in praise of sardines

Happy Blog Day!

Happy Blog Day 2005, everyone! Since all bloggers got the day off today to celebrate this momentous....what? You didn't get the memo? That's right. Today is an international holiday, celebrated worldwide, kind of like May Day. Don't tell me you don't get May Day off! How about Earth Day? Arbor Day? My God, where do you work? Here's a bit of advice: you might want to consider perusing the help wanted ads in today's paper (truth be told, I just learned about Blog Day a little while ago myself).

First, if you're coming here from another blog (I offer my gratitude to fellow food bloggers Amy Sherman of Cooking with Amy,  David Lebovitz of his eponymous site, NS of SF Gourmet, and Melissa Kronenthal of The Traveler's Lunchbox for linking to my site), then you already know what Blog Day is all about.

For those of you who don't yet know, on August 31 (the date was chosen because of the similarity between the numbers 3108 and the letters that spell Blog) bloggers worldwide are encouraged to recommend links to 5 new blogs, preferably "blogs different from their own culture, point of view and attitude."

So, in that spirit, here are links to three wonderful food blogs that celebrate a topic close to my heart (remember, my wife, N, is of Indian descent), the wonderful cuisine of India, and two blogs from elsewhere in Asia.

The Cook's Cottage - "deccanheffalump" writes brilliantly from India, sharing recipes (vegetarian and non-veg) with lots of step-by-step photos, stories and photos from her dining experiences throughout her hometown of Poona/Pune, a large city not far from Bombay/Mumbai.

One Hot Stove - Nupur, whose family comes from the western Indian states of Gujarat and Maharashtra, enthusiastically cooks in her cramped New York City kitchen. She shares her vegetarian recipes, stories, childhood recollections, travels and photos on her food blog.

Mahanandi  -The name for Indira's lovely blog comes from an ancient temple in the southeastern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh near where her family used to spend their summer holidays. Now living in the States, she shares with us vegetarian recipes from her mother and around the world, always "cooking with consciousness."

She Who Eats - Chika's food blog from Japan includes beautifully written and photographed stories of cooking and eating in that country and from her recent trip to Europe. Her photographs are gorgeous works of art.

Chubby Hubby - Aun writes from the culinary mecca of Singapore, one of my favorite cities in Asia. His "musings on food, wine and marriage" are filled with some of the finest food photography on the web. He also includes occasional recipes and lots of mouth-watering descriptions of his meals throughout Asia.

Hope you enjoy linking to these sites. And Happy Blog Day!

 

August Eat Local Challenge - Conclusions

With the August Eat Local Challenge ending today,  Jen of Life Begins @ 30 and Locavores deserve a big round of applause for encouraging everyone to support their local farms, ranches, fisherfolk, and artisans by eating foods grown within 100 miles of their homes. Great job!

Although in the blogoshpere I only took part for the last two weeks of August, I've been going out of my way to buy locally produced foods for the last decade. For me, the transformative moment came a dozen years ago with my first visit to the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, back when it was in a parking lot in front of the then dilapidated Ferry Building. At that time I was a vegetarian (lasted about 3 years), so discovering fruits and vegetables bursting with actual flavor was an epiphany.

I particularly remember tasting an astonishingly flavorful tomato called Uncle Jack's Mortgage Lifter at Nigel's Eatwell Farm stand, then simply known to all as Tomato Wonderland, since he was the only farmer at the market growing heirlooms. From that point on, I was sold. There could be no going back to eating commercially produced, tasteless, aroma-less, juice-less, characterless, unripe, waxed, uniform, out-of-season, shipped-around-the-world produce.

So when I heard about the August challenge, a little late, to buy and eat locally produced food, I had to participate to show my support.  I had a great time! I was reminded of how fortunate I am to be living in an area with such an amazing variety of fruits, vegetables, dairy products, sustainably raised livestock, locally caught fish, and artisanal products (cheeses, breads, olive oils, vinegars, wines). The Bay Area is truly an embarrassment of riches.

