Think Outside the Knee-Jerk

We let the fine folks at Prather Ranch concoct our lamb sausages, but it took a knee-jerk suggestion from the resident jerk to come up with a suitable condiment.
"Lamb?" thought the resident jerk. "Mint."
I've never been one to automatically reach for the mint jelly when the roast lamb comes out of the oven, tradition or no.
Wait. We didn't roast lamb in my family when I was growing up. At all. And we never, ever, had mint jelly in the fridge.
So even though the jerk's suggestion was classical, iconic, archetypal, knee-jerk — it wasn't going to happen.
Besides, the lamb sausage was already seasoned with its own mysterious blend of flavorings (salt apparently being foremost among them, as we learned upon tasting the cooked links).
But it needed something... green. Snappy. Tart. Minty, even. Perhaps a salsa, whispered the resident jerk.
Mint, we have: growing lustily on the patio. That was rounded out with a chopped jalapeño, a couple of diced tomatillos and a goodly wad of minced garlic chives. Oh, and (darn), some salt. Hadn't tasted the salty cooked sausages yet, so on autopilot I threw some salt into the simmering tomatillos.
Let it cook and soften for a while, scoop it into a dish, and allow diners to dose their sausages as they see fit.
We used up the entire batch of salsa on just two sausages. It was prototypical, quintessential, paradigmatic.
But it was not knee-jerk.

This Is Bread Salad?

Yes, but you can't call it panzanella. Nothing Italian about it.
It's made with cut-up strawberries, Bing cherries and white peaches, and the bread is a torn-up croissant.
It definitely features the sweetness of the fruit, but it's not dessert.
The fruit was macerated in a splash of good balsamic vinegar (I dragged out the 12-year-old for this) and some decent chardonnay vinegar. I happened to have a bottle of Knudsen's fruit juice concentrate in black cherry, so I dribbled in some of that too, as well as a teensy smidgeline of honey.
(This is not a recipe! This is merely a confession. Or, OK, maybe a boast.)
Anyway, everything was seasoned with black pepper and sea salt (a surprising amount of both), as well as some chopped fresh sage and marjoram.
Close to serving time the torn-up croissant went in, to sop up some flavors.
And finally, each serving got a dollop of crème fraîche.
Two remarks: 1) Really yummy. 2) What else can I do this with?

25 Years Ago

The next day we got in the car and ate our way across the country and back.
Ribs from Arthur Bryant's in Kansas City, fresh-caught trout fried in butter in Big Horn National Forest (with a leftover bottle of wedding champagne), lobster and clams and blue fish pâté in Nantucket, deep-dish pizza at Gino's in Chicago. Oh, yes, and Slim Jims and a sixpack in a motel basement room in Grand Rapids during a tornado. Memorable.

Where Did Everybody Go?

Mad for (im)Peachment

Bean Sprout has good taste. His tongue is caressing a sweet, juicy white peach (I forget the name; maybe White Prince).
Last time I sampled white peaches, a few years ago, I decided they were overrated: bland, wet and sugary.
But as of mid-June this year, yellow peaches haven't developed much character (and thanks to the farmers for letting us taste little bites at the market). So white peaches to the rescue, and you know what?
They're really good.
Enjoy them while you can. And pay cash for them, because the government has decided it's OK to comb through your confidential bank records, trying to ferret out suspicious activity related to terrorism — of which these delicious little bombs of fruitiness are surely innocent. Oh, silly me. Did I say "bombs"?
Of course, we don't mind being spied on at home, because it's better to fight terrorists over there so we don't have to... oops. Heh. Over here.

