Mississippi roast and chicken albondigas

I wasn't cooking at all for a few weeks. I was busy one night and lazy the next and then Mark was out or Owen was out or I couldn't be dragged away from my marathon viewing of Shoah. It was great for a while, but eventually I started to feel slovenly and unhealthy. In the absence of leftovers, my non-dinner meals had devolved to cherry Hershey’s kisses left over from Christmas and spoonfuls of Jif straight from the jar. That’s not a droll hypothetical. That's a precise description of one of my lunches last week, and probably all of my snacks. There was another day when sustenance consisted of an orange, handfuls of Nabisco gingersnaps, and a chai latte.

Saturday, I decided to start cooking again. Mark’s aunt is visiting and you have to offer a houseguest a meal at some point, plus I missed real food and missed blogging. I decided to warm up slowly. I decided to warm up with Mississippi roast.

Have you heard of Mississippi roast? Sit down, get comfortable, I'm going to tell you all about it.

A few weeks ago Sam Sifton wrote a story in the New York Times about the “improbable rise” of so-called Mississippi roast. The story was both fascinating and unintentionally hilarious, or at least I found it so at the time.

Over the last decade, a 5-ingredient, slow-cooker beef dish -- a.k.a. Mississippi roast --  has become a sensation among, as Sifton put it, “the mom-blog set.” A slab of chuck goes into your slow cooker along with a packet of Ranch dressing mix, a packet of au jus gravy mix, a stick of butter, and a few jarred pepperoncini.  Cook for 8 hours. Dinner.

Sifton tracked down the Mississippi woman who invented the recipe and the friend of hers who subsequently published it in a church cookbook, et cetera, et cetera (this was the fascinating part), until suddenly it was all over Pinterest and the blogosphere. One blogger quoted in Sifton’s story enthused that the roast passed “the hubby test.”  

It didn’t quite pass the Sifton test.

Sifton: “Packaged dry ranch-dressing mix? Packaged dry gravy mix? These are built on foundations of salt and monosodium glutamate, artificial flavors, artificial colors, polysyllabic ingredients that are difficult to pronounce much less identify. Surely they could be replaced without increasing by much the prep time for the roast.”

He came up with a new version of the recipe that involves browning the meat "aggressively beneath a shower of salt and pepper and a coating of all-purpose flour that I hoped would create a fond, or base of flavor, to replace the gravy mix, and give some structure to the sauce.” Then he whips up some homemade ranch dressing. Sifton: “It was exactly the same as the original effort, and took about the same amount of time to make.” (Italics mine.)

I didn't have to try the recipe to know this was absurd. How I chuckled. The original Mississsippi roast was about the miraculous alchemy of a few unfussy supermarket ingredients in a crockpot. It was about magic. By turning it into just another recipe and using the word fond, Sifton missed the whole point.

I was awfully smug. Like I'm so folksy and unpretentious. I made Mississippi roast according to the traditional mom blogger recipe Saturday, emptying two packets of flavoring powder plus butter and pepperoncini onto a chuck roast. I love ranch dressing. I love butter. I was sure it was going to be delicious. 

You've probably guessed from my long wind-up that a dramatic reversal awaits. I won't disappoint.

We sat down to dinner Saturday, I took a bite of the Mississippi roast and cried, “This is is terrible!”

It was terrible! The flavor of real beef had been replaced by salty and revolting “beef flavor.” The roast tasted like it had spent years in a can. It tasted like a hospital cafeteria smells. The difference between the flavor of regular pot roast and Mississippi roast was the difference between the flavor of a real strawberry and strawberry bubblegum. 

Mark said, “I don’t know what you’re so upset about. This is really good.”

Mark’s aunt said, “I like it. It’s delicious.”

Owen said, “It’s weird and too salty, but I like it.”

I’m not sure why this beef offended me so much. After all, I enjoy cloyingly artificial Hershey’s cherry kisses and love garbage like instant vanilla pudding. But Mississippi roast was so not my thing. Disgusting. I just don't get it. I’m sorry I ever doubted Sam Sifton. I bet his fancy Mississippi roast is delicious and worth the ten or fifteen extra minutes it takes to make, I can not recommend the original.

Last night, I continued the cooking revival by making the chicken albondigas (meatballs) from Zahav, which were good, though I thought they contained too much smoked paprika.

A word on meatballs. Everyone thinks they are an easy, homely, weeknight dish, but they're not. Meat loaf is an easy, homely, weeknight dish. Meatballs are a miserable chore. I forget this every time I decide to make meatballs and only remember when I'm in the middle of making meatballs. What is so hard about meatballs? A lot of things, but it mostly comes down to handwashing. If you’re shaping a meatball and the phone rings, you have to turn on the sink with your elbow and wash your hands to take the call. You have to wash your hands to turn on the stove. You have to wash your hands if your son wants you to come over and read his English essay. Then you often have to brown the meatballs "in batches." "Batches" is not a word you ever want to see in a weeknight recipe. 

