Category Archives: Chefs

New Premium Organic and Humane-Certified Pastries & Food Gal Giveaway

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Mushroom-thyme savory scone from Pastry Smart.

For the past five years, Pastry Chef Mark Ainsworth has been crafting organic pastries, breads and cookies for a number of San Francisco Bay Area hotels and restaurants, including the Carneros Inn in Napa and the Lodge at Pebble Beach.

Now, you can enjoy his Pastry Smart products in your own home by picking them up at Mollie Stone’s, Real Food stores, Piazza’s and Shokolaat restaurant in Palo Alto, where he is the CFO.

Ainsworth was previously executive pastry chef at the Lodge at Pebble Beach and the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco. His Pastry Smart company is thought to be the first pastry producer in the United States to be American Humane Certified. The company also works exclusively with organic dairy Clover-Stornetta Farms.

Recently, I had a chance to sample a variety of the baked goods, which are made in a commercial kitchen in San Mateo.

Just reheat these in the oven for a few minutes and you're good to go.

The retail line includes par-baked rolls that only need five minutes in a warm oven to enjoy at home. The challah slider rolls baked up crisp on the outside, tender on the inside, and buttery tasting, but not overly rich. They’d be great for dinner rolls for company or to stuff slices of ham into for Easter brunch. The multi-grain rolls had a nice nutty taste and a crunchy texture from the sesame and sunflower seeds that cover their exteriors. A package of six is about $6.99 each.

Lemon cookies that you'll never guess are vegan.

The cookies are fist-sized and perfectly round — like lunch-bag staples from childhood. My favorite — surprisingly — was the vegan lemon shortbread. Made with vegan shortening, the cookies are very crumbly with a delightful topping of crunchy, crystallized sugar. Take a bite and they just melt in your mouth.  I’m not even vegan, and I couldn’t stop eating these. A box of six cookies is $6.95.

Pastry Smart also makes three types of savory scones, which would be perfect for lunch or dinner with a salad and soup. The curry scone is full pungent cumin seeds, curry powder and paprika.  Like the curry one, the mushroom thyme scone has a fluffy, light crumb, but with a more herbal, earthy profile.

Each square-sized scone is perforated into fourths to divide it easily into four bite-size pieces. But most folks, I’m sure, will see it and think they’re meant to eat the entire square. Just realize, though, that the calorie count on the back of the package is 130 calories for a fourth of that scone in your hand, and not the entire thing.

Cheddar corn cake with the kick of jalapeno.

Same is true with the corn cakes — tender, cakey, corn bread squares that are about half an inch in height. The calorie count for these is 170 per quarter cake, though, few people are going to stop at just a quarter of one, especially when they come in flavors such as blueberry, and cheddar jalapeno.

Contest: One lucky Food Gal reader will win a sampler of Pastry Smart goodies, which includes rolls, cookies, corn cakes and scones. Entries, limited to those in the continental United States, will be accepted through midnight PST April 9. Winner will be announced April 11.

How to win?

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Oliveto Keeps On Going Strong

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Crudo of local halibut with shaved purple artichokes.

Twenty-five years is a very long time in restaurant years.

But that’s just how long Oliveto in Oakland has managed to not only survive, but to flourish.

A parade of talented chefs have manned the kitchen over the years, including Paul Bertolli (who went on to found his fabulous Fra’Mani salumi company in Berkeley), and most recently, Paul Canales, who was at Oliveto for the past five years.

In December 2010, Jonah Rhodehamel took over as head chef, after previous stints as sous chef at three San Francisco establishments:  La Folie, Zinnia, and Americano.

He’s already started putting his stamp on the rustic, Italian fare here. He started a new dry-aging program to age rib-eyes for three weeks to concentrate their beefy flavor.

Recently, I had a chance to try his menu as a guest of the restaurant.

Enter the doors, and to your right will be the cozy, more casual cafe. If you go up the stairs, you’ll find the warm, inviting restaurant with its bank of windows that overlook lively College Avenue.

My husband and I started with a crudo of local halibut ($13), clean and bright tasting, with the slight bitterness of puntarella chicory and shaved purple artichokes.

The prettiest salad ever.

Rhodehamel also sent out a roasted root vegetable salad ($11.50) that was as gorgeous as a still-life painting. This seemingly simple dish was spectacular, with the carrots, beets and turnips roasted in salt to concentrate their flavor and sugars, and render them tender-crisp. Even an avowed vegetable hater would have a hard time not eating every last bite.

