A Lovely Lemon Cake from the Girl & the Fig

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Cake so good that you'll make time to make it asap.

Meyer lemons. Rich olive oil. And heady rosemary.

All in one moist, flavorful cake that’s a California take on a Mediterranean classic.

One bite will have you transported to a white sandy beach by a crystalline blue sea.

That’s how good it is.

“Rosemary Olive Oil Cake with Lemon Glaze” is from the news self-published  cookbook, “Plats du Jour” by Sondra Bernstein, proprietor of the popular Girl & the Fig restaurant in Sonoma, which serves up French country cooking with California sensibilities.

The book, of which I recently received a review copy, is full of recipes from the restaurant’s popular three-course “Plats du Jour” menu offered each Thursday evening, which incorporates the freshest seasonal ingredients. Cook a menu in its entirety or mix and match as you desire.

This simple cake couldn’t help but catch my eye, now that my backyard Meyer lemon tree is groaning with ripe fruit. You also can use Eureka lemons, too. But Meyers are less tart and more floral, making them especially wonderful to bake with.

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Special Perbacco Dinner, Dine About Town Time and More

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aStaffan Terje of Perbacco in San Francisco. (Photo courtesy of the restaurant)

Perbacco Welcomes Special Guest Chef Jan. 14

Chef Tony Mantuano of Chicago’s acclaimed Spiaggia and a recent contender on “Top Chef Masters” will join forces with Executive Chef Staffan Terje at Perbacco Ristorante in San Francisco for “Winter in Piemonte” — a special dinner Jan. 14 to benefit the James Beard Foundation.

The Perbacco dinner, which starts at 6 p.m., will feature four courses paired with wines. A live auction also will take place.

Price is $165 per person or $150 per person for members of the James Beard Foundation.

Chef Tony Mantuano visits San Francisco to cook at Perbacco. (Photo courtesy of Bravo TV)

“Dine About Town San Francisco” Time

The 11th annual “Dine About Town San Francisco” restaurant promotion returns Jan. 15-31, in which more than 100 restaurants will be offering up either/and two-course lunch menus for $17.95 and three-course dinners for $34.95.

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Time for Nothing Bundt Cakes — and a Food Gal Giveaway

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How cute is this cake? (Photo courtesy of Nothing Bundt Cakes)

Bundt cakes are among the most homespun of baked goods.

Baked in one pan, then drizzled with a pretty glaze, it’s simple, sweet and thoroughly nostalgic.

Leave it to Nothing Bundt Cakes to take that basic premise and add major bling.

The bakery just opened a seventh locale in the Bay Area in the Fremont Hub Shopping Center (39952 Fremont Hub). It bakes up nine flavors of cake (from Red Velvet to Pecan Praline to Chocolate Chocolate Chip), then glides on a thick cream cheese frosting down the sides like the petals of a flower. If that weren’t enough, a colorful paper bloom fills the center, then fun paper butterflies, bees or other decorations are added. It’s a total party in a cake.

The cakes, themselves, are quite moist and have a surprisingly airy texture that’s more like a sponge cake rather than your typical dense, heavy bundt cake.

The cakes come in various sizes — from the Bundtini (the size of a cupcake; $18.75 for a dozen) to the single-serve Bundlet ($3.99) to a 10-inch cake that serves about 18 ($39.50).

Cakes are available at the bakery, as well as by phone and online orders.

Contest: One lucky Food Gal reader will win a gift card good for one free Nothing Bundt Cake individual Bundlet every month for a year (a $47.88 value). The only catch is that the winner must pick up the Bundlet each month in person at the Fremont store. As such, this contest is limited to those who can make it to Fremont regularly. Entries will be accepted through midnight PST Jan. 14. Winner will be announced Jan. 16.

How to win?

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Dinner at the Dazzling Michelin Three-Star Restaurant at Meadowood

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Guinea hen cooked in a salt crust -- at the Restaurant at Meadowood.

It’s not every day you get invited to dine as a guest at a Michelin three-star restaurant in the Bay Area.

It’s a rarity — especially because there are only two restaurants in the region that have attained that coveted honor, the highest ranking that the Michelin guide book bestows.

For years, there was just one — the French Laundry in Yountville, not surprisingly. But two years ago, it was joined by another establishment — the Restaurant at Meadowood, which not only achieved three stars but has managed to hang on to them, too, for the second year in a row in 2011.

When you have a chef as talented as Christopher Kostow, though, that’s little surprise.

After all, Kostow, who started cooking at age 14 in his hometown of Chicago, already had racked up two Michelin stars at his previous post at the charming Chez TJ in sleepy Mountain View. That’s no small achievement when you consider that it was his first head chef job on his own, too.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve had the chance to enjoy his cooking four times, most recently in December 2011, just before the restaurant closed for renovations. It will reopen March 12.

Executive Chef Christopher Kostow (left) prepping for dinner service with one of his cooks.

Over the years, his food has become more refined and confident, and even playful in the most elegant of ways. It reflects the 35-year-old chef’s personality — tough in the kitchen, but full of humor all other times. As I snapped his picture that day, he fumbled with the prep apron worn over his chef’s jacket, joking that it was not very flattering. “You think they make Spanx for chefs?’ he asked with a chuckle.

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Black Pig Meat Co. Bacon — Oh, Yeah!

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Meaty, sweet bacon.

Mario Batali is a fan, as are his fellow chefs, Traci Des Jardins, Suzanne Goin and Tom Douglas.

After all, what’s not to like about artisan bacon from heritage pigs that’s dry cured with brown sugar for up to 21 days, then smoked with applewood for 12 hours — and made by talented Sonoma chefs, husband-and-wife, John Stewart and Duskie Estes.

You may know them from their Zazu Restaurant + Farm in Santa Rosa and Bovolo cafe in Healdsburg, as well as Estes’ appearance on “The Next Iron Chef” in 2010.

But you ought to get to know them for their bacon, too.

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