Ramps!

Ramps! Wild garlic, plucked from the woods, perhaps in the wilds of Oregon, but hopefully on a sustainable ramp farm. They're only available a few weeks out of the year, and this was the first time I've seen them at Whole Foods (ditto for the cashier, apparently).

The cashier at Whole Foods apparently never heard of ramps. There was no listing in her book. She seemed not to even think I was sane when I repeated "ramps, wild garlic, ramps..." It wasn't in the book. Finally someone found the price, under "baby leeks/ramps".  I paid. I left. I cooked.

Ramps are wonderful, a blend of leek, garlic chives and maybe garlic flavors in tender bulbs and stems. These were sautéed in duck fat, with only a bit of salt and pepper, then simmered briefly in brown stock.

The steak is a New York, pan seared. The pan sauce is a mix of more duck fat, roux, butter and the excess liquid from the ramps. Monté au beurre, seasoned and finished with a bit of heavy cream, because you can never have too many kinds of fat.

We chose a Vigilance Petit Syrah 2009 from Lake County, California, a sustainably grown wine. The three main ingredients - rare steak, ramps, sauce - tangoed with the wine in a virtuoso dance gyrating on the palate. What sauce remained was sponged off the plate with some sourdough rosemary bread.

A salad followed the steak in good French tradition. The lettuce traveled about sixty feet from garden to sink to table. Sustainable indeed, and no way it could have been fresher.

Afterward, a decadent dessert: vanilla ice cream, fresh raspberries and strawberries drizzled with crunchy tempered chocolate.

Definitely fancy, and we'll see if ramps grow here in Sacramento - I planted three likely looking bulbs in case there's a chance of this vegetable taking off here.

So, I can credit my fundamentals class, professional cooking and advanced baking for this dinner. Sauté, sauces, tempered chocolate all were improved or inspired by these classes. The wine I already knew about, so we'll skip that class.

A valentine's menu for carnivores

Some might think guys are the real carnivores, but sometimes this isn't the case. Although I enjoy a nice piece of beef from time to time, this meal was inspired by a woman. A woman who was craving red meat. Not only red meat, but marrow bones, cooked slowly in a court bouillon flavored with mirepox. Then a pan-seared steak served rare, with a side of cipollini onions and baby potatoes braised in beef stock. A bit of marrow-infused Bordelaise sauce and the second course was done. Dessert was an upside-down lime-apple crumble, sort of a Franco-American take on the classic tarte tatin.

I think she got enough marrow bones to satisfy her craving, and then some. There really are things that should be consumed in moderation. So, the dinner that followed was much lighter - too tasty to qualify as atonement and not quite healthy enough to qualify as totally restorative.

I was in class on Valentine's Day this year, in case you were wondering why this menu appeared the day before V-day for a meal that happened two days before Eros came to town.

Before the Scary Cake Test

Tomorrow, my doom awaits. A cake must be made, to perfection. A cake perhaps never made since the dawn of time. My entire culinary future could rest on the successful completion of this dessert. Yes, that's stupid, but that's the way things are set up.

So, what to do while the stress mounts? Diligently study arcane tomes of cakery? Delve into the mysteries of gelatin-stabilized whipped cream and créme anglaise?

I think not.

Pan sear some excellent grass-fed beef, with a flavor of the fresh shoots of springtime, grassy, exuberant, bold. Add some lazy man's Bordelaise sauce - a pan sauce with a medium-dark roux, wine, fond, onions, celery, salt. A bit of tarragon-flavored beurre composé. A trio of artisan cheeses: Valsetz chevre, Twig Farms washed rind, Saint Nectaire. A wine worthy of the task: a Merlot by Solune in the Sierra foothills. Some sourdough baguettes an hour from the oven. Start with a fruity Garnacha for the first toast.

Add music. Sing in Portuguese and Spanish. Berekere, Barabare, O Vento, Depois os temporais, Los Ejes de mi Carreta, A Samba me cantou, Destillando Amor... Dance with the cat, too (he's amused).

Lie down and watch the lights of the room spin and twirl.

Ready?

Perhaps not, but at least relaxed. Tomorrow is a good day to die!

Whoa, there! Cowboy steaks is fer grillin' pard'ner!

Cowboy Steaks. Them critters is thick. Two inches. Right now, they's runnin' around two pounds, bone in. Thicker than a rattlesnake that just et a jackalope, an' that's thick. I hear some slicker down th' trail talkin' bout pan cookin' his steaks. Why, a piece o'beef like that needs flavor on the outside.

Now that there Frenchman, My-yard, he figgered out all this stuff about stuff turnin' brown and flavor. I do say that you can set that steak down in a right hot cookin' iron and you'll get lots of browning.

Yep, packin' a cookin' iron in the chow wagon is a right good idea and it's mighty useful come breakfast time when a body's yearnin' for bacon. It just ain't great for steaks, unless burned on the outside an' rare on the inside is yer idea o' fine meat. It ain't mine.

Well, even that hombre knows this, so that there slicker goes right out and throws that piece o'cow critter into an oven to finish her off slow like. Yep, ya heard that right. Ya figger some ranch hand's out there on the Goodnight-Loving Trail packin' an oven? Nope. Me neither.

Now I figger that pilgrim makes a right tasty steak in his own kitchen. He's prob'ly got a mighty fine cellar full of fancy wine from the likes o'Napa and thereabouts. But after a day a-saddle convincin' ornery critters which way they gotta go, ain't nobody gonna light an oven to grill a steak. No siree.

Ya see, we got these contraptions that work on charcoal. Pure, hard wood mesquite. Burns with a sight o'sparks, a real Fourth o'July, but boy does she grill up steak pretty. Them things look kinda like this, an' this is how ya gotta set 'em up fer grillin':

Now, ya see where it says, "sear"? Well, that's where you put the steak after you've rubbed it down with some salt, pepper, maybe some chili and some herbs you found along the trail, then let it set to warm up a bit an' dry off. Now this side's just fer brownin' and searin'. Don't do no cookin', cause if ya leave it on this side all you'll get is a burned to tarnation steak, blacker than an Angus in a tar pit and not much tastier. That's why ya have the side that says, "cook". There ain't no coals under there - so when that meat's lookin' nice and seared just slide 'er over and do her slow. Keep flipping her over and don't run off for no reason. Ain't nothin' important enough t'drag you away from that meat. Keep pokin' her with yer finger, soft is rare and hard is Too Late.

Now, don't ya go eatin' her all at oncet. That steak, she's gotta set pretty in a plate for five minutes or more. Just let the juices get back where they belong. Then carve her up and let the fandango begin! Don't try cuttin' her in two, neither. Just pick her up by the bone, whip out your ol' Bowie knife and slice her thin like prime rib. Smoke an' fire on the outside, tender an' moist on the inside.

Hanger steaks, squash, tomatoes, color theory

We're getting saturated with squash. The plants don't care; they keep producing. This time, I just julienned the vegetable and boiled it in salted water. It was just there to brighten the plate, glowing greenly between the steak and the carmine chunks of tomato added for acid and herbal notes. Braised shallots in a wine reduction nestle against the deep purplish red near-raw meat. Their function: add more umami to intensify the steak flavor and counterpoint all those veggies.

So, the color theory works like this: red/green complimentary contrast, not too strong since the squash sits way over toward the yellow side. The stronger complimentary contrast comes from the purplish meat and yellowish squash, even though the meat's color isn't as saturated. The gray plate and shallots intensify the colors, making them appear much more vivid than they would if the plate were white. Since the steak is dark and the squash light, there's a value contrast to perk things up even more. Texturally, everything is similar shapes, but different sizes.