Hedonia

Spring Frolic 2007

Ah, the benefits of an East Bay Monarchy. This year's Spring Frolic, hosted by our Berkeleyite regent Queen Liz, was held in Tilden Park yesterday. Cool breezes gave way to balmy sun as we flaunted our gaudy, silly hats in competition for pointless prizes. Above, DPaul displays his decomposing flower hat while Reese takes in a little sun.

This year's theme was Clowns 'n' Compost, a complex concept to be sure -- yet the judges had a difficult time deliberating for the winner of the eponymous category between the over-the-top compost of glamour chapeau and the beyond-cute family effort with circus tricks and all. But there were many other categories to compete in as well, such as Biggest/Tallest, Most Genderbending and Most Seasonal (DPaul took that one). Myself, I managed to take the dubious honor of Puh-lease, Queen, You Shoulda Left It At Home with my ozone-depleting styrofoam cup hat. I maintained that I should have won for Clowniest/Most Decomposed as my hat, literally millions of years in the making, was made from dead dinosaurs. Ah well.

More photos here and here. Do you have a creative itch that can only be scratched by building crazy hats? Ask me about getting invited to next year's event.

Break fast

Each year DPaul and I give up something for lent. It's not that we're the least bit Catholic, but we have found it to be a nice study in self-discipline, which has never really been our strong suit. Every year we give up something different, driven by factors in our lives. One year we gave up beer, back at a time when we were pretty big beer drinkers. In 40 days we lost several pounds, and it forever changed our relationship with that beverage. We still enjoy it, but now much more sparingly, such as on the three or four really hot days we get here in San Francisco.

This year, we gave up bread and potatoes. This was really DPaul's idea, as he had a little burger-and-fries monkey to get off his back. Within the first few days, though, we began to redraw the boundaries just a little bit, qualifying "bread" with the word "leavened." So tortillas were fair game, and they quickly became our new staple. Pita, matzoh and other flatbreads were also not verboten, but still didn't creep much into our diet save for my occasional bag of Stacy's pita chips.

This fast was no real hardship for me. I don't have the deep craving for potatoes that my other half does, and though I love bread as much as anyone, I have the mettle to refuse it. The only real change was that, since lunch options in my neighborhood are generally limited to sandwich or salad, I ate a lot more salads.

But what I did miss, actively, was pizza. For us to go a week without it is unusual; to go 40 days is unheard of. Many nights, as we came home exhausted and numb from busy days, we were tempted to break our fast for the sake of convenience and comfort, but held true. Even when we ordered Indian in its stead, we eschewed the naan to keep in the spirit, even though we technically could have gotten away with it, as it is unleavened.

So this Easter, in lieu of a traditional ham, it's all about pizza. Delivery, thank you very much.

(To be perfectly honest, we did break our fast last night. We were having a pre-Easter dinner at Cam & Anita's place, and Anita was checking in on our lenten restrictions. I told her that we had decided that by the time we arrived for dinner at their house, it would already be Easter in the Vatican, so we were free and clear. Jesus would have eaten that potato gratin, too ... though probably not the ham, delicious though it was.)

Feeling good

"It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life/And I'm feeling good..." -Nina Simone

Moreover, it's a new year, and I'm feeling good. Good about the year's prospects. Good about where I am, and where I'm going. Good.

I'm an optimistic person by nature, and not especially superstitious, but that didn't stop me from preparing and eating a traditional New Year's Day meal that's meant to inspire good fortune for the upcoming 365.

Many people know about the Southern tradition of eating black-eyed peas and collard greens; in fact it was a popular topic on the food blogs. Fewer people are aware that Italians have a beany tradition all their own, involving lentils. And me, I have to Italian everything up a bit.

The real traditional dish involves cotechino, a pork sausage. I hadn't planned that far ahead, and just stuck with some (very good) Niman Ranch applewood-smoked bacon. The greens were Swiss chard purchased from the farmer's market on Saturday, prepared how I always do them, with garlic, chili flake and lemon. Oh, and bacon.

