Vanessa Barrington

What I Finally Did with my Massa Organics Duck

2010-06-25T20:38:05-07:00

Last fall, Greg tweeted that he’d be selling rice-paddy raised ducks at the Berkeley market if folks wanted to order ahead. I did. I picked mine up on a bright day in September or October. I have no idea which. It was frozen so I put it in the freezer thinking I’d cook it within the month.

All sorts of crazy life stuff ensued, including a move. The duck, of course, came with me to my new home and took up residence in my new freezer. Sitting there in my freezer all winter and into the spring, the duck took on a gigantic importance. It was a special duck. A Massa-raised duck. Not just any old duck. I had to DO something with it. Just roasting it would not do at all. I was waiting for an occasion.

Finally Haven’s mother was in town and since the two of us had been meaning to cook a dinner together out of Niloufer’s wonderful book, My Bombay Kitchen, we decided it was time. Only problem is that there wasn’t really a recipe for a whole duck in the book. Improvisation was in order.

I decided to make the Green Curry Masala (page 135) that Niloufer says is versatile enough for lamb, brains, or chicken. My thought was to rub the duck with ginger garlic paste (page 36) and steam it for 15 minutes to render the fat. Then I’d rub it with the masala and roast it. I also made the Watercress and Turnip Salad (page 215). Haven made a variation on the Fresh Turmeric and Ginger Pickle (page 234) and her mother (appropriately) made Mother’s Khichri (page 165). Sorry about the white rice! We didn’t use the Massa Rice.

All went swimmingly. In the end I decided the duck needed a little sauce so I whisked together some white wine, butter, and Green Curry Masala and we spooned it over the duck. Four of us picked that thing clean. It looked as if buzzards had gotten in and taken up residence at the dinner table. The appetizer was a real coup. Instead of flatbread we ate the pickle with Cowgirl Fromage Blanc (they were out of paneer) on toasted Massa Whole Wheat Tortillas.

I’m hoping for another duck this fall. Greg: are you listening?

Just before steaming. Steamer insert rigged up in wok with foil covering it for 15 minutes.

Just after steam bath.

Rendering fat to use for roasting potatoes.

After roasting. It wasn't that pretty but it sure was good. PS: 1 duck is barely enough for 4 people.

DIY Delicious is Here!

2010-06-03T13:26:18-07:00

I got the email yesterday. It said, "I'm holding advance copies of your book in my hand, it looks beautiful. Which address should I send them to?"

I was excited but a little numb I guess. Or maybe nothing can really prepare a person for the feeling of opening a package and pulling out a HARDCOVER book with your name on the cover. I think that's it.

So there I was trying to concentrate on work all morning, with an undercurrent in my brain saying, "it's coming," quietly, insistently, constantly. The second I went upstairs to do something, I heard the dog bark. Here it was.

I ran to the door and stood in front of it, waiting for the Fedex guy to ring the bell. I guess I didn't want to appear too eager. I opened the door, shoved the dog inside, signed the electronic thingy shakily and then grabbed the package with a feeling in my stomach like being in love. I ripped it open and just kept saying "oh my god", "oh my god", "oh my god." The dog looked worried. She shouldn't have been.

There it was, real, concrete, and gorgeous beyond belief. The design of the cover is raised and embossed and it has a super cool blurb on the back by Novella Carpenter. I am feeling very lucky right now and also so thankful for the opportunities I've had. In the end, the dog wasn't really that excited. These are the times you wish you worked in an office, where if you shout, people will hear. I guess, that's what Twitter and Facebook are for.

Stay tuned soon for a gorgeous new Wordpress site to do justice to this book!

Mendocino Abalone Plus Recipes: Abalone Ceviche with Kumquats and Abalone Chowder with Bacon

2010-05-25T09:51:30-07:00

I’m not a diver but I’m a cook so I feel fortunate to have been invited on a camping trip with a bunch of abalone divers. I’m always happy to let my imagination run wild in the camp kitchen. And even happier to be able to eat copious amounts of one of the last wild foods available to us.

After my chilly weekend at Van Damme State Park in Mendocino, I have a new appreciation for abalone and the divers who harvest it. Because you know what? It’s not that easy to catch abalone. You may think, “How hard can it be? It’s not like they run away or anything, right?” And though abalone can’t technically move fast enough to flee from divers, they do have other deterrents at the disposal. As does the Calfornia Department of Fish & Game.

