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MONDAY 26 AUGUST 2002 link
I spent the weekend with my family, planning my sister's wedding. Her wedding dinner, anyway. My dad has the whole menu figured out - we're having chicken and sausage jambalaya, green beans with lemon olive oil, sliced tomatoes with red onion vinaigrette, and mixed greens with spicy candied pecans. He's been perfecting his jambalaya recipe for weeks. The fun part for me is that I get to use all those skills from years of cooking for weddings. We're using the kitchen at the local school (my mom is the school secretary), and we did a planning tour of the kitchen this weekend. It's been a long time since I peeled and chopped 15 pounds of onions or boned 100 chicken thighs. (My dad thinks he should buy pre-boned chicken; my mom wants to cook them with the bone in to add flavor, and pull the meat off the bones after they're cooked. I think we should compromise by buying bone-in chicken, doing the boning ahead of time, and using the bones for chicken stock. I'm quite proud of my chicken-boning speed.)
My parents are also making the wedding cake. More about that later.
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SATURDAY 24 AUGUST 2002 link
So, guess who I ran into the other day at Shopper's Corner? Steve, the wine buyer. It was very satisfying to get to speak directly to the person whose decisions have such a big effect on my daily life. If it weren't for the Shopper's wine selection, we'd have to drive over the hill to buy wine, or be reduced to drinking swill like Talus or Turning Leaf. Perish the thought! I got to tell him everything I wanted. I requested more Spanish rosados. I asked for the Vega Sindoa El Chaparral back. I told him how much I appreciated the selection of good, inexpensive red wines they have, so he'd keep them in stock. It was like telling Santa Claus what you want for Christmas.
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THURSDAY 22 AUGUST 2002 link
I scored a home-run dinner last night, according to Catherine. Lamb chops (that I marinated in olive oil, red wine, and garlic), corn, & figs stuffed with goat cheese - all grilled. Also briam, a mixed roasted vegetable dish (recipe in the next issue of Nobody's Fool). It all went really well together, and we sat down right when the sun was setting, which is always nice this time of year.
I've been buying a variety of corn called "Indian Blood" or "Indian Red." The kernels range from pink to dark burgundy, and even the silk is a beautiful strawberry blonde. (If you go to the Cabrillo Market, Webb's farm has it, and it's organic.)
Everyone has their own way of grilling corn - in foil, in the husk, in the husk but soaked first, etc. My way is to shuck the corn, brush it with olive oil, and throw it right on the grill. This is the way they do it at street stands in Guatemala and Athens (and probably a lot of other places, too). The kernels tend to get a little chewy if the fire isn't too hot, but I think it's a great texture. If the fire's hot, I like to let some kernels get so caramelized that they're almost-but-not-quite burnt. It doesn't even need butter - although if you're lucky enough to have some raw-milk Jersey butter, why not slather it on?
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MONDAY 19 AUGUST 2002 link
We spent Sunday evening having dinner in the open air, between rows of fig trees. It was amazing.
Outstanding in the Field pulls together a chef, a winemaker, and a farmer for a "restaurant without walls." Last night's dinner was out at Knoll Farms, and used their corn, tomatoes, buckwheat greens, and figs, among other things. My favorite dish was grilled Brown Turkey figs, stuffed with goat cheese and walnuts, and wrapped in prosciutto. They were drizzled with a reduction of Frog's Leap Zinfandel and balsamic vinegar, and I was fighting for the last fig on the plate. I'm ready for a trip to the Blue Plate in Bernal Heights - Cory Obenour, the chef, did a great job, especially considering that they were basically camp-cooking. And thanks to Jim and Leah for pulling the whole thing together.
And we met such nice people! We had a great time talking to John Williams from Frog's Leap. And our dinner companions - Sigrid, Kai, Kathy, and Evelyn - were great to talk to.
I definitely recommend putting yourself on the waiting list for one of the upcoming dinners, if you don't have reservations already.
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THURSDAY 15 AUGUST 2002 link
Julia's birthday dinner was pretty damned good. In retrospect, I just should have listened to her and had the vegetables with butter. The garlicky tomatoes didn't really match, but they were very yummy for breakfast this morning! We toasted her before dinner: "May we both be as happy and healthy as Julia when we reach 90."
I hope she is having a wonderful day today.
