Before you make a reservation at Haven, the latest addition to chef / restauranteur Daniel Patterson's growing restaurant group, be sure you are hungry. Very hungry. Once you enter the beautiful wooden door that leads into the dining room, you'll have to put your New Year's fitness resolutions temporarily on hold. Your resolve will most likely waver once you scan Haven's menu and start eyeing the roasted bone marrow and braised lamb.

Located in Jack London Square opposite Bocanova and right next to Heinold's First And Last Chance Saloon, Haven settled into its space in mid-December of last year. In the main dining area, you can take in the view of the waterfront through its large wall of windows, or tuck yourself away in a more intimate corner of the bar.

Dark brown linen coasters, miniature tableaus of air plants, candles and ceramic salt cellars along with Heath dinnerware are the small formal touches that enliven the warm, natural decor of the rustic-modern space.

The ample wooden bar extends the length of the dining room and flanks the kitchen. If you enjoy a more theatrical dining experience, aim for a seat that affords you a view of the chef and her staff busy at work. We arrived early on a Monday night and were able to sit directly in front of the kitchen humming along with activity.

Executive Chef Kim Alter (with the purple head scarf) and her staff at Haven

I mentioned earlier that it's important to be as hungry as possible when dining at Haven. This is absolutely necessary if you choose the "Let Us Cook For You" option -- as my husband and I did -- and allow Executive Chef Kim Alter to spoil you with her 4 or 5-course family-style menu that's available for a table of two or more ($55/person for 4-courses, $65/person for 5). We elected to go with the decadent 5-course meal as this would give us a broad survey of Haven's offerings.

The meal began with a simple and delicious amuse bouche of a white anchovy on a crostini with celery root puree. This was followed by a light, creamy fennel soup made with Meyer lemon preserves and pearl onions. The server poured each portion into our bowls tableside, which had been "washed with absinthe" for additional hints of anise.

I hope the housemade Parker House rolls that arrived in between the next course remain a staple of the restaurant, as they're probably the best ones you'll ever sink your teeth into. Salty and toasted on the outside, soft and pillowy on the inside, they were the perfect accompaniment to the Little Gem salad tossed in a gorgonzola dressing with celery, jalapeno peppers, and sprinkled with fried chicken skin. A small galvanized bucket filled with deep-fried caramelized Brussels sprouts seasoned with lime, mint and garlic had a delightful sweet and sour tang that reminded us of British "chips" with malt vinegar.

Following these three delicious renditions of classic comfort food was a twist on pasta carbonara. Haven's version with housemade fettucine noodles uses a thick-cut bacon that imparts a deep smoky flavor to the sauce.

Next up was a bowlful of clams with seared turnips and garlic toast, which we used to sop up the rich bacon and bourbon broth. A side of crispy, mildy spicy fingerling potatoes with seaweed, shiro soy, miso -- an unusual combination that worked well -- completed this course.

Here's where we began to feel quite stuffed, but there was more to come. The best dishes of the evening were served to us personally by Chef Alter: a sous vide and confit-prepared chicken (a mix of breast and leg/wing, respectively) with a generous portion of wheat berries and roasted parsnips and carrots in a sweet Banyuls-foie sauce, along with a whimsical reinvention of shepherd's pie prepared with ground pork, topped with a delicate rutabaga-derived foam and fried fingerling potatoes. And there was a savory baked cauliflower dish (garnished with a few raw florets) made with cheese from Andante Dairy and served in a cazuela.

Chef Kim Alter plotting to fill our stomachs to the limit with dessert

We had barely recovered from our main courses when the magnificent dessert courses arrived. The intermezzo was a grapefruit sherbet atop a tarragon custard, but the show-stopper was the baked California. Swirled with airy fennel meringue, filled with vanilla ice cream that rested on a lemony cookie crust and served with dollops of citrus and avocado, it was a sweet homage to native flavors.

