Alla giapponese

Eastside Road, September 30, 2012—

TO MARKET THIS MORNING for Nancy Skall's limas and Dave's fresh-caught salmon; then this afternoon into Healdsburg to a book-signing, where our friend Nancy Singleton Hachisu was presenting her new book Japanese Farm Food, a marvelous and beautiful introduction to her way of cooking simply and directly within the Japanese idiom.

Then home to marry the day's two outings. I built a little fire outside, using rosemary and fruitwood branches, and Lindsey sprinkled the salmon with salt and vodka (no sake on hand), put a dot of butter on each and a few scallions, then wrapped them in foil.

They cooked over the coals for maybe fifteen minutes, and we had them, as you see, with an ear of corn and the limas. The fish was absolutely delicious. Green salad afterward, and some melon and fruit. A perfect Indian-summer supper. (It was 104° in Healdsburg today!)

Cheap Pinot grigio

Japanese Farm Food, by Nancy Singleton Hachisu (Kansas City: Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2012), p. 242

Grilled cheese

Eastside Road, September 29, 2012—

AFTER A DAY spent at a memorial service (for Marion Cunningham, who died a couple of months ago), and then mindlessly drifting about and finally visiting a fine exhibition of photographs in San Francisco, neither of us was really in the mood for much of a dinner. A perfect Saturday evening supper? A Martini, grilled cheese sandwiches, a green salad, a little fruit.

Cheap Pinot grigio

Dockside

San Rafael, September 28, 2012—

EN ROUTE TO A delightful concert — music by Darius Milhaud, performed at Mills College — why not stop at a restaurant we haven't visited, particularly since it's owned by a fellow who was a friend and schoolmate when I studied at Mills back in the very early 1960s?

To tell the truth I've lost touch with Phil since. He went his way, I went mine. His way was the Grateful Dead; my way led elsewhere. But those are other stories; this is an eatblog. So: we stopped off a little before our reservation, in time for a decent Martini; and then, since the restaurant overlooks a small boat harbor, we ate seafood. I had this hunk of halibut, beautifully poached, served with green beans, peppers, onions, in a nice oil-based sauté sauce; Lindsey had fish and chips, the fish in a batter so delicate as to be barely there — as good an execution of this classic as I remember seeing anywhere, London included.

Dessert: Well, after the Martini, and a glass of wine, coffee seems to be in order. Fortunately the dessert menu mentions affogato, that indispensable combination of espresso and ice cream. This versions' a bit tarted up, with sliced almonds and Grand Marnier, but oh boy is it delicious.

I'm impressed with Phil's restaurant: we'll definitely return. For one thing it's comfortable, at least early, before the music begins. For another, the sourcing is careful. My dessert, for example, was made with Three Twins organic ice cream and Equator espresso: you can't ask for much more than that. The wine list is interesting, too, but I settled for a glass of

Sauvignon blanc, Terrapin house white (Sonoma valley): good varietal, easy

• Terrapin Crossroads, 100 Yacht Club Drive, San Rafael, California; 415-524-2773

Pesto

Eastside Road, —

AS YOU SEE, fusilli tonight, with pesto. When did I make that pesto? Really, August 11? Well, it's certainly held well…

Then a couple of weeks ago some folks were up for lunch and I'd happened to pick up a pine cone: time to demonstrate the home-grown pine nuts. These are labor-intensive: you pull out the nuts from between the scales using long-nosed pliers; you wipe the soot off them lest it pollute the taste of the kernel; you crack the nut using the pliers, being careful not to pinch the skin of your fingers; you extract the kernel and divest it of its husk…

Our guests amused themselves so for a few minutes. I saved the results in a little plastic container, and it's been decorating a corner of the kitchen island ever since. Tonight I tossed them into a mortar and ground them to a paste, adding some of the pesto to clean the result out of the mortar, then combining the whole with the rest of the pesto. Nice texture, richer flavor.

Green salad afterward, and a plate of sliced tomatoes. And then dessert, oh boy:


Fruit from the garden — Bosc pears, peaches (well, from Dry Creek; ours are much earlier in the season); and those absolutely delicious Yellow Transparent plums, picked at twilight today, sweet, soft, translucent, incomparable. The chocolate? Half a truffle Lindsey came into today, a gift from someone out in Sonoma…

Rosé, Château de Guilhem, 2011; Carignane, Preston of Dry Creek, 2009

That market dinner

Eastside Road, September 26, 2012—

THESE ARE THE LIMAS we so love to have, just shelled, a little bit larger than life, at least on my monitor. Your experience may vary.

