Food Gallery

Red and ruby, fresh strawberries are the jewel of spring. I saw some fresh organic strawberries at my farmers’ market this weekend, so I bought a basket. When strawberries come into season, you need to grab them fast because the really sweet ones are in season for only a few weeks. (Sure, you see them at Safeway for many months but those are hothouse strawberries that have been forced to turn red but taste like plastic.)

The fresh strawberries by the family farmer were so beautiful that I was inspired to take these photos. I generally like to just eat them as is and just enjoy their goodness, instead of baking them into some dessert. But if you want, you can also add them to a salad, which is what I did in the recipe below, along with another popular seasonal item—the California avocado. This weekend, think red.

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Strawberry and Avocado Salad

Copyright 2008 by Cooking With The Single Guy

Ingredients:
(no portions are given because you can put as much as you need to make the salad)
Strawberries
Avocado, pitted
Romaine lettuce
Parmesan cheese shavings
Croutons

Creamy balsamic vinegar dressing:
2 T balsamic vinegar
2 T Dijon mustard
1 T mayonnaise (optional)
1 T sugar
1 T extra virgin olive oil
pinch of salt and pepper

Whisk together all the ingredients for the dressing and set aside.

Chop up your romaine lettuce into bite sizes and slice up your avocado. Then combine with slices of fresh strawberries and croutons. Toss everything together with the dressing. (Just put enough dressing as needed.) Finish off with some shaved parmesan cheese.

Perfect to pair with any grilled meats.

Pair with a glass of Viognier wine.

TIP: To make the parmesan cheese shavings, just use a vegetable peeler and run it again the side of a chunk of parmesan cheese.

CROUTONS: I’m fine with using store bought when in a pinch, but if you have leftover bread, you can just make your own croutons by chopping them up into chunks, drizzle in olive oil, season with salt and pepper and any herbs you like and place under the broiler until golden brown. It should take just a few minutes so be sure to watch it and don’t let them burn.

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Jamie At Home: Episode 12, Game Birds

This is Jamie Oliver’s last episode in his Jamie At Home series on the Food Network. At least it looks like it because the schedule shows that the next few weeks will be reruns. Anywho, I’m kind of glad because recapping this series was a bit rougher than I thought. Even though I love Jamie, there wasn’t much to say. But let’s end it with a bang, shall we?

Jamie is working with game birds today and he’s psyched. He thinks game birds are fantastic, delicious, easy to prepare and underrated. I for one don’t underrate game birds, I love them just as well, especially quail. Pan-sear or roast any game bird and they’re often delicious.

Oops, maybe I spoke too soon. Jamie says he’s going to start off with pigeon. And I actually grew up with pigeons. My mom would make my dad catch the pigeons that would stoop near the roof of our house. It was a free meal but I think my mom was mostly annoyed by all the cooing. Anyway, I wasn’t a big fan of the meat because it was darker than chicken and a bit tough. Let’s see what Jamie does with it.

Asian-style Crispy Pigeon

Jamie is outside with some wood pigeons. He has two of them already skinned and they look really dark, almost like those Chinese black chickens. He’s going to make a dry rub with Szechwan peppercorns and a pinch of salt with his spice shaker. Where does he find those things? I want one. Last week he had a red one, this week it’s a nice blue one.

After shaking up the peppercorns, he adds a teaspoon of five spice, which Jamie says is brilliant for roasting duck. He shakes the ground spices over the pigeons and rubs it all over. He’s pretty rough with those pigeons. Jamie sweeps up the excess and puts them into the cavity. He’s going to fry up the birds in a deep pot of oil, which has been heated up to 180 degrees. While the pigeons are frying up, he’s going to make a dipping sauce.

In a small bowl, he adds zest from half an orange, squeeze of juice, 5 tablespoon of oyster sauce, a teaspoon of sesame oil, half a tablespoon of honey and the juice from half a lime. He whisks all these ingredients together and that’s it. That was easy. (He actually says a bit of fresh ginger grated in would be good but he forgot it this time.)

He also prepares some toppings, so he gets some spring onions and chops them finely. Also some chili, which he makes this weird roar sound when he chops them, I guess to demonstrate what happens when you eat them raw? Jamie and his noises, you got to love it. He says chili makes you happy. Ok. He also chops up some coriander.

His pigeons are about done and he removes them from the oil and pads them with kitchen towel and then places them on a plate with the dipping sauce and he starts piling on his toppings (again with the roar when adding the chili). He demonstrates how to cut up the pigeon into halves and then quarters. I would have used a bigger knife or kitchen shears instead of that regular chef’s knife. But Jamie gets it done, of course. He bites into a piece after dipping it and he’s so happy he’s jumping around. It’s a finger lickin dish, he says.

Roast of Incredible Game Birds with Polenta

Jamie is outside and making a roasto misto, which he says is Italian for mixed roast. So he’s going to roast a bunch of stuff: guinea fowl, quails, pigeon, partridge and pheasant. Wow, the film crew is going to have a lot of food to eat after this demo. Get the complete recipes here.

In a roasting tray, Jamie has root vegetables: celery, onions, carrots that will act as a lift for the birds so they don’t fry on the bottom of the pan. He gets his pheasant and flattens it to make it cook evenly with the other birds. He gets the guinea fowl and cutting away the backbone (he says you can get your butcher to do it but he’s Sir Jamie Oliver so he has to do his own knife work).

He gets his four quails and he’s going to roast those whole. He’s basically stuffing these tiny birds with rosemary and thyme in the cavity. Jamie also has this pinwheel of sausage that he just adds to cook with the birds for flavor, along with herbs and bay leaves. He starts throwing all sorts of things in the tray like rosemary and other herbs, along with salt and pepper and extra virgin olive oil.

He does more rubbing of the birds. I don’t know if I would want a massage from Jamie because he looks a bit rough. He puts the tray into his outdoor wood-fire oven and says to cook it for 90 minutes at 350 degrees.

Classically in Italy this roast is served with polenta. So he works on making that. He has a pot of boiling water and he adds a bunch of polenta grain and starts to whisk it. He puts a lid on it and cooks at low heat for about 50 minutes.

Jamie brings out his tray and the birds are all golden brown. This is absolutely a celebration, he says. It should be with all that food. He puts the birds on the side and he’s going to make a sauce or gravy. He cooks the tray and the remaining root vegetables on the charcoal grill, adding a couple of glasses or decent Chianti. He also adds a nub of butter because butter is the base of all fine sauces.

He’s ready to plate up his feast, so he takes the polenta off the heat. He tastes it and says it’s bland, like mashed potatoes, so he adds three ounces of butter and a whole bunch of parmesan cheese, along with salt.

He pours the polenta onto a chopping board and smears them onto the edge. And then he makes a well in the center. He places the birds and quails and partridge and pheasant and places them all in the middle right over the polenta. He gets some of the juices and pours it through a sieve right into the center over the birds. It’s a huge mountain of brown birds. He says this is what they do for presentation in Italy but I’m thinking I can see some of the sauce juices dripping off the sides of the board.

Pan-fried Partridge with Pearl Barley

Jamie’s cooking at night, and he has a partridge that’s been gutted and plucked. He’s also cooking a sauce pan of pearl barley, which he says is an old English carb. He just boils them in salted water for 50 minutes.

Jamie slices up a red onion and says he’s making a vegetable stew with the partridge. He’s going to use frozen peas.

He drains the pearl barley, puts the pan back on the heat. In the saucepan, he sautés up the onion.

With his partridge, he demonstrates how to take off the bone, cutting off the drumsticks first and then sliding his knife down the backbone to cut two pieces of breast filets. He also chops off the ends of the legs.

After the onions get some color, he stops that and adds the pearl barley and pours in frozen peas. He returns it to the heat and adds either vegetable or chicken broth, adding enough to just cover all the ingredients.

In another pan, he’s going to fry up the partridge, starting with the legs. Starting off by seasoning with salt and pepper, he adds them legs to the pan. Then for the breasts, he seasons them with fresh thyme ad rosemary and salt, just sprinkling them on top and then adds to the pan along with chunks of smoke English bacon.

For the breast, he says it just takes two minutes on the skin and one minute on the other side.

For the stew, he thickens it by adding a nub of butter into flour and then adds that to the pea broth concoction. He’s going to add lettuce and rockets, which he says cooked lettuce is genius because of the flavor that comes out. He throws them into the stew and serves it up, pouring the stew into a bowl and puts the breasts on top along with the other pieces. The stew is still a bit wet, I think. But he says it’s absolutely delicious. (The complete recipe here.)

Must be a British thing:

Spring onions=green onions

Coriander=cilantro

Kitchen towel=paper towel

Jamieisms heard in this episode:

Brilliant

Jamie At Home airs on Saturday at 9:30 a.m. on the Food Network, although future episodes look like reruns. Visit Jamie’s Web site at http://www.jamieoliver.com/. More on the accompanying book for the series here.

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Organic Butter Lettuce at Grand Lake

There's a lot more to see at the farmers' markets now that spring is in full swing, and some of the interesting things I saw this morning at the Grand Lake Farmers' Market in Oakland is this organic butter lettuce. Not only is it organic, but it sure is beautiful with its crimson tint. I've never seen butter lettuce so colorful and so big. They were piled onto this table draped in red cloth to match at this one farmer's stand. Time for some spring salad!

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Can We Just Date for Now? Love At First Bite Bakery

Wrapping up my visit to Berkeley’s “Gourmet Ghetto” a few weeks ago, I ventured into one of the area’s popular cupcake bakery—the Love At First Bite Bakery. Cute name.

I love a good cupcake as you can tell in my posts here, here and here. So I had to check out this Berkeley spot, which I’ll call Love for short (just like how some people call Jennifer Love Hewitt). Love, the bakery, isn’t easy to spot off the street. It’s in this odd mini wooden complex of shops and stores near the corner of Vine and Walnut Streets a block east of Shattuck Avenue.

It helps to keep an eye out for the sign on Vine Street, which I totally walked right by. I noticed it later on my way out.

Once you’ve wandered into the heart of the wooden complex (it’s almost like going deep into the forest), you find this cute little bakery with the workers in the back icing the many cupcakes. In the front at the window is a table with cake stands filled with a variety of flavors to choose from.

There are also some cupcakes in the counter, and Love had some unusual names like Hummingbird (a Southern-style cake with banana, pineapple and pecans) and Bunny Love (the cute version of carrot cake). The cupcakes are priced at $2.75, which is a whole dollar cheaper than my favorite cupcake, Kara’s in San Francisco.

Love is pretty small but they did have this section that sold all sorts of children books and gifts.

Here are the workers I was telling you about busy icing the cakes. I don’t know if they bake the cupcakes on site because I didn’t really smell the aroma of freshly baked cupcakes. But they were definitely busy making the cupcakes look pretty. While I was there, a few people came in for their pre-orders so it looks like Love is pretty popular for the parties.

I ended up getting three flavors: the Lemon Kiss (a lemon cake with lemon buttercream frosting), the Matcha Green Tea (a cake made from matcha tea and topped with matcha-infused whipped cream), and the PB Affair (an ode to Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups made with devil’s food chocolate cake and peanut butter buttercream frosting).

The Lemon Kiss was just OK, I found the actual cake part a bit on the dry side. The Matcha Green Tea cake had a nicer texture and the icing was a bit more sweet, but it didn’t have a strong green tea flavor. It was very subtle but tasty. I really wanted to enjoy the PB Affair because I love Reese’s PeanutButter Cups growing up. But it didn’t achieve the wonderful blending of chocolate and peanut butter. Instead it was just chocolate cake with a topping that was thick like, well, peanut butter. The only nice part was the quarter chunk of Peanut Butter Cup on top.

While the cupcakes were cute and clever, Love At First Bite is just nice, but not mesmerizing. I give it points for a reasonable price point for a definite boutique cupcake feel. So while I can’t commit to Love, I can say it was a nice first date.

Love At First Bite Cupcakery & Bakery, 1510 Walnut St., Suite G, Berkeley. PH: 510.848.5727. Open Tuesday to Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Closed Mondays. www.loveatfirstbitebakery.com

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Top Chef: Season 4, Episode 3

It’s a Battle of the Red and Blue States

Previously on Top Chef: Zoi and Jennifer are a couple, and Richard wants to make a statement with smoke. (Dude, what’s with the summaries from two episodes ago? That’s like “previously on previously.” WTF??) The cheftestants get wild at the zoo and Andrew wins while Valerie and her blinis go home.

Padma’s Prize Recap: I wonder how many Glad products you can buy with $100,000? My food will never breathe again.

The L-train rumbles across the city, waking up the neighbors. We cut to a scene that literally gets my mouth to drop. Really, I’m on the floor now looking for my bottom lip. My two favorites, Andrew and a shirtless Spike, are goofing around doing some Austrian-accented wrestling scene. Oh. My. GAWD. If this were the Real World-Road Rules Challenge, I’d peg them as the couple to beat. Anywho, elsewhere in the house Richard is being serious and Stephanie is missing Valerie even though she’s partly to blame because she made Valerie make those stupid blinis in the first place.

Quickfire Challenge: What color is Rick Bayless’ shirt? Is that eggplant? I need my sunglasses. With Chicago’s own master of Mexican fine-dining in the room, you know they’re going to have to do something fancy. So it’s no surprise when Padma tells the cheftestants that they have to dress up a well-known staple of Mexican cuisine—the taco.

This leads to almost a revolt among some of the cheftestants, who rightly so believe that the taco is the true symbol of Mexican street food and doesn’t belong on the menu of any fine-dining establishment. Erik’s bleeping his way through the challenge and says he’s going to keep it real with a street taco, so is Spike.

But the others try to rise to the challenge (do they have much choice?), either adding unusual ingredients like duck and cactus or like Richard is totally discarding the traditional taco shell and using jicama instead. (Yuck, I hate jicama.) BTW, doesn’t it look like Richard’s faux hawk is getting bigger each episode?

You know Manuel’s feeling the pressure, and not just because we’ve hardly seen much from him in the last two episodes. But since he works at a Mexican restaurant, he feels like he has to step up. When Bayless and Padma come around for the tasting, Manuel’s doing this rundown with a whole slew of Mexican ingredients that I’ve never heard of. (I could only get chorizo and picante verde, but that’s it.)

Lisa is the first to make Bayless nearly gag by using skirt steak in her taco. The man can barely bite into the tough meat and I bet he wishes he had a knife and fork so he can poke Lisa with them.

Erik, who’s keeping it real, offers up a really sloppy looking plate of tacos. Erik says he wanted to keep the traditional flavors, and Bayless is like, yeah, and so?

In the end, Bayless doesn’t like Erik’s train-wreck of a taco (and Erik could care less), Lisa’s tough skirt steak taco, and Ryan’s oddly paper-wrapped taco (“the paper just bugs me,” says Bayless).

BTW, I’m going to point out here that Bayless’ Frontera Fresco casual dining spot in the basement food court of Macy’s Union Square in San Francisco doesn’t even have tacos on the menu. I guess the only time Bayless thinks tacos are worth eating is when you have white tablecloths around?

Chef Bayless says he liked Spike’s soul-satisfying taco but the winner (and thus the guy with immunity) is Richard and his jicama-wrapped pseudo tacos. Bayless loved the refined presentation so much that he’s going to steal the idea and put it on the menu of his Topolobampo restaurant in Chicago. (Don’t you love it when guest judges use Top Chef as a test kitchen?)

Padma tells the cheftestants to divide themselves into two teams, one Red and one Blue. What? Too cheap to bring out the knives this week? The division isn’t very organized and you can tell who’s joining whom more for fun than strategy. It pretty much breaks down to the fun and carefree gang and the nerds, with Richard as the undeclared leader of the geeks.

They go into their respective colored vans and start driving around Chicago. This sounds just as boring as it was to watch—for nearly 5 minutes! This is such a waste of time watching the cheftestants try to guess their elimination challenge, I can’t believe I’m saying this: Bring on the commercials!

