Returning the space to its original purpose before a failed flirtation with Spanish food, the corner of Laguna & Hayes is once again a bakery and cafe. While Terra is a bit more upscale than Pendragon was, it's still good bread and pastry, and very affordable for the neighborhood. Haven't tried the cafe food there yet; will write a full review when I do.
For my second trick, I taught how to make a more complicated, "company" risotto for entertaining or special evenings. This one involves a lot more work, primarily because of the requirement to separately prepare a lot of the ingredients and the "stir continuously" rice cooking method. In the picture above, it's the yellow one. Click through for recipe.
I taught my first cooking class on thursday at Noisebridge. While it was small, the class went really, really well. We had a good time and cooked some great risotto! Above are my three students, Renee, Matt and Mike. There will definitely be more classes after this.
The subject of this first class was risotto, the traditional northern Italian rice dish. I wanted to both demystify risotto, which I think many Californians regard as very gourmet rather than the simple country dish it is, and show the basic techniques. Once you have the techniques, you can make any kind of risotto you want, based on what you find in the market or what you happen to have in the fridge. I'll follow up this post with recipes.
This is the first of the two risottos we made for the class, to demonstrate the easy, low-attention way of making risotto, for weeknights when both you and your sweetie are tired and you can't deal with a high-attention dish. It's the dark-colored of the two risottos above. Pictures of the cooking steps supplied by Matt Sonic! Click through for recipe.
Ages ago I posted an article on how to do home tastings. I thought I'd show you putting my comestibles where my dentition is, from a recent tasting at our apartment. We threw this little party because we had too much fine wine around, and too much chocolate, and our local grocer (Haight Street Market) had just broadened his cheese stock.
We invited over our upstairs neighbors plus five friends who had all worked at the same businesses at different times, but had not yet met each other. Continue reading for tasting notes.
Puerto Rico, next to Cuba, on the Haight
Continuing my recipe contest participation, I recently won the above dried ground hot pepper of Calabria from The Foodie Blogroll. The pepper is medium-hot, about the same level as Gephardt's chili powder, but has a hint of smokiness about it kind of like Aleppo Pepper. I have no idea how I'll use 1/2 a kilogram; I've already given 8oz away.
I also adore the phonetic italenglish spelling of the label. Shows you what the Italian on many American brands looks like to someone who actually speaks it.
As part of the victory, I had to promise to post a recipe to go with it, so here goes. What else would you do with pepperoncini di Calabria? Pasta fra Diavolo, of course! This is an easy-weeknight version. Click through for recipe.
Since I like food, and I like to teach, I'll be teaching my first cooking class on Thursday, April 29th at Noisebridge. This class will be on risotto.
I'm looking forward to it, I've needed a creative outlet since I had to give up my studio.
Please take a look, and if you're in San Francisco, sign up for the class! If this first one goes well, I'll start doing a series of them, one every month.
Underdog (Lunch)
Great California-style sausages in SF.
