So it never seems like much of a feat when I cook for five or ten or twenty in my tiny San Francisco apartment. It feels normal, even preferable to one of those weirdly spacious kitchens with a dishwasher or, godforbid, adequate counter space. Cooking with friends like Sonya is a symphony, but not honeyed Debussy, more twangy, abrupt Elliott Carter, full of bumps and starts. Messy, like love, like friendship, like anything worthwhile and good. 
Growing up, we celebrated holidays in my grandmother's apartment, which was parked above the red brick grocery store she and my grandfather, a butcher, built in the 1940's. My grandmother was a lousy cook, but not for lack of trying. Until she died, she brought my uncle a buttered hard roll wrapped in wax paper each morning. Her workaday specialities were paste-like oatmeal and chili made with old beef pushed through a hand-cranked grinder that clipped on to the kitchen table.
For holidays, she turned up the heat, roasting gigantic turkeys or dozens of cabbage-wrapped golumpki in the oven. As seemed to be the habit with her generation, she baked everything slow and low. Ever smelled cabbage baking for four hours in a 200 degree oven? Don't.
But the greatest marvel was that she turned so much food out of her little apartment kitchen. We lived in Connecticut, where nearly everyone we knew lived in a house. An apartment was an anomaly, as was a small kitchen. Many Italian families in our town had two kitchens: one on the main floor and one in the basement.
My grandmother was the oldest daughter of a large farming family. I called my sister to double-check the number of our great-aunts and uncles, but neither of us could remember: Tadeuz, Stanislaw, Piotr, Helka--and who was that guy who lived in the attic? Alfred? Albert? A-something. Adolf!
On holidays she cooked for her children and grandchildren as well as her siblings and their children. We lit candles set into painted metal wreaths and woke up early to roll out sweet potato dough.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
The Pleasures of a Small Kitchen
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Persimmon Jam with Sonya
The sugar she bought was Rapunzel Organic Whole Cane, which imparted a dark brown color and molasses-like flavor. I read in other recipes that the persimmon's delicate flavor didn't hold up well to cooking, which was certainly the case here, though I'm not sure if it was the fault of the assertive sugar. Fallin back on that ass, with a hellafied gangsta lean
Now a caveat: when I said in that last post that San Francisco pulled into its orbit good cooks and good eaters, and that my friends were both, one exception came to mind, and that is my very exceptional friend Sonya, with whom I cooked tonight.
Sonya is my closest friend here, and one of the dearest people I know. She is not, however, a foodie, which is one of her many charms.
Some time after we met, but before I learned that she cooked infrequently and detested sweet food, I assigned her to provide the dessert portion of a meal we were cooking at my old apartment on Liberty.
She showed up with a paper bag stuffed with two or three cartons of milk from McDonald's and a jug of Torani pumpkin syrup, the type Starbucks squirts into your latte 'round October. She scalded the milk on the stove, tipped in a bit of syrup, and served the hot, sweet milk in mugs. It was both totally insane and strikingly avant garde, a fast food version of Ferran Adria. Last week we met at a bar where she brought her dinner: two sticks of jerky wrapped in a paper towel.
So it was a surprise when tonight Sonya asked to make persimmon jam for a Montana-bound relative. She bought about eight persimmons, both Fuyu and Hachiya, from the Ferry Plaza farmer's market(which locals know to visit Tuesday, not the turista-crazed Saturday version. I asked her to pick up some lemons, sugar and canning jars, which she found at Rainbow, the co-op grocery in our neighborhood.
Sonya gave me exactly the Christmas gift I most desired: chocolates decorated with the face of Cordozar Calvin Broadus, Jr, known to the world as Snoop Dogg, formerly of Death Row records, currently a high school football coach, and always in my heart the man who delivered the best-ever musical hat-tip to leafy greens on The Chronic:
Gettin funky on the mic like a old batch of collard greens
Persimmon Jam
8 persimmons (about 2 cups pulp)
1/2 c sugar (white! none of that hippie bs!)
1/2 lemon, squeezed
Peel, pit and chop persimmmons, then place in a nonreactive pan. Stir in sugar and lemon. Cook over medium heat for about 25 minutes. The mixture should boil and reduce by about 1/3. Bottle. 
