BLT

Eastside Road, July 29, 2018—

WHEN A DEAR friend comes up from the city to visit, and she's a chef, and she brings stuff for lunch, that's about as good as it gets. And when the stuff is the makings of BLTs, that's a notch better.

Surely one of the Hundred Plates, the simple bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich is perfect hot-weather fare. This bacon is Niman; the lettuce and tomato came from Bob Cannard's Sonoma Mountain farm (I'm pretty sure); the bread is Acme levain, grilled in a little olive oil. (Black cast iron has a lot to do with all this.)

Only the mayo is store-bought, and I preferred one not shown in the photo, a tube of Zaanse mayonnaise — whenever we're in The Netherlands we bring a few tubes home with us.

The dill pickles are local to Healdsburg; I don't recall who makes the.

Dessert: a couple of white peaches sliced up with blackberries, Tayberries, and raspberries.

     🍷Fume blanc, Ferrari-Carano, 2016, very nice; thanks, Gaye…

Roast chicken

Eastside Road, February 5, 2016—

NOT A CAPON, alas; the one we had on Christmas Eve will have to do us for the foreseeable future. But this was truly a fine bird, this chicken: free-range, firm-textured, smooth, sweet-fleshed.

Cook roasted it Judy Rodgers's way, in a very hot oven, but we did something new this time: slipped a slice or two of superannuated baguette underneath the bird while it cooked. This made a delicious morsel; you see it at the lower left corner of the plate.

Also with it, buttery mashed potatoes, cooked with a bit of parsley. Green salad afterward, and the last of that delicious Key lime pie.

Cheap Barbera d'Asti

☛RESTAURANTS VISITED, with information and rating: 2016   2015

Foreign Cinema

San Francisco, November 11, 2015—

WHICH RESTAURANT TO CHOOSE for dinner with a couple of dear friends who both happen to be chefs? Since we'd had lunch here the other day, and it had been so good, and since we've neglected dinner here for far too long, particularly given that we like the owners, why not go to Foreign Cinema?

I'm not sure I know the history of the name. I know they do, from time to time, or have, at least, at times in the past, thrown movies, presumably mostly foreign classics, onto the back wall of the outdoor dining room: but since I've never eaten out there I'm not sure how well it works. (I do like the idea: I watch movies on airplanes with the sound off, and enjoy them as background visuals — sort of like having a fireplace, but you don't have to carry any firewood.)

I started out with a classic brandade: salt cod, well soaked and prepared, whipped up with mashed potatoes and flavored with a hint of garlic and, exceptionally, chilies, and served with toasted slices of baguette. Occasional visitors to this blog will know that I'm partial to salt cod; I eat it just about every chance I get, and have enjoyed it in Portugal, Spain, Italy, France, and of course the USA. Baccalà, Bacalao, Brandade: nearly every region has its own special way with the dish.

Foreign Cinema's way was somewhere between a classic French brandade and a fine Venetian baccalà mantecata : not only smooth but actually fluffy, and the potato there as a smoothening agent, not a filler. It was a classic brandade, a perfect one; I have never had a better one, and I've eaten dozens, scores, perhaps hundreds.

But that's not what you see here, because my photo didn't work. This one hardly works, too: there was very little light at the relatively quiet corner table we were given, that we might converse. What you see here is a pork chop, of course, brined in house and served on a bed of "Umbrian olive sauce," an interestingly and pleasantly textured green-olive tapenade I suppose, warm of course; and with it was a soft polenta that I liked for its continuation of the brandade texture, and a scatter of arugula.

The pork was very well chosen: lean, dense, mature, full of flavor; and the kitchen cooked it as I'd asked: as little as possible. Delicious. I like this place.

Sparkling Vouvray, Champalou Brut; Verduno Pelaverga, G.B. Brlotto, 2014 (rich, direct, substantial)

• Foreign Cinema, 2534 Mission Street, San Francisco; 415-648-7600
☛Restaurants visited in 2015 are listed at Eatingday's Restaurants

Hamburgers; shortcake

Eastside Road, October 4, 2015—

TWO NOMINEES HERE to the Hundred Plates: Hamburgers grilled over charcoal and fruitwood; strawberry shortcake. And between them, a third: Potato salad. Somehow it seems like the perfect supper for the last day of baseball season — particularly when our team has cinched the wild card. Go Cubs!

Garnacha/Monastrell, Laya (Almansa), Old Vines, 2013

☛Restaurants visited in 2015 are listed at Eatingday's Restaurants

Pesto

Eastside Road, August 7, 2015—

OK, LET'S JUST PRETEND nothing's missing. A few days off. Been busy doing other things. Maybe — no promise here, but maybe — I'll throw the missing items onto this space in the coming weeks. maybe not.

