Friday, December 31, 2010

under the wire: 2010 year in review

Only a few hours left in 2010, and I might as well use some of that time on a retrospective post.

new day

Let's break this into bite-sized chunks, shall we?
 
Trips
Since 2010 started with a trip, this seems a good place to begin.  We did our annual holiday visit to MI and IL for 2009 (a little late), leaving home on January 1.  After a few days in each state to see our families, we flew to New York City.  It was a lovely, though freezing, few days of good food, shows, and getting to see Riley perform in Bye Bye Birdie on Broadway.  In June, we traveled to Seattle for Chrissy and Kevin's wedding and spent another several days walking a whole lot, eating well, and exploring neighborhoods.  Last, we drove up to Napa for a few days to celebrate our second wedding anniversary.  Again, we ate at many exciting restaurants and did some wine tasting as well.  And throughout each of those vacations, I took thousands of photos.
 

Photos
Which brings me to the subject of pictures...  I finished 2009's Project 365 during the NYC trip, and then I faced the dilemma of whether or not to keep going for another year.  I decided not to stick to the stringent picture-a-day rules and instead just try to take one picture a week or more, collecting the representative photos from those days in a 2010 set on Flickr.  But by February, I was looking for another project to give me some direction.  Valentine's Day dinner, made by Steve, inspired me to start a 52 Weeks of Food project, wherein Steve would cook something new each week and I would photograph it.  (Since that project won't be finished until February, I'll save the reflective post for that until then.)

I also got a new camera body for my birthday in August, upgrading from my Digital Rebel to a shiny new 7d.  I don't think there's been a huge shift in quality of photos, but the new camera makes it easier to take pictures in darker places.

Most of my photos for 2010 have been from our vacations, the food project or dinners out, but there have been a few other outings that turned out to be good photo ops.  I went to see some baby goats outside Bi-Rite market; I took a few photo walks to Bernal Heights, around the Mission, and to Noe Valley; we went "lobster golfing" with Rob and Traci (lobster rolls, then mini golf); I did a stairway walk to the area between the Castro and Noe Valley; we took Steve's parents to the Ferry Building farmers market; we went for a hike at Lands End; we explored Hayes Valley; and we took a trip to Santa's Tree Farm and Village to cut down a Christmas tree for Dan and Carmen's place.  As a mini photo job, I took pictures of the lovely Marion and her spa for her website.  And I shot some pictures of the YTC fundraising cabaret show, featuring several Beach Blanket Babylon alumni.


Restaurants
Since so many of my pictures in 2010 were of food, it seems only fair to mention the good food that we ate that wasn't at home.  Sometime in the last year, Steve and I started a Google map with all of the restaurants that we'd like to try in the Bay Area.  It was a big year for restaurant openings around here, so we didn't even come close to making a dent in our list.  We went to Farallon in February (good seafood, amazing desserts), Chez Papa Resto in July (interesting small plates), revisited Gitane in September (still good, still too dark for great pictures), Una Pizza Napoletana (a little overrated), and Zero Zero in November and December (fabulous cocktails, tasty pastas, and pizzas done well).  There were also the regular restaurants, the most notable being Contigo, which we visited six times in 2010.  Everything is consistently awesome there, but my favorites tend to be the calamars with arros negre, the creative salads, and the seasonal fruit desserts.

And those are just the restaurants in SF.  In New York, we ate at Le Bernardin, Cafe Boulud, Bar Americain, and DB Bistro Moderne.  Seattle's visit included Restaurant Zoe, Lola, Poppy, Pintxo, and our favorite, Delancey.  In Napa, we visited Ubuntu, Morimoto Napa, Redd, Bottega, and the Restaurant at Meadowood (now with three Michelin stars).


Work
I kept busy with the usual teaching in the spring: Broadway Bound and the cabaret class.  I music directed the older kids' summer show, 13, and played piano in the pit.  The composer, Jason Robert Brown, came for a visit and a masterclass—for which I also played—about halfway through the rehearsal process.  That was both exciting and just a little nerve-wracking.  (The concert he performed at the end of those two days was just plain exciting, since my performing was done for the weekend.)  Once the summer show was over, I had two weeks off, and then I started rehearsals for The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee at SMHS.  While the rehearsal process seemed really long, the show itself was quite enjoyable.  It was nice to play (and teach) challenging and well written music, work with a small ensemble of actors, and play/conduct a small pit of musicians.  On Sundays in the fall, I taught Broadway Bound again, but I left the cabaret class to someone else so I wouldn't overextend myself while doing Spelling Bee.  It's back to teaching both in the new year, though.


Family
Since most of Steve and my family members live in various Midwestern states, we only get to see them once in a while.  We're fortunate that his parents are able to travel to SF once a year and stay for a while, so we got to see them both in January when we were in MI and in October when they came to visit us.  We saw my parents, along with most of my sister Christine's family, in January when we spent a couple days in IL.

Meanwhile, both of my sisters were pregnant and gave birth in 2010.  Sheri had Philip in February, and Christine had Aaron in August.  Then, just last week, our sister-in-law Carmen announced that she and Dan (Steve's brother) are expecting a baby in June.  We're unbelievably happy for them, and we're looking forward to meeting the little "monkey" in 2011.  Since they live below us, we'll get to see that niece or nephew more frequently than Christine and Sheri's kids.


