Cook Here and Now

Another kind of pumpkin: Afghani kaddo bowrani

Buongiorno.
Thanks for making the November dinner such a success! As I receive the recipes from the participants, I'll be posting them here, so watch for them. And if you participated: Send in those recipes if you wish to share them.

Here's the first one from our fabulous host, Jeremy.
Grazie mille,
Marco Flavio
 

Afghani kaddo bowrani

Pumpkin
two 2 to 2.5 pound sugar pumpkins (they taste the best)
1 cup sugar

Yogurt sauce
1 cup plain yogurt
3 clove garlic, crushed
3 tablespoons chopped fresh mint
Salt & pepper to taste

Meat sauce
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 medium onions, chopped
1 pound lean ground beef or turkey
4 clove garlic, crushed
1 cup tomato sauce or pureed whole tomatoes
1/2 cup water

Set the oven at 350.

Cut the pumpkin into quarters. Remove seeds and strings, peel the skin with a vegetable peeler, and cut down into about 3-4-inch pieces.

Transfer pumpkin to a roasting pan that has been sprayed with Pam.  Sprinkle sugar over pumpkin. Cover [with foil if using a roasting pan] and bake for 3 1/2 hours, or until tender and almost translucent.

Yes, this is a lot of sugar, but it tastes great. Get over it.

While the pumpkin is baking, make the yogurt sauce and the meat sauce.

Yogurt sauce: mix together yogurt with garlic and mint in a bowl; season to taste with salt & pepper.

Meat sauce: in a skillet, heat 2 tablespoons of oil and cook the onions until lightly browned. Add ground beef, the second clove of crushed garlic, and salt & pepper. Mix well and cook until beef is browned. Add tomato sauce and water, mix thoroughly and bring to a simmer, lower heat, and cook about 20 minutes until it cooks down to a thick sauce.

To serve: spoon yogurt sauce onto dinner plates, add a portion of the cooked pumpkin, and top with meat sauce. Serves 8.

You have to eat all three things together- the sweet pumkin along with the savory yogurt and meat sauce. Enjoy!

This recipe makes enough for 20 as appetizer or 12 as a main course.

Group cooking, PART III: Dinner, Sunday December 3rd

Buongiorno.
Thank you for the great response, again! Participation requests are increasing all the time, so thank you for registering early.

The numbers and courses have been tallied and without further ado, here are the results:

If you make a non-vegetarian entree Dungeness crab, mussels or oysters are our seasonal ingredients. For those that were worried about the availability of crabs due to delays in the opening of the season: Do not worry; the crab season is open, I've already taken sampled our Dungeness, and it's as good as promised. 

Vegetables: Portobello and cremini mushrooms, beets, potatoes and artichokes (the last two received the same number of votes).

Fruit: Pomegranates

The list of participants is below. All the spots are full so if you're wondering if you can bring a friend not listed here, the answer is: Sorry, maybe next time. I've had to turn down quite a few people already. If your name isn't on the list, please stay tuned for the next dinner and register early.

Grazie,
Marco Flavio

Participants:

Marco Flavio
Seafood entree, freshly-baked focaccias and a Portobello mushroom pate'

Jeremy and Mike
Spiced apple Napoleons with pomegranate caramel sauce and pomegranate sorbet and Jeremy's famous marinated cracked crab plus a roasted root vegetable salad with a pomegranate dressing

Scott Weitze
Entree

SYDNEY PETERS
Crab entree and dessert

Julia Kochi
Veggie appetizer

Joanna Tong (maybe with a guest)
Vegetarian entree (if with guest, he/she will also bring 2-3 bottles of good wine)

Samsara Oberle
Entree

Dan Schuster (maybe with a guest)
Dessert (if with guest, he/she will also bring another course)

Anne (with guest)
2 bottles of good wine and beer, and a mussels appetizer

Elizabeth Sousa
Appetizer (non-vegetarian)

Heather Thayer
Appetizer

Amanda Darnell & David Joud
Mixed pomegranated mojitos and margaritas, Paella with crab, clams, mussles, sole, italian sausage and chicken (Man, do do I love their enthusiasm!)

Unhei and Ben
Entree

Jacqueline G (with a guest)
She will bring 2-3 bottles of good white wine, the guest will bring a dessert

Becky (with a guest)
She will bring 2-3 bottles of good white wine, the guest will bring a salad

Margherita Navarro (with a guest)
She'll bring entree and her guest  bring a seafood salad

Eve Diamond
Salad

DeeAnn
Crab entree

Walter Scott Martin 
Non-alcoholic drinks

Andrea Jadwin
Salad

Benny
Salad

Leora Zadik
Mussels entree

Amélie and Björn
Entree and dessert

Melanie
2-3 bottles of good wine

Thank you so much!
Marco Flavio

A celebration of culinary mushrooms: November 25 and 26

Buongiorno.
Saturday and Sunday after Thanksgiving marks another San Francisco first: a culinary extravaganza of mushrooms and fungi. This funghi shindig will be at the Ferry Building, and it's  a benefit for SF's favorite botanical mavericks: the San Francisco Mycological Society.