In the past couple of weeks, I've tried to use this blog to celebrate the locally produced delicacies that make living here such a joy. I barely had time to scratch the surface, though, and the month is already over! (I especially regret not finding local sardines this month, although I know they're out there somewhere....)

It was also a somewhat humbling eye-opener to uncover the number of items I use on a daily basis that are not produced in my local region (I list these in my opening post about eating locally). I tried to make an effort to not eat too many of the foods on this list, but I did have my weaknesses (I tried giving up my morning cuppa tea, but the wicked withdrawal headaches and general grumpiness--sorry N--put an end to that).

What's the first thing I will cook on September 1? I brought some lovely bomba rice, pimenton, arbequina olive oil, and saffron back with me from Spain that I can't wait to use to make a vegetarian paella-style rice dish. Then, over the Labor Day weekend, my wife and I are already planning a big Indian feast for some of our friends which will use all the international spices I've been denying myself.

Both meals will, of course, still feature some of the magnificent vegetables (artichokes, peas, eggplants, cauliflower, tomatoes and more!) from our local farms, as will as many of my future meals as possible.

I look forward to participating again in August 2006 for the next edition of the Eat Local Challenge!

Lemon Verbena Tisane

There was I time I could handle a dessert wine, a digestif or maybe a cognac followed by a strong espresso after a work day dinner and still get up at the crack of dawn the next day, but those days have long since passed.

Now my favorite way to end a simple midweek dinner is with a plate of fruit and a pot of tisane, herbal tea, made with fresh mint leaves or, when it's in season, lemon verbena. It's a tradition I owe to many dinners over the years at Chez Panisse Café in Berkeley. N and I enjoy it so much, we couldn't resist buying the same beautiful glass teapot the restaurant uses when we saw it at a store in Berkeley.

So I was happy to discover that Nigel of Eatwell Farm is currently growing this highly perfumed herb on his farm in Winters. Its aroma is a wonderful as its name, scented like lemongrass or lemon zest on steriods.

To make a tisane, wash then place your herbs in a pot and cover with water that is just shy of a boil, as you would for green tea. Then let the leaves steep at least three minutes and serve.

Lemon verbena can also be used in place of vanilla to infuse cream to make any custard dessert, such as ice cream or panna cotta, any of which would pair perfectly with sweet local strawberries.

Eatwell Farm regularly attends the Saturday market and, during summer any way, the Tuesday market. If you're in town, stop by the Ferry Building today between 10 am and 2 pm and pick up a bunch of lemon verbena.

Fruit Porn (recipe inside!)

Here's a peek at some of the sexy local fruit from our Saturday farmers market.

These beauties, the best of our local figs, are the mostly widely anticipated fruit at my house. They come from Rick Knoll's Tairwa' Farm (a phoneticization of the French terroir, which loosely translates as "a sense of place") in Brentwood. The large purplish ones are Brown Turkey figs (N's favorite) and the small green ones are Adriatic figs (my favorite, mainly because I love the colorful contrast between the chartreuse skin and the red flesh, but they both taste similar). Both are scarlet on the inside and absolutely bursting with juice.

These lovelies with the color of a tequila sunrise (when was the last time you had one of those?) are called pluots. They're a cross between, as you may have guessed, a plum and an apricot. Steven Kashiwase, my favorite stone fruit farmer (peaches, nectarines, plums and pluots), grows them in Winton. This variety, which I find the most satisfying of all the pluots, is aptly called Flavor King. When eaten raw, the succulent fruit more closely resembles a sweet-tart plum. Its apricotness pushes to the forefront when it is cooked into a gorgeous galette or preserves (click "continue" below for an easy recipe for pluot preserves).

