Dos Piñas has now become a lunch tradition for Dennis and I whenever we have the urge for a quick Mexican fix. There’s obviously the Mission, which is a great hike from the Dogpatch and has tons and tons of taquerias. But for a quick fix, we simply walk down 17th Street (Mariposa is much hillier!) to Rhode Island in Potrero Hill for some great tasting Mexican treats at Dos Piñas.

As you step inside, Dos Piñas looks and feels like a bustling beach shack.  Decked with bright beach colors everywhere, all it needs is a coral blue ocean with white sand and the glorious Caribbean sun.  But I’m not complaining, a sunny San Francisco Spring day is seriously not bad at all, more so with a trio of tacos and a bowl of tasty and hearty tortilla soup.  It’s my pick for the best in the city.

To learn how to make your own tortilla soup at home, Alice Waters has a simple recipe, follow the link here.

Dos Pinas
251 Rhode Island Street at 15th Street
San Francisco 94103
415.252.8220
dospinas.com

Why do I love a bowl of tortilla soup?

There’s plenty of reasons: the crunchy tortilla strips, the hot salty chicken soup, and the endless garnish possibilities that add texture and flavor to this wonderful comfort food.

Squeeze some lime to add a little tang.  Throw in some jicama to add a little sweetness, some radish slices to add a little crunch.  Sprinkle some chopped cilantro.  Garnish with a slice, or two, or three of fresh, heart-healthy, and tasty avocado.  Alice Waters’s tortilla soup made with fresh local produce is easy to make and seriously simply delicious.  This recipe makes 4 to 6 servings.

For the tortilla strips
4 corn tortillas, cut into 1/2-inch strips
1/2 cup canola oil

For the soup
1-1/2 quarts chicken broth
1 chicken breast (with skin and bones)
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 Anaheim green pepper, seeded and thinly sliced
1/2 medium yellow onion, thinly sliced
2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
2 large tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and diced (or 3 small canned whole tomatoes, diced with juice included)
1 dried chipotle chile, seeded
sea salt

Recommended garnishes
lime wedges
1/2 cup chopped cilantro
1/2 cup jicama, peeled and shredded
1/2 cup radish, thinly sliced
1 avocado, sliced
chopped green onion
pickled jalapeno and red onion
crumbled queso fresco or grated Monterey Jack cheese

Making the tortilla strips

In a small heavy-bottomed pan fry the corn tortilla strips in canola oil over medium-high heat. Fry the tortilla strips in small batches until golden brown and crispy. Be careful not to burn the tortilla. Drain on paper towels and season with sea salt.

Making the soup

In a medium pot, heat the chicken broth to a simmer, add the chicken breast and cook at a bare simmer until the chicken is done, about 20 minutes. Turn off the heat, transfer the chicken breast to a plate and let it cool. Remove and discard the skin and bones and shred the breast meat. I like my tortilla soup a little chunky so shred the meat to your preference.

In a large heavy pot, cook the Anaheim green pepper, onion, and garlic in olive oil until soft, about 5 minutes. Season with salt. Pour in the hot chicken broth then add the tomatoes and dried chipotle chile. Bring to a boil and then turn down to a simmer and cook for 30 minutes.

Add the shredded chicken meat and heat through, but do not boil. Season with salt.  Serve the soup with crispy tortilla strips and little bowls of your favorite serve-yourself garnishes.

Waters recommends adding cooked and drained black beans and sauteed chard to make a heartier soup.

Spring is a great season to enjoy tortilla soup when sweet radishes and California avocados are in season.

True to Dennis’s genuine love for all things chocolate and all things peanut butter, we made a chocolate cake with chocolate and peanut butter frosting for his birthday.

Okay, I’m actually using the pronoun “we” here very loosely.  It was more like “he” rather than “we”.  Dennis made his first two-layer chocolate cake from scratch and I was the assistant pastry chef and food stylist.  We used a basic chocolate cake recipe from Alice Waters’s The Art of Simple Food and a chocolate butter icing recipe from The Joy of Cooking.  We tweaked the icing recipe a little to make a decadent chocolate and peanut butter frosting instead.  The chocolate cake recipe is a great versatile recipe that can be used to make cakes in any format from sheet cakes to cupcakes.

For the chocolate cake, makes one 9-inch one-layer or multilayer round cake

4 oz unsweetened chocolate
2 cups cake flour
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
6 Tbsp cocoa powder
8 Tbsp (1 stick) butter, softened
2-1/2 cups brown sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
3 eggs, at room temperature
1/2 cup buttermilk, at room temperature
1-1/4 cups boiling water

For the chocolate and peanut butter frosting, makes two cups of frosting

4 oz unsweetened chocolate, coarsely chopped
3 Tbsp unsalted butter
1/4 cup milk
1/2 cup peanut butter
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted

Making the cake

Preheat the oven at 350 degrees F.

