The Pottery Barn-ization of Boulangerie

When I used to live in San Francisco (now I’m just across the bay in Oakland’s Rockridge neighborhood), I used to love going to the Boulangerie on Sunday mornings. I know. I’m crazy, because Sunday mornings are when this tiny French bakery on Pine Street is the busiest, with people double-parking outside waiting for their significant other inside maneuvering to get some fresh artisan bread, pastries or other delights. (My usual was a loaf of the kalamata olive bread.)

The person behind Boulangerie, Pascal Rigo, became the star baker in town, which led to a cookbook and a few restaurants. Now Rigo has created a baking empire known as The Bay Bread Group and has duplicated the Boulangerie concept into similar cafés or bakery/cafés all around town. Over the years he’s opened six of these La Boulangerie, and last month he opened his seventh in the trendy Hayes Valley neighborhood.

Every detail of Rigo’s La Boulangerie is carefully crafted to reflect the well-established brand of the original Boulangerie. That means a lot of French country influences and baking accoutrements. The brand has been extended to coffee and cake mixes, which is why I titled this post “The Pottery Barn-ization of Boulangerie.” Boulangerie’s success has made it close to a chain, which means on the flip side it may seem like it has lost some of its charm of being the local tiny bake shop.

Still, that didn’t keep me from checking out the new La Boulangerie at Hayes (at a very prime spot at Hayes and Octavia facing the new children’s park). No matter that La Boulangerie has become the food version of Pottery Barn, if they continue to serve up such quality, tasty treats, I’m there!

Here people are lined up one afternoon to get one of the many treats offered at La Boulangerie, including a full menu of soups, salads and sandwiches a long with all the various bread and pastries in the counter.

The artisan breads are all made with organic ingredients. But like most popular bakeries, you’re out of luck when you arrive in the afternoon, when much of the selection is gone. Here’s what they had left.

The bakers behind La Boulangerie make incredible tarts and stuff. Once I had this incredible peach and goat cheese tart during the summer from the original Pine Street location. I still dream of that.
This is something new that I see offered at La Boulangerie—these colorful madeleines (or at least I think they're called madeleines. I know the sign had something with an "m"). The colors are so pretty. I think next time I’m going to try that Black Currant flavor at the end.

Like I mentioned, throughout the café were various branded products, such as these La Boulangerie coffee beans near the checkout. You can get some really precious birthday or Christmas gifts the next time you come in for a sandwich.

I sat down for an afternoon snack with this luscious goat cheese quiche with chorizo ($4). It was a very nice individual size (I would say about 5 to 6 inch in diameter) and sooo tasty with just the right texture in the crust. They can warm it up for you, but be careful to not burn the roof of your mouth (speaking from first-hand experience).

Along with my individual-sized quiche, I got a cup of the day’s soup, which was this beautifully presented French Onion Carrot Soup ($3). I don’t know what kind of carrots they were using, but it gave the soup such a striking orange color and such a strong carrot taste that I was tempted to believe there must have been some food additives used to pump up the flavor. But I’m sure it’s just really fine carrots.

On the weekends, La Boulangeries around the city can be a real chaotic scene. But on this weekday afternoon, La Boulangerie can be a relaxing escape to Paris. Sit by the window counter to people watch.

The addition of La Boulangerie at Hayes has really made this neighborhood a growing food destination. Just a few doors away you’ll find True Sake, one of the city’s only premium sake store; Sebu, one of the best sushi restaurants; and the original Fritz Belgian Fries. Just a block down you’ll find the very first Blue Bottle permanent stand (unlike the carts at the farmers’ markets) in the city. With the park on Octavia, all you need is a visit to Blue Bottle and La Boulangerie and you’re set for a relaxing Sunday in San Francisco.

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The Next Iron Chef: Episode 4

We Don't Mind Copying Top Chef

Previously on the NIC: The Chairman is reviewing the eight tests he’s created to find his next Iron Chef, but I’m confused because I don’t remember seeing anything about “attain greatness” or “lead and inspire.” And what exactly was the test for “attain greatness?” It’s like the Chairman wants to wrap this competition up already and is pretending we saw something we didn’t. Well, we did see last week Chefs Gavin Kaysen and Morou eliminated after a grilling cook-off. Tonight, we see Alton Brown in front of this huge-ass Lufthansa jet. Talk about product placement. The final four chefs are saying things are getting tense, and they no longer look like they’re as friendly in the kitchen. The fun is over guys.

We start off with the typical interviews of why these chefs want to be the next Iron Chef. Chef Michael Symon says he wants to grasp the title of Iron Chef and then “tear it up.” Huh? I didn’t realize he was such a masochist? Put yourself through the ringer and win the competition only to rip it all apart? Not my route, but good luck with that. Chef Big Easy (John Besh) and Chef Buzzer (Aarón Sanchez) says something typical about being more than you are, or something to that effect.

The final four is gearing up for traveling, and boy do they look like they’re going to Florida for spring break with their T-shirts and shorts. Even Alton Brown, who meets the four at a Culinary Institute of America darkened room to send them off, notes the four’s casual civilian attire.

Brown plays the Chairman in The Box, who tells the four chefs that an Iron Chef must be able to create under pressure. (Unlike the stress-free tests they’ve been given thus far?) They’ll be asked to redefine a style of cooking that affects people around the world every day. This vague description would be even more useless if we didn’t already see the big airliner in the first few seconds of this show. So why not just come clean, Chairman? Instead of saying more, the Chairman says something in what I guess is a foreign language but sounded more like one of those made up languages school girls use to communicate with each other and not let the adults in on what they’re saying. (Uoy wokn thaw I mean?) Anyway, the subtitles reveal that the Chairman supposedly said: “I wish you much luck and much fun.” Chef Sanchez gives a look like, “Watcha talkin’ about Willis?”

So it’s goodbye CIA (it must be weird to say you’re a graduate of the CIA) and hello to JFK as the four chefs try to figure out where their “culinary odyssey” (Brown’s words) will take them. They find out it’s Munich (which we already knew from last week’s preview) and the four cheftestants board what looks like a really empty plane. Chef Symon says he’s worried about Chef Big Easy, who says on the plane that he’s going to “whoop” Symon in this competition.

When they arrive in Munich, they’re still at the airport and they go into a hanger, of course. Alton Brown is already there standing in front of a huge Lufthansa jet, which he calls the secret ingredient. Symon’s like “how are we going to cook that?” Brown then goes into the wonders that is Munich (and I’ve never been to but even I’m interested in going after hearing this spot from the Munich tourism board) and says the chefs won’t be seeing any of them. Now that’s just brutal. This is why I hate business travel. All work, no play.

Brown tells the chefs that they’ll have to stay at the airport and conceive the “ultimate first-class meal” to be served in Lufthansa’s new Airbus A380 superjet. (Ironically, this is the same airplane that got lots of play when Singapore Airlines was the first to use one this month in a commercial flight. It’s so huge you can fly a whole city. Well, maybe just everyone in city hall.)
Of course, none of the chefs have cooked for an airliner. (And like I mentioned in the message boards on Top Chef when they were the first to do this similar challenge, how is this a mark of a top chef? Sure, lots of chefs are consulting with airlines to develop menus, but really, I’m sure they’re in it for the moo-lah and free trips to Paris. BTW, doesn’t this feel like those old sitcoms where all of a sudden the storyline on “Gilligan’s Island” will appear on “The Brady Bunch”?)

Commercials. Reruns, people. Save your time and fast-forward on your Tivo.

Back at the Lufthansa in-flight service kitchen, Alton Brown looks at home doing his “Good Eats” presentation. He’s wearing a hairnet and popping his head in and out of the camera shot with little innocuous food facts, such as Lufthansa serves 40,000 coach meals every day. I know, I didn’t care either.

So Alton continues with his “Good Eats” tour of the prep, cooking and freezing process of typical airline food. FYI, I flew on Lufthansa once on a trip to Spain and the food wasn’t that memorable. Although I did like the dinnerware they used. I know, I didn’t care about that fact either after sharing it with you.

Let’s get to some cooking. Brown finally meets up with the four cheftestants and tells them they have 90 minutes to create three courses, which will then be served from the Airbus to the judges.

There’s a guy from Lufthansa who tells the chefs that when cooking for airline passengers, they have to keep in mind that the altitude makes food less tasty, so they need to be aggressive with the seasoning and spices. This explains all the curry chicken and over-sauced salmon you’ve eaten on flights.

Chef Big Easy (Besh) says he’s going to “vow them” (he means “wow” but he’s doing a Wolfgang Puck imitation), and Chef Bad Boy (Chris Cosentino) says there’s a lot of protein to choose from in the kitchen but he wants his capers and anchovies to make his food “pop” in the high altitude.
The chefs get cooking, running around the kitchen and grabbing all sorts of meat, but mostly venison. (I’ve never eaten venison but looks like they’ve cooked a lot of it on this series.) People are grabbing lobsters, I see white asparagus, Chef Sanchez is swearing because someone took all the lemongrass. It’s just a big chaotic scene.

Which all explains why I haven’t really been satisfied watching the chefs cook on this series. Because they’re such sophisticated chefs using sophisticated ingredients, I really want the commentary that we get during regular Iron Chef cookoffs. On this series, the viewers at home are left seeing a blur of food being chopped, cut, marinated and fired up. It all looks pretty impressive but doesn’t help me connect with what’s happening. In between, we just get quotes from the chefs talking about how the challenge is very stressful.

Commercials. That ready-to-eat Philadelphia cheesecake filling looks soooo fake. And I usually love cheesecake. But that’s just saturated fat on a spoon.

Back in Munich, the chefs are still busy in the kitchen. And they’re not as friendly and joking with each other like the last few episodes. In fact, Chef Bad Boy is getting a wee bit upset with the camera people who are getting in his way. He does a Britney, pushing them back. But really, he better get used to it if he plans on being in kitchen stadium. (On Michael Ruhlman’s blog, Cosentino explains that the German crew was getting too close and he didn’t want them to get hurt by all the knives and cooking, etc. Check out Ruhlman’s blog for more behind-the-scenes tidbits.)

Chef Symon is making something with salmon, and Brown asks if he’s ever had a good piece of fish on an airline. Me thinks Mr. Brown has had a bad experience with salmon on a flight to Denver or something.

Cosentino is still fending off the paparazzi and that actually scares off Brown, who’s cowering around a corner afraid to talk to Chef Bad Boy. But Cosentino coaxes him out and tells Brown that he won’t bite him, then he tells Brown that he’s making a venison loin with crucifers and a white asparagus dish with some fancy-sounding sauce.

Commercials. I hate that Comfort Inn song. Now I can’t get that dang song out of my head. “I’ve been every where.” There, now you’ve got it.

13 minutes remain and everyone is still scrambling. Chef Symon is looking for foil to wrap up his trays of food and we get about two minutes of him getting frustrated with ripping the plastic wrap and now he’s barking at the camera guys. You know, I get frustrated too when you open a new box and can’t find where it starts so you can rip it nicely. Why can’t they invent a plastic wrap where the first layer has a green bar or some color where you can see where it begins? (Saran Wrap, if you use this suggestion, please cut me in on the royalties.)


Now the four chefs are sprinting to the finish, literally, as they push their container carts to the freezer like the typical average traveler trying to make his connecting flight. Chef Symon wins the race and Cosentino picks up the end, but they all get their food in on time.

The food gets loaded onto the plane and then the cheftestants take turns prepping their meals in the galley of the Airbus while Lufthansa flight attendants look on in a very disinterested way.

The three regular judges (Andrew Knowlton, Donatella Arpaia and Ruhlman) are in the hanger in front of the plane. What? Shouldn’t they be in flight thousands of miles up in the air to really test the taste levels of the dishes? Wimps. They’re joined by Bernd Schmitt, the executive chef of product placement Lufthansa. Again, Brown is going on and on about the challenge and explains what the chefs had to do, and we all know this so why are we wasting precious minutes? I get so frustrated that I actually took out my timer to see how many seconds Brown killed by this repetitive nonsense. 35 seconds. Huh, seemed like minutes! Still, that’s 35 seconds too long.

Chef Bad Boy is up first with his Sicilian play on Vitello Tonnato, which I find out is a chilled veal dish in tuna sauce. But instead Cosentino offers up seared tuna with venison loin and tomato. He also serves a white asparagus with lobster gribiche (I love white asparagus) and roasted venison loin with cauliflower and romanesco.


The guy from Lufthansa felt Cosentino went overboard with the chives in the first dish, and Ruhlman mysteriously asks Cosentino about how he likes his cauliflower cooked. Chef Bad Boy says he likes it “al dente” and you can tell that’s not how Ruhlman likes his done.

Commercials. That Vicks early-defense nasal congestion spray should be required for all those co-workers who come into work sick and sneeze on you. Yeah, I’m the type that would wear a mask to work if it were fashionable.

Chef Big Easy serves up his three dishes (and a bonus dish) to the judges. He says in his interview that he’s worried his flavors might be too subtle for the in-flight meals, but then he makes a dig at his competitors and says everyone cooks alike and is predictable.

Besh strolls in speaking German and you can see Donatella go, “oooh, I like a man with a foreign accent.” Besh offers up chilled watermelon consommé with a poached lobster salad. His second dish is white asparagus just like Chef Bad Boy but he uses something called a tomaton vinaigrette. His main course is baby lamb with spaetzle and chanterelle mushrooms, and for a bonus he offers fresh fruit with a Madeira sabayon.

Brown asks Chef Big Easy what he did that was very Iron Chef-like, and he asks this same question to all the cheftestants in some form or another. Besh says he focused on traditional cooking but with a new and fresher twist.

Chef Sanchez comes in with scallop and coconut ceviche. There’s a discussion about why he used coconut milk instead of typical citrus juices, and he says something about it not being astringent. (I, on the other hand, would be wondering about the idea of serving raw fish on a plane where the refrigeration is really in those little carts that sometimes sit for a long time.) His next dish is a pan-seared red snapper over sautéed summer squash. Brown, again, says it’s risky serving fish on a plane. Enough with the fish talk, Alton. We know, you had a bad flight with fish, get over it.

Chef Sanchez’s last dish is seared sirloin over a celery root puree. Sanchez says he cooks like an Iron Chef because he’s not intimidated by the proteins and isn’t afraid to make dishes. But I have to say, his face looks pretty defeated and he interviews that he found this challenge extremely difficult.

Last chef is Symon who offers up a tuna crudo topped with a lemon, dill and fennel vinaigrette. (Again with the raw fish.) His other dishes are slow-roasted salmon with creamed leeks and curry-crusted venison over a parsnip puree. Brown asks Symon the Iron Chef question and he responds that his dishes traveled all around the world, meaning he’s more than a one-trick pony.

