sybarites

I’m reading The 100-Mile Diet now, a gift from Shirley for Christmas. It’s written by Canadians in Vancouver which makes it kind of odd that they refer to the range within which they’re allowed to eat in miles instead of kilometers, though I suppose The 160-Kilometer Diet doesn’t have quite the same marketing appeal, nor does it fit quite so well across the front cover.

After reading a chapter or two in the mornings over my coffee, it’s always tempting to wonder where our food came from and how far it travelled- certainly the coffee, though organically grown in the shade and traded fairly, came a long ways. Presumably alot of our other foodstuffs come from away, too, though I rarely look so I can’t rightly say. The stuff we purchase at the farmer’s market is more likely to have been produced within 100 miles of SF, but I can’t really be sure…

Just now I looked up our 100-mile radius:

Oh boy! We get Roseville and Turlock and almost Ukiah! I have no frame of reference for these places; I should really find out what grows and swims around here, besides left-wing democrats and cold-water surfers. I wonder how many Starbucks there are in this 100-Mile radius… hmm… at least 500 within 90 miles.

At any rate, though it probably can’t measure up to eating local, there is alot of eating organic going on here (which is sometimes worse, I know, since the distance it must travel sometimes outweighs the points it might have earned by being organic). We have Trader Joe’s to thank for the excellent variety of dried fruits, especially the currants and tart cherries for our morning oatmeal.

My eyes have been opened to a new realm of culinary arts. For months I had admired the glossy, imposing coffee table book that is always displayed prominently in the cooking section of bookstores. This tome of French cooking which is heavy enough to be used as a tool in some of the recipes it describes – weighing down the cookie sheet that is squeezing the moisture from the slices of eggplant or smashing apart pepper corns with its solid spine – has become my teacher. It is The French Laundry Cookbook. It is alpha and omega. It is over fifty Canadian dollars.

I’m sure I can expect some resistance to my declaration of its importance, especially from those who learned to cook from books by Julia Child or James Beard or Auguste Escoffier, though I would argue that perhaps everyone who loves to cook has a book which they hold in higher esteem than the rest. Why is it this book for me? How is it that Thomas Keller, who isn’t even on the Food Network, came to represent the finest of culinary artists to me? Apart from magazine articles, I didn’t even have any exposure to him or his cooking, having never been to Yountville to visit The Source, or even having seen or heard an interview with the guy. Somewhere along the way, I just decided that he was the one whom I wished to emulate, if only occasionally and with the greatest preparation anxiety.

So we bought the book. As a matter of fact, we bought the very last signed copy available at Stacey’s Bookstore on Market street. I had always planned to buy it, perhaps on a special occasion, but the fact that it was signed was what clinched it, and I, who always suffer from buyer’s remorse, felt not a twinge; I happily, hungrily brought it home and devoured it.

It took a least a month before the book actually made it into the kitchen. I once read an article by a woman who collected cookbooks and who found that she would usually hesitate to bring a new, gorgeous, art-gallery-worthy cookbook into the kitchen, the same way she would buy a new silk blouse but let it hang in the closet for a few months before actually getting up the nerve to wear it. I can empathize. I break or spill nearly everything I touch- I wouldn’t say I’m clumsy, exactly, I just seem to touch the glass or plate to a hard surface at precisely the weakest point which causes it to shatter and/or spill. It’s sort of a super power. But anyway, the same could be true for the book; I could just imagine opening it for my first attempt at cooking a recipe within and spilling a healthy tablespoon-full of balsamic all over the wide, white pages, possibly even ruining a few pictures as well. Ergo, I hesitated. Until finally, one day, I decided to try one of the least threatening recipes: Blini with Roasted Sweet Peppers and Eggplant Caviar.

It’s worth mentioning, I think, that this is one of the few recipes that required few pieces equipment that were not already in our possession. It did involve some work the day before eating, but that is small potatoes, no pun intended. Before beginning, I was tempted to read about a blogger’s experience cooking this particular recipe on CarolCooksKeller.com, a woman who, like Julie of the Julie/Julia project, has purchased The French Laundry cookbook and has made it her mission to cook every recipe in it, while documenting the process online. But I stopped short of searching for the recipe’s post on her blog because it would be like using training wheels and I already have a fairly decent idea of how to ride a bike. I may not have ridden one on a wire stretched over a gorge, but training wheels would not help the situation, the same way Carol’s tips are unlikely to help me know when the blini were done- I just gotta do it.

