Thursday, December 30, 2010

Last fast

Eastside Road, December 30, 2010—
LAST OF THE YEAR, that is. We had family visiting on Tuesday; couldn't exactly ask them to join this silly idea, so we put the weekly fast off to today. Lindsey had a banana for lunch and a baked potato for dinner, but I've been chaste: after the two caffelattes this morning, nothing but a small bowl of nuts with a couple of cups of tea.
photo-2.jpg
I'm a little hungry, but I can handle it — though the griddle I'm seasoning with Mangalitsa fat smells awfully good. Maybe I'll fry a couple of eggs.

Tomorrow morning.
water

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Soup

Eastside Road, December 29, 2010—
END-OF-YEAR icebox-emptying continues here: a first course of sautéed leeks and carrots (in oil with a bit of butter and salt), delicious; another bowl or two of Ibleto's minestrone soup, still tasty; a cheese course, Beaufort and Cusiè Castagno (mixed cow's and sheep's milk in a Parmesan-type cheese, aged in chestnut leaves). And tomorrow we fast.
Cheap Nero d'Avola

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Pork at the Academy

San Francisco, December 28, 2010—
THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, that is, in Golden Gate Park. We were there for the exhibits, of course, not the cuisine, and I have to admit the aquarium and the rainforests were extremely interesting; and I was particularly happy to see the venerable African Hall of taxidermy, exhibited in beautifully prepared dioramas, was virtually unchanged from what had so impressed me as a child, sixty years and more ago.

I also have to admit that lunch in The Moss Room, a quiet little oasis downstairs, was quite good. I began with clean, sweet, marinated local sardines with arugula, salsa verde, and sea salt — it seemed appropriate after a couple of hours in the aquarium. Afterward, slow-braised pork "sugo", just as it might have been at Bizou al those years ago — Loretta Keller closed that restaurant, at Fourth and Brannan, five years ago; she's been busy since with other ventures, but this Moss Room is the first of them I've been to, and I'm glad to find her hand so evident.

The pork was delicious, deep, tender, and flavorful, served with nicely cooked pappardelle on a bed of good spinach, with a couple of shavings of grana padana melting in on top. A Meyer lemon panna cotta and a coffee vacherin — meringue, coffee ice crem, candied almonds, chocolate sauce, crème anglaise — were spot-on.
Côtes de Rhone, 2009
The Moss Room, The Academy of Sciences, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco; tel. 415 876 6121, ext. 3



Monday, December 27, 2010

Flank steak

Eastside Road, December 27—
COMPANY TO DINNER; what shall we eat? How about flank steak?

As soon as we got them home I salted them on both sides and put them back in the refrigerator, loosely wrapped.

I made the usual salad dressing and when guests arrived we had Martinis while we thought about the next step. Lindsey had prepped carrots and leeks, and had begun the sautéed-steamed potatoes the way she does them — the way her mother did, all those years ago.

Then I put the steaks, flat, on the hot griddle. I peppered them and squeezed a bit of lemonjuice on them and a little olive oil, then after three or four minutes turned them, treating the other side the same. When done, I cut them into strips and served them, a little more lemon juice and oil on top.

Afterward, the green salad, then Mace cake, with a teeny drop of brandy. It's Christmas week, after all. Delicious.
Zinfandel, ForestVille ("Sonoma and Napa") , 2006


Sunday, December 26, 2010

Cognitive dissonance

Eastside Road, December 26—
IT COULD BE ANOTHER TAG, I suppose, like the Hundred Pates, or the Five Restaurants. In fact I think it will be henceforth. Tonight's version was a guacamole as the first course — rather an odd one for us: red onion instead of shallot; no jalapeño. Maybe that made the cognition a little less dissonant when the main course arrived: another couple of bowls of that delicious Ibleto minestrone. Thanks for sending it home with us yesterday, Gaye; it was just as good today!
Monastrell, Albero (Jumilla), 200

Saturday, December 25, 2010

Roast beef

Eastside Road, Christmas Day—
IN FACT IT WAS MORE than simply roast beef, of course. We began with a very fine minestrone, one of the best I've ever tasted. Store-bought, it was; made a few miles south on Stony Point Road by Art Ibleto, the Pasta King. Next on the buffet line — we were eating at Gaye and John's annual Christmas Day buffet — a fine smoked turkey and a delicious prime rib roast. I just salted and peppered it, Gaye said, and roasted it; let the meat speak for itself, say I.

I'm a traditionalist, and to me there are really only two possibilities on Christmas Day: roast goose, or prime rib. This was the first prime rib I'd had in months, perhaps years, and it repaid my abstinence. On the side, a complex cole slaw enlivened with curry powder; for dessert, chocolate cake and Suzi's fine gluten-free lemon bars, made with Meyer lemons.
Sauvignon blanc; Pinot noir

Friday, December 24, 2010

Salt cod

Eastside Road, Christmas Eve—
I DON'T KNOW IF IT'S traditional or not; in our family perhaps it's becoming a tradition: salt cod on Christmas Eve. We went down the hill to the neighbors for dinner, taking the salt cod with us — Lindsey had made it in the afternoon, having soaked it a day or two previously. (The recipe is here.)

