Check, Please! Bay Area is KQED's new local series featuring regular people reviewing Bay Area restaurants. Season 2 kicks off tonight with three local haunts with very different styles.

Visit the Check, Please! Bay Area blog to experience the restaurants from Season 2 Episode 2:

1) Hing Lung: | restaurant information | reviews

2) Absinthe Brasserie & Bar: | restaurant information | reviews

3) Saylor's Landing: | restaurant information | reviews | recipe

Please feel free to join the discussion by posting comments about the show and your reviews of the featured restaurants!

You can watch all episodes online as well as subscribe to the Check, Please! video podcast in iTunes.

This season, Stephanie V.W. Lucianovic will be blogging about what happens behind-the-scenes during the making of Check, Please! Bay Area.

You can also view the Check, Please! Bay Area photo gallery to view behind-the-scenes shots at many of the featured restaurants.

Bay Area Bites recently got a chance to sit down with Tanya Steel, Editor-in-Chief of one of our favorite food sites, Epicurious.com. In Interview with Tanya Steel Part One we learn all about Epicurious. Next week check back for Part Two to read about bringing attention to hunger in America and the Wine. Dine. Donate. program.

1. You've been the editor of Epicurious for a little over a year now. Is there much difference working online as opposed to at a magazine?
There's a huge difference, I love the instant gratification. I see something, read something, experience something and blog about it. I love that we can turn on a dime--whatever the topic is, whether it's news, celebrities, holidays. I love the immediacy of it. But technically it's much more complicated than I imagined. But the biggest revelation has been the passion of the community and being able to communicate with them and have them respond instantly. I feel like my family has grown.

2. How have you put your mark on the site?
I recognized that we had tremendous depth but very little breadth. I expanded a number of things like entertaining for people who want to plan parties. We've increased wine coverage, cocktail coverage. I increased the "healthy" area of the site. People really do want to learn how to cook healthy. We have a couple thousand recipes that are tagged "healthy"-- some are low-fat, high fiber, wheat and gluten free. We added a blog, Epi TO GO and the Daily Dish.

The Daily Dish allows us to cover everything from where to dine in Yugoslavia to the newest organic labeling standards.

Epi TO GO lets you download recipes on your cell phone and shopping lists. In a supermarket you can find recipes and then find what you need while standing in the middle of the store.

Next year I want to make it even more user-friendly and make it easier to find what's there.

3. What are some of the secrets to attracting visitors to Epicurious?
If you know how to put a cover together for a print publication you can do it online. Certain iconic things always entice people. People like desserts and using numbers like 502 pie recipes. Using big beautiful photography. Certain images like desserts get more traffic. There's no such thing as doing too many features on burgers, it's like doing stories on Provence! You can't do enough. We change images constantly whereas at a magazine the cover has to last all month.

4. How do you like blogging everyday?
I love it 90% of the time. I'm a writer and reporter so I love having the audience and the framework within which to expound. It's another way to see what strikes a chord with people.

5. What are some of the more popular features on the site these days?
Healthy cooking, entertaining, all the news. Ethnic cuisine stories. We just did a story on Egyptian cuisine. We have novices but also a hard-core foodie audience that wants to read and learn. Some people come to entertain, some come to learn and some come to make soba noodles. We have to try to answer all of those needs.

Head over to Cooking with Amy to learn what Steel thinks is keeping people from cooking and her take on food trends on the East Coast.

In an area where we have one of the world's renowned farmers' markets, it is easy to overlook neighborhood markets. But the truth is that often we don't have the time or the will to elbow through the crowds at the Ferry Building. On the weeks when you'd like to avoid the weekend farmers' market crush, or you'd simply like some drama-free shopping at markets that will provide you with many of your necessities, consider one of the Bay Area's neighborhood markets.

The Fairfax Farmers' Market in Marin county is a small-town market that is fun, full of great food, and a gathering place for the community around Fairfax. The market is situated in a circle in Bolinas Park with some of the booths underneath a grove of redwood trees for added ambiance. The small number of vendors made up enough variety that I could shop for bread, veggies, and fruit here without any trouble. I did not see any eggs or cheese, however meat-eaters could buy sausages from Fabrique Delices.

