[Update: A list of all last night's winners and their profiles can be found at Good Food Awards. Bay Area businesses in the winners' circle include: Bison Brewing, Drake's Brewing, Marin Brewing Company, Cafe Rouge, The Girl and the Fig, Ceres Community Project, Cultured, Happy Girl Kitchen, Middleton Farm, Cowgirl Creamery, Nicasio Valley Cheese Company, Blue Bottle Coffee, and Charles Chocolates.]

Isn't it always Good Food Month in the Bay Area?

Do we need another award night honoring food artisans?

The answer to both those questions appears to be yes.

Here's why: The Good Food Awards recognizes food purveyors who demonstrate high standards in taste and sustainability and the ceremony tonight kicks off a month-long series of events showcasing artisan food producers in the sustainable food movement, many of whom struggle to make their businesses viable while they endeavor to work in environmentally-responsible and ethical ways.

The honors will be given out at a gala at San Francisco's Ferry Building hosted by the reigning queen of the sustainable food movement, Alice Waters.

The ceremony is not open to the public but passionate food folk can find out what all the fuss is about on Saturday when winning producers will be offering samples, talking up their wares, and selling them too, under the arcade at the front of the Ferry Building on the Embarcadero from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Almost 800 entries from 41 states were submitted from food makers hoping to earn the best-of-class honors in seven categories: coffee, chocolate, preserves, cheese, pickles, and beer. A panel of 80 judges -- including industry bigwigs like chocolate superstars Michael Recchiuti, Alice Medrich, and John Scharffenberger -- were recruited for blind tastings. A list of the 130 finalists can be found on the Good Food site.

The Bay Area is well represented. Finalists include several local brewers, among them Bison Brewing from Berkeley for Organic Gingerbread Ale, San Francisco's Thirsty Bear for Polar Bear Pils, and Marin Brewing Company for ESChi.

Finalists in the charcuterie category include Berkeley's Cafe Rouge for Smoked Beef Tongue and Sonoma's The Girl and The Fig for both Coppa and Pimenton Salami. A slew of Marin cheese-makers made the cut, notably Cowgirl Creamery for Red Hawk, Point Reyes Farmstead for its signature blue, and Nicasio Valley Cheese Company for Nicasio Square.

Chocolatiers vying for first-place nods include San Francisco's Charles, Jade, and Poco Dolce, and Oakland's Vice. Coffee makers up for top honors: Oakland's Blue Bottle, San Francisco's Ritual Coffee Roasters, and Santa Rosa's Ecco Caffe.

In the canning and jamming categories, Berkeley's Cultured represents the home team with Spicy Oregano Purple Carrots, while Monterey's Happy Girl Kitchen is on the preserves list for Apricot Chili Jam.

Good Food director Sarah Weiner of The Seedling Projects says the event grew out of a casual conversation at the Slow Food Nation wrap-up meeting. One of the preserves' organizers, Casey Havre of LouLou's Garden, mentioned how important it was to meet with fellow food artisans from different fields who share similar philosophies to generate ideas, learn about each other's products, and find ways to work together.

That idea stayed with Weiner, who spent time living in London, where she fell in love with an independent grocery store/deli that sold products with a little gold seal on them. Further investigation revealed that the seal was a taste award, bestowed by a British newspaper. Items that carried the seal, the proprietor confided, flew off the shelves.

Those two moments sowed the seeds for the Good Food Awards. The awards selection criteria sparked some bickering; a bitter brouhaha brewed over whether there even is such a thing as sustainable coffee. For some insights into that debate, visit the coffee news site Sprudge.com and a response to the criticism over at Fresh Cup Magazine.

Most food artisans, though, are grateful for the opportunity to show off their hard work. And with its national scope, the event can offer encouragement to sustainable food producers -- like the raspberry jam maker (a finalist) and her farmer husband in Ohio who hand-picked bugs off their crops and almost gave up on organic -- in parts of the country where there may not be much support or solutions for the challenges of sustainable production, Weiner explains.

Finalist Alex Hozven of Cultured adds that while she runs a food business, she isn't always the best at marketing her own work. The awards, she says, are a way of exposing more people to her unique products and garnering media attention that is likely to have ripple effects over time. Plus, like other fermented food fans, she's curious to see what picklers from other parts of the country are doing.

This Saturday marks the beginning of 30 days of sustainable food events, including cooking demonstrations, canning and pickling classes, and culinary and farm tours. Each week has a theme: Jan. 17-23 is devoted to events around coffee and chocolate; Jan. 24-30 features preserves and cheeses; Jan. 31-Feb. 6 charcuterie and pickles; Feb. 7-13 focuses on ethnic food and brewing events will be held in conjunction with the annual San Francisco Beer Week, Feb. 11-20.

Most events require advance tickets though many are free. For a complete schedule visit goodfoodmonth.org.

Back to the beginning. "It's good food month every second of every day in the Bay Area," agrees Lisa Rogovin, an epicurean concierge whose culinary tours In the Kitchen with Lisa are featured on the Good Food Month schedule. (Full disclosure: I lead some of these tours.)

"But locals may not frequent some of the stops on, say, our Mission Tour, such as Mr. Pollo, La Victoria Bakery, and Mission Pie, or have no idea about these businesses' back stories," she explains. "Personally, what I like about the Good Food program is that it introduces me to noted national brands that live and breath the same local, seasonal, sustainable mantra as do many of the artisans in our backyard."

Update: A list of all last night's winners and their profiles can be found at Good Food Awards.

One of the things that makes the Bay Area such an irresistibly lovely place to live is that, by and large, we're a buoyant lot. Let those on the other coast stomp slushily to the treadmill this morning to suffer for all their bacon-and-eggnog holiday excess. We'll be out here in the Pacific sunshine, picking Meyer lemons to squeeze into our green tea and visualizing abundance--not necessarily around our midriffs, but in our lives and others'.

Too often, it seems, gastronomic New Year's resolutions are all about "don'ts"--don't love the deep-dish at Little Star or the bacon cheeseburger at Marlowe so much; don't demolish half a loaf of Outerlands' bread in one sitting unless you've walked from Russian Hill and back to get it; don't spend more at Blue Bottle than you put in your savings account every month.

Instead of focusing on cutting things out (like the freebie salumi at Adesso's twice-daily aperitivi hour or the chocolate egg creams at Sidekick in the Ferry Building, to name just a few of my own local pleasures) this year, why not focus on adding things in? Things that are fun, things that last, things that do good for your community and for the beautiful and winter-greened land we all call home.

This year, why not resolve to:

Mural and compost at Free Farm

Get Dirty, Grow Locally

A community garden plot is a great place to start, but why not share your labor and get to know your neighbors? Volunteer at one of the numerous urban farms that have sprung up around the Bay Area. Willing hands are always needed, especially in the cold, rainy, tomato-less months. And not all the jobs require heavy lifting or complete mobility; I've spend many afternoons poking seeds into flats, transplanting seedlings, and making signs.

Dig, dine, and dance! Sign up for the monthly newsletter from Pie Ranch. The country outpost of Mission Pie, this small farm is located down the coast in Davenport, just north of Santa Cruz. On the 3rd Saturday of each month, the ranch hosts a community workday, followed by a potluck supper and a barn dance with a caller.

