Virginia Woolf said, "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." After five years of shared kitchens, I'm finally back in my own space. One hundred and seventeen square feet of butter-tiled, oak floored hearth on Lexington Street, in San Francisco's Mission district. A Wedgewood stove, eleven Le Creuset pots, a Meyer lemon tree, and the pleasure of breaking my own dishes.
This weekend, May 30-31, 2009, I'll be at my 4th Maker Faire, with a booth all of my own. I'll be testing out Kitchen Talk, a concept where I answer food questions. Here's how I described it:
As part of the Homegrown / FarmAid project, Rachel offers a know-it-all / reference librarian/ Car Talk style booth to answer any kitchen question participants raise. From marmalade to deglazing, from canning to grinding your own flour, this unabashed food nerd will answer all your DIY food questions and solve your "my yogurt tasted too sour" problems.
From knowledge gained from Top 10 restaurant kitchens, 30 feet of cookbooks, countless hours in the kitchen section of thrift stores, running the composting program at Burning Man, and getting fired from two bakeries, Rachel brings her DIY ethic to food.
No burning kitchen questions coming to mind? Ask about the most environmentally reasonable way to drink beer. Or how to whip up ceviche from scratch when you're stranded on a desert island. Or where to find fresh Montmorency cherries.
And I wrote up a new bio:
Rachel Weidinger loves saving the world, binder clips, canning jars, the ocean, and her tiny home in San Francisco. I am a marketing generalist with a fondness for the internet--especially social media. I have worked with nonprofits and social enterprises since 1998. When not writing or covering the walls with post-its, you can usually find me in my kitchen making marmalade or pies. My bookshelf has been sorted by color since 1999 and I read voraciously, no matter the hue of the spine. I am a partner in Stowe Boyd's /Ground project, on localism as a global movement.
Come visit me. I'll be demoing Third Date Eggs Saturday and Sunday at 11am, Apricots in Heavy Syrup Saturday at noon, and Preserved Meyer Lemons (and Naya's Eggs) Sunday at noon. Otherwise you can find me at the Kitchen Talk booth.
One spring, I will host a dinner deep in the forest.
A dozen guests, formal attire, candles, white table cloth, old silverware. I'll serve wild boar and venison, fiddleheads and ramps, piles of buttery mushrooms. Our shoes will get muddy. It's possible that we'll sleep in the bushes.
Recipe: 1.75 litres of Cazadores Gold 3.5 cups of Grand Marnier 2 quarts backyard Meyer lemon juice (about 30 pounds of lemons) 10lb ice.
Plus: 4 dozen half pint Mason jars in original boxes One rolling suitcase, the sort that is the max size for fitting in an overhead bin 40 cocktail napkins
For Garnish: One lemon 2 shallow lidded containers of rim stuff (one 1/2 c salt, pther 1/2 c sugar with 1 tsp fresh thyme mixed in).
Instructions: Mix liquids in Meyer lemon margarita cocktail recipe from above link.
Fill half pint 42 jars completely with ice. (Reserve remaining 6 jars, and bring with you. Pour margaritas into jars and screw on the lids.
Stack boxes of margaritas in suitcase with those 6 extra empty jars, one lemon, and 2 shallow lidded containers (one 1/2 c salt, other 1/2 c sugar with 1 tsp fresh thyme mixed in).
Throw suitcase in Zipcar, drive across town reeking of tequila, return Zipcar to lot by hotel, dash two blocks to hotel, scoop up 40 #09ntc peeps, shepherd them and the very heavy suitcase to Powell BART. Arrive at 16th St BART, brief Taco Safarists that we might get busted by cops, and head to street corner.
Pass out 6 empty jars rimmed with fresh lemon, and give those people instructions to dip jar in either salt or sugar, pour in freshly shaken ice margarita, and pass on now empty jar to new person with salt/sugar/pass on instructions.
Handkerchief pasta with fiddlehead ferns, morels and ramps (x2)
Panna cotta from @davidlebowitz
Lucca ravioli and meat sauce
Standing lamb rib roast and lamb shoulder with lavender salt over baby savoy, baby artichokes and baby carrots
Ricotta cheesecake with red walnut and matzoh meal crust and candied blood oranges
Stewed strawberries and rhubarb with matzoh strudel
3 batches @davidlebowitz Amaretti with varying ratios of apricot kernels:almonds
Flaming Cyanide Ice Balls (for the Flaming Dessert-Off, with Erin) Home canned Blendheim apricots, brandy, amaretti, and Erin's Meyer lemon ice cream and sorbet.
French breakfast radishes with sardine butter
I think spring is here. Report on amaretti findings to follow.
