food, and other musings

My favorite accessory

I mean eggs, silly people, not shoes.

All of a sudden I am obsessed with eggs. I think it's because for nearly a year, I thought I was allergic to them. In hindsight, I think I got one bad batch and drew some drastic conclusions. (Either that or the water at Lourdes really does work.) But the end result is that I can eat eggs again, and now I try to eat them as much as possible. I've been doing lots of scrambles and omelets for brekky, and I keep trying to sell Mr. Food Musings on the notion of eating them for dinner. I love breakfast for dinner -- we did it all the time when I was a kid -- but he complains that eggs, bacon and wine don't mix. Harumph. I'll show him.

In honor of the egg, tonight's dinner is going to be a BLET. Or a BELT. (BLTE? EBLT? What do you think?) Bacon, heirloom tomatoes (that better be good for $5 freaking dollars a pound...), loads of mayo, crisp lettuce and a dribbly, runny egg on top. Mmmm...I may even have to enter that in the egg-y event someone in Blogland hosts at the end of every month.

In other, less self-involved egg news...being out on the town a fair bit recently has drawn my attention to the delightful tradition of using eggs as a garnish on everything from cheese enchiladas to heirloom tomato bruschetta to salads like the love-in-a-bowl they call frisée aux lardons (and which I plan to eat this weekend while I soak up the sun at my favorite Napa bistro).

That silly little queen had her rallying cry all wrong. I say, LET THEM EAT EGGS!

Lions and Tigers and Chocolate Covered Hazelnuts, Oh My!

All nuts are not created equal. I offer, as proof, the humble bowl of mixed nuts from the last party you attended. The cashews were  inevitably the first to go, followed by the almonds, the walnuts and the pecans. A few odd souls might have chomped on the Brazil nuts, but not until the lowly peanuts had been picked through and people were desperate. And let's face it -- the filberts only got eaten because someone thought maybe, just maybe, they were hazelnuts.

As in the nut bowl, in Dessertland -- and that is where I live these days, just ask my thighs -- it is the hazelnut that resides at the top of the heap. Think Nutella slathered on crepes. Think chocolate hazelnut or nocciolo gelato. Think hazelnuts toasted and thrown into crumbles or on top of coffee cakes. It is, no doubt, because the hazelnut is naturally a bit sweet. It also has a pleasing round shape. (I think another reason they are popular is that much work is required to slip off the skins, making them well-suited to gourmet undertakings where a talented pastry chef, e.g. someone else, does the work for you.) But even in savory dishes, the hazelnut is queen -- toasted and tossed in salads, crushed as a crust for fish or fowl. And so it goes.

I have made no secret of my adoration of Charles Chocolates Triple Coated Chocolate Almonds. So imagine my surprise, my delight, my joy (and the giddy clapping of hands) that followed when I learned that they are about to release Triple Coated Chocolate Hazelnuts.

I was luckly enough to get a sneak preview taste (well someone had to do it). Like the almonds, the hazelnuts are coated in a mix of bittersweet and milk chocolate and dusted with a fine coat of unsweetened cocoa powder, with the toasted nut hidden in the center. As much as I love the almonds -- they were my gift of choice to lift my mom's spirits when she found herself tending to my ailing grandfather this summer (leaving little time to tend to her sanity), and they were the first thing I made (let?) Little Sister eat when she arrived in SF for her last visit -- I love the hazelnuts more.

After a taste (or ten -- I think I et half the jar during last night's unbearably dull Emmy's) of the chocolate covered hazelnuts, I have to pronounce them ridiculously, dangerously good. Oy, poor thighs, this is trouble with a capital T.

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Coming soon to Charles Chocolates ($12)

5 things to eat before you die (if you are me, and have not eaten them yet)

I am so enamored of this game that I'm playing again. This time I've put together a list of things I have never eaten, but would like to, before I die. (I am a little superstitious, and hoping that eating all of these things does not automatically mean that I must die. That would be terrible.)

1. Something, anything, directly from Pierre Hermé in Paris. I have read so many glorious blog posts about his chocolate-y treats, and even made some of my own truffles from one of his recipes, and I adore chocolate, so this only makes sense.

2. One meal at El Bulli. Just because.

(thinking...thinking...I refuse to name more than one restaurant A) because a list of restaurants I want to eat at before I die is too easy to write -- just typing this sentence, I thought of 3 or 4 -- and B) this is not about dining out, this is about the sheer joy of tasting something new. What does it say about me that I can only come up with two things off the top of my head? Surely nothing good. WAIT! Okay, the light bulb went off again.)

