The Dinner Files

My dashing husband calls these concotions – of rice and beans topped with salsa and pretty much anything he can scrounge in the kitchen thrown in for good measure – “thunder bowls.” He picked up the term when we were traveling in New Mexico and West Texas. Why thunder bowl? My theory is that they are named after the thunderous clap of a fart such a meal can create.

He made me this thunder bowl for lunch the other day. He heated up leftover short grain brown rice that had been cooked in chicken broth and some chickpeas. While those warmed up, he threw together a salsa fresca from all the tomatoes sitting around and chopped a perfectly ripe and amazingly delicious avocado. It was a reminder that sometimes some crap sitting around in the fridge or on the counter can make a crazy delicious meal. It also reminded me of how perfectly lovely it is to have someone cook for you. As I like to tell people who express nerves or concern about inviting me to dinner or otherwise cooking for me: everything tastes better when you didn’t have to make it and people hardly ever cook for me, so it’s a total (and much appreciated!) treat.

We started with these:

Lake trout, two fillets sprinkled with salt and pepper and drizzled with olive oil (for the record, this was my suggestion on how to prepare them) and one lightly spread with hoisin sauce (for the record, not my idea and not, in the end, the best combination).

They were caught and cleaned by:

My Uncle Denny, griller of chicken and smoker of fish. In this case he merged these impressive skills and helped my father and my husband (how many dudes does it take to grill some lake trout? it ends up quite a few more than you may have guessed) cook the fish thusly:

And then we had:

I made the coleslaw and the potato salad (my trick for such delicious potato salad? dress the warm potatoes with vinegar and let cool to room tmeperature, then add whatever else you like in your potato salad – be it mayonnaise and hard-boiled eggs and bread-and-butter pickles or olive oil and capers – and serve at room temperature without ever refrigerating the potatoes), my mom made her famous corn pie. It involves canned corn and canned cream of corn and corn meal and it is very corny and quite amazingly delicious.

The extra nice touch is that we ate the lake trout that my uncle caught and cleaned and helped grill on placemats his wife, my Aunt Nancy, made and gave to us more years ago than any of us might care to calculate.

My Uncle Denny has been featured here before. Or at least his famous smoked salmon has been. The other night he held a little shin-dig for his cousin (my first cousin once-removed – I figured out the difference between once/twice-removed and first/second/third cousins at a family reunion years ago). He invited a mess people over and cooked up six chickens all snug and cozy on his little Weber charcoal grill. They’re about half-way done here. He was a bit reluctant to open the grill, since part of the secret to the deliciousness of the final chicken is leaving the lid on to capture all the smoke and get it into the chicken meat. If they suffered I almost wouldn’t want to taste the more perfect birds – the chicken he served up was smoky, juicy, and fabulous. Just salted and peppered them, and put them on the grill as crowded as can be, and let them cook until golden and “done” from what I could tell. He seemed to spend most of the party in a lounge chair nursing a margarita without a chicken concern in the world. I should have asked more questions, but by the time I knew how good the chicken was, I was busy eating it.

Note: My cousin (technically another first cousin once-removed, the sister of the guest of honor) Jajie* really wanted to make the blog. She talked about it and made a fuss but then refused to stand still for any picture-taking. She made this awesome salad, however, which I then re-made, tweaked for the dressing, and posted a recipe (Blueberry Blue Cheese Spinach Salad) because it was so pretty and tasty and easy:

*You wonder what kind of name “Jajie” is? It’s short for Janet. You can’t really hang with the Watson clan and not have your named turned into a diminutive ending with a long “e” sound. Even Schuyler ends up being called “Schuylie” half the time.

I’ve been sick. Really quite sick. In bed for six days sick. It’s a been a bit of a bummer to say the least. I hadn’t eaten anything other than jello, crackers, broth, and popscicles since last Tuesday. Luckily, my mother-in-law was scheduled to come for a visit this weekend anyway. She did laundry and entertained Ernest and quick-set jello. And then last night she fried up some chicken cutlets.

They drew me down from bed and tempted me to eat an actual meal. I’m up and about today. Coincidence? Perhaps. But these cutlets have worked their magic in the past: they have aided many a recovery from long and painful flights across the country to visit her in New York, they fortified me after I had my son, they cheered me up when I broke my hand last spring.

