half-off sushi

Simultaneously pragmatic, a little worrisome, a testament to freshness, and oddly specific.

18 Reasons Food Lit Club

Rainbow cheesemonger Gordonzola turned me on to the 18 Reasons Food Lit Club today, so I’ll be attending three meetings between now and the end of the year. In October, we’ll discuss The Righteous Porkchop: Finding a Life and Good Food Beyond Factory Farms by Nicolette Niman, with the author and her husband in attendance. In November, it’s Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food by Paul Greenberg (a hard look at the effects of world fish consumption on cod, salmon, sea bass, and tuna). And in December, it’s Gordon Edgar’s own Cheesemonger: A Life on the Wedge, with Gordon in attendance.

If you’re free from 4-6 on Sundays October 24, November 21, and December 19, you can also join in! Tickets available for $30 (without books) or $70 (books included, pick up at Omnivore at Church and Cesar Chavez).

18 Reasons is a non-profit engaging the community through food and art. They offer a year-round calendar of wine tastings, art shows, community dinners, food classes, interactive workshops, and more in an intimate community space.

sardines

I like sardines. I like them in a salad, with toasted hazelnuts, parmesan shavings, and a lemon-olive oil dressing. I like them in pasta. I like them in omelets. I like them on toast. I like sardines.

And that’s what I say to myself every time I face down yet another sure-to-be-stinky can of sardines, waiting to be opened. The taste is always delicious, but the smell can be a little much.

Tonight, in preparing the salad described above (thanks to Courtney for introducing me to it), I formed a new brand loyalty: Cole’s sardines. Tasty, firm, and delightfully unstinky. I opened the can and was not seized with the urge to hustle the lid straight out to the recycling bin, to pack the leftovers up airtight and immediately. Those leftovers, which I put into a storage container at a leisurely pace, will go on toast for my breakfast tomorrow.

We’ve only bought Cole’s smoked trout once, because we soon found that Bi-Rite sells a whole smoked trout for the same price as Cole’s little tin. But these sardines? These sardines are winners.

Sardine

comparative breakfast

In Helsinki, the Klaus K laid out a very satisfying breakfast for its guests. I gorged on salmon, trout salad, cheese, ham, brown bread with salty butter, mixed fruit, and coffee. Besides that, pullas and other sweet breads, fresh fruit juices, soft-boiled eggs, roast beef, muesli, yogurt, oatmeal, and tea were available. I ate what seemed like a lot, especially compared to the daily bagel that J-P and I have at home, but it wasn’t just gluttony; it was an experiment. The results? With a brick of protein sitting in my stomach, the need for second breakfast doesn’t overwhelm me at 10, and lunch by 11:30 isn’t a necessity. In fact, I didn’t have much appetite for lunch, at least not compared to normal. I was prepared to skip it the first day, although Patty caught me up in her search for a midday meal around 2:30. The second day, despite a late-morning run, I was content at nearly 1 with small helpings of stewed reindeer (psst: it tastes like venison), mashed potatoes, green salad, and stuffed cabbage leaf.

On the day we returned to England, I breakfasted on a so-called protein shake, a banana, and a pastry. The sugar crash returned with a vengeance. I found myself sweating and shaking in a byway between Heathrow’s Terminal 3 and its bus terminal, letting J-P choose a vending machine snack for me while I chugged desperately at a Coca-Cola. It was more or less empty calories all the way to dinner on the Isle of Wight, and I felt more gluttonous than I ever did in Helsinki. So I imagine the two approaches at least balance out, calorie-wise, and certainly the big-breakfast approach feels better all around.

The Isle of Wight also did well by breakfast. There was a buffet (meager by comparison) of cereals, yogurt, fruit, pastries, and juices, and guests could also order a hot meal with toast and caffeine. I particularly enjoyed the English breakfast plate with beans, a sausage, two slices of bacon, an egg, a grilled tomato half, and a grilled portobello.

