TRIP REPORT: San Francisco 2009

It's that time of year again ... the time where we go to San Francisco! We're old so most of our frolicking there involves food or drink, but we always manage to have a great time. This year it was the occasion of the Cal-USC football game which meant the town was pretty much invaded by Southern Californians but only in the touristy parts. I never noticed this when I lived there, but when you're spending most of your time near Union Square it becomes very apparent, especially when you try to get a cab on Saturday night after the football game.

So ... on to the important stuff. Where did we go and what did we do there?

We arrived on Friday afternoon just in time to think about lunch. We stayed in the Hyatt Regency which is conveniently across the the way from the Ferry Building. Since we knew that Saturday would probably be out for the Ferry Building, we opted to just go there right away, for lunch.

We went to Il Cane Rosso for lunch. Il Cane Rosso specializes in simple, farm-fresh, seasonal meals. I had the Star Route Farm Red Oak Lettuce salad with grapes, watermelon radishes, spicy green beans, hazelnuts and sherry vinaigrette. It was a nice light lunch and I was happy that the salad was big enough to be filling but not ridiculously huge like some places make salads. J had a brisket sandwich that was special for that day. The menu is based around several basic items that change according to what's in season. Looking back I can see that my red oak lettuce salad was a Bibb lettuce salad back in August, with figs instead of grapes and almonds instead of hazelnuts, but the idea is basically the same. The food was delicious and we ended up going back again on Sunday for a late lunch. This is the kind of place that I would go to regularly if I lived near it, bcause of the the simple but delicious food and the changing menu.

The next part of the day was devoted to ... well, a nap. We had to get up really early to catch our plane, and I had stayed up really late working the night before so basically if I was going to be alive for the evening portion, I would have to rest, which I did. Then we began our evening.

We started at the Rickhouse, which my former co-workers will remember as Ginger's Trois, one of the more dive-y and frightening gay bars around. The Rickhouse is pretty much unrecognizable. The dark, forbidding entrance with its sad, limp, faded rainbow flag is gone and now there's a sleek wooden facade and bold sign proclaiming that you are now at the Rickhouse. It's rather labyrinthine inside, but it's very nice, managing to feel old and new at the same time. The Rickhouse is a spin-off of Bourbon and Branch and shows the same attentiveness and love of mixology, but with a focus on whiskey. The specialty here is whiskey, although they serve all kinds of drinks. I was feeling like something potent, so I got a Trilby #2: Scotch, sweet vermouth, parfait amour, absinthe and orange bitters. Now that's a drink. We somehow managed to snag a spot at one of the bars but the place was packed and we had things to do, so it was one drink and then out.

We moved on to the Gray Area Foundation for the Arts (GAFFTA). GAFFTA is a non-profit art group that deals mainly with social consciousness and digital culture and also as part of an effort towards economic development in the Tenderloin. They were having their public grand opening that night so we decided to check it out. It's a nice space - a small brick building with wheat grass growing from the walls. Most of the pieces were abstract and either in a digital video medium or digitally created. My favorite was a special exhibit by a design group where they mapped out San Francisco based on various things such as crime rate, trees, cab pick-ups/drop-offs, etc. It was interesting to see the city in terms of different things like that and to be able to pick out areas without any other identifiers.

After that, it was time for a late dinner. By this point I had walked from the Financial District to deep in the Tenderloin in my high heels and my feet were telling me in no uncertain terms it was time to sit down. We opted for Bar Jules, a small neighborhood cafe in Hayes Valley. It's the type of place where the menu is written on a blackboard each day based on whatever's good and where no matter how popular it gets, it always feels like a casual neighborhood hangout inside. We were incredibly lucky, because as we got there, we were told that it would be an hour wait. My feet had immediately screamed "WHAT?!" But noting the tables outside with chairs and the availability of wine ordering while you wait, I ignored them and accepted the wait. As it turns out, most of the people ahead of us on the list had left and didn't come back in time to be called so we only had to wait a few minutes. The food is simple, but ours was delicious. The restaurant did a great job of creating the illusion of being in a small neighborhood bistro in France, although most people couldn't afford to pop in here every day for a bite. Still, for a romantic dinner this is a great idea as long as a possibly long wait for a table won't kill the romance for you.

