my mother used to call it "piggy meat"

Yeah that was me this morning at Cafe Flore. EATING BACON. just a bite, but oh, I'm slipping, I'm not me anymore, I'm down the rabbit hole.



There was SO MUCH foodie gossip at the cookout last night in an East Bay suburb. FB gossip too. My boss gave me some more background information on market stuff, the Slow Food fight was discussed, chef ventures rated, farmers markets in many towns discussed. We had many offers, for instant reservations at Quince, job hookups for me at ice cream joints, vacations, dinners, whatnot. Wild times were had.

It was really great to see the family of a dear family friend, which so happens to include my boss (whom I never see) and her husband. And it made me want to be the next Jonathan Franzen so I could write about how an interest seeps its way through one generation of a family, how its roots grow. How the children marry cattle farmers and fruit farmers and become the sort of people who covet reservations at The French Laundry, how the generation after that becomes chefs and bakers and coffee-makers. My own family is fairly small, and no one is quite sure where I got my passion for sweet things or voracious appetite for bookishness.

I'm not doing a very good job of keeping out of the East Bay. Chez Panisse two nights ago (upstairs, this time). Rocket salad with pickled onions and warm figs on toast. Morel ravioli in pea sauce. Warm fig and raspberry tart with honey ice cream (the most well matched flavors I've had in a long time in dessert, though it could just be I'm in a figgy mood). Tomorrow we're walking cutie pie at the Albany shoreline, going to the Tuesday market, hitting up the Berkeley Bowl and stopping by Ici so we can compare it to Bi Rite. In other words, doing all the day off things I normally do.

Bi Rite tonight was better than the Bi Rite we had at work (honey lavender, salted caramel, cookies n cream, all with those Michael Recchiuti fleur de sel chocolate things). The honey lavender was too much lavender for my taste. And I don't like honey ice cream unless it's that amazing honey lavender candied pistachio ice cream I made for my Chez Panisse dinner party. And their salted caramel ice cream is not Claudia Fleming's. Ici, however, does not inspire me to make comparisons to recipes I prefer. It only inspires me to eat ice cream and lots of it. Tonight, though, was a banana split with vanilla ice cream, caramelized bananas, hot fudge sauce, lightly whipped cream and walnuts, made slowly and carefully just for me!

It's my birthday soon and I really want some homemade pie and ice cream. Perhaps the rosewater mastic ice cream, or sweet corn, or oatmeal to go with something yummy and fruit. However I don't actually think I'll have time to make myself something for candle-wishing and growing older. I may very well be in Santa Cruz looking for the most perfect beach ever or in Monterrey communing with the fish

(my last birthday actually was also spent at an aquarium and, ahem, if you were with my on the last birthday, this one is sure going to be better). Should we make ice cream next week? If so what kind? Pie? Or would you rather just hit up my favorite spots, go zaatar tasting and remember those perfect desserts?

foie, FB flashbacks,

Wedding tonight (not mine, obviously). I wore a dress and looked almost pretty, in a mermaid sort of way.

I was reminded that I come from a long line of feisty women and hedonists, and that it is nice to have people that are family, in a sense, out here in the west.

I tried foie, finally. It was sort of okay, bland until the cracker was gone and the berry coulis was gone and I was left with a mouthful of buttery, fatty protein. The foie. Not exactly how I wanted to do it. But I'll do it again, in a kitchen I trust.

I had ham, too, hiding under the cheese in my pizza. The taste unpleasant in the way a mouthful of swallowed salt water is when you're trying to swim.

I met some nice kids who work, or used to, in the FB. They all know the guy who used to have my job. Many have referenced him. There are conflicting stories, rumors, told to me by people I don't quite trust and some chef I used to like, and then normal reports told to me by my boss, whom I do like. One of the girls I met works for the Miette candy store, so we discussed Miette, the internship, and all of that. Lately I'm feeling like I've been around a block or two out here, like I know people or know of them or they know me, and things really are getting small. It's so strange to feel a part of this community, and all its conflicting relationships, rumors, gossip.

What to do about love, that bastard?

the trend has GOT to be over

While I *have* been saying I kind of want to try bacon lately (and, for me, that is like the moment in The Satanic Verses when Gibreel starts eating pork and goes off with the white mountaineering girl...well, it isn't culturally forbidden me, but it would mark the end of an era), bacon chocolate from Vosges isn't exactly what I had in mind. The bacon trend has got to be over. And for some reason, bacon with apple tarts, bacon in ice cream with breakfast-y desserts, all of that is at least something that makes sense conceptually. Salt and chocolate, yeah, I see, but bacon and chocolate?