We took along also a salad that L. always seems to associate with salt cod: sliced oranges and red onions, dressed with a bit of oil and vinegar.

Green salad afterward; and then the goodies: Beaufort and an aged Parmesan-like cheese from Italy made with both cow's and sheep's milk, and aged in chestnut leaves. Spritz cookies, Coud cookies, Pferffernusse, pan pepato, panoche; figs plumped in red wine, Damson paste, quince paste. A wonderful night's eating.
Cava, Freixenet Cordon Negro, nv;
Chardonnay, Russian River Valley, Shone Farm, 2003 (thank you Gaye and John);
Barolo, Bruno Giacosa, 1996

Thursday, December 23, 2010

And now for something different…

Eastside Road, December 23, 2010—
WHAT! WE'RE OUT OF Brussels sprouts! Well, not to worry, we've got the next best thing to them: Romanesco. “The vegetable resembles a cauliflower,” says Wikipedia, “but is of a light green color and the inflorescence (the bud) has an approximate self-similar character, with the branched meristems making a logarithmic spiral.”

300px-Brassica_romanesco.jpg

Don't you just love Wikipedia? Inflorescence; self-similar; meristems. And the photo is indeed beautiful.

Romanesco tastes pretty much like broccoli, though; perhaps a bit of nutmeg would push it a tiny bit toward the cauliflower end of the brassica spectrum; but let's face it, it's broccoli. (“Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education,” says Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson; that would make broccoli nothing but cabbage dressed up for a night on the town.)

Anyhow: we had the last of the cold roast pork; we had Lindsey's delicious steam-sautéed potatoes; we had the romanesco. A green salad.
Monastrell, Albero (Jumilla), 2008. (Monastrell is the Spanish name for Mourvedre. You can read about this inexpensive organic wine here and, less amusingly, here.)

That blog of ALB's, notes on drinking through Trader Joe's cellar (and a few other bottles), is an interesting one; I'm going to have to read through it one night when nothing else calls louder…

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Bean soup and Brussels sprouts

Eastside Road, December 22, 2010—
A BIT OF A CHANGE on the last few days of dinners: Brussels sprouts; bean soup. Perhaps I should explain the recurring Brussels sprouts. It's because I bought an entire stalk of them last Saturday, because the loose sprouts were old and tired-looking, and those on the stalk were fresh and firm. Then too, the entire stalk was for sale for $4.95; the number of sprouts involved would have cost much more than that bought loose. I suppose that's logical: a certain amount of labor is involved in cutting them free from the stalk. But once cut free, the sprouts deteriorate quickly; left on the stalk, they continue to be fed and watered.

The stalk I bought was densely populated: there were lots of sprouts. Probably at least four dozen. I did cut them all off at once, perhaps a mistake; but it's been cold; I put them all in a plastic bag and left them in the cold mud room until yesterday, when the refrigerator had been sufficiently discharged, and the sprouts sufficiently depopulated, to allow them the benefit of contemporary refrigeration technology.

I cooked them tonight as I did yesterday and the day before: trimmed the stems a bit, cut the sprouts in half lengthwise, and cooked them in a little water, with salt, in a heavy pot, under a lid, until tender. Then I sprinkled in a few drops of olive oil and a few red pepper flakes.

Lindsey found the leftover bean soup from a few days back, toasted a couple of slices of bread, and grated Parmesan over the toasts as they floated in our soup-bowls. Green salad, after, and pie's waiting in the kitchen, I can smell it now.
Tempranillo/garnacha, La Granja (Cariñena), 2009

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Idem the same (roast pork)

Eastside Road, Tuesday, December 21, 2010—
LOOK: IT'S CHRISTMAS week, okay? We're not fasting today, not even half fasting. Besides, we have simply got to get the refrigerator cleared out. So tonight we eat almost exactly the same as last night,

pork.jpg


except that those are canned plums down in the lower right corner, and the potatoes are steam-sautéed, we've finished all the roast potatoes. Green salad afterward.

cake.jpg  Oh: that Queen of Sheba cake just continues to taste better — as it diminishes in size.
Tempranillo/garnacha, La Granja (Cariñena), 2009

Monday, December 20, 2010

Roast pork redux

Eastside Road, December 20, 2010—

EXACTLY THE SAME dinner as yesterday; we'd cooked enough for twice as many people. I guess that means tomorrow will be the same. I did steam a few more Brussels sprouts; otherwise there was nothing more to be done; Lindsey warmed up the leftover potatoes and carrots, and we ate cold sliced roast pork, and why not?

The evening did give us the chance to test the hypothesis I'd just read somewhere the other day, that desserts always improve on standing and should therefor be prepared a day in advance. Indeed, Reine de Saba was even better tonight.

Côtes du Ventoux , "La Ferme Julien," 2009

Roast pork

Eastside Road, December 19, 2010—
PARTLY RESEARCHED, PARTLY IMPROVISED: A birthday dinner for a very special person. Pork roast, I think: so we buy a decent three-pound shoulder — what was called a "Boston Butt" when I was a boy. I'm still in Sicily and Sardinia a lot of the time, in my mind, I mean, so — since the whole dinner was sort of my idea — I called the shots.

