cabra delicata

Fearing milk allergies and mucus production, my folks experimented with feeding me goat milk as a child. In rural Sonoma County back in the seventies, this was no way out of the norm. Although I don't remember much of the early diet shift (as it was pre-5 for me; my elder sister was the one who really had to deal with it) I have a long standing love/hate thing with goat products. Okay now, I'll back up just a touch and say overall, I like them, especially the meaty kind. However, pretty much straight across the board, nope on the milk form. Curdle it or age it though and like, wow. Some are simply divine. But cook the creamy products, and for me, all bets are off.

Funny how things happen. I got a package of goat cheese recently, brought it home and noticed it had a cut in the package, likely from a box cutter. The seal was broken. I was looking forward to this on crackers and olive bread but now I doubted serving it to my family. I thought: bring it back, or just cook it? Now, cook it with what? I had some delicata squash about to be cut and roasted in the oven. I started thinking about how dark caramel flavors from the roasted goodness would probably be strong enough to deal with a pound of goat cheese, if in the right form. Maybe add sugar and eggs for safe measure. Time for a cheesecake.

It turned out pretty and all, almost good enough to get into the colorful holiday cheesecake repertoire. Then I took a bite. It was nice and creamy, and the caramel squashiness was perfect. But the overtones of goat were just too damn much for me. I struggled through about half the cake before admitting defeat though. I mean, it was cheesecake after all. Reflecting on it now, I realize this is the second time I've attempted such a thing. Now with two strikes, I'll say with confidence that goaty cheesecake just ain't for me.

for the love of purple

My first purple cauliflower!

I was giving the plants a look see to determine my next course of action against recent, rampant aphid infestation. Apparently, during the previous week while all was sunny and warm the aphid wranglers (ants) were busily placing their minions all over the tenderest parts of just about anything I've planted. Despite the odds, staring up at me was this beauty. It seemed to pop up overnight.

Before any of the two legged garden pests could run off with my produce, I hacked it off with thoughts of my own dinner, but was beat to the table by a creature with far less neurons. I suppose we all gotta eat, and if I have tempting items in my front yard, critters are bound to notice. A plan was hatched. With the help of the eldest monkey, we placed it in a jar with some treats it apparently enjoys, and brought it inside in order to "protect it from predators daddy."

I checked my recent sauerkraut experiment, and admiring it's deep purple hue, decided that a purple beer would really "tie it all together." I mean, hey, it is sf beer week and all, so somehow cracking a blueberry hefeweizen seemed just the right thing. Maybe you had to be there. Or rather, here.


So, I sipped one ferment, tamped down the contents of another and contemplated our captives. That's right, two. Because little eagle eyes spotted another and made sure it made it into the jar too. Now, we feed our captives more brassica, protect them from predators, and hopefully watch 'em go through their own ferment of a sort and become something totally different.

leftover week

Did you know that you don't need the tryptophan-laden bird in order to get a serious case of food coma on Turkey day? I didn't, but now do.

This year we honored the beast and had some faux-chicken sausages with some of the usual side dishes: mashed potatoes, candied yams, stuffing, and brussel sprouts. Even without loading the plate up a second time, the food coma set in and we nearly didn't get to dessert. Somehow, we managed. Then, despite no carcass, as usual, we had tons of leftovers. I say we should officially call the week after Thanksgiving leftover week, since chances have it, that's mostly what you'll be eating. So here goes: a look into this year's leftovers.

I started feeding the monkeys leftovers as soon as possible. The little dude is moving into hyperdrive with the utensil usage and gave cheesecake and brussel sprouts a go at the same time. He ate most of the sprouts, but every last speck of his cheesecake. Without any mess. Wasting none happens when you really, really like something, so I'll take that as a compliment and testament to his wanting more cheesecake in the future.

Yeah, speaking of cheesecake. I'm a fiend for them in case you don't know. But more specifically, the sweet potato kind. The addiction started a while back, before the blog. Then two years ago I made an orange colored one while recounting the original. Then last year, I found the right variety and we had a purple one. This year's had garnet yams again, as the purple variety of sweet potatoes were nowhere near the vibrancy of last years after cooking them. Oh well, just coat them in butter and brown sugar and eat them anyway.....aren't candied yams one of your favorites anyway?

