The Adventures of Pie Queen

Book Your Thanksgiving Pies!

2011-11-02T11:20:00.002-04:00

It's time to think about booking your holiday pies! Yes, the Pie Queen had some successful pie-baking for y'all last year, even working out of that tiny, tiny, freezer-less Oakland studio. This year, I have a bigger kitchen and a lot more space at my disposal, so the pie-making will be happier (for me) and even tastier (for you).

What kinds of pies would you like? Here's what PQ's considering, but there's lots more in the repertoire! In general, at this time of year, PQ doesn't want to freak out you (or your guests) by putting weird things into your apple pie. Especially for this very tradition-bound holiday. Then again, PQ has made, upon request, both cherry pie and key-lime pie for Thanksgiving, and a good time was had by all, so if you're longing for Meyer lemon meringue or chocolate silk instead, it can happen. All pies are possible!

Crusts are all-butter; fabulous butter-lard or vegan/nondairy upon request.

Classic Autumn Apple Made with a mix of tart and sweet California apples, lightly sweetened and spiced. With or without raisins.

Pumpkin No Libby's here! Made with fresh, slow-roasted winter squash, eggs, cream, and spices. A custardy delight!

Sweet Potato A Southern favorite! Made with baked sweet potato, brown sugar, eggs, and cream.

Cranberry-Tangerine Something different! A PQ family fave: tangy, ruby-red, chilled cranberry-tangerine filling in a crunchy walnut crust. Perfect with fresh whipped cream!

Pecan More nuts, less goop! Finally, a pecan pie that doesn't curl your molars. Also available in Chocolate-Pecan.

Pear & Quince A luscious autumn treat.

And a non-pie offering: Cranberry-Walnut Tea Bread. An excellent, lightly sweetened loaf that's perfect toasted and buttered for T-day (or day-after-T-day) breakfast.

Pies are $22-$28 each, and can be baked in a disposable foil pan or in a reusable glass or metal pan (available for refundable deposit or a small additional fee.)

For more info and to set up an order, call me at 415-623-6212 or email at dixieday(at)aol(dot)(com).

*Dietary restrictions: I can't promise a strictly gluten-free or nut-free environment for those with serious allergies. But if you just have a common dietary-choice issue, like being vegan or wheat-free, well, PQ loves a challenge! I can make vegan, wheat-free, dairy-free and/or eggless crusts and fillings, as well as wheat-free crusts. Just ask!*

What's for Dinner? Bugs!

2011-11-02T10:47:00.000-04:00

So I helped cook up a very nice Halloween dessert a few days ago, something sure to delight and horrify even the most implacable kid. The recipe? Take one big scoop of ghostly white vanilla ice cream. Pour on a bloody avalanche of ruby-red syrup made from prickly pear (the spiny, dark-red cactus fruit called tuna in Mexican markets), as bright as the outtakes of a Richard Ramirez flick. Then came the coup de grace, the thing to separate the mere Butterfingers-eaters from the true aficianados of the deep-down Halloween scare.

I'm talking, of course, about the worms. The caramelized mealworms, to be precise, crunchy and sweet but absolutely undisguised in their utter mealworm-ness. A bloody sundae topped with actual candied worms: does it get any spookier than that?

Mealworms, it seems, are the larval form of the Tenebrio molitor, the darkling beetle. They're common in California, where they were long part of the diet of native peoples in the region. They were the final creepy-crawly delight in a night of Edible Insects and Other Rare Delicacies at the Headlands Center for the Arts last week. The event, part of a well-publicized trend towards insect-eating was conceived and run by Monica Martinez, a Mexican artist who now runs a special-events company called Don Bugito, specializing in edible insects, and chef/bioartist Phil Ross, founder of CRITTER, a very vocal champion of entomophagy. To Martinez and Ross, eating insects isn't a novelty or a gross-out dare; instead, they see the long culinary history in many countries and cultures, where bugs may have started out as a subsistance food in places where any readily available source of fat and protein was prized, wriggly or not, but later became prized as delicacies. Several reporters were on hand during our two days of kitchen prep for this dinner, and both Martinez and Ross spoke with great sincerity about the deliciousness of the bugs they were roasting, frying, and pan-toasting. As anyone who has lived in a New York City apartment knows, insects are an abundant, green and renewable resource; they will be here, rubbing their six or eight legs together and feasting in the back of our cabinets long after factory-farming of bigger four-legged creatures has exhausted the resources of the planet. (Even bedbugs, scourge of urban living, are edible, Martinez insists.)

The five-course tasting meal that Martinez and Ross came up with featured bugs (some brought in from Mexico, others local) in every course. There were no giant scorpions to saw through; this was not knife-and-fork eating. The insects--crickets, wax-moth larvae, fly eggs--were used more as garnish and flavorings than solid entrees. In fact, a few of the artists in attendance wished the insects had been more in evidence. What's the point of a bug dinner if you're not crunching down on wings and antennae? The plates were daintily sized, too, just a few bites per course. ("We're going out for a burger later," one artist whispered to me as she toyed with the last few mealworms on her plate.)

For anyone that was feeling a little squeamish, though, drink pairings came with every course, from worm-salted Mezcal Factoria del Santos to wash down the lake-fly fritters to honey wine spritzers with the wax-moth larvae and corn custards.

And while the $50-a-plate attendees may have the more elegant experience most enthusiastic bug eaters turned out to be the squadron of servers and volunteers who came out to help, many connected to Martinez through her work at La Cocina. (Don Bugito is part of La Cocina's small-business incubator program, receiving mentorship, business advice, and reduced kitchen-use rates.) Working hard for free throughout the evening, they got their reward at the end of the night, when all the extra food was piled on platters in the middle of the kitchen. No dainty portions here: the mostly-twentysomethings grabbed plates and dug in, popping Tecates and piling their plates high with avocado, corn, and zucchini speckled with escamoles fried in brown butter and tomatillo-jicama-cricket salad, munching with the same enthusiasm they'd bring to a super carnitas burrito from El Farolito. Scary? No way.

Plants of Pleasure, Plants of Pain

2011-09-26T14:14:00.007-04:00

Perhaps in honor of the Folsom Street Fair, the PQ led this walk on the wild side yesterday as part of the Headlands Center for the Arts' Desire Trails program, a series of 9 different nature walks led by Bay Area artists and scholars. Our purpose? To explore the literary, mythical, culinary, and nefarious possibilities of the Headlands’ edible and dangerous plants.

The thirteen of us (plus 2 dogs) walked along a section of the Coastal Trail starting at the parking lot of the Visitors’ Center, down to Rodeo Beach and back, traversing coastal scrub, salt-marsh wetlands, and ocean beach.

Our first plant, growing right by the trailhead, was immediately recognizable by its licorice scent, feathery fronds, and umbrella-shaped clusters of chrome-yellow flowers. It often stands 6’ tall or higher, and you probably think of it as nothing more than a stringy weed that grows happily in trash-strewn vacant lots. To the ancient Greeks, however, this plant, wild fennel, was sacred, revered as the fire-bearer. Wrote the playwright Aeschylus of his protagonist in Prometheus Bound, “For I am he who hunted at the source of fire, and stole it, packed in pith of a dry fennel stalk.”

Prometheus was known in Greek myth as the Titan who snatched a live coal from the sun’s burning chariot and brought it back to earth in defiance of Zeus, who had decreed that only the gods could possess fire. (For this rebellion, he was chained to a mountain rock in the Caucasus with an eagle perpetually eating his liver. Bummer.) A walker on the tour had a more prosaic (but equally important) reason to revere fennel: it was, she said, a good remedy for flatulence, surely a concern for the people of the Mediterranean, whose often austere diet relied on dried beans and pulses as an important source of protein.

Right now, our wild fennel is blooming and producing a lot of edible yellow pollen with an herbal/licorice scent. This same pollen, imported from Italy, is sold for high prices in fancy gourmet shops back East, and is used as a finishing sprinkle over salads, pastas, and fish dishes. How lucky we are, living where it’s free for the shaking! Soon, these flowers will be producing small, flat, greenish-brown seeds with the same distinctive scent and flavor. As Patience Grey tells us in her excellent, scholarly Mediterranean memoir/cookbook, Honey from a Weed, the seeds are used in Naples to flavor taralli, hard, ring-shaped biscuits served with wine, as well as in a famous Tuscan salame, la finocchiona. The fronds and sheaths (stems) are used in soups, as a bed for fish dishes, and with snails, pork and wild boar throughout Greece, Italy, and Catalonia.

The bulbous, fleshy vegetable that we buy as fennel at the farmers’ market or grocery store is in the same family, but bred specifically for its edible bulb. It is deliberately “blanched” during the growing process (covered with soil or mulch) to keep it white and tender, much like celery and endive.

It’s hard to walk anywhere in the Headlands without running into poison oak, a most pernicious native plant. It’s not related to the oak (it gets its name from the oak-like shape of its leaves), and it’s not, technically, poisonous. About 85% of people are allergic to urushiol, a compound produced in the leaves (also found in the leaves and fruit skins of the mango, and in the leaves and fruit of the cashew plant). It’s the body’s own allergic reaction to contact with this oil that produces the painful, oozing skin rash unhappily familiar to many hikers. Animals are generally not allergic, but if they roll around in it, they can rub the oils off on you or your clothing. Euell Gibbons, the father of foraging, once wrote that he’d heard of a fellow nature-lover taking a homeopathic approach to poison oak, eating a minute quantity of the plant every day until he was desensitized. As you might expect, PQ wouldn’t recommend this approach.

What’s this 5’ tall plant, lurking in the shadow of a gloomy cypress tree? It looks like a giant Queen Anne’s lace or a carrot gone wild, with white umbrella-shaped flower clusters, ferny leaves, and a smooth, hollow stalk speckled with red. Rub the leaves (which look a lot like carrot tops) and you’ll smell an unpleasantly musty, “mousy” odor. It’s in the same plant family, Apicaea, as our friend fennel, sharing botanical similarities with carrot, parsley, dill, cilantro, and celery. But beware, one of these things is not like the others! The blood-red spots on the stalk are the giveaway: this is poison hemlock, and every part (root, stem, leaves, flowers, seeds) of the plant is poisonous.

Wrote Keats in his Ode to a Nightingale, “My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains my sense/As though of hemlock I had drunk,” which is a pretty good description of this plant’s effect. Unlike many other vegetable alkaloids, whose effects can generally be summed up by “dizziness, confusion, vomiting, convulsions, and death,” hemlock produces just such a drowsy numbness as Keats described. Weakness and heaviness move from the legs upward, and if the dose is great enough, death follows from respiratory paralysis. It has a similar effect as nicotine, stimulating then depressing the nervous system.

Socrates, of course, was hemlock’s most famous victim, forced to drink a fatal decoction in 399 B.C. for the crime of “corrupting the youth of Athens” (including his student Plato) with his philosophical teachings.

Nearby, winding among the poison oak and blackberry vines is another killer, deadly nightshade, also known as devil’s cherry or belladonna. Just like hemlock, it shares a plant family, Solanaceae, with many well-loved edibles native to the Americas, including tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant, and peppers. (Tobacco, whose active ingredient, nicotine, is one of the most toxic plant substances known, also belongs to this family.) It has small, hanging purple or white flowers and shiny green fruits that ripen to eggplant-black in autumn. Birds enjoy them, but the effects on people can range from rapid heartbeat, seizures, hallucinations, and convulsions to death if the dose is large enough.

The active ingredient is atropine, named after Atropos, the last of the 3 Fates, envisioned by the Greeks as the death-bringer who snipped the thread of life. (Atropine does have its medicinal uses as an antidote to other poisons.) One of its effects is a drastic dilation of the pupils; supposedly, it was used as an eyedrop by women in both Ancient Egypt and Renaissance Italy to give a mysterious, dark-eyed look, hence the name “belladonna,” Italian for “beautiful woman.”

Time for a tea break! Emerging from the shade of the cypress and eucalyptus trees (planted as windbreaks around this once-treeless area), we found ourselves climbing up a drier, windswept hillside. The plants here are tougher, often with thick leaves and woody stems, built to withstand both drying winds and the fog-born dampness that can encourage fungus and mildew.

But tough can still be pretty. One of the loveliest of coastal plants is found here, Rosa californica, our wild rose. Five flat bright-pink petals surround a golden center with a sweet, characteristic rose scent. In Britain, the wild rose is known by its French-derived name, eglantine, familiar from the description of Titania’s flower-strewn bower in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Says the sprite Puck to his master Oberon,“I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, where ox-lips and the nodding violet grows, quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, with sweet musk-roses and with eglantine/There sleeps Titania sometimes of the night, lull’d in these flowers with dances and delight.

Keats, too, praised the beauty of the “pastoral eglantine.” For culinary purposes, however, we want not the flower but its plump, shiny, seed-bearing fruit, the rose hip. Dry, seedy, and tart, rosehips are not the most tasty of fruits, but they are powerhouses of nutrition, higher in Vitamin C, iron, and phosphorus than oranges. It dries well and could be pounded together with dried deer meat and fat to make pemmican, a staple travelling food for many native peoples. Now, it’s most commonly used in tea, often in combination with the tropical hibiscus flower, which has a similar bright-red color and tart, fruity taste. Rose hips can also be used to make jelly. Out of the bag of treats came teacups and a teapot, and we enjoyed some hot rosehip/hibiscus tea with an ocean view.

As we walked over the hay-strewn path (why hay? Only the Park Service knows), the tang in the air went from the characteristic coastal-scrub scent of fennel, sage and sweet Annie to the cool brine of kelp and ocean waves. Descending along the path down to Rodeo Beach, we were suddenly surrounded by acres of iceplant, a South African native (also known as sea fig) that was brought in to reduce erosion along the railroads and is now a pernicious invasive. It is edible, although not very palatable raw, as a few of the braver among us discovered. In “How to Cook a Wolf,” California food writer M.F.K. Fisher described how a beach-dwelling friend with no money but a love of feeding her friends supplied her larder by flitting along the cliffs, coming back to serve up odd but alluring salads of iceplant and crumbled seaweeds. Perhaps Fisher’s friend had a secret recipe; maybe pickling might help, or peeling. But as an out-of-hand snack, astringent iceplant would be low on anyone’s list.

Still, it would be worth it to study the many seaweeds that wash up in the cove here. Rich in minerals, these sea plants were once an important part of native diets. (The roots and tuber-like rhizomes of the cattails in the nearby lagoon are also a rich food source; crushed and soaked in water, their starch precipitates out and can be used as a paste or dried into flour.) Seaweed can simmered in broth, dried as a crunchy snack, or used in salads

Walking back, we hoped to find some late-ripening blackberries. We discovered only a few (birds and hikers having taken the rest) but enjoyed a snack of tiny homemade blackberry tarts instead, with a honey-and-sour-cream filling under the juicy fruit. Appetites whetted, we made it back just in time for a Mess Hall brunch of fresh-squeezed orange juice; Morell’s bread and butter; Sonoma goat cheese; La Quercia prosciutto; Castelvetrano green olives marinated in lemon, rosemary, savory, and thyme; Spanish-style baked eggs with potatoes, spring onions, dry Jack cheese, and heirloom tomatoes; green salad with figs; and apple-walnut spice cake.

Up at the Headlands

2011-08-26T19:43:00.006-04:00

Where has the Pie Queen been? Up in Marin, enjoying the donuts at Donut Alley, cruising the Pink Pearl apples at the Point Reyes Farmers' Market, eating meat at Cochon 555's Heritage Fire (best t-shirt slogan: Bacon Gives Me a Lardon), and cooking, cooking, cooking up at the Headlands Center for the Arts, where I'm part of the kitchen staff, now through December, entrusted with feeding the artists in residence who are doing their thing out on this fogbound beautiful place just across the Golden Gate Bridge.

The three of us, plus whatever artists and interns wander into the kitchen to give us a hand, have been making a lot of gorgeous food these last few weeks (I started officially in late July, after 2 years of frequent volunteering). Just about everything is made from scratch, even things I've never really thought you could make from scratch (macaroni! hot dogs! bloody marys!) Bacon is cured and smoked, sausage is ground, pickles are lacto-fermented--you get the drill. You want mayonnaise, you get out the eggs and oil, lemon and mustard and salt. Fresh herbs grow outside the kitchen door. There's an ice cream maker in weekly rotation, gravlax of local king salmon under salt, sugar, and fennel fronds in the fridge, a sheet tray of black plums ripening for jam and 3 bags of rumpled, bug-tunnelled windfall Gravensteins marked for apple butter.

So, yes, the artists here eat really, really well. It's a little mean to brag about how great the food is that we're making, because the typical weekday meals aren't open to the public. However, if you become a member ($30 yearly for students/artists, $50 and up otherwise), you'll get access to our quarterly members' dinners and other events, plus advance notice of public programs and other cool things, most of which come with dinner, brunch, or a more casual cafe meal attached. You can take a walk on Rodeo Beach, a hike through the hills, a skinny-dip on Black Sands Beach as part of your day, then come in and check out whatever groovy thing is happening in the studios and performance spaces. All this just 10 minutes from the Golden Gate Bridge, but it feels like a complete getaway into nature, far from the city. (But still just as fogbound as Ocean Beach, at least right now. Supposedly, fall is the gorgeous time here, as the summer fogs recede and the Indian-summer sunshine emerges.)

But since I'm here, I can give you a day-by-day peek into the kitchen at what we're doing and making here. Right now, we're winding down, with just a few more days of the summer session to go. Officially, the kitchen goes on hiatus until artists arrive for the fall session on Sept 19. What this means, of course, is time for fun kitchen projects, the leisurely putting by that's not so possible when dinner's shallots need chopping and half-a-dozen chatty artists are breezing in and out, making pots of coffee and rummaging in the fridge for a bowl of leftover Vietnamese duck in ginger-and-five-spice-broth to throw in the microwave for lunch.

On the Pie Queen's list of Things to Do, then:

Plum Jam

Apple Butter

Sauerkraut, to go with all the sausage that the other 2 guys like to make. Sauerkraut is one of those things, like homemade croissants, that doesn't seem worth making in small quantities, and can thus be a bit logistically daunting for a small kitchen. How much fermenting cabbage can a single person co-habitate with? Not a problem here. Bring on the crocks!

Bacon, same deal. I'm not much of a bacon eater, not having been brought up with it (the Jew thing), but it would certainly be cool to know how to make it, since there are way too many creepy additives in most commercial versions, and I know my friends would be very impressed if I picked up this skill. Which seems to consist mostly of giving a slab of pork belly the odd salt-and-sugar rub, followed by a few hours of smoker-tending.

I'd also like to try making the sourdough starter and bread from the recipe in Tartine Bread, which I finally broke down and bought after Chad's talk at Toby's Feed Barn a couple weeks ago. Who knows when I'll have daily access to a Alan-Scott-built wood-fired oven again, plus lots of room for rising and kneading and several bread-baking professionals on hand for consultation? If I can pull something reasonably artisan-loaf looking out of our wood oven, I'll be very pleased with myself.

Turnover Time!

2011-05-19T12:40:00.004-04:00

Hello! Well, it's been a busy couple of months, writing & baking, housesitting and more. Today's job: taking over the kitchen of the Oakland Center for Spiritual Living for a few hours. No, I'm not part of their congregation, but my pal Molly is. Last month, I oversaw all the cooking for a Passover Seder she put on there, for 50+ people. It was the first Seder they'd held there, and was by all accounts a huge success. Since I volunteered my labor, I'm getting a little payback now in the form of free kitchen space and time to donate the PQ's baking skills to another worthy cause. Yes, it's the second benefit for Swamp Cabbage, and I'm making another massive batch of fruit turnovers to bring to the feast.

Last year, making that many little pastries in my shared Bernal kitchen was pretty much a nightmare and a huge mess. Working in a big kitchen, with an equally spacious fridge and freezer, should make everything much simpler. I'm going to make & chill the dough today. If possible, I'm planning on rolling out, cutting, and filling the turnovers tomorrow, and freezing them overnight. Saturday, they'll go straight from the freezer into the convection oven, which should blast them to a nice flakey golden brown.

I had promised, like last year, to make these turnovers from foraged fruit. Unfortunately, it's a bit early in the season in this neighborhood for tree fruit, especially after such a rainy spring. No one's apricots, plums, or peaches will be ripe at least for another month. Even out in Brentwood, the apricots are still not quite ripe enough. And my public calls for backyard rhubarb and berries have fallen on deaf ears. So it looks like I'll probably be "foraging" from Berkeley Bowl and the Friday Oakland farmers' market instead. There are, of course, plenty of lemons to be had around here, but the other 2 dessert makers have already staked their claim on citrus cheesecake and candied-lemon shortbread, so no lemons for me. I do have vast quantities of last summer's strawberry jam still hanging around, so I'm wondering if some of that can be incorporated in some way.

Here's a recent article I wrote for KQED about the upcoming Wild Game Feast (with ticket info). If it's anything like last year's, it should be a ton of fun and full of excellent eats & cool folks.

Wise Sons Pop-Up Deli

2011-03-28T18:45:00.004-04:00

What you should do this Saturday morning, Jewish division:
-Go to shul
-Then go to SF's new pop-up deli, Wise Sons.

You can read about Wise Sons on KQED's Bay Area Bites column, which I wrote last week. My favorite comment on this, of course, came from my sis on Facebook, who wrote, "Your grandfather, may he rest in peace, he didn't eat at delis that popped up. He married a balaboosta and SHE cooked for him."

Too true. But should you not have a bubbe at home baking babka, you could do worse than to let Beckerman & Bloom do it for you. True, their pastrami is a little fatty for my taste, cut a little thick and not quite as tender as it could be. (I also like a lot more spice falling off the edges.) So, not Katz's, but then again, lemon trees here, not slush!

Anyway, I don't need to eat pastrami when they have such awesome, house-baked bialys loaded up with Acme smoked salmon from Brooklyn. You could do a smoked-fish throwdown between their "Ollie's Bialy" and the open-faced smoked-salmon sandwiches from Capt Mike's at the Ferry Plaza farmers' market, and everyone's mouths would be too busy happily chewing to pick one or the other.

Wheat-Free Muffins & Other Morning Treats

2011-03-22T15:09:00.005-04:00

Somewhere inside me, and not really very far in, is a bright & shiny morning caterer waiting to launch. Honestly, I'm not that interested in making salmon pinwheels or chicken satay-on-a-stick. But muffins? Coffee cake? Waffles? Frittata squares? Yum, yum, fun. Bring me your bagels, your bialys, your Nova, capers, and a schmear yearning to be free!

I got my chance to do this out of PQ Castle last weekend, when the Ecological Farming Association (of Eco-Farm Conference fame) came to Oakland for a meeting. Mostly the EFA meets somewhere down near Santa Cruz, so it was a Big Deal for folks to come to the big bad city on this side of the Bay.

I find meetings in fluorescent-lit conference rooms only bearable if a lot of strong coffee and tasty treats are nearby, so I offered PQ's catering services in support of the good work EFA does. It was also a chance to show off what we can get at our local farmers' markets--all of the organic produce was bought at the Grand Lake farmers' market, plus gorgeous marigold-yellow eggs from Danny and Becky's backyard chickens in Rockridge.

So, on the menu: wheat-free Morning Joy muffins; savory cheddar-herb biscuits; asparagus frittata; strawberries and tangerines; PQ's Strawberry Beautiful preserves; a lovely donation of Marshall Farm's Fairmont honey, from the 4 hives they've got up on the roof of the swanky Fairmont Hotel now; and, since it was Purim on Sunday, a little plateful of apricot and prune hamantaschen.

The Morning Joy muffins were a spin on Nantucket Morning Glory muffins, which usually have pineapple and coconut in them. Wanting to stay local, I doctored up the Carrot Spice Muffins recipe from the excellent Streamliner Diner Cookbook (named for an adorable restaurant on Bainbridge Island near Seattle), adding grated apple, ginger, and cloves, reducing the amount of honey, and substituting rice and oat flours for regular white flour.

Now, normally I wouldn't put in what I consider a cupcake-worthy amount of butter into a morning muffin. But, I was baking these for strangers, and I also wasn't exactly sure if the oat & rice flours might bake up denser than usual. In the interest of not serving little hockey pucks, I used a full stick (4 oz, 8 tbsp) of butter, and I have to say, they were quite nice and not greasy at all. You could probably reduce the amount of butter quite easily to suit your own taste.

The biscuits came from a brunch recipe I picked up during a weekend cooking class I took at The Apple Farm in the Anderson Valley, about 3 hours from SF. A lovely, lovely place, and well worth a trip, especially during spring apple-blossom season. Made silver-dollar-size, these biscuits make a perfect cocktail snack or pre-dinner nibble.

Wheat-Free Morning Joy Muffins

Makes 10-12 muffins

1 cup oat flour

1 cup rice flour or barley flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp cloves

1/4 tsp ginger

2 eggs

1 stick (4 oz or 8 tbsp) butter, melted

1/2 cup honey or maple syrup, or a combination

1 1/2 cups grated carrot

1 large apple, peeled and grated

1/2 cup raisins

1. Preheat oven to 375F. Lightly grease a 12-cup muffin pan, or line with paper liners.

2. Sift dry ingredients together in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, beat eggs, melted butter, and honey together.

3. Stir egg mixture gently into flour. Add carrots, apple, and raisins, and stir until mixture is just combined.

4. Spoon into muffin cups (you may not use all the cups) and fill about 3/4 full. Bake until just golden, checking to make sure a toothpick comes out clean.

5. Cool on a rack. Serve warm.

Apple Farm Cheddar Biscuits

2 cups all-purpose white (you can also use whole-wheat pastry flour)

1 tbsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/3 cup cold butter (5 1/3 tbsp)

plenty of freshly ground pepper

1 tbsp finely chopped fresh rosemary (do not use dried! substitute fresh chives or parsley instead if you can't get fresh rosemary)

1 1/2 cups grated cheddar cheese

1 cup milk, light cream, or half-and-half

1. Preheat oven to 400F. Lightly grease a baking sheet, or line with parchment.

2. Sift dry ingredients into a large bowl. Cut in butter until pebbly. Toss in pepper, rosemary, and cheese. Drizzle in milk, tossing and mixing lightly to make a very moist dough.

3. Drop by spoonfuls onto baking sheet--each biscuit should be a nice peaky, rocky lump. Bake 15 minutes, until puffed and golden brown. Serve warm.

Irish Soda Bread, for St. Patrick's Day

2011-03-17T10:53:00.006-04:00

Happy St. Patrick's Day! Here's a recipe I used just yesterday to make some very nice soda bread, based on the "Irish Wholemeal Soda Bread" recipe in Elizabeth David's majestic tome, English Bread and Yeast Cookery (yes, she deigns to give some Irish, Scottish, Welsh, and even French recipes, too). The egg is definitely an American touch but it helps make the bread a little fluffier/cakier.

Ms. D. suggests putting the soda-bread dough into a cake pan, putting the pan onto a cookie sheet, then upending a deep (7") cake pan, baking dish, or heavy ovenproof pot over the dough. This will trap both heat and moisture around the dough as it bakes, helping it to rise. The pan or pot is removed after 30 minutes, so that the bread can brown for a final 10 min. or so.

Soda bread was originally baked over turf fires in the hearth, usually in heavy cast-iron pots. For baking, the rounded lids were flipped over, so they fit into the top of the pot like a shallow dish; coals were then piled into the lid and the pot suspended by a hook over the fire, so that the bread was baked by radiant heat from all sides. Lacking a turf fire, you can imitate this by putting a heavy cast-iron (or enameled cast iron, like Le Crueset) pot into the oven to preheat for 10-15 minutes. Once the dough is ready, drop it into the pot and pop on the lid. Bake for 30 minutes, then remove the lid and let it bake another 10 min or so to brown. It's the same mini-brick-oven concept as used by the No-Knead Bread folks.

But, if you don't want to bother with this, a cast-iron skillet makes a very good baking pan, giving a good crust and helping the bread bake & brown well.

Personally, I love the taste of caraway seeds in soda bread, but you can leave them out if they're not your thing. Oh, and make sure your baking soda is reasonably fresh and hasn't been sitting over the stove for the past 5 years. It's CHEAP, and since you're probably going out to the store to get the buttermilk and caraway seeds anyway, spring for the buck or so and get a new kitchen-only box.

St. Patrick's Day Soda Bread

1 1/2 cups whole wheat or white flour, or a combination (I love the flavor and nuttiness of all whole wheat, but adjust to your taste; a non-wheat mix of oat and barley flours would probably also work well)
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp sugar (optional)
2 tbsp butter, softened
1/3 cup raisins or currants
1 to 2 tbsp caraway seeds (optional)
1 egg
1/2 cup to 3/4 cup buttermilk
extra water and/or buttermilk, as needed

1. Preheat oven to 425F. Lightly grease a cast-iron skillet or 8" cake pan. Sift dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Rub in butter until mixture looks grainy/pebbly. Mix in raisins and caraway seeds, if using.

2. In a small bowl or measuring cup, beat egg and buttermilk together. Drizzle into dry mixture, stirring gently, until mixture comes together into a moist dough. If patches remain dry, add a little water or more buttermilk.

3. Pat mixture into a plump round. Slash a cross on top with a sharp knife. Put bread into prepared pan. Bake approx. 40 minutes, until golden brown. Best served warm or toasted.

scones!

2011-02-28T14:20:00.003-05:00

Brrr! It was chilly out there, but the sunshine was bright and the Great San Francisco Snowstorm of 2011 did not materialize, so PQ did not have to bolster everyone with hot toddies to get through her demo (although they probably would have been welcome!).

On the menu: apricot-candied lemon scones, and meyer lemon-blood orange curd to go with. The scones were particularly successful, as several people came up to me, post-sampling, to say that they'd always thought they hated scones, only to realize that they only hated BAD scones.

Unfortunately, almost every bakery & coffee joint I know makes/serves these crappy, hard, tasteless scones, so scones have gotten an undeserving bad rap. (The only exception is Remedy, the coffee place at 43rd & Telegraph, in Temescal, which has gotten justifiably famous for the awesome scones made by its in-house baker. Lotsa cream & butter, and a madly perfectionist attitude, seem to be her secret...)

