It’s what’s for dinner.

I’m really not doing this to annoy my friend Jill, who’s trying to get her head around her exciting new web project about veganism (about which, more later) but I want to delve a little bit into the meat-eating culture of this region. Not farming or ranching, as such, because I know bugger-all about that here (except that we like it to rain every now and then to make the cows grow) but rather the way meat is eaten, the way it is cut and sold- things which differ hugely from place to place.

For example, during my time in Germany the trip to the butcher’s presented its own challenges. You tend to had to know in advance what you intended to buy, because the range of option open once you got inside was so phenomenal as to be off-putting. The stereotype of the sausage-eating German is no myth. There is variety and range when it comes to your choice of Wurst. No two butchers are alike. I even used to go to one butcher (on Diezer Strasse) for sausage and another near the Neumarkt for fresh meat. Fresh meat was its own range of pitfalls. In Germany, they will cut pieces of meat directly from the large cut, to order. You can’t go into a German butcher and tell from the shape of the piece of meat an appropriate method of cooking it. You have to Know What You Are Doing. It all looks pretty much the same, and to get, for example, a steak to grill, you have to know the appropriate term to avoid ending up with something best left in the crock-pot for eight hours.

Here in the western US, as in England, beef has a centuries-old place in the heart of the local culture. It stands for an industry which is more than just a livelihood- ranches are passed down from one generation to the next. Devotion to ranching is sometimes synonymous with devotion to your granddad. Beef has iconic cultural status. As one of my favourite bumper stickers puts it “The West wasn’t won on salad.” Well, as has been borne out by my experience in California for the past year and a bit, the Americans don’t make things any easier than the Germans do. Again, you have to know the appropriate vocabulary, which is made all the harder by the fact that the Americans use mostly the same words the Brits do to refer to pieces of raw cow, but they apply them to different cuts. Sneaky, eh?

They use the term flank, just as we do, but US flank steak is what we call skirt, whereas they refer to what we call flank as a part of the bottom of the round. Everything referred to as chuck steak in the UK would be called chuck in America, but the reverse is not true. The British term silverside refers to something which is often called rump roast here in America, which is nothing- nothing- to do with the UK’s rump steak. Well, not really. Possibly a bit. It’s right next door to it, anyway, but it’s not the same. Because what we Brits call rump is mainly covered by the American sirloin, tenderloin, top sirloin and bottom sirloin cuts. I think so, anyway. Are you confused yet? I am, and I was the one who brought it up in the first place. We all agree on brisket anyway. Except you braise it in England and you barbecue it here.

By the way, these terms differ locally across America to a certain extent too. It’s no wonder that when I came over here and tried grilled tri-tip, the Central Coast’s gift to the food world, I had a hell of a time trying to get the butcher back home to reproduce the cut. It’s only in the past fifteen to twenty years that the cut has become known outside the Central Coast and the further eat you go, the less well-known it becomes. I would argue that Oliver and Eden, in the Grainger Market in Newcastle (see left), was one of the better butcher’s I used to shop at. So, knowing, as everyone with a barbecue between Ventura and Monterrey does, that tri-tip is from the bottom sirloin, I went to Oliver and Eden and confidently explained what I wanted. The butcher overcame his blank look as quickly as he could, and confidently explained that I was making, not to put too fine a point on it, no sense whatsoever. it took two return trips, with printed material and cow diagrams and incredible amounts of persistence an patience by the butcher, to get a tri-tip. It was worth it.

The other things that every trainee pitmaster knows about tri-tip are that it was first popularised in Santa Maria, 30 miles south of San Luis Obispo, and that it is not traditionally barbecued in the traditional sense of slow-roasting at low temperatures over charcoal until it could be pulled apart with a spoon, but rather grilled over hot oak logs and then sliced. It’s standard fare at special occasions here, and as such it is sometimes neglected, taken for granted and inadvertently abused. That’s because the traditional recipe is its own worst enemy. The cut itself is not the tenderest. It is hard to grill such a large piece of meat (they are usually around 3-4lb) to the point where it’s cooked without burning the outside. You don’t slow cook it. The fibres don’t break down over hours of slow heating. The dry rub makes no use of acids or any tenderising agents. When we had tri-tip at our wedding, Chuck’s Barbecue did divert from the traditional procedure. Chuck is from Kansas City (which is in Missouri….don’t ask) which is one of the capital cities of barbecue cuisine. Smoking the beef for hours ensures its tenderness, and produced excellent results. It’s hard to grill tri-tip for 100 people without it ending up tough.

