Figments

Infinite Beauty: Rebecca Solnit Reads at Woodward's Garden with Mapmakers & Essayists from "Infinite City"

2011-05-03T04:46:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, May 18, 6pm, $45 per person, 3-courses

Like Venice, San Francisco is small; they are vast not in territory but in imaginative possibility.

-Rebecca Solnit, Infinite City

I have been sitting with Rebecca Solnit's Infinite City for months now. I dip in randomly, lovingly gaze at its queer, gorgeous maps, read favorite essays over and over. It mesmerizes that way. To this longtime San Franciscan, Infinite rings true in infinite ways. It gets the ever-shifting subtleties of place; of neighborhood (of course Solnit would). It is a muli-visioned, nuanced poem to our stunning, fragile city. After getting caught in its infinite cosmos, you can't help but think that every city should be lucky enough to have its own beatifying Solnit.

And in a stroke of pure poetic random, Solnit has also written extensively on Muybridge (River of Shadows, Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West), who not only haunted 19th century SF himself, but 'mapped' our city keenly, and whose gorgeous photos of the original Woodward's Gardens (1866-1891) - our namesake - are infamous. They are images we used in our original menus.

So how perfect that Solnit - along with some fellow Infinite essayists and mapmakers - is coming to our SF Garden (located on the border of 'Love of Sex' and 'Desire for Liquids' according to the Phrenological SF map!) for an evening of dinner, readings and mappings. We'll talk zen, butterflies, gardens... We'll also make a menu of classic San Francisco dishes.

At Woodward's Garden, Wednesday, May 18, 6pm, $45 per person, 3-courses (does not include wine, tax or tip). (415) 621-7122.

'Entrance to Woodward's Gardens' - Muybridge

‘Animals at Woodward’s Gardens’ (1870) - Muybridge

Writer, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit is the author of thirteen books about ecology, environment, landscape, community, art, politics, hope, and memory, most recently the bestselling Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas, a volume of 19 essays and 22 innovative maps, for which she commissioned and coordinated contributions from 27 writers, artists, and cartographers. Other books include A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster; A Field Guide to Getting Lost; Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities; Wanderlust: A History of Walking; and River of Shadows, Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West (for which she received a Guggenheim, the National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism, and the Lannan Literary Award). A product of the California public education system from kindergarten to graduate school, she is a contributing editor to Harper's and regular contributor to the political site Tomdispatch.com.

Atlas contributors Genine Lentine ("Dharma Wheels and Fish Ladders" essay and map), Paz de la Calzada (Phrenological San Francisco's hair), Lisa Conrad ("The Names Before the Names" essay and map), Ruth Askevolt (Once and Future Water map), and Alison Pebworth (Phantom Coast map, cover, title page) will be joining Solnit.

Paz de la Calzada

Cheryl Strayed, Karen Karbo & Carolyn Cooke at Woodward's Garden, Tuesday, May 10, 2011:

2011-04-28T16:56:00.000-07:00

Spring Dinner and Three West Coast Writers Reading from New Works

At Woodward's Garden, Tuesday, May 10, 6pm, $45 per person, 3-courses (does not include wine, tax or tip). (415) 621-7122. Menu will be posted on website soon.

I first found Cheryl Strayed on Twitter (of course), which somehow led me to me to her dazzling essay "The Love of My Life," about - among other things - death, desire, grief, infidelity... and really, about not looking away. I had not read anything like it before. My body actually stopped moving, slowed-down into the essay's unexpected, achy orbit - it was so close to the bone and relentlessly brave.

It is a kind of ultimate memoir/essay to me now. And it made me realize how completely rare her voice is, and how much I crave it. In some ways Strayed reminds me of Rebecca Solnit, whose unique, brilliant work, it seems to me, almost always involves our lost/foundness and the unresolvable tension between the two, and staying with that hard, beautiful friction. So what a gift to have Strayed read at our restaurant.

Cheryl Strayed

Strayed’s forthcoming memoir, Wild, will be published by Knopf in March, 2012. Her debut novel, Torch (Houghton Mifflin, 2006), was a finalist for the Great Lakes Book Award and was selected by The Oregonian as one of the top ten books of the year by writers from the Pacific Northwest. Strayed’s personal essays have appeared in more than a dozen magazines, including the New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post Magazine, Allure, Self, Brain, Child, The Rumpus and The Sun. She’s won a Pushcart Prize and her essays have twice been selected for inclusion in the Best American Essays. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and their two children.

She will read from Wild, which is about the 1187 mile hike she took alone on the Pacific Crest Trail when she was 26 and the life circumstances that compelled her to take such a long walk in the wilderness. "Wild is smart and funny, and often sublime," wrote bestselling author, Chelsea Cain. "And it’s got something for everyone. A fight for survival in the wilderness. A bad girl’s quest for redemption. Grief, sex, drugs, and the proverbial (and literal) bear in the woods, all in the hands of a brilliant and evocative writer."

Karen Karbo

We are also thrilled to have Karen Karbo, whose three novels and memoir have all been named New York Times Notable Books of the Year. Her memoir The Stuff of Life won the Oregon Book Award and was a People Magazine's Critics' Choice. Her most recent book is The Gospel According to Coco Chanel: Life Lessons from the World's Most Elegant Woman. Her essays and non-fiction have appeared in a number of anthologies, including the best-selling "The Bitch in the House," and in The New York Times, Vogue, Elle, MORE, Outside, Entertainment Weekly and salon.com. She is a recipient of an NEA fellowship in prose and a winner of the General Electric Younger Writer Award.

Karbo will read from her forthcoming book, How Georgia Became O'Keeffe: Life Lessons on the Art of Living. It is coming out in November.

Carolyn Cooke

Finally, we are delighted, too, to have Carolyn Cooke. Her first novel, Daughters of the Revolution, will be published next month by Knopf. Her short story collection, The Bostons, was a winner of the PEN/Bingham Award, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway, and was named one of the best books of the year by the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. Her fiction has appeared in AGNI, The Paris Review, and Ploughshares, and in two volumes each of Best American Short Stories and Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards. Her nonfiction has appeared in New California Writing 2011 (Heyday Books) and The Nation. She is a core faculty member in the MFA writing program at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco.

Cooke will read from her new novel of the sexual revolution, which National Book Award finalist Kate Walbert praised as " Smart, visceral, sexy . . . absolutely brilliant.”

At Woodward's Garden, Tuesday, May 10, 6pm, $45 per person, 3-courses (does not include wine, tax or tip). (415) 621-7122.

Menu to be posted on website soon.

The Dinner: M.F.K. & Anne Zimmerman

2011-04-27T18:55:00.000-07:00

Anne read beautiful M.F.K. things beautifully. Celia sold many gorgeous books with charm. I got to dig deep into the M.F.K. cosmos again. It couldn't have been sweeter...

Photos by John Clayton: http://www.claytonshot.com/(except where noted)

Paris Brest snap courtesy of lovely Marcia Gagliardi

See here this post for more details.

M.F.K. FISHER DINNER, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 13, 2011

& ANNE ZIMMERMAN’S EXTRAVAGANT HUNGER

YES IT IS CRAZY TO SIT SAVORING SUCH IMPOSSIBILITIES, WHILE HEADLINES YELL AT YOU
AND THE WOLF WHUFFS THROUGH THE KEYHOLE. YET NOW AND THEN IT CANNOT HARM YOU,
THUS TO ENJOY A SHORT RESPITE FROM REALITY. -M.F.K. FISHER/HOW TO COOK A WOLF

PATÉ FIN: HARE PATE WITH KUMQUAT COMPOTE & MUSTARD CREAM

POTTED SHRIMP

•

FRENCH CREAMED OYSTERS (STEAMBOAT), TOASTS, WATERCRESS

•

GRIMAUD DUCK LEG WITH LITTLE TURNIPS, NEW CARROTS, SNAP PEAS & CIPOLLINIS

BOUILLABAISSE: COLUMBIA RIVER STEELHEAD, MANILA CLAMS, PEI MUSSELS & ROUILLE

•

PARIS BREST: CREAM PUFF WITH WHIPPED CREAM FILLING & FRUITS AUX SEPT LIQUEURS

•

DOMAINE DAULNY SANCERRE, LOIRE, 2009

DOMAINE D’AERIA CAIRANNE, COTE DU RHONE VILLAGES, 2007

DOMAINE DE COLETTE, CRU REGNIE BEAUJOLAIS, 2009

M.F.K. Fisher Dinner and Reading by Anne Zimmerman (from An Extravagant Hunger), Wednesday, April 13, Woodward's Garden

2011-03-23T08:06:00.000-07:00

I think that eating and sleeping and making love...

are so much entwined - M.F.K. Fisher

I mean, of course Fisher is etched into me. How not for anyone even tangentially moved by food? I read her way before I flirted with my first oyster; impulsively chose the long haul of cooking school; before it even occurred to me that cooking might be a prayer that could carry me. She may have sparked it all. M.F.K. Fisher tenaciously read hunger as inseparable from other desires in all of her work, so that to eat was never, ever just to fuel up. Which always struck me as both right and radical, too, in a culture more and more invested in our choosing soul sucking prepackaged. She called food out as one of the great madnesses, and she was wildly formative.

