Two Links, and Off for Christmas

Check out this story yesterday in Dining In/Dining Out about Meatpaper, a newish San Francisco-based quarterly devoted to meat. What I love about the story is that the two founders were once committed vegetarians who changed course and now appreciate and celebrate eating meat.

Oliver Schwaner-Albright quotes Stranden, one of the founders, as saying, "We find over and over again that bacon is the conversion meat...Bacon is how vegetarians change their minds." I was struck by this comment because Lou and I recently had a conversation over dinner with our friends Scott and Stephen, and the subject of the conversion from vegetarianism to carnivorism came up when I commented on the chicken dinner Scott served and ate along with us. Scott used to be a vegetarian, so I was a little surprised to see him eating meat. He told me that he had begun eating fish some time ago. He said he then ate a piece of prosciutto on a salad once and that ultimately broke the no-meat-eating barrier for him. He's been eating meat ever since. I remarked that I had heard other former vegetarians say that bacon was the meat that first lured them back, so I was intrigued to hear Stranden echo pork-inspired conversion stories. By the way, reread the title of this posting. Does pork come to mind?

Also, I noted this blog posting today about Grant Achatz, the chef at Alinea. Apparently, he had been diagnosed with cancer of the tongue this summer, and he's now made a public statement that his cancer is in remission. Good news.

I'm off for about week for Christmas visits in the east, so blogging will likely cease. Merry Christmas!

A Chez Panisse-Inspired Meal for the Girls

We hosted the girls--Amy and Jen--for dinner and bridge last Saturday night, and I made a meal that was almost entirely inspired by our visit to Chez Panisse last Thursday.

I made a version of risotto with grilled chicories and balsamic vinegar, along with chard gratin and a loaf of whole wheat bread.

The risotto recipe, straight from Chez Panisse Vegetables Cookbook, turned out extremely well. I used a combination of endive and radicchio. To be exact, I used four medium sized heads of endive and one head of radicchio. My only modification was rather than stir the balsamic into the risotto, I followed the lead of the chef last Thursday who placed the risotto into a small pool of balsamic in the center of the plate. I forgot to shave Parmesan on top of the dish, but Lou, Amy and Jen all raved about it anyway. Lou even said he thought it was better than what they served us at Chez Panisse. I think it tasted so good because of the extra butter that the recipe calls for stirring in at the last minute. Here's a pic of my half eaten plate.



The Chard Gratin recipe also came from the Chez Panisse Vegetables. I first tried this dish several years ago at a lovely dinner a friend cooked on a cold, rainy San Francisco night. She is a trained chef and a former cook at the now defunct San Francisco restaurant Elizabeth Daniel, so not surprisingly she made a beautiful and delicious preparation of the recipe.

I tried making it about three years ago, and I somehow screwed it up. I think I was rushing and skipped a few steps. Lou did not like it then. This time, I took my time and followed each step exactly. It was fun paraboiling the chard, squeezing as much moisture as possible out of the leaves, cutting them into small pieces, gently sauteing them and baking the dish. My one mistake was adding too many bread crumbs. I think I made the same mistake last time, but the chard itself tasted absolutely wonderful despite the extra breading. I also added a few pieces of bacon to give the dish some additional fat. I loved the rich, milky flavor, along with the nutmeg. It's a wonderful dish, and one of these days I'll get it exactly right.



The bread recipe is Julia's Child's from Baking With Julia.

Cookies in Spades!

I made chocolate-dipped espresso shortbread cookies last night for my office holiday lunch today. I got the recipe from the Fine Cooking chocolate baking collection that my mom gave Lou and me last Christmas. It's an easy recipe, and I had fun making and rolling the dough, cutting the spades (being a bridge geek, I have cookie cutters for all four suits!) and baking and dipping the cookies. I love how they look nestled in the tin.

