To Brandon, with nutmeg
There is only one thing that I need to say to convey the state of myself and my kitchen, and that is this: Brandon is boarding a plane to Seattle tomorrow with a one-way ticket. Oh, baby.It was not quite a year ago today—about 51 weeks ago, to be precise—that I first introduced him here, served up with a side of nutmeg muffins. Sometimes I forget how improbable our story is, and how uncertain it
Meet Paul Frohlich
Paul is the proprieter of one of the top specialty food stores in San Francisco, Yum.
Located at 1750 Market Street, Yum carries most everything to make a cook's heart sing. From childhood favorites like marshmallow fluff to a selection of over 100 exotic spices, some of which you've probably never heard of, Yum not only offers up great selection at reasonable prices, but does it with grace and style. And where else might you expect to find balasmic vinegars stored in a chrome medicine cabinet?
Read on to learn more about who and what has inspired such a fabulous store.
This store is so unique in breadth and depth of products, what inspired you, was there a niche you were trying to fill?
There is and we're not there yet--I've lived in NY, London, Paris, and San Francisco and it struck me that in all those cities have some sort of food hall--San Francisco didn't. It used to be Oakville Grocer and Macy's Cellar. The wonderful thing is the breadth (of those places) and it inspired me. It's about the quality of the product. There is a reason why everything ends up on the shelf. We don't deal with many distributors--we buy as much as possible from producers. Our customers are always asking us questions, the less middlemen the more info we can gather direct from the source and pass on to them.
Who did you have in mind as your customer? Who shops here?
Before I had this store I was a manager at HomeChef in Laurel Heights. Along with very loyal neighborhood support, a proportion of HomeChef's Customers were people buying to cook for someone else--private chefs and caterers not necessarily "eaters". By comparison, here it's everybody who can't wait to open up the Wednesday Chronicle food section. We do some mail order and we ship on a daily basis. It's fun when people come back here again and again. I've been most surprised that we've become a destination for people who bring their friends and family from out of town.
What is your philosophy towards cooking and shopping for food?
Recipes and classes say you have to do this and you have to do that but that's only half of it. After a class you have to make the recipes your own. The rules work for someone but that doesn't mean they work for everyone. I wanted to remind people to break down the barriers. When we do menu suggestions, we keep them light, and not too structured. We want people to do what works for them. We want people to feel a sense of enthusiasm, where cooking is no longer a chore.
Tell me about your obsession with bottled soft drinks!
We wanted to build a wine section, but very quickly it looked like any other wine store in the city. There are some really great wine stores in the city and it wasn't doing them or us any favors. What could we do that would create the breadth and playfulness? We chose something that was quintessentially American. When the economy started to tank I wanted to offer people something they could readily indulge in. The $12 bottle of wine wasn't it. We have over 130 different sodas and they have to be in glass bottles. It's a different formula in glass bottles, it's all about quality. I actually have a list of others, but we're tapped out in terms of room right now. There are another 38 more I'd like to carry...
What else makes the store different?
We do tastings on an informal but regular basis. We have a frequent shopper program and offer 2% back as a thank you to our customers. We don't sell them but we offer cookbooks as a reference for people who come into the shop and want to look something up. The layout and displays in the store are the way they are because I like things just so. Everything here is here for a reason.
Bouchon:Cookbook
I was planning on writing something about the crop of wonderful French cookbooks that were published in the last year. But then I received the Bouchon cookbook and quickly realized it warranted it's own review. It is a celebration of bistro food, but it is not just another bistro cookbook.
Having eaten at both the French Laundry and Bouchon, I believe that one of the things that make dining at any of Thomas Keller's restaurants such a pleasure is the perfection. The service is perfect. The food is perfect. You may not love every dish, but you are unlikely to find real fault either. Reading Bouchon is a sneak peek into the world of Thomas Keller as much as it is a peek into a bistro kitchen. So the Bouchon cookbook is a little bit of perfection too. It is a huge oversized format 340 page book that is very well written. It features gorgeous photography, wonderful essays about various elements of bistro cooking, discussions on various ingredients as well as techniques and recipes, of course. My only criticism is that this is a book you may not want to actually bring into the kitchen for fear of defacing it!
