(y)our food choices

Author Archives: (y)our food choices

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

Chocolate and cinnamon. One of many flavor combinations that go well together.

If there’s just one food we could eat every day, without turning into Chubby Hubbies, it would be ice cream. Ben and Jerry’s and Hagen daz are our two favorite grocery store brands. Locally, we love Bi-Rite Ice Creamery in the Mission, in San Francisco, but since it’s on the other side of the city and the lines are typically too long we don’t get to eat their ice cream as much as we would like to. So what are two guys like us to do? Make our own!

There is nothing more satisfying than making your own ice cream. You can substitute milk for cream if you want (sad); reduce the amount of eggs or add a few more for a richer version; and the flavors are limitless. A search in our pantry can change a simple chocolate ice cream into chocolate cinnamon ice cream, you can even add a pinch of cayenne pepper for a Southwest/Mexican flavor combination, or add fresh seasonal fruit at the end for a wonderful berry chocolate concoction.

With summer upon us in all it’s glory, it’s time to make our own. There is nothing wrong with going to the store and purchasing your favorite flavor, but spending a little time in your kitchen can change the boring vanilla into the vanilla rum raisin, yum! Try your own combination and don’t just limit your flavors to 31. There’s thousands upon thousands of combinations that still haven’t been discovered. Enjoy!

Chocolate Ice Cream

2 cups cream

2 cups whole milk

½ cup of unsweetened cocoa powder

6 egg yolks

1 cup sugar

pinch of salt

1 tsp. vanilla

Optional: 2 cinnamon sticks or ½ tablespoon cinnamon powder, or 1 star anise, or ¼-1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper, or a handful or two of fresh or frozen blueberries, chopped peaches, chopped strawberries, plums, bananas, etc., or anything else you can thing of that might go well with chocolate.

Add the cream and milk to a medium saucepan over medium heat. [If you are using cinnamon sticks, star anise, or any whole spices or herbs, add them to the milk and cream to infuse the flavor. Leave the milk on the back of the stove with the heat off for about 20-30 minutes. Strain before continuing.]

Add the ½ cup of cocoa to a small bowl and add ½ cup of the cream and whisk until smooth. Add the cocoa mixture into the milk, whisking until everything is smooth. In a separate bowl 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 vanilla 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.

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

Our dinner wines.

ForageSF’s underground dinners are a thing of legend in this town. After hearing about these things for several months, we finally landed seats at Friday’s iteration of the secretive sit-down feast. The nearly 5 hour, 8 course (9 if you count the amuse bouche) meal brought an eclectic mix of food enthusiasts together for an evening of locally foraged delicacies. And that’s the point. The genius behind ForageSF, Iso Rabins, is passionate about his “mission to connect Bay Area dwellers with the wild food that is all around them.” The foods presented to diners are “collected” from San Francisco Bay Area sources – wooded land, the ocean, public spaces. Most of the food is wild. The fruits come from local trees that haven’t been touched by pesticides. All of it harvested sustainably.

With low lighting, spare but tastefully set communal tables and the wines we brought with us, we sat down for a fascinating culinary romp through the season’s best. Our buddy Paul joined us on this, our first ForageSF dinner adventure. It was a delightful evening of good food and great friends!

The Menu

[Paired with a 2008 Bonterra Vineyards Chardonnay made from organic Mendocino grapes.]

Amuse Bouche. Toasted baguette with bay laurel butter.

We started with an amuse bouche of toasted slices of baguette that were generously doused with butter infused with locally picked bay laurel leaves. It was a simple, savory and oh so tasty beginning hinting of interesting fare to follow. The party of ladies sharing our table wasn’t as impressed as we were.

What followed was a redux of a ForageSF favorite–Stinging Nettle Soup. We loved it. The broth was savory and perfectly seasoned. Pureed nettles and crème fraiche were artfully drizzled over the base. From first taste to last spoonful, this soup was a winner. We understood why it continues to show up on the menu. It was a beautiful soup.

Nettle soup with crème fraiche.

Porcini-infused polenta came to the table next paired with in-season heirloom tomatoes and thin slices of porcinis. The flavor of porcini in the polenta was subtle and we thought the dish needed a little something more. Maybe some local crunchy sea salt sprinkled on top?

Yellow tail sashimi with tempura seabeans.

The yellow tail sashimi that came next was paired with tempura-fried sea beans from Bolinas (delicious) and wild nori picked off the rocks of Pescadero. Yellow tail is sinewy and the cubes of raw fish were chewy and unpleasant. Sashimi should be thinly sliced to be tender and not tough. The dressing needed to be bigger and bolder, but it was flavorless. The seaweed was fresh and seemed to delight people who like that sort of thing. Jason loved it. Me? Not so much (I’m not a big fan of seaweed). I thought this was the biggest “miss” of the evening, but could have been so much more if properly prepared.

[Paired with a 2008 Hamilton-Stevens Pinot Noir from the Russian River valley.]

Roasted marrow bone.

Roasted marrowbones were delicious paired with paper-thin fennel, fennel fronds and pickled sea beans and toast. Marrow is one of those things you either love or hate. These Marin Sun Farms marrowbones were awesome! I could have eaten them all night, but their extra rich profile would have done me in had I not moved on to the next course.

Fresh ricotta, foraged figs from Berkeley, fennel pollen, pea tendrils and fava beans – wow! The cheese was perfect as were the favas. This was one of the best dishes of the evening.

Fresh ricotta with fava beans and sliced fig.

The showstopper came next as our servers presented plates of risotto blackened with squid ink and topped with smoked cod, asparagus and wild morels. Seriously! This dish was rich and hearty. The risotto was perfectly al dente. The squid ink adds subtle briny flavor that paired perfectly with the smoky flakes of fish. Asparagus provided balance in what could have been an overly flavorful dish. The morels? Well, nobody says “no” to fresh wild morels.

Squid ink risotto with smoked cod, asparagus, and morrel mushrooms.

As the meal wound down, we were served a salad of mixed greens and roasted red and yellow beets and, you guessed it, more sea beans. This was the perfect palate cleanser after the hearty risotto. The vinaigrette was simple – a welcome companion to the delicious beets.

Our meal ended with a trio of foraged fruit sorbets – loquat, citrus and plum. They were paired with an unidentified green that tasted of licorice or maybe tarragon, and a ginger snap cookie. The sorbets were delicious and the perfect ending of a long rich meal.

A trio of sorbets. A little melting but still very good.

Our compliments to the cooks and the servers. The meal was intimate and memorable. Stay tuned for future wild meal stories. If you get the chance to indulge in one of these amazing community meals, we recommend you take it. We happily recommend the experience and promise to keep the locale a secret!