Tue, November 25, 2008
The California Report
Host: Rachael Myrow

Mobile Food Bank
Food banks across the state are struggling with longer lines and fewer donations this holiday season. But one Central Valley food bank will soon have a unique way to deliver fresh produce to rural communities.

Reporter:
• Sasha Khokha

Listen to the program

KQED Radio News: Mon, Nov 24, 2008 -- 5:30 PM

The Holidays and Food Bank Demands
This is the official start of our end-of-the-year holidays and is always the busiest time of year for food banks and soup kitchens. In the midst of a dire economic crisis, local food banks say they're seeing unprecedented demand for hot meals and groceries.

Host: Kelly Wilkinson

Guest:
Lynn Crocker, Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Clara and San Mateo counties

Listen to the program

Listen to Thanksgiving 2.0 on KQED's Forum.
Aired on KQED 88.5FM Mon, Nov 24, 2008 -- 10:00 AM

Thanksgiving 2.0
KQED talks with local Bay Area chefs about new twists on the traditional Thanksgiving meal and listeners call in to share their new traditions.
Host: Scott Shafer

Guests:
Charles Phan, owner and chef at The Slanted Door
Douglas Keane, chef at Cyrus
Joey Altman, chef at Miss Pearl's Jam House
Annie Somerville, chef at Greens

Fri, November 21, 2008
The California Report
Host: Scott Shafer

Butchery 101
Thanksgiving cooks will be brining, stuffing and roasting their way into next week's turkey feast. Foodies looking for a bigger culinary challenge can find it at a San Francisco market where home cooks can learn to be their own butcher.

Reporters:
• Lisa Morehouse

Listen to the program

Pick Your Own Chestnuts
If you're into eating locally grown food and plan on including roasted chestnuts with your holiday meals, we have good news for you. California is one of the few places in the U.S. where you can still find American chestnut trees. Four types of them grow on Skyline Chestnut Orchard -- a grove perched above the Northern California town of Woodside.

Listen to the program

Fri, Oct 17, 2008
The California Report
Host: Stephanie Martin

Melamine-Tainted Cookies
Food safety experts say one of the most serious issues concerning the appearance of melamine-tainted foods from China lies in finding what's contaminated -- and getting it off the market. We bought samples of popular Chinese-made cookies and had them tested for melamine. The results? Positive.
Reporters:
• Oanh Ha

Listen to the program

Mon, Oct 20, 2008
The California Report
Host: Rachael Myrow

Melamine Cookie Recall
We reported on Friday that our testing of a popular snack sold in California came back positive for the industrial chemical melamine. Lotte USA, the Michigan distributor of Koala's March cookies, has now announced through the FDA that it's recalling the product nationwide.
Reporters:
• Oanh Ha

Listen to the program

KQED's October issue of The Guide has a little piece about the new Jacques Pépin show, More Fast Food My Way, premiering this Saturday. I must to admit to snorting when I saw that the article's timeline of a day in the life of the show started at 10:30 a.m., because the back kitchen was there between 7:00 and 7:30 a.m., and Jacques himself was in not too much later.

We'd all be prepping, and he'd come in for his coffee blanched with Straus cream. After a few sips, he'd quietly look around at what we were doing and that's when we knew it was our time. Laura Pauli (Cucina Testa Rossa around these and other parts) told me that every morning working on this show -- she's worked on past shows with him -- was nothing less than a private cooking lesson with Jacques Pépin. She could not have been more right. Except, they weren't just cooking lessons, they were lifelong memories.

Going down the line, Jacques would answer any questions we had about the recipes and explain in detail -- often demonstrating or watching and correcting -- exactly how he wanted the fish portioned or how much of the broccoli he wanted trimmed. Because Jacques is the eternal teacher, he wanted to demonstrate his prepping and cooking techniques as much as possible on the show. He didn't want everything done for him, all neat and tidy and magic-of-television perfect. So, if he had a special way of drumming out pomegranate seeds that hadn't been filmed yet, he wanted to be able to do that.

