in praise of sardines

Living la vida local, part 2: Bay Area seafood

The name of my blog tips you off. I'm rather fond of seafood. You'd be correct if you were to assume that a person willing to praise the common sardine just might be the type of person who would attack a plateful of more celebrated delicacies from the sea with the voracity of a shark (I'd be the shark wielding the fish knife, of course).

I have only one criteria when it comes to evaluating the products that swim through that liquid that covers 70% of our planet: freshness.

Yeah, yeah, I know. Hardly earth-shattering. Thanks for the brilliant insight, Brett.

Here's my additional 2 cents.

What I've learned from my experiences in Spain rubbing elbows with those shoppers, diners, and cooks whose collective national fervor for impeccably fresh seafood is matched only by the Japanese is this: there is a huge  difference between fresh and FRESH.

Seafood in Spain is pristinely FRESH. Unlike stores in the Bay Area, fish markets in Spain do not smell fishy. There is no odor at all (Do you hear that, managers and owners of Andronico's and Whole Foods?). Respected fishmongers in Spain would sooner be caught wearing the jersey for the British national football (soccer) team during the upcoming World Cup than sell fish on Mondays, because everyone knows that fisherman do not fish on Sundays. If you want seafood on Monday, you eat salt cod (which in Spain is hardly a sacrifice).

In my dining and cooking experience in Spain and here in the Bay Area, I follow one rule of thumb. If you wan the freshest, most immaculate seafood, eat locally.*

As this year's Eat Local Challenge officially ended yesterday, I want to report that I was repeatedly frustrated and thwarted in my attempts to source truly FRESH locally caught or raised fin and shellfish in my home town. Since I am not working in restaurants right now, I have to buy my seafood in local stores like any home cook. With few exceptions (Swan Oyster Depot in San Francisco and Monterey Fish Market in Berkeley usually carry a few local items and can place special orders), the fish stores here are mediocre at best. It takes tremendous effort to find fresh local fish. Are my expectations too high? Is it simply a case of me being, yet again, a food snob?

Despite these disappointments, I did have quite a few foraging successes, though, which I'd like to share, chiefly to promote those who supplied the goods.

May marks the beginning of the local wild salmon season, but this year, due to heavy (and controversial) federally-imposed restrictions on the local catch, finding local salmon has never been so difficult nor so expensive.

Fortunately, at the local market I can buy freshly caught local wild King salmon directly from my favorite fisherman, Larry Miyamura. If you want to know the difference between fresh and FRESH, stop by Larry's stand, Shogun Fish, at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market on Saturday and buy some of his salmon (pictured above with sweet peas and champagne butter sauce). Despite the restrictions, Larry has thus far been able to supply our market with his succulent king salmon, missing only a couple of weeks in May. He has been catching the fish just south of Pigeon Point lighthouse near Half Moon Bay, which is the furthest north that he can legally fish this season. Enjoy his fish while you can, because he's warned me that there will be many weeks when he won't be allowed to catch a thing.

I've also been feasting often on the same thing that many of the local salmon eat: anchovies and a whole lotta sardines* (pictured above, fried). Although in Spain, for example, sardines and anchovies are considered summertime fish, in the Bay Area I tend to find the biggest sardines during the winter and spring (my solution: go to Spain during the summer!). I regularly buy my local sardines from the stand operated at the Saturday market by the Fresh Fish Company, a company run by the aptly named Tim Ports that has supplied many of the restaurants where I've worked.

Living la vida local, part 1: If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it...

I've been pondering a version of that old riddle during the past month, which, as I'm sure most of you already know, has been the second annual Eat Local Challenge month. Unlike last August's inaugural Eat Local Challenge (during which I apparently wrote 8 posts in the final 2 weeks!), this past month, I haven't had as much time to devote to writing about my experience of eating locally grown and raised foods. My version of the tree-falling-in-the-forest riddle goes like this: if I eat locally and don't blog about, am I still eating locally?

Just to hedge my bets, I thought I'd dash off a quick post [edit: actually 2, with the second part coming tomorrow Thursday], lest all the happy memories of the luscious strawberries, asparagus, fava beans, and wild salmon I've enjoyed during May be replaced by nightmarish visions of unrecognizable foodstuffs oozing hydrogenated fats and high-fructose corn syrup. Who would cast such an evil spell on this prodigal blogger? Am I the only one who has wondered whether the Wiccan-wood-nymph-earth-mother-goddess of the Locavores is, as the name would seem to imply, truly loca, possessing powers we should all fear? Well?

To appease any potential retribution from her Loca-ness (the Loca-ness monster?), I want to assure you all that I have been faithfully living la vida local, feasting on the fruits of our local farms, ranches and fisheries to the best of my ability. Frankly, eating local has been a bowl of cherries (particularly with the first appearance of Frog Hollow's cherries last Saturday).

When it comes to fruits and vegetables, which is the subject of this post (first of two), I have had zero incentive to look beyond the 100 miles from my home which, as any aspiring locavore knows, is where that arbitrary line is drawn beyond which one's stomach shall not cross. Yes, it has been a glorious month to live in this Eden called the Bay Area, filled with an embarrassment of riches that every foodie has been enjoying at our local farmers markets (and in our local restaurants). At home in our kitchen, my wife and I have been ecstatically buried beneath a hailstorm of peas and fava beans, asparagus and artichokes, green garlic and spring onions, which, believe me, have been a vast improvement over the real hail and rain that had saturated us down to the marrow of our bones for the previous 5 months.

