BOO!

They're already calling Bush's new Supreme Court nominee "Scalito."
Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Falling for Fall

Living a half mile from a fantastic twice-weekly farmers' market has rendered me somewhat lazy. I've fallen out of the habit of visiting other markets (with the exception of the Point Reyes Station Saturday market, which is so real, so homemade, so earnest — and its last day this season is Nov. 5).
But, as Dr. Biggles explained to me, Fatted Calf, his to-die-for favorite charcuterie and salumeria, doesn't come to Marin anymore. Not for now, anyway.
So Cranky and I decided to wake up early (whoa!) and make a day of it. A Saturday of it, at the San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market. Yes, including a ferry ride from Larkspur. First-class, babe.
California, contrary to popular belief, does have discernable changes in seasons. Right now, it's cool, sometimes breezy, occasionally cloudy, and when the sun is out, the landscape is bathed in a slanting, golden light.










But the best indication of changing seasons is the produce at the markets. Little Point Reyes Station hardly has any produce left to sell. The Ferry Plaza market, on the other hand, is bristling with fall harvest, in perfect fall colors: pomegranates, persimmons, peppers... Less intensely hued (duh, white!) were artisanal tofu and yogurt... We didn't buy any, because we can get most of it closer to home.
But we did make that destination purchase (and yes, Dr. Biggles, it rhymes with "kitchenette").
More later.

Royal Organic Pains in the Butt

A couple of weeks ago, when I was at the Point Reyes Station farmers' market, our favorite garlic and potatoes purveyor, Peter Worsley, dropped a sly hint. We had asked him when was the last day of the season for this sweet little collection of farmer/vendors. In telling us it would be the fifth of November, he added, "There will be a special guest; you should come."
How nice. We speculated: Alice Waters, to reinforce the idea of buying locally and seasonally? Joan Baez, to sing in the tiny entertainment tent?
"Can't tell you," said Worsley.
So, tonight I'm watching the news, and — jeez, I won't draw this mystery out much longer. (And I apologize for three posts in one day.)
It's going to be — oh god — The Prince of Wales (Chuck), and The Duchess of Cornwall (Camilla).
Press. Paparazzi. Royal gawkers. Security.
Thanks, Mr. Worsley... But where am I going to park?
Still...
Oh, hell yeah, I'm going.

Friday Hamdogging

Hey, back off, there, Bean Sprout.
We managed to get it right yesterday.
The first slice of pan-fried ham was salty and strong. So we gave the rest of the ham a soak in water (in the fridge) for about seven hours, and then boiled it for 20 minutes per pound. I decided to use a mix of ginger ale and water for the boil. I don't know if the ginger ale imparts much flavor, but it seemed so cool and dorky. (Can something be simultaneously cool and dorky? Answer me that, David Byrne.)
Then we skinned it (leaving the fat on) and smeared some sweet bourbon mustard on the outsides before it went into the oven for a half hour.
The WINNING preparation, however, is due to a commenter named Jillie (who may not have a blog, because her name isn't a link). She recommended that we bake the ham with sauerkraut. Gosh, that sounded good. So we rinsed a little jarred kraut (shoulda used more), drained it, and flung the shreds all around the ham. Topped them with cubes of new potato that had been parboiled. Let the fat melt into the mix.
Quote from Jillie: "The ham flavor (aka fat) seeps into the kraut and makes it doubly delish."
Man, she nailed it.
I could tell you about an extremely complicated recipe for smoked, nitrate-free slab bacon covered with pulverized herbs and pepper, braised in apple cider, then roasted with naturally fermented artisan sauerkraut and sauteed potatoes... (oh, wait, I am telling you) that I've made a couple of times. Because it tasted so good.
Well, so did this.

Scooter Scoots

CNN:

"Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was indicted today on charges related to the investigation into the unmasking of a CIA operative. Libby was indicted on one count of obstruction of justice, two counts of perjury and two counts of making false statements, court documents show. Libby -- a major player in the Bush White House -- resigned soon after the indictment was announced."

Looks like the house of (Andy) Cards is about to topple.

Are We This Stupid?

