Vers la douce France

 Spa, Belgium, February 29, 2012—

THE FOOD IS CERTAINLY more à la français: we have moved a country closer to Paris. We first noticed this in 1974, when a similar trip took us from Netherlands through Belgium to Luxembourg and ultimately France. The architecture and the social institutiions are less to my personal taste, as I understand them, but the cuisine I respond to more, er, intuitively.

We begin with an amuse-geule: Russian salad, to tell the truth, in a shot-glass, with a teeny shrimp in a pastry tube, perched above a pool of catsup.  Olives flavored with anchovy and lemon, a glass of rosé. (Well, but Lindsey had the house apéritif: sirop de concombre acec du Curaçao.)

Next, for me, pheasant ravioli in rather dense house-made pastry with mushroom sauce, and them a rib beefsteak, Irish I was told, with cream mushroom-black-peppercorn sauce, a whole steamed potato in butter, a half grilled tomato, a little endive and courgette.

Then dessert: chocolate mousse on chocolate cake base. Sounds simple; looks elegant; comes from a local patisserie-confiserie; tastes delicious.

Vin rouge en pichet: Merlot

• le Relais, Place du Monument, 22a, Spa; +32 0497/15.96.86

 

A third and final night

Epen. Feb. 28. 2012

I stuck my head into the kitchen to thank anyone. When we planned this stay, I said, I figured we'd eat two dinners in Maaztricht and one, maybe, in Valkenburg. Instead, we've dined in this provincial hotel, me on the €30 daily menu, three nights running.

Tonight after an amuse of smoked salmon with cucumber and lettuce in mayonnaise I moved on to potato salad with scallops and lettuces; then a pan-roasted beefsteak with shallots in brown sauce, snow peas, onions, green beans, and roasted potatoes on the side.

Dessert: frozen banana parfait, chocolate sauce and whipped cream.

Beaujolais

Sent from my iPhone

Pork loin and endive

 Epen, February 27, 2012—

 

DINNER IN THE HOTEL again tonight, after a day of lazy rambling along the Geul with only tea and a cherry tart for lunch. Tonight after the "amuse," which I forgot to mention yesterday — a scrap of waste-not-want-not ham in balsamic syrup — and a bowl of steaming chicken soup, welcome against the cold, we tucked into man-sized portions of pork loin, simply roasted and served in a brown sauce, with braised Belgian endive on the side. For dessert, strawberry mousse, which had been fortold with the previous night's ice creams.

Beaujolais, said the wine-card, first white, then red

•Hotel de Smidse, Molenweg 9, Epen; +31 043 455 1253

Traditional Dutch revived

Epen, February 26, 2012—

I FIRST VISITED The Netherlands in 1973, and we've returned many times over the years. Our daughter's Dutch adopted family, with whom she lived on an exchange year 1975-76, is as close to us as our own family. We've walked the length and breadth of the country. I love Netherlands as fondly as I do my own country — which I consider to be Sonoma county, California.

But I'll be the first to agree that for many years the food you'd get in restaurants when visiting this country was, well, pretty bad. Overcooked meat and vegetables and lots of potatoes, that's what it was, and I mean lots of potatoes. One night we had three dishes of potatoes: fried; mashed; steamed. I think we were being tested, to see if we were paying attention.

Then in the 1980s things began to change. You could still get traditional Dutch fare — govercooked mystery meat and too many side dishes of vegetables whose only escape from blandness came from liberal sprinklings of nutmeg — but Dutch travelers had enjoyed Italy; a number of them decided flavor was worth paying for; and government schools embraced the "Horeca" Field — hotel, restaurant, café — as a likely important sector of the economy to come.

We've spent a lot of time and a number of guilders, more recently euros, in horeca in the last thirty years, and I must say food here has become more consistant, and more consistently good, than in any other country we regularly visit but Italy. But this came, at first, partly at the cost of a recognizably individual national cuisine.

Some would say good riddance: not me; I like local distinction, and had always found the principles of Dutch cookery attractive and attractively familiar from my middle-class semirural upbringing. It was pleasant to find engaging mainstream Italian cuisine in provincial Dutch cities, but I missed the attempt to rescue the local traditions.

