Montclair Farmers Market

Since adopting Kaya the wonder dog, we’ve had to change up our schedule to accommodate husky club.  Husky club is a group of Siberian Husky and other types of sled dog owners going to Point Isabel park, the largest off-leash dog park in the country.  It has stunning views of the city of San Francisco and Marin County and is a very nice walk for the dog.  The downside is that it meets on Saturdays at 9:30 am.  That means if we are feeling unambitious, we will miss the Berkeley and the SF Farmer’s markets.

This has made us do some research on Sunday markets and it’s turned up a real gem – Montclair.  Nestled in the hills of Oakland, Montclair is the East Bay’s Capitol Hill’s Eighth Street – full of wealthy folks and cute shops.  The Farmer’s market is relatively small – one block.  But the neighborhood businesses recognize what a draw the Farmer’s market is and are open at 10:00 am on a Sunday.  That means we get to shop for our fruits and veggies and get a little retail therapy on top of it.  Montclair retail includes a kitchenware shop, an A.G. Ferrari Italian specialty food store, a cheese shop, and various used bookstores and knick knack places.

Convenience –3.5

It’s fairly convenient drive if you know where to go – much like Rock Creek Parkway is.  As a master of Rock Creek, I’d like to think of it as DC’s “screw you” to the tourists but that’s another story.  Anyway, it’s right off of Highway 13 and a ten minute drive to our house.  The plus side (and why I am giving this half a point more than Grand Lake) is the nice free parking structure.

Vibe – 3

I think the Capitol Hill comparison really holds true for the vibe.  It’s a lot of rich folks who come here.  The vibe is nice because its small and the vendors are friendly.  It is really nice to get some groceries and then go to a store and pick up a birthday present.

Produce – 3.5

There isn’t the kind of variety and sheer numbers of vendors you would find at Grand Lake of Ferry Plaza but it has the old standbys.

Prepared Foods – n/a

Ok. Being diabetic, I can’t really eat a lot of prepared foods at Farmer’s market, so I can really judge.  I’m taking this category off the ratings system.

Flowers –2

This is where Montcalir falls down on the job. There’s one flower vendor and its just a booth of a florist with a storefront on the same street.

Total: 12 out of 20

The easiest and most elegant weeknight dinner

So B, our favorite restaurant serves these awesome California style pizzas. V, our favorite server always makes a recommendation to add arugula and a fried egg on top of their mushroom pizza and truly it’s sheer heaven. Being diabetic, I can only have one slice, although I totally poach more than my share of yolky arugula.

Color be delighted when J found an Alsatian tart with bacon and caramelized onions at Trader Joes. For some magical happenstance, there’s only 11 grams of carbs for 1/4 of a decent size tart (bigger than a personal pan pizza). That means I can eat the whole damn things and only ingest 44 grams of carbs. Now with bacon and cheese and onions the fat content is off the charts but that’s why I run 18 miles a week.

As an experiment this weekend, I decided to top the tart with arugula and a fried egg. My twist was to toss the arugula in a meyer lemon vinaigrette. And OH MY GOD. Arugula salad and Alsatian tart is a better flavor combination of chocolate and peanut butter. The sharp pepperiness of the arugula and the tang of the vinaigrette are in perfect harmony with the salty sweetness of the tart. I’ve had this twice this week and could have it every night if I had my druthers. This is a total cheap eat because the tart is like $3.99 and the arugula is like $2.99.

And the Meyer lemons come from my tree.

crossposted at: itsalifestyle.blogspot.com

Christmas Dinner

So this year, things are REALLY changed up. Normally, I got to my parents for Thanksgiving (usually our big family holiday) and spend Christmas with J’s family. Because J and I had Thanksgiving with our friends, J will be flying to his parents solo and I will be spending Christmas with my family. But the twist is, for the first time in my life, my family will be spending Christmas with me. My parents and my sister along with her boyfriend will be flying up to the Bay Area for Christmas and we will be having Christmas eve dinner at Chez Bayareafoodblog. Woo to the hoo! This means I will be getting hardcore on the food. My family is pretty discerning. Here’s the menu:

Starter
Blini with gravlax and creme fraiche

Main Course
Frisee salad with walnuts and gorgonzola
Sauteed green beans
Mashed cauliflower with crispy shallots
Roast potatoes
Turkey roulade with a fig and sausage stuffing

Dessert
Apple crostada
Chocolate pots de creme

The caluiflower mashed is done and in the freezer.  The piecrust is done.  The gravlax is curing as we speak and the butterflied turkey breasts have been ordered.  Whew!

