Some grocers offer recipes and coupons. Others offer recipes for a socioeconomic-savvy food system and a mean pear skillet cake.

For the food shopper who thinks, the positively indispensable Bi-Rite Market’s Eat Good Food: A Grocer’s Guide to Shopping, Cooking, and Creating Community Through Food by Sam Mogannam and Dabney Gough (Ten Speed Press) released this month is the holy reference guide/blue book that clues consumers in to the real value of what’s on the grocery shelf. At a time when so much is being written about atrocities in our broken food system, consumers looking for sound, actionable advice on making grocery store purchasing decisions will appreciate this neatly compiled background check on everything from canned tuna to flour, fresh meat, fish and milk, and every manner of produce under the sun.

And note that this cannot be dismissed as a mere starter’s guide. As a veteran food nerd for decades, I thought that I knew a something about eating mindfully, ecologically, locally, and sustainably. But a primer on avoiding genetically modified organisms, and a full list of foods that are most commonly GMO? I am edified (sugar, milk and dairy, oils, corn and soybeans -- page 12). The pleasures of the texture of bronze die-cut pasta? I had no idea how this aspect of artisan pasta production can be essential for clinging sauce (page 37). And a list of all of the product acronyms on European foods that signify it is a product of protected origin (such as true, regionally-specific Champagne as opposed to methode champenoise) -- AO, DO, AOC, DOC, DOP, PDO, and IGT, page 47. And that’s just chapter one, people.

Just as one pushes the cart down the grocery aisle, the uber-brainiac education rolls through every department, well-captured in France Ruffenach’s bright, busy photography that conveys what it feels like to shop in Bi-Rite on a sunny Saturday afternoon or at the 5pm dinner rush. Mogannam and Gough give faces to food throughout the book as well, introducing readers to the likes of his brother Raphael, grocery buyer; farmer for the store’s self-grown produce and produce buyer, Simon Richard; and a smattering of farmers that are enmeshed in Bi-Rite’s business and mission -- some, like Drakes Bay Family Farms, purely as retail partner; others, like Soul Food Farm, pet investments to help propel local and sustainable agriculture.

The Eat Good Food shopping information stands alone as a necessity for any kitchen bookshelf. But the tome is also comprised of recipes from the Bi-Rite deli and beyond which, while well written to induce drool and craving, they feel awkwardly placed and difficult to find plunked at the end of each chapter. As a frequent Bi-Rite shopper, I was excited to finally crack the code on their addictive Mujadareh (see recipe below), and their heavenly and rich deli counter summer staple, Sergio’s Gazpacho. Even Delfina’s spaghetti makes a cameo, simple and delicious and part of the book’s neighborhood charm. And thumbing through I quickly found a new favorite, Mom’s Pear Skillet Cake from, you guessed it, Sam’s mother, which yields results that far outshine the effort, and is the perfect thing to be doing with pears right now.

Another challenge of the book is that it’s so much information, it’s nearly impossible to remember the essentials when you’re actually cruising down aisle six. Seafood shoppers striving to do the right thing really benefited from the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s wallet card guides to sustainable seafood and then later, their mobile apps. But when pondering the entire grocery store of everything from coffee to celeriac, tri-tip to crème fraiche out in the trenches -- well, we could really use an app for that.

In my favorite cookbooks, encyclopedias, or reference books, I turn down page corners and make notations freely, and my copy of Eat Good Food is already remarkably dog-eared. Essential as a shopping list, I’ve no doubt that it will continue to serve as reference and advisor. And that’s far more valuable than a coupon.

---

Recipe: Mujadara

Serves: 4 to 6 as a main course, 
or 6 to 8 as a side

Ingredients:
1 cup uncooked black or green lentils
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
3 medium or 2 large onions, diced (about 41/2 cups)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 cup uncooked long-grain rice, such as jasmine 
or basmati
2 tablespoons mild curry powder

Instructions:
Rinse the lentils and pick out any stones or foreign objects. Put in a bowl, add water to cover by 1 inch, and soak for at least 2 hours or up to 6 hours. Drain the lentils and set aside.

In a Dutch oven or soup pot, heat 2 tablespoons of the oil over medium heat. Add half the onions and a pinch of salt and cook, stirring occasionally, until the onions are soft and translucent and golden on the edges, about 4 minutes. Add the lentils, rice, curry powder, 
1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper and cook for 1 minute, stirring constantly.

Add 3 cups water, increase the heat to high, and bring the liquid to a boil. Then lower the heat to maintain a gentle simmer and cover the pot. Cook until the rice and lentils are tender, 15 to 20 minutes. At this point, it’s okay if there’s still a tiny bit of bite to the lentils; they will continue to absorb water. Remove from the heat and let rest with the lid on for 10 to 
15 minutes.

While the rice mixture is cooking, caramelize the remaining onions: heat the remaining 2 tablespoons oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. When hot, add the remaining onions and a pinch of salt. Cook, stirring occasionally at first and more frequently as you go, until the onions are soft and almost at the brink of burning, 9 to 11 minutes (lower the heat if the browning seems to be progressing more rapidly than the softening).

