Last Crumb

It’s dark, now, as I leave the office in the evenings, and I’m finding it harder to motivate for anything but curling up in a big chair with a book and a cup of tea. But the “to do” list seems to double in length daily, and somehow it seems like time is being trimmed from the days along with the light. We’ve been up late for the last week trying to fit it all in – in bed at 3 a.m., tired at the 7 a.m alarm, and still the house grows messier, the plants go un-watered. We did finally finish painting our bedroom, and it is a calm, cozy oasis filled with books and our small plantation of coffee trees.

Tonight we’ll make a shopping list, and tomorrow try to prep what we can in anticipation of Thursday. We’re hosting Thanksgiving for the first time this year, which, in an odd way, feels more like a milestone than the 30th birthday I’ll be celebrating in a few weeks. Andy’s parents will be there, as well as my mom and my stepfather Ben, Andy’s cousin, our housemate Keith, and a few good friends. In lieu of a turkey, we’re preparing a whole, wild, line caught salmon, which we plan to parchment steam and serve with a Bearnaise sauce “gravy.” On the side, we’ll have a wild rice pilaf, potatoes mashed with garlic, wasabi, and savoy cabbage, cornbread, and a salad of citrus and bitter greens.

Will is also hosting a Thanksgiving celebration this year, and he is soon to add his more classic version of a menu. We’ll both be adding recipes as we find time today and tomorrow, but for now, I’ll leave you a starter . . .

Rose’s Thanksgiving Menu

To Start

Champagne Cocktails

• Dry champagne
• Brandy
• Angostura bitters (or homemade!)
• Sugar cubes
• Unsweetened dried cherries

Plump the dried cherries in brandy at least one hour beforehand. Thread the cherries onto toothpicks (about three to a toothpick is nice – two is bad luck according to old bartending lore) making enough for all of your cocktails. Place a sugar cube in each champagne flute and moisten the sugar with a few good shakes of bitters (be careful though, you can overdo it!) Fill glasses with champagne, and garnish with the brandy soaked cherries.

• Endive boats with Roquefort and caramelized walnut – I stole the idea for these from Le Zinc, a charming little French place in Noe Valley. They make a light and tasty accompaniment to the cocktails. Simply separate the endive leaves and place a small cube of Roquefort cheese and a caramelized walnut at the white end of each.

• Curried almonds

• Fruit and cheese plate

The Feast

• Whole parchment steamed salmon stuffed with shiitake mushrooms and edameme beans
• Eggless Bearnaise sauce “gravy” – The cooking juices made such a nice sauce that we did away with the additional “gravy.”
• Potatoes mashed with garlic, wasabi, and savoy cabbage – Cube and steam 3-4 lbs russet potatoes, leaving the skins on. While potatoes are steaming, thinly slice a small savoy cabbage and place in a large bowl with 3 cloves crushed or diced garlic and 3 tsp powdered wasabi (or to taste). When potatoes are very tender but still firm, toss them with the cabbage until it begins to wilt. Add about 2 tablespoons butter, 1/2 cup milk or cream, and plenty of salt and pepper to taste. Mash until potatoes are soft, but not entirely uniform.
• Citrus salad with bitter greens
• Wild rice pilaf - Combine 8 cups water, 1 1/2 cups wild rice, 1 1/2 cups long grain brown or white rice, 1/2 cup sliced almonds, 1/2 cup dried cranberries, and 1/2 tsp salt in a rice cooker, or add ingredients to the boiling water in a large pot with a tight fitting lid. Return the pilaf to a boil, lower heat, and cook covered for about 1 hour, or until the wild rice is firm but tender to the bite. Fluff and allow to sit for 10 minutes before serving.