When we finally put our forks down and savored the last bite of baked California, we had that same, blissfully full feeling as if it were Thanksgiving in January. Our hearty 5-course meal would have been plenty for three, so next time we'll sample some small plates or bring back a group to share in the bounty. And hats off to Chef Alter for a fine meal; I'm looking forward to the ongoing evolution of Haven.

Haven
Address: map
44 Webster Street
Oakland, California 94612
Phone: (510) 663-4440
Facebook: Haven Oakland
Twitter: @havenjacklondon
Hours:
5 pm - 10 pm
Friday & Saturday
5 - 11 pm

The Bay Area has been at the forefront of a coffee renaissance in recent years, and local boutique companies like Blue Bottle, Ritual and Four Barrel are now spreading their roasting philosophy -- and their coffee beans -- across the country. KQED's Forum talks to some of the entrepreneurs behind the so-called "third-wave" coffee movement.

Original Broadcast: Mon, Jan 9, 2012 -- 10:00 AM

Host: Scott Shafer

Guests:
• Eileen Hassi, owner of Ritual Coffee Roasters
• James Freeman, owner of Blue Bottle Coffee
• Jeremy Tooker, owner of Four Barrel Coffee

Related BAB posts:
3rd Wave Coffee Roasting in the Bay Area
Bay Area Coffee Roasters: Food & Wine This Week

I’ll admit it: my kitchen obsessions aren’t hip. If they were, I’d have a cleaver slung on my hip, bacon smoking in the backyard, a burr grinder and Hario pour-over kettle on the counter for brewing my home-roasted coffee beans, kimchee fermenting stinkily on the porch next to a carboy of triple-hopped homemade ale. Meat, salt, booze, caffeine, and above all, funky slow rot: such is DIY hipness, 2012 style.

But the thing is, I’m a nice Jewish girl unmoved by bacon’s siren call. Beer is not my drink, madly bitter beer even less so. My nerves are easily unhinged by San Francisco’s high-octane third-wave coffee; what I need in the morning is not a tepid single mug brewed at tai-chi speed but a tall French press of good decaf poured three-to-one with hot milk. While I love fermented products in theory (and on my plate when I’m out of the house), uncontrolled bacterial action in my own kitchen unnerves me. I can taste mold at fifty paces; blue cheese and all its green-streaked brethren revolts me.

Instead, I have this thing for grain. For wheat, in particular, and how uncool is that, in this moment of all things gluten-free? I love windmills and grist mills run by water wheels. I’ll find any excuse to detour to a good bread bakery. Oven spring—when a previously sluggish loaf of dough suddenly leaps up to double its size during baking—strikes joy in my heart. I will never buy a bread machine, not so long as I have a bowl, my hands, and an oven.

It really does make a difference, getting fresh, good flour for your bread baking. Standard, brand-name paper-bagged whole wheat from the supermarket: fine, just fine. But fresh from the mill, especially if it’s from recently, locally grown grain: well, that’s going to make you some amazing bread.

I learned this first hand when I worked as an apprentice at the CASFS educational farm at UC Santa Cruz. We sowed a quarter-acre with three strains of heirloom wheat, chewed the milky kernels as they swelled, dried, and turned golden in the sun, scythed the stalks by hand then fed them into a noisy threshing machine. The result? Buckets of whole wheat berries, ground into flour and baked into the most alive bread I’ve ever made.

This fondness for mills started in childhood, with summertime visits to the Old Mill on Nantucket, whose sweeping sails dominated the low-slung island's horizon from any direction. In Minneapolis, I toured the excellent Mill City Museum, on the site of a formerly dilapidated flour mill, then brought home bags of heirloom wheat berries and freshly ground flour and polenta from the Mill City Farmers' Market. In Arkansas, I made dozens of biscuits from cornmeal ground at the War Eagle Grist Mill, a historic water-wheel mill that still produces dozens of flours (the mystique may have been upped by getting to drive there in a purple Lotus with the mill's current owner, now in her 70s). Through the Lee Brothers’ Boiled Peanuts catalog, I’ve special-ordered Guilford Mills’ remarkable grits, which are stone-ground in a North Carolina grist mill dating back to the 18th century.

