"Have you tried the lamb brains?"

Well, it was just that sort of party. The lamb brains, so I was told, were simply smashing--like meaty custard, in the best possible way.

But the lamb brains weren't the half of it. The outdoor tables at last weekend's first Primal Napa event were a head-to-tail, guts-and-all celebration of going deep with meat. There were the strips of grilled beef heart, for starters, and a whole roasted Musquee de Provence squash stuffed with chunks of pork liver. Then slim slices of headcheese, unctuous slathers of nduja, much salume, even entire smoke-blackened lambs' heads, complete with jutting teeth and curled, fibrous tongues. "Yeah, just gnaw right on the jawbone," advised one chef-jacketed guy behind the table.

The setting was appropriately rustic, outside on a beautiful autumn afternoon, under the trees and up against the vines at the Chase Cellars' Hayne vineyard in Napa, with hay bales scattered and, for Napa, quite a young and stylish crowd. There was definitely money here, cool money with BMWs parked in the grass, strolling over for scoops of lamb brains and chunks of rare goat right off the bone.

Back in the hot zone, surrounded by smoking coals, piles of logs and a whole Mediterranean coastline of fresh rosemary branches was Mr. Meat himself, Incanto and Boccalone's Chris Cosentino, jogging from fire to fire in his flaming orange t-shirt emblazoned "USDA Choice," his voice worn to a rasp. In fact, all the cooks seemed to be having a swell time, getting sweaty and grimy surrounded by fire and meat.

Mopping harissa marinade over a long spitted row of feet-on chickens, nuzzling a flat of eggs into a pillow of hot ash, angling an entire spread-eagled goat (furry hooves intact) over a pile of flaming coals: the concept may have been based in subsistence cooking, but the style was deep in the smoky flair that only flambeing can bring.

The mood was definitely gleeful--meat does that to people--and in a funny way, honest. There was no getting away from the fact that eating here meant eating something that once had a face, because that face, or at least the edible bits of it--the tongue, the cheeks, even the eyeballs--were probably right there on the table next to the legs or ribs or tenderloin. And the animals had a pedigree: ask any cook, and they could tell you where the meat they were roasting came from, who raised it and how.

Elbowing up to the platter of slow-cooked pork Hudson Ranch pork belly (divine), one could eavesdrop on any number of serious discussions about heritage pig breeding. Get distracted for a few moments by the leather-and-chocolate Pinots from Hirsch Vineyards, and the roasted goat legs would be all but picked clean, although a few succulent morsels could always be chiseled off and shared by the kind woman wielding a chef's knife on the other side of the table. This wasn't down-home (the highlights and sunglasses on display were much too expensive for that) but there weren't any waiters or coddling, either. In fact, you had to do a little begging just to score a little paper plate and skimpy napkin. Some of the meat was in bite-sized slices; some was simply hacked up and plattered, letting the hungry pull through the shreds and fat with eager hands and plastic forks. We cooked it, the attitude seemed to be. You figure it out.

Up front were hands-on displays of rock-star butchering (a cross-coast trend recently chronicled in the New York Times under the headline Slaughterhouse Live) with Fatted Calf founder Taylor Boetticher whipping through a beef forequarter with deft strokes and cool aplomb. Neatly wiggling out the ball of a shoulder, he pointed out that this particular breakdown didn't require too much finesse, since all the meat was destined for sliders, a rough grind of aged meat and creamy fat made into mini-burgers for the hungry hordes. (Too true: with all the variety meats on display, the table handing out hot dogs and burgers was the one with the surging six-deep, hands-out crowd, right from the moment the patties hit the grill.)

Not surprisingly, the list of participants read like a who's who of current carnivorishness: Fatted Calf, 4505 Meats, Boccalone, Avedano's, Perbacco, Star Meats...and Ubuntu? Wait, that Ubuntu, Napa's famous yoga-studio/vegetarian restaurant, the place my vegan cousin and his new bride had a nearly religious experience over the cauliflower three ways? Thankfully, Ubuntu chef Jeremy Fox (not himself a vegetarian) joined the party to show that open fire-cooking can do wonderful things to vegetables, too. There were terra cotta pots brimming with Rancho Gordo beans in spicy broth, slippery whole roasted torpedo onions, and more.

As the sun slipped away and the strings of white lights lit up across the wine-pouring booths, the heavy hitters came out, finally ready after their hours in the hot zone, staked and salted, roasted and smoky. It was primal, and it was delicious.

Sorry, Mr. Foer. You may not eat it any more, but you know how good it can be.

Photos by Stacy Cahill

I suppose we can thank Anthony Bourdain for the stereotype of the wild man chef. In Kitchen Confidential, his descriptions of "whacked-out moral degenerates, dope fiends, refugees...and psychopaths" haphazardly gobbling substances and screwing on flour sacks between shifts made cooking in a restaurant kitchen seem like both the worst and best job imaginable. He romanticized the depraved hangover-to-hangover existence of a clock-punching turner-and-burner even as he cast his world in a hyper-realistic light, widely disseminating a broad colorful portrait of the journeyman chef, specifically a male one, that quickly congealed in the public mind. He popularized an archetype young chefs may even aspire to emulate -- like fledgling rock singers copping Jagger's pout and other well-traveled performance tropes.

