Spice Dish

We Are Family.....

My father brought me a gift last week. He brought me 3 cast iron skillets that my grandmother has had since the 30’s. In order to use them in the manner to which they are accustomed… he also brought me a book. Not just any book. This book is like a family album and time-capsule. There are recipes tucked in between the pages written from my mother, my father, my grandmother, my grandfather. They are written on yellowed sheets of notepaper, index cards and later… post-its.

Perfectly Seasoned

When she was married in 1942 (2 weeks after meeting my grandfather) my grandmother received a book many new brides were gifted: the Woman’s Home Companion Cookbook.

This book is well loved and used. There are check marks next to “Chicken Rolls” and “Dried Beef Balls” in the appetizer section. Check marks on the 10 pages of biscuit recipes (although by the time I was a kid my grandmother had done what millions of American women had; gone in for the ease and convenience of pre made biscuit dough).

There are stained pages and pages of ice cream recipes (and it’s all David’s fault that I own a new ice cream maker—so I’ll be digging into these ASAP). There are amazing cake recipes in there too. My grandfather was renowned for his pineapple upside dawn cake recipe—he didn’t go for the recipe in the book however—but his 12 page handwritten recipe was tucked inside the back cover much to my delight.

Recipe for Cajun Beans

I love this book for so many reasons. Beyond the huge collection of recipes that I know my grandmother cooked there is the ‘sense’ of the book. It begins with a “Wartime Postscript.” It begins: As this edition goes to press out country is still at war. Rationing is in force and shortages of many foods have developed. In a fine spirit of patriotism American homemakers have adapted themselves to the changes. It goes on to acknowledge that the cook most likely won’t be able to make many recipes in the book until the war is over but it offers hope that once the war is over she will be able to dive into those with gusto, as well as have learned to improvise when need be. It’s comforting, hopeful and tells me a lot about my grandmother.

Julep ya'll

In honor of my grandparents I wanted to pick a particularly southern recipe to start with (it also happened to be derby day – so a mint julep was a natural choice). I also wanted to give a nod to my grandfather…. so I chose a pineapple version.

Pineapple Mint Julep

Fresh mint, 6 sprigs
Sugar, ¾ cup
Lemon juice, ¾ cup
Pineapple juice, unsweetened, 3 cups
Ginger ale, 3 cups

Wash mint leaves; bruise with spoon; cover with sugar. Add lemon juice; let stand about 15 minutes; add pineapple juice. Pour over ice in pitcher or tall glasses; add ginger ale. Garnish with sprigs of mint. Makes about 8 servings.

***Now you may notice that the recipe doesn’t call for bourbon. I went right on ahead and added a healthy dose. My grandpa would have been ok with that.



Enjoy!


Erin

How do you say Ole?

 
Patatas Bravas. Bravo!
 

Did you know that the Spanish translation for 'the perfect weekend breakfast' is Picaro? It is. Look it up!

Why is it perfect? Fresh fruit, eggs fried in olive oil, brioche french toast, omelets with Serrano ham and goat cheese... I could go on.... but I haven't mentioned the sangria yet or the mimosa's rimmed with cinnamon. Oh! Oh! Or the absolutely fabulous little back patio that makes you momentarily forget that you're in the middle of the city. This little slice of heaven has dragged me out of bed many a weekend (I've been here every one for the past month.)

Ahhhh sunny space

Every breakfast dish I've had has been fantastic. My guests have been bowled over by the super-friendly staff, the tasty hangover busters (the patatas bravas specifically), and the fact that for 7 bucks you will walk away a happy, rosy cheeked camper.

Big, fluffy and oh so just the thing

It really is a fantastic, not yet discovered, breakfast gem. If you want to try Picaro yourself you can find it at:

3120 16th St (btwn Valencia & Gurerro)

Enjoy!

Erin

Hot in The City, So Hot...

Last Saturday was a hot day. For those of you that don’t know… San Franciscan’s don’t ‘do’ hot. It’s actually hot here maybe five days a year. There is no A/C anywhere and we all tend to look a little frightened when it’s hot enough to potentially get sunburned.

I spent a good portion of the day napping in front of the fan. Could we have gone to the park? Sure. But Dolores park was akin to hipster Woodstock and we wanted no part of that. What did we want? Well not to fire up the oven in our small apartment that’s for sure.

Good thing I had made a reservation at Delfina for that night – two months in advance.

At 9 pm it was still hot in the city. People crowded the streets. The sidewalk in front of Delfina was no exception. A small mob stood outside hoping to get a seat, if not in the main restaurant, at least in the pizzeria; wine glasses in hand, sweat on their brows.

We waded through the throng and made it inside where our table was waiting for us.

Our waiter was new, that was clear, but his small foibles were more than compensated for by his smile and the way the entire staff worked together to ensure our comfort.

Again… it was hot. So hot. The thought of a huge heavy meal all to ourselves was basically unbearable but there were also so many things on the menu we wanted to try. We decided on sharing everything to get a taste of more delectables. Tapas style if you will.

We settled into our cozy corner with a blood orange bellini to start. Way too refreshing for words. Sparkly, sweet, perfect. We quickly agreed on a bottle of rose to follow, the heat deemed it necessary.

For our antipasti? Speck with artichoke fritti which I believe was on dandelion greens. It was salty, it was sweet, it was balanced by the bitter greens.

For our salad? Chilled asparagus with a prosecco zabaglione. The cloyingly sweet sauce was the perfect foil for the piercing green stalks. A bite of the speck piled on top of the asparagus…. heaven.

Our secondi was a Strawberry Mountain Ranch hanger steak and French fries. The steak was so rare it was about blue. The sauce that enrobed it was a sweet and savory concoction that was fruity, salty and had it been appropriate… drinkable. The fries were small, crisp and soaked with the aforementioned sauce. As I made my way through the steak, Mimi noted several times “hey you don’t like your meat rare”…. but my half of the plate was just about licked clean. The steak had the texture of butter and the sauce… oh the sauce.

We sat back, completely satiated. I didn’t think I could go on but Mimi had other plans. We would be ordering the Brachetto -Gatti Piero and the Moscato d'Asti-Sori.

She was right. They were delightful. Both crisp, cool, sweet and refreshing. At this point we just knew that we were not going to be finishing any dessert, but we had to try one…. at least one. For our dolci we decided on the profiteroles with espresso gelato, warm chocolate sauce and sugared almonds.

As we sipped our dessert wines and waited for that dessert we took some joy in people watching. Older gentleman with trophy wife and ‘natural black’ hair? Check. Uncomfortable tourist wanting hot sauce? Check. Young, newly engaged preppy couple both wearing loafers with no socks? Check. Monied man out on a ‘date’ with an obvious escort? Check and mate!

The profiteroles came oozing cold gelato and warm chocolate that was as dark as chocolate gets. We ate, we smiled. It was just a perfect evening.

Now… I share my dining experiences more than ‘review’ eateries but I can say that this is one experience I could in all good faith nudge you to indulge in yourselves. It’s just an amazing neighborhood spot, that happens to be spot on. If you want to give it a try you can reach them at:

621 18th Street

San Francisco, CA

415.552.4055

But be warned… reservations required… early.

Enjoy!

Erin

I Hate to Cook?

One of my newest acquisitions just might be my favorite cookbook of all time (so far anyways). The I Hate To Cook Book by Peg Bracken is cute, witty and has amazingly fantastic illustrations by Hilary Knight of Eloise fame!!!

This book, from 1960, begins:
"Some women, it is said, like to cook. This book is not for them"  Hear Hear! Now... don't get me wrong-- I adore cooking but Ms. Bracken is coming from a time when cooking was a chore... not a hobby. She claims that her book is "for those of us who want to fold our big dish-water hands around a dry Martini instead of a wet flounder, come the end of a long day." I say grab the martini AND the flounder... but that's just me.

The chapter headings are brilliant: The Leftover (or Every Family Needs a Dog), Desserts (or People Are Too Fat Anyway), and Last-Minute Suppers (or This Is The Story of Your Life). This book is hysterical. Basically all this woman wants is a good cocktail... and really who could blame her?

Beyond looking for ways to not cook she does offer some great recipes for when you must... like Saturday Chicken (which apparently is a lot like Sunday Chicken), Hellzapoppin Cheese Rice and Stayabed Stew.

She also offers up some great household tips like "If your daughter wears a pony-tail hairdo, giver her a pipe cleaner to put it up with. It won't pull, as a rubber band does." Ahhh life before scrunchies.

While flipping through, on pg 116, I found a recipe for Coffee Pudding. Pudding? Coffee? Together??? Hell yeah!! I decided to give it a shot. The recipe is as follows:

Melt twelve marshmallows in two cups of strong black coffee. Then add enough whipping cream to make it a pretty café au lait color, and pour it into a freezing tray. Leave it for eight hours. Serve it in sherbet glasses with whipped cream on top, and some chopped nuts if you have them.

Ok… twelve marshmallows of what size? Two cups of coffee…. meaning two measuring cups or two coffee cups? “Enough whipping cream”? What’s enough? What’s too much? A freezing tray? What’s a freezing tray? “Leave it for 8 hours"? Leave it where? In the freezer? In the fridge? On the counter??? I guessed and put two in the freezer and two in the fridge. The ones in the freezer…. froze solid. Not ice cream solid… ice solid. The ones in the fridge had the consistency of really, really runny pudding. Hrrrm. Not such a success.

Oh well. They can’t all come out perfect.  A martini makes a fine dessert anyways doesn’t it?

Enjoy!

Erin

P.S. You can read a fantastic article on Peg Bracken and her masterpiece, written by Laura Shapiro of Gourmet Magazine here. 

And one from the New York Times here.

NOPA No No

I was really excited about my trip to NOPA. I was taking a friend to celebrate his birthday. We went a little early hoping to grab a cocktail before our 8 o’clock reservation. We made our way to the bar and ordered a few cocktails. So far so good. We ended up forgoing our reservations and vultured a seat at the bar…. we like eating at the bar. It’s a great way to get to know the bar staff.

As we surveyed the room we took note of something odd. The waiters looked like a gaggle of Shaggy’s! There was an abundance of beards and open topped shirts with chest hair making an appearance—I don’t want beard hair or chest hair in my salad thank you very much.

We decided to order the flatbread and the fritto misto to start. While we waited for those, the kitchen send out an amuse bouche. A tiny crostini with duck liver pate and a slice of cornichon with sea salt. It was perfect.

 
Fishy Fritto

Then the flatbread came. It was topped with spicy fennel sausage, escarole, caramelized onions and herbed ricotta. The crust was perfectly thin and crisp and the topping worked together very, very well. Yay! This was going to be an amazing meal.

Um… no. Then the fritto misto of mackerel, radicchio, red onion, and orange arrived. The mackerel was extremely fishy and the breading was very salty. The best part was the radicchio. The battered, fried bitter lettuce was pretty tasty. But the rest… inedible.

I ordered up a second sidecar to cut the salt (with extreme sweet I know). It seemed like the bartender didn’t know how to make it—he kept tasting it while he was mixing it—and when my dining companion (who happens to be a bartender) tasted it he knew it was wrong so he asked to have it ‘amped up’ and offered to pay to have it fixed. At this point our bartender claimed ‘sorry I didn’t taste it’… which he had…. But shouldn’t have to! He should just know how to make it! In his defense… he was incredibly sweet and earnest without an ounce of attitude, which is generally an SF bartender norm.

Salty, salty short ribs

Second sidecar made proper boom the main dishes snuck up behind us. My friend ordered the burger and it was really good—the brioche bun gave it a fantastic sweetness. However the fries had some weird ‘hair’ fried onto a few. It looked like corn silk… but there was no corn on the menu. So we were a little afraid.

I had ordered the short ribs (which I was so beyond excited for), which were supposed to come with polenta and turnips (but actually came with carrots—hey I like carrots). The ribs tasted and had the texture of corned beef. It was also so salty that I couldn’t eat it. Honestly… there was so much left on the plate that the bartender asked if I needed to take it home. No… no thank you.

We passed on dessert and headed out, not because of the over-salting, but because we just couldn’t stand to witness the 45-year-old dude drinking a negroni next to us hitting on a pair of drunken 20 year olds.

So we left it at that and left. I really want to believe that we just had an off night—the place was, and always is, packed so I’m hoping we had a rare experience. While yes they bore a striking resemblance to Shaggy—the wait staff was spot on and the bartender surprisingly had taken the fritto off our bill. It was unexpected and much appreciated.

Puzzled Birthday Boy

As for my friend? The birthday bastard played quick draw McGraw and paid for dinner!!

Like I said…I hope we just had the random, bad experience. If you want to give NOPA your own try, you can find it at:

560 Divisadero @ Hayes
San Francisco, CA 94117
415-864-8643

Enjoy!

Erin

 

The Joy of Cooking!

Steak au Poivre or Peppered Steak from The Joy of Cooking.

The Joy of Cooking is such a great book. Mine is a 1964 edition that I found at the De Anza flea market. As I dug through the books on the table at the used book stall looking for the perfect find… I saw it wedged in between the Richard Simmons Desserts Cookbook (no really) and a pile of ‘The Wok Way’ pamphlets. I picked it up, with its tattered cover and opened. Inside I found this:

For Fran (Yes, for Michael too!)

On third wedding anniversary—

August 28^th , 1969

With all my love,

Jan J

How could I not buy it and give it a new home?! I do wonder if Michael ever cooked anything out of it. If Fran used it she couldn’t go wrong. This book has cocktail recipes, soups, gravies, meat, poultry, coffee cakes, candies and everything a 60’s housewife could want!

This book is so amazing. It’s really all the basics you ever needed to know AND it’s got a Goethe quote to start it off:

“That which thy fathers have bequeathed to thee, earn it anew if thou wouldst possess it.” Goethe: Faust

Random but how great is that?!

So last night I walked in the door to the strains of Steak!, Steak!, Steak! I had some great sirloin in the fridge so I figured… sure why not? Well I was a non-red-meat eater for 15 years so I actually am a total novice when it comes to cooking steak.

I nabbed the Joy of Cooking and flipped to Beef – Sirloin and voila!

Steak Au Poivre

Use: Trimmed 1-inch-think strip sirloin, club or filet mignon steaks

Crush: 1 to 2 tablespoons peppercorns

The pepper should not be ground but crushed coarsely on a board with a pressing, rolling movement, using the bottom of a pan. Press the steaks into the crushed pepper and work it into both sides of the meat with the heel of your palm or with the flat side of a cleaver. Sprinkle the bottom of a skillet with:

2 teaspoons salt

When it begins to brown, put the steaks into the pan and brown uncovered over high heat. Reduce to medium heat, turn the steaks and cook to desired degree of rareness. In a separate pan, prepare:

¼ cup butter

1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

2 tablespoons lemon juice

** I didn’t have worcestshire sauce OR lemon juice so I substituted with soy sauce and white wine—worked totally fine.

Remove the steaks from the pan in which they have been cooked and discard the pan drippings. Pour the butter moisture over steaks. Flambé steaks with:

2 oz cognac

I thought this dry frying with salt technique was really interesting. But make sure you have a hood vent or a really open window (neither of which I’ve got) in your kitchen because this causes some serious pepper infused smoke (I was actually coughing). You’re also supposed to flambé the suckers too but after the smoke filled kitchen incident I didn’t want to chance it. So no cognac or open flame for me.

This was super-juicy and the sauce… ooooh butter. Butter, butter, butter. Really how can you go wrong?

I added a roasted artichoke with a mayo sauce and really a fantastic mid-week meal that met with YAYS all around.

Enjoy!

Erin

Holy Crap!

Holy crap! There's only 16 days 'till Thanksgiving. No really!!! The past several years I've crammed 20+ guests into my small apartment-- plying them with booze, appetizers, cheese, booze, side dishes, main dishes, breads, muffins, cakes, booze, football, desserts, coffee, booze, coffee with booze.... well you get my drift. This year however, I am attending a very small family get-together. I've been told to "bring a side dish and maybe a dessert." ....... Wait what? I'm not brining a turkey for 10? I'm not making lentil loaf for the other 10? I'm not putting out 9 different salumis? I'm not making grandpa's cornbread/sage stuffing that takes 2 days? No cocktails with fresh fruit and herbs? No three different salads? I don't know if I know I  how to bring "just" a side dish!

I need help here! If I have to choose just one or two things they better be friggin' good!!! I decided to poke around and see what I could find. My faves?

I don't know if you're down with the pilgrims/Thanksgiving/turkey associations but if you are... this site has some really fantastic historical recipes!!

Epicurious' offers up a Pumpkin Ginger Cheesecake Pie? CHECK! 

 

How about an Updated Green Bean Cassarole!! 

From Food & Wine? mmmmmmm

Pumpkin Pie Pumpkins!! from Cook&Eat?? I mean just look at those!

 

Or finally what about a Pumpkin Divine Cocktail from the Nibble?!

I also couldn't resist the arts&crafts... I love arts&crafts. Know what I found? Pumpkin Pie Soap!!! And really? Who doesn't want their own paper turkey?!

After I finally pulled myself away from the crafty sites, I put my Thanksgiving side-dish recipe sleuthing hat back on and realized I already had the perfect one in my arsenal!

So there’s this gaping soft-spot in my heart for the white-trash love that is the green bean casserole. But my tastes have grown up up a bit and I don’t quite revel in its goodness the way I used to. I’ve updated the recipe and turned it into a panzanella type of salad with a nod to the old-school casserole we all know and love.

Basically take this:

and cross it with this:

 

And you get a type of stuffing/greenbean casserole/panzanella bowl full of wonderfulness! This is a dish that I'm not so much requested to make as I'm ordered to. I like to serve this in one, big, family style bowl and the last time I made this, I returned from a quick mission in the kitchen to catch several dinner guests with their hands in the bowl nabbing at the last bits of bread in the soupy sauce.

If you want to give my Thanksgiving “Panzanella” a try:

1 Large slightly stale French or Italian loaf
8 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons Champagne vinegar or white wine vinegar (Trader Joes Muscat Orange Vinegar is good too!)
1 teaspoon red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons capers
1/4 cup chopped green onion
3 tablespoons lightly salted chicken stock *** Use drippings if cooking a bird!
1 head of garlic – cut in half
½ lb. trimmed green beans
Several handfuls of crimini mushrooms quartered
1 Red or orange bell pepper cut into strips
Sea Salt or Kosher Salt and freshly cracked black pepper to taste

-----

Preheat oven to 425*

Coat garlic, green beans, mushrooms and bell pepper with 2 tbs olive oil. Salt & pepper to taste. Arrange in single layer on baking sheet. Roast for 15-20 minutes, turning over halfway through.

While vegetables roast-- cut bread into several large pieces. Brush bread with 1 tbs. olive oil. Broil till crisp and browned. Turn bread chunks over and crisp the other side. Cut/tear bread into 1 inch chunks. 

Combine 4 tbs olive oil with the vinegars and salt and pepper. Toss vinaigrette with the bread in a large bowl.

Remove vegetable from oven. Set roasted garlic aside. Toss remaining vegetables and oil from pan in with bread.

Pop garlic out if its shells. Heat 1 tbs olive oil on med-high in a small skillet, add roasted garlic and green onions—cook until onions are soft. Remove from heat and stir in chicken stock.

Pour over salad and toss. Shake capers over top.

Serves about 4.

ENJOY!!!