The Dinner Files

I defrosted some of the country sausage I ordered from our meat CSA yesterday. I formed it into patties, fried them up in a cast iron pan, and then made caraway-scented red cabbage in that same pan with all the yummy sausage fat in it.

To tell you the truth we’ve had some mixed thoughts about the pork we’ve received so far. Don’t get me wrong, it is delicious. The best tasting pork I’ve ever had. But it has been a bit tough, which is to be expected from an animal that lived a life in which it got to walk around the beautiful hills of West Marin. You build up some muscle doing that. The tougher meat, however, is something we’re still getting used to (part of it is figuring out how to adjust recipes – some cuts need to be cooked faster, others need more time – and I haven’t yet mastered that balancing act).

The thing about sausage, though, is it doesn’t matter much how tough that meat was before you ground it up, all you’re left with is the amazingly deep, pork-y flavor and all the almost sweet fatty juiciness. It melded quite nicely with the cabbage, too.

Ernie ate his sausage Minnesota-state-fair-style: on a stick. He speared the sausage patty with his fork, held it up, and ate from there. I knew I should stop him, because it’s not very impressive table manners. But he was being neat about it and seemed to be enjoying himself so much I didn’t say a word.

After three days of eating every meal in restaurants, and having the majority of them be for professional assessment or a signature event at which I ate what was served me, I reveled in returning to home and farm box. My dashing husband officially “tolerates” zucchini, but noted that the summer squash we get from the farm “actually tastes good” and wondered aloud “how do they do that?” How indeed. I turned some into a zucchini frittata/Spanish tortilla/omelet situation (thanks for the suggestion Luisa!) and sauteed some corn with a stray jalapeno I found in the hydrator.

It’s not official. No calender or national holiday marked it. But the sun was out, the sky was blue, the whole family played hooky with a road trip to the Russian River to visit friends that ended with a pair of wet underwear drying on the backseat because we forgot Ernie’s bathing suit, and we came home to the box from our CSA full of sweet corn and tomatoes. If that’s not summer, I don’t know what is.

So dinner was simple. Boiled corn with butter and salt. Sliced tomatoes with basil and salt. Red onion sandwiches with cream cheese on extra-seedy Russian rye bread. Cherries from the farm box for dessert. It was a bit spare, perhaps, but we had dined on brilliant homemade tortilla soup with more toppings than one bowl could hold (Mexican pasillas, Oaxacan pasillas, jalapenos, green onion, crema, cracklings, cotija, avocado, and cilantro) under a canopy of redwoods before retiring to a wooded glen for a crazy flan-on-chocolate cake concoction (I know! Genius, right?) and perfectly bitter espresso.

If I ever get jaded about living in California, a day like today knocks it right out of me. The Russian River, its redwoods, the shining California light, a ride across the Golden Gate Bridge, ripe tomatoes in June, cherries so good I want to eat them (unless pretty much perfect, they don’t interest me at all)… I love it all with abandon. A day like today pushes Prop 13, collapsed salmon fisheries, and fog-socked 4ths of July right out of my mind.

My Very Tall Cousin Sam came to dinner last night. The evening was marked by two big events. First, Ernie let go a bit too soon while showing off on his trapeze for Sam. He gashed his head on the pea gravel and bled profusely. Sam, who was in town for a job interview, carried Screaming Ernie up the back stairs to the kitchen trying simultaneously to comfort the child and, understandably, not to get blood all over his nice clothes. Once we got the blood cleaned up we all realized the cut was small. Ernie was back outside with Very Tall Cousin Sam within three minutes.

Second, I perfected the spring vegetable couscous (cuckoo!) that has haunted me lo! these many days. We ate it with grilled peppers and spicy Italian sausage from Boccalone, a cured meat CSA in the Bay Area (what won’t they think of next…).

We had it again, this time with green garlic from our “farm box.” Even better. It’s a new family favorite, although, truth be told, Ernie preferred the long-stemmed strawberries that came in the same box: “Mama, look! I made up a game! You spin the strawberry and take a bite! Look at all my bites!”

Messy, but at least he’s eating his fruits and vegetables.

Our “farm box,” as Ernie calls it, arrived this afternoon. It also had salad greens (whisked away to the refrigerator a.s.a.p.), kiwis (given away to neighbor who LUVS kiwis and gets a smaller, kiwi-less box), and a paper bag I guessed what was in and hid for after dinner.

