Nice Way To Spend A Sunday Morning

Noah and I were up north this weekend - visiting my family, attending a wedding, hanging with Noah's mom who was in from Baltimore and celebrating my birthday a few days early. As you can imagine, the schedule was fairly packed. But Sunday morning we got to do one of my favorite things - take a trip to the Marin Farmer's Market at the Civic Center. And this isn't some skimpy market. There are rows and rows of farm stalls, food stalls, petting zoos and even a bouncy castle or two. Heaven.
There's no better time to check out the bounty at the market than early September. Fruit like crazy, the beginnings of fall veggies and all kinds of meats, fishes and cheeses. Well, sadly not as much cheese this weekend as I had hoped for, as both the Andante guy and the Pug's Leap folks were MIA for the holiday. Damn. Still, there was plenty of other good stuff to enjoy.
Like these gorgeous berries. We brought a box of the fiery orange raspberries to our picnic in Golden Gate Park. They were sooo good. And I'm not at all a raspberry person. Usually they're too mushy and slightly fermented tasting for me (yes, even the really great, fancy, expensive ones), but these were great. They had an almost citrusy tang to them.
Brian picked up some fantastic tuna from the fish folks at Santa Rosa Seafood, which he whipped up for us at my birthday dinner at Insalata's. I must say, it's pretty nice having a chef in the family. I meant to get a few of the SRS oysters, but was rushed out of the market before I had a chance. Next time.
Of course, we had to grab some stone fruits as well - flavor king plums, flavor grenade pluots and some O'Henry peaches. We cut them up and had them along with dates (also acquired at the market) for our picnic dessert.
Stacy getting fresh with a plum.
Stone fruit free samples. I had to take this one three or four times because people kept popping in and blocking the shot as they reached for their taste.
I just liked this sign. Doesn't it make you smile?
One of the food stalls at the market is a wood-fire pizza oven. We always get their fresh mozzarella, prosciutto and egg breakfast pizza. Apparently you can hire them to do parties in Marin. If I lived there, they would be catering my birthday party. I guess dinner at Church & State is an acceptable substitute.
It was a nice time at the market - not too crowded, not too hot and lots and lots of deliciousness. Stay tuned for details of the picnic in GGP and the trip to the Academy of Sciences. I've got two words to tease it... duck rillettes.

Southern Comfort

Happy Father's Day!

Mom and Dad (aka Gretchen & Chuck) were down in Louisiana last week for the wedding celebrations of our family friend Sam and his wife Olivia. The festivities took place in New Iberia, which is in the southwestern part of the state. Above is the gorgeous B&B my parents stayed at in New Iberia.
And being my parents, they of course went to the weekly New Iberia farmers market. I love this woman's farmstand! My parents said she was selling homemade pickled foods (eggs, beans, okra, etc...) as well as jams, jellies and preserves. Given my recent jam obsession (see the bowl of cherries currently macerating in my kitchen), this is giving me ideas for future second career opportunities.
This is the cool main street area of New Iberia. I love the old school theater!
And some of the beautiful local architecture.
Here is the entire Cal crew (Sam's family is among the half dozen or so family's that we've been going to Cal football games with since 1984) enjoying a tasty luncheon at the Lafayette Cajun Restaurant.
Some Cajun shrimp. And check out that coffee mug - "Simply Cajun". Sweet!
A seafood etouffee - a great excuse to not worry so much about calorie counting when visiting the area and taking in their fantastic food traditions. Isn't it a travesty that I've never been to Louisiana?! There's talk of a family trip there for Jazz Fest to rectify said appalling truth.

Mom and Dad will try and put up their own post, detailing all the eats and sights of New Orleans, where they spent several days with Aunt Lise and Uncle Kevin after the wedding party. If I can't talk them through it, I'll put it all up myself. Can't wait for those photos.

Making Jam. Or How I Got Over My Fear of Canning...

There is always something that drives fear deep into the heart of any home chef. Maybe it's breadmaking or egg white beating or raw meat handling. Or maybe those things don't seem bad at all, maybe what really wakes you up at 3 AM in a full sweat is the idea of canning stuff. Processing it. Making sure you don't give yourself (or someone you love) botulism. Trying not to blind yourself with exploding glass jars in pans of boiling water. Ack!

