Living the Sweet Life in Paris: David & David

I just realized how much David Tanis and David Lebovitz have in common. Both are gay men who worked at Chez Panisse, moved to Paris, dislike Beaujolais Nouveau, and have written cookbooks. They're also friends. But I think the similarities end there. 

Tanis says things like, "I'm not much for rich, gooey cakes. . ." and "I scoff at the early asparagus that arrives around Valentine's Day. . ." and "You are probably not surprised to learn that I am not a fan of fusion. They can keep their wasabi aioli, thank you very much. . . ."

Lebovitz says things like, "You can't miss with a crisp disk of meringue topped with a scoop of coffee ice cream, warm chocolate sauce, and candied nuts. . ." and "How can you not love mole?" and "I always find myself eating more than one would think prudent. . ." He has invented recipes for Altoid brownies, and (fusion) green tea madeleines.

I have to make Altoid brownies.

A Platter of Figs: Feels like old times

Sometime during the winter, I decided to review David Tanis' Platter of Figs, but since his book is based on seasonal menus I stopped when I'd executed all the winter menus. I had some problems with the book, but decided to hold off before issuing a final judgement until I'd cooked at least one menu from  another season. 

Which brings us to last night and Tanis' so-called Supper of the Lamb:

 

-Warm asparagus vinaigrette

-Shoulder of spring lamb with flageolet beans and olive relish

-Rum baba with cardamom

First, a shopping challenge. I could not find "shoulder of spring lamb" in any local market, so I bought the tiniest leg of lamb I've ever seen. I don't remember the weight, but it cost $9.90 at Whole Foods. If you buy much meat, you know that is one petite leg. I roasted it, sliced it up, and served it on a bed of flageolet beans. 

Now, a shopping question. What is the deal with flageolet beans? One pound cost almost $7 at Mill Valley Market. Are flageolets that much better than Great Northern White beans that they merit paying three times as much? I know, I know, they're incomparable, pale-green, delicate, French, etc. etc. but the price galls me.

And yet another shopping issue. Asparagus. Here's Tanis on asparagus: "Ask any cook who has worked with me -- they'll tell you I'm a fanatic about asparagus. I've driven kitchen apprentices half crazy making them go through entire cases to choose only the the most perfect spears. I adore asparagus but it must be freshly picked or I'm not interested."

He goes on for two more paragraphs. I appreciate the information. I will feel very privileged when/if my asparagus seedlings mature next spring and I, too, can savor "only the most perfect spears." Meanwhile, the asparagus at the supermarket comes in a bunch held together with a fat rubberband and it is not, I suspect, "ultrafresh." Tanis' preparation -- boil, dress with a very light vinaigrette -- did nothing to enhance this particular bunch. The way I usually cook asparagus is to roast it with a little olive oil in a very hot oven until it shrivels and turns dark brownish-green, a procedure that makes even tired, middle-aged asparagus delicious.

It's not fair of me to hold Tanis' ingredient fetishes against him. He has exacting standards for his ingredients, and this is important. We should all be a little pickier. It's just that the barriers to entry for some of these dishes are rather high for an ordinary American cook.

Unanimous verdict on the lamb, beans, and asparagus: fine, nothing special.

The rum babas, on the other hand, were divisive. These are eggy, yeasted cakes that you bake in a muffin tin and then drench with a sticky rum-flavored syrup. 

Husband: "Anything with rum in it, I don't like."

Isabel: "I'm not going to have one because I don't like things with rum in them." 

Owen: "I would have tried one, but everyone said I wouldn't like it. "

Tipsy: "Sometimes it's depressing, cooking for this family."

This was a crazy good dessert. I have eight babas left and I don't know how I'm going to stop myself from eating them all for lunch. It occurred to me to feed them to the chickens, but I worry the rum would make small creatures drunk. I could swear that after I give them scraps of green tea cake they start squawking more and running around. 

I have not forgotten about the green tea cake.

