and then we eat

Fish selyanka

2012-02-01T23:29:00.001-08:00

Here is another Russian cold-weather favorite, fish selyanka. Russia's beloved sturgeon and pickled vegetables come together in a tangy, rich, comforting soup, layered with subtle flavors.

The variations are as many as there are cooks. One version uses rinsed, chopped sauerkraut in addition to pickles, olives, and capers. In another version crayfish or shrimp shells are added to the stock, and cooked crayfish or shrimp tails are used to garnish the finished dish.

The rich fish stock for this soup can be made with any non-oily mild tasting inexpensive white fish, or with sturgeon heads and trimmings. Fatty fishes would add extra heaviness and too strong flavors to the stock, and should be avoided.

Fish that work well:
Perch
Ruffe
Striped bass
Snapper
Sturgeon heads

Fish that don't work:
Salmon
Tuna
Sea bass
Mackerel
Sardines

If using small fish, ask the fishmonger to scale and gut it, but leave the heads and tails on - they contribute to the stock. After making the stock the fish is usually discarded. I was making mine with white perch, and the little sweet fishes from the stock actually made a very good snack; just have to be careful about the bones - they are numerous and tiny.

Fish stock is different from meat and chicken stocks because it cooks very fast. If you put the aromatic vegetables in it whole, they will just begin cooking by the time the fish is completely spent. So, to get the most out of the vegetables, we'll chop them into large chunks.

Fish selyanka
Serves 4

For the stock:

1-1/2 lb small fish or fish heads and trimmings
1 yellow onion, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
2 celery sticks, chopped
1 whole parsley, with root, or 1 chopped parsnip and 1 small bunch of parsley leaves
1 cup white wine
Water to cover
1 bay leaf
10 black peppercorns

Place fish, onion, carrots, celery, parsley and parsnip into a pot. They should fit relatively tight. Pour in white wine and water to cover. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce the heat to achieve slow even simmer. Skim the stock, add bay leaf and black peppercorns. Simmer, uncovered, for 30 minutes. Remove from heat, strain stock through a fine strainer into a clean pot. Discard the vegetables and fish (or, if the fish looks good, sprinkle it with sea salt and enjoy).

For the selyanka:

1 Tbsp olive oil
1 Tbsp butter
1 yellow onion, diced
2 Tbsp tomato paste
1 lb sturgeon, cut into four portions, skin and cartilage removed
20 olives, pitted and sliced
3 large kosher pickles, sliced
2 Tbsp capers, rinsed
1/2 cup marinated mushrooms (optional)
Salt, pepper
Lemon slices, chopped parsley (for serving)

Heat oil and butter in a sauté pan over medium heat. Sauté onions, stirring, until soft and beginning to turn color, 5-7 minutes. Add tomato paste, sauté 5 minutes more. Add 1 cup fish stock, stir well.

Bring 3 cups of stock to a boil. Add sturgeon, return to boil, reduce heat, simmer until sturgeon is cooked through, about 5 minutes. Add onion-tomato mixture, olives, pickles, capers, mushrooms (if using). Heat through. Adjust seasoning. Depending on your ingredients, you may or may not need to add salt. Serve garnished with lemon slices and chopped parsley.

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Location:San Rafael, CA

Hey, Sweetie! Tasting California wildflower honey

2012-02-01T19:12:00.001-08:00

I don't have a sweet tooth. At all. Indifferent to chocolate. Order cheese and wine for dessert. Eat fruit preserves one or two times a year (with cheese). I love fruits, but prefer them not too sweet. When I bake, people who don't like their desserts too sweet spoon sugar on my tarts. Those who like sweets, don't eat them at all.

Honey is different. The flavor of a good honey is so complex that you are not annoyed by the sweetness, you just enjoy the whole experience. It's as balanced as a well crafted wine.

I actually come from a honey producers family: my dad keeps bees at his country house near Moscow. He usually gets a few liters of honey to give to the family and friends, and some extra to sell. The varieties that he gets are clover, linden, buckwheat, and mixed summer flowers, depending on the season.

Now, where are my dad and his bees, and where am I? No chance to get our family honey, so I get mine from the farmers market.

Our farmers market honey people, Marchall's Farm, move their bees following the flowers, in order to produce single-origin honeys.
Here is what I got in their signature red mesh bag:
- Orange blossom honey - very floral, not too sweet
- California sage honey - delicate, very light herbal taste, not sweet at all
- Wild blackberry - SWEET, complex, fruity
- Star thistle honey - very complex, winey, slightly bitter (pleasant) aftertaste

I like my honey served at teatime on a slice of a very strong hard cheese. traveling in Bashkiria as a student, I fell in love with their dense white buckwheat honey, and the way they spread it generously over a thick slice of a Swiss-style local cheese.

Marchall's farms suggest paring their honey with a blue cheese, but I don't want to deal with the mess. So here were are, pairing a French Comte with California sage honey and white tea. You can try this with an off-dry German Riesling too.

Other suggestions for cooking with honey:
- Mix 1 Tbsp honey, 1 Tbsp Olive oil, 1 tsp Worchestershire sauce dash of Tabasco, 1 tsp ground black pepper. Use to marinate beef or chicken for the grill.

- Use a mixture of 2 Tbsp honey, 1 tsp dry mustard, juice of 1 lemon, salt and pepper as a rub for grilled chicken breasts

- For a tasty slaw, dress 2 cups shredded cabbage and 1/2 cup shredded carrot with 1 Tbsp honey, 1 Tbsp olive oil, juice of 1 lemon, salt and pepper; mix well.

- Parboil young carrots, turnips, rutabagas until almost tender. Sauté in butter, glaze with honey and balsamic vinegar

- Use instead of sugar to sweeten Turkish coffee

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Location:San Rafael, CA

More pelmeni

2012-01-17T20:07:00.001-08:00

I am still dealing with 200 pelmeni from one of my December posts. Well, I guess they are down to under 100 now.

Cooking pelmeni in a clear broth and serving them with it makes a fast and warming one-pot meal (Hello, ravioli in brodo, meet wonton soup!)

Any tasty homemade stock will work. I used my fresh made chicken stock, but beef stock would be even better, and vegetable broth or, in a pinch, salted water, are good. I never use store bought stocks for clear soups. They may be OK in sauces or pureed vegetable soups, but in a clear soup you taste the broth straight, and the packaged stocks never taste right. Also, in a clear soup the broth should be clear and beautiful, I haven't found packaged stuff that's perfectly clear. Please, don't do this shortcut. Use water.

So, bring your homemade stock or lightly salted water with a bay leave in it to a boil, drop frozen pelmeni in, bring back to boil, reduce the heat, simmer until pelmeni float, then two more minutes. Ladle the soup into deep bowls, garnish with herbs of your choice - parsley, dill, green onions are mine - and tons of freshly ground black pepper. Enjoy in front of a fireplace, with a shot of ice-cold vodka.

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Location:San Rafael, CA

Last years tomatoes

2012-01-14T20:43:00.001-08:00

With the weird weather this year, my garden tomatoes were not producing very much over the summer. But now - in the middle of January! - there are suddenly lots of cherry tomatoes on the last years plants.

They don't ripen completely, I guess the days are too short. So I pick them orange, and let them ripen in the kitchen for a day or two. They are not as super-sweet as summer tomatoes, but they taste great! Even in their orange state the taste is complex and sweet.

The rains and cold weather are coming, and they will kill my plants for sure, but for now we are enjoying tomatoes fresh off the vine in the middle of the winter.

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Location:San Rafael, CA

Russian food. Pelmeni

2011-12-11T22:22:00.001-08:00

These pot-stickers probably came to Siberia from China. Then they spread all over Russia, and became a favorite winter food. If the temperatures stay consistently below freezing for 3-4 month, you can invest into making a few hundreds pot-stickers, freeze them outside, put them in a bag, and hang it outside of the window, to be cooked as needed. They cook from frozen in about ten minutes. They are economical, easy to cook, and oh, so tasty! Shaping them is labor-intensive, but if you live in a region with freezing winters, or in a house with a large freezer, you only need to make them once a year.

In Siberia, they make pelmeni with all types of filling: mushrooms, potatoes, cabbage, grains, fish, meat, poultry, or any combinations. In Moscow, where I grew up, pelmeni are always filled with mixed meats, and seasoned with salt, pepper, and minced onion. The usual filling is half ground beef (not too lean) and half pork. Whenever we had venison, we would always mix ground venison into pelmeni filling (1/3 beef, 1/3 pork, 1/3 venison)

In my family, we would spend the afternoon before the New Years Eve making pelmeni. Mom made the filling, dad rolled out the dough, and we all shaped. The first hundred or so would go on our holiday table, the rest froze on all available surfaces out on the balcony, for winter dinners to come. We would put a whole peppercorn into one of the pot-stickers. The lucky recipient could make a wish that will come true in the new year.

In California, I like to make pelmeni for our Tahoe ski trips. After a day of skiing, they cook fast, and they taste great! Rolling out the dough is physically demanding. My dad (who is very good at it) being 9000 miles away and my boyfriend not being part of the culture, I replace them both with my pasta machine, on it's thinnest, ravioli setting. I then cut out dough circles with a 3-inch round cutter. A glass with a thin edge, or a cut tin can can do fine. Pelmeni should be a little larger than ravioli, but smaller than most Chinese potstickers, about 2 inches across.

Serve pelmeni in beef stock with a little white wine vinegar, straight with butter and
a lot of fresh ground black pepper, with sour cream with minced garlic and scallion, or even with mayonnaise!

Pelmeni
Makes about 200, serves 10-12

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp salt
1 egg
1/2cup water

for the filling:
1.5 pound mixed ground meats (3/4 pound beef and 3/4 pound pork; or 1/2 pound beef, 1/2 pound pork, 1/2 pound venison)
1 large onion, minced
1 tsp salt
1 (generous) tsp fresh ground black pepper

Make the dough: sift flour into a large bowl. Mix in salt. Make a well in the center. Pour egg and water in. Mix, gradually incorporating the flour from the sides, to make very stiff dough, knead. At first it will look like it's too dry and not coming together. Do not despair, keep kneading. If after five minutes of kneading it's still not coming together, add a few drops of water, repeat (you can skip the gym that day). Cover with plastic, let rest 30 minutes.

Make the filling: combine ground meats, onion, season with salt and pepper, mix well.

On a floured surface, roll out the dough as thin as possible, using a rolling pin and a lot of elbow grease, of a pasta machine. Cut out 3-inch circles. Put together the leftovers, and roll out again.

Place about 1/2 tsp of filling in the center of each circle. Pinch the edges together tight. Connect the corners to make a neat ring. Place on a floured plate or cutting board. Repeat 199 times, or so. Freeze. Put in ziplock bags, keep in the freezer for up to 6 month.

To cook: in a large pan bring water to boil over high heat. Add frozen pelmeni, bring back to boil. Reduce heat to medium, cook until pelmeni float to the surface, 5-10 minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon.

Serve with:
- sour cream and black pepper
- sour cream + minced garlic + minced parsley or scallion
- white wine vinegar and fresh ground black pepper
- beef stock + dash of white wine vinegar
- melted butter + a lot of fresh ground black pepper
- 1 cup sour cream blended with 1 cooked carrot and 2 minced garlic cloves
- (I didn't say this) mayonnaise

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Russian food. Assorted meat selyanka

2011-12-07T18:37:00.001-08:00

I guess it's the season: I've been cooking a lot of Russian food recently. From Russian Californians with a food nostalgia to families who never tried Russian food and want something different for their special occasion dinner, everyone is requesting traditional Russian dishes. I've even been working with a fine restaurant that decided to offer zakuski spread as a part of their appetizer menu.

There is very little information available on traditional Russian cuisine. A friend (of Russian background!) asked me a few days ago: "What do you mean by Russian cuisine? Isn't it all just French food made with available local ingredients?" The answer is "No". The French cuisine became a huge influence in Russian cooking in the 19th century, when French chefs immigrated to Russia to escape the revolution, and were hired by aristocratic families and fancy restaurants; but there are distinctive tastes and cooking techniques that make Russian cuisine stand on it's own, and reflect the character of the people and the land, even after absorbing multiple influences from the neighbor countries. I am going to put together a series of posts about russian cuisine, with recipes, techniques, and serving ideas, for easy reference. I hope I can paint a complete picture.

Contrary to what most restaurant menus would make you think, Russian cuisine is much more than borscht, beef Stroganoff, blini with caviar, and cold vodka.

The short growing season and long winter in most regions forced the cooks to make creative use of vegetables with long storage potential (cabbages, potatoes, turnips, beets, onions) and grains (wheat, rye, buckwheat, rice, barley, to name a few), to develop an assortment of pickled, marinated, and fermented vegetable recipes and smoked and dried meats for storage. During the short spring and summer growing season, fresh young vegetables and herbs are praised and presented in salads, cold and hot soups, or prepared simply to accompany the main course.

Wild mushroom hunting is a favorite national pastime and a competitive sport, and boiled, sautéed, pickled, marinated, dried mushrooms add their charm to many dishes. In modern times, when wild mushrooms are unavailable, cultivated varieties take their place in recipes, but they are never as good as the real thing!

Fish, both salt- and freshwater, was always popular. Two specifically Russian ways to prepare fish are whole de-boned fish or slices of fillet baked in pastry, and cooked fish, covered with jelly, served cold as an appetizer. There is a number of fish soups and salads, using both fresh and smoked fish. Pickled herring, a Scandinavian influence, is enormously popular, as it goes so well with vodka.

The most used meats are beef and pork, both served hot, or cold as an appetizer. Organ meats, such as tongues, harts, livers and kidneys, are cooked in soups, pates, baked in pastry, or made into sausages. Lamb and mutton are a recent fashion brought from the South. As part of Georgian, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Uzbek dishes they are very popular now.

Poultry and game - chickens, duck, goose, rabbit, pheasant, quail, grouse - are reserved for festive holiday roasts and stews. They are presented nicely, and grace the holiday table. Organ meats are also used. Chicken liver mousse is everyone's favorite.

What really sets Russian cuisine apart from the rest of the world is it's extensive use of yeast dough to make all kinds of bread, filled bread, pastries, pies, rolls, etc, baked, fried, boiled. Vatrushki (cheese pies) for breakfast. Small piroshki with meat and vegetable fillings as a part of the appetizer spread. The soup is usually accompanied with piroshki with a filling that compliments the soup. A meat or a fish pie can be a main entree at a family gathering, or one of the dishes served at a formal dinner. To finish, hot tea with sweet pastries and fruit preserves.

Assorted meat selyanka

There is no recipe for this soup. It can be made with anything.

In the old times, selyanka (means "village girl") was a soup made with a hearty beef stock, the meat used to make the stock, and any pickled vegetables on hand. 19th century restauranteurs dresses the girl up with tomatoes, olives, capers, and fancy smoked meats, and they called it "assorted meat selyanka". Still, she didn't lose her rustic character. Anything goes. If you serve a cold meat plate at a dinner party, make a selyanka the next day. It will show the meat leftover to their best advantage, and it will cure the hangover, if any.

After you invested time and effort into making beef stock, this soup comes together in minutes. At home, I usually make a lot of beef stock once in a while in my 8-quart stock pot, then freeze whatever I don't use immediately in 1-quart ziplock bags for soups, and in ice cube trays for sauces. This way, I have my "bouillon cubes" at all times.

Serves 6

2 Tbsp olive oil
1 large onion, thinly sliced
1 cup roasted tomato sauce (substitute tomato paste)
2 quarts beef stock
3 medium kosher pickles, cut into small cubes
1 pound assorted smoked or cooked meats and sausages (smoked pork shoulder, smoked ham, dry salami, summer sausage, frankfurters, boiled beef tongue, cooked kidney, Canadian bacon, smoked chicken, smoked duck), the more the merrier. If making stock from scratch, include the boiled beef from stock. Cut into small cubes.
2 Tbsp capers, rinsed
1 cup olives, rinsed
1 lemon, cut into thin slices, to garnish
Flat parsley leaves, to garnish
6 Tbsp sour cream, to serve

Heat oil in a large pan over medium heat. Add onions, sauté until golden, 10 minutes. Add tomato sauce or tomato paste, sauté 10 minutes more.

Add stock and pickles, bring to a boil, reduce heat to low. Add meats. Heat through. Add capers and olives.

Pour soup into hot soup bowls or small crocks, add capers and olives. Garnish with lemon slices and parsley. Serve hot. Pass sour cream at the table.

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Location:San Rafael, CA

All my favorite fall fruits

2011-11-07T20:01:00.001-08:00

Now is the magical time when all three of my favorite fruits come together at the market at the same time:

Figs are going out, the few still available are overripe, beginning to dry out, but still delicious. At this point, don't use them for cooking - enjoy them fresh while they last, or, if you are lucky to have a large tree, dry some for the winter.

Grapes are at the peak now. Super-sweet, juicy and wonderful as an accompaniment to wines and cheeses, in salads, or just eat them straight.

Persimmons are just coming in. My favorite Fuyu variety, that is not tannic and can be eaten still firm and crunchy, is good and sweet already. It's great sliced as a part of cheese and fruits board (think soft, sharp cheeses), sliced into salads, chopped into salsas, baked in a pie, or just eaten out of hand.

I don't even mention apples as my favorite fruit, they are too common, and everyone's favorites. But I eat a lot of apples now, when most varieties are at the peak: bake pies and tarts with Granny Smiths, Pippins, Honeycrisps, and tiny tart crab apples; slice Fujis, Honeycrisps, Rome Beauties, Empire, and McIntosh to serve with wine and cheese (lots of pairing options here), sauté Pippins and Granny Smiths to serve with savory meat dishes - poultry and pork work very well with apples; store some, wrapped in paper, in a box in a cool place, for the winter.

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Location:San Rafael, CA

Old cast iron pots restoration project

2011-11-04T21:24:00.001-07:00

I got these old, dirty and rusty cast iron pots in a second-hand store for a few dollars each. From a brief inspection and an Internet research, it appears that the small one used to be a Cape Cod fire starter (they would fill it with lamp oil, soak a lava rock with an iron handle in it overnight, then light it and put it in the fireplace to ignite the firewood), and the large one was a cooking pot used over an open fire (the outside was covered with sooth), both about 100 years old.

I loved the shapes of the pots, and I wanted to use them in my kitchen. How do I clean them?
A wire sponge and Barkeeper's Friend didn't achieve anything.
Medium-grade steel wool showed me that there may be some metal underneath the dirt and rust, and if I keep rubbing, in the next 500 hours or so I will see more of it.
A drill with a wire brush attachment blew a lot of rust iron dust in my face and cleaned some parts of the pots almost OK, but it couldn't reach inside the pots.

Finally, I took my pots to the local Porsche repair shop to be sandblasted. It took them a week, and they charged me as for Porsche repair, but the result was perfect, clean cast iron, stripped bare, beautiful dull-grey gun-metal color, and ready to start rusting again any moment now.

Now, I had to act fast. I took my pots home and started the seasoning process righ away.

A layer of rendered bacon fat, brush inside and out, wipe, into 400 degree oven. Lots of smoke. Let cool.

A layer of olive oil, brush inside and out, wipe, into 400 degree oven. Lots of smoke. Let cool.

Repeat three times.

The pots are gradually developing a shiny non-stick coat of polymerized fat, turning from dull grey to reddish-brown to black.

