My Dear C –

I’m sitting in a tank top and looking at some lovely redi-ish tulips I bought at Trader Joe’s. Yesterday I heard the ethereal song of my first Swainson’s Thrush of the year – so it’s past spring here now. One of the cats is passed out next to the flowers, her paw hung over the edge of the table, lethargic from what we call heat around here.

Just a couple weeks ago, I happened to be passing through the Ferry Plaza in San Francisco – spilling over with pea blossoms and berries and asparagus and lilacs. The market here by me has been – underwhelmingly un-springy.

I wonder what your CSA has this time of year? Never mind – I can just look on their site! Mmm – fennel. That’s a vegetable I changed my mind about as an adult. I used to find it unbearably anise-y in flavor and – also – overused, I suppose. I think there was a period when it was in everything fancy. Not that I was eating fancy, was I? But now perhaps my taste buds have dulled and also it’s no longer the annoyingly ubiquitous darling it was in the early 90s (?). I want to say 80s, though.

Probably 80s. Not that my mother cooked with it, so where would I have been eating it? I wasn’t soire-ing at Star’s, though I can still picture their ad from the NYT of my childhood – I remember it featuring a sketch of an impossibly lanky woman with big hair swirling all around her, and the restaurant’s name in a sophisticated serif script above her head…. I wonder if that’s an accurate recollection. I was fascinated by it.

Once as a kid I was staying over with my mother’s friends in Noe Valley for a couple days, in their Victorian in what was a very different neighborhood than it is now– and they told me they were taking me to Star’s and I got so excited. It turned out they were referring to the bakery down the street famous for its Irish Soda Bread. Star Bakery opened in 1899 and closed in 1998. Jeremiah Towers’ Star’s closed in 1999.

In my short stint as a professional cook, I did learn to make and sort of enjoy fennel braised in orange juice. It was quite a popular appetizer. But then – bread pudding was a popular dessert. So that says a lot about the patrons’ tastes.

The thought of a fancy dinner out used to thrill me. I racked up a lot of debt satisfying that particular yen – eating at the counters of some of the best restaurants in town. A lot of sushi, which is good for loneliness. It’s the omegas I guess.

The yen for a fancy dinner out still kicks in when someone else is paying, or when I know I’m going to eat with someone who will really appreciate the whole to-do of it. The last meal I had like that checked both boxes: at Boulevard. They still got it, man. And they’re bringing the 80s back – or they never left the premises. I wish I could remember what I ate – but I remember my companion and the joy of it.

These days I eat at home, most of the time. And I’ve jumped on two bandwagons – fancy tinned fish and the Rancho Gordo Bean Club. These two things can go together well. Last week I was making variations on what I call “dirty rice” which is probably not what other people call dirty rice – mine is rice cooked with things thrown in – maybe canned tomatoes, spices, asparagus, sesame oil, greens at the end. What is to hand. Topped with whatever is to hand. Some beans (I made an entire pound bag of Christmas Lima beans and I’m still eating them 2 weeks later) and greens and / or exquisite tinned fish, and some chili crisp or the like.

There’s no turning back from the fancy tinned fish. I had smoked trout from Fishwife and mackerel from a Spanish brand. Maybe Matiz? But I feel like there was a tilde in there somewhere. I must’ve happened on a sale because normally these little cans’ prices are too rich for my blood. Today I opened a can of TJ’s ahi in olive oil and beyond being dry, it was actually gristly. Sheesh. This is what happens, Larry…

The Rancho Gordo Bean Club shipment is quarterly and hard to keep up with, especially for a hoarder. The pile of pound bags grows precarious. So far I think my favorite new bean is the buckeye. I just made a pot of flageolet beans – going to have them with some salmon and greens/asparagus and green garlic. And sometimes I just get a hankering for a gigante bean, because I want to make this, which satisfies at home and for parties.

But back to fennel and your CSA. I wonder if you’re a fan of The Vegetarian Epicure. Maybe we’ve talked about it. It – the original edition, also featuring a woman with big hair on the cover, though quite a different aesthetic than the ad for Star’s, was lying around when I was knocking about alone in a big house a friend let me stay in and cooking wasn’t yet a habit. I made the greens and garlic soup (with feta) and was blown away.

And more recently, with a more practiced cooking hand, I made the chard and fennel – and feta – pie, with a dough from my sourdough starter. (The starter is languishing, long-unfed, in the fridge.) These days I’m a lazier cook than that pie, or even the soup, allows for – got one eye on the clock and the other on the stove, testing to see how quickly I can throw together something satisfying.

Tonight it was a soup of leftover roast chicken I’d frozen, thawed in a pot with soy and coconut aminos, a leek thrown in and a big green garlic shoot, some ginger grated in (I don’t even bother to peel it anymore) and a couple pints of frozen scrap stock. Once that melted – tossed in cauliflower, bok choy, and some lovely Tokyo turnip greens about to be languishing, and the cauliflower leaves, some shirataki noodles and finally finished with a little rice vinegar. Plated and garnished with chopped spring onion and the green garlic top and a drizzle of sesame oil. I think it took me 15 minutes. Maybe 20.

Sending you love and vegetal inspiration –
M.

P.S. I’m googling “How to revive sourdough starter” so I can make that pie again. I bet it can come to life again. I shall report back.

P.P.S. I’m in love with cooking pasta in just enough water so I don’t have to drain it – I don’t care what anyone says.