Eating Every Day

Risotto

2012-01-29T23:11:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, January 29, 2012—

LORD KNOWS WE HAVE BOTH made dozens of risottos. We agree almost completely on the method: soffritto of onions in oil with maybe a little butter; a one-kernel depth of rice grains next, moved around, until just beginning to soften; chicken stock which has been kept just under a simmer; a splash of white wine; more stock; stir stir stir;

ed e subito finito.

Where we differ is on the mechanics of the white wine: I throw it in before the stock, to cook it off quickly; she argues that this kills the cooking of the rice. The truth cannot lie in between; it must somehow transcend both points of view. But we get by.

Tonight it was her turn. Odd, how long it's been since we had a risotto here. There was one slip-up: she'd intended a classic risotto Milanese, with peas; the "peas" turned out to be soybeans, and of course were not used. Well, it's too early for peas anyhow.

The cooking wine is important. For years we had a dwindling case of superannuated Chablis, I think it was. Normally we might use Cheap Pinot grigio. But just now we have an old vintage of Joseph Swan Chardonnay, too oxidized for drinking, but fine for this purpose.

Green salad, of course; and the last of those Bosc pears in Marsala. Yes.

Cheap Pinot grigio

Ukiah

2012-01-29T10:28:00.001-08:00

Salade Lyonnaise, Mendocino style

Ukiah, Mendocino county, California, January 28, 2012—

THE SEAT OF GOVERNMENT in this rural county to the north of ours, Ukiah seems on very little direct knowledge an interesting jumble of blue-collar, agricultural, administrative, and student populations. Of course today's experience is confined to a two-block radius around the court house, where we're attending "mock trials" of a murder case, prosecuted and defended by teams of high-school students learning about both law and theater (as if there were that much distinction in real life).

But this site, as I've said before, is about food, not law and order. Lunch involved that classic, ham and cheese on a baguette, with a glass of orange juice; cappuccino and Danish to follow. Except that the cheese was cheddar rather than some kind of Swiss, everything was all I could ask.

• Courthouse Bakery, 113 West Perkins St., Ukiah; (707)462-1670

Dinner? We didn't want to hang around too late, so it was more of a very late lunch, seven of us at table. After a decent Martini I ordered a Lyonnaise salad — as some readers know by now, a favorite here — and a side of french fries. The salad, as you see in this theatrical photo, boasted two eggs, steamed rather than poached I'd guess, and lots of tasty lardons: tasty and healthful. Afterward, a chocolate-walnut tart that was more like a marquise in a pastry shell, dense and delicious.

Martini

• Patrona, 130 W. Standley, Ukiah; (707) 462-9181

Bistro

2012-01-27T23:18:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, January 27, 2012—

HAPPY MOZART'S BIRTHDAY to you! We celebrated with a quick trip to MacWorld Expo and an ailing friend, dinner out with a couple of friends, and some agitprop theater based on the Occupy movement. Much to think about: but at this site I focus on the dinner.

(I run into people from time to time — at MacWorld Expo, for example — who think my entire consciousness is narrowly focussed on dinner. That's not really true. I guess I should spend a little more time on the other blog from time to time.)

The theater was in nearby Sebastopol, and so is the K&L Bistro, one of the dependable local eateries. There I had a Friday Fish dinner: grilled sardines with roasted peppers and frisée; then grilled salmon on a bed of wilted lettuces, as you see, themselves on a bed of nicely flavored lentils in a sort of agrodolce. That's horseradish cream you see settling into the salmon. Not perhaps authentically bistro fare, but no complaints from me.

White Bordeaux in carafe

• K&L Bistro, 119 South Main Street, Sebastopol; 707-823-6614

Chili

2012-01-27T00:14:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, January 26, 2012—

MY FATHER KNEW HOW to make it; so did Mom. My mother-in-law could turn out a pretty good version. Lindsey knows how, too. But I bet I'd have to go to a cook book. Pathetic: chili, one of the great American dishes and certainly one of the Hundred Plates, should be something that writes itself.

I guess you start with chopped onions, frying them up in some kind of fat, then adding ground beef and flavor. The beans you've cooked ahead of time. Tomato is clearly involved somehow — canned? paste? sauce? Oh: and chili powder, no doubt about that.

Tonight's edition involved chili powder from Rancho de Chimayo, accessioned who knows how many years ago but never, it seems, losing either its heat or its unique smoky peppery flavor. Then too, Lindsey likes to set bowls of chopped raw onion, chopped cilantro, diced avocado, and grated cheese on the table; and I like a tortilla or two. Green salad. Oh: tonight, a dessert: a strange but tasty corn-flour cake which tasted, as Eric said, very old-fashioned, and Southern. If there's any left tomorrow night I'll tell you how she made it.

Zinfandel, Peterson (Dry Creek Valley), 2008

Steak, beans, guacamole

2012-01-25T22:51:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, January 25, 2012—

THIS WAS A DAY for a simple dinner, and that's what we had. Lindsey had found maybe a quarter pound of leftover grilled steak in the freezer. I made guacamole the usual way while she heated up a can or two of black beans. Tortilla, guacamole, sliced steak, raw onions, a little more guacamole, lime juice, bottled salsa verde. Delicious. (A little steamed broccoli afterward, to keep us healthy.)

(Yesterday, being Tuesday, was a fast day.)

Cheap Nero d'Avola

Grilled ham and cheese

2012-01-23T23:37:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, January 23, 2012—

LET'S JUST KEEP IT simple, shall we? Good Como bread from Downtown; thin slices of Black Forest ham; ditto of Gruyère. Butter on the outside of the sandwiches, just a little. Grill in the black iron skillet. A good green salad afterward, and then, just to keep it from being too simple,

Pears Baked in Marsala

Pour a cup of dry Marsala over six large firm unpeeled pears in a baking dish, sprinkle them with a cup of sugar, pour a scant cup of water into the dish, add a cinnamon stick, and bake, basting them every twenty minutes, for a couple of hours at 325° or until the pears are soft.

The recipe is from Milan's Restaurant Peck, as set out by Robert Freson in his book Savoring Italy (HarperCollins, 1992).

Ribolla Gialla, La Viarte (Colli oriental del Friuli), 2009: a perfect match to the dinner.

Ancora all'italiana

2012-01-22T21:41:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, January 22, 2012—

OUT TO DINNER again, you won't be surprised to hear, with a couple of new friends: francophiles and market gardeners whose lettuces we depend on through spring and summer. They'd been to this Healdsburg restaurant before; we had not, and were glad to give it a try.

Burt and I split a "Caesar" salad, in quotes for chopped Romaine and the lack of raw egg, otherwise not a bad salad at all, and thankfully with a liberal number of anchovies decorating it. I went on to Stinco d'agnello al forno, a braised lamb shank in its reduced drippings, on a bed of soft polenta, with the demi-glace and wild mushrooms and mixed vegetables on the side. Good hearty fare for a squally, rainy evening.

Rosso di Montalcino, Tenemente Angelini, 2004 (thanks, Burt and Mary: it was mature and sober and fruity and delicious); "Regale," Bordeaux blend, Ramazzotti (Alexander Valley), 2007 (oaky at first, quickly correcting itself into a nicely balanced wine)

• Baci Café and Wine Bar, 336 Healdsburg Avenue, Healdsburg; (707) 433.8111

Party party

2012-01-22T17:23:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, January 21, 2012—

AN UNUSUALLY BUSY Saturday, even for us: a memorial service for a friend at one o'clock; a birthday party for another at four; then a dinner party for our playgoing group, the Ashlanders, at seven. Food all along the way, of course.

We eyed the table of cheeses, pastries, cocktail sandwiches and such in the church on our way out of the memorial service. I felt guilty about reaching toward it and grabbing one little canapé, which turned out to be egg salad on crustless white bread; but my conscience cleared when I noticed Lindsey'd done exactly the same.

The array at Andrew's party

We drove nearly an hour to get to Andrew's party in Point Reyes Station. Quite a contrast: from a fairly new, media-savvy, banner-hung Christian church jam-packed with probably six hundred mourners to a rustic, crowded artists' studio equally jam-packed with perhaps thirty friends and family. Since Andrew is a Romanov, the table boasted blinis and borscht as well as ham, green beans, olives, beans, green salad, bruschetta, and a dozen other things. Looking forward to a dinner party in a couple of hours, we held back: but that borscht was delicious, even to beet-hating me; ditto the blinis and bruschetta. Perhaps I was simply in the mood for the letter "B". Or perhaps it was the Sophia rosé, whose slight sweetness pushed the Italo-Russian savor.

On, then, another hour, to dinner. A few glasses of Pinot grigio followed by Sauvignon blanc and conversation; then down to serious business at table: roast pork loin; delicious little yellow potatoes; green beans with pancetta and pine nuts (yes yes); homemade applesauce — ah: we're home in the good old USA again. Good food, good cooking, good discussions, good friends.

Chardonnay, Clos du Bois, 2009; Cabernet Sauvignon, Simi, 1999 (sound and serious); Sirah, Preston of Dry Creek, 2009; Zinfandel, Murphy-Goode "Liar's Dice", 2008 (authentic and mature); Pinot noir, Shone Farm, 2009 — note that all these reds were first-rate, and they all (and the whites too) came from within a dozen miles of the dinner-table.

Bogman with egg

2012-01-20T22:35:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, January 20, 2012—

HOW ABOUT BOGMAN with an egg on top, I said idly, not really all that seriously, but that's how she took me: seriously. A few tablespoons of Lou Preston's wheat berries in the saucepan, covered with water, cooked al dente with some chopped scallions, served with a poached egg on top. Rather a nice dish; we'll come back to it. Green salad, of course.

The rest of Tuesday's Bardolino

Roast lamb

2012-01-20T11:24:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, January 19, 2012—

HOME FAR TOO LATE last night to report on dinner, so you will find no dissertation here on the roast lamb. We'd driven down to Berkeley with friends to hear high-school musicians in a pageant of all sorts of chamber music, from a Schubert quartet movement to (no kidding!) a saxophone quartet, in shades and danger jackets, playing the "Air on the G String" by Johann Sebastian Bach. (I made a shaky video of this; when I get to better bandwidth I'll upload it to YouTube.)

To serious business first, though: dinner in the Café. I started with the house green salad, always dependable with its soft, subtle, but complex vinaigrette; and went on to sliced roast lamb with fried shoestring potatoes, delicate little turnips, and anchovy butter. Well, the lamb wasn't really roasted; it was grilled — such a young lamb it must have been, meat with that curious combination of young tenderness and optimism and the innately wary gaminess of the adult sheep. The anchovy butter suited it perfectly.

Desserts: Jim's Kishu tangerines, new crop dates, and for me house-made membrillo with Txiki and an exceptional ricotta, again with dates, candied lemon peel, and honey. Yes.

Verdicchio di matelica, Colle Stefano, 2010: fragrant, true to varietal, good body; Barbera d’Asti

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

Fish and chips

2012-01-18T21:41:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, January 18, 2012—

THE LAST FAIR DAY, we're told, before a string of rainy ones. So, since we have to get in shape for another long walk, we can't waste it: let's take a hike.

The hike took us forty minutes away by car. It always seems morally wrong to drive the car to a walk, but there you are: that's the kind of world we live in. The walk itself was nice, the first half a stroll really, the second more of a scramble. But this is a food blog, not a walking one. (I do in fact have a walking blog, but it's been inactive for a long, long time.)

So what did we eat to put back some of those calories we'd walked off? I'm a little ashamed to tell you: fish and chips. We thought of fasting, in fact, but were a little hungry. There weren't that many places at the end of the trail, so we dropped into a bar and settled for the least obnoxious thing on the menu. Three strips of decently battered unidentifiable firm white fish, fried in clean inert oil, with probably commercially pre-cut potatoes fried similarly, house-assembled tartar sauce, and a couple of leaves of lettuce that, frankly, didn't tempt us.

Later, at home, the usual handful of nuts with tea, and a banana. What a life.

White table wine, Kenwood, nv

• Wolf House Restaurant, 13740 Arnold Drive, Glen Ellen, CA; 707.938.8510

Pasta, tomato sauce

2012-01-17T23:22:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, January 17, 2012—

WHAT SHALL WE HAVE for dinner, she asked as we drove into town, and I gave it a considerable amount of thought, but not coming up with any ideas I kept silent.

A few minutes later: Why don't we have pasta and red sauce, she said; fine, I agreed, it's been a long time.

So we fell back tonight on familiar if neglected provisions: penne, in a sauce involving oil, onion, garlic, bay, salt, pepper, and of course a can of tomatoes. Every winter I tell myself next summer I'll can a couple of dozen quarts of tomatoes; every summer I somehow forget about it.

Green salad, and have I mentioned Mendocino Sea Salt? We bought a little jar of it at the Marin Farmers Market months ago, and finally have got around to using it; I think I like it even better than the salt from the Ile de Ré. (Well, actually, it's apples and oranges, as Mr. Cain used to say.)

Bardolino, Corte Gardone "Le Fontane," 2010

Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone

2012-01-16T22:21:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, January 16, 2012—

NO, WE DIDN'T go to Deborah Madison's excellent, indispensable book of that title for dinner tonight; it didn't really need a cookbook. I just put the title up there because L. pointed out that tonight's dinner was in fact vegetarian, and because I so admire Deborah's book, and so admire and respect her.