Well, that about covers it!  As a whole, 2010 was good to us.  Since the 365 project ended, I didn't do as well with taking everyday pictures as I would have hoped, but maybe I'll be able to do a better job of it in 2011.  In the meantime, here is the blogging meme that I do every year, even though it reminds me of how far behind I get in blogging each month.
 
 
Go to your archives and find the first entry for each month of 2010. Post the first line of it, and that's your "Year In Review."

January: I'm feeling a little conflicted about not having taken any pictures yet today.

February: It may be February already, but it's still a good time for new beginnings as far as I'm concerned.  I've been considering a new blog for a while, and tonight I impulsively did it.

March: Sunday, January 10 was our last day in New York.

April: Around the time that Steve and I returned from New York in January, I had a decision to make.  My Project 365 had ended on January 7; and the trip, which was keeping me shooting each day after that, was over too.

May: It's been a few weeks since my last post, which means more food in the backlog of things to write about.

June: The time has come to talk of many things: of trips and transit and trolls.  Of coffee and cupcakes.  Of food and flowers and aching feet.  I speak, of course, of the Seattle trip.

July: We continue our review of the Seattle trip with Friday night's dinner in Capitol Hill.  Yes, this would be Friday, June 4.  And yes, I realize this was over a month ago.

August: Two months later, we reach the main event and raison d'etre for the Seattle trip: Chrissy and Kevin's wedding.

September: And finally, it's time to leave Seattle.

October: Our first full day of wine-tivities in Napa began with a walk down to Bouchon Bakery for breakfast.

November: Contrary to the title of this post, we were not completely wineless on our last day in Napa.  However, Wednesday began without the wine tastings of the previous two days.

December: It's time to work on catching up with the 52 Weeks of Food project again.  Even though the chilly, rainy weather of S.F. winter is upon us—and I'm starting to think about Christmas cookies—I'm still recapping summer food.
   

december dish roundup

It looks like this weekend's recipe for the food project will be executed in the new year, so the recapping of December's food can now commence. 

The first dish of the month was one that I had bookmarked on 101 Cookbooks in November and was saving for our usual Christmas trip to MI.  I figured it would be relatively easy to find the necessary ingredients for it at Horrocks or even Meijer.  But since we ended up deciding to stay in San Francisco for the holidays this year, that meant that we had no more reason to wait.

winter pasta

This winter pasta recipe uses kale rather than the more predictable spinach in an almost pesto-like sauce.  The combination of garlic, shallots, goat cheese, and lemon with pasta was one that I knew I'd like.  And because of the dark green kale, it felt like it was relatively healthy.  The one thing that Steve forgot to get at the store was some thyme to go on top.  The exclusion certainly didn't make our lunch inedible, but I was a little disappointed that we had to leave it out.  I'm eager to try it again as it was meant to be, since I really like thyme.

   
Next, a fennel, leek and arugula risotto from the blog Cannelle et Vanille.
 
fennel, leek and arugula risotto

Steve had sent me this particular link—he got to it first in his feed reader—earlier that week, and it looked good to me.  I wouldn't expect fennel, leeks, and arugula to go in a risotto together, but it worked quite nicely with the help of parmesan cheese and some lemon to tie it together.  The recipe didn't include lemon juice—just zest—but the juice we added gave it a nice zing.
 
 
On December 18, Steve and I finally got around to tracking down some colored carrots for the winter Roast Carrot & Avocado Salad with Orange and Lemon Dressing that we had been wanting to try from Jamie at Home.  That involved a trip to the Ferry Building farmers market on a drizzly Saturday morning, but we found our pretty carrots.
 
roast carrot & avocado salad

They were the obvious star of this dish, too.  Besides being multicolored and pretty, those carrots were delicious, coated with a mixture of cumin seeds, chilies, garlic, thyme, oil, and vinegar while they roasted.  To round out the salad, there were pieces of avocado, some croutons, various greens including some little gem lettuce and carrot tops, a dollop of sour cream, and toasted seeds.  I didn't really find the avocado to be a vital part of the salad, but it didn't detract from the whole either.

While we were at the farmers market, Steve and I also noticed some small Lady Apples, which had been featured in a coconut rice pudding recipe on Cannelle et Vanille in November.  We got some, on a whim, and Steve made the rice pudding as a dessert/snack on Sunday.
 
coconut rice pudding

The rice pudding itself was rather rich and not as subtle as the Indian version with cardamom that Steve makes occasionally.  This one really needed the apples to provide a little acid for contrast to the pudding.  Good thing they were so cute.

You might notice that I used the same dish towel as a prop in the last three photos...  I was getting tired of using only our white napkins and found the dish towel in our cupboard—one of the few that's not stained beyond belief.  I have since claimed it for my own use, but clearly, I need to branch out to others soon.  A trip to IKEA for cheap dish towels may be in our future.

 
The last official dish of the calendar year was a side dish from our Christmas feast: Roast Vegetable Mega Mix from a Jamie Oliver Christmas series that we caught on the Cooking Channel.
  
roast veg mega mix

The centerpiece of our Christmas dinner was a roast of prime rib, since it's become traditional for us to have "roast beast" for Christmas.  However, that meant it was not new and therefore did not qualify for inclusion in the 52 Weeks of Food project.  Luckily, I was pretty excited about the roast veg recipe, so it was a good candidate for the weekend's new dish.  We had just had the roast carrot salad the week before, and this promised to be good (and pretty) as well.

