Eats For One … or more

… peach and tomato salad
Gone again… back again

the farm lane

This time we were off to Ohio, a land of heat and humidity, but one of family celebrations, as well. This one was Carol’s brother Alan’s annual pig roast on his farm just south of Lancaster – where Carol grew up – which is just north of Logan – my birthplace – and about 30 miles southeast of Columbus – where I grew up. Having lived in San Francisco for nearly 20 years, a trip “back east” is July is like a hot, wet slap in the face, and Carol tends to obsess over the heat. To my way of thinking, it’s good to go someplace really hot from time to time – not too often. I don the Ohio July uniform of a loose tee shirt, shorts and sandals and live with it. It’s the clammy, usually way too cold air conditioning that gets to me.

dude... check out these Ohio tomatoes!

All of that, to say that I haven’t contributed to eats for a while.

I found this recipe for Spring Cassoulet in the CUESA newsletter and though it’s a bit past spring, I had all the ingredients and SF is cool enough just now to enjoy a bean dish.

So, you make a pot of beans and throw some sausages and pancetta on top, and sprinkle that with baby lettuces and edible flowers. How easy and yummy is that? Quite.

But Dominique Crenn of Luce at the InterContinental hotel showed me a few tricks to make this simple thing sophisticated and sublime.

For the beans, she cooked bacon, shallot, garlic, celery and carrot in a generous amount of olive oil and deglazed the pan (I used my bean pot) with white wine. OK so far… that’s the way I start beans. For the twist, she tied up that vegetable bacon mixture in cheesecloth and put it back in the pot for the beans. Viola… no pesky vegetable and bacon pieces in the beans, just their flavor. She used Rancho Gordo White Runner Beans, I used Golden Eye.

Chunks of lamb sausage, pork sausage and chopped pancetta, sautéed with onion and garlic, then cooked with red wine and chicken stock, made it a cassoulet. I used Fatted Calf Merguez and Mild Italian sausages. (more…)

Asian noodles and sauce meet local vegetables and chicken.

I’ve made a number of noodle salads over the years – love ‘em – but I don’t have a clear favorite. For summer the cucumber orange version is good, but that’s for summer. It’s February and I have some leftover (LO) roast chicken just waiting to be made into a noodle salad. I thought I’d break down my noodle salad recipes and maybe invent a new way to go.

THE NOODLES
What I have on hand right now is:
Eden Organic Udon whole grain – thin, flat noodles – from Big Apple, a mostly Asian grocery in Polk Gulch.
Dynasty Maifun Rice Sticks – from Big Apple – these are good. Come 3 “pads” in a 6 ounce package. Figure one pad per person.
Somen Noodles: (Available at Whole Food) These thin white noodles, made of wheat, are related to udon noodles but are noticeably thinner — a delicate wisp of a noodle that still manages to retain a distinct texture and delicious taste. They are divided — within the cellophane packaging itself — into neat little bundles, each bound with a ribbon. I’ve used these in the soup-like dishes, Noodle Beef and Noodle Chicken.
And of course, if I’m in the mood, I can make some noodles in the Udon shape.

THE SAUCE
The Asian sauces use the following ingredients – not all at once:

rice vinegar (not seasoned)
cider vinegar
Chinese black vinegar
Asian fish sauce
vegetable oil
sesame oil
chile sesame oil
chile sauce, like sriracha
soy sauce
tamari sauce
oyster sauce
lime juice
fresh orange juice
sake
garlic, minced
grated fresh ginger
sugar
salt (more…)

beets and more

Visiting son Brian in Reno, we were treated to a fine meal of grilled fish and what I will call “Natasza Salad.” It is a traditional Ukraine salad of beets, carrots, potatoes and celery and was prepared by Brian’s friend Natasza from Kiev. It was simple and delicious, so naturally, I wrote down how to make it:
“Roast and dice beets, dice and steam carrots, potatoes and celery, dice cornichons. Combine and toss with oil and vinegar.”

I got around to making it for dinner yesterday as root vegetables are prevalent this time of year. I love beets and get a few about every week at the Farmers. Though I find red beets incredibly beautiful, I’ve taken to buying golden beets lately; they taste the same and don’t bleed, so they’re great for salads.

Carol asked me to get celery root (celeriac) a couple of weeks ago. She does that, saying she wants to make this or that. It’s time to use it or lose it, so I substituted celeriac for the celery. I didn’t have quantities, so I decided to start with a small and a medium beet and match the other ingredients to that.

2 beets cubed – slightly more than a cup
1 cup diced carrots
1 cup diced Carola potatoes
1 cup diced celeriac
5 cornichons sliced thick
Sea salt and freshly ground pepper
1 head lil gem lettuce, leaves separated

Steam carrots, potatoes, celeriac for 5 minutes. While hot, toss with beets. Fold in cornichons. Dress with vinegar and olive oil.

Arrange lil gem leaves on a plate and spoon salad on to the leaves.

Notes:
Dressing – I used a traditional mix of 1 part red wine vinegar to 3 parts xv olive oil — olio nuovo in this case. This salad needed more acid. Next time, I’ll use 1 part vinegar, 1 part cornichon juice, 3 parts oil.

Cornichons – 5 cornichons yield less than 1/4 cup. Needs double that amount.

Served with leftover ham loaf, sliced and fried in butter.

Good. Yum.

Bean and Bacon Salad

I live in San Francisco and have my choice of about 20 farmers markets, but in 2008, farmers markets are pretty much everywhere. Besides the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, I’ve shopped at Farmers Markets in San Rafael, Berkeley, Oakland, Sacramento, Healdsburg, Boston, Newton MA, Portland ME, Belfast ME, Columbus OH, and yes, even Lancaster OH. Look around on Saturday or Sunday, you can find one.

