Monthly Archives: January 2012

Part Asian, Part Italian — Momofuku Milk Bar’s Chinese Sausage Focaccia

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Focaccia gets a wonderful Chinese twist.

New York’s Momofuku Milk Bar bakery is famed for its playfully delicious “crack pie,” “compost cookies” and “cereal milk” ice cream.

But when a review copy of  the cookbook, “Momofuku Milk Bar” (Clarkson Potter) by Pastry Chef-Owner Christina Tosi landed in my mail, it was a more savory-spicy concoction that caught my eye.

“Chinese Sausage Focaccia” is a delightful mash-up of Chinese and Italian all in one bite.

It’s focaccia studded with garlic slivers and sweet Chinese sausage slices — with a veneer of Sichuan chile oil baked into it.

How’s that for breathing fire into this new “Year of the Dragon”?

The book offers a range of sweets and desserts sold at Milk Bar and plated up at the various Momofuku eateries started by the often off-color Chef David Chang. They range from the easy (peanut butter cookies) to the quite ambitious (“Tristar Strawberry Sorbet, Macerated Strawberries, Lovage, Ritz crunch and Celery Root Ganache”). The focaccia falls in the middle of those two extremes.

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Pick a Pimenton

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A "chem set'' for heating up your cooking.

If you’re a fan of the unusual summer peppers sold at Bay Area farmers markets by East Palo Alto’s Happy Quail Farms, you’ll be glad to know you can savor their exotic tastes year-round now in dried form.

The specialty, family-owned farm smoke-dries its peppers over oak and fruit wood to create its new smoked pimenton powders; and dries other peppers either in the sun or in a dehydrator for its small-batch paprikas.

The result is a range of spices so handy for creating so many dishes at home. Mulatto paprika, made from a mild spicy brown chocolate pepper, is perfect for traditional Mexican moles. Smoked Ají Amarillo pimenton has a vibrant marigold color and is ideal in a sour cream dip or a lime juice marinade. And Serrano paprika, with its sweet-hot notes, makes a mean rub.

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Viognier — Still Full of Vim and Vigor

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Short ribs elegantly presented at Viognier restaurant.

It wasn’t long ago that the notion of a restaurant operating inside a hotel doomed it to second-tier status.

While that no longer holds true, the idea of a fine-dining restaurant inside a grocery store still prompts some disbelief.

But when Viognier opened inside the gourmet market, Draeger’s in San Mateo 15 years ago, it made a convincing case that unlikely scenario could work.

After all, the restaurant was opened by none other than Chef Gary Danko, who later left to open his own eponymous restaurant in San Francisco. He was followed by Chef Scott Giambastiani, who is now an executive chef at Google. Chef Preston Dishman, former chef-partner of the General’s Daughter in Sonoma, took over the restaurant, named for the aromatic grape varietal from the Northern Rhone region of France, in 2008.

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The Incomparable Cecilia Chiang

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The lovely, pioneering Cecilia Chiang at home in San Francisco.

She has been called the Chinese Julia Child.

As Child is credited with introducing authentic French cuisine to Americans, Cecilia Chiang has done the same for Chinese food in this country.

At a time when Chinese restaurants were all run by men and serving gloppy chop suey, egg foo young and other so-called Cantonese specialties, Chiang — who had never owned a business before — dared to open the elegant Mandarin restaurant in San Francisco in 1961 to cook up the real flavors of her native Shanghai. Ethereal dumplings, spicy Sichuan shrimp, kung pao chicken, tea-smoked duck and minced squab in lettuce cups were novelties in the Bay Area then, but soon after became staples at Chinese restaurants trying to capitalize on Chiang’s runaway success.

The Mandarin closed in 2006, but not before becoming a culinary legend beloved by locals and such glitterati as Child, Alice Waters, Jeremiah Tower, John Lennon and Jackie Onassis.

At 92, Chiang still cuts an elegant figure with remarkable energy. She still travels to China annually with friends like Waters; remains a mentor to young Asian-American chefs such as Corey Lee at San Francisco’s Benu; dines at Betelnut in San Francisco regularly, wheres she was the opening consulting chef; cooks dinner parties at her penthouse abode in San Francisco; and only stopped driving a year and a half ago, when she got a speeding ticket and her license was taken away.

Recently, I had a chance to meet this amazing woman for the first time for a profile story for Food Arts magazine.

When I marveled at her stamina, she replied with a smile, “I never get tired. And I am interested in so many things. I love to cook, garden, and see movies. Just keep yourself busy — that’s the secret. I never take naps. I eat three meals a day, and I always eat well.”

If food is truly the fountain of youth, then you could hardly do better than to whip up a couple dishes from her classic, “The Seventh Daughter” (Ten Speed Press), a cookbook memoir she wrote in 2007. There’s no better time, too, what with Sunday marking the first day of the Lunar New Year.

Tender eggplant spears tossed with an easy chili-garlic-ginger-soy sauce.

The slightly spicy “Eggplant in Garlic Sauce” is perfect for what promises to be a fiery “Year of the Dragon.”

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