A fun outing for families is Marin Organic's Monday afternoon Glean Team. Each week, a different organic farm in Marin lets locals pick through their already-harvested fields for not-quite-as-pretty (but just as delicious) produce. The boxes of fresh, local veggies are distributed directly to schools in Marin. Afterward, gleaners can pick a round for themselves. (You'd be surprised what kids will eat when they've picked it themselves--especially if they've gotten good & muddy in the process.)

Strawberry Jam

Can It, Brine It, Carve It

Would-be urban homesteaders have a lot of choices these days. Longing to swap out the Heinz's for your own homemade ketchup and pickles? Then the folks at Happy Girl Kitchen have a workshop for you. (And for the truly serious among you, there's "Advanced Jam," prerequisite required.)

Charmed by winter's citrus, but afraid of ending up with sticky clementine soup or Meyer-lemon jello blocks? Put yourself in the knowledgeable hands of June Taylor, the British-born queen of marmalades. No one in the Bay Area takes fruit work as seriously (or finds it as fascinating) as Taylor does. At $200 per person, her small, hands-on classes are pricey, but her intelligent, carefully structured how-tos will forever take the guesswork out of your canning.

Prefer salami to jellies? The nose-to-tail classes in butchery and meat preservation at Fatted Calf will expose your sexy inner butcher. Get on their mailing list to sign up for a class; they sell out fast. (Classes are offered in both their Napa and their Hayes Valley locations.)

In Bernal Heights, Avedano's offers monthly "Butchery for Adults" and "Advanced Butchery" classes, as well as classes in trussing, carving, and curing.

...Then Talk About It

What do we talk about when we talk about food? Everything from the eco-sustainability of small-scale meat production to the history of heirloom apples has become food for thought lately. If you're curious as to what the Bay Area's farmers, writers, makers and thinkers are thinking about, check out the calendars at Kitchen Table Talks and 18 Reasons. Both offer an intriguing roster of thought-provoking events, talks, and panel discussions.

At Headlands Center for the Arts, performances, artists' presentations, and gallery talks are often preceded by a communal meal in the old mess hall. Sometimes, however, the meal itself is the event, as local or visiting artists and chefs come together to get inspired by the palette of the windswept, (supposedly) ghost-ridden landscape of the Marin Headlands, using mostly local and mostly organic produce, meats, and fish as their medium. Have more time than money? Volunteers are often needed to help in the kitchen, set up, serve, and clean up.

Elsewhere in Marin, the Marin Agricultural Land Trust (MALT), which works to preserve farmland in Marin while educating the public about conservation, is currently accepting volunteers for its two training sessions in January and February. The training will include trips to farmers, ranchers, and dairy farmers in the area.

...And Give Back

The holidays may be over, but the need at local food banks, soup kitchens, and food pantries remains just as strong. Find out when, where, and how to help, now that the Thanksgiving-to-Christmas volunteer crush has subsided.

Food, glorious, food. It's that time of year people: Bay Area Bites brings you the best in food news for 2010.

In this two-part package, we look at the national trends and topics that sizzled over the past 12 months and serve up some local flavor on the side.

Feel free to weigh in with your own edible highlights from the year that was. In no particular order:

1. Food Safety

From previous years we've learned that what we eat can make us sick (tainted peanut butter, beef gone bad, and salmonella-laced spinach ring any bells?).

This year's food alerts: A massive egg recall and lingering questions about health risks associated with Gulf seafood.

Thankfully, late in the year Congress passed the Food Safety Modernization Act to protect consumers from food products hiding harmful poisons or pathogens like E. coli and salmonella, a food policy coup that greatly strengthens the Food and Drug Administration's ability to keep unsafe food off supermarket shelves and restaurant plates by expanding the agency's recall abilities and access to records.

Local angle: Bay Area-based media consultant Naomi Starkman kept the spotlight on potentially dangerous foods for sale in reports on Civil Eats and Huffington Post, including a story about a Consumers' Report study that found packaged salad laden with fecal bacteria.

2. D.I.Y. Food

Age-old practices such as canning, jamming, foraging, fermenting, growing and gleaning are suddenly new (and cool) again. Chickens are the au courant backyard animal of choice. And classes in the Domestic Arts all the rage.

The New York Times Magazine traveled west to take pretty pictures of urban homesteaders from the Bay Area, The Washington Post chronicled the canning trend long strong here, and Vogue got down and dirty with city farmer Novella Carpenter, who donned a pink cardigan in a concession to fashion for a photo shoot with the stylish mag's scribe Hamish Bowles. (Carpenter seemed to pop up everywhere last year, including on KQED.)

Local angle: In addition to Novella Carpenter's Ghost Town Farm in Oakland, the Bay Area D.I.Y. brigade created a kind of cottage industry, hawking their homemade wares at venues like SF Underground Market (Underground Market on BAB) and East Bay Underground Market, as well as the Pop-Up General Store.

And they wrote about it too; notable D.I.Y. books this year included Rachel Saunders' tome The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook, Napa forager Connie Green's The Wild Table (featured on The California Report), and D.I.Y. Delicious by Vanessa Barrington. Online, San Francisco's Sean Timberlake launched Punk Domestics, a curated space for D.I.Y.-driven cyber self-publishers.

Classes in baking, brewing, beekeeping, bottling, animal husbandry and more were in high demand at venues like 18 Reasons, Urban Kitchen SF, the Institute of Urban Homesteading, and BioFuel Oasis, a worker-owned cooperative begun by Carpenter and friends.

3. Food Politics

In an era of identity politics and culture wars, food fights join the fray. What you eat (and what you choose not to consume) speaks volumes about your political persuasions. First Lady Michelle Obama, dubbed America's foodie-in-chief by The Atlantic, talked about ending obesity and increasing activity with her Let's Move initiative. She also championed growing food and farmers' markets -- and brought to her kitchen top chefs like Sam Kass. On the other hand, Rush Limbaugh mounted a modern-day Twinkie defense (this time citing the fact that a man lost weight on a diet consisting mostly of the infamous junk food as evidence that all nutrition science is bogus). Sarah Palin showed up at a Pennsylvania school bearing cookies and dished up s'mores at a diner in a calculated countermove to a Michelle Obama dessert comment. Professional rager Glenn Beck even weighed in. Sigh...

The task of putting the food wars in context fell to ex-Washington Post writer Jane Black, who has moved to Huntington, West Virginia with new husband editor Brent Cunningham to see what happens to the community's eating habits now that celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has skipped town.

Local angle: Taking the happy out of Happy Meals: Outgoing SF Mayor Gavin Newsom vetoed a Board of Supervisors ban on plastic toys in fast-food meals. But the supes struck back, ensuring that no child in the city will be tempted to eat junk food simply to get their hands on a cheap trinket that will likely break before you can say Big Mac.

4. School Food

For the majority of schoolchildren around the country school lunch sucks. Big time.

But change is coming. This year, Jamie Oliver brought his Food Revolution to the States, an anonymous teacher chronicled what she ate every day in her school cafeteria in her blog Fed Up With Lunch, and President Obama signed into law the much-anticipated Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010. The legislation bans some junk food, and gives a small, though historically significant, six-cent increase per child per lunch (the first such boost in the reimbursement rate in 30 years), and there may be more lunch money tucked inside the bill to boot.