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Mastering the Art of Fucking Up Your Cooking
All of my friends eat well, and most cook well. It makes sense: San Francisco is a city that pulls hedonists into its orbit. Last week I listened to a pick-up quartet play Brahms at a bar in the Mission District. A man with a silver moustache tapped his sneakered foot and leaned close to inspect the sheet music between movements.
"Are you a musician?" I asked him.
"No," he said, "I love beauty." That's how I feel about food.
So when I happen across someone who doesn't enjoy cooking, I am in disbelief. Andres, my roommate in Boston, boiled spaghetti to death each Sunday afternoon at our walk-up in the North End, spooning the limp noodles into a giant tupperware container he'd parcel out for each workaday lunch and dinner.
Obviously I cook because I like to eat. But also I cook because I like to experiment. I cook because I like to make a mess. I cook because I like to fail.
Failure isn't an acceptable option in many realms of life. It's unsafe and shunned. Who wants to fail at raising a kid or on a project at work?
Failure makes you learn, sure. But failure also makes you laugh at yourself. Failure makes you less of an asshole.
On the first night in my new apartment, I invited a few friends over for celebratory snacks and drinks. In the three hours between the movers leaving and the guests arriving, I baked green-frosted cupcakes and paved white bread with butter, cukes and truffle salt.
When you assume you'll have a 50% acceptance rate for a party with free food, you assume wrong. Everyone showed up and most brought friends, arriving directly after work and hoovering the limited supply of edibles before addressing the liquid portion of our meal. Reviewing the circle of drunk people sitting on the floor in my furniture-less living room, a dear friend ran to Safeway and returned with a canned ham and a microwaveable packet of fondue cheese. It was both hilarious and horrifying. Someone threw up in the sink. Someone was me.
I try new things always, but that spark of discovery sometimes burns into a full-on fire. Last week I roasted a chicken with a new recipe and set my pink vintage apron (yes, that one) on the stove for a minute while I ran to grab a lemon from the dining room table. In the minute gap, the apron hissed and curled like a Shrinky Dink tongue, with that same plasticky smell.
So here's my failure list: the apple butters from last year were dreadful; sometimes I buy food but then obsess over writing some story and let the fruit compost. If you wend down the trail of "I'll post the recipe tomorrow!" notes followed by silence, I was probably eating take-out noodles on the couch, wondering "How DOES George Saunders do it?" while the plums rot on the white counter. Also, I've heard from several sources that my marmalade's too sour (but that's how I like it).
Just today I melted some lovely pink rubber gloves accidentally left on the stove while I baked a marmalade tart. All the time I make messes, experiment, fail and learn. But that, also, is how I like it.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Fall Not In New England
Admit it. You read "Connecticut" and thought: mansions, autumn, an image of the society perhaps drawn from a 1940's film starring America's favorite crooner, Bing Crosby.
When I tell people, especially out here in California where few of my brethren live, I can see those exact images pop into their heads. Being from there is funny, because when I think Connecticut, I think:
New Haven-style pizza, especially Frank Pepe's exceptional pie, and the colorful Sicilian community in my hometown, where I actually went to junior high with a kid named "Sebby Italia." And in some ancient lizard part of my brain, there's still that imprint of autumn in New England, despite my distinct memories of clogged sewers and slippery roads.
So San Francisco autumn is, frankly, a disappointment. Fall is less a season than a bellwether of winter, when rain charges across the Golden Gate and spreads across the sky in a suffocating gray pillow that soaks us from December through April.
One recent year--was it 2007 or 2006?--it rained every single day in March. You try: you buy knee-high rubber boots in pink, think of finding a sturdy parasol when next in London, book a weekend in Mexico as a last gasp.
In October you see the faces of people on the street, and you think: it's coming. You do not think of leaves, harvest pies, that hollow weight and prickly smell of pumpkins in a field. But you know what we've got on you, New England? This:
It is still 70 degrees, warm enough to wear only a scarf to the market at 7 a.m. Autumn fruits and vegetables are fantastic: fresh almonds, weird squashes, misty cardoons. We never had to invent something so morally repulsive (and secretly delicious) as gelatinous canned cranberry sauce.
This time around: persimmons. If you've seen them before, you may be more familiar with the squat, pumpkin-shaped fuyu variety. When ripe, the hachiya melts into a custardy texture that seems interesting to cook.
We'll see when they ripen later this week...
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Food, Folks, Funds.
Last week was my birthday. In San Francisco, it's typical to pile into a restaurant with 12 of your closest friends, and last year that's what I did. We wore funny glasses, ate too much, and drank. And drank. And drank.
