In praise of excess

Hot diggity! Cherry season has begun. This past weekend, I bought 2 pounds of Brooks from Frog Hollow Farm* and another pound of Tulare. Scott thought this was excessive, but did the cherries last until Monday? No. I have eaten cherries to the point of self-injury. No other food has this effect. To put it in analogy form:

"Amy is to cherries" as...

a) Bush is to privacy
b) "Lost" is to narrative
c) Cats are to catnip

Answer in my next post. Meanwhile, I'm sure cherries are chock full of antioxidants or somesuch. It's not like I'm eating Pringles, right?

There's plenty of other good produce in the market, too. Last night, I steamed some asparagus, fava beans, and baby artichokes and made a lazy aioli with store-bought mayonnaise and leftover basil vinaigrette. All green! So simple and delicious.

*Scott, my birthday and Valentine's day are very close together.

Cheese, please

Ever since we decided to move back home, our friends and colleagues have responded with understanding murmurings about the importance of family, the value in having given it a shot, the cost of real estate. People have been kind and we appreciate it. We've made friends out here who we'll miss terribly. And I think it's a safe bet that about half of them think we're nuts. To be able to live out here and do work that you enjoy...and to choose to leave it? In exchange for Boston winters? Why would any sane person do that?

As I've been saying a lot lately, family trumps food. And even weather. But the food thing does pain me. I've grown accustomed to year-round farmers markets, strawberries in March, tomatoes in October, persimmons in November, green grass in January. I'm remembering one very sorry excuse for a persimmon that I saw in a fancy Boston produce market last December. I fear the ennui (and bloat) of being separated from all these remarkable farm-fresh fruits and vegetables.

But, on an optimistic note, I just thumbed through some press materials for Jeff Roberts's Atlas of American Artisan Cheese (June 2007: Chelsea Green Press. $35), and it gives me hope. In his definitive list of all the artisan cheesemakers in the West, Roberts lists 86. That includes all the producers in California, Washington, Oregon, Hawaii, Alaska, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. Meanwhile, in little bitty New England (that's Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut to you westerners), there are 84! If you add New York state, that brings the total to 119.

This does nothing for my waistline. But it does wonders for my spirits.

Bread heaven

I had a getting-to-know-you visit today with my new doctor. This being San Francisco, I filled out a lengthy questionnaire about my health history, my relationships, my feelings, and my food habits. She gave me great advice, and told me it never hurts to try accupuncture. I wanted to say, "Really? It never hurts?" But I bet she gets that all the time.

One of the questionnaire items had me listing foods that I crave and foods that are comforting. That would be "bread," and "bread." And I found the most fantastic bread up in Mendocino last weekend at Café Beaujolais. Best I've had so far, and that's saying something.

The breads are baked in a wood-fired oven and sold out of a little window on the side of a cottage. Couldn't be more charming. And they are the moistest, crustiest, most flavorful loaves. We bought a fougasse and a levain, and it took some willpower to not devour them on the 4-hour drive home. In the rain, with no lunch.

So here's the question: Now that we've found it, is it...hmm, excessive to do an 8-hour round-trip just for the bread?

Local favorites

One of the great thrills of going back home was the chance to visit two of my old haunts in Cambridge. The first, Formaggio Kitchen, is the former employer of Jessica from Feed and Supply, and still the best cheese shop I know. Hi-Rise Bakery is a source of superior breads, pastries, and jams, and an employer of comically grumpy and disaffected art students.

I love Formaggio not just for its good looks and jaw-dropping selection. It's the cheese cave underneath the store, where all the little live things are allowed to come to their peak ripeness before they hit the floor. With that kind of care, you're always assured that the Abbaye de Belloc for which you shell out $22/lb. for will be so good, you'll only need to eat a little bit at a time. Thereby resolving your ambivalence about paying $22 for a hunk of cheese.

As for Hi-Rise, I love them for their brichoe, their jam, and their jam-filled brioche. And the shrimp salad. The cookies and cakes and pies are also buttery and tender, but I save my calories for the jam and bread.

Hi-Rise's big downside, or charm, depending on how you look at is, lies in the subduction zone of the cash register, where cranky staff meets entitled customer. This is the great risk of doing business in places like Cambridge, and I'm not sure there's much to be done about it. The millionaire, NPR-listening, gluten-sensitive buyers believe they are each more special than the next. They struggle to share the big "family table" in the middle of the store. No room! Too many exceptional people! Meanwhile, the art students fail to conceal their contempt. And I silently project I'm not one of them, really while I order a jam-filled brioche, but with the apricot-lime jam, please, not the raspberry. No, not the apricot-lemon, the apricot-lime, 'cause I really like what the lime does to the...oh, uh, thank you.

Cheese n' stuff

Hot damn, I've got breaking news!

Well, for a food writer.

This morning, at the Association of Food Journalists conference in San Francisco, I sampled a cheese that hasn't yet hit the market. And it's made by Cowgirl Creamery. And it's really, really good. In Northern California, that qualifies as news, man.

It's called Farallon (after the Farallon Islands), and it's a very soft, bloomy-rind cheese. Starting with fromage blanc, they stir in some crème fraîche, form it into little patty cakes, and then innoculate the cakes with candida and some other flora I didn't manage to transcribe. They bloom and ripen for about a week and Voilà! A delicate, fresh, creamy, perfect little button. With some fresh berries, or honey and figs, this would be your new favorite cheese. Look for it in stores by the end of the month.

You heard it here first, folks.

Speaking of cheese, I also got to meet Laura Chenel today. My new hero.