On Saturday, Bradford fussed at me for not taking and posting a picture of the saffron ice cream (w/ pistachios and cherries) that I made and served in cacao nib florentine bowls: "These sound like beautiful things; why aren't they on your blog!?" The saffron ice cream is long gone (and was so expensive to make that it will be a long time in coming again), but in an effort to fulfill my public's endless demands (I'm constantly overwhelmed by the sheer volume of comments posted on the blog...jk), here are some recent meals, none as beautiful as the ice cream with its unearthly color nestled in dark brown cookie bowls.
Memorial Day alfresco: grilled endive with sauce gribiche, pissala tart, and grilled shrimp and vegetables with pearl couscous
Another Salad Niçoise (with asparagus, which was very much in season, rather than the traditional green beans, which-- at that moment-- were expensive, flown in from CA, an unappetizing shade of green, and a tad bit shriveled). We eat this salad constantly.
Just last night: a very rustic Algerian pepper tart, lentil salad with zucchini and arugula, and cold soup of peas and mint. I neglected to get a photo of the strawberry shortcake we had for dessert....
6 comments:
Hi Ereck,
Ran into Brad on Saturday at the dyke march and he said he was so glad you were back to blogging. I concurred. I never comment (oh to write publicly) but I read every new post and the food pictures moved me to expose myself. see what I mean? xo,
Vince
I want an erk of my very own.
Are your recipes of your own devices, or do you have a cookbook, or series of cookbooks, where you draw these wonderful dishes from? If it's existing cookbooks, could you name them? And if they're not, please write a cookbook.
Mr. C.,
I’ve been learning to cook for about 12 years: I have tons of cookbooks that I flip through, and I’m always looking into new sources. I just discovered epicurious.com, which is helpful if you’re looking for a particular recipe or a recipe that features a particular ingredient. I also just started reading Nigella Lawson, and I would recommend her very highly. Some find her maddening because of sentences like the following, paraphrased from her minty pea soup recipe: “I cannot tell you how long this needs to be cooked.” Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything (like Debra Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone) is a great standard book, but—like epicurious.com—it’s most useful when you have an idea of what you’d like to make. Lawson, like Ina Garten, offers great, provocative models for imagining and executing a meal, a menu, etc.
The details regarding the pictured meals are as follows. Grilled endive with sauce gribiche is from The Chez Panisse Cafe Cookbook. The pissala tart is my own thing influenced by Ina Garten on The Barefoot Contessa and Carol Field’s Focaccia. The pastry dough is my savory version of Debra Madison's recipe for a sweet tart shell (found in Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone). I found the recipe for grilled shrimp and vegetables with pearl couscous in the June Gourmet. The Salad Niçoise is my own ever-evolving riff, influenced by Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything, Ina Garten, and my experience of the dish at various restaurants (esp. Café Claude and La Boulange at Fillmore, both in SF). The pepper tart is based on a recipe in Kitty Morse‘s The Vegetarian Table: North Africa (although I used Debra Madison’s pastry). The green lentil salad is my own perversion of recipes from the Morse book and Georgeanne Brennan’s The Food and Flavor of Haute Provence. The pea & mint soup is from Nigella Lawson’s Forever Summer.
Cheers.
I've eaten ereck's meals and can say with confidence that they're absolutely amazing. the food itself is fab...and the place settings and linens make it all even better.
And, what do you all think of Mollie Katzen? I've always understood her to be the real champ of the veggie crowd.
I don't want to speak poorly of Katzen because she was instrumental in my early cooking ventures. I suspect that I learned more than I know from her, and I suspect she will long be important to young/budding vegetarians. However, her books are notably absent from my current collection. Actually, all my Katzen books are back in Tennessee, where I sometimes use her recipe for Spanikopita when I'm home for the holidays. But in general, I think either a) I've outgrown Katzen or b) the casserole-likeness of her huge pot-luck-centric recipes and the air of 1970's health food that hangs stifflingly around her heavy concoctions is a tad outdated. Perhaps a little of both.
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