Oh, Frances. Frances, Frances, Frances. You are so beautiful, yet so flawed.
You're an elegant looker, and you know it. Your white walls, gorgeous wood floors, sparkling glassware, and deftly-lit artwork are an understated feast for the eyes. You're a bit loud, but that's part of your charm. You're also extremely crowded and hard to get into -- two of your less-lovable traits.
Sometimes, your beauty dazzles, and you knock it off the hook. Your Applewood smoked bacon beignets with maple créme fraîche and chive are as good as they sound. Your pannisse frites with Meyer lemon aioli, though, defy description. One is hard pressed to find the right words for how they delight the palette: the startling juxtaposition of both crispy and velvety smooth textures, the delicate flavor of the chickpeas, and the tangy, luxurious aioli. Hats off to you, girl. It's sheer perfection.
Your dungeness crab salad with little gem lettuce, avocado vinaigrette and kumquats is chock full of tender crabmeat, but all that delicate seafood is perhaps a bit overpowered by the saltiness and tang of the vinaigrette? The tiny slices of kumquat do tame the saltiness a bit, but they don't help the crab -- or those little gems -- shine like they should. Your ricotta gnocchi are pillowy-soft and skillfully complemented in both texture and flavor by the garlicky breadcrumbs, but the English peas adorning the plate are a bit large and startchy. Better to leave them off than mar a dish with so much potential.
Your smoked steelhead trout is a showstopper and is among the best seafood dishes I've had anywhere. The fish is meltingly tender, and the flavor play of the smoky fish, earthy fingerling potatoes, rich créme fraîche and pungent house-made grain mustard is stunningly good. As I write this, my mouth is watering, and my eyeballs are fluttering just a little.
Your desserts don't disappoint either. Your bittersweet chocolate pot de créme with roasted bing cherries and Vino Visciole is so fabulous that after we tasted the first bite, we immediately ordered another one. Your almond and semolina crostata, too, is excellent, and the English thyme ice cream -- though not for everyone -- is an unusual, delicious touch.
Your wine-based "Refreshers" are lovely as well. The Apples and Honey, in particular, is a pleasant surprise. The combination of cava, white wine, Bonny Doon Pommeau, and Martin Gold could easily be sweet and cloying, but instead, it's refreshingly dry and complex. And your Strawberry Fizz, though definitely on the sweeter side, really tastes like strawberries, which probably explains why there were glasses of it at every other table.
You're a woman with a lot going for you, Frances, which is why I feel the need to now be brutally honest: though you're beautiful, your demeanor leaves much to be desired.
Classy lady that you are, you really should know that it's not acceptable to seat guests almost a full half hour later than their specified reservation. You're quite a petite woman, which makes waiting so long among the crowd and din a bit unpleasant. Ettiquette also dictates that if you apologize for a seating delay and tell your guests that you will "take care of something on the bill", you follow through on your promise. Too, you need to pace yourself better. You disappeared for a good 45 minutes between our appetizers and entrees, and when you finally reappeared with our food, you didn't even apologize. I love a relaxed pace at dinner, but 3-1/2 hours for a three-course dinner? Really, you should know better, Frances. You're not cheap, and I expect more for my money.
Now that I've been up front with you, I feel much better. Despite your shabby treatment of me, though, I'm still very much enamored with you, and I think I'll give you a second chance. What can I say? I'm just a sucker for a pretty face. But remember: your beauty will only get you so far.
★ ★ ★
Frances
3870 17th Street
San Francisco, CA 94114
(415) 621-3870
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Vegetarian Refried Beans, Perfected
Over the past couple of years, I've found myself consuming less and less meat. Though I don't consider myself a vegetarian because I eat seafood, the flesh of land-based animals is really no longer part of my diet. Health reasons certainly do factor in to my move away from meat, but my reasons are mostly political – I simply want to support institutionalized farming as little as possible, which leaves me very few realistic meat-eating options. (Yes, even the animals raised at high-priced, hoity-toity, organic, free-range farms eventually wind up at the same horrifying slaughterhouses where everything else is processed.)
Fortunately, vegetarian cooking is no longer the stodgy, grimly-healthful fare that it used to be. Thanks to food writers like Deborah Madison, Mark Bittman, and Madhur Jaffrey, there now seems to be an endless supply of fabulous vegetarian recipes to choose from, all written with taste in mind.
I have quite a few cookbooks, and though I do love my numerous vegetarian volumes, I've found that some of the best meat-free recipes can be found in non-vegetarian cookbooks. Case in point is The Best Light Recipe, by the editors of Cook's Illustrated, a book I picked up around the beginning of the year after resolving to eat more healthfully. Typical of Cook's Illustrated, it's a fairly meat-heavy collection, but it also contains quite a few delicious, low-fat vegetarian recipes: a great mac & cheese (yes, a low-fat mac & cheese that actually tastes good!), excellent veggie burgers far superior to anything you can find commercially, and some really good lentil dishes. It's also full of great tips on how to cut calories without sacrificing flavor. Reducing oil by a significant amount, for instance, is a no-brainer for slimming down a recipe, but our friends at Cook's Illustrated take that reduced amount of oil and use a very small amount of it to sauté, then finish the dish at the end with the remaining oil. (Try it sometime; it makes a huge difference.)
I'm always looking for quick, easy, inexpensive protein sources that can freeze well, so naturally, one dish in The Best Light Recipe that caught my eye immediately was low-fat refried beans. With high hopes, I gave them a try, and although they tasted fine, I felt something was missing. Even though they contained a fair amount of onions, garlic and jalapeño, the results were.... bland. Salt helped a bit, but what they really needed was acidity. A liberal dousing of Tapatío balanced things out, but I wanted beans that tasted good right out of the pot, so I made a few modifications the next time around.
After playing with the recipe a bit, I found that adding a few tablespoons of tomato paste gave the recipe the zing I was looking for. I also threw in some smoked paprika, an ingredient I've found adds a depth of flavor to most recipes that's akin to bacon. The results were exactly what I was looking for in vegetarian refried beans – tangy, smoky, spicy and complex. In short, perfection.
Although this recipe can be made with canned beans for convenience, I highly recommend cooking dried beans from scratch. They require a bit of advanced planning since they need to be soaked overnight before cooking, but they are very easy, and their flavor and texture are far superior to those of canned beans. As an added bonus, ounce for ounce, they are much less expensive than their canned counterparts.
Served with tortillas, chopped tomatoes, shredded lettuce, and some sour cream or yogurt, these beans make a hell of a good, nutritious, inexpensive meal.
Delicious as Hell.
Low-Fat Vegetarian Refried Beans
Adapted from The Best Light Recipe, by The Editors of Cook's Illustrated
Ingredients:
5-1/4 cup cooked beans (recipe below) with their liquid, or three 15.5 oz cans, drained and rinsed
1 cup water (if using canned beans)
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 large jalapeño chile, seeds and ribs removed (or not, if you dare), then minced
4 teaspoons olive oil
Salt
2 medium garlic cloves, minced or pressed
3 tbs tomato paste
1 tsp ground cumin
1/4 tsp smoked paprika
1/4 cup minced cilantro
Hot pepper sauce
1. Process beans (plus water, if using canned beans) is a food processor for about 2 minutes, scraping down sides of bowl as necessary. You should have a thick, silky puree. If f not, add water a little at a time until the desired texture is reached.
2. Combine the onion, jalapeño, 1 teaspoon of oil and 1/2 teaspoon of salt in a medium saucepan over medium-low flame. Cover and cook until the vegetables are softened, 8-10 minutes. Stir in the garlic and cumin and cook another 30 seconds, the stir in the tomato paste and cook for another minute, stirring constantly.
3. Add the pureed beans and stir until thoroughly combined. Reduce heat to low and cook, stirring occasionally, until beans have thickened, about 10 minutes.
4. Stir in the cilantro and remaining 1 tablespoon of oil. Season with salt and hot sauce to taste.
Yield: 6 servings
Per serving: 230 calories; 3 g fat, 38 g carb, 14 g protein, 11 g fiber
Cooked Beans
Ingredients:
2 cups dried beans (pinto, black, kidney -- your choice)
6 cups water
1. Soak dried beans in enough water to cover by several inches. Drain.
2. Combine beans and water in a large saucepan. Simmer 1-1/2 to 1-3/4 hour, or until the beans are tender.
Fortunately, vegetarian cooking is no longer the stodgy, grimly-healthful fare that it used to be. Thanks to food writers like Deborah Madison, Mark Bittman, and Madhur Jaffrey, there now seems to be an endless supply of fabulous vegetarian recipes to choose from, all written with taste in mind.
