Salmon from the grill

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

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

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

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

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

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

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