I'm sorry. Want a slice of cake?

Dear almond cake, I think I love you.

It has been so long that I'm not sure where to begin. Well, I figure that people really like cake, so what better way to say hello, sorry, than with this lovely little number? There, now don't we all feel better? I'm not the first cook to notice that almond paste and butter and sugar make very, very fine bedfellows, but I'm here to underscore their observations. This is the kind of cake you'll be glad to have in your recipe box. It's perfectly moist, with a tender crumb, and the crowning touch of toasted, sliced almonds adds just the right amount of texture. It also has the added benefit of being incredibly versatile, the black dress of cakes. It's great on its own (even for-ahem-breakfast) but you can gussy it up with any number of seasonal accompaniments.

A little rhubarb compote, maybe, fragrant with orange zest? Some sliced strawberries? A gilding-the-lily drizzle of chocolate? Poached apricots in vanilla syrup? Well, you get the point. I wish I could tell you that I invented this cake myself, that I awoke one morning with a vision of dessert, realized on the first attempt. Alas, credit must be given to the good people up at Thomas Keller's Bouchon Bakery. The recipe is in Keller's cookbook, Bouchon, which is filled with recipes that normal people can actually make...in sharp contrast to the collection of recipes in his French Laundry cookbook. Before discovering this recipe I had a go-to almond cake in my repertoire, one so loaded with butter and almond paste that it always collapsed after coming out of the oven, which I dealt with by filling the depression with berries. But that cake has now been removed from rotation, because this one, this one is just perfect.

Gateau Aux Amandes from Bouchon Bakery

7 ounces almond paste
1/4 cup granulated sugar
8 tablespoons (4 ounces) unsalted butter, cut into small pieces and chilled
2 tablespoons mild-flavored honey
3 large eggs
2 tablespoons amaretto, plus additional for brushing
1/3 cup all-purpose flour, sifted
kosher salt
1/2 cup sliced almonds, toasted
confectioners' sugar

3/4 cup creme fraiche, whipped to soft peaks (we made our own...I'll share that technique in my next post, as it's well worth knowing about.)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour an 8-inch round cake pan and line the bottom with parchment paper. Put the almond paste and sugar in the bowl of a heavy-duty mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Cream mixture on low speed to break up almond paste, then increase the speed to medium for about 2 minutes, or until paste is broken into fine particles. Add the butter and mix for 4 to 5 minutes, until mixture is airy and light in color; stop the machine and scrape down the sides as necessary. It is important to mix long enough or the cake will have a dense texture. Mix in the honey, then add the eggs one at a time, beating until each one is fully incorporated before adding the next. Add amaretto, flour, and a pinch of salt and mix just to combine.

Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top. Bake for about 25 minutes, or until the cake is golden and springs back when pressed. Transfer to a cooling rack to cool. Invert the cake onto the rack, remove the parchment, and invert the cake again so that the top is once again facing upward. Brush the top of the cake with amaretto and sprinkle with toasted almonds. Dust generously with confectioners' sugar. The cake will keep, well-wrapped, for up to two days (like it'll last that long).

Serve with a dollop of whipped creme fraiche and the fruit accompaniment of your choice. Die and go to heaven.

Splendid Spuds

Nearly a year ago I wrote a grant proposal for some funding that would allow me to work on my pet project, a look into the food culture in Northern Maine (if this sounds funny to you, you're not alone--every time I tell someone about this I get a weird look). My idea was to head to the Northernmost region of the state, where I'd set about tracking down farmers and cheesemakers and maple sugarers and potato people and get them to talk to me about what they are doing. I'd long suspected that Maine was the place to find interesting folks doing interesting food things, and it felt like time to put the hunch to work.

So in mid-September I headed up to Aroostook County. As a writer, it's hard to avoid the disappointment that comes when you envision a story in your head and then can't, no matter how hard you try, make it be so. It's better to go in expecting nothing and then being pleasantly surprised. So I tried not to expect anything specific, just let the region tell me the story it wanted me to hear. I can't lie--some of the journey was incredibly disappointing. There I was, in one of the richest agricultural regions in the country, sitting down at a restaurant and discovering that, rather than serving green beans from their neighbors down the street, they're buying them frozen, from Sysco. But some of the journey was exciting and encouraging, and I met some farmers who I believe will lead the area in the right direction.

