Hey y'all
it's been a long time, work started, my mairrage ended, all hell broke loose, therapy is underway, my life has exploded like the cherry pie my sister in law once dropped on the floor, glass pie plate and all.. well, that's overdoing it a bit, but if you've read any of my blog so far you know i'm prone to purple prose...

i actually have been cooking quite a bit, as we are full into winter i've been chowing on greens, turnips, potatoes, hot meat dishes, lots of biscuits, pancakes, wintry things. i have a box delivered every two weeks from Farm Fresh To You, a farm in Capay California, and that's been amazing.

i come home from a harsh thursday and it's like christmas and hannukah all wrapped up in one- ....a box bursting with kiwis, tangerines, fennel, leeks, spuds, beets... it's just amazing, i highly reccomend it.. it's only about twenty bucks a box... i still go on foot to the farmers market most saturdays on center street, but this way i don't need to get so much, and i can focus on what's not in the box- bacon from fatted calf or whatver.

a farmer's market friend and i have been doing something fun: i skip the market, she goes, and she brings her catch to me and i have to cook something with whatever she brings. a little iron chef without the pressure or competition, i suggest you try this, it's cool... invite someone for dinner and have them bring you 2 or 3 surprise things, then you cook them together, or try to figure out how to blend them into a couple of dishes, and then you buy a couple things to surprise them with, and they cook those... i call it Improv Kitchen Throwdown... try it and let me know how yours comes out....

Chicken Stew With Champagne and Dijon

Extra Credit!

Ironically, with all the classes I've been taking, I haven't been cooking much at home.
Lame! What's the point of all this if we're still dragging the kids out to some mediocre restaurant and paying seventy dollars for the privilege of kids menus and a night off of doing dishes?
So today on the third Sunday of my cookingmyassoff summer, I decided to actually get off that ass and put every class I've had together to make something good for the family. I give you the play by play in hopes that you may steal this recipe and/or an ingredient, or that it just makes you hungry.

8am: Okay, what's in the fridge. Half a bottle of Champagne left over from mom's birthday, Jesus what a bunch of f**ing lightweights. Hm...what else is back here, a light would help, when did that go out? Check the freezer. About ten mystery Tupperwares that have about as much chance of seeing daylight as Charles Manson.... Yo! The chicken stock I made after the stocks class! With those two roasted Beef bones I took from that night. Okay, I got my liquids.
11 am: Crusin' for some protiens. the Saturday Berkeley Farmers Market, the Mecca of the current local food revival. Carrots, celery... giant leeks....peaches...the grass fed meat guy isn't there but his blond haired born-and-bred on the range daughter is. I'll just look. "What are these?" I ask, picking up a very bloody shrink wrapped package. "lamb necks". Woa. At Incanto is SF I saw these, roasted, they looked hella manly and delish. I buy two for ten bucks and as I walk away she says, "thanks for taking those off my hands!" that makes me feel kind of weird. But I got some protiens.
(Problem: No one will eat these in my house but me. Picky eaters! Shit. I'll freeze em.)
2pm: Ice cream break at "Ici". Overhyped.
3pm: watering my moms plants, she's out of town. I rip a big red onion out of the ground. Shit, if I'm I'm gonna have time for the magic meat softening, I need to rush home and get some protien that will do that a little faster than a lamb neck the size of a volleyball. Chicken wings! As Mike said, small meat with lots of bone means two good things: compressed cooking time and beaucoup flavor. Ride the bike by Magnani's for 12 wings...Three dollars!!
4pm: Cooking time. I follow the process, but browning the wings is so awkward because they don't lie flat. I brown half of them and move on to the veg. The chopped onion, leek, carrot and celery all smell so nice. Two cloves of garlic sweetening it up.
Add back in the chicken wings. Honestly I think the whole browning-things-first is... oh shit. Remember how nice and thick my lamb stew was, with the flour dredged meat? (a few blogs ago, see "No recipe needed") Damn...
Now the liquid. In goes the Champagne. In goes the stock. Oops. I guess this is a stew, not a braise. Lots of liquid. Bring to a boil
Cover. Simmer.
I peek in after twenty minutes. Kind of watery.
A Roux! ....Duh! I whip out a frying pan, melt a hunk of butter and start whisking in my flour. Creamy, then pasty. Add flour, creamy, pasty...a little more..good. I pour that into the stew for thickening. Plenty of cooking time left to cook that flour as well.
Emulsification. I remember learning that Mustard is also a good one from the Aioli lesson. I dig mustard and that would go with the quasi french thing happening with the dainty peeled whole potatoes I put in after the liquids.
Mmmmm. It's smelling like some rabbit stew you'd get in the french countryside. I can smell the Champagne big time and the mustard is working my salivary glands.
Set the timer for an hour and forget about it.
After 50 minutes, I seive out the scum and the celery and leeks since all the flavor has been blasted out of them. I keep the carrots in since they still have a taste.