And here, we are lucky enough to have the Bale Grist Mill, right next to the lovely, hike-worthy Bothe Napa State Park, tucked among the vineyards, oaks, and manzanitas, right off Highway 29 between Calistoga and St. Helena. The mill was fully restored a few years ago, and is open for milling tours most weekends, three dollars well spent.

If you were the kid (or grownup) who pored over David Macauley’s The New Way Things Work, this is the tour for you. Milling with a water wheel makes basic physics come to rattling life, energy and motion transformed through simple engineering into productivity. It’s also a delight for grammar and etymology geeks: little did I know how many common words and phrases--“nose to the grindstone,” “cockeyed,” “fair to middling”--derive from milling. You put your nose to the grindstone to sniff for ozone, the smell you get in the air after a lightning strike; the scent of it can mean that the two millstones have become unbalanced, knocking into each other and striking sparks from the friction. Fair to middling are the two central grades of flour to emerge from the bolter, bookended by fine and coarse; if you’re feeling “fair to middling,” you’re right in the middle, so-so.

But now is the time to get to this mill for a visit. As well-loved as the grist mill is, its future is uncertain, thanks to stringent cutbacks in California's parks budget. As detailed in a recent Napa Register article about local park closures, both Napa Bothe Park and the Bale Grist Mill could be closed to the public as early as February, unless two local park groups, the Napa County Regional Parks and Open Space District and the Napa Valley State Parks Association, get approval (and funding) to take over the parks from the state this spring. It's ironic, of course, that such a historical resource could shut down just as a groundswell of consumer interest in local grains and grain products is rising.

For the moment, the Bale Grist Mill sells polenta, cornmeal, spelt, buckwheat, rye, and whole-wheat flours, all ground in the mill. Although, for liability reasons, the flours are marked "not for human consumption," the millers are scrupulous about cleanliness and sanitation during the milling and storage process. Any grain or flour touched or spilled during the milling process goes into a big bag marked "sweeps." A local farmer picks all the sweeps once a week, a welcome addition to his pigs' daily mash. Using both raw wheat kernels (wheat berries) and the mill's coarse, bran-rich bread flour, I made a dense, almost scone-like whole grain loaf inspired by the recipe for "Holly's Whole Wheat Bread" in Romney Steele's book My Nepenthe.

Wheat Berry Bread with Fruit and Nuts
Adjust the combination of dried fruit, seeds, and nuts depending on what's in your pantry, and what you like best. Dried persimmons, often available at Bay Area farmers' markets at this time of year, add bright color and a pleasant sweet chewiness to the finished bread.

Yield: 2 loaves
Prep Time: 90 minutes, plus 3 hours' rising time
Cook Time: 45 to 60 minutes
Total Time: 2 hours, 15 to 30 minutes, plus 3 hours' rising time

Ingredients:
1/2 cup whole raw wheat or spelt berries
3 cups water
1 1/2 cups whole milk
3 tablespoons butter
1/3 cup honey
1 package (2 1/2 tsp) active dry yeast, or 1 oz fresh (cake) yeast
5 1/2 cups whole-wheat flour, plus more for the work surface
2 tbsp ground flax seed (optional)
2 teaspoons salt
1 cup raisins, dried cranberries, or chopped dried apricots or persimmons, soaked in hot water to cover for 10 minutes if very dry or wizened
1/4 cup unsalted sunflower or pumpkin seeds, plus 2 tablespoons for sprinkling, lightly toasted
1/2 cup hazelnuts, pecans, or walnuts, lightly toasted and roughly chopped

Preparation:
1. Cover wheat berries with 3 cups water in a medium saucepan. Over medium heat, bring to simmer. Reduce heat, cover, and cook gently for 1 hour, until berries have softened and are tender to the bite but not mushy. They will absorb most of the water; drain any excess in a colander. (Step 1 can be done up to 4 days before you make your bread; store cooked and drained wheat berries in the refrigerator until needed.)