Not a sky in the cloud

I've been listless lately, unable to motivate myself to start a new cookbook or cook anything at all. I  blame the weather. First it was hot and I was out there happily throwing money into holes planting in the garden. Now: foggy. 

Growing up in San Francisco, I experienced summer as the most alienating season of the year on account of the fog. The rest of the country is hanging out at the community pool, playing in sprinklers/fire hydrants, waiting for the ice cream truck. But you -- you special bohemian San Francisco kid, you -- are living inside a giant, lonely cloud. 

Of course, you're not allowed to wish you could hang out at the pool because that's just so bourgeois and suburban. You're lucky! Don't you know that? You're growing up in freaking San Francisco. You can take Muni down to Haight Street and buy yourself a vintage pea coat or nurse a cappuccino at the Blue Danube while writing sad things in tiny print in your journal. Or check out the groovy poetry books at City Lights! Or smoke clove cigarettes at Coit Tower! Or watch a documentary about an avant garde porn director at the Roxie! With such cultural riches who needs the sun? 

I hate it when I get sarcastic. I like San Francisco, just not in the summer. 

Just checked on the kombucha. It has a translucent skin all across the top like Jell-O, and there are no foul odors emanating. This is good news.

Tonight: David Tanis' Supper of the Lamb.

Platter of Figs: Going back into the bat cave

I'm a sucker for cookbook recommendations, and this list would be more tempting and problematic but for the appearance of Platter of Figs, which makes me inclined to dismiss all of her other tips.

A few months ago, I cooked every dish in the "winter" section of Platter of Figs except the persimmon pudding. Expectations were high for this elegant, much-praised book. Results: stunningly mediocre. Only two dishes (celery root remoulade, octopus salad) would I go out of my way to make again, and the food that didn't work out was not just meh, it was, in some cases, curiously hateful.

 

One of my darker theories is that David Tanis feels contempt for his bourgeois American audience and this book is his passive-aggressive way of delivering the message. Exhibit A: The menu featuring pig's ear salad and chilled prunes, which was even more revolting than it sounds.

On the other hand, it's both foolish and wrong to assume evil motives without powerful evidence, which I don't have. You can't cook at Chez Panisse for 20+ years without being a brilliant chef. Tanis may be a lovely man and culinary genius who simply wrote a lame cookbook. 

 

Also, to be fair, maybe winter isn't Tanis' season. I'm forcing myself to execute two spring menus before I can finish with this book. But which ones? These menus are punishingly expensive, strangely untempting, or both. I could mix and match dishes, but the whole volume is built around purportedly "harmonious" menus. As Alice Waters puts it, "each a little masterpiece."

Bah.

Can't afford the lobster risotto. Ditto the veal with morels. I could do the "five spice duck with buttered turnips and fried ginger" except the starter calls for two pounds of fresh crab. Even one pound is too spendy. A side of wild salmon is out of the question. (I agree with Tanis that there are compelling environmental reasons not to buy farmed salmon, but then he makes one of those statements that drive me beserk: "Farmed salmon are as bland and flavorless as factory chicken." This, alas, is not true. The farmed salmon from Safeway is repellent, but I find the Atlantic farmed salmon from Whole Foods delicious, neither "bland" nor "flavorless," words that, incidentally, mean exactly the same thing. Food that is bad for the world does not always taste bad, though it would be convenient if it did; there should be a name for this fallacy.)

 

Anyway, this leaves me with the following two menus:

How to Cook a Rabbit

-spinach cake with herb salad

-mustard rabbit in the oven

-parsnips Epiphany-style

-apple tart

Can't get revved up for parsnips, unsure about spinach cake. But I'm okay with bunny; I'll just tell the kids it's chicken. No, no more fibbing. I'll tell them the truth, just won't expect them to eat it.

Supper of the Lamb

-warm asparagus vinaigrette

-shoulder of spring lamb with flageolet beans and olive relish

-rum baba with cardamom

This actually sounds amazing.

If these menus turn out beautifully, maybe I'll try one of the splurge menus. If they are innocuous or worse, I'm officially done with Platter of Figs.

