Category Archives: Food TV

Hazelnut Heaven

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Crumbly scones with a swirl of hazelnut spread.

That’s exactly what these scones are.

Aren’t you just getting giddy looking at how thoroughly packed with crunchy hazelnuts they are?

One of my favorite baking books from 2008 was “Baked: New Frontiers in Baking” (Stewart, Tabori & Chang) by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito, who own the Baked bakery in Brooklyn, NY. So I was thrilled to hear that the duo just brought out a sequel to that book. “Baked Explorations” (Stewart, Tabori & Chang), which offers 75 more recipes for irresistible homespun baked goods that are equally straightforward to make and yield exceptionally spot-on flavors.

The recipe for “Nutella Scones” caught my eye immediately after I received a review copy of the new book. Made with Nutella, toasted hazelnuts and cocoa powder, these beauties bake up as dark as a pan of brownies.

They look like they’d be too rich and heavy to enjoy for breakfast or brunch. But trust me, looks are deceiving. The crumb is actually quite light, crisp and crumbly. And the cocoa powder adds a hint of chocolate without hitting you over the head senseless with it.

Hazelnut spread with the consistency of natural peanut butter.In fact, I purposely played up the hazelnut factor by substituting hazelnut spread for the Nutella, since I happened to have a sample can of Love ‘n’ Bake’s Hazelnut Praline in my pantry. Like Nutella, it is made from roasted hazelnuts and sugar, but the one difference is there is no cocoa in it. Instead, it’s a pure nut spread with the thickness and consistency of natural peanut butter.

With any scone dough, be sure not to over-mix or else you’ll end up with leaden, tough baked goods. Never a good thing.

A generous amount of toasted, chopped hazelnuts gets stirred into the dough, before it is gently patted into a rectangle. A bit of Nutella or hazelnut praline paste is spread on top of the dough, before it is rolled up jelly roll-style. Then, you stand the roll of dough up on one end and gently flatten it down until you have a thick disk. Cut out wedges and bake.

When the scones come out of the oven, heat a little more Nutella or hazelnut praline paste in the microwave until the texture is more pourable, then drizzle over the top of each scone like glaze on cake.

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Five Heavy-Hitting Cookbook Authors to Visit the Bay Area

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Maybe those of you in the South Bay haven’t had a chance to eat the fried chicken and popovers at Wayfare Tavern in San Francisco yet. But you can still meet its chef-owner up close and personal.

Tyler Florence will be in San Jose at 5 p.m. Oct. 19 at Sur La Table in Santana Row for a Q&A session and a book signing of his latest cookbook, “Tyler Florence Family Meal” (Rodale Books).

The new cookbook is a collection of recipes he makes for family, including his wife and kids, as well as restaurant colleagues.

Attendees are encourage to pre-purchase the cookbook, available beginning on Oct. 12.

His fellow Food Network darling, Rachael Ray, also will be stopping by Sur La Table in Santana Row in San Jose at 3 p.m. Dec. 11.

Ray will be signing copies of her new cookbook, “Rachael Ray’s Look + Cook” (Clarkson Potter), filled with 100 recipes, each with step-by-step, full-color photos that illustrate how to create the dish.

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A Welcome (and Delicious) Red Wine Stain

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Red wine stains usually send shivers of horror through hosts and hostesses.

Visions of our best white tablecloths or favorite eggshell-hued couch being ruined for life tend to torment us.

But here’s one case where the staining power of your favorite red varietal is welcomed, indeed.

Take a close look at that plate of pasta above. No, it’s not whole-wheat pasta. In fact, those noodles started out as regular beige-colored strands. Take another look. Go on. You might even notice a bit of burgundy-purple tint to the noodles. It’s not your eyes playing funny tricks on you. And it’s not my meager Photoshop abilities at work, either.

Nope. It’s the magic of Zinfandel wine. An entire 750-ml bottle to be exact.

“Zinfandel Spaghettini with Spicy Rapini” is a genius dish from the new cookbook, “Michael Chiarello’s Bottega” (Chronicle Books). The book, of which I recently received a review copy, is filled with more than 100 recipes for Southern Italian specialties by Chiarello, chef-owner of the wildly popular Bottega restaurant in Yountville.

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Take Five with Chef Duskie Estes, On Competing On “The Next Iron Chef” Despite Never Watching the Food Network

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Tune in to watch Duskie Estes of Bovolo and Zazu restaurants in Sonoma County. (Photo courtesy of the Food Network)

When the third season of “The Next Iron Chef” premieres on Sunday, Oct. 3 at 9 p.m., 10 chefs will compete to win a chance to stand alongside Michael Symon and Jose Garces as the newest Iron Chefs on that smoke-billowing platform.

