As I sat at the completion of our meal the other night (we were in deep conversation about politics with our son in law, who is visiting with us), I noticed that my fork and spoon (both used to slurp up all the good juices in the bottom of the pasta bowl) were arranged as you see in the left photo above. And I realized that the arrangement of my utensils was one of those visible messages used throughout Europe. 

When you visit in Europe, there’s a kind of utensil code – it’s etiquette, really – when you dine out. Most likely it’s the same when you dine in as well.

• The etiquette message of the left bowl – the arrangement of the silverware indicates that I’m still eating. The fork and spoon are in the upright position, and set so I can grab them easily. The message – don’t touch my plate. 
• The etiquette message of the right bowl – the two utensils are aligned together on the right side and turned upside down. Meaning I’m finished and you may take my plate or bowl.

For those of you who live in some parts of the world this is probably nothing new at all, it’s common sense, since you use these codes all the time. You learned it from a young age. But we here in No. America haven’t learned these codes. Why, I wonder? Maybe it harkens back to the early Pioneers – they had no time or patience with the fripperies of fancy manners. I like the custom and wish we’d use it more often. I have lurkers (lurkers are people who read my blog, but never comment) from all over the world. Won’t you chime in and tell me about your silverware or utensil etiquette? Is it the same as I’ve explained when we’ve visited in Europe. Or are yours different still?

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Seared steak salad – with some goat cheese, tomatoes, and delicious roasted onions. Then there’s some chipotle mayo drizzled on top of the steak.

I never think to make a steak salad. It always seems to me that if I’m going to grill a nice steak, I really want to eat it straight away, its own chunk of beefy goodness. With maybe a veggie, or if I’m feeling particularly weak willed, some potatoes on the side.

But I had this ONE steak in the freezer. Lonely steak. Small steak, albeit a ribeye. What could I do with it, to extend it to feed two? I breezed through my recipes and came across this one that I hadn’t made in a couple of years. My recollection was that it was very good. And yes, it was.

Don’t get overwhelmed by the list of ingredients. It’s really not that involved, even though it may look like it. There’s a rub/marinade for the steak. There are onions that get marinated and baked in a blisteringly hot oven. There’s a salad, with an easy oil and balsamic dressing, the specific salad greens and the different decorations to go along with everything, AND there’s a very easy chipotle mayo that gets dribbled on the top. See, not so awfully hard, is it?

It does take a bit of time to assemble everything, I admit, but it is worth the effort.
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Warm lemon sponge pudding with a bit of heavy cream poured over.

Lemon sponge pudding hot out of the oven.

As probably with many of you, recipes come your way from so many different places. From people you’ve met along the paths of life (as in this case), or from a magazine at the doctor’s office, the grocery store even.

DH and I were fortunate to meet some very dear people, Rita and Roy, many years ago. They’re related to some friends of friends. You know how that goes. They’re from England, but come to the U.S. with some frequency to visit. DH and I were invited to their home in England (actually three different ones over the years) to stay, to use their home as a base for traveling in the area. They always made us so welcome, and we were very grateful for the hospitality.

One year, 1993 to be specific, my friend Cherrie and I decided to take a trip to England together. She’d never been, and since I had some experience driving on the left side of the road, we rented a car at Heathrow and set out on our journey. It’s through Cherrie that we knew Rita and Roy, and they’d kindly offered to let us stay in their home in Reading (pronounced like red-ing).

Every time I get behind the wheel in a right-hand drive car I have to familiarize myself with the mysteries of relearning some but not all of my driving motions. The gear shift is on the left, but the gas pedal is still on the right side. Most cars are stick shift in Europe. Not many people have taken to automatics, like we do here in the United States. That part was fine with me, but it does take a bit more concentration. The turn signal is still on the left side of the steering column, but you have to remember to look at the rear view mirror on the left (inside the car), and the outside mirror on the right. All very confusing. You do get used to it, but the first few days can be very frustrating.

When DH and I travel, he usually drives, and the first few days the passenger is responsible for navigation AND coaching the driver. As when approaching an intersection, reminding the driver to turn right, but keep in the left lane once you make the turn. Like “turn left ahead, but keep left.” Or when entering a roundabout, a reminder that we don’t have right of way. So Cherrie was my navigator and scout. She took on the role well through the whole trip. Only once did I come out of a parking lot where we’d been shopping, shopping, and I got into the right side of the road. Fortunately nobody was coming. She was johnny-on-the-spot to correct my error. We had a wonderful time on this trip, driving all over.