In fact, dinner was simply lentils from last night — from another friend and Panisse alum, David Tanis — a baked potato with olive oil and salt, romanesco sautéed with hazelnuts in olive oil and a little butter the usual green salad, an apple and a tangerine, and three little chocolate candies. Nothing exciting, you say? You haven't tasted these lentils, tiny tiny ones from Italy I think, we've lost track of the lineage; nor the olive oil from Les Baux that went on the potato; nor those sweet sweet hazelnuts from Oregon (thanks, Bhishma); nor (if I do say it myself) the green salad with red wine vinegar from Eastside Road Zinfandel.

Zinfandel: Viano Vineyards, 2006

Salmon and lentils

2012-01-15T22:43:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, January 15, 2012—

THE GUARANTEED TO BE very last piece of salmon exited the freezer this morning, and as you see graced our plates this evening, accompanied by delicious lentils and romanesco cooked in the now-fashionable Italian manner — slower and longer than recent fashions have required.

Lindsey's no slouch with lentils, and has usually in the past cooked them simply, her way, and they've been fine. Tonight she took inspiration from David Tanis, whose New York Times column recently ran a recipe that adds more savories than her everyday approach: onion, thyme, a carrot, bay, a shallot, vinegar, garlic, mustard, capers, scallions, cornichons, olive oil, and parsley.

As a general rule I think most dishes with more than ten ingredients are suspect. This was one of the many exceptions, all of which tend to marry the many flavors through slow cooking and careful adjustment of fat content. David's recipe calls for pork belly and potatoes: because tonight's lentils were a side dish, not a main course, both were omitted. (We'll go the whole nine yards another time.)

The salmon was salty and drizzled with lime juice: a tiny shot of Tequila would have been nice, but it's Sunday. Green salad, of course; and for dessert, a tangerine, an apple, and a couple of Roxanne's delicious and authentic Hungarian kiffles.

Zinfandel, Viano Vineyards, 2006

Chou farci

2012-01-13T16:39:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, January 12 and 13, 2012—

A COUSIN AND HER HUSBAND stayed overnight, and I decided to introduce them to Julia Child's wonderful chou farci, and I decided to follow the recipe much more closely than I usually do.

What an amazing recipe, and what an amazing recipe author. Julia Child must have had an extraordinary gift for organization — it's almost too bad she didn't go into politics instead of cuisine: she'd have made a fabulous president, I think.

There are essentially three steps to the process: making the stuffing; assembling the cabbage and baking it; making the tomato sauce. I had trouble finding Savoy cabbages, but two little ones turned up in a San Francisco neighborhood grocery store in the nick of time. Yesterday afternoon I set a big pot of water to boil, cooked two thirds of a cup of rice (next time I'll cook less), and made the stuffing by cooking a pound of sausage and another of ground veal, then a good thick slice of ham cut into little pieces, then a couple of onions chopped up. These all get combined with the rice, a raw egg, salt and pepper and a good bit of powdered sage.

I blanched the cabbages just enough to be able to pull them apart; then put five thick slices of bacon and some pancetta into the cabbage-water and simmered them. They went into the bottom of a hemispherical mixing bowl, along with some chopped carrot and shallot that had been sweated in goose fat. Then the biggest cabbage leaves, and a layer of the stuffing, and another layer of cabbage leaves, and another of stuffing, and so on until everything's used, ending with cabbage leaves.

I filled the mixing bowl with hot chicken stock, covered it with aluminum foil, and baked the whole thing for two or three hours. Meanwhile I made the tomato sauce: I browned a good-sized onion, roughly chopped, in goose fat with a little olive oil; then added a small can of tomatoes and a couple of smashed cloves of garlic, and a little bit of stock. After this had cooked down a bit I put it through the food mill. The result was a little thin so, following Mrs. Child's instructions, I thickened it with cornstarch.

I turned the cabbage out onto a platter; it was beautiful. The sauce was served on the side. Tonight we'll finish the dish, with a green salad; last night we finished dinner with spiced quinces which Lindsey made from the November 2011 edition of Sunset magazine; she livened it up further with some star anise. What a cook she is!

(Jan. 12) Pinot noir, Clos Henri (New Zealand), 2004; Cabernet sauvignon, Simi (Alexander Valley), 1999

Crépinettes

2012-01-11T23:35:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, January 11, 2012—

MANY YEARS AGO, back in the '70s I suppose, Victoria Kroyer (now Wise) opened a charcuterie on Berkeley's Shattuck Avenue, across the street from Chez Panisse, where she had been the first chef. Pig-by-the-Tail was a marvelous place. I knew from the beginning it would be, for she borrowed my Emerson to double-check the shop's motto: "I would write on the lintels of the door-post, Whim" (from the essay "Self-Reliance"), and any institution so flagged was bound to be good.

Among her most wonderful creations were her crépinettes. According to her book American Charcuterie (New York: Viking Penguin, 1986), which is indispensable, they are "the easiest sausage to make." Chopped spinach wilted in butter; ground pork and chicken and fatback, mixed and seasoned with nutmeg, pepper, cayenne, salt, coriander, ginger, and cloves; wrapped a quarter-pound at a time in caul fat with a tarragon leaf or two (or maybe a small bay leaf).

I bought these crépinettes whenever I had the, um, whim, which was often; particularly since our teen-aged daughter Giovanna was working there and could, as I recall, get them at a discount. On the rare days there were any left at the end of the day.

Alas, Pig-by-the-Tail is long gone; but yesterday I saw them at the Rouge butcher counter down on Berkeley's Fourth Street, and brought a couple home.

To cook them, you just put them in a hot dry black iron skillet, covered so as not to spatter all over the kitchen, and cook them to 140° or so on a hot fire.

Tonight we had them with romanesco from the farm next door and Corona beans left over from last Saturday. I put a couple of slices of focaccia in the skillet, not to waste the drippings. A green salad; then for dessert some pan pepato and tangerine ice — why eat out?

Cheap Nero d'Avola

Duck, duck, delicious duck

2012-01-11T00:02:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, January 10, 2012—

DROVE DOWN TO THE CITY today to see a show of Venetian masters (Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese: Giorgione wins, hands down) and dine with an old friend too infrequently seen. At a place we'd heard good things about, a place hard to get into — but a table for three at 5:15 fell right into our iPhone.

What a delicious dinner! We shared some "bouchées," little bites: a dish of four nice fat suave panisses* and another of broccoli romanesco prepared with olive tapenade, Meyer lemon, ricotta salata, and breadcrumbs.

Lindsey and I shared a marvelous salad: tiny kale leaves and duck confit, with chopped Medjool dates and sweet-sour fennel, and crisp ingenious deep-fried shallot rings strewn on top.

Then I went on to almost underdone duck-breast slices nicely grilled on the outside edges, served with slices of cotecchino, a favorite sausage of mine. Bitter escarole and nicely cooked butter beans rounded the dish out. It was superb.

Dessert: Panna cotta flavored with chicory "coffee", with espresso gelée and bits of mandarin orange on top (I'm not sure about the tangerines), with chocolate sea-salt cookies on the side.

The wine list was interesting, though I'd have liked a few less expensive items. We had a Sicilian red we like a lot: forthcoming, rich, not heavy, complex, and interesting. The service was smooth, ingratiating, personable, but not intrusive. The canned music was annoying, but that's modern life, I guess. We'll be back, I'm sure.

Frappato, Cos, 2009

• Frances, 3870 17th St., San Francisco; 415.621.3870

Fasting day

2012-01-10T22:16:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, January 9, 2012—

A COUPLE OF CAFFELATTES at breakfast, hold the toast; nuts with tea; half an apple and a tangerine at bedtime. Virtue is its own and only reward.

Hamburger

2012-01-10T22:14:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, January 8, 2012—

LUNCH WITH FRIENDS — a sort of business lunch, too — at a restaurant they're connected with over in Sebastopol. Sunday Brunch was what the menu said, but we'd had our Sunday soft-boiled eggs for breakfast, so I passed up further ovae and opted instead for a nice Niman-Schell hamburger, rare, no cheese, no bacon, yes to mustard, tomato, onion, lettuce. A nice dish, this.

Bloody Mary

• French Garden Restaurant & Bistro, 8050 Bodega Avenue Sebastopol; (707) 824-2030

Beans

2012-01-08T00:21:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, January 7, 2012—

IT SEEMS FOREVER since last we had beans. Lindsey picked all kinds of thyme and marjoram and sage today, and I chopped up a shallot, and she cooked up a batch of Corona beans. Dressed with that fine Les Baux olive oil, they were magnificent. A green salad afterward, and a dish of tangerine ice — what more could you ask?

Cheap Pinot grigio

Lunches at Chez Panisse

2012-01-06T23:11:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, January 6, 2012—

THROUGH THE KIND of misunderstanding unique to long-married couples — involving inattentiveness and doubly rich lives — we were booked for two lunches today. Alice helped us finesse this by electing to nibble in the office, where we shared her delicious artichoke-capers-red onion pizzetta and garden lettuce salad.

An hour later we tucked into a more substantial lunch — in fact, Principal Meal of the Day, as we always refer to such lunches, which allow us to skip dinner altogether. I chose a half dozen Hog Island Sweetwater oysters on the half shell, ignoring the mignonette as I always do (for seawater is the best sauce to an oyster, I find), sharing a corner of L's puntarelle with anchovy, garlic, and egg, a combination that reminded me once again that we've ignored bagna cauda so far this winter: memo: correct that. I went on to a bowl of noodles with beautiful, deeply flavored, long-cooked beef ragù, and finished up with lemon sorbet with candied orange peel. Definitive.

Sylvaner, Vieilles Vignes, Domaine Ostertag, 2008 (long in the tooth but fine with the oysters); Zinfandel, Green and Red "Chez Panisse"

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

Ham hash

2012-01-05T22:37:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, January 5, 2012—

TOMORROW, THE FEAST of Epiphany, we will not be eating at home. Tonight, the last of the Christmas ham. I'd smelled chopped onions browning in olive oil, and I knew something was going to be delicious. A few potatoes, that last thick slab of ham chopped into dice, salt, pepper, and a tiny bit of leftover duck sauce from New Year's Eve. This time of year, Slow Cooking and Continuity gladdens the heart. And the palate.

Cheap Pinot grigio; cheap Nero d'Avola

Pasta with anchovies and garlic

2012-01-04T22:29:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, January 4, 2012—

IL COMMISSARIO MONTALBANO was on the screen (one of our little pleasures, a set of DVDs borrowed from a friend), so I couldn't help sing out my praises of tonight's dinner as I went to the stove for a second helping:

Mamma mia, cosa bella
pasta fatta cogl'alici…

Lindsey cooks the penne in the usual way, meanwhile melting chopped anchovies and garlic in a little olive oil. Some broccolini flowerets got tossed into the pasta along with the anchovies. Nothing more, nor nothing needed, but the green salad, made tonight with chopped shallots, oil, and sherry vinegar. A little fruit for dessert, and the last of Thérèse's delicious buckwheat galette, which I will miss.

Cheap Pinot grigio

Eating, but not every day…

2012-01-03T22:36:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, January 3, 2012—

THREE LITTLE PIECES of stollen with the caffelatte at breakfast; the handful of almonds and cashews with the tea at tea-time. Oh: and water from time to time.

Back to the icebox

2012-01-02T22:51:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, January 2, 2012—

THAT'S WHAT I still call it, to the amusement of the grandchildren: icebox. That's what it was, when I was a kid.

Ours, of course, runs on electricity — it's undoubtedly the biggest consumer of electricity we own. And it has a lot of work to do. Today we barely made a dent in it, but we finished the Christmas brandade mantecato for our lunch, along with some fruit; and for dinner we finished the Christmas ham, and the puréed vegetables from two nights ago, and the last but one of those delicious pickled crabapples: I'll have to be sure to pickle some more this summer.

Cheap Nero d'Avola

Eating around

2012-01-02T22:36:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, January 1, 2012—

TRADITIONALLY A DAY of visiting, no? So today we went out to brunch with a couple of friends, who'd dined chez nous last night to see the new year in. Brunch is not my favorite sort of meal: I'm hungry by the time it rolls around, and of course I've already had my coffee, who can wait that long for the first coffee? But after last night's dinner of duck breasts — and yesterday's lunch of duck rillettes — what should be on the brunch menu but a nice duck-leg confit. I didn't hesitate a minute. The accompanying salad was a little strange — red beet, yellow beet, Belgian endive, a slice of orange — but the duck was fine.

Virgin Mary

• Barndiva, 231 Center St., Healdsburg; 707.431.0100

Then, after a brief rest at home, out to another friend's for dinner — three couples, all old friends. Here we had braised chicken and rice and a green salad and a lot of fun: a fine way to start the year.

Martini; Champagne; Pinot noirs: La Crema, 2010; Trioni (private label), 2010; Cabernet sauvignon, Simi, 2003 (mature and nicely balanced, thanks Kendall!)

