Hedonia

The Eatsdropper has to meet Nana for Shake-N-Bake

You know the drill -- keep those overheard items coming to eatsdropper-at-seantimberlake-dot-com.

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Little Girl: "Mom, why are they called beefsteak tomatoes?"
Mom: "Because they're the eggs laid by cows."
Little Girl: "Nuh-uh!" *pause* "Really?"
Mom: "Yes, now put away that sugar cereal and grab the oatmeal. We have to meet Nana for Shake-N-Bake."

- Eatsdropped by Garrett at Save Mart

Man enters, eyeing the pork cuts available.
Dave Evans (farmer):  "Would you like a cut?"
Customer: "No thanks, I'm Jewish."

- Eatsdropped by Jen at Marin Sun Farms booth

Girlfriend, tasked with getting the largest free-range roaster, after being shown a gigantic 8-1/2 pound bird:
    "Do you have anything bigger than this?"
Meat counter guy (deadpan):
    "Yeah, they're called turkeys."

- Eatsdropped by Bruce at New Seasons Market (Portland, OR)

Man, speaking to two female companions:
    "That funkiness is the reason I like Pinot Noir. Some wines are just so pretty."

- Eatsdropped by Tea at Della Fattoria Cafe's Friday night dinner

Scraggly guy walking along sidewalk, to diner at outside table: "Excuse me, man, what day is today -- Tuesday? Wednesday? Friday?"
Diner: "Monday."
Guy: "Monday...?"

- Eatsdropped by yours truly at Cafe deStijl

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One year ago today ... stupa dupa!

Mint julep poached peaches

Once again, I am guest-blogging over at Married ...with Dinner for another installment of their Drink of the Week feature. This time I am discussing a drink I absolutely adore, the mint julep.

As an ice-cold beverage, the julep is cool and refreshing, but the flavors lend themselves well to other preparations. By upping the ratio of simple syrup and mint to bourbon, it makes a wonderful poaching liquid for ripe fruit, and in particular that most southern of fruits, peaches. Since peaches are just now reaching their pinnacle of ripeness, this is a perfect, and perfectly seasonal, dessert.

I stole the idea from Nigella Lawson's Forever Summer; I never actually bought the book, just watched her make this on the television show. I just intuited the recipe -- it isn't really all that complicated.

Do you dare to eat a [mint julep-poached] peach?

Something widget this way comes

Frequent visitors to Hedonia may notice something new in the right column:  I've added a new widget featuring a site near and dear to my heart. TasteSpotting was started by my friends Jean of NOTCOT and Sarah of The Delicious Life, both of whom I worked with at ThisNext. Part of the NOTCOT network of sites, TasteSpotting is delicious visual snacking for the food enthusiast on the go. It's food meets design meets porn meets pure ADD instant gratification pleasure. I highly recommend it. And so do any number of others.

I'm a frequent poster myself, having put more than 150 delectable images up for rapid consumption, and you can play along, too. It's free, it's fast and it's fun. And wouldn't you like to put up a widget of your own, to showcase how cool and savvy you are? Of course you would.

They say you eat with your eyes, and thanks to TasteSpotting, my eyes are big as houses. 

The Eatsdropper doesn't want a bag

This week's Eatsdropper kicks off with an exchange I witnessed personally between Sam and Nick Atallah of Madison Growers at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market. (Sam wins extra points for being a source of three separate Eatsdroppers today!) It was such an astonishing volley that left us both rather stunned at first. We had coincidentally bumped into each other at the stand, where I had just purchased four wee basil plants in 4" pots. Sam innocently tried to purchase one plant of her own, and wackiness ensued:

Mr. Atallah: "Here, have a [plastic] bag."
Sam: "No thank you, I don't want a bag."
Mr. Atallah: "You have to take a bag."
Sam: "No, I don't."
Mr. Atallah: "You can't buy it if you don't take a bag."
Sam (putting the basil back on the table): "OK, I won't buy it then."
Mr. Atallah: "I don't want to be held responsible for messing you up, with the dirt on the pot."
Sam: "I think that's my choice."
Mr. Atallah: "No, it's not."

Geez, mister, sell the nice girl some basil, why dontcha? Anyway, on with the rest of this week's droppers. As always, send in your tidbits to eatsdropper-at-seantimberlake-dot-com.

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At a special infused vodka tasting referring to sandalwood:
"It's like you got in a car crash with a log in your face"

- Eatsdropped by Sam in the VIP lounge at Hangar One Vodka

A young boy at the St. Benoît stand, explaining to his mum:
"Please. Can I have one? This tastes like real strawberries, not like that fake strawberry taste in other yogurts."

- Eatsdropped by Sam at Ferry Plaza Farmers Market

Young woman in a party of four ladies to bartender: "I'd like a cosmo, but light on the cranberry juice."
Older woman: "We're cosmo connoisseurs."
Bartender: "So, bubblegum pink, right?"
Young woman: "Huh?"
Older woman: "Don't worry, honey. He makes 'em good."
Bartender (deadpan): "Connoisseurs, indeed."