But beginning say fifteen years ago something's changed again, and the provincial table has begun to reclaim those traditions, proudly asserting local culinary repertoire and even rediscovering long-forgotten vegetables like salsify.

Dinner tonight in the restaurant of an old-fashioned country hotel was nothing exceptional; certainly not after the previous two evenings, when our food was devised and prepared by professionals who've served their time at Chez Panisse among a number or top-class restaurants. But it was sound and competent and attractive, and grounded in the old Dutch traditions — with the slightly Belgian accent you'd want in this most southerly corner of Dutch Limburg.

We began with a nice light salad subtly incorporating very thin-sliced celery for texture among its lettuces, alongside thin slices of ham — Serrano, not Dutch — set off with rich, sweet red onion compote. A braised half poussin came next, in its cream mustard sauce, traditional to the neighboring town Gulpen, with green beans, snow peas and carrots on the side, and a side dish of buttery roasted whole little potatoes.

Dessert was a plate of ice creams and cold soufflées: vanilla, strawberry, and light chocolate, with dark chocolate sauce and whipped cream on the side — a deconstructed hot fudge sundae, in fact, nicely balanced. Even the wine was local — and surprisingly satisfactory.

Chasselas, I think: Domein Le Coq Frisé "Cuvée des Amis" (Epen, Limburg), 2010

•Hotel Herberg de Smidse, Molenweg 9, Epen, Netherlands; +31 043 455 1253

Location:Epen, Netherlands

Country dinner

Puiflijk, February 25, 2011—

AFTER DINING AT MARIUS, dining at home chez des amis is no let-down, particularly when the friends are themselves from the culinary profession. We're in a village in the Betuwe, in central Netherlands, apple orchards and pastures around our friends' house, and we're joined by Yolanda and Krijn and their two charming little girls Jip and Co for an evening of conversation and badinage and then dinner:

Salad: lettuces, pear, pecans, good blue cheese

Duck legs sautéed, then braised in stock with little onions

Red cabbage and mashed potatoes with celery root

Cheeses

Apple-blackberry crumble

A civilized country dinner combining California and Dutch tastes, completely satisfying.

Rioja, Muga, 2007; Cabernet sauvignon "Santa Sarah" (Bulgaria), 2009

 

Marius again

Amsterdam, February 24, 2011—

CERTAINLY AMONG THE FIVE, and closing in its present incarnation in a couple of weeks: get here soon.

Or wait a bit, as it'll reopen before you know it, only a few doors down the street, a little bigger but with the same team turning out, I'm sure, the same great stuff. The table d'hôte, at €47 I believe, involves three savory courses and dessert: tonight

fish salad, deliciously lukewarm, with poached red mullet, lettuce, purslane, blood orange, and fennel
grilled snoekbaars (perch?) with tapenade and Romanesco
quail stuffed with an agrodolci involving almonds, raisins, and don't recall what (I'd been nearly thirty hours traveling)
many good cheeses
almond tarte

Saumur, Domaine des Guyons, 2010; Langhe, Tre Stelle, 2009 (very beautiful young wines, both of them); "Escapade," Pays d'Oc, 2009 (soft and rich)

• Marius, Barentszstr. 243, Amsterdam; tel. 020 422 7880
Kees Elfring, chef-proprietor, at Marius

Aloft

In flight, February 23, 2011—

DINNER ALOFT TONIGHT: beef piperade of a sort. Well, pieces of beef, braised, served in a brown sauce thickened with cornstarch, with green beans and bits of green and red bell pepper; riced potatoes on the side. Lettuce salad with unpleasantly barely-pickled carrot. Anise-flavored roll; crackers; a brownie. Delicious, I told the stewardess when she cleared the tray; I'm glad you liked it, she replied: Would you like another? No thanks, I said politely.

bordeaux, Les Hauts Belair, 2010; Tempranillo, SolCasal, nv

• flight AA106, New York-London

Breakfast

Eastside Road, February 22, 2012—

FUNNY TO CALL IT that, when in fact this morning it begins a day's fast. And: no bread this morning — a disaster, but luckily there are crocantini.

Oh well. The egg is slubbery, as we like them. The last of those we'll have for a month.

