Every year CUESA (Center for Urban Education for Sustainable Agriculture) at the San Francisco Ferry Building has a wonderful fund raiser called Sunday Supper. Many Bay Area chefs cook for this dinner. There are wines, beers and cocktails and finger foods at the opening  reception on the main floor of the Ferry Building. Then the guests go upstairs where they are seated at long family style tables and a group of chefs cooks for each section of 50 guests.

Over the years I have been a chef at the reception, and a guest at the event. This year I worked with Chef Staffan Terje of Perbacco and Chef Mourad Lahlou of Aziza to help plate their delicious food. Staffan and staff prepared a marinated duck breast, a sausage stuffed into the duck neck, sauerkraut mashed potatoes and cherry mostarda.  Yum! My job was to sprinkle on the duck cracklings( and not to eat too many of them myself)

 Mourad cooked his famous Moroccan spiced lamb shank, vegetables and fluffy couscous. The guests really had two great dishes to savor.  All of the other dishes prepared by the chefs looked great and we cooks managed to snag some primo tastes from the leftovers.

I have decided that I’d rather work the event than be a guest. It is so much more fun to be with the chefs. Now that I do not have my own restaurant, I miss the comraderie of working with my peers. I loved being with the chefs as they plated the food, chatted, gossiped, tasted, and  sipped beer from a donated keg.  

Later that evening they had the auction. I had donated a dinner for eight in my home and guess who bought the dinner?  Umberto Gibin who owns Perbacco. This time Staffan can help me out!  It will be such fun to cook with him again.

It had been well over twelve years since it was last painted and my kitchen was looking tired. Definitely in need of refreshing.  I had a planned trip to the East Coast on my calendar and thought that it would be an ideal time to have it painted while I was away. That way I would not have to try to live through the mess. I contacted my trusty professional painter and set the date.  

Now my work began. I had to clear the shelves, all of the counters and the walls.  It’s hard to believe how much “stuff” one accumulates when one is a professional cook. I filled cartons and crates with casseroles, tagines, crocks, timers, wine openers, pots and pans, baskets, mugs, coffee machines, toasters, blenders, mixers and food processors.   I moved these bulging boxes into the dining room and living room. Later I hoped to weed out some of the excess.

I returned to a spotless, gleaming shell.  So then the real job of reassembling my work space began. What would stay and would would go? I wish I could say that I was ruthless and discarded equipment and tchotchkes but I was a coward and kept almost everything.   

It feels like home.

What sad news. It is the end of an era. I learned to cook from Gourmet Magazine. When I was a graduate student at Yale, with the first kitchen to call my own, I would  look forward each month to selecting new recipes to cook. I daydreamed about trips to countries I had yet to visit, restaurants I would put on the list of places to try, if I ever got there. In my tiny student apartment I felt like the soul of elegance, having prepared senegalese soup, duck a l’orange, crabmeat Maryland, coquilles St Jacques, and sole Normande. What Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking  was for many, Gourmet was for me.

I was thrilled when I saved enough money to buy their first cookbook, a weighty tome in a brown cover with gold print.  The pages on my 1958 editions of the Gourmet Cookbook, Volumes One and Two and the 1963 Gourmet Menu cookbook are stained with the juices of recipes I have cooked for years. Gateau Rolla, gougeres, madeleines, souffle Rothchild, croquembuche, caviar hors d’oeuvre roll, the Christmas roast goose stuffed with fruit, so many of my family’s holiday favorites came from those pages.  Looking through these books today, the recipes still seem inviting and some, even ahead of their time.

The power of their restaurant reviews was formidable. When Square One was reviewed  by Caroline Bates, people would come into my restaurant clutching the review in their hands. They trusted Gourmet to tell them where to go and what was memorable on the menu.

I must confess I did not enjoy the magazine as much when Ruth Reichl took it over. The tone changed, the recipes became more casual, and there were fewer recipes I wanted to try.  But it is sad to see a classic fade away. We will mourn the loss of Gourmet magazine. It was a culinary touchstone.

It was inevitable that I would go see Julie and Julia. All in all, a cute and entertaining film. Meryl Streep amazing as usual. Despite the brief surge in sales of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, you really can’t go home again. Those days in the sixties  of America’s awakening to French food are long gone. It is now just one cuisine out of many that are of interest to us. Real men still don’t eat quiche; they eat pizza and tacos. Most of us prefer grilled chicken to coq au vin and we now know that pounds of butter and cream are not good for us. Plus they make us feel full, fat and guilty. Julia once questioned me as to why I embraced  the Mediterranean diet. She was not impressed with it because it had such small portions of meat and not much dairy. I told her my father died at 47 of a heart attack and I was not blessed with her metabolism and gene pool to survive all that saturated fat! 

The days of elaborate dinner parties that were inspired by her book are over too. Few people are willing to devote the time to prepare such multicourse feasts. In fact few people invite you for dinner, despite those elegantly remodled kitchens . They’d rather meet you at the latest restaurant.   

 When I started teaching cooking in 1965 all my students wanted  “Gourmet French.”  But over the years their tastes evolved. They wanted  Italian, Middle Eastern, Asian, and Holiday cooking.  Americans are omnivorous, and interested in all kinds of cooking.

The other thing that struck me as ironic is that if Julia tried out for television today they would not hire her. Weird voice, not pretty, sort of awkward and too natural. Not slick enough for the tube. Sort of sad what has happened to cooking on TV. It’s mostly game shows and competitions that get the most attention. You really can’t go home again.

In this weeks NY Times Magazine section Michael Pollan has noticed that since the advent of the Food Network that home cooking has just about vanished.  Many of us in the food  business noticed this quite a while ago.  It has affected those in the restaurant  business as well as those at home.

Trying to hire line cooks who will cook the food that is the signature and style of the restaurant? Good luck. Since the Food Network, they want to be creative, to run free.  TV fantasyland has invaded their minds and rather than stay on the job and learn something, they daydream of being discovered as the next Top Chef and have a lucrative career on the tube. Restaurant  work is physically  demanding, repetitious, and does not pay that well. So they don’t want to stay for long in the working kitchen but aspire to stardom on a TV set kitchen.

Watching the competitions, Iron Chef battles, Top chef melees, home viewers are  entertained by the sport, but not really inspired to cook anything. Like Peter Sellars in Being There, they just want to watch.   Gone are the days when Julia Child cooked and  the home cook watched and then cooked. Now most television cooking is fluff for the  mind.  Displays of technical derring do!  Turbo ovens, whirring machines, Paco Jets, chemical thickeners, sous vide. No one has that kind of equipment at home so why bother??

Cookbooks are still printed but few at home are really using them. Sales for the last five years are down dramatically. Publishers are worried, as are authors and culinary experts who used to write books for people who used to cook. That audience  is now buying prepared food at Trader Joes and sending out for pizza.  We have become a nation of culinary voyeurs. Some buy books for the photos of food.  Food porn for those who dream of cooking while eating mediocre takeout. 

Well, maybe after reading Pollan a few people may be sufficiently embarrassed to pick up the saute pan, but will not know what to do with it. Three  generations of kitchen absenteeism means that no one at home has taught them how to cook.  

Maybe it is time for a grandma who cooks every night at home to show them.  Except they don’t like old people on TV. Not glamorous. Not as perky asRachael Ray, no cleavage, no snappy patter and amped up adrenalin.  No machines a plenty . No five minute meals.  Just cooking common sense in real time for the real world.  Anyone ready for that??

Today I watched a video of a pastry chef who spent hours making a dessert that featured a huge slicer, a dehydrator, gellan gum, instant freezer, and for what. A carrot cake with ice cream and a carrot curl. Too much state of the art for the state of the problem. C’mon, guys. Stop showing off your equipment ( in too many ways! ) ! Make something that tastes good and and does not need a three ring circus of technology. Enough already.

I have written about about Tapas which are small plates from Spain. But it seems as if every bar that offers small plates, no matter what the food may be, will call them “tapas”. Today I read a review of a Tapas bar in Berkeley offering such “tapas” as coconut shrimp ( pseudo Asian),fish tacos ( Mexico),smoked salmon, and, aargh!  buffalo wings with blue cheese.  Nuff said.  I have to say that this drives me crazy. These are NOT TAPAS.

Call them small plates, bar food, but please, do not call these dishes Tapas. It is offensive to those who repect this age old Spanish tradition.

My latest book, Tapas, Sensational Small Plates from Spain is now available at your local book store and on line.  I am going on the road with it, teaching classes, doing demos and book signings and even some TV.  Here is a recent review. 

