Category Archives: San Francisco

Material developed in San Francisco

03.28.06
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Poached

the_fish_poacher.JPGPoached Striped Bass
with Vodka Sauce

We own an actual fish poacher. It sits on top of our dining room armoire and I can’t recall having it down since we moved to San Francisco in 1992. Don’t look for it on my essentials page.

When I was surfing the New York Times Dining and Wine section the other day, I spied Poached Salmon with Vodka Sauce. That looked interesting, so I downloaded it to my “to cook” folder. There are over thirty recipes in that folder and more coming every week, so I don’t have a prayer of cooking them all. As time goes by, I delete the ones that no longer look interesting. This recipe will just be in the back of my head when I go to market. I didn’t really think about cooking a whole salmon, but I figured I could do it with a fillet.

We bought the fish poacher in Boston to poach a four-pound salmon for a party. In James Beard’s Theory and Practice of Good Cooking there is more than one recipe for poached fish and in my cooking-for-parties phase I poached a few salmon, as well as other fish and shellfish. I especially liked the Poached Fish with White Wine Sauce and Shellfish a la Nage, “,a la nage is the French term for a style of preparation in which shellfish are both cooked and served ‘swimming’ in a white wine court bouillon and eaten hot, tepid or cold.” Shrimp, crayfish or small lobsters are excellent prepared in this manner.
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03.24.06
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Cookie Monster

Cookie MonsterSAN ANDREAS COOKIES

I’m not a baker, but I have baked.

My mother baked a lot. I probably participated in baking at home, but my first memorable baking experience was with a lemon meringue pie. The occasion was a dinner, prepared with Wally (Carol’s roommate’s boyfriend at the time) in Carol and Sue’s apartment kitchen as a preface to my asking Carol to please marry me. I think I asked her before in Doug’s beat up ’53 Chevy, parked in front of my fraternity house (in the front seat!). But this occasion was with ring. The pie, crust made from scratch, was a success, as was the proposal.
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03.21.06
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Charcuterie, a review

CharcuterieCharcuterie
The Craft of Salting, Smoking and Curing
by Michael Ruhlman & Brian Polcyn
Illustrated. 320 pages. Norton $35

I would not have bought this book; now I have to buy this book.

In February, son Eric emailed a request for Charcuterie, in case I had a review copy and didn’t want to keep it. When I think charcuterie, I think sausages. Living in an apartment in the city, I’m lacking the space for sausage equipment and, okay, the desire to use up my pork scraps for sausages (like I have scraps, I buy my meat trimmed). Eric, on the other hand, buys a half-hog each year, loves to make sausages and is a staunch advocate of Fergus Henderson’s book, The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating. He needs Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking and Curing.
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03.17.06
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Halibut with Warm Cabbage Slaw

HalibutI had a recipe already picked out when I bought the Halibut at the Farmers Market on Saturday, but then when I went back and re-read it, Halibut with a Vegetable Nage, it sounded a lot like the New England Boiled Dinner I did last week. A nage is a broth, generally vegetable, which is made by cooking vegetables and herbs in water. Then you strain and discard the vegetables and use the nage to poach additional vegetables. A purist would poach the vegetables and the Halibut in the nage, but in that recipe the halibut is marinated and then grilled and served with the vegetables au jus.

Meanwhile, I made my “lunch soup” with Savoy cabbage. As is often the case, I had half a head of cabbage left over. Maybe I can do my Halibut with braised cabbage.
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03.13.06
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Slice 'n' Dice

Slice ‘n’ Dice Dinner—The perfect eats-for-one caper.

snow_on_SAAB.JPGIt was nearly seven o’clock and I was watching the tail end of the news when Carol called to report that there was a hailstorm going on at San Francisco State and she’s not driving home until it’s over. A hailstorm! In San Francisco! With thunder and lightning! Oh, and she had dinner at her meeting.
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03.02.06
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Tuesday Toss

Food_Book.JPGMenu: Sausages, Tossed Potatoes, Baby Leek Salad

I have a blank booklet I call the Food Book. In it I write down the stuff I bring home from the Saturday Farmers Market, so I can see what we have that’s fresh. We have two vegetable crispers in our undersized refrigerator (renter’s remorse), but they are themselves undersized, and even so, stuff can get lost in there.

I don’t need the Food Book to know that I bought some fine young leeks at the Mariquita Farm stand. They were my buy of the day, something new in season that makes me want to create something. Today is the day. What to do? I took a look at French Women Don’t Get Fat, a wonderful book by Mareille Guiliano. She’s a big fan of leeks, but she didn’t have a recipe to tickle my fancy. On to the ol’ standby, Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse Vegetables. There’s a nice Baby Leek Salad there, I’ll go with that.
Food Book
But that’s not dinner!
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02.28.06
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Soup Style

Son Eric posted a recipe for Beet Borscht on our family blog recently. He and his wife, Alison, have made it many times, and as the accomplished cooks they are, often freelance with both ingredients and methods—hey, you can’t screw up a soup if you’re using good ingredients. Cooking it for the first time, I went strictly by the directions, which included the use of a food mill, which is messy and cumbersome. We had it for dinner Sunday evening, and I gotta say, it was really good.

Beet_Borscht.JPG
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02.23.06
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Sautéed Beans and Greens

beans n cod to eat.JPG
(Cranberry) Beans and Greens with Cod

A one-pound bag of Rancho Gordo Vallarta beans has been lying in my rice-and-beans drawer for a good while. Rancho Gordo, of Napa, California grows “New World Specialty Food featuring glorious old-fashion vegetables.” That’s what they say of themselves. I know them for their stall at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, which features heirloom beans with intriguing names such as; Runner Cannellini, Anasazi, Ojo de Cabra (eye of the goat), Yellow Indian Woman and Eye of the Tiger; among their 28 varieties. Vallarta is a small bean, a rich mahogany color, about the size of a navy bean. When I bought them, the Rancho Gordo folks said I could cook them like a navy bean.

beans n greens to eat.JPG
Sauteed Beans and Greens

The Farmers Market is in a winter mode; root vegetables, citrus, beans and greens. I saw some fantastic mustard greens at the Mariquita Farm stand, and knowing I had a stash of beans, snapped them up. I love beans and greens as a comfort food side dish to have on hand. They are good with any kind of pork—maybe especially ham—but I like them best with fish. I got turned on to that idea in the 90’s with the recipe, Cod with Radicchio, White Beans, and Lemon Vinaigrette from Danny Meyer and Michael Romano’s Union Square Café Cookbook. (That is one of my Top Five cookbooks. We had dinner at the Union Square Café in New York in ‘02, and I dragged along my tattered, food-stained copy to ask for the authors to sign it. They weren’t there on that Sunday evening, but the sous chef, Ted Habber, was good enough to sign it for me.) Who knew you could combine fish (protein), beans (starch) and radicchio (vegetable) in one glorious dish?
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02.21.06
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PIZZA! again

pizza prep.JPGpizza raw.JPG

At the risk of belaboring the PIZZA! thing, I finally got around to making a great pizza for Sunday breakfast and taking pictures.
pizza cooked.JPG
In the first picture you see a Vicolo cornmeal pizza crust on my pizza peel with a little olive oil applied, a cheese grater, my Early Girl tomato sauce, some Spanish olives, Mike’s cheese curd, a leftover red onion and smoked mozzarella.

Then it’s fully topped, then baked.

That was so good I ate way more than my normal 1/3, and then Carol polished it off.