And in the end, you just have meatballs and no one is as impressed as if you’d made something truly easy, like, I don't know, cassoulet.  

Gosh, I sound negative. I’m actually very cheery, A few things that have made me happy and might do the same for you:

*45 Years. It won't make you happy, exactly, but this movie will make you think and argue (in a good way) with your friends over what actually happened and whether the character played by Charlotte Rampling is justified in feeling as she appears to feel at the end, which I think she absolutely and clearly is. I can't say more without ruining it.

*I read John Waters’s wonderful book Role Models a few years ago and loved it so much I’m listening to it now in the car and I love it just as much, maybe more, because Waters narrates with personality and wit. This book really does make me happy. I find the irony and outrageousness of Waters' movies wearisome, but his writing charms me. He’s an enthusiast whose exuberant, almost wholesome, delight in eccentricity is infectious and life affirming.  Parental warning: I used the words “almost wholesome.” There are a couple of chapters here that must be avoided when driving carpool. 

*Typing the name “Waters” reminded me to say that if you’re ever in San Francisco, the David Ireland House, which I toured last week, is extraordinary and worth a visit. It’s a lovely old Victorian that Ireland, a conceptual artist, used as his canvas, so to speak. You can read all about it here. At the end of our tour of this bizarre, entrancing house the guide had us sit at Ireland’s dining room table which is set with silver bowls filled with cement, candles stuck in blobs of cement, and perfectly round cement balls. She asked if we had any questions. Having heard that Ireland threw raucous dinner parties at this table, I asked, “What did David Ireland cook?” She said, “He cooked very basic things but he was in a relationship with Alice Waters so he certainly ate well.” I said, “A relationship relationship?” She said, “Yes, a relationship relationship.” 

I like to keep this blog nominally about food and I think that brings us back around.

A funny little party

 A new photojournalistic low, but I don't like to post pictures of people without asking. That would have meant explaining what a blog is. Maybe even the internet. Maybe even computers.

It’s hard to do justice to the charm and oddity of the ESL class where I volunteer once a week as an aide, but I’ll give it a shot.

Picture a group of (mostly) senior citizens just about evenly divided between sophisticated Iranians and working class Latin Americans. There’s so little cultural overlap between the two groups, it’s not even like apples and oranges. It’s like apples and shiitake mushrooms. A couple of the Iranian women dress like movie stars from the 1960s. A couple of the Latin American men are illiterate. One woman has Alzheimer’s. Another hobbles along with a cane. A few students are very earnest and motivated and a few of them come only to socialize. But everyone likes Wenceslao, a cheerful Salvadoran who wears a hat, plays the accordion, and has something like 57 grandchildren. Personal charisma transcends culture.

The end-of-term party on Wednesday was sweet and, well, a little funky. Mohammed brought Iranian CDs and played them very loud. He and Fatemeh danced for a while. Mohammed was an accountant in Iran and now breaks down boxes on the nightshift at Safeway. “But I’m happy!” he said, happily. I talked to Orfelina and Isila about the difficulties of making pupusas and Orfelina said she doesn’t stuff them, just mixes all the filling ingredients with the masa and fries ‘em up. Adolfo gave me a can of Coca-Cola for Mother’s Day. 

I'd brought in my two Persian cookbooks for vetting by the Iranian ladies, who dismissed The New Persian Kitchen, winner of the 2014 Piglet, but approved of the stout, encyclopedic New Food of Life by Najimieh Batmanglij. (I think New Persian Kitchen is too slim and contemporary for old-timers.) Najar had cooked a lentil dish for the party and Fatemeh had prepared a platter of really tasty baqala polow (rice with dill and fresh fava beans), a recipe for which I found on page 162 of Food of Life. Rosario, who is Mexican and whose front teeth are capped in gold, contributed a big foil container of very soft spaghetti.

Boy, did I eat. I ate like someone who'd spent the morning baking and hadn’t consumed anything except coffee, brownie scraps, and blueberries as of 2 p.m. and now had a splitting headache. I ate and ate and soon the headache was gone.

I ended up bringing a bunch of old favorites: these Essential New York Times Cookbook brownies, the Flour banana bread, Marcella Hazan’s (gluten-free) almond macaroons, and some cut butter cookies from Alice Waters’Art of Simple Food. 

