Best Day Ever

Want to know how to throw a party and have it catered for free?
Invite food bloggers.
If you live in a target-rich environment like the Bay Area, it isn't hard.
You can even invite bloggers you haven't met in meatspace yet, and you not only get a yummy potluck dish or two to share, but you will make new friends.
That's what Zoomie did yesterday. She and her hubster opened their fabulous home to a dozen of us vagabonds. She cleared off the dining room table, put out a tub of ice, some plates and utensils, and a gourmet picnic happened. Wine, iced tea, pickles, cookies, bread, cold cuts, salads, smoked ribs. All first rate.
Heck, I didn't even have to take pictures. This one was expertly snapped by the Rev. Biggles, thank you, sir.
(You'll have to check at Meathenge for photos of the... well, the meat. If he posts 'em.)
All the guests got to take home each others' leftovers. And we each got a party favor: a bag of beautifully harvested wild fennel seeds from Zoomie's plant.
Nice.

Pig In Three Fruits

This photo is a couple of months old, but I have to talk about the dish.
It's wild pig.
Which I did not shoot myself; in fact, it's raised in captivity. There must be some logical logic in there; find it!
The pork, which we bought at the local farmers market, is not terribly gamey.
But what I want to brag about is the braising liquid.
I live in the House of Three Fruits. At a certain time of year, all three fruit trees (pear, plum and orange) share a ripe stage.
The pears are late summer; the plums are slightly later summer; the oranges — surprise to me; I thought they were a winter crop — can last on the tree well into July, and the fruit will happily survive in the fridge for another month or so. I've concluded it's a variety called "summer navel." It's the tastiest orange I've ever had, and I'm not even huge on oranges. I love them.
Oh, one more fruit tree factlet: The plums (green gage, I believe) make the best prunes ever. I still have about five little prunes from last summer, and we've already dried bags and bags of them from this year.
So for this braise of "wild" pig, we used pureed pear pulp, squeezed orange juice, a handful of fresh plums and a handful of prunes. A splash of champagne for liquidity. (And then the usual seasonings, alliums, can't remember it all. Tinker to taste. We served it over rice.)
Verdict: Wow. Fruit is the tenderizer. Always cook your wild pig in fruit, if you can.
Ha ha. If you have wild pig.

Leek House

For some reason, Cranky bought an entire nursery's worth of baby leek plants.
We have this guy at the farmers market, very local, who grows seedlings and also sells grown-up food he grows. Cranky wanted some leeklings. The guy said he'd trot some over next week.
Well. Next week, there are six miniature plastic seedling planters at the market, each filled with about 60 baby leeks. Cranky bought the entire load. I don't know why. That's my Cranky.
OK. They went into the ground and started their flourishing behavior; lovely. But they are so densely planted that we're having to thin out several potential leeks, lest they crowd and get stunted. We could transplant them to a bed elsewhere, I suppose, but I'm having trouble thinking we'll need 360 leeks this year. Also, they're hard to pull out of the dirt.
A little detour here: When Cranky went back to buy the leeklings that week, the bearded guy pinched off one of the tender green tops and popped it into his mouth, just to make sure these were the leeks (and not the chives).
You can eat the green tops of leeks?
YES, you can. While they're immature. They resemble chives, but have their own zingy, tangy flavor. Later, when they become grown-up leeks, the tops will have mutated into those flat, fibrous fronds. The ones recipes always tell you not to use.
Here's my thinking. I've got this "farm" in my backyard, and it needs tending. Pruning. Thinning. And Mr. Bearded Guy just proved to me that you can eat the tops of baby leeks.
Well. We also have potatoes in the house. Time to eat them (and maybe try planting the ones that have grown eyes; not sure if I can do that in fall, but I'll experiment). So I thought: Champ!
We "harvested" (or thinned out) several leek tops, tender, hollow, spritely. Chopped them and gave them a quick saute.
Boiled and mashed the potatoes. (Copious amounts of butter, naturally. This is an Irish dish!)
Stirred this fragrant mess together, and did a silly American thing: we broiled it for some color.
The flavor was magnificent.
I doubt many of you will be able to replicate this recipe.
But if you grow baby leeks, please try eating the tender tops while you can.

