tilted skillet

bacon chops.

Every so often, a new-to-me food comes along and I think “HOW DID I NOT KNOW THIS EXISTED?”. As someone who prides herself on a well-rounded knowledge of most comestibles, I find it somewhat inexcusable that until very recently I was unaware of the best cut of meat to happen to pork eaters since bacon: the bacon chop.

Little more than a long shoulder-cut pork chop, bacon chops retain the pork belly meat and this simple slight of the knife makes all the difference. Think of a bacon chop like a mullet: business, or standard chop, in the front; and party (belly, aka uncured bacon) in the back.

Growing up, I’d help my mom make Shake ‘n Bake pork chops. Remember the jingle ‘It’s Shake ‘n Bake, and I helped!’? I remember. I remember pork chops that were usually dry and required lots of apple sauce for flavor and moisture. Thanks to fears of trichinosis and the lean nature of this particular cut, many people overcook pork chops and find them both dry and in need of some sort of sauce.

I’m never one to turn down a good sauce, dip, or spread, but bacon chops require little more than a good sear in a hot pan and a quick turn in the oven. Let me be clear about one thing: eating a bacon chop requires you to think very little about the fact that you’re eating pork fat as a main course. It can be a difficult concept to accept logically, so I suggest you don’t think about it in the first place!

Plus, bacon chops are rich. A one-pound bone-in chop was plenty for two of us, with a few slices left over for nibbling from the fridge the next day. I put out a smoky chipotle sauce for dipping, but we left it practically untouched as we speared fatty, crispy slices of pork from the skillet. Under the guise of drying the dishes George was dutifully washing, I managed to find time to gnaw on the meaty bone like a ravenous dog that had not, in fact, just eaten over a 1/3 pound of pork chop and belly.

There’s not a lot of information on bacon chops out there, so consider this post somewhat of a public service announcement. Bay Area denizens, check out Prather Ranch for a reliable source of bacon chops. All others, try a local butcher shop. If they don’t routinely offer this cut, there’s a good chance they’ll cut a couple for you if you ask. Then they’ll thank you for rocking their world. In advance, you’re welcome.

chicken stock- and honey-glazed carrots

Last week, I ate about three pounds of carrots. Supplementing our weekly CSA share with additional vegetables is not unlike a game of Russian roulette: we have a three-day window over the weekend to take advantage of the farm’s online store – which sells products ranging from bulk orders of certain fruits and vegetables, to locally-roasted coffee and artisan jams – but we don’t find out what’s in our weekly box until Tuesday. This means that when I opt to add two pounds of baby artichokes to my weekly share, I have no way of knowing if my CSA will giveth baby artichokes of its own. 

This time around, my fridge runneth over with loose carrots. I’d thought it sounded like a good idea to have a couple pounds of carrots laying around for snacking and whatnot, but I didn’t think that, hidden under the bushels of leafy greens, there’d be two more pounds of beta carotene powerhouses.

I did my best with the carrots. I pickled, shaved, and roasted. I dipped, sautéed, and nibbled them like a bunny. By far the best thing I did with the little orange sticks, though, was glaze them with slightly-fatty homemade chicken stock, fresh herbs from my struggling herb garden, and wildflower honey. Reducing two and a half cups of chicken stock and honey until it barely glazes the bottom of the pan can only do wonderful things for the flavor of your dish, and the honey adds a sweet and floral note. 

roasted beet and goat yogurt salad with olives and oregano

Last weekend was a whirlwind, thanks to a roughly 36-hour trip down to LA for a dear friend’s wedding. I could go on and on about the wedding itself, but I’m here to write about food so am going to cut myself off RIGHT NOW before I go down the rabbit hole of wedding fantasyland. We ate well both nights, which, let’s be honest, is somewhat unusual as weddings go. The Mediterranean/California fusion menus were ingredient-driven, seasonal, and mildly innovative yet straightforward enough to appeal to the hundreds of captive diners. 

Due to unfortunate work schedules, we had to skedaddle back up to the Bay Area before the main course was served. Entranced by the first dance, speeches, and salad course, I looked at my watch and was shocked at how fast time was flying. Soon, a catering attendant was shoving into my arms two salmon entrées to-go as we rushed out to pick up our luggage from the valet and slip into a waiting taxi.

