At Smokey Joe's Cafe

The skies in my corner of Northern California have returned to a familiar clear blue, even if the wildfires continue. The belch-odor of smoke in the air has died down. Cranky and I still have burning eyes, though, and the other day I sneezed so hard I got a nosebleed (I don't get nosebleeds).
So what did the hellish oppression do for Bay Area appetites? Taunted them. Tempted them. Ignited them!
Over at Meathenge, the Reverend wisely avoided the poisonous air outdoors, and it made him so mad, he set fire to his own kitchen. On purpose, and then he ate the results.
The Bunrabs hopped over to Oakland and nibbled on Mr. McGregor's garden patch of smoky ribs. Silly rabbits.
Catherine at Albion Cooks uncooked a gorgeous salad using chunks of smoked tofu.
Here at Crumb Central, we were taken by an urge to eat smoked trout layered over homegrown mâche, garden onions, little segments of oranges from our tree, and radishes from the market.
What is the MATTER with us people?
I know: carbon mouthprint.

I'm a Clafoodie

As with lots of other foods that seem to pop up in unison on blogs (there's a mini meatball meme going on at present, I've noticed), the clafoutis is currently catchy.
Zoomie put one together the other day to lovingly lay to rest some geriatric cherries and berries, and I know hers is not the only version I've spotted on blogs recently (but I'm drawing a blank, so shoot me — with blanks, of course).
I've been waiting for the plums in the backyard to ripen so I could make a plumfoutis, but it looks like they've got weeks to go. We were celebrating our *mumble*-th anniversary Friday and needed something pretty, right away... and there was aging fruit from the farmers market languishing in the fridge... so...
Gosh, this is an easy cake to bake. Easy as pie. Nope, easier.
You whip up what is essentially a slightly sweetened Yorkshire pudding batter, pour it into a buttered dish, and drop whole or cut-up fruit into it, making a stained-glass window effect.
Cook, puff, cool, cut, top with whatever pleases you (powdered sugar, crème fraîche), or eat it bare.
You have complete control over how sweet you want to make it, what kind of fruit (and how much) to use, or even whether to add vanilla (and next time, I'll opt out).
It's low-fat, high protein (eggs) and full of the natural nectar that grows on trees.
It's not dessert. It's food.

Cranky's Mache Pit

Let the tyranny begin.
The garden is beginning to flood out edibles, and it's our job to do something about that.
One thing we're doing is picking things while they're young and small (though it doesn't doesn't work for tomatoes, darn).
However, the mache plants are already sprouting blossoms. Hell, instead of nipping them off and throwing them away, we're nipping them off and throwing them into the salad. More edible flowers; nothing wrong with that.
Last year I tried hard to dream up thoughtful, imaginative uses for my produce. This year, I'm happy just salting and eating. Last year, a novel recipe might require me to buy ingredients not already in the house. This year, I'm thinking: I have oils. I have home-made pear vinegar. I have ground hot pepper from chiles I grew last summer. I have a bin of accumulated salts that is in all probability embarrassing.
So that's how this salad happened. Simply.
Which is not to say that's all there is to life.