‘If you are careful,’ Garp wrote, ‘if you use good ingredients, and you don’t take any shortcuts, then you can usually cook something very good. Sometimes it is the only worthwhile product you can salvage from a day; what you make to eat. With writing, I find, you can have all the right ingredients, give plenty of time and care, and still get nothing. Also true of love. Cooking, therefore, can keep a person who tries hard sane.’
This is my humble blog about a much beloved kitchen. If you're looking for more about how I rock nonprofit technology you might prefer:
Common Knowledge - The online agency for nonprofits I work at when I'm not making dinner. Sign up to stay in the loop on our webinar series, which I host.
/Ground - A project I'm involved with that keeps tabs on localism as a global movement.
If you made it to this blog it'll be abundantly clear that the way to my heart is indeed my stomach. Want to meet me? Come out to a Net Tuesday SF (which I host) and we may scoop you up for a nonprofit geek dinner afterward!
I twitter personally at @rachelannyes (mostly about food, and often about saving the world) and @commonknow (all nonprofit tech, all the time.)
Looking forward to meeting you...if you want to talk nonprofit tech email me, or catch me on Twitter.
agenthandy Asks: what's good intro book/site 4 #slowfoodmvmt? some1 said they didn't want 2 go 2 Alemany due 2 not knowing if was "local" !!!View Tweet
More on why I'm putting this in the dot com implosion pile. I think this is still a big ripple of the 1.0 bust. We'll see some more museums and cultural institutions fall in the next few years.
Last night on a whim a bought a Rosca de Reyes from Bakery la Mejor. No sign of baby Jesus yet. I'll update as tiny-things-baked-into-this-sweet-yeast-bread-ring developments emerge.
Am considering a cookie recipe printed in today's Chronicle food section which involves dipping baked cookies in chocolate melted with 1/2 T of shortening both to help the chocolate set and to prevent it from melting. Because of that, I presume that they don't mean butter. If you were employing this method, what shortening would you use?
My response: I would omit that addition because it is silly, and follow some other instructions for--instead--tempering chocolate. There are more and less simple ways to temper chocolate, depending on your level of patience. Tempered chocolate sets well, doesn't bloom (the whitish surfacing of coco butter), and is the proper thing to do with dipped things you want to be pretty. Adding shortening or butter would mess up the balance the chocolate maker has already established in cocoa/fat/sugar. In Ohio, people add paraffin wax to the chocolate that buckeye candies are dipped in. This is beyond silly and--rather than eating wax--Ohioans should learn to temper chocolate.
My crew has a Thanksgiving wiki. Here is what I contributed to the menu, a contribution I have edited eight times to date.
Rachel (Thanksgiving menu philosophy: We likely all have sentimental dishes. Bring that dish. I am apparently extra sentimental. Don't cook? Ask and we'll make it.)
Six Pies: Montmorency cherry pie, Walnut pie, Sweet potato pie, Shaker Lemon pie, Pumpkin pie, Ollalieberry pie
Four Sides: Farro with porcinis, Homemade applesauce, Roasted butternut squash with sage, Broccoli Gratin
One Bread: Parker House Rolls with Cranberry Butter from the NYT
Here's my version of the Elizabeth Pruett's original Tartine recipe: 1 1/4 C. milk (Elizabeth specifies nonfat, but with that much butter, who cares!) 10 Tbsp. unsalted butter Coarse salt 1 C. flour 6 eggs 3/4 cup Gruyere cheese cut in 1/1" cubes, plus more for garnish Some freshly ground black pepper Some fresh thyme
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper; set aside. Place milk, butter, and 1 teaspoon salt in a saucepan over medium heat. Cook until butter has melted and mixture comes to a boil. Add flour; stir constantly until mixture is incorporated, about 3 minutes. You'll likely need to switch from a whisk to a wooden spoon during this process. Add 5 eggs, one at a time, making sure each is fully incorporated with a wooden spoon before adding the next. Mixture will be thick, smooth, and shiny. Stir in cheese, pepper, and thyme.
Using two table spoons, form rounds about 1 1/2 inches wide on prepared baking sheet, spacing each about 1 1/2 inches apart. In a small bowl, whisk together remaining egg and pinch of salt. Brush each pastry round with egg mixture and sprinkle with cheese.
Transfer baking sheet to oven and bake until puffed, golden brown, and light for their size, 15 to 25 minutes. Remove pastries from oven. Serve hot, warm, or at room temperature. and with lots of well chilled champagne. Preferably to a house full of people whilst wearing a party dress.