Yesterday I made pesto, the way I always do — I've posted that before a few times, I won't do it again just now. It involves a marble mortar, a wooden pestle, garlic (Rose de Lautrec is my favorite for this purpose), pine nuts (our own, or failing them Italian ones, not Chinese), salt (Ile de Ré), basil (the Genovese variety for preference), Parmesan and a little bit of Pecorino (about three to one, like a Martini), and of course olive oil.

Yesterday I noted a California oil on sale at our local upscale single-addressed family-owned supermarket: California Olive Ranch extra virgin, about thirteen dollars a liter. That's what I used, and while it's certainly not Tuscan — it doesn't claw desperately at your throat on the way down — and it's a little fatter, more buttery, than you might want for some other purposes — it was very nice in this application. We use probably a cup of olive oil a week, and we're not rich, so it's nice to find something like this.

Anyhow: the pesto. I pound the garlic with salt; add pine nuts and a little more salt, and pound away until I have a smooth paste. The salt helps cut the garlic and the nuts: when you have the right proportion, it all comes together. Then the basil leaves, which this time I cut up a bit first with scissors. Pound pound pound until there's not much identifiable left of the veins of the leaves. (Don't use the stems, and leave out any discolored leaves.)

When that's all pretty well amalgamated, pound in the grated cheese. The result by now will be a rather dense, hard, intractable paste. I keep using the pestle while adding a little oil; then simply push the pesto down into the mortar, or whatever container I want to transfer it to, and pour in enough olive oil to cover, keeping the air away from the sauce, and refrigerating it until it's time to use it.

The photo shows you the color. This is rather a skimpy serving, and I added another spoonful or two before tossing my serving before eating it. The pesto was just as green today, the second day we had it…

Green salad, of course.

Primitivo, Epicuro (Puglia?), 2013: a little dumb and dull, a little alcoholic, fruity

☛Restaurants visited in 2015 are listed at Eatingday's Restaurants

Rome! Perilli!

Viale Villa Pamphily, Rome, May 21, 2015—

ARRIVED HERE about ten, unloaded rental car, and returned it — that's a story, but not for an eating blog — and found ourselves at the improbable Piramide, a little bit of Luxor at the gates of Rome. Well, since we're walking into Testaccio, why not lunch at Perilli? It's one of my favorite restaurants in the (by me) known world, so why not?

We opened the place, but other tables began filling up soon enough — many local businessmen, some eating alone, others in twos, threes, and fours; a few tourists; a few young couples. The waiters are imperturbable and professional. The menu — well, I doubt it ever changes much, nor does there seem any reason it should.

I had one of the dishes that defines Rome, for me: fettuccine cacio e pepe , dressed simply with grated pecorino and black pepper. The combination of semolina, really good cheese, and pepper was bracing and substantial, and I was very happy. Afterward, a simple lettuce salad, dressed with oil and juice from the lemon accompanying my companion's dish of green beans. A perfect lunch.

Frascati in carafe

•Perilli a Testaccio, Via Marmorata, 39, Roma; 06 575 5100
☛Restaurants visited in 2015 are listed at Eatingday's Restaurants

Posole

Santa Rosa, March 5, 2015—

AN OLD FRIEND invited us to her house for dinner, for which she made posole, one of my favorite dishes. In fact, let’s elevate it to the Hundred Recipes. The main ingredients in posole are meat and hominy: I think of it as an essentially Southwest dish, originating among the Navaho, or is it the Hopi. Among them, of course, the meat will be lamb or mutton, but it’s just as good based on pork, as we had it tonight. A big bowl of posole, and a green salad afterward.

Oh: and then Cook’s delicious blood-orange upside-down cake. Thanks to both the cooks!

Red wine, Trione Vineyards “Henry’s Blend” (Cabernet sauvignon, Merlot, Petit Verdot, Cabernet franc), 2011: very nice, sound, mature

☛Restaurants visited in 2015 are listed at Eatingday's Restaurants

Tartiflette

Eastside Road, February 14, 2015 (St. Valentine's Day)—

I KNOW EXACTLY when I first tasted tartiflette, which has become such a favorite dish of mine — so often mentioned and recalled — that Cook thought (so thoughtful a companion is she) to prepare it tonight: what a delightful surprise; what a sentimental gift.