Food News Roundup

Here's a rundown of several food related news stories from the past week that I think are worth mentioning on Foodphiles:

First, The New York Times Sunday Magazine published a piece by Michael Pollan yesterday in which he discusses the un-sustainability of factory farming and monocultures. It's well worth a read. I also noted that his new book, "In Defense of Food, An Eater's Manifesto," will be published in January. I'm definitely going to add his new book to my wish list.

Also, today in the NYT, they published a story by Elizabeth Jensen about the Food Network canceling Emeril Lagasse's prime time show, "Emeril Live."

I can't say that I'm entirely sad about Emeril Live coming to an end, especially since I have not watched his show in a very long time. But there was a time, probably in his first couple of years on the air, when I watched his show regularly. Actually, I used to love his show. I was captivated by the novelty of it--the live audience, his humor (Bam!) and the way he made cooking seem fun and easy. Like so many other viewers, he turned me on to other cooking shows on the Food Network as well, many of them obviously modeled on his show. Dare I say he defined the terms of celebrity chefdom?

So, it seems like a big deal that the Food Network has now canceled his show. I think it's too bad that they did not seem to give him a chance to retool the show or try to update the format for today's audience. It is a shame, frankly, that his break-through show is coming to an end. Of course, many of his innovations--his down-home shtick and the live audience--will live long as long as Rachel Ray and others remains on the air, but I want to note the end of the run for the original cable cooking king.

Also, in the Chronicle, Carolyn Lockhead reports today on the green changes Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and my own representative in Congress, has pushed on the cafes in the U.S. House.

And also today in the Chronicle, Phil Matier and Andy Ross mention that San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom is considering subjecting the sellers of high-fructose corn syrup drinks to a special fee to help the city cope with the rising costs that stem from unhealthy foods and drinks. Newsom's idea stikes me as a good first start at trying to change the behavior of retailers and consumers when it comes to buying these drinks.

Finally, here's a story from last week about the first regular grocery store set to open in San Francisco's economically disadvantaged neighborhood, the Bayview. This is good news for this largely African-American neighborhood that has not yet had its own grocery store.

A Pre-Winter Meal at Chez Panisse

We had another lovely dinner at Chez Panisse on Thursday night.

Lou and I took our friends, Jesse and Shawn, for their first visit to the downstairs main restaurant, and we had a fun night, filled with good food and lively conversation.

I had restrained myself back from looking at the menu all week long so Lou and I could go to dinner not knowing what was to come. I usually look over the menu about once a week to see what they're serving, but I like being surprised when I go in to eat (here is a link to our last dinner at Chez Panisse). Shawn broke down and looked at the menu in advance, so he and Jesse knew what was for dinner. They were good to us, however, and agreed to kept it a secret. On the way over to Berkeley I speculated that we were in for another lamb dinner since that's what we almost always seem to be served when we eat in the restaurant. Luckily for us, I was wrong.

The first course was a Dungeness crab salad with avocado, lime and coriander. The base for the salad was frisee, which was lightly mixed with three or four small slices of avocado, a creamy dressing, and hints of lime and cilantro (coriander). It was a marvelous way to start. Light and freshing, the flavors of crab, lime and avocado were divine together.

We brought along a magnum bottle of 2004 Patricia Green Cellers Goldschmidt Pinot Noir, which was even better than Lou and I thought it would be. The nose was of that Oregon grass, along with cherry, blackberry, and hints of leather. The finish was long and complex, echoing the fruits from the nose, but with more spice and pepper than we expected. It was a delicious wine.

The second course was my favorite: grilled chicory risotto with balsamic and Parmesan. It was incredibly good tasting. The risotto was creamy, perfectly white in color, and the chicories (mostly endive, I think) had been stirred in at the last minute of cooking after being grilled. The risotto was served on a thin pool of balsamic vinegar and several large slices of Parmesan cheese and some black pepper were arranged on top. I loved the slightly sweet, yet savory combination of the dish. Grilling the endive cut down its bitterness and transformed it into almost sweet, smokey tender leaves. Embedding them into the creamy risotto was brilliant. The balsamic gave the dish an acidic zip to bring it alive. Fortunately, I discovered a recipe for grilled radicchio and balsamic risotto in the Chez Panisse Vegetables Cookbook, and I'm going to make the dish myself tonight for Amy and Jen.

