Eastside Road, May 31, 2013—
VARIOUS TYPES OF PILAF: Rice, of course — apparently the only authentic pilaf involves rice:The English term pilaf is borrowed directly from the Turkish, pilav, which in turn comes from (Classical) Persian polow (پلو), and ultimately derives from Sanskrit pulāka- (पुलाक), "lump of boiled rice".(Not to offend any visiting Polish readers, I wonder if that's also the etymology of the derogatory "Polack".)
Well, my aversion to rice is fairly well known by now. There are exceptions, of course: a good risotto is a favorite dinner of mine, and even the time-honored rice salad can be nice on a hot summer day, if you don't have something better, like a Niçoise, to mention only one.
In general, though, I prefer pilafs made with wheat or farro or, as we had tonight, barley. Cook makes this every now and then; it's a stock item in her repertoire, and I love it: barley cooked in salted water, browned butter and chopped scallions and black pepper added at the end to flavor it. It's not even cooked in stock, so technically I suppose it's twice removed from pilaf. Still, that's what I call it. Buttered barley pilaf. Green salad afterward.
Grenache blanc, Preston of Dry Creek, 2010: the wrong wine for the dish — a light red would have been better — but we had to finish the bottle.
And then Lindsey's peach shortcake, with a drop-biscuit type cake and peeled, sliced peaches from Dry Creek, first of the season for us, and absolutely delicious.
THEN THIS AFTERNOON, after a pleasant four-miler in the nearby hills in the morning, we gathered at the nearby home of another couple of friends, where a feast of colors and textures was waiting for us — a sandwich kit. I settled, rather conservatively, on a BLT: nice crisp bacon, equally crisp Romaine leaves, and a good, flavorful tomato, with pesto rather than the usual mayonnaise. I should have gone back for more, and I did manage to sample a little of our hostess's pulled pork — nice. But it was too easy simply to sit in the sun on the deck, and converse languidly with bright, interesting people I hadn't met before, and have a glass or two of a delicious Zinfandel made from Dry Creek grapes by one of the guests, who has a few acres of vines…
Ah: breakfast. Again, a half dozen of those nice radishes; I have to get a couple of bunches tomorrow. The Nation, several pinches of salt, toast and honey, and café au lait, made tastier by the salt, and seen here not yet coffee'd…
We began with guacamole, made from Jim Churchill's avocados, which we picked up in Ojai ten days ago or so. And with radish, cilantro, lime skin and juice, an habañera pepper, and a shallot. Delicious.
DINNER WAS ACROSS the bay in San Francisco in what you might call an upscale trattoria, the casual little brother of a more ambitious Italian restaurant next door. Here I opened with another salad, arugula and Parmesan with a few lettuce leaves thrown in, nicely dressed.
Lindsey'd heard of a place downtown, so we gave it a try. It turns out to be very much a young person's hangout, and it was incredibly noisy — the dB meter was just under the red, at 90, much of the time. Nor was the menu that much to my taste. But you can't go wrong with Jambalaya, chicken, ham, and andouille with rice and quite a piquant sauce.
On the side, raita sauces — one based on cow's-milk yogurt, one on goat's-milk — and fine pan-sautéed whole little potatoes and this fine pan of sweet red and yellow peppers done à la grecque, which is one of my favorite things, too simple to be one of the Hundred Plates perhaps, but surely an honorary appointee.
Oh well: the Pozole was more or less blended in the kitchen. But it was a little bit revisionist: raw sliced radishes, shredded cabbage, toasted taco strips, and some kind of farmer's cheese were tossed onto the bowl of red chili-and-tomato flavored stew. Very little hominy, and meat whose flavor seemed just a bit off to me. An odd dish, I thought, which would have been quite satisfying had the meat been better. But not Pozole, I think.