Tag: cooking

Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons

mashastreLeave a comment

My Dear C –

I think you would be better served having our former classmate Darrell as your epistolary blog mate. He keeps posting fascinating foodstuffs he is making that I have to look up. Just this week I think – soubise, tangzhong, and tepache.

Soubise is apparently a French sauce made of onions, butter, and cream – Darrell noted Caramelized onion soy “butter”! From Calvin Eng’s “Salt, Sugar, MSG” cookbook. Really more of a sobuise sauce…so good! He made a rye tangzhong. I had to look it up on Wikipedia and to be honest I still don’t quite get what it is. It’s a roux/gel that makes bread more tender? Tepache is a traditional Mexican fermented beverage, often pineapple-based. That I get.

On that note – my mother made beet-based kvass when I was visiting her. At a farmer’s market foray, she’d bought this quite pricy and delicious tonic and had the inspiration to make her own. She skipped the spices, for better or worse, but it’s still tasty although less concentrated for sure. She basically applied the pickling concept to create it. But I found this recipe that looked good to me, partly because it uses whey – which is great if you make your own farmer’s/cottage cheese, because you’ve got a built in use for that nutritious stuff. I will try my hand at it.

I discovered that all the pickles I’d made last year didn’t get eaten – they just got hoarded and languished in their own brine at the back of the fridge. Super sad. I bought some pickling cucumbers (dubiously fresh) at a Russian store over the weekend and shoved them into the old brine to try to redeem this. We shall see.

Did I tell you I found a Magic Bullet on the street? With 6 containers. I used it to make a pesto yesterday. It’s – excessively smooth. But I used the analogous thing – that my mother found on the street by her house – to make a nicoise dressing and it was quite lovely. I put in a ton of basil and parsley and garlic and spring onion and olive oil and it was delicious.

Trader Joe’s canned tuna in olive oil in full effect. And the first good tomatoes of the season. Plus green beans that I had already made into a salad with a fancy white wine vinegar and shallot dressing.

Back at home the tomatoes aren’t yet ready. But I did get some Japanese eggplant and sweet peppers and zucchini – and picked some makrut lime leaves off a tree nearby – and made a lovely curry. I marinated very firm tofu in red thai curry with a little aminos and soy and rice vinegar.

Sautéed onions in avocado oil – threw in the 4 lime leaves, added the sliced eggplant when the onions were translucent, then a few sliced cloves of garlic and the marinated tofu, followed by the sliced peppers and then the sliced zucchini when everything seemed near cooked. Finally a bit of coconut milk (I had half a can moldering in the fridge – once I took off the bad bits it was probably 1/3 cup or less). Truly one of my better efforts. Despite the overcooked basmati rice on the side. I still haven’t learned to cook rice.

I am feeling like a damaged lemon, hence the title (courtesy of Blonde Redhead).

Much love –

M.

The Asparagus Song

mashastreLeave a comment

6/22/25

My Dear C –

I am back in the place we met. I used to not like coming down here because life is organized entirely around eating and now I like coming down here because life is organized entirely around eating.

I drove down yesterday with my mum – well, she drove us down, going 90 on the 5 in her Prius. Good to see so many yuccas pointing their waxy fairy asparagus candelabra blooms up out of the hills of chaparral south of the Grapevine.

On the way we listened to Long Island Compromise – a novel I thoroughly enjoyed but my mother found lacking so far in humanity (the Beemer character maybe doesn’t speak to her). Todd Solondz’s Happiness is showing at the Aero this evening and we are not going to see it. Too much humanity?

As time came to consider dinner, my old post-road-trip standby of a steak and bottle of red wine came to mind. After getting dropped off home I’d make my way to the Safeway open late on Mission and get a steak and cook it — in my cast iron pan on that gorgeous gargantuan O’Keefe & Merritt stove with its built-in porcelain salt and pepper shakers that spelled PS — and enjoy it alone. A return deserves a reward.

Yesterday we pulled off into Whole Foods and I got a rib eye and some young potatoes. I don’t cook steak much and less on this electric cooktop, so it’s a challenge to get the sear right and also cook it through just enough but not too much. I damaged my mother’s Le Creuset cast iron pan in the past overheating it to get the sear. Turns out you don’t have to go so high heat to get a good sear. It’s more about patience, perhaps.

Added whole young garlic cloves- sautéing gently in the fat at the side of the pan. And the young potatoes I first boiled and then poured off the water to steam them and seal in the flavor – I don’t understand this but it makes potatoes taste like butter. I suppose they’re less watery. Made myself martinis and should have kept it singular.

Oh got some French asparagus and instead of snapping off the bottoms, shaved them and when the steak was done, sautéed some shallot in the fat and added the asparagus and later a bit of red wine for the spears to simmer in. Finished with lemon and salt. Turned out well. Deglazed the pan with more red wine for a bit of sauce. One of my favorite ways to cook asparagus. (Usually I do just snap off the very bottom stem and use it in a stock.)

Tried my hand at compound butter. A bit of marjoram in the fridge that needed using – I tried to massage it into some butter from the freezer. Eventually somewhat successful and excellent on the steak.

Today – the farmer’s market. Green beans, the first tomatoes, the last of the pickling cucumbers, green garlic (still, amazingly, available), strawberries, delphiniums & lilies, mint, basil, Italian olives. A loaf of Jyan Isaac seeded sourdough and a conversation about “crumb” at the dinner table.

I’d driven down some very neglected (moldy on the outside) artichokes and wilty spinach and got those into decent shape here. Steamed the artichokes with the stems (which I love but are too fibrous for my mother) and served with garlic butter.

The spinach I put into a polenta. I’m finally getting a handle on those Italian starches, now that I’ve got a good relationship with risotto and made this polenta, which was…. extraordinarily satisfying. I think I used this as a concept and used a random stock my mother sitting in the freezer as the base, which was maybe made from asparagus? It had a very deep, complex flavor that I couldn’t quite place. After it stopped needing constant attention, I started throwing things in – first, some of tomatoes (not quite sweet enough raw but excellent cooked), the remains of the compound butter, and at the end – spinach, basil. It was like summer and comfort food got married and I got to officiate.

Steak sliced next day, with asparagus, olives, the artichokes and garlic butter, the potatoes and the polenta and a green bean salad – more on that last next time.

Much Love –

M.

PS I couldn’t figure out how to link it in the title, so here’s a link to Yo La Tengo’s The Asparagus Song

They Say It’s Spring

mashastreLeave a comment

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.