Our final bombshell is also of mixed parentage. This bunch of Bronx grapes, from Lagier Ranches in Escalon, is a cross between the flavorful purple Concord grape and the rather dull Thompson seedless variety. What you end up with is better than the sum of the parts. The Concord lends a tinge of its amethyst color, its floral perfume and its quintessential grapey flavor (I can't think of any better way to describe its almost artificial tasting flavor, the taste of the Welch's Concord grape jelly you had smeared on your peanut butter sandwich when you were a kid). The Thompson was clearly chosen to result in a seedless progeny, but it also adds its characteristic shade of jade green.

Recipe (IMBB 18): Pan-fried Petrale Sole with Succotash of Summer Squash and Corn

For most American cooks, summer is the season to go into their backyards and fire up the grill. For me, that's never been the case. I don't even own a grill. Nor, as a matter of fact, do I have much of a backyard. Hell, living in San Francisco, I often don't have a summer.

When the weather turns hot, I crave fried food. My first truly hot summer came when I moved to Washington, D.C., for college. While most college students would return home for summer vacation, I always made sure I had some excuse--summer school, internships, jobs-- to stay in D.C. during the hot summer. It turns out I actually thrived in the heat. And so did my stomach. Summer meant crab cakes, fried chicken, french fries, fried green tomatoes, hush puppies.

It wasn't until my trip to Andalucía last summer, though, that I finally found people who truly shared my unabashed enthusiasm for frying. The Andalucían cooks have mastered the art of frying in olive oil like nowhere else. It didn't matter that the thermometer often climbed above 104˚F/40˚C that summer. Nothing dampened their, nor my, desire for our daily dose of perfectly fried fish.

So, in the spirit of Andalucía and for my contribution to this month's theme of Is My Blog Burning, "Summer's Flying, Let's Get Frying," I present one of my favorite summertime recipes for simply pan-fried, local Petrale sole on top of a "succotash" of stir-fried summer corn and squash (press "continue" for recipe).

Butteriest Butter in the Bay Area

A recent story I read somewhere about the famed butter of Brittany whet my appetite for a taste of some good butter.

The flavor of really great butter is a taste, and specifically an aroma, that I associate with my grandmother's kitchen. Whenever we flew from Los Angeles to visit my grandparents' house in New York,  my grandmother always seemed to be in the process baking a  pie, usually my favorite, blueberry. The scent of Mimi's, that's what we called my grandmother, legendary buttery pie crust baking in her white enamel 1930's oven would send shivers of anticipation up and down my spine. Invariably, I would insist on eating a slice before it had properly cooled and I would devour that buttery, flaky crust before even touching the too-hot filling.

In the spirit of this month's challenge to eat locally produced foods, I remembered  the best butter I've ever tasted that comes from close to home. It's made by Spring Hill, a dairy farm and artisan cheese maker in Petaluma, a town north of San Francisco in Sonoma County. When I shopped at our local farmers market this morning, I saw this display and sign at their farm stand:

It seems one of the secrets to their butter is it's unbelievable degree of freshness. You've never tasted how sublime butter can be until you've let freshly made butter melt on your tongue.

The other secret to their incredible butter is Jersey cow milk. The milk from the smaller brown  Jersey cows is almost 50% higher in butterfat content than that of the more commonly raised, larger black-and-white Holstein cows (4.5% vs. 3.15%). Spring Hill's entire herd of 400 or so cows are  Jersey.

Spring Hill also properly cultures the cream to add the slightest tanginess to the otherwise sweet,  almost caramelized milk flavor. I prefer their salted butter to their unsalted, because the salt heightens the, well, butteriness. It's so slightly salted that I still prefer to sprinkle on a few crystals of fleur de sel (from Brittany, of course) when I spread it on a slice of my favorite bread.

Perfection doesn't come cheap, though. Prepare to pay $8 for a pound a Spring Hill butter. If you're a butter-lover, it's worth every penny.

