Khash-khash Kebab

East Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, May 9, 2013—

HERE WE ARE in Pasadena again, visiting A Noise Within to see theater, and wondering where to eat a midday supper before the first of three plays. I asked Mr. Google, and he suggested a place in the next block, the highest scoring joint in town from sites like Yelp and Urbanspoon.

It turned out to feature Lebanese cuisine cooked by Armenians, and I have to say it was very tasty indeed. I had this plate of Khash-khash: ground lamb and beef mixed with plenty of garlic, served on a bed of stewed tomatos, with Antaki bread: pita stuffed with onion, parsley, pepper, and spices, folded and cooked on the griddle.

The meat was a rather loose sausage, nicely flavored and expertly grilled. The hummus was made in house, like everything else here, and the tabboule was one of the best I've tasted. We'll likely return.

Cabernet sauvignon, Fetzer (the only red on the list)

• Sahara Café, 2226 E. Colorado Boulevard, Pasadena; (626) 795-6900

Artichoke

Ojai, May 8, 2013—

DINNER TONIGHT IN THE Hotel Churchill, as I call it, really the home of friends in this little corner of paradise. The friends are farmers, and two other friends of theirs joined us at table, also farmhands, and we always relax here, with fast and funny conversation, in total trust as to the provender.

Lisa steamed a batch of nice fresh artichokes; Jim squeezed lemon juice into the mayonnaise, and grilled the chicken. What succulent chicken! They'd marinated it overnight after smoking it in their Little Chief; then Jim grilled it at a furiously high temperature — smoke billowing out from the barbecue hood — making a sort of glaze on the skin that was really quite delicious. Rice pilaf on the side, as you see, and a tossed green salad afterward. I could eat like this every day.

Cava, Albero (Spain), nv, okay; Côtes du Rhône, Famille Perrin, 2010, rather nice

Back on the road

Berkeley, May 7, 2013—

LUNCH TODAY AT A PLACE we've been hearing a lot about, in a bright, airy room in a corner of the old Swan's Market in Oakland. It made me think of the old Sarah's Southern Gourmet, and Lois the Pie Queen, down-home soul-food restaurants we went to occasionally fifty-odd years ago in Berkeley.

Miss Ollie's is a little more sophisticated, though. We all are: that's what half a century can do for you. Miss Ollie was the chef-owner's grandmother, as I understand it, and her photo hangs proudly next to one of Edna Lewis, who — with her protégé Scott Peacock — brought soul food calling on cosmopolitan cuisine, with stunning results.

Lunch wasn't exactly soul food. In fact, I was transported to Papeete, not Mobile or Jackson. That was partly due to the salad, which involved mango, hearts of palm, and avocado, along with lettuces, of course, and — rather surprisingly, but very successfully — pickled vegetables and olives. It was dressed with coconut vinegar, I think. I eat mango so rarely, it always takes me back to Tahiti where I first tasted good ones. (With memories like that, why bother tasting mediocre ones?)

Our fried chicken came with sautéed banana, yuca, and a delicious grated-carrot-and-pot-greens combination. The chicken itself was generously coated with a very light batter and fried just right in, I'm sure of it, palm or coconut oil. I don't know what you call this cuisine, other than wonderful. We'll be back.

Assyrtiko, Atlantis (Santorini), ?2011: very pleasant, fresh, balanced, soft, crisp

• Miss Ollie's, 901 Washington St, Oakland, California; (510) 285-6188

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DINNER WAS ACROSS the bay in San Francisco in what you might call an upscale trattoria, the casual little brother of a more ambitious Italian restaurant next door. Here I opened with another salad, arugula and Parmesan with a few lettuce leaves thrown in, nicely dressed.

There were a good many very interesting things on the menu, but I wasn't in the mood to go exploring. I settled for this flatiron steak, nicely grilled and salted, on a bed of arugula, with grilled asparagus on the side, the whole thing drizzled with an anchovy vinaigrette. It was a delicious dish, and if the place weren't so infernally loud it would have been a marvelous evening.

Pigato, Cascina Feipu dei Massaratti (Liguria), 2010: modest, pleasant, clean;
Barbera/Dolcetto, Cascina degli Ulivi (Piemonte), 2010: rich, deep, nicely blended, going a little woody at the end

• Barbacco Eno Trattoria, 220 California Street, San Francisco; 415.955.1919

New Orleans ; dinner with Donna

Eastside Road, May 6, 2013—

SINCE WE FAST today, I'll catch you up on the last couple of days. Saturday we were in Berkeley to see two Tom Stoppard plays, with only a couple of hours between — where to fortify ourselves for the intellectual strain?

