Duck

Eastside Road, Healdsburg, February 7, 2009

THERE ARE NOT many things better to eat, we think, than duck. Yesterday I bought a "duck leg," which in fact was leg and thigh and a good part of the breast and back — the aft portside quarter of a duck, I suppose.

I radically adapted a recipe in Paula Wolfert's The Cooking of South-West France, simplifying it shamelessly. I soaked four prunes in a half-cup of tea. Then I trimmed the fat from the duck and rendered it in an enamel skillet, reserving most of the resulting fat for tomorrow or later. Then I cooked the duck pieces slowly for ten minutes or so, turning them a few times. I put them in a heavy pot with a fair amount of thyme, a garlic clove or two (unpeeled), and salt and pepper.

I sliced an onion quite thin and cooked it in the skillet, then added it to the duck. I deglazed the skillet with a teaspoon of mustard and another of wine vinegar and say a quarter-cup of red wine. When that was reduced to nearly nothing I added another quarter-cup of wine. The resulting demi-glace went into the pot with the duck, along with another splash of wine and a cup or two of stock, and a carrot.

This simmered for an hour and a half. Then I put the duck on the serving plates, on a bed of radicchio and arugula, and put the onions, carrot, and liquid, including the tea but not the prunes, through a food mill, then reduced it to a nice heavy sauce. The prunes went alongside the duck; the sauce over. I'd boiled some potatoes to go on the side.

Green salad, of course.

Cheap côtes de Ventoux 2006, "La ferme Julien"

Split Pea Soup

Eastside Road, Healdsburg, February 6, 2009

IT'S FROM DEBBIE'S book, Lindsey said. Which one, there are so many, I said. The big one, she said.
That would be Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, which needs only the first word of the title dropped to make this the single cookbook you might well restrict yourself to. (So many candidates: earlier today, in a grocery store, I mentioned Ada Boni's Italian Regional Cooking.)
Soak the split peas. Brown an onion and a couple of carrots and some garlic in olive oil. Add chopped parsley, marjoram, rosemary,paprika, and pepper; then the peas some salt, and a couple of quarts of vegetable stock. Simmer until the peas are completely cooked through.
Lindsey omitted the first word, and began with a little bit of crumbled bacon. Green salad, of course.

Leftover red wine

Doughnuts

San Francisco, February 5, 2009

Dynamo Donut & Coffee, 2760 24th Street (at Hampshire), San Francisco; tel. (415) 920-1978

DOLLARS TO DOUGHNUTS used to be odds the other way: when I was a kid, fresh doughnuts were a nickel apiece, fifty cents a dozen. Today we got less than a dozen, and a nonfat latte, and the bill was — well, never mind: but I was flabbergasted.
But that's how it goes. You've got to think of a dollar as if it were a franc, a French franc I mean, worth about twenty cents. And still allow for a little inflation. Even during a Depression.
But the doughnuts were as good as we'd been led to believe by two online (and offline) friends, Shuna Lydon and David Lebovitz. At first I thought the chocolate one was a little fat and bland, but I quickly adjusted to it; it's deep and rich and caky, a deepfried chocolate cake with fine frosting. And the hardly plain-vanilla more French-style one was light and tasty. Lindsey's lemony bismarck-style was my favorite, even it there were irrelevant little chunks of apple inside.

A16: Polenta and pizza

San Francisco, February 4, 2009

A 16: 2355 Chestnut Street, San Francisco; tel. 415.771.2216

FOR TOO LONG we've been forgetting about this fine Naples-style restaurant in San Francisco's Marina district, so convenient to us when we're driving into The City for a show, or out of The City after a day. Walk-ins can pretty well count on a seat at the bar or a bar table at 5:30, just the time for a pre-show supper or for sitting out what's sure to be a traffic jam in Marin county.

Yesterday I started with a bowl of chestnut polenta with mushrooms, a poached egg, and well-seasoned, fresh tomato sauce, while Lindsey ate a more healthful beet and arugula salad; then we split a mushroom pizza with ricotta salata and olives. Delicious.