Local angle: Veteran school food reformer Alice Waters claimed victory for her Edible Schoolyard model following the results of a study on Berkeley's School Lunch Initiative from University of California at Berkeley researchers.

5. Street Food

Fueled by Twitter feeds, gourmet grub on the go continued to attract a growing following around the country as food trucks hit the streets in increasingly more legitimate ways, boasting inspired names and bright colors, to wit The Best Wurst in Austin, Big Gay Ice Cream Truck in New York City, and Chairman Bao in San Francisco.

Food trucks went a step further in size, too, with the introduction of bustaurants, stripped former public transit buses reconfigured as a mobile kitchen, and, in some cases, even offering eat-in seating. In L.A. the double decker Worldfare dished up ethnic eats, while closer to home Le Truc in San Francisco served up gastro-pub fare, and Diamond Lil debuted to a small crowd and a camera crew.

Los Angeles officials announced it may regulate mobile carts, a move that could see other cities follow suit.

Local angle: With mild-mannered accountant Matt Cohen at the helm, the mobile food fest Off the Grid launched in Fort Mason and sprouted several neighborhood locations, including Golden Gate Park, McCoppin Hub, Civic Center, and UN Plaza. Officials in San Francisco passed reforms making it easier and cheaper for mobile vendors to serve street eats, while in the East Bay the city of Emeryville saw pushback from local brick-and-mortar businesses and Berkeley residents bemoaned missing out on most of the mobile food fun (for now).

Check BAB tomorrow for the rest of the best of 2010 food news.

Beautifully decorated cookies are a high-point of the holiday season for me. This year, I wanted to do a post on tips and strategies for creating gift-worthy sugar cookies at home, and I thought to myself, who better to turn to than the experts at Miette? Lucky for me (and you), Miette holds monthly classes on decorating sugar cookies. In class, you'll learn about necessary equipment, how to make and color royal icing like a pro, how to make parchment icing cones, and techniques for flooding and embellishing cookies. Owner Meg Ray and instructor Jeff Gosche were kind enough to let me sit in on the most recent cookie decorating class, snap some photos, and learn how the Miette elves create their stunning holiday cookies. Today, I'll share those tips with you.

Jeff was our trusty instructor and the man behind the sugar cookie magic at Miette. Jeff doesn't have any formal training or culinary instruction, but he's always been passionate about baking and decorating. He started helping Miette with cookie production solely around the holiday season and then about one year ago, Jeff was asked to stick around more frequently as a regular staple. After spending the afternoon with him, I can see why.

Jeff began class with a discussion on planning out your project and equipment. In terms of planning, it's important to be aware of baking times, cooling times, and setting times for frosting. Jeff recommends taking the entire project into account when thinking about how much time it'll take from Point A to Point B, especially if you'll be gifting or delivering the cookies. The last thing you want to do is rush the process! As far as equipment, a stand mixer, rolling pin, Silpat mat, and cooling racks are important for actually baking the cookies. For decorating, small metal bowls are handy for mixing up numerous different colors of frosting, good quality food coloring, parchment triangles to make your piping cones, and a spoon-spatula to spoon your icing into the bag. If you'd rather not deal with raw egg whites in your royal icing, Jeff recommended meringue powder as an easy and just-as-good substitute.

After we talked equipment, we set about making our own royal icing. Jeff did a demo using the whisk attachment on a stand mixer, turning it up to high (an 8 on a Kitchen Aid) and allowing it to mix for 3-4 minutes. The important thing to know here is that the icing should be quite thick--thicker than you think it should be on an actual cookie. You'll spend time later thinning it after you add the color, not now.

Jeff Gosche talking royal icing & our attentive class

After the demo, students all went back to their stations to add the egg whites and powdered sugar together and begin mixing away.

Learning how to mix up the perfect royal icing

Once everyone had royal icing down, we discussed the art of coloring the icing. Now anyone can throw green food coloring into a bowl of royal icing and call it a day, but it's often very difficult to get more subtle, interesting tones. This is where Jeff's icing tips come in handy:

• It almost always takes more than one color to get the shade you're going for, and Jeff gives an example of the infamous "Miette pink" used on so many of the in-house cookies. How to achieve that perfect pink? Add a little brown to the icing! Jeff explains how adding just a little brown to most colors of royal icing will just tone it way down and add more depth to the color.
• To achieve more warmth in any one color (Christmas red, for example), add orange. Orange is a miracle worker.
• When adding color to your icing, you may want to put the drop of color onto your spatula and work it in slowly. That way, if you add a little too much, it's easier to swipe off with a finger rather than having to scoop out color from the icing itself.
• When you're mixing up bowls of different colors of icing, you also want to cover each bowl with a slightly damp dish towel so the icing doesn't dry out.
• Don't thin out the icing until you're completely done with the color.
• To thin, just add a tiny amount (1/2 teaspoon or so) of water at a time. Ultimately, you want the icing to flow right off your spatula back into the bowl but leave a noticeable ribbon inside your bowl. So it shouldn't be liquidy, but it shouldn't be too thick either.

The Art of Royal Icing

After the icing was made and colored, it was time to get piping! Jeff showed the class how to form parchment piping bags and discussed how nice they are because you can just throw them away. With nicer piping bags, the royal icing can stain and they can be tough to clean.

Learning How to Make Parchment Piping Bags

Parchment cones are tough to describe in print but it turns out Wilton has a handy video so you can learn at home! With piping bags in hand, it was time to decorate the cookies.

Students decorating their Christmas cookies

Jeff's tips for decorating cookies were relatively straightforward and really involved a little planning and practice. He had templates on hand so students could practice their lines and shapes before really committing to a cookie. The gist of it? Outline the cookie first with the royal icing and then you flood (or fill) the cookie in a back-and-forth motion with the tip of the bag slightly immersed in the icing itself (this helps it flood more evenly).

Flooding Cookies

Then you can add sprinkles, add another color to do some blending, or wait around 15 minutes for the icing to dry so you can layer in another color. It does help to do a little planning and thinking about what you're going for with your design to ensure you have enough of each color and don't sit there stumped (as I did) seeking out inspiration while your icing is slowly drying out.

I can't recommend Miette's classes enough and thank Jeff and Meg for letting me tag along. The classes are sold out through February (so get on the March bandwagon!), but they're thinking about possibly adding additional cookie classes and, of course, there are other classes as well if you're ready to dive right in to the pastry/confection world. Happy baking and royal icing making!

Let the chestnuts roast and the eggnog flow, it's that time of year again! Here's our short list of unique food-centric gifts that will bring a smile to your favorite foodie's face.

1. Sushi Booties (For the Avant-Garde Baby)

Photo Credit: Sushi Booties (via Etsy)

You're never too young to develop a shoe fetish. These super soft fleece Sushi Booties ($24), fashioned to resemble your favorite piece of soosh, are the perfect gift for hip parents or the sushi-deprived mommy-to-be. Each set of booties is handmade to order and comes in a sushi bento box ready for gift-giving!

