Vegetarian dinner

Eastside Road, Healdsburg, June 23, 2009—

IN ALL MODESTY, I think the best way to make guacamole is by using my recipe, online here. And that's how we began dinner tonight, with tortilla chips and a teeny glass of tequila.
But what really made the dinner was the Caesar salad. I'm doctrinaire here, too: I think the only way to make it is by using Judy Rodgers's recipe in her fine book The Zuni Cafe Cookbook. If you follow the recipe, even a little loosely as I did today, you get a salad that takes you straight to Market Street and Zuni.
By "loosely" I don't mean do anything rash. I used all and only the ingredients and method she stipulates; I only neglected to measure. The romaine was from our garden; Lindsey's father, dead these ten years, made the vinegar. (I've been too lazy to refill our vinegar carafe from my own stock: when I do, I'll have to add a little to his nearly empty bottle.) The garlic from the Healdsburg Farm Market; the lemon from our patio; the oil from our friend Joe in Portland; the croutons from the freezer; the anchovies, well, I'm not sure; the Parmesan from that market in Milan, where we bought it last November…
So each meal is a collection of memories, a nod to the accumulation from the past. A present moment stolen from past and future.

Cheap rosé, Cotes de Var, "La Ferme Julien", 2007