I’ve been a student of San Francisco shakeology (the science of city milkshakes) for my whole life, but I have noticed an in-town trend towards outrageousness just over the past few years. Many chills, thrills, and bellyaches have been experienced to be your Dairy Queen and bring you this survey of just how crazy it gets out there these days. Shake it up, baby!

The Twinkie shake at Burger Bar

High atop Macy’s in Union Square, Hubert Keller’s Burger Bar playfully pokes fun at the American obsession for fast food with incredibly over-the-top versions of staples including a burger with foie gras, fries cooked in high-quality truffle oil, and heart-stopping milkshakes in child and adult (read: alcoholic) form. In the kid column, the craziest item one can order is the Twinkie shake. Rather than a research error, we deliberately did not ask how many of those Hostess bombs are stuffed into the blender with the vanilla ice cream, but we do know that a whole one is cut and thrown in the glass as a garnish — and maybe an extra f*ck you to those nuts enough to try it?

Salted coffee caramel shake at Greenburger’s

Greenburger’s, which opened in mid-March in the Lower Haight, has a milkshake and sundae bar that you can sidle up to for a sip. Though it hasn’t been around too long, word of its excellent shakes is starting to travel, and we were taken with the salted coffee caramel, made with Strauss vanilla ice cream, French organic coffee, caramel sauce, and fleur de sel. In addition to the salted coffee caramel, vanilla, and chocolate, there is a weekly changing special that tends towards the extra-decadent; recent flavors include carrot cake and bananas foster.

The green chile apple pie shake at Chile Pies (& Ice Cream)

Chile Pies (& Ice Cream) in the Panhandle offers ice cream by the scoop from Bay Area company Three Twins, but it seems silly to go for a cone when the Green Chile Kitchen offshoot features pie shakes: Milkshakes with a generous slice of house-made pie blended into it. We suspect that there is no pie there that wouldn’t make for an incredible shake (particularly the Mexican chocolate with pecan, hello). However, it’s only proper to opt for the signature pie, an apple studded with green chiles and surrounded with a cheddar-baked crust. A cheese shake doesn’t sound that appetizing on paper, nor does a chile one, but it truly is all a taste combination actually worth experiencing. A spoon is essential to capture chunks of crust too large to blend. I won’t tell anyone that these shakes are about 1000 calories in a glass if you won’t. (There. It never happened.)

Ube and Grasshopper shakes from Mitchell’s

Come to think of it, it’s always been easier to get a wild milkshake at city stalwarts Mitchell’s Ice Cream and Polly Ann Ice Cream than to get something relatively plain. Mitchell’s in the Mission is known for its exotic fruit flavors, and the bright purple ube (yam) is certainly the most wonderfully hued shake in town. Mitchell’s offers three suggestions for shakes, and three of them surprisingly contain Oreo cookies. The one to get is the Grasshopper, which blends grasshopper pie ice cream (mint with Oreos), more Oreos, and chocolate syrup. It’s the beverage equivalent of downing a box of Girl Scout Thin Mints in one go.

A Star Wars shake at Polly Ann Ice Cream

Exotic fruits are also a mainstay at Polly Ann, where it’s difficult to find much in the way of conventional flavors — which is why I’ve loved it since before I was able to walk. I’ve never had the guts to try a shake with durian, the fruit that famously smells like gasoline, but I am curious. I also wonder what it would taste like to make a shake out of Polly Ann’s gummi bear flavor, but that’s perhaps best kept as a mystery for anyone over the age of 10. A shake made with Star Wars (mint ice cream with marshmallows) is a sleeper of outrageousness, especially considering that the ice cream probably starts with the highest fat content in this 7×7 town without the marshmallow assistance. The Sunset mainstay has offered a “monster” size, which clocks in at more than a quart, for more than 30 years. Guess we’ve always been crazy around here.

In our continuing quest to learn more vital yet elusive tips on how to best select produce for flavor and longevity, we turned to chef Jen Biesty of Scala’s Bistro inside San Francisco’s Sir Francis Drake Hotel. When we arrived at her busy kitchen one afternoon, she had set out a platter of beautiful dark red fruit. Even though it’s February and well past stone fruit season, we found ourselves asking if she had somehow managed to pick some plums for us.

Jen Biesty holding an Arkansas Black apple. Photo by Tamara Palmer

“They’re Arkansas Black apples!” replied the Top Chef alum. “I love these, they remind me of the apples in Snow White.

“You want an apple that’s firm, with a nice color,” she advised. “They all look a little bit different and they’re not just homogenized. If you can see the pollen or dirt from the tree then you know it is really fresh and just picked within a week or a few days.”

Meat is traditionally thought of when pairing apples with a protein, but Biesty has found that they go great with fish as well; she likes to shave them raw into a salad with chestnut and parsley, an accompaniment for sea bass. She picks the Arkansas Black apples in particular up at the Alemany Farmers Market in San Francisco from Chimayo Farms.

Eric Tucker holding a Chanterelle mushroom. Photo by Tamara Palmer

Chef Eric Tucker of Millennium Restaurant, a venerable temple to creative vegetarian cooking in San Francisco, was kind enough to let us tag along with him on a Saturday morning visit to the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, where he was leading a small group who had signed up for a beer-themed cooking class in honor of the conclusion of SF Beer Week. No matter the theme of a particular course, Tucker will meet students the day before to wander the market and decide on some ideas and direction for the next day’s session, a hands-on class that includes sitting down to a family-style meal.

