Launch Party for the 3rd Tasty Awards

With all the food channels and food websites, there’s no shortage of food-related awards. But when my food blogging buddy Sandy of Foodhoe’s Foraging suggested we go to the launch party for the 3rd Tasty Awards, I have to admit I mostly went because I didn’t know anything about the awards and wanted to find out for myself. And they promised lots of wine.

The party took place at the SOMA bar 330 Ritch yesterday afternoon. Several tables were set up in the brick-walled space serving up food and wine. The party coincided with the first day of submission for nominees for the 2012 Tastys (or is it Tasties?), but still even after reading the website I’m not really sure how the nomination happens.

I do know that the awards are an odd combination of food and fashion. The awards go to shows where people features things that taste good and then recognizes people with good tastes in fashion and home lifestyles.

The crowd was a mix of food lovers and fashionistas looking good while they downed tastings of cabernets. Sandy and I, along with Sandy’s husband Mr. K, were looking for food. Unfortunately, there were only five booths offering up eats, and two of them were serving chocolates.

So it’s no surprised that the busiest tables was this one serving up Schiltz Foods roasted goose. The guy at the counter did a nice job of carving up the geese (there were more than one), and the goose meat tasted well-seasoned and nicely cooked. I just wished it was warmer.


Mr. K discovered that the goose was taken to another level when sandwiched between a gougere, a puff made from the Bread Project.


I’m always interested in new chocolate makers, and this table featured chocolates by newcomer Chris Kollar of Napa Valley. His Kollar Chocolates include a variety of chocolate bars and truffles.

The party also invited some local food celebrities, who serve as presenters at the Tasty Award program, which takes place in Los Angeles. Among the celebrities was Brian Boitano, the figure skater-turned-Food Network star with his show “What Would Brian Boitano Make?”

Another local celebrity was Chef Tanya Holland of Oakland’s Brown Sugar Kitchen. Sandy is a fan of Chef Holland, so I snapped this picture of a happy Sandy who was standing next to her idol waiting for wine.

It was a fun afternoon of sipping wine and nibbling on tasty food, but I still don’t know if I learned much about the Tasty Awards, especially since there wasn’t really a program or anyone talking about it. But I do know they love to throw a party, and hey, maybe the Tasty Awards are the Golden Globes of food awards? Let’s go with that.

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Melting Cheese at the Ferry Building

Who doesn't love the look of melting cheese?

Awhile back when I was strolling through the Ferry Building in San Francisco, I walked past the Cowgirl Creamery store, which is always crowded with cheese lovers, and smelled the distinct funky smell of melted cheese.

You know, it's that smell usually associated with fondue. But it wasn't fondue but what's called Raclette, which is just melted cheese on a toasted bread with pickles. (It was sold for $5.) Just looking at the big chunk of cheese dripping down from the metal stand looked so amazing. But alas, I had to avoid it because I eat very little cheese because of my high cholesterol. Still, it made for some juicy photos.

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Ikaros Greek Restaurant in Oakland

Discover Homey Greek Food
3268 Grand Ave., Oakland
Grand Lake neighborhood
PH: 510.899.4400
Open daily from 11 a.m.
Major credit cards, reservations accepted
www.ikarosgr.com

I often spot new places while riding the bus, so it’s no wonder that many of the restaurants I check out are along Grand Avenue in Oakland, which is also where my gym is located.

I noticed Ikaros Greek Restaurant open up a few months ago, and Greek food is one of those cuisines I know very little about outside of baklava. So I decided to make a visit to this family-style restaurant, which took over a spot that was formerly a nail salon. (Don’t worry, there are a lot more nail salons on the street to fill the void.)

Always up for an adventure is my equally adventurous foodie friend, Sandy, who forages for new food as the Foodhoe.

When we arrived, the spot looked like a bar restaurant because all the seating down a narrow aisle was flanked by a bar counter on one side and the official bar on the far corner. The seating felt like a restaurant at a hotel bar, but the seaside décor also made me feel like I was about to go sailing.

We lucked out with our waiter, who was not only friendly but also Greek. So we were able to ask him for the correct pronunciation for all the dishes on the menu.

To get a real tour of the various Greek appetizers, we went with the Ikaros Mezes (starters) combination platter ($16). This huge platter of food included dolmades (stuffed grape leaves), keftethes (Greek meatballs), spanakopita (spinach pies), and tiropita (cheese pie).

I love dolmades, which I first ate when I lived in Fresno where there’s a large Armenian community. The herbal grape leaves soaked in oil so they’re tender and stuffed typically with either cheese or rice. Ikaros’ version was with marinated rice with herbs and was just like how I like them.