Rita’s sister Sandy lives here in the U.S., and Sandy had always told Cherrie that there wasn’t “anything” to buy in England. So Cherrie went on that trip with nary any space in her suitcase for anything to buy. I’m certain I told Cherrie that wasn’t true, but she trusted Sandy in this case. Hmmm. The second day in England we drove to Salisbury. We had fish and chips at a local stand-up bar. They were absolutely delicious. Since it had taken us a few hours to get to Salisbury, we couldn’t dilly dally, since I wasn’t anxious to drive back to Reading after dark. It was winter when we were there, so there were shorter daylight hours. But, I wanted Cherrie to see the Cathedral in Salisbury, which is so magnificent. She enjoys English history just like I do, so we found a carpark and headed off walking. There was a wide walking street from the carpark to the church, with solid stores left and right. We walked about 30 feet onto this walking street and passed a window of Boots, the well-known “chemist” (drug store) that is all over the United Kingdom. I paused at the window to look at some cute coffee mugs. Cherrie looked over and immediately was looking closely at the window display too. We went inside. Well, what can I tell you other than we never made it to the Cathedral. Cherrie laughed and roared. What in the world did [her friend] Sandy mean there wasn’t any shopping in England? The dollar was worth a whole lot more then, so exchanging dollars for pounds bought us more value than today. We bought things. We shopped. And we shopped some more.

As time went on, on this trip, Cherrie was filling up the boot (the trunk) of the car with her purchases. There were bags and bags in there. Because we were staying with friends, she hadn’t quite figured out what she would do with all this stuff. Eventually we headed off on our own, driving many directions, including to London too. Cherrie had to fit things in her suitcase. Oh, there was trouble in River City. She stuffed. She pried. She pushed and pulled. She found room for a lot of things. She tossed out some things too – some clothes that weren’t new, and some tour data, to make room for more of her purchases. As we approached the last few days of our trip Cherrie was still buying. She still kids me to this day about my remark, but I said to her, Cherrie, if that doesn’t fit in your purse, you can’t buy it. She bought a second small bag of some sort (a carry-on), which was mighty full when we got to Heathrow to fly home. But she managed. How, I don’t know, but she did. She was big-time motivated!

So, I need to get back to this wonderful pudding. This is Rita’s recipe. It was actually Cherrie’s and my second trip to England that Rita had this in the refrigerator waiting for us when we arrived. We got there late on that trip. She had a couple of plates of food saved for us too, which hit the spot. Then she pointed to the dessert and said help ourselves when we were ready. Cherrie and I were jet lagged and way off-schedule. Rita went off to bed and we had a couple cups of tea to calm down. Finally, we scooped out a serving and poured on some light cream (like half and half) on top. Oh yes, was it good. I’m a huge lemon fan anyway, so this hit the spot, as it has every time I’ve made it since.

If you’re not familiar with sponge pudding, it’s kind of a cross between lemon curd, lemon pudding, and a sponge cake. The preparation and baking process makes layers – a lemony pudding layer and a cake layer. So, you get two desserts in one. Thank you, Rita, for sharing the recipe.
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The stories that go along with recipes, those hand-me-down treasures from family members especially, lend a rich character to them. Their origin gives them special merit. Added credibility. A known quantity of deliciousness.

I don’t talk about my first marriage much (thank goodness, you really should be spared the details), but in the course of the years that she was alive, I got to know and love my former husband’s step-grandmother, Ethel. She was a dear little lady, and I have 3 or 4 recipes of hers acquired over the years. This is one (I also have one for avocado ice cream, and another for icebox almond cookies that I remember right off the top, neither of which I’ve posted yet) that must have been served to me one of the multitude of times I visited her home. She was a very good cook, and managed to prepare some amazing meals in her very small kitchen. She enjoyed entertaining, even though it was hard work for her as she aged. She lived to be in her 90’s, bless her. I hope she’s waving at me from heaven since I’m sharing her recipe for coffeecake.

For many years, even up until recently, I have made this on holiday mornings, like Christmas, or Easter, or the day after Thanksgiving. With a bowl of fresh fruit, and maybe some bacon or sausage, it makes a lovely breakfast or brunch.

