amazing apricots 1

I remember the first time I ate an apricot. It was my first time in California, I was visiting family in Woodside, and I bought an apricot at the local market because it felt so California to me. And also because I'd never seen a fresh apricot.

I experienced what many people experience when they bite into a fresh apricot. The flesh was mealy, the flavor underwhelming, the skin spongy. I did not eat another fresh apricot for about six years and I gave them another try only grudgingly.

If you've ever thought these apricot things are so mealy and yucky...i contemplate eating them because i really want a fresh peach and the peaches aren't ready, well then, this post is for you. see, apricots deepen in flavor when cooked, and the mushy complaint of their texture turns soft. How, exactly, you say?

image by max xx

Close your eyes and think of a peach pie. You know how the peaches are bright, how they taste like you think yellow would if yellow had a taste? How they're probably one-dimensionally sweet from all the sugar added in the pie? When you cook apricots like this, don't be surprised if you turn down the next piece of peach pie someone offers you.

Pit and halve a bunch of apricots. Put them in a pot with some sugar and a splash of water. If you have a vanilla bean, you can throw one in. Apricots and vanilla really sing. If you've got a good honey, you can use some honey. What else could you use? Chamomile, dark brown sugar, brandy, lemon. This is not a list of ANDs, however. It's a list of ORs. Any item on this list will complement the apricots, but so that you understand the beauty and complexity of an apricot once it's cooked, choose sugar plus one, or even a rich type of sugar like muscovado or maple or demerara. Something special.

Cook the apricots plus sugar plus water (plus extra) over medium heat. Let's say you have six to eight apricots. I would add 1/3 to 1/2 cup sugar. You can always add more sugar but you can't take it out. The fruit will start to break down and release its juices. Continue cooking until the juices thicken. I'm not going to give you a more exact recipe than that, but I will answer questions. You will be left with a delicious compote that I like to serve warmed over vanilla ice cream.

Learning how to cook apricots will change your life. If you're lactose intolerant, spoon them over soy yogurt with granola for breakfast, and if you hate sweets grab a nice cheese and good bread because this compote is versatile, easy, cheap and delicious. Promise. If you get inspired to try this and make a new, fun combo, let me know.

schmidt happens

Hershey’s may not have spelled out their reasons for closing the plant to the employees, but the employee guessed that making artisan chocolates was too expensive and labor intensive for a such a large corporation.

“That’s why not one truffle looks like the next, even the special boxes are hand made and decorated,” she said. The truffle boxes are hand dyed on paper maché and individually decorated using the batik technique. “That’s what Joseph Schmidt is known for. A lot of people hold on to their boxes.”

Production costs for artisan chocolates may be high, but Hershey’s had a good 2008. Net sales in 2008 were $5.13 billion dollars, up from $4.9 billion in 2007. Hershey’s 2008 net profit was $311.4 million dollars, a significant increase from 2007’s $214.2 million.

“Working here was a good experience. I’m so sad. It feels like a death in the family,” the employee said.

The above comes from an interesting article on the last few days of the Joseph Schmidt factory in SF. Joseph Schmidt, along with the Berkeley ScharffenBerger plant, is being closed by parent company Hersheys.

People, don't sell your boutique chocolate shops to Hersheys.

sign of the times

SFGate reports today that Hershey's is deciding to close the Scharffen Berger and Joseph Schmidt plants and move all production to its PA factories. Having cooked with SB for over three years now I swear I can taste a difference in the stuff I was using when I first got out here and recent batches.

SB 70% is a very unique chocolate. I don't like chocolate desserts made exclusively with it, as it tends to be overwhelming, but it is very distinctive and very good. Or, I should say, Was.

for those interested in working with local chocolate, that cuts the option down to Guittard...which always tends to taste a little waxy to me, though can be quite fine in some things.

There are fine confectioners here...Recchiuti, Poco Dolce, Charles Chocolates to name a few. However, these companies do not focus on bar production but instead on treats, candies, truffles, etc.

Perhaps I should put on my SB t-shirt...yknow, the one that says Extra Bitter?

mystery box

someone sent me a box of fruit.

ripe cal red peaches and flavor king pluots from brentwood's frog hollow farm, a place i know very well. at first i thought it was from my old employers themselves...who else would send me such a gift?...or else from my mom, just being nice, or from my dad and stepmom thanking me for entertaining them on their visit. there was no card inside to clue me in. tomorrow i'll call up the farm and see if they can shed some light on it for me, but in the meantime...

here in california it's easy to play the ant. stone fruit season starts in what, may? continues through till october thereabout, at least september. when you get delicious fruit at work every day (and it's not convenient to your schedule to go to a farmers market), you snack on scraps of what you get at work and you use the fruit to make what is on your menu, and unless you are very diligent, that is about it. then the apples show up and, if you're me, you're kind of confused. like, it's apple season already? and there's only apples (pears, pomegranates, persimmons) to hold us til winter? in new england, where you don't get a good nine months of strawberries, everyone is anticipating the local harvest so much that in some ways it's easier to appreciate it. the peaches are here! this month! hurry, hurry...cause you know the cali peaches the store's been stocking all summer were picked way too early to ripen well should you decide to take them home.

this year for some reason my mom's been really awakened to local produce and what it means, tastewise. it's finally come together for her that when you buy something out of season, or when you buy something that's been trucked or flown up from south america or across this country, you are losing out on flavor for the nominal joy of having raspberries in your cereal. only they don't taste like what you remember a berry tasting like.

