Arsicault Bakery
Yeast-leavened French pastry or viennoiserie is a culinary miracle that traps the voluptuousness of fine, rich, sweet butter in layers of air and crunch, in the form of a golden croissant or a morning bun or a kouign amann. ( Kouign amann, a specialty of Brittany where some dishes keep their Celtic names, is puff [...]
Read More →The Breach–a movie about wild salmon
If wild salmon could talk, they might sound like the silvery stars of the documentary The Breach, who speak plaintively in a soft, feminine voice with an Irish lilt. By the end of this documentary, intermittently shot from the point of view of powerful fish swimming in pristine streams and magnificent bays in the wilderness of [...]
Read More →On the Fried Chicken Trail
The crunchy, spice-laden skin of good fried chicken may sell the dish, but a juicy, tender interior seals the deal. Great fried chicken has both, and our search for the ideal never ends. Fried chicken excites like no other iconic American dish, be it burger, pizza, burrito and yes, sushi. Here are three versions of [...]
Read More →Marla Bakery
How can a $6 plate of toast in a bakery/cafe in the depths of the Outer Richmond arouse such universal love? I guess because it is perfect. At the new brick-and-mortar Marla Bakery, across the street from the Balboa Theater, extravagantly thick slices of ciabatta, sourdough batard and levain are lightly toasted in the wood [...]
Read More →French Roots–an introduction to the cookbook by Jean-Pierre Moulle and Denise Lurton Moulle
“Alors, we are having our picnic now,” announced Denise. She unfurled a table cloth over some wet logs in the middle of a meadow in the foothills of the French Pyrenees. Jean-Pierre pulled bread, charcuterie, cheese and fruit from a wicker basket. The Americans, kids and adults in sweat shirts and jackets, actually thought it [...]
Read More →What I’m Eating Now, December ’13
Organic Valley Grassmilk and Organic Valley Pasture Butter Those of you who have tasted raw milk know that it is one of the great pleasures of the table. Alive and full of nuance, raw milk is palpably creamier and sweeter than typical pasteurized and homogenized milk. Tasted side by side with raw milk, pasteurized milk [...]
Read More →Ferry Plaza Farmers Market: 20 Years of Good Taste
The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake shook San Francisco to its roots and sent the city into a funk. Tourism, our number one industry, collapsed; no one would set foot in the city. The Civic Center, the nexus of government and the arts, shut down as one building after another closed for retro-fitting. Transportation was a [...]
Read More →b. Patisserie
I am obsessed with b. Patisserie, a new bakery/cafe in my lower Pacific Heights neighborhood. I sit at the computer inventing excuses to walk over. When I’m out, and pass within two blocks of its pearly white facade and big front windows, I start talking to myself. If I dropped in every time I had [...]
Read More →California Olive Ranch Olive Oil
For the first time, in my opinion, a California grower is producing extra virgin olive oil that is comparable in price, quality and availability to the extra virgin oils produced in Greece, Spain and Italy. Less than ten years ago California Olive Ranch started planting high density olive trees that look and act like grapevines. [...]
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