Or maybe that's just me. Or should I say, that was me, until this past weekend. That's when I finally stood up to my fears and CANNED SOME FREAKIN' JAM! And not just any jam, friends, the best fruit jam of all - the humble apricot.
I mean, jeez, aren't these some beautiful apricots? They're Robata's, which I find (prepare for blasphemy) superior to Blenheims. They're a little bigger, a little firmer and really taste of apricot to me. Not that I'd turn up my nose at a Blenheim. I am an apricot slut like that.

I haven't always been cuckoo for apricot jam - that I blame on Abby and the family trip to France she took me on a several years ago. For breakfast most mornings we'd have a croissant or baguette hunk slathered in delicious French butter and topped with Bonne Maman apricot preserves. It was, in a word, transcendent.

Last year, Mom & Stace put up some of their own apricot jam, with the apricots off of their home trees. And me, the ever competitive one, was like, "Uh, screw that, I can can too." And then I waited until last weekend to take the plunge. I'm competitive and procrastinator-ish, from time to time.

And here's what I discovered - canning shit is EASY. Making jam is EASY. Why the hell hadn't I been doing this all along?! And when you can stuff, people think you're awesome. There wasn't even the matter of exploding jars to worry about, because as I learned here and here you can sterilize the damn things in the oven. I love the internet. And I hate the fact that I now have to drive all the way back to Surfas in Culver City to return the (too large anyway) canning pot-cha-macallit.

All the canning on Sunday made me feel so... fulfilled. So I decided to do it again the next day (which carried into today, because I was lazy and because it doesn't hurt to macerate your fruit for a few extra hours). This time it was with some Bing cherries from the HFM.
The above picture really doesn't do the hot foaming pan of cherry goodness justice. Trying to get a picture when cherries are steaming up a storm = kinda hard. I riffed on a not-recipe from David Lebovitz and he's right. You really don't need a recipe. Just some concepts to kinda, sorta follow as you see fit. For instance, I didn't chop up any cherries beforehand, just mashed them a bit during cooking with the potato masher. I did this with the apricots, too. And I gotta say, it's a great way to get a nice, meaty (fruity?) texture to your jams.

Also, I just guessed when it came to sugar, rather than cooking down the fruit first, then measuring it out and then putting in an equal amount of sugar. I had about 4 cups of cherries. I figured they'd cook down to 2 (it was actually 2 1/2). I don't like crazy sugary jam - I put in way less than most recipes called for. So I went with 1 1/4 c. of sugar. I probably could have done just a cup.
Here are some of the finished products. What were the total yields? Well 4 lbs of apricots made 7 half pint jars of preserves. 2 lbs of cherries made 2 1/2 jars of preserves. Aren't they lovely?
Of course, I couldn't wait to use them. So for lunch today I went old school (or maybe pre-school) and made an open-faced PB&J with still warm cherry jam. Best meal all week. Confiture d'Abricot aux Amandes aka Apricot & Almond (well, technically, Apricot Kernel) Jam
from Clotilde at Chocolate & Zucchini

- 1.2 kg ripe apricots (**I used 4 lbs)
- 1 kg sugar (**I used only 750 grams or so)

Yields : 5 to 6 jars (the Bonne Maman kind, which holds 370g of jam), recipe can be doubled or halved. (**Mine yielded 7 pint jars of the Ball variety).

Rinse, scrub if necessary, and dry the apricots. Slice them in two, remove the stone, and cut the flesh in smallish pieces. Reserve the stones.

Weigh the amount of apricot flesh you get. Transfer the apricots to a large pan, and combine with the same weight of sugar as of fruit. If you used 1.2 kg of apricots, you should have about 1 kg of apricot flesh, but it's best to weigh it to make sure and adjust the amount of sugar.

Crack about 18 of the apricot stones open with a nutcracker (see important note), to get the almonds inside. Bring water to a boil in a small saucepan, remove from heat, and put in the almonds. Let rest for about thirty seconds (this process is called "blanching"), then transfer to a colander and rinse under cold water. The papery skin of the almonds will then slip off easily. Reserve the peeled almonds and discard the rest.

Wash the glass jars and their lids carefully, then soak them in boiling water for 10 minutes, and set them out to dry upside down on a clean kitchen towel.

Put a saucer in the freezer. Put the pan over medium heat, until the apricots have started to melt and produce juice, stirring frequently with a wooden spoon. Turn the heat up, and bring the mixture to a boil. Cook for about 20 to 25 minutes, keeping it at a gentle boil and stirring occasionally.

Keep a close eye on it : at first the mixture will almost double in volume, producing a light orange, thick foam (hence the necessity of a large pan). After a while it will reduce back down, and bubble quietly while taking on an amber, dark orange color. About 15 minutes into the cooking, add in the peeled almonds.