Then the judges deliberate about the dishes, and while there are no fireworks between the judges like last week, they do slap down a few dishes. Here’s how it went down:

Chef Bad Boy (Cosentino): The Lufthansa guy couldn’t get past the limp fennel garnish on the dish while Ruhlman couldn’t get over the fact that the cauliflower was undercooked. “He should have called it crudité,” he points out. Knowlton seems really frustrated at Cosentino, saying he can’t seem to deliver more than one or two Iron Chef-worthy dishes.

Chef Big Easy: Ruhlman is getting back to basics and says Besh didn’t make a watermelon consommé as much as it was just sweet watermelon soup. He says a consommé should be clear and wonders if Besh, a nationally noted chef, really knows what a consommé is? That brings Donatella and Knowlton to Besh’s defense, saying it was a play on consommé. Ruhlman isn’t swayed.

Chef Buzzer (Sanchez): Donatella liked the coconut flavor and heat in his dish but the Lufthansa guy thought the snapper was like cardboard. Ruhlman thought the presentation with the skin on top was “ugly.” Knowlton says he would have sent the dish back.

Chef Symon: The Lufthansa guy thought the salmon dish tasted the best, and he gives it two big “wow’s”. Everyone agrees that Symon listened about seasoning in high altitude and was smart to cook the fish on the plane instead of reheating. (Although I’m pretty sure the flight attendants aren’t too happy about the idea of spending more minutes cooking in flight.)

The cheftestants return for the verdict, and Brown announces that the next round will be in Paris. There really are no surprises on these Food Network shows.

Brown says Chef Symon excelled by creating under pressure, and he’s named the winner of this challenge. Chef Big Easy is irked to no end. (And I have to say Chef Symon has now taken the lead spot over Besh. This is going to be a tough call on who’s going to win it all.)

Besh is told that his consommé wasn’t really consommé at all, but he survives to cook in Paris. Chef Big Easy says he may have been too industrious, so next time he’s not going to try as hard. Um, wrong direction Besh. Take some pointers from Symon, who I’m now going to call Chef Clutch because he cooks in the clutch and like I said all along from the beginning, he looks like he works on cars.

That leaves Cosentino and Sanchez. Cosentino says who doesn’t want to cook in Paris? Sanchez is stressing out. Brown says they’ve both walked to the very edge. Who is taking the step off?

Commercials. Oh. My. Gawd. Who put that shirtless picture of me in that new Calvin Klein Man commercial? LOL, just kidding. I’m not that tan.

Back from commercials, Brown tells Chef Sanchez that his sirloin was good but his snapper didn’t fly. For Cosentino, Brown asks why he always “sets off bombs in people’s mouths.” (I told him not to cook with fireworks.) Everyone’s squirming, especially Chef Sanchez, and with good reason because Cosentino is given a pass and moves on.

The editors play this really sad music in the scenes of Sanchez saying goodbye. I don’t remember them making it seem so dramatic in previous eliminations. Even I get a bit teary. Sanchez says he feels hurt, and I feel for him. Makes you realize that chefs are like any other insecure person wanting to be accepted by others.


In the plane with all four, Sanchez says his goodbyes and says that this could happen to anybody. And Besh remarks that it’ll happen again with two more people. Ouch, reality check. Sudden ominous sound effects. Da-da-dum.

Next time: The final three cheftestants are in Paris and Besh feels he has the leg up because he’s experienced with French cooking. They’re running all over Paris and it looks like they’re cooking a feast for Louis the XIII. Just two more episodes before we find out who will be (dramatic pause) the Next. Iron. Chef. And I can go back to sleeping early on Sunday nights.

The Next Iron Chef airs at 9 p.m. Sundays on the Food Network and repeats on the same time every Thursday. Photos courtesy of the Food Network Web site.

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Food Gallery

I call this photo "Spicy Hot." Not sure if they are, but I have a strong feeling they are. Or maybe the photo's hot. :)

Coming up this week (lots of treats, and a few tricks):

• Tomorrow night I'll have another recap of The Next Iron Chef. Just two more recaps before the series finale!
• Read my interview with chef and TV host Joey Altman. We lunch over tacos and talk about his show "Bay Cafe" and other food things.
• Join me as I visit the latest outlet of La Boulangerie in Hayes Valley.
• See what I think of dining at the tiny Canteen restaurant in Union Square.
• And of course, recipes!
  

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Dish to Go: Cactus Taqueria

Freshness and Value Draw the Crowds
5642 College Ave., Oakland
Rockridge neighborhood
PH: 510.658.6180
Open Mon.–Sat., 11 a.m.–10 p.m.; Sun., 11 a.m.–9 p.m.
Credit cards accepted
www.cactustaqueria.com

Anytime after 6 p.m. on a weeknight, you’ll see a line coming out of Cactus Taqueria at the corner of College and Shafter Avenues right across from the Rockridge BART station. Many tired, business professionals line up to get a quick Mexican dinner to take home from this upscale-yet-casual taqueria.

You’ll see me there at times, but admittedly mostly on the weekends when I just got off the BART after spending all day roaming San Francisco and I don’t want to think about making dinner. Cactus provides a fresh alternative to cooking, but you won’t go broke unlike eating at other Rockridge establishments.

The people behind Cactus (which has a second location on Solano Avenue in Berkeley) really know their market. This place is clean, bright, and caters to a crowd looking for sustainable cuisine. All the meats are sourced by Niman Ranch and the poultry from Fulton Valley Farm. They also cook with vegetable or olive oil.

My friend Stella introduced me to Cactus awhile back because one of the key things about the place other than the food is the noise factor. There’s a lot of it, which means it’s perfect for a mom with kids (such as Stella and her young and rambunctious son, Lucas). Families can come here and not worry about making noise because everyone is making noise. Which is probably why I come to this place primarily for take out. :)

Cactus offers the typical Mexican taqueria faire, which includes burritos, tacos, quesadillas, enchiladas, tostada and tamales. There are several varieties of each dish, and a slight “have it your way” approach to ordering, which can be overwhelming when you look at the boards as you walk in for the first time. When you bite into the food, you know it’s fresh and home-made.

But now that I’ve given a general overview, here are some specifics about the food I typically eat (because when you go to a place often enough, you become a creature of habit):

The burrito mejor—this is the large burrito, which is the typical size of most burritos in the Mission District. Pictured is the Pollo con Mole Rojo burrito, which is chicken with red sauce of tomatoes, roasted chiles, ground nuts, and a hint of Mexican chocolate ($5.95 for the burrito, $7.45 for the plate). I got it with black beans, and it was packed nicely. I like a well-packed burrito because I hate it when it’s slightly loose and it ends up falling apart half-way through. But not this one.

The burritos are served with home-made chips that are slightly thick and are actually not my favorite chips around town. The oil, even though it’s vegetable and/or olive, still doesn’t look appetizing to me when the paper bag they’re in gets all drenched.

The crispy tacos are supposedly the popular item here and I love crispy tacos instead of the soft street tacos. However, the one time I tried Cactus’ crispy tacos, they were made overflowing with shredded green lettuce. I felt like I was a lawn mower trying to get to the meat inside the tacos. I don’t really recommend the crispy tacos, unless you’re into eating a salad with your tacos.

My mainstay for my takeout dinners at Cactus are the tamales. I’m a big fan of the cornmeal tamales. It’s like comfort food to me.

Most of the tamales are sold two for $4 or $4.45 or three for $5.25 or $5.95. I typically just order two tamales and they’re always filling enough for me. The tamales are served with salsa fresca, tamale sauce, pickled onions (tasty but really leaves a strong onion taste in your breath) and Mexican cream (so unnecessary IMHO). I usually go with the Chicken with Green Anaheim Chili Sauce, but sometimes enjoy the special pork tamales when available.

Tamales aren’t made to order, naturally, because they have to be prepared ahead of time. This means they can run out pretty quickly and unlike a burrito that’s assembled on the spot, when they’re out of tamales, they’re out of tamales.

Cactus also sells special drinks and Mexican desserts. The weakest link, however, for Cactus in my opinion is the salsa bar. I love salsa, and Cactus offers a variety to choose from, but most of the ones I’ve tried have been too “creative” for me. I like my salsa primarily medium or hot, but not with all the odd cabbages or pineapples I sometimes find at Cactus. For me, I’m the regular tomato, or the occasional salsa verde, guy.

Does Cactus offer the best burrito or tamale on the East Bay? I don’t think so. But it’s a clean environment with value meals that are perfect for a quick dinner on the run.


Single Guy rating: 2.5 stars (get fresh quickly)

Explanation of the Single Guy Chef’s takeout rating system:
1 star = Might as well cook yourself
2 stars = Nice to know it’s an option
3 stars = Definitely will return again
4 stars = I have its number on speed-dial
5 stars = Can I live here?

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In The Kitchen: Real Easy Risotto

My “In The Kitchen” series is back from hiatus. OK, so some of you didn’t even miss it. But my three subscribers on YouTube probably did. :P

I started out doing these demos to share basic cooking techniques. But then I realized that my cooking style is pretty simple since I don’t like to do a lot of work. So really, I don’t use a lot of fancy culinary techniques. That’s when I decided to demonstrate some of my basic recipes. The challenge with that, I’ve found, is that it’s hard to explain the steps of the whole dish in 10 minutes, which is the max on YouTube. (I’m a little OCD with steps so I tend to over-explain things.)

Anywho, this frustration over what to do with my demos resulted in a lot of inaction over the months. But after I got my new laptop, I was inspired to crank up iMovie and do another demo. So here’s my primer on making risotto.

I’ve said before that I love risotto, and it’s one of those dishes that you can be really creative with, adding ingredients of the season to make your own signature risotto dish—as long as you have the basic risotto part down. So this demo shows the basic steps of risotto, and then you can build from there to create your own dish. For my part, I ended up making a wild mushroom risotto with speck. (See recipe below if you want to make it at home after watching my video.)

BTW, if you have any suggestions or special requests on what might make an interesting demo, send me an email at singleguychef@comcast.net with your ideas. For now, turn down the lights and enjoy!

Wild Mushroom Risotto with Speck

Ingredients:
2 to 3 cups of mixed mushrooms (chanterelles, tree oyster, shitake, etc.), stem removed
5 to 6 thinly sliced speck (about 2 oz.)
½ sweet onion, diced
1 cup Arborio rice
1 cup dry white wine
2 ½ cups chicken broth
½ cup Parmegiano Regianno cheese
2 t fresh sage or thyme (dried version ok)
1 garlic clove, minced
1 T butter
2 T extra virgin olive oil
salt to taste

In a medium saucepan, warm butter and tablespoon of olive oil over medium high heat and then add garlic and onions. Sauté until translucent, about 3 to 5 minutes. Then add rice and stir to toast the rice for about a minute. Add wine and cook at medium heat until most of the wine has burned off. Then add two ladles of chicken broth with the sage or thyme, occasionally stirring your rice to avoid it sticking to the bottom of the pan. When the rice has absorbed almost all of the broth, add another two ladles until the rice is done. (About 15 minutes.)

In a separate sauté pan or skillet, warm a tablespoon of olive oil over medium heat and then add mushroom. (Cut larger sized mushrooms to quarter pieces to make it easier to eat.) Sauté the mushrooms with some salt to extract some of the moisture. Add to your risotto near the end when the risotto is almost done. (Save some mushrooms to garnish on top.)

When your risotto is almost done and you’ve added the mushrooms, remove your pot from the heat and add the grated Parmegianno Regianno. Season your risotto with salt to your taste. Let it sit for about a minute and then plate. Get your thinly sliced speck and rip the slices into pieces on top of your risotto. Garnish with your extra mushrooms and some grated cheese and serve immediately.

Makes two servings. Serve with a mixed green salad.

Pair with a glass of Barbera wine.

TIP: Speck is a leaner version of prosciutto. If you can’t find speck, you can substitute it with regular prosciutto.

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Autumn Colors in a Bowl

The fall is the best time to make some of the best orange-colored soup, whether it’s pumpkin or, in the case below, my roasted butternut squash soup. This silky smooth soup (the color of a fall sunset) is paired with classic ingredients: pancetta, sage and chestnut.

I have to say, hunting for the chestnut was a bit of a chore. It’s like the squirrels had worked overtime or something and had stashed all the whole chestnuts. I’ve found that chestnuts are often available at Italian specialty stores, I guess because they use it a lot in their cooking. It’s often sold in jars or in the vacuum packs. I eventually found them in the vacuum packs at The Pasta Shop at Rockridge’s Markethall. (Ironically, mines came from France.) Enjoy!

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Roasted Butternut Squash, Pancetta and Chestnut Soup

Copyright 2007 by Cooking With The Single Guy

Ingredients:
1 butternut squash
½ sweet onion, finely diced
3 oz. pancetta, diced
3 oz. whole chestnuts, chopped
1 t fresh sage, minced
3 cups chicken broth
2 cups water
extra virgin olive oil
sea salt
pepper

Preheat oven to 375 degrees

Cut your butternut squash lengthwise in half, and then cut it further into slices. Place the slices on a cookie or baking sheet and drizzle with extra virgin olive oil and sprinkle with pepper and sea salt. Place in oven and cook for about 30 minutes until tender. Then sprinkle the diced pancetta and chestnut over your semi-roasted squash and continue cooking until pancetta gets crispy (about 12-15 minutes).

Remove everything from oven and spoon your pancetta and chestnut onto a dish and set aside. Let your squash cool.

In a saucepan, warm a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil over medium high heat. Add diced onion and sauté for about 3 to 5 minutes until translucent. Then add broth and water and bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer. Cook for about 10 minutes, then add your roasted squash to the broth along with the sage. (Your squash should be so tender that you can just scrape it off its skin with a spoon.) Cook for another 10 minutes to warm your squash through and then remove the pot from the heat.

With a hand blender, puree the squash until silky smooth. (You can also place small batches into your blender.*) Once you have the texture you like, add the pancetta and chestnut (leave some for garnishing). Season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve warm and garnish the top with more pancetta and chestnut pieces.

Makes 5 to 6 servings. Serve with a field green salad.

Pair with a glass of Riesling.

* Do not place hot liquid in blender. Let the stock cool first. And never fill blender or food processor by more than half.

TIP: The squash can be like a potato with its starch factor, so the smoothness of your soup will depend on the right balance of broth/water to squash. So depending on how large your butternut squash turns out to be, you may need to add more liquid to thin out your squash puree or else it’ll taste like you’re eating mashed potatoes. You can thin your soup by adding more broth or, for an even creamier texture, some crème fraiche or heavy cream.

