#72 | Perfect Brown Rice
Remembering Butchertown
Hello!
PRIVATE EYE LETTUCE:
Three crates of Private Eye Lettuce,
the name and drawing of a detective
with magnifying glass on the sides
of the crates of lettuce,
form a great cross in man’s imagination
and his desire to name
the objects of this world.
I think I’ll call this place Golgotha
and have some salad for dinner.
Richard Brautigan, from The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster
Meanwhile on the east coast 🤣
By the way, I'm Bruce Cole, Publisher of Edible San Francisco. Welcome to all the new subscribers—especially those of you who subscribed to our print series—thanks for joining us!
What’s In Your Fridge? There’s a celeriac root and kohlrabi biding their time in the crisper drawer of the fridge but we’re about to set them free with Nigel Slater’s recipe for baked roots with curry cream. Sounds super easy: grate the vegetables into a dish, make a quick curry sauce (simmer cream and curry powder), pour sauce over, and bake.
Slater recommends serving with brown rice, which we have plenty of on hand. Might you consider our recipe for perfect brown rice? It is 99% full-proof and the opposite of so many of the hippie-style brown rice recipes out there that call for you to precisely measure out rice and water, slam a lid on the pot, and don’t dare open it until some magical minute mark. What that gets you is basically soggy brown rice sludge, all the grains clinging together in one big lump. Our secret: cooking your rice like pasta.
Perfect Brown Rice
2 cups brown rice
6 cups water
1. Bring water to a boil. Add rice. Cook at a medium boil with the lid off and begin tasting the rice at about 15 minutes if using long-grain rice or 20 minutes if using short-grain rice.
2. You’re aiming for rice that is al-dente, like pasta, almost done but still has a bit of tooth to it. Once the rice hits this point, drain the whole pot into a mesh strainer in the sink. If you don’t have a strainer, carefully, with the lid on, drain all the water from the pot.
3. Give the strainer a good shake to lose any water clinging to the grains and put the rice back in the pot. This next step is essential: cover with a dish towel or 4 sheets of paper towel and put the lid on top. Let steam for 15 minutes, remove the towel and lid, fluff the rice with a fork, and serve.
Co-Sign:
Related: What’s Wrong With This Picture? Seven Signs That the Mainstream Has a Beef With Beef. According to Nielsen, almost 40 percent of Americans are making an effort to eat more plant-based foods. Meanwhile, a recent YouGov poll indicated 32 percent of Americans have resolved to eat more plant-based foods in 2022. Sierra Club
Answer: Why doesn’t everyone resolve to eat more PLANTS, you know, good old broccoli, carrots, beans, lentils, etc., rather than processed plant-based foods that contain ingredients you can’t pronounce. Broccoli has one ingredient: broccoli.
Give Me Carbonic Or Give Me Death! I have yet to see a wine marketed as sustainable without fighting the urge to scream. Pellicle
Winie? Drinkie? Slurpee? Drink Culture Doesn’t Have a “Foodie.” Here’s Why. Punch
New Wine Shop Alert: Bottle Bacchanal, featuring natural wines, specialty spirits and craft beer, just opened in the Castro at 4126 18th St.
Thar She Goes: Mason Hereford’s “Turkey and the Wolf” and Melissa Clark’s “Dinner in One” cookbooks are delayed indefinitely because shipping containers with the books were lost overboard and are now presumably at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean.
Red Flag Warning: Jamie Oliver, who has apparently sold 48 million+ cookbooks, has a team of cultural appropriation specialists who make sure he doesn’t get canceled by mistakingly publishing recipes that he appropriates. CNN
Some Like It Hot: Wondering if we should replace our toaster oven, which we use on convection mode, all the time, with an air fryer? Because apparently, everyone has one: “air fryer sales in the United States rose over the past year to slightly more than $1 billion — 20 percent more than in the year before.” The New York Times (paywall)
They’re Still Coming For Our Gas Stove:
Gas stoves in kitchens pose a risk to public health and the planet, research finds. The Washington Post (paywall)
Gas stoves leak climate-warming methane even when they're off. NPR
Star Power? Restaurant review site The Infatuation brings back numeric ratings for 2022. Nari gets a 9.3 rating, while Mister Jius receives a 9.0, and State Bird Provisions rates a 9.4. Yeah, that’s helpful. Have to say though, we appreciate the effort they put into photographing the various dishes on each menu. The Infatuation
Trouble In Paradise: Chez Panisse is not renewing the lease for 24-year old tapas bar, Cesar, next door. The natives are not happy. Berkeleyside
Yan Can Donate: Chef Martin Yan and Wife Donate Archive to UC Davis. UC Davis
Remembering Butchertown: Pictorial look back at the slaughterhouses that used to occupy the southeast end of the city. SF Chronicle (paywall)
Our 2011 Butchertown Cover by Wendy MacNaughton:
Avedano’s Meats on Cortland is one of the last butcher shops that dates to the Butchertown era. It’s been in the same location since 1901 and was originally Cicero’s Meats from 1957 to the early 2000s.
At one point, Ed Sr. employed 11 butchers and four full-time salesmen in his store. He worked 18 hours a day, seven days a week; Cicero’s mother did the bookkeeping, and after school on weekends Ed Jr. and his brother cut and wrapped meat, and made deliveries. “We had customers as far as Tahoe, San Jose, and San Ramon who we’d deliver meat to,” he says proudly. “Back then you wouldn’t go to the supermarket to order beef, because you wanted good beef.”
His father visited Butcher Town on Third Street daily to pick out the best-looking whole and half-animals, which would then be delivered to the shop to be broken down into consumer-size cuts as well as turned into sausage, hot dogs, and other products. If the meat wasn’t up to his standards, he wouldn’t buy any, Cicero recalls. “He’d rather call his customers and tell them they’d have to wait.” Continue reading Avedano’s: The Return of the Butcher Shop. Edible SF
The Best Thing We’ve Listened To This Week:
Grooving to this new track by Toro y Moi and the accompanying video filmed in San Francisco and directed by Kid. Studio: Check it out 🎥 POSTMAN
That’s all for this week.
We’re outta here. Be well and take care,
–Bruce
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"Despite its artistic intentions and its many accomplishments, humankind owes its existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains." —Anonymous