Saturday was the day of the game, so there was not much activity to speak of for most of the day. Jason was off to the game and I spent that time getting some work done. But we did, at least, have breakfast and lunch. For brunch we headed out to the Mission to Bar Tartine. Bar Tartine is not new to me, but I think I haven't written about it here before. Anyway, if you've been reading this up until this point, you won't be surprised to find that Bar Tartine has a French cafe feel while serving fresh, local California cuisine. You are shocked, I know. But what they also have is a really satisfying brunch menu that will fill you up just as well as any greasy spoon. Jason had a poached egg and prosciutto with some grilled country bread and I had a nettle omelet with bitter greens and a rye-herb toast. And it was vacation so mimosas all around! I was happily surprised that we had such an easy time getting a spot for brunch there, although it was busy by the time we left, it didn't seem like it would be a long wait.

One long interlude for sports and working, and then it was dinner time! Our biggest problem turned out to be getting a cab. The city was packed with tourists and all the cabs were busy, busy, busy. We finally managed to grab a good corner and were able to get our ride just on time. We were about 15 minutes late for our reservation but the restaurant kindly held it for us and it was ready and waiting when we came in. Which restaurant? Well, NOPA. NOPA has made an appearance in this blog before, and it was actually good enough to merit a return. It's really hard when there are so many great places to go, to pick a place you've been over a brand shiny new place, but NOPA had all the qualities we wanted, most important being "open late enough." NOPA makes classic favorites using the requisite fresh, seasonal, etc. ingredients. You can't go wrong with a hamburger, and I indulged myself with a roast chicken and fries, since all of the "Bar ____" places were making me nostalgic for Paris. The chicken was giant. I did my best to devour it, but I couldn't quite make it. The meat was bright white and juicy. The skin was maybe not as crisp as I would have liked it, but that's easily overlooked.

Okay, just one more! Because this is getting looooong. Our last dinner was at Flour and Water. It's kind of a strange name, I have to say. The restaurant itself is Italian and once you know that it makes sense. But the name does not invoke Italy ... it's more like ... I don't know, it reminds me of The Good Earth restaurant where the name always for some reason invoked this very matronly, healthy sort of feeling that was off-putting to me. Something about "Flour and Water" is the same. I guess because flour and water on their own are not exactly tasty. You have to mess with them to make them into something delicious.

Anyway, the restaurant itself was fantastic. It was my favorite meal of the trip. J and I split a pizza and then had pastas for our main meals. I have been reading Heat, by Bill Buford and I had just been reading the section where he is in Italy with a woman who is famous for her pumpkin tortelli, which is a classic Italian recipe which appears in one of the oldest sources of written recipes. So I was thrilled when they had a pumpkin tortelli on the menu with fresh homemade pasta. I cannot think of anything that exemplifies autumn so much as a dish that uses pumpkin, sage, and butter. It was the perfect moment to eat it and it totally lived up to my rather high expectations. Everything in the restaurant is pretty lovingly homemade, and the service is fantastic, with everyone pitching in to wait tables so that you are never neglected. The server was also really helpful, answering all her questions in a way that showed she really knew the menu inside and out. Also, the price was not too bad for really good quality food and a nice atmosphere. We had a pizza, two pastas, a dessert, and two glasses of wine each and it came out to about $100 for both of us.

So that was mostly our trip! I left out the boring parts like shopping and stuff like that, and between the football and the work, and two exhausted people who needed to catch up on a lot of missed sleep, we didn't necessarily DO all that much, but we did have a lot of good food and that's pretty much enough for me. I can't wait until next year's trip now!

MISC: Evolution of a Meal

Most of the time when I make something for dinner it's in one of either two circumstances: (1) I have a recipe I want to make; or (2) I am throwing something together out of whatever we have hand. But sometimes something different happens. Sometimes I see something somewhere or think of something and then I get an idea in my head of something I want to have and then I have to figure out how to make it.