In July 2009, Lev Grossman wrote of Bourdain in Time:

"It was invisible then. Now we recognize it right away: this is Anthony Bourdain's world...He changed our whole cultural idea of what a kitchen is. Pre-Bourdain, it was a warm, cozy, maternal place. Now it's a profane, brutal, masculine crucible, where human frailty is rendered away like so much tasty bacon fat."

Of course, Kitchen Confidential didn't tell chefs anything they didn't already know. I also doubt the book would have been such a sensation had it not arrived at a time when cooking and eating were becoming popular fodder for entertainment on the Food Network, and chefs were more and more in the public eye. Today, celebrity chefs are brands -- swollen, polished amplifications of the managerial personalities they cultivated actually manning kitchens. I'm not trying to write a college paper here, but I have noticed (as have many others) that nearly all of the high-profile celebrity chefs are men. While female Food Network hosts -- like Rachael, Giada, and the newly minted Melissa-- focus on saving time, shopping frugally, and feeding families -- clear extensions of the domestic arena -- male celebrity chefs focus on the craft itself, food for its own sake, cooking as an endless array of skills to acquire and adventures on which to embark in the carrying on of tradition and technique. They can approach food from an intellectual perspective. You learn about salumi. You study pizza. You get your education one cream-laden sauce at a time. You come of age in a French kitchen helmed by a venomous, insult-spewing maniac. You soak up abuse like a crostini, work awful hours, and get paid little to no money, but it's what you expect -- because you're an apprentice. You have to be man enough to take it. Some day, you'll be an executive chef yourself, and you'll have your own cadre of serfs to kick around. Until then, you mince onions and practice cursing. While women obviously pass through similar rites of passage in kitchens all over the world, in the realm of food entertainment, they're relegated to clipping coupons, dumbing down complicated dishes to satisfy some producer's market-tested vision of the American housewife, and attracting no shortage of she-can't-really-cook mockery from their male counterparts. Older female celebrity chefs -- like Lidia Bastianich, for example -- are motherly and comforting. They learned to cook from their mothers, and that's what they're sharing with you.

Everything on television is deliberately orchestrated, of course, but many of the common signifiers of male chefness -- the cursing, the drinking, the fighting, the screaming, the preoccupation with large pieces of meat -- whether expressed on camera, in memoirs, or reputation via third-person anecdotes -- endow a traditionally feminine role with coarse, conventionally masculine trappings. Producers want men to feel safe watching their shows. They don't want the women to appear shrill, unattractive, bossy, or otherwise threatening, or for the men in aprons to come off as effete. Over the course of six seasons of Bravo's Top Chef, some of the show's most reviled male contestants have been wheedling, effeminate men. Likewise, when Padma Lakshmi, host of Top Chef, did a tour of Spain for the Food Network way back in early 2000s, she was not tripping around, Bourdain-like, shit-faced on sherry, taking bullfighting lessons, making subtle references to gastrointestinal distress. Instead, cameras zoomed in again and again as she slowly lowered strips of fine jamon into her mouth, oohing and cooing, her face bathed in a soft, warm lamp-lit glow. In one segment, she rode a horse, in another, a donkey. She did go to a bullfight, which the bull managed to win against all odds. Relieved, Lakshmi repaired to a nearby restaurant, where she ate the balls of one of the victorious bull's less fortunate comrades.

