Brandy Ho Ho Ho

I thought Brandy Ho's Hunan Food had gone out of business, because I don't hear much about the 28-year-old restaurant anymore, and I don't find myself driving on Columbus Avenue in San Francisco much since we moved almost an hour north. Seems it's still in business, however.
I've never eaten there, but I always adored the logo, with the perky red chile pepper, skinny and bright and wearing a green cap.
Whoa-Ho! I visited Brandy Ho's website today, and they've had a graphic modernization. I think that skinny chile pepper is still there, all stylized, standing in for the apostrophe. But the cuteness is gone.
Too bad. I've been calling my Cayenne peppers Brandy Ho as I harvest them this year, but only because they resemble that old cute cartoon with the green cap.
Now, what shall I call them? Hello Cayennie?
They're not very hot peppers, alas. They dry out well, and I'm planning on grinding them in the spice grinder.
This freaks out my mother. Like the mother in A Christmas Story, she says, "You'll shoot your eye out!"

For Which I Am Thankful

It took a while, but we finally convinced ourselves to buy that little waist-high chest freezer and stash it in an unobtrusive corner of the dining room. Garage = icky. Dining room = close by. Thankful.
We ordered it from Sears on the Internet, and it instantly became available for pickup at our local outlet. Funny, because our local outlet seems to be the only Sears in the Bay Area that had the freezer on the premises. Thankful.
It was really inexpensive. Thankful.
And it works. Thankful! It's already hella cold, plugged into a stupid normal electric thingie.
We are gradually moving "storage" items out of the refrigerator freezer, like tomato sauce and vegetable broth. The refrigerator freezer is now going to be useful, in that ice cube, bacon, dippy leftovers sort of way. Thankful.
Today we simmered up a huge pot of turkey stock, which is headed for the new freezer as soon as it cools down. Way, way thankful.
Just thought I might show you the "stuffing" we cooked yesterday. It's from a recipe in the New York Times, and it's inspired by the fabulous bread salad that accompanies the wood-fire roasted chicken at Zuni Cafe in San Francisco. Yep, vinegar and black pepper. Awesome.
Thankful.

Crabtastic

In San Francisco, Dungeness crab season opens about the same time as Thanksgiving every year.
I was born in the Bay Area (Oakland), but I don't have the local tradition of eating crab for Thanksgiving. My Navy family was too far flung to develop that habit.
However. I am no fool. If Dungeness is on hand, I am ready.
Thanksgiving is tomorrow, but today we enjoyed a dish I first tasted at Shanghai 1930. It was a dish of buttery tofu, mingled with warm crab chunks. The crab happened to be bearing its own roe at the time I tried it at the restaurant. Beauty.
It doesn't sing "Thanksgiving" to me, but, again, I am no fool. I loved it.
The crab we bought today was not graced with its own roe, so we bought a little salmon caviar. I would probably have preferred tobiko, but the store we shop at wouldn't allow it. "It's dyed," they said. I doubt that, but I was stymied.
Nonetheless. Good eating, with a generous pat of butter and a whirr in the microwave. Don't know where all that liquid came from. So what. We scooped it up and ate it.

Pre-Thanksgiving

This looks like it should be a relish tray for this coming Thursday, but it's what we ate for supper last night.
We seem to be doing dress-rehearsal eating in advance of the big day. Wait till you hear what we're having tomorrow. And for breakfast on Thanksgiving day.
I needed to cut open and roast a little Sugar Pie pumpkin (organic, local) for a treat I will tell you about soon (the breakfast!). And there were all those beautiful seeds in there. They were so tender, they didn't need a parboil in salted water, the way I did a couple of years ago. So I just oiled them, and sprinkled them with salt, cumin and garam masala. A quick zip into a medium oven (ALL food cooks at 350º, am I right?), and we had a perky snack.
I cobbled together some other nibbles, including that pathetic tray of oil-sizzled cauliflower buds, the sum total of this year's harvest. I blame George, of course. The sprinkling of truffle salt almost made me feel better.
The almonds (local) got a treatment of herbs and garlic, and then a little toasting in a skillet. The olives are cheese-eating surrender monkeys. And the pickled yellow squash are from the backyard.
This was quite snazzy with a martini.

I Follow Recipes! I Do!

You might get the idea — because I keep saying it — that I don't much follow recipes.
Well, come Thursday you can bet I'll have my nose buried in a book or two, trying to get the temperature right on the turkey. When you only cook something once a year, you don't tend to internalize the technique. And this year, we're not stuffing the bird as we usually do, so everything will be torqued slightly off whatever memory granules I've managed to accumulate.
There are other valuable uses for recipes, like when somebody shows you a dish you would never, in a million years, have dreamed up on your own.
And that's how today's lunch happened. Chris at Ms. Cellania doesn't blog about food often, but when she does, I find I want to eat what she's eating. Her latest dish has the unassuming name of Cheesy Vegetable Hotpot. But jeez, Chris. Couldn't you scream a little about the crème fraîche? Or the topping of golden, melted, crispy Camembert cheese? And, sorry, but "hotpot" is just too homely a name for a meal this outstanding.
I would call it Leeks à la Forestière in a Camembert Crust. Which, imperfectly, overlooks the fact that there is cabbage, and no meat. But "forestière" is also supposed to imply that there are potatoes and mushrooms, as well there are in this humble, elegant hotpot, so we're getting close. Although perhaps too silly.
We made half a recipe for the two of us (and I think I can say now that I will know how to make it without a recipe in the future).
If I were to change only one thing, I might stir in a teaspoon of sherry. And salt (which we did sprinkle in, but Chris seems to have omitted it from her recipe).
Thanks for the great meal, Chris.

Blog Food

Some days I am so grateful for this blog. It forces me to make beautiful food from time to time.
Today we hit a homer. Cranky really wanted to clear out a little freezer space, so we defrosted some wild Alaskan shrimp. And there was a sack of English peas in the fridge that needed eating.
How to bond these edibles? Rice. Plain old white rice.
I remember the wanton, ill-informed hippie days when we thought we could "invent" Asian cooking, simply by using a wok, some soy sauce, and a lot of chutzpah. Disaster always resulted.
Somehow, I learned restraint. DON'T use every Oriental sauce in your pantry. DON'T pretend you know how to stir-fry. DON'T fake it.
Except... today I faked it, and I was thrilled with the result.
I marinated the shrimp in an impromptu sauce of shoyu, sake, shichimi togarashi (Japanese seven-spice chili powder), sesame oil, a pinch of garlic powder and a grating of lemon zest.
And then I cooked some rice in the rice cooker, throwing in the shelled peas halfway through, with a pat of butter, to get them cooked in there as well.
Finally, I briefly sizzled the shrimp in a skillet with peanut oil. When they were done, I tossed in the marinade and cooked it down a bit.
I pulled a scallion from the garden, sliced it fine, and decorated the shrimp which were arranged atop the rice and peas. And with a final drizzle of the reduced marinade, we had a fine lunch.
OK, you wanna know something else? There is a huge bag of Doritos on the kitchen counter. That's life around here. No photo.

Damn You, Hedonia!

It's not exactly true that Sean threw off my whole week's menu planning.
We had actually been planning to make another pot of minestrone, with the fading vegetables from the summer garden.
And it so happened that we bought a handful — a couple of handfuls — of beautiful Italian white beans, dried, from Iacoppi last week. Which would go perfectly in the soup.
Of course, we had bread in the house.
Next thing you know, Sean has this post up about fried ribollita. Fried!
OK, well. That doesn't throw things off entirely. It just means we'll be using a skillet, in addition to the soup pot.
It worked.
Oh, by the way, thanks for the cavolo nero suggestion, Sean. That stuff is money.
Sean's attempt to fry his ribollita into cakes met with a little moisture problem. Not that it's a serious problem. But based on his experience, I decided to just scoop out the solids from the soup into the oiled pan. And then, as much liquid as necessary.
I am an accomplished corned beef hash cook; I know that the perfect result depends on an ideal state of wetness (not so very, but occasional additions must be made) and timing. Patience.
And thus it was.
We got soup hash.
Browned. Tasty. Magnificent.
I can't wait to have this again.
Damn you, Hedonia.