One of those farmers, Jim Gerritsen, spent the better part of three hours with me one morning, just before potato picking was to begin. At his organic farm, Wood Prarie, they harvest the potatoes by hand, a practice almost no one does anymore, since most farmers are farming 700 acres, not the 15 that the Gerritsen's plant (Wood Prarie is a total of 500 acres, but most is given over to forest, with frequent and elaborate crop rotation that protects the soil). It's more time consuming, of course, but the Gerritsen's have chosen to grow heirloom varieties of potatoes that simply cannot be picked by massive harvesters. The local kids get two weeks off of school to help with harvest, says Jim, "They learn more in two weeks here then they do at school."

I was reluctant to leave the farm, but another interview was calling. Before I left, though, Jim's wife Megan thrust two large bags of their early-harvest Yukon Golds at me, her favorite variety. At the airport, my suitcase made weight by a half-pound, and I had a moment where I thought that toting potatoes from Maine to San Francisco was, let's face it, a bit crazy. But last night I had a big bowlful of Jim and Megan's potatoes, mashed with butter, cream, salt and pepper, and thought that I would have been crazy to leave them behind.

Here's the best part--you don't have to make a field trip to Maine to taste these potatoes. The Gerritsen's are incredibly savvy marketers, with a beautiful color catalog and a potato-of-the-month club. As far as I can tell, this is likely the best, most unusual gift for a food lover you'll find this holiday season, and buying a bag (or two, since you'll want one for yourself) of these potatoes is such a good way to say that you support the small farmer. Visit www.woodprairie.com for all the info.

Hey, you hungry? Let me fix you something.

There is just no excuse, but I hope you’ll forgive me just the same. That’s what friends do, right? Friends forgive you for being absent, busy, distracted. They forgive you for forgetting to invite them over for dinner as often as you’d like to, and they know—they just know—that when you make their favorite brownies or carrot soup or iceberg wedge salad with blue cheese dressing that they are at the back of your mind, waiting patiently for some attention.

At least, that’s what I’m hoping, since I know I’ve let some of you down. I haven’t given you the recipe for rib-eye steaks with a shallot and red wine sauce, served over watercress that gets all wilted, that I made for friends last Monday. I haven’t told you about the weird How-To video/commercial I starred in last week, where I wrestled a turkey wearing a full face of make-up (and then some! Television personalities, it turns out, where a lot of make-up). I haven’t even told you about a magical trip to Maine that I took in September, where I interviewed potato farmers and restaurateurs and home cooks, the beginning of a project I hope will turn into something bigger.

In short, I haven’t told you much of anything. But I hope to make it up to you. I took a four month holiday, but I’m back. And boy, do I have some stories to tell!

Summer Sweet

The Perfect Summer Lunch.

I know that it's not right to complain about the weather in San Francisco. But, but--here we are, mid-June, and nary a sultry day in sight. No reason for popsicles, for ice cold beer, wedges of watermelon, long evenings by the grill (Well, you could spend a long evening by the grill, but you'd need to wear a jacket, and maybe a hat.) Though I hate to admit it, I really miss summer.

If you head inland a bit, remove yourself from the bay breezes and rolling waves of fog, it's deep, hot, steamy summer. In the Central Valley, in Sacramento--scorching. That means that all of the foods that I've come to associate with the season, like peaches, apricots, pluots, baseball bat-sized zucchinis and, best of all, corn, are still coming from a local source.

Growing up, we'd have big piles of corn on the cob for supper, our sticks of butter bearing the trademark pattern of the ears, which we'd roll to coat. (This is an important question--did your family do the roll to coat method, or were you of the slice-a-pat-and-rub-it-on-the-ear school?). A dozen farm-fresh ears was hardly enough for our family of five. Our all-corn dinner was followed by a big bowl of strawberry shortcake: Sweet nubby biscuits split and filled with softly whipped cream and hulled local berries. Tell me, please--can you imagine a summer supper better than this?

In honor of the season, we had corn for lunch today. Just corn, boiled, buttered, salted and dusted with black pepper. Sarah and I looked at one other, mmming and crunching. For a minute there, it almost felt like summer.

Simple Sunday

Somehow, despite all the hub-bub and build-up, we forgot today was the annual Bay to Breakers foot race, a very San Francisco-style free for all that mixes "real" runners with passionate amateurs and more than a few folks who trail along, running or walking, in costumes or buck-naked save for running shoes, many towing kegs behind. I know, how could you forget something like that?