Given that this was a farmers' market demo, I tried to use as much stuff from the market as possible, which meant using Eatwell Farm's locally grown and freshly ground flour, made from Sonora soft winter wheat. Soft wheat, as opposed to hard, is lower in protein, which makes it less gluten-y and thus better for tender "quick" breads like scones, muffins, and pancakes rather than yeasted breads that need to rise. The whole-wheat flour was more delicate than I expected and worked beautifully, in a 2:1 ratio w/ regular all-purpose.

Since it was winter, without a lot of fresh-fruit option besides citrus, I decided to highlight the gorgeous dried & preserved fruit available at the market, using chopped dried apricots and June Taylor's candied lemon rinds. This made a lovely sweet-tart combination that balanced nicely with the fluffy, buttery, not-too-sweet scone.

Cooking Demo Today with PQ!

2011-02-26T09:44:00.004-05:00

Brrr! Yes, it's chilly out, but that infamous SF snowstorm didn't hit, so you have no excuse not to pull on your woolly socks and hat and come down to the Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market (1 Market St., SF) this morning. The PQ will be doing a cooking demo at the outdoor kitchen under the archways at the front of the Ferry Building at 11AM, followed by a book signing.

What's on the menu? Scones that don't suck! I am a lover of scones, and yet I almost never eat them outside of my own kitchen, because almost all commercial scones, particularly the ones you get a chain coffee shop like Peets or Starbucks, are AWFUL: dense, tasteless hockey pucks that aren't even good for you. At least those equally dense & tasteless little oatcakes on the countertop of every Berkeley coffee joint are redeemed by Swiffering your colon with all the fiber in there.

But it doesn't have to be that way. Like chocolate chip cookies, which are infinitely better when made at home from the recipe on the back of the chip bag (although, picky picky, I like Guittard or Ghirardelli's dark chocolate chips a million times more than the overly sweet & metallic Nestle ones), excellent scones are easy to make. The recipe I rely on is an adaptation of one from a basic British cookbook that I took out of the library in, oh, 1981 or so, in order to make scones as part of a welcome party my school was hosting for a new English exchange student. I probably had a little crush on this guy, who was several years older, wore a long knitted scarf, and had, of course, That Accent.

Now, about the egg: most British scone recipes don't call for an egg--they're basically flour, sugar, leavening, butter, and buttermilk, milk, or cream. But I'm up here with all the chickens, rolling in eggs, and I've found that adding an egg does make for a lighter, fluffier scone that's a wee bit more cakelike, so it holds together nicely when you split it open to make way for all the jam. It's really optional, though, and you can make these quite nicely with or without it.

You can also mix up the flours--I usually use a mixture of whole-wheat pastry flour and all-purpose white, but you could also try non-wheat flours like oat or barley. (I've found a mix of oat & barley flours to be a good substitute for regular wheat flour in quick breads like this one.)

Now, some troubleshooting: don't worry if you add in all the liquid and get a very sticky or mushy dough. Just skip the folding/patting/cutting step, and drop your scones off a big spoon onto the baking sheet in nice big lumps. These are drop scones, perfectly legit.

Feel free, as I know you will, to mess around with what you put in the scones. Currants and lemon rind, cranberries and orange rind, pecans or almonds and chocolate chips, golden raisins, whatever you like.

Apricot-Candied Citrus Scones

Makes 16 scones, depending on size

3 cups flour (I like to use a mixture of whole-wheat and white)

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/3 cup sugar

6 oz butter (1 stick + 4 tbsp) butter, cold and cut into cubes

2 tbsp finely chopped candied lemon or orange rind*

1 cup plain yogurt

¼ cup half-and-half or heavy cream

1 egg, preferably from a pastured hen

½ cup diced dried apricots

2 tbsp milk or cream, for glazing

1 tbsp sugar, for finishing

Preheat oven to 425F. In a large bowl, sift dry ingredients together. Add butter cubes, tossing them around with your fingers or a fork until each cube is covered in flour. Keep tossing mixture lightly and cutting butter cubes down smaller and smaller, until mixture looks pebbly. Quickly toss in chopped citrus rind.

Beat egg, yogurt, and cream together. Drizzle most, but not all, of yogurt mixture over flour-butter mixture. Grab that fork and start tossing again, scooping up from the bottom so that the whole bowlful gets evenly moistened. Mix in diced apricots.

Dump out your big, rather straggly lump of dough onto a clean countertop. Pat down gently into a round. Fold over, then pat down again 2 or 3 times, just until it smooths out and holds together. Pat into a round about an inch thick.

Cut in rounds or wedges, using a sharp knife or a biscuit cutter. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or grease lightly. Place scones on prepared sheet. Brush top of each scone with a little milk or cream. Sprinkle with a little sugar.

Bake 15-20 minutes, until golden brown. Remove from baking sheet and cool on a rack. Serve warm with citrus curd or jam.

*Candied citrus rinds are available in the market from June Taylor Jams.

White Bean Soup for Another Rainy Day

2011-02-24T22:49:00.007-05:00

I'm a much neater cook in someone else's kitchen. Especially when it's a professional kitchen, complete with a generous supply of clean towels, sharp knives, and plastic storage buckets. (Even when all the kitchen dishes have to be washed by hand.)

It's actually quite relaxing, I find, to cook for a larger group when you have the right tools for the job. Today at the Headlands, where I'm helping out for the next week while a small group of artists does a 2-week special residency (in preparation for my actual kitchen internship there this summer & fall) my job was soup for lunch, made with white bean, fennel, and kale, a kind of pasta-less minestrone.

It was very easy and pleasant to do, with a spacious expanse of clean counter on which to dice and chop, plus the elbow room of an eight-burner stove. And as it turned out, quite a hit, if I say so myself! So, here's a nourishing veggie soup for a chilly, rainy day--I leave the amounts up to you, depending on how many people you're cooking for, and keeping in mind that it's impossible to make a small amount of bean soup. And why would you want to, when it only gets better the next day around?

White Bean, Fennel & Kale Soup
Good for using up the dregs of your winter CSA box
What you need: Olive oil; fennel bulb(s); spring onions; tomato paste; white wine or vermouth; white wine vinegar; vegetable stock; cooked white beans; dino kale (cavalo nero); fresh sage, parsley, oregano; chile flakes; some grated hard cheese for serving

In a nice big pot, heat up some olive oil. Saute some chopped fennel bulb(s), sprinkled with salt, until soft and beginning to caramelize. Let it go slowly, stirring frequently, to bring out the sweetness. Add about half as much scallion/green onions, chopped, and cook until it's all soft and getting a little brown here and there. Add a few good squirts of tomato paste, and cook, stirring, for a minute or two. Deglaze the pan with a good glug of white wine and a spoonful of white wine, champagne, or cider vinegar. Cook, stirring, until liquid is almost evaporated and everything looks kind of jammy.

Add enough vegetable stock to make everything float. Simmer for 10-15 minutes, until flavors have melded. Add some cooked white beans, a little salt and chile flakes, and some chopped fresh sage, and continue simmering for another 10-15 minutes. Taste for seasoning. 10 minutes before serving, add some finely shredded dino kale. Simmer until kale is tender. Add some minced fresh parsley and oregano. Taste again for seasoning. Top with a generous swirl of olive oil (a little fat at the last minute helps relieve the austerity of a purely vegetarian soup). Serve with some grated hard cheese (dry Jack, asiago, grana, parmesan) and a sprinkle of red chile flakes.

*****

Of course, you could make this with chicken stock, or saute a little pancetta in with the fennel. Yesterday, when we made a slightly Indian-inflected (turmeric, cumin, coriander) vegetarian lentil soup for lunch, the artists ate it straight (with yogurt and scallions) and all the cooks took a bite, then turned to the fridge to forage for the leftover sausage they knew was in there. They each broke up some cold sausage in their bowl, added hot sauce, and then ate happily. So, everything's better w/ sausage and a squirt of Sriracha sauce! At least lentil soup is. (I ate mine plain, and it was still pretty darn good.)

As a perk, today I got to take home not only soup but a plateful of last night's dinner: roast chicken, potato-fennel mash, sauteed kale, lovely mushrooms and a bit of tempeh. Plus, even more importantly, dinner for the goats: a big paper-bagful of the day's veggie scraps, including carrot peelings, parsley stems, and all the not-ready-for-prime-time mustard greens. (This on top of the compost-ready leftovers--carrot tops, old chard, withering fennel--I'd already begged from the kind folks at County Line & Full Belly Farms at the Marin Farmers' Market that morning.)

The goats, like a couple of haughty teenagers, were a wee bit disdainful of all those greens, but the chickens were STOKED. Peck, peck, peck, chomp! The goats preferred their hay, and I spent some minutes simply watching them munch inside their little stable as the rain pattered down. Earlier that day, I'd come down to check on the group and give out a little hay--a redundant occupation, given that the goats have figured out how to break into their hay bin, the plastic doors of which are now semi-detached and hanging open, no matter how I try to prop them up & block them shut.

As is my wont, I did a quick head count of the chickens: 6, when there should be 7. But no stray feathers, nothing out of place. Suddenly, a volley of crowing, coming from the vicinity of the hay bin. Not behind the bin, but yes, inside it, where one of the Buff Orpingtons had snuggled down in the sweet alfalfa and laid a warm brown egg.

Roasted Carrot-Parsnip & Lentil Soup for Rainy Winter

2011-02-21T20:55:00.008-05:00

You'd think, perhaps, after writing 3 cookbooks, I might be accustomed to the thought of other people actually feeding themselves from one of my recipes, but no! Every time, it's a surprise and a thrill. Especially when it comes from a friend. My pal Susie Bright sent me an email a couple of days ago, headlined "Yr recipe is my command" with this, her own picture of the carrot-lentil soup I've been going on about. And she said it was delish, even cold! So nice to hear and see...

So, back to the ladies' luncheon...Trying to make multi-grain rolls, lemon-buttermilk cake, and soup all at once, along with taking out the recycling, throwing all the shoes into the closet and setting the table, was a little crazy. (Such is studio living--everything's right there, all in one room, and how I long for the days of my glamorous, by comparison, Brooklyn one-bedroom, with an actual door that could be closed on fallen sweaters and an unmade bed.)

So I didn't end up roasted the tomatoes like I'd planned, but you should. I also had another thought, long after the soup was made, that parsnips, those tough, unappreciated wallflowers of the root-veggie bin, would be a really nice addition. So, here's the recipe, partly how I made it, partly how it should have been made. And again, mess around the spicing as you wish. This had a nice, vaguely smoky-Moroccan thing going on, but you should suit your own taste. I would go for the seedy/barky/warming spices though, rather than leafy green things like basil or dill.

Roasted Parsnip, Carrot, and Lentil Soup

1 lb carrots, peeled but left whole
1/2 lb parsnips, peeled, split if large
olive oil
salt and freshly ground pepper
1 28-ounce can whole plum tomatoes
1 ornion, thinly sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp chipotle pepper or smoked paprika (pimenton)
1 tsp pure chile powder
1/2 tsp coriander
1/4 tsp turmeric
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1 cup red lentils
Water or chicken broth as needed
Lemon and plain yogurt, creme fraiche, or sour cream for serving

1. Preheat oven to 450F. Lay carrots and parsnips out on a baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and roll around until well coated.

2. Drain liquid from tomatoes, and set aside. Halve tomatoes and place, cut sides up, on a baking sheet. Put both baking sheets into the oven. Roast, turning occasionally, until carrots are tender and browned here and there, about 15-20 minutes. Add sliced onions to the carrot pan and roast for another 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

3. Remove both baking sheets from the oven. Let carrots rest until cool enough to handle. Dice carrots, parsnips, and onions. Roughly chop tomatoes, reserving any juices.

4. In a deep saucepan, saute carrot mixture with garlic and spices for a minute or two. Add tomatoes and lentils, along with reserved tomato liquid and juices. Add water and/or chicken broth to cover. Stir well and bring to a simmer.

5. Partially cover and cook, stirring frequently, until lentils are tender and have broken down to a nubbly sludge, adding more water or broth as needed. Taste for seasoning, and add more salt if necessary. Depending on the texture, feel free to attack this with an immersion (stick) blender, or to puree some or all of it in a food processor or blender.

6. Add a squeeze of lemon before serving, if desired. Top with a dollop of yogurt, creme fraiche, or sour cream for serving. A sprinkle of fresh cilantro leaves would also be nice.

As mentioned in an earlier post, you could also add some diced or crushed canned pineapple in unsweetened pineapple juice shortly before serving.

Carrots & Lentils for Winter

2011-02-17T13:53:00.012-05:00

So, the Ladies are coming over for a lunchy tea tomorrow afternoon, and with the rain beating down and a raw chill in the air (especially here, where icy water is actually dripping down the INSIDE of the windows), something lovely and hot must be served.

The other day, hungry but with not much in the larder, I had a sudden flashback to a NYT recipe for a kind of thick, terra-cotta-colored potage. Red lentils were involved, I seemed to remember, along with oven-roasted carrots and some warming spices. I sifted through the many torn-out, wrinkled recipes in my big, messy, much-loved recipe binder to no avail, before trying the obvious fix: entering "roasted carrots and lentils" into the NYT search engine. Instantly, there it was, circa 1998, by Molly O'Neill, Roasted Carrot & Lentil Ragout (scroll to the end of the piece for the recipe).

This is as easy, cheap, and nutritious a thing as one can imagine. Plus, it's a good pantry dish to remember during spates of bad weather, since you'll very likely have all the ingredients (carrots, onions, lentils) on hand. The spices are quite flexible--you could use any number of Moroccan or Indian-style spice combinations to very good effect, things like cinnamon, ginger, turmeric, coriander, garam masala, etc.

This time, I'm thinking of opening a big (28-oz) can of whole plum tomatoes, halving them, and putting them into another baking pan to roast alongside the carrots and onions. This would concentrate and caramelize them a bit. Then, I'll add in the tomatoes (chopped) as well as the reserved tomato liquid from the can when the rest of the veg are ready to simmer with the lentils. Some coconut milk at the end would make for a richer, creamier dish, or you could buzz the whole thing in a blender for a smoother puree.

Of course, however satisfying to our peasant forebearers, pulses and beans can be a bit dull. They can always benefit from an acidic pick-me-up right before serving. A big squeeze of lemon or lime juice helps any lentil dish. Fresh salsa perks up black-bean soup, and a shake of hot-pepper vinegar (or a few dribbles of hot sauce) gives a lift to any long-simmered beans.

In keeping with the theme of Kitchen-Cabinet Homesteading, I had a sudden brainwave that afternoon while looking at a half-emptied can of pineapple chunks sitting in the fridge after the morning's Grape Nuts. Quickly diced, the chunks and juice went into the lentils, where they added a lovely tropical tang, doing the more or less the same thing as tomatoes would. (Only do this if you have plain old pineapple in unsweetened pineapple juice, not pineapple in any other kind of juice or syrup.)

Why red lentils rather than the usual greeny-brown ones? Well, red lentils break down quickly into a gently nubbly sludge that I find very comforting. And the deep-orange color is cheering when everything outside is so gray.

So, I'm going to play around with Molly's recipe for tomorrow. Will post once I've got my own version down. And stay warm! It's crazy hailing out there!

pies!

2011-02-16T13:34:00.002-05:00

OK, pie-loving readers: I need your help. What are your favorite pie metaphors, pie puns, pie references? Here's what I've got so far: humble pie, lucy in the pie with diamonds, pie in the sky, four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie...your thoughts?

No-Knead Bread Revisited

2011-02-09T17:47:00.007-05:00

2006 called Monday, right on time, since PQ Castle had just gotten down to the crumbs of last week's loaf of Easy Multi-Grain Bread. Breakfast has always been toast-dependent here, perhaps due to the vast overstock of jam & marmalade currently stashed under the bed, or because nothing goes as well with that very necessary first cup of cafe au lait as a plate full of crunchy brown toast.

So, the Castle being bereft of bread but well-stocked with various flours and most importantly, the long-stored, much-missed, well-loved little Le Creuset enameled cast-iron pot, we got to thinking about no-knead bread, which made such a sensation when it first came out. I remembered baking it several times back then in my Cobble Hill apartment and being quite pleased with the results.

So I consulted a past PQ entry and, mindful of my own advice, mixed up a batch of dough, using a mixture of what was on hand: about 1/2 cup of white flour, another 1/2 cup of rye flour, a cup of whole-wheat and another cup of coarse-milled graham flour. Why this mix? Simply because that's what I had--a little bit each of a bunch of different things. I do think this bread benefits from at least a little white flour in the mix, although I do prefer that the whole grains predominate, for health and taste. Also because, here in the Bay Area, there is so much high-quality white bread already out there, baguettes and boules and sourdough and pain au levain, why would you bother making yet another white loaf? The fun is in making up your own mix, adjusted to taste and made out of whatever's in the cupboard.

This is part of Kitchen-Cabinet Homesteading: Use what you've got. It's hardly frugal to keep running to Rainbow Grocery or Berkeley Bowl to get another plastic baggie filled with this grain or that flour, of which half will be used and the other half left, unlabeled and unloved, to subside into rancid dusty nothingness. If you got it for one thing, find a way to use it for something else.

The dough was very wet and sticky-goopy, but I let to do its thing under a sheet of plastic wrap. Perhaps because my kitchen is quite cool--closer to 60 than the typical central-heated 70 degrees--it rose very slowly, and didn't seem to mind being left out for a full 24 hours, rather than the recommended 12 to 18. Stirred down, with a couple of tablespoons of flour sprinkled over to make it workable, it had a lovely bouncing, eager quality, supple and light, and quite unlike the denser doughs I usually make.

The trick to the second rise is finding something that this very wet dough won't stick to. Regular flour is no good; much better is rice flour, if you have it, or cornmeal. The original instructions call for rubbing a tea towel with plenty of rice flour or cornmeal, then lining a shallow bowl or basket with it to make a home for the dough's second rise. Still, however much I sprinkled or rubbed, the dough always seemed to get caught in the folds, sticking and deflating when the time came to heave it from basket to oven.

Instead, I laid down a thick layer of rice flour in a high-sided cake pan, rolled the dough into a fat round, and let it rise there. The sides of the pan girdled the slack dough, helping it stand up as it proved. Meanwhile, during the last half-hour of rising, I heated up the pot and lid in a 450 degree oven. (I've also had good luck dumping the dough onto a preheated pizza/baking stone, then covering it with a preheated, upside down cast-iron pot.) The idea is to make something like a mini brick oven, in which the dough is trapped in a very hot place with indirect heat radiating inwards from all sides. As the moisture of the dough evaporates outward, it forms air pockets inside the crumb and bathes the outside of the dough in steam, which helps create that classic, hard-to-achieve, crisp-chewy crust.

Once the oven was hot and the dough risen, I flipped the pan over--quickly! no hesitating!--and the poofy, risen dough fell into the hot pot barely deflated. Clapped on the lid and into the oven for about 40 minutes, another 15 minutes with the lid off, then a final all-around crisping up out of the pot on the oven rack for another 5 or 10 minutes.

Out of the oven onto the counter to cool--because of the dampness of the crumb, this is a bread that needs to cool down intact. No matter how divine it smells, let it be for at least an hour. Sitting there on the counter, it's still cooking inside, and ripping into it while it's still crackling-hot will result in a loaf that's gummy inside rather than appealingly moist.

Sliced later in the day, spread with butter and marmalade, this was a lovely, full-flavored, wholesome thing, spattered with holes inside, rustic and very appealing, and well worth the 10 minutes of actual work it required.

No-Knead Whole-Grain Bread

1 1/2 cups lukewarm water
1/4 tsp active dry yeast
15 oz (3 cups) mixed flours, including white, whole-wheat, coarse (graham) whole wheat, and rye, or whatever mix of flours you have on hand
2 scant teaspoons sea salt

1. Sprinkle yeast over the water in a measuring cup, and let sit for a few minutes, stirring occasionally, until yeast has dissolved.

2. Stir flours and salt together in a big bowl. Add yeast mixture, and stir vigorously until a rough dough is formed. Cover with a damp tea towel or a sheet of plastic wrap. Place somewhere cool-ish, dry, and out of the way for 18 to 24 hours. It will roughly double in size and look bubbly.

3. Stir down, adding a little more flour as necessary to make the dough able to be shaped. Fold dough over onto itself several times, until it holds together. Shape into a ball.

4. Thickly powder a high-sided 8" or 9" cake pan with rice flour or cornmeal. Place the ball in it. Drape with plastic wrap and let rise for another 2 hours, until well-puffed.

5. 30 minutes before dough is fully risen, preheat oven to 450 degrees. Place a heavy ovenproof pot and lid (like an earthenware or enameled cast-iron Dutch oven) into the oven.

6. After pot has heated for at least 30 minutes, remove the lid and quickly dump the dough into the pot. Clap on the lid and return to the oven to bake for 30-40 minutes. Remove lid and bake for another 15 minutes to brown crust. If a thicker crust is desired, remove loaf from pot and let it bake bare on the oven rack for another 5-10 minutes.

7. Remove from oven and let cool for at least an hour before slicing.

Kitchen-Cabinet Homesteading, or Boston Baked Beans for a Rainy Day

2011-01-30T12:56:00.009-05:00

After weeks of undeserved balmy sunshine, woke up today to more typical Northern California winter weather: blustery rain and flannel-bathrobe temperatures. Nothing in the house for the usual morning meal chez PQ (plain yogurt over fruit, cafe au lait, toast) due to PQ Castle's being vacant since Wednesday in order to enjoy (and write about) the 31st annual EcoFarm Conference down in Asilomar.

Perhaps this would make some people put on their jeans and head out to the store for milk, coffee, and Grape-Nuts. Instead, inspired by the Homesteading workshop I'd just attended, as well as inherent Sunday-morning laziness, I padded from bed to to food-storage room (a.k.a. the studio's kitchen cupboard) to see what PQ had put up for the winter. Ah, oatmeal, currants, an apple, and a tin of smoky lapsong suchong tea: breakfast! And over here, a bag of multi-grain cereal, a jar of honey, polenta, rye flour, whole-wheat flour, yeast, and salt--all the ingredients, plus butter, for Easy Multi-Grain Bread.

Because I love to make gingerbread, there's also the dregs of a jar of molasses. Leftover from making bread-and-butter pickles last summer, some dry mustard, and from general thriftiness, a jam jar filled with dried little white beans. Boston baked beans! I haven't made these for years, but they are amazingly tasty and satisfying, bearing no resemblance to those disgusting mushy canned ones bathed in sweet goo, and a great way reason to keep the oven on all day. Warm apartment! They are a fantastic example of the sum being madly more than its parts. The parts are really cheap and unexciting, but all it takes is a long, slow commingling in a dark warm place to turn them into the pride of New England.

Not having grown up with pork in the house (the Jew thing), I appreciate the Little-House-on-the-Prairie idea of salt pork, or pork fatback, more than I really want to eat it, so I generally make my beans without the typical slab of pork fat on top. Today, though, I still had the remains of the holidays' tub of pastry-making, happy-pig lard in the fridge, so I dropped a spoonful of this good stuff into the pot first.

You should really soak your beans overnight, unless, like me, you wake up wanting baked beans for dinner today. Since my beans were small (pinkie-nail sized), I figured a brief soak would be enough. So, a cold-water soak for an hour or so, then another hour or so of simmering, until I could dip out a spoonful of beans, blow on them and watch their skins curl back. Drain the beans and save the cooking water. Then, the beans go into my recently retrieved-from-storage, incredibly battered, $1-at-the-Bernal-Hill-Garage-Sale, pig-greased Le Creuset pot. A peeled onion in the middle, and generous sprinkles of mustard, smoked paprika, and salt over the top, plus ropy dark wriggles of molasses. Add back enough bean-cooking liquid to just cover the beans. Bring this all to a simmer on the top of the stove with the lid on, then into a preheated slow oven, 250 degrees.

When you think of it, stir gently and check the liquid level, adding more bean-cooking liquid or water to keep the beans just barely submerged.

So, that's been the morning's activity. Bread dough rising and beans baking to go with the collard greens from C & S's garden, stashed in the fridge from last week's party with the ladies. Now, perhaps, time to peel off the flannel jammies, put on shoes and get some provisions from the farmers braving the rain at the Temescal farmers' market. Can never have too many satsumas at this time of year!

Order Your Pies Now!

2010-11-18T11:07:00.002-05:00

The Pie Queen is taking orders for Thanksgiving! If you want a delicious homemade pie to serve next week, with no work from you other than handing over a little cash money, now's your chance! You can pick up your pie in the East Bay or have it delivered in the East Bay or SF on Wed., Nov. 24 or the morning of Thurs., Nov. 25.

A word about our flavors. We're not really into making kooky, crazy pies. We don't want to freak you or your guests out by putting weird things into your apple pie. Especially at Thanksgiving. We made a ravishing pumpkin-ginger mousse one year, in lieu of the pumpkin pie, and the guests lost it. Where was the PUMPKIN PIE???? It didn't matter that the mousse was delish; what mattered that what was supposed to be there, wasn't. So we'll let others make grapefruit-huckleberry-campari tart and curried fig-balsamic galettes. At this time of year, there's just something comforting, and right, about having the same old thing.

So, our most popular Thanksgiving pies are listed below, but hey, if you're longing for Meyer lemon meringue or chocolate silk instead, it can happen. All pies are possible! Crusts are all-butter; fabulous butter-lard or vegan/nondairy upon request.

Classic Apple.
$22.

Classic Apple with Raisins. Marvelous.
$22.

Pumpkin. Made with fresh slow-roasted winter squash. Custardy goodness, not stolid stodge.
$22

Sweet Potato. Southern fave! Made with roasted sweet potatoes.

No-Crust Pumpkin or Sweet Potato. A pie without a crust? Yes! If you're avoiding wheat or grains, you can still enjoy the best part of pumpkin pie. We'll bake our delicious pumpkin or sweet potato filling for you "as is" and skip the crust.
$15

Pear & Quince. Luscious autumn treat! Silky pears layered with gently spiced poached quince.
$25

Cranberry-Tangerine. Something delicious different! Nutty, crunchy walnut or pecan crust, tangy chilled ruby-red cranberry filling with a hint of tangerine. A PQ family favorite!
$25

Payment is COD, cash only. Email PQ at dixieday(at)aol(dot)(com) for more information.

PIE QUEEN RETURNS!

2010-11-17T13:49:00.004-05:00

Just in time for High Pie Season-- Pie Queen Kitchen is open for business! It's just a week until Thanksgiving, and you know what this means...you're gonna need a pie, or 3. But you've already got a lot on your plate--turkey! tofurkey! gravy! buttermilk mashed rutabagas-n'-taters!--and perhaps facing down a crust and peeling all those apples is just one task too many.

And that's fine with me! I'd love to be your pie-bakin' hands for hire.

We're on yur Thanksgiving table, bakin' yur pies!

Here at Pie Queen Kitchen, our pies are all-natural & made from scratch, using local & organic ingredients whenever possible. I like to know where my ingredients come from, don't you? So, Pie Queen Kitchen uses locally ground Guisto flours, Clover and Straus butter and cream, eggs from local, free-range hens, all-natural lard from happy pigs, and fruits and vegetables grown by farmers I trust.

Here are some of our most popular Thanksgiving pies. But any pie is possible! These pies are made with all-butter single or double crusts. Truly delicious butter/lard crust, or dairy-free vegan crusts, available upon request.

Classic Autumn Apple. Made with a mix of tart and sweet California apples, lightly sweetened and spiced. With or without raisins.

Pumpkin. No Libby's here! Made with fresh, slow-roasted winter squash, eggs, cream, and spices. A custardy delight! (Also available in a tofu-based, egg-free version.)

Sweet Potato. A Southern favorite! Made with baked sweet potato, brown sugar, eggs, and cream.

Cranberry-Tangerine. Something different! A tangy, ruby-red, chilled cranberry-tangerine filling in a crunchy walnut crust. Perfect with fresh whipped cream!

Pecan. More nuts, less goop! Finally, a pecan pie that doesn't curl your molars. Also available in Chocolate-Pecan.

Pear & Quince. A luscious autumn treat.

Pies are $22-$28 each, and can be baked in a disposable foil pan or in a reusable glass or metal pan (available for refundable deposit or a small additional fee.)

For more info and to set up an order, call me at 415-623-6212 or email at dixieday(at)aol(dot)(com).

*Dietary restrictions: I cook in a home kitchen, so I can't promise a strictly gluten-free or nut-free environment for those with serious allergies. But if you just have a common dietary-choice issue, like being vegan or wheat-free, well, PQ loves a challenge! I can make vegan, dairy-free and/or eggless crusts and fillings, as well as wheat-free crusts. Just ask!*

Oderatus, sinuata

2010-02-12T11:37:00.008-05:00

Why am I awake and typing madly at 7am? Who knows? But the coffee and toast are made and I'm cozy in bed listening to the cold rain, glad that it's watering the sweet-pea and bachelor's-button seeds planted yesterday up in the garden. Oh, sweet peas! How I love them. They smell so incredibly sweet, especially the old-fashioned ones, which were specifically bred & cultivated for their scent. Their Latin name is "Lathyrus odoratus"--as you might expect, anything with "odoratus" in the name is a good thing.

Most really sweet-scented flowers use their perfume just like you do--for sex! Since they can't hit the bars, they have to get the hotties to come to them, by sending out a waft of tasty, tasty scent to attract the creepy-crawly pollinating bugs who'll climb in for nectar. Presumably, flying past a rose is like walking past a doughnut shop for a bee--irresistible.
BRAIN SEZ...MUST...HAVE...CRULLER...NOW!!!!

On their way down to the nectar bar, they get powdered in pollen, which is full of the plant's genetic material. Then they head off to flower #2 (because each flower only offers a tiny siplet of nectar, so everyone can get a little lovin') and track the previous flower's pollen all over the floor. Which makes the plant babies (fruits with seeds, to grow more plants) happen.

Not surprisingly, many flowers are only perfumey before they're pollinated. Once they get knocked up, as it were, they don't bother. Sweatpants and dirty hair after that! The flower itself often drops its petals and dies off shortly after pollination, so the plant can put its energy into fruit & seed production. If you're growing flowers for cutting, it's important to be able to visually identify your flowers' status pre- and post-pollination, because a flower that hasn't been pollinated will last a lot longer in a bouquet than one that has.

Sweet peas, though, just spread their gorgeousness around for the sake of it, since they self-pollinate before the flowers even open. Thank you, sweet peas! Since I've always had such limited gardening space, I've always felt strongly that any plant had to pull its weight and be either edible, a useful companion plant (like alyssum or marigolds, which repel aphids from other plants), or a banquet for the pollinators (bees love anything blue, hence the bachelor's buttons). But now I'm mellowing and making space for that which is simply shamelessly pretty, too.

