Remembering Andrea: A Trip to French Laundry and Keller’s Staff Dressing

I started this post more than two years ago.

I was supposed to be writing a eulogy and I procrastinated first by cleaning my apartment more thoroughly than I had in months. I then avoided it by starting a blog post I couldn’t bring myself to finish.

I didn’t want to write it because it would make things concrete. But now, two years after losing Andrea, her absence is absolutely, achingly, concrete. And not writing something won’t change that.

And I want to celebrate her at the same time that my heart is cracked open in her absence.

There is motivation beyond that too. For many reasons, not the least of which is that she was always one to knuckle down and get things done and it seems like she’d be sweetly exasperated with me for putting it off. Of course, she was often lovingly exasperated with me. “I can’t” was not a phrase in her vocabulary; she didn’t believe it should be in anyone else’s either. My pessimism, my jokes about eternal spinsterhood were received with her saying my name in an authoritative, yet almost gentle, tone.

Her mission in her last year was to get me to stop apologizing for things that required no apology — a bad habit. One I haven’t quite broken. She’d be exasperated about that too.

GandAinCR

Andrea ran full charge at life: marrying her high school sweetheart despite family opposition (and wearing red cowboy boots under her wedding dress to do so), finding jobs in traditionally male-oriented energy industries, getting her MBA from Royal Roads and using her skills, education and experience to become the first female vice-president at an oil and gas company. She was determined, smart and knew what she wanted. She always went after it.

Her positive nature created an amusing oil-and-water friendship between the two of us.

But it was an unshakeable one. Formed in writing classes at UVic when we were all young and away from home for the first time and dreaming of a career built on words. A mutual friend, Julie, drew several of us together and we became a quintet known collectively as the Writer Girls. After graduation, we still met up for girls’ weekends, and caught up over emails and phone calls when our lives couldn’t allow us to be together in the same room.

Girls’ weekends had a few things in common: wine, more wine, spa treatments, giggling like teenagers and talking and sharing problems, solutions, jokes, sad stories, sex stories and more than one game of ‘I never’ — though that was often at my insistence and the other four humoured me occasionally.

There were trips to Tigh-Na-Mara for giggle-punctuated pedicures and a fridge stocked with almost nothing but wine in our cabin. There were visits to Julie’s family cabin on Keats Island. And we met up for five spectacular days in New York City, where Andrea rallied in the muggy heat despite being quite pregnant with her second daughter.

While we were still in university, Andrea had been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma and was treated successfully. Went into remission. And none of us thought about it again, really.

Until a few years ago when a startling email arrived outlining that a new form of cancer was invading her body and she and her doctor were moving ahead with an aggressive plan for treatment.

Girls’ weekends became more frequent. Not because we were concerned she would leave a ragged hole in our group with her departure, but because it was a sharp reminder not to take anything for granted.

Email updates were marked by Andrea’s unbridled positive attitude — even when they were about new courses of action to replace those that weren’t working. There was always a way to spin it into good news.

And when there wasn’t, even then, she made light of things. Given a cruel timeline of only a few months to live, she made a joke about how she would never eat cauliflower again.

But she lied about that.

Because I made her eat some.

And that’s the story I really want to tell.

I don’t really have a bucket list. And if I did, I’m not even sure if dining at French Laundry would have made the cut; it seemed too far fetched that I would find a way to sit down at one of the tables in the little farmhouse in Napa Valley known around the world for its impeccable cuisine.

French Laundry

It was, then, incredibly unexpected to find myself on the receiving end of a phone call from a friend who said her banker had managed to secure a reservation three weeks from then and did I want to go. Oh, and also, could I think of anyone else who wanted to because it was a table for six and we only had five guests?

Admittedly, my mind didn’t go to Andrea right away. She was going through chemo at the time and the idea of inviting her to California for three days just for dinner seemed a bit silly and likely to garner a no. But Kirsten, another Writer Girl, aptly said there was no harm in trying.

She was right.

The dinner was two days after a round of chemo, but the doctor gave Andrea permission to go. And planning began. And so did the magic.

We needed to rent a convertible, I told her. She booked one. We should try to meet at the airport, if possible. She got a flight that landed 30 minutes after mine.

Our car was a brand new mustang with only eight miles on it. She had programmed her personal GPS with the address of our hotel in Napa Valley, but it couldn’t get a signal in the parking garage and it kept trying to ask if we wanted to take a ferry, thinking it was still in Victoria. At a T-intersection right out of the airport, it still didn’t know where we were, so Andrea told me to just pick a direction. I chose wrong.