Impromptu Panzanella

If the weather were a lot colder, today's lunch would have been more like an ad lib minestrone, but since temperatures are heading into the 90s*, it's an ad lib salad.
In either case, it would be made with ingredients on hand... In fact, not long ago I did make an impromptu minestrone, using some frozen tomato sauce, leftover vegetable stock, almost-shriveled mushrooms, some potatoes, onions and carrots, herbs and a handful of lentils.
Today's hot-weather version of "cream of bottom-of-the-refrigerator" featured chunks of fresh tomatoes, slivers of red onion, some cut-up yellow pattypan squash, half a sliced cucumber, herbs, salt, pepper, vinegar and oil. Oh, and about four slices of day-old pugliese bread from Artisan Bakers in Sonoma (look for it). I hacked up the bread, leaving the crusts on to soak up the juices in the bowl, and let it sit for about 10 minutes before serving.
Looks like I'm not the only one thinking about food in this form now. Oh, there are lots more of us, too; just go look here. And we all do it a little bit differently. Kinda impromptu.
Go make one yourself, any old way you like.

*Because it IS hot, and it's getting hotter. It's our own fault.

Solstice Sistah

It's hot. Really hot.
I'm swimming in iced tea and cold chicken sandwiches. The AC is on for the first time this year.
But really, I got nothin'.
Happy Summer.

The Chicken that Came Right After the Egg

We roasted a Marin Sun Farms free-range hen yesterday. It was sold as a three-and-a-half-pound bird, though it looked smaller to me. I'm not complaining; I want to give these people my business.
Before cooking it, we borrowed an idea from the wacky and inventive chefs at Ideas in Food, and brined the chicken in juice from home-cured green olives. It was only in the brine for about six hours, so I'm not sure what effect, if any, resulted. I can tell you that the brine on its own tasted mildly salty and rich with the mellow lactic acid that occurs naturally in fermentation.
Maybe the brine had a tenderizing effect on the meat; I don't know, because this was the first MSF chicken I've tried. But oh, mama, was that a tender chicken.
It was like kiddie porn. The thigh meat hadn't even managed to turn dark. It was juicy, coy, tender enough to cut with a fork.
I half expected we were going to be getting a tough old bird: stringy and tasting like a barnyard. So the texture was a really pleasant surprise.
But the flavor of the meat was a few gizzards short of chicken. Nice enough, but not noticeably farmy.
Marin Sun Farms is new at this venture; yesterday's hen came from only their second wave of birds to reach the market.
I'll give them a little time. I'd really like a much tastier chicken.
But if I'm ever in the mood for some baby-soft poultry, I know where to go.

Five Senses of Cooking

I realized a few years ago I was no longer tasting my food as I cooked. I would smell it, watch it, even listen to it, but as long as I was confident of the flavorings, I usually didn't taste it until it was time to eat.
Cranky would ask, "How's it taste?" and I'd say, "I don't know; all right, I think." Yeah, mostly all right.
I don't do this all the time, of course. Sometimes I'm uncertain where a dish is going, and I have to taste and adjust as I go. Other times I can hardly restrain myself from shoveling spoonfuls into my mouth, strictly for scientific purposes, you understand.
If the texture of food is important, I primarily let my teeth and tongue be the judge. I say "primarily," because yesterday I let my hands be the judge. It was a grilled pork tenderloin, and I pulled it off the fire when I liked the developing firmness in the meat, as judged by pinching and poking it. It worked perfectly: Lightly caramelized outside, a ring of creamy white inside, and a gentle rosy center. Juicy and tender, no thermometer required.
The other day I used my nose to roast some fresh walnuts (harvested in November). I seasoned them with salt, dried oregano, cayenne, cumin and olive oil, and then popped them in a 350ºF oven for about six or seven minutes. The aroma began to rise, but it wasn't quite there. I pulled the nuts out, gave them a stir, and put them back in for another five minutes or so until the smell drove me, well, nuts. Bingo: Fresh, toasty, perfect.
We all know how important the look of food is as it cooks, not even counting the value of choosing beautiful colors and arrangements when we serve it. Cookies have to turn golden, scrambled eggs need to achieve a gentle, glossy curd, etc., etc.
But I'm still working on the sense of hearing when I cook. I've heard tales of "knowing" when a pot of something or other is nearing perfection because the sound of the simmering changes. I think there are other, even more clever, cues from listening to food cook, but I don't know what they are.
The only simmer-nearing-perfection I've mastered is the sound of water coming to a boil in the teakettle — I can tell by a sudden cessation of hissing that it's just about to whistle. That doesn't really buy me much, but it's a start.
Anybody got any anecdotes?

