She Has Root Beer in Her Veins

This is our little Manny Jack, Bartlett. I've thought of lots of names that might be more appropriate: Pogo Stick. Helicopter. Voom Voom.
I have never had such an active dog. Thank goodness our fenced backyard is sufficient for her to run in, at least twice a day. She's in great shape, so it's working. And after her runs, she usually conks out for an hour.
What I would really like is more awake, calm time. Hah.
And yet today, she perched on the floor cushions in the living room, staring out the window at the flora and fauna. But that was total independence. Which I applaud.
Coming up on eight months in April. She's still a puppy.

Three Hour Breakfast

No, we didn't eat for three hours. Darn brown rice needed to cook for two and a half (plus prep work, so not really three hours, but sounds dramatic).
This Massa Organics brown rice always cooks tender in about an hour. But today we gussied up the liquid with about a cup of our own fresh-squeezed orange juice and a little scoop of pure coconut ice cream, made from coconut milk. And added a handful of chopped prunes from the backyard green gage plum tree.
I guess that combo messed up the rice's absorption capability. Also, and we didn't even think of this, the prunes sucked up an awful lot of liquid themselves (and came out velvety sweet).
Verdict: Very Good. Probably gonna have to try this again, but with a clearly different method. I think we'll cook the rice first, then add the goodies and let it go a while longer. Maybe it will be One and a Half Hour Breakfast.

Breakfasto de Nosotros, Gringo Style

It's nothing special, but it amazed me that we had everything in the house to make huevos rancheros for a weekend brunch. I don't know if there is a strict formula for the dish, so we wung it, based on memories of restaurant meals. You might find it imperfect in presentation.
You would probably like it anyway.
I won't apologize for having deli-counter Spanish rice and prepared black beans in the fridge; it was an emergency (of yore; there were leftovers).
The salsa is likewise store-bought, perfectly flavored but made with tomatoes imported from the moon.
Closer to home, the organic avocado is from somewhere in California. The cilantro is local, as are the red onion and the eggs. Corn tortillas? Local company; don't know the provenance of their grain.
It came together really fast. No fusty, clumpy mise-en-place excruciation. Well, a little. Fast excruciation.
Languid consumption, however. I ate until my food got cold, and then kept eating.

Seasonal, Local, Deliciounal

I talked about eating raw sorrel, in a salad, in my last post. I'm still not dead, so I guess I'll keep eating sorrel raw. It's crisp, tender, tangy. I love it in soup, but this is my new thang.
Kevin left a comment suggesting sorrel pesto, with fish.
That sounded great! I've been hankering for fish (for some reason, spring does that to me). Cranky has been hankying for fish for a while, too.
Today, Cranky returned home from his matinal perambulations (coffee, paper, store) and told me the fish guy he likes at our local market recommended today's fresh catch of San Francisco's historied local pescato, petrale sole. A nice, thick fillet of gentle, tasty white flatfish (yeah, the kind with both eyes on one side, but remember, these were uncreepy fillets).*
I said, "Why didn't you get some?"
He jumped! This market, by the way, is only a few hundred yards from our house, so a return trip was a mere carbon toeprint.
I've been very vague about appetite for some time, and only now do I feel the tide is turning. Fish? For a formerly unhungry person? The tide is in!
Well, it happens both Cranky and I had been dreaming about Kevin's pesto. That was a powerful appetizer.
I pulled several sorrel leaves and pounded them in the mortar with raw cashews, minced garlic, grated Parmesan, and good glugs of good olive oil. Victory! You might think handmade pesto is a chore, but the darned blender couldn't be bothered to pulverize the ingredients, and I was happy with my results. Me. Little skimpy-arms me.
Verdict: Gonna do this again. Saved some left over fish and pesto for fish tacos. I cleaned my plate.

*Sadly, most commercial petrale sole is caught by trawl, which can result in "bycatch," a euphemism for "stuff we're just gonna whack and throw back in." Trawling is also hard on the ocean bottom. The Pacific population is stable, and the fish is yummy and tender. What should I do?

