Because it’s soup season, I’ve taken to roasting whole chickens (generally the organic, air-chilled, fresh variety). One challenge is that I actually don’t own a proper roasting pan (as an aside, I like to serve in the dishes I cook in whenever possible, and an au gratin pan will work just fine thankyouverymuch), and have been borrowing frequently from our neighbors–so we’ll see for how long I can keep this up.

To wash or not to wash? Studies and logic say washing the chicken will only spread the germs via water around your kitchen. You’re better off not washing it unless there is something clearly gross that should be swept away. I know–but your mother use to do it. Well, your mother didn’t have the internet, did she.

Cut the chicken in a few places: on either side of the leg joints, above the arms. Make sure the cavity is clear and you aren’t leaving a plastic bag of giblets in there (I tell my butcher to keep’em). You have a few options now, but generally the simplest thing is to stuff the cavity with 4-6 garlic cloves, half a washed lemon, and fresh herbs such as rosemary.

I also pull the skin apart from the meat along the breasts and anywhere I can get to so that it crisps up, and then stuff a few sprigs of rosemary or whatever herb of the day under there. I’d recommend parsley, thyme, sage, or rosemary.

In your roasting pan, rub the chicken well with olive oil and coat with sea salt (coarse, grey, flavorful if possible) and cracked pepper. Throw a few whole, small tomatoes alongside the chicken and coat in olive oil, salt & pepper. Add some garlic cloves on the outside there too, if you like.

Roast at 350 for 30 min-1hr depending on size of chicken. Leg should wiggle firmly when yanked and it’s done, and will have a nice color to the outside.

After you eat it or use the meat in soups, be sure to save the carcass in the freezer or use immediately to make some stock.

A few weeks ago I joined a good friend of mine at the montessori school she works at to help with her “Friday Feast”–a cooking activity she plans every week to help teach the kids about food, cooking, and nutrition. She asked me to come in as a guest and plan the “feast,” so on a budget of $20 for 20-25 kids I brought two English cucumbers, fresh dill, chestnut honey I already had, ricotta cheese, a lime and an orange for zest, a big box of edible flowers, and all the patience I could muster.

It’s a simple palate cleanser, but is fun for kids and beautiful for adults with the edible flowers. The bites can be made more even and beautiful (by an adult), so know the picture is of the food the kids made (who were awesome and did a great job), and could be more sophisticated for a dinner party or event.

Cut the skin off the cucumber so that the sides are striped. Cut in 1/4 inch to 1/2 inch rounds. Mash the ricotta through a seive to improve the texture, add orange or lime zest to taste, plus a squeezing of the juice, a pinch of salt, and mix together. Put a spoonful of the ricotta mixture on top of each flower, dust with minced fresh dill, top with chestnut honey, and an edible flower.

On a budget of $120 for four people, a good friend and “astro-twin” who claims herself as a vegetarian but eats seafood and strangely, bacon, asked me to make a belated birthday dinner for her friend (my acquaintance). Because of the graces the bay area allows us in grocery shopping, and with many thanks to cheap, beautiful produce at Tokyo Fish Market in Albany, CA (plus some gorgeous seafood), and the amazingness that is Masse’s Pastries here in my neighborhood, we made a lovely dinner materialize complete with wine right here in the kitchen.

Monster Fresh Bay Scallop on Vanilla-Orange Risotto with Mint (Failed to take a picture of this, but we ate it up with Gloria Ferrer sparkling wine from Northern California, very reasonable ~ $14)

Start the risotto with half a medium shallot, diced, olive oil, and the pulp of one vanilla bean. Add the vanilla bean shell to your vegetable or fish stock–in this case I used a watered down vegetable stock so that the risotto did not take on too strong a flavor to avoid overpowering the scallop. Once the shallot begins to gain color, add the risotto rice, and a touch of salt & pepper. Once the rice is toasted, begin adding liquid, keeping the quantity such that the rice does not boil, and does not fry. This will take 25-40 minutes depending on the quantity of rice, in order to cook through. In the final minutes of cooking, when the rice is near tender, add the zest of one orange. Once tender, keep cooking until liquid has reduced a bit more, turn off heat. Add 1.5 T of butter, and one mineola segmented & cut in cubes. Add julienned mint at the end.