So how perfect that Celia Sack of glorious Omnivore Books hooked me with Anne Zimmerman (through twitter!), who will read at our restaurant from her beautiful new An Extravagant Hunger (a book that digs into Fisher's lifelong hungers). And she'll do it alongside a 3-course Fisher meal. Celia has also kindly offered to supply the book for sale at the dinner.

So I'm pouring through all my M.F.K. again for dishes (and my she's a world). Will post the menu as soon as it takes shape.

And a word of wolfy wisdom:

When you think you can stand no more of the wolf's snuffing under the door, and keening softly on cold nights, throw discretion into the laundry bag, put candles on the table, and for your own good if not the pleasure of an admiring audience make one or another of the recipes in this chapter. - M.F.K Fisher/How to Cook a Wolf

Oh, we'll make some of the recipes, all right. And, of course, there might be an oyster somewhere too...

At Woodward's Garden, Wednesday, April 13, 6pm, $45 per person, 3-courses (does not include wine, tax or tip). (415) 621-7122.

See, too, Omnivore Book's newsletter.

Enchanted

2011-02-12T07:39:00.000-08:00

Well, if ever there was a day for enchantment, for love sparks, sweet Valentine’s is surely it. But even something as gorgeous as enchantment has its edge.

My beloved OED tells me that to enchant is to be “influenced irresistibly as if by a charm; to hold spellbound,” yet it is also to delude or befool (a word alone worth the price of the volumes). Brilliant Jay Griffiths says we humans are endlessly enchantable, which both ennobles and damages us. We have dreams, art and love because of it, yet our enchantability also puts us in deep thrall to power and artifice. We create and support artificial structures, economies that undo us. See recent ravaged financial systems, our increasingly plundered earth... Enchantment is not as sparkly as it seems on the surface.

Food, too, is one of the enchantments. We are lured, lulled, loved by it. Food is as love itself. But, as with love, there are difficult edges to it too. And rather than dwell in these, we enchantables like a good airbrush.

Recently, a SF chef, known for his molecular sway, said of a vaporized beet dish he developed that he wasn’t seeking the beet itself, but the dream of a beet. Which is lyrical in its way, but troubling too. What do we lose when we seek the fiction of a thing rather than the thing proper? We are deluged in stylish, tight, expensive food images (as well as over-manipulated food). All of it luminously beautiful, of course, but life-sucking as well, this too manicured beauty.

What's more, we are afraid of our food. Push it around our plates furtively; worry the salt, the sugar, the fat of it. Is this why we want it immaculate? Unfoodish? Soul-stripped? I had a friend, years ago, who said food was the devil she couldn’t tame. (The devil!) She couldn’t eat it and she couldn’t stop thinking about it. Now there's a certain cruel enchantment, no?

And some personal knotty edges: My teenaged brother and I lived, for a period, on cans of Hormel chili with melted Velveeta. There’s love and grit in that fact - food, class, enduring. In a room full of people eating companionably, joyously, among the dazzling chime of forks and voices, I'm constantly aware of how we're opening our bodies so intimately, so publicly to our deepest need. There's always ache in this for me. This human vulnerability. This unbearable beauty. I sit and sit with it.

There is food as power, entertainment, class, food that can't be had, enjoyed or shared, food had too much, food as exposure, fraud, as torture, as seduction, as trickery.

There is no food or love without hardness, friends. These things go hand in hand. Our ever wise Rebecca Solnit wonders of our ultra-pasturized creations, "what are... landscapes and bodies without biology, without threat, without mystery, without darkness?” And I would add: What is food without its crude original life, striped of its ability to sustain? What have we, enchanted, conjured and of what possible use could it be to us?

There is food that creates exile, food that sparks love. We live in the thick of this. I say food that sparks love contains flora, flaws, fecundity. It is food that sparks life. The world enchants us delightedly and enchants us to death. By all means let’s enchant, be enchanted, be enchantable this Valentine's Day. Let's make a hard feast of it, consciously, with all the knotty edges, all the dirt on the beet.

(And praise to love sparker Jasmine Lamb for so charmingly nudging me into this enchanted project.)

*Jay Griffiths, "Artifice v. Pastoral: The world of fakery and its war on all things natural," Orion March/April, 2009: 20-27.

*Rebecca Solnit, Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007) 280.

Where I Mashup My Favorite Twitter Poets

2010-10-31T09:45:00.000-07:00

Inspired by @Soulclaphands' sparky mash poetry site, my current affair with luminous David Shields ("you are seeking to arrive at poetic truth, which can be reached only through fabrication..."), a naggy blocked writing morning, and, of course, some of my very favorite twitter poets, I "assembled" a poem. That is, I mashedup.

It was liberating to romp with stolen words... to pluck them, lean them against each other, shift, tweak & shift again. Is it an adulteration of the originals? To be sure. Is it something new, too? Well, yes.

Knowing the originals adds all kinds of crazy drift (I've included links when available), which I love. Like song covers, the new is richer when the source is burned into you too. I also just stepped up and titled the thing. It felt a tad proprietary at first, but now I can rightly say it's our poem.

Anthem

"Body" doesn’t do

your body justice. Patient

in my fumbling hands.

My kiss

on his cheek the only thing I knew would help him

his hands, my hands,

silk scarves from God's perfumed drawer,

where your skin

is a window open on a night

of many weathers

O night, O sea - you are twittery and long.

There is too much

in this world already. In a pile

Mistake yourself for shadows.

Learn the lullabies of lint.

1st stanza - Gabrielle Calvocoressi Elegy Scale
2nd stanza - Alex Dimitrov Dish Washer
3rd stanza - Trish Harris First Baptist
4th stanza - Sarah Sarai Let Me Ask You This
5th stanza - Kimberly Grey The Difference Between "Oh" and "O"
6th stanza - Stephanie Kartalopoulos Inside a Dark Room
7th stanza - Saeed Jones Sleeping Arrangement

Me. Narrative Magazine. Oh yes.

2010-10-29T10:33:00.000-07:00

In case you haven't heard? My essay in Narrative Magazine: http://bit.ly/9DDe97 Woo-hoo!

Primal | Narrative Magazine

While I’d love to rave about a French Laundry binge or a fat wedge of Ms. Child’s Pâté de Canard en Croûte, something so far out of the ordinary that it stunned me and presented me my calling on a platter, it wouldn’t be true. Exacting perfection has never swayed me much...

Best Poetry Dinner Ever

2010-08-22T09:28:00.000-07:00

All photos by John Clayton at http://www.claytonshot.com/ (unless otherwise noted)

The best things are always chancy, and there was so much beautiful random to the making of this night. Poet Gabrielle Calvocoressi and I put it together on the fly with about two weeks notice. I "met" her on Twitter, where we follow one another (in twit speak). She tweeted, one day, that she was meeting poet Matthew Dickman in LA, and I, off-the-cuff, replied that they should just fly up here for dinner and a reading. Gabby immediately said yes, (which, it turns out she's very very good at). But we wondered, would anyone really show up on a summer's weekday for food and poems?
Oh yes they did...

kooky dana snap

There were jubilant arrivals...

ditto

Gabrielle & Dana

Poets Matthew & Gabrielle

Crazy plates of summer food.

Hushed candlelit poems - beneath paintings, stars and cars - in which bee-filled armpits, vulvic bon bons, and Elvis-slicked hair made appearances. People wrapped their arms around each other, rocked, cried.

It was a twitter-inspired literary fantasy. It came to be through a tweet relationship, was packed with tweeters (who heard about it through Twitter, natch), and left most anyone in the room who wasn't already tweeting racing home to sign-up. (Check Megan Taylor's lovely post on the evening: http://bit.ly/a4Ronw).

It was another shimmering example of how social networking brings us together; sparks our humanness rather than alienness. In a brilliant post for the The New Inquiry, Helena Fitzgerald suggests that internet socialization - because it is so centered on the written word - encourages a more 19th century kind of intimacy, as opposed to robotic, modern disconnection. I couldn't agree more. I'd even say that it especially attracts those who live in words for that reason; that it is inherently literarily-inclined. We were of proof of that.

There wasn't one person in the room who didn't say at the end that we should host more of these, that these should be regular events. Monthly? Quarterly perhaps? We're still working it out. I'm chatting with all sorts of Tweeters about it, of course...

Gabrielle Calvocoressi & Matthew Dickman: Dinner and a Reading, Wednesday, July 21, 2010, Woodward's Garden

2010-07-09T10:10:00.000-07:00

Gabrielle Calvocoressi

Lucky me, I discovered poet Gabrielle Calvocoressi through some circuitous Twitter route many months ago... wherein lies the beautiful random of twitter. And how could I not immediately latch onto her (although I do try to tamp down twitter stalk tendencies)? She's balm; she's manna. She takes twitter to a place I think I'd secretly hoped it could go: beyond inane blow-by-blow updates and proclamations; past a daily grinding patter into something, well, artful.