Commercials. Foster Farms chicken wannabes. How long have you been trying? Give it up already.

The cheftestants get dumped onto a quiet street in some generic tree-line Chicago neighborhood. Padma tells them that this neighborhood has an annual block party and tomorrow the cheftestants are going to have to cook for them. The twist? They won’t be shopping for food, but instead will have to get their ingredients by knocking on the doors of the people in the neighborhood. (Oh, and BTW, this is the mealstogether.com challenge, which is the most stupid product placement possible because I never heard of mealstogether.com, the challenge didn’t require the use of mealstogether.com, and they’re probably only getting the benefit of being on Top Chef from the fact that I mentioned them three times in this recap! I’m not even bothering linking to the site because it’s too damn slow.)

So the cheftestants do a bad version of trick-or-treat as they go house-to-house looking for food. Of course, strategy comes into play for the Red Team when they send out pretty boy Ryan as the lead food beggar. Teammate Andrew says it was an obvious choice to send Ryan because he can pull off saying “Hi, I’m tall, dark and handsome and I need some grapes.” Ha! So true.

Some of these people have some really nice homes. The cheftestants are grabbing all sorts of stuff. One woman just came back from the farmers’ market, so that team scored with a lot of really fresh fruits and vegetables. OK, so I don’t know whether I should be jealous by the fact that these Chicago people have such fully stocked pantries, or whether they were told ahead of time to stock up because of the Top Chef visit? Either way, this challenge isn’t so much of a challenge because both teams leave away with bags full of stuff.

The Blue Team, led unofficially by Richard who can’t be eliminated, is talking about upscale, fancy-pants type of food like jambalaya. While the Blue Team wants to stick with American classic like sliders and hot dogs because they’re in the Midwest and there will be a lot of kids and you know what picky eaters they are.

It’s the next day already and the cheftestants are back in the Top Chef kitchen prepping their food for the block party. Here’s the planned menu by the two teams:

Blue: Paella, slaw, barbeque pulled pork, bean salad, inside-out cookie, “sexy” drink, fruit cobbler and mac n’ cheese.

Red: Sliders, corn dogs, pork skewers, sangria, Waldorf salad, pasta salad, taco salad and s’mores.

The Red Team is feeling pretty confident, but thanks to the editing of the show’s producers, we get a lot of foreshadowing of which will be the problem dishes. For example, Erik says he does corn dogs all the time at his restaurant in San Francisco but he’s worried they’ll get soggy during transport. (OK, so why risk it? Do something else people!!)

Zoi isn’t happy that she got put in charge of the pasta salad because she’s all like, meh, this is pasta salad, how fancy can you get? She says she doesn’t want to get eliminated and be known as the cheftestant who couldn’t make a good pasta salad. Yeah, I’m with you on that. That would suck big time.

Here comes Chef Collichio, and I have to say I don’t really get much from his kitchen visits. The only thing that I could gather from this segment is he’s suspicious that lavender would really make a drink sexy (hey, I love lavender!) and he thinks substituting mayonnaise in the Waldorf salad will take out the element that keeps it fresh-like.

Nikki is worried about her mac n’ cheese drying up during transport. So far it sounds like really poor planning by both teams who came up with dishes that don’t really travel well. It’s like they’re writing their own ticket to elimination. I’m so done with poor planners.

Commercials. You know that Stella Artois beer commercial where the bartender tries to pour the beer while on a train but can’t so he cuts his compartment off from the rest of the train, leaving him stationary on some mountain bridge? Well, it played at a movie theatre I was at recently and it got a lot of laughs. People ate it up! But I was like, now you’re stranded dude.

The cheftestants arrive back at the neighborhood where the block party looks like it already in full swing. Since there’s no grill or any outdoor cooking equipment, it looks like the cheftestants are mostly setting up and serving the food as is. As they set up, the neighbors cheer for their favorite colors. This is Chicago so I’m going to let you guess whether they’re for blue or red!

We’re still getting a lot of air time for Erik’s soggy corn dogs and Nikki’s dried out mac n’ cheese, so like I said, foreshadowing at work here. To counter the dryness, Nikki’s pouring a load of cream to try to basically give high cholesterol to everyone. BTW, was this filmed last summer? Why is it so warm out in Chicago that they can have a party outside? I can’t believe it’s almost a year since this has been filmed.

The judges arrive: Padma, Tom, guest Rick Bayless and Ted Allen. They start going around trying all the food, but they’re uncharacteristically quiet, not really offering up much criticism, good or bad. Ooops, Padma just dropped her s’mores on Ted Allen’s shoes!

The Red Team is having a lot of fun serving up their food, even the soggy corn dog. And ironically, it sounds from the neighbors’ reactions that they liked more of the food from the Red Team than the Blue. Afterwards, the Red Team members (notably Andrew and Spike, the goofballs) are having fun with the neighbors, joining in with the basketball games or dunking booth.

Over at the Blue Team, they look all stressed, worried and serious. They all head home. Gosh, it sucks to be caterers. You spend all that time serving food and you don’t get to eat any. That’s life, I guess.

Back at the Judges’ Table, the Red Team is still feeling pretty confident as they make a lot of noise going into that weird holding cell/storage locker room. But Padma comes out and asks for the Blue Team. The Red Team members know how this is going to go down, but they’re still in a bit of denial, thinking maybe the producers are adding a twist and calling the guys who sucked first. Sigh, sorry guys. The producers are not that creative.

Chef Tom says it was a fairly close challenge, and not in the good way where the two teams both excelled that it was hard to pick a winner. It was more like they both sucked so bad that the Blue Team just barely squeaked out the win.

Thanks to the foreshadowing editing, we know already that Nikki’s mac n’ cheese tasted awful. In fact, Bayless says it was like mac and brick. Tom was especially critical of Richard’s paella, saying it wasn’t authentic paella because it didn’t have the crispy rice bottom (ooh, I love that part) calling the dish a fancy-fied rice pilaf.

The judges did like Antonia’s bean salad (which we hardly heard about thanks to the foreshadowing editing of the bad) and Stephanie’s dessert and drink concoction. And get this! The judges say the Blue Team won primarily on the sexy drink from Stephanie. WTF? The best dish was some drink filled with simple syrup, lavender and carbonated water? This challenge did suck wind.

It’s the Red Team’s turn and some of them really seem indignant that they weren’t the winning team. Spike thought they kicked ass, and Padma’s like, no you did-n’t. Bayless thought Erik’s corn dog was a universal disappointment and that there was too much chicken in the Waldorf salad.

Just as the Red Team is indignant at the thought of losing, the judges seem especially critical and indignant that these cheftestants thought they could have won. Chef Tom at one point, after being told that all the members worked well together and tasted each other’s food to be sure, tells the Red Team that “well then you all must have pretty bad tastes.” Me-OW!

Andrew says he can’t believe he might be eliminated and adding more fuel to the judges’ contempt, he tells them that “as far as going home, you’re going to have to drag me out with security guards because this is my house.” Um, Andrew, kind of too early in the season to be throwing down with the judges, you think?

The judges chit chat amongst themselves, and Padma thinks it’s funny that the cheftestants didn’t realize that they did so bad. They harp on Ryan’s watery Waldorf salad and Erik’s soggy corn dog. Back in the storage room, Zoi’s effin-mad that she didn’t speak up against the pasta salad, which she says was an afterthought. You can tell by all her swearing that she’s partially mad at herself for not speaking her mind to the group. Her other teammates try to assure her she’s not going to be eliminated, but she’s not buying any of it.

Commercials. People are having a tailgate party on some highway, using Kingsford hickory charcoal. Talk about rush-hour traffic. Nexxus says my hair is talking to me. Really? I’d like to tell it to shut up so I can get some sleep. Oh, sorry hair. I didn’t mean it. PUH-lease don’t leave me!

Judgment time. Chef Tom says the challenge was simple but they screwed it up anyway. Padma sends Erik and his knives home to San Francisco, the first of four Bay Area cheftestants to get the boot.

Erik takes it like a rock star and says he’ll miss the camaraderie, which I don’t doubt given all the bear hugs that are being passed around. Zoi is crying up a storm, and partly it’s because she’s sad to see a fellow San Franciscan leave but partly because she realizes it was her ass on the line and the producers made Erik the sacrificial lamb.

Next week: Guest judge is Daniel Boulud. Looks like they’re cooking some fancy dinner with that actress that played Charlie in season 9 of “Friends” and Chicago movie critic Richard Roeper, who I think is funny because he calls the judges out for being too critical. I agree, this year they seem extra cranky pants, especially that Tom guy. And Andrew and Spike continue their fun and mischief, which starts to make some of the other guys in the house UN-comforta-ble.

Top Chef aires Wednesday nights at 10 p.m. (9 p.m. Central) on Bravo TV. Check out videos and multiple blogs at the Top Chef Web site. Photos courtesy of Bravo TV.

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In the Kitchen: Pan-Seared Scallops

Seared scallops are one of my favorite meals to make—for myself or often as a starter for a dinner party. There’s something about the caramelizing of the scallops that brings out the flavor of this delicate shell fish. Scallops are like a good piece of meat. All you need is salt and pepper and a quick fry on high heat. You can never cook them wrong, unless you char them.

I debated whether to make a video about me cooking scallops because it’s so easy it’s like watching butter melt. But then I thought, hey, maybe this will show someone who’s intimidated by the idea of pan-seared scallops to actually make them because it really is so simple? And this video will prove that. In the video I plated my scallops over a lemon-mint risotto. The full recipe is below. Enjoy!

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Pan-seared Scallops with Lemon-Mint Risotto

Copyright 2008 by Cooking With The Single Guy

Ingredients:
3 wild scallops (defrosted if purchased frozen)
½ cup fresh mint leaves, finely chopped
zest from one lemon
½ sweet onion, diced
6 oz. Arborio rice
1 small glass of dry white wine
1½ cups chicken or vegetable broth (or 14 oz. can)
¾ cup shredded Parmesan cheese (or Parmigiano Reggiano)
1 garlic clove, minced
2 T unsalted butter
olive oil
sea salt to taste

In a medium saucepan, warm 2 tablespoons of olive oil over medium high heat and add onion and garlic. Cook for about two minutes until onions are translucent, making sure not to brown the garlic. Add rice and stir with onions, letting the heat toast the rice for about a minute. Turn heat to medium and add wine and cook until most of it evaporates. Then start adding in the stock, using a ladle to add two to start. Continue cooking for about 15 minutes, stirring with a wooden spoon and adding two ladles of stock along the way as the stock gets absorbed, until rice is al dente, or almost done. Half-way through cooking your risotto, add the lemon zest and mint.

When done, remove saucepan from the fire and stir in butter and cheese. Set aside to stay warm.

Season your scallops with salt and pepper. In a non-stick fry pan or skillet, warm a tablespoon of olive oil, then add the scallops and cook for about two minutes. Add a tablespoon of butter and let cook for about 30 seconds then flip the scallops over and cook until opaque and firm to your liking. (Probably another two minutes.) Before removing the scallops, squeeze some lemon juice on top. Plate scallops immediately over the risotto and serve warm. (Click here to view my demo on pan-searing scallops.)

Makes one serving as an entrée or three small starter plates.

Pair with a glass of Sauvignon Blanc.

TIPS: Seared scallops go well over anything. Besides risotto, you can serve your scallops on top of a vegetable puree or mash, polenta, cous cous or on top of a green salad.

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Food Paparazzi

When shopping at a farmers’ market, you sometimes run into local chefs, especially those who specialize in seasonal, local, fresh ingredients. Last Saturday while at the San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmers’ Market, I noticed Chef Daniel Patterson of Coi doing some shopping.

Coi has been mentioned as among the best restaurants in publications like the New York Times and Food and Wine Magazine, but Patterson already established a name for himself in San Francisco at his previous restaurant, Elisabeth Daniel, and his past stint at Frisson. He’s also a good writer, having contributed to the Times Food Section.

You can usually pick out the chefs shopping at the market because they’re often pushing a cart filled with boxes of produce and meats. And if you really want to celebrity chef-gaze, you should hang out by the valet section on Embarcadero at the front of the Ferry Building because most chefs will often load up their goods into their cars there. (And while I do sound like a stalker, I assure you that I do not hang out at the valet waiting for chefs. Really.)

While Patterson looked vaguely familiar when I first noticed him, I wasn’t really sure until a farmer said “Hi Daniel” and I noticed his cart had containers labeled “Coi.” Still, I’m a bit shy about approaching chefs who I haven’t formally met, so instead I just channeled my inner paparazzo to shoot this photo of him. He was buying a bunch of citrus at one stand and had already loaded up on cheese, lamb, and several different types of micro greens and sprouts.

Coincidentally, I have reservations for Coi next week, which will be my first visit. I’m looking forward to tasting a dinner made with ingredients hand-picked by the chef! Coi celebrates its two-year anniversary next month.

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Jamie At Home: Episode 11, Winter Salad

Jamie Oliver’s in his garden, and it looks like a storm is brewing. He says it’s rainy and windy. But despite the dreary weather, Jamie’s going to pick through whatever vegetables he has in his garden to make some wicked salads. Ooops, he almost trips over a planter box as he’s walking away.

Gosh, it’s really windy. I feel like someone should tie Jamie down so he doesn’t blow away. He picks some radicchio, treviso (which is the Italian version of radicchio), land cress (which I’ve never heard of but Jamie says it’s watercress that doesn’t grow in the water but the land) and mustard cress, which is his favorite salad of the year.

Roast Carrot and Avocado Salad

Jamie’s out of the wintry weather outside and in his tiny tool shed. He says he’s going to make a salad, but not the typical crunchy salad. He’s going to spice up it, Moroccan style. (Complete recipe at the Food Network Web site here.)

He boiled some organic carrots (they’re the multi-colored ones, also known as heirloom) for about 15 minutes and drained them. While warm, he tosses them with salt, pepper, red chili and cumin. He has this really interesting red glass shaker that he puts everything in and just shakes until it gets ground up. I guess you could use a spice grinder, but that red thing looks cool. Wonder where I can get one?

He adds thyme and garlic to his red smasher and shakes that up more, creating a paste. He adds some olive oil and a swig of vinegar (about a tablespoon and a half) and pours it over his carrots, then places everything in a roasting tray. He cuts a lime and orange in half and places them face down in the tray with the carrots. This will be for his dressing. Everything goes in the oven and bakes for 20 minutes at 350 degrees.

He peeled two avocados and quarters them up to add to the salad. He combines it with the carrots and then works on the dressing using the roasted orange and lime, squeezing out the juice from both. He adds to the juice an equal amount of olive oil and a pinch of salt. He tastes it and decides to add a hint of vinegar.

Making what is pretty much croutons, Jamie grills a slice of bread in a pan and then rips it apart onto his salad. He adds a bunch of greens: radicchio, rocket, beet root leaves. They all go onto the salad with his dressing and he tosses everything together. You’d think he’s done, but no, it keeps going. He adds a spoonful of yogurt (he says you can use sour cream) and then more greens and finally, some hemp seed. Oh, and a drizzle of olive oil. Now he’s done. That’s a big salad.

Amazing Winter Salad

Jamie says he’s going to do something unusual by making a crunchy salad using root greets. First he’s making an unusual dressing, starting off by simmering six garlic cloves in a pint of milk in a saucepan. He’s trying to get them soft, and he says it should take about 10 minutes. He adds some anchovies including the oil from the can into the garlic milk.

Now he starts cutting up a bunch of things, and really he’s trying to get a mix of colors, textures and crunch. Jamie starts with carrots, that he cuts thin and places them in a bunch on a platter. It really looks like he’s making a crudite. Then he cuts a raw beet root (very thin), celery, cauliflower, fennel and a black radish. I’ve never seen a black radish, but since he has a big one, he says to peel it and inside it’s white like a normal radish. So he really defeats the purpose of having a black radish, me thinks. His last vegetable to add to his platter is a celeriac, which Jamie says he has the darndest time to grow in his garden.

