I had the lovely chance to discover and attend an event at 18 reasons, an art gallery and gathering place for those interested in the production and consumption of (good) food, which is owned by BiRite (Creamery & Market) in the Mission District of San Francisco. I even ran into a co-worker…

There was an exhibit of photographs Julio Duffoo featuring mostly people in the livestock/slaughter/butcher industries, from industrial/large scale down to the urban farmer with a turkey coop in the back yard (in Oakland!). The photos were interesting but the real draw for me was a friend of a friend making the delicious chaucuterie platters we snacked on with our wine throughout the evening.

We had headcheese. We had rabbit pate. We had two kinds of salami, two kinds of prosciutto, lamb sausages (from a class the chef of the evening had taken on lamb butchering), some things I didn’t figure out. It was delicious.

And, because it’s around the corner from BiRite Market and the block of the mission with some of my very favorite food vendors, I scored a few things from Tartine, took a spin through BiRite, and nomnomnom’d on a bowl of ice cream (creme fraiche, salted caramel, cookies n cream) with my ‘boo.

6 hardboiled eggs (instructions follow)
2 T capers, rinsed & drained
1 carrot, small dice
2 sticks celery, small dice
1/2 red onion, small dice
1/2 C homemmade or b’n'b pickles, small dice
rice vinegar
olive oil/macadamia oil
mustard powder
1 tsp sugar
salt & pepper generously

For hardboiled eggs: Put the raw eggs in a pot with water, not too large of a pot, and with a lid that fits. Start with cold water. Cover and heat to just under a boil, hold at that temp for about 1 minute. Turn off heat, leave covered. let rest until water cool enough to put hands in, then rinse eggs and peel (you can wait until cold if you want). The reason to use this method is so that the yolk is yellow and not grey, creamy and not too crumbly.

In a bowl, mix 2-3 T of rice vinegar with 2 tsp salt, 1 tsp sugar, cracked pepper, 1-2 T macadamia or olive oil, 1-2 T mustard powder. The dressing should be thicker than vinaigarette and thinner than store bought creamy dressing. Reserve the prior ingredients in case you need more dressing.

Dice the eggs into cubes as best you can. Don’t worry about the yolk falling apart, but be sure not to discard it. Put it in the bowl. Add the other diced vegetables, mix together with a spoon. Eventually, and over the following days, the egg yolk will blend into the dressing. From the beginning, it should be fairly dry, but flavorful. Will develop liquid over the next day. Serve on a fresh roll.

This recipe was inspird by the egg salad sandwich available at Blue Bottle Coffee in SF.

6-8 lipstick or gypsy sweet peppers
1 medium/small red spring onion (or shallots would do, etc)
1 bunch watercress, cleaned thoroughly
olive oil, salt, pepper

Heat the oil at medium heat, add the diced onions when hot. When beginning to sweat, add the peppers in ring slices. Remove the seeds beforehand. When softened but not greying, add the watercress, turn off the heat, cover. Serve when wilted. Toss well. Add some lemon juice or zest if you feel up to it.

Do yourself a favor and make the pesto from scratch if you have access to a food processor. It’s soooo much better than that stuff you’re tempted to buy at trader joe’s. Shame on you.

1/4 C pesto
1 C troffiette (substitute a pasta of similar size if you must)
1 bunch asparagus (~ 1/2 lb)
olive oil
salt

Clean your asparagus and use a carrot peeler gently to remove the thick skin along the bottom. The result should not be white but a paler green from below the head down. Trim the ends off. Cut in pieces as in the picture.

Heat olive oil in non stick pan (about 2 tsp) at medium heat. Add asparagus and cook until bright. Meanwhile, boil the pasta until al dente (very important not to overcook for this one). When done, drain and add to asparagus, turning to low. Add the pesto, mix, and turn off heat immediately. Serve by itself or with some meat or other dish.

By the way, troffiette is a Ligurian specialty (as is Pesto aka “pesto genovese,” I’ve mentioned before basil grows like weeds in the seaside, Italian riviera hillside that is Liguria, let’s not even start to talk about the ligurian foccacia, lobster-like delicious seafood, or wines on this tangent), though it’s not impossible to find in the US or to make yourself. It’s a very easy to make shape, the hardest part is cutting the peice of pasta dough you’re going to work with small enough and using a fine enough ground wheat flour in its construction, as well as letting it rest long enough to cooperate with you. But I encourage you to try to find it or make it.

Fair Warning: I made this not once, but twice in the last week.