All winners, except the butter cookies. I’d always frosted them before and learned that without frosting they’re not sweet enough.

Sometimes I wonder how I ever found myself in this strange, delightful group of people for whom I feel so much affection, but the answer is simple: I answered a Craiglist ad back in December. One of my best decisions of 2013. 

The uninteresting life of a late adopter

bad old peeler and wonderful new one

I haven't been cooking anything interesting lately for various uninteresting reasons, but tomorrow I'll be able to throw myself back into it.

The salmon salad from Sunday Suppers at Lucques was the last straw for me with Suzanne Goin as it required 10 separate cooking/holding vessels. It’s a delicious, opulent salad of beets, tiny potatoes, and roasted salmon atop dandelion greens dressed in a mustardy vinaigrette. While the beets quickly bled into the salmon (ugly), that didn’t matter because I was the only one who ate this salad. I ate it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for a couple of days and was very happy until I was suddenly so sick of it I had to throw it to the chickens. Depressing, given the cost of salmon, but I couldn't force down another bite. 

My complaint about the dish is my overarching complaint about Goin's books: Too many steps, too many dishes to wash. I like Suzanne Goin, I like her cookbooks, and next time I go to Los Angeles will try to eat at one of her restaurants, but I just can’t cook like this. Tomorrow or the next day we’ll see what Tad Friend has to say about The A.O.C. Cookbook vs. Roberta’s over at the Piglet. I wait with bated breath.

Ok, about  the Piglet. So homogenized this year! I’m going to swim agains the current and say that while I rolled my eyes at the time, I sort of miss those weird wild card judgments of Piglets past. Eccentric, half-assed verdicts like Roz Chast’s. These bizarre write-ups added spice. They got my dander up. Rather than telling people to write balanced reviews informed by conscientious recipe testing, it seemed like the Piglet organizers just sent the books out to a bunch of creative people and let them respond however they chose. While the results were sometimes lame, they were also very genuine and oddly illuminating. I learned a lot from Roz Chast’s review. I got a glimpse of how many ordinary people approach cookbooks, which is to say, they don't really give a damn. And while I didn’t love Alice Waters’ nose-holding verdict, she was using her own personal yardstick, not following a template. The Piglet organizers have clearly raised their standards and I, for one, find that I am a little sorry. 

My two favorite reviews ever:  Nora Ephron’s and Gabrielle Hamilton’s. 

Still waiting for the Benton’s bacon so I can’t start Momofuku. What should I do in the meantime?

A couple that rarely dines out dines out

The other night we went to Commis, a popular restaurant that San Francisco Chronicle critic Michael Bauer called "a slick, minimalist stage for rising star chef James Syhabout." There was no sign on the restaurant and only when you looked closely at the storefront could you see people moving around inside the small, stark room.

Husband: "I file that under 'precious.'"

Tipsy: "I'm reserving judgment."

The deal was: $59 for three courses, with three selections for each course.

Appetizers:

- cool eggplant soup
- new alliums
- zucchini tartare

(There was more detail about each dish, but I didn't memorize the menu.)

Husband: "For $59 I think they should give you more options."

Tipsy: "I'm getting the alliums."

Husband: "Which do I hate less, eggplant or zucchini?"

Tipsy: "Get the alliums!"

Husband: "You're getting the alliums."

Tipsy: "We can both get alliums."

Husband: "I don't even know what alliums are."

Tipsy: "They're like garlic, or onions, something like that. I'm not really sure. They'll be good."

Husband: "So pompous. They have to make up new names for everything."

Tipsy: "You know what? I'll get the zucchini."

Husband: "But you said you weren't going to get the zucchini."

Tipsy: "But you're right, we should get different things. I want the zucchini."

I didn't want the zucchini, but wanted cool eggplant soup less.

"Here's an amuse bouche for you tonight," said the waiter, and set some bowls on the table. Husband gave me a look. I looked back. Yes, it's a twitty term, but what else are you supposed to call it? In any case, it was dazzling: a soft-boiled egg yolk swathed in an opulent, lukewarm onion puree, the whole thing designed to look like a perfect fried egg. It was even more delicious than it was beautiful and it was exceedingly beautiful.

Husband: "I think that dish would be better without the egg yolk which obscures the good tasting stuff underneath."

Tipsy: "You are entitled to your wrong opinion."

Then the alliums came, accompanied by multiple garnishes including some raw tuna that was more luscious and fantastically delicious than any sashimi we'd ever tasted. Bauer describes a similar tuna he sampled at Commis as "so finely chopped it practically melted like snow."

The zucchini had been thinly shaved into ribbons, rolled into coils and plated with chunky porcini mushrooms and assorted vegetables. I gave it 2 Weight Watchers points, which, aside from the mushrooms, was the only great thing about the dish.