This picture is for Sam at Becks & Posh. We've been chatting about pineapple and ham (er, well, gammon), a dreaded dish her mum used to serve, which was so salty, Sam dubbed it Salt Lumps.
Of course, the pineapple was canned. Which brings to mind pineapple upside-down cake, a dessert I'm fond of (in a remote, nostalgic way — no, really, none for me, thanks; well, maybe just one piece).
And it also brings to mind the cooking-gear catalog that came in the mail today, with this ingenious dish for correctly locating the ding-danged pineapples and cherries! As if we couldn't do it by ourselves without a sextant and a slide rule and maybe balls of string and some incantations.
No. We need a pineapple-ring—dented dish.
Cripes!
PS: Make it in a cast-iron skillet. Who cares where the pineapples end up? Odds are very high that they'll position themselves rather precisely, without indentations. And they'll get that proper caramelized color and flavor.
Hmmph.

BORK!

And x
on the next nominee too.

My First Country Ham

Pretty, huh?
What you're seeing is a scrambled egg, some slow-cooked stone-ground grits, and a slice of Col. Bill Newsom's ham.
Eggs were good, grits were, well, grits.
But the ham was just freakin' SALTY.
The directions suggest soaking the ham ― if it's over a year old and/or if it has a particularly hard consistency. Since this one didn't have a born-on date, and it felt very tender to the poke of a finger, we skipped the soak.
So after we cleaned our plates (with one scrap saved for experimenting), I looked up country hams on the Internet and learned that they are just freakin' SALTY. The advice for pan-fried slices, in fact, is to slice them awfully thin, because they are just freakin' SALTY.
Even so, I could taste the most marvelous animal flavor in the meat. Not game-like, but very beasty. I usually think of cured meats as a step or two away from the "liveness" of the animal, but this was the most vivid, farmish taste I've ever encountered in meat.
Cranky saved one scrap of ham to soak in water for about an hour, and the flavor was much improved ― and the animal taste remained.
We have about 6½ pounds of it to go, and I'm going to try maybe a preliminary soak, then I'll boil it until the meat pulls away from the bone a bit (which should desalinate it even further), and then finish it off briefly in the oven, maybe with a restrained glaze.
Now the big question is: Should I boil it in ginger ale or Dr Pepper?
Hah! Restraint, my big-ass ham!

Indictments Coming Wednesday

According to a couple of insiders.
Happy Fitzmas to all, and to all a good night!

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes

See how big they are in that salad bowl? Mingling with the — um, what are those dirty white looking things?
Look, I couldn't even cut those dirty white things small enough to match the size of the killer tomatoes. That bowl isn't quite five inches across, to give you some perspective.
The dirty white things are chopped Armenian cucumber, sploshed with walnut oil and fake balsamic vinegar.
Sometimes you just have to eat what's cluttering up the kitchen. And there's nothing wrong with end-of-the-season patio tomatoes, even if they are dinky.
Besides! We're eating light for lunch. Gotta save some room for tonight's fried ham slices, stone-ground grits and eggs.

There's Meat, and Then There's CURED Meat

I knew I was gonna get razzed by Dr. Biggles from Meathenge for my remark about sawing through mouthful after mouthful of unmitigated animal protein. And already, others are piling on.
But look what arrived in the mail today: My Saveur magazine, and a big-ass Kentucky ham from Col. Bill Newsom!
See, even to an only-occasional meat eater, cured meat is another beast entirely. Just ask any vegetarians what they miss, and the answer is always, always bacon.
As I replied to Biggles, I've got bacon in my fridge.
And a big-ass Kentucky ham from Col. Bill Newsom!
Speaking of big-ass, has Rove resigned yet?

How Can I Be Mad?

Cranky has confounded himself. He's actually happy, and he's not used to that. All of a sudden, he's relaxed and he likes hanging around the house, and he's not used to that, either.
Oddest of all, he feels more and more like a vegetarian — and he's liking it.
I don't eat a lot of meat, which means we don't buy much of it, so when we go to restaurants, Cranky indulges his meat lust by ordering steak. But the last couple of times we ate at a place known for its rather good steaks, he had a bowl of French onion soup instead.
Now, Cranky is indulging my lust, which he's always been happy to do — but he's surprised at how much he enjoys it himself.
I tend to order "from the top of the menu" — y'know, little dishes, rich with flavor, varied in textures. Nothing I hate more than what I call "a plate of same." Who wants to saw through mouthful after mouthful of unmitigated animal protein? How about a little spark? Some visual gratification? Some fun?
So Cranky has been concocting meals of gem-like bites. The week before last, it was gorgeous, silly Fubars. Tonight we're doing a sequel, but using broccoli and oyster mushrooms on top of the tofu puffs. A couple of days ago, we finished off (most of) the rest of the tiny jar of truffled caviar on these lovelies: New potatoes cut in half, roasted cut-side down on an oiled sheet. Cooled off a little. Smeared with Cowgirl Creamery crème fraîche. Topped with dem fish eggs.
I eat.

