After exhausting all avenues of aesthetic appreciation cabbage can afford, I was left with the core dilemma: What, exactly, does one do with the better part of a head of cabbage? This is how many of my meals begin. Okonomiake came to mind, but it always sounds better than it actually is. Boiled with corned beef? Requires corned beef, an adventure in itself. Stir fry? After watching a true wok master handle a true wok over a true flame last night at Sunflower, I didn’t feel up to vain attempts at wok hay with my gas stove and poorly-seasoned wok.

So: simple, tasty, ego-preserving: coleslaw! The luscious vinegary bride of barbeque, salubrious salad of the South, the loneliest paper cup on your plate of fish and chips! Coleslaw gets abused in many hands, to my mind, hands that grant fat an unfair advantage over the acid. Southerners have it right: coleslaw is only as good as its ability to cut crisply through the broad and deep flavors it so often accompanies, and two parts mayo to 1 part cabbage does not achieve that end. I usually still use mayo in mine, but only so much.

Of course, one can’t just eat a plate of coleslaw. Well, I can’t. Since bbq would be even more of an adventure than corned beef, I decided simple pinto beans and some cornbread might combine with the slaw to form dinner, much the same as Voltron might form if two members of the team were hung over. My slaw came from Bittman, adapted with some mayo. My beans were, well, just beans. Boiled. With salt and bay. The corn bread came from The Gift of Southern Cooking, a wonderful-seeming tome with intimidating ingrediants like lard and field peas. I wouldn’t mind feeding lard to others, or eating it with them, but I don’t think I can eat it by myself. The cornbread recipe thankfully negelcted to include any, but it did suggest cooking the cornbread in a cast iron skillet, creating the perfect excuse to finally buy a piece of Lodge cookware. This set me back all of $10.

Anyway, I’m tired of writing about food, so just know that the story had a happy ending in the form of beautifully crisped corn bread and some fine slaw, a good meal of sides that well befit a Thursday.

Addendum
After actually reading that article on wok hay, and recalling the merely average nature of my stir fry, I suppose the guy at Sunflower may not have actually been a true wok master. If he was, he was saving his mastery for more desrving customers. He did have a cool wok though, and an industrial range with two settings: high and RAGING INFERNO. Some day, I will learn to use my wok.

Okra is a weird little pod-like veggie with sticky goo inside that’s useful for thickening soups and stews. The only thing I could think to put it in off-hand was gumbo, so I scoured the web for some recipes, bought some Andouille sausage, thawed some chicken, and set to work. There are about a billion recipes out there, and none of them seemed to exactly meet my needs, so I sort of just winged it based on the general ideas I found out there: brown meat, saute veggies, make roux, combine with liquid, simmer for at least an hour. Went something like this:

Ingredients (to serve 2):

1 large Andouille sausage
1 chicken breast
1/2 – 1 cup finely chopped okra
1/2 – 1 cup finely chopped sweet pepper (bell, weird colorful chile, whatever)
1/2 – 1 cup finely chopped onion
1/2 – 1 cup finely chopped celerey
1/8 – 1/4 stick butter
2 – 3 tbsp flour
A couple cloves of finely chopped garlic
salt
spices (chili powder, rosemary, oregano, black pepper, thyme, bay leaves)

Slice the sausage and brown it over medium heat in a deep skillet, until the meat is cooked and it has released plenty of delicious pig fat.

Meanwhile, make the roux. Melt the butter over low heat in small saucepan. Add the flour gradually until your have what looks like a smooth, thick sauce (not chunky, but not too soupy). Leave it alone, stirring occasionally, until it starts to develop a nice golden color. The deeper the color the better (uh, provided it doesn’t burn).

Remove the sausage and brown the chicken in the fat. Remove the chicken and set the meat aside. Make sure all your veggies are finely chopped and nice and uniform, and add them to the skillet (add some olive oil if the sausage fat is all used up) and turn the heat to low. You want to skill hear some sizzle but not too much. Add maybe half a tsp of salt or so and let them sweat.

Once the veggies have been sweating for 10 mins or so, add all the seasonings, the roux, and add water or stock to cover. Simmer for at least an hour, prefereably more, stirring occasionally, adding the meat back in about 20 mins before you want to eat it. Serve it up with white rice.

This actually worked out surprisingly well for me, hearty and flavorful. Been a while since I made something new successfully

She and two other people were working dough and making sandwiches in the open kitchen behind the counter. They had a limited variety of goods on display, but all looked great. I had already decided on their reputedly irresistible banana bread, so Betty slipped a big fat slab of it into a white paper bag. I asked if they had coffee, and was told that they had only just got the equipment and would start brewing tomorrow. They also didn’t have anywhere to sit yet, either, so, on Betty’s recommendation, I walked down the road a block to the Temescal Cafe, greedily clutching my bag of banana bread. I’d finished the bread by the time I got there, and it was definitely awesome. The dark kind, topped with sugar, very moist. Great stuff.

The Temescal Cafe is the kind of place I’ve been searching for around here: full range of coffee and espresso drinks, breakfast and lunch, unpretentious atmosphere and staff, unobtrusive well-chosen music. They only dropped the ball when they served my Americano in a glass cup instead of ceramic. See my blood run blue. Why I search for un-snobby coffee places and then turn my nose up at a glass cup I do not know.