For example, I recently ended up with a simple couscous, but in order to get to that point, the dish itself went through quite an evolution. It started when I saw these beauties:

Photo: Woof! Woof!

These are stuffed jalapeños wrapped with bacon. They really looked good and they stuck in my mind. Then, when I was at the farmer's market I saw this nice basket of jalapeños and I was reminded of the stuffed peppers, so I decided to get them and make some kind of stuffed peppers.

I thought I didn't want so much cream cheese, so I decided to think of alternate things to stuff them with. I decided I wanted a Spanish theme so I headed out to find some ingredients. Well, this was my first mistake. There's a reason there's so much cream cheese and that's because jalapeños are really freaking hot, and they stay that way when you don't shove a bunch of creamy stuff in there.

I did buy some goat cheese but apparently not enough. Anyway, at the store I decided on a stuffing of goat cheese, idiazábal cheese (a sheep's cheese from Spain), chorizo, couscous, and saffron. I cooked the couscous with butter, and then mixed in all the other stuff, filled the peppers with it, and baked them until the outside was wrinkly and cooked looking.

And then I took a bite and my mouth burned of a thousand fires. All the goat cheese had mixed and absorbed into the couscous and there was no creaminess left to counter the heat. But I discovered that despite the hot pepper, the filling was actually really good on its own.

I decided to save the rest of the peppers for pickling, and use the rest of the chorizo as a meal portion. Which is how we end up at the ultimate meal, which was the couscous with grapes and olives and it was really good in the end, if it took a while to reach its ultimate form.

And now you see why I usually just find a recipe. If I had to do that every time, well, I suppose cooking would be more of an adventure but also more of a pain.

HISTORY: Reindeer Breeding in the United States

I'm always fascinated with food culture and history. It's a type of history you don't often get to study and oftentimes just have to happen upon it. I was originally going to make this post about how to fry chicken, but when I was paging through one of my cookbooks looking up what it said about chicken, I got distracted by a page that explained how to prepare reindeer.

Wait ... what? Reindeer? This is a cookbook from the 1940s, I might add, so I am often finding interesting surprises in here when I go to look something up. Once I'd seen reindeer, I was compelled to stop and read about it. The first sentence was really interesting: "Government breeding of reindeer has brought the meat back on the market in modern form." Again .. wait ... what? Government breeding ... of reindeer?

I've never heard of this, and I immediately envisioned a secret government Santa project or some such, but I also had to go digging to figure this out. As it turns out, it was a sort of economic stimulus program for Alaska and the natives that lived there.

It all began in the 1800s, when American whalers discovered that the waters around Alaska were good hunting grounds. Eventually they thinned out the whale population and began hunting walrus in the area to boost their profit margin. The walruses were slaughtered in massive amounts, with estimates being about 300,000 walruses killed by the whalers. This was devastating to the native population of Alaska, as the walrus was their main source of food and other resources.

One whaling captain who was shipwrecked and taken in by natives wrote:

Should I ever come to the Arctic Ocean again, I will never catch another walrus, for these poor people along the coast have nothing else to live upon....I felt like a guilty culprit while eating their food with them, that I have been taking food out of their mouths. Although they knew the whaleships are doing this, they still were ready to share all they had with us.

Over the next years, the situation of the Alaskan natives became worse and worse, exacerbated by the introduction of alcohol, lack of educational resources, new diseases, and a reduction of inland mammals in addition to the walrus due to the introduction of rifles.

The U.S. Bureau of Education was given responsibility for the Alaskan natives and among other things, they decided to implement the reindeer herding proposal of Sheldon Jackson, a Presbyterian missionary who did extensive work in Alaska. Herds of reindeer were purchased from Siberia and brought over to Alaska along with herders from Lappland, who would train the Alaskan natives. Once they had completed their apprenticeship, they were loaned out their own small herd.

The herds were initially successful, as they filled in the ecological space left by the reduced population of caribou. Initially, the reindeer population grew, but by the 1940s it was rapidly falling again. There were ownership disputes, which led to incorporation of the reindeer program and rather than owning a certain number of deer, the natives were given shares of the corporation and the deer were managed as one large herd.