Men who have become famous cooking and eating in the public eye go out of their way to project a masculine image, and their carefully constructed personalities stud every crevice of the machismo spectrum. Ginger-coiffed Bobby Flay, proprietor of what Grub Street deems the 13th largest chef empire, is a wise-talking Jersey dude. He's richer than an oil tycoon but he has real friends. How do you know? They come over to his modest-seeming house for sausage party cook-outs. Sometimes, when he's smirking his way through a Throwdown episode, he looks like guys I've seen at bars late at night, red-faced, a little sweaty, leering at ladies between shots of Patron. 8th on Grub Street's list, Mario Batali, corpulent, jolly, and orange-clogged, is renowned for Falstaffian excesses. With his Tourettic interjecting of idiotic catch phrases, Emeril Lagasse, locked with Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Nobu Matsuhisa for #5 through #7, strikes me as a man who always speaks louder than he has to. With his Stray Cats-meets-Swingers-in-the-back-of-a-Sunglass Hut shtick, Guy Fieri apparently wowed audience members at this year's Great American Food and Music Festival in Mountain View with what Bay Area Bites contributor Stephanie Im called a "highly entertaining blowout performance complete with loud rock n'roll, gratuitous hot chicks on stage, big machinery, power tools, and pyrotechnics." The owner of 27 restaurants around the world, Gordon Ramsey has bounced over some financial ruts lately, but Grub Street still has him in the #1 slot. His shows are crude spectacles of theater Artaud, would find unwatchable. Ramsey berates chefs, spits food on the floor, and picks fights. Off-screen, he's compulsively disrespectful, particularly towards women. Bourdain? Well, he doesn't actually cook much anymore, but he drinks a lot on No Reservations and makes a point of eating anything put in front of him, regardless of how strange or off-putting it may be. When he's not going shooting with Ted Nugent, he's a culturally sensitive daredevil -- an Evel Knievel of antacid-defying degustation. I can eat this gigantic sandwich, these bulbous eyeballs, and this disgusting warthog anus, he seems to say -- could you? When he and Eric Ripert venture back into the Les Halles kitchen to char beef and sauce sole for Season Four's "Into the Fire" episode, they're in the war zone, brothers sloshing through the trenches, dunking freedom fries in spitting oil and hustling out steak au poivre as the foes -- the diners -- descend in overwhelming numbers. Interestingly, Jamie Oliver, who on several occasions has been the target of Bourdain's bullying, was the subject of a 2003 academic article published in the International Journal of Cultural Studies: "Oliver's Twist: Leisure, Labor, and Domestic Masculinity in The Naked Chef". The writer, Joanne Hollows of Nottingham Trent University in England, frames Oliver as a construction of the masculine domestic cook. According to Hollows, in his professional capacity, Oliver avoids associating cooking with labor; instead, it's a fun, leisurely, and "recognizably manly" activity.

You'll never see a man on a cooking show gasping and groaning over the way something tastes -- over-sensualizing their pleasure from food. "Oh that's serious," Bourdain will say, wiping some beastly innards off his face, taking a swig of Heineken. Emeril and Fieri will bark as if they're at a ball game. Batali will explain why something is good, rather than simply express how happy he is to eat it. Some kinds of cooking -- grilling, artisanal curing, brawny offal-centric preparations -- tend to have hyper-masculine devotees. Molecular gastronomy -- food science, art, and fantasy in a delicious jumble -- is safe too -- because it's so dramatically removed from the drudgery of home-cooking. Every now and then, you see a gentle man cooking on television, and the effect is jarring. In March, celebrated Manresa chef David Kinch schooled Bobby Flay on Iron Chef. Even though his restaurant is a destination, the soft-spoken and terroir-enthused Kinch will never have product tie-ins -- commercial mayonnaise, kitchen gear, spice rubs, etc -- on Flay's level -- even in the unlikely event he wanted to in the first place. He'd rather build "tide-pools" of fresh shellfish and sea beans languishing in dashi-laced green tomato broth and go surfing in his spare time. One of my favorite cooking shows was Charlie Trotter's original Kitchen Sessions on PBS in the late 1990s. Amid a loose jazz soundtrack, Trotter very softly presented his thesis: cooking is a cycle of improvisations where time-tested techniques meet endlessly changing circumstances and opportunities for adjustment. The food was high-concept, challenging but within reach. As a host, he was a soothing presence -- murmuring vaguely poetic asides, often looking away from the camera, frequently indulging in tangential digressions appropriate to his show's statement of purpose. Trotter has been very successful, but his show, at least in that incarnation, didn't last more than a year or two. Ironically, Trotter actually made a cameo in the 1997 movie My Best Friend's Wedding, in which he convincingly played the stereotype of a blustery chef, bellowing at an assistant: "I will kill your whole family if you don't get this right!" It's a better joke now, twelve years later.

SF Chefs. Food. Wine. Ribbon Cutting: Linda Lim, Mayor Gavin Newsom, Kevin Westlye, Tyler Florence

To quote Mayor Gavin Newsom, "Aspen, eat your heart out."

An epic event 2 ½ years in the making, SF Chefs. Food. Wine. was like a food-lover's Disneyland with over 200 of the Bay Area's finest chefs, 450 wineries, and mixologists aplenty strutting their stuff.

Over the past four days, Union Square was transformed into a playground of tastings, seminars, and demonstrations from a who's who list of culinary legends, rising stars, artisans, and experts.

View from the top: Charles Phan, Thomas Keller, Douglas Keane

Sara Moulton and Cindy Pawlcyn

Martin Yan, Yan Can Cook

Top Cheftestants Jennifer Biesty and Ryan Scott

It sometimes feel like a blessing and a curse to live in a city with so many amazing restaurants to try because let's face it, who can afford to try them all? One can read about them, drool over descriptions and photos of them, and then place them on an ever-growing bucket list of places to try. The Grand Tasting Tent at SF Chefs provided the rare opportunity to hone that list, allowing participants to really taste, touch, see, and feel for themselves, a sliver of what some of these heralded restaurants are all about. The air was electric and the excitement palpable, as the wine flowed and the bites were dished out.