Way too much.
I really nail the disapproving glare when I'm stone sober or incredibly drunk. What can I say: it's part of the genetic hope chest gifted by my Puritan Yankee ancestors.
Think you'd toss back vodka sodas in front of that guy? Think again.
To the matter at hand: this year I wasn't feeling the party circuit, in part because I wanted all of my friends to join in, not just the ones who could afford to commit to a $60 share of the tab. What with this depression we've got on, about half of us are unemployed or struggling.
Instead I cooked for them.
What's that? Huh? Oh. Yes. That is a pile of bacon on a paper plate. We're not in grilled squirrel territory yet. I turned my head, and like a puff of smoke the bacon was gone. I love my friends.
The sweet tomato jam, developed from this New York Times recipe, went well with a zucchini frittata; next time I'd add some bitter greens as well. On its own, the jam seemed a bit too saccharine, but paired against vegetal sharpness, the flavor peaks and mellows. Fig and strawberry-rhubarb jam I set out to serve with biscuits, but in the rush to fry chicken and semi-clean my dusty apartment, they also evaporated in a puff of smoke, but one that set off the fire alarm.
Luckily my friend Marco brought some raspberry muffins and homemade butter. Because of course if you were going to a brunch at noon on a Saturday, you'd wake up early to start churning your own butter. Right? The wheaty muffins were delicious with strawberry jam.
So there it is. The ideal birthday brunch. I'm off now for a trip to Laos and Vietnam. Maybe I can smuggle some pandan leaves back with me to finally make coconut-pandan jam?
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Tomato Jam in the New Apartment
Cooking, for me, is a function of mood. I can cook when I'm busy or bored, when I'm tinkering with a story or desire to follow instructions slavishly and eschew thinking altogether. Fever-addled, I once mixed up homemade marshmallows at 4 a.m.; at 20 I nervously roasted a shank of pork to impress my boyfriend's aunt, a Jew, who proved more gracious than I was cultured.
However, I can not cook when I'm unhappy. When I stopped cooking in my last apartment in a sad neighborhood in outer Mission, and would neither invite friends to a meal nor cook for myself, it was clear I needed to find a home that felt more like home.
But now I'm in a new apartment I love. And I'm cooking. And I went to Slow Food Nation.
On a sunny Saturday in front of San Francisco's City Hall, I had the best biscuits I have ever tasted--ever--and tried to shake the recipe out of Scott Peacock, but he was busy turning out a new batch. Curses! Guess I'll have to buy the book.
I decided to check out the scene at the Ferry Building market, where the wait for a Blue Bottle cappuccino looked to be about an hour long. I bought gorgeous Early Girl tomatoes at Everything Under the Sun (which specializes in sun-dried products).
Today I'm cooking a batch of tomato jam, which I've never made or eaten. Recipe to come...
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
More True = Less Funny.
Marco is becoming (deservedly) famous for his work on Cook Here and Now. And I'm one of the lucky few who will climb aboard his coattails all the way to the top of the San Francisco food chain.
Soon the doorman at Gary Danko will call in my drink order when he sees me slide out of a cab! Alice Waters will ring me for advice!
Well...not quite. But it's nice to see my friend reap the rewards of a project in which he's invested so much of his time.
At this weekend's food-fest, a magazine photographer will shoot the event, focusing in on a couple of participants who were asked to submit recipes that may be featured in the magazine.
I'm one of those people, so I've cooked my way through double blackberry pie (rejected because it had too many blackberries), pashka with lime marmalade (rejected because it was too complex), and finally a lime pie with a layer of blackberry jam.
I made three iterations, with the same crumb crust and blackberry jam layer: one chilled pie with whipped cream folded into lime juice and condensed milk; another souffle-like baked version with egg involvement; and a third that's a take-off of Shaker lemon pie, which uses the citrus peel.
"This looks like Slimer from Ghostbusters," I said, pouring the whisked eggs over the pale green peels.
"Your face looks like Slimer from Ghostbusters," my roommate said, which was not true, but funny.
And I was like: "Your grandma's face looks like Slimer from Ghostbusters," but I realized her grandma died and was buried last week. Sometimes things that are more true are less funny.
Tonight we're feasting on the three contenders. Each roommate gets a vote and they take the responsibility seriously.
Who will win? Who will be the next American pie-dol?