The Dinner Files

I had the supreme privilege of being asked to go on down to Pomona College and regurgitate what little I’ve managed to figure out about food writing to some very bright undergrads for a few hours last night. What they usually do Wednesday nights from 7-9:50 is have serious discussions about race and gender and politics in their food studies class. What they did last night was eat a food product they did not recognize and attempt to describe it. I then rewarded them with chocolate. But then I made them describe that, which probably took some of the fun away for them. And I made them try and describe it to someone who’d never had it in an effort to help that person figure out if they would like to try it. So the term “chocolatey” was out. But man did they come up with some good stuff. Their young, fresh palates even figured out, basically, what the mystery food was.

Want to join in the fun? Track down some gjetost* and write a sentence or two describing it. Not your opinion of it. It. If you want to throw in your opinion that’s fine, I suppose, but that’s the easy part. If you’d like to share it with the class, I’m sure we’d all appreciate it.

So that was me torturing others. I flew back today and had lunch with a friend. But now I wonder: Is she friend or foe? She took me to 900 Grayson where she suggested I order a Demon Lover. Since the Demon Lover is fried chicken on a waffle with cream gravy, I, being no fool, ordered it. Oh. My. God. She was right. She warned me. It will haunt my dreams. I will die wishing I’d eaten more of them, I’m sure of it. Crunchy and creamy and a bit spicy and just so much fat and flavor without being greasy or overly unctuous and coating your mouth in the unpleasant way and the chicken was so tender deep inside that spicy crunchy coating and there was so much of the coating, which is always the best part of fried chicken, and and and…. I couldn’t eat the whole thing. I just couldn’t. I wanted to. But I couldn’t. So I took about a third of it home. I meant to share it with my family, I really did. But I only lasted about an hour and a half in the house with it alone. I wasn’t hungry. In fact, I was still quite full. But I had to eat it. It was sitting on the counter, calling to me.

How did it know my name?

Long story short: I skipped dinner tonight. No little salad. No bit of toast. Just skipped it. I may never eat again. Not, that is, until I can get my hands on another Demon Lover.

* Once again, wikipedia is off. I’ve been to Norway. I’ve seen “gjetost” on the label in the stores.

Proving to one and all that halibut kebabs really are a fabulous casual dinner party option, I made them last night for my cousins. One thing I will do in the future: sweat the pancetta a bit before making the kebabs so it crisps up a bit more under the broiler.

Before dinner we had pimentos de padron, some cheese, sweet and spicy peppers, and olives. And wine. Plenty of wine.

We love brussels sprouts at our house. Love them! Roasted, sauteed, steamed, and in a soup. I browned a few of the garlic sausages I made Sunday (just using smoked sausage like andouille would have worked very well too), cut them into pieces while I brought 4 cups chicken broth and about a pound of yellow finn potatoes (cut into bite-size pieces) to a boil, added a pound of trimmed and halved little brussels sprouts, 1/2 teaspoon caraway seeds, and the cut-up sausage. Simmered everything until the vegetables were tender.

A few friends came over, we ground meat, rinsed intestines, and stuffed one into the other. Four of us made three kinds of sausage. I made Toulouse, or French garlic sausage. There was also an onion-sage-red wine combo and wild boar. No kidding. Wild boar hunted in Sonoma county, ground up and mixed with cumin, sherry, smoked paprika, and plenty of orange. Awesome. The advantage of group sausage making (besides multiple hands for detangling intestines, stuffing, and fetching various things with clean hands while others’ hands are pork-fat covered) is that everyone gets a share in each kind of sausage. Here’s my share:

Garlic sausage

4 1/2 lbs. pork shoulder

1 lb. pork fat

3 Tbsp. kosher salt

4 cloves garlic, minced

1 tsp. freshly ground black pepper

1/4 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg

Cut pork and fat into 1-inch pieces. Toss with salt and chill overnight. Toss in garlic, pepper, and nutmeg. Grind on a 3/8-inch grinder. Chill another 15 minutes. Grind again. Stuff into hog intestines or, much easier, form into patties. Chill and use within four days or freeze for up to four months.

I cooked some of the garlic sausage for dinner (with roasted potatoes and cabbage & onions). We started with some pimentos de padron, it was a lovely Sunday supper. We ate late, after walking up to the community garden by our house. The sun had set and the garden was decorated with dozens of jack-o-lanterns. A scary scarecrow tortured delighted children in the back corner before rewarding them with candy. It was beautiful and charming and full of neighbors loving where they live.

Dinner was pizza at Piccino. We sat outside–yes it’s been just that nice–and watched people arrive for a Halloween party across the street. Pirates seemed to be a very popular costume. We ate out because it was just so lovely out and reports predict an end to this glorious summer weather sometime soon. Every day the prediction is it will all end tomorrow. And yet it doesn’t end. I know I’m not going to get any sympathy for this, but it gets exhausting enjoying the last of the good weather every day…. But I digress. We ate out because of the weather but also because of how I spent the afternoon:

Ernie and I baked cupcakes for the cake walk at a field trip fund raising festival at his school today. And public schools need every cupcake they can get. So we baked four dozen. Then I let him chose how he wanted to decorate them from this awesome book “Hello Cupcake” my aunt gave me. It has fairly easy decorating ideas that use cut up candy and some simple piping. We decided on the spider theme.

It seemed reasonable. Melt some chocolate, draw little spiders a la the template in the book, use M+Ms as the bodies…. And I suppose if Ernie had the use of both hands (his right arm is in a cast from a run-in with some monkey bars), or if it hadn’t been hot enough out to keep the chocolate from re-melting 2 seconds after I took the spiders out of the freezer, or if I’d remembered what a pain in the ass boiled frosting is it might have all gone as expected. Instead we had a lot of broken spider legs, one bored kindergartener, and one mom swearing off all future cake walk contributions.

My solace: Ernie plans to try and win a plate of our cupcakes this afternoon.

My concern: It’s nice again today. Nice enough to melt spiders left in the sun.

Yum. Shell beans, collard greens, and turnips greens cooked with a bit of chorizo and garlic in some homemade chicken broth. It was my version of Melissa Clark’s tempting recipe from this week’s New York Times. Corn bread on the side.

Once in awhile I give private cooking lessons. It’s a word of mouth thing and, every so often, I donate one to a silent auction for a good cause. Last night I taught some lovely people how to cook various fish recipes (as well as a better way to chop garlic and herbs, how to hold a knife, and some other basics that can make a *huge* difference for the average home cook). We had a good time and felt terribly virtuous because we were having a good time for Obama–they bought me at a fundraiser.

Shocking, isn’t it, that an over-educated San Francisco resident like myself would be pro-Obama? In many ways it’s a very pleasant little bubble that we have here on the edge of the country. One major advantage, besides the amazing produce and other foodstuffs, is that no one bothers to buy ad time in this market. If we want to see the political ads we have to search them out on youtube. I know what an advantage this is because I’ve made the mistake of visiting my family in Minnesota around Halloween in the past. The ads are relentless, punishing, mind-numbing, crazy-making. I don’t know how people in the swing states stand it.

So with hope in our hearts we cooked halibut and bread kebabs (a fabulous quick dinner that serves equally well for a weeknight meal or a casual dinner party) as a little snack to get us started. Then we dove into salt-crusted striped bass, spaghetti with anchovies, and greens with currants and pine nuts. Just a note on the striped bass. It’s hard to find 3 lb. striped bass. The more common 2-lb. specimens work just fine, but only need about 20-25 minutes in the oven.

I felt bad we weren’t doing a dessert. It ends up the concern that we would miss that little something sweet at the end of the meal was completely unfounded. I have never–ever–seen a candy drawer like they had. It put my mother’s stash to shame:

Who is the family chicken champion? The smart money is on my mom. And my dashing husband can do some serious damage to a bird when he puts his mind to it. There is, however, a young pretender in our midst, as evidenced by Ernie’s plate after dinner pictured above.

Both wings, both drumsticks, and half a breast. Devoured. Systematically. And the boy gnaws on those bones. He crunches into the wing tips, and rips charred skin with his teeth. He picks out stubborn bits of meat with his fingers and pulls joints open in search of hidden morsels.

What inspired such fervent eating by Ernie? Roast chicken with arugula bread salad a la Zuni Cafe.

And let me tell you, I put my “you can do anything you want with a properly raised chicken” theory to the test and cooked the be-jesus out of that Clark Summit Farms bird. What happened is the chicken was done so I took it out of the oven, turned the oven off, and headed out to pick up Ernie from school. When I came home I couldn’t find the chicken. Where could I have put it? Surely nowhere outside of the kitchen. But where was it? My kitchen is pretty small. Not a lot of places to hide a hot, cooked chicken. An in-depth search revealed that I had left it in the oven. The turned-off but still plenty hot oven. For an extra 45 minutes. Oh my, I thought, this won’t be good.