After spending a pleasant 30 mins caffeinating and reading, I decided I’d pick up lunch for later back at Betty’s. Again, the foodies at Chowhound spoke of a fried chicken sandwich, so that’s what I asked for. Chicken was still in the fryer, so I had a to wait. Went for a walk, read a little more on a curb, came back. Damn, it was a fine sandwich. Nice, crispy batter, luscious chicken, well-dressed shredded lettuce, red onion , and jalapeño on a beautiful fluffy white roll. It was actually worth the $6.50 I paid for it. And it came with a free ginger cookie! Score!

Regardless, Bittersweet is a shop for chocolate epicures, a species of foodie arising from the darkest depths of frivolity. Read this article if you dare. I acquired two bars, a forastero from Sao Tome by Chocolatour (Belgium), and a trinitario from the Carribean by Michel Cluizel (French). Forastero is the kind of bean found in most conventional chocolate, but this bar had a distinct mellow but smokey character. Trinitario is a hybrid between forastero and another type, criollo, and apparently has more of a bright, fruity tang. If this sounds pretentious, it is. But both bars are also delicious as was my chocolate milk. The latter was kind of shock, given that most of my experiences with chocolate milk came from a can of Kwick (Quick? Kwiq?). I look forward to comparing their spicy hot chocolate with that of Jacque “Beuwhtter” Torres.

Addendum. I have sampled their spicy hot chocolate and it was small and over-priced. However, it tasted terrific, just spicy enough, and not too sweet. Not nearly as thick and creamy as Jacque’s, but that might actually be a good thing, because a cup of that stuff is more than a meal. However, Bittersweet also serves hot c in American and European styles, whatever that means, so the story doesn’t end here… This time the place was filled with young couples. Still haven’t decided if that was more or less emasculating.

Black Bean Salad (serves 2)

1/2 cup black beans, dry
1/4 red onion, diced
1 small tomato, or 1/2 a small red bell pepper, diced
1 small jalapeno, minced (optional)
1/2 lime, juiced
1/4 cup of chopped cilantro
1 tbsp olive oil
1-2 bay leaves
1/4 tsp. ancho chili powder
1/2 tsp. salt and more to taste

Put the beans and the bay in a pot, cover with agua, and simmer for 30 mins, and add the salt. Add more water if the beans aren’t covered, and simmer for about another hour, or until the beans are tender. Cool in the fridge. You can do this a day or two in advance, or make more and do other things with your tasty beans. Then just mix the beans with the rest of the ingredients, and salt to taste, and you’re done. Takes two seconds once the beans are done.

Chipotle chicken

1 serving of chicken (a cutlet, a leg, two thighs, etc.)
2-3 tbsp yogurt
1 tsp olive oil
1 dried chipotle pepper (if you want it good and hot, otherwise go for 1/2)
2 cloves garlic
pinch of salt
chopped cilantro, just a few tbsp.

Put the pepper in a cup and cover it with boiling water. Let it re-hydrate for 30 mins, then put it and the rest of the ingredients (sans chicken, a-durh) in a food processor or a blender and puree. Toss the chicken and the marinade in a bowl or plastic bag and leave it in the fridge for at least an hour, if not over night. Then cook it as you please. I tried broiling a leg, skin on, which took forever (half an hour!) and the skin was charcoal. If broiling, I’d recommend something thiner, or just roast it, or brown it on the stovetop and roast it. Grilling/broiling chicken is just hard in general, I think. However, my little piece of coal still tasted pretty good underneath.

It took me about 5 consecutive readings to suss out that the tourists who go to the market only to look are crowding out those who cook. The article is about the SF Ferry Building farmer’s market’s rising popularity as a tourist destination. Frankly, I think that place has always been crowded and over-priced, but that’s part of the fun. I mean, where else can you look a man in the eye and have him offer you a single peach for $3 with a straight face? On the other hand, I also enjoy the decidedly more low-key vibe of the Berkeley farmer’s markets, with their cheaper peaches and cast of crusty old guitarists playing to the chil’uns.

Spam musubi, for the uninitiated, is sort of a like a big maki roll, with grilled spam instead of fish, rice, and nori. I know I should have tried something more adventurous than the chicken katsu, but I was feeling cheap and boring. I guess that’s why I was there alone. However, I’d recommend the place for its generous serving sizes and apparently genuine Hawaiian menu, where “genuine” = “containing spam.” Hawaiian readers may feel free to laugh. Some one else has a better description here.

Anyway, I bought some of the Niman Ranch stuff, and though it’s definitely fatty and meant for crispin’ like other American bacon, it is quite fantastic. Excellent smokey smell, not too salty, very flavorful. I used it in a green garlic soup, cut up into bits and fried to supply the fat to saute the veggies. It overpowered the green garlic for the most part, but dude, my lilies don’t mind a little gilding. Green garlic is, well, young garlic w/o a significant bulb and sold with greens attached. I’ve only ever seen it in farmer’s markets out here. Can any one else confirm if this is a strictly Californian delicacy?

^*You know, those folks who are real nice to their pigs right up until they put one of these to their heads.