Fast

Eastside Road, January 13—

FAST: A HANDFUL of nuts.

Bean soup

Eastside Road, January 12, 2011—

TO THOSE WHO'VE EXPRESSED concern about the food we liberate from our refrigerator, that Fortunatus's purse left us by Lindsey's mother (and left us empty, I hasten to add), I say, Never fear: Lindsey's quite capable of telling sound from spoiled. She is not like Ruth Reichl's mother, who nearly poisoned her father.

Comme d'autrefois

Berkeley, January 11, 2011—

LEADING UP TO ITS fortieth birthday, this August, Chez Panisse has undertaken forty weeks of menus inspired by forty of its — well, inspirers. The week between Christmas and New Year's was dedicated to Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock, for example: we weren't lucky enough to have eaten at the restaurant that week, but Scott was in town to preside over a private party, perhaps through no coincidence, and I reported on that a few days ago.

This week's devoted to Waverley Root, a favorite of mine. His books on the cuisines of France and Italy are brilliant, memorable, and useful. His memoir is amusing and telling. And his influence on Chez Panisse, while perhaps not as pervasive as that of, for example, Robert Courtine, is still present. Today's lunch menu in the café was attributed to his inspiration, and from it I ordered

Liberty Farm goose and pork terrine with pistachios, pickled vegetables, and mustard
Choux farci: grilled sausage wrapped in cabbage leaves with chanterelle mushrooms, thyme, and fried shoestring potatoes

and I could have sworn I was in a Paris bistro in the 1960s, except that never before have I had french-fries cut like tagliarini and re-fried. Brilliant.

I had already pretty well decided I wanted to stuff a Savoy cabbage one of these days soon: it's just cabbage, deconstructed, steamed, then reassembled with a farci of ground veal and such. When I get around to it I'll tell you more; and this time I'll look it up in Waverley Root before turning automatically to the Julia Child recipe I usually use.

Zinfandel: Green and Red (Napa county), 2008

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

Since lunch was so substantial, dinner back home on Eastside Road was simply toast, rubbed with raw garlic, drizzled with oil, and sprinkled with salt, with some raw carrot.

Côtes du Rhône, Caves des Papes, 2009

The Last of the Salt Cod

Eastside Road, January 10, 2011—

ONE HOPES THAT'S NOT to be taken literally, of course — but some Easter Islander saw the last tree being cut down, and presumably one day someone will eat the last codfish; I only hope it will have been salted; discovered, then eaten, in a spirit of nostalgia, even sorrow.

But that's in the future. The one we finished tonight was a three-and-a-half-pounder, and it's seen us through, let's see, five dinners, the first served to two couples, not just us. You can see why salt cod was a staple for so many centuries, and why wars should have been fought over the fishing banks.


Before the cod we had a reprise of the onion-and-orange salad. It's a welcome dish in winter, when citrus is in season, red onions are still sound and solid, and the colors and piquant flavors are welcome on cold days. Slice 'em up, dress 'em with a little salt and olive oil; that's all you need.

Cheap Pinot grigio; the end of the Pinot noir, De Loach, Masút Vineyard (Redwood Valley, Mendocino county), 2007 (still graceful, true to varietal, beautifully made and balanced, though opened five days ago!)

The big news today eatingwise, though, was breakfast: an omelet from our friend Anandi's hens, one of whom is laying the most amazing doubleyolkers.

Posole

Eastside Road, January 9, 2011—

DOWN THE HILL TODAY for a family day: Sunday midday dinner, a two-mile walk at the pond, cheese and salad afterward.

T. made posole. She boiled up pork shoulder and pig's feet, shredded the meat off the bones, and cooked it with the hominy. There were bowls of chili powder, quartered limes, oregano, chopped cilantro, onions, and Savoy cabbage to strew over the posole, as we liked, and steaming hot tortillas.

After the salad aand cheese, the Christmas cookies — spritz, cloud, pfeffernüsse; chocolate truffles; Eve's salt caramels; pan pepato.

Rosé, Ramazzotti, 2009

Back to the salt cod

Eastside Road, January 8, 2011—

A NORMAL DAY at home again: cappuccino and toast for breafast; almond butter on toast, celery, a banana for lunch. Saturday: a Martini with our mixed nuts.

Dinner? There's still some salt cod and potatoes, and I don't tire of it. A green salad, dressed with oil and vinegar from a quart jar of pickled sour cherries I put up years ago — the cherries may be gone, but the vinegar is delicious. And, atypically, a cup of cocoa before bed. It's a great life.

Cheap Pinot grigio

A little of this, a fair amount of that…

Eastside Road, January 7, 2011—

BACK DOWN TO THE CITY today, as we Bay Areans always refer to San Francisco, to visit some museum shows. A bit of pasta with duck ragout at a friend's press, where we dropped in for conversation: Andrew had made the ragout for a New Year's Eve dinner, and was using up the shreds. It's a delicious thing, duck ragout, and it reminds me to get a duck leg or two one of these days.

Then we stopped off for salads and a couple of samusas at a place we'd heard about on Clement Street. The chicken samusas were first-rate, filled with a dense shredded chicken-potato mixture and served with a piquant sauce. (Duck, of course, would have been even better.) I liked my simple salad: cabbage, lettuce, cucumber, onion, salt, vinegar. L's more complex salad, with all sorts of seeds, and chicken, and nuts, and fish sauce, seemed too busy; the oolong tea was delicious and bracing.
• Burma Superstar, 309 Clement Street, San Francisco; tel. 415.387.2147

Dinner at a bistro new to us, suggested by the friends who joined us. We began with fine butter-lettuce salad with a parsley, chives, and scallions, and a nice, rather subtle mustard vinaigrette; we went on to grilled top sirloin steak served with french fries, a little bit of lightly bound spinach, and maître d'hôtel butter. Dessert was a redesigned tarte “Tatin,” on a crackerlike pastry round rather than tarte-pastry, but with first-rate apples nicely caramelized.


Chablis, Brocard “Vieille Vignes,” 2008 (tight at first, then opening into a soft, fruity, but still serious wine);
Cornas, Chave, 1988 (perfectly mature, ready for a few years more, beauitful garnet, tobacco and violets in the nose, full body, nice finish — thanks for bringing it, John!)• Bistro Aix, 3340 Steiner Street, San Francisco; tel. (415) 202-0100