WHO’S STORING THE NUTS?: I find that it’s a pit tricky hunting for whole chestnuts for cooking. Near the holidays you’ll see freshly roasted chestnuts, but you don’t want to sit there and shell them. Instead, look for the whole, shelled chestnuts used for baking. They’re often sold in jars or the vacuum packs and are often spotted at Italian specialty stores or gourmet food stores.

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The Next Iron Chef: Episode 3

Please Pass the Salt

Previously on the NIC: The cheftestants get to experiment with chemicals, but they leave a bad taste in the mouths of some of the judges who send Chef Jill Davie (or as I fondly called her, Bandana Girl) packing. It’s back-to-back women elimination, so let the conspiracy theories begin! Tonight, two chefs will be eliminated as the secret ingredients will be chosen by their peers. Will sabotage be served? Let’s find out.

I just realized that every week the show starts off with two cheftestants talking about what it means to be the next Iron Chef. I thought they were the same clips, but turns out that each week features two different chefs. For this week, we have homeboy Chris Cosentino (of San Francisco’s Incanto) saying he gave up everything to get what he wanted. Um, so the lesson is even if you give up everything, you still get back something in return. Chef Cutie (Gavin Kaysen) says something about circles and boxes and getting out of them. It’s like he’s still in geometry class from last week.

The remaining six cheftestants appear in the kitchen in this weird, ghostly special effect. Looks like some editor is playing with his Halloween special effects a bit early. They flash on some unusual ingredients on the table in front of them (mostly dark leafy greens, which are good for you btw!). In enters Alton Brown, who refers to the interesting ingredients as wild. But it’s odd how he doesn’t mention the really odd ingredients and instead talks about “edible flowers and tasty snails,” which to me is pretty normal gastronomic faire. Then he turns on the Chairman-in-the-box to listen to this week’s challenge.

The Chairman talks about resourcefulness, and how an Iron Chef has to display that skill even if he has no kitchen. Right, since when did an Iron Chef not have kitchen stadium to cook in? Sure, an ice cream machine may go wrong and, yeah, Chef Bobby Flay was shocked a few times working in a faulty kitchen in the original Japanese Iron Chef series, but they always had heat. Anywho, I’m already getting cranky at the feasibility of this challenge. But we forage ahead.

Brown explains that the cheftestants will be grouped into pairs, and the partner will get to pick the secret ingredients for the other chef. Brown also mentions that the cheftestants have been “too nice” in the last two episodes (and have probably been frustrating the producers who want more drama) so he does a spiel about strategy and not squandering opportunities. Sigh, it’s no wonder the judges always get cheated out of air time when so much time is dedicated to hearing Brown explain the challenges. Finally, Cosentino—as last week’s winners—gets to name the pairs of cheftestants. This is how it went down: Chef Bad Boy matches himself with Chef Michael Symon; Morou gets paired with frontrunner Chef Big Easy (John Besh); and Chef Cutie (Kaysen) is paired with Aarón Sanchez (Chef Buzzer; see last week’s recap.)

The cheftestants each get some individual time to select the secret ingredients for their partners. This is where we can see who’s going to play nice and who’s really going to hose the other competitors. Oh, Chef Symon just gave Chef Bad Boy some purslane, which I personally don’t like because it’s really a weed (but everyone’s cooking with it these days in the Bay Area) so I think it’s going to add a bad taste to Cosentino’s dishes. Well played, Symon.

The most interesting ingredients are exchanged between Sanchez and Kaysen. Chef Buzzer selects some ugly green leafy thing called “goosefoot” while Chef Cutie picks escargot for his partner. Of course, we hear in the voiceover a minute later that Sanchez says he hopes he doesn’t get escargot because he hates the little suckers. (Me too, Chef Buzzer.)

The cheftestants pack up their ingredients in a big cooler and Brown leads them outside into the garden where there’s a row of charcoal grills set up. (It looks like a really sunny day, so if you think you saw lots of sweating in the kitchen in the previous two episodes, be prepared for this outdoor flopfest.)

Brown tells them they’ll have no water (ooh, bad hygiene issues), gas or electricity for this challenge and can only use the limited ingredients on the table, which includes butter and cream but very little else. Chef Cutie gets all excited because he sees all the fresh herbs in the garden, but apparently the Culinary Institute of America has put that off limits not wanting to have their precious garden trampled by Iron Chefs wannabes.

They have 60 minutes to prepare two dishes using only the ingredients in front of them.

Commercials. Oh wow, a different Kia commercial. Thank God. Oh, wait. People riding around with a big red ball on a stick. I don’t get it.

Back outside, the cheftestants immediately start firing up their grills even before checking out what they have to cook with. Oddly enough, we get a lot of time watching these men build fire. I can feel the ratings slipping with every match. They finally open their coolers and Chef Sanchez is in denial about his escargot, Chef Cutie gets frog legs and raspberries (that’s brutal) but Chef Symon is happy about his quail and Chef Bad Boy is fine with his squab. (Hey, I think those two guys are building an alliance!)

Chef Symon seems to be the only one thinking out of the box when he sees a box of cornmeal in the shared table and he’s the only one to grab it to start making polenta, which he clearly points out takes 40 minutes to cook. (Which is why I don’t make polenta, plus I’m not a big fan of grainy mushy food.) There’s a lot of marinating and rubbing of meats, but ironically none of it is along the traditional barbeque route.

Chef Bad Boy (Cosentino) looks into his squab hoping for the innards to cook with. (Just a reminder, this is the man behind the Offal movement in the Bay Area, so he likes to cook with every bit of an animal.) He looks inside the squab and it’s empty. “Bullocks,” he says. Geez, Chef Bad Boy turns British when he’s angry. His partner in crime, Chef Symon, says under his breath, “no guts no glory.” And that is literally so apropos at that moment.

Brown comes around doing his little commentating-asking-annoying-questions thing. Has anyone else notice Brown is a bit more smug in this episode than the past? I think he thinks he’s the Chairman.

Commercials. Those teddy bears with the heads in the stomach are creepy. … Wow, Guy Fieri gets a second season of his Diners, Drive-ins and Dives. He’s the most successful of “The Next Food Network Stars” alumni. BTW, I just saw Amy’s “The Gourmet Next Door” and she’s just as nervous in her own show as she was competing on NFNS. Hopefully she improves in her remaining four episodes, but so far I’m getting annoyed at how she keeps making up words. (“Fancy-shmancy” is the least of it.)

Back to the fire-building, Chef Buzzer isn’t getting much heat with his grill, so Chef Cutie offers up his. (I guess Kaysen wasn’t paying attention to Brown’s lecture on not playing “nice.”) On a side note, Chef Symon in his in-studio interview shows off a big honking tat on his leg that says “I Live to Cook.” What a surprise.

The cheftestants start moving into the plating, and I have to say some of it looks really fancy like they’re being prepped for a restaurant. Chef Cutie even prepares some quail eggs by just grilling them in between the metal rods and letting the open fire poach the eggs. Now that’s resourceful.

Time’s up and Chef Sanchez is still talking about how Kaysen was out to get him with the escargot, but Chef Cutie chimes in that at least he gave him fire to cook with. Chef Buzzer acknowledges that and says Chef Cutie is back in his good graces, which prompts Chef Cutie to give Sanchez a big wet one (OK, maybe not so wet) on the cheeks. Sanchez recoils, of course. Boys.

This segment sure went pretty fast because here we have commercials again.

Commercials. Is that an exploding dog? A black dog walks into an all-white room and explodes into these various black dogs of every shape and size. The Hoover sucks them up. Tonight’s commercials are getting creepier by the minute.

It’s judgment time and it’s only fair that our panel of Andrew Knowlton, Donatella Arpaia and Michael Ruhlman must also sit under the glaring New York sun since the cheftestants had to cook under it. Alton explains to the judges the challenge, and again, why are we eating up time with him talking? We know what happened, the judges can get prepped by the producers, can we just get to the food?

First up is Chef Cutie and his frog legs lollipop with buttered leeks. For his second dish, he made a lovage salad with quail egg. The judges bite into the salad and they all look at each other shaking their heads. They also wonder why Kaysen didn’t make frog legs for both dishes.

Chef Symon begins by telling the judges his philosophy about outdoor cooking, which is “always give your guests a beverage” (he gives them a mulled berry drink while I would have preferred something with vodka) and serve the food family style, which is what he does with his polenta with wild mushrooms and quail with blackberry salad and grilled onions.

BTW, I have to say Arpaia looks really good with the long, straight hair. The sun is just bouncing off her blond hair. She should request all her judging occur outdoors.

Chef Big Easy (Besh) presents his grilled rabbit saddle and fried rabbit leg. His second dish is a rabbit salad with poppy flower vinaigrette. Ruhlman tastes some chickweed in the salad, which Knowlton tangentially remarks that rabbits eat chickweed. Huh?

Chef Bad Boy (Cosentino) made a juniper-smoked squab and a dandelion salad with squab. The editors again offer little interesting dynamics about the judges’ interest in Cosentino’s dishes, other than Ruhlman saying the dandelion greens were a bit too big to bite into.

Very little is also said (or at least aired) by the judges when it comes to Chef Buzzer’s skewered escargot with garlic scape and his warm mushroom salad.

For the last chef, Morou, Brown asks Morou why he plated his grilled venison as pieces throughout the plate. (Oh boy, I hear echoes of “disjointed” from last week.) Morou says he looks at the plate as a white canvas and likes to cover it all up with the food components.

Commercials. Cheese with live active culture. You know, I know live active cultures in food are good for you (which is why I eat yogurt every night), but I really don’t want to have it in the name, thank you very much.

Decision time, and the judges are back in their usual castle room. And somehow they’ve all changed into different clothes and Donatella has curly hair now. What gives? Did they take a day off to think about their decisions?

Last week the judging went by pretty fast with very little interaction among the judges. This week we’re offered an inside look at the judges’ minds as we hear a bit of the debate about the dishes.

Knowlton seems a bit grumpy from having to sit outside for the first part of judging because he comes out with guns blazing. His first target: Chef Cutie and why he didn’t use frog legs for his second dish. Donatella agrees that she found that to be a lack of resourcefulness. Ruhlman says the food wasn’t seasoned, and he seems a bit offended that a chef of Kaysen’s level doesn’t know how to season food properly. (On Ruhlman’s blog, he offers some behind-the-scenes information and reveals that he found out Kaysen’s food was sitting on ice packs that melted and drowned his food, which explains why the salt may have been washed out. Kaysen says pretty much the same thing in his exit video on the Food Network site.)

The judges also grapple over Besh’s rabbit. They felt he probably was too ambitious trying to present rabbit in a variety of ways, and Knowlton says his rabbit loin tasted like “wet tissue.” You know, I’ve eaten rabbit that’s super soft that way so I know what he means. That’s why I generally like grilled or roasted rabbit. Just my tip to you, Besh. ;-)

Speaking of harsh, Ruhlman describes Cosentino’s squab as a “pro forma boring restaurant dish.” Ouch.

But the judges save their most heated debate for Sanchez's and Morou's dishes. Knowlton seems almost angry that Morou hasn’t improved from last week with this disjointed venison plating, while Donatella and Ruhlman didn’t think it was all that bad. For Sanchez, Ruhlman says he liked the taste of the escargot, which prompts Knowlton to say that all Sanchez did was skewer the escargot and grilled it. He says the good taste of the escargot should be credited to the farm in Burgundy who produced it. Hmm, for some reason I don’t think it was only the escargots that were skewered on this day.

They bring the cheftestants in for questioning and this has got to be the longest judgment segment so far this series. Brown lets out that the Chairman has purchased four tickets for the next challenge, so we know the final four are going to travel somewhere for their next challenge.

Brown eats up time again explaining the parameters of the challenges and yada yada yada. Ruhlman is stuck on whether Kaysen salted his frog legs. (He says he did, but Ruhlman says “really?” like he doesn’t believe him.)

The judges fire off one question after another. Can you only make one good dish instead of two? How do you like your rabbit cooked? What’s your approach to plating? Will Mel B. get kicked off “Dancing With The Stars”? (OK, that last one is for me. Please vote for Mel B. and Maxim!)

Morou says in his background interview that he’s hearing a lot of negative comments about his fellow competitors but not a lot of heavy questioning for him, so he feels safe. Ah, foreshadowing comes into play, my not-so-secretive Food Network editors.

I think we’re finally going to hear some decisions, but not until we hear more from Brown, who asks Chef Bad Boy if he really took advantage of his strategic win from last week for this week’s challenge. Cosentino says he think his “Jedi mind tricks” worked a bit this week, but Brown gives him that Yoda expression of “how sad you are young Skywalker for not learning all the tricks of the Force.” Still, Brown tells Chef Cosentino that he’s safe.

Brown then tells Chef Big Easy that the judges are getting tired of his Southern charm, but still Besh survives to charm them again.

Chef Symon is declared the winner of this challenge, and again, we learn that it pays off to offer any kind of beverage to the judges. (I’m also increasing my odds on Symon, who has stepped up to the challenges and I now consider neck-and-neck with Besh.)

Brown says he needs to talk to the judges again. So he sends the remaining three cheftestants away. Will this judging segment ever end?

Back from commercials, Chefs Morou, Sanchez and Kaysen are in with the other cheftestants in the kitchen awaiting their fates.

At the judges’ table, Knowlton still has a stick up his butt as he rips into the fact that Chef Cutie and Chef Buzzer both didn’t use their protein for a second dish. Donatella adds that it’s a sign of laziness and lack of resourcefulness (the theme of this challenge if any of you have forgotten by now, I know I have).

Ruhlman is still stuck on the salt, or lack thereof, in Kaysen’s frog legs. It’s a good thing Ruhlman and Knowlton are on opposite sides of the table because they both challenge each other’s taste as Knowlton goes on and on about Chef Morou’s venison and Ruhlman saying he just doesn’t get why Andrew loves it so much.

The remaining cheftestants come back in for the decision. Chef Cutie is lauded as a master technician who’s imaginative but has not yet developed the maturing in flavor combinations. (You can see where this is going.) Kaysen is eliminated. There goes the eye candy.

Brown then tells Chef Morou that his food was well cooked but the plating was a mess. For Chef Sanchez, he says he “shined and shown glimmer of brilliance” but he lacked imagination and passion. Wow, someone’s ego sure is getting a lot of punches. Where’s all the “good chefs have bad days” speech, Alton? Sanchez is a top-notch chef and I doubt that anyone would question his passion for food.

This messy judgment period comes to an end when Morou is given the boot. Morou leaves with a lot of dignity, saying that in this group of talented, award-winning chefs, you don’t really leave a loser.