Lindsey'd heard of a place downtown, so we gave it a try. It turns out to be very much a young person's hangout, and it was incredibly noisy — the dB meter was just under the red, at 90, much of the time. Nor was the menu that much to my taste. But you can't go wrong with Jambalaya, chicken, ham, and andouille with rice and quite a piquant sauce.

As a first course I had the house salad: lettuces with tomatoes, raisins, and candied pecan halves in a fig-balsamic vinaigrette. Sweet, crunchy, off our usual trajectory, but very nice. Lindsey's pecan pie looked authentic, and the teeny bit I had tasted right too.

Riesling, Mirassou, 2011; Zinfandel, Rancho Zabaco "Dancing Bull," 2011: both sound, good varietal, unexceptional

• Angeline's Louisiana Kitchen, 2261 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley; 510.548.6900

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THEN YESTERDAY, AFTER a nice seven-mile hike out at the coast, we were at a party in a comfortable home in Healdsburg, where the guest of honor was fêted for an important anniversary of employment. There were ten of us at table, of whom three have been active as professional chefs and two as winemakers. Thank heaven for the few of us credentialled merely as onlookers, imbibers, and critics!

The centerpiece at table was that fine plate you see at the top of this post: a platter of halibut steaks simply grilled over wood and flavored with salt, pepper, and olive oil. Scattered atop, sliced fresh tomatoes, the first we've had this year, very welcome.

On the side, raita sauces — one based on cow's-milk yogurt, one on goat's-milk — and fine pan-sautéed whole little potatoes and this fine pan of sweet red and yellow peppers done à la grecque, which is one of my favorite things, too simple to be one of the Hundred Plates perhaps, but surely an honorary appointee.

And dessert! Lindsey's almond tarte! What a pleasure!

Champagne, Veuve Clicquot; Riesling, Kuentz-Bas (Alsace), 2010;
Viña Godeval Godello, Cosecha (Spain), 2010;
white Rhone blend, "Madame Preston," Preston of Dry Creek, 2011.
Very nice wines; and very nice conversation at table too. Thanks, Alta!

That bean salad

Eastside Road, May 3, 2013—

THIS IS THAT SALAD: white beans, canned tuna, chopped onion; fresh marjoram, parsley, and savory from the garden; olive oil, salt. You cook the beans, then you add the other things, in the right proportions. It's pretty hard to go wrong, I think.

Green salad afterward.

Cheap Pinot grigio

Artichokes

Eastside Road, May 2, 2013—

HOW EASILY WE forget: but then, when we're in one place, we're no longer in the other…

For two weeks in January, in Rome, I had artichokes nearly every day. I thought I'd never forget those wonderful artichokes, and could hardly wait to get home to our own.

Then came nearly a month in Spain and Portugal, and the new obsession was bacalhao. All thoughts of artichokes completely disappeared. When we got home, the artichoke plants looked like foreign objects, imposing but a little weird, and certainly demanding.

Today we had the first three of them, one violet, two globes. I simply cut them in half lengthwise after trimming them, rubbed them with lemon juice, and simmered them in salted water to cover, with the halved lemon keeping them company.

Lindsey added a bit of lemon juice to some mayonnaise — she buys it in tubes when we're in The Netherlands, Zaanse mayonnaise, very nice stuff. And that was that. Next time, in a couple of days, we'll have a few small ones, probably browned with garlic in olive oil. Close to alla giudia, perhaps.

Also on tonight's menu: delicious white bean and tuna and onion salad, and then the green salad, with lemon juice rather than the usual vinegar in the vinaigrette. And a bowl of applesauce, because we've got to start emptying the Mason jars, looks like a good fruit set again this year…

Cheap Pinot grigio

Three Squares

Santa Rosa, California, April 30, 2013—

A CURIOUS WAY to serve a Caesar Salad, don't you think? In fact the salad itself was very close to authentic: Romaine, egg, Parmesan, anchovy, croutons. But the salad was not prepared, merely set forth as its ingredients. Fortunately knife and fork were at hand; it was the work of a moment to chop the thing up. But why not do that in the kitchen?

Oh well: the Pozole was more or less blended in the kitchen. But it was a little bit revisionist: raw sliced radishes, shredded cabbage, toasted taco strips, and some kind of farmer's cheese were tossed onto the bowl of red chili-and-tomato flavored stew. Very little hominy, and meat whose flavor seemed just a bit off to me. An odd dish, I thought, which would have been quite satisfying had the meat been better. But not Pozole, I think.

But I had blueberry pie for dessert — a favorite pie of mine, one I get maybe every three years. It was just the way I remember blueberry pie used to be, and the vanilla ice cream on the side was very nice.

White blend, Sonoma coast; Zinfandel, Limerick Lane, ?2011: Nice authentic old vines-type regional wine

• Three Squares Café, 205 Fifth Street, Santa Rosa; 707-545-4300