Monthly Archives: August 2009

A Sunny Shade of Pasta

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A dazzling pasta that's as simple as it gets.

Whenever someone asks me what my favorite cookbooks are, they’re invariably taken aback when I answer.

Among my most adored cookbooks are the ones by Jean-Georges Vongerichten.

Yes, the chic four-star, classically trained Alsatian chef with a fondness for cooking in Prada loafers, who boasts a mega empire of restaurants around the world, including the swank Jean Georges in New York.

Yes, him.

I know you’re thinking precious dishes that take four pages to explain, days to complete, special equipment, and untold trips to many markets for esoteric ingredients.

But his recipes aren’t that at all.

Indeed, I’ve probably cooked more than a dozen recipes from his “Jean-Georges Cooking at Home with a Four-Star Chef” (Broadway) and his “Simple to Spectacular” (Broadway) books, and been won over by all of them. Surprisingly, from a chef of this caliber, the recipes are not overly complex. In fact, many of them are downright simple and thoroughly straightforward. Often, there also are inspiring flavor taste combinations, too, from this man who was nicknamed “the palate” at a young age for his uncanny ability to discern flavors.

His “Pasta with Saffron Oil” is emblematic of all of that. The recipe from “Simple to Spectacular” is indeed simple and spectacular.

It’s literally just pasta tossed with olive oil that’s been infused with saffron. But how beautifully they go together. The saffron turns the noodles a sunny shade of warm, orange-tinged gold, and lends a distinctive earthy, exotic flair.

I first served this pasta as a side dish, adding slices of piquillo peppers to give it a little more heft.

Pricey, imported tuna in olive oil.

The next time I made it, I not only added the piquillo peppers, but also some Spanish Italian tuna packed in oil to make the dish substantial enough for a main course.

I had picked up a jar of Consorcio Bonito del Norte, considered the “Caviar of Tuna,” at Corti Brothers Market in Sacramento while visiting my in-laws. According to Corti Brothers, this brand was founded in 1950 and is considered the premier tuna in a tin.

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A Secret Garden At Quattro in the Four Seasons Silicon Valley

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Flowering oregano in the secret garden.

It may not exactly possess storybook charm. Indeed, you might walk or drive past it without even knowing it’s there.

But if you look closely on the grounds of the swank Four Seasons Silicon Valley in East Palo Alto, you might just spot the secret garden that’s brimming with Meyer lemon trees, a Kaffir lime tree, lemon balm, lemongrass, lemon thyme, orange mint, pineapple basil, rosemary, and bronze fennel.

The Herb Garden at Quattro, as it has been so dubbed, serves an important purpose: It provides culinary inspiration for the chefs at the hotel’s Quattro restaurant, with its fresh, aromatic bounty just steps outside their door. It saves money, too. The garden now yields enough mint for the restaurant and bar that none ever has to be purchased. And when Executive Chef Alessandro Cartumini needs a few Kaffir lime leaves to roast fish, he just goes outside to pick some, rather than being forced to order a larger quantity than necessary from a supplier.

Cartumini planted the garden a year ago just around the corner from the restaurant, in a 100-square-foot, concrete-walled berm that’s part of the hotel’s landscaping. Like an Italian Johnny Appleseed, he’d like to sprinkle a few more seeds here and there on the hotel grounds, but he laughs that the landscaping crew might not go for that.

Executive Chef Alessandro Cartumini (left) and Sous Chef Edward Higgins (right) inspect the garden's citrus trees.

The fresh herbs are used in many dishes, most noticeably in the chef’s special tasting menu, where every course gets a flourish of them.

“It really gets cooks more in touch and makes them have more respect for the food,” Cartumini says of the on-site garden.

Adds sous chef Edward Higgins, “You can cut what you need five minutes before. It really preserves the flavor that way.”

If you haven’t visited the contemporary Italian restaurant since it opened three and a half years ago, many changes have occurred.

Higgins joined the team late last year. The Boston native, who worked at Craft Restaurant in New York, Insieme restaurant in New York, and Ekki Bar & Grill at the Four Seasons Hotel  Tokyo, has brought an international flair and modern sensibility.

House-made ricotta for the house-made bread.

The food, once a bit rustic, is decidedly more refined now, positioning the restaurant as more a destination dining spot, Cartumini explains. The restaurant also has a new-found emphasis on local and house-made. It shows in the creamy ricotta that’s made daily to serve in place of butter with the freshly baked focaccia brought to the table.  All the pastas are made in-house now, too, with the Ferrari of pasta machines, which set the restaurant back a cool $13,000.

The pricey pasta machine at work.

Filling Lombardian ravioli.

Gnocchetti.

When I asked Piemonte-native, Cartumini, why the pasta machine, with its 1.5-horsepower engine, is so pricey, he deadpanned:

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Food Gal Contest: Winner of the Morton’s Steakhouse Dinner, Plus A New Dinner Prize Up For Grabs

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Beets with pickled egg salad at the Tavern at Lark Creek. (Photo courtesy of John A. Benson)

Talk about fierce competition for the prize of dinner for two at any Morton’s The Steakhouse in the world. I sure am glad my husband, Meat Boy, had the responsibility of choosing the winner this time around, because I would have been hard pressed to pick just one from all the incredible entries submitted.

