cut off the short loin

dinner was a spinach and semolina gratin with roasted golden beets, caramelized onions, and thin-sliced bavette steak cooked with sherry vinegar, and a side of sunflower sprouts, carrots, and chevre, dressed with lime chutney. the chefs here really let the meat sit, rest, and re-absorb juices before slicing, which is perfect. the carver was massacring it by slicing along the grain but we soon put that right, and the resulting slices were rosy-pink all the way through, juicy, meaty, and tender.

the flavours of australia and the sun rising

arrived at work just in time to snag the tail end of breakfast: a quiche of leeks and dandelion greens, and an omelette stuffed with linguica and crabmeat. for lunch, we went to charlie's for the first time in months. the channa and urad dal cooked with garlic, ginger, onion, tomatoes, turmeric, whole chili, cilantro, arugula was deeply-flavoured as usual, and liberally dusted with chopped cilantro. there was also a guy behind the cutting board fileting large whole-roasted red snappers. the flesh was moist, flaky, and meaty, and they served it with a chutney of mint and coconut. the procurers must have had a field day with the fish since snapper filets were also on offer in slice (grilled with a grapefruit, blood orange, and thyme sauce, they tasted somehow australian -- bright and with a zingy flavour), served alongside a barley pilaf cooked with red savoy cabbage, pears, fried carrot chips, and sage. the barley had been slightly overcooked and it would probably have been better to use pearl barley instead, but the flavour was interestingly sweet.

then, for dinner a thai young coconut filled with sweet liquid but with flesh that had hardened out of the almost liquid gel that you can get if you knock a green coconut off the tree in your yard. the salad of black beans, dried roma tomatoes, onions, mozzarella, tarragon, thyme, rosemary was meaty and satisfying, though the addition of tarragon and thyme was inexplicable and gave the whole thing a strange flavour better suited to a sauce to accompany fish. the successful salad of the night was one that tasted of sunrises and mist burning off the sea: golden beets, dried blueberries, red onion, olive oil, orange juice, apple cider vinegar, cayenne pepper, and agave. it makes me happy that our chefs experiment.

hot beverage

also, there are squares of scharffen berger chocolate in the microkitchens now. steaming a cup of milk and then dissolving 6 squares of chocolate into it (3 bittersweet, 3 semisweet) and dropping in a curl of orange peel and a cardamom pod produces a quite magical beverage. full fat milk only, of course.

rices

i've never really understood why wild rice is so popular -- it has its place wherever a nutty, dry , highly-flavoured grain is needed, but there's no need to go putting it in salads with soft, mild leaves like butter lettuce or pairing it with delicately-flavoured foods. in any case, slice today served up boxes of cilantro-lime roasted scallops with steamed kale and cauliflower on a bed of wild and basmatic rice. individually, each component was irreproachable, but nothing there really could stand up to the rice.

cross-bearing

last week, they had cold, roast french fingerling potatoes with grilled red escarole, parmesan, olive oil, and pepper. i could eat this for days. today, no-name had a vol au vent filled with wild mushroom ragout, medium-rare slices of grilled flatiron steak, a seafood gumbo of prawns, scallops, snapper, and a curried cruciferous salad of broccoflower, broccoli, and cauliflower.

the Cruciferae are a family of flowering plants now known in the official taxonomies as the Brassicaceae -- cruciferous or cross-bearing because of a floral structure common to the family in which the corolla, or inner whorl of petals surrounding the anthers, is usually composed of four petals forming the shape of a cross. this family of plants contains everything from bok choy through broccoli, though what is perhaps more amazing is that broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, and kale are all cultivars of the same species (Brassica oleraceae) selected for their dramatically different leafing expressions.

kombucha

they made a smoothie today of young coconut, mango, and agave syrup. it was quite nice. for dinner, there was a venison stew that must have had red wine in it -- rich, with clear flavour and meat fork-tender without being mushy, it was a tremendous comfort food served with basmati rice and a coconut curry soup. over dinner, we concluded that the broiled skate would have been more classically accompanied by a brown butter instead of a mignonette, but that fussing with these piddling details would be churlish. the team also made a simple and inspired salad of strawberries and grapefruit with mint. clark made my night by sneaking up behind me while i was in line for some cucumber with a large, apparently empty olive jar that on closer inspection proved to contain a mat of kombucha culture.

small plates

lunch today at the small plates cafe. of the selection, the standout was a beef carpaccio with a raw quail egg, its top carefully removed to reveal a lemon-yellow yolk against the delicate pale blue of the shell. the cornmeal-dusted pan-fried trout was also good with its sauce of sage and brown butter: the chefs had dusted only the flesh, leaving the skin to turn crisp against the pan. as an afterthought, i picked up a small rosette of house-smoked salmon with a tiny salad of thin-sliced cucumbers dressed with sour cream nestled in the center.

this week, a host of interesting smoothies at slice. the most promising was one composed of macadamia nutmilk, bananas, agave syrup, raw cacao pulp, and vanilla. it tasted like a mild chocolate banana shake, even though the cacao pulp tastes nothing (to me at least) like chocolate. in brazil, the juice-stands with which the streets are strewn sell blends of cacao with mint, raspberry, acerola, or lemon.

dinner was a plate of ravioli (butternut squash and goat cheese) in a tomato cream sauce. on the side, broiled skate wings that were golden brown on the outside and barely-cooked inside, drenched in a mignonette of shallots, champagne vinegar, and pepper, and a slice of grilled flank steak full of beefy flavour.

the role of glutamate crystals in deliciousness

at the american table, lunch was a pizza of roasted mushrooms, parmesan, spinach, and a white cream sauce, some field greens with a balsamic vinaigrette, and a creamy sweet corn and crab bisque garnished with garlic shrimp and truffle oil. on the way out, i picked up a reconstructed s'more: a house-made graham cracker smeared with a bitter chocolate ganache and topped with a small piping of marshmallow fluff that had thereafter been thoughtfully bruleed. the pizza was thin and chewy-crusted, and the mushrooms, sauce, spinach, and parmesan came together beautifully. the parmesan was the unidentifiable element that made the pizza noble, adding the rich savouriness that you also get from seaweed, miso, tomatoes, some of the hard, proteinaceous cheeses, and MSG. the reason for this is glutamate, and parmigiano reggiano (the good stuff anyway, that comes in big wedges with the originating producer's code number printed on the outside in dot-matrix) is so full of it that it forms into long, needly crystals. you'll also have noticed these in pecorino romano. these are long, needly crystals of deliciousness. but i digress, for the reconstructed s'more was also marvellous, and the crab and corn soup remarkable (there was brandy in there, and a smoky kick from perhaps a roasted poblano or some such).

at dinner, the chefs at no name served up a panoply of delights. it was one of those fridays when all the flavours came together: muffuletta sandwiches, tube pasta in a roasted pepper cream sauce, carved turkey, smoked sturgeon. all these were john the chef's brainchildren, and they show traces of the six years he spent in new orleans before coming to cook for us. the turkey had been injected (using an enormous, 2 foot long syringe) in multiple places with cranberry juice, leaving the breast meat striped with rosy bands and juicy. the food infrastructure here in mountain view also includes a hot smoker, hence the slab of flaky, hot-smoked, caraway crusted sturgeon, sliced finger-wide and served with creme fraiche. and then, back at the desk, there was, in a small cup, a baked white peach filled with a maple-pomegranate reduction, whole roasted unsalted pistachios, and mint.

pushing the envelope

one of the smoothies of the week is made of spirulina, kiwi fruit, apple juice, and gojiberries. deep green and grainy, it is full of the sharp biting sensation that kiwi seeds give as you crack them open between your teeth. raelene's pistachio bundt cake was out at lunch. it had the friendly colour of good chartreuse and a slightly lemony icing sugar frosting. next to it was an enormous bowl of softly-whipped cream and a plate of cacao nib cookies, each such a deep brown it was almost black, and with a sparkling line of sea salt down the center.

persimmons

this morning, next to the vats of yogurt, there was a small white bowl of deep orange puree: this was an unmistakable sign that the persimmon puree had returned. made from hachiya persimmons, the puree was almost completely free of tannins and had a soft, mellow flavour that goes well with unsweetened yogurt. no one else seems to like it, since there's usually lots of the puree still sitting on the counter after the breakfast service is over. i'm told that fuyu persimmons are eaten as hand fruit here but hachiyas are not, since they become almost liquid by the time they've ripened to the point where their tannins subside enough for edibility. back home, we ate overripe hachiyas cold from the refrigerator on hot days and it was always a particular pleasure to extract the gelatinous lozenge from each squashy quarter slice.*

at lunch, the slice crew served forth trays of salmon roasted with a tamari, molasses, and pomegranate glaze and served with a salsa of halved, stewed, spicy kumquats. the salmon was crusty outside and rare inside, quite a tour de force. the wild rice and kabocha cakes with roasted oyster mushrooms that came with were less exciting, but you can't have everything. and, of course, tonight the enormous slab of seared ahi came out again. words are inadequate to describe the pleasure.

* -- some fruit, like good meat, is better after having gone through a process of controlled decay. what dry aging is for beef, bletting is for hachiyas and medlars.

then, there was applesauce

there was yogurt, made by the house with harold mcgee's own culture from india, now over 50 years old and still going strong. many of us are partial to the vanilla-flavoured variety although the vanilla is said to have an inhibitory effect on the culture. next to the vats of yogurt was a bowl of house-made applesauce, which carried with it a trace of the slightly resinous flavour of the winesap apples from which they were made. at dinner, there was a roughly-chopped salad of raw tomatoes, red onions, and cucumbers. the tomatoes have a ways to go before they're in season enough to explode with flavour, but the salad was excellent nonetheless. the meat and grill line looked different tonight because there were several slabs of whole roast beef tenderloin, perfectly cooked to a point between rare and medium-rare. they'd let the meat sit for long enough that the carving station wasn't awash in juices and each slice was a even, rosy pink through to the centre. next to the beef, what appeared to be an unusually large and angular pork loin turned out in fact to be a enormous slab of seared sushi-grade ahi tuna, rubbed with paprika. thin, garnet slices fell off the block and lay, improbably large and beautiful on my plate, napped with a honey teriyaki sauce and wasabi aioli. (is it an aioli if it doesn't contain, primarily, oil and garlic?) the tuna was meltingly tender, irreproachably fresh, and was completely wiped out before i could get seconds.