Next week: The final four ends up at an airport hanger in Munich and stares at a big Lufthansa jet. Looks like someone’s going to be making airline food. (Hey, did the Food Network hire the segment producer from Top Chef?) Knowlton still looks like he has something stuck up his butt. I just hope it’s not the Eiffel Tower that I see in the background.

The Next Iron Chef airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on the Food Network. It repeats every Thursday at the same time. Photos courtesy of the Food Network Web site.

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Rambutan: The Fuzzy Fruit

I don't know if the rambutan is more fuzzy than prickly. I mean, it sure does look like a sea urchin or a porcupine egg (if porcupines had eggs), but when you actually pick it up, the weird prickly looking needles are actually soft and doesn't harm you at all.

So doesn't this fruit look totally exotic? It's from Southeast Asia and is definitely a tropical fruit. I saw a lot of them in Vietnam, but even there it was considered a specialty so it was a bit pricey. I started seeing them this weekend in the Bay Area. They were selling for $7.49 a pound at the Markethall grocer in Rockridge and $4.49 a pound at a store in Oakland Chinatown. That's crazy expensive, but if you buy a handful, they're not very heavy and it's an impressive dessert for a dinner.

The rambutan is similar to the lychee or another white-flesh tropical fruit the Chinese called lung ahn (literal translation: "dragon eyes"). The rambutan isn't as sweet or juicy as a lychee, more like a lung ahn, but it's bigger than the lung ahn. The skin, once you get past the prickly needles, is thicker than the lychee, so it's easier to just cut into it with a knife. But it peels off easily once you make that initial slice. Just don't get it confused with your pin cushion.

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Apple Season: Macs for the Picking

OK, so this isn't an heirloom apple, but it is a Macintosh. Here's my new MacBook from Apple! I've had it for a week and am just loving it! This is the iBook series, which is cheaper than the PowerMacs, but this small laptop carries a lot of power and has both a CD and DVD burner. I had to get a new computer because my 3-year-old iMac desktop konked out again a couple of weeks ago when I tried to connect to the Internet. I had this same problem a month ago and after a temporary fix from Apple support, it looked like the problem was still there. So instead of dealing with my mysterious ethernet issues, I decided to just get a new computer.

(BTW, if you're shopping for Apple products in the Bay Area, save yourself some frustrations and avoid the Apple Store in Emeryville. It's smaller and they recently went with this format where they got rid of their cash registers. So now clerks roam the store with hand-held registers to check you out. What this means is that there's no line and people aren't given a number for service, so it's mass chaos as people try to find a clerk with a hand-held to try to buy something. I tried to buy my MacBook last week from the store and all the clerks were overwhelmed, and as I waited I asked a regular sales clerk some questions about the MacBook. He was so unenthusiastic about helping me that I just got tired and left the store. I ended up buying my MacBook at the San Francisco store where I got in and out in 5 minutes with my new laptop despite the fact the store is bigger and more crowded.)

Here I am this morning at the Bittersweet Cafe in Rockridge hanging out doing some photo retouching work on my new laptop. I had just finished shopping at Markethall for ingredients for a butternut squash soup I'm making for this coming week's recipe post. It was quiet when I arrived at about 11 a.m. but it quickly filled up as usual. As you can see, I'm already breaking the first rule about computers by having liquids nearby. It's nice being able to work outside instead of my studio apartment, especially on a nice day like today. Only downside is Bittersweet Cafe didn't have free wireless so I couldn't connect and do this post in real time. Oh well, can't have everything. OK, time to make my soup!

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Dish on Dining: Vung Tau

Success Reflects Back on an Original
535 E. Santa Clara St., San Jose
(South of Japantown)
PH: 408.288.9055
Open daily, 10 a.m.–3 p.m., 5–9 p.m.
Reservations, major credit cards accepted
www.vungtaurestaurant.com

If there were a so-called dynasty behind the elegant Vietnamese restaurants Tamarine in Palo Alto and Bong Su in San Francisco, you could trace its roots to a non-descript, old coffee house-looking restaurant at the corner of East Santa Clara and 12th Streets in San Jose. That’s where you’ll find Vung Tau, the restaurant whose family went on to open two other similarly named restaurants in Milpitas and Newark and the aforementioned fine dining establishments.

Vung Tau was started by Chac Do in 1985 and since then it has grown into the Vung Tau Group, where family members have gone on to open and manage various Vietnamese restaurants around the Bay Area. I used to eat at Vung Tau when I worked in San Jose, and recently returned after many years for lunch with my friends Jessie and John.

The interiors were noticeably spruced up from what I remembered—a clear sign that the family is doing well with their many restaurants and they’ve funneled money back to where it all started. But it wasn’t really the renovated surroundings that caught my attention when I first walked in; it was the strong aroma of grilled meat that hits you like a brick wall. No matter how dressed up Vung Tau has become, I knew from the smell that it was still about the food.
Vung Tau offers an extensive menu with more than 120 items, ranging from the typical pho and bun dishes to rice plates and claypots (including a couple of frog leg entrees that I wished I had seen earlier before I ordered my lunch). Its flavors are typically Southern Vietnam (well, it is named for a resort beach town in South Vietnam after all) with a few Hue-inspired dishes from the central region.

We started with a plate of Cha Gio, the fried egg rolls that are served with lettuce leaves that you can wrap around the roll with some herbs. Since I don’t really eat fried foods, I only ate one roll. But it was the most plump and crispy egg roll I’ve had in a long time.

For our lunches, Jessie ordered the Tam Bi Suon Cha, a rice plate with a slice of omelet, shredded pork and grilled pork chops all over broken rice. It was the Vietnamese version of brunch food. I didn’t really remember the name of John’s dish, but it was similar to chicken curry with rice. John actually didn’t like the various spices in his dish, but I liked the aggressive flavor. It definitely wasn’t a dish I would expect to find in a Vietnamese restaurant (probably more Indian or Thai), but I thought it was nicely done.

I kept it simple for myself and ordered the Bun Thit Nuong, or grilled pork over rice noodles. This was typically the dish I ordered when I used to go to Vung Tau for lunch a few years back. I always enjoyed drizzling the fish sauce-based dressing over the bowl of pork and noodles, and then discovering the fresh herbs and pickled vegetables in the bottom of the bowl. Mix everything together and its like a refreshing noodle salad.

In this visit, the bowl of bun seemed larger from what I remembered, with a lot more noodles but less variety in the vegetables on the bottom. (I missed not having strips of cucumber.) It’s hard for me to eat a bowl of bun these days without being critical of the noodles since I ate the best bowl of bun at this Vietnamese restaurant. I like the noodles to be fresh and loose, playfully dancing in my bowl. But in most restaurants in the Bay Area, the noodles are sticking together in a clump, oftentimes because the noodles are prepared ahead of time and divided into serving portions to help the kitchen deal with the lunchtime rush.

Despite the noodles being a big clump of white carbs, the thinly sliced pieces of grilled pork on top were delightful. It had the slightest glaze of fish-sauce and sugar and was cut thinly to make the eating experience enjoyable.

Side note: Service was friendly and attentive. We had a late lunch and it was near the end of the lunch crowd, so the restaurant manager even stopped by our table to see how our lunch went.

After all these years, Vung Tau still draws the crowds of Vietnamese families looking for traditional dishes in a beautiful setting. While some might dispute the authenticity of some dishes (changed up I’m sure with California flavors), they’re still very tasty and filling. The prices are probably $1 or $2 more than what you might pay for at a hole-in-the-wall in the Tenderloin, but it’s still a worthwhile trip to visit an original.

Single guy rating: 3.25 stars (hearty family meals)

Explanation of the single guy's rating system:
1 star = perfect for college students
2 stars = perfect for new diners
3 stars = perfect for foodies
4 stars = perfect for expense accounts
5 stars = perfect for any guy's dream dinner

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But It's For The Kids

It seems like the “dine-and-donate” promotional season is starting early this year. Typically, you see a lot of these programs (in which restaurants set aside a percentage of one night’s proceeds for a charitable cause) during the winter, especially after the holidays, when theoretically fewer people are eating out. (I say “theoretically” because I don’t think a slow dining period applies in the restaurant-hungry town of San Francisco.)

A diner can easily become blasé about all this, like the many color bands people wear on their wrist these days. But how can you ignore it when it’s for the kids?

When I was in the Tenderloin area recently, I saw a poster for the Streetsmart 4 Kids promotion benefiting Larkin Street Youth Services, La Casa de las Madres and Huckleberry Youth Programs. Unlike other promotions, this dine and donate program is not restricted to one night or one week. The promotion runs from Oct. 1 to Nov. 18, and it works by having diners donate money directly to the cause. The restaurants are just serving as the donate depot. (Diners visiting participating restaurants will be asked to donate $3 when their bill arrives.)

Click here for a list of the participating San Francisco restaurants, which include the obvious such as Myth, Perbacco, Chez Spencer, Slanted Door and Foreign Cinema. Your money will go to programs helping kids to have careers, such as maybe becoming a chef at a restaurant or, at the very least, help a kid grow into a career where he or she can even afford to go to a nice restaurant for dinner.

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Phyllo—The Friend That Never Leaves

Last week I featured a recipe using phyllo dough, which I don’t use too often but love because of the easy flakiness created in the dishes. But my friend Phyllo the Dough is like a friend who overstays his welcome. So basically in the one package of frozen phyllo dough I bought, I had sheets and sheets leftover to use after I made my salmon dish. So I ended up making some snacks using the phyllo dough and a filling of leeks and Gorgonzola cheese. This created a nice savory bite that can be a nice appetizer or cocktail dish to serve for the upcoming holiday season. Enjoy!

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Leek and Gorgonzola Bites

Copyright 2007 by Cooking With The Single Guy

Ingredients:
2 leeks (white stem only), diced finely
3-4 oz. Gorgonzola cheese
6 sheets of phyllo dough, defrosted
butter
salt and pepper
1 T extra virgin olive oil

Preheat oven to 375 degrees

In a sauté pan, warm olive oil over medium heat and then add the leeks. Season with salt and pepper and cook until the leeks are softened and translucent (about 2 to 3 minutes). Remove from heat and place into a bowl.

In the same bowl, add as much Gorgonzola cheese as you want to create the balance between leeks and cheese to your liking. Set aside.

Place about three sheets of phyllo dough on wax paper at your counter and then brush melted butter on each sheet. (Keep them stacked on top of each other.) Cut the sheets into about 3- or 4-inch squares and then fill each square with some filling. (About the size of a quarter.) Fold one corner over to make a triangle pocket or pinch all the sides together to create a purse. Remember to butter the outside to create a nice brown color when baking. Repeat with the remaining 3 sheets of phyllo dough.

Place on cookie sheet lined with Silpat or parchment paper and bake for about 15 to 20 minutes until golden brown. Serve warm.

Makes about 12 to 18 pieces depending on the squares you cut.

Serve with a glass of sparkling wine from California or other versions such as Prosecco or Cava.

TIP: With phyllo dough, it’s importing to butter all sheets so you get that nice crispiness in the layers. I recommend three sheets piled together for the recipe above but you can use less or more sheets depending on how flaky you want your bites.

SPREAD IT: If you have leftover filling, you can use it as a spread over crackers or toasted bread like crostini.

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The Next Iron Chef: Episode 2

Math and Science Don't Add Up to Good Cooking

Previously on the NIC: The cheftestants run and slice on a basketball court. Then they make desserts from savory ingredients like catfish and squid, which sound awful, but probably not as awful as the salmon roe that leads to the downfall of Chef Traci Des Jardins. Tonight: Everyone is stressing out about their next challenge while Alton Brown barks at Bandana Girl (Chef Jill Davie). It's a futuristic challenge and some of the chefs get stumped by the gadgetries and all that smoke from the dry ice maker.

We begin with the Chairman and his big sword announcing the hunt for the next Iron Chef, and really, he's acting more like King Edward III with that throne of his. (And I hate to say it Alton, but if the Chairman's the king, you're playing the role of the court jester.) All the cheftestants talk about what it means to be an Iron Chef, but we heard all that last week. So let's just get right into the challenge.

Commentator and host Brown runs into the kitchen as the remaining seven cheftestants wait for their next challenge. He plays a tape of the Chairman talking about simplicity, saying how everything comes down to one single bite. Chef Michael Symon is thrilled at the theme because he's a simple kind of guy. Brown says the challenge is to convey their culinary style in one single bite. They have 30 minutes to create a dish from any of the smorgasbord of produce and ingredients on the big table in front of them. Chef Big Easy (John Besh) won the last challenge so he gets to pick his ingredients first.

But hold the phone, Brown gets a calls on his cell and it's the Chairman, who supposedly (I say supposedly because the show's producers apparently didn't want to pay the actor's guild rate per line for the Chairman so we don't actually hear the Chairman speaking) says that he wants six servings of that one bite. OK, minor detail to just eat up a minute of this show's time, guys. Couldn't we have just gotten that all in the initial instructions?

Chef Big Easy goes to pick his ingredients and he's taking his sweet ole' time. Doesn't he know this is only a one hour show? Pick it up Besh, this recap isn't going to write itself. He finally grabs the plate of scallops and that unleashes the onslaught of the other cheftestants scrambling for their ingredients. (It's apparent that they've all been thinking in their head while Brown did that time-consuming fake phone call from the Chairman because the cheftestants go straight for what they want, albeit a few tugging hear and there of legs and loins.)

Chef Aaron Sanchez says he wanted to do a scallop ceviche, so already Besh has one over him by grabbing the scallops. So Sanchez goes for the shrimp because he says he didn't want to go for the tuna and make tuna tartar. You know, I love tuna but I've noticed it has been getting a bad rap on cooking shows lately because it's so ubiquitous in restaurant menus. Today's chefs apparently don't think it's very creative. But hey, what if they prepared it in another way besides seared or raw? Now that's a challenge!

As if right on cue, Chef Bad Boy (Chris Cosentino) grabs the tuna, which he calls "the beef of the ocean." Everyone else falls in with lamb for Symon, duck for Morou, clams for Chef Cutie (Gavin Kaysen) and buffalo tenderloin for Bandana Girl (she said everything else was taken).

We get snippets from each chef about their culinary point of view, and I'm really impressed how they easily describe it for the camera, unlike watching "The Next Food Network Star" where those contestants often didn't know their culinary point of view until halfway through the series.

Time goes by fast, and Chef Bad Boy wants his tuna to pop and explode to match his culinary style of rustic Italian. (Memo to Chris: Please do not cook with fireworks.) Chef Cutie's style is "fanatically seasoned French Fare" (quite a bit of alliteration from the young pup). Chef Symon is doing lamb tartar to match his farm-driven Mediterranean twist (at least that's what I think he said).