When I attended the market on September 20, the following vendors were in attendance:

Blossom Bluff Orchard (Parlier). Stone Fruit.
Brickmaiden Bakery (Pt. Reyes Station). Baked goods.
Cafe Zambala Himalayan prepared food.
Creekside Garden (Bolinas). Runner beans, tomatoes, apples.
Fabrique Delices Sausages.
J & J Farms (Hughson). Tomatoes, peaches.
Laguna Farm (Sebastopol). Runner beans, tomatoes, flowers, veggies.
Ledesma Family Farm (Gustine). Tomatoes, berries, various veggies.
Paradise Valley Produce (Bolinas). Vegetables, lettuces.
Sartori Ranch (Tomales). Strawberries.
Sylverleaf Olive Oil (Loma Rica). Olive oil.
Various crafts vendors.

You can visit the Fairfax Farmers' Market on Wednesdays until October 25 this year. The market time is 4 - 8pm, and will change to 4 - 7pm on October 4. It is located in Bolinas Park, 124 Bolinas Road in downtown Fairfax. Downtown Fairfax is approximately 20 miles from San Francisco.

Pierre Herme's moanable macarons - my favorite is the passion fruit, the three in the right column.

Twice a year the magnificent patisserie Pierre Herme introduces his new line of pastries, a la the House of Dior or Michael Kors. Just when you think he has done it all, Pierre Herme creates semething even more spectacular that his last seasons' jewels. The Fall 06 - Winter 07 line just came out so off I dashed to the 6th arrondisement, 72 rue Bonaparte across from St. Sulpice Church and was greeted by a line out the door - a common site since opening day.

The flavors of the macarons above are chocolate, raspberry, green tea, vanilla, chestnut-green tea, rose, olive oil-vanilla, chocolate-caramel, coffee, and three passion fruit-milk chocolate.

Here is a sampling of a few of the old and the new that sent me into a veritable sugar coma...

Emotion Garance - fig compote, caramelized cinnamon mascarpone, raspberry compote, bisuit in between layers, topped with a granola tuile. Paired with un coup de champagne!

These layered treats just came out when I was there a few years ago but they were in much shorter glasses. It always amazes me the way Pierre Herme combines, colors, flavors, textures, shapes, amd there is always a surprise inside all of these they you can't see whether it's a piece of cookie or nougat or berry.

in the box... described below...

out of the box... and ready to eat around the corner at Cafe de la Mairie.

fig compote-caramelized cinnamon mousse tart - my favorite of the day!

hazelnut biscuit (bis-kwee) filled with pistachio butter cream, raspberries and pistachios (I always got in trouble for putting too many pistachios on these...)

pate sable breton, lemon cream, strawberry and banana compote, soft lemon buscuit, country strawberries

yum!

this one was a bit of a disappointment. it's true we eat with our eyes first - I was so excited to dive into this alluring delight. True, the raspberry compote and glaze and berries were delicious but I couldn't determine the flavors in the top white pudding-ish layer and overall it was pretty flat. I also didn't like the sesame tart crust.

all hat, no cattle as they say in Texas...

I had many an "I Love Lucy" moment working in their chocolate room trying to shake powdered chocolate or the sparkly magenta or gold powder onto the little chocolates as they come out of the chocolate enrobing machine on the conveyor belt. The room was about 40F degrees and the vent was right above my head. The chef kept yelling "doucement, doucement" (softer) or "vite, vite!" (faster) at me. I was shivering, my neck and shoulders ached from the freezing air blowing down on me, exhausted from having to get up at 4:30am, and all I wanted to do was hurl myself off the top of the Eiffel Tower. It takes no less than six people to work the chocolate assembly line and every chocolate bar is hand numbered so next time you wonder why they are so darn expensive....think of the six people shivering on the chocolate line and the six to seven person afternoon shift dedicated solely to making macarons.