But that meant we ended up driving over the Golden Gate Bridge with the top down, gazing up at the orange steel beams soaring above. The grin split Andrea’s face as she just kept repeating, “I’ve always wanted to go over the Golden Gate.”

And the next night, we sat beside each other in the dining room at French Laundry, poking each other under the table at how lucky we were.

Outside French Laundry

The meal is a bit of a blur now; it feels like forever ago.

A parade of impeccable dishes served by stellar, but unobtrusive staff. Non stop wine. And more magic: a woman at a nearby table sporting a giant hat sitting with two gentlemen — one of whom had a pinkie ring with a diamond the size of a golf ball on it — sending me a glass of champagne for reasons that still aren’t clear.

Server: The woman at that table has sent you a glass of champagne.

Me: Um. OK. Why?

Server: I don’t know, but I would just take it, if I were you.

When a dish arrived containing the most microscopic cauliflower floret, I went into a fit of giggles. “Andrea,” I leaned over and whispered, “you’re going to have to break your vow never to eat this vegetable again.”

“If I’m going to eat cauliflower anywhere,” she replied, with the tiny white stalk speared on her fork, “it may as well be at French Laundry.”

I snapped a photo of her with the offending vegetable just before she ate it.

She left two days later, back home for more medications and chemotherapy. That would be the last flight she ever took.

She did not return empty handed, though. She bought Keller’s cookbooks for her husband, Steve — the chef of the family and one who enjoys a cooking challenge — who promptly began to cook his way through the daunting tome.

A few months later I was in Victoria for a visit, and to have Andrea co-sign my Pucker contract. Steve made dinner for us and Kirsten and her husband. Veal parmesan and a salad made from lettuce leaves picked that afternoon from their garden, served with a simple emulsified dressing that Thomas Keller uses for staff meals at the French Laundry.

Salad with Thomas Keller's Staff Dressing

By the end of the night, and after several glasses of wine, we all had a ferocious case of the giggles — one of us had fallen out of her chair from laughing so hard — and I had co-opted the bowl of fresh lettuce and was using the squeeze bottle of dressing to squiggle it onto individual leaves like ketchup on a hot dog before eating them like a wood chipper.

As soon as I was home in Calgary, I made it again.

And then I meant to post about it, as an ode to this magical dinner and an equally magical friendship.

But I didn’t. There would be time later.

Andrea passed away less than a year after that dinner. Thankfully after several more girls’ weekends, more wine, more stories, more laughs and a few tears. Even more thankfully, well after when the doctors said she would.

Nothing was left unsaid. More magic.

I made this dressing again tonight. Laughed for a moment at how much better I am at food styling my photos now and how Andrea would think that was so great.

She’d be less impressed with the pity party I’ve had over losing my job, how I haven’t pitched another book and, in a nutshell, set goals and pursued them. But I know her exasperation would be at its most gentle. And she’d say my name firmly but kindly and tell me about five things I needed to get going on. I would say sorry.

And then she’d tell me not to apologize.

Shallot and knife

Emulsified

Squeeze bottle

Tomatoes

Salad with Thomas Keller's Staff Dressing III

Thomas Keller’s Staff Dressing

  • 1 tablespoon chopped garlic
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons chopped shallots
  • 2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
  • 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
  • 1 large egg yolk
  • 1 1/2 cups to 2 cups canola oil
  • Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper, about 1/2 teaspoon each

Place the garlic, shallots, mustard and vinegar in a blender and blend until well combined. Add the egg yolk and blend again. With the machine running, slowly drizzle in the oil until the dressing is thick and emulsified. (A note here: I stopped at about 1 1/2 cups of oil because it was thick, completely emulsified — you’ll hear the sound in the blender change — and because, well, I like my dressing to be a little more acidic.) Season to taste with salt and pepper. You can refrigerate it in a covered container for 1 week.
I completely recommend using a squeeze bottle.

Makes about 2 cups.

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Kale Salad with Hazelnuts and Apple

No one would ever describe me as trendy.

I rarely look good in fashionable clothes and can’t figure out how to wear any new style of makeup.

Even when it comes to food, I’m often behind the times.

So, it’s no surprise I’m falling for kale just as it’s falling out of popular favour.