Recipe: Stuffed Summer Vegetables

For most people, the heat of the dog days of summer dissuades even the most enthusiastic cook from stepping foot in the kitchen. According to Melissa Clark, in her article for yesterday's New York Times, diehard home cooks in New York are turning to toaster ovens to prepare their multi-course dinner parties just to avoid turning on the main oven.

I have another suggestion. If you can't stand the heat in the kitchen, come to San Francisco, where the thermometer rarely rises above 70˚F/21˚C, especially during summer (although this week has been a scorching 74˚F/23˚C--time for shorts and sandals!).

So, San Franciscans rejoice! In the spirit of this month's Eat Local Challenge, I want to recommend a late summer dish that requires roasting (if it is indeed hot where you are, it will work in a decent toaster oven like Ms. Clark lists here).

A photo and recipe in the August/September issue of Saveur inspired me to stuff some of our beautiful peppers, tomatoes and zucchinis and roast them. The article, on a bullfighting festival in Nîmes in the Languedoc-Roussillon region of southern France, also featured a terrific sounding tourte de brandade that Molly of Orangette recently prepared for a picnic just outside Seattle.

The secret to stuffed summer vegetables, as in any simply prepared dish, is to use the best quality ingredients available to you. Take the time to go to your farmers market and buy locally grown, preferably oraganic, vegetables. I chose the squat, thick-walled, lipstick-red pimiento peppers and round, pale green ronde de nice squash from Andy of Mariquita Farm and the impossibly sweet dry-farmed Early Girl tomatoes from Dirty Girl Farm (yes, they have T-Shirts...and even hoodies) that Pim of Chez Pim describes so beautifully here (my God, I've plugged two other blogs in one post!). Small eggplants would work well for this recipe too. Click "continue" for recipe.

New York - torrid toro at Bar Masa

Writing about eating a whole day's worth of meals for $40 made me think about the other end of the spectrum. The big splurge.

It's time I write about my dinner (really a midnight snack) at Bar Masa, where my wife and I spent well over $40 on one dish, a platter of sashimi. But I'm getting ahead of myself here and will get down to the blow-by-blows later. First, let me tell you how I ended up here.

As you probably know, I had just gotten back from my month in Spain when I landed in New York to meet up with N. While I was picking up tips on how to perfect my paella and tortilla, my wife had spent the summer wrapping her mind around finance and philosophy in grad school.

The night after I returned, we had planned to meet up with one of her classmates at Tavern on the Green. Quelle horreur! Not that tourist trap (just look at their website)! Do I bring friends who visit us in San Francisco to Pier 39? But, alas, you cannot deny a pregnant woman's wish, especially when she, like N, had just survived six weeks of grad school. So off to Tavern on the Green we went.

If the lights of the Tavern weren't as bright as three suns, you'd probably smell it before you saw it. It reeks of horse shit from the dozen hansom cabs perpetually parked outside the legendary restaurant. The lights I had expected, but the smell was an unwelcome surprise.

We hurriedly entered the building to get away from the stench and were transported to the 1970's television of my youth, like walking onto the set of the Love Boat and Love American Style. Waiters in powder blue tuxedos with over-sized ties, women with big hair, tropical drinks with little umbrellas, plastic ferns, disco music. We quickly fumbled our way through the carnival fun house maze of lights and mirrors searching for our friends to no avail.

We briefly stepped outside to get our bearings and were quickly reminded of why we had run inside in the first place. With a choice between horse shit and disco balls, we made a second trip through the labyrinth, this time admiring the kitsch value of the place. Seen through a mai-tai or two, we might be able to warm up to the place, in an ironic sort of way.

However, after learning from a cell phone call that our friends wouldn't be able to join us, we happily bolted.

By Spanish standards, it was still early, barely eleven. That's when we decided to scurry over to the world's most expensive food court, the Time Warner Center in Columbus Circle.

