New Book (Zuni Cafe) and for the love of sage

After a few days off, I decided that my next foray into the world of cookbooks will be The Zuni Cafe Cookbook by Judy Rodgers, who owns and runs the restaurant of the same name in San Francisco (which I happened to visit in August).

Like any good San Francisco cook, Judy Rodgers worked in Chez Panise under Alice Waters, and, unsurprisingly, this cookbook reflects her passion for local ingredients and simple foods. Unlike most new American cuisine how-to manuals, the cookbook and cafe tilt a bit more Italian than French, although her experience in French restaurants certainly is evident as well.

If I'm going to tackle what many of those in the know consider one of the best restaurants in America, I might as well go big, as in pig big:

That's a fresh picnic ham from this guy, which I've want to roast for quite a while now. I've had plenty of luck with Paula Wolfert's slow roasted version, but this time I go with Judy's version of porchetta. In Italy, porchetta is basically street food-a whole deboned pig, stuffed with herbs, slow roasted and then served on bread.

Typically home versions use the pork shoulder, but that picnic ham looks so good, I gotta give it a try.

Deboning it was surprisingly easy, and then it got stuffed with a variety of herbs (rosemary, sage, fennel), as well as garlic and capers:

After tying it up, I use Paula Wolfert's technique for roast picnic ham-a hot oven (450) to crisp the skin, and then low and slow (225 for 4 hours) to finish it up.

I'm ready to eat:

For some reason, I managed to pick up all the sage recipes in the book: sage and bacon peas (super fantastic) and sage and onion polenta (also good), so why not tie the whole meal together with some sage pesto? I decided to forgo the food processor and made it the old fashioned way:

The dinner was great, but on some homemade foccacia bread with ricotta cheese, the leftovers are even better:

Back to the Grill

My grills are mad at me, and for good reason. My recent adventures with The Cooking of Southwest France did not afford many opportunites for cooking over the open flame.

To rectify that, in the break before my next cookbook adventure, I went back to a classic, beer butt chicken.

The particular recipe I use is pretty basic, so and any rub recipe will work (I like mine, which uses summer savory, a great addition):

Once they've been rubbed, you know the drill-in goes the beer can, and off to the grill they go. I don't think my sense of humour is that juvenile, but this sight always makes me crack up:

I've gotten into the practice of misting the chickens with a mixture of probably 6 parts beer (Yuengling), to one parts olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

I can't make beer butt chicken without my wife's favorite side, sweet potatoes roasted directly on the coals:

I also make a batch of buttermilk biscuits, and, like always, they fail to impress (maybe since I was born a couple of hours from the Canadian border, I'll never be able to make true Southern staples). Whatever the case, the meal as a whole went off well.

Today was a good day

Cheers!