Now the 100 years old pots are ready to cook again. I already used the small one to cook white beans with bacon and chorizo on my gas grill, and made a mutton stew with onions, carrots, and rice, and a borsch, in the larger one, on the stove. Waiting for the weather to put them on the open fire. Or should I give up on the weather and use them in the fireplace?

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Location:San Rafael, CA

Terrine of grilled eggplant and fire-roasted peppers with tomato confit

2011-10-17T17:47:00.001-07:00

Good bye, summer!

They are probably the last ones of the season, and I'll miss them terribly. But at this weeks farmers market an almost six-pound bag of slightly overripe organic heirloom tomatoes was $5, and they were of absolutely beautiful, sunny orange and red varieties. I had to take them home, and now everything I eat has tomato sauce on it. I also put away a couple of bags of tomato confit in the freezer for later.

Tomato confit

Makes a lot

1/2 cup olive oil
1 large onion, thinly sliced
10 cloves garlic, peeled
5 sprigs oregano
5 sprigs thyme
5 pounds ripe (or slightly overripe, undamaged) tomatoes, or as many as you can fit in your roasting pan, cored
Salt, pepper, red pepper flakes

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Cover the bottom of a roasting pan with olive oil, spread onion, garlic, and herbs in the pan. Place tomatoes on top of onion mixture, stem side down, fitting them close together. Season with salt, black pepper, and red pepper flakes. Bake about one hour, or until tomatoes char on top and blister. Let cool a little. Remove oregano and thyme. Puree vegetables in blender, working in batches, adding liquid from the bottom of the pan as needed. Store in a refrigerator, or freeze in locking bags or in ice cube trays. Use on pastas, eggs, beans, thin with stock to make tomato soup, braise fish fillets in it, or make my simple version of a vegetable terrine, while eggplants and bell peppers are still in season, and the weather is grill-friendly.

Terrine of grilled eggplant and fire-roasted peppers with tomato confit

Makes 1 4-cup container

2 bell peppers
3 small Italian eggplants
Olive oil for grilling
Salt, pepper
2 cups tomato confit
2 bags unflavored gelatin

Preheat a gas or charcoal grill. Place peppers on the hottest part of the grill, char on all sides, turning occasionally, until almost all the skin blackens. Place in a covered container and leave until cool enough to handle.

Slice eggplants lengthwise 1/4 inch thick. Brush with olive oil, season generously with salt and pepper. Remember that the vegetables will be served cold, so stronger seasoning will help them shine. Grill, turning once or twice, until soft and nice grill marks are created.

When peppers are cool enough to handle, remove the skins - they should slide off easily - and cores and seeds. Work over a bowl to catch the juices. Slice peppers lengthwise.

Line 4-cup Pyrex container, loaf pan, or terrine with plastic wrap. Put a layer of eggplant slices on the bottom, with the best grill marks facing down - this will be the top of the finished terrine. Top with a layer of peppers. Repeat, finishing with a layer of eggplant, with the best grill marks facing up, in case you decide to serve the terrine in the mold.

Divide tomato confit into two roughly equal portions. Bring one to almost boil, add any pepper juices to it. Sprinkle gelatin on cool confit, let sit two minutes. Add hot confit, mix well. Pour tomato-gelatin mixture over the vegetables in the mold. Pierce in a few places with a bamboo skewer, to let the tomato flow under and around the vegetables. Cover and refrigerate overnight.

Turn the terrine over to a cold plate, remove the mold and plastic, slice to show the colorful layers, and serve with more tomato confit, if desired.

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Location:San Rafael, CA

Slow burger

2011-09-27T18:17:00.001-07:00

This Marin Sun Farms grass fed burger sits on top of a pile of wild arugula, and a thick slice of heirloom tomato. It is garnished with sautéed crimini mushrooms, sharp cheddar, grilled bacon, marinated red onions, and fried sage. I skipped the bun and fries - why bother? - and ate it with knife and fork. Tastes like meat.

For the burger:
1/2 lb ground grass fed beef
1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
Sea salt, fresh ground black pepper
Olive oil for the grill

Season beef with Worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper. Shape into a ball, then flatten on a cutting board to about 1 inch thick burger. Make a shallow depression in the center to allow for expansion while cooking. Preheat gas grill. Oil the grill, cook burger over direct heat, covered, 3-4 minutes per side. Add toppings and cheese for the last minute of cooking.

For marinated onion (makes about 1/2 cup, keep unused portion refrigerated for up to a week): Slice 1 small red onion into very thin rings. Rinse under cold running water, drain. Season with a pinch of sea salt. Toss with 1 Tbsp sherry vinegar and 2 Tbsp white wine vinegar. Let sit 30 minutes at room temperature.

For fried sage: Heat 3 Tbsp olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add 6-8 large sage leaves. Cook until crisp, 3-4 minutes, turning carefully with tongs. Dry on paper towels. Use to garnish grilled meats, soups and salads. Cool and reserve the aromatic oil for use in salads.

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Location:San Rafael, CA

September fruit, cheese and wine pairing

2011-09-16T19:35:00.001-07:00

Fruit: Black Mission figs
Cheese: Chevre rolled in fine herbs
Wine: Beringer Knights Valley Alluvium Blanc 2008

Summer, I'll miss you! Long sunny days. The pool. Grilling in the park. Sitting outside on a warm evening, with the stars above me and a glass of chilled Sauvignon Blanc in front of me. Heirloom tomatoes. Bell peppers. Spot prawns with mango salsa. Peaches, nectarines, pears, melons. I'll even miss the zucchinis, no matter how tired of them I feel now. But most of all I'll miss the figs.

You just cannot get figs out of season: they have to be picked very ripe, they don't keep, and they don't travel. The season is short, and it is now.

Like all fruits, the only food created by the nature that was designed to be eaten, figs are great when you just eat them out of the basket. However, they really shine paired with cheese and wine.

I have selected Beringer Alluvium Blanc for it's fruitiness and chewy texture, not unlike my figs. The wine is deep golden color, it smells of exotic flowers and sweet citrus, and the taste is lush and tropical. And it has a hint of fig! Composed mostly of Sauvignon Blanc and Semillion grapes and aged in oak, it has a creamy start and a long, spicy and herbal aftertaste.

A soft goat cheese is a natural partner for the figs. Usually, I don't like any flavorings on my cheese, but for this pairing I picked a Chevre rolled in fine herbs, to honor the herbal character of the Sauvignon Blanc in the wine. And the wine supports it perfectly!

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Location:San Rafael, CA

Market find: candy stripe figs

2011-09-11T17:01:00.001-07:00

These pretty "candies" come from the farmers market and are actually a variety of figs, properly named Candy Stripe. Lighter in flavor than popular Black Mission figs and with a hint of citrus, they go well into sweet-savory dishes.

Quarter them for arugula salad with almonds, figs, and sherry vinaigrette; or cut a cross on top and insert a dab of goat cheese, season with a drop of honey and fresh ground black pepper; or wrap them in prosciutto slices; and enjoy the flavor of the early fall.

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Location:San Rafael,United States

Shooting vegetables: Garden photography class

2011-08-22T21:51:00.001-07:00

On a beautiful August day, when summer vegetables look their best and the vineyards are heavy with grapes getting ready for the harvest, Kendall-Jackson winery invited a local nature photographer Leagh Wachter to teach a photography class in their extensive vegetable garden and on the demo vineyard. The garden photography class was designed for those who are not content with just sipping wine and sampling fruits and vegetables, but who also want to capture their beauty. Of course, I am one of them! Having found out about the class at the last moment, I managed to get in.

I said it was a beautiful August day. Well, it was a good day for photography: the morning fog lifted a little by 9 am, but the sun never came out; it remained overcast (and cold!) all morning, giving us perfect diffused light for the duration of the class.

I arrived partially frozen in my convertible, and was greeted, together with other students, by Leagh, winery's estate manager Robin, and Jack the cat, who, despite his impressive size, moves very fast, and is difficult to convince to pose for a picture. It wasn't a wildlife photography class after all.

Behind the tasting room, on the outdoor patio, the kitchen staff had just started fire in their pizza oven. Later on I watched the chef taking temperature of the oven - it was 880 degrees then. In the morning it was just hot enough to help thaw my frozen fingers in front of the wood fire.

The day started with a sip of Kendall-Jackson new partially un-oaked Chardonnay, Avant, which they pare with fried green tomatoes topped with goat cheese, to highlight the tart and creamy aspects of the wine.

Then Leagh gave us a short lecture on specifics of outdoor lighting, sharing tips on when to shoot (early morning and early evening light are the best), how to select the light angle, use a diffuser (a cardboard frame filled with semi-transparent parchment paper) to tame harsh afternoon light, and a sheet of white paper held in front of the subject to fill in. He handled us printouts illustrating the same subjects photographed in different lighting, with different depth of field, and different composition.

After that all 25 of us, with our iPhones, point-and-shoot cameras and SLRs, were released to roam the garden and the vineyard. Leagh would go from one student to another, giving advise and ideas what to try.

Two hours later, we gathered for another wine and food pairing. The winery's culinary staff pair their Monterey county Pinot Noir with brick oven pizzas with roasted tomatoes, either vegetarian Margherita, or topped with sausages, artichokes, and mushrooms.

Kendall-Jackson people are obsessed with heirloom tomatoes. Half of the vegetable garden is taken by 175 varieties of them, arranged by color, and the next weekend they have their annual heirloom tomato festival. Sadly, this cold year was not the best for tomatoes. Most of them, except the cherry varieties, are just beginning to turn colors. The rest of the garden is organized by flavor profile, grouping together vegetables, fruits, and herbs that would compliment the same wine.

After the class some of us went for a complimentary wine tasting that the winery threw in with the class, others continued experimenting with picturing vegetables and grapes.

It felt like a very relaxing experience, and i was delighted by the opportunity to see and picture my favorite foodstuffs in their natural setting, but I was nearly exhausted after all the hours of hauling my heavy zoom camera around, kneeling, crawling, bending and twisting, trying to get close-up and the best angle.

Now I am looking forward to the next class in fall, when the vines will turn colors. Please, don't let it rain then!

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Location:Santa Rosa, CA

Gazpacho, because it's summer

2011-07-25T20:30:00.001-07:00

This simple cold soup is the symbol of summer. Its taste depends entirely on the quality of the vegetables. Only at the peak of the summer you can get the super-ripe, sweet, aromatic tomatoes, delicate Persian cucumbers that do not require peeling or seeding - the entire cucumber is delicious, - and juicy, tasty bell peppers.

When I don't have all the ingredients in my garden, I go to the favorite growers at the farmers market, and try to get a taste before I buy. If each vegetable tastes perfect, they will blend into a delicious refreshing bowl of soup.

Gazpacho
Serves 4

1 large or 2 small bell peppers, seeded
2 medium ripe tomatoes
3 Persian cucumbers, unpeeled
1 Maui onion
3-4 clove garlic
2 cups tomato juice
1/2 cup olive oil
Salt, pepper, sherry vinegar - to taste
Basil, parsley, or other herbs, to garnish

Chop all vegetables. Combine with tomato juice. Puree in blender, working in batches; I like to leave some chunks for more interesting texture. Season with olive oil, sherry vinegar, salt and pepper. Refrigerate 2-3 hours. Garnish with herbs and serve.

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Grill everything: Fish

2011-07-22T19:28:00.001-07:00

Nothing makes as quick, easy, tasty, and healthy summer meal as fish on the grill. You can create any marinade, seasoning, glaze, or sauce to add more character to your fish. I like to use lemon, garlic, and herbs with olive oil to marinate the fish for a Mediterranean flavor, soy sauce, ginger, and brown sugar glaze for an Asian accent, lime-mango salsa for a tropical twist.

However, if the fish is good and fresh, it needs no enhancement beyond some sea salt and freshly ground white pepper to bring out it's natural flavor.

The three problems that hold people from grilling more fish are:

1. It's expensive. I know it is, and it's getting more expensive very day, with all the rules and regulations, overfishing, supermarket profit margins, etc. We have to be flexible to still afford the fish. My solutions:
- buy from the fishermen. The local Pacific king salmon in season is $9/pound from the boat in the marina, $10/pound in the fish market in the marina, $11/pound in the fish market 100 yards from the marina, $25/pound at Whole Foods. Buying a whole fish to split with your friends is a good excuse for a party.

- watch out for sales; my local Safeway got an overstock of Copper River salmon, and they were selling the fillets at $10/pound today, instead of their regular $24/pound. Of course I got one!
- buy what's in season; at peak season for Alaskan sockeye salmon, a whole fresh fish (3-6 pounds, totally manageable for a larger family or an individual with some room in the freezer) was $4.99/pound at Costco.

2. It's easy to overcook and make it dry and unpalatable - just watch your fish, as soon as it flakes and is opaque throughout, it's ready to go. Don't waste a second. Most salt-water fishes are safe to eat raw anyway, so it's better to err on the undercooked side.

3. Turning over and taking off the grill a tender cooked flaky fish can be tricky. It tends to stick to the grill, fall apart, or both.
- Make sure the fish and the grill are well oiled to prevent sticking, and the grill is very hot.
- Don't move the fish until cooked on one side and ready to flip. Flip only once.
- When grilling fillets, place them on a very hot grill flesh side first. After it's seared, slide a wide spatula under the fillet, parallel to the grill ridges, and quickly flip it to the skin side to finish cooking.
- Tie fish steaks into compact round shapes, and use a wide spatula, parallel to the ridges, to turn and remove the steak from grill.

- For a whole fish, leave the scales on - the scales won't stick. Remove the skin with the scales before serving.
Or wrap the fish in grape, banana, or lettuce leaves. The leaves will char and add to the flavor, preventing sticking at the same time.
Or place thin lemon slices, kaffir lime leaves, or rosemary and thyme sprigs between the fish and the grill - same as above.
Or use a fish basket. I found out that even well oiled non-stick baskets stick badly, but it's much easier to free a fish stuck to a basket than one stuck to the hot grill.

My favorite fishes for the grill are:
Whole: all trouts, sardines, mackerel, red snapper, Thai snapper, pompano, stripped bass, sole, turbot.
Steaks: salmon, sturgeon, Chilean sea bass, halibut, dorado (mahi-mahi), tuna, monkfish, marlin.
Fillets: salmon, halibut.

Fishes that don't work for me: tilapia, all kinds of sole fillets, catfish, cod.

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Grill everything: Whole chicken

2011-05-28T15:43:00.000-07:00

Inspired by my success with grilling cut-up rabbit, and by Chicken Chimehuin recipe in Francis Mallmann's cookbook "Seven Fires", I now decided to grill a whole butterflied chicken.

The recipe calls for a 2-3/4 pound chicken - they don't make these anymore, not in North America. Last time I looked in the supermarket, the organic chickens were 6 pounds and up. That time I needed a small chicken for roasting, and I didn't specifically care for organic, so I asked to bring me a few conventional ones in a hope to find a smaller specimen. They were between 6.5 and 7 pounds!

Now, this monstrosity would be very difficult to roast evenly, and it would never grill, no way! It can be BBQ'd slowly, but this was not what I was looking for. Mallmann's idea is to recreate gaucho cooking over wood fire, and he is a big enthusiast of grilling on the verge of burning, adding flavor interest with charred patches on otherwise perfectly cooked meat. Grilling simplicity, and charred, rustic grilled meats appeal to me. I sure wanted to try this. But if I attempt to lightly charr a 6-pound dinosaur that is about 50% fat, it would be completely burned on the outside and rake of burned chicken fat long before it's enormous breasts come close to the desired temperature.

I needed a real chicken! Now, I happen to have friendly farmers who raise chickens underfoot, and they would get me one of the right size and superior quality, she would even have a name and a life story - if I called them a day before, and then drove two hours to their farm (and two hours back, if there is no traffic). I'll do it some day. But this time, I didn't plan ahead again, and I needed the chicken today.

So I did the same as I did when I needed a roster: the smallest supermarket chicken that I met recently is Trader Joe's kosher chicken, and it'll have to do this time. The smallest TJ's kosher chicken that I found was a little over 3 pounds. It's obviously the same breed as all other commercial chickens, as it shares the same traits: unbelievably huge breasts for it's size, and a lot of internal fat. Also, because of some specifics of the kosher processing, it's hairy. I mean, they cannot just plunge the bird into boiling water and then use a machine to pluck it. As a result, there are always some feathers left. So expect to spend some meditative time with the tweezers finishing the epilation job.

Anyway, with most of the fat and feathers removed, my bird was approaching the desired weight of 2-3/4 pounds.

I cut it through the breast and flattened it the best I could. The breast was still protruding, Holliwood-style. Than I made a paste of rosemary, garlic, salt, pepper, and lemon rind, and massaged it into the bird, carefully lifting the skin and spreading the mixture between the skin and the meat.

I heated the grill on full power, then reduced the heat to medium, brushed the grill with olive oil, and grilled my bird for about 15 minutes per side, bone-side first, putting out the flare-ups that occurred regularly - I thought I had cut off most of the fat, no?

The weird shape of the breast-forward chicken does create a problem: the legs were well cooked and beginning to burn long before the breast was done, so I covered them with foil for the last ten minutes of cooking.
Finally, it was done as desired: moist inside, 160 degrees, charred patches and golden-brown outside. Served with olive-parsley-garlic sauce, which is a green slurry of finely minced parsley and garlic in olive oil, as the recipe suggests (I couldn't resist doubling the garlic and adding some red wine vinegar to the sauce - it's so much like chimichurri!) and preserved lemons.

It's good, and I'll do it again. But the next time, I'll do it with a real chicken.

Grill everything: Rabbit

2011-05-28T15:21:00.000-07:00

Now, who told you that rabbit tastes like chicken? They either never actually tried rabbit and are judging from the similar size and shape of the parts, or they only tasted it in one of those preparations that cover up the delicate flavor of the meat with a lot of sauce and spices. Rabbit tastes like rabbit! If i would compare it to chicken, I'd say that rabbit tastes like chicken should in the perfect world. It has delicate meaty flavor that, depending on the animal's diet, can sometimes be distinctly sweet. Also rabbit meat is naturally lean, so it's good for you.

The traditional, fool-proof way to cook rabbit is stewing or braising. This is what I have always been doing too. Sometimes I would save the tiny tender flanks (belly), loins, liver and kidneys to add to other things on the grill, but the legs always went into the braising pot. They can be tough and dry if cooked by dry heat, especially coming from a large animal that's been previously frozen.
This small (2 pounds) rabbit that I got from Devil's Gulch Ranch was fresh and looked tender, and it obviously had been well fed, as it had some fat in it, so I decided to risk cooking it all on the grill - and it worked!

I got the idea of the marinade at Jamie Oliver's website .

I left out the honey: the meat is already sweet, why try to improve it? I cut up the bunny and rubbed the parts with a paste made of minced garlic, lemon zest and juice, rosemary, thyme, olive oil, salt and white pepper, covered and let them sit for 30 minutes or so. I preheated my gas grill on it's highest setting, then just before cooking I turned the gas down to medium and let some of the heat escape, so the actual cooking was done at 400 degrees or so.

The only secret in grilling rabbit (besides getting a young and fresh one from a good source) is that different parts cook in different times.

The hind legs are largest and toughest, hardworking parts of the beast. They took 15 minutes per side.
I added the smaller front legs while turning the hind legs over. They cooked about 8 minutes per side.
The delicate loins were ready after 3 minutes per side.
Then I turned heat back up, and quickly seared the bellies and liver and kidneys, threaded on a bamboo skewer, 2 minutes per side. This made the belly pieces really crispy without burning them, and cooked the liver and kidneys perfectly: browned on the outside, moist and tender inside.