How about for four, though? I was going to Big Sur, camping with friends. There was a tri-tip in the freezer. We  had oak logs for the campfire. It was far too tempting to resist. I used the traditionally minimalistic Santa Maria seasonings of garlic, black pepper and salt. This allows the flavour of the well-marbled beef to come through, without being buried in spices. Actually, I used garlic powder- fresh garlic would have burned in the intense heat from the fire and become bitter. I tossed the frozen meat with the seasoning in a Ziploc bag and allowed it to defrost slowly in the fridge for a couple of days, turning it every now and again.

I seared it  over a hot oak campfire, taking the opportunity to take an artsy shot of it cooking alongside a cast iron pan (used to warm flour tortillas) and a pot of beans. Then, I wrapped it in foil to prevent the outside burning any further, and cooked it over the cooler part of the fire until the inside reached 135°F. I removed it from the grill and rested it in the foil until the temperature came up to 145°F. It was fantastic, served with  grilled onions and peppers, beans and flour tortillas, tequila to wash it down.

This afternoon I’ll be cutting up 14lb of pork shoulder, and it will be a rare treat. Given the reverence with which beef is treated, it’s sometimes a little disheartening to see pork come such a poor second in shops. When I say this, I don’t mean that the cuts aren’t good or that the meat is poor quality; just the reverse. When pork is on offer, it seems only ever to be premium cuts- overwhelmingly pork loin. Pork loin is beautiful, lean white meat. And on its own it’s as dull as ditchwater. It needs to be smoked, or served with a sauce, or a ridiculous marinade. And then what you often get is dull meat, with a tasty marinade or sauce. It seems to be everywhere here. Where’s the pork belly? Well, actually, I know the answer to that one- it’s all been made into bacon. American bacon is wonderful stuff, but I almost resent the way all the pork belly ends up being cured and sliced. It could be rolled or sliced and roasted, with garlic and caraway or with Chinese spices.

I’m not entirely sure where the legs of these pigs go, either. It seems they all have loins and pre-bacon bellies, but no legs and precious few shoulders. You see loin chops, but no shoulder chops, or hand of pork. A disturbing amount of pork seems to come off-the-bone too. When I say “loin chops”, they are basically medallions of pork loin. It’s frankly bewildering, at times. It’s even more so with lamb. There seems to be almost no cut of lamb other than rack or leg. What the HELL do you put in your curries, California??? I think I’ve cracked the mystery as to why Americans serve braised salt beef, called corned beef here and almost unknown in Ireland, as a traditional Irish dish on St. Patrick’s day. It’s because if they tried to make Irish stew, they’d be confronted with the uncomfortable fact that you can’t buy shoulder or neck of lamb for love nor money, and no amount of Guinness could drown their sorrows.

It has been suggested to me that supermarkets serving the Hispanic community would have more variety, particularly in terms of the cuts of pork. I don’t know whether this is true or not but it seems to me that Mexican cuisine certainly knows how to deal with the less pretty cuts of pork. Carnitas, for example, done properly- not stewed or deep-fried. The fattiest part of the shoulder I’m cutting up will be cubed and simmered in orange juice. This simmering renders out the pork fat as the water in the juice evaporates, leaving it in its own fat. You then simmer it until a golden brown crust appears on the cubes of pork shoulder and use it to fill tacos, possibly with some salsa verde made from the increasingly monstrous tomatillo crop in our front garden. Proper food!

Spring Training

It is cold, wet and ‘orrible.

The second big rainstorm of the year has just hit the Central Coast. According to the Tribune’s Rainfall Map, Three Peaks in Big Sur has had 4.02 inches of rain in the past 24 hours. So, all in all, not a bad day to be sitting with several litres of hot tea and the second volume of Shelby Foote’s Narrative History of the Civil War; a massive dose of Southern-Fried prose; solid military history interspersed with silly anecdotes:

Though the city [of Richmond, VA] was no longer even semi-beleaguered, as it had been…the outer fortifications had been lengthened to such an extent that wags were saying “They ought to be called fiftyfications now.”

