Between Hands

Prosciutto . . . or an imposter?

Living in San Francisco, one can get rather jaded. Foodies abound, as do their love for "charcuterie"--smoked and cured meats--of all origins. While I do have a penchant for prosciutto di Parma (with such little fat and a delicate taste, I still haven't found anything to top it), I could really care less about the multitude of house-name salumi made in the region. OK, that's a partial lie. I enjoy eating all kinds of salumi: salame, prosciutto and bresaola, to name a few, but I don't necessarily feel better about eating Fra'Mani (or, directly translated into English: Between Hands--doesn't sound so tasty now!) than eating Butcher Joe's (or Trader Joe's), or whoever else may go to the trouble of producing their own house-cured meats. It's kind of like it would be with jeans. You may like the feel and fit of a designer brand, but are you really going to brag to your friends that you just LOVE Guess? jeans? I mean, after a certain age, like 17, you kind of have to stop doing that.

But up here in San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, Napa, wherever, it's totally uncool to be over 25 and not have heard of the Berkeley-based Fra'Mani. So in the spirit of diversification and sharing the publicity wealth of salumi--let me give you a glimpse of some American grade A country smoked ham. Not quite the buttery-rich, easy-to-get stuff 'round here--this thing is mail ordered straight from the Heartland--but it's interesting to see what others outside of the Bay Area and other big cities consider a quality cured ham. (For those interested in how the other other third live, check out the Country Ham Association's website--who knew??!) It should keep us in check as to our foodie preferences and at least force us to recognize our snobbery. After that, fine, go back to eating the superior quality Fra'Mani if you want. Just please call it something else. Like "Between Hands." It'll give you the status of one who loves prosciutto while making it sound like you support a non-profit. OK, I guess that's a bit pretentious, too.

*Country Ham from Burgers' Smokehouse.

Ice Cream on the Brain

Normally, I don't keep gallon-sized tubs of the stuff in my freezer, but as you can see from recent desserts I've made, it would be criminal not to pair these butter and fruit cakes with some ice cream. As a child, I was not often allowed to eat ice cream--and it was rarely kept at home--so I'm always surprised to see it in my (grown-up) freezer. Meant for birthdays or vacations, or an outing with our grandparents, my sister and I didn't eat it nightly as some of our friends did. So perhaps it's through my grandparents, or more specifically, from my maternal grandfather, that I developed a fondness for the frozen dessert in a cardboard container.

We made fun of him all those years, but he was a man who knew what he liked--there was always a carton of ice cream in the freezer. When he tried to eat healthier foods, ice cream briefly disappeared in favor of the less creamy sherbet (1-2% milkfat). My sister and I tolerated the "rainbow" variety, but noone in my family came close to touching the mango sherbet that my grandfather grew to love. (Such a peculiar taste in the pre-foodie '80s!) Briefly we saw the appearance of ice milk varieties in their house (less than 10% milkfat), and sherbets yet again, but even in his final years, I recall seeing some full-fat ice cream flavors in the freezer. It was an addiction of sane proportions, compared to everything else out there.

So now, here I am, alone with an almost-empty carton of Double Rainbow's all-natural Vanilla. And I have to admit that in spite of my ice-cream-is-bad-for-you-upbringing, I have no shame, and rather enjoy a few spoonfuls (ok, maybe a cup-ful) of the creamy and delicately flavored dairy dessert. It makes a nice, simple end to a spicy dinner, or a long day. Maybe I'm taking after my grandfather's habit after all. Nothing wrong with that, though.

Living Footloose and Corn Syrup-Free

In the past six months, I've made a concerted, San Francisco-like attempt to avoid food products containing high fructose corn syrup or plain corn syrup. It's not really due to health reasons--I don't eat too much of whatever I find it in--but more out of rage. With certain exceptions, I am overall not one for processed foods, nor do I understand the necessity of using them in frozen desserts. I find it confusing when I am able to enjoy a product like Sharon's All Natural Lemon Sorbet, which contains lemon juice as the first ingredient, swiftly followed by water and cane sugar. Why, there's no high fructose corn syrup here, not even a whiff of regular corn syrup. But when Trader Joe's closes at 9:00pm and I've got a sorbet craving, or I'm nowhere in the vicinity of the two existing TJ's in the city, or they're just OUT of the lemoniciousy goodness, what brand can I look for in the more commercial Lucky's or Safeway that matches Sharon's in ingredient-integrity?

