Turns out that a financial meltdown can be a good thing for a cooking school -- even one that charges $70 a class and $799 for a 12-week series of instruction.

Classes at the Gourmet Ghetto-based Kitchen on Fire in the Epicurious Garden are in such demand that the business now boasts a second, larger facility -- at 2,500 square foot twice the size of the original location -- in West Berkeley. The public can check out the new culinary classroom at its grand opening on Saturday night.

Back in 2005, chefs Olivier Said and MikeC teamed up to offer cooking classes both practical and playful. Their mission: To take the mystery out of kitchen techniques and culinary language, make cooking accessible to anyone who wanted to learn how to use a knife, and have fun putting food on a plate. (Read a recent review of one class and what a hundred or so Yelpers have to say.)

Like the original location, KoF2 offers a range of classes, including knife-skills, regional and ethnic cuisine, couples cookery, seasonal and farmers' market fare, and specialty food preparation (everything from cocktail party soirees to one-pot family meals for weeknights). All that, plus their signature 12-week basic cooking series taught in a space decked out with state-of-the-art equipment.

(Word to the recession weary: The kitchen is currently not accepting any new culinary assistants, which has proven a popular way for cash-strapped wannabe cooks to hone their skills. In exchange for helping prep before classes and clean up after, culinary assistants attend for free.)

In addition to showing off their new digs, serving food, and talking up the school's calendar of classes, MikeC and Said will sign copies of their recent book, Kitchen on Fire: Mastering the Art of Cooking in 12 Weeks (or Less), a step-by-step, technique-driven tome designed to offer new skills for the complete novice to the accomplished home cook.

Kitchen on Fire plans to offer longer classes at their new satellite site.

BAB checked in with Chef MikeC to find out what's cooking at the new Kitchen on Fire location.

Why did you decide to open a second Kitchen on Fire site and what drew you to this location?

Our classes were filling up so quickly (and many had large wait lists) so we needed more space to handle the demand. Our new location offers close access to the freeway, Berkeley Bowl West is in walking distance, and it's attached to a restaurant and home chef retail store, Rocket Restaurant Resource. Those three things made it a perfect match for us.

How has the continuing economic downturn and renewed interest in the D.I.Y. Domestic Arts impacted your business?

Oddly enough we have thrived through the recession. More people seem to think learning to cook is a great idea right now, whether to save money, eat healthier, change career, or just for the love of food. People want to come into the kitchen and create enticing, delicious, nourishing experiences at home for family and friends.

How is the new location different from the Gourmet Ghetto site?

It is a larger facility with two kitchens. It is also a blend of home chef and restaurant cooking equipment, so we can offer classes for both the home and professional chef.

What can folks look forward to at the new school in terms of classes, instructors, and events?

We will offer longer (four or more hours compared to our typical three-hour) classes, as well as more series-style classes on both cooking techniques and ethnic cuisines, including Thai, Indian, and French. We're also working with an ever-growing roster of guest chef instructors that are experts in their cuisines. On the event side, we can now hold larger private and corporate parties.

What's unique about your cooking school?

We are one of only a few independent (not part of a retail, grocery, cooking appliance) cooking schools in the country that has a focus on teaching home chefs. We have a vibrant atmosphere, with expert instructors who engaging. We explain the inner workings of food and its cookery to help students become confident cooks.

We're also involved in community outreach programs with non-profit partners such as Three Squares and St. Vincent de Paul's Kitchen of Champions. We help teach people living on welfare how to feed their families healthy meals on limited budgets or learn cooking skills they can use to find work in the food service industry.

What are the fundamental cooking techniques a novice should learn first?

Knife skills: If the food isn’t cut to the proper (and uniform) shape and size, it won’t cook evenly. Sautéing and stir frying would be next. Both are quick and easy techniques to make a meal and also the first step for many other techniques, such as making a soup or stew.

If you had to name three dishes that every home chef should know how to prepare, what would they be?

A roasted chicken and vegetables, veggie stir fry, and frittata.

A sneak peek inside the new Kitchen on Fire culinary classroom.

Details:

Kitchen on Fire West Grand Opening
Saturday, January 28, 7 p.m.-9 p.m.
Address: Map
(Inside Rocket Restaurant Resource)
2940 7th Street, Berkeley (between Potter St. and Anthony St.)
510-548-2665

The Year of the Dragon roars into town today, with two weeks of celebrations capped by the famous Chinatown Parade on February 11. Saturday, I attended a New Year’s themed buffet lunch and wok cooking demonstration by acclaimed cookbook author and San Francisco native, Grace Young, in Louie’s restaurant, a Chinatown institution.

Young —wearing a lucky red-colored top, as are many other attendees— greets her audience by reminding us that New Year’s is “the most important holiday in the Chinese calendar. It’s about renewal, rebirth and family togetherness.” Of all the animals in the Chinese horoscope, the mythical dragon is thought to embody power and success. Those born under its the sign are believed to be exceptionally intelligent, creative, charismatic, fearless, lucky, generous, confident, innovative, passionate but unpredictable. No wonder millions of Chinese people are waiting to get married, start businesses and have babies this year.

Grace Young. Photo courtesy of Steven Mark Neeham

The powerful dragon is a good symbol for Grace Young, a determined woman on a mission. Her goal: to rejuvenate authentic Chinese home cooking by keeping the wok tradition alive. “For 2000 years, the wok has been the iron thread that has bound Chinese culinary culture.” she says. “Now is the first time in his history that it’s at risk of being lost.” Non-stick woks are destroying Chinese home cooking,” declares Young passionately. “The food doesn’t taste right, because you can’t get it to sear and caramelize properly. It ends up braised and soggy. Non-stick cookware is not meant for the high heat necessary for stir-fries.” She prefers a flat-bottom, 14-inch carbon steel wok, with a long wooden handle, which can be seasoned to a warm burnished gold, like the one she is using today to make spicy long beans with sausage and mushrooms, a dish her mother taught her.

