French Fries @ Home: Fresh, easy, and not that bad for you (really)

First, potatoes. I love potatoes. I mean, I really, really, love them. I could probably eat an entire meal of potatoes and enjoy it (at least until it caught up with me). I love potatoes mashed, grated and pan-fried into pancakes, diced and pan-roasted as home fries, baked, oven-roasted, and, of course, deep-fried into french fries. Is there any food that is, on appearances, simpler and more spectacular than a perfect french-fried potato? I, for one, think not.

It is to the humble tuber's credit that it remains edible, if perhaps not at the peak of flavor, days, weeks, even months after it is pulled from the ground; certainly, the ease with which potatoes can be stored played a material role in wintering over food supplies for many peoples prior to the advent of refrigeration, particularly in Europe (Europeans still produce the most potatoes per capita, but the fastest rate of change is in Asia, and China is now the world's leading producer). As usual, lots of good info here at Wiki, and if you're really in a potato mood, check out the British Potato Council (you have to love the Brits). The catch is that storage comes at a cost - once the potato begins to decompose, however slowly, the starches that are so essential to its cooking properties begin to break down, and texture and flavor are compromised - so if you whenever you find truly farm-fresh taters (you have to ask - I used to see last-season's crop for sale at the Union Square market in NYC all the time, when the stalls were otherwise lean), by all means, buy them, and cook them post haste.

Thus it was with considerable enthusiasm that my eldest daughter and I rummaged through the basket of just-dug Yukon Golds at the Bernier Farms stall. I would have sworn they still carried the warmth of the topsoil they were unearthed from, but that seems logically unlikely, given the cool weather we've had; in any case, they were gorgeous in all their dirty splendor and, if you listened closely, the breeze through the market seemed to whisper "fry me... FRY ME!". OK, maybe that was just my stomach, but the end result was the same - homemade french fries.

French fries, however, present the home cook with a few obstacles, notably deep-frying (messy, dangerous, and requiring special equipment), and health (fat, fat, and more fat, although I'm not really very concerned with fat per se, the health issue having more to do with the types of fat and total calories consumed, rather than the percentage or grams of fat in isolation). Inspired by Heston Blumenthal's approach, I've experimented with "oven fries" for years now, with greater and lesser success, and I've now convinced myself that a good - no, a very good - oven fry is possible, even likely, with relatively little effort, and not much guilt on the health front.

Oven Fries

1. Start with proper potatoes. If you're going to go the trouble, and bear the caloric consequences, of making and eating home-made fries, surely it's worth a good potato. Most important is that the potato be of the waxy variety, and ideally fresh from your favorite local grower's patch of dirt. My go-to waxy potato is the Yukon Gold, great flavor, texture, color, and you can almost always find them.
2. Pre-heat the oven to 450F and boil a pot of salted water that is large enough to accommodate all the fries without crowding. (If you don't know how to salt water, go with the Italians' advice for pasta: It should taste about like the sea - this works for pasta, vegetables, whatever.)
3. While everything else is getting hot, proceed to cut the potatoes into roughly rectangular shapes. You will waste a bit, but you can use the trim for something else, or compost; but it's important to start with the right shape. A bit oblong is fine, as length is not so critical; what is essential is that the four "sides" of your potato are parallel, so that you can subsequently cut it into fries of uniform thickness. Cut the potatoes into planks of uniform thickness, typically 5-10mm per side; I like about a 1/4", but, while this is a matter of preference and aesthetics, cooking times and temps must be adjusted. Take the planks and stack them and cut them into sticks of width equal to their height - this will give you nice fries of uniform thickness, a pleasing square shape, and - most importantly - equal cooking time. As you cut the sticks, drop them into a bowl of cold water; this will help rinse starch off their surfaces and prevent them from sticking together.
4. Dump the potato sticks into the boiling water to blanche - carefully! use a slotted spoon or something to avoid splatter - and cook for about 5 minutes. 5 is my number, for my size fry (pictured); it will vary, so watch them. They should come out just barely starting to be tender, but not at all falling apart - if they don't 'bend' at all when you pluck one out, they're not ready; if they start breaking or fail to hold their clean-cut shape, they're over. This step is critical: There is no such thing as a decent fry that has been cooked only once. There is no short cut. You can use water, as I do here, instead of oil (not quite as good, but still quite good, and much healthier, easier, less messy, and safer at home), but you MUST blanche them before frying, or your fries are destined to suck. Seriously. It has everything to do with giving the starch molecules in the outer layer time to glue together before frying, which is what creates a crisp crust and a flaky interior. The chemistry is unforgiving on this, you can take my word for it, consult McGee, Corriher, or this excellent discussion from the French Culinary Institute, or you can eat shitty fries.
5. Gently - gently - drain, rinse, and pat-dry the potatoes (laying them out on a kitchen towel which you then fold over works well). Transfer to a large bowl and coat them liberally with good-quality olive oil. When in doubt, keep it local - I'm still working through the bottom of a bottle of TJ's Spanish EVOO, but I'd prefer to have used DaVero's 40-weight. And when I say liberally, I mean it, now is not the time to skimp on fat. The fries should be coated and glistening with oil.
6. Transfer to a sheet tray, moving the fries around to ensure that they all have room to breathe. Don't "crowd" the tray! Transfer the sheet tray to the 450-degree oven and bake for about 20 minutes. Watch, listen, and check them frequently from 15 minutes on, but I suspect you'll find about 25 minutes total cooking time.
7. Take them out and salt the hell out of them. Nothing worse than a bland, under-seasoned french fry. Kosher salt is a staple around here, but sometimes it doesn't stick to fries very well, so a finer grind of good sea salt, or - better - one of the more powdery sel gris would really make them sing.
8. Serve IMMEDIATELY! Heinz (and no other) ketchup is optional.

