Cold Snap in SF and Tuna Primavera Casserole

Yesterday was a wild spring day in San Francisco! When I woke up the windows were rattling, as sash windows do when it’s over 35 MPH, and the sky was looking decidedly dark. It was 45 F out, which is pretty cold here, and they said rain was coming so I put on lots of layers and my waterproof parka and headed to work. On the bus almost to Market Street I heard strange noises and realized it was rain and sleet!  People were scattering on the street for doorways like leaves in a strong wind. I have a 15 minute walk from the bus stop and so I zipped up tightly and headed off the bus, so grateful I was wearing my extra warm and fluffy Russian mohair shawl under all parka as it was verging on hail.

It was too windy for most of the walk to use the umbrella but the hooded parka was a blessing, for my upper half! I had soggy pants and shoes for the morning, alleviated by hot tea.  It did clear up to be sunny but icy cold and as the day wore on I really wanted to go home and make comfort food. I stopped at the FiDi Target and got some milk, broccoli, and fresh spinach, and a bottle of white wine.  On the way home I hit upon the idea of the ultimate comfort food, tuna noodle casserole, but I would add veggies, because I don’t eat enough of them, much to my shame, it’s hard to shop when we have bad weather and one  is on a budget.

Years ago my friend Pat shared her recipe on our recipe swap, and it was just like what my mom used to make. I had it bookmarked on my cell phone so I texted my sister while I was on the bus. What a fun exchange we had, remembering these great dishes when we were so very poor, and being forced to do the dreadful task of “just making a salad”.  My sis suggested putting breadcrumbs with Parmesan on top. I recalled that I had a little bit of buttery tasting club crackers in the breadbox, and we agreed that would work well.  She liked the vegetable addition idea and that reminded me of the necessity for peas, which happily I had in the freezer.  I also found a packet of fancy orecchiette pasta from Trader Joes, plus a can of their very fancy tuna.

I chopped the broccoli up a bit finer and sauteed the florets in butter, then added the damp, rinsed spinach, and a splash of the Pinot Gris. Once they were done, I added the peas, the milk, and the canned soup – this is how mom made it and nostalgia demanded I not deviate, although I could have easily rehydrated some mushrooms and made a bechamel. Sometimes comfort food’s appeal is that it is fast and easy, and I am fond of the cream of mushroom soup ubiquitous from my childhood.  I bashed up the club crackers and some good grated Parmesan using the wine bottle and a small ziplock bag and they were sprinkled on over the sauced orecchiette pasta.

 

While the casserole baked I watched Mind of Chef and amused myself by the comparison of David Kinch’s exquisite cuisine compared to my humble tuna primavera casserole. I also knitted myself a mini cat in Kuma colors, which just made me grin so much, I even stuffed him so that he’s a bit plump like his namesake.

The timer rang and the tuna primavera casserole was done! I scooped up a bowlful, poured some wine, and had a relaxing evening with Kuma at my side, coziness and comfort food moment achieved.

 

Printable Recipe: Tuna Primavera Casserole

Soup for a Duvet Day

This Saturday was a mellow day, I lounged around the house doing a bit of cooking, a bit of housework, and a bit of watching Netflix, but mostly I was snoozing on top of the bed while wearing fleecy sweats and wooley socks. When I was describing it to a British colleague he said, oh we call those “Duvet Days”! I love this term so much, I definitely had a wonderful Duvet Day this weekend.

After a slightly boozy cafe mocha or two and some toast while lounging on the duvet, I discovered a delightful Australian drama on Acorn TV which rivals Downton Abbey, set in post World War II in a small town named Inverness near Sidney. “A Place to call Home” has drama, romance, draconian grandmothers, illicit affairs, and blackmail make for perfect Saturday Duvet Days. Around 2 pm I started to feel peckish and nothing in the fridge and pantry terribly inspired me except I knew I had russet potatoes and a tub of sour cream in the fridge for a bodacious baked potato with a ribeye I had thawed that morning. But I really didn’t feel like having a steak for some reason, it felt like too much work and I really just wanted soup, and then I remembered the first dinner I ever made my family.