Two-Five-Zero-Zero

Ripped open by metal explosion
Caught in barbed wire
Fireball
Bullet shock
Bayonet
Electricity
Shrapnel
Throbbing meat
Electronic data processing
Black uniforms
Bare feet, carbines
Mail-order rifles
Shoot the muscles

Credits
Lyrics: "Hair"
Death toll: George Bush

Cookiecrumb's Very Productive Morning

All my plans.
Dashed.
Ruined by a sack of ripe cherries.
I'd had plans to go shopping for jewelry. Commemorative jewelry of a romantic sort, one hunk each for the two of us.
Then the cherries materialized on the patio, just as the morning fog was clearing. There was also a peach, and a little pot of yogurt.
A pair of reclining patio chairs. A little table between the two chairs, littered with magazines.
A small dog tucked inside my sweatshirt.
Eh. We've still got two weeks to go before the big date.
And I'm not the type to get twitchy if we miss the deadline.
Those cherries were worth it.

Nothing That a Little Frosting Won't Fix

World opinion of the United States is tanking.
From a New York Times story today:

Favorable views of the United States dropped sharply over the past year in Spain, where only 23 percent now say they have a positive opinion, down from 41 percent in 2005, according to the survey, which was carried out in 15 nations this spring by the Pew Research Center.

In Britain, Washington's closest ally in the Iraq war, positive views of America have remained in the mid-50's in the past two years, down sharply from 75 percent in 2002.

Other countries where positive views dropped significantly include India (56 percent, down from 71 percent since 2005); Russia (43 percent, down from 52 percent); and Indonesia (30 percent, down from 38 percent). In Turkey, a NATO ally of the United States, only 12 percent said they held a favorable opinion, down from 23 percent last year.

Well, duh.
We're all seen as Ugly Americans abroad, no matter what our personal views might be here at home.
I got a comment from a blogger in New Zealand several months ago expressing surprise at my "unusual" political views. As if we all marched in lockstep here, duct tape over our mouths, little red copies of "Misunderestimations of Chairman W" in our back pockets.
No, some us are pretty unhappy about the way we look to others.
Anyway, if we're that skanky, haul out the Cool Whip and strawberries, 'cause this baby's in need of some serious cosmetics.
Oh yeah. Much better. Mm-hm.
Lipstick on a pig.

Ann Coulter Is a Harpie

And a plagiarist and a self-promoter and a soulless weevil who lies about its age.
Really skinny legs, too, but that's the only part that isn't its fault.
Meh. Who cares?
Just ignore it.
It will get old and even more hideous and go into hiding, subsisting on a diet of cat dander and the condensation on sewer pipes.

I'll Get Mad Tomorrow

Right now, I know what side my bread's buttered on, and that makes me happy.

Wheat Levain BrickMaiden Bread from Breadvine Baking Co. of Point Reyes, CA, topped with Spring Hill unsalted butter from Petaluma, CA.

Weekend Swiped-Meyer-Lemon Blogging

I gave full warning I might do this. (I've done it more than once, in fact.)
My own tree needed to take a year in deep, restorative, comatose unproductiveness, to compensate for having been moved a mere 10 miles (in its own pot, no less, the poor sissy).
It's doing better now. I'm pretty sure the plump lemonlets on the branches will hang on this year, grow larger, and eventually turn yellow.
But when life doesn't give you ripe lemons on your tree at home right this minute, you swipe some.
This little guy was not about to grow any larger, ripe as he already was. And the gardener who tends this commercial patio has never, to my knowledge, harvested a single lemon, much less invited the chef out to select one or two.
So it was kind of my karmic duty to see that it got a good home.
My mouth.