But, spring is definitely here. The rain is here to set us up for the spring. We planted beans, tomatoes, tomatillos, peppers, aubergines, spring onions and lettuces last weekend, as well as a load of different kitchen herbs. The rain is falling on sprouting chives and dill as well as coriander which has been sprouting away for some time.

More than that, as the windows rattle to the beating of the wind off Estero Bay, I’m waiting for commentary to start, in about two hours, of the Giants vs Dodgers practice match. Major League Baseball is in spring training.

Baseball, I feel, deserves more attention in Britain, but is unlikely ever to get it. There’s a tendency to compare it to cricket because they’re both bat-and-ball games, which is as daft as comparing the Cheltenham Festival and The Godfather because they’ve both got a horse. The spirit of the two games, the level of teamwork involved, the social history of the the different sports, their traditions and iconography are so different from each other as to make a comparison totally irrelevant. There’s also the point that the traditional Brit response to a discussion of baseball is “What, you mean rounders?”. This is often mistaken by Americans for a serious opinion on the sport, rather than it being what it is- an easy way to annoy a foreigner. And, for the English, that’s not to be sniffed at.

There are deeper similarities between baseball and cricket than the fact there’s a bat and a ball. One is the obsession of devotees of both games with statistics and history. The reason for this is that the man who introduced statistics to baseball was a British cricket statistician who became obsessed with baseball upon moving to America.

Ken Burns’ documentary Baseball says that “It is a haunted game, where each player is measured against the ghosts of those who have gone before” It makes listening to baseball rather familiar to listening to the comfortably entertainingly, synapse-meltingly pedantic waffle on the BBC’s Cricket commentary show, Test Match Special, which sometimes sounds like a sports show, and other times sounds like the red-nosed, comfy, brandy-induced reminiscences of a retired colonel who served in India sometime before the War.

Secondly, it is the summer sport.  Here, the (American) football season is over- having come and gone, seemingly in the blink of an eye, in a torrent of  beer adverts, nachos, and vaguely homo-erotic comments about what a nice boy Tim Tebow is. So much for football.

The approach of the cricket season in England promises warm summer afternoons (no, really), the smell of homeysuckle and the buzzing of bees, and one pint enjoyed after another over the course of the day. It means a rolling-up of shirt sleeves. It means lazy relaxation in the knowledge that the evening in the garden after the close of play will be blue-skyed and possibly redolent of gin and tonics. Cricket itself has not much to do with these things, but the start of the season promises all these summer treats to fans.

Baseball is the same; Ken Burns tells us, as wonderfully schmaltzily as only he can, that “It follows the seasons, beginning each year with the fond expectancy of springtime and ending with the cold, hard facts of autumn.”

And so, while I wait for the Giants game to start, I can reflect back on the first game of Stacey’s softball season this week. She, under her nom de guerre of “The Puma” (no, really- long story) helped Where My Pitches At beat Red Scare 11-9, scoring one and batting in two.  She had played the last three games of 2011 injured, and not at her best. But she ran bases fast, caught well and hit everything she swung at. I was really proud of her; I’m looking forward to the rest of the year.

And that’s what Spring is all about, isn’t it?

Back to the Bay

After visiting San Francisco for two days in 2009 I fell so overwhelmingly in love with the place it became my firm intention to save up all my pennies and buy the city. So far, not enough pennies yet, but I'll keep you updated.

Even in the rain which at last arrived this weekend, San Francisco is visually stunning:

 
 

Coit Tower was illuminated in honour of the San Francisco '49ers' championship game against the New York Giants.

 
 



 
The 1898 Ferry Building- of which more later .
 
 
 

 

 

 
 

California Street by
night and day .

 

 

If you’ve never visited San Francisco before you might- as I did before I went- have unrealistic expectations of what the city is like. For one thing it represents a hefty exception to the rule “California = sun + surf”. You get no surf for the same reason that the city has been one of the world’s busiest seaports for 150 years: San Francisco Bay not so much a bay as a well sheltered cove with an area of up to 1600 square miles (depending on how you measure it). No waves is bad for surfing, apparently. And, being situated on the end of its peninsula, the western edge of San Francisco is about 9 miles further west- i.e. further out to sea- than the coast of Oakland, on the eastern edge of the Bay. Shoved out to sea as it is, San Francisco’s weather is often foggy and damp and considerably more changeable than the Central Coast:

Saturday, 9am

 

Saturday, 10.45 am

Sunday, 12.00

When we came in 2009 we stayed with Stacey’s cousin on the western side of town. Nearby, there was a bakery which embodied two of the most fascinating things about the city. Firstly, the bakery was a Workers’ Cooperative. The city is the most politically active place I’ve been to. While popularly associated with liberal politics (the last time it gave a Republican presidential candidate more than 20% of the vote was 1988) it is often more diverse than that, which makes it an interesting place to spend time. When we were out on Saturday we ran into a pro-choice demo in the morning and a pro-life counter-demo in the afternoon. In between the two we saw living proof that while the First Amendment might guarantee your right to free speech, it does absolutely nothing to protect you from looking like a complete arse once you’ve opened your mouth.