Growing up with my mom and sister being such amazing cooks, I learned a lot perched by their elbows. Even my father was a good cook and made what he called Turkey Bone soup after Thanksgiving every year, and blueberry pies in the summer. My mom had tons of lovely cookbooks, and I would take a pile of them and lie on my stomach on the cool tile floor of the entry hall to read. The light slanted in from the tall vertical pebbled windows surrounding the front door to the courtyard with the perfect brightness for reading and yet I was out from underfoot and could be left alone in peace. While reading, I would image what everything would taste like and wonder if we had the ingredients to make these things, and made a list of things I had never heard of before to ask mom later, or realize with a loud internal “AHA! *that’s* where mom got that recipe!” when I saw something utterly familiar. The Spice Islands Cookbook was a family favorite, the majority of the pages were spotted with stains and the book would fall open to those family favorites when the pages were ruffled.

One recipe caught my attention, Sour Cream Potato Soup, because I always loved baked potatoes, *and* it had cumin, my absolute favorite spice. I remember looking through the kitchen and realizing everything I needed was there, and it didn’t sound hard, and maybe mom would let me cook it for dinner. I was so excited about it, and yet it was just a small pot of soup, but my family was very kind about it and it really did taste good.

(A humble soup and yet so flavorful and unusual)

The purpose of the cookbook was to highlight the products made by Spice Islands, and to introduce spices to 50s housewives who were not terribly adventurous in the culinary department.  It is quite a varied cookbook in terms of cuisines and countries, since the spices are mostly sourced from “exotic locales”.  The recipes come out quite well using dried spices and herbs, which in the long ago pantries of bored housewives or wintertime, even in San Francisco, can be handy when fresh things are limited, or when one can’t be bothered to get out of pajamas to go grocery shopping.

I peeled a few potatoes and diced them, and assembled all of the soup ingredients while waiting for the dishwasher to finish its cycle.  Diced potatoes are simmered in a beef broth until tender, then mashed in the pan with a potato masher, which is very appealing to an 8 year old.  Cumin, beau monde seasoning, and black pepper are added to the pot, then cream thickened with arrowroot, and finally sour cream are stirred in.  A final handful of chervil finishes the soup, but I never seem to have chervil around, so fresh parsley made do. I had some turkey broth leftover from the Thanksgiving carcass so this time I used half turkey and half beef broth.

Another nap happened upon me while the soup was cooking, so I perked myself up to finish the cooking with a restorative cup of tea.  The soup was quickly ready, and as it was after 5:00 pm I had a tot of whiskey to wash down my initial mug of soup.  Another dram of whiskey and another mugful of soup made me feel so happy and content with the world and it tasted just as good as I remembered.

Next time you have a Duvet Day I hope you try making a pot of this soup.

Recipe:  Sour Cream Cumin Potato Soup

 

Asparagus and Potato Tart for a Party

It was the 4th of July and I was in such a happy mood! I was having a lot of fun around that time, walking all around town with no pain, meeting fabulous new people, seeing friends I love dearly, and just enjoying my life.

On the 4th, some dear friends had a potluck for the holiday, and I wanted to bring something absolutely beautiful and yet utilize what I had in my pantry.

As I assessed my inventory, I found a lovely sheet of puff pastry in the freezer, I have some beautiful Yukon Gold potatoes, some fresh herbs, and Gruyere cheese. I went off to the store and bought some additional fresh produce and things for the weekend and picked up a bundle of asparagus.

The morning before the party, I fired up the oven and boiled the potatoes, and once they were cool I sliced them and seasoned them well with Kosher salt. Meantime, I rolled out the puff pastry and cut it into a square, then created edges with the scraps. I brushed the bottom of the pastry inside the square with a little mustard, followed by some sour cream.

The sliced potatoes went on next, followed by a hearty layer of Gruyere, then the asparagus which were topped with a little more cheese, salt and pepper, and some leaves of fresh thyme.  30 minutes later, it looked perfect!