Set aside.

To serve, fluff the rice mixture with a fork and transfer to a serving platter.

Top with the caramelized onions.

Serve hot or at room temperature. You can make this up to 2 days ahead. If desired, reheat in a covered, shallow ovenproof dish in a 350°F oven for about 
30 minutes.

Reprinted with permission from Bi-Rite Market’s Eat Good Food by Sam Mogannam & Dabney Gough, copyright © 2011. Published by Ten Speed Press, a division of Random House, Inc.

Photo credit: France Ruffenach © 2011

---

Full disclosure: Karen Solomon is the volunteer host of the Jam It Salon at 18 Reasons, the non-profit art and food organization that is part of the Bi-Rite family of businesses.

So it's time to make a meal, and you're bored with making the same old dishes. It's time to recharge your repertoire.

Back in the day before the dawn of the online era, you'd just snag a new family recipe from a relative with some culinary chops, or tune into the wisdom of Julia Child. But the mega-popularity of The Food Network has since ignited an unrelenting avalanche of food-related media, and now you can find endless numbers of resources on television, newspapers, cookbooks, blogs, discussion forums, and even smart phone apps.

So where to go in the midst of this media overload? There are some excellent new sites that offer a curated collection of recipes that will help you sift through the onslaught of available resources.

If you're a fan of food porn, the following two sites will catch your fancy. Punchfork aggregates recipes from a number of popular food websites that rank highly in the social media sphere. According to their website, "Punchfork uses real-time data like tweets and Facebook shares to measure which recipes are grabbing the attention of users. We uncover the latent sentiment in sharing patterns on social networks." You can see which recipes have top-ratings with the foodie crowd, what's new, and of course, what's trending. Each recipe is easily sharable with folks on your own social networks, too. Learn more about this innovative new site in this interview with Punchfork's founder, Jeff Miller.

Then there's Gojee. Be sure to click on this site after you've had a snack, because the glossy photography will make your stomach instantly growl with hunger. You have to register to view the recipes, and then you're greeted with a stunning portrait of a dish that you'll want to make right away -- like Penne with Corn & Brown Butter.

The user interface is quite personable, allowing users to search by ingredient for what you "crave," what you "have" in your pantry, and what you "dislike." And when you type in search terms, witty messages such as "Almond joying myself, are you?" pop up as you wait for the recipe to pop up. And they bring careful attention to their curatorial process, as mentioned in this Forbes.com article: "You could call us a high quality, hand curated, easy to use Google for food blogger recipes. Every recipe on our site is manually chosen by our team," says founder Mike Lavalle.

Then there's Foodpress, which has a roster of featured food bloggers that contribute recipes. You can click on popular keywords that are listed in a handy sidebar, or check out sections such as, "Today's Specials" and "Featured Posts."

But if you'd like to dive into the online juggernaut, there are comprehensive sites such as Yummly, Google Recipe View (and if you're using their new Google+ social network, their "Sparks" feature includes recipes. However, you'll see it filters through articles as well as plain recipes when you scroll through.)

And of course, don't forget to check our Bay Area Bites's extensive archive of great recipes.

Like many modern friendships that are born in our era of social networking, I first "met" Ezra Caldwell online in 2006. I discovered his Flickr account through mutual contacts and was drawn to his extraordinary images of dancers, his beautiful wife Hillary and photogenic pooch Putney. We also happen share a deep devotion to bicycles and food, and he regularly chronicled his endeavors in frame building and cooking.

Ezra shared his thoughts with me about cooking via email: "I think it's important that people eat at home a certain amount of the time. For us it's pretty much every night. We eat out about once every three weeks. There's something about the time spent in the kitchen in the evening that is a real relaxer for me. A meditation. I often drag out food preparation just because I enjoy that time of day."

While I had lived in Ezra's hometown of New York City for 13 years, it wasn't until I moved all the way across the country to San Francisco that I finally met Ezra in real life. In the spring of 2007, he and another Flickr friend, Yohei Morita, embarked on a trip throughout the U.S. to share bicycle adventures and meet other Flickr comrades. They met me and a mutual Flickr friend, Judah, during their visit to the Bay Area.

And like many modern time-pressed friendships, we stayed in touch in the virtual realm. And so it was through Flickr that I learned in August of 2008, Ezra was diagnosed with colorectal cancer. In true Ezra fashion, who has never shied away from baring it all, he started a blog, "Teaching Cancer to Cry," as a "a way to keep people up-to-date as treatment progresses, and a way for me to look back when all this is over and reminisce."

Six weeks of chemotherapy and radiation treatments began. Ezra wrote about the tough days, yet still managed to make us laugh, too. He even got married along the way.

When he went into remission, he started posting recipes for spinach salad, sudado de pescado, and stewed chicken with olives. His lush images of his elaborate meals mirrored his renewed energy.

Then in September of 2010, the cancer returned. He resumed his documentation of the grim realities of his second round with the disease.

Through all of this, Ezra still found time and the desire to cook.