Internets, it could not have been more delicious and tender and juicy.
Let it be known: well raised + pre-salting = chicken magic.

I had to eat early in order to get to UC Berkeley by 7. Well, in a seat and ready to listen at 7. That time between “arriving” in Berkeley and actually being at a specific place is what always gets me. Parking, walking to the building, potentially having trouble finding the room… is why I need to leave an hour to get to Berkeley events. An hour for a 15-20 minute drive. Why so much wiggle room? Because I find being late physically unpleasant. It makes me so nervous I have a visceral reaction.

So I ate early and by myself. I had squirreled away a few slices of the abalone from last night (as well as some of the sweet potato fries), thought ahead and bought a soft roll from Acme Bakery at the farmers market in the morning, slathered on some mayo, layered in some tomato slices and baby arugula, sprinkled on some salt, and counted myself lucky indeed.

Speaking of the Ferry Plaza farmers market (oh wait, weren’t we?)… I was there yesterday for the smaller, more manageable version of the fresh fine food cluster f*** that happens on Tuesdays. The crowds and insanity on Saturdays tend to keep me away unless circumstances demand something from Fatted Calf. Quite frankly, the whole CSA membership in Terra Firma Farm has dramatically cut down on my farmers market visits–the house is already full of organic local produce. But I do find myself occasionally in need of items Terra Firma doesn’t grow or, as was the case yesterday, in need of pictures of various seasonal fruits and vegetables.

I went for pictures, and, $43.40 later, I left with a bag containing the following:

The breakdown goes something like this:

Italian Loaf 3.70

Sandwich bun .70

Shelling beans 9.00

Brussels sprouts 6.00

Pomegranates 4.00

Pimentos de padron 20.00 (with a bag of hot peppers thrown in for “free”)

Granted, I could have brought the total down significantly if I could have resisted the pimentos de padron. But I’m human. I can never resist the pimentons de padron. They are $6 a bag or 4 for $20. I know math and it is a better deal to drop the $20. We all love them at my house and every time I eat them I think of a gray day in Madrid when I stopped into a bar with two friends. We ordered some mushrooms a la plancha that made me re-think the very nature of mushrooms and those small glasses of beer you can get in Spain that are so perfect for a little afternoon snack break. The owner brought over a plate of pimentos de padron, explaining they had just come into season and were from his native Galicia. Oh. My. God. I just couldn’t believe how green and grassy they tasted, with just the teeniest tiniest bit of heat, and how the crunch of the coarse grains of salt made them taste all the grassier.

So I spend the money, eat the peppers, and am grateful for good friends and sweet memories of a time when we were young, unfettered by children, and dropped into a bar in Madrid on a Wednesday afternoon.

Of abalone or your attention. All I did was fry it up again. I know, I know. I was going to get all crazy and stir-fry it with lemongrass or something. But it’s so good floured and fried in butter. I just couldn’t resist. I did, however, put it on a bed of arugula dressed with a very lemony, garlicky dressing (2 Tbsp. meyer lemon juice, 1 Tbsp. olive oil, a clove minced garlic, 1/4 tsp. salt, 1/8 tsp ground mustard, 1/8 tsp. freshly ground black pepper).

What’s that other thing on the plate you ask? Oven-baked sweet potato fries, that’s what. They are pretty darn tasty. Just please, cut them evenly or you’ll have burnt fries and mushy un-browned fries and you’ll just be sad.

I made dinner while listening to Terry Gross interview Michael Pollan on Fresh Air. Except for the dusting of flour on the abalone and the various seasonings (salt, black pepper, cayenne), this meal was pretty god damn local. Well, regional. And somewhat removed, or at least side-stepping, the industrial food system. Arugula and sweet potatoes from our CSA, olive oil from outside Sacramento (sent directly from the grower/press), butter from Marin county (bought at local co-op), lemons from our yard, and abalone snatched from a wild and one imagines content life along the underwater sea cliffs of Mendocino. Oh, ethical consumerism really is a honeypot. So sweet. So satisfying.

And the radio tells me it’s good! That’s what makes it so sticky!

Seriously, though, if you missed the interview, check it out online–Pollan is a master at explaining just how screwy our ag policy in the U.S. is and why and how we need to to at least start to fix it.