On the road: Funky Porcini

This post has nothing to do with the downtempo nu-jazzy act. While they're quite good, we're talking about the mushrooms. Which, in my humble opinion, are even better.

Mangia, mangia!

During our stay in Italy last week, we were both blessed and cursed by having an apartment with a full kitchen. Blessed because we'd save on all the ridiculous cover charges, service charges, and other "surprise" costs involved in dining in Italy. And further blessed because we'd have a gas range. Cursed because it was – as expected – all equipped with crap from Ikea.

Anyway, I'd begged and pleaded with Alannah all night to do it.

And after she'd said no to all that, I'd asked politely if we could take our knives to Italy with us.


"No! We are NOT putting the knives into checked baggage. If you wanted to do that, we should've booked a train..." And that was that. We'd be traveling knifeless.

Despite nearly losing a few fingers due to dull, serrated (!?) Ikea kitchen knives supplied at the apartment, we did pull off a few good dishes. Sure, we had to tone down our usual schtick in the presence of kids – but it also made for some fun improvisation. (What do you feed kids who almost only want Persian food when you have Tuscan ingredients?)

But it was less about the tools or limitations or even our abilities than it was about the fresh food, and Florence has that in spades. And it's cheap. Perhaps we say that through the distorted filter of Parisian living, but hitting the Mercato Centrale every day seemed like a bargain. We were able to get fresh, high-quality ingredients for a drop in the bucket.

One morning's market haul

If you ever get a board full of antipasti at a proper Italian restaurant, you may think, "Geez, they put no work into this," well, that's the point. As almost an antithesis to elaborated French cuisine, much Italian cuisine is about taking the stuff and presenting it in its simplest form. This isn't to say that there isn't a lot of work going on – but it's usually happening on the supplier's end. It takes skill and knowledge to raise a boar, butcher it, and hunt the truffles to make a salsiccia di cinghiale al tartufo. But on your end, you bring it home from the salumeria, slice it up, and serve it with a robust wine from around Siena. Done.

Aperitivi a casa

So in that spirit, we decided to put together a nice aperitivi. After a day of touristing, juggling kids, and checking out Tuscan rear ends (I swear, despite the gaudy clothes surrounding them, even Alannah will agree that the women of Tuscany have the nicest asses ever) it was tough to get out to a bar and partake. The aperitivi is a northern Italian (but widely spreading) norm akin to the American happy hour buffet, where the spread is often simple fare like cheeses, olives, various cured meats, and other finger foods.


One night we opted to go for a very simple spread of melons, shaved parmesano reggiano, tender chunks of truffled boar sausage, and – it goes without saying – porcini mushrooms. Porcinis (called cêpes in France) are crazy expensive on this side of the alps. But in Italy, the spring funghi are surprisingly affordable, and abundant. Not bad for something that can't be commercially cultivated. So while €10/kilo for fresh ones might sound like a lot for mushrooms, it's actually a bargain.


The trick with porcinis is keeping it simple. Whenever you have fancy ingredients, you want to taste them. Otherwise, why bother paying so much? The other trick is to use them fast. While the dry ones keep forever, the fresh ones are incredibly sensitive to heat and moisture and can go slimy in less than a day if conditions aren't playing nice. Then you'll really have Funky Porcini. The bad kind.


My favorite is to slice them up about a quarter inch thick and grill them. They're a "meaty" mushroom, so it's perfectly OK to make like Rocco Siffredi and treat 'em like pieces of meat. Luckily, the apartment came equipped with a grill pan (albeit in cast aluminum... how cheap!) so we were all good.

Grill, baby, grill

Simply the grill pan with a very thin layer of olive oil. Not for actually cooking the mushroom, but because of its low smoking point, it can be burnt a little to impart some smokiness to the mushrooms. Slap the 'shrooms on 'til you have good grill marks on both sides.


And that's about it. Throw it on a plate, sprinkle with sea salt, and hit it with some good olive oil and you have a finger food that's at once decadent and humble. It tastes expensive but earthy. Smells strong but eases across the palate gently. And it goes damn well with all sorts of wine.


Pro tip from the amateurs:
We were asked last week how we shave it. To avoid nicks and cuts, take long, gentle strokes with a vegetable peeler. This way your parmesan (or other hard cheeses) will come out in fine strips that look pretty, feel good in the mouth, and glisten beautifully under drippings of olive oil.

Quick hit: Schnitzel und Spätzle

Just a quick one before I pass out...

At the local marché's butcher stand yesterday, we came across some fantastic looking veal and asked for two escalopes. Once again, as though thinking in unison, Alannah and I had the same thing in mind: Schnitzel.

Now before you go on about how cruel veal is, there are two kinds of veal. The traditional "white" veal, which is milk or – worse yet – formula fed and kept in tiny pens, and then there's "pink" or rosé veal, which is naturally, normally, humanely raised veal. The calf is allowed to pasture and forage for itself, have – depending on the farm – room to roam, and its existence is no more cruel than that of other animals raised for meat.  (If that in and of itself is a concern for you, there are plenty of wonderful vegetarian and vegan blogs that-a-way --> )

Anyway, back to the food...

Schnitzel mit Spätzle und Pilzen

Schnitzel: A slice of rosé veal breaded in panko and standard bread crumbs, fried for approximately three minutes a side over medium-high heat (for a truly rosé interior).

Sage Spätzle: Standard spätzle dough with eggs, milk, salt and flour, with the addition of finely chopped sage and mustard. Alannah had pressed the dough through a collander with a spatula into a pot of boiling water, and before serving sautéed it in browned butter and more sage.

Mushroom sauce: Sliced and sautéed mushrooms, reduced in Porto Branco (white port wine). Thickened with the cheat addition of leftover brown gravy from last night's Loco Moco.

Mock Sauerkraut: Barely in the picture is my quick mock sauerkraut. Real sauerkraut takes days to make, as the cabbage needs to ferment. So I steamed finely sliced savoy cabbage with salt and cider vinegar, and then put it into a fan of sweet onions softened in a spoonful of... lard. Cinnamon and caraway seeds lent it a bit of that Central European flavor. Simmered in more Porto Branco.

As is a common theme around here, German food, despite being from a neighboring country, is very hard to come by in Paris. Our new favorite place to have a nooner or late afternoon quickie, Tante Emma Laden, isn't open at night, and the only other Teutonic resto/bakery/shop in town, the Austro-Hungarian Stübli, recently closed its doors. And we always crave what we can't get.

Continuing the theme, our dessert was something else you can't regularly get when you go out in Paris: A shot of Fernet-Branca with a ginger ale back. Ok, multiple shots. This particular combination is rather uniquely San Franciscan, but with both Fernet and ginger ale becoming much more common on store shelves in the City of Light, we're going to try to bring this eater's drink into style.

Fernet, being a digestif, is wonderful for its intended effect. It's brilliant after a heavy meal. Taken in chilled shots with gulps of ginger ale, it also has the magical ability to get you fired up and drunk at the same time. *hiccup*

Where's the Beef?

Until recently, if you told me to go shopping for Meatless Monday night, I'd stop by one of the dodgy shops on Rue Saint-Denis on my way from work and come home with an all-girl DVD.

We're avowed trend-haters, particularly food trends (even though Alannah's got a thing for cupcakes), but once in a while, something comes along that – while faddish – is very positive in influencing how we approach food. (Just read the link for the whole philosophy behind cutting out meat once a week so I don't have to rehash it...)

For the reason it exists, Meatless Monday is kind of moot for us.

No, we haven't gone militant vegan. Both of us are of the Anthony Bourdain school of thought that vegetarianism is an anomaly. While we're not as single-mindedly carnivorous as the chain-smoking posterboy for foodie-travel-hedonism, we're fully on board with an idea that when plucking from Mother Nature's smorgasbord, one must respect her by using everything we're given. That calf that just died? Its liver, testicles, and face are just as worthy as its meat. And speaking of its face, we're also of the firm belief that you should be able to look at what you eat in the eye, or at the very least be fully aware of where it comes from.

Considering we're very conscious about what we buy – our poultry, meat, and off-cuts come from artisan butchers and never in a styrofoam barquette – we don't particularly feel any pressure to go more "sustainable."

No, we're quite simply going Lindsey & Samantha (or is it Ellen & Portia?) this week to detox from our bacchanal of beer and beasts in England and Germany spanning the last week.

The thing about eating vegetarian (or even vegan) is that so many people try to substitute meats, and that's what turns so many omnivores off of the concept. Any sworn omnivore who's been subjected to Tofurkey or oil-based "cheese" or Soysage is likely to say "fuck that!" and become a carnivore out of spite.

Forget substituting. Forget emulating. There's such a wide array of flavors and textures and substance in the non-meat world that there's no need to try to re-create meat based dishes. After all, do you go to a southern Indian restaurant and get Textured Vegetable Protein in your dosa? No. It tastes so good, you forget you're not getting meat.

With that in mind, we put together last night's meal, that was not only colorful and healthy, but filling.

The red cabbage above may not look like much, but even on its own, it's nutty, a little spicy, and carries a lot of heft. Toss it in salt and let it sit to soften it a bit (unless you like it really crunchy), then toss it with a dressing of miso, rice vinegar, and a little vegetable oil. Hell, add peanuts if you like the whole Thai coleslaw thing. You'll love it. Instead of seeing it as a raw vegetable dish, think of it as mild Japanese fusion. Throwing some Central European flair into an Asian side dish as old as time.

The same goes for the Sesame Kale seen here.

Riffing on a classic Japanese sesame-spinach dish, wilt some curly kale, and toss in a dressing of 2 parts ground sesame seed, 1 part soy sauce, 1 part mirin, and 1.5 parts sugar. (I just divulged Alannah's kick-ass recipe. You're welcome.) Garnish lightly toasted sesame seeds. You can serve it hot, cold, or room temperature, so feel free to live out your Goldilocks cosplay fantasies with this one. You'll be ooh'ing and aah'ing like never before, satisfied with every chopstickful you lift to your lips.

One of the best parts is that it's all so easy. Even the main course we threw together is hardly more complicated than a toaster strudel...

Simmer some kombu-dashi (seaweed stock, but you can use bonito stock and we won't tell anyone) and add sugar, soy and mirin to taste. Throw whatever you want into the broth. We went with carrots, Hokkaido pumpkin (kabocha), small shiitake mushrooms and firm tofu. Before serving, I decided to add an 8-minute egg to add some more girth (and to keep from going over that vegan line of madness), but to be honest, it's a bit much.

Serve it all with a bowl of steamed Japanese rice, and you've got yourself a supple, nicely rounded meal that will leave you more satisfied than you could possibly imagine. (If you're a carnivore, that is.)

In fact, even though I don't feel the need to do Meatless Monday in terms of sustainability and reducing the flow of money to factory farmers, I'm pushing we adopt this habit simply for the widening of our palate... Or palette, so to speak.

Naked Food: May Day Market Haul

It's May (Labor) Day weekend, and you'd think that in a country vilified by its transatlantic friends as some sort of socialist/communist/Marxist/pinko utopia, that everything would be closed in honor of the proletariat, and we'd all be waiting in Soviet bread lines for the small ration of food being handed to us by the state.


So to all our friends who worship at the altar of unrestricted capitalism and fear the S-word, we invite you to suck on our fresh basil (note the roots), sweet miniature bananas, long firm white asparagus, grit-free baby spinach, ridiculously red and juicy plum tomatoes, succulent gariguette strawberries, round and firm Paris mushrooms, and hairy brown kiwis.

Anyway, now to go line up at the bakery to get our gigantic baguette at the government-mandated price of 80 cents.

Creamy... But Where's the Meat?

We took a couple of days off to appreciate some professionals in action, celebrating Alannah's first Franciversary with a rare Michelin-starred bistro lunch. Needless to say, we were too damn filled to the hilt by Alain Ducasse (or whomever his stunt cook is) to make dinner... Then we shifted gears and went to the best damn crêperie in Paris for dinner last night.

After hitting up an event at a wine bar near the Latin Quarter, I was hoping to have tonight off, too, being that a new, California-authentic sushi bar (which is to say about 500x more Japanese than a standard Parisian sushi joint) just opened in our neighborhood. I was exhausted, starving, and in dire need of something raw and fleshy. Unfortunately, the little prickteases apparently close at 7PM, which is about 2.5 hours shy of peak dinner time in Paris.


This left us to improvise at home. Alannah offered to do most of the cooking while I did some prep... She cobbled together some spaghetti, a gorgeous garlic Emmenthal cream sauce, and the last of our delectable market mushrooms into an amazingly rich but none too overbearing dish.

Not to be outdone, I hit up some of our other artisan food fair ingredients and whipped together an acacia honey and walnut oil vinaigrette, to top a salad of mâche, walnuts, and crumbles of soft, ripe brebis cheese from a family farm that deals exclusively in sheep's milk.


Note to self: When crumbling ripe brebis in the future, wear gloves or use a fork. My fingertips still smell like those of a man who got some "extra mileage" at the Spearmint Rhino.

Oddly enough, this is the first vegetarian meal I can recall having in months. It was probably last in November – when Alannah was eating out Italy and leaving me to fend for myself – when I'd have monastic meals of rice, tofu, and a simple miso soup. For me, making a mess in the kitchen just isn't fun if there isn't someone else to feed.