Served with grilled vegetables, green salad, California Pinot Noir.

Grill everything: Vegetables

2011-05-20T09:56:00.000-07:00

Here I am, in the "beautiful, sunny California" in the end of May (heavy fog one day, so that you don't know if it's day or early morning till 4 pm, when the howling wind takes away the fog and brings in the rain clouds; pouring rain the next two days; upper 50s; repeat). I know I shouldn't be complaining: if this climate is good enough to grow grapes, it's probably good enough for me. But please, can it be just a little warmer sometimes? I'm waiting for summer. Begging for summer. Doing my little Voodoo dance to bring the summer in. The magic dance requires me to pretend that it is summer now. So every time the weather allows me to get outside, I cook my dinner on the grill, and serve it outside too. I even made the poor dear boyfriend have dinner out in the patio, in 50 knot wind, so that he had to hold his napkin with one hand, while protecting his face from the flying salad with the other. We pulled it off just fine, so I know, the summer is coming...

Since all grills are different, I cannot give you the exact cooking times. Mine is a Weber Q 320 gas grill that goes from ~~zero~~ 65 to 600 in 15 minutes. Probe your vegetables with a fork from time to time to find out right cooking times for your grill.

I like to prepare assorted vegetables, then brush them all together with light olive oil seasoned with salt and freshly ground black pepper just before placing them on the grill.

Artichokes: Peel off tough outer leaves. Cut off the top 1/3. Cut in halves. Remove the choke with a spoon or tip of a paring knife. I don't bother to rub the cut surfaces with lemon juice to protect them from discoloration - they are going to charr anyway. Parboil until almost tender, 10-15 minutes. Shock in ice water. Brush with seasoned oil, grill, turning once, until the heart is tender and the leaves are charred, 5-6 minutes.

Asparagus: Break off tough root ends (if you have a powerful blender, save the roots for a cream of asparagus soup). Toss with seasoned oil, grill until tender, 2-3 minutes, turning once or twice to get nice grill marks.

Bell peppers: Core, slice into 6 segments, brush with seasoned oil, grill, turning once, until tender and the skins are lightly charred, 4-5 minutes. Remove skins if desired.

Carrots: trim the root and the greens, leaving 1/2 inch of the greens attached (for presentation). Parboil until almost tender, 15-20 minutes. Shock in ice water. Brush with seasoned oil, grill, turning, until tender and marked on all sides, 5-6 minutes.

Eggplant: For grilling, select slender Japanese eggplants. Slice into 1 inch wheels, either straight or on diagonal. Brush with seasoned oil. Grill, turning once, until tender and lightly charred, 4-5 minutes.

Fennel: Trim off the green tops. Cut the bulb into six segments, brush with seasoned oil, grill, turning once, until almost tender but still crunchy, 6-8 minutes.

Lemons: Cut in halves, brush the cut side with oil, place on the grill with the curbside down. Grill 1-2 minutes just to soften. Squeeze over your grilled meats, fish, or vegetables.

Mushrooms: Trim the roots even with the cups. If the gaps in the grill are large and the mushrooms are small, thread them on bamboo skewers soaked in water. Brush with oil, cook 3-4 minutes, turning once. Cook portabello cups on the cooler side of the grill 8-10 minutes, until soft, turning once, brush with white wine vinegar or balsamico, if desired. Slice before serving.

Radish: Trim roots and greens, cut in halves, brush with seasoned oil. Grill on the cut side, just to mark, about one minute.

Ramps, baby leeks: Remove outer leaves. Cut off the green part, leaving 1 inch for presentation. Cut lengthwise, rinse, rubbing with your fingers, under running water, to remove the dirt that is clinging between the leaves. Brush with seasoned oil. Grill, turning once, until tender and lightly charred, 2-3 minutes.

Spring onions: Remove the green tops, leaving 1-2 inches. Trim off the root, but leave the root end intact, so that the layers won't separate (you can cut it off after cooking). Cut the bulb into six segments, brush with seasoned oil, grill, turning once, until tender and well marked.

Summer squashes (green, yellow, crookneck, pattypan, zucchini, etc.): Slice oblong squashes into 1 inch wheels, either straight or on diagonal. Cut pattypans in halves, or, if small, leave whole. Brush with seasoned oil. Grill, turning once, until tender, 3-4 minutes.

Sweet potatoes, yams: scrub thoroughly, brush lightly with oil. Grill in their skins over medium heat, turning occasionally, until tender (about 20 minutes). Cut in halves lengthwise, season with salt, pepper, olive oil. Eat out of the skins, or, if organic, skins are good to eat too.

Tomatoes: Cut in halves. Brush with seasoned oil. Place on the cool side of the grill, cut side down, and grill gently, just to charr the cut side.

Seafood stew deconstructed

2011-04-11T19:50:00.001-07:00

In coastal areas around the world, the traditional seafood stews are based on the same flavor-building technique: the flavor base is prepared with aromatic vegetables, herbs, spices, small fish, fish and shellfish trimmings; then the "nice" fish and shellfish are dropped into the base and simmered just long enough to cook through. They become the stars of the show, while the flavor base provides the ambiance, often with rice, noodles, or bread as a background. Bouillabaisse of Marselles, San Francisco chioppino, paella, jambalaya, Russian ookha, seafood chowders of the US East Coast, Thai seafood curries are all based on this winning principle.

This stew is my take on Brazilian mariscada, with a lot of adjustments to my own taste and ingredients at hand, and it's based on the same universal idea.
Lemon and white wine are seafood's natural partners, and I love the tropical islands reference added by coconut milk. It would be better to make seafood stock with shrimp shells and heads, but this time I only had shells - they had to do. Serves 4.

Flavor base:
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, minced
3 large cloves garlic, minced
1 red bell pepper, thinly sliced
1 small can diced tomatoes, with juice
Stock made with shrimp shells, 1 cup white wine, plus water to cover, strained
Pinch saffron
Pinch cayenne
1 tsp smoked paprika
Sea salt, fresh ground white pepper

Heat oil in a large deep pan. Add onion and garlic, cook over medium-low heat until onions are transparent but not browning. Add pepper and tomatoes with their juice, simmer over low heat until vegetables are very soft and the liquid starts to reduce. Add seafood stock, cook another 10 minutes. Season with saffron, cayenne, paprika, salt and pepper.

Seafood:
4 large sea scallops
12 large shrimps, peeled, tails on (use shells for the stock)
1 pound white fish (I had cod and barramundi), cut into bite-size pieces
12 langoustine tails

Increase heat to medium. Add scallops. Cook 2 minutes. Add fish and shrimps. Cook until opaque and the shrimps turn red. Add langoustine tails.

To finish:
1/2 cup unsweetened coconut milk
Juice of 1/2 lemon

Add coconut milk and lemon juice. Heat through. Adjust seasoning. Remove from heat.

To serve:
Small bunch cilantro, minced
Lemon slices
Cooked white rice

Serve over white rice, garnish with cilantro and lemon.

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Smoked trout in a bag

2011-04-06T21:56:00.001-07:00

Last week I have discovered an easy way to add smoked flavor to baked or grilled fish - smoker bags for oven or grill - and I used it to "smoke" whole trout several times, with great success.

The bag is made of several layers of aluminum foil, there are alder wood chips between the layers, and tiny holes in the inside layer. You rub the fish with olive oil, salt and pepper inside and out, place a few lemon slices and/or herb sprigs inside each fish, put the fish in the bag and close it. Then you can place the whole thing on a pre-heated gas grill, or in a hot oven. The chips release the smoke inside the bag, and it imparts it's flavor on the fish while it cooks.

Because the fish is enclosed, it doesn't lose any moisture, the way it does in real hot-smoking. The result is a moist, tender, steamed-fish texture, with a smoky flavor.

I found that one bag can accommodate 2-3 large trouts, up to four pounds total weight. Baking in the oven at 400 degrees for about 40-45 minutes works very well. The best results, however, I got when I grilled the fish package over very hot grill for about 30 minutes. The fish got a little charred on the edges while the centers stayed moist.

Update 4/7/2011:
Today I smoked a 2.5 pound slab of pork ribs in a bag. I used a pre-made dry rub on the ribs (Jake's Righteous Rub: paprika, brown sugar, garlic, parsley, tarragon, oregano, salt - thank you, Jake! I've added fresh ground black pepper, and more paprika for color). My gas grill goes from zero to 600 in about 15 minutes. I kept the bag at 550 degrees until the chips started smoking, 15 minutes or so, then reduced the heat to 325, and cooked the bag for a little over an hour.

Although the meat came out very tasty and falling off the bone tender, there is a lot of room for improvement:
- alder wood smoke is not as dramatic on pork as it is on fish; the bags are also available with hickory chips - I'll try this next
- the surface of the meat is somewhat dry; reduce the time at high temperature, and reduce the slow-cooking temperature too. It may be a good idea to marinate the meat instead of using a dry rub
- the bag had room for much more than just one slab of ribs; I'll toss in some onions and garlic, and may be even small potatoes next time.

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Simple mixed citrus tart

2011-03-28T18:25:00.001-07:00

Blood oranges have a short season, and it's almost over. We have to eat them now.

With their striking color, aromatic rind, and complex, pleasantly bitter-sweet taste they make an excellent addition to savory dishes, like salads, sauces for meat and poultry, and one-pot braises.

Or, mix them with other citrus fruits and bake this colorful tart.

Here, the citrus fruits are not decorated in any way - they stand out and shine on their own. Use a mixture of Valencia and blood oranges, tangerines, Meyer lemons, or anything that's good at the farmers market.

In this simple preparation, the quality of the ingredients make a lot of difference. If you don't feel like making your own puff pastry dough (I know it's painful, I try to avoid making it too), use artisan all butter frozen puff pastry, like Dufour Classic, $11 at Whole foods. A more economical option is to get an artisan puff pastry dough for $4 at Trader Joes. It tastes great, but it doesn't puff up so readily, so the texture may get compromised.

I store a vanilla bean that my friends brought me from Bali in a jar of confectioners sugar, and use this gently perfumed sugar for baking. If vanilla sugar is not available, I wouldn't substitute artificial vanilla extract - too bold a flavor would distract from out main attraction, the citrus. Better skip vanilla and use plain sugar instead.

Mixed citrus tart
Makes 1 12x12 inch tart, serves 9

14 oz sheet frozen all butter puff pastry, defrosted
All-purpose flour, for dusting

4 oz Neufchatel cheese, or light cream cheese, at room temperature
1 egg, beaten
rind of 1 blood orange, grated
2 tsp vanilla sugar or confectioners sugar

5-6 mixed citrus fruits: oranges, tangerines, lemons
2 tsp confectioners sugar

On a floured surface, roll out the puff pastry dough to fit 12x12 square baking sheet. Trim the edges. Place the dough on a non-greased non-stick baking sheet. With a tip of a sharp knife, mark a 1/2-inch border around the perimeter of the tart, take care not to cut through the dough.

Reserve 1 Tbsp beaten egg for the egg wash. Combine the remaining egg, blood orange rind, Neufchatel cheese and vanilla sugar. Mix well.

Spread the cheese mixture in a thin layer over the dough, within the marked border.

Cut top and bottom from each citrus fruit, to expose the flesh. Place the fruit on it's end on a cutting board. With a sharp knife, cut off rind and the white pith in strips, turning the fruit. Slice the fruit into 1/4 thick slices, removing the seeds as you go.

Arrange citrus slices on the cheese mixture, making an attractive pattern. Sprinkle with sugar.

Make egg wash: mix 1 Tbsp beaten egg with 1 Tbsp water. Brush on the tart border.

Freeze tart for 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees (350 with convection). Bake the tart until the border is puffed up and browned, about 30 minutes.

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Braised duck legs with blood orange and dried figs

2011-03-21T11:49:00.000-07:00

In this cold weather dish, the duck legs are sauteed slowly to create crunchy golden skin and melt out most of the fat, then open-braised in wine, stock, and orange juice. Make sure not to cover the duck skin with the braising liquid - this will preserve the crunchy texture.

I did noth thicken the sauce, but served the legs with de-greased braising liquid, for a modern, lighter dish.

If blood oranges are not available (the season is short), use highly aromatic Valencia oranges, or any other kind.

Braised duck legs with blood orange and dried figs
Serves 4

1 Tbsp olive oil or duck fat
4 duck legs
1 cup red wine
1 cup chicken or duck stock
12 dried Mission figs
small bunch thyme
2 small sprigs rosemary
2 bay leaves
5 juniper berries
rind and juice of 1 blood orange + 1 whole blood orange
salt, pepper

Smoking in the rain: Canadian bacon

2011-03-16T14:35:00.000-07:00

Many years ago, when I was growing up (yes, I am old), chicken used to be the lean diet meat, and pork was juicy and fatty, definetely no good for dieting, with the distinct flavor - love it or hate it. I don't want to know what they do to the poor animals now, but the roles have reversed to a degree: the huge chickens that you buy in a grocery store are almost 50% fat (unfortunately, it doesn't improve the flavor), and the pork is lean, and yes, mostly tastless. The good thing is, pork easily accepts flavors during marinating or curing. The leanest cut, pork loin, after curing and smoking becomes wonderful Canadian bacon.

I used Canadian bacon recipe from my favorite Charcuterie book. Since I had 2 smaller pieces of pork loin, and because of the shape of the dish, I cut the brine recipe in half; I've also adjusted the quantities of the ingredients a little, to accomodate my taste for less salty meat, and unlimited garlic. To cure two 2-pound pieces of trimmed pork loin I used
2 liters water
1/2 cup kosher salt
1/3 cup brown sugar
20 gram pink salt
bunch of sage
bunch of thyme
6 large garlic cloves

The pork spent 2 days curing in the brine, covered and refrigerated.

I then took the pork out of the brine, rinsed it under cold running water, dried with paper towels, tied in a few places to keep the shape, and let it rest at room temperature while I was busy starting my primitive charcoal smoker. This took a little over an hour of blowing on the charcoals, trying to contain the sparks while not getting burned myself, moving the hot and sparkling smoker farther from the house, running to the store to get more charcoal, moving the smoker closer to the house to protect it from the beginning rain, swearing in four or five languages all the while. Finally, the little no-good termometer on the lid moved to the mark between "warm" and "ideal" and froze there. No matter what I did, it wouldn't go higher.

Not to waste all the heat, I also smoked a couple of shallots, a boiled potato, a head of garlic, and a couple of handfuls of sea salt.

At my smoker's uncertain temperature, it took the pork about 4 hours to get to the internal temperature of 145 degrees. By that time the exterior was covered by beautiful, glossy and aromatic smoked "skin".
I let the bacon cool, removed the twine, sliced it, and vacuum-packed most of it for storage.

The next day I decided that my homemade Canadian bacon deserves homemade English muffins for breakfast. The recipe I used, http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/english-muffins/Detail.aspx , calls for shortening - I replaced it with melted unsalted butter.

Also, it took only 4-1/2 cups of flour, instead of 6 in the recipe, to make workable, relatively soft dough - must be due to variations in flour and humidity.

I was very happy with my adjusted recipe, and by 3 pm I already had a perfect homemade breakfast:

Toasted English muffin, Canadian bacon, lightly poached eggs, chives from the garden, Hollandaise sauce made with 1 egg yolk, 1/2 unsalted butter, juice of 1 lemon, salt and freshly ground white pepper; Turkish coffee.

By the time I finished breakfast, it was time to think about dinner.

Slow food.

Sonoma County wine road barrel tasting

2011-03-13T21:47:00.000-07:00

On a rainy Sunday last weekend my friend KY and I went to our favorite Dry Creek winery for once a year barrel tasting. As long-time wine club members, we've been watching their wine making efforts improve every year. And of course we couldn't miss tasting the future release of their wonderful Bordeaux style blend "The Mariner", out of the barrel. Composed of the classic five Bordeaux grapes, with a different proportion every year, the 2009 version displays beautiful balance and dark fruit flavors, and is although it will be released in 2013 and has a 5-7 years aging potential, it's perfectly drinkable even now.

When we started on the trip we didn't realize that it's not only our winery's event. In fact, most wineries on Sonoma County wine road, that runs through three valleys and wine making appelations: Dry Creek Valley, Alexander Valley, and Russian River Valley - open their cellars to the public and pour the future releases of their wines out of the barrel. It's a marketing opportunity for the wineries, who sell futures for their next releases, and endless fun for the visitors, from serious wine enthusiasts to out-of-state tourists exploring California wine country, to loud parties in stretch limos, out for drinks.

As we were not planning on visiting multiple wineries on this trip, we didn't have too much time, and there was no tasting plan. So we decided to just drive around, enjoy the vistas, and stop in whatever wineries we encounter.

Here is where we been and what we found:

Teldeschi winery didn't have an actual new release barrel tasting. Instead, they were pouring a selection of their library Petit Sirahs from 1998 on.Smooth, respectable, well aged wines.

Eveterre Ridge delighted us with a beautiful, smooth, silky and deep 2010 Anderson Valley Pinot Noir. The wine is not yet released, and available only as futures. The previous vintage sold out...

The wood burning oven on the patio overlooking the entire Dry Creek Valley produced flatbreads scented with thyme and rosemary from their garden, to go with the tasting, and everything pizzas for wine club party.

The cozy Rued Winery suprised with a 2008 zin produced from the grapes that grew next to a site of a forest fire. As a result, the wine has a distinctive smokey flavor that reminded me of my homemade Canadian bacon!

Mill Creek Winery featured several perfectly crafted wines, including one of the best examples of California Sauvignon Blanc, that started with citrus and tropical fruits and ended with delicate honey flavor.

Winter mushroom soup

2010-12-07T10:05:00.000-08:00

It was raining for two days straight. This is when this soup was born. It's dark, heavy body, earthy mushroom and vegetable fragrance, a fire in the fireplace, and a glass of wine - all you need to accept the long cold nights and days that look like early mornings. Now it's nice and sunny again in our unpredictable "sunny California", but I know there will be more rainy days, so here it is.

It looks like a cream soup, but the cream (creme fraiche) is actually just used for serving. The creamy body of the soup comes from root vegetables that are cooked with mushrooms in homemade chicken stock and then pureed. For a vegetarian version, replace chicken stock with vegetable broth.

The magic of this soup comes from a handful of dried porcini mushrooms. Their smell is comforting and totally irresistible, and is supported by a flavor base of winter vegetables. Make sure to add the liquid that you used to soak the mushrooms - a large part of the mushroom essence is in it.

This recipe makes four large servings of very thick soup, as is appropriate for the season. Or use more stock for a thinner version and serve it in espresso cups as an appetizer for a party.

Mushroom Soup
Serves 4

1 oz dried porcini mushrooms
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 Tbsp unsalted butter
2 leeks, sliced
2 carrots, chopped
1 parsley root, chopped
1 shallot, sliced
3 cloves garlic, sliced
8 oz white mushrooms, chopped
1/2 cup dry sherry
1 qt chicken stock
2 medium potatoes, diced
2 sprigs thyme
2 bay leaves
4 juniper berries, lightly crushed
salt, freshly ground pepper

To serve, optional: creme fraiche, minced parsley, fried shallot.