Of course, eating half my weight in salmon or pork every morning is by no means sustainable, no matter how much I might enjoy it. But the smoked trout that Klaus K offered is better, at least for now, and so are sardines.

Further experimentation so far supports my hypothesis that my stomach can handle soft-cooked farm-fresh eggs with little complaint. Beans are also an option, whether English/Boston-style or Guatemalan/Mexican-style. And an inadvertent experiment at Ginny’s hands seems to show that whole-wheat pancakes, accompanied by maple syrup and a little yogurt, are worlds less disruptive to my metabolism than white-flour ones. (She fluffs them up by beating the egg whites frothy, and they’re great.) Mark Bittman also has suggestions for hearty but meat-light breakfasts, and I might have to try my hand at kedgeree, a fish-and-rice breakfast popular in Victorian England.

Speaking of Victorian England, my vacation reading (The Smell of the Continent: The British Discover Europe) informed me that differences in expected meal times and content were a point of contention between traveling Brits and their Continental hosts as modern tourism developed during the long nineteenth century. Tour organizers, travel agents, and eventually large hotels were sure to advertise “meat breakfasts,” but even late in the century, satisfying the British desire for a large early meal could be still difficult once off the beaten path. In southeastern France, one traveler complained, “A bowl of black coffee and a piece of bread is the only breakfast that one can expect in a rural auberge. To ask for butter would be looked upon as a sign of eccentric gluttony, but to demand bacon and eggs at seven in the morning would be to openly confess oneself capable of any crime.”

Helsinki fine dining: Havis

On the first night of the conference, we had a very good dinner at Havis, a high-end Finnish cuisine restaurant on the waterfront. It started with skagen, an open-face sandwich that in this case included shrimp, a dill-cream sauce, and lavaret roe. The main was a white fish (I’m not sure we were able to get a good translation as to what kind) in a creamy false morel sauce. Both delicious. Wine was chosen by the eminences of J-P’s department, who’ve made extensive (academic) study of the subject and so have my trust, and dessert was creme brulee with (possibly) lingonberry sauce. Conversation included the antiseptic and other merits of various spices–I plan to report back here later. A good night.

One hitch in the meal: a fellow diner fished something very un-morel-like out of his sauce. As he was wondering what it was, I, with my tact as ever one step behind my mouth, gave a positive id. “That’s a spider.”

And it was. It was very small, and probably well cooked. When we told the waiter, his response was terrifically deadpan. “You’re joking.” Examining plate: “That’s disgusting.” And he brought another.

We enjoyed the food regardless, making jokes about the delicacy of baked giant spider eyes. The topic of Extreme Cuisine came up, as well as the time I watched a woman inadvertently make tarantula tamales in Guatemala.

We actually had an even better meal in Helsinki (story for another post), but nothing else as dramatic. Unless you count the clerk at the second kebab shop we visited warning us away from sitting outside to eat. “Oh, it sounds good. But there are birds attacking people and stealing their food.”

link round-up

I just spent six days on at the bike shop, which is why new posts have been spotty. Rest assured we’ve been eating well Chez Cervantes-Ferguson: my lunch leftovers today included lamb steak, zucchini casserole, and homemade basil pesto.

Summer is in full effect at the Noe Valley Farmers’ Market, and San Francisco even had two genuinely warm days last weekend. So I’m primed for:

Light, summery recipes
Mexconnect’s Sopa Fría de Sandía y Jitomate re-works one of our favorite Mark Bittman salads as a soup. In a related article (with more recipes), Karen Hursch Graber shares Alice B. Toklas’ remark, apropos of gazpachos, that “recipes, through conquests and occupations, have traveled far.” And the Jul/Aug issue of Cook’s Illustrated has a recipe for pureed tomato gazpacho, along with a description of pre-tomato versions: “yesterday’s bread, almonds, garlic, olive oil, and water … mashed … together into a humble potage.”

