When Kevin Rose Tweets Your Story
A few weeks ago, I visited Digg founder Kevin Rose’s new startup in the Mission to do a 7x7 shoot with one of the most stylish guys in tech, Milk creative director Daniel Burka. Once the issue hit newsstands, I sent Daniel a link to the story on my Flickr account, which I use as a kind of portfolio for most of my work. Within two hours, my Flickr page had 5,000 views thanks to tweets from Daniel and Kevin. Just to put that into perspective, up until that point, the most views I’d received on a single day was 178. It’s the first time anything I’ve done has gone remotely viral, and I still get a few hundred views on these two images every day.
Making of a Recipe: Springtime Fava Crostini
Image by JamesCollier/Flickr
A few weeks ago, I spent a lovely weekend in Sonoma, playing in the kitchen with 30-something chefs, food stylists, cooking geeks, and underground supperclub hosts. Eat Retreat is probably the best-documented gathering I’ve ever been a part of (who of this foodie group doesn’t have a blog or Flickr stream?), so I’ll skip the recap and just tell you what I cooked up.
I spent Saturday afternoon overlooking a green valley with BiRite marketing manager Kersten Bourne and 18 Reasons‘ Rosie Branson Gill, unzipping fava pods and uprooting the beans from their purses with our thumbs. An hour later, I hauled a huge orange bowl with several pounds of jewel-like favas down the hill and into the kitchen, where I quickly blanched and shocked them. I spent the next three hours under a tree or over the dining table with several other retreaters looking for something to busy their hands with. As we worked our way through the second shelling, we chatted and took pictures, but mostly we just zoned out and enjoyed doing something quiet and productive together.
After, I noticed the beans could benefit from another 5 minutes in boiling, salted water. I reserved a few cups of the cooking water and drained the rest. With the favas back in a dry pot, I splashed in a generous amount of olive oil, black pepper, a handful of mint leaves, and half a preserved lemon (rinsed) and took a hand blender to the whole thing, adding some of the reserved cooking water as needed to get a thick, hummus-like consistency. Kerstin suggested we keep a bit of the grain, so I held back from blending it too smooth.
From there, we roughly cut some seed bread into uneven pieces, brushed them with olive oil, toasted them in the oven, and topped them with a generous schmear of the puree. Even with the lemon, the favas were quite rich, so I quickly made a simple dressing of half olive oil and half fresh lemon juice and sprinkled a few drops over the crostini.
As I was plating the apps, Dr. Michael Rakotz suggested pulling some edible flowers out of the herb fridge (yes, a whole refrigerator stuffed with fresh herbs!) and topping the crostini with a few buds. Lovely.
To do: Practice and learn more songs on the guitar. Then convince some kid to sing a duet with me.
Cookbooks This Home Cook Actually Used
It’s December, and already the lists of this year’s best cookbooks are filling my inbox. They come from bloggers, The New York Times, and a few notorious collectors, such as Celia Sack, owner of Omnivore Books. My personal collection includes about 100 books full of recipes and techniques, much of them sourced from used bookstores, eBay, garage sales, and family members’ pantries. So instead of presenting my favorite new books, I give you the cookbooks I actually cooked from in 2010. A couple were duds, one or two old favorites, and others surprising finds. But they’re all lined up along my white hutch, stained, scribbled on, and much loved.
The Tassajara Bread Book, by Edward Espe Brown (Shambhala, 2005): I’ve been baking the Tassajara yeasted bread since one of the monks at their retreat center in Carmel Valley sent me home with a loaf a few years ago. The challah recipe is excellent too. I’ve probably learned the most about breadmaking from this book, thanks to its helpful illustrations and almost lyrical instructions: “Turn, fold, push. Rock forward. Twist and fold as you rock back. Rock forward. Little by little you will develop some rhythm.”
Madhur Jaffrey’s World Vegetarian (Clarkson Potter, 1999): When my friend Alisha invited everyone over for a North African potluck night, I didn’t know where to begin. I’d made Jaffrey’s ghee a few times, but it wasn’t until I sweetened her couscous with a little sugar, currants, and almond milk that I fell in love—and discovered Moroccan cookery.
The Art of Simple Food, by Alice Waters (Clarkson Potter, 2007): This is the book that taught me to roast a chicken to perfection, shock blanched greens, and braise short ribs. My best dinner parties are born from these pages.
The Art of the Cookie, by Shelly Kaldunski (Weldon Owen, 2010): OK, shameless promotion here, but I wrote the first 15 or so pages of this book. I also made some of the prettiest sugar cookies out of it.
The Fannie Farmer Cookbook, by Marion Cunningham (Knopf, 2008): Biggest. Disappointment. Ever. The meatloaf? A complete failure. Oatmeal cookies? Like dry cake. I’m sorry, Fannie, but this one’s going to the back of the cookbook shelf.
The All New Joy of Cooking, by Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker, and Ethan Becker (Scribner, 1997): These pages have soaked up more than their fair share of gravies, jams, butter sauces, and cake batters. I probably consult this tome more than any other, at least when I come across an ingredient I’m unsure of or a technique I’ve never tried. From these pages, I played with spice rubs and tagines, and it’s the one book I turn to (before even considering going online) to look up internal temperatures when I’m preparing fish and large pieces of meat.
Jamie’s America, by Jamie Oliver (Penguin, 2009): The measurements are in grams and handfuls, which somehow forced me to both use a food scale and my intuition. I made the one recipe that doesn’t call for large gobs of butter: A Southern pecan salad that was just divine.
Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, by Deborah Madison (Broadway, 1997): Her apple galette is a classic and has become my standby for a quick dessert to put together when people come over. I also turn to her when I have a fridge full of random produce and don’t know where to begin. It turns out that most anything can be roasted or turned into a gratin.
Tassajara Dinners & Desserts, by Dale and Melissa Kent (Gibbs Smith, 2009): On my resume, under skills and interests, it reads “I make a killer carrot bundt cake.” The recipe (minus a few personal tweaks) can be found on page 183.
Eat Well, by Charity Ferreira (Williams-Sonoma, 2008): My grandmother was diagnosed with dementia this year and can no longer hold down a conversation. But for some reason, she still remembers this warm spinach salad I made from my friend Charity’s book. Grams may no longer know my name, but she’s clearly still thinking about this salad along with the almond polenta cake I served for lunch on a warm summer day in 2009.
Peter Reinhart’s Whole Grain Breads (Ten Speed Press, 2007): Soakers, bigas, and final doughs—it’s all too much for my little brain to handle. I tried the challah, cinnamon raisin, and whole wheat, but the results just weren’t worth the trouble of reading recipes like they were secret scientific formulas. I’m hoping Santa’s wrapping the Tartine Bread book this Christmas.
Baking, by James Peterson (Ten Speed Press, 2009): The almond flour sponge cake has never failed me, and the vanilla butter cake turns out perfect cake bonbons.
Betty Crocker’s Cookbook (Golden Press, 1980): I stole this from my mom’s cupboards when I moved out of the house to go to college. Most everything calls for lard, and the pictures are terribly dark, the food very plastic-looking (see cheese-pineapple boats). But the classics, such as chocolate chip cookies, are amazing.
La Technique, by Jacques Pepin (Quadrangle, 1976): My new favorite pie dough can be found on page 374. It’s also perhaps the most low-key recipe in the book. This next year, I hope to get over myself and take advantage of this classic’s step-by-step photos and learn some real butchering skills. I’m looking at you, double rack of lamb.
Recent Writings
Lest you think I’ve been slacking off, let me assure you: I was working. On this story about the state of publishing and how San Francisco is changing the media landscape. Then I somehow convinced the city’s chefs to share with me their secret recipes. There are a few other things that haven’t hit newsstands yet, but I’ll post them once they’re up.
All You Can Eat
Every Sunday, under a white tent set up in a small Mission park, foragers, home gardeners, and urban permaculture farmers give away a bumpercrop of organic herbs, vegetables, fruit, and Acme bread. Eager crowds gather to fill up their canvas totes with lemons from a neighbor’s yard, beets that didn’t sell at yesterday’s farmers market at the Ferry Building, and dark greens grown in a community plot just a few yards away. The No Penny Opera volunteers that collect the food and run the free farm stand offer cooking suggestions, gardening tips, and seedlings. They also encourage everyone to take as much as they can as long as the food won’t go to waste. There’s plenty to go around. And that’s the whole point, says Tree Rubenstein, director of The No Penny Opera. The free farm stand is a demonstration in abundance—the idea that there is an infinite amount of good and prosperity in the world.
A little hoakey? Maybe. But since they set up shop at 23rd Street and Treat Avenue in 2009, The Free Farm Stand has given away more than 11,000 pounds of food. The group spends a lot of time driving around and collecting donated food from Saturday farmers market vendors, community gardens, and a few home growers. Each week, about a hundred Mission neighbors (families, skinny jeans, dreadlocks, and all) show up for the goods, but at the end of most Sundays, the stand is left with a huge surplus of food that Rubenstein was not able to give away. When I suggested they make a donation to a food bank, a volunteer told me that San Francisco food banks don’t accept unpackaged foods. And so, the group freezes what they can and composts whatever they can’t. That compost then goes on to feed the community gardens Rubenstein oversees.
We have an overgrown (and very aromatic) rosemary bush in our backyard, so I like to take a shoebox full of clippings to the stand and then fill by bag with sweet baguettes that Acme couldn’t sell at yesterday’s markets. They go straight into the freezer until I’m in the mood for warm bread. I rub a little olive oil, fresh rosemary and lavender, and Kosher salt over the frozen baguette and then toast it in the oven at 325 for 15 minutes. The air is sweet and smells of (mostly) freshly baked bread.
Cupcakes Are So Five Years Ago
My friend Lauren Martin left a full-time design job last year to start Sweet Lauren Cakes out of her Hayes Valley apartment. She does a lot of layered classics, but her specialty is a red velvet cakepop. Imagine a crumb as moist as a muffin top and a white-chocolate shell that turns creamy after you bite into it. They’re starting to give the whole cupcake craze a run for its money. I’ve seen them at parties and wedding receptions because—well, besides the fact that they’re beautiful and fudgy—you can hold a cocktail in one hand and have your cake in the other without skipping a beat.
It’s a one-woman show, but another friend and I invited ourselves over to see exactly how Lauren does it. First, we baked several cakes in round pans, just as you would for a layered confection. After a cake cooled, it went into the food processor to get all broken up before we mixed in cream cheese frosting with the crumbs. Once we had a playdough-like mixture, we shaped the pops and let them chill in the fridge. We dipped pop sticks in melted white chocolate and inserted them into the cake. After a few minutes, we were ready to give the single-serving cakes an even coating of white chocolate. To decorate, Lauren likes to drizzle colored chocolate and sometimes garnish the shell with coconut flakes or whatever else she has in her amazing stock of sprinkles, nonpareils, and confetti.
The Great American Tweet
When author Matt Stewart couldn’t land a book deal, he posted his entire dark comedy on Twitter. The stunt led to headlines, new interest from editors, and the first print edition of The French Revolution (Soft Skull Press). Now that the novel’s in book form, it’s easier to get sucked into Stewart’s allegory—a reimagining of the upheaval in 18th-century France as a family epic in modern San Francisco. Standing in for Marie Antoinette is Esmerelda, a morbidly obese ex-pastry chef with a bad cake habit. In the afterglow of a “triple chocolate truffle swirl cheesecake, with Heath bar crumbs and caramel roses on top” binge, Esmerelda has sex with a Market Street coupon distributor (Louis XVI) in a particularly gross scene that involves a public pool and food stuck in teeth. The tryst leads to the birth of rebellious twins, Marat and Robespierre. (The siblings later demand that their mother shape up, much like the revolution did for France.) The story makes plenty of entertaining nods to important historical figures and events. To get in on the joke, there’s a free iPhone app that allows readers to submit a picture of a page and find relevant videos, articles, and recipes inspired by the gluttony and over-the-top food descriptions throughout the book. You know, in case you still want to eat cake.