For the dressing, he uses a hand blender to puree his garlic milk dressing and he adds more olive oil and some vinegar. You can tell he loves this dressing, which kind of looks like a buttermilk dressing. He pours it into a bowl and places it onto the platter of vegetables. So he says this would be it and you could be done, but he also likes to present it like a normal salad and he throws all the vegetables into a bowl and tosses them with the dressing, which kind of made it look like a soup. The colors of all the vegetables are incredibly beautiful, though. (You can check out the complete recipe here, although what's weird is that the photo on the Food Network site for the recipe doesn't look like the crunchy salad and actually looks like the tuna salad that Jamie's making below. How weird.)

Tuna Ceviche with Herb Shoots

I feel like Jamie’s making dinner because it’s totally dark outside while he’s sitting in his sun room reading to make his next salad with this humongous blue fin tuna that most have cost him a lot. But first he fries up some ginger sticks and garlic slices that he’s going to add to his salad. He fries them up in sunflower oil.

Jamie slices up his tuna, first in half then into very thin slices, placing them almost like a fan around a plate. He adds a handful of sprouts and places them in the middle in a big pile. He says he wants to make the dressing using the Japanese yuzu, which is a citrus that is very hard to find in London, of course. (I think we can find it at the farmers market sometimes in California.) So he’s going to make a citrus dressing to try to match the flavor of the yuzu, so he combines the juices of a Clementine, tangerine, lime and grapefruit. He seasons with salt and he thinks it’s brilliant, very close to the yuzu.

Jamie sprinkles some of the fried ginger on top along with garlic chips, and then finishes it off with his citrus dressing. Now that’s a nice light dinner that should brighten any winter night.

Jamieisms heard in this episode:

Brilliant

Morrocon-vibey.

Mega

Jamie At Home airs on Saturday at 9:30 a.m. on the Food Network. Visit Jamie’s Web site at www.jamieoliver.com. More on the accompanying book for the series here.

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Chocolate Bunnies for Everyone!

Chocolate Easter baskets photographed at Scharffen Berger Chocolates in San Francisco.

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Usher in Spring With Asparagus

You can find a lot of asparagus these days, in the grocery stores and the local farmers' markets. They're getting nice and thick and so versatile. You can roast them, grill them, put them in a salad or stir-fry, or make soup. And they're one of the few spring vegetables that are returning to the farmers' markets, which are going to be really fun and plentiful in the months to come. Can't wait! (BTW, the shot above is from the Berkeley Downtown Farmers' Market, which occurs every Saturday morning in the street one block east of the Berkeley Downtown BART station.)

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People Coming Together in the Name of Cheese

The Cheeseboard Collective was founded in the late 1960s in Berkeley. So you know it’s going to be quirky. The quirk here is that every employee is an equal partner, sharing in the power and the success.

The Cheeseboard has grown so popular over the years that it’s credited along with Chez Panisse across the street on Shattuck Avenue for giving this area of North Berkeley the tag “Gourmet Ghetto.”

Last weekend I went to check out this Berkeley institution for the first time. Come join me, won’t you?

It was around 10:30 a.m. and the place was already packed with people at the cheese counter. There were all sorts of cheese from everywhere, but mostly California and the rest of the United States. Funny, I don’t really recall smelling a lot of stinky cheese, which I often associate with fromage shops.

The bread selection is pretty big, and according to its Web site the bread is also one of the big money makers for the collective. Bread and cheese? What could be better?

I liked how everyone working behind the counter seemed to be really happy. And they were chatting with customers like they all were regulars.

I liked the color scheme and décor near the registers. It really gave it that feeling of the old Berkeley Arts & Crafts movement. While the visit to the Cheeseboard was fascinating itself, the real reason I came all the way to North Berkeley was to try the pizza at the next door Cheeseboard Pizza (which formed its own smaller, separate collective in 1990).

The pizza restaurant was closed and didn’t open until noon for lunch. So I walked around to kill time. I came back 10 minutes before the doors open to find a line already forming. What’s the deal? Here I am at the end of the line. A few minutes later, the line extended past me and the doors still hadn’t open.

This is the pizza of the day. What’s funny is that when I saw this board, I thought it was a list of different pizza flavors for the day so I had my mind all set on a potato pizza with pasilla chili. Turns out, these are all the ingredients in just one pizza. Cheeseboard makes only one pizza each day and it’s one of those take-it-or-leave-it kind of thing. It’s all very utilitarian and Berkeley-like. If you can’t read it, the pizza on this day was roasted potato (comforting), pasilla chili (didn't taste it), onions (not my favorite topping), feta (yum), mozarella cheese (double yum), cilantro (decoration mostly), garlic, olive oil (maybe that's why it was so shiny) and limes (on the side really).

Here are the workers busy handing out the pizza of the day to the masses. I guess it makes it much easier when you just have one pizza and you can just bake tons of them and have them stacked up ready for sale.

I ended up just getting a slice of pizza (cost $2.50) and a drink. I was able to find a spot at the communal table inside and the couple sitting next to me had half a pizza for $10. I’m guessing a whole pizza would have cost $20. Hard to say because there weren’t any prices written any where. I guess people are so used to buying the same pizza all the time that the Cheeseboard doesn’t need to list the prices. Another thing: it's cash only (or checks) but no credit or debit cards.

They have a band playing for tips, which gives it a fun festive vibe on a Saturday. With the line out the store, it’s almost like a street fair.

I have to say that I was a bit bewildered by the line for the pizza. Don’t get me wrong, the quality of the ingredients was great and I love the combination of flavors. But I thought the crust was a bit soggy and there was a greasy sheen to the pizza that I’m not a fan of, so not sure if I would stand in line every week for what you get.

Despite the pizza being just so-so, I can see why this place is an institution and a great gathering place for cheese lovers.

Cheeseboard (store), 1540 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley. PH: 510.549.3183 (Open Monday through Saturday, closed on Sundays.)

Cheeseboard Pizza, 1512 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley. PH: 510.549.3055 (Lunch and dinner, Tuesday through Saturday, closed Sundays and Mondays.)

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Top Chef: Season 4, Episode 2

‘I’m Just Putting Perfume on a Pig’

Previously on Top Chef: Everyone arrives in Chicago and we find out that one couple arrived together (the two ladies from San Francisco), Stephanie is shaky when saucing (say that 10 times fast), Richard releases smoke and aroma (um, the good kind you silly) and Nimma was really salty. She’s the first cheftestant sent packing.

Padma goes over the prize list again and they all compete for the title of … TOP CHEF.

Sunrise over the Chicago skyline and the lake. Obligatory joggers who are everywhere (you should see them around my neighborhood in the mornings). And Dale yawning. Stephanie is already up and working out. That girl can curl. Then we find out that Valerie, who’s from Chicago, knows Stephanie because they worked at a restaurant together years ago. This business is so incestuous. Next week we find out Andrew and Spike were separated at birth.

We check in on our favorite lesbian couple, Zoi and Jennifer, and they’re sharing each other’s black crocs. This is why I’m single. I would never share footwear with my partner. [Yes, famous last words. ;-) ]

Quickfire challenge: The cheftestants meet Padma at the local farmers’ market, Chicago’s Green City Market. Yay, I love farmers’ markets! And so does Valerie who thinks she has the home field advantage because she says she shops at the Green City Market all the time. Padma tells them their challenge is to find the freshest ingredients to make a dish, but they can only use five ingredients (salt, pepper, sugar and oil doesn’t count). Winner gets immunity.

The cheftestants are off and running, jumping over a few kids to get to the stands. Spike is chillin’ listening to music. He’s my new favorite; he’s totally funny. Richard is looking over some eucalyptus leaves. You’d think with only five ingredients, he’d maybe want something more edible. Is he cooking for koala bears? (Oooh, zoo animal foreshadowing without even trying.)

Everyone’s shopping for protein and apparently the Green City Market sucks when it comes to that because the cheftestants are disappointed at the frozen meat that’s on sale. Australian Mark is in his own time zone and he’s totally frustrated at how slow. everyone. moves. … at the. market. At one point he basically opens up a farmer’s cooler to see what she has, and she’s all like, “excuse me?” He is in such a rush that he leaves another stand without his purchase (after clearly asking for a receipt).

Because Mark’s accent can be so heavy at times, I couldn’t really make out what ingredient he left behind. I think he said leeks. It was some kind of greens, and he eventually substitutes it with butter when making his dish because if you don’t have salad, add fat.

Back in the Top Chef kitchen we meet this week’s special guest judge, the molecular master and bearer of odd haircuts Wylie Dufresne, chef and owner of wd-50 in New York. You just know Richard’s just ready to pee in his pants at his excitement over seeing Wylie.

The cheftestants have 30 minutes to make their dishes, and everyone’s off and running in the kitchen. Richard says he’s making a classic braised chicken dish but he’s going to pump it up with the fragrance of the eucalyptus leaves. Spike unpacks his tenderloin tips and says they look like dog food.

You know, I probably should have paid more attention at how the dishes looked when they were finally done instead of typing away trying to get all the ingredients. Sigh, recapping is hard when you’re not taping the show. (I can only tape one show at a time and right now I’m taping "Men in Trees." Someone has to watch it, 'kay.) Anywho, here’s what I could figure out:

Richard tells Padma that eucalyptus is edible in small doses. He makes a braised chicken soup dish with apples.

Ryan makes steak with lettuce and radishes and something else. You know having worked at a San Francisco café that he’d be good at making simple, quick dishes with clean flavors.

Dale makes an egg dish with mushrooms and shallots.

Valerie seared a rib eye with sweet potato puree. Wylie thinks it’s refreshing and juicy.

Spike did apples with his tenderloin tips that he’s already apologizing for. Wylie says he thought he was going to make a steak sandwich. Spike is all, duh, next time bro, just for you.

Erik pan-seared some lamb chops.

Mark made sirloin with turnip puree, mushrooms and peach cream. Wylie knows Mark left a bag behind and says he likes the sweetness of the peach contrasting with the savory turnip. He also tells Mark “nice sideburns” as he walks away. So inappropriate. It’s like how David Cook keeps winking at everyone when he’s being lambasted by Simon on American Idol. Huh, I think I watch too much TV.

Andrew made something that I don’t remember but it really doesn’t matter because apparently Andrew is the kid in class who doesn’t listen to instructions. He used balsamic vinegar as an ingredient but didn’t count it as one of his five because he thought it was one of the excluded items (like salt and oil). He’s scatter brain like that, he says.

In the end, Wylie doesn’t like Spike’s chopped meat that should have been a sandwich, Erik’s uncomposed lamb chops, and Richard’s eucalyptus-smelling chicken, which Wylie thought was a bit greasy. Richard’s worried his molecular gastronomy card is going to be revoked.

The standouts were Ryan’s simple steak dish, Valerie’s flavorful rib eye and Mark’s sirloin with peaches. Mark (and his “awesome” sideburns) wins immunity.

Commercials. It’s raining Hershey’s Kisses. Doesn’t that brunette look like Cameron Diaz? … I would find it annoying if my dog kept yelping “sausage” all day like in that Bud Light commercial.

For the elimination challenge, the cheftestants draw knives and they’re all confused because they’re seeing words like “vulture,” “lion,” “bear,” “gorilla,” and “penguin” printed on the sides. Some speculate that they’re going to be cooking these animals. (BTW, Andrew makes this funny growling sound like a big lion; he really should be a voice in an animated movie.) Turns out, those are the names of their three-member teams.

Padma tells them they’ll be catering a staff party for 200 at the Lincoln Park Zoo. The twist is they have to make dishes that are based on the food their animal eats. (Zoi’s all nervous because she’s wondering what vultures eat. She guesses road-kill and rats. Wow, can’t wait to see what kind of dishes she comes up with for that.)

Lucky for Zoi and the rest of her team that vultures eat fish, rabbits and lamb. Yum.

The teams start throwing out ideas for their dishes. Ceviche for Team Penguin, honeycomb with lavender for the Bears. The editors start to pull out the odd team dynamics. Most notable? Dale is a control freak and doesn’t want to play with his team. Antonia thinks Valerie isn’t pulling her weight and Valerie is basically just the quiet mouse on Team Gorilla.

The next day, they all wake up talking about what kind of animal they’d be. But I’m distracted because Mark is wearing this black headband that’s pulled way back and he looks like Joan Rivers after her 100th facelift. Dude, that’s such not a good look for you. I thought he was wearing it to get those curly hair of his out of his face as he washes up for the morning, but the dude is playing pool, people! It’s freaking me out.

The cheftestants are at Whole Foods with their budget of $500 shopping for ingredients. Spike is molesting the produce section, and Lisa falls down and squishes some kind of vegetable. Nikki is asserting herself in Team Bear and insists on spending some of the money for table decorations, prompting Dale to interview that this is not Top Design.

Back in the kitchen, there’s more running and now Dale is wearing a headband. It’s reproducing! It’s the invasion of the headbands! If Tom Collichio shows up wearing a headband, that’s it. I will not watch this show anymore! I mean it.

We start to see what the teams are making. Team Penguin is doing a charred squid ceviche and also Andrew wants to make a glacier out of jelly. Team Gorilla is making banana bread, of course, but Natalie is already stressing about the blinis.

In comes Chef Collichio (thankfully sans headband). He visits each team but he really doesn’t say anything interesting or noteworthy. Thanks Tom for visiting. BUH-bye.

You know, I’ve said before that Andrew and Spike look like twins, except Andrew is the jittery one. I think they’re both really funny. They have this funny exchange at the refrigerator where Spike checks out Andrew’s jelly glacier and he stabs at it with his finger. Andrew’s all like “you’re going to break it.” Spike’s like “you told me to touch it.” Andrew’s like “touch it, not stab it.” LOL, I don’t know why I find that exchange cute but I do.

Dale says the stuffed mushrooms his team is making looks weird, and Spike says they look like turds. Nikki made them and she’s trying to pretty them up with some chives or chervils.

Over at Team Gorilla, Stephanie’s crab dish is falling apart because her celery chips are soggy, so they end up making a salad for the base. Shaky Hands Stephanie is now Totally Stressed Stephanie on this episode.

The cheftestants arrive in this beautiful room at the zoo with a lot of brick walls. They spend an hour setting up their stations. Team Bear is still wondering about the mushrooms. Dale sprinkles some cheese on them, saying in his interview that “At that point I was just putting perfume on a pig.” Ha! Too funny.

Padma arrives with the judges, including the return of Gail Simmons. The guests follow soon after. Hey, I see a woman wearing a zebra-print blouse! Typical.

As everyone’s checking out the different stations, Team Bear decides to pull their mushrooms because they’re cold (and ugly).

Wylie and Tom are checking out Team Lion and Wylie likes the beet salad with yuzu and the bison tartar. (Isn’t it funny how the boys are checking out the food together and the girls, Padma and Gail, are off on their own checking out the food. I notice this always happens at cocktail parties. Why can’t the sexes eat together? Discuss.)

At Team Vulture, Mark made anchovies in a quinoa croquette. He says it’s like a “piece of New Guinea” but I can’t get past the fact that he’s still wearing his headband in front of 200 guests. Have you no pride, man? Padma and Gail love the lamb meatballs.

Things aren’t as pretty when Wylie and Tom checks out Team Gorilla. The judges notice that the crab salad is too watery and Valerie’s black olive blini with fennel marscapone sounds delicious but isn’t. The only things they do like are Antonia’s lamb with edamane and Stephanie’s banana bread with salted caramel.

