sybarites

Since the DeLonghi espresso machine we currently use is now approaching six years of age, Marc is starting to hint at buying a new one.  For every day of every year since we’ve had it (except the year spent travelling) this machine has brewed up at least two cappuccini in the morning.  Marc has calculated that we’ve used it over 1ooo times.  Considering I paid $40 for it, used, 6 years ago, I figure it doesn’t owe us anything.  That works out to about, what,  2¢/cappuccino!?    But now the seal is starting to go and it’s getting a little too finicky…

The espresso machine is actually the only thing that has a permanent home on our one small countertop.   And I mean the only thing.   We both have an affinity for minimalist design, so any surface area in our whole flat has minimal permanent residents.   (On my desk, only the small desk lamp, the monitor and a framed print live here permanently.)  So by combining the need for a new espresso machine with the requirement that it be as unobtrusive as possible, I think I’ve found a viable contender: the Stelton 898 Simply Espresso.

Pros:  It’s tiny, it’s shiny, it’s European (upon this point I shall infer that it makes a decent tasting espresso), it looks really simple to use, and would take up no more than its fair share of countertop space.   Because it’s battery-operated, it could even come to the breakfast table with us!

Cons: no milk frother (duh), $289, and does it only make one double shot?  Must one use those wretched coffee pods?   How much does it cost to replace the battery?   Of course, Stelton also sells the appropriate accoutrements, including a milk frother.

This may not be the choice, but it’s fascinating to see the innovation.

Years ago, I took a cooking class that focused on eggs.  Out of all the classes I have taken, I would argue that this one was the best, the most revelatory.   I still think back to that day-long Saturday class in which I developed a fundamental understanding of the most versatile and elemental tool in cooking:  the magnificent egg!   The chef started the class by cooking scrambled eggs, and then launched into eggs benedict, a prospect that made my mouth water until she said she would be making it with bearnaise sauce instead of hollandaise.  I’m sure my face visibly sagged with disappointment.  I had wanted the classic experience, the purest form of eggs benedict.  I wanted to witness precisely what it should be and, for me, that involved hollandaise.  But had I gotten my wish, I never would have tasted bearnaise and I would never have become The Best Eggs Benedict Maker I Know.   The bearnaise deserves all the credit.  The perfectly poached free-range eggs, the precisely chewy English muffins, the hand-shaved black-forest ham, all of these things play a part, but it is the bearnaise that lifts the eggs benedict to its most glorious form.  We don’t even order eggs benedict at restaurants anymore.  What’s the point?  How could it ever measure up to mine?   (And with that kind of hubris, I will never again be able to poach an egg.)

More recently, I read Michael Ruhlman’s The Elements of Cooking: Translating the Chef’s Craft for Every Kitchen, or at least the non-encyclopedic part of the book, and my appreciation for the egg increased even further.  He writes,  ”My reverence of the egg borders on religious devotion.”   From that loaded introduction, he proceeds to list the reasons why the egg is the epitome of food perfection (page 22, if anyone cares to read it) and elaborates on its various methods of preparation.  If ever I needed a reason to love the egg even more, this gave me a trove of pro arguments.    One of things he discusses, of course, it the making of an omelette.  In my Introduction to Eggs class, the chef told us all that the making of an omelette is something that many chefs use to test the skill of their potential staff, something I’ve heard echoed a few times since then.   So naturally, I felt that the first skill I was going to work to perfect was the making of an omelette.

It turns out that the method which I was taught was sort of a cross between an American-style country omelette, and a classic French omelette.  (Dude, I hadn’t even known there were different types of omelettes, let alone techniques.)  I was taught to use a very hot, non-stick skillet, to slowly draw the large curds from the outer edges of the pan towards the center, to fold the finished omelette into three overlapping parts, and, under no circumstances, should I ever allow the bottom of the omelette to brown.   This technique, I thought, was The Way To Make An Omelette.  Little did I know of the variations in technique, and the incredible difference in flavour the technique can make.  I mean, eggs is eggs!  How different could they taste if scrambled or made into an omelettle?!   Turns out:  quite a bit, my friend.