• Wine pairings

Dessert

• Pumpkin pie
• Orange whipped cream
• Quady Essensia Orange Muscat dessert wine

***

Will’s Thanksgiving Menu

I’m not sure how classic this really is, but here goes:

To Start

The Gin Buck

Ingredients:

• 2 oz. gin (I use Junipero Gin for its robust flavor and ability to stand up to a strong ginger beer)
• Ginger Beer ( I’m a huge ginger beer fan, and my favorite brand other than my homemade stuff, is Fentimans out of the UK, now available at Cost Plus World Markets)
• The juice of 1/2 lemon
• Lemon wedge to garnish

Method:

1. Pour the gin and lemon juice into an ice filled highball glass
2. Top off with ginger beer
3. Add the lemon wedge as a garnish
4. Enjoy one of the best highballs known to man

Fresh sourdough bread with butter
Cheese plate
Olives

The Feast

• Fresh (never frozen) pasture raised Heritage Turkey roasted to perfection with stuffing, leeks, carrots, and quince
• Gravy
• Mashed potatoes made the old fashioned way without any “new fangled” fixins
• Hashed Brussels Sprouts With Lemon Zest
• Fuyu persimmon salad with cumin-lime vinaigrette
• My original home cooked cranberry sauce (see recipe below)
• Wine pairings

Will’s Homemade Cranberry Sauce

Ingredients:

• 1 bag fresh cranberries (rinse thoroughly and discard the rotten ones)
• 1 organic orange, zested and then squeezed
• 1/2 tsp. freshly grated ginger (heaping)
• 1 pinch black pepper (my grannies trick)
• 1 pinch grated nutmeg
• 2 dashes orange bitters (optional)
• 4 Tbs. real maple syrup
• 1/2 cup cane sugar
• 3/4 cup water

Method:

1. Combine orange juice (about 1/4 cup), water, sugar, maple syrup, orange zest, ginger, bitters, black pepper, and nutmeg in a sauce pan over medium heat
2. Stir to dissolve all the sugar
3. Add the cranberries
4. Stir often, and wait until all the berries have popped
5. Continue stirring as the mixture foams up
6. When the mixture calms down and turns a deep red it’s time to turn off the heat (the whole process should take less than ten minutes)
7. Let cool
8. This recipe keeps very well and can be made well in advance of Thanksgiving

Dessert

• Mary’s Cranberry yam apple crisp
• Butternut squash pie
• Cointreau flavored whipped cream (I’ll let you know how it turns out)
• Bonny Doon Muscat “Vin de Glaciere” (ice wine)

With any luck things will turn out as delicious as they sound and i will be posting more recipes in time for the next round of holiday festivities.

Posted by: Rose on November 20th, 2007 © Filed under: Cocktails & Spirits, Condiments, Fruit, Menus, Sweets | 4 Comments »

It is finally, fully, fall in San Francisco. The days crisp and mostly clear, the wind sharper. This year, as usual, fall has been chaotic and crowded. We’re overwhelmed with projects and visitors and holiday plans. We can’t seem to get enough sleep or find time to nurture the writer selves that are an important part of us. Even our bird has learned a piercing new screech that is sending me to my wit’s end. And for once, I haven’t welcomed the switch to standard time. For days straight now, I’ve been knocked out cold before midnight, but I can’t seem to drag myself up in the morning, despite the “hour gained.”

We’re lucky here, to have dry farmed early girl tomatoes still in the farmers markets, but I have to admit, I’m pleased to see the new autumn bounty nudging out the abundance of summer crops. Two weeks ago, I bought some of the last fresh green olives at the farmers market, then last weekend harvested a heavy bag of ripe black olives from trees we discovered on a drive through Lake County. I pickled both in a salt brine and hid them at the back of the pantry to be leeched free of their bitterness.

Fresh olives carry a compound called oleuropein, which is responsible for their extreme, lingering, bitter flavor when uncured. The bitterness fades as they ripen, but black olives retain enough bitterness to need several months of curing. Oddly, these were some of the first foods humans cultivated, though they need long treatment to be edible. Olive cultivation began in both Crete and Syria independently as far back as 2,500 B.C.

