Ysanne’s blog

Eccolo is a fine restaurant in Berkeley serving fresh local produce in simple delicious ways. So simple, so delicious. Here are their Roman-style fried artichokes, served with home made with aïoli. Chef / owner Christopher Lee isn’t doing rocket science here… He’s just using the freshest seasonal ingredients in time-tested recipes. Fabulously stuffed sandwiches, perfect salads, classic Italian entrées. To make his fried artichokes, simply heat a pan of high oleic acid safflower oil, throw in some baby artichokes that have been quartered and had their coarse tips and hair removed, and remove them from the oil in about a minute, depending on the tenderness of the flowers. Easy!

Eccolo, 1820 Fourth Street, Berkeley, California, 94710

Tomatoes are so expensive in California right now, even though the sun shines pretty much every day, and my little tomato plants in the garden seem to fruit without needing much help from me. Regular, non-organic, taste-free, pesticide-laden tomatoes at major stores like Vons cost around $3 per pound. So the big, beautiful, organic, heirloom, vine-ripened, ridiculously tasty, big fat tomatoes available at the Farmers’ Markets in SoCal for $3.50 per pound are a complete bargain, in comparison.

Even better, heirloom tomatoes - by their very nature - don’t keep well. They are picked at the point of perfect ripeness, and generally snapped up on the same day by eager L.A. gourmet shoppers. So what’s a tomato farmer to do at the end of the day with all the heirloom tomatoes that are slightly squishy, or too delicate to transport back to the farm for another day?

Well, luckily for me, I acquired pounds and pounds of these babies yesterday for free, and boy did they smell good when I roasted them with onion rings, sea salt, olive oil and whole cloves of garlic! I set the oven to 350 degrees and baked them for an hour, then drained off the juice and baked them for another 20 minutes at 400 degrees.

So here’s my top tip - get down to your local Farmers’ Market at the end of the day, and see if you can pick up some bulk buy bargains of the best produce you can find. Nature is truly bountiful right now, so roast ‘em and freeze ‘em ready for autumn sauces and stews.

Whether you call it a zucchini flower or a courgette flower, this flower is a delicacy lightly battered and deep fried, tempura-style. But have you ever felt sorry for the poor vegetable that will never come to fruit if you pluck this flower and eat it? I always wondered how stands at farmers’ markets managed to sell these blooms, when if they just waited a little while they could sell a big beautiful juicy zuccini / courgette instead. Well, I recently found out how they do it. Fact is, if you pluck the flower close to its base, the fruit still develops on the stem behind the place that it once was. So you can eat the flowers and then harvest the zucchini / courgettes later in the season. Of course!

Last night I attended an organic fundraising dinner for the Children’s Eternal Rainforest. The forest is in Costa Rica, and is surrounded by land which has been logged. Last night’s dinner at CAA in Los Angeles was to raise money to buy some of the cleared land surrounding the forest in order to replant it, growing the rainforest.

The evening was organised by Sara Newmark from New Chapter Organics. The food for this event was organic, with all the ingredients provided by Whole Foods.

There was a roasted fig salad with asiago cheese, followed by a choice of either brick roasted chicken with chestnut stuffing or vegetable tian with couscous and grilled vegetables. Dessert was pastel de leche, a Mexican-style sponge cake soaked in a lime cream sauce, with fresh strawberries on the side.

Cocktails included a fabulous ‘acai martini’ made from Bossa Nova acai juice and VeeV vodka, a new spirit made from acai berries.

I organised the music, playing electric violin in the main room, with my friend David Starfire DJ’ing after dinner.

A lovely evening, which raised many thousands of dollars. Here’s the story of where the money will go…

In 1987, a classroom of young children in Sweden decided to take action to protect endangered rainforest. They creatively staged fundraisers, such as puppet shows, pony rides and bake sales. The Swedish government matched their earnings, and in less than two years they raised enough money to buy 3,000 acres in Costa Rica.

Today, the Children’s Eternal Rainforest is the largest private reserve in Central America, protecting 54,000 acres. Children from 44 countries around the world have contributed to its protection.

