food, and other musings

California citrus

Good news -- despite record low temperatures and devasting freezes, Northern California citrus may not suffer quite as badly as we have been led to believe. In this week's CUESA newsletter (they run the Ferry Plaza farmer's market) there was a whole article on the fate of Northern California citrus. Here are a few key excerpts:

"Fortunately, our citrus growers were not as hard hit, on the whole, as other California orange, lemon, and grapefruit farmers. Many were able to harvest a good portion of their crop before the first deep freeze. While large farms couldn’t find enough laborers to pick their fruit, most of our farmers have fewer acres and were able to salvage more of their crop because of it. Though some fruits were harvested before reaching their peak ripeness and may not be quite as sweet as usual, they are preferable to no crop at all.

The jury is still out on the fruit that remains on trees. Tory Farms, Hamada Farms, Bernard Ranches, Olsen Organics and Everything Under the Sun Farm all reported that they felt optimistic about the unpicked fruit, but it will be a week before they can determine how much damage was done. Citrus fruits with lower sugar content like lemon, grapefruit, and pomelo are at higher risk than fruit with more sugar, since sugar lowers the freezing point. Yuk Hamada guesses that most of his unharvested lemons will be lost to the freeze."

Sounds like there will still be less citrus than if the freeze hadn't been quite so bad, but there is every reason to expect that the citrus offerings, at least at Ferry Plaza, won't go totally belly up this winter.

Tea and Chocolate

When a girl on a diet gets invited to visit a chocolate factory to eat chocolate -- some of her favorite chocolate, no less -- she tells her diet to take a hike and heads over to Emeryville. That's how I found myself at Charles Chocolates last week, enjoying a preview of their new tea-infused chocolates.

Developed in conjunction with Teance Fine Teas, a local importer of premium, whole leaf teas from boutique growers throughout Asia, the Tea Collection includes five flavors. Each one consists of tea-infused chocolate ganache enrobed in 65% bittersweet chocolate that is "painted" with the Chinese character that best represents the flavor inside. There are five chocolates in all, and we tasted four:

Formosa Baochong -- made with a variety of oolong tea that is the signature tea of Taiwan. This had the most pronounced tea flavor of the four. It was smoky and pleasantly bitter.

Special Jasmine -- this was very floral in character.

Osmanthus -- this is the favorite of Charles Chocolates' founder Chuck Siegel. It was delicately floral and didn't taste much of tea. A hint of salt brought out the flavors of the ganache.

Lichee -- this chocolate was strong, boldly floral, and tasted to me of roses.

Matcha -- this chocolate was not available for tasting, but it's made with "the highest quality, traditional Japanese tea used in tea ceremonies."

All the calligraphy for the chocolates was done by the father of Teance founder Winne Yu. He is a master calligrapher, and in addition to the Chinese characters, he also painted the image of the Yellow Mountains that adorns the edible chocolate box that houses the collection.

The collection will be available beginning in the next few weeks at www.charleschocolates.com and Teance, as well as a few select locations like Gump's. $60 per assortment of 18 chocolates in an edible chocolate box

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psst...Teance Fine Teas, formerly Celadon Fine Teas, is opening their new Berkeley location on November 10, 2006. There will be a tea bar with tea flights, similar to wine flights, as well as classes and a selection of more than 65 teas from Asia, India and beyond. 1780 Fourth Street, Berkeley.

Pictures at an Exhibition

Aren't these pretty? They're from this morning's farmer's market. A few of us met up and did some shopping, and these caught our eye -- mine especially because we used to have crabapple trees when I was little, and because the color heralds the imminent return of fall. The morning's shopping ended, as it so often does around this crew, with some bubbly. After a glass, I headed home, put away my bacon and heirloom lima beans, and scooted off in search of pizza. Our original destination was closed for vaca (drat!) so we hit up spot #2 and ended the meal with some scrummy Mexican wedding cookies. Mmm, Saturday in San Francisco...

