Heirloom beans (do they really taste unique?), halibut cheeks (are they as toothsome and tasty as they look?), local mushrooms, there are always more things to experiment with than time or focus allow. Take a gander at these options. Let a girl know where you stand.

New foods I’ve cooked with the last couple of months

• Frozen ginger – Who knew you could just keep a thumb of one of these spicy, bald cacti in the freezer and grate it as-is into the pot? Not me. A great new trick.
• Sashimi-grade tuna – so Camilo can sneak slices at will. The nearby Seattle Fish Co is awesome. Tonight we went just because they stock my favorite Pinot Noir, from Copper Hill.
• Fresh lemongrass – all you have to do is peel back the woody parts to reach the tender middle, which yields easily to the knife.
• Fanc-o fresh farmers’ market eggs – with yolks to write home about, these babies have converted a staunch favor-er of scrambled preparations to the over easy breakfast sandwich as well as the soft boiled egg.
• Red curry paste – important to know that you either use this OR create your own version with more ‘from scratch’ ingredients like spicy peppers, lemongrass, coriander, etc. Not both. The intense flavor you could pretend was delicious instead of overwhelming but the spice? Holy match-slapping thunderhorses, it was INSANE.
• Roasted beets – great flavor, but who cares what they taste like, even? That supersaturated magenta is absolutely visceral. Aesthetically rejuvenating just to be around.
• Candystripe beets – Tiny gems that taste like normal beets but look like starlight mints!
• Lemon cucumber – Shaped like a wobbly, striated lemon with a flattened top and bottom, with the flesh of a potato only a little stippled, this goodnatured Frankenstein is more cucumber then lemon in flavor and texture once cut into. Perfect for flavored seltzer.

Things I’ll Eat in the Yucatan

Tikin-xic (Grouper). Image: Tim Carman, Washington City Paper

I’m headed to the Yucatan next Wednesday for a 12-day trip with the boyfriend before we move to sunny Seattle next month. After much wringing of hands about the optimal itinerary keeping in mind it’s low season (meaning, hotter than hell), we’re spending 4 nights/each in Tulum, then Valladolid, then Puerto Morelos.

In addition to the activities I’m very excited about splashing around in freshwater cenotes arrived at by bike, exploring lesser-known Mayan ruins in Coba and Ek-Balam, floating through the Sian Ka’an Biosphere by boat, diving the colorful reef off the Caribbean coast, and reading the new Lev Grossman book I just snagged a galley of on the beach, I can’t wait to eat Mexican food for every meal.

Here are the local foodstuffs I’m most excited to try:

1. Chaya: A nutrient-packed Mexican cousin of spinach that should be appearing in my breakfast eggs.

2. Mayan food: I don’t know what pescatarian-friendly Mayan dishes will be available to me but have to believe that I’m in for a great dish or two from a cuisine with corn, tomatoes, beans, avocados, chocolate, and squash as its heady staples.

3. Romeritos: Dried shrimp patties, potatoes, and a rosemary-like wild plant for which the dish is named, served in mole sauce. (An e-gullet poster mentioned eating these while in the Yucatan, but the Wiki description identifies them as hailing from Mexico City, so I’m not sure if I’ll actually encounter them.) Doesn’t the romeritos plant looks like the lovechild of cactus and seaweed?

4.  Salsa: I LOVE salsa. All salsa: rich, oily, roasted red chile-based salsas, in particular. And resent when pico de gallo – tasty in its own right but lacking depth of flavor – is made to masquerade as salsa. The pureed chile offerings are bound to be good here, and hopefully tasting so many different variations will be as fun as trying the various vinegary, garlicky ajis of Colombia.

5. Tikin Xic – a whole white fish marinated in a mix of achiote paste (usually called annato in the US), pungent herb epazote, and juice from bitter oranges, then wrapped in a banana leaf and roasted or grilled.

6. Heirloom beans: I’ve read about lots of different kinds of beans and have had some trouble finding out which are available in the US and which are not.  Different people have different takes on which beans are called what in Spanish and English and the mapping between the two seems uncertain, so I’m just on the lookout of something tasty and hopefully also new.

7. A tequila-like liquor made from the henequen plant, which is supposed to have the word Sisal on the bottle. (Thanks to Zora O’Neil, co-author of The Rough Guide to the Yucatan for this addition to the to-try list).

8. Fish tacos: I don’t care if these aren’t Yucatan-specific. They are Mexican and I will find and eat them and they will be delicious.