They come usually four beans to the pod, and they're quite thin. They remind me, I hope it's not too grisly an image, of thumbnails: curved, flat, thin, and about that size. My nails are not green, fortunately; but then these beans aren't all that green either, the color's a bit saturated here.

They were the last to be had this year, Nancy told us at the market on Saturday. The seasons are turning: before long it'll be braises; cabbages and kales; we should be pickling the last of the lemons on the tree; the olives are almost ready to pick and salt as I do every third year or so, to set aside to mold and eventually throw out. I'm not much of a husbandman.

I picked up the fallen apples today — probably seventy pounds of them, and consigned them to compost. Of them a full box were sound enough to set aside; they'll go into applesauce. And those are only the windfalls: there are plenty still on the tree, to fall in their turn, if we don't get around to picking them. We already have three big baskets of Bosc pears, at least a bushel I'd say, about half the produce of that tree. The figs are running late. The Zinfandel's nearly ready to pick, or to leave for the foxes.

It's a nice time of year, and our salmon and limas and green Zebra tomatoes make a nice farewell to summer, and greeting to the fall.

Rosé, Château de Guilhem, 2011 (so easy to drink, so pleasant and good for you…)

Pizza

Eastside Road, September 25, 2012—

PIZZA WAS UNKNOWN in my neighborhood when I was a boy; it took the returning GIs from Italy, who presumably brought memory of the staple with them, to instal it firmly in the American consciousness. Now, of course, it's everywhere.

The wood-burning pizza oven came later. It's hard to imagine even that, now; but forty years ago there were few such appliances, even in the Bay Area. One, perhaps, in San Francisco. I mean ovens devoted exclusively to pizza, of course. No doubt bakers with wood-burning ovens were always prone to fixing their own suppers in the oven at the end of the day. But how many restaurants had one?

Now they're a dime a dozen (unless you're in the market for one, in which case they go for a considerable amount more). You can find a good oven in any self-respecting Italian restaurant. In our town, Healdsburg, there must be dozens of them.

Tonight we went a little further afield, finding ourselves in the next town north after a highschool volleyball game. Lindsey and I split a tasty green salad with big meaty chunks of heirloom tomatoes and sweat-'til-soft torpedo onions nestling in the lettuces, a healthy handful of Gorgonzola crumbled in the lusty vinaigrette.

Then, while she tackled her prosciutto and mushroom ravioli with brown-butter leeks and rapini, I tucked into a pizza. It was the house special, a little eccentric, certainly more Southern than Northern Italian: roasted red peppers, meatballs with pine nuts and raisins, provolone, and lots of arugula strewn on top. Diavola, they call it, and devilish good.

What I like about this pizza: it's on the casual side. The dough's tossed and spun and fired hot; the topping are set in place with heart and generosity, not some kind of even-handed compulsiveness. You've read about Franco Dunn's magnificent sausages on this blog from time to time: Diavolo is where he makes them, as I understand it, and the meatballs on this pizza reflect his approach: plenty of intelligence and respect for authenticity and terroir, but equal parts of sensuality and pure pleasure. Why don't we drive up here more often?

Nero "di Campo," Hawkes House (Sonoma Coast), nv: rich, immediate, compelling.

• Diavola, 21021 Geyserville Avenue, Geyserville, California; 707-814-0111

Birthday

Berkeley, September 24, 2012—

ANOTHER TRIP to Berkeley for another birthday celebration — this time the big 80th of an old dear friend, justification as if needed for two days of festivity.

We began on Sunday with a surprise party reception in the Berkeley-Oakland hills; then on Monday a private party for three couples downstairs at Chez Panisse. There we started with the delicious salad imperfectly photographed here: grilled albacore with tomatoes, yellow wax beans, and capers. Soft, barely-cooked fish, full of flavor, beautifully balanced, a last tribute to summer.

Then duck: pan-seared breast and confit duck legs with crisp potatoes, caramelized apples, and braised radicchio — an invitation from autumn: crisp, salt, sweet, complex.

Dessert: a crêpe filled with honey ice cream, roasted black figs on the side and over. Delicious.

Pinot gris, Domaine Pfister (Alsace), 2010: floral, soft, inviting, artless; Vernatsch, Baron Widmann Kurtatsch (Südtirol), 2010: full, direct, pleasant

• Chez Panisse, 1517 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley; 510.848.5525