in praise of sardines

The salmon question

In May, cooks trawling* San Francisco's Ferry Plaza Farmers Market are like 6-year-olds on Christmas morning. Fava beans, spring onions, green garlic, pea leaves, English and snap peas, artichokes, asparagus, field grown rhubarb, and (at long last) sweet-as-candy pixie tangerines. Soon we'll taste Ben Lucero's miraculous strawberries (this coming Saturday, perhaps?) and the first good cherries.

The absence of one of our region's most beloved harbingers of spring, however, has left a gash in every omni-locavore's heart. No locally caught wild king salmon for the entire 2008 season (typically May through October). The sudden, drastic, and thus far unexplained decline of the local salmon population is an immense tragedy.

Like other regulars of the Saturday market, when I heard the news my thoughts went immediately to Larry Miyamura, the local salmon fisherman who has pampered our palates with pristine fresh-out-of-the-Pacific Chinook for nearly a decade. Larry and his wife Roz of Shogun Fish are still attending the market, but this year the coolers of ice that used to hold salmon that Larry caught are now filled with the more expensive Alaskan counterpart (along with an enviable selection of other beautiful fish, some of it far more local and affordable). I urge all my Bay Area readers to please frequent the Miyamuras' stand. You won't find fresher fish anywhere else in San Francisco.

I challenge you to find a cook out there who adores the local king more than I do. The current situation breaks my heart, so much so that I woke up one night last week at 3 am pondering it. I knew then that I had to write my thoughts down on IPOS.

At Contigo I planned to feature the unctuous fish on my menu throughout the season. Granted, like other local chefs, I will fill the void by serving other wild and sustainably caught seafood. Expensive wild Alaskan salmon most likely won't be an option. Instead, my menu will focus on utilizing local goodies like petrale sole, sanddabs, sardines, anchovies, smelt, halibut, black cod, lingcod, California sea bass, squid, Hog Island clams, mussels, and oysters, and, on the off chance I get it at a great price, sea urchin and spiny lobster. You'll also find other Pacific fish, like the various tunas and Alaskan halibut and black cod. Occasionally, east coast treats will make an appearance, like skatewing, Sierra mackerel, wild black and striped bass, line-caught hake (and its roe) and cod (most likely salted), scallops, monkfish liver, maybe even Maine lobster. When you see octopus on my menu — and believe me, you will — it will likely be from Spain. Economics may even encourage me to consider some of the farmed fish endorsed by the Monterey Aquarium Seafood Watch. But none of these fish are as dear to my heart as wild local king salmon.

It will come as no surprise, then, that there is one fish I will not serve at Contigo: farmed salmon.** Not even Scotland's eco-friendly Marine Conservation Society-endorsed Loch Duart salmon.

My decision isn't based on holier-than-thou food snob bull shit. It comes from my heart. My decision is based on respect for and solidarity with people like Larry Miyamura, hardworking fishermen who depend on the salmon season for the majority of their income. It's a personal choice. It just wouldn't feel right to me to put farmed salmon on my restaurant's menu. Especially not this year.

Remember the name that you all helped me choose for my restaurant? Contigo. Spanish for "with you." The name places emphasis on the values of connection and community, that circle that includes people like Larry and all the other producers, artisans, and foragers who make a living by bringing us the best seasonal products our local ecosystem has to offer. You and I dwell in that circle too. What hurts Larry hurts all of us.

I'm aware there may be logical contradictions in my decision. There's a lot of gray area in the topic of sustainable fishery stewardship and I don't pretend to be an expert (but my future purveyors, Monterey Fish and Ports Seafood, are. In fact, Monterey Fish founder/owner Paul Johnson has just written the best book on the subject, "Fish Forever." I highly recommend his book and plan to make it required reading for all my cooks).

I also want to emphasize that I'm not judging any restaurant or chef or home cook who serves or eats farmed salmon. Heck, I admit I sometimes eat farmed salmon, particularly when I find myself in New York pondering what to put on my bagel.

But my restaurant is like this blog. It's my personal vision, my tiny attempt at making the world a saner place. And in my world, when the local wild salmon population has been decimated, people don't have the option of eating farmed salmon imported from halfway around the world. They try something else.

In my world, serving farmed salmon lands you on a slope as slippery as a shoal of sardines. Local king salmon is one of the iconic seasonal products of the Bay Area. If I decided to serve purportedly eco-friendly Scottish farmed salmon as a replacement for the unavailable local Chinook during our usual salmon season, what would stop me from serving conventional hot house peppers from Holland in August? What would stop me from serving ever available farmed salmon year round? By extension, what would stop me from serving tomatoes in January or asparagus in October? You have to draw a line somewhere. You have to do the right thing.

On the plus side, now maybe I'll have more success convincing Omega-3-deprived diners to eat sardines.

* Fishing metaphor intended. Word geeks: see discussion of trawling vs. trolling.

** For various reasons, you won't find Chilean sea bass, tilapia, or catfish on my menu either.

Note: photos of dishes I made with local king salmon are from 2005 through 2007 and can be found on my FlickR page under the tag "salmon."

TANCAT

... means "closed" in Catalan.

I need to take an extended hiatus from In Praise of Sardines. I am sorry.

This is a blog about food and, right now, I've lost my appetite. The reason I need a break does not concern the restaurant. At least not yet. Let's just say that my alphabet now contains 1 less letter and leave it at that.

I will miss you all.

I cook like a girl

An article in the London Times caught my attention. According to the article "Sex on a Plate" (from Monday, May 7), many cooks and food writers believe there's a vast gulf between the way men and women cook. The article's author, Shiela Keating, suggests that the differences are so obvious that you could tell just by looking at a dish if a man or a woman cooked it. She even put her assertions to the test.

I look at my own dishes and I'm not so sure. Based on the author's criteria, I'm quite sure that I cook like a girl. Honestly, were the author's generalizations true, no statement would flatter me more. I tend to look to grandmothers — my own and others' — for inspiration at the stove. The article got this boy who cooks like a girl pondering this question: are the differences between the sexes in the kitchen as readily apparent as the Ms. Keating suggests?

The author starts off persuasively. She invokes the authority of a woman so many of us greatly admire, Alice Waters. Who would dare dispute Alice? (oh, right). Alice says: "The simpler the dish, the chances are it is probably made by a woman." She adds:

"Women’s natural instincts, especially if they have children, are to be nurturing. Our main focus is to feed people something that is good for them and that will make them happy . . . some men are in touch with that side of things, but educationally and culturally they are encouraged to look at cooking from a career point of view, to see it as an artistic endeavor. They tend to be more self-absorbed and involved in their own creations and self-expression and more disconnected from what’s happening in the dining room. Instead of ‘Are people liking the food?’ they are more likely to think: ‘I am the Chef, they should be liking it’."

In her article, Ms. Keating uses the following words and quotes to describe the differences between male and female cooking styles:

Feminine: simple, honest, relaxed, spontaneous, pared-back, ingredients-led, seasonal, nurturing, nutritious, lighter, healthier, more consistent, "more concerned with substance," "a little bit more je ne sais quoi,  a little more flair and finesse," "not worried about what other people are doing or what's fashionable," "doesn't matter to me how fast I can chop," "think of myself as a cook, not a chef"

Masculine: extravagant, robust, artistic, showy, experimental, self-absorbed, strict, ordered, competitive, bad-ass, bigger, stronger, bolder, high-octane, testosterone-fueled, macho, swaggering, molecular-gastronomy, wizardry, element of surprise, "need to impress," "the boys just want to get on to the most difficult section of the kitchen," "buy a fantastic piece of meat, slam it in the oven and crack open a bottle"

Looking at my own style of cooking (remember, as a man I can't help but be "self-absorbed"), every word in the "feminine" column describes the way I cook. With the exception of my navel-gazing ways, the masculine column doesn't fit me or my cooking style.

