Eat Real Festival Crowd in Jack London Square, Oakland.
Photos: Wendy Goodfriend

The 3rd Annual Eat Real Festival kicked off their food extravaganza this past weekend, and the eager and hungry masses descended upon Jack London Square in full force once again.

I've attended the event since its inception and have always come away with a full, happy belly and lots of food porn. This dazzling array of culinary delights came about through a "social venture business" whose "mission is to help revitalize regional food systems, build public awareness of and respect for the craft of making good food and to encourage the growth of American food entrepreneurs," according to their website.

And Eat Real goes all out to foster this mission. This year they hosted 60 street food vendors, had 30 beers and wines on tap, an indoor marketplace with 30 craft food vendors, urban farmers leading Q & A sessions about homesteading, DIY workshops and demonstrations about baked goods, cheese and other foodstuffs, live music performances from local bands and DJs, butchery contests and more.

It's easy to get overloaded with this packed schedule -- even with 30 less food vendors than last year -- so I decided to seek out vendors that were new to the festival or that I hadn't checked out in previous years. I met up with BAB's editor and photographer extraordinaire, Wendy Goodfriend, in downtown Oakland on Saturday morning.

After checking in my bicycle at the East Bay Bike Coalition's free bike valet, we were ready to get our grub on. One of the first vendors that caught my eye was Fatface that hails from Davis. I've tried their popsicles before, so I was planning on strolling right on by until I saw the big sign that advertised a "bacon and egg" popsicle. (I think this sign made most people stop in their tracks.) Then I read the description: "Ginger-bacon caramel and vanilla egg custard featuring eggs from Vega Farm and bacon from Blesdoe pork also made with vanilla bean, heavy cream, milk, ginger, filtered water and cane sugar." After reading that list of ingredients and noticing that it was a "limited edition," I couldn't resist the call of the swine. I figured this would be a lovely breakfast (which I had skipped in anticipation of the afternoon of decadence) despite it being dessert. And it didn't disappoint. The frozen egg custard was rich and creamy, with a luscious caramel center of bacony goodness.

Next on the list was the San Rafael-based food truck The Taco Guys. This was their second visit to Eat Real, and Jason Hoffman and Justin Close are two chefs with 20 years of culinary experience under their belts that decided to branch out on their own into the street food scene. My husband Shawn ordered their Maui Fish Taco (panko-battered and fried Pacific rock cod, savoy cabbage slaw, pico de gallo, Sriracha mayo and pickled onions), while I had to try the Burmese Lamb taco (Fallon Hills lamb, Thai cucumber salad, preserved Meyer lemon yogurt, sweet herbs). We bumped into the guys later on as we were wandering through the festival, and they asked us how we liked their food. I let them know that we agreed with their slogan that it was "ridiculously tasty."

Onto the next course; the WOW Truck of San Jose was conveniently parked right near by. Despite being Eat Real first-timers, their popularity preceded them and they had a long line of patient folks queueing up for their fusion Filipino fare. And no wonder; I was willing to wait 15 minutes for a "WOW Silog Taco" with Niman Ranch cage-free egg and beef tapa, garlic fried rice and heirloom tomato on a flour tortilla. And I also had to try the "Silog Sushi Bite" with a fried quail egg on top of garlic fried rice, seaweed, hand-harvested Philippine sea salt (!) and Niman Ranch beef. Shawn went right for the "Turon Turon," a fried saba banana fritter roll. The Sushi Bite was one of my favorites of the day. It had an incredible savory quality that was umami to the hilt. (I'll stop now before I throw in any more pretentious adjectives, so I'll end with the declaration that it was unbelievably delicious.)

We decided to give our stomachs a time-out before diving into the next course. After perusing the goods in the indoor craft food market, we headed over to the DIY Eat It & Oven area. Amy Remsen and Blake Joffe of Beauty's Bagel Shop were just finishing up their bagel making workshop. This was the first appearance at Eat Real for the Oakland-based duo, and they're currently looking for a space to set up a brick-and-mortar bagel shop. In the meantime, Amy and Blake have a wholesale business making Montreal-style bagels that are "hand-rolled, boiled in honey water and baked in a wood-fired oven" for local restaurants Saul's Restaurant & Delicatessen in Berkeley and San Francisco's pop-up deli Wise Sons Delicatessen. They also sell their bagels through a vendor at the Kensington Farmers' Market. I was lucky enough to score a sample of one their freshly baked bagels from a workshop participant, which was still warm from the handmade on-site clay oven.

Moving onwards, we stopped by the latest venture of Eat Real founder Anya Fernald, who is also the CEO of Belcampo Meat Company. They made their debut at the Los Angeles Eat Real Festival in July and were making their first appearance as both a sponsor and vendor in Oakland this year. Based near Mt. Shasta, they're a "multi-species organic start-up farm" that raises grass-fed and pastured animals -- everything from "cattle to quail," according to farmer Kylan Hoover. Kylan, who was helping to serve up their hot dogs with his co-worker Peter Sterling, used to run his own farm in Livermore. He now works with Belcampo in designing and managing the Siskiyou County farm, which has been in the research and development phase for the past 5 years. They plan to open up butcher shops throughout the state along with their own processing facility in Yreka in 2012. I decided to try a cone of their French fries, which were golden and crispy as a result of being fried in grass-fed beef tallow.

