26 December 2005

L’Aïllade Toulousaine

In memory of Elizabeth David, who was born on December 26, read one of her books, eat good food with friends, or make this sauce, which I have adapted from a recipe in her 1951 book, French Country Cooking.

            3 ozs. chopped raw walnuts (about 1/2 cup), 2-3 peeled and chopped cloves of garlic, a good pinch of salt, and 5 ozs. good olive oil. Pound in a mortar the walnuts, the garlic, and the salt. Slowly add the oil, stirring until you have a thick sauce. If you don’t have a mortar and pestle, blend all the ingredients until quite smooth in a blender.

               To be served as an hors d'oeuvre with fresh bread and thin strips of raw celery and fennel to dip in the aillade, or as a sauce with any cold meat.

            Notes:  Before chopping the garlic, split the cloves lengthwise and remove any green sprout. If the sauce tastes too strong, add a teaspoon or so of warm water. Adjust the seasoning so that it’s appealingly salty. Although not traditional, the aïllade will profit from the juice of a half lemon.

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I have four or five shifts this week at the restaurant. I hope I can remember how to cook.

We had a nice Christmas. Fortunately I had a long afternoon nap before the kiddies arrived yesterday. So delicious to sleep in a warm house.  It wasn’t exactly a relaxing weekend. Two big dinners. My mother is more and more content each year to let me do more and more of the cooking. So, here’s what we had:

Christmas Eve: a fish broth with a shrimp persilade garnish and romesco sauce, sea bass filets baked in a tomato-spinach sauce (in the manner of my grandmother) with polenta, and a Meyer lemon meringue pie. I bought three whole sea bass on Friday from Monterey Fish in Berkeley, filleted them and used the carcasses to make the broth. Waste not, want not.

Christmas: A round of Manhattans and Meyer lemon drops to start. Then pasta with a Montepulciano meat sauce (beef, chicken, pancetta, almost no tomato), then an eight-rib pork loin roast (studded with rosemary and garlic), a little sauce made from the trimmings, a creamy chard gratin, roasted squash, then a green salad with the last of the tomatoes from the garden, and then a Marjolaine (layers of pecan meringue with chocolate ganache, almond praline cream, and bourbon cream fillings).

I’ve shaved off my beard. I need a fresh start after the heartache of last week.

22 December 2005

Only four more days until Elizabeth David’s Birthday!

I got the “let’s just be friends” phone call from the guy who is I guess now not going to be my next husband.

I’ve been feeling like a little boy. Yesterday afternoon, in the teeming rain, I got a stick and cleared the leaves from the sewer openings at the end of my street and got soaked in the process. Last night, on the way to the gym, I was so busy watching a fire truck pull out of the firehouse on Sanchez (and the near-collision with an inattentive motorist) that I tripped over the curb, skinned my hands, ripped my jeans, and really skinned my knee. And then after my massage, when we were in the shower, the massagist noticed that I had eye boogers (from lying down while wearing contacts). And no, you dirty minds, it was not that kind of massage, though we did take a shower together afterwards.

I woke up cranky this morning. I made my favorite crème fraîche-cornmeal waffles and ate them with the strawberry jam I made last summer, but it didn’t help. Today’s goals: a half-day of work, and then a trip to the Clement Street Chinatown to buy fish for tomorrow’s dinner, and then making a fish broth, and the gym, and then trying to get into a better mood.

21 December 2005

So much for a vacation. Busy, busy, busy.

If it weren’t for Cheney, Chimpy would be on his way to impeachment.  The real reason he didn’t get warrants from the compliant FISA court is either (1) the technology they’re using is too broad to be amenable to particularized warrants, or, more likely (2) he’s spying on his perceived (political, domestic) “enemies.” Admitting that he ordered over thirty felonious acts counts as a “high crime or misdemeanor” to everyone but the neo-monarchist wing of the GOP. He’s clearly not upholding his oath to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Bush is the worst president ever.

I’m getting dumped tomorrow by my latest attempt at love. Rather vexing. If he does it over the phone in the morning, I think I’m relieved of any duty to also have lunch with him as we had planned.

18 December 2005 

• Butternut squash soup with roasted garlic, marjoram, and crème fraîche
• Coq au vin with its classic garnish of tiny onions, bacon, and mushrooms, and roasted carrots, wilted rapini, and a creamy potato gratin
• Chocolate soufflé with Bourbon crème anglaise

It was good. Maybe my distant semi-Southern roots are showing. The soufflé recipe was from Juila [Homophobe] Child, but the Bourbon was my own idea. Good enough to please an alumna of Old Miss.

If you e-mailed me in the last week or so, please re-send it. I had a spam attack, and while trying to clean out the 5,834 pieces of junk I got in three days, I accidentally deleted my entire in-box. Sorry.

Well, what now? I am just puttering around my freezing apartment. Trying to wrap my mind around the idea that I don’t have to do anything at this moment. The bills are paid. I've restocked the larder. I've posted a shirtless photo of myself. The holiday cards are in the mail. I’ve read the funnies and the rest of the newspaper. I’ve visited all my favorite blogs. I’ve had two cups of tea. And a nibble of chocolate. I've burned a stick of Tibetan incense. I’ve figured out Monday night’s menu (a pasta with a meaty ragú, some kind of white wine stew (lamb or beef) with artichokes, wilted greens, and perhaps a small celery root gratin, and then soufflés (Dried apricot? Strawberry? Chocolate?). Something simple, basically.

What else? Find a job. Clean out some old files. Warm up the shredder and put it to good use. Reconnaissance mission around Union Square for a nice place to have a drink whilst shopping. USW.

8 December 2005

5 December 2005

I had a great date on Sunday. We went to Crissy Field, ate pizza, saw “Just Friends,” went over to his place, got Chinese food take out, and then, somehow, I spent the night. He has a great apartment, very nicely fixed up. Nothing fussy. We were startled out of bed by the punctual arrival of the electrician. My typical ambivalences about relationships have popped up, but I’m just going to see where this goes without getting all wrapped up in my usual self-doubts and second-guessing.

And I’m going to study like a monkey this week because finals are next week.

3 December 2005

Farmers’ market report: beef, stinging nettles, rapini, half a Pullman loaf from della Fattoria, eggs, apples, and chrysanthemums.

I hated those tepary beans. Never again. I usually don’t throw food out that I’ve just made, but after three bites, I knew I hated them and couldn’t make them taste good.

I made six and a half pints of quince-and-apple jam yesterday. Maybe I should have been studying instead.

I worked at the restaurant tonight. It was a long day. My course was sautéed haddock, braised fennel, and a citrus sauce (fumet mounted with olive oil and thinned with tangerine juice and lemon juice, with a little Valencia O.J. to round it out, and lots of zest). Everything went well until I was washing all our knives (all 50 of them) and I cut my middle finger. It was a gusher, but not serious.

Tomorrow: studying, a walk along Crissy Field, and a motorcycle ride, my first in about 20 years.  And yes, it's someone I very much want to get to know better.