The fourth course was braised Soul Farm chicken with wild mushrooms, leeks, and potato puree with olio nuovo. I must say, this was one of the most moist and juicy chickens I've ever tasted. I was served a small piece of chicken breast, along with what I think was a wing, though it may have been a piece of thigh. Honestly, I'm not sure. No matter, it was delicious. I ate every bit of it except the bones. I even picked up the bones and sucked every last piece of meat off each bone before relinquishing them to our server. I earned my membership in the clean plate club. The mushrooms and leeks, as well as the potatoes, were a lovely match for such delicate, juicy chicken.

For dessert, they served an apple and quince puff pastry tartlet with vin santo zabaglione. It was an superb dessert, and I savored every bite. The tartlet was served on a thin layer of what appeared to be vin santo syrup, with the creamy zabaglione on one side of the tartlet. Our server brought out a 1993 Fattoria di Felsina Vin Santo by mistake (he was going to bring a newer vintage but couldn't read the labels and brought us the older one instead), which had a nose of light, sweet caramel and hints of honey and fig. The finish was so long, light, and caramelly that I'm pretty sure I was purring after my first sip.



It was a great dinner all around. We talked about music lessons, travel, molecular gastronomy, the Farm Bill, San Francisco politics and the food. I think Jesse and Shawn enjoyed the experience, and I know did we.

Farm Bill Update: The SF Chronicle's Coverage

I must say, as someone who often complains about the Chronicle, they have provided outstanding coverage of the 2007 Farm Bill. Here is Carolyn Lockhead's story on final passage of the bill in the Senate yesterday. She has provided consistent, thorough reporting on the slow movement of the bill and on the various attempts to reform the bill.

I also want to note the poor coverage in the NYT and other national newspapers--not to mention TV news. The Chronicle published stories on the bill every day this week, and yet the NYT failed to publish a single exclusive story about the bill (there is, however, a good story today by Carl Hulse on how the Senate Republicans have thrown a wrench in the Democratic efforts to pass legislation this year). The fact that the NYT regards action on the Farm Bill as unnewsworthy is a sign of either the national ignorance about the importance of the bill or the lack of interest in changing such a complex piece of legislation. We have a lot of work to do if there's any chance of reforming the bill in 2012.

Farm Bill Update: Senate Passes the Bill

The Senate passed the Farm Bill this afternoon on a 79-14 vote. The "No" votes came mostly from Republicans opposed to subsidies, but three Democrats joined them in opposing the bill, including Senator Lautenberg. Senator Feinstein supported the final bill, but Senator Boxer did not vote. None of the presidential candidates cast votes either.

Now the House and Senate will attempt to work out their differences, all with a possible White House veto looming.

Also, here is Carolyn Lockhead's overview story from today's Chronicle on the Dorgan-Grassley amendment yesterday. She gives tells the background story on the vote well.

Farm Bill Update: Dorgan-Grassley Amendment Fails

The vote was 56 to 43.

A majority of the senate voted in favor of setting a payment limit to farmers, but not enough to surpass the parliamentary hurtle of 60 votes required to add the amendment to the bill. Because of arcane senate budget rules that subjected this amendment to a "point of order," Senators Dorgan and Grassley needed a super-majority to add their subsidy reform measure to the bill. Southern senators of both parties, most Republican senators and a handful of Democratic senators from other states stopped this reasonable reform from passing by voting "no."

Read Ken Cook's skewering of the senate, especially the Democrats, here.

Interestingly, all the Democratic presidential candidates voted for the amendment. Senator McCain was the only senator who did not vote, which is too bad, because he would likely have been counted as the 57th vote in favor of the amendment. Senators Feinstein and Boxer also supported the amendment.