The scallop should sit in milk for about 1 hour before cooking. Heat a skillet to very high heat with olive oil, and sear the scallop, turning once golden or brown on the edges and achieving the same on the other side, keeping the inside rare. Serve on top of the risotto.

Sesame Seared Maguro on Yuzu Mixed Greens

This dish depends completely on the quality of the fish. Blocked tuna works best, in this case I used tuna from two different parts of the fish–thus the difference in color between each slice. Simply pat the fish dry and roll it in sesame seeds. In a hot skillet add olive oil and while holding the fish with your hands or tongs sear it on each side about 20 seconds, let it rest off the heat for 30 seconds and then slice and serve. The greens were dressed with a mixture of yuzu juice, olive oil, shallot, salt & pepper.

Spinach Salad with Bacon, Fried Chevre, Grapefruit

Ahead of time, slice the chevre into medallions, coat in egg and then bread crumbs and set back in refrigerator to firm (makes them fry more easily). I like to use Capricho Di Cabra goat cheese from Spain, but any fresh chevre will work, the moister the texture the better.

Cut 7 or so slices of bacon into smaller pieces and add to a hot, dry skillet, let fry until crispy, drain on paper towels and add 1-2 T of bacon fat to a bowl to make salad dressing.

For the greens, add to the bacon fat 1-2 T of olive oil, juice of 1/2 lemon, salt, pepper, and a small amount of minced shallot or garlic. Dress the spinach and portion the salad out.

Segment one grapefruit by cutting the top and bottom off, then using a large knife remove the pith and skin from around, then follow the interior membranes to segment the grapefruit, leaving the membrane as waste.

In a hot non-stick skillet, add olive oil to high heat. Be careful not to pass the smoking point, as olive oil burns very close to its frying heat. Add the cold, breaded cheve medallions to the oil, letting them color on each side, serving hot on top of the spinach along with some of the bacon and several segments of grapefruit.

We ate the 2nd & 3rd courses with a Rhone red and a lighter Rioja, both in the $10-15 range.

We had some Australian port with the miniature cakes ($4/each–an incredible bargain saiting 2 people per cake) from Masse’s pastries–we had chocolate-rapsberry, bloodorange-chocolate, and mango. They were out of the amazing caramel mousse with poached pear! :( Even still, delicious.

For two, Spanish Spicy Shrimp:

10 shrimp–shell & de-vein them yourself
8 slices baguette, toasted with raw garlic rubbed on them
5 cloves garlic, minced coarsely
1/2 cap san marzano tomatoes or package fresh cherry tomatoes (cut in 1/2)
olive oil
vegetable stock
1/2 tsp thyme
salt
pepper
chili flakes

Two skillets: start one cold with olive oil & chili flakes (about 1/2 tsp), heat on low until chili flakes start to brown, strain and put the oil back in the pan to pan-fry the shrimp later. In the other skillet, sautee the garlic in the oil until beginning to color; add tomatoes, 1 tsp chili flakes, & thyme, and let simmer. When reduced and broken down, add vegetable stock until “minestrone” consistency.

Heat chili oil to medium high, sautee shrimp. Serve shrimp on top of tomato “stew” with crotistin (toasted bread with raw garlic rubbed on) in a shallow bowl.

Pan-Seared Chicken with Wilted Spinach

1/3rd orange bell pepper, diced
1 small shallot, minced
1 large clove garlic, minced
olive oil
salt
pepper
spinach
zest & juice of 1/2 lemon
1 boneless chicken breast, skin on

Preheat oven to 375. Use a oven-safe skillet for the chicken. Sautee on medium low bell pepper, shallot, and garlic in olive oil with salt & pepper. On high heat, with 1-2 tbsp of olive oil in a separate skillet, sear chicken skin-down (season skin with salt & pepper), until skin is golden. Turn over, move skillet to oven.

