all happiness depends on a leisurely breakfast. ~john gunther
the xx - intro (listen)
panda bear - surfer's hymn (listen)
sonny & the sunsets - too young to burn (listen)
lucinda williams - fruits of my labor. live. (listen)
the tallest man on earth - drying of the lawns (listen)
bon iver & st.vincent - rosalyn (listen)
alexander - truth (listen)
notes
* special thanks to SS & JAD for the musical inspiration
the kitchen is my safest place. i lean on the fact i am always aware of how much vanilla extract is in the pantry, or where i can find my favorite spoon. the weight of an empty baking dish is always the same as i lug it from a cupboard, and filling it with something is a small triumph in a stream of uncertainty. the kitchen is whatever i need it to be--sometimes i go to focus, sometimes to escape. there is always music. there is always something to be done. and at the end of the day, there is something to eat, even when there isn't an answer.
b.b. king - how blue can you get? (live in cook county jail) - listen
m. ward - here comes the sun again - listen
nina simone - i want sugar a little sugar in my bowl - listen
bon iver - re: stacks -listen
massive attack - paradise circus - listen
megafaun - bonnie's song - listen
four tet - she just likes to fight -listen
lykke li - i know places - listen
notes:
* all images from march 21, 2011. all songs from a stack of albums from the del mar public library or pulled from my iPod
would you trust these two women to make you dinner? some might say there are more substantial questions to consider. like this one:
the physics of cooking teaches us to choose our heat transfer agents and cooking methods wisely. i believe equal attention should be given to the selection and maintenance of strawberries.
i mean, really, is there any happier chore than hulling strawberries? especially with your best friend, who happens to go by dot, mutually barefoot in a warm kitchen, as an ambivalent rain shares the sky with quiet stretches of sunlight.
i wish every sunday afternoon could be devoted to making dinner with dot. she might be the only other human i know that geeks out on uncut, craggy stalks of rhubarb before they've been groomed for a crumble. alas, there is a whole lot of highway 1 between del mar and carmel-by-the-sea. albeit beautiful.
the thing is, because i only get to make dinner with dot every, oh, fiscal quarter, it sets the whole day in a desperate sort of slow motion. hours become minutes, but then a few moments can languorously braise an entire pot roast. or roast two chickens.
dot tided over the cooks and chess-players with little puff pastry tarts filled with the last of her local chanterelles, plus plenty of brie, a cheese which only expounds on its gooey, runny, luscious nature by a round in the oven.
earlier in the afternoon, i'd slipped a sheet pan of red grapes in a low oven for 2 1/2 hours of oven-drying. shallots enclosed in a homemade foil envelope nestled in beside them, and everything got a healthy drizzle of olive oil, salt, pepper, and fresh thyme. everything emerged an even richer version of itself.
the oven-dried grapes acted as centerpiece for a salad, the roasted shallots were pulverized with sherry vinegar and olive oil to become its dressing. and a little applewood smoked bacon and ricotta salata never hurt anyone. the recipe follows at the end of this post.
dot roasted two pasture-raised chickens in the style of thomas keller. watching her carve them tableside, spooning everything over with thyme-scented juices, was the theater for the night. you can find thomas keller's simple roast chicken recipe here.
perfect roast chicken is satisfying on its own, eaten straight from the cutting board, without the aid of a fork, knife, or plate. any "oyster" lover would agree. however, dot's crispy-skinned, creamy-centered red potatoes are the ultimate counterpoint for soaking up all those juices. also lovely: fat spears of asparagus, grilled in a cast iron skillet, and doused in garlic and lemon infused olive oil.
in my book, kids who eat salad are pretty much allowed to do whatever they'd like for the rest of the night at the table, including providing the most enlightening expose on the toothfairy. ever.
lastly, dessert. i'd found a recipe for strawberry rhubarb crumble that used spelt flour and toasted pine nuts in the crumble portion of the recipe. dot and i decided the fruit deserved a poetic, haunting pour of st. germain, an elderflower liqueur, before it hit the oven.
