A real Ad Hoc dinner. . .

in the restaurant! 

My friend Mary and I drove to Yountville last night for dinner at Ad Hoc, which is located in a nondescript beige building, like where you'd find a real estate office in an upscale strip mall. I didn't pay much attention to my surroundings once we got inside, but can say with confidence that the dining room was light and airy and full of murmuring people. There was no salt on the table; the bread was stupendous. The friendly waiter waxed so enthusiastic about the food that he blushed and got flustered. The set menu consisted of:

-a "living butter lettuce" salad. Mary asked why it was called "living" lettuce and our waiter answered to the effect that the lettuce had been recently living. It was a refreshing salad, quite lively.

-sous vide short ribs. I would kill for this dish. The chunky boneless ribs had the succulence of a braise, but the meat didn't fall apart when you touched it with a fork and none of the flavor had seeped away in a sloppy gravy. I guess thats the magic of sous vide? Worth the price of the whole meal. Now I want a sous vide machine -- and could almost afford one if I hadn't just bought a molded plastic calf hutch. The meat was served with white beans and fat, fresh Brooks cherries. Five stars.

-Sally Jackson goat cheese. Wrapped in grape leaves, this pink-tinged ivory cheese from Washington State was delicate and creamy, but also curiously bland. Neither Mary nor I could understand why this was the cheese. 

-buttermilk layer cake. It sure was purty, like a cake from a Mobile church potluck. Or how I imagine such a cake. If you look closely you can see that there was strawberry jam spread between the layers, which didn't taste quite as wonderful as it looked, but who cares? I love that dessert was a layer cake.

Altogether an excellent meal and, at $49, cheaper than Keller's book, which was prominently displayed near the front door. In my opinion, the meal was a better value, even after tax and tip.  I've cooked soft shelled crabs and a quail and duck breast out of Ad Hoc at Home in the last few days and have more to report. I didn't realize until I sat down to type this that I was done with Ad Hoc at Home. But I'm done. 

Monday morning conversation:

Tipsy: How can you not like cherries?

Husband: Because they have PITS in the middle of them. I think that's reasonable. 

Some cornish game hens, some crackers

I'm behind in my Ad Hoc at Home reporting.

Monday, Isabel and I made Thomas Keller's flatbread which looked simple, but -- to our shock -- wasn't. You mix a yeast dough, let it rise, and roll it in a pasta machine until you have several miles of gossamer that you brush with olive oil, top with salt and spices, and bake in painfully small batches until golden and crispy.

 

Isabel: "He always makes the recipes incredibly annoying and then the results are amazing." These feathery crackers were amazing -- restaurant amazing. I will never, ever, bake them again.

 

We were baking and topping flatbreads for at least an hour, which gave us lots of time to catch up. That's important with a teenager. She told me she thought both the male leads in Letters to Juliet were "ugly." I dissented. I told her Vanessa Redgrave was actually more famous than Amanda Seyfried. We agreed that The Office was better before Jim and Pam got married and we're both glad Tim Riggins ditched San Antonio State.

I felt good about the conversation. 

More dishes cooked out of Ad Hoc at Home in recent days:

-Cornish game hens.

Very plain recipe -- just some butter smeared under the skin. I didn't truss, though Keller tells you to, which is why they looked sloppy. I couldn't find string. They tasted like roasted chicken, which is what they are, except they cost $10.99 each and you need one per person.

-Braised pork belly. 

Cheap! Especially when you buy your belly at the Chinese market. First you brine the belly and while you're brining it, make Keller's elaborate beef stock. More on this all-day roasting-simmering-skimming ordeal some other time. Then you braise the belly in the beef stock and when it's tender, you press the belly in the refrigerator (plate, weighted can) overnight so it compresses into a compact and pretty package. Reheat, serve. Due to the pressing, I guess, this was less fatty and unctuous than pork belly usually is, which probably makes it more palatable to most people. I was disappointed.

On the side: caramelized fennel. Very nice.

There's more to report, including a dark horse contender in the chocolate chip cookie testing! But this morning I have to rent a truck and drive to Acampo to pick up a calf hutch for our goats. Attractive, no? I'm glad the fence is done. We bring home our second goat tomorrow. When the breeder told me her name was Pastry, I knew she was the one. 

Meat & sweet potatoes

Weirdly, Hannibal Lecter comes up often in the comments section of this blog. Weirdly, because I'm not a cannibal or murderer or even just mesmerizing and charismatic. But I do love fava beans, once ate a live sea urchin, and don't know how to photograph meat. This time, I'm just saying it before someone else does: that's a revolting picture of a delicious Santa Maria tri-tip. 

