Eating Dirt

Paella!!!

Today was a really good day. It started with a successful drop off of my daughter at her first day of Kindergarten, followed by a chicken fried steak with hash browns and a bloody mary. My son had a cheeseburger topped with grape jelly. Then a little bit of back to school shopping, an episode of Sesame Street, an iced coffee at Blue Bottle's sunny Kiosk location and after picking up the Kindergartener, a madcap dash through the Castro to Bi-Rite for ice cream, where the salted caramel is absolutely fantastic.

Four new Kindergarteners accompanied me to the ice cream shop, plus four of their younger siblings, four additional parents and three strollers. We set off at a trot through the streets to Dolores Park, where the sun was warm, the grass green and small wiggly dogs numerous. The kids sat still long enough to devour their treat on a low window ledge adjacent to the creamery, and then it was time to go back. It must have been a combination of being sun blind and sugar drunk that made us think herding twelve people, eight of them under the age of six, along 18th street was a good idea, but I suppose its important to have adventures. There was trash to kick and flowers to eat, old people to giggle at and hundreds of front stoops to climb on. Mission High School was there to explore, and so many dank bars to peer into, each spilling its own individual beery stench out onto the sidewalk. There was at least one sex toy shop - "Mama, what's that?!!"..."I'm not sure dear, I think those are decorations" - and a multitude of hair salons, flower shops, cafes, possible medical marijuana clinics and other curiosities along the way.

By the time we arrived home it was after five, hours later than when I'd planned to start cooking dinner, which was to be a great grand paella to celebrate with. Actually, we were having paella because the CSA box delivered a brown paper sack of red peppers last week, a key ingredient that we don't have very often. I've been itching to make paella since last summer's Canal House Cooking featured a recipe cooked out in the backyard, in the biggest iron pot in the world, propped atop cinder blocks over a fire on the grass. As much as I would love to risk burning the neighborhood down, the fog at our house kept us inside and me at the stove. But not for very long, because paella is a remarkably quick dinner to make.

I had no idea, really, that the dish most restaurants ask for extra time to prepare is nearly as easy as boxed mac and cheese. Well, plus a little chopping and slicing here and there. From start to finish it took me forty-five minutes. Thats less time than it took my kids to finish watching their second episode of Sesame Street. If only there was something so wonderful and easy to be made from zucchini and tomatillos.

---

Paella (adapted from Canal House Cooking volume 1):

Serves 4-6

This is really infinitely adaptable, you can change the ingredients and the amounts you use, I think the real soul of the dish is the manner in which you cook it. This recipe makes enough for four people, but you can easily adapt it to feed more. You don't need to use all of the chicken, just as much as you'd like. Save the rest for stir-fry, and the bones to put in the crockpot overnight with a quartered onion, two celery sticks cut into 3 inch chunks and one carrot cut similarly. Fill the crockpot with water and let it cook on low overnight. In the morning,  strain the stock into freezer jars and put them in to freeze once they have cooled.

a chicken, cut into parts, skinned and chopped into 2-3 inch pieces, lightly salted

chorizo, a big link or two sliced into bite sized pieces

shrimp or mussels, as many as you want 4-6 per person is probably good

8 cups chicken stock

1/2 cup olive oil

1 onion, chopped

4 red peppers, seeds and membranes removed, sliced into long thin strips

1 clove garlic, chopped

rice (arborio works well, any is probably fine), 3 cup

half bunch parsley, chopped

1 teaspoon pimentón (smoked paprika)

salt

Find the biggest pot you have, preferably cast iron. Put it over medium-high heat on the stove and warm the olive oil. When it is hot (toss in a piece of onion to check, it will sizzle) add the chorizo and chicken pieces. When they are beginning to brown, add the onion and peppers. Let that cook until the onion softens, then add the garlic, parsley and rice. Give it a stir to mix everything together. If your stock is unsalted, add some salt to it (at least a Tablespoon) and the pimentón. Then add about 3/4 of the stock to the rice pot. stirring it a little, but not enough to disturb the bottom layer of rice. It should turn nice and crusty, eventually.

Drop the shellfish on top, then let the paella bubble for about half an hour, or until the rice is tender (that means the crunchiness of raw rice is completely gone). If it gets dry before the rice is tender, add a bit more stock. Once the rice is tender, turn off the heat and cover the pot with clean dish towels. Let it sit for 15 minutes, then serve and eat!