First of all, while there are seven of species of abalone in California, the only ones the divers are allowed to take are Red Abalone no smaller than seven inches in diameter. To preserve the population, licensed divers are allowed three abalone per day with a maximum of 24 per season. The season runs from April through November with a closure in July.

Regulations also prohibit the use of oxygen tanks, so would-be abalone divers have to be highly skilled. Imagine diving down to a depth of 20-30 feet in freezing water, while holding your breath. Once you’re down there, you have to find the abalone, make sure they are the proper size and species and then move swiftly to pry them off the rock with a special tool. Tip them off to your presence and they seize onto the rock, making it impossible to remove them. One strike and you’re out. The seas can be rough, and visibility can be low, adding to the difficulty.

For these reasons it’s also dangerous. Emergency responders in Mendocino County rescue about 15 abalone divers each year. Nearly every year, somebody dies while diving for abalone. Last year’s death count was three.

Lets say you’re diving and you make it back to the surface with your abalone and head to the campsite to relax. First you have to pry the abalone out of their shells (this sounds nicer than saying you have to kill the live mollusks), and then you must trim out their goopy reproductive and digestive organs, as well as the black edges and the tough bits of the “foot.” Finally you have to pound the hell out of them or they’ll be too tough to eat. Then you can relax while someone else cooks them (if you’re lucky). In reality, most divers do cook. Usually they grill it, poach it, or slice, pound, bread, and pan-fry it. All are perfectly respectable ways to enjoy the sweet, oceany flesh.

On the third meal, something a little different was in order. I’ve made ceviche with abalone at home previously, but I wanted to do something a little different, so I brought along some kumquats to go with the usual ceviche flavors. The chowder was entirely unplanned. It was an incredibly cold weekend and, on one of our frigid hikes, Haven and I were fantasizing about chowder. We had potatoes in the cooler. We thought if only we had cream and bacon, we could make a fabulous abalone chowder. Luckily one of the other campers had both cream and bacon so our dream came true.

Here are the recipes—proportions are estimated. We cook by feel in the campsite.

Abalone Ceviche with Kumquats

2 abalone, sliced thinly into strips

6-8 kumquats, sliced as thinly as possible

2-3 serrano chiles, finely diced (seeds removed or left in depending on how much heat you want)

1/2 bunch of cilantro, chopped

1/2 of a red onion, cut half, then thirds lengthwise and then thin, half-moon slices

Juice of 5-6 limes

Salt to taste

Toss all of the above in a bowl and let sit for at least 30 minutes or up to 24 hours.

Campsite Abalone Chowder

This was truly a camp collaboration incorporating the ideas of many. One of the beautiful things about this chowder was that we were able to use the tough abalone trimmings to make a super flavorful stock. If there had been celery, I definitely would have put some in both the chowder and the stock. I used leftover cooked bacon from breakfast for the chowder, but if you don’t have cooked bacon you could sauté it in its own fat, add the onion and skip the butter if you want (or pour off some of the bacon fat and still use butter for flavor)

Stock:

2 pounds abalone trimmings

1/2 of an onion, roughly chopped

1 slab bacon

Chowder:

1/2 stick butter

1/2 of an onion, diced

2 to 3 russet potatoes, peeled and diced

1 abalone, diced

4 to 5 pieces of cooked bacon, crumbled

Cream to taste (about a cup)

Salt and pepper to taste

Put the abalone trimmings, onion, and bacon in a pot and cover with cold water. Bring to a boil and simmer slowly for 1 to 2 hours, strain. (can be made one day ahead and refrigerated).

In a soup pot, melt the butter, add the onion and sauté until translucent. Add the broth and bring to a boil. Add the potatoes and simmer until tender. (I added water to stretch it here because the broth was super flavorful) Add the abalone, bacon and cream and simmer until the abalone is tender, about 5 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve immediately.

On Smuggling, Renaissance Men & Chile Baked Beans with Nopales and Queso Fresco

2010-05-05T14:23:35-07:00

I found these beans back in January while wandering around the big market in Cuernavaca Mexico. Like almost all markets in Latin America, there’s so much to look at it was a little hard to take it all in. At one vendor’s stall I looked down and there, among the usual plastic woven bags filled to the brim with posole, beans, and chiles were these gorgeous, fat, purple beans. I had never seen them before.

