in praise of sardines

IMBB#19: Socca Crèpes filled with Ratatouille

Don't let the name of my blog fool you. I am a big fan of vegetarian cooking.

When I learned that Sam chose a vegan theme for this edition of Is My Blog Burning (my first!), I delved into my past to try to recall some of my favorite recipes from my veg days.

You read that right. Once upon a time over a dozen years ago, I was a strict vegetarian. The same Brett, who goes out of his way to consume odd bits like barnacles, salt cod tripe, razor clams, anything with tentacles, the snouts, feet and everything in between on the pig, and who even named his blog after the lowly sardine, was a vegetarian for three whole years.

And I don't use the term vegetarian loosely. I was not one of those annoying people who proclaims himself "vegetarian" even though he eats chicken and fish and sometimes bacon (what the hell is that all about, I'd like to know). Nary a piece of flesh passed my lips during that time.

True, although I live in San Francisco and used to cook at the Greens restaurant, I never even considered becoming a vegan, fruitarian, raw foodist (sorry Sky), or breatharian. No, I needed my eggs and dairy like a heroine addict needs smack.

Ratatouille is one of those dishes that entered my repertoire back in those days and I've continued to make it several times every summer for the last decade and a half.

I want to share with you here the keys to success so that your ratatouille will sing with the vibrant flavors of summer (yes, I know it's technically already autumn).

First, buy the best available, freshest vegetables (duh!). But really, please don't make this in the winter. It's a summer dish.

Second, cook each vegetable separately for maximum flavor impact before combining them. This means, fire roast the peppers (a gas burner works fine), quickly sauté the eggplants and zucchini until caramelized, and slowly stew the onions and garlic until meltingly tender.

Third, ideally, cook it the day before you want to eat it to allow the flavors to blend.

To trick carnivores into proclaiming afterwards "I can't believe I ate vegan!," I've served the admittedly mushy vegetable stew in a crispy, protein-packed chickpea flour crèpe (more like the Indian dosa than the traditional French crèpe, as it doesn't require any eggs or dairy). Socca, served at street stalls on the streets of Nice like pretzels are in New York, is a Provençal cousin of ratatouille. Although I don't know if they are ever served together in their native land, I've taken the liberty to wed these two kissing cousins (and I didn't even need a shotgun) into one satisfying dish.

When potato farmers get bored....

Ferry Building at dusk

I captured this picture of the San Francisco Ferry Building after the night market on Thursday. It's already Friday which means tomorrow (at least in our town) is another market day.

"Then I spied the sign."

That was the fifth sentence of my 23rd post.*

It came at a time when I was struggling to make a decision (seems to be the story of my life...see yesterday's post, for example).

On the 21st of July, or thereabouts, I was trying to decide between two choices, A or B. Time was of the essence, so it was vital that I figure out what to do soon. In my mind, the two choices were equal. I could only choose one course of action and I didn't want to make the wrong choice (nobody ever wants that, do they?). I searched and searched, hoping for some divine, heaven-sent intervention.

"Then," as I wrote, "I spied the sign." This sign was so helpful that I was immediately able to determine my course of action.

Because I want to help you resolve those personal dichotomies and dualities in your life (Should I take that job? Should I marry _____? Should I move to _____? Should I buy those shoes?), I have, out of the kindness in my heart, decided to share this sign with you. Because this sign was so helpful to me, I actually took a picture of it so that I would remember it always.

To see this holy sign and read the context of my personal struggle on that day, click here (my 23rd post).

* So what is all this nonsense about? It's about a bizarre little meme that's making the rounds (yes, I am no longer a meme virgin). I was tagged by Cookiecrumb of I'm Mad and I Eat. Here are the instructions for the meme:

1. Delve into your blog archive.
2. Find your 23rd post (or closest to).
3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.
5. Tag five people to do the same.

MonkeyGland of JamFaced added the following instructions to line 4 to make it a little more interesting: Ponder it for meaning, subtext or hidden agendas...

I tag the following people: Melissa of The Traveler's Lunchbox , Fatemeh of Gastronomie, Alice of My Epicurean Debauchery, Shuna of Eggbeater , and the person who writes the blog Bayarea, Where the Wild Thing Are (which is written in Japanese).

Good luck!