My entree: "slow-cooked" Duroc pork, both loin and belly, which arrived in a painterly ensemble with cauliflower foam, new potatoes, and tiny halved turnips. The pork may have been cooked sous vide, as it was suspiciously tidy, tender, and intensely flavored. I have never made pork that delicious. Husband ordered quail, which was tasty, but scant, and came with beets.

Husband: "What I don't understand is why they whipped up your cauliflower but they had to give me plain beets. You're not supposed to eat these things plain unless you're some kind of a farm animal."

Before dessert the waiter brought shot glasses containing rose geranium-blueberry soda and even my husband couldn't think of anything withering to say about the lovely drink.

For dessert, he ordered chocolate brioche and I ordered peach cream. Again, lots of stuff happening on the plates: purees, ovals of sorbet, chunks of fruit, cake, foam. The best garnish of all were some roasted strawberries, which were meaty and fragrant. Roasted strawberries have so much more character than virginal uncooked strawberries and would make an amazing ice cream. Maybe I'll try making it one day.

The check appeared along with two petite, bright green absinthe gelees -- tender cube-shaped confections that tasted like licorice.

Husband: "They're like off-flavored gum drops."

So I ate his.

The dinner was expensive and we probably won't go back, but I felt we got our money's worth.I can cook Chez Panisse food. I can cook Big Sur Bakery food. I can braise short ribs, mash potatoes, make a goat cheese salad and bake a rustic peach crisp. But I can't make foam or nest coddled egg yolks in bowls of puree or assemble multi-part desserts and follow up with absinthe gelees. I enjoyed the kitchen wizardry and my husband got to exercise his caustic man-of-the-people schtick.

We ambled into the night.

Husband: "That was fun."

Tipsy: "Yes, that was really fun."

A Monday Night Ad Hoc Meal

It really is hard to whip up an Ad Hoc At Home dinner without planning well in advance. Yesterday afternoon I surveyed my options and they were few. Many, maybe even most, of Thomas Keller's recipes require some step -- a special order from the butcher, brining, marinating, a blowtorch, homemade court bouillon, chive oil, slab bacon, serrano ham -- that I could not make between 4 and 5 p.m. and have dinner on the table at 7:15.

Don't worry, I'm not going to belabor this endlessly. I'm up for the game! I'm just explaining why last night I made the pan-roasted halibut and sauteed broccoli rabe, among the few Keller recipes that sound very boring, but also require no special ingredients or advance planning. These dishes actually were very boring, and I say that as someone who loves both halibut and broccoli rabe. 

Abridged family response to meal: 

Owen: I don't like fish.

Isabel: You ALWAYS say that about everything. What IS this vegetable?

Tipsy: It's broccoli rabe. I love it. It's bitter.

Isabel: Um, yeah. I noticed.

Husband: My favorite vegetable is celery and cream cheese.

Isabel: I like vegetables that aren't all wrinkled.

Owen: I like carrots that aren't cooked.

It went on like that. You know, discussing ideas, values, Bach. After all, the dinner table is the cradle of civilization.

Let's just hope Alice Waters is wrong about that.

 

When I was at the supermarket yesterday I bought chives to make chive oil, and parsley to make parsley water, both of which are essential components of Keller's asparagus coins, which I planned to serve tonight. But last night I was too tired to put the chives in the blender and make the oil, which requires 24 hours to steep, so we will not be dining on asparagus coins. I did track down some slab bacon, so I guess I can make his asparagus stew instead. 

Here's why I was tired: 

After a long talk with a bee expert about the fate of our lost bees and the future of our brand new bees, I decided to harvest last year's honey and let the new bees forage. These pictures do not quite convey the sticky drudgery of scraping, crushing, straining and re-straining required to hand-extract several gallons of honey in an ordinary kitchen. 

But it was worth it. Very pretty.

Alice Waters: The Earnest Assessment

Judged strictly on the deliciousness of the recipes, this is by far the best book I've cooked from since I started Tipsy Baker. 

When I began the Alice Waters project I had planned to cook from all of her books, and so I did. But the title I ended up gravitating to was The Art of Simple Food. It's the only book from her oeuvre that is truly geared toward the home cook. Instead of pigeons, beef cheeks, and purslane, the recipes call for ingredients -- eggs, chicken, spinach -- that anyone can find in the local grocery story. You don't need a mandoline, propane torch or wood-burning oven. You don't need a sous chef.

The writing is tone-deaf. You won't stay up nights reading this book for its wit or graceful prose. But if you are looking for straightforward, excellent recipes (try the cream biscuits, the cornbread, the apple tart, the Caesar salad, the Bolognese sauce, the meatballs, the steamed sole. . .) you will never be disappointed.

 I mean that quite literally: Never.

Based on the forty recipes I tried, here's my breakdown:

Worth the Price of the Book: 10 (!!!)

Great: 15

Good: 12

So-So: 3

Flat-out bad: 0

Pretty amazing if you compare it to some of my past experiments. And pretty amazing given that I started this project with a major grudge against Alice Waters.

Tomorrow: Arabesque by Claudia Roden. 

Alice Waters: Pickled Watermelon Rind

Pickled watermelon rind. A longstanding goal of mine. Achieved.

If you grew up reading Laura Ingalls Wilder you might understand how this concept wormed its way into my consciousness. Pickled watermelon rind appeared in every description of big farmhouse suppers, alongside the ham, fried chicken and gravy, biscuits, roasted venison, hot fried donuts, and dried apple pie with pitchers of fresh cream.

To make this preserve according to the recipe in Alice Waters' Fruit, you peel off the watermelon's green skin, pare away the pink flesh, and are left with the crunchy white layer in between. You cut this into small squares, soak in brine overnight, then cook in a sweet-tart syrup with some lemon rind and spices. Jar.

 It's quite lovely to look at, very tasty, and definitely exotic.

 

Alice Waters: Spaghetti, Meatballs & Goodbye

Amazing dinner. Amazing pasta night! Spectacular finale to the hugely successful Alice Waters experiment. She may speak in a breathy, babyish voice and prefer to address only to her elite friends, but her recipes really work, damn it.

Justine and Stella joined the usual Wednesday night crew to make Waters' spaghetti and meatballs (Simple Food) with some focaccia (Simple Food) on the side, just in case we didn't get enough carbs. 

The pasta was, as usual, tender and lovely. The meatballs: fluffy and flavorful. The focaccia, well, it was tasty enough, but I'm loyal to my old Jack Bishop recipe so this is one I'll probably not bake again.

Dessert: A staggeringly delicious and buttery free-form apple tart (Simple Food)  with leftover clove ice cream (Chez Panisse Desserts.)

I know I promised a post about pickled watermelon rind, and it's coming. We opened a jar and nibbled at it while making our pasta tonight. But I failed to take a striking picture when there was natural light and the stuff is GORGEOUS. It deserves the star treatment. So, I'll post about this excellent preserve -- and offer my earnest summation of the Alice Waters experience --  in a few days when I return from a short business trip.

Alice Waters: Shrimp & Salad

Over the last few days I have been cooking extensively from the Alice Waters oeuvre, but a lot of it has been too undramatic to mention. A really terrific creamy cucumber salad. A pretty good braised duck. Another fine angel food cake. And so on.

 

But as this is my penultimate Alice Waters night, I feel compelled to issue a report. Once again Alice, my onetime nemesis, gets. . . and A+. Her sauteed shrimp and garlic (Simple Food) and Caesar Salad (Simple Food) are both astonishingly good. This was a messy meal we ate with our hands, but it was much appreciated by my finicky family. I think Isabel consumed one shrimp and a pound of salad. Owen ate two shrimps, a few Romaine leaves, and several dozen croutons. But no one threw a tantrum or even complained, and everything was delicious. 

What a triumph.

I am frankly astounded by how successful Alice Waters' Simple Food has been at helping me produce relatively popular weeknight meals. More on this later. Meanwhile, must  go help Isabel frost her Alice Waters chocolate cupcakes.

Tomorrow: Homemade spaghetti with meatballs and an apple tart.  Bonus: Pickled watermelon rind. 

And then we kiss Alice good-bye and move on to warmer climes where we will begin experimenting with filo dough, rosewater, and gum mastic.

Alice Waters: Zzzzz

No matter how you feel about eating beets, they're kind of pretty. Though my blotchy photograph and half-assed food-styling doesn't really do them justice.

That's a walnut beet salad out of the Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook. Nice, but nothing to get excited about. Served it last night with plain poached salmon (Simple Food) and fried peppers and capers (Simple Food.) 

Dessert was a possibly too-tart rhubarb crisp (Desserts) topped with a monumentally wonderful, ivory colored, faintly exotic clove ice cream (Desserts). I don't know why I waste my time making fruit sherbets when ice cream is so much better.

Except, of course I know. 

I'm beginning to bore even myself with elegant, understated Alice Waters-style food. I will try to shake it up a little over the next five days of organic baby lettuce and homemade mayonnaise. And then. . . . ?