The book made me nervous. I had put it well beyond harm’s reach, on the furthest corner of the furthest counter-top from where I was working. Nonetheless, it made me nervous, the same impatient, anxious kind of nervous I feel when trying out a new instrument or playing a new sport- if I’m not good within 10 minutes, I’m giving up. Luckily, all that I had to do in the first 10 minutes of this exercise was slice up the eggplant, lay the slices out on a cookie sheet and let them rest so all the moisture is leeched from their pale, spiritless slabs. Encouraging. And so I proceeded, using clever tool replacements when I didn’t have precisely the appropriate instrument, and substituting but a few ingredients (like prepared, organic vegetable stock instead of of homemade) and two busy evenings later, produced my first, humble FL masterpiece.

The second attempt at cooking-to-eat-like-royalty is entitled Salad of Haricots Verts, Tomato Tartare and Chive Oil and went equally as smoothly, much to my surprise. Probably there will be no screw-ups until I’m working with an extremely expensive ingredient, like foie gras. But for now, I am happy to stick to the vegetable kingdom and turn out these first course delights.

In terms of dog teasing, I doubt that there is a joke that could ever wear thin. When Sam was a puppy, and I lived on the outskirts of a suburb on the outskirts of the city, the wild hares were regular visitors to the backyard. He could see them clearly from the kitchen window and would drive himself bonkers barking his head off and whining at the bunnies. They, of course, would barely look up from their foraging and would all but laugh “na na na na na” as they skipped around the yard. Sam’s long-suffered vendetta against these rabbits was never fulfilled, but that didn’t stop me from teasing him ruthlessly, asking him excitedly if there were bunnies outside. “Outside?! Bunnies?! Go see!” And still, this joke has not lost its punch, even now; we live where no rabbit would ever be outside the window, but where one has been unlucky enough to join us for dinner. That was rabbit the upon which he was most recently fixated and about whom I teased him relentlessly. “Bunnies?! Sam, is there a bunny in the kitchen!?” whereupon he would fly to the window.

Christmas Day Menu

“Bacon and Eggs”

Rabbit Fricasée

Haricots Verts

Tarte Tatin

We picked up the very last rabbit at the butcher (who the hell is cooking rabbit?) and the first thing the recipe for rabbit fricasée instructs one to do is divide the rabbit into eight pieces. So, now, just think about that for a minute: what exactly are the eight pieces into which a four-legged rodent should be divided? Umm… 2 front legs, 2 back legs, 2 “breasts”, a back and… a tail? I don’t know, I’ve never divided a rodent before! Seems logical for a member of the poultry family but a member of the rat family..?

So Marc did it.

I’m not even sure now how he managed it, to be honest. I think there were tenderloins. I know there were “wing”/front legs. It’s kind of a blur. The rest of the preparation was much more straightforward: sautéeing the bunny bits in a hot pan with mirepoix, roasting it in the oven and finishing the sauce with cream and egg yolks, which I suppose is what makes it a fricasée..? We even deep fried some sage leaves as garnish for what turned out to be illuminating example of how good wild hare can be. Marc couldn’t get enough of it, picking up the bones and [politely] gnawing the tender meat. If I didn’t think too hard about how cute was the animal that I was eating, it was delicious. Sam was nearly inconsolable, having spent all day racing to the window only to be denied the pleasure of crunching on the bones of his arch nemesis. He did, however, snarf down the few shreds of meat we left on our plates.

Prior to the main course, I put together another French Laundry objet d’art, condescendingly referred to as “Bacon and Eggs”, which is really “Soft Poached Quail Eggs with Applewood Smoked Bacon”. True to form, San Francisco readily provided us with both quail eggs and applewood-smoked bacon; we didn’t even have to veer from our regular grocery shopping course. Though we did go back to the Berkeley Bowl, because we were across the Bay anyway and wanted to treat ourselves for Christmas with a visit to mecca.

Allow me to provide an excerpt from The Book so as to demonstrate the details with which one must contend if one is to cook as they do in heaven:

“The best method for poaching eggs is in a deep pot of water. As the weight of the yolk pulls the egg through the water, the white encircles the yolk and sets. The deeper the water, the farther the egg travels before it stops, and the more the poached egg will resemble its original shape. Hold each [tiny, fragile, quail] egg on its side on a towel and use a serrated knife to cut halfway through the larger end of the egg.”