Red Umbrian wine, "Scacciadiavolo", 2005

Vanillas at Foreign Cinema

Eastside Road, Healdsburg, February 3, 2009

JUST ABOUT THE ONLY organization I belong to these days is The Baker's Dozen, a group of serious home and professional bakers that meets every three months in San Francisco to pool ideas, answer questions, socialize, and eat lunch. You couldn't find a nicer bunch or people. We meet at Foreign Cinema, a favorite restaurant of mine because of the quality of its food and the quiddity of its place. At night they'll throw movies up against the white-painted wall back of the outdoors dining room, but that's no good at lunch. Not that we need it; we're plenty entertaining enough without the movies.

Today we tasted seven different vanilla extracts: from Bourbon-Madagascar, India, Java, Mexico, Tahiti, Uganda, and (ringer) the Safeway. First we listened to three guests who described, from professional and experienced points of view, how to go about such a tasting. Then we each of us looked at seven little plastic cups, identical except for the numbers one to seven printed on them, each containing 94.8% water, 5% sugar, and 0.2% vanilla extract.

Oh boy, I said to Lindsey, this is going to be embarassing, I've never made any secret how much I love Tahiti vanilla, what do you bet it comes in near the bottom. Then we looked at them — four rather watery looking, numbers 3 and 5 a little darker, #7 hinting at a bit of color. Then we sniffed them. Then we tasted.

I thought the watery-looking ones were, well, a little watery. I liked the floral taste of #1, the peachy overtones of #3. I didn't like #6 at all. Best of all was #5: full and complex and substantial. Then the room was asked to vote on each in turn: Number 5 was the overwhelming favorite.

Then we had lunch, and what a nice lunch! A risotto galette — I'd have said a rissole — creamy inside, crunch out; on a fine lettuce salad with impeccable vinaigrette and shavings of wonderful Parmesan cheese.

Next, grilled mahi-mahi with little boiled potatoes, romanesco, cauliflower, all in a green coconut curry sauce, piquant and delicate at the same time.

Finally, grapefruit and blood orange granitas.

Oh: the vanillas? #1: Java; 2: Bourbon-Madagascar, 3: India fair trade, 4: Uganda, 5: Tahiti (yes yes yes), 6: Safeway, 7: Mexico. We win.

In the nature of ladies lunching, perhaps, no wine at this meal. Wouldn't a nice Riesling have hit the spot!

Redux

Eastside Road, Healdsburg, February 2, 2009

IT WAS ALL so good, why not stay with it one more day? So I splashed a little white wine into the leftover risotto (and shook some drops of water into it from my fingers) and heated it very slowly while making the salad dressing.
I'd halved the chicken breast yesterday, and reserved the little flaps — don't they have a real name of their own? What is it? So tonight I flash-sautéed them in hot olive oil, crumbling some myrtle leaves on them (salt and pepper, too, of course). Green salad of course.

Leftover wine, too, from last night, q.v.

Sunday dinner

Eastside Road, Healdsburg, February 1, 2009

A CHICKEN EVERY SUNDAY, that was the promise eighty years ago, as I understand it. It's been a long time since I dealt with a chicken, but it came back to me. Cut at the wing joints, the thigh joints; remove the back by cutting through the ribs; split the breast into two and bone them out. Wingtips, neck, and back go in the stock pot.

So then it was make the usual risotto — an onion minced fine and sweated in butter and olive oil; add the rice and heat until it turns powdery white and translucent along the edges; add the chicken stock ladle by ladle, and a glass of white wine along the way.

Lindsey broiled the chicken. We sliced a white truffle (the Christmas truffle) onto the risotto. Green salad, made tonight with shallots, not garlic.

Dessert: Lindsey adapted an orange upside-down cake from this month's Gourmet magazine, substituting almond flour and potato starch for the polenta. (We had a non-eater of wheat at table.) We thought it quite delicious, though she's not sure about the advisability of the potato starch.

How nice to have Sunday dinner with your family!

Pinot bianco "la Viarte", 2005 (!), Friuli; Côtes du Rhône "les Moirets", 2006