Back to Basics

“Beautiful Soup! Who cares for fish, game or any other dish? Who would not give all else for two pennyworth only of beautiful soup?”
Lewis Carroll (1832-1998)

“To cook is to lay hands on the body of the world.”
John Thorne


My adventures in the kitchen this past week are a riches to rags story.

Juan returned home on Monday from a weekend dive trip to Santa Rosa Island, one of the two northern-most Channel Islands. Unfortunately, he returned with barely half a limit of California Spiny Lobster, Panulirus interruptus.

I quickly decided it didn’t matter when he opened the ice chest to reveal a 6 ½ pound behemoth. It dwarfed the two smaller lobsters next to it.

It was Valentine’s Day and we’d been planning to cook some lobster for dinner, figuring he’d come home with at least one. The two small crustaceans would be more than enough for a meal, Juan insisted, adding that we should freeze the monster and serve him up at a dinner party. A debate ensued over which lobster to cook while Juan struggled to hold the squirming beast for a photo.

Killing one’s own food doesn’t happen much for suburban dwellers like me. I tend to catch and release when fly fishing and the closest I’d come lately to personally delivering a death sentence was plunging some Dungeness crabs into boiling water.

This guy definitely gave me pause. It was hard not to feel a bit of a pang knowing he’d escaped commercial traps for so many years. If we were going to eat him, it didn’t seem right to relegate him to the deep freeze. We needed to enjoy him fresh out of the sea.

I won the argument with that bit of reasoning and with that, the huge creature snapped its tail, arched its back and flew out of Juan’s hands onto the driveway with a loud smack. We quickly ushered him, only slightly subdued, into the kitchen.

We boiled him for a few minutes, split him open and rubbed the meat with olive oil, kosher salt and freshly ground pepper, then broiled both halves under the broiler until just barely done.

The tails were plated up with simple accompaniments: pinto beans, brown rice, grilled flour tortillas and limes. I was reminded of afternoons in Puerto Nuevo, Baja California, back when the restaurants there served real lobster. Tuesday night we had leftover lobster in an aromatic tomato sauce tossed with pasta.

Wednesday night we had lobster tacos, piled high with cilantro and avocado.

By Thursday night was I was wishing I’d lost the argument and we’d cooked the smaller lobster.

Friday night, I arrived home from work to find a box from Amazon on the doorstep. It turned out to be gift from my sister; Melissa Clark’s new cookbook In the Kitchen with A Good Appetite. I’ve long been a fan of Clark’s New York Times column and had given the book to my sister for Christmas, knowing she too is an admirer of her straightforward, unfussy recipes and inspiring narrative. Now my sister was returning the favor and after a week’s worth of lobster over-indulgence, her timing was perfect.

I opted for the restorative power of a great pot of soup and was happy to find, early Saturday morning, that I had all the ingredients on hand for this one. It was just what the doctor ordered: unpretentious, bright, meatless (except for the stock) and soothing. And, while it’s clearly good for you, it’s also very, very good.

Red Lentil Soup With Lemon

Very slightly adapted from Melissa Clark’s In The Kitchen With A Good Appetite

Time: 45 minutes
3 tablespoons olive oil, more for drizzling
2 large onions, chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons tomato paste
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, more to taste
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon red Aleppo pepper (or a pinch of ancho chile powder)
2 quarts chicken or vegetable broth (I used homemade turkey stock)
2 cups red lentils
2 large carrots, peeled and diced
Juice of 1 lemon, more to taste
1/3 cup chopped fresh mint. Can substitute fresh cilantro or parsley.
1. In a large pot, heat oil over high heat until hot and shimmering. Add onion and garlic, and sauté until golden, about 4 minutes.
2. Stir in tomato paste, cumin, salt, black pepper and chili powder or cayenne, and sauté for 2 minutes longer.
3. Add broth, 2 cups water, lentils and carrot. Bring to a simmer, then partially cover pot and turn heat to medium-low. Simmer until lentils are soft, about 30 minutes. Taste and add salt if necessary.
4. Using an immersion or regular blender or a food processor, purée half the soup then add it back to pot. Soup should be somewhat chunky.
5. Reheat soup if necessary, then stir in lemon juice and mint. Serve soup drizzled with good olive oil and dusted lightly with Aleppo pepper if desired.
Yield: 6 servings.

