#128 | 🐟 Fresh Smesh: Dry-Aged Fish is Best
🥦 Smashing Broccoli
Hello!
Grilled peaches on shortbread with raspberries and black pepper ice cream. We're all out, said the communicative waiter. That was twelve years ago.
—Brenda Shaughnessy, From The Octopus Museum
Hey there - I'm Bruce Cole, Publisher of Edible San Francisco. If you’re new here, welcome to Eat.Drink.Think., a newsletter spotlighting seasonal recipes, the latest SF Bay Area food news, poetry, and more!
👉 ICYMI: The most-clicked link from our last newsletter was the KQED feature on The Old-School San Francisco Sandwich That Stole My Heart. And following up on last week’s theme, Andrea Nyugen posted MSG Deep Dive part 2: How to Buy and Use MSG and MSG-less Flavor Enhancers to her Substack.
Vote Here! We’re starting a weekly poll to learn more about Eat.Drink.Think. readers. We hope you’ll participate!
Just Smack It: We’ve made this Ottolenghi Smashed Cucumber Salad twice this week, and it’ll no doubt slide into our summer recipe rotation; it’s crisp, crunchy, sweet, and refreshing.
🧄 Depending on how long and if you cook it ☝️ P.S. Don’t eat a whole clove 🙃
🤮 Gag Me With a Green Bell Pepper: Eric Kim’s stir-fry to convert green bell pepper haters. NY Times (Gift article)
Brilliant! In keeping with the smashed theme, check out this video for smashed broccoli ☝️
‘Lunch of Suffering’: Plain ‘white people food’ goes viral in China. “When I first came to Australia, I saw a woman who bought … raw sliced mushrooms in the supermarket and sat down to eat it, I was dumbfounded.” The Guardian
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While many lay claim to pouring the first Margarita, the story of Ziegfeld Follies dancer, Marjorie King, is a legend worth our salt. The mystical entertainer was rumored to be allergic to many spirits, but able to brave tequila with the help of a clever bartender. Our recipe strikes a dramatic balance between sweet, sour, spicy, and smoky—with notes of agave, citrus, and habanero—your tastebuds will be dancing all night long.
Keep in fridge, stir over ice, and if you are truly civilized, serve with a salted rim.
Tasting Notes:Bright Citrus, Gentle Heat, Complex
Ingredients: Reposado Tequila, Mezcal, Orange Liqueur, Agave, Habanero and Mango Syrup, Lime Juice, and Sea Salt. Bottle Size: 750 mL (Pours 12 Drinks), ABV: 25%
Awards:
Sunset Spirits – Double Gold – 2020
Sunset Spirits – Double Gold – 2021
Bartender Spirits Awards – Bronze - 2021
Bartender Spirits Awards - Silver - 2022
NY World Spirits Competition - Silver - 2022
Check out our new mini cans for a little dose of the grandiose!
No Soup For You! SF Mayor London Breed’s latest budget proposal eliminates funding for the SF/Marin Food Bank. “In an email sent to all San Francisco-Marin Food Bank employees on Thursday, Executive Director Tanis Crosby said that Mayor London Breed has recommended curtailing funding for the organization by 2025.” Mission Local
What Could ‘Food Is Political’ Mean? This is the first of a four-week series that Alicia Kennedy is publishing on her Substack. Kennedy notes:
To say “food is political” is to avoid talking about climate change, labor rights, fascism, racism, capitalism, and colonialism. What does it look like to engage with the way food is used as a political tool a bit more rigorously?
New Government Dietary Guidelines Released: Tamar Haspel of the Washington Post has other ideas: “If I were writing the dietary guidelines, I would give them a radical overhaul. I’d go so far as to radically overhaul the way we evaluate diet. Here’s why and how.” (Gift article)
🧬+🥩 NOT Coming to a Grocery Store Near You: The USDA approved cell-cultivated meat this week, greenlighting Eat Just and Upside Foods to begin production of their meats made from chicken cells. In her FoodFix newsletter, Helena Bottemiller questions whether these products can ever even make it to the market:
While the greenlight from the feds is a big deal, key industry leaders have been clear that the lack of regulatory approval is not the limiting factor. There are still serious logistical and financial challenges to scaling production enough to supply a single grocery store, forget the whole grocery retail machine, which operates at incredible scale. Futuristic meat is here – or is it?
Related: SF Chef Dominque Crenn has signed on to become one of the first restaurants in the U.S. to serve Upside’s cell-cultivated chicken at her restaurant Atlier Crenn. More on her “partnership” here.
SF Chefs Catching On To Dry-Aged Fish: Pristine fish fresh out of the water and landing on your plate the same day is no longer the benchmark of the best seafood restaurants—dry-aged fish is the new paradigm. Hanging a whole fish in a cooler similar to those used to dry-age steaks eliminates blood, moisture, and slime and yields a much cleaner flavor and a firmer texture. SF restaurants serving dry-aged fish include “Kiln in Hayes Valley, offering grilled, dry-aged sea bream; fellow Hayes Valley spot Le Fantastique, serving fish like dry-aged striped jack; and sushi restaurant Friends Only, where fish ages for up to six weeks.” SF Chronicle (gift article)
We’ve been following Liwei Liao, aka Dry Aged Fish Guy on Instagram for years now, and we’re pining for a dry-aging cabinet of our own. Here’s a Food & Wine profile on Liao from 2019: Everything You Need to Know About Dry-Aged Fish.
DIY Dry Age: While technically not dry-aging, we wrap any fish we purchase in a couple of layers of paper towels and set it on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator for at least a day or two, changing the paper towels as they draw out the moisture. Once the flesh has firmed up we cover it tightly, where it’s good for another couple of days at least. The last step before preparing the fish is to lightly season it with salt and rewrap it in paper towels for about 30 minutes, a technique we picked up from this recipe for halibut crudo by Sylvan Brackett of Rintaro in the SF Chronicle. We just served this last night as a matter of fact since there’s so much fresh halibut available on the market (due to fishermen having to switch species because of the cancelation of the salmon season). Here’s our take on Brackett’s dish: Halibut Crudo with Avocado Crema and Yuzo Kosho.
What Are You Doing This Weekend? Our friends at Gemini Bottle Co. opened a beautiful new wine bar, Bar Gemini, in the Mission at 2845 18th Street in the Madelon Building. They’re open Wed-Fri 5-11 pm, Sat 5 pm-12 am, and Sun 1-8 pm. Maybe we’ll see you there! (Disclosure: Gemini Bottle Co. is an Edible SF advertiser)
Happy Pride!
“It’s very cool to see that everyone who works for NPR is gay,” MUNA singer-guitarist Katie Gavin deadpanned by way of introduction at the band’s Tiny Desk concert. For a band whose latest album is currently soundtracking its second straight Pride Month, MUNA has found a deep kinship with queer audiences — a fact Gavin noted during the lead-in to a country reworking of 2021’s irresistible “Silk Chiffon.” —NPR
Thanks for reading EAT. DRINK. THINK. from Edible San Francisco!
That’s all for this week.
We’re outta here. Be well and take care,
—Bruce
“There are those who love to get dirty and fix things. They drink coffee at dawn, beer after work. And those who stay clean, just appreciate things. At breakfast they have milk and juice at night. There are those who do both, they drink tea.”
—Gary Snyder