Meanwhile, Joumana at Taste of Beirut offers an appealing spiced cheese salad, and Mark Bittman a quick pasta preparation with shallots, peas, lettuce, and proscuitto. Bittman has also been experimenting with using tomatoes to deglaze his pans.

Old News
Besides continuing to love Mark Bittman and Taste of Beirut, I am also charmed all over again by Robb Walsh, and his latest analogy: authentic Mexican restaurants are to Tex-Mex as Ballet Folklorico is to Freddy Fender. Or, if Freddy is too old-fashioned for you (say it ain’t so–he was my favorite rodeo performer when I was a kid!), Walsh recommends Chingo Bling.

Environmental News
But summer isn’t all good food and fun commentary. The BP oil slick has forced the 134-year-old, family-owned P&J oyster shuckery to close, lending credence (as though it were needed) to this Facing South article on Louisianans’ fears of cultural loss to environmental damage.

In better news, the EPA has moved to ban the insecticide endosulfan, which is known to cause neurological and reproductive damage in humans (especially farmworkers) and animals. Counties in California’s Central Valley are also mandating pesticide buffer zones around schools.

Miscellany
In a recent podcast, James Howard Kunstler discusses urban food production past, present, and future, and the need to preserve rural lands regardless of what we can produce in our cities.

Jan Chipchase reports on the cultural significances of breath mints.

This one is more for me than anything, since J-P and I will be leaving for London (then Helsinki, then the Isle of Wight) a week from tomorrow: James Ramsden’s highlights from this week’s Taste of London. I love the preponderence of Malaysian restaurants on his list: is it Britain’s new Indian?

fancy food for one, for many

John-Paul went to a cook-out in Palo Alto last night, so I cooked for myself. Wild Alaskan cod, poached, and California asparagus, roasted, all topped with an emulsion of the reduced poaching liquid and hazelnut brown butter.

Click the image for photos of the process.

—
Rachel called me just before I posted this to ask my advice on mole making. She said that her recipe called for deseeding and deveining the chiles. “What does deveining mean, and how much does it matter?”

My answer: The veins are the lighter colored ribs inside the chile that hold the seeds in place, and they and the seeds have most of the chile’s heat.

“Oh, so if I’m not worried about heat, I don’t have to do it?”

Right-o. And I was flattered.

link round-up

A Glimmer of Green in Houston
Restaurateurs, urban farmers, and investors are working together to plant gardens to serve local vegetables to Houston diners.

Gulf Fishing News
The South I know and–um, love?–has finally appeared in coverage of the BP oil slick. Only part of Louisiana’s shoreline and Gulf waters are directly affected by the oil, and fishermen west of the line blame media coverage for driving the tourist trade away from their charter boats. Yep, the gol-darned liberal media absolutely caused the BP oil slick.

Meanwhile, though Mexico is unlikely to see oil from BP’s slick wash ashore, the country is considering legal action against BP for damage to wildlife species that spend time there–and attract tourists.

Unrelated to the BP oil slick, members of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1529 are ready to strike against Delta Pride Catfish for proposing contract changes that would greatly reduce benefits and job security, eliminate daily overtime pay, and increase the work week–erasing all the benefits the workers won in their three-week strike in 1990.

Restaurant Labor News
Central Park’s Tavern on the Green, which has been closed since January 1, is transferring to new management, who are having trouble agreeing to honor the terms of the employees’ previous contract.

Marc Forgione kicked a New York times blogger out of his restaurant last weekend for asking him not to yell at his staff so that his diners could hear.

Everybody Knows About Arizona, Goddam
What with his state’s new requirement that brown people carry their papers at all times, John McCain feels he has to get tough on immigration. That’s hardly news, but what I really appreciate about this post at the Latin Americanist is Vicente Duque‘s comment listing municipal governments, school districts, and sports teams that are boycotting Arizona by refusing to fund employee, student, or team travel to the state. San Francisco, Oakland, and Boston are among them.