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photo credit: S. Breach

Summer cantaloupe

As I type, I am forking up bites of sweet cantaloupe showered with cracked black pepper and salt. My grandfather always ate it just this same way. When I was a kid, I was a picky eater and turned my nose up at nearly everything, melon included. He used to tease me into trying things by asking, "How do you know you don't like it if you've never tried it?"

Always silenced by a solid logical argument, I would usually cave in and take a bite of whatever it was he was offering. As luck would have it, I only remember the times I was glad that I did, like the fried clams dosed up with runny red cocktail sauce that he always ordered at Taylor's Fish House, and for which I promptly abandoned my usual fried shrimp the second I tried a bite.

As I have grown out of my picky eating, my grandfather has grown into his. At family dinners chez les grand-parents, my place was always the same: to the left of my grandfather. Though nearly all of us had a place where we faithfully sat every Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter and birthday, I knew by some secret look or handshake or wink from my grandfather that mine was the best seat in the house. And as the years went on, rather than him trying to get me to try something new, I would find myself encouraging him to have just a small taste of this, a little nibble of that. I did not inherit his knack for friendly persuasion, and so he had far more success than I ever did.

Right now he is trying to adjust to a stroke he had a few weeks ago, and he doesn't seem to want to eat much of anything. As I sit here and eat, I find myself thinking about all that he has taught me to love and enjoy, and how glad I am that I listened to him all those years ago.

Fresh from the Farm: Elston Family Tomatoes

FRESH FROM THE FARM

A monthly column on sustainable agriculture, humane husbandry & artisanal food production

Originally published in Northside San Francisco June 2006

Elston Family Farm tomatoes still in season

Nothing says summer like a red ripe tomato. When I was a kid growing up in the South, we’d pick them from our garden or bring them home from visits to my grandparents, whose friends always seemed to show up carrying paper bags full of the homegrown variety. Nowadays I buy my tomatoes from the Elston Family Farm at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market. Father-and-daughter team Dennis and Mary plant 1300 “Trust” tomato plants in their two greenhouses down in San Miguel, about 200 miles south of San Francisco, staggering the planting 3-4 weeks apart so the tomatoes will ripen at different times. Every Saturday from mid-March through early July, they make the 6-hour round trip to the farmer’s market to sell their tomatoes, which are a runaway hit. Early in the season they might load up as many as 800 pounds a week. Later on it dwindles to 500 pounds, which often sell out in the first 3 hours the market is open.

Like many farmers these days, the Elstons grow their tomatoes according to strict organic principles but haven’t gotten officially certified because it’s cost prohibitive. Dennis waters the plants every day, while Mary prunes them once a week and does all the picking. They use organic fertilizers and spray garlic oil on the plants to keep away pests like aphids, which can suck the juices from the tomatoes and transmit diseases to the plants. The result is luscious, organically grown beefsteak tomatoes that tend towards the sweet side. Pass the salt and pepper, please.

The Goods – organic tomatoes, cucumbers

The Markets – Ferry Plaza Farmer’s Market on Saturdays (in season)

Fun fact - Neither Mary nor Dennis likes to eat tomatoes!

Calling all San Franciscans

I just started subscribing to the second coolest food newsletter in town. And yes, as usual I'm a bit late to the party, so pardonnez-moi.

CUESA, which runs the Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market, stands for the Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture. They put out a weekly newsletter highlighting what's new (and obviously therefore seasonal) at the market each week, provide recipes, profile a few farmers and talk up events. If you're trying to devote your Bay Area kitchen to a more seasonal way of cooking, it's a must read.