Sofa's Choice

Does anybody remember Chicken Divan? ("Chicken Divan" is French for "Chicken Sofa," or "Couch Chicken," if that helps to jog your memory.)
We had some leftover rotisseried chicken, and a pretty bunch of broccoli from the garden, and if that doesn't say Chicken Divan, then maybe it says chicken soup, or chicken-broccoli salad, or chicken-broccoli pasta, or...
But no. We wanted the Chicken Divan. And what better place to look up a retro recipe than the Joy of Cooking?
Except the 1997 version of Joy of Cooking is free of Chicken Divan. It has been expunged. Hopelessly passé, I guess.
I had to refer to my previous edition of the Joy, which I'm glad I kept. It's the version with instructions on how to clean and hang venison, how to cook squirrel, how to concoct "quick soups" (hint: a can opener will be necessary).
Ta da! There it was. Chicken Divan. Basically, cooked chicken layered in a casserole, covered with slightly steamed broccoli, and drowned in a cheese sauce, aka Sauce Rebecca de Mornay. In a twist new to me, this old recipe suggested building the casserole atop a layer of buttered toast (optional), and I liked the idea. All your basic food groups in a single pan. Bake for half an hour, and you got a meal that will last you all day long.
Cranky was totally game for this dish. But he dreaded to think how bland it was going to taste.
It didn't taste bland. At all. First of all, the rotisseried chicken is first-rate, and is heavily seasoned with herbs. Second, the broccoli from our garden is sweet and rich and vivid — terroir de Marin.
Finally, the Rebecca de Mornay sauce was made with two, no, three kinds of cheese, and jacked up with a teensy hit of habanero powder.
Was it old-fashioned? I guess so, but I say Bring Back Chicken Sofa!
Delicious.

Bird Food

Have you heard the story — not a myth, I believe — about birds nibbling on overripe pyracantha berries, and getting drunk on the fermentedness? Flying around kinda kookoo, sometimes crashing into walls? Probably having unprotected sex, too. Dumb birds.
Well, we have a couple of pyracanthas to look at — one in front of the bedroom window, and the other across the fence in the yard next door. The owner of the next-door pyracantha was a little twitchy earlier this summer when we trimmed the branches that hung over our side.
"The orioles like to eat the berries," she warbled.
She needn't have worried. There are plenty of berries.
But I can guarantee you I haven't seen any orioles. (Northern California is visited by Bullock's Oriole in spring and summer; the pyracantha berries don't turn red until October or thereabouts...)
Even so, we've seen robins and scrub jays munching on the berries. They aren't getting drunk. (Yet?) The berries are ripe, but not fermented.
Fall is pretty.

Scenes From a Mall

Actually, this is A Tale of Two Malls.
There is a pair of malls in my county, directly across the freeway from one another. We used to call one the "rich mall" and the other "the poor mall."
The rich mall has a couple of major department stores, a Williams-Sonoma, a Gap, a Banana Republic, Pottery Barn. Decent middle-brow places to shop.
The poor mall used to look like it was in danger of closing down entirely, with a Pier 1, an eyeglasses place or two, and even a discount clothing store (Marshall's or Ross, can't tell the difference).
But the poor mall started bringing in food purveyors, including a stellar butcher (to add to the several rather OK food places that were already there, including a fun Italian deli). It got a twee French cafe (pastries, mostly, I suspect — not my tasse of thé). It got a whole little outdoor food court of fast food joints, but hey — wraps and burgers are somebody's can of SoBe, I suppose. It got a frisky fish restaurant, sorta fusion-y, to replace one of those dreary salad bar lunch emporiums populated by disheartened office workers. There's even a very good, once-a-week farmers market.
Meanwhile, the rich mall shut down its food court. Too tacky, I guess, although Cranky and I used to happily go there for sushi, Korean dishes and bottles of beer, which we would enjoy at the outdoor tables. There are still places to eat at the rich mall, and I'm going to name one: The Cheesecake Factory. (Shriek!) And there's a hot dog stand.
I am perplexed. Is food slummy? Did the rich mall kick out the eateries because eating is incompatible with Bailey Banks & Biddle?
I suspect they ousted the food court to put in a higher rent-paying tenant.
So on the other side of the freeway, the poor mall is now looking fairly swank, with an influx of good stores, my favorite of which is The Container Store (but that's just me; many of the other places are fancy, and there's a Sur La Table). The mall is busy, happy, rescued.
There's a moral in this story.
And there's a PS. The "poor mall" is now home to P.F. Chang's Chinese Bistro, a totally fake, sort of American-delicious restaurant so large it almost echoes. Nice looking; part of a chain. But it has the stink of sadness — deserted after lunch hour; waitstaff forced to act as bussers. We brought home some of our leftover hot and sour soup; not bad but not great. We'll see where this goes.