I've never cooked a tri-tip before, but will again after Wednesday night's triumph. Thomas Keller's method: pat your tri-tip with paprika, pepper and piment d'espelette. (I bought piment at the Spanish Table; it was spendy and not that special, so I recommend you pat the roast with any spice you like.) Refrigerate for 24 hours. Sear in hot oil. Add butter, crushed garlic, rosemary sprigs and lemon slices. Put in a roasting pan (or just use the same skillet) and slow roast at 300 for 40 minutes. Let rest in warm place for a half hour. It will be tender and scrumptious.

Keller's glazed sweet potatoes were less delectable. You scrub and then roast unpeeled potatoes until soft, dip in brown sugar, and broil. Failings: the leathery sweet potato skins were a turn-off and the sugar never really melded with the tubers.

 

My favorite sweet potato recipe comes from Barbara Kafka's Roasting. There are so many other fabulous recipes in Kafka's book -- the roasted broccoli in a lemon-garlic bath, the Richie Rich fish cakes, the soft polenta -- that I offer this recipe only as enticement to track down a copy.  You won't be sorry.

Maple-glazed sweet potatoes, insignificantly altered by me

1. Heat oven to 500.

2. Cut 3 or 4 (1 and 1/2 lbs total) peeled sweet potatoes in half lengthwise, then across. Cut each section lengthwise into 3 wedges.

3. Use the smallest pan that will hold the potatoes comfortably. Put 3 TBS butter in this pan and pop in the oven for a few minutes to melt. Remove and place sweet potatoes in pan and toss so that they are all coated in butter. Roast for 15 minutes. Toss with 3 TBS maple syrup. Roast 15 minutes more. 

4. Kafka: "Sweet potatoes should be easy to pierce with the tip of a knife. Immediately remove to serving plate or sweet potatoes will stick to pan. Soak pan."

If I had to cull my cookbook collection this would be one of the last books standing. I suspect Ad Hoc at Home will not fall into this category.

Some Thomas Keller catch-up

Remember A Perfect Storm? New England fishermen who earn a living on pitching boats in freezing sleet are the kind of people who should eat a soup made of butter, potatoes, slab bacon, and rivers of cream. Those are the people for whom Boston clam chowder -- a truly bonkers dish, when you think about it -- was invented. Not for the likes of me.

That doesn't mean I don't appreciate it. As you would expect, Thomas Keller's chowder was sensational -- rib-sticking, smoky-sweet, packed with clams. It also required 11 cooking vessels, plus a parchment lid and a conical strainer. Keller cooks ingredients separately: leeks in one skillet; shallots and clams, in another; a pan to crisp the bacon; yet another to boil the potatoes. Then you cool the potatoes on a tray. Keller often calls for cooling things on trays. I sigh. I feel slovenly. But there's just not room on the counter of my kitchen to cool things on trays. There's not room in my sink to wash the trays, or in my drainer to dry them. I mean, I can make room, but it's a hassle. I remain skeptical that this book belongs in the home kitchen.

Anyway, to garnish the chowder, I made Keller's soup crackers, which were tedious to cut out and ultimately ridiculous. 

I just typed that snotty sentence while eating leftover soup crackers. They are delicious. I still don't think soup crackers are worth the effort. Do I?

Some other dishes we've cooked out of Ad Hoc:

-Sweet potato and lentil soup. Again with the trays, but what fantastic soup. "I don't usually like lentils," said Isabel, as she devoured her soup. "I don't usually like soup!" said Owen, as he devoured his. Highly recommend. 

-Chocolate chip cookies. 

Isabel is trying to bake the perfect chocolate chip cookie and has been testing recipes for the last few weeks. The other day she tackled Keller's, which calls for chopping up two different strengths of dark chocolate then fastidiously sifting out and discarding the cocoa dust. We liked these cookies fine, but there was too much chocolate, not enough distinction between chunk and cookie to put them at the top of our ranking.

Incidentally, here are the interim results of Isabel's testing, listed by the source of recipe:

1. Cakewalk by Kate Moses (Robust cookies flavored with espresso powder, irresistible and possibly unbeatable.)

2. Baking by Dorie Greenspan (The classic -- but better.) 

3. Toll House (The classic.)

4. Ad Hoc at Home

5. Joy of Cooking, 1975 (Thin, pale, unimpressive.)

If you have a favorite chocolate chip cookie, Isabel is looking for more recipes to try.