Recovering from the flu? Had a baby? Need a little pick-me-up? Try the magic of chicken cutlets. In the words of my mother-in-law, “they couldn’t be easier.”

Thinly slice 1 1/2 lbs. chicken breast (or, have your butcher cut them for you – that’s what my mother-in-law does!). Whisk 2 eggs in a medium bowl and spread about 2 cups bread crumbs in  a wide shallow bowl or rimmed plate.

Dip each chicken piece in the egg mixture, then dredge the chicken in the bread crumbs. Use one hand to touch wet things and the other hand to touch dry things to keep things as clean adn easy as possible. Dip and dredge all chicken pieces, laying them on a large plate or baking sheet when you finish them. [Note: Some people, including me, like to dredge the chicken in a mixture of flour, salt, and pepper before dipping it in the egg. My mother-in-law skips this step and her cutlets are better than mine.]

Heat a frying pan over medium-high heat and add enough vegetable oil to make a 1/4-inch layer in the pan. When the oil is hot, add several chicken cutlets – you want to fill the pan but not have any cutlets overlap. Fry until browned on one side. Turn cutlets over and fry until brown on the other side. Remove and drain on several layers of paper towels. Repeat with remaining cutlets.

Sprinkle with salt to taste. Serve cutlets hot, warm, or even at room temperature, with a squirt of lemon is you’re so inclined (my mother-in-law is not so inclined). These cutlets are most delicious with a crisp green salad with a French-style vinaigrette or old-school Italian dressing.

Yes, those are reproductions of paintings by the mid-century Swedish abstract painter Olle Baertling (whose work, oddly enough, we saw in Marfa, Texas when we were there this spring)  being marched through the picturesque hills of the Marin Headlands just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco, why do you ask?

On Sunday my family went on a hike. It ended up being a much longer hike than my dashing husband had prepared us for, but true to form, Ernest champed out (only after having one complete breakdown about 10 minutes into the proceedings that, upon investigation, was caused by a bur in his sock). Let’s just say I was expecting that we might need to go on a hike after the “art hike” to get some exercise. Perhaps we’d take Ernest down to Rodeo Beach to run around for a bit. I invited my Very Tall Cousin Sam and his girlfriend to join us, knowing they were interested in seeing the Headlands, and was worried that they would feel ripped off.

No need. Everyone felt good and exposed to the Headlands, all thighs were well and worked, all energy was used and gone. It wasn’t just the hike. The hike also involved carrying the signs, the placards, the paintings – it doesn’t matter what you call them, they seemed carry-able enough when we first picked them up, but even plywood gets heavy after five miles of steep terrain and even well-sanded wood stakes start to rub delicate writer hands the wrong way after two hours.

We were hiking for art. We were part of a performance piece and eventual film by Jacob Dahlgren. We suffered for art. My hands are still stiff, my shoulder is bruised, and my neck is burned because – wouldn’t you know it – it was an amazingly beautiful day. The views were like this:

Yeah, so your sympathy for me is limited. I understand. And, you’re probably wondering, where is the food? Am I going to write about a delicious snack? A scrumptious picnic we tucked into at the top of the hill?

No. We had no food on the hike. We barely had water – in fact, the water we did have we scrounged off others. But when the hike was done and the art complete, we headed into the Headlands Center for the Arts for dinner.

For $10 we dished up giant bowls of shrimp & albacore and/or mushroom & tofu Thai curry, grabbed $2 beers or $3 glasses of wine, and sat down at communal tables in the mess hall (the Center is in a de-commissioned army base) on which waited large platters of the freshest, crispiest, most herb-laced, fabulous tomato- and cucumber-laden green salad I’ve ever seen.

These dinners are usually for the artists-in-residence at the Center, but whenever there are artists talks or other public programs (or protests, as the case may be) the public is welcome to the dinners – just reserve a spot ahead of time and bring a twenty (the meals are usually a bit more elaborate than the one we had – on other visits I’ve been served chicken perfectly roasted in that brick oven you see in the back, homemade pasta, an asparagus and wild mushroom combo, salad, and a mixed fruit tart for dessert), a few bucks for booze, and a willingness to pitch in with the dishes.

It is a totally fun, completely delicious, utterly unique experience to have dinner at the Headlands. I can’t recommend it highly enough. Also, if anyone ever invites you to hike through nature carrying a reproduction of a painting by an artist who believed art should get as far from nature as possible, say yes. Bring a pair of gloves, plenty of sunscreen, and a snack, but say yes.