2. Booze-inspired jewelry (For the Life of the Party)

Photo Credit: Sora Designs

She's the life of the party. She's stylish. She's bold. She loves boozin' and she loves looking good while she's boozin'. This necklace was made for her. Local SF jewelry designer Yueh-Wen Chang (Wen) of Sora Designs has created the ultimate statement pieces with her Owl-t on the Town Bottle Opener Necklace ($35.50) and Fish Bottle Opener Necklace ($29.50). Gift your girl this necklace and she'll be the most popular person at the party…as if she weren't already.

3. Tell Tale Society CSA (For the Discerning Sweet Tooth)

Photo Credit: Tell Tale Preserve Company

Tell Tale Preserve Company is Pastry Chef William Werner's (formerly of Quince) latest project. The modern pâtisserie and delicatessen is slated to open Spring 2011 at 33 Maiden Lane. In the meantime, company's monthly CSA of heavenly confections is in full swing. Join the Tell Tale Society ($35/month) and receive a burlap bag full of inspired creations like Turrón of White Chocolate, Walnut and Yuzu; Hazelnut, Frankincense and Muscovado Toffee, and Pain D'épices Laced Caramels.

Customers can order one month at a time, or pre-purchase months in advance. Society bags can be shipped or picked up at the Ferry Building Farmers Market on Tuesdays (8:00 am - 2:00 pm) or at Coffee Bar. The bag of treats can also be purchased at the Ferry Building Farmers Market on Tuesdays and Saturdays (8:30 am – 2:30 pm) and at Big Daddy's Antique Trunk Show Monday to Saturday (9:00 am – 5:00 pm) starting 12/10. Come along, sugar plum fairies, come along.

4. Marianberry Confections Doggy Cookies (For the Furry)

Photo Credit: Marianberry Confections

Let's not forget your four-legged friend. He does put up with all your shenanigans. While Marianberry Confections focuses mainly on treats for people (like amazing chewy, crispy, thin Oatmeal Raisin cookies), they have baked up something just for that special pup in your life. Honey Crunch Dog Cookies nestled in a classic Black and White Bone Motif Bowl ($15). The all-natural cookies are made with whole wheat flour, steel cut oats, honey, milk & eggs.

5. Homegrown Mushrooms (For the Green)

Photo Credit: Back to the Roots

BTTR (pronounced better), which stands for "Back to the Roots," was started by Nikhil Arora and Alex Velez after they graduated from UC Berkeley last year. During their last semester, the two discovered that they could grow gourmet mushrooms entirely on recycled coffee grounds. And so, they created a 100% sustainable urban mushroom farm in Berkeley (which now diverts 10,000 lbs/wk of coffee grounds from Peet's Coffee & Tea, produces 500 lbs/wk of fresh oyster mushrooms, and sustains 10 urban school and community gardens by donating post-harvest grounds which have turned into nutrient-rich compost from the leftover mushroom roots).

BTTR now brings sustainable mushroom farming into your own kitchen with their Easy-to-Grow Mushroom Garden ($19.95). Just open the box, mist it twice a day, and watch your own science experiment grow. Harvest up to 1 pound of oyster mushrooms in as little as 10 days, and harvest as many as four crops.

This is the ultimate feel-good gift of the year. Support young entrepreneurs, recycle would-be waste, grow your own delicious , sustainable, as-local-as-it-gets mushrooms, and help raise money for the Susan G. Komen Foundation all at the same time (through December 5% of sales will be donated to support breast cancer research). This officially puts you on Santa's Nice List.

6. Breakfast in Bed (For the Sweetheart)

Kodiak Cakes Gift Bowl

Nothing says "I love you" like breakfast in bed. Especially when breakfast entails thick, fluffy flapjacks sweetened with a touch of honey. This pretty gift package from Kodiak Cakes ($29) includes their famous hearty and healthy Frontier Flapjack and Waffle Mix (comprised of only the finest American wheat and Canadian oats), all-natural handmade berry syrup, a soft dish towel, and a 10-inch wire whisk, all nestled in a jumbo 2-quart glass measuring bowl with a rubber lid.

7. Smocks (For the Stylish Hostess)

Photo Credit: Smocks (on the left: "Kelly"; on the right: "MacKenzie")

These sassy designer aprons ($34.95-$39.95) from Smocks are flirty, feisty, fun, and functional. Yeah, alliteration. They are inspired by contemporary designers and designed to fit and flatter a woman's body. Favorite picks include the flouncy Kelly, with deep pockets cleverly hidden on each side to avoid bulk on your hips, and the retro-chic MacKenzie with those sexy back ties.

8. Bacon iPad Case (For the Devotees)

Photo Credit: Media-Digest

This is for the die-hard bacon devotees. I know you're still out there. The Bacon Case ($59) from Antjes is the ultimate fantasy. Tasty fatty pork makes sweet love to sleek shiny iPad. There's something viscerally disturbing in that statement, but I stand by it.

9. Homemade Goodies (For the Crafty)

Homemade Christmas Cookie Jars

• Christmas Cookie Jars
• Homemade Granola (via Lick My Spoon)
• Cookies Galore (via Brown Eyed Baker)
• Candy Galore…and darling packaging ideas (via Martha Stewart)
• Flavored Salts (via Breakaway Cook)
• Homemade Vanilla Extract (via Use Real Butter)

10. Classes (For the Hands-On)

Photo Credit: Curiosity Atlas

If you’re a believer that things own you rather than the other way around, this could be your savior this holiday season. Curiosity Atlas is a Bay Area initiative that aspires to provide inspiration and access to unique, local and hands-on experiences that foster personal growth and cultivate community.

Today, Wednesday 12/8, Curiosity Atlas is hosting A Curious Affair, a unique experience gift market that will bring together a broad range of vendors who could very well hold the key to the perfect experiential gift for that special someone who is always impossible to buy for. Some food-centric experiences to look out for:

• Butchery classes from Avedano’s Meats
• Community dinner and food classes from 18 Reasons
• Cooking experiences from La Cocina
• Discovering the joys of preserving from Happy Girl Kitchen
• Workshops on topics like brewing Kombucha, baking bread, or urban gardening from Urban Kitchen SF
• Parties, classes and tastings from Slow Food SF

That's a wrap! Jingle bells, everyone!

For more foodie gift-giving ideas, check out last year's wishlist.

The Exploring Ingredients Class at San Francisco Baking Institute

Last week was big for me. I took a week off from work, returned very few emails, and my dogs suffered a severe lack of exercise. Why? I spent all week baking eight hours a day at the San Francisco Baking Institute, brushing up on my skills and learning the "how's" and "why's" behind much of the baking I do at home (How exactly can I make this cookie chewier? Why add potato starch here? What effect does pastry flour have on this recipe?). Each day I came home with boxes of treats to share with family, friends, and coworkers along with copious notes and a head spinning with information on technique and method. After spending the weekend debriefing, I thought I'd share the top ten things I learned from my one week in pastry school. Some of the tips here are relatively basic and fundamental, others are a bit more advanced. Each could certainly use its very own post. But sometimes broad coverage is nice--it's just enough to get you inspired to break out a muffin or cake recipe for the coming week. I'd love to hear any of your own baking tips/revelations, too!