New Year's Eve

2012-01-01T01:13:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, December 31, 2011

ODD-NUMBERED YEARS HERE; even-numbered years there: therefore, tonight we ate here, with the two dear old friends we've shared this evening with for more than forty years. The menu:

Martinis

brandade toasts • nuts • pickled carrots

¶¶¶

salade lyonnaise

duck breasts, purée of vegetables
dinner rolls

Syrah, Preston of Dry Creek, 2008

¶¶¶

tangerine ice with cookies and chocolate bark

Méthode Champenoise, Scharffenberger, nv

Ham food (reprise)

2011-12-30T22:10:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, December 30, 2011—

WELL, HERE WE ARE again, the ghost of Christmas past: a good-sized slab of that processed ham food, as I call it; a baked potato with a good amount of olive oil on it (no butter, sour cream, or chives in this household!), and one of the crabapples I pickled two or three years ago. Gosh, those are good, and they set off ham perfectly, processed or not.

Cheap Nero d'Avola

Steak-frites

2011-12-29T23:12:00.001-08:00

Lafayette, California, December 29, 2011—

THIS IS THE FIRST town I remember living in, but it's changed considerably since 1940. I doubt there was a bistro in town in those days, but of course we weren't a restaurant-going family, so I wouldn't have known.

After a doughy Starbuck's croissant for breakfast and an enjoyable stroll in the Ruth Bancroft Garden I was hungry. We met an old friend from Chez P. in the 1980s at the place of her choice, also recommended by others. I had standbys: an almost authentic but not really Caesar salad (no anchovies, fluffy croutons, cut-up romaine) and a quite nice steak-frites made with hanger steak correctly grilled rare and served in a wine-flavored reduction. Nice frenchfries, too.

Pinot grigio, Scarpetta (Veneto), 2010; Malbec, Level (Languedoc), 2010

• Chow Lafayette, 53 Lafayette Circle, Lafayette; 925.962.2469

Dinner at Chez Panisse

2011-12-28T22:34:00.001-08:00

Concord, December 28, 2011—

DON'T ASK WHAT we're doing here; it's a stupid mistake. Mine, of course. But since we are here, why not stop off in Berkeley en route, for dinner downstairs?

It was delicious, of course, and the dining room looks so festive and inviting. We began with tasty green olives marinated with just the right amount of lemon zest, then went on to the table d'hôte menu:

Warm chicory salad with pancetta, farm egg and toasted hazelnuts
Steamed local ling cod and shellfish brodo
Spit-roasted Riverdog Farm chicken stuffed with herbs, ragoût of wild mushrooms
and roasted potatoes with green garlic
Apple and candied Meyer lemon galette à la mode

The whole meal was beautiful. The dining room was full; everyone seemed relaxed and enjoying the evening. I don't see how you can do any better than this, but then, I suppose I'm biased.

Vouvray, Le Mont, Sec, Gaston Huet, 2007; Sauvignon blanc, Ojai, 2010; Santenay, Lucien Muzard, Champs Claude "Vielles Vines", 2009

• Chez Panisse, 1517 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley; (510) 548-5525

Let's take the day off

2011-12-27T21:53:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, December 27, 2011—

TIME WE FASTED, I think, and the bathroom scale nods in agreement. So it was a piece of toast with the cappuccinos, three or four dried figs, and that handful of almonds and cashews with the evening tea. Basta così. We'll dine well tomorrow, just you wait and see…

Boxing Day

2011-12-26T23:56:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, December 26, 2011—

NO SURPRISE HERE: as predicted yesterday, tonight reprised last night. Baccalà, ham, roasted root vegetables, green salad, pumpkin pie. And tonight I gave that delicious baccalà mantecato a little more attention. Dio mio; che una cosa bella! Definitely one of the Hundred Plates. It even has its own website, where we learn that it dates back to 1432, when Venetian navigator and merchant was shipwrecked above the Arctic Circle, and survived on little more than dried salt cod. And so the Italians have awarded it its own Confraternity,

Perchè il baccalà mantecato non è semplice cibo. É storia, religione, avventura, segreto tramandato di cuoco in cuoco, di madre in figlia: piacere del palato, della mente, del cuore.

Because baccalà mantecato isn't simply food: it's history, religion, adventure, and secret, handed down from cook to cook, mother to daughter: a pleasure of the palate, the mind, the heart.

Well, this particular baccalà was handed up from daughter to mother, and to father too, and we're both grateful for it, from the heart.

Prosecco

Christmas dinner

2011-12-26T13:01:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, December 25, 2011—

ROAST GOOSE, FOLLOWED closely by a prime rib beef roast, are my candidates for Christmas dinner. But when the cook suggested ham instead I didn't hesitate. Whether my advancing age, or the nature of the season, I find nostalgia creeps in at such moments, and I thought of the feast-day hams my mother used to cook, with the delicious marrowbone, and the outside scored in diamond patterns, and coated with brown sugar, and perhaps rings of pineapple, and cloves.

So we went to one of the local upscale supermarkets in search of a decent natural ham. I was shocked, shocked I tell you, to find no hams in the butcher case. There was one pork leg roast: Is that what you mean? the "butcher" asked; No, it isn't, I want a cured ham, bone in, fat on, that we can cook for Christmas dinner.

We were directed to the refrigerated help-yourself case, and there they were: precooked hams, spiral-sliced hams, curious compressed hams, none of them with fat, or skin, or bones. We chose one of the compressed jobs: it looked like an old-fashioned beehive, those hemispherical ring-marked basket-weave beehives.

Well, it was okay. It wasn't ham, I said; Yes it is, said Cook. It's ham food, I countered — a little bit sullenly, I'm sorry to say.

Other things had gone wrong. The 1984 Joseph Swan Chardonnay was past drinking — we stuck the bottle in the fridge, corked, to use in risotto next month. My pickled carrots lacked bite and salt.

But mostly things went just fine. Our guests from down the hill brought spoon bread fixings (and cooked it for us in our kitchen) and a lovely baccalà mantecato to have with a bottle of Frexeinet as an appetizer. Cook made a fine roast vegetable
dish with carrots, parsnips, Delicata squash, celery root, garlic, marjoram and thyme. I dressed the green salad with shallots and a marvelous new olive oil from Les Baux (thanks, Michael!). And there was pumpkin pie with hard sauce for dessert. Oh: and, again from down the hill, made from David Lebovitz's recipe, a little tower of chocolate macarons.

Good thing it was all so good, as there was plenty left over, and we'll be eating Christmas dinner all Christmas week…

Zinfandel, Ridge (Lytton Springs), 1988: a little past its prime, but fragrant and delicious

Christmas Eve

2011-12-24T23:32:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, December 24, 2011—

WE TURNED TO Franco for our vigil supper: a sausage hot enough to be chorizo, I think, sure to keep us awake even through most of that hokiest of musicals The Music Man, a curious choice for Christmas Eve entertainment. (I'm not ready to see It's a Wonderful Life again, thank you; but I'd rather see it twice than ever return to Meredith Willson's excursion.) With the sausage, some red rice from the Camargue, dark and nutty, easily up to Franco's spices; and then the green salad; and as a special treat a slice or two of a very nice light fruitcake from J'amie Patisserie, whose first-rate macaroons and panettone we've found at the Santa Rosa farm market. A quiet evening: we'll feast tomorrow.

Cheap Nero d'Avola

• J'amie Patisserie, 706.767.5027; jamiepatisserieatgmaildotcom

A day.

2011-12-24T08:53:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, December 23, 2011—

I THINK I'VE MENTIONED this before: bog-man cereal. Red wheat, white wheat, oats, barley, in equal parts, all in whole grains. You cover it with water, bring it to a boil, turn off the fire, add a handful of raisins, cover it, let stand overnight.

Next morning you bring it back to a boil, turn off the fire, cover it for a few minutes while you make the coffee, et voilà.

Well, this time it didn't work — for the first time in decades. Reason: only wheat: no barley, no oats. Wheat from a neighbor's farm: perhaps too early harvested. Still, it was delicious.

Lunch was tea and too many delicious cookies — after all, it's Christmas — at a friend's.

Dinner: The rest of yesterday's chicken soup, heightened by the addition of some pesto found in the back of the freezer — I hate to think of what may still be lurking there. End of year thing. Still, it was delicious, and followed by green salad.

Cheap Pinot grigio

Chicken soup

2011-12-22T23:04:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, December 22, 2011—

EVERYONE KNOWS IT as the cure-all, the family comfort, the perfect combination of nourishment, sympathy, and reassurance. Chicken soup. A dead bird in a hot bath, with a few aromatic vegetables to make it palatable.

Turns out a plastic container at the back of the freezer was filled with chicken meat, shredded from who knows what bird, on who knows what date. A box of organic chicken broth, a few carrots, a potato, the tops of the leeks we had, let's see, when, thirteen days ago.

But we'd begun with pork rillettes on toast, and ended with mâche in a shallot-and-sherry-vinegar vinaigrette. You can do worse than this.

Cheap Pinot grigio; Barbera d'Alba, La Loggia, 2010

Osso buco

2011-12-21T22:42:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, December 21, 2011—

WE LOOKED AT THE MENU yesterday, and I thought about it from time to time today, and when we sat down in the restaurant and looked at the menu again there was no doubt. I mean, it's been twenty degrees Fahrenheit at our front door every morning for a week. This is osso buco season.

Wikipedia sums it up neatly:

a Milanese specialty of cross-cut veal shanks braised with vegetables, white wine and broth. It is often garnished with gremolata and traditionally served with risotto alla milanese.

There are two types of ossobuco: a modern version that has tomatoes and the original version which does not. The older version, ossobuco in bianco, is flavored with cinnamon, bay leaf and gremolata. The modern and more popular recipe includes tomatoes, carrots, celery and onions. Gremolata is optional.

Tonight's version was nothing if not revisionist. Read the menu description, which I overlooked on first viewing:

HERITAGE PORK OSSO BUCCO
ACE Hard Cider braised pork, fennel seed gremolata, red cabbage & apples, crème fraiche spaetzle

Pork, not veal. Cider, not white wine. Red cabbage and apples. Why call it osso buco?
Still, it wasn't unpleasant, and the spaetzle were a nice touch. But you know? I think I'll make osso buco one of these days soon…

Zinfandel, Hawley "Ponzo Vineyard," 2010

• Zin Restaurant, 344 Center Street, Healdsburg; (707) 473-0946

"Sole almondine"

2011-12-20T21:58:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, December 20, 2011—

I DON'T KNOW WHY I ordered it. Years ago I heard someone refer to me, not knowing I could hear, as a francophile: perhaps I am. I do think Sole almondine is one of the great dishes, though not perhaps one of the Hundred Plates. Essentially it's just sole fillets, floured, dipped in beaten eggs, cooked in butter, and sauced with almonds that have been toasted in the pan drippings, which are then combined with lemon juice and white wine.

I expected something along those lines, though I knew it would be Petrale sole, not the Dover sole this quintessentially Parisian dish really requires. What arrived, though, was a Provençal take, heavy on the lemon, even heavier on vinegary capers. The almonds were not slivered but halved, and there were too many of them. The fish was a bit dried out.

Let's not be overhasty in blaming the restaurant: I ordered badly. I knew I was ordering badly when I did it. I should have had the fish tacos. Next time I will. I did like the buttery spinach, though, and the French fries. And the flourless chocolate cake, with a couple of ice creams, was marvelous.

Ameztoi Getariako Txakolina, 2010

• Willi's Seafood and Raw Bar, 403 Healdsburg Avenue, Healdsburg; 707.433.9191

Another birthday

2011-12-19T23:24:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, December 19, 2011—

THEY SEEM TO COME thick and fast, these birthdays; one year the girl's in her teens, before you know it she's a grandmother. Oh well: sweet memories; good dinners.

Tuna grilled in the fireplace tonight, with a quinoa salad, and cauliflower florets braised with olives, aïoli on the side. Interesting, enterprising, grounded, and nourishing: just like the birthday girl herself.

Oh: and dessert: Linzer torte, with a syllabub on the side. Why only once a year?

Sparkling wine, Gloria Ferrer; Sauvignon blanc, Chapelle Ste. Marie, 2010; Zinfandel, Lodi, 2008

Arugula

2011-12-19T23:22:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, December 18, 2011—

A LONG DRIVE today, and the sort of dining, to give it too fancy a name, that seems to go with that. Breakfast at Porto in Glendale: croissant, caffelatte. Bread and cheese at a rest stop on Highway 5, with a little bottle of spicy V-8. A cup of delicious ice cream at Ici in Berkeley: Candied blood orange; Panforte.
Once home, a salad of arugula, dressed simply with lemon juice, salt, and a delicious new olive oil from Les Baux (thank you, Michael); and a fried egg sandwich.

Cheap Pinot grigio

Bolognese

2011-12-18T23:08:00.001-08:00

Pasadena, Dec. 17, 2011—

WHERE TO EAT tonight; always the same question; where to eat tonight. Five of us, varying demands and desires, Saturday night, eight o'clock theater curtain.

The old friend who is coincidentally a food professional who we'd met for brunch thought it over and finally recommended a chain restaurant. Apparently Pasadena really does have a dearth of good restaurants. (I have my favorite, but the rest of the party won't agree; besides, Tre Venezie takes time; it's not best for a theater night.)

