Category Archives: Going Green and Sustainable

Delicious Doings Around the Region

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The South Bay and Peninsula:

Sonoma Chicken Coop is famous for chicken, of course. But the Campbell locale has added a new item that will have you moo-ing instead.

That’s right — a burger made of grass-fed beef from Estancia ranches. It’s the only one of the franchises serving the grass-fed burger. And it’s flying out of the coop — at 75 orders a day, according to owner Jeff Starbeck. Surprisingly — or not — about 40 percent of the customers chowing down on the burger are women. Starbeck surmises that might be because grass-fed beef is lower in fat and contains more good-for-you omega-3s than corn-fed beef.

The 1/3-pound patty is hand-formed, then charbroiled, and served on a housemade bun. Choose from six different topping preparations, including avocado and mushrooms. The $9.99 burger comes with your choice of onion strings, regular fries or sweet potato fries.

Caltrain commuters at the Hillsdale station just got a tasty new option — a commuter “market” located in the former ticket office, where you can pick up fresh produce like apples, squash and avocados; as well as prepared dinner meals such as chicken pot pies and Dungeness crab mac ‘n’ cheese. How’s that for convenience?

Luke’s Local was opened by Luke Chappell, who started his own bagel business in Maine at the ripe old age of 11. His entrepreneurial spirit runs in his family. His parents founded Tom’s of Maine, a personal care products company that pioneered the use of all natural ingredients.

The commuter market is open Monday through Thursday, 6:30 a.m. to 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., and 6:30 a.m. to 9 a.m. Friday.  Purchase items there or phone in your order to take home. And yes, food and beverages are allowed on the trains.

Fans of Chef Michael Miller may be wondering what he’s been up to after he closed his well-regarded Trevese in Los Gatos last year. The good news is he’s now executive chef at the Silicon Valley Capital Club in San Jose.

If you’re not a member, find a friend who is to enjoy his wonderful cooking again.

Around the Region:

Thursday, Feb. 25 is National Clam Chowder Day. (Who comes up with these things?) Get your chowder fix at any Boudin SF or Boudin Cafe, where if you buy one clam chowder in a bowl that day, and receive a second one for free.

You have to present a coupon to get that deal. Print one out here.

If you’re a Parmigiano Reggiano fan (yes, the real stuff), you’ll want to head to Whole Foods at noon (PST) Feb. 27, when all of its markets will be demonstrating the proper way to break into huge, 24-month-aged wheels using five different knives.

In 2008, Whole Foods set a Guinness World Record for opening the most wheels of Parmigiano Reggiano simultaneously with nearly 300 wheels in 176 stores. This year, Whole Foods hopes to break that record.

You’ll get a chance to taste samples of the cheese, too. For more info or to see a video of a wheel of cheese being cracked open, click here.

If all that cheese is making you think of pasta, you’ll be glad to know that Pasta Pomodoro locations throughout Northern California are now letting kids (ages 12 and under) eat free all day on Tuesdays.

The “Kid’ Menu” includes items such as cheesy pasta or mini chicken Parmigiana pizza with a choice of milk, apple juice or soda. A chocolate sundae completes the meal.

Cinnabon — maker of those monster-sized cinnamon rolls whose sugary aroma fills the air of every mall around — has joined the cupcake craze.

The new cupcakes retail for about $2.50 each depending upon the city. San Francisco is the launch point for the cupcakes, which will be rolled out nationally to other cities throughout February.

Four cupcake flavors are available: Cinnacake Classic, Chocolate Passion, Vanilla Bliss, and 24-Carrot Cake.

Wine Country and Beyond:

Congratulations to Yountville’s Bardessono Hotel, Restaurant and Spa for garnering a LEED Platinum certification, the top designation established by the U.S. Green Building Council for environmental  and energy design.

It is the only hotel in California to achieve that designation, and only one of three hotels in the world to do so.

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Creating A Tomato to Call His Own

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It takes sharp eyes, a steady hand, good tweezers, and loads of patience to create a new tomato from scratch.

But Fred Hempel, a geneticist turned farmer, has a knack for it. Owner of the 9 1/2-acre Baia Nicchia Farm in Sunol, he’s already created and named 10 new varieties of tomatoes over the years. You might already have tried a few, as he sells his seeds to Seeds of Change, the certified organic seed supplier, which in turn makes them available to gardeners across the nation.

Hempel invited me to his rented greenhouse in Berkeley recently to watch him work his magic on his newest project — a signature tomato for Chef Guillaume Bienaime of Marché restaurant in Menlo Park.

Bienaime, who accompanied us that day, has been buying all his tomatoes, as well as winter squash, lettuces, lake, mustard greens and chard for the restaurant from Hempel for the past two years. Hempel grows about 30 different types of tomatoes, many of which you’ll find available in the summer at the Menlo Park Sunday farmers market. But Bienaime has been eager to add another to Hempel’s lineup, which will be available exclusively to him.

“I just thought it would be fun to create something that’s my own,” Bienaime says. “I’m not sure what I’ll call it yet, though.”

That’s OK, because he’s got plenty of time to mull over names. Forget a nine-month gestation period. It will take seven generations after crossing breeds for this baby to develop into a consistent tomato. Hempel can speed that up a little because he makes use of a greenhouse. Even so, it still will be about 2 1/2 to 3 years before Bienaime’s tomato fully comes to fruition.

Bienaime already knows what tomatoes he wants to cross to create his own: the Amana orange, a large, low-acid heirloom from Iowa that has the ability to hold well for three or four days even after it reaches peak ripeness; and the Costoluto Genovese, an Italian red heirloom from Genoa that’s squat with ridges like a pumpkin, and boasts magnificent flavor.