Alice Waters: Lasagne & More Sarah

A staticky radio broadcast of the Republican Convention accompanied the preparation and consumption of Alice Waters' tomato and cheese lasagne (Pasta, Pizza, Calzone) and cherry sherbet (Desserts) on Wednesday night. 

Our evening, condensed:

Checka: Do we have to listen to that noise?

Tipsy Baker: Yes.

Dita: I would like some ice in my wine, if you don't mind.

Tipsy Baker: I can't BELIEVE she just said that. No, not you Dita, I was talking about Sarah Palin.

Checka: How's middle school, Isabel?

Isabel: Fine.

Checka: Do you have any new friends?

Isabel: Not really.

Checka: Any interesting classes?

Isabel: I don't know.

Tipsy Baker: Did you HEAR that?

Checka: This lasagne is heaven!

Isabel: It's too cheesy.

Tipsy Baker: It's not worth making fresh pasta when you put it in lasagne.

Checka: Oh, I disagree. These noodles are very delicate.

Owen: Can't we turn off that noise?

Tipsy Baker: Be quiet, I'm listening.

Dita: I like McCain.

Tipsy Baker: What's wrong with being a community organizer?

Isabel: I don't want any sherbet. I don't like cherries.

Tipsy Baker: I'm tired of sherbet, too.

Isabel: All these Alice Waters desserts are fruit based.

Tipsy Baker: Aren't most people terrified of pit bulls?

Checka: You're really obsessed. I think we need to leave.

Tipsy Baker: What did you say?

Alice Waters: Cornbread & Ratatouille

Struggle though it is to wrest my attention from Sarah Palin, I did manage to focus on Alice Waters long enough to make dinner last night.

Cornbread 

Ratatouille

Pan-fried pork chops

The cornbread was ravaged by many possum-like hands before I even put the rest of the meal to the table. For the last decade I've only baked sweet, cakey cornbread from an excellent recipe given to me by Mark's grandmother. I was sure no one would like Waters' cornbread (Simple Food) which calls for almost no sugar. I was wrong.

Predictably, the ratatouille (Simple Food) was less popular, though it was pretty fantastic. Ratatouille is a miracle dish, so much more than the sum of its off-putting eggplant/zucchini parts, managing to taste oily and rich without actually being oily and rich. How does that WORK? 

Pork chops (Simple Food) were the skinny kind. Tasty and easy. Nothing more to add.

I think I overstated my growing fondness for Waters in my last post. Saturday, when I caught her underwhelming Slow Food panel performance, I was in a semi-traumatized, any-liberal-port-in-a-storm state over the prospect of Vice President Palin. Over the weekend, I was convinced that I was watching a horror movie. Now I'm wondering if it won't turn out to be a comedy.

Only time will tell. Meanwhile, I'm going to try not to let the unfolding political drama affect my judgment on important matters, like Alice Waters and her cookbooks.

Alice Waters: Alice v. Sarah

I've lost all heart for criticizing Alice Waters or her cookbooks. So she's a little snooty, so her books are out of touch, so I had a bad experience with her 7 years ago. Who cares? Alice and me, fundamentally we're on the same team. 

Whereas Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin. I disagree with her on every single issue, yes. But she also threatens me on a primal level that has something to do with the fact that she played basketball AND she competed in beauty pageants. That she gave birth to a Down Syndrome baby and went back to work three days later. (Three days? Seriously? Is she bionic?) That she proudly poses for glamorous photos with dead bears. Stridently self-confident. Dead sure of her rightness. A brassy tomboy.

So totally not my type. It's a schoolyard thing. And with those far-right politics? She's making me absolutely crazy.

Now I will turn my attention back to food and rant no more. I just had to get this out of my system.

I went in to the City yesterday to see Alice Waters on a Slow Food Nation panel about "Edible Education," though no one there could really agree what the term meant. Like most panels the discussion bounced around erratically -- though inspiringly!  It is hard to argue with offering our children better food.

Waters wore a fetching little cotton dress and playful sandals and made her pitch for a federal "slow food" school lunch program. Alas, she was the least articulate panelist up there. She seemed extremely nervous, and (I felt) everyone treated her like a beloved, dotty old aunt as she breathily 

outlined her idealistic vision of wholesale, top-down change.

She was very pie-in-the-sky, whereas other panelists -- most of whom had more practical experience making things happen -- listened to her patiently and respectfully, then offered their own earthbound ideas for how a transformation might realistically occur, piecemeal. 

Alice bristled and disagreed in her quavering voice, continuing to throw down her dreamy all-or-nothing gauntlets. I was slightly embarrassed for her, but paradoxically, came away liking her a little better.

Probably a schoolyard thing. 

