CHAPTER 1: Appetizers and a Story of How I Started to Cook

Some folks ask me if I have always loved to cook. The answer is a resounding no. As a young girl, I once made a disastrous chocolate cake with my cousins, but other than the occasional banana salad, I was neither interested nor particularly welcome in my mother’s kitchen. I did set the table.

My mother cooked serviceable dinners, pretty much the same conventional fare every week. Well-cooked pork chops, hamburger patties, french fries and green beans from the freezer, a salad, and ice cream. She had some specialties, like Beef Stroganoff, which were reserved for company. And on Sundays after church we would occasionally have a wonderful pot roast with carrots and potatoes or chicken and dumplings, both of which I adored. But mostly it was plain and simple mid-western food. And I took no part in preparing it.

So what happened?

• A move to Berkeley, California in 1966. Newly married to a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley, I moved from northwestern Ohio to the Bay area just in time for the action. Which for me included food as well as anti-war and anti-establishment. Here I am in my Albany, California kitchen, butterflying shrimp for a Japanese dish I was attempting. Not particularly successful if I remember correctly.

• The Shattuck Avenue Coop at the corner of Shattuck and Cedar, where Andronico’s currently resides, was a place of wonder for this mid-western lass. Full of exotic fruits and vegetables and people, the store offered a dazzling assortment of food products and wines from around the world. I studiously picked up all the free printed recipes and bought the Coop Lowcost Cookbook, to supplement the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook I had received as a wedding present.

• Our friends Nick and Sarah were passionate and adventurous cooks and eaters. He was a Scot and cooked up “scurlly,” an oatmeal and onion combination, which we washed down with wine or Green Death, so called because of its green can and lethal effect.

• Cookbooks started showing up under the Christmas tree and in birthday boxes. Mastering the Art of French Cooking was first and was quickly followed by Craig Claiborne’s New York Times Cookbook and New York Times Menus Cookbook.

• Gardening and food columns in the Good Times, an alternative East Bay newspaper in the 60s. Jeanie Darlington wrote about gardening in Grow Your Own. Marrakesh Lil, among others, wrote a great food column whose recipes I held onto for years. I lost them about 19 years ago but just recently my former husband found them and sent them to me.

• Occasional dinners out at places in San Francisco and Berkeley, such as The Pot Luck on San Pablo Avenue, opened my eyes to the amazing combinations of flavors and exotic ingredients you could put in your mouth. “Blew my mind” as we would say.

• A chance to grow and eat really fresh produce came about as an indirect result of the People’s Park controversy in 1969. The university turned a field at the corner of Buchanan and Jackson into garden plots and offered them to residents of Albany Village where we were living. We signed up. Oh my god, fresh green beans, basil for pesto, and tomatoes.

• I was cooking all the time. Nearly every day. Hard to imagine now, isn’t it? Learning so much. Gazpacho from Craig. Salmon cheeks and Finnan Haddie from Spengers Fish Store, chuck roasts from the Coop, and fresh crab for special occasions.

I was really lucky to have such a perfect coming together of supportive elements: cookbooks, friends and a husband who liked to cook and eat, a good grocery store, and time. I made a whole bunch of mistakes. As I said to myself about the Japanese dish above, "Oh well, I never claimed to be perfect. And there are lots more dinners ahead of me." It's still the case.

CHAPTER 3: Chicken and a Story about Traveling, Cooking, and Eating

Four years into my marriage, my husband and I moved to Taipei, Taiwan so that he could study Chinese at the Stanford Program at Taida University. Because we were so very Berkeley, we decided that we would shop and cook for ourselves rather than hire an amah. This was a pretty radical decision in 1970. So I learned to count in Chinese. I learned the names of vegetables. I shopped nearly every day at our neighborhood market. I bought a couple of pirated Chinese cookbooks. I took some cooking classes. In the course of the year I learned a huge amount about Chinese food and the shopping also brought me into the community. Neighborhood grannies would peek in my shopping basket to see what I had bought, ask how much I had paid for my cabbage and offer suggestions on how to prepare it.














When we moved to Kyoto, Japan in 1971 with our month-old baby, Franz, I did pretty much the same thing. Counting. A couple of cookbooks. Daily shopping. Asking questions of neighbors. And cooking a lot of Japanese food. I also taught Western cooking to some women in my neighborhood, as shown in the photo. They reciprocated by teaching me Japanese cooking. Just great for me.

So I’m going to jump ahead to the near present.

