Apples and Ice Cream

Three Perfect Things

2008-05-16T18:55:00.000-07:00

Preface
This is not really a food post.

Introduction
Today I went walking on the beach past Davenport and I found three perfect things:

Chapter 1
The first was a flat round stone. It looked black when it was wet but then it dried in my hands to a dusty gray. It is extremely circular, which made it stand out. It feels nice to hold and pat back and forth between your palms. It has such a nice feel that your fingers itch to skip it across water, but if you did that you couldn't hold it any more, and plus you're not that good at skipping rocks anyway.

Chapter 2
The second was a crab claw. It is complete (as much as any part divorced from its body can be) and undamaged and the joints are still working. You can pinch things with it, if you felt like it, and bend it around and make it gesticulate. There is no meat inside but it smells peculiar and pungent. The pincers are black, like they've been dipped in ink, and the rest is a lovely beige that merges with salmon-pink. There are charming brown speckles all over.

Chapter 3
The third was a small shiny white fleck of shell, I think from abalone but I can't be sure. It has the iridescent shimmer of mother of pearl. Something about the size and shape of this water-smoothed bit of shell makes you want to put it in your mouth and suck it like a lozenge. One side is completely smooth; the other has indentations that look like the paths worms make through apples and other fruits. Ocean worms? This merits further research.

Conclusion
I'm not sure why I find these things so pleasurable, but I do know that they are more pleasurable together, removed from the too-full beach and the other, less perfect, shells and stones and claws.

Raw Food = Raw Deal

2008-05-15T20:51:00.001-07:00

I admit it - I'm a sucker for health fads. I've read every diet book that has every been published, including (but not limited to) The Zone, Dr. Atkin's New Diet Revolution, French Women Don't Get Fat, The Okinawa Diet, Sugar Busters, The Best Life Diet, The Paleolithic Diet, Suzanne Somers' Get Skinny on Fabulous Food, Protein Power, and who knows how many more. Not that I actually practice what these books preach; to do so would be physically impossible, since they all preach something slightly different. But I like to stay informed, and it's good to throw a little healthy reading in with the Barefoot Contessa library and the Dean and Deluca cookbook, both of which tend to pad the waistline even as they please the palate.

One fad I haven't tried has been the raw food diet. I'm a cook, for crying out loud. I like to cook things. Futzing around with sprouts and blenders holds no appeal and even less glamor. I've always thought vegans looked a little gray around the gills; now imagine no eggs, no dairy, no HEAT.

But I live in Santa Cruz, where everyone does yoga, everyone drinks Kombucha, and raw food is on display at every supermarket. So I tried some spring rolls and a slice of blueberry "cheesecake" from La Vie, downtown Santa Cruz's go-to spot if you're into that sort of thing. I can't say that I am. At roughly 8 bucks, the spring rolls are the opposite of a steal, especially when you consider that they're made of zucchini, beets, carrots, and cucumber. That's it. Seriously. But the point isn't to be full, is it - if that were the case, I'd stroll on down to the El Palomar Taco Bar and swoop two snapper tacos for 6 bucks, which would give me the opportunity to get my salsa fix, becuase I swear their salsa is laced with crack. You can't stop eating it.

But I digress. The point is not to be satiated, but rather to be healthy, right? I suppose. I can't even begin to delve into the kinds of class issues this kind of eating entails; I would probably still be hungry if I didn't happen to have a terrible stomachache.

I think I'm allergic to raw food. I'm also $16 poorer than I was twenty minutes ago. Hurrah.

I want a hamburger.

2008-05-10T19:04:00.000-07:00

This may sound strange. As a general rule, I don't eat hamburgers. I could count on one hand, for instance, the hamburgers I've eaten in the past ten years. There was the time I was driving down from Tahoe after a girls' weekend with a carful of my then-boyfriend's female relatives. We stopped at In-N-Out, a place I've eaten only once or twice (and I'm from California. I know, I know.) I ordered a hamburger. Pretty simple, right? Little did I know that you're supposed to order a cheeseburger, and a hamburger sans cheese is actually a disgusting foodstuff not worth consuming. At least, that's what the revolted looks on the faces of the Clan told me: "No cheese? REALLY? EW! WHY NOT???" (Seriously? Is cheese that important? I don't think you can even taste the cheese on a hamburger - there are so many other flavors going on - but clearly I'm not an expert. Clearly.)

I had been living my life under the woeful misapprehension that ordering a hamburger was a simple proposition; I didn't understand that hamburger eaters are a part of a particular, if not particularly exclusive, subculture. The way you eat your hamburger (or don't) can align you with (or exclude you from) a group of people, potential in-laws included.