But what I really loved the most from this year's leftover fest is that homemade stuffing, heated up and served with a gooey-yolked fried egg atop it, is damn close to heaven in a bowl. Especially if it's made with bread made the day before and toasted the morning of. Luckily we had a disproportionate amount of stuffing leftover this year, and eggs o' plenty. So, not only have I had this four mornings in a row, but unless someone comes and swipes the rest outta my fridge, I'll have my last hella delicious bowl of it tomorrow. There are still some candied yams (gone tonight I'm sure), some brussel sprouts (ditto), and mashed taters (uh, scratch that as writing this piece took too long). The last piece of cheesecake (it was a frickin' huge one) just might hang in there until tomorrow though.

Ahhhhh, the leftovers nearly done with and we're on to the next portion of the holiday season. Some folks mark it with counting down the days until x-mas, so to honor the tradition, we went and bought a couple of "advil calendars" this morning. You might know them by their better known name: advent calendars. I guess the bigger of our little heathens knows more about advil than she does about the advent, and being as though it has been a whole year since the daily chocolate dispensation occurred, it only seems normal she'd go with the more familiar sounding name. Considering we just survived really only the beginning of the holidays, maybe an advil calendar isn't such a bad idea.

Anyway, stay warm, enjoy the festivities, and may a homebrew be coming your way soon..........Happy December!

kitchen noir

Dark, mysterious things have been happening in my kitchen. Like the case of the missing toast:

In the busy life I lead, I am often not able to fully ingest something before my attention is diverted away. In this case, I was about to sit down to a nice slice of toasted baguette when the wee one woke up from a morning nap. I ran upstairs to attend to him, and returned just a few moments later to find these remains. Hmmmmm, in black and white, to make it all the more mysterious......

Well now. If my breakfast is going to disappear I'll just have to do something about it. Sticking with the theme, I pulled out a boudin noir (my new favorite sausage) from the fridge and plopped it in a frying pan. I went to the remains of the baguette and discovered there was enough for a breakfast sandwich. So after frying the sausage, with the pan still blistering hot, in went two eggs. Slice the bread and pop it in the toaster. Spicey mustard in hand, the fixin's were coming together.

Now that is one good looking breakfast sandwich.

Wait.

What the hell? Black and white still? What the f*%@ is going on here?

Can't a guy enjoy his morning sandwich in peace AND color?

Well, it tasted great. Them folks over at the Fatted Calf really know a thing or two about charcuterie. Topped off with local eggs and handmade mustard on a sourdough baguette and I nearly fainted. I could eat this all the time for breakfast. And lunch. Okay, and dinner too, who am I kidding. But I'll still need something to wash it down with. Something black I suppose.

Like a homebrewed black death stout. Who cares if the picture is black and white or not, the beer is black. That's all that matters. Oh, and super yummy tasty. I guess that matters too. There is another gallon or two in the garage, that should in theory, peak in flavor somewhere near the winter solstice. Pffftt! Like it will last that long. (I've really gotta get to making another batch of that stuff, damn it's good!)

Then, with the holidays just around the corner and the prospect of cooking very large sized meals for lots of family and friends, you start looking at all the kitchen implements at your disposal and wonder: do I have a big enough pot to cook that 15-20 pound roast in? I rifle through the pots and pans in the kitchen and none look up for the task. Besides, it's hard to gauge how big such a roast would be in theory. Unless you have such an ample sized "roast" at your disposal.

Looks like an eight-gallon stock pot will work!

Thanks little buddy. Good thing 6 month olds are entertained by such simple things. Like being momentarily sequestered in a large pot while your father day-dreams of enormous quantities of chile verde............

And for the folks worried about child endangerment: calm down. I'm a professional Monkey Wrangler here. I've been on the job for four years and haven't killed anyone yet. There was no active flame under that pot, nor was there one for the previous couple of hours. And just so you know, he loved it. So much in fact that the elder monkey requested she try it out as well.

See you all later. On the dark side of things.