Eating in bistros in France you get a chance to discover how truly great simple food can be. Really it's the techniques that bring out the perfection in everyday ingredients. But if you want to know how Thomas Keller elevates simple dishes like roast chicken or potato leek soup to the point of perfection, this is the book for you. While most of the techniques are very traditional, you will also find the little touches that distinguish the Keller kitchen such as the salt mixture he uses in duck confit or the herbs or spices he uses to bring out the best in simple vegetables like cauliflower or fennel. While not every recipe may appeal to the home cook, there are plenty of recipes that have potential to become standards in your kitchen.
Post Modern Cuisine
Homaro Cantu and Ben Roche the Executive Chef and Pastry Chef of Moto are fascinating to listen to. They are brilliant innovators, great creative thinkers, inspired inventors and yet something disturbed me deeply about their presentation, " A Savory and Sweet Look into Post Modern Cuisine" at the IACP conference yesterday.
They talked about their kitchen as if it were a science lab. They video record everything because they want to document their efforts, but they don't believe in paper (except for when they are printing with edible inks on edible paper). Cooking, it seems, should not be limited to a stove but be something that is accomplished with "anything you can plug into a wall", including printers, lasers, freezing "anti-griddles", you-name-it.
Their goals are noble. They say they want to conserve energy, but really they want to save the planet. They believe in sustainability and in using only the best, most local, organic. and highest quality ingredients. They patent new technologies that they believe can be mass produced but donate profits to charity when they do deals with big companies. Not all of their inventions are necessarily food-orented. For example they even created a point of sale system that allows them to track costs in real time to ensure profitability.
They recruit all kinds of people to work in their kitchen/lab--engineers, soldiers, designers, mechanics, it could be anyone. They rotate everyone through the kitchen and dining room so everyone learns everything. They don't tell anyone when they are moving them from one place to another to keep everyone on their toes. They have meetings where anything at all can be discussed, because you never know where the next great idea will come from. It all sounds great.
But for all the talk of innovation, very little was said about taste. Even less was said about pleasure, unless it was the pleasure and fun of being in this wild environment of their own design. It saddened me to think that this is where food is heading, somewhere so efficient and focused and profitable, and yet without passion, heart or love.
The food at Moto is something you have probably heard about already--doughnut soup, hot ice cream, bubbles of sorbet filled with gasses, charcoal made from white bread and the like. I think of myself as open minded especially when it comes to food, but the offerings on a recent menu such as nitro sushi roll, goat cheese snow and balsamic, langostines with rice pilaf fries, chicken-fried mac-n-cheese, fruit and pasta, and chili cheese nachos for dessert really don't sound all that good to me. I have not eaten at Moto, but reading the reviews on their website I see words like fun, innovative, futuristic, playful, oddball and fantastic. What I want is just plain deliciousness. I hope in the "post-modern world" that's not too much to ask for.
FOOD
August 12
Delancey is one year old today.I took that picture, the one above, 16 months ago. Brandon had bought a 30-quart Hobart mixer a few months earlier, and we’d been storing it in our friend Carla’s basement. Our friend Sam named it Sir Mix-a-Lot. That morning, the morning that I took the picture, we had rented a big truck, wrestled Sir Mix-a-Lot into the back, strapped him in, and hauled him to
Lasagne w/ Wild Mushrooms
My lifelong friend, and a very dear one at that, is in Paris for the week, and I would be completely lying if I said that as soon as I knew she would be in Paris with her boyfriend (which was a couple of months ago) I didn't think about having her over for dinner and what I would prepare.
So alas, she agreed to come over last night with her boyfriend whom I would be meeting for the first time. This friend of mine is brilliant in every way and I hold her opinion in high regard; needless to say, I wanted this dinner to be perfect.
So, I got to thinking about what would make for some good dinner options. I had been craving some sort of mushroom dish for the past couple of nights, and I found a wild mushroom lasagne recipe that features the bold earthiness of dried porcini mushrooms - so soulful and satisfying.