This weekend I will make the blini and freeze (I know this is somewhat heretical but it works).  Buy the rest of the ingredients and make the apple crostadas.  Monday I will make the stuffing.  Tuesday, I will get the turkey.  Wednesday I will do the pots de creme and blanch the green beans.  So Thursday, I need to assemble and cook the turkey, compose the salad, sautee the green beans and roast the potatoes.  Definitely doable.

P.S.  – For those of you in the Bay area, I highly recommend the NewTown Pippin apples. They are the best apples i have ever tasted – aromatic, sweet and tart at the same time.  They are perfect baking apples, perfect except for the fact you want to eat them raw.

Bagna Cauda

This is a great dip that needs to be served warm. For those of you who are scared of anchovies, think of of them as an umame delivery system. This is really about an intense, salty savoriness. As I said before, it goes well with bitter vegetables like endive, cauliflower and frisee. Also great for dipping bread.

1 clove of garlic, finely minced
12 anchovy fillets (packed in olive oil), finely chopped
2 tablespoons of olive oil
4 tablespoons of cold butter, chopped into 16 chunks

In a cold small saucepan (the smallest you can find), sautee the garlic and anchovy in the olive oil. Heat slowly under a low flame, whisking vigorously to break down the anchovy and and garlic. When the anchovy and garlic are a paste, add the butter one chunk at a time while whisking. This is essentially like making a beurre blanc and the cold butter melts into the bagna cauda and gets emulsified into the bagna cauda.

Well HELLLLLOOOO There – Thanksgiving 2010

Holy cow the last post was August 10?  That’s crazy talk but you know, we had issues with our wordpress password and couldn’t log in.  There’s a lot of to catch up on.  Here’s a list of coming attractions:

Farmers market review of the Montclair Farmers Market

Farmers market review of the Temescal Farmers Market

A visit to the Cheeseboard collective – And a list of some of my favorite cheeses

Aunt Mary’s restaurant review

Casa Vino Restaurant Review

La Note Restaurant Review

Write up of my third year of making limoncello

Christmas dinner write up – My fmaily is coming over to the house for Christmas!

I’m sure I will come up with more but that’s my start.  Anyway, to kick off the new round of posts, I had to do a write up of Thanksgiving.  This was the best food Thanksgiving ever, as it involved actual food professionals.  This was a hardcore Thanksgiving, so hardcore that the key players had a planning summit to coordinate the menu. We had just eight, but Cheffie Mark and Bellisima worked in restaurants as an executive chef and a wine manager respectively.   Sadly, I forgot to take notes on the wine.  That is a tragedy because we had eight wines and three with appetizers alone.  Nevertheless, here’s the rundown:

Starters

Cheeses with pear and olives
The first cheese plate was a beauty. The cheesemonger at Bellisima’s restaurant is incredibly talented at selecting and caring for our cheeses. He selected the cheese, but also sent a paragraph about each. The cheese shared the plate with a variety of pears and olives. J selected a few to share as well. From the cheesemonger (thank you Colin):

Camembert Le Pommier - “Super strong and pungent, but rich and delicious and beautifully runny at temperature.” Spot on. This was one of the best. Goo.

Beaufort – “A French Gruyere from southern eastern France. Earthy, nutty, occasionally chocolaty.” A favorite for several folks.

J added two of his new favorites:
Tomme Crayeuse – a total score. Thanks to the people at Cheeseboard. Mushroom, butter, cream, sexy, luxurious.

Gubbeen – An Irish cheese. A bit more firm but on the butter side of firm. A little grassy and nutty.

Homemade pate and condiments
Cheffie Mark sent me into orgasms of delight by making a pate that was studded with pistachios and had a pork tenderloin in the middle.  It was earthy and divine.  He made two condiments – a raisin chutney and a fig jam.  I had to get into the action and made an onion jam – reduced onions with balsamic vinegar.   This came on top of homemade crostini and pickled carrots.   A perfect blend of sweet, salty and sour and a great compliment to the creaminess of the cheeses. Cheffie Mark also made a red currant gelee that he wanted to allude to canned cranberry sauce.

