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.
Monday, August 25, 2008
Need to Know
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
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).
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
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).
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Osento, 1980-2008
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.
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.
Friday, August 08, 2008
pie, and more pie!
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...
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...
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
love you like lard, here on the hill
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.
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.
Monday, August 04, 2008
Pie Contest!
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!
Sunday, July 27, 2008
thunderstorms, gazpacho, free pudding
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.
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.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Tea Time--NOT!
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.
************************
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.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
no sleep til brooklyn
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.
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.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Kitchen Stupidity, Vol. II
Welcome back, folks, to this week's installment of Kitchen Stupidity! Today's guest, two-time winner of the Burnt Potholder Award: PQ, again, and her brand-new kitchen scale. Oh, she's so excited, 'cause weighing ingredients is so much more accurate than measuring them, especially when your kitchen only has a 1/2 cup measure so every time you need a cup of flour, you have to measure it twice.
Boy, I was going to be great, weighing out my perfect 10 oz of flour for my nice lattice-crust peach pie. Except that for some reason, I ever-so-carefully weighed out 16 oz of flour, yes, a full pound, which is more like 3 cups than the 2 cups I needed. But, natch, I was still imagining that I was dealing with 2 cups, so I blithely mixed in proportions of butter, salt, and ice water that were all wrong (as in, way too tiny.) This is when you should listen to the little voice of experience inside your head. The one saying, Why does this dough need so much extra water? Why is it sitting there like a lump of granite on the counter after chilling? Why is it so dense and heavy? Why did a mere 2 cups of flour (or so I thought) make so much dough?
Because I am an idiot. Of course, I did not have the wrong-measurement epiphany until the pie was in the oven. I could have whipped it out, scraped all the fruit and goo out into a bowl, scrapped the dough, and started again. But I didn't, and I'm just hoping that somehow, even not-buttery-enough crust will be redeemed by really good fruit (frog hollow, yippee) and LOTS of ice cream. Embarrassing, though...some pie queen I am.
The proportions, as they should have been:
10 oz flour (2 cups)
1 tbsp sugar
1/4 tsp salt
13 tb butter
5-6 tb ice water
Boy, I was going to be great, weighing out my perfect 10 oz of flour for my nice lattice-crust peach pie. Except that for some reason, I ever-so-carefully weighed out 16 oz of flour, yes, a full pound, which is more like 3 cups than the 2 cups I needed. But, natch, I was still imagining that I was dealing with 2 cups, so I blithely mixed in proportions of butter, salt, and ice water that were all wrong (as in, way too tiny.) This is when you should listen to the little voice of experience inside your head. The one saying, Why does this dough need so much extra water? Why is it sitting there like a lump of granite on the counter after chilling? Why is it so dense and heavy? Why did a mere 2 cups of flour (or so I thought) make so much dough?
Because I am an idiot. Of course, I did not have the wrong-measurement epiphany until the pie was in the oven. I could have whipped it out, scraped all the fruit and goo out into a bowl, scrapped the dough, and started again. But I didn't, and I'm just hoping that somehow, even not-buttery-enough crust will be redeemed by really good fruit (frog hollow, yippee) and LOTS of ice cream. Embarrassing, though...some pie queen I am.
The proportions, as they should have been:
10 oz flour (2 cups)
1 tbsp sugar
1/4 tsp salt
13 tb butter
5-6 tb ice water
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Bake them pies!
You know how much the PQ loves a pie social, and here's one that'll use your pie-baking powers for good. At the Women's Building (18th and Guerrero, in SF) this Sunday, July 13th, two nice folks named David and Colleen are baking up a storm for a Pie Social fund-raiser for Equality California, and you can, too!
They're raising money to help defeat the mean-spirited Prop. 8 that's on the ballot for November. You know, the one that wants to prevent gay people from getting matching napkins and towels as wedding gifts. The deal here: you come, you give them money ($20-$50, sliding scale), they give your money to Equality California, and in exchange, you get all the pie you can eat, baked by your friends and neighbors. If you bake and bring a pie, entrance to this pie-filled wonderland is just $12 (although you can, of course, give more).
That Obama bake sale in Bernal raised a whole lotta cash, so high hopes for this one, too. I wish it could be outside--in Dolores Park, say--to get the walk-by traffic like the ever-fabulous Brooklyn Pie Social, but do your best. Pies for social change, si!
They're raising money to help defeat the mean-spirited Prop. 8 that's on the ballot for November. You know, the one that wants to prevent gay people from getting matching napkins and towels as wedding gifts. The deal here: you come, you give them money ($20-$50, sliding scale), they give your money to Equality California, and in exchange, you get all the pie you can eat, baked by your friends and neighbors. If you bake and bring a pie, entrance to this pie-filled wonderland is just $12 (although you can, of course, give more).
That Obama bake sale in Bernal raised a whole lotta cash, so high hopes for this one, too. I wish it could be outside--in Dolores Park, say--to get the walk-by traffic like the ever-fabulous Brooklyn Pie Social, but do your best. Pies for social change, si!
Saturday, July 05, 2008
shake your peaches
Ran into the (vegetarian-but-persuadable) Red Meat Ranger and her consort, Papa Sueno, at the farmers' market this morning, and they had fabulous news. Not just that RMR was making dinner for Shar and Jackie, and that I could join them, provided I showed up with a homemade pie made with my Frog Hollow Farm Suncrest peach bounty, but that RMR's cabaret-performance trio, Pussy Tourette, would be reuniting for (at least) one fantastic performance, on the main stage at this year's Folsom Street Fair.
If you were trashy enough in the mid-90s to see them, you know what I mean. If not, watch and be amazed. Lyrics definitely NSFW, so use the headphones.
Very exciting! And to follow, peach pie photos!
If you were trashy enough in the mid-90s to see them, you know what I mean. If not, watch and be amazed. Lyrics definitely NSFW, so use the headphones.
Very exciting! And to follow, peach pie photos!
Monday, June 30, 2008
cooking demo on tuesday
Come down to the Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market on Tues., July 1 between noon and 1pm, and see the PQ make her infamous, moan-inducing pomegranate figs, with peach and pluot variations. Yes, I'll be spreading the word about pomegranate molasses, my favorite condiment, and will even be making my own by boiling down Twin Girls Farm's fresh pomegranate juice. At the outdoor kitchen under the arcade, three demos at 12, 12:30pm, and 1pm. More info on the market here. If I can get some proscuitto from Boccalone in which to wrap the figs, life will be complete.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
apricot jam!
Homemade jam on homemade bread...such is the satisfaction of this early-summer morning in June. A day without the chocolate mines! Yes, I've given up my retail gig, so no more hour-long bus jaunts up to the Marina, hurrah. Instead, I'll be teaching down at Stanford as part of their Continuing Studies program, writing for various magazines, and doing some marketing copy for various places, including...Frog Hollow Farm! Yes, the source of some of the best peaches & nectarines in the Bay Area.
And to prove it, I got my hands on a bunch of their much-touted (well, that would be touted by me in particular, in the July issue of San Francisco magazine) Golden Sweet apricots, a beautiful red-blushed, truly golden variety that's juicy without being mushy, sweet and silky with none of that pasty quality that afflicts so many lesser apricots. I meant to buy a scale and carefully, carefully measure the weight of the fruit, the weight of the sugar, etc., but alas, I didn't.
What I did was pit and chop the fruit, probably into rough eighths, dump on what looked like the right amount of sugar--enough to dust heavily and begin to bury at least the top of the mound, plus a little more--mixed it up, covered the bowl (ceramic or glass, not metal) and let it sit at room temp for most of the day. Before going to bed, I scraped the softened, pulpy fruit and now-dissolved sugar into a wide pot, added the juice of a lemon, and brought it up to a foaming, frothy boil, stirring frequently, for 5 or 6 minutes. Then, the whole mess back into the bowl, covered with a towel and left on the counter again.
In the morning, it looked close to jam already.
Got my jars sterilized by boiling them for 10 minutes in a big deep pot. One of these days, I'm going to get me one of those fabulous little jar-lid lifters, just a magnet on the end of a stick that lets you pick up the flat lids one by one out of the hot water they're standing in. Seems like you wouldn't need a specialized tool for that, but the jar lids like to stick together and the water's hot, and it becomes an annoying matter of poking around with slippery tongs, a butter knife (to separate the stuck-together lids) and burnt fingers. Again, it's also very useful to have a wide-mouth funnel (for filling jars), a clean gardening-type glove (for holding hot jars, since potholders are too bulky), and jar-lifting tongs (which are convex-shaped, to hold the hot jars firmly when you're putting them in and pulling them out of the hot water).
So, I poured the now-almost-jammy apricot goo into a pot and brought it up to a simmer again. Stirred frequently to keep it from "catching", or sticking and burning on the bottom of the pan. Unless you're using heavy-duty copper--the best material for jam-making--or high-quality enameled cast iron (like Le Creuset), your pot will probably have a hot spot or two where sugary things will like to stick and burn. Stir, stir, stir, with your favorite wooden spoon.
I like to keep one cutting board and one wooden spoon just for sweet things, just because I worry about some latent garlic-and-cumin flavor getting transfered from the depths of a spoon usually used for making tomato sauce or black-bean chili, or from a oniony cutting board.
So, it doesn't take long til the jam looks like jam. The apricot chunks break down and get translucent, so you can see the veining in the fruit. When you tip a spoonful horizontally and let the mixture run off the side of the spoon, the last few drops gather in a couple of sticky clumps that run together. They're supposed to run off together in a sheet--this is called "sheeting" or the "sheeting test"--but mine has never done this. If two drops more-or-less come together and fall off looking sticky and jamlike, I'm content.
Basically, it's jam when it looks like jam. Apricots have a reasonable amount of natural pectin, so they'll thicken easily. I do like a soft, spoonable jam, though, that's nowhere near as set and bouncable as commercial products. So maybe 10-15 minutes for the final simmer, not more. You want to keep that fresh-fruit taste, not boil it to death.
Turn off the heat, take your jars out of the water and put them on a clean towel on the stovetop, and fill to within 1/4 inch of the top. Wipe the rims with a paper towel or clean dish towel dipped in hot water. Add lids and screwbands, and return to the big pot of hot water (you may have to scoop out some excess water). Bring back to a simmer and let the jars bump along for 8 minutes or so. Take out the jars, place them back on a clean towel on the stovetop or counter, and let them get stone-cold undisturbed. You'll hear the reassuring sucking sound--a kind of slurp-pop--of the vacuum seal setting as the jars cool.
The amount of apricots I had--and alas, I have no idea of the weight, although I'm guessing maybe 3 or 4 lbs--made 2 1/2 pints. That's the thing about making jam without a lot of sugar--you get a small yield of gorgeous, intensely flavored product, since you're not extending the fruit with loads of sweetener. I put the two sealed jars in the pantry, and then stashed the half-filled jar in the fridge for me.
And then today at breakfast I spread a spoonful on a slice of whole-wheat oatmeal bread, baked last night, and it was heaven. A heaven I won't be able to exactly reproduce, since I didn't measure anything, but a heaven nonetheless. Obviously, what's more important than exact measurements is the technique. Lots of sitting around, and minimal cooking, seems to be the ticket. Basically:
1. Wash, pit and cut up fruit.
2. Put in a glass or ceramic bowl, add sugar, stir well and cover.
3. Let sit 6 to 8 hours, stirring occasionally.
4. Stir well, add juice of a lemon, bring to a boil for 5 or 6 minutes, stirring frequently.
5. Into a bowl, cover, let sit 6 to 8 hours.
6. Simmer until fruit is translucent and mixture is thick and jammy.
7. Pour into sterilized jars, process in water bath, let cool.
That's it. No pectin, no thermometer, no worries.
High-acid products, like fruit jams and jellies, are not hospitable to serious bacteria, so you can't give anyone botulism from your homemade jam. As long as you keep everything tidy and clean as you go--sterilize your canning jars, use clean towels and clean spoons, no double-dipping--you'll have a product that can be safely stored, unopened, in the pantry for several months. If you don't have made-for-the-purpose canning jars, you can use clean, repurposed jam or mayonnaise jars. Just note that they won't vacuum-seal, so you should fill them, let them cool to room temp, and then store them in the fridge. Low-sugar jams are more perishable once opened, so use them within a month.
And to prove it, I got my hands on a bunch of their much-touted (well, that would be touted by me in particular, in the July issue of San Francisco magazine) Golden Sweet apricots, a beautiful red-blushed, truly golden variety that's juicy without being mushy, sweet and silky with none of that pasty quality that afflicts so many lesser apricots. I meant to buy a scale and carefully, carefully measure the weight of the fruit, the weight of the sugar, etc., but alas, I didn't.
What I did was pit and chop the fruit, probably into rough eighths, dump on what looked like the right amount of sugar--enough to dust heavily and begin to bury at least the top of the mound, plus a little more--mixed it up, covered the bowl (ceramic or glass, not metal) and let it sit at room temp for most of the day. Before going to bed, I scraped the softened, pulpy fruit and now-dissolved sugar into a wide pot, added the juice of a lemon, and brought it up to a foaming, frothy boil, stirring frequently, for 5 or 6 minutes. Then, the whole mess back into the bowl, covered with a towel and left on the counter again.
In the morning, it looked close to jam already.
