in praise of sardines

A Taste of Yellow: Mariquita's carrots

I feel a special bond to Barbara, the writer behind the blog Winos and Foodies, even though we've never met. Barbara lives in New Zealand. I live in San Francisco. I am positive that if we do some day meet, we'll get along famously. Why? We have one rather random thing in common.

When each of us started our food blogs back in 2005 (she in January, me in June), we both wrote about our trips the previous year to the Iberian peninsula (Spain and Portugal for her, just Spain for me). In the first posts of our respective blogs, we each described a significant meal that featured the same special product. Yes, you guessed it. We both wrote about sardines! What are the chances of that? For that reason alone Barbara and I share a special kinship.

My meal of sardinas a la plancha in Seville completely changed the way I looked at cooking, so much so that I named my blog after the occasion. For Barbara, sardines represented something else entirely. The grilled sardines Barbara ate in Portugal were her last memorable meal before receiving news that forever changed her life. In the middle of her holiday, not long after she had completed a 500 mile (800 kilometer) walk along Spain's Camino de Santiago, Barbara checked into a Portuguese hospital and discovered she had cancer. Read about it in her moving first post.

Recently, after several years of improvement, Barbara received news that her cancer has returned. Barbara's friends and supporters throughout the food blogging community wish for one thing. Some day we all hope Barbara will make a complete recovery.

This year, to raise awareness of the issues associated with cancer survivorship, Barbara created an event she's calling "A Taste of Yellow." She made a simple request: bake or cook something yellow, the color of the famous LIVESTRONG wristbands. Her event provides us food bloggers with a small way to take part in LIVESTRONG Day.

LIVESTRONG Day is the Lance Armstrong Foundation's grassroots advocacy initiative to unify people affected by cancer and to raise awareness about cancer survivorship issues on a national level and in local communities across the United States. LIVESTRONG Day 2007 will occur on Wednesday, May 16, 2007.

If you wish to make a donation to the Lance Armstrong Foundation, please visit the foundation's donation page.

When I picked up this week's CSA basket from Mariquita Farm, I knew in an instant I wanted to make something from the farm's sweet yellow carrots (pictured above) for "A Taste of Yellow." I also wanted to somehow pay homage to that significant meal of sardines that bound Barbara and me together. Unfortunately I couldn't find fresh sardines. Instead I chose another local fish, petrale sole. I decided I would cook the sole a la plancha (in a cast iron pan), the same way as the sardines I ate in Spain. Cooking fish quickly in a searing hot cast iron skillet gives it a delicate crisp (and golden yellow) crust. To provide a textural contrast, I decided to simply whiz the yellow carrots with slowly cooked onions and coriander leaves (cilantro) in a blender to create a silky smooth purée.

To complete the petrale sole dish, I stewed some artichokes and blanched some peas to scatter over the top. Then I whipped up a spicy olive oil-based sauce with finely chopped mint, coriander leaves (cilantro), garlic, ginger, and chilies. The whole dish was spring on a plate, the kind of food I'll surely serve this time next year at Olallie. In the picture below, you can barely see the carrot purée peaking out from under the sole. N loved the dish.

And now for something completely different

We interrupt this 4-course Parisian meal for an English pudding.

No, this is not a joke.

And neither, might I add, is English food. English food is a force to be reckoned with. It's no mere trifle.

Unless of course you're talking about Trifle. English Trifle is indeed a trifle. I mean that in the sweet-custardy-dessert sense of the word, not the something-of-little-importance sense.

In fact, in recent years English Trifle has become more than a little important. Its charms have spread far and wide. Why, it has even managed to ooze through the Chunnel, down the gullet, and into the brain of none other than the great pastry chef Pierre Hermé.

It's true. Pierre Hermé and other Great Chefs of France have been having a Tryst with Trifle. I've seen it with my own eyes. I've tasted the francofied trifle with my own tongue. What? Has the unimaginable occurred? Have the Great Chefs of France begun looking towards the much maligned cooking of England for inspiration? Quel scandal!

