A few weeks ago I ventured to my local Whole Foods in search of a case’s worth of new wines.

In my experience, wine selection at Whole Foods locations varies quite a bit by neighborhood and by staff, but the one in SOMA within San Francisco, while small, has a nice selection, with more than 50% of their wines being in the under $20, usually under $15 range. I have no problem paying for a good bottle of wine, but I do enjoy the thrill of discovering a very palatable wine under $12.

And lo, I managed to bring at least one great find home. This red wine from Argentina is really pleasant, drinkable, great with BBQ. It won’t age well, and doesn’t have the longest most interesting finish in the world, but for $8.99 without a case discount, it’s a real bargain with no nasty throat burning, lower acid than most wines in its price range, and its versatility. And, if you can find it locally, I’d definately recommend giving it a try. I went back and got a case.

Here’s one online source to check it out or buy it.

Prosciutto wrapped Pluot

Simple–great fruit, slices of it, wrapped in very thin prosciutto, paired with a soft cheese like burrata in this case, or seasoned ricotta (season with olive oil or flavored olive oil, salt, pepper), drizzled with aged balsamic vinegar.

Halibut on Truffled Corn

I’ve made this as an appetizer as well, and substituted asparagus shavings steamed lightly for the asparagus itself, and served smaller pieces of fish.

For 4

1.3 lb halibut fillet, skinned
3-4 ears fresh corn
1 pack rainbow microgreens
12 asparagus spears (or 5 if you are shaving them)
fresh thyme
truffle oil
hazelnut or walnut oil; if unavailable substitute mild, high heat oil – a few T
toasted sesame oil – 1 tsp
gomashi – ground salt and toasted sesame seeds
salt & pepper

You’ll need two skillets.

Lightly peel the asparagus and place on parchment paper. Dress lightly with olive oil or flavored olive oil (lemon, clementine, etc; alternatively add lemon or other citrus zest). Wrap peeled asparagus in parchment paper to enclose, and place in oven at 350.

Heat 1-2 T nut oil and toasted sesame oil in nonstick skillet or skillet with good sides for flipping at medium high heat. When hot, add corn. When corn begins to color, reduce heat to medium and add thyme. Continue flipping or stirring every 30 seconds to 1 min.

Meanwhile, heat a few T of oil in a pan for the halibut at medium high/high heat. Use enough to easily coat the bottom of the pan. Dress halibut fillets in gomashi and a dash of fresh ground pepper. Top side down into the pan first when oil is hot. When 2/3rds cooked, flip.

When corn is finished cooking, turn off heat and add 1-2 tsp truffle oil, mix. Season with salt and pepper.

Remove asparagus from oven. Total cooking time for most asparagus will be about 15-20 minutes, but check it as ovens vary.

Assemble as pictured on top of the corn; corn, halibut, microgreens, asparagus.

Apricot Ricotta Tart

3-4 cups nuts of any combination or variety: blanched/blanched slivered almonds, raw cashews, macadamias
5 dried apricots
2 T melted butter
6 fresh apricots
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup water
1 cup mascarpone cheese
8 oz ricotta cheese (preferably sheep’s milk)
orange blossom water
honey
benedictine or other brandy/liquor

For the Crust: Chop finely the dried apricots. In a food processor, blend nuts and dried apricots until fine meal is formed. Add 2 T honey, 2 T melted butter and blend until sticky ball is formed. If too sticky, add more nuts. Should be able to hold together.

In a 9 1/2 inch tart pan, press out the crust evenly and then place in freezer or refrigerator to set for at least 30 minutes.

For the Filling: Mix the ricotta, marscapone, 1-2 tsp orange blossom water, 2T honey and 2-3T benedictine/brandy for the filling. Chill.

For the Topping: Wash and quarter the apricots. Start a simple syrup of 1/2 C sugar and 1/2 C water in a large sautee pan. When made, add the apricot quarters and reduce heat to simmer, turning occasionally until fruit plumps but does not fall apart. Remove pieces onto a cool platter as they finish cooking. After fruit is removed, gently raise heat to create apricot caramel.