The party was a really fun time, seeing my friends and having a foggy and drizzly afternoon celebrating our country’s 240th birthday!  The tart was a huge success and was quickly decimated to crumbs. We escaped the fog after the food was devoured into the warm house with large glasses of bourbon to spur our conversations.  I plan to make this tart again for a picnic this weekend, hope you try it sometime too!

 

Recipe:  Asparagus, Potato and Gruyere Cheese Tart

 

Why Pay $11 for Avocado Toast?

San Francisco is the land of outrageously expensive toast.

Last year the internet trended with articles about $4 toast or $6 toast but the fervor over avocado toasts has reached hysterical heights.

I visited the Ferry Building, as I often do, and tried out one of the most outrageously expensive avocado toasts in the city at Frog Hollow.  Admittedly, it was divine.  The avocado was perfectly ripe, the bread had the perfect chewiness and toasted not too hard to become too difficult to bite through, causing a cascade of luscious avocado slices to slide off onto your black pants.  A hint of garlic overlays the bread, and the entire toast is dappled with salt, pepper, and olive oil.

This beauty comes in at $10.99.

While it is awesome to be like one of the cool kids and fork out two fins and a buck for someone else to make me lunch, I would rather reduce my wallet at the market and shop for the ingredients and make avocado toast myself.

Let’s do the math.

			Grocery Store cost ingredient outlay		At home per toast cost
Acme Herb Slab			loaf = 4 servings	4.99	1 serving	1.25
Avocado			each	1.50	1 avocado	1.50
Stonehouse olive oil, house blend			liter = 67 Tbl.	14.00	1 Tbl.	0.21
Garlic			head = 10 cloves	0.96	1 clove	0.10
Maldon salt			box = 8.5 oz	5.99	1/2 tsp.	0.06
McCormick’s black pepper in grinder			grinder = .85 oz	4.29	1/4 tsp.	0.02
			Total	31.73		3.13

I used Instacart to price out the ingredients at Whole Foods, while knowing that if I shopped at the farmer’s market or at the Ferry Building I would have received a discount for paying cash for the bread, and the other ingredients can be found cheaply depending upon which farm you source the avocados and garlic.

Last Saturday at the Ferry building I bought a loaf of Marla Bakery’s molasses oatmeal bread ($5), a head of garlic ($.25), and two avocados ($3), and made avocado toast at work on Monday. This delay was necessitated by the ripeness of the avocados.

If you haven’t tried Marla’s molasses oatmeal bread as toast you need to rectify this immediately.  I do feel slightly ashamed for not baking my own oatmeal molasses bread, as I often do, but I had a busy weekend.  I used salt, pepper, and a small bottle of olive oil from the office kitchen and the toaster and made this:

I was in a hurry and didn’t take the beautiful care to arrange the avocado like the staff at Frog Hollow, and my slice of bread got a little trashed during my morning commute on MUNI, but nonetheless, it tasted fantastic and I was the envy of my boss and coworkers.  And I saved $7.86.

The only vaguely tricky part is getting a ripe avocado, so I recommend visiting a farmer’s market and asking the farm to help you pick an avocado out.  They can advise you when it will be ripe to eat, and usually they are spot on.

Enjoy your avocado toast!

Recipe: Not Insanely Priced Avocado Toast

 

 

My Favorite Breakfast

Weekends are when I have time for a leisurely morning at home. I like to putter through my apartment sipping espresso, doing random tidying and half listening to my morning playlist of Tame Impala and Parisian bistro music. At some point I realize I truly am hungry and enter the kitchen in earnest looking for something delicious yet soothing.

I truly do miss having poached eggs at times, except for the unfortunate side effect of, you know, death, should I ingest an egg.  However, I still crave that creamy, soft comfort food kind of dish that appeals on a lazy morning. And the answer to that craving now for me is biscuits and gravy.

My first experience with biscuits and gravy was a truck stop at the base of the Grapevine on I-5.  I was with my mom and we were heading to LA to visit grandma.  In our family, a road trip meant that we had to pack the car and depart usually before 5:30 am. I have no idea why this insanity was inflicted upon us poor kids and my poor mom, but there you are, up at at ’em, bleary eyed well before the break of dawn, and completely ravenous by the time the Grapevine rose up ahead of us at the end of the San Joaquin Valley.