Cover dried mushrooms with hot water and soak until soft, 15-30 minutes, depending on the quality of the mushrooms. Remove mushrooms, squeeze dry, and chop, reserving the liquid. Strain liquid through a fine mesh strainer.
Meanwhile, heat olive oil and butter in a large saute pan. Add leeks, carrots, parsley root, shallot and garlic. Sweat over medium-low heat until soft but not browning, 10-15 minutes. Add porcini and white mushrooms, cook another 10 minutes. Add mushroom soaking liquid, sherry, chicken stock, thyme, bay leaves, juniper berries, and potatoes. Season with salt and pepper. Simmer gently over low heat for 20 minutes, until the potatoes are cooked.
Remove and discard thyme, bay, and juniper berries. Puree soup in blender to desired texture. I like to leave the soup a little chunky. When pureeing hot soup, work in batches, and hold the lid down firmly with a towel, to make sure that the steam doesn't force the lid off and the hot liquid all over the kitchen and the cook (been there, done this). Pour into a pan and re-heat gently.

Serve in soup bowls, garnished with creme fraiche, parsley, and/or fried shallot.

This soup, served with a large slice of bread, can make a dinner on it's own. Or, here is a comforting second course to match:

Place pork medallions (thick slices of pork tenderloin), crushed bay leaves, sage, thyme sprigs, sliced garlic, salt, pepper, and a little olive oil in a plastic bag. Vacuum seal (I vacuum seal everything these days) or close the bag tightly. Refrigerate overnight. Remove medallions, rub off marinade, and dry with paper towels. Saute in a little olive oil over medium-high heat to medium-well (barely pink in the middle).

Here, served with sauteed Brussels sprouts and baby cauliflower, with my apple butter, and my killer tarragon mustard. The apple butter tames the heat of the mustard a bit, so it doesn't make me cry all the way through the dinner. And I have plenty of this apple butter to last me and everyone around me through the winter.

Recipe cross-posted to my personal chef blog.

Happy Thanksgiving! Save a turkey!

2010-11-26T18:38:00.000-08:00

No turkey suffered to make this post. While the whole nation was feasting on millions of turkeys, we decided to save a turkey, and went for the other white meat. It happened to be pork.

We started with pork rillettes that I made in advance: I just cooked the hell out of a fatty porl shoulder, cut into cubes, seasoned with thyme, bay leaves, juniper berries, salt and pepper, covered with water. After about 6 hours of low and slow cooking, the pork was tender and easy to shred with two forks. I then strained and degreased the cooking liquid (save the fat), reduced it a little more, packed the pulled pork into small containers, spooned some of the reduce liquid over it to make jelly, chilled, and then sealed it with reserved fat. At the time of serving I scraped the fat off, and we spread the rillettes on slices of walnut bread and ate it with my homemade tarragon killer mustard. The mustard made me cry, but otherwise it was all good.

The crown roast of pork usually takes a few days to absorb flavors of a dry rub that you put on it. Of course, I wasn't planning well, so I got the 3.5-pound 6-rib roast just the day before Thanksgiving. No problems! Technology comes to a rescue: my new gadget, FoodSaver vacuum sealer, doesn't just extend the life of the leftovers, it also helps to reduce marinating time of whatever meats you vacuum-pack with it.

I vacuum-seal everything these days. It does increase my carbon footpring; I toss much more plastic every day than I used to. OK, I use my canvas shopping bags to offset the damage, but I'm not giving up vacuum sealing. It's fun, it looks cool, and now R. can take weekend dinner leftovers for lunches all week long.

I've made a paste of garlic, sage, and rosemary, finely chopped with salt and pepper. Cut part-way through between the ribs and the meat of the roast, seasoned it with the paste inside and out, tied it together between the ribs, as if nothing happened, and vacuum sealed the whole thing. When I cut the plastic and roasted it the next day, the flavors in the meat were distributed very well.

The roast took a little over an hour in a 400-degrees oven to come to internal temperature of 135 degrees. I took it out at this point, covered with foil, and let it rest for about 25 minutes. The meat came out completely cooked, no pink, but still juicy.

We did the modern classics for the sides:

- Mashed sweet potatoes with parsley root, apple topping (of course, I'm still dealing with the tons of apples from my friend's garden)

- Roasted Brussels sprouts

- Arugula salad with fennel, pomegranate, and toasted almonds, pomegranate vinaigrette dressing

Finished with a simple puff pastry apple tart, served with Three Twins ice cream, and a glass of Amontillado sherry.

The last six jars of my apple butter are cooling in the canning pot right now. I think I'm done with the apples for this year. The orange season is close...

Happy Thanksgiving!

Roasted pheasants

2010-11-19T12:38:00.000-08:00

My friend K. doesn't just flood me with apples from his garden. He is also a hunter (about once a year), and in fall he sometimes supplies game for our dinner parties.

Last year we had to figure out what to do with three wild geese. They ended up as a flavorful braise, made with prunes, wild mushrooms, and sherry.

This time K. and his wire hound Martin got us three pheasants.

Well, this one was easy: pheasants are very similar to chickens, these even had a little fat in them.

We rubbed them with salt and pepper, stuffed minced garlic, rosemary and thyme under the skins, put large slices of onions and garlic and a few juniper berries inside the birds, trussed them, and placed them in a roasting pan, surrounded by mixed cut vegetables (bell peppers, onions, garlic cloves, potatoes, carrots, and sweet potatoes) - just like chickens. Since pheasant meat tends to be dry, we covered the breasts and legs with slices of apple wood bacon.

Roasted at 450 degrees about 20 minutes, then removed the bacon, took out those vegetables that were done, turned the birds over and roasted another 15 minutes. Then we decreased the temperature to 375, turned the birds breast side up again, and let them roast to internal temperature of 160 degrees. The potatoes and carrots had to stay in the oven for another 10 minutes to finish cooking.

I made a sauce with mushrooms, Marsala wine, shallots and cream to go with the birds.

One bird serves two.

The birds came out very tasty, and the breasts were juicy and tender, except a few pieces of lead that we missed while cleaning them; but the legs, although full of flavor, were tough. Next time, if we get pheasants again, the breasts will go on the grill, and the legs into a stew.

However, I am afraid that it may be a wild boar next time.

This is what I did with the leftovers.

United colors of pasta

2010-11-04T18:41:00.000-07:00

Fresh pasta is readily available in the refrigerator section of any supermarket. Love, fun and imagination are not.

So, let's get the palette ready (baked beet puree, butternut squash puree, chlorophyll extracted from spinach),

prep a canvass of semolina flour, bread flour, salt and eggs, and let the pasta fun begin.

Pasta sheets are like soft fabric; they are easy to cut with scissors, knife, or a pasta machine attachment into traditional (and not so traditional) pasta shapes.

My four-cheese, three-color ravioli are like no others.

Stracchi means "rugs". Mine are colorful. How are yours?

Is pasta always the same color on both sides? It doesn't have to be!

I spent almost the entire day playing with my pasta and photographing it for the USPCA 2011 calendar (coming soon).

Thankfully, the gardeners came in the afternoon, and were looking in puzzlement at what I was doing. We shared a bowl of pasta, and there was nothing left to photograph.

Fall charcuterie

2010-11-04T17:36:00.000-07:00

You don't think that just because I haven't blogged here for a while, I stopped cooking, do you? In fact, I was so absorbed in developing my Personal Chef business and bringing up the new USPCA Bay Area Chapter website, I just didn't have energy for my dear own food blog. But I'm going to change this. And I've been cooking all the time!

The changing season requires some cured meat. Simple country-style pâté can be a great comfort.

When it comes to bistro-style cooking I like to rely on recipes from Antony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook. If Jamie Oliver is the naked chef, this is a chef, skin off. He takes classic recipes and strips them from all the bells and whistles, leaving just the bare 3-ingredient (well, sometimes 14) essence of the dish. And they work amazingly well!

Also, Bourdain's recipes withstand modifications very well. This is one of the very few cookbooks that I actually cook from. It's not just for browsing by the fireplace.

For my pâté de campagne I used chicken livers instead of pork liver. Marinated the livers, pieces of pork butt and pork belly with wine, cognac, and spices overnight, ground them using my old trusted manual meat grinder, and divided the meat into three portions. One I decorated with rosemary and thyme, the other with sage leaves, and the third with chopped almonds. Pictured here is the one with almonds. R. got both rosemary and sage ones to take to work for lunches during his crazy work week.

The sausages are pork with some beef. The red ones on the right have bright red, super aromatic paprika that a friend brought directly from Hungary. The ones on the left are mixed fresh herbs, and the light ones in the center are apple and cognac. If you are like me overwhelmed with tons of apples this season, check out my personal chef blog post on Dealing with all these apples for more ideas.

Here all three kinds of sausages are roasted and served with cannellini beans and tomato sauce.

Grilled trout in the park

2010-10-05T20:38:00.000-07:00

This year, San Francisco Fleet Week falls on R. and my birthday weekend. The planned party on Angel Island is out of the question. I had these parties a few times now, and every time we were lucky to catch the weekend before the Fleet Week. Friends had no trouble to get to the island, by boat, ferry, or even jet ski, and as an added bonus, we got to see the rehersal of the air show! This time, there will be crowds on land and on the water.

So the birthday party has to be elsewhere, but we decided to go to Angel Island anyway, and planned for this last Saturday. The morning of the trip, Y., who lives overlooking the Bay, called everyone and told us that the fog is entering, and Angel Island is covered already. Change of plans again.

One place that I know that the fog never reaches is China Camp park (in San Rafael, just across the highway from where I live), and I promptly suggested that we go there. By the time we were done calling back and forth trying to figure out where to go, most of San Francisco Bay, the Peninsula, and Southern Marin were covered with fog, so everyone was happy with my suggestion.

Supermarket farmed trout is a highly underappreciated fish. It's one of the few farmed fishes that actually taste good (farmed sturgeon is my second favorite), has few bones, looks great, and doesn't cost anything.
We paid $17 for this happy family of 6 fresh dressed trouts! Bright eyes, shiny skins, serves one each.

Season them inside and out with salt and fresh ground pepper, stick a rosemary branch, a sprig of thyme, and two-three slices of lemon inside, tie them with the kitchen twine to hold the herbs and lemon in, all the while keeping the bees out. Bees smell the fish from far away, and come to get a taste. Here, R. is fending the bees off with a paper towel, while I prepare the fish for the grill.

Brush the fish with olive oil. Grill over hot charcoals until the flesh flakes, about 6 minutes per side.

As an afterthought, we grilled a flat iron steak with cajun seasoning, and some corn on the cob.

Season the steak with Weber Cajun seasoning in both sides; grill, turning once, to internal temperature of 135 degrees for medium rare. Do not overcook: flat iron steak turns very tough if cooked beyond medium. Let rest 5-7 minutes, or as long as you can wait. Slice thinly against the grain. Serve with mustard.

Chicken paprikash

2010-10-01T20:11:00.000-07:00

My friends in Beaver Creek biodynamic winery make a chicken paprikash to die for. I know their secret ingredient, and I am going to tell you in a moment. Beaver Creek guys say it’s OK to publish their secret. It’s not going to help most of us to imitate their paprikash. In fact, those of us who have access to this secret ingredient, already know the secret, and have their own recipes to die for.

The secret ingredient in the Beaver Creek winery paprikash is the chicken. A farm-raised chicken that had natural feed, a farmyard with plenty of sunshine and green grass and a comfortable barn for residence, rich social life among other free and brave chickens, and a lifelong relationship with the cook. The guy who makes the chicken paprikash is the one who bought a few days old chick from the breeder, gave it a name, fed it, protected it from the mountain lions, killed, plucked and cleaned it, and now cooks and serves it on the same day.

Other ingredients include the usual butter, onion, tomato, bell pepper, thyme, oregano, white wine, sour cream, and, of course, paprika.

I don’t have easy access to the secret ingredient. Some day, when I have a special occasion and plenty of time, I’ll drive 2 hours to the winery, buy one of their chickens, ask them to kill and clean it right away, rush it home, and make a paprikash almost as good as theirs. It will have the chicken’s name and the life story to go with it, and the wonderful old-world flavor. Some day…

For now, I don’t have the perfect chicken. But I have paprika. A Hungarian friend brought back a couple of kilos from a trip home a few days ago. I got two large bags – one sweet, one hot. Vibrant colors, sweet one pure crimson, hot – very bright brick-red; intoxicating smell; and as fresh as you get this side of the Atlantic. My own secret ingredient.

Our poor supermarket Rocky Jr. chicken is a cheap plastic imitation of what a chicken should be. Huge, super-fat, and almost tasteless. It’s a challenge to trim most fat from the thighs while still leaving the skin on, but it’s doable. On the bright side, each oversized thigh makes a perfect one serving.

I used fresh oregano instead of dried, out of sheer laziness: fresh grows right in front of the kitchen door, while dried is packed into my personal chef kit in the car; I would have to go get it. Oregano is one of the few herbs that have more intense scent when dried, so use more of the fresh when you have to substitute it for dried. Thyme is the other way: it loses scent with drying and storage, so a little fresh thyme goes a long way in recipes that call for dried thyme. I also used my homemade tomato sauce instead of tomato paste. There was only one cup left, and I didn’t want to freeze it.

Chicken paprikash
Serves 4

1 Tbsp olive oil
1 Tbsp butter
4 chicken thighs, skin on, bone in, trimmed of most fat
Salt, pepper
1 large onion, thinly sliced
1 red bell pepper, thinly sliced
1 cup white wine
1 cup tomato paste
1 tsp sweet paprika
½ tsp hot paprika
2-3 sprigs fresh thyme
5-6 sprigs fresh oregano
½ cup crème fraiche
1 tsp finely chopped parsley, for serving

Heat oil and butter over medium-high heat in a Dutch oven. Season chicken with salt and pepper. Cook , turning, to brown on all sides. Remove to a plate.

Reduce heat to medium. Add onions and bell pepper. Cook until soft, about 10 minutes.

Add wine, tomato paste, paprika, thyme, oregano, and chicken. Bring to boil. Reduce heat to low. Simmer slowly until chicken is very tender, about 1 hour. Add crème fraiche, warm through without boiling. Serve over rice or noodles (or, in my case, with steamed cauliflower), sprinkle with parsley.

Sautéed cod with cannellini bean ragout, and a flashback from the 80-ies

2010-09-24T21:17:00.000-07:00

Some people never learn. I tried to buy frozen fish at Trader Joe’s many times, and it never comes out right. After careful defrosting in the refrigerator, all their three kinds of wild salmon turn mushy, and tuna and mahi-mahi are very dry. But I’m stuck here in Marin County with no Chinese grocery this side of the bridges, and if I want fresh fish, it’s either Whole Foods almost fresh at $30/pound, or traffic on the bridge. I decided to chance it again, and bough frozen Alaskan cod at TJ’s. These super-tough fillet reminded me of my lean young years back in the Soviet Russia, so I chose a similar cooking method.

In the late 80-ies my then husband V. and I worked hard at the first Internet start-up in Moscow (both words “Internet” and “start-up” were barely known at the time), and usually sat glued to our terminals till one or two in the morning. Except once a week I would leave early and go check the usually empty grocery stores for food. If I couldn’t find any – too bad, we’d survive on cans and dried pasta. But sometimes I would get lucky and find something frozen. And then we’d eat.

Like that time, when they were selling whole frozen cod, head on, very cheap. And there was no line yet. Of course, I bought one, 10 pounds or so. I brought it home, and tried to fit it into the tiny kitchen sink, to speed defrosting with cold running water. No luck. The sink was too small, the fish too big, it tried to slip away and hit me on the foot with its frozen weight, all the while looking me in the eye with its frozen eyes the size of a 20-kopeik coin (like a quarter). After an hour of fighting with the fish and loosing, I got desperate and called V. for help. V. held the fish firm in place while I heated the knife over the gas stove and sawed it into steaks, plus the head and tail for the cat. By 3 am we were done.

… A few weeks later, I left work early and went checking empty neighborhood stores in search for food. I stumbled upon very cheap whole cod. There was no line yet. I bought one, stone-frozen, head-on, 10 pounds or so…

I’m telling you, there are people who never learn. 15 years later, I was walking in El Granada fisherman’s marina, and there was a boat that just came in from a multi-day fishing trip and they were selling albacore tuna, deep frozen at sea. 10 pounds or so, head-on. I did not have a husband at that time, but my dear dinner guests had a lot of fun heating a knife over a gas stove and sawing the fish into steaks that would fit into the sink to defrost under running water, plus head and tail for the cat.

The Trader Joe’s super-tough frozen cod fillet brought back all these memories.

This is how we cooked it then:

2 Tbsp sunflower oil
1 large onion, sliced
2 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
2 red bell peppers, cored and sliced
4 large tomatoes, sliced
Salt, pepper, distilled vinegar, sugar to taste

2 Tbsp sunflower oil
About 1 kg cod, defrosted, skin and bones removed
Salt, pepper

Heat the oil over medium heat in a cast-iron pan. Add onions and garlic, cook until soft, about 5 minutes. Add peppers, cook until soft, about 3 minutes. Add tomatoes; reduce heat to low, simmer until tomatoes start breaking apart, about 30 minutes. Adjust seasoning with salt, pepper, vinegar and sugar.

Heat the oil over medium heat in a cast-iron skillet. Season cod with salt and pepper. Cook until golden on both sides, turning once, 2-3 minutes per side.

Remove cod to a deep serving dish, cover with vegetable mixture. Chill and refrigerate until ready to serve. Serve cold over canned white beans in tomato sauce.

How I cook it now:

For the beans:

1 cup cannelloni beans
Sea salt

For the tomato sauce:

2 Tbsp olive oil
1 large yellow onion, roughly chopped
3 large garlic cloves, roughly chopped
3 lb very ripe tomatoes
10 basil leaves
Salt, pepper, red wine vinegar, brown sugar to taste

½ cup fire-roasted peppers (bought or homemade)
2 lb Alaskan cod fillet
Salt, pepper

Beans:

Soak beans in boiling water to cover for an hour. Drain. Place in a large pan, add water to cover by 2 inches, bring to a boil. Reduce heat, add 1 tsp salt, and simmer until tender, about 2 hours. Drain.

Tomato sauce:

Heat oil in a large pan. Add onions and garlic, cook until tender, 7-8 minutes. Meanwhile, cut a cross on top of tomatoes, cover with boiling water, let sit 1-2 minutes, plunge into ice water. Remove skins. Chop tomatoes; add tomatoes and basil to the pan. Reduce heat; simmer until tomatoes start falling apart, about 30 minutes. Adjust the seasoning with salt, pepper, sugar, and vinegar. Puree in blender.

Cod:

Heat oil in a wide skillet over medium heat. Season cod fillet with salt and pepper on both sides. Cook, turning once, 2-3 minutes per side.

Combine beans, tomato sauce, and fire-roasted peppers in a deep pan. Heat over low heat. Spoon some tomato-pepper-bean mixture on a plate, place a cod fillet on top, top with more tomato-pepper-bean mixture. Serve hot or at room temperature.

New pot (just bragging)

2010-09-10T20:24:00.000-07:00

I've been going in circles around this Mauviel oval braising pot for a long time now. I needed it. But I couldn't afford it. But I knew I had to have it. Finally, I found one on sale for just $150 (don't ask me where, there was only one, and it's mine). Look how shiny it is! It's pure cooper, hand-lined with tin, in the classic tradition of Normandy.

Here, it contains Marin Sun Farms grass-fed top sirloin, braising with white wine, garlic, onion and herbs.

Braised duck leg, chanterelles, roasted tomatoes, pea greens.