He first led the class to Far West Fungi, which has a permanent stall inside the building. Tucker snapped up some beautiful black trumpets, chanterelles, and maitakes. Mushrooms are a staple at Millennium for their earthy, meaty qualities, whether it’s a sauce of black trumpets in a red wine reduction or oyster mushrooms simply fried. Tucker’s advice for selecting shrooms focuses on what you should avoid, which is just as valuable to know as what to pick.

“I’m leery of mushrooms that look too waterlogged or dark. Those you have to dry or use very quickly,” he said. “If you’re buying portabellas and the gills are really present and the caps are really open, you need to use those quicker than ones with tighter caps, which will have more life.”

“Or look at these,” he noted, pointing to some mostly beige Lion’s Mane mushrooms. “When they start to turn red, I associate that with some possible bacterial growth or breakdown.”

Sunchokes. Photo by Tamara Palmer

We ducked outside in the pouring rain to the Tierra Vegetables stand. Tucker started rifling through what we first thought were oversized knots of ginger root, but were actually sunchokes.

“You want the ones that are not caked in dirt, because they’re hard to clean and peel,” he explained, “And you want the larger ones.” While many like to work with raw sunchokes (shaving them thinly for a salad, for example), Tucker likes to slow bake them with white wine, olive oil, and herbs, the combination making a sort of guilt-free confit.

Golden Nuggets. Photo by Tamara Palmer

We finished at the Blossom Bluff Orchards stand, where some weird, nubbly looking mandarin oranges were about to be the subject of Tucker’s excitement.

“These are great for the zest!” he exclaimed of the variety, called Golden Nuggets. He likes to use them in savory applications, and for his beer class imagined they’d pair well with the bitterness of the hops in the different beer varieties. These can be a little difficult to pick. If they’re nubbier and heavier, they’ve got more juice, but they’ve also got thicker and more developed cell walls, so there’s a bit of a tradeoff when it comes to the insides.

Aaron London. Photo courtesy of Ubuntu

It’s still a good time of year for carrots, and chef Aaron London of Napa’s notable vegetarian restaurant Ubuntu has some valuable advice and a colorful, flavorful recipe to share. No matter what color or size your carrots are, he notes that the pigmentation should be deep and plush. Look for strong, rigid stems and leaves with some sheen to them that blossom out and don’t lay flat.

Carrots. Photo by Tamara Palmer

“If you’re at a Farmers’ Market,” London says, “dirt is a good thing to see on a carrot. If it has dirt on it and any moisture, it will degrade and diminish very rapidly, meaning that if you see a soil covered carrot with all of the above attributes, then you’re really looking good because it must be super fresh. I know this sounds redundant, but it should smell like a carrot. Take that in mind and try hard to find a carrot that actually smells like one, and you will have found a winner.”

Tender White Satin and Crisp Purple Haze Carrot Salad With Strawberry Spinach, Raspberries, and Crushed Herb Vinaigrette

By Chef Aaron London, Ubuntu Restaurant

Serves: 6

Ingredients:

2 large carrots, peeled and sliced thin
Peel of 1/4 of an orange
1/4 onion, sliced thinly
2 oranges
1 Tbs. sugar
Mixed color baby carrots, carrot tops reserved for cooking and for garnish
1/2 pint raspberries
1 qt. picked greens, such as arugula, chervil, celery leaf, and mint
1 cup grapeseed oil
2 Tbs. crushed toasted hazelnuts
1 big handful of baby spinach
3 cloves crushed garlic
1 sprig rosemary
Salt
1Tbs. sugar
Edible flowers, or garnish of choice

For the carrot puree:

Sweat the onion, sliced large carrot, and orange peel in a little grapeseed oil with salt in a heavy bottomed pot until very tender. Add 1 pint of water and reduce it by half.

Place the carrots into a blender and blend on high until smooth and the mixture blends easily. At the end, drizzle in a thin stream of 1tsp. of oil to emulsify it and make it creamy and fluffy. Reserve puree.

For the tender carrots:

Wash the carrots and tops very well. Clean the tops off of all the baby carrots, and reserve some of the smaller leaves on the herb in ice water for garnish. Place the rest of the tops in the bottom of a roasting pan.

Lay 2/3 of the carrots on the carrot tops in 1-2 even layers, followed by the garlic, whole sprig rosemary, peel and juice of 1 orange, the sugar, enough water to cover and a pinch of salt. Cover with tin foil and cook until tender, about an hour, at 350. Once they are done, let them rest in their liquid until it is time to plate.

For the crisp carrots:

Take the remaining carrots and cut them into interesting shapes as well as shave on a mandolin. Place the carrots them directly into ice water so they crisp up and tork (twist into natural shapes).

For the vinaigrette:

Place the grapeseed oil in the freezer for 30 minutes before you need to use it. Blanch and shock the quart of “rabbit greens” (greens of choice as listed above) and place them in the blender with the oil and spin until smooth. Chill immediately.

Place the raspberries into a mixing bowl and lightly fork crush them with the micro-planed zest of 1 orange, a pinch of salt and a twist of pepper. Add in the hazelnuts and ½ cup of the green oil and let marinate for half an hour.

To finish:

Spread the carrot puree nice and wide on the bottom of 6 plates or wide bowls. The puree should be just above room temperature. Pull the tender carrots out of their cooking liquid and toss them in a bowl with the juice of one orange and a spoonful of the green oil and place them artfully into the puree.

Drain all of the water off of the raw carrots and toss them in a bowl with some of the green oil and a pinch of salt and dance them though the tender carrots, building as much height as possible.

