(y)our food choices

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We cook a lot in our tiny kitchen and love it! Baked bread, simmering soups and homemade pizzas are just a few of the staples in our apartment. We are constantly experimenting with recipes and love a challenge. We’re not Iron Chefs but we do respect the men and women who are and their dedication to the craft. We’re just two men who are trying to get back into the simple ways of life. We’re all about farmer’s markets and grass fed beef. We believe that the food we eat is sacred, even if we are not of the religious state of mind, and that with every bite we take or every drink we consume we can all make a difference, for good or not so good. We hope you enjoy reading about what we are eating, peruse the pictures we take of our food, and tell us about what your eating and drinking. In the future we will be linking this blog to a new blog called Your Food Choices where we hope to get some lively discussions about food and how it affects us all. Cheers! Steve & Jason

All the makings of gazpacho.

Two days in San Francisco – is that really all we can get out of you? You didn’t give us any time to prepare and enjoy the first truly summery soup and ice cream we made especially for your visit. Rude! It was all too brief, but I guess we’ll just have to enjoy our cold soup and accompanying creamy frozen concoction with our old reliable friend – Fog. It’s not that we don’t enjoy Fog, but all he does is hang around, sometimes letting a few rays of blue sky through, only to envelop the skies again in his moody grey cloak. Not that we’re complaining or anything like that. No, don’t worry about us. We’ll just sit in our little kitchen listening to the mood music on KFOG. Oh listen, it’s Annie Lenox singing “Here comes the rain…again,” while the rest of the country is dancing to Katy Perry’s “California Gurls.” Yeah, well, our CA gals are in sweatshirts, not bikinis, thank you very much! (Sorry for the outburst.)

Getting ready to blend

Summer, we know you said you’d be back soon, but you’re unreliable. You show up when you want and leave without saying good-bye. How can that be any good for us? We know you’ve hosted a pool party for the rest of the country, setting high temperature records everywhere while we have to stay in the cold comfort of San Francisco. Again, we’re not complaining. But really, Summer, couldn’t you have hung around at least one more night? Just long enough to enjoy dinner with its menu of gazpacho with grilled cheese sandwiches and bourbon peach ice cream? Is that really too much to ask? We could have drank all night and danced until the wee hours of morning, but no, you had to leave.

All along, the weather people have been telling us you’d be around at least a few weeks. And just when the bounty of this year’s tomato harvest is coming to us in our CSA box. We really thought this would last until at least the end of September, but now you’ve just upped and split on us again. That’s no way to live. So, Summer, if you’re out there: please come back for another visit. Even with all the complaining we do while you’re here, we really do enjoy you’re company at least for 3-4 days in a row. Oh, by the way Summer, since we miss your heat so much we’ve added a roasted jalapeño pepper to the gazpacho, a lingering zippy sensation to signify how we wished you had stayed around just a little longer.

XOXO

Jason and Steve

The finished product with grilled cheese.

Gazpacho Soup

2 sweet peppers

½ onion

½ cup of milk (or enough to cover the onion)

4 tomatoes

2 small cucumbers

3 garlic cloves

¼ – ½ cup olive oil

small handful of basil leaves

2 slices bread

2 tablespoons sherry vinegar (or more to taste)

Tabasco – to taste

salt & pepper – to taste

Roast and skin the peppers. Mince onion and soak in milk for about a half an hour. Peel tomato skins and rough chop. Peel cucumber and rough chop. Chop garlic into large pieces, add to sauté pan with olive oil and let sear for a few minutes, don’t brown, allow to cool. Tear the bread and soak in water for about half an hour.

Drain the milk from the onions, add onions to a blender. Squeeze the water from the bread and the bread to the blender. Add the tomatoes, cucumbers, chopped roasted peppers, basil, sherry vinegar, Tabasco, salt, pepper and olive oil to the blender. Puree until smooth. Chill in the fridge for 1-2 hours, or overnight, before serving.

Bourbon Peach Ice Cream

2 cups cream

2 cups whole milk

2 cinnamon sticks

6 egg yolks

1 cup sugar

pinch of salt

2 tablespoons reserved bourbon from peaches (or from the bottle)

½ – 1 cup chopped bourbon peaches (or fresh peaches)

Add the cream and milk to a medium saucepan with cinnamon sticks over medium heat to warm. Leave the milk on the back of the stove with the heat off for about 20-30 minutes. Reheat the milk and cream before continuing.

In a separate pan add the egg yolks, sugar and salt and whisk together. Slowly add the milk, about ¼ to ½ cup at a time to temper the egg yolks. After you have added about 2 cups milk pour the mixture back in the saucepan over medium low heat and cook until slightly thick. At this point you are making a light custard. You don’t want the custard to be too thick, nor do you want to scramble the eggs. Once the custard is made add the bourbon and allow to cool to room temperature. Refrigerate for 4-6 hours or overnight. Add to your ice cream maker and process for 25-30 minutes, or according to your ice cream machine. Add the chopped bourbon peaches to the ice cream in the last 5 minutes.

Freezer for another two hours and enjoy on a hot summer day, or a cold winter one (like most July days in San Francisco).