Good vittles...

In defense of Costco

I'm taking time out of the kitchen today, mainly because I actually have commitments aside from cooking and writing about it, but also because, as much as I love to make and consume homemade goodness, sometimes I just want to eat a bowl of cold cereal, put the bowl in the dishwasher, and move on.

That being said, this is a new blog with precisely zero readers, and apparently - if I ever want to get a reader - it's important to keep posting. This leaves me with two choices: Recycle a story from an old recipe I've got filed away somewhere (I'm not above that, and reviving 'vintage' food photos from my pre-blog days will undoubtedly play a material part in the near future), or talk about something altogether different. So I thought this would be a good excuse to address a topic that, at first blush, might seem not-very-foodie-friendly, and downright heretical to the locovore crowd that one would be excused for thinking (however erroneously) we at PK are trying to ingratiate ourselves with.

Let me begin today's tirade by stating, for the record, what must by now be obvious to even the most casual reader (as if I'd have any other kind): I am not a zealot. I am not a fanatic. I love to shop, cook, eat, and drink locally, but I don't lose any sleep over imported dry pastas, cheeses, cured hams, canned tomatoes, or wines; neither do I abhor the occasional short cut in the kitchen, if it allows me to make better food, on average, more of the time, than I otherwise would or could.

And, to get back on piste, I occasionally shop at Costco. Yes, this particular local cook provides material, if episodic, financial support to All That Is Evil in the world of category-killing food mongers. My defense is this: With a bit of selectivity, I can purchase certain high quality foodstuffs at deeply discounted prices. The money I save by doing so increases the amount of money I have to shop for high-priced groceries and, by extension, my financial support of local food producers. (Let's be clear, farmer's markets are anything but cheap - don't get me started on the "if you only understood the true economic cost of mass food production" b.s. I'm an economist, and I say you're elitist, delusional, and just plain wrong. But I recognize that that line of argument requires some supporting evidence, so I'll leave it for another post.) All of which means that, buy shopping at Costco, I buy and prepare a higher average quality of food for my family.

By "averages", I am not talking about eating free-range, locally ranched lamb one day, subsidized by pre-prepared, Costco Mystery Loaf on another day. I'm talking about good, generally basic, ingredients, of substantially the same quality that I would have otherwise purchased, at a vastly reduced price. A few simple examples to illustrate the point:

• Organic, extra virgin Italian olive oil: Works out to be about $7/liter at the Big C, which is on the order of 1/2 less than I would get a comparable product at our local natural foods market, and probably 1/3 less than I would find at TJ's. (I won't even bother to talk about Whole Paycheck. The checkbook-liberal, self-described locovore who pats his or her self on the back for buying poorly butchered wild salmon of dubious provenance from Whole Foods at an inflated price has a lot to learn about buying food, is all I'm saying. This, too, is fodder for another healthy, rant-filled post, so I'll reserve further comment for now.) Oh, and it's not because the oil isn't good. Does it taste like DaVero's Estate? No - but it is fresh, grassy, and generally everything you'd expect from an everyday staple EVOO.
• Milton's Multigrain bread: We go through it like locusts once "sandwich season", AKA The School Lunch Dilemma, is upon us. At about $5 for two extra long loaves, this, too, is on the order of 1/2-1/3 less than I'd otherwise get the identical product. 
• The cheeses can be excellent: I buy Redwood Hill Farms (who are about as local as it gets) outstanding goat's milk cheddar, as well as basic "cooking" cheeses from Tillamook or Bella Gioso or whomever. If you use Kraft American cheese - and we at PK swear by it, without shame, for diner-style cheeseburgers and omelets - why not get it in bulk? It's not like it's going bad.
• Organic butter and milk. It's fine, trust me. (I don't buy their eggs. I am fanatical about eggs, particularly as we eat them raw or barely cooked on many an occasion. I'll devote many future posts to the various and sundry wonders of the chicken egg, and why, of all things, you should only buy incredibly fresh eggs from farmer's you trust.
• I didn't go there with the intent to use, or even knowledge of, their car stuff, but saved some $0.30/gallon on a full tank of gas, and will save about $200 on a set of tires that my wife's car very badly needs.
• Oh - this being a personal bugaboo of mine - they actually have remarkably consumer-friendly return policies.
• I could go on, but it would be pointless; if that sort of stuff doesn't seem worthwhile to you; if you are simply and completely price-inelastic, either because money is irrelevant to you or because your theological in your beliefs about shopping, nothing I am going to say is going to change your mind, and life is far too short for me to give enough of a shit to try. 

What is nevertheless unequivocal is that going to Costco is an aesthetic assault on your senses. It is poorly organized (or, more precisely, unnecessarily difficult to navigate), vast, noisy, and ugly in virtually every sense of the word. I won't even try to sugarcoat it. If you tell me those non-pecuniary costs are too high, I won't argue; they are for my wife, but not for me, which is why I draw the short straw in this particular division of household labor.

The key to shopping at Costco is to understand it for what it is - a quasi-military exercise in efficiency and restraint in the unavoidable application of force. Laugh this off and, like my wife, you'll go once, leave feeling dirty, disgusted, and out $300, never to return. Like any pseudo-military campaign, there are certain rules of engagement that raise the probabilities of success:

1. The first thing to understand is that, like Gulf War I (and in stark contrast to nameless wars before and since), you must clearly define your objectives before engaging the enemy. The first rule of Costco is, Buy Only What You Are Certain To Use. Generally, this means only stuff you would have bought anyway. However, that is not strict enough, because no matter how cheap it is, it is not necessarily economically efficient to buy stuff that is either costly to store or that is certain to rot. 
2. The next rule, which might properly be a corollary of the first is, Avoid All That Crap By The Front. For the most part, this means electronics, but I would extend its scope to home furnishings and almost anything that comes in "coupon" form (EasyPass may be an exception; Day Passes to an amusement park you had no plans to visit, however deeply discounted, are not).
3. Never forget the third rule, Be Ruthlessly Selective. Do not buy something that is "almost the same" but which you will likely be disappointed in; do not sacrifice quality; do not downgrade from organic; if they don't have an acceptably close substitute for what you want, Move On.
4. It is generally permissible, and even advisable, to Purchase Dry and Bulk Goods. Cleaning products, paper products, bottled water (insert outrage at the relevant catastrophic environmental impact here), etc. There is probably even an "eco-friendly" version much like, if not identical to, the one you would have bought anyway. Just be sure you can store it. 
5. As an over-arching principal, always remember, when buying foodstuffs, to Avoid Complexity. This actually goes far beyond Costco, and we'll talk about it more later - certainly in a forthcoming post on buying pre-made tomato sauce - but for now, take it on faith: The longer the list of ingredients, the worse it will be. This will generally, but not exclusively, preclude all pre-made food, which is a good starting place (there are notable exceptions - depending on the topping, for example, the organic pizzas on Viccolo cornmeal crust - but they are the exceptions that prove the rule). 
6. Finally, Focus On Staples and Avoid The Fresh Stuff. Staples is the obvious strategy: Organic olive oil, bulk cereals and breads (of the right brands), wine, beer, and liquor (yes, the ARE staples, although always heed Rules 1 and 2 when purchasing booze), etc. The Fresh Stuff may be more controversial, and may even be unfair; I confess, I've not bought much if anything. But fruits and vegetables, both because of quantities and provenance, strike me as dubious. And, if you like to shop at farmer's markets, certainly fruits and veggies should be at the top of your list. I am less clear on the meats, but I'm fanatical about meats (I am tempted to try the whole organic chickens, if I could persuade myself that they were truly raised and slaughtered in a humane manner), and I'm inherently skeptical.

Good shopping, and good luck.

Leftovers: Wild Salmon Two Ways - Wrapped in Prosciutto with Creamy Polenta, and Simply Raw with Pistou

Leftovers, I often think, are the home cook's best friend. At the very least, leftovers provide motivation: One of the cook's, any cook's, moral imperatives is not to waste food. And of course, using leftovers saves money - no mean feat, if your goal is to cook good food, on a regular basis, for a rapidly growing family of [insert your number here - it's not cheap for one, or for five].

But leftovers are more than that: Like the sonnet or the haiku, their inherently limited structure becomes the foil for improvisation, for efficiency, for making something new out of something old. Or maybe I've had that one-glass-of-wine-too-many and I'm blabbering, but I'm sticking to my guns on this one: I gain considerably more satisfaction as a cook by constructing a good dish from leftovers than I do by cooking from a well-supported recipe, replete with multiple stops at multiple markets (not that I mind that either, mind, but I'm trying to make a point).

Last night's dinner consisted of salmon; pistou; and polenta. And a salad of arugula, but I have limits on eating raw greens, so no salad tonight. Tomorrow, surely. In any case, I had a couple of nice chunks of salmon, some polenta, and a boatload of the pistou. It sounded like a coherent meal last night, why not another, different, coherent meal tonight? Enter my middle child, who - bless her culinary soul - believes that few foods are better cooked than raw. She was at 6, and remains at 8, an emphatic believer in steak tartare. And tonight, she sagely pointed out that, "Hey Dad, it's all well and good how you've cooked it, but can I have some of that salmon raw?" So we tasted it (this being one of the principle advantages of buying food locally, at the peak of freshness, from people you trust - raw meat need not be anathema), and sure enough, the kid had it nailed - if anything, better raw than cooked (I suppose that's the nickel version of why sushi is one of the finest cuisines in the history of human civilization; but I digress).

I rummaged around the fridge, found nothing noteworthy, except a pack of still-good-but-ought-to-use-it prosciutto. Add the fact that I was cooking for the kids (last night's dinner was behind schedule, so the kids got hosed on their portion, which is also why I had the leftover salmon in the first place), and kids have taste buds, and thus love bacon. They don't, however, appreciate a crispy salmon skin, tragic as that may be. And, speaking for myself, bacon can really make seafood (well, some seafood) kick ass. And so the genesis of the meal: Wrap the salmon on prosciutto before cooking it rare, and serve it on top of the creamy polenta, and alongside a hopelessly naive sashimi cut of the odds and ends of the raw salmon, with just a touch of the pistou.

Wild Salmon Two Ways

1. Trim off a few nice sashimi-like slices of the raw salmon using a very sharp knife (wipe the blade with a damp cloth between cuts - and if your knives aren't sharp, and you don't know what to do about, we have to talk). You want to end up with a nice, almost cube-like chunk of salmon. I've farted on about the pistou for two days now, so I won't bother again; grab it from the fridge. Put the polenta in a pot to warm, or what the hell, just nuke it before plating.
2. Take two slices of prosciutto, and wrap the salmon, first in one direction, then - after rotating it 90 degrees - in the perpendicular direction. Tuck and fold the prosciutto so that it's all wrapped up snugly, basically a birthday present of wild salmon in a wrapper of pig fat, what more could you one ask for? Except that I suck at wrapping presents. But less so, food.
3. The whole key to this is cooking the salmon such that (a) the prosciutto forms a nice crust, and (b) the salmon is cooked uniformly around the edges and rare to the center. On my stove, that means medium-medium-low heat, a few minutes on each side, just enough to brown the pork; but it took me a trial batch, which I overcooked, and asymmetrically at that. The hard truth is, you have to cook it by touch - feel it raw, and keep feeling as it cooks, because once it's firm in the middle, it's over done. And you know we feel about overcooking fish.
4. Season the sashimi with fleur de sel, plate over a bit of the pistou, and garnish with a basil leave. Slice the cooked salmon and plate over the polenta. 

Wild salmon with fresh pistou, creamy polenta, and arugula

This dish came about, like so much of what transpires here in the PK, simply because it was the obvious thing to do: I was driving home with my eldest daughter last night, and we have a small but exceptional farmer's market on Tuesdays; we had very little time, not enough to really walk the stalls, so we had to choose quickly; we were already behind schedule for dinner, so prep time had to be short; and, of course, in keeping with our MO, we wanted to be fresh, seasonal, and local.

The salmon are apparently running late this year, which is not a bad thing from my perspective, as it gives me a better shot at working this wonderful fish into my posts. Dave, our local market fisherman, either catches it locally, or - because of tragic overfishing - sources it from Alaska; in this case, somewhat disappointingly, we couldn't get the local stuff. But better to buy wild, from Alaska, than from an industrial farm or at the risk of wiping out the local population entirely. And if you've been following the Proximal Kitchen at all, you've already figured out that we're hardly zealots - we love local, but above all, we love good.

Two stalls down from Dave was Bernier Farms, who consistently produce, amongst other things, fabulous produce. Today, they had basket upon basket of different varietals of beautiful garlic, blazing green Genovese basil, and - a personal favorite here at PK - bags of crisp, leafy, young arugula. Having just picked up some organic polenta, the menu clicked: salmon goes well with corn; basil and garlic make pistou, and pistou is delicious on salty, oily fish; and simply dressed arugula always provides a great contrast in bitterness and acidity. (And yes, if you're wondering about the mythical Mediterranean salmon, you're right - you will not likely fine salmon in much Provencal cooking. But many of those same flavor profiles that work so well with bass and other Med-centric fish seem to do just fine with salmon... and my kids love salmon, which is generally enough for me.)

Wild Salmon with pistou, creamy polenta, and arugula

1. If you're making polenta from scratch, start it first, following the directions on the package. Heresy, but I will on occasion - as I did on this particular mid-week night - cheat, and start with a pre-cooked polenta. Yeah, yeah, I know. But it's better than you might think, and cuts the total cooking time of this dish by more than half. To make it 'creamy', simply whisk in some heavy cream or, better, mascarpone cheese right at the end.
2. Pin-bone and trim the salmon into neat shapes of roughly uniform thickness. Carefully score the skin side and pat dry.
3. Prepare the pistou - see my other post on the topic here.
4. Heat a pan over medium heat and add a little olive oil. Place the salmon cuts in the pan once the oil is hot but not smoking, skin-side down.
5. While the salmon is cooking (90% of its cooking time will be done on the skin), dress the salad. A simple vinaigrette would be unimpeachable, but I chose to keep it even simpler and save another bowl in the process by using one my favorite Italian methods: Simply toss the leaves with olive oil to lightly coat, season with salt and fresh ground pepper, and squeeze a lemon over them. 
6. Once the skin is crispy and the flesh is still rare to the middle, turn the salmon over, cook briefly just to set the other side, taking care to keep not to overcook the fish. There is really no worse crime to an already dead fish than to overcook it; better to be raw than dry. And, for those who abhor "fishy" taste, it's worth noting that, generally speaking, fish gets "fishier" the longer you cook it. 
7. Arrange some salad on a plate, make a little bed of polenta, place a salmon filet in the middle of the polenta, and spoon pistou over the top.

A final note on wine: Garlic and basil are not particularly food-friendly flavors, and a spicy pistou can be really tricky. The Italians will, correctly, suggest a Ligurian white of some sort, but I had none to hand, and very few of our local wines here in the Russian River Valley seemed obvious. In the end, I had an inexpensive white from the Cotes-du-Rhone, made primarily from Marsanne & Rousanne; the lack of oak, the barely-sweet fruit and young exhuberance, and the local-by-extension pairing of a Provencal wine with a nearly Provencal dish proved just about right.

In search of pistou

Thanks to Bernier Farms' produce, 4 ingredients & no cooking for a perfect sauce

Let me start with the essential fact: Pistou is seriously good stuff. Made in minutes, from very few (and entirely raw) ingredients, it turns a vegetable soup transcendent, it transforms a pasta from the simple to the sublime, and, perhaps less conventionally but no less successfully, it works wonders with certain seafood.

The problem is, unlike in the case of its far more famous (and near-mystical-when-done-right) cousin, pesto, there seems to be no clear agreement on what actually constitutes a true pistou. Or, at least that is what is to be gleaned from a quick perusal of my personal collection of cook books. In the case of pesto, one need go no further than Marcella Hazan (Essentials of Italian Cooking). OK, sure, the exact proportions change, but how exact is a "cup of loosely packed basil", never mind "2-4 plump garlic cloves"? My point is, there is broad agreement amongst serious cooks (or at least the subset of those whose cookbooks I both possess and have bothered to read) as to what constitutes pesto. I cannot say the same for pistou. To wit:

• Julia Child, in her classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking, suggests a relatively small proportion of basis, a relatively large proportion of tomato, and the more-or-less-usual quantities of olive oil and garlic. And - this being, in my opinion, the critical point, Julia includes grated cheese (Italian cheese, in point of fact - fascinating to the point of uniqueness, in classical French cooking). But no butter - this isn't pesto, after all.
• In Mireille Johnston's really good, if overlooked, small tome on Provencal cooking, The Cuisine of the Sun, we find basil, garlic, olive oil, and, again, grated Parmigiano - but here the proportions are distinctly pesto-like, with something like 5-10 times the amount of basil Ms Child would have me use (and a bit more garlic than most Italians would use). 
• Patricia Wells, in the consistently excellent At Home in Provence, provides a very similar recipe to Ms Johnston, with pesto-like proportions, but - critically - no cheese. 
• Finding such inconsistencies, and lacking the motivation and resources to track down primary historical sources, I went to the Gastronomique, who provides (perhaps unsurprisingly) very similar guidelines to Ms Child in the basic recipe. However, in the description of the condiment, it makes clear that the base is a paste of garlic, basil, and olive oil, and that tomatoes and cheese are sometimes added. 

One may fairly ask, "So what?" Because, while I'm not quiet a zealot about it, I generally count myself amongst the Italian school of "no dairy with seafood", and wild salmon was on the menu (more on the not-so-classic combination of this garlicky concoction with salmon in my next post). So where I come out is this: If you're going to serve pistou with seafood - and it can be truly exceptional with sea bass, crab, salmon, and perhaps most of all, rouget or red mullet - then follow Ms Wells, use lots of basil, and leave out the cheese. As to the radical variation in proportions, I think it really comes down to taste and application: The Childs/Gastronomique versions are really closer to a flavored olive oil, almost a vinaigrette with the acid, whereas the Wells/Johnston versions show case the aromatics of the basil and form a thicker, paste-like consistency, both of which are features I adore (even more so if you're spreading it on crusty bread, and why wouldn't you do that). One thing that is always and everywhere uncertain is the garlic: Which varietal, how young or old, the size of the cloves, and whether you want a mere background hint, or a spicy wallop in the front of the palate... it just depends, is about all I can say.

The other advantage of Ms Wells' version is that it can readily be converted to proper pesto at a later stage, simply by beating in a few tablespoons of soft butter and mixing in the requisite quantities of finely grated parmigiano and romano cheeses, although I'd have to think about how to deal with the missing pignoli.