In any case, after driving around the city for an hour trying to get to the Golden Gate Bridge (ha! double ha!) we ended up taking the Bay Bridge to Richmond, then the Richmond Bridge over to San Rafael. It just so happens that Sunday is farmers' market day at the Civic Center in San Rafael, so we stopped in. First, the bad: so many strollers, so many parents cooing over children running amok through stalls, sticking their half-eaten strawberries back into unclaimed baskets of to-be-purchased berries, so much Marin humanity, so many fancy S.U.V's crowding the lots. How can such a beautiful place be filled with...well, let's just say they aren't all as "in touch" as we might hope. Then, the good: strawberries, apricots, fava beans and little gem lettuces; Brickmaiden bread, the kind with a little whole wheat flour mixed in so it has just enough chew to it, chickens turning on spits and some--from Marin Sun Farms--ready for roasting, feet still attached. Good stuff!

We're having a kind of lazy Sunday meal--a roasted chicken, a piece of cheese, maybe some fava bean puree on toast. A couscous salad, with Armenian cukes from the market. But that's all just wholesome build-up to the real deal--possessed by some sort of dessert demon (a not infrequent occurrence chez nous) I made fresh mint ice cream with shavings of dark chocolate stirred in and then I tried making cones, too. The cones are tasty but totally ugly--they will not be holding the ice cream (due to giant holes at the bottom) so much as accenting the ice cream, like a crunchy little top hat. And who do I have to blame for all this? Ex-Chez Panisse pastry chef David Lebovitz, author of the newly released "The Perfect Scoop," a guide to fool-proof and goddamn that's good ice cream making. He also has a terrific eponymous blog, www.davidlebovitz.com Check it out!

Two-Timing

I'll admit it. I've been two-timing all of you. Remember a couple of posts ago, when I told you that I had taken a new job? Turns out this job has a blogging requirement to it, so I've been writing up a storm over there. Take a look.

You'll all be happy to know that all that blogging, eating out and general food-world immersion has done nothing to quell my boundless appetite. In my precious spare time, I've been testing some recipes for All You magazine (Creepy Coffin Canapes, anyone?), throwing my first ever "Out like a lamb" party (yes, it was a lamb-themed party for 40 in our backyard. Merguez sausage, kofte, free-flowing wine, lamb shaped chocolates), and on the merit of said party, scoring a coveted invitation to our a new friend's annual Crab-Crackin' Bonanza. (The invitation read, "starts promptly at 7 with the crack of a claw.") Lest you thought I'd been eating Ryvita crisp toasts and bubbly water, rest assured I've been getting my full calorie requirements each day.

I'll post photos of the festivities soon, but in the meantime, go check out that other blog of mine. Or, even better, pick up the May issue of 7x7. You'll see a certain someone on the contributors page.....

In praise of a perfect day

This is a post in praise of the perfect day. Today, I awoke to a bright blue sky (well, actually, I awoke to somebody--a wrong phone number somebody--calling my cell phone at 8am on a Saturday, but I digress) and a day almost completely without plans. I've been intentionally low-key lately, trying to recover from my tuberculin cough and my first week at a new job, so it was a great thrill to have the entire day free.

In the morning, I paid a visit to the humble, lovely Alemany Farmers' Market, which happily seems to have more vendors this spring than ever before. I bought pencil-thin asparagus and a chocolate croissant, had my knives sharpened (finally!), and got a hot tip about the best farm fresh eggs, sold by the olive oil vendor. He doesn't advertise them--he just has a basket in the back and sells them to those in the know. The best part is how he packs them up for you--tenderly tucking them into a brown paper sack lined with hay. Charming! I can't wait until breakfast tomorrow.

Then I had a long, leisurely lunch with a good friend, the kind of lunch that stretches through the afternoon--the kind of lunch that you daydream about when life is hectic. A lunch with a glass of white wine, a glorious abundance of fresh salads, cured meats, and good conversation, followed by an excellent ice cream cone. If there was some way to stop time, I would have stopped it for a couple of hours today.

It's spring here, now, no doubt about it. Tomorrow we'll turn our clocks forward, revel in the warm weather and extra sunshine and look forward to the happiest days of summer.

Grey skies are gonna clear up....

Well, it's been kind of a whirlwind, to say the least. You know when you're wishing and hoping for things to happen, crossing your fingers, throwing salt over your shoulder, blowing out birthday candles, hoping? It seems like that's when things DO NOT happen. It's like an emotional watched pot--the more you hope, the less that comes your way.