The Goats of Harley Farms – Pescadero, CA

(from L to R) Garlic herb fromage blanc, ricotta, dill goat cheese, plain goat cheese adorned with edible flowers: a pansy and nasturtium petals

Last weekend I was back in California for a friend’s wedding and had a chance to head up to sleepy Pescadero, situated between Santa Cruz and San Francisco about a mile inland off coastal Highway 1. Beyond the expected smatter of antique stores found in quaint Northern California oceanside towns and a cute general store-type place that has picnic tables in the back for the eating of sandwiches and sells its own ollalieberry jam (made of juicy, gem-like blackberry cousins that 1. exist and 2. are the hands down ur-berry), Harley Farms is Pescadero’s main attraction.

Baby goats greedily (and futilely) suckled at the fingers offered them and generally frisked about. Handpainted signs were placed at strategic spots of interest, sharing heart-melting eco-porn farm facts like that the sloped barn roof where the mama goats live helps collect rainwater such that all the goats enjoy cloud-fresh hydration at least 8 months of the year. There was an airy, high-ceiling dining room dominated by a long wooden table ringed by high-backed wooden chairs that looked like they’d been stretched into Medieval chess pieces by the Queen of Hearts. The room plays host to monthly dinner parties; they’re sold out until December. Below the rustic, grand dining room is a little store where all things goat milk-related are sold, from lotions and lip glosses to soft buttons of lavender honey goat cheese.

I tend to choose with the kind of excruciating care that can alienate companions when faced with many options that I’m near-equally entranced by. When it came time to choose cheese, I was pleasantly surprised to find myself taking, “Screw it, I’ll take ‘em all” approach and carried a bounty of dairy back to NYC.

Of particular interest was the goat ricotta which, unlike the super-salty feta or the many herbed or otherwise flavored options, let the barnyard-iness of the goat cheese through in a plain way that was pleasantly – and surprisingly – subtle. I am overdevoted to aged cow’s milk cheese so was glad of an excuse to break out from my favorites a little.

Tonight, I intended to make something led by the fresh ricotta for dinner. Instead, I made a romesco sauce with whole wheat penne (first time, which made it feel like an achievement of sorts) and just grated the cheese on top. It was good and simple! Why, though, is so much of the food I eat pureed and red? Hopefully this doesn’t presage toothlessness.

Fun fact in closing: Harley Farms is soon to start selling paint made from their goats’ milk! Apparently paint with milk as a key component is one of the oldest “recipes” (initially used for cave paintings), and has been used for thousands of years as  a sealant of sorts, too.

Dinner. Garnished at the expense of my failing basil plant who only regenerates leaves from the very top and so grows dangerously tall and floppy.

All hopped up on romesco. Excited about sauce. Excited about camera.

Ingredients: 6 pan-blistered garlic cloves + 1 jar roasted red peppers + handful roasted almonds + 1/2 cup Greek yogurt + 1/3 cup olive oil + juice of 1/2 lemon

Heathen Mac n’ Cheese

It's just a box of grain...

The back of the Annie’s mac n’ cheese box makes the absurd suggestion that butter is optional in the preparation of that heady blend of orange powder, milk, and pasta in shapes I can never really make out (some are bunnies, I know).Tonight I discovered that there is a way forward without butter…and it is better! Or at the very least compelling, and different. The secret is fancy, spicy marinara sauce and full-fat sour cream. And some arugula if, like me, you think it makes everything more nutritious and delicious and so keep it on hand for day to day heathen uses.

Note: if you don’t love thick sauce and too much of it, you will not like this. I think it’s like a tangier, creamier vodka sauce (not to malign the original which I adore). Also,  prepared this way, the mac n’ cheese is so rich you won’t be tempted to eat the whole box, an absence I’d never experienced previously: where for art thou gluttonous impulses?

Heathen Mac n’ Cheese

• 1 box Annie’s Macaroni and Cheese (get the sharp cheddar version)

• 4 TBSP regular sour cream

• 1 cup pasta sauce (I prefer a spicy arrabbiata)

• 6 oz. arugula

Cook the pasta for 9 mins., adding the arugula in to wilt for one minute before draining. Return the mixture to the pot.

In the bowl you’ll use to eat the mac n’ cheese (to prevent extra dish-washing), combine cheese powder with sour cream and pasta sauce and stir until smooth. Pour sauce over pasta, stir, and serve.

Note #2: A real, delicious mac n’ cheese, served in a skillet or baked, glistening with fontina, gruyere, and Parmesan (best trio for this, hands down), is unbelievably good. This just isn’t that. Do we indict the lowly Mexican pizza for not being authentic? No! Taco Bell is Taco Bell. Mexican food is Mexican food.

Note #3 (also known as Final Note): The leftovers have cooled and look kind of nasty (but are sure to be the perfect modified lumberjack breakfast!). Hence no photo, sorry.

Thistle Rennet: Tasty if baffling alternative to the skeeve of cheese catalyzed with calf stomach

The Mecca of Meltiness, Shangri-La of Savory!

Slowly, inexorably, by tray-of-broccoli-rabe-ravioli increments, I whittled down my Murray’s Cheese Shop gift certificate to just a nubbin of credit. Knowing my visit to Murray’s earlier this week was to be the card’s swan song, I got naught but special, new (to me) cheeses, with the small exception of the purchase of a crystalline slice of nutty, salty Piave Vecchio that looked so geologically elegant as I unwrapped it this morning that my mind tore into opposing impulses to sit down and eat the whole wedge in one sitting and to shellac it for ornamental display).

What isn't better after a bath in beer?

The most interesting new cheese I brought home is called Baladin and is crafted in a small…wait, why don’t I just give it to you straight from the cheese label (Murray’s copywriters are masters of taking the humble straw of background information and weaving it into the gold of consumer lust):

 

The Piemonte produces some of Italy’s finest wine, but it is also home to the small Le Baladin brewery, situated in the center of the small town of Piazzo. It’s arguably Italy’s finest small brewery, producing a handful of flavorful Belgian-inspired beers. Luckily someone had the bright idea to take a locally produced raw cow’s milk cheese made with thistle rennet and wash it in Le Baladin’s beer. The cheese takes on quite a bit of the beer’s open malty-hoppiness, which in turn brings out pleasantly nutty and earthy flavors in the cheese. A delight when combined with beer, some crumbly biscuits, and a little fruit.

Reading this in the store, the question immediately brought to mind that made me want to try the cheese was: thistle rennet? As far as I know, the vast majority of cheese is made using animal rennet, enzymes found in the stomachs of ruminant mammals (enzymes that exist, as I just learned, in order to help creatures digest mother’s milk when they’re babies), so the idea that those enzymes could be found in or made from such a divergent source as spiky weeds seemed surprising. I did some eager if not wildly in-depth investigating:

Rennet is the catalyst for turning milk to cheese and causes milk proteins to clump together, or curdle, separating curds from whey. The heads of both nettles and thistles (and fig leaves, and some types of ivy) contain an enzyme similar to one of the key enzymes that comprises animal rennet, chymosin. I wasn’t able to get a sense of why only two types of life – and two so different, thistle and calf stomach? – would contain an enzyme or suite thereof suitable for cheesemaking.

One interesting tidbit about the difference between the two kinds of curdlers (actually, four: there’s a kind of genetically modified bacteria and microbial rennet, too, that are also used as vegetarian rennet) is that thistle rennet works least well for the production of cow’s milk cheese, better used with goat or sheep’s milk. Be that as it may as a general finding, this Baladin is delicious.

Fish candy

Ignore my hippy sign, I am a purveyor of delicious and surprising foodstuffs!

I think I might have had the best meal of my life last Saturday at Cafe Gibraltar. If you ever find yourself in Half Moon Bay, on Highway 1 about a half hour southwest from San Francisco (off Highway 92), you would be a self-depriving madman not to pay a visit.

As my dining companions and I drove into Cafe Gibraltar’s parking lot, the fancifully shaped oxidized metal sign did not inspire confidence, looking more suited to a yoga center than the excellent restaurant we’d been told to expect. After walking in – and cutting through the distant glamor surrounding the Japanese-style seating along the back wall of the interior (my parents do not have the knees to sit cross-legged at low tables for a whole meal, and I’m pretty sure I’d have felt decidedly cramped myself), we were seated at a basic, comfortable table and given menus, which is when we discovered that the place touted itself as an organic Mediterranean kitchen.