Eat Your Flowers

A couple of days ago I mentioned collecting some celery pollen from the garden, and a few readers wanted to know more about it.
Actually, I'm harvesting the flowers of celery plants; I haven't quite gone as far as knocking off the pollen by itself.
The celery plants are all done being celery, but as they try to bolt into seed-bearing fornicators (all plants really want to do is reproduce themselves; we humans just like eating their young), the flowering tops have developed into tender, feathery, delicious morsels.
Why don't we think about eating vegetable flowers more?
I almost ripped out the bed of celery after the stalks got woody and inedible, but I had an idea: What if I let it go to seed, and then I'd have home-grown celery seeds? Cool!
Well, the seeds haven't appeared yet, but I needed something celery-ish the other day. I bit into a tiny green bud, and it was amazing. The flavor is celery, to be sure, but a little less crazy. (The celery I grew over the winter was shockingly intense-tasting.)
So far we have incorporated celery blossoms into stock, minestrone, tuna salad, and (of course) Bloody Marys. You just trim off the flowers, and voilà, instant mirepoix.
Aha, you say. Mirepoix includes onions and carrots, non?
Mais oui. Which gives me the opportunity to talk about onion flowers. (We are not growing carrots yet.)
Onion flowers! OMG, they are tender and oniony, but a bit less gaseous than true onion bulbs. In other words, perfect. In fact, not all my onions performed perfectly underground, but this floral crop more than makes up for it.
My only concern now is using up the celery and onion flowers as soon as I can, or figuring out a way to preserve them. I am drying some in the sun, and it seems fine. I may also try a quick blanch in boiling water, then into plastic bags in the freezer.
What other flowers should I be eating? I know about squash blossoms, rosemary flowers and nasturtiums. I also gather wild fennel pollen once in a while. Candied violets, roses, johnny jump-ups. Lavender, now and then. (And I'm trying to forget about the petal-strewn salads at Chez Panisse in the '80s, though they were pretty.)
Ideas?

Already?

It snuck up on me!
Best of all, today is the first day we are able to go into the garden and "pick lunch." Sadly, slicing tomatoes still not ready (though we do have one rogue Sungold cherry tomato we'll be sharing). But we have mache, zucchini, yellow crookneck squash, onions, lemon and herbs. Maybe even a little celery pollen (it's insane; deserves a whole post). The entire salad (I guess that's what it will be) comes out of our yard. Well, maybe we'll sneak in a little salt... might not need it, though.
Happy summer, friends.

Somebody's Ravioli

And How I Made it Mine.
You ever buy some boutique food creation, like sausages or ravioli, and then totally chicken out on how to eat it? Someone with a lot of talent has put together this lovely thing, and then... Who am I to wreck it with a squirt of ranch dressing?
So I freeze up and go the timid route.
I've been going the timid route a lot, lately. Because the food I'm buying is so intrinsically beautiful, it just doesn't need a lot of messing up. Fresh rabbit. Free-range eggs. Honest, pure vegetables.
I think my sense of taste has recalibrated to a very simple level, which is fine, but am I missing something? Part of my devotion to eating locally grown food prevents me from using lots of spices, although there are still plenty of flavorings I could use, but sometimes just don't.
OK.
Here is a pile of locally produced porcini ravioli (from The Pasta Shop in Berkeley). Who could beat a filling of seasonal fresh porcini and thyme? I was scared to even butter this stuff.
But Cranky and I got brave, and we didn't mess it up. Yay, and really, double-yay. So successful.
We cooked minced garlic scapes with chopped walnuts in brown butter. Poured in a little cream, and gloodged that over the pasta, and then sprinkled on chopped parsley and grated parmesan.
We tinkered, but it was perfect.
That's really affirming.

Great Caesar's Ghost!

True story: I know the guy who claims to have invented the practice of serving Caesar salad with grilled chicken on top of it. Yeah, that very '80s dish, which became ubiquitous at all mid-scale restaurants, and sometimes the chicken morphed into blackened redfish or strips of steak. You remember it; you know you do.
My friend ran a restaurant very close to two of San Francisco's daily newspapers way back when. The kind of place where more drinking happened than eating, but every once in a while, a reporter's got to shove some nutrients down the craw. I don't know how or why my friend developed this recipe (or if it's even true he was the original creator of it).
But that's his claim to fame, and knowing him is mine.
Fast forward to present times. My friend lives in the same county that I do, and I run into him every so often. The part of the county I live in is hokey. Cornball. Lowbrow. (He lives in a nicer neighborhood and he eats at nice restaurants.) My neighborhood has a neighborhood Chili's, and I've been known to snag a plate of nachos and a pint of beer there. Not long ago, Chili's introduced a Caesar salad topped with chili-lime shrimp. I tried it.
Ohgah. Good. Embarrassing to say, but good. Tasty... if you can stand the idea of a salad draped with animal protein, which is actually a little weird. Sorry to say, old friend. Weird. But good.
Turns out you can make this dish at home.
Just make it up; I did. (So did my friend, apparently, although he used chicken.)
The one thing you have to do is cook the croutons in the chili-lime-seasoned oil you used for sauteeing the shrimp.
Otherwise, just wing it. (But not with chicken wings.)

