in praise of sardines

Dussehra at Bombay Cafe

All sorts of significant religious events took place in the past few days. Ramadan is ongoing and Yom Kippur was on Wednesday. Wednesday was also Dussehra, the final day of the nine-day Indian festival of Navaratri. This is one of the most important Hindu festivals of the year.

Although festivities vary by region, the focus of Dussehra is the victory of good over evil.

On this day, according to the Ramayana, the hero Rama defeated the demon king Ravana. It is also the day that the goddess Durga (pictured left) slayed the hated Buffalo demon, Mahishasura, which no other god (feminists note, they were all males) was able to defeat.

Amongst N's Gujarati community, Navaratri and Dussehra is the time to feast and dance. There are two fun group dances, both similarly danced in a huge circle, one called garba and the other, my personal favorite, dandiya ras (performed with dancers percussively tapping their partner's set of batons, dandiya, against their own dandiya in rhythm to the gradually increasing tempo of the music). Unfortunately, with N in grad school and holding down a full-time job, there would be no celebrations in our household this year. Besides, I had to go south to L.A. for a work-related project.

After arriving in L.A. Wednesday afternoon, I was craving something healthier than what I had for lunch. In a word: vegetables. With Dussehra on my mind, I decided to head to what is perhaps the best Indian restaurant in California, Bombay Café.

I say “best” with some hesitation. Bombay Café is not at the same high level of dining as the finest Indian eateries in New York or London. Appropriate to the Santa Monica neighborhood where it is located, the atmosphere at Bombay Café is very casual. More than one diner donned flip-flops and shorts.

The somewhat tame level of spicing also caters to the predominantly non-Indian crowd that dines there. The chef-owner of Bombay Café, Neela Paniz (I wonder why she didn't name her restaurant Chez Paniz?), has reinterpreted Indian classics to suit her clientele’s tastes.

Usually that would be a red warning flag for me to stay away. But, not unlike the way Charles Phan tweaked traditional Vietnamese cooking at the beloved Slanted Door in San Francisco, Paniz has managed to successfully craft a menu full of interesting choices and daily changing specials unseen at other Indian restaurants.

Take for example the frankies.

These are traditional Bombay street food, typically associated with beachside food stalls. Similar to Mexican burritos, frankies consist of meat or vegetables wrapped in flat bread and served with sweet and hot chutneys. My vegetarian cauliflower-filled frankie, which admittedly was different and milder than those I’ve devoured at Bombay’s Breach Candy beach, was nevertheless satisfying. Being a pickle fan, I appreciated the pickled cauliflower on the side, a type of pickle you are usually served in people’s homes, but rarely in restaurants.

My starter was a Paniz invention, the “eggplant devi.” Roasted eggplant slices are topped with tomato chutney, garlicky yogurt sauce and cilantro. It’s one of N’s favorite eggplant dishes.

Because I had just read Mika’s mouth-watering description of almond kheer as a traditional Navaratri dessert on her blog Green Jackfruit, I decided to sample Bombay Café’s rice-based kheer for dessert. I tried my best to finish the heavenly cardamom-infused rice pudding, but I just couldn’t manage.

Paniz shares her recipes from Bombay Café in her cookbook, which I use all the time and highly recommend.

I'm getting so hungry writing this that I just may have to head back there for lunch before I make my way back up Route 5 to San Francisco!

I'd like to wish my Indian readers out there a belated Happy Navaratri and Dussehra!

UPDATE (ADDED SATURDAY 12 PM)

I did indeed have lunch at Bombay Café yesterday. This time I ate their Lamb Frankie, which was perfectly spicy and even better than the veggie version. The level of heat was just what I like in a frankie: my nose started to run, but not so hot that my eyes started to tear.

At lunch, the frankies are served as a thali, which at this restaurant means they are accompanied by a cooling dish of raita (yogurt), kachumber (salad of chopped cucumber, tomato and onion), sev puri (crispy fried snack food), and more of that lovely cauliflower and carrot pickle. I washed it all down with my favorite Indian drink, a nimbu (fresh lime) soda.

My long drive home was fueled by my cup of masala chai, which they graciously packed to go.

Food|and Drink|Restaurants|Reviews|Los Angeles|Indian

Road trip fast food

I am not a purist.

Whenever I drive down to Los Angeles, as I did yesterday, for some reason my mind (more accurately, my stomach) fixates on obtaining one meal. It doesn't matter that I just ate a gorgeously juicy, sustainably raised grass-fed burger at Sunday's Slow Food Fast Food picnic. I have to have a burger. Am I alone in this, in my insatiable desire for junk food when driving?