Our sheet pan was loaded with rows of colorful beets, carrots, parsnips, turnips, and fennel, each with their own herbs and dressings.  Although the carrots with rosemary and clementine juice sounded good, Steve and I decided that he would make the carrots from the salad instead, with cumin and thyme instead of rosemary.  It was a good move; they still rocked.  My other favorites were the fennel and the parsnips, but the beets were tasty too.  I'd leave out the turnips next time, though.  We concluded that maybe we just don't like turnips all that much.

In addition to the prime rib and roast veg, Steve made roast potatoes (with olive oil and rosemary), garlic butter roasted mushrooms (with thyme instead of parsley), the macaroni gratin (fancy mac & cheese) from the Bouchon Cookbook, and chicken & pork roulade for Rob and Traci, since they don't eat red meat.  I ended up with a little bit of everything and a nice full plate.  For dessert, we had Indian rice pudding and lots of the cookies that I had made in the week leading up to the big event.
  

Monday, December 20, 2010

november eats

More food from this fall...  First up for the somewhat eclectic month of November: Baked Mushrooms Stuffed with Ricotta from Jamie's Italy.
 
baked stuffed mushrooms

That's right, it's yet another Jamie Oliver recipe.  We've done several during this project, and it probably has something to do with the fact that so many of his recipes are on his website.  Sure, we have several of his books, and Jamie at Home is really pretty, but the website wins for convenience.  It really helps to be able to search, bookmark things that look good, and then just go through my Firefox bookmarks when we need to decide on a new dish for the week.

Anyway, I was still in mushroom mode during the first weekend of November, so we selected this for lunch that Saturday.  The results were a'ight, but they weren't quite as pretty as the picture on Jamie's website.  The cheese spread out quite a bit.  As for flavor, I wasn't wild about the oregano in this context.  If we were to make these again, I would probably use thyme instead.  The filling also needed a little lemon juice or something to brighten it up.  The zest alone wasn't doing it.


The next week, Steve and I went back to the ever expanding cookbook shelf and pulled out the London River Cafe cookbooks, Italian Easy and Italian Two Easy.  Steve has had these for years, and our go-to carbonara recipe originally came from one of them, although it has evolved quite a bit since.  Another look was definitely overdue, so we went through and put colored tabs on the pages of anything that caught our eye.  That Saturday, we decided on Ditaloni, Mussels, White Wine from Italian Two Easy.
 
ditaloni, mussels, white wine
 
It was pretty similar to the classic moules mariniere—mussels in white wine with a little cream—that Steve often made about 3-4 years ago, so we decided to use riesling and basil here too.  The recipe didn't specify what kind of white wine to use, but it did call for parsley.  (meh.)  Our version was better, I'm sure.  It was also even better than moules mariniere, since it had pasta to pick up the sauce.  Steve made it again for dinner last Monday, and I quite enjoyed it.

 
The lunchtime light was working well for me by then, so we tried our next new dish as a Saturday lunch as well.  The plan was to make Gnudi Spinaci from Italian Easy, but I wasn't really enthused with the results.  Gnudi are supposed to be a little like gnocchi, except that they're made from ricotta cheese instead of potato.  Steve and I didn't really know what we were doing, however; so there was some guesswork involved in deciding how much semolina should coat the cheese mixture, how big they should be, etc.  They turned out okay, but they were nothing special.  I was also being picky about the picture of them, so I switched it out of the food project when another option came along at dinner that night.

Steve had bought some sunchokes (also called Jerusalem artichokes) kind of randomly, as he is wont to do.  That prompted our Saturday dinner.  We waffled between a Jamie Oliver sunchoke salad and Steve's idea for squab with sunchoke puree.  Sometime that afternoon, in the course of our trip to the Ferry Building for ingredients, Steve decided to make both.  The salad won the honor of dish of the week, though.

sunchoke salad
 
From the book Cook with Jamie, the Warm Salad of Crispy Smoked Bacon and Jerusalem Artichokes was curiously good.  We had only really had sunchokes once before, glazed and in a salad at the French Laundry, and I really didn't remember what they tasted like.  They're a little potato-y, but the flavor is kind of earthy and more complex.  My one addition to the salad in the future would be something fruity, like currants.

The tricky part about the meal was trying to take pictures after dark.  Steve wanted pictures of the food, so I was obliged to at least try.  I used two lamps in an effort to get as much light into one little corner of the living room as possible without shining the light directly onto the plates.  The salad shot turned out better and more colorful than the squab.  The light still wasn't quite as diffuse as I would have liked—points of glittery, bright white on the food makes it look less appetizing—but it was passable.

  
squab

The squab dish itself turned out really tasty too.  I hadn't had Steve's squab before, because he had been making it while I was away at rehearsals.  It was perfectly cooked, and way more flavorful than chicken.  (Squab is young pigeon, but don't worry: we didn't go out and shoot it ourselves or anything.)  To go with it, Steve made some sauteed mushrooms and the aforementioned sunchoke puree.  The puree was a little sweeter and perhaps creamier than potatoes, but it worked just as well.