Oh, and by the way–ethnic studies classes are now outlawed in Arizona. “It’s just like the Old South,” says Arizona schools chief Tom Horne. And he’s right–except he means that ethnic studies classes cause Chicanos to resent and oppress white people. No, Mister Horne, it’s not my education that makes me resent you–it’s stunts like this. Which, I’ll note, you have the power to pull. So where’s the oppression again?

sciencing the frozen margarita

Duke University Press’ blog post about Gabriela Soto Laveaga’s Jungle Laboratories says that the book “challenges us to reconsider who can produce science.”

In a much lighter vein, I was reminded of that challenge this morning while reading Robb Walsh‘s recounting, in The Tex-Mex Cookbook, of Mariano Martinez’s invention of the frozen margarita machine. In 1971, Martinez relayed his diners’ complaints about his restaurant’s inconsistent margaritas to his bartender. The bartender, “sick of squeezing all those limes,” threatened to quit. Martinez found inspiration at a 7-11 the next morning and decided to automate–but he couldn’t get his hands on a Slurpee machine. Instead, he bought a soft-serve ice cream machine and began experimenting–or holding “a lot of tasting parties,” as he put it. The problem was how to get the alcoholic mix to freeze. Adding enough water to cause freezing diluted the drink too much, but adding more sugar… It turns out that “with a high enough brix level (the scientific measurement of sugar content), you can freeze quite a bit of alcohol.”

Mexican campesinos can certainly produce science, and so can tipsy Tex-Mex restaurateurs. Martinez never patented or trademarked his method, but his first margarita machine does have a place in the National Museum of American History.

—
In more serious news, US federal courts have been voiding clauses of BP’s exploitative clean-up contracts with Gulf fishermen left and right, preserving the fishermen’s rights to sue BP for damages from the Deepwater Horizon disaster and to talk freely about the situation, even if they do accept clean-up work from BP.

How come I cook so little Tex-Mex?

The world gets in the way sometimes. Today there were two ingredients lurking in the fridge, incompatible with Tex-Mex but threatening to go bad: broccoli and an open tin of sardines, just one used in a salad dressing yesterday.

Even though I’d told John-Paul I’d come up with something, my thoughts kept straying. We had sweet potatoes: I could make my grandmother’s chicken with sweet potato dressing. Just sweet potatoes, potatoes, butter, piloncillo, cinnamon, cumin, onions, pecans, raisins, and a little salt. Okay, we don’t have pecans, but wouldn’t the hazelnuts left over from yesterday’s salad be delicious in it?

Yes, they would. But you have broccoli and sardines.

All right… How about thawing some ground meat and making chili mac? That sounds yummy.

Yes, it does. But you work tomorrow, and chili mac will be super easy to make when you get home. You should save it, and right now while you can still manage some creativity, focus on the broccoli and sardines in your fridge.

Okay, sure, broccoli and sardines… I’ll just go get some chicken, and we’ll have arroz con pollo.

No! Focus, would you?! Broccoli and sardines! Broccoli and sardines!

I used the sardines in a Piedmontese sauce called bagna cauda (hot bath), which I got from one of the egg cookbooks I’ve been reading. Melt three tablespoons butter and soften three cloves minced garlic in it. Add most of a can of sardines and 2/3 of a cup of extra virgin olive oil. Pull from the heat. Add salt and pepper; taste and decide it’s somehow even richer than you’d imagined, so add the juice of half a lime and a handful of chopped parsley. This makes an obscene amount for two people, but I plan on scrambling eggs and toasting bread in the leftovers.

Tonight, the bagna cauda topped broccoli and plain risotto. Since I had a batch of black beans (for weekend work lunches) simmering in the pot that fits the steamer basket, I blanched the broccoli in a smaller pot. I drained that into a bowl so that I could use the broccoli water as the broth for the risotto. I browned the rice in a little of the bagna cauda but otherwise added nothing but salt, pepper, parmesan, and a pinch of dry yellow mustard.