My craving is truly Pavlovian: drive on Route 5, must eat burger (and fries and chocolate milkshake). I know that it is about 210 miles from my house before I will see the sign for Kettleman City, which lies somewhere between Cotati and Lost Hills on a desolate stretch of highway so straight you have to make a Herculean struggle to remain alert.

Kettleman City is ground zero for fast food, containing a representative of virtually every chain restaurant in America.

Not just any burger will do for me, though. Admittedly, I will not find a place that fits all of Slow Food founder Carlo Petrini's three criteria for good food: good (taste), clean (sustainably raised and organic) and just (suppliers, such as farmers, and workers paid fairly).

I focus my efforts on obtaining a burger that fits only the criteria of deliciousness. My burger, therefore, can only come from one place.

The Los Angeles based chain, In-N-Out, which Angelinos rate a respectable 24 on the food scale in the most recent Zagat survey (astonishingly just 2 points below top L.A. restaurants like Campanile and A.O.C., which perhaps says more about the L.A. dining scene than In-N-Out!) is renowned in California.

Although we have several locations in the Bay Area, the burgers there never taste as good as the one in Kettleman City. Perhaps it's the desperation, after driving for 3 hours and knowing you're still only halfway to L.A. Frankly, I don't think the burgers are as good as those made from Niman Ranch beef that we can get at  Burger Joint in San Francisco. But, then again, In-N-Out is much cheaper.

I rationalize this rather greasy, fat-filled meal with the knowledge that everything at In-N-Out is cooked to order. The kitchen uses 100% fresh beef (no fillers, never frozen), makes buns by the sponge-method without preservatives, and uses fresh Kennebec potatoes for the fries. Besides, I only eat there once or twice a year.

For the price, there probably is no better fast food burger. At least not on Route 5.

Food|and Drink|Restaurants|Reviews|Los Angeles|Fast Food

"Cursed is he who doesn't believe eating is an act of love."

As he trumpeted these words - which struck me as beautiful and true as any sentence I've ever heard - across the picnic grounds, Carlo Petrini's entire body, from his shoulders down to his knees, jerked and shook in a way that only a true Italian can make look natural and graceful. He spread his arms out wide, as if attempting to embrace the entire audience of 500 or so members of the international organization he founded, Slow Food.

The charismatic leader of the sustainability movement spoke, through translator/food writer Corby Kummer, to his faithful followers at Sunday's "Slow Food Fast Food Picnic" in Windsor, a small town in the Sonoma wine country.

I joined the winemakers, farmers and foodies in trekking to the picnic grounds on a gorgeous, sunny autumn afternoon to see our movement's Pope and his High Priestess, Alice Waters (both pictured below), to eat "fast food" made the slow way, and to raise money to preserve a local heirloom variety of apple, the Gravenstein (which happens to be my favorite variety of apple).

Alice, who spoke first, promoted her Edible Schoolyard program, which has successfully spread the message of sustainability to to a diverse group of 1,000 public school children at Martin Luther King Junior Middle School in Berkeley for the past decade. She shared some of the intentions of another program, the School Lunch Initiative, which hopes to expand the lessons of the King School program into the entire Berkeley school district. She enthusiastically told the farmers in attendance that in a few years "we're going to buy your entire crop of Gravenstein apples."

But the afternoon really belonged to Carlo Petrini. His overall theme was that you can't separate gastronomy and agronomy. Beyond considering whether the food we eat tastes good (which is vital), we have to also ask if it is "clean" and "just." Was the food grown and raised sustainably, in such a clean way that it does the least damage to Mother Earth? Were the farmers, fisherman, ranchers and artisans paid justly?

He particularly stressed the importance of paying farmers well. The multinational corporations that feed us processed and convenience foods and tell us that we can eat cheaply are, in his words, "enemies of the people."

He also debunked the notion that the developing nations of the southern hemisphere need genetically modified foods and pesticides in order to increase food production and end starvation. He blames the policies of the multinational corporations, in particular the creation of seeds that can only produce once, as the true culprit behind starvation. In fact, he boldly suggested that the South, with its far greater variety of seeds and cultivated plants, is richer that the North, which has allowed agribusiness to destroy its own biodiversity.

All of these political and economic issues are a part of gastronomy. If you are either a gastronome who doesn't care about these issues or a farmer who isn't interested in gastronomy, in Carlo's words, "you are an idiot."

