Mary Ann in Autumn and two San Francisco Classics

Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City Series were some of my favorite books in my late teen years.  My mother introduced me to the books, which in turn introduced me to a world much more interesting than my own.   For those of you who are unfamiliar with them, the books are a series based on a column written by Maupin for the San Francisco Chronicle in the seventies.  Honey, these books and columns are the original Sex and the City - a fun and risque portrait of a city and those that inhabit it without any superficial obsessions with Choos and Blahniks (don't get me wrong, I will always watch Sex and the City reruns).  The original series has six books and chronicles the lives of a varied group of individuals living a funky apartment in San Francisco in the 70's and 80's.  The three main characters are: Mary Ann Singleton, a conventional young twenty something who just moved to San Francisco from Ohio, Michael "Mouse" Tolliver, a somewhat flamboyant gay man and Anna Madrigal, the mysterious and kooky older woman that is the landlady at 28 Barbary Lane, where everyone lives (her welcome gift to new tenants is a joint).  There are more characters in the original series, but this 2010 novel, Mary Ann in Autumn focused on those three.   I guess by reviewing this new novel I am telling all of who that have not yet please go out and read the original six novels - they are fun and quirky and addictive!  For this quintessential San Francisco author I made two quintessential San Francisco dishes (at least they are so to a girl from Boston!) - fresh Sourdough bread and Cioppino.  The Sourdough bread is a bit time intensive and requires planning, and the Cioppino is the opposite - you will only need 30 minutes a bunch of the best fresh seafood local to you.

When Tales of the City begins, Mary Ann Singleton is a young, straight-laced Midwesterner who picked up and moved to San Francisco.  As readers we experienced the wild San Francisco of the 70's through her eyes - the landlady who grows pot, a bisexual hippie that lives downstairs, a sexy male slut and a lovable gay man who becomes her best friend.  I don't think any other book or series of books I have ever read has so created a vivid and memorable sense of place as Maupin does with San Francisco.  I am sure this is not the real San Francisco, I have only been there a couple of times, but it certainly creates the romantic vision of the city that I still hold in my head.  As the series progressed through six books, Mary Ann became a real local and a local celebrity to boot, as a television host.  She eventually runs away to the east coast, leaving a husband and adoptive daughter, and her best friend Michael behind.  The last book in the first installment of the series is Sure of You, dated in the 80's.  Nearly two decades later in 2007, Maupin revisited the Tales of the City characters in the book "Michael Tolliver Lives."  This book shows how San Francisco has changed in twenty years, most recently because of the dot.com boom, and how HIV/AIDs has changed since the 80's.  Maryann is only briefly present in this book, but it does introduce us to several new characters that play a big part in Mary Ann in Autumn.  These characters include Mary Ann's daughter Shawna, a sex blogger, Michael's much younger partner Ben, and Michael's assistant in his landscaping business, a young transgendered man named Jake.  As you can see, Maupin gives us a varied and rich glimpse of all types of people that populate San Francisco.  In this latest installment of the series, Mary Ann returns to San Francisco after she has left her rich husband in Connecticut and must deal with a difficult medical diagnosis.  Old characters from the series pop up, but the focus is on Mary Ann and her struggle.  Even though the issues are serious, this book had the same breezy soap opera quality of Maupin's previous works and was a satisfying update.  It isn't as fun of course cause the characters are 60 not 25, but it was nice to visit with them again nonetheless.  Do not pick this up if you haven't read the other books in the series.  Do that first, for sure.

Cioppinio and Sourdough Bread
(both adapted from epicurious.com)
 Sourdough bread is always associated with San Francisco although of course it's origins are likely in France, right?  A sourdough bread is just a bread that is built with a starter of yeast, flour and water that has been allowed to relax in its own funk for a bit and develop a distinctive sour taste.  I was intimidated when I decided to try to make a sourdough since I have not made a starter before (I have made bread where I have allowed the yeast to sit for a few minutes but not a few days). There was no knead (ha, pun intended) for me to be worried though, because it is fairly straightforward process. Especially this recipe from the always clear and practical Alton Brown.  It does take at least a couple of days though, longer if you want to develop more flavor, but all the work is being done by the yeast, not you.  Cioppino is a tomato based seafood stew, and it will work well with any seafood and fish that you can get your hands on.  It couldn't be simpler and really let's the beautiful seafood shine through.  You cannot eat this stew without some sort of hardy bread to sop up the beautiful juices, so you might as well do like I did and tackle both of these San Francisco classics at once.

