Steak was made ahead.
Here’s how to do it. I used kelp noodles for the first time with this bowl. It turns out you need to boil them until they’re soft like normal noodles! Ingredients
Directions Layer you bowl: noodles or buckwheat, arrange veggies around the sides, put your protein in the middle. Serve with dipping sauce. You’re set! Adapted from The Breakfast Book by Marion Cunningham
**Begin the night before Makes about a dozen four inch pancakes. Ingredients
Directions
Adapted from The Breakfast Book by Marion Cunningham
This is Elena’s go-to recipe for a weekend breakfast, though this recipe takes at least 3 bowls. Makes about 10 waffles. Ingredients
Directions
This is our go-to cupboard dinner. Ingredients are basic, but the result is delicious. Green French lentils are best, but conventional lentils also work.
Ingredients
Directions In a medium saucepan, heat olive oil over medium heat. Add onion and cook until softened, stirring frequently, about 5 minutes. Add carrot, water, lentils, bay leaf, thyme, salt and pepper and bring to a boil. Simmer until lentils are tender, about 25 minutes. Remove bay leaf, adjust seasoning and serve. Adapted from the Zuni Cafe, San Francisco
The Zuni cookbook describes this salad as “Sort of a scrappy extramural stuffing, it is a warm mix of crispy, tender, and chewy chunks of bread, a little slivered garlic and scallion, a scatter of currants and pine nuts, and a handful of greens, all moistened with vinaigrette and chicken drippings.” Yum. Ingredients
Directions Preheat the broiler. Carve off all of the bottom and most of the top and side crusts from your bread (you can reserve these to use as croutons for soup or another salad). Tear bread into irregular 2- to 3-inch chunks, wads, bite-sized bits and fat crumbs. You should get about 4 cups. Toss them with just a tablespoon or two of olive oil, lightly coating them, and broil them very briefly, just to lightly color the edges. If you’d like to toast the pine nuts (recommended) you can put them on your broiler tray as well, but watch them very carefully — they cook quickly! Combine about 1/4 cup of the olive oil with the Champagne or white wine vinegar and salt and pepper to taste. Toss about 1/4 cup of this tart vinaigrette with the torn bread in a wide salad bowl; the bread will be unevenly dressed. Taste one of the more saturated pieces. If it is bland, add a little salt and pepper and toss again. Heat a spoonful of the olive oil in a small skillet, add the garlic and scallions, and cook over medium-low heat, stirring constantly, until softened. Don’t let them color. Scrape into the bread and fold to combine. Drain the plumped currants and fold them in, along with the pine nuts, if they were not already mixed with the bread scraps from the broiling step. Dribble the chicken stock or lightly salted water over the salad and fold again. Taste a few pieces of bread — a fairly saturated one and a dryish one. If it is bland, add salt, pepper, and/or a few drops of vinegar, then toss well. If you’re going to serve the salad under the roast chicken (recipe above), you can pile the bread salad on the serving dish you want to use and tent it with foil. If you want to serve it separately, do the same, but in a 1-quart shallow baking dish. Hang onto the bowl you mixed it in — you’ll use it again. Place the salad in the oven after you flip the chicken the final time, for about 5 to 10 minutes. Tip the bread salad back into the salad bowl. It will be steamy-hot, a mixture of soft, moist wads, crispy-on-the-outside-but-moist-in-the-middle-wads, and a few downright crispy ones. Drizzle and toss with a spoonful of the pan juices. Add the greens, a drizzle of vinaigrette, and fold well. Taste again. Adapted from the cookbook from the Zuni Cafe, San Francisco
The original recipe falls over three-plus pages in a small font and includes a fantastic amount of detail, but it has been surmised here as best as possible. For the best experience, serve Zuni Chicken with the Bread Salad below, but you can also use any of your favorite side dishes instead or serve it at a casual dinner party. The real genius here is a great roast bird with a little forethought, but no fuss. Serves 2 to 4 Ingredients
Directions: One day before Season the chicken: Rub the chicken down with salt and pepper, not too much, but don’t worry since you will rinse it off before you begin cooking it. [1 to 3 days before serving; give a 3 1/4 to 3 1/2-pound chicken at least 2 days] Remove and discard the lump of fat inside the chicken. Rinse the chicken and pat very dry inside and out. Be thorough — a wet chicken will spend too much time steaming before it begins to turn golden brown. Approaching from the edge of the cavity, slide a finger under the skin of each of the breasts, making 2 little pockets. Now use the tip of your finger to gently loosen a pocket of skin on the outside of the thickest section of each thigh. Using your finger, shove an herb sprig into each of the 4 pockets. Season the chicken liberally all over with salt and pepper. Season the thick sections a little more heavily than the skinny ankles and wings. Sprinkle a little of the salt just inside the cavity, on the backbone, but don’t otherwise worry about seasoning