Not Diet Food
No, this is definitely not that.
Not when there’s a ton of heavy cream in it.
Sometimes, though, you need to live big, go for the gusto and just enjoy without looking back.
“Fettuccine with Meyer Lemon Cream” is one of those times.
Category Archives: Fruit
A Lovely Lemon Cake from the Girl & the Fig
Meyer lemons. Rich olive oil. And heady rosemary.
All in one moist, flavorful cake that’s a California take on a Mediterranean classic.
One bite will have you transported to a white sandy beach by a crystalline blue sea.
That’s how good it is.
“Rosemary Olive Oil Cake with Lemon Glaze” is from the news self-published cookbook, “Plats du Jour” by Sondra Bernstein, proprietor of the popular Girl & the Fig restaurant in Sonoma, which serves up French country cooking with California sensibilities.
The book, of which I recently received a review copy, is full of recipes from the restaurant’s popular three-course “Plats du Jour” menu offered each Thursday evening, which incorporates the freshest seasonal ingredients. Cook a menu in its entirety or mix and match as you desire.
This simple cake couldn’t help but catch my eye, now that my backyard Meyer lemon tree is groaning with ripe fruit. You also can use Eureka lemons, too. But Meyers are less tart and more floral, making them especially wonderful to bake with.
Special Perbacco Dinner, Dine About Town Time and More
Perbacco Welcomes Special Guest Chef Jan. 14
Chef Tony Mantuano of Chicago’s acclaimed Spiaggia and a recent contender on “Top Chef Masters” will join forces with Executive Chef Staffan Terje at Perbacco Ristorante in San Francisco for “Winter in Piemonte” — a special dinner Jan. 14 to benefit the James Beard Foundation.
The Perbacco dinner, which starts at 6 p.m., will feature four courses paired with wines. A live auction also will take place.
Price is $165 per person or $150 per person for members of the James Beard Foundation.
“Dine About Town San Francisco” Time
The 11th annual “Dine About Town San Francisco” restaurant promotion returns Jan. 15-31, in which more than 100 restaurants will be offering up either/and two-course lunch menus for $17.95 and three-course dinners for $34.95.
Dragon Fruit Juice for a Healthful Welcome to 2012
After imbibing perhaps a little too much on New Year’s Eve weekend, you’re probably in dire need of a quenching drink right about now.
How about one made from the exotic dragon fruit?
The fruit, which looks a bit like a hot pink flower bulb from outer space that’s about to unfurl who knows what, is the primary ingredient in Pitaya Plus, a new juice drink launched a year ago in San Diego.
Company founder Chuck Casano was working for a non-profit in Nicaragua when he got his first taste of pitaya or dragon fruit. He was so smitten with it and the people there that he wanted to forge an even greater bond to bring a taste of Nicaragua to the United States, while helping employ impoverished Nicaraguans in his new venture.
The result is Pitaya Plus, two juice blends high in Vitamin D, dietary fiber and other nutrients. There are 70 calories per 8-ounce serving. They’re sold in more than 100 Whole Foods nationwide, where they rank as having the lowest sugar level of any juice on the shelves there, according to a Pitaya Plus spokesperson.
Figgy Cookies
These cookies are fig-tastic.
Oh, they’re not like your familiar Newtons with an abundant filling of sticky fig paste. Nope, instead the dried figs in these cookies are ground up and incorporated into the cookie dough, itself.
As a result, the figs take on a more subtle quality, especially when mixed with ground pecans.
The recipe is from “The Gourmet Cookie Book” (Houghton Mifflin), of which I received a review copy last year. The book features the now defunct magazine’s best cookie recipe of each year from 1941-2009. These “Fig Cookies” hark back to 1964. A true oldie but goodie.