if you are like me, you are probably always looking for ever newer ways to consume that magical duo of strawberry and rhubarb. i can only liken the taste to a smell: "my little pony." no matter how many times i played with my beloved set of my little ponies as a kid, they always smelled sweet, like cereal milk and lipgloss. or a cluster of honeysuckle that had baked in the back seat of the car on a spring day.
the strawberries and the rhubarb, tinged with boozy flower fields, and topped with a crunchy rubble of spelt, oats, pine nuts, and butter, just struck the right chord. vanilla ice cream, as it tends to do, made a whole mess of it. all the better.
notes & recipes
* dot has a floral design shop & studio in carmel california: rose hip! it beats disneyland as the happiest place on earth. should you be in the neighborhood, i urge you to visit: rose hip floral design @ the crossroads shopping village, 243 crossroads blvd., carmel, ca 93923. the bouquet above was courtesy of dot & rose hip. sleeping next to it actually made me dream about flowers.
* for more information on st-germain, visit here.
the recipes from the night...
arugula and mache salad with oven-dried grapes, bacon, ricotta salata and roasted shallot dressing
(serves 6)
4 ounces baby arugula
4 ounces mache
1 lb. seedless red grapes
4 small shallots, peeled
2 teaspoons thyme leaves
1/2 lb. applewood smoked bacon, 1/4 inch diced, and pan-fried until crispy
1/4 cup sherry vinegar
2 tablespoons honey
3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil + 2 tablespoons
sea salt and cracked black pepper
4-6 ounces ricotta salata
preheat oven to 250. stem half of the red grapes, leave the remaining grapes in clusters. place the grapes on a rimmed baking sheet and drizzle 1 tablespoon of olive oil and 1 teaspoon of thyme leaves. place the shallots on a sheet of aluminum foil and drizzle with 1 tablespoon of olive oil and the remaining thyme leaves. sprinkle the grapes and shallots with sea salt and freshly cracked paper. enclose the shallots in the foil. place the pan in the oven and bake until the shallots are very soft and the grapes shriveled and lightly caramelized. let the grapes cool slightly before removing the unstemmed grapes from their stems. place all of the grapes in a bowl and set aside to cool to room temperature.
place the shallots and all of the pan juices into the bowl of a food processor fitted with a blade. add the sherry vinegar and honey and process until smooth. slowly drizzle in the 3/4 cup olive oil and a steady stream with the processor running until the dressing is well combined. remove to a jar or cup and cool to room temperature.
toss the arugula, mache, bacon, and half of the oven-dried grapes in a large salad bowl. add dressing gradually, tossing to coat, until the salad is just lightly dressed (you will have plenty of dressing leftover for another use). divide the salad among individual plates and top each with additional grapes. use a vegetable peeler to shave ricotta salata over each serving. drizzle with a little additional dressing, sea salt and cracked black pepper, if desired. serve immediately.
(this recipe was adapted from bon appetit, november 2006)
strawberry rhubarb crumble with spelt flour & pine nuts
(serves 8 - 10)
1 cup spelt flour
3/4 cup pine nuts, lightly toasted, and finely chopped
3/4 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup natural cane sugar
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 teaspoon cracked black pepper
1/2 cup melted unsalted butter
1/2 pound strawberries, hulled and cut into quarters
12 ounces trimmed rhubarb, cut into 3/4 inch pieces
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1/2 cup - 3/4 cup sugar (use more sugar for greener, tart rhubarb)
1/4 cup st-germain elderflower liqueur (optional)
set a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 375. butter a 10 inch round or oval baking dish, or a 9 inch square baking dish.
combine the spelt flour, pine nuts, oats, 1/2 cup can sugar, sea salt, and black pepper in a medium mixing bowl. gently toss the ingredients together with a fork. add the melted butter and use a fork to stir the mixture. using your hands, squeeze the dough into a few patties. freeze the dough for at least twenty minutes.
toss the strawberries and the rhubarb with the cornstarch and 1/2 - 3/4 cup of sugar. wait five minutes, then add the st-germain, if you are using. transfer the filling tho the preparing pan. remove the topping from the freezer and crumble over the filling, making sure to leave a few large chunks.
transfer the dish to the oven (you may want to set it atop a piece of foil to catch any filling drips). bake for 35 - 40 minutes, until the topping is browned and the filling is bubbling. let the crumble rest for 20-30 minutes before serving, preferably with whipped cream or some kind of ice cream.