Spoon the chunky vinaigrette evenly over all of the dishes, making sure to stir it often in order to insure even dispersion. To finish each dish, toss whatever spinaches and other garnishes with the lightest drop of oil, a pinch of salt and weave the leaves and edible flowers throughout the plates so it looks like their growing out.

Another sunny Saturday morning found us back at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, the secret weapon of San Francisco’s thoughtful, creative chefs. The Bay Area has a wide variety of interesting fruits and vegetables growing here and near year-round, and while we’re surrounded by it all the time, you’re not alone if you have little to no idea what to look for when picking produce. We tagged along with four local culinary artists on their morning run around the various farm stands to steal their valuable tips.

Mission Beach Café’s Trevor Ogden sorts through parsnips.

Trevor Ogden, executive chef at Mission Beach Café, is currently accompanying his braised Prather Ranch lamb shank with a puree of baby parsnips, which he picks up from Heirloom Organic Gardens. When shopping for the root vegetable for home cooking, however, Ogden says size doesn’t really matter all that much.

“You can use both,” he advises. “Bigger can be better, but the little ones you don’t have to peel.” Look for clean, firm roots.

Aziza’s Louis Maldonado looks at Romanesco broccoli.

Louis Maldonado, chef de cuisine at Aziza, enjoys working with Romanesco broccoli, which he prizes for its trimmings even more than the crowns. Sometimes he’ll even purchase them separately, often from Dirty Girl Produce. The trimmings work well for him because he doesn’t have to blanch or otherwise prepare some big hunk of broccoli. We’ve always stumbled around and picked huge, fat crowns, but it turns out that’s not a great strategy. Maldonado instead looks for really small crowns and roasts them whole with anchovies, lemon, parsley, and olive oil.

“When they get bigger, it kind of takes the special [qualities] away, so we just try to go for smaller ones,” he says. “The stuff they don’t make money on, we try to buy.”

Credo’s Gustavo Romero ponders the best purple kohlrabi.

Purple kohlrabi is big and scary looking, not the sort of vegetable that timid chefs would take a chance on, but Gustavo Romero, executive chef at Credo, makes it sound versatile and easy to use. Heirloom Organic Gardens is sporting big, beautiful specimens of this traditionally Lebanese, cabbage-like veggie right now.

“All the stuff they bring here is good quality,” notes Romero as we walk back towards the stand and spot the purple beasts. He picks up a few that are bigger, with cleaner white spots. “For the restaurant, I like to use the larger ones to mash them, because it’s easier and you spend less time doing it. In root vegetables, I don’t think the size especially matters unless you’re talking about carrots, because baby carrots have a lot more flavor.” Credo currently cooks a fish in parchment paper with root vegetables, including kohlrabi. He also loves to boil them and use them in a puree for a great consistency.

“Kohlrabi is great steamed in a stew with potatoes, carrots, and a chicken; it’s also great as a crudité or shredded like a cole slaw, skin and all,” adds Heirloom Organic farmer Dave Jamrock.

Page mandarin orange

Like many of his colleagues, Evan Rich, chef de cuisine at Coi, heads to the Hamada Farms stand for citrus. Right now, the Page mandarin oranges at Hamada are really good. He uses the juice for a play on a mandarin sour cocktail: Frozen mandarin ice with mandarin vodka jelly and a frozen meringue flavored with Angostura bitters.

He looks for a fruit that weighs a little bit, and says the color of the skin is important: If it’s more vibrant and darkly hued, the juice will probably be sweeter and more concentrated. He also suggests holding one in each hand; the heavier one will produce more juice.

Hamada is a reliable source, but Rich will often go the extra step to research the weather conditions around the various farms to figure out which ones might be producing the fruit with the most and most flavorful juice at the moment and then do a taste test at the stands.

“At Coi, that’s the kind of intensity we have with the ingredients,” he says. “It’s very important about taste and freshness. With fresh ingredients, there’s like an energy — it’s hard to explain, but it’s like there’s something that you can’t even notice, but it’s a subconscious thing that you just realize it’s better. And that’s why I come here.”

Previously: Bay Area Chefs on Winter Produce

Credit for all photos: Tamara Palmer

As important as growing and selecting produce is to a healthy diet and life, it’s pretty stunning how few of us really know how to pick the best fruits and vegetables when shopping. Sure, we might have heard about certain items we’re supposed to thump or squeeze, and we know to look out for obvious cosmetic flaws, but too much more beyond that is a big mystery for many.

We got up too early on a recent Saturday morning to find a number of San Francisco’s notable chefs shopping for winter produce at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market. It was fascinating not only to see what everyone was buying and placing on their big-wheeled carts, but to watch their gears turning while dreaming up new ways to use these high quality ingredients. After several conversations, we came away confident that our local farmers do a lot to pre-select the best produce before they bring it to a market, which is why so many of the chefs are confident to purchase large boxes of ingredients on the spot. But we also got some good tips on how to select for maximum flavor and longevity.

Kristie Knoll of Knoll Farms and Annie Somerville of Greens

We think of Annie Somerville, proprietor of the legendary vegetarian restaurant Greens, as a true goddess of produce here in the Bay Area, so we met her first. She suggested we convene at the Knoll Farms stand, a biodynamic farm from Brentwood where we’d see all kinds of chefs lurking throughout the morning.