By the 1930s, the reindeer were practically wild and weren't very well-managed anymore. The wolf population increased. The reindeer mingled and interbred with the caribou and hunters began to be less and less discriminate about what they were shooting at. By the 1940s the deer population had dwindled and the government tried once more to revitalize the program.

But ultimately, cultural differences between the government workers running the program and the natives proved too difficult to overcome. The natives could not successfully adapt to a businessman's mindset, learning to mind and manage and expand their herds on their own and create self-sustaining and profitable businesses out of them. They maintained their subsistence hunting ways and saw the deer as a gift from the government that would be replenished as needed. And once new industries began to appear, such as construction and petroleum, the natives found it more profitable to get jobs working in these industries than to try to make it as reindeer herdsmen.

By 1952, the deer were all but gone, and the caribou population had made a comeback, which meant natives had their hunting needs satisfied.

So that's the story of the United States reindeer breeding. It's an interesting look at historical efforts toward economic stimulus and an interesting look at colonialism, since we rarely think of ourselves that way anymore. It's also a history lesson in the pitfalls of government subsidy programs and trying to improve the lives of people of other cultures without totally understanding those cultures.

INFO: Peaches 101

History: Peaches are native to China, and came to Europe via Persia around 300 BCE. For this reason, peaches were once called Persian apples. The Ancient Romans ate peaches, mostly as a dessert. Apicius contained a recipe for pickled peaches:

To Keep Hard-skinned Peaches
Duracina persica ut diu durent

Select the best and put them in brine. The next day remove them and rinsing them carefully set them in place in a vessel, sprinkle with salt and satury and immerse in vinegar.

Varieties: Peaches have hundreds of varieties, varying in color (white with a pink blush to yellow with a red blush) and flavor. In general, a peach will either be freestone (pit frees easily from the flesh), or clingstone (pit clings to the flesh and is hard to remove). Freestones are generally found in markets, while clingstones are more often used commercially.

Season: Peaches are available from May to October in most regions. May through August is peak season in California.

Choosing: Look for a fragrant fruit that gives slightly to palm pressure. Peaches bruise easily so be careful when handling - you don't want to ruin it for another customer - and look over it thoroughly for soft spots. Avoid peaches with greening. Look for an orange cast instead. The best way to tell is the smell. Give it a sniff - if it smells delicious, then it is!

For Locavores: If you're trying to eat local, you have a better than 50/50 chance. 29 states harvest significant amounts of peaches. The largest producer is California, which grows more than half of the peaches in the U.S., followed by Georgia and South Carolina.

Ripening and Storage: To ripen an underripe peach, place it in a paper bag that's been pierced and let it sit at room temperature. Adding an apple to the bag will make it ripen even faster. To store, refrigerate in a plastic bag for up to five days. Bring to room temperature before eating. Be careful not to store below 45ºF. Storing a peach at such low temperatures impairs pectin breakdown in the fruit and can cause mealy flesh, which is unpleasant.

Preparation: If you like your peaches peeled, blanch it for 30 seconds and then plunge into ice cold water. To remove pits, cut in half lengthwise, following the cleft. Rotate the halves in opposite directions like opening a jar, until the pit comes free. If cutting peaches in advance of using, be aware that they can brown when exposed to air. Put some sugar on them to delay this reaction.

Nutrition: Peaches contain vitamin A and C.

Popular Dishes:

Peach Melba: Peach Melba is the classic peach dessert, created in the 1800s by the famous French chef Escoffier, for the Australian opera diva, Dame Nellie Melba. To make it, poach two peach halves in syrup and let them cool. Then place each half hollow side down on a scoop of vanilla ice cream, and top with a raspberry sauce and sometimes whipped cream and almonds.

Peaches are best served simply when they are in season. They are good enough eaten by themselves, or as a compliment to a shortbread or poundcake. Or, you can marinate sliced peaches in a bit of wine, or dribble a small amount of aged balsamic vinegar on them.