Left column (from top to bottom):
Ispahan - chocolate raspberry ganache, letchi rose pate de fruit enrobed in dark chocolate
Chloe - chocolate raspberry ganache enrobed in dark chocolate
Lou - milk chocolate and ginger ganache, ginger confit, enrobed in dark chocolate
Aztec - it's cut off in the picture but it's one of my favorites - bittersweet chocolate ganache, orange and balsamic vinegar pate de fruit, enrobed in dark chocolate

Center column:
Mathilda - almond praline and lemon zest and craqueline (those tiny little rice krispy things), enrobed in milk chocolate and roasted almonds
Azur - yuzu (lemon) and lime chocolate ganache, enrobed in chocolate noir sprinkled with magenta sparkly powder.

Right column:
Mogador - my all time favorite chocolate - passion fruit chocolate ganache enrobed in milk chocolate with dark chocolate powder sprinkled on top

OK, now I am officially in a sugar coma.

The rest of the Pierre Herme chocolate collection includes:

Intense - bittersweet chocolate ganache enrobed in dark chocolate
Almera - almond past, orange confit, Grand Marnier, enrobed in dark chocolate
Ouvre-toi - sesame praline, sesame nougat, enrobed in milk chocolate
Sensations - praline flakes, enrobed in dark chocolate
Makassar - salted butter caramel, chocolate mousse, enrobed in dark chocolate
Balthazar - caramelized cinnamon milk chocolate ganache enrobed in milk chocolate
Garance - fig pate de fruit, chocolate raspberry ganache with cinnamon, enrobed in dark chocolate
Choc Chocolat - bittersweet chocolate, chopped cocoa bean nougat, enrobed in dark chocolate

I don't know about you, but this alone is worth the trip to Paris!
Bon appetit et bon voyage!

Check, Please! Bay Area is KQED's new local series featuring regular people reviewing Bay Area restaurants. Season 2 kicks off tonight with three local haunts with very different styles.

Visit the Check, Please! Bay Area blog to experience the restaurants from Season 2 Episode 1:

1) Memphis Minnie's Barbeque Joint and Smokehouse: | restaurant information | reviews | recipe

2) Ovation at the Opera: | restaurant information | reviews

3) Cafe Gratitude: | restaurant information | reviews | recipe

Please feel free to join the discussion by posting comments about the show and your reviews of the featured restaurants!

You can watch all episodes online as well as subscribe to the Check, Please! video podcast in iTunes.

This season, Stephanie V.W. Lucianovic will be blogging about what happens behind-the-scenes during the making of Check, Please! Bay Area.

You can also view the Check, Please! Bay Area photo gallery to view behind-the-scenes shots at many of the featured restaurants.

The Professional Chef is the 8th edition of a book produced by the Culinary Institute of America. It feels like the ultimate cooking school textbook. At well over 1000 pages it is definitely the biggest cookbook in my collection. While intended for the "culinary professional", there is a lot that a non-professional will learn from it too.

Like The Cook's Book, it has plenty of photographs but no celebrity chef factor. Most recipes serve 10 people, but some serve 20. Unless you are going to work in a restaurant or take on a catering job, this is less a book to cook from, than to reference. The sections on "Fabricating Meats, Poultry, and Fish" are going to be great learn from if you haven't take classes in butchering. I appreciate the listing of types of ingredients like grains and their common culinary uses. I also like the page of Standard Vegetable Cuts so you can see the difference between fine brunoise and large dice, and everything in between.

Included in the book are sections of different cuisines of the world which includes common ingredients and essays on all kinds of topics such as food safety, nutrition and discussions about specific ingredients and techniques. As Anthony Bourdain says "This is The Mothership for recipes and basic culinary techniques. Anyone and everyone serious about food an cooking should have this one in their kitchen."

While upgraded and expanded from previous editions, it still focuses more on standard techniques than cutting edge ones. No question, it is a fantastic resource. You can take a peek inside the book here.

If you are looking to be inspired with creations from master chefs such as foams and fruit chips, consider checking out The Cook's Book reviewed today on Cooking with Amy.

Fatemeh tells us how to eat well on a cruise.