What the end result will look and taste like, though, is anyone’s guess.

“You just don’t know what you get until you cross them,” Bienaime says.

The greenhouse is where Hempel does his cross-breeding. Inside, where it’s balmy and bright, containers of lovely, elongated cherry tomatoes of every hue are growing, even though it’s still gray and chilly outside. The tomatoes that grow here can’t be assessed accurately for flavor because nurturing them under artificial lights doesn’t result in a flavor as developed as they would have if planted outside in a field. However, Hempel can tell if he’s on the right track or not just from the look of the tomatoes. Plumpness is an indicator of good flavor, he explains.

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The Tale of a Bowl of Noodles

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A bowl of noodles that represents both the simple and the hard in life.

This is the world’s easiest noodle soup that originated with the world’s hardest job.

Allow me to explain.

Warming, nourishing and filling, this bowl of custardy, thick rice noodles with sweet-smoky slices of Chinese barbecue pork is absolutely no-fuss, no-frett to make.

It has to be. It’s a work-all-day, race-home-to-put-dinner-on-the-table-before-I-collapse kind of dish.

Born of necessity. Born of invention. Born of the need to feed a family speedily, economically and, of course, deliciously.

It’s a dish my late-Mom used to make on hurried and harried weeknights for my Dad, two older brothers, and I.

Like many of my generation, I took it for granted that my parents always made dinner every night, no matter how tired they might be, no matter how much of a hassle it might have been. Not until I became an adult, myself, did I realize what a far from small miracle that truly was.

When I worked full-time as a newspaper reporter, there were long days when I’d arrive home so exhausted that I was in a complete daze. Those times, I’d often think to myself: “How did my parents do it? How?”

Here I was single, responsible for taking care of only myself, and it was downright draining. Even when I got married, and gained a husband to look after, it was still a far cry from how my parents managed to work five days a week and raise three kids without ever seeming too pooped to do any of  it. There was never a complaint, never a word uttered that it was all too much and they just wanted to give up.

I marvel at that, at all that parents manage to get done while life refuses to wait or even slow down one iota.

As a teen, I spent various summers working at my parents’ offices to make extra spending money. I remember waking up on weekdays at the same time as my parents, and climbing into the backseat of the car to go to work with one of them, as my Dad would make the drive into San Francisco’s financial district. He’d drop my Mom off first at the landmark, monolithic Bank of America building, where she would take the express elevator up to one of the higher floors to her job at a stock brokerage firm, where she handled estate work. Then, my Dad would drive on to his job at nearby Greyhound, where he was a book-keeper.

Sometimes at lunch-time, I’d walk with my Mom to nearby Chinatown to help her pick up provisions for that night’s dinner. Or if I was at my Dad’s office, the two of us would head there after work to buy ingredients before he picked up my Mom to drive us all home.

Often, those ingredients included that lovely lacquered Chinese barbecued pork and a box of freshly-made, fat rice noodles. My Mom would put a big pot of canned chicken broth to heat on the stove. In would go a few coins of fresh ginger, some slivers of yellow onion, a dash of soy sauce, a drizzle of sesame oil, and the slices of barbecued pork and cut-up rice noodles.

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Dinner & A Movie — Seafood-Style

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Clam chowder, full of sustainable clams, will be served tomorrow at the Yankee Pier Lafayette event. (Photo courtesy of Yankee Pier)

Head to Yankee Pier in Lafayette tomorrow at 6 p.m. for just that, as well as a lesson in sustainable seafood.

The evening will get started with a screening of the international documentary, “The End of the Line,” which made its debut at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. The film by Rupert Murray is the first major documentary to focus on the crisis facing today’s oceans because of overfishing.

Yankee Pier is joining with other restaurants around the country to host the “Fish ‘n’ Flicks” screening to urge consumers to choose sustainable seafood and to forgo critically endangered species such as bluefin tuna and beluga sturgeon.

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Organic Lamb with Idaho and San Francisco Connections

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A perfect lamb stew for a cold winter night.

Lava Lake Lamb of Idaho, 100 percent grass-fed and certified organic, is luscious, juicy and flavorful meat to be sure.

But what really sets this lamb apart is that all profits from the sale of the meat benefit land and habitat conservation efforts across nearly 1 million acres in south-central Idaho. Those efforts include restoration of wetlands, and studies of rare plants and songbirds.

I recently had a chance to sample some of this fine lamb and to learn more about this unusual enterprise near Sun Valley, Idaho.

Philanthropists Brian and Kathleen Bean of San Francisco purchased 20,000 acres of land on the Pioneer Mountain range-land. Of that, 7,500 acres were made permanently protected in a conservation easement held by the Nature Conservancy, where Kathleen worked for seven years. Her husband is an investment banker.

One of goals of the Beans was to run a sustainable business that sold lamb. The meat is now served at a number of Idaho restaurants. It also can be purchased on the Lava Lake Lamb Web site.

The rosemary garlic lamb sausages I tried made a simple, harried weeknight dish of pasta and tomato sauce something extra special.

The sample of lamb stew meat, tender and mild tasting, went into a recipe from “Flavors of Tuscany” (Broadway) by Nancy Harmon Jenkins.

“Lamb with Black Olives” is an easy stew flavored with garlic, rosemary, a little tomato paste and some dry white wine. As the dish cooks, the lamb juices infuse the sauce, giving it a richer flavor. Like most stews, the taste is even better the next day after the flavors have really melded.

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