Among them will be Duskie Estes of Zazu Restaurant + Farm in Santa Rosa, the only Northern California chef in the competition, who is gunning to follow in Cat Cora’s footsteps to become the second female “Iron Chef.”

I had a chance this week to chat by phone with Estes, a former vegetarian who went over to the pork side, who feared she nearly blew the interview when she was first asked to do the show.

A believer in “snout to tail” cooking, the 42-year-old Estes, who grew up in San Francisco, is also chef-owner with her husband of Bovolo in Healdsburg and the Black Pig Meat Co., purveyor of salumi and bacon in Sonoma County. Estes has worked at such top restaurants as Al Forno in Rhode Island, Bay Wolf in Oakland, and Dahlia Lounge in Seattle. She and her husband, John Stewart, who studied salumi making with Mario Batali, met while working together at Etta’s Seafood and Palace Kitchen, both of which are Chef Tom Douglas’ restaurants in Seattle.

Cheer on Estes as she goes up against: Marco Canora (chef and owner of Hearth, Terrior, and Terroir TriBeca, in New York), Bryan Caswell (chef and owner of Reef, Stella Sola, and Little Bigs, in Houston), Maneet Chauhan (chef at Vermilion in Chicago and New York), Mary Dumont (executive chef at Harvest in Cambridge), , Marc Forgione (chef and owner of Marc Forgione in New York), Andrew Kirschner (executive chef of Wilshire in Santa Monica), Mario Pagin (chef and owner of Lemongrass in Puerto Rico), Celina Tio (chef and owner of Julian in Kansas City, MO), and Ming Tsai (chef and wwner of Blue Ginger in Wellesley, Mass.).

Q: You had an Easy-Bake oven when you were growing up. I’m so jealous, as my Mom never let me have one because she thought I’d burn down the house with it. Was this the start of your love for cooking?

A: I was 5 when I got mine. I have a photo of me baking a birthday cake for my grandfather with it. I was very proud of it.

I got one for my older daughter when she was 5. They have so many added safety features on it now. You can’t get in there and get the stuff. It’s less fun now. It was better when it was dangerous. (laughs) So, I let my older daughter, who’s 9 now, just use the real oven instead.

Q: Is Duskie a nickname or your given name?

A: It’s my given name. It’s a testament to my California hippie parents.

Q: Since you grew up in San Francisco, you must have had a pretty foodie household?

A: My father was a scientist, and scientists are all closet chefs. After my parents divorced, my Dad would take me out once a week to a restaurant in San Francisco. So, from the time I was 10, I had a great exposure to what great chefs like Alice Waters and Jeremiah Tower were doing.

I’m also the youngest in the family. Growing up, I was the one who cooked for the whole family. I loved it.

Q: You graduated from Brown University. How did you go from that to cooking professionally?

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Take Five with Chef Jennie Lorenzo, On Cooking with Bad Boy Chefs and Life After the Fifth Floor

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One of the best meals I’ve had this year can’t be experienced again.

Not in all its totality.

It was on Sept. 4 at San Francisco’s tony Fifth Floor restaurant, on what was the last night that Executive Chef Jennie Lorenzo was in the kitchen.

Although, I had eaten at the Fifth Floor a few times over the past few years under the reign of other top toques, I had yet to make it in there to try Lorenzo’s cooking. I had planned on doing so some day. But some day came all too unexpectedly when Lorenzo emailed me that week, inviting me to come in as her guest, as she was about to depart the restaurant after cooking there on and off for five and a half years.

My husband, who is happy enough with a burger and gets jaded after one too many fancy tasting menus, sat back in his chair that night, looked me square in the eyes, and said emphatically after only the second course, “I am SO glad we came. This is really good.”

How good? Even our server, who had worked with Lorenzo for the past few years, came in to dine on his day off a few days before because he wanted to experience Chef Lorenzo’s dazzling cooking one last time before she left.

You might be scratching your head right now, thinking how it’s possible you’ve never heard of this talented, 35-year-old Filipino-American, who has worked for some of the most legendary chefs in the United States, Europe and Japan. It’s not your fault. For whatever reason, Lorenzo never garnered the buzz she should have. She took over right after the restaurant was remodeled — its wild, flashy animal prints toned down to a sleeker, simpler contemporary look.  But the public seemed confused about what the restaurant had become. Some thought it still fine-dining; others turned their back, thinking it had morphed into a bistro of all things.

The pity of that.

Especially  because Lorenzo decided to leave the restaurant to take a much needed break. Although the restaurant will continue, it’s unclear yet who will be named as her replacement.

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