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.
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3 comments:
Ok..the detective in me wants to know what restaurant. C.B.?
G.
greg: Mais oui! (The trick is to know how to read a menu... Kinda like your Reno experience.)
If I told you, I'd have to... Oh, wait. No, see, Greg's just helping me protect my exact whereabouts, because, lord knows, there must be scads of anti-food bloggers who want to hunt me down and force-feed me, what, genetically modified soy?
Send me your e-mail (my address is in my profile) and I'll clue you in -- and by the way, it's not that big of a deal!
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