As I said, labeling my approach to cooking "feminine" would make me proud. I've gone out of my way to work at restaurants owned by women and to apprentice under female chefs. Peggy, Annie, Loretta, Barbara, Donia, Dana, and Jen are the first names of cooks I count as mentors. Amongst the few men I've cooked with, I only count Russ and Mark as mentors. And neither of them, I'd bet, would be offended if you told them they cook like girls.

My favorite cookbook authors and cooks? Mostly women. Marcella, Alice, Ruth, Rose, Judy, Patricia, Suzanne, Janet, Anya, Penelope, Samantha, Annie, Julie, Madhur, Lindsey, Claudia, and Gabrielle (let's see if anyone can correctly guess the last names of all those authors and cooks).

Need more evidence of my girlie ways? Molecular-gastronomy (or whatever you call it) doesn't interest me. Then again, neither did high school chem class. I've tried to get excited about new wave avant-garde techniques. Really, I have. I went all the way to El Bulli in Spain. I've eaten at El Cellar de Can Roca (Girona), Commerç 24 (Barcelona), and WD-50 (New York). All those multi-course meals were interesting and amusing (and pricey) ways to while away an evening. But I don't crave anything I ate those nights. Most dishes I hardly remember. With the exception of low temperature cooking and sous-vide, I find most avant-garde techniques overmanipulate the ingredients in such a way that the results detract from the overall integrity of the dish. But that's just me. What do you expect from someone who looks to grannies for inspiration?

Am I and my girlie ways merely one exception to Ms. Keating's rule? The author admits no. She mentions other, in her words, "contradictions to [her] generalizations" (Simon Hopkinson, Rowley Leigh, Alastair Little, and Jeremy Lee), but I've never heard of any of them (British readers, please enlighten me). In my own backyard, I suspect that Craig, Nate, Laurence (again, guess the last names!) and maybe a dozen (or a dozen dozen) other male chefs in the Bay Area cook the type of simple, honest, ingredients-led food that the author labels feminine? Perhaps Ms. Keating would dismiss the entire Bay Area restaurant scene (myself included) as one big anomaly, a hot bed for men who cook like women?

Some evidence, on the other hand, suggests that there's an outside possibility that I cook like a boy. I like to play with knives and fire. I like curing and smoking meat and fish. I admire Mario, Anthony, Fergus, and Montreal's Martin (ha! more surnames to guess). I find Jamie amusing. I eat offal.

Wait a minute. I know a lot of women who like all those people and things too (especially Anthony, though I suspect for different reasons). Could it just be the whacked out food-obsessed crowd I hang with? Come to think of it, some of the most bad-ass swaggering macho competitive cooks I've worked with happen to be women. Also, aren't there a few women (Elena and Aki, for example) who are into avant-garde techniques? And, while we're on the topic, self-absorption is hardly unique to the male of the species. Perhaps you've heard of Madonna, Britney, or Paris. What oh what could all these exceptions mean??

Oh, I know. It means that Ms. Keating's premise is a heap of rubbish. Do we really need one more way to encourage pointless stereotypes? Didn't we get enough of that Martian men/Venutian women crap at the end of the last century? Aren't there some factors that are perhaps a wee bit more significant in influencing how someone cooks than which sex organs he or she is born with? Don't we all, men and women, have both feminine and masculine aspects?

Now that you know my take, what's yours?

Do you think you could tell the sex of the person who cooked your meal based on what the finished plate looks like? Do you think there's a big difference between the way men and women cook?

Fridge Flashing

Subject: unedited and unposed photo of the contents of my refrigerator.

Date photo taken: Friday, May 4, 2007.

From the looks of my refrigerator, you wouldn't have guessed that N and I were leaving town the next day for an impromptu trip north for the weekend.

Receiving a weekly Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) basket from Two Small Farms every week is a mixed blessing. On the plus side, my fridge is bursting with fresh locally grown organic produce for just $20. The negative side? Same sentence, heavy emphasis on the word bursting. When you catch yourself fearing that you can't go away for the weekend because you'll fall behind in your veggie consumption, it's time to worry. Or feel guilty. Or, in my case, both. [Thanks, Mom]. I'm starting to feel like Sisyphus. Instead of a boulder, I have a CSA basket.

This picture was snapped 2 days after picking up last week's basket. Thursday, after a meeting with my Oakland-based architect, I headed to Berkeley to pick up a Hoffman free-range chicken (delivered fresh Wednesdays and Fridays) at Magnani Poultry and some sweet sweet sweet strawberries from Lucero at the Thursday farmers' market on Shattuck. Now that the bridge toll's gone up a buck, I wanted to make sure I got my money's worth from the trip. [Thanks again, Mom]. For good measure, I swung across town and tried the ice cream at Ici for the first time. Angels sang when I tasted the voluptuous scoop of chocolate. The marsala was "just good" in comparison.

But we're talking fridges here. Click on the picture above to get a detailed description of virtually every item in my fridge (If you're reading this post in an RSS reader, you may need to click through to IPOS to access the detailed descriptions). A window will pop up from my FlickR page. Hover your cursor over the food item and read the descriptions to your heart's content. Go on, peep away. You know you want to.

How's the contents of the fridge looking today, 4 days later? Saturday morning, the chicken went in the freezer (although I just pulled it out again for tomorrow's dinner). The strawberries joined us on our journey north. The rest? Most of those once fresh vegetables are still in there untouched.

Our one saving grace is our killer fridge. If you ever need to buy a new refrigerator, get thee an Amana. Our produce stays in perfect condition for longer than you can imagine. Better than a professional kitchen's walk-in refrigerator. Better than N's parents' fancy Sub Zero that cost triple what we paid. I never cease to be amazed.

What's with all this fridge nonsense, Brett? You can thank Sam of Becks & Posh. She's the Lady Godiva who started all this nonsense. Go peep at her fridge now, Tom. And Cookiecrumb's. And Sean's, Jen's, Marin Catherine's, San Francisco Catherine's, Dr. Biggles' ... the list goes on.

Fridge voyeurism. It's the new "cheese sandwich."

I gotta run. I have a lot of veggies to cook and eat before our next basket comes. Tomorrow.

Something loca in the press

The pack I run with are hardcore locavores. Most of them would sooner skip a meal than succumb to the temptations of Peruvian blueberries in March.

To all of you striving to eat locally produced food, I say this: it's time you take your ethical standards to the next level. Start consuming locally produced writing! Become a locareader (in Spanish, that's la rida loca).

If, like me, you live in San Franciscostan, you ought to start reading some of our fine locally produced magazines. Fellow locavores, I say we combine both of our passions and seek out local SF magazines dedicated to food. Let's go out and grab ourselves a copy of our fantastic local 'zine Edible San Francisco! In the Winter issue we'll find articles by esteemed food writers like Michael Ruhlman (blogger and noted author of Charcuterie and many other books), Shuna Fish Lydon of Eggbeater, Bonnie Azab Powell (aka Dairy Queen) of The Ethicurean, Andrea Arria-Devoe of Daily Candy, farmer Andy Griffin of Mariquita, and some dude named Brett Emerson... who the heck is that?? Where have I seen that name before?

Citywide not local enough for you? Check the newsstands in the little neighborhood, burough, or arrondissement that you call home. My enthusiasm for our local community newspaper, The Noe Valley Voice, knows no bounds. I've been known to cart the paper along to some rather exotic locales (witness actual picture to right). Why, look at that in the February issue! There's another article by that feller Brett Emerson (while this issue is no longer on the newsstands, the entire issue is available online). He sure seems to get around. I feel like I've read that same story somewhere else....