Photo: Jenny Oh

There were long, long lines for festival newbie Tikka Bytes, "savory Indian bites" from Milpitas, so alas, I had to pass them up. Lines were also snaking around the plaza for the seasoned festival darlings Chairman Bao Truck, Senor Sisig, and Tru Gourmet Dim Sum.

Wendy grabbed a bite to eat at Vesta Flatbread -- she had been showing great discipline up until now -- and ordered up their vegetarian dish with carrot hazelnut pate, labne, beet salad, and of course, their delicious flatbread made right in their truck.

We said hello to Steven Gdula of Gobba Gobba Hey, who had his new cookbook and cool Indian-inspired Ganesh t-shirt for sale along with his fantastic treats.

We also popped by to chat with Ryan Farr of 4505 Meats, who showed us his fresh-off-the-presses galley copy of his new cookbook that's due out in November. He was slapping cheese on his burgers in rapid fire -- "it's like dealing cards" -- while extolling the virtues of his immensely popular "bacon-studded hot dog on a stick." Ryan serves up these crowd-pleasers at festivals because, "Who doesn't love food on a stick?"

This was Iso Rabins' (ForageSF) third time at Eat Real, but this year he decided to "go for it" and cook this year. Preparing food for "over a thousand people was taking it to the next level" (thus he'd had only 2 hours of sleep the night before), but he was thrilled with selling food made on the spot as opposed to pre-made goods in the craft market. Iso was serving up deep-fried smelt (which he personally deep-fried himself) because he "loved bait fish such as mackerel, sardines and anchovies." A colleague told him that he was taking a risk with selling this unfamiliar fish, but he wanted to take a gamble and "introduce people to new food." Iso flirted with the idea of calling them, "fries with eyes," but thought it might be "off-putting" to the masses. (I think it would have worked like a charm, personally.)

We took another food break and listened to part of the Q & A session with Heidi Kooy of The Itty Bitty Farm in the City. Heidi and her husband have a contracting business, but they're also urban homesteaders in San Francisco who raise chickens, bees and goats -- one of which she was milking onstage as she answered questions from the audience. The other one was gamely allowing adoring fans to pet her.

After all of this gorging, did I have room to eat any more food? Apparently so. I'm a sucker for a good grilled cheese sandwich, so GBD (which stands for Golden Brown Delicious) was my last food order for the day. The Point Reyes Farmers' Market was on the lookout for some prepared food vendors to augment their produce stands, and Osteria Stellina's chef-owner Christian Caiazzo thought grilled cheese sandwiches would be the perfect item. He knew there were plenty of great cheesemakers in Marin to source the main ingredient, such as Pt. Reyes Farmstead Cheese Company and Cowgirl Creamery. The Eat Real edition of GBD grilled cheese sandwiches were made with Estera Gold cheese from Valley Ford Cheese Company and generously brushed with butter from Strauss Family Creamery. Metropolis Bakery of Berkeley provided the delicious sourdough bread (normally Christian bakes his own bread, but he couldn't handle the volume required for the festival). I ordered the "The Bill From Bo," the grilled cheese made with brisket prepared with beef from BN Ranch, Bill Niman's illustrious new company.

Wendy and I were ready to call it a day after over 5 hours of snacking and sampling (Shawn had already reached his crowd saturation point several hours earlier). On my way back to the bike valet, I realized I was a) terribly thirsty and b) passing by the opulent and vaudeville-esque booth belonging to Taylor's Tonics of San Francisco and Santa Cruz. We stopped to talk with the nattily dressed Aaron Dolson, one of the co-founders, while his equally dapper partner Taylor Peck handed out samples and sold bottles of their Chai Cola. This was their first visit to Eat Real -- and it had been quite successful, as they had sold out of everything but their cola. Aaron's background included working with a raw juice co-op based in Eugene, Oregon, while Taylor was an experienced chai barista (read more about his eclectic background here) before they launched their successful enterprise. Aaron's a firm believer in the health benefits of tea and they use only natural ingredients in their drinks. They keep the sugar content low (and no high-fructose corn syrup), add medicinal herbs such as nettle and ginger, and use pasteurization and citric acid to preserve the drinks.

The spicy, sparkling Chai Cola was a refreshing way to end the day, and I was ready to roll home -- literally and figuratively. Tired and sated, we bid farewell to the event until next year, when we'll be ready for another round of the East Bay Eat Real Festival.

Check out BAB's Eat Real Fest slideshow to view more of the festivities.

Trevor Morris is a lot like any other Bay Area foodie. When he tastes something great, he can't wait to use it, share it, and think about how it could become part of his culinary repertoire. But as the co-founder of Gelateria Naia, his first thought upon tasting anything particularly delicious is, Could I make gelato out of this?

As anyone who's watched the original Japanese Iron Chef knows, just about anything can be made into something resembling a frozen dessert. (Tasting the buttered lobster ice cream sold at a popular ice-cream shop in Bar Harbor, Maine remains a low point of my tongue's career.) Even as simple a flavor as coffee can be trickier to perfect than one might assume.

The company's years of dedication have paid off. Naia now has 4 gelato shops around the Bay Area, and freestanding counters in numerous Whole Foods stores throughout Northern California.