"Please forgive us," the Chefs plead. "We cannot resist Ms. Trifle's creamy and voluptuous charms. She is like Nigella Lawson in a silk negligee and glass slippers."

"Non!" cried the proud French people upon learning of the Great Chefs' anything-but-trifling Tryst with Trifle. "We must enroll les docteurs du spin to defend our nation's gastronomic integrity. We won't allow anyone to trifle with our reputation." The docteurs du spin hatched a plan. "From this day forward, on our side of the Channel we will call Trifle la Verrine. Heh heh heh. We will convince the world the the Verrine is our invention! With a sexy name like Verrine, no one will realize that she is simply English Trifle in a little black Chanel dress."

The Great Chefs of France worked long hours, sometimes even exceeding 35 hours per week, to cover up their shameful Tryst with Trifle. First, they had Ms. Trifle slip into a size-2 glass (verre). Then they adorned her with tuiles and gelées, crème and caramel. They varied her temperature and texture, smeared croustillant on her lips, dabbed craquant behind her ears. They enrolled la bonne femme and even bloggers in their cause. Cook books were published. When they were done, they leaked the concept to the American media. "Let's start with LA. The Californians love us French. They will believe whatever we tell them."

And after my trip to Paris, I too have fallen prey to their deception. I have fallen head over heals for the charms of this repackaged Trifle, the voluptuous Verrine.

So what follows is the result of my own scandalous tryst with the francofied Trifle. I concocted a fashionable French verrine an old-fashioned English Trifle with a California sensibility. Imagine Joan Collins as Alexis Carrington. (If you haven't guessed by now, this Pythonesque tale is my fashionably late entry in Sam's Fish & Quips event. Happy St George's Day to all!).

Allow me to introduce you to my lovely sweet paramour...

Follow the trail of crumbs...

...into the kitchens of Spain.

Leave it to the frugal Spaniards to elevate a simple dish of stale bread crumbs into the gastronomic stratosphere. Migas, the Spanish word for crumbs, is so beloved throughout much of Spain that the residents of Torrox, a town along the Costa del Sol in Andalucía, annually host a Fiesta de Migas that draws tens of thousands of people.

At its most basic, migas consists of leftover bread torn into small bits, slightly moistened with water, and then fried in olive oil with garlic and pimentón, the Spanish paprika. Every region seems to have its own variation on the theme, most of which call for the cook to add healthy doses of cured pork products, such as chorizo (dry-cured paprika-laced sausage), morcilla (blood sausage), jamón serrano, and bacon (hungry yet, Biggles?). The dish also often includes peppers and onions in the mix and, surprisingly, may be garnished with a handful of green grapes. Typically, migas serve as the base for one (or two) of the glorious fried eggs I recently wrote about. They can also be topped off by many other humble delicacies, including, I feel obligated to add, sardines.

This weekend, I made a dish of migas con huevos for my entry in the 25th edition of "Is My Blog Burning?," Give Us This Day Yesterday's Bread, hosted by Derrick of An Obsession with Food.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, like all rustic, straightforward dishes, the key to making the most delicious rendition of migas con huevos resides in the quality of your ingredients. Use the best available loaf of country bread, farm fresh eggs, and, most importantly, authentic Spanish chorizo (in the US, there is only one brand, Palacios, available at specialty grocers and on line here and here), jamón serrano, and pimentón.

After N and I scooped up every last bite of our migas, we decided that the point of the humble main ingredient - day old bread - was to soak up every bit of precious pork fat that rendered out of the chorizo, jamón serrano and bacon in the dish. It was like breakfast hash, substituting bread crumbs for potatoes!

No wonder that I was surprised, then, to read that the dish seems to have originated with the Moors, the Muslim occupiers of the Iberian peninsula from the eighth to the fifteenth century. From what I read, it seems that buried beneath the avalanche of pork bits, migas shares a common, if distant, ancestor with North African couscous, steamed semolina.

