20 May Saturday

If you live in San Francisco, you´re familiar with that phenomena known as Gray May. It immediately precedes June Gloom, two months basically of chilly, foggy days where we may see the sun occasionally. It is a great time for soups, stews, baking, that kinda thing. It started last week, when he had a brief warm spell. Great, I thought, I just decided to make split pea soup, and it´s getting hot and sunny and summer is coming and etc. Well, no sooner had the soup cooked then the fog blew in from the coast and all was well. The soup lasted until this morning, ten meals. It never got old.

Split pea soup could not be easier, and is so heavenly, and it improves with age. With my time and budget, I´ve settled into a nice cooking routine. I make a large pot of soup, sandwich stuff, salad fixings, and there is lunch everyday and maybe a third of my dinners. Done. Make a chicken, or something a little more fancy.

Smoked ham shank is best because it is very strange to try to eat without simmering it, but there is a lot of beautiful meat on it at strange angles with a little gristly fat and tendons or whatever. It all disintegrates into the soup, making it thick, and smoky, salty. The dried, sweet peas melt into the ham and hot water, finely diced carrot, celery, onion, and garlic. Cook and cook and cook and cook. Add water as necessary and stir so the peas don´t cake and burn at the bottom.

Between the soup and the rhubarb strawberry cake, that took care of a lot of meals. Eating well, but not cooking much. It´s OK. It´s better than that. Now, I have a little project.

For a party of musicians, I´ve been tasked with appetizers. I thought I would include the favorite foods of musicians, but couldn´t find enough material. So, I pulled out a little book of Appetizers, called creatively, A Book of Appetizers, and sought recipes that include the favorite ingredients of musicians of the past. I´ve come up with a creative list of fun sounding things. I´ll make a little quiz to help the guests figure whose favorite ingredient we are eating. So, here it is. I´ll give you a few hints when necessary. I don´t know that I will make all of them, mind you, but I´ll do as many as I can. Some of them are exactly the dish that our tune smiths loved, some are a bit of a stretch. I´ll indicate the favored ingredient by using a pair of parentheses on either side of the ingredient. Clever, huh?

Josefinas! Where have these been all this time? This book is from 1958, and a quick Googlerama of Josefinas led to a few identical recipes and really not very much else. It should be more popular, I think. Baguette slice, buttered, mayonnaised, heap a tablespoon of finely minced roasted chile pepper and garlic on top, top with shredded jack cheese, broil till it swells, bubbles, browned. It has roots in early 20th Century Kansas. (Cheese).

Cut now, two days later, and I´ve kinda given up on the whole thing. I mean, of course I´m going to make some things. Part of the reason for this is I have decided to make Sumi Salad. What musician´s favorite food is Sumi Salad? Nobody, that´s who. So, how can I say all the recipes are inspired by musicians favorite foods if that is not true? You don´t just throw in another dish in there for no reason, especially something strange like a cabbage salad.

What is Sumi Salad? Thinly shaved napa cabbage, toasted almond slivers and sesame seeds, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, sesame oil. Yumbo jumbo. I found a recipe for it in one of those old spiral-bound books I got down in Santa Barbara. Remember that? More to come.