Home Cured Black Olives

There’s very little to curing black olives. They can be soaked in a salt water brine until ready to eat, then rinsed and seasoned as desired. Many olive growers will not start selling ripe black olives until December, but in much of California, trees are abundant and laden with unused fruit. Make sure to pick olives that are still firm to the touch.

3-5 lbs ripe black olives
sea salt
water
1 egg, washed well

1. To prepare the brine, add salt to water until the egg floats to the surface. Depending on the salt you use, this could take anywhere from 1 tablespoon per quart of water, to 2 tablespoons per cup. I used a natural sea salt and found that it took a little over a tablespoon per cup of water before the egg really floated.

2. Rinse olives gently and remove any soft or bruised fruit. Place them in a clean crock or large mason jar and cover with the brine. Use a small plate or other weight to make sure all of the olives are submerged. One trick is to fill a plastic bag with a little bit of water, tie it up, and use that as a weight.

3. Store olives in a cool place out of the sun, and stir once a week. After about 30 days, remove and taste an olive, but be aware that the curing process may take up to 90 days. Olives will continue to cure as long as they are in the brine. If they become too salty, drain and rinse them, then cover with a less salty solution. At that point, they should be stored in the refrigerator.

Posted by: Rose on November 8th, 2007 © Filed under: Preserves | 17 Comments »

As a reward for helping out my dear friend Sarah with her new dance website she bestowed upon me this rare and ancient bartender’s guide written back in 1934. Though many of the recipes are impossible to recreate due to the now defunct ingredients they call for, there are a few simple gems which I actually had the ingredients for on hand.

One such recipe was the “New 1920 Cocktail” which looked like a worthwhile variation on the Manhattan (my all time favorite cocktail). Unlike your Classic Manhattan though, which generally calls for a 2:1 ratio of whiskey to sweet vermouth and a dash of aromatic bitters, this one calls for a 1:1 ratio of whiskey to vermouth (half sweet/half dry) and a dash of orange bitters. This half and half combination of sweet and dry vermouth in any drink is commonly referred to as a Perfect (insert drink name here, e.g. Martini, Manhattan, etc.) these days, but perhaps this book was written prior to that terminology catching on. The orange bitters are the other biggest difference, and they have the potential to match very well with the peppery rye whiskey I plan to use.

New 1920 Cocktail:

Tasting Notes:

I prepared this recipe using Wild Turkey Straight Rye Whiskey paired with Noilly Pratt sweet and dry vermouth, topped off with a generous dash drizzle of Regan’s Orange Bitters. The only liberty I took while following this recipe was to squeeze the lemon peel over a lighted match in order to further enhance, and bring out the aromatic oils of the lemon. The results were quite tasty! The drink was dryer than your typical Manhattan, but not overly so, and it had a lighter, spicier, more zesty personality than its somber, buttery, sometimes cloying brother. Don’t get me wrong, I love a balanced, well made Manhattan. This is just a nice change of pace when you’re in the mood for something a little more bright and bitter.

Posted by: Will on November 5th, 2007 © Filed under: Cocktails & Spirits | 3 Comments »

Vegetable haters. They’re all around us. People who’ve had the misfortune of being raised on mushy, canned or frozen things like peas and carrots. People who’s idea of a salad involves nothing more than a pile of wilted iceberg lettuce with some Wish-bone dressing slopped on top. People who’ve never tasted a home grown tomato right off the vine. You know what I’m talking about.

I really can’t blame these people for being such haters. Frozen lima beans and over-steamed broccoli are worthy of hatred, I’ll be the first to admit it. Luckily most of these people are capable of recovery.

My wife is one such person, now undergoing intensive therapy. The following vegetable dish was responsible for a real breakthrough for her, and it’s so simple to prepare. She said, and I quote, “I never liked vegetables before I tried this dish”. If that’s not a good endorsement I don’t know what is.