 

While every president has their naysayers, and while in these times President Obama would have no trouble finding people with fair reason to disagree with him, you have to pity the two jackasses on a street corner in North Beach who felt that singing the national anthem (the fourth verse, no less!) lent validity to the point they had tried to make by photoshopping Adolf Hitler’s moustache onto Obama’s portrait. While this blog remains officially apolitical, I don’t feel I’m going too far out on a limb by agreeing with the shocked man in the expensive coat who looked somewhat ruffled, and wandered away muttering “Shameful, shameful!”. Pending, of course, the opening of the Obama administration’s first extermination camps in conquered Canadian territory. Shameful it might be- but it’s interesting that they were there at all. Life’s rich tapestry, and all that.

 

The second thing about the bakery (I digressed…) was that it took its food really damn seriously and produced some of the most remarkable things I’ve ever had with a cup of coffee. One that sticks in the memory was a pecan danish with maple and rosemary syrup. And this applies, more broadly, to the city at large. Just as I’ve never been anywhere so politically aware, I’ve never been anywhere with a higher density of foodies per head of population. Hipsters too, but that’s another song.

The old Ferry Building was close to our base of operations and is totally devoted to artisan food producers. Pictured left is an Italian charcuterie, turning out excellent salami and prosciutto, a traditional butcher selling dry aged beef and quarter-pound hot dogs made of it; the Cowgirl Creamery, whose raclette smells cheesier than any cheese ever did, a small ice-cream and sorbet place knocking out truly chewy gelato and offering cut rates to 49ers fans in team colours before Sunday’s big game, a French patisserie, a Californian olive oil shop, an organic vegetable market, a chocolatier, an artisanal baker, a wild mushroom shop and a lady in a big hat selling posh doughnuts (I can recommend the chocolate and almond cream ones.) There were cookware shops, a large sandwich deli and a juice bar, as well as a noodle stand. Outside, there was a farmers’ market. This, in a building 200 yards long. San Francisco is foodie heaven.

 

Which might go some way towards explaining why Stace and I were so bowled over by  the meal we ate at Campanula on Saturday. The area is well-known for its multitudinous Italian restaurants but there are notable exceptions: the Stinking Rose, whose menu (pictured right) features garlic in every dish.  Campanula features unpretentious modern cuisine. The place is a joy; the atmosphere well-adjusted, the decor unobtrusive and tasteful and the service friendly and professional. The highlights included the lamb meatballs, lightly dressed in a tomato, olive and caper sauce; the wild boar sliders, served on tiny brioche rolls whose cute appearance belied just how boldly flavoured and skillfully prepared they were; the sea bass on a bed of clams and mussels (I can be sure to hate any shellfish I eat four times out of five- these were literally perfect) and the simple, original cocktails. That was just the edited highlights; I don’t want to be a bore. It was quite simply nothing more or less than the  best meal we’ve ever paid for.

 

While that meal was extraordinary, it really underlines just how earnest a business food is in San Francisco that even towards the lower end of the scale, food is taken seriously. A bar on the waterfront does a bit of food; its specialities are barbecue brisket and hot wings. They don’t muck about with napkins there- they have rolls of kitchen paper on every table. Rained in on Sunday evening we ordered the Serpent’s Kiss from Pizza Orgasmica. It’s a pizzeria with its own microbrewery. Next time we come to San Francisco, which might be damp but is never dull, we’ll be torn between what to try out for the first time and what we want to revisit. It’s a dilemma, but the good kind.

American Football

Yes, there has been a break in transmission; no, there is no explanation for it apart from the fact my feet have barely touched the ground since October. I promise, I'll write about Thanksgiving this November; it's a wonderful thing. But January is not the time to discuss it.

So, the Californian winter is in full whatever. Swing is the wrong word, and so, most decidedly, is Flow. There has been barely a drop of rain since I last wrote to you. This is unusual; if California has seasons, then it has a wet season and a dry season.So far, the wet season is decidedly conspicuous by its absence. In a region of vineyards and fruit orchards, where cattle are calving and pastures are dry, this has caused more than one rancher to look skyward and frown at what is essentially a clear blue sky.This is due to change imminently; a cloud-bank the width of the entire state is approaching the coast between Monterrey and San Francisco, according to wunderground.com- bringing some sorely needed moisture.

The winter tides have been spectacular to behold. As the waves approach the shore, the offshore wind peels the crests from the tops of the waves and flings them back out to sea in white arcs. Over the coarse of a day, the sea spray can cut down visibility quite drastically.

 Looking through 12-foot waves never gets boring. This paddle-surfer took 10 minutes to get through the breakers.

On days like this, the waves take out their anger by smashing over the breakwater at Morro Bay. Standing in the wrong place is unwise.

Now, after eight months in the US it wasn't just the frosty mornings, rain and short days I was missing. It's been a good while since I've been to a football match. Now, when I say football, I'm not talking about the American game for men with funny shaped balls. I frankly like watching baseball and basketball but I still have to get used to American football. The exciting bits are exciting, there is obvious skill involved, but the padding's weird compared to, say, Rugby League or Aussie Rules, and I get frustrated by the fact that players are only expected to do one thing well- there are 53 players in an NFL squad, but only 11 on the field, and they swap the entire team in and out depending on whether they're attacking or defending. I dare say I'll get to see a game one day, and I might even enjoy it. But not yet.

Bill Bryson, a writer who left the US for the UK as a young man, compared the baseball he had grown up with and adored, to the football he was surrounded with in Britain, and concluded that it was simply a matter of what you grew up with. It isn't that one game is inherently better than any other, it's just that sports fans tend to grow up with their sport, and it's like growing up with a language. I grew up watching football. 

Actually, not just watching it; I watched it less often than I listened to it on the radio: Metro FM used to  broadcast every Newcastle game live when I was a kid.  I grew used to the calm, authoritative voice of Charles Harrison describing the exploits of Cole, Beardsley and Srnicek, and took for ever to get used to younger, more excitable commentators when Harrison retired. Didn't they realise they didn't have to make it sound more exciting? That to us, listening at home, on a Saturday afternoon or a Wednesday night, with our posters on our walls taken from the Newcastle Evening Chronicle, the match was already the most exciting thing happening anywhere in the world?

While I don't remember much about the first football match I went to, I do remember ridiculously irrelevant details. I remember it was against Luton Town in 1992. The internet tells me it was on September 2nd. I knew we won 2-0, and the internet confirms those goals were scored by Lee Clark and David Kelly. Off the top of my head I can tell you that Dad and I sat in the Milburn Stand, ate haggis and chips from the chip shop on Clavering Road in Swalwell before the game and we parked the car in Wellington Street. It was what we- my sister and I- grew up with.

And suddenly, it hasn't been there any more. Traditionally, but not always, teams play at 3pm on Saturday. That's 7am on a Saturday for all of us on Pacific Time. That means I usually catch the live text commentary on the BBC, as well as updates on Twitter, but usually just the second half. Due to rights restrictions I rarely hear radio commentary or see TV highlights. So Stace decided to do something about it.

We sat on a cold evening in Cambria on aluminium bleachers, cheering on the Coast Union Broncos- Stacey's old High School. OK, so Coast Union vs Taft isn't quite Newcastle vs Sunderland, but never mind. The Broncos, in white, worked hard in midfield during the first half while Taft soaked all the pressure up. There was a cynical and vicious central midfielder playing for the blues; I expect he has a bright future in the game; if not, the ballet will take anyone who can get their feet up that high. At half time, Coast took off their most effective, most creative players- a number 8 who had great agility and a number 11 whose strength, power and skill made him quite brilliant. 

All right, it was a cold, misty night in Cambria with no prospect of a pint in the Newcastle Arms before the match. But, the game had its talking points, the lads all played well and it was bloody entertaining. As the Germans say, the ball is still round: football is football wherever you go. As if to prove the point, the referee was just as inconsistently awful as any in the English Premier League; if you go home talking about the dickhead with the whistle, you know you've been to the match.