Bake the tart crust at 350 for 15 minutes until coloring golden. Remove and let cool thoroughly or pop into freezer/oven to bring it down.

Fill with ricotta mixture, top decoratively with apricot slices. If you want the topping to be glossy, melt some red currant jelly in a pan and brush on top. It will dry clear as pastries from a bakery.

Not too long ago I was visiting Peter at Red Blossom Tea Company–I was going on a little about the ice cream maker I had just purchased and not really had a chance to use yet. P’s sister, Alice, jumped in talking about some ice cream she had made with their Golden Monkey tea. Now, Alice has taste in food. So I shaped up and listened. And I got sent home with some tea to make the magic, along with some instructions which I’ve re-posted here.

1 qt Strauss family creamery whole milk (or other good quality organic dairy)
or
1 pt whole milk 1 pt heavy whipping cream (for softer, creamier result)
2/3 C sugar
2/3 C water
2 T mirin
~1 C (4-5 large tea bags) loose leaf high quality organic Golden Monkey or other organic black tea, stuffed into large tea bags (or prepare to have a messy straining process, that’s fine too)

Bring 1-2 C of the milk or cream to a steeping temperature (about 195 degrees, not simmering yet) and add the tea bags. When milk begins to color, turn heat off and pour tea bags and steeped milk into container with the rest of the milk. Reserve for 2-4 days in the refrigerator, shaking/turning to mix once in a while. This part of the process is important to get the infusion process going.

At the same time, heat the water and sugar together and bring to a light simmer, cooking until beginning to color a tea color. Add mirin and remove from heat immediately. Mix, and add to milk mixture.

Use your ice cream maker as directed.

Let’s talk about comfort food. I took on my first porkroast after a pretty intense craving for some pulled pork mustered up a few days ago after having an extremely delicious pulled pork slider at the Alembic in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood near my house. Maybe it was the magic of the cocktails along with it (perhaps the best blood & sand I’ve ever had!), or the horseradish mayo on the sweet, soft bun, but I was left wanting more. Not surprisingly, this 6-hour roast became my project a few Sundays ago.

3-3.5 lb pork shoulder/pork butt
1T oregano
1T paprika or smoked spanish paprika
4T brown sugar
1T cayenne/chili powder or more
2 tsp salt
2 tsp fresh cracked pepper
2 tsp garlic powder or garlic salt
BBQ sauce – vinegar based, spicy
BBQ sauce – sweet with molasses

Buns – I grabbed mine from the Japanese bakery

Buy good quality meat; if it does not come deboned and tied up, use cooking twine to pull it back together. Mix the spices (if you don’t have all on hand and won’t reuse the individual spices if you were to buy them, Penzey’s makes a similar mixture that should suffice, perhaps with the addition of a little more chili heat and brown sugar, which you can add on your own. Be sure to get plenty though, as you want to be generous with the rub) and rub onto the meat, wrap up and let sit overnight in the fridge or up to 2 days.

Heat oven to 300 degrees. Place pork into a ceramic or glass container that fits it but is not excessively large. Cook for 3 hours.

After 3 hours, begin basting the pork every 20 minutes or so with bbq sauce (spicy for 2x more than molassas) and its own drippings for another 3- 3 1/2 hours.

Cut off strings and pull with two forks into bits to save. When serving, mix in more warm bbq sauce of your choosing.

Southern Biscuits

Make your biscuit dough and shape them and get them in the oven before starting the omlette, assuming you are not world’s slowest prep artist.

4 eggs, whisked with salt & fresh cracked pepper

1/4 small onion, sliced lengthwise thinly

2 small French red fingerling potatoes, about 3-4 oz, diced/small cubes

1/2 T butter

1 inch block of gruyere or other cheese, grated into ribbons

2-3 T raw pumpkin seeds, toasted over medium heat and set aside

Sautee the onions in the butter. When starting to sweat, add the potatoes, about 1 min later. Add a light sprinkling of kosher salt. Cook until potatoes are gaining color, and put into bowl to reserve. Put the pan back on the heat and put to low heat.