It was Wednesday, June 25, 2008; I was with my friend Mac and my grandson Henry in a hiker's "refuge" called Bassachaux, a day's walk beyond La Chapelle d'Abondance, a kilometer or two inside France from the Swiss border, south of Geneva, in Savoie. Let me quote from my book Walking the French Alps:

We had a little suite of our own upstairs at the front of the building, Henry and I sharing one bed, Mac alone on the other; showers and flush toilets were curtain-walled off in the big dortoir we’d walked through to get to our rooms. I noticed, then, that other guests were beginning to show up, and made a mental note to reserve when I could, otherwise to arrive as early as possible. I don’t mind sleeping in these dortoirs but I do like a bed at the end of the row, by a window if possible.


At seven-thirty we had what seemed to be a standard refuge dinner: potage on a potato base, sometimes flavored with nettles; not rabbit but tartiflette, a dish of potatoes and local cheese, sliced and layered and cooked in the oven; and a delicious tarte à myrtilles, washed down with Aprémont, a favorite white wine of mine. We would have both these dishes frequently; they are both tourist specialties and honest food du terroir; “tartiflette” coming apparently from the local dialect word for “potato,” tartifla.

The next few days we continued our walk through the Savoie region of Beaufort, home of a very favorite cheese of mine, and we had a number of tartiflettes, all made exactly the same way: layers of thin-sliced potato, onion, and cheese.

But there are, apparently, a number of ways to approach this dish, which you'll have recognized is a version of potatoes dauphinois, or what was called, in my own childhood, "scalloped potatoes," why, I'll never know. My Berkeley grandmother made scalloped potatoes to take to church potlucks, and my mother made her own version on our broken-down "farm": sliced potatoes layered in a rectangular Pyrex baking dish, with sliced onion, and good rich milk from our Jersey cow, and dots of butter. I don't recall the presence of any cheese.

Tonight's version boasted little chunks of smoked bacon, which gives the dish an aroma more Alsatian than Savoyard: but the cheese was definitely Beaufort, and it was a lovely Valentine. Broccoli on the side, and a green salad afterward, of course.

Cheap Pinot grigio (had I known, I'd have splurged on an Aprémont)

☛Restaurants visited in 2015 are listed at Eatingday's Restaurants

Steak-frites

Berkeley, January 16, 2014—

LUNCH WITH A COUPLE of friends today, and since we were at a restaurant well known for its meat — in fact there's a good butcher shop here, and I bought a couple of pounds of duck confit before lunch, to make a cassoulet later on — I thought I'd have a classic: steak-frites.

It's a classic bistro dish, of course. Here I thought the steak a little too big, particularly since I'd made the mistake of ordering it "as rare as possible," and that's about what it was. I do like my steak bleu, which is to say quite rare, barely warm. But the cut used in the average steak-frites needs more cooking than that, else it is tough and chewy. My fault: not the restaurant's.

On this steak, a nice herb butter, surprisingly cold I thought. (We were eating early, though — 11:30 — and it may be that later in the service things are more au point.) And with it, very nice thin-cut french-fried potatoes.

---

FOR SUPPER, THEN, nothing needed but an omelette, which I cooked as I always do, in olive oil, with some grated cheese, toast on the side.

Zinfandel

•Cafe Rouge, 1782 4th Street, Berkeley; (510) 525-1440

Liver and onions

San Francisco, January 15, 2015—

YOU MAY NOT SEE them, but nestled below the bacon and the onions there are a few pieces of calf's liver. Liver and onions is a favorite dish of mine; I'll promote it right here to the Hundred Plates. It's best, of course, if it's fegato Veneziana; but good old American liver-and-onions will do in a pinch.

What's the difference? Well, the Italians cut the liver into strips, or (though I think this wrong) even into dice, so that it will all cook evenly (and inn fact almost instantaneously), frying it in butter and splashing white wine into it. We Yankees most often simply fry slices of liver, unevenly cut, so that some gets overcooked: not nearly as pleasant.

We mask the result with strips of bacon, unknown to the Italians. And we omit the white wine: a pity, I think. But at least we don't stint on the sliced fried onions.

(I remember years ago eating at the counter at the lamented Vanessi, on Broadway, and asking the cook on the other side of the counter to just fry up some liver and onions. He'd splash what seemed huge amounts of olive oil and white wine from those unlabelled bottles always at hand, sometimes thumbing the top to control — barely — the amounts. It was always good.)

John's Grill is dependable for its ordinary American-style liver and onions. It's the only dish I've ordered here, I think. It always comes with a baked potato and that typical old-fashioned Italian-restaurant spray of broccoli and carrots, and I usually have a bowl of the creamed spinach on the side.

