When folks exterior California think about summertime on the Central Coast, they’re most likely pondering of blue skies and ocean breezes grooming excellent browsing waves. In actual fact, it’s often about 60 levels right here and the ocean is gnarly, the clouds like darkish stubble on an unkempt sky. Ever the optimist, although, I hold a surfboard in my truck.
Not that I’ve a lot time for browsing: Thursday via Sunday at Dad’s Luncheonette, my restaurant in Half Moon Bay, my staff and I are cranking out hen of the woods sandwiches—topping the griddled mushrooms with pickled onions and a gooey fried egg—or we’re snipping herbs into seasonal salads. We’re frying potato chips by the gazillion and slamming them with a lot umami-packed dietary yeast that they style nearly meaty. We’re doing all of it in a practice caboose parked in a strip-mall lot. Wednesdays are spent prepping for the week.
However in the present day’s a uncommon, sunny, summer season Monday, and I’ve two days off. My canine, Boon, and my child, Frost, are ready for me within the truck—each of them, I’m positive, consuming fistfuls of the popcorn I packed, tossed in butter and home made furikake. Frost is a rambunctious elementary schooler with a love of street journeys as fierce as her father’s, and we have now a campsite reserved at New Brighton State Seashore, simply over an hour south in Santa Cruz. We’re assembly buddies to fish, surf, and cook dinner over a campfire.
On the way in which down the Pacific Coast Freeway, we’re accumulating substances. Like the remainder of California, the coast between the San Francisco Peninsula and Santa Barbara is susceptible to fires, mudslides, and different local weather crisis-induced calamities. Generally the freeway is inaccessible round Large Sur; parts of it have fallen into the Pacific. It’s a spot we wish to look after in its fragility, however rejoice for its energy: The Central Coast, the a part of the state I rejoice in my new cookbook, Coastal: 130 Recipes From a California Street Journey, can also be a gem-studded belt of microclimates. Right here, scrappy, natural farmers have a tendency wind-blown plots, elevating fruit and veggies so stunning and hard-won, you possibly can weep simply slicing into them. I pack my kitchen instruments and hop within the truck. With a mouth filled with popcorn, Frost mumbles, “Dude! What took you so lengthy?” We pull out of the drive.
First, we pop by Dad’s to choose up the riches that Bryan Jessop has left there for me. I met Jessop, the forager behind Morchella Wild Meals, when he confirmed up on the caboose in the future with a basket of porcinis from the woods on the Monterey Peninsula. As we speak, he’s dropped off tender dandelion greens and a messy load of huckleberries. I pack up the greens for a campground salad and let Frost stain herself purple gobbling the berries on the street.
Midway there, in Pescadero, I discover the salad’s star ingredient. Corn isn’t straightforward to develop on the Central Coast—the window of sufficient heat is simply August and September—however Fifth Crow Farm does it proper. The moveable tractor coop is within the subject in the present day, and the heirloom hens are inside, fertilizing the natural soil and consuming bugs. Like the opposite growers I work with, Fifth Crow’s Mike Irving, Teresa Kurtak, and John Vars consider in farming for social justice. They donate crops to gleaners, group nonprofits, and faculties.
Plus, their corn is tremendous candy. I determine to roast half of it and toss the remainder proper into the bowl to marinate together with the sugariest, tangiest Solar Golds. We seize these proper down the street from native tomato legends Mathieu Simms and Jennifer Jepsen at Simms Organics. I’ll wait till the final minute to toss in Jessop’s bitter, younger dandelion greens, in order that they’re nonetheless crispy-crunchy after we lastly dig in.
Hopefully we’ll catch some halibut off New Brighton’s pier this afternoon, which I’ll grill on the hearth slathered in herb butter. Whereas the fish cooks, I’ll have candy potatoes roasting proper within the embers. To high these off, we hit up Harley Farms Goat Dairy for a few of the Central Coast’s best cheese. Once we pull up on the barn, cheesemaker Dee Harley greets us, an Anatolian shepherd at her hip. This time of yr, Dee’s huge herding canine have their work minimize out for them: The spring children have grown into rowdy youngsters. The pasture behind the barn is a blur of adolescent goats bleating, bolting, and knocking each other down. Frost goes to pet the goats via the fence.
Only a few miles from the seaside, the briny sea fog hangs over the pasture. There’s a singular saltiness to their milk as a result of the goats eat that grass. Dee fetches a few blocks of aged feta, and I chunk into one prefer it’s sweet: Creamy and deeply savory, it’ll style like heaven crumbled over the charred, honey-drizzled candy potatoes.
I prefer to pair hearty meals with one thing ethereal. My pals at Brisa Ranch develop elegant, emerald zucchini, excellent for shaving and dressing with a French dressing I made the day earlier than—aromatic with salted cherry blossoms and brightened up with puckery umeboshi. Boon and Frost run between Brisa’s strawberry rows as I chat with the oldsters who provide my restaurant with 100 kilos of Désirée pink potatoes every week for our chips. Since 2018, I’ve watched Cristóbal Cruz Hernández and his companions Veronica and Cole Mazariegos-Anastassiou develop this farm from a small patch of earth to 40 acres of row crops and orchards. Simply throughout the freeway at Año Nuevo State Park, elephant seals loll lazily on the seaside.
The solar remains to be excessive when Frost, Boon, and I climb again into the truck. In 40 brief minutes, we’re at our vacation spot. As I begin pulling out gear, the 2 of them certain out of the truck to greet our buddies, who’ve been ready for us to reach on the campsite. We’ll catch some waves, and in just a few hours, we’ll have a fish in hand and the camp all arrange. I’ll be prepping all this stunning stuff—wrapping candy potatoes in foil for the hearth, shucking corn, and slicing skinny ribbons of zucchini—because the ocean is bathed in an off-the-hook sundown and the farmers of the Central Coast name it quits for the evening.