I spent hours carefully stitching the outline of a fig leaf into a beautiful piece of linen, intending to stitch it up into a skirt. It would be more than a year before my sewing machine made the trek west, and the project still lays idle.
My fascination with the shape (and scent) of fig leaves remains. A month ago I stole fig leaves from a tree on First Street in Napa to wrap tender bits of halibut in, and steam. I served these in the starry dark of Naya's Napa backyard for Eileen's birthday.
Despite working in a natural foods superstore and a thoughtful food co-op, I really hadn't sorted out chocolate until I moved to Napa. When I was 14 I spent a month is the USSR, shooting guns at the high school's rifle range in the basement, eating yeasty sweet cheese buns in the cafeteria, vaguely teaching English, eating ice cream in the snow in November, and meting dark chocolate in at spoon carefully held in the tension of a cup of hot black tea. Soviet chocolate had none of the grim waxiness of Hersheys, and I was smitten. Erin and I still love this chocolate trick, 19 years later.
There was breifly good bread in Columbus, Ohio, but the only good bakery had been shuttered in a flurry of financial disasters for several years before I moved to Napa.
So that summer, I lived in a perfect storm of the start-up stress of Copia, Acme sourdough baguettes and Scharffenberger chocolate. In this storm, I acquired one of my favorite sandwiches. Naya seemed to discover this same sandwich in the basement of Ritual.
Last night, when I met a friend for drinks at Range I was fully prepared to order my usual Junipero gin martini -up-with-grapefruit-twist. Yay for well stocked bars. I'd been thinking about it this twist for hours, how the whiff of citrus oil floats across the first sip.
The Range bartenders are amazing, and their specials menu is always worth a gander. You should never, ever go there though. You'll take up all the seats at my 'private' bar and I'll be sad. My fantasy martini never had a chance, as the special menu listed a Sungold Zinger. Perhaps you're not aware that it's Yellow Tomato Week at Rachel. I watched the bartender make them all night, enchanted. I also drank a glass of rosato, a bourbon-based Bit-O-Honey, some bitters, and a glass of champagne. I should have just drank four more Sungold Zingers.
Please make these at home and don't crowd up my neighborhood bar. Thanks.
Sungold Zinger 3-4 Sungold cherry tomatoes Pinch of sea salt 2 tsp agave surup 2 oz 209 gin Ice
In a shaker, muddle tomatoes with sea salt. Add agave syrup, gin, and enough ice to fill the shaker. Shake like crazy. Strain through a fine strainer into a martin glass and garnish with a Sungold.
Last night I was challenged with a kitchen full of Alemany farmers market and Farm Fresh to You peppers and tomatoes, but not wanting any of the usual things. I'm officially (after a zillion delicious variations) ratatouilled out. For now.
I also had three treasures: two cups of hand ground wheat flour from Eatwell Farms, four ears of sweet sweet corn and a pound of hand-hulled first-of-season fresh black eyed peas. I wanted chili, but it seemed too heavy for the sunny Mission day in San Francisco. What I had in mind was a brothy, fresh yellow chili and little savory sweetcorn pancakes.
Here is what I made...
Summertime Chili Saute until soft in a large soup pot: 2 Tbs olive oil 2 tbs salt 2 leeks, diced 3 stalks celery, diced
Cook separately: 2 cups black eyed peas (dry or fresh, cook according to instructions)
Add to the soup pot: 8 c water 4-5 medium yellow heirloom tomatoes, diced 3 ears sweet corn, cut off the cob 3 c mixed color sweet peppers, cut into thin strips
Bring to a boil, add the cooked beans and: 2 pints mixed variety cherry tomatoes, halved
Return to a boil, adjust seasonings and serve with assorted toppings: plain yogurt, guacamole, fresh cilantro, chipotle powder, grated cheese, pickled peppers and sweet corn pancakes (recipe follows.)
Sweetcorn Pancakes 1 cob sweet corn 2 Tbs butter
2 c whole wheat flour (hand ground is the most fun!) 2 c cornmeal 1 tsp salt 1 tsp baking powder
2 c whole milk 3 eggs
Cut the corn from the cob and saute in rather too much butter. The butter will be the oil in the batter. Mix the dry ingredients in a quart Mason jar. Beat the eggs in a bowl, beat in the milk. Add the sauteed corn and extra butter to the milk mix. Pour the wet into the dry in the Mason jar, add the lid and shake gently. Add milk as necessary to your ideal pancake batter thickness...I prefer extra thin ones and used a total of three cups of milk in this recipe.
Cook in a skillet in a bit of butter.
These are equally delicious with piles of fresh blueberries, slathered in maple syrup.
