ESF: The Last Supper

Wednesday night was our final class meeting for Eating San Francisco, and it was bittersweet. Sweet because approximately 3 hours after class got out, I would be done with almost all of my work for the year, and would feel about 15 pounds lighter. Bitter because the bonds we forged and the things we learned over the course of this short class were a little tough to say goodbye to (not in the sense that the bonds and the knowledge are going to disappear, but in the sense that we won't have the chance to further them for 3 hours every Wednesday night any longer).

My memorial Flickr Set

For our last class, my fellow students and I embarked on a local, seasonal, delicious meal cooking extravaganza, resulting in a gourmet potluck meal that proved there is definitely no such thing as too many cooks in the kitchen (as long as we have our own kitchens...) when it comes to this class. My contribution? One of my favorite fallback recipes: a summer pasta salad, salty, sweet, fresh and tasty. A more complicated and hearty recipe could have been tackled, had I had more than one hour between work and class, but I was happy - a fresh pasta salad is more reflective of my cooking personality. I have been covering Rainbow Grocery for my Journalism class for the past month and a half, and know more about it than any ordinary person should. But gladly, because I knew it would be my one stop shop for my local, seasonal grocery list. Not everything on their shelves is local or seasonal, but the selection is pretty unbeatable. I set on my way with the following list: Bulk pasta, bulk olive oil, balsamic vinegar, tomatoes, basil, pine nuts, mozzarella cheese, and the elusive "whatever else sounds good". I came out with a pound of bulk rotini pasta, a little tub of local, lemon-infused olive oil, some 18 year aged balsamic vinegar from Napa, organic basil from Hollister, organic tomatoes from Chico, pine nuts from China (*SMACK* - That's you, David Silver, slapping me on the wrist. I know, but apparently our good old American evergreens don't produce adequate enough pine nuts even for the most locally focused grocery store), mozzarella from a Berkeley cheese company, and "whatever else" in the form an Oakland produced parsley/arugula pesto and two bottle of "Cheap Red/White Wine" from Morgan Hill. Here's how it all came together (a careful science):

Ingredients:
1 lb Rotini Pasta
Two handfuls lightly chopped Basil
Lots of olive oil (part lemon-infused, part regular)
Not so much balsamic vinegar
One handful pine nuts
4 chopped tomatoes (large chunks)
Mozzarella balls, chopped in half
A dash (aka spoonful) of the parsley/arugula pesto (in retrospect, a traditional basil pesto would have been better)
Salt, salt, salt, and pepper to taste

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil, and dump in all the pasta (the pasta I bought from Rainbow cooked quicker than your regular supermarket box). Chop up a good amount of the basil leaves, but not finely, just enough to release the flavor. Chop the four tomatoes into large chunk. Chop the mozzarella balls in half, or quarters depending on the size. When the pasta is soft (al dente, preferably), strain it and rinse the noodles with cold water. Put the noodles in a large bowl, and add the chopped ingredients and pine nuts. Begin adding lemon olive oil, regular olive oil, and a little balsamic vinegar to taste. Finish with some salt and pepper, seasoning to taste. It's a DIY kind of recipe - you can make it however you like it.


REMINDER!
I created an ESF Cookbook blog on Wordpress, so log in and post your recipes please!
Login: ESFRecipes
Password: eatingsanfrancisco

When I arrived at the feast, a table of deliciousness lay before me, awaiting my addition. I was very pleasantly surprised to see that everyone had made something completely, and equally as enticing. There were open face steak sandwiches, chocolate covered strawberries, pita chips and salsa, salmon pasta, fruit salad, bite-size vegetable napoleons, couscous, fava bean dip, gnocchi, a fresh salad picked from USF's vegetable garden...I'll stop there. I'm getting hungry. We each grabbed a cafeteria boat and dug in, filling them to the brims. I don't know if it was the proximity, the seasonality, the freshness, or all three qualities of the ingredients we used, but it was, as Professor Silver said, the best meal we had all semester. Each dish made with different hands, different personalities, and it showed. I never doubted us and our new, or not so new interests in food, but this was beyond all expectations. Bravo, ESF, we done good. I couldn't have imagined a better way to close out the year.
Inspired by our meal's focus, I created a map using "MapMe" where we can pinpoint where all of our ingredients came from. I've already entered mine in, and uploaded some pictures to go with it. I've embedded the map here, but I want all of you to edit it and add your dish's ingredients so we can create a geographic picture of what we ate! The site takes a minute to get used to, but once you do it's pretty simple, so please contribute if you have a minute! I'll post it on our new ESF Cookbook blog as well.

You have to log in to edit it, so here is the info:
Go to: http://www.mapme.com/ and click Sign In
Username: ESFPotluck
Password: eatingsanfrancisco
Click "1 Map" under the My Maps heading, and get to gettin'.


Download: KML RSS | Create your own travel map on MapMe.com