When I taught English, I'd have my students write odes to objects, people, or places that they truly loved. I'd do the exercise along with them and for me, those odes always turned out to be about food. Big surprise. One of my favorite students told me one spring that it was a good thing I ran marathons otherwise he thought I could potentially be quite round. Thanks, Ryan. Your grade didn't suffer for that at all. Not one bit. So while I've been out of the classroom now for almost two years and while I haven't written an ode in quite sometime, I thought I'd write a dedication to Nutella today. Because frankly, I'm obsessed with the stuff. This is beyond a playful ode. This is serious.

I think the first time I had Nutella was in my college dorm and little individual packets were being passed around the hall. Someone's mom had sent a pretty stellar care package. I tracked down the source and made friends with Liz. Thankfully, her mom just kept sending those care packages. In graduate school, my friend Laura jazzed up her brownies with Nutella. For reasons other than this (although this counts as a firm reason), I'm devastated we now live across the country from one another. And when I lived in Boston suffering through those long winters, I'd "spike" my coffee with spoonfuls of Nutella. I'm convinced it helped me get through many a long night of studying.

The history of Nutella is an interesting one. It was created in the late 1940's by Pietro Fierro. Because of war rationing, there wasn't an abundance of cocoa and Fierro was a pastry maker in dire need of a rich spread to use with his baked goods. He decided to mix in hazelnuts to serve almost as a filler and to stretch out the chocolate supply. According to the Nutella homepage, the treat was originally called "pasta gianduja"--gianduja being a carnival character infamous in the Italian region of Piedmont and pasta denoting that it was a paste. At the time, it was made in small loaves so you could slice it and place it right on bread like a piece of cheese or a cold cut (Dear Nutella manufacturers, let's bring this one back!) Nutella began to make its way from Italy to the United States in the early 80's, and you know the rest of the story.

Today, Nutella's popularity has reached cult status in some circles. Major grocery stores stock it. Some folks are getting Nutella tattoos. Food bloggers adore it. There is, in fact, a World Nutella Day each year on February 5th. Meredith Stubbs of Food52 recently considered Nutella in her column for the New York Times, The New Staples. It's big. It's undeniable.

The one bummer about Nutella is that it does contain hydrogenated oils (another reason to make your own using my friend Shannalee's homemade Nutella recipe). Last time I checked, this is the reason my local Whole Foods doesn't stock it. For awhile, I'd buy a more expensive version of Nutella that did not contain hydrogenated oils but it was almost three times the cost. So I rationalize the treat a few ways: I either use recipes that emulate the flavor of Nutella by using good cocoa and ground hazelnuts or I think of Nutella very much as a treat. I try not to buy it all that often and when I do have it around, I try and do something special with it rather than just eat it spoonful by spoonful out of the jar--although that can prove to be pretty special, too. So recently I made a Nutella puff pastry that would fall into the ridiculously easy yet special category.

It's almost less of a recipe than it is a vehicle with which to enjoy a little Nutella. Regardless, it'll please crowds of coworkers, families, significant others, small dogs. You name it.

Nutella Puff Pastry
This recipe was inspired by a recipe for Chocolate-Almond Pastries in the December ‘09 issue of Martha Stewart Magazine. I gave it new life by using hazelnuts and Nutella. It’s a versatile recipe–you could easily use any combination of nuts, dried fruits, and chocolates. Next time I make it, I’m going to add a few dollops of Mascarpone cheese to finish it off.

Makes: 4-6 servings

Ingredients:
1 sheet frozen puff pastry (from a 17.3 package), thawed
1 large egg, beaten for an egg wash
7 oz. Nutella (roughly half of a 13 oz. jar)
1 Tbsp. sugar for sanding the crust
Fleur de sel (or fine sea salt) for finishing
4 Tbsp. whole hazelnuts, toasted and chopped

Preparation:
1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
2. Arrange puff pastry on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Form a 10-inch square and fold each edge in to make a 1-inch crust. Poke middle of dough numerous times with a fork. Brush edges of dough with egg wash and sprinkle with sugar. Freeze for fifteen minutes.
3. Transfer baking sheet to oven and bake until pastry is puffed and golden brown, 15 to 20 minutes.
4. Remove from oven and spread Nutella evenly across the pastry. The Nutella will begin to melt, making it much easier to spread.
5. Sprinkle with sea salt and hazelnuts and cut into 4 squares or 6 triangles. Serve warm.

Why make your own ice cream? For me, it was a matter of what to do with an elegant surfeit of both strawberries and cream left over from the previous weekend's adventures. Waste not, want not, make ice cream. But the real reason was revealed almost as soon as the paddle was out of the bucket: It makes people happy! A carton of Ben & Jerry's may be insurance against a bad day, a cone at Bi-Rite good for fun in the sun, but homemade ice cream is a party.

And you don't even have to own an ice-cream maker. That's what Facebook is for: put out a call for help and a hour later you'll have friends all around the city dusting off their mostly-unused wedding presents for the promise of mocha-chip. Krups? Cuisinart? Whaddya want? 24 hours and a helpful neighbor later, I had a tub of pink deliciousness on hand, rich, creamy and infused with ripe berry flavor. No eggs, no custard fussiness, just cream, sugar, and strawberries: pure summery bliss.

Wait, it took 24 hours to make that ice cream? Well, not exactly. But you do have to start the process the day before you want to eat your cone. Yes, this is a drag; after all, what is ice cream but an impulsive treat, and if all you want is five minutes' instant gratification (not a bad thing, by any means), then you might as well go down to Joe's or Mitchell's, hand over your money and be done with it.