You may cry "foul!" and claim that my locareader plea was a ruse, smacking of blatant self promotion. Perhaps, says I. But still, shameless as I may be, I implore you to run out and grab yourself the Winter issue of Edible San Francisco. It hit the stands a couple of weeks ago, but if you're lucky you can still snap up one of the last remaining copies at one of the locations listed here. Heck, it's free! To make sure you don't miss the next exciting issue, why not take a minute to subscribe? You'll make editor and publisher Bruce Cole (formerly of Saute Wednesday) a happy man. Who knows? Maybe you'll see another piece by that Emerson guy in a future issue?

5 Things About Me

A couple of weeks ago I noticed that Joy, The Restaurant Whore, had tagged me for the "5 Things About Me" meme. I thought to myself, "Ho, if there's one thing you do know about me, it's that I don't have time. I'm building a restaurant, yo."

Last month I was mired in the final stages of designing my restaurant, preparing plans that were supposed to have been submitted by the end of January at the latest. Most nights last month I woke up at 3 am, second guessing nearly every decision I had made about my restaurant. No grill... am I crazy? Do I really want to seat people at the kitchen counter? Should I scrap the garden area in the front for a proper bar? Where the hell am I going to put the slicer... or store the wine... or put the cutting boards? How am I going to live without a walk-in refrigerator? How am I going to pay for all of this? Maybe I should put the damn place on the market and buy a one way ticket to Barcelona? I'll rent a small shack on the Mediterranean coast, disappear for a while, write the definitive sardine cookbook...(there's a market out there for that, isn't there?).

What a difference a couple of weeks can make. I've made peace with most of my decisions (except maybe the lack of a walk-in) and, at long last, the plans are nearly ready to be submitted to the building department (next week, fingers crossed).

I suddenly have time again. Not a lot, but hopefully enough to sneak a few posts in on my neglected blog. You can expect some updates on my restaurant. Maybe even a few recipes, if I ever cook a meal at home again. First, though, I'll respond to Joy's tag and tell y'all five things you don't already know about me.

1. As a child, I hoped to become a cartoonist when I grew up. I was obsessed with Charles Schulz and Walt Disney. You'd rarely find me without a pen in one hand and a scrap of paper in the other. I was a real prodigy and nearly every teacher and classmate assumed I would become an artist as an adult. I even had cartoons published in our local paper. Sadly, though, after my father died the same year that I entered my teens and high school, I lost interest in drawing. My creative aspirations didn't resurface until years later when I took an interest in cooking, and more recently writing and photography. One of these days I hope to return to drawing. Perhaps when I move to that little seaside shack?

2. I was a champion long distance runner in high school. Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration, although I did win the league championship in the mile my sophomore year. My southern California high school, which no longer exists, used to have one of the premier cross country (long distance) teams in the state. I stopped running for a decade or two, but have recently started jogging again a few times per week. I'm training to build up my endurance for that marathon also known as "cooking in a restaurant."

3. I nearly died in a tragic bus accident in the Alps. After high school graduation, about 30 of my classmates and I went on a 3-week bus tour of Europe chaperoned by two of our school's literature teachers (who also happened to be the coaches of the cross country team). During the final week, we headed from Bologna, Italy, to Zermatt, Switzerland. Coming from suburban LA, we eagerly anticipated visiting Zermatt, the home of the Matterhorn. We all knew the Matterhorn as the mountain that inspired our favorite childhood roller coaster ride at nearby Disneyland. We couldn't have anticipated that we would take the scariest ride of our lives in the shadow of that mountain.

The brakes on the bus failed as we descended the hairpin turns leading into town. I remember the screeching sound of the bus scraping the sides of the metal road barriers -- our driver's futile attempt to slow us down. I remember the silence of the previously raucous group of teenagers, my close friends and classmates, as we sped around those hairpin turns. I remember the speed of the bus as it traversed narrow mountain bridges at an alarming pace and bounced over roadside boulders that our driver hoped would stop us. Our driver made a last ditch effort to save us by making a sharp turn at the inside of a hairpin turn. If his ploy failed, our bus would have rolled onto its side, maiming half of us, or bounced over the side of the cliff, killing us all.  Fortunately, the move by our driver, a former English stock car racer, stopped the bus instantly. He and one of our teachers flew through the windshield. There were no fatalities and just a few serious injuries (including the teacher, whose nose had to be sewed back on in the hospital). The bus, on the other hand, was totaled, as you can see from the picture below.

4. I taught English for a year in China. Although I may have briefly mentioned this in one post, most of you don't know I spent my first year out of college teaching English at a technical college (the College of Post and Telecommunications) on the outskirts of Chongqing (aka Chungking), the largest city in Sichuan (Szechuan) province. I whiled away my year in a tiny mountainside town famous for its Taoist temple. I spent most of my time on campus hanging out with my students, learning tai-ch'i and the proper way to make and eat dumplings. I rarely left town, because the journey to and from Chongqing and its 30 million inhabitants was an arduous one. The trip back home included a ferry ride across the Yangtze and a choice between spending 30 minutes sandwiched between my neighbors in a bus ascending hairpin turns or walking up several thousand stone steps cut into the side of the mountain. After my Alpine excitement, I tended to walk. Besides, the stairs featured a breathtaking view and several pit stops with tea and dumplings.

5. I've been married 4 times. All you countless fans of my wife N need not worry! All 4 times were to the same woman, my darling N. I was exaggerating (what more would you expect from someone who, when 18 years old, shortly after the aforementioned bus crash, quipped "I suppose that's the brakes."). We actually had just one wedding ceremony. But we had 4 receptions in 4 different cities.

The year we were married, N and I had just moved to San Francisco from Washington, D.C., where we both went to college. My mother lived in a suburb of LA (in the house my father built, where she had raised my brother and me). N's parents lived in New Jersey, where she had grown up, and her grandparents and extended family lived in India. N and I insisted on a small wedding that would only include our friends and closest family members. As our wedding was the first one for both of our families, not one of our parents or relatives was pleased with this decision. They wanted to invite all of their friends and all of the relatives. And each family member wanted the wedding to be in her town.

We came up with an absurd compromise. We agreed to allow each faction to throw a reception in our honor (I never have been one to turn down a party). So our Wedding Tour began in San Francisco, then headed to LA, then New Jersey, and finally concluded in Rajkot, a city in Gujarat in western India, north of Mumbai (Bombay).

I won't bother to tag anyone else for this meme, as most bloggers have already participated. If any of you bloggers reading this haven't revealed your innermost secrets and are just dying to share, feel free to consider yourself tagged!

I'll write again soon. Hopefully.

Is San Francisco killing restaurants?

A friend alerted me to an interesting post on Michael Bauer's (our local restaurant reviewer at the San Francisco Chronicle) blog titled "Is San Francisco Killing Restaurants?" Mr. Bauer spoke with the chefs of Foreign Cinema, husband-and-wife team Gayle Pirie and John Clark, about the expenses of doing business in San Francisco. The post has also sparked a lively debate in its comments.

While out of self-preservation I won't touch Mr. Bauer's blog with a 10-foot wooden spoon, this topic is obviously the focus of my attention right now. I'm pointing it out on my blog, because I believe it may be of interest to those of you following my quest to open a restaurant in San Francisco. Frankly, it's a topic that should be of interest to anyone who goes out to eat in our city.