Regardless of its mysterious beginnings, today a hearty plateful of migas con huevos will load you up with enough calories to keep you going out in the vineyards all day. If you won't be working the fields, you can reduce the fat somewhat (such as by poaching the eggs, as I did), but you lose some of the authentic flavor that makes this belly-buster so quintessentially Castillian. Spoil yourself and eat it for brunch or lunch on a special occasion. Next birthday or anniversary, skip the foie gras, oysters, and caviar, and beg for a plate overflowing with migas con huevos!

Banoffi, banoffi bo anoffi,...

...banana fanna fo fanoffi, fee fie mo manoffi, Banoffi!

I have to admit that when I first saw the "What's for Pud?" post by Sam and Monkey Gland which asked bloggers to whip up an English pudding (aka "dessert" in American English) to celebrate St. George's Day, I was less than enthusiastic. The names of the puddings, though amusing, did not exactly titillate my taste buds. Spotted Dick, Eton Mess, Lardy Cake, Ginger Nuts were but a few of the examples Sam listed on her blog.

Then I spotted Banoffi (also spelled Banoffee) Pie. Banoffi Pie is a sweet pastry crust filled with dulce de leche and sliced bananas and topped with a cloud of whipped cream and a dusting of ground coffee or shaved chocolate.The name is a portmanteau, a blend of the words "banana" and "toffee." There were two reasons I decided to make this particular pudding. First of all, when, I reasoned, would I ever again get the opportunity to use the word portmanteau?

The other reason was that, unlike the other "puds" on the list, I had actually tasted this one before. Last summer, N and I tucked into a slice of this gooey pudding while perched on rickety stools at New York's Spotted Pig, as far as I know the only bona fide gastropub this side of the Pond. We liked chef April Bloomfield's rendition of Banoffi Pie (see her recipe here) so much that we licked our plate clean even though our bellies were overflowing with smoked haddock chowder, pumpkin and pecorino salad, enough chicken liver mousse to fill a derby hat, and pan-fried kidneys from what was surely a herd of calves.

Using the original recipe created in 1972 by the owners of the Hungry Monk, a pub in East Sussex, England, the Banoffie Pie I made was a sticky mess of deliciousness. As you can see from the picture above, my pie was rather impressive looking before I sliced it. Unfortunately, I hadn't chilled it enough by the time my friends arrived for our impromptu "tea party," so the dulce de leche flowed over our plates like primordial ooze. My pudding became a puddle! What the dessert lacked in appearance (hence no pictures of the final slice!), though, it made up for in sticky sweetness. Mary Poppins herself would surely have declared my Banoffi Pie scrum-dilly-icious!

One note on making dulce de leche. The most common way to make this caramel custard is to heat unopened cans of sweetened condensed milk in a pot full of boiling water for 4-5 hours. Be careful to keep the cans covered with an inch or two of water.

The nanny of my friend S (S, by the way, just returned to San Francisco from a few months hiatus at her home in Madrid) once did the unthinkable. She accidentally let the water covering the cans boil away. The pressure built up inside the cans and then, S recalls, she heard a loud boom! boom! boom! She and her gaggle of brothers and sisters dashed to the kitchen and found dulce de leche dripping off the ceiling, down the walls, even inside light fixtures. They spent the next several hours happily licking everything in sight. So, unless you have a house full of children, make sure you keep the cans covered with water at all times! (Or simply avoid the whole issue by following the instructions on the can for making dulce de leche in the oven).

Happy St. George's Day, Sam, MG, and any other English readers out there!

What's For Pud?|St George's Day

IMBB#22: Orecchiette with Baby Turnips and their Greens

When I listed my 10 favorite foods last week, I began with broccoli rabe, known as cima de rape and rapini in Italian. Judging by flavor alone, broccoli rabe seems to be more closely related to turnips than broccoli {I'll leave it to you botanists out there to set me straight}. The greens of both plants taste pleasantly bitter, toasty, and nutty and can be used interchangeably. As far as I'm concerned, the little white bulbs on the end of the turnip greens is a nice little bonus!