A decent Martini before, why not; and, for dessert, cheesecake, because my constant companion does not like it, and we never have it at home…

Pinot noir, Annabella (Napa?), a little sweet

•John's Grill, 63 Ellis Street, San Francisco; (415) 986-3274

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I HAVE BEEN THINKING of linking this blog to a webpage listing the various restaurants we visit, and possible the hotels and motels as well, with a very simple rating guide. If I were to do that, this listing would read, for example,

•John's Grill, 63 Ellis Street, San Francisco; (415) 986-3274. 15 Jan. 2015. OK

where the restaurant name would link to its website and the date would link to the blog post discussing the place. My three-step rating key would be simply Y; OK; N: standing for Yes, okay; No; perhaps modified by exclamation points. What does anyone think of this idea?

Salade Lyonnaise

Eugene, Oregon, January 11, 2015—

THIS IS TRULY one of the Hundred Plates, an elastic but irreducible repertory of dishes without which I would find life much less pleasurable: the salade Lyonnaise, or, as it's called here, "bistro salad": frisée (no other lettuce will do), lardons, croûtons, a poached egg, vinaigrette. The vinaigrette should be cider vinegar, I think, and hot fat from the lardons.

We both enjoyed the dish, and I remarked that it's hard to mess it up, and my companion remarked No, not at all, it's frequently messed up. And in truth you can mess it up if you go out of your way to do so. You can use some other lettuce; you can use bacon instead of lardons, you can overcooke the egg (or even fry it if you're that perverse); you can use an egg that is less than satisfactory. I suppose you could use Balsamic vinegar, or "balsamic": I hope I don't run into that.

But. Not only is this one of the Hundred Plates; we are eating it in one of the Hundred Restaurants, those restaurants we always return to with anticipation, then pleasure, than fond memory. We don't dine here often enough, because Eugene has not often been a logical evening stopover for us. Now we have a grandson living here, so perhaps we'll be visiting more often. I hope so. This is truly a reliable, interesting, immensely comfortable place, with a good wine list, an excellent bar, first-rate service, knowledgeable sourcing, and a fine, professional kitchen.

A Negroni, with Citadelle gin, which I very much appreciate

•Marché, 296 East 5th Avenue #226, Eugene, Oregon; (541) 342-3612

Christmas, day three: goose

Eastside Road, December 27, 2014—

THAT'S COOK'S MENU, written down on the back of an envelope. But let me tell you about this Christmas goose. A week ago I went into town to have some tires installed. As I left the house I told Cook I'd stop off at the farmers market and pick up a goose, as we'd recently had an e-mail announcing the limited availability of same — nice fresh organic goose, raised locally.

Check the freezer, Cook said, and make sure we don't already have one. We don't, I said, I'm sure we don't. Check it anyway, Cook said.

And at that moment came a telephone call from the neighbor down the hill, whose big upright freezer we share. Guess what I found in your freezer, she said, a goose.

See, Cook said, I thought there'd be a goose in there, don't you buy another one.

We'll see, I said.

Don't you buy another one, she repeated, as I stepped out the door. I stopped at the neighbor's house down the hill, and she saw me through the kitchen window. I knew, just as I was hanging up, that I shouldn't have made that call, she said. Well, I said, you really messed things up; we'd have had two geese; now we have only the one.

To tell the truth one was enough, but I like to have spare parts, and plenty of rendered goose-fat, and a nice supply of goose stock, in order to make a cassoulet down the line a month or so. But there it was: one goose.

And that, curiously, with no wings — they'd been surgically removed at the breast, not the elbow, the armpit, or wingpit, or whatever you call it. This was apparently a wild goose someone had shot, and had found it easier to remove the wings than to pluck them. I don't know exactly where it came from.

In any case Cook roasted it today, and we had eight guests to Christmas Three. Canapés: liver mousse from the neighbor down the hill, and sliced fennel, and some very nice burrata. Then dinner: Roast goose, roast potatoes, roast Hubbard squash brought by another of the guests. The sauerkraut was tender and delicate, cooked in Pinot grigio. Wild rice with button mushrooms, and a green salad with shallot vinaigrette.

Cook makes the Nocino, but so do various culinary friends. It's made of green walnuts, gathered on St. John's Day in June, chopped, macerated in alcohol, and combined with a sugar syrup, then aged — I believe it's not ready until Christmas. It's splendid on vanilla ice cream.

Pinot grigio, Barefoot Bynum, nv; "Rubicon" (Cabernet sauvignon-Merlot blend), Niebaum-Coppola, 1995 (thanks, Mia and Ron); Cabernet sauvignon, Simi (Alexander Valley), 2000; and Kenwood, Sonoma county, 2002 (thanks, Kendall)

Boxing Day: Truffles

Eastside Road, December 26, 2014—

A SURPRISE GIFT on Christmas Eve called out to be put to use two days afterward: four small white truffles from… California! I don't know exactly where
in California; only that they were apparently found at the Farmers' Market in San Francisco's Ferry Building

Many years ago — at least twenty years ago, perhaps more — we had a white truffle from the state of Oregon. We were not at all impressed: to me it had no flavor at all, no aroma, nothing. I dismissed the idea of extra-Italic white truffles from then on, though I had had grey truffle from Algeria, I think, which had some remote resemblance to the real thing. (Come to think of it, that Oregon truffle may have been a grey one too.)