Hot Diggity Blog

We've got roofers on the premises. I'm not going to bore you with stories of how we battled leaks in the ceiling above the furnace, the top of my closet, the skylight over the foyer... At least our homeowners association is on the job this month.
Here's hoping they do the job right.
But it's been a great excuse to escape the place. Picnics. Viniferous lunches at the local cafe. Especially the occasional veg-fest after the workmen have left for the day.
Hence: Bean Sprout and the Deep South Greens and Rice Friday Dog Blogging.

But Enough About Me

A Little Ditty About Jack and Joanne
When I first received a personal e-mail from Jack of Fork & Bottle late last month, I was really flattered.
I'd seen the Web site and found it cheerful, smart, packed with information and good links, and utterly professional.
And this guy was sending me a note?
A little later on, Jack asked me if I'd put a link to his site on my blog. Me? But I'm just a pipsqueak... Oh, hell, sure!
Well, imagine my surprise when I found out that not only are Jack and his wife, Joanne, not playaz on the payroll in the food biz, but they've only been running Fork & Bottle for four months.
This Santa Rosa couple has simply got what it takes: A keen interest in food and wine, with a special emphasis on cheese; experience in the publishing world; wide-ranging familiarity with resources — shopping, educational, foodio-political (I made up that word); some gardening chops; and best of all, a strong desire to get the word(s) out.
Fork & Bottle is not a blog. Posts are not dated, and there's no comments capability (though you're welcome to e-mail either J or J).
Jack says he prefers to think of it as a portal into the world of food and wine. The site runs to over 200 pages — I'm tellin' ya, there's a lot of stuff, from cookbook reviews to food events to shopping recommendations and more. Want a quick place to look up links for sustainable seafood or Slow Food happenings? Need some wine advice? Interested in new books with a message?
Go poke around.
The fact that F&B's title banner looks suspiciously similar to mine is totally a coincidence! No money has changed hands.
Glad to be of service.

Cheney Resigns

Well. It could happen!
OK, enough excitement. Back to the food.
I haven't been able to write about this meal until now. It was just too good, and sadly, the photo is so inadequate.
Yesterday I got a little tutorial on spot metering and manual exposure from the good Dr. Biggles at MeatHenge. I practiced on handy items in a dimly lit room (OK, my foot and the dog), and dang, he was right. I'm not 100% there yet, but I'm workin' on it.
If only I'd known sooner, I might be proud to show you what was so delicious I couldn't talk about it for a few days.
As it is, you'll have to use a little imagination.
In fact, imagination is how I came up with this dish.




















Eh, I borrowed a little inspiration from a fabulous meal I had years ago at Shanghai 1930. That night, I was served a crab and tofu dish of such tenderness: succulent crab, cloudlike super-fresh tofu... and the crab meat was dotted with its own unborn roe! (No comments were available from Harriet Miers on the "v. Wade" variant of this dish.)
So for my home version ― since I had half a block of impeccable organic tofu that needed using right away ― we bought a small amount of Dungeness lump meat and a little jar of Tsar Nicoulai Truffled Tiger Eye caviar.
What a taste explosion. Sure, truffles will do that to most foods. But this was synergy. Gestalt. Über-flippety-floppity-floo.
We nuked the tofu just to the point of warmth; topped it with crab that had been heated in a saute pan with melted butter. And then dumped half the jar of caviar over the top.
It was too good to even contemplate having again any time soon. Y'ever have something that good?

Bottled Autumn

Pears. Subtle, yet distinctive. Lots of varieties, none of which I've mastered. Once, I bought four pears at a very nice market, and the checkout clerk asked me what I had in mind for them. "I'm going to poach them in Earl Grey tea," I answered. She said, "Perfect, you picked just the right type for poaching."
Who knew?
I bought a luscious, softly aromatic pear at the farmers' market last week, and I have no idea what kind it was.
But I had this great plan: I was going to infuse 12 ounces of vodka with slices of the pear ― and slices of cucumber! Genius. Inspired.
And you know what? I was right.
It's très sophisticated. Almost Japanese-tasting, if you could even begin to understand what I mean.
The vodka took on a gold color from the oxidizing pears, and even though I filtered it through cheesecloth, there is still some particulate matter in it.
But.
Lovely.