Besides coming to celebrate the new year with her family in San Francisco, Young is on a tour to promote and sign copies of her latest book, Stir-Frying to the Sky’s Edge, winner of the James Beard International Cookbook Award, which has taken her to Chinese diaspora communities around the world and steeled her resolve to share the secrets of the wok with as many home cooks as possible.

Young demonstrates how to judge when the preheated wok is hot enough (as soon as a drop of water evaporates on contact) then swirls in the oil and quickly adds her vegetables. One tip she imparts is to listen to your food cook, “That sizzle is the wok talking to you. If you don’t hear it, it’s not hot enough.” Her green beans turn out crunchy with a delicate, smoky wok flavor, which Young says sets it apart from stir-fries made in a skillet or non-stick cookware.

Meanwhile, upstairs, a Chinese calligrapher inks lucky characters on red paper, and the guests line up to fill their plates with lucky foods. Wilma Pang, one of the organizers of today’s event, under the auspices of A Better Chinatown Tomorrow, explains the symbolism of the foods arranged on the buffet table.

Many dishes are considered lucky because their Chinese names are homonyms for auspicious goals; others insure a good year because of their shapes or colors.

“The word for celery (choi) is a homonym for hard work,” Pang explains, and it portends the monetary result of all that effort. Green onions stand for intelligence; the turnip cake signifies that things will keep getting better. The apple means smooth sailing ahead and the tangerine is considered lucky because its orange color connects to gold. Its leaves represent growth and prosperity.

Although, many Chinese New Years foods vary by family and village, the one universal dish is crescent shaped dumplings. Traditionally, dumplings are made on New Years Eve by all the members of the family, working together. Their shape represents gold ingots and so symbolizes good fortune for the upcoming year. “The more you make, it’s like putting money in the bank,” says Pang. “And often, we hide a coin in one dumpling for a lucky diner to find.”

Pang points out the chicken with its head and feet still attached. “Very important to cook an entire chicken, for family togetherness.”

“See these cookies that open up with a smiling face, they represent happiness,” says Pang.

During the meal, there is one dish that has even the Chinese diners stumped. What are those roundish starchy vegetables? “Arrowroot,” Pang answers and holds up a fresh one, slyly smiling as she explains, “See this shape, with the little part that sticks out – that’s for having boy babies.”

After lunch, I have a chance to chat with Grace Young and ask her a few questions.

She grew up eating the traditional Cantonese foods her parents prepared. But at age 12, discovered Julia Child on TV and became fascinated with French cooking, and its entirely different culinary vocabulary. After apprenticing with French chef Josephine Araldo in San Francisco, Young moved to New York in 1979, and worked writing and testing recipes for General Foods. Then she ran the test kitchen at Time Life Books for 18 years, and produced more than 40 cookbooks that spanned the globe.

A chance comment from a cousin ignited the spark of Young’s passion to explore her own family’s culinary culture. Her cousin said, ”When it comes to Chinese cooking, I don’t even try because you can’t beat the Chinese take-out in San Francisco.” Young feared that if most second generation Chinese shared her cousin’s indifference towards learning to make the food of their ancestors, a wealth of authentic recipes and foodways might disappear.

For three years, she made numerous visits to San Francisco to learn her parents’ and family’s recipes. This led to her parents sharing stories about customs and traditions associated with the food, as well as tales from their lives in China that she had never heard before. Young’s first book, The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen, was published in 1999 and won the IACP Best International Cookbook. Young is proudest of this book because she feels it preserves traditional Chinese home cooking.

Is the dish you made today special for Chinese New Year's?
Not specifically, but it has mushrooms which grow quickly and so symbolize prosperity. I made this dish today because it’s one of my mother’s favorites. Now that she’s getting older and doesn’t cook, I’m so grateful I have recorded her recipes in my book. When I go back and reread them, it’s as if I can hear her still talking to me through the recipes. For all these years, she always made the New Year’s Eve meal and now in the last few years I am able, through my book, to make it for her. It’s ironic because I always thought that I was writing for the next generation. And in a million years I never dreamed I would give this back to my mother. When I make her a special New Year’s dish, like turnip cake, her face lights up, because food is memory.

Is there a certain dish you always have for New Year's eve dinner?
Fish is the standard dish at the end of the meal. The word for fish “yu” means wish and signifies abundance. It is essential to serve the complete fish, with the head and tail attached to ensure a good beginning and end to the year. Traditionally purchased live from a tank where one can pick out a strong swimmer, the poached fish with scallions and ginger is served as the last course of the New Year’s Eve feast, but not completely consumed. The leftovers are eaten the next day, so that its abundance will spill over into the New Year. Lobster, as the king of the ocean, represents the energy of the dragon. But any seafood is auspicious. Shrimp, whose name ha sounds like laughter, represents happiness; the shells of clams and scallops resemble old Chinese coins and therefore portend prosperity. Also, the clam shells open as you stir fry them, signifying a new beginning.

What's the difference between the Chinatowns in San Francisco and New York?
For me, San Francisco Chinatown has such sweet memories. My father was a liquor salesman and so the owners of every restaurant and shop knew him and gave us a special welcome. Plus, the produce in California is so much more abundant and pristine in quality, especially the Asian vegetables. I love the hustle bustle and energy of shopping on Stockton Street. When a grocer brings out a new box of baby bok choy or snow pea shoots and rips it open, all of a sudden everyone lunges towards it with frenzied excitement and all these hands try to grab the freshest greens.