Got my jars sterilized by boiling them for 10 minutes in a big deep pot. One of these days, I'm going to get me one of those fabulous little jar-lid lifters, just a magnet on the end of a stick that lets you pick up the flat lids one by one out of the hot water they're standing in. Seems like you wouldn't need a specialized tool for that, but the jar lids like to stick together and the water's hot, and it becomes an annoying matter of poking around with slippery tongs, a butter knife (to separate the stuck-together lids) and burnt fingers. Again, it's also very useful to have a wide-mouth funnel (for filling jars), a clean gardening-type glove (for holding hot jars, since potholders are too bulky), and jar-lifting tongs (which are convex-shaped, to hold the hot jars firmly when you're putting them in and pulling them out of the hot water).
So, I poured the now-almost-jammy apricot goo into a pot and brought it up to a simmer again. Stirred frequently to keep it from "catching", or sticking and burning on the bottom of the pan. Unless you're using heavy-duty copper--the best material for jam-making--or high-quality enameled cast iron (like Le Creuset), your pot will probably have a hot spot or two where sugary things will like to stick and burn. Stir, stir, stir, with your favorite wooden spoon.
I like to keep one cutting board and one wooden spoon just for sweet things, just because I worry about some latent garlic-and-cumin flavor getting transfered from the depths of a spoon usually used for making tomato sauce or black-bean chili, or from a oniony cutting board.
So, it doesn't take long til the jam looks like jam. The apricot chunks break down and get translucent, so you can see the veining in the fruit. When you tip a spoonful horizontally and let the mixture run off the side of the spoon, the last few drops gather in a couple of sticky clumps that run together. They're supposed to run off together in a sheet--this is called "sheeting" or the "sheeting test"--but mine has never done this. If two drops more-or-less come together and fall off looking sticky and jamlike, I'm content.
Basically, it's jam when it looks like jam. Apricots have a reasonable amount of natural pectin, so they'll thicken easily. I do like a soft, spoonable jam, though, that's nowhere near as set and bouncable as commercial products. So maybe 10-15 minutes for the final simmer, not more. You want to keep that fresh-fruit taste, not boil it to death.
Turn off the heat, take your jars out of the water and put them on a clean towel on the stovetop, and fill to within 1/4 inch of the top. Wipe the rims with a paper towel or clean dish towel dipped in hot water. Add lids and screwbands, and return to the big pot of hot water (you may have to scoop out some excess water). Bring back to a simmer and let the jars bump along for 8 minutes or so. Take out the jars, place them back on a clean towel on the stovetop or counter, and let them get stone-cold undisturbed. You'll hear the reassuring sucking sound--a kind of slurp-pop--of the vacuum seal setting as the jars cool.
The amount of apricots I had--and alas, I have no idea of the weight, although I'm guessing maybe 3 or 4 lbs--made 2 1/2 pints. That's the thing about making jam without a lot of sugar--you get a small yield of gorgeous, intensely flavored product, since you're not extending the fruit with loads of sweetener. I put the two sealed jars in the pantry, and then stashed the half-filled jar in the fridge for me.
And then today at breakfast I spread a spoonful on a slice of whole-wheat oatmeal bread, baked last night, and it was heaven. A heaven I won't be able to exactly reproduce, since I didn't measure anything, but a heaven nonetheless. Obviously, what's more important than exact measurements is the technique. Lots of sitting around, and minimal cooking, seems to be the ticket. Basically:
1. Wash, pit and cut up fruit.
2. Put in a glass or ceramic bowl, add sugar, stir well and cover.
3. Let sit 6 to 8 hours, stirring occasionally.
4. Stir well, add juice of a lemon, bring to a boil for 5 or 6 minutes, stirring frequently.
5. Into a bowl, cover, let sit 6 to 8 hours.
6. Simmer until fruit is translucent and mixture is thick and jammy.
7. Pour into sterilized jars, process in water bath, let cool.
That's it. No pectin, no thermometer, no worries.
High-acid products, like fruit jams and jellies, are not hospitable to serious bacteria, so you can't give anyone botulism from your homemade jam. As long as you keep everything tidy and clean as you go--sterilize your canning jars, use clean towels and clean spoons, no double-dipping--you'll have a product that can be safely stored, unopened, in the pantry for several months. If you don't have made-for-the-purpose canning jars, you can use clean, repurposed jam or mayonnaise jars. Just note that they won't vacuum-seal, so you should fill them, let them cool to room temp, and then store them in the fridge. Low-sugar jams are more perishable once opened, so use them within a month.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
opera & bake sales
OK, the pie! It's great! Maybe I overdid it with the tapioca--it's a little jellylike, not gooey-juicy the way I really like. But the fruit tastes great, and the lattice crust is cute as a button, even without the little $5 pinking-wheel roller that cuts your pastry into neat serrated strips. This is a state-fair pie, no doubt about it. Going over to Jen's for tea and pie later, and pix will follow.
[2 hours later....Ooops. Well, there was tea, and Jen's daughter was there, and before you know it, most of the pie was gone. So no pictures, alas, but maybe I'll make another one for the O.O.O. (see below)on Saturday...]
What else can you do this weekend, besides bake pie? (Yes, Hooverville Orchards will have more sour cherries at the Alemany Market. I bought about 2 lbs, which seemed just right for my pie pan.) You can come up to Bernal on Sat. morning for the Obernal Obakesale Obama, Move On.org's little sweet-treat fest, starting at 10am. Sign up here if you wanna bake or work; otherwise, just come and buy. I'll probably be there, forcing people to choose (again!) between brownies and blondies.
Go out to AT&T Park (yes, the baseball stadium) and see a live simulcast of SF Opera's Lucia di Lammermoor, on Friday evening. A mad scene, at third base! Opera and hot dogs! Actually, Peter Meehan, who does the $25 and Under column for the NY Times, recently got the prime gig of visiting dozens of ballparks to eat their food. Our fair city got top billing, thanks to a super Dungeness-crab panini, eaten by Meehan's ladyfriend with a split of champagne. He, having guyness to uphold, had an Anchor Steam, and the other half of her sandwich.
Or, just eat cherries!
State Fair Cherry Pie
You don't need a cherry pitter for this pie, since sour cherries are soft and squishy enough so that you can just pop the pits out between your thumb and forefinger. You do, however, need real sour pie cherries, a completely different animal than sweet cherries. In general, sour cherries are small and juicy, with a clear pale red skin and a yellow-to-translucent flesh. If you've ever had cherry pie, even diner pie, you know what they taste like. The advantage of making your own pie is, of course, that you can keep the sugar and gel to a minimum, so that you actually taste real fruit, not just goo. Perfect with vanilla ice cream. Also, I've reduced the amount of tapioca from the original 1/4 cup I used, so this should be just right.
Crust
2 1/4 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp sugar
14 tbsp (1 stick + 6 tb, or 7 oz) butter, chilled
5-7 tbsp ice water
Filling
2 lbs sour cherries (the weight is before they're pitted)
2/3 cup sugar
2 tbsp granulated or instant tapioca (like Minute brand, in the red box--look for in the baking aisle, or next to the Jell-O)
1/2 tsp almond extract or 1 tbsp Amaretto
pinch of cinnamon
Sift together flour, sugar and salt. Cut in butter, rubbing bits between your thumb and fingertips until you have lots of flat nickel-sized bits. Keep tossing the flour as you rub to keep the whole mix nice and light. Remember, light touch=light pastry. Once it looks like dry oatmeal flakes, drizzle in the water. Lightly stir with a fork or a chopstick, adding more as needed, until you can squeeze together a handful. Pat into two rounds, wrap in plastic or pop into a ziploc bag and chill for at least an hour.
Pit your cherries and mix with tapioca, sugar, almond extract and cinnamon. Set aside (a nice 10 minute soak will help the tapioca to start dissolving.)
Roll out your pie crust, line the pan (a 9" pan works well), and pop the pan back into the fridge while you roll out the second crust. Cut second round into even strips.
Preheat oven to 425F. Take your bottom crust out of the fridge, pour the cherry mixture (including juice) into the crust. Now, the fun part! Just like peanut-butter cookies must have that criss-cross fork pattern on top, cherry pie must have a lattice. (Makes sense, since cherries are juicy and the lattice helps with the evaporation so you have pie, not soup.)
Lay the longest strips in a cross over the middle of the pie. Now take another strip and lay it next to the first one, lifting the crossing strip so that it's the opposite--either under or over, depending. Keep doing this, lifting strips as necessary, so that you get a "weave" effect--one strip over, one strip under, etc. Now press the edges together around the outside and flute nicely. OK, I promise I'll do explanatory pix on the next go-round, since it's MUCH easier to show than tell. Brush with egg wash (1 egg mixed with 2 tsp water) if you want to get shiny and fancy.
Pop in the oven for 10-15 minutes, then turn down heat to 375F. Bake another 25-30 minutes, until crust is golden brown and juices are thick and bubbly (good to put a baking sheet underneath,to prevent smoking juices on the oven floor.). Cool on a rack for several hours so that pie juices can congeal properly. But do eat the day it's baked for optimum crust-crispness.
[2 hours later....Ooops. Well, there was tea, and Jen's daughter was there, and before you know it, most of the pie was gone. So no pictures, alas, but maybe I'll make another one for the O.O.O. (see below)on Saturday...]
What else can you do this weekend, besides bake pie? (Yes, Hooverville Orchards will have more sour cherries at the Alemany Market. I bought about 2 lbs, which seemed just right for my pie pan.) You can come up to Bernal on Sat. morning for the Obernal Obakesale Obama, Move On.org's little sweet-treat fest, starting at 10am. Sign up here if you wanna bake or work; otherwise, just come and buy. I'll probably be there, forcing people to choose (again!) between brownies and blondies.
Go out to AT&T Park (yes, the baseball stadium) and see a live simulcast of SF Opera's Lucia di Lammermoor, on Friday evening. A mad scene, at third base! Opera and hot dogs! Actually, Peter Meehan, who does the $25 and Under column for the NY Times, recently got the prime gig of visiting dozens of ballparks to eat their food. Our fair city got top billing, thanks to a super Dungeness-crab panini, eaten by Meehan's ladyfriend with a split of champagne. He, having guyness to uphold, had an Anchor Steam, and the other half of her sandwich.
Or, just eat cherries!
State Fair Cherry Pie
You don't need a cherry pitter for this pie, since sour cherries are soft and squishy enough so that you can just pop the pits out between your thumb and forefinger. You do, however, need real sour pie cherries, a completely different animal than sweet cherries. In general, sour cherries are small and juicy, with a clear pale red skin and a yellow-to-translucent flesh. If you've ever had cherry pie, even diner pie, you know what they taste like. The advantage of making your own pie is, of course, that you can keep the sugar and gel to a minimum, so that you actually taste real fruit, not just goo. Perfect with vanilla ice cream. Also, I've reduced the amount of tapioca from the original 1/4 cup I used, so this should be just right.
Crust
2 1/4 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp sugar
14 tbsp (1 stick + 6 tb, or 7 oz) butter, chilled
5-7 tbsp ice water
Filling
2 lbs sour cherries (the weight is before they're pitted)
2/3 cup sugar
2 tbsp granulated or instant tapioca (like Minute brand, in the red box--look for in the baking aisle, or next to the Jell-O)
1/2 tsp almond extract or 1 tbsp Amaretto
pinch of cinnamon
Sift together flour, sugar and salt. Cut in butter, rubbing bits between your thumb and fingertips until you have lots of flat nickel-sized bits. Keep tossing the flour as you rub to keep the whole mix nice and light. Remember, light touch=light pastry. Once it looks like dry oatmeal flakes, drizzle in the water. Lightly stir with a fork or a chopstick, adding more as needed, until you can squeeze together a handful. Pat into two rounds, wrap in plastic or pop into a ziploc bag and chill for at least an hour.
Pit your cherries and mix with tapioca, sugar, almond extract and cinnamon. Set aside (a nice 10 minute soak will help the tapioca to start dissolving.)
Roll out your pie crust, line the pan (a 9" pan works well), and pop the pan back into the fridge while you roll out the second crust. Cut second round into even strips.
Preheat oven to 425F. Take your bottom crust out of the fridge, pour the cherry mixture (including juice) into the crust. Now, the fun part! Just like peanut-butter cookies must have that criss-cross fork pattern on top, cherry pie must have a lattice. (Makes sense, since cherries are juicy and the lattice helps with the evaporation so you have pie, not soup.)
Lay the longest strips in a cross over the middle of the pie. Now take another strip and lay it next to the first one, lifting the crossing strip so that it's the opposite--either under or over, depending. Keep doing this, lifting strips as necessary, so that you get a "weave" effect--one strip over, one strip under, etc. Now press the edges together around the outside and flute nicely. OK, I promise I'll do explanatory pix on the next go-round, since it's MUCH easier to show than tell. Brush with egg wash (1 egg mixed with 2 tsp water) if you want to get shiny and fancy.
Pop in the oven for 10-15 minutes, then turn down heat to 375F. Bake another 25-30 minutes, until crust is golden brown and juices are thick and bubbly (good to put a baking sheet underneath,to prevent smoking juices on the oven floor.). Cool on a rack for several hours so that pie juices can congeal properly. But do eat the day it's baked for optimum crust-crispness.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
can you bake a cherry pie? damn skippy you can
All you cherry pie bakers, get thee down to the Alemany Farmers' Market (down near Alemany Blvd, by Crescent and Peralta at the southeastern base of Bernal Hill)RIGHT NOW. Hooverville Orchards has fresh Montemorency cherries, aka sour cherries, aka pie cherries, for sale at $4.50/lb. Also some damn fine lookin' Bings for a buck less. I've got 2 lbs in my fridge right now, which means tomorrow, I'll be living up to my Jersey-diner heritage and baking cherry pie. Pix and recipe to follow!
