in praise of sardines

My favorite appliance

Here's my contribution to Sam's Utensibility meme.  Although I admittedly have more than my fair share of appliances (due to registering at Williams-Sonoma a few years back), most of them seem to exist to gather dust and take up storage space.  When I cook, I love getting my hands dirty, feeling the connection with the raw materials.  I prefer earthenware cazuelas, cast iron pans, carbon steel knives, wooden cutting boards, my trusty mortar and pestle.

But there is one exception to my Luddite tendencies:  my Sumeet Multi Grind.  Because my wife is of Indian origin, we cook a lot of her family's specialties, including curries, chutneys and idli sambar.  These recipes require a lot of grinding of wet and dry ingredients, ideally with little added water.  These demands have resulted in the death of several blenders.  Then I discovered this lovely contraption, made in India and imported through Canada.  It reduces ginger, garlic, herbs, soaked grains and legumes to a perfect puree in seconds, with only a splash of additional water.  It's especially invaluable when making my wife's cilantro-mint chutney for tomato, cucumber and chutney tea sandwiches (I'll supply a recipe when juicy heirloom tomatoes come into season).  It also makes great pesto and other herb purees when you don't feel in the mood to pound out your aggressions with a mortar and pestle.

I bought mine at the Berkeley branch of Sur la Table about 5 years ago, but I couldn't find it on their website.  It costs about $90 and should be available through the manufacturer's website linked above.  Highly recommended!

If it's foggy, I crave Suzu's ramen

When the fog rolls into San Francisco, one thought inevitably pops into my mind:  soup noodles (or is it noodle soups?).  Either way, my home town rivals Singapore as the gastronomic capital for these and other Asian comfort foods.  The next decision, then, is Vietnamese, Chinese, Burmese, Thai or Japanese.  Today, I felt in a Japanese mood, so there was still one more choice to make:  udon, soba or ramen.  The winner was ramen, so my wife and I headed to one of our new favorites and definite short list member, Suzu (no website, tel. 415-346-5083, location 1825 Post St. at Webster, in the Japan Center downstairs from the Kinokuniya bookstore).

Although, unlike most of the foods I will write about, I should first give a caveat that I have unfortunately never had authentic ramen in Japan.  So my platonic ideal of what ramen should be is, alas, based mostly on one of the great all-time foodie movies, Tampopo.  With that disclosure out of the way, I can say that Suzu's version never fails to satisfy.  The noodles, freshly made off-site daily, have the al dente chewiness that I like.  But really, for me, when it comes to noodle soups, it's all about the broth and I adore Suzu's broth.  Perhaps it's because I love pork, and this broth can best be described as being porky.  An added attraction for pork lovers are the two tender slices of braised Berkshire pork shoulder or leg that float atop the ramen.  I could devour an entire plate of these heaven-sent slices of pork.  For starters, I can recommend the croquettes and the much better than average edamame.

Recipe: Tangy Green Olive Relish

Throughout the summer, I often make some version of olive relish to accompany our excellent local wild salmon.  Because it is both salty and tangy, it balances and flatters the salmon's rich flavor.  To maintain king salmon's natural succulence, I recommend "slow-roasting" (a popular menu description for what is more accurately called "baking") the individual salmon fillets in a 325° oven for 10-15 minutes, depending on the thickness.  To do this, first season the fillets liberally with sea salt (I usually do this about a half hour before cooking), then place the fish (without crowding) in their cooking pan and drizzle each fillet with about a teaspoon of olive oil and a splash of white wine.  It's also best to let the fish sit at room temperature for up to a half hour before cooking it.

Yield:  about a half cup, enough for 4 servings

1/2 c green olives, such as picholine or Spanish Gordal olives (my current fave)
1/4 preserved lemon , skin only, or 1/2 t lemon zest, finely chopped
2 T almonds, blanched, toasted and coarsely chopped or marcona almonds
1 T parsley, chopped
1-3 t lemon juice, to taste
3 T extra virgin olive oil

Pit and coarsely chop the olives.  Combine in a small bowl with the rest of the ingredients.  You will need more lemon juice if you use the lemon zest instead of the preserved lemons.  For convenience, use already toasted or fried marcona almonds, available at Trader Joe's or through the Spanish Table.  Also, if you want to make your own preserved lemons, there's an easy recipe in Chez Panisse Fruit.

Cocina Primavera's fish tacos

Compared to almost any other country, the United States has few truly regional foods.  But there are notable exceptions of cities or regions that serve dishes that are uniquely theirs.  The art of barbecue perhaps best exemplifies this.  If it's barbecued brisket you crave, you go to Texas; if it's pork shoulder, Memphis is your best bet.