"Over the last bunch of months, I was really laid low. I was in a lot of pain, a lot of the time. Having to take pain killers. Spending a lot of time in bed. Happily, though, this time around we found an anti-emetic (anti-nausea) drug that worked! So for most of the winter I would just save up my energy during the day to be able to get out of bed and cook some evening. It meant a lot to me to be able to continue to contribute to the household. I've always done nearly all the cooking, and didn't want treatment to interrupt that. Just about everything else went on the back burner."

Cooking also ignited yet another creative project.

"I started making videos, partly because I was getting back into making video and needed a subject, and here was this thing that I was doing every day anyway! I like to encourage people to cook. I think it's a little strange when people don't know how, or believe they can't. Cooking is easy! It's not hard to make yourself really good food.

So I started putting instructions for cooking on the blog, and later the videos with the instructions. I think it's sort of a great way to learn. See something done REALLY fast, and then read some instructions for it. You've still got an image in your head of what it looked like, and the instructions can be pretty bare bones.

I don't like the word "recipe." I feel as though there's an implication with "recipes" that makes people believe that there's a RIGHT way to cook a certain dish. That sort of takes the fun out of it. Instead I try to write instructions for dishes that maybe include some useful technique, like braising, or using an ice bath, that people will be able to include in their arsenal of approaches in the future. I love it when people write to me and say, "I tried that dish, but I changed it in this way and that, and it came out great!" Aha...you've been bitten."

Here's his artful visual rendition of "Braised Lamb Shanks" that will make your mouth water.

Braised Lamb Shanks from Fast Boy.

You can find his complete archive of instructions and food videos on his blog. He's since finished up his latest round of treatment and recently prepared a sumptuous lobster dinner with a friend who's battling breast cancer. May the cooking and celebrations continue for a long, long time.

In the United States, we have this idea that Italian meatballs are best piled on top of a huge mound of spaghetti noodles. Remember the song, spaghetti with meatballs, all covered with cheese? Well, the only way I've come across polpette en Italia is on their own, usually in a simple, tart pomodoro sauce. I've eaten polpette everywhere from Bologna to Brindisi, and while there are subtle differences in each region's traditional recipe, not once have I seen a menu offering spaghetti con polpette.

Perhaps they serve spaghetti with meatballs somewhere in the country (and if you know where, please feel free to chime in), but according to my friend's mom Angela, an incredible home cook in the Puglia region, meatballs are generally served on their own in the second piatti (second course), while pasta is served separately for the primi piatti course, or first course.

These days I'm in Firenze, or Florence, so the recipe I'm going to share with you is uniquely fiorentino. This dish comes from the kind woman who runs the hotel I'm staying at, who, when it came up in conversation that I was writing this post, was all too excited to share a bit of her family's culinary history with the rest of the world. Her only condition was that I not mention her name and that I should inform you all that American meatballs are missing the necessary addition of cured pork, and that on all of her trips to the states, she had to stop ordering meatballs because they were too bland for her. So, there you go. More bacon!

Recipe: Polpettone alla Toscano (Tuscan Meatballs Recipe)

Summary: This meatball recipe comes to you straight from Florence, Italy, highlighting the best of Tuscan cooking.

By Stephanie Stiavetti

Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 40 min
Total time: 1 hour 10 min
Yield: makes 8 meatballs, enough to feed 2 people as an entree

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup breadcrumbs
• 1/2 cup milk, at room temperature
• 1 pound ground beef
• 1/4 pound prosciutto, chopped fine
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup freshly chopped parsley
• 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese (get the good stuff -- trust me!)
• 1 cup white flour
• 4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 3 tablespoon grated carrot
• 1/4 cup finely minced onion
• 1/4 cup white wine
• 2 cups tomato sauce
• Parmesan cheese for garnish

Instructions

1. Soak the breadcrumbs in milk for five minutes. Strains and squeeze to remove excess milk, then loosen crumbed and spread over a plate.
2. In a large bowl, mix together with the beef, prosciutto, egg, parsley and Parmesan cheese. Mix well with your hands.
3. Moisten your hands with a little water and form the meat into 8 meatballs of the same size. Be sure to pack them well and not leave any openings, otherwise the meatballs will fall apart while cooking. Place the flour into a small bowl and roll the meatballs lightly in the flour until evenly coated.
4. In a large sauté pan with a lid, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Gently brown meatballs all over, allowing a nice, savory crust to form. Turn the heat to low.
5. To the pan add the carrot and onion. Cook gently just until the vegetables start to brown, then pour in white wine and tomato sauce. Allow to cook, uncovered, for 5 minutes, nudging occasionally with a spatula to keep them from sticking to the bottom of the pan. Gently turn meatballs over, cover the pan, and finish cooking until they are cooked through, about 7 more minutes, again nudging to prevent sticking. If you like, you can remove the meatballs from the pan and continue cooking the sauce, uncovered, until it thickens.
6. Allow meatballs to rest for 5 minutes before serving. Serve meatballs hot, covered with tomato sauce and garnished with parmesan cheese. Also, feel free to serve these bad boys on a sandwich with a little provolone, which is most definitely Italian!