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
cherry season!
You really haven't lived til you've heard War's Low Rider pounded out on a cowbell, a violin, and a washtub bass. That was last night, downstairs in the secret garden behind Bernal's Wild Side West bar, where impromptu jams can break out at any minute. I had just come home to change out of my new coral-colored sundress--because even a June afternoon is too windy for sundresses up here on the hill--when my roommate called to say music was happening at the Wild Side. Put on jeans and the trusty red leather coat and scooted on down there, for $5 wine and a group of friendly folks noodling away on guitars and slide whistles. Much fun had by all, and this seems to happen all the time, especially on sunny Sunday afternoons.
So, what are you doing with your cherries? I've been hunkered down, waiting for the Brooks (which were selling for an astounding $9.99/lb at the Real [-ly expensive] Foods near the chocolate mines in the Marina last week. Organic, from Frog Hollow, sure, but still, $10! For Brooks! Damn!) to be replaced by Bings. The dark, sweet fatties are just starting to come on, and promise to be heavenly, as always. Looking forward to scoring a few bags of cherry goodness at the Alemeny Market this Saturday. And if anyone has real sour cherries, well, a cherry pie will certainly be forthcoming. Yum!
It's Shifra's belated 40th b-day party this weekend, so another round of the eggless-spelt carrot cake (mashed bananas, the secret ingredient) may be in order. I'm also curious about barley flour, a paen to which was posted by the soon-to-be-in-California Bakerina recently. Buying avocados on Mission St the other day, I found bags of Peruvian barley flour, which I may have to experiment with, if only because of how delicious it smells while baking, according to the very trustworthy Bakerina.
Now, back to writing, as I'm on the very, very home stretch of a sassy new cookbook, coming out this fall from Manic D Press. 5 more recipes to go...
So, what are you doing with your cherries? I've been hunkered down, waiting for the Brooks (which were selling for an astounding $9.99/lb at the Real [-ly expensive] Foods near the chocolate mines in the Marina last week. Organic, from Frog Hollow, sure, but still, $10! For Brooks! Damn!) to be replaced by Bings. The dark, sweet fatties are just starting to come on, and promise to be heavenly, as always. Looking forward to scoring a few bags of cherry goodness at the Alemeny Market this Saturday. And if anyone has real sour cherries, well, a cherry pie will certainly be forthcoming. Yum!
It's Shifra's belated 40th b-day party this weekend, so another round of the eggless-spelt carrot cake (mashed bananas, the secret ingredient) may be in order. I'm also curious about barley flour, a paen to which was posted by the soon-to-be-in-California Bakerina recently. Buying avocados on Mission St the other day, I found bags of Peruvian barley flour, which I may have to experiment with, if only because of how delicious it smells while baking, according to the very trustworthy Bakerina.
Now, back to writing, as I'm on the very, very home stretch of a sassy new cookbook, coming out this fall from Manic D Press. 5 more recipes to go...
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
incredibly dumb things you do in the kitchen
Ok, help me out here. Surely all you kitchen-savvy types do really, really stupid things when no one but the cat is watching. Please share!
Why? Because I just exploded a hard-boiled egg all over my kitchen, that's why. Even worse was not realizing what I'd done for at least 20 minutes after said egg had exploded. Yes, I heard the poof-thwump of the egg chunks hitting the floor at high velocity, but I just figured my roommate had come home, put popcorn in the microwave, and had all the corn magically pop at once, boom.
Honestly, such was my thought process, and I should be condemned to a life of takeout pizza and Grape-Nuts just for that. it wasn't until the house began to smell like something burning on the stove that I recalled putting on an egg to simmer, oh, an hour or so ago. And then I remembered how yes, an egg will indeed explode if exposed to dry heat--the kind of heat you get when you let your pot boil dry for a long time. So, no hard-boiled egg for me, and lots of shell on the floor. Small rationalization: many deadlines, and typing madly on multiple projects! But still.
Damn. And you?
Why? Because I just exploded a hard-boiled egg all over my kitchen, that's why. Even worse was not realizing what I'd done for at least 20 minutes after said egg had exploded. Yes, I heard the poof-thwump of the egg chunks hitting the floor at high velocity, but I just figured my roommate had come home, put popcorn in the microwave, and had all the corn magically pop at once, boom.
Honestly, such was my thought process, and I should be condemned to a life of takeout pizza and Grape-Nuts just for that. it wasn't until the house began to smell like something burning on the stove that I recalled putting on an egg to simmer, oh, an hour or so ago. And then I remembered how yes, an egg will indeed explode if exposed to dry heat--the kind of heat you get when you let your pot boil dry for a long time. So, no hard-boiled egg for me, and lots of shell on the floor. Small rationalization: many deadlines, and typing madly on multiple projects! But still.
Damn. And you?
kwassa kwassa bling bing
As a young girl
Louis Vuitton
with your mother
on a sandy lawn...
A cupcake--or four!--for the bed-headed boys of Vampire Weekend, just for rhyming "Louis Vuitton", "reggaeton", and "Benetton", in a super-catchy, head-bobbingly happy tune. Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa, your Zipcar driving song for the summer.
As a sophomore
with the reggaeton
And the linens
you're sitting on
Who else gets cakes? Oh, all the lady couples I know, come June 17. The wedding-cake requests are rolling in, since I've promised to bake get-married-in-California cakes for everyone that can finally tie the knot legally in our fine golden state. Cupcakes, three-tiered frilly cakes, blueberry pies: whatever the ladies want, that's what I'm here for.
Is your bed made?
Is your sweater on?
Do you wanta
Like you know I do?
Of course you do! And if you're in NYC, you want to go see Hamlet in Central Park, assistant-directed by Rob Melrose, of Cutting-Ball Theatre fame in SF. And you want to drop by the Leslie/Lohman (rhymes with Lindsey Lohan!) Gallery, to see photos by former SF-er Phyllis Christopher, as part of a big pride-month show of queer women's art called Pink & Bent. And while you're there, you should go by the Rick's Picks pickle stand at the Union Square and Grand Army Plaza Greenmarkets, and bug Rick for some of his ON-RAMPS, pickled ramps with hibiscus and pink peppercorns. (Ramps, for all you non-easterners, are wild leeks, slim, pungent, and super-tasty for those who like that sort of thing.)
Does this feel so unnatural
for Peter Gabriel too
But this feels so unnatural
Peter Gabriel too
In SF, cool and foggy, you should be rolling around in sweet, sweet strawberries and anticipating the arrival of Bing cherries and Blenheim apricots. Don't be paying no $7/lb for those useless Brooks cherries! Honestly, they're wet and shaped like a cherry, that's all we can say for them. Surely you want more from your cherry than that, don't you? Save your tongue for the Bings. And get down to the Santa Cruz west side Sat. market to get them from Van Dyke Ranch, too. I'll be there this weekend, making strawberry jam at the farm for my fellow Cookie Fairy's 27th b-day, to be celebrated by a tea party in the Chadwick garden on Sunday afternoon.
Can you stay up
to see the dawn
In the colors
of Benetton?
(And what's kwassa kwassa, you ask? An African dance rhythm from Congo, one of the many co-opted/mainstreamed by Peter Gabriel, Paul Simon et al during those world-music 80s.)
Louis Vuitton
with your mother
on a sandy lawn...
A cupcake--or four!--for the bed-headed boys of Vampire Weekend, just for rhyming "Louis Vuitton", "reggaeton", and "Benetton", in a super-catchy, head-bobbingly happy tune. Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa, your Zipcar driving song for the summer.
As a sophomore
with the reggaeton
And the linens
you're sitting on
Who else gets cakes? Oh, all the lady couples I know, come June 17. The wedding-cake requests are rolling in, since I've promised to bake get-married-in-California cakes for everyone that can finally tie the knot legally in our fine golden state. Cupcakes, three-tiered frilly cakes, blueberry pies: whatever the ladies want, that's what I'm here for.
Is your bed made?
Is your sweater on?
Do you wanta
Like you know I do?
Of course you do! And if you're in NYC, you want to go see Hamlet in Central Park, assistant-directed by Rob Melrose, of Cutting-Ball Theatre fame in SF. And you want to drop by the Leslie/Lohman (rhymes with Lindsey Lohan!) Gallery, to see photos by former SF-er Phyllis Christopher, as part of a big pride-month show of queer women's art called Pink & Bent. And while you're there, you should go by the Rick's Picks pickle stand at the Union Square and Grand Army Plaza Greenmarkets, and bug Rick for some of his ON-RAMPS, pickled ramps with hibiscus and pink peppercorns. (Ramps, for all you non-easterners, are wild leeks, slim, pungent, and super-tasty for those who like that sort of thing.)
Does this feel so unnatural
for Peter Gabriel too
But this feels so unnatural
Peter Gabriel too
In SF, cool and foggy, you should be rolling around in sweet, sweet strawberries and anticipating the arrival of Bing cherries and Blenheim apricots. Don't be paying no $7/lb for those useless Brooks cherries! Honestly, they're wet and shaped like a cherry, that's all we can say for them. Surely you want more from your cherry than that, don't you? Save your tongue for the Bings. And get down to the Santa Cruz west side Sat. market to get them from Van Dyke Ranch, too. I'll be there this weekend, making strawberry jam at the farm for my fellow Cookie Fairy's 27th b-day, to be celebrated by a tea party in the Chadwick garden on Sunday afternoon.
Can you stay up
to see the dawn
In the colors
of Benetton?
(And what's kwassa kwassa, you ask? An African dance rhythm from Congo, one of the many co-opted/mainstreamed by Peter Gabriel, Paul Simon et al during those world-music 80s.)
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
south wind
Well, isn't it a balmy day. Almost muggy, which isn't like San Fran at all...which means it's blissful, because everyone knows it won't last. (Unlike, say, NYC, when the first muggy day is merely a harbinger of four months of nonstop mugginess to come.) So the tank-top-and-sandal brigades were out in full force in the Marina, drinking sangria and eating salads outside all along Union Street.
But enough weather chat...the fun news today was getting a mention in the New York Times! For my kids' cookbook, Williams-Sonoma Kids in the Kitchen: Fun Food. The lead story was all about the future for cookbooks for kids, and was accompanied by a list of their fave kiddie cookbooks. Check out the whole piece, here. Or, cut to the chase and see just the PQ mention.
But enough weather chat...the fun news today was getting a mention in the New York Times! For my kids' cookbook, Williams-Sonoma Kids in the Kitchen: Fun Food. The lead story was all about the future for cookbooks for kids, and was accompanied by a list of their fave kiddie cookbooks. Check out the whole piece, here. Or, cut to the chase and see just the PQ mention.
Monday, April 28, 2008
sweet berry heaven
Mmmm, strawberries. As it turns out, Watsonville's Tomatero Farms doesn't just sell at the Grand Lake farmers' market, they sell at my local down the hill, the Alemany Sat morning market, where everyone was basking and strolling in the sunshine. Well, some of us were basking. The rest were stuffing mad handfuls of sugar-snap peas into plastic bags and stowing 10-lb nets of oranges into granny carts. The last of the Sevilles were on display, along with a shriveled Buddha's Hand or two.
(Speaking of which, I ended up chopping up my BH and adding the blanched bits of rind to my kumquat marmalade. A mistake! This BH, perhaps all BHs, had a strong, camphor-ish scent, and made the whole batch of kumquat marm taste like Vick's vapor rub. Eucalyptus marmalade! Not the tastiest thing for toast.Next time, should there be one, I'm sticking the whole thing in a jar of vodka and making citrus liquor. Another kind of medicine...)
But I saw a flat or two of red berries behind the lettuce (flat whorls of red butter lettuce to make you weep) at Tomatero, and asked the price. Turned out they were just a buck a box, because they had been picked Wed. and were looking a little ratty by Saturday. Personally, I like a superripe, wine-dark berry, so with a little picking over it was cheap sweet heaven.
What other good things? Meatloaf on a rainy night at Blue Plate, with mashed p'taters and green beans, and the best smoky bacon ever. They do a salad that comes with a gorgeous burnished strip of bacon laid over the top of it, and that's reason to eat your rabbit food right there. Being on a fridge magnet with my pal Molly, advertising the Sundance Saloon (motto: "Building Community, Two Steps at a Time"), a fab country-western hangout over on Barnveldt St, near the produce district off of Bayshore. Hot coffee and warm apricot turnovers from the Liberty Cafe bakery on a sunny weekend morning.
Garden lilacs that smelled like lilacs, at Heartfelt on Cortland, and a blowsy three-buck bouquet of lavender-pink garden roses that smelled like roses, from one of the vegetable stands at the Alemany market. Essays about owls and poetry about snakes from Stanley Kunitz. Hearing about rabbit, Powell's, and absinthe up in Portland. Serving hot homemade herb biscuits to the plant-sale crowds at the Homeless Garden Project, and feeding the farmies with fresh strawberries, roasted squash, lentil soup and homemade rolls. Being sprung from the chocolate mines for the next four days, and going back down to the farm to cook again.
And of course, Cookie Fairy!
Monday, April 14, 2008
duck, duck, mousse!
