Take Five with Ming Tsai, on His Experiences on the “Next Iron Chef”

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Ming Tsai (photo courtesy of the chef)

He’s only 46 years old, but Chef Ming Tsai of the 12-year-old Blue Ginger restaurant in Massachusetts was an early pioneer of modern-day cooking shows with his innovative East-meets-West flavors that are more relevant today than ever.

Indeed, he’s now doing Season 8 of his “Simply Ming’’ show on public television. And he just missed winning this season’s “Next Iron Chef’’ competition on the Food Network, coming in third.

Yesterday, I had a chance to talk to him by phone about how the landscape of food television has changed, as well as his timely new cookbook, “Simply Ming One-Pot Meals” (Kyle Books).

Q: When the lineup for ‘Next Iron Chef’ was first announced, a lot of folks were surprised to see your name. In fact, my friends thought that the Food Network should have just made you an Iron Chef, that you’d already earned it after all these years.

A: I wish your friends worked at the Food Network. (laughs) It would have saved me a lot of work and time.

Q: Why did you want to compete on the show?

A: For fun. I enjoy competition and cooking. It’s the only format out there that’s legit. I think the judges were fair, though, I didn’t always agree with what was said. But Michael Symon was spot-on for the most part.

I wasn’t out to prove to the world that I could still cook. But I was out to prove to the rest of the world that I still had game. This seemed like the perfect format. I had enough staff at the restaurant to cover for me since we were shooting for five-plus weeks. It was a huge time commitment. But it was a blast.

It was as hard as I thought it would be. You have 30 minutes to do one dish or 60 minutes to do several dishes. You just have to put your head down and go for it. The hardest challenge was the Vegas buffet. It was brutal. People were getting delirious.

I’m certainly glad I did it. I made some great friends for life. Marc Forgione and Bryan Caswell are solid guys. Those are guys I probably would have never hung with. They’re 10-15 years younger than me. I tend to hang out with Jean Georges (Vongerichten) and Daniel (Boulud) — guys like that.

Q: I heard that some of the other chefs such as Duskie Estes were calling you, ‘Uncle Ming’?

A: Some of them did say that. (Marco) Canora called me that and he’s 43! I was the oldest there. But I was not in the worst shape of any of them. I loved the fact that they were thinking about me so much for the first couple of shows that they weren’t even concentrating on their own food.

Q: Did you like the way you were portrayed, i.e. the comments about your plating being stuck in the 1980s and the scene with the messy sous vide machine?

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Biscotti for the Holidays

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Biscotti that pack a punch with slivered almonds and brown sugar.

If you’re still searching for great holiday cookies that pack a wallop, look impressive and aren’t a chore to bake, look no further than “Brown Sugar and Almond Biscotti.”

These elegant, golden cookies are studded with slivered almonds, along with light brown sugar that gives them a little more tenderness.

With a crunchy texture from twice-baking, they hold up to dunking in a good cup of espresso, too.

The biscotti recipe is from the new “San Francisco Entertains,” a cookbook that celebrates the centennial of the Junior League of San Francisco. It’s the organization’s first book in 11 year.

With nearly 150 recipes, the cookbook is a culinary romp through the Bay Area with the flavors and dishes that make this region the darling of foodies. It features recipes from local foodies, as well as top chefs and restaurants such as Swan Oyster Depot, Gary Danko Restaurant, and Greens Restaurant.

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Bay Area Mushroom Entrepreneurs; Winner of the $100 CSN Card & A New Giveaway

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Two UC Berkeley business school grads and their innovative mushroom company. (Photo courtesy of Back to the Roots)

When Nikhil Arora and Alejandro Velez graduated from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business last year, they thought they would become investment bankers.

Instead, they invested in themselves, becoming farmers whose innovative way of growing mushrooms ended up, well, mushrooming beyond their wildest dreams.

Now their small start-up company, Back to the Roots, produces about 500 pounds of fresh oyster mushrooms a week — all grown in recycled Peet’s coffee grounds (10,000 pounds a week of it to be exact).

It was during their last semester in school when Arora and Velez figured out it was possible to grow mushrooms this way.

Nurtured on the grounds of Peet’s fine brew, these mushrooms have won over the likes of Alice Waters of Chez Panisse and Bay Area Whole Foods stores, which sell them for upwards of $10.99 a pound.

This year, they also launched the “Easy to Grow Mushroom Garden” ($19.95), which allows folks to grow up to a pound of fresh oyster mushrooms at home in as little as 10 days. You get multiple crops from it, too. Just set it on a kitchen window sill and mist twice a day. Just think: a project to amaze the kids and a way to have fresh, gourmet mushrooms at your fingertips for cooking up delicious meals. The kits, which come complete with a mister and recycled coffee grounds, are available at Whole Foods markets.

Pasta with homegrown oyster mushrooms. (Photo courtesy of Back to the Roots)

Through the holidays, 5 percent of all sales from the kits will be donated to the Susan G. Komen Foundation for breast cancer awareness. It’s a cause near and dear to Velez, who is a cancer survivor.

Contest: One lucky Food Gal reader will get the chance to win a free kit. The contest is open to anyone in the United States. Deadline to enter is midnight PST Dec. 4. Winner will be announced Dec. 6.

How to win? Just tell me your most memorable experience with mushrooms — be it a dish you tasted for the first time or an adventure you had involving them in some way. The best answer will win the kit.

To get you started, here’s my own answer to that question:

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Licorice Love

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Candy that's vibrant in color and organic, to boot.

Leave it to Nell Newman (Paul’s daughter) to come up with the first organic licorice twists.

In fruity wonderful flavors, too.

Newman’s Own Organics new licorice also is low in fat, sodium and cholesterol, and contains no trans-fat. Five twists have 130 calories.

Besides traditional black, the licorice also comes in three fruit flavors: Strawberry, Pomegranate and Tangerine. The latter three are not only fruity tasting but fruity smelling. They’re a little softer in texture than your average Red Vines, yet still plenty chewy. They’re not overly sweet, either.

I especially like the pomegranate one for its almost holiday berry relish flavor. There’s real pomegranate juice concentrate in them. And the tangerine licorice boasts tangerine essential oil.

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‘Tis the Season to Give an Olive Tree

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Nudo Italian olive oil. (Photo courtesy of Nudo)

As you contemplate braving the stores tomorrow to shop till you drop on Black Friday, here’s a great gift without any of the hassle.

Give the gift of an Italian olive tree, along with all the luscious oil it produces for a year.

You can through Nudo-Italia.

Jason Gibb and Cathy Rogers chucked their careers as TV producers to restore an abandoned 21-acre olive grove in Italy’s Le Marche in 2005. (We should all be so lucky, right?)

In addition to selling lovely olive oils, organic jarred pesto and dried specialty pastas, they also offer a program where anyone around the world can adopt an olive tree for a year. The project is a collaboration between Nudo and small-scale artisan olive oil producers in Le Marche and Abruzzo.

You can even choose the tree you want in a specific grove. Each tree produces about 2 liters of oil a year. For $105, you receive three shipments during the year.  First, a personalized adoption certificate and booklet about your tree. Then, in the spring, you’ll receive delivery of all the extra virgin olive oil from your selected tree. Finally, in autumn, you’ll get three flavored extra virgin olive oils to enjoy, as well.

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