My latest favorite is Salpiglossis (also called Stained Glass Flower or Painted Tongue), which I fell in love with out at the farm at UCSC. I had one last year, bought at the fabulous Flora Grubb, called Chocolate Royale, which produced a big ball of really beautiful deep, deep maroon-brown velvety flowers, all summer long. Plus, I love that its Latin name is Salpiglossis sinuata--so belly-dancer-ish!

And in your gardening news: stop by new gardening/groovy stuff shop Succulence on Sat, Feb. 13, for their grand opening party. I met co-owner Amy Shelf at the Underground Farmers Market last month, and she's just as nice as can be (she and her husband run 4-Star Video on Cortland Ave; Succulence is out back). Plus, she'll have some of her groovy preserves and pickles on hand. I'm going to go and remind her about her offer of a lemon-marmalade-making date...

And Pam Peirce, doyenne of gardening in the Bay Area's kooky microclimates, has recently revised and updated her classic reference book, Golden Gate Gardening. She'll be talking at Flora Grubb at 1pm on Sat., Feb. 28th.

lemon tart

2010-02-03T03:36:00.009-05:00

Living in SF on and off for 15 years, there's a certain built-in sense of place you get after a while. You know automatically which way to turn to get the train outbound or inbound, which way is the ocean and which way is Oakland. You fall asleep on BART coming from Rockridge, look out the window and know immediately, with a sinking heart, that you've missed 24th St and are headed somewhere past Daly City. The train pulls up in Colma and you realize you've gone 4 stops past where you wanted to be, and that you're going to have to sit on the cold concrete bench and wait for the next Bay Point-bound train to take you back to where you meant to go in the first place. Then again, at least you woke up in Colma, which is more than most people do.*

Back to 24th St, 14 Mission bus to Cortland, 24 Divis up the hill, finally home again, home again, jiggity jig. And unlike your umbrella last week, you didn't leave your french tart pan on the train, a good thing.

As usual, I was coming home after a transbay baked-goods run, not wanting to face rush hour and then late-night driving in the Green Bean, aka the PQ's nifty '95 beetle-green Taurus. The destination? Leslie's family-and-friends b-day party, a soupfest of fun, with cheese, bread and two fab soups, lentil and chicken and rice. Yes, Chicken Soup with Rice, just like the Maurice Sendak poem.

Leslie asked for a sweet, and since I still had the last few lemons from D's Oakland tree in the fridge, I made a lemon tart. What a hit! I used the recipe from the Bouchon cookbook as posted on Epicurious, and at first I was wary, since it was more of a creamy/fluffy filling rather than the typical jelly-ish french-bakery style. But it was tart and super-lemony and just lovely. Partly because I made one tart for what turned out to be 15 or so people (plus kids), everyone only got a little sliver, which was maybe why they all raved and wished for more. But regardless, I think that Mr. Keller might be onto something. Here's my version:

Birthday Lemon Tart

I made this with Meyer lemons, which are sweeter and more fragrant than your usual Eureka/Lisbon lemons. You can increase the sugar a little if you can't get Meyers.

Tart crust:
1 1/4 cup flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup sugar
7 tbsp butter, very cold, chopped into chunks
1 egg yolk
1 tsp vanilla
2 tbsp cold water

Mix flour, salt, and sugar, then cut in butter until it forms little nickel-sized bits. Whisk egg yolk, vanilla, and water together; add and toss together until dough comes together when squeezed. Don't worry if it seems crumbly; it will get moister as it rests. Put in a zip-lock bag, seal, and chill for at least 1-2 hours. Roll out into a round on a lightly floured surface (if it's too sticky to roll, just press into pan as evenly as you can). Tuck into a 9-inch fluted metal tart pan with removable bottom. Bake for 20 min at 350F, rotating as necessary for even browning, until golden brown. Let cool.

Filling:
2 egg yolks
2 eggs
1/2 cup sugar
grated rind of 1 lemon (use a microplane!)
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
4 tbsp butter

In the top of a double boiler over simmering water, beat yolks, eggs, and sugar together. Whisk until mixture is foamy and beginning to thicken. Add 1/3 of lemon juice and keep whisking. After a minute or two, add another 1/3 of juice. Repeat. Keep whisking until mixture gets thick and opaque, and mounts up a little as you whisk (whisk should leave trails). It should take about 10-12 minutes. Turn off heat. Beat in butter, 1 tbsp at a time. Remove top of double boiler from water, and let cool. It will thicken and get fluffy as it cools.

Spoon filling into crust. If desired, brown lightly under the broiler (watch carefully, as it will only take a minute or two). Serve chilled or at room temp.

Leslie's dad wanted me to be his Big Love second wife after tasting this; her mom fully agreed and said I could come for dinner at their house anytime, as long as I brought them a tart.

* Colma is the Bay Area's necropolis, with more graveyards than neighborhoods. Sure, some people do live here, but the vast majority? Very quiet.

Steph's Cafe this Thursday

2010-01-27T17:46:00.003-05:00

The Pie Queen is throwing open her jam cupboard! And not just for the usual friends and family, but for YOU. How? Sign up here and come to the Underground Farmers' Market on Thursday, Jan. 28 in San Francisco. Both the sign-up and the market are free, but you gotta be on the list. Why? Because the market, essentially a bake sale by your jam-making and kombucha-fermenting neighbors, is selling stuff made in people's non-health-inspected kitchens. So the city can't let it happen unless it's a "private party" with a guest list.

It's going to be great, though, and the PQ is madly emptying her jam cupboard and making marmalade and fresh bread to sell. Putting an emphasis on going local as much as possible. Bread will have whole wheat flour from wheat grown at Pie Ranch, honey from my buddy Eli, who keeps his hives in the Castro, cornmeal from a local farmer and miller, and butter from Straus. And the jams will be local, too--my friend Deb just gave me a big bag of lemons from her backyard tree in Oakland. Tomatoes for the cool tomato-ginger preserves came from Riverdog in Guida last summer, and apricots came from an old orchard up in Davis as well as from Frog Hollow in Brentwood, as did the pears for the vanilla pear butter.

Mad scramble to get some signage together, as well as creating the actual product. But last night's SPUR panel discussion about the Economics of Street Food was really inspiring. I'm thinking this pie/jam/baked stuff biz could really happen this year. Selling under the name Steph's Cafe this time. Come and say hello!

Up in the cool gray north

2009-11-24T13:27:00.002-05:00

Ok, so driving in a rental car on a rainy night through a city I've never driven through before--a little hectic! But I cowboy'd up and now after a night on the aerobed, I'm up and at 'em in cool, gray Seattle, drinking some good french press coffee at the Sun Cafe in Phinney Ridge. Mike and I went through the T-day menu last night, and I did have to do a little special pleading to get some green stuff on the menu--in Mike's eyes, completely superfluous on a day dedicated to stuffing, mashed potatoes in multiple flavors, gravy, turkey pit-cooked in the Weber, marshmallow-topped MBY casserole ("more butter than yams"), Velveeta mac n' cheese, 3 kinds of pie, an a jello mold. But I'm flying my Cali flag and bring the famous Bay Wolf pomegranate-and-persimmon salad to the table, perhaps without the goat cheese and pecans since there will already be a maple-walnut pie to follow. And maybe I'll even slip in a panful of lemony-garlic kale, too.

Lots of greens--dino kale, ruby chard, broccoli rabe--growing in the neighbors' front gardens here, which is nice to see.

More to follow! And feel free to post or call with all your piemaking questions--operators are standing by!

Pie Therapy

2009-11-23T19:43:00.003-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving week, from the Pie Queen!

Or, as she's being called these days, the Pie Therapist.

Talking about pies, as I do all the time but especially at this time of year, I'm continually amazed at how many people have serious fear of pie-ing. So I put out a call for potential patients, and got three: Kevin, Leslie, and Nancy, all of whom got a free one-on-one session with the Pie Therapist, and at the end, a hot pie coming out of their very own oven.

More fun stuff from the archives:

Lard Crusts!
I'm writing this deep in the Southwest Airlines scrum at Oakland Airport, on my way to the festivities in Seattle. My ticket to the party at Mike and Renee's? A tub of organic, local, happy-pig lard, packed in my suitcase next to the sweaters. This is not the first time I've traveled with apples and lard in my suitcase. Which makes me either a) weird, or 2) dedicated to supreme pie action.

turnovers to the people

2009-11-14T15:55:00.005-05:00

Well, hello! I missed you.

But not enough to write, you say. Thanks for working those abandonment issues, PQ!

Mmm, yes, well, be that as it may, PQ is back and just in time for Thanksgiving, pie time! As usual, we are offering a free fear-of-pie-ing class. Have the PQ in your kitchen, get covered in flour, and be freed from your dependence on those horrible frozen crusts forever! Flour, salt, a little sugar, butter and/or lard: voila, pie crust!

In fact, I'm getting going early with the pie-making this year, thanks to the benefit for Julie Kahn's Florida documentary Swamp Cabbage on Sunday. Turnovers for 150? Sure! It would only be more difficult if I had to take all of them up to Marin on the bus. But amazingly, PQ has a car now--her first ever! It's been a friend these past couple of months, toting crates of apples and boxes of pears home from hither and yon. The theme of the benefit dinner is wild & foraged, and really I should have been picking blackberries and scavenging for local apples and figs all these past months. But time got away from me, or something, and all of sudden, I was madly searching around for turnover timber that I could get for free or cheap. What's in the kitchen now:

-25 lbs of apples and a huge, beautiful Musquee de Provence squash, gotten in trade from Julia at Mariquita, for working at her bi-weekly Mystery Box pickup outside Piccino on Thursday. I ferried flats of strawberries and big plastic bags of veggies into Smartcars and Priuses for a few hours, and came home with a sense of duty done.

-Another milkcrate of knobby little apples, picked with Lauren of Produce to the People. Through Neighborhood Fruit, Lauren heard of a guy out in the avenues who had extra apples up high on his backyard tree. Being a fellow Bernalite, she picked me up in her truck and we nipped over there, ladder and pickers in hand. The guy was rather bemused to have two flannel-wearing cheerful ladies in his backyard, taking turns getting the fruit off his tree. Weirdest part: after telling us about a recent surgery he had to remove some moles from his torso, he insisted on whipping up his shirt to show us the rows of metal staples in his back and chest. He then followed us down the street and gave us both his card.

-40 lbs of beat-up kitchen pears from Frog Hollow, which I had to pay for, albeit much less than their usual $4/lb.

Wish I could have scored some quinces and huckleberries, but these will work...so now onto the pastry making! Am thinking of trying the quick-puff recipe in my Williams-Sonoma baking book, which is essentially just regular pie crust that's rolled and folded, rolled and folded three times to increase the flakiness and butter-layering. Report to follow!

We're Jamming...

2009-06-25T15:23:00.003-04:00

You'd think, working in a place full of fruit, jam, and pastries, my first priority on my day off would not be making bread and jam. But it is! I could spend the day trying to find my mysteriously-disappeared cell phone, but I've done what I could, and short of a little more desultory searching, I don't think there's much more I can do to bring it back from Buenos Aires or wherever it's decided to go junketing. So instead: apricot jam!

This is a special windfall batch of jam, courtesy of the Free Farmstand. Tree and pals gleaned over 400 lbs of beautiful Blenheims from an old orchard up in Davis. They brought back the bounty to the city, where the promise of fruit (and the beautiful Sunday afternoon) resulted in an actual line snaking back from the table--something I'd never seen before. The offerings on the table were mostly mixed-up greens (including some very nice bunches of orach, aka mountain spinach) and bunches of herbs...the greens (including the radish greens from the Star Route Farms French breakfast radishes for which I'd traded a few super-ripe candy-cot apricots the day before) made an excellent mess sauteed with young garlic and a little soy sauce and sesame oil over brown rice.

But mostly it was all about the fruit, and along with a couple of other intrepid jam makers I scored a whole flat of very ripe Blenheims to take home for jamming. Ten pounds of free fruit, gathered with love and generous intent, plus a few knobbly lemons from someone's backyard.

Right now, batch #2 is simmering on the stove, along with a pot of black-bean soup, and the dough for whole-wheat oatmeal is rising on the table. After a cold, cold start, it's a lovely sunny day out there, and the first flower has opened on the Royal Chocolate salpiglossis, living up to its name.

Seeds are Sprouting!

2009-05-21T12:02:00.005-04:00

Another day off, another post! Starting the day with coffee and homemade corn muffins with Sarabeth apricadabra jam, then pulling all the random empty glass jars and bottles out of my pantry so I can go to Rainbow Grocery and fill them up, courtesy of today's 20% off coupon.

Yes, any Wed & Thursday, you can use that 20% off coupon from the back of the Yellow Pages. Go, look in your phone book. There's one coupon for every month, so you can save up the pricey stuff you buy, like cheese or vitamins, and get it snappily discounted. Pretty cool, and thanks to my Facebook pal Sara S. for alerting me to this. Maple syrup, honey, dry beans, weird flours--I'm stocking up!

And soon it will be strawberry jam-making time, too. The jam cupboard is pretty much empty by now, except for a few jars of leftover winter marmalade. Time to start filling it back up with summer fruit! Lagier might have sour cherries for pie and preserves this weekend at the Ferry Plaza farmers market--maybe this will be the year I finally make my own brandied cherries. This jam season will be a good one, if only because I finally found the one tiny piece of jam-making equipment that had been missing: a lid-lifter! Essentially, just a chopstick with a magnet on the end, but completely necessary for fishing hot flat lids out of their sterilizing water. Thank you, Cole Hardware and your well-stocked preserving shelf!

What else to do today? Get my glasses fixed at the always accomodating Urban Eyes, brave the fashionistas to see if I can get lunch money for some castoffs at Buffalo Exchange, research & write a bunch of columns for Cosmic Cooking (hello, Gemini!) and Bay Area Bites (hello, rose wines!), and pick up some more pots for the patio. Yes, the Summer Salad Project continues apace.

The lettuce has popped up, as have the radishes. Even the carrots are finally sending up feathery little emissaries to the wider world. Very exciting! Picked up some yarrow (a temptation for the pollinators, and a good drought-tolerant flower) and another salpiglossis (yes, we're representing the solanums pretty heavily this year, what with the potatoes and tomatoes too) at Flora Grubb last week--now I just have to hit a more common-man nursery for ordinary stuff like marigolds to keep the aphids away.

Happily, there's one just down the hill, Flowercraft Garden Center on Bayshore at Cortland. They have loads of good stuff geared more towards people with yards (rather than people with lofts, like FG) and they're not too proud to carry pansies and petunias and yes, marigolds. Plus, numerous lavenders, and even six-packs of honey-scented sweet alyssum, a cute little bedding plant that's also a great habitat/food source for various beneficial bees and wasps. It's such a good home for aphid-munching wasps that even the big organic farms, like Lakeside, interplant it among their brassicas (broccoli, kale, collards, etc) to keep the crawly population down. They also had tons of big, healthy-looking early girl tomatoes, and I'm wondering if I can fit one more big bucket out there for one more tomato plant, even though it never really gets warm enough for tomatoes here. By the time the temps warm up, in Sept/Oct, the days are too short. (I had dozens of tiny still-green tomatoes on my plants come last November.)

And because I'm such a sucker for seeds, I also came home with seeds for borage and chives. The chives because the flowers make such a pretty pink vinegar, and because if you're growing potatoes, you ought to grow chives. (Where's my sour-cream bush?) The borage for its pretty starry blue edible flowers, but also because it's such a great bee-feeder. Bees love blue, and they particularly love borage, as do butterflies. The young leaves supposedly taste of cucumber, but they get big and hairy fast. Susceptible to powdery mildew in our damp climate, but we'll see if Gayla's milk-and-water spray helps with this.

So, on the patio now: lettuce, red and green; easter-egg radishes; cherry tomatoes, 2 kinds; morning glories, blue; marigolds (planted among the tomatoes); sweet alyssum; salpiglossis, red and chocolate-brown; sunflowers; borage; chives; scarlet runner beans. Seeds still to plant: cucumbers, sugar snap peas, more lettuce.

blogging in my underwear

2009-05-14T13:31:00.006-04:00

Well, hello! One thing that's become abundantly clear, these last few months: full-time job=good for bank account, bad for just about everything else, especially writing! It feels like I barely have time to wash my hair and eat cereal before getting back on the bus to work these days, a feeling definitely exacerbated by having to work 11 hours+ every Saturday. And then needing to write for Bay Area Bites and other places in my 5 minutes of spare time.

But you didn't come here to hear me whine, did you? After all, I have a job, which is no mean feat these days, even if it's one that I'm not especially trained for or good at. Right now, I'm good enough and hopefully getting better as I get it together.

Today, though, is a Day Off, and what am I doing? Lying on the bed in my underpants typing, obviously, but mostly I'm waiting for the seeds to sprout on the back patio. The Summer Salad Project is underway, and right now, with nothing but a few square feet of concrete, I'm going to have a garden or else. I'm on the waiting list for a couple of community gardens in Bernal, but until then, it's container gardening for me.

(A good inspiration/resource for beginning city gardeners is the website and book You Grow, Girl. I'm particularly intrigued by her suggestion of using a dilute (50/50) milk-and-water solution as a foliar and soil feed to prevent mildew and generally boost plant health. Also with adding crushed eggshells to the soil, or adding crushed eggshells to your watering can, so the water used picks up minerals from the shells).

The fingerling potatoes, planted back in early March, are looking very good. Or at least their leafy parts up top are; presumably, somewhere in the 15 gallons of dirt below, beautiful baby potatoes are growing, too.

This week's backyard determination came from Sunday's inspiring trip to the truly cool and awesome Flora Grubb. Even if you don't have a single corner in which to put a plant, it's worth it to grab a pal and swing down here on a pretty afternoon. You can treat this place like your own private garden, one full of palm trees and swaying tropicals and relaxing lawn chairs and little tables for your shiny red coffee cup. Yes, Flora Grubb is that very San Franciscan place, a nursery with an in-house Ritual Roasters coffee bar.

S., bless his heart, stood in the long sunny-afternoon/Mother's Day line and brought me the most velvety cappuccino you'd ever want to bless your lips, then went off to admire a pink-leaved hip Hawaiian beauty while I hit the seed rack and tried on sun hats. Came home with seeds for French baby carrots, heavenly blue morning glories, emerald-and-ruby salad mix, and my favorite multicolored easter-egg radishes.

The lettuce, carrots, and radishes are planted, and I've been going out every morning to drizzle on water to keep the seedbeds evenly moist, as promised. A few scarlet runner beans have been shoved into another pot, and now I've got to go out and plant the morning glories, already starting to sprout after their two-day water bath.

Nothing has come up yet, since it's only been a couple of days, and carrots in particular are verrrry slow to germinate. But that hasn't stopped me from squinting hopefully at the dirt as I shake on the water, looking for a jump-starting cotelydon.

What else? I'm blogging about astrology and food over at Astrology.com, your portal to the stars, and being a wee bit jealous of Maria Helm Sinskey's wonderful life over on KQED. I've got to re-start my lovely Eatwell Farms local-wheat sourdough starter, since I left the last batch a wee bit too long and it started growing some fairy-hair mold around the edges, although the rest of it looked great.

LA Book Fest!

2009-04-24T02:36:00.003-04:00

Headin' south! Yes, I'm zipping down to Los Angeles on Friday. Why? To party at the LA Festival of Books, of course. Look for me on Saturday and Sunday at poet-party central, a.k.a Manic D Press booth--#666, as if you had to ask, over by the LA Times stage-- signing and selling cute pink copies of the cute pink Astrology Cookbook. Come by, say hi, and I'll sign your book, your arm, your cleavage, whatever you want. Got to pack the pink glitter sparkles now, but see you down south!

COOKING DEMO!

2009-04-03T11:58:00.003-04:00

Come on down! I'll be demonstrating some hot Aries delights at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market this Saturday morning, April 4th, at 10:15am. Heckle, munch, buy an Astrology Cookbook and get it signed. Buy 12, and hand them out to your adoring friends! And then stick around to see my pal Bibbi do her own cooking demo at 11am.

The Ferry Plaza Farmers Market is outside the Ferry Building at the foot of Market Street, every Sat. from 8am-2pm. If you're standing in front of the big clock tower, the outdoor kitchen is under the arcade on your left. See you there!

I'm also heading out to the Twin Cities over Easter weekend, and would love to do a demo/book signing/radio show anywhere out there. If you've got contacts in the Minneapolis/St Paul area, let me know!

Saturday Demo at the Ferry Building!

2009-03-31T13:25:00.004-04:00

Well, I've been shamelessly remiss in hyping the brand-new fabulous Astrology Cookbook. The book party at Red Hill 2 weeks ago was awesome, if I say so myself. I cooked like a madwoman in the 2 hours between getting home from work and wriggling into my red crushed-velvet Susie-Bright-mojo dress. Having been at too many cheese-cubes-and-hummus parties, I dived through aisles of Good Life Grocery and came home with lamb, lamb, cilantro, bacon, and bacon, emerging smokily from the kitchen to load up S.'s shiny red car with tubs of pig candy, loads of lamb meatballs with yogurt dipping sauce, piles of fresh strawberries, brownies from the shop, and a slightly squashed heap of lemon madeleines.

We had to use the story-hour kiddie chairs as a makeshift bar for the Arkansas wine and fizzy juice, since Red Hill isn't really set up for cocktail parties, which is what the event turned into. First, though, I had to do a dramatic reading from the book, no mean feat for a cookbook author. But hey, I'm game, and by the end I was writhing on the floor and crawling up Roxxie's legs to demonstrate just how naughty Scorpios can be. Cookbook signings don't usually include a floor show, but they should, and they will, if I have anything to do with it.

I don't know if this Saturday's event will be quite so racy, but I'm going to do my best. Come down to the Ferry Building at 10:15am on Saturday, April 4th, and find me at the outdoor kitchen (out front, to the left of the main entrance) demonstrating some fabulous Aries recipes and taking on hecklers from the audience.

Have a Nice Day!

2009-03-29T18:10:00.009-04:00

There's a really fabulous Clive James poem out there that begins,

The book of my enemy has been remaindered,
And I am pleased.

The rest of the poem is great, too, but like the title of Snakes on a Plane, those first two lines tell you everything you need to know. Schadenfraude is not nice, I know, but don't we all indulge in it, and isn't it satisfying in an evil and unnecessary way to see some really hubristic, over-hyped tome sitting around with the $4.95 sticker on it at Dog-Eared Books.

Except, of course, when it's YOUR book. And not even stickered, but in the free box. Or, to be completely honest, not even IN the free box, but simply dumped on the Saturday-morning steps of the still-shuttered Red Hill Books with the Lance Armstrong biography and the tattered movie tie-in edition of Lord of the Rings, just ASPIRING, hoping for a home in the free box.

Yes, that was me yesterday morning, admiring my name up on the poster advertising last week's Astrology Cookbook party, when I looked down and saw my name, again, this time on my own previous book, which had been dumped like an old pair of shoes on the steps.

The pages were studded with post-its; whoever had owned the book had liked the recipes for hot honey lemonade and avocado-honey hair mud enough to make it easy to find the right pages. But clearly, not enough to provide continued indoor bookshelf space.

I called E. to tell him, since he'd been privy to the labor it took to birth that particular book, and of course he laughed with me. "Did you pick it up?" he asked, and the answer was damn skippy I picked it up! It's mine!

And then, still talking, I got on a BART train downtown only to see a dude sprawled on the front seat, pants around his ankles, pissing grandly into the carpet in a show-stopping arc, a fountain the likes of which I'd really never seen before, even when changing the diapers of my infant nephew. I wish I could erase this image from my brain, but I fear it's going to be there for a long, long time. Even four years of riding the NYC subway hadn't really prepared me for this.

Hamantaschen Time

2009-03-09T03:09:00.008-04:00

Whoa! Things are sneaking up on me this week. Like daylight savings time, which I didn't realize was happening today, since my phone aka watch automatically re-set itself. I was a little surprised that I'd slept til 8:30am this morning, but figured it was just a reaction to working a long 10+ hour day again. And suddenly it's plum-blossom and Girl Scout cookie time, and very soon, Purim, arriving on Tuesday! Which means, of course, that hamantaschen must be made. But where to get the correct, gorgeously wrapped gummy sheets of apricot paste, made, I believe, in Syria? Back in Brooklyn, they sold for cheap at Sahadi's, my friendly local Lebanese grocery store. Here, I'm sure Haig's out in the avenues has them, but it would be great to find someplace closer to home. There's a Middle Eastern grocery store on Mission near 26th St that I've been meaning to check out; now may be the time!

Why apricot paste? What you want for your hamantaschen filling is what's called lekvar: a thick, dense paste of sweetened dried apricots, which can then be pureed with golden raisins and mixed with orange and lemon juices for balance and complexity. Apricot jam WILL NOT do; it's too runny. You want the concentration of dried apricots, so the filling won't run out or burn during baking. You could, of course, soak, cook, and puree your own dried apricots, but the sheets sold in middle eastern grocery stores--imagine a 1-inch thick brick of apricot fruit leather--work like a charm. (Like canned pie filling, canned apricot lekvar is, unfortunately, usually filled with corn syrup and other junk). I've posted numerous hamantaschen recipes here, but here is the best one, adapted from the fabulous Jewish Holiday Baking book by Canadian baking Jew Marcy Goldman. Prune filling is also surprisingly good; poppyseed, another trad filling, sounds good but requires a special grinder to pulverize the seeds correctly.

sitting in your house, and spanish chickpeas

2009-03-04T11:08:00.004-05:00

Alas, my Rockridge idyll has ended abruptly, a week early. My good pal Leslie and her roomie had both departed for other timezones, and I got to housesit Leslie's adorable cottage, complete with comfy bed and backyard lemon tree. It was lovely to have real privacy and get out of the tiny, chilly environs back in Bernal. And, of course, it was easy enticement to get the East Bay-dwelling S. over for dinner with no bridge in between. I was looking forward to another week of warmth and tea in the kitchen and good books to read from Leslie's library.

Until Leslie's roommate got sick in Manila and decided to come back early, putting an end to the need for my housesitting duties. Bummer! So I'm back in Bernal, counting down the days til my hoped-for next East Bay housesit, also in Rockridge, for Shar's sister-in-law. Not I'm around much, what with working million-hour days right now, but still...privacy is bliss, especially when you're around the public all day.

So, you need your plants watered or your cat cuddled, let me know! No smoke, no drugs, no loudness, and I might even leave you homemade muffins in the freezer.

I did have fun cooking on the beautiful Wedgewood stove in Leslie's kitchen, including this last-minute, made-up-on-the-way-home-from-BART rainy-day dish.

Sort of Spanish Chickpea Stew

a couple strips of bacon or a few slices of chorizo
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 onion, sliced
1 carrot, diced
1 stick celery, diced
3 cloves garlic, chopped
a good splash of red wine
1 15-oz. can chickpeas, drained
1 28-oz large can diced tomatoes
2 tsp smoked paprika (pimenton)
1/2 tsp thyme or rosemary
salt and pepper, and hot sauce if you like it
1 cup frozen peas, optional

Dice the bacon or chorizo and cook until fat renders. Add onion slices and olive oil, and fry until onion is beginning to brown. Add garlic, carrots, and celery. Saute for another couple minutes, stirring frequently. Add wine,chickpeas, tomatoes, and spices, plus salt and pepper. Bring to a simmer, turn heat to low, and cook until flavors are blended, 15 minutes or so. Add a handful of frozen peas at the end for color. Serve with wine and good bread.

PQ & You!

2009-02-16T18:54:00.012-05:00

The Book has a print date! Hopefully, all going well, it will ship from the printers on March 10, getting to CA sometime around St. Patrick's Day. Come on down to the Bernal Heights premiere party on Friday, March 20th at 7pm at Red Hill Books on Cortland, hurrah. This is a particularly Bernal-icious event, given that the bookstore is just a few blocks from both PQ Castle and the world headquarters of publisher Manic D Press.

On April 4, at 10:15am, I'll be cooking up some hot Aries love at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market in downtown San Francisco. This is one of my favorite places to do a demo, because they have a fabulous display kitchen and it's great to be able to walk around the market with a basket early in the morning, sourcing ingredients from some of the best farmers in Northern/Coastal CA. Green garlic, artichokes, lamb, and hopefully strawberries will all be involved! Stick around after my demo and check out the skills of pal Bibby G., who runs a cooking-class-as-team-event business called Parties that Cook. She'll be doing her thing at 11am, same bat channel.

Also on the PQ docket: I'll be at Omnivore Books on 2pm on Feb. 28th in Noe Valley, talking about cooking with kids and signing copies of Kids in the Kitchen: Fun Food. Tasty snackies will be served at all events, so come on down!

So, what is this new book of which I speak? It's The Astrology Cookbook: A Cosmic Guide to Feasts of Love. It has a fabulous, very Daily-Candyish cover, and supertasty recipes guaranteed to woo the Scorpio or Capricorn of your dreams.

More exciting promo events and info to follow as the publication date gets closer, but until then, I'd like to take a page from the promo-brain of the wonderful Brooklyn author Ayun Halliday, who did a 30-day "virtual tour" by stopping by 30 different blogs in 30 days to promote her food memoir, Dirty Sugar Cookies. Some bloggers interviewed her; some talked about the book, others took the day off and let Ayun guest-blog. I'm thinking that May will be PQ's virtual-blog-tour month; if you'd like to have PQ on your blog some day in May, please let me know! All hosters will get a copy of the book, and maybe even cupcakes!

From the Mailbag

2009-02-10T11:35:00.007-05:00

Let's open up the mailbag this morning, shall we? Oh, it's a couple of questions from our good pal Shar in Oakland. (Somehow, this reminds me of Carole and Paula on The Magic Garden going over to talk to the Chuckle Patch...)

Dear Piequeen,

I have a fabulous couple getting married at the end of March who is pretty certain that they want my Mexican Hot Chocolate cupcakes with my decadent Kahlua Cafe Au Lait icing but for their non-choc option I wanted to offer them cupcakes featuring a seasonal fruit for that time in our region. what is good that time of year in general and how about this year specifically? What crops are gonna be in next month? I want to start getting a box from Frog Hollow. What will be in it??

