New Year, New Possibilties

Well, I'm a bit late on the Happy New Year Ra Ra! and the resolution this and holiday that train, but I hoped if I got it in before the week was over it might still be considered timely. I realize that by now everyone is well and truly tired of the holiday season and wants to move on to Mardi Gras and spring and new things. I do too, but I've got these cabbage and blackeyed pea photos on my phone and they are really nice things to eat at any time of year so I'm going to share.

On New Year's Day, I always try to do the traditional good luck thing but this year I was bored of Hoppin' John and braised cabbage, so I went a different route. Inspired by the cold bean side salad (usually served alongside pork rillette and various other dishes) at Tartine, I ad libbed a little black eyed pea salad with a red wine vinegar dressing. For the cabbage, I went with a chilled salad as well, using a NY Times recipe from a few years back for savoy cabbage slaw with applesauce vinaigrette and mustard seeds. They were both wonderful.  The bean salad is simple and delicious.  The slaw is so much better than you might think (and also makes surprisingly good leftovers).  I served them both with seared pork chops and it was a lovely meal.  Recipes, below.

I have to stop using my iPhone to take food photos. The white balance is terrible and my kitchen is nothing but yellow light at night. Sorry 'bout that, folks.

As for new year's resolutions, I'm going to keep it simple this year and rather than try to reform my hopeless ways, I am resolving to expand myself and do some things I've never done before, but think that by now I really should have. In some cases, it's unforgivable that I haven't yet. In 2011, I plan to:

Eat:

1. a muffaletta at Central Grocery - I've had them at lots of places in NOLA but never there, and really, what kind of muffaletta lover do I think I am if I haven't, right?.
2. turtle soup at Commander's Palace - When given the choice, I always go for new generation restaurants over the old traditionals, so I have a huge gap in my NOLA restaurant experiences. This seems to be a glaring one.
3. boiled crawfish at Hawk's in Rayne, La - Happily, my brother in law lives very close to it and we have plans for this spring.

Cook/Make:

1. Butter - I (oh so briefly) met Chef Daniel Patterson of Coi Restaurant in San Francisco several years ago (and had the pleasure of dining at Coi, which if you ever have the opportunity to do, DO!) and later watched him make butter in this fun video. Epiphany! Homemade butter! I've wanted to do it ever since, at least once, and now that I've gotten a stand mixer for Christmas, I intend to. Just look at it! All yellow and beautiful. Imagine lacing it with fleur de sel and spreading it on fresh bread with radishes. mmmm.... I'm not sure the reality can live up to my bucolic fantasy but we shall see.

2. Marshmallows - Another project that required a stand mixer to do, and one that I think I only need to try once or twice to appease the desire. The sticky clean up factor will probably prevent too many repeats, but I do want to sink my teeth into very fresh marshmallow. 2011!

3. Madeleines - Got the pan. Gonna make the treats. More than once. Need to put the pan to use and not let it collect dust in the back of the cupboard.

Do:

1. Learn to shuck oysters - This requires an leap of faith on my part. I am trusting that this year, my rheumatoid arthritis will be treated into remission and I will have the ability to bend and twist and bear weight with my right wrist again. Once I can, I plan to celebrate by learning to shuck and then eating a minimum of a dozen oysters on the half shell with champagne. It just seems right.

2. Plant some container herbs and tomatoes - This one borders on the "yeah right" type of resolution, since I say I'll do this every year and don't, but I might as well try again this year. Perhaps you can help me stick to it by reminding me when the time comes that I need to get those plants going.

3. Visit some of the River Road plantations - I never have. Might as well learn a bit more about the history of Southern Louisiana. I've always perceived the plantations as too tainted by the horror of slavery to make it enjoyable for me to visit for pleasure, but maybe by shutting the entire idea out, I am allowing myself to be ignorant. Maybe I could learn a thing or two. And eat a thing or two along the way.

That's that.

The recipes:

Black Eyed Pea Salad

1 lb frozen black eyed peas (precooked), thawed
1 red bell pepper, diced
1 small red onion, diced
2 TB fresh flat leaf parsley, chopped (optional)
drizzled olive oil, to taste
red wine vinegar, to taste
salt and black pepper to taste

Mix gently and serve cold or room temperature.  That's it.  It's delightful.