My conclusion is that despite their spirited effort, reform advocates lacked the political muscle to counteract the political power of agribusiness and other special interest opponents of reform. Most members never seriously feared voting against reform. Looking ahead to 2012, it seems to me that the most effective way to ensure real, substantive reform will be to assemble a grassroots coalition that will demand that members of Congress embrace real farm subsidy reform or face consequences at the ballot box.

Can we make that happen?

Farm Bill Update: Dorgan-Grassley Measure Doomed

Today the Senate is debating Senators Dorgan and Grassley's amendment to limit federal farm payments at $250,000 per farmer. Ken Cook reports that the amendment is going to fail because of the strong opposition and filibuster threat from Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln and because the amendment will be subjected to a super-majority vote threshold of 60 votes. There's no way 60 senators will vote for the amendment, so it's going down. I'm curious to see how many votes Dorgan and Grassley will win, and I hoping the number will exceed the 37 votes for the Lugar-Lautenberg amendment yesterday.

Speaking of Lugar-Lautenberg, Carolyn Lockhead has a good story in today's Chronicle about the vote yesterday. She tries to make sense of the disparate group of senators who supported the measure as well as explain why my Senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, supported the amendment.

Dream Cooking--Er, Eating--Weekend at Tahoe

Here is a posting about Pim's piece in the December issue of Food + Wine about a fake weekend she and her boyfriend, Manresa Chef David Kinch, spent with Coi's Daniel Patterson and others cooking on the slopes.

Dreamily delicious, huh?

Menu for a Romantic Dinner at Home

On Saturday night, I made a simple, yet elegant, dinner for Lou and me for a quiet night at home.

I made an easy recipe I found in a Bon Appetit a couple of years ago. Here's the recipe, but all you do is brush a rack of lamb with olive oil, sprinkle it with salt (I used rosemary salt Joey and Brad gave us not long ago), pepper and chopped rosemary. Then, you toss some cherry tomatoes in a bowl with more oil and rosemary, arrange them around the lamb on a baking sheet and cook for about 30 minutes uncovered at 450 degrees. The lamb came out of the oven rare--perfect for us--with the tomatoes soft and almost melted, and the flavors of the lamb, rosemary and tomatoes were spectacular.

I also roasted brussel sprouts in the usual fashion, sliced with salt, pepper and olive oil, although I mixed in pine nuts this time around. The pines nuts were a nice touch, and I like the light nuttiness they add to the dish.

Best of all, we opened a bottle of 2005 Unti Segromigno, which is a blend of Sangiovese, Syrah and Barbera. Unti is a small family run vineyard in the Dry Creek Valley, just to the northwest of Healdsburg, California, that mostly specializes in making Italian style wines. We visited the vineyard in October when my parents came out to see us, and we tried several wines, including the Segromigno, though it did not stand out. It was unbelievably good on Saturday. Lou and I were struck, actually quite shocked, by the wonderful flavors of fruit, especially strawberry and fig, along with hints of licorice and leather in the bouquet and by the licorice finish. It was a delicate, complex and delicious wine. We finished off the whole bottle, and I highly recommend it.

Farm Bill Update: Lugar-Lautenberg FRESH Amendment Fails

The U.S. Senate just voted down the radical reform measure offered by Senators Lugar and Lautenberg. The vote was 58-37 against. Interestingly enough both of my Senators--Feinstein and Boxer--supported the amendment, but there was no partisan breakdown on the vote. Also, not surprisingly, none of the presidential candidates voted. The votes for and against were all over the place, with Democrats and Republicans both supporting and opposing the amendment. As best I can tell, Senators from farm states, except California, or at least those from states that receive lots of federal farm subsidies for various crops voted against the amendment and those who come from states that receive little in farm subsidies voted against it. Fairly predictable.

