Colder than...

"Yes I'm a Witch" ~Yoko Ono

Menu for California

1. Homemade yogurt w/ loquats and strawberries (at a vine-covered hobbit house in Berkeley, surrounded by Eucalyptus and Laurel leaves.)

2. Picnic at the bird sanctuary, on an Indian burial ground, in Bolinas (above):
-Tuscan melon, sopressata and chive savory salad
-cold artichoke w/ garlicky lemon mayonnaise or vinaigrette
-bread and funky, runny cheese
-ripe figs
-homemade champagne

3. Dinner while listening to gospel on KPFA:
-creamless creamy mushroom soup with just-harvested garlic and a splash of sherry (w/ homemade Pinot Noir)
-Leek, Chanterelle and Meyer Lemon Risotto (topped with a sprinkle of chives) w/ Chardonnay
-Two salads: julienned raw asparagus with mint & parmesan
+ shaved fennel & grapefruit salad

Ambrosia

From MFK Fisher’s Alphabet for Gourmets (1949):

In this country Ambrosia is a dessert as traditionally and irrefutably Southern as pecan pie… I always thought of it as old-fashioned, as something as probably unheard of by today’s bourbons. I discovered only lately that an easy way to raise an unladylike babble of protest is to say as much in a group of Confederate Daughters—and here is the proof, straight from one of their mouths, that their local gods still sup on

AMBROSIA
6 fine oranges
1 1/2 cups grated coconut, preferably fresh
1 1/2 cups sugar
good sherry

Divide peeled oranges carefully into sections, or slice thin, and
arrange in layers in a glass bowl, sprinkling each layer generously
with sugar and coconut. When the bowl is full, pour a wine glass or so
of sherry over the layers and chill well.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Here’s my very Californian version. It could be breakfast, a retro-eccentric side dish for picnics or a deceptively virtuous dessert:

GOLDEN COAST AMBROSIA
3 oranges (thin-skinned is best)
3/4 lb cherries
1 cup of shaved unsweetened coconut
3 cups of plain yogurt (preferably not nonfat, lowfat is fine)
1 lemon
agave syrup to taste


Pit and halve cherries. Skin oranges, then slice through center to make thin rings. Quarter these rings, en masse, so that you have little pentagons of naked orange segments. Add these to the cherry halves in a big bowl. (There should be almost equal amounts of each fruit, with cherries just dominating over orange.)


To the yogurt, squeeze lemon and add agave syrup to taste, until the sweetness just takes the edge off the urge to pucker. It should still be tart, just over the line towards sweet. (If you can only find sweetened coconut skip the sweetener altogether.)

Just before serving, add enough yogurt to coat the fruit, then add the coconut. (If you bring this to a picnic, travel with prepared fruit, yogurt and coconut in three separate containers.) While combining all ingredients, smash two cherries against the bowl until the ambrosia takes on a cherry-and-orange-stained perfect shade of pale pink. Like this:

In fact, the whole color scheme should look a little Vargasesque:

West Coast WASPs

California Casual in words, images, and recipes



"How to Be a San Franciscan" from Herb Caen's Guide to San Francisco, 1957

He dresses in dark, generally conservative clothes. He prefers streetcars to buses because he can run and jump onto the bottom step of a trolley, like the frustrated athlete he is. And when he drives to work, he'll park anywhere, being pretty haughty about traffic regulations.

New York impresses him, but he wouldn't dream of living there (or anywhere else but San Francisco). He is scornful of Los Angeles and Oakland, and generally insular about everything beyond the Peninsula. He eats long lunches and shakes dice for the check, and reports faithfully to the nearest bar at cocktail hour, for San Franciscans, per capita, are the heaviest drinkers in the land. And perversely proud of the distinction, which has its roots in the Gold Rush days.

Although generally he can take culture or leave it alone, he'll attend at least one opera during the season, as well as a symphony and even a ballet, because he was brought up to believe in those things. He likes dining in small, out-of-the-way restaurants (preferably in an alley) where he knows the waiters by their first names--and one of his greatest joys is "discovering" a good little restaurant his friends haven't heard of.




The Ahwahnee Lodge in Yosemite

From Joan Didion's Where I Was From:

The Bohemian Club of San Francisco was founded, in 1872, by members of the city's working press, who saw it both as a declaration of unconventional or "artistic" interests and as a place to get a beer and a sandwich after the bulldog closed... For a few years the members appear to have remained resolute in their determination not to admit the merely rich, but their over-ambitious spending, both on the club in town and on its periodic encampments, quite soon overwhelmed this intention.

The rituals of the summer encampment were fixed. There were, every day, at twelve-thirty, "Lakeside Talks," informal speeches and briefings, off the records. .. Local color was measured; the fight songs sung remained those of the traditional California schools Berkeley (or, in this venue, "Cal") and Stanford.



Sporty San Francisco-born socialite Nan Kempner, who canonized slacks and costume jewelry, described her own style best: "She said it was 'artificially relaxed,'" says Harold Koda, the Met's curator in charge of the Costume Institute.




From "Nan Kempner: American Chic"

When she arrived at La Cote Basque in a new-style pantsuit, she was told at the door, "no women in pants allowed." So, rather than hang her head, Kempner merely took off the pants she was wearing under her tunic and walked in the front door.


Kempner is the one who played in red-lined blazer over tennis whites

Click on image below to read an annotated page from Private Collection (from the Palo Alto Junior League) and a recipe for an eccentric salad perfect for luncheons with Avocado Crab Mornay



Marin County Sweet & Sour Pickled Figs
Recipe adapted from San Francisco a la Carte
The San Francisco Junior League Cookbook

Every fall my grandmother's refrigerator would always contain a glass jar of cold, pickled figs, incomparable and essential for everyday living. Equally good with ice-cream or with roast meat, they were especially good stolen straight from the jar first thing in the morning.

When I finally made them myself as an adult, I began to play with the recipe, cutting down the sugar and adding more spices. They were perfect with cheese this way. My grandmother was appalled. She didn't mind that I altered her recipe (she loved a little innovation.) "You bought figs?" she asked. She thought every real Californian should know someone with a fig tree.

4 lbs fresh figs
salt water
4 cups brown sugar
1/2 quart white vinegar
4 cinnamon sticks
1/2 tablespoon whole cloves.

Wash figs and bring to a boil and simmer for 15 minutes. Combine the sugar and vinegar and bring to a boil. Drain the figs and add to the boiling syrup along with the spices. Simmer for one hour. Pack figs into hot sterilized jars, making certain that the figs are covered with syrup and that there is a cinnamon stick in each jar. Seal at once.

For Heretic's Version (to be eaten within a week) halve the sugar and add cardamom and a few more cloves to taste, plus a very few red pepper flakes, and a minuscule pinch of cayenne. Make sure all the flavors—-sweet, spicy, and sour--are just hitting each other against each other without any one dominating. The traditional version is ambrosial and intense. The generic exotic heretic's version has a long line of surprises in flavor.


Meyer Lemon Tree

Butterscotch is better with butter, and Scotch

"I'll have a butterscotch sundae, I guess."


I've always been fascinated with the use of butterscotch chips in most recipes for butterscotch pudding, including this well-rated one from very trustworthy Food and Wine. Does authentic butterscotch flavor really only come from a plastic bag from Nestle? Is butterscotch--unlike deep, dark, dangerously close to burnt caramel-- a pure nostalgia trip? (As so many sweets are.) Butterscotch is a mellow, cloying comfort taste. And, apparently, impossible to reproduce. A pure memory taste.

But, like many things, it can't be recreated but can be vastly improved with time, technique and a little booze.

Butterscotch for Adults:
Make a caramel sauce. (David Lebovitz has the best instructions, though I like wet technique and he prefers dry; he gives intstructions for both.) Don't go quite as dark as you would with caramel; go to just when it seems ready as opposed to a little past and closer to the edge of burnt, as you should for a good caramel. After you add butter, add a combination of cream and milk, and add much more than you would for caramel sauce. Finish off with some spicy Scotch whiskey (J&B instead of Dewar's, but anything will do.) Then turn the heat back up for a few seconds, whisk the Scotch flavor in and mellow the alcohol shock, and then cool.

two slivers of rosemary

The Haunting Herb:

A good recipe usually has one--just one--very surprising ingredient. Something unexpected and strong, but in such a small amount that it’s only an echo…

Like in this recipe for marinated mushrooms with cinnamon and thyme by Viana La Place:

"A stick of cinnamon gives these marinated mushrooms an elusive spiced sweetness."

1 lb medium mushrooms of about equal size
5 T olive oil
3 garlic cloves
3 sprigs thyme, leaves chopped
3 T Italian parsley
1 stick cinnamon, broken in half
salt & pepper
juice of 1 lemon

Clean the mushrooms carefully by wiping them w/ damp paper towels. Trim the stem ends.