Keep stirring until it feels like the mixture is thickening slightly. Although it is subtle, you'll see the change when you lift the wooden spoon and look closely at the drops dripping from it : they'll get thicker and will drip down slightly slower. Remove the saucer from the freezer, put a drop of jam on it and tilt the saucer to see if the jam is set. If not, let it boil a bit more before testing again.

Remove the foam from the surface with a slotted spoon to have a clearer jam (reserve the foam, it's delicious, as a topping on yogurt for instance), but that's optional in my opinion.

Pour the jam in the prepared jars until they are full (watch out, jam will be extremely hot) using gloves and a funnel if you have one. Wipe carefully if there was any spillage and close the lids tightly. Let cool to room temperature upside-down on the counter, then store in a cool and dark place for a few months.

Important note : this apricot jam recipe uses the almonds inside the stones. This gives the jam a particularly good flavor, and makes for a few lovely crunchy bites per jar. However, the almonds inside apricot stones, like bitter almonds, contain hydrocyanic acid. The human body has no problem dealing with it if ingested in small doses, but 30 to 50 almonds eaten in a short amount of time can kill an adult! It's perfectly safe to include a few in a jar of jam, but just keep the warning in mind.

Oyster-gasm!!!

This weekend there were oysters. Lots of oysters. One dozen on Saturday evening, courtesy of the Fish King in Glendale. One dozen Sunday evening courtesy of the Carlsbad Aquafarm stand at the Hollywood Farmers Market.
We ate the Saturday batch (Hama Hamas and Fanny Bays) with the above wine - a killer Viogner we picked up at Rideau when we were wine tasting in the Santa Ynez Valley three weekends ago (wine tasting then Kings of Leon at the SB Bowl, are you jealous?). Sunday's Luna oysters were washed down with a few glasses of Saison Dupont.
Noah not only did all the shucking both nights, but Saturday he put together the entire gorgeous platter and made the mignonette. I love that man. He also fancies hot sauce on his lil' guys.
As you can see, we really had to force ourselves to get all 24 bivalves down. Mmmm, bivalves.

Squash Blossom Pizza? Hello, Summer!

Tell me this doesn't look like a delicious late May dinner:

Even with the mediocre point & shoot picture quality, just looking at this pizza makes me want another slice.

This spring has really been a squash blossom discovery for me. Not just your typical fried squash blossoms (I had some great ones at Ford's Filling Station earlier this month before interviewing for the awesome new job Veronica and I landed). I had some in a light pasta dish, some in a risotto (wow, heavenly) and have spied them on pizza/flatbread menus all over town.

And so when I saw them at the market on Sunday, I figured, "How hard could a squash blossom pizza be?" And, for once, the answer was, "Not very hard." And thanks to a pre-made whole wheat pizza dough from TJs, the leftover mini-squashes from our Memorial Day bbq at Abby's and some cherry tomatoes, it actually seemed pretty freaking healthy. Especially when served with a crazy simple veggie sautee using the other bbq leftovers (The key to good sauteed veg? Lemon juice squeezed on after cooking).

Dare I say I've found a new vegetable lover? Sorry, beets, but your season is over.

Squash Blossom Pizza
by Sarah

1 Trader Joe's whole wheat pizza dough (or homemade dough for one 12-14" pizza)
12-24 squash blossoms (I bought 60¢ worth and used them all)
10 or so mini-squashes, thinly sliced OR 1 zucchini, thinly sliced
20 cherry tomatoes, halved
1/3 c. ricotta cheese (can be part skim or whole)
1/4 c. mozzarella (fresh is ideal, but I didn't have it and used pre-shredded without an issue)
freshly chopped basil
olive oil
dried basil & oregano
red pepper flakes