Market Slut

It was just an innocent outing. I had to return something to a store yesterday, and since the mall was peppered with outdoor tables, we decided to buy a bottle of water, some olives and some breadsticks to munch on.
Turns out it was farmers market day at the mall. So we were able to augment our impromptu lunch with snappy icicle and French Breakfast radishes, and a mound of Bing cherries for desert.
Honest, I wasn't seeking out a market.
It found me.
And today, even though I probably already have enough produce in the house, I'm meeting a fellow food blogger at the Marin Civic Center Farmers Market. Honest, it's just a meeting place, not a shopping destination.
But I'll probably end up buying more stuff, just as I did yesterday.
I'm attracted to farmers markets, and it's no accident that they make nifty meeting places for fellow food writers.
But they're everywhere. They find us.
Well, I'll admit, last weekend we drove almost 70 miles to visit a new-to-us farmers market. We found it.
And we find we like the atmosphere.
The shady table we chose yesterday for lunch was right behind the stand of a guy selling incredibly fragrant strawberries. He had a bowl of freshly washed berries set out in front for potential patrons to sample, and over the course of our meal, he must have refilled that huge bowl four times or more. He did make a few sales, so all was not in vain, but there are a lot of prowling snackers at that mall. I watched them.
Fortunately, it seems to be worth the farmers' efforts to attend that little market. Their tables were laden with beautiful, fresh produce, and the prices were no different than I've seen at other markets. Several of the vendors also attend the Marin market.
I wonder; do they even bother to drive home at night?
Yes, I guess they do. To box up more of that sparkling fresh produce.
See you at the market.

I'm Mad and I Voted

And I had a really good taco.
The taco was light and healthy; the turnout at the precinct was just light.
Cranky and I discussed our votes on the walk back home, and it turns out we canceled each other on a couple of categories. Eh. That's the American way.
This taco, on the other hand, might be the Native American way.
We had bought a couple of packages of heartbreakingly fresh corn tortillas Saturday at the Davis farmers market. We had some zucchini in the fridge, along with some spring onions and a little feta cheese. As always, there were also walnuts in the fridge (in the shell).
I don't know why it all came together like it did. I never consulted a recipe; I was strictly riffing on ingredients at hand.
But it was unbelievably good. Fresh, light, chewy in all the right ways, deeply satisfying (OK, I had two tacos, and Cranky had three). No meat. You could even veganize it with a little tofu instead of cheese.
I wonder which one of our two tofu — I mean, Democratic — gubernatorial candidates will wind up facing Der Big Cheesinator.

Technique: Chop a handful of walnuts, not too fine, and toss in a medium-hot, lightly oiled skillet with some crumbled dried Mexican oregano and a little salt (remember the feta is salty). Remove walnuts to a bowl when they are toasty and fragrant. Thinly slice a bit of onion (doesn't take much; I used maybe 1/8+ of a medium one) and saute it in the skillet, adding more oil if necessary. Add onions to walnuts after they become limp and golden. Quarter a medium zucchini lengthwise and slice it into 3/8" segments. Throw these in the hot skillet with a pinch of salt (again, more oil if needed; probably won't need it) until they get spotted with brown. Add the walnuts and onions back into the pan with the hot zucchini and toss until mixed.
Have ready some crumbled feta (1/2 cup?) and the bottled salsa of your choice.
Steam your tortillas in the microwave wrapped in a damp (not wet) paper towel.
Stuff the tortillas, and then stuff your face.