But it wasn't until last week's Fancy Food Show in San Francisco that I tasted gelati that transported me from the fluorescent-lit Moscone Center to the arched pergolas of a Bologna side street, to where I spent many a euro (and lazy afternoon) at La Sorbetteria Castiglione, that gastronomic city's best gelateria. And it wasn't in the Italian-food aisle, but California-made at Gelateria Naia.

What set these gelati apart was their purity and depth of flavor. Not too sweet, they were satiny smooth, pillowy and cool on the tongue, nipping right from the tongue straight to the brain's joy button. There was a deep, mellow coffee, rich but unbitter, made with Blue Bottle beans. There was a lovely, perfumey Earl Gray tea gelato steeped with a Numi Organic blend. A St. George Spirits single-malt gelato called out to be drenched with a shot of whiskey like a grown-up affogato. Chocolate was suave and mellow, the raw material provided by Tcho.

What was the one thing all these flavors had in common? They were all locally inspired, featuring some of the best artisanal products from around the Bay Area.

Part of the reasoning is, of course, a dedication to staying local. The company already gets many of its ingredients from nearby farms and producers, listing the day's sources on chalkboards in each of its stores. Yogurt from Pavel's, honey from Palamino Farms, fruits and nuts from Fiddyment Farms and B&B Ranch, among others, have become an integral part of Naia's offerings. As Morris notes,

"We opened our first store in 2002 and a year later decided to stop using the semi-finished ingredients we were importing from Italy. They tasted fine but it was a silly way to make gelato. Why buy chocolate from Italy when Guittard is right down the road? Why import pistachios when we can call and discuss different roasts with the grower in Roseville? And why would you ever use coffee flavoring when you can just use coffee beans?

But there's also the undeniable business sense of cross-branding with a company that already has its dedicated fans, as Blue Bottle does. Most important, though, said Trevor as he handed me yet another spoonful to taste, is the brainstorming and resource-sharing that happens when obsessive geniuses get together.

Instead of trying to learn everything about coffee in order to make a superlative coffee gelato, you go to a guy like Blue Bottle founder James Freeman, a man who probably spends most of his waking hours thinking about coffee. (Who needs sleep, when there's espresso?) And you sit down and talk, and by the time you get up from the table, you've hashed out a new cold-brewing method of getting big-bean flavor into your product without astringency or bitterness. Or you come back to the test kitchen with dozens of Numi teas, thinking you'll make one, two, maybe three tea flavors at the most. And then you taste tea after tea, each remarkable, each stunningly original, and you realize that you want to make a gelato out of almost every tea.

Same went with Tcho chocolate; to avoid the cloying heaviness that can weigh down some chocolate gelato, Naia gets pure chocolate liquor, without cocoa butter, for use in its version. Making gelato with high-proof alcohol is a dicey undertaking, since it resists freezing, but since their success with St. George's single-malt whiskey, they're now working on a similar gelato made with the company's popular Absinthe Verte.

Plans for other partnerships are in the works (Morris is already working with chocolate star Michael Ricchiuti on a few possibilities), and the new local flavors should be available in Naia's shops in early February. But those who can't wait can attend Naia's upcoming Pre-Release Gelato Tasting Benefit on Feb. 4, held from 6-9pm at the Berkeley store at 2106 Shattuck Ave. (The $5 fee goes to Doctors Without Borders.)

There will more than 20 brand-new flavors available featuring ingredients from TCHO Chocolate (TCHO Nutty, TCHO Chocolatey), Numi Tea (Earl Grey, Green Tea, Jasmine, Golden Chai, Rooibos), Blue Bottle Coffee (Bella Donovan, Hayes Valley Espresso, Sidamo), St George Spirits (absinthe, eau de vie) and Recchiuti Chocolate.

Get more information and buy tickets

We carnivores who live in the Bay Area are a privileged bunch -- on any given day, we can choose to eat Fatted Calf's bacon, Fra Mani's salami, 4505's chicharrones and countless other artisan charcuterie around the city. To that list, I would add Boccalone's pork ragu. It's a lucious ragu that is intensely spiced and just perfect when tossed with pappardelle. Until a couple weeks ago, my main interface with Boccalone was to buy the ragu, or to pick up a sandwich or two for a picnic.

Boccalone is a store that is located in the Ferry Building, and is the brainchild of Incanto chef Chris Cosentino and his business partner Mark Pastore. It has been open less than a year, and attracts great attention in the Ferry Building with its pristine meat slicers and case of hanging meats. In addition to their delectable porcine products, Boccalone also offers sparkling water (like what is offered at Incanto) -- I love filling up my bottle on farmers market days before I battle the crowds.

I've been spending more time at Boccalone these days, however, and it's all the fault of a delicious new product called Nduja. Let's all say it together, class: en-doo-ya. Can't remember how to pronounce it? Ask for the "N-Judah," like I do, and you will get a smile and the lovely Boccalone staff will hand over the $11 salami-shaped package. Nduja is a Calabrian spreadable salami that is spicy and full of flavor. I love bringing it to room temperature and eating it on fresh bread. Once it's at room temperature, it spreads just like butter and is has a great mouthfeel. Nduja roots come from the French andouille sausage and the flavor profile is not unlike the andouille in smokiness and layers of flavor. Friends have been tweeting about mixing a dollop of it in omelettes.

Because this is such a new and unusual product, the folks at Boccalone tend to have some out on sample -- I would suggest that you try it next time you're at the Ferry Building.