Monterey Squid, Chef Justin Simoneaux, Moss Room

Thai Wrap, Chef Toi Sawatdee, Lemongrass Thai Cuisine

It was interesting to see the chefs do riffs on many of the same ingredients that are in peak season right now: corn, heirloom tomatoes, melons, figs, and refreshing preparations like gazpachos and ceviches.

Bruleed Fig with Kaffir Lime Oil and Vanilla Salt, Chef Jenn Puccio, Cortez

And, there was no shortage of parties…all benefiting good causes of course: the Golden Gate Restaurant Association Scholarship Foundation, Meals on Wheels, Project Open Hand, and the San Francisco Food Bank (a member of Feeding America).

Thursday night reunited Rising Star Chefs and Bar Stars named by the San Francisco Chronicle, and a special dinner prepared by Arnold Eric Wong (E&O Trading Co.), Charles Phan (The Slanted Door/Heaven's Dog), and Martin Yan (Yan Can Cook).

Friday night honored America's Culinary Pioneers, Emily Luchetti (Farallon/Waterbar), Judy Rodgers (Zuni Café), Patricia Unterman (Hayes Street Grill), Joyce Goldstein (author and restaurateur), and Chuck Williams (Williams-Sonoma). There was also Out in the Fog, a celebration of the diverse LGBT community, at Elizabeth Falkner's Orson. It was chic, it was sexy, and it had a giant projection of Julia baking a cake on the wall.

Party time went strong through Saturday night, and the tasting tent was bumping with DJ Chef Hubert Keller laying down some beats at the Urban BBQ. Rock Star.

DJ Chef Hubert Keller

God forbid that dancing put anyone in a negative calorie count. The night continued at a Chocolate Enchantment after-party, complete with a floor to ceiling spinning display of chocolate decadence.

SF Chefs chocolate enchantment

This weekend's festivities were a true celebration of the unique culinary spirit of San Francisco, bringing together a community of both industry and non-industry people through a common love of food. It was a treat to have executive chefs live and in person, serving their dishes and chatting about their food, or seeing them interact with one another and catching a glimpse of that intriguing "chef's world" that has captured our imagination. We are a city that loves our food, and by direct association, honors the craftsmen and -women who bring joy through food.

SF Chefs. Food. Wine. hit on a winning combination of accessibility to hometown celeb-status chefs, utterly delicious food, fine wine, education, and awareness of important issues in food politics. It was fun, multi-faceted, and full of passion. It was, in a nutshell, San Francisco.

Ding-ding

10:30 a.m. on a weekday morning is not my usual cocktail hour. But with a cheerful SF Chefs. Food. Wine volunteer saying "Breakfast is served!" as he placed a cute pink drink in front of me, well, what could I do?

It was, after all, educational. The drink was a raspberry rum daisy, made with white rum, lemon, and raspberries, an olden-days cocktail made artisanally up-to-date through the use of small-batch Caribbean-style Baptiste rum and a locally made fruit syrup sweetened with raw cane sugar and thickened with gum arabic, that secret weapon of molecular gastronomy. And the occasion was Cocktails Get Into the Mix , an exploration of the past and present state of West Coast cocktail culture, moderated by Alcademics editor Camper English. In conversation with English was Duggan McDonnell of Cantina and Thad Vogler of the upcoming Bar Agricole.

Drawing a contrast between the technique-obsessed, traditionalist, authenticity-driven New York style of places like Milk and Honey, Death & Co. and the more free-wheeling, flavor-inspired California vibe, Duggan laughed, admitting, "We're more of a hot mess behind the bar." But both Vogler and McDonnell gave New York City its props, saying they'd both learned a tremendous amount about how even the simplest decisions--what sort of ice to use, whether to double-strain (using a cocktail strainer first, a fine tea strainer second)--can make a dramatic difference in the final result.

But, much like our restaurants, the current West Coast cocktail scene is driven by the extensive, year-round availability of amazing produce. "We eat and drink incredibly well here, we're tasting things constantly," noted McDonnell, who connects this vibrant, terrior-driven food culture with the rise in inventive, market-driven cocktail menus.

These drinks may look simple, but much of the work happens after hours, with bartenders simmering their own herb- or spice-infused syrups, amassing collections of quirky amari (the bitter digestive liqueurs beloved by true cocktail geeks), even growing (or bartering for) herbs, fruits, or seasonings. For bartenders less interested in getting in touch with their inner chef, there's Small Hand Foods run by Jennifer Colliau, a bartender at the Slanted Door, whose Berkeley-based company creates "classic ingredients for pre-prohibition cocktails," including grenadine, gum syrup, orgeat, and pineapple and raspberry syrups. All are made in small batches using raw cane sugar (no corn syrup) and no artificial ingredients.