Somerville was thrilled to see the beginnings of green garlic there (“I am so happy!” she exclaimed), something she says proprietor Rick Knoll actually pioneered and is typically found after the winter. When asked what to look for, she said,

“Look for it to look just like that! Just really fresh and nice, the point is that it is the young stalks, the shoots. As they get more mature, they get longer and at the end there they start to bulb up and [wilt] and at some point you probably want to let it go. We use the shoots for sautéing. All the applications of fresh garlic, use your green garlic instead. Put it in any dish. All the tops can go into soup stock.”

Green garlic

She finds it a wonderfully versatile ingredient, but seemed most excited about her plans to add it to mashed potatoes. One of Kristie Knoll’s favorite preparations, meanwhile, is to cut the stalks into “knuckles” and brown them.

Horseradish root

While at the Knoll stand, we stumbled into Michael Tusk, chef/owner of Quince and Cotogna restaurants, selecting some horseradish. He says to look for pieces that aren’t dried out. And, in this case of this root, size matters.

“I personally like the bigger pieces; they’re easier to grate,” he said. “We use it in a salad with smoked eel and with beef, but I usually I just find stuff and then I decide what to do. It’s good to have inspiration around, especially at this time of year, so I try to find as many fun things as possible.”

When we caught up with David Bazirgan, the new executive chef of Fifth Floor, he was hoisting up a giant bag of stinging nettles from Marin Roots Farm and explaining that he ingeniously uses them in place of spinach for a side dish of creamed nettles to accompany his new menu item, a dry aged New York steak also served with salt baked potatoes, roasted mushrooms, and red wine sauce. (He Thermo-mixes them so they don’t sting.) Since this isn’t an item eaten raw, picking them is a lot easier than other ingredients, but Bazirgan still suggests carefully looking through them for a vibrant, consistent color and no holes.

David Bazirgan of Fifth Floor selects chicories.

Bazirgan also uses color cues when picking various chicories at Marin Roots, selecting the most vibrant leaves; look for the whites as well as the colors to be bright. He is currently using various heirloom varieties of chicories in a salad, dressed raw with compressed persimmon, Pt. Reyes blue cheese, hazelnuts, pomegranate, vadouvan, and Chardonnay vinaigrette.

For Mark Richardson, the executive chef of Seasons Restaurant at Four Seasons Hotel San Francisco, Brussels sprouts are a winter produce staple.

“Look for the sprouts with tight-fitting leaves, with no browning or yellowing,” he advised. “If you can find the sprouts still on the stalk, they will be the freshest.”

His preparation for them is minimal: After blanching, he caramelizes the sprouts in a pan with some olive oil and then seasons with salt, fresh cracked pepper, and chili flakes. If you can’t make it to Ferry Plaza, Richardson also suggests buying them at Mollie Stone’s or Whole Foods locations.

Hoss Zaré of Zaré at Fly Trap examines white carrots.

Hoss Zaré of Zaré at Fly Trap truly shocked us when we met him to scout out white carrots. We gravitated towards the biggest ones, but Zaré said that was actually not the best strategy.

“The bigger ones are woodier and less juicy,” he cautions. “Too small, and they’re not going to have much flavor. You have to get the medium-sized ones so you get a lot of juice and flavor. Big ones are good for braising — chop them up and caramelize them, but the smaller ones are juicier.”

His favorite current use for white carrots is to lightly peel, blanch, pan roast until lightly caramelized, and then stack with slices of braised lamb tongue.

As we were about to leave Ferry Plaza full of new ideas and new produce specimens to experiment on, we grabbed Russell Jackson, chef/owner of Lafitte, just steps up the Embarcadero from Ferry Plaza. He was checking out the produce at Hamada Farms, the Kingburg grower whose citrus and pears seem to be the secret weapon of the chefs who shop at Ferry Plaza.

“Which kind of pear do I want today?” he asked.

“Niitaka!” came the answer from two people behind the counter, in unison. Jackson leapt over to the box and started smelling.

“Surface indication really isn’t anything,” he said, pointing out some visible flaws on a Niitaka. “It’s really about the texture, firmness, and I’m really looking for that aromatic quality to it. You don’t want something heavily bruised, but [some flaws] are just from tree hang, or where it faces the sun, or whether it’s been scratched by a branch.”

Right now, he’s roasting pears to make a demi-glace for roasted sweetbreads and also using them raw in a salad with persimmons, chicories or radicchio, walnuts and Banyuls vinaigrette.

Where many households across the nation turn to canned goods in the winter, we have these staples and so much more ripe for the picking.

“Elmo loves wasabi,” said an unmistakable voice over the phone. “Do you know what wasabi is?”

Taking an invisible squeegee to the brain, we realized that this conversation was actually taking place. Elmo was on the other end of the line, explaining the difference between sometime foods and anytime foods, one of the big lessons of Sesame Street’s new initiative Food For Thought: Eating Well on a Budget.

“Wasabi?” we asked, still stunned.

“Do you like sushi?” asked the iconic red monster, who has been three-and-a-half-years-old since the mid-Eighties. Of course, we said.

“Well, Elmo loves it,” he replied, “but it’s a sometime food. An anytime food is like broccoli or any kind of really good fruits and vegetables and stuff.”

Even poor Cookie Monster has gotten the message about sometime versus anytime foods and is now just as likely to be spotted with a fresh avocado than a box of Chips Ahoy, thanks to this bilingual (English and Spanish) multimedia program aimed at educating struggling families with kids aged two through eight on healthier food choices. A free kit sponsored by Merck and United Healthcare includes recipe cards with low-cost and well-balanced meal ideas, tips on broaching difficult topics regarding financial difficulties and healthy eating with children (such as what to say when food is hard to come by), and a DVD packed with songs and educational adventures with Elmo, Super Grover, and the charming new Super Foods (whole grain bread, broccoli, banana, and cheese).