Chocolate as an ingredient in coffeecake isn’t very common. At least I don’t think so. And this really isn’t chocolate-chocolate coffeecake. You might think the chocolate is in the entire coffeecake, and it’s not. It’s not overwhelming with chocolate, but is laced through in a kind of dry mix that is layered, then sprinkled on top. So, it’s a chocolate streusel-type coffeecake. It’s just a rich sour cream based cake. The only unusual ingredient there is cream of tartar. Not many recipes include it anymore. It used to be quite common, before double acting baking powder. So, that probably gives you an idea how old this recipe really is. Old.

So I did a bit of research about it cream of tartar. I’d forgotten what it is, exactly. Now I know:

Cream of tartar is a by-product of the wine industry. A crystalline acid forms on the inside of wine barrels. The barrels are scraped and the sediment is purified and ground to form cream of tartar. Cream of tartar is used to stabilize egg whites when making meringue or as an addition to certain frostings to produce a creamy product.

Why it’s in this recipe, I don’t know, but I’ve never wanted to bake the coffeecake without it merely to test it. There’s so much chemistry involved with baking that I don’t want to tamper with success. But be my guest, then let me know!

• Normally, when cream of tartar is used in a cookie, it is used together with baking soda. The two of them combined work like double-acting baking powder. When substituting for cream of tartar, you must also substitute for the baking soda. If your recipe calls for baking soda and cream of tarter, I would just use baking powder.
• One teaspoon baking powder is equivalent to 1/4 teaspoon baking soda plus 5/8 teaspoon cream of tartar. If there is additional baking soda that does not fit into the equation, simply add it to the batter.

Looks like you could substitute additional baking powder for the cream of tartar and baking soda called for, but since I had the cream of tartar, I stuck with the tried-and-true recipe when I made it this time.
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Some years ago a group of us spent a week in Tuscany, staying in a charming (read: old) villa in a tiny town of Bucine. Actually we stayed at this villa twice over the course of two years. In case you’re interested, click here to see the villa’s website. But this is the first trip I’m talking about today. The owners of the villa provided a delicious multi-course meal for us one night (they still do it now, but for a fee). It got us all talking about our favorite Italian food.  Carole talked about her fabulous chicken cacciatore, and agreed that when we returned home, we’d have a reunion with all of us and our photographs, and she’d prepare dinner for us.

It took us awhile to get a date for everybody, but we did, finally, meet at her home in West Los Angeles, and this is the dish she made. We slicked up our plates in short order, I’ll tell you. Inbetween drinking tall quaffs of chianti and telling stories. Laughing over some of our fun and funny adventures. Like the day we took the train to Florence, and made it on time to the last train back to our little village, with most of us having to help Carole with her bags and bags of purchases. Carole is a very successful real estate agent in Beverly Hills, and she dresses very well, so she thrives on buying all kinds of lovely things whenever she’s in Italy. Then there was the story about the huge antique chest Carole bought the day we spent in Siena. She spent nearly as much on the shipping as she did the antique itself (Well, not quite, but it makes for a good story, doesn’t it? It is lovely).

We had a grand time at our trip reunion. Carole happened to mention that the cacciatore recipe was Mario Batali’s, so it took just a bit of sleuthing on the internet to find it. About the only thing truly different about the preparation is the pancetta in this. (Remember, pancetta is unsmoked bacon.) This freezes well, and makes a nice presentation with some linguine or thin spaghetti to serve it on. The sauce is part of the greatness of this. And in this case, more is better. Don’t skimp on the ingredients for that part.
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Salad dressings. A mixed bag, for sure. If you’ve been reading my blog for awhile, you may know already that I’m very picky about salad dressings. There’s really only one bottled dressing I’ll buy (Brianna’s Blush Vinaigrette) and I use it only occasionally, when I’m simply too lazy to make a fresh dressing. I thoroughly enjoy green salads, and the dressing certainly adds to the enjoyment of them.

But I despair sometimes finding anything that’s lower in calorie. So, when I find something that IS delicious AND lower in fat and calories, I whoop for joy. This is one of those recipes. And you’ll note, there’s just a trace of fat in it. I like those nutritonal statistics.