6pm. Diner time.
It's still soupy but has a wonderful golden color, nice tart bite from the mustard and the chicken is falling apart. Potatoes are done but not obliterated. And the quartered, bright yellow summer squash I put in just five minutes ago are cooked through. Timing is tricky.
Lots of liquid...I'll serve with cous cous. Ahhhh cous cous. Memories of Paris...
It's nice.
Actually tastes like something my dad and I ate in France in a place that had no menus alongside a highway. The meat is soft, the taste is clear and sweet, rich from the stock, bone and meat. Everyone eats it, even Faye eats it who is pretty damn picky. The potatoes taste like potato. The juice you can sip like soup.
Now, I could have made this a month ago, before all these lessons and it would have been okay. I just wouldn't have known all the whys. All the reasons behind the little choices I made along the way. Why mustard was a good choice not just for taste but for texture. How I could have thickened it with a roux, etc...
I'm not a chef, but I may be becoming some kind of a cook.
That's Cool.

Cooking at Dara's House

It's torture.
I'm sitting on a hard wood stool in a small kitchen watching someone who clearly loves to cook and is having a ball. Imagine watching a really good pinball player. You know when they get that ball moving lightning quick all over the place racking up thousands of points and the bells and lights are going nuts? That's how Dara Merin moves around her tiny kitchen while while she teaches her classes.
Torture is maybe too strong a word. Anticipation maybe? At 6:30, five of us cram into her gorgeously organized kitchen and find a stool. We hold our packets emblazoned in beautiful font, "The Sage Table, cooking and classes for culinary wisdom." Tonight is "Mexican Mole, Posole & More". (Aha , stews! Perfect! see last entry...)
For two hours we watche her slice, grate, mandoline, mix, run into the closet and work her industrial blender, simmer, and all the while her rapid fire monologue continues. We don't do much except wait and wonder at her knowledge.
"How much cilantro did I say to add?" she asks us to check her recipes for her often. "Jordan would you grab me that onion?" I reach to the basket right above my head and pass it to her. "Isn't this easy? Didn't I tell you this is easy?" she says as she flips 180 degrees and opens her bursting fridge to grab a Ball jar of lime juice she squeezed earlier.
This aint Kitchen on Fire. This is Dara's world. She is the fastest talking most organic and health-minded chef I've ever seen and though she seems to forget and misplace as many things as she remembers to include in her cooking, her food is incredible.
But when will we get to eat it?
This is my third class at Dara's, and it really teaches you patience. This is a woman, after all, who can go on a master cleanser diet of nothing but lemon juice and cayenne for ten days. This is a woman who can cook an incredibly authentic Indian feast for 250 people in the woods outside Mendocino. This is a true iron chef, no flashy bullshit or port wine reductions, just straight up really f**ing good food.
For two hours all she fed us was a crunchy and delicious Algerian cucumber with salt. But what salt! "This is that Maldon salt from France which I finally splurged and bought and I'll just sprinkle a little on here... it's really good, you don't want to cook with it, for soup I'll use this jar of wet sea salt, see here? Wanna taste that? It's too wet to ground up, so to ground up and just sprinkle I might use- see that big jar of pink Himalayan salt? See, okay, I'm soooo excited because I got that a year ago from a guy at the Rainbow festival and I use that to-"...
Bring up salt, or fermentation, or Kombucha, or anything edible, and Dara gets like my nine year old daughter on her way to sleepover, "Sooooo EXCITED!!"
I've been sneaking little cherry tomatoes. It's 8:30 now and the enchiladas with incredibly rich brick-red mole just went in the oven. My stool neighbor catches me. "hey, those are for the guac."
"Ooops, sorry" I slink back to my stool and pretend to be very interested in the hundreds of hand labelled jars of grains and spices two inches from where I'm sitting." Actually I am fascinated by her extensive larder and do stare at it a lot.
"Okay, we're just about to eat, let's do the Margaritas, ooh, I'm so excited, we're having a party!"