The bread was also homemade, and really excellent. But I feel it deserves a post of its own, so stay tuned for that.

It's not pretty food (the colors got some enhanced saturation thanks to the magic of Photoshop), and certainly not food I would serve company. But the flavors were solid and the overall dish was humble, hearty and satisfying. Good, even.

Drink me: Nicolas Feuillatte NV Brut Rosé

I have to confess that I am not much of a sparkling wine connoisseur, or even appreciator. I rarely go out of my way for bubbly. (DPaul, on the other hand, adores the stuff.) However, I've had enough of it to know what I like, and I like this.

We first encountered the Feuillatte Rosé at the tail end of 1999. We had purchased a bottle at Bi-Rite, in a comemmorative cylinder. It wasn't until we got it home and opened it on New Year's Eve that we discovered it was a rosé. Unsure what to expect, we opened it for our midnight toast, and discovered that we liked it very much indeed.

And then, for a matter of years, we could never find it again.

Because this label was new to us, and because of its scarcity at the time, we assumed it was a small producer. Little did we know, in fact, that Feuillatte is part of a collective that is in fact the largest in the region, and second in production only to Moët.

In the last couple of years we've seen a resurgence of Feuillatte champagnes, and now the Rosé is readily available. And that's a good thing.

Flutes are fine, but this champers really shines with a good set of champagne saucers. I wish I knew why this flavor of stemware fell out of fashion. I love watching the columns of bubbles rise from the floor of a wide saucer, collecting in everchanging continents on the surface. I also like the gentle spray of mist you get when you go in for the first sip. And there's something so wonderfully old-school classy about them. Think Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr in An Affair to Remember.

Feuillatte Brut Rosé has a gorgeous salmon color, with consistent and diminutive bubbles. It's mildly sweet, with subtle berry flavors, and a fluffy mouthfeel as it explodes into an airy cloud on the tongue. I can't think of a better way to usher in the new year.

Happy New Year to all of you. May 2007 bring newfound prosperity, fortune and happiness.

La Vigilia: Feast of the Seven Fishes

I always thought I sensed a kindred spirit in Marcia Gagliardi, author of The Tablehopper. But when she spoke of her own family's Christmas Eve fish fest, I knew we were not only paisani (her name gave that part away), but culinary cousins.

La vigilia is as far as I know a uniquely Southern Italian affair, a feast involving seven fish dishes. There's no specific menu to follow; each family has its own traditional dishes it brings to the table. In my family, there was always baccalà, sometimes two different preparations, a big bowl of shrimp and heaping portions of spaghetti all'aglio e olio, a small portion of which was made with alici, or anchovies.

Not long after she moved to California, my mother had an epiphany. We were no longer gathering in such large groups (Christmas Eve at Aunt Anne's would sometimes be upwards of 30 people), so it was impractical to come up with seven discrete fish dishes for a small crowd. Why not line them all up and take them down in one fell swoop, and do it California style? Cioppino is the logical answer.

This year it was just four of us, so cioppino made perfect sense. But the one dish I crave every year, the one that sends me back to my childhood on Christmas Eve, is the spaghetti all'aglio e olio con alici, spaghetti with olive oil and garlic with anchovies. So six fishes in the cioppino and one pasta dish later, Christmas Eve was served.

Oh, and we also made the famous no-knead bread that everyone -- everyone -- has been buzzing about. There's clearly no knead need to recount the details of the process, but my brief take on it is this: It works reasonably well. I love the crispy crust and the meaty texture of the bread. However, the crumb is quite dense, and not especially absorbent, which is more what I was after to accompany the cioppino. Still, considering how little effort is involved, it's completely worthwhile.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all, and may you have a happy and heathy 2007.

Gayest. Christmas tree. Ever.

So it seems that you, my beloved readers, really, really want to know that I'm gay, and that discussing my sexuality will make this a better blog -- a better food blog, no less. Well, I've never made any secret of that fact here, but I've always believed in transparency and full disclosure. As such, I offer the following.