These four little guys were definitely white truffles, though their skins looked the slightest bit pinkish; I don't know why. They didn't have a lot of aroma, to my nose, but they were intriguing, so we decided on slicing them over pasts.

Here's the result: fettuccine cooked al dente, tossed in butter, with the truffles shaved over them, as you see, then mixed into the hot pasta to bring the slices to temperature. They were delicious. Subtler than those we had in October, in Monferrato, to be sure. But nutty, deep, flavorful. Almost makes me want to fight my way through the poison oak to see what might be underground up on the hill.

Green salad.

Sauvignon blanc

Christmas Eve

Eastside Road, December 24, 2014—

CLEARLY ONE OF the Hundred Plates: Roast leg of lamb. And there is no simpler way to roast one, nor more festive, than this Gigot à la ficelle, leg of lamb on a string. Of course you have to prepare for it. I'm not sure how this gigot was prepped, but I suspect it was simply trussed and salted; I don't think I'd have done more than that. Oh: and a hole was drilled through the bone at its end, to run the ficelle through. Ordinary kitchen twine is all you need — the twine must be at least two-ply, as the roasting method depends on the string's natural tendency to twist.

And the string must be soaked: you don't want it getting hot and burning through, dropping the roast onto the hearth!

Drilling the bone. Note ullage in bottle!

Now it's simply a matter of tying one end of the string to the gigot, through the hole in the bone, and the other end to a nail in the mantel over the fireplace, letting the gigot hang a little above center, the fire well behind it. Obviously there'll be some experimenting to do to get the fire at the right degree of heat. And it's heat you want, not flames.

The gigot will probably begin to spin of its own accord soon after you've hung it. When it's spun as far as the string likes in one direction, darned if it doesn't stop, then begin turning back the other way. I don't know if it's true that faster spinning slows the roasting; it seems so to me, but this may be a delusion. In any case, it roasts on all sides. You may want to finish it on the grill.` \




You'll notice a pyrex baking dish below the roast, to catch the drippings; in the dish, blanched potatoes and onions, roasting in their turn before the fire.

All this was done by the neighbors down the hill. Eric is practised at this; he does most of the meat cooking in the family, outside in good weather, inside like this when it's cold or rainy — or, I imagine, he wants to socialize with the guests while cooking. Either way, the result is consistently delicious.

Grilling the sausages	On the plate	Serving the tarts

Afterward, the green salad, and cheeses, and then, back in the living room, the Christmas tarts: a fresh pineapple tart with almond pastry; a perfect nut tart. Egg nog with, as you may have noticed, Bourbon, brandy, and a float of dark rum…

Trebbiano, "'l Tresen", La Chimera (Chiomonte, Piemonte): crisp, spicy, floral, very interesting); Volnay-Santenots Maison Naudin Père et fils (Savigny-les-Beaune, 1962 (absolutely optimal, mature but luscious, deep and strong); Syrah, Unti (Dry Creek Valley), 2012 (nicely balanced, young, good presence and finish)

My turn: lamb shanks

Eastside Road, December 12, 2014—

I DO LIKE TO COOK every now and again — but tonight revealed that I sure am out of practice. The first course went well enough, a sort of casual salade lyonnaise: I cut two slices of good bacon into squares maybe half an inch on a side and rendered them very slowly in the black iron skillet, made a vinaigrette with olive oil, some of the warm bacon fat, salt, and sherry vinegar, dressed a couple of small heads of frisée with that, then put a poached egg on each serving. Toast on the side, as you see.

So far, so good. But Richard Olney's foolproof recipe for lamb shanks, which I've made a number of times, seems to have moved into the pit of complacency — knowing how simple and reliable it is, I got careless. I browned the shanks in too much olive oil; it never let the lamb take over. The many cloves of garlic cooked too hard, and didn't purée properly in the food mill.



Still, it's a delicious dish. The dry herbes de Provence that I brought back from Nice over a year ago haven't lost their savor. I cooked up a batch of De Cecco's fettucine to put the little bit of sauce on, and though the dish was undersalted it was good enough. Next week I'll do better. It takes time to get yer chops back.