As the group of us sipped our rosy daisies (flavored with Colliau's raspberry gum syrup), Vogler pointed out the difficulty of sourcing spirits that haven't come though the big industrial distillers. Even small-batch labels often buy their base spirit--neutral alcohols usually derived from grain--from big producers, then redistill, infuse and flavor it to their own specifications. This, he noted, was behind the simple but surprisingly inflammatory decision of Oakland's Camino restaurant to yank vodka from their bar menu, instead carrying only a small selection of spirits and seasonal ingredients. (They've since found a small distillery that meets their standards.) When California-grown limes weren't available, the bar used lemons. This caused quite a stir in the press and blogosphere around town, as diners happy to dig into free-range rabbit and sustainable sardines were incensed at not being able to order their usual vodka tonic.

"You have to throw out a lot of stuff if you decide not use anything with artificial flavors or colors, or high-fructose corn syrup," said Vogler, who worked on Camino's cocktail program. That meant no Campari, no maraschino cherries, almost none of the usual fizzy mixers. It's annoying sometimes, admits Vogler, but also fun, more like being a pastry chef with 5 or 6 creations a day than a typical bartender.

Another difference in the East Coast/West Coast throwdown: the pervasive Latin and Asian influences here, and the predominance of tequila, sake, soju and other similar liquors here in lieu of the whiskeys, bourbons, port and sherries more popular in New York. At Cantina, McDonnell noted, the two most popular cocktails are Asian-Latin mashups: the 5-Spice Margarita, and the Latin Buddha, which blends Buddha's Hand citrus vodka with serrano chiles and ginger beer.

A lengthy cocktail competition during the midday food-and-wine tasting seemed to prove nearly all these points. In an Iron-Chef-styled move, the 3 bartenders had to whip up, on the spot, an original cocktail featuring a secret ingredient. The ingredient? Fresh herbs, from dill and rosemary to purple basil and fennel flowers and sage. The winner, Nick Varacalli's "Pass me the lemon, honey" matched lemon thyme with honey-sweetened bourbon, a bit of Canton ginger liqueur, fresh lemon, sweet vermouth, and bitters. A little fresh, a little sweet, a little bitter, and some herb to top it off: what could be more Californian?

Happy Pride! The Gay High Holy Days—or week, or month, depending on your stamina and affinity for dance music, tank tops, rainbow balloons, sign-waving, marches, guys in banana thongs, and standing in line, endlessly, for tickets, beer, and/or bathrooms—are coming to their sunny, sweaty close today. Time to get off the Blue Angel-martini-and-popcorn diet and put those silver latex shorts back in the closet, at least til the Folsom Street Fair.

Or that's how it might be in other cities, where Pride comes around but once a year. Here in our lovely fog-bound burg, though, we can be prideful every day, even if we still-still!-can't get married in City Hall.

But there is something particularly fabulous in seeing the typical straight-to-gay ratio of just about everything upended this month. I still remember walking into 2223 Market one night near the end of June last year, and feeling like everyone there was gay. Gay couples, gay friends, gay parents--it was just like being in the straight world, except this time it was all ours.

Naming all the LGBT chefs and business owners who have made the SF food scene what it is would turn this column into a faygelah version of Adam Sandler's Hannukah Song, but still, let's raise a glass to Traci des Jardins, for running a fancypants place in Hayes Valley and a taqueria with a conscience, and never turning down the chance to help out a good cause; to bad boy Jeremiah Tower, for making Stars sparkle; to Elizabeth Faulkner and her partner Sabrina Riddle, for giving the dyke food mafia an official clubhouse, first at Citizen Cake, now at Orson; and to food photographer Frankie Frankeny, because she shoots what we want to eat, and finds a way to sneak her daschunds into every shoot.

And let's not forget a toast to vinologist Pamela Busch, of the late Hayes and Vine and the current Cav Wine Bar, and to Absinthe's Jamie Lauren and her Top Chef Team Rainbow, for making "hot chef" replace "folk singer" as the default lesbian occupation. Also heating up the room is Gialina pizza diva Sharon Ardiana, turning Glen Park into Naples, and Celia Sack of Omnivore Books, for bringing us cookbook-browsing perfection with nary a 30-Minute-Meal or celebrity diet in sight, just up the street from the ever-charming Lovejoy's Teahouse, run by Muna Nash and Gillian Briley. Were we getting married, we might just drag pastry chef Yigit Pura of Taste Catering out to Iowa with us, just so we could show that corn-fed state just how divine his chocolate-hazelnut daquoise with passion fruit filling wedding cakes can be.

And thank you Rainbow Grocery, for letting us shop for veggie dogs on the 4th of July but closing for Pride Sunday, so your collective members can be out and proud rather than stuck restocking the spirulina. Even Food Not Bombs gets into the spirit now, serving up free eats (in tuxedo shirts and fake mustaches) at their mobile Chez Gay Cafe in Dolores Park before the Tranny March. We're here, we're queer, let's eat!