In 2003 I caught the travel bug. It started with the Middle East and went on to Spain and Morocco, southern France, South Africa, Brazil, Mexico, Turkey and Greece, Malawi, back to South Africa, Spain, Sweden on and on. And more recently Bali, Italy, Iran, Israel, Jordan, and Palestine. An amazing opportunity to see the world and to delve into cultures so different from my own.

Before going on trips, I educate myself about the new place by doing three things: I buy cookbooks (from my favorite used bookstore), read them, and cook some of the special dishes of the region. Good cookbooks tell me so much about the agriculture, immigration patterns and influences, the climate, and the traditions of the country. And then I get to eat the food I've fixed. Smell it. Taste it. I literally ingest the culture of the new place before I take a step outside this country. When I finally get there, I can look for the dishes I want to try and delight in seeing how closely my dishes approximate the “real” thing.

You'll see in many of the chicken recipes which follow that my cooking has been heavily influenced by my travels, in this case, Morocco, Spain, and Iran.  And India too although I haven't traveled there yet.

CHAPTER 4: Beef and Pork and a Story of Two Birthday Dinners

January 24, 2010 was an evening that required an especially nice dinner. Katherine, my partner of twenty years, was born on January 25, 1955 and was turning 55. We had invited her cousin and his wife, our dear friends Trip and Rivka, to join us for dinner.


I wanted to fix something special that would warm us up from head to toe. I chose the following: spare ribs in a delicious wine-ladened sauce cooked in the oven for hours in one of my favorite Bram pots. Wasabi mashed potatoes which are so good it is hard not to poke your finger into the serving bowl for one more bite. Caramelized carrot salad which I made ahead and served at room temperature. A salad course of beautiful greens enriched with slices of avocado and my Papaya Seed Dressing. Home-made Apple Crisp for dessert, although a Persimmon Pudding or a Lemon Mousse would do just as nicely. We drank a gorgeous 2007 Bourgueil Avis de Vin Fort from Catherine et Pierre Breton.

The dinner party was a big success, Katherine loved the food and felt properly celebrated. As we were walking a few days later and talking more about the party, I remembered a special birthday dinner that my mom fixed for me sometime in the 1950s, perhaps in 1955 (I would have been 12), and was struck by how similar it was to the one I had prepared for Katherine. Is there a place in our brains where we store “Special Birthday Dinners”?

Here is what my mom cooked at my request: a pot roast simmered in a large oval enamel pan in the oven with peeled potatoes and carrots. The potatoes were browned and the outside developed a skin which would ever-so-slightly resist my teeth’s efforts to get to the creamy inside. The carrots were so orange, soft and delicious, it was hard to believe that they were the same vegetable she tucked in my school lunches. When the meat had cooked until it was falling apart into succulent shreds, she would remove everything but the juices from the pan. She’d mix up a combination of water and flour in a small metal container with a lid which she would shake up and down vigorously until the mixture was well-blended. She stirred the flour mixture into the juices and simmered them until they thickened into gravy. There may have been a salad, most likely iceberg lettuce, carrots, celery perhaps, and Italian bottled dressing. I don’t remember the dessert but it could have been a boxed yellow cake with chocolate frosting. I loved this dinner, especially the meat, potatoes, and gravy. Look in a 1950s edition of Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book for a close approximation. It was a real birthday treat.

She was cooking her dinner for me in Toledo, Ohio in the 50s and was influenced by middle class habits and customs of that time and by availability of ingredients. It was expected that she would cook; it was her responsibility. Within that context, she made cooking decisions based on her resources, the time she had to spend in the kitchen, and her desire to please her family. Let me give you a couple of examples:
1. My family never cooked with wine; she would have added water, not wine or stock, to her pot roast.  Nor did they drink wine on a regular basis. Hard liquor before and coffee with dinner. That was their custom. Wine was an extravagance.
2. When it came to salad greens, she had one choice. Iceberg lettuce.
3. Bottled salad dressings seemed to us to be a great improvement over everyone having to eat the same one.  They also saved time in a period when efficiency was highly valued.
4. Box cakes were fashionable in the 50s and stayed that way well into the time I was learning to cook. Because dessert was pretty much a nightly requirement, boxed cakes, instant puddings, and the like were seen as very helpful.

That I prefer wine to coffee with dinner, love the variety of the greens, make my own salad dressings and most of our desserts is the result of my living in the Bay area in this particular moment where great ingredients are readily available and the desire to eat healthy food is shared with a large swath of the community. I choose to spend time in the kitchen because I love to cook. Unlike my mom, efficiency doesn't matter all that much to me and thankfully, desserts are not an everyday necessity.