Maybe it really is me.

I made triple chocolate cookies tonight. I'm not really a cookie person but I was in the mood for warm chocolate cookies. Of course, by the time I finished baking them I'd absorbed enough cookie smell to promptly not want any cookies. Sonsie also cookied me out, too. Double batch of chocolate cookies every day, and they were pretty good, but not good enough for me to not be thoroughly sick of them. I'd eat them, though, when I got hungry, which after ten hours and maybe a bagel at 10 am, would tend to happen. I'd also sneak extra salt in there, since I decided that's what they were missing, and I never told Michael I thought they were under-salted....

chez panisse, the update

Monday night dinner at Chez Panisse downstairs.

We started off with almonds and olives. As usual, my mother suggested I try olives. On my last SF vacation, I tried olives at least twice, and grimaced each time. Since then, I've tried other olives--and had tried them again twice this weekend--but these were olives I found myself unable to stop eating. They were slightly warm, slicked with oil and salt, and tasted like good olive oil had solidified and grown strangely shaped pits. We ate our way through the helping of olives and then we ate more. They brought bread (Acme, of course). First course was a warm onion tart with a little salad of microgreens and egg, pancetta for my mother's but not on mine, mild flavors but very fresh. I think you'd like the pancetta, she said.

I don't eat bacon. But I've been thinking about it, I replied. I remember enjoying bacon, especially dipped in maple syrup. It's been on my mind, lately, bacon, and it's one of the only meat products I actually have a taste memory of. Probably because I keep accidentally eating it.

The second course was chicken with morels and hand-cut pappardelle with peas and spinach. I'd like to hope they make their own pasta, rather than cut the pappardelle from strips as Sonsie used to do. Being Chez Panisse, I'm sure this is the case (although I was surprised to lean my lovely olives were sourced from Provence via NYC, rather than locally). They look like little brains,I said, and my mother warned me. I proceeded to eat every scrap on my plate, from the perfectly moist chicken (perfect chicken #3, and again something that inspired me to make perfect chicken, though of course I wouldn't know where to start). What I liked about the morels was that they lacked that slippery mushroom texture that gets gummy in my mouth. And then I began thinking of getting some ramps, peas or fiddleheads and morels from the mushroom store at the FB, and learning to cook.

Finally, (and thank heavens it wasn't plain fruit with dessert) bing cherries in syrup with toasted almond ice cream. An unsightly, not-great S shaped cookie garnished the dessert. But everything else was perfect. Down to the half bottle of A. Rafanelli Zin we shared in homage to last August's trip to Healdsburg (and SF, before it became my new home).

comfort food

coconut cake
Originally uploaded by the_jade_greene.

french fries n honey
mac n cheese
eggplant parmesan
teriyaki tofu
ice cream, any kind
coconut cake
warm chocolate chip cookies
hot chocolate
redbones bbq
mashed potatoes
crusty bread n butter
really good pizza
bread pudding, done right
leftover pastry cream
anything flaky and buttery
avocado
zaatar cheese toast
tapioca pudding
butterscotch pudding
chocolate pudding
honey mustard chicken
carrot cake
cupcakes
ice cream sundaes

I think I'm going to have to re-think the phrase "I don't like cheese." I also might have compose some some of french fry-honey dessert. Maybe I can start a veggie version of the bacon-in-dessert/breakfast-for-dessert trend. Cause who wants french toast (scuse me, pain perdu when you can have mapley, honeyed, crunchy, salty potatoes?

I also think it might be time to get some good cake...where to go? I've been meaning to try so many places. Maybe if I don't have to work tomorrow I'll pop off somewhere and get cake. This afternoon I bought a fileld churros from the lady on International. Somehow the vanilla custard filling when eaten with the churros dough tasted like butterscotch. It was good. Just what I needed before a post-work. three hours of sleep last night nap. But I almost liked the flavor of the churros they sell outside the Ferry Building better. This one, however, was freshly piped, freshly fried, tossed in cinnamon sugar and filled right before my eyes.