So I don't eat hamburgers. I know some may find this a sacrilege. For some, hamburgers are a food group entirely their own, a basic form of sustenance meant to be consumed, along with other meat-and-bread combinations, as often as possible. Not me. Too many apples and ice cream to be had, I suppose. I guess I think it's strange that hamburgers, along with so many other American staples, have never really entered my personal food lexicon. Part of it, I think, has to do with being a girl, and a health-conscious one to boot. The other part has to do with spending formative years in boarding school and in France, where hamburgers were few and far between (Quick and MacDo notwithstanding). And then I became a foodie. Why order a hamburger when there are boquerones and ceviche and tartare and duck to be sampled?

The bigger question, at least right now, is this: so why do I want a hamburger now? We're talking about an honest-to-goodness, full-bore, legitimate craving. It's not for a fast food hamburger, either, which are the only hamburgers I've eaten in recent memory. I want to sink my teeth into an inch-thick patty, rare and juicy, on a thick, squishy bun. I want sauteed onions and blue cheese on top, and I want a pile of shoestring fries on the side. And ketchup.

This is so weird. I don't even know where to get such a thing. I may have to make it myself.

To be continued...

Home again home again

2008-03-15T08:23:00.001-07:00

My but it's been a while.

I've just returned from a month in India, where the air is full of spices, although as I sit here typing in the early Santa Cruz morning (hello jet lag), it seems almost like a dream. There's too much to say about India, a place where splendor and squalor bump elbows, and abject poverty and mind-boggling luxury bump up against each other everywhere you look. So I'll start with food, since this is, after all, a food blog. And because I'm sick and sniffling, I'll start with masala chai, the delectable, spice-heavy cure-all available on every street corner in India.

Chai in India bears little resemblance to the signature drink of the Om generation (Venti soy chai? Come on.) for sale at places like Starbucks. Around three or four in the afternoon, everyone from shopkeepers to cab drivers to barbers takes a break to sip a thimble-sized cup of chai. Workers cluster around chai wallahs, who set up simple stations with a gas burner, milk, tea, and spices, and a handful of glasses. These glasses belong to the chai wallah, so after shelling out your 4 rupees (less than 25 cents), you stand and sip your piping hot chai on the sidewalk, then return it to the stand. Businesses send employees with big thermoses, which they fill to the brim with the tea.

The drink itself is hot enough to blister your tongue, fragrant with cardamom, spicy as hell, and as sweet as you can imagine. Its restorative effects are not to be dismissed; this morning I made some for myself and am already feeling better. We took a cooking class in Udaipur where we learned to make chai and even bought some of our instructor's homemade chai masala, a nose-tingling and sinus-clearing blend of green cardamom, black pepper, cinnamon, and dried ginger. (To make this at home, combine equal parts of each spice and grind to a fine powder in a spice grinder or the like. Our instructor used 25 grams of each spice and kept the powder in a glass jar in her pantry, where it will keep for several months.)

Here is her recipe. The quantities for both the chai masala and tea are flexible and can be adjusted according to taste.

Masala Chai
Serves 2

In a small saucepan, combine:
1 cup water
1 tsp. chai masala

Bring to a boil. Add:
1 tbsp. Assam tea (Darjeeling or any black tea will work as well)
1 cup milk (she used buffalo milk, but any milk will do, preferably whole)
Sugar to taste (a couple of teaspoons per cup works well)
(optional) 1 tsp. grated fresh ginger, washed and unpeeled

Boil for 2 minutes, then remove from heat, cover, and let steep for an additional 2 minutes. Strain through a fine mesh sieve and drink. It will be extremely hot. To cool, you can attempt the super-high pour of the chai wallah pictured above, or if you're like me, you can drink it immediately and burn your tongue each and every time.

Family dinner.

2008-01-23T16:55:00.000-08:00

My parents came into town on Sunday so that my sister and I could wrap up our visa applications for India. I had the rare opportunity to time my mother, and as it turns out it takes less than thirty seconds from the time she walks in the door to begin cleaning. Unfortunately, the type of cleaning she does at our house is of the huge-project variety rather than the superficial, make-the-house-look-tidy brand. This means that rather than wipe off counters or arrange flowers, my mother pulls all the covers off the sofa and puts them in the washing machine. She also likes to set up a sewing machine on the kitchen table and embark on large clothing-making projects. She feels good because she leaves the house cleaner, technically, than she found it, but it always looks like a huge bomb has gone off when they walk out the door. This may have something to do with their three dogs - when they visit, the people population goes up 66% but the dog population quadruples. It's all very exciting, but this kind of activity makes us very hungry. Where did we want to eat?