- Eatsdropped by Cameron at Babbo

Buffed-up, visibly muscled guy on his cell phone:
"I eat 16 eggs a day; eight in the morning and eight before bed. Do you know how much a dozen eggs cost?"

- Eatsdropped by Cranky at Starbucks in Northgate Mall

Customer: "I'll have the #34 noodle dish, but can I have real shrimp instead of the dried shrimp?"
Waitress: "Uh, sorry, we can't do that."
Customer: "Why not? What's the difference?"
Waitress: "About $10 a pound."

- Eatsdropped by Mary at King of Thai Noodle

Nigel Walker, owner of Eatwell Farm:
"Have you seen my YouTube channel?"

- Eatsdropped by Jen at Ferry Plaza Farmers Market

Girl, to guy: "What I don't like about some goat cheese is the sort of goatiness..."

- Eatsdropped by yours truly at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market

Not bad for a Yankee

Biscuits are the easiest thing in the world to make and among the hardest to make well. To achieve the perfectly, ethereally fluffy, flaky, crusty, buttery texture takes skill, patience and above all else a light hand.

I'm not purporting that I have personally reached biscuit nirvana, but at least I'm having fun trying.

I've been using the Alton Brown recipe as a baseline, but you know as well as I do that I don't follow instructions very well. Oh, I swap things out here and there, just sort of wing it now and then.

Saturday morning, no bread in the house but more preserves than you can shake a stick at, biscuits were the order of the day. Everything in stock except ... no buttermilk. And I don't enter a grocery store until I've had my coffee. So lessee ... a dribble of 2% and some Greek yogurt. That's sort of like buttermilk, right?

I tell you what, it was good enough for government work. The biscuits maybe didn't rise as much as I'd hoped (I think our baking powder may be losing its oomph), but the biscuits came out soft and fluffy, with a satisfyingly crunchy crust.

Not bad for a Yankee.

Math is hard

A couple decades ago, Mattel had the misguided vision to release a talking Barbie doll, one of whose onion-skin-witty quips has apocryphally been forever captured as "Math is hard. Let's go shopping!" This Barbie and I, we're, like, BFFs .

I decided to make another batch of Limoncello di Hillsborough, blessed as I was with another bag full of luscious yellow bounty from our friends' house. This time, I followed my own advice, and made a few modifications to the original attempt: I used thicker slabs of lemon rind with just a little pith attached, to lend a slightly bitter edge, and I used Everclear instead of regular 80-proof vodka, for a much-needed boost in alcohol content to keep it from freezing.

I was going for a double batch this time, and set the peels to infuse in two 750-ml bottles' worth of high-octane hootch for a couple weeks. After straining off the solids, I set to making my simple syrup. Referring back to my original recipe, I doubled the quantities of water and sugar, totalling 10 c. and 8 c. respectively. As I dumped them into a saucepan to dissolve, I thought, gee, that seems like an awful lot.

Looking back over the recipes I used as reference points for my own version, I realized that the proportion of 4 c. sugar to 5 c. water was meant for a double-batch, and that I had in fact halved that for my single bottle last time.

Oops.

OK, no harm, no foul. I simply used half of what now turned into three liters of sticky-sweet stuff. Now I had three liters of limoncello and 1.5 liters simple syrup. Did someone say cocktails?

Yes, friends, I can think of worse problems to have than finding yourself with a surplus of simple syrup in the fridge. And so don't be too terribly surprised to find the occasional cocktail recipe pop up on these pages over the summer.

Math is hard. Let's have a drink.

Oh, and the limoncello? It's, like, totally awesome.

Heirloom tomato sauce

Summer is a time of simplicity.

I've been trying to simplify on multiple fronts lately -- cutting away unnecessary complications. Somehow, though, every time I trim away one complicating factor in life, at least one other springs forth whence it came. Life is a complex garden to tend.

Food, on the other hand, does genuinely get simpler during the summer months. The bounty of the season serves up a riot of colors and flavors that need only a gentle hand to bring forth their already robust offerings.

I adore the heirloom tomatoes we get here in the Bay Area. I won't get into the seemingly neverending dialog about whether our tomatoes are better or worse than those back east -- like corn, my memories are of richly-flavored vegetables that I have yet to parallel out here -- but rather suggest that these are an entirely different creature, worthy in their own way and on their own merits.

While maybe not as burstingly flavorful as New Jersey romas (to say nothing of genuine San Marzanos from the slopes of Vesuvius), they do have a wonderful, bright acidity and, of course, a particularly charming appearance. I love their gnarled, bulbous shapes and pastel colors. especially the ones that seem to bleed from a cheery yellow to dusky sunset pink. Skyblue-pink, my grandmother used to call that color.

The Eatsdropper wants a smarge

It must be summer, cuz there's been a huge harvest of Eatsdroppings lately. Serve them forth at eatsdropper-at-seantimberlake-dot-com.