The kitchen might look familiar, it’s where we held Sausage Club, Part 2 last January.

I am supposed to be objective. Or at least not completely and totally biased. But a girl has her opinions, you know? And this girl is a huge fan of Michael Recchiuti and his awesome chocolates. There are several reasons for my devotion. First and foremost are the chocolates themselves. They are refined, they are clever without being gimmicky, they are a joy to look at and a treat to eat. The sesame nougat concoction alone is enough to make me walk across town and shell out a sort of large amount of cash for a very small chocolate. But I do so gladly. When we did a blind tasting for the best boxed chocolates at Sunset we unanimously hands-down agreed after the first round that the Recchiuti ones were the best and went on to spend hours trying to come to some semblance of a consensus on a second and a third. 

Second, there is Michael himself. I wrote a story about him and his chocolates in 2000 for a really bad “luxury lifestyle magazine for the Bay Area executive” I worked at for a short time. It was my first story with a person as the subject. I shudder to think of how I approached that interview – how little research I did ahead of time, how little I knew about chocolate – but Michael was extremely generous with his time, setting aside a whole morning to show me how they made different chocolates.

His generosity and desire to connect with people, I’m happy to report, is fully intact. I saw it in action last night when, instead of eating a wholesome meal, I participated in a preview of The Taste Project. Michael is teaming up with other foodtastic folks and has put together a series of tastings – they all involve chocolate, of course – exploring taste and pairing and food. At the preview last night various “members of the press” got to experience examples pulled from the entire series and it was one of those times when I really, truly love my job. (I go to a lot of tastings and similar events. Quite frankly, a great many of them make me hate my job, if but briefly. They can be boring, self-important, lack deliciousness, lack focus, be a waste of time, or even leave one feeling sick.)

This weekend will be the first in the series with Mark Bitterman, a self-styled selmelier who knows absolutely everything about salt. (Full disclosure: I have, on more than one occasion, eaten and drank – perhaps to excess – with Mark and/or his wife. Again, I am biased, but that doesn’t mean their salt isn’t awesome.) So we started the tasting with Recchiuti homemade graham crackers that we were invited to dredge through a slab of chocolate that was gently melting on one of the Himalayan salt slabs Mark sells at The Meadow in Portland, Oregon.

Then we tucked into stone fruit puff pastry “pizzas” that, to my eye, seemed pretty much like tarts, but that’s splitting hairs, with chocolate curls and Roasted Korean bamboo salt (yep, Roasted Korean bamboo salt – that’s the kind of crazy stuff Mark hocks). 

As we ate, Michael told us about the puff pastry, which he made and rolled himself according to a recipe and method he learned from a British chef while working in Vermont, and about the salt. At one of the real tastings, he explained, Mark the Salt Guy would give more explanation about the salt and how it worked with different foods and they would discuss how they came up with the dishes.

The Taste Project series also has a session (June 13) with Hangar One/St. George Spirits. Our preview of that was a cherry bomb – semi-sweet chocolate shells filled with St. George Spirit kirsch and topped with a chocolate-coated and cocoa-dusted Amarena cherry. And this is part of what is so cool about the whole series and about Michael – part of his motivation is to have an opportunity to make crazy labor-intensive creations that he could never put into production, but thinks of and wants to have other people experience. Michael Ruhlman wrote a book called The Soul of a Chef (great book by a great writer, by the way) and that phrase kept going through my mind as I listened to Michael Recchiuti talk about these amazing things we were tasting and how he came up with them and what excited him about the Taste Project. The desire to stretch, to explore, to create, to perfect, and, finally, to share.

Next up was the mushroom course (shout out here to the good people at Far West Fungi who are working with Recchiuti on this tasting (Sept 5) and have always been a great help to this writer, especially when she did a mushroom feature and needed lots of hard-to-find mushrooms for a fast-approaching photo shoot – visit them next time you’re at the Ferry Plaza in San Francisco). Yes, mushrooms and chocolate. More specifically, shitake-infused chocolate ice cream in a grilled brioche sandwich. Sounds insane and even nasty, I know, but I am telling you that it was amazing. If you didn’t know it was mushrooms in there you would just think, “wow, what is making this chocolate ice cream taste so amazingly awesomely delicious?”