Making Breakfast Pasties: Day 2

1. Mixing Methods: It's important to understand the different mixing methods when baking. And then to follow them. For example, when using the "Creaming Method" for cookies, you're really just creaming together the sugar and butter until combined. However, when making brownies, you need to integrate a lot of air into your batter when mixing your sugar and butter. This acts as your leavening agent (look at most brownie recipes and you'll notice a lack of chemical leaveners like baking soda or powder). So you'll need to mix on a higher speed for a longer period of time. If you're interested in reading more on mixing methods, The Reluctant Gourmet has done a nice post covering them in more detail.

2. Pay Attention to Your Flours: People use all different kinds of flour in pastry production for a variety of reasons. Cake flour and pastry flour have the lowest amount of protein whereas bread flour and all-purpose flour have the highest. As a general rule, the higher the amount of protein, the more structure the dough will have (think of how many cakes are so light and fluffy while traditional breads are heartier). Once you become familiar with how the various flours change the outcome of your pastries and baked goods, you can begin adapting recipes to create different textures simply by swapping the flours.

3. All About Super-Fine Sugar: I generally use granulated sugar at home. However, this past week we worked solely with superfine sugar (unless the recipe called for powdered or liquid sugar) and I learned why: superfine sugar melts in moisture more quickly than regular granulated sugar, and is really preferable for fine textured baked goods. Try it--you may just notice a difference.

From Angel Food Cake to Madelines: A Few of the Desserts

4. Temperature Matters: Much of what you're doing when mixing various batters is creating a smooth emulsion. We've all made a recipe where the batter turned out a little too chunky or broken looking, haven't we? There are many reasons why this might happen, but the main one is that the ingredients aren't the proper temperature. If you don't have time to bring your eggs up to room temperature, mix them together in a small bowl and microwave them for 20-30 seconds until warm. And for many recipes (not including pie dough, obviously) you want your butter softened but not oily or completely melted. Pay attention to the temperature of your ingredients and you'll have smooth, silky dough more often than not.

5. Take it Slow: Ah, cakes...a relative cousin to the cookie but with much more moisture. Because of this increased moisture, you'll notice most recipes ask that you alternate between dry and wet ingredients when combining the two together. You don't want to break the emulsion (or bind) between the butter and the eggs or your batter will start to look broken or separated. Slow down. Take your time. If a recipe asks that you alternate between the wet and the dry, there's a reason for that: don't dump your ingredients in all at once.

6. All About Pie Dough: I love making pies and quietly judge people who don't make their own crust. It's just so basic and tastes so much better than boxed pie crust. I was humbled this week though when I learned about the different kinds of pie crusts and why you'd want to choose one over the other depending on your fillings. It would take a few additional posts to cover the different kinds of pie doughs available to you. If you're interested in reading more, I'd check out: The Pie and Pastry Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum or Joy of Cooking: All About Pies and Tarts by Irma Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker. But for now, know that there are flaky and mealy crusts. The basic recipe is the same (a nice butter crust or a butter and lard crust), but a mealy dough is good for cream pies and wet fillings because you're incorporating the butter into the dough more (smaller chunks) thereby creating a coarse almost cornmeal like crust and a tighter dough. A flaky butter crust with large chunks of butter will always absorb more moisture making it much less ideal for cream pies and other wet fillings.

Meringues and Diamond Cookies

7. How Do I Make My Cookie ____ ? So you like your chocolate chip cookie crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside? Or maybe you like a tender, cakey cookie? How do you look at a recipe and alter it to fit your needs? A few good pointers: if you like a crispy cookie, you're looking for a recipe with low moisture and high fat and sugar. If you're looking for more of a soft cookie, the recipe will be lower in sugar and fat with a high moisture content. And if you're a chewy cookie fan, your recipe will call for more moisture and sugar and less fat. It'll also call for a stronger flour with more protein (like bread flour). What does this mean for the home baker? Experiment. If you want a chewy cookie and you're using the typical Toll House Recipe, try bread flour instead and use a bit more sugar. Take notes and compare. With the right information, you can have more control over your recipes.

8. Freezing and Storing: A good rule of thumb on this is to think about the moisture in your product. If there's a lot of moisture in something you've made (custards, lemon bars etc.), you generally want to avoid freezing after baking. Something with low moisture and high fat like a cookie is o.k. to freeze whereas a product with high moisture and lower fat like a soft, crumbly muffin really isn't great to freeze once baked.

9. All About Chilling: Have you noticed lately that many cookie recipes ask you to chill your dough in the freezer before baking? What's going on here? The most likely answer is that chilling decreases the probability that your cookies will spread when baked. Another possbility is one the New York Times stands behind with their infamous Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe: that dough tends to develop flavors when allowed to overnight, resulting in a richer, more buttery/toffee-like dough. Try it. You decide.

10. A Few Tips for Working with Chocolate: People spend years studying chocolate and confections, but for the purposes of home baking and simple pastry production, there are a few good things to know. First, when you're melting chocolate in a double boiler, you always want to cover the bowl that the chocolate's in. The second moisture hits the chocolate mixture, you're going to run the risk of grainy chocolate. Second, don't overheat your mixture. This, too, will create lumps. Last, don't let your bowl actually touch the water. You want space in between the bowl and the water below--this is where steam is trapped and this is what's going to melt your chocolate.

Kate McDermott laughing over pie

If you haven't heard of Kate McDermott, you're missing out. I first learned about her from a few Seattle friends who had taken her pie-making classes and insisted that it changed the way they thought about crust. And these are kitchen savvy people. Then I read somewhere that Ruth Reichl deemed Kate's crust an "absolutely perfect crust." That's about the time I started stalking Kate. I'd go to her website to see if she was planning on teaching in the Bay Area. No luck. I started following her @katemcdermott on twitter to see if she'd give away hints there. Then I finally wrote her an email asking if she'd consider teaching a class the weekend I was going to be up in Seattle in August. And voila--a few weeks later, I heard that she'd decided to do a shortened version of her regular class at Dianne's Market Kitchen as a demo. I signed up immediately. And like the rest of the folks who have written testimonials, I'm forever changed when it comes to pie.

So today, with her blessing, I'm going to share with you her infamous recipe and all of her fabulous tips. And of course some photos so you feel like you were along for the ride. Kate's come to the conclusion that there are three types of pie people in this world: makers, eaters, and seekers. After taking this class, you can literally be all three at one time. First things first: if you actually sit and listen to Kate, she's incredibly wise. Pie or no pie. While pie crust can make people uptight and anxious, Kate has a calming 'everything will turn out fine' demeanor. She says about the crust: "Just feel it...we all know how to do this stuff." Later in class she states how "it's simple--otherwise we still wouldn't all be doing it." And my favorite Kate quote: "Everything turns out fine in pie." Ah, a breath of fresh air in an often complex pie-making world.

Kate and Dianne showing off the amazing peach pie

The other thing that struck me immediately about the way Kate approaches pie is that she sets an intention for each pie. If you practice yoga, you'll recognize the practice of setting an intention before you begin: sending out some good vibes to someone struggling or someone that needs a little extra light in their day. Kate does this with each pie she makes. Regardless of whether or not this is a little too touchy-feely for you, it's a great reminder to be conscious and aware when we set out to bake pie. After Kate set an intention to send good thoughts to a friend struggling with cancer, I knew this would be a special class. This wasn't just a peach pie. This was a peach pie baked with love, skill, and deliberate thoughtfulness and care.