Last, we come to the weekend following Thanksgiving.  Nothing Steve made for Thanksgiving dinner was new; he makes mashed potatoes, gravy, and butternut squash with brussels sprout leaves almost every year.  (Our sister-in-law, Carmen, makes the turkey.)  After a day or two off from serious cooking, Steve made our official dish for the week on that Sunday for lunch. 

spicy squash salad

A friend of mine had just posted the link on Facebook for Spicy Squash Salad with Lentils and Goat Cheese from Smitten Kitchen, and it reminded me that I had recently bookmarked it too.  It might have been better suited for Halloween, with the black lentils and orange butternut squash, but it tasted just as good in late November.  Steve wasn't able to find more black lentils at the stores anyway, so he ended up using green ones.  Along with the spicy butternut squash and green lentils, the salad had goat cheese for creaminess and tang, butternut squash seeds for salt and crunch, and mint for greenery and slight cooling.  It was one of those salads in which the perfect bite was just that: perfect.  (Not all bites were perfect, but it's always good to have goals.)

And that's all for November.  I'm catching up!  Since Christmas is at the end of this week, it won't be long until I'll be recapping December's dishes

Saturday, December 11, 2010

fall in the air

It's funny how fast the new seasons arrive sometimes.  Rather than a gradual slide from summer into fall, one day suddenly feels—or smells—subtly different than the ones before.  Sure, there are still holdouts, days that are trying to be summery, but there's no mistaking the fact that those days don't quite feel like actual summer (or Indian Summer, as the case is here).  Once October hit this year, it just felt like time for fall food.
 
In our case, that meant lots of new dishes with mushrooms.  We had figured out prior to one of our trips earlier in the year that I, unlike my sister Bethany, am not allergic to mushrooms.  So I had to make up for some lost time and get to know them properly.

On October 2, we began our streak of mushroom dishes with a Jamie Oliver Mushroom Risotto from Jamie at Home.

mushroom risotto

Steve got to use some of the dried porcinis that we had purchased at the Fatted Calf during our Napa trip in August, as well as some assorted fresh mushrooms from Far West Fungi in the Ferry Building.  The results were quite good, but even the little bit of parsley on top wasn't for me.  Next time, we use thyme.  (It's better for puns anyway.)

 
The following week, we selected a recipe from the French Laundry Cookbook: Roulade of Pekin Duck Breast with Creamed Sweet White Corn and Morel Mushroom Sauce.

duck roulade

I think Steve had a little trouble wrapping the swiss chard around the duck breast without it falling apart, but it came out well enough that I was able to find an angle that worked for the picture.  I liked the duck/corn/mushroom combination a lot, although I preferred the lobster/foie/fig from the previous month.


Moving on to week 35, we did one more mushroom dish, this one also with corn.  It was from Michael Symon's book, Live to Cook: Sweet Corn and Wild Mushroom Soup.
 
sweet corn & mushroom soup

In this case, the herb used was thyme, so it worked just fine for me.  And since Michael Symon is all about the pork, there was some bacon on top to complement the corn and mushrooms.  Again, it was a very good dish, but I didn't go wild over it.  Maybe it was the lack of cheese...


That was not a problem the next week.  We chose a Michael Symon recipe from the Wisconsin cheese website.

bacon mac

Bacon Mac & Cheese sounded like a winner, and it was.  Steve did not use Wisconsin gruyere, but it was just as good with the Swiss(?) gruyere that our neighborhood store carries.  I'm not usually one for adulterating my macaroni & cheese with anything meaty; however, the bacon, rosemary, and chives really worked for me.
  
The downside of the recipe was that the cheese sauce separated when reheated for lunch the next day.  I got stringy cheese with my macaroni and a whole lot of oil at the bottom of the bowl, most of which I poured off.  Steve, being the smart guy that he is, has fixed that problem the last couple times we've had this by making a bechamel sauce instead.  Not only does the cheese sauce stay together better in the leftovers, it's also healthier since it substitutes regular milk for some of the heavy cream.  Maybe Steve will post the revised recipe on his blog one day.  (hint hint.)


Rounding out October was Halloween.  It wasn't terribly cold, but it still seemed a good day for a dinner of soup.  Steve and I looked at our bookmarked recipes and landed on Jamie Oliver's Superb Squash Soup with the Best Parmesan Croutons.  We found it on his website, but it also happens to be from the Jamie at Home cookbook.
 
squash soup

As it turned out, I thought the butternut squash soup was indeed superb.  Steve considered putting in a splash of cream, but it didn't really need it.  I remembered the butternut squash soup we had had at DB Bistro Moderne in NY last January, and that had been almost all puree, according to our server.  This was pretty similar, and it was great with just the drizzle of olive oil we put on top.  Still, if/when we make it again, I might like to try some of the garnishes that were on the DB Bistro version: caramelized onions, pumpkin seeds, a little Italian parsley, cherries or a drizzle of balsamic vinegar.  It might not even need special croutons with a few of those garnishes to break up the sameness of the soup.  I imagine a little bread would still be good on the side, though.
 
 
Well, that takes care of another month!  It also takes care of the last vestiges of natural light in the evenings.  By the last two weeks of October, it was getting rather difficult to get pictures of dinner before the light was gone—and that was before daylight savings time ended.  Since I don't have a set-up for artificial lighting, we've now shifted to weekend lunches for most of our food project photos.

Thursday, December 9, 2010

the last of summer

It's time to work on catching up with the 52 Weeks of Food project again.  Even though the chilly, rainy weather of S.F. winter is upon us—and I'm starting to think about Christmas cookies—I'm still recapping summer food.

In San Francisco, some of the nicest days of the year usually come in September or October, once the fog is out of the way for the summer.  There are a few ridiculously hot days, but by the official beginning of fall, the hot days have the influence of a cool breeze to make them pleasant.  Sadly, although October may still feel summery once in a while, the local food is turning definitively toward fall by then.  As a result, September feels like the last gasp for summer produce.