I found it at egullet.com a year or so ago and put it aside to try. Ideally, you’ll want to make this when Navel oranges are in season (like now). I doubt it would be so good using Valencia oranges. And it isn’t a recipe you can whip up in 3-4 minutes because you have to remove the orange segments and finely mince the jalapeno chile, then cook the mixture before pureeing in a blender. But if you have a few minutes and would like to try something quite different, this is your ticket. The first time I used it I made a regular green salad (regular for me, that is, means the salad contained a variety of chopped fresh vegetables). I thought the dressing was lost in the mix, as the vegetables predominated. The next time I made a simple salad with only greens, and we both enjoyed it very much. The greens only allow the orange and jalapeno flavors to come through. It would likely be very good on a salad mixed with some fruit, like apple slices, maybe a few raisins even. Or dried cranberries.

I didn’t have honey blossom vinegar, so used seasoned rice wine vinegar instead.
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For many of you, who don’t reside in the U.S., the name Alice Waters may not hold much meaning. She’s been an icon of the foodie world for about 40 years, emanating from her ubiquitous restaurant, Chez Panisse, in Berkeley, California. 

Thomas McNamee has written a definitive biography of Alice Waters, and the history of the restaurant along with it, that gives interested readers a glimpse into the complete timeline and inner-workings of the famous restaurant and kitchen.

Alice Waters’ claim to fame, is her absolute dedication to using farm fresh (Slow Food) produce and products. She’s probably credited with bringing this movement to the U.S. long before anyone else was interested. After visiting France when she was newly graduated from college, and enjoying the fresh untainted bounty of the countryside, she and her then boyfriend, returned home to open a restaurant near her Alma Mater, University of California, Berkeley. Chez Panisse is literally about 10-15 blocks north of the campus, and has remained much the same as when it opened back in 1971. A 2-story stucco house, transformed into a very busy, very VERY busy restaurant. After reading the book, I’ll just say that it has morphed over the years, and Alice remains in some kind of role, still seeking out the “stage,” if you can call a restaurant as such.

Having eaten there twice, I’ll say that I enjoyed the food tremendously both times. But I didn’t realize the significant difference between eating upstairs vs. downstairs. Upstairs is the casual cafe, with a small, open kitchen, and an a la carte menu (where I’ve eaten both times). Downstairs is the more formal set menu dining room, where you eat what is placed in front of you. No choices except what wine you’d like to have (extra). The varied chefs (Jeremiah Towers, Mark Miller, and the current chef, Jean-Pierre Moulle) over the years, have made and remade the reputation, but with Alice’s touch, always. The notable chefs have ebbed and flowed. Some with fiery temperaments. Some who had to take a back seat to Alice’s name as chef, when in fact, she rarely cooks. Over the years she’s had to wield a frying pan many a night, but you learn that it’s not her strength. She’d rather be adding a sprig of chervil on the green beans, or glad-handing the guests in the dining room. She also had the wizardry of Lindsey Shere, certainly a well-known name now in pastry stardom. Alice gave Lindsey her own tiny shack on the property, little more than a lean-to, and it’s from there the famous Chez Panisse desserts emanated. Lindsey was given almost complete autonomy, as long as she abided by Alice’s desire for local and seasonal products, the freshest, etc.

The first time my DH and I had dinner there, Alice was present in the upstairs dining room. We actually sat in the next booth to where she’d joined a small family (Chez Panisse purveyors) who had come to the restaurant for the first time. Alice was making certain they were appreciated. And now having read the book, I’m certain Alice was spreading “the word,” her philosophy, about how the Slow Food movement was progressing and how important their contribution was.

What’s interesting is that over the 35+ years of its existence, Chez Panisse has only been making money for about the last 10. Alice has a vision, always, about everything in her life, but particularly the restaurant. Nothing could sway her from her goal of providing the very best, the most expensive, but the freshest seasonal ingredients. But her management style? She virtually has none. She always left and still leaves the supervision, guidance, firing, to underlings. She didn’t dirty her hands with the day to day management. She prides herself, however, on the feeling of “family” that exists to this day, amongst the staff. In the early years she accommodated everyone’s needs – for vacations, days off mostly whenever they said they needed it, breast feeding in between shifts in a back room, or loans when someone was in financial difficulty. Rather amazing in a way.

But the staff, for probably 30 of those years, took gross advantage of their positions. The waiters and waitresses comped food to lots of guests (their friends, or?), delivered wine to tables that never paid for it, which naturally, affected the bottom line every single night. And, it was commonplace that after a shift was over with, the staff would get roaring drunk (on highly expensive bottles of wine in the wine cellar, for which they didn’t pay), got high on drugs sometimes, and drinking on the job was almost encouraged. It took Alice’s father’s strong hand and arm some years ago to bring some kind of order to the chaos. And a modicum of profit to the books. There were many others who helped with this – not just her father – but for every step forward, she’d fall a half step back. However, she never faltered in her vision, and it would seem, she still maintains the vision.

It’s one thing to have an idea in your head about what you dream or see for a business. And it’s another to make it work and make it profitable. Alice has never seemed to have the guts to step up to the plate and make that happen. Making the restaurant profitable was not a goal for her. And part of that was laudable, actually, since she funded hefty profit sharing to the employees over the years, and always provided health care insurance for them when it was an unknown in the restaurant business.

According to the book, Alice is rarely in the restaurant anymore. She has finally left it (mostly) to the able hands of chefs and managers she’s finally recognized as good and reliable. Instead, she flits around the world promoting her myriad of sustainable food projects (including one at Yale University). Alice has a loyal following of friends, and because of her notoriety is sought out by more celebrities. She’s a particular fan of Bill Clinton. But Alice still lives in the tiny home near the restaurant (when she’s home), and drops in the restaurant to say hello to old friends and to taste a sauce.

It was an interesting read. More so because I’ve been to the restaurant more than once, and because I’ve known of Alice Waters since the 1980’s. Although I certainly gained an enormous respect for Alice Waters from reading the book, I’m left with a feeling of unfinished business somehow. How she managed to run a business all these years is beyond my ken. Really what happened is that it barely ran itself. It was close to bankruptcy several times. I guess I’m disappointed in Alice for that reason, that she couldn’t learn how to manage. Fortunately she has strong, talented help who now do know how to run a restaurant.

Where do I go from here? (1) next time I go to Chez Panisse, I’m planning ahead and definitely going to the downstairs restaurant. That’s where the haut food is, where innovation takes place; and (2) I’m going to do some research about Lindsey Shere. Next time I’m in a used bookstore I’m going to look for her 1994 Chez Panisse Desserts, which is still in print.

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Believe it or not, I’m not certain I’d make this again. Not because it wasn’t good. It was. There are a variety of reasons: (1) the grill meister had difficulty keeping the cheese from melting right down through the grates (maybe the temp was too high?); and (2) once served, it didn’t stay hot very long (we didn’t put it on a hot, hot plate). Not long enough, anyway. The photo I took of the dish was taken in low light, so I’ve used a Food Network photo at left.

This is a Michael Chiarello recipe – a show he did a few months ago that was an all-grilled meal, from appetizer through dessert. On the program, grilling the cheese looked really easy. It didn’t appear to be so easy when we made it. Obviously there’s a technique here that we just didn’t get. According to the reader reviews at the tv food network, all who prepared the dish loved it, and I guess, had no difficulty with it. So it had to be something we did. The cheese and herb combination was good – as someone wrote, the herbs complemented the cheese well. I agree.

First you marinate the cheese – two chunks of cheese totalling 1 1/2 pounds – in olive oil, oregano, chile flakes, garlic, parsley, salt and pepper. Then you grill the cheese briefly, directly on the grates, just enough to put grill marks on the cheese. Michael said about 2 minutes per side. That’s when the grill meister ran into trouble. It began to melt, and he had no grill marks. You then transfer the cheese to a metal plate or baking dish (I used a small oblong metal pan that I encased in aluminum foil, so the grill wouldn’t damage the pan) and put that on top of the grill. You cook it until the cheese has begun to melt and “begins to brown on the bottom, about 3-5 minutes.” Well, we never got to the begins to brown part. Finally our grill meister removed the cheese and we served it, along with a bunch of baguette slices he’d also grilled. By the time we transferred it to a serving plate, the cheese was already kind of firming up again and cooling off fast. I think the trouble was with the grill temperature. The recipe does say moderately high heat. Maybe I will try this again and see what happens. Maybe we’ll start with half a recipe this time too. We had 8 people for dinner, and had lots left over. We did eat it – and it was delicious, but the cheese was cool within a couple of minutes, so be sure to place it on a piping hot plate.
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Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: “Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.” Well, the quote doesn’t exactly fit my purpose here, but close. There are creative people who thrive on finding a different solution, an innovation, to a problem. In the culinary world, chefs need to create on a dime. Every day. Here, we’re talking about pasta. And there’s nothing quite like overcooked pasta. I do like it just barely done – but al dente still. So, instead of guessing and having to remove a strand of lingine from the boiling pot, here’s a foolproof and very Italian method. There really is more than one way to boil pasta. I know, this isn’t exactly a very interesting post subject, but I ran across something in my stack of recipes that I’ve had for years, and used many times. So, I thought I’d share it with you.