Chew on This

Bush is pushing for a Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.
He's doing it because his approval rating is at an appalling 29%. It has dropped this low because even his usual, reliable, hatey-hatin' conservative base is abandoning him.
He's doing it, even though such an amendment has no chance of garnering the two-thirds Congressional vote it would require to come before the states, because he needs to fire up the haters.
It's his version of Get Out the Vote.
A proposed anti-flag-burning amendment went nowhere (though Frist is going to resurrect it any day now), and the abortion issue is simply, realistically, too supercharged (read: most people are glad we have access to safe, legal abortion) to put to a Constitutional test.
Bush's base — his ultraconservative, evangelical, family-loving, wimmen-hatin' righty boys — are sorely pissed off at having received none of the hate-filled goodie bags Bush "promised" them at the time of his re-election, and they're threatening not to vote at all this time.
"Give us air kisses or else!" they insist, religiously but unmeekly.
And the Decider blows the Discriminators air kisses, devil breath and all.
They know they're being pandered to.
They just wanted to throw some Nerf power around.
So Bush is throwing them a Nerf bone.

Be sure and get to the polls tomorrow.

Update: So all during Bush's speech this afternoon, the wingnut religious right leaders who are demanding these mean, substanceless sops were hidden from camera view. White House doesn't want to let real 'Murkans know who's pushing around our war preznit.

Smooth Moves

Do you have one of these?
It's a Chinois, a conical strainer with a very fine mesh. Believe it or not, it seems to have been named for its resemblance to the Chinese "coolie" hat, since its other name is "China Cap." Which is a bit of a stretch, because you'd have to turn it upside down to get it to stay on, and who wants to walk around wearing an expensive kitchen implement on her head anyway?
I don't have one. The one pictured costs $120, though you could certainly get one for less. (No endorsements here. I'm a Chinois virgin, and I'm thinking of taking a chastity vow.)
But yesterday I made another puréed pea soup, and this time I decided to go ahead and strain the bejeezus out of it.
Last time I tried straining the pulpy particles out of soup, I was horrified at the sight of the wasted food, and I threw all that fiber and nourishment right back into the pot. (SFist thought that was worth a mention.)
But this time, I rolled up my sleeves, soldiered on, waded through the soylent muck... And ended up with a superduper, silky-smooth soup. I didn't use a real Chinois, but my sorta-fine mesh strainer did the job just fine. (If you decide to strain, you will have to coerce the soup through the strainer with a rubber spatula or the back of a wooden spoon, and there will be yummy goop stuck to the outside-bottom of the strainer that you will want to scrape off with a metal spoon.)
Verdict: Worth doing again. It was "restaurant" smooth!

Seasonal ingredients included fresh shelled English peas, cooked until tender in vegetable broth (ooh, ooh, and I cooked them in the STRAINER, suspended in the broth so I could just lift them out), then puréed in a blender with a few spoonfuls of the broth and a good dollop of sour cream. Strain this into a fresh saucepan (push, scrape, push, scrape). Next, cook a whole head of "fresh" garlic (more mature than spring garlic, not yet papery, but you might want to separate and peel the cloves) along with the washed pea pods in the vegetable broth with salt and pepper to taste. When cooked to your liking, blend it all until smooth (hold down the lid tight; it's hot), and then strain into the saucepan with the peas (push, scrape, push, scrape). Sprinkle with a smidge or two of rice flour and whisk over gentle heat until slightly thickened. Finish with a smoothing pat of butter, stirred through.