When I found her she'd just landed in Italy on a 6-week stipend. Here - in 140ish character bites - is the wild I leapt into:

Blood oranges & nutella. Pecorino, spring onions & tomatoes to cook with orrichiette & anchovies this Sunday. Now nap & Mafouz in my turret.

Once my mother said how much she loved me. Once my mother said, "No one who ever sees your eyes move around like that will ever trust you."

Am I working on something or am I losing myself.

Louise Bourgeois is dead. Try staring that in the face.

Maybe it's about not knowing but loving deeply anyway. I don't know. Maybe a walk to the blue field.

The song I'm listening to on loop as I wait to give a presentation about God & my mother & me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4LdjEObjGo

Finish The Great Gatsby and lie alone for the last night and listen to the owl. More than anything I've loved this turret. This silent time

I want a space like this. A house w/ quiet & owls & hills. And a study with no books. And bedroom full of light. And reading room. And love.

Unfettered Twitter is utterly suited to Calvocoressi, to her expansive vision of things and of how art might work. She's gripped by Elvis, place, religion, desire, boxing! (she, too, writes the sports desk column for American Poetry). Alongside is a word she's made her own, and made me love. And she does much making alongside; writes against music, video, film, novels (she's always deep into a classic in her tweet stream). She does this, she says, in part for answers, but also, "to push into the possibility that silence is the answer" (see Isak interview).

Writing, for Calvocoressi, is a coming close, a seeking (alongside), a kind of prayer. She's about the connectedness of things, and the mining of that there alliance... and about sitting ardently with not-knowing, too. A randomly found Publishers Weekly review claims her poems result in "a not unpleasant ambiguity"... Oh, friends! They result in hellfire-in-your-head gorgeous ambiguities. Read them. Hear them read by her. With dinner.

Matthew Dickman

Oh, and the crazy-beauty of Matthew Dickman's poems? Deserves a post all its own. But I'll cheat and offer links: Read his achy "Slow Dance" in Narrative Magazine, find the smart New Yorker profile on him and his twin brother (also a poet) here. Have dinner and hear him read with Gabrielle C. at our restaurant, Woodward's Garden, Wednesday, July 21st, 6pm ($35 per person, 3-courses, includes wine). Please book by phone, as you cannot book through Open Table for this night - (415) 621-7122.

Prayer After a Long Time Away
- Gabrielle Calvocoressi

God, if you are the horn
and the wind that blows it

then who am i to turn my back
and breath from you.

Too long I say. Too long
since I sat in that cloistered room

beside the cornfield and let
the spirit move me as the Fisher

Price record player strained beneath
the weight of Dexter Gordon

and Jackie McLean. All that vinyl
and the cheap needle that skimmed

along the top as I pursed my lips
and tried to show restraint when

all I wanted was to sound across
the town that bore me so much

ill will. I tell you I'm
ashamed. To have held my breath

so long. To have said, "I give up"
over and over when I could

have made a joyful noise instead.
Were you the songs or the silences

between them, the rustle I took
for nothingness? How young

I was. All those saints
calling to me from the bars,

clamoring in my tin ear.

-From her newest collection, Apocalyptic Swing

Goaty Goodness

2010-06-11T07:06:00.000-07:00

We spit a kid goat (cabrito) on Memorial Day weekend with our friends Dita & Martino at their Olive Oaks home. This was a 35-pounder, grass-feed from Marin Sun Farms. Our first whole goat.

We rubbed it with oil, loads of garlic, salt, pepper and huge handfuls of herbs (thyme, marjoram, rosemary) the night before.

Drove it to Sebastopol early Sunday morning and gaffed it to a spit under the trees, which is always its own kind of challenge.

Used scissors, pliers, mallet, wire, butcher string, nuts, bolts. Sewed lemons and huge branches of Olive-Oaks rosemary into its belly. Let's just say Goat was stuffed and anchored.

We spit it for six hours; brushed it with oil & herbs. It got crazy gold-crisp the last two.

The thing was attacked before we could get it carved, with tender, crackling rib meat being the most coveted loot.

And although Goat was the glory-getter, there were other dishes, too, my favorite perhaps: oh vegetal mounds...

...of Smoky Eggplant; Tzatziki-Chive Blossoms; Just Plain Artichoke-Fava Madness; Radish-Fennel-Fresh Chickpea Galore; Gigante Beans w/Honey, Mint, Clove; French & Banana Fingerlings w/Meyer Lemon Confit; Salsa Verde; Skordalia... need I say more?

Oh yes, Apricot-Frangipane Tart with Wild Thyme, Honey and Greek Yogurt. There.

It was "...life; NoCal: this moment in June" to paraphrase Ms. Woolf; as sweet as any spring moment gets.

Double Duty: Mom's Day

2010-05-09T09:09:00.000-07:00

I feel for Claire sometimes. But if you're lucky enough to be us, here's what you could walk into on Mother's Day...

Spring Indian Wells, Palm Springs

2010-04-30T10:20:00.000-07:00

So we swam, biked, ran, cooked, cut roses, road-tripped, watched crazy moons & suns, ate, ate, ate...

Backyard action

Chard-Ricotta Gratin

Orange-Fennel-Olive Salad

Minty-Garlic Artichokes

Spit Roasty

Strawberry Brown-Butter

& Rose Rain

So You Have a Business for 18 Years...

2010-03-29T12:35:00.000-07:00

and this is what you're finally in the paper for:

Monday March 29, 2010
-- Cuba Gooding Jr. had lunch at Cafe de la Presse on Tuesday. And just after listening to Phil Claypool sing Nat King Cole songs at a Haight Ashbury Free Clinic event, Steve Sodokoff spotted Natalie Cole sitting next to him at Woodward's Garden.

I guess any publicity...

Indu Bhawnani Singh's Spinach Curry

2010-03-24T14:03:00.000-07:00

My friend Minnie kindly pushed a bowl of this on me when I arrived sick at her door to pick up my daughter recently. I didn't think I wanted food, but was so glad I gave in. By the time we got home the curry's shameless perfume had me ravenous. I quickly whipped up some of this gorgeous little basmati and adorned my steaming curry mound with a spoonful of yogurt and a (store bought, alas) mango chutney. An entirely exquisite thing.

Naturally, I had to know what gave. Turns out it's Minnie's mother's recipe, and, lucky us, she's writing a cookbook - The Sindhi Kitchen (due 2010 from Lustre Press) - and was gracious enough to share.

This curry is soooo up my alley with two pounds (!) of greens, fat knobs of ginger and chilies galore. It goes deep, with the slightest bittery edge (turmeric?) which I love anywhere, anytime. The finished brew is hot, toothsome, spice-bucked; its emerald green bleeds vividly into anything it cozies up against. It was a virtual potion, friends, and it healed me.

I've never made anything like it. Profuse ginger - added raw - cooks only a short while, which explains its clean, revenant jolt. The dal is left nubby as I only partially pureed the final stew. Toasty garlic - added at the end - gives another layer of wild fragrance and texture, while tamarind perfectly conveys its deep, sweet acid; green chilies their hot earth. A teaspoon of cayenne could be a bomb depending on how hot yours is. But it is an elixir. Add gradually, taste, push, taste...

Spring spinach is all around so I'm planing to serve this curry at Woodward's with braised fish (sable, blue nose, salmon), fresh mango-kumquat-date chutney (cilantro, ginger, mustard seed), all drizzled perhaps with a little tart yogurt. I can't wait for the book.

Indu Bhawnani Singh's Spinach Curry

1 cup channa dal
2 lb. spinach, rinsed and drained

2 large onions, diced

4 carrots, diced

A few green beans, diced

1 tsp. turmeric

1 1/2 tsp. salt

1 tsp. cayenne

A 2-inch piece of ginger root, minced

2 hot green peppers, minced

2 tbsp. tamarind paste

1 tbsp. flour

4 tbsp. vegetable oil

8 cloves garlic, sliced

Soak channa dal for at least 15 minutes and drain. Simmer spinach, vegetables and dal with turmeric in 2 cups water or broth until tender. Mash or puree; add salt, cayenne, ginger, hot pepper. Stir tamarind paste and flour into 1/2 cup water and add to curry. Cook, stirring, for 10-15 minutes. Heat oil in a small pot, add garlic, as soon as garlic starts to brown remove from heat and add to curry. Stir and serve.

Note: Minnie reminds me that Sindh (now the southernmost part of Pakistan) is a desert- and the dal is probably included not just to add nutrition but also to stretch the costly greens a little farther. Also, Sindh was colonized by the Arabs waaaay back, in the first wave of Arab expansion eastward, early 8th century AD, and Sindhi food bears some resemblance to Arab cooking. This curry in particular is like the tart garlicky stewed greens they have in Lebanon.

The Sindhi Kitchen by Indu Bhawnani, forthcoming 2010 from Lustre Press (New Delhi and Singapore).

On the menu: Cardoon Cuddling

2010-03-07T07:56:00.000-08:00

Ah, the cardoon. So unearthly. So underused/appreciated.
Perhaps because it appears too primitive,
too challenging? This is so not so.

Simply trim, cut, blanch...

layer with other scrumptious things,

then fire in a hot oven.

