

Our peppers were first rate though. We had sweet and spicy varieties and the quantity and quality were better than we could have expected. I hope to experiment with drying techniques this week, any sage advice would be appreciated.

Just for the heck of it: Teas' Tea

2006-10-17T21:34:00.000-07:00

If you are reading this blog and have given birth at Alta Bates Medical Center in Berkeley, chances are your friends or loved ones brought you goods from the Whole Foods down the street. I have a weakness for the Tea's Tea packaging and, even though Honest Tea was on sale, I grabbed a couple of bottles of Teas' at Whole Foods prices.

Just for the heck of it: Beef Ox Tails

2006-10-04T22:40:00.000-07:00

Bacon Dripping Ginger Snaps

2006-09-17T22:24:00.000-07:00

Last year, my wife spotted a recipe for bacon-fat ginger snaps in the New York Times magazine. When Prather Ranch began regularly stocking bacon, we started socking away bacon fat - storing up the 3/4 of a cup required for the recipe.

We faced some hurdles along the way, including a package of bacon that was virtually fat free. Not surprisingly though, Doug Stonebreaker of Prather Ranch was down with the bacon fat cookie cause. He contributed a package of bacon that was almost entirely fat.

Amy baked the first batch yesterday. The cookies are incredibly savory and that crisps up like you wouldn't believe. As you eat, you can feel the cookie bits melt in your mouth. As our friend Sarah pointed out to her partner Victor,"That'd be the fat."

About 'A Milk War Over More Than Price'

2006-09-16T11:41:00.000-07:00

The New York Times ran an article this morning on a new Walmart house-brand of organic milk. Because the article was in the business section, the motivation and character of Walmart's interest in selling organic milk goes more or less unadressed - there's a market, and they are delivering product to it.

According to a market researcher working with Walmart they are even expanding the organic consumer market, “They’re creating incremental users because they’re removing one of the big inhibitors to buying organic, which is price." I wonder what the persona room (pdf) for your typical Walmart organic buyer would have in it?

I'm still inclined to think that any interest in the organic food movement is a good thing, but some early adopters have been done with the organic label for years now because it's virtually meaningless - you can bathe lettuces in bleach and still sell them as organic.

Which is why it sounds like such a cop out when Aurora Organic Dairy, Walmart's organic milk supplier, says they,"are in full compliance with Agriculture Department standards for organic dairy."

Aurora are also feeding their cows hay, silage, corn and soybeans. I can't sling any mud at soybeans or silage, and grass-fed cows face perils of their own, but if you are feeding a cow corn then you've given up your right to make claims to your interest in that animals health and welfare.

Photo credit: Matthew Staver for The New York Times

Black's Tea-Smoked Sea Salt

2006-09-04T16:13:00.000-07:00

Whenever she travels, our friend Sarah brings us back foodstuffs. Hot sauce and tamarind marinade from Puerto Rico, Turkish Delight from Istanbul. Most recently, she visited family back east and returned with this tea-smoked sea salt.

Sarah's brother Danny is the executive sous chef at Blacksalt restaurant in Washington D.C., where the salt is sold in an adjoining fish market.

The salt is redolent both of smoke and floral black tea scents, imparted over a fire of cherry and maple woods. It's a complex scent. I haven't had a chance to try the salt with fish, but am eager to give it a whirl in both raw and cooked preparations.

First Weekend for Bronx Grapes

2006-08-20T15:42:00.000-07:00

After a year of blogging, and over a hundred posts I occasionally struggle with what my core M.O. is. I don't think I have the sheer photographic or culinary chops of Keiko over at Nordljus, or the consistent voice and perspective of Alder over at Vinography. I still struggle with an appropriate photographic technique for meat, and occasionally I'll lose all perspective and post something like my overly-personal entry on satsumas. If my ambitions include one or more flavors of a career in food, these lapses describe the degree to which I am still more enthusiast than expert. So do these photos of four freakin' pounds of Bronx Grapes.

We got ours at the Lagier Ranches stand, at the Grand Lake Farmer's Market, where the "Rolls Royce of table grapes" is yours for the consuming, and will only set you back $3.00 a pound.