The answer?

Well, there is none. The best I've found is a box of Dreyer's lemonade fruit bars. The order of ingredients leaves a little to be desired (in comparison to Sharon's hearty concoction): water tops the list, followed by sugar, then lemon juice from concentrate. And the tooth chill factor brought on by having to bite into a bar versus spooning soft sorbet takes some fun out of the eating, but there's nothing else questionable on that frozen bar ingredients listing. Which begs the question, why can't name brands like Haagen-Dazs take corn syrup off the menu and still serve a fine product? (Sharon's can, and they're pretty much evenly priced.) Don't look to their "Zesty Lemon" sorbet, which names CS as the third ingredient.

Apparently, Sharon doesn't have much competition in the "non-scary ingredients" category at the moment. Until the FDA reveals some terrible news about secret agent Guar Gum, which pops up just about everywhere, (as a thickening agent might), I'll keep packing on the corn syrup-free pints. I recommend you do the same.

Sunday Brunch

A brunch at The Magic Flute was the only cure for my grumpster mood this morning. I went for the Eggs Benedict with smoked salmon, and Joe took a stab at the brioche French toast with strawberries and cream. I can't say that either of us went wrong, though it was midway into the meal that I remembered to snag a picture of each! Enjoy the visual leftovers.

Scrumptious French toast:

Devilish Eggs Benedict:

Almonds, le mandorle, des amandes!

As you may have noticed, I am, of late, obsessed with eating marzipan and almonds. I like those nuts any which way (except in butter form), and most of all I love eating pastries with almond paste.

I was inspired by the Take Home Chef's Curtis Stone last night as he helped a non-cook husband prepare a meal for his wife of 10 years; this included twin blueberry clafoutis for dessert. (I am inspired by Curtis Stone in other ways, too, but those I will not share with you here.)

The clafouti, a traditional French dessert of fruit baked in an egg and bready custard, typically uses fresh cherries. Since it's currently pouring outside and winter's end is nowhere in sight, I decided to go with the fresh fruit in season--pears. I hunted down a recipe from the trusty epicurious as a start, from which point I adapted the recipe to ingredients that I had available and/or wanted to use. Such is the way of Jessica and her cooking! Using a mixture of the Bosc and Anjou varieties, I added the peeled pears to a mixture of eggs, flour, vanilla, butter and almond paste. Simple to make and even simpler to eat, the clafouti is best served warm and with a side of vanilla bean ice cream.

Recipe for Clafouti à la Poire et aux Amandes: (adapted from epicurious.com recipe for Pear Almond Clafouti)

4 pears, any variety (I prefer a mixture of Bosc and Anjous), peeled, cored, seeded
juice of 1 lemon
1/2 c almond paste
3/4 c all-purpose flour, sifted
3/4 c milk
4 tbsp butter, melted and cooled
3 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
pinch salt
1 tbsp granulated sugar

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease a 9 or 10" round baking dish (a pyrex pie plate will work). Slice pears thinly (and all pieces should be similarly sized), and place into bottom of baking dish. Squeeze the juice of 1 lemon over pears and mix.

In a food processor, combine almond paste, milk, butter, eggs and vanilla until well blended and almond paste has largely been broken up, creating a smooth and liquidy batter. In a large bowl, sift flour and salt together. When blended, add the liquid mixture to dry ingredients and whisk together until ingredients are fully incorporated, with no clumps of flour showing. Pour batter into pie dish, covering pears, and bake in oven for 35 - 40 minutes, or until a toothpick or knife can be inserted in clafouti and come out batter-free.

Serve warm and enjoy with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

This may appear similar to last week's tarte tatin, but I can assure you, it's not!

Who's a Square?