Finally, I imagine my mom and me standing side by side in a kitchen, straddling the span of time that separates us, each fixing birthday dinners. We share so many of the same values. We are both willing to spend time and effort in the kitchen. We both want the food to look beautiful on the plate. We both want the food to be cooked with an abundance of love. And most of all, we both want the dinner to be delicious and special for our birthday girls. Thanks, Mom.

CHAPTER 6: Pasta Dishes and a Story about Eating in Rome

In the summer of 2008, we spent a week in Rome with our son and daughter-in-law, Franz and Michelle. We stayed in a wonderful apartment which gently shimmied every time the subway went underneath the building. It didn't bother us much because we were mostly out eating. Everything, of course, but a lot of fantastic pasta which spurred me to try a number of wonderful pasta dishes when we returned home. You'll find six of them in the recipes below.

Franz and Michelle who know the San Francisco food scene had talked to their savvy friends about eating in Rome and came equipped with a thirty page document of recommendations. Oh my, how to choose?






As the week drew to a close, they started double dining--two lunches and two dinners a day. Katherine and I cheered them on but declined to join them. One dinner and one lunch was more than enough for us. A great time and fabulous food.

Beautiful markets too.

CHAPTER 7: Seafood and a Story about Menu Planning

I usually cook two dishes for dinner: the main dish and a vegetable or salad. And perhaps some bread, as in the photo to the left. For a dinner party, I might add a first course and most likely dessert. How much and what you cook depends a lot on your guests. If they are dainty eaters, less is preferable. If they are teenage boys, quantity counts. So how do I go about creating a menu that is fun, beautiful, tasty, and doable?

Gathering information
First of all I ask the dinner guests about any dietary restrictions. Is anyone a vegetarian, a vegan, or gluten intolerant? And I think about what kind of food would appeal to them and to me. Next I look to see what is hiding out in the fridge that needs to be used. Finally I think about what is in season. Oranges, lemons, and sorrel are growing in my backyard. New crops keep showing up at the Farmers Market.

With this information in mind, I have two options:
1. I can consult a cookbook for menu suggestions, look at the Winter or Spring section of a cookbook organized that way, or cook a dinner I’ve cooked before and love.
OR
2. I can plan a new menu using my own imagination and tastes. When I choose this method, I use a few guidelines to help me out. I love the imagining part—seeing the plate, tasting the flavors in my mind, envisioning the work flow. I usually start by choosing the main dish. As I add one dish after another, I ask myself some questions:

Color Will the plate of food be pretty and colorful? I love color. If I’m fixing a pasta with a cream sauce, for example, I might want a fresh green veggie on the side. Cauliflower wouldn’t work. Tomatoes, red peppers and carrots are great favorites of mine for adding color.


Taste/flavor How will the flavors work together? Most of us wouldn’t want to eat a meal where every dish contained cayenne. Our mouths would cry out for the soothing comfort of sour cream, avocado, cold beer. So I watch for balance in the hot flavors with the soothing ones. The same principle applies with sweet, sour, bitter, salty. Balance and contrast rule.

Migration Will the juices on the plate be compatible? A stew with a nice gravy works wonderfully with mashed potatoes. Most of the time a salad needs to be on a separate plate because the vinaigrette merging with the rest of the food would make it all taste like salad.


Texture How will the textures of the food work together? A silky-textured dessert is nice after a crisp salad. Polenta has a nice mouth feel with braised lamb shanks. Full-flavored dips are great with fresh crusty bread or crackers. You get the idea.



Timing Can I fix the meal without driving myself crazy? What can I fix ahead? I try to avoid dinners where too much has to be done at the last moment. I try to imagine the process of cooking the meal so that I can stay calm and collected. Sometimes that means waiting to have a glass of wine until dinner is on the table, as hard as that is. I know I need a clear head.

I love creating menus. But if this process seems too complicated, choose one thing, like Color, and put the rest aside. Keep it easy. Remember that you can BUY some or most of the add-ons so you can focus on the main dish. Most of all, cook with pleasure and have fun with your guests.

In the next seven recipes for seafood dishes, I have given you more suggestions about accompanying dishes.

CHAPTER 9: Dinner Salads and a Story about Being Seduced by Organic Produce

Friday Farmers' Market in Sonoma

This is my desire: I want to buy the healthiest fruits and vegetables, milk, and oils that I can afford. I want to make sure that they are not coated with pesticides and fungicides and that they come from land that was treated with respect and compost rather than chemical fertilizers and herbicides. Whether they are “certified organic” is not as important to me as whether I can talk to the farmer who grew them and ascertain for myself the story of the lettuce or the carrots. I want the produce to have been grown in my area and to have traveled as little as possible to get to me. I want to eat what is in season as much as possible. And I want this kind of food to be available to everyone at prices everyone can afford.

Like so many others, I have been slow to recognize the importance of making sure that the food I fix is safe. When I was first learning to cook in the 60s and 70s, it never occurred to me that the food might not be safe. The standard produce looked really good, and maybe it was. In contrast the tiny selection of organic was pretty pathetic (shrunken and discolored oranges, limp and unappetizing lettuce) and cost a lot more.

So what moved me to change my buying patterns? What forces nudged me toward buying more organic?

1. Two friends, Karyn (to the left) and Lisa, suggested ever so nicely that I might want to consider buying organic for the sake of my health and those I feed. Karyn is a big fan of the Tuesday afternoon Farmers Market in Berkeley and showed me around a couple of times. She has two kids and really wants to feed them well. She de-mystified the process, though I continue to feel as though I need an extra set of hands to negotiate the shopping bags, plastic produce bags, money and my store list. Lisa who is chemically sensitive told me a lot about the chemicals that get into our bodies from eating food produced by agri-business farms. I trust her knowledge and judgment. Thanks to their nudging, I started buying organic milk and butter and occasionally went to the Berkeley Farmers Market.

2. I also started gathering more information. Groups like the Environmental Working Group and the Organic Consumers Association have serious e-newsletters that keep me abreast of the latest worries in terms of legislation and threats to our food system. EWG has a list of the Dirty Dozen, the fruits and vegetables with the most chemicals, and a list of those with the least. I carry these lists with me to the market. I’ve also read enough articles and books by Michael Pollan and others to convince me that we are in danger if we don’t change the way our food is produced. Recently I’ve switched to Organic Canola Oil. Don't get me started on genetically modified stuff.

3. Finally I started going to the Friday morning Sonoma Farmers Market or to The Patch farm stand during growing season to see Leo (photo below), with my shopping list in hand. Going to the Farmers Market is now part of my routine and I usually know what’s available and look forward to seeing what’s newly in season. I even go when it's raining. I still need an extra set of hands. When I’ve bought all I can, I go to my local grocery store, Sonoma Market, and buy the rest.

There are costs to switching to this new system. It takes time to stay informed. It takes more time to do the shopping; it is a two- or three-stop rather than one-stop shop. Right now I have the time to spend. And these beautiful fruits and vegetables are still more expensive, but I am convinced that they contribute to my health and to the health and well-being of the farmers and the land producing them. So it's worth it to me.

My incremental steps have brought me a long way in the space of five or six years. Nudging from friends, educating myself, and making the new shopping practice part of my routine have really worked. I still have a ways to go. I don’t always buy organic. I still sometimes choose the cheaper alternative. But I am much more aware. I am in the slow lane of the organic highway, moving myself along, and I feel really good about it.

CHAPTER 12: Grains and Potatoes and a Story about Staying on Top of the Weight Issue

A couple of you have sidled up to me and asked sotto voce “How do you keep your weight so, ah, normal, when you’re eating all this delicious stuff you put on your blog?” I usually mumble something about wearing black or being mindful. The truth is that the first two months of the blog, back in May and June 2009, I gained. And gained enough to make me nervous. Having lived most of my life feeling, if not always looking, chubby, I took the gain of five pounds, hefting me over 140 (at 5’4”), seriously. Having foresworn “dieting” many years ago, I knew that I needed to construct some long-term guidelines for myself that might help stabilize the gain and possibly encourage a loss. Since that July, between 10 and 12 pounds have come off very very slowly with many ups and downs. But steadily down. No one will ever call me thin (and I don’t aspire to that description anyway) but I now feel back in my normal range. So here are the principles I’ve been using since that fateful day in July. Perhaps one or two of them will strike you as helpful.

Exercise portion control.

Use smaller plates (10-inches in diameter). Your eye and brain perceive a full plate of food and you feel full eating less. It’s a perception thing.

For lunch, I have a favorite green bowl. I can eat whatever I want, as long as it fits in the green bowl.
Cut back on pre-eating (snacking or having a glass of wine) before dinner.
Serve plates in the kitchen. I tend to nibble when serving bowls sit in front of me.

Pay attention to what you’re eating and drinking.
Eat more fruits and vegetables.
Eat less protein, starches, and fats. But don’t eliminate anything entirely. Our bodies want it all.
Eat desserts, enjoying every bite, for special occasions.
Drink less wine. I have been in the habit of drinking a glass or two of wine nearly every night. I’m trying to drink every other night instead.
Eat more slowly, at least 20 chews per bite. I find this very difficult but worth trying.