Canteen: looking at restaurants through my eyes

When I read about Canteen, a tiny cigar box of a restaurant in the theater district, a few months back in the San Francisco Chronicle, it was inevitable that I would fall for its charms. I'm a sucker for small, quirky restaurants with big personalities. My favorite restaurants are all tiny, usually 35 seats or less. They are places where the chef is the sole or co-proprietor, so that his/her vision and attitude are apparent in every detail, from the color of the paint on the walls to the font on the menu to the choice of butter dish.

Let's face it. Like a painter must feel when visiting an art gallery or a classical singer upon going to the opera, every time I go to a restaurant my senses are heightened. I take in every minute detail. At one moment, I'm critiquing the experience (I would've done it like this), in another finding inspiration (what a brilliant idea!).

But mostly, I am in awe. I love to watch the complex ballet that goes on in the kitchen and on the dining room floor. A server with a tray-full of drinks dodges drunken guests and their raucous children. The cook juggles 6 or 8 different pans on the stove and in the oven. When performed gracefully, it's a on par with a symphony rock concert.

I'm not saying this to romanticize the business, though. It's hard, backbreaking, unforgiving work with little financial compensation. More hours on your feet than anyone who has never worked in a restaurant can even begin to imagine. Try being on your feet for 8 to 10 hours without once sitting down, knowing there's not enough time to possibly finish the million things that need to be ready now (or preferably 10 minutes ago), that you've been dying to pee for the last hour, that the burn you just suffered from the spattered grease will only get worse if you don't stop to treat it, that you're starving because you yet again skipped your last meal, but you know you won't be able to do any of it because there just isn't enough time.

Those are some of the reasons I'm in awe of these people (and you should be too!).

But really, when I go to a restaurant like Canteen, it's not just my senses that are heightened. My emotions go into overdrive. Although it's difficult for me to express (hey, I'm a guy, cut me some slack), I feel a mixture of envy and anxiety and anger and confusion and joy.

In case you were wondering what I look like...

That is, what I would apparently look like if I happened to live in South Park! Appears I'm feeling a little miffed that someone made me wear that silly toque.

If you want to see what you'd look like as a character on the Comedy Central show, follow this link.

Thanks to Chubby Hubby of Singapore for pointing me to the website! Stop by his site and see how he transformed his entire family into South Park characters.

Promise to return to food blogging tomorrow.

in praise of Manresa

Near the end of our nearly five-hour extravaganza at Manresa, the most talked about restaurant in the Bay Area, I asked my three friends who, on separate occasions, had also dined at the French Laundry the inevitable question: which meal was better?

 

But, wait, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Four of my friends, N and I all dined at Manresa on Saturday to celebrate N's and my thirteenth anniversary and my friend's fabulous new job.

Arriving at Manresa, you feel like Alice (no not that one, this one) must have felt after she stepped through the looking glass. You've entered a world of paradoxes, juxtapositions and incongruities. You've entered chef David Kinch's mind.

The first hint that you're in for an unusual night is the location. Of course any time a city boy like myself leaves the big city and heads to unexplored regions of suburbia, I feel a sense of anxiety (my favorite Roz Chast cartoon from a few years ago depicts New Yorkers driving through the depths of New Jersey nervously exclaiming "Where are we? Are we in a town? Are we between towns? How can anybody live out here? Look! Look at that weird mall!!").

After driving for an hour south of San Francisco to Los Gatos (a suburb of San Jose?), we followed Manresa's own directions to the letter, for, as the website warns, "Google and MapQuest are not reliable." We carefully parked as directed in the bank parking lot, just behind Pedro's Mexican Restaurant.

Although I felt a sense of relief just to have arrived safely at the restaurant, this turned out to be my first lesson of the night: Trust Manresa. Allow Chef Kinch and General Manager Michael Kean and their capable staff to take care of you.

Because one of my friends had previously co-managed Silks Restaurant with Michael, we were warmly greeted and offered complimentary glasses of bubbly (thank you, Michael). This set the tone for a glorious, somewhat gluttonous five-hour feast that lasted until 1 am (sorry, Michael).

Unlike many other celebrated food bloggers, I'm admittedly not often lured into the rarefied air of four-star (or in Michelin land, three-star) dining. I'm probably the only so-called foodie to have eaten all my meals at tapas bars when I visited San Sebastián, Spain, the town renowned for having  more Michelin stars per capita than any other place in the world. As N somewhat embarrassingly commented upon learning that half our table had eaten at the French Laundry and we hadn't, "how come you only take me to Suzu?" Ha ha, isn't she funny! Of course, she was just joking...I think?

