Category Archives: Chefs

Fall Festivities In the South Bay/Peninsula

Gamble Garden's live Zoom class will show you how to decorate a pumpkin as beautiful as these. (Photo courtesy of Gamble Garden)
Gamble Garden’s live Zoom class will show you how to decorate a pumpkin as beautiful as these. (Photo courtesy of Gamble Garden)

Take Pumpkin Decorating To New Heights

If you’ve already done spooky and campy with your jack-o’-lantern in Halloweens past, now’s the time to give chic a try.

Palo Alto’s Gamble Garden will host a “Pumpkin Decorating With Henna” online class, 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. Oct. 24.

Artist Priti Aggarwal will lead this live Zoom class in the Indian art of mehndi, explaining its history and cultural applications, and guiding you to decorate your own pumpkin with custom-made henna paste free of chemicals or dyes.

All supplies, including the pumpkin and the henna, will be provided and must be picked up beforehand at the Gamble Garden.

The class is recommended for those ages 8 on up. Price is $40 per person. For more info or to register, click here.

“Dine Downtown San Jose”

This year’s “Dine Downtown San Jose” is extended through Nov. 15, and includes dine-in, dine-out, and to-go specials, making it easier than ever to help support local restaurants during this challenging time.

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Where I’ve Been Getting Takeout of Late, Part 10

Say hello to my little friend: Blue Jasmine Tea ice cream from Tin Pot Creamery.
Say hello to my little friend: Blue Jasmine Tea ice cream from Tin Pot Creamery.

Tin Pot Creamery, Palo Alto, Los Altos, Campbell, and San Mateo

Does ice cream qualify as takeout?

Oh, heck yes!

Especially when it’s from Tin Pot Creamery.

Founder Becky Sunseri has been obsessed with ice cream since she was a kid, when she’d even hunker down with a bowl of it in winter while sitting atop the heater in her family’s home in Illinois. At 15, she playfully wrote her first ice cream menu, too.

A former pastry cook at Facebook, Sunseri makes a point to use the best local ingredients in her ice creams and sorbets in creative yet highly accessible flavors.

Now stashed in my freezer at home.
Now stashed in my freezer at home.

Walk up to the window to order a cone or cup or pint to take home. Or order online ahead of time, then go to the “pick-up” window for speedier service.

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Three New Reads To Sink Your Teeth Into

“Eat A Peach” By David Chang

It’s taken four years of procrastination, endless missed deadlines, and the overcoming of persistent personal demons for celebrated Chef David Chang to write “Eat a Peach” (Clarkson Potter). But it was well worth the wait.

The chef who grew a bare-bones New York ramen joint into the global juggernaut now known as Momofuku has written an honest, earnest, and raw memoir. Whether you’re a fan of the man or of his restaurants, you won’t be able to put this down.

His meteoric rise in the industry might seem like calculated genius. But in reality, he writes, much of it happened by accident and in spite of being undiagnosed for years as bipolar, which manifested itself in blazing rage, alarming tantrums, and the punching of several walls, and not to mention suicidal thoughts.

You’ll learn how the PBS series “The Mind of A Chef” came about after its first iteration failed; how and why Chang started — and closed — his Lucky Peach magazine; how his hiring of Christina Tosi as both pastry chef and protocol specialist saved his butt; and how getting married and becoming a father have grounded him like never before.

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Alice Medrich’s Walnut-Crusted Oat Flour Genoise

A simple, soft, satisfying cake when times are anything but.
A simple, soft, satisfying cake when times are anything but.

Could this year get any more surreal?

At a time when life seems more chaotic than ever and more inconceivable by the second, that’s when we need to pause, take a deep breath, close our eyes — and have a piece of cake.

Yes, times like this call for equal measures of comfort, sweetness, and escape.

Cake does all of that.

Not one dressed to the nines in layers, swirls, swooshes, and a flourish of doodads.

But a simple one that’s honest and straightforward — characteristics we sadly seem to be in short supply of these days.

“Walnut-Crusted Oat Flour Genoise” embodies all of that. It’s just one layer. It’s baked in one pan. It doesn’t even require frosting. It’s also gluten-free — but doesn’t taste like it, if you get my drift.

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Do Yourself A Favor: Get A Taste of Shuk Shuka

Shuk Shuka's amazing Nutella babka (front) and challah (back).
Shuk Shuka’s amazing Nutella babka (front) and challah (back).

Yeasty, buttery, tightly coiled with generous ripples of Nutella throughout, this babka might very well have stolen my heart, not to mention my stomach.

It’s the handiwork of Shuk Shuka, a San Francisco online marketplace and kitchen specializing in Middle Eastern foodstuffs.

“Shuk” means “market” in both Hebrew and Arabic. Founder Inon Tzadok, who grew up in Israel and Yemen wanted to evoke the traditional flavors of Middle Eastern market stalls in his products. His sister, baker Yael Tzadok is responsible for the wonderful baked goods.

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