The recipe or the ingredient?
When I have a concept, it’s usually very clear where I found my inspiration. Sometimes, it’s a recipe that I have or come across. Sometimes, it’s an ingredient. But once in a while, it’s not very clear. Sometimes, it’s just because.
I can’t actually pinpoint whether I was craving a pie or rhubarb, but somehow, I found myself making Rhubarb Hand Pies. While we are at the very tail end of the rhubarb growing season, I was happy to see the vibrant scarlet stalks at the market. It just seemed to make sense. Almost without thinking, I found my knives dicing those leggy stalks and my hands forming disks of buttery dough.
I envisioned little miniature pies, or hand pies, as some call them.
The methods for hand pies vary. Some use a puff pastry, while some use a standard pie dough, cut into rectangles or circles with the dough folded over a fruit filling. As for the filling, some use a raw fruit and sugar mixture, while others cook the filling down, almost like a light jam.
For mine, I decided to use a Pate Sucre with a filling similar to this method. I sandwiched the rhubarb between two round disks, sealing the edges. It was definitely labor intensive, but I loved how they turned out. Little full moons, oozing with sweet and tangy rhubarb, they were the scrumptious pocket pies I was hoping for.
Like many consumers, all it takes is for the media to circulate words such as outbreak, recall and salmonella to influence me to look at food with a suspicious eye. With the recent salmonella outbreak in over half a billion eggs recalled from farms in Iowa, there are surely people who may have decided to omit eggs from their diet altogether. Some have flocked (eek, pun intended) to purchasing local eggs. To be safe, I know I will, for the time being, refrain from making my own Caesar salad dressing and letting my kids lick the cake batter from the spatula. It would be wise to avoid other foods that have raw or undercooked eggs.
Otherwise, experts, including Margaret Hamburg, Commissioner of Food and Drugs at the FDA, recommend that eggs are safe to eat as long as you:
- Wash hands before and after handling eggs
- Cook to 160 degrees
- fry on both sides for at least 2 minutes
- scramble until solid
- boiling for 15 minutes
- Don’t use eggs that are cracked or broken
- Store eggs at a temperature below 40 degrees Fahrenheit
I’m going to relax and enjoy my fully cooked and safely handled eggs! I made a Spinach, Zucchini & Smoked Salmon Crustless Quiche the other day, but what was nagging me more than the salmonella outbreak was the fat content. So, I lightened it up. No crust means less butter and carbs. Cottage cheese replaces heavy cream. And I loaded it with a lot of veggies – the zucchini helps to fluff up the quiche as well. If you don’t like smoked salmon, substitute it with prosciutto, or a good smoked ham! This quiche is very flexible.
While you’re waiting for it to bake, I recommend listening to a really interesting forum on the egg recall that was held by KQED, our public media in Northern California. Their panelists had quite an interesting discussion on the future of food safety, regulation, and egg prices. I’ve also included some links after the recipe if you care to read up some more on the issue.
I haven’t been buying cookies, sweets, or bakery items lately. No, I’m not on a diet. I’m just being stubborn.
Stubbornly healthy? Well, yes and no. When I see all manner of desserts at the store, I think to myself, I can make that. Who needs convenience, it’s so much more fun when I bake it myself. Only thing is, I haven’t been baking a lot, simply because it’s been a bit busy, what with the start of the school year and all.
After several weeks of witnessing my poor, baked goods-impoverished family search the cupboards for something - anything - to fill that cake-y void in their sad bellies, I promised myself I would get baking, pronto.
Three days later, I finally did. I confessed on Facebook that I was determined to bake on Sunday, and that I was trying to decide between zucchini bread or a cake. Some wonderful readers encouraged me to do zucchini cupcakes, and it was the perfect compromise. My family loves cupcakes, I myself was craving frosting, and I had a huge pile of zucchinis waiting to be transformed.
I adapted some of my favorite zucchini recipes into Zucchini-Chocolate Chip Cupcakes with a dreamy Cream Cheese Frosting. My dessert-deprived family raved about them – I like to think they really were good and it wasn’t just the deprivation talking. Lucky for them, I’ve got the baking bug, so there’s more to follow.
Ten years ago, on a chilly late August evening, my husband and I were in a car, suitcases and a cat in tow, zipping across the Golden Gate Bridge. Moments earlier, our plane had touched down at SFO, and we were weary yet excited. We had arrived from Chicago, on one-way tickets, eager to start our life together in San Francisco.
At that time, if someone were to ask, “where are you from?” the response would be fairly longwinded. I would find myself saying, “Well, I was born and raised in New York, but just moved from Chicago, where I spent the last two years…”
For a while, I missed a lot of things from my hometown. Mostly family, friends and food. Whenever I would go back home (and this is still the case), my visits would be marked by eating marathons, to get tastes of the things I missed. On the list: pizza and gyros, hot dogs and falafel, crab meat soup dumplings, knishes with mustard, among many other things. I can’t forget bagels. Chewy, gnarly bagels, slathered thick with cream cheese and topped with thin slices of lox.
Somewhere along the way, I began to think of myself as a Californian. I’m not exactly sure when that happened, but now, I can’t imagine life without dungeness crabs, fresh avocados, artichokes, sourdough, wine, and figs. I can’t imagine living anywhere else.
I find myself with my heart and my stomach attached to two cities.
A few days ago, my daughter begged for some smoked salmon when we were at the market. When I got home, I found myself craving those bagels with lox, but I also could not wait to dig into a handful of fresh black figs.
So I put New York and San Francisco together.
Figs with Cream Cheese and Smoked Salmon, drizzled with Avocado Honey symbolizes the happy union of two amazing places, the sweetness of California with the savory bite of New York. This is a dish that requires the freshest figs and the highest quality smoked salmon you can find. If I had the patience, I might have roasted or grilled the figs, but I just couldn’t wait. My sentimental taste buds were calling.
Apart from the gustatorial explorations at SF Chefs 2010, there were, as I mentioned in my last post, a myriad of demonstrations and industry seminars. You could learn everything from butchering a whole pig to the art of hospitality and fine service. I was given the wonderful opportunity to cover The Future of Food Media industry seminar for Foodbuzz.
The seminar title was fairly general, so I instinctively developed my own notions of what the discussion should cover. With clear shifts in consumer media preferences from print to online, the continued decline in magazine sales, and Gourmet Magazine’s demise in print but resurrection online and on its soon-to-be-released device application, I thought that this aspect of food media should be on the table.
And naturally, as someone who attempts to capture the beauty of food through writing and photographs on a blog, I was eager to hear opinions on this dimension of food media, and how PR firms and marketers have been harnessing this segment of their audience.
Well, perhaps next year.
The focus of the seminar was on social media, and ways those in the food industry can and should utilize social media platforms such as Facebook, Yelp, and Twitter. Admittedly, I long resisted the world of Twitter – the only reason I started a Twitter account was because of my blog, but I will be the first to concede that this platform can be extremely powerful. And fun. To me, my presence on Twitter and Facebook is an extension of my site. I was curious to learn the food industry’s perspective.
Moderated by San Francisco Chronicle Inside Scoop’s Paolo Lucchesi, the panel included Andrew Freeman (Andrew Freeman & Co.), Chef Robbie Lewis (Bon Appetit Management Co.), Ruggy Joesten (Yelp) and restaurateur Anna Weinberg (from the restaurant Marlowe).
The seminar was probably most beneficial to restaurateurs and chefs (and their PR firms) who want to find ways to hone their brand. But there were several key points that are useful to entrepreneurs or anyone involved in social media. Certainly, fellow bloggers can find the takeaways valuable, too.
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