But, like I said, there's something about homemade ice cream that draws a crowd, turning any afternoon gathering into a celebration. Plus, once everything's good to go (more on that below), the actual churning process takes less than 45 minutes and is quite fun to watch. It's liquid, it's slushy liquid, wow, it's ice cream, whipping around and around, getting fluffier by the minute!

Why the delay? Most ice cream recipes call for heating the cream, milk, and sugar to a gentle steam in order to dissolve the granules. So first it's hot, then after a hour of sitting around, it's room temp. Still not good enough, since what you want is a very short road from cream to slush to frozen velvet, achieved only by chilling the mixture in the fridge for at least four or five hours, until icy cold. Meanwhile, unless your rich uncle has bequeathed you his Pacojet, you'll also probably need to freeze the container of your ice-cream maker for a good 24 hours before using.

So, yes, plan ahead. As the sternly worded, multi-lingual instructions for the ice-cream maker will tell you, trying to rush will lead only to tears, frustration, and why-isn't-this-working-Dad??

(Then again, settling for an It's It isn't the worst thing that could happen. Ah, It's Its, how I love them! Just one of the many things to cherish about our fair city. The unexpected flavors, like cappuccino and mint; the little picture of the chocolate coating flowing like lava over the oatmeal cookies: all in all, a masterpiece of corner-store gustatory seduction, if you ask me.)

And while your paddle is churning away, doing all the work for you, you can dip into Of Sugar and Snow: A History of Ice Cream Making, by Jeri Quinzio. Quinzio, a food historian and the author a previous book on ice cream, leaves no Eskimo Pie unexamined in her painstakingly detailed exploration of ice-cream making from its beginnings in mid-16th century Europe to its meteoric rise in popularity during the early years of the 20th century in America. As you might expect from a book capped with 23 pages of scholarly citations (and funded by the University of California Press Foundation, as part of its California Studies in Food and Culture series), the accretion of minutia (Want to know exactly who first held the patent on the ice-cream cone? Or the many apocryphal stories of its invention? Or how fancy versions were once piped with icing around the top, dusted with chopped pistachios, filled with a mixture of ginger ice and apple ice cream and finally served on a doily-lined silver tray?) can be a little mind-numbing.

Quinzio, although clearly a dogged researcher, is no Mark Kurlansky, a writer who can make even the most ordinary of topics (cod, salt) into rollicking good reads. You really have to want to know what Quinzio has to share, but for those with a serious appetite for culinary history, the nuggets can be worth it. Who knew, for example that ice cream was aligned with the anti-alcohol Temperance Movement, posited as the family man's happy-making substitute for beer?

Surely even Quinzio would forgive you for putting down her 200-page magnum opus in exchange for a spoon, a banana, and a maraschino cherry. Think all your pals are too busy these days to get together without 3 weeks' notice? Just put out the magic call--There's homemade ice cream in my freezer! Who wants a cone?--and the doorbell will ring, I promise you. Very quickly, I discovered that I couldn't stop at strawberry. With recipes from Ina Gartner's book Barefoot Contessa Parties! on hand, I soon had a freezer full of homemade vanilla, caramel, and bourbon-caramel to go with the strawberry. Which led, even faster, to a whole bunch of impromptu parties, buoyed by tea, champagne, bowls of cherries and plates of fancy little cookies. Easy, sweet, and perfect for summer.

Strawberry Ice Cream
Proportions are pretty flexible here; if you want a less rich (but slightly icier) ice cream, you could use half milk and half cream. The sweetness will get less pronounced once the mixture is frozen, so keep that in mind as you sugar your berries.

Makes 1 quart

Ingredients
4 cups heavy cream
1/2 to 3/4 cup sugar, depending on sweetness of berries
pinch of salt
2 pint baskets ripe, fragrant strawberries, hulled and roughly chopped

Preparation
1. Over low heat in a heavy-bottomed saucepan, warm cream, 1/4 cup sugar, and salt until sugar is dissolved and cream is hot but not boiling. (Boiling will make the cream separate, not what you want.) Remove from heat and let cool.

2. Meanwhile, mix strawberries with 1/4 to 1/2 cup sugar. Crush some of the berries with the back of a spoon. Let berries sit, covered, at room temperature, stirring occasionally, until sugar is dissolved and berries have released their juice. Taste strawberry mixture for sweetness, adding more sugar as necessary.

3. Refrigerate cream and strawberry mixtures separately for several hours or overnight, until very cold.

4. Mix strawberries and cream together. Assemble ice cream maker and pour in strawberry mixture, freezing according to manufacturer's directions. When it's thick and fluffy and looks like ice cream, scoop it into a freezer-safe container and let harden in the freezer for a few hours. Or hand out spoons to your favorite people and eat it all up right there.

Food & Wine This Week:
City and suburban residents who want fresh eggs, milk and produce are raising animals, poultry and bees in their yards. Leslie and her guests, Oakland-based urban farmer and author Novella Carpenter, and Rebecca Katz with San Francisco Animal Care and Control, look at a growing trend -- backyard farming in urban areas.

WATCH VIDEO:

VIEW SLIDESHOW:

Related Posts and Websites:

• Goat-Curious? Take Urban Goats 101 with Novella Carpenter
• KQED Forum: Novella Carpenter's "Farm City"
• Ghost Town Farm
• City & County of San Francisco: Animal Care and Control
• A Tomato Grows on Capp Street

Yes, it's another post about cherries. But, honestly, what did you expect? Cherries are everywhere at the moment.

About this time every year, a little Depression Era song makes its return to the food blogoshpere: "Life is Like A Bowl of Cherries." One can bet that this song title will be borrowed for somebody's cheerful blog post about the fruit almost as assuredly as on can count on those swallows invading the poor, decrepit Mission San Juan Capistrano.

And, much like those damned birds, this song (words by Lew Brown and Buddy De Sylva, music by Ray Henderson*) is as chirpy as they come.

Not that that's necessarily such a bad thing. I mean, who couldn't use the occasional reminder to shrug one's shoulders and enjoy life?

Just have a look-see at the lyrics to see what I mean:

Life is just a bowl of cherries

Don't take it serious

Life's too mysterious

You work, you save, you worry so,

But you can't take your dough

When you go, go, go.

So keep repeating, "It's the berries."

The strongest oak must fall.

The sweet things in life to you were just loaned,

So how can you lose what you never owned?

Life is just a bowl of cherries,

So live and laugh at it all.

Why is it that Depression Era songs cling to me (please excuse the stone fruit metaphor) like fuzz on a peach? It's probably my chronic broke-ness. And the fact that I have a penchant for music that was born about the same time as my parents. Whatever the reason, this song is stuck in my head.

I am taking this as some sort of sign. Therefore, I am also taking its message to heart.

No longer will I over-complicate my feelings toward cherries. I will do my best not to think of them as symbols of transitory beauty, who in desperate need to retain their youth, turn to alcohol for support. Instead, I will eat them and enjoy them as they come. And when I dip into a brandied one or two come winter time, I will no longer view them as Helen Lawsons-in-a-jar.

Nor will I focus on the seedier side of the cherry pit-- that hard, bitter thing that can crack a tooth or choke a baby. I will not think of them as cyanide-laced stones that, if eaten in large quantities, offer up confusion, anxiety, vomiting, and death. Nope. I will dream of cherry pit ice cream instead.

From now on-- or, at least until cherry season is over-- I am going to focus on the now, the keep-it-simple, life-does-not-suck message of this glorious little song.

And I will live and laugh at it all.

Fresh Cherries with Ice and Mint

Why ice and mint? Why not ice and mint? This is how we serve them where I work. The ice gives the natural tartness a fighting chance against the sweet, much in the way that serving a big red California Cabernet Sauvignon at cellar temperature allows the inherent acidity of the grapes to balance out hugeness of the fruit (and masks the high alcohol). The mint is crushed and torn and shredded over the ice and cherries so that, as the ice melts, the mint's essential oils gently wash over the fruit, giving the cherries a subtle little extra somthing-something.

It is simple genius, if you ask me.

If you haven't tried it, you should. If you don't want to try it, what on earth is wrong with you?

Ingredients:

A bowl's-worth of cherries. Bing, Brook, Ranier, etc. Whatever you prefer. Whatever is currently available.

A handful of crushed, fresh ice. Please do not use ice that has been sitting in your freezer for months. If you do, you'll be washing all sorts of interesting flavors over your cherries.

A few leaves of spearmint, cleaned.

Preparation:

1. Wash cherries, place in large bowl.

2. Add ice to cherries. Toss gently.

3. Tear mint leaves and sprinkle over cherries and ice.

4. Serve immediately and eat without a worry or care. Unless, of course, you crack a tooth or ingest an extreme amount of cherry pits. In that case, I advice you to contact your local dentist or poison control center, respectively.

*On an interesting note, these fellows (either in collaboration with each other with other artists) gave us a selection of more food-related songs like "You're the Cream in My Coffee," "Animal Crackers in My Soup," and "Don't Sit Under The Apple Tree.

The first cherry of the season is always the best. Although I know what a cherry tastes like, I'm still always a little pleasantly surprised when I first bite into one after months of going without. But I don't eat just any cherry. I want a cherry that is firm to the touch, the skin taut with its underlying juices, and deep deep red. Keep those mushy cherries away from me. I want no part of them.

In college, I once got through an especially yawn-inspiring section of Herodatus’ The Histories by treating myself to one sweet cherry for each page I read. I remember sitting on the worn plaid couch in my apartment with a big bowl of Bing’s next to me. I read as quickly as I could, anxiously looking forward to devouring my reward after consuming a page of boring Greek history. I remember nothing of the reading assignment, but will forever savor the memory of those enticingly ripe cherries.

Yet as much as I love simply eating a large bowl of cherries (sans Herodatus, please), I also love to cook with this versatile fruit, especially when I can get them fresh. Usually I make a pie or tart, but this year -- with drizzly and cold weather more like November than May -- I was in the mood for a hot cup of tea and some cake.

Following is my recipe for Cherry Almond Tea Cake. Made with a healthy portion of almond paste, butter and a smattering of buttermilk it has a rich nutty flavor that underscores the tart sweetness of those gorgeous sun-kissed cherries now available in markets everywhere.

Cherry Almond Tea Cake

Makes: One cake

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 pound almond paste (at room temperature)
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 sticks butter (at room temperature)
1 tsp vanilla
4 eggs (at room temperature)
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 1/2 cup pitted cherries cut in half

Preparation:
1. Preheat oven to 350 (or 325 if using a convection oven). You should also butter a 10-inch tart pan or baking dish for later use now.