Once the peaches and nectarines of the summer months are gone, the focus can shift to figs.  And this was the summer/fall that I fell for figs.  They seemed to be everywhere in September, but it may have just been that I was looking for them.  We did the Jamie Oliver fig salad in late August; that was a bit of an outlier, though.  The real fig obsession began around Labor Day, after our trip to the farmers market and the resulting lunch of figs, goat cheese, and other stuff.

Some of the many figs that we had purchased were used in our dinner on Labor Day with Dan, Carmen, and Steve's parents: Fig-Stuffed Roast Pork Loin from the Ad Hoc Cookbook.
 
fig-stuffed tenderloin

Through a combination of factors—no pictures of the dish on Labor Day, leftover fig jam for inside, and a general tastiness the first time—we ended up making it again a few days later and counted it as our new dish for the week after Labor Day.  This time, Steve used a pork tenderloin so that it would be enough for just the two of us, and he made some macaroni gratin (fancy mac & cheese) to accompany it.  The mac & cheese didn't make it into the final picture, but some of the fennel and preserved lemon that Steve roasted with the pork did.  Personally, I was a bigger fan of the former, but that's no surprise.

  
The next week, Steve put figs with something else I like: lobster.  This dish was from the French Laundry Cookbook, so it was a more involved Thomas Keller recipe than the previous week's.

figgy foie lobster

The Figgy Foie Lobster, as like to call it, was amazing.  The real name is Five-Spiced Roasted Lobster with Port-Poached Figs and Sautéed Foie Gras.  There's a sauce or two, a flattened fig, a lobster tail and claw, and a piece of foie gras on top of it all.  It's not the kind of recipe one makes every day; it's a little excessive.  But it was oh so good.  Thomas Keller knows his lobster.  All of the flavors balanced each other beautifully, and the dish didn't feel heavy, despite the foie gras on top.
  
The biggest challenge for Steve seemed to be stacking it all in such a way that it wouldn't fall and mess up the plate before I could take the picture.  The plate that made it into the photo was actually a do-over, which involved washing off the plate completely and building it again with a fresh spoonful of sauce.  Happily, it worked out that time.

  
For dessert, we had... more figs!

goat cheese custard with figs

The recipe was from Tartlette: a goat cheese custard, much like cheesecake, with figs and a sweet balsamic syrup on top.  Steve improvised with cooking containers on this one.  The smaller custards cooked in ring molds worked out pretty well, but the ones he did in ramekins and one that he did in a larger tart pan didn't cook quite right.  He ended up buying some small tart pans and rings after that, so we'll be ready next time.

  
Finally, at the end of September—on Dan's birthday, actually—Steve made our last summery dish of the year: Cheesy Heirloom Panini Batons from 101 Cookbooks.

panini batons

Steve even went a step further than Heidi and made his own rosemary focaccia from the bread book that I had given him for his birthday.  The panini batons ended up being a little bigger than the suggested size, but they were a good size for our lunch.  We used some of the last heirloom tomatoes of the season, mozzarella, and the green spread from the recipe—ricotta, garlic, basil, chives, and olive oil.

 
Then I got creative with the leftovers.  I was in rehearsals for my fall show at the time, so I had to eat lunches and dinners without Steve most days.  We had leftover focaccia, green spread, and mozzarella; so instead of firing up the stove for paninis, I got some sliced turkey breast and put it all on the focaccia to make a nice cold sandwich.  The downside of the focaccia was that it was pretty oily, which made it messy to hold.  A little parchment solved that problem, and kept the sandwich from falling apart too.

leftovers sandwich
 
In the next installment, we move from September into October.  In other words, from figs to mushrooms.
 

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

adventures with in-laws

Steve's parents, Bruce and Bonnie, were in town for a month during August and September.  I thought I'd share some of the pictures I took while they were visiting.
 
This year, we gave them a reprieve from the annual work on the house.  They've helped us every year since we bought the place in 2005.  That first year involved a lot of demolition, including that of our kitchen.  The 2006 visit was mostly work on Dan and Carmen's unit downstairs, 2007 was sanding and painting our living room and bathroom, 2008 was our dining room, and last year was the painting of our kitchen.  We still have the hallway to fix and paint, along with our utility room and half-bath, but that hasn't been a big priority.  Since Bruce had throat surgery a few months before their visit this year, we didn't want to expose him to all the extra dust.
  
Instead, Bruce and Bonnie got to enjoy their vacation with more leisure time.  They parked their RV in Pacifica as usual and spent several days walking around the beaches and the pier.  We let them stay at our house while we were in Napa, and then they went camping with Dan and Carmen and L.J. the next weekend.  They also got to borrow our car now and then for little day trips. 

Their arrival in town was just in time for my birthday in mid-August, so they joined us for my birthday dinner at Contigo.  There are pictures of the food from that meal on Flickr, but I didn't take pictures of people that night.  I didn't even hand over my camera for someone to take pictures of me opening my birthday presents, although Carmen took some with Bonnie's camera.

