sybarites

I don’t think I’ve consumed as much maple syrup as I have ever since we moved to the Homeland of Security. Ironic, really, that as soon as we leave Canada, I feel the need for that sticky taste more than I ever have in the past. Maybe it’s because I had hardly explored the possibilities of maple syrup. Beyond pancakes, who has a need for that crusty Canadian bottle in the fridge? Lately though, I’ve been adding it to my morning cream of wheat instead of sugar (delicious), adding a little splash to morning tea (interesting, perhaps it won’t be repeated), and slipping some into plain yogurt, mimicking the maple-flavoured yogurt we once bought from the Berkeley Bowl. I think I’ll take the experimentation further and start adding it to cocktails; perchance it goes with dark rum..? We shall see.

Otherwise, our lack of cooking and/or any kind of culinary creativity lately borders on unacceptable. Not to mention that fact that we sorely neglected our beloved blog. There is no excuse, but as an explanation, I can offer: in the last two weeks, we were accepted as legal aliens in America, signed a lease and moved into a new apartment across the bay, into the depths of the fog, and poor Marc drove all our belongings from Canada to California. Lately, we have been doing nothing but working, unpacking and washing the mould off of everything we own. At least we are beginning to feel at home now; Sammy is happy that his day bed is in our office so that he can keep an eye on us all day long. We are here to respond to his every whim.

Also hovering on the edge of unacceptable is the volume of objects that we have unpacked that are meant to reside in the new kitchen. How, why!, do we have five corkscrews? Who could ever find a need for so much tupperware? How did we end up with 6 boxes of glassware? Vaguely, I remember packing this stuff up 16 months ago in Calgary. At the time, it must have seemed logical to have wrapped up two fondue sets, even though we never have fondue, and to keep three sets of steak knives, six ladles, two tea sets and ten mixing bowls, but frankly, I am now a little disgusted with the amount of our material possessions. I guess this comes with any move, one is meant to filter, sort and purge- now that Marc and I have moved more than four times in the past two years, I would’ve thought we’d now be pared down to a minimum. Au contraire.

But before the stuff moved in, before we were wading through boxes and boxes of dishes and pots and pans, I made a lasagne. I’m reading Best Food Writing of 2006 right now and there was one piece in the collection that prompted a yearning for pasta. Laura Taxel wrote a short piece about the time she was in the grocery store and, after answering a stranger’s question about tomato paste, ended up providing a whole lesson on how to make homemade spaghetti and meatballs. She talked about the kind of tomatoes to use in the sauce, how to start with a mirepoix and add ingredients, spices, herbs and then the meatballs. It tasted marvelous in my imagination but because I didn’t have the energy to do meatballs and because I knew neither of us would have the energy to cook at all in the middle of all the unpacking and cleaning, I made a huge, tasty, cheesy lasagne. The process was yet another adventure: I had to find a grocery store in our neighbourhood (there is a Safeway on Market street), find the beautiful, organic produce that I have come to expect of California grocers (impossible in a Safeway), drag it all home and find parking (impossible in San Francisco) and then build a lasagne in a kitchen nearly devoid of cooking utensils (I used folded paper towels on baking sheet in lieu of a cutting board). The circumstances under which I cooked approached unacceptable but the lasagne has kept us happily fed for two weeks.

P.S. I uploaded more photos of our place here.

If you look carefully, you’ll notice one item on this list is not crossed off; we finally found a food that the magical land of Berkeley could not provide.  Of all things, goat.  I even called around to butchers and halal meat markets, and the artisan butcher at the market;  the best response I got was to “try again around Easter”.    And I’m not sure, but I think that’s because the Muslim holiday of Id-al-Adha, at which much goat feasting occurs, might fall in early April(??).   I could be wrong, maybe that’s just when baby goats are at their most tender.  (Meat is Murder.  Tasty, tasty murder.)