Your biggest fan,
Shar
www.sharlenesbabycakes.com

Thanks for writing, Shar! Mexican Hot Chocolate Cupcakes with Kahlua Cafe au Lait icing, mmmmm. Those are my favorite, too! So, fruit-wise, your main local option at the end of March is sunny California citrus. Meyer lemons, tangerines, blood oranges, navel and juice oranges: they will all still be available, probably coming from central and southern California. I'd suggest Meyer lemon cupcakes with lemon frosting, or orange cupcakes with orange frosting.

The best way to get citrus flavor into cake batters is to use the aromatic rind. I swear by my microplane zester, which gets the zest (colored part) off quickly and easily without taking much of the pith (bitter white part underneath). I also like to put the sugar I'll need for a recipe into a bowl and zest the peel directly into it, mixing it in well to get all the aromatic oils well-distributed. The fragrant sugar can then be added to the recipe as directed. Here's a recipe for candied orange peels, in which the fruit slices are soaked in syrup and then baked for that stained-glass effect--cut into triangles, these might be a nice decoration on the top of each cupcake.

CANDIED ORANGE SLICES

2 large, thin skinned oranges
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup water

Wash and dry oranges and slice as thinly as you can, about 1/16th of an inch thick. Use a mandoline if you have one or a very sharp knife. In a medium pot, combine sugar and water. Bring to a boil and stir until sugar dissolves. Remove from heat and cool ten minutes. Add oranges to pot. Cover and let stand 2 hours. Preheat oven to 225°. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Arrange orange slices on baking sheet and press flat. Bake two hours or until golden. Cool completely. Store in an air tight container in single layers or between layers of parchment.

What else? Dried fruits, of course, and nuts like almonds, walnuts, and pistachios.

As for Frog Hollow, I would wait to sign up for a weekly CSA box until the farm's own fruit starts coming in, in May. Right now, they are sourcing fruit (citrus, apples, kiwi) from other farms around the state, and the quality/mix is not much different from what you'd get at the farmers market or a good market. I would wait til late spring/early summer when you can be sure of getting their fantastic Brentwood-grown cherries, apricots, peaches, plums, and nectarines.

All the Single Ladies

2009-02-02T11:36:00.009-05:00

"Men are Unnecessary" could have been a headline for yesterday's New York Times, what with the lead Style section piece on womyn's land in Georgia and a companion piece in the magazine, 2 Kids+0 Husband=Family, about a tight group of 40-something co-parenting single moms, none of whom are dating and all of whom have daughters adopted from China. Both these articles followed a Home & Garden piece, Living Together, but Apart, about 2 older, single female artists creating a new shared live-work paradigm out of a pair of lofts. Did the editors just assume that no guys would be reading the paper on Superbowl Sunday? Or were they giving a little nudge to the beleaguered women in the kitchen stuck mashing the guacamole as their spouses slumped slack-jawed on the couch, beer in hand? "Pssst!" the NYT seemed to be saying. "There's another world out there, ladies. A place in the woods where you'll never have to shave your legs or watch car commercials ever again."

The womyn's land piece was pretty good, even if it did have Dr. Leakey-ish online headlines about "Lost Tribes of Lesbians." Personally, I don't think these women are lost; I think they know exactly where and why they're there. But it was great to see pictures of fabulously wrinkled and white-haired old lezzies (having, natch, a potluck) in place of the usual whiny fluff about Botox and bridesmaids. And just to see even a little lesbian-separatist herstory in something as mainstream as the NYT is really, really cool.

The co-parenting piece was intriguing, as was the Thursday piece about the artist pals who created separate, but still joined, live-work spaces for themselves in a Tribeca loft. (What was especially intriguing was that although the loft was bought outright by the more affluent friend, both women supposedly had equal say in how their spaces were redesigned, including a poshly outfitted kitchen for the non-owner (the owner herself had be talked into having even a minimal kitchen; a microwave and a coffee maker are all she uses.) The financial breakdown--who paid for that fancy stove?--wasn't detailed, except to say that the women had talked everything through but had little in writing. Presumably, the non-owning friend pays rent, but how do you make renovation demands/requests when you're not footing the bill?) Still, it's encouraging to think of the different options out there beyond the usual Noah's Ark couplings.

(Well, I could dig into this much deeper, but alas, deadlines loom, and I have a cold and much need for tea and really spicy Thai chicken soup. More to come!)

As Bees in Honey Drown

2009-02-01T13:39:00.015-05:00

Yes, the El Rio concert was great. West Grand rocked out, thanks to Jackie, Debbie and the dude twins (no, for real, they're twins) on bass and drums. They were followed up by Reform School Girls, fronted by my old pal Pam Russell, who could read the phonebook on stage and be fun. This time she had false eyelashes AND a ratted-up bouffante, like Joan Holloway (from Mad Men)'s slutty little sister. As they claim on their Myspace page, "No women's prison can keep us out!"

Coolest thing is that Pam's gotten a book deal for her (deliberately) bad poetry, thanks to a savvy agent who saw her original chapbook. The Better Off Dead dancers may have to come out of retirement to promote this! As they clai

It's crazy warm out again although you'd never know it from being inside my freezing-cold house. Am off to soak up some vitamin D now, and possibly hit up the Free Farmstand for greens and herbs and whatever else they've got. Being a regular customer there, I feel I should give back a little--am considering whipping up a batch of vegan lemon cupcakes to bring along, since I've already thawed out a bunch of last year's frozen Meyer lemon juice to make cold-fighting lemonade this morning. Have to remember to bring a copy of my Honey book for Free Farmstand organizer Tree, also an urban beekeeper. A lot of people who like honey think of the hive as a honey factory, and bees as merely the anonymous means of production. Beekeepers, however, often end up fairly indifferent to honey. (As one home beekeeper told me, "Now if bees made chocolate, that would be something!") They may get into beekeeping for the sweet stuff, but they stay with it because they fall in love with their bees, every one of them. One beekeeper told me that if a stray bee finds its way into his car after he's been caring for his hives, he has to bring it back. He puts himself in the place of the lone bee: "If you've been constantly surrounded by 30,000 of your best friends, you'd be pretty lonely out on your own all of a sudden."

Tree, too, just gives away his honey, while wishing more people would appreciate the beauty and community organization of the hive, rather than just wallowing in the sticky end result. A recent in-depth investigative series by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer about corruption in the global honey industry should, I hope, get more people buying their honey locally, where they can know their producer, and where their producer knows his/her bees. It's also time to warm up those cupcake-making muscles, since I've promised to bring some cupcakes to the ladies of nearby Veritable Vegetable, in exchange for some fabulous pixie mandarins from their hotshot produce stash. Who needs Davos when you can network at Eco-Farm? Will bake/write for food, that's how we roll here at PQ Castle.

What else? Mike S. finally got his cherimoyas, only a year after his initial request. But late as they may be, he's got 'em now, courtesy of S., my produce connection, who took care of my needs through his cherimoya-growing buddy at the Berkeley Farmers Market. 4 super-jumbo, hard (so they wouldn't turn to mush in the process) 'moyas were shipped off to Seattle, where they're currently ripening to tropical sweetness in a paper bag with a couple of bananas. Looking forward to getting the full report once they're eaten!

Out of the kitchen, PQ has started writing for Bay Area Bites, the food blog for local public tv/radio station KQED. This week, my first post is about the potential for making foie gras more humane and sustainable--by shifting it to seasonal-only production. Read it and please post a comment there, if you like.

West Grand Rock N' Roll

2009-01-30T18:56:00.005-05:00

So, what's up tonight? A rockin' show at El Rio, your dive! My pal and all-around butch stud mama hero Jackie Strano is back on her stage with her old Hail Marys band-mate Debbie in a new band. Called West Grand, they're describing themselves as "Jeff Buckley meets Black Sabbath" and I am very excited to go...I like Jackie's acoustic stuff but really, rocking out is what she was born to do.

I remember going to one of the very first Hail Marys shows, back when it was Jackie and a bunch of gay boys; it morphed into an all-dyke lineup later. At one point Shar & Jackie set me up with their new drummer, whom I ended up dating for a couple of years. I've been to more shows of theirs than I can count, and go-go'd onstage for them many times. This isn't the same band, of course, but the punk rock and roll heart will still be there. Don't miss it! Show starts at 9pm; West Grand probably goes on sometime around 10-10:30. $5 cover and cheap drinks all night long.

And, thanks to Downtown Donna's Facebook postings, I just realized that the line-up includes Reform School Girls, another all-girl band featuring the fabulous Pamela August Russell, of Better Off Dead Poets' Society fame, and ex-Pussy Tourette backup singer Sally Dana. Wheee! This is a night for an outfit and eyeliner, for sure.

And, you know, free oysters!!! from 5:30pm til they run out.

car pooling to eco farm?

2009-01-12T19:41:00.004-05:00

So, who's going to Eco Farm next week? As usual, the carless PQ is looking for carpooling options...I can get down to Santa Cruz if necessary, but would love to get a ride from there. Happy to oblige with entertaining chat, gas money, and navigation assistance...Any driving farmies out there?

Cafe Gratitude, Chez PQ

2009-01-09T20:49:00.005-05:00

Yep, we're rolling our own here at PQ Central. What are we grateful for, right NOW?

Nextmuni, which means never having to loiter on the corner praying for the otherwise-mythical 67 bus.

Debbie Harry, who is still performing, this time in a benefit for my Brooklyn writer pal Ayun Halliday's kids' school.

Qupe Syrah, red roses, charming company and beef carbonnade with silky mashers at the sweet and perhaps underappreciated South Park Cafe, tucked away South of Market between 2nd and 3rd Sts, between Brannan and Bryant.

Finally finishing the final edits on the cookbook manuscript, wheeee!

Swedish popstress Lykke Li and her acoustic, nearly a cappella version of Dance Dance Dance with Bon Iver, and Jane for turning me on to both.

Talking to my mom this morning, and hearing about her fab trip to Florida to visit her beau, always a good reminder that love can find you at any age.

Oops, Nextmuni is telling me the bus is almost here! More to follow!

bonfire of the aloha cowgirls

2009-01-04T23:07:00.006-05:00

Well, it just goes to show...there PQ was, yapping about her untarnished greens-hoppin' john-cornbread history on New Year's Day, and what did I have for dinner this Jan. 1 but roast beef, mashed potatoes, Brussels sprouts, gravy, and yes, a couple of black-eyed peas. I had my beans a-soaking when Shar called up to say that Mama was making a roast, and that's all it took, after a morning brunch at Rose's Cafe in Cow Hollow (mimosas and the salmon "cozy", a fat slab of fresh salmon tucked into a thin ciabatta-like bread with herb mayo, greens, and radishes)to nip on over to Fruitvale to knit, help with the gravy, and make cookies with the kids. And, of course, eat more meat! First, though, we had to wander through North Beach for a cappuccino at Caffe Trieste, perfect as always. It was a sunny, washed-clean day, a good one to wake up to after dinner at Chow (bacon always makes Brussels sprouts better! Really, their Brussels sprout app--done in the wood-burning oven, I'm thinking--is fantastic, as is the very nice roasted chicken with sweet-potato mash), a Marga Gomez show, and a little champagne party in Bernal the night before, with Roxy, Nance, and Papa Sueno.

The key to Brussels sprouts, as with its other brassica sisters like cauliflower and cabbage: caramelization! Get those suckers cooked through and then BROWNED, in the oven or in a hot, greasy pan on top of the stove, and you'll eat them like candy, I swear. Lynn, Shar's Canadian mom-in-law, did a bang-up job with these for dinner on New Year's Day, and even though nothing can compete with a rare rib roast, they came pretty close.

And then, a couple days later, there was Papa Sueno's cocktail party, featuring tasty Cable Car cocktails of rum and curacao with a cinnamon-sugar rim on the glasses, mmm. Plus sushi AND cheese balls, both made by star cooks Susie & Heather, who also did the amazing food at Papa S.'s wedding last year. Handmade cheese balls, two kinds! Who would have thought, besides Amy Sedaris? There were also dainty little Rice Krispie treat balls dipped in milk chocolate, which I didn't try (being distracted by the miniature dark-chocolate milky way bars) but which garnered numerous moans of molar-curling delight. And as if that wasn't enough, I nipped on over to Lulu's bonfire afterwards, a posse of lovely ladies gathered around the fire pit in her Emeryville backyard. I passed out homemade pumpkin cookies (still tweaking the recipe, but will post soon) and shopped the clothes swap, donating some of the dresses and shirts passed to me by my older sister, and coming home with a snuggly black-velour coat, an excellent "Aloha Cowgirl" t-shirt, and many other pretty things.

Luck & Money

2008-12-31T14:37:00.005-05:00

A cold, foggy day out there, but I've got my black-eyed peas, my rice, my greens and my cornmeal. Which means I'll be set for making Hoppin' John, greens, and cornbread, for good luck and money (cornbread for gold, greens for folding money) on New Year's Day. Now, I just need to decide if I'm going the ham-hock route for the hoppin' john (always tastier, although smoked paprika--Spanish pimenton--works too), and pick up some more garlic & lemon for the greens (since I like them quickly steamed and then mixed with sauteed garlic and lemon juice in the California way, not boiled-to-khaki as traditionally they would be in the South) plus buttermilk for the cornbread.

Such are my Southern roots that I can't remember a New Year's Day where I didn't have black-eyed peas and cornbread. Maybe not in Italy, where the New Year's foods were lentils and zampone (a whole stuffed pig's foot) or a particular kind of fat sausage. I do remember going to the Carrefour on New Year's Eve day and coming home with a pannetone the size of a football helmet for 1 euro. We rang in the New Year in Bologna's main square, crammed shoulder-to-shoulder with every inhabitant in the city as prosecco bottle missiles rained overhead. In the morning, we made coffee and pannetone French toast--the perfect way to start anew.

I love taking a long walk on New Year's Day--I remember E. and I walking all over the city one chilly green January 1, cresting Randall Rock and running into friends old and new all along the way.

Out with the old, in with the new. Leave the regrets behind and face the challenges with glee.

chestnut soup

2008-12-28T17:52:00.005-05:00

And while we're talking winter soup, here's another one: chestnut soup! Inspired by the smooth-as-velvet, froth-topped bisque from NYC's Cafe Sabarsky, and adapted from a NYT recipe by Mark Bittman, this is very easy and tastes much richer and more luxurious than its simple ingredients would lead you to believe.

Chestnut Soup

12 to 15 fresh whole chestnuts
[or 12-15 peeled whole vacuum-packed or jarred chestnuts]
2 tbsp butter
1 onion, peeled and diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 carrots, peeled and diced
1 parsnip, peeled and diced
1 branch thyme
4 or 5 sprigs of parsley, minced
1/2 cup dry sherry or madiera
3 cups chicken broth
2 tbsp creme fraiche
4 or 5 crimini mushroom caps, sliced and sauteed in butter until tender and browned

To prepare whole chestnuts, cut an "x" in the skin of each chestnut with a sharp knife. Roast at 325F until the meat is tender and the skin dries out and curls back. Peel chestnuts while still hot, otherwise skin will stick to the nut.

Melt butter in a saucepan. Saute onion, garlic, carrot, and parsnip, stirring, until tender. Add crumbled chestnuts and sherry, and cook, stirring, over low heat for 2 or 3 minutes. Add herbs and chicken broth, a little salt (depending on the saltiness of the broth) and simmer gently for 35 to 40 minutes. Let cool for a few minutes, then puree in a blender. Taste for seasoning, adding more sherry as needed. Return to the pan and warm gently. Top with a spoonful of creme fraiche and a few slices of mushroom.

This went very nicely with a green-and-pink salad from the mystery box: crunchy little gem lettuces, shredded radicchio, and sliced watermelon radishes, in an apple-and-mustard dressing of olive oil, cider vinegar, Dijon mustard, garlic, and a little rosemary-apple compote.

borscht!

2008-12-28T13:40:00.006-05:00

A party centered around fried potatoes: what's not to like? As usual, the annual latke party was happy, grease-spattered chaos, with the four year olds building a fort in my bedroom and the adults circling the frying pans like starved hyenas.

And therein lies the inherent difficulty of a latke party: for latkes to be at their best, they must be freshly made and fried. You can't make the potato mixture ahead of time, or it turns into grayish, soupy mush. And in my purist opinion, you can't really fry the pancakes beforehand, or they get greasy and flabby, tasting like warmed-over hash browns. But frying to order, with only two not-very-large frying pans at one's disposal, means producing only a mere handful at a time, certainly not enough to get everyone at the party all the latkes they deserve.

Oh, well. There was a lot of hot borscht to fill in the gaps, and this turned out to be the savior of the party. Who knew everyone loved borscht so much? Or this borscht, more to the point, because there were a lot of folks who claimed to hate the beet, or be indifferent to borscht, before this batch.

Nothing fancy in it, just a whole lot of Mariquita Farm's fabulous mystery box vegetables, augmented with fresh beets from the Alemany Farmers Market. In a big pot, I sauteed chopped onions, garlic, carrots, and a lot of parsnips in a splash of olive oil. (If I'd had celery root, or rutabagas or turnips, I'd have thrown some in too. Petrouchka, or parsley root, is a nice addition if you can find it.) Then peeled grated raw beet, a handful of chopped raw cauliflower, shredded cabbage, a can of chopped diced tomatoes and their liquid, a branch or two of thyme, enough water and/or chicken or beef stock to cover the vegetables. Why so many parsnips? Well, I had them around--lots in the mystery box--and they do nicely in a soup, relaxing all soft and sweet and earthy as they cook.

Season with plenty of salt, a spoonful of caraway seeds, and a hearty splash of apple cider vinegar. Bring to a simmer, turn down heat and let it simmer very gently for an hour or so. Add the shredded beet greens, plus a good handful of minced fresh dill and parsley, just before serving. Taste for seasoning, adding freshly ground pepper and a little more vinegar as necessary--it should have a slight tang to balance the sweetness of the beets, carrots, and parsnips. You could make this heartier, by starting with some meat bones and adding potatoes and white beans, but I like it as a vegetable soup. Since this was going with latkes, I didn't add potatoes, but you could certainly put them in.

It's hard to give quantities, since it's the kind of soup that's based around how much stuff you have on hand, and how much soup you want. It's almost impossible to make in a small quantity, and anyway, why would you want to? It keeps well in the fridge or freezer, and you can down it by the quart, since it's all veggies. Top each bowl with a spoonful of sour cream and a sprinkle of minced fresh dill, and serve with a slice of challah or seeded rye bread. Note that this is the hot, winter-in-the-Ukraine kind of borscht, not the same as the simple straight-up purple beet soup that's typically stirred to pinkness with sour cream and drunk cold from a glass with your scrambled-eggs-and-Nova and toasted bialy at Barney Greengrass.

Thanks must be paid to Jen, for her superlative, truly perfect sugar-dusted soufganiot (Israeli jelly doughnuts), filled with the homemade marmalade she got from PQ; to Liz for her excellent chocolate-chip gingersnaps; to Ken, for bringing six-packs of He'brew, the Chosen Beer; to Joie Rey, for Ritual Roasters coffee and a big wedge of Humbolt Fog goat cheese; to Nancy and Roxie, for taking over the frying, and bringing lovely Bodega Bay chocolates; to the happy flowers from Karlyn and Ray; to Shar for schlepping over the bridge, pink champagne in hand, after a very long day, and exciting all of us about Whale Wars; to Bill for bringing his very sweet mom (who introduced herself to everyone saying "Hi! I'm Bill's Mom!"), to Phil for finally intoducing his daughter Violet, now three and a half; to Susie for taking the train all the way from Santa Cruz, and for nearly crashing another latke party along the way; to Eric M., Liza, and DG for taking on potato-grating duty, and to all the other friends, new and old, who came and squeezed into the tiny house, with children, wine, and good cheer in tow.

yarn!

2008-12-26T12:32:00.004-05:00

What a pretty day! It's clean and blue out there, crisp and Bay-Area-wintery; perfect for doing some pre-latke-party errands, like stocking up on Russian chocolates (actually made in Brooklyn, for the Russian immigrant market) and gelt out in the avenues, digging out the dreidels (which live in my bags of random papers and tchotckes, somewhere under the desk), vacuuming and skimming all the random junk off the living room surfaces while the roomies are out of town.

But first, coffee and waffles! It's been a while since I jacked up the waffle maker, and they sure are good with butter and Sarabeth's apricadabra jam.

What I really need to be doing is KNITTING, of course. I promised a handknit scarf to Omar, and then word got out. And now his younger brothers want one, too--pink for Ches and bright multicolors for Kai. So this will be my bus activity for the next couple of weeks. Luckily C. and K. are still little, so a foot and a half of scarf will be more than enough. And I've also discovered a quickie, less yarn-intensive way to do ribbing: German rib, aka fake fisherman's rib. Fast and easy, and it doesn't take double the time and yarn like real fisherman's rib. Just cast on an odd number of stitches, k2, p2, repeat to end of row. Start with k2 at every new row, and you'll get a nice, neat stretchy ribbing, perfect for a light scarf. For Omar, though, I might try this multidirectional diagonal scarf, which looks very cool.

Off to shower and get out into the daylight now, but stay tuned for the excellent chestnut soup recipe!

Warm you up

2008-12-24T16:08:00.006-05:00

What is it with R&B singers and raunchy Santa songs? This not being my holiday, culturally speaking, I have no problem with lines like, "Hang up your pretty stockings/Turn out the light/Santa Claus is comin' down your chimney tonight" or "I"ll slide down your chimney and bring you lots of joy/ what I got for you mama, it ain't just a toy."

1. Santa Claus Wants Some Loving--Albert King (also covered by Lynnard Skynnard, but I'd go with the original)
2. I'll Be Your Santa Baby--Rufus Thomas
3. Backdoor Santa--Clarence Carter
4. Santa's Back in Town--Elvis Presley (he blows the lyrics here, but it's worth it just for the grin)
5. Santa Baby--Eartha Kitt, r.i.p.

bring your lipstick

2008-12-24T01:42:00.008-05:00

I had a roommate back in college whose style motto was "Always dress like you're going somewhere better later." She had perfect shiny black hair, bright red lipstick, and a carefully or semi-ironically cultivated cut-glass accent (her parents were Brits, and she'd spent her high school years divided between Rodean and Spence). She was fond of black stretchy skirts and lacy black stockings, all of which made her an exotic anomoly among the jovial preppy types. Having a fondness for black garments and red lipstick myself, I was immediately charmed, and took her advice to heart, which meant, for me, wearing silver heels, black sweaters, Tres Tres Dior lipstick and Cinnabar perfume. She really did dress up like she was heading to a Soho cocktail party instead of a kegger in the courtyard, and it was fun--often more fun than the parties themselves, with their "Come on Eileen" and Everclear punch in trash cans.

I'm reminded of this every time I wander out of the house to do just a few errands, flanneled and bedheaded, only to end up, several hours later, in an art gallery, then a bar, still sans makeup and avec tennies. You can never predict when San Francisco will scoop you up into something better, and as a result you should always dress for what you want to happen, not just for the bank-and-post-office errands on your docket.

Like today, for example. Mostly it was writing, dropping off books at the library, buying Grape-Nuts and yarn. I knew I had to pick up 20 lbs of potatoes for the upcoming latke party chez PQ, and then meet Bucky at 18 Reasons for the Chanukkah Spin n' Fry. Which meant, of course, that I assumed I could nip over to Dogpatch, grab the potatoes from Julia's Mystery Box* truck, and get home again in time to change for my descent into hipster jewery.

But then, when I arrived at the truck, Julia was just finishing up selling her vegetable mystery boxes, about to sit down to dinner at Piccino with her son and his pal, all of whom had been moving enormous boxes of parsnips, carrots, greens, potatoes, radishes, radicchio, turnips and more from the corner of 20th and Tennessee. As she was kind enough to invite me to join her, what could I do but tuck my bags of potatoes behind me and sample her nettle-and-rice soup and amazing, super herby-garlicky roasted Dungeness crab, cracked and heaped over cannellini beans, and share a simple margarita pizza? By the time the boys were discussing the various merits of lemon tart vs. flourless chocolate cake, it was past 8 and I was late for the Spin n' Fry, still in my only-for-errands clothes and, since I hadn't bothered to bring a purse, woefully unequipped with lipsticks, comb, or other purse-stashed accouterments. And Julia, with true farm wife's generosity, had gifted me with a mystery box of my own, out of the small stack of no-shows. Which meant I was now underdressed and loaded down with some 40 or 50 pounds of rambunctious organic vegetables.

Nothing to do for it but find a cab and head over the Mish, even as scruffy as I was. Who could miss a roomful of Jews, brunette, bespectacled, and smiling over the brisket and latkes, the gelt and the dreidels? Bucky was there, with a coterie of Bike Coalition chicas, and we talked food, bike repair, Christmas Eve appetizers, and somehow, the Infamous Pirate Party of 1996. And then it was on to Anchor Steam's Christmas ale at the 500 Club, where I ran into a small posse of past and present Bay Guardian writer/editors, one of whom grew up in the same part of Buffalo as Bucky did. Yet again, small city, long life.

On the way out, various knots of people were puzzled but fascinated by my enormous plastic bag of vegetables, which I clutched in my arms like a huge basket of laundry. Not quite as cool as the conversation-starting Slinky I used to wear as a bracelet back in college, but definitely more edible.

*What is the Mystery Box, you ask? Well, Julia's husband, Andy, is an organic farmer in Watsonville and Hollister. Their farm, Mariquita Farm, was a longstanding part of the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market. Until they decided that the tourist-dominated crowds were in the market to snack, wander, and maybe buy some lavender salt, not to pack their bags with kale and carrots for dinner. However, after quitting the market, they still wanted contact with their regular city customers, even though they already had a lot of restaurant clients and a large CSA.

So the Mystery Box was born: twice a month, the Mariquita truck would pull up outside a local restaurant, and customers who'd pre-ordered through an email list would show up and hand over $25 cash. In return, they'd get an amazingly abundant pile of dirt-fresh veggies, whatever was striking Andy and Julia's fancy on the farm. It worked like a charm, and now they often bring a few items from other farming or ranching friends--eggs from pasture-raised hens, organic apricots, fresh lamb, handmade sheep's milk ricotta--or large quantities of particular items, like 25lb boxes of tomatoes or 10-bunch bundles of basil.

If you loved tomatoes but felt daunted by the amount, you would be encouraged to share the bounty with friends, on your own time. The price is similar to your average CSA box, but the quantity is much, much more generous, and the stuff inside is always intriguing. You have to be a cook, though--the mystery box doesn't pander. Parsnips, daikon radish, radicchio in all sizes and colors, turnips, arugula, enormous cauliflower and radishes fill the boxes in winter; this isn't about broccoli and lettuce. Anyone can sign up and get on the list; the only caveat is that if you confirm for a box that week, you MUST show up to pay and take it home. Miss your pickup, and you'll have to pay for the box you skipped in order to get another box in the future.

Dance Dance Revolution

2008-12-14T20:11:00.007-05:00

Dance! Dance! I'm pretty much a pushover for fun, especially when the very persuasive Susie B. calls me on her way into the city and says how I will regret it FOREVER if I don't put on my tutu, pick up my tiara and meet her and Jon at the LGBT Freedom Band's Dance-Along Nutcracker. She's been going since her daughter was little, and now that said daughter is 18 and too cool to flail around to the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies in public, she goes with friends instead. I am not exactly a ballerina, but as a wee pie princess I did drape myself in the PQM's Pucci scarves, put on our Nutcracker album and try to recreate in the living room what the lithe ladies of the NY City Ballet did onstage every December. Most of all I wanted to do that final pose of the sultry Arabian coffee dancer, where she lies prone, facing the audience, and arches her feet over her head. Alas, this was never achieved, but you can't fault a girl for trying.

When it came time for the Arabian number, both Susie and I hit the ground. "This is for floor work," we told our new best dance friends, two adorable 3 yr olds who were enthralled with Susie's tutu and stripey tights and my big iridescent golden scarf. We rolled around and pointed our toes in the air and flapped the scarf over their heads like a circus tent.

I can't really put the show (aside from the dancing) into words; it was a very San Franciscan mashup of The Nutcracker and A Christmas Carol, from a Mime Troupe/agitprop angle, with a little Corpse Bride thrown in. And drag queens, and French horn players dressed as reindeer! And ghost brides, and a guy on roller skates, and a giant prop clock where 8 o'clock was marked "No on 8". The Christmas tree had menorahs and Kwanzaa candles on it, and they finished with a rendition of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" that named-checked every December holiday from Hanukkah to the winter solstice, with Ramadan thrown in for good measure.

It was pouring again when we left, sorry to swap our tiaras for raincoats. We went over to 24th St, where it was too wet to show Susie's pal Laura, a high school art teacher and painter, the murals of Balmy Alley, but where we could browse (through the window) the hot-pink rhumba panties of the Candy Kitchen lingerie store while we waited for seats at the counter at the St. Francis Fountain. This newly reopened diner was where Susie's parents courted back in the day. It used to be a real soda fountain and candy kitchen, with malteds, homemade peanut brittle, and egg salad sandwiches served with chips and a pickle slice. Recently revived by hipsters, it happily still has reubens, patty melts and even egg creams, along with vegan chorizo and tofu burritos. (And Pixie Stix and the much-discussed Wacky Packs.) The chocolate-banana shake: perfect, right down to the cherry on top.

We stopped by Phil'z for coffee on the way back, and even this hand-made-cup place falls down in making decent decaf. My cup was watery, weak and without body, as it is almost everywhere that's not my own French-pressed kitchen.

hot ginger

2008-12-13T23:12:00.005-05:00

It's cold, it's cold, it's cold! PQ Castle still has no heat. Now usually, this is no big deal, because the heater we do have usually only heats the living room, a little. So I crank up the space heater and hunker down in my bedroom, the only warm room in the house. But now, with no heat at all, my roommate's got the space heater (since it came from her mom to begin with) in her room, and I'm in fleece and scarves. Every apt. I've ever had has been frigid at some point, often for way longer a time than was comfortable in, say, December. And no one here to snuggle up with, either, and my hot water bottle, complete with hand-knitted cover, is still in storage in chilly Brooklyn. So: cold and a wee bit lonely here! But luckily Leslie and Anya's potato party (latkes! vodka!) is coming up tomorrow in Oakland. Until then, deadlines to attack, and perhaps, gingerbread to make. I've got Elizabeth Faulkner's Demolition Desserts here, and turns out she's a sucker for gingerbread, too. Hers has chipotle in it, which sounds almost as good as the kind with bacon grease. Then again, there's also this one, a spicy chocolate gingerbread via Nigella Lawson's cookbook Feast. Lawson or Faulkner? Who could choose? Into the kitchen!

holiday fun in the city

2008-12-11T19:27:00.005-05:00

Hot chocolate! We don't have heat chez PQ of late, which means swapping the single space heater around the 3 of us....Which means hot drinks and flannel are the necessities du jour, as if I need an excuse for either one. BUT, fun things to do this weekend, all in places with heat:

Today, Thursday, 5-7pm, Serpentine turns one! Come celebrate with a glass of free bubbly and some nibbles down in Dogpatch, at the 17-yr-old Slow Club's lil' sister. Of course, having been kicking around SF since 1990, on and off, I remember when the Slow Club was the new cool thing in town. What the heck. I'm still about 35 years away from hitting kids with my purse on the bus to get a seat.

Sunday, 10am-2pm. Those cute, tattooed servers at Delfina, with their skinny black bra straps showing? They're not just charming and very good at their day (well, night, but you know what I mean) jobs, they're artists, too. Come to Delfina's holiday arts n' crafts fair, featuring stuff made by their staff.

in a jam!

2008-12-10T22:41:00.007-05:00

I miss my jam pot! Specifically, I miss my big, wide copper confiture pot, with its flared sides and brass handles. It was perfect for jam-making, since it was wide and shallow, allowing for rapid evaporation. The copper was nonreactive as well as heavy, which meant even sugary things cooked evenly, without hot spots or burning, and it cleaned up like a dream. The only drawback was its size--really big--which required making a pretty hefty amount of jam at any one time. (Where is it? Still in Brooklyn storage, with all the other large, fragile, or otherwise squirreled-away items of my life, mostly books, shoes, leopard lingerie, and china.)

I've been making jam throughout the year as fruit's been available, starting with the big box of organic Meyer lemons S. brought me last spring. And now, I'm beginning to pull out the contents of the jam kitchen, inspecting and wrapping for the holidays. Something I've learned this year is to unloose the screw-top rings after the jars have cooled and sealed. Why? First, to check that the seal is clean. I pulled out half a dozen jars of apricot jam earlier this week, only to find them cruddy with sticky jam trails down the sides. I'm not exactly sure where the gunk came from--the seals were tight, and the jam inside unspoiled--but just to be on the safe side, I opened them up, adding a little more sugar, and reboiled/recanned the contents. It's also wise to remove the screw-bands after sealing so that water (or condensed steam) doesn't get caught under the band and rust out the lid.

It's also very wise to label every jar as soon as it's cooled and sealed. I have a few jars of mystery marmalade--lemon? Seville orange? Mixed orange?--that will have to be labeled "California Citrus" since I can't pin them down any further than that. As far as I can remember, what should be in the jam cupboard this year is:

Apricot
Meyer Lemon Marmalade
Seville Orange Marmalade
Mixed Citrus Mystery Marmalade
Strawberry Jam
Hedgerow/Brambleberry/Raspberry-Strawberry-Blackberry Jam
Bernal Hill Wild Blackberry Jam
Bread and butter pickles

And, if I can manage to come home with some pears after my meeting out at the orchard this Friday, the divine Vanilla Pear Butter.

I'd still like to make some more pickles, and maybe even Chez Pim's bourbon-vanilla-butternut squash butter, in a mashup with Helen Witty's Spiced Pumpkin Butter.

It's been a pumpkin sort of week, or month, really, given how many pumpkin/butternut squash/sweet potato pies have been made chez PQ lately. And last night at Orson was all orange, all the time: we got 2 shots of curried pumpkin and sweet potato soup, a pumpkin pizza with fennel sausage, sage, red onion and ricotta, scallops with a sweet-potato puree, and finally the piece de resistance: The Clock After Midnight, made of pumpkin custard topped with brown-sugar streusel and pierced with dehydrated carrot spears, all over a spatter of carrot emulsion and root-beer maple syrup.

It took me a minute to get the Cinderella reference, just as it took the waiter to explain the King's Dream: peanut-butter cheesecake, peanut ice cream, slices of chilled banana rolled in cocoa nibs, and toasted marshmallows. But my favorite was the Snowcap: squares of gianduja topped with a snowfall of powdered (but still icy-cold) white chocolate ice cream, just like the snowflakes that fall during the last part of Act I in the Nutcracker. Or the froth of ice chips off the back of the Zamboni clearing the skating rink! Anyway, witty and yummy, and the best part of the meal, not surprisingly, since owner/exec chef Elizabeth Faulkner is a pastry chef from way back, and has clearly found a smart kindred spirit in Orson's pastry chef, Luis Villavelasquez.

Headcheese, Pleeze

2008-12-08T18:01:00.008-05:00

Duck meatloaf! Apple cider doughnuts! Sausages! Fried chicken with cheesy waffles! Maple-bacon almonds! Bacon-wrapped trout! I lost track of how many times bacon got mentioned on the menu at Buttermilk Channel, a new restaurant way down on Court Street, in my old Carroll Gardens/Cobble Hill Brooklyn 'hood. Turns out it's owned by a friend of an old high-school friend of mine (ah, Facebook!) who brought it up by asking what my opinion was on headcheese. I bow to John Thorne on this one, who said, "The world is divided into two kinds of people: those who have never heard of headcheese, and those who have and wished they hadn't."

Gelatinous porky bits aren't really my cup of tea, although in my perambulations last week (trying to go see French film I've Loved You So Long up in Pac Hts, and being stymied by the loooong bus ride), I ended up at the back of Browser Books, reading Little House in the Big Woods just for nostalgia's sake. I was surprised at how much I remembered, pretty much word for word, especially the part about breaking down the hog for winter. Headcheese is nothing more than the bits boiled off the head, finely chopped and seasoned and set in a jelly made from the bones. Buttermilk Channel makes its own, and it's yours for $8/plate, probably much, much more than a whole pig cost back in the 1880s, when Laura Ingalls Wilder was playing kickball with the pig's bladder and grilling the tail in front of the fire.

But right now, typing away about the glories of mail-order pears (no, I don't work for Harry & David, but I should), all I want are those maple-bacon almonds, with maybe some of their housemade pickles on the side. Were I back in NYC, I'd have a pickle throwdown between Buttermilk and Chestnut, with Rick's Picks as referee.

Also, here, a fun little conversation by the owners of Rabelais Books, in Portland, ME. Headcheese gets a mention!

Leeds United!

2008-12-05T12:51:00.003-05:00

Fabulous finger-waved art-punk femme, coming to Bimbo's 365 Club on Monday Dec. 15. Who wants to go?

Chocolate Whiskey Cake

2008-12-03T14:54:00.008-05:00

Oh my gosh. That Whiskey-Soaked Chocolate Bundt Cake in today's New York Times sounds like Best.Cake. Ever.

Actually, it sounds a lot like the chocolate whiskey cake that my parents would always bring home from our summertime visits to Saratoga Springs. Ostensibly, we went to Saratoga for the horses. My parents loved going to the track--to gamble a little, sure, but mostly for the whole ambiance of it--the personalities of the jockeys and trainers, the semi-mob guys and their flashy wives/girlfriends/mistresses, the beautiful horses, breakfasts of steak and eggs and Hand melons at the Clubhouse during morning workouts. Spending Sunday afternoons at Aqueduct or Belmont, or a whole week at Saratoga in August, seemed perfectly normal to me as a kid, even as my mom exhorted us not to tell our grandma what we were doing.

One of the reasons I liked Saratoga so much, I suspect, was going to really good restaurants every night. Like Nantucket and the Hamptons, Saratoga's had a longtime rep as a playground for wealthy New Yorkers (originally due its natural spring waters and reputation as a spa), and so there were fancier places there than you might expect. But Mrs. London's remained a favorite, a bustling cafe and bakery with smashing croissants, the best chewy sunflower-seed bread (dubbed "Max's Loaf") and above all, the whiskey cake, a dense, rich chocolatey cake with A LOT of whiskey in there. We always brought one home with us to Jersey, serving it in small after-dinner slices to make it last.

It's been decades since I've had one. If they even still make it-- they don't, alas, have it on their mail-order list. But this sounds like it might be close, or, if not, really good in its own right. As soon as I have an excuse--or a host/hostess to please--I'm making this. I think, although I'm not sure, that the Mrs. London's cake might have had whiskey-soaked raisins in it, so I've added those in. This recipe is adapted from Melissa Clark's recent NYT article, based on an original recipe from dessert queen & cookbook author Maida Heatter in her 1980 "Book of Great Chocolate Desserts."

Whiskey Cake

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened, more for greasing pan
2 cups all-purpose flour, more for dusting pan
1 cup bourbon, rye or other whiskey, plus more for sprinkling
1 cup golden raisins
5 ounces unsweetened chocolate
1/4 cup instant espresso powder (such as Medaglia d'Oro)
2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 3/4 cups granulated sugar
3 large eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon baking soda

Confectioners’ sugar, for garnish (optional).

1. Grease and flour a 10-cup-capacity Bundt pan (or two 8- or 9-inch loaf pans). Preheat oven to 325 degrees. In a small bowl, pour whiskey over raisins and set aside. In a double boiler over simmering water, melt chocolate. Let cool.

2. Put espresso and cocoa powders and salt in a 2-cup (or larger) glass measuring cup. Add enough boiling water to come up to the 1 cup measuring line. Mix until powders dissolve. Dump in whiskey and raisins. Let cool.

3. Using an electric mixer, cream 1 cup butter until fluffy. Add sugar and beat until well combined. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, beating well between each addition. Beat in the vanilla extract, baking soda, and melted chocolate, scraping down sides of bowl with a rubber spatula.

4. On low speed, beat in a third of the whiskey mixture. When liquid is absorbed, beat in 1 cup flour. Repeat additions, ending with whiskey mixture. Scrape batter into prepared pan. Bake until a cake tester inserted into center of cake comes out clean, about 1 hour 10 minutes for Bundt pan (loaf pans will take less time, start checking them after 55 minutes).

5. Transfer cake to a rack. Unmold after 15 minutes and sprinkle warm cake with more whiskey. Let cool before serving. Dust with confectioners’ sugar if you like.

The Mrs. London cake was made in a round, sealed with a dense chocolate glaze and a dab of gold leaf.

Late Nite Easy Cocoa Cake

2008-12-01T17:05:00.003-05:00

Most writers, in my experience, will do anything to avoid writing, even though we are usually fit for no other job. So, with numerous deadlines looming, what was I doing on Saturday night? Making chocolate cake, of course!

One of the things I'm always in search of during my rounds of stress-baking is a nice, easy, cocoa-based cake recipe, preferably one that's not too rich and calls for mostly pantry-based ingredients so I can make it late at night without going to the store. I rarely have chocolate, even baking chocolate, on hand. Why? Because I eat it before I can bake with it. Even unsweetened chocolate will get whisked up with hot milk, sugar, and cornstarch to make a kind of choco-pudding sludge if the chocolate demons (or the deadlines) really get cracking. Unsweetened cocoa powder, however, lasts longer, if only because not even I can eat it by the spoonful.

For a long time, Laurie Colwin's Cocoa Buttermilk Cake was my standard, even if the texture was rather coarse and the flavor marked with a certain unresolved acidity. But now baby's got a brand new bag, dense, moist, springy and full of chocolate flavor. I cut the original recipe in half to make just 1 layer. As always, the better your cocoa, the better the cake. I used Ghirardelli.

10pm Easy Cocoa Cake

1 scant cup flour (1 cup minus 1 tbsp, approx.)
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 tsp EACH baking soda and baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1 egg
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup oil
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup boiling water

Preheat oven to 350F. Whisk together dry ingredients. In a separate cup or bowl, beat egg, milk, oil, and vanilla. Pour into flour mix and stir vigorously until smooth. Pour in boiling water and beat quickly until smooth. Pour into greased round or square cake tin and bake 30-35 minutes, until top springs back and tester comes out clean. Let cool 5 minutes in pan, then turn out on a rack.

I've heard you can also dissolve the cocoa into the boiling water at the last stage, in lieu of adding it to the flour mixture. This sounds kind of intriguing, so next time you're stress-baking, try it out.

Swing your partner, round and round

2008-11-29T13:55:00.009-05:00

Sitemeter is always entertaining. Besides letting me know that PQ has blog readers in Moscow and Singapore, it also has a fun little feature that reveals how readers get here. For example, someone living in the U.K. needs pie bad today, having typed "PIE AND PIE AND MORE PIE" into their Google box. And what they got, as the second listing, was a PQ posting entitled, conveniently enough, "Pie and More Pie". "Dirt Cake" is always another reliable search, as is "Ice Cream Girl," whose red lace continues to make the rounds.

Well, anyway. The kitchen is finally, finally clean, the floor washed and even the compost bin emptied. The last green tomatoes from the patio--which I have to face are just not going to ripen on the nearly dead plants, it being almost December--are on the table, hopefully to ripen over the next couple of weeks, or meet their end sliced, cornmealed, and fried. The last of the cranberry bread went into the toaster for breakfast, with oatmeal topped with the remains of the apple compote from the Fallen Fruit jamming session. It's a tentatively sunny day out there, and I must put on some shoes and get daylight while I can, the last few days all having been spent inside baking, eating, and cleaning.

Fun things coming up:

Sat/Sun: The gorgeous Flora Grubb plant store/garden down in Bernal flats/Bayview is having a weekend open house today and tomorrow (11/29-11/30), with homemade pie and of course coffee from Ritual Roasters (just like some supermarkets have in-house Starbucks, FG has their own RR counter). New sprout Greyson Danger Grubb will also be on display today, accepting homage for having the coolest name ever.
*****
This was just super fun, as it happens. S., just back from 4 days of Cape Cod family time, was dying to get back to California reality, and this is part of his post-Thanksgiving, post-family re-entry tradition. So we zipped down there, where they had not only a tall silver urn of hot cider but 3 big bottles of spiced rum, Jack Daniel's, and tequila to doctor it. Clearly, they know what the people need. We got our cups and a couple slices of really good Shaker lemon pie (with kumquats!) and set off on a happy meander around the glittery bird ornaments and enormous succulents. And who should turn out to work there but my old housemate Laura, which whom I shared a big, run-down five-person flat in the Fillmore, sometime in the mid-90s. Ah, small city, long life, yet again.

*******

Sat: The Really Free Market in Dolores Park. Give away your stuff, go home with somebody's else's! Out with the old, in with new (to you). No money, no trade...just everything free. This sounds very groovy. 1-5pm today, in Dolores Park.

Mon: Cutting Ball Theater is having a fabulous fundraiser Monday night, with amazing music, performances, and square dancing with a caller. Don't miss it--just $10-$20, sliding scale, to raise money for the development of a new play by Eugenie Chan (of the critically acclaimed one-woman short play Bone to Pick) in conjunction with Polish performance troupe Teatr Zar.

Walk right in, it's around the back, just a half a mile from the railroad track...

2008-11-28T13:19:00.009-05:00

"...we went back to the church, had another Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat, and didn't get up until the next morning, when we all had to go to court."

It was on the way home from BART last night, after delivering three pies and having 2 Thanksgiving dinners that couldn't be beat, that I realized what was missing. Arlo Guthrie! We had a fondness for some hippie folk music in my house growing up--Odetta, the Weavers, Peter Paul and Mary. I can remember my parents taking us to Pete Seeger concerts on the Clearwater, a sailing ship promoting awareness of the Hudson River ecosystem, which is a lot cleaner now than it was then, back in the 70s, when pollution and PCBs were killing the shad and the striped bass. Pete Seeger had, of course, been a pal of Woody Guthrie, and so Arlo used to play with him a lot. Every Thanksgiving, one of the public radio stations would play the entire 20-minute-long original version of Alice's Restaurant, and we'd sing along as my mom chopped celery and my sister Amy folded the napkins (remember? She's my middle sister, the one from Chicago who's good at ambiance).

So I sang the whole thing to myself in my head, and then watched part of it on YouTube.

Because I had promised pies to both Shifra & Stephen and Shar & Jackie, I did manage to sit down to 2 Thanksgiving dinners, one at 3pm and one at 7:30pm. Or, to quote Cheap Eats columnist Dani Leone, on her habit of following an omelette with a plate of ribs, "That was breakfast. This is lunch." Or lunch and dinner, in this case. Well, I did take dainty portions, or so I'd like to think.

Anyway, turkey, mmmm. I do love turkey, and don't know why it's so heartily maligned. These were some delicious birds--braised and moist at Shifra's, crispy-skinned and chestnut-brown at Shar's--with all the appropriately brown and white gravy vehicles, also known as stuffing, mashed potatoes, mashed rutabagas, and sweet potatoes. Shannon, Shar's cousin, was there with his husband, and brought his Southern expertise to the perfect biscuits. Which I know are being sopped in leftover gravy for breakfast right as we speak. At both houses, it was a happy confluence of birth and chosen family--Shifra, Stephen, and Stephen's aunts, uncle, and cousin in Berkeley; and Shar, Jackie and a dozen assorted family, friends, spouses, and kids--a happy biscuit-, pie-, and Cool Whip-fueled chaos.

And special mention must be made of Omar's sweet-potato pie--his first, I believe, and absolutely delicious. Omar is the cool teenager of the household, keeping all the 40+ geezers up to date on Beyonce and Girlicious.

And except for me, and Jackie's sister and her husband, all the grownups there were married gay couples, almost all with children. There were kids eating cookies, kids playing kazoos, kids climbing up the back of the sofa, babies lolling half-asleep on shoulders. I could say "Look, gay families! Just like straight ones!" and on one hand, it would be true. On the other, I don't know that the goal is to be seen as "just like" straight families--that seems too much like whitewashing assimilation to me. And what's a straight family norm, anyway? There are many, many ways to be a family, and the genders of the parents is just one part. All I can say is that these were families, and every bit as married as anyone.

And the eggless pumpkin pie? A hit! It was a little soft, I think--more creamy than custardy, but rich in flavor. I would reduce the amount of evaporated milk, I think, and toss in a tablespoon of flour, and possibly chill it before serving. Overall, though, a treat, especially since for once, Shifra didn't have to bake her own desserts in order to enjoy them. Here's the revised recipe.

Eggless Pumpkin Pie
This pie does contain dairy. My neighbor Jen, however, had to cook up a dairy-free pumpkin pie, in order to accomodate her kosher sister. Her replacement? Vanilla hemp milk, richer and creamier than the usual rice/almond/soy milk options. So if you need to make a vegan or dairy-free pie, and can find hemp milk, give it a try.

2 cups mashed squash (I roasted one small butternut, one small kabocha squash, and one sweet potato)
1 cup evaporated milk
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
big pinch of salt
1/2 cup pureed silken tofu (or 2 eggs)
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 tbsp flour

Whisk all ingredients well until thoroughly mixed. Pour into partially baked pie shell, and bake at 350F for 35-45 minutes, until well set. Let cool to room temperature. For a firmer set, chill for several hours before serving.

still not live blogging

2008-11-27T16:01:00.004-05:00

Ahhh! The pies, almost done! I just missed burning the cherry pie by kibbitzing with Jen and Phoebe over tea and cranberry bread, while Phoebe sat with the massive black chunk that is the Twilight series (hey, she's 12) on her lap and we all watched Miley Cyrus dance around on the Bolt float. Luckily, though, I scampered home just in time-- it was looking a little lava-esque, but settled down once out of the oven.

Next up, the tofu-pumpkin. I have to say, the raw filling tasted AWESOME, and hopefully will be just as good cooked. 2 cups of mixed roasted butternut, kabocha squash, and sweet potato, whisked with 1 tsp pumpkin-pie spice, a little salt, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1 12-oz. can evaporated milk, and 1/2 cup pureed silken tofu. The baked texture is not quite as smooth as the eggy version made last week--it's a little wrinkly--but it still looks pretty cute.

Then it was on to make a speedy apple, after t-day dinner #2 at Shar & Jackie's got added. Of course, Jackie said I didn't need to bring a thing, but when I offered an apple pie, made with fresh organic farm apples, well, a last-minute butter run was in order. Now Mr. Apple Pie is in the oven, and I've got the real challenge: how to carry 3 hot-to-warm pies on the 67 bus, the BART to Berkeley, and then another bus.

But first, time to rinse all the flour off my sticky self. Happy Thanksgiving!

p.s. Am I secretly relieved that Kim S. is FREAKING OUT, burning things, and getting lumps in her gravy? No, of course not!

Not Live Blogging, Pt 2

2008-11-27T11:30:00.003-05:00

Coffee, mismatched pajamas (crossword puzzle below, psychedelic pink Victoria's Secret on top), cranberry bread.

The squash has been put through the strainer, last night's dishes washed, and the cherries (two jars of Trader Joe's excellent Morellos, drained) sitting around getting comfortable with the tapioca, in the hopes of softening up the little cassava balls enough so that they'll disappear in the baking. Talked briefly to my mom, Alex, and sister in Rochester, where it's been raining and snowing off and on all week. According to the family report, my sister, who is a scientist and very precise, has made a beautiful apple pie, and my mom is snapping the ends of a few pounds of green beans for some kind of casserole.

"Is it the kind with the cream of mushroom soup and the onion crispies on top?" I asked, just to tease her, since my mom is a really good cook. Sure, we had canned cream of mushroom soup growing up, but only as actual soup.

"No!! It's from Lidia. There's fresh mozzarella in it, and all kinds of things."

That's Lidia Bastianich, of Food Network/Felidia's/multiple cookbook fame, with whom my mom considers herself on a first-name basis, ever since we shared a table with her at the James Beard Awards one year, and she gave me advice about the food markets in Bologna.

Actually, come to think of it, my aunt used to be very fond of that classic kind of green-bean casserole,and always brought it with her to Thanksgiving at our house, since she knew that my mom was much more likely to have some kind of new-fangled steamed green beans with almonds or other inappropriately crunchy green thing. They must have wrangled over this one--or perhaps my aunt Karen has promised to have the real thing on hand.

But back in the kitchen, it's time to put on the Poi Dog Pondering and Hank Williams, and git these pies in the oven!

Not Quite a Live Blog

2008-11-27T00:33:00.005-05:00

So, I'm not exactly live blogging the pie-making here in Bernal. Then again, unlike Kim Severson, I'm not getting paid, nor am I expecting Eric Asimov to bring the wine or Scott Peacock to make the biscuits.

Actually, I'd love to post photos of my kitchen right now, because it is SUCH a mess, and bloggers, in their quest to be as Food & Wine-like as possible, never show messes. There are bits of kale all over the floor (red Russian, she sheds! Especially when there are 3 bunches from the Free Farmstead squashed into one bag in the fridge, and I'm squatting down in front trying to extract just enough for dinner), cooked squash in a colander, used lemon halves on the table, random butternut-squash carnage and swelling green plastic compostable bags full of scraps waiting to go out to the green-waste bin. Not to mention the squash-baking cookie sheet, encrusted with carbonized squash juices and poking out of the sink. No, no, by all means, go back to Kim and her pair of "little turkey earrings," aka her twin 9 1/2 lb heritage turkeys--although she did post a rather yuck-inducing snap of her bro deveining shrimp.

But the spelt-flour dough is made and chilling, and tomorrow will be just all cherry pie, all the time, with fingers crossed that it doesn't come out like cherry-flavored bubble tea. And, of course, silken-tofu pumpkin pie, with dairy but w/o eggs.

Moving over to the (mostly tidy) living room, where Fluffy the meowy grey cat is sleeping a blameless, long-haired doze on a couch pillow, was anyone else a little disappointed that Pushing Daisies didn't have a thanksgiving-pie theme tonight? Since the main character's supposedly a pie baker, after all. But he did have a good line about "stress baking," after he'd already filled the Pie Hole's kitchen with pies.

"There's no more room on the counter, so I'm stress-baking in my head."

Baking for T-day

2008-11-26T20:16:00.003-05:00

So, it's raining, it's chilly, the housemates are gone to San Jose and New Mexico, and I can do anything I want, right?

Which means, of course, that I'm baking and making a mess. So far, two loaves of cranberry-orange bread, one for breakfast and one to give to my neighbor Jen, for her Thanksgiving breakfast. It makes pretty much the best T-day morning toast you can imagine, all bright and citrusy-cranberry sweet.

Next up: Shifra's spelt-flour crust (thanks, Rainbow Grocery, for stocking both whole-grain and white spelt flour), for the eggless pumpkin pie and cherry pie. Turns out that I bought small-pearl tapioca, rather than granulated (Minute-style), which makes me worry that the cherry pie will have big, chalky, undercooked starch globules in it, instead of an imperceptively-thickened filling. The solution? Spinning the pearls in the mini-grinder--which was just like trying to puree metal ball bearings. Spin, spin, spin--to almost no effect! Oh, well. Meanwhile, a couple of squash and a sweet potato are baking, making the house smell cozy and sweet.

where's the cranberry sauce, Chuck? Where's the pumpkin pie??

2008-11-25T17:16:00.003-05:00

Lowdown and blue, that's PQ today. Maybe it's the weather, gray and lowering, gloomy and misty, without either stay-in rainy coziness or crisp autumn-y sunshine. Or maybe it's everyone winging back to see their families, while I'm here with the waifs and strays. OK, not really--I've got a very nice invite to join Shifra and Stephen at their Berkeley apartment for Thursday turkey. But what I'm craving is coffee in flannel bathrobes, family chaos and bustle and that sense of inclusion, not lonely crust-rolling by myself in this dim Bernal kitchen.

Well, anyway. Last Thursday was Farmie Thanksgiving back down on the farm, and what a thanksgiving it was. Since my old farmie pal Hollywood was in town from Durango, I even got to skip the crawly-slow train n' bus and ride down with her in style. And when of one of his many Santa Cruz meetings got cancelled, S. even came up to join all the wide-eyed farmie types, dirt on their boots and innocence in their hearts, for turkey, stuffing, kale salad, infinite bowls of greens, and many pies, some made, you will not be surprised to hear, by PQ herself.

Yes, I had pies on my mind at the farm. It was a stunningly clear autumn day, warm and bountiful, with all the chard and straw-mulched flowers glistening under a deep blue sky. Hollywood and I cruised the farm for pie timber, filling bags with late Granny Smith apples from a tree by compost row, an armful of fresh rhubarb stalks, and a few butternut and red kuri squash from the field's onion/potato/squash stash. Then she went off to hike to the ocean through Wilder Ranch and I headed to the Up Garden chalet, to roll and bake all afternoon. The final production:

One apple pie
One pumpkin (actually squash) pie
One crustless pumpkin custard (aka the leftover pumpkin-pie filling, baked in a bain-marie, and much appreciated by the wheat-free guests)
One pink and pretty rhubarb lattice pie
One apple crisp

All in all, a lot of very nice pie, all made with farm produce, which was very satisfying. I roamed through the Up Garden, picking more Braeburn, Granny Smith, and Pink Lady apples, along with some oranges, lemons, and peppers, all in lush abundance.

The real stunner was the rhubarb, though. Not just because there was rhubarb--not a usual November harvest--but because it was slim, smooth, and juicy, and a ravishing deep pink inside, like a Pink Pearl apple. I made the pie with nothing but rhubarb, sugar, and a little flour for thickening, and it was amazing--full of clear, tangy rhubarby goodness. I think cornstarch works better as a thickener for rhubarb, giving a better, clearer set to the pink juices, but this was pretty darn good just as it was.

The pumpkin pie was pretty swell too--the recipe was based on one from Williams-Sonoma 's Pie and Tart book, only I doubled the amount of squash and used evaporated milk instead of the called-for milk and cream. And so can you.

First, roast a couple of your favorite squash. I'd recommend butternut, red kuri, kabocha, or blue hubbard (in which case you'll just need a piece, since those babies are huge). Nix to delicata (not enough meat) and acorn (too pasty and fibrous). Split, scoop out the seeds, and place face-down on a lightly oiled or parchment-papered cookie sheet. Make sure the sheet has at least an 1/2" high rim, as squash can release a lot of liquid while baking. Bake at 350F until really soft and collapsing. Take out and let cool until you can scrape out flesh from peel. Discard peel and dump flesh into a colander in the sink or over a bowl. Let drain for several hours or overnight. Then, mash the squash through a fine-mesh strainer, or spin through a food mill (much easier, with smoother results). Buzzing in a blender or food processor is not really an alternative; the point is not just to mash the squash but to make a velvety, string-free puree, and this only happens via a method that leaves the strings on top and the puree below.

Why all the bother? Because it's nice to use fresh squash in all its multicolored, stripey cuteness, and because a fresh-squash pie has a springy fluffiness that rescues it from the usual heavy-custard stodge.

OK, so you've got your squash puree. Measure out 2 cups, and put away the rest for use in a tasty pumpkin bread or pumpkin pancakes.

Make a single crust the way you do. Line with foil or parchment and pile in the pie weights. Blind-bake for 8-10 minutes at 375F, then remove foil and weights, and bake for another few minutes, until crust is set, dry, and pale blond, like Cindy McCain. Set aside to cool.

In a big bowl, mix up 2 eggs, 1 can evaporated milk (or 1 3/4 cups of a mix of milk, heavy cream, and/or half-and-half), 1 tsp pumpkin/apple pie spice (cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, allspice, cloves), pinch of salt, 2/3 cup brown sugar, packed, and 2 cups squash.

Pour pumpkin mix into shell and bake at 375 until custard is just set, 30-35 minutes. Let cool on a rack.

Thanksgiving Memories

2008-11-19T14:40:00.012-05:00

So, are you dreading the family Thanksgiving yet? Personally, I miss it. I miss coming downstairs in my flannel jammies, to where my mom--in her flannel robe and nightgown--would be rubbing butter and paprika onto the big, bald, pale turkey, and chopping up onions and bell peppers for the stuffing. The kitchen would smell like coffee and celery and onions sauteeing in butter, and I'd get right down to my T-day job: peeling the freshly boiled whole chestnuts. This took forever, and after an hour or so your thumbs would be bruised and your nails caked deep with mealy chestnut meat. But it had to be done, since only chestnut stuffing (first made with bags of those Pepperidge Farm herby bread cubes, then later with torn-up Acme levain I'd bring back from CA) happened in our house. No oysters, no sausage, no Laurie Colwin cornbread and proscuitto. (I still find the idea of shellfish or meat in stuffing very weird, although probably very tasty.)

As any chestnut-peeler can tell you, there's something very satisfying about getting a big chunk of the tight, monkey-haired inner shell off in one piece. More often, though, it took painstaking effort to wrest all the clingy scraps of inner peel off the wizened, brain-looking nut. The treat was sneaking crumbles of pasty-sweet chestnut, playing guess the composer on WQXR (Aaron Copeland, always a good guess on Thanksgiving), and blabbing and/or arguing with my middle sis, who was usually good for about 20 minutes of peeling before wandering off. (To this day, she doesn't cook. Ambiance is her forte, she says; otherwise, her kitchen skills are limited to reheating lattes and making Mommy's Pink Dip--ketchup and mayo, and held in high esteem by my nieces and nephew.)

I still remember, vividly, the first Thanksgiving spent away from home--besides the one pre-adolescent year when my parents got a wild hair and packed us all up to a cold and chilly Nantucket, to play on the beach in our parkas and have creamed onions and pie a la mode at the red-brick Jared Coffin House, and clam chowder and shoestring fries at the Brotherhood of Thieves tavern.

I was just 21 and sharing a futon with that same chestnut-peeling sister in a studio apartment in Chicago, back when she was a carefree, miniskirt-wearing 24 yr old with a lot of dates. My sis was off to Joliet with the boyfriend of the moment, an actor named Dan whom we called Dan II (to separate him from her previous boyfriend named Dan) and that she called Binky. (He called her Binky, too, and me Spud. So phone calls tended to start, "Hi Spud, it's Binky. Is Binky there?") I had gotten an invite from Heather, my bookstore co-worker, who was something like 26--older than me, anyway, and wildly cool.

She had brilliant red hair, came from Florida ("You know Tampa, home of nothing"), wore a black leather jacket, wrote for the New Art Examiner, and had friends who were poets and junkies. Her boyfriend was an artist with silky shoulder-length black hair whom she called Max, although, like Binky, I don't think that was his real name. In a few years, these kind of people would be my tribe in SF, but at the moment, they were my first real post-suburbia bohemians, and I was dazzled. Heather invited me to stay over at her and Max's place on Wednesday night, and gave me directions for the bus.

She called back a few minutes later to tell me to go to a different stop, a few blocks further west.

What's at the first one, I asked.

Gangs, she said succinctly.

I was suitably impressed. Her neighborhood, Wicker Park, is groovy and gentrified now, but back then, in the late 80s, it wasn't.

We went to the enormous Jewel supermarket a few blocks from her house, squeezing down the aisles to buy potatoes and Cafe Bustelo alongside big Latino families pushing two or three carts at once. Out on the back steps of their sprawling two-flat were buckets of oysters keeping cold. There was no turkey; instead, she casually mentioned, we were having fish. Fish for Thanksgiving! Like I said, they were cool. The next day, Max was installed on the back porch with a potholder and an oyster knife. There was cheap wine and a dozen or so of their equally cool, broke, artsy pals, all eating from mismatched plates, drinking and talking at a long table snaking its way through most of the house.

Later, I would throw a lot of Thanksgivings like this myself, collecting dozens of unmatched plates and folding chairs to go with the motley assemblage of waifs and strays all gathered for turkey and mashed potatoes, or quiche and vegan gravy (not at my house, I might add--I still do not believe that quiche is an adequate festival entree, even for vegetarians), or pepperoncini chicken and a huge pot of potatoes boiled and beaten into lumpy submission with the single wooden spoon in the house.

I still remember the legendary mashed potatoes made one year by my chef pal Sugarkill, who ransacked the fridge for every dairy product he could get his hands on-- butter, half and half, ricotta, feta cheese-- and made what still live in memory as Best. Potatoes. Ever, possibly because everyone was so starved for anything by the time the turkey was ready, some 3 or 4 hours after dinner had been promised, and long after every black olive and baby carrot had been snaffled up. When dinner was finally served, it turned out the supposedly dripless candles had taken the extra time to run all over the platters of salad below, so everyone had to pick out chunks of cooled wax from among the roasted beets and walnuts.

This year, much of my small clan--my mom, her sister, my eldest sister and her boyfriend--will be convening in Rochester, at the home of my aunt Karen's family. Karen and my uncle (my mom's younger brother, and a recovered bohemian himself) live in Ohio, so I rarely see them, which is a bummer as they are really, really nice. Should I use my free Jetblue miles to zip off to Rochester for a few days? I had been toying with the idea of going to see my mom (and deal, yet again, with the remaining Stuff in Storage) for a few days around Christmas, using those same miles. But the specter of a family-less Thanksgiving, even one spend with sweet friends, is looming large in my brain right now. What to do?

Get Right with Sweet Potato Pie

2008-11-18T17:01:00.004-05:00

The cool fog is coming over the hill and it finally feels like fall. I'm a little sad not to be going East next week for Thanksgiving, since it's one holiday that doesn't feel right without family (mine, or even better, somebody else's, as long as there's lots of bustle in the kitchen) and crackling leaves, but there's still farmie thanksgiving down on the farm this Thursday. For which, I hope, I will be baking numerous pies in the Up Garden kitchen...pumpkin? Apple? Sweet potato? Apple-quince-pear?

Got to go see Lucinda Williams last night at the Fillmore, and she rocked her silver guitar and knee-high biker boots well, having left the country-girl cowgirl look behind. And almost as fun were The Whoreshoes, a four-gal old-time band twanging upstairs, complete with washboard, stand-up bass, and songs like "Cigarettes, Whisky, and Wild, Wild Women." My old pal Lala, freshly mohawked, was playing right in the middle, and a good time it was.

Then, on to lunch at Brown Sugar Kitchen, and dee-lish pulled pork and smoked mashed yams with brown sugar butter, and of course, all the sweet tea you could drink. The smell of the smoker alone could bring in a crowd, to say nothing of the fried chicken and the sweet potato pie.

And speaking of pie, are you looking at the calendar and having fear of pie-ing? Are you dreading standing in line to buy an overpriced, over-sweetened, bland-as-cardboard bakery or supermarket pie to serve to the pie-craving hordes next Thursday? Oh, the PQ can help! This year, I'm available for in-house pie consultations. Get a one-on-one cooking class with PQ to conquer your terrors of the crust and the filling. We'll go over pastry basics, try out hand vs. food-processor methods, and learn how to judge dough consistency. We'll make as many "demo" pies as you want, in your favorite flavors. And you'll get clear, step-by-step recipes to keep. Get a few friends together and we'll make an afternoon of it!

We Now Interrupt Our Regular Scheduled Programming

2008-11-17T13:25:00.007-05:00

UPDATE: The legality of same-sex marriage in CA goes back, yet again, to the courts. More info here. Having just ruled that same-sex marriage was, in fact, legal in May, here's hoping the court remains of the same mind. No hearing date set, but the Supreme Court will be taking on the case, and also deciding whether or not the 18K same-sex marriages performed since May will remain legal. Attorney General Jerry Brown, in an amazing display of batting for both teams, will be arguing both FOR Prop 8 (no same-sex marriage!) and FOR the legality of past same-sex marriages performed in the state.

Today, California State Attorney General Jerry Brown will be deciding whether to allow the State Supreme Court to hear and review the current lawsuits filed against Proposition 8, which was recently passed to ban same-sex marriage in California.

We need to let Brown know how important this issue is to ALL Californians. Please use the link below to contact the Attorney General's office, and request that he recommend that our Supreme Court hear these most important suits and allow us the opportunity for equal protection under the law. Please pass this along to your friends for additional support.

California General Attorney's Office Comment Form

Make sure to add your comments or insert the following text:

Attorney General Brown, I request your support for the lawsuits against Prop 8 and recommend that the California Supreme Court hear and review the current lawsuits filed against Prop 8. Please allow all California citizens the opportunity for equal protection under the law.

Thank you. Because civil rights are EVERYONE'S concern.

Quince Cake & Sunshine

2008-11-17T11:30:00.010-05:00

Well, how 'bout that weather? It was warm, sunny and gorgeous all weekend, with everyone basking in a last chance to throw on tank tops and sundresses and take the bulldogs, babies, and tattoos out for an airing. It was a blast of Indian-summer redux, ending with a giant golden wheel-of-cheese moon dangling over the Bay.

Went to 2 Prop 8 rallies on Sat--first in S.F., which was predictably jammed (and white), and then over to Oakland, which was awash in families and, you know, family values--like honoring diversity and appreciating (and trying to understand) people different than you, proffering love in the face of hate, respecting faith but also standing up for everyone's civil rights. There was impassioned, crowd-moving poetry, great signs ("My Other Husband is a Mormon"; "Just Give Us the Same Rights as the Chickens"; "Keep Your 5 Wives; I Just Want One"), and inspiring words from Oakland city councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan, who insisted on respect for "people of faith" but also used the bacon defense for keeping church away from state: her religion, she noted, forbade the eating of pork, but she wasn't trying to put that into the state constitution. And then she blew a shofar! This is how I imagine K. (minus the shofar) a few years down the road in NYC, fighting the good fight in public office. (And speaking of smart brunette butches, can we all just take a moment to admire smarty-pants Rachel Maddow in her pajamas?

Even if Jon Stewart's more your honey, it's worth a click.

But back to the Biggity O: Molly was there, of course, working the Marriage Equality table, her thousand-watt smile undaunted by all the amazing activist work she's been doing, not just these past few heartbreaking weeks but for years now. The Red Meat Ranger and Papa Sueno were there too, as were Shar, Jackie, Papa Steve and the kids, two beautiful, locally-adopted boys who wouldn't be in the warm two-mama home where they are loved, played with, and cared for 24/7 if they lived in Arkansas or Florida, where adoptions by gay couples (or, in the case of Arkansas, any unmarried couples) are specifically banned, even though both states have many, many more kids in the state-custody and foster systems than they have adoptive homes for. Kids who are, for the most part, in the system because of the failure of their heterosexual bio-families to create safe, loving homes for them, as writer and gay dad Dan Savage pointed out in a recent NYT op-ed.

So, we clapped, we cheered, we vowed to keep working, and then we went to Alameda and went bowling. A fabulous discovery: gutter bumpers! These railings keep kiddie meltdowns away, since every roll is nearly guaranteed to knock something down--helpful when you're four and the ball is bigger than your head. They're also pretty helpful when you're 41 and Not a Bowler.

Sunday was a day for breakfasting on ripe figs from the friendly tree overhanging my stretch of Cortland St., hiking over the hill and down the many secret staircases on the south side, slurping strawberry agua frescas from La Taqueria, browsing along 24th St to the back garden of Le Zinc in Noe Valley, admiring many, many babies and poodles along the way, and finally lolling on the green grass of Dolores Park with the rest of the hipster city licking pomegranate popsicles from Bi-Rite Ice Creamery.

Followed, as promised, by Soup Night at Leslie's, which was a Chronicle Books reunion and an all-around fab time. Having spent the day out in the sunshine, I had no time to bake dessert before riding over to Rockridge. So I took the performance-art route, and packed my flour and quinces to go. Because pastry requires space and makes a bit of a floury mess, I opted for this super-easy cake instead. Once the crush had cleared out in the kitchen, I creamed the butter, threw in eggs and vanilla, peeled quinces and threw the cake in the oven. And, of course, like any baked thing, it smelled fantastic and got even those guests sated with minestrone and Beard Papa cream puffs to take a slice. Here is Sara, Leslie's pal and backyard-cottage tenant, holding the semi-devoured remains:

As promised to everyone in the kitchen, here's the recipe. It's the simple-as-a-cookie fruit torte recipe adapted from Bakerina and Marion Burros, mixed and matched and topped with quince instead of prune plums. Since the quince is already cooked, it gets a dense, almost candied texture during baking.

Easy Quince Cake

1 stick butter (1/2 cup, 4 oz., 8 tbsp)
2/3 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 quince, cored and poached (instructions below), then peeled and sliced thinly; you could also use an apple or a pear, cored and sliced
1 tbsp sugar mixed with 1/4 tsp mixed (pumpkin or apple pie) spice or cinnamon

Grease a 9 inch round baking pan. Preheat oven to 350F. Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in vanilla. In a separate bowl, sift flour, salt, and baking powder. Stir flour lightly into butter mixture until just combined. Spread batter (it will be thick and sticky) over prepared pan. Arrange fruit slices in concentric circles over batter. Sprinkle with spiced sugar. Bake 35-45 minutes, until tester comes out clean and top is slightly puffed and golden brown. Let cool on a rack for 10-15 minutes; serve warm for best appeal.

Master recipe for poaching quince

Preheat oven to 300F. Using a heavy knife or cleaver, hack quince into quarters and core. Tuck quince chunks into a small, heavy oven-safe pot. Add water to barely cover. Add 1/3 cup sugar, half a cinnamon stick, a couple of cloves and/or a couple of allspice berries. Bring to a boil over medium heat, swirling pot to dissolve sugar. Cover and let poach in the oven for 1 to 1 1/2 hours, until liquid is reduced and quince chunks are rosy and tender. Let cool in liquid, then refrigerate. Peel quince before using.

More Agent Provocateur, less Jockey for Her

2008-11-14T13:50:00.014-05:00

I know, I know, you're wondering where all the pie-baking has gone to. Does PQ just flit from hot tub to theater seat these days, with nary a flour trail scattered behind her? Happily, my old pal Leslie from Chronicle Books is having a soup party this Sunday, so I'll be making a quince galette from S.'s recently poached quinces to bring across the bay to her sweet little cottage in Rockridge. And Sunday may be the day to try out the rough-puff (or "ruff puff" as the pastryettas call it) recipe in the Tartine cookbook and see what happens. And speaking of Chronicle, they've now got an entire puff-pastry cookbook out, to go with their other in-depth studies of toast, snowmen, and grilled cheese. Surely my soon-to-be-written tome, Everyone Loves Pudding, could find a happy home there!

I've also got to liberate my lard pastry from Paige's freezer, where it went when I chickened out over using it for the Sebastopol Gravenstein apple-pie contest. And with T-giving coming up, it may be time to search out more lard (Mexican markets? Fatted Calf? Boccolone?). But not for t-day proper, since I'm going over to Shifra and Stephen's, where trayf is, well, trayf. (For you goyim, that's Yiddish for un-kosher. And it's not just for the Orthodox; many Jews who don't keep kosher still get a little squeamish about having some of the obvious dietary-law no-no's--like pork products and shellfish--in their homes. Even as a lax baking Jew, I still very rarely buy porky things to cook at home, a hangover of growing up in a no-ham/no-bacon kitchen. The exception being, of course, my recent infatuation with lard for baking.)

In fact, because Stephen can't eat eggs, I've got to test-drive an eggless pumpkin pie. I'm thinking pureed silken tofu--the same solution used for their eggless lemon wedding cake, a few years ago. Any other suggestions for eggless custard? Dairy OK, just no cornstarch or eggs. Of course, I could just do my usual apple pie and cranberry tart, but I know how people get about a Thankgiving w/o pumpkin pie.

I also feel that it's bad form to bring a dessert that the host can't eat. So eggless pumpkin pie it is! And if I can find something like the heavenly sunshine kabocha squash that we grew at the farm last year--which tasted, I swear, like chicken, or at least like the marvelous sticky drippings left in the pan in which the chicken was roasted--I will use that instead of Libby's canned, or even a real sugar-pie pumpkin. If not, roasted butternut squash mashed and drained it is, because b-nut squash has much, much more flavor that any kind of pumpkin.

And speaking of the farm, it's Farmie Thanksgiving down there in Santa Cruz this Thursday, and I'll be there, hanging out with my fellow farmies and making pies from whatever I can get my hands on--quinces, apples, pears, sweet potatoes, winter squash...

It's also the time that you should finally get all the pie accouterments that you rue not possessing every time you start baking in earnest. Like a really huge, heavy rolling pin. And a crust shield, so you don't have to fiddle around burning your fingers while draping scraps of aluminum foil over the pastry edges that are browning too fast. And actual reusable pie weights*, which are heavier and better than old beans, especially the chain ones that look like jumbo-sized drain chains.

Of course, what I really want/need is a two-level pie basket (like this one) for carrying those pies on Muni and BART. Over the years, I've had an assortment of garage-sale picnic baskets and cardboard boxes that more-or-less did the job, but I still believe that a basket like this will come my way by serendipity.

*You know what pie weights are, don't you? They sail the seven seas in search of pwunder! Like this!

Songs for Pumpkin:
1. Kate Nash, Pumpkin Soup
2. Tori Amos, Big Wheel
3. Vampire Weekend, Bryn

Quincy

2008-11-12T19:01:00.005-05:00

What's on the calendar? Hot-tubbing with Shar & Christina tonight, not at the now-gone Osento (sob) but at the Piedmont Springs, in Oakland. Three ladies, one tub, much chat. Ah, California, how I love you. The serious lack of hot tubs in NYC--and the crappy, expensive lettuce-- were just 2 reasons why I nipped back here to the best coast. Last night, I was out at the Bay Guardian's Goldie Awards at 111 Minna with Paige and her pals, celebrating the best-theater award that Cutting Ball, Paige and Rob's theater company, had gotten. Great stuff, and if you haven't seen a Cutting Ball show yet, you should! Their current show, Ionesco's rarely seen Victims of Duty, is running at Exit on Taylor through next weekend. It was a pretty fun party, even if there were no samosas left (and no sign of the SF Cupcake Company's program-touted wares) after the thank-you speeches were done. And there was a cool set by the unfortunately named band Citay (not to be confused with High School Musical alpha-girl Sharpay, and sue me for knowing this, but I do have an 8 year old niece), 7 sweet-looking rumpled hipsters who really deserve a less chihuahua-ish name.

S., my produce connection, showed up the other day with two enormous, aromatic quinces and a pomegranate the size of a baby's head. Lover of poms that I am, it took restraint to make that pom last for 2 whole days. The ravishing, snappy garnet seeds got eaten straight out of hand, dappled into yogurt, and sprinkled into a butternut-squash saute. But honestly, I could have eaten the whole bowlful of seeds in one go. The quinces were oven-poached, one at a time, in a light sugar syrup with a a few bits of crushed cinnamon stick, allspice berries, and cloves. This is my standard way of dealing with quinces, since they need long, slow cooking to get tender enough for use. Hack up and core, then drop the chunks into a small pot. Barely cover with water, add about 1/2 cup sugar, and then 1/2 cinnamon stick, 2 or 3 allspice berries, and a couple of cloves. Bring to a boil on the stove, then cover and bake in a 300F oven for at least an hour, until the liquid is reduced and the quinces are deep pink and tender. Let cool in liquid and refrigerate until needed.

This gave a nice result. But the second batch was stupendous. Why? Because I used the original batch of quince-poaching liquid (plus more water and sugar as needed) to poach quince #2, AND I left the quinces in the oven for way too long, which made them deep, deep rosy-red, and reduced the poaching liquid down to a nearly-gelled slick. Ravishing, and you could put that quince jelly on toast and sing the hallelujah chorus before you'd even had your first cup of coffee.

Food, Books, Wine, & Cary Grant

2008-11-07T14:22:00.006-05:00

Some fun things to do this weekend, after you've made your Friday night challah:

Friday
8pm. North by Northwest at the Paramount Theater in Oakland. Usually used for concerts, this classic movie palace is showing great old movies again for just $5. Eva Marie Saint, Cary Grant, Mt. Rushmore, popcorn, AND the place has a bar! Even better, Luka's Taproom is just up the street, with great beers, oysters, and killer mac n' cheese.

Saturday
4-6pm. Opening party for SF's new (and only) cookbook store, Omnivore Books, at 3885a Cesar Chavez St between Church and Dolores. Run by Celia Sacks, the co-owner of nearby Noe Valley Pet Co., and a longtime antiquarian book fiend.

7:30-9:30pm. Writers with Drinks (aka "Writers Who Drink") does a cross-genre show at the Makeout Room, 22nd St between Valencia and Mission Sts. Michelle Tea reads cyberpunk! Stephen Elliot reads poetry! Other people read, you know, other stuff they don't usually read. I've read here and it's always fun.

Sunday
8pm. 12th Anniversary Show, K'vetch, held at Eros SF, of all places. K'vetch, a longtime (yep, that would be 12 yrs now) queer open mic show, used to happen at Sadie's Flying Elephant, in Potrero. But now it's at Eros, a men's bathhouse/club on Market St. I know this place pretty well for a girl, since along with a bunch of pals I helped run Club Cream, a women's party, here in the mid-90s. 2051 Market St at 14th St, Doors at 7:40, show at 8pm.

Chris Vargas and Greg Youmans--new short film!
Charles Vasquez--reading original material!
Zara Thustra and Siobhan--performance art!
Sara Seinberg--amazing writing!
Rhiannon Argo--awesome excerpts of novel!
Cindy Emch--poet!
Heathen Machinery--beautiful monsters!
Vero Majano--Mission Media Archive footage!
Devon Devine and Jenna Riot--debut of BrownDownCrownTV show!
Kari Orvik--footage from BART station mobile portrait studio!
Danny Levesque--tales from the world of hair!
Margaret Tedesco--words and images!

After this show, the regular K'vetch will continue on the first Sunday of every month.

Alas, I'll probably be down in Santa Cruz on Sunday, finally picking up my farmie tools and going to Bonny Doon's annual Day of the Doon winery hoo-ha, from 1:30pm-5:30pm at their new tasting room, 328 Ingalls St on the west side. Also happening on Saturday afternoon, too.

Happy Happy, Sad

2008-11-06T15:26:00.006-05:00

It was a beautiful night for a few minutes there. Shar and I were sitting on the couch, drinking red wine and watching reruns of Tina Fey do Sarah Palin on SNL (since I'd never seen any of her parodies) when all of a sudden Jackie was on the phone, telling us that Obama had WON. We flipped over to CNN and there it was, the 270+ electoral college votes that he needed, not to mention big numbers on the popular vote. We couldn't believe it.

The boys were running around whooping with us, and for the first time we could tell them to look at the TV and see a president who looked just like them. Fireworks were going off above the trees on the next blocks, cars were honking up and down Fruitvale. My sister in suburban Minneapolis was shrieking with joy out on her front lawn, even if all her (mostly Republican) neighbors were inside with their curtains drawn. There were the Obama and Biden families on the stage, black and white, trading hugs. The President-elect acknowledged from the podium in Grant Park that it was all kinds of people, all colors, "gay and straight" that put him there. I remember being in the Castro during Clinton's first acceptance speech when he actually mentioned AIDS, something that Reagan and Bush Sr. had hardly ever done through 12 years of a raging epidemic. I never thought I'd hear a President mention gay people as just one part of his America-wide constituency, much less as part of a momentous acceptance speech.

So it was a very uplifting 20 minutes. Until the results starting coming in for Prop. 8. A lot has been said already, and I'm not interested in repeating blame or finger-pointing. It's going back, again, to the courts, where it should have stayed--since it's very, very rare that the popular vote ever enacts real boundary-breaking change. (Votes for women? Ending segregation? Legal abortion? Left to the popular vote, would we have any of these now? Maybe, but it would have taken a much, much, much longer time. If ever.)

When I was in college, several social/dining clubs on campus (part of a system to which the majority of jrs and srs belonged; the university didn't have facilities to feed these students otherwise) were still all-male, even though the university had been co-ed for nearly 20 years. It took a long, arduous legal case, brought by a student who had long since graduated, for the NJ Supreme Court to finally rule that the clubs had to go co-ed. I remember talking to a friend of mine, a member of one of the clubs in question, before the ruling. He wasn't sexist, he insisted, he and his fellow members just liked things the way they were.

Life in Conn. and Mass. hasn't changed for straight people now that gay marriage is legal there, and it wouldn't in California, either. I am sickened at how much money came into this state from other places, expressly to deprive us of our legal and court-mandated rights and freedoms. I am heartbroken for all of the people I know who have worked so tirelessly on this issue, for years and years, working to open people's hearts and minds all across the state. Obviously, there is still more work to be done, especially out in rural communities in the Central Valley and around LA. How many times does this issue have to go to court? How many times do we--straight, gay, bi--have to fight for recognition of all our unions, not marriage for some and second-class, limited privileges and invisibility for others? How many times can our marriages disappear overnight?

VOTE!

2008-11-04T20:31:00.001-05:00

OK, I voted, and I hope you did too. Over to Shar and Jackie's now, to eat chili and drink red wine and sweat out the election results.

Vote Early, Vote Often, Eat Doughnuts

2008-11-03T12:15:00.004-05:00

Of course, it's illegal to pay anyone to vote. But you can, ahhh, REWARD folks for doing their civic duty, as long as you're not requiring them to vote the way you want. Right? Well, it sounds a little fishy--and kind of like giving your kids money for dong their homework, which, like cleaning their rooms, is something they're already supposed to do for their own good.

Be that as it may, though, Ben and Jerry's, Starbucks, and Krispy Kreme will all hook you up tomorrow if you say you voted. Yes, pull the lever or poke your chads tomorrow and you get a cone, a tall brewed coffee, and a star-shaped, red-white-and-blue-sprinkled doughnut for nada. And if you're lucky enough to live in NYC or Seattle, you can go to Babeland, the fab lady-run sex-toy store (which is actually based here now, although sadly they don't have a retail operation in the Bay Area yet--especially a bummer now that Good Vibes is no longer the groovy women's/queer co-op it once was, but is owned by a large and allegedly sleazy corporation with questionable business practices and much lower standards) and get a Silver Bullet vibrator or a Maverick (heh, heh) sleeve. So, go, vote, and get your swag. And please, if you live in CA, Vote NO ON 8. Equality and chocolate fountains for all!

Know of any other vote-for-goodies going on in your neighborhood? Let us know!

Best & Worst Halloween Candy

2008-10-31T17:12:00.004-04:00

Candy List Time! I'm channeling my 8-yr-old self here, circa the late 70s..and please, chime in with your best/worst. We didn't have a lot of candy in my house growing up, so Halloween was pretty much the only time we got to ditch the Tiger's Milk and acerola (mmm, rose hip jelly coated in carob! you try trading THAT for a Devil Dog!)bars for what the rest of the kid world was eating. Even then, though, I had strong opinions. Thus...

Best Halloween Candy:

1. Nestle's Chunky. These were just cool: a big silver-wrapped chunk o' chocolate studded with raisins and peanuts. A mass-market mendiant, and really good if you like the chocolate-with-stuff-in-it genre.

2. Hershey's Special Dark minis. The ONLY chance of getting straight-up dark chocolate on Halloween. I loved these madly even as a kid and would swap anything for them. Even now, when I could go buy my own Green & Black and Scharffenberger extra-darks, if someone leaves an office candybowl full of minis near me, I will mock-casually fish through them while picking out and hording ALL the Special Darks for my own nefarious purposes.

3.Goldenberg Peanut Chews. An East Coast thing, originally made by a family company in Philadelphia. Dark(!!) chocolate coating around molasses-based chewy stuff and peanuts. Not too sweet, really good. These are still around in name, but are made by the Just Born Co. (of Peeps fame) now.

4. Junior Mints. Rattling the little boxes was fun. Plus there always seemed to be one last, slightly melted, minty chocolate button in there when you needed it.

5. Mr. Goodbar. Much lower on the worthwhile-mini scale than Special Darks, but they remind me of one summer when I found a copy of 70s-scandal paperback Looking for Mr. Goodbar in our rented Nantucket cottage. This led to my 10 or 11 year old self asking my sisters what a four-letter word starting with "c" and rhyming with "bunt" meant. In the middle of the ice cream parlor on Main Street. Ah, good times.

6. Nestle Crunch. Mmmm, crunchy. Rice Krispies good.

7. Dots. Hard little dome-shaped gumdrops that were fun to shake in the box. Plus, I discovered one day that my mom liked to steal these from our stash and put them in her yogurt. She was extremely embarrassed about this when I caught her at it.

8. Wacky Packs! Yep, it was the 70s...No, not candy, but these were so cool (and designed, I later found out, by the likes of anti-establishment types like Art Spiegelman) that they made up for the lack of sugar. Every parent thought these were gross, which added much to the appeal. Even as an all-girl crew, my sisters and I loved these.

Worst

1. Candy Corn. Hardened earwax masquerading as cuteness, in a dead heat with:
2. Circus Peanuts. The heinous spawn of styrofoam and St. Joseph's baby aspirin.
3. Box o' raisins. Nice try, health Mom. No wonder no one likes your kids.
4. Candy apples. Just one of the many aspects of childhood that I found trying. Not that I really remember anyone handing these out. I just hate them.
5. Butterfingers. Blech. What's with that weirdass orange (but not orange-flavored) stuff in there (see circus peanuts, above)? Yes, I know everyone else loooves them. That's more Special Darks for me, kiddos.
6. Mary Janes, Sugar Daddys, all other hard, tasteless but achingly sweet toffees on a stick. Callard & Bowser these are not.
7. Candy buttons (on paper). And the point of these would be?
8. Mounds and Almond Joys. Because I have always loathed coconut. Their only use was as trading material, or for scraping the dark chocolate off with my teeth, stopping the minute the vile white shreds appeared.
9. Hershey bars. They taste like RUBBER, people! Rubber with dirt, too much sugar, and sour milk! Not so horrible with almonds, but overall, way too ubiquitous for being such a crap product.
10. A rock. Because, you know, you're going to be spending many nickels on psychiatry if all you get is a rock.

BaaaaTULA!!!

2008-10-31T13:50:00.005-04:00

Booo! I love Halloween. This might have something to do with having a late-October birthday; for my whole life, I've associated black cats, pumpkins, skeletons, and autumn leaves with good things coming my way. Then there's that once-a-year smell of a freshly knifed-open jack o' lantern, sitting fat and orange on a kitchen table covered with newspaper, and the slippery squish of the seeds and pumpkin-guts between your fingers as you pull them out.

Kids come in handy here, if you happen to have any around; let those deft little hands go to work separating the seeds from their clingy, slimy web of strings. It's a satisfyingly messy and purposeful job, and will keep them involved but away from the initial big-knife job of carving the lid and hacking out the big, toothy grin.

Once the seeds are separated, give them a rinse in a colander and spread them out on a cookie sheet to dry. Rub them with a light vegetable oil, sprinkle with salt (and regular or smoked paprika, pure chile powder, or cayenne, depending on your tastes), and roast in the oven at 350 F, stirring occasionally, until dry and crunchy. I find these completely addictive, and a crucial coda to the whole pumpkin-carving process.