Kale became a culinary darling a few years ago, starting with an obsession for kale chips that spread like wildfire on food blogs. The simple recipe of tossing ripped leaves with a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper, then baking them to a crisp, spawned thousands of blog posts. Hailed as the ultimate snack, food blogs were filled with increasingly creative versions.

There was something about them popping up everywhere that made me specifically not want to try kale chips and, as a consequence of not really knowing what else to do with the cruciferous vegetable, not bothering to try kale at all.

And then I was served a kale salad at a potluck.

The greens were dressed with a vinaigrette spiked with grainy mustard and sprinkled with paper-thin radishes. I asked for seconds.

Turns out, my disinterest in following a trend had meant I had been missing out.

Since then, I’ve started making my own versions of that salad — adding apple for some sweetness and hazelnuts for crunch — taking advantage of the fact it pays to work ahead with kale. Dressing it in advance, unlike other salads, actually improves the salad, as the vinaigrette helps soften the otherwise tough leaves. The dark green vegetable stands up to the dressing so well, it makes for a great work lunch because there’s no need to keep the salad and the dressing separate.

A nutritional powerhouse, full of beta carotene and calcium, as well as vitamins K and C, kale should transcend trends.

But, of course, like anything that becomes a widespread hit, there is bound to a point in time when people begin tiring of it and want to move on to the next hot ingredient.

As 2014 marches on, some in the food community are starting to declare kale has reached a saturation point on restaurant menus and in recipes. It’s time for that trend to move along, they say.

I’m not against the idea of another ingredient getting some time in the spotlight.

But, luckily, since I never really pay attention to trends, that means kale will be on my menu for a long time to come.

Kale Salad with Hazelnuts and Apple

Like all salads, this one is infinitely adaptable. Swap out different nuts, replace the apple with dried cranberries or cherries or add thin slices of radish for a peppery punch.

Dressing:

  •  Zest of 1 lemon
  • 1 tbsp (15 mL) lemon juice
  • 1 tbsp (15 mL) apple cider vinegar
  • 1 tsp (5 mL) grainy mustard
  • 2 tsp (10 mL) honey
  • 1/4 tsp (1 mL) salt
  • 1/4 tsp (1 mL) freshly ground pepper
  • 1/4 cup (60 mL) olive oil

Salad:

  • 2 bunches kale, cored and roughly chopped
  • 1 crisp apple, julienned
  • 1/4 cup (60 mL) hazelnuts, toasted and roughly chopped
  • 2 green onions, thinly sliced

In a jar or bowl, shake or mix together the first seven dressing ingredients — from the lemon zest to the pepper — to dissolve the salt and honey. Add the olive oil and shake or mix again until the dressing has emulsified.

Add the chopped kale to a large bowl, pour over the dressing and toss well. Refrigerate for at least an hour to let the dressing soften the leaves. When ready to serve, add the apple, hazelnuts and green onions, tossing everything together.

Serves 4 to 6.

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Quinoa Salad with Curry-Lime Vinaigrette

When Twitter first came on the scene, I wasn’t really sure what to do with it. I had Facebook and email and a blog already, so did I really need another way to connect with people? But I signed up anyway. And, as it has grown, I’ve come to see all sorts of benefits that I could not have previously imagined would come from this micro-blogging/communication/networking phenomenon. I’ve made new friends, found news stories and been given a few new recipe ideas.

This Quinoa Salad with Curry-Lime Vinaigrette is one of those recipes. A friend tweeted she had been thinking a lot about biryani-style quinoa dishes. I was curious and asked for links, which she happily sent along. I liked the idea of them, but neither of the recipes really grabbed me as a whole. Instead, I was more interested in picking and choosing the bits and pieces from each that were intriguing.

And I was more than motivated to try out something similar, having impulse bought a three-pound bag of quinoa from Costco. Seriously. Some people impulse buy gum; that makes a lot more sense.

Cooked quinoa

I’ve liked quinoa for some time, ever since trying it with veggies and a peanut sauce at the Coup. But the idea of cooking it was a bit intimidating. Various reports of it being bitter or improperly cooked were enough to make me shy away from it. And then I saw on the back of this bag that you could cook it in a rice cooker. Can I make a confession here? I don’t really know how to cook rice on the stove because a former boyfriend bought me a cooker when I came back from Japan (where I had fallen in love with the one in my little townhouse). Now that’s all I use. So, knowing I could make perfect quinoa in the rice cooker was enough for me to put the giant bag of the stuff in my equally giant Costco cart.