I stopped and stared, waiting for the vendor to finish helping another customer. Interestingly, a solo male shopper somehow picked up on my excitement and in very slow, elementary Spanish patiently told me what they were called—Ayocote Beans. He then spelled the name for me slowly so I could write it in my notebook, and told me that these types of beans are commonly eaten with molé in the state of Morelos. I’ve cooked with Steve Sando’s Ayacotes, before but I’ve never seen the purple version.

Throughout this exchange, the vendor just watched us, smiling. I thanked the man profusely and marveled on what had just happened. In Mexico, the women in the household usually do the marketing and the cooking. Sometimes you’ll see entire families shopping together, but it is rare to see a man shopping for food alone, especially one so clearly passionate that he was willing to share his knowledge with an ignorant gringa. (Incidentally, some of the people I met in Cuernavaca call this place north of the border “Gringolandia”, but not unkindly) He was either a chef or a renaissance man.

I tucked these babies in my backpack, buried deeply in layers of dirty clothing and made it through customs. I only felt a little guilty for lying about not transporting “seeds or plants.” My plan if caught was to say, “Get Out! Beans are seeds? I had no idea!”

I hung onto these for a couple months until it was time to make a celebratory bean dish. I wanted to do them justice, but didn’t want to make molé. Plus I needed something vegetarian so I went on over to Heidi Swanson’s bean-friendly vegetarian blog, 101 Cookbooks, and found this recipe which I improvised from to create my own. Basically I kept the queso and pesto, ditched the breadcrumbs, added nopales, and switched out the tomato sauce for a straight chile sauce. You don’t have to smuggle exotic beans from Mexico. I think either recipe would be great with pretty much any bean—from pintos to cannellinis, to borlottis.

Chile Baked Beans with Nopales and Queso Fresco:

3 dried red New Mexico or Ancho Chiles

3 garlic cloves

1 pinch of Mexican oregano

1 pound of beans, cooked until tender with enough of their broth to be moist but not too soupy

2 nopales

Queso Fresco

Pesto:

1 bunch cilantro

2 garlic cloves

Juice of 1/2 of a lemon

Salt to taste

Olive oil

Destem and remove the seeds from the chiles. Toast the chiles in a hot dry cast iron pan or comal until fragrant but not smoking, about 20 seconds per side.

Remove them to a small bowl and pour boiling water over. Soak for 20 minutes.

Put the chiles, the 3 garlic cloves, the oregano, and a few pinches of salt in a food processor or blender, reserving the chile soaking water. Process until smooth, adding chile soaking water a little at a time until the puree is the consistency like that of thin batter.

Using the edge of a sharp knife, scrape the spines off the nopales. Slice them into thin strips and then dice them. Boil for 10 minutes in salted water until tender. Drain.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and, in a large casserole dish, stir together the beans, the chile puree and the nopales. Sprinkle with queso fresco and then bake until brown and bubbly.

Meanwhile, make the pesto. Place the cilantro leaves and garlic in the bowl of a food processor. Process until finely chopped. Add the lemon juice and salt and then slowly add the olive oil in a thin stream until the mixture is smooth and emulsified. Drizzle over each individual serving of beans.

Food Orgies I’ve Lived Through: Oyster Bliss and IACP in Portland

2010-04-26T18:37:15-07:00

You'd think it was the holidays judging by how much I’ve been eating. It’s a little weird when the forced austerity of tax time collides with not-to-be-missed eating opportunities. Credit card bills and elastic-waist pants are usually the result. No regrets here because hey, this is just how I roll now. Living in the moment and all that.

I attended my first ever Kermit Lynch party on Saturday the 17followed by 4 days of gorging on all manner of both street food and fine restaurant eats in Portland.

Oyster Bliss is all about oysters, homemade sausages by Chris Lee and Samin Nosrat, wine by Kermit Lynch and desserts by Café Fanny, along with plenty of sun, friends, and music. It was a blast drinking buckets of rose, chewing on sausages, slurping oysters and laughing with friends and tablemates. It’s tough to spend a Saturday afternoon like that because it’s too tempting to continue the debauchery. Luckily I’ve reached the age of reason and spent the late afternoon and early evening napping.