Tacos (reprise)

Eastside Road, February 21, 2012—

TOMORROW WE SHALL FAST, probably for the last time in a month; tonight we finish the taco makings from two days ago. We, correct that, Lindsey is cleaning out the refrigerator for a good reason. I must say, the combination of beef, avocado, bean, chili pepper, tomato, cilantro, and raw onion is truly delicious: Elective Affinities perfectly energized by the lime juice. I'd eat this once a week — but doubt I'll see it again for at least a month.

As a first course, those fine leeks and carrots, sautéed with a bit of butter; afterward, green salad, then tangerine ice.

Cheap Pinot grigio; Nero d'Avola

Bouillabaisse

Eastside Road, February 20, 2012—

DROVE DOWN TO Berkeley for Monday night dinner Chez Panisse, to score with not one but two of the Hundred Plates.

Chicory salad with chanterelles and winter vegetables
Bouillabaisse à la Panisse
Tarte Tatin with Calvados ice cream

So there you have them: Bouillabaisse — gee, I do like typing that word-- and Tarte Tatin: two of the hundred great dishes.

About bouillabaisse there are two controversies, at least in my mind. One is the pronunciation of the word. For some reason most of the world seems to say something like bool-yah-base, or sometimes bool-ya-bez. What I say is more like bwee-ya-bess. Well, I say wah-cah-mo-lay, too: call me pedant.

The other controversy is the presence or absence of Wrong Shellfish. Sea-creatures with feet, that is: lobster, crab, shrimp. Bouillabaisse à la Panisse turned out, tonight, to have Wrong Shellfish, so I had an alternative, and it was very tasty — bass, I'd say, fennel, leeks, aïoli; with a few baby squid to make things interesting, along with sweet little mussels and tasty clams. Saffron, of course.

In my view bouillabaisse requires at least three kinds of fish, all of them preferably found fresh only within forty miles of Marseilles, perhaps some clams, perhaps some mussels. Squid seems inauthentic; Wrong Shellfish with feet completely out of the question. I know full well there are published "authentic" recipes involving crabs and lobsters; I know there are perfectly authentic Provençaux and -çales who throw such animals into the bouillabaisse pot. But I think this is done to make up for the lack of authentic fish.

Well, what the hell. Four weeks from tonight I'll be eating in Nice. I won't have bouillabaisse, probably: but I hope I'll have a soupe aux poissons. Maybe the night before, a little further west, I'll have bouillabaisse. I'll let you know, you can be sure. In the meantime, Bouillabaisse à la Panisse — surtout "ma façon", without feet — is pretty damn good. So was the Tarte; so was the ice cream.

Chardonnay, Domaine Labet (Jura), 2010; Rosé, Domaine Tempier (Bandol), 2010

• Chez Panisse, 1517 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley; 510.548.5525

Breakfast

Eastside Road, February 20, 2012—

Gibassier from Portland's Pearl Bakery. (thanks, freezer!); caffelatte from Sweet Maria's, roasted at home (thanks, T.); good old Faemina espresso machine (thanks , L., and mom)…

reprise

Eastside Road, February 18, 2012—

EXACTLY THE SAME DINNER as yesterday: the other half of the Shepherd's pie; and like most such dishes, it was even better the second day, the flavors deeper and more integrated.

Cheap Nero d'Avola

Shepherd's pie

Eastside Road, February 17, 2012—

EARLY IN OUR MARRIAGE lamb was a fallback in our economy, our domestic economy I mean, the daily-life balancing of too little income with the need for protein and calories if we were to keep things going. I mean: we worked hard in those days, and money was short. Ground lamb was three pounds for a dollar at most, twenty-five cents a pound at best, and we ate a lot of it.

Even at that price it was often a good idea to extend it somehow. I don't remember if Shepherd's Pie was one out our ways of extending it. (What I chiefly recall is some kind of bottled mint sauce, in an attempt at sophistication beyond our scope.) Tonight, Shepherd's Pie, recipe here. It's what you do when you haven't really enough lamb, or eggs, or Parmesan, or chicken stock, for a real dinner. Irish poverty at its enterprising best.

Afterward, green salad; then a few more of those Damsons we've been enjoying.