At the truck stop, an actual trucker in a John Deer hat (or something like it) was chowing down on a massive plate of a fried ham steak, eggs, and something I didn’t recognize but needed to know more about, and it turned out to be biscuits and gravy.  I have been hooked ever since.

Mom’s sausage gravy is a winner, with an entire pound of good breakfast sausage skinned of their casings and browned in a skillet, flour added to the scant amount of fat left in the pan after draining, and whole or skim milk stirred in vigorously.  This was all taking place while buttermilk biscuits were rising in the oven.  My job was to make mom her coffee, a pour over in a Melita cone, and to set the table and to fend off the cat from eating the slices of cantaloupe set out on a small bowl on each placemat.

These days, I have perfected an egg-free biscuit recipe, and during this time of year when morels are popping up all over the place, I have made morel gravy instead of sausage gravy.  Add a glass of prosecco and some espresso topped with bourbon whipped cream, a couple of biscuits and gravy are the perfect prelude to an epic post-breakfast nap, preferably with a James Bond movie on TV.

Whether you have access to morels or another mushroom, or prefer sausage, I hope you try this comforting breakfast dish, with or without a John Deere hat.

Recipe:  Sour Cream Biscuits with Sausage Gravy (with Morel Gravy option)

 

 

Breakfast Serenity – Maple Biscuits

I was inspired the other day when I was going through old photographs and found a picture of a recipe from an old book shared by a friend on Twitter.  The idea of maple biscuits and a cup of coffee sounded just the perfect thing for my first weekend in the kitchen after a long absence due to influenza and bronchitis.

I put my iPad on top of the fridge and started watching Two Fat Ladies make a picnic lunch in Wales, and prepared the biscuits while I slipped on some hot coffee from my favorite mug and saucer from a potter in Sedona.

The biscuit dough came together quickly while my little convection oven preheated. After a disastrous attempt to use my favorite springform pan, which developed a leak for some inexplicable reason, I successfully transferred everything to a cake pan and put the biscuits in the oven.

  

The instructions said to eat them warm and to eat them all, and although I couldn’t possibly can finish this entire pan I am a bit ashamed to say how many I actually did consume.

  

The biscuits are baked in a heavenly soup of melted butter and maple syrup, which infuses into the bottom of the biscuit a bit and leaves a delicious warm pool of maple to dollop on the top of each biscuit. 

I may have to make these again tomorrow for my friends!

Printable recipe

Saving the Last of Summer: Slow Roasted Tomatoes

The tomato crop this year was simply glorious!  It was such a relief because last year the tomatoes were almost nonexistent and it was a mournful summer as a result.  Despite not being able to personally attend the farmer’s markets this summer I was happily able to order from a few nice farms using Good Eggs.  I have indulged myself completely and filled my orders with heirloom tomatoes of every color.

One week Good Eggs was offering Monsanto-free Early Girl tomatoes at a pretty cheap price per pound so I bought 4 pounds, plus 3 pints of cherry tomatoes in various hues. I planned to make a fresh salsa-like tomato sauce but got tired, so I decided to slow roast them.

It feels like everyone on social media and my recipe swap has been slow roasting tomatoes, so despite being very late to the party I began roasting them and was so pleased with how well they came out.

After a quick rinse I quartered the tomatoes and left the cherry tomatoes whole, dumped them into my favorite jelly roll pan, slivered in a clove of garlic and scattered handfuls of basil leaves and a light scattering of oregano. I used a light hand with olive oil, salt and pepper and then at the last minute added a good hunk of butter over everything. The oven was on at 250 F, I set the timer for three hours and promptly took a long nap.

After three hours, voila, the perfectly roasted tomatoes and my nap were complete. It was far beyond dinner time by then, so I slid them into a plastic container, scraping every last bit of juice and butter into the container, and bung it into the fridge.