Soup course
I think because Thanksgiving can be so iconic, you don’t mess with the main course and sides.  We went all out with the starters.  The next set of starters was a trio of soup shooters.  I love the concept of soup shooters because it allowed us to give very interesting and intense flavor combinations. The soups were:

“Cream” of cauliflower with a bagna caude drizzle. I adore bagna cauda – a hot dip that consists of anchovies, garlic, butter and olive oil.  It has a bacony savoriness and pairs well with crunchy, bitter vegetables like endive.  This intense flavor complemented a creamy and mild cauliflower soup.

Beet and carrot soup with coriander cream. This was made by Angela Goodhair, Cheffie Mark’s wife and a close friend of West Coast Rebecca’s.  It was a bright, sweet soup with that had an earthiness with the coriander.  I love soups that play well on the tongue.

Heirloom tomato soup with garlic quark. This is essentially a Barefoot Contessa roasted tomato soup but the key is to use dry farmed early girl tomatoes.   These are small tomatoes that are never watered.  They get their moisture from Northern California fog and have the most intense flavor.  We’ve discovered this amazing cheese product  – quark which has the consistency of being somewhere between whipped cream and ricotta cheese.  It can be either sweet (with lemon zest and sugar) or savory.  Floating on top of soup. it gave an ethereal creaminess to the tomatoes.

And here’s where we made our big mistake. We were freaking stuffed by the end of the soup course and even with a 45 minute delay, we were still full by the time we served the turkey.  But we soldiered on (poor us! )

Main course

The turkey
So the day before Thanksgiving, J picked up the turkey from Cheffie Mark.  Cheffie Mark actually brined the turkey in a maple syrup/salt/white wine brine.  Along with that he gave us a basting liquid to flavor the gravy and baste the turkey.  He gave detailed instructions on cooking the turkey that were practically foolproof.  The turkey was the best we ever had -  a beautiful red-bronze color and full of a sweet savoriness.   This was perfect with the gravy that West Coast Rebecca made with her grandmother’s technique.  On top of that was a homemade cranberry sauce with ginger.

The sides
“green bean casserole” -  I put this in quotes because this was a play on the traditional green bean casserole.  Bellisima made this casserole that was actually a chiffonade of  brussels sprouts sauteed in butter and with a little red wine vinegar.  This was topped by crispy shallots.

Actual green beans - Muffin and June made a nice sautee of green beans in butter.   I am sad that we were so full at this point because the beans were perfectly made – tender and crisp.

Kale and sweet potato casserole – Another contribution form Muffin and June.  We asked them to bring some vegetably since there were so many starches.

The mashed stuff - West Rebecca brought two mashed vegetables – mashed ptoatoes with creme fraiche and mashed acorn squash.  Having had then as leftovers, they stood well on their own.  They were well seasoned and savory.

Rolls – j also made rolls.  I didn’t partake during the dinner part but they made perfect turkey-cranberry sandwiches.  They were soft and fluffy.

Dessert
By the time dessert came around we were just picking at our meal.  We were just SOOO full.

Cider – One of the things were were able to really enjoy in our satiated state was the hot apple cider Muffin and June brought.  It hit the spot and paired well with the apple cobblers and cheeses.

More cheese – We held back on the cheeses and had two for after dinner.  Sadly I can’t find the description.  The first was a semisoft cheese washed with walnut liqueur.  Another was a bleu cheese.  The great thing was that Cheffie Mark brought the walnut liqueur that the cheese was washed in (well the same brand).

Homemade truffles – This was perfect for our post meal state of mind.  Small bites to just pick at.  He had milk chocolate rolled in powdered sugar and dark chocolate rolled in almond flour.

Apple cobblers – I made individual apple cobblers in ramekins.  Like made things we ate after the soup course, they tasted excellent the next day.  Between the eight of us, we managed to finish two.

Pumpkin tarts - Finally, I made pumpkin tarts for everyone and ended up being very nice parting gifts.