I enjoyed the meatballs, and took small bites of the spanakopita and tiropita because they’re flakey deep-fried pies like samosas. That meant there was more for Sandy, but she didn’t mind because she totally enjoyed them.

The platter also came with warm, fresh pita bread with two dips: tzatsiki, low-fat Greek yogurt with cucumber and garlic, and taramousalata, a whipped blend of red caviar, olive oil and lemon juice. I totally loved the dips, especially the tzatsiki, which surprised me because I generally think Greek yogurt is too sour, but balanced with cucumber, it was refreshing. The taramousalata was a lot like humus, and had a nice pink color but I was more partial to the tzatsiki.

We could barely finish the platter when our entrees arrived. After seeing the platter, I’m sure you’ll be shocked by what we ordered for our entrees.

First off, Sandy got the Gyros Stacker ($12.50) because she said she liked the “trailer delight” feel of the plate, which is two kinds of gyro meat with pita bread, tomatoes and red onions stacked on top of steak fries and literally buried under more tzatsiki dip.

I partly feel Sandy orders these types of dishes just to rub in the fact that she can eat all this red meat and deep-fried foods and not worry about high cholesterol whereas I eat a piece of cheese and alarm goes off at my doctor’s office.

Sandy tried to make a dent on this stacker special, and she seemed to enjoy the meat and the tzatsiki. But I think she felt the fries were a bit on the soft side. Almost as a joke, this platter comes with a side of green salad. Sandy said the salad was almost inedible because it was drenched with vinaigrette.

Not wanting to let Sandy show me up, I ordered one of Ikaros’ specialties, which is the Gyouvetsi meh Arni or Orzo with Lamb Shanks ($16.50). The braised lamb shanks looked like those huge turkey drumsticks they sell at carnivals. They were fork tender and tasty, but the dish is pulled together by the comforting orzo pasta in a red sauce that tasted like baked pasta.

We topped off our dinner with dessert. And while we could have gone the traditional route of baklava, I wanted to try something different so we went with the galaktoboureko ($4.50), which is also a traditional Greek dessert.

It’s a custard dessert wrapped in filo with a lemon zest syrup. When it arrived, it did seem a bit flat. At room temperature, the dessert didn’t really excite us, even though I love custard. The custard filling was uneven, with some parts mostly filo and another end with more custard. If you know where to get great galaktoboureko, let me know because I am a custard fan and wouldn’t mind trying this again.

As you can tell by the prices, Ikaros is pretty reasonable and you get a lot of food, which explains why the place filled up by the time we left. While not everything was a success, there were a lot more comforting food and the menu appears to offer a nice variety of dishes to give a Greek novice a splendid introduction.

Read Foodhoe's take on our dinner on her blog.

Single guy rating: 3 stars (A lesson in Greek dining)

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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Test Kitchen: Salmon Baked in Salsa Verde Recipe

Last month's Test Kitchen came from one of my older cookbooks, the "New Food Fast" cookbook (Whitecap Books, 1999) by Donna Hay, who's known for quick and easy dishes.

Hay's recipes are really a reflection of today's modern chef trying to cook with a busy schedule. You can imagine that these cookbooks are probably really popular, but the challenge is always to have tasty dishes from these super simple recipes. So the poll results saw 37% of you wanting to try the Salmon in Salsa Verde recipe, with Peppered Beef and Cucumber Salad (sounds so summery) coming close at 32% followed behind by Angel Hair Nicoise (25%) and Little Chocolate Brownies (4%). What have you guys got against chocolate!? ;-)

This salmon recipe is perfect for summer too because sometimes when it gets hot, I don't really want to be hovering over a stove top or eating anything too heavy. So you can always count on fish for a light dinner. So how did it go in my kitchen? Check it out below.

I began by making the salsa verde. The ingredients include: 1/3 cup chopped dill, 1/3 cup flat-leaf parsley, 1/3 cup mint, 2 garlic cloves, t tablespoon dijon mustard, 6 anchovy fillets, 3 tablespoons salted capers (rinsed), 1/3 cup olive oil, and 2 tablespoon of lemon juice. Of course, I cut the recipe in half.

The recipe says to put all the ingredients into a food processor and pulse until smooth. (Start with everything except the oil and lemon juice, and then add those two ingredients at the end.) But I don't own a food processor, and while I typically use my hand blender as a substitute, the ingredients were so few that it really wouldn't work. So I busted out my hand-powered spice pulsing gadget from Jamie Oliver and had to shake everything together to basically pound them into a sauce.
Using it didn't turn out too bad. The main thing is making sure I chopped all the ingredients really fine since the shaker really just bruises everything together.