Since that fateful class, I have been drawn to any and all kinds of instruction on how to make an omelette.  We’ve watched the America’s Test Kitchen version, which involved using chopsticks and the broiler; I must’ve read a couple dozen of written How To’s;  we’ve watched Julia Child make them, Julia & Jacques make them, Bobby Flay make them and – the latest – Jacques sans Julia make them.   Truly, they are astonishingly different, these lessons.  I have to say, I liked Jacques Pepin’s classic version the best even though I CAN’T STAND that he uses a metal fork to scrape the bottom of a non-stick skillet.

I think it’s fair to say that I am still developing my own style. I like the idea of using chopsticks to help swirl and scramble the eggs around the pan because it’s easy to use them as pincers to pick up the edges if need be, and I am determined to master the technique of folding it into a perfect Pepin-torpedo.  I respect the knowledge of the egg that Rulman imparted and if ever the omelette turns into scrambled eggs, I adopt Julia’s attitude of “no excuses and no apologies”.   Above all, I love the creamy taste of the classic French omelette, and that alone warrants the effort.  It is that version that I plan to perfect, and when I do, I think I’ll buy a chef’s hat.

Egad.   How is it possible that I have forgotten to document the culinary masterpiece that was Christmas 2008?   Compared to Xmas ‘09, it could be described as ethereal, so how on earth could I have not written about it here on this fair-weather blog?  Flipping back through the pages of my menu book, I found the record for Christmas Eve 2008 (indeed, I record the things we have eaten so that when the world ends and future generations are sifting through the tattered remains of society, they can read about what the mortals once ate and wonder, “what is agnolotti”?)

Le Menu de Noël, 2008

Cornets of Salmon Tartare with Sweet Red Onion Crème Fraîche

Chestnut Agnolotti with Fontina and Celery Root-White Truffle Purée

Dry-aged St. Helena Standing Prime Rib Roast

Roasted Cauliflower, Brussels Sprouts and Jerusalem Artichokes

Cheeses with Quince Paste and Walnuts

A Veil of Vanilla

Marvelous, this meal.  I recall that we dragged my small desk to the living room window to act as an intimate dining table with a view of the city.  I remember the trouble we went through trying to make those damn cornets without the proper (and expensive) cornet-making tools;  and I remember being pretty pleased with myself at having made and rolled out the pasta for the agnolotti by hand, without the aid of a pasta maker, thank you very much!    But what is most dominant in my memory of this once-per-year feast is the dessert.

From Elizabeth Faulker’s book, A Veil of Vanilla is the name she applied to this multi-layered, somewhat deconstructed version of individual trifle-esque desserts.  In two glasses, we layered dark, sweet tarte tatin apples and Point Reyes blue cheese crumble with pecan caramel sauce, Napa Wildflower Honey semifreddo, and small cubes of pomegranate gelée.  Sprinkled on top were little glowing gems of fresh pomegranate seeds.  Crazy good.    Like the kind of good that warrants exclamations of pleasure between bites. With each recipe of hers that I try, I am tempted to label each one as The Best Dessert I Have Ever Had.  Maybe I should avoid the absolute declarations of “best” or “worst” and just stick with the Continuum of Like, where “best” is something that can never physically be obtained/observed, like absolute zero.  Relative that that spectrum, this dessert can certainly be classed amongst the Super-Like.

This book is like a secret weapon of desserts.  It should be printed and distributed as a little red book.  It should be included in a Match.com “How to Find a Soul-Mate” kit.  It should be sold with a napkin as a bookmark so as to manage the drooling over the photos of confectionary.

As has become tradition, we have cordoned off Christmas Eve for ourselves for the purposes of cooking and enjoying a multi-course, no-meat-is-too-expensive, dinner for two by the fire. It has long been the case that the food is what I anticipate the most during the Xmas season.  Now that we have cultivated this new tradition of decadence, it has become the ultimate focus of my anticipation– there will be no better meal during the year than the one on December 24th.

This year, though the rules of decadence applied, we were a little less astringent in the following of the recipes‘ rules, which resulted in some near misses and, admittedly, one bonafide disaster.

