The Omnivorous Fish

What do this spinach and arugula have in common? Yes, they are both organic. There’s something else. Yes, they’re both green, duh. Yes, they’re both grown in California. But you know what else? I grew them both.

Whoa.

I have often said that time and distance are reflected in the food we eat, so something flown in from Chile last week will never be as good as something picked yesterday on the local farm. Well, try picking the salad on your way inside from work. I’m not saying it was the best arugula I’ve ever tasted, but I will say that it had a taste and a vibrancy unlike anything else one can eat. Even a tomato eaten warm from the sun- one of the best things you can do with clothes on- as beautiful and explosive as that experience is- and it is- there is an urgent greenness inherent to salads and herbs this fresh that eclipse even the sacred tomato.

So I called up some of the crew and had them over to try it, and to help clean out the fridge from earlier in the week. The cupboard was relatively bare, but here’s what I came up with:

Bruschetta with Ricotta Salata and Oregano- that’s the recipe, essentially. Toast some bread with olive oil on both sides in the oven, grate over ricotta salata and sprinkle with chopped oregano- preferably from the garden.

Arugula (and spinach) Salad with Eureka Lemon Segments (god I love lemon segments in a salad)

Fava and Tuma Ravioli from Easter with sage butter… guess where the sage came from

Apple Tart- courtesy of Laura

I also had guacamole and chips out. Fresh fresh fresh guacamole and blue corn chips, THAT is MFing snack food. Boo-YA.

Listening: A soundstage. Oh jeez.

I’ve fallen into one of those headspaces again where I think posts have to be long and about something. I hate that. I like when the blog meanders and is like a series of little snapshots.

Oh well. I went to New York, and I had an ok time. I saw some friends, ate a couple of decent meals, blah blah blah. The gig I went to do was great, actually, one or two of you might have seen it (the ball drop). It’s quite a thing being in Times square surrounded by some little aluminum barricades keeping out 400,000 cranky drunk people. Oh well.

Anyway, I’m back, and so glad to be. I even had my first houseguest on monday. None other than Kung Foodie, Gnocchi Katz herself, came to visit me at the beach and have a bite. I had invited some peeps over, but they ended up being previously occupied, so I had her all to myself.

That store that I hate had some great manila clams which I cooked up with some shallots, bacon and sherry, which we snacked up, dunking bread and dripping clammy juice all over ourselves while mostly finishing the aforementioned bottle of sherry. Naturally, we were kind of loaded, so I set the brasato on to simmer and we went on a little walking tour of the neighborhood, including a little trek on the beach since, really, it’s right there. And who doesn’t like the beach?

The guest of honor took some great photos, too, reproduced with her permesso, naturalmente. [Flicker is down, will get on that when I can- jf]

When we got back, we had a little piece of pork, too, like you do, and some roasted rutabagas and parsnip, cut lengthwise and roasted in olive oil, garnished with a few cooked chestnuts (castagne in italian, marroni in sicilian, from the french word).

I have been craving gorgonzola lately, but unable to find any decent ones, so we had a MARVELOUS Point Reyes Blue, which fits better into the Eat Local ethos anyhow.

The rutabaga, certainly, is among the most overlooked vegetables around, and I encourage you to try it, especially when you find small ones. Even though I love them, it still seems I only eat them ogni morte di papa, or every death of a pope (meaning once in a while).

I’ve had a lot of italian idioms in my head. Last night, a friend of mine and her visiting in-laws- who speak NO english- came over for a little cena siciliana.

Honestly, I’m still a little skittish about cooking anything too far from my personal exerience for them, but I’ll branch out soon. Meanwhile, it’s fun to eat sicilian food. I don’t often cook it, since I’ve had so much of it, it’s often more fun to cook something I’m learning about.

We had:
Bruschetta of tuna and tomatoes
Bruschetta of dinsaur kale

Fennel with Oranges and Onions

Whole Wheat Pappardelle with Pork Guazzetto

Pork Shoulder Guazzetto with Oranges and Three Color Salad

And a pear cake that Anna made (I had bought some cheeses, but they were hurting, I still need to work on my portion control)

The first bruschetta is an old one, tuna packed in oil with tomatoes and onions. You could put garlic in it, too, if you wanted, but I didn’t. The other is a traditional tuscan dish, dinosaur kale cooked for a long time with onions and garlic. One of my favorites.

The fennel is a traditional messinese salad made with thinly sliced fennel and red onions, traditionally with chopped whole blood oranges, pith and all, but you need to have some special oranges for that, which I didn’t have, so I segmented the oranges and mixed the juice, the zest and olive oil in the blender to make the dressing (traditionally it would just be EV olive oil poured over plus the juice from the oranges).

