Katie Meadow

You Yanks have me at a 24hr disadvantage: On the left coast we don't see the Sunday Book Review until.....Sunday, so I had no idea what you were talking about until yesterday morning. Four Fish is on my library list, and no fish are on my shopping list. I'm really depressed.

No need to carry a card or get tangled up connecting to the net at the fish counter. There is an Aquarium seafood watch app for the iPhone.

Place to start for all things swimmy? Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch. Great site, well organized, appears to be updated constantly. I'm amazed at how much time I can spend browsing there.

If you can get hold of some fresh young collard greens, the current issue #105 has a great recipe for quick collards; they cook in about two minutes after being cut into thin ribbons, with no bothersome blanching. The recipe is vegetarian, but I used a little bacon grease as well as olive oil. Because they don't have a chance to cook down, you use less than you might for a traditional recipe. Luckily the farmers' market had baby collards, so I was starting with some lovely tender leaves, and I'm sure that helps for quick saute. I served them with the corn fritters from last summer's issue #100. Really good and really simple.

The Swing-Away fat separator. Revolutionary design, plastic, cheap, generously sized and works perfectly.

For my husband's primarily vegetarian family my favorite is eggplant parm. I usually coat my slices of eggplant in a light flour and egg batter, but even so, it doesn't amount to a lot of wheat product. In season, if you are ambitious, the tomato sauce can be made with fresh tomatoes. In July and August I'm actually very happy to make corn the main event. Last summer I was really into corn fritters and corn pudding and corn soup with roasted green chile. Or just a couple of buttered ears of corn and some simple tomato salad on the side. But I can make a meal of just corn and peaches, so I'm a cheap date. Fresh shelling beans baked slowly in olive oil with tomatoes and fresh herbs makes a pretty tasty main. Recently cathyeats posted a recipe for quinoa with corn and roast chiles. My lazy version was without grilling the corn (I sauteed the corn and scallion in butter briefly), and upped the amount of corn to the 1 cup of quinoa, and it was delicious. That was a main in my book. Never had quinoa and corn together, but it was yummy combo. We also like to have grazing dinners, which is sort of a kitchen sink production. Crudites, babaganouj, hummus, various salads of corn and beans, with mexican flavors or more traditional succotash, etc. I like it when there's no distinct "main," but lots of variety. I eat far less animal protein in the summer.

In my experience, the challenge isn't finding something exotic, it's finding something that isn't endangered or full of mercury. Clearly the list of fish and seafood is shrinking for all of us unless we start eating smaller size fish and try new kinds. The east coast seems to have a bigger variety of fish and bivalves than the west coast; when I go east and check out major seafood markets I'm always amazed. Bluefish would be in my top five, but it is rarely shipped west any more. Salmon was always at the top of the list, but the price for Pacific wild fresh salmon has soared and availability of CA salmon has evaporated. I love fresh ahi tuna, but the price is high and I don't think it's healthy, so that's become an infrequent treat as well. The most versatile fish and the one I buy the most is Black Cod (aka Sablefish or Butterfish.) I use it where-ever I might have once used Atlantic cod. The price is usually under $13 per lb, it's wild and fresh, neither threatened or unhealthy. It's hard to grill, because it's so delicate, but it is great for fish tacos and other things, and it is mild and rich. For grilling I like a whole trout. Farmed American and Canadian trout is supposedly one of the few farmed fish that has no down side. I also am partial to grilled fresh sardines, but, despite their being dirt cheap, very few markets have fresh sardines on a regular basis here. And not all vendors are willing to clean them, and I really don't like cleaning fish, especially a dozen little ones. As for shellfish/crustacea, I often buy wild gulf shrimp. I'm not sure why it is still available here, but it is. And local oysters, which are now being sold at the Farmer's market. The hardshell clams here just don't measure up to east coast clams. Local mussels are so-so. Dungeness crab is still pretty good when the price goes down during the season and you can buy live crabs in Chinatown or Ranch 99, but cooking and eating crab is a lot of work and the rest of my family doesn't care about it, so I end up buying it far less than I think I will. I don't like squid or octopus, and I just can't stand tilapia.