Le Menu

Clementine Negroni

Whole-wheat Blini with Caviar and Crème Fraîche

Sparkling white

Cauliflower Soup with Pecorino Romano and Black Truffle Oil

Spice-rubbed Roasted Squab

Homemade Potato Gnocchi in Browned-butter Sauce

Sautéed Kale

2006 Bouchaine Pinot Noir, Carneros, Napa Valley

Taleggio Raw-milk Cheese

Apple-Pomegranate Tarte Tatin with Honeyed Mascarpone

Generally speaking, it would be pretty hard not to pry a delightful evening from a menu such as this. Critically speaking, there were quite a few small mistakes we made along the way, or things that just didn’t taste “quite right” that I would do differently next time.  The whole wheat in the blini overpowered the taste of caviar (which was on the cheaper side, to be sure, but we still paid good American money for that American caviar and we should have been able to taste it!); the cauliflower soup was a little bland – the cauliflower should have been roasted before being made into soup; the roasted squab (a.k.a. pigeon) was too roasted, alas, and became a little dried out; the kale, it turns out, is not something that one can sauté with garlic, like swiss chard, to produce a lovely aromatic green on the plate.

The apple-pomegranate tarte tatin was a catastrophe.  We’ve made the classic tarte tatin a dozen times with great success (and fabulous leftovers) but the addition of pomegranate poisoned the formula.   What started as this:

…ended up as this:

Black.  Undeniably, solidly, even-viewed-in-direct-sunlight, midnight black. It seems that pomegranate adds zero to the flavour of such a tart and effectively turns the sugars and apples into pure evil if left to simmer together for a long period of time.  On the plus side, it was still entirely edible, and now we have a secret formula for making a wicked Hallowe’en dessert.

Both Humphry Slocombe Ice Cream and Dynamo Donut have been recommended to us several times.  The highest praise for both comes from Brad, our boot camp leader, who often tells us about his latest enjoyment of either, or  both, as we press our free weights up the sky or jog up the steep incline to the steep set of stairs.  Incongruous, perhaps, but inspiring in an odd way;  because we do the exercises, we have earned the right to eat donuts.  Or so it goes in my head.

So when Rebecca and Matt from Montreal were visiting the city for the 2009 Nike Women’s Marathon and they expressed an interest in eating some of the legendary SF cuisine, we proposed a mission to the Mission for fattening foods.   First stop, Dynamo.   The plan was to procure some for take-away and eat them later, when we could sit somewhere with a view.  The hand-made varieties on sale that Saturday were Huckleberry, Lemon Vanilla, Chocolate Spice, and Maple Bacon.  Yes, a maple-glazed donut with real bacon bits sprinkled on top.  This is Brad’s favourite.

With barely a pause, we walked straight down the street to Humphry Slocombe.  To say that the ice cream flavours here are out of the ordinary would be putting it mildly.   Rebecca ordered a cup of “Secret Breakfast”, which is cornflakes and bourbon, Marc got “Peanut Butter Curry”, and I bravely ordered “Boccalone Prosciutto”, labeled with the bracketed sub-title “Tasty Salted Pig Parts”.   In ice cream.   Pig.

Everyone sampled everyone else’s, and no-one but me liked the pig parts ice cream.   Truly, it was unique:  my mouth tasted salty prosciutto but my brain knew it was eating ice cream. It was hard to reconcile, but after consuming half a scoop, I was really enjoying the salty, sometimes crunchy, sweetness.   Marc’s was delectable, thankfully non-spicy curry was used.  The “Secret Breakfast” was highly unusual. Matt observed that it was impressive that there could be so much taste of bourbon in the ice cream without ruining the cream or making it runny.  And therein lies the secret of why Humphry Slocombe is more than just creative, it’s really, really good.

Later, having found an appropriate viewing point at which to consume our donuts, we snagged a bench in the sun near the Golden Gate Bridge and tucked into the donuts.

So fresh, I’ve never had donuts with this texture, practically melting in the mouth.  If Tim Horton’s donuts are good enough to be a national icon, then Dynamo’s deserve their own anthem.  The lemon and the vanilla really come through;  the bacon on top of maple, mouthwatering. Thank goodness this place isn’t within walking distance, because we’d have a problem that goes beyond what three days a week of boot camp could solve.   As Rebecca put it, “If we lived nearby [each other and Dynamo] we’d all be happier, but we’d all be a little heavier”.

