Salt and pepper tater tots are sure to be your new guilty pleasure.
If you had told me that one day I’d be stir-frying tater tots, I would have called you “crazy.”
But crazy can be mighty good.
And these sure are.
Put your disbelief aside, do yourself a favor, and make these “Salt and Pepper Tater Tots.”
If you’ve ever enjoyed the warm aromatics of Chinese salt and pepper shrimp or salt and pepper spare ribs, then you know the taste sensation you are in for.
This delightful recipe is from “Tenderheart” (Alfred A. Knopf), of which I received a review copy.
It’s the newest cookbook by Hetty Lui McKinnon, the gifted Chinese Australian cook and food writer who now lives in Brooklyn. She’s also the publisher of the multicultural food journal, Peddler, as well as host of its podcast, The House Specials.
There are recipes in this book to be sure. But more than that, there are stories that will touch and stay with you long after you set its spine down.
“Recipe for Disaster” (Chronicle Books), of which I received a review copy, is by Alison Riley. It is the first book by this Brooklyn-based writer and creative director, and founder of the paper and text studio, Set Editions.
It’s a unique collection of 40 essays and recipes highlighting how good food provides sustenance in so many ways through so many trying times. Riley has assembled an impressive roster of big-name contributors who share strikingly personal stories about how food has soothed and assuaged during some of the worst moments in life.
Comedian Sarah Silverman writes about how chocolate-covered marshmallow cookies known as pinwheels were the only thing that comforted her when she first experienced long-term depression at age 13. Alice Waters of Chez Panisse reveals how the throes of the pandemic made her appreciate all the more the beauty of a fresh salad made with the produce grown by her local farms.
Actor-comedian Bowen Yang admits that as a child he didn’t care for his mom’s cooking, but now appreciates it so much that her version of ma po tofu is the first thing he wants when he goes home to Colorado. And in one of the most stirring accounts, broadcast journalist Alex Wagner explains how her simple, hastily made canned-tuna sandwich that she toted to work would turn out to be the only thing to offer any sense of normalcy on Sept. 11, 2001.
You’d be hard-pressed to find another chef who has left such an imprimatur on the South Bay as Chef Jim Stump.
In his early days, he was executive chef at Birk’s in Santa Clara, then the same at Le Mouton Noir in Saratoga, before launching the Los Gatos Brewing Company and downtown San Jose’s A.P. Stump’s.
In fall 2021, during the throes of the pandemic, he also opened Shepherd & Sims in Los Gatos. The name is a co-mingling of the surnames of his wife and business partner, Angelique Shepherd-Stump and Stump’s birth name when he was adopted as a child.
A couple times a year, I play hooky from my home office during the week to enjoy a “ladies who lunch” outing with friends to celebrate one of our birthdays.
Shepherd & Sims sports a sizeable covered patio for dining, as well as a snazzy indoor dining room.
If you’re inclined to do the same — or to just enjoy a wonderful lunch outdoors on a sunny day — Shepherd & Sims is the spot to do it.
The rooftop restaurant inside Eataly at Westfield Valley Fair shopping Center in San Jose just launched a “Grill Takeover” series in which it partners with a local restaurant for a one-night collaborative dinner.
I was fortunate to be invited as a guest to the inaugural one last week with San Mateo’s Pausa restaurant.
The event featured Eataly Silicon Valley’s Chef Antonio Giordano and Pausa’s Chef Andrea Giuliani teamed on a four-course meal that was $125 per person.
Eataly Silicon Valley’s Chef Antonio Giordano and Pausa’s Chef Andrea Giuliani with Terra’s general manager.
The dining room was full for this sold-out event. For those still cautious about dining indoors, you’ll be glad to know that Terra’s dining room is practically outdoors. Floor-to-ceiling glass doors leading to the outside dining terrace are left open. Moreover, the ceiling itself is slatted to allow for plenty of air flow.
Because chances are wherever they hail from, they do not have a restaurant in their vicinity that serves modern Moroccan cuisine. At least not anything as elevated and imaginative yet still stirringly soulful as this.
So, when I recently gathered to catch up with family in San Francisco last weekend and discovered they had never eaten here, I knew it was high-time they were introduced to Chef-Owner Mourad Lahlou’s singular cooking.
The kitchen at Mourad. With Chef Mourad Lahlou.
We perused the menu, ordered, and paid our tab — but had no idea that Lahlou would end up sending out nearly three-fourths of the menu to our table on the house. To say that we each needed a wheelbarrow to cart us out afterward would be putting it mildly. It proved a feast in every sense and for every sense.