The to-go boxes were a nice touch, and I managed to keep them intact both while hopping in and out of heels at security, and while undergoing an unnecessary full pat-down and bomb-swabbing. Ravenous, we finally sat down in a café near our gate to eat and watch the basketball game. Recognizing my impending low blood sugar meltdown, George claimed he wanted a hot dog, leaving me to take down – with haste – two portions of wild king salmon with Meyer lemon-green olive salsa and fennel-herb salad. Bless him.

Sleepy and sated on the short plane ride home, I found myself thinking about goat cheese, which naturally led me to thoughts of the carton of goat yogurt I’d picked up on a whim at Whole Foods last week. Years ago, a friend, and incidentally the bride, had introduced me to goat cheese and thus helped spawn my deep and enduring relationship with what is now one of my favorite foods. Goat yogurt is faintly reminiscent of goat cheese, with a slightly grassy (euphemism for goat-y) taste. I love it, but consider yourself warned.

Tangy yogurt is a perfect match for sweet, earthy beets. In fact, I find that I crave acidic and salty components anytime I eat beets. For this salad, a twist on the traditional beet and goat cheese combo, I lightly coat roasted beets in faux-vinaigrette and top them with oregano-spiked yogurt. The salad is not unlike the wedding menu: mildly innovative yet not so far out there that no one will touch it. Keep in mind that red beets stain anything around them, so heed my advice to enjoy this salad cold and top the beets with the yogurt just before serving to avoid a preemptively pretty-in-pink salad.

beef and lentil picadillo

After last weekend’s Prather Ranch shopping spree, I’ve been thinking a lot about – and cooking lots of – meat and poultry. My freezer currently houses a bewildering assortment of bacon chops, pork scallopini, whole chickens (with heads and feet!), and several packs of ground beef. Eager to make a dent in the protein backlog, I defrosted a one-pound pack of ground beef to whip up a dish that’s fallen into heavy rotation in my kitchen: picadillo.

A Cuban dish of spiced ground beef with lots of sweet and salty components, picadillo is kind of like a grown-up version of the taco filling my mom used to make with scary VONS ground beef and a packet of Lawry’s taco seasoning (sorry, Mom!). Picadillo is great with corn or flour tortillas, or over potatoes, hominy, or rice.

I’m not sure where I first heard of this one-pot wonder, but I used this recipe from Food and Wine as a jumping-off point. And then I jumped way off into the deep end with the kind of recipe adaptations to which my regular dinner guests are well accustomed.

The original recipe calls for one pound of ground chuck and another of ground sirloin. Even with a freezer full of beef and pork, I’m conscious of our household’s collective meat consumption (and of a certain someone’s obsessive In-N-Out habit), and thus substitute a couple cups of brown lentils for one pound of meat. Be mindful of the type of lentil you use, as almost any except brown or French/du Puy will fall apart and make your picadillo exceedingly mushy. In keeping with the rather drab yet oddly appetizing brown hue of this dish, I opt for brown lentils.

Even after cooking, lentils and other legumes tend to suck up any surrounding liquid. To compensate, I add a ½ cup of my favorite pourable salsa. I sometimes sneak a spoonful of this stuff straight from the jar, so it’s not surprising that I’d find a way to work it into a respectable meal. A final note: several of the components in this dish are salty, including the capers, olives, Marcona almonds, and potentially the salsa. Err on the side of under-salting at the beginning until you taste the dish after all of the ingredients have had time to settle in together.

CUESA's Spring Breakfast

Money raised from Spring Breakfast benefits CUESA's Schoolyard to Market program, in which San Francisco high schoolers learn the basics of urban farming and running small businesses.