Weekend Farm Blogging

Cranky and I dashed up to Davis for a quick overnight visit. On our way we stopped by Full Belly Farm, which has a produce stand open to the public on Friday afternoons, but since we had rolled out of bed unusually early (excited, I suppose), we arrived before they had set up.
Never mind. We were invited to stroll around the farm, and it was an eye opener.
Full Belly Farm sells an enormous variety of produce at the Marin Civic Center farmers market (also Palo Alto and Berkeley), grown on a tidy 200 acres. But at the heart of the farm, where the workers congregate for lunch, where the cars with "agricultura orgánica" bumperstickers park, where the produce would be for sale if we could just dawdle for a couple more hours... well, we saw more than melons and peppers and lavender and onions.
We saw livestock!
What a great place, just north of tiny Guinda in the Capay Valley. You have to drive past the oddly anachronistic, disproportionately huge, entirely unwanted Cache Creek Casino to get there, but as we hummed by, I said to myself, "Just ignore it."
Full Belly is obviously not the only farm around; the entire valley is known for organic produce (and that damned casino).
But I was enchanted by the storybook beauty of the place (leafy shade trees, fragrant aromas, friendly owners and a large crew of workers), by the diversity of crops (flowers, fruit, vegetables, and by the unknown-to-me honeybees, goats, and a big old muddy sow). I understand there are also chickens and cows, but they weren't where I was.
We chose not to wait for two more hours, and instead went to the Davis farmers market this morning. Apparently Full Belly doesn't sell there. I could speculate on the economic reasons for that, but let's just say that the Davis market is beautiful, not too large and not too small. We found lots of produce and meat that, while not "officially" organic, is raised by methods I find quite edible. The heck with certification when you can go "beyond organic." Eggs from cage-free hens. Purebred pork from unmedicated pigs. Nuts. Peaches. Cherries. Cherries. Cherries. (Hurry, season's drawing to a close soon.) We even bought a couple of fresh nopales to roast and tuck into some spanking fresh corn tortillas.
The refrigerator is stuffed to the gills, and now I must go make lunch.
Sadly, I might have too much food in the house to make it worthwhile to visit the Full Belly folks at my local market tomorrow.
Well, maybe I'll just drop by and say hi.

Don't Vote for the Twinkie

Eat locally, and digest your local politicians jokally.
Californians are facing a primary vote next Tuesday, and for the life of me, I'm stumped as to who I'll choose to face Schwarzenegger in November's election.
Phil Angelides? I got to thinking about him, and all I could come up with was "a piece of beef jerky." I don't know why.
So I focused on Steve Westly, who can only be imagined foodily as something refined, processed. Say, a Twinkie.
See? That doesn't really help. I like beef jerky on occasion, but I wouldn't want to make a diet of it. I'm a lot less inclined to go for a Twinkie, though.
Wait. This could be working.
OK, checkbox Angelides.
My senator, Dianne Feinstein, is up for re-election. Given that her Democratic rivals in the primary are a pair of unknowns, you could say she's practically running unopposed. So I have little choice but to vote for the prunecake. Yeah, that's how I feel about her. Shrivelly, prim, somewhat laxative (well, she makes me head for the head; I don't know about you). She thinks she's good for me, but I've come to dread her. What to do? Grin and bear it, I guess. I'd almost rather have castor oil.
My representative, Lynn Woolsey, is also up for re-election, and it's starting to look like a bad ride for her. After seven terms in Congress with little legislative success to show for her time in, this can of garbanzos may get voted out in favor of challenger Joe Nation (his real name), who reminds me of a piece of buttered toast. Whole wheat.
Ding! Checkbox Nation.
Wow, maybe this really is helping.
OK, now, state attorney general. Longtime pol Jerry Brown, former governor of the state and most recently mayor of Oakland, is facing the charming and cocky Rocky Delgadillo. A granola bar against a can of olives. Ohgod. Feeling confused. Both are experienced lawyers. Uhhh. Nature Valley vs. Lindsay.
Dang. Checkbox Brown. If only Delgadillo had reminded me of a jar of cured olives, instead of those soggy brown things in salt water. And to tell the truth, I'm not sure if I've ever even eaten a granola bar. Sigh.
There are a lot of other courses on the ballot (side dishes, salads, sauces — I mean Secretary of State, Lieutenant Governor, Insurance Commissioner), many of them not well known by me. I'll have to haul out the menu and give it a good going-over before next week.
Burp.
I promise not to vote on an empty stomach.