so in the meantime...maybe i'll take some peaches camping with me. maybe i'll can them in verbena butter, make a plum rose compote. i have been meaning to buy some cans and do some canning, especially with our yard tomatoes fast approaching. i have at last found one white peach worthy of eating. the snow king (ours are from blossom bluff). white peaches (white fruit in general) tend to be high in sugar and low in acid, which means that all you taste is sugar and texture, and any indigenous flavor is pretty much lost. these snow king have a subtle perfumy flavor that's really kind of nice. i thought of them immediately for desert candy's white peach cardamom conserves.

time to play grasshopper kids.

i also got another present today. a genuine pasta king pasta bracelet. oh no, not the one in sonoma. sf's very own bicycle-riding pasta king.

where/what

yes, it's true, I did take long disappearance from blogging. new and less desirable work schedule to acclimate to, family in town, getting newbies settled, etc. etc. I haven't checked my email or gotten any writing done for the better part of two weeks. bah.

Another garden bbq this weekend and my part will be, I think:
rancho gordo yellow eye beans

watermelon salad with garden cilantro, radishes and greens, red onion, balsamic redux. or something in that vein.

We're also having the infamous veggie kebabs, grilled corn, meat of some sort and goodness knows what else. And I think I'm being called on to make myself look pretty and go to the Presidio Social Club, and I must say, the menu they have on their website looks extremely undelicious. Although they do have mac n cheese. Which would of course then be what I would get.

Maryusa asked what I have been doing with myself and it's been pretty much this: watering the garden, painting the kitchen, entertaining various family and friends, working, making homemade marshmallows for the boys, cleaning, working my way through a stack on slightly overdue library books. Unfortunately (or fortunately) the parade of visitors seems to KEEP COMING as I've got a college friend and fellow ice cream addict flying into town for a wedding next week. dios mio!

keep my head down and work, keep my head down and write.

eating locally, in nyc

if you live in New York City or state--or have friends, lovers, colleagues, etc, who do--perhaps you can help me help a friend of mine currently getting her Masters in New Media Journalism. She runs the Fringe blog and is super new to NYC living, and is doing her thesis project on eating locally in New York. I've put her query out to friends and colleagues and now I'm putting it out here.

Lizzie says:
Basically, we're focusing on how to get local food in NYC and may be traveling to upstate (or elsewhere in the tri-state area) to see some of the farms that supply it, as well as looking at people who farm in the city. However, it'd be fabulous if you could put me in contact with some upstate locavores/farmers...

I've clued her in to writers who are local food activists and serious food writers. I've set her on to chow, the nyc eat local people, the current issue of Gourmet and the New Yorker food issue, and I should tell her about the edible publications and Hudson Valley Table. But any other suggestions are appreciated.

The Hudson Valley...it's experiencing a food renaissance. It's got foamed cuisine now.

Is it because the Zagat children went to Vassar or because locally sourced food got trendy or the population of NYC-living second home folks reached a critical mass? I should be happy for it, right? The density of seriously cute towns up there is exploding. When I worked on the farm sometimes Robert DeNiro's helicopter would fly overhead. He owned a place in that town.

But the more the Hudson Valley becomes a plaything for New York City, the more it is never going to be affordable for people like me. Meanwhile the river's still dirty, Potown itself is...meh, I love it but I'm crazy, and the economy of the towns next to those cute towns sprinkled throughout Ulster County is still depressed.

local eating/thursday rant, or Pardon My Low Blood Sugar

7 pm now and I just finished dinner, after not eating anything all day except for an unfrosted carrot cupcake and a frosted mini cupcake. Dinner was brown rice, lentils, onions, carrots, kale and those ever-lasting 79 cent mushrooms spiced up with some ras el hannout and toasted cumin seeds. I've got some shortbread in the oven (trying out Tartine's recipe, but with lavender and walnuts mixed in.) If it comes out well (skeptical as it's now been in the oven about double the suggested time, but that might just be what I get for using an 8x8 pyrex and not a 6x10) I'm taking it to the potluck.

I was going to put a big post last night about the scraps n leftovers local meal I had...local egg omelette with avocado and Star Route spinach. And leftovers of the best rice I've ever made...Massa's organic brown rice with sauteed spinach, mushrooms, shallot and zaatar mixed in. But then my old college friend called, so I went out to a bar in the Castro where I got mistaken for a man in the bathroom line, got some perspective on the 9 to 5 (or whenever) lifestyle, and discussed our pathetic singledom in a bar full of cute, look-alike fag couples.

I'm on the verge of getting sick and this not eating thing really isn't helping. I brought food today but the cupcakery was zany and even though I promised myself ten minutes for lunch after finishing the vanilla batters that turned into 'll just eat it while I heat the juice for curd and make american buttercream which then turned into well it's one thirty and I'm here till three I'll just take a bite of carrot.

I should just get a tattoo on my forehead that reads I require clear and effective communication and while that might save me a lot of headaches I probably wouldn't get any dates. As I tell my FH coworkers on market day, just make me a list. Cause I'm very good at getting done what needs to be done.

Chef gossip at the cupcakery but I'm not spilling.

I hung out with my favorite cupcake slingers the other night. Took them blackberry picking on Bernal Heights where they, two native SFers, had never been. They gave me their berries in exchange for a promised pie, and I gave them tips on east coast living since their respective college are in Boston and NYC. We went for burritos in the Mission and I understood for the first time how you could prefer burritos to a slice. Time for a good slice, perhaps, as opposed to a whole yuppified pizza?

I've got tickets to Boston in October! Give me apples, autumn leaves, a chance to go to Beehive, the new ICA...if I weren't so food deprived I'd be jumping up and down.