Photo Credit: Bunrab.

Chuck Hayward from The Jug Shop

I'm a wine devotée, so I'm also a habitué of wine shops, and a seeker after their treasures. The best stores are often cool, warehouse-like spaces, with cases of wine stacked precariously, row upon row. The wine shops where I've worked--in Northampton, Mass., New York City, and San Francisco were all modest establishments, but in each one a customer could find a small masterpiece, a miracle of art and nature.

The good bottles, and there were always more good than bad, captured the sun and warmth of a fall day, and the full ripeness of the harvest. Open a bottle, and the wine tells a story about geography and weather, about a winemaker and his or her passions.

In New York one year, we sold 1973 Chateau Mouton Rothschild for just $11.99 a bottle. Not a great vintage, but still a great value-- a wine of grace and power. The bottles bore a label featuring a drawing by Pablo Picasso, one of his last commissions. That was the year Mouton won long sought "first-growth" status, the only promotion ever granted after the 1855 classification. See: not just a bottle of wine, but a piece of cultural history.

So I'm writing today about wine shops, and what I look for in them, now, as a customer. Please submit your comments, noting your favorite wine shops, or warehouses, and why you like them.

Chuck Hayward from The Jug Shop

For example, I like The Jug Shop on San Francisco's Polk Street, because Chuck Hayward and his staff are such a gas. Hayward says a good retailer "has an incredible thirst for knowledge, and an incredible thirst." He talks very fast as he says that, and then explains how he began specializing in wines from the Southern Hemisphere in the early '90s, to distinguish his store from bigger chains. Now he's the man to see for hard to find New Zealand Pinot Noirs, and Australian GSM wines (that’s Aussie Châteauneuf-du-Pape: Grenache, Shiraz, and Mourvèdre).

"We have to be like record shops and book stores, and come up with unique offerings."

I especially like Hayward's disdain for wine snobbery, what he calls "The piss down approach to wine sales. If you don't like the wine I recommend, you're stupid."

Instead he flatters his customers. "They're very smart, he says, they know good wine, but these days they're looking for the $10 wine that tastes like $20; and the $20 bottle that tastes like $40."

I asked for two recommendations, a red and a white, for the modern, budget minded shopper; say someone celebrating landing a half-time job just good enough to pay the rent. He showed me a bottle of 2006 Sebastiani Sonoma Unoaked Chardonnay, a crisp, golden delicious apple of a wine, and a deal at $9.99. For a red he suggested The 2006 D'Arenberg Stump Jump, an Australian GSM wine full of raspberries and spice for $9.99.

Hayward and his staff host a lot of tastings (recently they coordinated the first Twitter tasting of Pinot Noir I've heard of), and that's also the mark of a great wine shop. It's one reason I stop in often at Farmstead Cheeses and Wines, with its two East Bay locations, Alameda and Montclair Village. Wine makers and wine brokers stop in on Friday (Montclair), and Saturday (Alameda) to pour in the back of these two tiny shops. You can taste upward of half a dozen wines (Your $3 is reimbursed if you buy anything; there's no cost to wine club members), before choosing what you want for dinner. It's very civilized.

Jeff Diamond owner of Farmstead Cheeses and Wines

Owner Jeff Diamond is a warm, effervescent man, a former publicist for arts groups and nonprofits. He embraces the scholarly connoisseur looking for St. Joseph from Yves Cuilleron, or Viognier from Alban Vineyards, as well as the picnicker upgrading from White Zinfandel. His motto: "Relax, it's just food." In fact, he got into the wine business to offer an alternative to elitist stores. "I would buy wine and come home really angry," Diamond says. "And my wife, Carol, would ask, 'Why are you so upset?' And I'd say, 'I just spent $1000 and I had to put up with someone else's agenda.'"

Diamond says Farmstead has one advantage over other shops, "Wine and cheese speak to each other." He often has California burrata (a kind of mozzarella with a creamy center). So on a Saturday afternoon, you can stop by the Feel Good Bakery, housed in the same Alameda Marketplace as Farmstead, and buy a baguette to rival any in the East Bay, then taste wine and cheese at Farmstead, tearing off pieces of your baguette to wash it down.

I challenged Diamond, as I did Chuck Hayward, for two wallet friendly wines, bottles to stave off thirst while preparing my taxes. He responded with the 2007 Morandé Terrarum Sauvignon Blanc from Chile ($10). It features fabulous lemon grass and grapefruit aromas, and leaves you wanting more and more. His favorite value in reds (this week) is the 2007 Monte Oton from Spain's Bodegas Borsao, a raspberry and black pepper treat made with grapes from 50-75 year old Grenache vines ($10).

You can't beat the attention and care that Diamond and Hayward take as they match their inventories to the tastes of their customers. But I confess I also buy wine at Safeway, which features utter commercial dreck next to incredible values. This week I'm drinking the terrific 2007 Ménage à Trois California Red from Napa's Folie a Deux ($7.98). They blend Zinfandel, Merlot, and Cabernet into a wine that's full-bodied, spicy, and gulpable. For a white, I grabbed the 2007 Clos la Chance Unoaked Chardonnay ($6.98). It's crisp and lemony, and without another thought in its head. These are great bargains, but you won't find interesting imports at Safeway, or knowledgeable staff to help to match the wine to your meal.