I would extend this phenomena to what is somewhat inaccurately referred to as "ethnic food."  Due to seemingly random immigration patterns, certain diverse communities have introduced their specialty foods to the fortunate inhabitants of particular cities, so much so that one community's unique dish or cuisine can be best enjoyed only in that city.  For example, when I left Washington, D.C., a dozen years ago to come to San Francisco, I knew my taste buds would henceforth be deprived of the greatest examples of the spicy Ethiopian, and particularly Eritrean, food found outside of eastern Africa.  Other cities blessed by these strong culinary ties include San Francisco (Cantonese), Miami (Cuban), Chicago (Polish), and New York City (Jewish, Korean, Caribbean and Indian--lucky New York).

I add San Diego to that list, although I would whittle its associated food down from a region to just one dish:  the Baja fish taco.

What's in my market basket?

 
After a spending a week basking in the lovely warmth of the Sierra foothills, I was not surprised to find San Francisco enveloped in fog when I woke up late this morning.  Being Saturday, I instinctively headed to our amazing Ferry Plaza Farmers Market.  It's no secret that all of the stars in the Bay Area's foodie galaxy can be found here.  The sellers here are like the rock stars of the Bay Area food scene:  the growers, ranchers, bakers and cheese makers whose names you see sprinkled all over the menus of the eco-conscious restaurants who follow Alice Waters' lead.

Over the next month, I'll be traveling to New York City and Spain, so this was my last visit to the Saturday market until August. Wherever I travel, I make a point of visiting the best farmers markets to discover what's in season locally (frankly, after markets and restaurants, museums and other sights place a distant third).  So before I head abroad, I wanted to make note of what's currently in season in the Bay Area so I can compare what's available here with what I find at the Union Square Greenmarket in New York and at Spain's most famous markets, including La Boqueria in Barcelona, La Brecha in San Sebastián and the Mercado Central in Valencia.

What I crave: La Taqueria's pork tacos

The past week I did nothing but sit in silence.  Literally.  Against my stomach's protests, I signed up for an eight-day retreat at a Zen monastery in Calaveras County, in the California Gold Country.  My intention was to get away from the busyness of urban life to gain some clarity about myself and my career goals.  One perhaps unintended result was that I became intimately acquainted with my appetite.

To gain a more complete understanding of our minds, my fellow retreatants and I learned several psychological tools.  For example, we learned that throughout the day we humans are unconsciously viewing and acting upon the events of our lives from the perspective of various "subpersonalities."  These "aspects of the identity" were created throughout our lives in response to various difficult situations.  So, depending on the person, you might have created a "clown" or a "wallflower" personality to deal with going to school for the first time.

After a week of this kind of contemplation, the main thing I discovered is that my appetite seems to be my dominant subpersonality.  Or maybe it just seemed that way after subsisting on nothing but lowfat vegetarian food for the past week.  All I know is that during the 4 hour drive back to San Francisco I could think of nothing but food.

Why sardines?

Last summer on a trip to Spain, I had a culinary epiphany.  It happened late at night at a nondescript seafood shack along the Guadalquivir River in Sevilla.  My wife, N, and I were completely spent from the day. I had dragged the poor unsuspecting girl through the warren of streets in the old quarter to find a particular convent famous for its sweets and Seville orange marmalade. A reasonable plan, until you learn that it was the hottest part of the day on what we would later learn was the hottest day of the year.  After 5 minutes in the blazing sun, our cooked brains stopped thinking, but my stomach insisted on soldiering on.  (I tell this as a precautionary tale to those who think it would be fun to marry a chef or foodie.  Be warned:  we are not reasonable people).  When we finally located the convent half an hour later, we discovered that the nuns, no fools, had closed for the afternoon.  By nightfall, the city’s power supply failed and plunged Sevilla into darkness.

It was in this context that we arrived at Los Chorritos, the most convivial looking of the temporary outdoor seafood shacks, or chiringuitos, in the Triana district.  We placed our order at the counter and melted onto two stools at a tiny table with a view of the makeshift kitchen.  A refreshing clara, icy beer mixed with lemon soda, in hand, I watched the cook dust the griddle with crunchy sea salt, top it with several big, fat sardines, and douse it all with fruity olive oil.  After about five minutes, our sardinas a la plancha were delivered with crispy skin, bursting with salty juices.  It tasted like the sea, with more flavor than any other fish I’ve tasted before or since.  With the memory of those sardines as my guide, I now know the kind of food I want to cook and eat:  rustic, seasonal foods with a sense of terroir, rooted in the place that they came from.