Oh, and you should remember to preheat your oven to 400 degrees F. And the cookbook suggests to serve the salmon on a bed of steamed greens. The cookbook photo had some Shanghai greens, but I couldn't find any at my local grocer so I got these bok choy.

The recipe calls for 4 pieces of salmon (6 oz. each), but I just made one. This is wild salmon I got from Whole Foods. Man, they're pricey. I placed it on a roasting pan.

Then I just lathered the piece of salmon with the salsa verde. Then placed it in the oven and cooked for 10 minutes like the recipe said. (It actually says 6 to 10 minutes.) And below is how the dish turned out.

So how did it turn out? Well, I have to explain that the salmon's center was raw, and while generally it's OK to have some rear salmon, especially when the fish is fresh, it was too rear for me. The 10 minute for this cut of salmon wasn't a good recommendation. And usually when I cook salmon, I sear it first on the stove top and then cook it. So I actually end up cooking salmon a bit longer than 10 minutes total (probably closer to 12-13 minutes).

My tips and warnings about this recipe:

1. Doh, the first tip is to cook the fish longer. Because you're not searing like what you might typically do, it really needs more than 10 minutes unless you really like sashimi. I ended up having to microwave my final salmon just so I could eat it.
2. For some reason I feel like it needed pepper. But you definitely don't need salt with all the anchovy and capers in the salsa verde.

Ease of cooking: Salmon is always easy to cook, and a recipe from a cookbook called New Food Fast has got to be easy and simple. So definitely lived up to its name, although it was a bit tough without a food processor.

Taste: Despite the undercook salmon, I thought the fish tasted all right with the salsa verde. I did feel like the was a lot of salty flavors from the capers and anchovies (even though I love anchovies) so the fresh flavors of the herbs got lost by the heaviness of the capers and anchovies. I think I would use less anchovies or capers in order to let the mint and dill flavor come out more.

Overall Grade: B because it's an average dish but with all the ingredients that I like. It is simple but I think I'll experiment more with the salsa verde.

Don't forget to vote in this month's Test Kitchen poll on the upper right column. I face my fear and will try a recipe from the overwhelming Zuni Cafe Cookbook. This James Beard Award-winning cookbook seems complicated and time-consuming, but I figured since last month I went easy, next month I should challenge myself.

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Temescal Street Fair 2011 in Oakland

I haven't had a chance to get out to many street fairs this summer because of my recent travels, but I couldn't skip the annual Temescal Street Fair because it's one of the neighborhoods near my Oakland home.

I actually lucked out because the street fair was originally scheduled for early June when I was in Honolulu for my niece's graduation. But the fair got rained out and it was postponed till today, and I almost forgot about it. Luckily I went to the Temescal farmers' market this morning and on my way home I noticed the street closure from 45th to 51st Streets.

So I returned in the afternoon to check out the fair, which seems to have gotten bigger over the years. There were a lot more activities for the kids (it really is a big family affair) and with the growth in restaurants on Telegraph Avenue, there were a lot more interesting food booths at the fair.

Guerrilla Grub is a street cart that was almost selling out of its sloppy Joe's (including a vegan version) when I got there in the late afternoon. I like the T-shirt.

The booth with the longest line was, of course, Lanesplitter's Pizza, which were selling slices and beer.

They were just grabbing slices from boxes of pre-made pizzas.

Colorful paella from Barlata, which was selling it for $5 a plate. What a deal.

You can't have a fair without cotton candy, which was being sold from a table in front of the Mixing Bowl.

Even Bakesale Betty and its signature iron board tables were out in full force. And that's a big deal because it's normally closed on Sundays. But I'm sure they couldn't resist feeding the crowds its fried chicken sandwiches and strawberry shortcakes.

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Longman & Eagle in Chicago

Farm to Midwest Table Dining in the Hood
2657 N. Kedzie Ave., Chicago
Logan Square
PH: 773.276.7110
Open Mon.-Fri., 9 a.m.-2 a.m.; Sat., 9 a.m.-3 a.m.; and Sun., 9 a.m.-2 a.m.
No reservations, major credit cards accepted
Longmanandeagle.com

CHICAGO
I've found that in visiting this city, some of its more innovative and interesting restaurants are found far from downtown. Last year I had a lovely dinner at this spot in a neighborhood known as Wicker Park. This time I traveled by the "El" to Logan Square to have dinner at Longman & Eagle, which Esquire magazine deemed one of the best new restaurants in America.