Sing, Spring, Zing

A few years ago, my pal Kudzu suggested I plant sorrel in a pot. If planted in the ground, she warned, it would run amok. Amazingly, the darn stuff keeps renewing itself, and I've had a pot of sorrel leaves now for some time.
But you can't just look at it appreciatively. You have to eat it.
I picked some to eat raw, in a salad. I hadn't made a meal of raw sorrel before, but it was tasty and I didn't die.
Cranky was in on this. We blended the sorrel with some Little Gem lettuce, pepper cress, mandolined radishes and mandolined fennel bulb. When you shave radishes, et al., that thinly, you are "making lettuce." No chunky chunks in this beautiful dish.
Knowing that sorrel leaves taste sour, I decided not to use any vinegar or lemon in the dressing. I envisioned myself drizzling olive oil over the salad, and asked my brain what would go with that. Honey. A drizzle of honey. (Salt and pepper, too, yes?)
I think I love my brain. Good call.

This Was Not HERE Yesterday

The pear tree is in unfurl pageantry, all in one day. Today. I swear, I could stand there and watch the blossoms open, the way you can see bamboo grow. Since I took this picture this morning, there are now dozens more flowers.
The plum tree is simultaneously going bonkers, with similar white blooms.
Spring is so irrepressible, the pepper cress we were keeping in the fridge went into flower. In the fridge, in the dark.
I love Mother Nature.

Day After St. Paddy's

It's a lilac bouquet. The ancient bush, planted by the original owners of this home, is a springtime reliable. The daffodils have already faded. The pear tree is enceinte with blooms-to-be.
I love this time of year. We are weeding, getting ready to plant. The rain has ended, and the seven-month-old puppy has free range in the yard. (She eats oranges that fall off the tree!)
I did want to mention yesterday's St. Pat's supper. Too dark to get a photo, and... brown food.
We braised a lamb shank in Harp beer with a jigger of Jameson. Three hours, in a low oven, with carrots and onions. It was outstanding, and there are hella leftovers.
Oh, you think we forgot the traditional Irish potatoes? No, we made colcannon, with savoy cabbage and scallion. We happened upon some new-to-us goat's milk butter, made in Turlock (which is within the 100-mile zone). OMG. That butter is BUCK. It's expensive, but it's the best mouthful you ever had.

Soup Is My Thang

I love soup, and I love making soup.
Cranky is less avid. He has always thought soup wasn't real food. He needed chunks, knives, texture.
That didn't stop me. I've been making soups ever since ever, and I wasn't going to stop.
Guess what. Cranky fell in love with soup. Over time, admittedly. I would have to make him lumpy soups to persuade him he was really eating. Even so, I continued to make my smooth soups, and he happily consumed them, usually with a slab of bread.
Today, he ate this beautiful cream of asparagus soup without any bread at all. The soup was so nourishing (made with silken tofu as well as a few glugs of cream), that we didn't feel the need for embellishments. It was filling.
Spring-tasting, with a little dill, shallot, white pepper, salt, and robust vegetable stock.
Oh. And Cranky MADE this soup.
He is still going around the house snapping his fingers, he's so proud.

Take a Leek...