So we wound up at Il Fornaio. I had a decent small green salad with a simple balsamic vinaigrette; then a plate of tagliatelle in Bolognese. Or so promised the menu. Lindsey thought the sauce acceptable, though in need of the promised Parmagiano that never appeared. I thought it quite lacking in depth.

Bolognese requires beef, beef stock, and flavorings: carrot, thyme, wine, onion — I list these in random order, as they occur to me. Olive oil, of course. This Bolognese may have had many of these things, but it had another thing no Bolognese should know: water. It was thin and lackluster, and, sorry Lindsey, I don't think the addition of grated Parmesan would have offset its basic blandness.

Nero d'Avola

•Il Fornaio, 24 West Union Street, Pasadena; 626.683.9797

Noir

2011-12-17T00:38:00.000-08:00

Pasadena, December 16—

WHERE TO EAT tonight, five of us, early, on short notice, on a Friday night, in front of an eight o'clock theater curtain?

We looked at Zagat, and consulted Open Table, and settled on a place not too far away with a curious name and a reputation for good food. I had a sliced grilled hanger steak, rare, flageolets with shallots on the side.

The steak was covered with a sort of tomato-modulated reduction, rather nice, and came with a square of gratinéed potatoes. The green beans were a tad undercooked and salty, like the steak, but pleasant enough. Only the casual service detracted from a competent meal out.

Tempranillo

Noir Food and Wine Bar, 40 N Mentor Avenue, Pasadena

Poached chicken

2011-12-15T21:50:00.001-08:00

Ojai, December 15, 2011—

OUR DEAR FRIENDS Jim and Lisa are putting us up tonight, and acquainted us with this provocative, truly clever main course: a whole chicken, flash-poached, then flamed with lemon-based spirits. We've never tasted anything quite like it.

Berkeley sans Panisse

2011-12-14T21:22:00.000-08:00

Berkeley, December 14, 2011—

LUNCH AT A PLACE new to us, down on San Pablo Avenue: for me, Minestrone soup, then Spaghettini alla Carbonara. The soup was vegetable soup in a water base, not stock; it was not hearty enough to be called a minestrone (that "one" suffix is an augmentative, and this was a lean soup); but it was flavorful and pleasant and at the price I didn't complain. The carbonara was made with pancetta, thankfully, not bacon: but it tasted a little smoky nonetheless — domestic pancetta, I would say. Still, this was a pleasant enough lunch. No complaints.

Sangiovese by the glass, 2010

•Luca Cucina Italiana, 2057 San Pablo Ave., Berkeley; (510) 649-9718
Dinner at a new restaurant on Telegraph Avenue in a location that's housed at least five restaurants in the last dozen years. We wish this place well; it shows promise and deserves its chance to make its way. We opened with a plate of patatas braves, nicely roasted potato wedges served with aïoli and a tomato confiture; then I went on to rather too complicated a dish: steamed ling cod (very nicely done) which had been battered, in a sense, with shoestring potatoes and served with kale and crisply steamed snap peas. Dessert was a delicious Seckel pear, poached, with honey and an over-acidulated whipped gastrique, a bit too recherché for my taste.

A decent Martini; then a nice Albariño, 2010; later, a surprisingly good house-made approach to an authentic Spanish anis

•Origen, 2826 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley; (510) 848-9200

Chicken soup

2011-12-13T21:58:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, December 13, 2011—

A TOUGH DAY, beginning with a root canal job and ending with helping friends move. Well, no, thankfully, it didn't end with helping them move, it ended with helping them with Martinis and chicken soup.
Ironically, she'd made the soup for an ailing friend. But said friend was taken off to hospital before the soup could be delivered, so it served as our reward — I'm pretty sure another pot of soup will be in the works by the time friend is discharged from hospital.

After the soup, a nice green salad; before and after the soup, that delicious cheese I mentioned the other day — Joe Matos's St. George, named for the Azores island he's from, and made as it's made there, I'm told. Oh: and a bait of Dreyer's Rocky Road ice cream. A nice supper.

Sauvignon blanc, Geyser Peak, 2010 (grassy, fresh, clean, tasty); Vinho verde, Gazela (characteristic, pleasant, good acid balance); Merlot, Tony and Lorraine Vicini, 2008 (one of the best Merlots I've ever tasted, with the true varietal presence but with body and breeding as well)

Green salad

2011-12-12T21:37:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, December 12, 2011—

IT'S JUST SO good, the mixed green salad is. Reds and greens, sweets and bitters, softs and brittles: lettuce leaves — and those of a few other herbs sometimes — combine so nicely. I made the usual vinaigrette: a fair-sized clove of garlic, crushed, then mashed with a judicious amount of salt. A generous splash of olive oil to cover the garlic; let stand for ten or fifteen minutes. Then a careful amount of vinegar. These days we're using our own, made from Zinfandel we crushed last year — strong and full of character: I might have diluted it, but, like Bartleby, I prefer not. Oh: that's Acme walnut levain on the side: I love it.

Otherwise it's a fast day, so no wine tonight: water.

Frisée aux lardons (reprise)

2011-12-11T18:08:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, December 11, 2011—

ONE SUCCESS DESERVES another, I think, so today we repeated last Saturday's salad. Same type of frisée, from the same farm, bought at the same market; same bacon, shallots, olive oil. Two changes: a splash of sherry vinegar in the skillet after cooking the shallots; a guest to dinner.

Well, lunch: we sat down to eat about 1:30, got up maybe three hours later. Leek-and-potato soup; the salad Lyonnaise, cheeses and rillettes, lemon pie. I doubt we'll need supper tonight!

Cheap Pinot grigio

Odds and ends

2011-12-10T22:12:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, December 10, 2011—

DOLDRUMS TODAY, with one exception. The normal breakfast: toast (though buttered this morning, which is unusual) and cappuccinos. An apple for lunch. The last of that rescued-cassoulet soup and the usual green salad for dinner, with an ice cream sundae for dessert.

The one exception was a delicious Portuguese-style cheese nibbled at a friend's house: Joe Matos's St. George cheese, which Gaye likes enough to buy a wheel at a time, and I could imagine doing the same. Delicious.

Martinis tonight

leek-and-potato soup

2011-12-09T22:30:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, December 9, 2011—

WHEN IS IT, WHEN is it not, Vichyssoise? As is often the case, Wikipedia helps out, quoting Louis Diat, the famous chef of the Ritz-Carlton:

In the summer of 1917, when I had been at the Ritz seven years, I reflected upon the potato and leek soup of my childhood which my mother and grandmother used to make. I recalled how during the summer my older brother and I used to cool it off by pouring in cold milk and how delicious it was. I resolved to make something of the sort for the patrons of the Ritz.

Aha: it's the addition of milk — or, better, cream — that turns good old peasant leek-and-potato into uptown Vichyssoise. And the whole point, originally, apparently, was to cool it.

Well, it's winter here with a vengeance, 22° every morning for the last week; the fire's been burning nonstop, and I want my soup hot. We took our principal meal at midday today, and it began with leek-and-potato soup, maigre for lacking chicken stock as well as cream, and hot, and with a toast fried in butter floating on top. Delicious. Also a plate of cheeses — Stilton, Affinois, Gruyère; with some really amazingly deep and delicious Damson jelly. And "wild" arugula dressed with olive oil and Champagne vinegar.

And dessert! Lemon pie! Meyer lemon pie, made in the manner of a Key lime pie, with Graham-cracker crust and softly whipped cream… You can't do much better than this…

Cheap Pinot grigio

Croque baton

2011-12-09T16:05:00.001-08:00

Petaluma, California, December 8, 2011—

WE ALL HAVE GUILTY pleasures. Among mine: the Croque-monsieur, which I would nominate to the Hundred Plates except that among the many variations there are too many that seem to me not to measure up. Besides, I think I've already promoted the (generic) Grilled Ham and Cheese. (One of these days I'll have to bring some order to these matters.)

The best one I've ever eaten, I think, was served to me in the bar down at the Square St. Médard in Paris, where Les Caves de Bourgogne is now. Thirty years ago this was a rougher area; the bar was more ordinary. Still, the sandwich was on good bread, Poilâne in fact.

A true croque-monsieur requires really good bread. Also four other things: decent boiled ham; decent Gruyère cheese; Béchamel sauce; and that hyphen in its name. Don't ask how it got its name; no one seems to know. The earliest mention in the literature seems to be Proust, according to the French-language Wikipedia; but in this Internet epoch all such research seems circular at best, unverifiable in general.

Now today's question is, what the hell is a "croque baton"? I'd never seen the term before today, when it showed up (as seen here, no circumflex on "bâton") on the lunch menu at this bakery we like in Petaluma. Googling suggests it's a yuppieish word referring to a pressed grilled sandwich. The Dutch make pressed grilled ham-and-cheese, and call them Tosti's (Dutch nouns ending in vowels adding the apostrophe "s" to denote plural); the Italians of course call them panini.

But baton? Why "baton"? No idea. In any case, it tasted good. It was made with chopped ham and Gruyère — the cheese had been diced, I'm pretty sure — combined with a Mornay-type sauce, put between slices of bread, buttered, and grilled. The green salad with it was clean and flavorful and nicely dressed with good olive oil and salt. No complaints.

wine

• Della Fattoria, 141 Petaluma Boulevard North, Petaluma; (707) 763-0161

The very last of the cassoulet

2011-12-07T22:39:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, December 7, 2011—

YES, I KNOW, I've already told you about the last of last year's cassoulet. Fact is, Lindsey found a little something in the freezer and, thinking it was bean soup, thawed it, and lo and behold.

But there wasn't really enough of it, nor was it (probably: I haven't inquired too closely) in good enough shape, to serve as a main course, even for just the two of us. So she turned it into soup, and it was delicious, and recalled pleasant evenings gone by.

Then on to Franco's sausages — tonight, a fine, redolent cotecchino, which always makes me think of Paolo, so dearly does he love it — and, of course, a green salad, dressed with oil and lemon juice. A simple supper, welcome after yesterday's fast.

Cabernet sauvignon, Hamilton Block (Coonawarra), 2009

Cannellini and salmon

2011-12-05T22:57:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, December 5, 2011—

TIME TO BEGIN CLEANING out the garden, getting ready for next year. I picked the last of the cannellini the other day; Lindsey cooked them tonight, with thyme, marjoram, and savory. These herbs are subtle. I thought I detected sage, but it was the savory that had thrown me off. The summer savory, true friend of the bean, is long gone, but Lindsey has a little garden-variety savory tucked away in a border somewhere, and that did the trick, lifting these fresh dried beans very far indeed out of the ordinary.

With them, as you see, broiled salmon, one of the last pieces of the season, from out of the freezer and so a little dry but delicious nonetheless. We dressed it with salt pepper and lime juice, not lemon, as we'd warmed up with guacamole and tequila, and had a little of the lime left.

Green salad, of course; fruit, of course.

Cabernet sauvignon, Hamilton Block (Coonawarra), 2009: serviceable, friendly, screwtop

Soup and salad

2011-12-04T22:38:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, December 4, 2011—

LUNCH TODAY as usual, peanut butter on toast and some fruit; then a late-afternoon party catered by Berkeley's Le Poulet, with deviled eggs, cold cuts, roast potatoes and aïoli, cheeses, and desserts. So we were content with the standby soup, sandwich, and salad for dinner: yesterday's pea soup; toast and nagelkaas; green salad with that delicious Eastside Zinfandel vinegar. Fruit, of course.

Yesterday's rosé

Salade Lyonnaise

2011-12-03T21:32:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, December 3, 2011—

FRISÉE AUX LARDONS : clearly one of the Hundred Plates. I can't imagine when I first tasted this absolutely perfect dish. I must have known immediately that it was perfect. Bistrot cooking at its most soigné; French cuisine at its most characteristic.

We were at the Farm Market in Santa Rosa today — in winter it's the nearest fairly complete market, with produce, bakery goods, fish and shellfish, a band that sounded like the Hot Club of San Francisco. Yael Bernier was there: we buy garlic and peppers from her at the Healdsburg market, and it's nice to know we can stay in touch out of season.

She had a beautiful head of frisée, and seeing it I was immediately struck with a strong desire for a Salade Lyonnaise. I looked it up online, to make sure I wasn't forgetting anything, and then made the dish you see here:

A little olive oil in the black iron skillet, got good and hot. Throw in some bacon you've cut into cubes: I used maybe three ounces altogether. When that's crisp, or as crisp as it can get in all that oil and bacon fat, throw in a couple of shallots chopped not too fine.

Oh! I forgot croutons! Oh well: cut a couple of thick slices of French bread, stale is better, into cubes, and toast them in a dry iron skillet with a little salt.

Meanwhile, boil some salted water; then turn it down and slide a couple of eggs into it to poach.

You've washed the frisée, yes? Then tear it apart, put it in a mixing bowl with the croutons, pour the bacon-shallot mixture over and toss, adjust for salt, distribute among the serving plates, and put a poached egg atop each one.

Afterward we had a baked potato, nothing more.

Rosé de soignée, Bergerie l'Hortus (Languedoc), 2010: crisp, fresh, clean, tasty

Fast; Erwtensoep

2011-12-02T23:58:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, November 30-December 2, 2011—

WEDNESDAY, AFTER TWO WEEKS of indiscretion partly excused by the national feast season that is Thanksgiving, and after having gained a number of pounds, it was time to fast, of course.

