Food tips

It's King salmon season and I couldn't be happier. King, also known as Chinook is the most precious and luscious salmon around. It’s very high in healthy fats and has an amazingly creamy texture. I was offered the opportunity to try fish from Daily Fresh Fish  so naturally I chose King salmon. DailyFreshFish is a company that delivers seafood overnight. There's no warehousing or middle man and no time for it to linger in a case at the market. It goes from the dock to the shore and then directly to you. The only way to get fresher seafood would be to either catch it yourself or go to dock and get it from a fisherman.  The company offers a wide range of seafood, and is certified with The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) sustainable seafood certification program, which verifies that the seafood is sustainable. They also use seafood guides from the Seafood Watch  from the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the NOAA FishWatch  to select sustainable fisheries and farms. Even t...

With Summer comes sweet juicy stone fruit like peaches and nectarines. Which is exactly what was in the second batch of fruit I received as part of the Canbassador program from SweetPreservation.com .  In addition to making a cobbler and a tomato peach salad, I made peach ginger butter. Fruit butter is very similar to jam, but it has a creamy consistency that seems amost buttery even though it’s completely dairy free. Fruit butters are easier to make than jam since they don’t set the same way. You cook the fruit to the right texture rather than setting with pectin.  Since this was my first time making it, I had lots to learn. For one thing, you don’t need to remove the skins. I did, but this was not necessary since they get pureed into the mixture. I added some vanilla, cinnamon and cloves in a sachet. This was also probably unnecessary. Because of the ginger flavor you can’t really detect the other spices. I used mostly all peaches and one nectarine.  The main ...

I don’t know when I stopped making salad every night, but it happened. That’s not to say I don’t eat salad anymore, I probably eat it more often than ever, I just eat it as a main dish instead. At least several times a week for lunch and at least once a week for dinner, I serve a main dish salad. What makes it a main dish? I’d say protein. And tofu is a perfect plant-based protein for salads.  A few weeks ago I attended an event hosted by House Foods organic tofu. Chef Melissa King did the cooking and also a cooking demo. I picked up a lot of good ideas. I loved her take on a Caprese salad and I’ve made my own versions of it several times. In one version I made a small bite style appetizer by placing diced tomatoes and tofu on large basil leaves and dressed them with coarse salt and extra virgin olive oil. In another, I was captivated by another recipe I found for Tomato-Peach Salad with Tofu Cream . But I wanted the salad to be a main dish, rather than a starter so I made some ch...

When I lived in Italy I was both very lucky to know a few Italians who treated me like family, and very naive. I think back now on my 6 months living in Italy and I can’t help but realize how much I missed. What I really needed was a friend like Viola to help me navigate and find the good stuff.  Viola Buitoni is a San Francisco cooking instructor and kind of impresario--organizing Italian themed events. She’s also tremendously down-to-earth, relaxed and utterly charming. I took a cooking class with her a few years ago and loved every minute of it. Her classes sell out so quickly I rarely have time to write about them in advance. To travel with her to Italy ? That sounds like heaven to me.  Where did you grow up and can you tell me about your family’s food connections?  VB: I grew up in Perugia, the main city of Umbria and was born into one of Italy's first pasta families. I am the 6th generation of the Buitoni family. Our pasta fortune originates in Sansepolcro, a provi...

Not unlike traveling to Japan itself, this past weekend's J-Pop Summit ,which combines food, culture, technology and popular music from Japan. delivered a complete sensory overload that made for one of the most immersive experiences this side of virtual reality. It's hard to know where to begin to describe it as words and pictures only scratch the surface. But, for me, the Ramen Summit with 8 booths serving their own take on this foodie favorite was a major draw.  The ramen on offer here came in so many different styles that it was tough deciding but I went with a bowl of ramen from a very sucessful ramen shop with 3 locations in Tokyo that will soon be is opening up in Japantown. Hinodeya is the winner of the Japan Ramen Awards for 2016 and after tasting their ramen, I can see why. The dashi broth was much lighter but at the same time very rich. The egg noodles were wider and wavier than other ramen but still al dente. The slice of pork and cooked egg were tender and deliciou...

In the Summer you need a book or two that you can take on a plane or to the beach. These are the my picks for Summer reads:  My Fat Dad : A Memoir of Food, Love, and Family with Recipes I think I was afraid this book by a nutritionist would be about dieting. It turns out it is and it really isn’t. It’s all about family and author Dawn Lerman paints such vivid pictures of hers that the recipes are just an added bonus. From the very beginning her feelings are tied up with those who feed her and those who don’t. You can feel the plastic covers on her Bubbe Mary’s couch and smell her dad’s “closet” brownies. And even if you didn’t grow up in Chicago in the 70’s, or move to NYC and go to school on the Upper East Side, you can’t help but relate to her memories of her dieting dad, frustated mom, beloved younger sister and especially her doting grandmother Beauty. The book is all about her love for and evolving relationships with her family, her heritage and yes, food adventures of her own...

Summer is in full swing and so are the farmers markets. It’s a joy to walk around and see all the juicy peaches, luscious strawberries, plump eggplants, and many colors, shapes and sizes of peppers and squash. Much as I like Summer squash, I’m even more crazy about their younger selves—squash blossoms. They are wonderful stuffed and fried, in frittata, risotto, in quesadillas and of course, with pasta.  I am a pasta maniac and swear I could eat a pound of it in one sitting. But I’ve been experimenting lately and I’ve found I can be satisfied with a whole lot less pasta if I add a lot of other ingredients. This recipe is a perfect example. It has plenty of vegetables and just a little pasta. It uses very few ingredients so use the absolute best you can get from either your garden or a farmers market.  Squash blossoms are very delicate and I like this technique of just blanching them in the pasta water rather than sauteeing them. Many recipes use to many other strong flavored in...