Setting an intention for her pie

Now for a few nuts and bolts. Where to begin? Ingredients and equipment seems like a logical start.

Ingredients and Equipment
Kate uses King Arthur Flour, Kerry Gold Irish Butter (she buys it from Trader Joe's--the best deal in town, she insists), and leaf lard she orders from a small farm in Pennsylvania. And perhaps most importantly, she insists on using only the most superior fruit you can buy. That way, you don't need to add much sugar at all. In our class, we used Frog Hollow Cal Red peaches and nothing more than a little sugar, flour, salt, tapioca, and nutmeg. It turned out absolutely dreamy.

As far as equipment, Kate uses either an 8-inch or 9-inch pan and admits to loving many kinds of pans--from ceramic to glass. She does advise, however, to stay away from those disposable aluminum pie pans because they interfere with the even temperature of the pie crust. Kate also uses a dowel pin and a pastry cloth to roll out her dough. You can find both at your local food supply store.

After discussing ingredients and equipment, Kate began to speak about pie in general, and the elements that make up a good pie:

4 Elements of a Pie Filling:
1) Superior Fruit
2) Thickener
3) Seasoning
4) Sweetener

Pie Filling: Fruit
With any good fruit pie, there are some considerations that will make a ho-hum pie extraordinary. Kate weighs in:

• Quantity: O.K., so this tip is genius in my opinion. I always struggle with how much fruit it will take to make my pie filling. Kate uses a method where she takes whole peaches (or apples, or whatever you're using) and literally places them in the pie pan. Once it's full, you've got enough fruit. In our case with this pie, I believe we used 4 large peaches for our 8-inch dish.
• To peel or not to peel: Kate doesn't bother. Ever. I love this about her.
• Choosing the best fruit: With peaches, Kate says you want to see gold coming out of the rim (not green) of the peach--that way, you know it's gotten all of the sun and nutrients available to it. And when you're choosing a peach, a heavy peach means it has more sugar.

New Trick to Figure out How Many Peaches to Include

As we watched Kate make, form, and roll out her crust she gave many invaluable tips that I've used since and have seen great improvements in my pies. Here they are, in no particular order:

Kate's Crust Tips:

• Cold, cold, cold: Everything must be cold. I was surprised to learn that Kate not only uses cold butter and lard, but she also keeps her butter, her rolling pin, her bowl--even the pastry cloth in the freezer.
• Adding water to your dough: Kate says two things: it's not precise, and go slow. She mentions a 3-2-1 formula where she adds 3 Tbsp. of water to begin and advises to just quickly move the dough around (you're not doing a thorough mixing here) and press together to see if it holds. If it doesn't, add 2 Tbsp. more. A good rule of thumb: the colder the fat, the more water you’re going to need. And an important side-note: Don’t get ice into the dough! When asked if she likes to err on the wet or dry side with her pie crust, Kate says she'd much rather err on the wet side (apparently, Ruth Reichl agrees).
• Forming your dough: Cut your dough ball in half and you should see marbling. You want two “chubby disks” (about 4 inches by 1.5 inch). Wrap your disks in dough and then actually shape them how you'd like while they're in the plastic wrap (this was a revelation to me).
• Rolling out your dough: After chilling your "chubby disks" for at least an hour, you want to take them out and gently tap them with your rolling pin. Kate says this is to kind of jar it awake and let it know you mean business. You want to put a nice amount of flour down on your pastry cloth, and roll out slowly (without worrying about cracks) from fingertips to palms, out and back. Brush off the extra flour as you go with a pastry brush. Kate says you want the pie dough "as thin as glass and only as large as it needs to be." That's how you know when you're done.

Forming Our Pie!

And now that you're inundated with tips and advice, here is the recipe for Kate's award-winning crust. I will say that nothing could ever replace sitting across from her and watching her make it herself. And I look forward to one day actually taking her longer participation course. Maybe if we all start stalking her and sending her emails, she'll decide to take this pie-crust madness on the road. Until then...

Kate's Infamous Pie Crust

Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups King Arthur Unbleached White Flour (red bag)
8 Tbsp. leaf lard, cut into various small pieces, pea to walnut size
8 Tbsp. Irish butter, cut into various small pieces, pea to walnut size
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
6-8 Tbsp. ice water (this is an average--Kate's used anywhere between 3-15 Tbsp. at a time)

Method:
1. Combine all ingredients except the ice water in a large, cold bowl.
2. With clean hands, blend the mixture together until it looks like course meal with some lumps in it. Lumps=flaky pie!
3. Sprinkle ice water over mixture and stir lightly with a fork.
4. Squeeze a handful of dough together. Mix in a bit more water if it doesn't keep together.
5. Divide the dough in half and make two chubby disks about 5 inches across. Wrap each disk separately in plastic wrap and chill for 1 hour.
6. Take out one disk and put on a well-floured board. Sprinkle some flour onto the top of the disk and thump the top several times. Turn it over and thump the other side.
7. Sprinkle more flour onto the top of the crust if needed to keep the pin from sticking and roll the crust out from the center in all directions. When it's an inch or so larger than your pie pan, fold the dough over the top of the pin and lay it in the pie pan carefully.
8. Don't worry if the crust needs to be patched together; just paint a little water where it needs to be patched and "glue" on the patch pieces.
9. Put the filling in the pie and repeat the process with the other disk.

Notes on Filling and Baking: fill with your favorite fruit filling. For a peach pie similar to the one we made in Seattle, use adequate peaches, a pinch of salt, 2.5 swipes of nutmeg (this is the one spot where she seemed quite precise), 1/2 cup sugar, 1/3 cup flour, and 1 1/2 tsp. quick cooking tapioca. Then, crimp edges and cut vent holes. Paint egg white wash on top of pie and sprinkle with a little sugar. Then bake for 15 minutes at 425 F. Reduce heat to 350 F and bake for 35 minutes more.

Then, as Kate says, "Eat Pie, Be Happy."
For more pie musings from Kate, you can check out her blog Art of Pie for more pie musings.

Even a pie therapist needs professional development. Or maybe there's just no nicer way to spend a Sunday afternoon than bumping along in the back of a pickup truck, perched on a hay bale, out to pick fresh apples for a pie.

Tipped off by a friend who lives in Petaluma and knows my fondness for (one might say obsession with) pie, I headed out to the rolling hills of rural Sonoma last weekend, joining 19 other local pie enthusiasts for Two Rock Ranch's Orchard to Oven Pie Workshop, a three-hour event hosted by ranch owner and orchardist Kathy Tresch and taught by chef, caterer, and blogger Meloni Courtway.

Two Rock Ranch has been in the Tresch family since 1905, when the family of Kathy's husband Joe started it as 300-acre dairy farm. Over the years, they added to the farm piece and piece, and it now stretches across some 2000 acres. The dairy was certified organic in 1995, the second (after Straus) organic dairy in California. Straus Organic Creamery has kindly donated the butter for all the classes, making our pies truly local, since the Tresch dairy supplies nearly two-thirds of the milk processed by Straus.