2. In a medium saucepan, heat milk until just beginning to bubble around the edges. Add butter, honey, and salt. Stir to dissolve, then let cool until tepid.

3. In a large bowl, sprinkle or crumble yeast over 1/4 cup lukewarm water. Let stand for a few minutes, then whisk vigorously to dissolve any remaining yeast. Beat in the milk mixture and 5 cups of the flour, mixing to form a soft dough. Stir in wheat berries, raisins or other dried fruit, 1/4 cup of sunflower or pumpkin seeds, and nuts.

4. Sprinkle flour over your counter or work table. Scoop the dough onto the work surface and knead for about 6 minutes, adding more flour (up to an additional 1/2 cup) in increments to keep dough from getting too sticky. Various errant mix-ins will try to push their way to freedom by popping out of the dough as you knead. Don’t let them get away with this; push them back into the dough and continue kneading until dough feels elastic and smooth.

5. Wash and butter your large bowl. Put the dough back into it, turning it over to coat with butter. Cover with a clean damp kitchen towel. Let rise in a warm place for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, or in a cool place for 3 hours.

6. Deflate the dough by sinking a fist into it. Divide in half and shape into two loaves. Grease two 8"-by-5" loaf pans. Put shaped dough into pans, cover with damp towel, and let rise again for another 45 to 60 minutes, until loaves have doubled in bulk.

7. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Brush the top of each loaf with milk and sprinkle with sunflower seeds. Bake loaves for 45 to 50 minutes, until well-browned. Let cool in pans for 15 minutes, then remove from pans and continue cooling on a rack.

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.

Chef Jacques Pépin demonstrates how to clean and prepare mussels. He is joined by his daughter, Claudine on the set of his TV series Essential Pépin.

Simon Doonan. Photo: Albert Sanchez

Simon Doonan (Twitter @simondoonan) has long rocked the window dressing for Barneys New York, where he is currently the Creative Ambassador-at-Large. Doonan--who is known as much for his wit as his fashion prowess--has appeared on Iron Chef America, America’s Next Top Model, and VH1’s I Love the 80s series and is a columnist for Slate.com. He is the author of the new book Gay Men Don’t Get Fat, (Blue Rider Press, $24.95) which is a twist on the 1970s book Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche and the more recent book French Women Don’t Get Fat.

The book premise?

“There are only two food groups, straight and gay, and a balanced diet (and the concordant trim figure) means some of both.”

His other books include Wacky Chicks and Eccentric Glamour.

The fashion phenom married his partner, designer Jonathan Adler in California in 2008, and the two reside in New York City. He told Bay Area Bites that “I cannot imagine living anywhere else, except maybe Fresno which people tell me is lovely in the springtime.” Doonan will be signing books at Barneys San Francisco on Saturday, January 21 from 2 to 4 p.m.

What are the rules for eating gay?
The trick is to balance your gay food and your straight food. It's about equilibrium. 
Straight men get fat because they eat too much lardy straight food. On the other hand, if you eat too much gay food you will.... Simply put: eat too many macaroons and you will probably go into a diabetic coma.
 
How do gay bear men fit into this?
Gay men do get fat and they are called BEARS. I have an entire chapter -- a chunky chapter -- devoted to Bears. It's called Operation Goldilocks. Guess who's Goldilocks? Oui, c'est moi!
 
...and what are the guidelines for eating straight?
Straight food is often thick and phallic and protein-rich. Think Burritos.

...lesbian?
Lesbian food is organic and honest and peasant-y.  Think organic olive oil. Think trusty community tables. Think crusty whole-meal bread. 