Cheap Nero d'Avola; and one of these days remind me to give you a disquisition on the effect of various Vermouths on the Friday Martini…

Choucroute garni

Berkeley, Feb. 16, 2012—

CHOUCROUTE GARNI, one of the Hundred Plates, is a dish we rarely make at home. The authentic version requires a number of things rarely at hand, so it's more easily found in a restaurant. Tonight's version lacked ultimate autenticity, I felt, but it was pretty damned good, nothing to turn your nose up at.

The sauerkraut was a little too salty: I'd have rinsed it, and maybe have been a little more generous with those perfect little steamed potatoes. But the pork chop was delicious; ditto the sophisticated boudin noir; and the smoked garlic sausage not far behind.

Green salad before; glass of Slivovitz after. I'd do it all again tomorrow, willingly.

Gewürtztraminer, Oberer Weingarten, Rolly Gassman, 2002, perfect

Café rouge, 1782 Fourth Street, Berkeley; 510.525.1440

Lunch at the restaurant

Eastside Road, February 15, 2012—

"THE RESTAURANT," in our family, means Chez Panisse, simply because it was one of the centers of our family's daily life from its beginning, in 1971, until Lindsey's retirement, in 1997. Our two daughters worked their in their early 'teens; I even did my time there — was, in fact, one of the earliest employees to be fired. But that's another story.

And occasionally we're at table with other members of The Family, and lunch today was one of those occasions:

Spring pea toasts
Little gems lettuces with radishes and shaved Parmesan
Grilled black sea bass with wilted Chino greens and chanterelle mushrooms
Blood orange sherbet and passionfruit ice cream bombe

All, needless to say, delicious.

Rosé: Sancerre La Louée, 2010

• Chez Panisse, 1517 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley; 510.548.5525

So supper at home: a little Comté, a little saucisse sec, green salad, salt-oil-garlic toasts, an apple.

the rest of Monday's Reuilly

Boerkool

Eastside Road, February 13, 2012—

I LIKE PEASANT COOKING, and it seems particularly appropriate to winter, when slow cooking heats the house while it prepares food both comforting and nourishing. Now it's true enough that we first tasted boerkool on a warm summer day in 1976, when we made our first visit to Apeldoorn. There a teen-aged boy who would later become one of the best chefs I know — and who has run two of our favorite restaurants — threw together a mess of kale, potatoes, onions, and sausage.

Boerkool — Dutch for "farmer cabbage" — is the kind of dish that invites improvisation. Tonight Lindsey fried up some bacon, then onions; cubed potatoes go in next, with enough water to steam-sauté them; then the chopped kale on top, to steam and cook in the heavy, lidded pot. No need for salad after kale; more Damsons for dessert; then a slice of fruitcake. We're cleaning out the kitchen.

Reuilly, Denis Jamain, 2009: a little rough, tannic, young-tasting; likable.

Lamb chop

Eastside Road, February 12, 2012—

BACK TO THE FREEZER this Lincoln's Birthday — I like to think he would have approved, somehow — to find there another package of chops from one of Meadow's lambs. It isn't quite spring, somehow, though we have a gentle sort of misty rain today, and I notice the favas are beginning to bloom, so lamb chops seem appropriate.

With them a riot of color: bright green Romanesco; assertive orange carrots sautéed with leeks; and nice grainy mashed potatoes. A green salad to follow, eaten by lamplight, as our power company chose to take a few minutes for its own mysterious purposes…

And then, light restored, a bowl of delicious Damson plums, picked from our tree a couple of years ago by our daughter, who then canned them for tonight's dessert…

Cheap Nero d'Avola

Grilled ham and cheese

Eastside Road, February 12, 2012—

AN EIGHT O'CLOCK SHOW in the city, for us, pretty much militates against a normal dinner. Today, then, we contented ourselves with a couple of grilled ham and cheese sandwiches, made with prosciutto and Comté on Downtown's Como bread — it doesn't get a whole lot better than that. On the side, as you see, little flowerets of Romanesco; afterward, green salad. No wine: we're driving an hour, then sitting through an opera, then driving back home again.

A little glass of grappa, though, as a nightcap…

Peruvian

Eastside Road, February 10, 2012—

BACK TO A PLACE we'd visited last July, with the same couple of friends: a Peruvian place, seating only twenty at tables and another six at the counter, in a strip mall on the edge of town. We began with a truly delicious Ahi ceviche, with soy, diced onions and jalapeños, cilantro, huacatay, sesame seeds and oil, and avocado: but the sea-strong tuna ruled the dish as it should have: perfect. I thought the fried yuca was bland and lacked salt, nor was it lifted much by the aji huacatay "aioli" that came with it.

