Celebrating A Rare Blue Moon

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Adagio's Bella Luna Blue does indeed start out blue, but turns violet when you stir in lemon juice or other acid.
Adagio’s Bella Luna Blue does indeed start out blue, but turns violet when you stir in lemon juice or other acid.

If you’re an astronomy buff — and a tea aficionado — you’ll want to mark Aug. 22 on your calendar.

That’s when a rare Blue Moon will grace the sky.

It’s also the only day that Adagio Teas will be selling its Bella Luna Blue tea blend.

Yes, this special loose leaf tea, which commemorates this cosmic occurrence, is only available when there is a Blue Moon.

It’s a rather magical blend that brews up blue in color. But stir in a little lemon juice to increase the pH, and it will turn vivid violet-purple in a flash. How fun is that?

The herbal tea gets its blue hue from Butterfly Pea flowers. The longer the tea steeps, the deeper the color, too, as you can see from the sample I tried.

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Where I’ve Been Getting Takeout of Late, Part 34

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The butternut squash and salsa verde Milan-style pizza from Pizzone.
The delicata squash and salsa verde Milan-style pizza from Pizzone.

Pizzone, Palo Alto

Let’s start by saying that I’ve never paid nearly $70 for one pizza before ($69.90 to be exact).

But Pizzone’s pie is unlike most.

For one thing, it’s a massive 18-inches in diameter and 1-inch thick all around.

It’s also Milan-style, meaning that it’s airy, soft, fluffy, and more like focaccia.

Milan-native Dario Presezzi, founder and CEO of Redwood City’s Biotechforce Corp., put his entrepreneurial skills to use in a different way this summer when he opened this ghost kitchen inside of Palo Alto’s Vina Enoteca.

That means it’s pick-up and delivery only. And if you pick it up yourself, just note that you do so at a side door just to the left of Vina Enoteca’s main entrance.

By the time you get the pizza home, the cheese may have congealed just a bit, so you can rewarm it in the oven or zap it in the microwave for the briefest of seconds.

The whole pie.
The whole pie.

The pizza comes either in a box of two slices ($9.90 to $11.90, depending on the toppings) or as a full pizza (12 slices that will serve 6, starting at $54.90). Because the crust is thick, two slices will definitely fill you up comfortably, too.

There are five vegetarian pizzas to choose from, and four meat ones. The beauty of the whole pizza is that you can choose up to six flavors on one pie, which is what I went with.

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Discover “The Well Seasoned Librarian”

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(Image courtesy of Dean Jones)
(Image courtesy of Dean Jones)

Dean Jones is a long-time Bay Area librarian, who also has a deep passion for food and cooking, as well as exploring new restaurants.

Now, he’s cooked up something really irresistible — a new podcast.

In the wittily titled, “The Well Seasoned Librarian” podcast, Jones talks in-depth to cookbook authors, food writers, farmers, bakers, chocolate experts, and culinary historians.

It’s a fun, enlightening, and entertaining time, as I personally discovered when he invited me to be a guest on the show last week.

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Scallion Oil-Poached Chicken

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Classic poached chicken with a vibrant scallion-ginger sauce.
Classic poached chicken with a vibrant scallion-ginger sauce.

Betty Liu makes the rest of us look like slackers.

Not only is she a doctor training to be a surgeon in Boston, but she’s a home-cook so gifted that she created an award-winning food blog, bettysliu.com. Her writing, recipes and photos have appeared in Bon Appetit and Saveur magazines. She’s also taught food photography classes around the world.

On top of that, she debuted this year, the top-selling cookbook, My Shanghai: Recipes and Stories from a City on the Water” (HarperCollins), of which I received a review copy.

My, oh my.

It’s even more impressive when you realize that Liu didn’t even learn to cook until she was in college, and missing her mother’s cooking. Back then, whenever she visited her parents, she cajoled her mother into teaching her how to make her favorite dishes. After college, she worked in Shanghai for a spell, which only deepened her passion for that regional cuisine.

Her cookbook honors her heritage and her family’s cooking, spotlighting the Jiangnan region, which encompasses the lower Yangtzee area, including the city of Shanghai. Not surprisingly, Jiangnan cuisine is all about seasonal fresh ingredients and elevating the natural, pure flavors of the food.

This beautifully illustrated book is complete with lavish photos that bring this region of China to life, as well as useful images that take you step-by-step through specific techniques, including making “Suzhou-Style Mooncakes,” “Scallion Flower Buns,” and “Shanghai Big Wontons.”

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Fabulous Fig Clafoutis

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Fig clafoutis baked at home -- the next best thing to being in France.
Fig clafoutis baked at home — the next best thing to being in France.

As much as I long to wander the cobblestone streets of France again, to nosh on freshly made crepes from a sidewalk vendor, and to sit at an outdoor cafe to watch chic Parisians flit by, I don’t think I’ll be getting on a plane anytime soon.

Yeah, thanks very much, Covid.

But I can still live vicariously and bring a taste of the French table to my own Silicon Valley kitchen, thanks to “À Table: Recipes for Cooking and Eating the French Way” (Chronicle Books), of which I received a review copy.

The new cookbook is by Rebekah Peppler, an American food writer and stylist who makes her home in Paris now. (Yes, lucky her!)

The cookbook contains 125 recipes that are home-cook-friendly. They’re lavishly photographed by Paris-based photographer Joann Pai, whose images are bathed in that lovely golden light that brings the city to life.

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