As we finish our interview, I accompany Grace on a short walk to The Wok Shop, a bustling little warren, filled chock-a-block with woks, gadgets and cooking accessories, whose owner Tane Chan graciously provided the seasoned wok for today’s cooking demonstration.

“This is the best wok store in the whole country,” says Grace as she leads me right to the tower of carbonized steel flat bottom woks (only $24.95). And I gladly buy one. No use resisting the power of the dragon.

Chef Jacques Pépin demonstrates how to make haddock steaks in rice paper with a shallot and soy sauce. This video clip is a web-exclusive that was taped during the filming of Jacques' series Essential Pépin.

As I walked up the stairs to Kitchen on Fire’s spacious Berkeley loft, an inviting aroma of toasting cumin laid out an olfactory welcome mat. Chefs Olivier Said and MikeC., co-owners and culinary over-achievers, have a book coming out and a second location opening behind Berkeley Bowl West (both in November). They keep their kitchen fires burning in daily classes ranging from globetrotting one-nighters to a 12-week series. Fun seems to be an essential ingredient in every recipe as the two irreverent pros blend nutrition tips, science facts and knife skills in their engaging, hands-on sessions.

The class I attended was entitled Moroccan Vegetarian Delights for Couples (though not all attendees came in couples and most were not vegetarians). The menu included couscous, sweet tomato salad and a pungent green leaf and herb jam that disappeared as soon as it was spooned into the serving bowl. After an introductory lecture and demo, students converged on various stations to chop and sauté elements of the 6-course meal we would enjoy together at evening’s end. Chef “Olive,” a wiry French charmer, scampered around the homey coral kitchen in a blur of motion, lending a hand with seeding tomatoes, modeling how to slice rather than slaughter the greens, and sprinkling nutritional tidbits along the way.

International evenings include menus from: Korea, Spain, France, Italy, Vietnam and more, some featuring guest instructors. (Upcoming: November 8 - North Indian, November 11 - Greek, December 3 - Thai Vegetarian).

The folks I've met at ethnic cooking classes come to recreate meals from their travels, enlarge their cooking repertoire or just spend a pleasurable couple of hours that culminate in digging into exotic dishes. If you are similarly inclined, here are 9 more places around the Bay to feed your passion:

Photo courtesy of Brundo

Brundo -- Ethiopian

Oakland’s Café Colucci is a consistent award winner for its authentic Ethiopian cuisine. Brundo, Café Colucci’s sister store, organizes traditional balemoyas (chefs) to share classic Ethiopian delights (both fiery and sublime) in three-hour Saturday classes that include a main dish and several salads. Meals may feature messer wot or kik alicha, (vegetarian stews with red lentils or yellow split peas), begue wot (spiced lamb stew) or doro wot (chicken stewed in red pepper paste). Brundo supplies the organic herbs, seeds, grains and spice mixtures (such as berbere, the essential red chili pepper blend), all imported from Ethiopia.

In early 2012, Brundo’s Ethiopian cooking classes move to a West Oakland warehouse, allowing for an expanded class size and schedule, including injera-making—those flat, spongy disks with a pleasantly sour-ish flavor that serve as plate, utensil, and sauce-mopping bread.

Photo courtesy of Culture Kitchen

Culture Kitchen

Ever wish you had an Indian auntie to teach you her chicken tikka masala? Or a Thai grandmother to tell tales about taking odiferous durian fruit on the bus while showing you how to whip up a tasty Thai lunch in a wok? That’s exactly the idea behind Culture Kitchen, a recently launched enterprise that realizes the rich potential in immigrant women who have been cooking authentic family meals from their native cuisines for years. Pair these self-taught cooks with eager students in various Peninsula and San Francisco locations for a warm, informal gathering that offers more than just new recipes. Small classes encourage an intimate experience—like being at someone’s home—and provide cultural understanding through shared stories.

Cuisines represented include Columbian, French, Mexican, Thai, Vietnamese, Indian, Peruvian, Ukrainian and Iraqi. (November 9 – Taiwanese)

Tante Marie’s

This venerable San Francisco cooking school offers two-hour Wednesday afternoon demos or daylong weekend participatory classes on ethnic themes, such as regional cooking of Italy, Mexican chili peppers, a tour of the Mediterranean and Southeast Asian street-food. Respected author and teacher Joyce Jue leads several Chinese and Southeast Asian sessions.

Azalina teaching Malaysian cooking at La Cocina. Photo courtesy of La Cocina

La Cocina

San Francisco’s celebrated and inspiring “food-business incubator” offers technical support and commercial kitchen space for low-income immigrant women to grow their businesses as food entrepreneurs. The light-filled Mission kitchen space is also home to a smorgasbord of classes, such as Russian piroshkis and borscht, Ethiopian and Nigerian foods and Malaysian cooking. On December 14, the popular tamales class will return, featuring three of La Cocina’s graduates guiding students in the traditional, labor-intensive process of filling the masa and wrapping with corn husks before steaming.

Chat Mingkwan of Unusual Touch -- Thai, Vietnamese

Born in Bangkok, this well-traveled author of a slew of cookbooks on regional Thai and Vietnamese cuisine teaches cooking classes all over the Bay Area (including Piedmont Adult School, Kitchen on Fire, Sausalito’s In the Kitchen) or at your private party.

A recent Vietnamese street food class I attended began with a demonstration of several uses for lemon grass, tips on choosing the best fish sauce, and a bit of historical explanation about why fresh herbs (including mint, cilantro, basil) are such an essential part of Vietnamese cuisine. After preparing all the ingredients, students rotated among four stations to assemble our own fresh bowls of chicken soup, plates of beef noodle salad, spring rolls and rice crepes, just like a street food vendor. Mingkwan also offers classes in dim sum, decorative fruit and vegetable carving, sushi and kaiseki, and leads culinary tours of Thailand.