Commercials. Guess which musical car commercial is back? Don't bother. I'm done with Kia. I shall file your commercial in TV purgatory for the rest of this series. Have you seen that Nasonex commercial? Isn't that Antonio Banderas' voice as the bee? I say "si."

I like how all the cheftestants are so polite and courteous in the kitchen working together. Everyone is talking about their food and they kind of build each other up. This is such a refreshing reality competition. Who knew maturity could be so fun to watch?

Time runs out and Chef Sanchez didn't finish plating his shrimp, and he's shocked when Brown clamps down on him and won't let him finish. I guess Sanchez hasn't watched many episodes of Top ("hands up, utensils down") Chef. He says he thought he could plate later (after the 30 minutes) but Brown says "You can wipe your hands and that is all you can do." Wow, wouldn't want him as my camp counselor. Anyhoo, the camera pans into Sanchez's six plates and all he has is the garnish of shrimp heads. I feel for the guy because those shrimp head garnish isn't going to sell his ceviche that's not on the plate. It looks pretty sad.

Everyone's impressed with the dish from Chef Cutie, and it is actually very pretty. He made a design with what looks like thinly sliced radishes and placed his clams on top of it. The other guys ribs him, but Chef Symon goes up and says "You're good dude, I'm gonna hire you. I'm gonna retire and hire you." And I know he said this because they subtitled Chef Symon's attempts to poach a chef in only the second episode. (Tough luck Symon because apparently Daniel Boulud beat you to it. The San Diego papers reported that Kaysen--one of the best new chefs of 2007 according to Food and Wine magazine--will start as the executive chef of Cafe Boulud in New York on Nov. 4.)

Chef Sanchez is still fuming about his empty plates (he only plated one of his ceviche) and Brown isn't hearing any more of it. Chef Symon says he told Sanchez to pay more attention. From now on, I'm going to call Sanchez "Chef Buzzer" because he never beats the buzzer.

Brown lets the group know that they had to make six servings of their one bites because their fellow cheftestants will judge them. Well, everyone except for Chef Buzzer who knocked himself out of the challenge by making invisible ceviche.

Chef Big Easy (Besh) presents his seared scallop first with truffles and corn salad and everyone seems to like it. Chef Bad Boy offers up his cured tuna with a mint-orange salad. Bandana Girl felt the orange in the salad burnt her tongue. Not sure how that happens, but I guess chefs have very sensitive taste buds.

Chef Big Easy gets to taste the only shrimp ceviche from Chef Buzzer. And to rub salt into the wound, Besh declares the dish "killer" and says "I'm glad you didn't make more." Oooh, hitting him when he's down. Chef Cutie presents his clams, which everyone thought were beautifully plated, but Chef Big Easy (who is almost like the elder statesman of the group) says that his mouth was on fire from Cosentino's tuna but then when he got to Chef Cutie's clams, he thought they were bland. (Da-dum. Ooh, Besh just got on Kaysen's shit list. Let's see if they're still friendly in the kitchen from here on.)

Chef Symon's lamb tartar looks like a big bite, but Chef Davie likes all the flavors and personality. Bandana Girl presents her plate, which Symon says looked like it was plated by a crazy person (ouch, at least he said this in voiceover and not to her face) and to top it off, Chef Big Easy says it tasted like it had a strong taste of peanut butter and jelly, which I don't know, but sounds like he's saying it's like a dish for kids. "Dang, I just got crucified by the Besh," says Bandana Girl. You said it girl.

Everyone tastes the last dish from Chef Morou, who did some sweet paprika-cured duck breast with truffle sauce and duck skin salad. Everyone seems to like the plate, and everyone seems to be cooking with truffle. What's up with that? They're not even the official Iron Chef yet!

Then all the cheftestants vote and it's like high school where they're doing those mock elections and someone gets voted "Most Likely To Succeed" (moi). Chef Symon wins the challenge. So I guess he gets "Most Likely To Win A Cooking Challenge."

Gosh, these people just love each other. After the challenge, they all do a group huddle with Bandana Girl going all "much love" to the group. I'm expecting Dionne Warwick to come out and sing "That's What Friends Are For."

The cheftestants walk into the kitchen and there are all these weird machines, almost like a torture chamber. The chefs all seem intimidated and they look scared, almost.

Brown walks in and says the Chairman expects his Iron Chefs to always be reaching into the future. Then the Chairman speaks to them through the little portable box that I think the kids these days call a "portable DVD player?" Oooh, futuristic. He says an Iron Chef must be daring and take risks, which means the skill test today is "innovation."

Two guests comes in, and instead of the Two Dudes Catering, it looks like Two Nerds Cooking. One is kitchen creator Philip Preston and the other is Wylie Dufresne, chef of WD 50 in New York, who apparently is on the cutting edge of molecular gastronomy. Dufresne gives almost a science class to the cheftestants. He shows them how to make shaving cream foam and ice cream from liquid nitrogen. Yeah, you know you want some.

Preston the Manufacturer shows the cheftestants the sous vide bath-and-sealer machine. (I hate the trend of sous vide cooking. The food tastes tender but I feel like I'm eating raw meat because of the pale coloring.) Then he shows the Smoking Gun, which infuses smoke flavor, and what I think he calls an anti-griddle where he makes little pancakes. All the cheftestants are impressed by how everything works, but none seem comfortable with it all.

The cheftestants have 90 minutes to play with the equipment. Bandana Girl asks if there's any chance of her killing herself with any of the machines. She does a wicked laugh near the liquid nitrogen smoke. Chef Bad Boy says he's "confused, pissed and irritated." I think he says he failed math, but I'm pretty sure that's not why he's confused, pissed and irritated.

Commercials. Speaking of sous vide, I want that FoodSaver vacuum seal machine for food storage. Fancy.

Brown says the cheftestants have another 90 minutes to prepare two small dishes. They have to use at least two of the chemical devices as part of their technique. Chef Symon this time gets to raid the pantry first, but he's not playing the Besh role and instead goes charging for the table grabbing a whole bunch of tomatoes, lobster and other stuff.

Everyone else fights for what's left. They're all explaining what they're making and it's so sophisticated that I'm totally lost. I can barely keep up with all the ingredients named on top of their descriptions of what molecular gastronomical device they plan to use to complete the challenge. (I admit, I got a D in high school chemistry, which was the only D I got in my life.)

Brown is doing his job of annoying the cheftestants by asking them questions while they're busy cooking. You would think he's just being interesting, but I'm pretty sure he's just trying to throw them off their game. But as a sign that he's not all pesky, he pads down Chef Big Easy's face, which is beginning the sauna sweats from last week.

Chefs Besh and Symon are trash-talking each other. Chef Cutie is making another pretty dish with a frozen beet puree as a base. Bandana Girl is doing something very tall looking.

Chef Bad Boy (Cosentino) is looking for a scale, and he's really frustrated. One minute is left and Morou is happy with what he made. Cosentino makes a shaving cream type of sauce and pours it over his razor clams, which Brown astutely observes with a laugh that Chef Bad Boy put shaving cream with the razor. Bowahahaha. Oh Alton, nothing gets by you.

Time's up and Chef Buzzer tries to sneak more garnishing (unless that's tricky editing). He just doesn't seem to learn his lesson.

Commercials. Strangers in the house with the cafe line from GE. She's just lucky it wasn't a Starbucks.

Judgment time. We welcome back our three judges from last week: Andrew Knowlton (long-haired New York magazine editor), Donatella Arpaia (cleavage-bearing restaurateur) and Michael Ruhlman (freelance food writer with long hair but not as long as Knowlton).

Up first is Chef Big Easy. He talks about Mardi Gras and some kind of "fashing" menu. And for that he makes a hot and cold potato soup. The top layer is cold potato soup, center is a summer truffle tapenade, and the bottom is the warm potato soup. Ruhlman says it didn't translate to the table. He doesn't seem impressed. Next dish is a potato gnocchi with smoked parmesan and truffle. He smoked the parmesan cheese and froze it into ice shavings. He also offered up a roast duckling with Morrocan spices made sous vide style. Then it's served with a frozen Gluwein sorbet. The judges say nothing, or at least the editing didn't allow for further comment. What's up with that?

Chef Cutie comes in and pokes holes into these bags that the judges then place their dishes on top. This doesn't affect what's on the dish, but I guess it's pre-dinner aromatherapy. He serves a spiced-smoked fricassee of sweet breads and a hamachi crudo with three different types of beets. He admitted that his dishes probably weren't as innovative. Hmm, the editors aren't letting the judges be as chatty this week. In the first episode, Donatella had a comment for every dish, now all we have is her asking if the beets were seasoned. (They were.)

Chef Bad Boy comes in with ancient-spiced duck breast with carrot salad, using the smoking and sous vide techniques. He also made a "saor," which he says is a sweet and sour sauce. He transformed the saor into a shaving cream that he poured over the razor clams. It looked like pudding.

Since the judges aren't talking much, I'm just going to give a summary: The judges were 2-to-1 against whether Chef Symon's tomato salad was perfect and Chef Symon tries to kiss up to judge Donatella but Knowlton calls him on it; Chef Morou's lobster sashimi and braised beef cheeks dishes seemed disjointed and may have worked better if he put them all together; Bandana Girl's fried-frozen salad was chewy and hard to eat; and Chef Buzzer makes a pan-roasted sablefish and some sweetbreads with a tomato foam that's spicy.

Commercials. I. Love. Dogs. I give a blue ribbon to Pedigrees' "dogs rule" commercial. Simple but powerful. Woof.

Elimination time. Everyone's nervous about how innovative they really were. This time they let the judges give little summary on everyone. Here's how that broke down:

Knowlton says Chef Buzzer is playing it easy with his Mexican dishes and needs to move a little away from the "Latin stuff." But he's safe.

Chef Morou is disjointed in his dishes, but is also safe. He picks up the little pieces of himself and goes to the kitchen.

Chef Symon doesn't get any major comments, but survives.

The judges liked Chef Big Easy's duck but felt he could have done that dish without the innovation. Not futuristic, but he still has a future in the show.

Ruhlman tells Chef Bad Boy that he loved the razor clam dish, but the salad had really aggressive onions. Brown tells Cosentino that the clam dish was extraordinary and everyone agreed that it couldn't have been made without the innovative techniques Chef Bad Boy struggled with. He's named the winner, and Cosentino is shocked. So shocked he walks to the kitchen like the living dead and Chef Morou tries to comfort him, saying that he's still in the game. In the game? He won the whole sucker. Now all the other chefs are staring at Cosentino in amazement.

So that leaves Chef Cutie and Bandana Girl. Brown kisses up as usual, telling them they're both fine chefs (who had bad days). Donatella says Chef Cutie's soup tasted like dirty mushroom water! Ouch. Knowlton says the consomme needs to be spot on if it's to be made by an Iron Chef. Donatella says the marinated hamachi dish was the least favorite dish. But despite all that, it apparently wasn't as bad as the inedible salad from Bandana Girl. Chef Cutie lives to smile another week but it's off with Chef Davie and her exuberance.

Sigh, somehow I think the kitchen will be less brighter without Bandana Girl's colorful headwear and bright personality. As she leaves the other cheftestants, she yells out to Chef Besh, "John, say it." And with some reluctance and apparent sadness at Bandana Girl's departure, Chef Big Easy yells out "I got a real bad feeling." How true, how true.

Next week: It's all men left and that means grilling! Yeah, me man. Me love grilling. Looks like Chef Big Easy is sabotaging someone, and Judge Knowlton seems really upset that a chef is constantly disappointing him. Oops, looks like Chef Cutie may be on the chopping block yet again.

Despite the very little comments from the judges, you get more insight from one of the judges' blogs. Hear reaction from Michael Ruhlman. (Interesting note on his blog, Ruhlman says next week's show will have a double elimination. Oooh.)

The Next Iron Chef airs at 9 p.m. Sundays on the Food Network. It repeats on the same time every Thursday night. Photos courtesy of the Food Network Web site.

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Pumpkin Arrives at Teacake

It's October, so of course we're going to see a lot of pumpkin in the stores for Halloween and pumpkin pies next month. I actually love pumpkin and I was excited when I saw special pumpkin-flavored goodies at the Teacake Bake Shop at the Bay Street Shopping Mall in Emeryville.

Teacake does a lot of specialty flavors for their cupcakes (each sold on specific days of the weeks; vanilla and chocolate sold every day) but right now they're doing a special pumpkin cupcake everyday ($3). I bought one to take home recently and thought it was moist and tasty, and not super sweet. It didn't necessarily look as cute as the other cupcakes (kind of plain looking) but it satisfied my hunger for pumpkin.

They also sell a variety of cookies and they have a special pumpkin-flavor cookie ($2), which I also tried. This wasn't as satisfying as the cupcake. When I bought my cookie in the afternoon, it was soft and almost stale. Not sure if it was meant to be soft, because a lot of their cookies are on the soft side. I felt it would have been better a bit more crisp. I did like the cinnamon icing on top, though.

Since I've never done a full profile of this quaint bake shop, here's a mini tour of Teacake Bake Shop:

Some of you may look at Teacake and think, "Oh, this is too precious." And you're right. But I'm a sucker for well-packaged stores. And Teacake is designed well, from all its pink goodness outside to the cookies and cupcakes sold inside.

When you walk inside, you see it's a celebration of the cakes with all the ornamental cake stands in the window. Of course, the cakes they celebrate are all mini, which is good for me because I won't feel guilty buying one.

Here's the front counter that you see as you walk in and that's where you have a selection of Teacake's cookies and things like mini brownies.

The Teacake cookies are hit and miss (like the pumpkin cookie I talked about earlier). But one cookie I do like is the Snickerdoodle (on the right), which is this big, soft, chewy cookie. It's very comforting to me.

To the right as you walk in is this shelf of precious packaged products. Like I said, the owners really know how to brand their products, which means they make very classy-looking gifts.

They display the cupcakes at the window and the day I went (Thursday night) the cupcake of the day was Pomegranate. I would have tried one because I love pomegranates, but I was already filling myself with pumpkin. I wish they mix their flavors every week, because it's not like I can always go to Teacake on Thursday just to try the pomegranate. When this store first open, they had a variety of flavors every day but I guess that was too much. But now with the Flavor of the Day plan, you don't get to try the variety of flavors unless you go to Teacake every day of the week. I like cupcakes, but that's a bit too much for me.

