We went to the city today for a meal at Yank Sing. The very first dish we were offered was a basket of soup dumplings, aka juicy buns aka xiao long bao aka Shanghai dumplings. These were as good as I’ve ever had, the skin only just strong enough to contain the soup and dumpling inside.
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A lot more dim sum goodness followed. The last dish was a great execution of don tat (egg custard tart). Look at that flaky flaky pastry!
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In the early 80’s a boyfriend gave me a copy of Gourmet. I’ve been reading it ever since(okay, at least looking at the pictures). Tom despairs of the slippery stacks of decades of it that populate our house.
A dependable highlight is the annual collection of cookie recipes in the December issue. Now, the website has a collection of “the very best cookie of each year”. I am definitely going to try some of the 1940’s selections…Cajun Macaroons anyone?.
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One of the things I did to keep busy while waiting for the returns on election day was to make jam from some lovely post-season raspberries. I don’t know who’s still harvesting them, but they’re from California.
Here’s my recipe which works with many kinds of fruit. The fruit’s flavor is bright and in the forefront, not the sugar. It’s a little thinner than store-bought, so it’s easier to use in baking or making sauces. In the fridge, the consistency gets thicker. If you want to make it thicker yet, don’t cook it longer, just chop some lemon or orange peel, put it in a cheesecloth bag in the first step and take it out before the second cooking. (That’s for the pectin.)
About the fruit: only use well-ripened tasty fruit. Anything larger than a berry (like raspberries or olallieberries) should be roughly chopped unless you want whole-fruit preserves.
Ready?
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About pots for sterilizing: Not having a proper canning pot, I use a large stock pot with a clean, not linty dishcloth on the bottom. The towel serves the same purpose as a rack, allowing the water to circulate and to prevent the jars from rattling around. My stock pot will let me do only 1/2-pint jars. To do pints and quarts, I’ve been eyeing a tamale steamer at the local Mexican grocery. It’s inexpensive, pretty tall, has a removeable built-in rack and should accommodate larger jars. Also, an angled silicone spatula is great to use for stirring as it swipe more of the bottom of the pot at once.
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In keeping with my mild obsession with bread I was interested to read an interview with Paul LaDuca of Zingerman’s in Ann Arbor over at the Wasted Food blog. I always keep our bread in a heavy paper bag, a little aluminum foil over the cut end, and stored in a bread box. Because of their size, we tend to not finish the loaves I make, which the chickens really don’t mind, but I do. So I was intrigued with the idea of freezing bread, then re-baking it.
(By the way, if you’re ever in Ann Arbor, totally make a trip to one of the best delis anywhere: Zingerman’s.)
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A most excellent program organized by SF’s tourist bureau has been moved from January to the more tourist-friendly month of June. It’s a great opportunity to try new restaurants at a reasonable cost. 3-course set lunches are $21.95 and 3-course set dinners are $31.95.
Check out the list or restaurants and available reservations at OpenTable.com
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I don’t know why the simplest things in life are the hardest to get right, but they just are. After a disappointing stab at the recipe in Martha Stewart’s new cookie book, I went digging around for my recipe which we had sent out in a Christmas card ages ago. My objective wasn’t to make a lemon bar you could pack up in a care package or contribute to a bake sale: I wanted a luscious topping on top of a cookie crust that was good on its own. It’s a little delicate, a bit gooey, and totally delicious. A lemon bar you need to eat at home with a napkin. So if you want to try it, here’s the recipe:
This is for a baking dish that’s has about 70 square inches. In my case it’s a white oblong baking dish from Ikea. I like the 7 x10 shape because it’s easy to cut with a chef’s knife in one go.
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Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter the baking dish, line it with foil lengthwise (draping over the short ends) to make removal easy, and then butter the foil.
Toast about 1/2 cup of whole almonds (5-10 minutes at 350 degrees until they smell right). Let them cool completely and then grind them up in a food processor or chop them by hand into fairly small pieces.
By hand or in a food processor, combine and cut until like cornmeal:
| 1 stick + 1 tablespoon of good cold butter, cut into cubes 1 cup + 2 tablespoons of all-purpose flour 3/8 cup powdered sugar the toasted almonds |
Spread this mixture in the baking dish and tamp down firmly. (A cheap hardware-store rectangular plastic putty scraper is the perfect tool for this job.) Bake for 15 minutes until it starts to color up a little.
Meanwhile, beat together in a bowl:
| 3 eggs |
Combine in another small bowl:
| 1.5 cups sugar 3 tablespoons flour |
Add this mixture to the beaten eggs.
