Julia and ME!

O.K., perhaps my Julia moment is a bit slight, but the horse is way out of the barn on this with Nora Ephron's forthcoming film (yay!) which weaves Julie Powell's ingenious Julie & Julia with Julia Child's My Life in France (complete with blog and twitter sites, no less), and I mean to pull-up and hop on. Here's my Julia confessional...

Photo by egg on stilts

I “met” the real Julia an easy twenty years ago while attending San Francisco’s Culinary Academy. My sweet crazy Southern friend Susan and I were trouble-making at the back of a demo room, like any self-respecting wayward clique, planted in a single isle separated from the main lower seating area/stage by a walkway.

Photo by Sean Ganann

We were having a good-old time, tittering on while occasionally glancing the chef’s way, when a grand inky shadow came over us, movie villain style. We gazed up to find Julia herself towering over us with a flute of champagne. She - rosy, backlit, fuzzy-haloed - winked and twinkle-smiled like the North star she was, and then, incredibly, lifted her glass to a stunned, betoqued us. Speechless, I think we tried to beam back. She operatically sighed, imperiously took in the rest of the room, and then instantly vanished like a very last warm gougère... poof!

Photo by C@rljones

You know those gauzy 70's posters of misted fields stocked with blurry white horses? This was one of those super-astral moments for me. Was Julia a foggy figment of wild, sleep-sucked times or did she, in fact, happen? She stood behind the other students so that no one else but our chef could see her. And he, uber-Frenchie Albert Tordjman, (who's become a friend), didn’t pause a moment to acknowledge or introduce the most famous chef in America (which I’ll always suspect was a bit of sour grapes re: the brilliant woman who so breezily co-opted his ultra-male culture). So really, just Susie and I were granted the vision; the Julia blessing; what I’ve naturally come to consider over the years as the passing of a toque, troublemaker to troublemaker.

Addendum: I sent this to Susie to confirm/deny my ever-loopy memory of things. Here are a few snippets from that exchange (she obviously needs to start her own blog):

Of course I remember Julia Child, she didn't look that blurry to me... you must have gotten to the champagne first. Secondly, I SPOKE to her and she answered AND smiled, she clearly was enamored of me too. She was my idol - when I got home that day I called everyone I knew.

Next... troublemaker?? Troublemaker... distracted maybe, there were about 35-40 good looking guys that knew how to cook, I was living in San Francisco and found out there was a way to eat and drink for a living, uh, it was a little bit more fun than I’d been having in Baton Rouge. No wonder we spent most of our time in the back of the class giggly and blurry.

By the way, you should definitely post this, the trailer to the movie is us! When the girl is at home cooking, and pours the bottle of wine and then drinks out of the bottle... something about that makes me think there's a nanny cam in my house. I want to play her - do you photoshop?

Susie & Me

And a final bit of Julia lore: Another friend of mine cooked for Julia Child (I believe at the Santa Fe Bar & Grill in Berkeley). After a bite of soup, apparently the great JC pulled a tiny rubber band from her mouth - which probably got there through a stock with carelessly added herb bunches. Mon Dieu! The entire staff began obsequiously swirling, naturalment, attempting to make the offending dish disappear. JC, laughing, would have none of it. She waved them all away trilling, "Nonsense, it happens!" Was the woman's every living moment a freaking life lesson?

Julie & Julia opens August 7th!

Grilled White Nectarines, Lipstick Peppers, Soppressata, Fresh Ricotta, Basil, Rocolla & Lemon-Fennel-Chili Vinaigrette

It seemed a pretty eccentric pairing at first. I originally stumbled on it in Ana Sortun's provocative Spice, a book which ponders endless brilliant uses of Eastern Mediterranean herbs and spices. Yet after a few stumped moments it came perfectly clear to me that of course stone fruit and peppers belong together. They have all kinds of sisterly affinities: are sweet, summer-induced, and each take gorgeously to fire and smoke. I, as usual, take liberties with Sortun's original Grecian premise of Grilled Peaches and Peppers, pulling it more towards the Italian coast.

