Breakfast pastry with farm fresh produce

Our Saturday in San Francisco was spent at the Ferry Building's weekly farmer's market, an event that sees the building and space around it filled with locals and tourists alike standing in lines for delicious meals and to pick up fresh and organic produce.

We decided to stock up on some goodness and make breakfast for the family Sunday morning. I was inspired by a recipe for a breakfast pastry in February/March issue of ReadyMade magazine which suggest arranging some ingredients on puff pastry, putting it into the oven and topping the finished product with a fried egg. It seemed simple and a great idea for breakfast.

From the market we got (clockwise in the picture above from top left)- pancetta and a fennel and orange salami from Boccalone Sulameria, a bundle of fresh herbs, free-range eggs, asparagus, two kinds of heirloom tomatoes (how have I not had this before?) and Dutch shallots. Everything was either organic or free-range or both and everything looked and tasted just magnificent.
I could not find puff pastry as the recipe suggested, so instead I picked up some phyllo pastry from the friendly grocer across the street from our apartment and left it overnight in the fridge to thaw.

Sunday morning I started out by cutting and slicing up all the ingredients, neatly arranging them on the cutting board before starting work on the pastry. I've never worked with any form of pastry before so I was rather nervous. What I did to the phyllo was probably somewhat wrong but it worked fine. I folded the sheets in half, brushing each layer with a little melted butter. I forget how many sheets I used, it wasn't too many. The last one I brushed with some beaten egg and then arrange the rest of the ingredients, except for the eggs, on top with the help of Alexander.

While the pastry was baking in the oven (preheated to 375F and baked for about 12 minutes or so) we cooked the eggs. When the pastry was nicely browned and the toppings were just nicely cooked we removed it from the oven, topped them with egg and served. Simple and fantastic.

* The images were sketched by Alexander. He's on a drawing and painting mission and I might do some more entries with his work. Fun!

Spending time in California

Apologies for being a lame blogger. I got reprimanded by a fellow blogger the other day so I will try-try-try to be more active here.

We're currently on a family holiday in northern California. Having a most fantastic time and feeling quite at home in this part of the US. If I had a dollar for every time Alexander mentions something along the lines of 'so we should totally move back to this part' I'd be able to afford a pair of Tom Ford sunglasses by now. I do agree with him though. I enjoyed Chicago and New York seems like fun, but there is something about the West that just clicks with me.

We spent some time in Napa, visiting wine farms, enjoying the scenery and we got to meet the above mentioned blogger, delightful Erin of Endive Chronicles and her husband Phil. And of course we had to stop by an In & Out to satisfy a craving of almost 3 years!

At the moment we're in San Francisco and I am loving it. I must admit that I was a bit skeptical about the visit, everybody who heard we're coming could not stop ranting about what a great city it is. My skepticism was gone within the first few seconds of arriving here though. It really is a great city. It has everything I like- lovely fresh produce, excellent food scene, great architecture, handsome men, stylish ladies, fun shopping, sweet coffee spots, environmentally conscious... in a word, it is awesome.

Since arriving here we've been doing a lot of eating and wandering around. Some highlights include grabbing superb Vietnamese sandwiches at a grubby spot and then some fabulous baked goods from Tartine and then enjoying them in Golden Gate Park. We had the most amazing dinner at Burma Superstar (if the food there was at what food is like in Burma then book me a ticket pronto!), more great sandwiches at Wexler's downtown and super ice-cream at the Bi-Rite Creamery in the Mission.

We're almost getting ready to go again and already I know I am going to miss San Francisco. But we are keeping it open as an option of possible-future-home-city so who knows. And if we decide to move back to LA (which luckily I also love-love-love) then SF is only a couple of hours away. Head over to Alexander's blog soon for some more stories on our foodie adventures here.

*Thanks Alexander for the pictures!