My Lomo Saltado, though, was complex and forward and pointed, all the flavor you could ask: wok-fried tenderloin steak strips, onion, tomato, cilantro, soy sauce, vinegar; with house-cut fries. I'd gladly have sacrificed the big ice-cream scoop of white rice, oddly and unfortunately tasting of tap-water, for a few more fries. But this is a nice place, comfortable, friendly, and lord knows inexpensive.

Syrah, Intipalka (Peru), 2009: good varietal scent; nice balance; weighty

• Sazón Peruvian Cuisine, 1129 Sebastopol Road, Santa Rosa, California; (707) 523-4346

Ceci

Eastside Road, February 9, 2012—

OUR FRIEND BHISHMA, easily one of the most intelligent, culturally openminded, and discerning men I've ever met, is also of course a fine bouche, as who with such attributes would not be. Some years ago he sent us a recipe he'd adapted (with very little change) from Madhur Jaffrey's An Invitation to Indian Cooking (Knopf, 1973), and tonight Lindsey made it for dinner.

The ingredients are many, as is so often the case with this cuisine; but a half-dozen of them are spices, and many of the rest are other sorts of flavoring agents. The base is chick peas — ceci or, as they were called in my childhood home, garbanzos. Chick peas can well; the commercially canned ones do fine, though I prefer the purity of concept attached to dried ones.

They're added to a heavy skillet in which you've sweated chopped onions along with cumin, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, coriander, garlic ginger, cayenne, salt, and lemon juice — I told you there were lots of ingredients — and served with chopped tomatoes, raw onion slivers, and, if you have some, green chilies: we did not, tonight.

The dish is delicious and the house smells marvelous. Green salad.

Cheap Nero d'Avola

Lunch in Petaluma; the last of the goat

Eastside Road, February 8, 2012—

CROQUE-BATON for lunch today, with a tasty green salad on the side, at a place I've mentioned before:
• Della Fattoria, 141 Petaluma Boulevard North, Petaluma; (707) 763-0161

Riesling

Later, a really good macchiato at Acre Coffee, 21 4th St., Petaluma; (707) 772-5117; still later, fine ice cream (Lindsey had her hot fudge sundae) at Lala's Creamery, 134 Petaluma Blvd. North, Petaluma; 707 763-5252.

Dinner: the last of the goat shanks we had Sunday night. Better, of course, for being a couple of days older, and perhaps for yesterday's fast. With them, chard from the garden, and carrots cru; afterward, cheese — d'Affinois and bleu d'Auvergne: two of our favorites. We never pretended to be sophisticated.

cheap Nero d'Avola

Salmon

Eastside Road, February 6, 2012—

DAVE THE FISH GUY was at the market yesterday morning, with the salmon we've come to depend on. Delicious as it is, though, it was matched tonight by a very favorite dish of mine, braised leeks and carrots. Normally I'm the one to make this, and I always slice the leeks and carrots lengthwise before cooking them in butter. Lindsey sliced them crosswise, and damned if it doesn't make a better dish, bringing more leek flavor to the mix, and merging it more completely with the carrot.

Baked potato, as you see; green salad afterward.

Cheap Pinot grigio; Cabernet sauvignon, Château St. Jean, 2001 (bottle-ends, both, and none the worse for that)

Lamb shanks

Eastside Road, February 5, 2012—

EXCEPT THAT THEY WERE (1) not lamb shanks, but goat; (2) almost completely ruined, by my own ineptitude.

I followed the classic Richard Olney recipe, from Simple French Food: brown the shanks in olive oil in a heavy pan; throw in a dozen or so unpeeled garlic cloves; turn the fire down to the lowest possible, cover the pot, cook for an hour, throw in a handful of herbes de Provence, continue cooking until the shanks simply sizzle in the pan, remove them, deglaze the pan with white wine, run the result with the garlic cloves through a food mill, coat the meat with the resulting sauce, grind fresh black pepper over, serve with noodles.