I believe this dish is of Italian origin, but I was first introduced to it while living in the city of Mérida, Venezuela back in 2003. A couple of friends had invited me over to their home for lunch one Sunday, and I had no idea what a culinary treat I was in for. Señora Rojas, my friend’s dear mother, had prepared delicious homemade gnocchi with pesto sauce, minestrone soup, and this dish using “calabacines”(little squash in Spanish), also known as White Mexican squash, White or Grey zucchini, or Tatuma squash. It was a meal I will not soon forget, and have tried to replicate many times since.

Having only asked Señora Rojas what was in her recipe (in my best Spanish), and not how much of each thing there was, here is my best approximation of her calabacines dish:

Calabacines with Lemon, Mint, and Garlic:

Ingredients:

• 6 medium Calabacines (maybe 2 lbs), sliced about 3/4″ thick
• 1 Tbs. spearmint, minced
• 1/2 lemon, juiced
• 1 large clove garlic, pressed
• 1 Tbs. extra virgin olive oil
• 1 Tbs. butter
• Fresh ground black pepper to taste
• Sea salt to taste (I used a heaping 1/4 tsp.)

Method:

1. Steam squash until just tender.
2. Add all ingredients to a warmed bowl starting with the squash and butter.
3. Mix gently to distribute the dressing evenly.

Notes:

1. Zucchini or any other summer squash can be substituted if necessary.
2. For a less soupy version olive oil OR butter could be used instead of BOTH, but I love the soupy broth at the bottom of the bowl.
3. Be careful not to overcook the squash or mix the ingredients too vigorously or you could end up with a mushy mess.
4. Follow this recipe the first time, then improvise to your own taste the next. Some people may like more or less garlic, mint, lemon, etc.

Posted by: Will on October 26th, 2007 © Filed under: Vegetable Dishes | 4 Comments »

Saturday mornings mean my usual pilgrimage to the San Francisco Ferry Building Farmers Market. I try to go early, before the bulk of gawkers and tourists arrive, but I usually get there just as everyone else does. And truth be told, I don’t really mind. I wander happily through the crowds, Blue Bottle cappuccino in hand, and gawk. This weekend, as Andy stopped off to buy some Fava Beans, I strolled over to Tierra Vegetables to gobble taste some of their famous pepper jams. The jams were as good as ever, but as I made my way from the Mystery Pepper Jam to the Chipotle Jam, I caught a glimpse of what looked like little gold tomatillos. When Andy and I tried them, we found them to be more fruit than vegetable – sweet and tangy, a little like a gooseberry. I was so enamoured, I thought I’d enter them into this week’s Weekend Herb Blogging event, hosted by Susan at The Well Seasoned Cook.

It turns out that, while the fruit is a close relative of the tomatillo and part of the nightshade family, it is often called a Cape Gooseberry. It is also sometimes called Husk Cherry, Peruvian Ground Cherry, and in Hawaii, Poha or Poha Berry. The Latin name is Physalis peruviana.

Native to Brazil, the plant now grows wild in much of South America and Hawaii and is cultivated in many temperate regions, including South Africa, where it has long been popular. It is commonly used in jams and sauces, but can also be eaten fresh.

Chocolate Dipped Cape Gooseberry

According to the friendly folks at Tierra Vegetables, this is a common preparation in France. The golden husks make for a beautiful presentation.

1/2 lb Ripe Poha/Cape Gooseberry
8 oz dark chocolate

Pull husks away from berries, but leave them attached to form a handle for holding and dipping. With a damp paper towel, gently wipe the berries clean. They must be completely dry before dipping in the chocolate. In a heavy pan, melt chocolate over low heat, stirring constantly. When chocolate is fully melted, dip berries until they are about 2/3 covered. Place on a parchment lined baking sheet and allow to harden. Serve immediately, or cover and refrigerate.

Posted by: Rose on October 21st, 2007 © Filed under: Fruit, Sweets | 18 Comments »