First, with a great deal of help from Lindsey, I made the cake, a wonderful Queen of Sheba cake (Reine de Saba sounds so much more exotic, and that's how I think of it): grated hazelnuts (thank you, Bhishma X.), a tiny bit of flour, eggs, butter, and chocolate. The recipe's in the Baker's Dozen Cookbook, and it's by Alice Medrich, and it's a real winner. We glazed it with chocolate buttercream, changing the recipe only by using hazelnuts instead of almonds.

I salted the meat as soon as I got it home, yesterday, and dried it off today and stuck in all round with garlic-clove nails. Around it in the roasting pan were five or six Yukon Gold potatoes, quartered lengthwise, and six or eight carrots, cut in half, the big halves again split. Salt, of course, and slow roasting; in the last half hour, a couple of branches of rosemary atop the vegetables.

When the roast was done I set it on a bed of small-leaved myrtle branches, lay another bed of myrtle on top of the roast, and covered it to rest half an hour while I finished the Brussels sprouts: I'd halved them and steamed them until done, then finished them by sautéeing in butter with a tiny bit of nutmeg and not quite so tiny but still a small amount of red pepper flakes.

Green salad after; and then eggnog with the cake. What a dinner! What a girl! Now let's wash the dishes.
Prosecco, Zonin, NV; Mourvedre, Preston of Dry Creek, 2008

Saturday, December 18, 2010

Posole

Eastside Road,December 18, 2010 —
ONE OF THE HUNDRED plates, no doubt about it. I think I first tasted posole in New Mexico, probably in Santa Fe, in the 1970s; I'm pretty sure we had it on Third Mesa on the Hopi reservation at some point, too. But my father was brought up in Bisbee, on the Arizona-Mexico border, and it's likely he made versions of it at home when I was a kid — I know we often had hominy, and it would have been like him to put pork stew in it, and plenty of chili powder.
#alttext#   #alttext#

Tonight we had it at Gaye's house, and she made a very tasty version. Before, a guacamole I made in her kitchen, with all my usual ingredients but onion in place of shallots; afterward, mint chocolate chip ice cream. What a pleasure to work a bit in a friend's kitchen!
Blanc Fumé de Pouilly, Domaine Didier Dagueneau, 2008; a very nice bottle; thanks, Michael!

Beans and barley

Eastside Road, December 17, 2010 —
#alttext#MAKES A NICE SOUP, it does, this combination; deep, substantial, and very satisfying on a cold rainy night, winter well on its way. Lindsey found the recipe on a website called Cooking Light; I don't know how she found the website. She had no parsley, so omitted it — that's winter for you! — and substituted fennel, which she had, for celery, which she didn't. Floated toast atop the soup, with grated Parmesan on it. We had the regulation green salad afterward.
Côtes du Ventoux (did I write "Lubéron" the other day?), "La Ferme Julien," 2009

C'est pas possible dîner sans la soupe!

Friday, December 17, 2010

Pizza and such

Eastside Road, December 16, 2010—
SPENT THE DAY in the city: meeting; shopping; a little business; supper with an old friend. Lunch was salad and pizza at the Café Chez Panisse: a mushroom pizza, hot from the oven with that delicious flaky crust. The taste of mushrooms like this, baked in the wood-fire oven, always summons up autumnal thoughts, and this was a fine autumn day. With it,
Zinfandel, Green and Red, but what year?
Supper at a place recommended in a guidebook: I suppose it might normally be a nice place, but we were too late for lunch, too early for dinner. This was precisely why we chose it; guidebook said they served throughout the day; perhaps things have changed since publication, what with the economy…

Still, I had a nice platter of salumi: housemade finocchiona and salame cotto, and well-chosen commercial mortadella, with a nice little relish, onion confit, good bread, and a bit of raw fresh pear. I liked it and I'd go back; just not at 4:30 pm.
Primitivo, Cantele, Puglia, Italy 2007
  • Starbelly Restaurant, 3583 16th Street, San Francisco; tel. (415) 252-7500
  • Wednesday, December 15, 2010

    That grilled cheese

    Eastside Road, —
    I'VE ALWAYS LOVED COWS, as I've probably mentioned here dozens of times. Tonight I thanked these generous, dignified, loving creatures once more, eating for dinner a couple of grilled cheese sandwiches from those Abondance cows. You can see a parade of them in the main street of Lanslevillard, in Savoie, here. I first met that breed two summers ago, while walking through the Alps. When I asked a fellow what breed they were — race is the French word for "breed," so much more satisfying a word that in its American use, I think — Mmm, vache rouge, he said, "red cow."
    #alttext#
    But I quickly learned, from a lifesize statue with bronze plaque outside that particular town, that it was the Abondance, and she gives the milk used in Beaufort, and of course in the Abondance cheese in these particular sandwiches. You can tell her by the spectacles she wears, red like her coat, on her impeccable white face.