Since I started this thread I've made a lot of tuna melts, and I've come up with a method that makes me happy. Clearly there is a lot of flexibility about what may be called a tuna melt. If you can do it on a tortilla or essentially make a pizza, it would appear that the only required ingredients are tuna and some type of melted cheese. My method is this. I start with my standard tuna salad: canned bonito in oil, minced celery, a little minced red onion, minced pickled jalapenos, finely shredded romaine lettuce and a minimum amount of mayo to bind it together. The tuna with mayo can accomodate a surprising amount of shredded lettuce and the lettuce remains pretty crunchy. I preheat the broiler. I take one slice of bread and toast it in the toaster (making toast in the broiler has always been a mystery to me.) When it's the way I like it, I butter one side (and that would be sweet butter!), and put it, buttered side up, on a cookie or broiler sheet. I pile on the tuna salad, and then lay on some thin slices of cheese. I think I prefer sharp cheddar, but I've used mozz in a pinch. Then I put the second slice of bread in the toaster until it is almost done, slide the cookie sheet with the open sandwich under the broiler until the cheese is bubbly.Out it comes and the second toasted piece simply gets placed on top of the melted cheese. I admit this seems fussy, but it gets me what I want, which is a flavorful crispy sandwich without being a greasy one. Yesterday in Napa at what used to be called Taylor's Refresher I had a tuna melt made with Ahi tuna. Great idea, not so great execution--so much mayo you couldn't taste the tuna, so it was pointless. Good sweet potato fries alongside, though, and that's worth a lot. Chris, I think if I was using a tortilla I might try roasted fresh poblanos or other green chiles instead of pickled peppers. It might be good with jack instead of cheddar, too, as long as the chiles had enough heat and flavor.

I've had most success if I press in the berries as the first side is cooking. Perhaps my cast iron pan isn't perfectly seasoned, but when any berries burst on the hot skillet they tend to mess up the surface and get the next pancakes sticky. So, using a lofty recipe, small berries AND adding the berries after pouring the pancake batter in the pan seems to insure whole berries that burst in the mouth instead of sizzling in the pan. I admit this is extremely fussy. This is why I don't make blueberry pancakes very often, even though I like them far better than plain pancakes. No one in my family besides me ever seems to have the patience to make pancakes, and the pancake maker doesn't get much chance to slow down, enjoy them and read the paper, so we usually eat toast for breakfast. I can see how folding in egg whites separately would help get a rise out the pancakes but I'm too lazy to do that.

Actually the Webster residence hall is a pretty cool location, now being referred to as "uptown Oakland" which is slightly silly, because it a few blocks from downtown Oakland. However, a Bart station is only a few blocks away. She will be closer to Chinatown than she will to the Lake Merritt Farmers Market--definitely walking distance. And she will also be walking distance from some new clubs and restaurants that are becoming trendy hangouts at night for young people. Okay, I'm going on heresay now! But friends tell me the streets around B'way and Telegraph down there are hopping at night. The new Bakesale Betty's is just a few blocks away from 15th. For minor splurge dinners in the area look into Flora and Pizzaiolo, but there are tons of nice places to eat. I assume you will be renting a car when she comes out.

Goes without saying room temp: maple syrup, cheeses, hummus, babaganouj, salsa, ANYthing with tomato, potato salad. Actually most salads. Perhaps most anything that should be spread, although I like cold butter on bread. I prefer carrot juice to be close to room temp. Some fruits I like cold: watermelon, cherries, grapes, often apples. Some fruits I prefer room temp: pears, peaches, plums and apricots, citrus. Is it just me, or have there been some weird topics lately? My tastes never struck me as terribly nutty until I started reading my own posts in some of these cold vs hot, celery vs carrots threads.

