I am guilty of contributing to the delinquency of fruit.
Yes, the other night, I got fresh figs tipsy, even bordering on wasted.
But boy, did they taste good that way.
These black Mission beauties got a luxurious overnight spa soak in a tub of Port.
It was all in the name of making “Chicken Fricassee with Figs and Port Sauce,” which was published in Bon Appetit magazine, way back in 2007. The recipe is from the now-shuttered Cremant restaurant in Seattle.
Last Saturday afternoon at Macy’s Union Square in San Francisco, I wrapped my first Chinese rice tamale ever — before a standing room-only crowd.
I couldn’t have done it without the good cheer and great instruction from Executive Chef Alexander Ong of the popular Betelnut restaurant in San Francisco.
Though I’d grown up eating these glutinous rice tamales stuffed with pork belly, mung beans and salted duck egg yolks, I’d never made one myself.
But what better time to try my hand at it than last weekend, when the San Francisco International Dragon Boat Festival took place off the waters of Treasure Island.
The rice tamales (known as joong in Cantonese or zongzi in Mandarin) are the food most associated with the sport of dragon boating, which originated more than 2,000 years ago in Southern China.
According to legend, a popular poet and statesman was wrongly accused of treason. So despondent was he that he committed suicide by jumping into a river. Local fishermen, who admired the statesman, paddled out in their boats to try to rescue him to no avail. They beat drums and threw rice dumplings into the water to try to scare away fish and sea dragons from his body.
Boy, is it ever, with the 5th annual “San Francisco Cocktail Week,” now through Sept. 25.
Celebrate the city’s grand cocktail heritage with a range of seminars, dining events and after-parties.
Learn about everything from “The Science of Taste,” 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. ($25 in advance or $35 at the door); to “How to Throw a Brunch Cocktail Party,” noon to 2 p.m. Sept. 24 ($25 in advance or $35 at the door).
Participating restaurants also will be hosting special cocktail events, including a Grand Marnier fete at Absinthe restaurant ($138 per person), which includes a cocktail punch reception and a three-course dinner, with each course featuring a different cocktail.
Last but not least, there’s the St. George Spirits Bathtub Gin BBQ, 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Sept. 25 at St. George Spirits in Alameda ($35 in advance or $45 at the door). Try three new St. George gins. Barbecue grub will be available, too, for an added charge. For $5 off this ticketed event, use the discount code: FRIENDSANDFAMGIN.
For a complete list of events, go here. For a $5 discount off any seminar, use the code: FRIENDSANDFAM. That code also will get you $10 off tickets to some of the other events, but not to any of the cocktail dinner events hosted by participating restaurants.
“A Toast to Recovery” is the theme of the 6th annual “Sake Day,” 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Oct. 1 at the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Northern California in San Francisco’s Japantown.
Taste more than 100 sakes, sample Japanese food and bid on exciting items in a silent auction.
I can’t stop staring at the newest addition to my dining room.
See that artsy canvas hanging on the wall with the two cherries?
That’s actually one of my photos — enlarged and printed on a 30-inch-by-40-inch canvas frame. You might even recognize that particular image from the post I did awhile back about baking “Cherry Focaccia with Rosemary.” Here’s what it looked like:
How cool is that?
The free canvas came courtesy of EasyCanvasPrints, which offered me the chance to try out the photo-to-canvas process. All I had to do was pay the shipping cost.
The company offers a range of images to choose from. But of course, it’s way more fun to use one of your own photos.The larger the canvas, the higher the resolution your photo will need to be. The EasyCanvasPrints folks are great at getting back to you, too, if a sharper image is needed. You also can choose from various borders for your canvas, as well as color effects and retouching services.
I chose my photo of cherries because I liked the simplicity of the image. It’s not so fussy that I’d get tired of looking at it quickly. And when enlarged to that scale, it has a real presence in the room. Plus, it matched my deep red dining room walls so well.
I couldn’t be happier with the results. In fact, I’m already toying with turning another one of my photos into a large canvas for another wall — even if I’ll have to foot the bill for this one.
But hey, it’s a small price to pay to be so thoroughly mesmerized by my once plain wall, isn’t it?
Contest: One lucky Food Gal reader will win the opportunity to design a free 8-inch-by-10-inch canvas, courtesy of EasyCanvasPrints. Entries, limited to those in the continental United States, will be accepted through midnight PST Sept. 25. Winner will be announced Sept. 27.
How to win?
Life is short, people, so let’s start with dessert first.
That’s not to say that the rest of the food at the three-month-old Bluestem Brasserie in downtown San Francisco isn’t worth crowing about. It is.
But oh my, the desserts.
Can we talk cake just for a moment? A cake with the irresistible name of “Honolulu Hangover” ($8.50)?
It’s a generous wedge with considerable height. The chocolate rum layer cake is super moist — everything you want a great chocolate cake to be — with a boozy back note that doesn’t overwhelm. It’s enveloped in a fluff of marshmallow meringue torched until toasty brown and enormous shards of toasted coconut. It’s one of those cakes, where you take the first forkful and your willpower is defenseless. You might tell yourself you’re only going to eat half of this huge slab. Uh-uh. You’re going to finish it — every last crumb. And you’re not going to regret it in the least.
The cake and the rest of the desserts are the creations of consulting Pastry Chef James Ormsby. His name may be familiar to you because he was formerly the chef at PlumpJack Cafe, Jack Falstaff and Bruno’s, all in San Francisco. Ormsby may be most known for his savory cooking, but he did pastry back in the day.
Of course, most of you will most likely want some real food to go with all that cake. Bluestem does a fine job with that, too, as evidenced by what we tasted, when my husband and I were invited in as guests of the restaurant recently.
The two-story American brasserie, with soaring windows, was built in what was once merely a storage area for the Marriott Hotel. It took four years to complete, including two and a half of construction, according to Adam Jed, the restaurant’s operating partner, who used to work for the China Grill Group and the PlumpJack Group.
The restaurant, named for the indigenous North American grass favored by cattle ranchers, features a roomy lounge, dining room and large bar (with a cool, sparkly top) on the first floor. We sat at one of the tables on the airy mezzanine, which has a bird’s eye view of the floor below for great people-watching. The decor is modern with cocoa, caramel and white hues.
Bluestem does its own in-house butchery, so you can’t go wrong with the charcuterie, especially the Grand Plat ($19), which includes a little bit of everything available that night. It’s a large selection, one that would make a fine meal on its own in the lounge with a glass of wine. Selections included rustic country pate with pistachios, truffled chicken liver mousse, duck rillettes, blood & tongue sausage, pig’s head terrine and calf’s liver sausage. Each was fabulous, especially with accompaniments of stone ground mustard, sweet mustard pickles and sweet-tart fruit chutney.