One of the main events of their visit was their 40th anniversary on August 29.  We all went to see Toy Story 3 in Daly City in the afternoon, and then we had dinner at Fog City Diner that evening.

anniversary dinner

They opened their anniversary cards from us while we were there.

cards

And we all shared some truffle fries.  (More food pictures are on Flickr.)

truffle fries

Bruce and Bonnie finished by sharing a malted milkshake.  I tried some, and it was really good.

malt shop picture

On Labor Day weekend, we braved the crowds and took the parents to the Saturday morning farmers market at the Ferry Building.  I took my camera and shot some of the produce. 
  
veggies

I guess I wasn't the only one with that idea...

canon shooter

While we were shopping at the stall pictured above, I spotted Chef Chris Cosentino buying produce for his restaurant, Incanto.  I pointed him out to Bonnie, since we took them to Incanto for my birthday two years ago.  We've also shown them an episode or two of "Chefs vs. City," on which Cosentino competes.  He was chatting with someone about the show.  I didn't take any pictures of him; I saved those for random strangers and family members.
 
At one point, Bonnie wanted to take a picture of Bruce picking out some tomatoes for them.  I sniped a picture myself while Bonnie was directing her shot, and I liked how it turned out.

bruce

We filled up our bags with tomatoes, figs, almonds, nettles, assorted cheeses, butter, meat sticks from Fatted Calf, prosciutto and salami from Boccalone, and a baguette for good measure.

bonnie & steve

After fighting our way back out through the Ferry Building, we BARTed back home and set out some of our purchases for lunch.  The bread was especially good with the butter we bought—and the spreadable goat cheese too—but my favorite combination was figs and goat cheese.  Alternated with some prosciutto or almonds, it was the perfect late summer lunch—or snack.

That afternoon, Steve and I walked to Ritual for some coffee with Bonnie while Bruce napped at home.  Bonnie and I both got mochas, and Steve got a macchiato (pictured below).

macchiato

On Monday, Labor Day, we all went to Lands End.  Traffic and parking were a bit of a nightmare, but it was a beautiful day.  Dan and Carmen had been hiking on the trail before, but I hadn't been to that area of the city before.  There was a lovely view of the Golden Gate Bridge, although the beach there isn't as close as some of the others.

picture time

A lot of people were out, but it wasn't unpleasantly crowded on the trail down to the beach.  Once we were down there, we took a few pictures and watched Enzo run around.

steve & me

Enzo played with his toy for a while, and then he met a dog named Atlas.  They chased each other around for quite a while at top speed, and Atlas' owner had trouble dragging him away when it was time to go.
 
We also saw some starfish hanging around, since it was low tide.

dan & carmen

I shot some pictures of family members again, since I've gotten negligent about that lately.
 
bonnie & bruce

And one last shot of the bridge from a little detour we took after climbing back up the hill from the beach.
 
lands end

Finally, Carmen and I made one last outing with Bonnie before they left town: tea at Lovejoy's Tea Room in Noe Valley.

tea time

We got High Tea for three with salad, tea sandwiches, scones with jam and cream, and sugar cookies.  It was all very girly and fun.
 
Steve didn't get to cook for his parents quite as much on this visit, but we had a few homemade dinners with them to balance out the Friday nights that we ordered pizza.  The arancini got especially good reviews, but they also enjoyed his macaroni & cheese, calzones, and a fig-stuffed pork loin.

More on the pork loin and other fig-related dishes in the next post, as I get back to September's contributions to the 52 Weeks of Food project.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

august cookery

Time to catch up with the old 52 Weeks of Food project.  I have 14 weeks worth of food to cover, and I don't even want to know how far behind Steve is with the blogging.  I'm mostly just glad that he's kept up with the cooking part each week.

When last I blogged about our cooking endeavors, I left off with the broccoli cheddar soup of week 24.  That was the very end of July.  August began with another recipe from another food blog: La Tartine Gourmand.

stuffed zucchini

I sent the link to Steve one day, because I thought the pictures were pretty.  It wasn't so much that I wanted him to try to make it.  Nevertheless, he came home from the farmers market not long after with a few globe zucchini—the very same kind that were used in this recipe.  So of course, we had to try it once we had them.  The squash were filled with a mixture of the zucchini innards, sweet potato, prosciutto, parmesan, celery, garlic, shallots, thyme, and marjoram.  We ate it with some plain white rice and opened a bottle of Kuleto Estate Chardonnay.  It was a good meal, and it was different from many of our usual recipes.

Right before our anniversary trip, we took care of week 25 in the form of a Saturday lunch: Summertime Tagliarini from Jamie Oliver's website.

summertime linguini

We strayed slightly from the website version.  First, we used linguini, which is similar but easier to find than tagliarini.  Second, I requested a change from the parsley in the original to basil, which I much prefer.  I didn't feel too badly about that, since Jamie mentions a basil version at the River Cafe in the introduction.

The recipe for this pasta is really easy, especially if you skip the step of warming the bowl of sauce over the pasta water.  Steve determined that it wasn't necessary anyway, since the sauce heats up and melts the cheese just fine when you mix it with the cooked pasta at the end.  If you heat it too much or too fast, which you risk doing with the double boiler method, the sauce tends to seize up.  Anyway, it's so easy that I've made it a couple times for lunch recently.  (A quarter recipe gives me two servings.)  And it has so many things I like: pasta, cheese, basil, lemon, and pinenuts.  Win-win.