Our lunch was set at long picnic tables tucked amongst vineyards and pumpkin patches and under the shade of generous trees. The chefs of Syrah Bistro in Santa Rosa and former chefs of Chez Panisse cooked up American favorites like hamburgers and fried chicken. The Slow Food twist was that the beef came from grass-fed cattle and the chickens were organic and free-range. There were also plates of beans, heirloom tomatoes, potato salad and jars of homemade ketchup, mayonnaise and pickled vegetables. (Alice, visibly embarrassed, apologized that the mustard came from Maille in France and not the far more local Mendocino Mustard). Local artisans provided cheeses, brewers poured their ale, and winemakers uncorked their juice from the nearby appellations of Chalk Hill, Alexander Valley and Dry Creek Valley.

My friends Kathleen and Ed Weber of Della Fattoria baked dozens of buttery Gravenstein Apple Galettes. Kathleen confided to me that her bakers had to slice and freeze the gravenstein apples a few weeks ago, because the gravenstein season had ended and the delicate variety doesn't store well. She could have used another variety, but wanted to use the variety that we were all hoping to preserve. From my (several) samples, I'd say she made a good judgment call.

If you would like to learn more about the mission and efforts of Slow Food in your part of the world, please click here. If you would like to become a member or make a contribution, please click here to join.

Food|and Drink|Slow Food|Carlo Petrini|Alice Waters

Now that's a pumpkin!

Champion pumpkin "El Camello." All 1,200.9 lbs. of it were on view at MarketBar restaurant in front of the San Francisco Ferry Building.

Food|and Drink|Markets|Vegetables|San Francisco

In the Pink: braising awareness for breast cancer

When I heard that Emily had started a new food blog event to help raise awareness for the importance of early detection of breast cancer during the month of October, National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I felt it was vital for me to participate. Her event, called In the Pink, named after the color of the ribbons worn to show support for victims of this disease, encourages food bloggers to cook or bake something pink.

I felt inspired to go all out last night and attempted to create an entire meal of pink foods to help raise awareness for this cause. True, some of the dishes came out more purple than pink, but I like to think of magenta and fuchsia as shades of pink.

Here's my menu:

French breakfast radishes with butter, coarse sea salt and a baguette (ideally I would've used Hawaiian pink 'Alaea sea salt if I could have found it, and bright pink watermelon radishes would have been lovely too).

Salad of baby gem lettuces, pink Chioggia beets, Pt. Reyes blue cheese and toasted hazelnuts

Wine Harvester's Chicken: legs and thighs braised in red wine with Concord grapes and pink pickled onions served with polenta and spinach

Strawberry and rose gelato with chocolate cookies (I made the gelato from Marcella Hazan's simple recipe in her Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, reducing the sugar to my taste and adding a ¼ teaspoon of rose water, more or less, depending on the strength of the rose water and personal preferences).

What motivated me to go to such lengths was the story of my dear friend S.

S works with my wife, N, at a school in San Francisco. She is one of the school's unbelievably talented trio of music teachers.

A little over a year ago, S complained to deaf ears at Kaiser, the school's HMO, of all sorts of maladies. The doctors at Kaiser had come close to labeling poor S a hypochondriac, refused to run any tests, and told her to take several over-the-counter drugs.

Over the summer, S went home to Spain, where they have universal health care (you know, the kind of health care system the Bushies warn us won't work). Once in Madrid, S visited the doctor and discovered she had a fairly advanced case of breast cancer which had spread to other parts of her body, causing the various digestive and other pains she had experienced.

When we learned of her condition, I impulsively gave notice and then left my new job as sous chef of a recently opened restaurant of a prominent chef and travelled to Spain with N. We spent some time with S to comfort her during the beginning of her chemotherapy.

We also consider ourselves to have been blessed by discovering and falling in love with the beauty, joy and alegría of the Spanish people, culture and cuisine on our later travels to Sevilla, Córdoba, Granada and Barcelona.

After months of treatments, S is back in San Francisco doing what she loves best, sharing her passion for music through teaching children. Her cancer is under control for now and she returns over holidays to Spain for treatment. Her unbelievable strength and courage is an inspiration to us all.

Although I'm aware that S's frightening story sends a chill up the spine of every American who has been frustrated by our lousy health care bureaucracy, I still want to encourage everyone to visit your doctor regularly. Get your annual physical examination, including a mammogram.

As I see it, the lesson for us is twofold. First, vote the current administration of bastards out of office. Bye-bye Bush-Cheney-Schwarzenegger. Support candidates who will improve the quality and spiraling-out-of-control costs of our health care.

Second, confronted with doctors more concerned about cutting costs than curing cancer, yell a little louder. Be your own advocate. Don't take no for an answer.

Or, the third alternative is clear. Get out while you still can and move to a country, like Canada or Spain or just about any other sensibly enlightened industrialized nation in the free world, where there is better health care.

