A New Leaf

It was the dizziness in the morning that alarmed me. And the sudden cravings for something sweet mid-afternoon that gave me a clue. When I went to the doctor, my blood pressure was 168/90.

I was scared. Bad cholestrol was higher than the good kind, and fasting blood glucose was high normal at 100, when it should be in the low 60s.

So now, the changes begin.

Instead of the occasional gym, one Pilates workout and two classes at Rhythm and Motion, it will be five classes, one gym session and Pilates workout for the unforeseeable future. I will walk with my workmates during lunchtime, and get my big ass out of the desk every hour to stretch and take a walk through the building I work.

Butter is verboten. And sob, no more pork with fat. Salt use down by half and white sugar and flour are tossed. Instead of blogging four hours, I will do something to organize my house better. Toss out old clothes, shoes and those fucking papers that have accumulated in my computer hutch.

A note to my family and friends - no, I'm not going to die. I'm going to manage myself better. I won't tell you how many pounds I want to lose, but I will tell you I have a long, hard slog.

But does this mean I will have no more gustatory pleasure in my future? Am I not going to cook anymore? Am I not going to share what comes from my ample table with others?

Hell. Fucking. No.

What I will do is make what I've got work. And use the pallette that fabulous and healthy food provides to make this new leaf work. So today's recipe is for ginger carrot soup.

6 big carrots, sliced
1/2 sweet maui onion sliced
5 cups low-sodium chicken broth
1 Tbs. grated ginger

Braise the carrots, onions and ginger in the broth until tender. Pour mixture in blender to puree, or use a hand blender to do the same thing. Serve with a dollop of yogurt, or blue cheese, or feta.

Now get your butt out there and walk for 30 minutes.

Food that Makes a City Great

I've never been one to sprint to the latest trendy restaurant in this city. I live in a region so diverse and food-obsessed that its a constant, pleasurable process trying to figure out what you want to eat for lunch or dinner. Low $? High $$$? Chinese, fusion, Latin, European, American, pizza, shawerma, pozole or soup dumplings? By the time you've narrowed down your choices, your blood insulin levels go off the chart, you become delirious and head for the nearest Rite-Aid for a bag of chips and the rack with the latest edition of the SF Bay Guardian and its food review section.

It can stress you out.

UPDATED: I am grateful that I live in a region where its a veritable genie's lamp as far as food choices. And I have my preferences: tapas on Valencia Street (Ramblas is great for that), the Los Compadres taco truck at the Civic Center parking lot for their Lengua Super Tacos, perfect chicken congee and fresh-fried Chinese donuts at Hung Ling on Broadway, or the $9 worth of dim sum that you can pick up at the place near 6th and Clement that can easily feed a family of four. The fresh warm hand-made tamales by the women who manufacture their food products at La Cocina in the Mission District. The incredibly soft pan dulce at the Mexican panaderia run by Chinese bakers on Mission between 24th and 25th.

The entire list can read like the first chapters of a gustatory Genesis.

I love that my city does not mess around when it comes to food. Evidence the farmer's markets that occur weekly throughout the city. Now I am not going into which restaurant serves the best gnocchi, or who has the most unctuous uni, or whose pizza crust is the best (a topic of considerable controversy). And I don't care about who serves the best martini, fried olives or roast duck. That isn't my point. There are tons of writers who DO research and investigate that. I'm talking about MY San Francisco, and its a personal journey de cuisine.

I prefer the braised chicken feet at City View over everyone else's, but that doesn't mean I don't love Ton Kiang's scallion dumplings. Its just that there's a difference in approach to each at each site to merit frequenting both. And I always go to Mara's Italian Bakery on Columbus because on a cold rainy day, a latte and a slice of their almond cake makes you ache with pleasure from the soul. Hayes Street Grill's creme brulee is the absolute, while the hamburger with a crisp cold martini at Zuni Cafe provides an experience in pure satisfaction. And I happen to love the shaken beef at Sunflower (Vietnamese) Restaurant on Valencia Street, and willing to stand in line after an evening of theater to get my fix, along with a Vietnamese crepe and a Singha. A perfect Saturday night. And then there's the ritual weekday lunchtime trek to the Tenderloin where a perfect chicken biryani awaits.