Cook the eggs. Let them set once, and then stir them and redistribute while enough uncooked egg remains to create a base layer. Cook another 1-2 minutes and add the potato and onion, and then the cheese.

I also added a green salsa from a local Mexican restaurant at this point. It’s spicy and tangy with lime.

Fold the egg miture over into a half circle and cover lightly with a lid, keeping at low heat to cook through without coloring the eggs or stiffening them.

When done, top with salsa and pumpkin seeds and serve with biscuits and jam. We had apricot rose jam today from Arbo.

Saikyo Yaki & Konnyaku to Ninjin no Shira ae

I’ve had a fabulous traditional Japanese cookbook for some years now, never really venturing into it. I was interested in it because an old friend used to cook, by nature, a lot of fusion food, and I loved the yuzu citrus so much that I”d go to the Japanese market in Berkeley with some regularity. Now that I live in SF, I have all the expanse of the Nijiya supermarket in Japantown, among other resources.

I’m not inclined to post a lot of the recipes, because they’re complicated, and require making sauces and broths and other things before cooking your actual item, but also because for most people, it will be difficult to find the ingredients.

That said, Japanese food photographs beautifully, and I hope to integrate some of the techniques and ingredients I am learning about into my more improvisational cooking in the near future.

Miso Fish

- Best to use Salmon or Black Cod/other oily fish

- Marinate for 1.5 lbs of fish; I like to do this on Saturdays or Sundays and use it throughout the week; later in the week the flavors are stronger so it’s best to use the cod last as the marinade will remove some of the oily, fishy flavors.

-Marinade must be applied for at least 1 day in fridge or up to 5

Cheesecloth or Japanese cooking cloth
3/4 cup light colored, sweet miso
1-2 T mirin
1 T freeze dried Yuzu peel, zest of 1 fresh yuzu, or zest of 1-2 fresh lemons or limes

Mix all ingredients together thoroughly. Wrap each piece of fish in 1-2 layers of cheesecloth or 1 layer of Saryachi cloth. Paint the marinade on TOP of the cloth, not touching the fish directly. Layer neatly and reasonably tightly (without aggrevating the fish flesh) into a glass, ceramic or plastic container with a lid. Coat each side of the fish and continue layering. It is OK to mix fish types in the same container.

To cook, after marinated at least 1 day in refrigerator, remove cheesecloth and scrape any clumps of marinade off the fish. Put into small foil pan or other pan that is broiler safe with skin side up. Broil for 2-4 minutes, until skin is crisped and blackened. Flip, and cook until colored and cooked through under broiler.

I like to serve this with something acidic, like a simple salad or impatient pickles, and sometimes some miso soup as well.

A friend is moving back to her native Sicily and I hosted a brunch for her yesterday. There were 7 of us and our menu was:

- Butternut Squash & Kale gratin

- Southern Biscuits

- Trio of amazing fruit preserves

- Crispy Bacon

- Winter Fruit Salad

- Soft Scrambled Eggs

And a dear friend showed up with not only bubbly, guava, and peach juice, but also a big thing of tortellini salad. Thanks Lauren! (MR. Y finished it off after the movie!)

I’m not going to preach on the easiest of this list of dishes–a quick note about bacon and eggs.

Scrambled Eggs. The key to your success is low heat and lots of stirring. You know what most recipes tell you to do with risotto? Don’t do that with risotto. Do it with eggs. They will take longer, but they will not taste like you made them in the microwave.

Bacon should be served crispy and taken out of the pan just before you think it looks crispy. It’ll get there.

My no-fail recipe for Southern Biscuits comes from Alton Brown. Don’t try to outdo it, you won’t. I follow it to a T and end up making it several days in a row after reviving it for an occasion. In fact, I’m going to go buy more flour as soon as I finish writing this. I served them with fig-almond spread, plum preserves and peach preserves from local frog hollow farms. You can buy the latter ones on their website.