Leek and Potato Soup never had it so good.
Well, I never had it so good.
I got the idea from a blogger somewhere, maybe on Tastespotting (and I TRIED to refind it; sorry) to roast the vegetables before you blend them with the vegetable stock and cream.
This is not your mother's vichyssoise. It is muscular, almost meaty, and staunchly American. Think of Hemingway. If he would eat a creamed vegetable soup.
The roasting of the vegetables brought out a magic flavor. We tossed in one tubule of green garlic with the leeks and potatoes (all chopped, salted and peppered, tossed with oil, and spread on a baking pan). Green garlic separates into sheets when it's cut, and the sheets cook faster than potatoes and leeks. Fine! As long as you stop at crispy brown and don't accelerate into "stuck-to-the-pan black." About 375ºF for 20-30 minutes; monitor it. When the vegetables are finished, toss on some greens. The original recipe used arugula; I used pepper cress. Just a tiny handful. Cook for a minute, but pull before the leaves dry out.
The lovely vegetables go into the blender with some homemade vegetable stock in a proportion which pleases the cook, knowing that she will be adding sybaritic glugs of cream in a minute. Blend, hard! Faster, pussycat!
Pour the soup into a pot and gently heat, tasting for seasoning. I added a little salt.
I might have put the resulting puree through the tamis, but the flavors are so rugged I thought it would be silly to screen out the texture. Manly, natural lumps!
Of course, the color is tawny. All those burned corners from the oven. In this soup, the green garlic kind of overpowered the leeks (six small leeks to one short length of green garlic), and the green garlic had collected the most burny flavor and color.
Flavor: I kept getting bacon. I think roasted green garlic = vegetable bacon.
Cranky got chanterelle. Nice! We saved a bundle there.

So. Damn. Good.

I was introduced to hot dogs wrapped in tortillas last year.
What a stupid, simple idea. And nothing could be better. Really, addictively yummy.
Then I went on a self-imposed wheat-products vacation for six months. There are teff tortillas, and probably other non-gluten ones, but the texture is not as familiar, not as comforting. So I said goodbye to my dogs.
Until I got the all-clear on gluten. Go ahead! Eat it! You're safe!
I did a little binge last week on all things tortilla: burritos and hot dogs. I guess I had a lot of tortillas.
This week my gut is telling me to knock it off, and I am sadly complying. It was nice while it lasted, but I can't handle the stuff. I felt freedom: any restaurant would be safe, any cracker could be nibbled, that contaminated old toaster could be used again.
But, no.
Anyway. If you can eat tortillas, try this.
The tortilla is smeared with a little mayo and topped with a smidge of fried kimchi (just take it out of the jar and sizzle it in a pan for a minute). Add cooked dog, roll and eat.
Wahhh.

Have This Salad Right Now!

Remember that old Saturday Night Live skit, from the wonder years with Gilda Radner, Laraine Newman and Jane Curtin? They were playing preteens at a slumber party, wondering where babies come from. They were pretty sure you needed certain specifics, like marriage, a man, stuff like that. They had some gross, icky, disgusting ideas about sex. But the details eluded them. One of them said she believed a man could just shout "Have a baby right now!"
Well, that's how I'm feeling about this bowl of mighty fine. There were certain specifics, and you needed a man. Cranky. He invented this potato salad today. It's exactly like many potato salads we make: hard-cooked egg, minced scallion, sliced celery. Throw some vinegar and olive oil on the drained potatoes while they're still warm. After it cools only just a bit, toss in your vegetables and a spoonful of mayonnaise. Salt and pepper.
Here's Cranky's sudden birth of an idea, a labor of love, a delivery of delight. He added a couple sliced, raw carrots. The color was so cheerful, I think we just jolted the earth's axis again and spring is coming early.
The little, polite crunch was a bundle of joy. And the flavor, sweet, just like a powdered infant.
A salad is born!

Simon Le Bon Made My Lunch

Food is very dull chez nous, these days. I like what I'm eating, but I wouldn't really want to share it with you. Leftover fried rice? Bean burrito?
So, here's the classiest thing we've turned out of the kitchen in weeks. "Chinese" beef salad.
There was a really good piece of leftover grilled steak in the freezer, and our fridge is filled with crisp winter greens: baby gem lettuce and pepper cress. The orange tree is loaded with golden globes. For some reason we have three packages of cellophane noodles in the pantry. Add in radishes and scallions, and a brisk dressing made with rice vinegar and sesame oil (and stuff). Toasted cashews on top. Done.
It was so '80s.
I felt like I was having lunch at the Cheesecake Factory.
And I liked it!