There are thousands of personal journeys undertaken each day in this culinary hub. Its a small city, yes, with less than a million people. But it stands pretty well-balanced on its shaky seismic legs, has managed to re-build and transcend itself many times over, and still has room for the traditional and experimental.

When you're in a city at the very edge of your continent, there's nowhere to go but everywhere.

Babe-a-licious - A Love Note to My Boys

I dedicate this special recipe post to my boys Nikko, Jake, Addison and their pals. In an endeavor to help them improve their cooking skills and perhaps impress a few women while they're at it, I've set about to make this post a first of I hope many to help them become more than adept in the kitchen, perhaps inspiring actual meal prep from salad to dessert, instead of the meal in a microwave bag, cup o' noodles slag or the never-ending onslaught of carbs and cheese called le pizza.

Come on guys, its fun and its EASY to cook. Also--it saves you some much-needed bucks for the latest X-Box iteration of brain-fritzing.

Before I begin, there is only one credo in the kitchen that you must adhere to. Practice makes perfect.

For example, when it comes to doing anything having to do with eggs, practice makes perfect. Let's take a look at the audaciously rich sabayon (or as the Italians say: zabaglione). Egg yolks and Marsala whisked heavily OVER, not in, boiling water. It sounds easy enough, but here are words to the wise.

Watch. Your. Whisking. Practice, practice, practice.

Pre-assemble your ingredients, making sure your eggs are at room temperature before you begin. Separate yolks from white, and save whites for another use (omelettes come to mind), and pour yolks into large metal bowl (large enough to go OVER, not in, a pot of boiling water. Add marsala.

Whisk the shit out of it until the yolks-marsala are foamy AND form firm peaks. You are actually cooking the yolks while they are whisking. Just DON'T allow the bowl with the yolks to touch the boiling water. Once this portion of the sabayon is ready, take it off the heat. Set aside. It should pour off your whisk like a thick sauce. You're done.

Pour a half-pint container of whipping cream into a chilled bowl. Add 1/3 c. sugar. Whip the shit out this until the whipping cream is firm--close to butter but not quite. Fold the whipped cream into the fluffy egg yolks and combine, briefly. Serve immediately or you can serve the sabayon chilled. Pour over strawberries, cherries, berries, or any other fresh fruit.

Now go out there and thrill the babes.

Ingredient List

4 eggs, separated

1/3 c. marsala or other sweet liquor (amaretto, calvados, even kahlua if you want a coffee effect)

1/2 pint of whipping cream

1/3 c. sugar (for whipping cream)

The list above should cost you no more than $15 at Trader Joe's (especially if you go for their generic amaretto).

Final note: You need to proportionally increase the recipe volume if you have more mouths to feed. The above recipe feeds two generously as a sauce over fruit. If you want to increase it to make individual puddings, double the recipe. It translates and volumizes easily and well.

Tails of Beauty, Tails of Might

Sucking it right off the bone.

That aptly describes the pleasure I feel when I am enjoying a bowl of my mama's simple oxtail soup. Nilaga. Oxtails. Ginger. Onions. Salt. Water. That's it. Simmer slowly until done. For years, I denied myself the oxtail experience of my roots, going instead for the boutique meat. Glamorous filets, chicken breast, an occasional short rib feast. But oxtails were mean, disgusting looking, and only poor people ate them. Which was exactly the reason they will always be so good.

When my forties came, the fall signalled the need to hang in for provisions that would increase warmth and fortify soul. Muscles and bones ached more. The need for a good read and something warm on the stove cooking for a VERY long time was spiritual. I believe I was reading "Like Water for Chocolate" at that time in our walk-up flat in the Marina, when I came across the recipe for oxtail soup. The soup that brought Tita, the heroine of the book, back to life from a nervous breakdown. The soup whose recipe was taught to her by Nacha, the ancient cook in her tyrannical mother's kitchen. What a way to remember the healing power of the bones.

Luckily, I found them at a butcher's on Mission Street. And with ginger, onions, cabbage, and the tails, Tita, Nacha and I shared in the glorious mystery of sucking down on some good bones and gelatinous cartilage. The healing I felt co-incided with that of the literary characters and I felt myself inside Tita through the warmth that these oxtails gave. We were eating meat that needed time, thought, and patience to coax out the very best of its character, which is humble by roots, and mighty in flavor.