Elmo and Super Grover pose with the four healthy food groups (Fruits, Vegetables, Dairy, and Grains) as part of Sesame Street’s Food For Thought initiative. © 2010 Sesame Workshop. Photo by: Richard Termine.

“We’ve always been involved with [healthy eating], but now we’re trying to get out there in a more major way to help families not only eat healthy but to find ways where it’s affordable for them also,” said Kevin Clash, executive producer of the DVD and author of My Life as a Furry Red Monster: What Being Elmo Has Taught Me About Life, Love and Laughing Out Loud. “What’s exciting for us is that we get to send these out and it’s no charge, it’s free. We get send them to everybody who really needs it without them incurring a cost to get it. There are wonderful recipes in the kit and of course there’s the Muppet story — we always try to entertain at the same time that we educate.

“It’s such a major challenge for this country,” lamented Clash. “There are so many children under the age of four who are not eating healthy for a number of reasons. It’s the economy, unfortunately. I think all of us have to be more clever about how we get healthy food on the table for our kids because we don’t want them to go to school hungry.”

Elmo personally likes to start the day with a breakfast of oatmeal with orange slices or yogurt and orange juice.

“Elmo loves breakfast!” he declares. “Elmo’s mommy and daddy say it is the most important meal of the day. Elmo can’t wait to go outside and play with his friends after a really good breakfast.”

Elmo cooks with his mom all the time, which he loves, and his favorite recipe is a healthy take on the perennial kid favorite chicken fingers.

“We get to crunch up my favorite cereal and put the cereal all over it, and then we put it in the oven! It’s really good. My mom likes to use egg whites instead of the whole egg. We dip the chicken into the egg and then we put it in Elmo’s favorite cereal.

“It doesn’t have any sugar on it,” he giggled.

One of the DVD’s many highlights is “Try It,” a musical number that encourages children to take chances on new foods. In the song, Elmo discovers that he likes kiwi after trying it a second time. This is a key concept when food needs to stretch over thin budgets.

“What Elmo’s mommy and daddy does is that if Elmo doesn’t like it the first time then they try to prepare it a different way,” observed Elmo. “One time they chopped up Brussels sprouts and they put it in Elmo’s potato soup. And it was really good! Elmo didn’t know until after Elmo finished that it was in there, but Elmo got to love Brussels sprouts that way.”

Just as important is showing how economical preparing fresh and healthy meals at home can be.

“Elmo has a really good friend named chef Art Smith,” explained Elmo, “and he taught Elmo’s mom and dad that you could take a chicken and you could make four meals out of it! You can have four days worth of chicken but prepared different ways. So he grilled it, that’s one way. Then he took some of the chicken and he put it in salad, that’s number two. Then he took the chicken and he made a pasta dish with the chicken, that’s number three. And then he made a really cool soup with some of the chicken. And that was four meals! Elmo’s mommy and daddy say you have to be creative sometimes because food can be expensive. But you have to figure out ways of using it more than once.”

Elmo is no stranger to the world of culinary celebrity. In his short three-and-a-half years, he has collaborated with chef Emeril Lagasse on the Food Network special Emeril and Elmo’s Healthy Start (in, um, 2005), made eggnog on Emeril Live, and loosened up Martha Stewart on two of her shows. Now he’s revealed that he’ll be appearing on an upcoming episode of Top Chef.

“We don’t know what we’re going to do yet, but we can’t wait to spend some time with them,” said Elmo. “They’re really cool. And the chefs are so talented. We love watching it. Elmo watches it with his mom.”

Wait, isn’t Top Chef on a bit late at night for a young monster?

“We TiVo everything!”

In music, the best remixes retain the highlights of the original song (whatever they may be) while adding a new twist that makes the production feel fresh. It’s a small parameter to keep in mind while cooking that can yield a big change.

I realize that I wasn’t the first person to think of coating balls of leftover mashed potatoes or sweet potatoes with panko flakes and pan frying until crisp, for example. But several invisible exclamation points hovered above the kitchen the evening after Thanksgiving a couple years ago when I found a new way to confront those heaps of starch.

If your party wasn’t vegetarian, it’s likely that turkey and/or ham makes up the bulk of the leftovers. It is here that I turn the controls over to five Bay Area chefs with brilliant ideas on how to make your leftovers feel like they’re back for the first time.

Chef Jordan Mackey of Cuvée Napa

Chef Jordan Mackey of Napa’s Cuvée restaurant has an efficient breakfast recipe that will swoop in and handle most of your leftovers in one go. He didn’t find a way to include pumpkin pie in his Harvest Benedict, but there’s just about everything else in it, including leftover ham, stuffing, biscuits, and vegetables.

Harvest Benedict
By Jordan Mackey

Makes: Four servings

Ingredients:
Some leftover sliced country ham
4 leftover biscuits, split
2 organic egg yolks
8 large organic eggs
8 oz. melted butter
¼ cup white vinegar
Kosher salt
Worcestershire sauce
Cayenne pepper
1 lemon
Some leftover stuffing
Leftover vegetables

Preparation:
For hollandaise sauce: Mix two egg yolks with a squeeze of lemon and about one tablespoon of water in a short and shallow mixing bowl. Set a shallow sauce pan half-filled with water, vinegar, and a healthy pinch of salt over medium heat. When water is simmering, place bowl with eggs over pot and whip until hot and thick like a custard. Gradually add melted butter until a smooth, thick sauce forms (as you add the whey from the butter, the sauce will thin slightly). Season with salt, cayenne, and a couple drops of Worcestershire sauce. Keep hollandaise sauce warm.