And finally. We sit down. This is the best part of class at Dara's house. We do the most importnat thing. We sit down. We ladle ourselves steaming bowls of Posole. It has a wonderful grainy texture from the blending of the pumkin seeds, tomatillos, and chilis. The heat of it is just enough to make the mouth hum. The balooned-up white corn kernals, the hominy, are wonderful and creamy.
The chunky guacamole on the sliced up and baked organic Primavera tortilla slices ("From the tuesday market on Derby, I just can't have you over for a class and buy chips in a bag, it's just not my style") -fantastic.
"Ole" I say as we toast with the margaritas. They are smooth and syrupy. Sweetened with actual Agave Syrup. Glasses rimmed with the Maldon salt. Dara is a fanatic.
Suddenly I have forgotten the two hours of waiting and watching. Her food is the essence of soulful. We start to talk loudly, smiling and laughing. I go get the enchiladas that have been warming in the oven. They are made with organic corn tortillas, and a mixture of zucchini, onion, carrot, all bonded together with goat cheese. They are so rich and earthy, the mole is not that bland chocolate sauce you might get in a burrito- it is an incredible mix of Ancho Chiles, cumin, cinnamon, garlic and just a few hunks of Sharffenberger bitter chocolate. (She let us taste it at one point, two people said it tasted Indian, we all voted for more chocolate, she complied. It's perfect now. )
I eat one huge one.
Then another.
I realize that this wouldn't be so delicious if we had been handed Margartias upon entering the house and if we'd been stuffing our face with chips and salsa for two hours. In fact I'd probably be drunk, full, and half asleep if we had. We are all very awake now.
This is what Dara's house is all about to me. Being awake to tastes, to food, to the other people you are eating it with.
If Kitchen on Fire is the boot camp of technique and improvisation, about skills and methods and becoming confident with your hands and your taste buds, then The Sage Table is a reminder of what those techniques are for: Meals of beauty, made from ingredients with integrity, shared with other human beings.
And I can't f** ing believe it was vegetarian!


(I hate to encourage others to take her classes because you might get my spot at the table, but in the spirit of sharing good things, thesagetable.com... reserve your spot early...)

No Recipe

The Culinarian Barbarian gave us a threatening look and raised his big eyebrows.
"Those are tonight's recipes folks, BUT, you don't necessarily need to follow them. You know the techniques right?" No one disagreed, it was the calm before the storm. "Everything in the kitchen is fair game, if it's special it'll be marked. GO!"
And with that, the cooking part of my third class, "Stewing and Braising" began. There were lots of great dishes on the bill. Meditteranean Seafood Stew. Doro Wat and Mesir Wat (Ethiopian Chicken, and Lentil Stew, respectively.) Bayou Style Spicy Greens Gumbo. Longevity Noodles, and more.
And Osso Bucco.
Osso Bucco. Say it. Now say it in a low husky voice. Gets you right there doesn't it? Just the sound of those two words and I see a dark haired woman stretched on a sofa in some crumbling Venetian villa.
I know it's just long cooked veal shanks with a nice thick sauce, but when I saw that in our recipe packet, I knew that would be the station I raced to when Mike's lecture was over and the cooking began. But true to his promise, he'd thrown a wrench into our routine. Instead of finding all the ingrediens laid out on hotel pans, leaving only the measuring and cooking, lots of things were AWOL. Some stations were almost bare. He sensed our confusion.
"Folks, the first two classes you shoulda got the lay of the land," he sounded like a football coach at the halftime of a losing game, "now get in there and play around, see what happens. Most cooks don't use recipes, I never do. I might check 'em out for flavor combinations, but I know the technique. So do you, go for it."
Okay. The Osso Bucco station was pretty naked. There was no veal. There was no carrot. There was no celery. My dark haired woman rose and left abruptly.
I found a bowl of lamb hunks in the fridge and claimed it quickly. I nabbed a red bell pepper from another station, plus a few sprigs of parseley, a stray onion.
"You're gonna want to cut that into smaller pieces right?" Mike said as he whizzed by my cutting board. He made a point in the lecture that if you wanted the slow, magic meat-softening of a Braise to happen faster, just cut the meat in smaller pieces. So I cut them up, not as uniform as I should have, but into small cubes. I wanted that fall-apart-in-the-mouth magic.
Next, part one of the technique; I dredged the protiens (meat) in flour before browning it. This proved to be very f**ing smart, as it rendered to the stew an incredible gravy-like mouth feel.
So I browned them until I had a bowl of crusty lamb hunks. I removed the protiens.
Step two; I browned my odd veg assortment. I ran off to get some stock for step three. Where the hell are those nice plastic pitchers? Damn this kitchen has a lot of drawers.
"We're burning here Jordan!" Shit.
Mike turned down my pan as everyone looked at the damage on the central 8-burner range top we all shared . Some onions were blackened. Bad, but not ruined. Despite much forehead sweat, I went on to step three.
I Put protiens back in, added my liquid, the stock, so it's about half way up. (For a stew, technically speaking, everything would be submerged in the liquid.)
This was fun. I was free. It wasn't Osso Bucco but maybe I could make something edible, something great even. I remembered from the Sauces class, mike said that tomato paste was a good thickener, has collagen or something, so I found some in a glass at the bottom of the fridge and in it went. A few slugs of wine.
Step four; Bring it up to a boil, then to a simmer, cover, let cook.
I went to clean my station so I wouldn't get yelled at twice in one night, then I had some dead time. Peeked around in the fridge. A little bottle of Martini olives caught my eye. Threw about ten in the stew. A Little cayenne. Tasted it. Hm...ooops, a little too spicy. Crap. But I knew Osmosis would help that heat spread around eventually, becoming more mild. I was definitely making something.
About forty five minutes passed. The pair doing the Longevity Noodles finished and we all tasted that. Incredibly healthy tasting, beautiful brown, soy gingery broth and those toothsome Chinese fresh noodles, accented beautifully by baby Bok Choy. The bar was raised high.
I tasted my meat. Chewy. Oy.
I seasoned, salt, salt, salt. Pepper. I just had to wait.
I grabbed a tangerine, put it on my station. Cut up some flat leaf parseley and some very fresh oregano so even if it tasted like mud I could do a really cool garnish right? Tangerine zest on mud.
Mike tasted the meat. "Chewy. This is when it siezes up. Now it'll start releasing. Look at the clock. Wait, taste again in fifteen minutes. "
Okay. Wait.
After fifteen minutes, we taste again, everyone starts tasting with plastic spoons, bread. The meat is breaking down now, not like butter in the mouth, but not chewy. It's super rich, dark brown and gravy like. That's it. Any more and it'll reduce to nothing. I put it on the buffet. Microplaned some zest on it, garnish with the green.
People liked it. I liked it. It tasted good.
Yes the meat could have been softer. But the stew had an amazing texture from that residual flour, the tomato, the animal fat, the butter I used to saute stuff, all working together. Did I say "stew"?
Mike had a bowl of it, and seemed to enjoy it though he didn't say anything.
It was fun, the most fun I've had in class yet. I created.
No recipe needed.

Not While I'm Cooking

The scene where Carlo and Silvio wack big Dom in the back of the Pork Store was so good I had to watch it twice.
Ahhh. This is summer vacation for a teacher. I watched the last two episodes of season six of The Sopranos before lunch. Even pushed lunch a little late, which for me is major. Meals are how the men in my family measure the day.
No one is more religious about mealtimes than my dad. Though for five months of the year he lives alone in a little house in France, so he runs no danger of any late arrivals pushing lunch to 12:15. My oldest brother Paul has been an ex-pat in France for the past 10 years. Crammed into a tiny third floor walk up on the Rue Paradis, he likes nothing better than walking all over Paris for THE best loaf broad and all the way across in the other direction for THE best disk of goat cheese. A long time bachelor, much of his time is consumed being a connoisseur. My dad also loves to cook elaborate things for himself, and loses no sleep if he dines alone, as he'll tell me over the phone, "I wish you were here, I've got six oysters I just opened up and a plateful of beautiful tomatoes and-" he enjoys himself, by himself. Not a skill everyone has.
I dropped the kids off at their camps by 9am. Hit the strip in North Berkeley that has the worlds greatest fruit and veg place, Monterey Market. I contemplated grabbing a few things for the whole week, the kids lunches and whatnot, but realized we had already done the Big Shopping. So I pretended I was in Europe and just shopped for what I might eat today.
A big bulb of fennel. Two tomatoes so ripe they were cracked.
Up at the cheese store run by cheeful Asian women, I grabbed Pecorino Romano, and the ground coffee smell was so earthy and intense, a single espresso was unavoidable. Came home.
Tried to blog.
Nothing to say, I hadn't eaten yet.
So after my two hours of tube time, I went into the kitchen. Then into the Zone.
The zone, where all you see is the cutting board, all you think and smell and taste is the food.

I pooled olive oil in a saute pan, melted two anchovies in that, clove of garlic, chili flakes, in went the thick sliced fennel bulb, and I forgottaboutit- so it would carmelize nice.
Chopped up the final messy hunks of leftover lasagna, added some left over grilled eggplant and a few hunks of grilled chicken into it that was destined for the trash. Put a lid on that.
Sliced a bursting tomato, showered it with chiffed basil, olive oil, sweet balsamic, a little funky sherry vinegar, some of that Pecorino.
Beautiful brown almost burnt crust on that fennel. Tomato so wet it has to be summer now.
Took it all outside. Ate. The fennel was the best part. SO sweet, with that slight fishy edge to it, as unctious as Tony Soprano himself.
Which brings me to my final point, if I have one. When Dom came into the back of the Pork Store, Carlo had his apron on. "We're making fra Diavolo" Silvio says to Dom, "why don't you stay?" Dom refuses.
Who the hell would refuse Lobster fra Diavolo? Foreshadowing.
Then of course all the off color homophobic remarks Dom makes about their recently murdered colleague, Vito Spattafiore.
Then he incorporates Carlo into these remarks, who in spite of his silently building rage, continues to stir and season, his back to the interloper from Brooklyn.
Until the last comment about the lipstick.
Sil hits him on the head, and Carlo -despite Dom's huge size- manages to get that knife in about twelve times. Talk about knife skills.
A big professional mistake of course, to kill a made guy, to act out of passion in this way. But for gods sake, when you're cooking, when you're in the zone, you just shouldn't be disturbed.

The First Sunday

(As per my vow to cook for others in my house every Sunday.)

It wasn't until all the food was eaten and most of the guests were gone that the moment happened.
My mom's birthday dinner went off fine. The Lasagna I made was nice and saucy, the layer of grilled eggplant turned out to be a good idea. The Drunken goat cheese was better than the uber-thick mozzarella I've used in the past. There were kids playing, the wine was all fine, (even though it gave me a headache) it was good to see my brother very happy with his new girlfriend.
My mom was pleased and kept telling me "I can't believe you did this, you shouldn't have done this!"
It was over fast as my mom and her man split to see a concert, then my brother left to get his daughter to his ex wife. Only Jennifer hung around with her grand daughter Camille. Camille and my daughter Faye holed themselves up in our bedroom doing flips off the bed and watching Spongebob. Dashiell, who's six, stayed out in the living room, listening.
It isn't often he just hangs around listening and talking to adults when there are kids around.
But Jennifer has a hypnotic voice. She's a big Bubby. A hundred years ago she'd have been in a shtetl with a black headscarf on and a gaggle of little kids around her, or maybe a Yentl, telling them amazing stories of Dybbuks, Golems, and Rabbis.
Today she is a retired first grade teacher, a big huggable slow moving woman with a bad hip and a beautiful shock of short white hair. She talked and talked as she does, long stories about mundane things made interesting by her animated teacher's voice. Dash holed up in the easy chair and sat transfixed for an hour, occasionally joining in, in his stilted but eager six year old talk, telling a little story to join in.
As I kept looking over at him it hit me, that he was becoming familiar with a sound that was such a part of my childhood. The sound of someone's voice, so distinctive, like a thumbprint, much more vital that than their picture, or what others can say about them. In twenty or thirty years I can talk about my childhood, how Jennifer and my mom ruthlessly, ceaselessly tried to match me up with Jennifer's daughter Missy, and Dash won't just look at me dumbly becasue he spent every day with just his nuclear family or watching TV when all the grownups talked.
The food seems pretty irrelevant sometimes, except that it can be the glue that keeps us together.