This holiday, I'll be slow-cooking them in a base of carrot, celery, onions, bay leaves and other herbs (bouquet garnis), and either a little vermouth or maybe a decent house red. The bones need to start up early, probably before I head out to dance class on Saturday. I'm setting the crockpot to cook them for ten hours. Plenty of time. By the time friends come, they'll be ready to pour over some rice in bowls and it will be us and our faces in sauce and sucking down on some good tender meat.

Bones Basic

2-3 lbs. oxtails

1 onion, chopped

2 stalks celery, chopped

3 large carrots, chopped

1 c. red wine

veal stock

bay leaves (2)

2 TBS. whole peppercorns

1/2 cup flour seasoned with salt and pepper

1/2 c. olive oil

Lightly dust tails with seasoned flour. Sear on high heat in thick-bottom pot or Dutch oven until brown. Remove from Dutch oven and place at the bottom of the crock pot. De-glaze the fond from the Dutch oven with the wine. Add stock and simmer until the brown bits are dissolved. Remove from heat.

Add chopped savory vegetables, bay leaf, peppercorns to the crockpot. Pour the stock over everything to cover. Season to taste then seal crockpot with its lid and leave it alone and read a book. Preferably something that makes you happy curled up with a coverlet on the couch.

I can't imagine a better winter day. Cheers.

Finding Home Anywhere

Living in the dorms is a special challenge for people like me who love to cook--and who love to share the enjoyment of food with friends. It's one thing to share a meal served on a plastic tray, it's another thing to see something cooked from the heart coming out of the oven or off the stove having and serving it to your loved ones. I think this kitchenlove-isolation has made me particularly susceptible to waxing poetic about the simplest cooking encounters.

I am lucky enough to have older friends with apartments nearby who allow me to raid their kitchens on occassion. I recently enjoyed one such occassion and found myself oddly at home--a feeling much missed by this homebody. My girlfriends and I planned way in advance (a miracle in itself) to treat "our boys" to a home cooked meal. We were so excited for a real meal, and what did we make? Pizza! It felt kind of silly, considering we all have access to pizza every day, but we wanted to throw some dough in the air and make a mess... But really, it was a perfect choice because this time dinner was less about filling our stomachs and all about filling our hearts.

Before the guys arrived we had time to chatter in a warm kitchen over rising dough while we prepared toppings. Really, not much is better than best friends in a warm kitchen in the anticipation of something special; we had nothing but love and warmth in our hearts, and I think these feelings were kneaded into the dough. The boys arrived just as we finished rolling out individual pizzas. We then all got around the table and assembled our own perfect pizzas. Heart-warming perfection. Our friends were all so happy to have a hand in creating the meal rather than being served (especially my girl friends, who admittedly have limited cooking talents); and although we hadn't seen each other much during the busy quarter, we were at home with each other in an instant. The atmoshpere was perfect for food magic. We all were cooks, and we all cooked with the feelings of joy and comfort and love. From that point on I was a mushy mess. While the first pizzas were in the oven we had time to catch up and mess around. It didn't matter that we could only bake 2 pizzas at a time, making the dinner abnormally long; in fact, we didn't even notice that the dinner was long. Like music, in which the notes are made special by the silence between them, it wasn't about the food, it was the time in between the bites that made the meal great. We ate and revelled being so at home again until the last pizza came out of the oven some hours later. Even though we were just eating pizza, the love and intentions with which it was made filled more than our stomachs.

Simple Thin-crust Pizza Dough

bread flour (approx. 3 cups) (bread flour makes the dough more sturdy for spinning, if you use bread flour you don't need to knead or punch down the dough as much after rising.)

1/2 tsp. salt

1 packet fast-rising yeast

1 C. hot water (as hot as tap will give you)

2 tsp. olive oil

Blend the yeast with two cups of flour and the salt. Add the water and the oil and mix to form a dough. Add more flour as necessary until you can knead the dough. Knead for about 6 minutes. Put the dough in a lightly oiled bowl covered with saran wrap, and allow to rise for about 45 minutes. In the mean time, preheat the oven to 400F and prepare your toppings. Split the dough into two pieces and roll into two medium size pizzas on parchment paper. If you can't find parchment paper (some regular grocery stores don't have it), roll out the dough and the place on a cutting board liberally dusted with cornmeal. Grab some guests and have them top their own pizzas!