San Francisco on $40 a day?...no problem

Apparently there is a show called "$40 a Day" hosted by Rachael Ray which airs on the Food Network.  Perhaps you've seen it. I haven't. I don't have cable. As of yesterday, I don't even have a TV. I'm not making this up. With the intention of freeing up my creative energy (remember, I live in San Francisco), I just sold my 19-inch Magnavox television and VCR on craigslist to an art student for, you guessed it, $40.

So, in celebration of dumping this time-wasting, mind-numbing, brain-washing device, I thought it would be ironic fun to be television personality Rachael Ray for the day, which is the theme for the fourth edition of Dine & Dish. Limiting myself to $40 total (unlike the real Rachael--how does she do it?--not including tax or tip), where would I eat breakfast, lunch and dinner in my home town?

I set out yesterday morning with my newly earned 40 bucks burning a hole in my pocket and my hunger pangs burning a hole in my stomach. Since I had recently returned to San Francisco from a long absence, I was easily able to look at my city through the eyes of a tourist, specifically a food-loving tourist. If I were here for just one day and only had $40 (who, I ask you, who in their right mind would come to one of the most expensive cities in the world with just 40??), where would I eat?

First, I ditched the car. San Francisco is parking hell.

Breakfast: $4.95
Since San Francisco has often been called the most European of America's cities, I started my day in the French fashion with a relatively light breakfast of a croissant and a cafe au lait ($2) at Tartine in the trendy, gentrified (i.e. yuppie) part of the Mission District. Not just any croissant, but the best damn frangipane croissant outside of Paris ($2.95) at San Francisco's premier bakery/patisserie. And not just any cup of coffee, but a steaming hot bowl of Mr. Espresso coffee, made from beans roasted over oak wood across the Bay in Oakland, mixed with organic Straus milk from Marin County.

Two in the Mission: Limón and Range

Although I don't envision "In Praise of Sardines" as a restaurant review blog, per se, from time to time I can't help but shout the praises of restaurants I've visited that I particularly liked.  This past week I went to a pair of restaurants in San Francisco's Mission District that I feel are especially worthy of a mention.

I have to admit it took me a while to warm up to Limón, the most hyped of the wave of Peruvian/Nuevo Latino restaurants that have swept over San Francisco's dining scene in the last few years. I think my hesitation to embrace the likable Limón stemmed from my fondness for another Nuevo Latino restaurant at the other end of Valencia street, Alma. I was acquainted with Alma's chef, Johnny Alamilla, and I could see that the restaurant was struggling, especially with the increased competition from the newly relocated, grander and sexier version of Limón.  Now, with Alma's unfortunate recent closure and Johnny's departure to Tahoe, I thought it was time to revisit Limón and see it through fresh, unbiased eyes.

I'm finally ready to jump on the Limón bandwagon. Even in the original location on 17th Street, I had loved the uplifting palate of lime and tangerine splashed on the walls, cheery colors that almost demand that you loosen up and look on the bright side of life. In the new location, a loft-like space reminiscent of the original Slanted Door that used to be just down the block, the owners wisely retained the same palate and added gorgeous dark mahogany floors to create a festive, lounge atmosphere.

Everything my friends and I ordered from the menu was perfectly prepared and incredibly tasty. We started in the front lounge area with a refreshing pitcher of sangria, that citrusy, chilled red wine drink that I always manage to avoid when I'm in the sweltering heat of Spain but am oddly only too happy to slurp down in the icy fog of San Francisco. After we moved to our table, we dug into a fresh and lively tasting platter of four of the signature ceviches. Unlike many ceviches I've endured, each one of Limón's was lightly kissed with lime and other seasonings at just the last minute, enhancing rather than overwhelming the seafood's flavor and texture.

All of our meaty entrées--the pork chop (chuleton carlitos), the top sirloin (lomo saltado), and the rib-eye (churrasco a la parilla)--were equally juicy, tender and flavorful, so I could not name a favorite. Well, maybe because it's so difficult to find a well-prepared pork chop, I'd recommend the chuleton. Our desserts were good, but not particularly memorable (OK, maybe I had too much sangria to remember what we had).