I'll be braising a lot now. Ready for the winter.

Fresh vegetable salad with blue cheese dressing, and more tomatoes

2010-08-06T19:46:00.000-07:00

Posting this recipe feels like cheating in more than one way:
One: There is no recipe here. Any reasonable combination of fresh ripe summer vegetables will work.
Two: Most people can never get heirloom tomatoes and fava beans at the same time. By the time the tomatoes are in season, fava beans are long gone. They don't grow when the temperature goes above 70 degrees. Mine were gone by the end of June. However, anything is possible here in the Bay Area. We have Google and the Gay Parade. Why not fava beans in August? The farm is located in Half Moon Bay, where it never gets above 60, and is foggy most of the time. So the guys re-seed their fava beans every three weeks, and grow them all summer long. It's always spring there.

Cheating or not, it was a good salad, and worth recording.

Persian cucumbers have delicate skins that are never bitter. Don't peel them.
Use vegetable peeler to slice zucchini into delicate ribbons.
Shell fava beans, place them in boiling water for 3 minutes, remove and put the beans in ice water to chill. Pinch the skin at one end and slip it off.

Fresh vegetable salad with blue cheese dressing
2 servings

1 zucchini, sliced into thin ribbons
2 Persian cucumbers, thinly sliced
3 medium heirloom tomatoes, sliced
1 cup fava beans, skins removed
salt, pepper
3 Tbsp plain yogurt
2 Tbsp crumbled blue cheese
1 tsp white wine or water

Arrange vegetables on two plates, season with salt and pepper. Mix together yogurt and blue cheese. If the dressing is too thick, thin with white wine or water.

My own tomatoes just started to produce. Early Girls are small, you can see in the next photo that they are a little larger than Cherries. Both are very flavorful.

I save them for eating fresh. For roasting, I got 3 pounds of Shady Ladies at the market. At $1/lb!

3 pounds medium ripe tomatoes
salt, pepper
olive oil
2 Tbsp chopped fresh oregano leaves (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil, sprinkle with olive oil. Core and cut tomatoes in half; arrange them cut side up in one layer on the baking sheet, season with salt, pepper, optional oregano leaves. Add a generous splash of olive oil.

Roast about 2-2.5 hours, until the tomatoes shrink and the edges caramelize. Check frequently during the last hour to make sure the tomatoes don’t burn.

Serve hot, or remove to a jar (taste one or two right away anyway, they are wonderful!), add all the juices from the pan, and cover with more olive oil.

Store covered in the refrigerator up to one week.
No matter what else is in the oven, a head of garlic always goes in too. I remove the outer skin, slice the top off, add a few drops of olive oil, wrap it in aluminum foil, and roast about 40 minutes. Roasted garlic is good spread on a slice of bread, mixed into salad dressings, or add it to sauces for grilled meat or chicken. Store in the refrigerator up to 3 days.

Perfect grill marks

2010-08-02T19:57:00.000-07:00

These beautiful medium-rare fillet mignons, evenly cooked to perfect pink inside and seared with well defined grill marks on the outside, are not coming from my modest grill. They are coming off this elegant technological miracle, TEC Infrared grill:
This is what my friend M. gave her husband S. for his birthday. Fortunately, M. and S. are my friends and clients. That is, when they have time, they invite me for dinner and S. grills for me on his super-grill. When they don't have time, being caught between their busy work schedules, raising C., an energetic 2.5-year old, and expecting another baby, I cook for them. And then I get to use the super-grill myself!
It goes to 800 degrees in minutes, looks like the best patio decoration you can think of, and is positioned so that while you grill you get to watch the sailboats on the bay and the planes descending to SFO. It has a glass panel between the heating element and the grill, so nothing burns, and the heat is distributed evenly.

Grilled eggplant and fire-roasted peppers were never easier and better tasting. Dressed with sherry vinegar and good olive oil.

The other kind of grilling perfection is acheived indoors, on a cast aluminum griddle heated over medium-high heat: tuna steak marinated Japanese-style, with soy sauce, toasted seasame oil, mirin, wine vinegar, black and white seasame seeds, and brown sugar, grilled about 3 minutes each side, brushed with marinade.

Served with California avocadoes and heirloom tomatoes. Salt, pepper, olive oil.

Cooking under a camera

2010-07-26T22:46:00.000-07:00

I am a moovie star now! My dear friends I. and V. started experimenting with online videos, and the last time we had dinner at my place, they filmed the two simplest operations - making a salad:

and grilling vegetables:

I am all too excited about the results (I guess I. and V. put a lot of work into post-processing), so I've put the videos on my two blogs and on my website, and I already imagine all possible cooking shows that we can film: making sausages? fresh pasta? boiling crabs? oysters Rockefeller? Turkish coffee? boiling eggs? boiling water?

I just cook, and the friends get to do all the post-processing.

Bacon wrapped chicken livers

2010-07-22T07:44:00.000-07:00

It's a grilled heart attack: you wrap chicken livers (high cholesterol) in bacon (sodium, fat), carefully thread them on scewers and grill.

Anything missing? Yep, sugar. So grill some sweet corn alongside the livers, and add to the salad. To offset the pure evil, I used tomatoes and a little parsley in the salad too.

Grilled corn and tomato salad
Serves 2

2 corn cobs
1 tsp olive oil
2 large heirloom tomatoes, sliced
1 Tbsp chopped parsley
1 tsp Dijon mustard
salt, pepper
1 tsp red wine vinegar
1 Tbsp olive oil

Carefully peel back the husks off the corn; remove silk, rub the corn with olive oil; pull the husks ove the corn, secure with kitchen twine.
Preheat the gas grill to 400 degrees.
Grill the corn intil tender (10-20 minutes, depending on the ripeness of the corn), turning ocassionally.
Remove the charred thread and husks. Hold the corn with a paper towel upright on a cutting board. With a sharp knife, cut off the kernels.

Combine corn cernels and tomato slices. Season with salt and pepper. In a small bowl whisk together mustard, vinegar, and olive oil, dress the salad.
Bacon wrapped chicken livers
serves 2
10 chicken livers, about 1 lb, trimmed of fat and connective tissue
5 thin bacon slices
salt, pepper
1 tsp chopped thyme leaves

Preheat the gas grill to 400 degrees. Season chicken livers with salt, pepper, and thyme (easy on salt, bacon will add saltiness). Slice the bacon in half. Wrap each chicken liver in a half-slice of bacon; carefully thread the wrapped livers on scewers. Carefully transfer scewers to the hot grill (the livers are slippery and will try to slide off the scewers - don't let them; as soon as they are somewhat cooked, they will stay put). Don't touch the scewers for the next two minutes. then turn and cook 2-3 minutes on the other side, until bacon is crisp and the livers are firm, cooked through, but still pink inside.

Remove from scewers; serve with the corn-tomato salad.
Pure bliss. Don't tell your cardiologist.

A weekend of grilling in the parks

2010-07-19T21:39:00.001-07:00

The Pacific coast weather is predictably insane. For two days this weekend my friends and I tried to go to the beach, and ended up grilling in the park instead. The weather forecast was great. Since one of the guys is a pilot, just before as we were getting ready to laeve, he would look up the real-time weather on the pilot's website. Both days, just as we were getting ready to leave, the fog was coming in over the beaches. So we had to go to some inland park instead - did we have a choice? Inland, the weather was glorious.

On Saturday, it was Edgewood Park in San Carlos. Since I was very tired after promoting my Personal Chef service all morning at a Mimosa-heavy networking event , M. had to take care of all the food. Her special is tuna poke, made with a poke mix that she gets in a secret Japanese store. There is pink seaweed, salt, and spices in the mix. I don't like it when she makes it according to the recipe, one package per pound of tuna; it comes out too salty and spicy. This time she seasoned 1.5 lb tuna with that one package - and it was perfect!

M. also brought wakame salad, to go with the poke, and shitake mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, zucchini, and a huge bag of baby bok choy that we rubbed with olive oil and grilled.

There had to be adventures, of course: First, we forgot salt, and the guys had to run back to the supermarket while we were placing the unsalted vegetables on the grill. Second, in the background of the mushroom picture you can see Martin the dog. He is illegal. Dogs are not allowed in the park. But it's a very small print on the very bottom of the park website, so we didn't realize it until a ranger kicked Martin (and his seriously pissed-off owner) out of the park.

On Sunday, I had recovered from doing business and was ready to go to the ocean. The pilot guy checked the pilot's info, and the fog was coming in all over the cost. We had to go grill in Coyote Point park in San Mateo. Martin was not coming.

This time R. and I were getting the groceries, and the other guys were bringing the charcoal, plates, forks and napkins. We stopped at Belmont farmers market 10 minutes before close, and got wonderful heirloom tomatoes, small delicate Japanese eggplants, mixed squashes and spring onions. We also got a two-pound seabass steak, a large slice of cooked octopus, enoki mushrooms, ripe mangos, and Thai basil in Marina market.

Then we got a picnic table, and sat and waited. And waited. Watched the sailboats and kite surfers on the bay, and colorful international parties around us in the picnic area. And waited. I borrowed a plate from the Russian party to our left and started preparing the vegetables.

Finally, our people came. They brought salt, fancy glasses, new grilling tools, and Mai Tai mix, but forgot plates, so they had to drive back to a supermarket. Just as they came back, I found out that we are out of paper towels. So we had to borrow some paper napkins from a Mexican party to our right.

The octopus looks like a scary sea monster, but it makes a tasty grilled snack, has strong aroma of the sea, and is smoky and chewy.

The sea bass we seasoned with salt (forgot the pepper, sure), brushed with olive oil, and grilled for about 7 minutes each side; served with a salsa made of mangoes, spring onions, red bell peppers, and Thai basil.

Enoki mushrooms grill beautifully if you keep the root attached while cooking. The root keeps them from separating and falling through the grill. Cut the root off before serving.

Grilled eggplant and squashes didn't last long enough to get photographed.

Summer is for tomatoes

2010-07-15T19:44:00.001-07:00

These heirloom "ugly" tomatoes are absolutely irresistable; each variety has it's own flavor character, and they add all the colors of the summer to the plate.
During the last hour of the farmers market they go on sale for $2/pound. I think I got too many again...

Mixed with arugula, chevril, bittercress, and basil, seasoned with salt, pepper, and good olive oil, and topped with roasted pine nuts, they almost make a complete dinner on a hot evening.

No, I didn't go vegetarian, I'm still holding. I did grill a small flat iron steak almost as an afterthought. It was delicious too, but not nearly as good looking as the salad.

French Kiss party at de Young Museum

2010-07-14T22:27:00.000-07:00

De Young Museum in Golden Gate Park is hosting an impressionist exibition from Musee d'Orsay that runs through the summer, and tonight, for the French national holiday, Bastille Day celebration, the museum had a "French Kiss" party, with food, wine, music, performances, and access to the exibition.

I went to the party for the impressionists - I miss d'Orsay badly, last time I went there was 5 year ago, and I don't know when I'll have a chance to go again, - and to meet a friend. Guess what? My friend got sick and called me at the last moment to tell me she's not coming!
So I was left on my own with food, wine, music, performances, and the impressionists. For different reasons, I couldn't take pictures of the paintings and the music. I don't know why I never thought to take a picture of the go-go dancers or the wonderful mime who went through the crowd and interacted with everyone she saw in mimics and gesture, or of the Pernod bar. May be because I'm a food blogger. So all you get here is pictures of food.
After sampling a few mini-quiches and crudites, I got to the dessert station, and was about to take a picture and leave tasting for later, when the Maître d' went by and said: "If you only try one dessert tonight, make it the coffee bean truffle." I took one right away. It was heaven. (That's the darkest ones in the photo)

20 minutes later all the coffee bean truffles were gone. I sampled the cocoa and pistachio truffles later, they were good, but not even close to the amazing coffe bean.

There were a few people I know at the party. It appears that all the same people go to the same places.

J., a beatiful sunny kid of my friend's friend, who hikes, skies, and is generally one of us, and whom I just meet at a party last weekend, was there with her buddies.

I didn't know that Maxx, one of my dear salsa dancing partners, works for Marin French Cheese Company, but there he was, slicing the cheeses for tasting. His was one of the busiest tables at the party, but we were still able to chat about favorite bands and clubs, while he served the cheeses.

My salsa dancing crowd is one of the best foodie crowds so far.

I've already met a bread baker and a cheesemonger on the dance floor.

Now, I cannot wait to dance with a winemaker.

Happy Bastille day!

Raw fish for a summer day: tuna and opah poke

2010-07-11T22:56:00.000-07:00

I planned to make this Hawaiian dish for friends who just came back from Maui, but they got a flu on the plane and couldn't come over for dinner. So it was just the two of us who enjoyed it, but we loved every bite (except those few sinewy pieces that the fishmonger put on the bottom of the bag - they shouldn't do it at $15/lb, but they do!) I got sashimi-grade ahi tuna and opah from Santa Rosa Seafood stall at the farmers market this morning.

Ahi and opah poke

Serves two

3/4 lb sashimi-grade ahi tuna, cut into 1/2 inch pieces

3/4 lb sashimi-grade opah, cut into 1/2 inch pieces

1 red onion, minced

1 small bunch chives, finely chopped

1 Tbsp Japanese toasted sesame oil

1 Tbsp olive oil

2 Tbsp soy sauce

1 Tbsp Mirin rice wine

1/2 tsp red pepper flakes

1/2 tsp white sesame seeds

1/2 tsp black sesame seeds

Salt, pepper to taste

Combine the fish with the onion, chives, and the oils, season with soy sauce, Mirin, red pepper, sesame seeds, salt and pepper. Refrigerate for 30 minutes to 2 hours. Serve over a salad of mixed greens (I used arugula, bitter cress, and chervil) and avocado.

Chalone Sauvignon Blanc.

Celebrating the US national holiday by totally disrespecting the rim of the plate

2010-07-06T21:09:00.000-07:00

Happy 4th (and 3rd, and 5th) to everyone! I was told that in other parts of California the last few days were cold and foggy. Not here. It was a lovely weekend, sunny and hot, just as a 4th of July weekend should be.

Our friend Y. was busy sailing to see the fireworks and was not making it for dinner on 4th, so we had him over on 3rd. I got a 3-pound New York roast at half price at Safeway; after trimmimg all the extra fat and slicing it really thick, I got three serious steaks out of it. Seasoned with salt and pepper, brushed with grapeseed oil, grilled at 450 degrees to medium-rear, about 4 minutes aech side, let rest for a few minutes, and served with herb-lemon butter.

Sliced and grilled assorted summer squashes from the farmers market. The "very sweet" corn from Safeway turned out very tender, but not nearly as sweet as advertised. I pulled off the husks carefully, brushed the cobs with olive oil and sea salt, replaced the husks, and grilled over indirect heat.

For our 4th of July family grill, I marinated thick slices of pork tenderloin in red wine with sage, thyme, a lot of red onion slices, and some olive oil, for pork kabobs.
It was a very hot day, and while the meat was marinating, we went to China Camp park on the Bay, to catch some breeze, and to see what other people are grilling. One of the parties was placing bacon-wrapped sausages on the grill. The light went on in my head. Double pork! This is what we should eat! And with my kabobs, it'll make it a triple!

On the way home we picked up Adelis Italian sausages and a pound of bacon. Wrapped each sausage in a strip of bacon and grilled slowly to perfection, together with the kabobs and summer squashes.

Summer Is Now

2010-07-01T21:36:00.001-07:00

I've been asking "When summer?" all these long cold and rainy months, and finally the answer is "Now." The temperatures are in the 90ieth, the car AC stopped working, there are so many people you cannot see the water in the community pool, and so many sailboats you cannot see the water in the Bay, and it's summer market again!!!

No need to cook. Just fire up the gas grill, let it heat up to 450 degrees, stay back. Brush the tenderloin tip and sliced Japanese eggplant with olive oil seasoned with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, grill 2-3 minutes on each side. The eggplant just needs the grill marks and a little smoky flavor; it's so tender that it cooks in no time at all.

Boil "little people" funny shaped Finn potatoes until they almost fall apart. Slice the vine-ripened supersweet tomatoes and Persian cucumbers with their eadible crunchy skins, dress with salt, pepper, and olive oil - they don't need any enhancements. After the steak has rested a few minutes, slice it, and put dab of lemon-herb butter on it, or just use mustard.

Chill the Pinot, pour, and serve.

I was amazed when I came to Belmont farmers market last Sunday, and the first thing I saw was ... FIGS! Figs? Figs. In the end of June. I remember how I waited and waited for them till the end of August last year. And these farmers from Central Califirnia didn't understand why I jumped so high at the sight of them: "Why? Actually, we are a week behind, it's been a cold year." There is no picture, I was shopping for my cooking gig for my client and friend, and had to run. I'll get some for myself, and photograph them, the next time.

Other highlights of the summer market: cherries, apricots, nectarines, peaches (Galaxy peaches are wonderful!). Summer squashes are in. Fava beans and asparagus are out. Green peas are still holding, but they won't last. The first sighting of bell peppers. Heirloom tomatoes.

I'll keep you posted.

Animal crap, or the most expensive coffee in the world

2010-06-21T21:58:00.000-07:00

The most expensive coffee in the world, Kopi Luwak, comes from Indonesia, where the coffee berries are eaten by a little racoon-like beast, Luwak, or Asian palm civet. The beast supposedly picks the best berries. Natural quality control.

My friends just came from Bali, where they got lost looking for some tourist attraction, and stopped to get directions in the middle of nowhere at a coffee farm. The Luwak lives in a narrow long cage where he runs back and forth very fast, obviously on caffeine high, feeding on coffee berries. The farmers' kids carefully pick the coffee beans from the beast's crap, wash and dry them thouroughly, and so produce the best coffee in the world.

The price that my friends paid, 69,000 Indonesian rupies for 100 grams, or $32 per pound, is nothing compared to $250/lb that you would pay for it in the States, but it's still the most expensive coffee I ever had. They got me a little bag of perfect meduim-roast beans, that I asked one of my dinner guests to grind in a manual grinder, then prepared it Turkish style.

It's perfect. Beautiful balance, sweet, fruity, no sharp corners whatsoever. The beast knows what he is doing.

But you know what? You don't taste the beast. It's just a good coffee.

Look at the 'shroom!

2010-06-10T22:20:00.001-07:00

The mushroom stall at the farmers market never stops to amaze. Today they had this fine specimen on display (at 2 pounds @$24/lb it would cost $48, but I doubt that she would sell it anyway). It was one of the biggest cepes I've ever seen.

After realizing that I forgot to get cash and only have a $20, I didn't even attempt to bid for the king 'shroom, but settled for his younger brother the prince, and just one half of him. $12, good two servings.

I've sliced the half-mushroom thin, seasoned with salt and pepper, sauteed it in half-olive oil/half butter over medium heat untill dry, added thinly sliced red onion and sliced asparagus, sauteed some more to soften the onion.

Served over buccatini pasta tossed with fava beans puree, garnished with grated parmesan.

For the fava beans puree: Double-shell (remove the pods, put in hot water for about a minute to loosen the skins, pinch and remove the skins0 1 lb fava beans (makes about one cup). Cook in a small amount of water until tender, about 15 minutes. Puree in blender. Season with salt and pepper. Fold in 1 Tbsp. olive oil. Serve over pasta, in sandwiches, on toasts, or about anywhere.

Yes, it's vegetarian again. I told you it's a conspirasy.