Since peaches also come in season in the summer, they make a wonderful gelato, sorbet, or ice cream ingredient.

SOURCES: The Food Lover's Companion, On Food and Cooking (Harold McGee), How to Pick a Peach (Russ Parsons)

NEWS: Angeleno Magazine's Chef's Night Out

Brad A. Johnson of Angeleno magazine, and The Tasting Panel's Anthony Dias Blue are co-hosting the annual Chef's Night Out and Restaurant Awards to honor local chefs and resterauteurs and to celebrate the release of Angeleno's food issue.

The dinner benefits the Children's Institute, an organization that works with children and families affected by violence, abuse, and trauma. Tickets are $150 for the event (food from the featured chefs with wine and spirits pairings), and $250 for VIP tickets which includes access to a special reception and the awards ceremony.

The event will be held at the Fairmont Miramar Hotel and Bungalows this Sunday, July 26. The chefs at the event include:

• David Myers from Sona, Comme Ça and Pizza Ortica
• Lee Hefter and Thomas Boyce from Spago
• Lee Hefter and Ari Rosenson from Cut
• Susan Feniger from Street
• Anthony Zappola from Craft
• Brian Moyers from BLT Steak
• Ray Garcia from FIG Restaurant Santa Monica
• Warren Schwartz from Westside Tavern
• Evan Funke from Rustic Canyon
• Monique King from Nine Thirty
• Vernon Cardenas from Katana

The chefs and restaurants that will be receiving awards that evening include:

• Restaurant of the Year: Melisse
• Chef of the Year: (Tie) Suzanne Tracht, Jar and John Riviera Sedlar, Riviera
• Best New Restaurant: Church and State
• Best New Chef: Steven Fretz, XIV
• Pastry Chef of the Year: Adrian Vasquez, Providence
• Best Restaurant Design: Cecconi’s
• Best Wine Service: Osteria Mozza
• Vanguard Award: Capo

The awards reflect the upcoming issue of Angeleno, in which Johnson lists his top 50 restaurants of Los Angeles. “This annual event celebrates the 50 best restaurants in Los Angeles. I dined at more than 200 restaurants again this year to narrow L.A.’s food scene to the elite Top 50. It was a daunting marathon of eating that included everything from pig’s ear to white truffles. We might be in a recession, but L.A.’s restaurant scene is as exciting as ever. If you haven’t been to Mélisse or Jar in a while, you’ll be amazed at what they’re up to. And if you haven’t yet discovered downtown’s Church & State, or if you still haven’t heard of a rising star chef named Stephen Fretz in West Hollywood, it’s high time you booked a table. These are the 50 restaurants every Angeleno needs to know, right now,” Johnson said.

For ticket information, visit www.childrensinstitute.org or call 213.807.1959.

RESTAURANT: Ludobites at Breadbar

We've been meaning to try Ludobites basically forever. I've never been able to try any of Chef Ludovic Lefebvre's cooking before, and I have to admit I've also had an unshakable albeit tiny crush on him, ever since I laid eyes on this picture:

Normally, this is not my type of thing at all - the sort of Fabio-romance-cover-cheesecake genre of handsome, but apparently the idea of a man bringing a fish to me straight out of the ocean that he caught with his bare hands is appealing on some sort of primal level I didn't even know I had. (It helps if you know said man would also be able to prepare it brilliantly after wrestling it from the sea just for you.) Hopefully J is paying attention and perfecting his fish-wrestling skills even as we speak.

I had a lot of fun at the restaurant. I like the size of the dishes, which is small so that you may order several things and share, but big enough that you don't have to spend a fortune just to fill yourself up. The dishes were also a lot more fun than I was expecting. There were a lot of playful elements and unique concepts, and I didn't know to expect that.


The first thing I ordered was listed as "Chorizo, Cantaloupe, Cornichon." It sounded like a kind of light starter of little things on a plate, but turned out to be a cold soup! What it was: liquified chorizo with cubes of cantaloupe and a cornichon slush (really - it was pickle in a frozen slushy texture). Oddly enough, it worked. The soup had a nice flavor that I think would have been a tad too much without the melon for contrast and the pickle slush was odd but it actually blended in nicely and enhanced the overall flavor. And it was so pretty!