Then came two days of erwtensoep. I have to admit that much as I love The Netherlands, its culture and its people, its landscapes and its landscape, and as attracted as I am, even, to its language, I find erwtensoep an impossible word to pronounce. You leave out the "w," of course; but I think you sort of hint at it. "Air-ten-soup" doesn't quite do it justice. That "w" is a palimpsest of Proto-Germanic*, I find after a Google search, and it should be honored though not lingered over.

In any case, it's good old split pea soup. Lindsey fried up a little bit of bacon, then fried onions in it; then made the split pea soup in the usual way — but she'd found some leftover cooked kale in the freezer, and added it in: that, I think, made it Dutch. It was delicious last night, and it was just as delicious again tonight, always with a slice of toasted bread rubbed with un-Dutch garlic floating on top.

Cairanne (Côtes du Rhône), Domaine Catherine le Goeuil, 2009 (a little dull and unforthcoming)

*Proto-Germanic: *arwait=, *arwīt=
Meaning: pea
IE etymology: IE etymology
Old Norse: pl. ert-r f.
Norwegian: ert
Swedish: ärt
Danish: ert
Old Saxon: eriwit, erit f.
Middle Dutch: erwete, aerwete, arwete
Dutch: erwt f.
Middle Low German: erwete, ērt f.
Low German: pl. erwten
Old High German: arawīʒ f. (9./10.Jh.), bair. araweiʒ (10.Jh.) `Erbse, Kichererbse'
Middle High German: arwīʒ, ar(e)weiʒ, er(e)weiʒ, (spät) erbeiʒ st. f. 'erbse'
German: Erbse f.

Road food; Piperade

2011-12-02T23:40:00.001-08:00

The road, then San Francisco, November 28-29, 2011—

IT'S DIFFICULT, these reconstructions of dinings past, even when only at the distance of two or three days. Still, one musters on.

Monday we drove a long way, leaving Portland about eleven in the morning, spending a short hour in Eugene with Penny and Gary and a slice of pizza and a salad, then driving on to Emeryville and a cheap motel. On such a day one's grateful for anything of flavor and substance, and the pizza margherita, with a Caesar salad on the side, qualified. I looked longingly at the wines available by the glass, thought about the five hundred twenty miles left to drive, and forgoddabouddit.
• Marché Provisions, 296 E 5th Avenue, Eugene, OR; 541.743.0660
Then it was on to Ashland, where we stopped for a coffee from Mix. Somewhere along the way we ate the ham sandwich we'd bought in Portland at Ken's Artisan Bakery. At our motel I settled into a glass of Cutty Sark, and so to bed.

Next day, Tuesday, we enjoyed a fish sandwich as a delayed lunch at Oakland's Sidebar, with a glass of fine white Rioja (Ostatu, Cosecha 2010, very delicious); and a dinner with friends at Piperade, where I feasted on a curious but delicious plate of local cod turned into bacalao on a bed of crème frâiche with a few oysters on top, then the piperade, sautéed Serrano ham with a poached egg atop the obligatory peppers and onions. Authentic, crisp and pointed flavors, refreshing, with a glass or two of Lagar de Cervera Albariño, 2009, and then a glass of Tempranillo, Baron de Ley (Rioja), 2004 (!), a deep, serious pleasure.
• Sidebar, 542 Grand Avenue, Oakland; (510) 452-9500
• Piperade, 1015 Battery St, San Francisco; 415.391.2555

Strozzapreti

2011-11-30T23:25:00.001-08:00

NE 8th Avenue, Portland, November 27, 2011—

GUYS SHOP WELL for groceries, so think I. Tonight, our last night in Portland for a while, the thinking had been to order a delivery of noodles from a Korean takeout the family thinks highly of. I was in a minority when we discovered it was closed on Sundays.

Let's just go to the store and cook something, I said, and Pavel and I drove to the supermarket, where we bought an already-prepped boneless pork roast, a couple of packages of padrones, a couple of packages of pasta, and a supply of arugula. Oh: and a lemon or two.

The roast — actually, I'd call it a rollito — took a short hour to cook and needed no attention at all. Simon washed the arugula. We dressed the strozzapreti, once cooked and drained, with olive oil, lemon juice and minced garlic; I sliced up the roast; the arugula was dressed just like the pasta; and Bob's your uncle.

But what was the wine? Red, after a preliminary bottle of very nice Verdicchio…

Thanksgiving

2011-11-27T08:37:00.000-08:00

NE Eighth St., Portland, November 24-26, 2011

A fine dry-brined roasted turkey has been at the center of our eating every one of the last three days. His companions have been all but totally consumed: the mashed potatoes and gravy, the Brussels sprouts and chestnuts, the cranberry sauce; even the yams and beets have met their fates (though I assure you I did my best to spare them).

Thursday was complicated by having been a birthday here as well, so after the obligatory apple, mince, and pumpkin pies, and a visit to a nearby friend's party for even more pie, we went home to a Lane cake, and they don't get much richer and delicious than that.

The last two days were given over, as you might imagine, to leftovers. No complaints. Cold roast turkey on buttered bread — who'd complain?

Wines: Dolcetto d'Alba, for the most part…

Revisionist Italian

2011-11-24T13:06:00.000-08:00

Portland, Oregon, November 23, 2011—

DINNER OUT TONIGHT, all eight of us, at a neighborhood gem (to use Zagatspeak) new to me, a serious but comfortable place with a thoughtful kitchen, kind service, and an interesting wine list.

I chose one of the vegetable side dishes for a first course: kale with bagna cauda, an idea that had never occurred to me before, but one that makes perfect sense — the lacinato kale has that deep, chthonic quality that marries anchovy so well. Afterward I was less enterprising and settled on flank steak, nicely grilled and accompanied by a huge serving of onion rings, battered with coarse cornmeal and deep-fried.

Dessert was almost too enterprising: Brutto ma buoni, it was called, but instead of the delicious bitter-almond macaroons I so like it was a kind of flip or fool or trifle. Revisionist for sure, but, again, delicious, and nothing to complain about.

Cortese, Tenuta Maiola (Lugana), 2009 (minerals, delicious with the bagna cauda); Galliopo, Ippolito Ciro "Liber Pater", 2007 (fruity but serious)

• Lincoln, 3808 N. Williams Street, Portland; 503-288-6200

Minestrone

2011-11-22T23:14:00.001-08:00

Portland, Oregon, November 22, 2011—

NOT YOUR TRADITIONAL minestrone, I suppose, but a minestrone nonetheless, and a particularly delicious one: beans, hominy, kale, stock. That had been at home, with

Fabla (Tempranillo/Garnacha) (Catalunya), 2010

Lunch had been downtown, in a "fast slow food" place: a codfish-cake sandwich on a sesame bun with crisp-fried potatoes, butter lettuce, dill relish and tartar sauce, gloppy and tasty, and a couple of fine beignets for dessert.

Pinot grigio, 2010

• Violetta, 877 SW Taylor @ SW Park, Portland, Oregon

Sausage-cabbage hash

2011-11-21T22:23:00.001-08:00

Portland, Oregon, November 21, 2011—

LEFTOVERS AT HOME TONIGHT, delicious ones: a couple of those sausages from yesterday, sliced up, and combined with leftover roast potatoes, carrot, and Jerusalem artichoke, with a blanched chopped cabbage folded in, the whole then baked in the oven.

And, later, ice cream from Alma, one of Portland's finest shops, a chocolatier making better Bicerins than, even, Bicerin, in Torino. And a little glass of Clear Creek eau-de-vie de poire, to make today uniquely Portland.

Beaujolais nouveau, Georges Duboeuf, 2011

• Alma Chocolate, 140 NE 28th Ave., Portland, Oregon; (503) 517-0262

Sausage and potatoes

2011-11-21T00:21:00.001-08:00

Portland, November 20, 2011—

THE TITLE TELLS the story: sausage and potatoes, potatoes and sausage. Of those sausages, half came up from Berkeley's Local Butcher, the others are Portland natives. They were quite different, both pork; I wouldn't set one above the other.

The potatoes: well, there's some Jerusalem artichoke in there too, and some carrot, as you see. Roasted in olive oil in the oven, one of our favorite dishes. Thanks, Giovanna!

Rosso da Monferrato, Tenuta la Pergola, 2009; Fabla (Tempranillo/Garnacha) (Catalunya), 2010

Polenta

2011-11-19T22:59:00.001-08:00

Portland, November 19, 2011—

HOW LONG IS IT since last we had polenta for dinner? Way too long: so it was particularly pleasant to find it waiting for us when we finally rolled into Portland after fighting traffic for hours. On it, a nice smooth supple tomato sauce, and grated Parmesan and good fresh-ground black pepper of course. Afterward, green salad.

Red wine

Lamb chops

2011-11-18T22:35:00.001-08:00

Ashland, Oregon, November 18, 2011—

SNOW ON THE PASS — just enough to make us take it slow and easy on the way down; then an hour or two of rest in the cheap motel; then the fabulous dinner. I've written many times before about Charlene Rollins and New Sammy's: it's one of the Five Restaurants; she's a genius of the kitchen. (Vern, her husband, has mellowed into a fine host; the restaurant bears his stamp as much as hers.)

Tonight, though, I realized at the end of the evening that she is not only peerless as a maîtresse de la braise, not only impeccable as a chooser of ingredients; she is something even more rare, a chef as perfectly suited to pastry as she is to savory. Intelligence, a subtle but fully trained hand, a gifted sense of taste both physical and imaginative, and a keen interest in research unite in this woman, one of the most well-balanced, enthusiastic, and egoless geniuses I've met anywhere.

Well, shucks, she might well say at this point, and what did she do for us tonight? We started with the green salad energized with broccoli flowerets, then went on to Anaheim peppers filled with salt cod brandade and served on a bed of pumpkin purée, lifted with discreet pimenton.

From there Lindsey moved on to quail, but I couldn't resist the local lamb chops, succulent, cooked just to the rare degree I wanted, again lifted with a generous but not overwhelming touch of smoky pimento, and surrounded by a bed of braised vegetables: carrot, sweet potato, onion, kale. I could have sworn I was in Spain. ¡Sabroso!

We had desserts, of course: gingerbread with apples and chestnut-honey ice cream for Lindsey, pecan torte served in thin slices, a sort of Spanish twist on panforte da Siena, with salt-caramel ice cream for me — a truly delicious, memorable dessert.

Champagne: Drappier, nonvintage (creamy bubbles, nicely dry); Bordeaux, Chateaux Chabiran,2008 (modest but fully achieved, opening well with the food); Zinfandel, Sausal Creek (Alexander Valley)

• New Sammy's Cowboy Bistro, 2210 South Pacific Highway, Talent, Oregon; (541) 535-2779

Coq au vin

2011-11-18T16:26:00.001-08:00

Oakland, November 17, 2011—

A PERFECT DINNER for a vertical tasting of Rhone wines and surely one of the Hundred Plates: coq au vin, rooster in wine. These days of course it's never a rooster, not unless you've been either farming or foraging. And come to think of it it's a long time since I've had capon, a favorite dish of mine. Ah well: we're lucky to get one of the sixty billion chickens they say occupy this planet at any given moment.

In any case, coq au vin it was, rich and succulent, preceded by a fine green salad with pecans, and followed by, first, four delicious cheeses, and then apple crisp with heavy cream; and it doesn't get much better. Thanks, John and Susan

Vieux Télégraph, 1985, 1989, 1995, 1999

Eggplant

2011-11-16T21:51:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, November 16, 2011—

TODAY SHOULD HAVE BEEN a fast day, but a few things needed to be eaten, otherwise wasted; and people our age, born during the Great Depression, don't waste food if they can help it.

And, anyhow, it gives me a chance to report on one more recipe from My Calabria, by Rosetta Costantino, which I mentioned here two days ago. I set out one little eggplant too late last summer, and finally picked a half dozen fruits from it the other day; Costantino's book told me what to do with them: slice them lengthwise from the cap, left on to keep things together; blanch them quickly; then marinate them in wine vinegar and olive oil with mint, garlic, and red pepper.

I'm still learning this year's vinegar. It's quite powerful; I should really dilute it a bit, but I'm not sure how to go about that in a stable way. So this dish was pretty vinegary, but the flavor was good. Next time I'll use a little more mint, too.

The tomatoes were from Nancy Skall's garden. It's nearly Thanksgiving; it's odd to be eating tomatoes and eggplant; we don't complain.

Arneis, Tintero (Langhe), 2009

Supper in the café

2011-11-16T00:19:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, November 15, 2011—

AN EARLY SUPPER in the café tonight, as we'd driven down to Berkeley to see a performance of Stravinsky's Histoire du sold at.
There I ate:

Roman-style endive with anchovy, garlic, and egg
Liberty Farm duck leg braised with prunes and red wine; with turnip purée,
carrots, and rosemary

After yesterday's fantasy on Calabrian themes it felt like we'd driven north: first to Rome, as the menu stated, for that delicious salad, whose anchovy was just the right balance — and recalled yesterday's anchovy-stuffed peppers. And then up toward Austria, perhaps, for a braise that nodded toward winter but recalled that it was still, after all, a pleasantly warm day. The rosemary kept the dish grounded in das Land, wo die citrönen blühen, but the prunes, the duck, the turnips suggested Austria. (And by the way the purée was potatoes, not turnips; the turnips were slices of small roots, thankfully, and on the side.)