After all of the good eating on the Napa trip, we got back to the project with another easy Jamie Oliver recipe.  This one was the creatively titled Easiest, Sexiest Salad in the World.
 
fig salad

It was the beginning of my fall fig obsession.  There were figs of two kinds—I now know that I prefer the black ones—along with prosciutto, mozzarella, basil, and a dressing of olive oil and lemon juice.  It was a little like the Grilled Peach Salad that we often eat in the summer, but I think I prefer the grilled peaches.  I suppose this is a good option for the post-peach season, however.

We stuck with the online sources for one more week after that, switching from Jamie Oliver to 101 Cookbooks.  I had gone through Heidi's archives and looked for recipes that looked good to bookmark, paying attention to the dates on her blog entries to keep the seasonality correct.  While the cherry tomatoes were still had the farmers market, Steve made the Red Pesto Ravioli.

red pesto ravioli

Luckily, Heidi's recipe had pinenuts as an option, because the walnuts that she used for her pesto would not have worked out so well for me.  Our result didn't have quite the rustic look of hers, but it was more important that I live.  The "optional" oven-roasted cherry tomatoes for topping were also a very good idea.  Since Steve is Steve, he insisted on making his own ravioli, rather than buying some as the recipe suggests.  His goat cheese and ricotta ravioli turned out really well; he seems to be getting better at rolling out fresh pasta.  In the end, the only change I'd make is to use less garlic in the pesto or cook it a bit first.  It was pretty intense, and I don't like tasting garlic for several hours after dinner.  But other than that, I'm looking forward to next summer so we can have it again.
 
The next weekend, we hit the (cook)books once more, namely David Tannis' A Platter of Figs.  We had done the Shaved Summer Squash with Squash Blossoms several weeks before, but it was time to try the rest of the "Yellow Hunger" menu.  The main course of that menu was Halibut with Indian Spices, Yogurt Sauce, and Yellow Tomatoes.

yellow fish

I've found that while I love crudo fish dishes, cooked fish isn't generally my favorite.  I enjoy a nice fillet of salmon occasionally, probably because it's a good excuse to eat the cheesy polenta that Steve serves with it, but I usually don't order cooked fish in restaurants.  I'm willing to try just about anything, though.  This halibut was yellow from an Indian spice rub and served with yogurt sauce, which sounded interesting.  The yogurt had various spices in it as well, but I think I wanted something more akin to raita, with mint actually in it and not just on top.  Lemon juice might have helped too, although the sauce was already pretty thin.  Overall, I wasn't wild about it.

For dessert, a simple pairing of peaches—yellow, of course—soaked in white wine.

peaches in wine

Steve made some whipped cream to go with it, and I suggested adding cardamom for interest.  We had had cardamom whipped cream on a plum tart at Contigo last year, and I remembered loving it.  It was a good move.  As a dessert, it wasn't as elaborate as the sauternes cake with peaches that I was craving from our dinner at Redd, but it was delicious and summery anyway.
 
Next up: my obsession with figs gets a workout.  Plus, the end of the late San Francisco summer.

Saturday, November 6, 2010

wineless in wine country

Contrary to the title of this post, we were not completely wineless on our last day in Napa.  However, Wednesday began without the wine tastings of the previous two days.  After checking out of our hotel, we headed to the Round Pond Olive Mill in Rutherford for a different kind of tasting.  I had come across Round Pond while looking at travel websites.  They have a winery across the street, but I was trying to find some options for things to do that didn't involve wine.  A tour and tasting at the olive mill turned out to be a nice switch, and it gave us a rest from the alcohol.

round pond
We got there around 10am for the tour, and we ended up in a group of about 10 people.  The tour itself was interesting, but it didn't travel very far.  We spent a while right outside the building, standing next to one of the olive trees.  There, we learned a little about growing olives: the main kinds they have (Spanish and Italian), the things they have to do to avoid pests (keep the ground free of dead fruit and trim the trees so that there's more space between the top part of the trunk and the branches), and how best to harvest the fruit to avoid bruising (by hand).

Having covered all that, we went back inside and examined the working part of the building.  We were told that Round Pond is one of the only olive oil producers in the area with its own mill, so they don't have to transport the olives before processing them or work around a shared mill's busy schedule.  As a result, higher quality is retained, and the oil doesn't get the bitterness that comes from bruised fruit. There was a machine with big stone wheels for crushing the olives, old school style, as well as more modern centrifuges for separating the oil from the water.  I didn't actually take any pictures of the machinery; it didn't seem particularly photogenic to me.

tasting spread
The tasting part of the tour and tasting, however, was indeed picture-worthy.  At the table, we each had two blue glasses, which contained tastes of olive oil.  The first was the Italian Varietal, and the second was the Blood Orange.  The blue glasses were used so that color would not be a factor in the tasting.  So we tried each of the olive oils, after a little instruction in the correct way to do so.  We warmed the cup in our hands a bit, took a sip, and then slurped in some air—not unlike Hannibal Lecter with the fava beans and chianti.  It was kind of silly, but it did make it easier to taste the flavors in the oil without it simply coating the tongue.
  
I ended up liking the Blood Orange better than the Italian.  The Italian Varietal was more assertive and spicier, while the Blood Orange was made with the more mellow Spanish olive varieties.  The blood orange flavor was also better incorporated than I might have expected.  Rather than just infusing olive oil with flavor, they actually grind the fruit peels with olives to get more of their oils thoroughly melded with the olive oil.
 