Sometimes the ups in my life can be as simple as a bar of chocolate--or four. When the Walgreen's circular came out in the Sunday ad section of the Chronicle, I was thrilled to see that my new fave chocolate, Ritter Sport, was on sale for $1.59 (per 100 gram bar)! Down from a whopping $2.19! There's a price to pay for good chocolate in this here city, let me tell you. I often prefer a rotating array of Belgian, Swiss and French chocolatiers, but as of late my heart has softened for the German Dark Chocolate with Marzipan "quadrat" that I once favored as a college student. (Thanks for sending me some Ritter for Christmas, Mom!)

Upon seeing the ad, I rushed to the nearest Walgreen's (which happened to be in Walnut Creek) to find absolutely no Ritter, and to learn that the ad applied to San Francisco and Peninsula-area stores only. (Is there really no market in the deep East Bay for German chocolate?) I returned to S.F., scouting out the two Walgreen's in the 'hood, neither with any sign of a Ritter bar, before discovering 16 flavors of Ritter Sport available at a third location. Fearing an impending rush on the discounted chocolate, I decided to stock up and bought four bars. Now that's a lot of high quality square-a-liciousness for me to enjoy in the coming months.

My Landlord Wants Me To Get Fat

How could anyone try to take me away from this?!

It goes something like this: I'm at home, turning on the DVD player to get jazzed up for Paula Abdul's Get Up and Dance (Artemis Home Entertainment, 1994) low-intensity workout, and two minutes into walking across the floor into a heels-off-the-ground-half-twist my landlord comes knocking on the door to ruin my fun.

"Um, is there something going on in here?" he asks.

"Yeah, I'm getting exercise--doing a dance video," I explain.

"Oh. How often do you do that?"

Couldn't he just get to the point?

"Maybe once, twice a week," I answer.

On and on it went, until he said something like: "Well, if you keep doing this, then the floors will start to creak, and then you'll come and ask me to fix the floors, and I don't have a lot of money to do all that. You guys are always coming to ask me to fix stuff," (*stuff being the heater, a mold problem--surely we shouldn't bother him with those things!).

Did you catch any logic there? Regardless, the floors have been creaking since I moved in a year and a half ago; I've done Paula's dance routine only five time in the past three weeks! I'm still trying to deduce the real reason that Mr. To doesn't want me to do a dance workout, something that's good for my heart and all, in a living room that sits atop an empty garage. He didn't mention that the noise was an issue for anyone, so there has to be something else going on in his mind. Any guesses??!! I need YOUR help!

Until I muster up the courage to challenge his demands that I stop, I'll continue eating and cooking, being forced to watch the pounds settle back on because my principal heart-healthy joy has been taken away. (Some may say that being forced off of the 90s aerobics scene, and Ms. Abdul's music, might be a good thing, but I disagree.) Every minute less dancing to a remix of "Promise of a New Day" shall be a minute more of me cooking in the kitchen. Last night, chocolate-Grand Marnier cookies, today spoonfuls of peanut butter and Mozarts (the candy), tomorrow, cheesecake and chocolate éclairs! To compensate for my poor snacking habits, I tried to cook myself a healthy and reliable standby: stir-fried shrimp and baby broccoli in an orange-hoisin sauce. Not bad, but not the same as dancing along with Paula and the gang, either.

No more Paula! I can't dance, so I'll just have to eat healthy instead. Broccoli's got lots of vitamins C, K and A, right? Shrimp's not too bad either, save the cholesterol.

Eating My Greens

When I first sampled the sugary niçoise specialty tourte de blettes, I wasn’t sure what to think. The sweet butter pastry was clearly palatable, but the filling in-between was confusing. Perhaps I just wasn’t used to it: a mixture of Swiss chard (des blettes, in French), egg, pine nuts, apple, raisins, vanilla, rum and parmesan cheese. Upon re-reading those words, it still doesn’t make sense that such a blend of ingredients would taste good together. But the truth of the matter? It’s actually one heavenly combination. The cheese is barely noticeable, and as it melts in with the dense filling, it isn’t even visible or distinguishable by taste. The sweet apple slices complement the dense chard nicely, and overall the whole pastry has layers of flavor that don’t overwhelm each other. When I taught English in Nice, I’d buy a large square of the tourte for lunchtime from the bakery across the street from the high school. Nutritious? Well, there are some nutrients in there, sure. But first and foremost, this is a pastry! The Niçoise must be given credit for sneaking a highly nutritious vegetable (Swiss chard) into a delicious dessert.