Aarrrhh!

Aye, matey. Cap'n Cranky and I visited the overflowing treasure chest that is Tyler Florence Mill Valley t'day.
A virtual galleon stuffed with the loot and booty from many lands. Especially the land of Tyler Florence. Selling his own line of Mikasa china. Ahoy!
Shiny trinkets. Avast! Expensive toasters. Off the plank with ye! Stacks of quaint (and jarringly practical) Kerr canning jars, but no pressure canners for sale. Keelhaul the lot!
A quiet, dim room of books, but none by authors (men authors) prettier than Tyler. Yoo hoo, sailor!
And a wall of inexplicable condiments.
Yo ho ho and a bottle of balsamic!
Scurvy rapscallion. Not goin' back.
Yarrr.

Mrs. Toad's Wild Ride

Having unknowingly, inadvertently "reinvented" a foppish Toad in the Hole — with fancy sausage and prunes — I had to find out for myself what the real thing was like.
I thought I had already tried Toad in the Hole at that foolish Renaissance Pleasure Faire, but it was always just a bit of flaky pastry wrapped around a boudin blanc — more of a pig in a blanket; something you could hold in your hand amidst the jesting and the jousting.
I Googled some images of Toad in the Hole to see what to aim for. Yikes. They looked like the photo above: sausages baking in Yorkshire Pudding batter. Nothing more, nothing less. A little frightening in its meatiness.
And what kind of sausages were they? Cranky suspected "bangers," but what's a banger? I thought it was just a cute nickname for sausage in general.
The other day Cranky was searching for English food items at Safeway (they don't carry Marmite in San Rafael, Sixy!), and decided to look for bangers. OMG, voila.
Now, these are not an artisan product, but they are local. We had to try them.
They were good. We ate half the Toad in the Hole last night for supper.
And we ate the other half in bed this morning.
If I turn totally Brit, will I have to have a new name? Seems like all English last names are hyphenated.
I'm thinking Fuchsia Guy-Ritchie.

Salt Is Your Friend

I love to twit Michael Ruhlman. He's written (or co-written) some pretty good books. I've had great success using recipes from his and Brian Polcyn's "Charcuterie."
I hated his most recent one, though.
But I still read his blog.
The other day, Ruhlman wrote about his preference for presalting tomatoes. Salt them a little while before you intend to eat them raw. Can't find it on his blog now, though. Did he pull it?
(UPDATE: I think I found it.)
(UPDATE 2: Anna Banana found a more recent post.)
What the hey. I gave it a try.
And it was great! Especially if the tomatoes are on the sweet side. The salt penetrates the tomato flesh (cut up, yes?) and does its little chemical dance in there.
I'm used to salting tomatoes at the table. It's perfectly good, especially if you love the crunch of Maldon crystals.
But this is good; a new flavor approach.
We have used the presalting technique on two separate lunches of cherry tomatoes, although not on the tomatoes in the picture; godIlovespaghetti; I'm trying it next time.
So, yeah. I recommend it.
Thanks, Ruhlman.