Sometimes things would change mid-stream and the prep we had done in the morning was tossed. For instance, maybe the recipe called for 1 cup leeks, diced. Well, 1 cup leeks, perfectly diced went out to the set. But maybe while going over the episode's blocking, it was decided that we had enough time for Jacques to show how to clean and dice leeks. As food runner (the other half of my duties), it was my job to dash back to the kitchen and grab or holler out for undiced leeks, make sure the ends were trimmed just enough (not all the way, but tidied up the way Jacques liked them), and run them back to the set.

A few episodes later, I finally learned that the way to keep me from constantly running hither and yon was to have all ingredients in every possible form at the ready. If the recipe called for 1 cup leeks, diced, I had 1 cup leeks, diced. I also had whole leeks and even a few whole leeks with some -- but not all -- diced. Options.

Working on the show was one of the most amazing experiences of my life, made even better by Jacques' patience and professionalism. But Jacques has a professionalism that isn't cold or diva-ish. He's professional in that it was almost unheard of him not to get the episode on the first take. Not just the segment, mind you, the entire episode. He also doesn't need a script; it's just all right there on the tip of his tongue and the front of his brain.

However, he's warm and appreciative. He's kind. He's generous. There would be a wine on the set that he particularly liked and after shooting the episode, he'd bring it to the back kitchen because he was so intent on all of us experiencing it. He was interested in talking to people about them, not about himself. He spent a long time at our wrap party talking to my husband about his career as a mathematician. He spent a dinner out asking me every detail about how I got involved with food and what I want to do next.

Later, I'd realize that he spent so many early morning hours with us in the hot, cramped kitchen because that's where he really wanted to be, in the thick of it, teaching.

Jacques Pépin: More Fast Food My Way premieres Saturday, October 4, at 10:30 a.m. on KQED TV.

The website launches October 2 and you will be able to watch video episodes online, download recipes from the show, view a behind-the-scenes slideshow of the production process and get program information.

Go to kqed.org/morefastfoodmyway

Listen to Slow Food Nation on KQED's Forum.

Slow Food Nation
This Labor Day weekend San Francisco will host Slow Food Nation -- a four day gathering to promote sustainable and healthy food. We talk with organizers and experts in the slow food movement, exploring the connection between our plates and the planet.

Host: Michael Krasny

Guests:
• Anya Fernald, executive director of Slow Food Nation
• Dr. Vandana Shiva, author of "Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature" and founder and director of Navdanya, an organization supporting conservation, renewal and rejuvenation of biodiversity
• Eric Schlosser, award-winning journalist, author of "Fast Food Nation" and a correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly
• Michael Pollan, professor of journalism at UC Berkeley and author of "In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto"

Read Amy Sherman's Event post about Slow Food Nation.

Tamara Keith, reporter for The California Report and KQED Public Radio, recently learned how to cook these potato pancakes the right way...from her mother-in-law. Here's her story.

This may be the ultimate parable of Jewish cooking tradition. Growing up Methodist in a small, central valley town, my first introduction to latkes was through my college boyfriend, Ira, when I went to visit him at his parent's house in L.A. during Hanukkah. The whole house had this distinctive scent of grease and potatoes --and it was sort of fishy. The potato pancakes Ira's mom and sister made were terrific. They were crispy and warm and dunked in apple sauce for that perfect balance of grease and fruit.

So, Ira and I kept dating (for like a decade) and recently got married. Over the years, I've tried making him some traditional Jewish foods -- dishes he remembers from his childhood. But I've basically screwed everything up. I put dill in the matzo ball soup (big mistake), and my matzo balls were fluffy in stark contrast to what his mom makes. And my brisket, while quite tasty, is nothing like his mom's. So several years ago I asked for her latke recipe. She photocopied it from a small paperback cookbook, and I followed the recipe exactly, more than once. But my latkes also were a dud. They were like over crispy little hash browns. I gave up and started using Manischewitz latkes in a box -- which is essentially admitting defeat.