Cookiecrumb's Toxic Kitchen

A few years ago I gave Christmas presents of homemade rice vinegar (I didn't make the rice vinegar, for heaven's sake!) infused with sage leaves and cranberries. I was just learning to tinker with my primitive computer graphics application, and made up labels for the little bottles (I used Tabasco bottles). On the spur of the moment, I added the line "From the toxic kitchens of..."), and even though I've moved to a new kitchen with new appliances, the nomenclature probably still applies.
Hey. But at least I have a dishwasher now, and sometimes I actually use it. And there's a lovely antique washstand with a marble top that makes a perfect surface for rolling piecrusts.
Still. There's a meme going around where food bloggers show pictures of their kitchens for all to see. And I have pictures. Most of them not too incriminating. (I'm loading all these photos in a small size, but if you're keenly curious, you can click to see the hideous details.)
This is the top half of the fridge, with our pretty, old, enamelware containers on top. The fridge is inconvenient to use; shoulda bought a side-by-side instead of freezer-top. But it's got that space-age coating on the stainless steel, so fingerprints wipe off easily.
To the right of the fridge is the stainless steel toaster Cranky gave me for my birthday. Yup, buttery fingerprints, not mine, though we could let a DNA lab make the final judgment. (Also, notice the burlap sacks of dried beans we bought at the Tracy Dried Bean Festival. One of them is topped with a bag of Bob's Red Mill Polenta, which we cook in a little slow cooker for breakfast ― add cheese and jalapeños ― mm.)
OK, make a 90∘ turn to the right, and there you have the Starship Enterprise, our dual-fuel convection oven and gas range. I love that thing. To the left of it is the Marin honey we stir into our tea, and ― d'oh! ― there's my lens cap on the counter. Also, a canister of black Oxo tools. They're nice. On the other side of the stove is: a pitcher of wooden spoons. You can never have too many wooden spoons. Damn, are those spatters on the pitcher? Things you never really notice until you take a picture. (There are some more wooden spoons in the dish drainer, but I'm going to spare you a picture of my dish drainer.)
Now, turn right again, and you can see the view over the top of the sink, across the dining room, and through the glass doors into the patio. Darn, curtains are shut. Anyway, above the sink are old Mexican clay bowls of tomatoes, a pear (it's now bathing in a vodka infusion) and some clutter. Ooh, there's a gnarly scrubbie next to the faucet. And look! Another wooden spoon, poking its head out of the drainer, on the left. Also, I am not responsible for that Freudian kitchen faucet. What were the previous owners thinking of when they remodeled? Yarghh.
Anyway, that's about it.
Well, there is a really pretty tiled floor with a cute doggie on it. (Wait. More spatters? [Hangs head in shame.])

Anybody Got a Laminator?

I've had an enormous amount of fun learning to use the new highish-end camera I bought in July.
Sometimes I just get lucky and a wonderful picture happens. Other times I work and work and work, until I get something semi-decent. I spend hours pushing buttons and reading the (impossible) manual. I shoot test pictures, I tinker with white balance and ISO (and yes, Dr. Biggles ― I realize I'm supposed to buy a light and a tripod and get a kid to stand in the sink).
But sometimes dinner is at dinnertime, and these days, dinnertime is getting darker and darker, and there's just no good natural light, and too high an ISO gives you a grainy picture, and I've got the wobbles and the focus suffers (and autofocus is notoriously unreliable in poor light anyway)...
Well, last night I just said to myself: Bite the bullet. Use the flash. (I hate the flash!) I wasn't going to get any kind of picture without the flash, though, so I used the flash.
So here's what we did with the taro root and the great fresh tofu from Basic Soy: A stir-fry of chopped leeks and shredded Brussels sprouts, with minced garlic, a knob of ginger (which one of us forgot to look out for and chomped right into it, and it wasn't me, but I'm not saying who it was), diced white eggplant and a sploosh of oyster sauce... topped with sauteed taro crisps, and they were fantastic, and I'm making taro crisps again real soon.
And here's the fun part: It wasn't authentic Chinese cooking, but I sure got an authentic-looking Chinese menu-style picture out of it.

