How a Croque Monsieur became part of a lovely cauliflower dish.

As a kid, I loved scalloped potatoes, but drew the line at potatoes—or anything—au gratin. My brother and I called them potatoes hog rotten. In Ohio at the time, scalloped potatoes were made with milk. To make potatoes au gratin, cheese was added, usually orange cheese, probably Velveeta.

I looked to Julia Child for a definitive answer on the issue of scalloped and au gratin. In Mastering the Art of French Cooking (1961) there is a recipe for Gratin Dauphinois [Scalloped Potatoes with Milk, Cheese and a Pinch of Garlic) Julia writes in the preface, “There are as many ‘authentic’ versions of gratin dauphinois as there are of bouillabaisse.” She goes on to say, “Although some authorities on le vrai gratin dauphinois would violently disagree, you may omit the cheese. If you do so, add 2 more tablespoons of butter.”

By 1999 the cheese had disappeared entirely. In Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home, the recipe for Julia’s Pommes de Terre Dauphinoise makes no mention of cheese, either in the recipe itself or in the Scalloped Potatoes introduction. Continue reading →

Rosemary-And-Pepper Standing Rib Roast With Two-Mushroom Pan Sauce, Roasted Root Vegetables and Harvard Beets

It was Christmas day.

Three days earlier I bought a 3 rib, 8-pound Prime Rib of Beef at Golden Gate Meat Company. That big beauty was air drying in the refrigerator. The recipe I had selected to roast it called for 3 tablespoons chopped fresh thyme leaves and I had overlooked that small item. I didn’t have enough shallots, either. The only store open on Christmas day was Safeway (until 4 p.m.), so I went. No thyme, no shallots. I asked the produce guy and he said, “It’s Christmas, the warehouse is closed.” Hmmm, I bought a bunch of rosemary.

When I got home, I looked on epicurious.com for another recipe. I found Rosemary-And-Pepper Standing Rib Roast With Two-Mushroom Pan Sauce; rated 4-forks with three cooks raving about its goodness. Worth a try, and I had a package of dried Porcini mushrooms, but no fresh mushrooms. Back to Safeway. There were three empty risers in the place where the fresh mushrooms live. I looked for canned mushrooms, but not with any enthusiasm; I didn’t find them. I could live with that, it’s only the gravy. Continue reading →

I stood in front of the rice bins at Real Food, a San Francisco organic grocery store. The labels read: SHORT GRAIN WHITE RICE, BASMATI WHITE RICE, BROWN BASMATI RICE, ARBORIO RICE, JASMINE WHITE RICE, SHORT GRAIN BROWN RICE, SUSHI RICE, BROWN & WILD RICE, and WILD RICE. There was no Long Grain White Rice. I always thought that was “regular rice,” which is what I thought I wanted to buy. A twenty-something woman walked by and asked if I needed help. I said, “Which one is regular white rice?” She looked at the bins and looked at me and looked baffled. “Maybe the Basmati?” she said. I could go for that, but the Basmati bin was empty.
Continue reading →

, and Markie Makes a Chicken

Carol Cooks a Turkey
Carol was pissed. Our Thanksgiving host prides himself in his turkey, so she had no leftover turkey to enjoy. (I’m not partial to LO turkey, myself.) So she went out and bought her a nine pound turkey and snared a recipe from the techno-wacko Alton Brown of the Food Network.

So here’s the turkey, ready for its apple and onion and rosemary stuffing.

Once stuffed, oil that baby up for the oven, Continue reading →

This is a picture of a sliced sirloin tip with baby mustard greens and sliced radishes. Ummm good.

I wanted to cook the sirloin tip like a steak. I’ve done Hanger steaks, guided by Anthony Bourdain’s Onglet Gascon recipe in his excellent Les Halles Cookbook, and finished them in the oven while making a pan sauce. Those are up to one inch thick at their thickest, and I’ve gone with his times — two minutes a side to brown and 5 minutes in the oven for rare, 8 minutes for medium rare. For this meal, I didn’t bother with a pan sauce. [Anthony Bourdain does this dish with bone marrow, as well as the hanger steak, but I left that out, too.]

My meat, Sirloin Tips from Marin Sun Farms; two hunks of meat about 2 inches at their thickest, tapering to about an inch, were more like small roasts than steaks, weighing a little over a pound, total. I browned them in butter in the cast iron skillet for about 2 minutes a side and finished in a roasting pan in the toaster oven at 400 degrees until the internal temperature reached 130 degrees, about 10 minutes. That was a little on the rare side and chewy, but the flavor was very beefy and good. We ate one and had one, unsliced, leftover, to die for. The leftovers provided two meals, a hash and a steak salad. Not bad, and all for about twelve bucks.

I bought the baby Mustard Greens at the Mariquita Farm stand at the Farmers Market. They were sautéed in olive oil for about 5 minutes while the steak was in the oven and then drizzled with a little vinegar. I bought the red and white radishes at the Eatwell Farm stand, and just sliced them raw for a quick, bright, crunchy complement to the greens. I drizzled the good Stonehouse olive oil over the finished plate to enrich and pull everything together.

Ummm good.