Come on down to Santa Cruz and see PQ make duck-egg frittata. The Homeless Garden Project will be holding their annual Plant Sale and Youth Day on Saturday, April 19th, and I'll be doing a cooking demo in their newly rebuilt outdoor kitchen. We'll be getting VERY local, using chard from the gardens along with duck eggs from the ducks that roam the rows. And because you can't have eggs without bread, there will also be flaky herb biscuits, using whatever herbs (probably rosemary) are growing around. And then, after the demo, I'll be scooting up the hill to the farm center, to make dinner for the new little farmies coming in to set up their tents. I can't believe it's been a year already since I fled the snows of Watertown for the fog and strawberries of Santa Cruz...
More info on Saturday's event, here.
Note that this is at the Natural Bridges garden itself, NOT the little shop where they sell their wreaths and stuff. If you have a garden, definitely plan to pick up some stuff at their great plant sale, which will have loads of organic plant starts, fruit trees, herbs, annuals, and perennials.
Where: Homeless Garden Project, Natural Bridges Farm, Schaffer Road at Delaware Ave, Santa Cruz, CA
When: Plant Sale, 9am-6pm. Cooking demo: 3pm-4pm.
What else is in the kitchen right now? Scones with lemon zest, candied ginger and dried apricots, just because, plus last night's mashed potatoes and a picked-over chicken, plus a few sugar-snap peas with mint chiffonnade, courtesy of Tomatero Farms in Watsonville, which had the best-tasting sugar snaps, eggs, and strawbs in the whole market. And two quarts of frozen lemon juice, because you just never know, and a crate of meyer lemons doesn't last forever, but lemon juice in the freezer does, or at least as close to it as I need to be.
More info on Saturday's event, here.
Note that this is at the Natural Bridges garden itself, NOT the little shop where they sell their wreaths and stuff. If you have a garden, definitely plan to pick up some stuff at their great plant sale, which will have loads of organic plant starts, fruit trees, herbs, annuals, and perennials.
Where: Homeless Garden Project, Natural Bridges Farm, Schaffer Road at Delaware Ave, Santa Cruz, CA
When: Plant Sale, 9am-6pm. Cooking demo: 3pm-4pm.
What else is in the kitchen right now? Scones with lemon zest, candied ginger and dried apricots, just because, plus last night's mashed potatoes and a picked-over chicken, plus a few sugar-snap peas with mint chiffonnade, courtesy of Tomatero Farms in Watsonville, which had the best-tasting sugar snaps, eggs, and strawbs in the whole market. And two quarts of frozen lemon juice, because you just never know, and a crate of meyer lemons doesn't last forever, but lemon juice in the freezer does, or at least as close to it as I need to be.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
PQ for Sale
Which is to say, a case of Meyer lemons in my kitchen, waiting to be used! I think, given the abundance awaiting PQ's attentions, I might actually sell some of my wares this time around. Nothing fancy, no Paypal or anything. But if you live in San Francisco or its nearby environs, I think we can figure out a way to swap fabulous lemon marmalade or lemon curd for cash. Let's see: here's what I'm proposing:
For Sale from Pie Queen Kitchen:
Pablo's Ode to a Lemon marmalade (nothing but organic Meyer lemons and sugar)
8 oz. , $8
Delovely Delicious Lemon Curd (organic Meyer lemons, eggs, butter, sugar)
$8 oz, $10
and to go with:
Happy Tea Time Lemon-Currant Scones (whole wheat and white pastry flour, butter, currants, meyer lemon zest, buttermilk, sugar, baking soda, salt)
-the real deal, light and fluffy, perfect with tea and marmalade or lemon curd
$10 for 6 scones
So, interested? All extra-delicious and homemade in the PQ kitchen. The lemons are definitely organic; I can go all-organic/local with the other ingredients, too, although it might be a little pricier. Option of using local Straus organic butter and buttermilk, pastured eggs from Soul Food Farms, etc. Post a comment if you want to get some, and we'll figure it out.
For Sale from Pie Queen Kitchen:
Pablo's Ode to a Lemon marmalade (nothing but organic Meyer lemons and sugar)
8 oz. , $8
Delovely Delicious Lemon Curd (organic Meyer lemons, eggs, butter, sugar)
$8 oz, $10
and to go with:
Happy Tea Time Lemon-Currant Scones (whole wheat and white pastry flour, butter, currants, meyer lemon zest, buttermilk, sugar, baking soda, salt)
-the real deal, light and fluffy, perfect with tea and marmalade or lemon curd
$10 for 6 scones
So, interested? All extra-delicious and homemade in the PQ kitchen. The lemons are definitely organic; I can go all-organic/local with the other ingredients, too, although it might be a little pricier. Option of using local Straus organic butter and buttermilk, pastured eggs from Soul Food Farms, etc. Post a comment if you want to get some, and we'll figure it out.
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
lemonades
Ode To a Lemon
Out of lemon flowers
loosed
from the moonlight, love's
lashed and insatiable
essence,
sodden with fragrance,
the lemon tree's yellow
emerges,
the lemons
move down
from the tree's planetarium
Delicate merchandise!
The harbors are big with it-
bazaars
for the light and the
barbarous gold.
We open
the halves
of a miracle,
and a clotting of acids
brims
into the starry
divisions:
creation's
original juices,
irreducible, changeless,
alive:
so the freshness lives on
in a lemon,
in the sweet-smelling house of the rind,
the proportions, arcane and acerb.
Cutting the lemon
the knife
leaves a little cathedral:
alcoves unguessed by the eye
that open acidulous glass
to the light; topazes
riding the droplets,
altars,
aromatic facades.
So, while the hand
holds the cut of the lemon,
half a world
on a trencher,
the gold of the universe
wells
to your touch:
a cup yellow
with miracles,
a breast and a nipple
perfuming the earth;
a flashing made fruitage,
the diminutive fire of a planet.
-Pablo Neruda
Out of lemon flowers
loosed
from the moonlight, love's
lashed and insatiable
essence,
sodden with fragrance,
the lemon tree's yellow
emerges,
the lemons
move down
from the tree's planetarium
Delicate merchandise!
The harbors are big with it-
bazaars
for the light and the
barbarous gold.
We open
the halves
of a miracle,
and a clotting of acids
brims
into the starry
divisions:
creation's
original juices,
irreducible, changeless,
alive:
so the freshness lives on
in a lemon,
in the sweet-smelling house of the rind,
the proportions, arcane and acerb.
Cutting the lemon
the knife
leaves a little cathedral:
alcoves unguessed by the eye
that open acidulous glass
to the light; topazes
riding the droplets,
altars,
aromatic facades.
So, while the hand
holds the cut of the lemon,
half a world
on a trencher,
the gold of the universe
wells
to your touch:
a cup yellow
with miracles,
a breast and a nipple
perfuming the earth;
a flashing made fruitage,
the diminutive fire of a planet.
-Pablo Neruda
Monday, April 07, 2008
Maybe things aren't as bad as you think
Rhubarb, we have it here at PQ Castle! Along with another, final case of Meyer lemons--final, that is, until I go down to cook at the farm in 2 weeks and score as many Meyers as I can pack out. Whatever ripe lemons are left after making the famous Meyer lemon pound cake and lavender-sugar lemonade are coming home with me. Well, I might leave a few (or 10) so that Lanette and I, aka Cookie Fairy, have something to work with when we return to cook for the new farmies on May Day. Lemon ricotta pancakes? Lemon thumbprint cookies? Spicy lemon lentils? Mmm, tasty. As I recall from my own first few farmie weeks, there's not a lot in the larder or in the fields at this time, so I'll have to be inventive with the carrots and beets. But I remain dedicated to the PQ Farm-Cooking Creed: No Bean Mush, No Undressed Salads, No Unpeeled Beets, and Yes, There Is (Always) Dessert.
But back to the rhubarb, another perk from the produce co., so silky and pretty and gorgeously pink. I am thinking, of course, of strawberry-rhubarb pie, the most perfect harbinger of spring I know. And perhaps some rhubarb compote, with a hint of rosewater or vanilla bean. And then a few jars of strawberry-rhubarb jam, since I gave all my farm jam away last year.
But back to the rhubarb, another perk from the produce co., so silky and pretty and gorgeously pink. I am thinking, of course, of strawberry-rhubarb pie, the most perfect harbinger of spring I know. And perhaps some rhubarb compote, with a hint of rosewater or vanilla bean. And then a few jars of strawberry-rhubarb jam, since I gave all my farm jam away last year.
Brown sugar and waffles
Artichokes, fava bean leaves, asparagus, and soon, yes, rhubarb: Spring at last, spring at last, hallelujah, it's spring at last! The tiny page mandarins are still kicking around, though, and a sweeter little citrus you'll never see. Four of these, from Tory Farms, were about all I could afford from the Ferry Plaza farmers' market last Saturday, but they're so sweet and juicy you could grin all day just from licking your sticky fingers. After a spin around the crowded, crowded market(it's only April, people! Nothing to see here, no tomatoes, no peaches...where are you going to stand come July if you all pile in here now just for tangerines and deep-fried asparagus?) I headed back down to my local, the much more down-to-asphalt Alemany Market.
It was close to 1:30pm when I got down there, so many of the booths were already shut down and sweeping up, but I still scored a bag of 4 or 5 slim heads of red butter lettuce rubber-banded together for $1, plus cilantro, garlic, onions, peppers, and a big bag of brutto ma buono tangelos, golden nugget tangerines, Meyer lemons, and mandarins for a mere buck a pound. Flowers, taco trucks, strawberries (conventionally grown, and a little beat up, but $10 a flat' organics go for $35/flat): PQ says check it out. SE edge of Bernal Heights, Putnam and Alemany, Saturday mornings.
It was an Eazy-Bay kind of weekend, from breakfast at Brown Sugar Kitchen in West Oakland to a French movie (Hors de Prix--Priceless--with Audrey Tatou, and a delightful romp it was) in Piedmont, drinks at Kingman's Lucky Lounge, coffee at Peet's on Grand Ave, even late-night eats at Rudy's Can't-Fail Cafe (the servers' black rocker tees read "Serving E'ville" with the RC/FC logo done AC/DC style on the front) in Emeryville (they're open til 1am! In the East Bay! Wheeee!) The only thing I missed was farmers' market cocktails at the Easy with the Red Meat Ranger, Papa Sueno, and their market pals Kelly (who sells fabulous girly lotions and soaps) and Arianna, who runs a small farm and chicken ranch in Watsonville. Arianna is cool, says Papa Sueno, because she farms, raises Peruvian chickens that can lay green eggs, and knows all about what's in season. Farmers are our new rock stars, now that we're all too sleepy to stay out late enough to go to gigs any more.
So, what will being in bed by 10, PQ can be up with the chickens herself, and a good thing too, if you want to get some of that fried chicken and waffles at Brown Sugar Kitchen. Don't let the industrial West Oakland setting fool you: Peralta Studios is just across the street, and the word is out about the homemade biscuits and doughnuts and Blue Bottle Coffee. Shuna of Eggbeater was working the biscuit dough behind the counter, doing a helpout for her pal, BSK owner Tanya Holland. The all-female kitchen crew was working hard, scooping grits and plating waffles on this busy weekend morning.
Oh, those waffles! At the last moment, I looked to the left, looked to the right, and realized the chicken would be little too much fried for first thing in the AM. But on their own, these waffles were light-as-a-feather babies, crisp and airy and golden brown. Real maple syrup, a smear of some kind of flavored butter, chicken-apple sausage from Aidell's: a very good time. The biscuits are very fine too, but only if you get them warmed up. Cold, they're still good, but they won't fill you with that special buttery-edged Southern-warmed lovin'. The home fries were good, the scrambled eggs were very good, the Niman Ranch bacon top-hole.
But now, the caveats. BSK, at least on busy weekends, does not have its service together. The hostess has no time (or inclination) for charm, the servers are sweet but overwhelmed. After finally snagging seats at the counter, then being ignored for many minutes, we went and fetched our own menus. The weekend menu itself is short--a fine thing, usually. I like a chef with an opinion, and there are enough places with millions of omelettes already. But there's short, and then there's running a breakfast place with no straight-up eggs-potatoes-toast option.
Now, I'd understand this, maybe, if this was a dinner place that did a fancy brunch once a week. But no, this is a joint that only serves breakfast and lunch. I understand that, grits and pie aside, this ain't no Just for You, no Rudy's or Al's Good Food Cafe. Holland's clearly not interested in running a short-order white-wheat-or-rye diner. What you can get are cheese grits and poached eggs, quiche, veggie scramble, French toast, or waffles (with or without fried chicken). But if you, like many, many people, want home fries, a biscuit, and some scrambled eggs for breakfast, you're going to get charged a la carte prices for every little thing, which means something like $12, with bacon.
Then they charged me for the fried chicken I didn't order. And did I mention it took close to 45 minutes between sitting down and getting breakfast? On the plus side, there were a couple of free (cold) biscuits to take the edge off, and an extra cup of coffee. (Another warning: that Blue Bottle coffee is all French-pressed, which means no waitress warming up your cup from the Bunn-o-matic. I imagine if you want more than a single dose of joe , you're going to pay a fresh $2 for every round. Haven't confirmed this, but I didn't see any warmups going around, so I'm figuring this for policy. And go easy on the half-and-half: it comes in tiny pitchers, filled only halfway.)
Not that I'm trying to be negative, mind--I came in really wanting to love BSK. It's a very pleasant place, with apple-green walls and a lively open kitchen, and some very handsome pecan and sweet-potato pies on display, right next to some massively nutty sticky buns. But it's still getting itself together, and a little more attention to the nuances of making customers happy--instead of just well waffled--would go far in getting the PQ's adoration, or at least her returning breakfast cash.