Just like a Norman Rockwell

Isabel: "Um, Mom? This is, like, really good meat. Don't say bad things about this dinner just because you thought it was hard to make."

Okay, I won't. And it wasn't actually hard to make. Monday night, my sister brought a salad, and from Ad Hoc at Home I cooked:

-brined pork tenderloin

-scallion potato pancakes

I was initially intimidated by these pancakes because Thomas Keller warns of the difficulties of flipping them. Also, the picture in the book (page 231) makes them look impossibly neat and tricky -- latkes as conceived by a perfectionist jeweler. But my friend Mary said they were easy and great, so I made 'em. These were only the best hash browns I've ever eaten! If you nudge the potato shreds into a square (Mary's suggestion), the pancakes look like they were made by an actual chef.Sort of.  I liked this recipe a lot. 

The brined tenderloin had its advocates, most notably Isabel. I can see their point, but remain staunchly indifferent to lean cuts of pig, however well-salted and flavorful. Perhaps this is why I myself am not lean?

 

Or maybe this is it: For dessert, Isabel and I made glazed buttermilk donuts out of The Craft of Baking by Karen DeMasco. 

We're on a quest for the perfect homemade donut and while these were yeomanly spice donuts, spice donuts aren't our grail. We didn't know that until we made them. If you love spice donuts, you will probably love these spice donuts.

That was Monday.

Tuesday night, from Ad Hoc: 

-marinated skirt steak

-sweet potato chips

My spoiled family couldn't stop complaining about how tough the steak was. That's just the nature of skirt steak. I liked it -- when you have to chew real hard you know you're eating meat. 

I fried the sweet potatoes to reuse the oil from the previous night's donut escapade, but wouldn't bother with that recipe again. A bag of Terra chips is just as tasty.

Really, it is no mystery why I'm not lean.

I remember when I remember I remember when I lost my mind

 Yesterday, Owen and I went shopping for a mature milking doe. (We're getting our baby goat today and she will eventually need a companion.) We drove an hour to look at Stiletto, and fell hard. She's a lovely, mellow Nubian who gives a gallon of milk a day.  She is, however, large, about the height of a tall Doberman Pinscher. 

After this we drove another hour-and-a-half to look at Dusty, a squat, surly Nigerian Dwarf with freaky, opaque white eyes. She cringed away when we tried to pet her. She has never been hand-milked and her "sisters" give 2 cups of milk a day. No thanks. The only reason to even consider this unfriendly, underproducing goat is that she is petite, about the height of a border collie. Poor Dusty is probably just misunderstood but we don't have time to understand her.

 

It seems like the answer is obvious: Get Stiletto. And then change her name immediately.  

It is slightly more complicated than that, due to her size and my fears of neighbor reaction, but I think that's what I'm going to do, provided her breeder can keep her for a few weeks until our wooden fence is finished. With a wooden fence, perhaps we won't incite every passing busybody to report our illegal goats. 

 

You may question the wisdom of keeping goats illegally. I do. Constantly. But I am about to practice my first-ever -- and probably last -- act of civil disobedience. It strikes me as absurd and wrong that you can legally keep big, chicken-killing, barking dogs in this (or any) town but can't keep two docile, milk-giving, brush-clearing ruminants of the same size, or even much smaller. I am prepared to fight this fight, though I would prefer not to. For one thing, I might lose.

 

 My father came over for dinner after our big day of goat-shopping. I was shocked when he approved my illegal goat plan as he's a lawyer and usually very cautious. I served him Thomas Keller's pepper-crusted tenderloin from Ad Hoc At Home.

To make this, you poach peppercorns in oil for an hour, crush them, coat your expensive steaks, sear, then finish in the oven. Owen refused to eat his steak on account of the "bean things" on the outside, but my father and I thought they were delicious.

 

Nothing but the best for my lawyer.

 

For dessert, we had Keller's coconut cake.

Keller says his mother used to bake this cake, and the fussier steps in the recipe suggest the coconut did not fall far from the palm. You have to reduce a can of coconut milk over the stove, which struck me as too much work for what is ostensibly an ordinary layer cake. Worth it! The cake itself is springy yet dense, airy yet substantial, and you can taste the coconut right there in the crumb. 