Fruity Kazooty

One small problem with trying to offload your overload of homegrown summer fruit on friends is that some of those friends have fruit trees of their own. So you have to agree to take a bag of theirs, which basically resets your odometer.
You still have just as much fruit.
But it is different fruit, good fruit!
I long ago stopped trying to bake all the fruitage into pastries. I just don't want that much dessert.
And I'm not much of a jam user (besides, think of all the extra sugar that goes into preserves).
I'm still ga-ga over a plum clafoutis we had a few weeks ago, and I think that one needs a do-over.
But I finally realized I just want the fruit plain, for the most part. Not so very much of it, though. Not all the time.
Solution? I roasted the fruit. Cleaned, cut up, pitted, and layered in buttered baking dishes. At 350º, of course, and for how long? You'll know. Just pull them out when they're the way you like them. I like them not too soggy.
The flavor intensifies. It's like "once-removed" from fresh tree fruit, kind of the way cured salami is once-removed from fresh pork.
I popped half the cooked wedges into freezer bags, and we can enjoy them during the coming gloomy weather.
The other half is in containers in the fridge. We like to nibble on bits of gently roasted pears and peaches and apples (the plums are too gooey; they've got to go into a clafoutis pronto) with bits of baguette, shavings of charcuterie, chunks of cheese.
At last. The pressure is off.

Local, if You Live in Key West

I'm hardly the best person to write about this. I lived in Florida for just three years. Central Florida (shudder).
But I was fortunate enough to have a husband who wrote for the Orlando Sentinel. He took it upon himself to get to the bottom of the Key lime.
A real cult item.
You rarely see them in stores. They don't even grow in Orlando.
But in Key West, everybody grows them in their backyards.
So we went to Key West. (Actually, we went as often as we could. The culture there was much more to our liking than Disney Acres.) Key West is the last of a chain of islands, connected by a causeway, leading southwest from Miami. Ninety miles from Cuba.
The newspaper photographer accompanying us on this adventure had grandparents living in Key West; they were the descendants of generations of Key Westers. And yes, they had Key limes growing in their backyard. As well as a bird pepper tree. You might have to Google that.
I will briefly stop the narrative here to tell you an anecdote the grandfather liked to repeat. "You ever get up to the States much?" "No, I get the shakes around Key Largo."
We learned lots of Key lime lore from the Pinders, but my favorite item was a condiment called Old Sour.
Old Sour is a blend of Key lime juice, salt, and a fresh chili pepper, ideally a bird pepper. Let it sit in the humid, warm air for a day, then refrigerate it. You're supposed to filter it through cheesecloth, but I hate filtering off the goodies. Even though I just bought a tamis. So I never filter it. In the photo, you can see lime sediment settling at the bottom of the bottle. What's so wrong with that?
We recently got a sack of Mexican limes, which are really similar to Key limes. Squeezed them into a bowl. Strained out the seeds. Stirred in the salt. Tossed in a gashed cayenne pepper. This is SO not Key West, but for Northern California, darned close.
This mixture went into a bottle with a spout, an old Kikkoman bottle. Tabasco bottles work well, too.
It has been sitting out for a day, but since we don't have tropical weather here, I think I'll let it go another day before I pop it into the fridge. Already the sharp smell of the limes has softened, sweetened. No kick from the cayenne yet, but we've got time.
So, what do you do with Old Sour? My best memory at the Pinders' house was a bowl of fresh-caught fish served with a side of grits, splashing around in some of the fish-poaching liquid. Onions, bay leaf, like that. And a great shot of Old Sour.
When it was time for us to say goodbye, Mr. Pinder slapped a precious bottle of Old Sour into Cranky's hand, like a secret handshake. A private, special, homemade gift from an old-time Conch.
It was.