Summer's honey-fat white nectarines and skinny-walled lipstick peppers are landing en masse and something has to be done about it. I have a garlicy two-footer of Fra'Mani's Soppressata... I know, I know. I will make my own, a la Hank Shaw, the moment I land my grand restaurant kitchen - the one with the oversized walk ins, perfectly chilled meat cellars, and an organic garden outside the antiqued back door. For now I slice bought artisanal on our ancient meat slicer (and I don't mean the coveted hand-turned style, I mean old) and overlap the rosy, clove-infused rounds on a plate with Summer basil and rocolla tossed with lemon, fennel seeds and crushed chilies, all of which easily commune with said salame's gallant interior. I lay warm, charred nectarines & peppers into the rumble and finish with spoons of fresh ricotta and virgin oil vinaigrette, then silently thank chef Sortun for the sweet spark...

Grilled White Nectarines, Lipstick Peppers, Soppressata, Fresh Ricotta, Basil, Rocolla & Lemon-Fennel-Chili Vinaigrette (serves 4)

Lemon-Fennel-Chili Vinaigrette

1 lemon, fine zested and juiced for about 2 tablespoons of juice

1 teaspoon fennel seed, toasted and lightly crushed

1 small chili de Arbol, seeded and crumbled

Sea salt and freshly ground pepper

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

Whisk the lemon juice and zest in a small bowl. Add the fennel seed, chili, a pinch of salt and a grinding of pepper. Slowly whisk in the olive oil and taste for seasoning. Adjust if needed.

For the Nectarines and Peppers

2 ripe white nectarines (or other perfect stone fruit: peaches, apricots...)

1/2 pound Lipstick or other smallish, thin-skinned pepper like Gypsy

Olive oil

Sea salt & freshly ground pepper

Fire up your grill. Cut the nectarines in half and remove the pit. Toss with a good splash of olive oil, a pinch of salt and grinding of pepper and grill, cut side down, until marked and hot, about 3 to 5 minutes. Turn onto skin side and do the same. Remove and hold in a lightly covered bowl. Toss the whole peppers with a good splash of olive oil, a pinch of salt and grinding of pepper and grill, turning several times, to mark each side, until collapsing slightly, about 5 minutes. Add to the bowl with nectarines.

To Assemble

12 thin slices of soppressata, homemade or bought artisanal

1 cup rocolla, cleaned

1 cup basil leaves (a mix is nice if possible: opal and a green variety), cleaned

Lemon-fennel-chile vinaigrette

1 cup fresh ricotta, homemade or artisanal, Bellwether Farms is nice

Grilled nectarines and peppers

Cracked black pepper

Fan 3 slices of soppressata onto a plate, slightly overlapping. Toss the rocolla and basil with a splash of the vinaigrette. Place a handful (about 1/2 cup) into the center of the plate. Lay a warm nectarine half and several peppers into the greens. Drizzle with the juices which have collected in their bowl. Drop several spoonfuls of the ricotta onto the nectarines, peppers and the salami. Drizzle with a spoonful of the vinaigrette and finish with a good grinding of black pepper.

FROM THE MENU: Charred Calamari with Chilies, Lemon and Anchovies on Smashed Fava Beans

I've been appalling my more veg-inclined friends lately with ridiculously meaty posts: viscous head cheese, great bubbling pans of goat shank, unwieldy pig porterhouse... what's next, an Anissa Helou tidbit? Yet I've had coveted Marin Sun goat and giant porcine sides to negotiate friends. What's a girl to do?

All of this is especially nutty as deep down I'm such a zealot for all things vegetal. I worked for years at the alter of Greens, for heaven's sake, where I lived to praise stunning Green Gulch produce daily, and where we literally had an alter for found vegetal oddities: the obscenely shaped fingerling, etc. (those kooky monks). To me early morning smack at the Garden is a towering pan of stray greens (beet, turnip, scallion...) melted with whatever other earth-booty happens to be lurking, all anointed with soft eggs, bread crumbs and a big smush of lemon. This is daily bread and dharma.

So in honor of the sprouting world and patient woozy friends, here's a fat green (and, OK, pescatarian) offering: Squid and Beans. Stay with me. This is so much better than it sounds. Fresh favas, all delicate and green, have this alter-life knocked against chilies, raw garlic, stiff herbs and anchovies. And could there be a better devilish platform for our sweet Monterey Bay calamari?

Charred Calamari with Chilies, Lemon and Anchovies on Smashed Fava Beans

Fava Smash

Make more of this stuff than you need. It is spreadable manna on crostini, swirled last-moment into pastas and smacked into garden greens as a vivid landing place for soft eggs.