The tiny seed that packs a big punch

If I had to pick one favorite spice, mustard seeds would win hands down. Black (or brown) mustard seeds, to be more precise. Not only are they the main ingredient in the best condiment on the planet, Dijon mustard (especially the version made in Beaune by Edmond Fallot), but they are indispensable to Indian cuisine.

Although there was a dusty old bottle of yellow mustard seeds that sat untouched for decades on my mother's spice shelf, I had never known the alluring power that lay within those tiny seeds until I met the woman who would become my wife.

After we were engaged, N and I traveled across the country from Washington, D.C., to California in an old station wagon. We saw the country from the slow lane at 45 mph, as we foolishly dragged the Ikea furniture accumulated in college behind us in a rented U-Haul trailer. Our car never fully recovered from that trip and I think we've since sold all the furniture.

A couple of days of driving brought us to Dayton, Ohio, to the home of some of my future relatives. N's aunt, the best cook in the family, offered to give us a crash course in Indian cooking, particularly the vegetarian specialties of Gujarat, the region of northwestern India where N's family comes from.

Masi (which means mother's sister in Gujarati) proved herself to be a masterful teacher. Our little blue notebook of carefully transcribed recipes is probably the most valued cookbook in my collection of over 200 cookbooks!

It was there in Masi's kitchen in small town Dayton (actually a suburb of Dayton) that I first encountered the incomparable aroma of toasting black mustard seeds, called rai in Gujarati and Hindi.

Many of Masi's recipes begin with frying rai in hot oil until the seeds turn gray and start to pop. When the seeds pop, they release this intoxicating scent that combines elements of toasted peanuts, brown butter and popcorn. I can never get enough of that smell!

This morning (for our thirteenth anniversary) I prepared a traditional savory Gujarati breakfast dish called batata poha (pictured left) from one of Masi's recipes that features the taste of rai. If you've never cooked with this spice before, this would be a good place to start.

The only unusual ingredient in the dish, aside from black mustard seeds themselves, is poha (sometimes spelled powa). Poha is flat pounded rice (see picture next page). There are two varieties of poha, thick and thin. You'll need the thick one for this recipe. It can be purchased at any Indian store or on line at Kalustyan's. It's also a flavorful and spicy alternative to the standard American breakfast options, like cold cereal or toast.

Recipe: Tomato and Corn Soup with Basil

When I bought a few pounds of our super-concentrated, extra flavorful local dry-farmed tomatoes at the farmers market last weekend, I had intended to make some authentic creamy Andalusian gazpacho (to contrast it with the chunky style so prevalent in America). I waited all week for the perfect warm sunny day when a refreshing cold soup would be most appreciated.

And waited.

And waited.

It never came. I finally threw in the towel after being reminded by Fatemeh of Gastonomie (also in the Bay Area) how delectable (and utterly simple) hot tomato soup can be. And, on a cold, foggy San Francisco day, nothing could be more satisfying.

Sadly, like so many things I do, I neglected to plan ahead (just look at the time of this post). It was nearly dinner time, so I had to go with what was on hand.

No cream. Darn, I liked the sound of Fatemeh's cream of tomato soup! It brought back a flood of childhood memories for me. Whenever I was sick, my liberated convenience-food loving mom opened one of Andy Warhol's iconic cans of Campbell's and a package of those little hexagonal oyster crackers. She always accompanied it with a grilled cheese sandwich (sadly, made with American cheese and margarine...I now shudder at the thought).

Back to my fridge. I found one lonely ear of corn. It still tasted sugary sweet, which would help to balance out the tartness of the tomatoes.

Herbs? The only herb on hand was basil. A couple of farms at our market conveniently sell bouquets of basil with the roots still attached, so when you get home and put it in a vase full of water it thrives for about 2-3 weeks. It's convenient and I, such a city boy, get to play the farmer (pitiful, no?). I stripped the leaves from the stems, puréed the leaves and used the stems to flavor the soup.

So, together with one of my famous caesar salads (you can't survive as a cook in this town if you can't toss together a decent caesar), some tender sautéed rainbow chard from my favorite Zen farm, and a hunk of fresh, crusty bread still warm from our bakery's oven, I was able to improvise a quick summer vegetarian menu for two.

Click "continue" to see how easy it is to make this soup!

You and I need to sit down and have a little chaat

The Indian restaurant scene in the Bay Area is, for the most part, abysmal.

