This is my favorite OITF location. You can’t beat the backdrop of the Pacific Ocean and the sandstone cliffs forming the cove. The wind is a bit much but, being from the area, I knew and came prepared. Those who didn’t could borrow blankets which is an excellent plan. I brought many layers that I slowly added and used all of before I ventured to the bonfire.
No surprise, the food was amazing under the direction of Central Kitchen and Flour and Water’s Thomas McNaughton. The fish came from my longtime fishmongers, H&H Fresh Fish. We actually ended up sitting with them so it was nice to visit all evening and talk about life beyond what fish I was buying.
My favorite dish of the night was the grilled squid. I could have eaten all 8 portions put in front of us family style. I’m always interested in squid done in new ways. It’s a seafood that I’ve made and it’s been amazing and other times just not right or slimy and blechy. This was amazing.
Sadly, we aren’t able to attend another Outstanding in the Field dinner until December. I’ll just have to savor the pictures and memories of this one until then.
Thomas McNaughton and his pet pig
Thomas’s pig
The first view of the table
The table
Jim and Leah
The crowd is released to the table
The menu
Finding seats
Finding seats at the table
Smoked salmon with asparagus, dill, roe
Grilled squid with potato, fennel and squid ink aioli
La Posta is one of my favorite places to eat in Santa Cruz so naturally I picked it for my birthday dinner. I’ve already written it up in the past but I got a new camera and wanted to test it out! And it never hurts to update people on the status of a restaurant. This one has only improved with time!
I got the quail and matsutake special appetizer. I can’t pass up matsies!! It was a lovely, delicious dish with crisp radishes and shaved turnips. I have to be honest, I still prefer matsutakes prepared with mirin and shoyu baked in parchment. Nothing wrong with this preparation though!
My main was Berkshire pork spezzetino. I had no idea what spezzetino was but it’s cubed pork stewed with everything you can imagine: soffritto, tomato, clove, wine, herbs, you name it! Served with polenta verde, it was so harmonized and rich and heavenly. I mopped up every last drop.
I added a salad last minute because the pork was so rich, I needed something to balance it out. Simple green salad, so fresh, so perfectly dressed.
As usual, my son got the Salumi plate, olives and pasta with butter and cheese. My husband got the lasagnette with sausage and candy caps. There wasn’t a bite left at the end of the night aside from the bit of prosciutto and olives my son couldn’t quite finish that we took home and he had in his lunch the next day. How many 8 year olds take prosciutto and olives in their lunch?!?!
Dessert disappeared too quickly for a picture. I got a vanilla cake with candied mandarin slices and creme fraiche. My son got pear sorbetto and vanilla gelato. My husband had chocolate almond cake with cinnamon cream and caramelized figs.
I was surprised to find out that no one at La Posta knew they’d been featured in Food and Wine Magazine! They were all wondering when they came in!
We had Christmas at about 5 different houses this year. Bouncing from family to friends and back again. We wanted to have Christmas day at our own house though. So since we’d already made the rounds, we extended and invite out to any friends who didn’t have a place to go on Christmas…Christmas Orphans. We had a couple of people take us up on the offer and I decided, since it was a small group, to make something a tad fancy: Rack of lamb.
I made the recipe that I love but can’t take credit for, I didn’t make up the amazing combination of cocoa, cumin and coffee that’s in the dry rub. I honestly would never have put those together. But it is so good and is the only way I make lamb now.
Alongside the lamb I served a simple salad of fennel, satsumas and pomegranates in a pomegranate-lemon-shallot dressing.
The lamb turned out perfectly. I had gone to Whole Foods assuming I’d be picking up lamb imported from New Zealand since it’s winter. Turns out there’s a northern California rancher raising lamb year-round now so I got locally raised, grass-fed lamb. I was pleasantly surprised.
I hadn’t planned dessert but my eight year old jumped in and scooped up some Mission Hill Creamery Salted Caramel ice cream and topped it with some chocolate-covered pralines we made for gift bags. Not bad for no planning huh?!
The day after Christmas we went to our friends’ place for their annual Boxing Day party, had a lovely time, and came home with a bag of porcini from their “back yard.” Most were dryers, one was a griller. Perfect, firm, white, awesome.
We mostly struck out on our Thanksgiving foraging trip so this was a treat.
I’m finally coming up for air after the crazy holiday season. Just when I get back to the real world we’ll be leaving for the Cayman Cookout again this year. Our once-in-a-lifetime crazy trip is happening again. I can’t wait. I’ll be reporting live as much as I can!
The thing that always bothers me about renovation shows and before and after pictures are that they always take the after shots from different angles that the before shots. So, I went through mine and stood in the same spot so you could really see the transformation. I have wanted this kitchen for so long! The only thing not done now is the pantry. It’s still under construction. It will have a lazy susan in the back corner, swing out shelves and custom doors made by our cousins to go with the dining room chairs.