Fanny's strawberry rhubarb tart

Fanny's Chocolate Pave

Barely recovered from the oyster party, Tuesday I arrived in Portland and proceeded to eat my way through town. I had plenty of good company and made countless new friends. Here are a few of the pictorial highlights.

The dreamiest coffee ever from the sweetest 200 square foot storefront.

Porchetta sandwich from The People's Pig Cart. Yowza!

Ziba's pitas: like my grandma's strudel only savory with cheese and lamb and Ajvar!

Poutine from Spudnik

I've had some pretty sorry examples of Korean tacos. This was not one of them.

Ok so I probably didn't really need to eat Texas toast grilled cheese with hamburger.

Cutest shack ever

My roomie Amy's Schnitzelwich from Tabor. She was nice enough to share. It was a textural wonderland.

Civilized lunch with new friends Laiko Bahrs, Maura Sell, Brona Cosgrave, and Patrice Savery at Pasta Works.

Green garlic soup!

farmers market pizza!

Much to my surprise, I walked into the Chronicle Books party and there was my book cover all blown (and grown) up and looking gorgeous. I had to get a happy shot. It's blurry but too fun not to include.

In closing, the conference was inspiring, exhausting, exhilerating and magical this year. The best ever. Everyone I met, famous or not, was kind, engaging, friendly, and helpful. It felt like one big giant love fest and sharing sphere. It made me feel like anything is possible and we’ll all get where we are going by helping one another. And you know what? I believe we really will. I don’t know if it’s the new economy or Portland itself but the conference felt like one big happy family. Maybe I just had “city of the roses”-colored glasses on, but I don’t think so. I think it was real.

This Ain’t No Chicken Factory: Soul Food Farm Tour

2010-04-18T21:33:38-07:00

On a recent rain-threatening Saturday I set out with a friend and fellow Soul Food Farm CSA member for Soul Food’s first ever farm tour. We weren’t sure what to expect but we were pretty sure we’d like what we saw. I mean they wouldn’t invite people if it weren’t going to be a pleasant experience.

Though the wind came up, roaring through the chicken houses and causing hens to scurry and cluck, the weather held. It was a lovely romp through the different parts of the farm followed by lemonade and chicken salad sandwiches in the kitchen, where we chatted with Alexis and one another between bites. We even made it to the tail end of the Berkeley farmers’ market on the way home. Pretty perfect Saturday if you ask me.

These are the meat birds. Note the clean straw and healthy looking chickens. They take about 10 weeks to grow. These, I believe, are about 7 weeks old.

These are the meat birds inside their house. The modular houses are disassembled and moved around the farm every few months to keep things clean. The birds are never given any drugs to keep them healthy. Sage oil in their water acts as an anti-microbial.

Sort of like a chicken/or Easter egg hunt but not. Now this is free-range.

3 day old chicks that arrive by US Mail to the post office, where Alexis picks them up cheeping away in their boxes. They look like Peeps don't they?

These are the laying hens outside, but under a shelter. Note how healthy they look. Their beaks have not been clipped, which is commonplace in the egg industry (yep, even the organic, cage free kind).

What a pretty pretty girl!

Comfortably roosting in clean, dry straw.

These were gathered in the hen houses by farm tour participants.

Llamas and chickens are friends. The llamas keep the predators away from the hen houses at night.

Here we are walking up the gentle slope of the farm. This is the site of the devastating fire last fall that nearly killed the farm just before its CSA program was about to launch. Amazing how nature renews.

What a wonderful opportunity to be able to feel so connected to the eggs and chickens and people who feed me!

A Sort of Persian, Mostly Vegetarian Passover

2010-04-11T16:27:46-07:00

I finally wrangled an invitation to a Seder. For years I’ve only heard about the ceremony and the food, and finally this year I got to experience both. I also had the opportunity to help cook this one, so I was really excited.

Our hostess, Haven Bourque, decided on a Persian menu. There were several reasons for this: One was a recent musical outing, that inspired us to want to eat Persian food, one was an article in the New York Times, and one was a vegetarian on the guest list, and our own veggie leanings.