I was inspired to visit the newest Mission hot-spot, Range, after reading a letter from the chef, Phil West, to Sam Breach posted on her blog, Becks & Posh. He mentions that he uses a lot of my favorite local organic farms (including Mariquita and Happy Quail Farms) as sources for his ingredients, so my wife, N, and I paid them a visit this week.

For the most part, we enjoyed everything we ate there. We started with an unusual sounding hamachi sashimi with avocado and cantaloupe (good, but even better with the addition of a touch of salt, making me wonder why I don't carry a container of my favorite Maldon sea salt with me for emergencies) and the bay scallop "diablo," a voluptuously creamy gratin that the chef apparently learned in New Orleans. Both of these appetizers tasted even better when paired with a glass of one of my favorite white wines, a Rías Baixas from Galicia in western Spain, which is made from the albariño varietal. The Rías Baixas served at Range, a 2003 from Morgadío, was one of the best I've tasted: round and creamy, incredibly aromatic, yet acidic enough to cut through the richness of the scallop dish.

Our next courses included a particularly well-prepared pork shoulder, always a must-order for me when I see it on a menu, and a venison salad, listed as an appetizer. All of the desserts at Range sounded tempting, which is a feat in itself, but we eventually settled on a pistachio waffle with caramel ice cream, a chocolate custard and huckleberries. It was a fun and satisfying end to a good meal that showed that Range has the potential to evolve, like Limón already has, into a destination restaurant.

Recipe: Caponata di Melanzane

Since I shopped this week at the farmers market, we have lots of wonderful local summer vegetables on hand.  Yellow and red peppers and rosa bianca eggplants from Mariquita Farm , tomatoes and basil from Dirty Girl Farm...for me that spells caponata di melanzane, the Sicilian summer vegetable stew.  Caponata is in the same family of Mediterranean vegetable ragoûts as the Provençal ratatouille or the Spanish pisto, although unlike either of those it does not usually include zucchini.   I say usually, because every family in Sicily has their own recipe for caponata.  They all feature eggplant in the staring role, but the supporting cast changes, with raisins and pine nuts in some versions, capers and olives in others.  My version leans in the latter direction, featuring capers, olives, anchovies and roasted peppers.  It can be used as an accompaniment to lamb or fish, to sauce pasta, or on its own on top of polenta.  Tonight, I served it topped with a slow-roasted fillet of local halibut (see here for tips on slow-roasting fish) and basil oil.

3 T extra virgin olive oil
1/2 onion, sliced
2 garlic cloves, sliced
2 peppers (red or yellow), roasted, peeled and sliced thickly
1 eggplant (approx. 12 oz.), cubed (1 inch)
3 tomatoes, peeled and coarsely chopped
1 t dried oregano or 1 T fresh oregano, marjoram or basil
1 T salt-packed capers, soaked in several changes of water
1/4 c olives, pitted (your favorite--I used arbequinas I brought back from Spain)
3 anchovy fillets, chopped (optional)

Sweat onions over low heat in 2 T of the oil, adding garlic halfway through, until they're meltingly soft.  Add tomatoes and your choice of herbs and cook 10-15 min. longer, until saucy.  In a seperate pan, sauté eggplant over high heat in the remaining 1 T oil until caramelized and starting to soften, about 5-10 min.  Add eggplant and peppers to tomato mixture and cook until eggplants are tender, but not mushy.  Add capers, olives and optional anchovies at last minute.

Dosas: A Tale of Two Cities

As promised, I want to write a couple of posts about my brief stopover in New York on my way back from Spain.  I met up with my wife, N, who had been studying at Columbia Teachers College for the summer.  After a month of Spanish food, I craved something, anything, not made with olive oil.