But when you get too busy for hoping, too busy for planning--that's when things seem to unfold in front of you, glorious and bright. Friends, I've been riding high these last weeks. After a few years of freelancing, followed by a 6 month gig at Sunset Magazine (great, but underpaid), I've finally gone off and gotten myself a "real job" as assistant food editor at 7x7 magazine, the San Francisco city magazine. What does this mean? Well, I'm not sure yet--my first day is tomorrow--but it's the beginning of a new chapter, and a new, deep familiarity with the city dining scene. Stay tuned!

On Crispy

I've finally decided. My favorite flavor is crispy. I love browned bits, burnt ends, toasty toast, blistered pizza crust...well, you get the picture. So Saturday night, looking for something to serve with boudin blanc and a lovely little Frenchy salad of mache and endive, I resurrected an old favorite recipe that takes crispy to its most glorious extreme: Kate's crispy potatoes.

Kate Rowe and I worked together at La Varenne cooking school in Burgundy, France, about 5 years ago. It was a long summer, filled with endless meals, long days, elaborate cooking techniques and scarce personal time. One night, when another group of unexpected guests was invited to stay for dinner, Kate and I quickly whipped together a meal. Salad with cheese, probably, maybe a couple roast chickens, some artichokes with big bowls of melted butter--who knows. What I do remember, though, was the debut of Kate's Crispies. Halfway between home fries and frites, these potatoes are rich, deliciously brown, and very simple to prepare. I'll caution you now--2 pounds of russet potatoes is enough for 4 people. While you're eating them, you'll probably wish you had more, but trust me--just TRUST me--you shouldn't eat more than a half-pound.

To make Kate's Crispies:
Peel 2 pounds of russet potatoes and cut them into 1-in. cubes. Put them into a cast-iron skillet (10-12 inch) or a small roasting pan and add 3/4 cup of sunflower oil and 1/4 cup olive oil (or all olive oil, if you prefer). Start the pan on the top of the stove over medium-high heat. You want the oil to heat up quickly, so the potatoes start to gently fry. Once the oil and pan is nice and hot, transfer the pan to a 425 degree oven and bake (I probably should say "fry-bake"), stirring every 10-15 minutes, until they are very brown, and very crispy, about 1-1 1/2 hours. Remove potatoes from oil with a slotted spoon, sprinkle generously with salt and eat! Save the oil that remains in the pan for another frying or roasting project.

Try them tonight--and let me know how it goes!

5 Good Things

It's a little late, I know, to recount all of the best food things about 2006, now comfortably 16 days behind us. But I'm sure you'll still be happy to hear about 5 highlights of the table from this year gone by, and hopefully my recounting will lead to your own adventures--I look forward to hearing the news.

Last night, Sarah made us a peach cobbler (she's really perfected the recipe, and I'll post that one soon). I know you're probably thinking, "what would Alice (Waters, natch) say?" about serving peach cobbler in the depths of January? Well, you see, back in the heat of the summer there was this certain adopted tree, you might remember, and that tree yielded 6 cases of peaches. Once we had eaten our fill, I froze and canned the rest, to pull out when we were tired of oranges, chocolate, and gingerbread. So, best food thing 2006 #1? Those fresh peaches from Masumoto's farm. Good then, good now!

My brother is a good and enthusiastic cook, and his girlfriend's family has extraordinarily good taste: they bought him a fry-o-later for their apartment. I've given fry-o-laters as gifts, enjoyed many nights of tempura and wontons in the stinky kitchens of others, but have never broken down and bought one myself. So it's a real treat to go to his house, where the fry-o-later is extension corded out to their porch and perenially in service. Now, french fries are kind of our thing. My brother does the whole double-fry action so the fries are ultra-crisp on the outside and resemble mashed potatoes within, and it's the food we make to mark an occasion. We made them the night before we moved to California, and for our last supper of '06, making them good food thing #2: the homemade fry.

Does everyone already know about Vietnamese crepes? Is this old news? Well, I discovered them in 2006. These crispy little puppies are made with rice flour and coconut milk, fried just enough, then filled with bean sprouts, shrimp, and chicken. I squiggle Sriracha over the top and dig in. Recently, I looked up a recipe for the crepes (previously limited to take-out only) and think that 2007 could be the year I attempt this at home. Vietnamese Crepes? Good thing #3.

Wafuu curry, what my friend Sylvan calls the macaroni and cheese of Japan. Kind of like a stew, only with curry flavor. So savory! So succulent! Even when Sylvan confessed to using a pre-made curry base, as is typical in Japan, it only added to the appeal. Wafuu, I love you, you're #4.