Finally, we entered the world of bread and chocolate and… olive oil. With a Acme Bread (TBD) bread pudding and a flan and olive oil (July 11) and everything melded together into luscious bites with amazing “mouth feel” as we say in the biz. That means it feels good in your mouth. 

And while we ate, Michael talked about fermentation – something key to both bread and chocolate – and educating cocoa farmers and how the business of chocolate works and how he loves laminated doughs (that’s things like puff pastry and croissants). 

The tastings aren’t particularly cheap, but they pretty much just cover the costs – not including the creation labor – that go into the events. You get to taste things you’re not going to find anywhere else and talk about them with people who can explain just why your eyes are rolling back into your head with pleasure.

Plus, if you ask nicely, Michael will show you how they make the chocolates.

I ate pizza at The Lab last night. The Lab is a museum, a public space, a place that puts together some thought-provoking discussion panels, and a place that, for reasons only it can divine, invited me to talk about the history of pizza and Mark Dym to demonstrate the making of the pizza last night. Mark, of Marco’s Coal-Fired Pizzeria (the pizzas are actually wood-fired, everything else if coal-fired, which goes to show you a name is often just a name) in Denver, also brought a whole slew of pizzas for everyone to tuck into while he demoed the shaping of the crust. So as soon as I was done with my talk (“The Cheese Stands Alone, An Autobiographical History of Pizza”), I got to sit down with a cold one and a hot slice. Perfection.

Word on the street is that The Lab will post an edited video of the talk online. I’ll let you know when/if that happens. I don’t want to ruin anything, but did your mother, father, or other nutrient-provider ever serve you an English muffin pizza? Did you know they date from the 1940s? The 1940s!

My dashing husband dashed this off for dinner last night. Broccoli, red cabbage, tofu, plenty of ginger and soy sauce, and “chow mein” noodles. Was a bunch of green garlic included but indetectable due to all the stronger flavors? Sure. Would I have ever thought to put red cabbage in a stir-fry with tofu that might get dyed a bit, um, blue? No. Was there, perhaps, just a smidgen too much soy sauce included in the dish? Yes, yes there was. Was it  delightful to have a piping hot dinner placed in front of me without ever having stepped into the kitchen last night? Absolutely.

And the red cabbage? Not a bad addition to a stir-fry. Not bad at all. As long, that is, that you don’t mind slightly blue tofu.

Last night I snacked through dinner at a bar while waiting to play Edible Pursuit, the brain child of the tireless people at Edible San Francisco. People bought tickets, gathered at Acme Chophouse, formed teams, and competed for a stunning array of prizes by answering food trivia questions.

I’m going to be honest. I wanted to win. Not for the prizes either (although the 20-pound box of endive would have been nice); I wanted to win for the glory. I put together what I thought would be a team of ringers. A super smarty-pants and highly competitive Ph.D. now editor and food writer who loves trivia and two plugged-in smarty-pants writers from the San Francisco Chronicle food section.

And then we picked up another team member who showed up without a team or had a friend cancel on her – I can’t remember – and it was Jen Maiser of Life Begins at 30 (who, by the way, is a delight! and so reasonable about eating locally! we bonded over not making our own salt – that’s what the food world has come to people!). Total ringer! Filling in on the tough food politics category! How, I ask, could we lose?

I’ll tell you how we could lose: One Miss Smarty-Pants decided not to drive over an hour in the rain while sick and pregnant in order to play a trivia game in a bar (!?!? go figure !?!?) and the rest of us sat around over-thinking everything. At one point in round two we had every answer right. In our infinite wisdom we changed three of the answers to make them wrong. Smooth move Ex-Lax! We tried zenning out and following our collective gut after that but some questions during the next round required thought, not gut. Gut wasn’t going to get us anywhere with those. In fact, gut completely screwed us over on one and if we’d thought about it for 2 seconds…. Oh, never mind.

So we came in third – or fourth if you count that two teams tied for first and had to sudden-death it for the grand prize. But we had fun. We had fun despite some embarrassingly incorrect answers we marked down on paper and handed in for others to see. We missed what “blanc de blancs” means on a wine label! That one we should have thought about for just the 1 second because we all knew the answer. I think we all also felt a bit sheepish about missing what famous bakery Boulange de Cole used to be (Tassajara, obviously). But we had some proud moments too: We geeked out by demanding a fact-check on one answer and were proven correct; we worked together to remember the name of the dude whose writings are the basis of bio-dynamic farming (teammate: “I can’t believe I can’t remember his name, I wrote a whole article about him.” me: “For some reason I keep thinking of a name, but it’s not the right name. Why am I thinking of this name? I have to say the name to get it out of my head, but ignore me. Ok, so I’ll tell you who it isn’t: Rudolph Steiner. Why am I thinking of him? He’s the Waldorf guy…” teammate: “No, that right. It’s Rudolph Steiner, it’s the same guy.” me: “That’s right – what a nut.”); and one member brilliantly answered a tough fill-in question before the question was over (answer: Mac MacDonald).