The pizzas can go directly in the oven on parchment paper (just be careful not to burn the paper onto the crust!). The trick to crust is that it needs to bake directly on a hot surface. I don't have a pizza stone or tiles in my oven, but cooking directly on the floor of the oven works (expecially if you like thin crust crispiness) and even on the rack (more as a last resort to get more in one batch). Bake 12-18 minutes until crust is hard.

Enjoy!!

Paella Perfecto

Is there really such a thing as a purist? I keep reading in "Catalan Cuisine" by Coleman Andrews about the ultimate authentic paella. As if there were such a thing as an ultimate Any Dish. As if there is the ultimate application of heat, spice, oil, onions, garlic, ingredients to make a paella THE paella. Is it paella when there's no rabbit in it? What happens to vegetable paella? Is that really a paella? And what the hell is paella doing in a book about Catalan cooking when its a Valencia region specialty?

Conventional wisdom about legendary paellas says they have to be cooked over an open fire on the beach. The rabbit must be grilled to perfection before put into a paella, which needs the smokiness of the rabbit to be authentic. No peas. Beans. Green beans for authentic Valenciana. Feh.

I think folks who proffer opinions about what is the right, best, appropriate, perfect version of a dish are as crazy as, well, crazy as me. That's ok with me. With advancements in online publishing, now everyone has a pulpit from which to proclaim the relative merits of a dish and how its made, what ingredients are in it, and even the geneology of the cooks making it.

So in the bright, limitless world of virtual, I stand today, pontificating my heart out about paella and other pressing matters of the state of the senses.

I once heard that an opera house in a big city recently had a $75 million dollar facelift, which included a $1,500,000.00 stage curtain replacement. The fabric and fringe of that curtain was of a certain type and standard produced solely by a convent of blind nuns sequestered somewhere in the Alps. Does that make that curtain authentic, rare and valuable? Yes. Does it make it very expensive? Yes yes. Does it promise to bring more prestige and commerce to the isolated area by promoting its rarity and prestige? Triple yessicas!!

There's no such thing as a purist. I think the purist throughout history is really just someone with a big mouth who opined about things, and in this instance about recipes in particular, and who had the vehicle to do it with. They also had as a willing band of co-conspirators, compatriots ready to agree with their opinion, and be vocal about theirs. And everyone of them had their own vested interest and personal tastes in mind.

So there you go. In the world of paella superlatives, started as early as the 8th century when the Moors first brought rice to Spain, it is this humble author's opinion that the superduper superlative paella was, is, and will always be an experience in relativism based on your available ingredients. And if you could make the rice good. Or you're visiting the Valencia region.

All the rest is marketing.



Serves 4-6 as a main course

15-20 fresh shrimp
1/2 lb New Zealand mussels, fresh
2 Spanish chorizo or good quality linguica sausage, sliced diagonally at 1/4" thick
1 whole chicken (marinated with minced garlic, salt and pepper and Spanish agridulce paprika)
2 onions, chopped
4-15 cloves of garlic, minced (depending on taste/preference)
3 - 4 c. chicken broth
2 c. valenciana rice (calrose or any short grain rice will also do)
1 pkg. frozen peas
olive oil
two pinches whole saffron
2 TBsp. white wine

Roast chicken at 375 until about done. (1 hour, 20 minutes). Turn off heat and let rest in oven. Soak saffron in wine to allow it to bloom.

In a large flat paella pan or wide skillet or saute pan, saute onions in olive oil until golden. Add sausage and cook through. Add rice and garlic. Let rice absorb flavors of the savories and meat, coating in hot oil until rice kernels are opaque. Don't let the garlic burn.

Pour in the broth and saffron wine mixture and stir to incorporate. Let simmer at medium/medium low heat to let rice absorb the liquid. Just before all the liquid is absorbed, and the rice kernels have just a LITTLE bite left, add the fresh shrimp and peas. Cover tightly with foil and continue to cook at low heat for another five more minutes. Turn off heat completely and let rest.

Cook mussels in ungreased cast iron skillet until opened. Turn off heat and reserve any pot liquor. Cut up chicken into serving-sized pieces. Arrange chicken pieces over the paella, then add the mussels and pour in the pot liquor. Serve, enjoy.

And come up with your own damn version of this recipe. This one happened to work for me.