So, here’s the tour:
Before:
After:
Back Door Before:
Back Door After:
Right Side Before:
Right Side After:
Sink/Windows Before:
Sink/Windows After:
Sink Corner Before:
Sink Corner After:
Stove Corner Before:
Stove Corner After:
Fridge Before:
Fridge After:
Pantry Area Before:
No Longer the Pantry Area After
Gross Vinyl Floor Before:
Gorgeous Marmoleum Floor After:
Blind Corner Cabinet Before:
Blind Corner Cabinet After:
Useless Corner Before:
No longer useless, now becoming pantry corner after:
Left Side Before:
Left Side After:
Outside Windows Before:
Outside Windows After:
So as you can see it was quite a transformation! We still are finishing up the pantry. The interior should be done this weekend and then the doors need to be made. It’s been a long haul but in the end it is just so amazing! I feel like I’m cooking in someone else’s house!
I picked up Andrea Nguyen’s Asian Dumplings cookbook pretty much on a whim a few months ago. We made way too many dumplings and stuffed ourselves (and our neighbors) silly. Not long after that I saw that she was teaching a dumpling class at Love Apple Farm and had to sign up!
This has been an interesting month for us. My husband got in a motorcycle accident at the end of September (not his fault, driver turned in front of him) and, although he will be fine, crushed his foot badly and has been bedridden for 4 weeks (with at least 2 to go) as it heals. I have been the 24-7 nurse for all the time he’s been home from the hospital…3 weeks now. I lucked out that my mother-in-law came to help out the weekend that this class was scheduled so I got to go do something fun and rejuvenate myself for a few hours. Nothing makes you feel better than mushing together ground pork with wonderful sauces by hand and then getting to gorge on dumplings!
Soooo, we all split into groups around 4 tables and started chopping, mixing, rolling and filling! There were pork, veggie and shrimp dumplings, momos, baked buns and sauces to be made!
It was a lot of work and a lot of fun. We spent the first 3 hours prepping the ingredients and the last hour rolling and filling the dumplings that we then moved into the steamer, the pan for frying or the oven for baking. The results were, across the board, fantastic. From potstickers to honey buns, we ate them all and I even snuck a bao home for hubby to cheer him up a little.
Before we knew it the four hours had passed and we were all sated and sweaty. It was work to crank out what in the end was hundreds of dumplings and buns and with the steamers going, it was like a sauna in there!
I bought another book of Andrea’s, stole my honey bun for my honey, and headed home to return to nursing duty. I haven’t gotten to make anything from the dumplings cookbook since the kitchen remodel. Now that I’m actually back in a functioning kitchen (pictures and article about that to come soon!) I can get back to the more complicated dishes like ramen and dumplings!
My dad brought me tomatoes. He seriously grows the sweetest tomatoes I have ever had. When summer starts I begin dreaming of the tomatoes and waiting for them to ripen. I remember how sweet they are and then I get one and I taste it and it’s even sweeter. It’s like my brain can’t contain the awesomeness of these tomatoes from year to year.
He also brought Armenian cucumbers and basil. GAZPACHO TIME!
All I put in gazpacho when it’s with these amazing tomatoes is a couple of garlic cloves, a ton of basil and salt. I used the blender for this one since it’s so juicy. I garnished with a drizzle of chili oil and cucumbers and this time a borage flower because our plant is blooming and they look so pretty!
Then I made inside-out gazpacho. It’s a modified white gazpacho but I didn’t have any bread that would work in it so I just used about 2 cups of almonds, 4 or 5 cucumbers, a handful of parsley and more basil, garlic, a bit of water to thin it out and a dash of cayenne. I used the food processor for this since there was very little liquid. My blender just whirrrrrrrs and does nothing without lots of liquid. It turned out more like dip than soup. The texture was a bit grainy from the almonds (I only had whole almonds…also from my dad!…No blanched or sliced ones). But the flavor was nice. I topped it with tomatoes for color and served with crostini since it was dip-like anyway!
I’m getting paint in my kitchen today. Soon there will be cabinets.
Making food in the garage actually hasn’t been that difficult. I can’t make anything that has to simmer for a long period of time (I’ll run out of propane) or go into an oven larger than the toaster oven, but other than that, it’s been working.
I made one of our favorites with my CSA Salmon:
And another night made a quick appetizer of grilled padrons with olive oil and Bali Kechil salt.
I’m still making frittata just about every Sunday with the weeks CSA goodies. Sometimes greens and pancetta, sometimes squash and basil, sometimes all of the above!
There are nights that I just keep it simple and BBQ. Sometimes steak and onions:
Sometimes chicken marinated in red wine, mustard, onions and rosemary:
One day I got ground pork from my CSA and some nice white fish from my CSS and thought I was making fish soup with pork. Turns out it was pork soup with fish and MAN, was it GOOD! My son would have had the whole pot if we let him but we wouldn’t give ours up!
The hardest part is getting the food from the garage through the sliding door, through our bedroom, down the hall and to the dining room table, then the drinks, silverware, and us before it gets cold! It’ll be nice when we have our kitchen door back.
Everyone’s reaction to me telling them I’m remodeling my kitchen is first, “FINALLY!” and second, “Where are you cooking? When we remodeled our kitchen it was a lot of microwaving.”