A few days ago, I was surprised to find perfect thumb-sized Tokyo turnips {pictured above} grown by one of northern California's premier organic farms, T & D Willey Farms at a store I rarely visit, our local Whole Foods. Whenever I see these baby turnips, I cannot resist buying them to make my frequent weekday dinner of orecchiette. Therefore, Orecchiette with Baby Turnips and their Greens is my entry in this 22nd edition of Is My Blog Burning, hosted by Amy of Cooking With Amy, who chose the theme Use Your Noodle.

This healthy pasta dish can be tossed together in the time it takes to bring a pot of water to a boil. If you can find it, use the hand-formed orecchiette pasta made by Rustichella d'Abruzzo. I like the rustic irregularity of their orecchiette {which means "little ears"}, because the garlicky olive oil clings to all the pasta's grooves and crevasses. They're the pasta equivalent to the nooks and crannies of English muffins. Otherwise, De Cecco's excellent orecchiette and penne would make worthy substitutes.

When making Italian pasta dishes, I find it helpful to remember that, from the Italian perspective, the point of the dish is the pasta, not the sauce. The other elements in the dish are there to complement the pasta. Therefore, you must adequately season your pasta water. Use 1 tablespoon salt {preferably inexpensive bulk sea salt} per every 2 quarts of water.

Since there are so few ingredients in this dish, the quality and choice of each is of equal importance. To match the assertive flavor of the turnip greens, use a good quality aged sheep's milk cheese to grate over the pasta. I prefer the slightly creamier and milder pecorino sardo to pecorino romano, so if you use the latter combine it with some parmigiano reggiano.

Use this recipe as a starting point for your own variations. Possible additions include anchovies, breadcrumbs fried in olive oil, toasted pine nuts, and a squeeze of lemon or a dash of vinegar. For a heartier meal, I sometimes add Italian sausage. It's up to you.

While the pasta is boiling, relax with a glass of Barbera or Dolcetto d'Alba, which both nicely complement the flavor of the bitter greens.

Sugar (not) High Friday #15: Oranges and Dates

This juicy Orange and Date Salad is my minimalist entry for the fifteenth edition of  Sugar (not) High Friday hosted by Sam of Becks & Posh. Our goal in this event was to showcase desserts that used little or no refined sugar.

This easy dessert is a refreshing assortment of medjool dates and sliced organic citrus (blood oranges, cara cara navel oranges, clementines and tangelos) topped with toasted pistachios, dusted with powdered sugar, and baptized with a spoonful of sweet muscat wine and a few drops of rose water. It was inspired by a recipe in one of my favorite cookbooks, Casa Moro, from the chefs/owners of the London restaurant Moro.

Together with a glass of mint tea, this Orange and Date Salad would make a simple yet elegant conclusion to a rich winter meal, especially one with a Moorish or Indian theme. Use the sweetest citrus fruits available and vary the flavorings to suit your taste. You could substitute orange flower water and perhaps add some orange blossom honey if your citrus fruits are not so sweet. Or you could make it more savory by drizzling the plate with extra virgin olive oil and a few flakes of sea salt. Remember to keep it simple, so that the tartness of the citrus fruits can dance with the sweetness of the dates without too much distraction.

Food|and Drink|Recipes|Desserts|Sugar High Friday #15

WBW #15: Samsara, Verna's Vineyard Syrah 2004

There's good news and bad news about my entry for this month's Wine Blogging Wednesday, hosted by my pomegranate-loving fellow Bay Area blogger Fatemeh of Gatronomie. Fatemeh urged us to discover a wine with such a small production that only 250 cases or less were produced.

First, the good news. The sales people at Ferry Plaza Wine Merchant led me to a beautiful syrah made in southern California's Santa Barbara County. There were only 60 cases of this wine made.