What is your typical weekday breakfast, lunch and dinner (at home or on the go)?
For breakfast I eat very fibrous hetero granola with a handful of blueberries to add a little gay panache. For lunch I usually ingest a big bowl of soup. This has given rise to rumors in the Barneys office that I wear dentures and can only eat soft food. It's not true. For dinner we often hit one of our local glam eateries. Il Cantanori on 10th street is a fave.
 
Where did you celebrate when you were married in California in 2008?
We had dinner at Chez Panisse and Alice picked up the tab, which was incredibly sweet of her. I worship her. Her food is, and has always been, the perfect combo of gay and straight -- hearty protein with fluffy veggies.
  
Guacamole shows up on San Francisco taqueria menus everywhere. You say it’s a no-no...why?
Let me put it to you this way: if you were to get kidnapped in Mexico and they fed you on guacamole for a week, you would explode out of your holding cell. THAT's how fattening it is.
 
What are your favorite San Francisco food spots? How gay/straight are the menus there?
I love Zuni -- a perfect balance of gay and straight, ditto the clientele.
J'adore Boulette's Larder -- fresh and chic, with a top-note of lesbian.
And of course, Chez Panisse, where it all started.

 How did you come up with the book idea?
I thought it was time for me to take all my gay nuggets and nuances of wisdom and fling them at the straight world. I want to liberate the women -- and men too -- and show them how to live with the fearless stylish bravado of we homos...and weee homos like Me. 
 
I was scolded for asking for a beer at a SF fundraiser populated by gay men. The crowd was enjoying vodka and vodka cocktails. What are your thoughts on alcohol?
I am a tea-totaller. Alcohol scares me. When people get boozed up they start doing insane things and, worse still, eating everything in sight. Naughty naughty.

What can Bay Area folks expect at your book signing on Jan 21? 
I love SF and am always happy to come visit. I will be radiating gay positivity.

What’s next for you?
My Jonny (Jonathan Adler) has won a design award in Madrid and so we are zipping off to collect it in February. I have not been to Spain in decades. Am looking forward to assessing the gay-ness of the paella.

Chef Jacques Pépin demonstrates how to debone a quail. This video clip is a web-exclusive that was taped during the filming of Jacques' series Essential Pépin.

Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë Francois of Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day fame (and the followup, Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day), have just put out the third book in their wildly popular series: Artisan Pizza and Flatbread in Five Minutes a Day. The duo, which consists of a medical doctor (Jeff) and an award-winning pastry chef (that would be Zoë), have spread their wings and launched an exploration of global flatbreads and the world of flavors that can be paired with them.

Jeff and Zoë were kind enough to take a break from their busy book tour to answer a few questions for Bay Area Bites readers. Here's a peek into what inspired their international journey, and how they spent an entire year eating countless pizzas. Oh, the sacrifice!

This is your third book. Now that you've covered Artisan Bread In Five Minutes a Day and Healthy Bread In Five Minutes a Day, how did you come up with the idea for pizza and flatbreads?


Jeff: It seemed to us that the country was being swept up into a high-end pizzeria craze.  These places are popping up all over the country, claiming Pizza Vera Napoletana status and all that, but it's a pretty expensive night out and our readers want something they can do at home.  Plus, we already knew that the pizzas and flatbreads were clearly the fastest things in our books.  After you stretch them flat, they're ready for the oven.  That's not true for loaf breads, which need to rest for 45 to 90 minutes after shaping.  So pizza and flatbread works for a busy weeknight.

Zoë: Pizza is one of my favorite foods and this project was an excuse to eat it at every meal. My sons love this book best of all, even after two years of serving them pizza for breakfast, lunch and dinner. In fact, my oldest son now makes his own, start to finish. It is an excellent way to get kids in the kitchen.
 

How did working on this book differ from working on the others?