Spain at Home

Seafood paella has always been my favorite edible treasure hunt. Each forkful uncovers a prize of mussels, shrimp, clams or vegetables amidst a bed of saffron-scented rice. With the help of a Spanish chef and a gang of friends equally smitten with this glorious dish, we turned my kitchen into a classroom and created our own feast. Chef Raquel Hermosilla, made her culinary house call wearing chef whites, rolling in a cart laden with all the ingredients we would need to make, as she put it, “Spain’s gift to the world.” First, she set a festive tone, passing out Flamenco-inspired red and black polka-dotted aprons. Then she got serious and erected the crucial piece of equipment in the middle of my kitchen: a paellera, the wide shallow pan with its own ringed-gas burner that ensures the essential socarrat or crusty rice shell at the bottom of the pan.

Hermosilla, who grew up in Madrid, efficiently doled out tasks, and while my friends and I sliced red peppers, de-veined shrimp and squeezed out squid’s innards, she shared the history of her national dish along with her mother’s cooking tips. Finally, she guided us in fashioning a massive mosaic of shellfish and red peppers, with lemon wedges artfully perched on the pan’s rim.

While Hermosilla’s home base is the South Bay, she is willing to travel. Her business, Spain at Home, now in its tenth year, also includes catering for small to large groups. Seafood paella is her most requested offering, but other paella variations and a score of tapas are also available.

Photo courtesy of Linda Tay Esposito

Flavor Explosions -- cuisines of the Pacific Rim

Linda Tay Esposito grew up in Malaysia and treasures her native cuisine with its use of fresh herbs, such as galangal, fresh turmeric and lemon grass. She even incorporates the kaffir lime leaves from a potted plant growing on her San Francisco balcony. This self-taught cook leads classes all over the Bay Area, offering an extensive choice of menus, which either focus on a specific dish interpreted into several Pacific Rim culinary accents (Pan-Asian Noodle Bar) or an in-depth exploration of a single cuisine (East Coast of Malaysia).

Esposito teaches regularly at The Cooking School at Cavallo Point in Sausalito as well as privately in Bay Area home kitchens and weaves in a discussion of spices, regional vegetables and cooking traditions. No matter what the focus of the lesson in her private classes—from dim sum to Malaysian desserts—she supplies everything needed (traveling woks, steamer baskets and professional knives).

Photo courtesy of Nalini Mehta

Route to India –– Ayurvedic Vegetarian Indian cooking

To Nalini Mehta, cooking is a spiritual journey that nurtures the mind, body and soul and a crucial element in the Ayurvedic tradition of creating balance. Mehta works as a cooking teacher and caterer and leads culinary tours to India.

In her San Francisco classes, she shares her wisdom as well as her recipes in an evening of mindful cooking and eating in accord with Ayurvedic principles. Her classes, single or 4-class series, focus on seasonings and techniques, always incorporating a palette of colorful spices.

One of Mehta’s most popular classes centers on dosas (fermented South Indian rice-flour and lentil crepes with savory fillings). Students make the batter and the filling (perhaps with potato, onions, cilantro and spices) and practice forming the dosa disks on a hot griddle. Other regional Indian cooking classes feature an entire menu with dal, pilaf, soup, vegetable and dessert.

The Cooking School at Cavallo Point

For the ultimate indulgence, combine an Italian or Asian cooking class with a relaxing stay at Sausalito’s Cavallo Point Lodge. The 3-year old luxury hotel, at the former Fort Baker military site, features spectacular views of the Golden Gate Bridge and offers a choice of historic or modern rooms. Several cooking classes are held each week on a range of topics and while most attendees drive up for the day, a room discount is available for cooking students.

Classes are held in an airy, light-filled kitchen, with hardwood floors and retro glass cabinets. Italian cooking is taught by Viola Buitoni (yes, that Buitoni—whose family has been in the food business for generations). The former caterer and Italian food expert was born in Umbria and shares her culinary heritage, aiming to highlight authenticity, translated for the local market. In “Bitter is Better,” on November 17, Buitoni will explore the preparation of traditional greens and make handmade orecchiette.

Other ethnic cooking classes at Cavallo Point include Mexican Sauces from Scratch and The Asian Melting Pot series. On November 26, Linda Tay Esposito will showcase a menu of Spicy Sichuanese specialties.

The warm days of summer might be over but it’s the middle of grape harvest and for wine lovers that means the chance to go back to camp. Some local wineries offer harvest immersions also known as “Crush Camps” which are half day stints to several day excursions offering hands on winemaking. The serious wine camper might start very early in the morning to pick grapes alongside day laborers who have been working since 2 am. If you are not that committed, you can start the process, as I did, once the fruit has arrived at the winery. I went to "day camp" at Crushpad in Sonoma, a custom crush facility where I have been making wine for nearly a year. My first task was to remove leaves, rocks and bad grapes from freshly picked Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir clusters. A conveyer belt then dropped the grapes into a giant destemmer. I am afraid I let a few unwanted items go by in my effort to learn the task.

Nearby the destemmer, red grapes were fermenting in open plastic bins. I had heard the term, "punch down," but never knew exactly what it meant. Well, nothing like actually doing a task to get a first hand understanding. A punch down is where you punch the cap of a fermenting batch of grapes to pull the color and flavors out, move yeasts back down into the wine must, and prevent potential bacteria from growing on the exposed top layer. These grapes had already sat in a cold soak for four to five days, a process where winemakers gauge sugar and future alcohol levels. After the cold room, the white grapes head to a big press and are crushed into juice before fermentation. Red grapes are a little more complicated. To put it simply, they are first fermented with the skins on then pressed and the juice goes through a secondary fermentation before going into barrels to age.