Niki, a Great Host

Despite Mario Batali's creed, "in my perfect world everyone has an industrial slicer for Proscuitto and spends their days making Lasagne", I have to say, it aint easy. I made two yesterday. Today is my mom's birthday and I volunteered to make an early dinner for her at my house. I'm terrified.
Every night before I am about to "entertain" I have repeated nightmares where I am struck terribly ill before the guests arrive and they have nothing to eat or drink. I'm in my room throwing up with a headache and they are milling about confused and upset.
In spite of that, I did wake up this morning. The lasagnes are made. I also made some potato/green garlic /onion soup, the last two ingedients coming from my mom's garden, and I just have to clean the house, do all the dishes, and I'll be ready for twelve people to come in and make a complete mess.
So why entertain at all? Why do people do it? Some people are natural at it.

My old friend Niki Hale from Newburyport was a natural cook and host. She's a Greek woman who married a much older scion of the Hale family (one ancestor was Nathan Hale, "I regret I have but one life to give to my country") then she found herself a widow with two kids living in an inherited old historical relic of a house at the dead end of a road near the Merrimac river. Chipping green shutters. Creeky wood floors. Cloth bound books a century old lining every room. Coal stoves in all the bedrooms.
She rented a room to my girlfriend at the time, I was doing a degree at Harvard Extension in Cambridge, and the thing that got me through a week of lonely studying in Lamont library was the food-conversation-people filled weekends at Niki's house.
She'd pick me up at the train station, her frizzy gray hair flying, in her red rabbit convertible. Driving way too fast. Goofy smile with brown, crooked and missing teeth, brown because she smoked like a chimney. We'd go directly to the supermarket where's she'd get either a whole salmon, or a leg of lamb, maybe a bag a mussels. Though she was tiny , she moved through the aisles like a talk, talking, laughing and for some reason calling me "Jose".
We'd get back to the cold creeky house, warm our hands by the kitchen's coal stove which was black and about the size of a rhinoceros. Then we'd cook.
She'd put the fish in the oven. She taught me how to make real mayonnaise, whisking olive oil into egg yolk, and then she'd cut up a whole head of dill, add that in with lots of lemon juice and that would go with the salmon, still the best way to eat it I've ever had. She'd be on her second Jim Beam on ice (she always bought the gallon size) we'd put everything on the table.
Maybe she'd off to pick up her twenty year old boyfriend, or her daughter back from Columbia. But when we sat down, she'd talk. Talk about Greece, her father who was an archeologist, fleeing from the Nazi's, or Art. She could run down the whole history of art, especially the modern stuff, as her late husband, Robert Hale, was the first curator of Modern Art at the Met. By the time coffee was brewed in the chrome stove top pot, she might repeat the story of how, when she and Robert lived in the Hamptons, a neighbor who was low on cash, begged and pleaded and finally sold them a paintning for 65 bucks.
It was Jackson Pollack.
Sitting down with Niki, no matter if there were two or twenty people around, it always felt like a party. She'd say whatever the hell was on her mind, she'd shoot down someone if they were bullshitting; she was herself. At midnight, When she finally wobbled up to bed to read some thick novel for an hour, and fall asleep with the light on and her reading glasses perched on her nose, it was deathly quiet around the kitchen table.
I miss her.
It's rare to meet someone that fills a room with life. What a great gift to have.
That is what is truly "entertaining". Not just a bunch of good food spread out on a table, but that feeling of anticipation about being around people that are sure to surprise you.