The Dinner Files

It’s five where I am. It’s officially cocktail hour. I’m going to go pour myself a gin and tonic. I’d like to say I’m going to sip it gracefully on a veranda, but the truth is I’ll probably suck it down and make a second one before I get outside and get my bare feet in that cool grass. It’s been that kind of week. Oh wait, it’s only Tuesday.

I was outed recently. Outed as a strawberry hater. (That is a funny thing to write on this, the opening day of Pride weekend here in San Francisco – and yes, I know it has a longer official name that specifies the people who are proud, but to me it is simply Pride and it is tons of fun but oh my how it messes up traffic!)

People were over for brunch and someone had brought strawberries. I had, in fact planned that by asking her to bring fruit. It was late May in San Francisco and “fruit” almost directly translates into “strawberries” since they tend to be really good around then and no one is sick of them yet (the strawberry season here runs from April until the end of time, from what I can tell). By asking her to bring fruit, everyone could have strawberries but I wouldn’t have to deal with strawberries or make something with them that, being a hater, I wouldn’t end up eating.

Another friend mentioned my hatred and the cat was out of the bag. Man, do people like to gawk in amazement at someone who doesn’t like strawberries. I’ve mentioned my dislike here before, but people can’t process it. It makes no sense to them. I try to emphasize the positive for them by pointing out that it means that they can eat more of the strawberries before us. Sometimes that bright and shiny object works, sometimes it doesn’t.

You know what else I don’t like? Tropical fruit. Seriously. It all tastes perfumey and sweet and, basically, everything everyone else loves about it I don’t care for.

Except mangoes. I used to dislike mangoes, too. Or, rather, I assumed I disliked them because they seemed just like all that other mushy sweet stuff I didn’t like. I’m not sure I’d ever had one. Then I was invited to a Parisian librarian’s apartment for dinner and she served mango for dessert. It was offered as though manna from heaven and I like to represent the civilized side of Americans when I’m abroad, so I ate it. It was a sweltering day during a summer that was one giant heat wave (punctuated by the random metro bombing to keep everyone on their toes) and we were crammed around her tiny table in her tiny apartment decked out in Ikea furntiture which seemed terribly modern and cool since we didn’t have Ikea in the Bay Area yet and there were traditional non-deodorant-wearing French people involved. Let’s say that the aromatic nature of the mango was as welcome as its ability to be sweet and smooth and cooling. The mango, it made a good impression.

My dashing husband took us all to Hawaii for my birthday. We got rest, we got fun, we got shave ice. We also spent a whole lot of time together, the three of us, and it was delightful to remember how very much I like these two fellows who live in my house.

Oh, and we ate mangoes. Lots of them. Plain and in lassi form. Cut up a mango, put it in a blender, add some yogurt, squirt in some lime (or sour orange) juice. Whirl it up. Is it hot out? Add a handful of ice cubes.

We’ve had some sardines in the house this spring. How long could they possibly keep themselves out of a dish of pasta?

Sardine red pepper pasta

The sweet silkiness of the peppers and the salty silkiness of the sardines do a lovely little dance with the tangle of noodles.

1 pound spaghetti

Salt

3 Tablespoons olive oil

3 cloves garlic

1/2 teaspoon red chile pepper flakes (optional)

1 jar (12-ounce) roasted red peppers

6 or so fillets of home-cured or skinless canned sardines

Freshly ground black pepper

Bring a pot of water to a boil. Add enough salt so it tastes like the sea. Boil the pasta until just tender to the bite. Drain the pasta.

Meanwhile, heat the oil in a saute pan over medium high heat. Add garlic and chile flakes and let them sizzle until the garlic turns golden. Add the roasted peppers and stir, using the spoon or spatula to break up the larger pieces of peppers into bite-size pieces.

Add sardines and stir, again, breaking them into pieces if you need to. Cook, reducing heat to maintain a simmer, until everything is heated through and the flavors blend, about 10 minutes.

Divide pasta between the serving bowls or plates and top with the “sauce.” Garnish with black pepper.

