Maybe you’ve tasted sesame cake before. Well, you probably haven’t had sesame cake like this before.
Extremely moist, artful with black sesame seeds throughout, and with the haunting, revved up flavor of toasted Asian sesame oil. Wow.
The recipe is from baker extraordinaire, Alice Medrich, who never ceases to amaze. It’s from her book,
“Pure Dessert” (Artisan). It’s a simple cake to bake, and one that needs no other adornment to shine.
Sesame Seed Cake
Southern California, which no doubt has been starved for a stellar Thomas Keller restaurant, will finally get one in late 2009 when a new Beverly Hills outpost of Bouchon will open.
The French bistro will be on North Canon Drive in the Beverly Hills Gardens building. It will be adjacent to the Montage Hotel, which will open later this year.
“This project is a homecoming of sorts for me as I worked for many years in the Los Angeles area,” said Keller in a statement, referring to his time overseeing Checkers restaurant before he was fired for insubordination. But that wasn’t such a bad thing, as not long after that in 1992, Keller ended up buying the French Laundry in Yountville; and the rest, of course, is four-star culinary history.
World-class restaurant designer Adam D. Tihany, who created the look for Bouchon in Yountville, as well as Per Se and Bouchon Bakery in New York, will once again turn his magic on creating this Keller restaurant that will seat 225. The two-story structure will house the restaurant on the second floor and a Bouchon Bakery on the first level.
Rory Herrmann will be the chef de cuisine. He is the former private dining kitchen chef at Per Se.
Bouchon Beverly Hills will join the Bouchon family, which also includes a Bouchon Bistro and a Bouchon Bakery in Las Vegas.
Not to be left out, Laura Cunningham, Keller’s former long-time girlfriend who ran the front-of-the-house operations at French Laundry and turned service into a true art there, will be opening up a restaurant of her own in Yountville.
Cunningham, who has been a restaurant and hotel consultant all over the world since leaving the Thomas Keller Restaurant Group about two years ago, will take over the former Pere Jeanty restaurant site on Washington Street. She plans to rename the restaurant, Vita, which means “life” in Italian. It also was the first name of Cunningham’s late grandmother. The restaurant will be contemporary Italian with an emphasis on her family’s Sicilian and southern Italian heritage.
The concept, image and design will be overseen by Cunningham. The daily operations of the 120-seat restaurant will be managed by Culinary Director Jeffrey Cerciello of Bouchon and Ad Hoc restaurants, along with the team from the Thomas Keller Restaurant Group.
That’s the thought-provoking title of the Asian cuisine event, 6 p.m. July 21, upstairs at the Ferry Building in San Francisco.
Join Chef Kelly Degala of Pres A Vi in San Francisco and Va de Vi in Walnut Creek; Eric Gower, author of “The Breakaway Cook”(William Morrow); Michelle Mah, former executive chef of Ponzu in San Francisco; Kirti Pant, executive chef of Junnoon in Palo Alto; and Chef Charles Phan of the Slanted Door in San Francisco. They will talk about how they developed their signature styles.
Appetizers will be served, along with wines from Filipino-American estate winery, Eden Canyon Vineyards.
Tickets are $35 for general admission; $25 for full-time students and those in the restaurant trade. To register, click here.
The event is a kick-off for the Oct. 10-12 Asian Food Beyond Borders symposium at the Ferry Building. The event is being spearheaded by Bay Areans Andrea Nguyen, author of “Into the Vietnamese Kitchen”(Ten Speed Press), and cooking instructor and Asian foods expert, Thy Tran.
The three-day event will celebrate how Asian communities have created dynamic cuisines around the globe. Among the speakers will be: cookbook author Madhur Jaffrey; Public Television star Martin Yan; Google cafe chef and former San Francisco Chronicle food writer Olivia Wu; and James Oseland, editor in chief of Saveur magazine.
Yours truly also will be overseeing an Oct. 11 wine-pairing seminar hosted by Edwin Soon, oenologist and author of “Asian Food With Wine” (Tide-Mark Press), at Le Colonial restaurant in San Francisco. For more information, click here.
Jugglers, clowns, mimes, fire-breathers, French poodles on parade, and more — that’s what’s in store when Left Bank Brasserie at San Jose’s Santana Row celebrates Bastille Day, July 12-14.
A triple-peaked big-top tent will be erected next to the restaurant for “Cirque de la Bastille,” 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. July 12 and July 13, where French circus performers will entertain. Admission is free.
Noon to 2 p.m. July 13, bring your four-footed doggie friend to take part in a competition, “French Poodles on Parade.” And no, your dog doesn’t necessarily have to be a French poodle. Registration is $10; proceeds benefit the Humane Society of Silicon Valley.
July 12-14, try your luck at pentaque, one of Europe’s most popular lawn games. Everyone is encouraged to sign up to play at no cost.
If you’ve been wondering what happened to that wonderful San Francisco Chronicle food writer, Olivia Wu, she didn’t go far in miles, but she did do quite the about-face in her career.
Wu put down her pen and notepad to free her hands for some bonafide cooking. Since early this year, she’s been an executive chef at one of Google’s famed cafes in Mountain View. At her Oasis Cafe, she oversees a staff of 26, who turn out more than 600 meals a day for hungry Googlers.
A former caterer, private chef, newspaper reporter, music teacher, and yoga instructor, Wu says one reason she took the job was for the challenge to expand the palates and horizons of this young, techie crowd. As one of her wholesale distributors said of her in awe, “She’s cooking Chinese food. Real Chinese food!”
Forget visions of chow mein and egg rolls. Think steamed fresh fish, pork hash with pungent salted fish, homemade lemongrass tea, and fresh juice from young coconuts cracked to order. Or the menu the day she graciously invited me to come for lunch last week: cold salads of chrysanthemum greens and tofu, cucumber-seaweed, cranberry shelling beans flavored with shiso, assorted vegetable kimchee, and 5-spice beef cut from the succulent shin bone. The hot selections that day included: spicy ma po tofu, melt-in-your-mouth crystal pork (steamed pork shoulder drizzled with a soy-garlic-sugar sauce), and stir-fried broccoli. If that wasn’t enough, there was also house-made bubble tea with fresh, peeled lychees bobbing in it.
Wu uses as many organic ingredients as possible (including the tofu), and only serves sustainable seafood. She’s even added a few traditional big round tables with lazy-susans to the seating area to encourage more synergy among Googlers as they dine.