When they get to Team Bear, they try the cheese with honey and salmon with soy glaze. Padma and Gail ask about the mushrooms and Nikki makes the fatal error of bringing it out just for the judges “if you really want to taste it.” OK, so you decide it’s not worth serving to the guests, but you decide to serve it to the judges who will decide your fate? Nikki should be sent home now just for that dumb logic.

The party guests interview about their favorites, and of course everyone gets a mention. Although one honest guest said that the olive pancake (the blini) “tasted like dirt.” Ouch.

The judges do a mini huddle to discuss their favorites, and you can already tell that the mushrooms with pecorino cheese and the blinis are going to be problems.

Commercials. Jason Stratham is always running in his movies. I will not go to see “The Bank Job.” Also, the Bravo poll for the week is whether Tom Collichio is a Gorilla, Bear or Penguin. Come on, we already established last season that he’s a “bear.” Where’s my trip to Napa?

Judges table: Padma calls Teams Vulture and Penguin. Everyone loves the anchovy dish by Mark, and the lamb meatballs. For the Penguins, they liked the fun glacier and Wylie really liked the squid dish by Andrew. And since Wylie’s the guest judge, he names Andrew the winner.

Andrew goes back and tells Team Gorilla and “DA Bears” (it’s Chicago, after all) that they’re wanted at the judges’ table.

Tom lets them know that the two teams are there because they made the three worst dishes of the night: the mushrooms, blinis and crab salad.

Dale says the mushrooms weren’t executed well, and Nikki recounts her debate about whether to hold back the dish or serve the turds. Dale says they looked like shit so he added the cheese, which Tom says made it worse. He asked if he tasted it after adding the cheese, and Dale says no because he does not eat shit.

Stephanie admits that she wasn’t happy with her crab salad and that she pre-mixed the ingredients instead of waiting until they arrived at the party. (The salt pulled out all the moisture from the crab, adding more water to the dish.) Valerie also admits that the blinis shouldn’t have been made ahead of time. They were soggy and soft and Tom felt the rutabaga overpowered everything.

Gail asks Antonia who she would hire—Stephanie or Valerie—based on the dishes they made tonight. Antonia, who already interviewed earlier in the episode that she didn’t think Valerie had any skills, chooses Stephanie. Valerie feels like she’s been stabbed in the back, and with a sharp knife, not one of those floppy blinis.

The judges debate a bit and this is the most boring discussion to date. The writing’s on the wall and try as they might, the editors can’t find any reasonable clips to throw us off the scent.

Commercials. The results are in and (told you) Tom is voted as most like a bear. (61 percent)

The two teams are back for judgment. Tom does the recap and we’ve heard this already so let’s just get to Padma. She sends Valerie packing.

Stephanie looks really sad, like she was partly to blame. In a way, I blame her too. She was the one who assigned Valerie the job of making the blinis. But I guess Valerie should have spoken up and argued that the blinis should be made at the party. Oh well, she was the weakest link. At least she doesn’t have to travel far since she’s from Chicago.

Next week: The cheftestants take a field trip and it looks like they’re at a kids’ party. Chicago’s own Rick Bayless is the guest chef, and seems like there’s some major bitchfest among the cheftestants and we’re only in week 3.

Top Chef aires Wednesday nights at 10 p.m. (9 p.m. Central) on Bravo TV. Check out videos and multiple blogs at the Top Chef Web site. Photos courtesy of Bravo TV.

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My Easter Pappardelle with Lamb

For some of you who might be new to this blog (welcome, I’m happy to see my readership growing every week!), just a reminder that I’m a single guy and I like to make quick-and-easy dishes. Being single, it also means I don’t always have really big family dinners for the holidays (my family is in Hawaii).

Easter is this Sunday, and it’s one of those holidays that sneaks up on me (and it’s especially early this year) and I often have no major plans for it. That means I’m also just eating what I normally might eat for dinner, nothing especially special or Easter-like.

So if you’re in the same boat like me where you don’t have an invitation for a big Easter dinner, then you might want to try my lamb pasta below. I thought I’d come up with a pasta dish (because they’re easy to make) and add some spring ingredients. Lamb is a given because it’s a big part of Easter dinners at most families, so I cut up some strips of lamb and tossed it with asparagus ribbons (also very spring like) and some cherry tomatoes (because they were on sale at Trader Joe’s and I think the spot of color is festive). Enjoy!

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Lamb Pappardelle with Asparagus and Cherry Tomatoes

Copyright 2008 by Cooking With The Single Guy

Ingredients:
6-8 oz. lamb leg steaks
1 bunch asparagus (thicker the better)*
1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
4 to 5 crimini mushrooms, sliced
1 lb. dried pappardelle pasta
½ T fresh rosemary leaves, minced
1 clove garlic, minced
½ cup red wine
¼ cup veal or beef broth
1 cup Parmesan Reggiano cheese
salt and pepper
extra virgin olive oil (normal and good quality for drizzling)

Cook your pasta in a large pot of salted boiling water per the instructions on the package. When done, drain and set aside.

Prep your asparagus by breaking off the woody part of the stem at the end. Then with a peeler, strip a thin slice of the asparagus to create a ribbon. Leave the flower tip intact and keep everything in a bowl of cold water.

Season your lamb steaks with salt and pepper and drizzle with every day extra virgin olive oil. In a large skillet or saucepan, warm about another tablespoon of the olive oil over medium high to high heat and then add your lamb. Cook for about three to five minutes on each side (depending on how done you like your lamb). Then set aside to rest.

In the same skillet or saucepan, add some more olive oil and over medium high heat cook the garlic for just a few seconds to infuse the olive oil. Then add your asparagus tips (just the tips and not the ribbons you made) and mushrooms. Saute for about two minutes, then add red wine to deglaze your pan. Reduce your heat to medium to simmer and then add the broth, cherry tomatoes and rosemary. Let cook for about 2 to 3 minutes covered.

Get your lamb steaks and cut them into strips. Then add them along with your asparagus ribbons to the pan and mix all your ingredients together. Then add your pasta and toss everything together, letting the pasta soak some of the broth. Take the pan off the heat and add the cheese, mixing everything well.

Plate your pasta and garnish with some flat leaf parsley and grated Parmesan Reggiano and drizzle with good-quality extra virgin olive oil. Serve immediately, with garlic bread.

Makes 2 to 3 servings.

Pair with a glass of Pinot Noir (the ones from Willamette Valley in Oregon is especially nice now).

* You may not need to use all the asparagus, depending on how big your bunch is. Most bunches sold at stores are about 1 pound.

TIP: I like making the asparagus ribbons to match the pappardelle. To make them, lay the asparagus flat and run a peeler along the body to create flat ribbons. Run the peeler just on the stalk part and keep the tip whole. (But I leave the tip in the beginning because it gives me something to hold on to while peeling away, then I snap off the tip afterwards.) If you have a hand peeler like mines that has a big handle (you know, those ergonomically proper ones), it might be hard to get close to the flat asparagus. So what I do is lay the asparagus on the edge of the cutting board and then place the board on the edge of the sink. The space from the sink gives me room for the peeler handle and my hands as I run it along the cutting board and asparagus.

PAPA WHERE’S THE PAPPARDELLE? I find it’s a challenge finding pappardelle at typical groceries stores. They don’t always stock this wide flat noodle. I found mines at Trader Joe’s, or you can look for them at specialty food stores or Italian delis. If you can’t find them, then you can substitute with the pasta marked “flat wide noodles” or something similar.

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Dish on Dining: Kiss Seafood

Sushi Presented with a Delicate Touch
1700 Laguna St. (at Bush), San Francisco
Japantown
PH: 415.474.2866
Dinner Tuesday to Saturday, 5:30 to 9:30 p.m.
Major credit cards, reservations accepted

I’m not the type of guy to kiss and tell, but after eating at Kiss Seafood, I thought I had to share. ;-)

Kiss is a tiny sushi restaurant run by a husband-and-wife team off the beaten track in San Francisco’s Japantown. It’s been described as a tiny gem because it really is quite small, with only five seats at the sushi bar and three tables for two in the tiny space.

I visited recently with my older sister, who lives in Hawaii and is a connoisseur of raw fish. My sister started eating raw fish such as sushi and sashimi way before I developed the taste for it. And that says a lot since we’re Chinese Americans. (Most Chinese like their food cooked.)

We were lucky to grab one of the three tables even though we didn’t have reservations on a Friday night. (The other two tables were later taken by people who were smart enough to make reservations.) The place was sparsely decorated, almost like a gallery space but with only enough room to showcase one piece of artwork. The zen-like environment was reflective of the food to come.

The menu is very small, with a page of appetizers and then a few specials for the sushi and sashimi. But most people who come here put themselves in the hands of the chef behind the sushi bar, so we decided to do the same by ordering the omakase, or chef’s dinner.

Just a disclaimer: We ordered the $60 omakase for both of us even though it was designed for a single eater. My sister and I weren’t very hungry so we decided to share, but the hostess expressed her concern that we wouldn’t have enough to eat because, she emphasized, their plates are “Japanese style.” Which translates to mean “small but artfully presented.”

We convinced her that we understood the presentation of a Japanese omakase, but to put her mind at ease we also ordered an additional plate of the sashimi special ($30) and a plate of agedashi (deep-fried tofu) as an appetizer.

Because the omakase is very similar to a tasting menu, we had a parade of tiny dishes come to our table so I’m going to touch on each one in the order they arrived that night. Here’s a recap of our dinner at Kiss Seafood:

First came a cold starter similar to an amuse bouche. It was pickled bamboo shoots with cellophane noodles that tasted simple and light. If you ever ate any Japanese dishes cold, then this was just like that with the emphasis more on texture rather than taste, which almost bordered on bland.

Next came a trio of small appetizers: raw mackerel, cooked cold octopus and a tofu salad with green onions. Again, Japanese cold dishes are best as an art on contrasting textures rather than flavors. Everything was nice but nothing was necessarily eye-opening, although I would say the octopus was my favorite.

Two trays of sashimi came next, one was the omakase sashimi and the other was the sashimi special platter that we added on. This allowed us to savor a nice variety of fish and the hostess was very good with naming all the fishes, but she’d often give the Japanese names and it’s hard for me to remember them all. My sister helped identified some of the fish as halibut, toro, hamachi, cuttlefish and abalone. There was also this really funny fish that the hostess described as “a Japanese fish with no English name.” From then on my sister and I called it the Japanese fish with no name (although it was very similar to sardines). While all the fish was nice (I really liked the crunch of the cuttlefish) and clean, they all seemed pretty straightforward and tasted like other fish served at other good sushi places around town.

After our sashimi, we were served this clam soup with turnip and a fish ball. It was light and refreshing.

Finally we got the agedashi or deep-fried tofu. There were three pieces that were lightly fried. It was really fresh (=hot in your mouth if you’re not patient). I liked the light broth that accompanied it. This dish seemed very authentic, albeit an odd place in the order of when we received it. We felt it should have come earlier.

As an interesting twist, we got this cup of egg custard topped with a crab leg and snow pea. If you like custard, you’ll like this warm, eggy treat that’s almost like eating soft tofu, but not.

We’re nearing the end of our dinner with our sushi plate, made up of five nigiri pieces. Starting from the nearest piece, we received hamachi (nice), salmon (brilliantly orange like wild salmon), halibut (the hostess said it came with its own sauce but I could barely taste anything), toro and the Japanese fish with no name. Again, the rice and fish were presented nicely and tasted fine, but didn’t necessarily wow us. I was also disappointed in the variety because we tasted much of these fish with our sashimi plates.

I asked my sister what she thought of the fish after having the sashimi and sushi, and she said it was “fishy.” I know, I may have to rescind her sashimi connoisseur title. My thought was that while it seemed fresh and clean, it did seem that the fish weren’t as vibrant as it could be.

We ended our meal with a light broth soup, probably made of dashi, with thinly sliced mushrooms.

Of course, like most Asian dinners, we had a simple fruit for dessert. Tonight it was cantaloupe. My sister loved it only because in Hawaii they rarely get ripened fruit because everything’s shipped in (except, yum, mangoes), so even the lightest flavor in fruit makes her declare it as first-rate. I thought it was nice but felt it lacked the perfume of a truly great cantaloupe. And while it doesn’t take much preparations to serve a piece of fruit, I guess I’m going on an on because I felt Kiss Seafood could have served a more seasonal fruit like oranges.

Despite not having reservations, we didn’t feel rushed. My sister wondered how the restaurant can make money without much turnover for the night, and I proposed that they had very little overhead since it’s just the husband and the wife and that they do charge a bit more than other Japanese restaurants.

If you’re expecting a lot of sushi and possibly some unusual appetizers or izakaya, then Kiss Seafood may not be the place for you. This is a place with good sushi (not great) but presented in an intimate, delicate way with a lot of love and care. Come here for special occasions, when you’re ready to put your mind in that zen zone where balance and tempo are key ingredients to your dining experience.


Single guy rating: 3.5 stars (Well prepared and classic Japanese cuisine)

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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The Luck of the Irish to You Finding Cabbage Today

St. Patrick’s Day always reminds me of corned beef, and even though people keep saying corned beef and cabbage is an American-made dish to celebrate the holiday (I guess along with green beer) I still love to eat this dish once a year. I mean, I am an American so it’s no skin off my back whether this is an authentic Irish dish or not.

This isn’t a dish I made from scratch. I basically visited the deli section of the Pasta Shop at the Rockridge Market Hall near my home and purchased their Niman Ranch corned beef at $19.99 a pound (O’blarney!) and I got some cabbage and steamed it instead of boiling it. I steamed it with some of the corned beef juice and did the same with the corned beef to warm it up before eating. I also served it with some roasted fingerling potatoes, of course!

I had such a hard time finding a head of cabbage that I ended up having to buy shredded cabbage in those salad pre-packs. I guess a lot of people are making corned beef and cabbage tonight! Hope you’re having a nice plate of corned beef and cabbage along with your green beer on this St. Patty’s day!

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Jamie At Home: Episode 10, Lamb

Jamie Oliver says it’s wintertime for him (almost spring for us) and it’s awful weather and his garden is slowing down. So he focuses on meat, lamb to be precise. Instead of having your own livestock (which he doesn’t have, just a garden, remember?), Jamie suggests having a relationship with someone locally (or over the Internet, which sound like online dating) so he brings his friend Daphne, who I guess is some kind of sheep rancher. She brings him a whole lamb.

So we get some education on quality lamb. Daphne says the key thing for quality lamb is a mixture of grass, wind, sun and rain. What more does Dolly want? She also says that happy animals basically taste better because when they’re stressed the meat will be tough. And who wants tensed meat? I guess that’s why the Japanese pay a premium for hand-massaged Kobe beef. Daphne also says people think pink meat is cleaner and better, but actually the darker the meat, the better the quality. Jamie chimes in that it should be a lovely maroon color with fat marbling. I love lamb.

Jamie’s in his sun room kitchen (you know, where he sits down and cook), and he’s making lamb kebabs. (Get the complete recipe here on the Food Network site.) He gets a shoulder of lamb and he cuts off the sinew part, which can be tough and stringy. Then he cuts the lamb into inch chunks and throws them into a food processor along with fresh thyme, a teaspoon of chili powder, 1/2 a teaspoon of cumin, a fancy herb called sumac (about two pinches), sea salt and pepper, and then finally some pistachio nuts. He pulses it to grind it all up together. Jamie says you don’t want a fine puree, but a bit chunky.

He gets these metal skewers that looks pretty dangerous. You can poke an eye out with them. Then he does this weird thing where he squeezes a handful of the meat along the skewer. I’ve never done that with my skewers. He says it helps to leave the skewers in the fridge for a couple of hour to let the meat set. He drizzles the skewers with olive oil and places them right onto a hot grill.

He gets a bowl of parsley leaves. Then with a hand mandolin, he thinly slices a red onion. (He says if you don’t have a mandolin you can just grate them.) Then he adds a pinch of salt and juice from half of lemon onto the onions and mixes them all together to soften the onion slices and soften the bitterness.

