Category Archives: More Food Gal — In Other Publications

Dressed Up Veggies

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Miso gives an unexpected boost to an array of fresh veggies.

Blanched and sauteed vegetables tossed with melted butter.

Been there. Done that.

Wake things up by mixing an equal amount of blonde miso into the butter first.

Voila! What you get is a really velvety sauce that clings beautifully to the veggies. The flavor doesn’t scream miso soup. Rather it just lends a subtle umami or savoriness to it all.

The recipe for “Saute of Market Vegetables with Miso Butter” is a cinch to make. Even better, you can vary the vegetables you use, according to what’s in season.

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Now Might Be The Best Time to Snag That Table at the French Laundry

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Chef-proprietor Thomas Keller of the renowned French Laundry. (Photo courtesy of the French Laundry)

You’re cutting back. You’re eating out less. But if you still have the means to splurge on a fancy meal, now’s the time to try to get that longed-for table at the French Laundry.

To be sure, the Yountville restaurant considered one of the very best in the world, is still full every night. But as a result of this nightmarish economy, it’s now a little easier to get a reservation.

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Dim Sum for the New Year

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Clockwise from top: Sweet potato puff, durian puff, siu mai, har gau, and (center) sweet green tea dumpling -- all from Dynasty Seafood Restaurant in Cupertino.

Dim sum may mean “touch the heart” in Chinese.

But we all know these precious morsels tantalize the tummy, too.

Read the definitive guide to dim sum restaurants in the Bay Area in today’s San Francisco Chronicle Food section, which yours truly contributed to.

While helping to research this story, I picked up some helpful tips along the way:

1) To really judge the quality of your dim sum, refrain from using soy sauce, chile paste, hot mustard and the like. At least with your first bite. Just as we are so often guilty of drowning pristine sushi in soy sauce and wasabi, we unthinkingly do the same with dim sum. When it’s au naturale, though, you can really judge whether a filling has real flavor, and whether a wrapper is well made.

2) Bigger is not always better. As my friend Andrea Nguyen says, there’s a reason they’re made small. Nguyen, whose newest cookbook “Asian Dumplings” comes out in September, notes they should be bite-size. Once they start to get too large, the quality of the wrappers suffer.

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A Soda to Ring In the Lunar New Year

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Get ready for Lunar New Year.

Long-life noodles.

Check.

A whole fish.

Check.

Red envelopes filled with lucky money.

Check.

If you’re celebrating Lunar New Year in San Francisco, though, don’t forget to include a bottle of Belfast Sparkling Cider in your Year of the Ox festivities starting Jan. 26.

The non-alcoholic soda, with Irish origins, is the oldest-continually bottled soda made in California. And inexplicably, it’s the city’s Chinese-American community that has kept this brand alive for generations.

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A Tangy-Spicy Shrimp Curry to Welcome 2009

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Coconut shrimp curry

Vittal Shetty, corporate chef for the Bay Area’s Amber India restaurants, loves the simplicity and versatiliy of this coconut shrimp curry dish.

Redolent of tamarind, chilies, garlic, cumin seeds, tomatoes, and coconut milk, it cooks in a flash. Best yet, the curry paste can be made in large batches, then frozen in smaller quantities. That way, you’ll always have some on hand to use with most any seafood.

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