It’s as though formulae of physics are being applied to the poaching of a quail’s egg. I love it! I gleefully used the knife to serrated-ly open the quail eggs, I used the pot of deep water, I gently “lifted one egg at a time from the ice water and used a pair of scissors to trim their ‘tails’ of egg-white”. The result was that I spent three hours preparing the elements of a dish that was consumed in three mouth-fulls. Three hours, three bites, totally worth it.

As the eggs were being poached and the rabbit fricassed, Marc assembled the tarte tatin. This is another of those intimidating classics about which I am apprehensive. So many things could go wrong with a dish that cooks for so long on the stove top and then has to be baked and flipped out onto a serving dish. Usually, we’re happy to use an easy, cheater’s short-cut tarte tatin that is just sliced apples layered on top of puff-pastry and drizzled with honey (exceptional, by the way). But in the true spirit of the holidays, we went through way more trouble than was necessary in order to deliver perfection. Indeed, though he was too chicken to roll out the pastry dough and place it gingerly on top of the caramelized apples for fear of ruining the pastry, Marc’s efforts were rewarded with a sugary, apple tart with all the lovely, dark flavours that caramelization proffers. And it turns out that tarte tatin, in addition to being a crowning glory of a dessert, is also a magnificent breakfast.

Let’s see— so, November 26th was the last time I posted to this blog. That seems sterotypical of blogdom: start off strong, interest gradually wans, topics fade and the next thing you know, it’s 2008. Well, if December went by in a blur, it’s because we had so much food to prepare and eat that I was too busy to write about it. Or, I was too lazy. Either or. Therefore, I’m re-starting the posting with a bang, the climax of our December, indeed, the climax of our epicurean year: Christmas Eve dinner.

Long has it been tradition in my family to have a heavily “sauced” happy hour, followed by an elaborate dinner on Christmas eve before attending atheist mass (a.k.a. a James Bond movie). This is when the good dishes make their annual appearance, when no cut of meat is too expensive, when four-course meals are warranted. I relish this dinner and look forward to it with more anticipation than any other Christmas treat. Presents? meh. Eggnog lattes, sure, I’ll have a few. Three days worth of menu planning, grocery shopping and food preparation? Be still my beating heart.

This year, since Marc and I decided to have a California Christmas on our own, we opted to continue those traditions, minus the mass, which we substituted with Christmas music by a crackling wood fire. The menu planning actually started about a month and a half earlier when we finally made the big-ticket purchase of The French Laundry cookbook, signed by Thomas Keller. Oh, The Book. How I am enamoured of The Book. It calls to me in the mornings, when the sun in shining through the window onto the love seat by the fireplace, where I can sit with my cappucinno perched on the armrest and reverently read it, relishing every page. I take such pleasure in perusing the fastidious recipes, all the labour-intensive details that go into making one dish, trying to imagine how a person can be so singularly focused on food as to come up with such fantastic ideas for preparation. With much anxiety and trepidation did I construct my first French Laundry dish (which I shall describe in a subsequent post), but the first try gave me the confidence to attempt and FL recipe for this hallowed feast. I could only imagine having the stamina for one such dish, though— for the rest, we turned to simpler fare. Thus, our menu:

Dungeness Crab Salad with Cucumber Jelly, Grainy Mustard Vinaigrette, and Micro Arugula

Duck Confit with Fried Arkansas Black Apples

Lentils with herbs and garlic

Brava Ginger Cakes

Guess which one is Thomas Keller’s. I mean, who makes cucumber jelly? Who even thinks up such a thing? We had to make cucumber juice and cut wee cucumber diamonds to delicately float in the gêlée. We drove across the Bay in order to go to our favourite butcher for the duck legs and found the whole, cooked Dungeness in the fish market next door. It took several hours to de-meat the crab and put together the whole layered affair. It was ridiculously laborious and wonderfully decadent which, I suppose, is really à propos of Christmas.

