Home cooking

Eastside Road, June 13, 2015—

WE THOUGHT OF our friend Nancy tonight as we ate dinner, Nancy Skall, whose smiling, slightly ironic, good-hearted presence animated the Healdsburg Farmers' Market for so many years until her death earlier this year. We were eating favas from her Middleton Gardens, the same favas she'd sold to us every year for over a decade. Her gardens — Malcolm's gardens; Malcolm of the winsome smile and the straw hat — their gardens live on; new owners have kept the same gardener who plants the same seed in the same soil. Of such continuity is made the little certainty we have, I sometimes think; and Cook's way of dealing with the favas is another piece of that certainty.

 

As is Dave's salmon, which we buy every Saturday in season, and which tonight I grilled over fruitwood cuttings, and Cook dressed simply with lime juice and salt.

Lest you think we have no dessert here I give evidence to the contrary: a bit of the last of that delicious buckwheat birthday cake Thérèse made fully a week ago, and which holds up beautifully, especially with some salt-caramel ice cream; and a bowl of ripe strawberries from Lou Preston's farm. Summer is truly here.

 

Cheap Pinot grigio

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YESTERDAY WE DINED once more on Franco's sausage, this time crumbling it, browning it, and combining it with shredded cabbage, sliced carrots and radishes, a couple of Habañera peppers roasted, then minced, some avocado, and lime juice — what I think of as Californio cooking, down to earth and simple and delicious. ☛Restaurants visited in 2015 are listed at Eatingday's Restaurants