Here in Northern California, we have dozens of other fabulous stores (and I hope you, my readers, will tell us about more of them). K&L features a dazzlingly deep selection online and in its three stores (San Francisco, Redwood City, and Hollywood). The East Bay features Kermit Lynch, arguably the most influential shop in the U.S., but narrow in its focus (France and Italy), and pricey. North Berkeley Imports has carved out a niche for its exclusive imports from Burgundy and Champagne. Solano Cellars pours oodles of good wine at its wine bar, and Paul Marcus shows off his impeccable taste at his store in Rockridge Market Hall.

The best thing is finding a store in your neighborhood-- (it's nice to walk home, not drive, after tastings!), where they get to know you, in the same way your barber or hairstylist knows you. And if you say you want a fruity red, with a little off the top, they know just what your palate needs.

Next time, I'll talk about buying online.

You have until tomorrow, Friday December 21st, to donate to Menu for Hope, and bid on any number of priceless prizes donated by food bloggers all over the world. As you already know, Ms. Pim of Chez Pim has organized this impressive fund raising event for the past four years. This year she's picked The United Nations' World Food Programme, as she did last year, but for 2007 she's made a special request,

"With a special permission from the WFP, the funds raised by Menu for Hope 4 will be earmarked for the school lunch program in Lesotho, Africa. We chose to support the school lunch program because providing food for the children not only keeps them alive, but keeps them in school so that they learn the skills to feed themselves in the future. We chose to support the program in Lesotho because it is a model program in local procurement - buying food locally to support local farmers and the local economy. Instead of shipping surplus corn across the ocean, the WFP is buying directly from local subsistent farmers who practice conservation farming methods in Lesotho to feed the children there."

In the spirit of supporting local food economy, one of the USA West Coast prizes has been amended as of the afternoon of Wednesday December 19.

(UW17) Dinner for 8 prepared by Brett Emerson
Brett Emerson, owner of the soon to be opened Contigo, is offering dinner made for 8 people in his new Noe Valley home. Wines to be paired and picked by none other than our very own wine blogging superstar, Alder Yarrow of Vinography. And desserts will be made by yours truly, Shuna fish Lydon of Eggbeater. Triple threat, no doubt.

This all-star dinner could be yours for a mere $10!

More USA West Coast prizes can be found here at Rasa Malaysia. But if you're a jet-setting world traveler you may want to bid on a personal tour of the El Bulli kitchen {EU31}, or have lunch with your not-so-secret lover at Alain Passard's 3 Michelin star L'Arpege in Paris one lovely afternoon {EU40}, to name just 2 insanely amazing possibilities!

The prizes are varied and beyond your wildest imagination. Delicious in every regard. Please take a few minutes to head over to First Giving and help us raise a record amount this year. (Last year we raised $60,925.12)

How To?

- To donate, go to First Giving. To specify a specific prize, follow the instructions on the Chez Pim website (scroll down to the instructions and screenshots).

If you love produce as much as I do you know that living in the East Bay is better than living in San Francisco. I realize I could start a riot here, but I've lived in 3 out of four directions of the peninsula, in various neighborhoods and cities, and no matter where I was, no matter if I was in possession of a drivers license or not, I made it to Berkeley Bowl and Monterey Market, and/ or the Berkeley Farmers' Markets, because there was more to see, smell, taste, touch and procure in these markets.

And until I moved to North Berkeley myself, I was a tried and true Berkeley Bowl Trooper, from the old school-- back when it started in the old bowling alley. I still love to get there when I have my list in Excel spreadsheet form and the time is early enough before rush hour clogs the insane parking lot and creates lines worse than LA traffic.

But now I have been seduced by Monterey Market. I used to laugh at its size, comparable to Rainbow Grocery but tiny compared to Berkeley Bowl. But then. But then I found its buried treasure. One day two summers ago I stopped by for a few things and bought an entire flat of the best boysenberries I have ever seen, smelled or tasted! I went home and ate about four baskets, made pie with a few more and froze the rest. Returning just a day or two later I found that I had bought something which would not be back again until the following year... Sad...but also something to look forward to.

You can go to the same place day after day, year after year, and find everything ok, get what you need for the price you like and shrug shoulders at the prospect of change.

Until. Until one day you pick the best looking toad you can find for toad soup and when you get through checkout you realize your bag is exploding with a Prince and your car has been moved closer to the horizon, where a pretty sunset awaits you.

A few days ago is a perfect example. I needed some citrus and butter and cranberries. I like to stock up on cranberries before they disappear so I can whip up a batch of my favorite walnut-cranberry-orange bread, which I love to toast and smother with butter. (It really can be whipped up-- it's a one bowl and wooden spoon recipe!)

I'm in love with citrus and I always look at what's going on. Scratch and sniff is the best way to learn about new citrus. Both blossom and skin will tell you what unique flavor and perfume are awaiting you. While scanning high bins of yellow and green and orange globes my eyes did a double-take on a gnarly looking fruit.

YUZU! Fresh, California grown Yuzu were staring at me. Like a collector at a yard sale discovering a priceless chair, I monitored my breathing and tried not to look around frantically. I bit my tongue when I wanted to jump up and down and yell, "Hey?! Do you see what I see?! Look! It's fresh Yuzu, here, in Berkeley, California, yours for the having!! Can you believe such a thing? It's so wonderful!!!!!"