Guazzetto we’ve been over before, but this is a slightly different one, very popular all over sicily, although I believe it is from Pantelleria originally. Pantelleria is an island between sicily and africa that gets VERY hot; it’s famous for its citrus and for its passito, a sweet wine, made from moscato d’alessandria, a more characterful version of its cousin from Asti (in Piemonte). Anyway, it’s made with a lot of onion, some rosemary and the juice and rind of blood oranges (two or three for a 3 pound piece), plus smaller quantities of the traditional wine, tomatoes and stock. We had the meat with a small green salad, molto california, if I do say so myself.

Anna (La Mamma in capital letters), was very sweet and brought a simple but simply wonderful pear cake, a plain cake batter poured over pears and baked. It was fantastic.

Much is made of the fact that Anna eats my cooking. When she visits, she does most of the cooking herself, and when people invite her over, she usually refuses food, claiming not to be hungry… but I know better. She ate like a horse at my house, which is about the best compliment I can get.

Had a nice little doodang tonight. Vegetable appetizers: Golden and Red beets (separately) salad with green beans, walnuts, blood oranges and walnut oil, celery root and radishes vinaigrette (possibly my signature dish) and onion marmalade with balsamic vinegar. These were all with bread and butter. I could have done toasts, but… I’m just one man.

Then we had a poached salmon with beurre blanc, potatoes anna and brussels sprouts with chestnuts and pancetta. Then a little salad, then a whole baked camembert in pastry. We drank a couple of really remarkable wines, too. With the salads we had a Cusumano Nero d’Avola, which is only the Sicilia IGT, but it’s a great wine nonetheless, and with the salmon we had a Collio from Livio Felluga, which is a Lombardese pinot grigio, one of the finest, and certainly my favorite of the region. I admit I am partial to the Alto Adige DOC wines, esp the ones from Tiefenbrunner, but I find pinot grigio behaves a lot better when treated like a german grape than when treated like an Italian one. I’m fascinated by that area of the world, Friuli and Alto Adige especially, and also Istria (where they speak Istrian; an Italianate derivative of Slovenian). I mean, these are Italian people, eating Speck and drinking austere whites that speak german… and are Italian. Of course, I grew up speaking a language that Turks can understand, eating pasta with preserved lemon, and I think I’m Italian, too, so go figure.

I realized that I really like cooking, and tasting, but I find the actual act of eating kind of lackluster. I thrive on the fellowship of a meal, yet the shoveling food in my face is among my least fave parts of it. The first taste of something followed by a sip of the perfect wine… then I kind of just want rice. It’s funny, when people just drop by for dinner or I cook for myself (very rare) I cook mostly vegetarian, almost vegan, really, minus cheese. The other night I had a friend by and I cooked a pilaf of bulgar wheat (which I absolutely adore) with raisins, steamed red russian kale with tamari and the world famous celery root and radish salad.

Holy shit, I’m rambling. I think I might post this. Don’t be offended.

Listening: Pepino D’agostino “Ancora Un Instante” Venus Over Venice

… sounds like a song. Hm.

Very often, when I have leftovers, they sit in the fridge until they start to move around on their own, with the exception of self-evidently useful things like ham or chicken. Sometimes that kills you, though, like when you make lapin a la moutarde one night and 3/4 of it languishes in the fridge. Well, anytime you have any sort of moistened meat left over, but it’s not enough to feed anybody, just remember: that is the stuff of legendary pasta sauces.

Pappardelle with Rabbit

A traditional celebratory country meal in Italy will be comprised of several courses, but all the meat elements will come from one meager cut, usually of the less glamorous variety. I once had a delectable meal of cold antipasti, homemeade strozzapreti with guazzeto made from the shin meat of a water buffalo leg, and then the braised leg itself with potatoes and beans. It is one harmonius theme, and symphonic in its effect.

Anyway, the point is a simple braise can be stretched into a very impressive sauce for pasta, especially wide, sauce-scooping varieties like fettuce and pappardelle. When these pastas are made fresh, the experience is sublime. And let’s face it, with a little practice, pasta is a breeze.

Rabbit meat for sauce

I moistened the meat with a little milk and cooked it gently. When it was about ready, I dropped the moments old pappardelle in, and- whammo- they were done. Good stuff.I didn’t even drain them, I grabbed them out of the water with a fork. Old school.

Well, the seal is broken. I had people, real people, over for dinner for the first time in the new place. True to form, I was butchering as people walked in the door.

The apt wasn’t ready, the kitchen wasn’t ready, I was barely ready, and we did it, and it was good. Here’s what we ate:

Amuse piqui (ok, that’s just a French way to spell picky. sue me.) Salted radishes with champagne vinegar on levain baguette with sweet butter

1st: Creamed Sorrel Soup, cold, garnished with chopped strawberries, served in demitasse cups, which makes me all giddy. Feudi di San Gregoria Falanghina 2005 This was barely a course, with people lounging around, whimsically sipping their soup. This is so cool.