The winner of this ultimate carnivore contest will be revealed at the end of this post. But before you scroll down like mad, you’ll first want to know about the delicious new contest that starts today.

The Tavern at Lark Creek in Larkspur is kindly offering a prize of dinner for two (a total value of $75, which can include beverages, too). The contest for this prize is open to anyone in the world, as long as you can find your way to the restaurant in Marin County, Calif. within the next year. That’s because the dining certificate is good — you guessed it — for one full year.

A muffaletta mouthful at the Tavern at Lark Creek. (Photo courtesy of John A. Benson)

So what do you have to do to win? Read on.

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Enticing Events to Savor

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The fun bar at Aquarius restaurant. (Photo courtesy of Matthew Millman)

How’s this for one cool looking bar?

You’ll find it at the new Aquarius restaurant in the newly renovated Santa Cruz Dream Inn in Santa Cruz.

The modern American bistro is headed up by Chef Philippe Breneman, formerly of the Ventana Inn and Spa at Big Sur, who’s all about sustainable seafood and seasonal, organic produce. Look for California white bass with udon noodles, lychee glaze and miso-truffle broth; and seared Pacific cod with white corn succotash, smoked bacon, and mache.

The 2,900 square-foot restaurant features wraparound windows to take advantage of the views of Monterey Bay. A whimsical canopy of handmade surfboards and teardrop-shaped latticework lamps hang from above to give the restaurant a carefree attitude.

Leave it to Napa Valley’s celeb chef, Michael Chiarello, to know how to throw a shindig.

Aug. 9 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., he will host a “Mid-Summer Zin n’ Ribs Party” on the lawn outside his Bottega restaurant in Yountville.

Meet celeb Chef Michael Chiarello. (Photo courtesy of Phil Harvey)

Chiarello, a finalist on this season’s “Top Chef Masters” on Bravo TV, will sign cookbooks and wine bottles at 11:30 a.m., then host a 1 p.m. cooking demonstration.

The menu includes Chiarello’s signature barbecued honey espresso ribs, and Chiarello Family Vineyard’s Zinfandel.

Tickets are $30 per person for those ages 21 and older; $15 per person for those under age 21. Proceeds benefit Clinic Ole, and the Land Trust of Napa County’s Connolly Ranch.

For more fun with chefs, head to San Francisco’s Union Square, Aug. 6-9, for “SF Chefs. Food. Wine.” The multi-event extravaganza features a bevy of the Bay Area’s best chefs and sommeliers heading up cooking demos, wine seminars, food panels, grand tastings, and special gala dinners.

Tickets range from $40 to $700 for individual events and multi-day passes.

Chef Ross Hanson and his wife of Restaurant James Randall. (Photo courtesy of Laura Ness)

The town of Los Gatos invites you to try its many highly regarded restaurants during “Sizzling Summer Restaurant Week,” Aug. 5-12.

Participating restaurants will feature special three-course prix-fixe menus for $25, $35 or $45. California Cafe, Cin-Cin Wine Bar & Restaurant, Crimson, Forbes Mill Steakhouse, I Gatti, Nick’s On Main, Restaurant James Randall, Tapestry, Three Degrees, Trevese, Viva, and the Wine Cellar are among those who will be participating. Reservations can be made through the restaurants directly or through OpenTable.

If you’re a fan of “Top Chef” and in the Los Angeles-area, you’ll be interested to know that “Top Chef” contestant Stefan Richter, whom fans loved to hate, is expected to open his first restaurant, Stefan’s at LA Farm in Santa Monica, on Aug. 6.

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“I Don’t Really Cook….”

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Chewy Tteokbokki (top left), and Joanne's Mom's savory omelet (bottom center).

If you’re like me, you have friends or family members who hem, haw, and timidly declare time and again, “I don’t really cook….”

But if you poke, prod, and nudge enough, you realize that, yes, they actually can and do cook.

And quite well, thank you very much — whether they care to admit it to themselves and the rest of the world or not.

Take my friend, Joanne.

You may know her work from the glorious photos she used to take for the San Jose Mercury News, for the poignant pics she now takes for her wedding photography business, and for the lovely shot she took of me on my “About” page.

Joanne is a professional photographer. She is most gifted and skilled. She takes great pride in the work that she does behind the camera. Indeed, if she — instead of yours truly — had snapped the photo above, it would have looked far more gorgeous than my feeble attempt.

Yet get her talking about cooking and she is as bashful as can be. Listen to her words, and she’ll have you believe she can’t make a thing, that turning on a burner is beyond her capabilities, and that her home kitchen is a foreign land she dares not step into too often.

But taste her food, and you realize the truth: She sure can cook.

Joanne, who is Korean-American, invited me and our other friend, Lisa, over recently for a home-cooked Korean lunch. Together, we make up three-quarters of the Woo Hoo Wednesday Club (the fourth was otherwise occupied). Lisa and I, who are both Chinese-American, took copious notes, since Korean food is not a cuisine we are intimately familiar with. Joanne scurried about in the kitchen, as we peppered her with questions.

Her favorite local Korean market?

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