Tapas: Sensational Small Plates from Spain Joyce Goldstein Chronicle, $22.95 paper (168p) ISBN 978-0-8118-6298-1

Goldstein, author of Antipasti and Italian Slow and Savory, ably whittles down the expansive gastronomy of Spain into a worthy, compact cookbook. Instead of attempting an impossible feat—to include every component of the Spanish table in a glossy, chic nutshell—she wisely chooses the best of each dish, starting with five basic sauces that can be applied to the seafood, meat, vegetable and egg recipes that follow. Though a few dishes are larger than a typical small-plate (Asturian white bean stew or paprika-marinated pork tenderloin, for example), Goldstein stays true to the fundamental procedures and ingredients used in modern Spanish kitchens. Salty, spicy and sweet, Goldstein offers innovative tapas, showcasing the best of each of Spain’s diverse regions. Each recipe comes with wine pairings, both Spanish and non-Spanish, and the book begins with a clever rundown of Spain’s history, cheeses, cured meats and fish. While some recipes might seem daunting for beginners (cleaning squid or handling a whole octopus), there is also an entire chapter dedicated to “Shop-and-Serve Tapas” that require little to no preparation. With vibrant photos and straightforward instructions, this book has all the makings of a reliable source of fun, crowd-pleasing ideas for the contemporary cook. (June)

 And here is another :

Volumes of flavor

Celebrated cookbook author coming to region

By Doug Gruse
dgruse@poststar.com

Published: Saturday, June 06, 2009

Larger Text 
“http://www.poststar.com/core/images/header/logo_print_new.jpg“; 

The problem could be anything from not accounting for the difference between home and professional appliances to inaccurate measurements, according to the author of the recently released “Tapas: Sensational Small Plates from Spain.”
When Goldstein works on a cookbook — and she’s written a slew of them — she guarantees every dish will be a success.

“I pride myself in writing books where the recipes are well-tested. No one is going to call me at home hysterical because the recipe didn’t work,” she said. 
Goldstein will bring her cooking knowledge to New York and Vermont for a series of culinary events. Goldstein will be honored with a Spanish-style luncheon at noon Thursday at The Perfect Wife in Manchester Center, Vt. The author will take part in an interview-style program, moderated by chef Suvir Saran, at 7 p.m. Friday at Red Fox Books in downtown Glens Falls. She also will teach a class on Mediterranean cooking June 13 at the Battenkill Kitchen in Salem.

Goldstein was the chef and owner of Square One in San Francisco, a highly acclaimed Mediterranean restaurant. Goldstein also served as chef at the Cafe at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif., and was the founder of the California Street Cooking School.

Goldstein had previously published a cookbook on Spain, but she wanted to create a book that focused on tapas, the Spanish appetizers that have gained international popularity.

“I wanted to pick the best 50 or 60 tapas recipes I could do and make sure they were perfect, and I wanted to give a little background about Spain and Spanish ingredients,” Goldstein said. 
The book offers recipes on dishes ranging from Galician double-crusted pie with a fish or meat filling to grilled green onions, artichokes and asparagus with salsa romesco.

Goldstein wanted the book to present a more authentic view of tapas than what is served in many American restaurants.

“There are all sorts of American dishes that people are calling tapas. A lot of people call things tapas that have nothing to do with Spain, they just serve them on small plates,” she said.
Goldstein believes the tapas trend eventually will become a staple rather than a fad in American cuisine.

“It’s a wonderful way to entertain people. I can’t think of anything better. A lot of them can be done ahead of time, and most of them are served at room temperature,” she said. “They are fine to eat, and they have lively flavor.”

When it comes to dining out, tapas dishes allow diners to get experimental with little risk.

“If you order an entrée in a restaurant and you don’t like it, you are out $25 to $30 bucks,” she said.

In addition to the influence of serving sizes at restaurants, the Spanish flavors of tapas are beginning to appear in contemporary American dishes.
“Years ago, you couldn’t get a lot of Spanish ingredients. I think that is why it took so long for Spain to come into people’s homes,” she said.

Today, hints of Spanish flavor are becoming common in American recipes and restaurant dishes, according to the chef.

“I think Americans are a little more adventurous. Even if it gets watered down, they are getting the flavors,” she said.

For Goldstein, writing cookbooks is as much about changing people’s food philosophies as it is about creating step-by-step instructions for specific dishes.

Goldstein’s previous book, “Mediterranean Fresh: A Compendium of One-Plate Salad Meals and Mix-and-Match Dressings,” focused on the versatility of Mediterranean dressings as marinades and finishing sauces.
In “Solo Suppers: Simple Delicious Meals to Cook for Yourself,” Goldstein was on a mission to show people that it is possible to live alone and eat well.

“I think you can cook wonderfully for yourself. I live alone, and I cook for myself,” she said.

The book was inspired by her own frustration with trying to work with recipes written to serve four to six people.

“I don’t want to eat something four days in a row,” she said.

Although some recipes can be scaled down, others don’t convert as easily. Goldstein wanted to write a book that would empower single people to get back in the kitchen.
“I really believe we eat better if we cook for ourselves. We get a better quality of ingredients with less preservatives and garbage,” she said.

Goldstein has found that eating by yourself doesn’t have to be a lonely experience.

“If you really respect yourself, you’re certainly worth a half hour of time,” she said. “You can even afford to splurge on yourself every once in a while.”

I know, I know. It’s been too long since I have added a post here. I have been traveling most of the Month of May  and will be gone again next week.  I was in NYC for the Beard awards ( no my book did not win; It lost out to the big food trend of the year, Fat.  So much for salads and good nutrition. Even six of the journalism award nominations were about pigs and pork.)  But the Awards ceremonies  themselves were a hit and quite inspiring. It was the first time Women in Food had been celebrated by the James Beard Foundation. All the food served at the reception and at the media dinner was prepared by women chefs.  We had women mixologists making great cocktails. And women sommeliers serving wine at the VIP dinner. As a founding member of Women Chefs and Restaurateurs , it made me mighty proud.

I also hae embarked on a new aspect of teaching. I worked with the culinary food service teams at Yale University  an at University of Massachussetts in Amherst.  Student diners are way more discerning these days and I have been teaching the  university cooks the fabulous food of the Mediterranean. It was especially poignant for me to be at Yale from where   I graduated 50 years ago. Visited the Art and Architecture school where I had been a student. Very  emotional and heartwarming.

Also was a participant in  Cooking for Solutions, a great chef event heal at the Monterey Bay Aquarium every year.  It celebrates sustainability on land and in the ocean.  Very inspiring. Did  a demo at Esalen and one at Quail Lodge in Carmel Valley. Also visited Earthbound Farms to tour their amazing gardens

Now I am off again to teach in upstate NYC with my friend chef Suvir Saran and a return visit to U Mass for a chefs conference.

So sorry to be so brief  here but time is of the essence. 

Later!

 After last year’s successful Passover dinner  at Perbacco we decided to do it  again. Over 290 guests ate classic Italian Jewish recipes for the Passover holiday ( recipes from my cookbook Cucina Ebraica) and wow, were they happy! I guess we will have to do it again next year, as we had so many requests for a repeat performance. Chef Staffan Terje and his staff cooked their hearts out. and Umberto Gibin ran the dining room like the pro that he is.  Sommelier Mauro selected ideal wines to match the food. I am attaching the menu so you can see what was served. Stay tuned for next year’s dinner.  

A Passover Dinner celebrating traditional Jewish cooking in Italy

with recipes from “Cucina Ebraica” by  guest chef Joyce Goldstein

Haroset

**

Antipasti

(served family style)

Fegato di Anatra alle Uova Sode – Chopped Duck Liver, Italian Style

Spuma di Tonno al Peperoni – Tuna Paté in Roasted Peppers

Carciofi alla Giudia – Crispy Fried Artichokes, Jewish Style

Melanzane in Insalata – Grilled Eggplant Salad

Concia – Roasted Zucchini with Mint and Vinegar

Peperoni Ripieni – Peppers Stuffed with Eggplant

**

Primi

Brodo con Polpette Uova per Pesach – Passover Soup with Chicken Dumplings and Eggs

or

Crema di Carciofi – Artichoke Soup

***

Secondi

(choose one per person)

Spigola al Sugo di Carciofi – Seabass with a Sauce of Artichokes

Tonno Fresco con Piselli – Fresh Tuna with Spring Peas

Pollo Arrosto all’Arancia, Limone , e Zenzero

Roast Chicken with Orange, Lemon and Ginger

Rotolo di Vitello coi Colori – Veal Breast Stuffed with Peppers and an Omelet

Spalla di Montone con le Olive – Lamb Shoulder Braised with Olives

Carciofata di Trieste – Spring Vegetable Stew from Trieste (vegetarian)

Contorni for the Table

Purea di Patate e Olio – Olive Oil Potato Purée

Finocchio alla Giudia – Braised Fennel, Jewish Style

Carote alla Giudia – Sweet Carrots with Raisins and Pine nuts

***

Dolce

(served family style)

Frutta Caramellata con Zabaglione – Caramelized Fresh Fruit with Zabaglione

Pan di Spagna alle Nocciole – Passover Hazelnut Sponge Cake

Scodelline – Almond Pudding

$49.00 per Person