At the suggestion of our kiwi-loving neighbor, I made a spring vegetable couscous (or, as my mom often calls it, “coucou”–yes, she pronounces it like the iconic Swiss clock; no, I don’t know why). I used the big, Israeli style couscous (are you hearing “cuckoo” in your head when you read that like I am?) cooked in chicken broth, added shelled English peas, chopped snap peas, and the fava beans I garnered from the 14 pods in our box. We topped the whole thing with chopped spring onion tossed with olive oil, lemon juice and zest, and chopped cilantro. Very tasty. Needed… something. Perhaps that feta cheese the kiwi-lover suggested adding and I forgot about until just this moment? Yes! That’s it! Next time I’ll pay attention and write up amounts and times and other recipe-like details. (Or, feel free to experiment yourself and report back.)

That paper bag I squirreled away? Beautiful, luscious, brilliantly red strawberries. Have I already discussed my dislike of strawberries? Yeah. I don’t like ‘em. Not at all. Not even when they’re really good. These were beautiful, though. And they smelled a lot. I can only assume they would smell great to people who actually would like to ingest a strawberry. A fact borne out by Ernie’s avid consumption of all 10 strawberries. My dashing husband just let him go at it and forsook all claim to any berries. What a martyr.

Ernie doesn’t like to smile for pictures anymore. His new mode is either to run away when a camera appears or to stare glumly into the lens and look directly into your soul until you run away. I got this shot with maternal teasing. It wasn’t right, but it had to be done. Now the grandparents have something to show their friends when they look at the internets.

… um, kill each other with knives?

Just kidding. Dashing Husband and I cooked a lovely meal together last night. (There’s the silver lining of this broken-hand business.) He cut, I stirred. Ernie? He played with Baufix–his new German wooden toy obsession–in the dining room.

Behold! Our creation:

Yes, it looks a lot like the gratin from the other night. What can I say? We’re on a role. And we need to use the cool-weather and cold-storage crops we’re getting (along with lettuces and asparagus) from our CSA. This was sort of a bubble-n-squeak, I think. Leeks (2), green garlic (3), and cabbage (1 small) chopped and sautéed in an ample amount of butter (3 tablespoons?) and salt (1/2 teaspoon?) until tender, with a bit of homemade chicken broth (1/2 cup) added along the way. The chopped red potatoes (5) were stirred in, more salt added along with some freshly ground black pepper, and the whole thing thrown in a 375° oven. After about 30 minutes, when everything was tender, I made a command decision–with some slight initial reservation but eventual consensus from my co-cook–to top the whole thing with freshly shredded cheese (about 1 cup of mixed varieties found in our refrigerator–this is a time to use what you have) and stick it under the broiler to get dinner on the table. The cheese made the dish. On that, we agreed.

While that baked and I helped Ernie make a Baufix truck, Dashing Husband braised some red chard with anchovies and harissa:

SO DELICIOUS. Cut out the stalks of a bunch of red chard. Chop stalks and leaves separately. Sauté two minced oil-cured anchovy filets and any oil that cleaves unto them until more fragrant than they start out as. Add stalks and cook, stirring, until they’re a bit tender. Stir in a tablespoon or two of harissa and 1/2 cup water. Cook, stirring, a bit to combine everything. Stir in leaves and cook (covered) until delicious, which you’ll dedect by the meltingly tender texture of the leaves once they properly submit to the heat. Add salt to taste before the whole thing’s through.

Still under the weather plus my husband had a dinner meeting. You know what that means! More pasta for Ernie! Yes, my son’s fantasy of an all-pasta diet made headway last night as he dug into a bowl (well, three) of orecchiette with parmesan. Nothing else. Not in the fantasy. He’ll eat pasta with various sauces, but never as a first choice. No butter! No olive oil! Why are you ruining it? Just plain, cooked, dry pasta with grated parmesan. He prefers to grate the cheese himself. You know what? I prefer that too.

Our “farm box” arrived overflowing with delights, including the ever-popular “farm carrots” which were munched on during dinner preparation. Ernie pulled out some lovely golden chard when allowed to choose the vegetable we had for dinner. I then promptly over-hot-pepper-flaked it when sautéeing it with garlic and hot pepper flakes. “Too spicy” was Ernie’s assessment. I liked it, but had to agree.

Food writer tired. Food writer drank too. much. wine. Food writer had fun.