Until then, enjoy the recipe for the scrumptious chicken dish I made last night, sort of a Moorish coq au vin.

(Early) Autumn in New York: Prune

How do I begin to describe the place that, in my mind at least, is the Platonic ideal of that convivial little boîte that everyone wants to have just down the block from their home? Will I be able to do it justice, to convey how absolutely perfect it is?

Here is my attempt. Call it my ode to Prune.

For me, Gabrielle Hamilton's little gem of a restaurant is truly the perfect neighborhood bistro, the kind of place I could only hope to open in my dreams.

I position Prune at the top of my pantheon of tiny, quirky chef-owned restaurants that I have become enamored with over the years. At the very least, this list would have to include Pinotxo and Cal Pep in Barcelona, El Cairat in Falset (Catalonia, Spain), Delfina (especially before they expanded, when Craig still manned the stoves nightly and Ann stood watch over the floor), Liberty Cafe, Woodward's Garden (5 or 10 years ago), and the recently opened Canteen, all in San Francisco. When it comes to restaurants, these are my beloved "sardines." [Here's a suggestion: if you share my enthusiasm for small neighborhood restaurants, feel free to add your own favorites to the list in the "comments" section].

There seems to be no detail of Prune that I don't adore. The antique zinc-topped French bar, which seats just four people on rickety, uncomfortable stools. The long buttercream wall lined with distressed wooden mirrors, each topped with votive candles. The way that the candles, the silver-dipped bare light bulbs along the walls, and the school-house lamps hanging from above manage to cast a flattering glow on all the diners. Tables that are placed so ridiculously close together that the server has to pull your table completely away from the wall every time you want to sit down or get up from the banquette.

I also love the brief, well-edited list of wines and cocktails. And the professional servers, sporting tight pink T-shirts, tattoos and piercings, reminding you that you're dining in the East Village and not Paris.

But really, it's the food that brings me back again and again (I try to dine or brunch there on every visit to New York). Gabrielle Hamilton's food is as sassy and original as her writing. From the spicy, messy boiled peanuts that (currently) begins a meal to the chunk of bittersweet chocolate that ends it, the gustatory experience at Prune is delightfully unique.

As usual, on this past visit I struggled to choose among the many tempting menu offerings. Thankfully, there wasn't a tuna tartare, caesar salad, flat-iron steak, or rotisserie chicken anywhere in sight. Instead, I was faced with the happy task of deciding which unusual appetizer I craved more amongst a selection that included sweetbreads, monkfish liver, head-on prawns with anchovy butter, and sardines.

Of course, smart reader, you guessed which I chose! The kitchen served the ceviche-style cured fresh sardine fillets on top of toasted ciabatta and thinly sliced avocado, scattered with ribbons of scallions. The tart vinegar of the marinade, the creaminess of the avocado and the crunch of the bread played off each other so naturally it made me wonder why this isn't as classic a partnership as Fred and Ginger or Hepburn and Tracy.

(Early) Autumn in New York: pastrami sandwiches and cheesecakes

I am not Jewish.* I have never lived in New York City.

However, for some reason, a lot of the foods I crave the most come from the culinary traditions of the Eastern European (Ashkenazi) Jewish community that are on display in so many delis, bakeries and shops in New York City. It drives me crazy that I can't find a decent bagel, smoked fish (salmon, sturgeon, whitefish, sable, you name it, I love them all), pickle, cheesecake or pastrami in San Francisco.

Maybe it's due to some sort of karmic connection that continually draws me back to New York? My grandparents lived on Long Island and my mother was raised there. My wife, N, grew up just across the GW Bridge. My college years were spent within striking distance of the city, just a short hop on the Shuttle (anyone remember People's Express?) or Amtrak from Washington, D.C., for many long and crazy weekends.

On my visit there last week, I made a special effort to seek out the best examples of two of these favorites, pastrami sandwiches and cheesecake.

I've had pastrami everywhere, from the infuriating Carnegie Deli to the crowded Katz's in New York, from Langer's and Nate n' Al in Los Angeles to Niman Ranch's version here. But nowhere have I had better pastrami than at the Second Avenue Deli.

Located on the Lower East Side, this deli is an institution. Unlike many of the other delis I've visited, Second Avenue Deli is glatt Kosher, so no dairy products are served. Thus, those of us with a weakness for the abomination known as the Reuben (in which the lily, usually corned beef but sometimes pastrami, is not only gilded but smothered to death and embalmed with the addition of thousand island dressing, Swiss cheese and sauerkraut) will not be tempted to stray from purity. Sorry N.