No way! Not for me!
Pasta and broccolini boiled on my camp stove…garlic sauteed and pine nuts browned on the other burner. Topped with fresh CSA basil and a dash of chili flakes I made with last year’s crop:
Pasta with broccolini, pine nuts, garlic, basil and chili flakes
Locally caught sand dabs cooked in foil on the grill with CSA garlic, garden parsley and marjoram and olive oil. Served with grilled CSA leeks and grilled CSA lettuce (romaine-like but not actually romaine) topped with caesar dressing:
Sanddabs with garlic, parsley, marjoram, grilled leeks and grilled lettuce with caesar dressing
I think I’ve used my microwave twice and that was for warming up leftovers for lunch. No kitchen does not mean no Food Porn!!
The first event of the year. Route 1 Farm is just a little way up the coast from Santa Cruz. We left our house when it was sunny and hot. We got 3 blocks from our house and it was socked in fog and freezing. I was numb by the end of the night but full and happy! A great start to the season. Just like last year, the Fogline chicken was the highlight of the evening. So incredibly good that I took a picture of an empty plate!
Appetizers
Route 1
Fennel frond cracker with salmon and pickled dandelion
Jim and Leah - The make this all happen
Jeff from Route 1 Farms
Nettle ravioli with pork belly and milk thistle butter
Butter lettuces with beets, prosciutto, ricotta salata and balsamic
The table
Caleb from Fogline Farm
That was good chicken
Strawberry tart with lemon verbena and meyer lemon cream
In December I took a baking class from Pim. You all might already know that I don’t bake but that’s one of the reasons I took the class, to try something new. I still don’t bake but I’ve taught my 7 year old to bake for me. What I do make is soup! What I’ve never made is ramen. I was very much looking forward to this class. It was more my speed. The class was full of ingredients from Mitsuwa (my favorite place to stop when on the other side of the Santa Cruz Mountains, a Japanese grocery store) and lots of pork products. Wheeee!
The basic ramen broth is like most other soup broths: bones, veggies, simmer, strain. Voila! The flavor comes from additions to the broth called Tare. This allows you to make one broth but have choices as to the flavor people can have. The most common are Shoyu (soy sauce) and Shio (salt). I prefer shoyu tare. And the recipes we left with will flavor a whole pot of broth which will make and insane number of bowls of ramen.
The prize recipe I left with though was for Tonkotsu broth. I’d seen tonkotsu on ramen menus but I didn’t know what is was and always went with shoyu. What a mistake I’ve been making!!! Tonkotus is basically every iota of porkiness you can eek out of a pig. You boil the bejeezus out of pork bones…for many, many hours. You add sesame, mirin, garlic, soy. Nothing wrong with this idea. Then you top it like a beautiful bowl of any flavored ramen, with slices of luscious braised pork. (I think I just drooled on my keyboard)
I think one of the major things you miss out on as a vegetarian is good ramen topped with good braised pork. Vegetarian ramen is just a bowl of noodles in broth. Pork ramen is an ineffable experience. Have you seen Tampopo? If you haven’t, watch it tonight. For the entire ramen class I had scenes from that movie flashing through my mind. I don’t need to explain it, we have YouTube! Here’s a clip:
Pim braised the pork the day before the class since it takes hours and we wouldn’t have the time. It smelled heavenly. And the braising liquid is exquisite! I’m starting to run out of adjectives already.
I don’t think I’ve ever been to a ramen joint that properly cooked the egg. I thought the egg was supposed to be hard-boiled. Apparently, it is supposed to be soft-boiled! The white should be set, the yolk should gush out into the broth. As Pim says, “Next time you’re served a bowl of ramen topped with over-cooked, hard-boiled eggs, get up from the table and walk out. How do you expect a good bowl of ramen if they can’t even figure out how out cook their eggs properly!” I don’t like runny eggs but I will still use this tactic as a benchmark for judging a good ramen joint. Ironically, the only dish I’ve ever eaten with runny egg that I liked was at Manresa! Actually, is that irony or coincidence? Whatever…anyway…
I had no idea what made ramen noodles ramen-y. They’re alkaline! That gives them the distinct ramen texture and flavor. Everyone rolled out their own dough for their own bowls of noodles. Since the pasta roller was a manual one, I had to rely on others to roll mine out for me, my wrists and hands are too shot to do that. But at home I have a pasta roller attachment for my KitchenAid so I can make noodles at home without pain!
Once the noodles were made, the eggs were cooked and cooling, the water was boiling (rapidly) it was time to eat! We were all starving after watching, smelling and sampling very tiny tastes of sauces and broths. I was so hungry, in fact, that I wolfed down my ramen before taking a picture. Then wolfed down a second bowl of Tonkotsu ramen without taking a picture of that either. I’m a dork. But I was a hungry dork and that’s the way it goes.
When I got home I immediately emailed my farmer buddies at my CSA and requested some pork bones from them. I picked them up yesterday. I will keep accumulating bones for a few weeks and hopefully christen my new kitchen (remodel starts next week!!) with a huge pot of Tonkotsu!