Since salad was the entrée, no need for green salad afterward. Instead, the last slice of Thanksgiving's pumpkin pie, with a little bit of hard sauce.

Cheap Pinot grigio

Bogman cereal

Eastside Road, December 9, 2014—

THERE'S NO DOUBT that I've written about this before; it's one of the problems with blogging, especially for seven years: you forget what you've already written; you repeat things. But, as Samuel Beckett writes somewhere, I can't go on, I'll go on.

I also don't recall when I first made bogman cereal. Certainly before I knew what to call it: it was our Prague-born son-in-law, a fellow who knows hard times having grown up in a People's Paradise, who said, on first being introduced to it, that it was exactly what had been found in the stomach of an unfortunate who'd been in a Danish peat-bog for the last thousand years.

In any case it's what we have for breakfast on cold mornings. Here's how I make it:

In the evening, after dinner, I fill the tin-lined heavy copper fait-tout, one of my favorite saucepans, with water, just up to the rivets holding the handle to the pan. That turns out to be a cup and a third: I just checked. It's the first time I've measured it (and the last).

Then, using a little scoop which I haven't been able to find for a year or so so now I use my hands instead, which is messy because some of the grains inevitably get dropped, I add the grain. The blend varies, but always includes both hard (red) and soft (white) wheat, preferably in equal proportion. It may also include oats. It may also include rye. The green grains in this photo are rye groats. I don't know what the suspicious-looking dark objects are; some exotic kind of grain. The two important principals here are, first, never under any circumstance include millet; second, the grains must be whole, not milled or rolled or anything like that.

I pour the grains into the water, using the scoop — the hands don't do this at all neatly — forming a cone of grain; and I pour it in until the peak of the cone just breaks the surface of the water. One of these days I'll measure that too, so I can "publish" a proper recipe. This isn't that day. As you'll see below, it really doesn't matter.

I then bring this mixture to a boil; then turn it way down to simmer for a little while, how long matters but can only be established by trial and error. When I'm finished for the day, just before retiring, I turn it off if it's still simmering, and cover it. You have to keep the grain covered with water, of course, and I've added it from time to time while simmering if necessary, and certainly top it off before turning in for the night But you leave it on the stove, where it retains its warmth and continues to cook gently until it's cold.

In the morning, first thing on getting up, turn the burner back on underneath the pot, to bring the cereal back to a simmer. Top up with more water if necessary. As you'll notice in the photo at the top, we sometimes add raisins. Chopped prunes or dried apricots or figs work too. Some people I've know will think of adding sugar, or butter, but not Calvinist Me; I eat it with just a bit of milk.

If it's too chewy, you haven't simmered it long enough. Do that next time. Cooking time varies with the grain and how long you've had it. This particular batch is a year old; it lives in a tin box refrigerator. And, yes, that's my nice old coffee bowl in the photo, bought thirty years ago or so in Brittany; and, yes, my caffelatte goes into it when I've eaten the cereal; and, no, I don't rinse it between, no reason to.

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PERHAPS IT WILL NOT be inappropriate for me to thank here, in this inconspicuous spot at the bottom of the blog, a few people who have commented lately on Eating Every Day recently, not least of them my own younger daughter. I write these entries more sporadically now than in earlier days, but I find I'm still compelled somehow to write them. It's an almost daily ritual, a mental exercise. It makes me think about things too easily taken for granted.

The comment that precipitated the present discussion followed the recent extensive description of a dinner downstairs at Chez Panisse. A private correspondence followed, in which the question was put succinctly:

I only meant to open the discussion out into an area that seemed to cry out for amplification--i.e., was your primary interest in more "common fare" motivated by a desire to explore food at that level, or were you deliberately
evading (or avoiding) the implied comparison between the mother ship [Chez Panisse] and everywhere else?

To me it's all a question of what we eat, every day. Some days are more everyday than others, of course, and that's one of the (often understated or even completely sub limina) themes here. But in fact a feature of Chez Panisse, in my admittedly possibly biased view, is that its cooks and directors do not think of its cuisine as elevated in quite the way other restaurants do. There is no aspiration to a Michelin star. Not one, let alone three. What is important is source, soundness, clarity, technique. Not kitchen architecture, not whiz-bang postmodern taste combinations, not molecular froth and liquid nitrogen. (In truth much modern restaurant cuisine seems to me to be largely smoke and mirrors.)

So I guess my answer is that I'm motivated by a desire to explore and consider food from the most basic level, and let comparisons arise where they will among any readers. Last night's risotto and this morning's bogman cereal are splendid examples of this: there's a magic in the marriage of grains and liquid and heat; the result is a little like what I imagine dwells within our bodies, fermenting, exchanging flavors and memories, energizing, ultimately decaying. I'm going to stop thinking about it now, and turn to some light reading. It's Fast Day, and there's still plenty of time.