If you have had the good fortune to sample the authentic flavors of any of the cuisines of South Asia at the source or, at the very least in London, or even New York or Chicago, then you know what I'm talking about.

With few exceptions, there is nowhere to go when you get a hankering for a crispy butter dosa, a sweet jalebi, or an exquisitely aromatic biriyani. So Indian expats and other members of the desi community (collective term for members of the South Asian diaspora) in the Bay Area, along with those who have become addicted to the flavors of their cuisines, have learned to make do with pale imitations of their favorites.

The situation improved markedly about five years ago with the sudden influx of inexpensive Pakistani kebab and curry houses, beginning with Shalimar and Naan-n-Curry in what has been dubbed the Tandoorloin, and the subsequent explosive expansion of franchises and imitators throughout the Bay.

But, really, the one place that everyone unanimously agrees is truly exceptional is, perhaps, the most humble of them all.

When N and I first discovered Vik's Chaat Corner over a decade ago, it consisted of a few rickety tables and chairs hidden in the back of a dusty spice wholesaler's warehouse located in an unassuming, somewhat run-down part of Berkeley. It was a well-kept secret that was just beginning to be revealed.

That was then.

Now, Vik's is an institution. Despite several expansions into the warehouses next door, there are still impossibly long lines on the weekends. On Sundays, it feels as if the entire desi community and all the hippie wannabes of Telegraph Avenue have descended upon the place.

The press hasn't stopped its adoration of the humble snack emporium, either, adding accolade after accolade to the wall of press clippings. In the 2005 Zagat Guide, Vik's is tied for best Indian restaurant in the area, pulling in an impressive 25 points for food (although only 5 points for its decor!). This also marked the first year that they were (rightfully) included in the San Francisco Chronicles annual round-up of Top 100 restaurants.

And so I, too, give Vik's perhaps its highest honor yet by adding it to my personal Short List. Like its other legions of fans, I go for the well-crafted masala of contrasting flavors, textures and aromas found in their renditions of North Indian street food known collectively as chaat.

There isn't a clunker on the menu, so I find it difficult to single out just a few dishes to recommend. I'd be sorry to see anyone miss Vik's stellar renditions of sev puri, bhel puri, pani puri, and samosas, but my favorites on the daily menu are the dahi papdi chaat (pictured, right, crisp wafers topped with chick peas, steamed lentil dumplings, creamy yogurt, and tamarind and coriander chutneys) and aloo tikki cholle (pictured, above left, fried potato patties stuffed with peas and topped with spicy chick peas, tamarind and coriander chutneys).

When I'm willing to wade through the Bollywoodesque weekend crowd, I never fail to pick up a box or two of dhoklas (steamed chickpea flour cakes), N's favorite Gujarati comfort food, for the next morning's breakfast. They also serve a passable masala dosa and pav bhaji on weekends, but my favorite weekend treat is the lamb baida roti, a buttery bread stuffed with spiced ground lamb.

 

Memories of Aunt Geeta's Chutney Sandwiches in Ba's kitchen

Whenever N and I visit her ancestral home in Bombay (now Mumbai), the first meal we eat after our interminably long flight is invariably one of her aunt Geeta's chutney sandwiches.

I remember the first time I visited the house in a posh neighborhood of Bombay, where N had spent the first five years of her life. We arrived well after midnight and her grandparents, Ba (pictured below, talking on the phone at her kitchen table) and Dada as they were known to all the family, woke up briefly to welcome us. Although I had heard many tales of her grandparents and felt like I had already known them, this was the first time I was meeting them and the first N had seen them in several years. Emotions ran high and we both felt exhilarated.

After her grandparents went back to bed, N and I were too excited to sleep.

My senses struggled to absorb every detail of my new surroundings. We sat at the absurdly long kitchen table that N had lovingly described to me so many times. It could seat 18 guests comfortably and at its center were a at least a dozen shiny steel and plastic containers, each holding a different crispy snack, tart pickle or sweet delicacy.

The room seemed at first quite plain, with stone floors and drab peeling paint on the cement walls. But, as my eyes adjusted, I realized that we were surrounded by shelf after shelf of countless glass jars that contained yet more treats and seasonings. There wasn't a square inch of space, not even a window sill, that remained bare. And when I closed my eyes, my nose knew it would be years before I'd be able to sort out all the various aromas contained in that one room.