3. Fresh seafood prepared at the shore. I'm not too picky about what -- it could be fresh oysters, crab cooked over a bonfire, a clambake, whatever. But the idea of eating fresh caught seafood on the shore of the sea from whence it came sounds lovely. Quite a romantic notion, isn't it? (This also seems the likeliest one of the bunch to result in death by food poisoning, though certainly I don't envision myself as the one to wade in and catch the crab or scrape the oysters off the rock. I plan to be sitting on the beach, wrapped up in a cozy blanket, sipping bubbly. Still, perhaps this is the one to leave till I'm an octogenarian, just in case...)

4. A real Philadelphia cheesesteak. This one I stole from the burgeoning list over at Traveler's Lunchbox. I've had one before in the presence of a PA native (and cheesesteak afficionado), and I was assured that it qualified as pretty authentic, but having the real deal right in the heart of Philly, well, you can't beat that with a stick.

5. I've been thinking about this one all day. I started this post at about 9 a.m., got stuck, then had to run off to interview two chefs for a project I'm working on. (They were a blast.) Anyway, during the interview we got to talking about the pleasure of pulling fresh vegetables from your garden and eating them, just the way Nature intended, and I realized that I'd love nothing more than to eat a tomato that I grew myself. This will have to wait until I can claim at least a foot's worth of outdoor space.

5 things to eat before you die

When this post popped up in my RSS reader tonight, my first thought was, gee, I don't think I'll participate. (Okay, maybe I didn't think "gee" exactly. Don't be so nitpicky, Internal Editor.)

But then I thought, well, what are the top 5 things I think everyone should eat before they die? It's kind of a crazy question. Should I make my list the top 5 things I want to -- and have not yet -- eaten before I die? Or the top 5 things I have eaten and think everyone else in the world should, too? And then you start to wonder, well, obviously french fries has to be on that list, but then hasn't pretty much everyone had french fries once in their lives? Can we cross french fries off the list?

It's a conundrum. In the end, I decided to quit thinking so much and write down the first 5 things that really felt like they belonged on the list, whatever they may be.

1. The chef's tasting menu at Manresa. Like many people in the Bay Area, I am a bit of a broken record about how much I love David Kinch's cooking. On my birthday last year, I was treated to no fewer than 23 separate courses of things as lovely as abalone meuniere paired with rich pig's trotters, or braised kid goat. It was so magical that I spent five days -- 5! -- blogging every single detail. If I was only permitted one last meal on Earth, this is where I would go.

2. A cup of grapefruit sorbetto and yogurt gelato from Gelato Milano. I discovered this East Bay gelato Mecca while writing an article about ice cream for the Oakland Tribune, and dammit if it hasn't spoiled me forever. Mr. Food Musings and I now happily drive across the bay at least once every week or two for a taste -- and this is a man who still gets horrifically carsick! Owner Curtis Chin employs an Italian gelato artisan full-time on the premises. Chin handpicks all the fruit himself at 2 a.m. when the market opens every morning, and he orders almost everything else from Italy so as to remain as authentic as possible. The result is the creamiest frozen treat you have ever put in your mouth. I can't even eat anything else anymore. On our next trip, we're taking a cooler of ice so we can bring some back with us. (And no, we are not going to share it with you, so don't even ask.)

3. Macaroni and cheese. I have always loved macaroni and cheese. I still think there is almost nothing better. It can be my Great Aunt Margaret's version made with crushed saltine crackers, bright yellow cheddar cheese and milk, or the ooey-gooey version at Tablespoon that is studded with a million hunks of smoky bacon. Hell, I even like the stuff that Kraft makes. It's all good as far as this belly is concerned.

4. A Krispy Kreme donut, hot off the presses. I grew up in Virginia, just one state away from where Krispy Kreme was founded in 1937, and we had plenty of stores throughout the state. I can remember making runs in college, late at night, praying we'd see the "Hot Donuts Now!" sign in the window. You can watch as the sumptuous dough is fried, then draped with a curtain of hot icing, before coming to rest in a big glass case in the front of the store. Grab 3 or 4 -- trust me on this -- and a glass of milk, and your life will change forever. Mr. FM and I once drove an hour north of the city to some podunk suburb because I heard they had a real Krispy Kreme store. It was worth every frigging mile.

5. A really good tomato sandwich. Irony of ironies -- I grew up hating tomatoes. I thought they were foul. My mom didn't care; it just meant more for her. In summer there were always a few ripening on the windowsill above the kitchen sink. Sometimes they grew in my dad's garden, other times they were gifts from friends of my grandparents whose own gardens produced more than anyone could reasonably eat. One day in college -- I remember it exactly -- I offered to make lunch for my boyfriend, and ran to the store. And suddenly, inexplicably, all I wanted was a tomato sandwich. White bread, slathered with mayonnaise, sprinkled with salt and fresh pepper and piled high with impossibly thick slices of red, ripe Southern tomatoes. From that day on I've been hooked.

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If you're a blogger, feel free to do your own post and let Melissa know. If you're not a blogger, I'd love to read about your top 5. Just post them in the comments section.

Redemption

All it takes is a good night's sleep and a breakfast of eggs, bacon, butter, toast and homemade apricot jam to make things right with the world again.

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No boyfriends, girlfriends, or fishmongers were harmed in the making of this post.

How not to cook a lobster

1. Do not decide, at the ass end of a Saturday night, to just buy lobster from "any old supermarket," and especially not one that has sold you bad crab before. (Not bad as in, not good, but bad as in, poisonous.)

2. Do not buy a frozen lobster tail, especially when it takes not one but two employees and 10 minutes to locate it in a block of ice in the nether regions of the supermarket's walk-in freezer.

3. Do not believe the employee when he tells you that 15 minutes of running water is enough to thaw the frozen lobster tail.

4. Do not time it so that every other part of the meal will be ready when the thawing is done. You see, unlike crab, lobster is frozen raw. R-A-W, folks. Raw. (Do not feel stupid that you thought it was cooked. Crab is sold in the shell, frozen and cooked. And you have never bought frozen lobster before, so do not beat yourself up about it.)

5. Do not have a really big fight with your boyfriend/girlfriend when the one of you who is "cooking" (e.g. cutting up heirloom tomatoes and burrata cheese, which will soon be pointed out is not really cooking) realizes that there is a problem with the "cooked lobster." Do not accuse the one of you who is sitting on the couch surfing the internet -- and having a blast -- of not telling you, on purpose, that the lobster tail was raw. He/she probably only realized it when he/she looked at it. (Yeah, right.)

6. Do not dissolve into a fit of crying over the fifty f***ing dollars you have spent on dinner, only to find yourselves starving and nowhere close to dinner 2 hours later. Do not put the polenta fries back into the oven to warm for another 30 minutes. (Do eat them. Might as well. It might just be the only thing you eat all night that actually tastes good.)

7. Do not cut the lobster out of the shell with dull scissors and, in the process, cut your hand until it BLEEDS, people, BLEEDS, from the spiny lobster shell.

8. Do not then debate the merits of boiling the lobster tail without the shell v. throwing it in the garbage and eating some king crab legs that you have instead v. broiling the lobster tail since it's already out of the fucking shell. Just make a decision and stick with it.

9. Do not argue over how long it takes to cook lobster. Do not run into the bathroom and sit there, sobbing, while your boyfriend/girlfriend figures it out. In between sobs, do not shriek that you are deleting your food blog and never cooking anything again. (Do pick up the phone and call Domino's.)

10. Do not overfill the pot of boiling water so that it overflows onto the stovetop, dousing said stovetop -- which has just been meticulously cleaned the day before -- with sticky, fishy, nasty water.

11. When the lobster tail is finally done, do not get your hopes up, not ONE LITTLE BIT, that it is actually going to taste like anything but rubber.

12. Do not take a delicious bite of creamy burrata cheese and ripe red tomato drizzled with orange-infused olive oil and feel a sense of pride for the way the homemade, citrusy olive oil offsets the cheese and tomato perfectly. Do not engage in this act of hubris, for as the ancients knew, pride goeth before a fall. Imagine what it goeth before when all this other shit has already gone down.

13. Do not force yourself to take several bites of the rubber I MEAN lobster before tossing it in the trash.

14. Do not get your hopes up again and say, oh well, let's just enjoy the cheese and tomatoes and king crab legs. Oh no. For the crab legs are inexplicably, horrifically salty. Do not act surprised or take more than one bite of those.

15. Do not wish you could turn back time and have fresh salsa and tequila for dinner instead. It is too late.

And finally, folks...

16. Do go get soused on the rest of the wine.

17. Do fish out the receipt for the lobster and king crab legs and plan to rain down a world of pain on the fishmonger the next day.

S-s-s-salsa

I feel a bit like Columbus discovering America today. I have just whipped up my first batch of fresh salsa courtesy of Lucero Organic Farms' salsa basket, and I gotta tell you -- it's great.

