Monthly Archives: October 2012

Afternoon Tea at Craftsman and Wolves, Boozy Otter Pops & More

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Not your ordinary afternoon tea at Craftsman and Wolves. (Photo by William Werner)

Craftsman & Wolves’ Spin on Afternoon Tea

When the very creative Pastry Chef William Werner decided to offer up a new afternoon tea at his Craftsman & Wolves patisserie in San Francisco, you knew it wasn’t going to be the usual staid cucumber sandwich affair.

Instead think apple gruyere scones, buckwheat crumpets, clotted cream and olive oil curd.

Not to mention beet root madelines and salt cod with brioche.

Choose either a pot of Naivetea’s oolong or tisane to go along with it all.

The menu will change with the seasons.

Afternoon tea, available Monday through Wednesday from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., is $22 per person or $40 for two. Reservations are recommended by calling (415) 913-7713.

Some of the creative sweets and savories served with tea at Craftsman and Wolves. (Photo by William Werner)

Veteran San Francisco Chef Carlo Middione Hosts Two Special Dinners

Long-time Chef Carlo Middione and art connoisseur Daniel Friedlander are teaming up for two nights of wining and dining amid magnificent artwork in an 1908 landmark building in San Francisco, Oct. 18 and Oct. 20.

Middione who for decades owned the stellar Vivande and Vivande Porta Via, both in San Francisco, lost most of his senses of smell and taste four years ago following a car accident in which his small sedan was broadsided by another vehicle. Despite that, he’s still able to cook rather magnificently, as evidenced by the lunch he cooked for me when I profiled him two years ago for a story in the San Francisco Chronicle.

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A Taste of Burma at Betelnut in San Francisco

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Author Naomi Duguid and Chef Alex Ong conferring before the start of the Burmese dinner at Betelnut.

World traveler and global food writer, Naomi Duguid, calls her newest cookbook a “lucky miracle.”

Indeed, the timing couldn’t be more fortuitous than now for her “Burma: Rivers of Flavor” (Artisan), a book that’s been in the works for four years.

If the world’s collective eye wasn’t already drawn to this sovereign state in Southeast Asia, also known as Myanmar, it surely is now that it is transitioning after five decades of military rule. Its most famous democracy activist, Nobel Peace Prize-winning San Suu Kyi, finally freed in 2010 after 15 years of house arrest, was elected this year to a seat in that nation’s Parliament, as were 43 members of the National League for Democracy.

As Duguid told a dinner crowd of about 30 at Betelnut in San Francisco last week, she’s grateful to have experienced the country’s “before” and “after” transformation, having visited most recently late last year.

“It was the difference of people being afraid and then not being afraid any more,” she says. “You saw people chatting and arguing in the streets. It was normal, but it wasn’t normal. Now, they have to find their way to other progress.”

Duguid was the guest of honor at the dinner, hosted by the Asia Society, the global non-profit that supports educational, business, arts, culture and policy projects in Asia. Betelnut Chef Alex Ong, a board member of the Asia Society, did the honors in the kitchen, crafting a multi-course, family-style dinner of dishes featured in Duguid’s book.

Tomato and spinach salad strewn with fried shallots.

A fragrant fish soup with coriander.

Burma is bordered by India, Bangladesh, China, Laos and Thailand. Its cuisine reflects all those influences, too. Duguid put it best: “The flavors are layered rather than coming at you as one big wall.”

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Hakka-Style Halibut

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A taste from my childhood, courtesy of the new "The Hakka Cookbook.''

I’d like to raise a virtual glass of bubbly to Linda Lau Anusasananan, whom I’ve known for years since her days as the recipe editor for Sunset magazine.

I’d like to congratulate her on a job well done for finally publishing her “The Hakka Cookbook: Chinese Soul Food from Around the World” (University of California Press), of which I recently received a review copy.

It’s a true labor of love and deliciousness that Lau Anusasananan spent more than five years working on. Her brother, artist Alan Lau, did the lovely illustrations of ingredients in the book.

For Chinese-Americans like myself, we’re all the better for its publication, too, because it includes so many recipes for dishes that we grew up with and still crave to this day.

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At Bushido in Mountain View, There’s More than Meets the Eye

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Bushido's very clever sushi. Can you guess what it is?

Executive Chef Isamu Kanai is a very, very clever man.

When he impishly set a small plate of nigiri sushi before my husband and I one night when we were invited to dine as guests at his downtown Mountain View restaurant, Bushido, he asked us to guess what type of fish it was.

We scrutinized the fleshy white pieces that had been crosshatched, then brushed with a sweet soy sauce and placed atop mounds of rice. We took a bite. The texture was ever so chewy, much like raw cuttlefish which it resembled. But the taste was slightly sweet.

Could it be some other type of cuttlefish we’d never had before?

We couldn’t have been more wrong.

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Scenes from the Third Annual Foster Farms Fresh Chicken Cooking Contest

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A chicken dish worth of $10,000.

If you were a chicken, the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone in St. Helena was a dangerous place to be last Friday.

But if you were a cook, gunning to show your prowess with the country’s most popular protein, you couldn’t have picked a better venue.

The occasion?

The third annual Foster Farms Fresh Chicken Cooking Contest, which pitted six finalists (two each from California, Washington state and Oregon) against one another for the grand prize of $10,000, plus a year’s supply of Foster Farms chicken.

It was my third time judging this contest, and each year the recipes seem to get better and better.

The judging panel (L to R): Chef Ken Frank, the Food Gal, Chef John Ash, Lynn Char Bennett, and Liam Mayclem.

My fellow judges were: Chef John Ash, host of KSRO-AM “The Good Food Hour”; Lynn Char Bennett, test kitchen director for the San Francisco Chronicle; Chef Ken Frank of La Toque in Napa; and Liam Mayclem, host of CBS’ “Eye on the Bay.”

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