Risotto

Eastside Road, December 8, 2014—

YEARS AGO, YOU may not believe it, I used to do nearly all the cooking in this family. I was retired; Cook was not. She was still working as a professional pastry chef, and the last thing either of us thought fair was for her to have to cook dinner after a long day at the stoves.

One of the things I always enjoyed cooking was risotto. Cook and I have few disagreements, and it's surprising, perhaps, that so many of them center on this harmless entertainment, this classic dish that is at once so simple and so dubtly demanding. So, while I very much enjoyed tonight's risotto, to the point of having a second helping; and though the not very complimentary photo you're looking at is of Cook's risotto as we had it tonight, I'll tell you how I make risotto — or rather how I made it, in those long-ago days before Cook too reached a well-deserved retirement, freeing her to cook nearly every day at home, for no wages and, I'm afraid, nowhere near the gratitude she (and her cooking) deserves…

Well: you begin with a skillet, we use stainless steel, on that we agree; and you put olive oil in it, Cook adds a little butter I believe, and you soften in that oil some minced onion. Well: I soften minced onion; Cook browns chopped onion, even letting some of the bits get really quite dark. In my opinion the onion should be no darker than the rice that follows, but that's just my opinion.

Next you add the rice, which must be Arborio or perhaps some other short-grained fat Po Valley rice, on that we agree. You cook the rice in the oil (and possibly butter), with the onions, until…

Well, difficult to explain exactly when. I like the outside half, let's say, of each grain become rather transparent, while the central half of the grain is still opaque white. Another way to tell is to take a grain of rice between the teeth, and feel the way you can bite through part of the grain, then meet the interior, which will feel crumbly, not soft, between your teeth.

At this point I begin adding the stock, which has been simmering in a pot on an adjacent burner. You add the stock, we both agree, slowly, a ladleful at a time; and after each addition you stir the rice, moving it about, with a wooden paddle, we agree on that too. You let each ladleful cook down to nothing: it's being absorbed by the rice, though a little of it is evaporating and making the house smell good. When it's all soaked in, you add the next ladleful, and stir, and so on.

When the rice has absorbed all the stock it can, and any more will simply make a soup instead of a risotto, you stop adding stock and instead add a glass or so of white wine. THIS IS A MAJOR POINT OF CONTENTION. Cook adds the wine before the stock; I add it after. My theory is that the wine, which is usually cold, will shock the rice and make it resistant to the addition of the stock. The rice has got nice and hot with its onions in the olive oil, and the stock is also simmering hot: if you add the wine before the stock, even if the wine is at room temperature and not out of the refrigerator, the rice will have to do a little U-turn on its way to perfection. None of us wants a bucket of room-temperature water thrown on us while relaxing in a hot bath; why do that to the risotto?

In any case: The risotto is finished. Now you may stir in some cooked peas, even some frozen peas which come in handy for this purpose and no other. You may add some chopped browned (not too brown!) bits of prosciutto. You will certainly add some grated Parmesan cheese.

Serve it in heated bowls, of course, and grate more cheese on top, but not too much. Risotto should taste first of rice, then of poultry stock, then of onion and olive oil; the cheese simply glues all these flavors together.

One more point of discussion: how to pronounce the name of this classic dish, surely one of the Hundred Plates? With an open "o," say I: ree-zought-tow, don't slide too much into that final (nonexistant, in Italian) "w."

We had a green salad afterward, with a sherry-vinegar vinaigrette, and then a slice of marvelous pumpkin pie from a delicious, subtly chthonic pumpkin brought home a week or so ago from Ojai. Thanks, Jim and Lisa.

Cheap Pinot grigio

Union, Pasadena

East Colorado Boulevard, Pasadena, November 20, 2014—

WE DINED AT A TABLE under this mural, only the center part shown here — and other quotes from Alice Waters were to be found on the walls in other strategic locations. This restaurant is serious about the specificity of its provender, which confirms to the Good, Clean, Fair maxim of Slow Food. But you have the feeling that, ethical and correct as the operation is and intends to be, it is Deliciousness that drives it.

It drives it down an Italian country road, I would say, certainly on the basis of tonight's visit. (Not our first, by the way.) I was eager to sample this place again so soon after a couple of weeks in Italy, while the authentic tastes were still in my mouth, so to speak; and I was certainly not disappointed: this is one of the great Italian restaurants not in Italy.



We began with this plate of bread, butter, and giardinera: good sound bread, delicious butter, pickled vegetables that were unusually piquant but crisp and tasty, setting us alert for what was to follow.