I happened upon Ben & Karen Lucero (a.k.a. the nicest people on Earth) when I was researching zucchini. They grow several varieties of zucchini, including two Italian heirlooms and dozens of squashes, and as I spoke with Karen, I learned that it doesn't stop there. They also grow 20 kinds of sweet and hot peppers and 60 varieties of tomatoes -- 60! -- including their very own hybrid called Ben's ivory pear. It's a pear tomato, small and yellow, and very fruity. I love it. (More about their operation in my next Fresh from the Farm column.)

At any rate, when I stopped by their market stand today to chat with them some more, Karen showed me their pre-packed salsa kit. Each one contains a handful of tomatoes, including Early Girls and a few of Ben's ivory pears; green and yellow sweet peppers; two outrageously strong jalapeno peppers; two cloves of garlic; and two purple tomatillos (so pretty!). The directions tell you to remove all stems and husks and give everything a whirl in your food processor. While I was putting away my freshly purchased burrata cheese, I tossed everything in and let it go. (I saved one of the jalapenos from the mix. Thank God...)

The result was a vibrant slush that tasted of bright tomatoes and mild peppers against the faintest backdrop of garlic. It's got a hint of sweetness from the tomatoes, which aren't overly acidic, and just enough kick there at the end to make you wish you had a margarita in  your hand. So tonight the great debate is whether to serve up a salad of Early Girls, burrata cheese and lobster (thanks to Bar Crudo for the idea) or to spoon up that lush salsa with crunchy tortilla chips and drink tequila till we puke. Votes?

***

p.s. I know, I know. I said no more photos. Maybe I was persuaded by all the sweet people who said they liked them anyway. (Thanks, Mom.) Maybe I was just feeling cranky that day. Maybe, like Ralph Waldo Emerson, I believe that "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." Whatever the reason, they're back.

Roast crab

The right way to celebrate a birthday...

...is sucking sweet meat from the legs of what is, in essence, a glorified spider. Friday night, Mr. Food Musings and I finally made it to Thanh Long at the behest of good friends R. & B. They brought loads of bubbly (and presents!) and steered us to the choicest picks: whole roasted Dungeness crab dripping with garlic and butter, and a heaping plate of garlic noodles on the side. The garlic noodles were literally life-changing, and that's as much as I can say about them. You just have to go and eat them to believe it. Rumor has it that they're even made in a secret kitchen that the waitstaff isn't allowed to step foot into. High drama -- I love it!

The Most Perfect Birthday ever continued with the best pancake on the planet Saturday morning. It was plump with fresh purple blueberries, and the sour cream-brown sugar puddle on top was so divine it makes syrup look just plain silly.

Mr. FM and I toodled around the City, enjoying the warm day, and then I spent some of my birthday money on a new desk chair and a pair of framed antique silk paintings from Guangzhou, China. I hung them in our hallway next to a painted wooden serving tray that my grandmother gave me when I was home a few weeks ago. Mr. FM gave me the most gorgeous jewelry ever (lots of superlatives, I know, but I told you it was a perfect day!) and then we went out for a (quiet) night on the town to our all time favorite bistro, Chapeau! We haven't been in since the accident, so it was good to reconnect with Philippe & Ellen and explain our long absence (...and stuff ourselves silly with oysters and sweetbreads and cassoulet and profiteroles).

All in all, it was a lovely day. What surprised me most was how much I enjoyed it. It's been an annus horribilis to say the least. I didn't have a candle, but if I had I'd have wished that Mr. FM were fully recovered. (Aside: a recent visit to a specialist was encouraging, but we've got at least 6 months more before we can realistically hope for anything resembling normalcy). I missed my grandfather a lot -- it was the first birthday for me, for anyone in our family, without him. In spite of all the sadness this year has rained down, on Saturday I was joyful and very much looking forward to the next spin around the sun.

Tres Agaves

Eh. That about sums up my overall impression of Tres Agaves. The food was decent, but nothing I'd run out and hunt down. They do get serious props on the m-m-m-margarita, however. I like mine tart -- Mr. Food Musings makes 'em with nothing but fresh lemon juice and Cointreau at home -- and picking out my very own tequila made me feel special, though I'm not enough of an expert to know what the hell I was doing. It's a big space and the noise level was high but not uncomfortable (keep in mind it was Tuesday...). The service and the decor were nothing more than average, and there you have it folks. For my pesos, it's Mamacita all the way.