There are plenty of great inexpensive options in Oakland, although CCA isn't in a particularly inexpensive neighborhood, being close to College Ave/Rockridge area. Back when my husband went to CCA (then CCAC) there weren't any dorms there--your only option was off campus living. I have no doubt your daughter will learn the hot spots very quickly. I'm guessing a good percentage of the student body is local to the Bay Area, although that may be less true than it used to be. Will she have a car? My favorite Thai place is called Old Weang Ping, and it is located near Mills College. Talk about atmosphere! In spades, and very good food. My favorite pho place is Pho Au Sen, on 2nd st nr International Blvd. Best bowl of pho, dirt cheap; open all afternoon but closes early (like 7 or 8). In Oakland Chinatown there are a couple of banh mi places that are very good, and It's pretty cheap to shop and snack there. Of all the Farmers markets in Oakland and Berkeley, probably the best prices are at the downtown Oakland market on Friday mornings. The Berkeley Farmers market on Saturday morning is wonderful, but my daughter, when she deigns to visit from a college town in WA, is horrified by the prices. She's right, it's a little scary how much 2 bags of high-end organic produce ends up costing. I can't stand the long lines at Bakesale Betty's, but that fried chicken sandwich is awfully tasty; it's big enough that my daughter and I used to share one. She and her east bay cronies like to eat Ethiopian food, and that's pretty reasonable--and there are a lot of them around. As you can imagine, there are plenty of cheap eats on Telegraph, near UCB. Happy to help out in any way I can, and you can certainly PM me.

I sift when instructed to, if only because I am not a very practiced baker and assume that there is a lot more "science" involved in the art of baking, which may or may not be true. I am under the impression that sifting changes the volume by aerating the flour somewhat; so that if you sifted you would end up with slightly more volume than if you didn't. In other words, if you decided not to sift, you might have to adjust the measurement of flour. That would be far too taxing for me, so I just do what I'm told when it comes to flour. If it is true that you can get around sifting by weighing the flour instead of measuring the volume, doesn't that support my assumption? I'm already breaking out in a sweat.

When I make blueberry pancakes I make sure to use a batter with a lot of loft. And I tend to pick out the smaller berries from the box. I agree that the really big berries are hard to work with in a pancake. Fussy, right?

I grew up with salted butter too. I don't recall my mother ever baking so much as a batch of cookies. So I too continued to use salted butter for years after I was on my own. I would buy unsalted butter only if a recipe specified it. Then I had to cut back on salt, so salted butter was the first to go. Now I'm so used to the taste of it I can't imagine going back. Unsalted butter is delicious. The only time I miss salty butter is on a matzoh. So now I just sprinkle buttered matzoh with a little sea salt or kosher salt.

Seems to me that 90 percent of all recipes that specify salted or unsalted butter call for UNsalted. I never buy salted butter any more. I just adjust for salt as needed. I never pay attention to the amount of oil called for when sauteing onions, etc. I do what works for whatever is going in the pot, adding oil as necessary. I often cut back on sugar and cinnamon. For me, a little cinnamon goes a long way. I prefer it in rubs or savory foods rather than sweet ones. For apple pie I usually cut it in half. In my experience, no potato salad meant to serve fewer than 15 people has EVER needed 3/4 cup of mayo. But the number one recipe direction that I ignore is the specification to add carrot, celery, peppers or garlic at the same time as the onion when sauteing. I like to soften my onions slowly, and they take more time. After a few minutes the carrot and celery or peppers go in. And the garlic goes in only a minute or two before the rest of the ingredients are soft.

Of all the weird questions. Luckily I'll never have to chose. I prefer nibbling a straight up raw carrot to a stalk of celery, but they are both very good. Carrot juice leaves celery juice in the dust. Although I used to be very fond of Dr. Brown's Cel-Ray tonic, and I can't imagine a carbonated carrot drink. However, I never go a week without using celery for several things, but I can go a week without carrots and not suffer. Celery is probably integral to three quarters of all the foods I cook. Soups, stews all kinds of beans 'n' rice, tuna or egg salad or potato salad. Tuna salad made with minced carrots... No. And a Bloody Mary needs some salted celery sticks alongside but a carrot would be silly. I would chose apples over oranges, as well. Does Julia Child or anyone else have a recipe for orange pie? Exactly so.

I pretty much gave up on BBQ or grilled chicken breasts until I discovered kosher chicken. The leg-thigh of a non-brined chicken seems to have enough fat in it to survive the dry heat if you are very attentive, but it's no mean feat to achieve succulent white meat; a sloppy sauce or a dry rub, it doesn't seem to matter to a thick breast. If it wasn't so easy for me to buy good kosher chicken here, I would definitely brine my own before BBQing.