I have less of an opinion with respect to the tomatoes, mainly because I've not spent much with tomato-laden pistous; that being said, I can easily imagine a simply grilled whole bass, dressed with Ms Child's version of the sauce. In fact, seeing how much of the rather intense and concentrated elixir is now sitting in my fridge, I test that hypothesis next weekend...

In the event, my eldest daughter and I decided to stop by the Tuesday farmer's market in town and, as we were under a bit of time pressure, made only one stop for produce: Luckily, we landed at the Bernier Farms stand, and they had an exceptionally fragrant Tuscan garlic and big, bright green bunches of Genovese basil, so the decision was easy.

Pistou (food processor method)

1. Mince 1-2 large (2-4 small) cloves of fresh garlic and form a paste by sprinkling with kosher salt and using the flat side of large knife to mash the salt and garlic on a cutting board.
2. Gently wash and de-stem 2 cups of loosely packed basil leaves, taking care not to beat the leaves up too much at this stage. Get the Genovese varietal if at all possible, nothing else has the fragrance. (On a side note, if you have sun, basil is a frightfully productive and easy-to-grow plant.)
3. Put the garlic paste and basil into a food processor and puree, while slowly adding a quarter to a half cup of good quality, extra virgin olive oil. And if you want to be strict about the whole cooking-local thing live in California, you can probably get a very good olive oil from not too far away. (I love our local oils, and I buy but I'm no zealot, and have no objection to buying organic extra virgin Italian olive oil in bulk from the dreaded Costco.) Continue with the oil until it reaches the desired consistency.
4. Puree just until smooth or you'll bruise the leaves beyond recognition, a few minutes should suffice. Transfer quickly to a tightly-sealing container that fits the quantity as well as possible - oxidation takes away the wonderful color of the pistou, so the less exposed surface area the better. Keep refrigerated, but allow to come to room temperature before serving.

Figs, figs, figs, Part III: Salty Fig Paste

Our family vacation was due to start a couple of days after I filled up a shopping bag full of first-crop green (or white, or whatever they are) figs, and if there's one thing ripe figs were not meant for, it's sitting around on your counter, waiting to rot. Also, first-crop figs not quite being all that, I figured a heavier hand might be warranted, and beat the crap out of them, until they cried "salty-fig-paste-Uncle":

Salty Fig Paste:

1. Scoop out flesh (discard skins) and cook gently, over low or medium-low heat, until it reaches a jam-like consistency (likely closer to 1/4 than 1/2 of the original volume). For my first experiment, and as pictured here, I cooked the paste down after the puree in Step 2 below, but I think, on reflection, that that was a mistake, because it's better to blend in the oil after it's been reduced.
2. Transfer the figs to a food processor - here is where I try to heed Boyle's law and let it cool a bit, so as to avoid a steaming-fig-paste facial - and puree until smooth, adding a good, fruity olive oil as you go. How much depends on your taste and what you're going to do with the paste, but the paste should have a smooth, glossy look and you should be able to taste the olive oil underneath the fruit. In the spirit of keeping it local, my go-to cooking oil is DaVero's "40-weight", although I was out, so in this particular instance, I cheated and used the bottle of TJ's Spanish EVOO I had to hand. Season to taste - I just used salt, but I can see an argument for a few grindings of fresh white pepper.

OK, now I've got a few cups of the stuff, what do to with it? I think fig paste is good with all sorts of things, but shows a particular proclivity for sharp, salty cheeses and cured meats. My wife and kids don't like fig paste at all, so I'll be eating it for a while, with the attendant posts to this blog when, as, and if I come up with any other clever ideas. But it's a Monday, so it's got to be simple, and I don't want to go shopping; and, since this is a cooking-locally blog, I want to keep it local. Herewith, a simple salad of sorts, made almost entirely of stuff from within my county (and mainly from within my city limits):

