Seared Local Something

November 4, 2009 in Dinner out, San Francisco | No comments

I’ve eaten my way from one end of the Ferry Building to the other on more than one occasion, but a few Sundays ago I got to do it for a good cause. CUESA, the organization that runs the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, was holding its annual Sunday Supper fundraiser, a cocktails-and-appetizers reception followed by a seated five-course dinner upstairs in the beautifully vaulted expanse of the second floor. My dream was to go to the dinner upstairs but that cost $200, compared to the relative bargain of the $75 reception ticket. Having already sprung this year for a $200 dinner ticket, I opted for the reception (okay, I couldn’t find anyone else willing to spring for the dinner, and I had a taker for the reception. Wiser, thriftier heads prevailed). Then I spent the whole weekend nursing a cold and was happy I hadn’t paid $200 for a dinner I didn’t feel well enough to attend.

But $75 is nothing to sneeze at, either, so I loaded up on the nondrowsy cold medicine and trotted down to the Ferry Building to meet my friend M.

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Dinner at the Pig Farm

November 4, 2009 in Dinner out, Uncategorized | 1 comment

On the coldest Memorial Day weekend in Northern California history, I went to an outdoor dinner in Nicasio at Devil’s Gulch Ranch. Outdoor dinners, particularly ones in the middle of a vineyard, are supposed to be warm and summery affairs. Skinny-strapped dresses, bare legs and shoulders, heels (but not spiky ones that might sink into vineyard soil and leave you stuck), a floppy hat and some movie star–size sunglasses, and maybe, if you’re feeling particularly cautious, a floaty, gauzey scarf for a cover-up. That’s what I had in mind (in addition to delicious food and a beautiful setting) when I bought the $200 tickets for the event. The reality was more like this.

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It was freezing. In classic Norcal fashion, we showed up in sunshine and spent the first hour keeping an anxious eye on the fog bank looming on the horizon. Take a sip of wine, nibble on halibut ceviche, glance to the west, shiver, sip, repeat.

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On and Off the List

August 4, 2009 in Food Habits | 4 comments

My friend LKA keeps a running list referred to as The Coma List. Everyone should have one. This is the list of foods that a friend or family member should bring to your bedside if you are ever in a coma. Only the foods on the list have the power to bring you back to consciousness. For a long time the primary items on LKA’s list were two notable chicken sandwiches found in San Francisco:
The Bi-Rite Market’s original chicken sandwich, circa 2000, and the chicken sandwich found at the SF MOMA café.

It only takes one bad bite to get an item crossed off the list.

What exactly made the Bi-Rite sandwich so special has been lost to the mists of time; all I can remember is that she took it off the list around 2003 or 2004 because she had one and it was too dry. It only takes one bad bite to get an item crossed off the list. The SF MOMA café chicken sandwich was a chicken breast on focaccia with arugula and onion jam. The key to the sandwich was the cutting of the chicken breast into two or three slices, rather than leaving it as one thick piece, which often leads to the specter that haunts all chicken sandwiches: dryness.

LKA was in town last weekend and took a trip to SF MOMA to check out the Robert Frank show and also to check in with the chicken sandwich. Was it still good enough for the list?

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Boiled Peanuts

July 30, 2009 in Snacks, southern food | 4 comments

My two previous posts give a skewed idea of my usual food preoccupations, and this post is going to skew it even further. I’m going to talk about a controversial delicacy that inspires either rapture or revulsion: boiled peanuts.

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There are a few reasons for my current fixation on Southern food: It’s summer, which means the Southern dish I crave the most—fried okra—is in season; I haven’t been home for a while; and I recently got The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook. The Lee brothers write for The New York Times, their cookbook won the James Beard Award, and their names pop up in food publications all the time. I knew they were from Charleston, South Carolina, but it wasn’t until I got the cookbook that I discovered they were not really Southerners. They are Yankee transplants, the children of academics. In other words, carpetbaggers.

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Conversion Experiences

July 28, 2009 in Casseroles, southern food | 1 comment

I had to avert my eyes while adding the mayonnaise.

The white bean and collard green casserole/gratin was not the first John T. Edge recipe I’ve seen that involves Ritz crackers. A few years back he contributed an article about a Southern potluck dinner to Food and Wine, featuring a broccoli and wild mushroom casserole that’s topped with Ritz crackers. Basically it’s a fancified version of a broccoli casserole made with cream of mushroom soup, except without the cream of mushroom soup. Instead you use real wild mushrooms and make a roux. I cannot tell you how much mayonnaise is involved in this recipe because you would never eat it if you knew. Both times that I’ve made this dish (for parties, always devoured), I’ve had to avert my eyes while adding the mayonnaise. That basically sums up my feelings about most Southern cooking. Avert your eyes, and your taste buds will be rewarded while your arteries pay the price.

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Beans and Greens

July 23, 2009 in Beans | 3 comments

I am helpless before the crumbled, buttery goodness of the Ritz cracker. Even though I have not lived below the Mason-Dixon line in 19 years, my true palate remains Southern at heart. So when I read a recipe that involves Ritz crackers used in place of bread crumbs, I can’t really resist. Especially when it is suggested by someone as distinguished as John T. Edge, head of the Southern Foodways Alliance, in the virtual pages of Gourmet. Mr. Edge recently posted a casserole variation on a Frank Stitt gratin, and its publication happened to dovetail with a couple of my other current cooking interests, namely beans and greens.

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Mr. Edge’s slow downgrading of the original recipe started with canned beans, but part of my inspiration for making this dish had to do with my recent discovery of Rancho Gordo’s magical Alubia Criolla bean, which is basically a Mexican heirloom variety of a white runner bean, as perfect and creamy a white bean as you can imagine. Once I made my first batch, I was on the lookout for anything I could use them in. And along comes Mr. Edge with his beans-and-greens casserole, coinciding with the appearance at the farmers market of beautiful, peaced-out collard greens grown by the Buddhists at Green Gulch. The stars were aligned for my California-fication of Mr. Edge’s casserole-ification of Frank Stitt’s gratin.

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