---

Hash Browns with Greens and Sausage

We spent the holiday in Sonoma, soaking up sun in the pool of the house our friends rented to escape summer in San Francisco.  What a great idea - while July third and morning of the fourth were warm and sunny here in the city, we returned to a chill wind and fog billowing down the street on the fifth. Yikes. I love our city, but really, the summer is just absurd.  That said, we harvested our best strawberry yet from the garden on friday - nearly as big as a toddler's fist, it was candy sweet and red all the way through, unlike most store bought strawberries that are white and tasty as a sponge on the inside.

Also in our "summer" garden, the new arugala is growing in and sunflowers are taking to their warm spot against the fence. We harvested plums last week - the yellow wild ones that are each about the size of a walnut. They are almost cloyingly sweet and great in cake. The favas are about done, the peas, as usual, have mildew. The giant pot holding sweet peas on the deck broke when the door banged it in the wind, and since then the flowers, unwatered, have wilted. I keep promising my son I'll replant them soon, but I fear they are doomed because of my lack of focus. The bean shoots are twining up the stakes of their teepees, asparagus stalks have grown tall and weedy and my seedlings are growing up and out of the cold frame. Maybe tomorrow I can get them in the ground, after we spend the day in the East Bay, escaping the fog.

On the way home from our trip I asked both my children about their favorite part of our weekend. We'd gathered with Sonoma's own on the town square to watch their parade Sunday morning and then reconvened that night for fireworks on a giant field of hay. We'd visited Sonoma's Traintown, discovered my daughter's love of ceviche at Maya on the town square and spent hours and hours in the backyard swimming pool, the two of them and their pals shrieking with delight as they jumped like cannonballs into the water and paddled endlessly in their La Petite Baleen tubes. After deliberating for quite a while, one busily picking his nose and the other staring vacantly out the window of the car, they replied.

"DragonWagon," said my three year old son, meaning the rickety tin roller coaster for kids he'd ridden at Traintown, similar to the rickety tin roller coaster for kids he'd ridden a few weeks back at the Giant's County Fair. I see on the web that we can even purchase our own used Dragon Wagon for the backyard, at only $75,000.00. Maybe next year, for his birthday.

And my daughter, who has recently turned a mature five years old, told me "candy. I liked eating candy". So there you go. The highlights of a trip filled with friends, quality family entertainment, summer activities and discussion about the birth of our nation are candy and a crappy roller coaster. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised.  

Tonight for dinner, in an attempt to get away from hot dogs and potato chips, we had sausage and fried potatoes. With a little side of sauteed kale and green beans, to round things out. A quick meal, probably not terribly healthy, but something to put on the table.

---

Hash Browns (adapted from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything):

four medium potatoes

olive oil

salt and pepper

The secret to these is that if you fry them up right and serve them immediately, they are delicious. If not, they are terrible. So, set the table, pour the milk and wine, serve the sausage and greens and call your family as soon as you've put the first ones on the griddle. If yours are anything like my family, they should take about ten minutes to assemble, and by then you will have some crispy hash browns ready to serve.

For starters, grate the potatoes in a Cuisineart, with the grating disk. If you don't have one, use a grater with the largest holes you can find. Toss the potatoes with about a half teaspoon of salt and an equal amount of pepper. In a very large flat bottom pan, or on a stovetop griddle, pour two teaspoons of olive oil and heat it over medium low heat until it shimmers. Drop smallish handfuls of potatoes onto the pan, smush them gently with a spatula, and turn the heat down a bit so that you only hear a little bit of sizzle. The potato shreds should slowly turn golden brown, if things happen faster and they start to smoke or turn black, turn the heat down. 

Keep checking the underside of the potatoes until they are crispy and golden brown, probably seven minutes or so, then flip them with a spatula and brown the other side. It will take a bit less time than the first side. Sprinkle a little more salt on top, then serve them when the bottom matches the top. Eat them right away - cold, greasy potatoes are not very good.

---

Sauteed Greens with Garlic and Chili:

The best greens for this are what our CSA calls "stir-fry mix". It is usually made up of small leaves of the heartier greens, like kale and collards. 

Fill a salad spinner with water, then go through the greens, pulling the leaves from their stems and putting them in the spinner. Discard the stems and any yellow or excessively wilted leaves. Swish them in the water, dump it and refill, swish again, then dump it and spin dry the greens. 