2-1/2 pounds fava beans, about 2-1⁄2 cups shelled

Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper

1 medium garlic clove, minced

A good handful of mint, lightly chopped

1 medium lemon, zested and juiced

1/2 teaspoon sherry vinegar

1/2 cup virgin olive oil

Set a large pot of water on the stove to boil. Remove the fava beans from their pods. When the water comes to a boil, add the favas and cook for about 3 minutes, until their skins come off easily and the beans are just tender. Run them under cold water until cool, and peel. Set 1/2 cup aside. Place the rest in a food processor with 1/4 teaspoon salt, a pinch of pepper, the garlic, mint, lemon zest, juice and sherry vinegar. Purée until melded, slowly adding the olive oil as you go. The purée should be assertive. Season if necessary. Hold at room temperature.

Salsa Verde

1 lemon, zest and juice

1 shallot, finely diced

Sea salt and freshly ground pepper

1 anchovy, preferably salt cured, boned and smashed

1 tablespoon capers

a handful of chopped herbs, one or a mix: parsley, chives, mint, tarragon

1/3 cup virgin olive oil

In a small bowl mix the lemon zest and juice with the shallot. Add a pinch of salt and a grinding of pepper, the anchovy, capers and herbs. Slowly whisk in the olive oil. Taste and season if necessary. Serve immediately. (If you want make this sauce early, mix all of the above without the acid - add the lemon juice right before serving).

The Calamari

2 pounds cleaned calamari, cut into 1-1/2 inch rounds, with tentacles

Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

3 tablespoons olive oil

4 garlic cloves, roughly chopped

2 medium chilies de Arbol, seeded and crushed

8 sprigs of time, plucked

2 anchovies, boned and mashed

3 lemons, two zested and juiced, one cut into quarters

Virgin olive oil to finish

Season the calamari with salt and pepper. Place a heavy medium saute pan over high heat, add olive oil and when it just begins to smoke add the calamari. Cook several minutes, shaking the pan occasionally, until charred deep brown. Add the garlic, chilies and thyme. Cook 30 seconds. Add the anchovies and cook another half-minute. Add the lemon zest and juice and cook a moment more. Finish with a swirl of virgin oil. Taste and season again if necessary.

Serve warm over a large spoonful of smashed favas. Scatter with a few whole favas. Anoint all of it with a fat tablespoon of salsa verde and a lemon wedge.

Head Cheese... Just Yuckers? (Some Notes)

I haven’t made Head Cheese since a boggling attempt twenty years ago in a Garde Manger class alongside ten other clueless, betoqued students equally as stumped as I about the ins & outs of snout-to-tail eating and the requisite, deeply mysterious art of preserving. Why, oh why were we doing this appalling thing:  jellying long-cooked gray meat, tongue and fat torn from the various hollows of a pig’s warm skeletal head and serving it on gilded mirrors plonked beside wobbly golden gelatin cubes?  This I did not want to be a part of.  One of the glaring failures of cooking school was the lack of provided context for what it is we were feebly carrying out.  Most of us were dropped on a another planet and asked to learn its language without grasping jack about its culture.  The critical backstory - say a brief illuminating history of food - was desperately missing.  

Which is how food books saved my sorry chef’s soul.  Not for recipes alone, but for context.  Like reading the glorious Alice Munro or Tolstoy, crack food writing illuminates worlds; offers endless ways into the mystery, so that even dreaded Head Cheese can morph into something both elemental and delicious.  I zealously make it now because it so cleverly puts to use every scrap of that wild, sacred slaughtered animal (and I’m holding half a pig), and because to make and eat such things is to know what’s been made and eaten for centuries before... it is to conjure endless edible apparitions.  

I nab trusted guides for a quick tutorial.  River Cottage offers a beautiful, muscular outline for the operation: we’re to remove brains first and fry them as a “chef’s perk,” pluck the stubborn bristly hairs of the simmered snout with tweezers (for better mouthfeel, presumably), reduce broth two thirds, cover and weight the head-filled terrine.  Chez Panisse Café, as always, supplies further refinements: checking the broth for tender gelatinousness by cooling spoonfuls on a plate, thinly slicing simmered ears and snout for a nice added cartilage crunch. Both finish with herbs and acid to (somehow impossibly) make the dense porcine mishmash sparkle.  I am surprised by how much liver the peeled, chopped tongue imparts; that the tender suspending gelatin is so meltingly delicious, such an animating part of the whole.  What I have is a lavish, dotted rogue pate.  My final notes are a mingling of the above that reflect my own foibles and leanings.