We left the sofa cushions to themselves and went out to eat at Soif. Yes, I work there, and have cooked there, but very rarely do I get to eat there. This is a shame, because Soif is one of best, if not THE best, place to get a bite in Santa Cruz. It was one of the best meals we've had as a foursome in recent memory, making up for the La Posta debacle over Thanksgiving (this had nothing to do with the food and everything to do with a healthy dose of sisterly drama. Like a volcano, our relationship has to erupt every so often, wiping out villagers but creating a lovely clean slate). I ordered a flight of riesling in my attempt to like varietal that all wine snobs adore. I must admit, it's growing on me. I've started to crave that mix of shimmering acidity and residual sugar - it's so good! I also had a great glass of Muller-Catoir Scheurebe, a cross between riesling and silvaner. It was a little big for my scallops, but I'm not nearly knowledgeable enough about wine to care about something like that. My scallops were cooked perfectly - seared to a caramelized crust on the outside but rare and silky in the middle - although I'm a little bored of the Brussels sprouts/Dijon mustard sauce combination (but perhaps that's just a product of bopping around Soif too long, because it was actually quite delicious).

Aside from my collection of rieslings, which I gathered around me in a wine fortress, we had a bottle of chardonnay and another of Flowers Pinot Noir, which I think is the finest California pinot I've ever had. It blew my mind, and my dad's too. My sister and my mom both had the gnocchi, and the wine was great with its butter-soaked Chanterelle mushrooms and golden potato-ness. It was also delicious with my dad's steak, although I couldn't quite wrap my mind around the sunchokes that came with it. Criticisms aside, great food and wine is just one part of a great meal. The rest - atmosphere, service, company, conversation - all combine to make something memorable.

I'd say that was one hell of a memorable meal. But we had to sober up before we could get the covers back on those damn couch cushions.

The Silence of the Yams.

2008-01-20T16:38:00.000-08:00

Thanks to a last-minute ticket offer from Tom, I got to see Michael Pollan speak last week at the Capitola Book Cafe. I came toting my copy of The Omnivore's Dilemma (In its pristine, uncracked condition it looked shameful next to Tom's dog-eared copy complete with phone number and "Please Return This Book!!!!" inside the front cover. I hope someday someone brings a copy of one of my books to a signing and it is one half as destroyed.) and picked up a copy of his new book, In Defense of Food. Pollan is a charismatic, engaging speaker, and a funny one to boot. This post's title comes from one of the pun-nier moments of the night when he talked about the deafening assertions of labeled food ("Omega-3s!!!" "Fat free!!!!" "Lowers cholesterol!!!") drowning out the natural goodness of the produce aisle.

Pollan's career straddles the academic world and the "real" one; his books are brilliant and accessible; he teaches at Berkeley but steps outside academia to write about things like the Farm Bill. He has an intellectually challenging career that makes an impact, and I'd say that's exactly what I want. Food writing is all well and good - there's a part of me that wants to bicker over porcinis and portobellas and debate the merits of salted versus unsalted butter - but Pollan proves that food writing goes beyond truffles and saffron, that it can and should try to change the way our world looks.

Come back and marry me, Michael Pollan.

Foie Gras Limerick.

2008-01-12T12:13:00.000-08:00

There was an old gourmand of Crediton
Who ate pâté de foie gras having spread it on
A chocolate biscuit
He boomed 'Hell, I'll risk it!'
His tomb bears the date that he said it on.

From Schott's Food & Drink Miscellany

When it's worth the wait.

2008-01-08T15:31:00.000-08:00

The best place for coffee in Santa Cruz, if you can get beyond the reverential, museum-like atmosphere and slightly sour staff, is Lulu's at the Octagon. (Oooh, and look, Christina Waters agrees with me.) Want a cup of coffee? Select a bean from their menu of over twenty, and they weigh, grind, and brew your selection to order. It's a bit of a change to wait longer for a cup of coffee than an espresso drink, but it's worth it. My cup of Guatemala this morning, brewed in a French press because the electronic press was down, had a pleasing weight and viscosity, a near-chewiness, that I haven't encountered before. I know it's a little strange to talk about coffee in wine-snob terms, but the coffee from Lulu's demands it. It also demands a healthy glug of half-and-half, the only addition to coffee that elevates it beyond its natural state (excluding, perhaps, whipped cream). Black is fine, but you skim milk-ers, you two-cube-ers, you Splenda addicts, you soy aficionados, you are all lovely people I am sure, but you are bad at drinking coffee. Throw your fears of fat and dairy out the window and do a side-by-side, blind tasting. So good, right?

Right.

A note about the food writing in Santa Cruz: so bland! One writer describes the staff at Lulu's as "nice and knowledgeable," and calls the atmosphere "casual and sophisticated." Bah.

On Hemingway, hunger.

2008-01-07T15:31:00.000-08:00

I have always thought of Hemingway as a food writer, so today I pulled out my copy of A Moveable Feast to find the parts that made me hungry when I read them in high school. They abound. Eating runs through the book like a baseline of pleasure, each story tethered by the fundamental ritual of hunger and its satisfaction. And what hunger! The book reinforces the old stereotype that an empty stomach fuels genius. Feast is a memoir of Hemingway's time spent in Paris as a young, struggling, and sometimes starving writer:

"By any standards we were still very poor and I still made such small economies as saying that I had been asked out for lunch and then spending two hours walking in the Luxembourg gardens and coming back to describe the marvelous lunch to my wife. When you are twenty-five and are a natural heavyweight, missing a meal makes you very hungry. But it also sharpens all your perceptions, and I found that many of the people I wrote about had very strong appetites and a great taste and desire for food, and most of them were looking forward to having a drink"(101).

And what does Hemingway eat when his hunger finally gets the best of him? A beer and some potato salad, but he writes it like no other beer and potato salad I've ever read:

"The beer was very cold and wonderful to drink. The pommes a l'huile were firm and marinated and the olive oil delicious. I ground black pepper over the potatoes and moistened the bread in the olive oil. After the first heavy draft of been I drank and ate very slowly. When the pommes a l'huile were gone I ordered another serving and a cervelas. This was a sausage like a heavy, wide frankfurter split in two and covered with a special mustard sauce"(73).

He does not shy away from the verb "to be," simply stating how things are, delivering their taste with the sparing use of adjectives like "wonderful" and "delicious." From Hemingway, these sound both effusive and special. Most importantly, he describes what it is like to eat after being very hungry, the effort of holding oneself back, of eating slowly to make it last. Taste and flavor are not, as many food writers would have it, constants. They are the most variable of variables, as much a product of a specific moment in time, a single eating experience, as they are of the ingredients used. This is why I remember spectacular meals at mediocre restaurants, and why a three-star meal can be spoiled by a sour dining companion.

I can't decide whether to eat lunch or skip it, and write one instead.

Blackout!

2008-01-05T15:14:00.000-08:00

Power outages are inconvenient and scary, especially when the wind whips around the eaves like a banshee and slams sheets of rain against the windows. Fortunately, there is a cure for winter storms and their attendant stresses: the hot toddy. Variations on the drink abound; here's the one that put my waterlogged woes to bed:

In each glass mix the following:

the juice of 1/2 Meyer lemon
a healthy dose of Meyer's Dark Rum (serving size depends on severity of the storm)
1 t. agave syrup (honey is a good substitute)

Fill with hot water. Sprinkle over the top:
pinch cinnamon
pinch freshly grated nutmeg

Stir and enjoy in front of the robust flames of a Duraflame Firelog.

On resolutions.

2008-01-03T21:14:00.000-08:00

Some people make lists of resolutions that resemble the following:
1. Lose weight
2. Quit smoking
3. Quit drinking
4. Join a gym
5. Get a boyfriend
6. Give up [enter any number of things here, including: ice cream, chocolate, one night stands, men who are bad for me, bread, fat, coffee, talking on cell phones in restaurants/while driving/in public (I would like to give my full support to this last {note the many layers of parenthetical remarks})].

Without judging any of these noble projects, my own list of resolutions looks something like this:

1. Make my own butter
2. Cure my own meat
3. Learn to brew beer
4. Finish reading The Wine Bible and finally stop confusing Bordeaux and Burgundy (really embarrassing when you work in a wine shop, but easier to do than you might think).
5. Make kasespaetzle
6. Write every day
7. Make more ice cream
8. Develop a refined palate for riesling
9. Become rich and famous beyond my wildest dreams

Doable, right?

Fleischgeist = genius.

2008-01-02T14:42:00.000-08:00

My sister, cultural lightning rod that she is, delivered into my hands the other day a little slice of brilliance, otherwise known as the Premiere Issue of Meatpaper, "your journal of meat culture." The magazine is guided by "fleischgeist," thus defined by the editors: From the German, Fleisch "meat" + "spirit." Spirit of the meat. From Zeitgeist, "spirit of the times." Ahem.

A little over the top, you say? Intellectual snobbery meets hipster meets slaughterhouse, you think? Perhaps, but after some consideration I decided that's one neologism I can get behind. The world does not need another food magazine with recipes for the busy housewife, but a slim, artsy volume with two pages devoted entirely to a closeup picture of mortadella? How do I subscribe?

I'm a little less enthusiastic about the meat poetry ("Meat marinated in sweat. / Meat stewed in own bile" reminded me a little too much of that wretched pig's tail. Blech.) but the self-portrait in hamburger and the flank steak dress are right up my (slightly creepy) alley. Best of all is the article about the old-school butcher shop in San Francisco started up by three female butchers. Bad ass. The anti-supermarket butchers, they specialize in humanely and locally raised meats and rare, specialty cuts you can't find everywhere else. I sense a pilgrimage to the city in my future.

One small digression before I leave off - caught Anthony Bourdain on the tube eating lungs and goat brains on the street in India. I am SO EXCITED for our upcoming trip there. I can't wait to make myself sick on organ meats and strange curries.

Excess indeed.

2008-01-01T18:25:00.000-08:00

Oh lord.

There was much revelry last night. At 5 pm I realized people would be descending upon the house in a few mere hours and we had nothing to feed them. So off I dashed to Shopper's Corner with decadence as my guiding principle instead of a shopping list. What could I make quickly that would still taste fabulous and celebratory? Into my cart went champagne, smoked salmon, prosciutto, crème fraiche, dill, capers, hummus, olives and olive tapenade, cashews, rosemary, salmon roe, goat cheese, a wedge of Petit Basque, truffle pate, and several loaves of francese bread. Not the cheapest shopping expedition I've ever made, and certainly not the healthiest, but I had the makings for a whole array of delicious crostini. Just slice up the baguette, drizzle a little olive oil, let the toasts crisp up in a hot oven, and then top them with whatever you please. My favorites were goat cheese with olive tapenade, prosciutto and Manchego with a kalamata olive, and smoked salmon, crème fraiche, a little salmon roe, and some dill. Hil picked up some guacamole from El Palomar, and I doctored up the store-bought hummus with lemon juice, salt, cayenne, and cumin, and drizzled some top notch olive oil over the top. It ended up tasting homemade, a new little trick I'm glad I have up my sleeve.

I also got a wild hair and decided that I had to, positively had to, make a batch of lemon bars. I was sick of those Meyer lemons staring balefully up at me from their bowl on the counter, daring me to make something of them. The lemon bars are delicious but turns out people don't really want to eat dessert when there's a night of drinking ahead of them. Let's just say I still have about 95% of them. Now the lemon bars stare at me balefully from their pan, daring me to eat them. I'm not sure if this is an improvement.

My first meal of the new year? A breakfast burrito from Chill Out about the size and weight of my head and 20 oz of the hottest coffee I've ever had in a restaurant. My tongue is still recovering. The burrito was also about 500 degrees and had a curious way of retaining heat. When it came to me, it was too hot to even pick up, and it simply did not cool down. Perhaps its surprising mass had something to do with heat retention - less surface area relative to volume or something like that. I would have been able to explain it better in high school when physics was something I understood. In any event, that sucker refused to cool down, boggling my still-drunken mind and burning my poor long-suffering tongue.

Tomorrow? Carrot sticks and herbal tea, preferably lukewarm. Sheesh.

Promises, promises

2007-12-31T12:53:00.000-08:00

I've had so many things to write about lately; the only thing I'm short on is time. (Thanks to Justin for putting a little fire under my ass.) So let this post be a massive, behemoth, wrap-it-all-up, end-of-year blowout bonanza. What is New Year's Eve for if not excess excess excess?

First, some recent memorable dining experiences:

AVANTI: Had a lovely lunch with Tom the other day. One of the great things about working in restaurants is having free time during the day to go out and have fancy lunches (the downside being very little free time to go out and have fancy dinners. But lunch is cheaper, so let restaurant biz win this round). Avanti is one of the two or three great restaurants in Santa Cruz, with an emphasis on fresh, local, and in-season produce. Soif, the restaurant where I used to cook, and Avanti often feature the same ingredients from the same local farms; eating at the two restaurants is like seeing two paintings by different artists who were using the same palette.

We sat at the bar, in keeping with my sister's and my philosophy that the bar is the best place to sit for parties of two (and when you're flying solo). We were ravenous and fell upon the hunks of bread and olive oil with abandon. The olive oil surprised us with its explosive flavor of freshly crushed olives. The bartender confirmed that they let crushed olives and herbs macerate in the oil before pouring it off and serving it. I thought it a great touch and something I'd like to try at home. Next came bruschetta: thick slabs of grilled bread, lightly charred and smoky. One piece was topped with marinated orange-scented beets, the other with a chiffonade of barely-blanched, bright green kale and a mysterious crumbly white cheese (queso fresco?) tossed with hazelnuts and more of that delicious olive oil.

The main courses shone. I had a crispy striped bass served on a steaming, brothy tower of cannelini beans, tomatoes, artichoke hearts, and carrots. The effect was something like a soup, but fresher. Tom had the clear winner: the Poulet Rouge, a half roast chicken brushed with a subtly sweet, rich, red (naturally) wine-based sauce. I had to keep begging for bites to try to suss out the ingredients; I failed. No matter - the slight sweetness brought out the nutty Parmesan of the risotto and was cut nicely by the watercress salad served alongside. I am never one to order chicken (usually Boresville, the mark of a ho-hum eater), but this was a Great Dish. I have a running list in my head of dishes I know I'll crave when I'm pregnant: this is definitely at the top.

The best thing about it all was the price tag. Even with a great glass of wine a piece, the total bill for the whole experience was somewhere around $50, a smoking deal. The same thing at dinner would have been considerably more spendy. I can't wait to go back, for lunch of course, to try the cheese plate: the five cheeses they had available were carefully selected to create a balanced plate that progressed from a mild, smooth triple-creme to a sharp blue. MMM.

GABRIELLA: My brave dining companion boldly ordered the crispy pig's tail. I egged him on, thinking of Laura Ingalls Wilder fighting her sister for it in "Little House in the Big Woods." I imagined a sweet curly little crisp of a tail, ready to pop in your mouth. Instead, a long, crusty carrot-shaped monster lay across the plate, doused in what tasted like little more than Dijon mustard. It lay there with as much menace as I've seen a foodstuff muster. When we ventured a taste, we discovered that most of the interior was what looked like spinal cord, little pig vertebrae coated in a thick layer of mean, dirty-tasting fat. It coated your mouth and lingered, whispering of barnyard and pig sweat and garbage. Needless to say, this was not a hit, but Archie put on his game face and made a valiant effort. I have rarely seen menu bravery so poorly rewarded.

The rest of the meal was good, but not great. My appetizer was a highlight, little rounds of raw hamachi with cool, creamy avocado and a little zest of citrus. Not reinventing the wheel, but simply delicious. Our fruit tart came with housemade limoncello, which I have loved ever since my summer in Venice, and the tart sang with Meyer lemon, another old favorite.

Speaking of Meyer lemons, I pilfered a skillion of them from our tree in Sacramento. They arenow in a big bowl on the kitchen counter, staring up at me and daring me to make my mom's famous lemon cake. I'm not a cake lover (ice cream is my dessert of choice; see blog title) but there are a few I can't turn down. This is one. The cake's dense, butter-rich crumb is tempered by the tang of lemon, which stars in both the batter and the glaze. When the cake is still warm, we prick the surface with a fork and pour on the glaze so it seeps into every slice. You have to eat it when it's still slightly warm! The combination of warm buttery cake and tart lemon-sugar glaze is simply irresistible, and another food for the Pregnancy Craving List.

Other Food Stories of note: on Christmas my mom made Yorkshire pudding, and I was struck as I always am by how good something so simple can be. What is better than a fluff of dough baked in roast drippings? I sound like Ina Garten, I know, but simple, rich pleasures are where it's at. For dessert I made the Blumderful cake, a recipe that has quickly assumed Classic status with our family. It makes the biggest statement of any cake I've ever baked, but is also a huge pain in the ass. The cake part is relatively simple - an angel food cake made rich with egg yolks. You slice it into three layers and spread freshly whipped and only slightly sweetened cream between each layer and all around the outside. The comes the crunch: a crispy yet melt-in-your-mouth coffee flavored candy that you have to make yourself. This is tricky. You must carefully caramelize sugar with corn syrup, coffee, and vanilla, making sure to heat the mixture to EXACTLY 300-310 degrees. When the caramel is the right temperature, you stir in baking powder (I know, weird, right?), which causes the whole mess to puff up in a golden brown explosion. You stir madly to incorporate the powder, trying to keep your cool as the mixture takes on a life of its own. Quickly, you pull the pan off the stove and pour out the froth of candy onto an ungreased baking sheet. There it spreads out and cools; once it's hard, you have at it with a rolling pin or meat pounder and shatter it into a million crunchy little pieces. This you pour over the top of the cake and smoosh into the sides, where the whipped cream holds it in place. You must serve the cake within an hour, max, of adding the candy: upon contact with the cream, it begins to melt into a gooey caramel. This is delicious, but left too long and the cake collapses in a sodden mass. Temperamental!!!

It's a delicious cake, but that goddamned candy. I had to make it THREE times, which my mom thought was HILARIOUS. If you heat it too much, it burns and fills the kitchen with an acrid, relentless smoke. Too little, and your candy is flaccid and pale like taffy. The third time around, my mom supervised, which was both humbling (I'm a cook!!!) and comforting (I love my mom). The third time was a charm, and the cake looked like a lovely tower of caramel and cream, just as it should. Thanks mom.

PHEW! Have you made it this far, dear readers, if in fact you do exist? Let me know.

Here's to 2007, a year of endings, beginnings, and many great meals. And here's to 2008, which I hope holds more of the same. Love to you all.

A word about the title

2007-12-30T12:58:00.000-08:00

Apples and ice cream happen to be two of my favorite foods. I have to be true to my roots here; there can be no rewriting of history. Sure, I love mussels and leeks and ceviche and steak tartare and all manner of adult and challenging flavors. But I have always loved apples. When I was little I'd sometimes eat three or four a day (clearly, I have never fallen for the empty promises of moderation). Nerd that I was, I spent a lot of my childhood reading, and apples are a great reading snack - you can eat them with one hand, they don't require utensils, and they make relatively little mess. My parents might beg to differ on that last, though. There has always been the problem of what to do with the core, and sometimes I would forget to dispose of it altogether. This habit has been hard to break, even as I have gotten older. My father has often stumbled on a dessicated core in one of my many reading nooks and taken this as prime evidence that I was home from school.

Ice cream has also been an old standby. My father and I were filling out a questionnaire at the gym over Thanksgiving, and one of the questions was "What is your favorite food?" I drew a blank and asked my dad. He didn't even pause before he said "ice cream." I admit, I judge people who don't care for it, and judge them harshly. People who say vanilla is their favorite flavor lose much in my estimation as well. Vanilla? Seriously? That's the best you can do? I imagine vanilla-lovers as quiet, meek types with no real opinions and a lot of empty space where their personality is supposed to be. What about fresh mint chip? Coffee? Hazelnut? Dulce de leche? Blackberry sorbet? Peanut butter cup? Come on! Live a little!

Lately I have taken to making my own ice cream, and I admit, vanilla has earned more of my respect. At Soif I would scrape the seeds of three whole vanilla beans and scald them with milk and cream before tempering in the yolks of twelve, yes 12, eggs. This I would heat carefully into a thick, golden, vanilla-flecked custard. Once cooled, I'd churn it into a mellow, silken ice cream that, I confess, even I liked. It was especially good on top of our apple crisp or served alongside our roasted figs in vanilla syrup.

But I digress! The point of this whole post was to say that while, yes, I do love apples and ice cream, there is a third food that I think might be my favorite. I'm not sure it counts as a food, actually, but without it I think I might put fork and knife down forever and lead a life of monastic asceticism. SALT. Definitely my favorite element of eating. Without salt, food would be bland bland bland, flavors would disappear into each other and never resonate on the palate. Salt changes everything! And there are almost as many flavors of salt as there are flavors of ice cream. Kosher salt is my cooking staple, sea salt lives on my table, and I simply love sprinkling bug crunchy crystals of Maldon sea salt on top of everything (thanks to Old Beks for that one). Vinegar is a close second to salt: together and in the right proportion, salt and acid take food from everyday to exceptional.

And this is the gospel according to me.

Ode to the Service Industry

2007-12-14T10:17:00.000-08:00

There are few aspects of the restaurant business that are foreign to me. I have worked as a prep cook, pantry cook, and server in small family-owned places and for large restaurant groups. I have opened a restaurant (and will never do that again unless Thomas Keller calls me personally and offers me a skillion dollars a day), and I've worked for restaurants that have no business being open. Whether you work front of the house or in the kitchen, restaurants are sticky places. They suck you in. You think you're going to quit because your manager is a semi-psychotic beast and you are sick of coming home smelling like rotten food scraps. You can't mix another batch of peanut dressing, you'll scream if you have to wear those nasty work clogs one more time, no one will cover your shift, you have to work on New Year's Eve, you have a degree, a college degree, and you know there are tons of places just dying to pay you a salary and give you benefits and set you up in a nice little office.

But you can't quit. I know. I tried. When it comes down to it, if I'm not working for myself, I'd rather work in a restaurant. Nothing about it is easy, but once you master the menu, reacquaint yourself with the rudiments of good service, explore the wine list, and shine those godforsaken work clogs, it's fun. As a server, you work short shifts and walk with pockets of cash - plenty to live on, even in pricey cities. I couldn't stay cooped up in an office all day with the rest of the world, navigate a morning commute with the masses, live my life to the same rhythm as everyone else. Why go out on Saturday night and get in elbow fights at the bar? Mondays and Tuesdays are the nights to go out, when the bars are mellow and filled with other people who don't work 8 to 5. Plus, people who work in restaurants are often interesting and always the most fun. They take eating and drinking seriously, and share my idea that these are the finer things in life, not working your way up the corporate ladder.

You can't work in restaurants forever. By and large, they are the territory of young people. But while I'm young, why not?