Seems like an oxymoron, doesn't it? People always tell you that you don't cruise for the "quality" of the food, but the "quantity". And truth be told, food was our greatest concern when we booked our vacation -- would we find ourselves eating room service BLTs every night instead of abysmal beef Wellington and fake-ice-cream baked Alaska?

I have to admit that I am not a very big cupcake fan. I think it's because their flavor is often disappointing and they look much prettier than they taste. However, the Cupcakes of Love made by pastrygirl seem to have both flavor and beauty. Check them out!

These cupcakes were born of serendipity in my pastry school days, when I would go through my refrigerator and find containers full of leftover pastry cream, tart dough, and other things from class that I was sure I could find a use for. I had some hazelnut mousseline left over from a cake, some coffee buttercream from an opera cake, and decided on the spur of the moment to combine the two into a decadent cupcake. The result has become a favorite of my boyfriend, which is why they are called Cupcakes of Love, and a reminder of the unexpected happiness you can find when you appreciate the good things you've already got.

With ethical eating becoming more mainstream, there has been a plethora of books on the subject. After Derrick's excellent review of The Ethical Gourmet, I think this is one book that I won't feel compelled to read.

The book invites comparison with The Omnivore's Dilemma and Pollan's book makes Weinstein's look like the earnest essay of a college freshman. Pollan's book fills in every detail of our food chain, taking no knowledge for granted. Weinstein's book skates around large topics with hands behind his back—"This is not meant to be an exposé about the technique of veal manufacture, foie gras creation, or chicken farming. These stories are frequently reported in the news." But they're not reported. Or they're poorly reported. And he does nothing to change that.

After declaring "this is not a food blog," Molly from Spicetart brings us a fun picture of baby Ivy and an entertaining post about her 6-month old's eating habits.

I was sure a food lover like myself would pop out a foodie, I mean, how could my daughter not appreciate a beautifully roasted, then pureed, then food-milled acorn squash? I confess that I didn't really truly appreciate food until I was well into my 20s. I mean, I ate food and enjoyed a good burrito like anyone else, but I didn't start obsessing over summer tomatoes and the perfect meatball sandwich until I was in college. Even then, I truly didn't enjoy cooking until I moved to LA and discovered Whole Foods and Gelsons, yet I did expect that my baby would have a refined palate at the age of 6 months. A sure sign her palate is not yet that sophisticated: she actually eats the rice cereal and she also loves chewing on paper. Sigh. I guess we have a ways to go.

I wanted to share with everyone the project I've been working on for the last few months: the online food magazine CHOW, which officially launched on Friday. (By "officially," I mean publicly; it's been open in beta for about three weeks.)

Some of you may remember CHOW as a print magazine. Oddly enough, in today's New York Times CHOW's demise was revisited -- alongside that of Teen People. CHOW ceased publication last year, went online, and was bought by CNET Networks this spring. CNET was smart: they brought over pretty much the entire editorial team, led by Jane Goldman. It's a great group of people, and I'm so happy to be part of it.

I could say a lot more, but I won't -- because you should really just go and visit the site. We have great stuff planned -- not all our big features have been rolled out yet. Being online allows for so much creativity and flexibility, and we've got a sharp group of engineers building it all. And for content, we've got a pretty strong lineup (if I do say so myself). We'll be posting new stories and recipes daily, and our blog, the Grinder, is updated often. You may even notice a few familiar names among our contributors.

Peppers from Happy Quail Farms

Much is written about the San Francisco Farmer's Market but nary a word about the humble little Menlo Park Farmer's Market. Held every Sunday in the parking lots between Santa Cruz Avenue and Menlo Avenue, this little market has grown in the past fifteen years from just a few stands with kettle corn, pomegranate juice and a smattering of produce to a vibrant, active organic market complete with political campaigning, 20 foot high buffaloes and protesting grannies.

The first booth I stopped at was Happy Quail Farms located just over 101 in East Palo Alto. All their produce is organic, naturally grown right there.

Kate from Happy Quail Farms

Little Gems - squash from South Africa

Zapallitos - Argentinian summer squash

The next stand was Heirloom Organics with a stand so gorgeous, I thought for a moment that I was back in Provence. Grant Brians leads this Hollister farm with 90 percent heirloom variety vegetables.

