it gave me a lickin’, all that chicken…

Since moving to San Francisco, I have started contributing little bits here and there to the SF Weekly’s food blog called SFoodie. It has been fun, slightly lucrative, and a really cool way for me to get to know this completely food-crazed city. I have been so enthusiastic about contributing to SFoodie that recently my editor let me know that if I wanted, I could pitch a “Top Ten ______ of San Francisco” story. Thrilled at this prospect, I suggested a few top ten ideas I thought San Franciscans might be interested in (places to eat before a Giants game, sourdough bread, etc) in addition to a few things that I just really wanted to get paid to eat (chocolate chip cookies, fried chicken, local cheese, barbecue). Lo and behold her favorite of my ideas was fried chicken.

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what i learned today

I just finished watching El Bulli: Cooking in Progress, you know, the documentary about Ferran Adria and his fantastically famous restaurant in Spain, El Bulli. While the movie was entertaining, it wasn’t very informative in that there were no interviews, many images and conversations were left unexplained, and as far as chef-based documentaries are concerned, it has a ways to go to be as good as my current favorite Jiro Dreams of Sushi. I did learn a bit about what goes into making one of the most famous restaurants in the world work and how the chefs plan their absurd avant garde menus. But, I think the most important thing I learned from watching this film is that if Dave Matthews (yes, that Dave Matthews) had a love child with my old boss Thierry Rautureau (The Chef in the Hat)…

…it would probably look a lot like Ferran Adria.

That is what I learned today.

be coolinary news

• I knew it! Even aliens have sweet teeth! Sugar has been found in SPACE!
• I’ll see you at da club! Oh wait, I mean Applebees. Oh good, they are the same now. 
• I’m with Chipotle on this one: I hate pennies too.
• But I was really looking forward to eating at San Francisco’s hottest new restaurants Distilled Moustache and Reclaimed Wood & Subway Tiles!
• Because why drink coffee in the morning when you can drink waffle-flavored vodka?
• ATTENTION MOM! Apparently black licorice is not only totally gross, but can totally kill you.
• Soft-serve beer. It exists.
• Just my luck. Right after I move away from Seattle, this happens. 
• And in case you missed it, the best of the latest footage of real actors reading real Yelp reviews:

dutch baby, baby!

Has it been a while since you have had something warm from the oven for breakfast? Do you have some eggs, half and half, and flour in your kitchen? Do you have an oven? Do you like eating yummy things with your baby (your literal or figurative baby) while you sip coffee and browse your Instagram feed from the night before? If you answered yes to any of these questions then, boy, do I have the thing for you! It’s called a Dutch baby and it’s the perfect way to enjoy the morning with your literal or figurative baby! 

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candy flavor horoscope!

My idols over at The Stranger have created a Candy Flavor Horoscope and now I am mostly illegally posting it on my blog for you all to see (print publications can’t afford lawyers these days, right?). I have decided it is 100% accurate based solely on the fact that my mother is a black licorice lover and fed me microwaved apples as “dessert” when I was a child. Enjoy!

happy birthday julia!

Today marks what would have been Julia Child’s 100th birthday! And it seems quite obvious that to celebrate her legacy we should all treat ourselves to some delicious French food, preferably something whipped up from one of her cookbooks. I went ahead and made two of her trademark dishes from Mastering the Art of French Cooking: vichyssoise and boeuf bourguignon. 

So pop open your favorite bottle of French wine and read more to see how you can celebrate Julia and her unparalleled contribution to American cuisine. Or skip the recipes and just watch this amazing remix instead. Bon appetit!

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i like cookin’

There is a store down the street from my apartment that I recently discovered. I have walked by it approximately 600 billion times but had never checked it out until last Friday. It’s called Cookin’ and it’s a used kitchenware shop owned by a peculiar, although spectacular, woman named Judith Kaminsky.

In operation for over 25 years, she clearly is doing something right but apparently has received mixed reviews from customers about her inventory and peculiar approach to customer service. This article describes a bit about what you’ll encounter at her shop and this article goes on further to describe her mixed reviews. When I showed up to her store, I got a firsthand glimpse of her curious idiosyncrasies, but left her company a believer. 

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if i were an artist…

perhaps my stuff would look like this…

(Thanks Devin!) 

it’s a vegetable dish

Right now in the Bay Area, according to people that don’t live in a small SF apartment and therefore have a garden (a.k.a. not me), we are in prime zucchini harvesting time. And, also according to those same garden-havers, after a few weeks of this plentiful harvest, it’s quite possible that they just might be sick and tired of eating zucchini. There are only so many meals of roasted zucchini, baked zucchini, or zucchini soup a garden-haver can handle but, alas, the forever fruitful zucchini plant knows no bounds. If you happen to be related to a garden-haver suffering from this Garden Zucchini Overload (G.Z.O), you should relieve them of their zucchini burdens by taking some home and turning it into it’s most unrecognizable—and therefore most delicious—form: zucchini bread. 

Read more to see how to make it!

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gifts from the south

Just the other day, I received some gifts from a far away land. My friend Christopher is in graduate school all the way down in Alabama and was nice enough to endow our new kitchen in San Francisco with some Southern culinary secrets. 

White Lily Flour: Apparently, this is the flour widely known in the South for making their one-of-a-kind biscuits. Any southern Grandma worth her bridge mix knows that the lightest and flakiest biscuits are made with White Lily flour. Even my friend Tim’s Georgian MeMa (that’s Southern speak for Grandma) swears by it. I have yet to investigate firsthand the widely asserted claims that White Lily holds the secret to a perfect biscuit, but I imagine it’s true. And as we all know, MeMas are rarely wrong.

Cajun Chef Tabasco Peppers: According to my Californian-turned-Southern-gentleman friend, this stuff is tasty. He says you’re supposed to leave the peppers in the bottle and use the infused vinegar they are soaking in to spice up your meal. The vinegar is a radioactive florescent yellow color so I am thinking this stuff is probably pretty spicy. Also, it’s made in Louisiana so I am hoping Emeril has something to do with it. BAM!

Duke’s Mayonnaise: Now, I know what you are thinking. Why did my dear friend bring me mayonnaise. Well, because this isn’t just any ordinary mayonnaise my friends. I am by no means a mayo-ficionado (see what I did there?), but I have been known to enjoy some smooth and fatty goodness on a turkey sandwich or in a deviled egg just like anyone else. However, this mayonnaise in particular is exceptional. I should know—I ate a spoonful to make sure it was worthy of all the hype and I promise it is. However, this stuff is hard to find outside The South and the East Coast, and as you can seen here it’s hardly available anywhere west of the Mississippi. I guess the people at Duke’s aren’t fans of sharing, or blondes, or surfing, or states with corners. But lucky for me, I have a friend on the inside, a mayonnaise smuggler of sorts. And little do they know, he is from California (GASP!) and totally blonde (SHRIEK!).