Category Archives: Fruit

Convenient CSA Pickup at a Caltrain Station

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Would you believe you can pick up this bounty at a train station?

Leave it to Luke’s Local — the gourmet convenience store at a Caltrain station — to make getting farm-fresh produce on your commute even easier now.

The tiny store, which opened last year in a long-vacant ticket office at the Hillsdale station in San Mateo, just started offering a Community Supported Agriculture “Meal Box” that folks can pick up once a week at Luke’s Local. Imagine getting off the train after a long day at work, then picking up a box that contains not only fresh fruits and veggies, but a couple of ready-to-heat meals that you can load in your car to take home.

A sample "Meal Box'' from Luke's Local.

Luke Chappell, owner of the store, is offering this new service in a joint effort with Farmshares, a Community Supported Agriculture program of local farms in the Capay Valley. When you subscribe to the service, you pick up your box every Wednesday night at the train station.

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Having Your Cake and Giving It, Too

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A simple yet satisfying coffee-orange angel food cake.

There are people who accept gifts graciously, no matter what may lie under that heap of ribbon and wrapping paper.

My late-Mom was not one of those people.

My siblings and I joke that whenever we gave my Mom a gift, we braced for what would come next.

She’d pull the present out of the box, inspect it thoroughly, turning it this way and that, before putting it back down. She’d furrow her brows, and hem and haw that we shouldn’t make such a fuss. Then, she’d flat-out say, “Don’t spend your money. I don’t need anything. Here, just take it back.”

Sigh. Once again, after my brothers and I had wracked our brains to come up with what we thought was the perfect gift, my Mom would burst our bubble.

It’s not that she meant to do so. It’s just that Mom was being a mom.

When I was little, I would save my quarters and dollars to go to the store to buy my Mom a card and a tiny box of See’s candy or a Walt Whitman Sampler for her birthday or Mother’s Day.  I do believe I remember her smiling, too, whenever I presented them to her eagerly in my outstretched arms.

The irony, of course, is that once I got to be an adult and could afford to buy her much nicer gifts — such as clothes or jewelry — she didn’t want them.

For years, I was downright perplexed by that until I realized the lesson she was teaching me. For her, it truly was the thought that counted. As long as you remembered her with something as simple as a phone call or note, that’s all that mattered. She didn’t need anything beyond that to know that you cared. Everything else was just superfluous.

It's not fancy, but it's a cake that's sure to please.

That hit home after my parents both passed away four years ago, and I found tucked away in a drawer, every card I had ever given them since I was a child. Some were hand-drawn, others store-bought. But there they all were, stored away like some precious treasure worth more than any fancy cashmere sweater or snazzy electronic gadget ever could be to them.

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Etoile’s Perry Hoffman — A Chef To Watch in the Future

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Chef Perry Hoffman in the kitchen at Etoile.

Perry Hoffman, executive chef of Etoile at Domaine Chandon in Yountville, has quite the pedigree.

His grandparents, Sally and Don Schmitt, were the original owners of the French Laundry in Yountville, who turned a dilapidated building into a destination restaurant in 1978, before selling it in 1993 to a then down-on-his-luck chef named Thomas Keller.

At age 4, Hoffman played in the kitchen of the French Laundry, while his grandma cooked in the kitchen, his grandfather seated guests in the dining room, and his mom (Sally and Don’s daughter) arranged flowers and worked as a waitress in the dining room.

His Mom later started her own florist business, which still supplies the blooms to the French Laundry, as well as a host of Wine Country restaurants. His grandparents went on to buy the Philo Apple Farm in Mendocino County, once again turning a rundown property into a showcase. Today, it is an organic, biodynamic farm that grows 80 varieties of heirloom apples in a setting so picturesque that Pottery Barn does catalog shoots there.

Hoffman, 27, followed in his grandmother’s footsteps, working in restaurants since he was 15. His food is already quite refined and mature for his young age. In fact, two years ago, he became the youngest chef in the country to garner a Michelin star — an achievement that prompted Keller to send him a hand-written note and a bottle of Dom Perignon.

For the past three years, he’s overseen the kitchen at the elegant Etoile, the Napa Valley’s only fine-dining restaurant housed inside a winery.

