SFist in the Kitchen: Market Breakfast
Bon Appétit readers may remember the "Entertaining at Home" articles: Buffy and Chip invite their dashing and witty friends over for a casual dinner in a Manhattan loft. Or in their Long Island farm house. Or their Swiss chalet.
Back when we subscribed, we daydreamed about the perfect life depicted in those features. We eyed the Smoked Trout with Cucumber-Watercress Cream and thought that maybe if we made it often enough, we could conjure an airy loft or movie star friends. As we became older and wiser, or at least more cynical, the pieces annoyed us with their unattainable standards and fluffy content. When one article featured—we swear to Alice Waters—a group of friends using their seaplane to get to a favorite picnic spot, we threw the issue across the room and canceled our subscription.
Photos by Melissa Schneider
But we got a taste of that fabulous life as as we assembled a breakfast made from a shopping spree at the Alemany Farmer's Market with our friend Meriko. Sure, the beautiful house is hers, not ours, but in this housing market, we'll take what we can get.
We may have felt like we were in a Bon Appétit article, but we can't imagine any photographer from that magazine snapping shots of this ethnically diverse marketplace. Asian women gripping live chickens by the feet and buying bok choy don't often find their way into the glam shots: The ignorant who think that California markets are lousy with elitist snobs could learn a thing or two from this sprawling array of stalls. The produce might be more darling up at the Ferry Plaza, but at Alemany it's vastly cheaper.
That kept brunch inexpensive as we scouted the stalls under the mural-bedecked archways. We started with tiny raw Kumamotos ($7/dozen!) from Point Reyes Oyster Company (well within the 100-mile-radius imposed by August's Eat Local Challenge), which we shucked and slurped on the little deck. We like them "raw and wrigglin'," but we also grilled ginormous oysters for our meat course. You can never have too many oysters.
The hit of the menu, however, was fried artichoke hearts. It's a lot of work [PDF] to strip the leaves from an artichoke, but we'll happily do it again so that we can enjoy thin slices of heart fried in hot olive oil and butter until crispy. A sprinkle of salt finishes the treat, and even the grilled goat-cheese-stuffed figs wrapped in prosciutto weren't quite as addictive. We tasted through a range of peaches to find the juiciest and most succulent for our fruit salad and Meriko's brilliant combination of pan-fried potatoes and just-warmed corn kernels made for another unforgettable dish. We washed it all down with rosé sparkling wine, of course. We're tempted to say that we finished the afternoon by playing bocce before hitting the surf in our sailboat, but instead we ended our little Bon Appétit fantasy by returning home over a crowded Bay Bridge.
Recipe: Fried Artichoke Heart Slices
Note: Three good-sized artichokes fed three of us well, but the slices were so tasty that you might want to get an extra one.
- Prepare a bowl of water with a splash of vinegar in it.
- Use a sturdy chef's knife to cut through the top third of the artichoke. The choke should be visible
- Peel off some of the tough outer leaves. Using a sharp paring knife, trim the leaves on the choke until all that's left is the stem, the heart, and the choke. Use a spoon to scrape out the hairy choke. Quickly drop the artichoke stem into the acidulated water. Repeat with the other artichokes.
- Slice each heart into thin (1/4") slices, and drop the slices back into the water.
- Heat a pan with equal parts olive oil and butter. The pool of fat in the pan should just cover the artichoke slices.
- Once the fat is hot (sprinkle a drop of water in; it should pop), put the artichoke slices into the pan (they will sputter; be careful). The pieces should fit in a single layer. You may need to cook the slices in batches. Fry until the slice is tender and has some browning, flipping regularly.
- When the slices have finished, place them on a paper-towel-lined plate for a few minutes.
- Salt liberally and enjoy.