October | 2022 | Food Gal

Monthly Archives: October 2022

Chewy-licious Blueberry & Apricot Bars

Posted on October 7, 2022 by foodgal Leave a comment

Chewy, sweet, and loaded with dried fruit, there's a wonderful old-fashioned quality about these tasty bars. — Chewy, sweet, and loaded with dried fruit, there’s a wonderful old-fashioned quality about these tasty bars.

There’s a lovely wholesome taste to these chewy-soft fruit bars, which is not surprising, given that the recipe hails from a baker who got his start selling farmhouse-baked treats out of an old red truck.

“Blueberry & Apricot Bars” is a recipe in the new “The Red Truck Bakery Farmhouse Cookbook” (Clarkson Potter), of which I received a review copy.

It was written by Brian Noyes, founder of the Red Truck Bakery in Marshall, VA, who trained at the Culinary Institute of America in New York and at the King Arthur Baking School in Vermont.

In his previous career as the art director at the Washington Post and Smithsonian magazines, he would spend his free time baking pies and breads at his Virginia Piedmont farmhouse, which he sold from that vintage red truck that he bought from none other than designer Tommy Hilfiger.

Noyes now operates two Red Truck bakeries, both in historic buildings, and has fans in Oprah Winfrey and Barack Obama.

Dining Outside At Occitania

Posted on October 5, 2022 by foodgal Leave a comment

Chef-Owner Paul Canales thinks of his new Occitania restaurant in Oakland as the light to his more moody-vibed Duende that’s a mere five blocks away.

Certainly, he — and the rest of us — were badly in need of a little more levity when work commenced on this restaurant in October 2020 during the throes of the pandemic.

Taking inspiration from the Occitania linguistic region of Southern France, Occitania opened its doors in June of this year on the property of the Kissel Uptown Oakland, a Hyatt brand.

Chef-Owner Paul Canales in front of the bar at his newest restaurant.

At the end of August, the restaurant added a few sidewalk tables, which is where I dined recently when I was invited in as a guest of the restaurant. The tables sport large umbrellas for shade, with heaters forthcoming.

The Fun of Grilled Sticky Rice Skewers with Peanut Sauce

Posted on October 3, 2022 by foodgal 2 comments

For fans of sticky rice, this is the bomb.

If you are a sucker for the crispy, crackly texture of Persian tahdig or the smoky, charred exterior of Japanese grilled onigiri, then you’re sure to go wild for “Grilled Sticky Rice Skewers with Peanut Sauce.”

I know I sure did.

In fact, this recipe, which supposedly feeds four, was roundly devoured in one fell swoop by just my husband and I.

Because I’m sure two regular people can — and will — easily lay waste to this dish, I changed the number of servings to reflect that in the recipe below.

It comes from “Rice Is Life” (Chronicle Books), of which I received a review copy. The cookbook is by Caryl Levine and Ken Lee, the founders of Lotus Foods, the Richmond, CA company that imports rice grown on small family farms in Asia to the United States.

In business since 1995, Lotus Foods definitely knows all things rice after pioneering its black Forbidden Rice in 1995 and introducing the first certified organic jasmine rice in the United States.