Oliveto has long been known for its house-made pastas, now made with local flours, so we just had to indulge.

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New Cupcake Bakery, Food Truck Gathering in San Jose & Much More

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A chocolate cupcake from Sinful Bliss. (Photo courtesy of the bakery)

Who’s Hungry for Cupcakes?

Downtown Pleasant Hill welcomes a sinful addition in April — Sinful Bliss Cupcakes, to be exact.

Owner Tammie Parnell believes in celebrating life’s everyday moments with something sweet. After surviving breast cancer, being laid off from her banking job and watching her husband lose his own job, she decided to bet the future on her love of baking.

Her cupcake shop offers a dozen flavors, including chocolate peanut butter cup, Nutella, raspberry and Red Velvet cheesecake. Mini ones are $2 each; regular size ones are $3.25 each. Parnell also does custom designs upon request.

Sinful Bliss Cupcakes will celebrate its grand opening at 10 a.m. April 17 with a ribbon-cutting and free tastings. The event is also a fund-raiser for the Pleasant Hill Middle School Art Department, which will receive 100 percent of that day’s cupcake profits. The students will be creating inspired artwork, which will be displayed at the bakery.

Morever, during the grand opening, children are invited to make their own cupcake design. Fifty of the winning designs will be made and sold on April 23, with profits of the sales going to Pleasant Hill Elementary School.

Custom cupcakes from Sinful Bliss. (Photo courtesy of the bakery)

A Food Truck Meet-Up in San Jose

Aren’t you tired of hearing about all those great food truck gatherings in that city to the North and that other one to the East?

Well, South Bay foodies, you don’t have to feel left out anymore. Here’s the event you’ve been waiting for –  SJEats: A Moveable Feast, noon to 8 p.m. April 2 in the Fallon House parking lot at Saint John Street and Almaden Avenue in San Jose.

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The Kapow of Absinthe Cake & A Dave Lebovitz Book Giveaway

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Looks so innocent, doesn't it? But wait until you get a taste of the glaze. Yowza!

So, you might not want to get behind the wheel of a car after eating a slice of this unique cake.

Or try to recite the alphabet backwards. Or even attempt walking a straight line.

OK, I exaggerate — but just a little.

You see, this cake has absinthe in it. Yes, the potent Green Fairy, the once illicit spirit that was once thought to be hallucinogenic (a notion that’s since been debunked) that’s typically 100-plus proof.

The recipe is from “The Sweet Life In Paris” (Broadway Books) by cookbook author and blogger extraordinaire, David Lebovitz.

There’s 1/4 cup of absinthe in the batter, which largely mellows through baking. But there’s also a glaze of sugar mixed with another 1/4 cup of absinthe that’s brushed over the cake after it cools, giving it the appearance of a winter white icing. This glaze is so wicked strong that my husband wouldn’t even let me give him a few slices to take to his colleagues at work, because he feared they’d all end up tipsy.

This moist, anise-forward cake is made with a little almond flour or stone-ground cornmeal. However, you also can use pistachio meal, which will give it a faint yellow-green tinge like that of absinthe.

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Basking in the Glow of Quince

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Rack of rabbit done to perfection at Quince.

Quince, the much-heralded Italian restaurant in the Jackson Square neighborhood of San Francisco, is the kind of place where, on any night of the week, you might find the likes of food cognoscenti Ruth Reichl, and actors, James Spader, Roy Romano and Peter Krause, dining.

Because at this gorgeous, historic 1907 brick and timber building, it’s easy to feel like a glam celebrity, even if you’re not one at all.

That’s because Quince treats you with such utmost care that you can’t help feeling a bit special.

After hearing so many friends and chefs rave about the restaurant, which is a short stroll from the Club Quarters San Francisco hotel, my husband and I finally decided to splurge on dinner there recently.

There’s a warm glow to the restaurant, with its exposed brick walls, artsy chandeliers and gallery-ready, contemporary paintings. The waitstaff — both the men and women — are nattily attired in sharp, dark suits, giving them the air of serious professionalism.

They provide some of the best and most seamless service I’ve seen in a long time. Each and every time that a server pours a wine for you to taste, he/she will tilt the bottle at a particular angle just so as you try a sip — and continue holding it that way until you’re done — all the better for you to examine the label more closely.

Although two tasting menus are usually offered each night, we decided to order off the a la carte menu instead.

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