 

A Monday Night Ad Hoc Meal

It really is hard to whip up an Ad Hoc At Home dinner without planning well in advance. Yesterday afternoon I surveyed my options and they were few. Many, maybe even most, of Thomas Keller's recipes require some step -- a special order from the butcher, brining, marinating, a blowtorch, homemade court bouillon, chive oil, slab bacon, serrano ham -- that I could not make between 4 and 5 p.m. and have dinner on the table at 7:15.

Don't worry, I'm not going to belabor this endlessly. I'm up for the game! I'm just explaining why last night I made the pan-roasted halibut and sauteed broccoli rabe, among the few Keller recipes that sound very boring, but also require no special ingredients or advance planning. These dishes actually were very boring, and I say that as someone who loves both halibut and broccoli rabe. 

Abridged family response to meal: 

Owen: I don't like fish.

Isabel: You ALWAYS say that about everything. What IS this vegetable?

Tipsy: It's broccoli rabe. I love it. It's bitter.

Isabel: Um, yeah. I noticed.

Husband: My favorite vegetable is celery and cream cheese.

Isabel: I like vegetables that aren't all wrinkled.

Owen: I like carrots that aren't cooked.

It went on like that. You know, discussing ideas, values, Bach. After all, the dinner table is the cradle of civilization.

Let's just hope Alice Waters is wrong about that.

 

When I was at the supermarket yesterday I bought chives to make chive oil, and parsley to make parsley water, both of which are essential components of Keller's asparagus coins, which I planned to serve tonight. But last night I was too tired to put the chives in the blender and make the oil, which requires 24 hours to steep, so we will not be dining on asparagus coins. I did track down some slab bacon, so I guess I can make his asparagus stew instead. 

Here's why I was tired: 

After a long talk with a bee expert about the fate of our lost bees and the future of our brand new bees, I decided to harvest last year's honey and let the new bees forage. These pictures do not quite convey the sticky drudgery of scraping, crushing, straining and re-straining required to hand-extract several gallons of honey in an ordinary kitchen. 

But it was worth it. Very pretty.

Homemade camembert

Whether or not "my" first camembert will age into something edible remains to be seen, but the camembert workshop  I took yesterday at the Davis Co-op was the most fun I've had this April. You have to enter a lottery for these workshops, and if you live within a 3-hour drive and have any interest at all in cheesemaking, I recommend you do this. When I won the space in the camembert class, I thought, hmm, this should be absurd. Normal people can't make camembert.

Not so. The class was revelatory. We divided into small groups, each with a pot of milk to play with, and three hours and some very simple steps later, we left with our baby camemberts "molded" in small segments of plastic pipe. We also got to eat some of the camemberts made by our teachers who, admittedly, are not normal people, and they were incredible. I wanted to drive straight home and make more cheese.  

I let the camembert drain all night in its plastic pipe. This morning, secured in Tupperware, it went into the basement crawl space, which I suspect may not be cold enough. We shall see. Supposedly the refrigerator is perfectly okay, but I like the idea that our useless crawl space is actually an undiscovered cheese cave. 

I haven't cooked anything lately except this lovely apricot almond bread from Jim Lahey's My Bread, a book that hasn't let me down yet: 

The bread contains almond butter and quartered dried apricots and would be amazing with some camembert.

I'm going to start Ad Hoc at Home tomorrow. I'll do Big Sur Bakery after that.

Moro: The long overdue earnest summation

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away I cooked from the Moro cookbook, and it was one of my favorite cookbooks ever. I know I just gushed about Pioneer Woman, but let me leave no room for doubt: MORO IS BETTER. 

Eccentric and personal, Moro is my favorite kind of cookbook, the antithesis to the sterile, test kitchen-generated Gourmet Today. Although the desserts all failed me and the skate wing counts among the most repulsive things I've ever cooked, this Mediterranean/North African/Middle Eastern cookbook by Sam & Sam Clark (above) challenged and fascinated and educated and fed us very, very well for several months. Even after all that time there were dozens of recipes I still wanted to try but never got around to: roasted pork belly with fennel seed, fried liver with chopped salad, crab brik. The I only reason I stopped cooking from Moro was because Isabel became fixated on Pioneer Woman and practically begged me to move on.

 

I cooked 57 recipes from Moro:

Worth the price of the book: 2*

Great: 14

Good: 25

So-so: 12

Flat-out bad: 4

 

*the bread, of course, which I have baked a dozen or more times, but also the phenomenal chickpeas and spinach.

Definitely a shelf essential. 