    Well, we've gone a little far, um, afield. With the sandwich, some fine green beans, slow- and long-cooked, particularly nice in this cold weather I think; and then green salad; and for dessert a little pumpkin pie Lindsey made in a Slow moment or two. What a fine supper!
    Côtes du Luberon, "La Ferme Julien," 2009

    Tuesday, December 14, 2010

    Fast again

    Eastside Road, December 14, 2010—
    SO FAR, THIS IS easier than I thought it would be.
    Two caffelattes for breakfast: a little over a cup of nonfat milk, that's about 100 calories.
    A couple of dried apricots for lunch: another 40.
    Maybe 2 ounces of cashews and almonds at teatime: say 60
    A baked potato with a few drops of olive oil, about 180
    A cup of romanesco, another 35 or so;
    Total, a little over 400 calories! I'll probably celebrate with a banana (another 100 calories) before bedtime…
    Cool water; hot tea (0)

    Monday, December 13, 2010

    Penne, red sauce

    Eastside Road, December 13, 2010 —
    QUITE A WHILE SINCE we last had penne in tomato sauce, no? Let's see: August 23: but then it was with fresh cherry tomatoes. I think it may be last winter Lindsey last cooked a tomato sauce… or I'm absolutely terrible with either searches or tagging, and that's certainly the case. Anyhow, she browned onions and later a little garlic, I think, in olive oil, then added a can of tomatoes — the contents of a can of tomatoes, I mean, pace, James Thurber — and let it simmer while the whole-wheat penne cooked. Before, guacamole; after, green salad.
    Tempranillo, La Granja 360(Cariñena), 2009

    Sunday, December 12, 2010

    Tuna "confit"

    Eastside Road, December 12, 2010 —
    SET IN QUOTES, because "confit" to me means goose. Duck at a stretch. Certainly not fish. But it's trendy these days to cook thick tuna steaks very slowly in fairly cool oil, and we tried our hand at it tonight, flavoring the fish with thyme and marjoram from the garden, garlic, salt, and pepper. On the side, small potatoes, and delicious romanesco.

    We were in Berkeley yesterday, and we generally take a cooler with us when we make those trips, because Monterey Fish is a fishmonger we rely on. The fish is fresh and sound and delicious; today's was no exception.
    Viura, Marqués de Montañana, 2009 (soft, clear and clean, low acid, pleasant)

    Breakfast, lunch, and dinner

    Eastside Road, December 11, 2010—
    A DAY AWAY. Breakfast at Pizzaiolo, because Lindsey does love good doughnuts: but I made do with a couple of pieces of toast with my two caffelattes. On the toast, a delicious orange marmalade. When I exclaimed at how good it was the young woman sitting on my right — we were sitting at the bar — said Thank you; it turned out she was the person who'd made it. (A very knowledgeable young woman, as well as an excellent maker of marmalade.)

    Lunch in the café with a couple of friends from Ojai and their parents, well, the parents of one of them; every now and then the English language is so deficient. The menu was one of the best I've seen lately; I settled for leeks vinaigrette with chicories, mustard, and hard-cooked egg, then fresh noodles with bolognese — a particularly fine bolognese, toward the dry side: this is not a complaint, or a criticism; the meat and savories were lean and present, not hiding in a sauce, and combined very nicely with the pasta.

    Generous desserts: dates stuffed with ricotta, fresh fruit; then a slice of a fine bombe. This is Berkeley, after all.
    Arneis, Marco Porello, 2009; Zinfandel, Green and Red, ?2008
  • Pizzaiolo, 5008 Telegraph Avenue, Oakland; tel. (510) 652-4888
  • Café Chez Panisse, 1517 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley; tel. 510.548.5525

  • THEN DINNER WITH OUR FRIENDS the Ashlanders, two of the three other couples we spend a week with every year seeing plays up in Ashland (alas one couple was unable to attend), at a potluck. Gaye supplied roasted root vegetables, at least one of every benighted chthonic root I really dislike contemplating, let alone eating: turnip, parsnip, rutabaga, Hades knows what else. Margery supplied a delicious beef stew made with onions and a bottle of unidentified red wine: thick, deep, and savory, it masked the vegetables so well I had seconds.

    I supplied the green salad, and Lindsey an apple pie: delicious.
    local Pinot noir and Cabernet Sauvignon

    Friday, December 10, 2010

    Duck leg

    Emeryville, December 10—
    IT'S A FAVORITE dish of mine, a good braised duck leg. And that in spite of two early experiences with ducks: raising them, when I was in grammar school (there are few animals dirtier than ducks, or less pleasant in their social behavior); and having them often for dinner when we were first married, when we got them free from a friend who worked for the Department of Public Health, and brought them home from work — always missing one leg. Lord knows what use they'd been to the DPH.

    Anyway, finding ourselves in Berkeley tonight at dinner time on a Friday night with no reservations, we remembered the little bistro on Dwight Way where we'd eaten well a few years back. No problem getting a table early in the evening, and I ordered the duck leg, which arrived with a cornmeal soufflé and warm kale slaw. There was a bit of apple mostarda on the duck: unfortunately it was cold, doing mild violence to the hot meat; that was made up for by a lagniappe, a beautifully prepared étouffée of duck confit, quite spicy with cayenne.

    Dessert was a very dark, very deep chocolate "budino," intensely flavored though sweeter than we might have wanted, and very well made.