Food lover’s guide to a weekend in San Francisco

If you’ve read this blog you’ve heard our complaints about the limited selection of certain ingredients available to us on the Central Coast. While we agree that it is the happiest place in America, we still feel the urge to spend a weekend every now and then in the foodiest place in America – San Francisco. Here we can find nearly any ingredient and a good dose of inspiration.

Here’s our basic plan step by step

Step 1. Find a place to stay. San Francisco has thousands of hotels. Everything from luxury rooms in touristy areas to motor inns in neighborhoods. What they don’t have is much in the way of parking. When you go online and get a killer deal you will most likely arrive to find that you’ll be charged $40 a night to park your car. On a recent trip we opted to stay at the Pacific Heights Inn which offered free parking, a reliable recommendation and a fairly decent rate by San Francisco standards. PHI is located in the Marina/Cow Hollow district of the city which has a nice selection of restaurants, bars and shops. It is a neighborhood full of young hip families. A nice respite from the tourist/homeless crowds found in Union Square. What PHI doesn’t offer is a swanky room that makes you want to hang out instead of hitting the streets to either shop, eat or drink.

Step 2.Make dinner reservations. San Francisco has dozens of great restaurants. If you want to dine at a restaurant of note be sure to make reservations well in advance. We read restaurant reviews and scan online menus for days trying to decide where to eat.

Step 3.Ditch work early enough on Friday to get to the city in time to check-in to a hotel (or in our case a motel), grab a cocktail and make a 7:30 dinner reservation. At night we leave the car and take taxis to and from our chosen restaurant. This eliminates the need to fight traffic, find parking and designate a driver. You can get almost anywhere in the city for less than $20 each way.

Step 4. Go to Farmer’s Market at the Ferry Building on Saturday morning…and go hungry! On a recent trip we headed to the market at a bit after 8, spent a few minutes shopping before we came upon the Roli Roti rotisserie truck.
One whiff of their porchetta sizzling on the rotisserie and we were hooked. Porchetta is rolled pork loin filled with a rosemary/lemon herb mix. Grilled on the rotisserie for 4 hours until crispy brown on the outside then sliced and placed on a fresh baked Acme Bread Company deli roll with a smear of onion marmalade and whatever greens are available (curly grass, baby arugula, baby Italian parsley) DELICIOUS!!! The other amazing thing they do is roast potatoes in the bottom of the rotisserie in all of the drippings from the racks of chickens they have roasting. So we split a sandwich and a side order of roasted potatoes and thought we’d died and gone to heaven. Of course it didn’t hurt that we had the good fortune of being in the city on a clear February morning where the temperature reach an amazing 75 degrees that day.

Next stop, Boccalone. We’ve written about their Tasty Salted Pig Parts in the past. Well somehow in the past we missed Nduja, a spicy spreadable salami. Wow! That right there is reason enough for us to get in the car and head north. It can be spread on a cracker, used to enhance sauces and surely other yet to be discovered uses.

I could go on about the joys of Farmer’s Market but those are the standouts from this particular trip. If you enjoy food, this market is a must do if you find yourself in San Francisco on a Saturday morning. And don’t forget your ice chest!

Step 5. Plan a trip to the Mission district if you are into Latin foods. I go for the empanada skins at Casa Lucas on 24th street. There’s a self-serve Mexican bakery just across the street which netted Juan a big bag of fresh baked cookies.
Between the amazing restaurants, Farmer’s Market and the Mission district you can’t help but return home with a new outlook on working in your kitchen (once you recover from the full feeling you’re bound to leave the city with).

I was recently given a set of pasta attachments for my Kitchen Aid mixer. Devon and I put it to work and paired it with our new buddy Nduja. This one’s a keeper!