My fellow campers, about half a dozen, and I were constantly washing our hands. Turns out the inside of a winery needs to be about as sterile as a hospital. Pesky yeasts will attach to your hands, clothes and other instruments and you don’t want those yeasts getting into a different wine batch with a different formula.

Before I could even break into a sweat, Crushpad’s Stu Ake, who was a great camp counselor, took us on a tour of the rest of the wine making process. This included several levels of fermentation, aging and barrel tasting. We tasted a Napa Valley Zinfandel from Howell Mountain that, I was told, needed six more months of aging. It was bursting with tannins.

I did a half day crush camp but if you want to check out one for yourself, consider that many wineries offer their wine club members harvest experiences. Meantime, here are a few suggestions from day camps to expensive, fantasy crush camps. If you have a recommendation, let us know!

• Sterling Vineyards
• Crushpad
• St Supery Harvest Experience
• Schramsberg -- A multi-day, hands on, sparkling wine immersion.
• Sonoma County Grape Camp -- A fantasy grape camp. Several wineries get together and participate in a three day, high end, harvest immersion.

And I leave you with this, what I thought of the entire day at crush camp:

It’s Saturday night, warm for San Francisco, and the line at Bi-Rite Creamery stretches around the corner onto Dolores Street. Just a few doors down at the Creamery’s soft-serve window, the swirl of the day is balsamic strawberry and vanilla. Under a neon glow, flowers and pumpkins, melons and apples are piled up in front of the brightly lit windows of Bi-Rite Market across the street, where savvily curated, compulsively purchasable groceries lure dinner-party goers and dinner-party throwers alike.

And tonight, another Bi-Rite business is in full swing: the bigger, newer, cooler home of 18 Reasons, where a long communal table is packed with friends and neighbors listening to a twangy banjo band, sharing $5 bowls of cannellini-bean soup and $3 bottles of Trumer Pils as part of its monthly Soup for Supper program, this time in conjunction with Slow Food's $5 Challenge. Behind the public room, splashy with bright murals by local artist Zoltron, is the company's new stainless steel commissary kitchen, where Bi-Rite workers prep salads for tomorrow's deli case.

The commissary kitchen

Face it: on this block, it's Bi-Rite's world. Which, it seems, given the company's success, and its lively involvement in the local community (and economy), is just how we like it. Think about it: here are a lot more jobs on this block than there used to be, back when it had a single bad hippie restaurant, a tiny barber shop and a couple of junky secondhand stores. A lot more small farmers, cheesemakers, winemakers, jam-makers, and tiny sea-salt caramel businesses are getting paid, thanks to getting their products on these shelves. Now, with the opening of its bigger space, 18 Reasons can reach out to more people with its mandate of community food education and engagement.

Olivia Maki, 18 Reasons' events coordinator, is excited about this. "We hated turning people away," she said, when they wanted to come to popular events. "Now, we have a lot more space," she noted, as well as, in the evenings, the use of the spacious commercial kitchen for dinner events and cooking classes. The old Guerrero Street space, a cramped storefront with a miniscule galley kitchen, was a challenge for an organization doing frequent sit-down dinners and food-based events. How did they manage it? "We spent a lot of time pushing metro racks full of half-prepared food down the street," she laughed.

What's coming up, now that they've got both marble counters and elbow room?

"Rosie Gill, 18 Reason's program director and I are particularly excited about all the children's programming we've got coming up. That's really going to be our focus for the next year. Food education, working with kids, that's a big part of our mission."

Maggie Spicer serving soup on Saturday night

As is bringing people together to eat, talk, schmooze, and think. Maggie Spicer, a volunteer and co-curator, with Tia Paneet, of the rotating art installations, was also tonight's soup-maker, using a Tuscan-style sage-and-bean soup recipe from Bi-Rite’s upcoming cookbook/shopping guide/manifesto, Eat Good Food, out next month from Ten Speed Press. The bigger space allows for bigger art, in this case enormous murals inspired by Ronald McDonald, weeping for his sins, and the Japanese tsunami, envisioned as an ominously grinning, skull-faced girl, Sue Nami. The murals began as street art on the plywood panels shielding the windows during construction. Graffiti, and commentary, followed, and the paintings became collaborations between Zoltron and local artists Bodhi Freedom and Hollis Rhodes, among others.

Eucalyptus "constellations" by Julie Kahn, part of The Bathroom Residency installation

Even the bathroom is its own mini-gallery, thanks to The Bathroom Residency, part of The Residencies, a long-term project by artist Julie Kahn. Each quarter, Kahn plans to create a new nature-inspired installation, passing the job onto another artist after a year. Twigs of eucalyptus poke out of the walls in the shapes of two autumn constellations, Scorpius and Sagittarius, while a box of scrolls, helpfully labeled “Bathroom Reading,” explain the concepts behind both the project and its current installation. White and bright, the room still manages to be serene, at least until the unsettlingly aggressive Dyson hand dryer roars into action, a MiG jet attacking the dastardly enemy of freshly rinsed hands.

Bathroom reading explaining the installation

Outside, the ice-cream line persists, fed by the post-pie crowds from Pizzeria Delfina across the street. Appetites, it seems, know no bounds.

18 Reasons
3674 18th Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
Twitter: @18reasons
Facebook: 18 Reasons

A new class at UC Berkeley is getting a lot of buzz. Edible Education: The Rise and Future of the Food Movement is all about food politics. In an unusual step, Cal is opening up the 13-week course to the general public. Well, the class was open to all. Three hundred free tickets for the first night were snatched up in less than fifteen minutes. Student enrollment filled up just as fast. Edible Education is being organized, and funded, by Alice Water’s Chez Pannise Foundation. Nikki Henderson, the executive director of People’s Grocery in Oakland, along with author and U.C. Berkeley journalism professor Michael Pollan, will co-teach the semester course.