He checks on his kebabs, and when he turns them over he’s all excited about the grilling. What man doesn’t like fire and meat? Jamie sure does.

Jamie’s going to make a salad to go with his kebabs, so he gets some romaine, radicchio, rocket and mint. He does a simple lemon juice, olive oil and salt dressing, and tosses everything together. Then he’s going to assemble his lamb.

He starts with a flat bread (untoasted) and lays some of his salad greens on top, then some of his parsley and onions, then finally the meat off the kebab, breaking them into chunks. He sprinkles a few more chili powder, thyme and other spices onto the meat and adds a spoon of yogurt before wrapping up everything with the flat bread. He basically just made a wrap and he’s loving it. Very Greek and Indian at the same time.

Jamie’s back in his garden. It’s another education session and this time he’s chatting with his gardener, Brian. They’re talking about the winter affecting the herbs, although they’ve had a mild winter, it sounds. I didn’t really get much from this conversation and I notice Jamie’s not cooking much in the winter. This episode seems shorter than most, don’t you think?

Incredible Roasted Shoulder of Lamb

Jamie is really just going to make one other dish in this episode, and it’s a slow-roasted lamb shoulder. (Complete recipe here.) He says everyone goes for the lamb legs and rack, but he says shoulder is great, especially when you slow cook and it’s all sweet and delicious.

He begins by scoring the lamb shoulder. On a roasting tray, he adds a few cloves of garlic along with fresh rosemary. He seasons his lamb with salt and pepper (on both sides) and places it in the roasting tray, then adds more garlic cloves and rosemary. He covers the tray with tin foil and says he has his oven at “full whack” (I’m guessing 500 degrees) and puts his lamb in the oven, immediately turning down the heat to 350 degrees. He wants the initial heat to seal the meat’s exterior while keeping the interior juicy. Now he’s cooking this for four hours. No wonder he can’t make anything else this episode, it’s all about this slow-cooked lamb.

Of course, with the magic of television we get to see the lamb after the commercial break and it’s so tender that he can easily pull out this big bone from the lamb. He gets the garlic cloves and says to keep the soft garlic meat, which he’s going to use for the sauce (or gravy).

He gets rid of the rosemary and excess oil from the roasting pan, and then starts by adding some flour to create a thickening agent. He finely chops some fresh mint and then a whole bunch of capers, and all this goes into the pan along with some chicken stock. He brings this to a boil and then simmers it until it thickens.

More lamb? Nope, Jamie’s got some swede, potatoes and carrots that he boiled in a pot and then he drains out the water and he gets a hand smasher to make a mashed vegetable dish. It’s definitely more colorful than plain mashed potatoes. He adds some butter and salt for taste and he’s ready to plate up, as they say.

He adds some cider vinegar to his sauce and pours it into a gravy bowl. Then he’s also made some boiled green vegetables (he should have just steamed it to retain some of the nutrients, but I guess boiling is a British thing) and he plates that with the mashed potatoes and adds a slice of his tender roasted lamb and he’s golden. Super easy. Did he really do anything different with lamb? Who cares. Lamb is so good by itself that it’s all about the sides. LOL.

Must be a British Thing:
Just some clarification on some of the terms Jamie uses.

Tin foil=aluminum foil

Jamieisms heard in this episode:

Brilliant

LOVE-ly

Rock ‘N Roll

Jamie At Home airs on Saturday at 9:30 a.m. on the Food Network. Visit Jamie’s Web site at www.jamieoliver.com. More on the accompanying book for the series here.

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Fro-yo Across the Bay: Yogurt Harmony

I thought I'd check out the frozen yogurt craze on my side of the Bay. While on my way to the farmers market in downtown Berkeley today, I noticed this fairly new yogurt shop right on Shattuck Avenue not too far from the downtown BART station.

Yogurt Harmony has all the look and feel of the up-and-coming yogurt shops opening around the Bay Area, with its bright colors and feel-good zen-like name. The space inside, however, lacks the bright and fresh colors of most new places, although it is clean and well-kept. It reminds me more of a cafe than a yogurt shop (it also sells coffee).

They keep it pretty simple at Yogurt Harmony. Plain yogurt is sold at small, medium and large at $2.50, $3.50 and $5.50. The flavored yogurt (there's only a couple of flavors, peach and green tea when I visited) costs $3.25, $4.25 and $6.25 for the same sizes. Toppings are extra.

I ended up getting a small size of the green tea yogurt with fresh strawberry toppings. It was a nice size for the small, and they were quiet generous with the strawberries. But as for the yogurt itself, I was less than impressed. The texture of the green tea was a bit gritty, and not as creamy as the yogurt I had at places like Jubili or Icebee. The green tea flavor was very subtle. I could barely taste it when mixed with the strawberries, but on its own I could taste the definite green tea flavor.

Yogurt Harmony looks like a nice place to hangout and its a prime spot for UC Berkeley students, but at least with this one visit, the yogurt doesn't seem to be on the same level of others I've tasted in San Francisco. On my side of the Bay, I'd probably just end up getting the yogurt at Sketch in the Fourth Street area or stick with Ici ice cream.

Yogurt Harmony, 2259 Shattuck Ave. at Bancroft, Berkeley (downtown). PH: 510.848.5903. Hours: Monday to Thursday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.; and Sunday, noon to 6 p.m. Web site: www.yogurtharmony.com.

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Top Chef: Season 4, Episode 1

Don’t Add Salt to Her Wounds

Ok, so here we go. A new season of Top Chef and there’s hostess Padma looking as tasty as ever. Also looking tasty is all the sights of Chicago. I love that city, and my nephew’s studying there now. I really have to visit again, but now I don’t have to thanks to Bravo and this 2-minute clip review of the city’s sights. BTW, looks like the grand prize hasn’t really changed from last year. Still some fancy European trip, appearance at some food festival, $100,000 prize money, and yes, the title of Top Chef. Fire it up baby!

We get the same theme song and the typical shots of each cheftestant trying to dance while putting on his or her white chef’s jacket. Hey, that Jennifer girl is wearing black. WTF is that all about??

More scenes of Wrigley Field (haven’t been there yet) and first in is our homeboy Ryan from San Francisco. He says he started cooking in his parents’ restaurant when he was 11 years old. He seems pretty proud of the fact that he out-cooked some of his parents’ workers, but I’m thinking child-labor law violation myself.

Then we meet Nimma from Atlanta who doesn’t sound like she had her family support initially but now she does. It’s hard to say because the sound on her application video is crap.

We get a parade of other cheftestants and snippets of their background/video. But I’m not going to bore you with the details. When do we eat from the quickfire?

Oooh, a shot of Pizzeria Uno. Now, I know it’s a Chicago institution and all but do people really still go there for pizza? Oh, I guess we’ll find out because the cheftestants are gathering inside a Pizzeria Uno for some classic deep dish pizza. (Did you know some stupid marketing person convinced Pizzeria Uno to change its name to Uno, Chicago Grill? Stupid.) There’s Richard, who is holding up Marcel’s reputation for molecular gastronomy, so you can bet he’s going to go on and on about gels and smoke and weird shit like that.

BTW, I contemplated titling this recap “Who’s Got a Dirty Mouth?” because seems like this year there are a lot of bleeping going on around here. This group of cheftestants is made up of a lot of potty mouths. (Yeah, talking about you Erik and Andrew.)

So as the cheftestants are sizing each other up at Pizzeria Uno, Jennifer and Zoi, who are both from San Francisco and sitting next to each other, announces casually to the group that they’re, um, like a couple. What the [bleeeeep]?! Geez, it’s catchy. OK, don’t get me wrong, I think they’re cute together and such, but what? Are they competing together? Are we to believe they’re going to duke it out with much heart against each other if they both end up in the final two? Shouldn’t there be some kind of clause against two-fers? I mean, enough with the Bill and Hillary Clinton show.

The other cheftestants are just as baffled as I am, but Andrew has the funniest line when he says “Well, then they can go home together.” (BTW, after Jennifer and Zoi’s “announcement,” I have to say I probably heard the word “out” repeated like four or five times within a single minute. I get it Bravo editors, they’re a gay couple. Like we’ve never seen that before on Bravo, the gayest channel in the world?)

In walks Padma and head judge Chef Tom Collichio, looking as serious as he’s been the last three seasons. You’d think with all the money he’s making he’d crack a smile. Padma says they have to go to the Top Chef Kitchen for their quickfire challenge with a “Chicago twist.”

In the kitchen (which might as well be in a Los Angeles sound studio with its generic stainless steel appliances), we find out that each cheftestant got to bring $200 worth of their favorite ingredients and the camera points out the lockers where they can keep it. This is like the first day of school when you got your locker assignments and you were always worried about sharing space with the class clown who would then proceed to make you the butt of his jokes for the rest of the school year. Oh, wow, bad grade school flashback just now.

Padma tells them they have 90 minutes to make their own signature deep dish pizza for the guest judge, whom she never really introduced.

There’s a mad scramble, of course, as everyone’s grabbing ingredients. We learn more about some of the other cheftestants when they describe their strategy for the quickfire. (Dale, chef at New York’s trendy Buddakan is doing an Asian-inspired pizza with a squirt of hot sauce; Manuel of Dos Caminos is French and Italian trained and is doing a classic Italian pizza; Nikki from Manhattan doesn’t get the whole deep dish pizza coming from thin crust New York so she’s making a white pizza with no tomato sauce; and the Australian dude Mark is using his secret weapon, which is some jar called Marmite, which he says “can move mountains” when used properly. So I guess the assumption is that Marmite can sink ships if used incorrectly Mark?)

Early in this season it looks like the editors are pitting Andrew (who I termed “jittery” in my primer and I was pretty spot on) against Mr. Molecular, Richard. Already in the quickfire challenge Richard has taken Andrew’s deep dish pan so he could test out two pizzas (that’s not very fair I think) so Andrew has to use a skillet. But doesn’t matter, because it looks like he’s not the only one having issues with the deep dish. Some cheftestants are piling on the dough and what comes out are these huge mass of carbs that really look more like they just made a big chunk of bread.

Time’s up, and they pack up their “pizzas” into those delivery bags and head off somewhere.

It looks like it’s dinner time when they arrive at night at some Chicago home. They’re guessing it belongs to some well-to-do Chicago chef because the digs are nice. But who opens the door? None other that media whore Rocco Dispirito. What? They couldn’t find any local chef with the same caliber to be the first judge in Chicago? They had to import a New Yorker to judge deep dish pizza? This is so wrong in so many levels and not just the fact that Rocco still looks like he had his eyes done.

So Padma is there as well and she and Rocco sit at the sofa while each cheftestant brings out their pizzas for them to try. They are going to be stuffed like the sofa they’re sitting on! You know it’s the first episode of the season when the taste-testing zooms by with less than a few seconds for each person. I mean really, did we even get a sense of what they made? Some highlights that I could gather, but only thanks to the forced captioning the editors added for emphasis: Stephanie brings out a melon-tomato pizza with prosciutto and Rocco says he smells something “funky”; Padma seems to like Ryan’s grilled escarole pizza with ricotta, Nimma did a mostly mushroom pizza but Padma asked if she added salt.

The cheftestants are all in the kitchen when Rocco and Padma come in to give the verdict. Rocco calls out a bunch of names and those people stand to the right. He says these are the losers. The other group is the winner. I’m confused? So who really won? They’re really mixing things up this season on Top Chef.

Padma says these two groups will come into play during the elimination challenge tomorrow. For now, they can relax because the house they’re in is actually their home base for this season. Everyone’s all excited because they are pretty sweet digs. And Andrew is providing us with a lot of colorful descriptions, if they’re not being bleeped out. Fatness, for one, whatever that means.

They bust out the bubbly and start to settle in. All except for Nimma, who says she’s not here for socializing, nor is Dale, who’s playing pool by himself. Losers.

The next morning they’re back in the Top Chef kitchen and Padma is standing there looking like a school marm in front of a chalkboard. She tells the cheftestants from the winning group to draw knives, each with a number. That’s the order that they get to pick their partner because they’re going to go head-to-head with the other person to make the same dish from a list of classic dishes that Padma (doing her Vanna White) unveils on the back of the chalkboard.

There’s some strategy coming into play by the cheftestants as they choose which classic dish to make. But, again, at this point there are so many of them it doesn’t really mean anything until they start dropping like flies.

Commercials. That Glad commercial is so weird and 70s that it’s kind of interesting. Very retro. Rutherford Hill, why do all wine commercials have to sound so boring?

Now that they’ve been paired off in head-to-head battles, they’re at the market buying their ingredients. More scrambling, as usual. Ryan can’t find his notepad, and he’s having a hard time remembering the key characteristics of his classic dish, chicken piccata. I don’t think I’ve had this much growing up either, so I can’t help you there bud.

Back in the kitchen, they’re all busy cooking and everyone is stressing, especially Nimma. She’s really turning out to be the drama queen for this season. She’s making shrimp scampi and she’s going to make a custard or flan to go with it. I never knew that was the traditional way of serving scampi? Who knew?

Back to Andrew vs. Richard, Andrew is looking for mayonnaise but Richard tells him that there’s none in the kitchen. Andrew thought that would be an obvious staple in the pantry, but Richard says, well, I guess you’re going to have to make your own with eggs and oil. Andrew’s all, aha, thanks for giving me the recipe for mayonnaise, you loser. Then, of course, Richard brings out a jar of mayonnaise from his shopping bag because he was smart enough to buy a jar. Eventually he offers it up to Andrew, but he’s all like, forget it dude, I’m good. Awwwk-ward.

Nimma’s flan isn’t setting and with just two minutes left, she decides to make it a cauliflower scramble. This is usually my strategy. When things don’t turn out, make an omelette.

Stephanie’s hands are just shaking as she sauces her duck ala orange. Someone get this girl a valium. She’s going to have a nervous breakdown any minute, I can tell.

Commercials. Fish Eye, you can call it wine in a cask but it’s still wine in a box. And animating it still won’t make it look classy.

Judging time and in walks Padma and Tom along with Rocco and, huh, Anthony Bourdain? Where’s Ted Allen, or even Gail Simmons? I feel sorry for all the cheftestants already.

Each pair will go up one at a time and a winner and loser will be declared for each dish. The loser will be eligible for elimination. Since there are so many pairs, here are just some quick highlights:

Duck ala Orange, Australian Mark vs. Shaky Hands Stephanie. Bourdain and Rocco are turned off by Mark’s deconstructed duck and everyone loves the tastes and look (although I thought it plated sloppily) of Stephanie’s dish. She’s the winner.

Crab Cakes, Andrew vs. Richard. Andrew looks like he’s rapping when describing his dish with cilantro basil pudding, and Richard wows the judges with his cakes unveiled with smoke scented with a spice. When the smoke clears, Richard is named the winner.

Lasagna, San Francisco Jennifer vs. New Yorker Nikki. Jennifer uses autumn vegetables for her lasagna while Nikki does a classic lasagna using hand-made pasta sheets. The judges seem to like both these dishes, but eventually Nikki is declared the winner.

Shrimp Scampi, Italian Mama Antonia vs. Socially Awkward Nimma. There’s a lot of yummy sounds coming out of the judges as they taste Antonia’s shrimp scampi with pappardelle. Padma calls out Nimma about her dish being too salty and Rocco says he would send it back if he were at a restaurant. So you know Nimma loses.

Egg’s Benedict, Hardly Seen Spike vs. Generic Lisa. This is another close one with good comments for the two, but eventually they go with Lisa, who said earlier in the competition that she’s been making breakfast for years so you know she had to win this.

Steak Au Poivre, Dale I’m The Next Hung vs. Manuel I’m Not the Next Carlos. Dale has steak all over the plate, trying for something new and Rocco says it was a risk well taken. He wins over Manuel’s steak with a Mexican twist.