One of them will be my sous-chef and one of them will be the taster.

It is high time I took picnicking to the next level.

I have read and re-read the chapter in Peter Mayle’s Toujours Provence where he talks about the picnic his wife plans for his birthday, the picnic he is loathe to attend because of a fear of “a damp bottom and ant sandwiches”.  Of course, the picnic reaches far beyond all his low expectations when he is presented with a table with actual linens and sliverware, set in a sunny, quiet meadow and several courses of a divine luncheon.  As beautiful as that all sounds, I’m not sure that I would necessarily categorize that as a picnic;  it’s more like alfresco dining.   So what I want to target is something that, on the spectrum of Eating Outside, sits far, far from PB&J and rather close to alfresco dining, but without the caterers or linen.

An opportunity to experiment with picnicking arose with Mom & Dad’s visit to SF, and the subsequent – practically mandatory – day trip to wine country.  There are several wineries in the region that have picnic areas for visitors, but one in particular, in Napa, is where we had been before and wanted to go again:  Reynold’s Family Winery.   It’s a small scale operation with a nice patio, some chairs and tables with umbrellas arranged under (what is almost always) the hot sun.  Even better, they have one of the few Chardonnays on the planet that I actually find pleasant to drink.   The wine is where I started the menu, the library is where I continued.

Truthfully, I didn’t plan to actually go searching for a picnic cookbook when I was last at the library, but I happened to pick a most unlikely choice: Tassajara Cookbook, Lunches, Picnics & Appetizers, by Karla Oliveira.

“The Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, a legendary Buddhist monastery set deep in California’s Ventana Wilderness, is famous for its healthy gourmet vegetarian cuisine.  Guests rave about one particular Tassajara tradition: the bag lunch.”

Ha!   It’s vegetarian, and I still brought it home.  Brought it home and got completely wound up in what were starting to sound like really good spreads and chutneys, even without any meat:  Fennel Mustard Butter, Tarragon Onion Spread, Eggless Egg Salad, Mushroom Pâté…  I had to look up what “tempeh” was, and what “tamari” was (coarse tofu and a kind of soy sauce, respectively) and then designed a menu mindful of chardonnay:

Tempeh Garlic spread with cherry tomatoes

Artichoke, Walnut Tofu spread with Raincoast crisps

Un Mondo Cacciatore Hunter’s Style dried salami & grainy mustard

Cabbage slaw with maple vinaigrette

Coco-Luxe chocolate truffles

Ultimately, though I forgot the forks and the sun refused to shine in Napa (inconceivable!), this picnic was a smash.   We uncorked a thoughtfully chilled 2007 Chardonnay, dressed the salad, sliced the salami, and enjoyed our picnic despite the chilly breeze.  In fact, I’m not sure it could’ve been nicer– the spreads were good protein but not so filling that we would regret them at dinner time, the slaw added a vinegary, crunchy element and the truffles at the end effectively sealed off any overindulgence in white wine.   Only the sun was lacking to make our view out over the vineyards perfect.

It seems we cannot stay away.  Gail and Daniel’s visit gave us an excellent excuse to explore further wineries and picnic spots.

The fog drifts in again and makes itself comfortable on the hill that is Buena Vista Park, opposite our picture window.  It’s this wet blanket of water droplets dampening streets, hiding views and flattening hair that makes me sigh and reminisce about wine country.   Ahh, Napa–  where the sun always shines and the palm trees wave and the wine flows. Unless you rent a convertible, in which case, it is sure to rain.

I’m convinced that the only reason it rained on our trip North recently is because we rented the Mini Cooper Convertible.  It’s cute and all, but kind of simple and definitely not as fun in the dark, cramped, ill-formed back seat with the top up.  Nonetheless, Marc and Marcia and I trooped from winery to winery despite the chill, even stopping for a surreptitiously-timed picnic lunch before the rain began.  As it turns out, a winery is perhaps the most perfect place for civilized picnic outdoors:  tables and chairs are usually positioned with a wide view of vineyard or valley or pond, staff are quick to offer knives or napkins or whatever else has been forgotten at home, and wine is conveniently sold chilled for enjoyment on the spot.  Bread and good cheese, some sun-warmed fresh figs bought at the farm stand along the road, a glass or two of unoaked Chardonnay.  It will be hard to beat that.