Here’s the menu:

First Course:

Seder plate—in the Persian tradition green onions are on the table for the guests to beat one another with. Yep, that’s right. It symbolizes the sting of the whips of the Egyptian slaveholders. Rather fun and they do sting!

The charoset was wonderful. Lots of delicious dried fruits, cardamom, and pistachios.

Second Course:

Beet soup—very simple vegetarian version made with beets and leeks and balanced with champagne vinegar and then garnished with lebne and cilantro.

Third Course:

Smoked salmon

Asparagus roasted in a blazing hot oven with olive oil and salt

Deviled Eggs

Mainish Course:

Two types of grape leaves—one with lamb and rice and one with rice and dried fruit from the recipe in the New York Times above

Roasted/braised baby artichokes: Quartered and roasted with salt, olive oil, thyme sprigs, and sliced lemons until brown and then oven-braised in white wine.

Dessert:

Flourless chocolate cake and macaroons from La Farine and illegal for Passover baklava from Zand’s. Best baklava I’ve ever had. I finally understand why people eat baklava.

The ceremony was great. It was a secular humanist Passover and we sung songs of social justice while drinking plenty of wine.

Hope I get invited back next year!

DIY Cheese and Fresh Pasta with Asparagus

2010-03-25T08:40:43-07:00

My new book: DIY Delicious: Recipes and Ideas for Simple Food from Scratch will be published this fall by Chronicle Books. I just finished going over the final proofs and finalizing the cover. It looks beautiful! The designer did a wonderful job and the photos are by the fabulous Sara Remington. I’m very excited about this project. There is so much kitchen inspiration to share.

My idea of the book is to inspire people and give them the tools and confidence to make some of the food items from scratch that they would normally buy. The payoff is better tasting, more economical, more environmentally friendly, additive free food, and the pride of kitchen self- reliance.

Each DIY recipe is followed by one or more simple recipes that show readers how to use the DIY ingredient to create incredibly simple dishes that are super flavorful because the ingredients you’ve made yourself are so fresh and tasty. For example, in the book, following this cheese recipe, and in addition to suggestions sprinkled throughout the other chapters, you’ll find the pasta recipe, a recipe for cheese crepes and a simple marinated cheese appetizer.

In celebration of sending my baby off to be printed, I’m offering one of my favorite spring dishes using a homemade, soft, ricotta like cheese and whole wheat pasta to make a simple, seasonal dish with fresh asparagus and lemon—two of spring’s stars.

I probably shouldn’t give away all the recipes in the book so I’m assuming here that you can figure out how to make the pasta (or buy fresh pasta from a good specialty store) Of course you can use dried pasta too, but the chewiness of fresh pasta makes this dish more interesting.

Fresh Whole-Milk Soft Cheese

It helps if you have a thermometer for this recipe (see below). Time Required: 10 minutes active; 1 hour mostly passive, yet watchful

You can create your own particular style of fresh cheese by adjusting the time you drain the cheese and the thickness of your cheesecloth. The longer you drain, the drier it will be. When moist, this cheese is good for spreading and using as a dessert filling. Drain it longer and it’s perfect for pizza and pasta.

Makes about 1 1/4 pounds, depending on how much whey you drain out

1 gallon whole milk (not ultra-pasteurized as you may have trouble curdling it)
1/3 cup white or apple cider vinegar or 1/2 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
Non-iodized salt, such as kosher or cheese salt

Pour the milk into a large nonreactive pot (stainless, ceramic, or enameled). Over medium-low heat, slowly bring the milk temperature up to 185 degrees F, stirring occasionally. Take your time, so you don’t scorch the milk. Stir occasionally and watch closely. This can take 45 minutes or longer.

While you wait, ready 2, 4, or 6 layers of cheesecloth, folded into a square of about 18 inches on each side. Place the cheesecloth in a strainer (the number of layers depends on how dry you want your cheese). Fewer layers will make the cheese drain more quickly and yield a drier, crumblier cheese.

If you don’t have an accurate thermometer, you can still make ricotta. The milk should be just short of boiling. Signs that the milk is almost ready include tiny bubbles on the sides of the pan and a shimmering, vibrating surface not yet broken by bubbles.

