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.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
PIE QUEEN RETURNS!
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!*
Friday, February 12, 2010
Oderatus, sinuata
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.
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.
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
lemon tart
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.
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.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Steph's Cafe this Thursday
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!
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!
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Up in the cool gray north
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!
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!
Monday, November 23, 2009
Pie Therapy
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.
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.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
turnovers to the people
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!
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!
Thursday, June 25, 2009
We're Jamming...
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.
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.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Seeds are Sprouting!
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.
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.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
blogging in my underwear
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.
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.
Friday, April 24, 2009
LA Book Fest!
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!
Friday, April 03, 2009
COOKING DEMO!
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!
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!
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Saturday Demo at the Ferry Building!
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.
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.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Have a Nice Day!
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.
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.
Monday, March 09, 2009
Hamantaschen Time
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.
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.
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
sitting in your house, and spanish chickpeas
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.
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.
Monday, February 16, 2009
PQ & You!
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!
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!
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
From the Mailbag
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.
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.
Monday, February 02, 2009
All the Single Ladies
"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!)
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!)
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