Bourbon Peaches

We preserved some peaches in Bulliett bourbon by skinning, removing the pit, and cutting the peaches in half. Pouring enough bourbon over the peaches to cover. You can add some ginger pieces to the jar, if you wish. Refrigerate overnight or up to two months. Use the bourbon in cocktails, desert, ice cream, etc.

They're rare so get them while you can!

We’re likely to make whisky dinners a habit after a recent event presented by Whiskies of the World and The City Club Whisky Society in San Francisco. City Club’s David Forsyth and WoW’s Douglas Smith hosted Ed Kohl of ImpEx Beverages who led the evening’s educational tasting of a magnificent selection of whiskies from the Ian Macleod Distillers’ Chieftain’s Range of single cask bottlings.

Now, you might be thinking to yourselves, “Whisky with dinner? That’s just crazy!” Believe us, whisky is a fantastic companion to many of your favorite foods. Pairing food and spirits takes some experience, but you already know that it works well with examples like tequila and carne asada or Grand Marnier and chocolate soufflé.

This was our favorite-and most rare-of the bunch.

So, here’s the setup: each course of the meal is paired with two different but complimentary Scotch whiskies, each selected for its unique flavor profile and likely affinity to the flavors of the food it accompanies. As the meal progresses, our whisky expert explains the whisky making process while describing the flavors of the whiskies in front of us on the table. Diners have a unique opportunity to experiment with pairings that would never have occurred to them (who thinks to serve whisky with fish?) while learning quite a lot about a spirit category many Americans are rediscovering.

The City Club’s very own Chef Michael Munoz, formerly of Moose’s Restaurant in North Beach, put out a fantastic meal that began with a taste of pepper seared beef tenderloin, roasted peppers and blue cheese cream on toasted crostini. Our whisky experts from ImpEx paired the hors d’oeuvres with two fantastic drams – the first, an 8 year old Isle of Skye blended malt with its mellow smokiness, was the perfect start to the evening’s tasting; the second, a 31 year old bottling of Speyside malt Allt a’ Bhainne, was a spicy, warm and woody counterpoint to the rich flavors of the beef and blue cheese.

Beautiful and delicious scallop with duck hash.

The pan seared Maine Diver Scallop dish that kicked off the sit down meal impressed us. Chef Munoz plated these beautiful scallops with Muscovy Duck Sausage Hash, Rocket greens and a delicate sauce béarnaise. The accompanying whiskies, an 18 year old Glen Moray from Speyside and a 25 year old Port Ellen from Islay were gorgeous on their own. The exquisite Port Ellen was jaw droppingly delicious and oh so fine! The Glen Moray was full of fruit and sweet oaky spice that lingered for a very long time. Both complimented the scallop and duck perfectly.

Venison, the other red meat.

Our venison consumption has been limited to the wild variety – mule deer, elk and antelope from Idaho and Wyoming – so we were curious to taste Chef’s Denver Leg of Venison, which he plated with herbed spaetzle, a puree of English peas, an heirloom tomato sauce and black truffle jus. We were impressed by the kitchen’s expert touch with the venison, served nice and rare. Venison is naturally lean relative to beef and as such doesn’t hold up well to overcooking. Wild venison cooked well turns into shoe leather and once “ruined” must be cooked for a very long time to get it back to a point where it is chewable. This dish was delicate and perfectly tender! We loved the spaetzle, a treat we’ve prepared at home with good success but something we don’t eat often enough. If there was a disappointment in the dish, it had to be the pea puree. It wasn’t a bad idea, but it didn’t do anything for the venison and one of us thought it tasted as though the peas were old. We both agreed that while some preparations of greens might pair well with whisky, this pea puree did not. The flavor of the tomato sauce was barely perceptible. The course was paired with a 16 year old Linkwood, a Speyside malt of excellent character with sweet smoke and spicy cedar notes that worked beautifully with the venison. We also tasted a 14 year old Glenrothes that has been finished in a Burgundy cask (also from Speyside). We love Glenrothes whisky, and this one was fine, but the Burgundy finish was distracting and, for a few dinner guests we spoke to, confusing. They wanted wine with their venison and the Glenrothes disappointed because the wine finish is, of course, very subtle.

You can never go wrong with Chocolate and Whisky.

The evening meal ended with a dark chocolate pot de crème and chocolate dipped hazelnut short bread. The pot de crème was interesting – very buttery and dense. We thought it was delicious. The hazelnut short bread was awesome! Unlike many shortbreads, this one was crisp not sandy. We wanted a plate of them. Desert paired nicely with an 11 year old Madeira finished Dalmore that we thought to be perfectly sweet and creamy with just hint of chocolate and smoke. It’s a warm, sunny malt from the Scottish Highlands that works nicely with the added richness of the Madeira.

Our compliments to the Chef and the whisky makers! You’ve inspired us to think more broadly about food and beverage pairings. To those of you who are still scratching your heads, we say let go of your inhibitions and give it a try. How bad can a great steak paired with a great glass of Scotch taste? We think you’ll love them together.