It was close to 1:30pm when I got down there, so many of the booths were already shut down and sweeping up, but I still scored a bag of 4 or 5 slim heads of red butter lettuce rubber-banded together for $1, plus cilantro, garlic, onions, peppers, and a big bag of brutto ma buono tangelos, golden nugget tangerines, Meyer lemons, and mandarins for a mere buck a pound. Flowers, taco trucks, strawberries (conventionally grown, and a little beat up, but $10 a flat' organics go for $35/flat): PQ says check it out. SE edge of Bernal Heights, Putnam and Alemany, Saturday mornings.
It was an Eazy-Bay kind of weekend, from breakfast at Brown Sugar Kitchen in West Oakland to a French movie (Hors de Prix--Priceless--with Audrey Tatou, and a delightful romp it was) in Piedmont, drinks at Kingman's Lucky Lounge, coffee at Peet's on Grand Ave, even late-night eats at Rudy's Can't-Fail Cafe (the servers' black rocker tees read "Serving E'ville" with the RC/FC logo done AC/DC style on the front) in Emeryville (they're open til 1am! In the East Bay! Wheeee!) The only thing I missed was farmers' market cocktails at the Easy with the Red Meat Ranger, Papa Sueno, and their market pals Kelly (who sells fabulous girly lotions and soaps) and Arianna, who runs a small farm and chicken ranch in Watsonville. Arianna is cool, says Papa Sueno, because she farms, raises Peruvian chickens that can lay green eggs, and knows all about what's in season. Farmers are our new rock stars, now that we're all too sleepy to stay out late enough to go to gigs any more.
So, what will being in bed by 10, PQ can be up with the chickens herself, and a good thing too, if you want to get some of that fried chicken and waffles at Brown Sugar Kitchen. Don't let the industrial West Oakland setting fool you: Peralta Studios is just across the street, and the word is out about the homemade biscuits and doughnuts and Blue Bottle Coffee. Shuna of Eggbeater was working the biscuit dough behind the counter, doing a helpout for her pal, BSK owner Tanya Holland. The all-female kitchen crew was working hard, scooping grits and plating waffles on this busy weekend morning.
Oh, those waffles! At the last moment, I looked to the left, looked to the right, and realized the chicken would be little too much fried for first thing in the AM. But on their own, these waffles were light-as-a-feather babies, crisp and airy and golden brown. Real maple syrup, a smear of some kind of flavored butter, chicken-apple sausage from Aidell's: a very good time. The biscuits are very fine too, but only if you get them warmed up. Cold, they're still good, but they won't fill you with that special buttery-edged Southern-warmed lovin'. The home fries were good, the scrambled eggs were very good, the Niman Ranch bacon top-hole.
But now, the caveats. BSK, at least on busy weekends, does not have its service together. The hostess has no time (or inclination) for charm, the servers are sweet but overwhelmed. After finally snagging seats at the counter, then being ignored for many minutes, we went and fetched our own menus. The weekend menu itself is short--a fine thing, usually. I like a chef with an opinion, and there are enough places with millions of omelettes already. But there's short, and then there's running a breakfast place with no straight-up eggs-potatoes-toast option.
Now, I'd understand this, maybe, if this was a dinner place that did a fancy brunch once a week. But no, this is a joint that only serves breakfast and lunch. I understand that, grits and pie aside, this ain't no Just for You, no Rudy's or Al's Good Food Cafe. Holland's clearly not interested in running a short-order white-wheat-or-rye diner. What you can get are cheese grits and poached eggs, quiche, veggie scramble, French toast, or waffles (with or without fried chicken). But if you, like many, many people, want home fries, a biscuit, and some scrambled eggs for breakfast, you're going to get charged a la carte prices for every little thing, which means something like $12, with bacon.
Then they charged me for the fried chicken I didn't order. And did I mention it took close to 45 minutes between sitting down and getting breakfast? On the plus side, there were a couple of free (cold) biscuits to take the edge off, and an extra cup of coffee. (Another warning: that Blue Bottle coffee is all French-pressed, which means no waitress warming up your cup from the Bunn-o-matic. I imagine if you want more than a single dose of joe , you're going to pay a fresh $2 for every round. Haven't confirmed this, but I didn't see any warmups going around, so I'm figuring this for policy. And go easy on the half-and-half: it comes in tiny pitchers, filled only halfway.)
Not that I'm trying to be negative, mind--I came in really wanting to love BSK. It's a very pleasant place, with apple-green walls and a lively open kitchen, and some very handsome pecan and sweet-potato pies on display, right next to some massively nutty sticky buns. But it's still getting itself together, and a little more attention to the nuances of making customers happy--instead of just well waffled--would go far in getting the PQ's adoration, or at least her returning breakfast cash.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Girls, Cookies, Eco-Cocktailia
jesus died for somebody's sins
but not mine
Happy Easter, everyone! Did you enjoy your bunny cake, your chocolate eggs, your righteous pagan fertility worship? Glad to hear it. And now, on to Passover, and rhubarb.
But first, fabulous femme Shar Rednour is doing a reading/talk with Michelle Tea and Chelsea Starr on this Tuesday, April 1st, at the 3 Dollar Bill Cafe at the LGBT Center on Market St. Starts at 7pm, free, and if you ask a question during the Q & A, you get a homemade cookie!
As Shar says, "They have beer and wine at the 3 Dollar Bill Cafe and pretty good potato salad. All a femme needs, right?"
And before that, the swanky XYZ bar in the W Hotel, right near SFMoMA, is kicking off their new green happy hour called, I kid you not, Ecolicious, from 5:30 to 7:30pm. How this will be more green than say, the Easy Lounge's Saturday afternoon happy hour, when they make cocktails out of stuff from the Grand Lake Farmers' Market across the street, is the serious research PQ will be doing on your behalf tomorrow afternoon. Is this the bevvie version of Toyota's latest hookup to the green bandwagon, the hybrid SUV? Tune in on Wednesday for a report...
but not mine
Happy Easter, everyone! Did you enjoy your bunny cake, your chocolate eggs, your righteous pagan fertility worship? Glad to hear it. And now, on to Passover, and rhubarb.
But first, fabulous femme Shar Rednour is doing a reading/talk with Michelle Tea and Chelsea Starr on this Tuesday, April 1st, at the 3 Dollar Bill Cafe at the LGBT Center on Market St. Starts at 7pm, free, and if you ask a question during the Q & A, you get a homemade cookie!
As Shar says, "They have beer and wine at the 3 Dollar Bill Cafe and pretty good potato salad. All a femme needs, right?"
And before that, the swanky XYZ bar in the W Hotel, right near SFMoMA, is kicking off their new green happy hour called, I kid you not, Ecolicious, from 5:30 to 7:30pm. How this will be more green than say, the Easy Lounge's Saturday afternoon happy hour, when they make cocktails out of stuff from the Grand Lake Farmers' Market across the street, is the serious research PQ will be doing on your behalf tomorrow afternoon. Is this the bevvie version of Toyota's latest hookup to the green bandwagon, the hybrid SUV? Tune in on Wednesday for a report...
Friday, March 14, 2008
freebies!
Free samples are one of the happy perks of any job. I showed up at The Alley in Oakland the other night with a bag of salted caramels, hazelnut bonbons and big slabs of chocolate studded with candied orange peel and almonds, just because we'd been rotating the display boxes at the chocolate mines and there were loads of extras in the big "eat me" box behind the counter. Everyone needs some sweets to go with their cosmos and French fries. (Of course, when you work for, say, Goldman Sachs, these free samples are called "money", that being the stuff they rotate around. But I digress.)
And now, doing some freelance writing work for an organic produce distribution company, my perks come in the form of bunches of asparagus, bags of kumquats, a cherimoya or two, and most exciting of all, a Buddha's hand! Do you know the Buddha's hand? A very trippy citrus, like a citron made up of a dozen curling fingers covered in bright-yellow, intensely aromatic peel. No real pulp to speak of; it's all about the zest. What to do with it? I'm going to my favorite resource, former Chez Panisse pastry chef, Parisian homme-about-town, and cookbook author, David Lebovitz. His book "Ripe for Dessert" is a fantastic resource for fruit dessert-making, and his citrus-prosecco gelee was a huge hit at the PQ family Christmas dinner last year. So, David, qu'est-ce qu'on peut faire avec le main de Buddha?
And now, doing some freelance writing work for an organic produce distribution company, my perks come in the form of bunches of asparagus, bags of kumquats, a cherimoya or two, and most exciting of all, a Buddha's hand! Do you know the Buddha's hand? A very trippy citrus, like a citron made up of a dozen curling fingers covered in bright-yellow, intensely aromatic peel. No real pulp to speak of; it's all about the zest. What to do with it? I'm going to my favorite resource, former Chez Panisse pastry chef, Parisian homme-about-town, and cookbook author, David Lebovitz. His book "Ripe for Dessert" is a fantastic resource for fruit dessert-making, and his citrus-prosecco gelee was a huge hit at the PQ family Christmas dinner last year. So, David, qu'est-ce qu'on peut faire avec le main de Buddha?
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
spray-on tan
Remember pancake batter in a can? We were talking about this back a month or two ago, and today, the Bay Guardian's "Cheap Eats" Leone does the perfect sum-up.
The verdict on aerosol-can waffle and pancake batter?
Yeah. Whatever. No, I mean, it was free, and it was delicious. But being a person who loves to cook, and who loves to spend as much time as possible doing the things that I love to do, like cooking, why in the world would I ever in the world squeeze waffle batter out of a can? And then blow time looking out the window that I could have more wisely spent separating egg whites and hand-whisking until they hold soft peaks?
No kidding, I make three meals a day. I want to have my hands in the food, and my arms, teeth, and tongue when appropriate. Like sex, I actually want it to take as long as possible. And dirty all the dishes. (I'll do 'em in the morning.) You're in a hurry, I know. You have a job. Me, I'll keep doing what I do ... stirring constantly.
The verdict on aerosol-can waffle and pancake batter?
Yeah. Whatever. No, I mean, it was free, and it was delicious. But being a person who loves to cook, and who loves to spend as much time as possible doing the things that I love to do, like cooking, why in the world would I ever in the world squeeze waffle batter out of a can? And then blow time looking out the window that I could have more wisely spent separating egg whites and hand-whisking until they hold soft peaks?
No kidding, I make three meals a day. I want to have my hands in the food, and my arms, teeth, and tongue when appropriate. Like sex, I actually want it to take as long as possible. And dirty all the dishes. (I'll do 'em in the morning.) You're in a hurry, I know. You have a job. Me, I'll keep doing what I do ... stirring constantly.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Tiptoe through the Tulips
This being San Francisco in citrus season, I may not be the only girl walking around the city with 4 kumquats, a tangelo and a cherimoya in her purse. Ok, two kumquats and a cherimoya, because I ate the rest, dripping juice down my sleeve and biting through that aromatic kumquat skin to the sour pulp within. It's a breezy early-spring day, the stripy, frilly tulips out in buckets in front of Heartfelt, our local card-and-giftie store, and it's pretty, pretty, pretty out there, yet again. And I'm skipping around on this, my day off, singing that Be Good Tanyas song "The Littlest Birds" over and over again and hanging my laundry out to dry in the backyard, so it will come in smelling of sunshine and eucalyptus.
Another reason to be happy: you didn't wake up today as Eliot "Mr. Clean" Spitzer, a man who's having a Very Bad Day, the specific sort of Very Bad Day you have when you pledge to clean up corruption in the Empire State and then get busted as "Client 9" by the booker of a high-class escort service, who, alas for the Gov., was wearing a wire when he set up his NY-to-DC assignation with "Kristen" the petite brunette. Did he really think that paying the Amtrak fare for a NYC working girl to come down to DC was somehow more discreet than booking a date with a local? Now, as the result of that train trip, he's doubly busted for the whole crossing-state-lines-for-the-purpose-of-prostitution thing. Politicians: Toujours Stupides!
On another note: good books! Almost finished with Amy Bloom's novel Away, yet another in the sub-genre of Jews in Alaska, stories about (see also Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union). A rambling picaresque, and better than almost everything else I've read by her, except for the small, perfect story "Love is Not a Pie", which remains unsurpassed.
Another reason to be happy: you didn't wake up today as Eliot "Mr. Clean" Spitzer, a man who's having a Very Bad Day, the specific sort of Very Bad Day you have when you pledge to clean up corruption in the Empire State and then get busted as "Client 9" by the booker of a high-class escort service, who, alas for the Gov., was wearing a wire when he set up his NY-to-DC assignation with "Kristen" the petite brunette. Did he really think that paying the Amtrak fare for a NYC working girl to come down to DC was somehow more discreet than booking a date with a local? Now, as the result of that train trip, he's doubly busted for the whole crossing-state-lines-for-the-purpose-of-prostitution thing. Politicians: Toujours Stupides!
On another note: good books! Almost finished with Amy Bloom's novel Away, yet another in the sub-genre of Jews in Alaska, stories about (see also Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union). A rambling picaresque, and better than almost everything else I've read by her, except for the small, perfect story "Love is Not a Pie", which remains unsurpassed.
the littlest birds
Well it's times like these
I feel so small and wild
Like the ramblin' footsteps of a wanderin' child
And I'm lonesome as a lonesome whippoorwill
Singin these blues with a warble and a trill
But I'm not too blue to fly
No, I'm not too blue to fly, cause
The littlest birds sing the prettiest songs...
