I like traditional cole slaw but can only eat so much of it. I don’t like cooked cabbage. I’ve been getting cabbage from my CSA so I’ve been experimenting. When I decided to make chicken with the honey-soy glaze I found a while back I decided to make a chinese cabbage salad.

We all loved it, my son had 2 helpings and I had the leftovers the next day for lunch and it was even better!

• 5T Usukuchi soy sauce
• 3T Seasoned rice vinegar
• 1 garlic clove, grated
• 1 inch ginger, grated
• 2T sesame oil
• 1/4 c canola oil
• 2c cabbage, shredded
• 1 sweet onion, thinly sliced

Toss everything together in a bowl or bag and let it sit for at least an hour. Strain off the liquid and eat!

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.

Then I realized what I was missing. Cooking! It’s my happy place. It’s what I do well and it makes me feel good about myself–as well as eating well which helps physically. Saturday night my husband got home but my neighbor and I were out seeing Eric Ripert and Tony Bourdain. I was inspired.

I invited the neighbors over for a fancy dinner on Sunday. I pulled out Eric’s A Return to Cooking and started flipping through. His are the only recipes I follow at all. I love them. Of course I still modify and cut some corners ;-)

I picked out Crab Salad with Chilled Gazpacho Sauce, Grilled Rack of Lamb and Cucumber Salad, and Pan-Seared Skirt Steak with Herbed-Butter Frites and Bitter Greens. I hit the store to stock up for the meal and they had no crab. They have had crab every day that I’ve gone in there until Sunday. They even had it when I went in two days ago. I had to go off script and decided to make my Green Curry Ceviche. The fish I bought was weird…possibly with parasites. First time I’ve ever gotten bad fish at my market…they refunded my money, no questions asked. I took that as a sign that I was trying to cook too much food.

I concentrated on the other two dishes. My husband took on dessert: Flourless Chocolate Cake with Coffee Liqueur. It was inspired by the coffee infusion that he made about three months ago. We hadn’t tried it yet. It was a pound of Panama Gesha in Hangar One vodka. It better be good (it is!).

I also wanted to play with my Porthole infuser so put some ginger, lime and cardamom pods in there with some Oxley gin and let it sit. The plan was to mix up little drinks to go with the first course. Hubby took over that project when I was up to my elbows in lamb.

I cut the racks of lamb into chops and covered them in herbs and olive oil and set them aside. I put the skirt steak in the soy-based marinade from Eric’s book and set those aside. I sliced the potatoes into thin fry-sizes and put those in cold water. I made salad dressing. I washed the greens…I used regular lettuce, not bitter greens. I had a ton in my fridge from my CSA. I thinly sliced cucumber.

I tapped hubby for the infuser drinks. He muddled some cucumber, added lime juice, simple syrup and the gin and it was really good! The infusion was pretty strong even though it only sat for a couple of hours. The design of the Porthole works really well.

Then I started searing the lamb. I had to do it in two batches, the pan was too small. But that gave the first batch time to rest while I seared the second and the second batch time to rest while I plated the first! I sliced the lamb off the bone, tossed it with the dressing and piled it atop a nice little circle of cucumbers.

I had already par-fried (is that a word?) the fries and set them aside. So I fired up the oil again to bring it to 450° to crisp them up. I seared the skirt steak and set it to rest before slicing. I then sliced up the steak, tossed the salad with dressing and plated them. This was the best skirt steak I’ve ever, ever had. Eric is THE MAN. Yes, I cooked the food but the marinade was not my recipe.

The fries were also amazing, tossed with herbed butter and crispy as can be. I didn’t get a picture of those. I was too busy getting them on the plate and eaten while still crispy to take a photo!

The cake also ended up being rich and so incredibly good. Who needs flour when you have butter and chocolate?!

Needless to say, I was in a much better mood after 5 hours of intense prepping and cooking. Not many people would say that but I’ve always been odd.

You know how I feel about Eric Ripert. He’s probably mentioned more on this site than any other chef. He and Anthony Bourdain came to San Jose on their Good vs. Evil tour and of course I had to go. Even though I had a feeling I’d already seen a lot of the material at the two Cayman Cookouts, I didn’t care. My neighbor said she’d go with me so we decided to grab a bite to eat before the event. I pinged Jeff Bareilles, Beverage Director at Manresa, and found out we could get some food at the bar so we popped in there.