The highlight of my farmers market visits in May has been watching the changing parade of wonders that is Mariquita Farm. Here I found some true rarities, like fava leaves, garlic and leek scapes (pictured left), cardoon flowers (not edible, but oddly beautiful, pictured at top of post), and, of course, their treacherous artichokes (pictured above right, which I featured last month).

Three vegetable dishes stood out as highlights in May. First was a starter of grilled asparagus with romesco sauce that I made from local Tierra Vegetables dried chillies, Lagier almonds, and Bariani olive oil, made from a recipe I posted last year.

Second came a seductive yet simple celebration of the fava bean. I cooked up some whole wheat spaghetti and tossed it with briefly cooked fava leaves and fava beans that had been stewed with garlic and rosemary, about half of which I mashed into a velvety sauce. Lots of black pepper and pecorino sardo cheese (from India and Italy, respectively... what're you gonna do?) and a squeeze of lemon made this labor of love one to remember.

Third, another night I made a sybaritic pasta dish consisting of long strands of hollow perciatelli that were sauced carbonara style with a raw farm egg, green garlic, Fatted Calf bacon, Italian (again? Am I falling from grace?) parmigiano reggiano, all buried under an avalanche of sweet peas. One of the few times I would use the word decadent to describe a pasta dish.

Then there's the local fruit. As I've said before, I am loco when it comes to fresh fruit, but I'm no pastry chef. When the fruit is as ridiculously sweet as Ben Lucero's strawberries are (finally, in the last week, they are no longer as waterlogged as previous weeks) or even the first Brooks cherries from Frog Hollow, I prefer to savor every bite unadorned. When I grow tired of gorging myself on plain berries and stone fruit, though, I have a few tricks up my sleeve (most of which involve some variation on custard or cake).

When it comes to fruits and vegetables (including nuts and olives and their oils), if you can afford it (a topic which could fill a whole series of posts), why would you want to not eat local while living in the Bay Area?

Tomorrow Thursday: we'll see that the picture isn't as rosy when it comes to local seafood.

Food|and Drink|Eat Local Challenge|San Francisco|Fruit|Vegetables

If there's pomegranates at the market, it must be autumn

I have a theory regarding why so many cooks in the Bay Area are obsessed with seasonality (meaning using fruits and vegetables only when they are at the peak of their season). Yes, there are the obvious reasons: close proximity to excellent farms, good distribution at farmers markets and local stores, desire to support local farms, and the majority's left-leaning support for environmental policies. Of course, everything also just tastes better when it's in season.

My theory adds our weather to the equation. We, in San Francisco at least, can't tell what season it is by the weather alone. When you live in a town where nearly every day of the year the meteroligist predicts "patchy morning fog, highs in the mid-sixties," you need to go to the farmers market or a store that specializes in seasonal, local produce to figure out what season it is (yes, I'm aware you could also simply look at the calender).

I know that it is now early autumn because, while a few tomatoes are still available, summer's sweet peaches, nectarines and figs have been replaced by pomegranates, persimmons, pears and quince.

Here's some of my loot from a recent visit to the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market. Amazingly, all these fruits were grown within 200 miles of San Francisco.

This gorgeous and very ripe pomegranate comes from Balakian Farms, located about 200 miles from San Francisco in Reedley. One indication of ripeness and sweetness are cracks in the skin of the fruit. Only the sweet-tart seeds of the pomegranate are eaten. Tomorrow I'll show you a neat trick to help you remove the seeds from this fruit with little effort.

Husband and wife James Beutel and Kalayada Ammatya of K&J Orchards are my favorite growers of the fuyu persimmon. Kalayada first convinced me to try one of her persimmons a dozen years ago when I started to shop at this market. Unlike the hachiya variety which must completely soften before it can be eaten, the fuyu is typically eaten when it is still firm. I usually peel and slice my persimmon across the horizon to reveal its beautiful star pattern. Kalayada and James (K&J) grow their persimmons in Winters, about 67 miles from the city.

According to Al Courchesne of Frog Hollow Farm, the juicy Warren pear is a difficult variety to grow. It is similar in taste and texture to the Comice pear, another of my favorite pears. Al's farm is located in Brentwood, about 54 miles east of the city.

The folks at The Apple Farm, Tim and Karen Bates, grew these quince at their beautiful farm in Philo, about 120 miles north of San Francisco (which, by the way, has reasonably priced comfortable guest rooms for visitors). Like a firm hachiya persimmon, quince are unpleasantly tannic when eaten raw. Unlike the hachiya, a quince must be cooked before it is eaten. It is naturally quite tart, so often requires a sweetener like sugar or honey. Quince can be roasted, poached, or cooked down to a paste called membrillo in Spain (traditionally served with Manchego cheese as a tapa).

Expect to see more of these lovely autumn fruits in upcoming recipes!

Food|and Drink|Farms|Markets|Fruit|San Francisco

"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

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.