Exercise regularly.
I try to go to the gym two or three times a week. It’s a 30-minute workout mostly to keep my muscles from getting flabby. As long as I'm there, I walk fast on the treadmill for 30 minutes.
I also walk outside at least six miles a week, usually with my friends, Barbara and Geraldine. I record my miles on a computer program in which I virtually walk across the United States, complete with photos and maps to show me where I am. I have walked over 3000 miles and am currently in Montana. Check it out at Tools to Keep You Active http://exercise.lbl.gov. You need to wear a pedometer to keep track of your mileage.

I hesitate to mention one more thing that I do: I usually don’t eat breakfast. This practice is idiosyncratic to me and would make nutritionists, dietitians and probably some of you blanch. I have nothing against breakfast. In fact, I love breakfast foods and often eat them for dinner. But I am rarely hungry for breakfast, so why eat? If I’m hungry, I eat. Simple as that.

There are weeks when we are eating out a lot, traveling, cooking dinner parties, or vacationing with friends. The principles don’t exactly go out the window, but they get modified to fit the current reality. And that is how it should be. It is wonderful to eat delicious food without worrying too much about the consequences. Once I’ve returned home, I reinstitute the principles. And that feels good too.

A couple of books have been really helpful in educating me about eating and weight:
David Kessler, The End of Overeating and
Brian Wansink, Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think.

CHAPTER 13: Breakfasts, Brunches, and Baked Goodies and a Story of Kunst Sunday Morning Breakfasts

The Kunst family, the four or us in Durham, North Carolina, had a long-standing tradition of Sunday breakfasts. On Saturday I would ask Ben and Franz what they would like to have the next morning. They would choose from a couple of coffee cakes, various muffins, biscuits, Irish soda bread, pancakes and waffles. I would get up the next morning and make what they had chosen, along with an omelet and maybe some bacon. Nothing, but nothing, got in the way of our Sunday breakfasts.

A few years ago,  Katherine and I drove south to visit Ben. We arrived at his house in the Santa Cruz mountains on a Sunday morning, just in time for brunch. What he fixed for us in his new kitchen was a good old-fashioned Kunst family breakfast. A mushroom, spinach, and cheese omelet, biscuits with jams, jellies and our favorite lemon curd, strawberries and blueberries, orange juice, the works. Among his friends, he has become known for his biscuit and omelet brunches. Just great. The tradition lives on.

The recipes that follow are for various breakfast or brunch possibilities as well as some baked goods that would be great for breakfast but would work equally well with tea or for dinner.

CHAPTER 14: Desserts and a Story of Overcoming Fear

Starting with a disastrous chocolate cake my cousins and I concocted when we were quite young, I have had a fraut relationship to desserts. For a long period of time, say about 40 years, my luck with desserts didn’t improve much. Especially with cakes.

I now know that baking in general and making cakes in particular involves a chemical reaction. It requires just the right interaction between the ingredients in the cake and the oven. If you are working with a bad recipe, even following it exactly, or with a faulty oven, you’re doomed. As time went along I could make a pretty good Thanksgiving pie, a perfectly fine baked custard, and decent fudge brownies. Cakes still eluded me. When pushed, I would buy dessert for a dinner party rather than risk disaster.

Two people have changed my relationship to desserts. Our friend, Xochitl, pictured above, moved to the Bay area from Mexico with her husband shortly after we moved here from North Carolina. Xochitl suggested that we start a dinner party club, the only requirement being that the host or hostess had to make everything from scratch. I said that I was interested but couldn’t guarantee I would make dessert. Well, I never heard the end of it. Whenever we invited them for dinner, she would pointedly offer to “make the dessert.”

Finally I said to myself, “Enough. I cook a lot of really good food. Why not desserts?” Coaxed into action, I set to work finding reliable recipes and practicing so that the next time they came to dinner I could offer them something home made. I can’t remember the first one I made for them, but let me tell you, it was received with a great deal of laughter and enthusiastic praise.

My daughter-in-law Michelle Polzine has also been instrumental in this process. She is the award-winning and magical pastry chef at Range in San Francisco. Prior to my enlightenment, I would ask her to bring the dessert for every family meal figuring that she knew what she was doing and I didn’t so she should provide dessert. At some point I said to myself, “Enough. It’s not fair to ask someone who makes desserts for a living to make them for every family occasion. Give her a break.”

And so the learning process continued. I found more great recipes, including a couple of cakes. I practiced. I fed (and still feed) my favorites to my dessert-loving friend Sam to see how he responds. Over the years I have built up a pretty good repertoire of choices that are delicious, pretty and relatively simple. Best of all, with some confidence, I now serve desserts to Michelle.