One taste of the pastrami here and you will be glad that nothing is there to interfere with the impossibly tender layers of juicy meat. It possesses a perfect balance of briny saltiness, peppery seasoning and creamy fat. A dab or two of deli mustard adds the right amount of zip and zing, but nothing else is needed. Aside, of course, from the two slices of caraway-studded rye bread that hold the whole thing together.

Lest I forget, the experience wouldn't be complete without Second Avenue's complimentary dish of sweet-and-sour coleslaw (no mayo) and my favorite bright green, crunchy half-sour pickles (full-sours and pickled green tomatoes are included, too).

Although I rarely have room, the mushroom-barley and matzoh ball soups are good here, and the potato latke with the obligatory applesauce isn't bad either.

But for real New York-style cheesecake you'll have to go elsewhere (remember, no dairy).

For the quintessential cheesecake experience I headed to an adorable little pastry shop some 75 blocks up Second Avenue on the Upper East Side called Two Little Red Hens.

With Ed Levine's article in the New York Times as my guide, in which he tasted about 50 cheesecakes over the course of a month last year (poor Ed, such a hellish job), I sampled the cheesecake here that he called the "first among equals." Sure enough, just as promised, this cheesecake manages to achieve that elusive combination of creamy richness and ethereally light fluffiness, without being too sweet.

Just to make sure I was getting a taste of the finest New York has to offer, I stopped into another store on his list, Eileen's Special Cheesecake in SoHo, where I sampled a mini-cheesecake that, though amazing, was not quite as tasty as the slice I had at Two Little Red Hens. Or maybe, unlike Ed Levine, two cheesecakes in one day is too much for me.

* When I published this yesterday, I forgot to add my hearty wishes for all the best in the new year. Happy Rosh Hashanah!

Food|and Drink|Restaurants|Review|New York

(Early) Autumn in New York: Casa Mono

For your listening pleasure, may I suggest you download this Billie Holiday song (you'll have to open the link in a new window) to play in the background while reading this post, which will be the first in my Autumn in New York Week on "In Praise of Sardines."

I vanished from the blogosphere for a few days while I stole away to New York. Ostensibly there to do some research for a project, my stomach apparently had a different agenda entirely. It was there to eat, and eat well, at that.

Appropriately, the gastronomic focus of this trip quickly became the sardine. At each of my three dinners in New York last week, I managed to get a taste of my favorite little fish.

Because of New York's closer proximity to the Iberian peninsula, restaurants import the big fat true sardines, sardina pilchardus, from Portugal. They are admittedly plumper and tastier than the faux sardines, clupea harengus pallasi, that we find in our local Pacific waters in the Bay Area, which are actually small herring.

I wasn't surprised to find sardines on the menu at my favorite Spanish restaurant this side of the Atlantic, Casa Mono. After my flight landed late Tuesday night, I headed to the Gramercy Park tapas restaurant desperately hoping to snag one of the few coveted seats at the counter. Happily, I did!

Reminiscent of tapas bars in Barcelona, like Cal Pep or Pinotxo, all that separates the diner from the Casa Mono kitchen is a short glass partition, preventing a surreptitious swipe from the cooks' mis en place. To get any closer to the kitchen, you'd have to work the line.

I started my meal with a glass of sparkling pink Spanish Cava (from Codorníu) and the Ensalada Mono, which despite the name neither contained monkey parts nor gave me a throat infection. Rather, it playfully riffs off some quintessential Spanish ingredients to create a salad you would find nowhere in Spain: frisée with manchego cheese and quince membrillo-sherry vinaigrette, showered with pimentón-flavored crushed almonds.

Next came two delectable fried sardines, reminding me why, despite the obvious fact that I would scare off potential readers, I couldn't resist naming a blog after what is essentially bait. The plump, juicy sardines were accompanied by a salad of sweet onions, preserved lemons and chives. These paired nicely with an extremely aromatic white wine from Gramona Gessamí (Penedés, 2004), an unusual blend of muscat and sauvignon blanc.

For my final tapa I enjoyed a couple of tender fried sweetbreads, accompanied by caramelized roasted baby fennel bulbs. How I wish we would see sweetbreads on more menus in the politically correct veal-phobic Bay Area!

For dessert, I enjoyed the refreshing and barely sweet Mono sundae, which featured pumpkin arrope and the same crumbled almonds that were on the salad.

All in all, I perfect welcome to my brief stay in New York City. Stay tuned tomorrow and the rest of this week for more stories about my eating adventures in the Big Apple.

Food|and Drink|Restaurants|Review|New York|Spanish