But instead I kept walking and went back nonchalantly, looking puzzled on the outside and then hunkered in and bought at least 5 pounds.

Yuzu is a fruit I only saw one of once, while living in Napa. A famous chef I knew had smuggled one in from a recent trip to Japan. Like Bergamot, it's an ugly mottled fruit, but it's exquisite perfume and flavor lives in every molecule of its being.

Monterey Market is a cold market, mostly outside and seemingly unkempt. But it's a facade, truly, because you never know what you will find there. Bill Fujimoto buys small and large shipments directly from farmers single and corporate. The back room, unseen by the average consumer, is a carefully organized chaos of fruit and vegetable back-stock/ cases, available to restaurants, chefs and caterers who want to buy direct and avoid (or amend as the case may be) produce companies or farmers' markets.

And if I haven't sold you yet, I beg of you to rent or buy Eat At Bill's, a lovingly made documentary about Monterey Market and its beloved workers. Watch it just to see the massive pumpkins, which get brought in on elephant transport trucks and the joy so many people share about cherry season, and one particular cherry in particular.

When we talk about shopping and eating local we often overlook our markets with rooftops. But Monterey Market, Berkeley Bowl, The Food Mill, Rainbow Grocery, Bi Rite market, Farmer Joe's and so many more in the Bay Area are all about shopping locally. These businesses are still independent, many of them family and/or co-operatively owned. If you can't get to the farmers' market, find your CSA box lacking this week or next month, or just want to see that there are a dozen kinds of sweet potatoes, countless citrus varietals, far out and funky shaped mushrooms, head over to a new market for countless fruit and veggie adventures. They await you in one corner of the bay or the other...

This past weekend many of my favorite activities came together under one roof for one night only in San Francisco. On Saturday August 12, from 7 - 9 PM Slideluckpotshow brought handmade food, art, artists, friendliness, beautiful thought-provoking images, eating new things, seeing old friends and making new ones, giddy excitement at the spontaneousness of it all, and deeply inspiring ideas about creating community together. It met me when I left the just cooling breeze of San Francisco's dusk and entered the vast white space that is Sandbox Studios on Minnesota Street. Slideluckpotshow met all my expectations and then far exceeded them in a few minutes, when, after arriving too early with my carpool, put me to "work" being a 20 minute volunteer.

The first time I read about Slideluckpotshow was in Time Out NY on a trip there. I kicked myself for not thinking of the brilliant idea myself. And then I wished I still lived in New York City. Well, for a minute, at any rate.

Recently, via Marcia of Tablehopper and through an odd series of random emails, all mere days before the event, I heard that Slideluckpotshow was coming to my fine, fair city. I could barely contain myself long enough to think about what dish I might create to welcome Slideluckpotshow's founder Casey Kelbaugh and his crew. How could I convince them to come to SF again? How could I gather all the troops possibly interested in coming to an event displaying such an incredible amalgamation of ideas?

It's true, Slideluckpotshow had little advertising. Until I posted the information on eggbeater no one I knew had heard of it or realized they were coming SF at all. Which is really unfortunate, because it was right up our alley!

The requirements for attending for Slideluckpotshow were easy. Make food (I made enough for 30 people but most people made enough for about 12, depending on the portion size), or bring really good dishes from a reputable prepared-food vending source. Make or bring great beverages. If the first two are not possible, give a good donation at the door. {My friend DB gave $10.} Come hungry at least a few minutes, or up to 2 hours, before the slide-show. Be prepared to sit on the ground if you don't get there early enough to nab a seat in a chair or on a comfy couch. Wear the eye glasses you do for watching a movie, if needed. Enter a small body of images for the show and make the deadline. Or don't submit "slides" but be prepared for seeing/ experiencing a wide range of aesthetics and mediums projected on a 20 foot screen via an Apple computer. There were two sections of the slide show, each running at about an hour, with an intermission in the middle.

My favorite artists from Saturday night's SF showing are the following:

Jessica Rosen's powerful images of transsexual women in Brazil, high contrast, slightly ironic (fashion or not?) portraits by Olivier Laude, Jonathan Solo's graphite pencil work wherein he, "collages the drawings... to create meta-feminine/masculine figures from a fantastical assemblage of physical characteristics." There were two artists whose photographic documentation of America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan reached into my core, but Heidi Schumann's images and astute interplay between sound (all the slide-sets were accompanied by music of the artist's choice) rendered me speechless. Although it's difficult to pick a favorite set and artist, I will. Tim Gasperak contributed a series of photographs stark, detailed, evocative, lovely and textured from two series, Mystery of Iceland and Isolated Landscapes. Even his bio is well written.

What did I make for the pot-luck? A fruit salad composed of the juiciest, most absolute ripe beyond ripe farmers' market fruit. Something similar to Shuna & Athen's Famous Gazpacho. A quick photo of the finished bowl can be found by clicking on this link. From my assembled posse there was also a beautiful pecan-peach cake made by Marc, and a clean squid and broad bean salad made by none other than Brett.

Slideluckpotshow could not be a better event for me: a chef with over 10 years of fine art training and a BFA in photography. If you're a person who appreciates Open Studios or museums, Flickr or JPG, or just the occasional food porn photograph, this is an event I beg of you to attend if it comes to a wide open room near you.