Every interaction in Oakland is some sort of cultural exchange. The shopkeepers switch to English for me. The thuggy guys keep their eyes on me, the white girl. In the Asian markets, I try to sound out the Vietnamese words. I wonder if I'll miss that, living in SF.

knife bliss

I got a new knife today! Finally used up my Sur La Table gift certificate after work, to buy a Global Santoko. I tried the Shun on the staff's insistence, but I can't use a Shun. Reminds me too much of the grim old boss, plus the handle's too big. The Wusthof handles were likewise weird, overly large in my small girlish hands. I just went to the kitchen to pick up my bread knife and even that feels odd in my hands and that is the sexiest knife I own.

My Global's really awesome. I'm not into them for being trendy, and if I were into trendy knives I'd get a Shun or something, but it fits so naturally in my hand and it's really lightweight esp. when compared to my chef's knife. Knives, boring, right.

The last Fauchon in NYC's closing. I read the Beard dateline pages for three cities now, Boston, NYC and SF. I was thinking yesterday about what my life would be like if instead of coming west I'd gone back to New York to beg a stage out of Claudia Fleming or someone else. How I'd be crashing on the apartments of friends, how I wouldn't have gotten the chance to see a Michael Pollan reading like I did last night, and how I probably wouldn't have been as writerly as I've been here. Enjoying myself.

Today at work, I made quince-rhubarb upside down cakes, using David Lebovitz's recipe. The fruit part is yummy, but the cake is stiff and sort of flavorless. I'd like more of a brown sugary, burnt-buttery cake, but it's hard because I've onyl got one day to make anything I could want and even then a good chunk of that day's spent prepping for the standards and baking things off. Still, I've got a good five hours to do ANYTHING I WANT. What else did I make today...Maura's strawberry lavender cream tarts (got to try one tomorrow, that's been on my list to make for a long time). Pastry cream for fresh fruit tarts. Shortcakes for blood-orange and quince shortcakes.

I'm thinking of a Bavarian for next week. Still haven't tried one. Maybe with the asian pear chutney, or a caramel and apricot marmalade, or a lemon bavarian with something, maybe strawberry plum jam. The caramel idea is my favorite, but do those things all go? According to my handy flavor profile list, cardamom, caramel, vanilla nuts and stone fruits all go well with apricots. So vanilla bavarian with caramel and jam layer. Also some poppy orange cookies with blackberry jam. The strawberry tiramisu (Paul Bertolli's recipe, I presume) if Becky does fax over the hot milk sponge recipe.

I should just make larger batches. I made the shortbread today and it made 18 cakes. Enough for two weeks, but I could have made double that and frozen most, but the recipes really don't indicate quantity at all. I'd just like to be more effective. I'd like to not have to spend so much time baking tart shells and cutting up fruit and more time making muffins and custards and cakes and cookies. I'll get more efficient with time. Today was only day three. Sheesh.

Bad thing: I got a chicken burrito from the cart outside my street last night and i was SO SICK today. ugggh. Like, really I shouldn't have been working kind of sick. That is until Rafael made me a magic drink. Sparkling water, salt, half a lemon and baking soda. He promised me I'd feel better and I didn't believe him. I don't want to think about what meatiness founds its way into my burrito: pork skin, brains, tongue...this, and I'd daydreaming of bacon ice cream and foie.

nostalgic for boston

I miss my stage at Oleana. Since my trip to Frisson the other week, I've been REALLY wanting to try their bacon ice cream dessert...pancakes with blueberry jam and bacon ice cream. I'm not a fan of breakfast-as-dessert and I don't eat bacon. But I sit here and wonder, is it salty? Is it crunchy? Would I like it? Bit of a dilemma. I think the reality is that I miss being around someone who makes me crave things I never thought I would want or like...hence, missing Oleana.

Or maybe it's bigger than that. Maybe there's something in me that wants to be the person that eats everything. Maybe I'll go back to Frisson and get the foie gras thing followed by the bacon ice cream. ugh, I'd be so sick.

I'm still waiting for the beehive in Boston to open up. The Cyclorama is such a cool space, very dining as theater. I checked the Oleana website to see if there's anything about Sofra (there isn't) and the Sonsie site to see if they'd put up the new menu so I could see what Michael did for spring menu change (they haven't). There's not much new happening in Boston at the moment.

But I did enjoy this, from the James Beard site: sf update--a whole shop dedicated to the molecular gastronomy fuss. Could be fun to browse. I might be making some new friends who are foodies. Very exciting. I'll finally have someone to go out to dinner with, and there are so many restaurants to start with.