a few links to help pass the time



rabbits are the new chicken: novella and i in brooklyn on 11/15. a huge thank you to sasha for her fantastic design skillz. info on our diner dinners and party at mast brothers chocolate factory coming soon...

it's decorative gourd season...: enough said

2009 beaujolais nouveau party at kermit lynch...a little birdie told me we'll be having boudin blanc with cabbage, apples and potatoes. could it be? the sausage to end all sausages? plan on it!

chris and janet brought back some beautiful jacques genin chocolates for me. i may have never tasted anything so perfect.

i am sort of obsessed with liberty, as we all know. these amazing glasses are my newest fave.


OPENfuture--the confused recap

our fearless leader frank smigiel at alemany farm

okay, let's talk about OPENfuture before a whole month passes and i feel like it's completely irrelevant.

when jerome realized that he was going to be gone for the five weeks directly preceding the event, i think he started to panic a bit. i'd just lost my job, so they wondered if i wanted to come in as the chef/coordinator, and i said YES! when i realized how huge it was all going to be, i insisted we bring in chris lee, too. we're a package deal these days.

then jerome left and we began to realize how much work there still was left to do.

then soul food farm burned down and i knew i had to do whatever i could to help raise some money for alexis. i was down at esalen without phone or internet while bonnie planned the event for 10/11, a mere six days before OPENfuture. ack!

there were meetings and emails galore. googledocs became my most visited webpage. for about a month, i was simultaneously working on both of these events. my head was spinning. so many emails! so many obstacles!

where would we get the steer? we wanted something grass-fed, and relatively small, something from someone we knew well, so we knew we had to turn to bob and ross cannard at green string farm.

where would we slaughter it? the animal was far up north in red bluff, ca, but could we do it closer so that our friend could videotape it for her graduate school project? no, that didn't work out.

would the slaughter happen in time so that we could hang it for the three weeks necessary to age the meat properly? october 17th minus three weeks equals september 27th. but the day we were having this conversation was....september 28th. uh-oh. so the steer was set for slaughter on 10/1. but when i called on 10/3 to inquire about the brain, which we'd wanted to remove and give to lance to make grappa out of for us, it still was alive in the field. uh-oh. i had to turn a blind eye.

where would we hang it the animal? we'd all heard of avedano's, and some of us had been there. but had anyone ever actually spoken to any of the meatladies? eventually, we got in touch and they agreed to let us hang the animal in their shop

but how would we transport it to the shop, and once there, how the heck were we going to get it onto the hooks? uh, let's just say there's a dent on the wall in front of avedano's that wasn't there before. and a butcher who shall remain nameless may have sprained his wrist.

where would we cook it? what sf landowner in their right mind would let us dig a 7 x 3 x 2 foot trench in their yard and cook a quarter-ton animal? for a while, zeitgeist was considered, but that fell through. finally, jason at alemany farm agreed to let us do it. but we were planning to bike the cooked monster to SFMOMA and alemany farm was pretty much on the other side of town. how the heck were we going to make this work?

and what about a fire permit? ha! problem of the century. jason said we could just go without as far as he was concerned, but alemany farm is basically on the freeway, so someone was guaranteed to see the billowing smoke around 3am and call the fire department. we couldn't stomach the thought of being stuck with a half-raw steer in the middle of the night, so we knew we had to get a fire permit. but how were we going to convince the city?

and who the heck was going to show us how to cook the thing? after months of phone tag with our prospective spit-roaster, we got chewed out for waiting until three weeks before the event to contact him. it was ugly, and we got desperate. for a few days there, i was maniacally googling "how to spit-roast a whole steer" and considering flying someone in from germany, where spit-roasted steer is a traditional oktoberfest dish. then, our hero jack cannard agreed to supervise and bring the equipment.

chris and jack preparing the steer to roast at alemany farm


how would a rickety-ass tricycle sam bought from an oakland crackhead get a quarter-ton steer from alemany farm to SFMOMA?

allow me to illustrate what we're talking about here:
there is no sane answer for this. let me just say that howie is a crazy mofo. i still can't believe he made it happen. not to mention the fact that they were so pleased with their progress on the way to the museum that the entire entourage stopped for shots of tequila at a bar. with the steer. while the rest of us were pacing back and forth wondering if we should call the fire department to help.

oh, and so much more: there was the bread--were there going to be testers? and who was going to make the mole? where would we get avocados from in october? why weren't any of my urban farmers calling me back about the veggies for the city limits stew? how were we going to grind all of that meat for the ice cream cones? and who was going to make 800 tortillas? who was going to fry them? where would we find an edible ink printer for the panforte? who was going to come do all of this work for free? what would all of these people wear? and what if someone got hurt?

are you catching my drift yet? add into that mix of confusion 130 volunteers (some who are emailless), an amazing yet inexplicable mission statement, some major menu-printing mayhem the day before the event, and a lot of hipsters, drugs and alcohol, and you might begin to understand why my neck (storage space for my stress) is only now starting to relax, three weeks later.

but, it couldn't have been better. magical things happen when people come together with good in their hearts:


i had a fantastic time working with so many wonderful people: sam, jerome and stacie (who i told had to induct me as a member of OPEN after all of that!), but also sasha, mark gravel, howie, christa, the avedano's gals, and frank. and about 100 others.



one more thing...

about jsf's book:

after those three years of research, i'd think he would have learned the difference between a cow and a steer.

people, please, if you're going to write or talk about the beef industry, learn to use the correct terminology:

bull: an intact male destined for breeding
calf: a young bovine of either gender less than a year old
cow: a mature female that has had at least one calf
first-calf heifer: a young female pregnant with or nursing her first calf; first-calf heifers often need extra help with calving
heifer: a young female
steer: a castrated male
yearling: a bovine of either gender between one and two years old

copied directly from page 21 of bill niman's niman ranch cookbook. since bill hands copies of that book out like candy, i'm pretty sure jsf was given one on his visit to their house...

these days, the vast majority of the beef we eat comes from steers, not cows. cows usually become breeders or dairy animals, but not meat animals.

photo by allison long of the kansas city star

i've been beagle-sitting. in fact, they're snuggled up under my arm right now snoring away. and since mister's nose always trembles when he dreams, his whiskers keep tickling me.

i've been to kansas city--my first time in middle america. novella and i went to bad seed to teach chicken 101 and it was a total success. there are some nice photos in this slideshow, but somehow in the article, i became samin noscrat. oh well.

on the plane, novella lent me eating animals by jonathan safran foer. let me begin by talking about my deep love of this man's novels. do you guys remember when i made everyone read everything is illuminated for our short-lived book club? do you remember the fan letters i wrote to him? do you remember when i trekked out to city arts and lectures to see him speak, standing nervously in line afterward to have him sign my book and ask him about our mutual friend?

this is a person i have long admired and respected.

but now, he's abandoned fiction and entered my sphere. this world is one i take seriously, immersing myself in its issues and doing my best to educate myself so that one day i might be able to improve the state of some of these awful systems. i've been working hard for over ten years to learn as much as i can about what's going on in this country's disjointed food chain, and along the way i've been lucky enough to get to know most of the people jsf features in his book.

i'm already well acquainted with most of the imagery and statistics he uses to shock people into vegetarianism, but where jsf argues that being a compassionate omnivore is pointless because you'll definitely falter from time to time (giving in and eating factory-farmed meat for social reasons or out of convenience), and because the mere presence of meat eaters out in the world (compassionate or not) encourages others to eat meat, others who may not put the energy or care into finding out how their meat animals were raised and killed, i respectfully disagree. i'm going to go ahead and give intelligent people some credit.

i won't eat meat unless i know and respect the person who raised it, pure and simple. i won't eat fish unless i know the fishmonger and respect his techniques. i won't eat eggs or drink milk unless i am well-acquainted with the processes used to produce them. and i know lots of other people who are not only willing to do the same, but to help educate others about why it's so important.

i'm not going to give up on trying to change our ailing food systems. i won't retract my support of people like bill and nicolette hahn niman--who have arguably done more than anyone else to provide an alternative to factory-raised beef and pork in this country--by refusing to buy the exceptional meat from animals they raise. almost all of the ranchers and food-folks featured in eating animals (frank reese, patrick martins, bill and nicolette, michael pollan) have made huge strides in creating and furthering an alternative-meat industry in this country, and to ignore and disparage the work they have done for the past fifty years would be a travesty.

at one point, jsf tries to appeal to raw human emotion, saying that if you can't imagine eating your pet dog for dinner, you shouldn't be eating meat at all. i wish i had the book before me to quote it directly, but he says something to the effect of, "well, it sure would be a lot more sustainable to eat our pets than putting all of that energy and environmental input into raising meat animals. i mean, we're already feeding them all of that food anyway, right?"

uh. no.

what are most americans feeding their pets? i'm pretty sure it's meat by-product--the stuff from the slaughterhouses that humans won't touch. i'm pretty sure it consists mostly of GMO grains, takes plenty of environmental resources to produce and ship, and that its prohibitively expensive price makes it the opposite of sustainable. not to mention that presenting people with a completely irrational choice is a sort of ridiculous way to get them to think about eating sustainably. how about this option: instead of raising dogs at home to eat, what about raising chickens or rabbits?

i'm really riled up. i want everyone i know to read this book so that we can use it as a starting point for an intelligent discussion about food systems. i want people to read the stories about how turkeys, chickens, pigs and cattle are raised, killed and processed in this country. i want them to be disgusted, and be moved to work for change if for no other reason than out of self-interest. i want people to get riled up. i just don't think that becoming vegetarian or vegan is the only way.

i wrote to jsf the other day, and he wrote back--i think we'll agree to disagree respectfully, and engage in a serious discussion about what can be done. i'll let you know what happens...in the meantime, i'm gonna snuggle with these beagles as much as i can.
note to self: never again schedule huge, high profile events involving feeding hundreds of people a mere six days apart. and definitely don't plan two cross-country trips in the proceeding month, either.

Jessica in Bon Appetit. Bar Jules is one of the top ten new restaurants in America!


Take a look at this.

It got me all riled up because there are no women to be found on either of his lists. Huh? There's not one woman doing anything exciting anywhere in the Bay Area?

I've been thinking about women chefs a lot lately. The other day, a female/former CP cook friend who loves to be controversial started talking about how none of the dozen or so women cooks who've left the restaurant over the past five or six years have gone on to open restaurants. She pointed out all of the guys who've done so, or gone on to become chefs at other places (Brian, Troy, Chris, Charlie, Russ) and asked, how come investors are lining up to give these guys restaurants but not one woman has been able to get anything off the ground?

I said it's because women are too smart (and in general, not ego-driven or masochistic enough) to want their own restaurants. And a lot of these women have small children, which opens the door to a whole different conversation.

I don't give a hoot if I'm ever known or famous for my cooking! I just want to cook good, honest food, and make every single plate perfectly. I want to work in a kitchen with kind and respectful cooks who work as hard as I do. I want to work with the best ingredients available to me. I want a somewhat sustainable lifestyle. I want to stay true to the way things have been done for hundreds--and in some cases thousands--of years. These are things I will not compromise on.

And I think that a lot of women feel the same way about these desires. All of these goals pretty much clash head on with the goal of having your own restaurant or being an executive chef (not so sustainable), and certainly with the idea of being one of the cooks who's "embracing traditional and boundry pushing techniques--often on the same plate."

Does that mean chemicals and foam? Does that mean using plates that look like this? I'm not sure what boundaries he's referring to, but in my cooking I prefer to push the boundaries of taste. Cooks who know me know I try to take things to their farthest possible point to extract the deepest flavors from my cooking: salt, caramelization, acid, fat. I layer flavors, or elements of one flavor, in an attempt to bring out the very quintessence of an ingredient. Isn't that boundary-pushing, too? In this day and age, when everyone is looking for the next trend, the next big thing, I wonder if it isn't groundbreaking to stay true to tradition.


The response from the radio show has been incredible! Here is my favorite email so far (posted with the author's permission):

Dear Samin,

I happened to accidently run into your radio show today - The Story I think it was - found it while listening to Ashland Oregon radio on the 'puter - qute a fluke. You were awesome and I am inspired. I am a very small organic farmer and seed grower up in NW Washington - my main interest is in finding neglected heirloom vegetable varieties and bringing them back into circulation and taking good care of them - best accomplishment so far has been to save Winter Bloomsdale Spinach and get it back into availability as organic seed.

Anyway - I found your story very inspiring - now I'm so excited about producing the kind of eggs you so aptly described - actually I do produce such eggs but don't often encounter people who know about egg qualilty like you do - it's in the yolk color and that is from the diet (lots of green leaves - i.e. pasture). Now I'm determined to produce them in quantity and at a reasonable cost and make the rounds of restaurant back doors looking for somone like you to feature them.