-Be Good Tanyas, "The Littlest Birds (Sing the Prettiest Songs)", from Blue Horse
I feel so small and wild
Like the ramblin' footsteps of a wanderin' child
And I'm lonesome as a lonesome whippoorwill
Singin these blues with a warble and a trill
But I'm not too blue to fly
No, I'm not too blue to fly, cause
The littlest birds sing the prettiest songs...
-Be Good Tanyas, "The Littlest Birds (Sing the Prettiest Songs)", from Blue Horse
Saturday, March 08, 2008
Woofer
Normally, I don't love being booked for work down in the Marina chocolate mines all weekend, especially on sunny spring days when all the ladies of leisure come breezing in for a couple of fleur-de-sel caramels, full of cheery commentary on how beautiful it is out there beyond the barred gates of retail. But last night, the Giant Scary Dogs arrived in my home, courtesy of my roommate's visiting girlfriend. I haven't seen them, but I've heard them, and they sound like the Hound of the Baskervilles looking to take your leg off. So having a paid excuse to be out of the house today and tomorrow will be very welcome.
Off to the Libery Cafe for coffee and apple turnovers, then on to Bart to see K. off to the airport, where she flies back to Richmond for 3 more months of Army-officer training. Meanwhile we took many slow buses out to Lincoln Park for a spin around the Legion of Honor museum, followed by whole fish and goat cheese with tomato-preserved lemon jam at Aziza.
Which was swell, really, except for the service at Aziza, which was way snootier than anyone doing business at the Outer-Richmond side of Geary deserved to be. I learned a few tricks during my 10 years as a restaurant critic (back pre-Yelping, pre-blogging, when this was a job one got paid to do, with the accompanying professional standards), and one was that the chillier the waiter, the more likely that he or she would know next to nothing about the menu, or the food being served, or anything but the most basic info about the ingredients. And that he or she would, when pressed, b.s. with aplomb, usually in the most patronizing manner possible. So when we asked what was argan oil, exactly, we got the spectacularly unhelpful but smug response that It's Smoky And It Comes From a Tree. Like maple syrup, presumably.
Nothing about the small, oily kernels of the nut of the argan tree, a gnarly little tree native only to a certain part of Morocco. Or how the nuts are encased in a rock-hard shell that is in turn wrapped in a small, olive-like fruit delicious to goats. The goats clamber up the branches, eat the fruit, and drop the nuts (still in their shells) to the ground. Each nut must be cracked and the kernels removed and ground between heavy millstones to release their dark, pungent oil, work often done by women's collectives in rural Morocco. A good story, non? Especially if there had been enough oil dribbled on the white chunk of cheese to actually taste, rather than merely providing gourmet-cachet to the menu.
Off to the Libery Cafe for coffee and apple turnovers, then on to Bart to see K. off to the airport, where she flies back to Richmond for 3 more months of Army-officer training. Meanwhile we took many slow buses out to Lincoln Park for a spin around the Legion of Honor museum, followed by whole fish and goat cheese with tomato-preserved lemon jam at Aziza.
Which was swell, really, except for the service at Aziza, which was way snootier than anyone doing business at the Outer-Richmond side of Geary deserved to be. I learned a few tricks during my 10 years as a restaurant critic (back pre-Yelping, pre-blogging, when this was a job one got paid to do, with the accompanying professional standards), and one was that the chillier the waiter, the more likely that he or she would know next to nothing about the menu, or the food being served, or anything but the most basic info about the ingredients. And that he or she would, when pressed, b.s. with aplomb, usually in the most patronizing manner possible. So when we asked what was argan oil, exactly, we got the spectacularly unhelpful but smug response that It's Smoky And It Comes From a Tree. Like maple syrup, presumably.
Nothing about the small, oily kernels of the nut of the argan tree, a gnarly little tree native only to a certain part of Morocco. Or how the nuts are encased in a rock-hard shell that is in turn wrapped in a small, olive-like fruit delicious to goats. The goats clamber up the branches, eat the fruit, and drop the nuts (still in their shells) to the ground. Each nut must be cracked and the kernels removed and ground between heavy millstones to release their dark, pungent oil, work often done by women's collectives in rural Morocco. A good story, non? Especially if there had been enough oil dribbled on the white chunk of cheese to actually taste, rather than merely providing gourmet-cachet to the menu.
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Beautiful Day
Oh, sunshine! Daffodils! Prettiness! It's the nicest day you could imagine out there, even if the burly guys in neon vests are jackhammering up every square inch of the Cortland Street pavement outside Martha's coffee where I'm trying to write this. A day to frolic in the green, green grass, where there should be fluffy white sheep grazing on the top of Bernal Hill. Waiting for the 24 the other day, I heard a rooster crowing, something that never happened in Park Slope. This led to a conversation with an elderly woman at the bus stop, about WWII-era victory gardens, her husband's and my dad's WWII experiences, how hens will lay eggs regardless but it takes a rooster to fertilize them into potential chickens (which led my new pal into singing a verse of "It's So Nice to Have a Man Around the House"). All in all, not a bad way to pass a little of the inevitable waiting for Muni.
Then, down to the Ferry Building, to admire the oranges and watermelon radishes, and to lunch on lamb stew, roast chicken, yams and herby polenta from Mistral, followed by a spin around MOMA (free Tuesday!), tea in very stylish black-and-white cups at Caffe Museo, a trip to the main library to see Dorothea Lange's luminous photos of the summers she spent at her cliffside cottage at Slide Ranch. Family snaps, really, but heartfelt, and some exquisite. And then, around the corner, a fabulous little exhibit of SF nightlife souvenirs. Connie Champagne, hoofers at Bimbo's, eyelinered bartendresses at Coconut Grove, pool players at the 500 Club, Tosca's neon. And a photo of the old 17 Reasons Why sign, just to warm the PQ's heart. Dinner at Little Nepal back home on Cortland, where yak-butter tea has been replaced with mango shakes and chai, but we still enjoyed the mustard greens in tangy ginger broth, and the chunks of chicken in a cashew-thickened, creamy orange garlic-ginger-tomato sauce.
Then, down to the Ferry Building, to admire the oranges and watermelon radishes, and to lunch on lamb stew, roast chicken, yams and herby polenta from Mistral, followed by a spin around MOMA (free Tuesday!), tea in very stylish black-and-white cups at Caffe Museo, a trip to the main library to see Dorothea Lange's luminous photos of the summers she spent at her cliffside cottage at Slide Ranch. Family snaps, really, but heartfelt, and some exquisite. And then, around the corner, a fabulous little exhibit of SF nightlife souvenirs. Connie Champagne, hoofers at Bimbo's, eyelinered bartendresses at Coconut Grove, pool players at the 500 Club, Tosca's neon. And a photo of the old 17 Reasons Why sign, just to warm the PQ's heart. Dinner at Little Nepal back home on Cortland, where yak-butter tea has been replaced with mango shakes and chai, but we still enjoyed the mustard greens in tangy ginger broth, and the chunks of chicken in a cashew-thickened, creamy orange garlic-ginger-tomato sauce.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Chocolate Pie
Tomorrow is Bucky's birthday, so we'll all be celebrating (and raising a glass to his namesake) with a backyard bbq and (for those lucky enough to get tix ahead of time) the Extra Action Marching Band at Cafe du Nord. I've never seen the EAMB, but hanging out with dozens of skimpily dressed brass players blasting away in that little speakeasy space sounds ridiculously fun. I've been tapped to bring a chocolate pie in lieu of the fancy whiskey I'd love to bring but can't afford (now that B.'s ruined me for all but the finest 15-year Islay malts). Since I've got the big new Bubby's Pie Cookbook--written by the founders of NYC's Bubby's and the pastry socialists responsible for the annual Brooklyn Pie Social), I'll be hitting those pages to find me a tasty, tasty recipe for some kind of choco pudding in a crust. Pictures to follow, if I can ever find the little computer cord for my digital camera.
Tonight, it's opening night at Cutting Ball's spankin'-new production of Beckett's Endgame at the Traveling Jewish Theater, 470 Florida at Mariposa. Don't miss it!
Tonight, it's opening night at Cutting Ball's spankin'-new production of Beckett's Endgame at the Traveling Jewish Theater, 470 Florida at Mariposa. Don't miss it!
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Poetry Afternoon
It's warm! It's sunny! It's a day for tipping the last bits of ice and strawberries out of your cup of agua fresca--and, if you're strolling in my part of the Mission, to put on your tank top and tiny denim miniskirt and stiletto sandals, and that's just to go to the bank.
And, of course, to roll out the springtime poetry.
Snowdrops
Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know
what despair is; then
winter should have meaning for you.
I did not expect to survive,
earth suppressing me. I didn't expect
to waken again, to feel
in damp earth my body
able to respond again, remembering
after so long how to open again
in the cold light
of earliest spring--
afraid, yes, but among you again
crying yes risk joy
in the raw wind of the new world.
--Louise Gluck, "The Wild Iris"
And, of course, to roll out the springtime poetry.
Snowdrops
Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know
what despair is; then
winter should have meaning for you.
I did not expect to survive,
earth suppressing me. I didn't expect
to waken again, to feel
in damp earth my body
able to respond again, remembering
after so long how to open again
in the cold light
of earliest spring--
afraid, yes, but among you again
crying yes risk joy
in the raw wind of the new world.
--Louise Gluck, "The Wild Iris"
Friday, February 22, 2008
No Snow, pie!
It's a little damp today, yes indeed. A hat might be well-advised; perhaps some boots, or at least not your favorite suede platforms. This morning, I'm drinking coffee in my crossword-puzzle pajamas and making pie crust for Meyer lemon meringue pies, part of What Is To Be Done with the big box o' lemons that's been filling my kitchen for the past week. And while the kitchen fills with the scent of sweet California citrus, am I feeling just a tiny, tiny bit grateful not to be here"?
Yep. California is a beauteous place, especially when it's snowing in NYC.
Yep. California is a beauteous place, especially when it's snowing in NYC.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Will Bake for...
Doesn't every office deserve a resident baker? Especially one devoted to rev-'em-up, his-n-her pleasure in every size, shape, and glittery color. It was Jackie's one-year anniversary at the Oakland warehouse/headquarters of Babeland, and rather than hire a stripper, she called me, PQ, baker for hire. I tied on my fabulous Parisian pin-up birthday apron (thanks, susie!), filled my bag with Meyer lemons and brown sugar, and nipped across the bay. Up on the 3rd floor, past the Pam Grier and Jenna Jameson posters, was a little kitchenette, with a coffee machine, a fridge full of soy milk, and a real full-size gas oven. Say no more, say no more...on that rainy Tuesday morning, it was HQ of Babeland Bakery.
Grating, juicing, making crust and mixing up cake, ransacking the cupboards for usable baking pans...by lunchtime, there were two pie plates full of vegan carrot cake and a sheet pan of buttery-tangy Meyer lemon bars, thickly drifted with powdered sugar. The Babeland babes (and dudes) wandered in, drawn to the scent of hot butter and sugar, nutmeg and lemons, and stood there in a daze, clutching their coffee cups in stunned amazement. After all, there are visuals, and then there's stuff you can actually put in your mouth.
Truly, this is what your workplace needs--me, baking for you. Warm, fresh-from-the-oven, made-from-scratch treats beat Safeway cupcakes any day when it comes to promoting worker productivity and encouraging general smiley well-being. Book the PQ now! Wide selection of vintage aprons available...
Meyer Lemon Bars
There's a kick-ass sounding recipe for lemon bars in the Tartine cookbook, involving (as all their recipes do) vast amounts of butter and egg yolks. I'm sticking to my old tried-and-true simple one, though, because it always works and makes everyone happy, without much effort at all. Remember to allow time to cool--these are sort of disgusting hot out of the oven, but fantastic chilled. Let them cool to room temp, then cover and chill for several hours, if you can bear to wait that long.
Crust
1 cup flour
1/2 cup powdered sugar, sifted
1 stick (8 TB/4 oz) butter, softened
a couple teaspoons of water
Filling
2 eggs
6 TB Meyer lemon juice (approx. 2 juicy lemons)
zest of those 2 lemons*
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp baking powder
Powdered sugar for decorating
Preheat oven to 350F. Sift flour and powdered sugar together. Cut in/mash softened butter into flour mixture, to get a crumbly texture that's halfway between cookie dough and pie crust before you add liquid. Add just enough water to make it stick together. Press into a 9 x 9 baking pan (8 x 8 is ok too--whatever square brownie-making type pan you have is fine). Bake until golden brown, about 20 minutes.
While crust is baking, stir or sift together the sugar and baking powder. Beat in eggs, lemon juice, and zest. When crust is ready, pour filling over hot crust and return to the oven. Bake until set but not browned, about 15 minutes. It's OK if it still seems slightly gooey in the center--it's better to underbake a little than to overbake. Let cool on a rack, then cover and refrigerate. Sift a good snowy drift of powdered sugar over the pan, cut into bars, and serve.
*Yet another shout-out for the amazingness of the microplane grater in this instance. I had to go down to Cole Hardware and buy another one of these, my original one being (like everything else) in storage in Brooklyn. Fast, easy, no-waste grating every time, with no shredded knuckles--if I could do infomercials for one piece of cooking equipment, this would be it. It's especially useful with Meyer lemons, which, besides being soft and tender, also have that very smooth, hard-to-grab peel. Available in cookware stores and fancied-up hardware stores everywhere, it's a tool that will make you at least as grateful when you use it as anything Babeland has to offer.