Chicken Piccata, Ryan vs. Valerie. The judges don’t like either dish, which they think neither remotely resembled a classic chicken piccata. Ryan is named the loser of this losing pair, and he says in his taped interview that it’ll be embarrassing to go out on the first round since he’s been cooking since age 11. Ryan, unless you were making Beef Wellington from 11, I don’t think it’s that impressive that you were being used as cheap labor by your parents, so stop bringing it up.

Final dish: Souffle, Erik vs. Zoi (the San Francisco showdown). Both soufflés sound like they were rising nicely during the cooking but something must have happened in plating because Erik’s look like a taco mess with his chips on top and Zoi covered her up with candied figs and fennel. But Zoi is named the winner and Erik, class act that he is, says “I just got my ass handed to me.”

Commercials. David Beckham is now endorsing Sharpie. We can all rest easy America.

Judgment time. Padma calls in Antonia, Nikki, Richard and Stephanie. It’s obvious they’re the winning group, and you can tell Dale is not very happy that he was looked over. He should have the word “Entitlement” branded onto his chef’s jacket.

Everyone compliments the four cheftestants, but eventually Rocco names Shaky Hands Stephanie as the winner with her duck ala ronge. I’m kind of shocked because like I said, it looked really sloppy with too much sauce. But hey, the judges said it had a lot of flavor and until someone invents taste TV that I can lick, I have to go with their word for it.

In comes Ryan, Erik, Nimma and Mark. The judges query the losing group but it’s mostly a time for them to vent. Rocco doesn’t understand why Erik’s soufflé had a mashed potato base instead of egg whites, and Tom calls out Nimma about her failed flan idea for her scampi. Australian Mark gets to hear Bourdain call him “pretentious” while everyone is all over Ryan for not really knowing what chicken piccata should be. (Hey, I don’t know either.)

The four are sent away as the judges vent some more but you can tell it’s not looking good for Nimma, whose food was described by Tom as baby food.

Commercials. Toyota Corolla. Wow, those water polo players are beefy. I’m just sayin’.

Decision time, and it’s kind of worrisome that two of the four Bay Area cheftestants are in the bottom on the first episode. Not representing guys! In the end, even though none of them really had a clear understanding of the classics, it’s Nimma who’s sent packing. She interviews that she’s going to keep on cooking (but hopefully with less salt).

This season on Top Chef: people are sweating in the kitchen (of course), there’s a lot of running, we see zoo animals and a football stadium and some bromance is stewing among a few of the guys. Oh yeah.

Top Chef aires Wednesday nights at 10 p.m. (9 p.m. Central) on Bravo TV. Check out videos and multiple blogs at the Top Chef Web site. Photos courtesy Bravo TV.

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Dish on Dining: Jack Falstaff -- CLOSED

Clean and Crisp Dishes from the Ground to the Sky
UPDATE (04/30/09): This restaurant plans to close on May 9, 2009.
598 Second St. (at Brannan), San Francisco
SOMA
PH: 415.836.9239
Open lunch, Mon.–Fri., 11:30 a.m.–2 p.m.; dinner, Mon.–Sat., 5:30–10 p.m.
Reservations, major credit cards accepted
Web site

When you look over the menu of Executive Chef Jonnatan Leiva at the handsome Jack Falstaff restaurant, you can see that Leiva has all the areas covered. His starters are broken into four areas: “from the market,” “sea,” “land” and “air.” It’s a something-for-everyone approach to dining, which helped this week because I was dining with a vegetarian friend.

This past Monday night, I visited this SOMA restaurant up the street from the Giants ballpark with my friend Susan, who was in town for a convention. (Susan and I worked together when I lived in New York.) I suggested we check out Jack Falstaff, which is part of the PlumpJack Group, because its chef, Leiva, had just been named one of the rising young chefs of 2008 by the San Francisco Chronicle.

After a few minutes looking for the entrance (it’s actually not off the street but near an alcove that looks like a passageway to the freight elevator), we entered the dark and romantic settings, walking past the bar with heated outdoor seating. We sat along a wall that wasn’t as much cozy as claustrophobic. Surrounded by pale green velour, I felt like we were in a padded cell. But I guess the padding helps muffle the noise because Jack Falstaff—at least on this night—lacked the boisterous cacophony you often get at the other loft-like restaurants in SOMA.

Going back to the menu, Leiva offers a variety of items as starters, many of which are heavy enough to be combined into entrées (such as the short ribs and quail). There are only two pasta dishes, but they can be ordered as starters or as an entrée. Then there are six main entrées to choose from, and also a list of six sides to fill out your dining experience.

There were a few unusual items on the menu, such as the Crispy Pig Trotters, which I really wanted to try until I found out it was deep-fried. Overall, while I give Leiva a nod for creativity, I thought many of his ingredients were actually fairly commonplace these days. I’m talking Kona Kampachi (love it but this has now taken over ahi tuna as the tartare of choice), diver scallops, Liberty Farms duck and grass-fed lamb. (For you bone marrow fans, I noticed bone marrow mentioned twice on the menu: once as a side with toast and another with the prime sirloin.)

We started the dinner with an amuse bouche from the chef—a panna cotta with braised fennel on top. Susan and I couldn’t get our mouths around the feeling of panna cotta at the start of a meal instead of the end, although the fennel added a nice, buttery texture to try to trick our minds.

Susan started with the Butter Lettuce and Apple Salad ($10), which came with brie, candied walnuts, slices of blood oranges, carrot, shaved fennel and walnut vinaigrette. It arrived plated as a trio of mini salad cups, which is great if you want to share it with two others at your table. It was a crunchy and clean salad, fresh and enjoyable. The petals of orchid flowers made it especially pretty.

My dinner was all about the “air” as I chose both a starter and entrée that were poultry. So I started with the Pan-Seared Sonoma Free Range Quail ($14), which was two sides of quail nicely crisp from the pan-searing and sitting on top a maple-glazed apple. Everything was topped with a foie gras emulsion.

I loved the quail for the complementary flavors of the savory skin and meat with the sweetness of the baked apple. I didn’t get any of the foie gras, though, which came sprayed on as a foam. The strong natural flavors of the quail seemed to overpower any essence of foie gras. Still, it was a tasty dish.

Next came our entrees. Susan had the Black Truffle and Ricotta Cheese Agnolotti ($15 as appetizer/$22 for entrée, but Susan opted for the appetizer size). The simple preparations of shaved parmesan cheese and olive oil made this pure comfort food, which Susan said was well done.

Continuing my fowl dinner, I had the Crispy Liberty Farms Duck Breast ($26). It came in such an unusual presentation that I thought I’d order the sirloin instead. The duck breast was cut in bigger chunks so that it could stand up in this array of duck and spicy fried cauliflower on a bed of steamed tatsoi green vegetables. It was all very elegant.

I loved the crispy texture of the duck’s skin and the cauliflower, which tasted like it was likely fried like Japanese-style tempura. But the duck itself was a little too done for my taste. I prefer it a bit tender. Still, I give Leiva props for an inventive presentation of your basic duck breast.

We ended our dinner with the Cinnamon-Sugar Donut Holes ($8), which our server said was a house favorite that’s consistently on the menu. After a night of interesting plating, I was a bit disappointed when our donut holes came out simply stacked on a plate with a side of fresh raspberries and a container of crème anglaise.

Don’t get me wrong, the donut holes were freshly made, piping hot right out of the kitchen with a fluffy interior and crispy shell (although not as strong a cinnamon taste as I would have liked). But the crème anglaise was runny and it just made this dessert rather pedestrian after all the other fashion-forward dishes that paraded to our table earlier in the evening.

Despite the thud of an ending, the dinner overall was quite entertaining and satisfying. I love chefs who spend time preparing quality ingredients and plating them in creative ways, thus allowing us diners another element of the eating experience to talk about and dissect.

As we left Jack Falstaff, I wondered about the talent of Chef Leiva and how long he’ll remain here. As part of the PlumpJack group, he could easily be moved to the flagship PlumpJack restaurant in the Cow Hollow neighborhood, which had been going through some chef changes in the past year. I do think that Leiva’s abilities require a larger showcase for his talent, so you should check out his work now while he’s at Jack Falstaff because I’m sure he’ll be moving on to bigger things fairly soon.

Single guy rating: 4.25 stars (Eat with a rising star)

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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Bust Out The Chef Knives!

Tomorrow night is the long awaited premiere of Top Chef Chicago. (Isn’t it funny how they add the name of the city into the title now, instead of calling it Top Chef, Season 4?) Anywho, I say long-awaited because I’ve been waiting so long for these promos for Top Chef Chicago to end! Didn’t they start these promos, like, late last year?

I may regret this decision, but I decided to do recaps of Top Chef. When I was doing recaps of “The Next Food Network Star” last year, people kept asking me why I wasn’t recapping Top Chef? And that was because the two shows overlapped last season so I couldn’t do both. But doesn’t look like TNFNS is airing anytime soon (I bet the poor response to Amy’s show might have cooled the network on the franchise) so that means I can dedicated my Wednesday nights to Top Chef.

So as a primer, here’s a rundown of the contestants in Season 4. Of course, all my views on these people may change after I get a first glimpse of them in action tomorrow night. I’ll be posting my recaps on Thursday nights, so come back then to see what happens.

Andrew, 30, sous chef in New York City. First thing I think when I see Andrew is that he needs to clean up. He just seems gritty to me, you know, like leeks that needs some soaking before you cook them. Still, I like his varied background in cuisines—his bio’s says he’s interested in African, Spanish, French, Thai, Vietnamese, Japanese, Latino and Indian. Andrew could be the dark horse in the competition because he seems to be very nebulous, but I don’t give him much odds in winning. He’s too jittery.




Antonia, 31, executive chef at Foxtail in L.A. Antonia’s a single Italian mama and already I think she’s too nice to win. She’s already an executive chef of a major trendy restaurant so her talent (which one can’t tell from reading the bios) will be the only way for her to gain any lead. She also focuses on comfort food (she’s going to grow up to be a nice Italian grandmother!), which I think puts her at a disadvantage for some Top Chef challenges that’ll require a lot of creativity and innovation.





Dale, 29, sous chef at New York’s Buddakan. I’ve already pegged this guy as this year’s Hung of last season. Not that I think he’s going to win, but he has that same smug confidence. Maybe it’s that smirk pasted on his bio photo. His ethnic background is Filipino (via Chicago so he might have home field advantage). I’m hoping he’ll show more about this cuisine because I know very little of Filipino cooking of all the Asian cuisines. Mabuhay!





Erik, 38, executive chef of Circa Restaurant in San Francisco. Here’s one of four contestants with Bay Area connections and I have to say I’ve never been to Circa so can’t really vouch for the food. Erik has a kick-ass attitude, and not just because he said that on his bio video, but he has major tattoos, a bald head and piercings. Need I say more?








Jennifer, 35, executive chef of Coco500 in San Francisco. Another Bay Area resident and another Bay Area restaurant I haven’t tried. (I think all the San Francisco entrants come from really fancy restaurants that I just don’t have the budget for right now.) She has a real Brooklyn attitude (where she was born) and looks like she can handle anything in the kitchen. The only weird thing is in her video she says she doesn’t like wild rice, because it’s more like grass. Um, then it would be called wild grass? I don’t get it, and now I’m nervous about what dishes she comes up with at her restaurant.



Lisa, 27, unemployed chef in New York. Lisa’s one of the yunggin’s, and I think she’s already a long shot because she wears a bandana in the kitchen. I’ve found people who wear bandanas don’t seem to go very far in kitchen competitions. Sorry, I know it’s a bias I have about bandanas but I have to be honest. Anywho, Lisa quit her last job at Public, so not sure what that’s all about. She says she favors Asian cuisine, so I give her points for that. But like Simon says, I think her personality’s forgettable.





Manuel, 33, executive chef of Dos Caminos in New York. Wow, seems like we have a lot of chefs from the Big Apple. But Manuel’s our Latino cuisine contestant so you know he’ll go for bold flavors and lots of spice. It’s hard to really get much from his personality, so again, I think he might fall in the middle of the pack. He just seems meh to me.









Mark, 29, sous chef at Public restaurant in New York. Yep, another guy from New York, and he comes from the same restaurant where Lisa just quit from. What? Did they apply together? And what’s with this restaurant Public where everyone’s so dying to leave the kitchen? Anyway, he’s originally from New Zealand so I bet he’ll have a cute accent, but I think he’s also a long shot because he’s self-taught. While that’s good for a cooking show on the Food Network, it might be tougher on Top Chef that really looks for someone with good restaurant chops. He looks like he really should be a band member with, like, Iggy Pop. I peg him as the one to be cut in the first or second week.



Nikki, 35, chef and co-owner of 24 Prince in (where else?) New York City. I think Nikki’s a ringer in this competition because why would you have someone who owns a restaurant in a competition where the top prize is to give you cash to help you start a restaurant? I think the producers fell for Nikki’s hot looks. She does look like a model, doesn’t she? But she’s pretty smart, having worked in the front and back of the house of a restaurant and being certified as a sommelier. Again, why does she need Top Chef?




Nimma, 26, chef at Repast in Atlanta, Georgia. Hey, doesn’t she look like Padma’s sister? She seems very unstructured, which could be her downfall when she might go overboard with the saffron or salt in one of the challenges. And yes, she has a bandana! (Although it is a bit more like a scarf.) My guess is she’ll be like Mark and will be eliminated either in the first or second round.








Richard, 35, chef at Element restaurant in Atlanta, Georgia. I think this guy may be among the top three contestants, mostly because he sounds like he’s creative and innovative (ala Marcel of Season 2) and because he has a faux hawk. Have you noticed that the last two winners of Top Chef (Ilan and Hung) both have faux hawks? Even though I’m so tired of the faux hawks (I tried it once in 2001), I think this guy has a chance.







Ryan, 28, formerly of Myth Café in San Francisco. Another Bay Area contestant, Ryan has been getting a lot of pre-buzz on the food blogging pages. A lot of people have been speculating about what he’s been up to since Top Chef filmed (he reportedly spent some time as a waiter, a red herring maybe?) but his last real chef gig was with the popular Myth Café, which was next door to the even more popular Myth restaurant, which is unfortunately going through a lot of changes right now and lost its famous chef (not Ryan). I think Ryan will be fun to watch because he seems to have a bit of the bad boy in him (he kind of reminds me of Sam from Season 2) and I peg him to be in the top 3. A sad trivia of his past, he’s from Los Banos in Central California, which is Spanish for The Toilet.

Spike, 27, chef de cuisine at Mai House in New York City. Spike looks just like Ryan, except he has a hat. He’s working at one of the hottest new restaurants in Manhattan’s TriBeCA neighborhood, so that’ll give him an extra boost of confidence, I think. He might be a sleeper in the competition because his style is not very clear upfront, but I bet he might surprise us.








Stephanie, 31, restaurant owner in Chicago. Another person with home field advantage is Stephanie, who most recently owned her own restaurant in Chicago called Scylla. Not sure if it was good or what, but I guess she did well enough so she could be traveling a bit before deciding what to do next. Nice gig if you can get it, huh? I don’t get the sense, though, that Stephanie has the chops to go long in this competition. My guess is she’ll be out in the mid rounds. Then she can get back to her travels.






Valerie, 32, personal chef in Chicago. Hmm, another Chicago native with home field advantage. I don’t really know what to think of Valerie. But watching her video, I get this sense that she’s going to be in some fights with other chefs in the suites. I don’t know why, she just seems scrappy.








Zoi, 30, restaurant consultant in San Francisco. The last contestant and the last of the four from the Bay Area, Zoi seems like another long shot to me. She doesn’t have any formal training nor much restaurant experience, it seems. I mean, how often are you in the kitchen when you’re consulting? Oh, I just watched her video and she says she’s the chef de cuisine at San Francisco’s Presidio Social Club. (Um, nice work updating the bios Bravo!) Anywho, Zoi still seems like a long shot because she seems young and a bit inexperienced. But who knows.





Top Chef airs on Wednesdays at 10 p.m. on Bravo TV and repeats at 11 p.m. (Note: The premiere episode is 75 minutes long so if you’re taping it, be sure to add another 15 minutes to the typical one hour segment.)

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Business Lunch: Singapore Noodles via China

I’ve been making my own lunch lately because a few of the regular places I go to near work has closed! What’s up with that?

But one of my favorite lunch meals is Singapore Rice Noodles. They’re light and tasty with the subtle curry flavoring. While this dish takes some prep work, it’s actually very quick to fry up once you’re ready because you don’t really need to cook the ingredients that long. And as usual, with a white-hot wok, you can really add a flavorful element to your noodles.

One note about shopping for rice noodles: they’re much harder to find than I thought! Growing up, I loved rice noodles, called mai fun. I would eat them either in a soup dish or as a plate of fried noodles. But for some reason, the stores in Chinatown don’t really stock a lot of rice noodle sticks. Instead, they have tons of what looks like rice noodles but are actually made from mung bean (they’re sometimes called “long rice”). Do not buy these. Be sure to buy those that clearly says “dried rice noodles.”

I ate my first Singapore Fried Rice Noodles when I was a graduate student in New York. I would go to those corner Chinese restaurants and order take out because I was too tired to cook at the dorms. This one place made this great Singapore Fried Rice Noodles and I’ve been eating them ever since. I notice places vary in the way they prepare it, but the constant ingredients are always shrimp, fried eggs and a yellow curry base. When I was researching the Web to create the recipe below, I found out that Singapore Fried Rice Noodles is made mostly in Chinese restaurants and may not necessarily be a staple of Singapore. Of course! Enjoy!

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Singapore Fried Rice Noodles

Copyright 2008 by Cooking With The Single Guy

Ingredients:
5 squares of dried rice noodles*
6 oz. shrimp (small or medium size), deveined and shelled
2 carrots, julienned
4 to 5 shiitake mushrooms, sliced
½ cup green or spring onions, julienned (mostly white and some of green parts)
3 eggs, scrambled
1 t white pepper
1 t sugar
1 T sesame oil
1 T soy sauce
1 T Shiao Hsing wine or sherry wine
2 to 3 t yellow curry powder
½ cup chicken broth
2 to 3 T Canola or vegetable oil
salt for seasoning

Start by preparing your rice noodles. Soak them in a bowl of cold water for about 30 to 40 minutes until they’re softened and loose. Drain into a colander, loosen them up a bit, and let dry.

Marinate your shrimp in a small bowl with the white pepper, sugar, sesame oil and Shiao Hsing wine. Set aside for about 10 minutes.

In a small non-stick frying pan, heat 1 T of vegetable oil over medium high heat and add beaten eggs to scramble. Set aside.

In a wok or large skillet, warm vegetable oil over high heat. Then add the carrots and mushrooms and sauté with a pinch of salt for about 2 minutes. (You can add half of your chicken broth now to help soften the vegetables.) Then add the shrimp (don’t put in all the marinade) and curry powder and stir-fry until partially cooked. Add the rest of the chicken broth if needed to help create a little curry sauce. When shrimp is almost done, add the rice noodles and let them absorb the curry sauce. Add another pinch of salt to help season the noodles. Add the eggs and green onions and cook for another minute until well-tossed in the wok. Serve immediately.

Makes 2 to 3 servings. Serve with oyster sauce on the side to drizzle over the rice noodles.

* The size of your dried rice noodles depend on the company that produces them. So happens the ones I got from China came in flat squares like those Instant Noodles squares. Whichever rice noodles you get, soak as many as you think you’ll need to make two to three servings.

Pair with a glass of Gewurtztrahimer.

TIP: For an extra crunch, you might want to add a cup of bean sprouts at the very end. But don’t cook them too long or else you’ll soften them and lose the crunch.

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Jamie At Home: Episode 9, Wild Game

Jamie Oliver is cooking Bugs Bunny today. OK, well, not exactly. But I know whenever I order rabbit on the menu, that’s what someone at the table undoubtedly says. But meat is meat, and Jamie says rabbit meat is cheap, lean and more flavorful than chicken (although it can taste like chicken when roasted).

He’s cooking in his sun room, and in a pan he puts the rabbit pieces along with a bunch of garlic, some rosemary twigs, about a wine glass of white wine, some olive oil, and salt and pepper. He covers the pan and brings everything to a boil so he can simmer the rabbit for an hour and half or hour and a quarter. Just until the meat is tender when you pinch it but the meat doesn’t come off the bone.

When it’s done, he says he typically lets the rabbit cool, but since he’s in a rush for our sake, he throws the pieces into a bowl of flour (along with the cooked garlic) and then transfers them into a tray of beaten eggs. Ah, I can see he’s getting ready to fry them. He places the pieces next to a bowl of bread crumbs, which look like panko. He adds some thyme and parmesan cheese to the bread crumbs, and coats the rabbit pieces with it.

He has a pot of oil heated up, and Jamie says the way to test to see if your oil is ready for some deep frying is to drop a small peeled potato inside and when it turns golden brown, then your oil is ready. (The old trick for Chinese chefs is to stick in a pair of wooden chopsticks and if little bubbles float up from the tips of the sticks, then that’s when the oil is ready.)

Jamie plops in the rabbit pieces and starts frying. When the rabbit is nearly done frying, he throws in a few twigs of rosemary into the oil to add more infused flavors. Fancy. He calls this Essex fried rabbit, and it’s perfect pub food if he owned a pub. He sprinkles it with sea salt and he’s done. “Life couldn’t be much sweeter,” he says, crunching away at his fried rabbit. Hmm, I don’t really eat fried food but fried rabbit sounds good right about now. (It’s also interesting how he squeezes fresh lemon on the rabbit before eating. I always associated lemon with fried seafood, but I guess you can use it for wild game like Bugs.)

Pan-roasted Venison

Jamie is outside talking to his gamekeeper Geoff Garrod. They’re talking about hunting deer and the importance of controlling deer. Something about how deer multiply like bunnies and then you have to control them (by hunting them, of course) or else they’ll destroy the forest. It was the same arguments the hunter said to shoot Bambi’s mom. (Just kidding!)

So Jamie’s at his outdoor wood-fire oven and he’s starting off by cooking with celeriac and potatoes. He’s going to make a dauphinoise. I’m not sure what that is but it’s basically creamy potatoes. (The complete recipe here at the Food Network site.)

He slices and quarters his celeriac, and then cuts them into quarter-inch slices. He does the same for his peeled potatoes, and then everything goes into a bowl so that he can mix them all with some sage, a couple of cloves of garlic, a handful of parmesan cheese, half pint of double cream, half pint of milk, and salt and pepper. Jamie mixes them all together with his hands. Then he layers them up on his baking dish, pouring all the remaining liquid. He adds more cheese on top (or course), then he covers with aluminum foil to make sure it cooks evenly. It goes into the oven at 350 degrees for half an hour.

He gets a venison loin and he prepares some spices that he’s going to coat the venison with. Jamie starts by getting 10 juniper berries and cracks them with the side of his knife. Then he tosses on some sea salt and pepper and rosemary twigs, then chops everything up finely. He scatters it around the chopping board and then rubs some oil all over his venison. (Jamie says the oddest things sometimes. When he was rubbing oil all over his venison, he says at one point “Yes mother.”) He rolls the venison all over the mixture, encrusting everything. Then he gets a heated pan from the oven, puts in more olive oil and then puts the venison on it searing both sides. He throws in a few more herbs and garlic. Then he puts it into his wood oven for 15 to 20 minutes. After that he’s going to bring it out and let it rest. Meat is so easy to cook.

Jamie then works on a quick sauce for his venison. But first he takes out the potato dish, which is bubbling after he takes off the aluminum foil. He grates more parmesan and says he’s making a gratin. He put it back in the oven for 5 more minutes.

He grabs his venison and places it on a plate to rest. Then he uses the pan to make the sauce, squeezing out the garlic and pops the pan back in the oven but you can do it on a stove top. It’s just that Jamie has to cook in his garden for this series. Anywho, he gets some red wine (“Not cheap old rubbish,” he says) and puts some of the wine in the pan to deglaze it along with a nub of butter, shaking all the ingredients. That’s pretty much the sauce.

Jamie slices up his venison about quarter inch slices. He says the center should be blushing, but could be more rear. He plates up the venison and adds a big spoonful of his potatoes. He’s really excited about this dish. He gets a sieve and pours his sauce through it and right onto his venison. James says to serve it with a nice bottle of Italian Chianti because you know Jamie’s all about the Italia.

Beautiful Game Ragu

Jamie’s in the tool shed with three types of game: hare, rabbit and venison (which is so weird because I though hare was pretty much like rabbit but I guess it’s just a bigger, meaner rabbit). He's making a ragout (recipe here). He’s sautéing finely chopped red onions in a pan, and then he slices up some carrots into chops and then slices up something call a swede, which I never heard of. So I go to the Food Network Web site to check out what swede is, but they already Americanized his recipe by calling for rutabaga instead. So I guess swede are like rutabaga, but Wikipedia says it’s also like a yellow turnip. It looks like a potato. Jamie adds all this to the onion and mixes them all up, then adds the game meat.

He adds half a bottle of an Italian white wine, and then herbs: thyme, rosemary, bay leaf, chopped up fine (except the bay), and then adds it all to the pan along with a pinch of salt and pepper and a tablespoon of flour. He adds a pint of chicken stock to just cover up the meat, then brings it to just a boil with the lid and simmer for about an hour and 15 minutes.

In a pot of boiling water, he throws in some pappardelle. I love pappardelle but I can never find them in my local Safeway.

To his meat that’s been slowly cooked, he adds a nice nub of butter, then with the pot off the heat he throws in a handful of parmesan cheese and the zest from half an orange. He mixes it altogether and then he grabs a handful of parsley and he finely chops them. He gets the pasta and pours away the water so he can use the pot. Then he pours pasta back in and throws in a few spoonfuls of his ragout sauce. He says you have to be quick, stirring everything together. Hmm, I think I might make this one Sunday, if I can find rabbit and hare. Jamie finishes it all with a sprinkle of parlsey and olive oil and then a bit of parmesan. He says you have to eat this quick. No problem, Jamie.

Jamieisms heard in this episode:

Happy days

Nub, as in “nub of butter.”

Rock and roll

Jamie At Home airs on Saturday at 9:30 a.m. on the Food Network. Visit Jamie’s Web site at www.jamieoliver.com. More on the accompanying book for the series here.

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Seen at the Market: Spring

It was a beautiful, sunny day in the Bay Area today and I was out at the farmers market at the Ferry Building in San Francisco. One of the fun things about farmers markets is the fresh flower stands. At this time of the year, there are tons of tulips. It's one of my favorite flowers. It's always nice to have some fresh flowers at the table to go with your dinner made with produce from the farmers market.

And looks like I'm not the only one with that idea. This is the first time I've ever seen such a long line at the flower stand at the market. A definite sign that spring is just around the corner. (BTW, don't forget to "spring forward" and set your clocks forward tonight. Gosh, I'm like a public service announcement.)

I feel like I'm in Amsterdam with all these tulips. And just for fun, my friend Stella sent me this amazing online flower garden site. Go visit it here and click anywhere in the black canvas... then see your garden grow. Bring on spring!

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Dish on Dining: Rang Dong

Vietnamese cuisine that’s hard to pin down
724 Webster St. (at 8th Street), Oakland
Chinatown
PH: 510.835.8375
Open daily, 10 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.
Reservations, major credit cards accepted

Since I started this blog, I spend a lot of time visiting food discussion groups just to see what the food buzz may be in the Bay Area. Awhile back I read someone claiming Rang Dong to be the best Vietnamese restaurant in Oakland. Now, I know reviews on the Web can get a bit superfluous (been to Yelp lately?), but this is just a downright challenge in my mind.

Luckily for me, Rang Dong is in Oakland’s Chinatown, which is a good walk from my office on a nice sunny day. So in the last few weeks, I’ve visited this typical Vietnamese restaurant (with its recently renovated windows) for lunch.

Rang Dong is larger and cleaner than most of the smaller pho joints in town, which probably gives it an automatic one star to start in most people’s eyes. It definitely can handle the large office party, like on one visit when it looked like an office group was having a special lunch.

The menu also offers more options than popular pho spots like Pho Hoa Lao II just two blocks up the street. But despite being bigger and offering a variety of dishes, Rang Dong never seemed extremely busy on the times I’ve been there compared to other places.

The service is very friendly and attentive. They’ll be sure to bring you a fork if it looks like you’re struggling or your check when you look like you’re ready to get back to the office.

On my first visit, I ordered the Bun Bo Hue ($6.90, note: while a pho noodle dish, it’s listed under the house specials). This is one of my favorite beef pho soup bowls because it’s spicier and comes with a large assortment of animal parts.

When the order arrived, it was a very large bowl but I noticed right away that the broth didn’t have a deep maroon color that I’ve seen at other places. Instead, it looked almost like a clear broth with a lot of chili flakes in it.

The pho itself was good, not great. And while the broth was light, it did have a kick to it and really helped to clear up my sinuses. The meat parts weren’t as fresh as Pho Hoa Loa II and the accompanying fresh herbs used to toss into my soup were pretty standard: bean sprouts, basil leaves and lime wedges.

On another visit, I decided to order a rice dish. So I got the Com Bi Suon Nuong ($6.95, grilled pork chops and shredded pork). Again, it was a huge plate that arrived at my table, but the flavor itself was straightforward and nothing spectacular. It tasted like any other pork rice plate I’ve had at countless other Vietnamese restaurants.

On my most recent visit, I decided to try something different and ordered one of two claypots on the menu. I got the Com Tay Cam ($7.50), which on the menu says it’s a claypot with stir fried prawns, beef, chicken, veggies and fried rice. I love eating from a claypot ever since my trip to Vietnam. All the juices of the many ingredients meld together in this beautiful, rustic pot brought right to your table.

So I was disappointed when what arrived on my table looked strangely enough like some kind of Chinese broccoli stir fry. In my claypot were pieces of thinly sliced beef and chicken with just maybe two pieces of shrimp and lots of broccoli and button mushrooms. Oh, and there were a few pieces of zucchini.

The rice was broken rice, not fried rice, which was fine but misleading. And the overall flavor leaned heavy on the Chinese oyster sauce side instead of the more clean fish-sauce flavors of Vietnam. I was very disappointed at this dish, not only because I could make it easily at home on my own but because of the rudimentary ingredients used in what could be an authentic Vietnamese dish. They could have at least thrown in some Southeast Asian herbs.

So you can probably tell by now that if I were ever to meet that person who declared Rang Dong the best Vietnamese restaurant in Oakland, I’d laugh in his face. (OK, maybe not laugh because I’m not that kind of guy. But I would ask, “What were you thinking???”)

Don’t get me wrong, Rang Dong is a decent Vietnamese restaurant. You do spend a couple of dollars more for the cleaner settings, and you have more dishes to choose from. But in terms of vibrancy and authenticity in execution, it falls short. Then again, I don’t know if I’ve found the best Vietnamese restaurant in Oakland. It definitely isn’t Rang Dong. The quest for the best continues.

Single guy rating: 2 stars (Straightforward and clean)

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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Pushing My Cholesterol With Crab

Awhile back I had a lot of shrimp shells after making a shrimp dinner so I decided to make stock. It’s really simple because you don’t need to cook the shells as long as you might cook cow or chicken bones. I added the typical carrots, celery and fennel (because I love it) with a few peppercorns and froze the stock in containers.

So that took care of my shrimp shells. Now I have containers of shrimp stock in my freezer.