1. Preheat oven to the highest possible setting (about 550 farenheit on conventional kitchen ovens).
2. Toss, stretch or roll out your dough, to your preference. The thinner the better with this one. Then lightly sprinkle with olive oil (1 tsp or so) and rub oil into crust. Sprinkle dried basil, oregano and pepper flakes to your liking on crust.
3. THIS IS THE SECRET: Put your crust in the oven (either directly on a pizza stone or on a pizza sheet) and bake for 6-8 minutes. You want a decent brown-ness to the dough. This will keep it from getting too mushy, something the ricotta might do to your crust. I do this with all of our doughs when we cook pizza and it makes a HUGE difference. Gives a slightly more Neapolitan crunchiness to the crust, which I favor.
4. Remove dough from the oven and put on the toppings in whichever order you see fit (leave the squash blossoms and basil for later, though). I made a thin layer of the ricotta, then put on the thinly sliced mini-squashed and halved cherry tomatoes. *It's important to put the cherry tomatoes with the cut end facing UP. This way they won't sog-up your nice and crispy crust. Then I sprinkled the entire pizza with a small handful of the mozzarella. I think you could also do the veg first, then dollops of ricotta and spots of fresh mozzarella. It's pizza, you really can't fuck it up.
5. Put the pizza back in the oven and cook for 10 minutes.
6. Remove pizza again and put the squash blossoms on top. Slide back in the oven and cook for 5 more minutes.
7. Remove pizza and sprinkle with basil. Purple basil adds a colorful punch to the dish.
8. Enjoy pizza while watching the season finale of SOUTHLAND. Which totally kicked ass, by the way.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

We're about six weeks into the spring/summer/fall garden and things are growing great. There were some lofty plans to take the space and build a huge raised bed, but time and bad backs got in the way. So we're going ahead with the usual container/wine barrel garden we've had for the past five or six years. And like every spring, we've added a few more containers.

What's growing? Tomatoes (13 and counting, we added a Northern Lights that we discovered at the HFM last weekend), Japanese eggplant, Persian cucumbers (the best for the hundreds of Greek salads we eat during the summer), serrano peppers, Charentrais melons, 4 kinds of beets, swiss chard, silverbeet spinach, spring onions, rainbow carrots, turnips, strawberries (with actually berries, for the first time ever!), 4 kinds of basil, rosemary, 2 kinds of thyme, lemon verbena, oregano, Bob Marley mint (it smells smokey when you rub it, another HFM find), tarragon, sage (the flowers are below) and lavender.
And that's just for now. We're bound to adopt a few more things over the course of the spring/summer. Including, hopefully, a fig tree. To go with the Meyer lemon tree I forgot to mention. As you can imagine, my other career option is farming.

The early mornings would be tough, though.

La Fête du Fromage - Andante's Picolo

When it comes to my desert island food - you know, that "you're stranded on a desert island and you can only eat one thing for the rest of your life" type scenario - I think I would have a seriously tough time choosing between pork (all forms) and cheese. You've heard me go on and on about pork, so today it's all about cheese.

One of my favorite blogs, Chez Loulou, does a weekly "Fête du Fromage", a tasting and write up of one of the many, many French cheeses on offer (CL is based in the Minervois region of France). And each month, she opens it up to her readers and fellow bloggers, to submit their own fromage to fête. I've been meaning to come up with a post for a while now, but I really wanted my first to be one of the Andante cheeses. Only problem? They can be difficult to find outside of the Bay Area.

I first discovered Andante on a visit to the family up in Marin, at the Sunday Farmers Market at the Civic Center. They are a local dairy, making a variety of cow and goats milk cheeses, which are also sold at the Ferry Building Farmers Market in the City. In addition, they supply many Bay Area and SoCal restaurants and wholesale to a few stores, including Whole Foods. Which is where Noah and I stumbled upon their Picolo cheese down here in Los Angeles.

To say that I was excited to see this little cheese in my neck of the woods is an understatement. In fact, Noah practically shouted across the cheese section to alert me to its presence. He'd been through many an Andante cheesehunting expedtion with me down here, all fruitless.
But enough about the search, more about the cheese! Picolo is a triple creme, one of my favorite kinds of cheese. It's rich and, obviously, incredibly creamy. The flavor was nice and buttery, with a hint of mushroom and an underlying pleasant grassiness. The rind is edible and I enjoyed it, though it might be too agressive for some. We paired it with a nice Provencal rosè, but the Andante folks also recommend it with a Gruner Veltliner or other minerally, melony white. There was some sliced baguette to go along with it, but Noah and I ended up eating pretty much the whole round on its own.

If you're in California, check your local cheesemongers for this cheese. It's a lovely, rich, artisnal treat.

Super Bowl Funday and the Porkstrosity

That's right folks, we did it.

We made the Porkstrosity aka Pork Explosion aka Heart Attack in a Dish for the Super Bowl. Actually, Noah and Jeremy did it, with an assist from Param, Rice and Christina. I was just a post-pork spectator. And maybe I sampled the wares.
C'mon, you can't tell me this doesn't look fantastically tasty. It's a freakin' basket weave of bacon, encasing the best Sweet Italian sausages on offer at the H-wood Farmers Market. And there's BBQ sauce!
Okay, I know - it makes Paula Dean's typical offerings look like diet food. BUT when you break down the 5000 calorie, 500 fat gram log into its 15 serving slices, that's only 333 calories and (okay, gulp) 33 fat grams per slice - less if you use turkey bacon (gag). And I only had half a slice, and it was wrapped in a lettuce leaf, so damn, that's like health food right there.