Over the weekend, Bon Appétit chefs and managers rallied on their days off to host a breakfast for 300 hungry farmers’ market-goers at the Ferry Plaza Farmers’ Market in San Francisco. As the major sponsor for this year’s Spring Breakfast, an annual fundraiser for the nonprofit Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture (CUESA), team BAMCO banged out an impressive spread: hundreds of delicate Swedish oatmeal pancakes with strawberry syrup, more pastured scrambled eggs and asparagus frittatas than you could shake a stick at, 4505 Meats and Fatted Calf (purveyor of incredible charcuterie) breakfast sausages with apple compote, roasted spring onions and potatoes, and St. Benoit yogurt-Marshall’s Farm honey parfaits with Blue Bottle granola. There may have been a mimosa bar with squeezed-to-order orange juice, but I was working so of course cannot be sure.

When asked to attend and photograph the event, I jumped at the chance. In terms of my favorite extracurricular activities for work, playing the role of chef paparazzo is a close second to my true love: pretending I’m a chalkboard artist. Naturally, CUESA events always attract a lot of attention, so I wasn’t the only photographer onsite. In fact, a couple of the photographers came equipped with assistants and translucent umbrellas they held up against unsuspecting diners for better light.

I’m not a professional photographer. I use Photoshop’s ‘straighten’ function more than I’d like to admit, which makes me worry that I, like the title of my blog, am perpetually tilted. Even in the bad light and with a tilted lens, I managed to grab a few shots of beautiful food and dedicated Bon Appétiters.

While at the market, I couldn’t resist the call of the fresh English shelling peas and skinny asparagus. I smartly only brought $22 in cash to prevent myself from overburdening my vegetable-filled crisper drawers, but then undid most of my good work when I went inside the Ferry Building and stocked up on $150 worth of pastured pork and poultry from credit card-friendly Prather Ranch. You win some, you lose some.

roasted cauliflower steaks with tahini, date syrup, and kalamata olives

Something I’m a little afraid to tell you: if left to my own devices, I have a really hard time not eating an entire head of roasted cauliflower in one sitting. Sometimes, I’ll cook only half of a large head, but then I’m just upset with the unnecessary restriction. I mean, there are worse things I could be eating than a pound of cauliflower.

In the early days of my cauliflower adoration, I favored simple preparations – a sprinkle of good curry powder and salt, melted coconut oil, and a shower of cilantro after roasting. Lately, I’ve been exploiting the humble cauliflower’s adaptability by pureeing it with potatoes, steaming a whole head at once, and most recently, turning it into steaks.

I’m not trying to fool anyone – including myself – into thinking that a big slab of cauliflower approximates a nice filet of beef or chicken. Rather, I feel more civilized cutting into a cauliflower steak than I do digging into a mountain of tiny florets. I think it has to do with the steak necessitating use of a fork AND knife, but this is starting to smack of the theory of human evolution so let’s get back to the cauliflower.

Recently, Bon Appétit magazine posted a recipe for roasted cauliflower with date syrup from Erez Komarovsky of Calilee Cooking School in Israel. The combination of cauliflower, sweet and sticky date syrup, and creamy tahini is a bit unexpected and extremely delicious. I added ground cumin for depth, a generous handful of flat-leaf parsley leaves for color and crunch, and sliced kalamata olives for a salty counterpoint, and was completely hooked.

Another Bon Appétit recipe, for cauliflower steaks with olive relish and tomato sauce, caught my eye and, before I knew it, all I could think about was a cauliflower steak topped with date syrup, tahini, and olives. I waited for a night I knew I’d be cooking for one (lest I have to share my cauliflower with others) and, I’ll admit, went to town on my creation.

If you’re wondering where to find date syrup and/or tahini, try a Middle Eastern market or well-stocked natural foods store. Making date syrup is easy and having a jar laying around is never a bad thing. Drizzle it on pancakes, waffles, French toast, or yogurt. Making it takes about five minutes. Try this recipe.

a visit to (my idea of) the Promised Land

Before we get started here, I’d like to make it known that I did not take or otherwise distort the photo above with Instagram! I’m not sure how much better I feel, though, for basing at least part of my criteria for photographic genius on my ability to mimic my favorite Instagram filter – say, Valencia or Hudson.