The reason I went to the trouble to find a goat’s shoulder  is because of the annual article in Food & Wine magazine on the Best New Chefs of the year, in America.   The youngest of the 2007 crop is Johnny Monis who makes this Pappardelle with Milk-Roasted Baby Goat Ragù at Komi in Washington, DC, and the description made it irresistible.  Nevermind that it is the middle of summer and hot as an oven inside our west-facing kitchen in the evenings, I could just imagine the delicate, slightly gamey,  savoury taste of this slow-cooked, oven-braised meat over pasta.  It had to be done.

Upon giving up on the goat, I settled on veal (because something young and innocent had to die in order for me to eat).   But there was a pleasant surprise in store for me at the gourmet grocery because when I went to pick out a can of tomatoes, I was amazed to find Rao’s canned tomatoes.   I hadn’t thought about that place for years but for awhile, I had kind of had an odd fixation on that particular restaurant in New York.  I’ve never been there, never even seen it, but I’ve read enough about its legendary status to be more than a little curious.   I read somewhere that reservations are nearly impossible for mere mortals (i.e. me) to obtain and quite hard to get even for immortals (i.e. celebreties).  What made the place even more curious is that, if one has enough money and clout, one can own a table at the restaurant, which will be made available immediately upon request.  Imagine!  Owning a reserved table at a restaurant!   Anyway, the idea of an eatery taking things to such an outrageous level stuck with me so when I saw their tomatoes on the shelf here in California, I knew that if I bought them, I could eat like an immortal.

I did indeed braise the meat in milk, as per the recipe, and I let the ragù rest overnight so as to allow the flavours to properly meld, but did not go so far as to hand-make pasta without a pasta machine.  I am dedicated to cooking, but not crazy;  we picked up dried, organic papparadelle.

Did I mention that I made bread to go with it?  My first ever attempt at bread making:  pain à l’ancienne, a crispy, chewy baguette which, by the way, turn into rock solid pieces of fossilized bread if you leave them out overnight wrapped in  towel.   But I digress.  The resulting meal that we enjoyed the following day was marvelously decadent and the only thing that could possibly have made it better was if it was cold outside.

I am a huge fan of the set lunch menu. If ever we come across one on our travels, especially if it is of the French variety, I insist on making an effort to give it a go. Nine times out of ten, it is a delicious lunch for a great value, usually three courses with a drink and maybe even a coffee thrown in at the end. If we´re lucky, two of us can get a big meal for under $20. Plus, I have a theory that these lunches are even more delicious if there is a crowd of people in the restaurant and a queue at the door.

Twice in recent weeks we have come across dreamy set menus. The first was in the antique-y, bohemian barrio of San Telmo in Buenos Aires. We were actually looking for some other restaurant with a set menu and happened across a cafe named something like ¨Via Via¨. Anyway, it was crammed full of suits but we managed to snag one of the tables and ordered “dos, por favor.” This one was only two courses: roasted quarter of a chicken, salad and rice with home-made ice cream for dessert. Simple enough menu for a late lunch but it was hot and tasty and left us full enough that we didn´t need to eat again that day.

For the past two days, we have eaten lunch at the same cafe in Valparaiso, Le Filou de Montpellier. Yesterday, it was a crepe filled with bechemel and cheese to start, then roasted chicken with this fantastic mushroom reduction sauce and then profiteroles with ice cream and chocolate sauce. It´s making my mouth water just to remember it. With wine, it was $22 dollars and there was a queue of people at the door waiting for our table. Hurrah! The meal today was a tarte of tomato, eggplant and camembert, slow-cooked beef in wine sauce with a gratin of potatoes and then Ile Flottant for dessert. No wine this time (thanks to a pisco-induced hangover today) but still, the best-value lunch menu I can remember having had. If we were staying here longer, I can almost guarantee that we´d be going back at least every other day. As it is, we´ll be going back tonight to Alegretto for – arguably – the best pizza I´ve ever had. We may not be eating classic comida Chilena, but I´m digging the food here.