2. Mix together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

3. Crumble almond paste into small pieces and place in a separate mixing bowl (use your stand mixer bowl, if you have one) along with the sugar and combine. Then cream the butter into the almond paste and sugar mixture for 2-3 minutes with your mixer on medium high.

4. Add your eggs, one at a time, to your almond paste/butter mixture and cream until smooth.

5. Add in your vanilla and buttermilk until everything is fully incorporated.

6. Gently fold in your flour mixture in batches, being sure not to over mix. When adding the last batch of flour, also add in the cherries and fold everything together.

7. Pour the batter into your prepared baking dish, using a spatula to gently flatten the top and then bake for 1 hour in a regular oven or 40-45 minutes in a convection oven.

8. When you can cleanly pull a toothpick from the cake, remove it from the oven and let cool. Top servings with powdered sugar.

Note: Almond paste is made of ground almonds and sugar. It's available in most high-end grocery stores and bake shops. It should not be confused with marzipan, however, which usually contains more sugar and so could throw off the recipe a bit.

Grass-fed Steak Tartare: with raw egg, caperberries, chives, lavender sea salt, and toast

I love brunch. With an intense passion. In fact, it may just be my favorite pastime. When else are you given full license to sleep in late, ease into a leisurely day with a light cocktail, and indulge a little, because after all, you are eating through two meals. Why not have something sweet to go with that savory?

The girl & the fig in Sonoma has perfected brunch. And that is no hyperbole. It's my newest happy place (too bad it isn't closer).

Sunday Brunch

The restaurant is ridiculously charming with a Frenchy-bistro-meets-wine-country vibe that extends from the décor to the menu. I couldn't stop oohing and ahhing over all the cute little touches, and virtually everything on the menu was calling my name.

Salon de Fromage

The salon area well accommodates those waiting to be seated, with a "Salon de Fromage" station where you can sample some artisan cheese and house-made charcuterie, floating servers who can help you get started with a tasty drink, and even a gift shop selling all sorts of figgy goods (both edible, like Ficoco, a fig and cocoa spread, and home/bath products, like Fig & Orange Blossom Body Butter).

Balsamic Bloody Mary

My drink of choice on this joyful morning? The Balsamic Bloody Mary, a phenomenal twist on the classic, made with house-made Bloody Mary mix and a splash of balsamic vinegar, garnished with a briny caperberry, green olive, and celery stalk. All the vegetables I really need on a Sunday.

For our starter, the Grass-fed Steak Tartare caught my eye. When it arrived, the presentation was almost too pretty to eat. And yes, I just called raw beef "pretty." The steak was succulent and sweet, and even more sumptuous with the egg mixed in. The flavor of the caperberries carried over nicely from the Bloody, and cut through the richness of the meat. The shower of chives brought a splash of color and touch of onion, and the lavender sea salt bloomed when sprinkled over each bite. The dish was well-conceived, well-constructed, and fun to dig into.

Duck Confit & Potato Hash: with poached eggs, applewood smoked bacon, and mixed greens

Next up, Duck Confit & Potato Hash with a side of fresh mixed salad greens. It wasn't quite what we were expecting, which was larger pieces of duck confit over potato hash. Rather, it was a hash made of duck confit, applewood smoked bacon, and potato. The duck was overshadowed by the bacon, but nevertheless, it was satisfyingly savory and crispy. And the eggs were poached precisely, with luxurious yolk flowing out as we cut into it.

Stuffed Brioche French Toast: with sweetened Bellwether Farms fromage blanc, meyer lemon and huckleberry compote

And, the crowning jewel, a gigantic piece of Brioche French Toast stuffed with sweetened, meyer lemon fromage blanc (from Bellwether Farms) and huckleberry compote. Gorgeous. Sweet and tart, full of bright citrus-berry notes, creamy and decadent, but incredibly light at the same time.

The girl & the fig, it's as if you've dived into my soul and materialized every brunch wish and want I've ever dreamed. Now if only you could do something about teleportation…

the girl & the fig
110 W Spain St
Sonoma, CA 95476
(707) 938-3634
Sunday Brunch: 10 am - 3 pm

I visited the old Bonny Doon within four months of moving to California. The year was 2002. Tickled at the idea of crashing a tasting room, my then-roommate and I motored through the mountains in a borrowed car, the Doon our destination solely on the strength of a few cheap bottles we'd downed. It was a few days before Halloween, and as we sauntered into the building (It's been long enough that I scarcely remember the exterior), we realized we were not the carousing pranksters, but instead the straight men: Every member of the Bonny Doon tasting room staff was dressed in a costume. I saw a bear, a clown, and a few ghosts in sheets just begging for cardinal-colored stains. A young woman -- a witch -- asked us what we wanted, and we had no idea. We wound up taking home a few selections -- including a lovely Framboise I shipped off to my mother.

Since then, Bonny Doon has moved to Santa Cruz, sold a few of its bank-breaking mainstream labels, and most recently, shifted its focus from winsome, cleverly-marketed table fare to quirky, more rarefied wines made using organically grown grapes (invariably oddball Italian varietals) and biodynamic methods. At the same time, owner Randall Grahm has seen his profile grow, not because of the bottles he's produced, but as a result of his well-publicized literary efforts -- from newsletter manifestos to provocative cartoon ads in widely-read wine magazines and crushing commentaries cloaked in clever wine-y homages to canonical novels and poems. That career, a supple, sturdy vine shooting off his winemaking business's freshly trimmed root, culminated -- at least so far -- in last year's "vinthology" Been Doon So Long, a self-curated collection published by the University of California Press. The title, I assume, is a play on Richard Farina's 1966 novel Been Down So Long, It Looks Like Up to Me, the book Farina was promoting on the very night he died in a motorcycle accident near Monterey.