Grate the zest of two lemons (Meyer lemons are great) into the mixing bowl and then juice both lemons into the bowl. (A Mexican orange squeezer does this and keeps the seeds out of the bowl.)
When the timer goes off on the crust, carefully pour the lemon & egg mixture over the hot crust and return to the oven for about 25 minutes. They’re done a few minutes past the point that the mixture sets.
Let cool, remove from the baking dish grasping the ends of the foil, slice and sprinkle liberally with powdered sugar. (The powdered sugar should be sprinkled as you serve because it can get wet and yucky after a time.)
Last step: enjoy!
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Say what you might about the San Francisco Chronicle (and most of what I have to say is not good), they do have one of the very best newspaper food sections around. A lot of that is due to Michael Bauer, their lead food critic. His annual list of the Top 100 Restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area appears today in the Sunday magazine.
I look around Yelp, Chowhound and Zagat every once in a while, but the problem with those user review sites for me is you always have to read between the lines and decide whether the person sees the subject the way you do. I don’t agree with everything Mr. Bauer has to say, but he’s a very good restaurant reviewer, his writing is intelligent and over time I’ve learned what his perspective is and how it relates to my own.
This year’s list is totally worth a bookmark.
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Blue Bottle Coffee, an Oakland roaster with an intense following, has finally opened their cafe (address South of Market in SF,near the old Mint, 66 Mint St between Jessie & Mission).
I’ve been going to the kiosk in a garage on an alley near Hayes Street, the Opera House, and Davies Symphony Hall. It’s been a popular dash for musicians on our breaks as well as the local hipster crowd. It is truly amazing coffee, totally worth the upscale prices. It’s fair to say that Blue Bottle’s coffee-ness borders on the obsessive.
Most interesting about the cafe is the newly installed $20,000 Siphon Bar Coffeemaker. Check out the stuff below, particularly the NY Times slideshow on the siphon bar.
NY Times slideshow
Gourmet.com takes a look
Bluebottle website: http://www.bluebottlecoffee.net/
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Yesterday I had a mini-orgy of baking, making some sourdough no-knead bread, trying out Martha Stewart’s lemon bars, and making this gorgeous loaf out of sweet, buttery, eggy dough, known as pain viennois. It’s like brioche, but not as rich.
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I was intrigued by a short article in a recent issue of Gourmet magazine about a technique taught by Richard Bertinet at his school in Bath, England. (That’s him over there –>>) There’s a great video about the method he uses for kneading his dough, often called a “french fold”. Basically it involves using your whole body to slam the dough in the work surface and folding it over to incorporate a lot of air. Normally I don’t think it’s a good idea to cook when in a bad mood, but I can see this being very therapeutic and with good results to boot! |
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For the loaf pictured above, use 1/2 of the ingredients in this recipe over at Gourmet’s website. I’ll add a couple of notes:
Watch his video to get the slap-and-fold technique down. It’s lots of fun to do! (In the video he’s making a double recipe of the one at the Gourmet website. That means quadruple of what I used to make my single loaf.)
For the second rise, shape the dough into a 9-inch loaf and place it in a buttered 9-inch loaf pan. When it’s risen at least double, heat the oven to 375 degrees. Make a laminate (glaze) from 1 egg yolk slightly beaten with a spoonful of heavy cream. Brush this on the dough, let it dry for a minute, and make shallow slashes in the top with a sharp knife, razor blade or scissors. Put it in the oven and bake it for about 35 minutes. (Doneness tests: hollow sound when thumped or internal temperature of 180 degrees.) Cool the loaf in the pan for 10 minutes or so. Take it out and let it finish cooling on a rack.
This bread is great for sandwiches and french toast. By the way, cooking french toast on a waffle iron is amusing and tasty.
The dough itself is pretty versatile: it’s good for rolls, brioche-shapes, Danish pastries, cinnamon rolls. I’m going to try single-serving mini-loaves with different fillings: ham & cheese, a chocolate bar, etc.
Not quite as easy as the no-knead bread recipe I usually make, but not by much!
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My absolute favorite fast food in the world is the Red Beans and Rice at Popeyes. So it was with curiosity that I read of the recent passing of its founder, Al Copland . I had always repeated the rumor that the recipes were developed anonymously by famous New Orleans chefs. Not so according to the obits; they were Copland’s own originals. Hats off to you, Mr. Copland.
Check out the interesting article over at the New York Times which describes some of Copland’s flamboyant life and an interesting aside about a feud with another New Orleans denizen, Anne Rice.
(By the way, Popeyes was never spelled with an apostrophe…Copland said he was too poor to afford one.)