San Francisco « (y)our food choices™

“I Got Baked in San Francisco” – Mr. Holmes Bakehouse

Pastries occupy a special place in our relationship and in our hearts. When Jason and I first met, he was working at The Wild Flour Bakery in Ogden. We ate a lot of pastries in those early years (and I gained a little weight), thanks to the bakery’s leftovers.

Needless to say, we expect a lot from pastries. Our usual haunts – Tartine, Knead Patisserie and B. Patisserie – never disappoint. When we try a new spot, these are the standards against which all others are judged. Croissants in Paris? Sure, they’re OK, but we’ve never eaten one that compares to the perfection that is a Tartine croissant. Kuin Amman at Dominique Ansel in NYC? Yeah, they’re pretty good. We admit it. But we’re a little judge-y when it comes to these things and that means we’re reluctant to spend those precious calories gambling on an unknown (to us) baker.

Knowing we were likely too late to get our hands on the “croissant muffin” or “cruffin” at Mr. Holmes Bakehouse, we decided to check the bakery out anyway (cruffins come out at 9AM and sell out quickly). The bakery is a small, kitschy little spot in San Francisco’s Tenderloin that is wildly popular in spite of the crappy neighborhood that houses it. In this city, that means they offer something people want.

We tried the blueberry “Brioche Bomb” and a croissant. The brioche was soft and pillowy. Crunchy sugar crystals and a tasty crumb topping added nice texture. The blueberry filling was sweet, but not too sweet. Worth the visit.

We liked the croissant a lot. It had a nice dark crispy outer layer and lots of flavorful soft layers in a perfectly sized portion. It was far better than almost all of the croissants you’ll find in a grocery or a coffee shop. Worth returning for more.

If you’re going, be sure to line up early for the signature cruffin. When they’re gone, they’re gone.

Mr. Holmes Bakehouse
1042 Larkin Street (at Sutter St.)
San Francisco, CA 94109
They’re open daily from 7AM weekdays / 8AM weekends and close when they run out of goodies!

A bushel of cardoon at the farmers market.

We ventured out to the Ferry Building Farmers Market last month with visiting parents in tow to grab breakfast and browse the stands in search of something interesting to serve with brined pork, from our 4505 butchering class. We grabbed some asparagus from Zuckerman’s Farms (dad’s favorite spring veggie) and what has to be a too early to be real “heirloom” tomato (we’re suckers for a big, meaty tomato).

As we strolled through the stands, we saw a bucket brimming with big, wild-looking stalks of cardoon, a vegetable we’d seen at the market and on menus over the years but had never tried cooking at home. This Mediterranean thistle, and relative of the artichoke, was domesticated eons ago. It shows up in dishes throughout Mediterranean Europe, usually braised, often added to soups, sometimes deep fried. Enzymes in cardoon stamens provide a vegetable source of rennet used in cheese making in Portugal and Spain.

Cardoon’s flavor is subtle like artichoke-as you might expect. On its own, it isn’t terribly interesting. The vegetable provides a nice textural backdrop to some of our favorite flavors and textures – cheese, butter, cream, mayonnaise, garlic – but pungent herbs like rosemary, thyme and oregano would likely overwhelm its delicate flavor.

Cardoon stalk.

After scouring the web and our cookbooks for inspiration, I settled on a gratin of cardoon. A gratin is a simple, efficient choice for any number of veggies and, in this case, a good use of leftover sauce béchamel sitting in our fridge. I made due with a single stalk, but more would have been better. After removing the leaves and most of the largest stringy fibers from the outside of the stalk, I cut it into two-inch lengths and blanched the pieces in salted boiling water for about 10 minutes.

I could have sautéed them in butter or olive oil with a little garlic and red pepper flakes, but I wanted something richer. I set the pieces in a single layer on the bottom of a small baking dish then spooned the béchamel over the cardoons, sprinkled the sauce with a good helping of micro grated Grana Padano and freshly ground black pepper and then popped it into the toaster oven for about 20 minutes at 375 degrees.

The dish emerged with a beautiful golden brown crust. The cardoon pieces retained their texture and though they were perfectly tender on the fork, they were still pleasantly crunchy and toothsome. We may or may not look for them the next time we’re in the market, but we’re happy we finally gave this new old veggie a try. Next, soup!