A few weeks ago, my friends at The California Report convinced me that I should do a story about celebrating Hanukkah as a newly converted Jew. For me, Hanukkah is all about latkes, even if I make them using a mix. But with my in-laws coming to town, I decided this little radio story would be a perfect excuse to actually learn how to make the family recipe.

So there we were in my kitchen, my expert latke-making mother-in-law (Andrea) and sister-in-law (Shannon) and me. I pulled out the recipe and put it on the kitchen counter. I might as well have left it hidden away in my recipe binder, because they hardly used it! Instead, they kept referring to what we were making as "Poppy's latkes." Poppy was the patriarch of the family (my mother-in-law's grandfather) who continued making latkes well into his senior years. The secrets of Poppy's latkes are lots of oil in the frying pan and the perfect mixture of shredded potatoes and mushy potatoes.

Clearly, following the printed recipe all those years was setting me up for failure. The real recipe is in the nuances passed from generation to generation. Here's the recipe as close I can recall it. It contains elements from Sara Kasdan's cookbook "Love and Knishes," but has been modified over the years by Ira's mother and sister working under heavy influence from Poppy's latke-making tradition.

Ingredients
2 cups grated raw potatoes (measure after draining)
2 eggs beaten
1 teaspoon salt
1 heaping tablespoon of flour or matzo meal
1 pinch of baking powder
1 small onion grated (optional)

Preparation
Put potatoes and onions in a food processor (exact quantity is up for interpretation). Ideally your food processor will have both a grate and a chop blade running at the same time. Otherwise grate, then chop until the latkes reach the appropriate mixture of mush and shred. Add a little lemon juice to the mixture so the potatoes won't change colors. Push the mixture into a strainer removing the excess moisture. Add flour and eggs until it looks right. Don't put in too much salt because people are on low sodium diets these days.

Cook the latkes in vegetable oil about a half inch deep in the pan. Really, there's no such thing as too much oil. It is best if the latkes float in the oil just a little but aren't fully submerged. Cook until they are quite crispy. You're aiming for brown, not golden brown.

Sara Kasdan adds in her book: "Note: This recipe should serve 4-6 people, but when some people see potato latkes they act like they haven't eaten for a week. They will want to make from latkes alone a meal. When you have people who enjoy so much, you won't mind grating potatoes all day long."

Post by Tamara Keith, from The California Report.

You can listen to Tamara in the kitchen with her mother-in-law at The California Report's website.

Comfort food is different for every person. It might be your mother's meatloaf, a bowl of butter-padded mashed potatoes, or a vat of chicken soup. Personally, I never thought I'd be looking to a New Mexican restaurant as my comfort food source, but that's exact what Green Chile Kitchen has come to mean for me.

Working on a KQED cooking show has meant that my past week was filled with twelve hour days where I rarely sit down, lots of running, and lots of food. The sad thing is, I didn't want to eat that food. It's no reflection on the chef, mind you, but it's long been a foible of mine that if I cook something all day, I completely lose my appetite for it.

There have been two constants of comfort during this past week of twelve hour days: my husband and Green Chile Kitchen. Green Chile Kitchen moved into the vacated Baker/Fulton corner nearly two years ago and while we have been fairly frequent patrons, I have never written about it.

They have a fresh greens salad to which you are allowed to add five additions from all manner of fresh ingredients. You can also choose to add applewood smoked bacon, avocado, and Fulton Valley chicken breast. I've actually developed my own salad mix that I consider to be the ultimate order. Aside from the greens I request walnuts, blue cheese, red onion, corn, and for my fifth choice, I just get more corn. When I'm really hungry, I'll add chicken breast and avocado to the salad.