Today is my birthday. It’s a big one. If I didn’t have a slew of insanely long-lived Norwegians behind me, I could safely assume I’m at my half-way point. Like the one pictured above, it involves a “4.” Now it just has a zero on the end. I have a feeling I’m supposed to find this distressing in some way, but that’s not quite how it’s hitting me. I’m feeling just as psyched – but blessedly less manic – as I did at that fabulous pancake breakfast 36 years ago (thanks for the awesome party, Mom!).

My dashing husband and super-excited son have swept me away to celebrate. See you next week.

Grill bread is sort of like a pretzel and sort of like bread and a lot like crack. I dare you to take just one bite. One friend of mine – who particularly relishes its salty pretzel-like quality – once begged me not to make it. She was on a reducing plan and found the siren call of the grill bread too much to resist. On her, I take pity. For the rest of you: Enjoy.

Grill Bread

Make the dough a day ahead of time, stretch it out ahead of time and cover or simply stretch it right before you plop it on the grill.

1 teaspoon active dry yeast

1 cup milk

6 1/2 – 7 cups all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon kosher salt

Olive oil for brushing

Coarse salt for sprinkling (don’t kid yourself, this is *not* optional)

Black onion seeds (nigelia) for sprinkling, optional

Dissolve yeast in 1 1/2 cups lukewarm water. Stir in 1 cup lukewarm milk.

Stir in flour and salt until a dough forms (this is great to do in a standing mixer with a dough hook, if you have one). If doing this by hand, you may need to turn the dough out onto a counter and knead it to work in all the flour.

Lightly oil a large bowl and put the dough in it. Cover with a clean kitchen towel and let sit to let dough rise until doubled in bulk, 8 hours or overnight.

Punch down the dough and let it sit another hour.

Meanwhile, brush your cooking grate with vegetable oil. Heat your grill to medium to medium-hot. You should be able to hold your hand about an inch over the cooking grate for two minutes second or so before it just feels way too hot. Don’t worry too much about this, however. Grill bread isn’t fussy.

Divide the dough into ten pieces. Work with one piece at a time and stretch it into a disk of some sort – oblong is cool, round is fine, crazy-shaped is always popular. Lay whatever shaped dough disk you have on the hot grill. Repeat with remaining pieces of dough.

Once all dough is on the grill, brush each disk with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and black onion seeds, if you’re using them. Cook until grill marks form and the disks release easily from the grill. I’m not going to give you a time frame because I know nothing about your grill or fire-making skills or how windy and cooled off it is on your balcony where the grill is. This could take 5 minutes or 15 – but that is not a time frame to follow! Just hang with the bread a bit, when it releases easily and has grill marks, flip it. Flip each grill bread and brush the cooked side with olive oil and sprinkle with salt.

Cook until grill marks form on the second side and grill breads are cooked through. Serve hot or at least warm.

It may not be as green as real pesto – the kind made with basil and pine nuts and so forth – but it is awfully green, all the same. Toss it with hot pasta, as is the way with pesto, or use as a sauce on grilled chicken or fish (it is completely and utterly yummers on grilled salmon), or use as a dressing on a pasta salad. I have done all of these to great satisfaction.

In the interest of full disclosure, I got the idea for this “pesto” at an event hosted by the Walnut Board. Yes, things like that go down.*  The walnut people’s people’s assistants invite people like little old me to come up to Napa and eat walnut-laden foods and listen to all-walnut talks and be generally wined and dined and walnuted and put up in places that iron the sheets, all in the fervent hope that we will write something about walnuts. Funny thing is, I like walnuts a lot and am fully aware of how chock-full of omega-3s they are. The other funny thing is that the best recipe I took away from the whole thing was “zucchini mint pesto” but made with way less mint than used here and, obviously, with walnuts. As I was eating it I thought the heretical thought, “this is good, but it would be way better with pistachios.”

And so it is.

Zucchini mint pesto

By the way, this pesto oxidizes (turns brown) just like the real thing, so cover it with olive oil or cover with plastic wrap by pressing the wrap directly onto the surface of the sauce.