The confit is something I’ve never tried. Years ago, when Mom & Dad were first living in France, Mom received a gift from someone that, no doubt, seemed normal to a Norman but confused the hell out of a Canadian: a large jar of duck fat. Mom offered to give it to me when we visited as she had no real use for it and I turned it down as couldn’t think of what I would ever do with several pounds of duck fat. Now, I get it. Confit is duck cooked in its own fat for, like, ever. For such a simple dish, this is one of the classics by which I have been somewhat intimidated in the past. It’s so French and, therefore, carries an air of complication about it. I had never even attempted to find a recipe for duck confit as I figured it was something beyond reach of the home cook- don’t you need special tools or applicances or something? Some secret underground technique for masterfully crafting this ancient dish? A Julia Child? And then I saw the recipe in a Bon Appétit magazine, where they proclaimed it the “Technique of the Year” and promised “rich results” for a “surprisingly simple” preparation. That was enough for me— first, because I simply coudn’t finish 2007 without having partaken in the technique of the year, and second, if ever there was an occasion to make such a meal, it was here and now: San Francsico at Christmas.

We weren’t too worried about finding duck fat hereabouts and indeed had no trouble in getting some from our butcher, purchased by the pound from an enormous bucket of fat at the base of the refrigerated case. After marinating the duck pieces in salt and garlic overnight, Marc melted down the fat (I suppose I should refer to it as “rendered”), threw the duck legs in and chucked the whole thing in the oven: that is basically all that it needed, which makes me wonder how it is that I could have been so intimidated and misinformed about it in the past. Many deliciously aromatic hours later, we had the most unctuous, flavourful, outrageously extravagent duck that I’ve ever had. With the lentils and the sweet-tart apples, it absolutely melted in the mouth. Clearly, duck fat is the way to go. And as an added bonus, we got to keep the leftover duck sealed in its own congealed fat in the back of the fridge, ready for a quick meal any time this month. Amazing!

The ginger cakes, modeled off of our old favourites at Brava bistro in Calgary, have never disappointed. Slowly steamed on the stove top, they emerge from their ramekins as moist puddings to hover in our homemade caramel sauce. This is my desert island dessert, certainly befitting of a Christmas Eve repast. They are so good, in fact, that they may make an appearance on New Year’s Eve. Ginger totally goes with champagne.

And over glasses of port, all snug by the fire, we languished in our gluttony as we contemplated our Christmas Day feast.

I find it hard to resist salivating while watching cooking programmes. Like a dog, I find there are certain things that trigger my reaction: when someone on TV tosses a pile of onions into a pan of melted butter, when I see tasty, seared meat coming out of an oven, and when sauce is drizzled over anything. I suspect that this is because I know so well what sauteed onions and roasted meats smell like, and can anticipate what sweet and/or vinegary tastes are about to be thrust onto the item over which the sauce ladle hovers. Indeed, it makes my mouth water to think about these things just now, as I type.

These past couple weeks have been especially Pavlovian for me because of all the Thanksgiving business on the Food Network. For two solid weeks, the theme was turkey and fixin’s: roast turkey, braised turkey, southwest-style turkey, deep-fried turkey, barbecued turkey, turkey with stuffing, turkey without stuffing, turkey wraps, turkey pot pie, turkey soup, turkey cracklin’, turkey gravy and turkey mole. We hadn’t even planned to make turkey until the TV so earnestly convinced us to do so. And thus, we produced a TV-inspired Thanksgiving meal for two, which actually produced enough food for six. This is what America is all about. Loosen the belt, point the tube at the dining room table and make way for the bird.

So the day before The Day, we walked down to the market to pick up a few things for our meal. Initially, the shopping list consisted of four items: turkey breast, sweet potatoes, potatoes and cranberry juice. It was to be a simple, elegant meal with a few favourite items and some homemade cranberry sauce. Though maybe we should get some carrots, because we kind of need a veg. Although we have those brussels sprouts, I could make those too. Oh yeah, and I forgot that I bought some pumpkin pie filling the other day because it was on sale. Plus that bread is kind of getting stale, we might as well use it in stuffing… and on, and on. Somehow, that quick trip to the grocery for four items turned out to be a dinner of way too much food. How much is too much, you ask? How does one gauge the point at which the line is crossed from sufficiency to excess? I think it would be fair to say that when you forget to serve a couple of dishes, you’ve crossed the line. We were in the middle of eating before we remembered the stuffing in the oven. Ergo, this picture is a fair representation of our meal, minus one.

There is also no picture of the pumpkin pie that I made because we were so full, we forgot to eat it. If that is not the very definition, the very essence of excess, than I don’t know what is.