For Benedict: Reheat stuffing, ham, and vegetables in oven. Toast biscuits. Gently poach eggs in the simmering vinegared water. Place some ham on the cut side of the toasted biscuits and top with some hollandaise sauce. Enjoy with your delicious sides from last night.

Chef Tony Gemignani of Tony’s Pizza Napoletana: Joe Wollenhaupt

Most of us gravitate towards the turkey sandwich, and Tony Gemignani, owner of Tony’s Pizza Napoletana, Tony’s Coal-Fired Pizza & Slice House, and Tony Gemignani’s International School of Pizza in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood, has some simple ideas for making that sandwich a lot livelier than yours would have been, with flavors that are still reminiscent of Thanksgiving. When you’re picking up your loaves at Acme Bread Company, pick up an extra loaf of cranberry walnut bread for the day after.

Turkey Club
By Tony Gemignani

Makes: Two sandwiches

Ingredients:
6-8 oz. sliced turkey (thinner the better)
2 oz. cranberry sauce
4 pieces of cranberry walnut bread (Acme if possible), sliced 1/2 inch thick
1 oz. mayonnaise
3 slices provolone (3 oz)
Spring mix
Salt and pepper to taste

Preparation: Spread a layer of mayonnaise on one slice of bread for each sandwich. Add half the turkey to each sandwich, top with cranberry sauce, provolone, and spring mix.

Chef Gaston Alfaro of Half Moon Bay Brewing Company: Justin Lewis

Another solution for felling your mighty leftovers in one big second meal is to make turkey casserole. Chef Gaston Alfaro of Half Moon Bay Brewing Company has a recipe that is about as easy as cutting up leftovers, mixing them in a dish with a splash of beer, and baking for less than 20 minutes.

Turkey Casserole
By Gaston Alfaro

Makes: Two portions

Ingredients:
¾ cup cut up turkey
½ cup roasted winter vegetables, diced (such as turnips, carrots, parsnips, pumpkin and onions)
¼ cup stuffing
1 tbsp dried cranberries
½ cup turkey gravy
Splash of beer, such as the Half Moon Bay Brewing Company’s Mavericks Amber Ale

Preparation:
Pre-heat oven to 350° F. Mix all the ingredients in a bowl and pour into a casserole dish. Bake for about 17 minutes or until golden brown and bubbly.

Chef Bridget Batson of Gitane: Hardy Wilson

One surefire way to remix leftovers is to take them out of the Thanksgiving context altogether. Chefs Bridget Batson of Gitane and Anamika Khanna of Kasa Indian Eatery, both in San Francisco, both have turkey recipes that look to Asia for inspiration. Batson uses turkey for jook, a rice-based porridge popular in China, while Khanna fashions an Indian curry out of the bird.

Jook
By Bridget Batson

Makes: Two servings

Ingredients:
½ cup arborio rice
½ cup sushi rice
4-6 cups turkey stock (made from leftover scrap and veggies)
1 ginger finger, peeled and lightly crushed
Leftover turkey, cut into bite-sized pieces
1 bunch scallions, cut into rings
¼ bunch cilantro, chopped
Fried shallot rings
2 jalapenos cut into rings
1 fried egg

Preparation:
First combine the rice and rinse. Then, in the crock-pot, add the rice with 4 cups of the turkey stock and ginger finger. Bring to a boil stirring occasionally (you can also put the crock pot on auto mode). Once the mixture has boiled, turn down to low. Let simmer for 1 ½ to 2 hours, occasionally stirring. Add more stock if needed. When done, the rice will be tender and creamy. Remove the ginger finger and then fold in your leftover turkey and garnish with the scallions, cilantro, fried shallots and jalapeno. Top with a fried egg.

Chef Anamika Khanna of Kasa Indian Eatery. Photo Courtesy of Kasa Indian
Eatery

Leftover Roast Turkey Curry
By Anamika Khanna

Makes: Two servings

Ingredients:
4 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 white onion, very finely chopped
1 tomato, blended
3 cloves garlic, finely crushed
1 tablespoon ginger, finely chopped
1 teaspoon whole cumin seeds
1 teaspoon freshly ground coriander seeds (in a mortar and pestle)
1 whole green chile such as serrano, jalapeno, or bird’s eye, finely chopped
Juice of 1/2 a lime
1 red bell pepper, sliced
1 tablespoon plain yogurt
2 cups leftover turkey, cut into bite-sized pieces
Fresh cilantro to garnish
Salt to taste

Preparation:
Heat the oil in a medium deep pan and add the onion. Fry on medium heat until medium brown in color, approximately 10 minutes. Add the ginger, garlic, chile, cumin, and coriander seeds and fry for a further five minutes until the onions are dark brown. Now add the tomatoes, turmeric, salt, and yogurt. Fry for five minutes more. Stir in the bell peppers and turkey and fry for a couple of minutes on high heat, so all the flavors go into the turkey. Add two cups of boiling water, lower the heat, cover the pan, and simmer for 6-7 minutes until the peppers are tender. Squeeze in the lime juice and garnish with cilantro. Serve with plain boiled basmati rice and crunchy long cut cucumbers and red onions dressed with salt, pepper, and fresh lime juice.

