Michael Pollan. Photo: Alia Malley/michaelpollan.com

Listen to the Story from KQED’s Forum:
Original Broadcast: Thursday, May 16, 2013 — 10:00 AM

Host: Michael Krasny

Guest:

• Michael Pollan, professor of journalism at UC Berkeley and author of “Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation”

More info:

• MichaelPollan.com
• Some of My Best Friends Are Germs : NYTimes.com
• Fire, Water, Air, Earth: Michael Pollan Gets Elemental In ‘Cooked’ : NPRFood via BAB
• ‘Cooked’ by Michael Pollan : BostonGlobe.com
• Senate Agriculture Panel Approves Farm Bill : TheHill.com

Excerpted from COOKED by Michael Pollan. Reprinted by arrangement with The Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc. Copyright (c) Michael Pollan, 2013.

Guests and host Leslie Sbrocco tape the sixth episode of Season 8 of Check, Please! Bay Area at KQED.
Photo: Wendy Goodfriend

Check, Please! Bay Area’s sixth episode of Season 8 airs on Thursday May 16 at 7:30pm on KQED 9. View other airtimes and channels.

You can watch individual restaurant segments as well as view the entire episode online. The website provides restaurant information not specified on the show and you are free to share your opinions on the restaurants featured. This season, Leslie Sbrocco will continue to share wine (and spirits) tips with each episode.

The sixth episode of Season 8 features these restaurants: Hunan Home’s Restaurant (San Francisco), Radius Restaurant and Café (San Francisco) and Guerilla Café (Berkeley).

Fun in the greenroom after taping the sixth episode of Season 8 of Check, Please! Bay Area at KQED. Lyrics Born autographs Leslie’s foot. Photo: Wendy Goodfriend

Watch Leslie Sbrocco share her Wine Tips about Santa Barbara County Wines:

View more Wine Tips at Check, Please! Bay Area.

Vegetables. Photo: Getty Images

Six years ago, Mark Bittman was a full-time omnivore. But then a doctor told him to turn vegan for health reasons, and suddenly Mark found himself facing a world void of meat, dairy, or processed foods. So the New York Times food writer decided to personalize his vegan diet and allow for some cheating. He called it “Vegan Before 6,” or “VB6,” and says it helped him improve his health and focus on cooking at home. Mark Bittman talks about his new book, and how a full-time meat lover adapted to part-time veganism.

Host: Michael Krasny

Guest:

• Mark Bittman, food writer, columnist for The New York Times, and author of books including “VB6: Eating Vegan Before 6,” “Food Matters” and “How to Cook Everything.”

More info:
• Next Meal: Engineering Food : A half-hour documentary from KQED Science
• VB6: Eat Vegan Before 6:00 to Lose Weight and Restore Your Health . . . for Good : amazon.com

Guests and host Leslie Sbrocco tape the fifth episode of Season 8 of Check, Please! Bay Area at KQED.
Photo: Wendy Goodfriend

Check, Please! Bay Area’s fifth episode of Season 8 airs on Thursday May 9 at 7:30pm on KQED 9. View other airtimes and channels.

You can watch individual restaurant segments as well as view the entire episode online. The website provides restaurant information not specified on the show and you are free to share your opinions on the restaurants featured. This season, Leslie Sbrocco will continue to share wine (and spirits) tips with each episode.

The fifth episode of Season 8 features these restaurants: Bocanova (Oakland), Willi’s Wine Bar (Santa Rosa) and The Rotunda of Neiman Marcus (San Francisco).

Watch Leslie Sbrocco share her Wine Tips about Wines of Washington State:

View more Wine Tips at Check, Please! Bay Area.

Guests and host Leslie Sbrocco tape the fourth episode of Season 8 of Check, Please! Bay Area at KQED.

Check, Please! Bay Area’s fourth episode of Season 8 airs on Thursday May 2 at 7:30pm on KQED 9. View other airtimes and channels.

You can watch individual restaurant segments as well as view the entire episode online. The website provides restaurant information not specified on the show and you are free to share your opinions on the restaurants featured. This season, Leslie Sbrocco will continue to share wine (and spirits) tips with each episode.

The fourth episode of Season 8 features these restaurants: Pompei’s Grotto (San Francisco), Lillie Mae’s House of Soul Food (Santa Clara) and SPQR (San Francisco).