The above was my finisher: lobster medallions with honey-sherry vinaigrette and rosemary. It was a chilled lobster piece with a gelled dollop of vinaigrette on top and herbs sprinkled over. Really nice and refreshing, although I probably could have done with a tad less of the dressing, but the herbs were great.

I also had scallops with red port creme fraiche, bacon and potatoes. The bacon mashed potatoes were probably my favorite thing I had during the night. The potatoes were really smooth with little chunks of thick bacon. The scallops were good, but mine was a bit gritty even though it was a diver scallop. Still, that's a possibility with any scallop and it was cooked well.

Other items we had included: Poached Egg 65 degrees, Morels, Smoked Mornay Sauce, and Toast (I didn't have any of this dish, but it looked ridiculously good); and Fried Chicken in Duck fat, and saffron cornbread). The chicken was very good, juicy and flavorful and J claims it is the best fried chicken he has ever had. I personally loved the cornbread. Saffron is one of my favorite flavors and it went well with the cornbread, which was really moist, more like a soft corn cake than a piece of cornbread.

It's BYOB so make sure to bring a bottle of wine you like. Dishes range between $11-$24 (with the exception of the giant cheese plate, which is $35) with our dishes ranging from $11-$19 apiece. So it's not a cheap or casual meal, but it's a great place for a date night where you still want it to be a bit relaxed and fun.

Ludobites is going on through August 22 at Breadbar on 3rd street. See Ludo's website for details and reservations.

RECIPE: Parmesan Pull-Apart Rolls

A recent issue of Gourmet had a bunch of different dinner roll recipes. You don't have to persuade very hard to get me to make bread products. Baking is one of my favorite things to do, and now I have a whole bunch of rolls to try.

The first ones I tried were these Parmesan dinner rolls and they came out great. Before I made them, I looked over the comments on Epicurious and I was a little bit hesitant because a bunch of people said that these didn't taste good. To try to counter that, I added some herb salt I have to the top before baking, just to add some extra flavor.

However, the flavor on my rolls came out nice, even apart from the addition of the salt. I wonder what kind of cheese the people who complained used. I got a hunk of parmigiano reggiano and grated it myself using my Microplane, which is what the recipe called for. If you didn't use real parm reggiano, or you used the pregrated kind that comes in a powdery-like form, then perhaps that made a difference. I would definitely go for the real stuff and grate it out yourself just to be sure. It's a good workout for your arms. ;)

The one thing I didn't have for this recipe was the round cake pan it called for. However, I just used a rectangle one of similar dimensions and it worked fine. As long as you have something where the rolls can fit in similar proportion I'm sure it will be okay.

RECIPE: Parmesan Pull-Aparts

RECIPE: Lemon-Ginger Marmalade

One of the best parts of spring and summer is getting to preserve your favorite flavors for later use. Jellies, jams, pickles, etc. are all fun to make and let you save the fruits and vegetables that are in season so that you can enjoy them even in the winter.

I've tried to make marmalade once before and it didn't quite work. I used a recipe that didn't involve pectin, relying on the pectin in the fruit to thicken it and I ended up with a lemon syrup rather than a marmalade. Luckily it could still be used for something (ice cream!) but it wasn't what I was really trying to make.

This time I chose a recipe that was virtually foolproof and as a bonus it had an added ginger flavor that was really appealing to me. The only difficulty I had was in reducing the recipe, since I had a different size of pectin packet than the recipe anticipated so figuring out the amount to use was kind of tricky. I probably could have used a bit less than I did, but the marmalade still turned out great, if a bit stiff.

It's sweet, not tart and the ginger adds some kick. I find it really good on any sort of toasted bread item with butter, as the hot toast and the butter melt it down a little and it turns into a hot mass of flavors that is really delicious.

Serving suggestions: On buttered toast or english muffin; as a topping for yogurt, ice cream, or frozen yogurt.

Recipe: Lemon-Ginger Marmalade