Michael Pollan. Photo: Alia Malley

Think of the sustainable food movement as a dinner party. Edible Education will take a look at the guest list and topics of conversation. How do the slow food movement and food justice fit together? What does corporate food look like? The class will feature immigrant farm workers telling their own stories. Each week will include a guest lecturer.

Here’s the line-up:
• 8/30: The Global Food Movement, Founder Carlo Petrini with Corby Kummer
• 9/6: Building a Successful Movement, Peter Sellars
• 9/13: The Politics of Food, Marion Nestle, Ph.D., M.P.H.
• 9/20: Perspectives on Race, Place & Food, Alegria De La Cruz, Rebecca Flournoy, Yvonne Yen Liu
• 9/27: Nutrition, Health and Diet Related Disease, Patricia Crawford & Robert Lustig
• 10/4: Corporations & the Food Movement, Jack Sinclair, Jib Ellison, Michael Pollan
• 10/11: School Lunch and Edible Schoolyards, Ann Cooper
• 10/18: Global Economies of Food: GMOs, and Feeding the World, Raj Patel
• 10/25: Agriculture and Social Justice, Eric Schlosser, Greg Asbed & Lucas Benitez
• 11/1: What is an Edible Education? Alice Waters
• 11/8: Food and the Environment, Frances Moore Lappé & Gidon Eshel
• 11/22: Van Jones
• 11/29: Place Based Models of Change, Brahm Ahmadi, Hank Herrera

The class is every Tuesday from August 30th through November 29th, 6-7:30pm (doors open at 5:30pm) at the Wheeler Auditorium at UC Berkeley.

Tickets will be available, free of charge, six days before each class.

Bay Area Bites will provide coverage of the course.

Related Articles:
Nikki Henderson: On the frontlines of edible education by Sarah Henry (Berkeleyside)

In the kitchen with vegetarian cooking instructor Theresa Murphy. Photo: Sarah Henry

Sometimes it takes an ex-pat to make you wake up and smell the fair trade, third-wave coffee.

That's how I felt last week when I met vegetarian cooking instructor Theresa Murphy, who has called Paris home for some 15 years. Murphy has firm opinions about food and she's not afraid to share them. She brings her own salt, cheese, and wine when traveling Stateside and scoffs at the bread on offer in the Bay Area.

It's almost impossible to buy decent baguette here, she says. Acme baguette, beloved by locals, is all wrong in terms of taste, texture, and air as far as Murphy is concerned. She maintains that Cheeseboard's long loaf comes closest to a true Parisian baguette and she likes the brick-oven loaves baked at Oakland's Firebrand.

While good cheeses can be found in the Bay Area they're outrageously expensive, says Murphy, ditto natural wines, though at a pinch she picks up bottles at Terroir when she's in town. She disdains California wines which she believes don't pair well with food, especially vegetables.

None of these pronouncements makes Murphy, 58, a self-taught chef, any less likable. It seems all so refreshingly, well, French or something, even if Murphy hales from Southern California and calls rustic Italian fare her cuisine of choice. The culinary guide behind La Cucina Di Terresa, Murphy runs plant-based cooking classes out of her tiny apartment kitchen in the 11th arrondissement in Paris.

For the second year in a row, Murphy offered a series of "cooking food from the soil" classes in the homes of friends in Berkeley, Oakland, and San Francisco, which I first heard about, as you do, from a mom of a boy on my son's baseball team. Vicky raved about the class she took with Theresa in Paris, urged me to sign up quickly for her first Bay Area tour last year, but I was too late to land a seat at the table. (You'll find endorsements for her Parisian culinary classes here.)

This year I was determined to check out Murphy's classes, which promised a celebration of seasonal, sustainable, organic vegetables cooked simply. Sounds just my sort of savory fare.

Murphy has an eclectic background. In the U.S. she worked in the front-of-the-house restaurant dining scene in San Francisco, including stints at La Mediterranee, Carta, Flying Saucer, South Park Cafe, and Bistro Clovis. In France she started out busking in Parisian eateries, served as a translator on films and books, and pursued photography.

Food has always been a focus in her life, though not always a healthy one. She struggled with both anorexia and bulimia as a young woman and says she broke herself of the compulsive behavior by filling the house with food one day, smearing it all over the walls, and screaming like a banshee. When she made the move to France, her love affair with food began in earnest.

Dishes pictured: Red Quinoa Salad with Watermelon Radish, Potato Gnocchi with Wilted Spring Greens

As my luck would have it, I am unable to report back on Murphy's abilities as an instructor, since the class started at 5 and I didn't arrive until 9:30, thinking all that would be left to do was apologize for my tardiness and offer to wash dishes. (I was delayed by a deadline, a meeting, a front porch light that caught on fire--don't ask--and heavy traffic on Geary Boulevard, filled with St. Patrick's Day revelers.) But the Richmond District house was abuzz with activity when I arrived and guests were leisurely getting ready to cook the main dish.

It's a well-known hazard of working in food (whether in the kitchen making it or at the desk writing about it) that you're often starving for something to eat, too busy on your craft to take the time to actually feed yourself. That's how I felt, ringing the door bell Thursday night. I was parched, hungry, and hankering for a home-cooked meal.

And that's exactly what I got. Can I tell you just how wonderful it is to be warmly greeted into a stranger's home and offered, wine, water, and appetizers after you've worked a 12-hour day with little sustenance? The other guests, which included two Robs -- filmmaker Epstein and chef Zaborny of Hayes Street Grill -- were calm, kind, and caring and I found myself happily sitting down to a meal that I'd had absolutely nothing to do with preparing.