Culinary Tradition: Italian

Every year, usually around the beginning of February, I notice that the ornamental plum trees in Golden Gate Park are starting to burst into clouds of pink and white, covering the lawns with a pale, fluffy blanket of springtime splendor. But as much as I love how these 10-foot tall pastel bouquets line the streets, my mind instantly goes to another sign that the season is changing. Soon local farmers markets vendors will start stocking my very favorite bit of produce, which is only found this time of year: green garlic.

For those not in the know, green garlic is simply early season garlic that hasn't yet matured into a fully bulbous state. Green garlic is special for many reasons, but the reason I love it so is that it takes the strong, pungent qualities of mature garlic and lightens up the game a bit. Infinitely more subtle and nuanced than its full-grown brothers and sisters, green garlic has a less intense flavor and a sweetness that only early-season produce can impart. Perfect for both strong and mellow dishes, green garlic can be used wherever you would use regular garlic, in the same amounts. Give it a try in garlic bread or mashed potatoes. As well, green garlic's flavor is gentle enough that it can be eaten raw in a lovely green salad. Seriously!

Perhaps the coolest thing about green garlic, though, is the fact that you can eat the entire thing, from it's long, frondy leaves to it tiny root system. The younger the garlic the more tender it will be, and you'll know true baby garlic by its nearly complete lack of a bulgy, bulb-y end. As the season progresses week by week, you'll notice that green garlic at your local farmers market will get thicker and thicker towards the bulb-end, until it looks almost like a fully matured bulb of garlic with a long, green stalk. At this point you can still eat the entire thing, though the fibrous membrane that separates the individual cloves will have begun to form by this stage in its development. The cloves will have a strong, more traditional garlic flavor as they mature as well.

When shopping for green garlic, look for specimens that are long and green, without any browning or wilting along the stalk. Green garlic should be eaten within a week of being harvested for the best possible flavor, though it can be stored in the refrigerator for up to three weeks if you end up with a bunch of it. To store young garlic, I'd recommend wrapping the stalks in foil and leaving them in the crisper drawer of your refrigerator, where the humidity will work to keep them fresher, longer. If you're not planning on eating them right away, a little spritz of water in the foil every few days will help keep green garlic tender and fresh.

The best way to enjoy green garlic is in a dish where it's the star. For anything even remotely herb-y, I always try it out in a pesto recipe, where its flavor is front and center -- and in this case, green garlic plays the lead role with aplomb.

Green Garlic Pesto Pasta
Serves 2

Ingredients:
6 green garlic shoots, trimmed of the dark green tips and cut into 2 inch pieces
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
1/2 cup pine nuts
3/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly-ground black pepper
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
4 tablespoons kosher salt
6 cups water
2 cups uncooked penne pasta

Preparation:

1. To the carafe of a food processor, add green garlic, parmesan, pine nuts, sea salt and pepper. Pulse 10-15 times, until ingredients are relatively well-blended, scraping down the sides in the middle of blending. Slowly drizzle in olive oil and continue blending until you get a well-combined pesto texture. Scoop into a bowl and set aside while the pasta cooks to let the flavors meld.

2. Add kosher salt to water and bring to a boil in a large pot. Add pasta and cook until al dente, about 9 minutes. Drain and rinse pasta.

3. Spoon pesto over hot penne pasta and serve immediately.

Dear readers, for the first time ever, I am writing a recipe. The dish is green garbanzo soup, a real seasonal palate-stunner. I invented it last weekend, when my girlfriend and I elected to have some friends over for dinner. Since we both were going to be busy during the day preceding the occasion, we shopped and did much of the cooking the night before. After drinking a few beers at the 500 Club and watching the wurst (Germany) come up short against the hams (Spain), I strolled down to Bi-Rite to rustle up ingredients: for the soup, a huge bag of garbanzos in their fuzzy green shells, a quart of chicken stock, a head of garlic, a leek, and way more hazelnuts than I needed. I had butter and good olive oil at home. I’d also stumbled across a few threads of tired-looking saffron tucked away in a cupboard.

I was all set. We had lots of dishes to prepare, of course, but the night before I was focused on crafting an enticing, verdant elixir with which to prime the appetites of our guests -- prior to the impending assault of assorted cheeses, breads, olives, pickled peppers, octopus and tomato salad, roasted corn relish, watermelon with salt, and two bastardized briks -- one with ancho-and-roasted tomato-stewed heritage pork, currants, and cilantro, and the other with morels, thyme, feta, beet greens, chard, and kale.