Etoile, the only fine-dining restaurant inside a winery in the Napa Valley.

The serene dining room.

Starting the evening off with a rose from Domaine Chandon.

During fall and winter, too, there are apples aplenty on his menu, which, of course, come from the Philo Apple Farm. My husband and I couldn’t resist honing in on those particular dishes when we treated ourselves to dinner at Etoile in December. Choose either a seven-course chef’s tasting menu for $110 or a four-course tasting menu with options for $85. The latter is what we went with, though we added one additional dish.

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Crisp-Chewy Fruity Cookie Squares

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Buttery, sugary and filled with plump black currants and lemon zest.

There are times when I’m decidedly old-school.

I prefer a paper wall calendar — the big kind with pics of the Eiffel Tower or Berkeley Breathed characters  on it — to keep track of my appointments rather than my smart phone.

I like to hold a real book in my hands, not a Kindle.

I like to plop myself on the couch on Sunday mornings with the many sections of the New York Times stacked by my side, not an iPad with various newspaper apps loaded onto it.

And there are times when I just want a simple buttery cookie with nothing more than good ol’ dried fruit in it.

Old-school, but oh-so wonderful.

That’s just what “Pebbly Beach Fruit Squares” are. The recipe is from “Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy: Melt-In-Your-Mouth-Cookies” (Artisan), of which I received a review copy last year, by Berkeley’s doyenne of baking, Alice Medrich.

With turbinado sprinkled on top, these are kind of like a sugar cookie sandwich with a filling of your favorite dried fruit, such as prunes, apricots, cherries, dates, cranberries or even dried ginger. Medrich recommends a combo of ginger and cranberries for the winter holidays. I used some especially plump, dried black currants, which I toted back from Quebec last year.

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Take Five with Pastry Chef Rodney Cerdan of the Village Pub, On His Candy-Filled Childhood

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Rodney Cerdan, executive pastry chef of the Village Pub, who is never far away from a good cookie.

Rodney Cerdan is a very dangerous man.

If left to his own devices, he will ply you with chocolate honey mousse cake, peanut butter brownie bars with fluffs of toasted marshmallow, chewy almond cookies and bags of homemade sticky caramels to no surrender.

He can’t help himself. As executive pastry chef of the Village Pub in Woodside, Cerdan, 33, has been baking since he was 7, when he’d commandeer his mom’s toaster oven before taking on the full-size one.

After stints at Roy’s Restaurant in San Francisco, Delessio’s Market in Bakery in San Francisco, and Bi-Rite Creamery and Bakeshop in San Francisco, Cerdan took over the head pastry job at the Village Pub in October 2010.

Recently, I had a chance to try a sampling of his newest desserts (about $10 each) on the house that reference homey favorites, but have been reborn with contemporary flair. They included a fluffy, airy chocolate honey mousse cake with spicy ginger ice cream; and a Meyer lemon pudding cake with an ethereal texture made all the more luxurious with dollops of lush white chocolate.

Cerdan's chocolate honey mousse cake with ginger ice cream and ginger chocolate bark.

Cerdan, who is of Spanish-Basque and El Salvadoran heritages, joined me at the table to chat about his failed attempt at an acting career, what it was like to grow up with a mom who worked at See’s Candies, and what his all-time favorite dessert is.

Q: Your Mom wrapped candies at See’s. That must be every kid’s fantasy, right?

A: She used to bring home 10-pound boxes. The fruit-filled chocolates were always my favorite. I used to take a knife to the bottom of each candy until I found the ones that I was looking for.

I got pretty good at identifying them just by sight. But it’s been a while. I’m not sure I could do it now. I’d have to brush up on it.

Q: When you were 7 years old, you wanted an Easy-Bake oven?

A: Yes, but I couldn’t have one. But I found that the toaster oven was better. There was none of that pushing a tiny pan under a light bulb.

I would grab a box of Bisquick and make all the recipes. Then, I’d make my own coffee cakes and pigs in a blanket. I made my own pasta at 9.

I’d watch all the PBS cooking shows, especially Julia Child and ‘Yan Can Cook.”

Q: So was this how your love for baking started?

A: My Mom would come home smelling of chocolate and vanilla. That pretty much did it. (laughs)

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