When the milk reaches the proper temperature, turn off the heat, pour in the lemon juice or vinegar and stir to distribute. Stop stirring and let the milk sit undisturbed for 5 to 8 minutes. You will see curds begin to form and separate from the whey. Using a slotted spoon or small, hand-held strainer, spoon the curds out into the cheesecloth-lined strainer. It will look a little like wet biscuit dough. Work the cheese a little with a spoon to release some of the liquid.

Tie the ends of the cheesecloth together so you have a bundle of cheese and hang it from a wooden spoon set over a big pot until it reaches the desired consistency (5 to 10 minutes). Reserve the whey (see Note), transfer the cheese to a medium bowl, and add salt to taste, if desired. If using for desserts, you’ll want to add little or no salt. Will keep, refrigerated, 4 to 5 days.

Fresh Pasta with Asparagus, Homemade Cheese, and Lemon

Time Required: 15 minutes active (excluding cheese and pasta)

Serves 4 to 5

1 bunch (about 3/4 pound) fresh, in-season medium-thick asparagus
1 pound Fresh Pasta or store-bought whole wheat fettuccini
2 tablespoons butter or store-bought butter, softened
1/2 pound Fresh Whole-Milk Soft Cheese, drained to a moist, slightly crumbly texture
3 tablespoons mixed chopped fresh herbs (parsley, mint, chervil, savory, marjoram, anything you like)
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 lemon, for zesting

Grasp 1 end of each asparagus spear in each hand and bend until it snaps at its natural breaking point. Discard (or compost) the lower fibrous ends. Cut the remaining parts of the spears into bite-sized pieces. In a vegetable steamer, steam the asparagus until tender but still vibrant green, about 2 to 3 minutes. Submerge it in ice water to stop the cooking, drain, and pat dry. Set aside.

Meanwhile, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil, put the softened butter in a bowl large enough to hold all the ingredients, and get the cheese, chopped herbs, and lemon zest ready, as this dish comes together quickly.

Add the fresh pasta to the boiling water and cook until it is tender but still chewy, 2 to 3 minutes (if using store-bought pasta, follow package instructions). Drain immediately, do not rinse, and add the pasta to the bowl with the butter. Toss to coat the pasta, and then add the cooked asparagus, cheese, and herbs to the hot pasta. Toss and add salt and pepper to taste. Transfer the pasta to plates. Using a microplane, or the small holes of a cheese grater, grate lemon zest over each serving and top with a few grindings of fresh pepper. Serve immediately.

Note: What To Do with Whey
Don’t dump it down the drain! It provides nourishment for indoor and outdoor plants, and has many culinary uses besides. It can be used to cook porridges or grains for salads, in smoothies, as a broth for soup or beans, or you can drink it over ice.

The Prospector in Twain Harte: Certified Napoletana Pizza

2010-03-09T08:07:35-08:00

I don’t usually write about restaurants because everybody else does, and usually, when I’m dining out, I want to be fully present with my dining companions and the food and don’t want to take photos and notes. I have to make an exception here because The Prospector Forno Rustica is pretty out-of-the-ordinary and has not received much press.

I’m quite sure I would never know about this place if my family didn’t live in the Sierra Foothills near the town of Twain Harte, where The Prospector is located. Hell, most people I know have never heard of Twain Harte . Even if you visited Twain Harte and saw this restaurant, you’d likely pass it by, not knowing what a treasure you had just missed. Honestly, I’m not sure owner Robert Martin even cares. I get the feeling he likes operating what amounts to a sort of underground restaurant right out in the open.

Though everything is strictly legal, I say underground because the place looks like a tourist pizza joint— a place where you take the kids for gloppy, cheesy, saucy, rubbery pizza after playing mini golf at the course next door. In fact, I’ve heard that kids aren’t even allowed in the restaurant and this is NOT kid pizza (though they'd like it too). It’s honest-to-god certified Napoletana pizza from a wood-fired oven.

It’s a quirky place. For starters, there’s no stove, so everything is made in the oven. So it’s really about the pizza. But the night we went there was a simple pasta on the menu—rolled out before our very eyes, boiled in a big pot in the oven and sautéed in a skillet on the edge of the oven’s hellishly hot maw. There may or may not be salad on the menu. There wasn’t any the night we went.