I thought about adding some of my home cured bacon but realized that it would overpower the precious mushroom. The bacon'll have to wait.

Marinated baby octopus, and more flowers

2010-06-09T19:37:00.001-07:00

There is a conspiracy: they are trying to make me a vegetarian. Marinated octopus and eggs are vegetarian, right? With all these heirloom tomatoes, tender salad greens, local avocados coming from the market, and fava beans and eadible flowers going crazy in my garden after the rains, every time I make myself something to eat it's a salad.

"Baby" octopi come frozen from the Chinese grocery store. They are not really babies, they are just small octopi, correct? If they are, I'm in trouble - R. doesn't eat any baby animals. Not even veal. It took me a while to convince him that Cornish hens and quails are grown up birds.

Anyway, I defrost the "babies", cook them in a large pot at a slow simmer until tender, about an hour, then marinate them with rosemary, thyme, oregano, salt and pepper in 1 part sherry vinegar and 2 parts olive oil.

Serve over a salad of baby romaine (he's fine with baby plants), avocado, heirloom tomatoes, and fava beans. Garnish with a soft-boiled egg and nasturtium petals.
The marinade doubles as a dressing.

Vegetarian delight.

There are flowers on the plate!

2010-05-18T22:40:00.000-07:00

The vegetables love this miserable rainy spring we are having here. It's a shame I'm not a vegetable (yet?). The fava beans, sugar peas, heirloom tomatoes, and all the herbs and flowers are doing great.

The duck leg confit that I did this week shares the plate with baby carrots, asparagus, fingerling potatoes (Finn and Russian Banana), all sauteed in the duck fat, and nasturtium leaves and flowers.

Yes, you can eat the flowers. Just wash them well. They add a lot of color and some spicy flavor. Taste somewhat like watercress.

Other flowers good to eat are:

Chive flowers - taste similar to chives but milder, beautiful purple color in salads

Pansies - don't taste like much; mostly for decoration
Zuccini flower - fry, stuff and braise, or just add fresh for color in salads

Rosemary and thyme - cute and flavorful; use to garnish dishes that are flavored with rosemary and thyme leaves

Marigold - add to salads

Artichokes - you know

Cured braised pork shoulder

2010-05-10T21:24:00.000-07:00

This is an unhurried preparation. It takes five days to brine the pork, then it rests to distribute the seasoning for another day, then you braise it low and slow all afternoon, and then finish it in the oven. It’s totally worth it, so melting tender, including the tasty skin, the meat is beautifully rosy pink from the brine, and so flavorful. And it actually takes very little of the cook’s time – it mostly brines and cooks itself.

I started on Monday with a pork shoulder picnic, skin on, bone in. Made the brine with the curing mixture of 8 parts kosher salt, 4 parts sugar, and 1 part InstaCure #1 that I mix by weight and use as needed. Steeped the herbs and spices in the brine, let it cool. When I grow up, I will have a special needle for injecting brine into hams. Professionals have it. I don’t. So I just poked the pork with a bamboo skewer to allow the brine to penetrate the meat a little better, covered the pork with brine, and left it, covered, in the fridge, till Friday. Drained, washed, and dried the pork, reserving the herbs.

On Saturday afternoon I tied up the pork, added the reserved herbs, a leek, a couple of celery stalks, 4 garlic cloves, and some 1/2 cup water, and simmered it VERY SLOWLY for about four hours. Parboiled the fingerling potatoes, got the car from the mechanic, went to the farmers market to get tomatoes and fava beans, shelled the beans, and went for a hike in the hills while it was cooking.

Just before dinner, I removed the pork from the braising liquid, put it together with the potatoes in a roasting pan, basted both pork and the potatoes with the braising liquid, and popped into a hot oven for about 15 minutes, just enough to add some color and crust.
Took out of the oven, sliced, served with roasted potatoes and a salad of heirloom tomatoes and fava beans.

Cured braised pork shoulder

1 pork shoulder picnic, with bone and skin, about 3.5 lb

For the brine:
6 cups water
¾ cup curing mix (1 part pink salt, 4 parts sugar, 8 parts kosher salt by weight)
5 bay leaves
4 sprigs thyme
2 sprigs sage
1 Tbsp black peppercorns
5 juniper berries

Quick grilled pizza with artichokes and asparagus

2010-05-06T21:58:00.001-07:00

This pizza takes advantage of the fine seasonal vegetables, whatever you have on hand (I had goat cheese and bacon), and a sunny arternoon perfect for grilling. Can be easily done on a week day, after work.

I got this elegant oval non-stick griddle that is too thin and burns everything, so my pizza came out charred on one side. Next time I'll use a pizza stone, it'll cook it more evenly.

For the dough (makes two):
1 cup bread flour + more for dusting
1 tsp dry yeast
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp olive oil
1/2 cup warm water

Mix flour, salt and yeast in a large bowl. Add olive oil and water, mix with a fork to combine, then dust your hands with flour and knead the dough for 5 minutes, dusting your hands as needed to avoid sticking. Form the dough into a ball, cover with a towel, and leave to rest for about 30 minutes (it doesn't have to raise).

Meanwhile have a glass of wine in the sunshine.

Divide the dough in halves. Refrigerate one half for future use.

For the filling:
3 small artichokes, trimmed and halved
4 slices of bacon
2 oz goat cheese
6 young asparagus spears
1 ripe tomato, sliced
1 Tsp olive oil
salt, pepper

Boil water in a medium pan. Add the artichoke halves, reduce heat to low, and cook until tender, about 10 minutes. Drain.

Heat the gas grill to medium. Place the griddle on the grill, add bacon slices, brown on both sides, remove to a plate covered with a paper towel. Turn up the heat to high. The target tempereture is 500 degrees.

Pour the fat off the griddle and wipe with a paper towel. Roll out the dough and spread on the griddle. Scatter the crumbled cheese, bacon slices, asparagus spears, artichoke halves, and tomato slices on top. Season with salt and peper, drizzle olive oil over the pizza. Place on the hot grill. Cover and cook until the crust is cooked through and charred on the edges, 7-9 minutes.

Wine: 2006 Walnut Block Pinot Noir, Marlborough

Sunny day, whole fish

2010-05-03T21:55:00.001-07:00

I was having a car problem on Sunday, and while I was waiting for my car to be repaired, R. took me to the farmers market, and there I saw the fish. I looked at the Thai snapper, it looked at me, and we were at agreement that it's a good day to grill a whole fish.

It's a good idea to grill a fish with the scales on - the scales don't stick to the grill, and when it's ready you just lift and discard the skin with the scales. but this time the fishmonger had scaled the fish before I had a chance to say anything. All right, there are other ways to protect my fish from sticking, like a lot of oil, or a grilling basket, or placing herbs between the grill and the fish.

To keep the Thai theme, I put kaffir lime leaves and slices of Meyer lemon inside the fish and also tied them to the outside. Brushed with grapeseed oil and grilled over indirect heat for about 15 minutes, turning (very carefully) once.
Served with grilled asparagus and frisee and heirloom tomato salad.

2007 Mahi Marlborough Pinot Noir, since the fish is from New Zealand too. I would eat it with a Sav. Blank, but R. likes a red wine even with fish, and the light silky Pinot worked just fine.

Pacific ring of food, where bread is baking, and ducks and goats roam

2010-04-29T21:15:00.001-07:00

After someone on craigslist food forum mentioned going to Salmon Creek Ranch that raises duck for eggs and meat, and goats, I wanted to go too. I called them a few times, and every time got an answering machine telling me that everyone is outside with the animals. No wonder: if they have all these fine birds and beasts to tend, why would they sit in the office, waiting for my call?

This Saturday it was nice and sunny. I wanted to go for a ride with the car top down. R. wanted to see the ocean, and a snack or two. So we went on our favorite route to Bodega Bay, stopping at our friend Jed's bakery in Freestone to smell the dough, have coffee with a sticky bun in the vegetable garden, and chat with the owner.

Jed was in the shop, busy as always, but spared a few minutes to talk with us about salsa dancing and to tell the exciting news that his samba drums CD is coming soon. Yes, we’ve been waiting for it!

As we were sipping coffee and blowing on the hot straight out of the oven bun in the sunny garden, the wind started to pick up, so we hurried on before it gets too cold.

Since Salmon Creek Ranch is on the way to Bodega Bay, this time we just drove up to their gate and pressed the intercom button. The intercom gave us the same message as the answering machine, no one in the office. Luckily, John, the owner, was riding his Range Rover not far from the gate. He saw us, opened the gate, and instructed us to follow him to the house.

The gravel road winds around the hillside for about a mile before it gets to the little yellow house surrounded by emerald hills. I didn’t realize how low my convertible is until I scraped the muffler on a couple of bumps. The rainy season took its toll on the gravel road. Have to be careful, we are not in a Rover. This mostly kept me from enjoying the view, which is breathtaking, as R. told me later.

Finally we arrived and parked on the grass between the farmhouse, fenced duck yard, and a tiny wooden shack titled “Merchandise” in large friendly letters. The merchandise shack holds a cooler full of super-fresh duck eggs, and a freezer that contains a wealth of vacuum-packed Muscovy duck breasts and legs. To get fresh duck, you have to be there on the harvest day. Next time I’ll know, I’m on the mailing list.

$38 got us a dozen of huge, dirty, wonderful duck eggs, and two breasts, one large, almost 2 lb, for the smoker, one small, a little over a pound, for the grill. Beats the farmers market. And we got to see the animals.

We didn’t actually meet the egg laying ducks. They roam free, so they were probably hiding from the piercing ocean breeze on the other side of the hill, protected by the hillside and the trees. Meat ducks don’t have this luxury: their yard right on top of the hill is exposed to the wind all the time, guarded by an electric fence and a large shepherd dog Moose, their wing feathers trimmed to prevent them from flying over the fence to meet coyotes and mountain lions. So the meat ducks were all crowded together to keep warm, but refused to go into their little houses. Apparently, the fresh air is more important than comfort.
Goats are too fluffy to care about the wind. The snacks are what they want.
We were greeted by a couple of cute kids, and then the whole herd appeared from over the hill crest, coming right at me.

At some point I thought that I can actually tempt them with a handful of grass to come close enough to touch them, but they figured that I don’t have anything unusual to offer, and lost interest.

The larger goats expertly get up on their hindlegs and chew branches off the trees and tall bushes. The little kids look at them with envy. They are cute eating machines. John rents them out to clear hillside lots.

By the time we got to Bodega Bay it was blowing so hard that we didn’t want to get out of the car. I almost decided to stop and close the car top. We just drove around, took in the view, and went home.

The larger of the two duck breasts that we got at the farm I brined with red wine and blood orange, then smoked in my water smoker over cherry wood chips. Actually, a smoked duck breast is delicious even without any seasoning besides salt and pepper. I just did this complex brine because I could: the red wine that I open and don’t finish; the blood orange from the market; herbs that grow happily in the garden, enjoying this season’s endless rain.
It’s sufficient to brine the duck breast overnight. Due to circumstances beyond my control, mine spent full two days in the brine. The resulting flavor was strong, but beautiful.

Treat the smoked duck as you would treat ham. Serve it cold, thinly sliced across the grain, over green salad, roasted vegetables, or on a slice of bread with fire-roasted pepper and duck egg (or any) mayonnaise.

Smoked duck breast
Serves 4 as the main dish, 6 as an appetizer

1 cup water
1 Tbsp kosher salt
6 whole + ½ tsp crushed black peppercorns
2 sprigs rosemary
5 sprigs thyme
2 bay leaves
1 blood orange
1 cup red wine
2 garlic cloves, sliced

1 large whole boneless Muscovy duck breast, skin on

About 2 cups cherry wood or other hardwood chips

Prepare the brine: Boil the water in a small pan. Stir in the salt, whole peppercorns, rosemary, thyme, and bay leaves. Remove the skin from the orange with a vegetable peeler, cut the orange in halves. Drop the orange skin and halves into the brine. Let cool. Remove the orange halves, squeezing the juice into the brine. Add wine.

Brine the duck: Press the garlic slices into the duck breast. Season the breast with crushed black pepper. Put the duck breast into a large zip lock bag, pour the brine into the bag, close, and shake to distribute the brine. Refrigerate overnight, or up to 48 hours.

Smoke the duck: Remove the duck breast from the brine, rinse under cold running water, wipe with paper towels, and leave out to dry. Remove and discard garlic slices. Add the wood chips to the brine, and soak for about 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, prepare the charcoals in a smoker, or heat up a covered grill for low indirect grilling.
Put the duck breast, skin side up, on the grill. Add a handful of soaked hardwood chips to the charcoals (or put them into a smoker box and place on the hottest part of the grill).

Smoke to the enternal temperature of 160 degrees. Remove from the smoker and let cool.

With the skin side up, slice thinly across the grain. Serve.

The Sauvignon Blanc that I had with this duck was a huge mistake. This is a red meat, and it deserves a red wine. Try a big Pinot or a light bodied Merlot with it.

Raw

2010-04-29T20:36:00.001-07:00

The farmers market is so wonderful this time of the year! The asparagus spears are slender and delicate; snap peas are still tender enough to eat with the pods; spring onions are so sweet that they don't make me cry - and I would cry if someone mentions onions in a conversation; the greens are beyond fresh, and there are innumerable varieties: lattuces, chicories, miner's lattuce, arugula, pea greens, beet leaves, nettle, spinach, sorrel, what's not. Not all of the greens are green, and this makes salads even more interesting.

And the pullet eggs. The guy at the egg stall is very excited about them. They are eggs from "teenager" hens, under six month old. The young hens are just learning to lay eggs, so these practice eggs are tiny - the ones sold at the market barely qualify as medium; they are not allowed to sell even smaller ones, - have bright yolks and very delicate texture.

Every Thursday after a trip to the market I'm tempted to skip the dinner and just slice some raw vegetables for a salad. Do I resist? No. The possible combinations are endless. I just go with what looks the best today. Two examples:

Salad #1: arugula, cresta di gallo, curly cress, mediterranean cucumber, fava beans (shelled and lightly cooked), fresh asparagus, soft-boiled pullet eggs, red wine vinegar and EVOO dressing.
Salad #2: fresh asparagus, heirloom tomatoes, avocado, snap peas, thinly sliced spring onion, soft boiled pullet eggs, goat cheese; dressed with mayonnaise made of one yolk of a pullet egg (tiny!) with about 3 Tbsp olive oil and 1/2 tsp Dijon mustard.

Grilling simplicity

2010-04-20T20:06:00.000-07:00

I am a victim of a steak accident: the five large grass fed New York steaks that I left at my dear friend K's freezer in order for him to bring the still frozen steaks to our ski cabin in Tahoe, he forgot. Instead, he brought them to the last Saturday's picnic in Sonoma. Carefully defrosted. Together with a couple of gallons of lamb and beef kabobs, marinated with red wine and onions. For the seven of us.

Of course, after struggling to get down all the kabobs (delicious, just way too much!) no one cold even think about the steaks. So they gave them all to me, to take home. I told them I already have a large chunk of beef tenderloin at home. They wouldn't listen. So R. and I are stuck with steaks for the rest of the week.
Luckily, I have a wonderful cookbook to read for inspiration, Seven Fires: Grilling the Argentine Way . It's all about steaks and wood fire, including a recipe for a whole cow, roasted over wood coals on a metal frame. If he can do a cow, I can do 5 strips and a tenderloin. And I have the Farmers Market for the vegetable support.
Grilled baby artichokes and Russian Banana fingerling potatoes:

Remove the outer leaves from baby artichokes, trim the stalks. Cut the artichokes in half, place in a pot with cold water, a pinch of salt, and a lemon, cut in half. Bring to boil and cook until they can be pierced easily with a knife, about 10 minutes. Drain and let cool.

Cover the fingerling potatoes with boiling water, parboil until tender, 15-20 minutes. Drain, let cool a little, cut in half lengthwise.

Preheat the grill to hot.

Season 1/2 cup mild olive oil with salt and pepper. Toss the vegetables with the oil. (Brush the remaining oil on the steaks.) Grill the vegetables until slightly charred, turning once.

Grill the steaks on one side without moving them, until they come easily off the grill, about 3 -4 minutes. Lift and rotate 60 degrees. Grill for 2 minutes. Turn and grill to desired donness. Press the steak (carefully, hot!) with a finger. When it's as soft as the first joint of your index finger it is rare, the medium joint is medium, and the top joint is well done. Or use a termometer.

I don't specify the quantities here. Everyone's steak accidents are different.

A simple salad of mixed greens and heirloom tomatoes is dressed with juice and minced rind of one small blood orange + 2 Tbsp EVOO + salt&pepper.

Malbec.

Market watch: April

2010-04-16T21:08:00.001-07:00

After all the long winter months of cabbages, potatoes, turnips, and torrentious rains, the farmers market is getting exciting again. The new asparagus is so tender that you can eat it raw (and I do).

While the fava beans in my garden are just beginning to show their first black and white flowers, the market already got young fava beans - for a week or two their skins are so tender that no double shelling is required.

The first heirloom tomatoes and small mediterranean cucumbers show up (at stellar prices).
The strawberries are reaching their peak.

I feel like turning vegetarian. I made myself a salad of mixed greens with young fava beans, shelled and steamed for 3 minutes, heirloom tomatoes, sliced raw asparagus, and mediterrenian cucumber. I know I shouldn't eat onions before going salsa dancing; but could I leave these beautiful spring onions out?

Keeping to the local, seasonal concept, I added lardons made of my home-cured bacon, and a free-range duck egg, soft boiled.
This salad got the simplest dressing of red wine vinegar and EVOO that it deserved.

Poached salmon

2010-04-13T21:55:00.001-07:00

Out of the hundreds photographs from the CIA cooking class that I have posted on Facebook, the most popular one is a picture that I made purely as a reference, to illustrate a variation of the classic court bouillon recipe that chef Victor was making for poached salmon, and that was so wonderfully aromatic that I spent every free minute next to the pot (we really need this Aromatography that Kodak announced on the 1st of April!)

Since I could not forget the aroma, and my friends were asking “What’s in this nice looking soup?”, I reproduced it at home as close as I could. There are many versions of a court bouillon.
The idea is to cook aromatic vegetables and spices in water with addition of white wine, vinegar, or lemon juice (I wonder whether it will work with orange). The spent vegetables are then discarded, and you use the strained broth to partially simmer, partially steam small pieces of fish.

This treatment keeps the natural flavor and the delicate texture of fish, with added aroma and acidity from the broth.

For the court bouillion:

1 leek, trimmed, split in halves
3 celery stalks, chopped to fit the pot
1 carrot, chopped into 2-inch pieces
1 parsnip, chopped into 2-inch pieces
1 medium onion, quartered (to add golden colorto the broth, leave some skin on the onion)
3 lemons, cut in halves
3 bay leaves
3 sprigs of thyme
1 small bunch of flat parsley
1/2 tsp fennel seeds
1 tsp black peppercorns
1/2 bottle white wine
3 quarts water
salt to taste

Put all the ingredients into a stockpot, bring to a boil, simmer gently for 1 hour. Strain, discard the solids. This makes much more broth than needed for the salmon recipe. I freeze the leftover broth in 1 qt. freezer bags or covered plastic containers, for future use.

Poached salmon
serves 2

1 large salmon fillet
1 qt court bouillion
Optional: 1 Tbsp Crème fraiche, 1 tsp minced parsley and chives, for the sauce

Cut the fish fillet into 2 inch pieces.
In a deep sautee pan, bring 1 quart of court bouillion to a slow simmer. Add the fish, cover, and cook at a slow simmer until just done, 5-7 minutes.