Parsnips and pears

2007-12-03T10:52:00.000-08:00

I have been obsessed with Patricia Well's "Vegetable Harvest" lately. The latest cookbook from the queen of Provencal cooking, it places vegetables at the center of the plate. With the bounty of farmer's markets and seasonal produce here in the heart of one of California's most fertile regions, it has served as inspiration for some memorable meals.

The other night I had J Zac and Archie over for dinner and decided NOT to serve a big hunk of meat (nothing against big hunks of meat) but simply what I was craving and not a thing more. I began by finishing off my bottle of Antica Formula, an Italian vermouth served over the rocks with an orange slice as an apéritif. I started drinking vermouth in France and have become a convert - what's not to like? For dinner, I chopped carrots, parsnips, and turnips (a mistake I was nudged into by the recipe and shall not repeat) into thin rounds and cooked them into a sort of pistou with some crushed tomatoes and chicken stock. Well's recipe calls for this spicy and slightly sweet soup to be served with a watercress pesto. I was out of watercress so I substituted arugula, which packed a different, but delicious, peppery punch. We also had Parmigiano-Reggiano to garnish as well as a loaf of crusty bread (de riguer) and some paté de campagne (no goose liver, no worries).

And that was dinner! I wanted everyone to have room for dessert, which was particularly delicious. I made Well's pear cake, reminiscent of the cakes my French sister would make during my year abroad in Rennes, France. Pears are thinly sliced then barely swathed in a light, pear brandy-infused batter and baked in a springform pan. For the last 10 minutes of baking, you mix eggs with more pear brandy (woohoo!) and pour the mixture over the top, then sprinkle on a mixture of toasted almonds ground with sugar into a fine powder. The result is a crunchy, light, and delicately sweet cake that tastes like pear, improved. I had also made a buttermilk-almond sorbet, which sounds odd but is both light and addictive (my roommate Trey has been "jibbing" off it surreptitiously ever since).

I think it went over well. Plus, there was plenty of pear brandy left over for some post-prandial drinking. Ahem.

Time, see what has become of me

2007-12-01T12:05:00.000-08:00

I have always wanted to write a food blog; doing so has proved more difficult than I imagined when I started this thing. I began this blog months and months ago in Harvard's Lamont Library. It was 3 am, I was trying to write a paper on Ulysses, and expounding on food, Bloom's or mine, seemed to me an incredible luxury. Now here I am, graduated from school and with all the time in the world. I have a kitchen, the time, the inclination, and, I hope, the skill, to cook whatever I want. The world is my oyster, right?

We'll see. The spirit that prompted my first post is still alive: eat consciously and well, eat while respecting food's origins and preparation, eat, eat, and eat some more. I am inspired by Calvin Trillin's indefatigable appetite and M.F.K. Fisher's attention to relationships around food and Barbara Kingsolver's belief that eating well and eating responsibly (and writing about it!) are not mutually exclusive. I still love to read, clearly, and I have always loved to eat. Let the meals begin.

Kidneys, Livers, and Hearts, Oh My.

2007-03-21T17:25:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to write a paper on Joyce, food, and Ulysses right now, so of course I'm procrastinating by returning to a blog I started months ago in a similar fit of procrastination.

But really, check this out:

"Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods' roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine"(Ulysses, 4.1-5).

Awesome. This isn't for the faint of heart, clearly (no pun intended), most Americans balk at the idea of consuming anything that even remotely resembles an identifiable working organ. The meat we do it is rarely on the bone, comes in plastic wrapped packages, and couldn't be more distanced from its origins. Feathers, eyes, heads, feet, tails: we see none of this, all disposed of most neatly by the butcher. We rarely even see a butcher anymore, relying instead on the refrigerated cases at the supermarket, everything neatly prepackaged and bloodfree.

I object. If we're going to eat meat, we should be prepared to face the animals we're eating, and we should eat as much of the animal as we can. In this spirit, I'm going to embark on a bit of a culinary/literary adventure, eating as I read. I happen to have begun in a bit of a tight spot; Leopold Bloom's tastes are not exactly mine. For all my vitriol and blather, I don't eat much meat, and when I do it's usually boneless skinless chicken breasts. The thought of eating pork kidney or veal liver makes my stomach flip upside down. But I have a foodie background: I have worked as a chef and spent countless hours pontificating on how much I hate picky eaters. So hypocrisy begone: veal liver here I come.

To whet your appetite:

Bloom "crushed the pan flat on the live coals and watched the lump of butter slide and melt. While he unwrapped the kidney the cat mewed hungrily against him... Here. He let the bloodsmeared paper fall to her and dropped the kidney amid the sizzling butter sauce. Pepper. He sprinkled it through his fingers ringwise from the chipped eggcup"(4.274-9).

Mmmm. Delicious.