Though very much in overabundance, we managed to pull off quite a satisfactory meal, if I do say so myself. Without having to worry about uneven cooking times or different parts of the bird being over- or under-cooked, the roasting of the breast was dead simple and wonderfully juicy; the cranberry-port sauce kicked ass. Slow-baked sweet potatoes and fluffy mashed Yukons cannot be any tastier than when monteed by a ton of beurre and then pressed into service as a blockade for gravy, protecting the vegetable half of the plate. That evening also marked the occasion for opening our last remaining Argentine wine, the Beta Crux from O. Fournier in Mendoza. This is the bottle that travelled with us across the Andes to Chile and up to Bolivia, that got strapped to the roof of our jeep as we crossed the blazing desert and the salt flats of Bolivia, that bumped along in the bowels of the bus that forded rivers as it took us to La Paz and then made it, intact, inside Marc’s soft-sided backpack when we checked our luggage to fly from Peru to Canada. These are less than ideal storage conditions for wine. However, we were very pleased to have decanted the bottle and found, after a little airing, a brilliant, well-balanced accompaniment to our meal.

As has been a tradition for the past nine years, Sam received his annual salary in the form of food, a small plate of all the things that dogs dream about for 364 days of the year. He set aside nothing for his retirement.

V6Yuqtgsock

The other day, we were watching Sell This House on A&E and the designer on the show made some comment about improving the look of the poured concrete floor in the victim’s home.  I can’t remember exactly what he said, but what I heard was “It will increase the awesomeness of the floors”.   And for a few seconds after hearing it, it didn’t really occur to me to question it as a word because I’ve become so entrenched in the habit of making up words, that it seems I barely notice when it is done anymore.   Eventually, I did ask Marc if Roger had just used the word “awesomeness” and was subsequently corrected.   But I could almost make a case for the acceptance of “awesomeness” as a new word, if it weren’t so incorrect and, like, totally Valley Girl.   The word “ensmallen” on the other hand-  that’s a different story.

At any rate, if “awesomeness” indeed became a word, it could most readily be applied to the following gadget:  the George Foreman USB iGrill.     This is what geeks all over Silicon Valley would be getting and giving for Christmas, (especially the ones who arguably live inside their cubicles and go home only because that’s where their clothes live), if it weren’t for the fact that it is a joke.  Sadly, the iGrill does not yet exist, though surely it is only a matter of time.  The description of the product is pretty clever: “The George Foreman USB iGrill conveniently connects to your home or office PC using USB 2.0 technology, and provides a sophisticated web-based cooking interface.”

Amazingly, the following gadgets, however, do currently exist: the USB missle launcher, the USB ashtray, the USB fragrance dispenser and, for the holidays, the USB fiber optic Christmas tree.   Geeks may not yet be able to cook using their computers, but they can smoke, fight cube-wars and enjoy the holidays by left-clicking.

Now this is what I’m talkin’ ’bout:   Goat Cheese Ravioli with Bell Peppers and Brown Butter.

If I may be so bold as to resurrect the Continuum of Like, this recipe rates as a hands-down Super-Like (see below).   It was conceived at a restaurant called Bonne Soiree in  Chapel Hill, North Carolina which someone on the interweb compared to The French Laundry in the quality of its meals.  I have never heard of Chapel Hill, NC, but now it will forever have significance for me as the point of origin of one of the best things I’ve ever tasted.

Tangy-creamy, smothered in rich butter, floating like warm, little clouds on a wilty bed of peppers, slick with tart, vinegary dressing.   I don’t know if anyone is reading this blog anymore but if there is only one recipe that is attempted as a result of my humble recommendations over the past couple of years, THIS IS THE ONE to attempt.   Go the distance.   Be the ball.   Make the ravioli.  (Use the wonton wrappers.)

Now that we are both working from home, in our office/dining room/guest bedroom, we seem to have more opportunity for making an actual breakfast. I’ve long been an eater of breakfast but 90% of the time, it used to consist of plain oatmeal or whole wheat toast with just a suggestion of peanut butter, eaten at my desk at work. Marc used to stop at the Starbucks on his walking route to work for a slab of carrot cake, and this was breakfast. One of us was far too plain and sensible about this meal and one of us was arguably eating dessert first thing in the morning every day. Things are different, now.

