Last night we finally tried Farina. It was very busy when we arrived at 8:30 PM without a reservation, but we were seated at the focaccia bar within twenty minutes. Luckily, we had stopped at Minimum (my new favorite bar) on the way there to have a glass of cava and cheese plate, so the wait wasn't painful.

The focaccia bar is awesome. There are lots of old marble blocks acting as counters and attractive young chefs make pasta and focaccia. We were there during the Festa del Pesto and I was very excited to try the pesto that Shaina has been raving about. Nate, however, was absolutely insistent that we try the ravioli filled with veal and sweetbreads, and I backed down.

The star of the night was something they called Focaccia di Recco, two thin layers of dough filled with Stracchino and baked until crispy. Oh Stracchino. When I lived in Italy, my host mom would often pull the aluminum foil wrapped package of Stracchino out of the fridge, and we would slather it on hard dusty rolls from the bakery downstairs. It's sour and smooth and a little astringent. A great snack cheese. Like Laughing Cow but less fake (maybe) and more complex.

My attention kept drifting away from the conversation and towards the enormous pasta roller three feet away. Then I was mesmerized by the girl chef rolling out dough for Focaccia. Nate said, at one point, "I hope someday we win the lottery so you can go to cooking school." See, this is why I love him.

I never get sick

Everyone at my office has had a cold for the past few weeks. I was feeling very smug with my clear airways until Friday, when they were no longer so clear. I got the cold. Not the horrible version that a few of my offcemates have had, but unpleasant enough. I have alligator scales on my cheeks from blowing my nose, I had to lay my head on the table during a massage instead of in the face donut thingy (which made my neck hurt), and I cannot smell. This last bit is really the most upsetting.

Not being able to smell is horrible. I cannot taste my food and wine, and I cannot smell my house or Nate. My day slides by without asserting itself. Somehow, I was in charge of food for the non-Valentine's dinner party on Saturday night. I think it turned out okay, but who am I to judge? I found myself making pronouncements on the wine, but who was I kidding?

However, I think I may have developed the perfect dinner for a cold, rainy night and a cold. Last night, I had rice and creamed kale with a sunnyside up egg on top. I may have it for lunch again. The richness of the egg is detectable without functioning scent receptors and the whole thing is salty and a little bitter. I feel like it's reasonably healthy, too (but I also thought the Greyhounds I was drinking yesterday during poker were good for my cold).

I am thankful for...

Capay farms!

Look at what I got delivered to my doorstep yesterday:

All organic and local (as long as you specify Capay only) and all for $29. I suppose that might seem like a lot, but it's all very fresh and tasty and I don't have to shop for it.

The leeks and chard are going into some soup for me tonight. I feel on the brink of a cold, but I hope to stave it off with this magic concoction.

Thanksgiving

Due to a last minute freakout on my part, Nate and I found ourselves sitting through 17 hours of traffic the day before Thanksgiving. I decided, last minute, that I absolutely could not be in the same country as my family and not see them on Thanksgiving. So we went, and listened to a very bad audiobook, and Nate was nice enough to drive most of the way.

I am so happy we did. Really, the only way I am able to live 1500 miles from my family is that I somehow manage to see them once every couple of months.

Above you see the beautiful turkey my Grama roasted in the oven. It was very good, as turkeys go (turkey is not my favorite fowl). We had all the other usual suspects. One thing that was missing from the table, that I sorely missed, was the sweet potato, bacon, Gruyere, and rosemary casserole. This recipe was adapted from a Martha Stewart twice baked potato thing-y many years ago, and we have loved it ever since. However, this year, Grama's friend brought the sweet potatoes. No bacon, no love, in my opinion.

My contribution was Grama's famous onion and mushroom casserole (weird how we switch jobs around here) - I believe this is adapted from an ancient Sunset magazine recipe. We made it with fresh onions this year, instead of frozen, and I thought it was an improvement. Here's how it goes:

Blanch a bag of pearl onions in boiling water for a minute. Once they are cool, slip them out of their skins. Saute the same amount of mushrooms in a chunk of butter until they are a bit browned.

Remove mushrooms to a casserole and combine with the onions.

Saute a spoonful of flour in the leftover fat and then slowly whisk in a cup of milk. Remove from the fire and whisk in a cup of grated Swiss cheese, along with a bit of oregano and parsley. Pour this into the casserole and fold in the veggies.