To Everything There Is a Season (turn, turn, turn)

We're entering a mini heat spell in my neighborhood in the next few days. It's warm now, in fact, but we might go up to the 80s.
Still, I gotta run this photo now. It was cool and gray in the past weeks, and we got a hankering for chicken pot pie.
We are fortunate to have a seller of spit-roasted chickens at our farmers market. The chickens are local, beautifully herbed, and already cooked by the time the market opens in the morning. (The vendor must be like a bakery, getting up in the middle of the night to prepare the day's wares. Imagine driving this truck of hot birds down the highway.)
One of the first things we did (OK, actually sandwich first, with still-warm meat) was to strip the meat off the carcass, set it aside, and make a slow simmer of the bones for a couple of hours. The already-present herbs were a present, already.
Now, I'm not going to get too 'splainy on you, because I made this pot pie without a recipe (last time I used a pot pie recipe I got a putz pie). I made a white sauce, with a good gulp of the chicken stock and a drizzle of milk.
Cut up some carrots and onions; sauteed them in oil? butter? Forgot. Tossed in a handful of green peas.
When you buy these roasted chickens, you have the option of getting some cooked potatoes; the spit rods are above a holding tank of taters that lie there, getting rained on by chicken grease. Heaven.
So I cut up some of them, too. Didn't even bother with mushrooms.
Here's the easy part: Throw the vegetables into the white sauce, then stir in rough cubes of cooked chicken.
Top it with a crust (this was a frozen puff pastry), made into the shape of your perfect two-person baking dish.
Bake, half-hour.
That's supposed to be a heart on top.

Old's Cool

The New York Times republishes antique recipes from time to time.
Last Sunday's was a version, 1948, of Green Goddess Salad.
This is not really something I would seek out, but I was captivated. And we just happened to have all the ingredients in the house. Oh, and I love all those flavors.
A couple of my friends run Foreign Cinema, an innovative restaurant in San Francisco. Before they bought the place, they had been restaurant consultants, and taught a Fisherman's Wharf restaurant how to upgrade its menu. One of the things they did was to modernize the Crab Louis.
But they did not nix the iceberg lettuce. "You want that watery crunch," said Gayle Pirie. How smart.
Sometimes old-fashioned is better.
Back to the Green Goddess Salad.
It worked. Crisp and very umami. Perhaps too much vinegar (but sheesh, who knows how acidic your vinegar is going to be, the recipe writer or you? Oh, pooh; I should have known.).
Romaine lettuce, to begin with. Then anchovies, mayonnaise (store-bought!), Worcestershire sauce, garlic and much more. My fingers still smell evil.