The weekend before the one I’m enjoying right now was full of cooking. A friend and I spent a good amount of time together respecting each others’ skills, scheming up meals and projects, and visiting our friend across the bay, the Berkeley Bowl (at which I found out they now have a second location??!?!!?!!! Why is it not in SF!?!?!!).

We were to make pesto and apricot chutney, together. We ran out of time, and I took on the easier project of pesto–my friend–let’s call her the “other C” took on the chutney. I’ll include both recipes, which were inspired from these blog entries.

For the Pork:

1 pork tenderloin
1/4 C brown sugar
juice 1 lime
1 tbsp chili powder
1/8 C olive oil
several cloves garlic, minced
salt & pepper

Mix ingredients above, smooth over trimmed tenderloin and seal in container or ziplock to marinate at least 1 hr. The more thick you make (the more like a paste) the more the marinade will actually flavor the meat.

When ready to cook, heat grill to high. Slap the puppy on there, reduce heat to medium, cover. Turn it ~3x, whatever it takes to get each side on the grill, until its mostly firm but not stiff. Take it off, let it rest, slice it up. Note that tenderloin is OK to cook medium (or less than well done) even though it’s pork, because it’s a single cut of meat that hasn’t been exposed to bacteria (the outside has, and it’s been burnt!).

For the Apricot Chutney (with forthcoming commentary from “the other C”):

2lb ripe apricots
1 1/2 C brown sugar
1 medium onion
3/4 C golden (sultana) raisins
1 tsp fresh ginger, grated
1 T salt
1 C or scant cider vinegar
1 tsp coriander seeds
3 cloves (or heck, I say more!) garlic
cayenne to taste
1 jalapeno, minced
zest of 1 lime

Rinse, halve, pit the apricots; slice the onion & garlic thin. Put all the ingredients but the cayenne in a large pan and boil until the apricots are very soft. Remove the apricots and reserve. Boil the remaining liquid until it is a thick syrup. Reincorporate it all, add & adjust the cayenne, serve it up or let it cool and seal it. Take steps you would in jam making for sterilization if you’d like this to last a while, otherwise use it within a few days.

He made his way home from India. I’d asked him to bring me something, anything, preferably not malaria or bedbugs. He can’t be named because he’s now an international food smuggler: I received a beautiful silk scarf and even more exciting the following:

Star anise

Cardamom

I have no idea what this is. Please help me. I got smart, and asked my friend Scarth who once ran a restaurant & cooked in India for several years. It’s Mace.. Well, the part of the nutmeg that surrounds the actual nut but is inside of the fruit.

A case of “there is a lot of stuff going bad in my refrigerator and we need to eat some vetatables. What goes with flank on the grill?” came up on me tonight.

1 small white onion (top attached, ripped from the earth ala farm-fresh-to-you style)
2 gypsy peppers (small sweet peppers)
3 medium yellow flower squash
1 small bunch spinach
1 bunch beet greens
Olive oil
Salt & pepper

Wash all your delightful veggies, and spin dry the greens. Chop the beet greens, take big stems off the spinach. Dice the squash into medium cubes, cut the peppers into small squares. Finely dice your onion.

Heat olive oil in a nonstick. When medium hot, add onion, and 1 min later add gypsy pepper, salt, pepper. 4 more min, add squash, keep heat up. Let brown, tossing. When cooked, add the greens, cover, turn off the heat.

I served it with my favorite marinated flank steak.

This morning started out really well. A friend came to be my running partner, another showed up for the breakfast we were to make afterwards. We enjoyed the back yard for a sunny, late morning breakfast, and followed it with bellini’s for most of the rest of the day.

Serves 3:
6 large eggs
2 oz chevre (fresh, soft goat cheese, I like capricho di cabra)
1 cup chopped, clean rainbow chard, no stems
1 1/2 inch piece smoked pancetta

Whisk the eggs and add salt & pepper. Dice the pancetta very finely and add to hot, non-stick pan. Let cook until craips and reduced by half. Oil is now in the pan as a result. Reduce heat from medium high to low, add eggs. Stir and move constantly at low heat–this will take longer than you may be used to, but will result in a creamier, more tasty egg.

When starting to firm up, but still runny, add the chard. Fold to incorporate to cook. As it begins to wilt and incorporate, add the chevre, cubed or in rough chunks, about the size of 1/2 a kumquat.

When still wet looking, but without being runny, and before it browns, serve the eggs. Try not to let the pan slip from your hand and land on the floor, but if it does, then you’ve made floored eggs too.