And then I got it home and didn’t really know what to do with it.

And here we are.

So, I made this salad with quinoa and carrots and zucchini, currants and pine nuts and sort of make-it-up-as-you-go-along dressing based on what I thought would be good with hints from the other two recipes I read. Tossed it all together and it was fantastic. So I ate some more. And then I tweeted it and people started asking for a recipe. So, I made it again last week and actually wrote down what went in this time.

I was at the farmer’s market and bought some oddly coloured carrots (because I also impulse buy strange vegetables) and used them in the salad because I thought they’d be pretty. They were. But the first time I made this I used straight up normal carrots and it was just as fantastic.

Funky white carrot

Purple Carrot

Oh, and here’s the best tip I’ve read in a while for julienning vegetables perfectly. First cut it in diagonal slices, then stack those and cut into sticks. So much easier and they always look fantastic.

Julienned Zucchini

This is great right away, even better if you can let it sit for a bit so everything has a chance to hang out.

Lastly, I’d say that the beauty of a salad is it is infinitely adaptable. Don’t like pine nuts? Use sliced almonds instead. Currants are great, but I bet diced apricots or a handful of dried cranberries would also be delicious. And so on.

Curry-lime vinaigrette

Quinoa salad with curry-lime vinaigrette

Quinoa Salad with Curry-Lime Vinaigrette

  • 2 cups cooked quinoa
  • 2 carrots
  • 1 small zucchini
  • 3 green onions
  • 1/2 cup currants
  • 1/4 cup pine nuts, toasted
  • 1 cup chickpeas, rinsed and drained
  • zest and juice of one lime
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon curry powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon dried ginger
  • 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1 tablespoon honey
  • 1/4 cup oil (I used olive because it’s what I had. Any veg oil will be great)

Cook quinoa according to package directions or using the “white rice” setting on a rice cooker. Set aside and let cool then place in large salad bowl.

Julienne carrots and zucchini, then slice green onions. Add to quinoa. Stir in chickpeas, toasted pine nuts and currants.

To make dressing, zest lime into a bowl, then add lime juice and honey. Whisk to dissolve honey, then add salt and spices. While whisking, slowly add oil to emulsify. Pour over salad and toss.

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Basil Vinaigrette

If you’ve been reading this for awhile, you may remember when I mentioned that I once bought a cookbook simply for a salad dressing recipe. Subsequently, I’ve learned to love Rebar’s lime sugar cookies and have tried numerous other recipes in the book. But it’s the basil vinaigrette that keeps me coming back to this book every single time.

Salad close-up

I first tried the basil dressing when I had a salad at Rebar one afternoon. It was a fantastic meal. (I have this theory about salads, that they are always best when someone else makes them. In this case, it’s not all that surprising when you look at what they include in their giant salads: grated beets, grated carrots, lettuce, tomatoes, sunflower seeds, cheese . . . . The list goes on.) And I’ve barely tried anything else when I’ve gone there again because the salad is so good.

And they don’t blink when I ask for a little extra dressing on the side.

People, this is good stuff.

And no doubt, there is A LOT of basil in here. Once blended with vinegars, dijon and a few other ingredients, then emulsified with olive oil, this comes out very thick, very green and very fantastic.

Basil

As soon as basil starts to show up at the farmer’s market each summer, I buy a couple of huge bunches, make a batch or two of pesto and then this dressing, which I devour on salads all week.

(Um, may I suggest checking your basil before blending?)
Extra passenger

The measurement for basil (1 1/2 ounces) doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s a few cups, so make sure to buy enough. Otherwise, cut the recipe in half if you don’t have enough.

All in the blender

Basil Vinaigrette

Basil Vinaigrette II

Dressing on lettuce

Simple salad with Basil Vinaigrette

Basil Vinaigrette

from the Rebar Modern Food Cookbook

  • 2 garlic cloves
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
  • 2 tablespoons honey
  • 1/4 cup red wine vinegar
  • 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
  • 1 1/2 ounces fresh basil leaves
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons cracked pepper
  • 1 cup olive oil

Combine all of the ingredients, except the olive oil, in a food processor (I use a blender and that works just as well, I’ve found.) and blend. Slowly add olive oil in a slow, thin stream until thick and creamy.

Season to taste and serve. Can be refrigerated up to three days.

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