When chicken is finished cooking (by sight; should become constrained on sides and generally thicker), remove from oven and place on cutting board to rest for 5 minutes. Meanwhile, add spinach to bell pepper mixture, and turn off heat. Zest the 1/2 lemon on top and add the juice. Put a lid on top of it and let it sit in the heat to wilt 70%.

Slice chicken and serve on top of spinach mixture.

A friend boyfriend of mine kindly not once but on two different occasions recently provided my cocktail-sipping self with much needed pizza delivered to my hand inside a bar (it was from the “outside”), and to thank him for not only 1. going to get it but 2. paying for it, I offered to cook him dinner. We drank a Sicilian white wine with the first two courses and a cabernet franc from Carmody McKnight in Paso Robles for the duck. There were also some bottles of cabernet sauvignon, but let’s not talk about that.

Beet Salad  – I used baby bitter greens (in this case, baby kale and arugula) and tossed it in my garlic-lemon-olive oil-salt-pepper dressing, roasted three small red beets in the oven (inside foil, with olive oil, salt, pepper for 1 hr at 400 degrees), peeled them and sliced them in wedges, and served it all up with a slice of the wonderful french goat cheese ($34.50/lb) Tomme Affinee Grandmere.  The beets were still warm, but feel free to roast them in advance.

Pasta with Roast Tomato Sauce, Fried Eggplant & Mussels – I made fresh pasta, cut the noodles quite thin, dressed them in a food-processor sauce of two roasted heirloom tomatoes, roasted shallots, garlic, fresh thyme, fresh rosemary, salt, and pepper, and added several cloves of fresh garlic at the end, then topped it off with two slices of eggplant fried in olive oil (very thin) and two mussels for each serving.

Pan-seared Duck Breast with Rum Pears & Almond-shallot Risotto – I scored the duck breast in a diamond pattern, seared it fat side down on very high heat, flipped it over, threw the whole pan in the oven at 350 for a few minutes, took the duck out of the pan to rest, threw the pan back on the burner, tossed in sliced pears and let them brown,  poured some rum in and let it reduce. Meanwhile, I made risotto with home made chicken stock, shallot, and onion, and at the end I mixed in some hazelnut oil, and toasted marcona and sliced almonds, along with some rum & amaratto soaked raisins.

We ate it right up.

The week before last I was asked to come and cook for a good friend of mine and his roommate. I gave my friend–who I love to tease and challenge–a complicated grocery list that would send him shopping in at least three places, one of which was Japan Town in San Francisco. He procured everything exactly as I wanted (to my surprise, as I was prepared to improvise for missing items), and I showed up with a great, inexpensive Falanghina to sip on while cooking & eating the first course, and a great 1998 Norman Cabernet Sauvignon to accompany our duck breast with persimmons and medallions of roasted Japanese yam course.

I prepared  Tuna con Yuzu, and followed it with whole, head-on shrimp pan fried and served family style with warm buckwheat noodles covered in hazelnut oil & toasted sesame seeds. Had I not been a few glasses of wine in, it would have been garnished with a tarragon sprig. The main event, though, of this three-course savory meal was the pan-seared, oven-finished duck breast.

It was my first time cooking duck at home, and I felt after a whole year of watching P effortlessly cook duck breast from Japan town medium rare and over and over surpass even the best local restaurants in execution that I could take on the challenge. I did, and it turned out fantastic.

The pan was searing hot, and I scored the duck breast in a diamond pattern, salted & lightly peppered it and threw it skin down. There it sat, sizzling, until the sides had curled up a bit, and the fat had turned a beautiful caramel color. Then, I tossed in some persimmon slices (from the short, squatty variety), made sure they had a whole facing touching the pan, turned the breasts over and put the pan in a 375 degree oven for 4-6 minutes. It came out perfectly rare and incredibly juicy. How restaurants manage to screw this up over and over is beyond me.

So looking ahead, I’ve decided to pseudo-host Thanksgiving. As my converted Victorian duplex is too small for a crowd, we’re hosting at E’s house, he’s doing the turkey (“How do I cook the turkey?” / “It’s meat, you’re the man, you figure it out,” was my reply haha) and I’m doing most of the other items and the rest are being supplied by guests who want to pitch in. So this year, similarly to last year, I’m making:

Persimmon & Sage Sausage stuffing (except this year, I’ll fashion up my own sage sausage)

Whipped yams with fresh roasted chestnuts & tarragon (or maybe fried sage leaves on top instead, what do you think?)