Thanksgiving 2010 was great because we had a kitchen big enough to accommodate eight cooks, a dining room and dining room table that accommodated eight diners, and eight great friends who shared our new house with us.   Now on to Christmas!

Grand Lake Farmers Market

We definitely have become fans of the Grand Lake Farmer Market.  We’ve known it existed but we’ve never gone there until we moved to North Oakland.  Upon the recommendation of our server at B, we decided to go the week after we moved into our house.  It was a blast.  The vendors are almost uniformly friendly (almost) and the produce is high quality.  It’s a big crowd that goes there and one that is stereotypically Northern California – young white folks with dreadlocks, aging hippies, yuppies and their families, etc.

Convenience –3

This market isn’t anywhere near a BART station.  Although being at the intersection of Lakeshore Ave. and the 580 freeway it’s fairly convenient to drive. T he big challenge is to find parking.  It’s a popular farmers market so parking can be challenging.  One thing that adds to the convenience is having Trader Joe’s right down the street.  It means you can really get all of your grocery shopping done in one fell swoop.

Vibe – 4

It’s a fun friendly scene here.  Very similar to Berkeley Farmers Market but without be aggressively progressive.  It attracts the usual Bay Area crowd.  The lay is great because it is concentrated into one area and you don’t have to cross streets to see the whole market.  I’d give the vibe a 5 but there are a few vendors who just aren’t that friendly.  Also the sheer number of people makes it hard for vendors to chat (although that doesn’t stop the vendors in Berkeley or the Ferry Plaza.

Produce – 4

The variety of products is pretty standard. What is great is the sheer size of the market. You can really do comparison shopping to see whose produce you like the best.  Of course it helps that we’re shopping in the middle of summer where there is a profusion of fruits and vegetables.  I particularly like the variety of nut vendors.

Prepared Foods –4

There is a great variety of prepared foods.  There’s the roast chicken people, the Belgian waffle people, Indian Food, Afghan Food you name it.  What I do particularly like is that Cowgirl Creamery has an outpost at Grand Lake.  I love their panir and use it to make some awesome ravioli.

Flowers –4

Great selection of flowers.  I’d rank it right up there with Old Oakland for flowers.  One good thing is that there is a vendor that sells cut orchids.  For those of us who have a habit of killing orchid plants having a bouquet of cut orchids is a nice treat.

Total: 19 out of 25

Recipe Success – Pork and Tomatillo Stew

It was one of those perfect Saturdays.  The sun was shining.  The people at the farmers market were their friendly selves and we were able to get a million things done in the space of two hours.  One of the reasons why we got our weekend errands done with such dispatch was because they were all in the same two block radius – Oakland’s Piedmont Avenue.  While J got his hair cut, I went to the UPS store to ship off a quilt, the fabric store to get batting and the comic book store to see if the latest Uncanny X-Men came in.

I passed by Piedmont grocery and realized I could get fixings for dinner.  If Whole Foods and the Shop Around the corner decided to have a love-child, it would be Piedmont Grocery.  It’s a small grocery store that is halfway between a Trader Joe’s and a convenience store in size but it boasts an excellent butcher section and has an international foods section that puts World Market to shame.  Looking to be inspired, I went to the meat section and remembered a great recipe for pork and tomatillo stew.  Knowing that there was a canister of homemade tomatillo salsa in the fridge, I bought three pounds of pork shoulder (a steal at $3.00/pound), more tomatillos, and cumin.

Being new to cooking pork shoulder, I stayed close to the recipe, adjusting for the fact I had three pounds of meat instead of four.  The only changes I did make was adding in the tomatillo salsa, replace the jalapeno pepper with a poblano, adding a couple of overripe tomatoes to roast with the tomatillos, and (gasp) using Maggi chicken stock powder instead of my own chicken stock.

It turned out wonderfully.  For those of you who are wary of using pork, pork should is the perfect meat for braising.  It turns out tender without being stringy (my biggest complaint for using chicken to braise) and full of flavor.  The meat is well marbled without being fatty.  And the flavor of the stew is amazing.  We served the stew with tortilla chips, grated cheddar and sour cream along with some fresh cilantro.  It was perfect!

Two reviews – Julie and Julia/My Life in France

In anticipation of the Julie and Julia movie, I decided to write a joint review of Julie and Julia the book and My Life in France. One I like.  One I didn’t. You can probably guess which one is which.