Then either serve the fish together with the broth in a soup bowl, or remove the fish and keep it in a warm place while you reduce the broth and make a sauce with crème fraiche or heavy cream and herbs. If you plan to reduce the broth, don’t salt it, or salt very lightly until it’s reduced. It will be impossible to remove the salt from the concentrated broth later.

Poor fishermens' stew

2010-04-05T21:37:00.000-07:00

Bouillabaisse, the Marseilles fishermens stew, is my old friend Y.'s pride, joy, and a holiday special. It's is a lot of work, but the result is a perfectly balanced, fragrant, and totally delicious festive dish. Y. kindly allowed me to help with the prep, and to document the process.

Y. says he tried dozens of recipes (Y. is the type who is most comfortable following a written recipe), and this one is the winner. Y. has modified it only slightly. Since the recipe doesn't come up in search results and is very difficult to find, I'm going to write it down here, before it dissapears completely.

For the broth:
1 tsp butter
Shrimp shells and heads
white fish trimmings, heads and bones
1 teaspoon of fennel seed
3 bay leaves
small bunch of parsley, whole
1 teaspoon salt
several grinds of black pepper

For the soup base:
2/3 cup of olive oil
2 or 3 large onions, chopped
10 cloves of garlic, minced
1 teaspoon fennel seed, or a small bulb of fennel, chopped
½ cup parsley, chopped fine
1 teaspoon salt
1 large can crushed tomatoes
2 teaspoons thyme
3 strips of peel from an orange, about ½" X 3", orange part only, no white flesh
3 bay leaves
2 teaspoons ground black pepper
1 teaspoon saffron (yes, a teaspoon of saffron, beleive it or not!)
2 teaspoons harissa sauce
one pound of inexpensive fish fillets (we used tilapia)

For the garlic mayonnaise:
one egg yolk
2 or 3 cloves of minced garlic
about 1 cup of olive oil
salt to taste

For the croutons:
a small baguette
¼ pound of gruyere cheese, grated

To garnish:
1 pound shrimp
1 pound scallops
1 pound seabass fillet, cut into bite-size pieces
1 pound red snapper fillet, cut into bite-size pieces
2 dozen clams or mussels

Make the broth:

Heat the butter in a large skillet. Sautee the shrimp heads and shells until fragrant, about 5 minutes.

In a large pot, combine shrimp shells and heads, fish trimmings, fennel seeds, bay leaves, and parsley. Add 2 quarts of water, season with salt and pepper, bring to a boil, and simmer gently for 30 minutes. Strain the broth, discard the solids.

Make the soup:

Heat the olive oil in a large pot. Add onions, garlic, parsley, and fennel seeds. Cook to soften the onions and garlic. Add the tomatoes, thyme, orange rind, bay leaves, black pepper, saffron and harissa. Cook for about 20 minutes. Add the fish filets and cook until the fish is done.

Remove and set aside the bay leaves and orange rind. Puree the soup in a blender in small batches. Return to the pot, add the orange rinds and bay leaves, and simmer another 30-45 minutes. Watch the color develop from bright yellow to a beautiful brick-red. Adjust the seasoning.

While the soup is cooking, thinly slice and lightly toast the bread and make the mayonnaise:
In a medium bowl, combine the egg yolk with garlic, and beat with a whisk or a mixer with a whisk attachement until the egg yolk turns pale yellow color. Start adding the oil, first by a drop, then by half-teaspoon, whisking constantly. Add salt to taste.

5 minutes before serving, add the clams or mussels to the simmering soup, bring back to the simmer, then add the scallops and fish.
Cook gently until the fish is just cooked through and the clams and mussels have opened.
(Serve them a little salad while they wait)
To serve, spread a little of the mayonnaise on the toasts and dip the toasts into the grated cheese.

Place two or three toasts into each soup bowl, and laddle the stew over them.

Duck confit with star anise and ginger

2010-04-01T19:52:00.001-07:00

If making duck confit with mediterranean herbs didn't much affect the flavor as compared with plain salt, the oriental spices in this confit did add some spicy, exotic character.

Also, this time I decided to do it the right way, and instead of struggling to maintain a low simmer in one overcrowded Dutch oven on the stovetop, divided the legs between two deep ceramic baking dishes, made sure they are covered completely with fat, and kept them in the oven at 200 degrees for about 4 hours, all the while suffering from the noise of the convection fan.

The noisy torture was well worth it: the duck has perfectly soft, melting texture.

Crisped it on both sides in a skillet over medium heat (the legs provide their own fat for cooking, plus some fat left over for the vegetables). Sauteed asparagus, shitake mushrooms, and parboiled and then sauteed Russian Banana potatoes.

A happy surprise at the farmers market today were bunches of lilacs from the Sierra Foothills. The smell of my childhood that I thoroughly miss - Coastal California is too hot to grow them.

We used to eat the flowers that have more than four petals and make a wish. This variety has too many of five-petal flowers, I cannot eat them all.

Cutting up a dragon - what's inside?

2010-03-30T22:20:00.001-07:00

While shopping for duck legs, pork belly, live spot prawns, and other exotic things in Ranch 99 oriental market we came across something that looked like a beautiful tropical flower, and was just $1.89 a pound. The name is "Dragon fruit". We asked a few store clerks and oriental-looking customers, and no one knew what it is and how to eat it. So we just took the beast home with us.

An Internet search identified it as a fruit of a cactus plant, to be peeled, sliced, and eaten raw. The white flesh dotted with black eadible seeds is fresh and juicy, and the texture and taste remind me of an underripe supermarket strawberry, just a different color. Unexciting, considering the appearance of the fruit. Next time, I'll sure buy it, and use it whole for table decoration.

CIA Culinary Arts Boot Camp, day 5

2010-03-30T21:51:00.000-07:00

The class is over. I already miss the temperamental Viking oven, the sunny herb garden, the gravity tongs that we all hated but finally got used to, the collection of, you guessed right, corkscrews, the desserts, and, most of all, the instructors and the classmates.
The class taught me a lot. It certainly helped to develop the confidence and the humility that every chef needs. However, the best thing about the class was that it put me together with other freaks just like myself, who take food extremely seriously and can talk about it for hours. I am not the only one out there!

The topics of the fifth day were deep frying, stir frying, and the foods of Asia.

For the first time in my life, very carefully, I tasted a Sichuan pepper. It feels hot and cold at the same time. I thought: tastes like a fever. The I realized that there is a lot of energy in it, so fever is not a good metaphor. OK, it tastes like extreme skiing in a snowstorm.

We made:

Fried shrimp rolls

Sichuan noodles with beef

Fried squid

Asian fried chicken

Stir fried vegetables

Chicken stir fry with tamarind

and a few other things, after we learned that the participants of a cake competition upstairs are coming over for dinner. Since there is no pastry class on Fridays, we were counting on the cake people to bring down cakes. Imagine: they didn’t! They just came down to eat with us, and there was no dessert!

I got my kitchen branding with burning peanut oil (too hot wok, a little bit too much oil, and my stir fry was up in flames, and my left hand looks like one of a real chef now, with several burns that are peeling skin and promise to leave scars), a certificate and a CIA apron.

Inspired by the class, I am making duck confit with ginger and star anise from the Charcuterie book (substituted shallots for scallions because I didn’t have them, and blood orange for the regular one, just because I can) and curing bacon with oregano, black pepper, and bay.

CIA day 4: Charcuterie workshop & Culinary Arts Boot Camp, Mexican cuisine

2010-03-29T22:05:00.001-07:00

As we gathered ingredients for our Culinary Arts class last Wednesday, we discovered a cart with delicious-looking cured meats and sausages drying in our walk-in refrigerator. This is how we learned that Chef Lars Kronmark’s charcuterie workshop is happening in the mornings of the same week and in the same kitchen as our afternoon class.
The next day I came to school in the morning to take a peek at the charcuterie magic. Then I collected all my courage, walked up to the chef instructor, introduced myself, and asked permission to observe the class and take pictures. Chef Lars kindly invited me to the class, answered my questions, and after learning about my background he actually asked me more questions about pork and charcuterie traditions of Russia than I asked him about the recipes and the techniques. I got to watch chef Lars pick a cooked pig's head for headcheese, to talk to participants, watch them unmold the pates, roast the sausages, take the salmon out of the smoker, prepare the sides, help with de-boning a smoked chicken and some clean-up, taste everything, and I got invited to lunch!

The fourteen chefs who participate in the workshop come for this one week from all over the country, and I was surprised to find out that the majority of the chefs work in hotels, country clubs, and golf clubs, traditionally “steak and potato” places known for very conservative food. So, charcuterie is not a new trend anymore, it’s mainstream.

Lessons learned:
- Duck rillettes made with pork fat can be molded and sliced just like a pate; duck fat would just melt at room temperature
- They use a Bradley smoker for both hot smoking (charcoals inside) and cold smoking (charcoals in the outside box) – not at the same time
- The neat-looking pate press, a wooden box with screws to push down the lid, can create a terrible mess if you apply too much pressure; the juices fountain all over the kitchen
- Our temperamental Viking ovens work just fine for these professional chefs who roast sausages in them with no problems
- Hot smoked salmon is very difficult to slice, even for people with excellent knife skills

After the lunch and a walk in the CIA’s herb garden, it was time to go to our class. The topics were Braising, Stewing, and the cuisine of Mexico.
The main trait of the Mexican national character seems to be the love of hard work. Mole is a proof. Making Rick Bayless’s Simple Red Mole took three hours of three people continuously roasting, grinding, hydrating, reducing, mixing, hydrating and reducing the ingredients again. Did I mention 26 ingredients?
We got so absorbed into creating the mole that we missed the desserts!
The menu was:

Tortillas

Roasted Serrano salsa

Tomato, potato, and avocado uncooked table salsa

Spicy mushroom tamales

Juchitan-style black bean tamales

Smoky peanut mole with quail

Simple red mole enchiladas with braised chicken

CIA Culinary Arts Boot Camp, day 3

2010-03-26T09:47:00.000-07:00

Everyone in Napa Valley seems to like CIA students.
My classmate Joy from San Diego is very passionate about Cakebread Cellar’s wines, so, trusting Joy’s taste in wines, and having come to the Valley an hour before the class, I stopped by the Cellar. I had never been there before. The sign at the entrance says “Tasting by appointment only”, and this always scares me.

This time, I walked right in and asked if it was too late to make an appointment for right now, because my classmates at the CIA like the wines, but the class starts in an hour. It wasn’t too late. They didn’t charge me anything – CIA students are always welcome, we love food too - and sent me to the cellar right away.

The winery is proud of its food-friendly wines; the tasting notes for each wine have a food pairing recipe printed on the back. My favorites are 2007 Carneros reserve Chardonnay, big and complex enough to go even with red meats (suggested pairing: Spanish chicken with chorizo, clams, and prawns; my suggestion: duck confit with baked apples), and 2006 Syrah, that goes from dried fruits to chocolate to coffee and has a dynamics of an end of a meal (suggested: moussaka; I would just have it before or in place of a dessert). They also have cooking and food pairing events through the year.

After tasting, I checked into El Bonita motel in St. Helena, to avoid the drive home and back tomorrow. The cheapest room was $120, after mentioning my CIA class I got it for $90. I got double lucky with the motel, because it began to rain later, and what is a longish but beautiful drive in the dry weather is no fun at all in the rain, and also because the next morning I got to school early enough to observe chef Lars Kronmark’s charcuterie workshop.

The day’s topics were sautéing, roasting, and the cuisine of the South Mediterranean.

For two hours I fought with a brand-new Viking oven, trying to get a decent temperature for my lemon and herbs roasted chicken. After an hour at what the oven thought was 450 degrees and another hour at “350”, the breast and the drumsticks were perfectly cooked and still juicy, but the thighs were very pink at the bone, and they didn’t make it to the table. You may think it’s a Viking, but it’s still an oven. Can’t trust it.

The menu:

Grilled tuna ceviche tostada

Salsa de chile guajillo

Chile-grilled squid on sesame spinach

Persian roast chicken

Roasted chicken with lemon and herbs

Sautéed salmon with yogurt sauce

Sautéed salmon with Skordalia

Risotto

Seasonal vegetables

Joy’s grilled squid, rings and tentacles cooked separately, came out as most tender squid I ever had. In the process she did destroy one hotel pan that she put on a hot grill in the absence of a grill basket, but I say it was worth it.

The pastry class only did cakes that night, no plated desserts, so I had to make do with foie gras for dessert. Chef Victor brought us torchon de foie gras that he had made in his other class. It didn’t come out quite right. They brought the liver to room temperature, deveined it, seasoned with salt, pink salt, and white pepper, rolled it into a log shape in cheesecloth, and buried it in rock salt for three weeks. It turned out that three weeks is way too long, and the liver came out too salty. So to balance it out, chef Victor served it on toast points with sweet and sour blueberry sauce, garnished with fresee. Still salty, but heavenly.

CIA Culinary Arts Boot Camp, day 2

2010-03-23T23:58:00.001-07:00

CIA campus in St. Helena, CA, Greystone, is located on a North-facing slope overlooking the valley and the highway, surrounded by gardens and vineyards, so it's extremely difficult to photograph. It was built as a huge coop winery, the biggest in the world, and it still has a winery character, with it's cellars, wine barrels, and, (did I mention it?) a collection of corkscrews that takes an entire wall in the enormous entrance hall.
Today's class was about poaching, steaming, and overview of French cuisine.
Yes, all in one day.

Here the chef instructor Victor Scorgle does the demo on cutting up the poached chicken, all the while complaining that he doesn't want to be the only one who always does the carving. Next he handed me the knife, and I shreded the second chicken into little pitiful rugs.

On the menu:

Leeks in vinaigrette

Seafood poached in saffron broth

Poule-au-pot

Braised celery hearts

Braised green beans and tomatoes

Braised greens

Braised fennel

Meanwhile, upstairs, the two-year program students were preparing a colorful Latin American meal (roasted duck with pumpkin seed sauce and escabeche were both beyond praise), and the pastry students got ready to pass the desserts.

We all love this part of the class, because the desserts are perfectly executed and presented with taste and imagination.

And we get to share them among our group and with other students, which creates a fun family atmosphere.

And we hate it, because even if you try a tiny little bit of each, you cannot try them all.

And in the end, we have to toss some of these, barely sampled, jewel-like creations, and it doesn't feel right.

And we have to somehow walk downstairs after this, and practice cutting potatoes and tomatoes for compost (that's called knife skills).

Today the pastry students, besides the desserts and decorated cakes, also made a display of sugar caramel sculptures.

I remember how much fun we had as teenagers when we would get together after school and play with burnt sugar, twisting it into amazing abstract shapes. This is the teenager's fun elevated to a fine art. Beautiful and useless.

Today I started thinking about taking this pastry class.

CIA Culinary Arts Boot Camp, day 1

2010-03-23T10:36:00.001-07:00

No time to write in details, just a few highlights:

- Everything about the Institute is impressive
- What they call a "giftshop" is actually a complete kitchen store, it has everything from pots and pans to wine service. Expensive.
- I especially liked the corkscrew collection in the lobby; I would travel there just to see the collection
- We got lucky: our class is in the brand-new Viking demo kitchen that they just put in. We have it to ourselves all day

The first day was broiling, grilling, and Caribbean cuisine.

What we made:

Grilled chicken breast with adobo de achiote marinade (both on the gas grill and charcoal fire; I was gas-grilling, but my grill was downwind from the charcoal pit, so I got my share of "smoking chicken" too)

Smoked corn and chile salsa (charcoal)

Mamba (Haitian peanut sauce; spicy, delicious, cures cold instantly)

Quinoa pilaf with roasted peppers

Grilled vegetables

We also had a knife skilles demonstration and practice, made a lot of compost.

Did I mention that the class is very fast and intense?

The best part (after cooking) is going to the Teaching Kitchen to try what the two-year culinary program students are making. Then the pastry students come out of their bakery and pastry kitchen and offer little dessert samples for everyone to taste. You cannot try them all, and it's a shame.

Chocolate and Guinness souffle I'll never forget.

Back to the class now.

The healing power of raw fish

2010-03-22T11:35:00.001-07:00

I am still fighting off my cold symptoms, with variable success. This Saturday the weather was great, and R. decided to see if the ocean air can help me, so he took me to El Granada.

After a short 2-hour walk in the fisherman's marina, checking the live Dungeness crabs sold from the boats (exceptional!) and on the beach, we ended up in Sam's Chowder House, a restaurant with one of the best views even in views-rich California.

What I love about CA is that even in a place with a great view you can get good food. The gumbo was excellent, tuna poke just the way I like it, moist and not too salty, and the oysters (we had local kumamotos and royal miyagis from British Colombia) had this season's creamy quality that I already mentioned in my post about the oyster farm. The oysters were so rich in fact, that they went well with Ferrari Carano Sav. Blanc, an unlikely oyster wine.

And the magic of the ocean, the sunshine, fish and wine worked: my cold was gone for the day! It returned the next day, and I am still fighting it, but at least now I know that there is hope.

Today I am leaving the corporate wonderland for brief five days, to see how much I love to do what I love to do the best. I am taking the CIA Career Discovery - Culinary Arts class.

Wish me good luck.

Signs of Spring II

2010-03-16T00:05:00.000-07:00

Eating outside. Fresh from my just cleaned for the season gas grill: prosciutto wrapped scallops and asparagus; mahi mahi scewers; portabello steaks.

Here I am, messing with the classics (again). Small fillet mignons baked with morel halves in puff pastry, with roasted fingerling potatoes.

Miner's lattuce. Looks like a miniature water hyacynth, complete with pretty little flowers. Mild and juicy.

Breakfast outside. Steamed asparagus with Maltese sauce made with blood oranges.

Not shown: Starborough Sauvignon Blanc; Theraflu Severe Cold and Cough.

Signs of Spring

2010-03-12T20:56:00.000-08:00

I’ve been watching the Farmers Market for the first signs of spring. People is sleeveless tops don’t count – in California you can see them any time. What I wanted to see was some exciting spring produce. Well, anything besides cabbages and potatoes.

Here comes:
Asparagus

And morels

Asparagus wrapped in prosciutto and grilled over medium heat for about 4 minutes, turning once.

Maccheroncini pasta with morels, asparagus and shallot.

I found too late that I'm out of white wine, so the liquid in the sauce is a few tablespoons of the pasta cooking water. All the better. The asparagus and the 'shrooms taste so fresh and bright that wine would actually interfere with their character.

And more piroshki, same dough as in the previous post, this time filled with beef and with shitake mushrooms.

Beef filling:

2 Tbsp olive oil
½ large onion, minced
1 lb ground beef (I hand-minced a large New York steak, a lot of work, but tastes great)
4 sprigs oregano, minced
Salt, pepper

Heat the oil in a large sauté pan over medium heat. Add the onion, sauté, stirring frequently, until soft and golden. Add the beef. Cook, stirring, until almost no pink color remains. Season with oregano, salt, and pepper. Let cool.

Mushroom filling:

1 Tbsp olive oil
1 Tbsp butter
½ large onion, minced
¼ lb shitake mushrooms, finely chopped
salt, pepper
a few drops of truffle oil (optional)

Heat the oil in a large sauté pan over medium heat. Add the butter. Add the onion, sauté, stirring frequently, until soft and golden. Add the mushrooms. Season with salt and pepper. Reduce the heat to medium-low. Cook until the mushrooms soften and begin to dry. Add a few drops of truffle oil to intensify the mushroom flavor. Let cool.