Kathy's pet project now is Olympia's Orchard, 8 acres of fruit trees spread out over several fenced-in parcels throughout the farm. Since 2004, she's planted some 500 trees, with over 50 varieties of apples alone. Many of them are hard-to-find antique and heirloom types, such as Cox's Orange Pippin and Kidd's Orange Red, along with newer varieties like Freedom, Pink Pearl, and Gold Rush, all chosen especially for the area's mild climate, so unlike the icy winters that many of the more common East Coast varieties (Macintosh, Macoun) require. The trees, planted on dwarfing rootstock and farmed organically, are charmingly petite, laden with fruit that all but drops into our hands. Pick 10 each, Kathy tells us, and it's nearly impossible to stop plucking the fat bright-red Jonathans, tart-sweet and perfect for pies.

Before we start, Kathy tells us a little of the history of the place, its beginnings as a land of plenty for the native Miwoks, then as a farm homestead for Charlie and Lena Hall. They plowed with horses, ate their dinners off dishes brought West by covered wagon. Kathy holds up Miwok mortars and pestles, horseshoes and bits of blue-patterned china that she's found in the dirt over the years.

Once our bushel baskets are half-filled, we pile back onto the hay bales for the bumpy ride back to the ranch. There, we find a long table on the porch lined with bowl after bowl, bags of flour and sugar, and Meloni, smiling in a white chef's jacket.

Meloni, a California Culinary Academy grad who was dubbed the "Best Baker in America" by no less than Martha Stewart, thanks to killer recipes for Pumpkin Scones and Persimmon-White Chocolate Bread Pudding, says this is her very favorite job ever, talking and making and eating pie. She tells us that those of us with chilly hands are born pie makers; the warm-handed ones need to make sure they use cold butter, very cold ice water, and a good pastry hoop to keep their dough light and flaky, not oily-warm.

Another tip? Ignore all those recipes that reference "small peas" in describing the perfect texture of pie dough. Don't think peas, think oatmeal, says Meloni. This is a surprise to me, since I've always leaned towards the rough and nubbly to get maximum flakiness. Use short, sharp downward strokes of the pastry hoop, she says, and turn the bowl as you go.

I keep going, farther than I usually would, until my butter and flour are as sandy as quick-cooking dry oatmeal. In goes the water, and the dough is patted into shaggy mounds, then set aside to chill.

Now it's onto the apple-peeling and slicing, and soon we're rolling out our doughs and piling them high with cinnamon-sugared apples. The pies go into the outdoor brick oven that Kathy has been tending.

Photo by Stephane von Stephane

Rinsing the sugar and butter from our hands, we wander into the great room at the lodge, where a fire is burning in the fireplace under a massive, glowering mounted buffalo head and there's Baletto Russian River Valley gewurztraminer to sip, delectable apple-arugula-bacon-cheese flatbread and blue cheese, apple, honey and walnut crostini to nibble, and half a dozen different types of apple to sample.

When the platters are reduced to crumbs, we head back outside, to see all our beautiful pies--each so different, though we all used the same ingredients--laid out on the porch, hot and steaming with the scent of autumn.

Register for the season's final Oven to Orchard Apple Pie Workshop on Sunday, Sept. 26th at 10am. $48/person includes orchard tour, pie class, apple tasting, wine and apple-inspired snacks, and your own apple pie to take home. Workshop lasts approximately 3 hours.

The author's pie

There's nothing like the "Bauer Bump."

Blogs, Tweets, Yelp write-ups, email newsletters, check-ins on Foursquare-- the new social-media options may be the shiniest, coolest toys on the block right now, as evidenced by the full house attending The Future of Food Media, one of several industry seminars presented as part of SF Chefs 2010.

But after a 90 minute discussion between Oracle corporate chef Robbie Lewis, Yelp executive Ruggy Joesten, Marlowe owner Anna Weinberg, PR specialist Andrew Freeman, and moderator Paolo Lucchesi of San Francisco Chronicle's Inside Scoop SF, it came down to this: A great review from Michael Bauer, the Chronicle's longtime head restaurant critic, is still the golden ticket that every restaurant dreams of, the one sure-fire way to guarantee a full house for months to come.

For the longtime print writers, editors, and public-relations folks in the audience (as well as, presumably, Bauer himself, who was seated unobtrusively near the back of the room), it was satisfying to hear Anna Weinberg, owner of Marlowe, insist that Bauer's dubbing their lamb-laced bacon cheeseburger the best in the city had an instant, and huge, impact on her business.

(And that burger was no accident; Weinberg and her chef Jennifer Puccio did loads of food trend research before opening, looking for what local diners really get passionate about. Which turned out to be, unsurprisingly, pizza and burgers.)

For all that Yelp's Joesten had to say about his company's proprietary, scam-searching algorithm for rating and ranking user reviews, a smart professional critic whose palate and judgment you trust is still a more reliable guide than a blogger hoping for perks and freebies, or an anonymous poster with any number of axes to grind.

And there's the other bonus: good writing! Among all the long-winded digressions about data mining and statistical analytics (which got many of the industry types and interested foodies fidgeting in their seats and yes, probably checking their tweets), no one mentioned the enjoyment value of professional criticism until the closing minutes, when audience member Jan Newberry, food editor of San Francisco magazine, noted that no one goes to Yelp for the prose, whereas good criticism is also good writing--entertaining, informative, able to put a restaurant, its chef, and its scene into a social, gastronomic, and cultural context.

(As a former restaurant critic for both the Bay Guardian and San Francisco magazine, I was often asked how I "got paid to eat." My response? I didn't get paid to eat, I got paid to write. Eating was just what I happened to write about.)

Still, there was lots to say about how a restaurant, or a chef, can build a community and a brand through judicious use of Twitter, blogs, Yelp, and more.

As Weinberg noted, "It's a free 24 hour a day focus group. Looking on places like Yelp, you can start to see trends. If 10 posts in a week tell you the soup isn't so great or the bartender was rude, you know that maybe it's time to get a better soup, or a better bartender."

Said Lewis, "You can use to engage your customers, start a direct dialogue with guests, ask for feedback rather than it getting blasted all over the internet. It can be great for customer touch-back, especially when they've given you positive comments. Thanking someone for a positive post builds loyalty instantly."

According to Lewis, customers love to get a glimpse "behind the velvet rope," and hearing that the sommelier is really jazzed about a new Cab or that the pastry chef is doing something fantastic with the season's first pluots can galvanize these would-be insiders into showing up that very night.

But how much transparency is too much?

Said Lucchesi, to much laughter from the audience, "You know, Eric Ripert of Le Bernardin in NYC just started tweeting. Now, he's James Bond suave, with an olive-oil French accent, probably one of the world's most respected chefs. But his tweets read like a 12-year-old girl is writing them!"

The Mayor was a no-show to the Grand Tent's grand ribbon-cutting shortly after the panel concluded, but that didn't stop the crowd from oohing over the dramatic sabering of a magnum of Domaine Chandon, or the star-studded posse of chefs and restauranteurs clustered around the thick orange ribbon. And with a scissor and a snip, the crowd surged forward to check out Friday's main event, "Hog in the Fog," a food-and-cocktail walk-around under a big white tent in Union Square.

It helped to like pork in all its myriad forms, since besides the figs, grapes, and Cowgirl Creamery cheeses offered at the CUESA table, there was almost nothing for vegetarians, save a lot of tasty cocktails. Table after table offered pork cured, pork braised, pork shredded, or pork confit'd.