It’s also about the wine. A large collection of retail priced foreign and domestic bottles. Honestly I was focused on the pizza and didn’t look into the wine at all, just poured myself a glass of something tasty and Italian from the bottles lined up on the counter. Wish I’d looked a little harder because judging from this interview with the owner in The Sierra Mountain Times, there are probably some well-priced treasures there, as a wine bar was really the original business plan.

There’s no table service. You order at the counter, pour your own wine (the glasses are helpfully marked), get your own water, table settings etc. and then settle in to watch the pizza artists at work. The pizzas are brought out one at a time by the chefs. You’ll need to order 1 per person or try another menu item because they aren’t large. What can I say? The pizza was perfection. Crisp, thin, blistered crust with structure and chewiness. Great toppings, judiciously applied. Nice combinations. We had a white pizza with prosciutto, basil, and roasted onions, and a red one with spicy salami and fresh mozzarella (made in-house, I believe).

We enjoyed a fresh pasta with mushrooms, olive oil, and Parmesan--simple and perfect. In fact, the first pasta was discarded as not good enough before it even made it to the table, and remade by the owner/chef. We watched him do it. Sorry about the bad photos. It was a little too dark.

If you’re curious and you’re not about to make it to Twain Harte anytime soon, you can go to the Prospector pizza webcam (it’s usually running during dinner service) and watch the masters at work. Honestly though, it’s kind of like watching paint dry between orders, but fascinating, as there’s sort of a wild west Slow Food vibe going on there. Oh, and you can follow The Prospector on Twitter, naturally.

Curried Cauliflower Soup with Annabelle’s Mustard Seed Oil and Yogurt

2010-02-22T18:27:07-08:00

Whether roasted, braised, sautéed, gratinéed, or simmered gently into a soup, cauliflower is one of my favorite winter vegetables. I crave it for comfort…its soothing sweetness and versatility. It is a vegetable that takes very well to Indian spices, so when I’m craving that flavor profile, I usually braise it with whole spices that I’ve toasted and ground and serve it as a side dish.

One recent cold night I wanted soup. And I wanted Indian spices. Plus I had some of Annabelle Lenderick’s hand-harvested mustard seeds that she’d given me last summer. I wanted to do something special with them and I didn’t need any more homemade mustard in the house. I decided to try infusing them into oil.

The flavor result wasn’t earth shattering, but instead rather subtle. Toasted in oil as described below, the seeds will turn brown and pop energetically. Strain the oil and drizzle it over the soup. You’ll notice a nutty, warm flavor spreading over your tongue as you sample the soup.

Serves 4

1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1/2 teaspoon coriander seeds
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon cayenne (depending on its level of heat and your preference)
3 tablespoons olive oil or ghee
1/2 of a large yellow onion, diced
2 celery stalks, diced
4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 1/2 pounds cauliflower (1 medium to large head)
5 cups chicken or vegetable broth
Salt and freshly ground fresh pepper
4 tablespoons vegetable oil for high heat cooking
1 tablespoon mustard seeds
Fresh lemon juice (optional)
Plain yogurt for serving
Cilantro leaves for serving

In a small, dry skillet, over medium heat, toast the cumin and coriander seeds, shaking the pan often, for 3 to 5 minutes, or until beginning to brown and become fragrant. Remove from pan and cool. In a spice grinder or with a mortar and pestle, grind the seeds finely. Stir in the turmeric and cayenne and set aside.

In a large soup pot over medium heat, warm the olive oil or ghee. Add the onion and celery and cook, stirring occasionally, until soft and fragrant (about 10 minutes). Add the garlic and cook 2 to 3 minutes. Add the spice mixture and cook, stirring for an additional 2 to 3 minutes, until fragrant. Add the cauliflower and the broth along with a few pinches of salt and some pepper. Bring to a boil, stirring occasionally, and then lower heat, cover partially and simmer until the cauliflower is soft, about 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, make the mustard seed oil. In a small skillet, over medium –low heat, warm the vegetable oil with the mustard seeds for 4 to 5 minutes. They will brown and begin to pop. Don’t let them burn. Cool and let sit to infuse the oil and then strain before using.

Cool the cooked soup and then puree until smooth. Return to the pot and heat slowly. Taste and adjust for salt and pepper. If you find the soup needs a little acid, add a squeeze or two of lemon juice to taste.

Serve with a drizzle each of yogurt and mustard oil along with a few leaves of fresh cilantro.