The debate continues this week, with the pivotal vote on the Grassley-Dorgan amendment still to come. Also, here's a posting by Ken Cook about the RESCU amendment, offered by Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and others, which would redirect about $2 Billion from crop insurance companies and invest it in conservation, school lunch programs, food stamps and deficit reduction. Cook seems to think that Brown's amendment could pass, thereby further improving the bill as a real reform measure which would boost spending for low-income folks who could use the help buying better food.

A Sunday Food Diary

Lou and I had a pleasant day of eating around San Francisco yesterday.

The day started off at home with coffee--Peet's holiday Blend--and Straus non-fat vanilla yogurt with a coconut granola from Rainbow Grocery and sliced banana. Over breakfast, I read Florence Fabricant's wonderful essay in The New York Times Sunday Magazine arguing that white wine makes for a superior pairing with cheese. Not only is Fabricant a wonderful writer, but I enjoyed the piece because it seems that Amanda Hessler, the dreadful Sunday magazine food editor/writer, has been banished from the pages of the magazine, thereby boosting the quality of the food writing immeasurably. Hessler used to write horrible stories typically reminiscing about some miserable cooking from the past (think laudatory pieces about jell-o molds or the like), and her columns were unfailingly uninteresting and uninspiring. I loved Fabricant's argument about white wine as much as the story she tells of her controversial effort to persuade chefs and wine and cheese enthusiasts to forgo red for white. It was a much welcomed bit of food writing in an otherwise food-free Sunday paper.

For lunch later in the afternoon, Lou and I walked into Tartine and waited for no more than five minutes (a record for customer service efficiency at Tartine), and then found a table for two (another shock) and before immediately being served (the hat trick shocker) two piping hot croque monsieurs. One was fromage blanc with sundried tomatoes and the other was turkey with roasted red pepper. Both of them were, of course, delicious. The fromage blanc croque was creamy and rich, while the roasted red pepper gave the turkey croque the zip it would have otherwise lacked. The Tartine croques are fantastic, and I especially love the crunchiness of the bread crust and the way the cheese burns and crisps on top.

From there, we walked up the street to Bi-Rite to pick out wines for our Wine Blitz case, including a bottle of 2005 Unti Segromigno, among others (I'll write more about the bottle of Unti we tasted Saturday night later). Then, after a drive around town and a little Christmas shopping, we stopped at Peet's for coffee. I had been craving a peppermint mocha, so I got my fix, and Lou ordered a decaf drip.

After some more Christmas shopping, we slipped into a showing of "Enchanted" at the Westfield Center downtown . After the movie, we finished the evening off with dinner at Out the Door, where we ended up sitting next to two friends, Jesse and Shawn. The food was good, if not amazing, and we ordered a chicken bun, green papaya salad, curry chicken and a grilled cod served in light tomato broth with onions and spinach.

Eric Asimov on Kermit Lynch

I've been meaning to post about Eric Asimov's story about Kermit Lynch, the Berkeley wine merchant, for the last couple of weeks.

Here's the original story in Dining In/Dining Out. Asimov tells Lynch's story well. His passion for French wine and his focus on discovering French producers is inspiring. In a follow up blog posting, Asimov continues the story and tells of tasting Beaujolais with Lynch.

Lou and I have been over to Lynch's wine shop several times, including once for the festive Beaujolais tasting in the fall last year. It was a lovely afternoon in the Bay Area, and we basically stumbled upon the festivities with no advance planning or preparation. My main memory of the tasting is of the rawness, the grittiness even, of the Beaujolais wines we tasted that day. The wines we tasted were thick with sediment. I also remember the deep rose-purplish color of the wines. They were beautiful, even if not spectacular to taste.

Be that as it may, I admire Lynch for his passion and for his determination and success in educating Americans about French wines and in pushing French producers to make better wines. His shop is well worth a visit if you find yourself in Berkeley.