We sat and talked with the bartender, whose name I did not get! D’oh! He was a lot of fun. Jeff recommended my perfect cocktail. It’s one he developed called the Lemon Zest. He was spot on, it was sooooo good. My friend got the Manresa Bordeaux blend wine that Jeff blended. Also, soooo good.

The food didn’t disappoint either. A Belon oyster with a citrus granita started everything off. If you didn’t say it was an oyster and I blind tasted it, I’m not sure I would be able to tell you what it was. It was ridiculously good. Don’t get me wrong, I love oysters…my friend does not and she loved it too…but this wasn’t like any oyster I’d ever had. The Arpege egg came out and I, once again, had to tell the L’Arpege/food poisoning story. I however wasn’t poisoned so I ate the egg. I like that concoction until the end where all I have left is yolk—unfortunately, runny yolk is not my thing.

The remaining courses were awesome: chicken with potato mousseline (not Mussolini, no dictators in my dinner please). And dessert was a goat milk ice…thingy. It was ice cream with an ice on top and goat with goat. Yeah, I didn’t write it down :P The final plate had macarons that tasted like the best damn nutter butter you could ever imagine and crunchy little chocolates pieces.

We headed out of Los Gatos and headed to the San Jose Center for Performing Arts. Last time I was there was with this same friend and we sat front row, center for Tori Amos. Amazing night. We weren’t that close for Eric and Tony, those seats were crazy-expensive!

I have to say, I find it pretty amazing that these two chefs…well, one chef and one former chef now traveling gourmet…can fill this huge theatre. I mean, I love Eric and I find Tony very entertaining but I’m usually an anomaly. I’m the weird one. I’m the one who squeals like a ’60s Beatles fan when my favorite chef walks in a room….I mean, who does that?!

We had a moment of hometown and just-eaten-there pride when Eric listed David Kinch as one of the 3 chefs he’d want to have cook for him if stranded on a desert island (the other two: Suzanne Goin and Joel Rubuchon). Tony was really, exceptionally brutal towards Eric. I’m amazed they can do this night after night and remain friends. I was right, I had seen a lot of the stories in the Caymans, but there was plenty I hadn’t heard. In particular the story of Eric, in a restaurant in France, telling a woman she was mal baisé then punching her husband! ERIC RIPERT! Practicing buddhist, proponent of calm, encouraging surroundings….PUNCHED a guy in the nose. Not saying the guy didn’t deserve it or that he wouldn’t have clocked Eric but…OMG! That story was worth the (significant) price of admission alone!

I’m also amazed that they can talk for 2 hours every night of this tour and either continue to come up with new material or, when it’s rehashed, continue to look so authentically surprised and/or embarrassed. All in all we had a lovely food-centric evening. Food at Manresa, hilarity with Eric and Tony.

We had a full weekend of food, wine and no kid. He went skiing with a friend in Tahoe for the weekend. I don’t think there was a time, aside from when I first woke up, that I wasn’t full and/or a teeny bit tipsy. We didn’t need to drive anywhere, we just needed to eat and drink. Friday night we had dinner at Central Kitchen. Saturday morning we slept in then walked down to the Ferry Building and had brunch at Marketbar. We wandered around Chinatown, walked back to our hotel, had a couple of gin and tonics in the bar, took a nap, then headed out for the next round!

I have a tremendous admiration for Chris Cosentino. He makes edible things which most people would go nowhere near. He’s getting people excited about nose to tail cooking. He’s elevating to gourmet levels things that most people cast away or at best use for stock. I just have one problem…I don’t like offal or pieces-parts. At least none I’ve ever tried. Still, I wanted to eat Chris’s cooking, I would just order everything from the middle edges of the pig rather than either end or the center ;-)

We had no trouble finding non-pieces-parts dishes. The arugula-feathercress salad was lovely. Our waitress was fun and knowledgable and just made the evening fun. She recommended wines that we may not have picked but went with each dish wonderfully.

One problem I kept having, I’d forget to take pictures! So, most of my shots are after I’d eaten some and messed up the presentation. *SIGH* But when the food is so good, you don’t want to grab a camera, you want to grab a fork!