Aunt Geeta is by nature a night owl, so she happily stayed up with us. Knowing we must be peckish after our long flight, she offered to make us a sandwich.

For each sandwich, she spread a generous amount of sweet Indian butter, far more than any doctor would recommend, on two slices of white sandwich bread. Then she slathered a layer of spicy coriander (cilantro) chutney over the butter. Next she peeled and thinly sliced a cucumber, fanned the slices onto the bread, and showered it with salt. After putting the two slices of bread together and cutting the sandwich in half, she handed each of us our snack.

From that point on, whenever I taste one of our chutney sandwiches, I'm instantly transported to Ba's kitchen. We've adapted it to our tastes by reducing the butter and salt slightly and, during the summer, by adding a few slices of juicy tomato.

It's best accompanied by a sweet and spicy cup of masala chai (which I trust you'll never again call a "chai tea latte," right?) made with black tea, milk, turbinado sugar, ginger, cardamom and a touch of black pepper.

Click "continue" for the simple recipe for coriander chutney, which can be prepared in just minutes in a blender, food processor, or ideally, a Sumeet Multi-Grind.

Cold noodles on a warm day at PPQ

On those rare days when the mercury rises above 70˚ F (21˚ C) in San Francisco, N's and my default Short List choice is PPQ, which is abbreviated from Pho' Phú Quôc (1816 Irving Street at 19th Ave.). The reason we head to this Irving St. Vietnamese restaurant on warm, sunny days is not, however, for the hot beef noodle soup, pho', that is a part of its name (and in my opinion not as good as the pho' at Loi's up the street).

No, we go to PPQ when we are craving the cold noodle dish, bún. Bún are thin rice vermicelli-style noodles, usually served as a cold salad. At PPQ you can get your bún with charbroiled pork, beef, five-spice chicken, shrimp or meat balls. When your bowl of noodles arrives at the table, the various components are neatly arranged on top and then you toss the whole mess with a sweet-sour dipping sauce, nuoc cham.

My personal favorite bún is the charbroiled pork with Imperial rolls (no. 11 on the menu), bún chá giò thit nu'óng. The tender grilled pork adds smokiness, the deep-fried Imperial rolls add crispness, and the nuoc cham adds that perfect zip of sweet-salty-tangy-spicy that compels you to eat bite after bite until the bowl is empty. Like all the bún dishes on the menu, this one comes with shredded vegetables hiding under the noodles and is garnished with chopped peanuts, fragrant cilantro, caramelized garlic and shallots that add a whole other onslaught of flavors and textures.

PPQ also does a great version of green papaya salad with charbroiled beef and catfish simmered in salty caramel sauce in a clay pot. The atmosphere is simple and homey and the crowd is mostly locals, with a heavy dose of teenagers from nearby schools on weekends.

Eating at Rafa's (Spain) vicariously through eGullet

Photo by John Sconzo (from his post on eGullet)

I saw something on my favorite foodie web forum, eGullet, that I have to share with you all!

John "Doc" Sconzo, aka "docsconz," just posted the eye-poppingly gorgeous photos of his meal at Can Rafa, a humble restaurant-and-bar in Roses, a town just across the French border in Catalonia, about 3 hours north of Barcelona. I highly recommend that you follow this link to view the photos of the rest of his meal. The grilled calamari pictured above are just an appeteaser, an amuse bouche for the eyes, of what you'll see there.

Can Rafa is a restaurant that I had hoped to visit on my trip to Spain in July, but in the end opted not to traverse the treacherously winding roads of the Costa Brava in a rental car by myself (you're welcome, N).

While most saner diners scramble to snag one of the highly coveted reservations at the other restaurant in town, I dream of going to Can Rafa (and other restaurants like it) that serve the pristine ingredients of Spain intact and unadorned. From what I read, the chef/proprietor, who bears the name of the restaurant, simply cooks the seafood with a little olive oil and salt, usually a la plancha, and serves it naked of any embellishment or sauce. Not even a sprig of parsley or a wedge of lemon.

To me, as I've previously mentioned in the description of my amazing meal at Valencia's Ca Sento*  and elsewhere, the beauty of Spanish cuisine is how the best cooks there respect the purity of their ingredients. And I find that, especially when it comes to seafood and ham, no country in Europe can rival the quality of ingredients found in Spain. Only  Japan is Spain's equal when it comes to respecting the pristine nature of raw products.