Jeff: It meant thinking back to all my travel experiences around the Mediterranean -- so for me, that's Spain, Morocco, Italy, and France.  When I travel, I eat, and that's how I categorize everything.  This book was basically a travelogue for me, because these breads originated in the Middle East, and spread by water.  It's my favorite part of the world.  

Zoë: I took my family on a research trip to Turkey, Greece and Italy. We ate our way through the countries and then I came home to recreate the flavors. It was so inspiring and I discovered a whole new world of spices being in Turkey. This book is a real adventure of flavors, beyond the pizzas that we all know and love.
 

Besides the obvious pizza topic, how is Artisan Pizza and Flatbread in Five Minutes a Day different from Artisan Bread and Healthy Bread? How is it similar?


Jeff: What's similar is that we start with dough that we optimized for long-term storage in the fridge-- up to two weeks for doughs without eggs or dairy.  That's what changes everything, because you mix once, and bake up to eight half-pound pizzas, and it makes doing this nightly possible.  And we have whole grain and gluten-free options in the book.  

So what's different?  For one thing, it's a whole book of offbeat and familiar pizza toppings, fully explored.  Then, about the doughs -- for the whole grain, we didn't need vital wheat gluten for this book (as we did in Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day) because these don't have to support a tall loaf, so less structure is needed.  And in our white dough recipes, we ventured into the territory of true Italian-style flours and how to approximate them with more readily-available stuff.  

And, in this book, we wanted to get into our readers' entire meal, so there are more soups and dips than in our other books.  These breads can form the basis for everything you eat. 

Zoë: We also try to make our books a tool to help people feel confident about baking everything from simple breads to a roasted-vegetable stuffed, Italian torta. Our Tips and Techniques chapters are as valuable as the recipes themselves. We want to teach people to bake, so they share the joy we get from it.
 
For more about Jeff and Zoë, you can visit their blog, artisanbreadinfive.com. And try their gluten-free brioche recipe!

Where does inspiration come from? I don't know what Beethoven would say, but for me, inspiration pops up out of the blue when I'm writing recipes. Of course, during recipe creation, like for any creative work, the brain is always humming away, rummaging through sense memories, taste memories, old cookbooks, dishes tasted a dozen years ago and filed away under "try to reproduce," descriptions from novels, bits of poetry, mental snapshots, things learned in first-job kitchens 20 years ago.

One morning, I was gathering the ingredients to cater a lunch for a women's leadership seminar at the Oakland Center for Spiritual Living. Some of the attendees were vegetarian, others dairy-free. I'd planned some nice ladies'-lunch items--the chicken salad with curry and mango chutney I'd made by the bucketful at a fancy deli in the mid-80s, a vegan quinoa-adzuki bean salad I'd created for this column last year--when the sunny day suddenly turned chilly and overcast. Soup weather, my mother would call it, and so tomato soup, with its cozy, home-from-school associations, seemed like a natural fit. But it wasn't summer, and the fresh tomatoes available were mealy, Mexican, and overpriced. How could I make a canned-tomato soup that didn't taste like marinara sauce, or worse, have that unmistakable tinny flavor to it?

Roasting the tomatoes in plenty of olive oil concentrated their flavor, and warming, India-meets-North African spices like coriander, mustard seed, and cumin took them out of the pizza-sauce realm. Instead of cream, a rich slug of coconut milk would balance out the tomatoes' acidity, as would a drizzle of honey at the end. But what wintery thing would give the soup some heft? Some sweetness and ballast? I was driving around Lakeshore, looking for parking, when the solution suddenly turned on in my head, just like the proverbial light bulb: sweet potatoes! Perfect color, perfect earthy sweetness, and the starch, once pureed, would turn the soup to velvet.

These roadside bursts of brilliance don't always pan out, but thankfully, this one did, and the soup turned out to be the star of the luncheon. In fact, I could have skipped both salads, left behind the fruit and cookies and just ladled out big bowls of soup, breadsticks on the side, to make everyone very, very happy.