Farm Bill Update: Reid and McConnell Strike a Deal and Debate Begins

According to my usual source for happenings in Congress, National Journal's Congress Daily (I can't link to it because it's by subscription only), Senators Reid and McConnell have struck a deal on the Farm Bill and debate began on the floor yesterday. The deal allows each side to offer twenty amendments to the bill, with the reform measure offered by Senators Grassley and Dorgan up first with a vote expected on Tuesday. It looks like the Senate will complete the bill by the end of the year.

Again, I'll plug Ken Cook's excellent blog, Mulch, which focuses on the Farm Bill, farm subsidies and other policy issues related to federal food and farm policy, as a good resource on reform efforts.

New Pizzeria Delfina Coming Soon

The Chronicle is reporting today that Craig and Annie Stoll plan to open a second Pizzeria Delfina on Fillmore Street in a space that they had originally hoped to lease for Delfina ten years ago. Sorry you have to scroll down the page, but here's the story.

And, guess what they're supposedly putting in the space?

Yup, a wood-burning oven!

I can't wait.

Farm Bill Update: Filibuster

It's been a while since I've written about the Farm Bill, and that's because nothing has happened. Well, that's not exactly true, but the net effect of all the "action" in the Senate amounts to not much at all.

Senator Harkin did take the bill to the floor about a month ago, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell could not agree on the number of amendments that the two sides could offer on the bill--most of the amendments had nothing to do with the Farm Bill. Then, after more than a week of no action, Reid subjected the bill to the parliamentary equivalent of execution when he called for a cloture vote and the vote failed. Cloture is the term used in the Senate to close debate on a given matter, and it is the means by which the Senate ends a filibuster. When the cloture vote failed, the Senate failed to end debate, in effect allowing the Republicans to "filibuster" the bill. There was an excellent story by David Herszenhorn in the NYT Week in Review about the widespread use of the filibuster in the Senate.

On Monday, National Journal's Congress Daily P.M. reported that Reid made an offer to McConnell to limit the number of amendments on the Farm Bill to five for the Democrats and ten for the Republicans. Apparently, both the wholesale reform measure proposed by Senators Lugar and Lautenberg and the more modest reform measure of Senators Grassley and Dorgan would be among the amendments. No word yet on whether McConnell has accepted the deal. I would say that the likelihood of the bill passing this year is in doubt. Before the Senate adjourns for the end of the year--in a mere three weeks--it must resolve at least eight spending bills, including the funding bill for Iraq. That's a tremendous amount of work, which would leave little time for other measures. In addition to the unresolved Farm Bill, the Senate also needs to act on a major energy bill. While it's possible that in the end of the year furry of legislative activity, the Farm bill might make it through, I'll be surprised if they get to it.

UPDATE: National Journal's Congress Daily P.M. is reporting today that Reid and McConnell clashed on the Senate floor this afternoon about the fate of the Farm Bill. Congress Daily also reported that Reid is going to file a second cloture motion on the bill to try to force the Republicans to agree to a deal to pass the bill. I seriously doubt the Senate will act on it before recessing until January.

White Bean Soup with Sausage

I spent most of this afternoon making a white bean soup. I had several cups of rehydrated beans left over in the refrigerator after making another stew earlier this week.

I chopped some shallots, sauteed them in olive oil in a big pot along with some chopped sage and rosemary. After the shallots were translucent, I added four or five cups of chicken stock and all the beans. I brought them to a boil and then let them simmer. After about an hour, I added five chopped tomatoes and one piece of sausage, and I continued to simmer the soup for about three more hours.

In the meantime, I made croutons out of the leftover wheat bread that I had made for Thanksgiving. I broke the remaining bread--perhaps a slice and a half--into small bite sizes and tossed them in olive oil and salt before baking them in the oven for about eight minutes. Actually, I let them go too long, so they came out slightly burned. Damn!

When it came time for dinner, I ladled out the soup, tossed a few croutons on top and added a dollop of creme fraiche to assemble the dish. The creme fraiche, not surprisingly, made the dish. Its sourness cut the sweetness of the soup, and made it a delicious dish on a cold, gray Sunday.