Host Leslie Sbrocco and guests from Check, Please! Bay Area relax in KQED’s greenroom

Watch Leslie Sbrocco share her Wine Tips about Napa Valley Wines:

View more Wine Tips at Check, Please! Bay Area.

Why won’t bacon die? Because it tastes so good. Photo: Rachael Myrow

Yes, pundits keep declaring bacon is boring, and therefore, dead. Over. Done, already. But bacon’s greasy grip on the American consciousness lives on.

As food writer Jason Sheehan of the Seattle Weekly put it,

“Bacon has not merely jumped the shark. Bacon has taken all the sharks, stuffed them with cupcakes, ice cream, sausage, lipstick, alarm clocks and mayonnaise, wrapped them in bacon, deep-fried them, then jumped that. Using a ramp made of bacon.”

In a time when people are cultivating their own yoghurt and milling their own flour, it’s a wonder everybody isn’t making their own bacon, the way Pati Palmer does in Cupertino.

It all started a couple of years ago. Driving her two teenagers around one morning, Palmer heard a KQED Forum segment on Do-It-Yourself projects, and the guest Sean Timberlake from Punk Domestics piqued her curiosity. Not long after, she was poking around on the group’s web site. “And I just decided ‘I gotta do bacon.’”

Off she went to Dittmer’s Gourmet Meats & Wurst-Haus in Los Altos for five pounds of pork belly. The family ate what they could, and froze the rest. Although, really, that shouldn’t have been necessary. Palmer guffaws. “A 14 year-old son? Come on! Bacon doesn’t last.”

Tasty as it is, Palmer’s not looking to start a new career in bacon. In case you’re thinking about it, bacon is not one of the approved foods under the new California Homemade Food Act. But…we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

The raw material, in this case, at Olivier’s Butchery in San Francisco. Photo: Rachael Myrow

First, you should try making bacon, and that involves buying pork belly. Bi-Rite butcher Zane Clark says some people do pause looking at a full pork belly. Especially if they don’t have ravenous teenagers living at home. Zane suggests sharing the love — and the saturated fat — with others. “You could have a bacon party with it,” he suggests.

Or…if you want to get all competitive about it, you could invite your DIY-inclined friends over for a piggy throw-down. “A bacon swap,” Clark says, “Which would be kind of cool.”

Clark says he’s seen no perceptible bump in pork belly sales specifically for bacon-making. Other Bay Area butchers report bacon stampedes, typically set off by a compelling food blog post, or TV show, or dare I suggest it, public radio segment. Once you’ve got the belly in your hot little hands, the next question is dry rub or brine.

Ian Marks is chef/owner of The Beast and The Hare in San Francisco’s Mission District. Photo: Rachael Myrow

Ian Marks of The Beast and the Hare in San Francisco brines. Downstairs in the restaurant’s basement, buckets of pork belly sit in brining solution for a week before he pulls them out, commenting:

“It’s basically a pickled piece of meat.”

Marks is coy about the actual recipe. Still, it’s fair to say his recipe works. He moves four slabs of bacon a week. The rest he sells to Drewes Brothers and Guerra’s Deli & Meats. In truth, much depends on your personal palate. The ingredients are about as basic as can be: “White sugar, brown sugar, molasses, honey, salt, and a little saltpeter.” That said, he must be doing something right to stand out in a crowded marketplace. San Francisco magazine last year declared his bacon the best in the Bay Area.

Out of the bucket and ready for the smoker. Photo: Rachael Myrow

From there, it’s on to the smoker, strewn liberally with apple wood chips. To meet the exigencies of the weekend brunch rush, he typically finishes cooking the bacon in the oven. After that, there’s yet another aesthetic decision to make – thin slices? Or thick? Marks slices super thick — just eight to ten slices a pound. “Otherwise, the molasses will start burning.”

Some folks are finicky about choosing locally-raised pork, but some of the best heritage breeds come from parts elsewhere. Marks gets his pork from Coleman Farms in Colorado: raised on pasture; no hormones or antibiotics.

“I definitely prefer a red pig, a Duroc pig, over a Berkshire pig,” Marks says. Why? He likes the nuttiness of the Duroc, and the sweetness of the meat. He makes his own charcuterie, too, and that’s also Duroc. That said, there’s something else. “I find Berkshire to be a little more barnyard-y smelling — and because I’ve noticed it, now I notice it every time.” There are a variety of heritage breeds to choose from, and heritage crossbreeds, too. Ask your favorite butcher where she’s sourcing her meat, but it’s worth noting she’ll also special order if you simply must try, for example, a Tamworth pig, instead of what she has in the case.