(this recipe was adapted from heidi swanson of the 101 cookbooks blog)
yesterday was all about the green bay packers and pittsburgh steelers. or was it green guacamole and stealing brownies?
there were little cheerleaders to keep the crowd in good spirits.
and sunshine was a nice consolation for the fact we weren't watching the chargers.
i wandered a bit and looked for clues as to what team would win.
things were looking pretty green.
the chickens did not have any insight. or care much for football.
i am so a chicken.
but i can get behind any day devoted to a super bowl of chili.
some prefered the root beer and the black eyed peas.
isn't every moment a small touchdown?
touchdowns call for butt slaps. and ice cream.
even the moon morphed into the shape of a football making an eternal pass through clear night sky. all was well in san diego. and especially wisconsin.
notes
* my favorite chili of all time is paula disbrowe's texas beef, poblano, and beer chili. find the recipe here.
*OMG. i fell in love with usher yesterday during the halftime show. in case you were wondering, an obsessive google search revealed his favorite food is banana pudding. swoon. and his favorite rapper is biggie smalls. i have a bunny named biggie smalls! signs?
sometimes inspiration for a dish comes from a particular pile of apples at the farmers market, hit by a stream of hazy afternoon sunlight just so. sometimes it's a dog-eared recipe in a long forgotten book. sometimes its the breeziest hot pink kaftan on the planet, adorned with white turkey feathers and hand-rolled edges, hanging in the mingei at the zandra rhodes exhibit. or how the kaftan reminds me of gold and silver disco balls and something the princess of punk herself said to me long ago.
there was once a time i stood backstage to an impossibly long runway, draped in a 1970s zandra rhodes kaftan, head wrapped in tulle, nervously clutching two disco balls as lucy in the sky with diamonds blared. i had been directed to walk out and have a mesmerizing, psychedelic experience with the disco balls. perhaps sensing my fear and uncertainty, the tiny, hot pink-tressed zandra rhodes wrapped her arm around my waist and whispered up to me, "you really know how to work those disco balls." she said it like an old friend, like she'd seen me do it a thousand times before. this was the first night we'd met. as you might imagine, it stands out as one of the more memorable things to happen to me as a teenager. and i walked out and acted as if i knew how to work those disco balls.
returning home from zandra's mingei exhibit, moved all over again by the faith and confidence this renowned fashion and textile designer had shown a sixteen year old girl, i wanted to continue the conversation with her work. i asked myself what her hot pink chiffon kaftan, patterned with delicate white zigzags and orange sunbursts, would taste and look like on the plate. like zandra admiring a length of kuba cloth, or a fanciful children's cap from guizhou, china, i began to play in my medium. inspiration is really an act of giving yourself permission.
i'm pretty sure that becoming a great cook, or a great anything, is the result of tireless practice. but it's also a willingness to experiment when you feel like you have a blindfold on. don't worry. you know how to work those disco balls.
citrus and currant salad with strawberry sauce and spiced coconut cream
for zandra rhodes. inspired by chevron shawl kaftan, 1970.
