A busy week in Pearl's Kitchen

It's finally Sunday evening after a busy week in Pearl's Kitchen.  We have hit the streets four of the last five days.  Lot's of fun.  The week started on Wednesday at Amnesia Bar for St. Patrick's Day.  What's St. Patty's day without a bit of corned beef?

On Friday we did a stint at the Mission art gallery Fabric 8's weekly Street Food Friday's.  The Fabric 8 backyard was the perfect place to be on a sunny Friday evening. 

Saturday night it was off to La Victoria, the old-school Mexican bakery on the Mission's fabled 24th Street corridor. The same family has owned this place since 1951.  The family's current proprietor Jamie hosts periodic street food nights, with live music.  Vendors set up on the spacious commercial kitchen.

Spring was in full bloom Sunday at Precita Park.  We dropped in to debut our brunch menu of corned beef hash with a fried egg, and egg salad sandwiches with homemade mayo and dill bread. 

Onion article sheds light on Jon's mustard obsession

Jon sent me an article the other day which did an amazing job describing a recent aspect of his life.  Mustard. You may ask, how does mustard become an "aspect of someone's life?"  Well if you read the article, which I've excerpt and linked to below, you will understand. I truly respect Jon's ability and willingness to reflect on himself, but the problem about the article is that it is from The Onion, a satirical  newspaper that does an amazing job of perfectly making fun of everyday life. You may have chuckled through many an Onion article in the past. But it really hits a nerve when the jokes on you...or your husband.

The title of the article is Man On Internet Almost Falls Into World Of DIY Mustard Enthusiasts. Here is a quote from the article to give you an idea of what I'm talking about.

Gibson's descent into the depths of mustard obsession started innocently enough, when he got involved in an Internet exchange about the best kind of mustard to use on a grilled bratwurst. When someone posted a link encouraging him to "click on this if you really want to spice things up," he took the stranger's advice and suddenly found himself on MustardMonster.com, a discussion group devoted to the cultivation, preparation, and enjoyment of the table-side condiment.

"I immediately realized I was out of my league," Gibson said of his first encounter with the Internet's do-it-yourself mustard community. "At that point I had maybe three different kinds of mustard in my refrigerator, but when I looked at their forum topics, these guys were talking about the strengths of unique varieties of imported mustard seeds, brewing your own vinegar for mustard-making, ways to improve store-bought mustard when you find yourself in a pinch. That…that was the start of what I now call my 'lost year.'"

Over the next few weeks, Gibson broadened his palette with many new and "exciting" mustards, an experiment that soon led him down a path toward compulsive mustard connoisseurship.

The likeness of this article to my reality really hit home, when I read the following quote from the wife in the article:

 " I thought it was pretty neat at first," said Gibson's wife, Heather. "After a while, though, it seemed like every conversation we had was about something the people on his mustard website said. One night I woke up at 3 a.m. and found him bathed in the light of the computer screen, posting his latest mustard thoughts to the message boards."

"That's when I realized the mustard had come between us," she added.

Lucky for us Jon's internet obsession with mustard (and other DIY food related issues) benefits us here at Pearl's Kitchen. He did develop our special mustard slurry, which helps our corned beef sandwiches stand out in a crowd. He perfected the braising liquid for our corned beef and has been studying the art of injecting brine into massive cuts of meat. And I will be able to take the multiple trials of sauerkraut currently in our fridge and cook them with the pounds of home-cured bacon to create a Pearl's Kitchen Reuben that will kick your butt. Of course that won't happen until he's satisfied with the proportions of fresh horseradish in his Russian Dressing.

As long as Jon continues to obsessively develops the techniques for creating the base ingredients for Pearl's Kitchen dishes I can take those ingredients and do some good cooking. It's a partnership that works, even if if it does sometimes get out of hand.

 Bacon in the Makin

Injecting a corned beef

 Prepping the Passover brisket

SF dabbles with regulating street food

During my day job I think nonstop about federal financial regulation and maybe an occasional state legislative proposal. So it was refreshing today to experience something different and new to me- local lawmaking at its finest. This morning there was an important hearing at City Hall to discuss how to fix the outdated, confusing, inconsistent, and often illogical nature of San Francisco's mobile vending permit process which is currently a great barrier to many food entrepreneurs who have tried to come out from "underground".