Stop Me If You've Heard This Before

Having never been faced with cooking the Thanksgiving turkey ever before in my life, the prospect of doing so filled me with ambivalence. Turkey to me is a "so what" meal. Thanksgiving meals are rote, bland affairs that I would not in any way WANT to eat on any other day. I thought the challenge of doing a turkey would be an intellectual exercise at best.

I proceeded with my friend Sean's recipe for a paper bag turkey, which was a basting-free style form of cooking that would eliminate me having to open the oven every 40 minutes to juice up the thing.

Peering inside Mama's refrigerator, there it was, taking up two shelf spaces. When I was told it was a 25 lb. bird, the image of the Norman Rockwell painting of the American family sitting down to grace and the grandmother proudly carrying the golden roasted bird to the table completely flooded my consciousness. It was cooked to perfection. In theory.

But the reality when I opened the refrigerator door was 25 pounds of BIRD-BEAST. The only thing I could think about was the T-Rex chase scene in Jurassic Park.

Not to be overcome, I grabbed it with both arms. Backing away from mama's refrigerator, the Bird-Beast threw me off balance. Taking off the plastic shrink-wrap, the creature exploded, freed up from its cumbersome prison. The huge boil-sized goosebump pores of its skin looked like they were breathing. I searched for the salt.

"Take a fistful of salt and stick it up its ass", I remember someone telling me that was his favorite Thanksgiving duty. He never got invited over for subsequent dinners. But I took in the spirit of this questionable pleasure, and with a handful of Morton's approached the bird. I had forgotten that with all poultry, the processor will usually place the baglet of organs into the creature's crevice. This bird was no exception. With a plunge of my fistful of salt my hand was wedged into the mastodon bird. Thinking I could perform two duties with the one, I started seizing the baglet of organ meats. They wouldn't move. And my hand was stuck. Thinking I could let gravity do the work, I thought perhaps suspending my engaged arm over the roasting pan would free me and the baglet. I certainly did not want to roast the bird with a plastic bag of spleen trapped inside. It still would not move.

Next I tried to ease myself out of it, taking to the chair and using the tight wedding ring scenario, practiced mindful breathing to stop stressing and let the blood flow ease a little, thus freeing my hand and hopefully warming the organ bag enough so that it would release. Still nothing.

Then, in a fit of panic, I violently swung the bird, trying to force it from my arm and it flung me across the kitchen, hitting the edge of the oven, and stopping just short of the kitchen floor, a seething cauldron of bacteria.

It's Thanksgiving and yes, Virginia, my fist was stuck up a turkey's ass.

Misguided heroism prevented me from weakening my wrist and allowing the bird to fall or touch the floor. Rolling over, hoping to get on my back and use that as my vantage point to do a momentum-based sit-up with a twenty-five pound avian life-form in both hands, I engaged my core muscles. Yet my my right knee muscle was twitching, screaming something equally important."PAIN!!!!". I looked down and my knee was starting to hurt from the movement. I micro-wrenched it and was paying the price. Getting up without my hands touching the floor would be impossible.

I lay on the floor, working out what my next move would be. Looking down at my chest, there lay the open exposed neck hole of the T-Rex bird that I was about to bag and put in the oven for dinner, which by this point would happen at 10:00pm. Gathering myself up, I managed to slide my back to the cabinet under the oven with the turkey in my lap. Then, with my good leg, pushed myself up to standing, hopping on the one leg to reach for the big brown grocery bag. I was thirty minutes and a frozen hand into this match, and I was going to get this bird into the oven if it killed me. With all my might I pushed the bird into the bag, and rising to its defense the spirit of this dead bird, a Fighting Demon Turkey Spirit I might add, re-inhabited the body and crushed the bag.

I flattened the bag out with my elbow and tried again. This time, calling for the spirits of my ancestors, for my maternal grandfather, a veteran of decades of pig slaughtering, to my uncles long since in heaven but I'm sure taking pity on me after howling with laughter from heaven's pantry for this half hour of culinary magic. Using a twisting motion with my trapped hand, I somehow managed to dislodge the baglet, free up the salt and my hand at the same time. The bird, laying in "breach" position which would require some a minor procedure to remove later but at least it was finally and at last halleluia, in the fricking bag.

The next day, after I had removed a perfectly roasted bird from the oven and carved it up to dole out leftovers, my brother in law asked me "how did you get the turkey to be so tender?".

Please don't ask.