As you're walking outside, you can see the workers inside making cupcakes. They're mostly decorating it, but I guess if you go early enough you'll see them baking. Teacake uses high-end, natural ingredients and bake their cupcakes in small batches. While I don't think all their flavors are that successful, it is still a fun place to explore after a movie or a day of shopping at Bay Street.

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Seen at The Market: White Pomegranates

You're strolling the farmers market stands and you glance at a sign that says "White Pomegranate." You feel like a hunter in a jungle spotting a white tiger or white elephant. Funny how the oddest of colors is often the one with no color at all.

I spotted these white pomegranates last weekend at the Ferry Plaza farmers market in San Francisco. But this same farmer just selling these pomegranates was also spotted at other farmers markets such as the one in downtown Berkeley. So I think he gets around.

I love pomegranates. It's one of my favorite exotic fruit, but most people don't like dealing with de-seeding it. (I did a demo early on in my blog here.) This white pomegranate is actually white to pink. And the seeds inside are very similar to a regular pomegranate, just slightly lighter in color. The taste is sweet. People around me thought it was really sweet, but I thought it was very similar to the regular version. So like yellow watermelon and purple cauliflower, these wild varieties are all about looks. But like they say, half of eating is done with the eyes.

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Travel Dish: Jer-Ne in Marina del Rey

A Short Journey to the Waterfront
4375 Admiralty Way (inside the Ritz-Carlton)
Marina del Rey, Calif.
PH: 310.823.1700
Open daily, 6:30 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Reservations, major credit cards accepted
Web site

MARINA DEL REY
When dining at hotel restaurants such as those in, say, the Ritz-Carlton or Four Seasons, the bar is raised pretty high. And you definitely pay for it in the bill. So why subject yourself to it? Welcome to the world of a captive traveler.

I found myself in such a situation recently when I was in Marina Del Rey (in the Los Angeles area caught between Santa Monica and LAX) for a brief business trip. I hate business travel because you never can enjoy the place you’re visiting and the meals are always pre-planned. But one night when busloads of my co-workers went off to designated dining spots, I literally missed the bus and was left behind at our hotel, the Ritz-Carlton. Without a rental car or any nearby recommendations, I went downstairs to the hotel restaurant, Jer-Ne, for a quiet dinner alone.

Jer-Ne is a play on the dictionary pronunciation of the word “journey.” And all this time I was going around pronouncing it with some fancy French accent, like zher-NAY, when it really was just journey. Anywho, the restaurant is a gorgeous spacious room off the front lobby. The space makes it a popular place for special occasion brunches.

I requested a seat outside in the heated deck because I wanted a view of the sunset over the marina as my dinner overture. The deck is typically reserved for bar patrons, but the front staff was accommodating and seated me outside overlooking the sailboats.

Side note: In the table next to me was a group of businessmen and one of them was smoking. I was surprised because I thought California had pretty strict laws on smoking in public places, but I guess Jer-Ne was working on some grandfathered technicality for its outdoor area. If I knew, I probably would have sacrificed the view to avoid the second-hand smoke with my dinner. Luckily, the group left by the time my appetizer arrived.

The menu by Chef de Cuisine Drew Sayes (who worked at the Four Seasons in Chicago) is casual and light, featuring a lot of fresh, seasonal ingredients. There were heirloom tomatoes and beef tartare, but nothing that struck me as unusual. So I settled for some fresh oysters with a white balsamic grapefruit granita and tarragon ($16).

I thought it was refreshing to have oysters with a little bit of granita, but I didn’t detect any trace of the white balsamic. The oysters were fine, but none of my servers could tell me what type of oysters they were or their origins.

For my entrée, I ordered the pork tenderloin served over soba noodles, baby bok choy and honshimeji mushrooms in a red curry sauce ($36). On paper, I thought this would be an exciting Asian-influenced dish, but instead it was just a bowl of thin soup with pork on top. It was almost an elevated interpretation of char siu ramen, but all the elements didn’t come together.
I could tell that the pork was quality stuff; it was tender and tasty. But it wasn’t supported well by the red curry broth, which was spicy but still more a broth than curry sauce. And the honshimeji mushrooms, very similar to enoki mushrooms, weren’t really my favorite.

I should also note that by the time my entrée arrived, the sun had completely set and it was virtually like eating in the dark out there by myself. While the heated lamps kept me warm, the single candle on my table and the side lanterns up against the exterior walls were barely enough to help me see what I was eating. (Which is why I resorted to flash photography. But it was OK since I was the only one dining outside at the time.)

My meal, however, was salvaged by the nice glass of Syrah that came with my pork (although it cost $16 for just one glass) and dessert.

I ordered the seasonal Grilled Peach Napoleon ($13) and it came out on a tasting tray with three components arranged as a smart approach to enjoying the dish. I started off with the peach napoleon, which was creamy and spongy and delightfully warm. I really wished it came as a bigger piece, but I reveled in the restraint of the presentation.

Then I continued with the next item on the plate, which was a clean gelee that acted almost as a palate cleanser, preparing me for the finale of the dessert tray—the ice cream. To be honest, I totally forgot what the flavor was of the ice cream, but I remember its creamy texture and firm taste. I’m pretty sure it was vanilla and it was good.

Overall, the service was excellent and accommodating, although they may not have been as informative on the ingredients.

If it’s been awhile since you’ve been to Jer-Ne, this may be a journey you may want to put on hold. While the quality of the ingredients is fresh and superior, the execution under this fairly new chef is lacking. There’s no disputing the waterfront view is a nice added ambiance, but at the current price point and location, the bar was still raised up high.

Single guy rating: 3 stars (go for the view)

Explanation of the single guy's rating system:
1 star = perfect for college students
2 stars = perfect for new diners
3 stars = perfect for foodies
4 stars = perfect for expense accounts
5 stars = perfect for any guy's dream dinner

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Phyllo Is So Flakey

Ever have those flakey friends who always say they’ll meet you at a certain time and then think it’s an hour later? Worst yet, not even show up? But with Phyllo, I count on the flakey-ness. In fact, I demand it.

Working with my friend Phyllo the Dough can be tricky. He’s very sensitive so I have to handle him with kit gloves. After defrosting his cold demeanor, I have to gently unfold each layer of his complicated psyche and then butter him up a lot so that he’s not only flakey, but crispy. Mmmm, now that’s a good friend.

My friend Phyllo the Dough recently helped me put together a nice quick dinner with my other friend, Salmon. As you can see in the recipe below, it’s just a matter of handling Phyllo and then putting together a few ingredients and voila, dinner. Enjoy!

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Phyllo-wrapped Salmon

Copyright 2007 by Cooking With The Single Guy

Ingredients:
6-8 oz. salmon fillet
1 T prepared horseradish cream
8 sheets phyllo dough, defrosted
2 twigs of fresh dill (optional)
salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 375 degrees

Cut the salmon fillet into two slim pieces and season with salt and pepper. Mince your fresh dill and mix it in with the horseradish cream. Then spread as much as you want on top of each salmon fillet. Place one piece of salmon on top of four sheets of phyllo dough that you’ve brushed with melted butter or olive oil and then fold into a wrap like a burrito. Do the same with the other. Brush the exterior of both with butter to help it get golden brown. Place both salmon wraps onto a cookie sheet or baking dish and bake for about 15 to 20 minutes, depending on the size of your fillets. Remove from oven and let cool. Then serve warm. Garnish with a wedge of lemon.

Makes two serving. Serve with sauteed or creamed spinach.

Pair with a glass of Sauvignon Blanc.

TIP: The salmon can get pretty hot being baked with a shell, so be sure to let it cool before biting into it and burning the roof of your mouth. Believe me, I learned the hard way.

WORKING WITH PHYLLO: Phyllo dough can be labor-intensive but it’s worth it to get the crispy exterior. Once you defrost your phyllo dough per the box’s instructions, then stack the amount of sheets you need. Then like a book, flip each one and lightly brush each sheet to make sure you’ve buttered every layer. It’s important to butter each layer because it won’t get crispy without either butter or olive oil. For your work area, layout some wax paper so you’ll have an easier time picking up your phyllo sheets.

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The Next Iron Chef: Episode 1

Sauna and Salmon Roe

So we begin with the first episode of “The Next Iron Chef,” and with all the scenes from around the world and the heart-thumping music, I feel like I’m watching the beginning of one of my favorite TV shows, “The Amazing Race.” (Excuse me, five-time Emmy Award-winning “The Amazing Race.”) I all but expect Phil to walk out and say “Sorry, you’ve been eliminated” but instead we’ll get a similar light-hair host in Alton Brown (but more on him later).

So eight cheftestants from across the country will battle it out for a spot on “Iron Chef America.” It’s odd that Brown voices-over that “the battle to attain greatness begins” but what we see are our cheftestants scrambling on a basketball court. Is this a sign of the great cooking in store? Hope not.

I wonder if the Chairman (the very fit actor Mark Dacascos) had to do several takes of him saying “the next Iron Chef” in that deep, ominous voice? And I wonder if he got as tired of it as I am in the first minute of this show?

All these fast-paced clips of scenes from the episode, music and voiceover of finding a “culinary god” is making me exhausted. I feel like I’ve watched the episode already but am left with that empty feeling like I wasn’t given a large enough portion. Gosh, that Iron Chef theme music really does sound like the Amazing Race. Maybe they’re trying to go for an Emmy win, too?

OK, we finally meet the cheftestants. First up is southern cool John Besh looking like a model in a silver-grey, long-sleeve shirt. Owner of three New Orleans restaurants and a former Marine, he’s my front-runner for taking this whole thing.

Next is Aarón Sanchez, owner of two restaurants in New York (hey, Besh has three; what are you, a slacker?) and he looks and sound kind of like Yankees catcher Jorge Posada. (Please Yankees, don’t get eliminated so soon!)

Here’s Traci Des Jardins, my hometown girl and owner of San Francisco’s classic Jardiniere restaurant. Traci looks like she’s going on a hike. She says she probably has the most experience of all the cheftestants, and I believe her.

Michael Symon owns a restaurant in Cleveland. I said in my earlier preview that he looks like a mechanic, but now with the outdoor scenery and heart-thumping music, he looks like a contestant on "Survivor."

Our second female contestant is Jill Davie of Josie’s restaurant in Los Angeles. She says she’s intense and doesn’t mind arguing, but I’m just wondering if she’s going to be wearing that bandana throughout the series. If she is, then I’m going to call her Bandana Girl.

Another hometown connection, Chris Cosentino of Incanto restaurant in San Francisco, is talking, of course, about offal cuts and using all the different parts of an animal. That’s pretty much his reputation around these parts. He says he’s brash and loud, and to prove it he gets the first bleep of the series.

The only African-American chef, Morou, owns a restaurant in Virginia and he says his cuisine is just like how he talks: American with an accent.

Last but not least, we get Gavin Kaysen, looking like he’s going to hit a few rounds of golf. I dubbed him Chef Cutie in my earlier post. I think I’ll probably stick with that because he is pretty darn cute—and young, at age 28. He says he’s representing all the young chefs in America. But, you know, if we add up all the ages of all the young chefs in America, that’s a lot of experience and age. Maybe he needs to rethink this “all America” thing and just represent the young chefs from Palm Beach or something like that.

The eight stand in this courtyard that looks like an Italian villa or some CG studio at LucasArts. The Chairman tells them it’s the hallowed grounds of the Culinary Institute of America (in Hyde Park in New York). He tells them that “the journey will be long and hard, and when it ends, one will stand alone as (dramatic pause) the next Iron Chef of America.”

We get some flashback scenes of Kitchen Stadium from the Iron Chef America series, and all the cheftestants talk about the honor of competing for the spot. One even calls it the pinnacle of a chef’s career. Hmm, I always thought it was winning a James Beard award or getting four Michelin stars, but maybe some chefs do consider it the height of one’s career to sweat it out in a TV studio cooking for an hour and letting a judging panel criticize your food. I’m starting to wonder about some of these cheftestants.

The Chairman makes a quick exit and then appears the work horse of the series, commentator Alton Brown, who informs the cheftestants that they’ll have eight tests over the next few days to demonstrate the divine eight characteristics the Chairman believes all Iron Chefs should embody. Then he does this odd “come hither” motion with his fingers like some card dealer in Vegas, and we move to our first character test: Speed.

Everyone’s in a basketball gym and Brown talks about the physical attributes and agility of the Chairman (that guy does some amazing flips in a suit) and how Iron Chefs have to be fast when cooking in Kitchen Stadium. So of course the first challenge will test them on their knife skills, doing such tasks as deboning chicken, filleting a whole salmon, French-cutting a rack of lamb, and even cutting open a coconut and getting 2 cups of juice. They all have 15 minutes to do this and already you can see many of them thinking, “where’s my line chef?” For each task they complete, they get a certain amount of points.

The cheftestants are split into two groups of four. First up are Bad Boy Cosentino, Des Jardins, Big Easy Besh and Chef Cutie (Kaysen).

The four race off for the table of food and start cutting away. I notice Chef Bad Boy (Cosentino) talks a lot while Chef Big Easy (Besh) seems pretty quiet as he focuses on his lamb. The scenes are so quick and short, it’s hard to really see who’s doing what, although I do think Cosentino should have switched to contacts for this series because his black-rimmed glasses are sliding off his nose while he’s cutting away. This is going to happen often throughout the cooking competitions.

Chef Big Easy looks like he’s the first to finish and he raises his arms, calling for congratulations but no one seems to hear him as they try to finish as much as they can before time runs out.

Chef Morou in the peanut gallery says Besh and Des Jardins are the two cheftestants to watch in this early stage of the game. Well, (spoiler alert) he was half right.

The second group is let loose onto the food table, and again, it’s really hard to tell who’s doing what, but Besh says it looks like Morou is going really fast. Everyone from the first group is watching in the peanut gallery with their jaws dropped and speechless. Ouch, Brown announces that there’s blood spilled in this competition and it belongs to Chef Morou.

Morou, who doesn’t seem to miss a beat despite having a bleeding finger (I mean, put a band-aid on man), says he saw the blood when he was filleting the salmon but thought it was the salmon. Talk about dedication, this guy doesn’t even feel the pain in his haste to win. I hope he doesn’t drip any blood into the coconut juice.

As expected, Chef Morou is done with 3 minutes and 4 seconds to go. Sanchez is the next to finish, and Symon is still shucking oysters (although he called it a clam).

Commercials. Another Food Network show with a couple of hippies catering food. Where do they find these guys? And why don’t they have hair nets? It’s called “Two Dudes Catering” and it’s another reality series. Hey, there’s another cute commercial with those California cows. They’re teaching a duck (who oddly looks like the Aflac duck) how to meditate by saying “mooo” instead of “ooom.” So funny.