The name of the winery, Samsara, could not be more appropriate, as today is El Día de los Muertos, the Aztec/Mexican day to remember the deceased . In Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, samsara refers to the endless cycle of birth, death and rebirth that humans are stuck in until they manage to free themselves and attain enlightenment. The word samsara, then, tends to have a slightly negative connotation, unless of course you are marketing perfume or, apparently, syrah.

But anyway, back to the wine. This specific bottling of Samsara came from the 2004 vintage. Winemaker Chad Melville used syrah grapes from Verna's Vineyard, which is tended by his brother Brent. He then blended them with a small portion of white viognier grapes (8%), let the grape juice ferment naturally, aged it in 30% new French oak and bottled it unfiltered.

Yes, yes. What is the nose, the body, the finish? What aria do you hear playing upon the first sip? For God sakes, just tell us what this limited production beauty tastes like?*

Did I mention there was bad news? The wine was just released yesterday. I, ever the procrastinator, saw it at the wine shop this afternoon.

I struggled with the quandary of whether I really wanted to plunk down 36 bucks for a California syrah from last year's vintage that weighs in at 15.2% alcohol, rush home, pop the cork, pour myself a glass, snap a photo, write some drivel about how it could use about 5 to 10 more years of age and press "publish."

After a long, ponderous 2 minutes of deliberation, I decided to give it a pass.

I consider myself a connoisseur of cheap wines, by which I mean interesting and unusual wines from lesser known appellations that retail for, at most, $25. In my experience, most of the wines that fit that description come from Europe, not California.

In addition, as a chef and home cook, I prefer wines that pair well with food. For the Mediterranean style cuisine I typically cook, this means I prefer wines with good acidity and moderate (i.e. normal, reasonable) levels of alcohol. Although I did not sample the Samsara syrah, I view its relatively high level of alcohol as a red flag (yes, I am aware that there are many syrahs on the market that top 16% alcohol, and 15.2% is not that high for a California syrah).

But it really boiled down to one question. Why would I risk $36 on a California syrah when I know that for a comparable sum of money I could have a bottle of Vieux Télégraphe Châteauneuf-du-Pape or a Domaine Tempier Bandol from the amazing 2003 vintage, either of which will dance with my grilled lamb or rib-eye like Fred Astaire with Ginger Rogers?

*According to one taster, the wine "literally coated [his] glass and intense aromas of blackberry, spice, iodine, and savage notes jumped from the glass. A very structured wine with plenty of firm acidity." Sounds good. I probably would like it, especially with another 5 or 10 years of age.

IMBB#20: Butternut Squash Pudding Soufflé

Who doesn't like soufflés? They never fail to impress your guests, yet are surprisingly easy to make. The only pitfall is that they have to be made at the last minute and eaten the moment they emerge from the oven.

My favorite type of soufflé solves this problem. It is the love-child of a pudding and a soufflé that is known, not surprisingly, as a pudding-soufflé. Unlike its more jittery cousins, it is baked in advance, unmolded from its ramekin and rebaked later when you are ready to serve it. This convenience makes it ideal for a restaurant or a dinner party (perfect as a starter or vegetarian entrée for Thanksgiving or other holidays).

The texture of the pudding-soufflé combines the best of its parents, coming out both velvety smooth, yet light and airy. But what really sends this type of soufflé over the top is the contrast between this exquisitely creamy interior and its crunchy breadcrumb-lined exterior.

According to Richard Olney, whose recipe for Zucchini Pudding Soufflé appeared 30 years ago in his Simple French Food, this convenient twice-baked soufflé is based on the soufflé à la Suissesse, a parmesan pudding soufflé. My riff on Olney's recipe (and on subsequent derivations by the chefs of Chez Panisse in their many cookbooks) is this Butternut Squash Pudding Soufflé, my entry for the 20th "Is My Blog Burning?" event sponsored by Kitchen Chick.

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.

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.