Leftover management: piroshki

2010-03-09T22:39:00.001-08:00

I made half of Michael's recipe for braised pork shoulder, and I liked it a lot, the melt-in-your-mouth texture, the perfectly balanced taste, the aroma of the pork roasting with the spices spreading through the house. And the price. Pork shoulder is one of the cheapest cuts of meat you can get in the supermarket.

The problem is, it's a restaurant recipe, and even half of it gave me way too much of braised pork. We ate it for dinner for a couple of days, then R. got a large piece of pork, browned on all sides, with his eggs for breakfast, then I mushed it into rillettes and we ate it spread on toasts as a part of our late-night wine and cheese plate, and there was still a lot left.
Finally I mixed what was left with some rice and sauteed onions and baked it into piroshki. Piroshki can be eaten in place bread, and they go well with a soup. Or they make a very good portable snack - take them to the office for lunch, on a day sail, or put them in your backpack and hit the slopes.
Last week I made a puree soup of the vegetables from the farmers market - baby leeks, parsnips, celery root - and my pork and rice piroshki went very well with it.

My favourite piroshki dough:

1 cup warm milk (body tempetature)
2-1/2 tsp dry yeast
1 tsp sugar
2-1/2 cups bread flour + more for dusting
2 Tbsp softened butter
1 egg
1/2 tsp salt

Egg wash:
1 egg
2 Tbsp water

Mix the yeast with 1/2 cup of milk and the sugar. Let sit for 20-30 minutes.
In a large glass bowl, combine 1 cup flour with the remaining milk and the milk/yeast/sugar mixture. Mix well. Cover with a clean napkin and put in a warm place until it doubles in size, for about 1 hour. Add the remaining flour, butter, egg and salt. Knead for about 5 minutes, rubbing your hand with some flour if the dough sticks to your hands.

Form the dough into a ball, put in a large glass bowl, dust with flour, cover with a napkin, and keep in a warm place until it doubles in size, 1to 1-1/2 hours.

Place the dough on a floured surface, roll out into a long log shape, and divide into 16 equal portions. Work with one portion at a time, covering the rest with a napkin to prevent drying.
Form the dough into a ball, roll out into a flat circle, place about 1 Tbsp of filling in the center and pinch the edges close. Place on a buttered cookie sheet. Repeat until you run out of the dough or filling (there is always something left over)

Prepare the egg wash: beat together the egg and water.

Brush the piroshki with the egg wash. Bake at 375 degrees until golden, about 20 minutes.
Let cool before serving.

The filling could be:
- braised or boiled beef, pork, or chicken, shredded + sauteed onions + (optional) rice or buckwheat
- steamed or boiled cabbage, spinach, kale + sauteed onions + (optional) chopped hard boiled egg
- cooked fish + rice
- sauteed mushrooms
- anything

Grilling trout by the Bay

2010-03-07T19:39:00.000-08:00

The spring is here, we just had two sunny days in a row!

Yesterday we went for a short walk in China Camp park, which is a five minute drive from where I live. It's an old Chinese shrimp fishermen's village made into a park and an outdoor museum, with an old pier, a couple of century-old fishing boats, fishermen's cottages, shrimp-drying oven, Chinese vegetable garden, and a picnic area.

The water in front of the park is one of the very few places on the Bay where sailboats can anchor - it is legal to anchor there, and the bottom holds relatively well. This is a long sail from almost anywhere, so boat people like to come to China camp and stay overnight, then sail back the next day. It can be a very comfortable anchorage if there is no wind, but usually the wind (from the shore, thankfully) keeps you cold and nervious all night.

So yesterday was one of these rare balmy days with some sunshine and no wind, and the boat people seemed happy. There were a few people on the shore: a sunbathing family trying to keep their kids out of the water, a photographer doing an outdoor glamor shot, the model looking comfortable in her short sundress, and some tourists, taking pictures of themselves with their phones. The picnic area was deserted. We regretted not bringing food at once, and promised each other that if it doesn't rain tomorrow, we'll come back and picnic.

So this morning we got two beautiful rainbow trouts at the farmers market. I rubbed them with salt and pepper, put two rosemary sprigs, a bay leaf, and a few lemon slices inside, and tied them with the kitchen twine, adding some lemon and rosemary, then packed them into a cooler with ice. R. loaded a bag of hardwood charcoal, lighter fluid, and grilling tools into the car, and to the park we went.
By the time we got there, the picnic area was almost full. We found a table with a view, but it wasn't easy. And the wind picked up to some 30 knots or so. While R. was building the fire, I set up the table, weighting the plastic plates down with glasses with water and protecting the salad with the picnic basket. At some point a gust of wind actually knocked the wine bottle and a bottle of salad dressing off the table! Our neighbors run chasing their light paper plates, plastic glasses, and the umbrella all over the park.

R. doesn't really care about cooking (as long as the food comes to table in time), but he loves to play with the fire, and the stinky lighter fluid is his favorite toy. I have to indulge him, and while I usually avoid using the fluid myself, when he's tending the fire, the fluid goes in, and I have to wait till the smell burns off. After the stink was gone and the charcoals were ready, it took the fish (brushed with olive oil) about 8 minutes on each side to reach perfection.

Celebration of the spring

2010-03-01T19:22:00.000-08:00

The winter is over, or will be over very soon. Here is the proof: it was nice and sunny both Saturday and Sunday. Saturday was a very good day for a wine country trip, and one of our favorite wineries, Beaver Creek, hosted a barrel tasting of their organic wines and a lamb barbeque.

I have a good luck to live within 20 minutes drive from Sonoma and Napa wine countries, and I don't go wine tasting there anymore - too touristy. This winery is different, and it's not the closest one for sure. It took us an hour and a half to get there. All the way through Napa valley, then up into the mountains on a very scenic and very tricky winding road, then going down into Lake County.

We tasted two Zinfandels, estate-grown Lake County and Napa Zin, made of grapes that the owners outsource from vineyards in Napa Valley and bring by a small truck across the mountains. Both have a wonderful aroma of ripe berries and nuts (I want to smell like this), and the Lake County Zin also has this rich and complex flavor that I began to call the "Lake County taste" - somewhat jammy, dried-fruit taste of the red grapes growing in a very hot climate.

I also got to taste a white blend that was only halfway ready, still foggy with the sugar residue and smelling of yeast and fresh bread.

The winery owners, Joseph, Martin and Bruno, all from the former Czechoslovakia, run their winery like an Old World farm. Happy sheep and goats graze on the fresh grass between the rows of grapes (they move them to a pasture in summer).

The llama posed pretty for a picture, then refused my humble offering of a bunch of grass and moved away - he somehow knew that the grass on my side of the fence was no greener.

Charlie, the majestic white rooster, walks his multiple girlfriends in front of us, just as Joseph and I enjoy a delicious paprikash (yes, I got the recipe, but I promised not to publish it) made of one of Charlie's ex-girlfriends, and discuss pros and cons of adding chanterelle mushrooms to the future coq au vin of Charlie.
Charlie is oblivious of hir retirement plan.

Then, as the sun goes down, Bruno builds an oak wood fire, and out comes the rack of lamb.

The lamb's name was Molodets, this means "good boy" both in Czech and in Russian. He surely tasted like a good boy. In fact, he was the best lamb I tasted in many years.

There were music, songs, and stories. My hair and clothes still smell of wood smoke, like a pizza oven.

This time of the year, the little creek runs full and strong like a mountain river. You can kayak on it, if you have the skill and courage.

Welcome, Spring!

Flat-iron steak

2010-02-25T21:30:00.000-08:00

Flat-iron steak is my new religion. As tender as a fillet, as flavorful as a hanger steak, and priced like a cheap braising cut (don't tell anyone!). Just make sure to grill it rare or medium-rare.

Here served with mushed potatoes, sauteed mushrooms, and green onions.

Pork three ways

2010-02-25T21:03:00.001-08:00

This winter seems to last forever. Heavy storms come every other day. The market is all cabbages and root vegetables. Oh, well. Cabbages. Actually, this red cabbage I got last week was super pretty. And I had meats to go with it.

So I sauteed cubes of pork loin, chunks of my home-cured bacon, and my Italian sausages with onion and garlic, added chopped cabbage, and braised the whole thing with thyme, rosemary, bay leaves, black pepper and juniper berries, in red wine.

Added a handfull of prunes halfway through cooking, as an afterthought. It turned out to be a good idea - the sweetness of the prunes balanced the salt of the meats and the wine's acidity, and

I didn't have to add any sugar to adjust the flavor.

It looks like a glorious mess, but that's part of it's charm as a comfort dinner at home on a rainy day.

Duck breast "prosciutto"

2010-02-22T21:18:00.000-08:00

In my previous charcuterie post I mentioned cured duck breasts hanged to dry in the outside laundry closet. With the rains and fog we had almost constantly, it took them two weeks instead of one to dry, but they are finally done (and almost all eaten).

I followed the recipe is from the Charcuterie book; here's what I did:
- split a large Pekin duck breast, skin on, trimmed, washed, dried with paper towels, covered completely with salt on all sides, and refrigerated for a day
- rinsed off the salt, dried with paper towels
- seasoned the breast halves with freshly ground white pepper
- wrapped them in cheesecloth, tied with a string, and hung them to dry in a spot protected from the sun (irrelevant in this weather) and rain - the outside closet with the door open
- checked them every other day to see if they feel firm and dry
- after about 10 days I got nervious and thought that I may have to bring out a fan to help them dry, but the rain stopped then, and in a few more days they felt just right
- brought them into the kitchen, unwrapped, sliced thin at an angle across the grain, and served them as a part of our late-night cheese and wine course.

The duck breasts are delicious, they have prosciutto-like texture and the gamey, slightly sweet duck flavor. They will be a part of our cheese and wine course forever. See how this will work in a regular California weather.

Oysters for Valentine's day

2010-02-21T21:06:00.000-08:00

Oysters are erotic, local, and in season. No need to make reservations two month in advance in order to take your sweetie out for perfect Valentine's day food. Just pack the oyster knife, a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, glasses, plates, and lots of napkins, a lemon or two, and drive to the oyster farm.

Last Sunday the weather was good, for a change, and we enjoyed the drive across the emerald green hills, dotted with cows and sheep, and through the redwoods, with the car top down, very much. I would have enjoyed it even better without a cop on my tail all the way from San Rafael to Point Reyes Station. With the cop, no place for me to stop or for him to pass, and the speed limit of 35 mph, it was a very slow scenic drive.

Since the last time we were there, Tomales Bay Oyster Company has put out new nice picnic tables, and lots of them, so even on a busy Sunday there is a good chance to find a spot.

By the time we got there, our friends found a table and got a hundred of extra-small oysters.
When we started opening them we were surprised by how plump and fat these oysters were. On the outside, they looked like regular extra-smalls, about 3 inches across, but the inside of the shell was filled completely with white, very sweet and delicate meat.

It appears that the unusual weather of this winter, colder then most years and with a lot of rain, is the oysters' paradise.

With a squeeze of lemon juice, a spoonful of mignonette sauce (white wine, minced shallot, salt and white pepper), or both, they were absolutely the best oysters I had in years.

We had trouble finishing a hundred of them between the six of us, just because we got so much more food then we expected, but we couldn't leave any, so we finally got them all. I wasn't hungry for two more days.
It's cold and raining again, and the wonderful oysters are growing fatter by the minute. I cannot wait for the next clear day to go to the farm. Next time we'll just get one dozen per person.

Charcuterie in the middle of a storm

2010-01-29T21:36:00.000-08:00

It's an El Nino year, the weather pattern that repeats every seven years and brings a lot of water to our otherwise dry coastal desert. The last storm went on for two weeks, with the water pouring down from the sky continuously, the roofs leaking, ponds and creeks overflowing, highways flooded, visibility zero or less, and driving a nightmare. Stay home and cook. I used the time to do more charcuterie.
This time I used lots of herbs and spices on both my duck legs confit and the bacon, with mixed results. The bacon cured for 6 days with sea salt, sugar, a dash of pink salt (sodium nitrite), torn bay leaves, rosemary, thyme, garlic, and black pepper, then slowly oven-roasted at 200 degrees (no smoking), developed a deep and interesting flavor. On the other hand, the same spices (minus sugar) made almost no difference for the duck legs.
After I cured the legs with salts and spices for about 24 hours, rinsed, dried, let rest for an hour at room temperature, then slowly cooked them in mixed duck and goose fat in a Dutch oven for a couple of hours, and then seared them over high heat in a skillet, the confit didn't taste much different from the previous batch made with just salt and pepper. The duck flavor and the salts overpower all the spices.

For smoked beef sausages I used 2/3 beef chuck and 1/3 pork belly, ground through a small die and seasoned with salt, pink salt, sugar, pepper, rosemary, juniper berries, and red wine. Stuffed in hog casing and tied into handsome rings, dried at room temperature for a couple of hours, then smoked in my water-smoker for two hours over apple wood chips. The sausages came out pretty dry, fully cooked, and tasting very meaty and savory.

They are good sliced thinly as a part of our late-night cheese and fruit board. I have also cut them into thick chunks and fried them with bacon and potatoes, and chopped them for a pasta with cauliflower and cavolo nero (drop them in hot water for a few seconds to loosen the casing, then peel it off).

The salted duck breasts hang dry-curing, wrapped in cheesecloth and tied with kitchen string, in my outside laundry closet right now. The temperature in the 50-ies and the high humidity are perfect. I'll try them in one or two days.

Another storm is coming.

Artificial sunset (on the table)

2010-01-14T18:53:00.000-08:00

My beautiful sunny California has been blanketed by fog for two weeks. We are not used to not getting any sunshine for so long, everyone was feeling low on energy. And confined: there is no reason to go anywhere on a weekend if all you will see is the same grey.

The last weekend's weather called for staying at home and cooking, and for some bright colors on the table. To make up for not seeing the sunset, I made a sunset colored salad with small purple, red, golden and white beets, roasted (unpeeled, untrimmed) at 375 degrees, in a dish with some water on the bottom, covered with foil, for about 40 minutes. When roasted this way, the beets leak very little juice, so the colors stay true. I still try to keep the purple beets in one corner of the dish, separated by some space from the rest. They do give off a little juice, and you don't need much of this juice to stain everything else. I also cut off the top of a head of garlic, wrapped it in foil, and roasted it alongside the beets. When the beets are cool, peel, quarter, mix with baby arugula, add roasted garlic, squeezed out of it's skin, dress with olive oil and red wine vinegar, sprinkle sel gris or sea salt on top.

For a chunky three-cabbage soup I sauteed celery, parsnip, onion and garlic, added one of my "bouillon cubes" (chicken stock that I freeze in square plastic containers), waited for it to melt, and brought to a boil. Then I added chopped Savoy cabbage, cavolo nero, and halved brussels sprouts, crumbled some dry herbs, and simmered until the cabbages were almost done. Added torn prosciutto slices, little dry pasta rings, adjusted the salt, waited for the pasta to cook (11 minutes), served the soup with a spoonful of Creme Fraiche.

For the main course, Ono steaks, pan-fried in half olive oil and half butter. The fish doesn't just turn a beautiful sunny golden color, but it's very Hawaiian flavor (and name) bring back the memories of warm sunny days.

Steamed Blue Lake beans (I know, I know, I overcooked the beans. Never again, I promise.) Sauteed chanterelle mushrooms.
I thinned Maui onions that are growing from seeds in a patio box and seem to like the fog very much, so the green onions on top are yet another Hawaiian reference.

The walnut bread is Jamie Oliver's basic bread recipe (halved; it still gave me more bread then we can eat - two medium loaves. Fortunately, it keeps well). I have mixed in two handfulls of walnut halves and pieces (and, as became clear at dinner, a couple of shell pieces too).

Baked at 500 degrees for about 15 minutes ( I sprayed some water in the oven before putting the bread in, to help with the crust), then at 375 degrees until baked through and the tap on the bottom gives a hollow sound.

This weekend it's raining, and we are told that a major Pacific winter storm is coming our way. We are all ready for a serious carwash. Stay home and cook again. Well, we made a brief trip to Napa, just for a glass of Champagne at Gloria Ferrer, and even saw something that we thought may have been a little sunshine between the clouds, for a moment. Then stay home and cook again.

I am making duck legs confit, smoking beef sausages, baking more walnut bread, curing bacon, and we are also planning a beef fondue + hot spiced wine, by the fireplace. We will survive the winter. The spring is near.

My 2009 in food

2010-01-11T22:30:00.000-08:00

Every blog has to have lists. I'm catching up here.
This is the list of top ten things that happened to me food-wise in 2009.

1. Farmers Market. I have been a fan for a long time. This year I really got into a habit of going to the Farmers Market twice a week, if only to get out of the corporate environment (the office lunch break coincides with the last hour of the market, when all prices go down). As a result, about 95% of the fresh produce that I buy comes form the market. Even R., who would eat anything, recognizes the superior flavor of fruits and vegetables that were just picked this morning.

I still go to the grocery store for rice and toilette paper.

2. Gadget: charcoal smoker. I've been smoking fish, beef, pork ribs, and bacon. Sausages are next.

3. Curing meats. I have overcame my distrust of sodium nitrite and nitrate (I grew up with the nitrate scare; we used to peel 1/2 inch off our potatoes. Other scares included the Bermuda Triangle and the UFOs). Curing meats for flavor, storage, and smoking.

4. Food styling classes (Food Styling 101 and Everyday Food Styling) were completely enjoyable, and they changed my attitude. I want to be a food stylist when I grow up.

5. Food writing class didn't exactly make me a writer, but it removed some of the block; it also taught me that no recipe is much better than a bad recipe. And it was a lot of fun with good friends.

6. I got a new, serious camera for food photography, and am learning to set up the light. I also got an external flash as a birthday gift and I will be learning to use it in 2010.

7. The Maui and Molokai trip in August was rich in seafood experiences, restaurants, grilling on the beach, and all. I still owe my blog a detailed post.

I also tasted a coffee berry for the first time, and found it inexpectedly sweet and juicy. And I learned to love macadamia nuts: the texture I detested before comes from roasting them in peanut oil, for preservation. When dry-roasted, they are absolutely delicious.

8. New food and ingredients for 2009:
- persimmons (I ignored them for years thinking that they are too tannic; then a neighbor introduced me to Fuyu persimmons. I am beginning to mourn the passing of the persimmon season as much as I did figs)
- cavolo nero
- rapini
- pea shoots
- macadamia nuts
- More-Than-Gourmet demi-glace
- piopini and matsutake mushrooms
- almond meal

9. Learned to make:
- polenta
- duck confit
- bbq ribs
- steam vegetables in a microwave (Thanks, R.!)
- bacon

The second season of home-cured olives resulted in a huge over-production; I am still dealing with it.

10. Gadget: wine aerator. We first saw it used by a wine associate in Buena Vista vinery tasting room in Sonoma, where we went on one of the rainy days during the Christmas holidays. So I count it as 2009. I actually got mine in the first minutes of 2010, when I was allowed to open the gift box that my dear friends put under the tree with my name on it.

Instead of decaunting the wine for an hour, you just pour it through the chrystal filter that fluffs it up and mixes it with the air. This softens the tannis immediately.

And this foodie's New Year resolution?
Smoked sausages.