But, back to Halloween. Since the holiday falls on a Friday, you can really make the whole weekend into a spooky celebration, ending with Sunday's Day of the Dead events around town. And goddess knows, if there's one thing San Franciscans like better than getting naked in public, it's dressing up. Many, many drag virgins will be discovering what it feels like to balance 150 lbs+ on two 4-inch spikes the size of your thumb. Just as many others, especially those from the warmer climes of the South & East Bays, will be realizing that SF gets really, really cold at night, especially when you're wearing nothing but glasses, a spandex flag bikini and a "Miss Alaska" banner. Come midnight, you gonna wish you knew how to field-dress a moose, or at least turn a stuffed polar bear into a coat, PETA be damned.

So, what you wear tonight and tomorrow is up to you (me? Joan Holloway, girdle, gold pencil, and all) but you can start out the day in the right way. What do women want? If you were me last year, it was the Batula, a spatula in the shape of a bat, and an orange and black spiderweb apron. (Both gifts were that rare and fabulous thing, items I'd never considered but that instantly spoke to my deepest desires for world batulation. Plus, you can use the Batula to spank anyone that comes between you and your pancakes.)

This weekend, it's spider and skull-shaped pancakes for everyone in the house. And while the shapes may be spooky, the pancakes themselves are both wholesome and really tasty. You could use grated winter squash or pumpkin in these if you want to really stick to the theme, but carrots are easier. Enjoy!

Spooky Autumn Pancakes

1 cup whole-wheat flour
1 tbsp wheat germ
2 tbsp rolled oats
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cinnamon or pumpkin/apple pie spice (a very handy combo of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and allspice, sold already mixed)
1 cup buttermilk
1 egg
1 tbsp vegetable oil, such as canola, or melted butter
1 tbsp maple syrup* or honey
1/3 cup chopped walnuts or pecans
1 large raw carrot, grated
Butter for cooking pancakes

In a large bowl, sift or whisk dry ingredients together. In a separate bowl, beat buttermilk, egg, oil, and maple syrup together. Stir (don't beat!) wet ingredients into dry, adding a couple tbsp of water if mixture seems too thick. (It should be fairly thick and pillowy--enough so you can spoon it out rather than pour it). Gently stir in nuts and carrots. Set aside.

Over medium heat, heat a wide skillet or griddle. When a drop of water will sizzle and skitter over the surface, add a slim pat of butter and swirl to coat the surface. Turn down the heat to medium-low and add batter. Flip once bubbles begin to form and pop and edges look glazed. Cook another minute or two until well-browned on bottom. Repeat as needed. Serve with warm maple syrup and butter. Boooo! Serves 3 to 4, more or less.

*Yankee that I am, I feel strongly that ONLY real maple syrup is worth eating. "Table syrup" is just corn syrup and artificial flavorings, and does nothing but skyrocket your blood sugar and make the whole kitchen stink like IHOP. Look for the deep, mellow Grade B syrup sold at Trader Joe's and in bulk at Rainbow Grocery.

Will work for food

2008-10-13T12:58:00.004-04:00

For a lot of reasons, now seems like a very good time to see how much we can do with a barter economy. As the Fallen Fruit collective claims, "You have nothing to lose but your hunger!" All my fruits and vegetables have come from truly local sources these past couple of weeks, and none of them cost me a dime.

Not in money, that is. I did, in fact, pay for all them--by forking compost, setting up irrigation tubes, weeding, making garden signs, picking strawberries, cooking for 50 farm apprentices, harvesting chard, making rosemary bundles from the huge bush in my front yard, and more. There are a lot of sources of beautiful fruits and vegetables available, if you have the time to spare to earn them. Right now, I have more time than cash, so with a few hours spent, I've become rich in gorgeous produce, to eat and share.

A few sources:

Alemany Farm, at the base of Bernal Heights. This Sunday is their Harvest Fair, so come down and see what's going on around the farm. Best non-car way to get there, besides walking and biking: the 67-Bernal Heights bus to Ellsworth and Alemany. Get off right where the bus turns in the public housing development, then walk back out to Alemany, turn right and the farm's about a dozen yards down the street. Workdays are alternating Saturdays and Sundays from 12-5, also Monday afternoons. Volunteers work and then share in a communal harvest. Right now, the tomatoes and strawberries are finishing up, but there's still lots of chard, collards, lettuce, a few peppers, ground cherries, feijodas, and green (and purple) beans.

Garden for the Environment. 7th Ave and Lawton, in the Sunset. This is a half-acre teaching garden rather than a working farm, but volunteers often share a small harvest (I went home with a big bag of bok choy) at the end of the workday. Workdays are Wednesdays, 10-2pm, and Saturday afternoons. Workshops are taught every weekend on various gardening topics, like seed saving and worm composting. PQ may be teaching some preserving the harvest classes here this winter.

Free Farm Stand. Longtime community gardener and food-justice activist Tree started this stand inside the community garden at the park on 23rd and Treat in April, using the overflow from several community gardens in Potrero and the Mission. Now he also gets donations from Acme Bread (loads of day-old fancy bread, like their killer walnut levain) and several farmers at the Ferry Plaza farmers' market, plus city-park gleanings (including a bushel of apples harvested from a tree in Golden Gate Park) and backyard harvests from friends. Sundays from 1pm to 3pm. If you have any homegrown extras--herbs, fruit, flowers, vegetables, seedlings (I brought rosemary bundles from my yard), feel free to bring 'em along, otherwise, just come and help yourself, and talk to Tree about helping out in the various gardens in which he works.

Heartfelt. This cute little giftie and flower shop on Cortland in Bernal Heights has a little freebie table out front, where locals put out their garden extras. In the summer, it was lots of plums and lemons; right now, there are 2 big bowls of green and red apples. Seedlings, bulbs, herbs have also made their way there. Check in with the staff before you donate; help yourself if you're taking, being, of course, mindful of sharing.

Blintz Me

2008-10-10T15:10:00.007-04:00

Yes, thanks to volunteering on several urban farms this week, I have a whole lotta veggies (and fruits) going on in my house right now. But what I really want are blintzes, preferably the ones made by my grandma Fae, may she rest in peace. Why? Probably because they're a typical part of the Yom Kippur breaking-the-fast meal.

Anyone? Grandma? Any blintz-fryers out there with farmer cheese at the ready? Once I get through all the apples, chard, and peppers, I'm going out to the Russian delis on Clement St and getting me some blintz-ready dairy products.

Blintzes
I live with regret that I never wrote down measurements for my grandmother's perfect blintzes. But this recipe (adapted from one on Epicurious) seems very close to what I remember her using.

For crêpes
1 1/2 cups whole milk
6 large eggs
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons butter, melted, for frying

In blender, combine milk and eggs. Add flour and salt and blend at low speed until smooth, less than 1 minute. Let batter stand 1/2 hour.

Have ready large plate or platter. Place skillet over moderately high heat, brush lightly with some melted butter, and heat until butter just begins to smoke. Pour 1/4 to 1/3 cup batter into pan, tilting to spread into thin, even layer. Cook until crêpe begins to "blister," edges curl slightly away from skillet, and underside is lightly browned, about 1 to 2 minutes. Flip crêpe out of skillet and onto plate, cooked side up.

Repeat with remaining batter, brushing skillet lightly with melted butter before cooking each crêpe. Stack crêpes, cooked side down, on plate and let cool.

For filling
1 1/2 cups (12 ounces) farmer cheese
1/2 cup (4 ounces) cottage cheese (4% milk fat) or pot cheese
1 egg yolk
1 tablespoon sugar
pinch salt
big pinch cinnamon
1/2 tsp vanilla

In large bowl, mash together farmer and cottage cheeses until blended. Add egg yolk, sugar, salt, and cinnamon and mix until combined. Taste and adjust sugar, vanilla, cinnamon.

Place 1 crêpe, cooked side up, on a plate. Place 2 tablespoons filling in center, and fold up bottom to cover filling. Fold in sides, then roll to seal. (If you've never seen a blintz before, think flattish, squared-off egg rolls.) Place on a large plate. Repeat with remaining crêpes and filling. (Can be made up to 1 day ahead; cover and chill until ready to fry.)

For sauce (optional; or just serve with more butter and powdered sugar or warm maple syrup)
2 1/2 cups fresh blueberries
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon cornstarch

In large saucepan, combine 2 cups blueberries, sugar, and cornstarch. Set over moderately low heat and stir gently until sugar dissolves. Raise heat to moderately high and boil, stirring occasionally, 3 minutes. Remove from heat and gently stir in remaining blueberries.

To fry blintzes, you'll need an additional 4 tb butter.

Heat 1 tablespoon butter in iron skillet over moderately high heat. Add 3 blintzes and fry until golden brown on both sides, about 1 to 2 minutes per side. Repeat with remaining butter and blintzes. Serve hot with sauce.

******
I have now been an Officially Bad Jew on 2 Yom Kippurs. The first time, I was inadvertently (I swear!) recipe-testing the BLT for Fun Food that morning. Which meant I was standing in the kitchen, eating and frying several rounds of bacon while I should have in temple, fasting. Normally, I'm not even a bacon eater, which makes it worse. This time, I was out at Pier 23 celebrating Shar's birthday when I should have been at Kol Nidre services. Susie gave her all these fabulous Vosges bars, and so I ended up eating not just chocolate but bacon-studded chocolate. I'm hoping that maybe it was still before sundown when I did this. I'm also very glad Jewish theology really doesn't have an eternal-damnation thing going.

Cupcakes for CA, MA, CT

2008-10-10T13:06:00.008-04:00

Go Connecticut! Even if they're just angling for some of those gay ice-sculpture dollars (now that all those Darien bankers are going bust), the Supreme Court in Conn. just ruled, 4-3, that same-sex couples can marry in their state. This is great, great news. And since NY gov David Patterson has agreed to recognize out-of-state marriages, all those gay New Yorkers with Connecticut country houses can just throw their tuxes in the car without without having to jet up to MA or out to CA. Yippeee! Wedding cupcakes for all!

But, of course, nothing can be taken for granted. It's crucial to get out and vote this November. And while your vote is between you and your conscience, if you live in CA the PQ is urging you to consider VOTING NO ON PROP 8. Prop 8 would take away the already-established right for all couples to legally marry in CA.

No matter what you think of gay people buying matching towels together, if you're straight, letting gay people marry too should make NO difference in your life. You can still get married, divorced, married again as many times as you like. So what if Jim and James down the street are married too? This is supposed to be the land of the free, y'all. More freedoms--and the acceptance of the responsibilities that come with them--are, in my opinion, the hallmarks of a strong country and a social fabric that's worthy of respect. Do the right thing, for your friends and neighbors.

Vegan Cupcakes for Everybody
Now, you know I'm down with the butter and eggs when it comes to baking. But in the interest of inclusiveness, here's a recipe worth a try, even for the egg-adverse among us.

* 1 cup soy milk
* 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
* 3/4 cup granulated sugar
* 1/3 cup canola oil
* 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
* 1 cup all-purpose flour
* 1/3 cup cocoa powder, Dutch-processed or regular
* 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
* 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
* 1/4 teaspoon salt

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350°F and line a muffin pan with paper or foil liners. Awww, ain't they cute?
2. Whisk together the soy milk and vinegar in a large bowl, and set aside for a few minutes to curdle. Add the sugar, oil, and vanilla extract to the soy milk mixture and beat until foamy. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Really, you need to sift, because both cocoa and baking soda love to clump up into annoying little balls. Add in two batches to wet ingredients and beat until no large lumps remain (a few tiny lumps are OK).
3. Pour into liners, filling 3/4 of the way. Bake 18 to 20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Transfer to a cooling rack and let cool completely.

gettin' dirty just shakin' that thing

2008-10-06T19:43:00.008-04:00

Farming! It was all about the dirt this weekend. Went down to UCSC for the CASFS Harvest fest, and it was absolutely charming, as always. A whole posse of little face-painted kids were bobbing and swaying to the Rolling Cultivators' rockin' bluegrass while a couple of farmies were grinding away at the cider press, with Karen and Felizia pouring juice, another farmie grilling corn and veggie kabobs, and just loads of general sunshine and happiness. I was in apple-eating bliss, with all those cold nights, disappearing mugs, and close quarters with loud, walk-over-the-table-in-dirty-boots dudes forgotten, or at least not in the forefront of my mind. No, it was happy times with Frankie and Beans (the rat-eating farm cats), all the Early Girl dry-farmed tomatoes you could eat, and that priceless view. (And it's almost deadline time for applying to the program for '09, so get on it if you want to go! Happy to answer any and all questions you might have, especially for you over-30 types.)

An even more priceless view was to be had from the Chancellor's house, where we got to hear a short concert by the Shanghai Quartet, before their larger concert as part of the Arts and Lectures series. Hearing Ravel, Schubert, Brahms, and a contemporary Chinese composer in what was essentially a large living room with a stunning view of the ocean and meadows was also high on the bliss rating for the day, followed by browsing around and finally spending the last of the Book Shop Santa Cruz gift certificate I'd earned last year with my 2nd place in the apple pie contest. I went home with The Urban Homestead handbook, full of useful and snappily-written info about self-sufficient city living, from making daikon pickles and building your own solar dehydrator to using greywater and why it's crucially important to make sure your chickens have dry, fluffy, healthy butts.

And then onto the Alemany Farm, to dig and dig and dig and dig some more, to get out the posts that were planted halfway to China to hold up the bean fence. We pulled out the old beans, rolled up the chicken wire, and then spent hours digging out the poles. But by the end of the afternoon, the bed was cleared and marked off for a cover crop planting, and I was harvesting a big bucket of plum, lemon boy, sungold, and early girl tomatoes. Came home with a fabulous harvest of tomatoes, green beans, strawberries, rainbow chard, basil, and lettuce mix, all grown and picked right there in Bernal. You can have free vegetables, too: just show up and work from 12-5pm, and you can share in the bounty of the harvest at the end of the day. The farm has work days every weekend, alternating Saturday and Sunday. (The schedule's on their website.) Somehow, vegetables taste better when you bring them home, sweaty and dirty, having earning them with your back and hands.

Tonight, it's local salad-o-rama, with Shar and Susie. I'll be combining my Bernal harvest with what I brought back from the Santa Cruz farm (since I also had a gift certificate to spend at their market stand, earned from cooking 3 squares for the farmies earlier this year). Which means a salad nicoise, I think--with everything but the tuna (and the wine from Arkansas!) local. Green beans, lettuce, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers--all local. And then apple gingerbread, followed by a nip over to hipster-tapas hangout Andulu, at 16th and Guerrero, to see the gorgeous photos of Bill Basquin, part of a photo series and film doc dubbed Soiled, about what he's been growing in his community plot in the Dearborn Garden.

challah and nails

2008-10-02T16:51:00.002-04:00

So, it seems I missed my chance--twice!--to have a baby named Violet. E. and his wife have just named their new little one Violet, joining Dutch, his ladywife, and their girl Violet. And since there are other ladies out there who might very well have spawned by now, perhaps there are even more Violets among my ex's. Well, a big cheer to all of them, and here's to their getting a full night's sleep again sometime in the next five years.

What else? Last night was a lovely Rosh Hashanah celebration, with piles of homemade challah, much butter and honey, apples, pears, Asian pears and pomegranates, Arkansas wine and grape juice from the Post Familie winery, lots of barbecued chicken, corn muffins, and honey butter from Roxxie and Nancy's new favorite bbq joint out in the avenues, right next to their favorite cheap Indian place, and salad from Christina. It was a stone soup/potluck kind of deal--the best kind--and everyone agreed that the wine tasted like Manischevitz, only better. I've done many types of RH dinners, and this was the most low-key but one of the warmest, too.

Now, onto Sukkot planning! I wanted to build a sukkah out at the farm last year, but busy farm life got in the way. But here, we have a little back patio, just big enough for a little hut. It could happen, with some scrap lumber, rope, nails, and branches. One thing I am not going to do, though, is spend $$$ buying some super-ugly sukkah from a kit. A writer from the NYT reviewed a few this week, and they all sounded (and looked) hideous, made of metal tubes and printed plastic sheets, nothing like the rustic farm-laborer's shacks that were the inspiration for the holiday in the first place. The writer freely admitted having no confidence in his ability to even put together something from a kit, inviting an architect friend over to do the screwing and hammering. Are we really that far removed from taking care of basic tasks for ourselves? Granted, I'm no handyperson, but I can hammer a nail, sew a button, and bake a loaf of bread. (Given my druthers, I'd also like to know how to spin wool, make croissants, and tend goats, but that's just me.) Slapping together a temporary little hut in the backyard--one that, by Torah mandate, cannot have a solid roof, and only needs 2 1/2 walls to be kosher--is not like raising your own barn. It can look as slapdash as you want, as long as it can stay up for a week and provide space for a dinner table. I'm no carpenter, but how hard can it be? I'm thinking of having a build-the-sukkah party in a few weeks. Bring a piece of wood, bring a handful of nails, and help make it happen! followed by, of course, dining al fresco, looking up through the branches at the stars.

Challah and Better than Honeycake

2008-09-29T21:29:00.006-04:00

L'Shanah Tovah! Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, starts tonight at sundown. And right on time, my box of Arkansas wine arrived, including a nice bottle of muscadine grape juice--much tastier than Welch's for the non-drinkers. More muscadine pix, and a visit to the winery and vineyards, to follow.

Right now, of course, what you need is a nice challah recipe (below), and an alternative to honeycake, which everyone (at least on the eastern-european side) feels compelled to eat, but no one likes very much. And here PQ can help you out, with the famous apple upside-down gingerbread. You can use half molasses, half honey, if you have to get the honey in there. And if you're having brisket and don't want to serve a butter-based cake for dessert, you can sub this no-dairy gingerbread recipe, adapted from the original Silver Palate Cookbook, below.

Very Useful & Easy Gingerbread, with upside-down option
In a glass measuring cup, measure the oil first, pour into a separate cup, and then measure the molasses. This helps the molasses run right out the cup when you tip it, which otherwise it will not do. I've also made this as more of general spice cake, using 2 tsp of mixed "pumpkin pie spice" (also called apple-pie spice--basically, a mix of cinnamon, ginger, allspice, nutmeg, and cloves).

For optional apple/pear upside-down topping:
3 apples or pears, cored and sliced
3 tbsp butter or margarine (if you need to be non-dairy)
1/3 cup brown sugar, packed

Batter:
1 2/3 cups flour
2 tsp powdered ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg, fresh grated if possible
1/4 tsp cloves
1 1/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
1 tbsp grated fresh ginger root, and/or 2 tbsp chopped crystallized ginger (optional, but I would add both if I were you)
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup molasses, or 1/4 cup honey and 1/4 cup molasses
1 egg
1/2 cup oil
1/2 cup boiling water

Preheat oven to 350F. Grease a square 8 x 8 or deep, round 9" cake pan. To make topping: melt butter in a small pot. Add brown sugar and cook, swirling the pan, until thick, melted, and smooth. Pour mixture into prepared baking pan, spreading evenly. Arrange sliced apples or pears in concentric circles. Fit fruit in tightly, since it will shrink in baking. Set aside. Put 1/2 cup water on to boil.

Sift flour, spices, baking soda, and salt into a large bowl. In a separate bowl, beat eggs, sugar, and molasses. Stir into flour, then quickly stir in oil and boiling water. Pour into prepared pan (over the fruit, if using) and bake 35-40 minutes. If using fruit, loosen cake and invert onto plate while still warm, pushing any errant fruit slices into place as needed.

A Nice Round Challah for a Sweet Year (adapted from my own book, Honey from Flower to Table)

1 tbsp (1 packet) dry yeast, dissolved in 1/4 cup lukewarm water, or a decent nubbin of fresh yeast, dissolved in same amount of water
1 cup lukewarm water
1/3 cup melted butter or oil
2 eggs plus 2 yolks
1/2 cup honey
2 1/2 tsp salt
4 - 5 cups flour
1 cup raisins, golden look especially nice
1/4 cup honey, for drizzling, or an egg wash of 1 egg beaten with 1 tbsp water

Mix up water, butter, eggs, and honey. Add yeast. Stir in 2 cups of flour and the salt. Keep adding flour (2-3 cups) until you have a soft, sticky dough. Turn out and knead well for 6 to 8 minutes, adding flour as needed. Doughs with honey are hydroscopic (they absorb water from the air), which means they tend to get more gloppy, not less. Knead with a little oil on your hands, or use a dough scraper. You can add more flour as you knead, but go easy, as you want the dough to stay fairly soft. Let rise until doubled, then punch down. You can do another rise, or go straight to shaping.

Flatten dough into a big rectangle. Sprinkle with raisins, and fold or roll until raisins are fairly well integrated into the dough. Shape 2/3 of the dough into a long, thick rope. Now wrap the rope around itself, starting about halfway down the rope. Tuck the "tail" into the top. Do the same with smaller piece, and nestle the topknot into the top of the dough. This makes 1 big loaf; you can also divide it and make 2 smaller ones. Let rise until nearly doubled in size. Preheat oven to 350F. Drizzle loaf with honey or brush with egg wash. Bake for 35-45 minutes, until puffed, golden, and shiny. Serve with apples and honey.

Makes the world's best French toast the next day.

put a little steam in your Saturday

2008-09-27T12:21:00.008-04:00

Sigh.

You can keep your xtube, your flesh-slapping naked people doing what naked people do. Give me provocation in green satin shoes, any day of the week. I also find this to be the most convincing argument for bisexuality that I can imagine, given how completely dreamy both Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse are here. (It's also fun to note how 6-feet-plus-in-heels Cyd Charisse keeps her knees bent and her hips cocked in almost all of her up-close partner shots, so she doesn't tower over her men.)

And you? Your favorite don't-make-'em-like-they-used-to moments of screen steam?

Baking Bread at Steph's Cafe

2008-09-20T12:15:00.002-04:00

So, the house smells like baking bread again, not a bad thing. This is the third round of bread baking I've done since I got here, and the most successful. The first, from a recipe from the Inn at Dairy Hollow cookbook (the B&B that was here in this space, before it became the writers' colony) Did Not Work. Really, it was like a horrible dense brick that never rose. Bummer. The second version rose like a charm, only we lost our power that day, and with an electric oven, I had to keep punching down the dough and waiting before I could finally fire up the oven and bake. When I finally put the bread in, it had over-proofed and looked collapsed and wrinkly. It baked up okay, but I never got that beautiful swoosh of oven spring, and the loaf was a little dense.

This round, though, poofed up gorgeously in the oven, rising to about double what it was in the pans, and was light and delicious. I had a little bowl of orange-cinnamon-lavender sugar lying around, extra from the plum cake I'd made on Thursday, so I swirled that into one of the loaves, and damn if it wasn't just heaven's morning toast.

Bet y'all like the recipe now, wouldn't you? Well, so would I. I have to admit that I just sort of threw stuff together without measuring on this one. Once you have a sense of the basic dough proportions, you can do this, and it will almost always work. Having done this for a while, I also have a pretty good eye for guessing measurements, so the recipe below should be roughly accurate. Mess around, experiment, and let me know how it goes.

Re: buttermilk. I love buttermilk, for drinking straight and in all kinds of baked goods. The only way it doesn't work for me is, weirdly enough, in pancakes. I know, that's the place it's supposed to go, but every time I make a buttermilk pancake batter, I get a wet, gummy-rubbery result. So now I use regular milk and save my buttermilk for baked-in-the-oven things.

Orange-Cinnamon Oatmeal Bread

3/4 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup rolled oatmeal flakes
3 tbsp butter, softened
2 tbsp honey, sorghum, or pure cane syrup
1 tbsp salt

Mix all together and let sit for 20-30 minutes.

1 packet dry yeast, dissolved in 1/4 cup water
2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

Stir dissolved yeast into flour, adding enough water to make a thick, clumpy batter. Cover and let stand while oatmeal is soaking.

Stir oatmeal mixture into whole wheat flour. Add enough white flour (probably 1-2 cups) to make a soft but kneadable dough. Knead for 6-8 minutes, then let rise until doubled.

Meanwhile, make sugar mixture:

1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
grated rind of 1 orange
1 tsp crushed, dried lavender flowers
1/4 tsp cardamom

Punch down dough and divide in two. Flatten one ball of dough into a rectangle, and sprinkle with half the sugar mix. Roll up tightly into a loaf shape, and place in lightly greased loaf pan. Repeat with rest of dough and sugar. Let rise until nearly doubled, then bake at 400F until well browned and risen, about 35 minutes. Tip out of pans (to prevent soggy sides/bottom) and let cool on a rack.

Robert Steinberg, 1947-2008

2008-09-19T10:25:00.007-04:00

Robert Steinberg, doctor, chocolate aficionado, co-founder of Scharffen Berger chocolate, and a man of quick mind, boundless curiosity, and much passion, died on Wednesday. A sad day.

I met Robert in San Francisco in the mid-90s, shortly after he and business partner John Scharffenberger started their quirky little bean-to-bar chocolate company, Scharffen Berger Chocolate, with a space between the two words so customers wouldn't confuse it with the Scharffenberger winery, a sparkling-wine operation run by John's family up in the Anderson Valley. Robert was a doctor who'd left practice after being diagnosed with lymphatic cancer. A man of many passions, he decided what he really wanted to do was make chocolate. Really make it, from sourcing the beans to wrapping the bars. At the time, no one in the U.S. was doing this. Plenty of people were making fancy chocolates and even fancy bars, but they were all buying their chocolate elsewhere, usually from Europe, and then blending and flavoring it to suit their tastes. Robert and John, however, were going to go back to basics.

For equipment, they had to go to Germany, buying up old fire-engine-red, Willie-Wonka-ish machines from small family firms, then retrofitting them to run on American current. The flavor they were after was dramatic: smoky, fruity, smooth but forward. It evolved over time, but you still can't confuse SB with any other chocolate.

Robert was like that, too. He had a sardonic wit and lots of opinions, but unlike a lot of opinionated people, he wanted to know what you thought, too, and why. You couldn't get away with mindless conversational fluff; he really wanted to hear what you were doing, and what you thought about it. I first met him down at the company's original South San Francisco warehouse, and from then on we'd chat at various industry events and food deals. I'd run into him at the farmers' market, at the James Beard Awards, and always, he seemed to know everyone there. He was a man of taste, and dedication, who said what he believed. The evolution in chocolate that has occurred over the last 10 years was spurred in many ways by his dedication, curiosity, and passion.

More background,here.

in the kitchen

2008-09-18T15:55:00.003-04:00

Brownedbuttersugarplumsvanillalavenderorangecinnamon, that's what my kitchen smells like right now. With a little bit of garlicky spinach thrown in there, and if you open the fridge, Thai-curry-coconut-pumpkin soup. Outside, it's soft and warm and sort of late-summer-edge-of-fall. Just pretty beautiful all around. Oh, and I did mention the dishwasher? Nothing to you suburbanites, but a crazy luxury for this low-rent city gal.

Everyone likes pancakes! You can put anything in a pancake, I think, and if you pour enough syrup over it, it's yummy! Made butternut squash-apple-spice pancakes at the farmers' market this morning, over a propane stove, and doused them in sorghum syrup from the aptly named Ozark, Missouri at the end, and they were a hit! Who wouldn't like a nice hot cinnamon-spiced pancake on a crisp September morning? I think everyone at the market moseyed over for a pancake or two (I made them silver-dollar sized, so there were plenty). Recipe's below. One guy even ate up all my leftover steamed butternut squash. It's just so fun to pick out produce from the stands and then cook with it right there, without even going home.

So that was breakfast, and then an Ozark caponata--with eggplant, green tomatoes, red pepper, vidalia onion, and lots of fresh garlic and basil--was lunch. Served with triscuits and pita chips, and it was all gobbled up. Nary a recipe sheet or eggplant cube was left by the time I left. Much fun!

And now, on to Poet Luck...and spinach quiche, pumpkin soup, plum cake, and the recipe-testing caponata, made into a pasta salad with fusilli.

Spiced Pumpkin Pancakes

2 cups all-purpose or whole wheat pastry flour
1 tablespoon sugar, or to taste
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg, freshly grated if possible
1/4 tsp cloves
1 large egg
1 1/2 cups milk
1 cup pumpkin purée (made from steamed or roasted pumpkin or butternut squash)
2 tbsp butter, melted
1 large apple, cored and diced, and/or handful of toasted chopped pecans
butter for greasing griddle
Sorghum or maple syrup and butter for serving

2. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and spices. Stir to blend.

3. In another large bowl, whisk together eggs, buttermilk, and pumpkin purée. Stir in flour mixture, followed by the melted butter and diced apple and/or nuts. Stir until just blended--do not beat! Add a little more milk or water if batter is too thick.

4. Heat a heavy skillet or griddle, and lightly coat surface with oil or butter. Spoon batter onto griddle, using about 1/4 cup per cake.

5. When pancakes are lightly browned on the bottoms (after about 2 minutes), flip them over, and cook another minute, until browned.

6. Place pancakes on warm plates, garnish with pecans, drizzle with butter and warmed maple or sorghum syrup, or spread with apple butter.

Lizbeth, eat yer squish!

2008-09-16T12:20:00.006-04:00

Summer squash. Winter squash. Purple hull beans. Okra. Green beans. Cherry tomatoes. Potatoes. Leeks. Peppers. Rhubarb. Apples. Herbs. Lettuce. Eggplant--white, purple, lavender, baby striped. Flowers. Summer and fall were colliding in abundance out at the farmers' market on Rt. 23 in Eureka Springs. It was so nice to be back there and see Heather the market manager, and Patrice, the French businessman-turned-organic-farmer, and meet some of the other farmers working the area. Vela, an apple farmer, social justice activist and poet, told me that it's just about impossible to grow peaches organically here, because the humidity and bugs mean fungal diseases like brown rot spread like wildfire, even inside a cooler. His apples are transitioning, though, and they're delicious, especially his Melrose apples, a big, tart, full-flavored apple that I hadn't tasted before. I think this will have to go into a batch of the famous upside-down apple gingerbread, for Thursday's open-mike potluck here at the Colony, dubbed the "Poetluck" and much fun for all.