Chinon, a little tight and somewhat drab

• Café Chez Panisse, 1517 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley; 510.848.5525

Calabria

2011-11-14T22:52:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, November 14, 2011—

I AM ENTHUSIASTIC ABOUT a cookbook I bought last week: My Calabria, by Rosetta Costantino with Janet Fletcher. Of course I'm completely programmed to like it: it's by an Italian-born woman who grew up in Oakland, where her parents had settled after World War II, having brought not only their cuisine but their vegetable seeds with them. The family reminds me of Lindsey's father's family. It's about cooking from the garden, and from a peasant past.

Then too, the book's co-written by a woman I like a lot who worked her shifts at Chez Panisse. I think I recognize some of her input, but the book's more than that: the principal author's voice is present in every sentence.

I could hardly wait to cook from it, but I waited until today, when I tried four recipes. The heart of the meal was pasta, home-made pasta — nothing could have been easier: a cup of flour, a little more than a quarter-cup of water, some time, my two hands, and a rolling pin. Oh: and a sharp knife and a straightedge: you see the result at the left.

The vegetable was sweet Italian peppers, cooked so easily, but with such an interesting and delicious twist: you cut the stem and core out of the pepper, leave it whole, ribs and seeds still inside, put an anchovy inside, and fry it in olive oil, over high heat.

I strayed from Costantino's recipe for Spaghetti aglio, olio e peperoncino, adapting it to the meal that was taking shape, and using the lagani I'd just made — a sort of fettucine — instead of spaghetti. No point in cleaning out the skillet I've just used for the peppers, I thought, and sliced a couple of cloves of garlic thin, and a couple of tiny sweet tomatoes, and the stipulated hot peppers into the same, sweet-pepper-and-anchovy flavored skillet, cooked them just a minute or two, and then put the cooked, drained lagani in the skillet.

Meanwhile Lindsey had cooked up some little carrots and spring onions (spring, in November?) that had from a neighbor's truck garden; that's what you see at the bottom of the plate. It was a delicious dinner, and the salad matched it: wild arugula from my garden, dressed with olive oil and lemon juice.

Oh yes: I said I tried four recipes. The fourth was marinated eggplants. They're still marinating; maybe I can describe them tomorrow or next day…

Arneis, Tintero (Langhe), 2009 (a very favorite white, fresh, crisp, light-bodied but full of flavor)

Barley

2011-11-14T00:01:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, November 13, 2011—

HULLED BARLEY with Brown Butter and Scallions, is what you see over there on the left; a recipe Lindsey clipped from the paper three years ago and has served before — a Marion Cunningham recipe, so it's double a favorite.

When I was a boy we bought rolled barley in 75-pound sacks. It looked very much like rolled oats, the sort you used to cook for oatmeal — Quaker Oats. It has quite a different taste and texture. We bought it for the pigs; it was my job to dump the barley into a big vat into which we also poured the surplus skim milk. (We sold the cream.) I never tasted the result, which we always referred to as "pig slop," but I did eat the occasional handful of barley, and always rather liked it.

Pearl barley goes into various soups. Beef and barley soup is a favorite of mine. But this is made with whole-grain barley, which also goes into our old dependable Bog-Man Cereal. Tonight's recipe makes a sort of barley pilaf, and the lightly browned butter gives it a nutty flavor that nicely complements the chopped scallions, which aren't cooked at all except by the retained heat of the barley, into which they're dumped — like barley into pig slop — just before serving. Delicious.

Before the barley, as a first course, we had the very last, I'm sure of it this time, of Nancy Skall's lima beans, for this year I mean; I'm sure they'll be back in the market next year. Some pods have two or three rather huge beans inside, some only a couple of tiny ones, barely big enough to notice. They all cook together, so there's a nice range of textures. Even the big ones are delicate and tender. I'll miss them, these next few months…

Rosso da Monferrato, Tenuta la Pergola, 2009

Salmon; frisée

2011-11-12T23:33:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, November 12, 2011—

PROBABLY THE NEXT-LAST salmon of the year — Lindsey bought two this morning; one's in the freezer. It was our last Farm Market in Healdsburg for the year; we'll be away next Saturday; then the market closes for the winter. Dave's salmon; Nancy's lima beans; the neighbor's tomatoes — we'll miss them; but we look forward to them next season.

It was one of the last of our Meyer lemons, too — only three or four left on the tree; but lots of green ones for the next cycle. And the radishes are coming up; the new lettuces won't be far behind. Kale, too, and broccoli. And after our salmon we had a really delicious salad of frisée from a nearby farm, dressed with olive oil, garlic, salt, and lemon juice. Tomorrow we'll have arugula, and the puntarelle are flourishing…

Zinfandel, Sky Vineyards, 2007

Stuffed cabbage

2011-11-11T23:13:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, November 11, 2011—

WHAT, STUFFED CABBAGE again? Didn't we just have that?

Well, yes, just a couple of weeks ago. But it's such a delicious thing, I thought I'd revisit it. This one was different, better in some respects, lesser in others. Here's how I made it: I browned some sausage and ground veal in goose fat, removed it, and browned chopped celery, carrots and leeks; then I combined all that with cooked short-grain rice, the core and some inner leaves of the cabbage, and a few leaves of chard, all chopped fine. I added an egg for the fun of it. Alas, I did not salt this sufficiently; nor did I flavor it with any herbs — next time I won't fail to add thyme.

I'd blanched the cabbage and deconstructed it; then, starting with the outside leaves, put it back together again, in a stainless-steel mixing bowl, interleaving the cabbage leaves with the stuffing mixture. (In the photo above, the operation isn't yet quite completed.) The finished cabbage — which I neglected to photograph, alas — completely filled the bowl, and I added veal stock up to its rim, then covered it with aluminum foil and baked it in the oven, not too hot, for an hour or so.

The finished cabbage turned out easily onto a platter and looked very nice indeed — I'm sorry I didn't think to take its picture; we just wanted to get on with our dinner. All it needed was a slice or two of bread on the side, but there was a little ice cream for a sundae afterward.

Zinfandel, Sky Vineyards (Napa), 2007: as definitive and true to varietal as Napa county can provide

Baked potato

2011-11-10T22:41:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, November 10, 2011—

WELL, ALMOST EVERY day; we skipped yesterday except for the coffee, toast, tea, and nuts. Maybe a little fruit: someone has to eat it.

And tonight we feasted on a baked potato. When we first started this fasting business, nearly a year ago, we ate a baked potato for dinner on the fast day: now we're happy to go without it when fasting, and feast on it the next day — especially when it's a 560-gram beauty like this one, bought Saturday at the Healdsburg Farm Market. The flesh was that perfect russet texture, not too mealy, and the flavor went deep.

I like my baked potato with just olive oil, salt, and pepper. Add beefsteak and lemon and you'd have Bistecca fiorentina with a potato on the side. Even without the beefsteak it's a meal, one of the Hundred Plates; and the green salad, with good old Eastside Zinfandel vinegar again, followed by a Bosc pear and a few figs from our trees, finished it off nicely.

Brouilly, Château Thivin, 2010 (soft, fruity, easy)

Baker's Dozen

2011-11-08T22:57:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, November 8, 2011—

I'VE PROBABLY WRITTEN here before about Bakers Dozen — yes, here it is, just a year ago. The group comprises professional and amateur bakers, who meet to share ideas, resources, and enthusiasm about the various dimensions of baking. I always enjoy these meetings, partly for the information they offer — I always learn something — and even more for the reassurance they offer about the basic goodness and generosity of these women (and they are mostly women, though a number of men are just as committed to the organization.

The meetings are held at a favorite restaurant of ours, too, and lunch is always delicious. Today we had a mixed chicory salad with lemon-anchovy vinaigrette, a crisp pappadum, and grated Piave; then sesame-coated crisp-fried chicken with a cheddar biscuit and spiced kale set off by Moroccan honey. Dessert: a little chocolate pot de crème with a discreet pâte sablée cookie.

All around us dedicated professional and amateur cooks were polishing off their lunches; every plate I saw was perfectly bare when the meal was over. Everyone knew this was delicious. And what bravery, serving a biscuit to a company of bakers! (And it was as tender and perfect a biscuit as I've ever seen.)

• Foreign Cinema, 2534 Mission Street, San Francisco; tel. 415-648-7600

Minestrone

2011-11-07T22:11:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, November 7, 2011—

IT'S GONNA BE COLD tonight; there's a fire in the stove; let's have soup.

I minced a little bit of chorizo and browned it in olive oil in the stainless-steel pot, added an onion, a stalk of celery, and a couple of small carrots, all chopped up; browned them; then added a box of store-bought organic beef stock — later this winter I'll begin making my own. A handful of our own cannellini went in, too; they take a long time to cook, but they're so sweet and nutty. Then I chopped the stalks of eight or ten leaves of chard and threw them in, and added the chopped leaves late in the game, along with a tomato chopped up. Toast rubbed with raw garlic and drizzled with olive oil: a complete meal in a bowl.

Barbera d'Alba, La Loggia, 2010: smooth, too young, delicious.

Huevos rancheros

2011-11-06T23:10:00.001-08:00

Eastside Road, November 6, 2011—

OUT, UNCHARACTERISTICALLY, to brunch this morning, since sisters-in-law were visiting. A double cappuccino with a tablespoon of brandy in it, since there was no grappa at this bar; then a very fine version of a dish I particularly like: huevos rancheros. If the Hundred Plates were a hundred ten, it would be there. Maybe it should be anyhow.

In this version the beans and rice formed a base for the slightly crisp tortillas; the poached eggs rested on top of those, with a tomato concassée, cilantro leaves — not chopped! — on top, and a spoonful of sour cream. The whole affair was pretty, nicely balanced, and delicious.

Dinner at home: salmon from yesterday's market, with the usual lima beans — I think there will be only one more market this year, and then we will look back fondly on these limas with a certain amount of regret. Sliced tomatoes, as you see; the green salad afterward.

Salice Salentino, Epicuro, 2007

• French Garden Restaurant & Bistro, 8050 Bodega Avenue Sebastopol; (707) 824-2030

Birthday party

2011-11-05T22:27:00.001-07:00

Coleman Valley Road, Occidental, November 5, 2011—

A BIG PARTY for a special birthday of an old friend and colleague tonight, a blustery cold rainy night in the dark countryside, with a very warm assembly of friends in a barn out toward the coast. Since the venue was the Occidental Art and Ecology Center, you can be sure the food was tasty, nourishing, and politically correct — and local. We had: Spitfire roasted pork with applesauce from Llano Seco Ranch; Petaluma gold bean with rosemary from Tierra Vegetables; Roasted Hubbard and Kobocha squash with maple garden, Kale with olive oil, and mixed green salad with Meyer lemon vinaigrette, from the OAEC garden; and blue green cornbread with Spring Hill butter, from Tierra. This was after the appetizers: deep-fried potato croquettes; prosciutto, apple and soft cheese on toast; radishes; canapés; with a glass of sparkling wine with a spoonful of elderberry syrup — delicious.

Had I given a toast I'd have said this: the other day someone asked me point-blank to list the three most important values to me: answer quick. Attentiveness, reflection, enjoyment, I responded, perhaps because subconsciously I was already thinking about the qualities this remarkable woman embodies. And she expresses those values in the Two Humble Virtues: generosity and gratitude. She'd invited eighty or so of us, and we ate and drank, talked and sang, danced and celebrated; for Community is at the heart of her great gifts to her world.

White, rosé, and red wines, mostly French and Spanish — too much going on to take notes!

Cheese sandwiches

2011-11-04T22:52:00.001-07:00

Eastside Road, November 4, 2011—

THAT SANDWICH YESTERDAY was so tasty; why not have the same thing for dinner tonight?

This time I set the cast-iron griddle on the kitchen stove, straddling two burners. A few raw peppers, those little spherical ones, went on first, to roast and blister; and I laid out two or three Nardini we'd prepared a few days ago and had left over in the icebox, to let them warm up.

Lindsey shaved the last of the Gruyère and sliced some more onion to fill the sandwiches, and after putting a tiny bit of butter on the griddle they went on next. As you see, we had some radishes ready to go too.

After the sandwiches were done and the peppers ready and the griddle empty, I threw on a few little cubes of bacon and diced leftover stale bread, figuring they'd add nicely to the green salad. They did.

Vermentino, Epicuro (Lazio), 2010 (fruity, minerals, nice acid, refreshing)

Grilled cheese; roast chicken

2011-11-03T23:16:00.001-07:00

Eastside Road, November 3, 2011—

IT'S FEAST OR FAST around here, and since yesterday was fast, this must be feast. No fewer than two of the Hundred Plates today: for lunch, grilled cheese and onion sandwiches — Piave and Gruyère, on Como bread from Downtown, grilled on the griddle on the wood stove: for today was cold enough to light the first fire of the season. (It went down to 26° last night.)

