Kale

Eastside Road, January 31, 2011—

WHEN I WAS A BOY it was not considered food for humans. We grew kale in the garden strictly for the chickens, and for years I persisted in believing that kale was the chicken's favorite food. Perhaps it is; I haven't really researched this; but in fact I believe chickens like insects, especially soil-living insects, more than anything else in the world.

Both L. and I have grown kale from time to time. Sometimes when the weather's right kale will live over from one year to the next; L. grew some that attained the stature of small trees, and harvested the leaves one by one. They were enormous.

It was our friend Kees who woke us up to kale, years ago, in 1976 I think, when he cooked up a mess of boerkool. Since then I've loved it: chickens, fend for yourselves.

Tonight L. cooked up a pot of kale from the store. Kale, salt, crushed garlic, olive oil: that's all you need, that and a little time, a little more perhaps than she gave it, as she was the first to point out.

Afterward, jambalaya left over from last night. Man, that was good.

Syrah, Lagranja 360, Cariñena, 2009: young and friendly.

Jambalaya

Eastside Road, January 30, 2011—

A FEW WEEKS AGO, okay, maybe a few months ago, our daughter brought us a package of smoked andouille sausages from New Orleans. They went into the freezer to await the right occasion.

The right occasion turned out to be tonight. We had the other daughter to dinner, and E. too of course, and L. found a recipe on the Internet somewhere and wrote it out,

and we found some sushi-type rice at the supermarket, and the other things at our usual organic shop, and Bob's you uncle.

We started with Sazeracs: Redemption rye whiskey — who can resist such easy redemption? — and Herbesaint and Peychaud bitters, of course. And then the jambalaya, hot and piquant and stick-to-your-ribs.


Afterward, the regulation green salad; and then a dessert, bananas Foster
bananas flamed in rum (because we could thankfully find no banana liqueur in our local liquor store), with vanilla ice cream.

Mourvedre, Preston of Dry Creek, 2008: mature, subtle, rich

American country bistro

Eastside Road, January 29, 2011—

A TYPICAL FRENCH BISTRO in San Francisco yesterday; a typical California bistro in a tiny Sonoma county village today. In fact, it's a bar with an attached dining room whose ambience is, well, plain. Saturday night: lots of locals at the bar, drinking mostly beers. We ate early, so I don't really know how full the dining room got.

The bar's been in town for close to a century, maybe more. Big room, bar on one side, a couple of pool tables; dining room off to the right. The whole place reminded me of my two-room country grammar school, with more interesting bottles. Not much of a kitchen: four burners and a breadboard, oven out of sight. Menu's on a blackboard — an ardoise, as last night's bistro had it — on the wall. You order from the cook, grab a Martini at the bar, and go into the side road to sit at a plain table. The cook brings your dinner.

And what a nice dinner! We went because we've followed this chef, Mark Malicki, for years, from one restaurant to another, usually his own. I'm not sure why he's surfaced out in this remote village, but I'm glad to eat his cooking again. I opened with a variation on "steak tartare with all the fixings," a molded tartare with the capers and onion already integrated — and, oddly but not unpleasantly, pomegranate seeds, lending a healthful touch. The meat, I learned after dinner, was a locally raised veal — actually probably a yearling, what we always called "baby beef" when I was a boy. It sat next to a pool of tasty horseradish cream, and there were plenty of house-made potato chips on the side.

Next came duck again, because I'm in a duck mood these cold days. This was duck breast, beautifully rare, on a bed of big white shell beans and potatoes and kale, with currants. I could happily have had a double order.

Bodega's Casino is a roadhouse, and we decided, the four of us — we ate with a couple of old friends — that we should visit a local roadhouse every three weeks or so. I think it's a nice New Year's project. There are plenty of them around. But I imagine we'll be back here before too many months are out.

Zinfandel, Ravenswood "Vintners Blend", 2008

• Casino Bar & Grill, 17000 Bodega Hwy, Bodega, California; tel. 707-876-3185

Bistro

Eastside Road, January 28, 2011—

WHO DOESN'T LOVE BISTRO? There's something so satisfying about bistro fare: meaty, succulent, often slow-cooked, utterly urbane yet unpretentious. And with enough history behind it to make it clear when you're getting something authentic, the real deal, or when you're just dealing with wannabes.

Tonight's experience was authentic. We looked at the menus, looked at each other, and ordered identically: a butter-lettuce salad with a couple of white Spanish anchovies, sparked up with very discreet bits of pimento pepper and dressed with smoked olive oil and a hint of mustard; then duck-leg confit with pommes Landaises, thick-sliced potatoes fried in duck fat. The food was delicious; the room is warm and inviting; the service professional and relaxed. I'd go back in a minute.

Côtes du Rhone

• L'Ardoise, 151 Noe Street, San Francisco; tel. 415.437.2600

Back to leftovers

Eastside Road, January 27, 2011—

MOZART'S BIRTHDAY WAS NO occasion for a feast today, not after last night's celebration. (Old friend visiting from New York.) Instead, it was back to leftovers, and why not? The rest of last night's delicious roast potatoes, with some green beans and shallots; then some penne in nonbolognese (those porcini are really quite remarkable animals); then the end of the hash from the other day. Only the green salad was made from scratch today. I'm not complaining.

Peñasol (60% Tempranillo, 40% Garnacha), Viñedos de España, NV — 12.5% alcohol, a little soda-poppy (maybe Constanza would've liked it)

Pork chops

Eastside Road, January 26, 2011—

CURIOUS THING: this is a favorite dinner of ours; we used to have it five or six times a year; yet it's years since last we made it. Here's what you do:

In a mortar, crush raw peeled garlic cloves (perhaps previously crushed) with a good quantity of whole fennel seeds and some salt. Cover the resulting paste, which will be coarse, with olive oil.

You salted the pork chops when you got them home, right? And refrigerated them loosely wrapped in their butcher-paper until time to broil them?

Get them out of the icebox, spread one side with half the fennel paste, and broil until that side's done. Turn them, spread the other side with the remaining paste, and broil until done.

Sometimes I sprinkle the chops with lemon juice before spreading on the fennel paste; last night I forgot.

I don't know where the recipe came from. We've made it for years: I recognize the label-paper and calligraphy on the fennelseed jar from the time I was studying calligraphy informally with David; that would be in the early 1960s. As to what what this is called, I suppose it's a kind of fennelseed pesto, but that would be misleading. It's delicious on pork, broiled or roasted.

With it, we had these oven-roasted potatoes with a few whole cloves of garlic, salt, pepper, and rosemary. Green salad, of course.

Cheap Pinot grigio

The Tuesday fast

Eastside Road, January 25, 2011—

TWO CAPPUCCINOS in the morning; a handful of mixed nuts at night; a few glasses of water in between.