    I like this place: the menu's consistent, the technique skilful, the service correct and friendly, the dining room cozy and pretty. Alas, for the second time in a few weeks we've dined in a Berkeley restaurant in its last days. According to TripAdvisor there are 380 restaurants in this town, far too many. In January there will be 378.
    Pinot noir/Gamay, Cheverny (Loire), 2009

    Digs Bistro, 1453 Dwight Way, Berkeley; tel. (510) 548-2322

    Thursday, December 9, 2010

    "Light Thai"

    Eastside Road, December 9, 2010—
    ANOTHER DINNER FROM a recipe clipping, another attack on the oversupplied pantry. This one gets rid of some frozen fish I bought weeks ago, a can of coconut milk (I bet it's replaced soon), and a tablespoon or two of red Thai curry sauce. It also got me to eat some of a detested vegetable, sweet potato, and I have to admit that in this concoction it was not unpleasant.

    Where does Lindsey get these clippings? I'm not asking about the original source: this one came from Sunset, I know; the information's at the bottom of the page. But where does she keep these things for over three years, and what makes her decide to pull one out and put it to the test? No idea. Something to do with foraging, preserving, and memory, no doubt; too feminine and chthonic for me.
    #alttext#
    It was a fish stew, is what it was, and I think she should keep the clipping.
    Chardonnay-Viognier, Panilonco, Colchagua Valley (Chile), 2009; Tempranillo, La Granja 360(Cariñena), 2009

    Wednesday, December 8, 2010

    Bread

    Eastside Road, December 8, 2010—
    WE CAN GET BY A DAY or two, maybe a week even, without meat; anyone can do that. I can easily go a day or two without wine; last summer I went over a month without any alcohol at all. Almost anyone can do that.

    But yesterday we went the whole day without bread, and I found myself thinking about it a lot. We eat a lot of bread in this family, probably a pound a day in normal times. We both come from bread-eating families. I have two slices at breakfast, another slice or two at lunch, and at least one at dinner, without even thinking about it. And that's just the problem, not thinking about what one's eating; and that problem was just why we decided to to that half fast yesterday.

    So today we ate, and we ate bread. I had two slices of Downtown Bakery levain toasted for breakfast, with some delicious quince jelly Lindsey's somehow cousin-in-law in Italy gave us last month. For lunch, the customary slice of toast spread with almond butter.

    #alttext#Cocktail time, this delicious flatbread, pizza dough I would guess, rolled out very thin indeed, baked on a grill, and spread with olive oil and salt, and accompanied by a little dish of fine hummus; a delicious accompaniment to a Manhattan*. And then came dinner, at home:#alttext#Grilled cheese sandwiches. This was on another Downtown Bakery bread, don't know the name, Lindsey bought it, and remembers its name featured the word "Italian." (The cheese was Abondance, brought home from Netherlands last month. It tastes of Savoie.)

    Then, with my green salad, because salad doesn't count if you don't have a piece of bread to sop up the last of the oil-and-vinegar, a piece of Ciabatta, really my favorite bread, brought home Monday from dinner out at Monti's, where it had been drizzled with white-truffle-infused olive oil. Bread, bread, bread, and bread.
    Tempranillo, La Granja 360(Cariñena), 2009

    Three memories of bread from my childhood:
  • Cellophane-wrapped Wonder-type sliced sandwich bread, of course, like everybody ate in those days, suitable only to be squeezed into doughy balls in your hands and used to clean typewriters, not that anyone has a typewriter these days
  • Franco-American "French bread," favored by my father, who occasionally brought a loaf home to be sliced not quite all the way through, spread with margarine, and sprinkled with garlic salt (the horror! the horror!)
  • The bread Mom baked, using a jar of yeast she kept on the windowsill: too airy and filled with holes at first, over the months changing until it was dense as cheese and about the size of a slice of two-by-four
  • Early in our marriage, when I worked as a laborer for the City of Berkeley, Lindsey wrapped a couple of liverwurst-and-onion sandwiches made with dark dense but still pre-sliced and cellophane-wrapped bread from the Co-op. Later I used to walk three quarters of a mile down to Spenger's to get a loaf or two of Colombo's sourdough bread, baked in Oakland in those days; it was best bought at this otherwise unsatisfactory restaurant because it was trucked to them innocent of any wrapping, no cellophane, no paper, and the crust was therefor perfect.

    Later, finally, thankfully, Steve Sullivan opened his Acme Bread Company in Berkeley, and I've never baked bread since. And then Lindsey, Thérèse, and Kathleen opened the Downtown Bakery and Creamery in Healdsburg, so we're within seven miles of really good bread.

    There are fine bakeries in Portland: I like the raisin bread and the boules at the Pearl Bakery, and especially the big country levains at Ken's Artisan Bakery. There's decent bread to be had, in fact, in most towns we visit these days, just one of the many things that have improved the quality of daily life over the past sixty years. I'm grateful. And I chew, taste, think about my daily bread, and am glad to have it, and sorrow for those who don't.
    *The Manhattan was drunk at Spoonbar


    Tuesday, December 7, 2010

    Half fast

    Eastside Road, December 7, 2010—
    I HAVE AN IDEA, I said brightly, Let's not eat anything on Tuesdays. There are people all over the world going to bed hungry every day; we're so lucky; one day every week we should put ourselves in their place.

    (It wasn't all altruism: I was also a little concerned about the weight gained over our Thanksgiving week in Portland.)

