Carnivores will want to head to picturesque Poggio for two marvelous meaty events.
First up, every Monday through March 30, the Italian restaurant will feature a Porchetta Dinner for $16 per person.
Executive Chef Peter McNee learned the Tuscan technique in Italy, in which a small pig is deboned and stuffed with herb sausage. Then, it is roasted in a wood-burning rotisserie until the skin is super crispy and the meat tender as can be.
How’s that for covering all the major food groups?
For $20, the Quiver Bar inside Epic Roadhouse in San Francisco will serve up “3B” –a 1/2-pound Roasthouse Burger that’s ground daily, an ice-cold 12-ounce Budweiser, and a house-made brownie.
Dim sum may mean “touch the heart” in Chinese.
But we all know these precious morsels tantalize the tummy, too.
Read the definitive guide to dim sum restaurants in the Bay Area in today’s San Francisco Chronicle Food section, which yours truly contributed to.
While helping to research this story, I picked up some helpful tips along the way:
1) To really judge the quality of your dim sum, refrain from using soy sauce, chile paste, hot mustard and the like. At least with your first bite. Just as we are so often guilty of drowning pristine sushi in soy sauce and wasabi, we unthinkingly do the same with dim sum. When it’s au naturale, though, you can really judge whether a filling has real flavor, and whether a wrapper is well made.
2) Bigger is not always better. As my friend Andrea Nguyen says, there’s a reason they’re made small. Nguyen, whose newest cookbook “Asian Dumplings” comes out in September, notes they should be bite-size. Once they start to get too large, the quality of the wrappers suffer.
The Japanese sure give their food a lot of TLC.
Cows get massaged so their flesh transforms into buttery, extraordinarily rich Kobe beef. And even persimmons get the shiatsu treatment.
Maybe I should have been born a Japanese food product because I’d be one happy camper if I got back-rubs on a regular basis. But forgive me, I digress…
I’d never tried the famous hoshigaki before. So when I spied these dried persimmons at Nijiya Market in San Jose last week, I had to buy a package to try.
The traditional method, brought here by Japanese immigrant farmers who settled in Placer County, require that firm persimmons be peeled by hand, and hung by string for several weeks. During that interval — yes indeedie– the persimmons get regular massages.
The rub-downs apparently help break up the flesh and give the dried persimmons a more uniform shape. They also help smooth the exterior to retard mold. After three to six weeks of this, a white powdery bloom appears naturally on the fruit, and they’re ready to be enjoyed.
Hoshigaki (also spelled hoshi gaki) are not easy to find. Because they are so labor intensive to make, there’s little commercial production. In fact, Slow Food has added hoshigaki to its Ark of Taste, a classification given to artisan foods in danger of disappearing. The global food organization is working to revive this fruit tradition.
Welcome the start of Lunar New Year today with Chinese almond cookies. Two different kinds, to be exact.
After all, you can never have too much of a good thing — especially when it comes to cookies.
Oh sure, you could take the easy route and buy a tub of almond cookies at the store. But please, make your own. They’re so much better and fresher. Try either of these recipes, and you’ll be glad that you did.
In one corner (right one in photo), we have the recipe for “Chinese Almond Cookies” from “Classic Stars Desserts” (Chronicle Books) by Bay Area Pastry Chef Emily Luchetti. (If you missed my fun Q&A with her, just click here.)
In the other corner (left one in photo), we have another recipe for ”Almond Cookies” from one of my all-time favorite Chinese cookbooks, “Every Grain of Rice (Clarkson Potter) by Ellen Blonder and Annabel Low.
I know what you’re thinking: “But Food Gal, which cookie recipe is better?” (You are thinking that, right?)
The answer is that they’re both wonderful, but it just depends on what you like.
The recipe by Blonder and Low will probably appeal to the almond cookie purist, the one who wants the exact same look and texture as the ones found in the stores or that arrive on the tray with the check at Chinese restaurants. These cookies have pretty crackles on top, and bake up sandy and crumbly from the addition of shortening.
Luchetti’s version is more for the modern almond cookie aficionado. Her almond cookies are crispy on the edges, and sort of cakey in the center. They are made with butter, and get a jolt of fresh almond flavor from sliced almonds incorporated right into the dough.
So which contender will it be?
Go ahead, make both. What better way to say, Gung Hay Fat Choy!
Almond Cookies (From “Every Grain of Rice”)