That was a plate of sautéed wild mushrooms served with the softest, subtlest polenta I've had outside Venice — "Grist and Toil" polenta the menu called it, and I'm sure a lot of work went into its production, both in the field and in the kitchen: but the result was anything but effortful or labored, merely soft, delicate, complex, utterly satisfying. The mushrooms gained from a sherry vinaigrette, surprising on this menu, but quite explicable: perhaps we were in Venice, where ships occasionally call from Jerez…

I went on to this porchetta, with potatoes roasted in the fat, and salsa verde on the side. Porchetta correctly done involves shreds and slices, fat and crackling, and plenty of dense lean meat as well. This was excellent. If we'd begun somewhere in Puglia, and gone on to Venice, I was now in Testaccio, and no mistake about it. The pork had that slight taste of tripe that roast suckling pig has to have; this pork was young, I'm sure of it, but complex, again, and long in the finish. The potatoes had a fine creamy texture, and the salsa verde was a Piemontese type, heavy on the parseley, very nice with the pork.

How could I resist the gianduia budino on the dessert menu, after my recent researches into bonet, the classic Piemontese chocolate-hazelnut dolce? This was not bonet, as it lacked any reference to amaretti; instead the little jar of silky pudding wore a chocolate cookie dusted with powdered sugar as its lid. But it recalled Piemonte, perhaps because I'd gone on to a marvelous red wine…

Soave classico, Balestri Valda (Garganega, Veneto), 2012 (truly suave, a little innocuous, very pleasant);
Nebbiolo, Francesco Borgogno (Langhe), 2013 (too young, but a beautiful wine quite willing to be dealt with now)

•Union, 37 E Union St, Pasadena, California; (626) 795-5841

Stew

Eastside Road, November 17, 2014—

BEEF STEW must certainly be one of the Hundred Plates. Of course there are many variations. This one seemed a little French to me; perhaps because of the sprigs of thyme I ran across. I don't know how Cook made it; I was in the other room.

She made it yesterday. One of the requirements of a good stew, of any good braise I think, is that it be prepared at least a day before it is to be consumed, to allow the flavors to deepen, to marry, to discuss things among themselves, without our interfering, so that they may reach an ultimate accord, perhaps even a consensus.

That's what happened with this one. It was served with noodles, as you see, not with potatoes — no Irish stew here, no cabbage, no praties.

Before the stew we had an appetizer of padron peppers, cooked the usual way; afterward a green salad, dressed tonight with lemon juice rather than vinegar.

Zinfandel, Beaulieu "Coastal Estates", 2011 (a little flat)

More catch-up

Eastside Road, September 12, 2014—

PERHAPS AN EXPLANATION is in order: we've been busy, and we've been eating irregularly. The end of last week was spent at a hotel conference in Los Angeles, as cursorily noted in the last post here. We drove down on Friday, subsisting on bread, cheese, peanuts, and water; and we drove back on Sunday, on a similar diet. What, no green salads those days! No cheap Pinot grigio! Yes, but Martini rewards instead, and I guess we get enough green salad to let us skip a day or two, now and then…

Monday night we feasted on fusilli. Yes: it was the last of that fine pesto I'd made a week earlier, I think; and it had held up perfectly well in the icebox, hadn't darkened at all; if anything, the flavors even more blended and deepened.

Tuesday, of course, was fast day. Wednesday we feasted: our usual this-time-of-year lunch, as seen in the photo to the left: peanut butter on toast; fresh figs from our trees. The drought has been hard on the trees, but has intensified the fruit. Late pleasures are sharpest.

And Tuesday night Cook turned to an old favorite unaccountably otherwise neglect this year, surely one of the Hundred Plates, Tuna-Cannellini salad. Simplest thing in the world: a can of good tuna — we use Ortiz, which purports to be Mediterranean tuna, processed in Spain (I write "purports" because, well, one doesn't want to be cynical, but these days…)

Anyhow: a can of good tuna; a can or jar or two or three of cannellini, a chopped onion, what looks like some summer savory, a little olive oil if needed, ditto salt. Marvelous with a decent white. There it is, over there to the right:


We've been eating lots of fruit. The Bosc pears are particularly heavy this year; the Comice and Duchesse d'Angoulème are always heavy, and they all seem early. The Seckels were big and delicious, because I'd thinned them some, for a change. There's an embarrassing number of apples on the trees. Good dark fig crop, too, though there weren't any white figs far as I could tell.

It's hard to keep up with all this; we don't even try. I tell myself every year we need a cider mill, but they're so damned expensive…

Oh: and while my poor grapevines are really suffering from drought, they sure put on a lot of fruit this year!