Bacon For the Foreseeable Future

2006-08-20T14:26:00.000-07:00

Back in May, on an otherwise ordinary Saturday, Doug Stonebreaker of Prather Ranch told us that the following weekend he'd have bacon. I'd been keen on some organic and old school bacon since seeing a post on Highland Hill Farms Bacon over at Meathenge. My wife and I arrived the next Saturday only to have our BLT-dreams dashed. We were so visibly disturbed that Doug gave us consolation sausage. The following weekend we headed up to Portland. During the two bacon-free months since I figured that we'd missed out on this year's magic bacon weekend.

Not so. For the past several weeks now we've picked up a package of the most intensely meaty and smokey bacon I've ever thrown in a skillet. I'd lobbied for this week's package on the grounds that we never did make the Bacon Dripping Ginger Snaps we'd seen a recipe for during last year's holiday season.

We did pick up a package this week despite assurances that the folks at Prather Ranch hope to have bacon on an ongoing basis. I'll let you know how the cookies turn out.

Wild Boar Farms

2006-08-14T23:43:00.000-07:00

There are two times of year when we come dangerously close to just handing over twenty dollar bills to vendors at the Grand Lake Farmer's Market. The peak of grape season is one of them, and the height of tomato season is another. For grapes we lean toward Hamada Farm's concords, for tomatoes it's Wild Boar Farms.

Brad Gates has been breeding tomato plant varieties for eight generations now, and has refined several varieties with unique names like,"Berkeley Tie Dye" and "Evan's Purple Plum". An associate of his in New Zealand also plants crops of these varieties, giving him essentially twice the number of tomato plants to cull seeds from.

This weekend he showed us samples of one variety that had an oblong shape he'd noticed last year. Working to refine the varietal, he'd expected to wind up with orange and yellow striped oblongs. Instead he wound up with a single plant bearing oblong fruit in just about every tomato color you can imagine. Rather than sell a single color, he'd brought them all. Gesturing toward a bin of striped green, red, and yellow fruit he said,"I mean, which of these would the tomato world be better off without?"

Then suddenly, fried okra.

2006-08-14T23:22:00.000-07:00

Tip Top Farms has great okra right now. Green, red, and white varieties at the pea of freshness and flavor. I totally dredged and fried that okra.

Ceviche Three Times a Day

2006-07-31T21:47:00.000-07:00

It's been about a month since my last post. During that time, my wife and I travelled to Ecuador - spending a week and a day in the Galapagos Islands. A people after my own heart, Ecuadorians eat ceviche at every meal. They even have cevicherias.

Breakfast ceviches might include smoked mussels, dinner ceviches could include everything from octopus (pulpo) to lobster (langosta). While commercial fishing in and around the Galapagos is forbidden, locals are allowed to fish for commercial purposes, subject to seasons. Lobsters were off limits while we were visiting, as indicated by this sign at the airport on Isla Isabella.

It'll be business as usual here in a day or two. We've been to the farmer's market a couple of times now, and there's plenty going on there. Wild Boar Tomatoes are back. We're happily eating peaches, plums, and pluots. The Hamada Farms folks have a couple of varieties of grape, though it'll be a while before their concords are available.

Photo Credits: San Cristobal Cevicheria, A.Moore. Isla Isabella Airport, A.D. Mehta.

Sour Cherries

2006-07-03T19:48:00.000-07:00

Sour Cherries can be any one of several cherry varities including Montmorency, Morello, and Early Richmond. According to whatscooking.net,"Montmorency is the most popular of the sour cherry varieties the U.S. and Canada providing 95% or more of the sour cherries on the market."

Prior to this year I was unaware of the distinction between sour cherries and sweet cherries. We grabbed these on a whim at the Lagier Ranches stand at the Grand Lake Farmer's Market. Dumb luck tends to be its own reward at times like these. I did not have to suffer through, for instance, a period of deep and intense wanting.

Sour cherries are smaller than more familiar varieties, and get sweeter the longer you hang on to them. Their tart flavors stand up to the sugary rigors of desserts. While harvest of these cherries is generally associated with July, the folks from Lagier Ranches indicated that last weekend was the last weekend they'd have them.

Market Recap: Week 20

2006-06-26T22:21:00.000-07:00

Last week's Market Recap went unreported while my wife and I visited friends and family in Portland. The week before there had been more cherry varieties than I could reasonably bring home, early season pluots didn't taste like much of anything, and Doug Stonebreaker of Prather Ranch had no bacon.