Butter two 9-inch cake pans and line the bottom with parchment paper. Butter the paper and dust the pan with flour or cocoa, and shake out the excess. Lining the pan with parchment paper makes removing the cake from the pan much easier.

Coarsely chop the unsweetened chocolate.  We used the Venezuelan chocolate El Rey Bucare that has 58.5% cocoa.  Place the coarsely chopped chocolate in a metal bowl and set the bowl over a pot of simmering water. The metal bowl should be big enough so that it sits on top of the pot without touching the water.

Turn off the heat. Stir the chocolate from time to time until completely melted and smooth. Remove the bowl from the pot and set aside the melted chocolate.

Sift together the cake flour, baking soda, salt, cocoa powder.

In a large bowl, beat the softened butter until creamy. Beat the butter either by hand or in a stand mixer. Beat in the brown sugar and vanilla extract. Then beat in the eggs, one egg at a time. When fully blended, stir in the melted chocolate. Add half of the dry ingredients to the mixture and combine. Stir in the buttermilk. Then stir in the rest of the dry ingredients. Gradually pour in the boiling water until completely blended. The batter will have a thin liquid consistency.

Pour the batter equally into the two cake pans and bake for 45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Place the pan on a cooling rack and allow the cake to cool completely.

Run a knife around the edge of the pan to loosen the cake. Remove the cake from the pan and peel off the parchment paper. The cooled cake can be kept in the pan and stored if you are not using the cake the same day. Just make sure that it is tightly covered.

The recipe can also be used to make a sheet cake or cupcakes. For a sheet cake, prepare a half-sheet pan as mentioned above. Pour the batter, smooth the top, and bake for about 20 minutes. For cupcakes, bake for about 30 minutes. The recipe makes around 24 individual cupcakes.

Making the icing

Melt the chocolate the same way as previously. Place the coarsely chopped chocolate in a metal bowl and set the bowl over a pot of simmering water. Remove from heat. Add the unsalted butter, stir in the milk and the vanilla extract. Blend by hand or use a stand mixer. Gradually add the confectioners’ sugar and beat until smooth and spreadable. Add the peanut butter and mix until well blended.

Add more sugar, if needed, to thicken the consistency. According to the Joy of Kitchen, confectioners’s sugar icings tend to thicken on its own if left undisturbed for a few minutes. Also, it thickens if stirred over a bowl of ice water. Add more peanut butter if you prefer a more peanut buttery taste.

Make the icing just before using.

Assembling the Cake

Place the first layer on a cake pedestal. Using a carving knife, trim the top of the first layer to make it flat.

Evenly spread a generous layer of the icing on top of the cake using a metal spatula. Then place the second layer on top of the frosting.

Generously coat the cake with the frosting using a metal spatula. The recipe for the frosting makes 2 cups, which we found to be just enough for a two-layer 9-inch cake.  If you prefer a cake more lavishly coated with frosting, adjust the ingredients proportionally to yield more.

The cake was amazing.  Rich and moist.  Dennis’s birthday, too was equally amazing.  Sweet sixteen.

Polpette is Italian meatballs.

Generally made with beef and pork, combined with some olive oil, garlic, cheese, bread crumbs, egg and parsely and rolled by hand, polpette can be easily made at home.  Toss them with tomato sauce and spaghetti to make the beloved American favorite, spaghetti with meatballs.  Or grab some crusty bread to make a hearty meatball sandwich. Or simply roll them in grated or shredded Parmesan cheese and serve them as an hors d’oeuvre or even a main course.

This Italian meatball recipe is taken from Alice Waters’s The Art of Simple Food.

Making Polpette

1 pound ground grass-fed beef
3/4 pound ground pork shoulder
1 cup torn-up pieces of day-old white bread with crusts removed
1/2 cup milk
1 small yellow onion
1 Tbsp olive oil
2 garlic cloves, peeled and pounded to a paste
1 Tbsp chopped fresh oregano (or 1 tsp dried oregano)
1 Tbsp chopped parsley
1 egg
1/4 cup grated or shredded Parmesan cheese
a pinch of cayenne pepper
salt and fresh-ground pepper

Season the ground beef and ground pork with salt and fresh-ground black pepper.