2nd: Fresh Tagliarini with Asparagus, Cream, Sage and Black Pepper. In a rare moment of showmanship (tee hee), I hand rolled a table-sized sheet of pasta for everybody to order. The nice thing about pasta this fresh is that it is completely light, and cooks instantaneously. Little purple sage flowers are beautiful on dishes like this. It also got a last minute grating of pecorino romano.

3rd: Poele of Chicken with Bacon and Green Garlic, and Firecracker and New Fire Lettuce Salad (this is a combo dry-moist heat cooking technique, look for more on this soon) Qupe Syrah Central Coast 2004 The salad was dressed with champagne vinegar, mustard and extra virgin olive oil.

4th: Crepes with Swanton Farms Strawberry Jam and Shuna’s Magic Bergamot Orange Jam Royal Tokay Wine Co. 5 Puttonyos Tokay

And I served chunks of non-regulation chocolate with our coffee. Somebody made me feel so bad about having this brand of chocolate in my house that I chopped it up for coffee. Jeez.

Listening: NPR, BBC World Service

So there was this article in the Times yesterday that everyone saw, no doubt, about people freaking out trying to outdo one another at dinner parties. This is the kind of thing that is making me flee new york.

Having people over for dinner should be about fellowship and a decent meal. And while we should all have the presence of mind to be responsible omnivores, criticizing the ingredients people are nice enough to feed to you, or their provenance, is rude and counterproductive.

And for all those people who want to talk about organic this and biodynamic that, insisting that olive oil come from a conventional farm in far away Greece, when there are legion organic olive oils coming from (6000 miles closer) California is not only moronic, but hypocritical, and you don’t deserve to come to my house for dinner.

The food is gone, mostly. The dishes are half done. The crowd is gone. The stragglers have stayed and gossipped and drank the dregs and left. The leftovers were sent home. The agent has already passed out.

I’m alone with my thoughts, about this party and the people who were here and the people who weren’t. This was my party for many years; now it’s ours. I’m ok with that, just getting used to the idea. I still hear the din and the glasses clinking and chirping and the faint whisper of christmas music in the background. The phantom party lives on in my mind.

Many people who were here will read this, and I want to thank you. Just like my work is nothing without an audience, so is my hobby. If you weren’t here, especially Nick, you were missed. When the show you work at changes, your surroundings change, the people in your life change. The moments that were really good live on in my memory and in this christmas party. Often, it’s the only time of the year I see the people who made those times special. They’re doing other shows, I’m doing other shows, that’s how it is. But tonight, I can offer a slice of ham and a glass of wine to damn near everyone I’ve ever met, and I love it. I eat a slice or two myself, and when I do, I think about some of the people who simply aren’t here anymore. Like the shows I did with them, they are gone from the stage, but not from memory.

The Christmas Party is next week. We’re having it early this year due to many scheduling conflicts in the past, and as a result, it has jumped up out of nowhere.

I am working two gigs this week, so the Agent and I sat down and divvied up what needed to be done. Since all of our good Xmas Music is on record, I did a little iTunes shopping for some holiday classics, and last night we went to Fairway and bought them out of torrone.
For those of you who don’t know me, it may come as a surprise that the menu for the Christmas party has changed exactly once in nine years. It’s the one party I give that’s less about the food and more about socializing, so I want to spend less time in the kitchen. This, of course, means crowd pleasers, like baked ziti and ham. (The one change was from bratwursts to ham, due to the inability to get decent bratwursts at a reasonable price.) Potato salad (with the martini olives from a jar), cheese and crackers, a green salad and Christmas cookies. That about does it.

When my family comes to visit¹, I like to cook Italian, especially in the Italian style of service, since when we entertain, we generally do things in the French way (which, of course, is really the Russian way). How do they differ? If you don’t know much about food, not much. If you do, they are enormously different. First of all, Italians are AOK with a little cheese before dinner. Yes, Francophiles, get your jaws off the floor, I said cheese before. Charcuterie (or salumi, really) are often served with cheeses, olives and vegetables, although sometimes there is a separate vegetable course. For tomorrow I have salumi and giardiniera, though I will probably pick up some cheese, also, most likely some obnoxiously strong provolone, Pop’s favorite. This is the antipasto, “before the pasta.”

We survived. We’ve eaten more since Friday than we have in the last year, but we survived. Every pan, every bowl, every dish¹ and every appliance except the ice cream maker- all of which has been in boxes for over a year- has been used. Looking at the overflowing dish drainer last night, and the nut bowls littering the butcher block with little bits of this and that, it was like a battlefield; silent after the carnage.

I’ll start with the last meal first. I tried to balance my love of Autumn with the schizophrenic weather we’ve been having, and, therefore, came up with- climactically speaking- a more or less schizophrenic menu. Here it is: