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Thanksgiving apple tart

For Thanksgiving dessert, I made an apple tart using an excellent recipe from A Platter of Figs by David Tanis, who spends half his year in Berkeley cooking at Chez Panisse.  It’s a great recipe because of its simplicity – it lets the deliciousness of the apples and the flaky pastry shine.  I also love that the directness of the flavors is mirrored by the rough hewn aesthetic of the tart itself.   Another great thing about this tart is that you can prep it well beforehand, and then put it in the oven during dinner (it takes about 45 minutes to bake).  This time around, I used New York Special apples from the Ferry Building farmers’ market and essentially followed the recipe to a T, although I reduced the amount of sugar called for in the glaze (I used 3/4 cup but would go even lower next time) and added vanilla and a dash of cinnamon (Mr. Pigtales’ idea) to the glaze as well.  Voila!

Meat Sweets in San Francisco

Caramels made with pig lard (available at Boccalone in the Ferry Building)?  Hmmm.  Could be very, very good….

Braking for the RC boats on Spreckels Lake in Golden Gate Park.

Thanksgiving: a gorgeous, sunny day in San Francisco – perfect for a pre-cooking bike ride!  I pulled on my brand new Sheila Moon bike shorts to test ‘em out, and Mr. Pigtales and I made a beeline for the ocean, via Golden Gate Park.  We were pleasantly surprised to learn that the Parks Department had closed JFK Drive to cars today, and there were tons of cyclists out, including lots of helmet-wearing kids on trikes.  We made a quick stop at Spreckels Lake to watch the motorized boats, then rode by the Bison Paddock (where incredibly, the bison actually deigned to make an appearance!).  Then, onward to the ocean, where there were some huge breakers.

Watching the breakers roll in at Ocean Beach.

On the Great Highway, we spotted a really cute red and yellow bike that read “Depot Cycle&Recycle” on the downtube. Turns out what we saw was a pretty odd duck – and Depot Cycle & Recycle is a bike shop in Tokyo!  Guess that bike was a long way from home.

Cute bike, a long way from home.

As for the Sheila Moon bike shorts, which I wore under my britches, I’m glad to report that they were super comfy (FYI, she’s having a holiday party /warehouse sale on December 5-6 in Oakland – might be worth checking out!).

Given the late hour, I decided to opt for the easiest of the bread recipes in my arsenal, Jim Sullivan’s no knead bread recipe.  (In terms of ingredients, I prefer King Arthur’s bread flour and Fleischmann’s Rapid Rise Highly Active Yeast.)  You literally slap the ingredients together (taking care to mix the yeast into the flour separately from the salt), make sure the dry ingredients are roughly evenly hydrated, cover it, and after a long while, throw it in a piping hot oven.  It’s the long while that is key – this is when all the flavors in the bread will develop, so letting it sit there on your hopefully warmish counter for 20-plus hours is what will make this bread delicious.   I’ve made this bread with anywhere from 18 hours to 24 hours or possibly more fermentation time, and it will turn out fine (the high moisture content in the dough helps it keep longer).  You can also stick it in the fridge to retard the dough a bit if you like.  It’s all good with this recipe, in my book.

Next up: making some butter.  Mmm, butter.

Here are my tweaks:

• I only use 280 grams (about 1.25 cups) of sugar, rather than the 350 g (1.75 cups) called for in the original recipe.  I find that most dessert recipes call for way too much sugar, and this one is no exception.
• Although the recipe says to press out each scoop of dough into a flat 3-inch circle, I press mine into roughly 1.5″ to 2″ circles to get the cookies to a decent not-too-large size.  (Done this way, I end up with about 45 cookies, rather than the 24 listed in the original recipe.) When I made this recipe the first time and followed the directions for 3-inch circles, I ended up with these monstrously large (5″ to 6″) cookies that intimidated everyone at the baby shower I had brought them to.
• This last one isn’t exactly a tweak, but just a bit of emphasis – the recipe says to bake until the edges of the cookies are lightly browned but the centers are still pale.  This takes a lot of will power to do, as the cookies will look sort of disturbingly pale in the center and your instincts (if they’re like mine) may tell you to keep baking them.  But you really do need to take the cookies out when the centers are still pale – otherwise you’ll end up with cookies that are a bit too hard (I learned this the hard way, although my co-workers politely pretended that they were not concerned about destroying their dental work as they crunched (loudly) through the 2nd batch I made several months ago).  Even so, although the recipe says 10 to 12 minutes, I find that in my oven the right timing is more like 14 to 15 minutes, sometimes more.

I’ve never actually braved the line at Tartine the bakery, probably due to sheer laziness.  (Notwithstanding the similarly obscene lines, I’ve somehow managed to make my way to Mitchell’s and Bi-Rite, so perhaps I just need to suck it up and show up at Tartine one day as well.)  So I have nothing to compare my homemade version to, but Mr. Pigtales, a true chowhound, just ate three in a row, so I’m going to count that as an enthusiastic thumbs up.

After polishing off our chilaquiles (and turning my fingers orange in the process – small price to pay for such deliciousness), we picked up some New York Special apples for the tart I’m planning to make for Thanksgiving, a bag of brown rice from Massa Organics (the best!), and a small chicken from Norm, who sells fantastic poultry at various farmers’ markets around here.

Mr. Pigtales' new 1973 Raleigh Super Course

After the farmers’ market, we made a beeline to the San Francisco Bike Expo at Cow Palace.  Mr. Pigtales was looking for a project, and he found one: a 1973 Raleigh Super Course in a lovely bronze color, for a song.  We also picked up a Raleigh crankset, pedals, and seatpost for it, so now we’re just looking for a saddle (probably a Brooks B17?), some albatross handlebars, and a few other odds and ends (bottom bracket?  wheels, perhaps?).

The Bike Expo was pretty fun, all in all.  There were lots of cool bikes to look at, including a gorgeous old Hetchins frame like they don’t make anymore, as well as a tiny little orange Italian road bike with what looked to be 24-inch wheels — even smaller than mine!  There was even a guy who was making bicycle-powered smoothies.  And I finally picked up some bicycle shorts from Sheila Moon, a local bicycle clothing designer, for longer weekend rides.

The only problem with the Bike Expo was that the only food there was of the entirely unappetizing hot-dog-oriented stadium-concession variety.  So we eventually high-tailed it out of there and grabbed an early dinner at our favorite Singaporean restaurant, in the Inner Sunset.  It shall remain unnamed in this blog to keep the masses at bay (given the hordes (i.e. 1 or 2, if you include myself) of people who are reading this), but suffice it to say that we sated ourselves on fantastical Singaporean chili crab and curry noodles – a great end to a great day.

Here's Mr. Pigtales prepping the first pizza.

But we ploughed ahead even so.  Between sips of red wine, we added onto the rolled-out dough:

• a pesto Mr. Pigtales made fresh tonight
• a bit of olive oil
• mushrooms sauteed in sherry
• prosciutto
• sauteed onions
• mozzarella
• a bit of parmesan
• kosher salt & pepper, and
• a few slices of late-season homegrown tomato, from the one scraggly heirloom tomato plant we have on our roof.

We slid the pizza onto our Fibrament baking stone with the oven piping at 525 degrees and waited.

A couple minutes before we were going to take it out, Mr. Pigtales opened the door and cracked an egg on top.

Turns out I needn’t have worried, as the crust came out perfectly thin and crispy, just how I like it!  The bacon-y goodness, along with the kosher salt, the pesto, and the olive oil in the crust, was just sooooo yummy.  Sigh.

A margherita with a crispy, thin crust.

We made another just like the first, and then a pesto margherita, and I’m proud to report that there ain’t a stitch left (sorry!).

The AP is reporting that a Utah teen is facing trial for rapping a McDonald’s cheeseburger order.

OK, so some kids showed poor judgment by patronizing the fast “food” chain, but is it really necessary to prosecute them for expressing themselves (by parodying a McDonald’s commercial, no less)? Jeepers, what is this country coming to??

Sounds like the “American” Fork police and prosecutor are unfamiliar with the First Amendment. I guess the Unemployed Philosophers Guild was right. Crap like this is why I heart the ACLU.