I found it because of some research I'm doing on nearby farms. I haven't blogged much about the farmer's market or farmers in general, but I got interested in them about a year ago. I met Larry Peter, a man with boundless enthusiasm for his herd of hormone-free Jersey cows and the rapid-fire auctioneer chatter to match. I met him at an old creamery in Petaluma, which is farm country if you're not from around these parts. He'd just bought the 90-some year old building and was cranking it back up to produce his cheese. My interest in him at the time was related to butter, but his passion stuck with me. It wasn't just the passion -- anyone who makes a living as a family farmer has to love what they do -- but also a bit of edginess that I sensed in him about his way of life. It's endangered, and he isn't sure he can fix it or the dwindling farm community he lives in, but he is damn well going to die trying.

Although his cheese is amazing (try the hard Giana modeled on Portugese cheese, or Mike's Fireman Jack if you want a three alarm fire in your moouth) it's his butter I adore. He starts with 100% Jersey cream, which matters because of the high fat content. Then he cultures it to bring about a certain flavor. It is a high-fat butter like the Euros use, and although it hasn't been certified he told me that he thinks most batches are nearly 88% butterfat. That is really high, which means extra yummy. He was working on getting certified organic when I met him last year, but that's mostly a technicality. Best of all, he sells his butter at the Farmer's Market, but get there early because they usually run out by 10.

If you like stories like these you'll love the CUESA newsletter. And when the rain seems like it'll never stop pouring down on the tops of our poor, soggy heads, it's nice to have a reminder that the market is there and waiting with its gorgeous produce, fresh butter, artisanal sea salt and fresh, free range eggs. Happy shopping.

Lady Marmalade

When I was in the third grade, I thought marmalade was the cat's meow. I'd never had any, mind you, but I'd read the Paddington Bear stories, and anything that was good enough for a posh-speaking stuffed animal was good enough for me. I loved my P. Bear; he was a cool cat. P. Bear loved him his marmalade, and by virtue of the transitive property of mathematics, I loved marmalade too. Despite never having tasted any.

Then came our first book reports, and a little red-headed boy with lots of freckles named Jeff Kosich did his book report on Paddington. In a show of one-up-man-ship that would become the hallmark of my later years in advertising, he brought in some orange marmalade for us all to sample.

I don't know how he passed it around in keeping with the health codes of the day, but he did. When it came my way, I clapped my hands, licked my lips and went in for a taste of the very nectar I had been dreaming of lo these many years.

I spit it out into my napkin with a modicum of fuss. It was revolting -- as bitter a substance as I'd ever eaten. I couldn't even choke it down. I was horrified, let down, shamed and utterly exposed. That day I lost my innocence.

Well, perhaps I'm being a bit dramatic, but cut me some slack. It was the first childhood dream of mine that had ever been killed. (This was before I caught my beloved M. cheating on his math homework, which caused me no amount of heartache. I broke it off immediately; what else was I to do when faced with such a heinous crime?)

I'd managed to keep my distance from marmalade for 20-odd years until just the other day when one of my angels of mercy brought me a gift basket that included a jar of June Taylor's grapefruit and Meyer lemon marmalade. Now I know about June Taylor, considered by many to be the Jam Whisperer, and I was bound to have a taste. Luckily, my tastebuds have matured and the bitter rind was carefully offset by the sweet fruit. It was so good it made me smile -- no small feat these days. It also made me take another bite, and another. Its glory was so great, I sacrificed an entire piece of marmalade-slathered toast to Mr. Food Musings (his accident has made me more charitable than normal) and I made myself another.

Tomorrow I plan to slather it on my other angel's freshly baked lemon biscuits, and the day after that on whatever I can scrounge from the bread basket. Or vegetable bin. Who cares? I finally know what Paddington has known all this time. Just a hint of sweetness can take the edge off something bitter. Thank you, P. Bear. It was a lesson I needed to learn.

Koloa Farmer's Market

Every Monday in Koloa on the south shore of Kauai, there's a farmer's market in Anne Knudson park. Of all the things I wanted to do while in Hawaii, this was the one real food adventure I had planned.

We walked down to the beach first to catch the morning sun, and returned to the condo sandy and smelling of the sea, our skin caked with salt, just in time to head off to the market, which opens at noon. The whole family went -- Mom, Dad, Little Sister and The Boyfriend, Little Brother and bien sur Mr. Food Musings.

