contra

Bienvenue to el blog, yo.

I’ve been kicking around the idea of a site for a few years now, more as a way to collect my impractical cooking experiments, menus, and deep, deep thoughts for posterity than anything else. If you’re curious about How to Cook on a Budget Using Random Ingredients in Your Fridge, or How to Ferment Things you Didn’t Think Could be Fermented, consider this a safe space.

Part of the immediate inspiration was my recent move from New York City, my hometown, to San Francisco about four months ago. I had been cooking on and off in the Hamptons and the city with a friend for a few years, a little private dinner/catering project we called Contra (a combination of the first three letters of our first names, not a statement on anti-Sandinista politics).

Prior to that, I spent a year putzing around Paris and traveling a bit. Out of necessity, I stopped following recipes and started trusting my intuition a bit more. That meant buying lamb necks from a halal butcher on Avenue Ledru-Rollin and scoring sweet deals from the farmer’s market at the Place d’Aligre five minutes from closing time when all the vegetables were on deep discount (hello, jerusalem artichoke aka topinambour) and slapping together something cheap and delicious.

I’ll never forget spending a week as the de facto cook at a little “farm” in Uzès, a little town near Languedoc-Roussillon. I spent most of my time eating wild cherries, drinking vin de sureau (an aperitif made with elderflower), and getting chased around by their black lab-border collie mix, Zoë.

Sylvie, the tan-as-leather matriarch who smoked six spliffs a day, noticed I was handy in the kitchen and appointed me de facto cook for the week. She was a talented cook in her own right but precise measurements were not really her bag (“a few eggs, a cuillère of this, etc”). When I left, she gave me a compliment I hold pretty dear. “Straftford, tu es un grand cuisinier!” Hell yeah, score one for the good guys.

And way, way before that, my obsession with cooking began as an 11-year old. It started with my Trinidadian babysitter teaching me how to fry an egg, then staying up past my bedtime to watch episodes of Jamie Oliver’s “The Naked Chef,” and then cooking three-course meals for my parents on a $20 budget using a stained copy of Boy Meets Grill by Bobby Flay.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that it’s tough to separate the way I think about cooking from my life experiences. So often they’re inextricable. When I moved cross-country, I figured, hell, might as well start picking up one-off gigs and private dinners again while I looked for a desk job.

Here’s the menu for one of my first Contra private dinners in San Francisco. I took the day off from my temp job at the salt mines, donned the ol’ blue apron and trusty clogs, and Muni-ed over to my client’s home in Russian Hill to cook for nine.

The menu was Provençal-themed, a not so subtle nod to my ol’ pal, Sylvie. I was spoiled with ingredients all from the Ferry Building farmer’s market so the goal was to keep it simple but show off some technique as well.

June 14, 2011

• home-made parmesan cracker, fava bean purée, ricotta salata, mint
• pattypan squash carpaccio, panzanella, purple basil, preserved lemon vinaigrette
• pan-roasted halibut, spring vegetable barigoule, artichoke chip
• tarte tatin, dukkah, lemon crème fraiche, golden raspberries (recipe below)

If I was a French grandmother, this is the recipe I would shout at you from the living room while smoking a Gauloise and drinking a glass of Lillet on ice.

Recipe: Tarte Tatin, dukkah, lemon crème fraiche, golden raspberries 

Equipment

• 9 inch cast iron pan

Ingredients

• 8 granny smith apples

• 1 sheet of Dufour puff pastry (please don’t overachieve and try to make this at home)

• 6 tablespoons of sugar

• 2 tablespoons of butter (note the 1:3 ratio)

• Lemon zest

• Dukkah (a middle-eastern spice blend, heavy on toasted nuts, seeds, and anise)

Technique

• Crank the oven to 400 degrees, set wire rack in center of oven

• Roll out your puff pastry so it fits the pan and gives you at least an inch of wiggle room around. Throw it back in the fridge

• Heat pan on medium, add sugar and butter and make a dangerously dark but not burnt caramel. (Keep an eye on this and swirl the pan or use a wooden spoon. It will change color quickly at the end, and you’ll see hot spots and wisps of smoke.)

• While the caramel is…caramelizing, recruit a loved one to help you peel and core the apples. I prefer them halved so they hold their shape, but quartered also works.

• Take pan off heat and add peeled apples, so the cut side faces up. Fit smaller slices around the halved apples. Scatter zest and a healthy pinch of salt around the apples, then crimp the dough snugly over the apples. Slash the top to release steam

• Throw in the oven and bake for 40 minutes

• Remove from oven. Let it rest for a minute or so, then release the edges with a knife or palette knife. Working quickly, place an oversize serving plate on top of the cast iron pan, and quickly invert the tarte

• Garnish with dukkah and served with a quenelle of chilled crème fraiche mixed with lemon zest, and golden raspberries