It was funny timing when I took this photo. In Austin for a bachelorette party, I’d snuck out in the morning (okay, noon) after a late night to see the city as it looks in the light of day. I think almost the entire population was recovering from the festive double-whammy of Cinco de Mayo and the Kentucky Derby, as I was practically alone along the popular Colorado River trail when these geese, which may or may not actually be swans, floated by. On the flight over, I’d started and subsequently devoured most of Prune chef/owner Gabrielle Hamilton’s memoir, Blood, Bones & Butter. In it she describes a particularly vivid scene of a French butcher shop in which the milky white geese lay with their inky black heads curled unnaturally – yet gracefully – around their bodies like question marks.

I didn’t do any cooking in Austin. As might be expected, most of our time was spent celebrating. And by celebrating, I mean cavorting around the city in coordinated outfits with 13 other women and partaking in lots of organized social drinking and drinking games. Fortunately, I found time to visit the Promised Land, which is quite clearly the Whole Foods flagship store. I spent a good hour and a half combing the aisles, appreciating rare SKUs and miniature in-store cafés, and managed to fit in two meals (one there, and one carefully transported for enjoyment on my flight home).

Turns out Whole Foods prefers that you not photograph inside the store, but I managed to snap a few photos without concerned team members forcing me to delete my weird photos of chalkboard chickens, new-to-me granola bars, and unusual heirloom beans. Below, a few snapshots of some of my favorite finds.

Flavored sugars in the bulk section brighten up the otherwise drab hues of dried beans, grains, and nuts. At $12.99/lb for (non-organic!) cane sugar blended with a little bit of flavoring agent, such as dried strawberries, ground cloves, or lemon zest, the contents of these bins promise both a sugar high and an impressively expensive dessert.

At work I’ve become an unofficial and very amateur chalk artist, so I’m always seeking out chalkboard inspiration. This chicken has really been taken to the next level with its multicolored, feathered design. I’m filing this one away for the next time I need to highlight a chicken farmer in one of our cafés.

Merchandising like items is not revolutionary, but usually these groupings bring together items that one might use in a single recipe, such as bananas, vanilla wafers, cinnamon, and pudding mix. While coconut oil and young brown coconuts may not be commonly paired in recipes, placing the coconut oil smack in the middle of the produce section calls a lot more attention to it than it would if shelved as one of many varieties of cooking fats in the oils aisle.

roasted nori chips

A couple years ago when I was home for the holidays, I was mildly disgusted to find a can of French’s cheddar-flavored fried onions sitting front and center in my parents’ pantry. Figuring the can of processed onion product would end up in a green bean casserole, I made a mental note to stick to the relatively safe turkey, roasted root vegetables, and sugared cranberries. Mere hours later, I saw my dad rooting around in said pantry for a snack and was horrified when he absentmindedly started devouring the French’s fried onions like they were a reasonable snack of, say, kale chips or trail mix.

I asked my mom if Dad had just annihilated her stock of would-be green bean casserole toppers, but she nonchalantly responded that in fact no, Dad buys those at the grocery store for the sole purpose of snacking. The little part of me that died on the inside that day was solidified when I noticed that the expiration date for the can of cheddar-flavored onion impersonators had passed many moons ago. 

I remembered this incident last month while in Mammoth with my parents. Seeing my dad fumbling with his Blackberry over by the pantry, I was a bit confused until the photo below landed in various family members’ inboxes with a caption of ‘challenge of the day: which snack is Dad’s and which is Shannon’s?’. I think we all know the answer to this one. Although over-salted cocktail peanuts are probably a step up from French’s fried onions, I insisted Dad try my nori chips. He obliged, bless his heart, but I don’t think I have to worry about him stealing my roasted seaweed anytime soon.

A pack of these seaweed chips is only a couple bucks at the store, but I feel wasteful purchasing a snack that needs so much packaging for so little satiety. I started tinkering at home with a pack of seaweed generally reserved for sushi-making and, after a few tries, came up with a method and roasting temperature that works for me. These little chips are surprisingly addictive, with a salty kick and nutty flavor thanks to the sesame seeds and time in the oven.

Eating them can be a messy affair: I usually try to fit a whole one in my mouth so as to avoid the otherwise-inevitable crumbs associated with biting one in half. This is not an overly attractive way to snack. Thus, they are best enjoyed in the comfort of your own home, preferably while standing over the sink.