As is often the case when we're in New York, I especially craved Indian flavors, in particular South Indian snacks like dosas, idli and sambar.  For those of you unfamiliar with the amazing snack foods of South India, here's a quick primer.  First, they are all vegetarian.  Second, most of the dishes originate from versions of the same batter, which is made from a type of lentil, urad dal, and sometimes rice that are soaked, ground and fermented overnight in a process similar to making sour dough.  The batter can be shaped into dumplings and steamed (called idli, sometimes spelled iddly), shaped into doughnuts (vada/vadai) or balls (bonda) and fried, made into thick pancakes (oothapam) or large thin pancakes (dosa/dosai).  In restaurants, all are usually accompanied by coconut chutney and a bowl of spicy sambar, a stew of toor dal (another type of lentils, sometimes called pigeon peas) and vegetables.

To get our fix of South Indian food, we headed to Murray Hill (dubbed "Curry Hill" by the locals for its abundance of Indian eateries), around Lexington and the high 20s.  It was a Monday, so a lot of places were unfortunately closed.  We noticed a lot of Indians eating in Dosa Hutt (102 Lexington Ave. at 28th St.), which may or may not be the second location of the well-known South Indian restaurant of the same name in Flushing, Queens.  Regardless, everything we ate here was perfectly prepared, although considerably tamer than what I have had in India.  My butter dosa (cooked in butter instead of oil) was so tangy and crisp yet tender that we ordered a second one.

Coincidentally, a week later in the Bay Area, on our return trip home from Tassajara Hot Springs, we stopped over at Dasaprakash (2636 Homestead Rd., Santa Clara) to get another fix of the delectable dosas.  Dasaprakash is, in our opinion, the best South Indian restaurant in the San Francisco/San Jose area and belongs on our Short List.  How did they compare?  We were split on this one.  I preferred Dasaprakash, because the flavors were more authentically spicy--incendiary would be more apt.  N, who for some odd reason prefers that her food not scorch her taste buds and bring tears to her eyes, liked Dosa Hutt a bit better, but agrees that Dasaprakash is more authentic.

August Eat Local Challenge (truly a challenge)

I guess I've sort of missed the boat on Jen's August Eat Local Challenge, which is unfortunate because I am a huge supporter of eating locally (and seasonally, sustainably, organically).  If you've been following my blog at all, you know I was out of the country, heroically enduring smoke-filled, oxygen-deprived, un-air-conditioned, pay-by-the-hour Internet cafés of Spain in order to post my blog entries and photos to this site.

So, although I'm arriving at the Eat Local party when it's half over, I want to offer my support and congratulations to all those who have been participating for the whole month!  Go team!

For me, eating locally and seasonally is without a doubt a high priority in my life.  It's a goal for me really all year long.  In August, when the harvest is exploding with plump tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, green beans, fresh herbs, juicy peaches and plums, it is really no challenge at all (or so I pompously thought, until I looked in my pantry, fridge and cellar...see below for the dirty secrets).

This past Saturday was the first Saturday I've been in the Bay Area for many weeks, so I was itching to go to our great local market, the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market .  I've been a faithful shopper at the market's many incarnations since it opened in 1993, right around the time I began my culinary career.  In fact, these early visits to the farmers market were what first inspired me to dream of opening my own restaurant.  I attended demos by Annie Somerville, Alice Waters and Reed Hearon (whatever happened to him?), all of whose kitchens I've since worked in, for the first time at the Ferry Plaza market.

Nothing compares with the personal interaction you get when you buy your wild salmon, for example, from the guy (Larry) who caught it and your strawberries from the farmers (Ben and Karen) who planted and picked them.  Over the years I've been fortunate to have even visited some of the farms and artisan food producers that supply our market.  Every night at dinner, my wife and I have a ritual of thanking the people by name who grow and produce our food before we take our first bite.  Overall, I'd have to say that eating locally has really enriched our experience at the table.

With this as background, I was surprised by how many things we eat that are not local.

Barcelona - chocolate tour

Few people may know this, but Barcelona is a great town for chocolate lovers!  Not only is there a Chocolate Museum (Carrer Commerç 36), with all kinds of mouth-watering exhibits (unfortunately only in Catalan), but there are several world-renowned artisan chocolate makers.  I felt it was my duty to visit them all and sample as much as I could, solely of course for the benefit of you, the reader.   

I start off my chocolate tour with a visit to one of the half dozen Xocoa shops scattered throughout the city.  The chocolates here have clever packaging, including a chocolate CD and Birracao, a chocolate beer (take a look at their great website to get an inkling of what they're about).  Unfortunately, in my opinion, the quality of the product doesn't live up to the promise of its appearance.  It's just OK, which when you're talking about chocolate, doesn't mean it's bad (and it's great compared to Hershey's).

Next stop is to one of the three locations of Escribà.  I visited the flagship store (Gran Vía 546), but they also have a shop in a tiled modernista building built in 1820 (Rambla de les Flors 83, near la Boqueria market) and a beach side Xiringuito (Ronda Litoral 42) with tapas and paella in addition to their own desserts.  Everything at Escribà is as delicious as it looks, which is impressive when you see how gorgeous the chocolates are.  Besides the meltingly smooth chocolate creations and a fun collection of candy glam rings, come here for the lovely (and, again, absolutely stunning) pastries.  Christian Escribà is famous for his wedding and birthday cake creations, made to the specifications of his discerning and creative customers.

Barcelona - fun spots for lunch

Perhaps since I grew up in Southern California and have a natural Type-B personality, I find it easy to succumb to the more relaxed rhythm of life of Mediterranean Spain.  I'm a staunch supporter of siestas, 3-hour lunch breaks and dinner at 11 pm.  Frankly, I find it's a more sane and civilized way to live our only too short lives.

I'm particularly fond of the Spanish approach to lunch.  As in much of the rest of the world, the midday meal has always been the main meal of the day.  In order to preserve this tradition, the Spanish government (or some pro-labor lobby) took an enlightened approach to protect its workforce from succumbing to the corporate pressure for increased productivity which inevitably leads to a bag of greasy, chemically preserved God-only-knows-what mindlessly devoured during "working lunches" or behind cubicle walls.

Some brilliant Spanish law actually requires restaurants (not tapas bars) to provide a three-course menú del día.  What this means for the tourist is that you can join the Spaniards in tucking into a very civilized lunch consisting of an appetizer, entrée, dessert, bread and wine, often for just 7-10 Euros.  So long as you avoid the awful restaurants catering to tourists and go where the locals go, you can get a taste of something very close to Spanish home cooking.

While I was in Barcelona, I felt it was my duty to ferret out some of these great lunch spots and report back.  For my tips, I relied on recommendations by Barcelona natives and transplants who wrote into eGullet and by Colman Andrews, editor of Saveur  and author of Catalan Cuisine.  Of the places I tried, these three very different restaurants are my favorites.

Barcelona and New York - so much more to tell....

I'm physically back in San Francisco now, but my mind and my heart (and of course my stomach) are still vacationing in Barcelona.  I want to write about so much more, including fun places for lunch with the locals and a luscious chocolate tour.  And, after Barcelona, I was off to New York to reunite with my wife, who had been studying there for the summer.  One of the highlights of our few days there was a raw fish feast at Bar Masa in the newish Time Warner building.  So much to tell.

But, alas, I am off again for a few days (this time with my darling wife) to soak in the hot springs of Tassajara and to feast on their always wonderful vegetarian delicacies, including their incomparable freshly baked bread.  The beauty of Tassajara is that it's completely cut off from civilization (kerosene lanterns and candles after the sun sets), so the blog will have to take a temporary siesta.  When I return, I promise to share more tales (and photos) of Barcelona, New York and even Tassajara.  Hope you all have a yummy week.