Then a nice roast chicken for dinner. Friends arrived with armloads of vegetables, so we had oven-roasted potatoes — cut 'em up, put them in a roasting pan with a little olive oil in it, shake them around, sprinkle them with salt, pepper, rosemary. A garlic clove or two won't hurt.

And leeks and carrots, diced and cooked in a little butter and olive oil.

I salted the chicken, let it stand a few hours, then stabbed a lemon a few times and put it in the cavity, put rosemary branches and thyme branches under the skin on the breast and between the legs and wings and the body, sprinkled it with a little olive oil, and roasted it at about 400° for forty minutes or so. Delicious.

Dessert: ice cream sundaes with chocolate sauce, chopped nuts, whipped cream, and a maraschino cherry. Who could complain?

Rosé, Château du Rouet (Provence), 2010; Vermentino, Epicuro (Lazio), 2010; Côtes de Bordeaux, Château Grand Claret, 2009 (we had guests helping)

Nearly Nothing

2011-11-02T23:43:00.002-07:00

Eastside Road, November 2, 2012–

Two cups of coffee and a buttered English muffin this morning at the motel. Later, a macchiato at the Palo Alto café that no longer, alas, serves my favorite, Caffe il Doge. A small handful of nuts with the tea. Three small figs at bedtime.

Nearly

2011-11-02T23:43:00.001-07:00

Cassoulet (revisionist)

2011-11-01T23:33:00.001-07:00

Sunnyvale, November 1, 2011—

THAT SPLENDID WEATHER we've been having these last couple of weeks has turned chilly today, at least down here on the Peninsula, where a cool wind was blowing as we walked a block or so to dinner. So when the waiter mentioned a cassoulet among the daily specials my ears perked up. The Caesar salad I had as a first course was barely tolerable: tired pre-cut romaine, a little browned at some of the edges, and the faintest hint of anchovy — I think some folks wave an anchovy can in the general direction of salad, as others make a game of displaying the label of the Vermouth bottle to the Martini pitcher.

The cassoulet was off-standard, too, but not really substandard, just a little revisionist. In the first place, you can't really make a satisfactory cassoulet as a single serving — though I imagine this is ladled out of a big pot and finished, in its little ramekin, under the salamander.

The beans were good, if a tiny bit undercooked; I liked the addition of tomato coulis, accepted in some traditional quarters; the duck confit was pleasant if a little dry. It was odd to find chopped fennel in the dish, but it was fairly discreet. Chives, though, have no place at all in cassoulet. (Or in much else from the kitchen, far as I'm concerned.) Still, cassoulet is like baseball: bad cassoulet is better than no cassoulet at all. And this, don't get me wrong, wasn't really bad, not at all.

Cabernet Franc, 2009

•Saint Michael's Alley, 140 Homer Avenue, Palo Alto; (650) 326 2530

Salmon from the grill

2011-10-31T23:55:00.001-07:00

Eastside Road, October 31, 2011—

WHAT SPLENDID WEATHER we've been having these last couple of weeks, sorry about that, East Coast…

So, another salmon "steak" out of the freezer and onto the grill, over charcoal this time. I brushed it with olive oil with chopped shallots in it, and salted and peppered it; it's a nice preparation. Six or eight of those delicious Nardini peppers had already roasted, whole, over the charcoal; I split and seeded them while the salmon was cooking. Lindsey'd cooked up another mess of Nancy Skall's peerless lima beans and sliced up a couple of tomatoes; and then we had green salad of course, and the last of yesterday's apple pie and Mary Jo's crisp — life is good…

Salice Salentino, 2009

Boudin blanc

2011-10-30T22:23:00.001-07:00

Eastside Road, October 30, 2011—

A COUPLE OF FRIENDS, cooks and caterers, arrived about two o'clock with leftovers from a recent job: time for a late October party.

We began with a big plate of padrones peppers, toasted in the black iron skillet with a little olive oil and salt; and went on to the delicious main course:

salad, grilled Boudin blanc, and a poached egg; mustard vinaigrette. Truly Curt — you see him above, leaning in from the right, a cap on his head — is a generous man and a genial one, and a damned good cook. From there, on to dessert: Lindsey's apple pie, Mary Jo's apple-quince crisp; ice cream.

Is anything better than a supper like this with friends and family? I doubt it.

Rosé: Cheverny, Domaine du Salvard, 2010; Château Lascaux, Coteaux du Languedoc, 2010; Barbera, Preston of Dry Creek, 2009; Riesling, Josef Rosch Kabinett, 2000; Muscat, Beaumes de Vénise, Domaine de Durban, 2005

Chou farci

2011-10-29T22:12:00.001-07:00

Eastside Road, October 29, 2011—

STUFFED CABBAGE, in plain English: but it's not quite that simple. You don't just hollow out a cabbage and fill it with something. Here's what you do — and basically I follow the recipe in Julia Child's second book, adapting it to what's available:

First you need a good sound cabbage, Savoy for preference, though today's was simply a big Dutch slightly curled one. You blanche it in a big pot of boiling water and, running a sharp knife down around the core, remove the leaves, one by one, setting them aside.

Then I browned a pound of ground veal and set it aside, then four Italian sausages which I'd liberated from their casings and crumbled up and set that aside, then a carrot, two leeks, a half-inch slice of Virginia ham, and the chopped core of the cabbage, with some thyme and sage. I combined all that with half a cup or so of cooked rice.

Then you lay out the outside leaves of the cabbage inside a stainless-steel bowl about the size and shape of the original cabbage, and sprinkle them with the meat-vegetable mixture. More leaves; more stuffing; etcetera, until all the leaves are in place.

You then fill up the bowl with beef or veal stock and put it in the oven at 350° or so and cook it until the cabbage is tender, and there you have it. What a fine meal it is!

Petite Syrah, Preston of Dry Creek, 2008

Alla Romana

2011-10-29T21:59:00.001-07:00

San Francisco, October 28, 2011—

THE ETERNAL CITY — Rome — is among my very favorite cities for dining. There's nothing really like it, and most Italian restaurants in our country certainly fall short. But Locanda, in San Francisco's Mission district, makes a plausible attempt at Rome's inimitably simple-but-sophisticated cuisine.

Not that I really know: I only hazarded three courses. But the carciofa alla giudia was pretty authentic, and made memorable by the chiffonade of mint flavoring the soft, delectable artichoke. My pasta caccio e pepe was dressed with a pungent Pecorino and nicely peppered, though I did think the pepper unnecessarily exotic and single-varietal in flavor (a nit-picker's complaint, I admit). Dessert was a fine pine-nut tart with fior di latte gelato on the side, my favorite; and afterward I had a small chunk of perfect robiola with carta da musica bread, brown-buttered, and blackberry marmelade on the side. Delizioso.

A good Martini; then Malvasia, Carso, Edi Kante, 2008

• Locanda, 557 Valencia St., San Francisco, (415) 863-6800

On dine en rouge

2011-10-27T23:22:00.001-07:00

Eastside Road, October 27, 2011—

WE DINE IN RED tonight, and drink rosé. Here's the setup: On Saturday we bought our weekly salmon, but knowing we wouldn't have a chance to cook it for a few days Lindsey stuck it in the freezer.

Then, Sunday, we visited Bob Cannard's farm for a Chez Panisse party, and of course we came home with an armload of vegetables — a handsome Savoy cabbage, some carrots, peppers, an onion, eggplants, tomatoes. I was thinking of stuffing the cabbage, and I probably will, Saturday morning. It's a favorite recipe of mine, and I'll be glad to share it with you.

But Monday we had leftover Bolognese to eat, and Tuesday we didn't eat, and yesterday, well, still a bit of Bolognese. And the vegetables were waiting. So tonight Lindsey sliced up the peppers and eggplants and a nice big spring onion, sprinkled them with olive oil and salt, and set them on sheet pans to roast in the oven.

Meanwhile I built a wood fire outside, with grapevine cuttings and a bit of old oak barrel, and I sprinkled the salmon with salt and pepper and a little olive oil and a handful of coriander stalks Bob had sent along with the vegetables, and grilled it over the fire, along with a couple of slices of bread.

The tomato was absolutely delicious, but then so was the rest of the dinner. Green salad, of course; maybe a pear a little later.

Rosé: "El Solà d'en Pol," Celler Xavier Clua Coma (Catalonia), 2010: fruity, substantial, easy.

The last of the Bolognese

2011-10-26T21:34:00.001-07:00

Eastside Road, October 26, 2011—

ACTUALLY, FOR ALL THE TIME we've spent in Italy, and considering how attractive we find the pastimes of the table, we've hardly set foot in Bologna, which offers what many think to be the pinnacle of Italian cuisine. I don't know why that is, exactly: probably because we've been too busy elsewhere. Our first allegiance is to Piemonte, the province of half of Lindsey's heritage. Then there's the attraction of Milan, with its trattorie and central location.

Venice, goes without saying. Verona, where our dear friends live. Rome, as we learned in a fine week back in 1988, and then for two wonderful months in 2004. (Buy the book!) Sardinia. Sicily.

We did have a splendid dinner in Emilia-Romagna a little over a year ago: that's as close as we've come to eating in Bologna. Otherwise, what we know first-hand about Bologna is the sausage, and Bologna ain't baloney, and the sauce. I wrote enough about it day before yesterday; there's no point adding more today.

Leftover rosés

Double Bolognese

2011-10-24T23:28:00.001-07:00

Eastside Road, October 24, 2011—

OTHERWISE KNOWN AS "meat sauce," I suppose, Bolognese is one of my favorite things. Basically simply ground beef, tomato, onion, carrot, celery, bay leaf, salt, and pepper, with fat of course to bind everything together. There's a good history and recipe on Wikipedia. We often have a shorthand version, made simply all at once in the skillet by making the soffritto with either olive oil or some form of pork and chopped onion, usually omitting the celery and carrot (a mistake, in my opinion), then squeezing tomatoes in: this is the "red sauce" we so often have on pasta.

But the true Bolognese is a much subtler, richer, more highly evolved thing. I can well believe it dates back to the Sixth Century: or, rather, I can't believe it waited until then to be perfected. (And the addition of chicken livers is brilliant: I've never much liked chicken livers, but they'd be perfect in a Bolognese.)

Well: Lindsey made lasagna alla Bolognese last week, with the true recipe, and we had the last teeny little corner of it as a first course tonight. Then came
the dish you see above, fusilli with the extra ragù Bolognese she had cunningly set aside, and a little Parmesan cheese grated on top. Rich, profound, nourishing, totally satisfying. A little chard from the garden, with garlic crushed in. Later some fruit, no doubt, and we'll be ready for tomorrow's fast.

Cinsault, Preston of Dry Creek, 2008

Dinner on the farm

2011-10-23T23:43:00.001-07:00

Glen Ellen, October 23, 2011—

SUNDAY SUPPER on the farm today: twenty or so of us, gathered for a farewell meal with David Tanis, who's leaving Chez Panisse after many years as downstairs co-chef. We were at Bob Cannard's farm, which supplies by far the lion's share of produce served at the restaurant, and the late afternoon light over the Valley of the Moon hills was strikingly beautiful.

The menu seemed to me the perfect expression of Californio cooking: ranch-style cooking drawing directly from what's available, pointed up with discreet use of exotic spices. It centered on a spit-roasted pig, a wild one Angelo had shot for the occasion — succulent, lean, full of flavor, healthy. The table was laden with salads and vegetables: slaw, poblanos stuffed with corn and cheese, sliced tomatoes, roasted beets, shell beans, onion salad, crudités. There were delicious sardines with lemon zest, peppers, and olive oil; there were olives of course, and grilled bread; there was sliced tongue with chimichurri.

For dessert there was an apple tart with figs cooked in red wine and whipped cream. And best of all, throughout, there was the company of cooks and diners, people who knew why they were so happy with what they were confronting; and good conversation; and memories and good wishes for the future; and generosity and gratitude.

Rosé, Domaine Tempier (Bandol), 2008; Zinfandel, Skye Vineyards (Napa); Syrah and Pinot noir, noncommercial (Sonoma and Napa counties) (true to varietals, sound and delicious)

Lamb again!

2011-10-22T23:25:00.003-07:00

Eastside Road, October 22, 2011—

LAMB CHOPS ARE AS GOOD as it gets; lamb chops twice in a week is even better. Dinner with friends tonight, at their home, celebrating a birthday: artichokes from Castroville, boiled and served with lemon mayonnaise; then the chops, pan-fried, crisp and crunch outside, just rosy inside, flavored with salt and garlic. Nancy's delicious lima beans on the side because, after all, it's Saturday, Healdsburg Market day.

Cinsault, Preston of Dry Creek, 2008 (a nicely balanced, delightfully flavored wine)

Lasagne party

2011-10-21T22:28:00.001-07:00

Eastside Road, October 21, 2011—

LINDSEY MADE THE LASAGNE a week ago, basing it on a recipe from Marcella Hazan, for another party. In the event we decided to set it aside for later: lasagna is, to me, a cool-weather dinner, not a hot-afternoon lunch.

In fact we both came to the same conclusion separately, each of us a little embarrassed to admit it — one doesn't normally serve leftovers to friends: but last week it was so warm, and the leftovers were so delicious, it seemed appropriate.