In a large sauté pan, combine the olive oil, garlic, thyme, parsley, & cinnamon stick. Warm the ingredients over low heat for 2 to 3 minutes. Add the mushrooms, raise heat to medium, and sauté for about 5 minutes, stirring frequently. Lower the heat, and add salt and pepper to taste and the lemon juice. Stir the mushrooms, cover the pan, and cook another 2 to 3 minutes, or until the mushrooms are tender and firm.

Transfer the mushrooms to a dish and let cool. Cover and marinate for at least an 1 hour, stirring occasionally. These mushrooms can also be made several days in advance; they improve as they marinate.

That workhorse herb thyme can also play the reverse role of surprise. Richard Olney has a perfect recipe for dried figs cooked in red wine syrup with thyme in his Simple French Cooking.

I considered adding thyme to a red wine syrup that I made recently for poaching pears, but decided it needed a flavor even more mysterious, something to really deflect from the potency of this red wine syrup doctored up with cinnamon and a few cloves. I added just one needle of rosemary. No, two.

I poached the pear halves in this elixir, feeling a little witchy , until they were soft but not mushy, still firm. I cooked down and warmed up the syrup, pored a little over the room temperature pears (just enough to wake them up but not drown them.) I served it with a sauce boat full of a very dark chocolate syrup and, for those who choose to gild the swan, a dollop of some sweetened mascarpone.

The Marinated Mushroom Narrative (Elizabeth David Part II)

There is a narrative to a classic recipe--a thread of good taste, common sense, elegant simplicity & humility to the ingredients. It is a story of specificity, told only through the language of food. Elizabeth David translated that language faithfully.

1. Presentation
From Elizabeth David's French Provincial Cooking (1960) on the presentation of hors-d'oeveres at la Mère Germaine:
The hors-d'oeveres are beautifully served here, in small oval raviers of glowing deep yellow Provençal pottery. Brought on a basket tray which was left on the table so we could help ourselves, they consisted only of olives, marinaded mushrooms, a rice and prawn salad, anchovies, these pickled cherries and the tapénade already described.

2. The Classic (slightly revised)
(Also from French Provincial Cooking)
Champignons à la grecque
The addition of a little tomato to the usual à la grecque manner of preparing mushrooms makes the dish more interesting. Put 5 tablespoons of olive oil, 3 of water, 2 skinned and chopped tomatoes, 3 or 4 crushed peppercorns, half a dozen coriander seeds, a bayleaf, a sprig of thyme and a little salt into a saucepan. Bring this to a boil, let it simmer 2 or 3 minutes, then add 1/2 lb. of very small button mushrooms washed, drained and rubbed with lemon juice. Cook gently about 5 minutes. Take out the mushrooms, put them in a small shallow oval serving dish; continue cooking the sauce a few more minutes until it is thick and somewhat reduced. pour over the mushrooms. Serve cold.

3. The Classic Revised
In this recipe from Spices, Salt and Aromatics in the English Kitchen (1970), E.D. has edged the recipe even more towards simplicity and surprise (a recommended direction, in every art.) In this version all of the ingredients are essential and none of the flavors are lost.
Coriander Mushrooms
This is a quickly cooked little dish which makes a delicious cold hors-d'oeuvre. The aromatics used are similar to those which go into champignon à la grecque, but the method is simpler and the result even better.
Ingredients for three people are: 6 oz firm white, round and very fresh mushrooms, a teasppon of coriander seeds, 2 tablespoons of olive oil, lemon juice, salt, freshly milled peper, and one or two bay leaves.
Rinse the mushrooms, wipe them dry with a clean cloth, slice them (but do not peel them) into quarters, or if they are very large into eighths. The stalks should be neatly trimmed. Squeeze over them a little lemon juice.
In a heavy frying pan or sauté pan, warm the oilve oil. Into it put the coriander seeds which should be already crushed in a mortar. Let them heat for a few seconds. keep the heat low. Put in the mushrooms and the bay leaves. Add the seasoning. Letthe mushrooms cook gently for a minute, cover the pan and leave them, still over very low heat, for another 3-5 minutes.
Uncover the pan. Decant the mushrooms–with all their juices–into a shallow serving dish and sprinkle them with fresh olive oil and lemon juice.
Whether the mushrooms are to be served hot or cold do not forget to put the bay leaf which has cooked with them into the serving dish. The combined scents of coriander and bay go to make up part of the true essence of the dish.