Culinary Muse

EATING CHEAP, AT HOME, IN SAN FRANCISCO OR WHY I LOVE MY CAST IRON SKILLET WITH SPANISH ROASTED POTATO RECIPE

For a very long time it lived in the dark, tucked away in the back of the cupboard that holds all of the seldom used cookware.  Once in a while it would get unearthed for baking a Pineapple Upside Down Cake.  But lately it has held forth front and center in the kitchen.  The ten-inch cast iron skillet.  Seasoned to a shiny black by someone else's grandmother it is the kitchen workhorse of the hour.  Need to dry out a few slices of bread for breadcrumbs?  Place them in the skillet in a 400-degree oven for about 10 minutes.  Feeling guilty about wasting the last quarter loaf of that great ACME Walnut Bread?  Cut it into 2" squares, place in the skillet in a 400-degree oven for about 15 minutes, tossing every five minutes.  But what has really kept the skillet front and center this week is the recipe below. This is a deeply satisfying and easy meal to make after a long day at work.  It also fits into the category that we can all relate to:  THE BUDGET MEAL.

Maybe you need to eat home all this week.  Your next paycheck doesn't arrive until next Friday and you can't quite justify or afford a 'cheap' $20 meal out every night this week.  The solution is a pantry stocked with Russet potatoes, good olive oil, kosher salt, Spanish Smoked Paprika and eggs.

THE MUSE'S SPANISH ROASTED POTATOES
Preheat oven to 400-degrees. 
4 Russet potatoes, washed, dried and cut into 1-inch chunks
Place potatoes in a large mixing bowl.  Add about 1/4 cup olive oil, 1 teaspoon kosher or sea salt, 1 teaspoon Spanish Smoked Paprika (sweet), 1/2-teaspoon garlic powder. 
Toss well until the mixture turns a deep mahogany red. 
Place in cast iron pan.  Roast for 30 minutes.  Using a metal spatula carefully turn the potatoes over being sure to scrape the great crust that is forming on the bottom.  Return to oven for at least 30 more minutes or until they are nice and crisp. Remove from oven.

Poach 4 eggs.  Place roasted potatoes on plate.  Top with poached eggs. 

Yield: two servings

Blum's Where Are You????

Every year the Muse is asked, in her other life, to predict restaurant trends 3 to 5 years from now. This always gets the Muse a little worked up because there is a wide gap between what she sees coming down the road and what she would like to see coming down the road.  The first trend I would like to see return, to San Francisco at least, is the return of the fountain, a la Blum's.  New York has Serendipity and we San Franciscans have, well, nothing.  Yes, bits and pieces exist here and there.  Fenton's in Oakland is the closest to what Blum's was - a good combination of savory sandwiches and over the top ice cream creations.  But Blum's had more to offer.  Blum's was a pink spun sugar fantasy come to life.  It had a gift shop.  It had shocking pink banquettes.  It had surly waitresses.  And it had cake.  Not those plastic looking, multi colored and tasteless layered cakes offered in cafes around Union Square.  No.  They had Blum's Famous Coffee Crunch cake. (This legendary cake is so memorable that Nancy Silverton has included a recipe for it in her latest cookbook.)

Blum's was partly a restaurant for the ladies who didn't work and spent their days going downtown to shop, meet friends and get home before the children came home from school.  It was also the highlight of a day spent in THE CITY for those who came from across the bay. 

So here is what the Muse would like to see in Union Square: a pink soda fountain with freshly baked layer cakes (NO CUPCAKES, PLEASE), a decent club sandwich made with thick bacon that does not declare its pedigree, and a tall, hot fudge sundae served with a pitcher of hot fudge on the side.  How hard could this be to realize? 

Spice Cake

Okay, how lazy can I get?  Sunday I craved spice cake.  Not a fancy spice cake, just a 'from the box' spice cake.  Have you cruised the cake mix aisle lately at a regular (not Whole Foods type) grocery store?  There are lots of chocolate, yellow, white and lemon (?) cake mixes.  Lots of brownie mixes.  (Even a nightmarish confetti cake mix which looks like an adult's idea of what a child would think is fun.  I may be jaded but the children that I know are purists.  No confetti, no glitter, just hand over the chocolate, thank you.)  The nearest facsimile to a spice cake mix that I could find was a carrot cake mix.  Now I had to weigh how desperate I was.  What itch was I really trying to scratch?  Was it my need to approximate a fond childhood memory of a cake straight out of a box or a chef's quest for a culinary revelation?  Could I trust Betty Crocker to deliver?  And what would bits of dehydrated carrot in a cake mix taste and look like?  My ingenious food stylist side said, "just sift out the orangey bits".  My food consulting side said "you know what dehydrated carrot tastes like when reconstituted - soap". My carefree, take a chance side said "just buy the damn cake mix and get on with it".  So I did.

When I got home I assembled all the necessary ingredients: three eggs, vegetable oil, water. I dumped the mix into a wire sieve and sifted out as many of the karrot bits as I could catch.  This process proved what I have always suspected.  There are many foods that one should not inspect too closely before consuming.  This is especially true in the world of packaged foods.  Then I went to work adding my own additions: ground cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and cardamom.  Half way through this process I did realize that with very little effort I could have just made a cake from scratch.  Too late now.  I poured the batter into a well-greased bundt pan and then placed it into the oven. About 30 minutes later I it occurred to me what I was really hunting for in this great spice cake caper.  The heady aroma of dark spices wafting through the kitchen announced the arrival of fall, my favorite season, like nothing else could. 

HOME AGAIN

The Culinary Muse returns from hiatus to find that San Francisco is in the middle of its best time of year - Indian Summer - with a dash of rain (we prefer to think of it as a heavy fog) thrown in for good measure.  There was just enough rain yesterday to keep the tourists alert and to discourage them from thinking (realizing?) that we live in paradise.  One of these tourists, a stockbroker from Illinois, was telling the Muse that he first visited San Francisco in 1957.  He was on leave from the Marine Corps.  When he arrived he headed straight to North Beach where he spent his entire week's leave. To this day this obviously successful businessman from the era of The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit sounded wistful as he spoke of beatniks and coffee houses.  In semi-retirement, he is trying to talk his wife into moving to SF but she won't leave Illinois and their ten grandchildren.  His children have all married into old families with deep local roots so they are staying put as well.  But he is still trying to figure out a way to come back.  Maybe the phrase 'I left my heart in San Francisco' rings true for more people than the Muse realized.  People do seem to leave at least part of their souls here.  Time spent in San Francisco is transforming.  The natural beauty stirs souls but so does the underlying sense of freedom and possibility.  As Emily Dickinson might say we "dwell in possibility....".  So nice to be home.