Well: all went well until it was time to deglaze the pan. For that purpose I removed the shanks to a plate, then pulled the cork from a bottle of white Morey-Saint-Denis, Domaine Ponsot, 1974. This was a pretty old wine, and I offered a glass to one our guests to verify. At first it seemed sound though old; quickly, though, doubts arose. I'd turned the flame up under the shanks' pan, with the remaining juices and dozen or so cloves of garlic, and before I knew it smoke was filling the kitchen. The wine was corked; the sauce was ruined.

The genius of Olney's recipe is its simplicity, its faith in the deliciousness of the ingredients, their perfect marriage of savor, scent, and texture. The meat, some salt, the garlic, the thyme and savory and marjoram (in this case); finally the white wine — all converge in a perfect focus. And I had let it burn, turn to bitter carbon. The stink filled the house.

I've made this dish a dozen times, I'm sure. I no longer need to read the recipe: it's engraved in my hands and nose and mind and eyes. But I'd failed it, and Olney, and our guests, and worst of all the goat itself. Che disastro!

Well, Lindsey cooked the egg noodles; I threw out the burned stuff; we served the shanks without their sauce. They were delicious, of course, though robbed of the nobility of their enrobement. One shrugs off the disasters and makes the best of things.

Green salad; later, blood-orange ice. You can do worse.

Champagne, Laurent-Perrier, nv; Cheap Pinot Grigio; Beaujolais, Côte de Brouilly, Potel Aviron, 2009 (thanks, Tom); Cabernet sauvignon, Château St. Jean, 2001 (thanks, Kendall)

Leftovers

Eastside Road, February 4, 2012—

TIME TO DRAW in the reins just a bit. We had a nice guacamole with the Martini, but afterward went on to clean-out-the-icebox mode: cold roast chicken, warmed-over potatoes and mushrooms. Green salad, of course, made tonight with walnut oil and shallots; and a little ice-cream sundae to finish.

Cheap Nero d'Avola

A Day in Berkeley

Eastside Road, February 3, 2012—

SECOND BREAKFAST — or early lunch — at a place new to us, a nice little neighborhood place where we'd had a decent Martini yesterday, when we ducked in to see what this morning's breakfast menu might feature. We had the "Strada," a sort of savory bread pudding involving egg, bread, tomato, corn, peppers, and Fontina, baked, then topped with a thin pesto sauce. A nice way to start the day, with a fine Blue Bottle cappuccino.
• Paisan, 2514 San Pablo Avenue, Berkeley, California; (510) 649-1031

After a nice five-mile hike, a pot of tea: Mao Jian, a green tea that is absolutely yellow, butter-colored, in the cup; fragrant, a bit fermented, a little tannic toward the end of the third brew.
• Teance, 1780 4th St., Berkeley; (510) 524-2832

A glass or two of Prosecco with an old friend at her house; then dinner downstairs at Chez Panisse. Shrimp and lobster on the menu, but I had delicious substitutes:

Apéritif: Cava flavored with Buddha's hand citrus
Rockfish and winter vegetable tempura with horseradish cream
Jerusalem artichoke velouté with black truffle matchsticks
Grilled yellowfin tuna with lemon and olive salsa, Savoy cabbage and tat soy, and roasted potatoes with green garlic
Crêpes Suzette

no, no photos: just relax and enjoy the eating. And the wines:

Rosé, Domaine Tempier (Bandol), 2010; Chardonnay, Ghostwriter, (Santa Cruz), 2009; Morgon, Côtes de Py, 2010; Riesling, Auslese, Peter Maher, 2001

• Chez Panisse, 1517 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley; 707.548.5525

Meat

Oakland, Feb. 2, 2012— Dinner with a couple of friends tonight, at their home — (how clumsy our English language can be: no other way to say simply diner chez des amis, or bij vrienden) — and it was, delicious treat, rare roast beef and mashed potatoes and green beans in brown butter. I'd been hungering for beef for days, and here it was. Oh: dessert: a fine Linzertart, from Berkeley's Bread Garden bakery. How pleasurable these simple pleasures are!

Roast chicken

Eastside Road, February 1, 2012—

ROAST CHICKEN, potatoes and onions and carrots and mushrooms in the pan too; salt. Green beans on the side, as you see. Not many better things, I think.

Cheap Pinot grigio; cheap Nero d'Avola