So, why this soup for New Year's Day? Well, it's a good pantry soup. Canned tomatoes, chicken stock, sweet potatoes...you probably have all these around from the holidays' cooking sprees. The spices can be rearranged depending on your taste and what's in the pantry. It's good for you, a welcome, spice-bright visitation of veggies after all those rich and indulgent holiday meals. You can easily make it vegan by using vegetable stock and leaving out the honey (or substituting agave or brown-rice syrup).

It's easy to throw together, and it doesn't take long, and the recipe's easily doubled or tripled, should you have a lot of friends and family on the couch. And it's good for sipping any time of day, whether as a warm-up after a brisk walk or while wallowing in that all-day Downton Abbey marathon. Plus, what better way to start the New Year than with a burst of inspiration?

Sweet Potato-Coconut Soup

Yield: 6-8 servings
Prep Time: 25 minutes, plus 45 minutes roasting time
Cook Time: 45 minutes
Total Time: 1 hour, 10 minutes, plus 45 minutes roasting time

Ingredients:
1 28-oz can plum tomatoes, preferably organic
5 tbsp olive oil, divided
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1 large yellow onion, peeled and chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 tsp mustard seeds
1 1/2 tsp coriander seeds
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
pinch cayenne, or to taste
pinch cinnamon or 1 cinnamon stick
1 tbsp grated fresh ginger
grated rind and juice of 1 small orange or tangerine
2 medium sweet potatoes, chopped
4 cups chicken or vegetable broth
1 13.5 oz can coconut milk
1 tbsp honey, or to taste (agave syrup can be substituted for a vegan version)

Preparation:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Drain tomatoes, saving liquid. Halve tomatoes and spread out in a single layer in a non-reactive baking pan. Drizzle with 2 tablespoons olive oil and sprinkle generously with salt and pepper. Roast for 45 minutes, until tomatoes have shrunk slightly and begun to brown. Remove from oven and set aside.

2. In a small, heavy pan (cast iron is ideal) over medium heat, toast mustard, coriander, and cumin seeds until mustard seeds start to pop and spices smell fragrant.

3. In a deep, heavy-bottomed soup pot, heat remaining 3 tablespoon olive oil. Add onions and saute, stirring frequently, until onions are softened and translucent. Add garlic and toasted spices, and cook, stirring, for another minute.

4. Add cayenne, cinnamon, ginger, rind and juice, sweet potato chunks, and roasted tomatoes. Add reserved tomato liquid and broth. Bring to a gentle simmer, reduce heat, and partially cover. Cook for 45 minutes, or until potatoes are very soft.

5. Add coconut milk and honey to taste. Taste for seasoning; add salt if needed. Remove cinnamon stick, if using. Let cool for a few minutes, then puree until smooth using an immersion (stick) blender. If using a regular blender, let cool for another 10 minutes before pureeing.

6. Taste for seasoning, and add honey or salt as needed. Serve hot.

Next month, the Mission outpost of sausage and craft beer emporium Rosamunde Sausage Grill marks its third birthday. Partner-owner Josh Margolis shared some meaty updates with Bay Area Bites recently: plans for an East Bay Rosamunde location are in the works.

His longtime passion has been to open a beer restaurant, and he first came to San Francisco and worked at Postrio in 1990. The UC San Diego and Culinary Institute graduate is from Los Angeles, and gravitates to Saison and Belgian beer: “Duvel in the bottle is one of my go-to drinks.”

Margolis lives in the Bayview with his husband Raymond Lobato, who is a graphic designer, DJ, artist, and feng shui artist. The two have also lived in the Mission and Noe Valley. “We met in college and have been together 25 years... he DJs here on Friday nights. He did all the artwork. We've been married four times. In 1991, we became domestic partners. Then we did a ceremony in 2000. 2004 was the best one. We saw Gavin Newsom on the news. Then we got in line and we’re probably 80th or 90th in line at City Hall. The place was on fire! The energy and ceremonies were happening every 5 minutes. It was just the two of us, and we saw our old next-door neighbors. They took pics--via cell phone--and became our witnesses.”