Chevre with Fresh Herbs, Fresh Figs, and Salty Fig Paste

1. Prepare Salty Fig Paste (above) and use the back of a spoon to apply a heavy smear to the plate.
2. Slice a fresh baguette thinly on a bias - I'd use sweet rather than sour bread for this (my local favorites are Costeaux and Full Circle). Spread a spoonful of chevre on each slice of bread (so many good local goat dairies, this time I used Redwood Hill Farms' excellent young chevre) and sprinkle with roughly chopped fresh herbs (basil, flat-leaf parsley, and a little rosemary from our own garden worked great here), some fresh cracked pepper, and a few dried chili flakes. Arrange on the plate, next to the fig paste.
3. Cut a fresh fig in quarters - our black Mission fig tree had a few first-crop ripe ones, so I used those instead of the greenies for color and because they tasted pretty damn good - and arrange down the other side of the cheese-breads.
4. Drizzle the breads with olive oil and sprinkle the fresh figs with a bit of fleur de sel.

I think I'd round out this local meal with any number of the excellent and reasonably priced Sauvignon Blancs we produce here in the Russian River Valley.

Figs, figs, figs, Part II: Salad of fresh figs with posciutto, goat's milk cheddar, and herbs from the garden.

Inspired by the urgent need to do something with the early-season fig crop, I tried a salad:

1. Cut a few figs into shapes and drizzle with olive oil and a little balsamic vinegar, just enough to provide acidic balance.
2. Drape prosciutto (a sweet San Danielle would be great, but a saltier Serrano might kick even more ass) judiciously over the figs and sprinkle with a finely grated goat's milk cheese (we have wonderful goat dairies all along the North Coast; I used Redwood Hill Cheddar), taking care to keep the flesh and skin of the figs in view as much as possible. At this stage, a little fleur de sel to bring up the seasoning wouldn't hurt.
3. Garnish with whatever herbs you have to hand - I find basil to be exceptional with the sweet-salty combination of fruit, meat and cheese, a small bit of thyme was nice, but sage was overpowering (I love sage, but it so often is). I finished it with fresh lavender, because we grow it ourselves, it makes for great color contrast, and really, what's more seasonal in summer than fresh lavender from your own garden?

Hello, world, it's me, over here, in the kitchen.

Disclaimer: This is my first post on my first blog. I haven't the slightest idea what I'm doing, not even a clear sense of precisely why I'm doing it. But I love to buy, prepare, and consume food, and I've always been prone to pontification, so here I am, writing a food blog.

The point of my blog is to articulate, in stories and words, what I see in my local markets, why I buy what I buy, how I think it ought to be prepared, and what actually ends up on my family's plates as a result.

I'm hoping a thread emerges, but as of yet, I'm not sure what that will be; however, a dear friend of mine, who shares my passion for local food and the effect of heat and knives on raw ingredients, suggested that perhaps we launch a virtual cook-off between NorCal (where I reside) and SoCal (where she lives), shopping at our respective local markets, and posting the results of subsequent forays into the kitchen.

So, whomever and wherever you are, please stay tuned, and thanks for your time and patience as I figure all this out.

Figs, figs, figs

Digression: Every year, I'm struck by the ways in which each season in Sonoma County is individual and unique. This, of course, is hardly news to the oenophile, for whom vintage can at times be as fundamental as terroir in differentiating quality and character of a wine; and certainly, as a region beholden to the economics of grape-growing, all of us here in the County are aware of the climatological particulars of each year's growing season. However, it is cooking (or, to be more precise, shopping for the foods with which to cook) that has taught me the strange and wonderful ways in which the vagaries of weather come to life in the farmers' stalls at our local markets. My unscientific and largely baseless hypothesis is that the defining characteristic of the 2010 growing season will turn out to be a relatively cool and wet spring: Our average temperature has been about 3 degrees lower, and our cumulative precipitation about 4" higher, than normal. Ripening will run late, and yields appear to be low for grapes but, for reasons that elude me, very, VERY high for the common fig.

In any case, what I know definitively is this: Our personal crop of white figs will be off the charts. We have two fig trees on the property, what I believe to be the Mission (or black) fig, and the Adriatic (or white) fig, but it is only the Adriatic cultivar that has been sneaking the 'roids. We will get more white figs this year than cumulatively over the past several.

All of which leads the home cook to one obvious question: What do I do with all these figs?!