Winter Fruit Salad (adapted from Smitten Kitchen)

3/4 Cup sugar
1/2 vanilla bean
3 star anise
zest of 1 lemon
10-12 dried apricots, sliced in half
Juice from the same lemon
3 firm pears of any variety (I used Comice, Bosc, and D’anjou)
1 tart apple

Bring 4 cups water and sugar to boil with star anise, vanilla bean. Add lemon zest and dried apricots, and let cool completely. Meanwhile, peel all of your remaining fruits and remove the cores (the easiest way to remove the core of an apple is to quarter it, and turn each quarter on its side, slicing diagonally the core area off). Slice the fruit thinly and evenly and toss in the lemon juice. When syrup is cooled, gently mix all together, cover, and store 8 hours or overnight in the fridge. Serve with slotted spoon. I reserved the remaining syrup for another use in the freezer.

Butternut Squash & Kale Gratin (also adapted from Smitten Kitchen)

For an oval gratin pan, 13″ long and 3″ deep
1.25 lb thinly sliced butternut squash
1.5 lb dino/lacinato kale and/or baby rainbow chard–I did 50% of each–clean & cut into small pieces
1 small onion, diced
pinch of nutmeg
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups heavy cream or whole milk
4 T butter
2 T flour
1 T fresh flatleaf/Italian parsley, minced
1 T fresh thyme, mined
1 1/4 C gruyere cheese (about 5 oz)
lots of salt & pepper

Start by washing and spinning dry your greens. Dice the onion and begin cooking it at medium low heat in a large pan in 2 T butter. When soft, add any chard stems you are using and a pinch of nutmeg, salt, pepper. Cook another 1-2 minutes. Add greens and keep adding & stirring until all are wilted. Turn off heat and place mixture in a fine collander to remove excess moisture.

Sauce: bring 2 C cream or milk to near boil with the garlic, being sure not to let it burn. Meanwhile, in a larger sauce pan, melt 2 T butter. When melted and water content is steamed off, add the flour and whisk, cooking 1-2 min more. Add the hot milk and whisk for 1-2 more minutes while bringing to a boil, turn off and leave it alone.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Arrange 1/2 the butternut squash in your pan, evenly along the bottom. Add 1/4 the herbs, salt, pepper, and then top with 1/4 C of the cheese. Next, half the greens evenly on top. More salt & pepper, more herbs, more cheese. Pour 1/2 the sauce evenly over it at this point, and go back to the butternut squash slices. Add salt, pepper, then herbs, cheese. Add the rest of the greens, the herbs, salt & pepper. Top wit the rest of the sauce and then the rest of the cheese. Bake uncovered for the first 1/2 hour, throw foil on it for the 2nd half.

As an aside, I want to reitorate how happy I am in my new space. Oh my gosh, look at that, I have a entry table! With a place to–no, really?–place flowers. Incredible.

1 pack gyoza wrappers (round, about 50 per pack)
1/3 lb crab meat
1/3 lb large scallops, diced
1/3 lb deveined/peeled shrimp, chopped
2 green onions, sliced thinly
1/2 carrot, shredded finely
1/4 head napa cabbage fresh, sliced finely, salted, left aside to wilt, rinsed, and drained/squeezed dry
3-4 cloves garlic, minced and mushed into a paste
1 generous T of ginger, grated into a paste
1/2 tsp white pepper
1 T minced cilantro
1/2 tsp sugar
1 tsp toasted sesame oil
1 T sake
1 1/2 T soy sauce
1/2 tsp salt

Mix everything together, adding the liquids last. Using a small spoon, put about 1 heaping/rounded tsp onto each gyoza wrapper. Using a spray bottle, dampen the open face of the wrapper, and gently fold in half, sealing the filling and not air. Gently pull the sides/lobes of the half moon together to create the shape you see in the photos above.

Cook the same way as the shrimp & pork gyoza, or steam above simmering water until cooked through (you can fill your colander with a layer of lettuce, cabbage, or some other similar item in order to create a steamer if you do not own one).