I'm still not done with Wizenberg. I love A Homemade Life, especially after the funny dinner we cooked last night, which gets its own post. I got up too late to make the Dutch baby pancakes and I also want to make her custard-filled cornbread. 

After that: back to Tanis, however briefly.

Platter of Figs: To be continued

I won't do a full wrap-up review until I've cooked David Tanis' spring menus, but in the last two weeks I've made 21 dishes from Platter of Figs:

Worth the price of the book: 0

Great: 2 

Good: 12

So-so: 3

Flat-out bad: 4

Consider: By some measures, the Best of the Best of Alaska -- a kitschy, Jell-O mad, spiral-bound featuring the "cuisine" of a state where nothing grows but moose and blueberries -- scored better, with 2 recipes that were "worth the price of the book" and fewer repulsive failures.

Shocking, given Tanis' pedigree (Chez Panisse chef) and the glowing reviews (Gourmet, New York Times) that I read for months before finally getting my hands on this book. 

Obviously, the pedigree has something to do with the reviews. Also, I'm not sure how much cookbook reviewers actually cook from books before offering their opinions. I did some searching and found a third disinterested party, besides Philomere and myself, who made Tanis' chicken tagine and found it wanting. 

And, to be fair, most the recipes were "good," which means they were pleasant and they worked. 

Two things I appreciate about the book so far:

-The photographs are gorgeous.

-Lovely and thoughtful writing. You come away liking David Tanis for passages like these:

 

"Now, about cooking for friends. At my house there always seem to be at least eight of them and I've designed all the menus in this book for a table of eight or ten. That should not be daunting. And most recipes can be easily halved, or increased (as in add another potato to the pot). What matters is that you do it."

Sweet and true, if not worth the price of the book.

Platter of Figs: He mostly redeems himself

I scored abysmally in my predictions about David Tanis' "Tapas Party" menu. 

I also made one horrible, lewd, cringe-inducing joke at last night's dinner. Justine and Michael, I'M SO SORRY. Ashamed. 

The food was a hit, anyway, starting with the . . . 

Octopus salad. An ordeal to acquire the animal, which had to be special ordered and came frozen in a perfect gray sphere the size and shape of a volleyball. $15 for a 3-pound cephalopod -- such a bargain! Like butchers, fishmongers appear to enjoy special ordering weird stuff and discussing. I have been persuaded to someday grill an octopus, but this one was simmered gently for two hours, chopped into chunks, dressed with olive oil, dusted with smoked paprika, garnished with pickled red onion. "Octopus salad is one of the most delectable things I know," Tanis writes, and he is right.

 

Potato tortilla. Hispanophile Justine is helping me appreciate tortilla as a steady, mild-mannered foil for spicier Iberian dishes and garlicky mayonnaise. The Jeff Daniels of tapas. Tanis' version was big, gentle, rich, very tasty.

Scallops a la Plancha. I thought these would be the highlight of the meal, but ultimately felt the scallops were just an expensive vehicle for green sauce. Delicious, delicious green sauce (cilantro, garlic, hot pepper, roasted cumin, oil) which would be good on almost anything so why pay for scallops.

Black paella with squid and shrimp. A typical paella, only uglier. The squid ink (ninety-nine cents for a tiny envelope at The Spanish Table) tinted pearly bomba rice the color of topsoil. Is that really a good thing? No squid to be had; substituted clams.

Manchego and membrillo. Breathtaking. Like melon and prosciutto, one of those miraculous salty/sweet combinations. Could have eaten the whole plate all by myself and almost did.

An altogether excellent menu that begins to make up for recent disasters. As Alice Waters might put it, "a little masterpiece." 

Having cooked all six of Tanis' winter menus, I'm taking a break from Platter of Figs to resume after March 20 when I'll try his spring meals. 

Platter of Figs: She just can't stop herself.

Wait, did I not just write about how the blog wanted to be prettier?