Head Cheese Notes

1/2 pig’s head

1 pig’s foot, cut in half lengthwise

Sea salt

Mirepoix: 2 onions, peeled and halved; 2 carrots, peeled; 2 celery ribs 

   halved lengthwise

2 leeks, cut lengthwise and cleaned

1 head garlic, cut in half widthwise

A good handful of tied fresh herbs on the stem, some or all:  parsley, 

   thyme, tarragon, marjoram 

A tied cheesecloth bundle of:  2 bay leaves, 4 cloves, 10 black 

   peppercorns, 10 coriander seeds

1 cup white wine

Freshly ground pepper

A good pinch Quatre epices or grated nutmeg

A good handful of chopped soft herbs, some or all: parsley, chives, 

   tarragon

1 tablespoon lemon juice or wine vinegar

Rub the head and foot with a good handful of salt and let sit refrigerated 8 hours or overnight.  Rinse and place in a large stock pot with the mirepoix, leeks, garlic, tied herbs and the spice bundle.  Add wine.  Cover with water by several inches.  Bring to a simmer and skim well for the first 20 minutes, then whenever any foam comes to the surface.   Gently cook at a simmer until the meat is tender and falls off the bone, about 3 hours. Add more water as necessary. 

Remove head and foot, strain the stock and cook over high heat to reduce, skimming occasionally. 

In the meantime, pick the meat when it’s cool enough to handle.  Gently remove the tongue from the skull, peel and chop it into small cubes.  Pull all the meat, skin and fat from the skull and feet, removing any coarse pieces or whiskers.  Chop/shred the meat, skin and fat.  Add the tongue to the mixture.  Thinly slice the ear and snout and add this to the meat mixture.  Add several grindings of pepper, a few pinches of Quatre epices or nutmeg, the fresh herbs and lemon juice or vinegar. The mixture should be seasoned boldly. Taste and adjust it as necessary.  Lay into a plastic wrap lined 5-cup terrine.

When the stock is reduced by about two-thirds, spoon some of it onto a plate and refrigerate to check its density.  The gelatin should be firm enough to bind the terrine but not dense or rubbery.  Add more liquid or reduce the stock as necessary and check again.  Ladle about 1 cup of the reduced liquid over the terrine.  Wrap well and refrigerate until set, several hours or overnight.  

Serve cold, in slices or crumbled with something big and acidic: a bitter salad with Dijon vinaigrette, cornichons and sauce gribiche, or on a warm crostini with endive, red wine vinegar and cracked black pepper. Mario Batali melts his lightly on a warmed plate and serves with potatoes, rough mustard and pickled shallots (Babbo Cookbook).    

FROM THE MENU: Goat Shank Tagine

Gorgeous, grass-fed goat is in from Marin Sun Farms. These guys gently graze the hills of Point Reyes sustainably "managing" pastures. I also have a dozen fragrant bulbs of Spring fennel courtesy of Terra Sonoma in Sebastopol, and lemon I quickly preserved to save from ruin. I'm craving intense spices these days, and our menu could definitely use some as well. All of which promptly leads to tagine in my book. I quickly consult my Paula Wolfert.

I had a revelatory 16th birthday dinner at Dar Maghreb in Los Angles, and visited Morocco itself briefly in my early 20s ...the astonishing flavors of the place immediately etched themselves into me, and I had to figure out how they worked. Wolfert - one of the first food writers I turned to for authority - had lived in Morocco, and was a brilliant guide into those layers of saffron, ginger, garlic, sweet onion, green coriander & preserved lemon. Tagines have become an essential piece of my food lexicon. I crave them habitually as I crave any faithfully made pozole or bouillabaisse; any sating, true stew.

Fennel in the index of Wolfert's Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco gets me Lamb Tagine with Fennel, a "fragrant meat tagine," which I learn, as a group, usually involve preserved lemon, olives and vegetables. I substitute our newly arrived rich goat shank for the lamb shoulder, augment dried ginger in the recipe with beloved fresh, add a little tomato for some bricky earth, cinnamon stick because I can't resist its perfume, and a spoonful of honey to pull on the sweet notes of the melted saffrony onion. So, while I've ultimately made my own way in the recipe, both in ingredients and technique (French training and restaurant kitchen Batterie de cuisine!), Wolfert is always lingering in the background, too. The braise hums madly. Serve on couscous with lemon, chickpeas and scallions.