(serves 2)
2 pints strawberries, washed and hulled
1 tablespoon orange juice
2 tablespoons honey
1 cup unsweetened, canned coconut milk
3 tablespoons muscavado sugar (or light brown sugar)
1/8 teaspoon ground cardamom
4 - 5 citrus fruits (any combination of tangerines, mandarin oranges, grapefruit, blood oranges, tangelos, etc.), cut into supremes (how to video here)
1/2 pint red currants
freshly ground grains of paradise or pink peppercorn (optional)
make the strawberry sauce: puree the strawberries, orange juice, and honey in a blender. push the strawberry puree through a fine mesh sieve to remove the seeds. discard the seeds and chill the sauce until ready to use.
make the coconut cream: place the coconut milk, muscavado sugar, and cardamom in a small sauce pan over medium heat. cook, stirring occasionally, until the sugar has dissolved and the sauce has thickened--about 5-6 minutes. let cool to room temperature, and then pour the cream into a plastic squeeze bottle (alternatively, if you do not have a squeeze bottle, you can spoon the cream onto the plate).
plate the salad: using a spoon, pour about 1/4 cup of strawberry sauce onto a chilled plate. swirl the sauce with the back of the spoon to create a circle. create zigzags using the squeeze bottle of coconut cream over the strawberry sauce. place the citrus segments and currants over the sauces in an overlapping pattern. grind grains of paradise or pink peppercorns over the top. serve immediately.
notes
* "zandra rhodes - a lifelong love affair with textiles" is an exhibit at the mingei international museum in san diego running through april 3, 2011. more information here.
* grains of paradise are a spice native to west africa. they are similar to a peppercorn, but impart a more citrusy flavor. they can be purchased at specialty grocery stores and online.
when the day includes a vg donut and this song all before 7 a.m., i start to wonder if my bliss meter has already reached max capacity. an emerson quote: "write it on your heart that every day is the best day of the year."
sometimes i don't have to--the day does it for me.
how often does your first born turn six years old? once, and never again! this called for vg donut & bakery in cardiff, california. i'm pretty sure the aroma of this place is what they use as air freshener in heaven.
the morning was so clear and quiet, the moon insisted on hanging around to be part of it. "the moon followed us to donuts," lola said. "let's do hot chocolate cheers for the moon!"
and then the quiet morning turned into big blue euphoria. doors opened so wide, you could not help but walk through them.
yesterday, i arrived at room 273 around 11 o'clock and discovered my baby sister was the kind of lovely someone achieves only by being really, extraordinarily happy. it's the kind that makes everyone else weak in the knees to behold.
life is so nice. yesterday, i got a new brother. his name is arto. ARTO! i like him so much, and not just because his name starts with the same letter as awesome.
i like arto because he bakes cookies. brides and grooms who stay up baking raspberry thumbprints for their friends and families the night before their wedding deserve a disproportionately larger amount of "better" in "for better or for worse."
like any self respecting student of gastronomy, i interpreted "celebrate" to mean "let's kick back a dozen oysters." be warned: if you say that word (or pretty much any of its synonyms), i am going to take it as carte blanche to deplete the nearest supply of kumamotos.
oyster and a cupcake? january 21, 2011 was a break the mold sort of day.
plus, the afternoon provided quite a gang of cupcake eaters.
somehow, amidst all of this, there was a totally unaccounted for bonus hour that coincided with the mission hills farmers market. as an act of repentance for the day so far, i stared at a basket of broccoli.
and followed it with a cup of french fries and two rounds of UNO! at five guys burgers and fries, per the birthday girl's wishes.
one might expect i would have needed an alka seltzer, or, at the very least, a cup of peppermint tea at the end of all of this. really, all i needed or wanted was to be the filling in a thing 1 and thing 2 sandwich.
don't mind me, it's a quarter past silly and my bliss meter is being rebuilt to new standards. some yesterdays will do that to you.
notes
* the song in the beginning of this post is "dance, dance, dance" by lykke li.
* vg's donut & bakery is located at 106 aberdeen drive in cardiff by the sea, california. visit their website here.
* top of the market at the fish market is located at 750 north harbor drive in san diego, california. on the web.
* the mission hills farmer's market runs every friday from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. on falcon street between fort stockton drive and washington.