2 medium zucchini

10 – 12 sprigs of mint

1 small clove garlic

1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup shelled pistachios

1/3 cup grated Parmesan or Pecorino

Chop zucchini and put in a blender or food processor. Pick leaves off the sprigs of mint and add them to the zucchini, tearing any larger leaves into smaller pieces if you’re so inclined.

Chop the garlic and throw it in along with the oil and salt. Whirl until a more or less smooth paste forms – this will take a minute or two of running the blender, so be a bit patient.

Add the pistachios and cheese and whirl until smooth again, another minute or two. Taste and add more salt to taste, if you like. Use fairly quickly or cover (plastic wrap or waxed paper or parchment paper pressed to the surface). You can keep it at room temperature for a bit while you prepare the rest of the food or chill up to two days.

For quite some time I did not understand the clafouti. Cherries (or other fruit) baked in a batter that results in a cross between a baked pancake and a tart and a custard? What’s with that? Something clicked when I finally made one myself – the combination of ease and deliciousness snapped together in my head and the clafouti became my go-to dessert during cherry season.

Cherry clafouti

Use any fruit you like, but cherries are traditional.

1 pound cherries

3 eggs

1 cup milk

1/2 cup flour

1/3 cup sugar

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon vanilla

Powdered sugar for garnish (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 and butter a baking dish in the 9 x 13 family – although a bit smaller than that is great. While the oven heats up, settle in and pit the cherries. I like to pit them over the baking dish so all their juices end up in the dessert.

Whisk or whirl in a blender the eggs and milk. Add flour, sugar, salt, and vanilla and whisk or blend until smooth. Pour the batter over the cherries.

Bake until batter is set throughout and the edges and top are browning, about an hour.

Let sit a few minutes. Cut into pieces and sprinkle with powdered sugar, if you like. The powdered sugar really dresses up this humble dish quite a bit.

Whenever my dashing husband and I find ourselves in the happy position of being able to go out for a quick meal together – which, let’s be honest, just isn’t that often – we head over to Piccino an almost embarrassing percentage of the time. It’s close, it’s easy, it’s delicious, it’s no big deal while also being insanely pleasant.

We darted over there for an early dinner the other night when our son was at a friend’s house for his own last-minute dinner plans.

One thing I love about their salads is they are never quite what you expect, despite the ample menu description. I suppose this would annoy some people, but it fits my eating out strategy perfectly. I eat a lot of good food. Or, rather, a lot of the food I eat is good. I don’t worry too much about whether any given dish is going to be good – at this point I’m often looking to be surprised, if only a bit, when I eat out. This salad did that. Who, as my dad might say, would have thought?

Warm asparagus and cabbage salad

The key to the success of this dish is to use a cast iron frying pan. It gets nice and hot and gives the cabbage and asparagus a bit of a charred edge.

1 egg

3 shallots

Vegetable oil

1/2 head Savoy cabbage, chopped or shredded

1 bunch asparagus, trimmed and sliced on the diagonal

2 teaspoon lemon juice

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Put the egg in a pot and cover with water. bring to a boil, cover, take off the heat and let sit 14 minutes. Drain and peel the egg under cool running water. Set aside.

Peel shallots and slice them.

Heat a thick layer (almost 1/4 inch) of vegetable oil in a cast iron pan over high heat. Add shallots and fry until they are browned and stop sizzling so swiftly. Lift shallots out of the oil and drain on a layer of paper towels. Set shallots aside. Pour out any excess oil from the pan.

Return pan, with its now-scant covering of oil, to the heat. Add cabbage, sprinkle with about 1/2 teaspoon salt and cook, stirring frequently, until it wilts and starts to brown. Lift cabbage out of the pan and transfer to a wide shallow bowl.

Add asparagus to the pan, sprinkle with salt and cook, stirring often, until tender and starting to char on the edges. Add to the cabbage, sprinkle with lemon juice, and toss to combine. Taste and add salt and pepper to taste.

Add fried shallots and toss to combine. Divide onto serving plates or serve family style – but first finely chop or shred the egg and use it to garnish the salad.