From green garlic shoots, to slender asparagus, to sweet early-season cherry tomatoes, I have, with regard to the realm of edible vegetation, a tendency to prize fresh young things. When I saw the green garbanzos nestled like weird little grubs in a big basket in the Bi-Rite produce case, I was consumed by the desire to harness their youth, pea-like flavor, and agreeably grassy pallor, and express them fully and vigorously in a simple yet well-calibrated dish. To work such magic, I began by chopping the leek and letting it slowly fall apart in a pot glazed over with a half-stick of butter. Meanwhile, I roasted four unpeeled cloves of garlic on a hot, dry cast-iron skillet, just the way Rick Bayless taught me. When the peels were flaking off, the exterior blackened in places, and the cloves delectably squishy to the touch, I turned off the burner, let them cool, peeled them, and stirred them into the pot with the creamy, cooked-down leeks. I added the stock, about a quart of water, and the saffron. Then, I realized I had forgotten to separate the beans from their pods. Cursing, I turned off the other burner, grabbed the bag of beans, and got to work.

About an hour, two beers, and two-and-a-half episodes of Eastbound and Down later, I shelled the last bean and headed back to the kitchen. When I heated up the pot again, I realized I’d severely misjudged the amount of beans I’d need. Each relatively large pod contains just one or two tiny pellets. I would have required a wheelbarrow to haul the quantity of beans I truly needed, and an entire television series to make shelling so many bearable. Cursing, I flung open the fridge. I would have to improvise. I spied half a head of cauliflower. The beans would, I thought, dance prettily with such fair white curds as a partner. I hacked the cauliflower up rather brutally and tossed it in the pot with the beans for a steamy dip. Fifteen minutes later, after a nice simmer, everything was tender. I turned off the heat and added salt and pepper.

That’s when I started -- as Dave Chappelle would say -- f**king up. Using a small, lidless blender better suited to smoothie-making instead of a food processor (ours fell prey to mold a few months ago), I tried to do the soup in four or five very small batches, covering the top with a plate. This was happening after 11:00 p.m., around the time I become capable of doing nothing besides sleeping, drinking, or watching movies requiring little intellectual investment. I should not have been cooking really, much less handling hot liquids. I accidentally pressed the “liquify” button instead of “puree”, and a surge of pale green came bubbling up, rattling the plate, sending a steaming froth cascading out and across the table and floor. I screamed like a small spoiled child, clutching my seared right forearm with my left hand, also incidentally very badly burned. Sickly drops flecked the wall next to the blender. I suddenly realized the front of my shirt was hot, wet, and green. Cursing, I dived for a towel. After mopping up what I could see in my exhausted haze, I limped off to bed.

I awoke to find a trail of ants the size and shape of a patch of body hair churning around the area of floor I’d soiled with soup and failed to properly clean. On the other hand, once strained, the soup -- now cool and the appealing color of green tea ice cream -- tasted fantastic -- rich and lively, with depth provided by the roasted garlic and the chicken stock, texture courtesy of butter and my hapless blender, the beans and cauliflower intertwined in a nutty, herbaceous, harmonious embrace. Later that night, we would serve it in tiny to-go espresso cups with toasted hazelnut crumbles, finely chopped parsley, and neat drizzles of olive oil. I botched the first cup by accidentally dumping in about a shot or two of oil -- and cursed -- but the rest turned out fine -- once I let the lady handle the pouring. Out in the dining room, conversation paused. Everyone was quiet, sipping away. My hand and forearm throbbed a little bit. I was sweating under my apron. So much shelling, so much spilling, so much cursing -- and yet the soup managed to hold. It was good, the way I’d wanted it to be. Things don’t always fall apart. The process of creating something so simple and easy might have been unnecessarily tortured and chaotic, but the result, blessedly, was pure and refined, even serene -- swirling green peace in the bottom of a soup spoon.

Yes, Swish Steak.

Among my cookbooks, there is a recent acquisition I consider to be the jewel in my crown-- a must-have for anyone who fancies herself (or, of course, himself) Queen of the Kitchen: The Gay Cookbook by Chef Lou Rand Hogan* (Sherbourne Press, 1965).

The Gay Cookbook: "the complete compendium of campy cuisine and menus for men... or what have you" was first brought to my attention by Celia Sacks of Omnivore Books on Food, who had a copy proudly displayed in her store window the last time I visited. She always seems to know what will pique my interest.

A gay cookbook? Pre-Stonewall? I never thought any such thing could exist. I was transfixed. I just had to have a copy for my library. I mentioned the book later that evening to friends over drinks. One month later, those same friends placed a copy in my not-so-little hands. It was probably the most perfect birthday present. Ever.

When I returned home, I opened the book and was immediately struck by how much times have changed since 1965. Not only our food ways, but our slang, too. Especially what I would call gay-speak. The "girlfriend" tone has remained, but the terms have certainly changed. There is a self-mockery that may be horrifying to some readers; others might find the embracing of extreme stereotyping fun and, in a sense, freeing. The last two paragraphs of the book's introduction leave no doubt as to what the reader is in for:

Yes, in that magic hour 'tween day and dark, after effacing the ravages of the day's toil, and before the night's serious cruising, ya gotta take on some food. Man, woman, or child, a girl has got to eat!

So we'll offer here a sort of nonsensical cookbook for the androgynous (don't bother to look it up, Maude. It means "limp-wristed"), and while we can't guarantee the quality of the guests these dishes may be set before, we do not hesitate to assure the reader that all preparations and recipe details are honest and practical.

