Double Duty: Mom's Day

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

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...

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

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

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

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

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.)