I pondered a bit on what to do then. One week, I heated up the batch of tomatoes gently and tossed them with pasta and some leftover chicken. Another time I pureed them with my immersion blender and added a slosh of vodka and a dash of leftover cream and warmed this while the pasta cooked. Another time I pureed half of them and left the other half whole and added dollops of ricotta to each bowl of pasta. Another time I made goat cheese stuffed meatballs and seasoned breadcrumbs and poached the meatballs in the pureed sauce. The last time I pureed the whole batch and added more butter. It tasted just like Marcella Hazan’s butter tomato sauce, and no stirring required!   If I made these on the weekend I napped and if it was after work I was done well in time for an early bedtime (being gimpy and healing is very tiring).

(with ricotta)

(goat cheese stuffed meatballs)

(the finished meatballs topped with seasoned breadcrumbs)

Each time I slow roasted a batch of tomatoes I wanted to save some in the freezer for that dreary part of January through March when all of the tomatoes are pasty pink nasty mealy things.  After making a packet of pasta I would use up an entire batch of tomatoes. I kept buying more tomatoes, four pounds, then six, then eight pounds and still had no leftovers for the freezer.

Last night I succumbed to a wild impulse and bought an entire case of San Marzano tomatoes from Good Eggs, I think it will be about 20 pounds. It will take me a while to slow roast them in batches but surely this time I will have some leftover for the freezer.   I will have a bit of summer in my freezer for the rest of the winter, or at least, for the rest of the month.

Slow Roasted Tomatoes (for Sauce)

 

That’s a lot of tomatoes!!!

Sunday Meals with Framily

I am delighted to find a way to offset the dreaded Sunday blues I have been feeling by having a “framily” dinner – a dinner with friends who are like my family.

This Sunday sadness is an odd phenomenon for me.  For many years I thought it was because on Sunday afternoon I remembered I had to go to work on Monday to a job I hated. As time passed and I changed jobs, then changed jobs again, I was in a series of long-term relationships with men who lived out of the City. Sundays meant either they left to go home, or I did, and there again leaving me feeling lonely at dinner and facing an evening of dread anticipating work.

Work got better but I was always seemed to end up alone Sunday night and in my societally-programmed brain Sundays are meant to be spent with family or friends, with a well anticipated family meal capping off the weekend’s adventures with each other, or hopefully, at the minimum, the successful completion of chores that inevitably pile up. But that is not my life, and now that I am single and even without a cat roommate I find the sorrow and loneliness is sometimes overwhelming. Some Sundays I even spent watching Hallmark Channel movies and dabbing at the eyes with tissue, such a deplorable state in which to find oneself.  The Hallmark Channel!!

Last weekend however, I invited friends over for dinner and we had such a nice evening together, full of laughter, silliness and great food, even if it is a challenge to cook in my tiny kitchen astride a scooter. I realized, even after they went home, that I didn’t feel as lonely as I usually do, and this is because my dear friends are my family and that this simple family meal felt right and true and I felt like a member of a family, a family of friends, my “framily”.

I spoke honestly about my feelings over that dinner and found that some of my friends feel the same way.  Either they’re not in a relationship right now, or their partner lives far away like mine used to, or the child custody arrangements mean half of the Sundays they say goodbye to their children and go home alone.  I have proposed a standing Sunday dinner or midday supper going forward where we gather and relax and enjoy.  I know it can’t happen every weekend but I hope it will.

This weekend, despite the 6.1 earthquake that rocked the Bay Area and severely damaged the town of Napa, we in SF were in good shape, a little shaken but not stirred, if you know what I mean.  Saturday, before all of the excitement, I prepared an osso bucco with a large format beef shank from my amazing local butcher, 4505 Meats.  I love making osso bucco and it is very nostalgic for me and I haven’t made it for four years.

I made a variation of my usual osso bucco and added shitakes and some local bell peppers, just because I had them, and used a bunch of whole carrots scattered across the top.  Everything cooked away in the oven while I practiced crutching around the apartment.