After my short strange trip to the old tasting room back in 2002, I followed Bonny Doon in the news, and even made a point of buying the company's wines when I could. Already thoroughly charmed by his labels frequently featuring wild, splotched, and puckered caricatures drawn by Ralph Steadman, a favorite artist, I was also taken with Grahm's funny essays, and enamored of the prospect of supporting a good writer by drinking his wine. A few weeks ago, Been Doon So Long won a James Beard Award, and I figured the time had come to reacquaint myself with Grahm's body of work.

The body is the size of a biology textbook, which is probably appropriate considering the subject matter. At the same time, essays so dense, so rife with potentially unfamiliar terms and allusions that require quick references, suit a more portable package, something to be tucked into a jacket pocket, read in installments on public transportation, and marked with folded corners, underlines, and scribbled notes. Instead, the book is huge, heavy, and handsome. It looks good in a case, or on a coffee-table, but actually reading it requires physical effort. It's a little cumbersome to hold up while lying prone in bed. If you fall asleep reading it, you might break your nose, so don't try doing so after reaching the bottom of a bottle of syrah. Instead, you need a strong, straight-backed chair, a cup of coffee, and the warm morning light. Some oenology acumen and a solid background in Western literature doesn't hurt either. I am equipped with the latter, but -- as someone quite comfortable picking out something nice to drink with dinner, yet woefully ignorant of winemaking practices and quite hazy on the cultural worlds and myriad personalities, both human and grape, surrounding them -- plenty of Grahm's jokes (and a few of his key points) swirl above my head like clouds of must. With respect to some of it, like a high school junior trying to make sense of Ulysses, for the first time, perhaps a year or two too soon, I'm happy getting the gist.

Aside from introducing the reader (who is probably already familiar) to Grahm's general vibe, the book takes two distinct tacks. The first -- palpable in his gleeful parodies -- is the wine world equivalent of a dis record, and a fairly hilarious one at that -- with upstanding luminaries like Robert "Moldavi," disagreeable trends such as "merlotmania," and, of course, the critic Robert Parker looking flimsier than 2010-era 50 Cent. The insults are often no less opaque than those hurled by a derisive rapper, and the effect is equally delicious, though with salvos of double entendre, puns, copious footnotes, and a constant barrage of drunken word-play (For example, and there are thousands, the wine "dick" in "Spenser's Last Case" wields a Gattinara, not a gat), considerably cuter. The formula is consistent and agreeable: Grahm apes the style of a famous author -- Thomas Puncheon, James Juice, or J.D. Salignac, perhaps -- and unloads a lecture cloaked in a madcap, script-flipping of themes in a well-known work by the particular author -- say, "B," "Cheninagin's Wake," or "A Perfect Day for Barberafish." Most of these are as pleasant and drinkable as a $12 bottle of Gruner, if a bit more demanding, and somewhat heavier on the palate. The song and poem parodies that follow are less successful; they seem watered-down, like Grandma's pink zin.

The other side of Been Doon So Long is meditative, serious -- which is to say, witty, somewhat less goofy, and only a touch softer on the tannins. On page two of his introduction, Grahm starts with his own shortcomings. In essence, he wouldn't have had to become the writer and marketing savant he is had his wines been as wonderful as he'd wanted them to be. Words -- with regard to wine -- are where he has made his mark. The success of Bonny Doon and his other labels have kept him a few steps further from the poorhouse than the average grape-stomper, but he has typically been known more for his prose, antics, and stinging satirical flail than for the quality of his wines. Many entries are both amusing and illuminating. In one chapter, he runs through some of Bonny Doon's best pre-Steadman labels, discussing the Jules Verne-influenced scene on Le Cigare Volant and revealing that the label for his muscat was inspired by a trip to a lady's underwear boutique in San Francisco. For me -- again, the non-expert -- Grahm repeatedly uncorks sweet, thoughtful conceits about wine that make me eager to improve my grasp -- not on know-how and scoring systems, but the mystery and magic of wine, to see it as a lovely, boundless parcel to discover and unravel in the same way I've devoured popular music and steeped myself in its history, absorbing its movements and collections of characters, coming to understand first-hand how certain changes and instrumental colors render certain effects on a listener. On page 220, he writes:

"...[R]emember that wine's inmost nature is metaphoric (wine can smell like grapes and cigar boxes), that wine's very essence is linked to mutability and to memory..."

Way back on page seven, Grahm sums it up -- his lot, at least -- as a "soul's journey" toward a better grasp on wine's "animating brilliance, the profound truth of terroir." His discovery of wine was a stumble, not a search, "a happy accident," and now it means much more: "winemaking and the culture of wine provide a unique and powerful language that carries the rich metaphoric suggestion of the sweetness and strangeness of life itself."