Enjoy tastings, watch cooking demos, and learn mushroom-hunting secrets. The SFMS always creates glorious displays of the non-edible ones, with colors and shapes to die for... literally.

I'll be there probably Saturday to catch Scharffenberger as well (see below) so drop me a note if you want to meet up.
Ciao,
Marco Flavio

Where: San Francisco Ferry Building
When: Saturday and Sunday, November 25 and 26

Thanksgiving turkey: Local, organic and delicious.

Buongiorno.
As the Thanksgiving holiday is rapidly approaching, I thought I'd share with you where to get fantastic Diestel turkeys. If the big bird is your meat of choice, I'd recommend these to serve friends and family the best turkey they've ever had. They're free-range, raised at the bottom of the Sierra Nevada foothills, and amazingly flavorful. Diestel also offer an organically certified veriety. Take my word for it, and after the holidays post back here and tell me how it went.
Ciao,
Marco Flavio

Here's where you can get them in San Francisco.
Here's where youcan get them in the East Bay.
Here's where you can get them in the North Bay.
Here's where to get them in the South Bay.

Enjoy!

Scharffenberger: San Francisco's local chocolate maker. Come, listen, ask.

Buongiorno.
Here's another event worth attending. SF's renowned chocolate maker, John Scharffenberger, is talking about his new book The Essence of Chocolate, giving us the chance to ask about the nuances of this most beloved ingredient (and when they will be Fair Trade Certified).
Come join me — I'll be there.
Marco Flavio

Where: Book Passage - San Francisco Ferry Building
When: Saturday, November 25, 2006, 2:00 PM
Cost: Free

Great meals from a crappy oven

Buongiorno,
I'm back from Italy, and I've been thinking about cooking with great ingredients using less-than-stellar equipment. When I was back in Rome, I had several meals at friends' houses where  the kitchens are small, the countertops are not granite, and the pots are not all All-Clad.  The equipment they used was nothing fancy, and standard in the majority of the world. Yet they managed to come up with  fragrant sauces, succulent slow-cooked roasts, and lightly sauteed vegetables bursting with flavor with that subpar equipment. Oh, and did I mention the pasta?

Like many of you, I'm a fan of the scientific methods of the Equipment Corner at America's Test Kitchen. Thanks to them, I now know that of the 28 garlic presses available for purchase, only two or three will actually do the job consistently, self-clean, and have a hinge that won't break in three months — wish I'd read that before I bought the first six. But in the US, have we taken reliance on the latest, greatest equipment too far?

Consider our oven at home in San Francisco: 12 years old, brand-less, seals poorly, and cooks unevenly. I put a pizza stone in  it to stabilize the heat, but still I have to rotate baked goods for  even cooking. I also invested in a good oven thermometer to monitor the  temperature (this is a must, even for really good ranges — don't rely  on what the handle says). In this dented white pile o' tin, I've managed over the years to cook  endless amounts of muffins, breads, focaccias, cookies, pizzas,  braised meats, roasts, and most other items that require diffused heat. I'm sure that with a better oven, things would be easier, but it still gets the job done. And let me tell you: The flavor has not been  wanting. (Many of you who've tried my foccacia at Cook Here and Now dinners can vouch for that.)  I count on the love I have for food and sharing it, experience with local ingredients, and knowledge of where and when to find the best produce to make up for our rickety old equipment.

Too much technical information and emphasis on really high-end tools can be paralyzing. Same with all these cooking shows where elaborate meals requiring 4 skilled Santoku-wielding prep cooks are presented to a chops-licking hungry audience that applauds on cue. Then when you make the dish at home you think: how come I can't julienne like that? And where is my applause?! We can't always take our cue from professional chefs. Most of us have somewhat limited time and budgets, and limited space in our apartment kitchens for the latest appliances — let alone room for a studio audience.

Some people come back to their homes equipped with the latest and  greatest, yet buy their ingredients from the local chain store, even  when farmers' markets or a CSA are an option. They store their groceries for a week  in those marvelous Sub-Zero fridges, and most of their recipes come  out... well...

