October | 2012 | Food Gal

Monthly Archives: October 2012

At Bushido in Mountain View, There’s More than Meets the Eye

Posted on October 3, 2012 by foodgal 8 comments

Executive Chef Isamu Kanai is a very, very clever man.

When he impishly set a small plate of nigiri sushi before my husband and I one night when we were invited to dine as guests at his downtown Mountain View restaurant, Bushido, he asked us to guess what type of fish it was.

We scrutinized the fleshy white pieces that had been crosshatched, then brushed with a sweet soy sauce and placed atop mounds of rice. We took a bite. The texture was ever so chewy, much like raw cuttlefish which it resembled. But the taste was slightly sweet.

Could it be some other type of cuttlefish we’d never had before?

We couldn’t have been more wrong.

Scenes from the Third Annual Foster Farms Fresh Chicken Cooking Contest

Posted on October 2, 2012 by foodgal 5 comments

If you were a chicken, the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone in St. Helena was a dangerous place to be last Friday.

But if you were a cook, gunning to show your prowess with the country’s most popular protein, you couldn’t have picked a better venue.

The occasion?

The third annual Foster Farms Fresh Chicken Cooking Contest, which pitted six finalists (two each from California, Washington state and Oregon) against one another for the grand prize of $10,000, plus a year’s supply of Foster Farms chicken.

It was my third time judging this contest, and each year the recipes seem to get better and better.

My fellow judges were: Chef John Ash, host of KSRO-AM “The Good Food Hour”; Lynn Char Bennett, test kitchen director for the San Francisco Chronicle; Chef Ken Frank of La Toque in Napa; and Liam Mayclem, host of CBS’ “Eye on the Bay.”

Get Your Mojo On In A Delicious Way & A Food Gal Giveaway

Posted on October 1, 2012 by foodgal 8 comments

Sweet, salty, crunchy and chewy — all in one bite.

Is it any wonder that Clif Mojo bars are among my favorite energy snacks?

OK, with chocolate chips in some of them and as much as 30 percent saturated fat, they might not be the epitome of health food. But at about 200 calories per bar (varies depending upon the variety), you could do a lot worse, especially when the ingredients in these bars are 70 percent organic.

They come in a variety of flavors, including: Chocolate Almond Coconut, Dipped Chocolate Peanut, Peanut Butter Pretzel, Mountain Mix and White Chocolate Macadamia.

I like the profusion of rice crisps and nuts in them because they make for a satisfying texture.

Stash one in your desk drawer, purse or carry-on luggage, and you’re good to go.

Contest: Five lucky Food Gal readers will win a sampler pack of Clif Mojo bars (one of each variety named above). Entries, limited to those in the continental United States, will be accepted through midnight PST Oct. 6. Winners will be announced Oct. 8.

How to win?