Terroir is one of Grahm's central preoccupations, specifically its "Old World" form of expression, when a winemaker attempts to "excavate" the power and potential that already exists within the soil, in the setting, under the sun: "the vineyard itself becomes a sort of mantra or prayer wheel and successive vintages are our reincarnations." At the same time, he's frank about his own efforts. He calls the wines he has made thus far "puppy-dog wines," and wonders if he'll ever be able to discover terroir -- to make a wine that has a taste expressive of its physical place of origin, not jammy, high-fruit, "bimbo" wines that he finds as vacuous and disposable as fast food.

I came away from reading the book thinking of Grahm himself as a product of terroir: the Citroen-driving, tie dye-clad, John Lennon-meets-I.M. Pei glasses-sporting California sage steeped in the post-hippie foment of the very early seventies, soaked in counter-culture and the canon alike, a farmer and an academic. No place but the North-Central coast of California could have birthed Randall Grahm. About a year ago, in a New York Times profile, Grahm described wine also as "a reflection of the human psyche." Writer Eric Asimov went on to speculate: "No doubt 25 years of whimsical, mercurial wines have been a reflection of his own." He's probably right. The wines he has made -- and their labels, and the universe of words he has conjured up around it all -- reflect his character -- and his time, place, and climate. That would make him quite like a grape, one that has doon quite well for itself.

It all started with pancakes. As many great things do. Kim Boyce, former pastry chef at Spago and Campanile, left the industry to settle down and have a family. At home, she was inspired to bake but wanted to create healthy options for her kids without spending all day in the kitchen. While shopping at the market, Boyce picked up a small sack of Bob's Red Mill 10 Grain Pancake Mix. Later in the day, her young daughter was hungry and there wasn't an immediate plan for meal-time, so Boyce grabbed the flour and added in apples, pureed beets, milk, eggs and butter and had some darn fine (and unique) pancakes on her hands. This began her interest in cooking with whole grains. And I'm so, so thankful that this interest turned into a minor obsession and a very real talent, yielding her special cookbook, Good to the Grain.

I'm much more of a baker than a cook, and I often experiment with whole wheat flours in certain recipes--thinking I'm making a cake or cookie recipe that much healthier. It makes me feel somehow o.k. when I go back for a second (or third) portion. But Boyce makes a point that this book isn't just about substituting a whole grain flour in place of white flour. She's spent time getting to know the flavor profile of each type of grain and the texture that each lends to baked goods. In her Introduction, Boyce notes:

"Baking with whole-grain flours is about balance, about figuring out how to get the right combination of structure and flavor from flours that don’t act the same way as regular white flour.”

And the recipes are truly original and insanely appealing. From strawberry barley scones to muscovado sugar cake to ginger peach muffins -- morning and evening treats are included and photographed beautifully by Quentin Bacon. Bacon knows how to photograph rustic desserts, capturing the simplicity of a scene, the slight dimness of morning light, and evocative shots of half-eaten desserts. This book has been on my bedside for the past two weeks and I look forward to crawling into bed and climbing into Boyce and Bacon's world each night. Actually, it's a world I'd prefer never to leave.

The book itself is organized logically, with twelve different grains/flours covered and each chapter donated to one of them. For example, Boyce begins with a chapter on whole wheat flour and ends with spelt. Somewhere in between you'll find recipes that include amaranth, teff, rye, kamut, buckwheat--and so on. There are 74 recipes total, and Boyce gives a great list of online sources to order some of the grains (page 200). After all, not all of us are lucky enough to have Rainbow Grocery or other natural foods stores with great bulk sections in our backyard.

Now generally with a book review worth its weight, the author will have cooked or baked from the book and will perhaps include a recipe for readers to try. I have done neither of those things. You see, this interesting thing has happened where a few friends and a coworkers have brought me treats made from Boyce's book. That's actually how I first learned of it. So while I haven't exactly baked from it myself, I've tried her chocolate chip cookies (and they're absolutely fantastic: chewy yet sturdy and studded with hand-chopped chocolate), the gingersnaps and the chocolate babka. We're not talking healthy deprivation here. We're talking pure joy and indulgence. That being said, I understand some of you may be seeking out a bit more information and authority on Boyce's recipes. So here are a few of my food-blogging colleagues and friends who have detailed their hands-on experiences with the book:

• Figgy Buckwheat Scones from 101 Cookbooks
• Carrot Spelt Muffins from Pithy and Cleaver
• Honey Amaranth Waffles from Fake Food Free
• Olive Oil Cake from the Wednesday Chef
• Muesli from 5 Second Rule

To close, I'm moving again. More on that later. But as you all know, moving has a way of forcing you to purge things you're not using and packing up the things you want to hold onto. I have trouble letting go of cookbooks, but I did donate a few this time around to make room for some new ones and to make life just a little easier come moving day. But I know for a fact that Good to the Grain isn't going anywhere. I've never been so excited to read, absorb each word and tip, and bake and bake and bake from a book. While I hope this move will be almost the last for a very long time, I know that Boyce's book will make it into any U-Haul that crosses my path for many years to come.

In the forward to the book, Nancy Silverton notes,

My first impulse when I’m tasting a dish or a baked good I’ve never had before is to think about how I would do it differently, how I would improve upon it. I love it when I come across something and think ‘This is perfect! I wouldn’t change a thing!’"

I agree. Wholeheartedly.