    Next day Lindsey responded: I think it's a good idea you had, about not eating on Tuesdays. But I think we should modify it: on Tuesdays we should eat nothing but fruit and vegetables. But while embracing her emendation I stayed with part of my idea: for breakfast nothing but a caffelatte; for lunch an orange and a banana. A couple of tablespoons of almonds and cashews with tea. Then, for dinner,

    #alttext#

    a baked potato and a serving of broccoli. And that's it today. Next Tuesday, less. Maybe.
    Water

    Charcuterie

    Eastside Road, December 6, 2010—
    THE BEST INTENTIONS only get you so far and no farther, so here I am with a small glass of Fernet, regretting too rich a supper — a board of charcuterie. Coppa, white-truffle salami, chorizo, piquant saucisse, prosciutto; with olive-oil drenched ciabatta ( a trace of white truffle in that oil, too), and a small pot of honey-mustard, and some nice little pickled vegetables, and a bottle of
    Zinfandel, Louis Preston old vines (Dry Creek Valley), 2007
  • Monti's Rotisserie & Bar, 714 Village Court, Santa Rosa, California; tel. (707) 568-4404
  • Monday, December 6, 2010

    Croissants

    Eastside Road, December 5, 2010—
    I MADE GUACAMOLE ma façon today, but let's not rehash all that, I've explained it already three or four times*. And then dinner was a reprise of last night's: that fine pasta with tuna, then a green salad, and the same rosé even as last night.

    Nor need we linger over breakfast: it's Sunday; that means a three-minute soft-boiled egg with our toast and caffelattes.

    Lunch was also minimal: a cappuccino and a croissant. I wanted a croissant from "The Bakery" to compare to the one I had Monday, while it was still fresh in memory. And I have to say, though I'm loyal to our Downtown Bakery and Creamery (after all, Lindsey was one of the founding partners), last Monday's, from Mix in Ashland, was, well, more to my taste.

    #alttext#

    Today's, photographed above, was breadier. There are really two basic types of croissant, the bready one and the flaky one, and I prefer the flaky, no matter the mess involved in eating it. There's something about the combination of butter, crispness, and layer on layer of softer pastry inside; it's so, well, Parisian; a flaky croissant is to me what that madeleine was to Proust.

    When The Bakery opened all those years ago Kathleen made croissants by hand, and they were fabulous. After a year or so the bakery installed a sheeter, and no wonder: rolling out the dough, folding it in half, turning it a half turn, rolling it out again, repeat, repeat, repeat — that's a lot of work, and they were selling in greater number. (In those early days Lindsey and I used to deliver them all the way over to the Napa Valley, on our way back down to Berkeley after the weekend.)

    The machine-made ones aren't as flaky, to my mind. Then too, the weather just now is hardly conducive to making decent flaky pastry. Don't get me wrong, the Downtown croissant is one very fine item; I'd never reject one. I wish I were in shape to eat one every morning, in fact.
    *More on guacamole here and here.

    Saturday, December 4, 2010

    Pasta with tuna

    Eastside Road, December 4, 2010—
    ANOTHER RECIPE CLIPPING tonight, this one from a recent copy of Bon Appetit. Lindsey used fusilli instead of lunguine, because that's what's in the pantry, I suppose: and I think it worked very well: the spiral threads of pasta hold the sauce better than linguine would have. #alttext#The tuna was canned albacore, the Sacred Sea brand caught off Oregon — a different thing altogether from the Ortiz brand we also like, but a nice alternative, one doesn't want things to be always the same. Green salad afterward.
    Rosé: Moulin de Gassac, Aniane, Guilhem, 2009

    Comfort food: apple cake

    Eastside Road, December 4, 2010—
    I HAVE BEEN REMISS, as the house corrector points out: I've neglected to mention dessert these last two days. In my defense, it's been served some little time after the end of dinner, after posting the eatingblog in at least one case. Still, that's no excuse.

    It's a splendid dessert, Agnes's Dutch Apple Cake:
    #alttext#

    I think Lindsey was reminded of her mother's recipe when she noticed a few late apples on one of the trees (that's one in the background of this fuzzy photo). Agnes wrote the recipe out on a 3x5 index card, as housewives have done since index cards were invented; I wonder how many such cards there are in the world, and consider the great body of culture they contain. If only we had the equivalents from ancient Greece!

    #alttext#

    Agnes's version is so nice, not at all too sweet — though of course the nature of the apple is important. (She, or any good cook, would know exactly what "3 tart apples" represents.)
    Appelkoek or appelgebak — there's a difference, but I don't know what it is — is a favorite treat of ours when we're in Netherlands; we often have a slice with a cup of good boring Dutch coffee as a break at a museum. It's generally served with a good helping of slagroom, and I have to admit I like that, but we don't have whipped cream on this cake at home — not even a spoonful or two of heavy cream, which I'd like even better. Please, Lindsey?