Also, I have a story today in Slate comparing Pioneer Woman and Thomas Keller. His fried chicken is way, way better, but I still prefer her book.

Pioneer Woman vs. Thomas Keller

Since both Pioneer Woman and Thomas Keller have published recipes for chicken pot pie, and given they occupy opposite ends of the culinary spectrum,  I thought it would be illuminating to bake their pies and compare. So we held a pot pie party the other night. One Safeway rotisserie chicken yielded enough meat for both pies.

Unsurprisingly, the pot pie from Pioneer Woman Cooks was a breeze to make, as Ree Drummond is all about the breeziness. You saute vegetables (frozen peas, carrots, celery, onion) in butter, toss in some flour, shredded chicken, broth, a bouillon cube, and cream. Briefly simmer, then pour into a pie plate. Pioneer Woman calls for just a top crust, which she makes with flour, shortening, and an egg. I did not enjoy working with this sticky, unwieldy dough  and would not use her crust recipe again.  Total number of pots, bowls, and other cooking vessels PW calls for: 3.  

Unsurprisingly, the pot pie from Ad Hoc At Home was painstaking, as Thomas Keller is all about the pains. You blanch vegetables (potatoes, carrots, celery, pearl onions) in four separate saucepans, then make a bechamel that reduces for 40 minutes (an eternity when you're trying to keep milk from boiling over) and requires much subsequent pot-scouring.  The all-butter double crust, however, was very straightforward and user-friendly. That recipe is a keeper. Number of pots and vessels Keller calls for: 10.

For fun, I also heated a bunch of frozen pot pies.

Sadly, I forgot which was which after I took them out of the boxes so we couldn't really rank them, though it hardly matters. My husband and brother-in-law got all misty gazing at the boxes and reminiscing about their bachelor days, but the frozen pies? Universally nasty. In isolation, I'm sure they taste fine, but sampled side-by-side with homemade pies, they were noisome. As Isabel said, "It's like they have water in them."

That sounds weird now, but in the moment, tasting the storebought pies, I knew exactly what she meant.

She used to wear that little purple suit.

So, both of the homemade pies were hands down more delicious than any of the storebought pies. Deciding which of the homemade pies we liked better presented more of a challenge.

 The crust on Thomas Keller's was flaky, almost like a croissant, very buttery. Everyone loved this crust. There was also unanimous agreement that a pot pie needs a bottom crust, which his has and PW's doesn't. The interior of his pie was firm and cohesive so you could actually cut it into neat slices, though some critics thought the filling lacked flavor.

 

Certainly, by contrast with PW's brashly seasoned pie, Keller's was a bit bland. There was nothing subtle about the flavor of PW's pie, thanks to a bouillon cube, chicken broth, and dried thyme. Whether this was good or bad depends on who you ask. Her pie was also exceedingly runny, called for a ladle rather than a knife. I'll let the tasters speak for themselves:

My mother: "I liked the potatoes in the first one (Keller's), and the crust was unbelievable. But I liked the second one (PW's) very much. They both needed more vegetables."

Justine: "I want the two pies to get married because Thomas Keller crust is fantastic, but I wish it had fewer potatoes and more flavor and was maybe a little runnier." 

Fastidious Isabel, gesturing in disgust at the soupy Pioneer Woman pie: "This is why I don't like chicken pot pie!"

Owen had a similar reaction and refused to even touch the PW pie: "You know I don't like soup."

However, the two adult males at the party, both of whom consider themselves pot pie experts, praised Pioneer Woman's pie.

Brother-in-law: "The critical issues with both of these is they're not in individual portions! They're not supposed to be actual pies, they're SUPPOSED to be soup in a crust."

My husband agreed. I don't have any quotes from him because he was to busy shoveling pie into his mouth. You know what word I detest and can't even use except to say how much I detest it? Pie hole.

We held a vote. Keller got four votes, though Justine was a pretty wobbly supporter. Pioneer Woman got two votes, and there was one abstention. Given that he is Thomas Keller, I think this is a win for Pioneer Woman. Or at the very least, a tie. 

For the record, I was staunchly in the Keller camp. But I was thinking later how very little I love chicken pot pie, even an elegant Thomas Keller pie that involves ten cooking vessels and a 40-minute bechamel. I'd rather consume empty calories in the form of potstickers, cheeseburgers, BLTs, potato chips, manhattans, or blue Shropshire cheese. I'm just not that into chicken pot pie. 

Still, it was a fun party.