Dlog Bogging

Our local market serves a Latino clientele, along with your more "predictable" Marin shoppers. It is by no means an upscale market, but it does a darned good job in its produce department, especially given that it's located across the street from the Marin County Civic Center, home to a fantastic farmers' market twice a week.
I was totally surprised to find taro roots among the vegetables the other day, not having done my research. So I bought four of them, then Googled "taro latin," and learned that the taro root is a staple of South American and Puerto Rican diets. Apparently cultivation of taro, also known as yautia, cocoyam, dasheen or tannia (and I may be commingling varieties here ― I'm not a botanist, I just eat the stuff), is very old in the Americas, and possibly arose, maybe 10,000 years ago, in India. I read this on a site I stumbled across, Invista: "Since taro is a staple food, it is common for it to have hundreds of names. In 1999, the UN listed forty-four countries that grow taro, and the University of Hawaii listed eighty-five known cultivars."
See what you can find out? Thank goodness for the Internet. And high-speed.
And thank goodness for my digital camera, so I can show you this:
Bean Sprout looks about as perplexed as I am over what to do with a taro root (actually a corm).
What will I do with it? I do have a poi recipe. But no. I think I'll use one tonight, with some tofu and eggplant, in a little stir-fry. The other three might go nicely in a traditional Japanese meal along with some chicken... Or I could stew cubes of it in coconut milk, Thai style... Or simmer a pot of Puerto Rican root vegetable soup.. Or make fried chips. Or...

Clinging Desperately to Summer

Eh. It's not that hard. Not in Marin.
I know it will be over in two weeks. I'll have to concede that the tomatoes are fini, and yank them out. The rain will begin.
But, oh, what a great October we get around here.
So, today.
Gazpacho at the Civic Center lagoon. Picnic table. Canada geese and mallard ducks. Sea gulls. Even a snowy egret. I think I saw a loon!
We brang the doggie, and he parked himself on the table, right next to the path, so everyone who walked by had to come over and pet his highness. He's nice to people (and scared of dogs).
Here's the soup. Pure. Just tomatoes, cukes, onion, sweet pepper, a little jalapeño, a bit of bread — blended. Oh, sure, and some salt and vinegar, plus my secret ingredient of a swig of Two Buck Chuck cab.
Then swirled in the bowl with garnishes of chopped cuke, tomato and red onion. A twinge of fleur de sel (in that fancy Limoges dish — don't worry, I didn't have to pay for the Limoges).
Can you believe this is a public picnic place? It was like personal heaven.

What Should I Call These?

Cranky went to San Francisco yesterday via ferry from Marin County, to visit some old pals. I asked him to stop at the Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market for some fresh organic tofu, sold by Basic Soy (and thanks, Jen, at Life Begins at 30, for cluing me in about them).
Cranky got there a little early, and had to wait for the Basic Soy folks (lovely people) to arrive and set up. So he had some coffee. Hung around.
But once they arrived and got ready to vend, Cranky went a little nuts. Good.
We now have, in the fridge, a block of fresh tofu, a sack of Chinese Five-Spice dusted tofu cubes, and half a sack of Tofu Puffs.
That latter — well, I was a little wary. I mean, they're just squares of deep-fried tofu, and we all know what happens when you deep fry tofu: It gets hollow. Not literally hollow, but spongy and vaguely interiorless.
So, the reason we have half a sack of them is — ta dah! Cranky decided to invent a use for the first half of the bunch.
We had some fresh (though aging) brown mushrooms in the fridge. And a very healthy pot of garlic chives on the patio. Naturally, our pantry holds oyster sauce, peanut oil, and sesame oil, at the ready.
We talked it over, briefly. And then he cut himself loose.
"Don't come downstairs until I call you," he said.
And he came up with these.
They were so cute, so delicious, so satisfying. They reminded me of the dancing mushrooms from Disney's "Fantasia." I wanted to call them "Fubars" or maybe "Futons."
Cranky suggested "Tofrooms," or even "Mushfu." I swore that I'd never eat in a restaurant with food named like that (and I wasn't at all carried away with my own suggested names).
By the way, these little bites were really easy to make. Cranky just heated some peanut oil with a squirt of sesame oil and a squidge of oyster sauce in a nonstick skillet. Then he warmed the cleaned mushroom caps to the point of submission, and slapped them on top of tofu puffs that he had opened on top with a pinch of his thumbnail, so the stems of the mushrooms would fit inside. Then he tied the little bales with lengths of garlic chive that he had blanched in hot water. A minute in the microwave, and we had a super snacky dinner. (Plus! They would make ever-so-easy party canapes, just awaiting a zap in the nuker.)
Really good.
Now what should we call them?