I wanted to make a simple salad to start off the dinner, and I chose a very basic endive salad with a red wine dijon vinaigrette - simple, tasty, and light.
For an additional starter, I knew I wanted my friend to try pissaladière - it's so unique in flavor with slowly caramelized onions, salty anchovies and olives, and a crispy pastry crust, that it makes a bold and enriching statement. It really is amazing, I find myself craving it at random times throughout the day - the flavors stay with you!
Of course, the glorious cheese plate had to make an appearance - and it was the star of the night! The real winner on the cheese plate was a 2-year aged gouda that I got from a farmer's market in the 7th arrondissement; this cheese is a beautiful combination of sharp, nutty, and creamy.
Finishing off the dinner with two large maccarons, flavored with salted butter and caramel, and a small strawberry tart, we were successfully stuffed. And happy as clams.
So, I hope that anyone who is reading this (although I'm slowly becoming certain that I'm writing these recipes for no one but myself) can find inspiration in these dishes to create his or her own five-course dinner at home, and bring joy, passion, and love to a dinner table. The recipe for the endive salad is in the next post, and the recipe for the mushroom lasagne is what follows.
To make the filling for the lasagne, you'll need 2 ounces dried porcini mushrooms, 1 1/2 pounds white mushrooms, 2 large zucchini, 1 onion, 2 garlic cloves, 5 tablespoons butter, 6 tablespoons Sherry vinegar, 4 sprigs of fresh thyme, salt, and pepper. Bring 2 1/2 cups of water to a boil in a small saucepan; remove from heat, then add in the porcini mushrooms. Let the porcinis soak for about 20 minutes, and then remove them from the water, squeezing them out to get rid of excess liquid. Strain the porcini to remove grit and pat them dry. Chop them up, then place them in a large bowl. Simmer the porcini water until reduced to about 1/4 cup, then place in the bowl with the porcinis.
Chop up the white mushrooms, onion, garlic, and thyme, and cut the zucchini into 1/4-inch dice. Melt 1 tablespoon butter in a large skillet over medium heat, and once it has stopped foaming, add about 1 tablespoon sherry vinegar. Add 1/3 of the mushrooms, and cook until most liquid has evaporated from the mushrooms and they're beginning to brown, about 8 minutes. Place them in the bowl with the porcini mushrooms. Repeat this process with remaining mushrooms in two batches, adding them to the porcini mixture. Next, cook one more tablespoon butter, and cook zucchini until tender, about 8 minutes. Add to the porcini mixture. Cook final tablespoon butter (talk about excessive use of this dairy product!), and cook onion until soft, about 4-5 minutes. Add garlic, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/4 teaspoon pepper, and chopped thyme and cook for about 30 seconds, then add to the mushroom mixture. You can make this 1 day ahead, and keep it refrigerated.
To make the sauce, you'll need 1 stick of butter, 1/2-cup flour, 4 cups whole milk, about 1 1/2 cups parmesan, 2 teaspoons dijon mustard, and 1 1/2 teaspoons salt. In a medium saucepan melt butter over medium-low heat and whisk in the flour. Cook the mixture (which I learned is called a roux), whisking constantly, for 3 minutes. Slowly whisk in milk, and bring to a boil. Simmer for about 3 minutes, whisking occasionally. Add the parm, mustard, salt, and pepper. This can also be made a day ahead and refrigerated.
Ok, we're almost done now, phew. To prepare the lasagne, you'll need about 15 small lasagne sheets, 3 small mozzarella balls or 2 large ones, and 3/4 cup grated parmesan. Turn your oven on to 400 degrees. Place one layer of filling on the bottom of a 9x9-inch baking pan (you can really use any size, this was all I had), and then cover with one layer of lasagne sheets, making sure the sheets don't overlap. Spread a layer of filling over the sheets, and top again with a layer of lasagne. Press down softly to seal everything together.
Rip up your mozzarella balls, and spread half of them over the pasta sheets. Repeat these steps one more time, ending with a layer of lasagne on top. Sprinkle parmesan over the lasagne, and bake for about 35-40 minutes.
Serve with a nice bottle of red wine, and you'll be feeling fantastic. Santé!
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