At gala events you expect to see top chefs preparing bite-sized nibbles for guests. But at StarChefs events working chefs are not just preparing the food, they are the ones being celebrated. StarChefs is all about the chefs of today, and the rising star events are a great way to get a taste of what's hot at the moment.

If you're not a chef, it's possible you've never visited StarChefs. The web site offers recipes, community features, publications and articles that are geared for the restaurant professional. Roughly every other year, they also hold an event in our neck of the woods. For the first time, this year they held a Rising Stars Revue™ in Napa and toasted the up and coming chefs of Napa and Sonoma at the historic Charles Krug winery in St. Helena.

Fifteen chefs, sommeliers and a mixologist were honored with food, wine and prizes to boot. Interestingly there were several husband and wife teams, one of whom had to close their restaurant in order to attend. Some favorite dishes from the evening were:

Ubuntu Fregola in Caramelized Vegetable Juices with Salsa Maro from Jeremy Fox of Ubuntu

Poached Poussin with Summer Vegetables from Christopher Kostow of The Restaurant At Meadowood

Ricotta Gnocchi, Salsa di Pomodoro della Nonna and Pecorino from Nick Ritchie of Bottega

Chicken Fried Sweetbreads with Green Bean and Mushroom Casserole from Matt Spector of Jolē

Sauteed Maryland Wild Striped Bass, Ragout of Salsify, Black Trumpet Mushrooms, Bloomsdale Spinach and Spinach Vin Blanc from Restaurateur Award winner John Toulze the girl & the fig, fig café, Estate

Lemon Verbena Parfait with Summer Stone Fruit from Pastry Chef Deanie Hickox-Fox of Ubuntu

Long Ranch Goat Two Ways: Grilled and Braised with Rancho Gordo Beans and Salsa Verde from Host Chef Richard Haake of Winery Chefs

At the event guests got a chance to vote for their favorite dish. I had a hard time choosing between intensely herbal and fragrant fregola dish and the delicate yet crisp striped bass but in the end, the winner was Matt Spector and his decadent sweetbread dish. Looking at the recipes that were in the program, it's clear why we love eating out. With complicated techniques, multiple preparations and long ingredient lists, these were not dishes you would likely make at home!

One of the most beautiful dishes was this plated dessert from Deanie Hickox-Fox. Basically an unconstructed tart, it featured a bit of crunchy crust, sweet apricot with lemon verbena cream accented with a fruit puree, and garnished with edible flowers and a thin wafer cookie.

To make at home, I'd recommend the cocktail presented by Scott Beattie, the Bella Ruffina, a pretty rose colored cocktail perfect for warm Summer days or nights...

Bella Ruffina
4 ounces Braquetto di Aqui
1 ounce Carpano Antico Vermouth
1 dash orange bitters
1 Amarena cherry, for garnish

Combine the sparkling wine, vermouth and bitters in a champagne flute and stir gently. Drop the cherry in the bottom of the glass to serve.

Recipe reprinted from Artisanal Cocktails by Scott Beattie, published by Tenspeed.

Mostaccioli with pork shoulder ragu

I've been making meat sauces for years, but only now -- after two months as an apprentice at Oliveto -- have I learned some of the secrets behind a superlative ragu.

A ragu is a basic meat sauce for pasta. The first authentic version I tried was years ago, in Emilia-Romagna, the region of Italy that invented the classic Bolognese sauce.

That first ragu was bold and brooding -- much like a Pavarotti opera. The sauce was entangled in a nest of perfectly cooked tagliatelle, with the flavor infused into the noodle.

Numerous cookbooks offer suggestions on making a Bolognese sauce and other forms of ragu. Yet nearly all of these recipes, in my opinion, are flawed. Most suggest cooking a mixture of diced onion, carrots and celery before adding your meat to brown it. The sauce that results tends to be lifeless or, even worse, infused with chunks of burnt vegetables.

Vegetables sweating on top of meat as the meat brown

At Oliveto, the chefs have reversed the sequence. First they brown the meat and then allow the vegetables to steam, or "sweat," on top of the meat. This process produces a dark layer of caramelized meat solids at the bottom of the pan -- a foundation of flavor. This foundation, or "fond" as the chefs call it, is then deglazed by the natural juices of the vegetables when added on top. This is allowed to cook down so the fond is rebuilt and deglazed two or three times.

Paul Bertolli, the former head chef at Oliveto, describes the technique in his 2003 book, "Cooking By Hand." Bertolli's successor, Paul Canales, who had a role in developing this technique, has continued to refine and perfect it since becoming executive chef.

Cooking a ragu in this manner is not difficult, but it cannot be whipped out in an hour or two. A ragu is truly slow food -- time-tested and refined by Italian grandmothers over many centuries.