Top with buttered croûtons and pop in a 350 degree oven for about 25 minutes.

how i really plan my day

Chow has an interesting thread going about when people eat, what and why. My response is below:

weekdays: oatmeal with raisins around 9 am at work, occasionally a snack of cheese and crackers or fruit mid-morning, lunch of leftovers at my desk anytime between 11 and 2, snack of yogurt and raisins or crackers mid-afternoon, snack of popcorn or cheese and crackers (i like cheese and crackers, you see) at home around 6, dinner around 8, usually rice or pasta based with a glass of wine. on rare occasion, will have a cookie or a few spoonfuls of salted caramel (thank you, bi-rite) ice cream after dinner. i don't love sweets.

weekends: decaf coffee with milk and sugar whenever i wake up. eggs of some sort an hour or so afterwards. snack (popcorn, fruit, or chips) in the early afternoon or lunch depending on when i woke up. dinner out or take away, usually around 7/8.

i eat when hungry, out of necessity. i get very cranky, nauseous, and tired if i don't eat as soon as i am hungry. however, the food choices are usually purely for pleasure, although i like to use up the contents of my csa box for health reasons. hopefully those vegetable experiments turn out pleasurable as well.

Something to talk about

I've eaten two foods in the last two weeks that forced me to sign onto this blog. The first, french fries from Magnolia gastropub on Haight. The second, halibut and gazpacho from Cortez.

Magnolia is delightful. It's a real pub, not in the completely dark and wooden English sense, but in the Californian sense. There are big tables and wood pillars, but there are also lots of windows and light. The beer is great, even at 2 pm on a hungover Sunday. Actually, I'm not sure that the people who were actually hung over that Sunday (my twin brothers and their friend) would concur, as one of them didn't even have a beer. But my pale ale was refreshing and alcoholic enough to put a fun spin on the rest of the day.

So, the beer is good and the sandwiches are good. Really good, actually. Their Cubano has spinach on it, which may seem like heresy, but the house made (I assume, as they're too delicious to come from a market) pickles will quell any uprising. What is great at Magnolia, and I mean really great, are the fries. They are crispy, maybe double fried, maybe parboiled in advance of frying to dry them out a bit. And then tossed in parsley. They are officially the best fries I've had in my 27 years.

So, go to Magnolia, have a beer and some fries, and disfrute.

And then, when you're done with the pub atmosphere, head to Cortez for dinner. Cortez makes a regular appearance here, as it should in any diner's playlist. Cortez is consistently interesting, with well-crafted drinks and attentive service. Friday was no different, although our entrees were almost unforgivably late coming out of the kitchen. But then our server comp-ed us dessert and two glasses of Moscato, and all was forgotten.

On to the standouts. I had halibut with a beautiful crust, perched atop skinned cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, and croutons. And after the server set down my dish, he poured a moat of perfectly salty gazpacho around the fish. Honestly, I was a little concerned about the hot fish and cold soup and the potential tackiness of it all. But it was so good that it inspired me to make gazpacho this weekend. An inspiration I should have ignored (or at least I should have followed a recipe).

And then there was dessert. Pistachio crusted french toast with pancetta ice cream, washed down with Moscato d'Asti. The french toasts were more like nut crusted beignets and the bacon ice cream was all that it promised to be.

Thank you Cortez, for making me feel like a grown up.

Heaven.

Yogurt, lamb, and rice. Boring, you say? Pedestrian?

No, it's heaven.

This little piece of the sky can be found at Fattoush on Church and 26th St. An unassuming Middle Eastern restaurant, this place holds the recipe for my new favorite dish, Mansaf.

According to Wikipedia, Mansaf is the national dish of Jordan. I'm glad to hear this, as it definitely needs an official designation.

I'm not going to attempt to describe it, except to say that it tastes like three of my favorite things: cheese, rice, and butter. However, Mansaf is truly more that the sum of its parts. Try it and you'll see.

While you're there, have the cold meze platter, full of wonderful spreads and fresh falafel (not cold). The mango laban is good, like a thin lassi. And then order the crazy pink hairy dessert, for fun. It's actually quite delicious (if Nate is not around to make unfavorable comparisons to it).