So, readers, it would be wrong of me to recommend Murphy's cooking class, since I essentially missed all the instruction involved. But what I can tell you: That meal was a satisfying end to an otherwise frenzied day.

I sampled French goat cheese on a rustic loaf and farinata, a chickpea flour-based flat bread studded with coins of purple carrots. Red quinoa salad with mandolin-thin watermelon radish slices, wild fennel, and a tangy dressing followed. Then it was on to wilted spring greens (lots of dandelion and some chard in the mix too) with impressively turned out potato gnocchi, which were pleasingly soft. Not as melt-in-your-mouth as the ricotta gnocchi from Zuni Cafe that I've never been able to replicate, but we're talking darn good, fluffy gnocchi, bathed in olive oil and butter, sprinkled with hazelnuts and parmesan, the slightly bitter greens proving the perfect counterpoint to the creamy potato pillows.

Dessert followed, an almond-meal crumble (crunch the cooking crew called it) that worked when generously doused in an almond and pistachio milk cream with lemon zest. It was not the billed Meyer lemon tart with roasted pumpkin seeds and meringue, but honestly, I wasn't about to quibble when I was being so well fed and I hadn't lifted a finger to help get dinner ready.

Supper was served at a handsomely set table for ten at host Lisa Baker's house, where the wine and conversation did indeed flow and the accents (French, Italian, American, and Australian) just added to the ambiance. What could be better than sharing a simple meal made of top-notch ingredients with a group of people united around the pleasures of home cooking?

You've got to have issues, important issues, to preach about when you're a cooking demonstrator trying to keep an audience of chilly strangers entertained on a cold morning in February. Especially when bucket drummers, porchetta-sandwich sellers, and the latte line at Blue Bottle are all clambering for attention just a few feet of lettuce-strewn pavement away.

Luckily, I have strong opinions about everything you do in your kitchen, and if you're sitting in front of me at the farmers' market while I'm demonstrating a recipe, you're going to hear about it chapter and verse: why you won't buy buttermilk, why you should buy those pricey pastured eggs, why you need to stop storing your herb jars over the stove. But you'll laugh at least once, I can promise, and you'll go on your way amused and at least a little informed, even if all you wanted when you sat down was the free sample.

It's the amused-and-informed part that's most crucial to giving good demo, more important than flawless technique or having the be-all, end-all recipe for seared Arctic char suspended in pomegranate-ponzu gel.

I learned this early on from super-pro David Lebovitz, who was cooking before me the day of my first-ever demo at the Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market. Being a food writer and cookbook author rather than a "real" (read restaurant) chef, I confessed to David that I was nervous about seeming professional enough. What kind of presenter doesn't even own a white chef's jacket? Wouldn't this sophisticated audience root out my less-than-perfect knife skills like a pack of snuffling, Prius-driving pigs hot on the scent of a ripe black truffle?

David, bless his heart, merely scoffed. "Just make 'em laugh! That's all they want," he insisted, and then went out in front of the audience and did just that. He cracked jokes, told funny stories, and in the time it took to melt a block of chocolate for a batch of his "absolute best" brownies, he had the audience eating out of his hand.

Well, entertainment I could do. Having been onstage in many guises, even buck-naked, tap-dancing in an apron wasn't going to daunt me. In fact, as I nattered about bee sex while whipping up a honey-and-almond cake, I realized quickly that it could even be fun. Didn't it combine two of my favorite things, cooking and telling people what to do?

It also helped that I'd seen, or suffered through, hours of bad cooking demonstrations, done by talented but charisma-free chefs who mumbled into their jacket mics and kept their eyes glued to their pans, never interacting with the audience or explaining the whys or hows of what their hands were doing so deftly. Or, conversely, the equally brilliant chefs, beamed in from Planet Moleculo-Gastronomix, who talked the room to glazed-eye death with thirty minutes of nonstop techie arcana. Then there were the recipes, often too complicated or elaborate for a home kitchen whose only prep cook might be a reluctant boyfriend or mad-hungry 12-year-old already whining for dinner.

A good cooking demonstrator, like a good teacher of any sort, is equal parts evangelist and showman. Personally, I love farmers' markets, and have great respect for the hard work that farmers do. So my job up there is to make you, the market shopper, fall in love with the unexpected, like nettles or quinces or the ravishing, marigold-yellow color of an egg yolk produced by a happy, pasture-raised hen. What makes these pitches work is that I'm also a great big ham who loves to be on stage, even if that stage is only a folding table and a propane stove.

But does it pay? Well, no, not directly. No one's handing me a wad of twenties to blanch kale and crack eggs (and jokes) on a Saturday morning. I've cooked at a lot of markets, from Brooklyn to Arkansas to Santa Cruz, and it's always been a unpaid gig. Now, I won't write for free. That's a professional skill I've honed over the past 20 years. It's my livelihood. I wouldn't expect my dentist or my hair stylist to do their job for free; why should I be asked to ply my own trade without remuneration?

But I will (probably) do a cooking demo at your farmers' market without payment. Why? Because hopefully, you in the audience will watch, like what you see (or at least enjoy the freebie sample of what I've just cooked) and thus buy one of my cookbooks from the stack I've so thoughtfully piled on this table next to me. Maybe you in the velour yoga pants and cute stripey tote bag are a magazine editor amenable to pitches. Or maybe you're the person who programs the classes at a fancy cookware store down on the Peninsula, classes I could get paid to teach. Restaurant chefs do it to for publicity, to keep their name (and the name of their restaurant) in public circulation.