In Belfast, Maine, there's this sweet little shop called Chase's Daily. It's owned by a farming family who have 500 acres out in Freedom, Maine, where they grow all sorts of great vegetables. This is worth a post of its own, but in the meantime I'll just say: walnut scones with apricot jam? Lucky #5. These not so sweet scones are loaded up with ground walnuts and formed into big rounds. Then, just before they are finished baking, they drop a couple of tablespoons of juicy, delicious apricot jam into the center. The end result is a bit like eating a piece of walnut toast with butter and jam. In other words, a great thing.

Bird by Bird

I could blog about Thanksgiving...but aren't we all tired of that, by now? I like listening to people talk about their Thanksgiving meals, though, kind of checklist fashion. Turkey? Check. Gravy? Uh-huh. Mashed Potatoes? Oh, me too. Well, no kidding, folks. Have you noticed that everyone eats essentially the SAME dinner? Except the woman in front of me at the post office. She was gabbing on her cell phone about a Persian Thanksgiving. What could that be?

But enough turkey talk. I want to tell you about my new favorite kitchen tool. Well, it's not a tool, really--it's a bird. Can you guess what it does? It's little birdie back lifts up, and you can place a slice of lemon or lime in there, then press it down, and the juice come out the bird's spout, which has little holes to catch the seeds. Genius, eh? I saw this gadget for the first time at a friend's summer home, where all the kitchen gear has that wonderful, odd, vintage beach house feel (as in, it's mostly stuff used to make cocktails or boil lobster). I'd never seen one before, but I coveted it immediately, so much so that I kind of wanted to swipe it from her house. But I didn't. No, really! I didn't.

Instead, I went to Cookin', a gem of a store here in San Francisco. The taciturn owner has a great shop filled to the rafters with finds--enamelware, molds, pot de creme cups...and though it's completely chaotic and seemingly disorganized in there, the owner knows where everything is. So when I asked, on a lark (get it! a lark! so punny!) if she had a birdie squeezer, I was only a little surprised when she walked over to a huge glass jar and retrieved one for me. There may be more there! You could go get your own birdie cocktail aid! It is, after all, the holiday season--high cocktail time. And it would make such a cute little stocking stuffer.

The bounty of autumn: Ham Bone

Hey! It's fall! Even here on this temperate little peninsula, there is a carpet of brown leaves on the sidewalk, and last night it was downright chilly. I pulled out a hat and scarf for the first time this season--the changing seasons always make you remember things you've forgotten about: a favorite sweater, a familiar smell in the air, and, of course, good foods that should only be cooked when it's chilly and you need to turn on the oven, braise some meats, roast some squash, roll out pastry for apple tarts.

I had the good fortune to receive a ham in the mail last week, sent from the good people at Snake River Farms. They're one of a handful of companies in the States who are selling Kurobuta pork--an heirloom breed of pig (the Berkshire) raised according to strict specifications that guarantee deliciousness. Berkshire hogs were the pig around the time of Oliver Cromwell, and the British government gave Berkshire hogs to the Japanese as a diplomatic gift, which is how they came to be known as Japanese Black Hogs. (Hmm, pork as a diplomatic gift. Well, it wouldn't work in Iraq, but what about North Korea?)

The ham was delicious, marbled with fat, and a deep, rosy color. It had a rich, porky flavor that you don't find from the Honeybaked hams of the world. This kind of quality doesn't come cheap, (a half-ham, about 9lbs., will set you back about $90) but with the holidays fast approaching, no other roast will be so simple to prepare and will certainly be a crowd-pleaser. You can order one from www.snakeriverfarms.com They also sell Kurobuta pork chops, too.

The segue between fall food and ham may seem vague, but here goes: Ham=ham bone. Ham bone=soup. Split-pea soup is the ultimate fall food, and is the natural follow-up to a fine ham. To make it, do this: chop up an onion, a couple of carrots, a couple stalks of celery and a couple of cloves of garlic. Heat a couple glugs of olive oil (glug, glug, that's about 2 tbsp.) and cook up the vegetables over medium heat. Stir in 1 cup of split peas, plop in the meaty ham bone (if you aren't fortunate enough to have a ham-bone to spare, you can always use a meaty ham hock), pour in 8 cups of water, some salt, some pepper, a bay leaf....then simmer that baby until the peas are tender. If you have some surplus ham, chop it up and stir it in. Serve it with some cheese, some bread....and wait for the Trick-or-Treaters. Dessert, of course, will be fun-size candy bars. Of course.