We're all fortunate here in the Bay Area because Kim Boyce is speaking at Omnivore Books tonight. Come and pick up a book and meet my new baking legend in person. Here are the details:

Monday, May 24th at Omnivore Books: 6-7 p.m.
3885 Cesar Chavez Street
San Francisco, CA 94131
(415) 282-4712

Photos by Stephane von Stephane

"Is this Satan's dinner party?" my companion Stephane asked me as we walked into a Dogpatch photo studio on Saturday night. "If it is, it sure looks tasty!" At the center of the airy white room, hanging suspended on a heavy chain, was a whole goat, skinned and hooked through the hooves on two sharp cast-iron points. More heavy chains were linked around the waists of Marina Meats' and Avedano's butcher David Budworth, a.k.a. Dave the Butcher and his assistant Josh Kleinsmith, each chain weighed down with an assortment of wicked-sharp knives and cleavers.

Around us, tattoo-sleeved servers in black t-shirts emblazoned with the electric-green logo Chef Stephanie: Culinary Mistress were delivering plates of Alemany Farms greens topped with bright nasturtium flowers and tiny gobbets of goat carpaccio--raw meat, fresh off the hoof--while a band crashed out some power chords in the corner.

Welcome to The Butcher, the Chef, and the Goat, the first episode of The Butcher and the Chef, a roving underground dinner party dedicated to explaining, in the most deliciously visceral way possible, just how food goes from animal to ingredient.

A collaboration between caterer, cooking teacher, and private chef Stephanie Hibbert and Dave the Butcher, the concept was born during a casual conversation the two had a couple of months ago. At first, their business partnership might seem unlikely; Hibbert, who spent six years cooking with Eric Tucker at the high-end vegan restaurant Millennium, was a vegetarian until four years ago. But their mutual passion for sustainability, and for getting their clients to know where their food is coming from, proved to be a perfect match.

Eight weeks later, they were shepherding 50 people up four flights of stairs into a Dogpatch photo studio, transformed into a dining room with the help of green events planner Sadie Waddington of One Big Fish Events. Using her usual prep space at La Cocina, with last-minute staging furiously organized in the studio's tiny galley kitchen, Chef Stephanie created a five-course meal featuring the products of a host of like-minded local suppliers, from strawberries grown at the unionized, organic Swanton Berry Farms near Santa Cruz to beers made by newbie brewer Patrick Horn at Soma's Pacific Brewing Laboratories.

On the plate, the goat was great, from a deep, richly flavored mushroom, liver, and kidney pâté to a black bean and chipotle chile and seared slices of leg (tough and hard to cut, but worth the chew) and a more succulent braised shoulder over polenta and peas. The meat was sweet, not gamy at all, from animals raised at Long Ranch in Manteca, pasture grown and finished on alfalfa. But the real draw? Not the dinner, but the show.

As guests sipped from wine glasses filled with Pacific Brewing Lab's Rough Wooing (a big Scottish-style ale smoothed out with maple syrup, jaggery, and sweet spices), Dave broke down the display goat, first sawing it half, then methodically dividing it from ribs to loin, explaining as he went.

"If you understand how one animal works, you can understand how any one works. The shoulder is always a slow cook, while legs and ribs are a fast cook." To demonstrate, he bones and rolls a neat parcel, made from the "arm"--meat from the shoulder, socket, and shoulder blade--perfect for braising, with just a sprig of rosemary and a little salt.

"I'm a real fan of cooking without a lot of seasoning, so you can taste the meat. If you're not going to taste the meat, you might as well get a boneless, skinless chicken breast and move to the Marina," he says, to much laughing and clapping from the crowd. As the beer flows and the goat is slowly reduced to a couple of ankles and hooves, the audience begins yelling out questions. What about the marrow, asks one man. It's there, just like in a cow, replies Dave. Split the legs, roast them, and you'll have marrow bones. Different taste, and less of it, since the legs are much slimmer, but marrow nonetheless.

Is this, then, what will get our goat? A little glamour and some knife-wielding education? Despite some media hype, goat hasn't quite muscled beef, pork, or even lamb off our plates. For the omnivorous, though, there are plenty of reasons to go for goat. As red meats go, it's a lean and healthy one. Since they're smaller and slaughtered younger, they don't have the impact on the ecosystem that cows raised for meat do, and they're well-suited to smaller operations. Just ask Bill Niman, who left his rapidly expanding meat company, Niman Ranch, in order to focus on sustainable goat farming at Stokes Ranch in Bolinas. He and his wife Nicolette are goat evangelists now, touting the healthful, environmentally sound benefits of goat meat to skeptical carnivores around the country.

So, why not goat? First might be what Dave calls "the ethnic thing." If you didn't grow up eating Mexican birria or Jamaican curried goat, or shopping in halal butcher shops, goat can seem like something other people eat, like tripe or frogs' legs. Gamy, funky, too strong: Dave has heard it all from customers he's tried to get interested in the world beyond tri-tip and lamb chops.

Slowly, though, goat is catching on. Dave says that Avedano's now goes through a whole butchered goat about every two weeks. At a recent Inforum panel discussion on urban farming at the Commonwealth Club, City Grazing founder David Gavrich mused on the possibility of reducing his ever-increasing goat herd--which makes its living munching down the weeds around the City's train tracks--through selective slaughtering, providing truly local meat to interested consumers.

Back at the dinner, guests are purchasing their own party favors. In keeping with the event's no-waste, nose-to-tail philosophy, the display goat isn't just an anatomy experiment, it's next week's dinner. As each part of the goat is broken down, the cuts are wrapped in brown paper and sold on the spot for diners to take home, from the head ("I'm making soup!" announces its buyer jubilantly) to the chops, the shanks, the kidneys, even the tongue.