Serves 6


Savoy Cabbage Slaw with Applesauce Vinaigrette & Mustard Seeds
Adapted from Jeremy Fox, Ubuntu, Napa, California


FOR THE VINAIGRETTE:

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1 tablespoon applesauce
1/3 cup olive oil

FOR THE SALAD:

4 cups savoy cabbage, sliced as thinly as possible (store was out of Savoy by the time I got there, so I used half green and half Napa)
1 large bunch red radishes
3 or 4 Granny Smith apples
1 lemon, juiced
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
1/2 cup walnuts, toasted and chopped
Salt and black pepper to taste.

1. Make vinaigrette: In a bowl, mix together mustard, salt, vinegar and applesauce. Slowly whisk in olive oil a little at a time until dressing emulsifies. Set aside.

2. Make salad: Put cabbage in a large bowl. Using the shredding blade of a food processor or a box grater, shred radishes until you have 1 cup. Add to bowl.

3. Core apples and shred in food processor or with box grater until you have 2 cups. Put shredded apple into a bowl filled with lemon juice and 2 cups water, to prevent apple from browning.

4. When ready to serve, gently squeeze water from apple, add to cabbage and toss slaw with vinaigrette. Add mustard seeds and toss again. Sprinkle walnuts on top of slaw. Season with salt and pepper.

Serves 6

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Weekend in San Francisco

I've spent the weekend in San Francisco and very fortunately for me, my hosts packed much foodie fun into my short visit.

I ate amazing and lovely things at Incanto, so I'll have to come up with some manner of review for you.  I didn't take any photos, but they are all still pretty fresh in my mind, so hopefully I can share the descriptions, at least.  Teasers are: fried strips of pig ear, pork belly, pink peppercorn ice cream...  More on that later.

I have been shown how to make a chicken stock that cooks for about 6 hours on very low heat in the oven.  I can't wait to try it.  It smelled amazing.


Oh, and at Kamei Restaurant Supply, I have purchased two new kitchen goodies: a Japanese benriner mandolin and a simple mortar and pestle.  I am flying home tonight and will be trying to think of how best to put them to use when I get home.  Any suggestions would be fabulous.  If you had a shiny new mandolin, what would you make first?

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The Best of 2009

Despite the fact that I am a blogger-come-lately and have not been blogging all year, I am determined to do a year end wrap up of the best food I have eaten in 2009.  I wish I would have blogged it all, but I didn't and it's too late now, too bad.  We forge ahead.

My best meals this year are distinguished by the cities I was in at the time, so I will separate them as such.

My first trip of the year was to San Francisco, where I enjoyed:

1. Jamón Ibérico - good grief, glorious stuff.  This is the first year it has touched my palate.  How did I live so long with out it?  My friend was cooking dinner that night and served it as an appetizer.  We peeled it off the wax paper and it just melted in the mouth.  Afterwards, there was a bit left and she said "please, someone, finish that." No one stepped forward. I could not let it go to waste. Clearly. I finished it all. Glorious slice after slice of it. This is why I have a fat roll that defies my waistbands.

2. Dinner at Contigo, a new (at the time) Spanish restaurant that was already doing a very brisk business.  I had cava and my friend and I shared several small plates. I will try to remember them:

* coca de txistorra: catalan flatbread with housemade basque sausage and raddichio

* calamares a la plancha: squid with harissa and arugula (so very perfectly cooked, was fab)

* sardinas fritas: fried sardine filets, fried sardine bones, fried slices of meyer lemon (so good!)

* croquettas de buey: crispy beef fritters and mizuna

We finished with a cup of thick, perfect Barcelona style chocolate caliente into which we dipped churros that were so crisp and so fantastic, I kept eating them until I was well past the point of pure enjoyment and more into the territory of embarrassing overindulgence with chocolate dripping off my face and sugar coating my blouse. Unattractive, yes.  But so worth it.

3. Dim sum. OMG. Dim sum! What could be better than spending Saturday morning in a dining room surrounded by hundreds of Chinese people (I was literally the only caucasian person to be found) and dish after dish after dish of dumplings (pork and shrimp, shrimp, shanghai, shark fin) and sliced meats (five spiced beef, cold sliced pork with vinegars) and buns and rice porridge with thousand year eggs and just endless cups of jasmine tea?  What could be better than the heavy clink of crockery, the sweet steam wafting from towers of bamboo steamers being wheeled around the room on carts, the steady sound of Chinese being spoken and contented, happy, yumyum sounds all around me?  Nothing.  Really, nothing could be better.  Afterward, I was full for a week.  I don't remember the name of the restaurant now, but it was truly a pleasure and  joy.  I wish I could go every weekend.

Next trip was to Berlin, where I had:

4. Life changing bouillabaisse at KaDeWe in the Feinschmeckeretage.  KaDeWe is a huge, high end department store (similar, I suppose, to Harrods in London) with a floor devoted to gourmet delights... and folks, it is truly a sight to see.  Food stalls as far as you can see, run by some of the best gourmet purveyors in all of Europe.  In addition to food of every variety, one can belly up to the many bars and enjoy exquisite culinary examples of cuisines from around the world.  We went to the bouillabaisse bar and there, I learned what fish stew is supposed to be.  I'm not the same since.

5. Facil - At the Mandala Hotel in Berlin, the restaurant Facil serves a "refreshing combination of elegantly light fare accented by purist luxury and modern avant-garde since July 2001. Facil is the perfect place for unconventional gourmets seeking a culinary experience, people who prefer casual clothes to formal dress codes and simply want to relax and spend an enjoyable evening downtown." which is a well-worded way of saying that if you eat here, you will have beautiful, incredibly lovely haute cuisine served, paradoxically, in the most blissfully un-pretentious way, all the while being treated like royalty.  Your handbag, should you have one, will have a stool of it's own, so that it needn't be sullied by resting on the floor.  Your waitstaff will smile at you so fondly and with such a glitter in their eye, that you will believe, for a minute or two, that somehow you are not only their favorite person ever, but also are in on a very, very special secret and that just you and these lovely people know it.  The wine will be perfect, the food will be perfect, the dining room will be minimal and serene and gorgeous and the entire experience will make you wonder why you were not born much, much richer and much, much more interesting so that you could live life surrounded by such perfection all the time.  At least, it did me.  I have no notes or photos of the food at Facil.  I was too busy soaking in the experience to do anything other than LIVE it.

6. Hot chocolate and apple strudel at the original Café Einstein on Kurfürstenstrasse.  Here, your hot chocolate arrives in its own small pitcher, accompanied by a dish of dense cream and a cup.  You spoon the cream into the cup and then pour the rich, thick chocolate over the top.  Then, you die a little.  And then, you eat the same fabulous Apfelstrudel that has been eaten by artists, authors, philosophers, musicians, intellectuals and the bohemian gliterati for decades.  And you die a little more.  *sigh*  Oh, Berlin.

Back in New Orleans, I had some wonderful meals this year.  Highlights included:

7. The tasting menu at Restaurant August on my birthday. Spectacular. Five courses of decadence, 5 glasses of lovely paired wines.  Also, a beautiful vegetarian tasting menu for Kid Cayenne that rivaled my dinner in deliciousness.  Absolutely wonderful.

8. A food lover's trip through Acadiana, which included a stop at Richard's Seafood Patio in Abbeville, where I ate 3 pounds of boiled crawfish and a bowl full of grilled oysters in butter with bread for the sopping up.

You remember that fat roll I told you about?  A lot of it was made eating the above.

9. Duck, duck duck.  I love duck (as I'm sure I've mentioned ad nauseum) and I've had some very nice duck dishes this year.  Two of my favorites were were the roasted Muscovy duck breast with Tuscan kale, butternut squash, sage, and satsuma coriander jus at Lilette and smoked duck and chestnut pasta (below) at the Green Goddess.

I should try to round this list out to 10, but I feel like these 9 truly represent my best eating experiences of 2009.  May the new year bring many more for all of us.  Happy New Year!

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