Looking over the appetizers, I was immediately drawn to the squid sauteed with garlic, cinnamon, and other North African aromatics I can’t remember now, but was still shocked by how unbelievably delicious the dish was. Toothsome, tender, and imbued with an uncommon depth of flavor via a combination of sweet and savory spices, it was the stand-out of the meal for all of us. After grilling the waiter some on the preparation, I had my suspicions confirmed: the pleasantly medium-sized morsels of squid had been marinated before cooking to break down some of the proteins that can make it an unpleasantly chewy food, then steamed briefly, then sauteed to pick up the various other flavors in the dish. Fish candy, I kid you not.

Next up was the shrimp bisque that my Dad ordered. Now, I am not a huge lover of the stringy, meaty – if sweetly fresh-flavored – shrimp, but this soup was nothing short of a revelation. An sample menu I came across says it was seasoned with apples, sweet onions, dill and white wine. The gestalt effect was that some unheralded herb brightened the creamy, tangy puree – not to velvety, not too chunky – making the soup compulsively ladle up-able.

My Mom and I also split a beet, feta, and Marcona almond salad. Though not ground-breakingly inventive, it was still one of the best iterations of this I’ve had.

My parents each ordered a fish stew that they liked but couldn’t stand up to our stellar appetizers. I picked out a vegan dish – with trepidation in my heart, feeling vegans are often a pleasure-eschewing clan harboring eating disorders by a different name – of pumpkin dumplings with toasted pumpkin seeds in a spiced sauce. Again, it was the restraint of the seasoning – so bold, but so balanced, not only between sweet and savory, but also in terms of intensity of flavor – that made the dish knee-slackening. By this point in the night, I didn’t have much room left, so I took the dumplings home…and ate them for breakfast with a chai latte after a rainy scramble along a rock jetty the next morning: still so good.

We are Balls, which means dessert happens. I got a glass of port (alcohol always wins over food by a nose for me, especially in the realm of sweets). My Dad ordered a maple tart with vanilla gelato and my Mom chose a tangerine sorbet. The tart was stupendously rich and flavorful, a classic truly taken beyond its roots: the tart  was so buttery, it was as if only the bare minimum of flour required by basic chemistry had been added to prevent the thing from just melting into a bubbling golden mound in the oven. The tangerine sorbet was slightly sticky in that way I associate (positively) with homemade frozen confections. Even without dairy (I prefer the lactic middle ground of sherbet myself), there was something of the old school orange creamsicle in that sorbet dish – very satisfying and nostalgic.

No more room in your belly for aggrandizing adjectives? Fear not! For you, I present…

What You Should Order at Cafe Gibraltar (the prose-free version)

• FREE: Brick oven pizza dough-like bread, char-bottomed and warm, with olive oil

Appetizers:

• Sauteed squid

• Shrimp bisque

• Beet, feta, and marcona almond salad (optional)

Entree:

• Pumpkin dumplings

Dessert:

• Maple pecan tart

OR

• Sorbet (rotating flavors could include ginger pomegranate and tangerine)

Candy-stripe pasta cuter than a baby bonobo in mukluks

Serious stripes (hoping they're from beet and not FD&C Red #40...)

On my way to purchase whizz-ables for my brand new Kitchen Aid 7-cup food processor, I found myself exploring D’Vine, the Lebanese-run specialty food store right between my usual two go-to grocery spots, Back to the Land (filled with fuzzily joyless but theoretically appealing young men stacking organic greens) and the more plebeian Key Food (where waist-high metal pilings of the sort you find in front of pedestrian-only trails at national parks guard the entrance as if one too many enraged shoppers had tried to bust through in speeding golf carts).

D’Vine was a perfect mix of both stores – good variety, and surprising foodstuffs (and a solid but unlabeled olive bar). A woman working there explained with a wide and wistful grin how cloudy olive oil reminds her of home (though I am regrettably unclear on the details of how the cold pressing induces this quality). When I asked if they had tahini (for the delicious hummus I’ll soon be preparing), she took me to the back kitchen where they prepare their cold foods to dole me out a healthy quart of some of her own freshly made sesame paste.

I came out of D’Vine with most of my shopping done but, really, this is all mere prelude to the AWESOMEST-THING-IN-A-WHILE rainbow-striped dry pasta I found festooning one shelf.

In addition to the technicolor farfalle, there were brightly striped lasagna noodles. I can’t help but think the lasagna noodles’ loveliness would be unavoidably lost under sauce and cheese so plan to simply add  butter and crisped sage to the farfalle to maximize its CandyLand pop.