Next up to taste was red wine vinegar.  Round Pond makes two kinds, which makes sense, since the winery has plenty of red wine and red wine grapes.  We tried the Cabernet Sauvignon-Merlot vinegar first, but I preferred the Sangiovese-Nebbiolo-Petit Verdot, which just seemed better balanced to me.  Again, the tasting involved some tricks.  For the vinegar, we were provided with two sugar cubes.  The idea is to get a drop of vinegar on a sugar cube and then suck it out.  The sugar is supposed to compensate for the acid of the vinegar and make it more palatable.  Of course, if you accidentally get too much vinegar on the sugar cube, it disintegrates into a sticky mess.  Not that one of us would ever do that... (Steve.)

ready for tasting
After the official tasting of the oil and vinegar, we were left on our own to mix and match with the various Round Pond products and the food on the table.  There were pieces of bread, salad greens, cherry tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, strawberries, blue cheese, and pecorino cheese.  I made myself a nice salad with my favorites of the oil and vinegar and tried the two oils again, with bread this time.

In addition to the oils and vinegars, Round Pond produces meyer lemon and blood orange syrups.  (Presumably, they're using the parts of the fruits that aren't getting used in the flavored olive oils.)  They were pretty sweet, but they went well with the salty pecorino cheese.  The meyer lemon syrup was also tasty with the strawberries.

In the end, we bought a bottle each of the Blood Orange Olive Oil and the Sangiovese-Nebbiolo-Petit Verdot Vinegar.  They also had these adorable little bottles, so we got one of the Italian Varietal and one of the Meyer Lemon Olive Oil.

mini bottles



After Round Pond Olive Mill, we made a quick stop at nearby Honig to purchase a bottle of their Late Harvest Sauvignon Blanc.  We had done a tasting there last year, by appointment, but we didn't bother to do one this year.  Still, I wanted to bring home a bottle of the dessert wine, so we dropped by and bought one.
  
By this time, it was almost noon.  Despite our little snack at the olive mill, we were hungry enough to stop for some lunch before driving back home.  We decided that Bottega would be good for that.
  
bottega

We ate dinner at Michael Chiarello's restaurant in Yountville at the start of our trip last year—the picture above is from that evening.  Unfortunately, we had eaten too big a snack too late that day, so didn't feel like we had really done the place justice.  Lunch was a good chance to try again and taste some more dishes.
 
We each ordered a glass of wine—sparkling for me and red for Steve—and started with one of the specials: a salmon tartare.

salmon tartare
I should mention that we were seated outside on the covered patio.  I was excited to sit outside, because it seemed so picturesque.  What I didn't think about beforehand was the effect that the orange canopy would have on pictures taken under it.  My camera (and Lightroom) tried its best to compensate for it, but all of the pictures ended up exceptionally red-pink.  It took all of my meager skills at using Lightroom to make them look like they weren't radioactive.  The first and third pictures of the meal still aren't quite right, but believe me, they're a whole lot better than they were.
 
The picture of my lunch entree fared a little better.
 
Swiss Chard & Ricotta Raviolo, farm fresh egg yolk & sage browned butter parmigiano
  
raviolo

When I ordered this, our waiter made sure that I knew that it had runny egg yolk in it, which oozes out when the raviolo is cut open.  I guess they're used to tourists, many of whom are scared of anything that's not fully cooked.  I have no problem with it, as long as the chef knows what he or she is doing.  My only problem with the raviolo was that the dough was a little gluey around the edges.  Other than that, the flavors were great.

Steve also got a pasta dish:
  
Garganelli with tomato braised rabbit sugo, wild mushrooms & ricotta

garganelli
Again, not the best picture, but Steve enjoyed the food.  It was more his style of pasta, though: braised and earthy.  I tend to prefer cheesy and/or lemony.
  
We didn't see Chef Chiarello at all during our lunch, but apparently, he was at work in the kitchen.  We heard our waiter talking to a table that arrived a while after us, introducing a new appetizer special that Chiarello was testing out.  It must have been really new, since it wasn't being offered when we arrived.  The other table was asking about a dish that they had seen on the Food Network show The Best Thing I Ever Ate.  They were told that that dish wasn't on the menu at the time, but they could try this new appetizer, made by Michael Chiarello himself.  Not a bad consolation prize, really.
 
After lunch, there was just one more stop to make: Bouchon Bakery, across the street.  I wanted to get some cookies to take home with us.  We had gotten a TKO (Thomas Keller Oreo) the year before, so I wanted to get some of those for sure.  But last year, I hadn't known if I was allergic to almonds or not, which prevented me from trying the macarons.  This year, there was no such deterrent.  We left with an assortment of French macarons, several TKOs, and a foie gras dog biscuit to give to Dan and Carmen's dog, Enzo.  Steve's parents were going on a camping trip the next weekend with Dan and Carmen, so we sent along a TKO and a vanilla macaron for each couple to share.  (They were all pretty big cookies.)
 
The day after we got back, I did the obligatory photo shoot with the remaining macarons.  We had eaten the caramel one already, but we still had coffee, vanilla, chocolate, and raspberry.  In case you're wondering, they tasted as good as they looked.
 
macarons

And thus ends the recounting of the second anniversary Napa trip.  (Finally.)  It was a lovely visit to wine country, and although we didn't experience as many wineries as last time, the food more than made up for it.  I would gladly return to any of the restaurants we tried, especially the Restaurant at Meadowood, which just earned its third Michelin star.  The French Laundry is the only other three-star Michelin restaurant in the Bay Area, so that's quite an accomplishment.