Ragu ready for a long simmer, after broth and tomato paste have been added

Ragu for pasta

Makes: 8-10 servings of sauce

Ingredients:
2 pounds ground meat (Beef, pork or equal amounts of both. For beef, try ground chuck or get adventurous with ground hanger steak, beef cheeks, etc. For the pig, try ground pork shoulder.)
4 medium yellow onions
5 stalks celery
5 carrots
4 tablespoons finely chopped fresh sage
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh oregano
6 cups dark chicken or veal stock
½ cup white wine
½ cup high-quality tomato paste
1 cup cream (optional)
Salt and pepper to taste

Preparation:

1. Dice the onions, celery and carrots into a mirepoix -- cubes smaller than 1/4 inch in size. As you are dicing the vegetables and mincing the fresh herbs, start cooking your meat. Use a heavy bottomed Dutch oven or stew pot. This is essential. The bottom of the pan has to be thick and heavy enough to brown the meat, without scorching it.

2. Use high heat to start your browning process. But keep an eye on it, and adjust the flame accordingly. It’s okay for the meat to stick and brown, but you don't want it to blacken or burn.

3. After you have built an even layer of fond on the bottom, toss your vegetables on top of the meat. Leave them there for at least 15 minutes, allowing them to release their juices to the bottom of the pan.

4. Give your meat and vegetable a rigorous stir with a wooden spoon, and scrape up the fond layer that has now been deglazed by the vegetables.

5. Turn up heat slightly, and allow this to cook down and brown again, then add a shot of wine -- no more than a cup. Stir and scrape.

6. Allow this to cook down again. When browned, add a cup of stock. Repeat the process and add your tomato paste, diluted with a half cup of stock.

7. Watch your ragu carefully at this point. The addition of tomato paste could lead to scorching. Keep the heat up, but stir it regularly as the fond starts to reform. When it is nice and brown, but not scorched, add two or three cups of stock -- enough to make it slightly more soupy than you'd want for a sauce.

8. At this point, your ragu should have a lovely, brownish-red color. Bring it to a boil and then turn down to a simmer. Allow it to simmer for two to four hours, stirring occasionally and adding more stock, if necessary.

9. Before serving, you have the option of adding cream -- as much or as little as you want. Too much cream will dilute the intensity of the sauce, so be judicious at first.

10. You can take this basic sauce in many different directions. Add minced porcini mushrooms early in the cooking for an earthier flavor, or cinnamon or nutmeg to give it a spicy edge. Use different combinations of fresh herbs.

11. The final step, of course, is marrying the ragu with the pasta. Don't just ladle it on top. Cook your pasta just short of al dente, then mix it thoroughly in a skillet with an appropriate amount of sauce and then serve it immediately. Sprinkle some Parmesan cheese on top, and you will be ready to sing.

This is what ragu should look like when finished

The Great American Food & Music Festival (6/13/09), Mountain View, CA

If you made it to the Great American Food & Music Festival this weekend, you may still be grumbling, "You mean the not so great American no-Food Festival"...

Katz’s Deli, New York Pastrami on Rye

The first time event was just not prepared for the hordes of hungry festival-goers, eyes glowing red from want of a Katz’s Pastrami and other best of the best eats from around the country.

With an influx of over 15,000 patrons descending upon the festival, chaos ensued as systems crashed, credit cards were rendered useless, and lines upon lines multiplied.

Lines...

...and more lines

Passive-aggressive behavior escalated to aggressive-aggressive revolts as people waited an hour plus just to get into the Shoreline Amphitheatre, waited to add money to wristbands so they could purchase food, and then waited some more to actually get close to that glorious food.

Junior's Cheesecake

Propane griddles failed, food ran out, and disgruntled folks stood in lines for hours on end. Yes hours (that's plural). Those Anchor Bar Buffalo Wings were mighty tasty, but were they worth 3 hours of standing in line?

Grievance aside, once you managed to get to some food, it was delicious.

A burger from Bobby

Coupled with some big cold beers, beautiful weather, some green grass to sit on, and a little entertainment, the day ended up being a fun day in the sun.

Great American Food & Music Fest, Serious Eats stage

Not to mention, the opportunity to get up close and personal with the talented chefs and proprietors who make some of the best food around the country. And of course, Food Network celeb chefs galore: Bobby Flay, Guy Fieri, Anne Burrell, and Aida Mollenkamp.

Highlights of the festival:

Pink’s Famous Hot Dogs

Pink’s Famous Hot Dogs from LA were my favorite item of the day. A meaty dog with that great snap when you bite into it, topped with chili, cheese, kraut, mustard, catsup, relish, and onions. A sloppy, amazing, delicious mess.

SF Weekly Burger Challenge

Bay Area favorites, BurgerMeister, Pearl’s Phatburgers, Bistro Burger, and Mo’s Grill duked it out for the title of Best Burger.

Bistro Burger's rich, creamy Paris Burger, with brie and sautéed mushrooms, impressed even grill master Bobby with its crazy juiciness.

SF Weekly's Best Burger Winner: Pearl's Hawaiian Burger

But, it was no match for Pearl's Hawaiian Burger, with sliced pineapple, bacon, teriyaki sauce, jack and mayo, which took first with its sweet, spicy, exotic burger o' love.