    Friday, December 3, 2010

    Huevos mexicanos

    Eastside Road, December 3, 2010—
    LINDSEY CONTINUES TO MINE magazines and newspapers for recipes, as women have for generations now. She has a critical eye, though: of the thousands of recipes published annually, she chooses only a few. Tonight it was "Mexican Eggs," from the current issue of Sunset: from Toledo, Ohio, in fact, contributed by Ned Plummer, to whom thanks.
    #alttext#
    It involved bacon, refried beans, green ciles, eggs, cheese, scallions, tomato, cilantro, and avocado; and you eat it of course with tortillas. What's not to like?
    The rest of yesterday's Chablis

    Thursday, December 2, 2010

    Squash and Bitter Greens Soup

    Eastside Road, December 2, 2010—
    I'VE NEVER BEEN FOND of squash of any kind, though I've reluctantly learned to tolerate zucchini. I have to admit that winter squashes, though, including pumpkin, can be useful and even pleasurable when used as ingredients. As stand-alone vegetables their combination of pungent flavor and aroma and their grainy-slippery texture continue to repel me: but cook up some pumpkin with a few other things and fill ravioli with it, or, as tonight, include winter squash in a soup, and I'm a happy camper.
    #alttext#
    Lindsey found the recipe in the newspaper, and followed it pretty closely, using Carnival rather than Kabocha squash. I happily ate three bowls, and there isn't any left.
    Chablis, Jacques Bourguignon, 2008

    Birthday prime rib

    Eastside Road, December 1, 2010—
    TO SAN FRANCISCO TODAY for another birthday party: a friend has reached my own age:
    Andrew at seventy-five

    Proud December Orion,
    High and clear, like Arion
    Thanks to the gods still alive

    I send sevens on your day
    Knowing they edge toward your work
    While making little mark.

    You, dear Andrew, odd at play
    And pressed, must still smile today.
    Let these numbers have their say,

    Proud December Arion,
    Riding on your dolphin’s back,
    Three fourths the circuit well run,

    May we enjoy, prosper, thrive
    Through another twenty-five!*
    The party was a festive affair, black-tie, Martinis before dinner, then, six eight to a table, six or eight tables, we enjoyed:

    Salad with Green Goddess Dressing
    Roasted New York beefsteak
    Mashed Potatoes and Parsnips
    Green beans

    Birthday cake
    and a fine time was had by all.
    Riesling; Ridge Zinfandel
       *Andrew's own poem was of course much better than this: but then, unlike me, Andrew's a poet.

    Wednesday, December 1, 2010

    Omelet

    Eastside Road, November 30, 2010—
    I ALWAYS USED TO cook omelets in butter, but seeing The Big Night a few years ago changed all that. The closing scene of that movie is a protracted lesson in omelet-making, Italian style; and the lubricant in question is olive oil, not butter.

    Tonight, though, I cut a tiny bit of butter into the heated olive oil, and I think I'll stay with this technique. An omelet as I like it, nature as the French say, just egg, seems more French than Italian, and the slightly nutty flavor of the browned butter complements the egg better, I think, than oil alone.

    Nor do I salt the eggs, so the butter adds just a bit of salt too. I break the eggs, two for L., three for me, into a bowl; rinse my hands; let a few drops of water run off my hands into the eggs; whisk them up with a dinner fork; swirl them in the hot oil/butter over a naked flame; throw a little grated Parmesan into the center; turn it into the classic oval; flip it to brown the other side; then turn it out onto the plate, sprinkling a bit more Parmesan on top. That's all.

    With it, tonight, a baked potato and a serving of romanesco quickly cooked in oil and water with some crushed garlic and salt. Green salad, of course.
    Cheap Pinot grigio




    Grilled cheese sandwich

    Eastside Road, Healdsburg, Nov. 29—
    HOME AT LAST, and to stay for a few months. Breakfast was at the motel, an English muffin and bad coffee: but second breakfast: now that was a real treat. Mix is one of those unexpected, undeserved gifts that fall like a miracle from the gods on high. It has the best coffee between Portland and San Francisco, and the best bread and pastry too, and probably the best ice cream, though nine o'clock on a frigid morning is not the time to put that matter to the test.

    I was content with a plain croissant, as they called it, though there was nothing plain about it. The surface was crisp and buttery; the interior that curious merging of flaky pastry and real substance that only a perfectly proofed croissant can give you. There's nothing better than a really good croissant, and few things rarer: but you can count on Mix to provide one, every time. And the coffee…

    Oh: and their echt Parisian sandwiches, nothing but sweet boiled ham on buttered baguette, the butter infused with just a touch of thyme. We got one of those for the road.

    Dinner at home: grilled cheese sandwich, broccoli, green salad. The sandwich was simple: layers of Abondance cheese that we'd bought a few weeks ago at the Kaasplank in Apeldoorn, Netherlands, because we saw it when we went there for nagelkaas, and ever since walking through Haute Savoie among the bespectacled Abondance cows I've loved that cheese, a floral and subtle French take on Fontina or Bel Paese; layers of Abondance, I say, between slices of Ken's version of levain, bought in a three-pound boule in Portland yesterday, and toasted in the black iron frying pan on the wood stove…

    The cheese had been vacuum-packed for its flight. When I cut the package open tonight I found inside, nestled against the cheese, a minutely folded, colorful, apparently very special plastic bag to put the cheese in for its storage. Kaasspecialezak, the bag gaily trumpeted in orange script: cheese special sack. We'll see how it works.
    Cheap Pinot grigio

    On the road again

    Medford, Oregon, November 28, 2010—
    TRAVEL DAY TODAY, with predictably mixed and unforseen dining implications. We breakfasted as we generally do on a last morning in Portland: at Ken's Artisan Bakery, where the coffee isn't bad, and the pastries and bread are spectacular — I do believe Ken's is my favorite bakery in the world, and bakeries are in my family. Then for my second coffee we stopped in at Sterling Coffee, which operates a stand just a block away. It was so good I bought a pound to take home with me.