While the Foreign Cinema couple points out some *sadly* humorous expenses like a "candle tax" and a "tent tax" (neither of which I was aware of!), these are relatively minor. The two more significant expenses unique to San Francisco are the recently passed Proposition F, which mandates employers to pay for 5-9 sick days for its employees, and the Board of Supervisors' new universal health care requirement. When combined with San Francisco's recent minimum wage law, the owners of Foreign Cinema estimate that these new ordinances will add $260,000 to their costs!

You may be surprised to learn that, for the most part, I support the new laws and ordinances. I agree with what New York restaurateur Danny Meyer wrote in his new book, Setting the Table: the Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business: employees come first, even before guests. It is the responsibility of any employer to take care of her employees to the best of her ability. Happy employees, in turn, will provide better service to the restaurant's guests. [To learn more about Mr. Meyer's innovative "enlightened hospitality," I recommend Shuna's excellent report on her former employer's recent visit to the Commonwealth Club].

But whether or not I support the new ordinances is beside the point. They are the new reality for every restaurant and business owner in San Francisco, small and large. In case it was not already, San Francisco will now become the most expensive city in the country to operate a restaurant, higher than Manhattan or Chicago.

It makes me wonder what the hell I was thinking when I decided to open a restaurant in this lovely, though increasingly expensive, city....

So, do I think San Francisco is killing restaurants? Nah. Speaking for myself, I know the risks and costs of this business, and yet I still have decided to open a restaurant here. I know I'll be lucky if I make a dime. I want to open a restaurant simply because I like cooking and making people happy. It's what I do. And I love this city too much to even consider doing it anywhere else. Despite the expenses. That's what the hell I was thinking.

In any event, Mr. Bauer's post will give me (and hopefully all of my SF readers) something to ponder forget tonight while celebrating the arrival of this year's beaujolais nouveau at some Frenchy restaurant in the city. Perhaps Foreign Cinema?

Cheers, Michael Bauer, for raising this very important topic!

Food|and Drink|Restaurants|Opening Restaurant|San Francisco

Salty Snacks

Here are a few stories and sites that have grabbed my attention (or are just begging for my comment) over the past few days. Hope these tidbits whet your appetite for more!

Two skilled professional cooks with experience in East Bay restaurants are offering online video cooking classes at Kitchen Pirate. The videos, which range in price from free to a few bucks, cover topics from basic braising to how to bone a pig's trotter. Will online video cooking demos soon see a surge in popularity akin to that of the TV Food Network 10 years ago?

The SF Chronicle's Bill Addison highlights the growing popularity of Spanish piquillo peppers amongst Bay Area chefs. These crimson conservas (more appetizing sounding than "canned goods," don't you think?) deserve every bit of attention lavished upon them. I enjoy them so much that a few seed packets apparently slipped into my luggage during last summer's trip to San Sebastián (exactly one year ago!). Keep your eyes on the Mariquita stand in the next few months to see how piquillos fare in our local soil.

Speaking of Spain, check out Pim's description and photos of her meal at Etxebarri, a secluded restaurant about an hour's drive from San Sebastián. Since I reluctantly missed this out-of-the-way Temple to the Grill (you may recall that my usual copilot N was once again toiling away in NY), I am grateful to Pim for reporting every detail of her meal.

Back to the Chronicle, Janet Fletcher covers an innovative idea making the rounds amongst pastry chefs. As a self-avowed fruit addict, I love the idea of placing our extraordinary local fruit in the spotlight and relegating the custards and cakes to a garnish. Sometimes at the end of a big meal I just want a little something to sweeten my mouth and not weigh me down. What's your take?

Over in the NY Times, there are a couple of stories about two of my all-time favorite savory treats. Peter Meehan left me salivating with his review of a stellar Brooklyn joint selling Jamaican patties. Oh, how I miss Jamaican beef patties! When I lived in Washington, D.C., I ate them as often as I eat tacos here. (Recipes and/or tips on where to find these addictive Jamaican snacks locally would be much appreciated!)

Did someone say tacos? In another Times article (in today's paper), Cindy Price tours taquerias from LA to SF's Mission District. Check out her choices for the best taquerias on the California coast. Local Chowhounds, a little slower on the uptake than usual, are just starting to weigh in.

Is it lunch time already? Don't be surprised if you spot me on my own taco crawl through the Mission.

Happy Easter!

And a Happy (belated) Passover!

Naturally blue and green eggs brought to you by the free-range Araucana chickens of Three Wise Hens in Davis, California.

Spring and Easter are a time of rebirth and new beginnings. I'm hoping some of that seasonal energy will rub off on my blog, which has been hibernating lately. Stay tuned....

Food|and Drink|Eggs

My Great Wall of Cookbooks

Pastry Queen extraordinaire Anita of Dessert First tagged me for the "Recipe Collection Meme," which was started by the Web Sorceress Cooks. Admittedly, my first reaction to Anita's email was a roll of the eyes and a sigh. "Oh good, another meme." But then I read her insightful post and realized that this was quite an interesting topic. In a nutshell, the topic is about how we choose (and store) our collection of recipes. But, delving even deeper, I am inspired to write about how we decide to cook what we cook.

The Web Sorceress provides a definition from a dictionary website that calls a recipe "a set of instructions for making something from various ingredients." True, but then again that's like saying a novel is "a set of sentences strung together to tell a story about various events and people." To me, recipes are far more than a mere set of instructions.

For one, recipes are a source of inspiration. I rarely follow a recipe as it is written, but I often look to cookbook authors - especially favorites like Paula Wolfert, Marcella Hazan, Richard Olney, and Alice Waters - for guidance, advice, and ideas.

When well-written, a recipe and the prose attached to it can convey the author's personality, preferences, and his or her personal history. If you've ever seen Judy Rodgers' The Zuni Cafe Cookbook, then you know what I'm talking about. Her book is probably the quirkiest, most opinionated collection of recipes to be published in the last decade.

Where do you obtain the recipes you prepare?

I have too many cookbooks to count (well beyond 101). Or more accurately, I'm too lazy to count them. So I measured my collection to see how tall they would be if they were piled one on top of the other. The answer: just a shade under 20 feet. Those 20 feet are spread out over 11 shelves. One shelf, the one dedicated to storing the over-sized sumptuously illustrated coffee table books, just collapsed last week.

That is only part of my collection. The 20 feet don't include years of back issues of Saveur, Fine Cooking, Gourmet and Food & Wine. Nor does it include the recipes I've clipped from the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and all the recipes I've gathered from the restaurants where I've worked over the past 10 years.

What about the Internet, you ask? With the exception of food blogs, I don't really get any recipes from the Internet. For one, I'm old-school. I like the tactile sensation of the book in my hands and the feel of the paper against my fingers. Reading, like cooking, is a dying pastime. They belong together. Besides, if I bring my laptop into the kitchen and spill tomato sauce on it, I'm out a thousand bucks.

The main reason I don't look to the Internet for inspiration, though, is a question of trust. Why would I cook a random recipe written by someone I know nothing about when I could cook something by Marcella Hazan or Suzanne Goin? If I don't know who wrote a recipe, I know I will never cook it. That's why the only online recipes I use come from food bloggers. Food bloggers tend to be incredibly open and generous with their thoughts and opinions, willing to share both their (our) successes and failures.

How often do you cook a new recipe?

The last month I have been cooking a lot less frequently than I usually do. I am putting all my creative energy into my restaurant search, so I have little left over for new recipes. When I have cooked, it's been mostly comfortable old favorites.

I have another perspective on this topic, though. With the exception of pastries, I do not really follow "recipes" in the traditional sense of that word.

I cook intuitively. The products I use tend to come from small farms and artisans, so they vary incredibly. I rely on all my senses and experience to determine how to bring out the best in a particular ingredient. I've probably already said this before, but I view my products, especially seasonal fruits and vegetables, as my Muse.