I was so proud of myself for using crutches almost the entire day, except when I made myself a sandwich for dinner.  It was quite a gourmet sandwich made from leftover smoked beef brisket but once I had made it I couldn’t figure out how to transport it to my dining table.  I tried wrapping it in a paper towel but couldn’t hang onto it while holding onto the crutches and it fell on the floor, happily still wrapped up.  Then I put it in waxed paper and tried sticking inside my tee shirt, but it fell out!  So much for passing the pencil test then, I chuckled to myself.  Then I put it in a ziplock baggie and held it in my teeth, like a dog.  Utterly hilarious.

When my sandwich was done, so was the osso bucco and I let it cool a bit on the stove before packing it up for my friend’s place.

On Sunday, D___  made a gorgeous pot of polenta with lots of butter and cheese, and we reheated the sauce first to thicken it a bit then added the meat and carrots to warm up. While it was heating I chopped up a huge mound of gremolata, the magical mixture of garlic, lemon zest and parsley that is scattered over the top of the osso bucco and livens up the dish.

(once you make gremolata you will want to put it on everything)

Another friend made a beautiful salad of avocados and ripe tomatoes and brought some tomato basil bisque to start.

(from the Unsafeway, delicious!)

We sipped on Prosecco then rose, while the young man in the house enjoyed his milk in a wine glass.

(there is a huge mound of cheese-laden polenta under that sugo!)

There was a moment during dinner where the conversation just halted and we all felt so replete and blissed out.  Having a luxurious and hearty mid-day meal on Sunday was so pleasant and relaxing, it was the perfect moment.  Afterwards we chatted and played games and I knitted a bit while the sun streamed in the window while the room was chilled by the Pacific breezes.  We all felt really happy!  Mission accomplished!

 

Next weekend, tacos!

Recipe:  Overnight Osso Bucco

A San Francisco Special Breakfast & DOLE’s Peel The Love Banana Cabana Tour

I have been battling food allergies for a few years now, and was therefore ecstatic to discover that most of the tropical fruits do not set off my intolerances, so I have been indulging in bananas a lot.

Not only are bananas delicious and the ultimate comfort food, they are high in B6, vitamin C, iron, magnesium and potassium, all of which are really helpful with my efforts to heal.  When DOLE approached me to be a Peel the Love Blogger Ambassador I was delighted!  I do “peel the love”, every day!

People take bananas for granted, and forget how versatile and useful they are, for example, I have been using them as an egg substitute, in addition to eating out of hand for my morning breakfast. This weekend I made a true San Francisco treat, sourdough banana pancakes.

There is something in the air in San Francisco that makes our sourdough special, so my sourdough starter gets used for great bread but also for great pancakes.  They are so light and fluffy and and the addition of bananas offsets the lashings of butter and maple syrup from Quebec that I slather on liberally.

I like to add sliced bananas inside the batter while the pancakes are baking, then cover them with a bit more batter so they do not stick when you’re ready to flip them over.

 

Today I used my “status” pan, as Julia Child calls it, a lovely polished aluminum crepe pan with a Bakelite handle, a gorgeous vintage piece I found at an estate sale years ago. It made the pancakes crisp up to the most perfect color of golden brown.

As an extra treat, I cooked the bananas first in a Bananas Foster sauce, and then we used a little of the extra boozy syrup to spread over our pancakes like some sort of fantastical boozy jam.

Speaking of Peel the Love, I learned recently that I have been opening bananas incorrectly my entire life.  Now I open them like this and it’s so much easier!

I showed my sister this trick over the 4th of July weekend and we we were both astounded that we had never figured this out before. Thank you, internet.

I think it’s interesting to note that most of our bananas in the United States come from DOLE, and the only state where bananas in the US are grown are from the DOLE farms in Hawaii. Hawaii has more than just pineapples!

This summer DOLE is holding a national tour called Peel the Love :”Banana Cabana Tour” and they’re coming to the Bay Area next week. They will be featuring unique recipes and ideas for parties and to ideas perk up your every day with bananas. If you’re nearby, go check out the fun, and meet Bobbie, their banana mascot.