Here’s what’s so weird – I related more to a dead lady who lived a big chunk of her life abroad than a fellow food blogger who is around my age.   So with Julie and Julia, I just felt like she was moving from one topic to the other without enough context.  It felt like a series of anecdotes but without the context of how life changing and nourishing cooking actually is.   Yes you hate your job as an office drone triaging the needs of 9/11 widows but I’m not getting a sense that cooking Julia’s recipes was anything other than something you did.  Obviously it changed your life but from what I read, BLOGGING about it changed your life more than the cooking.  There were very few points in the book where cooking was pleasurable and nourishing for the soul.  On top of that, things kept on happening to her but I never got a sense of who she was other than some generic 20something trying to figure herself out.

This is in contrast to My Life in France where I felt like Julia and Paul would totally be friends with J and I.  What’s funny is that My Life in France is one of the least food porny books about food there is.  There’s more descriptions of Julia’s frustration with her conservative father than mouth watering descriptions of meals.   Like Julie, food and learning to cook was a life changing event.   What was so satisfying for me about My Life in France was seeing who she was before and after she discovered cooking.  She was an extremely intelligent and socially progressive person who found a stand up guy who shared her values.   I love that she was sharing her and Paul’s frustration wit the crappy politics of the U.S. diplomatic corps and her challenges with co-author Simone Beck.  What encapsulates the book for me isn’t even a written word.  It’s two pages of Valentine’s Day cards she and Paul would send to friends.  They capture the couple that have been so well described in the book.  Pictures of the two of the as an 19th Century couple (with Paul in a toupee), in the bathtub, and sitting on a bench with red hearts pinned to their matching white shirts.  These are two engaged, funny, smart people.

Unlike Julie, I wanted to be part of Julia’s orbit.

Digs Bistro – A Tale of Two Evenings

J and I have this thing when we go to restaurants in the Bay Area, we end up totally connecting with the staff. It happened at B, it happened at Aunt Mary’s (review to come) and it happened last night at Digs Bistro.  Located in our ‘hood on the corner of Sacramento and Dwight Way, Digs bistro is a tiny (I mean TINY) neighborhood joint that does the local, organic, gourmet food extremely well.

On Tuesday, we tried to go and they were closed.  As were Aunt Mary’s, San Maru (a Korean place closed???), and Zatar.   We tried to go to Bistro Liaison but we were told they only had outdoor seating only to see them seat two other couples behind us.  We were told told “if you want an indoor table the wait will be X.”  We were told there was no indoor seating.  Period.  We tried to brave the outdoor space but couldn’t deal with the slow service.   The slow and confused service was so bad that we felt sorry for the OTHER couple who were seated outside.  We at least got bread and water. They were still waiting to get any attention.  That night we left and made a beeline to B.

Last night we made another attempt to hit Digs Bistro.  This time we were successful.   They were having a busy night.  With only two people on the floor, a maitre d’ and a server and ONE chef and a kitchen person, they had a skeleton crew.   But here’s teh difference between SLOW service and BAD service – communication.  Right away, the maitre d’ let us know they had a full house and that they were a bit slower that night.  He was apologetic aobut the fact he didn’t have space at the bar for us and once we got to the bar, he gave us a small glass of wine.  What counts is not the free booze (although that helps), it’s the thoughtfulness.

Once we got to our table the service was slow but he checked in on us and let us know how long things would take.  Once we got to our table we ordered the charcuterie plate and fried squash blossoms and the roasted half chicken with the roasted toamtoes and polenta and the semolian crusted halibut with sauteed baby spinach and three bean vinaigrette (three diferent kinds of beans in a vinaigrette).  I will say that the bread you get is excellent.  Soft with a nice crust to it.  But we were really impressed by the charcuerie plate.   It was inventive with homemade bacon and h0memade apricot chutney.  We are trying to eat as many squash blossoms as we can as the season is drawing to a close.  Here’s the thing, it’s hard NOT to get a great squash blossom because deep fried squash blossoms stuffed with cheese can never go wrong.