Peel and thinly slice a large clove of garlic. When that is done, heat about a Tablespoon of olive oil in a pot large enough to hold your greens. Toss in the garlic and stir it up, turning the heat down to low when the garlic starts to sizzle. When the garlic is turning a tiny bit golden (you don't want it to be brown or black), toss in the greens and stir them around. Add 1/4 teaspoon of salt and 1/4 teaspoon of chili flakes (for a standard bunch of greens), then let the greens sit until wilted, stirring occasionally. When they are cooked to your liking, turn the pot off.

If you have other veggies around that you'd like to eat up, like green beans, steam them for a few minutes and serve them with the greens.

---

A Bale of Straw and Some Sausage Salad

I finally figured out, after making a wrong turn on my way home from Berkeley last week, how to find Golden Gate Fields. This is where my friend Geoff, from the Edible School Yard, sent me to remedy my compost problems. My compost has been neglected for weeks now, growing slimy, stinky, and buggy, after running out of its only source of "browns" - a season's worth of dropped leaves from our ancient apple tree. 

"Can I just put newspaper in there?" I asked my friend. "What about cardboard? Paper towels?". 

But he just shook his head. "What you need is some straw". 

I feigned recognition when he told me how to find Golden Gate Fields, the only remaining horse racing track in the Bay Area now that Bay Meadows has been torn down to make way for condos, and figured I'd look it up on the Internet later. But magically, in just a few days, I stumbled on the track while driving further out of town when I really wanted to be driving further in to town. So I headed over for a visit. 

The woman at the front parking booth seemed relieved that all I wanted was straw and directed me to follow the road along the bay until I came to another parking booth. A man at that parking booth directed me to follow the grey pickup truck ahead as it continued to follow the road along the bay. "That's where he's going," the man told me. So I did. I followed it for nearly a mile, then right up to the water's edge, where the driver parked his truck, rolled down the window, lit up a smoke and peered quizzically over at me. 

"I'm looking for some straw," I told him, feeling very much like one of the three little pigs. 

"Go back over there," he drawled, politely removing the cigarette from his mouth. "You'll see it after you go through that gate".  He turned, gestured across a vast parking lot, then returned to contemplate the water. And I saw them - my fields of gold - shorn, baled and stacked on a flatbed, gleaming in the sun with the promise of a new day.

---

Sausage Salad (adapted from Yvonne Milham):

This is a recipe given to me by my friend Yvonne a couple years back, when we were both in the throes of living with two children under the age of two. Or something close to that. I pulled it from memory tonight after realizing we had some thawed sausage, new potatoes and lots of salad needing to be eaten. Sausage is one of those things that saves well in the freezer, if it is the packaged kind. I like Aidell's.

This recipe feeds two adults, you can double the sausage and potatoes to feed two additional children, and adjust the lettuce according to how much you think they will actually eat. I have one child who eats the greens and one who throws them on the floor, so I increase the lettuce by half. You can get away with not doubling the dressing, just add more olive oil if you use it all and the salad still seems dry. 

For the salad:

two precooked sausages

two large fingerling potatoes or medium waxy potatoes

eight loosely packed cups salad greens (I would call that about six handfuls)

1 Tablespoon olive oil

1/4 teaspoon salt

For the dressing:

2 Tablespoons olive oil

1 Tablespoon champagne vinegar

1 Tablespoon Dijon mustard

1 teaspoon honey

Preheat the oven to 450°. 

Slice the potatoes into 1/4 inch rounds, cut them in half if they seem to large. Put the potatoes, olive oil and salt in a large bowl and, using tongs, toss to coat them with the oil and salt. Then lay them in a single layer on a cookie sheet. Use two cookie sheets if there isn't enough room. Put them in the oven and set a timer for ten minutes. 

While the potatoes are roasting, slice the sausages into 1/4 inch rounds. When the timer rings, check the potatoes and if they are golden on top, remove the cookie sheet from the oven, flip the potatoes to their other side, add the sausage in a single layer, then put it all back in the oven and set a timer for five minutes. If the potatoes are not golden, set the timer for another five and check again.

Also while the potatoes are roasting, wash and dry the salad (spin it, then spread it in a single layer on a clean towel and roll it up. It can go into the fridge like this for an hour or so, but if it needs longer then transfer it into a lidded refrigerator dish with a single paper towel). Next combine the dressing ingredients in a small lidded jar. Screw on the lid tightly and shake it up until they are blended. 

When the potatoes are golden on the other side, remove the cookie sheet from the oven to cool for a few minutes. Put the salad greens in a large bowl, add the potatoes and sausage and toss with the dressing. Serve right away.

---