The Maine Event

Yet another computer melt-down (HP, now is the time to offer me a free machine in exchange for some shameless grassroots promotion) is responsible for some of my recent silence, though the rest can be attributed to a week spent on vacation in the great state of Maine.

And what a week it was! If my inability to comfortably button the top button of my new tight jeans is any indication, I ate pretty well. It was all in the interest of research, which is why I happily wolfed down whoopee, chocolate cream, blueberry and rhubarb pies, local hard-shell lobster (including the 4 pounder my friend Julia bought and then had to hammer apart on the front stoop) and Glidden Point oysters, in addition to a few fried fish sandwiches, some fine cheeses, enough bottles of wine that I was embarrassed to bring the empties to the redemption center and a couple of squares of seaside-town produced fudge.

Here in San Francisco, good food isn’t particularly hard-won. Bay Area natives seem to consider pristine produce, excellent wine and local fish a birthright. This is, generally speaking, a good thing, to have so many nice people interested in good eating. But sometimes it can get a little tiresome. It can make you think, “Is there anything new under the sun?” Any good eater worth their San Fran salt knows about Chez Panisse and Marin Sun Farms, Frog Hollow peaches and Straus cream.

So it’s exciting to go to Maine, where folks aren’t making such a hoopla. In understated New England fashion, they are just doing their thing. At Primo, in Rockland, they are feeding their guests with food grown about 20 steps from the kitchen door, and raising piglets that are plate-bound. At Morse’s Sauerkraut, in North Waldoboro, they keep right on making sauerkraut and pickles and bockwurst, just as they have since 1918, and it’s no big thing. The Glidden Point oyster vendor at the Boothbay Farmer’s Market tells me that her kids eat the oysters—who wouldn’t like something so sweet and tender? And across the green from her stand, the “Maine-ly” Poultry man keeps a cooler of chicken pies, rabbits and whole roasters. He doesn’t bother to boast and brag that they’re organic, or that they have access to the great outdoors. How else would you raise a chicken? Drive by the farm in Warren and you can see them scratching around the yard.

After living here, I wondered if I could ever be satisfied, culinarily speaking, with the East Coast. Now I’ve no doubt. Sure, there are months when your freshest vegetable is likely to be a rutabaga. But the seasons balance one another out, and the abundance I experienced last week made me think that it’s a rich region only growing richer.

Want to read more?
For Morse’s, visit www.morsessauerkraut.com
For Glidden Point Oysters, check out www.oysterfarm.com
For Primo, www.primorestaurant.com

From Coast to Coast, Farm to Table

A frenzy of peach production has yielded nine quarts of canned peaches, two pints of peach chutney and many, many bags of sliced, frozen peaches that are awaiting a rainy winter day when they'll reemerge in peach crisps and crostatas. My day at the farm was spectacular, and David Mas Masumoto is one of the most generous and kind souls I've ever met. He's also an excellent writer, and the magazine section of the Sunday Times features an article he wrote about life on the family farm (and some recipes, too.) Check it out here: http://www.nytimes.com/pages/dining/index.html

Since the farm visit I've been on the move, and I just returned from a whirlwind weekend in Vermont, a trip to attend the wedding of an old friend. It was a lovely day, and I was struck by how lush New England looks in August. After only two summers here in the Bay Area, I've become accustomed to the scrubby brown and gold grasses, the spiky yucca and agave. It was a treat to spend a weekend in a place where summer means brilliant green, overgrown, aggressive agriculture. Food-wise, the highlight was an ideal BLT made by my friend Matt (ok, it was just a BT. Who needs the lettuce, anyway?) and a vegetarian feast prepared for my arrival by my mother, the world's greatest home cook, celebrating the bounty of August in Vermont.

I know I promised some pictures here, but there's been a technical difficulty. So close your eyes, and imagine sitting beneath the pleasant canopy of a fine old peach tree, juicy fruit in hand.

The new addition to the family

Big News! We've adopted!

No, not a child--a peach tree. Not just any peach tree, though--nothing less then an organic Elberta peach tree organically grown under the expert guidance of Mas Masumoto, a family farmer with an orchard in Fresno and also the author of the superlative "Epitaph for a peach: Four Seasons on a family farm."

Two trees were adopted in January by Slow Food Berkeley (I told you they were doing cool stuff) and the concept is pretty simple. Mas raises the trees and then the adoptive parents and their friends come and harvest the 200 pounds of fruit one weekend in late July or early August. We've finally received news that our crop is nearly ready, so I'll be heading out to the farm next Saturday to hand-pick my ten pounds. It's an unbelievable value, too--a one year adoption is only $250. You have to sign up well in advance and they only have a limited number of trees up for adoption, but it's something you might consider doing with your friends. Then, on the best weekend of summer you, too, could head to the farm and fill up your basket.