Kathleen & Caroline’s Hard-hittin’ Stonewall Bourbon drink (2 ladels hot spiced apple sider, 1 ladel maker’s mark)

Fresh cranberry-orange compote

Vanilla-bourbon whipped cream (for the desserts people will inevitably bring)

I’ll post recipes the day before Thanksgiving when I’m prepping all of the dishes. Stay tuned!

A few weeks ago my roommate’s friend hooked us up with free VIP tickets to The Treasure Island Music Festival. To thank him, I promised to cook dinner.

The menu looked like this:

Watercress Salad with Spring Carrots

Garganelli with heirloom tomato sauce & asparagus

Quesedilla of Vella’s Dry Jack, habenero peppers, & zucchini blossoms w/ avocado mash

Assorted Cheesecakes (Thanks Berkeley Bowl!)

We started with one of my favorites, stolen from Cafe Jacqueline in San Francisco. I’ve never been able to perfect the dressing, as the one at CJ tastes almost like butter (I suspect it’s her olive oil), but it’s live watercress (or “fancy” watercress) dressed simply in lemon juice, good olive oil, salt, pepper, and minced fresh garlic. This time I topped the salad with warm spring carrots, blanched for just a few minutes in boiling, salted water.

Garganelli (a ribbed, diagnoally rolled version of penne, often with higher protien dough and thinner) was served in an heirloom tomato sauce (see about two entries ago, when Peter made this for a dinner party), and I added fresh, blanched asparagus. It’s a simple recipe, just olive oil, a shallot, pepper flakes, salt, & heirloom tomatoes.

The quesedilla was by far the highlight–the combination of flavors came to me while in the grocery store. I’m always happy to see zucchini blossoms, and when I can find them, try to use them in everything. The spiciness of the peppers, the sweetness of the avocado, and the fresh aromatics of the blossoms worked fantastically. I’ll be making this for a long time.

We’ve enjoyed dinner with my friend Peter before, but about two weeks ago I worked hard (read: begged) for another home cooked meal in the city.

Friend and I headed from Berkeley to the city for pre-show dinner at Peter’s (we were to catch the MF Doom/Pigeon John performance at the Independent, but when we arrived later it was canceled), and brought gifts of Berkeley Bowl’s fresh buckwheat & lemon pastas–saving someone who lives in the city a trip to the famous Berkeley Bowl, I’ve now learned, will almost always earn me a delicious meal.

Peter’s food is especially fun to write about because he has taken to obsessively photographing almost everything he eats or makes these days. This is helpful for me, as inevitably I almost always begin copying and making variations upon the dishes he creates when I’m lucky enough to join him for a meal.

Friend & I brought a bottle of Bucci’s Verdiccio (a native Italian varietal especially from the southern regions, it is somewhat similar to a Vermentino except lighter, perhaps more like a blend with Pinot Grigio) and the first course was slices of a perfectly ripe (California? Organic?) pluot wrapped in Prosciutto di Parma (Peter has read my entry detailing my dislike for domestic prosciutto), served with aged balsamic vinegar I once gave him from my stint of living in Italy, and ricotta seasoned with blood-orange olive oil.

I could have walked away satisfied. Can we take a moment to remember how important using high quality ingredients are? I mean, in addition to the flavor and all-important texture combination, the harmony of the perfectly ripe fruit, the freshly cut ham, and the fresh ricotta made it. Things wouldn’t have been the same if the dried out week old stuff in my fridge had finally been saved from itself. Yes, that was an admittance of recent culinary guilt, on my part.