No pork crudo was in evidence, but there were plenty of jiggly slices of "head and hoof" terrine topped with pickled mustard seeds. (Made by Chris Cosentino of Incanto, as if you had to ask).

Poggio's Peter McNee laid out a lavish spread of salume, all made from a single pig, including sliced "pigstrami," mortadella, chocolate-brown "bloodella," and more, plus poached cotechino sausage over lentils (a classic Bolognese pairing) and fermented summer sausage on sauerkraut.

Homer Simpson would have been in heaven ("Porkchops and bacon, my two favorite animals!") but after the sixth or seventh porky bite, the octopus tentacles made by A16's Liza Shaw starting looking mighty good.

Nicolette Manescalchi, Liza Shaw and Ross Wunderlich

Why octopus? "Well, I love squid, octopus, all that stuff." said Shaw. Sometimes you have to choose between cooking for the people or cooking for chefs. Today, I decided to cook for the chefs. The people will follow!"

And her octopus tentacles on a stick, with slippery onion and a vivid, herby green-tomato salsa verde, were double-plus good.

You could wash down all that pork with many different cocktails, as long as your taste ran to tart, dry, and spicy. San Francisco bartenders continue to love their bitters, from the aromatic bitters (made from cinnamon, allspice, cardamom, and cassia) in the Rye Buck (Wild Turkey, house-made ginger syrup, lime) from Rye to the orange bitters in the cayenne sugar-rimmed Smoking Gun (Combier orange liqueur, Hennessey Black cognac, smoked peach puree) from Otis.

Everything seemed to have lemon or lime, ginger or cinnamon, plus a dash of herbal/anise flavor, in the form of Chartreuse, Herbsaint, or absinthe. Acknowledging that bartenders have their groupies and their name-brand just like chefs, each bar table had a board announcing the bartender's name and his (yes, they were all male) liquor of choice above the table.

The next morning, it was time for the Anolon Chef Challenge: Restaurant Family Feud (Delfina vs. Spruce), hosted by the Food Network's Aida Mollenkamp and judged by Jan Newberry, Steffan Terje (Perbacco, Barbacco) and Chronicle editor Miriam Morgan. The same conference room was now a Top Chef-style kitchen, with portable cooktop (but no running water), myriad bottles of wine and olive oil, and both a secret ingredient and a mystery basket of seasonal produce, courtesy of CUESA.

The secret ingredient? Local sustainable seafood, including Monterey Bay squid, sardines, and sole. The produce basket had just about everything you could find at Ferry Plaza: tomatoes of all sizes and colors, new potatoes, corn, herbs, figs, nectarines, melons, plums, onions, leeks, and more. The challenge? Three courses, one hour, two chefs on each team.

Mark Sullivan from Spruce

As you might imagine, chefs know how to focus, and halfway through their allotted time, you could hone a Wusthof knife off the single-minded attention beaming down from Delfina's Craig Stoll and Anthony Strong and Spruce's Mark Sullivan and Ben Cohn.

Craig Stoll from Delfina

They had little time or energy for chit-chat, which left Mollenkamp to carry the show, without TV's benefit of tomato-chopping close-ups or suspense-building commercial breaks. But the judges did chime in here and there, as when Mollenkamp asked Terje about his favorite summer produce.

"Summer is hard for me," Terje admitted. "It's like culinary ADD. Winter is more forgiving. Now, when something hits the market, you have to be ready for it right away."

Delfina dishes

The final menus? For Delfina, handmade tonarelli pasta with sardines, fennel, grapes, capers, and toasted breadcrumbs, followed by an impromptu toss of charred peppers, anchovies, and poached squid with pureed and diced tomatoes, lemon, capers and olives, and finally rolled sole poached with fish fumet, white wine, and herbs over tomatoes stewed in tomato juice and camomile tea.

Spruce dishes

For Spruce, the meal began with a clear tomato-water gazpacho with diced tomatoes and mint, followed by seared sardine over a pork-and-tomato broth with peppers and smoked paprika, then poached sole and squid with leeks, potatoes, and a basil pistou.

The winner? By just the smallest of margins, Delfina. The audience cheered, the chefs toasted each other with well-deserved beers, and the audience, tantalized by unbearably delicious aromas (but no tastes) during the past two hours, headed to the Grand Tent for another chef-and-cocktail go-round.

SF Chef 2010, Seminar - Going whole hog. Stephen Gerike cutting off the trotters. Tom Pizzica (left) assisted. Photo by bonnibella

Thursday's SF Chefs Whole Hog seminar mixed savory porcine dishes with butchery and cooking demos. The event was geared toward restaurant professionals, and honed in on how chefs and restaurant owners can purchase and use an entire hog while making money. Guests arrived to the Westin St. Francis hotel room by a sweet, BBQ nuanced smell which served as a preview for the dishes to come. Chef Stephen Gerike did most of the butchery, and is from the National Pork Board, a sponsor. “Unemployed Chef” Tom Pizzica assisted. Pizzica lives in “a one bedroom San Francisco apartment” and was a finalist on The Next Food Network Star.

Gerike and Pizzica prepared and butchered half of the pig on Wednesday, so that food would be ready to eat for the guests. They acknowledged that curing the hog is one popular use of whole animals, but that they had cooked up other options, including: Philly style roast pork sandwich with provolone and broccoli rabe; Trotter log (also known as foot cheese) and Achiote marinated al pastor.

Trotter log. Photo by bonnibella

Chef Gerike says to avoid watery, sticky, or spongy pork. Ph level is important, and reddish, firm meat is the ideal to look for. Mid-way through the demo, questions from attendees ranged from “What is the difference between a picnic ham and a butt shoulder,” to “What will I pay for pork?” Gerike also debated the cooking temperatures, pointing out that the foodservice required temp is lower than that for consumers. “There’s a reason why people find pork to be tough… if it’s been cooked too long, it will be tough. Keep it to 137 degrees and allow it to rest for three minutes before serving. Then it will get to the medium temp you want, of 145 degrees.”

Of all the 90+ slides Chef Gerike showed, one for a dish called the Bacon Turtle, made out of bacon, seemed to garner a mix of interest and humor from guests. Scrapple, a dish popular in other parts of the country, was described as a mix of pork heart, liver, and kidney that is braised. It is then strained and the meat is pulled and blended with buckwheat, polenta, and sage. After being refrigerated, it is fried, usually for breakfast. Gerike said, “It’s the same thing as boudin, or black pudding. A version in Cincinnati calls for oatmeal.”

Cerdo al pastor. Photo by bonnibella

Chef Pizzica used achiote, dried peppers, toasted pasillas, ancho, clove, cumin, tomato, and onion to marinate the al pastor pork. Marinating for 24 hours infuses the meat with flavor and also tenderizes it. The resulting tacos were made from leg meat that Pizzica pronounced to be “mucho sabor.” The samples were happily gobbled as soon as the waitstaff set plates in front of guests; one napkin was barely enough for the red and sometimes oily hands that followed. Chef Pizzica recommended using an extremely hot char-broiler to cook the meat, and using reduced marinade while cooking for added flavor. The one hard and fast rule Chef Pizzica recommended for cooking with pork was using salt and pepper to season. “You can’t do pork without salt and pepper,” he said.

Mary Ladd is a staff member for the SF Chefs 2010 events.