I have quite a few cookbooks, and though I do love my numerous vegetarian volumes, I've found that some of the best meat-free recipes can be found in non-vegetarian cookbooks. Case in point is The Best Light Recipe, by the editors of Cook's Illustrated, a book I picked up around the beginning of the year after resolving to eat more healthfully. Typical of Cook's Illustrated, it's a fairly meat-heavy collection, but it also contains quite a few delicious, low-fat vegetarian recipes: a great mac & cheese (yes, a low-fat mac & cheese that actually tastes good!), excellent veggie burgers far superior to anything you can find commercially, and some really good lentil dishes. It's also full of great tips on how to cut calories without sacrificing flavor. Reducing oil by a significant amount, for instance, is a no-brainer for slimming down a recipe, but our friends at Cook's Illustrated take that reduced amount of oil and use a very small amount of it to sauté, then finish the dish at the end with the remaining oil. (Try it sometime; it makes a huge difference.)
I'm always looking for quick, easy, inexpensive protein sources that can freeze well, so naturally, one dish in The Best Light Recipe that caught my eye immediately was low-fat refried beans. With high hopes, I gave them a try, and although they tasted fine, I felt something was missing. Even though they contained a fair amount of onions, garlic and jalapeño, the results were.... bland. Salt helped a bit, but what they really needed was acidity. A liberal dousing of Tapatío balanced things out, but I wanted beans that tasted good right out of the pot, so I made a few modifications the next time around.
After playing with the recipe a bit, I found that adding a few tablespoons of tomato paste gave the recipe the zing I was looking for. I also threw in some smoked paprika, an ingredient I've found adds a depth of flavor to most recipes that's akin to bacon. The results were exactly what I was looking for in vegetarian refried beans – tangy, smoky, spicy and complex. In short, perfection.
Although this recipe can be made with canned beans for convenience, I highly recommend cooking dried beans from scratch. They require a bit of advanced planning since they need to be soaked overnight before cooking, but they are very easy, and their flavor and texture are far superior to those of canned beans. As an added bonus, ounce for ounce, they are much less expensive than their canned counterparts.
Served with tortillas, chopped tomatoes, shredded lettuce, and some sour cream or yogurt, these beans make a hell of a good, nutritious, inexpensive meal.
Delicious as Hell.
Low-Fat Vegetarian Refried Beans
Adapted from The Best Light Recipe, by The Editors of Cook's Illustrated
Ingredients:
5-1/4 cup cooked beans (recipe below) with their liquid, or three 15.5 oz cans, drained and rinsed
1 cup water (if using canned beans)
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 large jalapeño chile, seeds and ribs removed (or not, if you dare), then minced
4 teaspoons olive oil
Salt
2 medium garlic cloves, minced or pressed
3 tbs tomato paste
1 tsp ground cumin
1/4 tsp smoked paprika
1/4 cup minced cilantro
Hot pepper sauce
1. Process beans (plus water, if using canned beans) is a food processor for about 2 minutes, scraping down sides of bowl as necessary. You should have a thick, silky puree. If f not, add water a little at a time until the desired texture is reached.
2. Combine the onion, jalapeño, 1 teaspoon of oil and 1/2 teaspoon of salt in a medium saucepan over medium-low flame. Cover and cook until the vegetables are softened, 8-10 minutes. Stir in the garlic and cumin and cook another 30 seconds, the stir in the tomato paste and cook for another minute, stirring constantly.
3. Add the pureed beans and stir until thoroughly combined. Reduce heat to low and cook, stirring occasionally, until beans have thickened, about 10 minutes.
4. Stir in the cilantro and remaining 1 tablespoon of oil. Season with salt and hot sauce to taste.
Yield: 6 servings
Per serving: 230 calories; 3 g fat, 38 g carb, 14 g protein, 11 g fiber
Cooked Beans
Ingredients:
2 cups dried beans (pinto, black, kidney -- your choice)
6 cups water
1. Soak dried beans in enough water to cover by several inches. Drain.
2. Combine beans and water in a large saucepan. Simmer 1-1/2 to 1-3/4 hour, or until the beans are tender.
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