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Woman #1: "Oh, look at those blueberries!  I love blueberries right now!"
Woman #2: "Well, sure blueberries taste good, but you eat them for the anti-oxidants more than anything."
Woman #1: "Right."

- Eatsdropped by Jeanne at Marin Farmers Market

Customer, pointing to sunflowers: "What do people usually do with these?"
Vendor: "Put them in a vase."

- Eatsdropped by Jen and Cookiecrumb at the Marin Farmers Market

Customer, at Frog Hollow Farms stand:
"This is that place where they make these Peach Pies with, like ... you  know ... peaches."

- Eatsdropped by David at Ferry Plaza Farmers Market

One woman to another: "Hey, I'm going to get some coffee while we wait. Do you want anything?"
Second woman: "Sure! Can you get me a small coffee, but in a large cup? I like a lot of milk in my coffee."
First woman: "Oh, you want a smarge!"
Second woman: "Huh?"
First woman: "A smarge! A small in a large cup! Get it? (shrugs) Well. That's what we call it where I come from."

- Eatsdropped by Jennifer at SFO departures lounge

Girl: "We could go to the Fortune Cookie Factory."
Guy: "Can we see the fortune writers?"
Girl: "I'm pretty sure those are imported."
Guy: "They outsource the fortune-writing?"
Girl: "Well, if they don't, then there's no reason for why the fortunes don't make any sense."

- Eatsdropped by Eric on an outbound 1 California bus.

Exasperated man, to woman: “Do you want to spend our LAST day in Seattle in a BAKERY?”

- Eatsdropped by Matthew on 15th Ave East, Seattle (reproduced with permission)

Man, standing by apples: "What kind?"
His wife, across the aisle: "Oh, just pick something. (pause) Just not green, yellow, or red."

- Eatsdropped by Anita at Tower Market

My friend Matthew: "All dogs' paws smell like Fritos."

- Eatsdropped by yours truly at my house.

Braised lamb shank

Considering I was vegetarian for so many years, and for largely political reasons at that, it's perhaps ironic that I have developed a propensity for eating baby animals. In particular, I like lamb. A lot. So I couldn't refuse a couple of lovely lamb shanks winking at me behind the glass at Prather a few weeks back. But then, straight into the freezer they went to rest in an icy tomb for a future meal.

After all, lamb shanks are not the sort of thing you just whip up on a workday evening. They demand a long, slow braise to break down all the gristle and connective tissue, or else you end up with a plate of tough, gnarly meat. And I don't love lamb that much.

But Sundays are made for the long and slow. Sundays are the days we typically have a big pot of chicken stock or sauce bubbling away on a back burner for hours at a stretch. This Sunday was no exception -- while a mighty pot of stock stewed, my braise was brewing in its own unctuous juices in the oven.

Recipe? We don't need no stinkin' recipe. To apply precise measurements to this dish would rob it of its rustic country soul. My meaty shanks got patted dry, generously seasoned and tossed in a powdery bath of flour, then quickly and thoroughly browned all around over high heat. While the bronzed thighs rested off to the side, in went a whole mess of coarsely chopped veggies -- your basic mirepoix, plus a little of whatever else was taking up space in the fridge -- for a little softening. In went a spoonful of tomato paste, half a bottle of good red wine, maybe almost as much chicken stock. Up to the bubble, and it's into the hot tub for my mighty hunks of meat. Cover on, into a 325º oven, and the rest is all waiting. Like, three or four hours of waiting.

The Eatsdropper likes boobies

Hope everyone's enjoying the gorg weather as much as we've been. All the more reason to get out there and horn in on other people's conversations. Keep sending those nosy notes to eatsdropper-at-seantimberlake-dot-com.

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At an office party featuring a buffet of Indian food:
Coworker 1: "Oh, that looks good. Where's the food from?"
Coworker 2: "India."

- Eatsdropped by Anita at work

Customer: "What's the difference between black raspberries and blackberries?"
Farmer: "Well, it's like the difference between apples and oranges: they are two distinctly different fruits."

- Eatsdropped by Shuna at NYC Saturday Greenmarket in Union Square

Man waiting for his Blue Bottle coffee, looking over a flat of Miette cupcakes and brownies, wondering if they're free:
    "Do you think they're a social experiment?" 

- Eatsdropped by Stephanie and her husband the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market
(Turns out, the Blue Bottle folks were encouraging coffee drinkers to enjoy the delicacies while dealing with the long wait for their coffee.)

Chris Cosentino, to market goer who was eating cherries voraciously off of his market cart: 
    "Dude, those are cherries I bought for my restaurant.  It's not a tasting cart."

- Eatsdropped by Jen at Ferry Plaza Farmers Market

Catherine: "Man or woman, gay or straight, everyone likes boobies."

- Eatsdropped by yours truly (and a dozen others) at R&G Lounge

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One year ago today ... I made a lovely chilled melon soup with mint and prosciutto. Might just have to make that again.