SHOPPING TIP OF THE WEEK: Keep an eye out for something called "ajvar." It looks like roasted red pepper spread, but it is made out of red peppers, eggplants, and onions; it can also contain other vegetables. Ajvar (pronounced eye-vaar according to one note I saw on the web) comes in both mild and spicy versions, and you'll probably find it in the same aisle with the olives and fancy condiments. It's a very handy thing to have in the fridge - good on a sandwich, very nice on crackers with goat cheese, nice also on hard-cooked eggs. Or straight out of the jar when you're starving and there are no other snacks to be had!
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WEDNESDAY 12 AUGUST 2002 link
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JULIA!
Julia Child turns 90 tomorrow, and I'm cooking dinner to celebrate. Why don't you all join me? Go to your bookshelf, or the library, and cook along.
I'm making one of my favorite recipes ever - Poulet Rôti à la Normande (Roast Chicken Basted with Cream, Herb and Giblet Stuffing). I make it like my mom does - leaving out the heart & gizzard, using fresh tarragon and fresh breadcrumbs. (My mom stands over the pan with a baguette and pulls out the middle, so the "crumbs" are more like ragged pieces.) I think that even people who don't like chicken liver (i.e. Catherine) will like this dish. It's from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1 (the red one). Because I have tomatoes, I'm making Tomates à la Provençal (Tomatoes Stuffed with Bread Crumbs, Herbs, and Garlic), from the same book. I know that it seems like mixing stripes and plaid to have Normandy and Provence on the same plate, but so what? I can't have any more butter for dinner, so I can't have the buttered peas and sauteéd potatoes or buttered rice that she suggests.
There are only two of us, so I'm not making dessert. For those of you with families, or who plan ahead enough to ask people over for dinner, I suggest the Gateau Saint-Andre from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 2 (the blue one, which I think is out of print). This was a family favorite cake in my house, and it's really, really good. Dust it with powdered sugar and serve with whipped cream.
OTHER READING:
The new issue of the New Yorker arrived yesterday. It's the Food Issue. Go out and get it - it's great!
And there's an article in the Chronicle today about Manka's Inverness Lodge, where Catherine & I went last November. The article will make you want to go, which is a good idea.
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MONDAY 12 AUGUST 2002 link
It was a weekend of indulgence.
Last Saturday, I bought some blackberries at the market from Webb's farm. The guy who sold them to me said that they might not make it home, and he was right. (Halfway right, anyway - I ate my portion of the basket before I got home, but I was restrained enough to save half for Catherine.) This weekend, I stopped on the way home from the market to buy some Straus cream, and we had blackberries and cream. I licked the bowl.
On Sunday, Catherine made breakfast. Luckily, we were out of butter - so she had to fry the eggs in bacon fat! There is no better medium for egg-frying. The edges of the whites get lacy and crispy, and there's a lovely undertone of smoke and salt. Reminds me of my childhood.
And then last night! Onion rings in beer batter - they don't seem so bad when you fry them in olive oil.
(I did hike five miles, four of them uphill, to make up for it.)
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THURSDAY 8 AUGUST 2002 link
HOUSEKEEPING
Spent part of the day cleaning up around here. Separated out some of the recipes, put them in the archive, moved entries from here (geez, this page was long) to their own monthly archived pages. Please let me know if you find any problems! One of these days I have to figure out something like Movable Type. For now, though, I'll keep updating by hand.
What I'd really like, now that I have more recipes in the recipe section, is to have a new one come up on the home page every time you reloaded the page. (That was a terrible sentence - but do you know what I mean?) I'll have to have my sister's fiance Aaron help me figure it out.
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THURSDAY 1 AUGUST 2002 link
There are certain foods that shout "summer." Tomatoes and corn are at the top of the list. I've had two of the summeriest dinners this week. Monday, while Catherine (not a fish lover) was out, I had corn on the cob, cornmeal-dusted fish panfried in olive oil, and sliced tomatoes with salt and Best Foods mayo. Delish! And then yesterday we had BLTs and corn on the cob - equally yummy.
For the first couple of weeks that corn shows up at the market, I don't do anything to it except eat it on the cob. I might grill it instead of boiling, but nothing more fancy than that. It's so good, just plain. Maybe by the middle of August I'll make corn chowder or pancakes or timbales or salad. But in the beginning of the season, simple is best.
The funny thing about Santa Cruz - and it's better to hang on to your sense of humor - is that while we're eating all of this lovely summery food, it looks like winter outside. The sun did not come out at all today- the stubborn Pleasure Point fog bank would not go away. And I refuse to turn on the heater in July. Instead, I've been roasting eggplants and garlic, and letting the oven heat up the house.
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