Pasta with Nduja and Roasted Tomato Sauce
Adapted from The Zuni Café Cookbook

1 pound pasta (we used fresh fettuccine)
2 cans whole tomatoes, drained, juice reserved
½ cup olive oil
1 yellow onion sliced
6 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
1 teaspoon cracked black pepper
1 bay leaf
Salt
Sugar (if needed)
½ Nduja salami
½ cup grated pecorino romano cheese
Cut tomatoes in half and place cut side down into a shallow roasting pan in one crowded layer. Add enough of the reserved tomato juice to come to a depth of ¼ inch. Drizzle with 2 tablespoons of the olive oil and broil until tops are charred.




Sautee onions in 3 tablespoons olive oil until they begin to color then stir in the garlic, pepper, and bay leaf. Add warm tomatoes and a few more tablespoons of olive oil. Add the salami and simmer long enough to combine the elements. Season with salt and sugar if necessary.

Drain cooked pasta and fold into the tomato sauce. Serve sprinkled with grated pecorino romano to taste.

In Honor of Meat

Sometimes you just need a little red meat.

In the 60’s, when the craving hit my family we’d head to Lawry’s The Prime Rib on La Cienega Blvd. in Beverly Hills. My grandparents lived in Los Angeles and often when we’d visit from San Diego, they would treat our family to dinner at Lawry’s.

It was always a special occasion. The restaurant was expensive, even in those days, and for our family it felt like a big night out. My mom would doll up my sister and me in our best dresses, put my hair in a bun, which I hated, and remind us to be on our best behavior.

My grandparents were loving and wonderful people. As proper grandparents should, they showered their grandkids with presents. They took us on tons of outings --often to Kiddyland (also on La Cienega) and the La Brea Tar Pits. My grandmother baked cookies and made taffy. And they lived in a large house complete with a bar and a slot machine where my sister and I could pretend to be cowboys in an old time saloon.

In exchange for their largess they expected good behavior from us when out in public.

My most vivid memory of one of these meals at Lawry’s was of an elderly couple coming up to our table as we finished our meals. The husband leaned over conspiratorially to my dad and said, “Those are the most well behaved children we have ever seen in a restaurant. You have a lovely family.” My parents and my grandparents beamed with pride.

What the elderly couple didn’t know was that there was a secret behind our etiquette.

Much of the allure of Lawry’s, besides the beauty of a big red slab of prime rib on your plate, were the giant wheeled silver carts the chefs rolled over to your table that contained the standing rib roasts. The rolling doors on the carts would be dramatically opened to reveal the rib roasts and the chefs would carve them up tableside. It was quite an impressive sight befitting the over-the-top splendor of the restaurant.

And every time we went to Lawry’s, as we settled into our booth, my parents would point to one of the carts and remind my sister and I that that was were where they put the naughty children who didn’t behave at dinner. As absurd as that sounds, I believed it one hundred percent. And my parents, enjoying their martinis, never bothered to let me in on the joke.

Speaking of big metal contraptions that encase meaty delights, my new smoker from Weber arrived on Friday. The thing is enormous. It could fit two naughty children inside. It also has me thinking that I need to make some new meat eating friends as it seems fewer and fewer of my current pals are carnivorous.



I christened The Beast on Sunday and smoked up some baby back ribs. Kathy emailed me the next morning and claimed they were the best she’d ever had.



This spice rub is terrific on pork—baby back ribs in particular. Sprinkle both sides of the rib racks with the rub, then grill them over indirect heat on a charcoal grill for about 40 minutes. (These puppies took 4 ½ hours on my new smoker and they were worth every minute!)




Dry Rub

Adapted from Saveur Magazine

MAKES 3 CUPS
1 cup sugar
1⁄4 cup seasoned salt, such as Lawry's
1⁄4 cup garlic salt
1⁄4 cup celery salt
1⁄4 cup onion salt
1⁄2 cup paprika
3 tbsp. chili powder
2 tbsp. freshly ground black pepper
1 tbsp. lemon pepper
2 tsp. ground sage
1 tsp. dry mustard
1⁄2 tsp. ground thyme
1⁄2 tsp. cayenne
1. Sift together sugar, seasoned salt, garlic salt, celery salt, onion salt, paprika, chili powder, black pepper, lemon pepper, sage, mustard, thyme, and cayenne into a bowl. Store in a jar. (When using, sprinkle onto, don't rub into, meat.)