The advice came from a cooking instructor. What class, I can’t tell you. It’s something she passed out to all of her class participants, every class she teaches. And it’s a photocopy from the back of a package or box. Agnesi is an Italian company – they do have a website, but it’s all in Italian.

Anyway, the instructor was also a caterer, and she said this is her failsafe method. She uses it always. And as long as I remember, on those occasions when I do make pasta, it’s worked like a charm.

• “The ANGESI Advice for a Better Pasta Cooking Method: cook pasta in boiling water for just 2 minutes. Measure this time from the moment the water returns to a boil after adding the pasta. After the 2 minutes are up, remove pot from the heat, cover with a lid and leave to stand for the cooking time indicated on the box. Drain the pasta and . . . buon appetitto! This is to encourage you to try a new way of cooking pasta. You will see that when the cooking time is over, the water is almost clear. This is because the pasta has retained most of its precious nutrients, some of which are lost during the normal, longer cooking method.”

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Since I Tivo all the America’s Test Kitchen programs, I store them up and watch several at one time. They did one a week or so ago called French Classics. It included this Coq au Vin (coke-aw-vahn, chicken in wine) and a chocolate Pots de Creme (poh-deh-crehm). I printed out both recipes, and today you get to hear the results of the chicken.When I was in my 20’s, and living in Denver, I think it was, I attended one of my first cooking classes, and the teacher prepared the traditional coq au vin. It required many steps, including rendering some salt pork. Salt pork’s not something I see every day, although I suppose it is available at the grocery stores if I sought it out. I have made coq au vin a few times, but never found the chicken all that tender (rather, it was dry and overcooked) and the gravy was very thin.

The chefs at America’s Test Kitchen came to the rescue. They explained that originally French kitchens used a very elderly boiling chicken, the kind you have to cook and cook to tenderize. These days we have young, tender fryers which don’t require much cooking. They demonstrated a rather rapid coq au vin, and I was intrigued. It used bacon instead of salt pork. I love the richness and suppleness of red wine, cooked down to a thick gravy with the onions and mushrooms. This recipe took about 50 minutes of total cooking time (browning and simmering), with about another 25 of prep. So, I had dinner on the table in a little over an hour. Their recipe said it took 90 minutes.The secrets of this recipe include reducing the entire bottle of wine and chicken broth to about 3 cups, browning the chicken first, then making the vegie part (mushrooms and onions) and then simmering the dark meat pieces first (for 20 minutes), THEN adding in the chicken breasts later, so they cook only 20 minutes. What a difference that made. The breast meat was tender and juicy. Once the chicken is done you remove it to keep warm and turn the heat up to high and continue reducing the gravy until it’s thick. A tablespoon of butter is added at the very last, along with a tablespoon of the red wine you saved at the beginning, that didn’t get reduced.Definitely I’d make this again. It was certainly a lot easier than my previous recipe. I might not make it for guests just because it’s, to me anyway, a kind of home comfort food dinner. But, it looked very pretty in my wide soup bowls with the gnocchi pasta in the bottom and the fresh Italian parsley sprinkled on top. We both slurped it up in quick order.

Cook’s Notes: use a light, fruity red wine (they recommend Pinot Noir or a Rhone grenache). Use good, thick bacon (more flavor). If possible use kosher chicken, since it will retain the juice better. Next time I’d use more mushrooms, just because I like them. And if I had my druthers, I’d have more sauce, so that would mean using about a bottle and a half of wine to start with, and would mean measuring a bit more carefully so you reduce each part correctly.
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