Goat Tagine with Fennel and Olives

6 meaty goat shanks

Sea Salt

Freshly ground pepper

3 tablespoons olive oil

2 medium onions, sliced in half lengthwise, then into 1/4-inch slices lengthwise

2 medium bulbs of fennel, cut in half lengthwise, then into 1/4-inch slices lengthwise

1 large pinch of saffron threads, lightly finger-crushed

6 medium garlic cloves, chopped

1 tablespoon fresh ginger, grated

1 teaspoon ground ginger

2 teaspoons freshly toasted, ground coriander seed

1 teaspoons freshly toasted, ground cumin

2 teaspoons freshly toasted, ground fennel seed

3 tablespoons honey

3/4 cup fresh tomato peeled and chopped, or good boxed/canned chopped tomatoes

4 cups of chicken stock or water

1 cinnamon stick

1/2 bunch fresh coriander (cilantro), stem and all, tied with butcher string

1/2 cup oil-cured olives

1 large preserved lemon, rinsed and quartered

Preheat oven to 375. Salt and pepper the goat shanks. Brown them over medium-high heat in a large, deep casserole that will fit all the meat and go in the oven. Remove shanks from the pan and add olive oil, onions and half the fennel and cook for about 5 minutes. Add the saffron, garlic, ginger and all spices and cook another 5 minutes. Add the honey and tomatoes and cook a few minutes. Add stock and tuck shanks back into pot along with the cinnamon stick and tied cilantro. Bring to a simmer. Cover and braise in the oven until tender, about 3 hours. Check every so often; add more liquid if necessary. Add olives, lemon and remaining fennel to the stew the last 15 minutes of cooking. It is finished when the fennel is tender and the meat is buttery and falling off the bone. Taste and season as necessary.

Devil's Gulch Head Cheese "Piggy Confessional"

 

Here’s the head cheese (post to follow) I made from said animal in my Pig, Winnie & Me post, apparently my own personal “piggy confessional,” as Sara Dickerman ingeniously coined these scribed adventures a while ago in Slate.  I don’t know if I actually "(came) face to face with (my) own fleshly and mortal nature in the 'mirror' of the pig,” as Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft claims we bloody confessers do in the recent wonderful Pig Issue of Meatpaper, or if I felt my butchery sins had been absolved by the end of my piggy scribblings, but close enough to the bone and utterly hilarious.

       

Feast: South India

Menu

Okra and Lotus Root in Fenugreek Masala 

Prawn Varuval - Chilie Prawns

Sweet Mango Curry with Cumin Basmati Rice 

Pork Vindaloo with Rice Idlis and Cilantro-Chickpea Chutney 

Bagare Baingan - Tamarind Stuffed Eggplant

Mint & Cilantro Raita 

Our pal Rohini fashioned an Indian feast for us last night.  Oh yes she did.  Her husband Ravi chose perfect, outlandish wines for the whole rollicking shebang from his rife cellar too: blissful bony Chablis, petal-steeped Meursault and an earth-singing Pinot Noir from Oregon (he even insanely tossed in a `96 Les Forts de Latour for post-dinner sipping!)... enough liquid elegance to animate any fiery fete. 

Rohini, originally from Mumbai, is stumped when I ask her to name a good Indian restaurant in San Francisco.  And, truly, I have never had Indian food like hers anywhere.  It is both utterly layered and pure. She uses fragrant herbs unabashedly - curry leaves, fenugreek, cilantro, mint - and is rightly adamant about freshly toasted, ground spices. She tells me that Indian families often mix their own unique masalas and that her mother sends her bundles of the new family cache every few months (which she proprietarily flashes from a deeply perfumed drawer).

Our dinner was Southern: extravagantly spiced, popped with heat, vegetable rich, rice-inflected (spiced basmati and classic Southern idlis of rice and dahl).  I have been known to groan over Sambar with Idlis in my (clearly deprived) past, yet I’ve never tasted idlis as fine as these.  I loved the sour-tender crumb of it; the way its neutral fermented tang worked against the sweet, bitter, cool, hot fusion of the entire plate.  I could tease out each gorgeous flavor of our dinner separately and then taste them, too, mingled together in their own magnificent manna.  Rave on Rohini. Recipes to come...