Alton has the results of the speed round. I’m not going to go over the scores for everyone because this isn’t the SAT and no one’s going to Harvard, but looks like Chef Big Easy was fast in the first round, and most of the other chefs got points deducted for sloppy work. All except one who looks like he got a perfect score of 75, and that’s Chef Sanchez. Brown declares him “the fastest knife in the kitchen” and Besh points to him and says he’s coming after him. That was so Sopranos.

For their next challenge, the characteristic is “artistry” and the test is dessert making. Again, all the cheftestants look at each other wondering “where’s my pastry chef?”

Alton Brown says the Chairman has a sweet tooth but he likes it weird. (That sounded odd. Even Cosentino scrunched his face when he heard it.) The cheftestants have 90 minutes to make two desserts. One will be made with any of the ingredients in this big table of fruits and chocolates, but they’re not allowed to use butter, sugar or cheese. The second dessert has to feature one of the savory Survivor-like ingredients from the other table. Since Chef Sanchez won the first challenge, he got to choose first and he picks duck confit.

Chef Bad Boy picks tripe and you can hear others say “Aww, he picked tripe. He’s a warrior.” Hey, I’m pretty sure they use tripe in some kind of Asian cooking. OK, maybe not for dessert though.

All the cheftestants get cooking and this is where the series loses a lot of the drama. The editing doesn’t really show how the dishes are made because there’s just no time for that. But the cheftestants are all such professionals that there really isn’t a lot of drama in the kitchen and much interaction among them.

Anywho, this is what I can gather so far. Chef Symon is making vanilla bean ice cream with bacon because his belief is “everything is better with pig.” (His words, not mines.) The ice cream machine isn’t cooperating and it pretty much falls apart. Brown is no help and just walks away before he gets blamed.

Chef Sanchez is going to make a sweet corn cake that’ll serve as a base for his duck confit. Davie is going to make a gastrique, which I’m not sure what that is but it has to taste like beef shoulders, which is what she picked as her savory item. Morou is making chorizo and coconut milk. So far I’m getting hungry for dinner, not dessert.

Commercials. What’s this musical chairs with cars in the parking lot? Kids, don’t do this at home. You know, this Kia commercial is kind of appropriate for the holidays because this is what it’ll be like at the malls with cars fighting over spots. Hey, there’s Amy of “The Next Food Network Star.” Her show is going to premiere next Sunday at 1 p.m. (at least it’s not 7 a.m.) and I give her props for sticking with her theme, “The Gourmet Next Door.”

Coming back from commercials, wow, the Chairman sure wields a big sword. We get the second bleep in the series when Chef Symon swears over the ice cream maker. So he gives up on his ice cream idea and makes bacon cream sauce?

Boy, they’re really sweating in this kitchen. What’s this? Top Chef Miami? It’s like they’ve all caught the Howie body sweats and they’re all soaking. My guess is this was filmed in the hot humid summer of New York.

Chef Morou plates his plantain boat with beignets and a rambutan. His plate looks pretty. Chef Sanchez is plating a cute little pancake and Alton Brown calls time. Chef Sanchez wants to put one more thing but Brown eyes him down until he puts down his utensils. Brown looks at the camera like “these kids don’t listen.”

Now group two gets to cook. Chef Big Easy says he wants some green tomatoes. “What’s a Southerner to do without a green tomato?” Chef Bad Boy yells out “cry.” Chris, I’m pretty sure that was what we call “rhetorical.”

Cosentino says he’s working on some kind of fried tripe bread pudding. Chef Cutie says he’s making bread pudding too, but with his secret ingredient of squid. Ugh, more sweating. It’s like a sauna. I’m getting kind of worried for these chefs. I hope they hydrated afterwards.

Chef Traci is making something with celery, beet and apple for her secret ingredient, salmon roe. Everything moves so fast, it’s hard to keep up. Besh jokes about why did he pick catfish. It’s so hot that Chef Cutie says he can pour honey right out of the container and it really does look like melted butter. And Chef Traci’s crème fraiche looks watery.

Commercials. WTF? The Kia musical car commercial again? I wonder if someone else will win? Oh no, same guy. I thought they’d do something clever and have another winner since they repeat this commercial soon after the first one. But no, they’re not that creative or they think we have no ability for retention.

Back in the kitchen, the heat is playing havoc on all the cheftestants dairy products and their hairstyles. Chef Bad Boy is whisking his olive oil zabayone. It’s a workout for his arm. He does small talk with Chef Traci. Must be that San Francisco connection. She’s nice enough to small talk back. Aww, that was a sweet moment.

Oh. My. Gawd. Chef Big Easy looks like he has a fever with all the beads of sweat on his face. Thankfully, the cooking and sweating ends and now we move to the judges table.

So the three judges for this series (and I’m so glad they’re not the Food Network executives from “The Next Food Network Star”) include Andrew Knowlton, restaurant editor for Bon Appetit magazine. I’ve seen him judging in the past on Iron Chef America because I recognize that long, cropped hair. In the middle is Donatella Arpaia, a New York restauranteur who I’ve never heard of but is going to play the role of Paula Abdul this evening. The final judge is Michael Ruhlman, freelance food writer and a trained chef. Ruhlman actually came off really serious in this first episode, but he’s actually really funny as far as I can tell from his food blog. (BTW, he offers some limited insider insight of the show every Monday on his blog.)

Each judge briefly states what makes an Iron Chef. Ruhlman says he’s looking for fundamentals. Donatella says the chef needs passion and drive (yawn). And Knowlton says the chef has to accept what’s given to him and make no excuses. (Basically, no whining.)

Chef Symon is the first to present. He made a rice pudding with goat’s milk. His second dessert he calls the “6 a.m. special”—vanilla bean French toast with bacon ice cream and more bacon with pecans. Ruhlman says the dish is very familiar. Symon says he puts pork in everything.

Chef Cutie is up next and serves a pecan-crusted pain perdu. Again, it’s too fancy of a name but I’m pretty sure it’s the bread pudding he was talking about. He made it with Bavarian cream with honey and assorted berries. He serves it with some kind of strawberry shooter and Alton Brown jokingly declares him the winner for serving alcohol. (Woo-hoo!) The judges say they feel Kaysen played it safe. Next is his squid, which was marinated in lime juice, poached in honey water, cilantro and fried ginger. Donatalla makes a face. Ruhlman says it’s creative and impressive. To me, it doesn’t feel or look like dessert.

Commercials. Kia musical cars again! I’m waiting for an accident to happen. Nokia commercial about kids text messaging. ISNIT (=I’m so not into it).

Chef Traci offers up an almond and citrus cake made with olive oil, which actually looks yummy. Donatella says it’s dry, and Chef Traci comments that it’s been sitting while the prop guys and lighting people set up the judges’ shot. (OK, she didn’t add the last part, but I’m sure that’s what she was thinking.) Her second dessert is beets, celery, apple with the salmon roe on top. Ruhlman says he likes the beet salad, but there was way too much salmon roe.

Bandana Girl (OK, Chef Davie) serves up her chilled limoncello soup with summer heirlooms tomatoes. Donatella loves it (this woman is really jumping in first with all the comments). The second dessert is a beef and blackberry crepe with the gastrique, but Donatella (again) says the beef flavor isn’t very pronounced in the gastrique. (Maybe because it’s pronounced gas-trique, not beef-trique. LOL.) Overall, though, the judges say they liked it.

Chef Sanchez is up next with his filled mini crèpes with caramelized bananas. He added something Mexican that I didn’t catch. His second dish is the duck confit with corn cake and mole. Donatella says it’s spicy. The two male bookend judges wonder if the dish really qualifies as dessert.

Chef Bad Boy presents his goat’s milk rice pudding and honey almonds. Donatella says it’s perfectly cook. The tripe comes next in a panzanella. Donatella doesn’t mind it. Ruhlman loves it. Now there’s an adventurous eater.

Chef Big Easy made some white chocolate bread pudding that sounded like he said challah. (I learned this from my Jewish workmate.) Ruhlman says it was very rich, and Besh says it’s the chocolate, cream and crème fraiche. Then it’s on to the catfish, which was served in three ways: a truffle with grape, a parfait and a beignet. Donatella says she’s afraid to eat it, but eventually does.

Chef Morou present his banana fritters on that very pretty plate with the exotic rambutan. Then it’s his chorizo risotto with pickled currant. Hint to Chef Morou: don’t call your dessert risotto. Try “rice pudding” instead.

Judgment time. Chef Big Easy won with his catfish dessert, cementing his position as the frontrunner. He survives to battle again.

Also surviving is Chef Bad Boy and his honeycombed fried tripe. When he arrives in the waiting room, Besh calls him “Monkey Boy,” which I think is kind of endearing. Also passing mustard is Chef Cutie, Chef Morou and Bandana Girl.

The judges tell Chef Sanchez that his dish wasn’t really dessert but the duck was done really well. Sanchez is relieved that he’s surviving another week, but he looks a bit sad when he arrives in the waiting room.

That leaves just Chef Traci and Michael Symon. The judges say Symon played it safe, pretty much making something that everyone has had before. (And yes, they say they’ve all tasted bacon desserts.) Judge Knowlton asks Des Jardins if she was nervous, and she says it was a challenge working with the salmon roe. Knowlton says he wished he saw more of a classic dessert.

Alton says great chefs have bad days. (He probably doesn’t want to offend either of them since he may be dining at their establishments soon.) Chef Symon makes the cut and it’s the incomparable Des Jardins, once an Iron Chef America battle winner, who is the first to get cut. Everyone seems a bit shocked and sad because Des Jardins is probably the most experienced cook. (I heard that from someone; oh yeah, Des Jardins.) Chef Traci puts up a good face and says she had fun meeting everyone and cooking with them. Everyone gives her some love.

Next week: Besh is laughing it up but still sweating a lot. Chef Bad Boy says he’s pissed about something. Chef Sanchez wants to put something on the plate after the buzzard and just about gets his hand slapped by Alton Brown. Now that’s drama.

The Next Iron Chef airs on The Food Network every Sunday at 9 p.m. and repeats at the same time on Thursdays.

Photos courtesy of the Food Network Web site.

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Bomboloni Part Deux: Raspberry and Chocolate

I'm still eating my way through the four flavors of my new favorite pastry treat: the bomboloni at Boriana's Corner at the Ferry Building Plaza in San Francisco. It's this Italian doughnut that doesn't have a hole but is filled with a nice treat, pretty much like a jelly doughnut. I've already had the custard, which I love. In the last few weeks, I've also tried the raspberry (above) and the chocolate (below), which they call cioccolato.

The raspberry was nice, but it actually just tasted like a jelly doughnut. There wasn't as much filling as the custard, but maybe it's because raspberry can be tart and you don't want too much of that. The chocolate was better. It tasted like bitter chocolate, with a thick texture, not as creamy as the custard. Chocolate-lovers will probably like this more than the custard, but I have to say the custard is still my all-time favorite. It has a lot of filling and it's so creamy and tasty. If you like custard like me, you'll be going on and on about it too!

So all that's left for me is the Nutella flavor and I would have tried all the bombolonis for sale at Boriana's Corner (they're the store on the south end of the Plaza close to Sur La Table). Just a reminder, the custard and raspberry sells for $2.50 each and the chocolate and Nutella sells for $2.75 each. It's worth trying just for the unique treat, and of course you know I'm still recommending the custard first!

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Get Figgy With It

It's fig season and this is one of those food product that's fun to eat and, for me, photograph! You can rarely take a bad fig photo. They're soooo seductive. Anywho, after I was done striking a pose with my figs, I cooked them with duck because that's such a classic pairing. I basically braised some duck legs with the figs and some broth and wine. The fig was so delish, almost like a compote with my tender duck legs. Of course, I paired it with a bottle of French red wine I bought awhile back at Kermit Lynch Wine Merchants. Don't forget that when shopping for figs, the mushier the tastier. Better yet, get them from a neighbor's yard. They'll be happy to have you take the figs off their hands since they don't keep long. Enjoy!

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Braised Duck Legs with Figs

Copyright 2007 by Cooking With The Single Guy

Ingredients:
2 duck legs with thighs
5 to 7 Mission figs, stem removed and diced
½ cup red wine
1 cup beef or veal broth
1 bay leaf
¼ cup shallots, finely diced
salt and pepper
extra virgin olive oil

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Season duck legs with salt and pepper and drizzle with olive oil. Set aside.

In a large skillet or saute pan over medium high heat, sear the duck legs to brown and render some of the duck fat. (Be sure to brown all over the skin.) Remove the legs and set aside. In same pan, add shallots and saute until translucent (about 2 minutes) using the duck fat. Deglaze the pan with the wine, then add broth, figs and bay leaf. Pour everything from the pan into a baking dish or dutch oven. Place duck legs (skin up) on top of liquid mixture and cover. Place in oven to cook. After 2 hours, remove cover and cook for another 30 minutes to an hour to crisp the duck skin.

Remove from oven. Plate legs with figs and sauce drizzled on the side or on top.

Makes 2 servings. Serve with mashed potatoes and sauteed green vegetable of your choice.

Pair with a glass of Syrah or Cabernet Sauvignon.

TIP: Duck can be pretty fatty, so the sauce that’s created after braising for 2.5 to 3 hours can be oily. (The more you brown the skin and render some fat, the less oil during the braising.) If it’s too oily for your taste, pour all the liquid from your baking dish into a cup and let the oil float to the top. Skim off fat and then you can warm up your remaining sauce or add some flour to thicken it a bit.

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Travel Dish: A Conversation with John Vlahides of 71Miles

Now that I have one year of blogging under me, I decided to expand my horizons—and my blog—so that it’s not always just about me. Today, I’m launching a new occasional feature where I go out and talk to interesting people about food and beyond. (But no bed or bath.)

I decided for my first feature to chat with John Vlahides, executive editor and co-founder of 71Miles, a Web site that focuses on regional travel. Currently the site provides travel features on short, local trips in Northern California and the Washington, D.C., metro area. I’ve seen John in the past on the KRON4’s weekend news show, where he would offer travel tips. I wondered what it was like as a travel writer figuring out where to eat.

John also has an interesting background. He worked for years as a luxury-hotel concierge before getting into travel writing. For the last eight years, he’s written for publications such as Fodor’s, Lonely Planet and Condé Nast Traveler. And he once worked as an interpreter for the French culinary school LaVarenne Ecole de Cuisine in Paris.
I asked John out to lunch and suggested he pick a San Francisco restaurant that he would recommend to out-of-towners. That’s how we ended up at Plouf, the French seafood bistro in the quaint Belden Place alley.