* five guys burgers and fries san diego location is located at NAS north island, building 2017 in liberty station, point loma. for nationwide locations, visit here.
do you know what i love even more than eating?
cooking.
especially when cooking involves my dearest friend dot, aka lauren orman. in honor of our turning thirty (within four days of each other), dot and her boyfriend, christian, took a little drive from their home in carmel, california to san diego. the photo above shows us piled into a prius with thing 1 & thing 2, set out for the most important kind of mission: produce. the beauty of making dinner with dot is embarking with only the vaguest of plans and letting whatever we find inspire us. i don't know how to do that very well, but this lady does!
is there any better source of inspiration than chino's vegetable shop in rancho santa fe? dot picked a bagful of tender, buttery lettuce and bouquets of the tiniest spring onions and leafy sorrel. i went straight for the grumpiest looking, most esoteric root vegetables i could find. what can i say? i like produce that scowls at me from time to time. craggly, knobby celery root, parsnips, and sunchokes won my heart, in addition to red spinach and spring garlic.
while dot & christian spent the afternoon playing afoot and afield in san diego, i set the table with the assistance of thing 1 & thing 2. they are experts in the art of scattering rose petals and blowing out candles. they also made place cards for everyone and spent the better part of an hour bickering over who would sit next to dot. chairs were rearranged so thing 1 & thing 2 could make a dot sandwich and everyone was cheerful when our co-chefs arrived.
seeing this picture of dot's wild mushroom salad with truffle vinaigrette is making my mouth water all over again. earthy pan-browned mushrooms entangled in the prettiest of lettuces and showered with shards of pecorino romano, spring onions, and celery root greens, then all united with a slurry of meyer lemon juice and truffle oil. dot is really gorgeous, but i have other reasons for being in love with her.
(dot's recipe here)
a bowl of fragrant blood oranges and those grumpy root vegetables inspired my entree. i used a favorite recipe for slow roasted sea bass (the very best recipe for serving thick, fleshy fish to a crowd), and set it atop a puree of parsnips, celery root, and sunchokes with flash-cooked red spinach laced with green garlic and currants. the entire pile got doused over with bright blood orange sauce and a crumble of hazelnuts. no one complained.
(recipe here)
finally, dot and i found a pretty way to serve the sesame seed benne wafers we had baked earlier in the afternoon. the recipe for benne wafers comes courtesy of the wednesday chef. it can be found here. our advice: sprinkle them generously with sea salt before baking and leave them in the oven for an extra minute. they are peculiarly addictive, especially if you set them beside apples roasted in red wine, spiced whipped cream, and pomegranates.
(recipe here)
beautiful things happen when you cook with your best friend. at the end of the night, you have a dinner to share over candles and rose petals. plus, look at those two lovely lovebirds i got to laugh and feast with. could life get any sweeter? why, yes.
the day after this delightful meal went down, christian and dot got engaged!
permit me to gloat: on dot and my's 25th birthday we took a roadtrip to big sur, california where christian lived and i played a cosmic part in introducing them for the first time. and now, two of the most wonderful people i know are gettin' hitched.
the love continues shortly with a ten bites interview with miss dot. soon to be missus.
the photograph above shows my grandfather, george julian mitchell jr., in germany. my uncle arthur estimates the year to be 1950 or 1951. i love this picture. it captures my grandfather's strong personality and good appetite. he died when i was thirteen, but i still think of him every day, with special intensity around the holidays. in his later years my grandfather had a white beard, round belly, and bald head. when he took me to ride the mini train at balboa park i asked all the other passengers what is still one of my family's favorite rhetorical questions: "doesn't my grandpa look like santa clause!"
my grandfather is the reason i love to cook. he's why i care about food, why i'd wake up and write about a meal in the morning. i've never tasted anything better than the fresh squeezed orange juice he'd set out for me in the morning, carefully poured in a glass with cheerful little oranges painted on the side. i think he knew this made it taste better--cooks are aware of these things. mitchell meals were richly flavored and always peppered with heated discussions with my grandfather at the helm of the table and my father and uncle flanking the sides. the robust exchange of ideas, insults and side dishes inspired me, at seven, to pen "the mighty, mighty mitchells" a chant i imagined in unison before each meal, our fists clutching the family silverware and pounding the table.