How did you open Rosamunde? Any chance of bringing the Tuesday Rosamunde burger to the Mission?
I partnered with Jennifer Tucci to open the Mission one. We’ve decided to keep the Rosamunde burger at the Haight only. There is a steak sandwich now every day in the Mission. We started the steak sandwich in the summer, as well as a mushroom sandwich. Our vegetarian orders are significant, and we are one of the biggest destinations for veggie diners in the city.

Lady Gaga visited in August 2010. Do you get Gaga fans trying to see where Lady Gaga hung out?
People still ask about it. It was around three in the afternoon, and only a few people were around. She came in with her boyfriend and bodyguard and was wearing a red leotard outfit. She said to the bartender Claire, “I'm Gaga” and Claire told her, “I’m Claire.” Then Claire came into the office to look her up online. Gaga hung out, drank several glasses of white wine, and stayed for two to three hours. Apparently she was on her way from San Jose to dinner in the city. She wanted Mexican, and a friend told her to go to the Mission. She saw the sign for sausages, and decided to go to Rosamunde instead.

Raymond Lobato, Josh Margolis, Jennifer Tucci - Rosamunde First Year

What’s new at the restaurant?
We’re getting ready for our 3rd anniversary on January 18. There’ll be a party of some sort. Then, there’s SF Beer Week February 10-19. We’ll host some breweries and also have a beer drinking & sausage-eating contest that will be something classy. Teams of two will compete together. Rosamunde will choose the sausages cut in 1/2 while each team will choose a unique beer. Eat as many 1/2 sausage as you can with as much beer as you need to get it down in 15 minutes. The winner gets $100 in Rosamunde gift certificates. Everyone gets $1 off the winner’s beer choice the rest of the day or $2 for the beer choice with winner’s sausage choice. All contestants get a Rosamunde T-Shirt. Team signup begins January 25th at the Mission Street location.

What are your favorite spots to shop for food?
Rainbow is my standard go to for dairy, pantry, vinegars, oils and sauces.

Sun Fat Fish Market is the cleanest, nicest of all old time seafood shops. Since November 15, I’ve been visiting them every day. I’ve been eating a lot of crab.

On Saturdays, I go to the Alemany Farmers’ Market.

I also like the European Market on Clement. They have whole walls of refrigerated cured meats, salami, sausage, and things like that. They also bring in really good German bread. It’s frozen and they bake it off. That’s the only place in town you can get that. They cure and smoke own fish, salmon, white fish, herring.

Where are your favorite date spots?
Besides home?... We drive down to Santa Cruz and make a day of it. We usually take our bikes and ride on the north side of Santa Cruz. It’s such a beautiful place and one of the best times to go is not summer. On the way, our favorite lunch spot is Sam’s Chowder House in Half Moon Bay. I like both their red and white chowder, and fish and chips.

What is your favorite meal to have with your family?
I’m pretty famous for not cooking the same thing twice. Ever. Restaurants and farmers’ markets constantly inspire me. We may have pizza once a week at home, but I’ll never make the same pizza twice.

Do you have plans for the holidays?
Kathleen is my friend from San Diego. Together we make “Turkey Prince Edward”: take the skin off a turkey, and completely debone it. Lay the meat down on the turkey skin so that you basically make a roulade. You can do Turkey Prince Edward with two turkeys, rolled and stuffed with prunes, port and chestnut. Kathleen fed us when we were opening the new place (Mission Rosamunde).

"Turkey Prince Edward"

What’s your guiltiest food pleasure?
Which one should I choose? The burrito mojado al pastor at Taqueria Cancun is a huge, swimming in sauce delicious meat thing that you pay for later. Then there are super nachos, but I don’t treat myself to that anymore.