So, until you can make it to Rafa's yourself, head on over to eGullet and enjoy the vicarious feast for the eyes of Doc Sconzo's pictures. And if you're still not convinced about how great the seafood of Spain is, read two other mouthwatering descriptions of meals there.

* My meal at Ca Sento stands as the best meal of my life up to now. My friends and I are, however, going to Manresa next weekend....

Recipe: gravlax of wild king salmon

There are only about 6 more weeks remaining for the local king (chinook) salmon season in the Bay Area, so I wanted to take the opportunity to share my favorite method for making gravlax, the Scandinavian cured salmon. My version, which results in rich, velvety slices of salmon (albeit saltier than your typical smoked salmon) is based on the recipe I learned years ago when I interned at the Chez Panisse Café in Berkeley (their version is in one of my all-time favorite cookbooks, the Chez Panisse Café Cookbook).

I diverge from the classical gravlax in one major way. I substitute lemongrass or lemon verbena or, well virtually anything, for dill.

Before I go on, I have to confess, I don't like dill. My friends and I were discussing over the weekend what, if any, flavors we dislike and the only one I could think of was dill. It's funny, because my Indian wife despises saffron and my Filipino friend shudders at the mere mention of ginger. And here I am with a hefty dose of Swedish in my mongrel American gene pool, and I disdain of the herb commonly associated with Scandinavian cuisine.

It's really my mother's fault. When I was growing up, she used to dump hefty amounts of green stuff from a dusty old jar marked, appropriately, "dried dill weed" into our buttered peas. Some herbs just do not fare well in the dried form. In the case of "dill weed," the result is a disastrous exponential expansion of the weedy aspect of the herb. Now whenever I so much as get a whiff of the stuff, even if it is fresh, that gag reflex resurfaces from when I was six years old and forced to eat my veggies.

But, as usual, I digress.

First you need about a 1 pound piece of extremely fresh king salmon fillet, skin on. I buy my local salmon exclusively from Larry Miyamura of Shogun Fish Company who catches, cleans and sells his salmon direct at our local farmers market. I prefer to use a tail piece or the next cut up from the tail, because it's easier to slice the final product. It's also thinner, so it cures faster. Pull out any pin bones with needle-nosed pliers.

Lightly toast 1/2 teaspoon coriander seeds in a pan over medium heat, and then allow to cool. In a mortar, coarsely crush coriander with 1/2 teaspoon black peppercorns. Transfer to a bowl and stir in 1/3 cup each kosher* salt and sugar.

Coarsely chop 1/4 cup lemon verbena leaves or thinly slice 1 stalk lemongrass.

Place fillet in a glass or stainless steel dish lined with a piece of cheesecloth, skin side down, and thoroughly coat first the bottom and then the top with the salt-sugar mixture and the herbs, leaving no flesh exposed. Wrap tightly with the cheesecloth, cover, and refrigerate for a total of 48 hours. After the first 24 hours, turn the salmon skin side up.

After 48 hours, your now cured salmon will look similar to the photo at the right. Before serving, scrape of the herbs and the undissolved salt and sugar. Slice at an angle with a very sharp, thin-bladed knife into paper-thin slices.

I usually serve it for breakfast on buttered toast or a bagel, sometimes adding a few thin slices of avocado to cut the saltiness of the salmon.

I've made several versions of gravlax over the years, not all with lemony herbs. I've also had good results with fennel seeds and wild fennel fronds, ajwain (an Indian spice often used in fish curries), and a combination of coriander and cumin. Let your creativity guide you.

* For the amounts specified, I use Diamond Crystal® kosher salt. If you substitute any other brand of kosher or any other type of salt, reduce quatity of salt to about 1/4 cup.

WBW13: Banyuls and chocolate, why the classics are classic

With Clotilde as the host of this month's installment of Wine Blogging Wednesday, the pairing naturally had to be wine with chocolate (let's be thankful she didn't choose to go with zucchini...and hope I never propose sardines!).

I had the best of intentions when the theme was announced. I would bake Clotilde's velvety, nearly flourless chocolate cake and host a lovely soirée of trained culinarians and oenophiles, asking each to bring a bottle of some libation they thought would dance perfectly with the complex tastes and aromas of chocolate.

Instead, over the weekend my friends and I made an impromptu escape from chilly San Francisco in search of sun and sand. Clotilde's melt-in-your-mouth chocolate cake was sacrificed, replaced by s'mores, tri-tip and corn-on-the-cob grilled over a campfire. Although many bottles of wine made the trip, none were of the sweet dessert style.