But it’s the entrees that really kicked it.  The halibut was perfectly cooked and the spinach and beans had a very vibrant fresh flavor to them.  The chicken ranks up there with Courdoroy and B as great tasting chicken. It was moist and tender and full of flavor.  The delicate sauces with both dishes really highlighted the flavors of their proteins.

throughout the whole evening, the skeleton crew waitstaff made sure we were attended to and were apologetic about the wait.  We were appreciative of their thoughfulness and once things slowed down we got great service.  We could tell this is an excellent neighborhood joint where people come back again and again.

Pavlova – Two Ways (or Damn you Barefoot Contessa!)

It’s been intimated that J and I have some eating restrictions, me with the diabetes and J with dairy allergies as well as an allergy to artificial sweeteners.  That makes dessert a huge challenge.  I’ve resolved this challenge by making the same desserts two ways – one with Splenda and dairy (for me) and the other with sugar and dairy substitutes (for him).  A good example of this is my cobbler recipe.  I make a cobbler with almond flour in ramekins.  I do a ¼ cup of almond flour with ½ teaspoon of baking powder and 1 tablespoon of sugar and then mix in 1 tablespoon of melted butter, 1 tablespoon of almond milk and a dash of vanilla.  Spoon on top of about ½ a cup of chopped fruit (stone fruit like cherries and nectarines work best) and bake for half an hour at 350 degrees.  For myself, all I need to do is replace the sugar with the equivalent amount of Splenda and I’m set.

Sunday, J and I were going to Muffin and June’s for a BBQ with Bellisima and West Coast Rebecca.  Being summertime in the bay area, I decided to try my hand at pavlova.  For those of you who don’t know palvova, it’s a meringue shell that is mashmallowy in the middle.  It’s cratered in the middle as well so people traditionally pile it high with fruit and whipped cream.  Perfect dessert to highlight summer fruit.  Like the cobbler, I decided to make a version for me (whipped cream and splenda) and a version for J (lemon curd and sugar).  Because you can freeze the pavlova ahead of time, I tried my hand at pavlova on Friday night.  For the first time Ina Garten did me WRONG.  I made her Back to Basics it failed.  What I got was a gloppy mess of a meringue that was more the consistency of a meringue topping for a lemon meringue pie.  Never a waster, I decided to fold in the lemon curb to the failed meringue to lighten the lemon curd.

The next morning I did a little research (Nigella!) and saw that every OTHER cookbook was saying to bake the pavlova at 300 degrees as opposed to the 180 that Ina instructed.  I did the whole shebang again using the Barefoot Contessa recipe but using the oven temperature of Nigella Lawson (preheat to 350 and when you put it in, immediately drop temp to 300).  It was a huge success.  I tried it again using baking Splenda, and another HUGE SUCCESS!  So in one pavlova there were raspberries and blackberries over lemon curd and another pavlova there were the same berries over whipped cream sweetened with Splenda.  In fact, Muffin, who ate both versions, liked the Splenda version.  SCORE!

So here’s my sugar-free version of a pavlova.  To make it low-fat, simply use low-fat (or even nonfat cool whip).

• 2 extra-large egg whites, at room temperature
• Pinch kosher salt
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoons cornstarch
• 1/2 teaspoon white wine vinegar
• 1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Place a sheet of parchment paper on a sheet pan. Draw a 5-inch circle on the paper, then turn the paper over so the circle is on the reverse side. (This way you won’t get a pencil mark on the meringue.)

Place the egg whites and salt in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a whisk attachment. Beat the egg whites on high speed until firm, about 2 minutes. With the mixer still on high, slowly add the sugar and beat until it makes firm, shiny peaks, about 2-3 more minutes.

Remove the bowl from the mixer, sift the cornstarch onto the beaten egg whites, add the vinegar and vanilla, and fold in lightly with a rubber spatula. Pile the meringue into the middle of the circle on the parchment paper and smooth it within the circle, making a rough disk. Bake for 1 1/2 hours. Turn off the oven, keep the door closed, and allow the meringue to cool completely in the oven, about 1 hour. It will be crisp on the outside and soft on the inside.

Invert the meringue disk onto a plate.  There will be a cracked crater of delciciousness that is perfect for lemon curd, whipped cream or just fruit and a dash of some old balsamic.

Crossposted at itsalifestylex2.blogspot.com