After having filled the wee trunk with as much wine as it could carry/we could purchase, we headed for The Fig Café in Glen Ellen.  As they accept no reservations, we took our place second in the queue forming outside the door for the first sitting at 5:30pm.  It smelled delicious as soon as we walked in– did someone toss garlic into pan as the doors were unlocked?

Fried calamari with lemon aioli, no corkage (!), fig and arugula salad with chèvre, pecans and pancetta, duck confit, saffron and white corn pasta, and a humble order of “fries” with tarragon aioli.  Now allow me, please, a moment to elaborate on the fries:  these were The Best Fries I Have Ever Eaten.  They were twice fried, to be sure, but that oil must have contained duck fat or pure lard or something that penetrated the fluffy potato interior and melted in one’s mouth.  Burning hot and very liberally salted, they crunched so preciously between the teeth that I found them more enjoyable eaten one by one by hand, rather than by the civilized forkful.

The three of us, after having eaten and wined all day, could barely muster the strength to get through three quarters of the honey-lavender crème brulée before crying uncle and staggering back out into the drizzle to our cramped little Mini.  The dinner and the wine and the fries more than made up for the rain.

Mixed grill. Mixed grill.  The phrase hummed in the air all afternoon at the trailer.

Marc and I invited ourselves out to Carl & Julianne’s Airstream in wine country for Labour Day Weekend with the plea to use the BBQ.   This BBQ- it was previously enjoyed and left for dead next to the giant “To Burn” pile in the trailer lot next door- Carl had rescued it, dragged it over to the Airstream.  It enjoys a second life now, one in which Marc and I have played a part every time we enjoy a weekend with C, J & M out of the city.

For several weeks before the long weekend, we perused the food mags and sites for barbecue ideas.  Burgers were featured everywhere, of course, all with some sort of label of “ultimate” or “perfect” or “gourmet”, but that didn’t seem special enough for one of these cherished occasions where we get to use actual flames to cook food.  Flames that burn from artisanal charcoal.  After narrowing down the list and debating about what would go best with cold beer and hot weather, we decided on the menu.

Homemade babaganoush with grilled pita bread

Mixed grill with cherry cola barbecue sauce

Grilled vegetables with goat cheese

Grilled nectarines with honeyed crème fraîche

And so, early on Saturday afternoon, the preparation and cooking began.  The coals were lit, the mesquite pellets sealed in tinfoil, the grill scrubbed clean.  There were to be hours of slow cooking ahead for the ribs and the eggplant, and hours spent lounging and beering in the shade as the smoky, meaty smells would waft towards the picnic table.

Then we started to get hungry.   The eggplant was the first to be lifted from the flames, only to be judged insufficiently cooked and thrown into the trailer’s oven for softening.  At best, the resulting babaganoush tasted intriguingly smoky.  At worst, it tasted a little… burnt.  But at 5:30, after having already sat still listening to and smelling the ribs sizzling for almost 2 hours, we weren’t going to waste any more effort on the stupid appetizer.

Then came the sausages (the homemade Antonelli’s sausages which never let us down), and the spice-rubbed, skin-on chicken thighs that blistered and crisped to perfection under the supervision of three adults who could not leave the meat alone, who could not go five minutes together without one of us “peeking”, even though we promised each other we’d leave it alone.  The barbecue sauce was applied, and reapplied; the veg hit the grill as the meat neared its end, the ribs rested before they got hit with more sticky, sweet, cherry-cola sauce.   Mixed grill.  Mixed grill.  Finally, we ate.  Even the pickiest eater among us could not help gnawing at the bones.

All of it was divine.  The ribs fell apart in our hands, every surface, every utensil on the table became sticky with sauce.  The sausages, coarse enough to be toothsome, were spicy little nuggets next to the juicy chicken, done just right.  The vegetables were tasty but hardly seem worth mentioning next to the all-consuming chewy, meaty, saucy, smoky, drippy, messy mixed grill.