• Aug. 7 – Grocery Outlet (125 Hickory Blvd., South San Francisco)
• Aug. 8 – Grocery Outlet (125 Hickory Blvd., South San Francisco)
• Aug. 8 – Nob Hill Foods (270 Redwood Shores Pkwy, Redwood City)
• Aug. 9 – Nob Hill Foods (2531 Blanding Ave., Alameda)

Elsewhere in the nation, the DOLE jeep and Bobbie the Banana will be appearing here.  Yes, there will be bananas, lots of them.

 

Thank you, Dole, for this opportunity to be a Peel the Love Blogger Ambassador!

Recipe:  Sourdough Pancakes (with Bananas)

Recipe: Bananas Foster

Learn more about the Peel the Love “Banana Cabana” Tour here!

Fascinating banana nutrition facts here

Please note this is a sponsored post and I was compensated by DOLE. The opinions herein are my own.  The Banana Cabana Tour is still a lot of fun and the recipe here and my opinions are my own. I hope you enjoy it!

Hone Your Knife Skills

I received a fun invitation the other day, a chance to check out the new San Francisco Cooking School and take a preview of their knife skills classes.

I have been wielding a knife since I was a little girl, my dad taught me how to use a pen knife to whittle and do little projects, I received the first knife of my own when I was about 10 and have a small collection of pocketknives and the very handy Swiss Army knife. Then there is my collection of kitchen knives, my first being a gift from my mom and my sister when I was 17 when I moved out on my own.

My 10″ Wusthof chef’s knife has been my constant friend throughout all this time, and for many years it was the only knife that I owned. I learned to do a lot of things with it, including paring vegetables, fluting mushrooms, and butchering meat.

Who knew, after five minutes in this class, that I have been holding my knife wrong! The wonderful instructor, David Groff, who was a former chef at Zuni Cafe among other places, told me I held my knife like I was going to shank someone with it. Well, he might not be far off from wrong! However, holding it with the correct grip as he showed me felt a whole lot better and I felt like I had more control.

My sister and I used to practice our knife skills as teens, racing each other through bags of onions and potatoes to see who could finish first. I have practiced my knife skills diligently throughout my adult life, trying every technique that I saw on a cooking show or by restaurant chefs and butchers. I live life with a motto that you can always learn something, and it is very true. Life is all about learning and you will never ever stop learning, especially in the kitchen.

The class is really fantastic, and in a full length class the students work with instructors for three hours cutting up every kind of vegetable imaginable and learning all of the basic knife skills and knife safety techniques. I even learned a new kind of cut, which excited me tremendously.

In class we cut up onions, celery, carrots, zucchini, leeks, and potatoes. The students cut up this variety of vegetables and then take them home, along with the recipe for fantastic minestrone soup, then the students are served soup for lunch. In our abbreviated preview class, we cut up all these vegetables, had a shorter lesson, and then we got to have delicious soup as well. I was so touched that the instructor made me a special batch of soup that did not have potatoes in it to accommodate my oral allergy syndrome.

It was really fun to read about their class schedule. I am rather interested in taking the fish course which is three hours per week for three weeks and where one learns to cut and prepare every kind of fish and cook said fish using every technique. They even have special cooking nights where the students cook from local celebrity chefs cookbooks, and the chef is there to guide them along, along with a dinner afterwards.  Wouldn’t you like to play in the kitchen with the chefs from Kokkari or Bar Tartine?  I think it would be a fun thing to do with the team at work or for a party.

We got to peek into the other side of the school as well, where a full roster of culinary students were completing a pastry course. It was always a dream to complete a pastry program at a culinary school, maybe someday if I can get a different kind of job situation I will give it a try. It is intense training, but the students in there were having a blast and what they were making looked fantastic.

When I got home with my mound of baggies of prepped vegetables, I promptly made a wonderful minestrone for myself, although I used Nonnie’s recipe.  How I miss her, but eating her recipes always make me feel like she’s right there with me.  I bet she held her knife correctly!

Take a class!

San Francisco Cooking School
415.346.2665
hello@sfcooking.com