I wasn't going to make David Tanis' "Tapas Party" meal as I have issues with almost everything on the menu. I'm going to come clean about those feelings and we'll see how the dinner meets (or defies) expectations:

-Octopus salad with pickled onions and Pimenton. This strikes me as a "look how edgy and eccentric I am that I'm serving OCTOPUS" recipe rather than a "this is incredibly delicious" recipe. I inflict weird dishes on my loved ones in the interest of science, not to show off how quirky I am. I think. Prediction: It'll be so-so, chewy, there will be a lot left over.

-Potato and Salt Cod Tortilla. Leaving out the salt cod as it's impossible to track down in suburbia and Tanis says it's optional. But my real concern: What is there to love about bland Spanish tortilla? Willing to be enlightened. Prediction: It'll be so-so, there will be a lot left over.

-Sea Scallops a la Plancha. Scallops are horribly expensive, therefore I never cook scallops and did not want to cook this menu. Prediction: It will be delicious, there will be none left over.

-Black Paella with squid and shrimp. See potato and salt cod tortilla. Never understood the fuss over paella. Willing to be enlightened. Prediction: It will be good, but there will be a lot left over.

-Membrillo and Sheep's Milk Cheese. Sounds great!

Now I have to go pick up the octopus.

Platter of Figs: I'm just doing what he tells me

Here's the Alice Waters blurb on the cover of David Tanis' Platter of Figs: "Incomparable menus, each a little masterpiece."

Hieronymous Bosch painted some masterpieces. 

I've said more than enough about the pig's ear salad.  What saddened me was just how badly the rest of Tanis' "peasant fare from a Parisian kitchen" menu turned out.

The complete bill of fare:

-pig's ear salad with herb vinaigrette

-duck hams with French lentils and celery root remoulade

-chilled prunes in Beaujolais

The duck hams sounded delicious. Per Tanis' instructions I brined, braised them, then baked them with lentils and vegetables. Ordinarily the meat on duck legs is loose, rich, and tender, but in this case the flesh clung tightly to the bone and the flavor was off.

I don't entirely blame Tanis. He says you should brine the duck legs for several days or "up to a week." And while I suspected that "up to a week" was a bit of casual imprecision on his part, I went with it because after I put the duck in brine, it took exactly a week to get those freakin' pig's ears. The duck wasn't a disaster, but definitely a disappointment.

And dessert. Cold little prunes in a thin, inky sauce, like something you'd get at Hogwarts or a nursing home. I speak as one who is fond of the prune, but there's nothing nice to say about this dish except that it's not pig's ear salad. 

Am I the only one who thinks that even on paper this is a hostile menu? Forget the pig's ears for a minute. Can you really imagine inviting someone for dinner and serving chilled prunes?

One theory: This is Tanis' "epater la bourgeoisie" moment after all those years cooking natural lamb and organic baby vegetables for people who think eating at Chez Panisse is a political statement. 

I've made five out of the six winter menus from Platter of Figs. I was going to skip the last one, but now feel compelled to follow through. It does involve octopus and a packet of squid ink, but also yummy expensive scallops and Spanish cheese.

Today I'll try to track down an octopus.

Live blogging the pig ear salad, pt. 5

He thought it was "bacon salad." I don't generally approve of lying to children, but oh well. What's done is done. In any case, he spat it out. I also spat it out, though in a more quiet and ladylike fashion. The smoky, jellied, cartilaginous nature of David Tanis' pig's ear salad was extremely challenging.

My father's opinon:  "I was the only one brave enough to eat it. Lousy texture, lousy taste, slimy, slightly crunchy."

There we have it. Insane stunt complete. Full report on the rest of the meal tomorrow.

Live blogging the pig ear salad, pt. 4

In high school my father worked at a slaughterhouse, first as a herder, then as a "stunner." No mystery why he thought my sister and I were pansies, with our little tutoring and babysitting gigs.

He has sliced the ears into "ribbons." They are like velvet! I'm deputizing him right now as my guest blogger:

The correct title was "stunner and shackler."  Petunias captures it better than pansies.  I must say that the pig ears raised real feelings of nostalgia for the Swift plant, the blood, the money.