Here then is the GAY COOKBOOK, which some queen will promptly call FAGGOT'S FARE.

Fierce! At least we have been warned.

I knew I just had to make something from this book. But what? Something from Chapter Six: That Old, Tired Fish? Chapter Five: The Shell Game; Oysters, Lobsters, Shrimp, and What To Do With Crabs? I finally settled on the dish I feel best exemplifies this time capsule of Camp: Swish Steak-- a dish that just may have been served in many a home among the Swish Alps-- otherwise known as the Hollywood Hills.

Swish Steak

Serves 4.

The recipe is delivered to you as originally written. The curly parsley is my own photographic addition. I happen to think that this is an unintentional omission of the author. What gay chef in his right mind would not add a splash of color to a monochromatic dish?

I did, however, omit the MSG. My concern is not for my own health, but for yours. And for the health of Dr. Joyce Brothers. If she happened to wander into your kitchen uninvited and took a bite of MSG-laden Swish Steak, it would kill her. I know this for a fact because she told me so. If you are too young to remember Dr. Joyce Brothers, then you are certainly too young to remember this cookbook.

It really does taste like the 1960's. Or, at least this is what I imagine them to taste like. I was only there for about five months. And on bottle-fed formula.

I suggest you pop this little number into the oven, pour yourself some Cream Sherry, and sit back to enjoy a careful watching of The Boys in The Band. By the time you've finished, dinner will be ready.

Go on, gurl. Dish it out like only you know how to do.

Ingredients:

4 Steaks (for swishing)

3 medium onions, sliced

3 pts. gravy--OR-- part gravy, part rich stock

6 buds garlic, minced

1 tsp. coarse-ground Black pepper

1 tsp. salt

1 ½ tsp. MSG

4 Tbs. flour

4 Tbs. fat (bacon if possible)

(opt.) small can mushrooms 'stems & pieces'

(opt.) small can Tomato sauce

(opt.) 1 Tbs. meat extract (V.V., Boveril, etc.)

Preparation [No paragraph breaks]:

Lay each steak flat; pound lightly with a meat tenderizer (a sort of mallet-like thing with a big and peculiar shaped head), or give each steak a dozen or so whacks with the blunt back of a heave knife, sort of criss-cross on either side. These blows should just cut the surface of the meat but not too deeeply [sic]. Dredge each piece in the flour; heat fat in heavy skillet to very hot. Sear (Brown... as if you didn't know...) meat on both sides in fat in skillet. Take meat out of skillet, put into roast pan (one with a cover). Toss sliced onions and garlic into fat in skillet, cover, cook 3-5 minutes; then dump it all into the roast pan onto the steaks. Add salt and pepper, the MSG, the leftover flour, the mushrooms and tomato sauce if used. Pour stock and gravy (any left-over, rich, brown gravy, except 'sweet-sour' or sauerbraten gravy), into roaster over and around the meat. Cover and cook in 325° oven until tender. This may be 2 or 3 hours. For last half hour, take cover off roast pan, but gravy should still just cover the meat. When meat is real tender, carefully take steaks out of the gravy and set aside on a platter or pan in a warm place. Why not the oven with the heat turned off? Scrape out all the sauce, etc. from the roast pan into a small sauce pot, getting every bit of it. Let this sit for a while on the stove until all the fat-- and there'll be quite a lot of it-- rises to the top. Skim this away. The gravy, full of onion, mushrooms, etc. should be thick enough; taste for seasoning, and you're ready for chow down! Serve the Swish Steak with some of the sauce over each piece of meat. This is wonderful with hot buttered noodles, or with mashed potatoes, etc. Men just love this one, though whether it's the 'swish' or the 'steak' would be hard to say. But-- keep 'em happy...

* Lou Rand Hogan was also the creator of what is believed to be the first gay detective in print (the sexual identity of that perennial bachelor, Sherlock Holmes, is open for debate), Francis Morley, in Rough Trade (originally titled The Gay Detective), also from 1965. The Gay Cookbook, incidentally, was written right here in San Francisco.

Last week, I accepted a dinner invitation from an ex-boyfriend to dine with two old, out-of-town friends at Bar Crudo. It would seem that I can be lured nearly anywhere by the promise of raw shellfish and wine.

It was an oddly comfortable dinner. There was none of the awkwardness that typically accompanies former couples who find themselves momentarily placed in the situation of acting as partners again, even though the partnering has been limited to the dinner table. Dining-- especially from shared dishes-- is an activity that is unmistakeably intimate. I decided to not focus on the obvious questions like why on earth would he invite me to dinner to meet two of his oldest friends or why I had accepted the invitation. Rather, I decided to focus on his friends and the platters of seafood that had been so carefully placed in front of us.

His friends were smart, charming, and very enthusiastic. Dismay was expressed by his friend Lindsay over the prospect of eating raw oysters-- an activity in which she had never before engaged, but was willing to give them a chance, nevertheless. I ordered the smallest, sweetest ones on the menu, to make the exercise as easy as possible. She gave them a go, declared them good, and then immediately turned her attention to the one half of a Dungeness Crab carcass lying lifeless on the pile of ice that both separated and united us.