Not to be forgotten is Ella Bella Farms and their gorgeous heirloom tomatoes. Ella bella is a small organic family farm in Corralitos (south of Santa Cruz) run by Brandon and Michelle Ross specializing in a variety of organic berries and specialty tomatoes.

I'm not sure if having sharp knives next to the political tables is such a good idea but so far no incidents.

Other prolific produce...

Everything you ever wanted to know about buffaloes...

And the most heartwarming sight of the day - Grannies for Peace!

-------------

Happy Quail Farms
804 Greenn St, East Palo Alto 94303
650-325-0823
info@happyquailfarms.com
http://www.happyquailfarms.com/

Heirloom Organics
Grant Brians, Hollister
831-637-8497
web site

Ella Bella Farms
Brandon and Michelle Ross
Corralitos, California
http://ellabellafarm.com/

It's that time of the month. The freezer is overflowing, and I've had it. Given that there are two post-roast chicken carcasses under the frozen mango and buffalo burgers, and to the left of the kaffir lime leaves, I've got what I need to deploy my famous three-step method for making space in the freezer:
1. Cook and eat half box of perogies. (I boiled them and then slathered them with onions sauteed in butter, then added parmesan, then sat down to watch Dr. Phil. Yum. I mean about the perogies, not Dr. Phil.).
2. Remove and drink half bottle of vodka. (No, Kim had nothing to do with this.)
3. Make my famous Shiksa Matzo Ball Soup.

And here are the steps to making Shiksa Matzo Ball Soup, aka Matzo Ball Soup a la Laslocky:

Step 1: Stock
Two chicken carcasses, carrots, a parsnip or two that had been hiding in the bottom of the vegetable drawer, an onion, some peppercorns, celery with leaves, bay leaf. Cover with water and simmer the hell out of it.

Now, before I get to the next part, let me tell you about my matzo ball soup history. For years, my dad has made it, and it was only when I was well into my twenties and decided to make it myself AND FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS that I discovered that matzo balls are supposed to be soft. And fluffy. And really like a little slice of heaven. My dad is an impatient cook: the steak is always bloody, the eggs are always runny, and now, I know, the matzoh balls are always hard. Anyway, it was quite a revelation when I discovered (and later confirmed at a Jewish deli) that matzo balls are supposed to be like Barbie-sized down pillows, only round, not roughly the consistency of a chunk of parmesan cheese.

Anyway.

Step 2: Fry the bacon

Yep, you heard that right. Now usually I would dispense with that step because I would already have bacon fat on hand, in a tin next to the stove. I'm Hungarian, and that's what we do, because bacon fat is love. But lately I've been a bad Hungarian and I don't have a tin of bacon fat next to the stove. Needless to say, I've not had much love, either.

Once the bacon is fried, reserve the bacon for another occasion. Like Passover.

Or just eat it because it's only four pieces.

Now you have a beautiful puddle of bacon fat -- just about two tablespoons. But before you continue and give cardiac arrest to the nearest Jewish grandmother, let it cool.

Step 3: Make the matzo balls
The package directions are great, just replace the vegetable oil called for with bacon fat. Blend 2 T bacon fat, two lightly beaten eggs, half cup matzo meal, a little salt, and 2 T chicken stock.

Cover and place in the refrigerator for 15 minutes, and meanwhile bring a pot of water to a boil.

Make the matzo balls by rolling them in your palm -- each one should be about one inch in diameter, so you should have a total of 8.

Cook them in the boiling water, covered, for 30-40 minutes. (Until they're soft, Daddy, SOFT.)

Step 4: Combine balls and soup

Et voila. Matzo ball soup that increases your cholesterol and makes Jewish grandmas the world over roll over twice in their graves.

It's that good!

P.S. In all fairness, I do have to give Papa Laslocky credit this recipe, even though he isn't a shiksa. He still doesn't cook the balls for long enough, but he did introduce the bacon fat idea, good Hungarian that he is.