Rockstar Performance from Guy Fieri

Must give props to Guy, he rocked the crowd with a highly entertaining blowout performance complete with loud rock n'roll, gratuitous hot chicks on stage, big machinery, power tools, and pyrotechnics.

All in all, a day that was admittedly frustrating, but not without some bright spots. If the people don't lynch them first, here's hoping that producers of The Great American Food & Music Festival can learn from mistakes and come back with a better, more organized, less stressful event next year.

Baby likes Brisket

We’re rooting for you to work out the kinks because we know that bringing together America's best is no easy feat. Looking forward to next year!

Sunset magazine has long been the go-to source for "how to live in the West" especially when it comes to travel, gardening, home improvement and of course, food and wine. Since the centennial of the magazine in 1998, Sunset has been hosting an annual open house called the Sunset Celebration Weekend. The weekend takes place in June, and there is a schedule of chef demonstrations, garden and outdoor living events and live entertainment. The entrance fee is $15 and that gets you admission to all of the presentations although you'll need to sign up for the wine tasting events separately and they fill up quickly.

Many vendors offer tastes and nibbles, but for a meal, you'll have to pay. I was a bit disappointed that the food available was the typical street fair variety such as corn dogs, gyros and overpriced tostada salads. Not very inspiring! The exhibitors and vendors range from Hawaiian Airlines and speciality nurseries to the ShamWow! and everything in between.

Highlights of the experience include meandering through the gardens, including the team garden for the Our One-Block Diet, a tour of the test kitchen and the outdoor kitchen.

Test kitchen has a long counter where finished dishes are evaluated. Once the editorial and test kitchen team is finished with the dish, a green flag indicates the staff can eat it. A red flag means the dish is not yet finished, and a pirate flag means, the dish did not pass muster, eat at your own risk! In the tote bag you receive at the entrance are some coupons, a schedule and a great booklet with recipes from all the chefs so even if you only come one day, you'll have recipes from the whole weekend.

My favorite presentations were by chefs Burak Epir of the Pilita Mediterranean Turkish Grill in San Carlos and Cindy Pawlcyn of Mustard's Grill. Epir showed off his kebab technique with a huge knife, and shared tips such as using a small sieve to filter stems and seeds from dried herbs. He used my favorite pepper, maras, in his recipe for Kilis kebab which also included lots of fresh parsley, the most commonly used fresh herb in Turkey.

Cindy Pawlcyn emphasized the importance of using the ripest produce, explaining it is better to substitute an ingredient than to use something that is not deliciously ripe. She also showed a technique of smashing hazelnuts with the side of a chef knife rather than chopping them to create a better and more uniform texture. Great tips, no matter what recipe you try.

Kilis kebab
10 tomatoes
2 poblano peppers
1 medium white onion, preferably sweet
1 bunch Italian parsley, chopped
1 Tablespoon salt
1/2 Tablespoon fresh ground pepper
1 Tablespoon Maras red pepper, also called Marash pepper
1/2 medium white onion, grated
2 pounds ground lamb, shoulder cut

On a charcoal grill cook the tomatoes and pepper until well charred, remove the skins and finely dice.

Also finely dice the onion and mix it with the chopped parsley. Add to the charred tomato and peppers and set aside. Cover and keep warm.

Prepare the kebab by adding salt, pepper, Maras red pepper and the grated onions to the ground lamb. Mix well. Make the meatballs and place on a skewer. Grill indirectly over the heat, until nice and juicy. Place the charred tomato and peppers on a plate and set the meat kebabs over it.

Recipe reprinted courtesy of Sunset and chef Burak Epir

If eating is an agricultural act, as Wendell Berry so famously said, then what better way to celebrate the connection between food and farming than at Dirt to Dining?

Jesse Cool, the down-to-earth owner-cook (don't call her a chef!) of Menlo Park's Flea Street Cafe is hosting this benefit for the Ecological Farming Association right in her own backyard--which just happens to be a bountiful edible garden on the edge of the Stanford campus.

Cool, well known for her longtime dedication to seasonal, locally-sourced and sustainable cuisine, is opening up her address book, too. On hand to nosh and chat will be dozens of organic farmers and winemakers, including those from Full Belly Farm, Frog's Leap Winery, Green Gulch Farm, Live Earth Farm, Swanton Berry Farm, Robert Sinskey Vineyards, Frey Vineyards, and more.

And of course, going along with the garden tours will be plenty of delectable food and wine. That fava-bean canapé? Probably made from beans grown by the guy sipping sauvignon blanc right next you. Never seen a fava bean in its natural habitat? It's over there, hanging on vines right next to the carrots. Dining doesn't get any dirtier than that.

Dirt to Dining: A Day in Jesse Cool's Kitchen Garden
Sunday, June 7, 2009
2pm-5pm
2150 Amhearst Street
Palo Alto, CA
Tickets: $75