Next we had a delicious cold layered course of roasted white corn with sesame oil, avocado, mache, and seasoned crab. I was paying more attention to my wine than Peter’s prepping of the crab dressing, but something about olive oil and maybe garlic and some Asian herb he wouldn’t divulge the name of (probably to spite us) were all involved. Wait, his photo says it’s a yuzu and tarragon vinaigrette…was I being tricked all along? I would feel as if my nose failed me :(

Along with other goodies from the East Bay I brought some Burrata–a wonderful fresh cheese similar to mozarella except that it is super creamy and decadent inside and stringy and fresh on the outside like fresh mozarella. It spoils very fast because of the fresh cream, so it is somewhat difficult (read: expensive) to find it imported but since it’s a cow’s milk cheese and a producer of it is in the LA area, it isn’t too expensive or hard to come by in the Bay Area. It is also incredibly addictive and delicious, and peter used it with the avocado and crab to round out the dish.

Because P is master of portion size, we were up for a third course. For a while–in fact, we were salivating for both the crab and the smell of the caramelizing heirloom tomatoes while eating the crab, P sauteed some heirloom tomatoes in olive oil and smashed cloves of garlic, adding chili flakes about halfway through and fresh basil towards the end. He chose traditional semolina spaghetti (often underutilized in my kitchen) and made an incredibly satisfying but healthy dish that reminded me of some of my favorite Italian comfort food. I recreated the heirloom tomato spaghetti a few days later with very little effort and wonderful results. The only thing I”ll offer you readers is this: Do not cook the garlic on too high of a heat, and make sure to add the pepper flakes when there is enough fluid for them to break down in.

Bellies full, friend and I skipped off to walk a few blocks to our show, leaving P wish only a few dishes and his cello. We were actually kind of happy to arrive and see it was canceled–we looked at each other, and said “Dessert?” at the same time, and started heading to get some chocolate ice cream from the store. We called P, and as soon as we said the show had been canceled, he was on the same page as us.

No pictures of this one, but it’s something I ‘ve had with P before and he stole it from some place I can’t remember in the city. Dark Chocolate Ice Cream with Bergamont Olive Oil and Sea Salt. Oh_my_god.

I walked tonight from my somewhat new home to my good friend’s new home for a late-night housewarming party and found it quite romantic. Berkeley at night, when the air is still and quiet, smells of all the many flowers growing wild in million dollar homes’ yards’. Jasmine, blooming orange trees, calunda.. It smells sweet and amazing and thick but not heavy. On my way up into the hills where my friend lives (about five or six blocks uphill onto the north side of campus), I could hear the Arcade Fire concert from the greek theater. Dim lights from living rooms lit the way and the scent of flowers was intoxicating in a way it can’t be during the day. Jasmine even stood out visually, white and catching what little light there was. I feel so lucky to live here and be young.

A few days ago, I moved to a great location in Berkeley, between downtown & the “gourmet ghetto.” Since then, I have been gleefully enjoying my neighborhood–one I was previously familiar with, but always drove in to, hasseled with parking, and felt like a visitor in. After just three nights here, it feels like home.

In the mornings I have enjoyed walking either a block or several to various different coffee shops for my morning espresso and (sometimes) croissant. I’m on a mission to find the best one; on lazy days (I’ve had a few since graduating this past Saturday from college, while working only about 25 hours a week right now–know somewhere I could be employed full time?) I stumble two and a half blocks down my VERY street to a wonderful cupcakery (which I will write about seperately tomorrow or the next day), walk with my ipod to a nearby gourmet grocery, to various Indian, Thai, French, Spanish, Japanese restaurants, to the famous Chez Panisse, to the famous Cheeseboard Collective where I bought two delicious flavored rolls this morning for my lunch and dinner endeavors–I am still unpacking or I would have taken photos of all these trips, of my cooking lately.

Some of you may know my last living situation was less than stellar. The crazed, rude, and frankly dumb girls I shared a kitchen with made it completely inhabitable with both their filth and their unpleasant, constant, tv-blaring presence. I am so relieved to have sane roomates and a big, cooking-friendly kitchen that you’ll be seeing a lot more of me in coming days.

Best of all I’ve been able to walk to several of my friends’ houses, been able to walk to meet them at one of my favorite dancing spots (a pleasant urban 12 minute walk from home, and 15 minute drunken stupor back), my favorite east-bay pizzaria, and a variety of other high quality businesses that encourage socialization.

Though my existence as BROKE is impending, it’s a happy, happy time.