The first thing that has made such a monumental difference in our lives is the lack of commute. Two hours a day has been reclaimed for things like sleep, and breakfast and dog walking and -somewhat regrettably- TV. Until we lived without the commute, I didn’t quite realize all the time saved from that aggravating part of the day. Hate traffic, hate cold, dark mornings. Now, we’re practically livin’ the dream, sleeping in until 7:30, starting the day with cappuccini, and working at least the first quarter of the day in our pj’s. And sometimes, if one of us is feeling particularly hungry, we launch into a full-fledged meal for breakfast.

One of my recent faves was the occasion on which we happened to have fresh raspberries and Marc decided to make Raspberry-Topped Lemon Muffins. These made me especially happy, having eaten them warm, sitting at the breakfast table/conference table in the sun with the pup at my feet. Turns out they also make an excellent conference call snack.

Once in a while, a truly decadent item makes its way into the office in the morning: Spiced Hot Chocolate. Wow. Wo-how. Nothing like drinking CREAM in the morning. This is so rich, I can only finish half a cup at a time, which is outrageous considering I’m not normally one to stop short on a dessert. Marc adds cardamom to this recipe too and I have to say that it makes it divine, a solid rush of sweet and aromatic flavours. This too, seems to make any conference call that much better. I’m not a fan of the conference call but good food can make any task better.

If I had lived on a farm in the days or yore, I would’ve lived in savoury anticipation of harvest season. In the pale sun of late morning, after breakfast, I would put on my warm wool sweater which I had knit last spring (in this history, I can knit, too) and my muddy boots to tramp out to my garden to collect ripe squash, onions, and firm, winy apples for a big farm lunch. The air is crisp and clean and smells like earth as I dig up some potatoes and start thinking about all the canning that needs to be done and the root cellar which I’ll soon fill. This morning’s bread is ready to go in the oven. Must think about starting the Christmas cake soon.

I feel I can make this definitive alternate-history prediction because of the way I look forward to fall and its vegetable bounty nowadays. There are certain recipes that I don’t make on purpose the rest of the year because if it’s not fall enough outside, they just don’t taste as good. It’s kind of like Christmas cookies, I guess- one could make them in July, but it wouldn’t be the same, wouldn’t be as special. My fall-only menu includes pretty much anything with butternut squash, rutabaga, turnips, shepherd’s pie, any kind of really dense and sticky dessert, and heavy, hearty casseroles. The weather all but demands it and as a result, I think I eat more during fall than any other time of the year, save Christmas. How can I resist? Not only does the kitchen now feel cozier for the oven, rather than stiflingly hot, the root vegetables are at their peak, the corn is here, the apples are dropping, and the mushrooms are at their musty best.

O, Mushooms! Nothing is more quintessentially fall than mushrooms. Wrinkly, dark, musty and aromatic, I will always favour a recipe in which they are involved. Divine in an omelette, earthy in a stew, dense in a salad; even a portebello can effectively masquerade as the patty in a burger. And my mushroom stems never go to waste as Sammy happily snarfs them up when offered.

On one of our most recent sojourns to the Saturday market, we came upon the an irresistible bargain on chanterelle mushrooms at Far West Fungi. These guys know their way around the mushroom, but I usually feel a little intimidated by the staff, like if I were to ask a question about a type of mushroom, the answer would be preceded with a mild snort of derision as if to say “what- you mean you don’t know?” This time, however, I didn’t hestitate approach the counter and hand over the $5 for an orangey, little basket of these usually prohibitively expensive variety. Immediately, I began thinking that I would use them in an omelette following a Thomas Keller recipe I saw online somewhere. Unfortunately, search though I might, I couldn’t find it again and I don’t yet own The French Laundry Cookbook. However, I fortuitously connected with another intriguing recipe in Nigella’s book: Mushroom Ragout. Now this, was going to be outstanding because truly, ragout is all that is fall. This recipe – my mouth waters just thinking about it – is all about wild mushrooms and this is how I chose to honour the chanterelles. Sautéed in butter and herbs, deglazed with white wine, thickened with a little flour, some onions and parsley and then sloppily served over soft, polenta with parmesan. The mushroom were just this side of firm and could not have been better presented or more flavourfully offered than in such a ragout. I should’ve garnished the bowls with newly fallen leaves.

There are two items on this menu that sound…   intriguing.

Why would there need to be a vegan version?

This is a picture of birds waiting for the light to change at an intersection in The Mission: