Meatballs and salt cod

Eastside Road, January 6, 2011—

A LITTLE BIT OF business in the nearby town of Petaluma this morning, and then a stroll about town, stopping for lunch at a local favorite — so well liked that another long community table had been added since our previous visit, and there were only two places to be had, next to a couple of strangers who soon became amiable acquaintances.

All we could desire, of course: so L. ordered an egg-salmon-tomato sandwich, good but a little too complicated she thought, and I had these fine Italian meatballs on polenta.

With them, a glass of Garnacha, details unremembered.

•Della Fattoria Downtown, 141 Petaluma Boulevard North, Petaluma; tel. 707-763-0161

Supper tonight was the rest of last night's salt cod, and now I can tell you the recipe, or at least steer you to it, for L. found it online. She notes that thick pieces of dried salt cod should be soaked for up to two days; even so, as mentioned yesterday, this casserole was too salty — you should soak the cod in changes of water until the water no longer tastes salty, think I.

Cheap Pinot grigio

Salt cod

Eastside Road, January 5, 2011—

LOOK: IT WAS TOO salty; we all know that. The first taste set us on edge. But, I say, it's in the nature of salt cod to be salty. Not too salty, though, I'm sure L. thought. I soaked it a long time, she said. The other piece was nowhere near this salty, the end we had on Christmas Eve. This end must have been a lot thicker.

Doesn't matter, doesn't matter, doesn't matter. It was, of course, that adjective that shows up here almost every day, delicious. I don't know how L. makes this dish, and I'm not about to give a recipe here: it involves salt cod and potatoes, herbs, black olives and hardboiled eggs as you see, a parsley garnish. It's all good. It's one of the Hundred Plates.

Before it we relaxed, with a couple of friends over to dinner, with mixed nuts and a glass or two of white wine. After it we had green salad and cheese: D'affinois; a raw-milk Manchego, rather delicately pungent if that makes sense; and a salty Bleu d'Auvergne, a cheese I like a lot. We'd thought about fruit or such, but the hell with it: we're completely sated. Delicious dinner; delicious.

Sauvignon blanc, Burnside Road (Sonoma county), 2009 (earthy, clean, varietal but not grassy);
Chardonnay, Chalk Hill (Sonoma county), 2000 (absolutely true to varietal, not oaky, beautiful straw-brass color, solid);
Pinot noir, De Loach, Masút Vineyard (Redwood Valley, Mendocino county), 2007 (graceful, true to varietal, beautifully made and balanced)

Cucumber sandwiches

Eastside Road, January 4, 2011—

Why cucumber sandwiches? Why such reckless extravagance in one so young?

SINCE FIRST MAKING THE PLEASURABLE acquaintance of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest I have loved cucumber sandwiches. This is no great credit to my sophistication; the play's rarely unavailable, and cucumber sandwiches are particularly tasty.

[JACK puts out his hand to take a sandwich. ALGERNON at once interferes.]
Please don't touch the cucumber sandwiches.They are ordered specially for Aunt Augusta.
[Takes one and eats it.]

Some months ago I casually mentioned cucumber sandwiches at a friend's house, a friend with a grasp of details and a memory for one's likes; today she'd asked us over to tea, and there was a plate of cucumber sandwiches.

It may surprise you to read that I have my own way of making cucumber sandwiches: it is this: slice white bread fairly thin; remove the crusts (this is not extravagant: I always eat them furtively by myself, later); butter the bread not too thick; lay on watercress; then place the thin slices of cucumber, peeled of course; add a sprinkle of salt if the butter's not salted. For some reason the sandwiches are better if they've stood for a while: look out for Jack.

Have some bread and butter. The bread and butter is for Gwendolen. Gwendolen is devoted to bread and butter.

And in fact there's nothing wrong with bread and butter.

Today's sandwiches were made differently: no watercress; cream cheese in the place of butter; grainy brown bread. This variation was startling, but tasty; ditto the clementine cake we had afterward, a sort of pound-cake with bits of tangerine in it. I'll fast Thursday, I guess.

Chai

Date cake and potatoes

Eastside Road, January 3, 2011—

SINCE IT IS NOT possible to entertain with something new tonight, our having dined precisely as we did yesterday — on brasato, potatoes, green salad, and date cake — let me enlarge a little on the details.