Take that quintessential spring ingredient the fava bean, for example. When they're as tiny as the tip of my pinkie, they taste good raw, skin and all. When slightly bigger, I prefer to peel and quickly cook them to bring out their sweetness and bright green color. When they get larger and starchier, they taste best stewed and then mashed.

I try to maintain that sense of wonder and respect for the products that I buy so that, in a sense, every time I cook I am cooking a "new" recipe.

Having a ball (or two) at Incanto's Head to Tail Dinner

I've mentioned before on this blog that I used to be a vegetarian.

So how did I go from eating a diet of rutabegas and wheat berries to finding myself staring down a strip of bacon flanked by two nuggets from that part of the bull that, to put it politely, makes him a bull rather than a cow (third picture in post).

In my mind, there is a straight line that I can draw between my veggie days and my seat at the table of Incanto's Third Annual "Head to Tail Dinner" 3 weeks ago (where the only vegetables were a few capers and a sprinkling of herbs). I'll attempt to describe the connection between the two eras of my life here in this post and you can decide whether I am in fact full of another product of the bull (which thankfully was not part of this particular feast).

Like many who are vegetarian by choice (as opposed to by their upbringing), my decision to stop eating meat was made consciously and was based on personal ethics. I was and still am sickened by the treatment of animals in the industrial system that currently exists for raising the majority of the animals that we eat. (If you haven't yet, view The Meatrix now). Well, er, maybe that's only part of the story. The other reason was that, as a good little rebellious twenty-something, I enjoyed causing my mother grief during holiday feasts.

Once I chose to return to my omnivorous ways (it turns out vegetarianism has a way of curtailing the options of aspiring chefs), I sought some system of ethics that would support my decision.

I enthusiastically latched onto the ethical standards of Alice Water's "Delicious Revolution" and, later, those of the Slow Food Movement. I intentionally sought out local ranchers and farmers who raised animals more humanely, like Bill Niman (cattle, sheep, and pigs), Bud and Ruth Hoffman (chickens and quails), Jim Reichardt (ducks), the Straus family (dairy cows) and others.

Unfortunately, I quickly discovered that ethics costs a premium. On the pennies that I earned as a novice cook and the nickles N earned as a teacher, we really couldn't afford these pricier meats. But we were both committed to the cause, so we shelled out a shocking portion of our incomes to shop at farmers markets and support the efforts of these pioneers.

One way I learned we could save money was to buy less expensive cuts of meat. I happily mastered the art of slow cooking and braising tougher cuts like lamb shanks, beef short ribs and cheeks, pork shoulder and belly, and duck legs. In fact, these are some of my favorite cuts of meat to this day.

Unfortunately, every other penny-conscious chef and home cook in the area came to the same realization at the same time as I did. As demand rose, so did the price of these once less desirable cuts. Slow-cooked meats became a hot trend and "comfort food" became a buzz word.

The next logical step was naturally to find out which of the even less desirable cuts were the tastiest. I had eaten many interesting parts - like pig's ears and bull's "whip" (another euphemism) - during my year teaching English in Sichuan, China, but I honestly had little idea how to cook them.

Mr. Sardine's Wild Ride

First things first. It's been a long time since I pressed the "create new post" button. I have to say, I've missed y'all. Sniff.

Every day during the past week and a half, I've woken up with the best of intentions, telling myself "I want to write something today!" Perhaps I'll describe last week's Head to Tail Dinner at Incanto! Or maybe I'll write about how I made the most wonderful steak by cooking it backwards!

And then the phone rings. It's the broker. Or the landlord. Or the architect. Or the accountant. Or one of the dozen other brokers I talk to weekly.

The last 2 weeks I've been riding the roller coaster known as restaurant buying. No. Scratch that metaphor. The plunges and twists and turns have been too tame to require an E-ticket (reserved for the scariest rides). The trip has reminded me more of a particular kiddie ride that enchanted me on birthday visits to Disneyland (remember, I grew up in LA). The C-ticket ride still exists to this day, 50 years after its premier. Its name is "Mr. Toad's Wild Ride."

The ride is based on Disney's 1949 animated adaptation of "The Wind in the Willows." You climb aboard an old convertible buggy and ride through madcap scenes set in the countryside of England at the turn of the 20th century. As the story of the ride unfolds, J. Thaddeus Toad is accused of stealing a car, sent to prison, escapes, is chased by the police and nearly loses his ancestral home, Toad Hall, to a group of nefarious weasels.

Here's how one fan describes the ride:

You are passenger in a runaway car which careens through hilarious scenes reminiscent of the Keystone Kops. On your fast ride which is in the dark, you have a lot of near misses. You blast through haystacks, nearly run characters down, crash through a fireplace, end up on a railroad track with a locomotive bearing down on you. You end up deposited unceremoniously in Hell, and you laugh all the way.

That's about as accurate a description of the last 2 weeks of my life as any I could come up with.

So climb in your buggy and lower the safety bar while I share my tale.

After months of insufferable hemming and indecisive hawing that I mercifully spared you all from reading (tea house? tapas bar? culinary book store? food writer? private chef? restaurant chef? back to school? insane asylum?), I finally decided that I wanted to go ahead and commit myself (hmmm... maybe I should stop the sentence there, press publish and never post again? nah, too easy) to opening a little restaurant.

Since the new year, I've ratcheted up my search process. I've been looking and looking and looking. I've felt like Goldilocks. This one's too big. This one's too expensive. This one's next to the projects.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, I found a pretty decent place quite close to my house in a good but not great location (you blast through haystacks,...). I contacted the agent and walked through the property. It has just a few seats, but plenty of room to expand. Surprisingly, it even has a walk-in refrigerator, which is a much-coveted rarity in the size of restaurants I have been considering. Sure, the equipment is kind of old, but what can I expect from a 20-year-old restaurant? I assured myself it has lots of potential.

When is a trout not a trout?

When it's an omelet, of course! (Don't worry, this Dadaist answer will soon make sense).

A month ago, I promised an unusual Catalan recipe that features green garlic "later in the week." I made the dish, took pictures, ate it, and then plumb forgot about it.

My promise remained buried in my gray matter until an alert reader, Jesse, emailed me a few days ago. Jesse subscribes to the weekly CSA box (go Jesse!) from one of my favorite local farms, Full Belly, and was scheduled to receive a bunch of fresh green garlic on Tuesday. Jesse, hopefully you still have some of your stash remaining to use in this recipe!

During my trip to the Priorat wine region of Catalonia last summer, I sampled what was to me an unusual riff on the classic Spanish tortilla. In place of the traditional potatoes (and onions in some renditions), the cook had substituted local white beans, called mongetes, and green garlic. Tasted alongside the potato version, I actually preferred this tender, mildly garlicky tortilla.

Once I returned home, I flipped through old and new Spanish cookbooks and learned that the Spanish tortilla is just as versatile a platform for experimentation as the more familiar (to American cooks) frittata of Italy. The potato-based tortilla is the most famous and widely adored version, but there are countless others. What they all have in common is a relatively low proportion of eggs to filling.

Catalan cooks appear to be especially fond of tinkering with the classic potato version. In his book Catalan Cuisine, Colman Andrews wrote that he encountered a wide variety of fillings while in Catalonia, including "white beans, green beans, samfaina [similar to French ratatouille], artichokes, asparagus, garlic shoots [another word for green garlic], wild mushrooms, tuna, botifarra sausage, apples or pears, even fried zucchini flowers." The version I tasted, then, was not as shockingly original as I had assumed!