Got any kitchen noir to share?

the golden state

There are many reasons to call my home state golden. Whether referring to the gold rush, the golden gate, the golden hills waving with dry grass, or the fields of eye candy that grace our outdoors this time of year. Like these ones:



Or maybe these. These were nice. It was taken from about the same spot, but looking up, back toward the road and it's destination farther uphill.



Both shots were on Hwy 180 this past friday, at about 3,500' on the way to Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Park. The poppies were amazing. The lupine too, as well as countless others that I don't know the name of. I love flowers, so I stopped at a few points, got out of the car, and tried not to tumble down the hill while taking a few pics and beaming with happiness at being in a field of wildflowers.

In the park, I headed toward Grant Grove, to see one of the largest trees on earth. The third largest to be exact. With a base over 40 feet wide, and well over 300 feet tall, this tree is immense. Stop and think for a moment about how big that is. It's frickin' huge.



Remember how you do that calculation for circumference of a circle? C=∏d right?
Then that means that this tree is near 120' around!
At these dimensions it is a building. But a really cool one.
I like to think of it as a 1700 year old building that is nearly fire proof, solar heated, and home to an enormous community of critters. How's that for sustainability of a living community? I'd call that pretty golden too, wouldn't you?



I did say this was the third largest, not tallest, so that means it will help if we talk volume to wrap our heads around how hugemongous it is. Something like, if you stuffed the trunk with ping-pong balls, it wouild fit 37,000,000 of them. Or if you had a car that got 25 mpg, and started driving it using this tree as a gas tank, you could drive around the planet something like 350 times without refueling! That is one hell of a tank.

Now think about the reality of this community, and how being a living entity it's mainly water. Lots of players, but it's being managed by one living creature. Thriving. Did I mention it doesn't have a brain, or a nervous system? That some call it of a lower "order"? With considering all that, I just can't see them as lower, in any way. I'd call these giants smart. In fact, way smart. Smarter than you or I will ever be. It humbles me when I'm in the presence of such creatures. I have much to learn from them.

I know, this is primarily a food blog. And none of this is about food right?

But it is. It's about my food. It's about the food I share with others. It's about the things that inspire me. The entities that bowl me over with their very existence. Whether it's the intense golden hue in those flower petals or the enormity of such a single creature that functions as a sustainable high rise community. It's the micro and the macro and everything between. It's the images and sensations of living here, that are swirling through my mind as I create food for my family. To put it another way, if when you die, your life flashes before your eyes, then this is some of the stuff that I hope passes before mine as I check out.

Don't worry, I'm not going anywhere. I just had to share. In fact, when I was baking this bread last week, knowing I was going to my in-laws soon, I started getting images in my mind of what would be near their home. How within an hour, I could drive through the foothills awash in wildflowers, on my way to walking amongst true giants. I had imagined that I would see these very items before I did. I knew the redwoods would be there, and was pretty sure the flowers were too. Their colors inspired me to incorporate gold and red in bread.

So two of these loafs had the golden cheddar and red bacon combo. Really killer cheddar from Springhill Dairy, paired with super tasty bacon from Highland Hills, all wrapped up in dough that includes my favorite whole wheat from Full Belly Farms.

Cooked to a nice.......golden color.

I'm sure a few of you intuited that I'd eventually work that whole golden state thing into talking about sourdough. I may love them argonauts, and that big bridge thing that spans the gate. I love the sere hills of summer, and of course those poppies. All those things are wrapped up in my head. Which means they're wrapped up in the bread. The bread of my life.

colorful holiday cheesecakes

When I shop for sweet potatoes, I always hold a sort of hope that a taste of the islands can be found. You see, on the two trips I have taken to the Big Island, we delighted in sampling some of the local produce: coconut, bananas, papaya, pineapple, guava, longan, and some of the more familiar to us tomatoes, corn, and sweet potatoes. Only one thing, these sweet potatoes were purple. Heavenly, yummy, purple, gorgee-ous little sweet potatoes. Some of the local restaurants served it up as a side dish, to say a seared ahi steak or grilled ono fillet, in the form of light and fluffy lavender mountain, with a red colored salad sprig stuck in the top, representing lava spewing out. I fell in love with this form of mashed potatoes at first tasting, and we later purchased some raw ones at the local farmers' market and tried mashing them up ourselves. Well, our selections in lodging somehow never managed to have the right utensil, namely a masher in a kitchen drawer. We made do with forks and big spoons, and plenty of cream and butter I believe, and they ended up palatable. If only we could find these back home....