When she saw crab on the menu, her eyes went wide behind her glasses. When our waitress explained that there was only one half of a crab left in the restaurant, her eyes got even wider, as a mild panic set in. "We want that crab." There was no raised voice or exclamation point to end those four words, but the sense of urgency with which they were imparted caused our server to move more quickly than we were to see her do for the rest of the evening.

"You don't understand," she told me, "We live in Texas now. You can't get fresh crab in Texas." Enough said. I decided not to wonder aloud if the crab was actually local.

I sat there staring at the cold, dead crab for a minute, remembering the two pounds of crab meat that lay ignored and shivering in my freezer between the ice cream and bottle of Limoncello that had been equally forgotten. I looked back at Lindsay, who was so delighted by the sight of just a fraction of what I had taken for granted at home. I felt instantly shamed, and said as much when I offered her my share of the crab. It wasn't so much generosity as it was penance.

When I got home, I opened my freezer door to pay my respects to the crab meat. I waved at it briefly and offered it my apologies. Why had I been avoiding it? Why had I put two pounds of crab meat out of my head?

And then I understood. My expectations had been too high. When the crabs fell into my lap unexpectedly, I was excited, full of high hopes and grand plans. I wanted them to be shared in any number of fun ways with people I cared about, since one should never eat crab alone.

My crab-eating reality, however, was different from my crab-eating fantasies. I was sick with a stomach virus and working a lot. Circumstances had stacked themselves between myself and the crab. What was once alive and fresh and full of possibility wound up wrapped and thrown into a dark place to freeze over. Like so many other things.

And then, of course, I thought of the man who invited me to dinner. Our relationship was rather like the crab in my freezer-- something once regarded as a source of grand plans, the sweet meat of it hard to get at through the tough shell, but thoroughly worth the effort. A seasonal item with a very short shelf life. I'd wrapped that up tight and thrown into a dark, cold place where I didn't have to look at it along with the damned crab.

Well, I've taken the crab meat out of the freezer. It may no longer be fresh but it's still there and my feeling is that what is left should be put to good use-- it's just too precious a thing to let go to waste. Something good can and should be made of it.

It does, however, take a long time for something that cold to thaw.

Crab Rangoon

I'm not quite certain why I chose to make this dish. I could have made something fresher, something that showed off the crab a little more. I suppose I just wanted to try something a little different this time around. And it suits me. It suits me just fine.

Crab Rangoon is dish whose origins and ingredients are as fanciful as its name. I very much doubt the current military government of Myanmar (formerly catalogued as Burma by English Colonials) would ever allow such a recipe into the country. Unless, perhaps, they changed its name to Crab Yangon, tortured it a bit (it is, of course, boiled in oil), and then slapped a uniform on it after it had been sufficiently "retrained."

Nope, Crab Rangoon is a uniquely American concoction-- one that takes a little bit of this culture (wontons are Chinese), and a little bit of that one (A-1 Steak Sauce is English, cream cheese is a Northern European invention) and serves it up in a way that is universally acceptable (fried). Hopefully, none but the truly naive are fooled by the name.

There are two schools of thought relating to the genesis of Crab Rangoon. The first tells of its debut at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904-- a year the city has never since exceeded in terms of global attention or charm. The claim is dubious-- more so than the other "firsts" of the Fair, like cotton candy, peanut butter, or the hamburger. I'm willing to give them Dr. Pepper and the ice cream cone, at most.

The second, most likely story is that the dish was created in Oakland, at the original Trader Vic's. According to their website, "Trader Vic employed what was becoming the ever-present hallmark of all his food and beverage recipes: a light touch, meant to enhance but never disguise nor overpower the fine original taste of his main ingredients."

Given that this is a fried dish with cream cheese and, according to the original Trader Vic's recipe, A-1 Steak Sauce and garlic salt, that's about as colorful as one of the one-legged Vic's legendary tall tales.

Fortunately, the dish is much easier to swallow than his stories.

This is an adapted, non-traditional recipe. I figured if Vic could come up with a "Polynesian recipe" and name it for a city nowhere near Polynesia, I could take a few liberties, too.

Makes about 30 pieces.

Ingredients:

1/2 pound fresh crab meat, preferably, but canned crab meat may certainly be substituted.

1/3 pound cream cheese at room temperature

4 tablespoons of finely chopped red onion, more or less according to your own tastes

1/2 teaspoon finely chopped garlic

1/4 teaspoon of salt

1 tablespoon or more of chopped cilantro

a few dashes of Worcestershire Sauce

as many wonton wrappers as you can fill

1 egg yolk, well beaten with a teaspoon of water

vegetable oil, for frying

Preparation:

1. Combine crab meat with cream cheese, onion, garlic, salt, Worcestershire sauce, and cilantro. I find mixing the ingredients with clean hands to be immensely satisfying. Refrigerate if not using immediately.

2. Heat at frying oil to 375 F. Give yourself some room-- do not stint on pot size and make sure the oil is at least three inches deep. Pre-heat oven to 200 F and line a baking sheet with paper towels for future oil drainage.

3. Working four wonton wrappers at a time, lightly moisten (sigh) the edges of the wrappers with egg yolk. Place a heaping teaspoonful of crab mixture in the center of each. To shape into blossoms, seal each corner together and gather in the middle like so:

If a little bit of crab peaks out from the top, as illustrated above, don't worry-- they won't come apart. Pinch and twist the corners, making certain that you are making flowers and not swastikas. This is important.

4. Fry the wontons. You may do this in batches if you like or one at a time, since the frying time is fairly quick-- about 45 seconds, depending upon the true heat of the oil. The dual goal is to get the wrappers to a crisp, bubbly brown and to heat the filling through. The filling does not need to be horrendously molten. Place each wonton on the towel-lined baking sheet to drain. When frying has been completed, place your newly-born Crab Rangoon into the oven to keep warm.

Best served immediately. And not piping hot, unless you actually are trying to give your guests mouth burns.

Serve with Chinese mustard, Red Pepper sauce like Sriracha, or fish sauce. Whatever you like. It's your Crab Rangoon, make it work for you.

Breaking two cardinal rules in my kitchen--versatility and real-world functionality--my favorite new toy is silly, beautiful, and fun. It can only do one thing: make cookies in the shape of an obscure cut of lamb. A while back, while checking out the display cases at the excellent little butcher shop, Avendano's, my friends spotted a batch of hand-crafted, limited-edition, copper cookie cutters. For some reason, they thought of me.

The packaging was gorgeous. Each form is hand-stitched to a card painted with a watercolor depiction of the actual cut of meat. I am now blessed with a "Middle Cut Rib" of lamb, which, to be honest, does not resemble any overly trimmed product that I’ve seen at most meat counters. My favorite part is the tiny tag, hanging off the cookie cutter like some exclusive designer label and engraved--by hand, of course--with the maker's phone number.

This past weekend, I finally had a chance to give it a try. Since royal icing is one of my least favorite foods, depicting meat with only cookie dough became the challenge. An old recipe (adapted from Vanilla Refrigerator Cookies in the 1976 edition of the Joy of Cooking) and a bit of red food coloring leftover from making velvet cake came to rescue. I debated incorporating demi-glace or bouillon for meaty flavor, but decided to stay simple for the test run. Next time.

Here are some photos and notes from my first stab at meat cookies:

The red-colored dough, with a bits of white dough aka fat marbling left from the mixing. The color will lighten with baking, so make it darker than the final shade you want.

While still warm and soft, shape the dough into a thick piece that roughly follows the contour of the cutter. Basically, you're making a lamb loin, or the meat before the butcher saws it into steaks or chops. Make it slightly smaller than the outline of the cutter, though, to allow for the fat layer...

...with some reserved, uncolored dough, build up a thin (or thick—your preference) layer of "fat" around the lamb loin. I started off with an offset spatula, and then figured out it's much easier just to flatten pieces of white dough between my palms and press then right into the red dough. Press down firmly on the dough to avoid air pockets, which will later become cracks and gaps. Any breaks later are easy to fix, though, with extra dough.

After chilling for a few hours, I sliced the loin thinly with a chef's knife and transferred the cookies to a parchment lined sheet pan. Final shaping with the cutter happens right on the pan. (The two front cookies have been cut).

Sweet meat trimmings. I mushed them together into a log, chilled again, and then sliced into pretty, round, marbled cookies.

Be sure to cool the cookies completely on a wire rack before storing them in an airtight container.

Layered between parchment, the cookies traveled very well to a weekend picnic in the park. If there's a meat-lover in your life who happens to like baking or who deserves a batch of meat cookies...well, I think there's a gift out there waiting to be made.

Red Meat Refrigerator Cookies
Makes 12 large cookies, plus trimmings.

Ingredients

• 1 cup butter, room temperature
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 teaspoons lemon zest or 1/2 teaspoon lemon oil
• 1 teaspoon almond extract (optional)
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 2 – 4 teaspoons red food coloring

Preparation
1. Beat butter until creamy. Add sugar gradually and beat until pale and fluffy.
2. In a separate small bowl, lightly beat together the eggs, vanilla, lemon, and almond. Drizzle into the butter-sugar mixture and beat until smooth.
3. Sift together the flour, salt, and baking powder. Stir into the butter mixture.
4. Remove 1/4 of the dough to a separate bowl. Adding gradually, blend the red food coloring into the remaining dough. Leave the coloring slightly streaking, to keep the cookies tender and to mimic marbled meat.
5. Shape into logs or lamb loins. Chill thoroughly, or at least four hours.
6. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Working quickly, cut into 1/4-inch thick slices. Re-chill dough, if needed, to keep it firm. Arrange on parchment paper and bake just until lightly golden around edges, or 8-10 minutes. Transfer to a rack and let cool completely.