I'll post a full report upon my return, and some pictures and recipes, too.

Pozzi Perfect

I know I've disappointed my very small base of loyal readers, and I'm sorry. What can I say? Life got in the way, big and bossy, and I've been spending a good deal of time working on all sorts of new life projects. The good news is that overall I am much happier then I have been, so those who still check this blog from time to time will be rewarded with Feed and Supply 6.0: The Return.

And what better way to return then to tell you about the good work of Slow Food? To be completely honest, I've never been a huge Slow Food booster. Of course I love the idea of returning to artisanal food, of paying more attention to what we eat and of celebrating our farmers and growers. Good stuff, all. It's just that I've been to a event or two over the years and they have been decidedly not exceptional. One was a salt tasting. 10 different kinds in one sitting! Curious as I am about salt, that was too much even for me.

But yesterday was different. The day opened bright and beautiful, high sun and a touch of breeze. We got in the car and headed up over the Golden Gate Bridge, through Marin county and into Sonoma. We turned off at Petaluma, drove straight through the historic downtown and headed deep into the fields. Our final destination was Pozzi Ranch, a lamb farm on a gorgeous tract of land not far from the ocean. These are some lucky lambs, let me tell you. The ranch is all golden grasses and rolling hills, and in the center of it all was a meadow filled with beautiful tables and a massive grill.

As guests arrived they were treated to Aqua Frescas and local cheeses, while the cooking team, headed by the inimitable Michelle Fuerst of Chez Panisse, prepared a bevy of delights, from braised Pozzi Ranch lamb shoulder and grilled leg of lamb to grilled flatbreads and vibrant herb salads. A host of condiments accompanied the lamb--spicy harissa, rich yogurt with mint and garlic, fresh fava beans with new garlic, an herb jam with black olives--good stuff, all. Needless to say, it was a most beautiful scene. Under the hot Sonoma sun people who care about food heaped their plates high, dipping liberally into the "bounty of the county."

After everyone had eaten their fill of lamb we shaved ice for snowcones (with a blackberry syrup made from blackberries Michelle picked herself) and indulged in waffle cones with an amazing ricotta-honey ice cream.

By 3:30 we were headed back to the city (after a brief stop in Bodega Bay for peanut butter and molasses salt water taffy), sun-kissed, very full of delicious food and with a renewed enthusiasm for the good work of Slow Food. Don't believe me? See for yourself: www.slowfood.com You can join your local convivium and then tell them that you, too, want to celebrate local foods by eating snowcones on the best summer day.

The raw and the cooked

First things first: I don't even really like baked apples. I like apple crisp and apple pie, apple cake (as you loyal readers will remember, I posted an apple cake recipe a while back) and applesauce. But baked apples always kind of seemed like, well, kind of a lame dessert. So it's only fitting that I've been asked to develop a baked apple recipe for a magazine.

Two days ago, I would have told you that baked apples were NO BIG DEAL. In my head I was already strategizing what I would fill them with, and deciding on an abundant amount of the tantalizing ingredients that normally top a crisp. No raisins, thank you, no scanty filling of butter and brown sugar. These, I imagined, would be the perfect union of apple crisp and baked apples, with loads of that delicious streuselly topping that would blend perfectly with ice cream.....

Well, it isn't exactly working out as I planned. The bit of topping that's poking out at the top of the apple is getting nice and bronzed, but the stuffing that's deep inside the apple refuses to cook. Needless to say, this is neither a delicious or successful outcome. They still taste good, mind you, in that kind of gross uncooked cookie dough kind of way, but not exactly the kind of recipe that I'd want to send out to legions of home cooks. So it's back to the drawing board, I'm afraid, but if anyone wants to stop by later for a baked apple, please do--I have quite a few rejects kicking around.

How does your garden grow?

Last post, I promised to tell you more about the little garden I've built out back. Last summer it was mostly toil--I moved lots of dirt, built two stately raised beds (a project that involved pounding stakes, moving more dirt, and some aggressive drilling) and fought a courageous battle against aphids and rose rust. It was satisfying work, in the way that hard physical labor can be satisfying.