    Lunch was at another bakery, Le Patissier, oddly placed in a shopping center in Corvallis, a hundred-odd miles south. Here Didier Tholognat presides over a patisserie right out of the Paris of thirty years ago. The glazed fruit-filled pastries, the millefeuille layers of puff-paste, the display cases, the uniforms on the serving girls (and here a dated locution, probably politically incorrect these days, seems both appropriate and inevitable) — it's almost a parody of a Parisian bakery, except that the skill and the focus clearly reveal Tholognat's seriousness of purpose.

    We had quiche and salad for our lunch, and then split a crèpe, very beautifully cooked, filled with a first-rate plum conserve with a few apple slices right out of a tarte Tatin, garnished with the inescapable crème Chantilly. Perfect.

    The day ended in Medford, near the southern border with California. It was freezing cold and we didn't feel like driving more miles for dinner, so we stopped in at the nearby Regency Inn. I thought I'd have a Caesar salad or something like that. Their description of a Caesar salad was not promising, so I ordered my fall-back, pasta. The ravioli that came were loaded with gluey ricotta-like substance and covered with guar-gum sauce, with bits of unripe tomatoes added for color. Maybe I just wasn't in the mood.
    Pinot grigio, "Cavit," 2009
  • Ken's Artisan Bakery, 330 NW 21st Street, Portland, Oregon
  • Sterling Coffee Roaster, 2120 NW Glisan Ave., Portland, Oregon
  • Le Patissier, 956 NW Circle Blvd., Corvallis, Oregon; tel. 541.752.1785
  • Regency Grill, 2300 Biddle Road, Medford, Oregon




  • Flatiron Piemontese

    Portland, November 27, 2010—
    THE GIRLS PERFORMED so splendidly, and worked so hard, on the Thanksgiving feast, it seemed only right that I take the initiative today. Though to be truthful, it was a last-minute inspiration.

    And it was owing to the splendid series of tasting experiences earlier in the day. Breakfast was our usual: buttered toast, the bread from Ken's Bakery; perhaps the best bread you can get in this country. And cappuccinos, of course; today's coffee being Black Cat Espresso from Intelligentsia, bought last Sunday in Pasadena.

    Then a walk across the Broadway Bridge to the Pearl district, there to buy gibassiers at the Pearl Bakery; and then a walk down 9th Avenue a couple of blocks to Caffe Allora for another cappuccino, this one corretto with a drop or two of grappa, against the biting cold.

    Then, after a light lunch on leftovers from Thanksgiving, to another great Portland institution, Alma Chocolate, where I had a bicerin and a huge slab of delicious chocolate cake. A bicerin is essentially a mocha — half espresso, half hot chocolate — flavored with a hint of hazelnut and bound with thick cream. We had them a few weeks ago at the eponymous Caffe Bicerin in Torino: this one today was twice as good and half as expensive, made with deep deep cocoa, beautifully roasted coffee, and tiny nibs of Oregon hazelnuts.

    Italy is famously dedicated to coffee — importing, blending, roasting, grinding, and finally preparing the beverage with imagination, dedication, passion, and subtle discrimination. Two Italian houses, Caffè del Doge in the Veneto and Tazza d'Oro in Rome, are particularly fine; I never pass up an opportunity to enjoy them. But I have to say that Portland is shouldering Italy aside in this department. Every neighborhood seems to have its own coffee roaster, and many are on the level of the best Italy has to offer. Alma Chocolate uses Spella coffee: I haven't had Spella in any other context, but I can say that judging by the bicerin, Spella has to be an extraordinary coffee: pungent, vivacious, serious.

    The bicerin so excited me that I determined to shop for and cook dinner, and nothing would do but a simple grilled steak, smothered with wilted arugula. I popped into the nearby Laurelhurst Market for three pounds of flatiron steak cut from local naturally raised Piemontese cattle, then a local Whole Foods for two bunches of arugula, five or six cipollini, and a nice firm head of radicchio.

    Back home I fetched up the potatoes I'd dug from my own garden a week ago, not quite enough for the eight of us but they would have to do. The cipollini were sliced thin on the mandolin; some were sweated with the potatoes, in oil and water and salt; the others were cooked with the shredded radicchio. The arugula turned out to be spinach — I'd been so excited I bought them by the shelf-label and hadn't even looked at them closely. So I steamed it, while Pavel grilled the steaks which we'd salted and oiled. I sliced the steak and set it on a platter over the vegetables, garnished with the potatoes and triangles of Ken's bread. We all thought it delicious.
    Coteaux du Languedoc, Bergerie l'Hortus, Pic Saint Loup, 2007

    Ken's Artisan Bakery, 330 NW 21st Street, Portland
    Laurelhurst Market, 2188 E. Burnside, Portland; tel. 503-206-3099
    Caffe Allora, 504 NW 9th Avenue, Portland; tel. 503-445-4612
    Alma Chocolate, 140 NE 28th Avenue, Portland