Jacques Pépin recently filmed his new cooking series Essential Pépin at KQED, which will premiere in fall 2011 on PBS stations nationwide. It breaks new ground from previous series due to its thematic nature, with whole shows based on subjects such as poultry, shellfish, soup, and fruit desserts and easy recipes that are practical for the home chef. This seasoned icon of culinary television shot 26 episodes in three weeks at a pace of two to three episodes per day; Connecticut, where Pépin calls home, was simply loaning him to us for that time.

Backstage, the kitchen staff, which included Culinary Producers Christine Swett and David Shalleck as well as Pépin’s longtime friend and right-hand man Jean-Claude Szurdak, would arrive at 7:30 a.m. to begin preparing ingredients for Pépin to cook on set as well as duplicates of the dishes (or “twins”). Pépin himself was already well into kitchen preparations when we arrived on one of those final mornings at 9:30 a.m. We didn’t expect him to take such a hands-on role in the production kitchen, but there he was, showing young chefs and interns his quick tips on how to break down a chicken and open and clean shellfish. He was relaxed and happy to answer their questions, offering a valuable mentorship.

A behind-the-scenes slideshow of the taping of Jacques Pépin’s new series Essential Pépin.
Photos by Wendy Goodfriend

There was a brief moment to speak with Pépin after he finished prepping in the production kitchen and before he started filming his shellfish episode. We wondered what this pioneer of culinary television, who won an Emmy in 2001 for his work with Julia Child, thinks of the generation of food celebrities on television.

“Frankly I don’t really do much [food TV watching],” he admitted. “I’m kind of addicted to news so it’s more MSNBC, CNN, or something like this for me. But if you have an open mind you can always learn something from anyone you cook with — sometimes you learn what not to do as well as what to do but you do learn something.”

“Everyone looks at food in a different way, and when I go to the Food & Wine festival in Aspen, for example, there is 5000 food people there and then you have Lidia Bastianich, Mario Batali, Emeril Lagasse, everyone is there. And certainly I will have people who come up to me and say, ‘Out of all the food shows on television, you are the best.’ And the reason they say this is that the people who don’t like me don’t come and talk to me. Only the people who like me come and talk to me. You’ll have another group who will come up to, I don’t know, Bobby Flay and say, ‘Hey, I look at all the shows on television, you’re the best,’ and so forth. And that’s the way it should be.”

“I like to have fun on television and for people to have fun and have a good time looking at it,” he added, “but ultimately I try to teach something.”

At last, it was almost show time. The Essential Pépin set blended a dream kitchen with peeks of an office study and a verdant backyard on either side. It looked amazingly natural, as if it was transplanted straight from his Connecticut home. The lenses of five large cameras were trained overhead and all around the stove area.

Dissecting the multiple angles splashed across a bank of screens in the control room, director Bruce Franchini and series producer Tina Salter patiently tweezed out inconsistencies that would disrupt the show’s continuity, whether accidentally substituting chives for scallions or taking a dish out of the wrong oven. But while it was meticulous, it wasn’t as serious as surgery in there; overheard, the opening strains of the theme from Rawhide (“rollin’, rollin’, rollin’!”) sung by a crew member nearly each time the cameras and audio would start recording.

“Ooh, that’s great,” exclaimed Franchini, as Pépin dropped his crab cakes in hot oil in the next room. “We love sizzle, we love steam!”

The preparation of each dish took about 45 minutes to film. It was impressive to see almost no time wasted in the process. Both Pépin and his daughter, Claudine remained cool throughout the three hours it took to complete the first episode of the day; summoning up the poise to appear fresh even at times when they needed to repeat either a short step in the cooking process or a sentence or, in Claudine’s case, when she needed to eat two oysters in quick succession. The same graceful professionalism was to be said of Claudine’s adorable young daughter Shorey, who joined her mother and grandfather to adventurously taste some of the dishes on camera.

Being inside the studio as the episode unfolded was an exciting sensory experience for everything except our poor taste buds, which didn’t get to be indulged in the same way that our eyes, ears, and nose did. As Pépin dropped the beginnings of clam fritters into hot oil, the sizzle was amplified to an almost concert-like level. When he lifted the lid on the pot of mussels, which had been boiling in garlic-spiked broth, and poured in a measure of wine, the intoxicating scent seemed equally boosted, though we know there’s no such thing as smell-o-vision in real life.

After the cameras took their close-up “beauty shots” of each completed dish, they were whisked away to a back copy room that had been temporarily converted into a guerilla-style photography studio. Bay Area Bites Producer Wendy Goodfriend carefully shot pictures as Cara Miller helped David Shalleck style the plate with the use of tweezers and a delicate paintbrush dipped in water. The images will appear on the Essential Pépin website, which will feature all the full episodes online along with three printable recipes for each show. The website’s launch will coincide with the program’s premiere in fall 2011.

Essential Pépin the book will contain 750 recipes and 200 of Pépin’s own illustrations as well as a three-plus hour DVD that Pépin says will amount to a wonderful “apprenticeship” for any home cook. The television series uses approximately 150 of these recipes. In all of these concurrent projects, his techniques can be used to cook from any book or straight from the heart.

Follow Pépin on Facebook and Twitter for more news and timely updates. Visit Jacques’ official website at KQED Food. And for a fascinating timeline of the life of this culinary icon, be sure to read his autobiography and visit the archives of KQED’s TV program Jacques Pépin: The Apprentice — Then & Now.