Two happy occurrences converged last night. First, the “farm box,” as my son calls it, arrived full of just the best produce I’ve ever eaten. I don’t know what they’re doing out there in Winters, CA but it’s working. In it were “farm carrots,” “farm cabbage,” and many other fruits and vegetables now saddled with “farm” as an adjective in our house. Why do we speak this way? Because Ernie will eat anything that’s “farm.” He is all about the farm and the farm box and the big bowl of farm kiwis sitting on the counter.

Speaking of, that bowl of kiwis is part of what I’m absolutely loving about the whole CSA thing. I never buy kiwis. They’re often not so good and, to be honest, even when they’re good they’re just okay in my opinion. That promising emerald green hue never really pays off with an equally “wow” flavor, am I wrong? But a big batch of them arrived in the farm box and Ernie downed two as a pre-dinner snack. He loves kiwis. Correction: he loves farm kiwis.

But I digress. The second happy occurrence was a visit from a friend’s cousin who, through regular visits to San Francisco over the years, has herself become a friend. She visits from Providence, RI (where she “teaches business majors enough philosophy to be able to chat at cocktail parties”) and finds the Bay Area to be a sort of paradise. Especially in March. The comparison, I’m led to believe, having never been to Providence, is quite striking.

So she loves this city and she also loves to eat. She finds food and meals a source of great pleasure and satisfaction, and so she is a delight to cook for. We put out some Carmondy cheese from Bellwether Farms, farm cauliflower (so sweet you just want to eat it plain–and by “you” I mean “I”), and peeled stems from the farm broccoli drizzled with tamari to nibble while I cooked. We sat down to a gratin of farm yellow finn potatoes with Italian fontina and a bit of prosciutto, the tiniest florettes of farm broccoli sautéed with garlic, and a salad of farm spinach and farm radicchio with backyard Meyer lemon dressing (made with juice from a lemon Ernie picked for me on command and the last bit of chopped preserved lemon I made from last year’s crop–this year’s batch is curing on the counter). We finished up with a dessert made of sliced oranges drizzled with a syrup made from their own zest, a bit of prosecco poured on top, and garnished with chopped bits of said semi-candied zest.

Could the dinner have used a steak? Yes and no. Yes, it would have been good. But no, we were pretty happy with the farm and agreed we didn’t miss the steak at all. Well, husband and guest agreed. Me, I would have liked just a bite or two of rib-eye. It might have off-set the wine a bit.

The other night finding something from which to make dinner was a bit of a scavenger hunt (hell, it took me into the yard!). Last night was the opposite problem. We picked up our CSA box last night. The bounty! We switched from the “medium” to the “large” box and were justly rewarded for our additional investment in Terra Firma Farms. Green garlic! Beets with greens attached! Our old friends the “farm carrots”! Oranges! Kiwis! Red cabbage! Cauliflower! Broccoli! Grapefruit! Sweet potatoes! Yellow Finn potatoes! Red kale! Rainbow chard! Frisée escarole! Baby spinach leaves! A giant leek! Really, it was all I had dreamed about. And more.I had never dreamed of red cabbage. I’d somehow forgotten about red cabbage. And rainbow chard. I prefer regular old green or “Swiss” chard, but when it shows up in a box unannounced, rainbow chard is very exciting.

But what to make? Well, the utter lack of pasta observed on Tuesday had led to the brief thought of risotto, with which I was too tired to deal. But the seed was planted. Green garlic and leek risotto it was–

with a side of braised beet greens.

Ernie ate three bowls of risotto because, as he never tires of informing me, “I like white rice, not brown rice. Mama, I don’t like brown rice. At school we have white rice. Why do we have brown rice at home? I like white rice.” Arg. Damn school and their damn lunches I don’t have to make but of which I vaguely disapprove.

In fairness to the tyke, however, he did grate the parmesan for the risotto. With tiny hands and a lack of true grating skill (dude, you need to press the cheese against the grater a bit, not just move it), grating the 1/2 cup+ needed took the lad awhile, but he stuck with it. He did, however, keep my expectations nice and low by warning me several times during the process, “I might not finish it all.” And at one point proclaimed, “I’m going to take a little break and have a glass of ice-cold water.” (We recently moved some non-glass cups to the open shelf under the “island”–read: Ikea movable counter–so he can get his own water now. His is now superlatively hydrated.)