It is managed by a Costa Rican nonprofit organization called the Monteverde Conservation League, and in 2002 the Monteverde Conservation League US was formed as the US charity to support the Children’s Eternal Rainforest.

Because rainforests are so important in storing carbon, providing habitat for migrating species, moderating global climate change, creating oxygen, and are the home of half of the biodiverity on the planet, we have every reason to protect them. Moreover, because humans are responsible for the devastating deforestation, we feel it is right to also be responsible for protecting rainforests and the species that make the forests their home.

Unfortunately, people continue to slash and burn rainforest at an estimated rate of an acre every second, or approximately 30,000,000 acres a year. The goal of the Monteverde Conservation League US is to raise money to buy and reforest parcels of land that stretch down the mountains toward the Pacific Ocean so that altitudinal migrating animals such as monkeys and leopards will have food year-round, the rich biodiversity of this region will be protected, and generations to come can benefit from a protected ecosystem.

Deep green goodness is best enjoyed from leafy greens that are as fresh as possible. These giant chard leaves were picked from my garden and steamed within 24 hours. Once you’ve tasted veggies as fresh as this, you’ll understand why so many cooks become gardeners. They were grown from seeds planted last year from my friends at JL Hudson and pretty much grow themselves in most conditions. Just add water and wait for them to flourish.

Before cooking up these leaves last night, I went to my local yoga studio for a little post-work breath, stretch and relax. By strange coincidence, my fabulous teacher, Gabe Hendrie, was comparing some of the poses to chard and fresh salad greens. She described how yoga poses and greens are not as good if they wilt, and how the simplest of ingredients and poses make the most vibrant and nutritious dishes and yoga asanas. She also said that the best reason to do anything, whether yogic, food-related or otherwise, is for the pure enjoyment of it. Of course, Gabe’s observation of parallel culinary and yogic forces and the pursuit of pure pleasure struck a nice chord with this particular OrganicFoodee. So after class, I asked Gabe for a chard recipe that brought her the highest enjoyment factor. This is what she said:

1. Take four big leaves to feed two people as a hearty side serving.
2. Don’t use too much stalk. Discard about half of it, then chop the rest into 1 inch / 2 cm long pieces and steam.
3. While the stalk is steaming, halve the leaves down the spine, then slice them in 1/2 inch / 1 cm strips.
4. Once the stalk is fairly tender (about 4 minutes), throw the leaves on top and steam until everything is cooked to your taste.
5. In a bowl, mix 4 tablespoons olive oil with 1/2 teaspoon good quality sea salt. Himalayan pink crystal salt tastes good in this dish, also my personal favorite salt variety, Halen Mon. You can try a flavored olive oil too, especially lemon olive oil.
6. Once the greens are tender, remove from the heat and drizzle with the oil.
7. Serve and eat immediately for sheer taste pleasure and utmost nutritional satisfaction.

Okay, rolling out pasta dough is far from easy unless you use a special pasta rolling machine. While these gadgets are not very hard to find or expensive, most people don’t plan to make pasta from scratch often enough to warrant getting one. So how else can you approach making pasta from scratch while not purchasing the rolling machine?

Pizzoccheri - this is the answer! Made with a combination of buckwheat flour and durum wheat flour, this Northern Italian pasta is really easy to roll out using a wood rolling pin. The softness of the buckwheat dough means there’s really no need for a pasta rolling machine or other fancy gadgets. Simply flour your countertop and roll out the dough, and you’re halfway towards a superbly gourmet homemade dinner.

What’s more, buckwheat is almost always organic, even when it’s not written on the pack. This is because buckwheat bizarrely grows better WITHOUT chemical fertilizers. A rare crop. Buckwheat prefers the harshest growing environments and poorest soils, and simply doesn’t grow very well if you treat it to fertilizers. So you can feel confident your pizzoccheri are full of natural goodness, with minimal chemical inputs.

Here’s how you do it… Take 1 1/2 cup of buckwheat flour, and 1 cup of durum wheat flour. In a bowl, add 1 cup of water, little by little, squelching and kneading as you go. Keep kneading in the bowl for at least ten minutes, then leave the dough to rest, covered in a recycled plastic bag. Then, flour the counter and rolling pin, and roll to about 3mm thick. Cut into 1/2 inch tagliatele-style strips, then chop down into shorter strip. Boil and serve with a sauce of your choice, or the traditional way… boiled with potatoes, and cabbage, then doused in melted butter, fried garlic, porcini, fresh sage, and creamy semi-melted fontina cheese.

Green’s is a legendary vegetarian restaurant in San Francisco, California. Although I’m not a vegetarian, I do love vegetarian food. So I was excited to try this restaurant recently with Richard and some friends Joe and Jean.

Green’s was one of the first vegetarian restaurants in the world to serve vegetarian cuisine in an upscale setting with well-crafted recipes. Before Green’s, vegetarian restaurants were wholefoody bohemian places that served home-style fare. Green’s is undeniably a bit bohemian and wholefoody itself, but its beautiful simple styling has an elegance that raises the environment from pure home-style to fine dining. The food is high quality, based on time-tested vegetarian staple ingredients grown at their farm, only fourteen miles away from the restaurant. And the restaurant is nestled in an inspiring complex of marina-side buildings that house over 50 environmental non-profit businesses. This is ground zero for San Francisco-ness.

Local fresh produce is of course seasonal, so the menu changes regularly, naturally reflecting the seasons. Visit in February and you’ll find deep leaf greens like black kale, crisp roots like beets and carrots, and stored fresh fruit like apples transformed into hot puddings and pies.

Run and designed by Zen Buddhists, Green’s is a gentle kind space serving delicate and nutritious food with love.

Am I the only one who loves poached eggs? They’re so simple to prepare, and are so elegant for a long Sunday breakfast.

For perfect poached eggs, drop a tablespoon of vinegar into a medium sized pan of simmering water, then swirl with a wooden spoon. When the whirlpool has subsided to a minimal little spin, gently crack the egg into the middle of it. Adjust the heat as necessary to keep the water simmering gently… If it’s boiling too vigorously, the bubbles will disturb the egg too much, ruining it’s ability to remain a single mass. After 3 minutes, lift the egg out with a slotted spoon, and serve on a bed of organic mixed leaves. Drizzle with hot hollandaise sauce, then serve for a happy weekend brunch.

I’ve just come home from a trip to San Francisco, where my friends Gabe and Kelly treated me to organic bangers and mash at a sweet local restaurant. American bangers, which means the most huge, giant bangers I’ve ever seen. Californian bangers, which means they had more garlic in them than an French aioli. Delicious, wonderful and - dare I say it - possibly an improvement on a truly delicious British staple.

Go find them yourself at Magnolia on Haight Street, a block down from the legendary Haight / Ashbury crossroads. Run by chef David Coleman, owner Dave McLean, and Dave’s wife Demetra Delia, this stylish yet relaxed restaurant offers perfect English pub food alongside American micro-brewed beers on tap. The emphasis is on local and chemical-free ingredients, sustainable seafoods and organic vegetables. The English recipes are faithful yet improved upon. Check out their homemade root beer and homely favorites such as fish and chips.

Here’s David preparing some onions for a deep-fried extravaganza called Chrysanthonions. First, take a big juicy onion and make a bunch of very deep cuts from the shoot top to the bottom, but keeping a circle around the root intact. Next, soak the onions in cold water for a few hours so they swell and reveal a fake chrysanthemum flower shape.

This brings us to the stage you can see, which is where the onions are double-dipped in batter. First, dip the onions in an egg wash and roll them in corn meal. Then, dip them in the egg wash for a second time, and thoroughly coat them in flour that’s been seasoned with salt, pepper and a little bit of chili powder.

Once they’ve been double-dipped, it’s time for them to meet the deep fat fryer until the outside is crisp and golden brown.

Flowertastic!

My oh my, this gentleman is saucey! Last night, we had a delicious time preparing spaghetti bolognese with more than a touch of Californian sauce. Always a sucker for experimentation, I wholeheartedly embrace Richard’s thoroughly modern approach to this Italian staple.

Traditional Italian bolognese sauce hails from the town of Bologna. The official Bolognese delegation of the Accademia Italiana della Cucina states that it is made from a tomato sauce base with ground beef, pancetta, white wine and cream. However, there are as many recipes for bolognese sauces around the world as there are cooks. Here’s what we did last night.

First Richard seared equal amounts of ground beef, ground pork and ground lamb in three separate pans. Simultaneously, finely chopped onions, minced garlic and sliced crimini mushrooms were sautéed in salted bacon fat. The combined cooked meat and vegetables were then drenched with diced and sieved canned tomatoes and a liberal helping of tomato paste. Simmering slowly, the sauce was flavored with dried fennel seeds, oregano, basil, powdered dried porcini, ground pepper, a touch of chili and a bottle of really fine Californian red wine from Silver Lake Wine.

The resulting bolognese was perhaps the perfect dish to warm our cockles this crisp and chilly autumn night. A truly exceptional sauce which, of course, will improve as each day passes, getting richer and increasingly luscious as the days wane.

There are times when you know deep down in your soul that the only thing to do is to eat a huge pile of the freshest organic greens you can find, preferably tossed in a simple dressing and served with a delectable and substantial ingredient to satisfy your bodily needs. David Dressler, Matt Lyman and Erik Oberholtzer joined forces to answer this calling at their vitamin-rich restaurant, Tender Greens, located in Culver City, California.

It’s true, they have other great stuff on the menu, such as the line caught ahi tuna hot from the mequite grill, and the Angus flatiron steak with mashed yukon gold potatoes. There’s also a fine roasted roma tomato bread soup with micro basil, and a richly lemony chicken soup.

But the heart of this restaurant is its salad menu. Inspired by Matt’s childhood on a Maryland farm and Erik’s ongoing passion for home-grown produce, the three friends have developed a deep and wide salad menu that relies on produce picked daily at family-run Scarborough Farms in Oxnard, a short hop skip and jump from the restaurant. While not certified as organic, the family run a small-scale European-style farm using the lowest amount of chemical inputs possible to nurture their lettuces, arugula, microgreens, edible flowers, herbs and baby salad vegetables on realistic restaurant scales. The additional ingredients are consciously sourced, with organic oils and vinegars, free-range poultry, hormone-free beef and line-caught fish.

Simple salads include the baby spinach, goat cheese and hazelnut with cabernet vinaigrette, and the red and green butter lettuce with dijon vinaigrette.

The big salads are far more substantial, providing full lunch or dinner satisfaction. Check out the Chinese chicken salad with spicy greens, golden pea sprouts, carrot, crispy wonton, roasted peanuts and sesame dressing. Also the grilled veggies with crunchy lettuces, shaved parmesan and roasted tomato vinaigrette. And finally the ahi tuna nicoise (pictured above) with tender greens, tomatoes, potatoes, capers, olives and sherry vinegar.

Watch out as the Tender Greens tendrils reach out to other California neighborhoods. Two new restaurants are currently planned, one in West Hollywood and another in San Diego. Keep your fingers crossed if you’re further afield…

Nina really gives a fig. She is a fair trade food activist with a penchant for the finer things in life, such as the moist and sticky fig and apple pie she makes with fruit from this fig tree in her central San Francisco home garden. It’s moist from the fresh figs, sticky from a generous sprinkling of brown sugar, and wholesome because of the whole wheat flour in the shortcrust pastry.

While not tending to her plants or delighting husband Greg with her vegan delicacies, Nina earns her daily bread helping to publicize fairly traded chocolate in Berkeley, California. Part of her job description is to try out new chocolate varieties to see if they are fairly nice or really properly delicious. It is all in a day’s work for her.

However, the main part of Nina’s job is to help oversee the building of an exciting brand new chocolate factory. Due to open Spring 2008, the factory is the first of it’s kind to be built for years and years. Almost all companies “make” chocolate by melting down chocolate couverture and reforming the molten chocolate into molds. The company that Nina is working for is throwing this easy way on it’s head, investing a ton of money into the serious machinery needed to grind cocoa into the finest, smoothest artisan chocolate imaginable.