Alice Waters: Slow Bread

I didn't make it to any of my Slow Food lectures in San Francisco yesterday, deterred by hangover, laziness, and my new dark obsession with Sarah Palin.

Instead, I spent the day listening to the radio, fretting, and baking a very slow loaf of bread out of Paul Bertolli's Chez Panisse Cooking. I started the bread on Monday, and yesterday afternoon pulled the final golden loaf out of the oven.

I've baked a lot of "artisanal" (one of those icky buzzwords) bread over the years, and this was a pretty good specimen, though I felt it lacked salt. You begin by mixing a starter, which ripens for a few days, then you add your flours (rye, wheat, white) and let it rise a few more times. I went for the longest rising time, which Bertolli promised would yield the finest, most complex loaf.

Whatever. It was okay.

It's hard to care about bread when there's Sarah Palin. 

Alice Waters: Slow Dinner

Last night, my favorite restaurant in Mill Valley, Small Shed Flatbread, hosted a lovely, hippie-ish "Slow Dinner" as part of this weekend's Slow Food Nation festivities. 

On the menu, barely touched by the hand of a chef, were: corn, baby mustard, yuzu, miyoga, maitake, sea vegetables, piquillo peppers, shell beans, forest fungi, turnips, sungold tomatoes, baby squash, potatoes, rapini, lettuce, tomato, beet, watermelon radish, ancho cress, strawberries, and Kadota figs.

As a celebration of local, seasonal bounty it was beautiful and impressive. As a meal it was. . . light. I think my father may have stopped at In-and-Out Burger on the way home. 

Much wine was poured. My memories are cloudy. 

I have tickets to additional Slow Food Nation events today, which -- if I can muster the energy to attend -- may help shape my thoughts on this interesting culinary movement so dear to Alice Waters' heart.

Alice Waters: Cooking Therapy

We've all been in a funk around here.

Yesterday: 

a. No one came to work on our house, which is still missing walls, lighting, and cabinets

b. Mark was attacked by a freaky double-barreled migraine

c. I was lynched by an online mob

I modeled good coping behavior for my daughter. We dropped by the Spanish Table, I bought a bottle of wine, came home, and started drinking. 

I also cooked:

-Minestra Verdissima (Cafe). A chopping-intensive vegetable soup with a rich chicken stock base. Nothing new or exciting, but very healthy and worthy.

-Tuna Confit with Green Beans and Shell Beans (Cafe). Interesting dish. You cook the tuna slowly in 3 cups of olive oil (see above), then toss it with the beans and a vinaigrette. Serve with aioli -- which uses another cup of olive oil. Extraordinarily delicious, but what's with all this olive oil, Alice? Even if I restrict myself to the daintiest portions, I can feel all my fat cells rapidly and happily expanding.

-Pear ice cream (Desserts). Can the delicate, evanescent fragrance of pear ever really be captured in an ice cream? It can! Lindsey Shere's pearly ice cream is an amazing treat. This recipe is a keeper. 

Not everyone enjoyed the dinner. Not everyone is thrilled with tuna confit and pear ice cream. Some of us would be happier if I served Top Ramen and Eskimo Pies every night.

Some of us had tantrums. 

And this morning, some of us had hangovers.

Alice Waters: Biscuits

Ever since we first made the 1-2-3 biscuits from Best of the Best from Alaska back in July, Isabel has baked maybe a half dozen batches of these very tasty biscuits. They're made with flour, baking powder, oil and milk -- humble ingredients, but no on has complained.

Yesterday, for comparison purposes, I convinced her to try Alice Waters' recipe for cream biscuits (Simple Food), which calls for butter instead of oil, and cream rather than milk. 

How were they? Unbearably good. They tasted like soft, warm shortbread -- except not sweet. Jam was superfluous. After biscuits like these, I'm not sure we'll ever go back to 1-2-3. Which makes me strangely sad.

Alice Waters: My Farmers' Market Problem

Why can't I just wander mellowly of a Sunday morning, enjoying the sunshine, the downy peaches and rosy red onions, the company of my cultured food-loving compatriots at the Farmers' Market? 

I don't know! I've been going to farmers' markets regularly for the last twelve years, and yet I always feel like a bit of chump. I am trying to figure out why. Two thoughts:

1. The prices. I know Alice Waters and Michael Pollan think we should be paying more for food, and I agree. Agrobusiness shortcuts have artificially lowered the prices of food. But how do we know what the price should be? If you can buy a pound of wonderful peaches at a Utah fruitstand for 99 cents should you really pay $3.75/pound at a Bay Area farmers' market? If you can buy five bunches of scallions for a buck at the Chinese grocery store should you really pay a buck per bunch at the Farmers' Market?