In a small bowl, combine the bread pieces and milk. Set aside to soften. Grate the onion using the large-holed side of a box grater or if you don’t have a grater, chop the onions very finely until it becomes a rough puree, which will add moisture on top of flavor to the meatballs. Squeeze most of the milk out of the bread and put the bread in a large mixing bowl together with the seasoned meat and the grated onion.

Add the rest of the ingredients and mix them with your hands gently and thoroughly. Mixing them too much makes the meatballs tough. Fry a little meatball in a small pan and taste. Adjust the salt and pepper as needed. If it seems a bit dry, add a little milk. Gently roll the mixture into golf-size meatballs by hand.

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F and bake the meatballs on a rimmed baking sheet until just cooked through. Waters suggests a baking time of about 6 minutes. When I made mine, I baked for 8 minutes and then turned up the broiler and broiled the meatballs for another 2 minutes to brown them a bit. An alternative to baking is frying the meatballs in little oil in a pan, turning them occasionally for even browning. I personally prefer baking since I find it hard to brown the meatballs uniformly by frying them.

Waters suggests the following cool variations.

• Use ground turkey instead of ground beef.
• Use cold cooked rice or potato instead of the bread.
• Add other chopped herbs such as mint, marjoram, sage or thyme.

It’s Dungeness crab season in San Francisco and there’s no better way to enjoy these tasty crustaceans than to make crab cakes! Alice Waters has a great simple recipe for crab cakes in her amazing book The Art of Simple Food.

Making homemade crabcakes is an excellent example of why homecooking is so cool: you actually know what ends up in your plate because you made it yourself.  Most of the time I wonder how much crabmeat there is in the crab cakes I get when I dine out.  Get the best crabmeat, pick the freshest herbs, make your own breadcrumbs and if you’re a little adventurous, make your own mayonnaise from scratch! Fresh ingredients plus a simple recipe equals great-tasting food.

Crab Cakes

1 lb crabmeat (picked from 2 Dungeness crabs)
1 cup mayonnaise
2 Tbsp chopped chives
2 Tbsp chopped parsley
2 Tbsp chopped chervil
1 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
salt and cayenne to taste
1-1/2 cups breadcrumbs (click here to learn how to make fresh breadcrumbs)
5 Tbsp unsalted butter (click here to learn how to make clarified butter)

Cooking the crabs

Boil salted water in a large pot and then carefully drop in the Dungeness crabs. Two Dungeness crabs will yield roughly a pound of crabmeat but use as many blue crabs or other crabs as needed to yield the same.  Boil for 15 minutes.  Remove the crabs from the pot and let them drain and cool.

Pull off the large top shell, remove the fibrous lungs and rinse lightly.

Split the main body in half down the center.  Pull off the legs, crack them, and pick the crabmeat from the body and legs.  Big chunks of crabmeat are good for texture. Put the crabmeat in a bowl and gently go through the meat to remove any bits of shell left in the meat.  Refrigerate until ready to use.

Making the cakes

Stir the chives, parsley, chervil, lemon juice, salt and cayenne into the mayonnaise and mix thoroughly.  Let me make a note that chervil is pretty difficult to find. Even the local Whole Foods does not normally carry them.  If you find yourself chervil-less, don’t worry I think you’ll be fine without it.

Stir the mayonnaise into the crabmeat, mix gently but thoroughly. Taste and add more lemon juice and salt as needed. Form the mixture into patties. I ended up making six 3-inch diameter cakes.  Roll the patties to coat in the breadcrumbs.

Warm a heavy-bottomed pan over medium heat.  Pour in the clarified butter (click here to learn how to make clarified butter) and when the butter is hot, carefully add the crab cakes and fry until golden brown, about 4 minutes on each side. If the breadcrumbs start to burn, turn down the heat.

A cool variation to this dish is to use fish fillet to make fish cakes.  Waters recommends using a firm white fish like halibut, haddock or ling cod.  Use two cups of chopped fish fillet in place of the crabmeat.

How to make fresh bread crumbs

Breadcrumbs are best made from bread that has been dried out for a day or two.  For breading and frying, Waters recommends using white bread.  First, remove the crust. Cut the crustless bread into cubes and grind up the bread in batches using a food processor or a blender.  The bread should be ground up thoroughly so the crumbs are more or less the same size.  Crumbs for breading need to be ground very fine, so they will stick to and evenly coat whatever is being breaded.

How to make clarified butter

Melt unsalted butter in a small heavy pot over medium heat.  Cook the butter until it has spearated and the milk solids are just turning a light golden brown.  Pour through a fine strainer to remove the milk solids.