It's time I explain the seemingly absurd riddle of the title. It's quite simple, actually. In the Catalan language, the word for tortilla is truita, which means "trout." Although theories abound as to why a round omelet made of eggs and vegetables would be called a trout, nobody seems to know the true reason. To differentiate between a real trout and an omelet, Catalans call the fish a "trout of the river" (truita de riu). A few months back, when I made a delicious tortilla with potatoes, leeks, and smoked trout, I had unwittingly made perhaps the world's first truita de truita.

The following version is called a truita de mongetes i all tendre, meaning white bean and green garlic omelet. In its homeland, it would most likely be a served as a tapa, cut into small wedges or squares and served on toasted slices of baguette, perhaps with a smear of romesco sauce or a paper thin slice of jamón serrano. N and I enjoyed this truita one weekend for brunch. It would also makes a nice luncheon or early supper with a simple salad and a glass of sparkling Catalan Cava.

My bad. Reflections of a food snob

The Sunday before last, a local newspaper critic reviewed Dosa, a new South Indian restaurant in San Francisco, and dismissed bloggers, including myself, who were critical of their initial dining experiences there as “snobs.”

I can't speak for the others, but me? A food snob? Well, um, yeah. Is that bad? Which of the following words describes me?

    a. chowhound
    b. connoisseur
    c. foodie
    d. food geek
    e. food lover
    f. food snob
    g. all of the above

Clearly I have to circle “g.” And, you know what? I’m quite OK with that. In fact, I’m rather flattered.

Honestly, though, I was critical of my first meal at Dosa and I bluntly expressed my dissatisfaction in a comment on another blogger’s review. In hindsight, perhaps too bluntly. While my wife, a second grade teacher, will remind me that there are no are "mistakes" (only "learning experiences"), I do have some regrets about the comment I left. So much so that, prior to the newspaper review, I asked the owner of the blog to delete it, and she kindly obliged. My regrets stem not from being called a snob, however, but from my own self-imposed ethical standards.

So, if you don’t mind, allow me to get horizontal on the couch here and share with you some of my innermost thoughts and feelings about my role in the Dosa debacle.

First, let’s look at what happened. Shortly after Dosa opened, my wife and I invited our friend, who’s of South Indian descent, to dine with us there. We were all quite excited that a South Indian restaurant had opened in San Francisco, as we love and crave dosai (plural of dosa. Oops. Does that come across as snobbish? Ah well, I am what I am).

With its winning combination of an imaginative wine and cocktail list, a contemporary take on a previously underrepresented “ethnic” cuisine, and affordable prices, all presented in a colorfully painted loft-like space, Dosa brings to mind the original Slanted Door and the new Limón. Unfortunately, our first dinner at Dosa was marred by myriad service mishaps and disappointing food. We especially disliked the chutneys. We were crestfallen that the restaurant initially didn’t meet our perhaps too high expectations.

Although I intentionally did not write a review of Dosa on my own blog (more on that later), I left that blunt comment on the other blogger’s review. That review, which was also somewhat critical of the restaurant (although more balanced than my comment), inspired an earnest reply from the restaurant’s co-owner, Anjan Mitra. Mr. Mitra acknowledged that our  criticisms of the food were at least in part warranted. During the first weeks, Mr. Mitra explained, there were some "mistakes" made by the kitchen staff that led to our disappointing dinners and, in particular, the problematic chutneys. He invited those of us who initially disliked Dosa to return.

A couple of weeks ago (prior to the newspaper review), my wife N and I accepted Mr. Mitra’s invitation and returned anonymously to Dosa. I am happy to report that the food and service are much improved. To use an analogy from the Winter Olympics, our recent meal was like Bode Miller’s performance prior to the Olympics, while our first experience at Dosa was like Bode during the Olympics. As the pictures on this post help illustrate, the food is now quite tasty.

Whipping chocolate through Molecular Gastronomy

My brother and I are complete opposites. I'm the artist, he's the math geek. I don't own a TV, he has one in every room - even the bathroom. In my free time, I read up on how to improve my paella. My brother plays computer games based on Dungeons and Dragons.

The family mythology says that my brother, who dashed from house to house pushing door bells while I was in a stroller, has known since he was 4 years old that he wanted to be a computer engineer. I, on the other hand, still don't know what I want to be when I grow up.

Given my lack of interest in science, it may come as a surprise that I snapped up Hervé This' book Molecular Gastronomy: Exploring the Science of Flavor the second it was translated into English. Professor This (pronounced "Teess") has collaborated with many chefs, including 3-star Michelin chef Pierre Gagnaire, to help propel the movement that has become known as Molecular Gastronomy.

The most famous innovators of the Molecular Gastronomy movement reside not in the Professor's France, but across the border in Spain in the kitchens of El Bulli, Arzak, El Celler de Can Roca, and elsewhere. As a fan of all Spanish cooking, traditional and modern, I figured it is time that I loosen up some of my Luddite prejudices and learn about and perhaps even *gasp* play around with some of the new techniques.

I enjoyed the premise and promise of the Professor's book more than the reality. Perhaps I am not the best person to review such a book, as my interest in science falls even below my interest in the Olympic sport of curling. I rushed through high school chemistry in one summer, never took physics, and only got as far as trigonometry in math (although, as I never fail to gleefully remind my brother, I still managed to score 20 points higher than Mr. AP Calculus on the math portion of the SAT). There are lots of fun tidbits to chew on, but for the most part I found the book too focused on molecular theory and lacking in practical application. Then again, what did I expect from a chemist?

I ought to disclose one other bit of information. Truthfully, I only bought the book because one chapter, entitled "Chantilly Chocolate: How to make a chocolate mousse without the eggs," tantalized me with its possibilities. Unfortunately, like all the chapters in the book, this one turned out to be just 2 or 3 pages long. If you are more used to the in-depth discussions of Harold McGee's tome, On Food and Cooking, you will be disappointed with the brevity of the explanations in Molecular Gastronomy.

In defense of human-animal hybrids

I've been refraining from taking the bait and responding to President Bush's call for a ban on "human-animal hybrids" in his State of the Union Address last week, but I can no longer continue to hold my tongue. As the Sardine Man, it is my obligation to speak out.

Since this is a food blog, I will keep my political commentary brief: the President's call for a ban is overtly speciesist. {Seeing as it comes from a human-plant hybrid like Mr. Bush, I am not surprised}.

I am not alone in my opinion. My wife N agrees with my condemnation of the President's proposal as it affects her, too. What I am about to tell you I have previously kept private, as N prefers to keep a low profile. But, in light the President's recent speech, I feel I must be open with you all.

You see, my marriage to N is what some refer to as a mixed marriage. Although I have shared with you that her family is from the west coast of India, I have not been 100% forthcoming. How do I phrase this? N's family is from just off the Malabar coast, as in the Arabian Sea. What I mean is they are merpeople.

Initially, they were upset when they had learned that their only daughter - their Little Mermaid, as they endearingly call her - had fallen for a fish-headed man that she had met in school. Eventually they came to accept that, in so many ways, we complete one another. In fact, from this point forward, I shall refer to N as My Better Half.

We were hoping to join the other human-animal hybrids at this weekend's planned demonstration in front of the White House, but we'll leave that to the centaurs, minotaurs, and other beastly types. I always feel like a fish out of water at those social events, any way. I hear Cindy She-Hen will be there and it would've been nice to have met her.

Although I fear I am jumping the shark with this post, I want to encourage each of you to add your support in the comments section of this post so that I can forward a link to the President. My Better Half and I appreciate your support on this issue.

________________________________
Note: Unfortunately, due to a sudden increase in comment spam, I have begun experimenting with moderating comments. Have no fear, though, your comments will eventually be published - unless they contain spam!