The PORK BELLY (Spicy pork belly, asparagus, scallions, pistachios, mint)! Oh good lord. Sooooo creamy and delicious. It looked like it would be fatty and greasy but it was pure pork heaven. Spicy from the pepper topping and … just damn good!

Handkerchief pasta and rustic pork ragu was comfort food. I wanted to take the plate to a fireplace with a blankie and my glass of Brunello. It was baby-it’s-cold-outside kind of food. Comfort food like this is where the law of diminishing return goes out the window. More more more!

The cod was perfectly cooked with artichokes, potato and lemon. I had to talk my husband into this one since wine and artichokes don’t mix but the Brachetto was nice with the dish actually.

The table next to us got the In-CAN-to dish which was tripe and trotters served tableside in a soup can. Really fun presentation and the woman said it was great. At one point I saw Chris expediting but also with his phone out. I slipped my phone out of my purse and checked and, yup, he was tweeting pics of the dishes as they went out. Our’s didn’t make the photo shoot!

Dessert was the first lemon meringue pie that rivals my mom’s. She set the bar high. Her lemon pie is amazing. They called this one a lemon curd torta but it was a lemon meringue pie with a shortbread crust. It’s my perfect dessert. I love it. I didn’t leave a crumb on that plate.

After we were done I asked our server if Chris was still around and available for me to play fangirl. Luckily he was. He came out, said hi and we chatted for probably longer than we should have kept him out of the kitchen but he was a gracious host. I felt like I was talking to an old friend and he seemed pretty convinced that I’d be eating offal sometime in the future. I’m not ruling anything out.

Many moons ago I won a fundraising auction for a table for four at the as-yet-unopened Central Kitchen. We could be one of the first to dine there. I was very excited. I informed our friends of the wonderful news and we aligned calendars. That proved more challenging that we though but we eventually had a table booked for November. My husband was in an accident at the end of September and was still not mobile by reservation time so we had to put it off. Finally, he was up, walking, off the crazy meds and we could enjoy a weekend in San Francisco. I booked the table for a Friday night.

We got up to the city with just enough time to check into our hotel, change clothes, hop in a cab and get over to the Mission. We were a little confused about where to enter the restaurant. We ended up going through the salumeria but cut through the back door when we saw our table mates were already seated.

The tasting menu had a few things that neither I nor one tablemate could eat but the kitchen was amazingly accommodating. The first course was fine for all though: A taste of pork. The pork rinds, as I called them as I ate them by the bag as a kid, or cracklins, were fine, crispy but not much to them aside from crunch and they were slightly oily inside. This was seriously the only minor disappointment all night. The pickles alongside the cracklins were crisp-sour-salty-tangy-wonderful and the pork consomme….THE PORK JUICE! Cup-o-heaven. Wayyyy too small of a glass of this broth. It is the basis for every good soup you could think of. It was gone far too quickly.

The pork fat was sadly left behind but we didn’t miss it long as a light, refreshing, and beautiful plate of Hamachi, kumquat and insanely thinly sliced hazelnut was delivered. Clean flavors, cool and crisp.

When I read there was geoduck coming up next I was taken back to Sooke Harbour House on Vancouver Island. We were brought a plate that looked caprese-like. Tomatoes, cucumber…not cucumber, geoduck. Raw geoduck very much resembles cucumber in appearance and not at all in taste. This was not the case at Central Kitchen. It was served in a bowl with quail egg, and amazing lemongrass broth. Between this and the pork broth, I just wanted a vat of each to soak in. Whoever is in charge of making the broths deserves a medal.

I assumed the mussel, smoked sturgeon, black cioppino dish was going to be a seafood stew but not at all! The sturgeon which, at first bite, was overwhelmingly smoked seemed to be tamed by the…well, black cioppino sauce??…it was jet black. It was thick. It was rich and so good.

A couple of months ago we went to a restaurant in San Francisco that will remain unnamed. It was a very large dining room…huge in fact. We had lovely oysters and good wine and then I ordered the duck and the waiter said, “The chef suggests it be cooked medium.” I very much disagreed. That is far overcooked for duck. I said, “Really?! Odd. I want it medium rare.” The waiter said, “I’ll see if he can do that, you know, duck is very hard to cook.” Ummmm…right. Note that there was no discussion of how to cook the duck at Central Kitchen, it just came out perfect with thin slices of kumquat and celery root puree.