You really made my mouth water with your description of the Parmesian cheese - way to go. I'm a fan of yours now.



eggplant cooking in the coals :: august, 2008 at cannard farm

well, the link to my npr story is up on the story's website! i can't exactly bring myself to listen to it yet, but my hope is that i didn't say anything too embarrassing. going into the studio to record was a fantastic experience, and everyone at kqed and the story was really, really caring and generous.

every morning lately, i wake up and say, "thank you, thank you, thank you!" to the universe for all of the wonderful things that are happening. some, i can talk about here, and some i can't, but i want everyone to know that i couldn't have dreamt up these days if i'd tried. for one thing, the red light camera ticket i got (for $500) and fought with a sketchy traffic lawyer who calls himself mr. ticket and charges a flat rate of $100: i somehow won that case even though i pretty much ran the light. um. ok. i'll take it!

cooking at cp has continued to be magical. for one thing, i love having a job where i'm not in charge. i also love being a floater, helping out here and there. i've just tried to believe that i'll be able to make it financially as new opportunities appear, and so far, things have been fine. last night while we cooked a beautiful dinner for cecilia chiang's 90th birthday (hello, emily's delicious potstickers!) there was such an incredible feeling of camaraderie and trust in the kitchen. i just feel so lucky to be part of this community!

i wish i had a scanner so i could share the beautiful handmade menu with you, but in it's stead i'll type out what we made:

little snacks of boiled peanuts with star anise, cucumber and radish pickles and olives

dumplings and salt and pepper squid

corn and lobster soup with scallions

tea smoked squab

braised eggplant and rapini

sichuan green beans

fragrant rice

coconut ice cream with autumn strawberries and tapioca (!)

asian-inspired mignardises

it was lovely. i hope it inspires you!



Where you can find me:

Not at home.

Tomorrow, at Eat, Learn, Live with Michael Pollan teaching UC Berkeley freshmen about sustainability. I'll be doing a demo of panzanella made with Dirty Girl tomatoes!

Saturday 10/3 at Full Belly Farm's Hoes Down, doing a tomato canning demo

Monday 10/5 on NPR's The Story. Details TBA!

Sunday 10/11 at Pizzaiolo for the Soul Food Farm Fundraiser. Tickets and raffle tickets are still available!

Saturday 10/17 at OPENfuture

Saturday and Sunday 10/24-25 in Kansas City with Novella doing a Complete Chicken class at Bad Seed Farm

Sunday and Monday 11/15-16 in Brooklyn with Novella, location TBA doing Complete Rabbit Classes

Tuesday and Wednesday 11/17-18 at Diner Brooklyn with the OPEN and Meatpaper folks doing Airstream dinners (hopefully cooking up the rabbit from our classes!)

Sunday 11/22 at Biofuel Oasis teaching an olive curing class


Throw in some nights at CP, writing projects, major canning while we've still got tomatoes, and a whole lot of insomnia and you've got my life!
i'm overwhelmed:

by the amount of work i have these days. who knew unemployment would be so busy?
by the abundance and generosity shown to chris, me and my cooks by our community.
by the number of emails i've gotten over the past month. and the number i have yet to respond to.
by the incredible opportunities i've been led to.
by empathy for two of my dearest friends who are each going through really difficult times.

i'm not quite sure of how to balance it all.

i wish i had a personal assistant to help me get organized.

Soul Food Farm raffle!


photo borrowed from SFF blog


Bonnie and I have been hard at work organizing all of the generous donations the incredible Bay Area food community has offered for the raffle and auction to raise money for Soul Food Farm!! We are so excited to finally be able to start selling some tickets for this thing!

Please check in to the SFF blog post periodically as Bonnie will be updating the list as more and more items are offered. There are a lot more prizes in the works (not official yet), but I'm telling you, this list is gonna be GOOOOD! I might even buy 10 tickets myself!

The raffle is gonna happen live at Pizzaiolo on October 11th at 3pm. We'll soon start selling tickets to that event, where we'll have snacks, drinks and rowdy music, as well as Alexis and Eric in the flesh.

EDIT: here's an updated list of awesome prizes!!



i'm super-excited to be helping out with OPENfuture, the next project from my friends at OPEN.

there's going to be a lot going on at SF MOMA on october 17th, complete with a whole spit-roasted dexter steer from cannard farm being butchered by a bunch o'ladies (including me!), flying wheels of stacie's panforte, and all sorts of performance art/food boundaries being blurred. i think there will be lots of waxy mustaches in attendance, as well, for those of you who might be interested.
soul food farm laying hens :: june, 2009

my dear friend alexis's soul food farm has suffered a horrible disaster: two nights ago, a fire burned down chicken houses and 1,000 baby chicks, a bard from the 1880s, and nearly thirty acres of pasture for the meat birds. without immediate and serious financial help, they may not be able to continue farming.

bonnie wrote an incredibly detailed post on ethicurean with lots of info and a paypal donation button. we're also working hard to set up a big fundraising party to get them lots of cash asap to ensure they're able to continue their good work.

please check in again in a week or so, when i'll have more details and a set date and location (hopefully) for the party so we can all spread the work and help keep soul food farm going.

spit-roasted suckling pig :: august, 2009

we're still in the midst of packing up the restaurant, so i'm juggling that with cleaning my own apartment after weeks of neglect, a joyful return to yoga, and a few nights a week at cp (which are kicking my butt. the pace of cooking downstairs is no joke!).

i'm starting to toss around some canning ideas--anyone interested in some workshops in october? dirty girl early girls, or perhaps some cucumber pickles? i'm finagling some restaurant friends to let me use their kitchens on their days off, so we'll see what pans out. and the outdoor kitchen in sonoma is almost ready to go. otherwise, i'd be happy to come to your house and do a workshop with you and 4-6 of your closest friends. leave me a comment, peeps!


christopher lee, eccolo :: august 2009



me, eccolo :: august 2009

photos by the ever-fantastic bart nagel

yesterday, while i was up at the farm with deeann and novella, my piece on the closing of eccolo ran in the chronicle. and even though at times i want to throw that durned iphone out the window, every time i checked it, there were a few more emails, messages and comments about the piece. and you know what, nearly every single one said that it had brought the reader to tears. yowza!

there was a lot i didn't have room for in that piece, and i'm sure that over time i'll be able to tell more and more of the story. i do want everyone to know these two things, though:

1) we tried everything we could to save the place, including cooking every sort of people-pleasing food you might be able to imagine. our egos and ideas of what we should be cooking went out the window many years ago when we realized that we had to cook people what they wanted to eat if we wanted to survive.

2) at the heart of it, the investor simply had a different idea about how to run a restaurant than we did. he was actually very generous, supporting us financially for a very, very long time without any return on his money. i don't know very many people who'd do that. but when it came down to it and things needed to change in a big way, we were forced make some big decisions about what we were and weren't willing to do, and we decided that we couldn't compromise any further.

now i'm off to the restaurant to clean up a bit. hopefully, this will be the last week of packing up. i've already started working a bit at cp, and am trying to get some of my other projects organized. i think next week i'll get a chance to catch my breath, when i head down to esalen to TA a seed-to-table cooking workshop for jessica theroux.
i know this is getting really old for you to hear, but i am still dead tired and really busy with closing up eccolo. i'm so exhausted i haven't actually had a chance to process any of my feelings (certainly not sadness!).

packing up a restaurant is really difficult and time-consuming, plus, the last week of special dinners was brutally busy, so pretty much every single cook was there 12 to 16 hours a day every day. it was so much fun, and so special, to have that time with my cooks, but i am burnt out.

unfortunately, no time to rest yet. more packing today, cooking at cp tonight for the birthday, chicken slaughtering and butchering workshop tomorrow with novella, and sunday a visit to a very special rabbit farm.

the reason i even turned on the computer, though, was to tell you guys to check out my piece in the chronicle food section this sunday about the closing of eccolo. hopefully by then i'll find five minutes to upload some photos (or videos!) for you of our last weeks.

Urban Farming, Butchery & Cooking Demo at Ghost Town Farm


novella's turkey feet:: november, 2008

have you guys heard about the eat real festival? well, novella and i are going to do a little project in conjunction with them on saturday, august 28th.

novella wrote out the whole thing here, so i won't type it all out again, but we're gonna be having a grand ol' time at the farm all day long. so please, come down and check it out if you're around!