Love is in the air: peaches are here, and all is right with the world. Yes, my sunglasses are rose- tinted, why do you ask?

I've been on the road, taking my show with me. First NYC, then Portland and most recently, Chicago. It's been fun, educational, hot, and delicious, but I've missed being home. Home is where the peaches are. Home is where I know the season's signage at my local farmers' market is. I wait and pine for strawberries, cherries soon follow, and after cherries, O Glorious stone fruit arrives, bang! a cornucopia drops out of the sky and lands on my head! It's fast. It's furious. And no one can keep up. Chefs and pastry chefs change menus daily, attempting to think of newfangled dishes to highlight summer's overwhelming, non-stop conveyor belt of tree fruit to farm, to market. It's all about pitting and prepping and ripening, and those of us who really care, trying to keep our fruit out of walk-ins.

We want our diners to get a taste of what we felt when scooping up the first apricots, felt their soft downy skin and licked our chins attempting to keep every last drop of apricot nectar, spilling out like the well which Micky and the sinister brooms let loose in the night.

This past weekend I had the extraordinary pleasure of working for my favorite peach farmer, Carl Rosato of Woodleaf Farm. On Saturday and Sunday I joined an exceptional crew to sell August's first Cassie peaches, pears, a few undercover Pink Pearl Apples (!!!), tiny sweet green grapes, red pears, mixed figs, white peaches, a dozen or so nectarines and Suncrest peaches.

Cassie peaches, in my humble opinion, are a reason for living.

While working at the markets this weekend I gave out a lot of peach advice. Peach advice for ripening, baking, storing, freezing, jamming, eating, and handling. I received a funny email, in fact, from my friend Guy today,
"That was cool running in to you yesterday, selling peaches. Can't imagine what the customers though when they asked, 'Do you have any good ideas what to do with them?' AHAHHAHAH."

A fruit-inspired pastry chef could not be happier having a job wherein he was surrounded by exquisite fruit all the day long. Fruit is an exciting field of study because not all fruit is created equal. One must know the inner workings of the family of fruit when one approaches a new branch.

Some fruit must always be picked unripe from the tree, the best example being pears. Certain fruits will continue to ripen off the tree, two examples are pineapples, and most stone fruit. There are cranky fruits who do not like to be picked with a machine, cherries, for example. And there are laid back fruits which can go either way, they're easy, like oranges or walnuts.

Peaches will ripen off the tree, on your counter, if you so wish. A good farmer will pick fruit right at the moment where she/he can get it to market looking alright and then allow the eater to ripen it a bit more to get it where it's desired. Many fruits will get softer but not sweeter if picked too early; mangoes are a great example of a fruit whose perfume is stolen when picked green or green-ish.

This weekend, in the midst of excitedly talking a mile-a-minute about peaches, I heard some great peach advice from customers. My favorite tidbit came from a fellow at the San Rafael market in Marin named Patrick. It made me stop dead in my tracks and so I wanted to share it with y'all.

What works for me, and so I share it with others is this: place peaches shoulder side down (aka "stem end"), on a flat surface, at room temperature, just until there's a bit of give under the skin, then refrigerate or eat.

But Patrick had a brilliant idea. Refrigerate peaches/stone fruit all at once and take out, placing on counter (or plate) as I've described, a few days before eating. Refrigerating fruit at home, (as opposed to the massive cold storage facilities in the "produce stream" wherein "refrigerators" are the size of private airplane hangers and temperatures are kept between 30-34F), means the fruit's ripening process is slowed down, but not stopped. With Patrick's method you don't have a lot of really ripe fruit in the fridge at once. And, also, you horde a some power over the ripening process, therefore giving yourself more time to relax, find recipes you love, and do with that fruit what you want without the pressure of doing that right now!

Patrick's method also allows you to buy a little more fruit than you might need or want to consume in one day or week. (Which of course makes the farmers happy.)

Every peach is a snowflake. Every varietal is different, every farm growing a particular varietal grows them differently. Every soil and location and method will produce a different peach. Every tree on in that orchard growing that peach will ripen and concentrate its sugars and acids differently. Depending on how much of one kind a farmer has, and which market they're selling them at, will determine or fetch a different price. And every mouth eating that peach like a snowflake will react to it differently.

We all know at what point exactly we like to eat a banana. Even within one family each member will like a slightly more or less green specimen.

My Peach Advice? Jot down the names and details of the peaches and the farmers with whom you interacted with this year so that next year you will leap at the chance to buy your favorites, have mouth notes from which to comparison shop/eat, and ripen gently and slowly the fruit you choose to buy.

And if you see me selling peaches, please stop by and say hello, I'd love to expound further, or just introduce you to my favorite fruit!

This Sunday June 10th I will be teaching my second Seasonal Fruit Dessert class in North Berkeley from 1 - 3:30 pm. Might you wish to join me as I conjure a number of sweets simple and complex, whose main focus is fruits at the peak of their early summer season's best? Those who took the first class were lucky enough to eat: Verbena & Meyer Lemon ice cream, Redwood Hill Goat Yogurt Pannacotta with rhubarb miroir, Roasted Lucero Strawberries, Rhubarb-Cornmeal Cake, Crunchy Poached Rhubarb Dice, Strawberry Coulis, Pavlova with whipped cream and strawberries, and Rhubarb-Walnut Crisp.