At the end of the evening, Dave and Stephanie are wiped out but thrilled. For a first venture, it's been a surprisingly smooth success, one they'll repeat on Sunday afternoon from 4 to 7pm. And then, after the buckets of compostable scraps are hauled out, the rented tablecloths packed up in their biodegradable bags, they'll start planning their next event, Gone Fishin', at Coffee Bar on June 27th. As with the first event, which was a benefit for Alemany Farm, part of the ticket price will go to support a local agricultural or sustainability effort, in this case the backyard-gleaning project Produce to the People.

"Would you like Bleu cheese, French, Russian, Ranch, oil and vinegar, or Thousand Island dressing?" It was a familiar chant I'd hear from waiters and waitresses in restaurants high and low-end-- wherever I'd go in the 1970's.

Some might lament this time in our history as a sort of Dark Age of salads-- iceberg lettuce, either crispy or wilted, anemic tomatoes, and a packet or two of saltines that never seemed to make it to their intended consumer fully intact-- the thin, clear packaging holding fast to either your fingers or the side of your soda glass thanks to static electricity.

Others might have viewed this time in our country's life as a sort of Golden Age for thick, creamy salad dressings-- some much needed zing and oomph to perk up (or completely drown) the most flaccid of leafy green offerings.

I was strictly an oil and vinegar fellow. I shied away from the heavy stuff because I thought it would make me phlegmy. The Blue cheese dressing my mother preferred made me gag, the French looked like an aged whore with a terrible dye job, and the Russian seemed positively treasonous back then. The Ranch dressing, however, was appealing since it made me think of cowboys in tight jeans who smoked and drank and slept together in bunk houses when they weren't busy soaping each other up in antique horse troughs. I approached that dressing carefully. I would order a little bit of it on the side. It was for my french fries in case anybody asked.

And what about Thousand Island dressing? It left me completely baffled. I tried to imagine palm trees and tropical fruit and people wearing very little in the way of clothing, but things just didn't seem right. The people were always naturally a few shades darker than myself, as if they'd been sunning themselves on some kind of never-ending summer vacation. They were happy and beautiful and exotic. But then they came up with this mayo-based, pickle-and- chili-sauce-infused dressing to represent themselves? It made no sense.

How on earth were you supposed pour Thousand Island dressing over a pineapple?

It just wasn't tropical in my book. I mean, where were these people from? Which "thousand islands"? Were they Indonesian? Filipino? Bahamian? The French and the Russians would agree with me that Thousand Island dressing was culturally confused. And, since they were so busy entertaining each other, the ranch hands wouldn't even give it the time of day.

And neither would I. I decided that Thousand Island dressing was just a bad marketing idea and dismissed it from my consciousness, never having gotten to the bottom of this Thousand Island mystery. To me, the Thousand Islanders were sort of like the lost civilization of Atlantis, only creamier.

Occasionally, the dressing would creep into my consciousness. I'd wonder what made the special sauce on my burger so special. A diner would use Thousand Island dressing to pinch hit for the Russian dressing in my Reuben, but it never ever made it onto my salad plate.

Until now, that is. I've given it another chance. My fear of phlegm has cleared up, if you will.

And it's also due to the fact that I now understand where Thousand Island dressing is coming from. There is nothing tropical about it. Its success can be traced to a thrifty 19th Century New York housewife, a famous stage actress accused of getting a little too hot and heavy with her co-star, and a hotel magnate whose most famous hotel gave its name to another salad.

Thousand Island Dressing

The thousand islands in question are those that exist in the middle of the St. Lawrence river between Ontario, Canada and Upstate New York. In the late 19th Century, these islands existed chiefly for the benefit of the leisured classes.

One family who made its living off of these monied folk was the family La Londe of Clayton, New York. George La Londe, Jr. was a local guide who would take people who could afford to take time of off work around the river, showing them the best places to fish for pike or black bass or build a mansion or a dock for their yacht. On mild evenings, he would treat them to "shore dinners" wherein he would serve his wife Sophia's special dressing.

At one such dinner, a New York stage actress named May Irwin was so impressed with the dressing that she requested the recipe. It was she who gave the name "Thousand Island" to the dressing. Around the same time, she gave what is believed to be the world's first on-screen kiss for Thomas Edison. Whether or not her breath smelled of Thousand Island dressing is unclear. Sadly her food journal (in the 19th century, food blogs were handwritten and not kept online or backed up with Time Machine or Back Blaze) was destroyed in a fire.

Not long after giving Miss Irwin the recipe, Mrs. La Londe gave it to a Mrs. Bertrand, who served the dressing at her hotel where it was tasted by one George Boldt, owner of a local island mansion and, more importantly, the Waldorf Astoria hotel, where he insisted this delightful salad dressing be served. Clearly, Mr. Boldt loved his mayonnaise-based salad dressings. Thousand Island dressing was a sensation.

Or, at least, it caught on. I'd prefer not to be accused of sensationalism.

Makes about three cups.

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cups mayonnaise

1/3 cup bottle chili sauce

1/4 cup chopped drained pimientos

1 large hard-boiled egg, chopped and sieved.

2 tablespoons Dijon mustard

3 tablespoons finely chopped cornichons or dill pickles

2 tablespoons capers, drained

Tabasco sauce to taste.

Preparation:

Combine everything but the Tabasco sauce in a medium sized bowl. Mix well. Add Tabasco to taste.

Will keep well refrigerated for several days.