A week later several stands had quit selling cherries. While confirming that the season was over for them, the guy working the Hamada farms booth pointed out that next weekend would probably be the last weekend for their apricots. Apricots which offer up ample squirming proof of their organic credentials.

A few stalls down someone was selling cherries from a single crate at 7.00 a pound. Second only to 10.00 a pint blueberries in terms of sheer pricing chutzpah. We were relieved to find that Lagier Ranches still had Rainier Cherries and also Sour Cherries. I'll have more to say about sour cherries later this week, in the mean time here's a photo.

In a rare break with Market Recap protocol I'll also offer up this photo of Sour Grapes, even though my wife stumbled upon them at Berkeley Bowl.

Still no word on Prather Ranch bacon. Though the appearance of Highland Hill Farms Bacon over at Meathenge seems encouraging. Suppose there's always the off chance it came and went while we were up north...

Just for the heck of it: Shrimp

2006-06-26T22:08:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since we ate shrimp. I prepared these with olive oil, fresh herbs, a basic kosher salt and some sliced garlic scape. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the Cannard Farms Pepper that found its way into the dish. Tough not to think of this as a ringer ingredient, but doing so when referring to a dish that features garlic scape would be kowtowing to celebrity rather than obscurity. I'm not that kind of guy.

A minute a side on the grill and they were done, but I prefer this photo of the shrimp pre-skewer.

Incidentally, this was one half of a surf and turf combo featuring Buffalo Ribeye.

Market Recap: Weeks 17 and 18

2006-06-11T13:09:00.000-07:00

Flavorful stone fruit were everywhere at the Grand Lake Farmer's Market last week. I tend to associate good-tasting examples of these with later summer months, and after a long wet spring, they seemed were both welcome and unexpected. Sweet and rich peaches, tart and chewy apricots, and all kinds of cherries (King, Rainier, and Tulare varieties). There were blue berries as well.

All were more expensive than they tend to be later in the year, but the taste makes the premium palatable.

After an absence of nearly two months, County Line Harvest Farms was back at the market. Their arugula is the best I've tasted with the exception of Knoll Farms. It lacks that grown-wild shape and color, but makes up for it in piquancy.

This week's new arrivals included black berries at Lagier Ranches. These should be excellent in a couple weeks; now they taste more tart than flavorful. There were also a few varieties of Pluot. I didn't taste these after my wife waved me off.

Of course, most of these fruits have been available for some time, and for less money, at Berkeley Bowl. Some consideration of the philosophical differences between people who are, and are not, swayed by that sort of thing is something I intend to address eventually.

Blanxart Chocolate Negro Con Almendras

2006-06-03T18:08:00.000-07:00

According to an entry at Global Province, "Blanxart is a small artisanal chocolate company located in Sant Joan Despi, a town just outside Barcelona. Its owners make over 100 types of chocolate and pralines, all by hand, using traditional recipes and select cocoa beans from South America and Africa, which are roasted and blended in the atelier." While their Chocolate Negro Con Almendras can be found at both Dean and Deluca and La Tienda, my wife picked up two bars for me at The Spanish Table in Berkeley.

The taste of the bar is curiously bright. It is packed with small chunks of almond, and the fruit taste of almond (akin to marzipan) nearly overwhelms the acidity of the dark choclate.

Cardoons (Cynara cardunculus)

2006-06-02T23:36:00.000-07:00

Cardoons (Cynara cardunculus) are a winter staple here in northern California, and figure prominently in Italian dishes like Bagna Cauda. Of the ten recipes for cardoons over at Food Network, nine are associated with Mario Batali.

Until a recent meal at Aziza, I had somehow managed to go fifteen years in the bay area without having eaten a single bite of cardoon. There they served a pungent salad of cardoon with crushed garlic, olive oil, and meyer lemon.

Reproducing this salad at home was more involved than it might sound. To prepare cardoons you have to first remove the leaves, and then the spines that that dot the outer most rib on either side of the stalk. Once you've done this, you need to remove the ribs off the back of the stalk, using a vegetable peeler. To get the stalks tender, you also need to boil them for thirty-five (35) minutes.