It's that nebulous, hard-to-quantify thing known as exposure. Cooking at a well-regarded market like San Francisco's Ferry Plaza Market also puts me in good company, alongside many other well-known authors and chefs. A lot of people come to that market, and lots of them will sit down and watch the cook's demonstration attentively, from start to finish. (Never discount the joy of an attentive audience, especially one that laughs at your jokes.)

Part of the satisfaction of doing this is encouraging people to get in the kitchen. Since I think that anyone can, and should, cook, these demos are stealth teaching, using snappy patter and snacks to sweeten the skill-share. Come for the sample, in other words, and maybe you'll take away a few tips that might inspire you the next time you're in the kitchen or in the market.

To this end, I've fried zucchini pancakes for teenagers walking by the sidewalk offerings of a tiny urban farm in Brooklyn. Made a frittata using eggs from ducks quacking and waddling between rows of chard at the Homeless Garden Project in Santa Cruz. Proved to a row of skeptical seven-year-olds in Arkansas that yes, a bowl of heavy cream will turn into a huge mound of fluffy, puffy whipped cream with nothing more than elbow grease and a whisk.

In places like these, my lack of chef cred (and jacket) is actually a plus. If I can do this, standing here in a goofy gingham apron, so can you. If this kooky woman can cajole browned and beautiful biscuits out of a tiny toaster oven running off a snaky orange extension cord, then surely you can do the same, or better, at home.

Since even basic baking seems to daunt a lot of folks, I like to show how easy it can be. Scones were the subject of my most recent demo, because, like chocolate-chip cookies, they're delicious when freshly baked at home, and pretty much horrible--dry, tough, overly sweet--everywhere else. The reward? Several audience members came up to me afterwards,s saying they'd always thought they didn't like scones. But that morning, they'd realized, after two bites of a hot-from-the-oven homemade one, that it was only bad scones they hated.

Only a handful of pantry staples (sugar, baking powder and soda, salt) were not from the market. Everything else, from freshly milled, Sonora soft-wheat flour from Eatwell Farm and yogurt from St. Benoit to the candied lemon rinds from June Taylor Jams was bought right there at the market. And yes, farmers and purveyors were paid market price for any items used.

So, shop, bake, and be merry. And should you ever have the chance to cook in public, take these tips from me:

1. Talk fast, talk loud. Hopefully you'll have a microphone, but even so, markets are noisy places. Articulate, project, and talk fast, because your audience will come and go, and you want to get as much info out there before they wander off to find coffee.

2. Make eye contact. Look out into the audience as much as you can without chopping your fingers off. Pick a few receptive-looking folks, and direct what you're saying right to them. Scan around and shift your focus every few sentences.

3. Practice your recipe at home. Make it start to finish. Talk it through. Figure out where the boring parts are. Think about what you can prep beforehand. Do you have a brilliant new way to chop an onion? If not, do it ahead of time.

4. Keep an open space between you and the audience. Don't clutter the table right in front of you with bowls and ingredients. Let people see what you're doing.

5. Don't forget about final presentation. Have a pretty plate or bowl ready to show off the final product.

6. Give credit where it's due. If you're at a farmers' market, promote the farmers whose products you're using. Talk about who they are and what they sell, and why you love it. If your recipe was inspired by a cookbook you read or a dish you ate at a local restaurant, tell us about it.

7. Make 'em laugh! Be funny, be informative, tap-dance if you have to, but give 'em a show.

At first, it may sound like a film you'd only be into if you appreciated French pastry or cooking competitions. But Hegedus and Pennebaker manage to draw you in quickly and don't let go until the very end. Like most good documentaries, you connect with the characters and begin to understand each man's motivation for competing as you get a glimpse into their home and work life. In this sense, you become invested in the outcome of the competition just like the competitor's own spouses or children. In addition to rooting for each contestant, you'll find yourself puzzling over the level of commitment it takes to prepare. There is so much to give up: time with family and kids, being fully present at work, and a normal social life. One of the contestants insists that when he and his wife were remodeling their home, they had to add a pastry workshop in the basement for him to practice and prepare for the competition.

I found myself rooting for Jacquy Pfeiffer, an Alsace-born, Chicago-based chef who has both determination and drive but also humility and perspective. While working on an elaborate wedding cake, he smiles and says "If you whistle it works better." While he may not be as piercingly intense as the other contestants, Pfeiffer is obviously immensely talented and confident that he's a sure contender. Here he is shaping his chocolate sculpture:

As you can probably imagine, not all goes as planned at the competition. To avoid any misteps, each contestant does a three-day trial run to try and work out the kinks. Sugar flower work for eight hours at a time without stopping for food or much drink? Check. Putting the finishing touches on an elaborate sugar sculpture only to break it when making an adjustment? Check. The stakes are obviously high. No amount of practice can prepare each man for how he'll perform on any given day. And the judges, having each gone through the same competition at one point in their lives, relate and sympathize with this pressure. When reading the name of the winners, the judge is obviously shaken and has difficulty saying the names out loud. By this point, they've witnessed sixteen sure winners, so it must be unimaginably difficult to announce that three years of one's life have been spent without anything to take back to show for it. One gentleman in the film is competing for his fourth time: sixteen years of constant preparation!

As the head of the jury says "Your mind has to work as hard as your hands." And this is, I think, at the crux of the fascination with this film: it's difficult for many of us to imagine this kind of focused and relentlessly enduring determination towards any one thing for years upon years. It's not just an interest, a hobby, or a passion. It seems to be more of a fire--something each finalist feels like they must do. And by the end of the film, you'll be surprised at who earns the "collar" and who is ultimately sent home to consider competing again or throwing in the towel. It's a touching, emotional, and thought-provoking film. Whether you're interested in food films or not, the topic at hand isn't really what this movie is about. It's really about heart. And that's where we all meet at the same table.

Image Credit: Film Forum