Well, here it is, nearly 11 pm on Wednesday in California. In Paris, the sun is rising on a new day and I have yet to post my contribution. Fortunately, I work well under deadline (actually, I don't seem to work at all unless I have a deadline), so I've managed to put together something and with luck I'll get it in just under the wire.

I set out this afternoon (did I mention I'm a procrastinator yet?) across the Bay to Berkeley in search of a bottle of Dolç de l'Obac, a sweet red dessert wine that I had tasted back in July at the Costers del Siurana winery in the Priorat region of Spain. According to my tasting notes, I thought the wine, made mostly of garnacha (grenache in French) would go great with chocolate. Unfortunately, I came up empty-handed at The Spanish Table, which had run out of their supply until the holidays.

Because I hadn't recently won the lottery, I decided to forgo the Spanish Table's vast inventory of vintage port dating back to the middle of the last century. Instead, I headed to my favorite importer of French wines, Kermit Lynch. Surely the brilliant wine minds of KLWM would dazzle me with a suggestion for a clever pairing (by this time, it was already 5:00, so they had better be quick about it, too).

Quick they were, but perhaps lacking in innovation, proposing a bottle of Banyuls. "That's nice," I proffered, "but obvious. Don't you have anything more...interesting?" "Sometimes," the wine expert replied, "there's a reason the classics are classic. There is no better partner to chocolate in our store."

They handed me a bottle of 2003 Banyuls from Domaine La Tour Vieille (just $14 for 500 ml!), made by Cantie and Christine Campadieu just across the Spanish border in the French town of Collioure. It turns out that this vin doux naturel is made in nearly the same way and with the same grenache grapes as the Catalan vin dolç that I had originally set out to find.

My next hurdle was to find a rich chocolate cake. I headed back across the Bay and, miraculously, found a parking spot in front of my favorite San Francisco pâtisserie, Tartine. I couldn't decide between the miniature chocolate cakes called friands and the chocolate pot de crème, so I bought them both.

With no longer enough time to make dinner, I picked up N and we headed out to a restaurant. Home by 10 pm, we sat down to dessert and, finally, tasted the goods. The Banyuls did not disappoint. The color is a beautiful garnet and the body is not as syrupy as your typical dessert wine. Though it is fortified with a bit of brandy, the alcohol content, 15.5%, is not much higher than a California sangiovese I had over the weekend.

With one sniff, I instantly understood why it is such a successful accompaniment to chocolate desserts. The aromas of raspberry, coffee, mocha and, yes, cocoa waft out of the glass. Then, the crucial taste and, yes, this does indeed work very nicely. It went especially well with a luscious spoonful of the chocolate pot de crème that had been topped by a juicy raspberry.

Sometimes, there's a reason the classics are classic.

The dark side of the eggplant and a recipe for baingan bharta

Although I love eggplants to this day, a decade ago when I was a vegetarian, I craved eggplants almost all the time.

Italian eggplant parmigiana, Middle Eastern baba ghanouj, Chinese "yu-xiang qie-zi" (literally "fish-fragrant eggplant," but usually translated as "eggplant in garlic sauce") and Indian baingan bharta were my favorite restaurant dishes. I was impressed by the versatility of this purple (or green or white) relative of the tomato, of how it soaked up the flavors of everything around it. It seemed almost magical.

Looking back on my aubergine obsession, I now believe what I really craved was not the flavor of eggplant, which after all is quite bland, but the mouth feel.

[vegetarians continue reading at your own risk...I advise skipping ahead to the recipe on the next page]

Mushrooms, it has often been said, are the closest that the plant kingdom comes to replicating the taste and feel of a piece of meat. In the mouth, the fungi are juicy, chewy, somewhat funky, not unlike a hunk of well-aged beef. Look at the portobello. Is it a surprise that in America this overgrown brown mushroom has become the vegetarian alternative to the hamburger on practically every lunch menu?

I'd like to posit, then, that eggplants are the vegetal version of animal fat. The feel of a piece of cooked eggplant in your mouth is reminiscent of that luscious piece of fat on your pork chop or rib-eye, the one you know you should really cut away, but, oh, it's just a small piece, just this once, nobody's really looking anyway, and you'll make sure you exercise tomorrow. Eggplant is the pork belly, the foie gras, the marrow, the toro of the plant kingdom.