I will be back, D’Vine! For now, I drink this wine, thinking lustily of the almond-basil pesto I just made that will top the tofu-nut burgers cooling before me now.  Much too full from my La Taqueria burrito (the best Cal-Mex in NYC) to dig in until tomorrow.

Potato Leek Soup, with Celery Root and Shallots

A few years ago, my Mom typed up recipes of hers that I like (as well as some random ones, featuring both foods I don’t eat or dishes I’d never seen her cook or even heard about until the recipe appeared in its plastic sleeve). Yesterday, arriving on a red eye flight from Colombia, land of varied potatoes, I went looking in my glossy stack for the recipe for her delicious potato leek soup. It wasn’t there.

When she called to say hello later in the day, I asked her why she hadn’t included this recipe, one of my favorites growing up, and was told in approximate seriousness that “you’d have to be an imbecile not to know how to cook something so simple.” Ah, maternal affection. But she does have a point: it would be pretty hard to not manage to assemble a passable soup out of potatoes and leeks (assuming you know how to clean them and not end up with sandy soup).

That said: When I cook, I can usually imagine how I would prepare a dish if forced to give it a shot without a recipe, but really do prefer speculation in context. I’m happy to modify a recipe, but like to see the theoretically BEST way to prepare something before just trying A way. That’s why I usually read over at least three or four recipes before cooking something myself. It’s not that I’m not capable of creativity or improvisation: it’s simply that, not having gone to cooking school or being a truly dedicated home cook, there’s too many things I don’t know, and it seems as bizarre as it would be frankly dumb to dismiss the accumulated wisdom so easily accessible these days via food blogs and websites or even YouTube videos.

Long story short: I looked up a recipe today for potato leek soup and made it, with some modifications that were in truth very subtle (though not altogether without merit) in terms of overall effect.

I used this Food Network recipe from Emeril, though I consider him the biggest charlatan (at least Rachel Ray doesn’t claim to be more than she is) on the network. His line of jarred pasta sauces – all made with tomato paste instead of actual tomatoes,  and with inferior oil – offends me, in particular. Whatever, though, the recipe looked fairly standard and easily adaptable.

So, what did I change? I’d just read an article on root vegetables in a November issue of The New Yorker and so was itching to incorporate some of the less loved roots veggies of the world. Spurred on to my own rememberances by the author’s description of wisp-light, creamy celeriac soup, I decided to grate this ungainly root into the soup for some complexity of flavor (Idaho/Russet potatoes not being the most nuanced of foodstuffs). Celery root has an appealing bitterness and looks like one of those filamented, inky horrors illustrated in the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books.

Also, I added more butter by a TBSP. The recipe called for only two. Two TBSP for a pot of soup? What are we, ascetic monks? Also, instead of going all leek, I figured that shallots make everything better, so added in a few of those into the bubbling butter, pre-leek. Lastly, I used half and half instead of cream. Cream is seriously intense stuff and if you “treat yourself” as much as I do, you just can’t mess around with anything that heavy at home. Going out to eat is one thing, but there’s definitely something to be said for not throwing all caution to the wind.

Here are some relatively unexciting – but highly descriptive! – photos of the soup stages staged:

Ingredients, looking handsome and wholesome

Pile of soup-thickening grated celeriac, looking for all the world like a heap of Fontina

Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble

The final product, whizzed baby food creamy and cast in queasy gold light, compliments of my patchy camera skills

Groundcherries, Dessert-ready darlings of the tomato family

Today I have cooked all day after a trip to the farmer’s market. The one item that hasn’t taken a turn in pot nor oven is the sack of groundcherries I brought home – I’m still much too in awe to start hacking into them hopefully.

Groundcherries, in all their husk'd glory

If you, like me, had never heard of these splendiferous little sweets – husked like a tomatillo, sweet as fruit, and near-identical in texture to a cherry tomato albeit with stonier seeds – you are in for a treat.

I’m considering making little cupcakes with them, a decision partially driven by the non-disposal, rainbow-colored muffin liners I brought back from a kitchen store in Norway earlier this summer.

Silicone muffin cups: full visible spectrum

Other items made today:
1. Carmelized onions and cubed roasted winter squash served over wild rice (A modification of this recipe.)

2. A great scape pesto that’s good even sans food processor:

Scape pesto, classy as can be in a reused grated Romano cheese container

3. My Mom’s minestrone (recipe to come)

A question in closing: Is homemade vegetable stock overrated or am I just really awful at making it?

Shoes, and ships, and sealing wax...and cabbages and kings!