I realize I don’t really use shrimp stock that often, always going with chicken broth. So I tried to think what recipe would benefit from shrimp stock, and that’s how I ended up making my crab risotto.

Risotto requires a lot of stock for the rice to absorb as you cook it, and crab comes from that same family of shellfish (please, don’t Wikipedia this!) so I figured it’s probably better to make crab risotto from shrimp stock than chicken broth. To jazz up the dish (although I’m sure the crab would have been fine alone) I added radicchio, mostly for color and aforementioned jazzing.
We’re getting near the end of crab season so the crab I got wasn’t as sweet as I hoped. But I still love the texture of crab meat in any dish. This will probably be my last crab post until next season. Enjoy!

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Crab Radicchio Risotto

Copyright 2008 by Cooking With The Single Guy

Ingredients:
Meat from one cooked Dungeness crab
1 cup radicchio, shredded
½ sweet onion, diced
1 cup Arborio rice
1 small glass of dry white wine
1-1/2 cups of shrimp stock or vegetable broth (or 14 oz. can)
¾ cup shredded Parmesan cheese (or Parmigiano Reggiano)
1 garlic clove, minced
1 t thyme, dried
2 T unsalted butter
olive oil
sea salt to taste

Get your whole Dungeness crab and clean it if your fish monger hasn’t done that for you already. Then crack the shell and legs to remove the meat. (If you prefer, you can pay more and buy lump crab meat.) Set aside.

In a medium saucepan, warm 2 tablespoons of olive oil over medium high heat and add onion and garlic. Cook for about two minutes until onions are translucent, making sure not to brown the garlic. Add rice and stir with onions, letting the heat toast the rice for about a minute. Turn heat to medium and add wine and cook until most of it evaporates. Then start adding in the stock, using a ladle to add two scoops (about ¾ cup) to start. Add the radicchio and thyme. Continue cooking for about 15 minutes, stirring with a wooden spoon and adding two ladles of stock along the way as the stock gets absorbed, until rice is al dente, or almost done.

Remove saucepan from the fire and stir in butter and cheese. Stir in crab, reserving a few nice whole pieces for the top to garnish. Add salt to your taste. Let risotto sit for about a minute, then plate. Garnish with some whole crab pieces and more parmesan shavings and something green like some diced Italian parsley.

Makes two servings. Serve with small green salad and garlic bread.

Pair with a glass of Sauvignon Blanc.

TIPS: If you get a live Dungeness crab, you can clean it yourself and cook it by boiling or steaming it for about 15 minutes. Check out my video on how to clean a live crab.

REVIEW OF RISOTTO: Risotto rice makes this dish unique with its short grain and creamy texture. So you can’t substitute it with the typical long-grain rice or even Japanese sushi rice. But you do have choices. There are three main Italian rice to make risotto: Arborio, Carnaroli and Vialone Nano. Arborio is the one most widely available outside of Italy and can be easily found in any grocery store. It consistently cooks in 15 minutes and produces a nice cream. But don’t be afraid to experiment with Carnaroli and Vialone Nano if you spot them on a gourmet store shelf. They both cook a bit longer, but Carnaroli grains keep more of their shape so it’s a nice choice if you don’t like your risotto too mushy. Vialone Nano is creamier if you want to go the other direction.

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Icebee Picks Prime ‘Fro-yo’ Spot

I don’t get all this talk about the frozen yogurt craze in the Bay Area. Sure, we’ve got a few “fro-yo” spots opening up here and there, but I don’t see the long lines like they got a couple of years ago down in Los Angeles when Pinkberry came to town.

It’s not like there’s a fro-yo shop at every corner like Starbucks. “Fro-yo” wars? Ehh, it’s more like skirmishes—if they can even go to battle. (I’m still waiting for the big hitters Pinkberry and Red Mango to come to town.)

So all this is to explain why I haven’t really ventured out to check out any of the serious contenders since I visited Jubili on Fillmore. But this past weekend after seeing a movie at the San Francisco Westfield Shopping Centre, I went across Mission Street to check out the three-week-old Icebee Yogurt shop.

This would seem to be a prime spot for a frozen yogurt stand. Despite being stuck to the Fifth Street parking complex, it’s across from the Westfield center and just a stone’s throw from the Sony Metreon. So basically, lots of young mouths hungry for an after-movie treat.

The main twist to this swirl shop [get it ;-) ] is that it’s self-serve. So while some of you might feel intimidated creating the perfect looking frozen yogurt cup, it’s great for those who like to experiment.

You start off by picking up a container (it’s all the same size). You pay by the weight and when I was there, they were charging 43 cents per ounce, which really doesn’t sound like a lot. Don’t forget your napkins and spoon. I did, and had to backtrack.

There are tons of flavors to choose from. In fact, my criticism would be that there are too many flavors. Really, I think yogurt lovers are more into the tartness and toppings than the actual flavor of the yogurt. I’m old style and like the typical three flavors. At Icebee, there were about five stations against the wall, each offering two flavors. (BTW, there were no lines when I was on Saturday afternoon. I could take my time deciding and not offend anyone behind me, because there wasn’t anyone.)

I don’t know if the flavor changes often, but this is what I saw when I was there: Signature, Blueberry, Green Apple, Peach (it’s marked “tart”), Very Strawberry, Country Vanilla, Cable Car Chocolate, Cookies & Cream, Peanut Butter, Mango and New York Cheesecake. In the photo above, you’ll see my lame attempt to swirl together three flavors: Very Strawberry, Mango and Cookies & Cream.

Then you move on to the toppings. You hit the fresh fruits section first and I went for some strawberries, but nothing else really inspired me. It’s hard to reach some of them, but the girl behind the counter was ready to assist if needed.

Then you get the fun toppings (=more calories) such as mochi balls and gummy bears. I went for Oreo crumbles, which I love because Cookies & Cream is one of my favorite flavors but I have to say the black specs didn’t make my yogurt look very pretty.

Here’s my yogurt being weighed. I wasn’t paying attention to what I was throwing into my container, but I didn’t go overboard. I’m pretty good with portion control. My total was $4.25, which sounds about right for what I would pay at other fro-yo shops for a yogurt this size.

Here’s my creation. I really liked the Very Strawberry. It did have a distinct strawberry taste. The Cookies & Cream was OK (it did look like chocolate though) and the Mango had a slight tartness but no real perceivable mango flavor. Overall, the texture of the yogurt was very nice. Creamy and smooth. I liked the toppings that I got, too.

Icebee’s setting was very much like other fro-yo wannabes, with the frosted glass, tiled interiors and Swedish-like furnishings. Like I said, it wasn’t very crowded while I was there. I kind of liked the forest design on the glass mural.

I enjoyed my Icebee yogurt. I don’t know if I would love all the flavors (like I said, I really don’t need so many options), but I enjoyed the ones I did try enough to think I would get them again. This fro-yo spot has convenience on its side, so when there really is an all-out fro-yo war, my guess is that Icebee will be sitting pretty.

Icebee, 829 Mission St., (between Fourth and Fifth Streets), San Francisco. PH: 415.882.7800.

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Jamie At Home: Episode 8, Winter Veg

Today we learn that when you’re cool like Jamie Oliver, you don’t have to spell out the word “vegetable.” That’s why he’s making recipes with winter “veg.”

Jamie has a big bowl of vegetables, and you can tell it’s cold because he’s wearing both sweats with a hoodie and a really thick jacket. But then again, that could be summer in London. He says he’s going to make a really zingy coleslaw. Yum.

Winter Veg Coleslaw

Instead of a classic, boring coleslaw, Jamie’s going to make his own with a twist. Instead of onion, he’s using shallots. But he still uses the traditional base of cabbage, both green and red (well, more purple-red).

He gets his food processor and starts slicing away. The big lesson of the day: “The softer you push, the finer it’ll be. The harder you push, the thicker it’ll be.” Gotcha, Jamie. After slicing up the red, he slices up the regular cabbage, and then two shallots. Then a whole fennel bulb. Then he flips his blade to grating, and starts grating away at a variety of veg that will make his coleslaw unique: beet roots (he’s using a raw yellow beet because the red ones will stain too much), turnip, carrots (including heirloom-colored ones), and a bunch of radishes. Wow, it’s like a rainbow with the really bright colors. He also has it in this really big bowl.

Jamie uses organic yogurt instead of mayonnaise as the base for his dressing for the coleslaw. I personally don’t have anything against mayonnaise, but I can see how yogurt would be healthier. Still, I rather stick with mayonnaise. I tried to make a dressing once with yogurt and the tartness just wasn’t the same. Anywho, Jamie seasons the yogurt with salt and pepper and then adds some herbs: fennel fronds, mint, chervils, all chopped into fine pieces. He adds a squeeze of lemon (about one-and-a-half lemon), about 4 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, and a big spoonful of mustard. He tosses it all up with his fingers. Again, that’s a big bowl of slaw.

He gets a leftover piece of meat and slices up a few pieces and spoons the coleslaw on top, garnishing with more herbs.

Italian Cabbage Soup

Jamie is cooking outside and brings out a pot of cooked savoy cabbage and green curly kale. He boiled them in chicken stock for about five minutes. He gets some stale bread and rubs them with garlic after toasting them. Then he gets a tray from the oven, and opens a tin of anchovy fillets. He pours the oil from the anchovies on the bottom of the pan, then covers the tray with pancetta. That’s a lot of pancetta. He gets back his anchovy fillets, oops, he almost hurt himself getting them out of the can. How many times has that happened to me? He puts the anchovies with the pancetta and places the tray into the oven to render the fat out of the pancetta.

BTW, doesn’t Jamie look like he’s dressed to go moose hunting? Or maybe duck hunting with Dick Cheney. Odd imagery, I know. He goes to the wood oven to get his crispy pancetta and he throws in his greens, blending everything together. He gets a casserole pan, and covers the bottom of the pan with the slices of toasts. Then he throws in the vegetables and sprinkles grated cheese (fontina and parmesan) and drizzles with olive oil. He covers the top with more toast slices. Then another layer of vegetables and cheese. He says it’s like making lasagna, but it’s not. He finishes the layering with a top layer of bread that hasn’t been toasted.

Jamie tastes his stock and does that odd gorilla dance with his swinging arms. You know what I’m talking about? He pours the stock into the pan over all the bread and vegetables, and grates more cheese on the top and then more olive oil, seasoning everything with pepper and he pushes everything down with his hands. This will cook for 40 minutes at 350 degrees in the oven.

With the magic of television, a second later he brings out the pot and he says it’s like a cross between bread pudding and French onion soup. OK, I’ll take your word for it. He says a classic thing to go with it is sage butter. So he uses a sauté pan and melts butter and sage together, crisping up the sage leaves.

Jamie says this is not going to be a creamy or brothy soup. “Don’t go there,” he warns. He reminds everyone that this is a bread soup. Not having had bread soup, it’s tough for me to imagine. But he “cuts” up his soup and gets a clump of it in a bowl and ladles in some of the soup, then garnishes with his sage butter. Is this really how Italians make their soup? He tastes it and loves it. (Complete recipe here.)

The Best Bubble and Squeak

OK, who out there knows whether the Brits really have a classic dish called Bubble and Squeak? Funny name. Anywho, Jamie says it’s getting cold outside so he’s going to make this comfort dish. (Actually Jamie, it’s getting a bit warmer here in the Bay Area.) He has a pot of vegetables that he’s boiled: carrots, turnips, parsnips, Brussel sprouts, potatoes, and savoy cabbage (again). He cooked them for 15 to 20 minutes until cooked through and then drains them in a colander. (Complete recipe here.)

In a pan, he gets some olive oil and butter warming, and then puts some chestnuts he got from a vac pack. (I actually still have a pack from Christmas when I made my butternut squash and chestnut soup, so maybe I should try it n this recipe?).Then he adds his drained vegetables and breaks them up. He uses a potato masher to do this, and creates a mix of color.

He gets a long string of pork sausages. Then he gets some beef sausages. He unravels the twists so that they’re no longer individual sausages. It looks like he’s trying to make one giant sausage. Jamie flattens out the sausages and puts the pork next to the beef and then lathers them with olive oil and starts massaging his sausage. (Don’t even go there.) He seasons with salt and pepper and fresh rosemary and nutmeg (a classic old English spice, he says). Then he grabs the two giant sausages and rolls them up like some sausage cinnamon roll. Then he skewers right through the center to keep it in a wheel.

He slices three red onions, which he’s going to use to make gravy. Jamie gets a roasting tray and pours some olive oil to coat the bottom of the pan and adds the onions. He seasons the onions with salt and pepper and a nub of butter and then he places the sausage wheel on top of the onions. He adds bay leaves in between the sausages and puts the tray into the oven to roast.

Jamie goes back to his pan and turns over the mashed vegetables and he says you do this continuously for awhile. Wow, this is a time-consuming recipe to make.

After awhile, the vegetable mash gets golden brown. He says if you listen to it, “I think you’ll hear it’s bubbling and squeaking.” Oh, that’s where the name comes from. Those British and their odd dishes! He brings out his caramelized onions and cooked sausages. He pulls the whole thing out onto a board and plates up the “bubble” into a plate. He puts the tray of onions into the stovetop and makes the gravy, adding flour, balsamic vinegar and chicken stock.

Jamie gets some fresh watercress and dresses it in olive oil with a squeeze of lemon and salt and pepper. He adds a bunch on top of his bubble and pours the gravy into a bowl. Then he cuts some of his sausages and places them on a plate on top of his bubble and squeak. Then he pours the gravy on top. It really looks like a bunch of mashed food. Squeeeeak! I just wanted to say that. Next week, bubble.

Jamieisms heard in this episode:

Happy days

Nub, as in “nub of butter.”

Mucking about

Jamie At Home airs on Saturday at 9:30 a.m. on the Food Network. Visit Jamie’s Web site at www.jamieoliver.com. More on the accompanying book for the series here.

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Watching Footballers Crushing Crab

Today turned out to be a nice day around the Bay Area, so I strolled over to San Francisco's Union Square for the Sixth Annual Crab Fest. This is going to be an odd food blog post because there's going to be food, but I didn't eat any of it! (I'm watching my cholesterol and I ate my quota of crab in the last two weeks. Bad timing on my part.)

Anywho, I've never been to the Union Square Crab Fest, which is sponsored by Macy's and is actually a fund-raiser for the San Francisco 49ers football team's foundation, which helps underserved children. And it's a nice way to feature one of the big food icon of the city, the Dungeness crab.

Of course, the highlight of the mini-festival is the crab cracking contest featuring celebrities paired with local chefs. Above you see, from left, Tiffany Tam (the first princess for the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, what happened to Miss Chinatown?) with her partner Chef Darren (I didn't get his last name or the name of the restaurant, I think he works at Luke's Restaurant), 49ers quarterback Alex Smith and San Francisco Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White.

The contest actually took awhile. I guess it's not that easy getting all that succulent meat from those darn crabs.

Alex Smith seems to be having fun. He was a good sport given all the jabs about his left shoulder that the MCs were ribbing him about.

Along with the crab cracking contest, there were the food booths from area restaurants (most of them from the Union Square area). Above is Chef Robert Helstrom of Kuleto's serving up his red curry crab risotto.

I give the best presentation to E&O Trading Co., which was serving up these curry crab salad. Huh, lots of curry crab dishes.

Aren't these hilarious?! LOL. They're sourdough bread from the Boudin Bakery baked into the shape of crabs. So funny looking.

These are crab gelees from the Grand Cafe. I have to be honest and say that this didn't seem very popular with the crowd, who tended to head to the booth serving mini crab cakes.

Not everything was crab. Above are Chocolate Cherry Sourdough Bread Pudding from Boudin Bakery. It was pretty popular and people were devouring it.

With the sunny weather, lots of food and celebrity spotting, it looked like most people were having fun. Definitely one of those signature San Francisco events.

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