According to the folks at Tip Top Farms, cardoons are closely related to and taste a lot like artichokes - I don't find this to be the case. There are portions of the plant that smell like an artichoke smells, but after you've variously peeled, boiled, and chilled, they don't taste like much of anything. Meaty celery maybe.

Market Recap: Week 16

2006-05-31T18:40:00.000-07:00

It's been about a month since I've posted a Market Recap. This past weekend there were a lot of summer fruits and vegetables to be had at the Grand Lake Farmer's Market. Two weeks ago a single stand was selling cherries for $4.00, now there are a handful of stands selling them for as little as $2 a pound. We were particularly happy to find cherries at the Lagier Ranches stand; the first fruit they'd had in over a month. I would have photos of these cherries, but we have eaten them all.

Likewise the small ufo-shaped peaches we picked up. My wife and I both feel as though we've been burned by stone fruit in recent summers. These were great though, deeply flavorful and intensely sweet. The only indication that it was May and not, say, July was a slightly mealy quality to the flesh. At the same stand, we picked up squash blossoms.

The Tip-Top Farms folks had what looked like the last of this year's Cardoons and also Garlic Scapes. Scapes, which I think will be next year's green garlic, are supposed to be at their curly and tender best between mid-June and July.

Coming and Going: Volume 02

2006-05-24T22:28:00.000-07:00

A few months ago I posted my first Coming and Going entry - a kind of minor-league Inside Scoop. This time around I met my sources at a grand opening party for Mignonne, a new store in downtown Oakland. Here's what they had to say:

The folks who run Dona Tomas and Tacubaya, will be opening a Tequila Bar on the New Amsterdam stretch of Telegraph Avenue, not far from Uptown. While these details are new, I first heard about this from our friend Penny early last month.

The rights to open a restaurant in the boat house on Lake Merrit have gone to the owner of Luka's, who intends to open a steak house there. Incidentally, Oakland institution Everet and Jones appears to have missed out on the spot, following a rare City Council vote by outgoing Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown.

The owners of B will open a third restaurant in the space formerly occupied by Clouds, in San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center. They also operate the Boxed Lunch Company.

Tamarindo Antojeria will feature more seafood dishes as summer picks up, including a dish they sampled the other night of raw shrimp marinated in citrus juices and chiles, served with cucumber and avocado slices.

Orlando, so much to answer for.

2006-05-24T21:33:00.000-07:00

Been a bit since I've posted. There was a winter's worth of neglect to undo in the backyard, then work led me to Orlando for a week. We stayed at the Omni Hotel. There were five restaurants on the hotel grounds, each with a distinct ethnic focus. Not a frequent domestic traveler, I first noticed this phenomenon in Las Vegas — the hotel as a kind of culinary microcosm of the world. At the Omni, there were American, Italian, and asian fusion restaurants. — each had the same wine list.

Each restaurant also seemed to get a piece of the equation for success right. Zen was intriguingly designed, Trevi's had just updated most of their menu to eliminate food that was more American than Italian, David's dished up intensely flavorful plates. By day four it added up to well less than the sum of its parts. This wouldn't have been so disconcerting, but they were clearly trying hard to do serious food.

Back safe in our culinary bubble, we're looking forward to the Farmer's Market this weekend. My tomato plants are starting to take off, the citrus trees out front have tons of new leaves and blossoms. I've almost completely blocked out the memory of a tempura-fried crab wrap that was fried whole rather than stuffed with deep-fried crab.

Aziza Restaurant in San Fracnciso

2006-05-11T22:47:00.000-07:00

Went with a friend to Aziza last night. In light of my New York Times reading habits, I'd somehow missed the considerable local buzz over this place. I had, in fact, never heard of it. As we approached I was convinced that the place was closed. The front door is made of an exceptionally dark glass that obscures light.

The food was good, and we ate a lot of it. There was an unusually long pause between our starters and the main courses. Long enough that our server felt compelled to bring us one of the desserts as a "palate cleanser" - a roasted meyer lemon sorbet. He attributed the wait to our having ordered one of four dishes that the chef plates himself. The table behind us apparently did too, but worked the system for a free dessert during the dessert course as well.

All told we ate:

• mariquita's cardoon
• marin roots farm wild arugula
• prather ranch kefta skewers
• grilled spicy lamb sausage
• paine farm squab
• devils gulch ranch rabbit

The specific preparation of each dish is available on the Aziza website's menu page. The sides, sauces, and seasonings did generally have a mediterranean aspect that wouldn't necessarily be evident looking at the dishes themselves.