Human-Animal Hybrid|Bush

Guavas in San Francisco?

I was raised a sugar addict.

When I awoke every morning at my house in a suburb of L.A., I would amble across the terrazzo floors in my slippers to the kitchen. There, in the cabinet that was just within my reach above the white formica counter top , I would find a dozen brightly colored boxes. Each box had a different cartoon animal on it - bears, rabbits, even a toucan -yet each critter shared the identical wild eyes and big smiles. How could I resist such friendly! fun! exciting! characters when my eyes were still full of sleep?

I poured the dry flakes-squares-nuggets-loops into my white bowl, the cereal tingling like I imagine diamonds sound when poured into a crystal vase. Then I added a splash of milk and a heaping spoonful or two of refined sugar and carried the bowl to the white Eero Saarinen tulip table, nestled myself into my tulip chair, and devoured my fix, all washed down with a glass of Sunny Delight orange flavored drink.

In retrospect, I wonder why I didn't just mainline high-fructose corn syrup directly into my veins. I suppose I was too young to use a hypodermic needle.

Thankfully, I've mostly weened myself off the sugar addiction in the intervening 30 years. Years have passed since I last had a soda or fruit juice sweetened with corn syrup. The closest thing to the Kellogg's of my childhood is the occasional muesli with yogurt.

My new addiction is fruit.

I can't imagine a breakfast that doesn't include a ripe piece of fruit. Being a good little disciple of Alice Waters and the Slow Food Movement, my fruit of choice varies with the seasons, is locally grown, and usually organic. Right now I'm eating a lot of different varieties of fresh citrus and apples and pears stored from the fall harvest.

And guavas. You might not think that local California guavas would be any good and for the most part, you'd be right. There is, however, one farmer who grows the most incredible Asian guavas and sells them at our local farmers market.

Tucked into a corner in the back of the farmers market, Will Brokaw (aka the Avocado Guy) sells a variety from his family's farm that they label "White Malaysian." The yellow to chartreuse colored fruits are not particularly inviting in appearance. They look like an apple or pear with a slight case of the mumps and often include a few brown scars.

Don't be put off. Pick one up. Close your eyes. Inhale deeply. I guarantee a smile will spread across your face as you are embraced by aromas of ripe pear, cut pineapple, and some heaven-sent flower you can't quite recall the name of.

Do sardines exist?

I was quite amused this morning to read that, according to Kate at Accidental Hedonist, "there's no such animal as a sardine."

With her proclamation that "[the fish] aren't called sardines until they are in the can," I realized that the highly esteemed Kate had most likely extrapolated her information from an article by the even more highly esteemed Charles Reichblum (aka "Dr. Knowledge™") that appeared in the Boston Globe and online last month. I lay all the blame for Kate's oversimplified notions squarely on the shoulders of Dr. Knowledge™, who boldly stated: "There are no sardines. It's all a big lie!" Like most things in life, the answer is far more complex than a few sound bites.

Here is my short answer: Kate and Dr. K are incorrect. Fresh sardines do indeed exist.

Just as soon as I finish eating my sardinas en escabeche, which I made from fresh sardines (pictured above) that I bought at the farmers market on Saturday, I will explain in painstakingly tedious detail why they are wrong. While I am eating, take a look at the "Sardines!" photo set that I just added to the right hand column of this page. There's plenty of visual evidence to refute Kate's and Dr. K's claims.

{MmmMmmm, that was tasty! I am curiously full for someone who has apparently eaten a figment of his imagination.}

I do not disagree with Kate's assertion that "the word sardine is a generic name for a number of different small fish." That is quite true. The fresh sardine cooked a la plancha in Sevilla that I rhapsodized about in my first post was most likely a member of the species Sardina pilchardus (Walbaum). According to my fishmonger, the fresh sardines I ate for lunch today were Pacific sardines, Sardinops sagax. Both are members of the complex herring family (Clupeidae), which includes more than 300 different species, including anchovies, shad, and herring. Both, I might add, were delicious and tasted and looked rather similar.*

The statement of Kate's that most puzzles me is that sardines don't become sardines until they are canned. That is of course absurd. I just finished eating exhibit A (and have previously eaten exhibits B-Z).

What's in a name? That which we call a sardine by any other name would smell as sweet. It really boils down to linguistics. I look to cultural norms and historical patterns to determine the meaning of the words I use. If the fisherman, fishmonger, cook and consumer all agree that the fish I so love is called a sardine, then who am I to argue? If it looks like a sardine, smells like a sardine, tastes like a sardine, then it is a sardine.

Screwage

Seen Saturday outside of the shop Ferry Plaza Wine Merchants at the Ferry Plaza building in San Francisco.

Food|and Drink|Markets|Wine|San Francisco

Food blogging when you're ill

Every other year, I catch a cold.

Although this will hardly surprise anyone who's been reading my blog, I tend to be rather self-indulgent. Multiply that times ten when I am not feeling well. I crawl under my thick comforter and curl up catlike for long naps, only coming up for air when the impulse strikes to watch a Woody Allen movie or an episode of "The Kumars at No. 42" on my iBook.

Because my wife N spends her days taming 7-year-olds, the season's virus du jour lays siege to her at least 4 times per year. At those times, I gladly spoil her, serving as her personal chef and support staff. During the relatively rare occasions when I get to play the role of indulgee, I do not hesitate to cash in my favors Godfather-style.

N knows exactly what I will be requesting, so she hardly bothers to ask any more. I suppose that's a perk of a dozen years of marriage.

Thursday after work, she headed straight to Irving Street to pick up two orders of chicken pho' from Loi's, one for our dinner and one for my lunch Friday. Then she stopped by New Cheung Hing for an order of duck jook for Friday's breakfast. Finally she went back up the block to the grocery store to pick up a few chicken legs and thighs so that I could make stock when I was feeling better. It’s good to be loved.

Yesterday, I felt well enough to simmer up that batch of chicken broth.

The best broths are made with a good proportion of meat to bones. I often use a whole chicken per gallon of water, but this time I opted to augment the stash of bones that waited in my freezer with a few extra legs. I removed a couple of thighs after an hour so that I would have meat for my soup. I like to simmer my chicken broth for 3 or 4 hours to extract the most flavor.

The easiest soup for a sick person to make is the polentina from the Chez Panisse Vegetables cookbook. I find it incredibly soothing to prepare and eat, and believe it should be in every busy cook's repertory.

The recipe is just a few lines long. In a medium pot, stew a diced small onion or a leek and a slivered clove or two of garlic in duck fat or butter, pour in a quart of chicken broth, bring to a boil, stir in ⅓ cup polenta (preferably stone-ground), toss in a few leaves of sage, a sprig of thyme and a teaspoon of salt, and simmer the soup for 20-30 minutes. The polenta slightly thickens the broth and imparts a comforting corn flavor.

While the soup is cooking, cook and then chop whatever greens are in your fridge {I’ve used broccoli rabe, arugula, turnip greens, chard and even watercress with equal success in the past. This time I used some gorgeous red Russian kale - pictured left}. When the soup is ready, stir in the cooked greens and add a few grindings of pepper. This time, I added some shredded meat from one of the chicken thighs I removed from the stock. Garnish each serving with some shavings of parmigiano reggiano and a drizzle of your best olive oil.

Depending on how I feel, I may post one of my other favorite chicken soup recipes later in the week. Until then, take care good care of yourselves and try to stay healthy!