Live blogging the pig ear salad, pt. 3

I left the ears at a (very) low simmer while we went to piano lesson. The house did not burn down, but it is now permeated by a powerful, meaty fragrance that is not entirely nice.

Ears are cooling in their broth. 

Father's arrival imminent. Must go clean, set table, cook.

Live blogging the pig ear salad, pt. 2

Are we enjoying this piece of absurdist performance art? 

You can't really see them, but the ears are simmering in that back pot with a bunch of onions and carrots. In the front are the prunes, poaching gently in red wine. 

There's definitely something hostile about a menu that begins with pig ear salad and ends with poached prunes.

Live-blogging the pig ear salad, pt. 1

The listeners have landed.

I don't want to repulse anyone, so if you're not interested in seeing the package above unwrapped, skip the rest of this post. 

As promised, the pig ears -- to be used in David Tanis' pig ear salad from Platter of Figs -- were waiting at Mill Valley Market's butcher counter.

Punk butcher: This is so cool, I'm so glad you ordered these. I'm going to take the extras to use in my blood sausage. You cook 'em for a long time and they turn all creamy 

and gelatinous.

African-American butcher: Are you going to fry 'em?

Me: No, braise them and make a salad.

African-American butcher: Anything with the pig is good.

Older butcher: It's funny, I've never, ever seen one of those before.

Me: It is my goal in life to bring interesting new experiences to everyone I meet.

You got me. I didn't really say that. I just took the pig ears, got some olive oil and lentils, paid the cashier, and drove home. 

You've been warned, squeamish ones. Here are the listeners: 

They look much ickier in the photo than they do in life. I have since salted them heavily and put them in a bowl, where they will sit for the next several hours. 

Platter of Figs: He's no Claudia Roden

A tough crowd, my toughest. The other night I presented them with David Tanis' North African Comfort Food menu which consisted of:

-carrot salad

-chicken tagine with pumpkin and chickpeas

-walnut cigars

They were surprisingly tolerant. For once, I was the meal's harshest critic, disappointed by the tagine, which I felt needed something starchy to soak up the thin, copious sauce. Tanis is supposedly the master of the "harmonious" menu, so why no couscous or bread or potato buds? 

I'm dying to hear Philomere's thoughts and will withhold some of my larger theories about Tanis and this book until she has weighed in.

The walnut cigars were basically deconstructed baklava and very tasty.

Platter of Figs: The pig ears are on the way

Because I know you were all wondering.

Like I say, butchers are the best. We had a little adventure here, me and Butcher Mark. He found a Sonoma slaughterhouse that will send him a pound of ears. Apparently they're popular smoked, as dog treats. 

And people treats?

We'll find out on Wednesday. Save the date.

Platter of Figs: Give me a pound of listeners

Butchers are great. How bored they must get, endlessly parceling out ground sirloin and boning chicken breasts when they have this amazing arcane knowledge of bellies and trotters and livers and cheeks. Whenever I make a strange request they seem positively exhilarated by the challenge. One of my fears is that all the butchers will disappear and we'll be forced to buy our meat from the refrigerator case at Safeway. This is such a depressing thought that I have just this instant made a resolution to henceforth only buy meat from a human butcher.

So, I just phoned the butcher shop at Mill Valley Market, where I have successfully acquired weird animal parts in the past. I requested pig ears and had to say the words twice, enunciating carefully: PIG EARS. 

Admittedly, it was tempting to ignore David Tanis' recipe for pig ear salad with herb vinaigrette, but what am I, a quitter? Squeamish?

 

It turns out that Mill Valley Market's meat supplier does not supply pig ears. Butcher Mark is exploring other avenues. "Let's not give up," he said. "Call me tomorrow morning. I have an idea."

And I have an ally. 

Platter of Figs: Europeans are better, I get it already

I believe that the Europeans have a more civilized food culture. I do. But I am sick of hearing about it. No one needs to tell me one more time about the leisurely three-course dinners with wine and cheese, the modest portions, the reverence for fresh produce, the love of terroir, the horror of McDonald's.