I had a lot of fun chatting with John, who doesn’t hold back when it comes to speaking his mind—about travel and food. (In fact, he got into it with our waiter and eventually the restaurant owner over a bowl of mussels we ordered. In the end, John decided that Plouf has “lost its luster” and is only saved by the outdoor dining experience, which we unfortunately didn’t get to do because it was cold and overcast on the day we met.)

The following is an edited version of our lunch conversation.

Chef Ben: So I asked you to pick a restaurant that you consider a signature San Francisco restaurant, one you’d recommend to people visiting. What made you choose Plouf?

John Vlahides: Oh I hadn’t realized you wanted a signature San Francisco restaurant or I would have chosen Tadich (Grill) for a seafood restaurant. Tadich is definitely a signature San Francisco restaurant for sure. In my years as a luxury-hotel concierge, I know that most people who come to San Francisco want fish. … And I would always be loath to send them to the wharf. I just don’t think the food is any good there, with a few somewhat good standouts.

Tadich is fine for the classic San Francisco experience with the waiters in the long, white aprons and the sort of timeless room, and the power lunchers and the little, white-tiled floors. But I’ve always liked Plouf, and I tend to send people to Plouf, especially on a warm day because you can sit outside.

CB: I like the whole alley atmosphere.

JV: Oh, it’s like Paris. It’s fantastic. The whole block filled with the little tables and umbrellas. But I’ve always liked Plouf because the focus is seafood. It’s fun and most people who come to San Francisco want a bit of a party when they go out to eat.

CB: When you recommend places like Tadich Grill, which is a classic, don’t you run the risk of it being too touristy because everyone is recommending it?

JV: It depends on which meal. If you go to Tadich on a Friday afternoon for lunch, it’s mostly going to be power lunchers from nearby banks and Montgomery Street. If you go to Saturday dinner, it’ll mostly be out-of-towners. So the question can’t be simply answered. It depends on who’s asking it, when they want to go, what they’re looking for.

CB: Now you’re part of 71Miles, which you co-founded. Are you the main person providing content for the site?

JV: I’m the sole content provider for the Northern California site. There are about 50,000 words, maybe more now, up there (on the site). It’s almost a book. It’s about three-fourths of an average travel book. (He holds up a travel guide and pinches more than half the pages.) There’s a phenomenal amount of content up there, but since I’ve been doing this for so long, writing for Fodor’s, Lonely Planet, Condé Nast and San Francisco magazine, and covering things for Channel 4 (KRON-TV), I have all this on the ready. And now I get to say everything that Condé Nast and Fodor’s, even Lonely Planet, won’t let me say. Lonely Planet is pretty liberal but they’re governed by the laws of Australia, and they’re not protected by the First Amendment. Only in the United States does the burden of proof lie on the accuser in libel and defamation cases. It’s the other way around in Australia.

CB: If someone wanted to plan a trip nearby focused on food, where would you recommend?

JV: Go where it grows. Go to Sonoma. Get a copy of the Farm Trails Guide. It’s a list of all the independent flower growers, fruit farms, cheese makers and gardens.

At this time, our mussels arrive and John demonstrates a trick where you take the meat out of the first mussel and then use its shell as a makeshift tong to eat the rest. That definitely comes in handy when you’re grilling at the beach. And if nothing else, it’s a neat trick at your next dinner party.

CB: In your bio it says you had culinary training in France. Did you want to become a chef?

JV: I did, and it’s just grueling work. So I decided not to. I did it for a little while and I thought it sucked. ... There’s a high rate of alcoholism. The stress, the timing, you’re working your ass off until midnight and then you stop working and as the express train is slowing down you have a couple of glasses of wine or scotches. Restaurant people are really fun but they party their asses off. And you sleep all morning and then it’s time to go back. And you get stuck in a rut. You really have to be disciplined about it. I think I lacked that critical piece.

CB: Do you still do a lot of cooking?

JV: I cook sometimes, but I don’t have a big kitchen. I love to cook.

CB: I originally started my blog for the single people out there who don’t have time to make big, fancy dinners but want quick, easy meals, especially after work. As a single person, what do you end up making?

JV: There’s a classic northern French dish that I really like. You take endives, trim the outer leaves, take out just a little bit of the center core, just a little, and then steam them and then wrap pieces of Virginia ham around it. Lay them side-by-side in a small baking dish and pour over them a Mornay sauce. And what, it’s like 2 tablespoons butter, 2 tablespoons flour, one and a half cups of milk, nutmeg, and salt and pepper. Then sprinkle grated gruyere cheese on top of the sauced endive before baking it.

CB: Do you have a favorite style of cuisine?

JV: I think my favorite food is those that use few ingredients. That’s why I like country French and Italian—five ingredients to a dish so that everything shines. And then it’s really about using the best ingredients you can get.

CB: What are your tips for people who are traveling and trying to find a good place to eat?

JV: Advertisers do something, it’s called “finding the maven.” Every group of friends has an expert, the go-to person for all their questions. My uncle and aunt are coming to town, where should we go for dinner? I need to get my shoe fixed, where should I go? I need a nice leather jacket, where should I go? And every group of friends has one person to ask. It’s called the maven. So you do what the advertisers do and you find the maven.

The mavens don’t like everything. Don’t trust anybody who says everything’s great because they’re not discerning.

CB: How do you find the maven in a place you’ve never traveled to before?

JV: You find a cool café. You chit chat and smile at everybody. And whenever a conversation comes up, you say you’re from out of town and you pick their brain. But you do so with a critical eye. They can say, “Oh, this place is wonderful” and then cross check the information with the next person you talk to. Don’t accept nice as an answer. “Oh, it’s a really nice place.” What makes it nice?

Also determine your price point. People will rattle off all sorts of restaurants. … Tell them how much you want to spend so you don’t get this long list of places and you find out they’re wicked expensive.

At this point, the waiter walks by and John starts speaking to him in French, pointing to our bowl of mussels. I feel like I’ve transported myself to a sidewalk café in Europe, where you see people carrying on in a very animated conversation. John explains later that he felt the mussels had been doused with cheap, acidic white wine that washed away any hints of the liquor (the natural juices of the mussels that create this wonderful broth you can sop up with bread). He says he felt we were robbed of this sublime pleasure, and I agree. While the mussels were plump and fresh, they were drowned in a bowl of broth and wine that wasn't very tempting to slurp liberally. A few minutes later, the restaurant owner comes out and, again, John talks to him in French. This is when I wished there were floating captions.

CB: When writing for a travel guide, what criteria do you use to decide which restaurant to recommend?

JV: It depends who I’m writing for. For 71 miles, I’m writing for my forgotten friends, if you will. Condé Nast is for a very specific niche, high-end market. Fodor’s is a sort of bland, middle-of-the-road traveler. Lonely Planet is for a younger, more dynamic audience. But I kind of like to write with an eye toward my varied group of friends, be they older adventure travelers or middle-aged luxury travelers or younger people who don’t have much money to spend and who want to splurge on a dinner and then stay in a cheap hotel. So I give a wide variety of options. But I’m usually writing to my friends.

CB: Do you feel pressured to list the hot and trendy places?

JV: I don’t feel pressured to. I feel it’s important to. But I look at them with a more critical eye because everybody’s talking about them. Like West County Grill in Sebastopol. There’s a big to-do about that place. Very flashy, with Jonathan Waxman (the New York restaurateur) and Stephen Singer (the ex-husband of Alice Waters of Chez Panisse). But there are too many chiefs and not enough Indians. There’s all these people huddled around the computer looking at orders and all this. The food’s good but the portions are too precious. Anyway, so I went there and I said OK, so this is a hot place, let’s see what the deal is. And it was good, but because it’s such a hot place I’m a little more critical of it.

CB: When you list trendy restaurants in your guide, don’t you run the risk that it won’t be trendy by the time the guide gets published?

JV: I tend to avoid overly trendy places. It’s hard to say. Because you really don’t know what a restaurant will be like until it’s been open for about three months. So if it’s not 3-months-old yet, I try to shy away from it unless I know there’s a star team behind it.

CB: What is it that you’re looking for in a good restaurant? Is it strictly the food?

JV: No, the service is really important. When Michelin gives its stars, they do so on food alone. So a place like Dry Creek Kitchen in Healdsburg got a star from Michelin but the service is terrible there. I look critically at service. But the measure of good service is not how they do day-to-day, it’s how they handle problems.

CB: Would you recommend room service when traveling?

JV: When I’m on an expense account, I recommend it.

CB: Is it because room service is always expensive?

JV: Oh, ridiculously. Don’t order room service if you’re not on an expense account because you’ll hate yourself when you get the bill. … Room service is tricky. I like to order room service but usually the selection is limited. If you’re at a hotel that has a top-notch restaurant, find out if that restaurant is doing the room service. And then it’s a different story altogether.

CB: For a food experience anywhere in the world, where would you recommend?

JV: San Francisco. Paris. Um … such predictable answers. Bangkok is a blast. Bangkok has really good food but you have to be willing to eat on the street. … Everything is so redolent with spice. When you get a bowl of tom yum, it’s an earthy, spicy broth and you typically put seafood in it. But in the bottom of the bowl there’s a big pile of sticks and leaves and branches of all of these spices and herbs. And they’re not afraid to put whole, big inedible chunks of plant matter into the food. I love that earthiness. You just kind of eat around it. But they add such thrilling spices to the cooking.

CB: Now you’re planning a trip to Dubai. That’s not for 71Miles, is it?

JV: 7,100 miles. (laughs) That’s for Lonely Planet.

CB: Will it be your first time there?

JV: Yes, and the first time the editor is working with an author who hasn’t been to the destination. But he said “I really need your expertise in luxury travel.”

CB: That’s pretty much all Dubai is, heat and luxury, right?

JV: There’s a 7-star hotel. Yeah, it’s their own marketing spin. It’s over the top. There’s an underwater hotel. There’s an indoor ski slope in the Arabian Peninsula. What?

Near the end of our lunch, the owner has sent out a second bowl of mussels after John told him about the poor preparation of the first batch. This second bowl has less wine but still needs a bit more seasoning. John asks me what I think about our lunch overall. He ordered the skate wing and fried ravioli and I had a big prawn salad. My salad had an abundance of fresh ingredients, but it was drowned, just like the wine, with too much vinaigrette. This is when John says he probably won’t include Plouf in his update of Lonely Planet’s California guide.

CB: Any last dining tips for travelers?

JV: Do a little research before you go and find out what the local specialties are. And then find out who does them best. Rather than finding out when you get there and you stumble into a diner and they say it’s the specialty of the town and you go, “Oh, we’ll order that.” But then you might get a bad version of it. … If you can, chase the season.

CB: What do you mean by that?

JV: Eat what’s in season. There’s a great restaurant called Seaweed Café in Bodega Bay of all places. And everything served there is within 30 miles of the restaurant and in season. So chase the season.

Soon John will be chasing the dunes as he goes “sandboarding” in Dubai for six weeks. My many thanks to him for being an entertaining lunch partner and having such a discerning palate, especially when it comes to mussels.

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Seen At The Market: Persimmons

Like figs and pomegranates, I think persimmons are some of the most exotic fruits around. I think any unique type of food has a distinctive color, such as lavender. The persimmon has a brilliant color that's only comparable to itself. This Japanese import is also one of the more difficult to cook with. Mostly because it's all about timing in terms of whether you want to bite into it or not. Last year I made a chicken salad using persimmons that was quite fun to eat.

I saw these boxes of persimmons recently at the downtown Berkeley farmers market. You'll see more and more persimmons in the next few weeks. It's a real fall and winter fruit. The top version is the fuyu, which looks like a tomato and should be eaten crunchy like an apple. The version below is my favorite for its shape and color. It's the hachiya and should be eaten soft like the tender figs. This is also the version people like to cook down to a jam or pudding. If you don't venture into eating them, persimmons are great food models if you're into food photography like me!

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Last Hurrah for Summer Tomatoes

It's the last few weeks of the season for tomatoes and I wanted to make something that really celebrated this ruby red beauties. So I decided to make a tart, which I rarely do because of all the butter and cheese inside. But I bought this cute little French tart tin at Sur La Table that was only 8-inches so I thought it wouldn't make a very big tart. I whipped together this tart by just combining goat and ricotta cheese and topping it with thinly sliced tomatoes. It turned out beautifully, but I have to say the tomatoes are a bit hard to eat politely. You'll definitely need to use a knife and fork to cut the tomatoes. But they were so intensely flavored because of the concentration of flavor after roasting in the oven. Now, I have to admit that this is a semi-homemade type of tart because I just bought ready-made tart pastry dough at Whole Foods. I've said before how I have a small kitchen and don't want to be bothered with rolling dough. So I had the tart taken care of by Whole Foods so I could just concentrate on what's inside. Enjoy!

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Tomato Goat Cheese Tart

Copyright 2007 by Cooking With The Single Guy

Ingredients:
5 oz. goat cheese, room temperature
5 oz. ricotta cheese
4 to 5 small tomatoes
¼ cup fresh basil, chiffonade (thinly sliced), reserve 5 leaves for garnish
2 eggs
1 package frozen tart pastry dough or pie crust

Preheat oven to 400 degrees

Defrost frozen pastry dough per the box’s instructions. Place into 8” or 9” French tart tin pan, pressing the edges up against the side of the pan. Poke a few holes in the bottom with a fork.

In a large bowl, add goat cheese, ricotta cheese and eggs. Blend well with a mixer and season with a pinch of salt and pepper. Add sliced basil and fold into your cheese filling. Pour everything into the tart shell. (You may not use up all the filling depending on the size of your tart pan.) Don’t fill to the top. Leave some room for the tomatoes.

Slice tomatoes into thin pieces and then place on the top of your tart in a concentric circle with each tomato overlapping slightly. Start with the outer layer and then place some basil leaves on top, and then finish with the final top layer of tomato slices.

Place on cooking sheet and place in oven and bake for about 40 minutes until the tomatoes are roasted and the cheese is slightly golden on top. Remove from oven and place on cooling rack before slicing. Serve warm.

Makes 4 to 6 servings. Serve with a mixed green salad.

Pair with a glass of Cote du Rhone or Syrah.

TIP: If you can’t find frozen pastry dough specifically for French tarts, then buy a frozen pie crust and remove it from the pan and flatten with a rolling pin. Then place into your tart pan. Another possibility is also using puff pastry dough and cutting it into a circle to fit your pan. Some people recommend cooking the crust first before adding the filling if you like your crust more golden brown. If you do this, cook crust for about 20 minutes and then add filling and tomatoes and cook for another 30 minutes. Be sure to weigh down the filling with some beans or rice to avoid it from puffing up when cooking it by itself.

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