Part I: Country Style Sourdough Bread (adapted from epicurious.com)
(Printable Recipe)
Ingredients
Proto Dough (this is the starter, this makes more than you need for 1 recipe of this bread but you can keep it in your fridge and keep "feeding it" and you will always be able to make deeply flavored fresh bread
1 2/3 cups bread flour
1 teaspoon instant or rapid-rise yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 500-mg vitamin C pill (not chewable), crushed
2 cups warm filtered or spring water (105°F to 115°F)

Bread

1 cup warm filtered water or spring water

3/4 cup Proto Dough

1/4 cup buttermilk

3/4 teaspoon instant or rapid rise yeast

3 and 1/3 cups or more of bread flour

2 tablespoons salt

nonstick spray

Directions:

1. For Proto Dough, you want to start more than 24 hours before you want to eat your bread.  Mix the first four ingredients together in a large sealable container.
2. Add the water and stir vigorously.
3. Leave the lid slightly ajar and let stand in a warm, draft free place for at least 24 hours.
4. After 24 hours, you can use this starter in a recipe.
5. You can develop more flavor by a cup each of warm water and bread flour, let it stand uncovered for 2 years, then put it in the fridge, covered for at least three weeks.
6. A alcohol smelling liquid will rise to the top, just stir it back in.
7. You can then use this in recipes as you like.  Each time you take some proto dough out though, feed it back with a cup of water and cup of flour per cup you take out.
8. According to Alton - Proto-dough can last for years, as long as you keep taking and feeding. To use proto-dough in a regular yeast recipe, replace the dry yeast and every cup of liquid (including dissolving liquid) with 1/2 cup of proto-dough, 5 ounces liquid, and 1/2 teaspoon instant yeast. 
9. Once you have your proto dough to your desired level of funkiness, mix the water, proto dough, buttermilk and yeast in the bowl of an electric mixer.  
10. Add two cups of flour and mix. 
11. Cover with a kitchen towel and let rise in a warm draft free location until doubled in volume, about 1 and half hours.
12. Attach bowl to mixer and using dough hook, add 1 and 1/3 cups of flour to mixture.  Add more flour a tablespoon at  time if dough sticks too much to side of the bowl.
13. Knead on low speed for 5 minutes.
14. Let dough rest 15 minutes.
15. Knead dough on low speed for 5 minutes.
16. Remove bowl from mixer, coat a rubber spatula with cooking spray and turn over dough a couple of times in bowl.  Cover bowl with kitchen table and let rise another hour.
17. Remove dough from bowl onto a floured work surface.  Turn it over itself a couple of times to flatten it out. Cut it in half. Shape into two rectangles. Put on a cookie sheet dusted with cornmeal. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise (again...) for 1 hour.
18. Preheat oven to 500 degrees.  Put a 9 by 13 pan in the bottom of the oven.
19. When you put the sheetpan with the loaves in the oven, pour a half a cup of water in the 9 by 13 pan and quickly close oven door.
20. After 5 minutes, add 1/2 cup more of water and lower oven temp to 425.  Bake for about 20 minutes till nice and golden.
21. Let cool on rack for 15 minutes.

Cioppino (adapted from epicurious.com)
Ingredients

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 chopped onion

1 chopped shallot

1 fennel bulb, chopped

3 cloves of garlic chopped

3 bay leaves

1 teaspoon dried oregano

1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

salt and pepper to taste

1 28 ounce can crushed tomatoes

1 8 ounce bottle clam juice

1 and 1/2 cups white wine

3-4 pounds of the seafood/fish of your choice (I used mussels, squid and beautiful pink Maine shrimp) (other suggestions would be snapper or cod, large prawns or gulf shrimp, clams, lobster)

Directions:

1. Heat olive oil in a dutch oven or other large sauce pan over medium low heat.
2. Add onions, shallot, fennel, garlic, bay leaves, oregano and crushed red pepper flakes. Season with salt and pepper.  Cover and cook until onions etc... are wilted, about 10 minutes.
3. Add tomatoes, clam juice and wine.  Cover and cook until the flavors meld and it is slightly thickened, 20 minutes.
4. Add your prepared seafood (cut fish into small chunks, clean and debeard mussels/clams, peel shrimp - though I skipped that with the tiny Maine Shrimp, slice squid into rings) and cook until the mussels open/seafood is done, about 5-7 minutes.  You could be very particular and add the seafood one at time depending on how long they take to cook, I threw it all in at once.
5. Ladle into bowls and serve with yummy break.