Grating, juicing, making crust and mixing up cake, ransacking the cupboards for usable baking pans...by lunchtime, there were two pie plates full of vegan carrot cake and a sheet pan of buttery-tangy Meyer lemon bars, thickly drifted with powdered sugar. The Babeland babes (and dudes) wandered in, drawn to the scent of hot butter and sugar, nutmeg and lemons, and stood there in a daze, clutching their coffee cups in stunned amazement. After all, there are visuals, and then there's stuff you can actually put in your mouth.
Truly, this is what your workplace needs--me, baking for you. Warm, fresh-from-the-oven, made-from-scratch treats beat Safeway cupcakes any day when it comes to promoting worker productivity and encouraging general smiley well-being. Book the PQ now! Wide selection of vintage aprons available...
Meyer Lemon Bars
There's a kick-ass sounding recipe for lemon bars in the Tartine cookbook, involving (as all their recipes do) vast amounts of butter and egg yolks. I'm sticking to my old tried-and-true simple one, though, because it always works and makes everyone happy, without much effort at all. Remember to allow time to cool--these are sort of disgusting hot out of the oven, but fantastic chilled. Let them cool to room temp, then cover and chill for several hours, if you can bear to wait that long.
Crust
1 cup flour
1/2 cup powdered sugar, sifted
1 stick (8 TB/4 oz) butter, softened
a couple teaspoons of water
Filling
2 eggs
6 TB Meyer lemon juice (approx. 2 juicy lemons)
zest of those 2 lemons*
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp baking powder
Powdered sugar for decorating
Preheat oven to 350F. Sift flour and powdered sugar together. Cut in/mash softened butter into flour mixture, to get a crumbly texture that's halfway between cookie dough and pie crust before you add liquid. Add just enough water to make it stick together. Press into a 9 x 9 baking pan (8 x 8 is ok too--whatever square brownie-making type pan you have is fine). Bake until golden brown, about 20 minutes.
While crust is baking, stir or sift together the sugar and baking powder. Beat in eggs, lemon juice, and zest. When crust is ready, pour filling over hot crust and return to the oven. Bake until set but not browned, about 15 minutes. It's OK if it still seems slightly gooey in the center--it's better to underbake a little than to overbake. Let cool on a rack, then cover and refrigerate. Sift a good snowy drift of powdered sugar over the pan, cut into bars, and serve.
*Yet another shout-out for the amazingness of the microplane grater in this instance. I had to go down to Cole Hardware and buy another one of these, my original one being (like everything else) in storage in Brooklyn. Fast, easy, no-waste grating every time, with no shredded knuckles--if I could do infomercials for one piece of cooking equipment, this would be it. It's especially useful with Meyer lemons, which, besides being soft and tender, also have that very smooth, hard-to-grab peel. Available in cookware stores and fancied-up hardware stores everywhere, it's a tool that will make you at least as grateful when you use it as anything Babeland has to offer.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
my heart is telling me...
Spring in San Francisco always sneaks up on me. I know that come February, the rains will taper off, shy mauve blossoms will star the plum trees, the bees will start pummeling the fuzzy clusters of acacia, and the boys in their speedos will be lying out on Dolores Beach. But still, just a couple of weeks after January's icy nonstop rains, it's suddenly a new season.
This weekend was just ravishing, everyone out with bare ankles, stumbling around still winter-pale and grinning stupidly at the warm sun. Ti Couz had their umbrellas up for the noontime crowds eating crepes, drinking cider and pretending that 16th St was the Latin Quarter, except that we're much luckier, because Paris in February is wind-whipped and gray, the castles of pink macaroons at Laduree the only cheerful thing in the whole bitter frozen town.
It was a day for--what else?--a mint chip cone at the Bi-Rite Ice Creamery (yes, I'm filling up my buy-10-get-one-free punchcard, thank you very much), indie movies at the Roxie (what's playing at the Roxie? I'll tell you what's playing at the Roxie....the SF Indie Film Fest, that's what) and then, on Sunday, a hike up to the top of green, green Bernal Hill to survey the territories. And then an N-Judah out to the beach, where the happy hordes were swarming the Java Beach cafe (because god forbid you're ever less than a block from a latte and an oat cake, even at the far western fall-off of the continental U.S.) and it was just a easy stroll across the sandy pavement of the Great Highway onto the wide strand of Ocean Beach, where the waves were breaking in great tumults of creamy foam and dogs were racing madly everywhere.
This being my life, I got a call from Molly halfway down the beach. She was shooting some photos to promote the Sundance, her favorite country-western dancing bar, and did I want to come down to be in the shoot? Well, sure! This being Molly, she had about 7 complete extra outfits, including cowboy boots and hat, in her car, so I bought some cheap lipstick and mascara on the way and we trucked down from Cafe Flore to Troy Dean's basement photo studio for a hour of dancing and posing. I fully expect to be handed a club flyer with my grinning mug on it one of these days...
Down in the overgrown Bernal background of Wild Side West to celebrate our Cindy-and-Naomi moment, an impromptu old-time music jam was going on under the trees and every little nook was full of neighbors sprawling over beers and bloody marys and plastic packs of mini-cupcakes, celebrating the first beautiful weekend of spring. And then Molly ran off to dance and I ran home to madly chop the bounty of my Mariquita Farm mystery box, a huge haul of greens, parsnips, true baby carrots, squash, turnips, fennel, parsnips, beets, parsnips, leeks, and parsnips. Dinner with Papa Sueno and the Red Meat Ranger followed--roasted squash, green noodles with leeks, garlic, greens and parmesan, with pears, toasted walnuts and dark chocolate for dessert. And, of course, we had to talk about fruit.
All in all, a very good day.
This weekend was just ravishing, everyone out with bare ankles, stumbling around still winter-pale and grinning stupidly at the warm sun. Ti Couz had their umbrellas up for the noontime crowds eating crepes, drinking cider and pretending that 16th St was the Latin Quarter, except that we're much luckier, because Paris in February is wind-whipped and gray, the castles of pink macaroons at Laduree the only cheerful thing in the whole bitter frozen town.
It was a day for--what else?--a mint chip cone at the Bi-Rite Ice Creamery (yes, I'm filling up my buy-10-get-one-free punchcard, thank you very much), indie movies at the Roxie (what's playing at the Roxie? I'll tell you what's playing at the Roxie....the SF Indie Film Fest, that's what) and then, on Sunday, a hike up to the top of green, green Bernal Hill to survey the territories. And then an N-Judah out to the beach, where the happy hordes were swarming the Java Beach cafe (because god forbid you're ever less than a block from a latte and an oat cake, even at the far western fall-off of the continental U.S.) and it was just a easy stroll across the sandy pavement of the Great Highway onto the wide strand of Ocean Beach, where the waves were breaking in great tumults of creamy foam and dogs were racing madly everywhere.
This being my life, I got a call from Molly halfway down the beach. She was shooting some photos to promote the Sundance, her favorite country-western dancing bar, and did I want to come down to be in the shoot? Well, sure! This being Molly, she had about 7 complete extra outfits, including cowboy boots and hat, in her car, so I bought some cheap lipstick and mascara on the way and we trucked down from Cafe Flore to Troy Dean's basement photo studio for a hour of dancing and posing. I fully expect to be handed a club flyer with my grinning mug on it one of these days...
Down in the overgrown Bernal background of Wild Side West to celebrate our Cindy-and-Naomi moment, an impromptu old-time music jam was going on under the trees and every little nook was full of neighbors sprawling over beers and bloody marys and plastic packs of mini-cupcakes, celebrating the first beautiful weekend of spring. And then Molly ran off to dance and I ran home to madly chop the bounty of my Mariquita Farm mystery box, a huge haul of greens, parsnips, true baby carrots, squash, turnips, fennel, parsnips, beets, parsnips, leeks, and parsnips. Dinner with Papa Sueno and the Red Meat Ranger followed--roasted squash, green noodles with leeks, garlic, greens and parmesan, with pears, toasted walnuts and dark chocolate for dessert. And, of course, we had to talk about fruit.
All in all, a very good day.
Monday, February 04, 2008
Ain't We Got Fun?
Well, Saturday's weather outside was frightful--I kept singing that line from "Lady is a Tramp" that goes "Hates California, it's cold and it's damp..."-- but the citrus faithful (aka Papa Sueno and the now-veggie/flexetarian (hey, she's a Gemini, and the world still contains bacon) Red Meat Ranger and their fabulous child-toting friends, Rox n' Nance, and the fabulous Molly McK), all showed up, along with a bunch of other almond-cake-curious locals, even as the rain drizzled down and my little fingers froze as I sliced and sliced through the cara-caras, the blood oranges, the ruby grapefruits and the page mandarins. Gorgeous, gleaming fruit from Torey Farms, Olsen Organics, and Hamada Fruits, and raw almonds and orange/vanilla/honey-coated crunchy candied almonds from Alfieri Farms. What was really fun was going back to the farmers afterwards with samples, to show what their wonderful food had become. Quite a treat all around, especially since there was lots of cake and citrus compote left over to share with the hard-working CUESA volunteers. They'll be doing a cooking demo every Saturday from now til Dec., so do drop by.
It was almost worth losing my voice over, not that near-complete croakiness kept me from a grilled-veggie burrito at Azteca that afternoon or the fluffy pancakes at my new favorite breakfast place, Rudy's No-fail cafe in Emeryville, with Kas and Kirsten. Much fun, and then I had to go home for tea and complete silence. No Superbowl screaming (well, as if), no hanging out at K'vetch with the RM Ranger and Shar the Cupcake Queen.
But today, a sunny day! And here's a challenge to all you folks out there: the PQ needs gainful employment. I can cook for you, teach you to make pie (among other things), write for your website/newspaper/magazine/blog, edit articles/books/whatever, even feed your cat or weed your garden. Anyone that gets me a job lead that pays off gets 2 jars of just-made orange marmalade (or the future jam of your choice) or a freshly made homemade pie (your choice!) from the PQ kitchen. Let the networking begin!
It was almost worth losing my voice over, not that near-complete croakiness kept me from a grilled-veggie burrito at Azteca that afternoon or the fluffy pancakes at my new favorite breakfast place, Rudy's No-fail cafe in Emeryville, with Kas and Kirsten. Much fun, and then I had to go home for tea and complete silence. No Superbowl screaming (well, as if), no hanging out at K'vetch with the RM Ranger and Shar the Cupcake Queen.
But today, a sunny day! And here's a challenge to all you folks out there: the PQ needs gainful employment. I can cook for you, teach you to make pie (among other things), write for your website/newspaper/magazine/blog, edit articles/books/whatever, even feed your cat or weed your garden. Anyone that gets me a job lead that pays off gets 2 jars of just-made orange marmalade (or the future jam of your choice) or a freshly made homemade pie (your choice!) from the PQ kitchen. Let the networking begin!
Friday, February 01, 2008
Sunny D-Lite
Look outside, it's sunny! Thanks to 11 days of rain, Bernal Hill looks like Ireland. Keep your fingers crossed that this brief interval between storms stretches out through Saturday morning, so you won't have to stand under a deluge to get your bite of Orange-Almond Cake with Citrus Compote.
Yes, the PQ will be doing a cooking demonstration, complete with samples, at the Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market at the foot of Market St tomorrow morning at 11am. Look for the demo kitchen out in front of the Ferry Plaza, on the north side of the arcade, near Taylor's Refresher (if you're standing in front the building, look to your left). It's part of the market's Citrus Festival, so I'll be using as much fabulous Cali citrus as possible. Kumquats! Blood oranges! Navels! Pomelos! Come by, heckle, eat cake, maybe even buy a copy of Fun Food, my kids' cookbook, afterwards. More info on the CUESA site.
See you there!
Yes, the PQ will be doing a cooking demonstration, complete with samples, at the Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market at the foot of Market St tomorrow morning at 11am. Look for the demo kitchen out in front of the Ferry Plaza, on the north side of the arcade, near Taylor's Refresher (if you're standing in front the building, look to your left). It's part of the market's Citrus Festival, so I'll be using as much fabulous Cali citrus as possible. Kumquats! Blood oranges! Navels! Pomelos! Come by, heckle, eat cake, maybe even buy a copy of Fun Food, my kids' cookbook, afterwards. More info on the CUESA site.
See you there!
Friday, January 25, 2008
Si se puede!
Rain, cypress trees, woolly hats, kale for breakfast, flamenco songs about worms: it's Eco-Farm 2008 at Asilomar, and a wonderful place it is.
Friday, January 18, 2008
Down, Up, Up
So I didn't get that marketing-writing gig at Whole Foods that I was hoping for. The up side? I don't have spend my days trying to promote
organic spray-on pancake batter. But the can's recyclable, yo.
Today's joy—the incredibly beautiful weather, strip-off-your-parka warm (at least in the Mission) and cloudless blue sky. I got to the top of Dolores Park and decided it was ice cream weather, and Bi-Rite Creamery obliged by having not just its usual highfalutin' flavors (salted caramel, roasted banana, orange-cardamom) but ROCKY ROAD, made with chocolate chips, almonds, and minimarshmallows, $1.95 for a single scoop that's more than enough to set you up on a happy choccy high for a few hours. Next visit, it will be a mandarin-orange popsicle stained with blood-orange segments.