This is a farmers market meal. You could make it with stuff from the supermarket, but fresh, local stuff just tastes better.

Let’s go down the list.
WHITE BEANS. I used Marrow Beans from Rancho Gordo and cooked them the day before. I cook beans half-a-pound at a time. That yields about 4 cups of cooked beans. Well I work at home, so I can cook the beans anytime, you say. I say, put your beans to soak in the morning before you go to work. When you get home, pour your bowl of beans into a saucepan, water and all (you want to change the water, be my guest). Make sure the water covers by at least an inch. (I use a clay pot, which I think is better, but it’s an investment.) Now, bring that to a boil and let it boil for 4 or 5 minutes, cover and turn the heat as low as possible. That takes about 20 minutes. You want the beans to barely simmer. If you have a heat diffuser, that’s good. Set your timer for 45 minutes and do something else.
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Salade Nicoise

The first time I remember having Salade Nicoise was in a café in Paris in 1979. I was alone, having lunch on a lovely August afternoon.

Of course August is the time when nearly all Parisians take holiday. My family and I were lucky enough to exchange houses for the month with a French architect, an acquaintance of a close friend. Our flat was a third floor walk-up (69 steps) so we were careful to plan our comings and goings. Situated on the Left Bank near Invalide, we were able to walk or take the Metro nearly everywhere. After breakfast, we could each go our own way (the kids were 11 and 13), sometimes for the whole day before assembling for dinner to exchange tales of our ventures.

The salad was served on an oval plate with a pile of tuna, surmounted by three anchovy fillets in the center. Green beans, tomato wedges, a quartered hard boiled egg, black olives and sliced potatoes were arranged around the tuna and dressed with a vinaigrette. Yellow potatoes! I had never seen yellow potatoes. I carefully took a bite of each ingredient — starting with a potato slice — and savored each bite. I hoped the experience would never end, but of course the plate was not infinite, and when I reached the last bite, perhaps an olive, I was wholly satisfied. (more…)

It was a few hours before the Giants’ game and I wasn’t hungry yet, but I would be when I got to the game. Ballpark food is so expensive, and truth be told, not that great. Although there’s something to be said for steamed hot dog in a warm bun with yellow mustard and chopped onion. That’s four bucks and I can’t have just one, which means going down in the fourth inning or so and standing in line for another. I have trained myself to buy only one eight dollar beer, though.

A pasta salad would be good, and good for me, but I wasn’t in the mood for the Asian noodle salad that I’ve made in the past for ball games.

I dived into my recipe archives. With the Internet, there are a gazillion recipes out there, many good, most bad. In addition to all the free sites, food company sites and blogs, I subscribe to the Cook’s Illustrated website for the tried and true. I do have a bone to pick with CI, it seems to me that if I subscribe to their magazine, and have for years, I ought to get the website for free, or at least at a healthy discount. I enjoy leafing through the magazine when it comes in the mail; it’s a pleasant experience. But NO, the website is the same price as the magazine and there are no deals to be had. The website is a different experience. Even if you “browse” the current issue on the web, it’s not like turning those pages of heavy matt stock. But the website has the archives and easily searched recipes. I gave up the magazine. Bummer. But I digress. (more…)

Peel ‘n’ Eat Shrimp
Leftover Potato Salad

While waiting for dinner at Brophy Bros Fish Restaurant in Santa Barbara on Thursday, we had a mess of Peel ‘n’ Eat Shrimp. Yum. Carol said, “We should have Peel ‘n’ Eat shrimp for dinner every Sunday night.”

Our Sunday night dinners are usually planned, and then when the time rolls around to cook, one of us says, “who’s cooking?” and the other says “How about (Chinese) (Pizza) (Leftovers).” Our Sundays are rarely structured; we’ve been out or whatever, and we neither are inclined to get it up for a nice meal.

On this particular Sunday, we were just back from a trip to Santa Barbara to attend the beach wedding of Amber — one of Carol’s head teachers — and Will, a fine young Italian. We wrapped extra days around the Friday afternoon wedding to create a nice “foodie getaway.” (more…)

Sometime in 2001

Before leaving for work, Carol said, “I’m going to be late coming home and you’re going to be late, so we’ve got all the stuff, there’s the leftover Flank Steak, and a bag of spinach, that avocado, cherry tomatoes and stuff in the vegetable drawer, so we’ll throw together a Steak Salad.”

“Great,” sez I.

I was tired coming home, after closing the store at nine. It was about quarter to ten and Carol was watching The West Wing, the recipient of many Emmy Awards, recently. She said she had been too hungry, and had eaten about 9 o’clock, and presented me with the big wooden salad bowl. In it was lots of spinach, some cherry tomatoes, bits of celery and scallion. Near the stove, she pointed to a plate with some steak and mushrooms that had been sauteed in butter. “Just heat these in the skillet, throw them warm on the greens, slice this half-avocado on top, throw on some Newman’s, and there you have it.” (more…)

On Saturdays I have time to make whatever I want to eat after the Market. When putting away stuff in the refrigerator, old stuff has to be juggled or taken out so the new stuff fits. This taking out can be an opportunity for what to eat for brunch. (I do this alone, as C will already have eaten a big breakfast while I’m at the Market.) And there’s also the possibility of throwing stuff out, but I hate to do that.

So today, I threw out some leftover garlic mashed potatoes, about half a cup in a way too large container, taking up way too much space, which weren’t very good in the first place.

Oh, but look what I found:

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Slice ‘n’ Dice Dinner—The perfect eats-for-one caper.

It was nearly seven o’clock and I was watching the tail end of the news when Carol called to report that there was a hailstorm going on at San Francisco State and she’s not driving home until it’s over. A hailstorm! In San Francisco! With thunder and lightning! Oh, and she had dinner at her meeting.
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