We also ate dessert. I brought my wife home two of the most delicious dates I've ever tasted, and a perfectly ripe Pixie Mandarin. I even managed to bring home some of my rabbit.

The wine list tended to have several reasonably priced bottles ($70.00-$40.00)in a variety of styles, and one decidedly more expensive bottle ($70.00+/-) in each style. This seemed like some kind of trap.

Something about our experience prevented me from actively wanting to head back with my wife. I'm not sure that Bar Crudo is really operating on a similar plane in terms of sheer culinary sophistication, but after my first visit I was eager to head back.

The Aziza leftovers made a pretty strong case though. I expect to be back soon.

Berkshire Pork Shoulder-cut Chops

2006-05-11T21:39:00.000-07:00

Berkshire pork is enjoying a lipid content-fueled vogue, at places like Momofuku in New York - where two re-interpreted Berkshire Pork belly Pork Buns will set you back $8.00. In addition to the amount of marbling it exhibits, the meat is also incredibly rich in pork flavor. Jonathan Kauffman over at East Bay Express, describes it as the foodie breed of the moment in his review of B.

We buy ours from Doug Stonebreaker of Prather Ranch at the Grand Lake Farmer's Market, though I supsect you can also get it at the Prather Ranch retail shop in the Ferry Building in San Francisco.

My wife is not a big fan of fat, and will purposefully separate meat from fat no matter how much I dim the lights before dinner. How then did we come to purchase two shoulder-cut chops, weighing nearly a pound each?

When I asked for two chops I was buying mostly out of Berkeley Bowl habit. The shoulder-cut chops were relatively cheap, and Doug had indicated that they were his favorite on the dry-erase board that he uses to list available cuts of meat.

When he set them down on the counter for us to look at, I knew that the marbling and large band of fat along one side would not go without comment. Still, Doug insisted that most of the marbling would "cook out".

After grilling, the meat was predictably moist. The sheer pork flavor of the chop was intense, and brought to mind bacon or even sausage. Searing the band of fat over high heat, allowed slow cooking to reduce the fat to a liquid-like state trapped inside a crispy outer shell.

Market Recap: 2006: Week 12

2006-04-23T13:42:00.000-07:00

The weather forecast called for rain this weekend, even thunderstorms for Saturday morning. The wet weather never materialized though/ We arrived at the market around 10:30am after a trip to Berkeley Bowl, and had to park several blocks away.

At least four stands were selling strawberries. They don't have the deep strawberry flavor of mid-to-late season fruit, but hey - it's April.

As we made our way through the market, I saw Brad Gates of Wild Boar Farms. I've waxed enthusiastic about his tomatoes before, but figured he'd be selling lilacs. I was surprised to find that he's selling tomato plants for his rare tomato varieties.

Ramps

2006-04-23T13:36:00.000-07:00

Ramps (Allium Tricoccum) are a type of wild leek which smell slightly of garlic. Unlike our domesticated leeks they also have edible, broad green leaves.

Ramps are found in North America as far south as the Carolinas, and as far north as Canada. Their season is short, and runs from March to May. They are availble now at Berkeley Bowl for $9.50 a pound. You'll find them piled in a plastic bag along the eastern wall of the produce section. One word of caution, the roots will be muddy.

I first saw ramps on Iron Chef America, where Mario Batali was using them in a dish. The website for his restaurant Babbo, featured ramps as an ingredient of the month. They also offer up this recipe.

Stringless Snap Peas

2006-04-23T13:31:00.000-07:00

You'll be able to find good snap peas at Berkeley Bowl well before they find their way into most Farmer's Markets. Stringless edible-pod peas are more expensive than other varieties, selling for between 3 and 4 dollars a pound.

Discerning pea enthusiasts will probably want to remove the stem end of the pod before eating. Still, these are so crisp and sweet right now that I ate several pods whole while prepping them.

We dropped them in boling water for two minutes, transferred to an ice bath, and then served over a pool of romesco sauce. They are also great in soups, as they do not require shelling.

Purple Carrots

2006-04-23T13:23:00.000-07:00

As a college undergraduate, I was introduced to the practice of serving radishes before meals. The first time I ate at Chez Panisse, that small dish of radishes with a few leaves still attached was a sure sign that I wans't in Kansas anymore.