And mark your calendars: on Saturday, Feb. 2nd, I'll be doing a cooking demo as part of the "Market to Table" program at the Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market. Yippee! The big question: which apron to wear? The orange-and-pink retro flowers from K's mom? The reversible Parisian pin-up print from Susie? The demure French-maid white lacy vintage one? It's the market's Citrus Festival, so whatever I make will be featuring citrus prominently. Clementines! Meyer Lemons! Satsumas! Blood oranges! Oh, after those icy days selling sauerkraut and celeriac in Union Square, the mind reels.
organic spray-on pancake batter. But the can's recyclable, yo.
Today's joy—the incredibly beautiful weather, strip-off-your-parka warm (at least in the Mission) and cloudless blue sky. I got to the top of Dolores Park and decided it was ice cream weather, and Bi-Rite Creamery obliged by having not just its usual highfalutin' flavors (salted caramel, roasted banana, orange-cardamom) but ROCKY ROAD, made with chocolate chips, almonds, and minimarshmallows, $1.95 for a single scoop that's more than enough to set you up on a happy choccy high for a few hours. Next visit, it will be a mandarin-orange popsicle stained with blood-orange segments.
And mark your calendars: on Saturday, Feb. 2nd, I'll be doing a cooking demo as part of the "Market to Table" program at the Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market. Yippee! The big question: which apron to wear? The orange-and-pink retro flowers from K's mom? The reversible Parisian pin-up print from Susie? The demure French-maid white lacy vintage one? It's the market's Citrus Festival, so whatever I make will be featuring citrus prominently. Clementines! Meyer Lemons! Satsumas! Blood oranges! Oh, after those icy days selling sauerkraut and celeriac in Union Square, the mind reels.
Monday, January 14, 2008
Happylemonland
O frabjous day! Calloo, callay!
Yep, I'm back on the best coast, settling in and doing exactly what I did back in August of 1990, when I first moved to San Francisco fresh out of college.
Which would be, of course, buying a warm blanket, since just like in nearly every apartment I've lived in here, the heater only warms two rooms, neither of which is my bedroom. But it's lovely to be back, and wonderful to be living in Bernal Heights. More soon, but for now, yippee!
Yep, I'm back on the best coast, settling in and doing exactly what I did back in August of 1990, when I first moved to San Francisco fresh out of college.
Which would be, of course, buying a warm blanket, since just like in nearly every apartment I've lived in here, the heater only warms two rooms, neither of which is my bedroom. But it's lovely to be back, and wonderful to be living in Bernal Heights. More soon, but for now, yippee!
Friday, January 04, 2008
roll, roulade, roll
Happy New Year! It's January 2008, cold as, well, a cold thing, which means hello, Florida! Yep, we're packing up and waving bye-bye to Park Slope on Monday. A week in lovely central Florida--Orlando, Vero Beach, Jacksonville--to follow. And then, K. heads off to more officer training and I go to my new temporary digs in Bernal Heights, home of the Liberty Cafe's apple pie, my dear pal Jen of Manic D Press, and Wild Side West, where the mullets roam free. Yep, I'm ditching the snow and slush and ever-escalating metrocards for happy lemontreeland, at least through mid-May. Joy, oh joy.
But first, lunch with B. at the Bar@Etats-Unis, another day pushing cookies and sauerkraut at the Hawthorne Valley Farm stand at Union Square, dins with the newly-married E. in Manhattan, and celebratory wedding brunch in Pennsylvania for my oldest friend Bea on Sunday. And did I mention packing? So it's going to be takeout and restaurant food for the next few days. But I will post the highly sucessful NYE raspberry roll-up cake, or as we like to call it here at the castle, la rouuuuu-laaaahde.
But first, lunch with B. at the Bar@Etats-Unis, another day pushing cookies and sauerkraut at the Hawthorne Valley Farm stand at Union Square, dins with the newly-married E. in Manhattan, and celebratory wedding brunch in Pennsylvania for my oldest friend Bea on Sunday. And did I mention packing? So it's going to be takeout and restaurant food for the next few days. But I will post the highly sucessful NYE raspberry roll-up cake, or as we like to call it here at the castle, la rouuuuu-laaaahde.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
South by West
Happy day-after-Boxing Day! Hope you had a wonderful Christmas time, as the song goes. Used a nifty Zipcar to go up the PQM's house, where my aunts and uncle were gathered for the usual family hilarity. I went toting 2 kinds of biscotti (the zuni cafe cookbook's cornmeal-and-almond jobs, made sans anise and avec orange and lemon zest, and some quite fabulous double-chocolate-and-pistachio ones from last December's issue of Food & Wine, the one where I modeled for Julie Powell's holiday-party story but ended up figuring only as a headless torso holding a plate of pork and salad) and multiple jars of strawberry jam, apple butter, and green-tomato relish from the farm jam kitchen. And came back with about 2 dozen pairs of socks, a plate of christmas cookies (summarily dispatched with K. to spread the cheer among the soldiers in her Nat'l Guard unit), and lots of yummy Clarins face creams to make me smell French and expensive.
Spent Christmas Eve with B. and his new wife and her family,eating wine-soaked cassoulet and playing scrabble. A new invention, though, for the non-meat eaters: pomegranate squash. A butternut squash, peeled, seeded and cubed, roasted with olive oil and salt, then tossed with carmelized onion, some good glugs of pomegranate molasses, and a handful of fresh pomegranate seeds. Can be served warm or room temp, quite delicious all around and very festive looking.
Then, post-xmas, much lying around on the couch in my new flannel pjs, printed with crossword puzzles! no actual clues, alas, but plenty of the familiar black-and-white squares. Park Slope being as cozy and bougie as it is, these are the best selling item at our local lingerie boutique.
But soon, we'll be departing from NYC--first for a week in sunny 70-degree Florida, then back to California! While K. goes for more training, I'll be returning to the BEST coast, to live in Bernal just a stone's throw from the Liberty Cafe (home of the best chicken-pot-pie and apple turnovers in the city), ready to bask in the meyer-lemon-ness of it all. Yippee!
Until then, come say hi to moi, your sauerkraut girl, at the Hawthorne Valley Farm stand on Saturdays at the Union Square Greenmarket from 8am to 6pm.
Double Chocolate Pistachio Biscotti
2 cups flour
3/4 cup cocoa
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/8 tsp salt
1 1/4 cups brown sugar
4 tablespoons soft butter
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp almond extract
1 TB strong coffee
3 eggs
1 cup chocolate chips
1 cup chopped pistachio nuts
Whisk flour, cocoa, soda, and salt together (sift if cocoa seems very lumpy). Set aside. Cream brown sugar and butter together in a large bowl. Beat in extracts and coffee. Beat in eggs one at a time, then stir in cocoa mixture. Stir in chips and nuts. Form into 2 long, flattish logs on a nonstick or lightly greased baking sheet. Bake for 20-25 min at 375 degrees F. Remove from oven and let cool. Slice into thin cookies on the diagonal and place cut sides down on the baking sheet. Bake slowly at 250 degrees F for 20 minutes or so, until firm and crunchy. Let cool, then store in a tightly covered container.
Spent Christmas Eve with B. and his new wife and her family,eating wine-soaked cassoulet and playing scrabble. A new invention, though, for the non-meat eaters: pomegranate squash. A butternut squash, peeled, seeded and cubed, roasted with olive oil and salt, then tossed with carmelized onion, some good glugs of pomegranate molasses, and a handful of fresh pomegranate seeds. Can be served warm or room temp, quite delicious all around and very festive looking.
Then, post-xmas, much lying around on the couch in my new flannel pjs, printed with crossword puzzles! no actual clues, alas, but plenty of the familiar black-and-white squares. Park Slope being as cozy and bougie as it is, these are the best selling item at our local lingerie boutique.
But soon, we'll be departing from NYC--first for a week in sunny 70-degree Florida, then back to California! While K. goes for more training, I'll be returning to the BEST coast, to live in Bernal just a stone's throw from the Liberty Cafe (home of the best chicken-pot-pie and apple turnovers in the city), ready to bask in the meyer-lemon-ness of it all. Yippee!
Until then, come say hi to moi, your sauerkraut girl, at the Hawthorne Valley Farm stand on Saturdays at the Union Square Greenmarket from 8am to 6pm.
Double Chocolate Pistachio Biscotti
2 cups flour
3/4 cup cocoa
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/8 tsp salt
1 1/4 cups brown sugar
4 tablespoons soft butter
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp almond extract
1 TB strong coffee
3 eggs
1 cup chocolate chips
1 cup chopped pistachio nuts
Whisk flour, cocoa, soda, and salt together (sift if cocoa seems very lumpy). Set aside. Cream brown sugar and butter together in a large bowl. Beat in extracts and coffee. Beat in eggs one at a time, then stir in cocoa mixture. Stir in chips and nuts. Form into 2 long, flattish logs on a nonstick or lightly greased baking sheet. Bake for 20-25 min at 375 degrees F. Remove from oven and let cool. Slice into thin cookies on the diagonal and place cut sides down on the baking sheet. Bake slowly at 250 degrees F for 20 minutes or so, until firm and crunchy. Let cool, then store in a tightly covered container.
Friday, December 21, 2007
Union Square Hello
Brrr! Baby, it's cold outside. Thank heaven for the long, lovely clawfoot tub in our temporary digs in Park Slope...And speaking of chilly, I'm working the all-day shift at the Hawthorne Valley Farm stand at the Union Square Greenmarket tomorrow, Saturday. Stop by and say hello!
We'll have loads of organic breads, cookies, rolls, and sweet treats, plus pasture-raised beef and pork, organic cheeses, and fabulous lacto-fermented sauerkrauts, including my favorite, ginger-carrot. And biodynamic mache and celeraic, too.
We're on the left side, near the far northwest corner of the park, more or less kitty-corner from Coffee Shop. The farm itself, a complex comprising a livestock operation, dairy, vegetable farm, and bakery, is located about 130 miles north of the city, in Columbia County. The whole place is both certified organic and biodynamic. More about the farm here-- they also have groovy-sounding internships, school programs, and farm-camp programs.
We'll have loads of organic breads, cookies, rolls, and sweet treats, plus pasture-raised beef and pork, organic cheeses, and fabulous lacto-fermented sauerkrauts, including my favorite, ginger-carrot. And biodynamic mache and celeraic, too.
We're on the left side, near the far northwest corner of the park, more or less kitty-corner from Coffee Shop. The farm itself, a complex comprising a livestock operation, dairy, vegetable farm, and bakery, is located about 130 miles north of the city, in Columbia County. The whole place is both certified organic and biodynamic. More about the farm here-- they also have groovy-sounding internships, school programs, and farm-camp programs.
Monday, December 17, 2007
Stop the Insanity!
Step...away...from...the icing....(Poor Mr. Bill and his candy cane, stuck to the wall with lightning bolts of icing excitement.)
Book Nerd had a birthday brunch/holiday decorating party. Blame the champagne mojitos at Park Slope Frenchy bistro Moutarde (on Fifth Ave and Carroll), but a small posse of bookish types ended up in the BN kitchen, making bourbon balls and Christmas/Chanukkah cookies, and assembling and decorating this little gingerbread house. OK, let's be honest: I contributed nothing useful to the bourbon ball/cookie endeavor, except for licking the chocolate bowl and cutting out a few dreidel shapes.
But the gingerbread house--oh, the joy! What soul can't be satisfied by a plastic pastry bag oozing royal icing and a bottle of glitter sprinkles? Left to my own devices, I would have buried in the whole house in a snowy avalanche of icing swags. More icing! More!! Luckily, though, BN eventually wrestled the bag away from me, a good thing.
This was a bit of a cheater's house, because the gingerbread pieces came already pre-baked and pre-cut, so all we had to do was stick them together and then get onto the fun part. Theinstructions on the kit said ridiculous things, like that you have to wait 4 hours between sticking on the roof and decorating the house. Made from meringue powder, water and tons of confectioners' sugar, the icing set nearly immediately into impenetrable cement, so we got on with the peppermint and gumdrop action ASAP.
You can also roll the icing into little balls and create a turban-wearing Sikh snowman, if you're so inclined. Next year, a satellite dish on the roof!
Truly, though, fun (and hot buttered rum) was had by all.
Music for Gingerbreading:
"Back Door Santa," Clarence Carter
"Do the Funky Penguin," Rufus Thomas
"Baby It's Cold Outside," Ann Margret
"Santa Baby," Eartha Kitt
"Santa's Back in Town," Elvis Presley
Sunday, December 02, 2007
Winter wonderland
Snow! Number #7 on the Good Things for the Holidays list arrived this morning. As I was standing around in the kitchen, filling the coffee pot and wondering why it was so cold in there, I glanced out the (partially open) kitchen window to see...SNOW! on the fire escape, frosting the trees, sifting down over the backyards outside. It's grey and quiet out there, and December has officially begun.
More later on Bakerina's lovely surprise party, Julie's smashing walnut torte, a long walk through the city with K., and working at the Hawthorne Valley farm stand at the Union Square Greenmarket...all that and more, soon. Why not now? Because half my head is still throbbing with the migraine that will not retreat, now in day #2. but soon, hopefully, I'll be back, with much to report, in snowboots!
More later on Bakerina's lovely surprise party, Julie's smashing walnut torte, a long walk through the city with K., and working at the Hawthorne Valley farm stand at the Union Square Greenmarket...all that and more, soon. Why not now? Because half my head is still throbbing with the migraine that will not retreat, now in day #2. but soon, hopefully, I'll be back, with much to report, in snowboots!
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