More news as this fair trade chocolate story unfolds…

Such a simple idea, but one I’d not encountered before… Last night, Colette pierced a dozen or so baby plum tomatoes onto a wooden skewer, adorned them with thyme, then slow-roasted them over a barbeque until they sweltered in oozing sweetness. The gently charred skins added a smokiness to the green baby leaf salad that they were thrown into, the caramelized flesh infusing the vinaigrette with extra sweetness. So pleasing to bump into these babies in the midst of all that greenery, they pop with a gentler softness than their raw counterparts. Try it. You’ll smile as brightly as Colette and savor the flavor just like Zeth.

Talking of sweetness, it’s now established that different species experience this basic taste radically differently. Old World primates - such as humans - and New World primates - such as spider monkeys and marmosets - perceive sweet compounds differently. For example, give humans a food containing aspartame, and they will find it sweet. Feed aspartame to a passing spider monkey, and they’ll sense only a dull chemical taste.

The human taste response to aspartame has stimulated widespread production of this industrial food ingredient under the brand names NutraSweet, Splenda, Canderel and Equal. However, whether you’re a human or a spider monkey, eating food and drink containing aspartame is strongly suspected of causing extreme negative health responses, including brain tumors, lymphoma and leukemia.

This is because aspartame is broken down by the human digestive system into methanol and formaldehyde, universally recognized poisons. Aspartame also contains phenylalanine, a protein that adversely effects neurotransmitter function in adults as well as unborn fetuses.

A number of rigorous scientific studies have looked into these claims of toxicity, and although the findings are contested by the aspartame manufacturing industry and their friends, it seems wise to avoid foods that contain aspartame unless new data proves it safe after all.

The cautionary principle is so wise when it comes to protecting your family’s health from all under-tested and novel ingredients developed for cheapness and convenience rather than taste, nutrition or improved culinary function.

Of course, one of the many reasons to choose organic foods is because aspartame is prohibited from them, along with a long, long list of other potentially risky chemical additives. You can reach for any certified organic food without the need to scan the ingredients list. Aspartame isn’t on it. Simple.

Now this is what I call a sexy salad. Hardly a lettuce leaf in sight, this salad is so substantial, you can almost hear it sing. No wonder. It’s creator is Stefan Broadley, the music producer who recorded the song ‘Sexy Bitches Like It Raw‘. Yes, you heard that right… it’s a saucy, sassy song that’s the theme tune to a new cookery show that’s all about raw food. Which makes it an un-cooking show, if you will. Rawk!

Stefan’s Sexy Salad:

red cabbage
spring mix
grated carrot
grated beets
tomatoes
onion sprouts
avocado
broccoli

with a saucy dressing made from:

flax oil
olive oil
balsamic vinegar
apple cider vinegar
curry powder
French wholegrain mustard

In an alternative reality, Richard and The Beets had seven successive Number Ones, making them America’s most popular ska band of all time. However, here (as you can see) Richard is a happy lunch muncher, and the beets are Bull’s blood beets from our friends David and Sheri’s seed bank, sown in February and grown to their maximum deliciousness in my back yard.

Pulled out of the ground this morning, I simply washed them, cut off the greens and little tapering roots, then set the big beets to steam over a pot of simmering water for an hour or so. I then chopped them into large chunks and added blobs of soft goats’ cheese while they were still warm.

Meanwhile, I gently steam fried the chopped beet greens with a little olive oil and a clove of crushed garlic for a few minutes. Once the greens were more tender, I added the cooked roots to their tops, and doused the whole salad in a vinaigrette of 1/4 seasoned rice vinegar, 1/4 balsamic vinegar and 1/2 walnut oil.

Once everything was well mixed, I scattered a few pretty sesame seeds onto each serving and sat back in the satisfying knowledge that lunch was likely to be a big hit.

My friend Mary Beth is one of the top fit models in Los Angeles. Her derrière is the basis for most of the designer jeans now gracing the finest behinds around the world. As such, Mary Beth is often transported to far flung capitals in order to model the very latest fashions. Recently, she was flown to Hong Kong, and during that trip she found a fantastic quality chrysanthemum tea. The big fresh dried flowers are slightly moist with resins, and pungent with the scent of chamomile mixed with honey. The big daisy-like flowers swell when drenched in boiled water, releasing their powerful liver-cleansing magic. According to Traditional Chinese Medicine, chrysanthemum tea is deeply cooling for the body. It purifies the blood and detoxes the liver, and is great as an after-dinner tonic. It is wonderfully relaxing and helps clear the head of unwanted thoughts. So I’m delighted Mary Beth gave me a nice big jar, as well as some fabulous puer tea. More on that later…

Whether they’re ‘tom-aaaah-toes’ or ‘tom-ay-toes’, the big and fat heirloom babies at my local farmer’s market are utterly perfect right now. Wrinkled and creased, with an astounding array of colors, they’re soft and juicy and deliciously sweet. Almost bruised in appearance at times with their purple / green / black color combo, right through to classic tomato red numbers, I’ve been eating them for practically every meal this week. Here’s my breakfast, and very nice it was too! Classic San Francisco style sourdough bread spread with French style chevre goats cheese and topped with four big rounds of fresh heirloom tomatoes. Flavour set ablaze with a sprinkling of French Atlantic sea salt and some crushed black peppercorns. Quick, simple and inspiring.

Wolaver’s Organic Ales is an independent family run micro-brewery in beautiful lush green Vermont, USA. They’re celebrating their 10th anniversary by launching a special Belgian-style farmhouse ale. It’s a rich full-bodied beer, brewed with plenty of organic malts and hops. And for every bottle of Farmhouse Ale that is sold, Wolaver’s will donate 10% to the Organic Farming Research Foundation in Santa Cruz, California.

Another great reason to drink cool organic ale this summer.

Artificial sweeteners are often bad news in terms of your health. Take aspartame, an artificial sweetener used in everything from Diet Coke to sugar-free gum. Marketed under the brand name NutraSweet, aspartame is manufactured and distributed by Monsanto, the multinational corporation that brought the world genetically modified seeds and Agent Orange. It’s been linked to cancer, brain damage, and bizarrely, is scientifically proven to cause compulsive over-eating disorders. Dieters beware of dieting products.

Erythritol doesn’t sound very whoesome or natural by name, but in fact it’s simply made from cane sugar. In the case of this new brand, Organic Zero, the sugar is organically grown.

Pure organic cane sugar is dissolved in water, and fermented with a USDA-approved fungus. This process is not dissimilar to making kombucha. Once the sugar solution has fermented for a while, it’s sterilized and filtered. This liquid is then heated to evaporate the water, leaving a white crystalline powder that looks like refined white cane sugar. You get about 1lb erythritol for every 2lbs of sugar used to produce it.

While organic food at its best is all about minimally-processed whole foods, I can see there’s a place for Organic Zero in some people’s lives. If you love coffee and hot tea with sugar, but need to cut back on the amount of sugar you eat, you should consider using Organic Zero on the way to cutting back your sugar usage. It doesn’t have any of the benefits of a good quality honey in terms of enzymes, but it has a zero glycemic index, which means it doesn’t cause any highs or lows in blood sugar levels. Essential news for diabetics.

Erithrytol isn’t a new ingredient, and as such doesn’t need to be treated with the suspicion new and novel untested ingredients often deserve. We’ve been eating erithrytol in mushrooms and cheeses for centuries. It has 0.2 calories per gram (which is pretty much the same as 0 calories), and actually helps prevent tooth decay as the bugs in your mouth can’t eat it.

It’s about 70% as sweet as sugar, so you’ll need to use a little more than usual to get the same effect as sugar. It also has a slightly strange cooling taste on the tongue, a bit like mint. While this is extremely subtle in coffee and tea, it makes it less desirable as a sugar replacement for baking cakes. I suggest you try baking a small batch of a familiar recipe to see if you’re happy with the results before baking a fancy cake.