I then I came home, still hungry despite the rib, the sardine, the slice of flatbread, and the spoonful of asparagus and butter beans I’d eaten four hours before, and scarfed down a few slices of the Spanish tortilla my dashing husband had made with this recipe I’d given him:

Spanish Tortilla

Like the Mexican tortilla only in general shape (round and somewhat flat) and in its ubiquitous presence, Spanish tortillas are more like omelets (known as “French tortillas” in Spanish), and come with as many varieties. I add a bit of garlic instead of the traditional onion, but otherwise stick to the basics of egg and potatoes. As flexible at home as they are in Spain, where slices are available at almost every café or bar anytime of day, tortillas are delicious hot, warm, or cold for breakfast, brunch, lunch, cocktails, or dinner.

2 cups olive oil (most will be discarded)
4 to 5 Yukon Gold or other medium-sized potatoes
1 Tablespoon salt
3-4 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 cup chopped parsley, optional
4 whole eggs and 4 egg whites

Heat the olive oil in a large pot over medium heat.  Add the sliced potatoes and salt.  Cook, stirring often to keep the potatoes from sticking, until edges of potatoes look cooked (they will be less opaque than the centers).  Add the chopped garlic and continue cooking and stirring often over medium heat until the potatoes are cooked through.  When potatoes are cooked, add chopped parsley, stir into the potatoes and remove from heat.  Drain the entire mixture in a colander or strainer and let sit for 5 minutes.  The potatoes may be a bit mushy and fall apart, this is okay.

Beat the eggs and the egg whites in a large bowl.  Add the potatoes-garlic mixture and mix well.

Heat a 10-inch skillet over medium heat (a non-stick skillet will work best when you need to turn it out at the end).  Spray or coat the pan with olive oil.  Add the potato-egg mixture and flatten into the pan with a spatula or spoon.  Turn heat down to low and let cook until the edges are firm and just the very top layer barely moves when the pan is gently shaken.

When just a top layer of uncooked egg remains, put skillet under the broiler to brown the top.

When the top is brown, remove from oven.  Run a spatula around the edges to loosen the tortilla.  Place a plate larger than the pan over the pan and turn the tortilla out onto the plate.

Serve warm, room temperature, or cold.  Serve plain or with almost any condiment you can think of (hot sauce, pesto, salsa, ketchup–anything that you like with your eggs). It really is the perfect midnight snack for a hard-working, trivial gal.

Oh, Kokkari, how do I love thee? Last night I was invited to a pre-sale booksellers dinner for a book coming out in April. The book sounded interesting, the dinner was at Kokkari, and, honestly, I didn’t know I was a token member of the press but had thought it was more of a press event and I would see friends and schmooze and whatnot, so I said yes. Glad I did. Along with the excellent food I’ve come to expect at this fancy-pants Greek restaurant in downtown SF*, I also got to chat with independent book sellers. What a commited lot! What verve! What love of books! I also got dragged into a “difference between Los Angeles and San Francisco” discussion as well as a “difference between New York and San Francisco” version, which are not comparisons I ever find very interesting. It all seems as plain as day, doesn’t it? San Francisco is colder than one, smaller than both, and terribly terribly pretty. Telling the New Yorker about the difference between San Francisco and the East Bay, however. That was kind of fun. Ridiculous, but fun.

* The whole broiled fish is just so delicious and moist and flavorful – something about the fire, I’m thinking. The Greeks, I’m telling you, they know how to cook a fish. And lamb, they know how to cook lamb too. And, as I’ve done at professional dinners at Kokkari before, I peer-pressured everyone near me into trying the octopus. It’s fired up in the oven and sprinkled with lemon and some kind of magic that makes it always super tender and yummy. In short, if you’ve never tried octopus try it there because it is as good as it gets. Arg, I want some more right now.