Don't Throw Your Crustacean Shells Away

Don't.
I'm even thinking of showing up at my local seafood restaurant and volunteering for some bussing duty.
I'll only clear the tables that ordered shellfish, though. Lobsters. Shrimp. Crawdads, if they got 'em.
My secret is that I will be carrying a bag inside my busboy jacket to dump the shells into.
The rest of the leavings, I'll just crash into that plastic garbage bin they all use. Yeah, I'll be good at this. Do we share tips at this place, 'cause I'm awesome!
Until they run me out for strange behavior.
But IT'S NOT STRANGE.
I quiver to think how many crustacean shells I've tossed into the trash just because I'm stupid and didn't think of this: Crustacean shells make insane stock.
Not stock, exactly, because you don't want to cook it much longer than a half-hour, and there's no gelatin.
But the flavor extraction is rich, and quick!
This was Cranky's version: a batch of "used" shrimp shells simmered gently with some fennel fronds, minced onion and empty English pea pods. Herbs. Salt.
This is a very special recipe, so remember it: shrimp shells, fennel fronds and pea pods. Complete innovation. Until somebody tells me it's very common; that everybody knows this already. (Please, no.)
The pea pods were a special whim. Oh: rich, green flavor. Fresh. Springlike. Good Cranky, good boy.
The problem with the final execution of our meal (and I blame myself for this part of the idea) is that greenish stock makes stracciatella look dingy and icky.
It wasn't a genuine stracciatella; we added tiny pasta strings for nutritional bulk.
I'll tell you what, though. A colorblind person would have loved it. I ate mine with my eyes closed; it was that good.

Jolly Green Giant on my Plate

I know. Looks stupid.
But you have to know this: The braising liquid from small animals is heavenly.
Small animals = ducks, rabbits, goats. And braising liquid = champagne; accept no substitutes.
You will need mirepoix: finely diced carrot, onion and celery. The amount depends on the amount of meat, and I'm not your teacher, never have been; figure a couple of handfuls of a mixture of equal portions of the veggies per pound of meat (and, boy, am I faking it here).
Champagne to cover the meat and the verdure. Salt and pepper. Herbs? Knock yourself out.
Slow simmer. Timing depends on... tenderness.
AND: You did not remove the bones first. They add the ineffable ineffableness you are looking for. Bones matters.
How did I get skewed off into a braising lesson? All I want you to do is save the braising liquid for the Next Thing you cook. You will know what to do with your braised meat (and in my case, it keeps being rillettes).
Here's the deal. The braising liquid will develop gelatin, flavor, body, depth, utter pookiness. Save the liquid. Do the rillettes later. Eat the liquid ASAP.
For today's Jolly Green Giant Inadvertent Presentation, I circled some angel hair pasta in a plate and spooned over the incomparable richness of braising liquid made from confit of duck legs (department of redundancy department, I know, but double-cooked duck is divine). The onions and celery from the mirepoix had melted away, but the carrots were still vibrant, viable, visible.
Then I placed a portion of tender English peas inside the pasta circle, where the carrots roared into semi-prominence, creating an inadvertent orange/green Jolly Green Giant tableau.
Stupid looking. But delicious beyond words.

Do You Have Square Plates?