Reading about eggplant in the NY Times, I was reminded that despite its unassuming spongy nature, eggplant is actually kick-ass good for you. Or, more specifically, purple eggplant SKIN is, since it's full of nasunin, which is not an Indonesian prime minister but one of those brawny antioxidents, part of the flavinoid family of anthocyanins also found in beets, red cabbage, and blueberries.

As for recipes to make at the market on Thursday, I'm thinking about pumpkin-apple pancakes with sorghum syrup, since the demo starts at 9am and we are in the Ozarks, after all. And then maybe caponata, that chunky sweet-tart Sicilian stuff with capers, olives, and vinegar, or possibly babaganoush...it's always fun to find things to make that use as much as possible from the market. Followed, perhaps, if I just can't stop cooking, by winter-squash soup, since several farmers at the market told me no one knows what to do with their beautiful squash. There's the classic squash-onion-sage-chicken broth sort of soup, with a little creme fraiche at the end, or possibly a Thai-type one, made with Thai curry paste, coconut milk, hot peppers and lemongrass. I won't have a blender, since I'll be cooking outside with just a propane stove, but if I can track down a hand-cranked food mill, all will be well!

Fun Thursday!

2008-09-15T14:53:00.004-04:00

Farmers' Market in the morning, Poetluck in the evening...ain't we got fun? Looks like I'll be doing a cooking demo at the Eureka Springs farmers' market on Thursday morning (Sept 18) at 9am! Yippee! And then, back to the kitchen to make something tasty for the Poet-Luck potluck/open mike at the Writers' Colony that evening. Quiche with the thyme pie dough left over from last week's pie class? Upside-down pear gingerbread? Homemade rolls? Will post more info and recipes soon!

And, apropos of nothing at all, can you guess where this photo was taken? And what it is?

Happy autumn!

2008-09-15T11:08:00.005-04:00

It's clear! It's nippy! We've got power! Yes, the hem of Hurricane Ike twitched across NW Arkansas late Saturday night like a drag queen in a snit, and we got trees down everywhere and no power from 3am to 8pm. Hard work for the road crews, and broken branches, leaves, acorns, and twigs all over everything.

Up at the Crescent Hotel, the lights were out all day, which meant a gorgeously spooky atmosphere for exploring this 1880s landmark. Lace curtains gusting out over dim empty corridors, doors opened onto empty rooms, their bedclothes still in a tangle, wide wooden staircases spiraling upwards...a perfect setting for Death at the Old Hotel. Even without power, a wedding went on as planned, and the big Crystal Dining Room seemed to be in full (if unlit) swing. I sat out on the wide back porch with a glass of OJ pilfered from the continental-breakfast spread and wrote letters as the pine and oak trees creaked in the wind and the sun broke through the scudding clouds.

Now, it's a beautiful fall day, crisp and blue and clear, with none of last week's soggy humidity. A day for hot apple cider and walking through the woods...which is just what's on my agenda once I finish up this week's CSA newsletter. And then, of course, more work on the next book, Breakfast at Steph's Cafe. Challah French toast and Dutch babies for all!

Rain!

2008-09-12T20:09:00.004-04:00

It's so beautiful here, I don't know where to start. But start we must, so, Rain! Yes, after many months in mediterranean-dry SF, it's teeming rain here in Eureka Springs. I've got the door open to the porch so I can hear the pitter-pat. It's still muggy and warm out in the early evening, but with the edge-of-Ike thunderstorms coming through tomorrow, maybe the air will stop being quite so wringing wet. But plus side: supergreen, everywhere!

I haven't been here in 2 years (I was last here in June 2006, when I spent a month at this same writers' colony) but it's amazing how completely familiar everything is. I remembered the slightly warped texture of the straw placemats in the kitchen, and the steep steps up to the library, and the funny store that sells only frog-themed tchotckes, and how the shower always drips a little. I think I've had apartments that I was less attached to than this place, my home for only a month.

It helps that NYC was a frantic, sweaty round of packing, mailing, and shoving boxes around. Besides a few dinners, and a nice weekend with my mom, the city part of my trip was pretty businesslike, and mostly involved the less-than-scenic environs of the Brooklyn post office and my storage unit. I did learn than even in hoity-toity Brooklyn Heights, the residents are not so hoity-toity than they won't take free furniture left out on the street. So whoever's living with my baker's rack and kitchen chairs now, thank you! Enjoy!

Cooking Workshops in Eureka Springs

2008-09-02T17:36:00.004-04:00

Alright, I'm going! NYC tomorrow, Arkansas next week. Which means...you can cook with PQ! I'll be teaching two very fun workshops in a beautiful kitchen in Eureka Springs.

Thursday, Sept 11th, Foolproof Pie Making, and
Sunday, Sept. 14, An Ozark Brunch on the Deck.

The hands-on Sunday brunch class will be particularly lovely, as we'll be cooking together, and then sitting down to enjoy our meal on the beautiful outdoor deck off the kitchen. Mimosas, live music provided!

Info and signup,here. Scroll down to get to the cooking ones...

cupcakery

2008-08-29T02:52:00.003-04:00

a few hours, 100 cupcakes later...my freezer is all cupcakes, all the time. Don't try this at home, kids, unless you have a big ol' stand-up mixer. And, preferably, some non-dark muffin pans. Dark pans, it seems, make the bottoms of your cupcakes burn faster, or so said my pal Shar, of Shar's Babycakes, when we were baking 20 dozen cupcakes for a wedding a few weeks ago.

How will these little suckers get iced? Who knows. They're baked, and that's one mountain (of butter & sugar) climbed.

Feed me, Seymour!

2008-08-28T11:10:00.006-04:00

My tomatoes love Miracle-Gro! This feels a little like saying "My kids love Big Macs!" (if, you know, I had kids.) But what can I say? I have two tomato plants--Stupice and some kind of cold-loving Russian heirloom cherry--stuck in a couple of pots on the back patio, bought in a fit of farm-longing outside Cole Hardware on Mission Street. There was a big bag of potting soil under the steps behind my house, so I filled up a couple of containers and stuck my little plants in. And there they stayed, stunted and unhappy, doing absolutely nothing. I knew they were sadly in need of some NPK (no new growth, curled-looking yellowish-purple leaves, general ennui), but what to do? The soil was in place, and you can't really amend junky potting soil once it's already in the pot around the plant. So, yes, I copped a quick cheap fix: a spoonful of the blue stuff, dissolved in water, poured over the leaves (foliar feeding!) and into the soil.

Better living through petrochemical byproducts! Just like cake-mix cakes always rise and look perfect, damned if my tomatoes aren't 10x healthier looking just a few days later. They're green, they're growing, they look fat and sassy and they actually have tomatoes on them. And they're looking at me as if they just got a hamburger after two months of olives and soy milk. What were you thinking, they seem to be saying. We needed food! Bad enough you put us out here, with the cold and fog and whiteflies. Then you put us on some no-nitrogen starvation diet?

Of course, they're supposed to get their food from the soil,if it were any good, which clearly it wasn't. I can't blame them; soil is a living thing, and if you leave it in a plastic bag under the porch for years on end, it's not going to be worth much more than the plastic it came in. If I had a real garden, I'd be composting and fish-emulsioning and mulching til the cows came home (yoo-hooo! Bessieeee!!). But for two pots on the concrete, the M-G will have to do.

There are all kinds of metaphors in here, but I'm too written-out to delve into them. Plus, there's the Cupcake Dilemma: in a whimsical moment, I promised my pals M.& D. that I'd make them a wedding cake when they could finally get married legally here (They're longtime gay-marriage activists, and already been been married several times to each other, but we're hoping this time will stay on the books). Now, this promise has morphed into a request for cupcakes for 150. Especially tricky since I'm going to be at Slow Food on Sat and down in Santa Cruz with P. and her family, watching Shakespeare, on Sunday. Which leaves today, tomorrow, and the freezer. I have absolutely no idea how this is going to happen. I'm actually thinking...minicupcakes? Very cute, and well, small! So they could each just get a little dab of icing and sprinkles and be done. We'll see if I can find a million mini-cupcake liners at Safeway.

Also, Arkansas! I'm longing to go back to Eureka Springs, as I've promised to do for a few weeks this sept, but there remains the difficult cash issue. As in, plane tickets=really f'ing expensive these days! Especially going NY-Arkansas, Arkansas-SF. Not sure if I can swing the $700 or so for the plane fare, on top of the $300 or so it will take to stay at the writer's colony for 10 days after my workshops. Seems like a better deal to just come back in a week from NYC on a cheap jetblue fare...ah, what to do.

dancing in abundance

2008-08-25T17:40:00.005-04:00

Or, in another word, blackberries! Finally walked up to the other side of Bernal Hill, empty yogurt containers in hand, and picked, picked, picked. Many berries were still at the red/sour stage, but I did come home, over 2 days, with a little less than 2 quarts, about enough to make 3 half-pints of jam. This is some high-octane, high-berry-content stuff. And easy--easier!--as pie.

OK, I guess I have to cop to my recent pie-contest experience. I baked, I went, I didn't win. Maybe it was because I chickened out at the last minute, fearing my lard dough was too soft and crumbly, and made a regular all-butter crust instead. Yes, the apples--a mix of gingergolds and gravensteins--were a little soft, but that's early-season apples for you--it's just how they are. Paige and I took the rest of the pie home (after the judges had taken a slice) and I can say, honestly, that it was a really, really nice pie. Not spectacular, but certainly better than the ones I tasted at that same fair, back when I was a judge in 2002. Oh well. We had a lovely time at the fair nonetheless, and I got to chat with the very nice farm manager from Nana Mae, the orchard where I got my gravensteins.

What else? $2/lb heirlooms at the Civic Center farmers' market! Also there: MacDonald Orchards, with $2/lb Pink Pearls, my favorite obscure apple. Cream-colored on the outside, hot candy pink inside, bright and tart. these have a season of about 5 minutes, and make fabulous pink tarts and pink applesauce, so git 'em while you can.

Even better were the jumbo tomatoes and Summer Lady peaches fresh picked (and free!) from the Moraga Farm, a sweet, incredibly productive one-acre farm/garden in, yes, Moraga that's part commercial farm, part community garden. Tomatoes and squash are the farm's cash crops, sold to local fancy restaurants and markets to pay the garden's bills. The rest of the produce goes to everyone--to the locals who help to plant and harvest, to an assisted-living senior facility in the area, an AIDS hospice, a local elementary school, and more. Bartering is the way of the garden. The guy who runs a tree-trimming biz in town came out to the prune the trees earlier this year. His requested payment? Tomatoes. Same with the guys from the nursery. The firefighters who put out a fire at the farm got flats of tomatoes in thanks, too.

Wine works, too. Farmer Al of Frog Hollow Farm donated dozens of peach and nectarine trees, plus the manpower and expertise to get them planted a few years ago. Each spring, he brings a crew of his workers over to help shape the season's vegetable beds. His payment? Some of the (very good) homemade wine that David and the other Moraga farmers make each fall. It's an economy of abundance, especially during this peak of the harvest. Around the full moon each month, friends of the farm come together for a moonlight potluck, anchored around the wood-fired cob pizza oven in one corner of the farm. Pizzas are made, wine is drunk, a farm update is presented, there are dogs and babies, even a campfire.

This time, I got the bright idea to try to bake some peach galettes--with farm peaches!--in the pizza oven. Not such a hot idea, as it turned out, since the oven, heated from below, was just too smokin' hot for this kind of baking. The galettes burned on the bottom before they browned on the top. And the one galette I put aside, for baking later when the oven had cooled off, mysteriously disappeared, seemingly the victim of dough-loving space aliens or a very tidy, intrepid dog, who managed to eat all the raw crust while leaving most of the peaches intact. (Is it too gross to report that I made another galette, using those same possibly dog-licked peaches? And that everyone ate it? Like I said, really hot oven.) But it was (mostly) fun to bake on the fly, even if the disappearing galette did throw me for a loop. Best moment: taking a just-after-dark spin through the tomato plants, candlelit lantern in hand, to smell the roses and tomato leaves, listen to the crickets, and look up at the stars overhead. Abundance, indeed.

**with thanks to Lauren, pastry chef and soon-to-be cookbook author, who introduced me to the farm and all very nice people there**

Foraged Blackberry Jam
I've only ever made this with foraged berries, which usually include a fair number of not-quite-ripe berries, the ones highest in natural pectin. So my jam tends to jell up very easily without lots of extra sugar. If you're using very ripe, sweet berries, you might need a spritz of fresh lemon juice (half a lemon) or a little more sugar for a firm set.

4 cups blackberries
1 cup sugar

Mix berries and sugar, and let sit, stirring occasionally, for a couple of hours. Sterilize a couple of 8 oz jars. Pour berries and liquid (sugar should be dissolved) into a heavy pot. Bring to a foaming simmer and let it simmer gently, stirring frequently with a wooden spoon, until berries break down and it looks almost like jam (it should still be a little runny, since it will thicken as it cools, and you don't want it over-thickened and rubbery). Spoon into jars, put on lids, and put in a deep pot with hot water to cover. Simmer 8 minutes, then remove and let cool. Test for seal when completely cool.

Need to Know

2008-08-25T17:38:00.000-04:00

Saturday, August 30 in San Francisco

The French-American queer connection presents:

THE ORIGINAL SIN

A night of lascivious and scintillating readings, screenings and performances at the Center for Sex and Culture

Featuring hot local stars and sexy imported babes:

Michelle Tea
Madison Young
Kentucky Fried Woman
Ms. Cherry Galette
Miss Poppy Foxheart
Billie Sweet
Lynn Breedlove
Sadie Lune
Wendy Delorme
T.R. Moss
... and surprise guests!

Hosted by Carol Queen
Curated by Wendy Delorme and Corrie Bennett

Show starts at 7pm

1519 Mission St.
San Francisco (Between 11th and South Van Ness)

Tix $8-$15 (sliding scale, natch).

Osento, 1980-2008

2008-08-20T19:15:00.009-04:00

So, the much-loved women's bathhouse on Valencia St is no more. Osento, I just found out, closed on July 31st, after a 28-year run.

I loved Osento. My very first lesbian date took place there, when a girl I'd met at a Queer Nation bar takeover (where a bunch of queers swarmed a het hook-up joint in North Beach) called and asked if I wanted to join her, her sister, and a bunch of their friends for a steam and soak. They were on their way there after dinner, and she thought I might want to come along. I was a little nervous--after all, we'd only talked once, and here she was inviting me to get naked and meet her family and friends. But I was 22, and game, and so I went. And I fell in love--not with her, although we did end up dating for the next 3 months, mostly to drive around Berkeley listening to the Indigo Girls--but with Osento.

It was a funky old Victorian that had been refashioned into a bath house. What had been the parlor now had lockers and a sink with a counter full of water glasses alongside a bowl of lemons, plus a little cutting board and knife so you could make your own glass of lemon water to sip on while you soaked. Behind one door was a tiled shower stocked with Dr. Bronner's liquid peppermint soap; behind the other was a blue-tiled room with a big, deep soaking pool. At night, the lights were soft and hazy, making everyone look straight out of an Ingres painting. And unlike the men's bathhouses, it really was a place for bathing. Although I heard stories of late-night sauna nookie, I never witnessed any; the rules were no sex ("not even with yourself"), and privacy was respected. But if you couldn't touch, you could look: it was a place to experience the myriad beauty of real women.

Whatever your orientation, the sheer variety was reassuring: everyone was different, and there was beauty to be found in every curve. Forget those dopey Dove soap ads; this was a place to see the tattooed rings of a double-women's-symbol inked as a pair of linked handcuffs; to see dreads, scars, huge breasts, no breasts, every kind of variation of taut skin, wrinkled skin, flared hips, skinny legs, women with extravagant curves and spare women straight up and down.

Outside in the garden, there was, originally, a rain barrel full of chilly water for post-sauna plunges (later replaced by a cold plunge pool). There were two round cedar saunas, one with a wooden bucket and ladle inside, for steam, the other dry. The wet sauna was the good one, hot and steamy, with an astringent san francisco smell of eucalyptus going deep into your lungs. Over the saunas was a wooden deck. At one point, an avocado tree grew right up through a hole in the deck, and I would stretch out naked in the sunshine and look up at the ripening avocados hanging down between the leaves, still amazed that I'd found a place in a city where something as exotic as avocados just grew on the trees.

Osento was open every day, from noon to midnight. Anytime you needed relaxation, solace, hot water up to your neck to fight the summer or winter chill, or just a peaceful place to be surrounded by naked women, it was there. The Valentine's Day I locked out of the house by mistake without a coat, feeling sad and sorry and single while everyone else was dining a deux, it was to Osento that I went to warm up my self-pitying self until my roommates got home. When P. and I lived in the same building across the street, we soaked there all the time. I've been with friends, with girlfriends, and by myself, and I always came out softer, cleaner, and happier than when I went in.

Owner Summer is giving up the business so she can retire upstate, to Clearlake, turning the building back into residential units so she can pay the mortgage. According to the Osento website, this is her only option; were another person to take over the business, they'd have to bring it up to current code. This, which would take many, many thousands of dollars in renovations, would by necessity mean turning it into a more upscale, expensive, pampering type of spa in order to make the money back.

During Osento's early days, Valencia St was full of women's businesses. There was Amelia's, a dyke bar where the Elbo Room is now. Artemis Cafe (which became Radio Valencia, now Beretta) and Valencia Rose had open mics, comedy and performances. Womyncrafts West, women's bookstore Old Wives' Tales, and more...the street, run down as it was, was a welcoming place for lesbians and feminists and women with and without a "y". Now, with the closing of Osento, the last of the old lesbian-feminist vibe of the street will finally fade.

Moving to SF in 1990, I didn't experience too much of the old Valencia St. Sure, Old Wives' Tales and Womyncrafts West were still there. My then-girlfriend Anne and I snuck out of a party at her house on Guerrero to go to the closing night of Amelia's. I felt way too young, and femme, to fit in with the old-school bardyke crowd there, but we felt we had to honor it, somehow, in acknowledgment of the days when bars like Maud's, Peg's Place, and Amelia's were the only places a lesbian could be out, and where butches weren't "mannish" but sexy women in their own right. I heard about Artemis from another girlfriend, who'd helped to run shows there.

What I did know was the second wave of dyke businesses that opened along the street, like the Lexington Club, a punky dyke bar just off Valencia, at 17th St, and Red Dora's Bearded Lady, a closet-sized cafe and performance space near the notoriously sketchy Valencia Gardens housing projects. Red Dora's was where Michelle Tea and Sini Anderson started Sister Spit, with their weekly writers squeezed up against the muffin counter reading to sweaty overflow crowds. It would get so hot in there that I remember asking the crowd one night if they'd mind if I stripped off my shirt and read just wearing a bra. And Leathertongue Video at 18th St (now denim store Self Edge), which got started at the kitchen table of a house I lived in on 22nd Street. It carried all kinds of kooky videos--the sort of place to have entire shelves dedicated to both Jodie Foster and Bruce LaBruce.

Things are different now, of course. Ellen and Portia's wedding at their $35-mil Beverly Hills mansion is People-magazine fodder (The outfits! The rings! The cake!). My friends are getting a little tired of getting married, in fact. Once-It Girl punkettes have partners, kids, and careers as midwives or yoga teachers. The stores on the street sell fancy coffee and $120 sneakers. I wish I could still go get wet and naked in the middle of day behind an ordinary door on Valencia Street, but times change.

Thank you, Summer, and all the ladies of Osento. It was a good time.

pie, and more pie!

2008-08-08T20:57:00.002-04:00

Countdown to the pie contest! Got my flour, got my Sonoma Gravensteins (thanks, Bi-Rite!), got my butter, got MY LAAAAAARDDDDDDD....(anyone else singing Porgy & Bess here?). Off to the wilds of San Rafael tonight, jam and pink wine in hand. Keep your fingers crossed for PQ!

And speaking of pie, as we so often are here, you can do a pie class with PQ in September, if you happen to find yourself in Eureka Springs, Arkansas on Sept. 11. I'll be teaching a hands-on pie workshop in the beautiful kitchen at the Writer's Colony at Dairy Hollow, followed by a brunch workshop on Sunday, Sept. 14. Will post more info about these soon...

love you like lard, here on the hill

2008-08-06T20:08:00.003-04:00

The kind folks at Avedano's on Cortland Street are rendering me some fresh lard for my contest pie...now that's some neighborly service! They also do a nice meatloaf sandwich, kind of a Cali version of a classic Brooklyn meatball-parm sub. Soft, mildly flavored meatloaf, swished with marinara sauce and a slice of provolone, sandwiched in ciabatta bread and grilled in a panini press. Mmmmm. And for dessert, a tiny Fiat square, smooth, creamy-good chocolate with a hazelnut filling. These come from Bologna, and were a fave of mine when I lived there. Almost never seen outside of Italy, so a fun treat...

Hey, it's one-dollar ice cream day at Maggie Moo's! rocky road, here I come...that is, until I can get up to Picco Pizzeria, in Larkspur, for their supposedly awesome soft-serve.

What else? Free wild plums from the share-the-love garden-freebie box outside of Heartfelt, also on Cortland. Unapologetically rich and wonderful oyster stew, perfumed with pernod, at Hog Island Oyster Bar in the Ferry Bldg. Way more vegetables (carrots, onions, and celery, mostly) than would ever be allowed to mingle at Grand Central's Oyster Bar, but v. tasty nonetheless, and they keep you from feeling like you're downing a straight half-pint of cream. Alas, just as I sat down, they ran out of the bitchin'-looking, spicy grilled octopus and padron pepper appetizer. Watermelon agua fresca from La Taqueria, and a carne asada taco with avocado...always, always delish. Ollalieberry pie and seafood chowder (with a stock base, and rice, rather than cream and potatoes) at Duarte's in Pescadero, then ollalieberry picking at Phipps, home of white peacocks and every kind of dried bean ever.

Pie Contest!

2008-08-04T12:17:00.004-04:00

OK, pie bakers, prove your mettle! The annual Sebastopol Gravenstein Apple Fair is coming up this weekend, and you know what that means: Apple Pie Contest!! Getting me some Sonoma county apples (as required, in a completely un-enforcible but honorable rule) and some happy-pig lard, and keeping a close eye on the kitchen scale, so I don't screw up this time. P., who lives out near Novato, just where the subdivisions give way to cows, will be my escort to the land of country twang and apple fritters. And hey, no pressure, just because I won the Grand Champion ribbon upon my first entry a few years ago. But really, this is an awesomely fun little country event, definitely worth a visit, especially for families. Pies have to be turned in by 11am, judging takes place around 2pm, on Saturday, Aug. 9. See you there!

thunderstorms, gazpacho, free pudding

2008-07-27T15:24:00.005-04:00

Thunderstorms! Rain is teeming down here, lightning flashing on this dark and stormy Brooklyn afternoon. It's peaceful, actually, since I haven't heard rain in the summertime for a while. K. doesn't want to leave the house while it's pouring, so we're browsing through the Times, doing the crossword, eating microwaved chocolate-chip cookies (since her oven doesn't really work, and I'd made the cookie dough before realizing this) and contemplating take-out vietnamese noodles. But if the rain stops, it's onto the R train to see the new film of Brideshead Revisited, since it would take more than a little rain to stand between me and dissipated, self-torturing English types in 1920s haircuts. Not that anything could really beat the 1980s BBC miniseries (Jeremy Irons! Anthony Andrews with a teddy bear! Nude sunbathing, in Venice!)

Pizza at Grimaldi's was, as usual, exactly the right thing, eaten elbow-to-elbow off red-checked vinyl tablecloths. Before seeing Laurie Anderson's show at the gorgeous Rose concert hall (part of Lincoln Center, in the fancy slate-gray mall that is the Time-Warner Center), we tried to have dinner at Jack the Horse, a nice bar and restaurant on a leafy stretch of Hicks St. Except that after waiting in vain for our dinners for 30 minutes, we finally tracked down the waiter, who blithely informed us that our order had been lost--in a place where maybe 6 tables were occupied, the chef was chatting with the table next to ours, and half the wait and kitchen staff were standing around with nothing to do. So we split, grabbed a sandwich at the deli on the corner, and ran for the subway. And now this place will forever be known to us as Jack the Ass. After the show, we stopped in at Epices du Traiteur, off Columbus, for a big golden fan of brik (fried phyllo, stuffed with egg and tuna), peach gazpacho, and chopped mediterranean salad.

On Saturday, we took a breezy spin around the East River on the Pioneer, a 1880s ship turned schooner. Very peaceful to be out on the river with nothing but the splash of waves and the slap and creak of billowing canvas sails overhead. Best part: going right under the Brooklyn Bridge, so that we could look up and see the underside of the bridge--a rare perspective. Then, in keeping with the maritime theme, I dragged K. up to The Mermaid Inn, a favorite little seafood joint on 2nd Ave, which takes its theme seriously--goldfish crackers on the bar, fish-info placemats, little mermaids on the matches. Keeping with the fruit-gazpacho theme of the weekend (hey, it's 89 degrees, with humidity!), I got the watermelon gazpacho, which was a little too sweet, but had cute tiny watermelon balls and lots of lovely blue crab. Then fab fresh sardine filets, sans the usual head, tail, and backbone, with pineapple bits, a mango-ish sauce (I think) and thinly sliced cukes, radishes, and onions with vinegar, reminiscent of what NYC delis used to call "health salad". To save on table-malingerers, Mermaid doesn't offer dessert. Instead, you get a demitasse of free chocolate pudding to send you on your way.

Tea Time--NOT!

2008-07-25T10:09:00.009-04:00

UPDATE: Well, that was a bust! I schlepped over the river and down to Union Square in my cute pink dress, only to find a dark, empty bar with cavernous scaffolding outside, a couple of women with a blender filling tiny plastic cups with tea smoothies, a guy on the corner handing out free tea, and nothing else. Even the PR flack there admitted there was nothing for me to do. So after several conference calls with Lipton and Ogilvy being briefed about the product, about a million emails, and too many minutes on the hell-hot platforms of the 2 and 4 trains, I flipped around on my kitten heel and left. What a giant waste of time! So, skip this, and hey, make your own iced tea. Much better, cheaper, and less sweet. Save your sugar for PIE! And note to self, and all others: don't shill for a fat corporation unless they're paying you real cash.

************************

Want to meet the Pie Queen? And quench your thirst with some nice chilly iced tea on this hot summer afternoon? I'll be at the Union Bar at 200 Park Avenue South near 17th St just off Union Square, in Manhattan today, from around 11am to 3pm. There's a promotion going on for Lipton's new Pure Leaf bottled iced teas, so there will be free tea samples and tea smoothies and tea cocktails, all kinds of tea-related festivities going on. Not to mention the usual farmers' market around the corner.

Why will the PQ be there? Because someone at Lipton (owned by corp giant Unilever) via ad agency Ogilvy thought it would be a snappy marketing idea to get some of those kooky bloggers the kids like so much to do some promoting--for free!--of their product. Yup, they did send me (via K.) 54 bottles (4 1/2 cases! sheesh! luckily K. has an elevator to her fifth-floor apt) of tea for sampling and recipe-testing, but otherwise PQ's not getting paid.

Which, in retrospect, seems a little dumb. Why would I want to promote a corporate product for anything but cash? (Ok, I do repeatedly sing the praises of the microplane grater and the jam-jar lifter here for free. But that's evangelism, and better kitchen living through invention, not shilling.)

However, K.'s been enjoying the tea, and she's a tried-and-true, Southern-born sweet tea lover. So far her favorite is the red fruit-flavored rooibos tea, followed by the white tea with tangerine. Also in the line-up: plain old black tea that's unsweetened, thank you, which is a hard, hard type of cold tea to find, as all of us unsweet-tea lovers know. As far as I've ever been able to find, Tejava is the only fairly common unsweetened tea out there, and it's more health-food store than kwiki-mart. What else? Green tea with honey, and a sweetened black tea with lemon.

All of these, except the unsweetened black tea, are sweetened with sugar (cane and beet) not the usual h/f corn syrup, and don't have any weird chemicals in them. Interestingly, you might think the redbush (rooibos) tea is extra-healthy for you, what with the blueberry & pomegranate touted on the label. But nope, as the bottle will tell you if you look hard, there's no actual blueberry and pomegranate juice in the tea, just "natural fruit flavors." Thanks, New Jersey!

(Yes, PQ grew up in Jersey. Which meant high school chemistry class involved mixing things in test tubes to make liquids that smelled exactly like banana, or grape, or sour-apple chewing gum. That's my home state, providing better living through chemistry, candy-aisle division.)

Well, how do they taste? Well, K. says they're pleasant and refreshing, without that weird puckery too-much-citric acid flavor that mars most bottled tea. Even without the corn syrup, though, they're plenty sweet for a non-soda-drinker like moi. There's about 27 grams of sugar per 16-oz bottle, or a little over 6 teaspoons. Probably more than you'd put in your own made-from-scratch tea, but less than a can of soda, which have about 38-48 grams per 12-oz can, on average.

Anyway, much as I like a nice iced tea, I can't really drink it, since the caffeine gives me a debilitating rebound headache the next day. Much better: iced peppermint tea, watermelon agua fresca, or limeade with mint (what Valencia Street's Luna Park dubs a 'nojito'), especially with a little salt added, Vietnamese-style.

no sleep til brooklyn

2008-07-22T13:48:00.005-04:00

Humidity, thunderstorms, Grimaldi's pizza: all on the horizon! Yes, I'm making a flying visit back to Brooklyn come tomorrow. And while I'm there, I'll be doing this crazy thing, this thing that earned K. a delivery of 54 bottles of iced tea...this thing that makes ex-NYTimer Regina Schrambling (she of the many, many murky blind items hating on just about everyone in the food industry) think I'm a desperate bottom-feeding fame whore. Or not even a whore, since whores, by definition, get paid!

But more on that later...right now, many deadlines, and 1/2 a flat of lovely Albion strawberries to turn into jam, or at least something jam=like that can be put into the freezer until my return.

To look forward to, though: homemade ricotta from Salvatore Bklyn, the view from the Promenade at night, outdoor movies in Dumbo, not having to wearing a (fake) fur coat in July, lemon italian ice from Court St Pastry, croissants from Almondine, lunch with my old pal Lily B., coffee with B., saying hi to the folks at Hudson Valley Farm over at their Greenmarket stand (where I sold biodynamic sauerkraut and organic cheese in the snow last winter), and of course time with K., now a full-fledged New York working stiff, Blackberry, Brooks Bros. shirts and all.