Are you going to tell me that the ribs/burger/fried chicken YOU ate during the Super Bowl was any healthier than that? Yeah, I didn't think so.

All photos by Christina Stahlheber.

Gates in the City

A couple of the ironwork gates I pass on my weekly walk to the H-wood Farmers Market every Sunday. I don't think I ever really noticed them (or a lot of other things) until I brought my camera with me one morning a few weeks back.
I especially love these. They're getting me in the mood for France. T-minus 39 days...

Les Poissons

I've been meaning to post about these dinners for over a week. What can I say, I'm lazy sometimes.

Both dinners started at the weekly Farmers Market, where I love to buy fish - if the line isn't too long. Which really only happens if I manage to get out of bed by 8 and head up to the market stat. Have I mentioned the market is on Sunday?

The first dish was dinner two Sundays ago. The fish is opah, which is really one of my favorites right now. I believe it's also called moonfish, in case you're looking for it in your local market. We've made it before using a great marinade of pineapple juice, limes, chiles, oil and salt. But this time we went very basic - oil, salt, pepper.

To play off of it, I roasted up some small eggplants and tomatoes in oil, salt and garlic (1-2 hours at 250 degrees farenheit) and plated the fish on top of it. The two went together brilliantly, if I do say so myself. The eggplants and tomatoes were almost like a chunky, hot marmalade with a nice, sweet flavor.

I'd also gotten some scallops that day and did them as an appetizer. Again we just went salt, pepper, oil and seared them quickly in a pan. We served them with a lemon butter sauce that didn't go well with the scallops - too bitter for my taste. Noah liked it more.


Now here's the nice thing about our fishmonger - she always throws in something tasty for free. This week it was a nice chunk of ahi tuni. She's kind of awesome, right?

I've never loved seared ahi the way some people do, but this made a great light protein with a big salad for dinner that Monday night.

In case you're wondering, the weird blue light on the fish is probably reflection from the TV as we watched Gossip Girl. Oh, Chuck Bass, you delightful schemer you.

Fingers crossed for an early trip to the market tomorrow and some more fun with fish.

Sunday Shopping

Sundays in our little corner of Hollywood are pretty much the best. It's the only day I'll willingly wake up early, and that's so that I can head over to the Hollywood Farmers Market before all the good stuff is gone. Usually Noah joins me, unless it's football season (like it is now). Lately my friend Sherry has been coming along.

The past few mornings here have been cool and overcast. Fall is in the air, at least the mini-fall that we get before the 4-6 weeks of blazing hot Indian summer/Santa Ana winds kicks in. Maybe it was the cool weather or just the lure of new stuff, but for the first time in weeks my bags (yes, they're the re-usable cloth kind) were filled with more veggies than fruits after the market today.

(Non Sequitor: Watching the Broncos game on the Ticket and they just scored an awesome last minute winning touchdown which does GREAT things for my fantasy team, since Cutler is my QB. Woooo! And the Niners won in OT, double woooo!)

I picked up some butternut squash, Brussel sprouts, Listada de Gandia eggplants, a Hass avocado and heirloom tomatoes (Black Krim, Paul Robeson and Sara Schwartz). Check out the Brussels and eggplant:


In keeping with the fall theme I also got two kinds of apples, Honey Crisps and Gravensteins. Mom always uses Gravensteins to make her amazing apple pies and that's what I'm planning on doing with these guys. The Honey Crisps are my current favorite eating apple, at least until the Cameos come in.

Rounding things off were a stop at the Bread Man for almond croissants and a loaf of whole wheat and a visit to the fish lady for tonight's dinner - Opah, scallops and some ahi she threw in for free, yay!

Oh yes, and I picked up a few starters for my fall plantings from the guys at Hayground - two kinds of Brussel sprouts, purple asparagus and scallions. But more about the fall/winter garden in the next post.

Now that the afternoon games are over, it's looking like it's apple coring and peeling time. Kind of a pain, but worth it when the pie comes out of the oven. Though I'm thinking of doing what my mom does and freezing the uncooked pie for use at a later date. I've still got left over birthday cake to eat!