I've already explained how the brasato is made. As often as I've mentioned Lindsey's steam-sautéed potatoes, though, I think I've never described the technique. She cleans but does not peel them, always choosing the waxy variety rather than the russet; she dices them into say half-inch pieces; she cooks them in a heavy pot with a little water and a little olive oil, salt and pepper; when tender, she mashes them up with the wooden spoon. We generally use a heavy cast-iron enameled pot with a heavy lid.

The date cake came from a book I hadn't noticed before on the bottom shelf of what I think of as The Working Cookbooks, America Cooks: the General Federation of Women's Clubs Cookbook. Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons (1967), this “grand compilation of all those little cookbooks from the church women and girl scouts,” as zeegeezer describes it on librarything, was edited by Anne Seranne, whose name can be trusted. (She was among other things an editor at Gourmet. Lindsey bought the book back in 1986; I opened it for the first time tonight, to find that date cake:

Mix a cup flour, 1-1/2 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp salt, a cup sugar
Stir in 2 cups chopped pecans, 1-1/2 lb. chopped dates
Beat 4 egg yolks with 1 tsp vanilla until light
Beat 4 egg whites stiff; fold in the yolks; hold in the dry ingredients; turn into a 9-inch pan (greased and lined)
Bake at 350° for 40 to 45 minutes; cool 10 minutes in pan; then turn out of pan and cool on a wire rack

And there you have it. Lindsey serves a small piece, with whipped cream, and I am content.

Nero d'Avola

Brasato

Eastside Road, January 2, 2011—

NOT AN OUNCE gained or lost over the last couple of days, in spite of the delicious feasting, so we celebrate with a proper Sunday supper. This morning, going through the piles of things-to-be-read next my chair, I ran across a pamphlet of traditional Piemontese recipes picked up at Slow Food last October.

Nearly simultaneously Lindsey thought of the bottom round steak that's been lingering in the freezer since I bought it at the Farmers' Market last summer.

So here's what she did: browned the steak in olive oil in a heavy copper pan, put in a carrot, an onion, and a stalk of celery cut into pieces and wilted them; then added half a bottle of wine, a couple of bay leaves, rosemary, a couple of cloves; covered it, and set it on the wood stove where it simmered all afternoon.



Then I lifted the steak out and put it on a plate, and ran the vegetables through the food mill, then returned the resulting sauce to the fire to heat it. Slice the steak; pour the sauce over. Lindsey had steam-sautéed some potatoes, and of course we had our green salad; and for dessert L. rustled up a delicious little date cake. Fabulous.

Cheap Pinot nero

New Year's Day

Berkeley, January 1, 2011—

IT WILL PROBABLY turn out to be a three-pound weekend, maybe four. But it's worth it, and I know how to drop back to normal.

We brunched out, the four of us, a little before noon, at a Berkeley fixture we hadn't been to in years. I had a simple on-the-road breakfast: two eggs over easy, potatoes, three or four strips of delicious bacon, unbuttered toast, with a couple of cappuccinos.

Café Rouge, 1782 4th Street, Berkeley; tel. (510) 525-1440

Then, after a glass of fine dry Blanquette de Limoux at Pat&Mike's, we stopped at Alice's annual New Year's Day at-home. Here a buffet was cooked by none other than the handsome, intelligent, kind and generous, supremely gifted Scott Peacock, and I kept thinking of Phil Harris and "That's What I Like About the South":

pecans
pimento cheese spread on celery sticks
Incredibly well-seasoned collard greens
Sweet-potato purée
Sweet southern ham
Hopping John
Scott's fabulous corn-bread muffins

An incredibly delicious, resonant, integrated meal, full of flavors and reassurances, among friends who know how lucky, healthy, and hard-working they are; a salutary beginning of a new year.

Pigeoulet (Var), 2009

New Year's Eve: Osso Buco

Oakland, December 31—

WE ALTERNATE YEARS, New Year's Eve, having dinner with two old friends, odd-numbered years at our house, even-numbered at theirs. It's a nice tradition, and it keeps us out of trouble. And the food's always good.

Take tonight, for example: ossobuco, nicely flavored with judicious carrot and garlic; steamed broccoli, risotto; green salad; cheesecake for dessert. Long and pleasant conversation. Fireworks over the distant bay at midnight. A perfect evening.

Cabernet Sauvignon: Simi, 2003; Kendall Jackson, 1997; both strong and substantial, the Simi a little more serious