But now, there's so much more in season!

The possibilities are endless...

Shall we conjure a sublime cherry clafouti? Roast apriums in black pepper and Banyuls vinegar? Concoct a clear peach leaf consomme? Try our hand at whole almond frangipane with noyau and pluots? Layer light vanilla cake with brown butter pastry cream and fresh peaches? Finesse a batch of fresh cherry granite? Whip up some biscuits for cobbler? Fill the kitchen with the heady scent of warmed blackberry compote? Whip up an easy fresh fruit and cornmeal cake? Tremble with joy at the lightness of pannacotta? Learn what to do with a cherry pits' inner secret? Sneak some herbs from the garden and see what goes with what best?

I've lost count of how many classes I've taught now. And I'm happy to report many of us independent cooking instructors in the Bay Area were recently featured and reviewed in this months issue of San Francisco Magazine, click here to see the whole spread. I always have a lot of fun, but moreover, I love getting reports back about how people are less afraid to tackle homemade pie dough, ice cream and caramel or were excited to learn the secrets of how to make egg whites do what they want them to do, use their knives better or allowed my class and instruction to break down the last wall between them and their pot de creme molds.

This Sunday's Seasonal Fruit Dessert class will be my last Bay Area culinary class until August. On June 21 I'll be teaching my popular Knife Skills Class in NYC and come July I will teach 4 (!!) Pie Dough & Seasonal Fruit Dessert classes in Portland, Oregon. A good friend of mine said I should buy a silver Airstream trailer and take my show on the road! Hey, where the students want to learn, that's where I'll go, I say.

This Sunday's class is filling up quickly. Although the 2 spots I offer at almost 1/2 the price are still empty. I keep these spots open for those who love to bake but might not be able to afford the full cost. Those two folks come a wee bit early and stay a little later, to help me clean up.

The page that always has the current calendar of my classes can be found by clicking on this link. Register by going to the Paypal link in Eggbeater's right hand column and if you want to send a check, email me and I will send you a snail mail address. I also have a private mailing list for those of you who like the info to land on your email-doorstep.

See you soon?

Come One, Come All. Come Hungry To Learn!

It's that time of year. When Bay Area markets are jumping with stone fruits. Names whimsical, actual and unpronounceable and downright silly fill signage over mysterious glowing orbs. People want to know, "What's the difference between a pluot and a plumcot, a nectarcot and an aprium? Why all the funny names? What happened to the straight up plum, apricot, nectarine and peach?"

The full answer is too wordy for this medium. But, truth be told, there are almost no fruits we eat out hand today which are their true selves in their original form. All stone fruits are hybrids of the bitter almond tree, and all have been developed by horticulturalists for hundreds of years to withstand certain weather conditions, soils and various interfering pests. And in the last one hundred years or so, farmers have been juggling/gambling with different trees in an attempt to provide Americans with what appears to be one fruit during the course of a season. The peach you eat in May is not the peach you eat in June or July. But the hope is that on each of these hot summer days, you can find, buy and eat a peach.

It's almost impossible to keep up with all the stone fruit hybrids once summer begins. They rush at us like stars in a meteor shower. Some varietals last a month, but many come and go within a week or even days! My favorite farm for stone fruit is Blossom Bluff. Ted and Fran Loewen grow dozens of varietals, oftentimes experimenting or sticking with more difficult trees and fruit to provide their customers with a delicious spectrum of complex, aromatic, texturally sensuous fruits.

It's been as big a surprise to me, as anyone else, that peaches and various plum-apricot hybrids are arriving at the farmers' market as early as this. It's May; still spring by the calendar! But here they all are, available for the picking, and in wide sweeping arrays and displays at Berkeley Bowl, Monterey Market and local farmers' markets.

Unless a farmer has stayed loyal to calling these hybrids their proper names, what you buy here will be named something different there. As of yet there's little regulation to insure names stay consistent. Train your nose and mouth to recognize new varietals. Pick fruit that has a strong scent when you go in for the smell. All stone fruit can ripen off the tree. Unless your house is very hot or humid, ripen fruit further by setting fruit on its shoulders, stem side down, until, when pressed, flesh has a bit of give. If the fruit you buy is very ripe, be sure to refrigerate it immediately.

Early fruits will be smaller and higher in acid than their later cousins. Fruit whose color bleeds right down into the stem end will ripen sweeter than those whose color is yellow or green by the stem. Look for fruit with saturated color. The sun's blush is what determines sugar in stone fruit.

But remember, some of these varietals will be gone before you can decide if you'll like them! Buy a few of each as the season progresses and jot down the name on the placard as well as the name of the farm stand. These notes will help you get a head-start on next years stone fruit onslaught.

If you have an interest in the history of these quirky hybrids, Mr. Floyd Zaiger is the first person to learn about. He has contributed more to stone fruit hybridization than any other person to date.

Short Pieces on Floyd Zaiger:

Your Produce Man
News from The Dave Wilson Nursery (where many California farmers buy these various hybrids.)

And if you are a nerdy (budding) fruit historian (pun intended) like me, you'll enjoy words written by and about the infamous David Karp, Fruit Detective extraordinaire:

California Heartland . Org
John Seabrook from The New Yorker spends a few days with our man.
Smithsonian Magazine interview.