the inside. Twist and tuck the wing tips behind the shoulders. Cover loosely and refrigerate. Directions: Day of total time is 45 minutes to 1 hour Preheat the oven to 475°F. Choose a shallow flameproof roasting pan or dish barely larger than the chicken, or use a 10-inch skillet with an all-metal handle (we used a 12-inch cast iron frying pan for a 3 1/2 pound chicken). Preheat the pan over medium heat. Wipe the chicken dry and set it breast side up in the pan. It should sizzle. Roast the chicken: Place the chicken in the pan in the center of the oven and listen and watch for it to start browning within 20 minutes. If it doesn’t, raise the temperature progressively until it does. The skin should blister, but if the chicken begins to char, or the fat is smoking, reduce temperature by 25 degrees. After about 30 minutes, turn the bird over — drying the bird and preheating the pan should keep the skin from sticking. Roast for another 10 to 20 minutes, depending on size, then flip back over to recrisp the breast skin, another 5 to 10 minutes. Rest the chicken: Remove the chicken from the oven and turn off the heat. Lift the chicken from the roasting pan and set on a plate. Carefully pour the clear fat from the roasting pan, leaving the lean drippings behind. Add about a tablespoon of water to the hot pan and swirl it. Slash the stretched skin between the thighs and breasts of the chicken, then tilt the bird and plate over the roasting pan to drain the juice into the drippings. You can let it rest while you finish your side dishes (or Bread Salad). The meat will become more tender and uniformly succulent as it cools. Serve the chicken: Set a platter in the oven to warm for a minute or two. Tilt the roasting pan and skim the last of the fat. Place over medium-low heat, add any juice that has collected under the chicken, and bring to a simmer. Stir and scrape to soften any hard golden drippings. Taste — the juices will be extremely flavorful. Cut the chicken into pieces, spread on the warm platter (on top of the Bread Salad, if using). Capitalize on leftovers: Strain and save the drippings you don’t use, they are delicious tossed with anything or stirred into beans or risotto. You can also use them, plus leftover scraps of roast chicken, for a chicken salad. It’s scary to consider cooking a whole fish because we’re used to perfectly cleaned and cut fillets from the grocery store. If you’ve considered getting a whole fish, it’s difficult to figure out where to start. Armed with a few tips however, and cooking a whole fish becomes second nature.
Fish are best bought at the seafood counter or a farmers market. You pick out a fish, ask the butches to clean, gut, and butterfly the fish, then you’re ready to go. A half pound fish is good for a light meal for two people. A 1 pound fish will be plenty for two people for dinner. As the fish increases in size, there is a greater proportion of meat. A four pound fish would be enough for 8 people, or 4 people for dinner then leftovers for a day or two. In San Francisco, we were lucky to have a farmers market at the Ferry Building, which has fish caught the same day from Monterrey Bay, at a reasonable price. Chinatowns also has live fish. Ingredients
Directions
This recipe yields kale chips far better than any available in stores. They are delicate and do not store well, but there are never any leftovers.
Ingredients
Directions Tear kale into bite-size pieces, discard stems. Add kale, olive oil, and salt in a big bowl. Mix and squeeze kale in your hand well until all kale turns a little darker. Arrange kale on an oven sheet in a thin layer, leave space between kale. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes, or until edges kale dries out and turns a green/brown. You’ll be able to smell it when they’re done. Repeat for additional batches. Adapted from Fabio's Italian Kitchen.
If you are a fan of Top Chef and know Fabio Viviani, please look up his story of “leeks tucked in bed”. If you are not a Top Chef fan, do not worry, as this is a wonderful recipe that is simple and yet will woo dinner party guests. The key to this recipe is blanching the leeks long enough – they should be nearly ready to eat when you align them in the pan. Serves 6. Ingredients
Directions
One of my colleagues went on a fishing trip to Mexico and came back with 20lbs of mahi-mahi for the office. Limes were also in season in the East Bay, so it was an obvious choice to make ceviche. The fish is cooked by the acid in the limes, then some cilantro and onions are added for texture, color, and flavor. Any white fish works well and chopped jalapeno can add some heat. You can also use lemons or add a variety of ingredients, like fresh tomatoes and Tobasco/hot sauce.
Ingredients
Directions Cut fish into bit-size pieces. Cover with lime and lemon juice. Let sit covered in the refrigerator for 20 minutes, then stir, making sure more of the fish gets exposed to the acidic lime and lemon juices. During the marinating process the fish will change from pinkish grey and translucent, to whiter in color and opaque. Once the fish is all white, about 30-45 minutes total from when you covered it with lime juice, stir in the other ingredients. Serve with tortilla chips. |