What I Ate For Dinner

This post has nothing to do with food, unless you like eating concrete. The inimitable Banksy, a world-famous and secretive British street artist, has graced San Francisco's urban canvas with at least six of his not-quite-legal embellishments in the last week. At least, they look like Banksy's stuff--I've really no way to verify. It's not like you always sign a graffito. But they're cool anyway, so I cruised around and snapped up some pictures before the militants of the middle paste them over with beige.

Banksy's earned himself an international reputation as a street artist and critic of consumerism, politics, the commercialization of art, and lots of other things that are kind of a laugh. His style has won him gallery shows and princely sums for his works, sometimes totaling in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for a single piece. How's that for the commercialization of art!

Who am I to judge, but I admire Banksy for his guerilla tactics, humor and force. His work collapses the distance between quotidian life and art, often through the age old play of text and image in a new frame: the public spaces of sidewalks, brick walls and rooftops. If you have the chance, check out his stuff at the addresses below (which I got from Warholian.com. Warholian has far superior pictures and some video about the Banksy above Amnesia in the Mission, too, so be sure to check that out if you're interested).

There's also a new documentary out that's sort of about him called "Exit Through the Gift Shop." I saw it and loved it.

The Baron and I took a little day trip up to Point Reyes on Saturday. We took California State Route One, which is known as the Pacific Coast Highway south of San Francisco and is called the Shoreline Highway up in Marin County. Unlike the Pacific Coast Highway portion of SR1, which has mostly scenic oceanfront views, the Shoreline Highway twists and turns through the beautiful wooded hills of Marin County. There are some lovely ocean views as well, once you get near Muir Beach.

We were heading for Limantour Beach to have a beach fire. Fires are allowed with a permit, which you can get for free at the visitor center.

We left San Francisco at about two thirty and were on the beach around five. With lessons learned from Carmel in mind, we brought a lot of firewood and set the fire as far back from the water as the rules permitted. It was really windy, so it was a struggle to get the fire lit at first. But after some clutch fire-starting techniques from yours truly, we had a nice blaze going.

We brought a few sandwiches (copa and sun dried tomato) and a few beers, and spent several hours just tending the fire and listening to the waves roll in. There were quite a few people on the beach when we arrived, but after the sun started to set, it got pretty quiet.

I would definitely recommend taking another way back to San Francisco if you're staying until sunset. The Shoreline Highway route is very scenic, but the hills and tight turns make for slow going even during the day and would be a real challenge in the dark. We took Sir Francis Drake Boulevard from the nearby town of Olema into San Rafel and hooked up with Highway 101.

The Cold War years corrupted a lot: faith in democracy, trust in authority, and the prestige of chastity, just to name a few. But nothing in those glory years was so ignominiously backhanded to the waste bin of once-adorable-but-now-inconvenient notions as homemade macaroni and cheese. While we pondered the cosmos and the communists, the powder 'n carbs mix that passes under cloying appellations like "mac 'n cheez!" led the charge of "convenience foods" into grocery stores, supplanting from the American cultural memory the faintest recall of firm pasta accepting escort from crunchy bread crumbs and a fresh-made, well-seasoned cheese sauce. Instead, blue boxes and their electric orange contents carried the day for decades. Well, I, for one, say that's about damn long enough: tonight, we exorcise our Nixon-era ghosts with fresh macaroni and cheese from scratch.

The sauce is the only part of this recipe you even have to really pay attention to--other than eating it. Start with caramelized shallots, then deglaze with white wine and kill the heat after allowing the alcohol to burn off (a few seconds of bubbling). Allow to cool and add in some thick milk--preferably, one or a mix of vitamin D, half/half and/or cream. Turn the heat on med-low and bring the temp up as you add in grated cheeses. Tonight, I'm using a smoked mozzarella and aged Irish cheddar with just a bit of Parm. I find that smoked cheeses go wonderfully in sauces within limits, but that too much smokiness can weary the palate. As such, I'd suggest some more grounded co-cheeses as an accompaniment.

Allow the cheeses to melt into the milk on low- to medium-low heat while seasoning with pepper and lightly with salt (the cheeses already have quite a bit of salt in 'em), as well as a bit 'o balsamic. Stir frequently, if not constantly, so as to avoid burning. When you get small bubbles on top, the sauce has reached its maximum viscosity. For more thickness, add another iteration of cheeses. You'll of course want to taste frequently as the sauce develops. Finish with chopped fresh herbs--tonight we've got Sage--and, should you dare, chopped Serrano chili.

Combine the pasta and sauce while you still have a less than fully-thickened sauce since the whole deal will thicken quite a bit in the oven (more notes on sauciness follow). To distance myself from inheritance, I'm using Farfalle ("bow-tie") pasta tonight. Macaroni is of course great, but other pastas can go well, too, so feel free to experiment. Under cook 'em: they'll get the rest of the way done in the oven.

Combine the par-cooked pasta with the cheese sauce in some sort of oven-able dish. I usually go around the edge of the dish with a little bit of butter, providing the pasta with a well-lubricated exit strategy. Sprinkle panko (or bread crumbs, but keep in mind that store-bought panko is by far superior to store-bought bread crumbs) and finish with Parm so that you get some good browning on the top. Throw it under the broiler until the top is golden brown, or at least blond.

A word about the oven: the thin sauce will thicken up in the oven. When I've let the bread crumbs brown without much cheese on top, the sauce sometimes comes out quite thick, almost like a paste. None of the flavor is lost, of course, and the dish is still delicious, but if you really want lots of creamy sauce, I thought I'd share a few ideas. First, you can sprinkle lots of finely grated parm on top of the bread crumbs. The parm flakes will brown before the crumbs, saving some time in the oven (and therefore saving some creaminess in your sauce, too) while also producing a golden brown topping. Alternatively, you can reserve some of the sauce from the stovetop and either use it as a garnish over the browned crumbs or as a base on the plate atop which to affix the finished product. In either event, the arid effects of the broiler can be mitigated--although a drier macaroni and cheese is no penance.

Garnish with more herbs and serve--perhaps with a side salad.

Ask ten people how to cook ribs and you'll probably get fifteen different answers. You can do 'em in the oven, you can rub 'em down and grill 'em up, you can marinate 'em, start 'em in the oven and finish 'em on the grill, braise 'em, or figure 'em out all sorts of other ways. As for types of ribs, though, I'd argue there are but two choices: pork spare ribs or beef ribs. Baby back ribs, though popular, are overpriced, lack meaty worth and therefore miss the cut.

Tonight, I'm barbecuing beef ribs, although a similar method would also work for spare ribs. Lots of folks go for rubs, and if you do to, I'll leave that up to you. Mixtures that combine cinnamon, salt, pepper, brown sugar, cumin and such seem to be the usual suspects. For me, though, sauce is where it's at, so I'll focus on that after navigating the nuances of the grill.

I go for a slow "roast" on the grill to tenderize the meat and also to provide it with a subtle smoky mistress. Start with a bank of coals. Since this is a slow roast operation, you won't need too many. All you need is half a chimney full, which is about two or three handfuls. Let them glaze over with white ash, and then pour them out into an embankment along one side of the grill. The bank allows for far superior control over the heat than stacking them in the middle of the grill. You're ready to throw the ribs on when the coals cool to the point that you can hold your hand over them for several seconds without being uncomfortable.

Then roll out the ribs after seasoning, either with a rub or just salt and pepper. I usually arrange them as far from the heat source as possible, which means, practically speaking, around the circumference of the grill. See the photo below for an example. You'll of course want to rotate the ribs so that the ones that start closest to the coal bank get moved out, and the others get moved in.

Add soaked woodchips to the bank a few at a time. You need not smoke the joint out, but you want to get a good waft workin' through the top vent. Continue to add chips a few at a time throughout the cooking process. Also, add charcoal briquettes three or four at a time to keep the fire going once the newest round of coals has ashed over.

You want moist and tender ribs, so be sure to keep the fire small and to rotate the ribs about. Tonight, I left them on for just under two hours, but longer would probably be better. With a hotter fire, they'll of course take less time.

Now for the sauce, which I paste onto the ribs while they cook. Start with well-caramelized shallots, and add white wine and a tomato puree. Then season with salt, pepper, brown sugar and, if you want some heat, either wasabi or Serrano chilies. Also add some sort of vinegar--white wine, apple cider, balsamic--and some red wine. Allow to reduce and taste as it does so. Lime juice will help bring the flavors together. Adjust seasoning and adjunct mixture until the sauce is deep crimson and well-balanced: there should be acidity from the tomatoes and vinegar, as well as sweetness and a hint of heat.

Needless to say, this is but a road map: molasses, hot sauce, cinnamon, and all sorts of other additions would also be welcome.

Mashed potatoes go wonderfully with grilled meats, as do a few lightly fried shallots.

Tonight, we're cookin' up chicken provençal, a slow (but not too slow) cooked French classic. I'll serve it up with wasabi mashed potatoes piped into rounds on a baking sheet, and browned under the broiler. To complete the plate, I add carrots and zucchini in with the chicken, although lots of other root vegetables or squash would also work. I've borrowed from Mark Bittman's recipe for this one.

For the chicken: dredge the thigh and drumstick in seasoned flour and brown, skin side down. Then brown the other side, and as much of the rest of the chicken as possible while seasoning with salt and pepper. You could also do this with breast meat, but in any event, I'd advise going with skin-on, bone-in cuts. You just can't replicate that flavor.

Once the chicken is well browned, remove it from the pan. Sauté chopped shallot and tomato in the remaining olive oil and fat rendered out of the chicken skin. After they soften up, sauté finely minced garlic and olive, and then add chicken stock and/or white wine, as well as chopped fresh herbs. I'm using rosemary tonight since I've got some fresh, but thyme or pretty much any other fresh herb would also work.

Allow the liquid to simmer for a few moments and then add the chicken back in. Simmer on medium-low while covered for five or so minutes, reseason and flip. About half way through, add the vegetables. The time will of course vary depending on how much chicken you've got in the pan, but for two servings (that is, one thigh and one drumstick) tonight, the chicken took about 17 minutes total. So, I let the veggies simmer for 8-10 minutes, and they were perfect.

If you're going to cut the chicken open to check for doneness, go for the joint on a thigh-leg combo, since that's what will finish cooking last.

Wasabi mashed potatoes have already been explained on this blog, but for this presentation, start with a Ziploc bag (unless you have a pastry bag, which would be ideal). Fold the top quarter of the bag down and to the outside to assure you've got some clearance up top after you load it up with mashers. Spoon in the potatoes, reserving one corner, which you'll snip off. Go small on the first snip; you can always make it bigger. Then, on a buttered and floured baking sheet, pipe the potatoes on in any design you like, but keep in mind that something with height may be best since that'll give a good presentation and also brown up better. Also, you want to avoid lumps in you potato mix, since they'll clog up the bag.

Pork tenderloin is a joy to cook: it has enough fat to tenderize on the grill but still maintains a flavorful balance that allows you to add tastes to it in all sorts of ways. Tonight, we're adding an interior rub of chopped sage, olive oil and a pinch of parm, and then dressin' 'er up with a raspberry sauce and puttin' 'er on the dance floor with some sautéed zucchini, shallot and carrot.

There's the easy way and the ideal way to butterfly pork tenderloin. The easy way is just to cut an incision in the middle and proceed through most of the diameter while still leaving a hinge. The ideal way is to cut through its diameter on the upper and lower thirds on opposite sides (that is, if the round circumference of the tenderloin were a clock, insert your knife around 10 o'clock for the first incision, and around 5 o'clock for the second). This allows the tenderloin to lay close to flat. In either event, just be sure to leave a solid hinge (as if you were slicing a baguette for a sandwich) so that the ole dog holds together on the grill.

Once you have it open, slather in the rub. Sage has a beautiful aroma and a nuanced flavor that goes well with grilled meats. Rosemary and/or thyme would also work. Chop up your herbs, season with salt and pepper, drizzle in olive oil and then, if the mood strikes you, finish it off with parm. Close the hinge, and tie the tenderloin up with kitchen twine (which is just cloth string). I usually slather a bit of olive oil and salt on the outside as a protective entourage for the grill. Remove the twine before service.

Now for the sauce. Grilled pork really knows how to dance with tart berries like raspberry and blackberry. Start with a raspberry mash (produced by smashin' 'em against the edge of a bowl with a wooden spoon), and then get the seeds out by forcing the puree through a metal mesh sieve. Now you've got the smooth, seedless berry extract.

Start on the stove with butter and shallots, to cut the tartness of the berry extract. Once the shallots have some color, add in white wine and/or stock. Then add the berry extract, and allow the liquids to boil off. To thicken, add a simple roux (equal parts flour and oil).

I served this up with simple sautéed vegetables, but our wasabi mashed potatoes would also be welcome.

Cocktails are a wonderful addition to any meal, although too often forgotten in the bustle of food preparation. Tonight, we focus only on our potent pals, and point out a few tips and tricks for garnishes that dress the drinks up. For our first installment of "What I Drank After Dinner," we'll limit ourselves to piña cola, grapefruit margarita and what I'm calling the "Mid-Missouri Rambler." More to follow . . .

First, the garnishes. A semi-frozen lemon twist can add color, texture and interest to any drink involving lemon juice. Simply shave off a section of lemon rind with a channel knife from the circumference of a halved lemon, twist, scrunch and freeze. You really only need to freeze these for about 20 minutes; as such, their natural oils will remain vivacious and available to season your drink while the juice will coagulate to maintain the structure of the twist.

Second, the coconut salt. Add salt to shaved coconut and allow the mixture to mellow overnight (or at least a few hours). This will give you a dry, salty garnish with body and a hint of sweetness to all sorts of drinks. This mixture modifies the full-on saltiness of the typical margarita rim, without resorting to the sugary coating of some piña coladas.

For the piña colada: Start with chopped and shaved, fresh pineapple and a few ice cubes in a blender. Add Malibu and Bacardi, then blend. There are also coconut-flavored pastes available in the grocery store, as well as fresh coconut, with which to contend. I find that turning fresh coconut into workable coconut milk is more work than reward, and that the pastes don't really surpass the Malibu. Hence, the above ingredient lineup. Blend until smooth but still with texture, and serve in a snifter with coconut salt rim and a sprig of pineapple leaf for garnish.

For the grapefruit margarita, start by garnishing the rim of a martini glass with coconut salt and freezing. Then drizzle a thimble-full of Agave nectar in the bottom. Add three parts grapefruit juice to one part lemon juice, then tequila. For effervescence, add seltzer water (sans high fructose syrup), and serve.

For the Mid-Missouri Rambler, start with chilled hibiscus tea in a coconut salt-rimmed tumbler. Add rum and grapefruit and/or lemon juice. This is a great summer drink, so add seltzer water for a fizzy boost. Serve chilled.