I had promised them fresh fish and tropical flowers. We pulled into the parking lot and trudged across the pavement. The midday sun radiated fierce waves of heat that bounced off the blacktop and onto our skin. Thankfully, the very first vendor at the market was selling fresh coconuts. He'd lop off the top with a long sharp knife (which the men in the group identified as a type of machete), stick in a straw and collect his buck fifty. When you were done, you could bring them back for him to whack into chunks and scoop out the meat. The coconuts weren't brown and hairy, but pale green, smooth, very heavy. The coconut milk was a revelation, not for its flavor but for how little it tasted like coconut milk I've had. It was thin and nearly clear and not very sweet. We each got one and walked around the small market sipping on our authentic hunks of Hawaiiana, smiling, sweating, proud and full of aloha spirit. In other words, silly-looking tourists.

Little Brother was after mangoes for his mango lassi, and we found some immediately. Reddish-gold, this variety was firm to the touch, but the woman selling them swore they were ripe. "We pick these from a mango tree on the island and they don't have to soften to ripen," she swore. At $2.25 apiece, I wasn't dying to take the risk. I walked away to think about it.

We bought some pineapples, large ones and babies. Small, delicate Japanese eggplant begged to be roasted and served with pasta one night, and limes were so cute and round that Mom came away with ten. "They were practically giving them away," she explained with a guilty smile.

Little Sister came running up. "I found some beautiful red tomatoes, and the biggest okra I've ever seen!" she gushed. We scooped those up, as well as some dark purplish-green African basil. A deep sniff produced strong licorice notes, and I threw it in the bag for the pasta sauce.

I realized then that there was no fresh fish. I was disappointed, but soldiered on looking for flowers in bright fuschias and reds. A selection of pink orchids and coral red anthuriums went into the bag.

My shopping list exhausted, I meandered back to the mangoes. I stood there silently peering at them. Next to me was a woman who looked to be in her 60s or 70s. A bright red strapless muu-muu hugged her ample bosom and her sagging flesh spilled out over the edges. She wore comically large sunglasses and as she studiously placed mango after mango into her bag, looked up at me. "This is what I spend my gin and cigarette money on," she rasped. "Can't beat 'em." And then she laughed a deep down, throaty laugh. I was sold. I piled four or five into our bag and walked back to give the coconut man my drained shell.

Life is just a bowl full of cherries

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so forgive me if this post is short. Yesterday morning Mr. Food Musings and I were in Los Gatos, a wealthy Silicon Valley suburb, after dinner the night before at Manresa (oh me, oh my, wait till I tell you all about it!). After a quick breakfast we wandered over to the Los Gatos farmer's market held near the park underneath big fat leaving trees. It's only a few blocks long, but we found fuzzy pods bursting with fava beans; French-style crepes with butter, sugar and cinnamon; mounds of green beans, green garlic, potatoes in every size and color; strawberries galore; infused balsamic oils and fruity-flavored golden olive oils; lumps of fresh crab meat picked clean from the shell; beds of shaved ice full of oysters being shucked one by one and slurped down by the hungry crowd; and a stand of preserves from Fontana Farms. Mr. FM and I were seduced by the strawberry rhubarb but if I'm ever down that way again, you may see me loading up on raspberry and peach or very berry. The fruit had warmed under the hot morning sun and a dab slithered down my chin before I caught it. The ingredients are simple: just picked fruit, sugar, pectin and lemon. We swiped a flat of big red strawberries and a bag of sweet cherries, then sat for a minute with the sun warming the tops of our heads and shoulders before heading back to the City.

Shopping in Japantown

My friend R. is an ardent sushi lover and, like many of us, has fallen prey to the fantasy of making sushi in her own home. It seems that any self-respecting citizen of the world these days can point to a collection of sushi accessories in their kitchen: a book on sushi-making (likely named Easy Sushi or Sushi Made Easy), a sake set, chopsticks, flat sushi plates and child-sized bowls for soy sauce.