This isn't a square plate; it's just a little appetizer-sized dish. I have six of them, half black and half white.
I also have two smallish, salad-sized black dishes, square with slightly rounded corners.
So, no. I don't have square plates. Per se.
Of course, you've noticed how trendy they are.
But, I bought my two salad plates at Target, and you know the fashionability mantra about that store: "If you can get it at Target, it's already out."
I got the six little square dishes at what used to be called Cost Plus (it's now World Market). El cheapo. El super-common.
A few months ago, I had a mediocre meal at a mediocre Thai restaurant that was doing its darnedest to be stylin'. Square plates! Still, crappy food. Plus, the plates obviously came from the restaurant-supply catalog, and how cool is that? Not very.
All told, square plates are modern. Fun. Different!
I wondered if I'm supposed to go out and buy a set of square dishes, just to keep up.
Then I remembered the beautiful blog of a salty pal who persistently plates up her stunning meals on round Provençal-golden dishes; she's way too cool to fall for the trendy allure of 90° presentation!
Oops. But. She has square plates too, it turns out. I saw 'em.
They looked good.

Who Blogs on Friday?

We seem to be a lazy bunch, us food bloggers, with our three-day weekends.
I'm even lazier. Today's picture was taken weeks ago, back when the weather warranted this kind of rib-warming, leftover-using, special gadget-decorating dish.
Any ideas what it is?
Hint: There was cholesterol.

Life Goes On

In this case, a tiny life goes on the nearly defunct celery, crawling spotlessly for the camera.
That celery patch has been a prolific and shockingly strong-flavored crop ever since we planted it last summer. We felt guilty for not harvesting as much as we could, but jeepers, after a while, the green-shoe-polish taste of the ribs got to be nearly too-too.
Not that we didn't love it! We just didn't love it enough to eat it all up.
We dug up a few heads of celery and gave them away. The others, we merely trimmed off stalks as needed, and left the rest to grow.
Finally, this spring, the stalks are kaput. Woody, hollow. Time to throw in the trowel.
And, yet, the seed heads are sprouting, so beautifully. If I wait a little longer, will I be able to collect celery seeds?
And can I cut off the celery leaves before they turn brown (already I'm seeing tinges), and preserve them, maybe by blanching and freezing?
I am getting impatient. The stalks that support the seed heads are still just barely juicy and tender enough to dice and cook with. But every time I chop down a stalk, I sacrifice a blossom. Nature's funny that way.
I've decided to hold out a little longer before digging up the entire patch. Somebody besides me is fond of the garden.

Scape Goats

Thomas Keller, you are welcome to this one if you wish.
I know how you like to create dishes based on puns. Oysters and Pearls, yipes. A perfectly good oyster draped with sabayon of pearl tapioca, because it sounded cute to you. I remember an interviewer asking you how you knew it would be a tasty dish, even if you'd never tasted it before. You said you just knew.
Well, I got one for ya, and it IS tasty.
Yesterday I was sitting in the backyard watching the onions grow. They are sending up surreal spikes topped with Martian flowers, not at all unlike the crazy stalks that garlic plants sprout this time of year. Some bloggers have even taken to calling these onion growths "scapes," although I think that word should be reserved for the much tastier, un-hollow garlic growths.
Whatever.
I've been on a garlic kick, and I was tossing around the word "scapes" in my mouth, when I happened a-pun the phrase "scape goat."
My local meat provider, Marin Sun Farms, brings some lovely goat parts to the market, and... OK, you're way ahead of me here. But it only took one day for me to pull it off, and oh, so successfully.
First, get Cranky to cook for you. No, get him to shop first, then cook.
I will claim creative rights to this recipe, but the boy himself concocted the entire production. It wasn't very hard, I don't believe. What do I know? I was reading a magazine on the patio.
What we have come up with is a gentle stew of trimmed goat meat, cooked with thinly sliced garlic scapes, tiny cubes of carrot, some seasonings, a splish of beer and a teensy strewing of flour. Cooked nicely, not hard.
Then a recipe of piecrust, made with half white and half whole-wheat flour (and greased with leaf lard, because I am lucky and bragging about it).
Little galettes happened. Scape Goats. So cute.