But this summer I'm angling for the satisfaction that comes from watching your plants--planted early enough in the spring to enjoy a full, productive growing season--grow and bear fruit. So what is back there? One bed is devoted to herbs, some of which carried over from last year, despite all of the rain. I have two types of parsley, chives, basil, tarragon, sage and three types of thyme, plus a small pot of mint. In the other bed I've planted spinach, mixed salad green, gorgeous blue lake beans and lots of tomatoes. To encourage the beans, I made some little trellises so they could climb high. It's so pretty. Then I planted some icicle radishes, tucked into little six-packs in some fluffy well-nourished soil.

My Meyer lemon tree, as if to show its enthusiasm for its new neighbors, has put out loads of fragrant blossoms. When each blossom falls off, you can see the baby lemon there, ready to grow. I'll post pictures soon, but in the meantime I think that everyone should get out there in their own yard, whether a postage stamp patio, a city balcony or rolling acres in some small New England town and mess around in the dirt. Plant a little rosemary bush, or put a cherry tomato plant in a pot and nibble off of it all season. Mound up some dirt and throw in some watermelons or some zucchini, or build a little tripod from bamboo stakes and watch your beans reach towards the sky. Growing your own food is not only good for your body, it's good for your soul, too. And that's good enough for me.

Rituals of Summer

It's here! The brilliant sunshine, the long days...gosh, if I didn't know better I'd say summer has arrived here in San Francisco. Oh, I know, I know--soon it will be foggy and cold in the evening (that's a Bay Area July for you) but for now I'll just take what I can get.

Summer has its own set of rituals, its own rules. Growing up, one of our summer routines was to go to Tozier's restaurant, in Bethel, Vermont, on the hottest days of the year. It would be too hot to cook, too hot to move, so we'd pile into the car and drive across the mountain to the restaurant my mom went when she was a girl. I love, love, love Tozier's. It is a low-slung, pine-paneled restaurant with long wooden tables and paper placemats that list Vermont attractions in green ink. On those hot days they have some tall old-fashioned fans circulating the air, but it stays cool because the restaurant is under a grove of trees near a little brook. They serve water in little waxed paper cones set into sturdy metal bases, and hot dogs on well-buttered buns, and fried clams. And outside, next to the main restaurant, there's a walk up counter where you can get ice cream cones and hot fudge sundaes. It is the perfect August restaurant. Just perfect.

But a different venue calls for a different routine. While we haven't yet found our favorite seaside seafood shack, and there don't seem to be any pine-paneled brook-side restaurants here in San Francisco, we did make the most of yesterday's sunshine. After a day planting in the backyard (beans, tomatoes, herbs, flowers...but more on that next post) we started up the grill, opened some cold Mexican beer and grilled some pizzas. Grilling the crust gives it the delicious blackened bits that you can't get in your oven (even if you have a pizza stone and the oven is cranked up all the way, filling the house with smoke) and it's great fun to assemble a platter of toppings so everyone can customize their pie. After the pizza, when the sun was still high enough to warm us and the coals had died down to a nice, slow burn, we toasted marshmallows and made S'Mores, and I had the wonderful pleasure of introducing our English neighborhood to the very American treat. Her quote? "Well, I like these very much indeed. They're quite good." Perhaps the start of a new summer routine?

One year gone

It's hard to believe, but I've lived in San Francisco for nearly a year now. After twelve months in my adopted city I find that I still miss things about my old home, namely good friends around the corner and slices of vanilla loaf cake from Hi-Rise bakery. Oh, and their blueberry lime cakes. Good stuff. In the first few months here in California I thought about the East Coast almost every day, and I couldn't imagine that there would ever be anything that I liked about living here more.

But sometimes things sneak up on you. Now, a year later, I know that if we moved back East there are lots of things that I would miss about this side of the world. I'd miss the taco shop, La Cachanilla, where they serve no-frills tacos from a window at the end of our block. I'd miss the pizzas from Chez Panisse, the crust blackened from the wood oven, the toppings refreshingly spare. I'd miss the farmer's markets, which even in these bleak swing months are full of great things. I'd miss the walnut bread from Acme bakery. I'd miss the croissants at Tartine (oh, yeah, their cream pies, too) and when my birthday rolled around, I'd miss the carrot cake cupcakes from Noe Valley Baking Co. I'd miss living in a place where lemons--meyer lemons--grow so readily that people let the fruit drop to the ground.

When you love one place the most, it's easy to know what you should do. But when you love two places, things get a little muddy. While I think we'll probably head back East eventually, there are still loads of restaurants to visit, tamales to eat, sunny days to enjoy in the meantime.