If You Like Truffles, You'll Love This Cheese

A little over a week ago, our local paper ran a story about an imported French Camembert. You might enjoy reading it, but here's the gist: The U.S. forbids imported raw-milk cheeses less than 60 days old. Camembert does not have a 60-day shelf life. Pasteurized Camemberts aren't very good.
So, cheese affineur Hervé Mons persuaded a French producer to step up to the cheese plate and knock one out of the park. And the resulting (pasteurized) Camembert is only available (in this country) at Whole Foods.
Cranky went to Whole Foods three times, and each time, the Camembert was sold out. I mean, deliveries came in, and customers simply scarfed them up.
Finally, after leaving his name with the cheese department, Cranky scored a box (it comes in a cute, flimsy wooden box). We let it sit in the fridge, double wrapped (because it's STANKY) for a couple of days, and finally succumbed to it today.
It could have been riper. It still has about a month left of viability. But the flavor was insane. It will probably only get better.
Do you want to try this cheese?
Only if you like the taste of gymnasium. Halothane. Feet. Neck-snapping swamp funk.
Ohgod, it was good.
OK, here's the funny upshot. The story in the Chronicle caused such a stampede that Hervé Mons flew to the Bay Area for a visit to Whole Foods. Or maybe he was already planning to visit, but such a coincidence.
Yup, a vice president of Whole Foods (they have a lot) lives in my town — I think — and he escorted M. Mons through the store for a cameo appearance.
I really hope nobody took his picture and said, "Say cheese."

Gratificational Burp Breath

Oh, big deal. Somebody's lunch.
Yepth, an impromptu casserole of cute, twisted noodles, homegrown broccoli florets, and a good grating of Gruyère cheese. Some butter to help it all stir through.
But here's the deal. We have a jar of truffle salt (Williams-Sonoma will happily provide you with some for a generous fee). And we thought: Would that taste good on this silly, homely bake?
We thought it would, but we decided to wait until it was cooked, and then make up our minds.
By the time the casserole came out of the oven, though, we realized we had created the flavor of truffle. It's in the cheese, it's in the broccoli, it's even in the pasta. We baked a dish of truffle flavor. Chemical synergy.
Did we put truffle salt on it?
Hell yes.

O!

art credit to ilovetypography.com

Change We Can (Eat) (Believe In)

I almost couldn't leave the house and vote today. Too freaked. Visibly stressed, in fact.
I figured California was all sewn up for Obama, anyway.
But then Cranky reminded me how important my vote on Prop 8 would be, and I combed my hair. Put on a shirt. Went to the Nazarene home where the polling booths were. (Nice people!)
Gosh, what a crowd. Last time I voted there, we were the only two people. This time, we could hardly find a place to park.
HOPE.
And then, on the way home, we stopped by a Chinese restaurant we've been meaning to check out. But. It had a new name! A new canvas sign outside.
Still, we went in and ordered food... and they told us we were their first customers.
Of the day?
No, of the restaurant. They just started, today!
I have never been a first customer, anywhere.
The food was OK. Good enough. I'm glad I went and voted, for onion cake, and for Obama.

Help Me Out Here, People

Four years ago, I voted to unseat George W. Bush. My husband and I visited our polling station in the rumpus room of a Catholic church (ahem, separation, anyone?).
And then, heartened but frightened, we went to Caffe Trieste in Sausalito to knock back a couple glasses of plonk.
An old friend spotted us there, and chided us for our early imbibitions. (I know. It's cromulent.)
We finally went home, still heartened but frightened, and followed exit polls on the Netz. Hopeful! Amazing.
Then came Ohio, and... disaster. Bush thought he had a mandate. He thought he had political capital! On the narrowest of wins.
But yeah, he won. Somehow.
My comfort comes from knowing he will not win again tomorrow.
My fear... Well, let's not go there.
Help me out here, people. Vote to end the madness.
I'll be at Caffe Trieste if you need me.

I Say Ribollita, You Say Whatev

In Marin County, the best Italian restaurant we've got engages in an autumn ribollita frenzy. Kinda like an annual festival, the place dishes out this Tuscan stew, what I would describe as minestrone with bread in it, with molto bravado.
OK, you've guessed correctly that I'm not Italian.
In fact, I may have bastardized this dish beyond repair, but it was molto, molto delicious.
We started with some leftovers that basically amounted to minestrone "un-soup," because it wasn't liquid.
We added them to a pot of vegetables: the world's best little Falcon beans (look 'em up, they're hella cute), tomatoes, zukes, onions... like that. Fresh oregano (come on!). Oh, and some divine veggie broth.
So that became soup, although not very soupy.
Then we poured it over dried bread chunks, which just basically devoured all the remaining liquidness.
We were left with bowls of seriously tasty, um, food! Grated Parmesan on top, or else it would have been vegan.
I think I will always toss bread into my soup from now on.
Wait. I already do.