Since then radishes have fallen in and out of favor in our home. While two bunches a week used to be no problem, we can go months without eating one. We were introduced to the multi-colored carrot variation on this theme by our friend Penny.

Berkeley Bowl makes it easy to throw together an attractive plate of these salt vehicles. They stock them in red, yellow, and orange varieties. They are very sweet, and taste intensely of carrot.

Red Carrots

2006-04-23T13:21:00.000-07:00

More multi-colored carrots from Berkeley Bowl. The red color of these carrots is limited to their skin. Inside, a more typical orange color contrasts sharply with the red blush of the skin.

Navel Orange (Heirloom)

2006-04-23T13:19:00.000-07:00

Berkeley Bowl has a good selection of interesting citrus varieties, including these heirloom Navel Oranges from the Rising C Ranch folks who operate ripetoyou.com. According to their website, the oranges are grown using "Old Line" Washington Navel Trees and a combination of sweet and sour rootstock.

Grow Quest offers this useful account of the Navel orange's introduction to the United States,"In 1873, taking advantage of the North American diplomatic services established in Brazil, technicians specialized in citrus production in Riverside, California, received three seedlings of Bahia orange, from which came the seedlings that would later be spread all over the United States and other parts of the world with the name of Washington Navel. Therefore, the citrus exchange between the two countries is over a century old, and the Bahia orange was a fundamental base for that exchange."

Here's the Rising C Ranch write up on their approach:

We only use "old line" Washington Navel trees combined with sour and sweet orange rootstock. Both rootstocks are out of favor with most growers because of different inherited problems, but no other rootstocks can produce a better tasting piece of fruit.

While the flesh of these oranges is unusually pale, they are intensely flavorful.

Ortanique Mandarins

2006-04-23T13:14:00.000-07:00

Ortanique Manadarins are a late season varietal native to Jamaica. They are available now at Berkeley Bowl, and through ripetoyou.com. The name of the varietal is a dubious confabulation of orange, tangerine, and unique.

Ortaniques have a relatively thin skin, and peeling them was not particularly easy. The flesh is a pale orange color, while the taste reminds me of honey tangerines. Hale Indian River Groves describes the taste as akin to mango.

According to Macks Grove the varietal was introduced to the states by a Mancunian:

The Ortanique was reportedly discovered in the Christiana Market, Jamaica, by a Machester man named Swaby who bought six fruits. Of the seedlings he planted when back in the States, only two bore fruit, which he exhibited at an agricultural show in the early 1900's.

Chicken Liver

2006-04-23T12:38:00.000-07:00

You can find loose Chicken livers at Berkeley Bowl, where they fish them out of a tub with a hook. You can also find them at Safeway, where they are sold in a small container. Either way, they are inexpensive. Expect to pay about $2.50 for them.

Typical preparations involve browning both sides of your livers in olive oil, and seasoning with salt and pepper.

The livers add depth and creamy texture to Beef and Chicken Liver Ravioli, and can easily be turned into a Pate.

Mario Batali maintains that Italians would find it unthinkable to eat a chicken and not its organ meat. Not surprisingly, of the 50 recipes for Chicken Liver over at FoodNetwork.com, Mario accounts for 18.

Market Recap: 2006: Week 11

2006-04-15T18:49:00.000-07:00

The rain is threatening to turn these posts into a broken record. The guy we buy our lettuces from hasn't been around for three weeks now. Most of our citrus staples are no longer in season. All the same, the market was busier than we expected today. By the time we left, four or five cars were circling the lot next to the Grand Lake Farmers' Market, waiting for a spot.

The big news of the day turned out to be about the Marin Sun Farms eatery just outside Pt. Reyes Station. Doug Stonebreaker of Prather Ranch, told us that the place had closed its doors after flooding twice. Long time readers may recall my post on a Rib Eye we picked up there, or an earlier post that described their tantalizing condiment bin.

Doug held out hope that they might re-open their doors when the weather improved and the day-trippers returned.

Our aims for the market this week were a bit differnt. Some recent dental work has left me consuming liquids for the time being. With that in mind, I went looking for things to turn into soup. I found this giant mushroom cluster. Enjoy.