my grandfather's fierce passion for food coursed through all of us. it is little wonder that i consider my father and my uncle to be two of the finest cooks i've ever met. in 2005, my uncle, arthur mitchell, started what i believe to be one of the most inspired holiday traditions i know of. each year a different country that celebrates christmas is represented at our table. my uncle carefully researches the christmas foods of that country, writes a multi-course menu in the language of that country, and assigns us each recipes to provide. it is an exercise in history, celebration, and, indeed, endurance. we have feasted on etouffât de noël and spätzle aux beurre from france, colcannon soup and plum pudding from ireland, italian pignolata-strufoli and greek αρνί kεφτεδάκια. those, my friends, are lamb meatballs. i will share the recipe for those morsels with you soon because i don't think you should end 2010 without them.
this year, we travel to mexico. i am responsible for the pork posole and rompope, a puebla style egg nog, in addition to ponche navideno con tejocote, a holiday punch with hibiscus flowers. in the coming days, i'll share some recipes and hopefully a ten bites interview with the mastermind behind this dinner, my uncle art. he is definitely my grandfather's son. as you prepare for your own holiday feasts, good tidings and glad wishes.
salud!
i always gauge where i am in the week in relation to wednesday. monday is two days before it. saturday is four days until the next. if i am permitted a brief vacation from the present moment it's either, oddly, to think about a snowy place or anticipate wednesday. on every hump day periodicals across america publish their food & dining sections. i am programmed to head to the closest coffee shop in my proximity with copies of the ny times, and give myself over to thirty minutes of macchiato/journalistic bliss. today i licked the chocolate-dulce de leche drips off the side of a jar from la salamandra in argentina, sucked down a cup of butterscotch egg nog, noshed on old school pigs in a blanket from liberty tree in our nation's capitol and paused on a perfect sentence from david tanis: "sheep, it turns out, adore bread." my fingertips get covered with newsprint, i inhale the perfume of glossy coffee beans, and in a single moment i know i will never be a digital reader.
i have a stack of ny times dining sections dated back to 2006 collecting in the northeast corner of my bedroom. an old issue instantly brings back where my head and heart were at on that particular wednesday. some have even been textured by rain, bicycle wheels, tears both happy and sad. they also remind me of why we write and read about food. there is an intense, incredibly slippery satisfaction in exchanging the ineffable. i would even venture to say that no other section of the newspaper is quite so much about sharing pleasure.
here i am smiling. only seven days until next wednesday.
notes
* this wednesday's issue includes a recipe for homemade chai masala, something i have been delighted to try my hand at in the kitchen. i'll include the recipe soon, but you can also find it in today's copy of the times, hopefully over a cup of something steamy and caffeinated.
cooking is a good method for providing dinner. it also forces us to pay close attention when we otherwise wouldn't. the act of cooking can be a form of spiritual counsel, if you will. i often look at all of the shapes and experiences of life through a window. without even knowing it, the window gets sullied by quiet dust storms of reaction and fear. then there are the repeated smudges of my fingers--i have looked out this window before. i tell myself it's all the same out there. life becomes a picture visible only through my pane of glass, which is to say, visible only in haze.
i tell you all this to set the stage for a particular armful of squash. motionless and robust, they sat on the kitchen table for a few weeks as an adornment for fall. i paid them no mind. i'd like to say one day the sun shone through the house and haloed them, flaring my heart up into the recognition of beauty. but the truth is, i was exceptionally restless, and i sat in front of those squash and begged them to inspire me. then i carried them over to the butcher block and began making soup.
sometimes my window gets blasted open by the unexpected arrival of the exquisite--a sunrise that saturates an entire city fingertip pink. sometimes there is necessary labor, a willingness to pick up the rag, work at the layers and ease rust out of the crank until i can pry the window open and see. sometimes there is chopping to be done. and squash to be begged and soup to be tasted. sometimes i have to agree to let the contents of my life work their ordinary magic.
notes
* to those that have expressed missing the daily posts, thanks for the patience as i've replenished. and being good reason to start typing again.
* in the spirit of this post, improv squash soup tomorrow.