When it comes to salad dressing, I'm a purist. I make my own and there are only certain restaurants I trust to get it right. Zuni, Suppenkuche, and Chez Panisse get it right, but a lot of other places don't. It's either bottled or delivered on the side, and on the side just doesn't cut it with me. I mean, unless you're going to bring out a big ol' bowl along with the "on the side" that allows me to slap everything with an even, glistening coat, don't bother. Green Chile Kitchen gets it right. Their balsamic vinaigrette, chipotle lime vinaigrette, citrus vinaigrette, and green chile buttermilk are all made from scratch and they toss the dressing for you. There's no need to dump the dressing on, seal up the box, and shake your foodie, praying that oily droplets don't spew everywhere.

So yeah, I love their organic green salad. I also love their burritos, and their guacamole has recently been made amazing by the piquant addition of chiles. Finally, their green chile stew -- veg or fully meaty with slow-roasted Niman Ranch pork -- is something to tuck your body into on a cold autumn night.

But lately, a side order of their rice and pinto beans is all I need to sustain me during these trying weeks, and it's also about all I have time to shove into my mouth before collapsing, insensible, into bed.

Over this past weekend, where I did little else but sleep and brunch with friends, the thought of being back in my kitchen didn't repulse me, as much as it made me narcoleptic every time I set foot in it. Food was needed. Outside food. Comfort food. Once again, Green Chile Kitchen via my husband came to my rescue. 1/4 of a citrus-herb roasted chicken -- all juicy white meat -- some roasted potatoes, a warm, soft, folded tortilla with fire-roasted salsa, and a glass of Geyser Peak Merlot from Trader Joe's was all my exhausted soul needed to regenerate.

A few quibbles: their overly complicated menu, riddled with so many choices of sides and accompaniments, confuses both the order takers and the order fulfillers, not to mention the patrons. They could also do with another register. While you can stake out the dark wood booths and eat in the welcoming cafe area, we're only three blocks away, so we mostly do pick up. Unfortunately, with one line and one register for everyone, it means if you've placed your order over the phone, you are often standing in a long line with people who haven't placed their order, don't know what they want, and waste your already-packed order's precious heat by browsing the menu and asking lots of questions. Not that I begrudge them the time to make up their minds, mind you, it's just that two lines -- one for pick-ups and one for everyone else -- would make so much more sense.

Green Chile Kitchen
601 Baker (at Fulton)
San Francisco, CA 94117

415.614.9411

Hey y'all -- there is a story on wine in Napa on QUEST tonight that you won't want to miss. QUEST is KQED's new TV, radio, web, and education project about science and environment in Northern California, and their latest science story has taken them to Napa Valley. The story is titled "Napa Wineries Face Global Warming" and explores the potential effects of climate change on the unique ecology and climate of Napa Valley.

The Napa and Sonoma microclimates produce world famous wines, but what happens if the climate changes? Scientists are predicting that global warming could increase the number of super-hot days in the California wine region, interfering with the way grapes ripen. Local scientists and wineries are beginning to look at how to prepare.

Post by Craig Rosa, Interactive Producer, QUEST

Check, Please! Bay Area is KQED's local series featuring regular people reviewing Bay Area restaurants.

Check, Please Bay Area was nominated for two 2007 James Beard Awards (pdf) in the Television Food Show Category!

Visit the Check, Please! Bay Area blog to experience the restaurants from Season 2 Episode 15:

1) The Grubstake: | restaurant information | reviews | recipe

2) Charanga: | restaurant information | reviews

3) Viognier: | restaurant information | reviews

Please feel free to join the discussion by posting comments about the show and your reviews of the featured restaurants!

You can watch all episodes online as well as subscribe to the Check, Please! video podcast in iTunes.

This season, Stephanie V.W. Lucianovic will be blogging about what happens behind-the-scenes during the making of Check, Please! Bay Area.

You can also view the Check, Please! Bay Area photo gallery to view behind-the-scenes shots at many of the featured restaurants.