For the Dipping Sauce

2 parts soy sauce
1 part seasoned rice vinegar
3/4 part yuzu juice
1/4 part chili oil

It’s one of the things that white people like…and I had a lot of fun making three kinds of dumplings over the weekend, freezing them, and having them last my boyfriend until.. yeah, lunch on Tuesday. 200 pieces. The man is a machine.

I’d recommend a finely misting spray bottle for these, folks–I converted an old hair product bottle by washing it in vinegar a few times.

Shrimp & Pork Gyoza

50+ pack of gyoza wrappers (yeah, I’m lazy, when you fold 50 peices of these you don’t want to make 50 wrappers too)
1/3 lb shrimp (deveined, peeled, chopped)
1/3 lb pork
1 green onion, sliced thin
4 cloves garlic, minced and then mushed into a paste
1 full T of fresh ginger, grated into a paste
1/2 carrot, grated finely
1/4 head napa cabbage, finely chopped
1/2 tsp sugar
2 T soy sauce
1 T sake
2 tsp toasted sesame oil
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper

Prep your ingredients by first chopping the cabbage and putting it in a bowl, mixing with 1/2 tsp salt. Let it sit for a good 15 minutes and wilt. When you’re ready to use it, rinse it and squeeze excess water out until reasonably dry.

Mix everything together, adding the liquids last. Use a small spoon to put 1 rounded tsp or so onto the center of each gyoza. Spray with your handy water spray bottle, and gently fold the wrapper in half, keeping the back half flat and folding the front half–sealing in the filling and not so much air. Check out this handy guide on how to shape the gyoza, except that I make 4-6 of them on my cutting board at a time and go through to fold them up all at once.

To cook, heat a nonstick to medium high heat, and spray with canola oil. Arrange the gyoza once the pan is hot in a circle to fit the most in (see picture). Cook for about 2 minutes, until golden on the bottom.

Add about 1/2 a coffee cup of water, or enough to coat the whole bottom of the pan but not make the dumplings “boil”. Cover immediately and reduce heat to medium; let them steam for about 5 minutes until cooked through. Remove the lid and if you desire them more crispy, flip them over to cook another 1-2 minutes. Serve!

Also, you can absolutely freeze these while on a baking sheet with parchment or wax paper or a silpat, for about 30 min, and then put them into a freezer bag. They last beautifully even when frozen raw, uncooked. You can then pull them out and cook them just like they were fresh, but with a tiny bit longer steaming time.

For the dipping sauce

2 parts soy sauce
1 part seasoned rice vinegar
1/4 part chili oil

The original plan was to throw my stuff in storage while evacuating a home of disbanding roommates, to buy the bare essentials from ikea, from east bay restaurant supply, from the dollar store–make do in the studio together for a couple of months, save some money, move out and back into the world of roommates.

But it didn’t make sense to, so a year later and a winter without the majority of my sweaters (I moved at the beginning of summer….) I’ve been working with a 3/4 size electric stove (a full gas range and plenty of counter space was always a priority in finding my own place), a kitchen full of abandoned laptops, computer fans, hooks that were never hung on the wall, and, after buying a new coffee pot as a gift for my (wonderful) boyfriend, inevitably two coffee pots next to each other on the very limited counter space. Thank the powers that be for our amazing back yard! Hello, sanctuary!

Well this has changed. My parents visited for the weekend, we took them up on an offer to help and grabbed what we thought was all of my kitchen boxes from a storage unit an hour from our place in SF, brought them back and I delightfully rummaged through them finding what I couldn’t wait any longer to have back. This means our space is even more impacted now, but I feel like I have my artillery back!

I mean, I unpacked reidel tumblers, nonstick pans, multiple whisks, a pasta machine (which I have mixed feelings about), a french press, the many many things I’ve missed. Now, I’m thinking I must have missed a box. Where is my Deruta pitcher & espresso cups??? Surely we missed one–so when I return the stuff I don’t have room for right now we can start the whole process again–I’m sure you’re really happy to read that, right, boyfriend?

Good things to come y’all.

Two Memories in my Berkeley Kitchen: