Birthday Pork and Earthquake in Chile

The Birthday

Well that was a crazy weekend.

Pavel, Emma (our niece), and I got into the car Friday morning for a ten-hour drive to Laytonville, a small California town about halfway between Eureka and Santa Rosa.  A whirlwind trip—we were going to surprise my brother on his 50th birthday, but would return on Saturday. Yep. The next day.

Crazy.  But we managed.  We got down, surprised my brother, and enjoyed an afternoon and evening of serious meat eating.  They’d butchered a Duroc pig the day before.  While it roasted in a ‘Cajun microwave’ Friday morning, they slaughtered a lamb.  Four wild turkeys made the mistake of wandering by.  A woman at the party, with a thick Louisiana accent, told us how she’d called to her husband: “Baby, go get me a turkey!”  He ran to their upstairs balcony and shot one for her.  When she told her mother the story, her mother wondered why he’d only got one.

The Chilean Earthquake

The next morning we woke up in our motel in Willits, to an email saying our son was fine.  Since I stupidly don’t speak Spanish, I had to go online to translate the rest of the message.  Only then did I see news of the Chile earthquake.  Simon and Caro (his girlfriend) had just arrived in Santiago the day before.   Just in time for the 3-minute long earthquake, measuring 8.8 on the Moment Magnitude scale. [3 minutes according to Wikipedia--I've seen it listed as anywhere from 90 seconds to 3 minutes; it's all too long]

We are extremely lucky.  Neither was hurt.  No one in Caro’s family was hurt.  And how lucky to find out about the earthquake by learning they were okay.  We were spared the hours of waiting and wondering.  We’re so grateful.

It was a surreal morning, spent emailing our daughter, Grace, in the Netherlands (she speaks Spanish), having her email Caro’s parents in Punta Arenas (in Patagonian Chile), and then relay the information back to us in Willits.  At the same time, we were all trying to contact our other daughter, Francesca, in Caserta, Italy.

We headed north again Saturday afternoon.  By then everyone in the family knew Simon was okay.  Facebook proved to be incredibly useful: we could post updates, relatives could check in.  I'm glad most of my family uses it.  While we were stretching our legs in Eureka, Simon finally got a call through to us.   What a relief it was to talk to him. 

Ways to Help Chile

CNN has a helpful site, Impact Your World, with links to organizations accepting donations for aid to Chile as well as to Haiti, which, of course, is also still in dire need of help. 
It’s time to check our earthquake supplies here in the Pacific Northwest.

Read More on the Chilean Earthquake

Eric Asimov's column, The Pour, discusses the damage suffered by the Chilean wine industry ( Maule, one Chilean region hit hard in the quake,  produces half of the wine exported).  Also, here's a New York Time's Op-Ed piece, 'In Chile, Life Between the Tremors', by Alberto Fuguet, which gives a sense of what it's like in Santiago in these first post-quake days.

Bi-Rite Creamery

Ice Cream at Bi-Rite

I had ice cream at Bi-Rite Creamery twice when I was in San Francisco last month (not bad since I didn’t even go the only full day I was in town!).  If I had been on my own—with no one to see me, no need to defend my actions—I would have visited Bi-Rite twice a day.

Sorry about the blurry picture. I was excited.

Because it’s that good.  Bi-Rite’s ice cream is made with Straus organic milk, cream, and eggs.  Bi-Rites flavorings and ingredients are local and delicious: Ritual Roasters coffee and lavender from nearby Mint Hill (named after the U.S. Mint building, not shade-loving herbs for juleps) are just two examples.  And the people who work there are friendly (though, seriously, why would mean people sell ice cream?).

Bi-Rite Flavors

I think what makes them especially good, though, is balance.  Bi-Rite’s flavors, such as the salted caramel, orange cardamom, and brown sugar with ginger caramel swirl, achieve perfect balance.  Each flavor comes through, its presence necessary but never overpowering.  Like good friends at a party—each has plenty to say, but still listens to his friends.

The flavors.  Over our two visits we tried salted caramel, honey lavender, orange cardamom, brown butter pecan, brown sugar with ginger caramel, and malted vanilla with peanut brittle and milk chocolate pieces.  Don’t ask which was my favorite; I couldn’t say (it might be easier to pick a favorite child, and that’s impossible--especially in print).

[A Portland shop with the same pitch perfect palate is Alma Chocolates—their Rosewater Caramels, Thai Peanut Butter Cups, and Earl Grey Caramel sauce are just three examples]

Our second visit to Bi-Rite was late Friday afternoon.  Pavel and I were squeezing two scoops of ice cream in before dinner with his family (the shame!).  We managed to park just a block away (that should have been our first hint of trouble).  We got our ice cream, ate it lovingly, and stepped into the Bi-Rite Market for a bottle of wine to take to dinner.

Parking at Bi-Rite

We stepped out, and our car was gone.  Towed. I asked the parking guy where the sign was, and he looked up from his task (supervising another poor person’s car being towed), turned slightly, and pointed right above me.  “Right there, sweetheart.”


Not much I could say to that.  We grabbed a taxi and got to the car retrieval site right behind our car.  A woman sitting behind bullet-proof glass smiled and gave us our bill: $330 for the towing fee and ‘San Francisco Administrative Fee’.  When we got to the car it had a $70 fine stuck to the windshield.

And then we returned to the site of the crime, to take a photo.  How could we both have missed the sign?  Clearly it wasn’t visible.


The trees did block the sign somewhat.    But what San Francisco didn't think of was that while the trees might have obscured the sign, Bi-Rite Creamery blinded us.  Because while the above picture is about what it looked like (according to photos), what we saw was more like this:


Who am I kidding.  This is what Pavel and I saw:


I felt bad that I didn’t get a better picture of Bi-Rite's ice cream.  We thought about getting one more scoop, just for the sake of you readers, but we were late for dinner.  And I didn’t want to push my parking luck.

The Moral of the Story

$406 is a lot of money for ice cream.  I would have balked at paying that for two dishes.  But am I sorry we stopped in at Bi-Rite? Not on your life.  I’d go back in a flash.  But maybe next time I’ll take a cab.

Bi-Rite Creamery

3692 18th St (at Dolores)
San Francisco, CA
415-626-5600

Oven-Baked Polenta

Polenta’s been in the food news recently.  Mark Bittman’s 'Taking the Fear out of Polenta” showed up on February 12.  A few days later, Russ Parsons’ ‘Easy, Fast Polenta that doesn’t Skimp on Flavor'’ was on the L.A. Times site.  I’m happy that so many readers will be keeping warm with polenta dinners.

Parson’s column grabbed me for two reasons.  The first was nostalgia.  He mentions a Cesare Pavese book, The Moon and the Bonfires, about a Piemontese man returning to Italy after living in California for twenty years.  The book’s been sitting on my shelf for a year or so—it’s time to take it down.

Polenta Nostalgia

My grandfather came from Chiomonte, a small village in Piemonte, a part of Italy that likes its polenta.  Perhaps because of this we often ate polenta while I was young (no one else I knew had polenta for dinner).  My mother cooked it in a battered copper pot, stirring until the polenta pulled away from the sides, leaving a papery film behind, which always fascinated me.


We bought bags of Golden Pheasant polenta, with the picture of a red and yellow pheasant lifting off from a field.  It was good, local, (from San Francisco), and probably one of the only ways to get polenta then.  We didn’t have bulk aisles in many grocery stores, or today’s wide availability of products like those from Bob’s Red Mill, or imports from Mulino Marino and Moretti (no connection to Moretti beer, which I have a soft spot for, because the man on the bottle looks like my other—non-Italian—grandfather).

The second reason Parsons polenta article spoke to me?  Because he wrote about baking it in the oven, my favorite way to cook polenta.
 

When polenta’s popularity began to grow here, so did people’s interest in an ‘easier’ cooking method.  Tubes of cooked polenta showed up in markets.  An Italian relative even showed us her ‘easy’ method of cooking polenta in the microwave (it was kind of lumpy and required nearly as much attention as the stove-top method).

[A note on the question of ease in making stove-top polenta: it was never difficult—it took time, but no particular skill]

Baking Polenta

About ten years ago, a friend gave me Paula Wolfert’s book, Mediterranean Grains and Greens , and I found a new-to-me method of cooking polenta.  The surprise was that the recipe had been right on the Golden Pheasant polenta bag all along.

The method isn’t quick to the table; it takes 1-1/2 hours to bake enough for 6 people.  But it only takes about five minutes of active time: four to combine the ingredients, and one to stir the polenta ten minutes before it’s finished.  And I like the subtle toasted flavor the oven-baking imparts to the polenta.


Oven-baked polenta is a great way to get dinner on the table fast—you can use the spare time to make sauces and a salad.  Or read with your kid.  Or have a drink with your sweetheart.  Or fold laundry and go through the mail.

Polenta Serving Ideas

If you’re really in a rush, skip the sauce.  Pick up a nice piece of Taleggio (or Fontina) cheese at the store.  While the polenta bakes, slowly caramelize some onions (they don’t need much attention either) and make a salad.  Once the polenta is done, lay cheese slices on top of the polenta along with the onions.  This is the kind of dinner that fills you in every way.

Follow this link for the Oven-Baked Polenta Recipe.

Oven-Baked Polenta Recipe

Adapted from Paula Wolfert’s Mediterranean Grains and Greens

• 2 Tablespoons olive oil
• 2 cups polenta
• 7-10 cups water*
• 2 teaspoons salt

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Grease a shallow pan (lots of of leeway here—I use a 9x13 Le Creuset casserole, but you could use a deeper pan, or a cast-iron frying pan…). 
Combine the oil, polenta, water, and salt in the pan; stir with a fork.  Don’t worry when it separates immediately—it will come together in the oven.

Bake uncovered for 1 hour and 20 minutes.
Stir the polenta with a fork, add more salt if desired, and return to the oven for 10 more minutes.
That’s it.

*About the water.  If you want a very firm polenta, use less water.  For a soft polenta, use more.  I find that even the softer polenta is firm enough to slice the next day.

One last note. If you want to make less, you simply halve the recipe and bake 45 minutes, stir, then return to the oven for 10 more minutes.  This is useful—when I want to make the larger amount, but don’t have time, I just make two half recipes and bake them side by side.  Less time baking equals less energy usage, also a good thing!

Print Oven-Baked Polenta as text only

Ramos Gin Fizz at New Orlean’s Roosevelt Hotel

Our first stop when we arrived in New Orleans on a Saturday morning was the Roosevelt Hotel.  This wasn’t because we were staying there.  We made this important stop because the Sazerac Bar at the Roosevelt Hotel is home to the Ramos Gin Fizz, which is one of my very favorite cocktails (despite its lack of bourbon!).

A fizz is a cocktail with soda water and acidic juice (generally from a citrus); a silver fizz has the addition of an egg white.  The Ramos Gin Fizz is a silver fizz made with gin, lemon and lime juice, an egg white, a little sweetener (simple syrup or confectioner's sugar), cream, and most importantly, some orange flower water.
 
The Roosevelt is  a stunning hotel.  Built in 1893 (as the Grunewald Hotel), home to ‘the Cave’ (considered the first U.S. nightclub), it was renamed the Roosevelt—after Teddy—by its new owners in 1923.  Huey Long held court with many a Ramos Gin Fizz at the Sazerac Bar while governor (he even imported its bartender to New York once, to teach the NYC Roosevelt’s bartenders the proper way to make the drink).  In the 1960’s the hotel was renamed the Fairmont, and in 2005 Hurricane Katrina shut it down.

The Cave at the Grunewald Hotel—glad I didn’t have to dust the stalagmites and stalactites!

Happily, the hotel reopened this past July, restored to all its past glory (that of the Roosevelt Hotel and Sazerac Bar, not the Cave!), complete with four Paul Ninas murals depicting New Orleans life, and a curved bar made from one African walnut tree, begging to be caressed.
  
I don’t know about you, but when I travel I’m always prepared with a list of the ‘must see’ spots.  These almost always consist of eating and drinking places: where to find the best ice cream, who has the finest oysters, and, yes, who has the best Ramos Gin Fizz.  Hence our early morning stop (the Ramos Gin Fizz is really a morning drink). Sometimes, though, places look just how I imagine them, but the food doesn’t necessarily deliver as promised.  The Sazerac Bar delivers.

Bartender with concoctions to celebrate the Saints impending Super Bowl win

Our bartender at the Roosevelt's Sazerac Bar (I know, we should have been drinking Sazeracs, but it was too early in the day for that) strained our fizzes into highball glasses, and set them in front of us. Her vigorous shaking had produced a fizz with an cloud hovering above the glass, like a hat at a wedding.  To my mind, what really makes the drink so great is the orange flower water.

Ramos Gin Fizz continues here...

Ramos Gin Fizz at Roosevelt Hotel Part II

The whole week I was in New Orleans my mind never strayed far from Ramos Gin Fizzes.  While it was still winter back home in Portland (where people were enjoying drifts of perfume from winter-flowering Daphnes), spring had arrived in New Orleans.  And it saw no reason to let me forget.
 
As I wandered through the streets, mainly without any destination in mind, there was always plenty to look at: shotgun houses—some still needing repair—, iron scrollwork on balconies (were no two alike?), and cats sunning themselves on porches. 
 
Citrus trees were blooming all over town. Often they were hidden behind high walls.  But like the winter-flowering Daphne back in Portland, the citrus trees put out siren scents, their sweetness kept sneaking up on me.  How could I not crave another Ramos Gin Fizz?

One bumpy citrus shows itself

On our last day in town, we made a stop at the Roosevelt Hotel.  I’d tried two other Ramos Gin Fizzes during my wanderings; they just weren’t that good (one tasted uncomfortably close to an Orange Julius).  So even though it’s expensive ($13!), the Ramos Gin Fizz at the Sazerac Bar is the way to go.
 

Don’t touch my Ramos Gin Fizz!

I'm back in Portland now.   We made a Ramos Gin Fizz once—not bad, but we’ll have to work at it to get up to the Sazerac Bar’s standards. 
Happily, I keep being reminded.  The day before we left New Orleans, I visited Hové Parfumeur, where I sampled their orange flower perfume on my left wrist.  Today, more than two weeks later, I can still detect its lingering scent.  I’ve been marked for life by New Orleans and the Ramos Gin Fizz.

Ramos Gin Fizz Recipes

• Straight from the Roosevelt Hotel, the Ramos Gin Fizz.

• And another Ramos Gin Fizz recipe at Imbibe Magazine.

• Eric Asimov’s POUR column (July 16, 2008) about the two New Orleans cocktails (Sazeracs and…), with recipe.

Blog for Food 2010

In Portland, eating locally is a joy—we have access to locally grown produce, and locally raised and butchered meats.  Coffee roasters, bakeries and chocolatiers  fill our cups and satisfy our sweet tooths. 

Sadly, many Oregonians are hungry; they aren’t sharing in this abundance.  The Oregon Food Bank works to eliminate hunger, serving all of Oregon as well as Washington’s Clark County.  They work are central to 935 hunger-relief agencies, distributing food through 20 food banks to over 340 food pantries, soup kitchens, and shelters.

The Blog for Food campaign runs from February 15th to March 15th, spreading the word through blogs.  The aim is to help the Oregon Food Bank with their mission to feed everyone in Oregon who needs help getting meals.

Please click to donate to the Oregon Food Bank.  Be sure to add ‘blog for food’ in the ‘in honor of’ section of the donation page (the second page of the form). 

Cooking Up a Story has provided a link to Feeding America’s Food Bank Locator page for people outside Oregon who want to support their local food bank. 

As much as we enjoy eating locally, we need to remember that part of that pleasure is remembering our responsibility to help feed locally as well.