Dry Wit

During my "preserve tomatoes NOW" frenzy last month, I roasted pans and pans of tomatoes to put through the food mill and store in freezer bags.
Then I made a couple of batches of oven-dried tomatoes so we could have tomato chunks in our food this winter, not just sauce.
This was intentional:
I've got a bag of 'em in the freezer.
The mushroom guy at the Marin farmers market sells mushrooms in paper bags, and he told us to let them get a little shriveled for extra concentration. It works, as long as they stay dryish — no slippery mold allowed. So this was more-or-less intentional: But the past couple of days have been busy in a non-kitchen, non-patio sort of way, and this was not intentional:
(Click the picture for a really scary peek at inadvertent herb dehydration.) A healthy dose of water failed to return my oregano plant to health. So I did the sensible thing. I picked all the dried leaves off, and now I have enough "preserved summer oregano, vintage 2005" to get me through the winter.
PS: I'm also saving a few tomato leaves in the freezer. Chef Paul Bertolli says a leaf or two is a thrilling — and nontoxic — addition to tomato sauces; remove it after cooking, like a bay leaf. Save 'em if ya got 'em.

Novato Trifecta

Last month I wrote about a couple of meals at restaurants in a town north of mine. I wanted to eat at yet one more restaurant up there that's getting good ink, but due to a bunch of, uh, "stuff," didn't get to try it until today.
And it was good.
So. In Novato, I can recommend:
1) Boca, for meat. There's not much else on the menu anyway, although don't pass up the duck fat french fries. The empanadas appetizers are good too. Salads are perfectly edible. Oh, and I liked the squash blossom soup, too; very creamy. I tried sweetbreads as well as roasted shrimp on my first visit (what was I thinking?) but the grilled hanger steak on my return was killer: smoky, juicy, dark on the outside and pink in the middle. Some of the meat on the menu is grain-finished, and some is grass-fed.
I wasn't certain I'd return for a second meal, but we went with friends who wanted to eat there. And I'm glad I went back.
2) Kitchen, for retro food with stellar refinement — and yet the place is small and homey — and yet smashingly decorated — on a budget. I mean decorated on a budget, though meal prices are not bad (and there's an early-bird dinner special!). For lunch I had a salad of fresh Oregon shrimp, with avocado and lots of tarragon. Too much at first, in fact, but then my mouth fell in love with it. The shrimp was presented in a sort of mini cake pan-mold piled shape, real "ladies' lunch" (forgot my white gloves!), next to a mesclun salad with good dressing. Cranky had a nifty Cobb salad, updated by presenting the chicken as a whole warm roasted leg atop the cornball (but pristine) salad ingredients of tomato, bacon, egg, etc. We haven't tried dinner yet, but the menu (changes daily) offers things like carrot-ginger soup, grilled salmon, and house-cured pork chop. Ingredients are locally sourced as much as possible, and treated very nicely. Definitely going back.
3) Rickey's, for stylish comfort food. Rickey's is part of a casual-elegant country inn-motel-type place right on 101, so I just avoided it on principle. What a dope. We finally went in one hot summer day, to sip a gin and tonic by the pool. As we walked through the restaurant, we noticed the interior is stunning: Craftsman style furniture, white tablecloths, a fireplace. The menu looked really promising — but I took the advice of a fellow local blogger who disliked a brunch there, and skipped the food. Until today. I had a chicken pot pie that tasted deeply of sage and je ne sais quoi (and I'm usually pretty good at cracking a recipe's secret ingredients, but I was stumped). Full disclosure: some of the vegetables were undercooked. Not just al dente, but undercooked. But I loved the taste of the pie, topped with a disc of puff pastry, so much that it didn't matter! Cranky had the best meatloaf I've ever eaten, studded with onion and carrots.
Goin' back for sure.
Look, restaurant reviewing is really hard. So, no phone numbers, addresses, stars, no chefs' name-dropping. And I wouldn't call these squibs reviews anyway, since I've only been to each place once or twice.
But I'm thrilled to see good dining come to North Marin — which, come to think of it, sort of puts South Marin to shame, somewhat, given its demographics.
I think the point I'd rather make is that a successful restaurant meal sometimes depends on the diner's ability to analyze a menu. You can't realistically go to a restaurant and complain that it doesn't make what you want. You have to want what they make! You just need to figure out what it is that they make really well. At a steakhouse, eat steak. At a retro-food joint, have the Cobb Salad (and Kitchen is so retro-savvy, the menu specifies "Robert H. Cobb Salad (1926) with Brown Derby Dressing"). And at a comfort-food place, well... get the idea? Pot pie. Meatloaf.
You simply have to understand the menu.
PS: The credit for each photo belongs to the individual restaurants. I lifted 'em off their Web sites.