I Found the Square Plate Store

A couple of months ago, I was trying to locate a tamis. Sur la Table was no help ("And what is a tamis?"). I went online and somehow came up with a store in San Francisco, previously unknown to me.
The store, called Kamei, is in San Francisco's "other" Chinatown, the Richmond. It seemed unlikely I'd find a tamis there.
And that's where the story languished, until yesterday.
We had business in the neighborhood, and managed to find a parking spot right across the street from Kamei.
Horrors, it looked like the "Everything's-a-Dollar" store. Stacks of plastic bins outside on the sidewalk, white and gleaming, yes, but unpromising.
Still, we went inside.
First thing we noticed was a rack of strainers. But no tamis. "We're in the wrong place," I said to Cranky.
We prowled up the length of one whole aisle, where strainers and colanders and spiders and sieves seemed to be arranged in taxonomic order: increasingly "tamis-like," but no seegar.
Then we rounded the end of the aisle, and bumped into a stack of them, all sizes. A stack! I picked out one I liked, and... the price tag said "$5.50". I am dead serious.
OK, my pulse racing, I tore up one aisle and down another, just to see what else this store sells.
Plates (square plates!). Egg timers. Gadgets. Sake sets. Cutting boards (giant cutting boards if you want). Charming Asian pottery. Knives. Rice cookers. Bento boxes.
Forgive me, I don't know what else is offered because it was simply too exciting and overwhelming.
And the prices! Verrrrry reasonable. No, I'll just say it. Really inexpensive.
We had to scamper off to our appointment, but I am SO going back.

Fennely Felony

Waldork Salad

Don't you hate Waldorf Salad? It's so paleolithic. (It is. The original recipe is over a hundred years old.)
And it's drenched in mayonnaise.
Now, I like mayonnaise but I can't face a plate of apple chunks gooshing around in white... um, goo.
But we had apples, lovely Gravenstein apples from ChileBrown's tree. And we had a fresh bag of walnuts.
We figured "apples and walnuts, that's pretty much the backbone of Waldorf Salad. Let's take this fusty antique dish to infinity and beyond!"
Without looking at a cookbook, we just went with a sort of natural flow.
A little chopped up heart of Romaine lettuce. The apples and walnuts. Hey, a chopped up pear or two, too.
Now here's where it balanced out into ideal-ness. Some small chunks of blue cheese. And a dressing made from pear-apple cider vinegar, plus a dash of fruity olive oil. (Salt, pepper, natch.)
It's a 21st century retooling of a gooshy old relic.

Awesome photo by Cranky. I know, I should just GIVE him this blog.

Pearfection

The tree has been stripped bare.
This, not Labor Day, marks the true end of summer, Chez Crumb.
Last year the pear tree produced so much fruit, we hosted a party and forced all our guests to take home bags of pears.
This year, not so scary. Early on, I trimmed out baby fruits so there wouldn't be so much crowding.
When the survivors matured, we pulled off plump pears and snuck them over to the farmers market, where we'd give them to our favorite farmers and artisans.
We gave sacks of pears to friends. Including a pair of pear friends who brewed up a most insane pear brandy! I had my first sip of this year's vintage last night, and it's crisp, fresh, pearish. Insane. Must consume quickly, while the nectar is sparkling.
I had plans to concoct 10 recipes for pear soup, but only got around to three of them.
I will sadly confess that I am not a total pear aficionado, but I feel that we did honors to our tree this year.
And today, Cranky climbed that creaky ladder, with me holding on, and he pulled down the remainder of the crop.
We saved a few specimens in the fridge for, well, just eating out of hand. Which we should have done much more of.
There are about three or four pears up high he couldn't reach. Fine. I love it that the birdies can come and snack.

Clown Barf

Cranky made his second batch of crankers the other day. He was brave enough to completely revamp the recipe. Instead of sesame and poppy seeds, he flavored these with grated dry Jack cheese, a little mustard and some garlic. Tender, tasty. Mm. They were perfect with the eggplant puree from our garden, amped up with strained yogurt, dill, tomato paste (from the freezer) and oh, gosh, whatever else. Mm.
But Cranky got a good idea just as he was approaching the final quarter of the cracker dough. Instead of cutting out individual rounds, he rolled out the entire blob and baked it as a whole, huge disk.
Then he covered it with a melange of cooked potatoes, tomatoes, herbs and ricotta cheese. Popped it back into the oven for a bit of heating up.
It was a snapping good pizza!
We were sorry the topping looked like what my friend Heather calls "clown barf" (actually, her clown barf is prettier, but what a cool description).
The trick is the snappy cracker crust. Take that, Krusty.