Fussy recipes will have you pull the ribs from larger stalks, but I've never found the them to be a problem
if thoroughly cooked.

You can think of cardoons as an artichoke/celery hybrid, but in truth their fine flavor is distinct: peppery green with butter edges, nutty turns, and just the slightest hit of astringency. Even its lush leaves are strangely fragrant, a tad skunky,
but in the good way.

Caught, red-handed, snuggling a bunch...

Cardoon, Melted Onion, Thyme Gratin

Sea salt

2 pounds of cardoons

1 lemon

Freshly ground pepper

Olive oil

2 yellow onions, peeled and sliced lengthwise into 1/4 - inch strips

3 cloves garlic, roughly chopped

1 cup grated parmesan

2 tablespoons picked thyme

1 cup cream

1 cup chicken or vegetable stock

3 tablespoons butter

Fill a large pot with water and bring to the boil. Add enough salt to make it taste like the sea.

Squeeze the lemon into a bowl big enough to hold cardoons. Trim cardoons, cut into 3-inch lengths and toss in the lemon juice as you go. Add cardoons to the boiling water, reduce heat to simmer, and cook until tender, about 45 minutes. Drain and spread on a sheet pan to cool.

In the meantime, heat a medium sauté pan over medium-high heat for a minute, add the olive oil. When hot add the onions and a good pinch of salt and grinding of pepper. Sauté until the onions are melted, about 10 minutes. Add garlic and cook 1 minute more.

Heat cream and stock in a medium sauce pan until hot. Season with salt and pepper.

Preheat oven to 375. Evenly layer cardoons, onions, 3/4 cup cheese and 1-1/2 tablespoons thyme in a gratin dish, seasoning each layer with salt and pepper as you go, and finishing with a layer of cardoons. You will have 3 or 4 layers. Pour over warm cream/stock, and sprinkle with remaining cheese and thyme. Dot with butter. Bake 45 minutes, until tender, bubbling and golden.

I Heart this Tableware

2010-01-28T06:09:00.000-08:00

Lisa Neimeth makes irresistibly beautiful things. Witness my gushing from last Valentine's. Her tableware is all hand formed from California clays. We use her sweet mini crocks for salt & olive oil, her baby rounds for bread, her raised quirky platforms for pastries at our restaurant. I have a fantasy about our next place, the clay-pot cooking only restaurant all completely decked out in Neimeth-ware. Here's another Valentine's Day trove:

The only Sweetheart mantra missed

is "tweet me"

You can find Neimeth at the Gardener (Berkeley & the Ferry Building too) and Horne among other places.

Check her on Design Sponge too.

XO those bitsy plates

Paula Wolfert's Poached Swordfish in the Style of Izmir

2010-01-16T12:07:00.000-08:00

Note: While it was once a safe and prized fish, Sword is now in danger of extinction from overfishing and tainted with pollution. So Wolfert says you can substitute Sea Bass. I also got beautiful results with our local Monterey Opah.

I’ve tweeted the glories of Paula Wolfert’s new Mediterranean Clay Pot Cooking, and now I'm postin' it. I'm a longtime Wolfert groupie. She's the first food writer I ever turned to for authority. Her Couscous and Other Good Food of Morocco (1973) got me to Tangier, briefly, in my early 20's to slurp Harira, crack Bisteeya, and sip crazy-sweet mint tea in the Medina. She travels. She lives places. She cooks. Her books are revelations. Clay Pot Cooking sources recipes from all over the Mediterranean, and proves again that her cooking is always true and close to the bone, a guaranteed thing of authenticity and beauty. So when Wolfert says of a dish that it's “one of the best (she’s) ever eaten,” your ears should shoot straight up on your head. And said dish, Poached Swordfish in the Style of Izmir, is exquisite. Why?

The VesselWolfert's thesis is that cooking in clay pots (hand made preferably) simply produces better tasting food. All Mediterranean food was once cooked in clay, she reminds us, so that its dishes particularly shine cooked this way. Unglazed pieces especially impart natural flavor; hold and transmit an accumulation of all the flavors ever cooked in the pot. I love this painterly notion of pentimento applied to cooking, the idea of uncovering delicious ghosts in food. Isn't that what we, in truth, hope for when exploring the food of other cultures/times? To taste ghosts? Anyway, I know this fish blossoms in the slow even heat of its mojo pot.

The Tomato

The tomato grating in the recipe is a wicked technique. Forget the French and their 10-minute minimum concasser. This is instant, economical and brilliant. Cut the tomato in half and run it on a grater right down to the skin (which you toss or use for stock). I love how it fluffs the tomato, how that resulting fluff itself is so fresh, not partially cooked by blanching, love that all my favorite bits - the seeds and juice - are put to use. I mean, I suppose if you wanted to be fussy for a recipe you could squeeze them out before grating. But I almost never get this. It is tossing the gold. This is the very source of le “tomato water” you pay dearly for in fancy pants places...

(NB: While I’d usually turn to a good preserved/canned tomato in winter, I happened to have a few heirlooms my grocer had slipped me [who knows? maybe he was trying to move his tomatoes along]. I also wanted to be true to Wolfert’s recipe. I wanted to taste what she meant by it. And boy did they come through. So just imagine the dish with summer tomatoes.)

The Poaching Method

What I’ll call “sauce immersion poaching” is also the bomb. Rather than poaching in just water or broth - in which flavor is diluted and often discarded - you poach in the very brew you’re serving so that flavor is intensified and fused into the dish. Our fish is slow cooked in a pool of sharp vegetal richness. This Black Sea style of cooking is called bugulama, and you should memorize it. It renders succulent food.

It's probably starting to dawn on you, rightly, that is this is one outrageous dish, and not just because of the perky peppers, tomato, garlic, black pepper, vinegar, and herb - but because of the cooking vessel and technique. And, to me, this is at the heart of Wolfert's brilliance. Who, that you know, was using tagines before her? Layering grated onions and other raw lovely things into clay pots with curiosities like preserved lemon and head spinning spices for long tender cooking? Who was digging into other cultures, joyously, through food, as her very life's work?

Nobody. And nobody does it better still.

(A warning about reading this book: you will become obsessed with clay pots. Luckily Wolfert gives many sources for them. Also, where to begin with the recipes? In my first go-through I instantly marked Moroccan Chicken with Pumpkin, Sweet-and-Sour Plums, and Almonds; Gratin of Pig's Foot with Vin Jaune and Comte Cheese; Kadide: Tunisian Spiced and Preserved Lamb; Crema Catalana as Prepared in the Nineteenth Century... It's a book to grapple with for years)

See Wolfert in conversation with Patricia Unterman this Saturday, January 23 at SF's own, most wonderful, Omnivore Books.

Poached Swordfish in the Style of Izmir
   (recipe printed courtesy/permission of Paula Wolfert)

Preferred Clay Pot:
A 9-inch cazuela
If using an electric or ceramic stovetop, be sure to use a heat diffuser with the clay pot.

1 pound juicy ripe tomatoes, halved
1 pound swordfish (substitute a firm white fish like Sea Bass or Opah),
   cut 1 inch thick
4 small garlic cloves, lightly bruised
1 Anaheim pepper, seeded, deribbed
   and finely chopped
2 tablespoons heavy cream
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
3/4 teaspoon finely ground black pepper
1 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon red wine vinegar
Pinch of Greek oregano

1 Use the large holes on a 4-sided grater to shred the tomatoes into the cazuela. Discard the skins and stem.

2 Add the swordfish, garlic, Anaheim pepper, cream, butter, half the black pepper, the salt, and about 2/3 cup water, or enough to just cover the fish. Cover the cazuela with a sheet of aluminum foil and set it over medium heat. Slowly cook for 15 to 20 minutes, or until the swordfish is just opaque in the center but still juicy.

3. Remove from heat, place the covered cazuela on a folded cloth napkin on the table, and let stand for a few minutes. Uncover, divide the fish into 4 serving pieces, and sprinkle with the remaining black pepper, vinegar, and oregano. Serve in shallow soup bowls, making sure everyone gets some of the tasty sauce.

NOTE TO THE COOK: Many people avoid swordfish these days, because of both pollution and overfishing. If you prefer, you can substitute sea bass, in which case the fish will probably take about 5 minutes less to cook.

(I tried this dish with local Opah from Monterey, a kind of cross between swordfish and bass, and I substituted my window marjoram for oregano. Marjoram is related to oregano but is sweeter and milder. The dish was gorgeous.)

Grilled Opah with Shaved Apple-Fennel Salad, Fingerling Potatoes and Caper-Balsamic-Brown Butter

2010-01-06T11:26:00.000-08:00

Ok, this is the one everyone's asking for, so here goes: We are getting incredible local Opah from Monterey Bay right now and bitter winter chicories are all over the place, as are apples (and fennel skinched from late Fall). What else were we to do with the bounty? All of it drizzled with sweet, salty, caramel-ee butter. Stop it.