Doggity Bloggity

Obligatory Weekend Dog Blogging:
Bean Sprout Adrift on a Sea of Patio Lettuce.

Desiccated to the One I Love

There's a great little throwback restaurant about 10 minutes' walk from my house, where folks mainly of a generation previous to mine like to gather and drink and eat — definitely in that order of priority. It's in a remote enough location, even here in well-populated Marin County, that you feel you're in the country; from the patio you see only the road and a pristine hillside.
And on that patio is a trellis covered with grape vines. Earlier this past summer I surreptitiously snagged a few grape leaves for dolmades. But then I guess I forgot to go back for a few months, because when I returned yesterday, not only were most of the grapes long gone, but the ones that got left behind had turned into raisins.
I was not at all surreptitious about helping myself to a cluster.
The little shriveled things are really tiny, but luckily, I happened to grab this bunch before they had become too dried-out. In fact, even though they're a tad more leathery than those sticky, icky Sun-Maids from a box, they are just tender enough.
And the flavor? Sweet. Deep. Concentrated summer.
Man, I love finding food.

On Following Recipes

You know when your level of expertise has reached the point where you don't cleave slavishly to every little detail in a printed recipe. Half a teaspoon means "more or less," and you let your tastebuds be the judge. You know that you can get pretty much the intended flavor of, say, onion and garlic, by using a handful of shallots instead. You even know when you can introduce your own ideas of ingredients, such as adding some toasted walnuts to a cookie recipe. You might be more creative, and use just the formula of a recipe, the "how-to" — I do this with one of Deborah Madison's recipes for savory bread pudding — but make the dish with entirely different flavors.
You might know, just by reading it, that a recipe is going to be dead wrong, and you'd better not attempt it at all. Experience will have taught you, for instance, the best time and temperature for a piecrust, and when you come across a recipe that's seriously off, alarm bells ring.
I feel I have about that level of expertise. I'm not a serious baker, and I consider baking more of a science than an art, so I usually follow baking directions pretty carefully. I'm an avid soup-maker, though, and seldom follow strict recipes for soup. I get the basic idea, and then I take off from there.
So I was excited to see a recipe in this month's Saveur for Soupe d'Herbes Potagères ("Pot Herb" Soup). It called for potatoes, a leek, some onion, a lot of parsley, some heavy cream and various fresh herbs — all of which I just happened to have on hand (and almost always happen to have on hand). Plus, the picture was gorgeous: a velvety greenish-khaki colored puree that looked homey and comforting and oh, I could almost smell it.
I regarded this recipe as a suggestion, and yet I actually followed the directions fairly closely. I didn't measure strictly, because I didn't feel I needed to. I didn't time the cooking exactly, because I know when something's cooked enough. How bad could that be?
Now, I realize that the recipe called specifically for russet potatoes. And I realize that the potatoes I had on hand were (I think!) Yukon Golds — beloved Cranky Husband is the potato buyer in this house, and that's what he usually gets. But I've been led to believe — and experience has reinforced my belief — that a Yukon Gold is pretty much a good substitute for a russet. (Let the horrified comments to the contrary now flood my inbox.) I've baked YGs, I've roasted them in oil, I've boiled them, I've mashed them, and (I think!) I've used them in soup.
But I got goop.
Neon green goop.
Gluey, vivid, unsubtle, nearly tasteless, non-comforting gloop.

Does She Ever Talk About Anything But Tomatoes?

Well, yeah. Like how about some Rovian intrigue — such as why Kapitan Karl has been "absent" lately from any events starring the boy-heir, Prince Incurious George. Could we be looking at a frog march? Ooh, delicious.
But, nah. Let's talk tomatoes.
This is the time of year when the few remaining ripe tomatoes left on the vines are hanging from those weird, stiff green twigs where the other 'maters have already been picked; odd-looking sticks that remind me of fish skeletons. (There are still some little greenies out there, which I think will ripen, and I am getting some lovely new yellow blossoms now, but I don't know if there's enough good weather left this year for them to set fruit — especially anything that will turn red).
Hey — at least I didn't talk about the gooey green soup I made yesterday. Not entirely successful. But I might talk about it tomorrow.

What Were They Thinking?