The Peacock Tree.

We purchased it from Gump's, so you already know we're on a slippery slope here. It's a 5-foot-tall artificial tree sporting, in lieu of needles, 1"-diameter mylar sequins. Predominantly teal, they have variations in color, leaning bluer or greener and occasionally even flashing yellow-orange.

Yes, I know, it looks like Cher molted all over it. But, because this is such an exceptional food blog, we simply had to gay it up even more. First of all, 5' is not a particularly fabulous height (trust me, I know whereof I speak), so we had to jack it up a bit. To create the illusion of virgin snow, DPaul swathed the tree's milk carton pedestal with no fewer than three white boas, nestling in precious little red brocade boxes to complete the holiday illusion.

OK, almost there. But how could we gay this up just a skosh more? I know! Let's put it in front of a teal, spangled drapery panel and a chair with matching pillows, and a David Hockney poster of West Hollywood! Yeah, that'll do it. Now that's making the yuletide gay.

But lest you  think we could contain our fabulousness to just one corner of the house, read on.

Thanksgiving retrospective, or the bacon parade

As I mentioned in the master roundup of last week's consumption, Thanksgiving Day was an uncharacteristically small affair for us, just DPaul and me. For years, DPaul has lamented that we don't get to cook a Thanksgiving dinner of our own, but the reason is not necessarily what you might think. His beef is that, since we are eating Thanksgiving at other people's houses, we don't get the pick of the leftovers, and therefore never have the proper makings for what is in his estimation the most important part of the Thanksgiving meal: The sandwich composed of cold turkey pulled from the bone, a sweet-tart smear of jellied cranberry sauce (from the can, thank you very much) and a sizable dollop of stuffing. Well this year, things were different.

But as it was just us, a whole bird would have been an abomination. No one needs that much leftover turkey hanging around, even if you do get a year's worth of use out of it. We opted for a good-sized turkey breast, far more manageable.

Several weeks ago, DPaul tried marinating a half a chicken in pomegranate juice, and then roasting it. The result was quite good, so we decided to try the same thing with the turkey breast. We started with one whole pomegranate, extracting the arils.

Too often on cooking shows I've seen this stupid method for removing the arils from a pomegranate. They cut the thing into quarters, then invert the cut side and tap the rind with a wooden spoon or something heavy, dislodging the seeds one at a time. Aside from being phenomenally tedious, this strikes me as being a really good way to make a big mess. There is a much, much easier way. Score your pomegranate several times longitudinally, just enough to weaken the skin. In a big bowl of water, submerge the pomegranate and pull it apart. Then, gently work the arils out from the pith. Aside from preventing geyser-like sprays of the most stainariffic juice on earth, the water has an added benefit: The seeds drop to the bottom, and the pith floats. Once you've gotten all the arils out, just skim off the pith and drain the bowl.

(Photos: DPaul Brown)

Best Martha moment

These fabulous Bloody Finger Cookies over at BLOGHUNGRY reminded me of my favorite Martha moment ever. Back on her old show, pre-incarceration, she did a whole Halloween episode where she made similar severed extremity confections, laid out on a loamy grave plot of ground Oreos, a big punchbowl full of "blood" and so forth. Toward the end of the episode they trot out the neighborhood (or more likely staff's) tots in predictable costumes: Ghost, witch, mummy. Martha tries plying the kids with these gruesome goodies, and they're just not having anything to do with it. Exasperated, Martha pours a cup of punch and hands it to the little girl, saying in her snippiest voice, "Here, witch, have some blood." I love evil Martha.

Happy Halloween, my groovy ghoulie friends.

(Photo: BLOGHUNGRY)

Related: SFist rounds me up with other food bloggers. Oh, and I like the other Martha, too.

Pride & Pink Saturday 2006

Just a few shots from this past weekend's blur of debauchery. View the whole photoset here.