Perbacco Welcomes Special Guest Chef Jan. 14

Chef Tony Mantuano of Chicago’s acclaimed Spiaggia and a recent contender on “Top Chef Masters” will join forces with Executive Chef Staffan Terje at Perbacco Ristorante in San Francisco for “Winter in Piemonte” — a special dinner Jan. 14 to benefit the James Beard Foundation.

The Perbacco dinner, which starts at 6 p.m., will feature four courses paired with wines. A live auction also will take place.

Price is $165 per person or $150 per person for members of the James Beard Foundation.

“Dine About Town San Francisco” Time

The 11th annual “Dine About Town San Francisco” restaurant promotion returns Jan. 15-31, in which more than 100 restaurants will be offering up either/and two-course lunch menus for $17.95 and three-course dinners for $34.95.

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After imbibing perhaps a little too much on New Year’s Eve weekend, you’re probably in dire need of a quenching drink right about now.

How about one made from the exotic dragon fruit?

The fruit, which looks a bit like a hot pink flower bulb from outer space that’s about to unfurl who knows what, is the primary ingredient in Pitaya Plus, a new juice drink launched a year ago in San Diego.

Company founder Chuck Casano was working for a non-profit in Nicaragua when he got his first taste of pitaya or dragon fruit. He was so smitten with it and the people there that he wanted to forge an even greater bond to bring a taste of Nicaragua to the United States, while helping employ impoverished Nicaraguans in his new venture.

The result is Pitaya Plus, two juice blends high in Vitamin D, dietary fiber and other nutrients. There are 70 calories per 8-ounce serving. They’re sold in more than 100 Whole Foods nationwide, where they rank as having the lowest sugar level of any juice on the shelves there, according to a Pitaya Plus spokesperson.

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These cookies are fig-tastic.

Oh, they’re not like your familiar Newtons with an abundant filling of sticky fig paste. Nope, instead the dried figs in these cookies are ground up and incorporated into the cookie dough, itself.

As a result, the figs take on a more subtle quality, especially when mixed with ground pecans.

The recipe is from “The Gourmet Cookie Book” (Houghton Mifflin), of which I received a review copy last year. The book features the now defunct magazine’s best cookie recipe of each year from 1941-2009. These “Fig Cookies” hark back to 1964. A true oldie but goodie.

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I don’t know about you, but a gift at this time of year of something precious and sweet, all tied up with a bow in a glass jar is as wonderful as something in a familiar little blue box.

OK, almost as wonderful.

“Honey-Preserved Clementines” could not be easier, either, especially for a can-o-phobe like myself, who admittedly gets a little nervous around water-bath equipment.

But since these jars get stored in the refrigerator, you can skip that sort of, kind of scary step.

This recipe, published in the Dec. 2009/Jan. 2010 issue of Fine Cooking magazine, comes from my friends and prolific cookbook authors, Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough.

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KONA, HAWAII — When you think of the Kona district on the Big Island, it’s hard not to think of coffee immediately.

The first coffee was planted in Kona around 1828 by missionary Samuel Ruggles, where it thrived because of the mineral-rich volcanic soil.

It is now Kona’s most famous crop and probably its most expensive. You’ll find top-grade Kona coffee selling for upwards of $38 a pound. Don’t be fooled by the so-called “Kona Blends.” Yes, they’re cheaper — but for a reason. The blends are required to contain only 10 percent Kona coffee. The rest can be made up of much cheaper coffee from elsewhere around the world.

Kona coffee may get even more expensive in the future, as farmers have had to do battle with a pesky, virulent beetle that has been attacking the berries for the past couple of years. Moreover, just like farming elsewhere, it remains a hard profession that younger generations are turning their backs on.

Tom Greenwell is a fourth-generation grower. His great-grandfather, British adventurer, Henry Nicholas Greenwell, was one of the first exporters of Kona coffee in the late 1800s. Today, Tom Greenwell carries on the family tradition, overseeing Greenwell Farms, where the planting and picking are still done by hand on 35 lush acres.

Recently, I had a chance to tour the farm with Tom Greenwell during my trip to Hawaii, courtesy of the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau.

Before you even stick your head into the roasting building, the sweet aroma of roasty-toasty beans hits you. It’s like coffee syrup aromatherapy.

Greenwell Farms grows about 280,000 pounds of coffee annually. Small white flowers begin to bloom on the coffee trees in by February, followed by green berries in April. From August through February, the red fruit, known as a “cherry” (because it looks similar to one) has ripened and is ready for picking.

The fruit is separated from the seed or bean with a machine known as a pulper. The beans are fermented overnight, then rinsed before being spread out on a rooftop to dry for at least 30 days. After that, the beans go into the roaster for about 15 minutes.

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