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Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Chile Pepper Menu at Dosa

A few weeks ago I had brunch at Dosa on Fillmore . It was absolutely fantastic. First of all, it's a lovely and glamorous dining room with high ceilings, gold accents and modern sculptural chandeliers. And the food is so good. I love having something a little out of the ordinary for brunch. There are omelets with chiles, dosas with eggs, spiced up scrambled eggs, all the things you want but served in a new way. So I was particularly thrilled to get a chance to work with chef and owner Anjan Mitra to put together a really cool menu for BlackboardEats . And now I have an excuse to go back for dinner. Anjan uses the best ingredients and brings a level of freshness to Indian food that is pretty much unique in San Francisco. He's been wanting to do a chile pepper menu for some time and the dishes are all over the map in terms of heat. Because this is a BlackboardEats special , YOU MUST sign up at http://blackboardeats.com/ and download a passcode on June 28th (or first thing June...
Thursday, June 23, 2011

Louisiana Gulf Shrimp

Help! I'm undergoing gulf shrimp withdrawal! On my Louisiana Seafood adventure I ate shrimp every single day and never got tired of them in the least. In Louisiana there are white shrimp, brown shrimp and freshwater shrimp. I particularly liked the flavorful brown shrimp I tried, though they are less popular than the larger white shrimp. Shrimp from the gulf are sweet and succulent and perfectly safe to eat. At the Sustainable Foods Institute (part of Cooking for Solutions at the Monterey Bay Aquarium) I spoke with scientists who told me that the shrimp population came back quickly after the oil spill in the gulf and the testing has not shown any signs that the seafood is contaminated. Fortunately Louisiana gulf shrimp are available all over the country and are really worth seeking out for their superior flavor and texture and because they are harvested in a more sustainable way than the cheap shrimp you find imported from Asia. So how many ways are there to eat shrimp? Prob...
Saturday, June 18, 2011

Bourbon for Father's Day

I'm just back from Bourbon Street, and I have bourbon on my mind. Of course, in New Orleans I drank Sazeracs, and the flavor of the city is really herbsaint as far as I'm concerned. But I'm thinking about bourbon and the young people I met in Louisville last Spring who told me that bourbon was what their granddaddies drank. It took them a while to come around to it, but they have now embraced it as their own. Even though my father doesn't drink it, bourbon just seems like the quintessential spirit for dad. In my visit to bourbon country, I learned the distilleries were all pretty much family ventures, though now mostly owned by conglomerates. Even if you don't drink bourbon, a visit to this beautiful part of the country outside Louisville is a treat. I was a guest at the Maker's Mark distillery in Loretto which feels more like a national park than anything else. Historic wooden buildings with touches of their trademark red are set against a lush green backdr...