The palate cleanser was the perfect pregnant lady’s drink (my friend is expecting) and when I was pregnant with my son I couldn’t get enough lemons. This was Meyer lemon ice with whey and topped with celery salt. I actually ordered her a second one :) Even not pregnant, I would have loved a few of those!

Last but surely not least we were destroyed with a wooden bowl of chocolate death: Dark chocolate, caramel, sesame. I was stuffed but not so much that I couldn’t move. Perfectly stuffed. We had the wine pairings which all matched beautifully and were all over the map and not at all familiar which was a rare treat.

My husband isn’t a fan of chewing meat off a bone. He was out of town so I thought I’d try out making ribs. I’d never made them before since I too wasn’t a fan of gnawing on bones, but I got over it. My son recently discovered he like chicken wings because you only get a little meat at a time…apparently cutting smaller pieces of non-bony meat isn’t an option for him. So I figured he’d like eating ribs for that reason.

I don’t really like barbecue sauce. I think it’s the ketchupy taste, not sure. I just knew I wasn’t going to make goopy ribs. I wanted a dry rub. The rub I use on rack of lamb is so good I thought I’d just do that. I got the lamb recipe from Epicurious and always have cumin, cocoa and coffee around. I rubbed that on the ribs and put them in the fridge. About an hour before I wanted to put them in the oven I took them out of the fridge to bring them up to room temperature.

I put them in a 375° oven for 40 minutes, took them out, brought the oven up to 450° and put them back in for 15 minutes, turning them over once. The rub was really good for me but I think I should have put some butter on them for the last 15 minutes like I do with the lamb. I forgot about that and it really helps the rub not be so dry. The ribs were perfectly cooked though. Juicy and delicious!!

I thought this recipe from Cooking.com’s newsletter looked tasty, kid-friendly and easy. Well, this was a miss. The broth had too much sugar in it. I made the rookie mistake of not tasting the broth before cooking the chicken in it (or even before ladling it into the bowls). I ate it but it wasn’t great. I added soy sauce to it but it was still cloyingly sweet.

As a side project, inspired by Brooke’s misstep in the Top Chef finale when she served chicken wings, I thought they looked really good. I never, ever cook the chicken wings. I think there’s too little meat to warrant attention. But for the rice bowl I only needed the breast meat, I froze the legs for later and I will make stock from the back. That left these little wings. I was only cooking for my son and I last night so I cut off the wing tips, cut each wing into two pieces and had 4 little bits to cook up for the two of us.

I went to Epicurious to figure out how I wanted to do these and found this great and easy marinade for a honey-soy glaze. Too bad I only had 2 wings to work with! These were sooooo much better than the rice bowl and we only got two little pieces each!

I will start saving my wings and make this one again. Finally, something that makes them worth keeping!

My eight-year-old helped me mix everything up and ate about a pound of frozen blueberries in the process! But they were great. He had two servings (of 3 pancakes each!) and my husband and I both had our single servings like non-growing kids.

Unlike all the other recipes, I don’t think I changed anything in this one because this is like baking…and we all know how I feel about baking. The measuring is important! My son measured it all out because he likes that part. I just cooked ‘em when that was all done. My skillet doesn’t heat evenly so they got a little darker than desired but that didn’t stop us from finishing every one of them!

I used frozen blueberries in the pancakes and fresh as a garnish. I’d make these again.

I got my frozen chicken backs from my freezer and got the stock going on the stove around noon. Simmer simmer simmer. I didn’t change a whole lot in the recipe…well, I left out the cheese since I hate cheese. I added some minced garlic to the meatballs because, well, I like garlic! I put a cup of orzo rather than 1/4 cup. Oh, and I used dried Umbrian chickpeas rather than canned because they’re soooo much better! I pressure cooked them for 35 minutes in my new, nifty Breville Fast/Slow Cooker. Miracles of science, I tell you! The beans cooked perfectly.

I brought the chicken stock up to a boil, added the orzo. It takes 8 minutes so I added the meatballs at the same time since they’d take 8-10. With 5 minutes left I added the chickpeas and the spinach. Oh, and salt! I undersalted everything a little bit, I had to add it at the table.

I had it again for lunch today and, although the orzo does get a little mushy after being reheated, it’s good as leftovers!