Since I don't get back to Nice too often, I was determined to make the tourte here in San Francisco. Covered with a layer of powdered sugar, here was my homemade version.

Farmed Salmon, Oh My!

It was approaching Saturday night, and we were craving a fish dinner. Oven-baked salmon was the fish dish that popped to mind, so off we went to Bryan's (THE fresh meat, poultry and fish grocer located in the Laurel Heights neighborhood) to pick up something fresh.

The fresh day boat scallops glistened, tempting me to abandon our salmon-eating plans, but then I spotted the fresh, farmed salmon. OK, it's not politically correct to eat farmed salmon, and as the Audubon Society warns against eating this particular fish, I probably should have thought twice about buying it. But mmm, it looked delicious and fresh. The woman waiting to place her order after me, however, wouldn't buy it, literally.

Woman (to Bryan's fish-counter man): "Excuse me, do you have any fresh, wild salmon?"

Fish-counter man: "We have fresh, farmed salmon."
W: "OK, but do you have any fresh salmon that isn't farmed?"

FCM: "The farmed salmon IS fresh."

W: "Yes, but do you have anything wild?"

Clearly, the fish-counter man has had enough of the SF do-gooders and their wild salmon-eating ways that he's prepared to give them a hard time when presented with questions like these. Hopefully I'm still in his good graces, as I kept my mouth shut and just bought the "offending" salmon without hesitation.

We later turned these nice slivers of fresh (but farmed) fish into a pepper-crusted, maple & soy-glazed baked salmon à la the Surreal Gourmet, (Off the Eaten Path, Ballantine Books, 2000), and served them alongside a homemade rice pilaf composed of jasmine white, carrots, zucchini, onions and chicken broth. What a tasty dinner!

The syrup tried to "brand" itself into the marinade by taking the shape of a distorted maple leaf when added to the soy sauce:

Pepper-crusted salmon ready for the oven:

Finished meal:

Starting Fresh

New year, new you, so the advertisers say. I've decided to share with you all the comestibles I'm making and eating these days.

I welcomed the new year with the resolve to eat more fruits and vegetables. That's a nice "resolution" for me, since it is all about being positive. Now I can eat as many fruits and veggies as I want. If I eat chocolate and ice cream on top of that, I won't have a broken any rule, and my motivation will remain intact!

In keeping with my new vow and to make use of the three-kilogram bounty of fresh pink ladies (the apple version) that I hauled off from Trader Joe's last week, I created my version of tarte tatin, the upside-down caramelized apple tart, and topped it off with a scoop or two of creamy vanilla ice cream. (Until there's room in the shared freezer for me to make a batch of the homemade stuff, I have Double Rainbow to thank for a delicious vanilla ice cream blend that is happily corn syrup-free!)

While the tatin's crust didn't come out as flaky as it should have, the caramelized and buttery-soft apples were scrumptious and fared well on their own. Perhaps in the future I'll eliminate the crust and rename these apples, sweet and soft.

For apples, sweet and soft:

7 apples (your favorite variety of Golden apples, sweet and firm) cored and peeled
1/2 stick + 2 tbsp unsalted butter, chopped

1/4 cup + 2 tbsp granulated sugar

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

In an 8 or 9" diameter baking pan, place pieces of the 1/2 stick butter. Sprinkle 1/4 cup sugar on top. Place cored and peeled apples on top of butter/sugar mixture in pan. Scatter the remaining butter and sugar on top of the apples. Place in the oven for 30 minutes, allow apples to soften. Bake for another 20-30 minutes more, for a total of 50 minutes to 1 hour, or until apples are translucent and soft. Serve warm and enjoy with a scoop of your own favorite ice cream!