Nothing replaces celery, but fennel is a close second. I have used it instead of celery in potato salads and tuna salads, and often sub it for celery in Italian flavored soups. The only person I know who doesn't like celery doesn't much like fennel either. For her, I make a potato salad with lots of chopped radishes and a little red onion for the crunch factor.

The best thing about French's Mustard IS the color. Looks beautiful. Love those handles.

http://www.foodpeoplewant.com/crema-mexicana/ This blog contains Rick Bayless's recipe for making your own crema.

When I started making stock many years ago, my only cookbook was a Julia Child one, so I pretty much got into the habit of following her general instructions, which are, in brief, as follows: put in the pot raw and/or cooked carcass, meat, bones, whatever. Add water to two inches above the ingredients. Bring to a simmer and skim off the foam until it stops appearing. Then add aromatics and veggies as desired, continue to simmer very gently UNcovered, for 3 to 4 hours. I do usually add some onion stuck with cloves, a carrot and a stick or two of celery, including the leaves, and I might throw in some whole coriander seeds and peppercorns. If I am making an Asian broth I add different stuff. Julia cautions against boiling and against covering at any time; she says that covering the hot stock can lead to souring. I have no idea if this is true. I start with a small whole chicken, 2 lbs of backs and 1 lb of feet in a big stockpot. Most often I want a bit of tender chicken for soup or whatever, so after about 45 min at a low simmer I pull out the whole chicken and simply pull off some nice hunks of breast meat and set it aside. I throw the rest back in the pot, and 15 minutes later I take it out again and remove some of the dark meat and add it to the breast meat. Back in goes the rest of the bird. I find the meat pretty worthless after more than an hour or two, except to make the stock. Typically I let it simmer for a total of 3 hours, or a bit longer. I have never measured water but I suppose with approximately a 3 lb chicken and 3 lbs of parts I usually end up with about 5-6 quarts of medium-rich stock. I never do a second round with the bones, nor do I cook down the stock further. The dog and I split what's left of the carrot and she gets some chicken picked off the bones.

Our last night in Waitsburg was spent happily at jimgermanbar. If you see their kitchen you will realize just what kind of magician Claire (Jim's wife) really is. The place was hopping on a Monday night. Everything we ate was excellent: an amuse of house-cured jamon, smoked salmon rillette with crostini, crispy cumin potatoes with aioli, rare slices of hanger steak with perfect local asparagus (so glad I had plenty of aioli left) and a lovely cupcake for dessert. The steak came with a remarkable herb pesto I couldn't identify. It turned out to be lovage, from Claire's father's 30 year old plant in Seattle. I'm sure I've never tasted lovage before; it was addictive. This is a gracious and friendly place, with great food and drink. On our way out we stopped for a bit to listen to music made by birthday celebrants in the room with the big table. The birthday girl was playing a hand saw with a violin bow. Otherwordly it was.

