Category Archives: General

Make Room For Smoked Meat Loaf

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Getting ready to smoke the meatloaf with plenty of hickory.

Sure, you’ve baked many a meat loaf. But have you ever smoked one — over hickory chips no less?

It may spoil you for any other version.

A beguiling smoky, woodsy flavor permeates this very moist “Slow-Smoked Barbecued Meat Loaf” from “Cooking My Way Back Home” (Ten Speed Press) cookbook, of which I received a review copy late last year. The cookbook is by Mitchell Rosenthal, co-owner and executive chef of three San Francisco restaurants: Town Hall, Salt House, and Anchor and Hope. The book features more than 100 hearty, Southern-inspired dishes from those restaurants.

This is one flavorful meatloaf, as the mixture of ground beef, pork and veal is suffused with your favorite barbecue sauce, Dijon mustard, grated Parmesan and a spice mixture that includes cayenne, paprika, cumin, coriander, oregano, celery salt and dry mustard.

Meat loaf that's as good as it gets.

The meat loaf can be cooked either inside a loaf pan or on top of a sheet pan. The latter will expose it to more of that lovely smoke, so that’s the method I chose.

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Restaurant O Has Finally Moved to Santa Clara — Well, Part of It

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Chef Justin Perez in his new kitchen in Santa Clara, a space he's been working on for more than a year.

It’s been a long time in coming, but Chef Justin Perez, who started refurbishing the old Wilson’s Jewel Bakery in Santa Clara way back in the summer of 2010, has finally moved his Restaurant O Catering company into that site.

As of last Thursday, his catering company, which had been operating in Los Gatos, was up and running in the new site with a huge 4,000-square-foot kitchen, cobbled together with equipment he refurbished, scoured at auctions and purchased new with scrounged funds. The restaurant portion of the space is still to come. But the fact that his team is finally in its new facility is a huge achievement, he says.

“It feels amazing,” Perez says. “It’s all just been unreal.”

The catering part of the company is up and running in the new site.

When his longtime cooks saw the finished space for the first time, they had tears in their eyes. It’s easy to understand why when you know the horrific and shocking events that came before.

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Momofuku Milk Bar Cookie Mixes

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Momofuku Milk Bar's "Compost'' mix results in rich, chewy, delectable cookies.

Leave it to Williams-Sonoma to save us the plane trip of flying to New York for Momofuku Milk Bar’s famous, whimsical cookies.

The retailer has introduced three cookie mixes for the iconic “Compost,” “Corn” and “Blueberry & Cream” cookies.

Of course, convenience does come at a price. The mixes are $16 each, and make nine to 12 cookies, depending upon the variety. You need to add an egg and butter; and in the case of the “Compost” cookies, also your own potato chips and pretzels.

The cute packaging.

Recently, I had a chance to try samples of the mixes. They’re all quite straightforward to make. You do need to chill the resulting cookie dough for at least an hour before baking so the cookies don’t bake up flat.You also need to resist sampling one right out of the oven. The palm-size cookies need to cool so they set up properly. Otherwise, if you bite into one when it’s still quite warm, you might think it underdone.

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Blathering about Bouillabaisse Balls

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Fish is the main ingredient in these meatballs. But where, oh where, is the sauce?

This is a case of: Do as I say; don’t do as I do.

What I mean by that is if you make this recipe for “Bouillabaisse Balls” found in “The Meatball Shop Cookbook” (Ballantine Books) exactly as printed — as I did — you may find it lacking. Just as I did.

First, it looks nothing like the photo in the book by Daniel Holzman and Michael Chernow, founders of New York City’s The Meatball Shop, of which I received a review copy. The photo in the book shows a frying pan filled to the brim with meatballs bobbing in a thick tomato sauce. Only problem? The meatballs in the recipe are cooked in a rectangular baking dish, not a frying pan. And there’s no sauce anywhere to be found in the recipe. Uh, hello?

OK, fine, I thought. I’ll just try making the recipe as is, thinking the fish balls, seasoned to mimic the famous Provencal seafood stew, will be flavorful enough all on their own.

Not quite.

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Lend Support to Introducing Ethiopian Crops to the United States

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Highland kale, a staple in Ethiopia, now grown by Baia Nicchia Farm of Sunol.

You may know Baia Nicchia Farm of Sunol for its glorious array of heirloom and one-of-a-kind tomatoes it sells at the Menlo Park farmers market in the summers.

Now, geneticist-turned-farmer Fred Hempel wants you to know his small farm also for its efforts to introduce Ethiopian specialty crops to this country.

As such, he’s asking for your support for his Ethiopian seeds project that he’s hoping to launch through the funding platform, KickStarter. He has until March 10 to get $22,000 pledged for the project, which aims to introduce five Ethiopian vegetable varieties nationally this year.

Hempel got interested in the project when he met Ethiopian native, Menkir Tamrat, a former Silicon Valley tech worker who started growing the peppers of his homeland that he missed after he got laid off. Hempel offered Tamrat some space at his 9.5-acre farm to grow peppers that Hempel then sold at farmers markets.

The result is a partnership set to blossom even more. Hempel hopes to release Ethiopian varieties through his new seed company, Artisan Seeds, which also will sell some of his tomato seeds.

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