When I was a vegetarian, perhaps my aubergine urges were my unconscious attempt to fulfill some ancient, deep-seated, primeval, buried-in-the-shadows-of-the-genetic-code lust for that velvety, gelatinous, mushy feel of fat rolling around on my tongue?

Something to pursue with my therapist.

Until then, here's my favorite recipe for the Punjabi eggplant delicacy baingan bharta, which was part of N's and my vegetarian Indian party and cooking lesson over the weekend.

Getting ready for an Indian feast

N and I just got back from the farmers market with lots and lots of vegetables for an Indian feast that we're preparing for friends tonight. It's a participation kind of event where we plan to show our friends, who are vegetarians, how to make some of our favorite Indian dishes.

Recipes will follow in a few days, but first I wanted to share with you photos of some of the gorgeous veggies we will be using.

Have a great Labor Day weekend!

Paella 101: "What's in a name? That which we call arròs By any other name would smell as sweet."*

As I mentioned in my wrap-up of Eat Local month, during August I had been resisting using the ingredients I brought back from Spain in order to support the campaign to eat as much locally produced foods as possible. Although it's true that some of the ingredients I brought back were local when I purchased them (such as the olive oil that I bought at the local co-op's mill), I didn't want to go down that road, or before you know it I'd have been rationalizing my way into eating a dozen Ho Hos® ** (you know, Hostess® claims the recipe, or more accurately the chemical formula, came from a bakery in San Francisco, so maybe it qualifies...).

Last night was the first day of September, so it was high time for me to dig into my Spanish products and make some paella!

So, what's in a name? I hesitate to even use the word "paella" to describe this Spanish-inspired rice dish, which in Spanish I would be more inclined to call arroz de verduras and in Catalan arròs amb verdures, arroz/arròs simply meaning "rice" and verduras/verdures meaning "vegetables." But, for better or worse, in English we tend to call any Spanish-style rice dish a paella, so that's what I'll call it here.

My goal for this vegetable paella was to showcase the pristine artichokes and peas from Swanton, one of our local farms, in a vegetarian (heck, it's even vegan!) rice dish that would retain the integrity of an authentic paella or arròs like the one I sampled in Valencia. You could substitute any combination of fresh seasonal vegetables that you prefer, such as peppers, zucchini, green beans or mushrooms. Even if you've never had a good paella -- oh the horrible things I have seen and tasted that went by the name of paella (even in Spain)!-- I know you're really going to like this one! And it's so easy, much less work than making risotto, because you don't have to stir it at all!

Background

Before I get to the recipe, though, I want to get on my soapbox and share with you some of the things I've learned about paella on my trips to Spain and in my readings.

Traditionally, a paella should be cooked in a special shallow, round steel pan called, not surprisingly, a paellera. I don't yet have one, but they're easy to order on line. The important thing to take into account when choosing a paellera or whatever pan you're going to use is how many people you plan to serve. The size of the pan increases with the number of servings.

For example, my recipe below is for just 2 people, so I used my shallow 10-inch/26 cm sauté pan to successfully imitate a paellera. For 4 servings, you'll need a 13-inch/34 cm paellera; for 6 servings, a 15-inch/38 cm pan; for 40-50 servings, a 36-inch/90 cm pan (and a really big spoon).

I wasn't going to get into this, but I might as well. At least in Valencia and Alicante, Paella is traditionally the Spanish equivalent to the American Sunday afternoon backyard bar-be-cue. What I mean is it's a dish, more often than not, cooked by men. And when men cook, we like to do it outside, over a wood fire. If you're inclined to cook your paella in a manly fashion, you may want to consider a tripod, but actually the standard round Weber® is perfect. If you can get your paella pan in time, it would be a perfect alternative to hot dogs and burgers for the upcoming Labor Day weekend grill-fest!

Alas, as I've mentioned before, I don't own a grill, so I had to settle for cooking my paella indoors. Besides, a vegetable paella is hardly manly (real men don't eat vegetables, do they?). To replicate the subtle smokiness that a wood fire imparts to the rice, I used a little of the marvelous smoked Spanish paprika, pimentón de la Vera.

Tune in tomorrow...why bomba is da bomb!

What do you get when you combine incredible local vegetables with equally spectacular products from Spain -- olive oil, saffron, pimenton (paprika), and the finest short-grained rice in Europe?

Check back tomorrow for details and a recipe!