Food|and Drink|Recipes|Chicken|Soup

10 foods that whet my appetite

I was flipping through a pile of papers that I had shoved into a dark corner when I found one with a list scribbled on it. I hang my head in shame as I admit that it was my response to a meme that Mona and Lady Lavender of the Kitchen both tagged me for over a month ago! I didn't post it at the time, because I had committed my blog to an exploration of Kashmiri cuisine for Menu for Hope II {that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it}.

I wonder, do memes, like fine wine and cheese, improve with age? Or do they rot and mold like yesterday's sushi?

Without further ado, in no particular order, here is my fashionably late list of My 10 Favorite Foods {happily, month-old sushi is not one of them}:

1. Broccoli rabe. During the winter months, I never neglect to buy a bagful of baby rapini when I visit the Mariquita Farm stand at our local farmers market. N and I eat broccoli rabe once a week, usually as a quick and simple pasta with orecchiette, garlic, chili flakes and pecorino. It's pure winter comfort food at our house. In fact, we ate it Tuesday night for dinner!

2. Whole fish. If I see grilled whole fish on a menu, 9-out-of-10 times I will order it. That's true for everything from my favorite little sardines {duh} on up to the whole Dover sole I had last summer in the Basque country. As a matter of fact, I ate both sardines {pictured left} and sole for lunch that day! For my stomach, life doesn't get much better than that.

3. Pickles. I have yet to meet a pickle I don't like. From half-sour Kosher dills to fiery Indian nimbu achar {pickled limes} to Korean kim chee to my own pickled yellow wax beans.

4. Figs. Figs are Nature's most voluptuous fruit. I am especially enamored of the Adriatic variety that Rick Knoll grows in Brentwood. They're pistachio green on the outside and a luscious ruby red on the inside.

5. White peaches and nectarines. The fruit I crave the most, though, are the tooth-achingly sweet Arctic Rose white nectarines grown by Steven Kashiwase in Winton. They are perfect eaten out of hand, with no embellishment. I made a sorbet once which even included some Sauternes, but I still prefer them naked {no comments please}. In my neck of the woods, the only albino peaches that can rival these nectarines are the Babcocks grown by the inimitable Didar of Ram Das Orchards.

6. Duck. Like whole fish, if a menu includes duck - particularly the leg or liver - I will invariably order it. And yes, although I struggle with the ethics, I would be lying if I didn't include the soon-to-be-outlawed foie gras in this category. One of my all-time favorite dishes was an obscenely large slab of foie gras  topped with a fried egg. I savored every bite sitting on a bench at a communal white marble table in the back of the Barcelona food store Mantequería Ravell. And that was just the first course!

7. Parsnips. Just thinking about that meal in Barcelona made me crave a vegetable! The first one that came to mind is the lowly parsnip. I guess I have a soft spot for all the less celebrated foods in the world - hence the {new and improved} tag line of my blog. My favorite way to cook the small, carrot-sized parsnips is to slowly caramelize them stove top in a cast iron pan in clarified butter or duck fat {oops, back to duck again!}.

8. Pastrami. I've prattled on enough about my love of pastrami on this blog. If you missed it, read here and here. Guess where N and I ate dinner last night.

9. Gran Reserva jamón ibérico de bellota produced by Joselito. On the way to the chiringuito where I tasted those sardines that inspired the name for my blog, N and I dropped by a traditional Sevillano bar near the bullring called Mesón de la Infanta. The air was thick with the smell of ham. Dozens of them hung from the ceiling. We sidled up to the bar and ordered a thick glass of gazpacho and a plateful of jamón ibérico de bellota, the Spanish cured hams from black-hoofed {pata negra} pigs that graze freely on acorns. The jamón glistened with {omega-3 rich} fat and tasted like sex. Click here to read an excellent article about this delicacy.

10. Jalebi from that place near Kemp's Corner in Bombay.  I almost wrote "chocolate," but decided against it. If I have to choose between the two, these amazing sugar spirals fried in clarified butter win, if only for sentimental value. The morning of my first trip to Bombay to visit N's grandparents, we awoke to a breakfast of bright yellow jalebi, their honey-like sweetness balanced by alternating bites of the savory chickpea flour sheets called ganthia - also deep-fried. I couldn't stop eating. First, a bite of sweet jalebi, then a bite of savory ganthia, and so on, all washed down with strong cuppa masala chai. From that moment on, N's grandfather, Dada, warmed up to me. I learned that day the truth of the adage "food is love."

What, I'm already at 10?? I just started warming up!

I haven't even mentioned Catalan olive oil, toasted hazelnuts, Taiwanese dongding oolong tea, Della Fattoria bread, cochinillo (roast suckling pig) at Cándido in Segovia, eggplant, "the fifth quarter," Rudy's plain cheese pizza in Closter (NJ), unagi, toro at Bar Masa, avocados, Chesapeake Bay crab cakes, mapo dofu in Chengdu, percebes {goose-neck barnacles} at Ca' Sento in Valencia, the scents of vanilla and cardamom, butter Mysore masala dosa at that outdoor stand at the end of Laburnum road in Bombay, Maryland silver queen corn, idli sambar delivered to our room at New Woodlands in Madras, Mimi Sheraton's recipe for matzoh ball soup, salsa romesco, zha-jiang mian (hand cut noodles with meat sauce) in Taipei, pulpo a la gallega (octopus) at Casa d'a Troya in Madrid, oil-packed anchovies from Cantabria, fried putillitas or chopitas (baby squid), bouillabaisse at that restaurant overlooking the calanques west of Marseilles, Manresa's parmesan churros and pimientos de Padrón, cheese, wine, gelato in Rome, freshly baked H&H bagels with Nova salmon from Zabar's, Comice pears, roast baby lamb (cordero lechal) at Asador Tierra Aranda in Madrid, peanut butter sandwiches, Nutella, New Jersey beefsteak tomatoes, soon dubu chigae, my grandmother's blueberry pie ....

Don't worry, I'm not going to tag anyone else for this meme. But if you feel like picking up the gauntlet, I'm not going to stop you.

Food|and Drink

Please excuse the mess...

I am a minimalist at heart. A friend of mine describes the decor of N's and my house as "Shinto-Shaker meets Bollywood." Translation: we abhor clutter, but love color (especially in pillows and rugs).

Over the 6 months that I've been publishing "in praise of sardines," I've been growing increasingly queasy as I've watched my "blog roll" and other links in the left-hand column grow faster than the ivy that attacks our backyard fence. It was time for drastic measures.

So far, this is what I've done. I've reduced IPOS from 3 to 2 columns. I moved my links (which includes many of you, my readers) to their very own "links" page. You can get to this page any time by clicking on "My Links and Blog Roll," located under my picture in the right-hand column. With more room, I am able to continue to divide my blog roll by region and add the names and locations of each blog's author.

Just as too many ingredients can muddy the taste of a dish, I have stripped away the superfluous and little used garnishes of my blog. Gone are the calender, the lists of recent posts and comments, and the translation tool. In the future, I hope to tidy up my categories and recipes, too. Feel free to leave any suggestions about these changes in the comments section of this post.

I hope you like the improvements as much as I do! It's not much, but for me - a simple Luddite cook more comfortable with a mortar and pestle than a Cuisinart (let alone a keyboard!) - it's a huge accomplishment. Ultimately, my goal is to increase your pleasure as you peruse the stories, recipes and photos that I plan to share with you in the coming year!

White Christmas, LA style

Every Christmas was a white Christmas when I was growing up in suburban Los Angeles in the late 1960's and early 70's.

Though my parents raised my brother and me without any religion, for some reason we always celebrated Christmas. Without any religious back story to give the holiday meaning, Christmas devolved into just 3 traditions: going to the mall to sit on a fat bearded man's lap (pictured left), getting pr