Walking into the second day of BlogHer Food without being allowed access to the opening day was like coming into summer camp late, with new firm friendships already swirling in the air and new songs being sung, with all the lyrics unfamiliar to you. As much as we like meeting new people, we were actually drawn to the InterContinental Hotel for the promise of practical knowledge gained at the discussion panels. So while we didn’t come away with new blogroll buddies, we did leave with some sharp insight from some clearly consummate experts.

BlogHer would have needed a third day in order to space out these panels so that they didn’t run concurrently, but the schedule as it was required some tough choices and some furtive diving in and out of different rooms. We sat in on “Recipe Writing” with Elana Amsterdam, Jennie Perillo, and Gaby Dalkin, missing sessions on “Urban Farming” and “Food Styling” altogether, which was a shame because our backstairs container garden and our plating skills could both use some professional tips. But the ladies had good takeaway tips, including to never be afraid of making mistakes in the kitchen; it’s where some of the best, most creative ideas can come out. Amsterdam also suggests a “Zen” approach to the craft of recipe writing and development: Eliminate having your mise en place before you start (practical cooks don’t work this way), consider eliminating extraneous articles and verbs, and write so her 10-year-old son could remember the directions on his way to the refrigerator.

A two-hour afternoon excursion to the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market was a wonderful idea for both locals and visitors alike. We had fun putting ourselves in a tourist’s shoes to try to experience what they’d feel seeing this temple to gastronomic consumption for the first time. But two hours on a Saturday in that madhouse of hungry humanity was merely a tease, and a lot of long lines. Surely some of the out-of-towners did the right thing and played hooky and lingered there for a while longer.

After lunch, there was a great panel of veteran and up-and-coming authorities assembled for “Do You Have a Cookbook in You?”: Shauna James Ahern, Nancy Baggett, Dorie Greenspan, Susan Russo, and Justin Schwartz. It was clear that the era of cushy book contracts and even significant marketing help once you do get published is bygone, but there is still plenty of room in the publishing industry for those who are truly passionate about cooking. “The real work begins now,” is the refrain Greenspan hears in her ears every time she releases a cookbook (she’s currently on her 10th), for the writing is the easy part.

We didn’t want to miss “Food Photography: Think Outside the Plate,” so we tiptoed out of the cookbook session and into a dark room, where Penny De Los Santos was showing stunning slides from her travels as a photographer for Saveur. Whatever your level of photographing experience or equipment, De Los Santos had solid advice for anyone using a lens. Light is key, about 50-100% of a great photo, she said; so is color, composition, energy, and connecting with your subject, even if it is a still life.

We then realized that De Los Santos was the truly personal smile that met us in the hallway about an hour earlier. We smiled back, connecting with a stranger, and later realized how key that warmth is in her photos. So we did learn a little something about connecting with people at BlogHer after all.

The first local dessert/music mash-up we can remember experiencing goes back to San Francisco in 1991, a memory shrouded in some deep Outer Sunset fog. That year, Polly Ann Ice Cream introduced O.P.P., a flavor inspired by Naughty By Nature’s rap song of the same name. Listen to the song to hear and understand its polyamorous proclivities, but here O.P.P. stands for something far more innocent: Orange, Peach, and Pineapple!

We still love going to Polly Ann, where O.P.P. is occasionally available to this day. It’s still fun to spin the wheel of ice cream fortune, which is there for the adventurous, indecisive, or merely the patron who wants a shot at a freebie. But we head to the Mission to the two-year-old parlor Humphry Slocombe to get a sonic rock fix in frozen form. The Gabba Gabba Hey sundae is named after a song by the late great New York band the Ramones. A fat chocolate brownie mimics Dee Dee Ramone’s bassline, there’s balsamic caramel ice cream for Johnny Ramone’s guitar, and sugar-enhanced Amarena cherries stand in for Joey Ramone’s vocals on top.

Humphry Slocombe’s Gabba Gabba Hey sundae

Only outrageous sinkers reside at Psycho Donuts in Campbell and San Jose, so it’s a natural extension that some would be named after explosive musical personalities. There’s Headbanger’s Evil Twin (raised, filled custard), Michael Jackson (chocolate cake dipped in powdered sugar), and Bananarama (raised, filled custard topped with chocolate and freeze-dried bananas). The shop even created three limited-edition donuts in honor of Lady Gaga, including one with cherry champagne custard filling and a sparking cherry on top, and sold them the week she brought her Monster Ball concert tour to San Jose’s HP Pavilion in August.

At Orson in San Francisco’s SOMA area, Maria Muldaur’s 1974 hit “Midnight at the Oasis” is rendered in dessert form, with a chocolate fudgesicle, Devil’s food cake, and milk pudding scattered with a streusel made with cacao nibs. Nearby, the Cups and Cakes Bakery takes its whole name from a Spinal Tap song with sweet lyrics: “Cups and cakes, cups and cakes/Please make sure that nothing breaks/The china’s so dear and the treacle so clear/And I’m glad that you are here/Milk and sugar, bread and jam/Yes, please, sir and thank you, ma’am.” Musical influence also shows up at Cups and Cakes Bakery in the Elvis-winking Viva Las Vegas cupcake (banana bacon cake and peanut buttercream topped with banana chip and bacon). And north of the Panhandle (Nopa to some), Candybar has constructed an ode to the catchiest Internet-era ditty you’ll ever hear. Peanut Butter Jelly Time!!! (exclamation points theirs) is a peanut butter tart with salted peanuts, blackberries, and chocolate crust. Sweets taste better when you’re in tune with the music that runs through it.