So we had the lasagna, finally, tonight. Just lasagna, or lasagna — as Wikipedia says, "As with all the other pasta shapes, is generally used in its plural form lasagne" — and a green salad. Plenty for all six of us (sorry you weren't there, Gaye and John!). Fresh pasta from the Phoenix Pastaficio. Béchamel sauce, Bolognese. (We asked the Phoenix guy for "plain pasta," and he relayed the request to the owner, a Frenchman who is serious about his metier. Oh do not say plain pasta, he said, I do not make plain pasta, plain, that means nothing, you cannot say plain pasta, it is egg pasta. I take his point.)

Dessert: ice cream sundaes: vanilla ice cream, with chocolate sauce, salt caramel sauce, chopped almonds, macaroon crumbs. Life with a pastry chef has its advantages.

Syrah, Radio-Coteau "Las Calinas" (Sonoma Coast), 2009 (nice varietal, forthcoming); Cabernet Sauvignon, Husch (Mendocino), 2007 (serious, a little austere); Cinsault, Preston of Dry Creek, 2008 (pointed, edgy, refreshing, straightforward)

Lamb chop

2011-10-20T23:55:00.001-07:00

Eastside Road, October 20, 2011—

ANOTHER LITTLE PACKAGE from the freezer tonight; another couple of lamb chops from our son and daughter-in-law up Laytonville way. Shoulder chops this time, as you see. After thawing them I sprinkled salt on both sides, let them come to nearly room temperature, and spread crushed garlic and a little rosemary on one side.

I'd picked cannelloni from the garden a couple of days ago and shelled them: those got cooked in water until tender, then flavored with a little salt and sage leaf. The green tomatoes are from the Healdsburg farmers' market. The chops were simply broiled in the kitchen stove; when this much baseball's waiting to be watched, no time to grill over vine cuttings outside. Maybe next week.

Green salad after, of course.

Montagne Saint-Émilion, Château Tour Bayard, 2007 (a little closed and tight, not what I'd hoped)

Farewell at Chez Panisse

2011-10-20T11:55:00.001-07:00

Berkeley, October 19, 2011—

OUR LAST DINNER here from a chef we're very fond of, David Tanis, who leaves after a number of years as one of the two downstairs chefs, continuing his transition from remarkable chef to remarkable writer. A bittersweet occasion: but an absolutely wonderful dinner, très français:

Chilled beet soup with cucumber and horseradish cream
Petrale sole with chanterelles and thyme
Spit-roasted pork loin with flageolet beans and caramelized carrots
Warm buckwheat crêpe with roasted figs and wild fennel ice cream

As many know, I'm not fond of beets; they almost always taste like aluminum to me, some genetic flaw in my DNA, I'm sure. But the horseradish cream quite countered that tendency, and I found this version of borscht really delicious. Too, it put me in mind of Jeremiah Tower, who was fond of celebrating some vague Russian connection in his menus back in the early days of Chez Panisse.

Flat fish are my favorites, and this sole was in my favorite style, pan-fried in butter. Straus butter, in fact, which had been clarified, and leant a substantial flavor to a fish that can be bland.

The pork was from Ranch Llano Seco, up near Chico: remarkably consistent, even-grained meat, delicate in flavor, substantial in texture.

Chez Panisse, 1971

That dessert took me right back to Lindsey's years at the restaurant. In so many ways this meal personified years of history for us — culinary, social, familial; all the things Chez Panisse stands for to those of us (and we are thousands, I think) who are part of its long tradition. David has been at the center of this for so many years; from the late 'seventies, I think — as café chef in the 1980s; as downstairs chef for the last ten years. (The four Chez Panisse chefs work six months on, six months off, full time and then some, two in the café, two in the downstairs restaurant.)

For a number off years David's lived in Paris his off six months, sometimes offering a little pop-up restaurant. He has published two books, A Platter of Figs and Heart of the Artichoke, both with the Artisan division of Workman Publishing, both very beautiful and clearly written. In June he began a weekly column, City Kitchen, at the New York Times, and on leaving Chez Panisse at the end of this month he'll be settling in New York. I see, too, that he has an attractive and useful website.

Thanks for so much, David — your cooking, your experience and your experiences, your thoughtfulness, your intelligence. Don't be a stranger.

Savennières, Domaine des Baumard, 2008; Condrieu, Domaine Faury, 2007; Chardonnay, Lioco (Carneros), 2009 (in half bottle); Châteauneuf du Pape, Château de Beaucastel, 1990

• Chez Panisse, 1517 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley; 510.548.5525

Faster and faster

2011-10-19T12:02:00.001-07:00

Eastside Road, October 18, 2011—

AFTER THE AL FRESCO feasts of the last couple of days, the Tuesday fast was welcome — but it turned out to be a fruit fast. No surprise: the garden and its orchard have been productive.

I couldn't help eating a fig from the neighbor's tree in the afternoon, for example, when we walked down past their house to get the mail; and that put Lindsey in mind of our own figs, a smaller variety, drier and more intense. There aren't many, but what there are are delicious, and they go nicely with the pears she salvages from among the windfalls: Comice and Duchesse d'Angoulême. Peeled to avoid bad spots, they are particularly delicious — I think pears should always be peeled.

In the afternoon I'd picked the first of the cannellini:

dry brown papery skins
inside, whiter than my bones,
cannellini beans

Lunch on the patio

2011-10-17T16:41:00.001-07:00

Eastside Road, October 17, 2011—

THE WEATHER'S SO ODD, unseasonably warm and unnaturally humid, but we toughed it out on our patio, both today and yesterday, with a fine meal made for us by Sylvie and Jason, both of whom polished their culinary chops at the Chez Panisse program at the American Academy in Rome. That's Jason and Sylvie in the foreground, there at the left. What a fine menu!

green beans and cherry tomatoes
hard-cooked eggs
boiled potatoes
grilled bread
pan-seared tuna
green salad
anchovies
olives
aïoli, aïoli, aïoli

There were eighteen of us yesterday, and all with appetites. Today, though, even though there were eight of us at table, there was enough left from yesterday to have the entire feast over again. Don't think we don't know how lucky we are!

Rosés, of course

Another market day

2011-10-15T23:44:00.001-07:00

Eastside Road, October 15, 2011—

AND IT WILL COME as no surprise that another market day brings another market menu. They have been consistent because we like the menu: it seems to exhibit Elective Affinities. But no matter how often we repeat the menu, each reiteration seems to have its variation.

Most notably today, Padrones peppers, grilled dry with salt in the black iron skillet, joined the tomatoes and lima beans on the plate; and the salmon is now Coho; the King salmon has run its season out. I prefer the King, but the Coho's not bad.

Afterward, a bit of chocolate. A nice supper for a late-season market day.

Salice Salentino, Epicuro, 2007

Encore en France

2011-10-14T23:17:00.001-07:00

Eastside Road, October 14, 2011—

I CALL THIS SITE Eating Every Day, and for nearly 1200 days now I've been pretty faithful. But I find I've forgotten last night's dinner, and that's too bad, because it was particularly delicious. It involved a salad with tuna and greens, and then gnocchi alla Romana, which is not the usual gnocchi at all but rather a sort of polenta. Well, I'm sorry: you'll have to take my word for it. It was upstairs at Chez Panisse, and it was delicious. Afterward we went to Aurora Theater to see A Delicate Balance, and I'm afraid the play drove the details of dinner out of my memory.

Afterward I spent an hour or two in one of my favorite cities, Grenoble, with our two daughters, who seemed to have been in their 'teens, and the man who later became the husband of one of them. Lindsey was not there. We spent a bit of time driving, then walking, then riding trams; we were in cafés and restaurants and a particularly interesting musée de la cinéma.

I woke up speaking French for a few sentences, then dressed and walked a block or so — we'd been spending the night at a friend's in Berkeley — to get caffelattes and croissants. Later, we stumbled on a promising boulangerie* in San Francisco: lunch was a jambon-beurre, than which nothing is more French; and at teatime we had a couple of canalés. (Dinner, at home, was sort of French by way of the southeast: polenta, an egg, mushrooms.)

In the remote past I've been described, from time to time, as a francophile. I don't think I am, really, though I certainly respect the French intellectual and cultural heritage. My culinary allegiances are more toward Italy, as you may have noticed. But it may be time to get back to France for a while — though I'll have to put the actual physical transport off for a few months.

*Alas, the bread from that boulangerie turned out to be not as good as it had smelled.

Pesto di Basilico

2011-10-12T23:17:00.001-07:00

Eastside Road, October 12, 2011—

I'VE BEEN TRYING to think of just when it was we first ate pesto, and how we may have learned of it. Certainly I never had pesto in my childhood. We had garlic, of course, though usually in the form of garlic salt. (That in spite of the fact that Dad always good-naturedly scoffed at his brother-in-law the Hungarian George because when they met George worked in a "garlic factory" in Salinas, and was something of a social outcast.)

No: I'm sure I met pesto fairly early in my married life. I don't know if it was served in Lindsey's childhood: her father was born in Piemonte, not that far from pesto's Ligurian homeland, but I don't recall her mother ever cooking particularly Italian. We probably met pesto, Lindsey and I, through reading Elizabeth David. Or maybe a little earlier, from Irma Mazza: here is her Herbs for the Kitchen (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, the 1947 tenth printing), with Lindsey's name on the flyleaf, and the annotation "Christmas 1961." Two bookmarks: one for meat loaf; one for general pasta-cooking instructions. There in the index, though, is Pesto di Basilico, and the entry, on page 309, reminds me that our first involvement with pesto was as a garnish on minestrone, usually the canned minestrone from the Habitat label, as I recall.

Irma Mazza was a Berkeley girl, I read in a nice little piece online; early in our marriage she lived in a brown clapboard house on Walnut Street, only a block or so from Chez Panisse. We may have met her: I'm not sure. In addition to Herbs for the Kitchen she wrote an earlier cookbook, Accent on Seasonin: we have them both, consult them rarely if ever, would never part with them. In those days there were few cookbooks — Moe's used book store, for example, up on Telegraph Avenue, had only a small case, no bigger than the computer hutch I'm looking at at the moment; I'd check it every week or two, and if there were a cookbook there we didn't have, I'd buy it if I could. The result is in the photo above, which doesn't include the working books, the ones we actually do consult, which are in the kitchen. (One of these days I'll put a bibliography here; it might be amusing.)

Today we had fusilli con pesto, with basil from the garden — there's nothing like pesto made absolutely fresh. (The way I make it is described, with photos, here.) Alas we don't have our own pine nuts at the moment: maybe I'll try to harvest some next week. Mazza ignores them altogether, which is probably preferable to using those from China.

What else: Oh: lunch today: toast and those wonderful rillettes of Franco's, with celery and tomato; afterward, the last cantaloupe from the garden, one of the most flavorful we'd picked — and they were all full of flavor.

Tempranillo, Terranal (Yecla, Spain), 2010: a little coarse at first, but quickly ingratiating, sidling up to the garlic

Fruit fast

2011-10-11T22:37:00.001-07:00

Eastside Road, October 11, 2011—

THERE'S JUST TOO MUCH fruit around here not to eat it, even if it is fasting Tuesday.

Today, for example, we picked the last of the Belle de Boskoop apples (there are a few Arkansas Blacks in the box too), and I couldn't resist one. It was as big as my fist, and I have a pretty big fist. It's a fine apple, a curious one for its yellowish flesh and complex, slightly musky flavor — though I'm pretty sure it's a relative of the Gravenstein I grew up with. orangepippin.com says

Eaten fresh, Belle de Boskoop is quite a sharp apple. This and its large size makes it unsuitable as a snack apple, but it can be nice cut into slices to share after a meal.

Well, my snack was a meal. And later, Lindsey fixed another one: a fig — it's a poor year here for figs, but there are a few — and a couple of pears, as we have those to contend with too. Life is hard.

Lamb chops

2011-10-10T23:51:00.001-07:00

Eastside Road, October 10, 2011—

OF ALL THE MEATS THAT WE DO EAT —
Chicken, beef, or ham —
The one that tickles my palate the most
Is lamb, lamb, lamb…

So used to sing Virgil Thomson, and so sing we.

Pavel has his Sausage Dance: in his Slavic way, when sausage is served, and the spirit moves him, he will put the platter of sausage in the center, and form a ring around it with his family, and they will slowly dance around it, chanting Sau-sage, sausage, we are going to Eat You. Lindsey and I do not do this; it seems barbarous. But we do occasionally, when the spirit moves us, glance at one another over a lamb chop, each of us thinking of Virgil, and our Lamb Song is not always merely silent.

Our daughter-in-law is, I think, the chief stock person in her family; our son is too busy with other things to attend to the ongoing daily requirements of tending animals. Among their beasts are sheep, and now and then we're the beneficiaries. Today, for example, we had four delicious little lamb chops.

I salted them and sprinkled Herbes de Provence on them and a little dried lavender, and Lindsey broiled them in the oven - it was too murky and busy a day to build a fire outside. I'd cut a couple of potatoes into dice and cooked them in fairly deep olive oil, say halfway up the sides of the dice, until they were brown and crisp. Chard, as you see, from the garden.

Lamb, lamb, lamb
lamb-y lamb lamb
lamb, lamb, lamb
lamb-y lamb, lamb

Chateau de Voiture, 2005; Salice Salentino, 2007