I just finished the part of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle in which Barbara Kingsolver rhapsodizes about her Italian holiday, wandering through those dreamy farmer's markets, discovering divine little restaurants, marveling at the glorious landscapes and gracious Italians. Something happens to smart people when they write about Italy and their brains turn to polenta. 

One European custom I want to debate: the three-course meal. In restaurants, yes. But at home?

Last night my mother came over and I made David Tanis' menu "Feeling Italian, part III" from Platter of Figs. It included: 

-Orecchiette al forno 

-Lamb osso buco with orange, lemon and capers

-Persimmon pudding, for which I substituted white chocolate ice cream made from David Lebovitz's Perfect Scoop because there are no persimmons to be found in late January.

Quite an endeavor, bringing those three courses sequentially to the table. Quite a lot of food.

For the orecchiette, you cook the little discs of pasta, toss with homemade (yes) fennel sausage, ricotta, and broccoli rabe. Bake. What a hit! The orecchiette was sitting there on the table for some time as we waited for the lamb shanks to finish cooking, and we kept picking at it, like the greedy and barbaric Americans that we are.

Except, does anyone really want lamb shanks after a delicious pasta? Shouldn't you just eat your fill of pasta along with some salad and call it a meal? That's the American food culture -- everything on the table at once like in a Norman Rockwell picture -- and is it really so wrong?

It felt unnatural to bring out lamb shanks after the pasta. Or maybe it was just these lamb shanks:

I hesitated to include that unlovely photograph, but it gives you the idea. This dish was fine in its gamy, bony, shanky way. But none of us had trouble behaving with admirable European restraint.

The white chocolate ice cream was another story.

Platter of Figs: The braise goes on

David Tanis's "Slow Beef" menu from Platter of Figs:

-watercress, beet, and egg  salad

-braised beef

-mashed celery root and potatoes

-roasted apples

A few thoughts:

1. Beets. Why do they scare people? No, the juice does not look like blood. It doesn't! My beet-hating husband saw the salad -- beets on a bed of fluffy watercress -- and started to make a "humorous" remark. I silenced him. Jokes are not helpful in the culinary education of our children, both of whom remain surprisingly open to the beet.

2. Braised beef = pot roast. Is there something new to be said on this subject by an august chef like David Tanis? If so, he didn't say it here. In my experience, the only thing you can do to screw up a pot roast is to undercook it.

3. Celery root is one of the few really positive additions to mashed potatoes, probably because you can barely taste it. Isabel had seconds. Also: I bought creme fraiche to make these potatoes, but don't like the extra expense and didn't think it made an appreciable difference.

4. Roasted apples. Just a more appetizing name for baked apples? Seems to be. These were handsome and austere, just apples and sugar (no butter) baked/roasted for 45 minutes until the skins split and the fruit exuded its own lovely, fragrant sauce. Mark said he'd rather eat a fresh apple, but Isabel and I were both kind of charmed.

Have so far braised pork and beef from this book with good, if not dazzling, results. Tonight: lamb. 

A Platter of Figs

"Trying a new recipe is as exciting as going on a blind date," Barbara Kingsolver writes in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. 

Obviously, many of us do not find blind dates exciting, we find them terrifying, boring, and/or hellish, but I know what she means. It's how I feel about starting a new cookbook. David Tanis's exceedingly handsome Platter of Figs, which has been glowingly reviewed everywhere, is divided up into four seasonal sections and since we're all so very seasonal now, I'm going to cook the six winter meals and move on to another book. In spring we'll do spring, and so on.

Tanis, who is the head chef at Chez Panisse half the year and lives in Paris the rest of the time, presents his recipes in the context of complete meals which I'm going to try to cook in their entirety. Here's Alice Waters in the foreword: "David's menus are incomparable. Whatever the occasion, they all share a certain quality of harmonious simplicity uniquely his." 

I worry that "harmonious simplicity" will make me feel messy and overcomplicated, but am otherwise looking forward to this blind date.