Grilled Opah with Shaved Apple-Fennel Salad, Fingerling Potatoes and Caper-Balsamic-Brown Butter

Roasted Fingerling Potatoes

1 pound fingerling potatoes (French, Banana, Rose Finn...), washed and dried

olive oil

Sea salt and freshly ground pepper

Preheat oven to 375. Toss potatoes with a drizzle of olive oil, salt and pepper. Place on a sheet pan and roast until just tender, 15 to 25 minutes, depending on their size. Keep warm.

Caper-Balsamic Brown Butter

1/4 cup salt-cured capers

2 tablespoons Dijon mustard

2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

Freshly ground pepper

1/3 # butter (1-1/3 stick)

Soak capers in water for ten minutes. Strain. Place Dijon in a medium metal bowl and whisk in balsamic and pepper. Add capers. In a medium sauce pan melt and then simmer butter until golden brown, 6 to 10 minutes. Remove from heat and let sit 5 minutes. Slowly whisk into Dijon-balsamic mixture. Taste for salt. Add more if necessary. Cover immediately with foil. Keep warm.

Shaved Apple-Fennel-Soft Herb Salad

1 medium hard crisp apple like Pink Lady, Braeburn or Sierra Beauty

1 medium head fennel

2 small stalks celery from the center of the bunch and cut into 1/8-inch diagonals

A handful of celery leaves from the center of the bunch

A handful of picked parsley leaves, with some stem attached

1/4 cup chives, cut into 1 inch strips

2 small heads chicory: radicchio, escarole and/or endive

Shave apples (skin on) and fennel thinly on a mandolin into a medium metal bowl. Add herbs and chicories. Set aside.

To Assemble

Sea salt and freshly ground pepper

6 Opah filets, preferably local

Olive oil

Caper-balsamic brown butter

The apple-fennel salad

If grilling, fire up your grill. Brush the opah filets with olive oil and lightly salt and pepper both sides. When hot, grill the fish about 2 to 3 minutes per side. Don’t overcook. Alternatively, place 1 large or 2 medium sauté pans over medium-high heat. Add the olive oil, and when it is hot but not smoking add the filets and cook until they are lightly golden, about 2 to 3 minutes per side. Keep warm.

Dress the apple-fennel salad with a tablespoon of the caper-balsamic brown butter and divide the salad onto your plates. Surround the salad with a few warm potatoes per plate. Top salads with a piece of opah and drizzle each filet with a good spoonful of the brown butter.

Did you know Opah is polka-dotted?

Peace of Cake: Citrus Cake with Cranberry Compote

2010-01-01T15:21:00.000-08:00

Photo by Christina Weber

Thought it might be good juju to get a post in the first day of the year. Ha! The peace-full tea towel is courtesy of my pal Chris and her studiopatró. Here's to abundant peace in the new year...

Citrus Cake with Cranberry Compote

This cake was inspired by the “Bitter Orange Cake” in Paul Bertolli’s brilliant Cooking by Hand. The moment I saw that it called for whole oranges (bloods), skin and all, it was over. I’m a fool for citrus, and much of its flavor - its oil - resides in its skin. I add it in wide peels to meat braises, stewed vegetables and poached fruit; shave it thinly into vinaigrettes, panna cotta and anglaise; chop it roughly for pestos and salsas. In this case, the whole citrus adds moist, bitter chewiness. It is, needless to say, sublime.

I have experimented with all kinds of citrus in the cake: tangerines, grapefruit, Meyer lemons. I’ve even mixed the fruit up for lovely results. I also like citrus with spice, so I add cinnamon, cloves and/or nutmeg. And the amount of sugar I use varies. Some fruit is more bitter/astringent than others, so Meyer lemon or grapefruit will probably take more, while sweet tangerines will require less. I also like different nuts with different fruit: lemon & almonds, grapefruit & hazelnuts, oranges & walnuts or pecans. I also add cranberries to the compote.

Cooking by Hand - which came out in 2003 - is still one of the most original food books I know. Bertolli cites Pablo Neruda and Thom Gunn, for goodness sake. It's not packed with recipes; doesn't have endless glossy full-page photo inserts (but little sumptuous muted black & white snaps instead); is as much about Bertolli's lucid writing as it is anything else. Twenty-four pages on the lovely tomato alone (!), with a "Conserva" recipe that will ruin you forever for store bought tomato paste. And his sections on pasta and charcuterie are little master classes themselves.

I included my altered recipe when I posted yesterday, and while I do feel that I have made the cake my own, I woke up this morning thinking the frame/idea/spark of the thing is ultimately Bertolli's, and I don't want to infringe on his copyright. So crack the book if you have it, buy the book if you don't, or stop by the Garden for some uber-tweaked variations. Meyer lemon-almond's on tonight...

On the Menu: Porcini, Chestnut, Leek, Farro Soup

2009-12-22T07:32:00.000-08:00

I had a grainy mushroom soup revelation in the Marche years ago that I’ve never shaken, so this is a little praiseful bow to that moment. I’ve added chestnuts to the brew, which fell on our heads all throughout that late fall trip. I don’t know if we worship chestnuts as properly as the Italians - who finagle cakes, puddings, polenta, creams and pastes from the stuff - but I am completely besotted with their sweet addictive back notes.

I like my grain chewy, so add it at the very end of the cooking. I also crave brothy soups so serve this straight-up. Too, a splash of cream really gussies up the bowl... makes it festive enough for a holiday.

Porcini, Chestnut, Leek, Farro Soup

1-1/2 pounds chestnuts

1 cup of dried porcinis

1-1/2 cups hot water

3/4 cup farro

3 Tablespoons olive oil

2 medium leeks, cleaned and cut in half moons, light green part too

1 red onion, sliced in half lengthwise, then in 1/4-inch slices lengthwise

2 ribs celery, sliced on the diagonal, 1/4-inch (save inner leaves for garnish)

1 medium waxy potato, like Yukon Golds, peeled and cut 1/2-inch dice

Sea salt

Freshly ground pepper

4 cloves garlic, sliced

4 sprigs thyme, leaves plucked

5 to 6 cups stock or water

Cream (optional)

Small hunk of Parmesan

Virgin olive oil

Handful of celery leaves (optional)

Preheat oven to 375. Lightly score an x into chestnut shells on the flat side, trying not to cut into the nut meat too much. Spread them on a sheet pan and roast 20 to 30 minutes until the shells curl away from the nut. Cool, peel and roughly slice. Set aside.

Soak the porcinis in hot water until tender, at least 15 minutes. Squeeze the water out of the mushrooms over a bowl and save the liquid. Chop the mushrooms roughly. Set aside.

Place the farro in a small pot and cover with water by 2 inches. Bring to the boil. Reduce heat and simmer about 20 minutes until al dente. Strain and spread out on a plate to cool.

In a large, lined pot big enough to hold the soup heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add leek, onion, celery and a good pinch of salt and pepper and sauté until tender, about 10 minutes. Add garlic and thyme and cook until fragrant, about 2 minutes. Add the chestnuts and potatoes, sauté 2 minutes. Pour over the porcini liquid being careful not to add any grit lingering at the bottom, and reduce until almost dry. Cover with stock or water by about 1-inch (add more liquid if necessary). Simmer about 20 minutes until the potato is tender and the flavors meld. Taste and season as necessary. Add a splash of cream if desired. Add the farro right before you serve the soup (otherwise it can suck up all the wonderful broth!) and finish with a shaving of parmesan, a drizzle of virgin oil and the celery leaves.

For a creamier soup: Before you’ve added the farro you may purée a cup or two of the soup - with a splash of cream if desired - and then pour it back into the pot. Add farro right before you serve.

Rickie Lee Jones Plays "Wild Girl" Live on Soundcheck

2009-12-07T12:26:00.001-08:00

For those of us with daughters. For all of us. Thank you Candy for sending me this gorgeous thing.

Arrivederci Maiale

2009-12-06T06:43:00.000-08:00

We finally polished off the last of our gorgeous pig.

Our Greek grocer friend Bobby, from Haight Street Market, lent us his mega spit (something like this), which he uses to turn whole lambs on. He sews lemon and herb bunches into them then stabs them with garlic.

We had one huge pig haunch left... the last scrap of our Devil's Gulch side.

We scored, oiled, herbed, poked, screwed, rammed and bolted the thing, then hefted it onto its glowing alter to slow-turn/smoke for seven hours.

It was dwarfed by the spit, but we just kept scooping little red coal dust mountains around it.

Don't ever let anyone ever tell you there's a better way to cook meat.

Our next dream restaurant has seating under sun & stars and about ten of these babies turning in tandem.

The gifts of one single pork side (nothing left untouched):

Spit-Roast Leg

Slow Low Eight-Hour Pork Butt

Braised Fresh Bacon

Head Cheese (foot, head, tongue)

"Party Roasts" (unidentifiable wedges)

Pozole Verde

Grilled Giant Porterhouse

Fried Tail/Ear (thank you F. Henderson and H. Fearnley-Whittingstall)

Cracklins and, by extention...

Luscious Lard

Very, very grateful.

From the Menu: Persimmon Pomegranate Madness

2009-12-01T06:02:00.000-08:00

This looks so polished and all, but really it's just one big seed party. Toasted pepitas (which sound so much more natty than just pumpkin seeds), and pomegranate jewels are the sweet little pips that the whole salad is built around.

I love using pomegranate and persimmons together when their short seasons overlap. I mean, the sheer color riot alone...

And just what is it about pomegranate molasses anyway? All that astringent vanilla-tinged goodness. Insanely addictive. It is the perfect tart counterpoint to fuyu/fresh ricotta creaminess. Also its hugely copacetic with citrus, dates, pine nuts, mint, salmon, rice, yogurt... definitely a pantry stalwart.

Persimmon Salad with Pomegranate, Fresh Ricotta, Pepitas and Pomegranate Molasses (for 6)

1/2 cup pepitas

Sea salt

2 tablespoons regular olive oil

2 teaspoons aged sherry vinegar

Virgin olive oil

Pepper, freshly ground

3 cups watercress, about 1 large bunch, cleaned

3 Belgian endives, cleaned and separated into spears

2 cups fresh ricotta, like Bellwether Farms

3 Fuyu persimmons, washed and cut into 1/4-inch slices widthwise

1 pomegranate, seeded for about 1 cup of seeds

1/4 cup pomegranate molasses

Put the pepitas in a medium sauté pan with a pinch of salt and toast over medium heat for 2 to 3 minutes until they start to get fragrant and golden. Set aside to cool. In a medium bowl whisk the sherry vinegar with a pinch of salt and pepper. Whisk in a tablespoon of virgin oil. Add the watercress and the endive to the bowl and gently toss. Use about three persimmon rounds (half rounds if large) per plate, laid down in a triangle shape. Place endive spears between the persimmons, then a good handful of the watercress in the center of the plates. Dot dollops of ricotta around the cress, and sprinkle with pepitas and pomegranate seeds. Drizzle with pomegranate molasses and finish with a drizzle of virgin olive oil and a grinding of pepper. You can also arrange this all on one big beautiful platter, family-style.

Notes: You can grill the persimmon for added smokiness. And this salad is just as beautiful with roasted squash substituted for the persimmon.

Dawn Landes - Young Folks (bluegrass style)

2009-11-22T09:13:00.001-08:00

Sunday morning. What sweetness is this -

Foodish Poem Love

2009-11-11T06:52:00.000-08:00

She's such a master. You already know this if you read Plague of the Doves.

Advice to Myself

Leave the dishes.

Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator

and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.

Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.

Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.

Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.

Don't even sew on a button.

Let the wind have its way, then the earth

that invades as dust and then the dead

foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.

Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.

Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles

or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry

who uses whose toothbrush or if anything

matches, at all.

Except one word to another. Or a thought.

Pursue the authentic-decide first

what is authentic,

then go after it with all your heart.

Your heart, that place

you don't even think of cleaning out.

That closet stuffed with savage mementos.

Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth

or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner

again. Don't answer the telephone, ever,

or weep over anything at all that breaks.

Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons

in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life

and talk to the dead

who drift in though the screened windows, who collect

patiently on the tops of food jars and books.

Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything

except what destroys

the insulation between yourself and your experience

or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters

this ruse you call necessity.

-Louise Erdrich

From the Menu: Chestnut, Farro and Kabocha Squash Soup

2009-11-08T07:17:00.000-08:00

Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers of the River Cafe continually inspire me. I especially love their rough soups. Most puréed food seems silly to me anymore, although I understand its kid-appeal. And even when I do go that route - for intense amalgamated flavor - I'll add texture back to what I'm making by finishing it with big chunky bits of whatever is in it, and/or rough-cut herbs, little buttery croutons, crisped cured pork. I want to feel the shape of what I’m eating.

I’ve tweaked this recipe slightly. Crumbly, dense kabocha squash is a favorite, so I’ve substituted it for the onion pumpkin called for. I crave the dark smoky heat of chilies de arbol, so I've used them specifically and have upped the ante... be careful here. And, as all I had in the house one evening was guanciale (cured pork cheeks), I used it for the pancetta and it was wonderful, too. Try it if you have some. Sage also works beautifully for the rosemary, and to me the dish begs for a hard, nutty cheese like parmesan.

Chestnut, Farro and Kabocha Squash Soup

1- 1/2 pounds fresh chestnuts
2 pounds (one smallish) Kabocha squash, peeled, seeded, cut into

1-inch cubes
6 tablespoons olive oil
Sea salt and freshly cracked black pepper
1 tablespoon brown sugar
3/4 cup farro
8 oz pancetta or guanciale, cut into lardons
2 medium red or yellow onions, sliced in half lengthwise, then in

1/4-inch slices lengthwise
1 whole head celery, washed well, dried, and cut into 1/4 -inch

diagonals widthwise (save the leaves for finishing the soup)

6 medium cloves of garlic, peeled and sliced
3 mediumchilies de arbol, or other dried chilie, seeded and crumbled (use less if you don't like much heat)

2 teaspoons sage or rosemary leaves, roughly chopped, about 1 stem
5 cups of chicken or vegetable stock
Virgin olive oil to finish
2 oz. Parmesan (optional)

Preheat oven to 375. Lightly score an x into chestnut shells on the flat side, trying not to cut into the nut meat too much. Spread them on a sheet pan and roast 20 to 30 minutes until the shells curl away from the nut. Cool, peel and roughly slice. Set aside. Toss squash with 3 tablespoons olive oil, a pinch of salt, pepper and the brown sugar. Spread on a sheet pan and roast until fully tender, about 30 minutes. Set aside. Place the farro in a small pot and cover with water by an inch. Bring to the boil. Reduce heat and simmer 20 minutes until al dente. Remove from water and spread out on a plate to cool.

In a large, lined pot big enough to hold the soup heat 3 tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat and sauté pancetta until rendered and lightly browned. Add onions, celery, a good pinch of salt and pepper and sauté until tender, about 10 minutes. Add garlic, chilies and rosemary and cook until fragrant, about 5 minutes. Add the chestnuts and the squash and cook for 5 minutes. Add the farro and cover with stock by 1-inch (add water if necessary). Simmer about 15 minutes. The squash should melt partially into the soup, making it lusciously orange, yet still remain in chunks. Taste and season if necessary with more salt and pepper. Serve in warm soup bowls with a drizzle of virgin olive oil, celery leaves and shaved parmesan.

Notes:

The amount of celery in the recipe - a whole bunch - is surprising, but its peppery green presence is pure counterpoint to the soup’s sweet richness. Also, in her brilliant Cucina del Sole, Nancy Harmon Jenkins points out that the celery in Italy is a much rougher affair than ours - so don’t be afraid to use all the seemingly tough outer stalks, too, as it is entirely authentic.

The soup is also completely delicious in vegetarian mode: hold the cured meat, add a tad more oil to cook the vegetables, then bring it all together with vegetable stock or water.

November Prix Fixe at the Garden

2009-11-06T06:58:00.000-08:00

On the Menu: Grilled Salmon, Shaved Beets, Little Carrots, Radishes and Fennel with Couscous, Scallions and Ginger-Soy Mayonnaise

2009-11-02T12:52:00.000-08:00

We can't get enough of this dish which is all about raw, clean freshness.

It's a bed of shaved uncooked vegetables with room-temp couscous, warm salmon and lightly spiced mayo. Fallish, only SF style... meant for our long-boy summers. Citrus, coriander and ginger give it mega legs.

Grilled Salmon, Shaved Beets, Little Carrots, Radishes and Fennel with Couscous, Scallions and Ginger-Soy Mayonnaise (for 6)

This recipe has several parts, but is well worth it. You can make both sauces a day ahead of time if you’d like. Also, to simplify a bit, I've used instant couscous (which is a cinch), and canned chickpeas. The couscous is still very delicious...

Fire-up your grill for the salmon

Couscous with Scallions and Chickpeas

1 cup instant couscous

Sea salt

1 cup water or chicken stock

1/4 cup virgin olive oil

1 lemon, zest and juice

1/2 cup chickpeas, canned

3 scallions, cleaned, whites and greens, cut thinly on the diagonal

Place the couscous in a medium bowl. Bring stock or water to the boil with a good pinch of salt. Pour over the couscous and cover with foil. Let it sit for about 20 minutes. Uncover and drizzle the couscous with olive oil and fluff it with a fork. Stir in the lemon zest, juice, chickpeas and scallions. Taste and season with more salt if necessary. Set aside.

Shaved Salad

1 small chioggia beet

1 small gold beet

2 small colorful carrots, heirlooms are great, washed, leave 1/4-inch stem still

attached

2 radishes, French Breakfast or Easter Egg if possible, washed with 1/4 -inch of

their stem still attached

1 small head of fennel

1 head frisÉe, cleaned, for about 2 cups

Shave beets, carrots, radishes and fennel on a mandolin (or cut as thinly as possible with a knife). Set aside.

Tangerine-Coriander-Ginger Vinaigrette

1 tablespoon sherry or Banyuls vinegar

1 tangerine, fine zest and 2 tablespoons of its squeezed juice

1 small knob of ginger, peeled and grated for 1 tablespoon

1 tablespoon coriander seed, toasted and ground

Sea salt and freshly ground pepper

1/4 cup virgin oil

In a small metal bowl whisk vinegar, tangerine zest, juice, ginger and coriander seed with a good pinch of salt and pepper. Slowly whisk in the oil. Taste and add more salt if necessary. It should be very bright and well seasoned. Set aside.

Ginger-Soy Mayonnaise

1 egg yolk

1 small lemon, zest and 1 teaspoon squeezed juice

Sea salt

1 cup olive oil

1 small knob ginger, peeled and grated for 1 tablespoon

2 teaspoons soy sauce

1 tablespoon rice vinegar

a pinch of sugar

In a small metal bowl whisk the egg yolk with the lemon zest, juice and a small pinch of salt. Slowly drizzle in oil, about a tablespoon at a time, until you have a creamy emulsion. Whisk in ginger, soy sauce and rice vinegar. Taste and add more salt if needed and/or a pinch of sugar for brightness. Set aside.

To Assemble

Sea salt and freshly ground pepper

6 salmon filets, about 3/4-inch thick, preferably wild and local

3 tablespoons olive oil

Shaved Vegetables

Tangerine Vinaigrette

Couscous

Mayonnaise

Brush the salmon filets with olive oil and lightly salt and pepper both sides. Grill about 2 to 3 minutes per side. Don’t overcook as the salmon is best medium rare and bright pink in the center. Set aside on a plate, lightly covered with foil.

In a medium bowl toss the shaved vegetables and frisÉe with 1/4 cup of the vinaigrette. Taste and salt if necessary. Put a large handful of the salad in the center of each plate. Put about a half cup of the couscous on top of the salad. Lay a salmon filet on top of the couscous and spoon two to three tablespoons of the mayonnaise over the salmon.

studiopatró

2009-11-02T10:57:00.000-08:00

Hot tea towels? Well yes. Our pal - SF designer Christina Weber - is making them with a troop of neighborhood artists through her new

Studiopatró or pattern studio. She's put serious time into this natty project, and it's finally here.

Her designs are low-key and ravishing: leafy, organic, modern - all of it in a super dreamy palate. My personal favorite is dotted with spunky little peace signs (can you ever get too many of these?). They have swanky weight which gets more beauteous with using, washing, little emerging tears. They're hand-screened and eco-friendly to boot.

Chris envisions all kinds of alternative uses for them, too. They are excellent camouflage, flower swaddlers, pillow sheaths, gift enclosures. Not much they won't do. She's also designed one very cool apron.

So do I really need to say it with the holidays looming? Check-out this very sweet thing.

Bookish Love

2009-10-03T08:27:00.000-07:00

Bittersweet: Lessons from my Mother's Kitchen

Opening:

My mother... asked me if I thought I was a good cook.

"Yeah," I said. "Not bad."

"Do you always leave the book open?"

"Yes," I said.

"Then you can't cook."

Matt McAllester's frequently delusional mother found an anchor in cooking (um, hello?). Elizabeth David, her favorite food writer, looms in these pages: "Study her if you want to know how to cook" his mother repeatedly chides. And McAllester, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, finally channels David, among others, as a way of working out his crazed, drinking mother's life and early death. Like Nigel Slater's riotous Toast, it is the thorny family in food, only less dense; in more human time.

I love that Elizabeth David's brilliance is a hub of Bittersweet. Some of the best chapters close with food she's inspired. Stark childhood pastiches and achy adult traumas end with cathartic recipes. He offers the most concise, approachable cassoulet you're likely to find, drop scones that sweetly mitigate childhood sorrow. His wife accuses him of cooking his way out of the stress of their failing pregnancies, and she's right - also out of broken youth; a mother's alienating madness. There is no end here to the restorative power of food.

It is an odd, sideways memoir/elegy/prayer of a book, as simple and knotty as Elizabeth David's superb three ingredient Oeufs en Cocotte à la Crème which McAllester finally grasps well enough to manage, book closed.

Last Summer Sunday Sweetness

2009-09-23T14:11:00.001-07:00

For the last chilly Sunday of Summer our girls nabbed much of the crowd leaving Golden Gate Park's Comedy Day with their homemade lemonade stand. It was, clearly, quite the place to be.

Lemon Verbena Lemonade

15 lemons, fine zest (2 teaspoons) and juice (2 cups)

1 1/2 cup fine sugar, or to taste

2 good stems Lemon Verbena, for about 15 plucked leaves, rinsed

3 to 4 cups cold water

ice

Mix the lemon, zest, sugar and hand-crushed verbena leaves. Let sit for about 10 to 15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the sugar is dissolved and the verbena has imparted its flavor. Add water to taste and pour over ice.

Our Woodward's Garden Prix Fixe, through September...

2009-09-21T20:29:00.000-07:00

PRIX FIXE $29 — 3 COURSES

Available Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays through September...

MIXED LETTUCES, TOASTED ALMONDS,

FRENCH BREAKFAST RADISHES,

TALEGGIO CROUTON, AND BANYULS SHALLOT VINAIGRETTE

•

RAGOUT OF SHELL BEANS, CIPOLLINIS AND CHANTERELLES

WITH GRILLED MARIN SUN FARMS’ FLAT IRON STEAK AND PIMENTON BUTTER

Recipe

•

PLUM COBBLER WITH LEMON VERBENA CREAM

Note: As we try to keep our ingredients fresh

and local, our menu may change.

woodward's garden

1700 Mission Street • San Francisco

woodwardsgarden.com

415.621.7122

ON THE MENU: Grilled Flat Iron Steak, Ragout of Fresh Shell Beans, Cipollinis and Chanterelles with Pimenton Butter

2009-09-11T16:58:00.000-07:00

Oh the late Summer booty: fresh shell beans, those wild Italian onions, cipollinis, and chanterelles are spontaneously everywhere. The grow together/go together axiom holds mighty tight here. This dish is a no-brainer as far as mutual affinities go.

Flat Iron (ours grass-fed from sublime Marin Sun Farms) is a rediscovered shoulder/muscle cut that is made more tender in the butchering. The steak is cut around a center fibrous tissue. It is, according to Saveur, the second tenderest cut after the tenderloin.

Still, to me this is no filet. Flat Iron has texture and nap, which I admire in a steak. Manic Kobe worship has always eluded me... why would you want your steak to be foie gras? What's wrong with good old meatiness? And isn't real texture back anyway with our Pollan-inspired grass-fed revolution? This fleshy Flat Iron is toothsome, and because its from muscle, also has serious steaky flavor. Cut across the grain it is racy-succulent.

My adored Spanish Pimenton (smoked paprika) gives breadth to the dainty new beans and sweet, squat onions, and boosts the smoke of the apricoty chanterelles and the charred meat. Think earthy mushroom squeak/honey-onioned goodness.

Ragout of Fresh Shell Beans, Cipollinis and Chanterelles

with Grilled Flat Iron and Pimenton Butter (serves 4)

Pimenton Butter

4 ounces of butter, 1 stick, softened

1 teaspoon smoked paprika

1/4 cup chopped chives

1/4 cup chopped tarragon or parsley

3 anchovies, mashed

1 shallot, minced

1 lemon, zest and juice

Sea salt and pepper to taste

Cream together butter, paprika, herbs, anchovies and shallot. Add the lemon zest and juice. Taste and season if necessary. The butter should be pungent. Shape into a log in a piece of plastic wrap or parchment paper. Twist the ends to tighten and refrigerate until firm.

Shell Bean, Cipollini and Chanterelle Ragout

1 pound cipollini onions

Olive oil

Sea salt and freshly gound black pepper

2 pounds shell beans, for about 2 cups shelled, Cranberry, Flageolet,

Cannellini...

1 bunch of thyme

1 bay leaf

1 chilie de Arbol, snapped in half widthwise and seeded

1/2 pound chanterelle mushrooms, cut into 1 inch wedges

1 large garlic clove, minced

3/4 cup chicken stock, preferably home made

2 tablespoons butter

Preheat oven to 375. Fill a medium saucepan with water and bring to the boil. Add the cipollinis to blanch for about 1 minute. Drain, cool and peel. Toss with 2 tablespoons olive oil, a good pinch of salt and pepper and spread out on a sheetpan. Bake about 45 minutes or until golden and tender. Check and shake the pan every so often. Set aside.

Place the shelled beans In a medium sauce pan and cover with 2 inches of water. Add 6 sprigs of thyme, the bay leaf and the chilie. Bring to the boil then simmer until tender, about 30 minutes. Drain. Pull out herbs and chili. Toss the warm beans with 2 tablespoons olive oil, a pinch of salt and pepper. Set aside.

Clean the chanterelles with a soft cloth/napkin. Cut into even sized, 1-inch wedges. Leave them whole if they are small. Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in a medium sauté pan until very hot. Add the chanterelles and cook over medium heat for about 7 minutes, stirring every so often, until tender and golden. Add the garlic, a teaspoon of picked thyme, a pinch of salt and pepper and sauté for another minute. Add the cipollinis, the shell beans and the stock. Cook for about 5 more minutes until creamy and sauce consistency. Swirl in butter and taste. Season again if necessary. Set aside.

To Assemble

4 flatiron steaks, about 5 ounces each

Olive oil

Sea salt and freshly ground pepper

The ragout

The pimenton butter

1 cup arugula, or other fresh, spicy green like watercress

Fire up the grill. When hot, brush the steaks with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Grill to desired doneness, about 4 minutes per side for medium-rare. Remove and set on a plate, lightly covered with foil. While the steaks are resting reheat the ragout if necessary. Place about a half-cup of ragout into the center of a warmed serving plate or bowl. Top with a steak and any accumulated steak jus, a round of pimenton butter, and a little handful of of fresh greens.

How Gay is Jill and Kevin's Wedding?

2009-08-29T08:43:00.000-07:00

Dance is the hidden language of the soul of the body - Martha Graham

I would believe only in a god who knows how to dance - Nietzsche

Well, since I’m totally hooked I might as well try to figure the thing out. I’ve watched the Jill & Kevin Wedding video way too many times; woke my sweetie the morning I found it on Twitter - where insanities like this blossom - with coffee and the wireless announcing this was the only way I would ever consider marriage. I’ve thrilled to it almost daily now (it's an unfailingly intoxicating wake-up). So how does its addictive enchantment work?

The video is both utterly homemade and a perfectly wrought tiny film. A few opening seconds catch all the mise-en-scène of a small traditional wedding: the presider's instructive, sleep-inducing "voice over"; the milling corsaged guys officiating at the back of the church in ill-fitting, desert-hued suits; the eerie green sparkle dust of stain-glass filtered light; the restless hum of midwesternly modest pew dwellers.

The first hint that sedition's in the air comes in the three nasal synthesized blasts (from Chris Brown's Forever) that replace somber organ lines. And for a second the chunky guys who begin throwing programs and prancing could be a tired white-guys-do-hip-hop riff, yet instantly becomes something more interesting and wonderful. The poker-faced John Goodman stiffly hustling down the isle has joyous treason in his awkward limbs, can’t keep the mischief from his slow-swirling body. Cheeky day-glow bridesmaids swing sabers of boldly florescent mums in tight time into glorious vanishing shimmies. Even the earnest minister can't finally keep herself from swaying. And so it goes. Everybody "walks" the isle, each voguing change in their own fashion.

And it becomes instantly clear why dance is so tightly regulated within the church: for the irrepressible carnal joy of it, for its potential pentecostal subversiveness. Even relatively newfangled "Praise Dance" is suspect. Because the body doesn’t lie. It is a helpless conductor of other realities, other possibilities. And this danced wedding exudes pure transformation and joy. The mood is ultra gay, and indeed gayness itself is everywhere in this straight union... who can ignore that thromping beat, those hot pink gerbers, the Bob Fosse arm flourishes, those aviator glasses? The celebration gets its dazzling life (23 million YouTube hits and counting) from rubbing against those church walls, from pushing their boundaries. It wouldn't have nearly the same spark were it simply held on a beach.

And is there just something thrillingly transgressive about movement and music in unlikely places? The Belgium Train Station flash mob video is also compulsively watchable and euphoric. These performances offer different potential visions for previously controlled space; a new choreography for what has always been so tightly choreographed (whether for religious propriety or the sake of timetables). They are all about liberation. Just look at the people watching them. They can't stop grinning, can't keep their jumpy bodies still.

So is it too crazy to imagine, in the early days of a new forward-thinking leader, when states are beginning to fall domino-style to the side of marriage equality, that this one small renegade wedding speaks to the sudden very tangible possibility that what has been convention might in fact be pliant enough to contain all of our wild mysteries, all of our sacred loves?

Or have I, reader, skipped straight into a very deep end here? Do I pile far too many words onto one teensy viral video? I don’t know... my often reticent girlfriend is rocking beside me tear-streaked and hooting, our 8-year-old is squealing that she and her friends want to dance the isle at our wedding. And have you ever witnessed such an exuberant one? To paraphrase Mr. Brown's now infamous song: It’s like we’ve waited our whole lives.

Knopf Julia Contest!

2009-08-26T06:01:00.000-07:00

What a fab, so very French competition! And this coming from someone who avidly avoids shamelessly promotional cooking events that usually involve having to incorporate some random, corporate "ingredient" into an original dish. But this contest was just right. It was all about passion. It coaxed us to spell-out our Julia love boldly by digging into her Mastering the Art trove to feed friends & family. What's more in Julia style?

I loved perusing the entries of my fellow mad-cappers. How totally kick was the multi- media Harlem bash post with it's video/text messaging/playlist/snappy invite/couture drama? Or Julia's Chicken Meunière carried out in onion-defying goggles? Or the earthy cool garden-to-table Oregon Gorge to-do? My wine-country soirée was rather prim by comparison. I really should have documented the post-dinner pool party or at least my Terrier's latent Frenchie tendencies. But honorable mention? Lovely. The adventure was brilliant. Thanks Knopf for sparking it and spreading the love.

The Julia Dinner

2009-08-14T12:05:00.000-07:00

Photos by Julie Dodge

So after the early morning J & J screening last Sunday (see recent Julia-O-Rama post), we raced off to a dreamy Sebastopol spread, Olive Oaks (we actually have friends, Edita & Martino, with a named property!), raw poulet, haricot & pâte brisée in hand - to expliquez and document Julia Child’s cusine bourgeoise from Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

To be honest, I haven’t cracked Mastering the Art for years, which is not to say I haven’t been using it constantly. Digging into it again for this fête, I realize how deeply I’ve internalized the tome: the teensy batch browning; the slow fat-loved sauces; the crucial flavor-punking deglaze; the tender fold into halcyon floss; the imperative right-hand-man of righteous stock.

My European cooking school (read: French, as it is undeniably they who codified the whole shebang into technique and decree), traded in pedagogies like alarmingly thick early morning hand-outs of huge family trees titled “Mother Sauce” that branched into all sorts of tangled, intimidating progeny: Sauce Soubise, Creme Fleurette & Ravigote... Child always brought this kind of gibberish (n’a pas de sens) all home to me in intelligible, lucid spades.

Choosing the menu was a surprising snap. The Californian in me - compulsively bound by season - landed instantly on Poulet Poele a l'Estragon (Casserole-Roasted Chicken with Tarragon). I mean Summer’s just so tarragon, which is itself just so damned French.

And with nothing but August’s green beans galore, the Haricots Mange-Tout à l'étuvée (Wax Beans Braised with Onions, Lettuce and Cream), stepped right up to preen beside the herby chicken.

And how could I resist Quiche à La Tomate, Niçoise (Fresh Tomato Quiche with Anchovies and Olives)? I mean if the JC oeuvre doesn’t scream savory custard tart, what on earth does? Besides, the 80's are so here again, and tomatoes sont arrivés.

Also, when Ms. Child pronounces a chocolaty something an “all time favorite,” you’re a fool if you don’t seriously investigate... hence, la Reine de Saba (The Queen of Sheeba/Chocolate-Almond cake).

My co-conspirator Winnie throws in rogue Gougères and a Pommes Anna, crisply fleshed-out in duck fat, for good measure.

The dinner is quintessentially française: fearlessly fat and flavorful. The tart, an egg-tricked pissaladière in an butter-fused crust, is an old fashioned testament to how much tomatoes do love their beurre. The chicken is both rubbed in softened butter and browned to golden in the stuff. Tarragon is trussed within and laid beside the bird to long-stew in its crazy juices, then added by fresh handfuls to finish the glorious affair. Summer beans, onions and lettuce are layered raw into a gratin with herbs and stock to braise before anointed with thick cream. Ground almonds jacked with almond extract are tenderly wound in souffléd chocolate.

The final plate is a trippy shifting tableau: a blackened potato island surrounded by bronze poulet jus swimming up against thick jade haricot cream. The one European at the table, Martino, giddily notes - while cracking off another wedge of pomme - that the potato is so fat-full it practically fends off the chicken butter & creamy beans, which, I notice, does not slow him down in the least. Could anything on earth have delighted Julia more?

Julia-O-Rama

2009-08-05T10:06:00.000-07:00

It's a kind of madness friends, this all Julia all the time. A fellow tweeter says she never thought she could tire of Julia Child, but now she just sort of wants her back in the kitchen. And it's morphed into a Julia wildfire week for me. I was flabbergasted Monday to be the Julie & Julia Sony site's featured blog-of-the-day (see previous post). I'm cooking five dishes from le glorious Mastering the Art for our Woodward's menu.

We're meeting friends early Sunday to catch said publicity-flamed flick, then racing to Napa to fire-up a Julia fête with more friends just for fun and for the Knopf's "Be Like Julia" contest (though I can't possibly think how I could be any MORE Julia at the moment). My 8-year-old is in her room trilling random Julia bon mots, so steeped is she in the mania. Truly I'm way through the looking glass here... every White Rabbit is Lapain au Saupiquet, every Dodo bird Pigeonneau en Vin Rouge.

How on earth did this come to be? Will the Julia insanity ever subside? What I can say is that her Poulet Poele a l'Estragon is a wonder; that the reason for all the fuss and frenzy is illuminated in one single bite.