Pho Sho: Finally, after two trips to WW since this little place opened. Friday night we had a quick dinner before a play on campus. I thought it was excellent, and I eat a lot of Viet food at home in Oakland. And if you should doubt the street creds, note that the owner is the wife of the owner of Saffron and she is in fact Vietnamese. The rare beef pho had the best tenderest rarest beef and lots of it. The noodles were perfect, the broth was delicious. My daughter had a chicken curry that was also very good, the spring rolls were okay, served with a too-thick peanut sauce, and the imperial rolls were great--very crunchy and fresh tasting--and I don't usually love them. Not to knock Bangkok 103 in College Place, since the owners are so sweet, but Pho Sho is far superior and not at all expensive. My large bowl of pho was maybe $8 and came with the requisite plate of sprouts, jalapenos, thai basil and lime wedges. On Saturday afternoon we went out to the Monteillet Fromagerie, which is between Waitsburg and Dayton. This was amazing. They have been farming sheep and goats since 2002 and turn out a staggering variety of cheese. Right now all the cheeses are 70% goat and 30% sheep, but there will be straight goat and sheep cheeses later in the season. For $10 you get a full tasting of about 12 different cheeses, and the tasting ends up to be very generous. For another $5 you get two pours of wine. They start with the freshest cheeses and a lovely semillon, then move into the more aged cheese and a local pinot noir. Some of the cheeses are outstanding. There are a LOT of baby goats right now, and they are about the cutest things you've ever seen. It's hard not to over-buy cheeses on your way out. I was ready to buy a baby goat, but there are no pets allowed at the hotel in Ashland, which is our stopover on the way home. Saturday night we had drinks at jimgermanbar in Waitsburg, and some of their fabulous sauteed cashews. My husband had a delicious martini with Hendricks gin and a cucumber garnish. I'm not into cocktails so I stuck with my straight Old Overholt, but Jim's cocktails all sound great and he is the sweetest guy. My daughter wasn't too keen on the room with the communal table, it was a bit stark for her, but we are going back Monday night for dinner and have been promised the table by the window in the bar. Then it was across the street to The Whoopemup. It was packed, every table full of freshly minted Whitman grads and their families. And it was totally fun, just my daughter's kind of place: cozy booths and generous portions and a terrific starter pizza. They call it a crawfish pie, but it's a crispy thin crust pizza in my book. I could have made that my whole meal. My husband and daughter had salads, and I had the asparagus soup, which was very good. Apparently this was a bumper year in WW for asparagus, and it's all over the place. I thought my bbq chicken was the best of our three entrees, and so did my daughter. It was served with a very good cheesy grits cake and a sweet slaw. My daughter had spare ribs, which I thought were okay, and my husband had jambalaya, which was pretty interesting. The major disappointment was the cornbread. Three different cornbreads come to the table in a silly bucket and red-checked cloth napkin, and they were dry and not very flavorful. I pretty much LOVE my own cornbread, so I'm the worst critic. There was way too much food. This place is generous, to put it mildly. I couldn't imagine getting dessert, but then it seemed wrong not to get something. They are famous for some type of banana bonanza, but none of us wanted anything heavy. We split the grapefruit tarragon sorbet and it was a knockout. It comes with a drizzle of raspberry sauce, and there were three good-sized scoops, one for each. Really really good. I'd be pretty happy with just the pizza and the sorbet for dinner. But it is definitely a good time. There's a very nice artisan bakery in WW on Main St near 1st. They make a great crusty sourdough loaf, which is what I had toasted for breakfast today. We'll have a baguette and eat up some of our Monteillet cheese for lunch.

Took the plunge and made reservations at New Sammy's Cowboy Bistro. It was one of the best meals I've had in a long time. It was quiet, simple, not a lot of fuss. Maybe not everyone cares about lighting, but I need to see my food to taste it, and to find it. The lighting was perfect, not too dark. Time between first and second courses was a bit long, but it didn't matter. The bread is baked on site, and it was fantastic, some kind of levain I think. There was an amuse of cold sorrel soup with creme fraiche and a dab of black caviar. I could have eaten a bowl of that. I didn't have a first course, but my husband had a simple caesar-like salad. Good, but not exciting. For a main he had goat that was braised and falling-apart tender served over orzo, spinach and shitakes with goat cheese gnocchi. He loved it. I thought the gnocchi were spectacular. I ordered what they referred to as true cod from Alaska. It was served over fingerling potatoes, fantastic still crispy asparagus, shitakes and leeks, with a sauce that was out of this world and I can't begin to describe. It also came with a drizzle of some fabulous lemon creme fraiche sauce. The best fish I can remember eating. And both plates were generous and attractive and unfussy. For dessert we split something from single malt heaven: vanilla scotch ice cream served over black mission figs that had been macerated in scotch and served with, what else, shortbread. The scotch ice cream wss subtle, the figs were not, and that was just right. And again, the portion was generous and the presentation was simple and not overly decorative. I guess I want my food to taste artful, but I don't want it to look like an architectural ziggurat. Oh, the espresso was excellent. We had wine by the glass, and let Vernon advise us--an Oregon pinot noir with the goat and a white burgundy with the fish. Both wines were very reasonably priced and generously poured and good. I thought the value was great.