Where were we? Right, the stove. After Marks fries up a couple slices, we retire to one of the restaurant tables. Journalistic duty requires a taste test, you understand. Sure enough, as Marks promised, the bacon is salty, sweet and nutty. Some say brining makes the bacon taste more hammy, but there’s nothing hammy about this bacon. “Phenomenal,” I exclaim, and he grins with satisfaction.

Want to listen to the radio feature on bacon that aired on KQED? Here you go!

Off You Go To a Butcher Now:

• 4505 Meats, SF.
• Avedano’s, SF.
• Belcampo Meat Co., Larkspur.
• Bi-Rite Market, SF.
• Boccalone, SF.
• Dittmer’s Gourmet Meats & Wurst-Haus, Los Altos.
• Drewes Brothers, SF.
• Fatted Calf, Napa, SF and Berkeley.
• Guerra’s Deli & Meats, SF.
• The Local Butcher Shop, Berkeley.
• Marin Sun Farms, Point Reyes Station.
• Olivier’s Butchery, SF.
• Prime Smoked Meats, Oakland.
• Victorian Farmstead Meat Co., Sebastopol.

Previous Bay Area Bites bacon coverage: Makin’ Bacon in the Headlands

Guests and host Leslie Sbrocco tape the third episode of Season 8 of Check, Please! Bay Area at KQED.
Photo: Wendy Goodfriend

Check, Please! Bay Area’s third episode of Season 8 airs on Thursday April 25 at 7:30pm on KQED 9. View other airtimes and channels.

You can watch individual restaurant segments as well as view the entire episode online. The website provides restaurant information not specified on the show and you are free to share your opinions on the restaurants featured. This season, Leslie Sbrocco will continue to share wine (and spirits) tips with each episode.

The third episode of Season 8 features these restaurants: Maverick (San Francisco), Izakaya Yuzuki (San Francisco) and Souk Savanh (Oakland).

Watch Leslie Sbrocco share her Wine & Spirits Tips about Sake:

View more Wine Tips at Check, Please! Bay Area.

Guests and host Leslie Sbrocco tape the second episode of Season 8 of Check, Please! Bay Area at KQED. Photo: Wendy Goodfriend

Check, Please! Bay Area’s second episode of Season 8 airs on Thursday April 18 at 7:30pm on KQED 9. View other airtimes and channels.

You can watch individual restaurant segments as well as view the entire episode online. The website provides restaurant information not specified on the show and you are free to share your opinions on the restaurants featured. This season, Leslie Sbrocco will continue to share wine (and spirits) tips with each episode.

The second episode of Season 8 features these restaurants: Zaré at Fly Trap (San Francisco), Barrio Fiesta Restaurant (Milpitas) and Flora (Oakland).

Watch Leslie Sbrocco share her Wine & Spirits Tips about Whiskey:

View more Wine Tips at Check, Please! Bay Area.

Mary Roach. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

How does saliva work? Why doesn’t your stomach digest itself? And did constipation really kill Elvis? In her new book “Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal,” Mary Roach chronicles the surprisingly exciting journey that food undertakes in the human body. Roach joins KQED’s Forum to talk about everything you ever wanted to know — or might be disgusted to know — about the digestive process.

Host: Michael Krasny

Guest:

• Mary Roach, author of “Gulp” and other books including “Stiff,” “Spook,” “Bonk” and “Packing for Mars”

More info:
• About Mary Roach (MaryRoach.net)
• Mary Roach on NPR’s “Fresh Air”

Red Wine. Photo: Getty Images

Are you easily intimidated by snobby sommeliers? Flummoxed by phone-book-thick restaurant wine lists? Help is on the way. KQED’s Forum convenes a panel of Bay Area wine connoisseurs to talk about how to pour and taste wine, and how to select the perfect bottle at a store or restaurant.

Host: Scott Shafer

Guests:

• Debbie Zachareas, owner/partner of Ferry Plaza Wine and Oxbow Wine Merchant
• Doug Tomlinson, CEO of Vino Volo airport wine bars and shops (serving SFO), headquartered in San Francisco
• Jon Bonne, wine editor for The San Francisco Chronicle

More info:
• Wine Tips from Leslie Sbrocco (Check Please! Bay Area)