All unused.

R. is no different from the rest of us, but (quite probably inspired by my derring-do in the kitchen) decided the fateful day has come to christen her sushi tools. I weaseled an invite for me and Mr. Food Musings for next weekend, then begged to help plan it, and so found myself over at her apartment last Saturday morning, sushi books spread open across my lap, decoding Japanese ingredients while R. transferred them to a neatly typed shopping list on her computer screen.

"I put B. in charge of the entree," she stated, matter-of-fact in her delegation of cooking duties. (B. is The Fiance.) "And I'm doing the sushi." B. is fearless in the face of a naked flame, so he planned to grill black cod after marinating it for two days according to a recipe from the world-famous Japanese restaurant, Nobu, in London. Suffice it to say that the man aims high (although I snuck a peak at the recipe and honestly, it looks pretty easy. I figured I could even do it, envisioning the two of us in matching aprons and hot mitts having our way with the grill. But then I remembered I'd have to light the grill without the gas blowing up my head or the apartment or whatever, and decided I'd let him fight it out on the balcony alone.)

We looked at the recipe for making vinegared sushi rice. R. confessed to me, "Every time I make rice, I end up with rice soup." I eyed her warily, but she remained cheerful. "So I'm going to buy a rice cooker today!" We studied the maki sushi, deciding that tuna, salmon and yellowtail would be a good selection alongside secondary ingredients like avocado, carrot and cucumber. I added shiso, a Japanese herb similar to basil, to our shopping list.

We leafed through the pages of the books, absorbing the maki making technique. In another moment of imaginary, transient glory, I decided to make an inside-out maki roll sprinkled with sesame seeds, something the sushi books consider difficult. Nevermind; I'd sashay around, a prodigy, impressing R. and B. with my sushi-making prowess. Soon, word would get around and I'd get a call to guest chef down at Sushi Groove South.

"Why are you smiling?" R. asked. I remembered it was lunchtime.

We set off for Japantown and a shopping trip to the only all-sake store in the States. After a not-so delicious sushi lunch (the unagi made R. gag and spit her hand roll into her napkin) but some darn good gyoza we went to Nijiya, a Japanese grocery store. We browsed the aisles like aliens just landed on a new planet, taking everything in: the bread, cutely wrapped in crinkly plastic with pretty gold lettering, more adorable than anything in Safeway; row after row of soy sauce, ponzu, chili oil, mirin, rice vinegar and wasabi (I made R. get the stuff with super Japanese-y labels; "But how do we know what it is?" she wanted to know. So practical. I rolled my eyes.). An entire squid, dried, leered up at me from its hermetically sealed plastic and I held it up for R. to see. "Gross!" came the reply.

After the initial excitement of the exotic and unknown had worn off, R. snagged a young stock boy and handed him her grocery list. "What kind of nori should we get?" He helped us find the pickled ginger, sesame seeds and white miso and then we were on to chopsticks and sake cups. I begged to take home the cute shrimp dumplings we found in the freezer section, my eyes wide and pleading. R. consented and I felt like I used to when my mom would buy me a doughnut at the grocery store to keep me quiet. It was a good feeling. I trotted off to find the chili oil.

That errand finished, we drove over to True Sake in Hayes Valley. Owned by sake sommelier Beau Timken, the store offers a selection of filtered and unfiltered sakes that vary in price from $10 to the hundreds. R. went straight for her favorite and then we asked Timken for a recommendation on a good sake for infusing. I'd gotten the idea to add mango from Sunset magazine's recently printed instructions. (Cut up a ripe mango and add to 750 ml of sake. Cover and chill for 5 days, then remove mango and serve within one week.) He suggested something with a lot of acidity: "You don't want the mango to hide the sake flavor."

Up next: Sushi-making 101