There's been a ton of attention on the street food scene here- see NY Times- which has been blowing up for about a year with new carts like ours popping up all the time. And of course, street food has a long tradition beyond us foodies hawking our goodies in the park. The system needs to preserve old and new food businesses while fostering the new community of mobile food vendors.

The hearing allowed us to get an idea of what the Supervisors were thinking with regards to regulating street food. I came away with a positive impression of the city's intentions. You can read a couple good summaries of what happened here and here. It did not sound like they wanted to immediately crack down on flourishing enterprises. Supervisor Bevan Dufty instigated and led the meeting and promises to have a proposal within a couple months. Let's cross our fingers. I plan to get more up to date on the current regulatory structure for mobile food service and look forward to reading the proposed regulations when they are issued.

Some truly awesome people spoke on behalf of the street food vendor crew: Shakirah Simley who runs Slow Jams, Matt Cohen who runs SF Cart project, Robyn Sue who developed the amazing Smitten Ice Cream machine, Curtis Kimball whose got the famous Creme Brulee Cart, and Paula Tejada of Chile Lindo. I've been nothing but impressed and awed at the great community that we've recently joined. Within 36 hours they gathered hundreds of signatures in support of street food, written on fabulously designed postcards which were submitted at the hearing. It's a true community of very motivated and creative people who will definitely continue being very successful.

One step closer to a Pearl's Kitchen Rueben

Since we served our first corned beef sandwich people have asking us about a Pearl's Kitchen Reuben sandwich.  As any deli nosher worth his or her salt (pun intended) knows, a Reuben is a corned beef or pastrami sandwich on rye, grilled, with sauerkraut, Swiss cheese, and Russian dressing. 

Well, the Reuben is a challenge we can't pass up.  Step one is mastering sauerkraut.  Sauerkraut is  pickled cabbage.  The cabbage is brined in salt water until suitably fermented.  Since cabbage is almost entirely water it produces its own brine once it comes in contact with salt.  Shred some cabbage into a crock, toss it with salt and - voila - in about 15 minutes the salt will have drawn so much water from the cabbage that it will be submerged in its own juices.  Leave it be for a few days or weeks (depending on the conditions) and you got yourself some sauerkraut.  I added some garlic and caraway and celery seeds for flavor.  

Our first batch was pulled out of the basement tonight after two weeks of fermentation.  It's flavorful and crispy and waiting to get heaped on some corned beef and slathered with dressing.  We are one step closer to the Reuben!

Fancy schmancy Jewish dinner at the James Beard House

A fabulous idea is coming to light in New York in a couple weeks with an awesome name.  “A Schmaltz to Remember” is being organized by David Sax, author of Save the Deli, and hosted at the James Beard House. David is bringing together the best delis from across NYC for a multi-course extravaganza featuring traditional Jewish cuisine. With wine pairings of course. For $125 a person.

Apps
Adelman’s Chopped Liver
Ben’s Best Miniature Cabbage Rolls,
Liebman’s Hush Puppies,
Second Avenue Deli’s Miniature Gefilte Fish

Courses
Smoked Tongue Salad w/ Rye Croutons, Pickled Shallots, Seasonal Greens, & Grainy Mustard Vinaigrette.
Martha’s Excellent Matzoh Ball Soup
Hot-Smoked Sturgeon w/ Dilled Potatoes, Beets, Horseradish, & Caviar Jus.
Zucchini Pasta with Pastrami, Sun-Dried Tomatoes, and Tapenade.
Braised Beef Brisket with Horseradish, Kreplach, and Tongue
Honey–Lemon Ricotta Cheesecake

We absolutely love this idea. If we lived in New York, we would spend every penny of Pearl's Kitchen's profit to date and go to this dinner. But since we live here in San Francisco (and since Jon and I have had daily conversations for the last six months about doing something similar here ) maybe we'll just go ahead and organize our own SF version...low key...underground style...without the fancy NY delis...and the illustrious hosts.

What do you think?

This is why SF needs Pearl's Kitchen

Our recent rantings about the challenges of finding schmaltz and kosher meat in San Francisco spark curiosity in my Aunt Julie who lives outside of D.C. in Olney, Maryland. She wondered, are things different on the east coast? Well after a quick stop at her regular old local supermarket, she realized the answer is most definitely yes. It seems that kosher deli food is readily available everywhere you look. And just to rub it in, she took pictures of the deli counter at her local Giant Supermarket.

This is the brand of kosher chicken they sell at Trader  Joe's here. But TJ's definitely doesn't carry Schmaltz.

Kosher corned beef for $7.99/lb. Don't even talk to me about this.

 Noodle Kugel at the supermarket! 

You think Safeway or Whole Foods would ever stock Pearl's Kitchen kugel?

 

Six different types of knishes!

Dill and half sour pickles. 

You can definitely get good dill pickles around here, but a perfect half sour is hard to find. Pearl's Kitchen will be developing a perfect recipe for these come summer when the cukes are in season.

 

Black and White cookies. 

We like to outsource these from our favorite bakery, Sweetface Sweets, if we can persuade her to bake some Jewish deli treats!

So the moral of the story is that you can probably hunt down decent versions of the above items if you spend a lot of time looking and driving to the ends of the earth here in the SF bay area. But nobody is bringing these goodies to your local street corner except Pearl's Kitchen. So come out and grab a taste next time we're serving. Together we can achieve a world where San Franciscan's can find six different types of knishes by just logging onto their twitter account.

Holy brisket breaks the bank

Pearl's Kitchen is excited to be serving up some grub at the upcoming Purim festival at the San Francisco JCC on February 28th. We're bringing our top game to this event (not that we don't always serve our best) because this is the ultimate test-- serving grandma's food to other Jewish grandmas, their children, and their grandchildren. In preparation I've been perfecting my chicken soup with matzoh balls and Jon's been fine tuning his corned beef. And then we got the not surprising question: is your meat Kosher?


Ok well, the chicken soup is no problem. Up until now I've been using organic chicken in my soup, but I can easily replace that with kosher chicken which is readily available and not too pricey. The corned beef on the other hand is another story.

We've been investigating different brisket retailers since the beginning of this endeavor. We really liked the product from Robert's Corned Meats which is a locally owned business that's been selling corned beef briskets in SF for 100 years. We have looked into very local producers like Marin Sun Farms, which sells all grass fed beef raised fifty miles away and bigger gourmet producers like Golden Gate Meats, which ship from Montana but the meat has no antibiotics or growth hormones. Of course prices range dramatically and justifiably depending on the size of the production and usually the sustainability of the practices. But nothing could have prepared us for the price jump when we looked into kosher briskets.

 Kosher is a certification which ensures that the animal and its meat have been prepared according to Jewish law. It must be killed in a humane way (by hand) and it's blood must be quickly drained from its body. If an animal is sick or dies of natural causes it cannot be Kosher. As an aside, even the grand old USDA does not allow "downer" or sick cows to enter the food supply, but it still happens all the time. Similarly to foods labeled organic, there seems to be an assumption that Kosher means the meat is healthier or at least more ethical. The validity of this is a whole different debate which I won't get into here, but one thing I do know is that Kosher means expensive!

Take this family's story from an article in Money Magazine:

It's not just the $9 grape juice doing damage to the Perets budget. The kosher mozzarella that Abbi uses to make pizza costs $5, double the price of the non-kosher kind; brisket, the quintessential Jewish comfort food, costs a whopping $14.99 a pound vs. $1.99. It all adds up to a monthly grocery bill of more than $1,000 for Abbi, 33, Guy, 36, and their four kids, ages 3 to 9 (a fifth is due in July).

I'm familiar with the reasons that grass fed local beef or even just regular old organic beef is more expensive than your average corn fed beef shipped from a factory farm in the Midwest. I read Fast Food Nation and The Omnivore's Dilemma. I get the whole negative externality thing- that the price of industrial food is deceptively low because its costs are being born out by the environment, our health, and the poor treatment of the animals and the people who process them. But I've never really thought about Kosher meat before and today I found out that a pound of Kosher brisket is twice as expensive as a pound of the holy grail of sustainable beef at Marin Sun Farms!

So here are some possible explanations:

1. The Kosher market is relatively small and so there is not the economy of scale necessary to drive prices down.
2. The butchering and handling of the meat must be done by someone who is highly skilled and therefore charges more.
3. There are less plants producing Kosher meat so if one gets busted for doing something wrong, prices go through the roof.
4. People are so willing to pay for Kosher food because it is a necessity for them that the few producers that do exist are able to dictate higher prices.

While we may never get to the bottom of the Authentic vs. Sustainable debate, likewise we may never know whether Kosher is really worth the premium price. Here at Pearl's Kitchen we will continue to examine all of the available sources of meat and promise to serve food that we feel good about.