I'm no technophobe (hello, I'm a blogger) but like many home chefs I swear by my most tried-and-true equipment. Teflon pans come and go in our house, but nothing makes cornbread like a cast-iron skillet. Let me tell you, Kitchen Aid mixers are built like tanks: mine has walked right off our too-narrow counter many times and has the scrapes to prove it, but it hasn't let me down yet. Knives that need constant sharpening,  pots that burn anything unless you constantly stir, ranges without  convection, plastic wrap that does not seal perfectly can still deliver what we so fondly desire. Again and again.

So be fearless: Pick a handful of recipes and master them with what ever tools you have handy. An upgrade here and there can be necessary,  but don't let product-peer-pressure stop you. Practice the recipe, using the freshest ingredients you can find, and make it yours.

A presto,
Marco Flavio

Let's cook and eat together: ALL SLOTS FULL - Sunday, December 3rd

Hello,
thanks for the enthusiastic support! We've filled our slots in four days.
Jeremy invited us to go and harvest mussels near his house in Point Reyes the Saturday before the dinner: details to come.
For the people who are waitlisted, I'll let you know as soon as I have cancellations. If you want to be on the waiting list, let me know.
Thank you all, and stay tuned for January's announcement.
Ciao,
Marco Flavio

Let's cook and eat together: Sunday, December 3rd

Buongiorno.
We had a terrific dinner last Sunday, and the plans are already in place for the next one. Dungeness crab season is about to open, so that will be our meat choice, along with mussels as the season opens mid-November (hey Dan, much to our delight you can smoke them!) and oysters to round it up. Sign up early and come over hungry.
A presto,
Marco Flavio

The plan
25-30 of us will cook and eat together on December 3rd, starting at around 2:30.
The dinner will be in San Francisco. Jeremy has kindly offered his company's very large, multiple-range kitchen for our gathering. Thank you, Jeremy, for making this dinner possible.
There will be enough space for us to use the stoves and ovens in a couple of shifts.

Registration will be limited to 32 people (which means that realistically there may be around 28 people, with the California flaking-at-the-last-minute syndrome) and every person coming (including any guests you bring) will either cook something or provide wine and drinks (see below).

We'll divide the cooking among the participants this way:

4 participants will make appetizers for 12 each (please include some vegetarian options)
10 participants will make main courses for 3-4 people each (please include some vegetarian options)
4 participants will make salads for 8 people each
4 participants will make desserts for 8-10 people each
5 participants will bring 2 bottles of good wine (or one bottle of really good wine plus a six-pack of beer)
2 participant will bring non-alcoholic beverages for 15 (sparkling water, juices, soda)

Please let me know who is coming by name. Once we reach 32 people confirmed, I will close the event. If the slots are full for what you'd like to bring, please choose something else instead. (Don't worry: There will always be another event to showcase your skills.)

Ingredients
We decided to pick these together, so we'll work with what the group decides (Iron Chef-style, only without the competition bit). Dungeness crab, mussels and oysters are the already-chosen ingredients, and the others are up for voting.
Below I've suggested some seasonal November-December produce; now YOU get to vote the ones you want. We should pick 3 vegetables and one fruit.

Here are the possibilities: 
Vegetables: Beets, yams, Portobello and cremini mushrooms, winter squash, potatoes, artichokes
Fruit: Grapes, pomegranates, grapefruits

I'll go to the market one week before the dinner, if something else looks great, I will add it to the  ingredients we can use for the dinner, so we'll end up with four possible vegetables.

So post a comment here letting me know the following:
First and last name
Email address
What you'll be bringing (appetizer, main course, etc. and if it's vegetarian)
Your vote for ingredients (please pick 2 vegetables, 1 fruit and 1 meat from the list above)
If you brought wine last time, you should now cook an appetizer or an entree, (unless you cooked as part of a couple and made a large entree).

I'll tally the results and post a list of the chosen ingredients, and who's bringing what.
If too many people pick the same course, I'll have to assign a different course to the last entrant.
If the votes are tied for ingredients, I'll flip a coin.

This is going to be great! So sign up before we have no space left.
Precedence will be given to the people who came last time, but please feel free to pass the word to fellow foodies.

A presto,
Marco Flavio

Mole To Die For annual competition

Buongiorno,
It's time again for one of San Francisco's best community food events: the Mission Cultural Center's annual Mole Competition. Come and try the many inspired variations on the theme, and vote for your favorite. While you're there, pay your respects to the Day of the Dead altars – definitely not to be missed.

I’ll be there, so post a comment letting me know you’re coming, or just look for me … I’ll be the Italian in mole heaven.
A presto,
Marco Flavio

When: November 9 from 7-10 pm
Where: Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts
Admission cost: $5
For information and details on more events, telephone 415-643-5001 or visit www.missionculturalcenter.org.