My co-workers (I was in town for a design conference) joined me as we went to Sunday dinner. The restaurant is at the end of the block in a non-descript strip, bordering a bunch of residential homes. Since it was a beautiful early summer day, a lot of people were eating in the patio area, which left us with a lot of tables inside to choose from. We were glad to just get seated since Longman & Eagle doesn't take reservations, and on most nights the wait can be long.

Because we all have a design background, we were all enthralled by the setting, a homey, rustic saloon-type restaurant with unique touches of artwork in the back. We kept looking at the ceiling above us, which looked like it was made from an array of reclaimed wood.

The menu from Chef Jared Wentworth was just as interesting and eclectic, with an emphasis on American fare using locally-sourced ingredients. Chef Wentworth also has a "head-to-tail" approach to his dishes so that meant items on the seasonal menu ranging from bone marrow to veal heart.

After a round of drinks, we jumped into our meals. The chef sent out an amuse bouche, which I thought was quaint in such a casual restaurant like this. The spoon-sized bite was a smoked salmon with a cream sauce and some kind of roe on top. I didn't remember the specifics, but it was savory and light.

One of my co-workers, Chen, started with a recommendation of our waitress. It was the Slagel Family Farms Meatballs ($6), served on top of creamy polenta, parsley pesto, and Fonduta cheese.

I had the Pastrami Cured Sweetbreads ($11), with Gruyere, pumpernickel, saurkraut, and Thousand Island dressing. Even though I had sweetbreads the night before, I wanted to see what pastrami-cured sweetbreads were like. My stack of sweetbreads turned out looking quite burnt, but they didn't taste that way. They were crispy but tender in the center, and had maybe a bit more salty flavor than sweetbreads I've had before. But it was the combination of contrasting flavors on the plate that made this dish a winner, from the saurkraut and Thousand Island smear on the side to the fluffy Gruyere puff on the side.

The girls in our group skipped a starter and went straight to the entrees. One ordered the Wild Alaskan Sockeye ($25) while another ordered the Roasted Miller Half Chicken ($18), which came on a pomme puree with Swiss chard and carmelized onion and pickled cherry and date jus. I tried a piece of the chicken because the waitress says it's one of the most tender roasted restaurant chicken she's ever seen, and it was. I don't know if maybe it's better than, let's say Zuni Cafe, but it was definitely a fresh and perfectly cook poultry.

For his entree, Chen actually ordered from the small plates section because he really wanted to try the Gulf Prawns and Grits ($13), which came with an organic egg and black pepper shrimp gravy. The prawns came whole and looking a bit blackened, but that was probably the black pepper gravy. Chen loved the prawns, and ate all of it, even sucking the heads.

I also went a bit off type and ordered from the daily vegetarian menu. I respect a place that goes through the trouble of creating a vegetarian menu each night. I was enticed by one item on the menu, which was a Spring Vegetable Risotto ($16) with asparagus, English peas, and morels.

What I loved about this dish was the intense flavor of the risotto. There was what seemed like a brown gravy encircling my plate of risotto, and that brown gravy (maybe it was the jus of the morel mushrooms) just added a rich and deep flavor to the overall dish, which was fresh and bright like spring.

We all rounded off our meals with dessert, and Longman & Eagle had an impressive list of unique creations. We each ordered a different dessert ($9 each) and tried a little of each. Here's what we ordered: Bittersweet "Manjari" chocolate tart with bourbon tapioca, gruyere donuts with whipped citrus goat cheese, an olive oil pound cake with poached rhubard and, finally, a banana and toffee English pudding and ginger and black pepper panna cotta.

As we tried a little bit of each, we enjoyed the sweet flavors and the interesting contrasting tastes reflected in our beautifully plated desserts. But I have to say I think I ordered the best dessert (well, everyone loved the donuts but you know I didn't have any), which was a light but rum-soaked English pudding that was more like a cake, and the little cup of panna cotta that was creamy and rich.

Dining at Longman & Eagle is a real adventure for both your eyes and your stomach. The funky but familiar vibe (all the servers were extremely friendly and helpful) makes you feel comfortable, but the innovative dishes from the kitchen (with the servers introducing each dish as they arrived) elevates the food to a fine-dining experience but without the pretension. I believe Longman & Eagle and Chef Wentworth will be known far beyond the Logan Square neighborhood.

Single guy rating: 4.5 stars (Refined but casual)

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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