So the Bush administration finally figures out that maybe, just maybe, energy conservation is a good idea. (You might remember Dick Cheney's remark a few years back, calling energy conservation a "possible sign of virtue but not the basis of a sound energy policy.") OK, now with gas prices soaring and the promise of very high heating bills to come, Bush starts up with his brilliant new exhortations to not buy gas if you're not going to drive, and come to think of it, don't drive if you don't have to, and, uh, excuse me, I have this flight to make on Air Force One for, like, the fifth time in five weeks, because, boy, are my numbers slipping.
Quoth His Eloquence: "We can all pitch in by using, by being better conservers of energy." (Well, which is it, use or conserve?)
Best of all, though, the Department of Energy has trotted out, on its chubby little trotters, a new mascot for the "Easy Ways to Save Energy" campaign. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman says the government hopes this adorable little cartoon critter will become as familiar as Smokey Bear and McGruff the Crime Dog.
And who is this charming new character, the symbol of our government's energy crisis, I mean conservation campaign, the little fuzzy lovekins who will whisper sweet words of encouragement when our willpower wanes and we start jonesing for a little dose of fossil fuel, please, just a tiny taste?
Meet Energy Hog!
(And, oy, what a lame Web site. Lamey-oh. Worth visiting to see how lame-a-tricious.)
I could not make this stuff up.

Still Summer, Hell Yeah

Thumbing through one of my favorite cookbooks the other day, Deborah Madison's Local Flavors, I came to the stunning realization that I hadn't yet had one of summer's best treats this year. Madison presents a tomato sandwich of epic porportions, made in a hollowed-out round loaf of bread, layered with herbs and oil and cheese and...
Shoot. I never go to that much trouble on a tomato sandwich.
Here's mine: Sliced nice bread (we're kinda stuck on PANoRAMA from the farmers' market; this time we used their sweet batard). Slather with mayo (c'mon, admit it, you use Best Foods; I do). One layer of sliced cukes (found some amazingly crisp, obscenely huge Armenian cucumbers from a guy who grows them in Nicasio; no peeling required). One layer of sliced, drippingly ripe tomato. Shower with salt and pepper. Cover with the second piece of bread.
Now here's the money shot: Serve this sandwich on a paper plate, or even better, a styrofoam plate. I don't know how these ozone-killers ended up in my house — probably leftovers from a potluck picnic (I'd never buy them myself) — but, ever-so-voilà!
Eat.
Lick juices running down arm.
Shut up.

In the Land of the Lotus Eaters

I first fell for Wing Lee Bakery because of their fragrant, chewy, substantial, exotic, sticky rice wrapped in lotus leaves.
Each bundle contains a ball of glutinous rice encasing a filling of gravy-ish cut-up chicken, along with tiny dried shrimp and Chinese black mushrooms. Some recipes also use Chinese sausage, and I honestly can't tell you whether the ones I buy contain any.
But the secret ingredient that Must Not Be Left Out [ominous thunder boom offstage] is the lotus leaves. First, the dried leaves are remoistened in hot water for 30 to 60 minutes. Then the stuffed rice blob (the rice and the filling are already cooked) is wrapped in two of these monsters (they're bigger than an old vinyl LP), and steamed for 20 minutes.
During that brief, impassioned honeymoon, the rice takes on a most wondrous flavor: something in between tea and tobacco.
And it's just as addictive.
Remember your Homer?

On the tenth day we reached the land of the Lotus-eaters, who live on a food that comes from a kind of flower. Here we landed to take in fresh water, and our crews got their mid-day meal on the shore near the ships. When they had eaten and drunk I sent two of my company to see what manner of men the people of the place might be, and they had a third man under them.
They started at once, and went about among the Lotus-eaters, who did them no hurt, but gave them to eat of the lotus, which was so delicious that those who ate of it left off caring about home, and did not even want to go back and say what had happened to them, but were for staying and munching lotus with the Lotus-eaters without thinking further of their return.
Nevertheless, though they wept bitterly, I forced them back to the ships and made them fast under the benches. Then I told the rest to go on board at once, lest any of them should taste of the lotus and leave off wanting to get home, so they took their places and smote the grey sea with their oars.

Well, it turns out lotus leaves might have, er, "medicinal" qualities. According to an herbalist web site I came across, "All parts of the flowers and leaves of the Asian water lotus, Nelumbo nucifera, also known as the Sacred Lotus, are a traditional relaxing and inebriating smoke, similar to a mild cannabis."
Good thing there's a big ol' bridge between me and my dealer.