Shopping at "The Bowl" one afternoon last summer, I'm cruising the tuber section in produce and see something called an okinawan sweet potato. I look at it a little closer and see that the flesh looks like it has purple streaks in it. Ohhhhh, could it be........one of...........those.........hawaiian ones..........? I make my way toward the register to read a book I brought from home for entertainment while standing in line (or so I wish, about every-other time I'm in the place) and purchase somewhere near ten pounds of them. I get home and google it. I had found them. The very thing. I was so happy. I looked up a few recipes and found something entitled "Sweet Potato Cheesecake with Haupia Frosting " by anonymous locals. One look at the ingredients and you could tell they meant island locals. So, for thanksgiving last year we had this purple cheesecake for dessert.

Looking up the recipe again yielded this site:
http://www.e-hawaii.com/features/Christmas/recipes/sweetpotato.htm


Sadly, this year I have not seen the sweet little purple things. I've been back to the source, then another, but without luck. I should probably check chinatown, as I did last year and found them, but you see, most of the crop comes from Hawaii. This doesn't sound too bad right? Think about it a little harder and consider the requirement that the USDA has on irradiating them first, before shipping them the 2,500+ miles (at least) to your door. Purchasing them, should I even find them, is something I just can't do now, for either of those reasons, when there are just so many great locally grown sources of equally delicious tubers. So this year, our family has happily plugged away at eating our papas in the white, yellow and orange color scheme. And as it happens, this week found leftover baked garnet yams, sitting in the fridge, just waiting to be made into something else. Sister A was spending some time with us, so technically it was a holiday and all......so why not, let's do another colorful cheesecake!



Based on making the purple variety twice, adjusting for my own preferences, and of course altering the recipe into one more accommodating to my ingredients, it became something like this. So for a first time, I shall put something into an actual recipe form (of sorts), so here goes:




Garnet Ginger Grenadine Cheesecake (a work in progress)

1 cup chopped pecans (fine)
1 cup mashed graham crackers
1/2 cup buttery stick
2 tbsp chopped candied ginger

combine and pat into that fancy pan you have for such occasions and bake at 350 for ten or so minutes

1 and 3/4 cup mashed garnet yam (1 cup at least, or up to nearly 2 depending on consistency and size of eggs used)
3 jumbo eggs (use large sized if using only 1 cup potato, more like 4 large or 3 jumbo if using nearly 2 cups potato)
1 pound cream cheese
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract (optional)
1/4 tsp freshly ground nutmeg

combine these together in a large bowl, preferably in a mixer to save your arms from breaking off. when finished, wrap your pre-baked and now cool pan with tinfoil (if using a springform pan) and pour this mixture in. place the pan into a large roasting pan that will hold it and lots of boiling water around it (should you consider a water bath, which I highly recommend) pour in boiling hot water (around the cheesecake pan please) and bake at 350 for 50-55 minutes. it should be hardly done (no more jiggle in the middle). carefully take the roasting pan out of the oven, making sure to not scald your arms off with sloshing HOT water. DO NOT POUR WATER OUT while cheesecake is still in the roasting pan. it will slide to one end and not being horizontal at this high of a temperature will destroy it. siphon off the hot water with a turkey baster or the like and then remove the cheesecake pan from the roasting pan. place on a cooling rack and leave for several hours on the counter until it is totally cool. mix up 1 cup of sour cream with a few tablespoons of grenadine. pour this over the cheesecake and smooth it out. place in the fridge to chill for a few hours before serving. when chilled, place pomegranate seeds on the top, hopefully in a pattern more thought out and interesting than the one above.