Maybe. Maybe not. I need more evidence. I can take it on faith that I should pay half again as much -- or even twice as much -- for an organic scallion. But five times as much? 

2. The scene. I like the low-key afternoon farmers' markets in shopping malls. There, you get people going about their humdrum daily business and -- wow! Look at these handsome apples for sale just outside Walgreens! I think I'll make a pie when I get home.

The weekend "destination" farmers' markets can be overwhelming and pretentious. 

Yesterday, I overheard a woman ask a dealer, "Are these heirloom tomatoes?"

He answered, "They're Early Girls."

She walked away.

Ridiculous! Sad! Early Girls aren't heirlooms -- they're hybrids -- but they're fantastic. In fact, I prefer them to all the lumpy, striped, oddly-sized heirlooms I have tasted over the decades. But "heirloom" has become a buzzword, and people are all about the buzzwords at the Farmers' Market. 

Socially speaking, I prefer the Safeway experience. No one is trying to be cool in Safeway. They are just stocking up on Wheat Thins and bathroom cleaning products and strawberry jam. It is very calming to stroll down those colorful, orderly aisles. The posturing outside world is far, far away when you're in the middle of a big, temperature-controlled Safeway. You are not trying to express yourself, make a statement, or change the planet with your food purchases. You are just buying food.

Or should I say "food?" 

Because, the tomatoes are terrible. Ditto the peaches. And they don't have beef cheeks or fifteen kinds of baby lettuce or shell beans or purple basil and the chicken is pumped full of hormones and the salmon full of orange dye and they put all the sugary (correction: corn syrupy) cereals at eye level with your kids and I know, I know, I know, how screwed up our food system is. Safeway is its ultimate expression. 

So, I go to the farmers' market, and probably always will. And I will probably always feel a little mixed up about it.

Alice Waters: Steamed Sole & Apricot Tart

That's an apricot curd tart, made from Chez Panisse Desserts, which isn't technically an Alice Waters cookbook -- it was written by Lindsey Shere -- but nonetheless falls under the umbrella of this project. 

You can tell the difference between the Waters books and the non-Waters books immediately. Waters' volumes tend to be restrained, elegant, a little precious. Paul Bertolli's Chez Panisse Cooking is long-winded, meditative, Italocentric. And Chez Panisse Desserts is overstuffed, mellow, generous, and playful. It is also packed with recipes I want to try, using rose petals, geranium leaves, black raspberries.

The apricot curd finished off the Utah apricots, and yielded a very smooth, tangy dessert. If I had a pastry bag I could have made more artful use of the whipped cream, but this was still the prettiest thing I cooked last night.

It was not, however, the most delicious. That would be the steamed sole with beurre blanc (Simple Food), one of the world's most fattening and excellent fish dishes. God, how do food writers do it? It was heavenly. All superlatives apply. 

This gorgeous recipe involved steaming the filets for seven minutes, placing them on a platter, then serving with some beurre blanc. How have I cooked all these decades and never made beurre blanc? You simmer chopped shallot in wine and wine vinegar, then add almost two sticks of butter (!!!), a tiny bit at a time, whisking as you go. It is creamy and superrich, but has a wonderful bite to it. The ideal complement to delicate white sole.

French cooking 101, which apparently I missed. 

Alice Waters: Vanilla Pots de Creme

I have reservations about Alice Waters' Art of Simple Food. To start with, it mostly recycles recipes that have appeared in previous Chez Panisse cookbooks. Plus, Waters is trying to address a mainstream American audience and hasn't a clue how to go about it. Her awkward condescension can be excruciating. 

But I've found myself gravitating to this book among all the Waters/Chez Panisse titles in my collection because it focuses on recipes I can make without special ordering beef cheeks from the butcher (don't think I haven't tried) and acquiring a propane torch.

Like vanilla pots de creme. I haven't made these in thirty years. I had the idea to garnish them with crystallized violets, which I thought was very clever of me.

Then I decided to compare the Waters recipe to the one I made all those decades ago from the old burgundy-jacketed Gourmet II cookbook. (If you take out a magnifying glass you can see my name embossed in gold letters on the cover -- a gift from my mother circa 1977. Thank-you Checka!) And there, in the instantly familiar photograph, were pots de creme garnished with crystallized violets.

In any case, pots de creme are pots de creme, and there's not that much you can change about the standard egg yolk/dairy/sugar combination. The Waters version is lighter, using a mixture of half-and-half and cream as opposed to straight cream; and it calls for a little less sugar. 

But otherwise, it's hardly an original recipe. Just a very good one. I think Waters' goal with this book, is to remind us how delicious, and how easy, some of these basic dishes are. And she succeeds.