After a year of incredible meals at restaurants, it’s always hard to narrow down a list of my Top 10 dishes.
But I managed to — picking the ones that were so memorable that I still lust after them and would hike a mile in a blizzard just to have them again.
Here, in no particular order, are my top eats of 2011:
We’ve all learned that to make the perfect, flaky crust, you need cold butter, cool hands and a resulting dough that must be chilled before it’s baked.
Now, take those techniques that you’ve labored to master all these years — and throw them out the window.
Because here’s a supremely flaky crust that breaks all those rules.
It’s made with boiling hot butter that’s mixed with flour to form a dough that you press — while still warm — into your pan before baking.
How crazy is that?
It’s almost embarrassingly easy and pretty fool-proof. And it produces a crust that would rival any at a fancy patisserie.
Chef Sarah Burchard knows her meat — and what goes well on top of it.
After all, for three years, she worked at Perbacco, then Barbacco, both in San Francisco, where she regularly broke down whole animals to make the fabulous house-made salumi. She left her position as chef de cuisine at that latter restaurant earlier this year to start her own San Francisco company, S&S Brand, with boyfriend and fellow chef, Spencer O’Meara, who’s no stranger to grilling and smoking meats.
They’re now selling their three specialty barbecue sauces (St. Louis Style, Tennessee Style, and Carolina Style), as well as six rubs (BBQ Spice, 4 Peppercorn, Fish Rub, Jerk Rub, Poultry Rub, and Ranch Rub).
Recently, I had a chance to try some samples. The BBQ Spice and the 4 Peppercorn both livened up grilled pork loins. I especially liked the Szechuan peppercorns in the latter rub, which added a subtle palate tingle.
The barbecue sauces are what really steal the show, though. Not that barbecue sauces are ever wimpy, but these are major attention-getters. With their powerhouse of tang and spice, these sauces are assertive and sassy. In fact, if you drizzle these on meat that you’ve smeared the rubs on, you probably won’t even taste the rubs. The Tennessee Style sauce, full of mustard and onions, is sharp and piquant. The St. Louis Style, redolent of molasses, cumin and coriander, is smokier and sweeter.
The sauces contain high fructose corn syrup because of the addition of Heinz Ketchup. But Burchard and O’Meara are in the process of switching to organic ketchup, so the sauces will be made with sugar in the near future.
The sauces are $8 each for a 12-ounce jar; the rubs are $7 each for a 2-ounce tin.
Contest: One lucky Food Gal reader will get a chance to try an S&S Brand Combo Pack, which includes all three barbecue sauces and all six rubs. It’s a $57 value. Contest, open only to those in the continental United States, will run through midnight PST Dec. 10. The winner will be announced Dec. 12.
How to win?
If you’ve ever doubted the power of education to inspire, just consider University of California at Berkeley grads, Nikhil Arora and Alejandro Velez.
Classmates at the Hass School of Business, Arora, 24 and Velez, 23, were on their way to lucrative careers in investment banking and business consulting after graduating two years ago. But they turned their backs on that after listening to a visiting lecturer talk about how poor, malnourished women in Columbia and East Africa were growing mushrooms in coffee grounds to supplement their diet.
Instead, they maxed out their credit cards to start their own business. Their Oakland-based Back to the Roots turns mountains of discarded Peet’s coffee grounds that would have ended up in the landfill into gourmet oyster mushroom kits now sold at Whole Foods and on the Back to the Roots Web site for $19.95 each.
In the process, Arora and Velez have created an innovative enterprise that even prompted Business Week to name them among the most promising social entrepreneurs in the United States.
Two words: Caramel. Mustard.
You might wonder how those two things go together. But in the hands of three chefs, who created this addicting dip/spread, caramel and mustard go together so well that you wonder why nobody thought of doing this before.
Their Rhode Island company, Wicked Natural, makes Caramel Mustard, which tastes like it sounds — as if someone stirred sharp mustard into sweet, gooey caramel to create a whole new taste sensation.
Recently, I had a chance to try a sample jar, courtesy of the folks at King Arthur Flour, who also sell the condiment on their Web site.
This rich, creamy, candy-like spread with a noticeable piquant backbone would be fabulous as a dip for pretzels, stirred into a vinaigrette, spread inside a grilled cheese sandwich, or used to coat chicken before dredging in breadcrumbs.