Oh how I love leftovers like these. Because when the weather outside is dreary and gray, I feel like wrapping myself up in a blanket and snuggling down with a nice piece of cheesecake. Besides, it's kinda funny to see the colors of Fall on a plate, and be reminded that this weather will pass (after a few more months of rain that is) as this season of colorful cheesecake comes to an end and ushers in a new year.

israeli couscous with carotenoids, betacyanins, and xanthophylls topped with anthocyanins

The monkey was mixing up a batch of fruit salad. "What do you want in your salad dada?" Her method involves tossing in ALL of the fruits and veggies that she has into a large bowl, and giving them a thorough mixing. When this is complete she fishes out your requested items, plus a few that she thinks will pair well with them, and carefully arranges them on a plate for you. I believe her last plating involved peach, orange, cabbage and cauliflower as a bed, supporting the bell pepper and corn 2nd floor. I was inspired to duplicate her range of colors into a dish that had alot of local* ingredients. It made me think of using our carrots, butternut, beet, and yellow bell pepper that was hanging around the kitchen from the last trip to the farmers market. We also had local* mushrooms, celery and onions that I figured would go well with everything else as long as I tied it all together with some ginger, and maybe drizzled it with grenadine.

So, I roasted some butternut, steamed some beets, sliced some carrots and bell peppers, chopped onions, celery, mushrooms, garlic and ginger, picked a few strawberries and little bit of mint, and measured out a few tablespoons of grenadine. A few cups of israeli couscous topped it off.



I sauteed the onions/celery/mush/gar/gin combo in olive oil and combined it with the couscous and some water in our largish green caserole thingy. To this I layered the sliced carrots on one side and bell pepper on the other and then piled on the butternut and beet. I topped this all of with the strawberries and a healthy pouring of the grenadine. I poked some mint sprigs in a few places and put it in the oven at 350 for over an hour.


And because this meal was all about the fresh, colorful, and somewhat local* produce, we steamed some cabbage (yet more anthocyanins) and carrots (carotenoids........duh?) to serve up with it. Those crazy beets stained the couscous a nice burgundy (those betacyanins are the ultimate in staining, they will even turn your urine pink if you eat enough, so I hear...) and that cabbage, WOW! (although in honesty the cabbage was not that color when I put it in the pot. It was no trick, just plain ol' purple cabbage, steamed until quite tender). In fact now when I look at it, I think that we needed some more yellow stuff (xanthophylls) to offset that shocking bluish purple. I mean, do you eat bluish veggies THAT often?

This meal really made me reflect on how dull and boring most of the typical American diet is. I guess as a stay at home dad, who cooks, loves veggies, and doesn't eat much meat (less than twice a week lately, and that usually fish), I'm not exactly typical. I like that.


* Local for purposes here being produced in California, within about a three hour drive (say 150 mile radius from home) and purchased by us at the closest Farmer's Market or at our one of our neighborhood stores (all walking or biking distance). The onions, celery, garlic, bell pepper, carrots and beets are all organic and from the Farmer's Market. The grenadine was from Reedley pomegranates, juiced by hand with a ricer and then boiled with a cup of organic sugar (Whole Foods). The butternut was also from Reedley. The ginger is admittedly from Brazil (Berkeley Bowl), and is a leftover from my last attempt at making candied ginger. The mushrooms and couscous are from Whole Foods, the mushrooms produced locally (Monterey County), the couscous from unknown sources (I didn't pay much attention to the bin it came from as this too was a leftover ingredient from a past dish, I do believe it was organic). The olive oil (Greece, Kalamata actually) and the salt (France) were from the mediterranean by way of Trader Joe's. We had a locally produced olive oil that could have been used, but I can't yet justify using the $15 bottle of dipping/dressing oil for frying in a pan. I will look into getting a "cooking" oil from the local folks. The little strawberries and fresh mint are from our yard. You could say that this dish was a result inspired by the monkey's color scheme, local ingredients, what was in the cupboard, some oil-economics (olive), and the food we pass everyday going in and out of our door.

Putting it all down in this form and documenting where the meal came from goes out to my sister-in-law Sheryl. For being one of those folks who are brave enough to look at where your food REALLY comes from (and who having made it through the corn chapters in the Omnivore's Dilemna, now probably doesn't see that big grass the same anymore). Let me know when you get your hands on one of them Polyface chickens.