September 2006

September Events

Don't miss the Piedmont Harvest Festival, September 24th at Piedmont Park on Highland Avenue, Piedmont. I've been involved with this festival since it started, and each year it gets better. Come taste the entries in the growing, canning and cooking-from-the-garden contest after the judging. Stay for the music—the stage will be humming with live local acts—and the kid's carnival, sponsored by the elementary schools. Don't miss the Scarecrow Walk, a silent auction of creative and often hilarious life-sized Halloween decorations made by Piedmont school classes—one graced the lobby outside the Kitchen last year, made from various kitchen gadgets. And, of course, there's lunch, with our great Caesar salad (with chicken if you want), heirloom tomato salad, grilled sausages and burgers, Piedmont lemonade (squeezed entirely by hand from lemons from our local trees), and more. Volunteers are always needed for this event, just email Brooke Guiney if you're interested in helping.

Also join Paulding & Company and many other purveyors of food and drink at the annual Women of Taste event at the Oakland Museum, September 30th from 6-10 PM. This charity event benefits Girls, Inc., and this year, we will contribute to the culinary mix with a wonderful dish. For a list of all the participants and more information about the event, go to http://girlsinc-alameda.org/news/womenOfTaste.htm.

Future events

Mark your calendar for the Emeryville Chamber of Commerce mixer at the Paulding & Company kitchen on Thursday, November 16th from 5:30 to 7:30, which we will host along with our neighbor, Periscope Winery. There will be an all-appetizer cooking class the night before—the least expensive class of the year, making appetizers to serve at the event (and to eat in class of course). Register now to guarantee your spot.

Classes

Registration starts August 28th for my Basic Cooking Class, a Piedmont Adult school offering that is taught at my kitchen, The six-week course starts September 20th, and continues Wednesday evenings through October. As always, it will be a fun series of lessons, using seasonal ingredients and a variety of cooking styles and methods to teach you basic knife skills, cooking techniques, and lots of new dishes. Follow the link for the Adult School in the class listing to register. I will also be offering a Thanksgiving Dress Rehearsal class on November 5th, a Sunday afternoon class—where you can learn to make a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. It's early to mention it, I know—but since some of my friends are already doing their Christmas shopping, it seems appropriate.

Rosetta Costantino has some great classes lined up this fall—a wonderful preserving class, a peperoncino festival class that includes learning to make her wonderful Calabrian sausage (and a lot more), and another featuring the great tomatoes from her garden.

Ayako Iino, our Japanese cooking expert (with a minor in Italian from her years cooking at Oliveto) is planning two great classes as well. These classes will be a lot of fun—Japanese Tapas is intriguing as an idea, and really quite logical when you think about it. And her Tonkatsu (pork loin) class should be a lot of fun too. Check the class listings and do sign up early for these great classes.

Charlene Reis has scheduled some amazing classes for pre-teens and teens. Each one is keyed to an event—the first being a pie class, just in time to enter the pie contests at the Piedmont Harvest Festival. Then, just before Halloween, a class learning to making home-made treats! In November she is going to put the "give thanks" back into Thanksgiving, with a class to prepare food for the homeless as well as feed the students. And finally, her December class will feature homemade treats to give as gifts. Now, all we have to do is get her to also teach these great classes for us grownups…

Private Events

As you all know, Paulding & Company loves to host private classes, parties, luncheons, friends get-togethers, rehearsal dinners and corporate team building events. We make every event a very special occasion, and welcome your inquiries. We are starting to book the holidays, and want to remind you that it is not to early to make your arrangements for your party. The kitchen has hosted cooking parties for 50, and hybrid cooking/cocktail parties for even more. Even our upstairs neighbors notice how much fun these events are—they comment on the laughter and sounds of happiness drifting out the windows. Feel free to contact me to arrange your next event at the kitchen—or your next catered party!

Not a Restaurant Review

This just left me humming "It's a Small World, After All." If you go to the Pacific East Mall, where 99 Ranch Market and a host of restaurants reside (3288 Pierce St., Richmond), you might not even notice Shanghai Gourmet restaurant. It sort of blends into a long wall of restaurants, unless you pause long enough to look at the pictures of dishes they serve, displayed on the front window. We were intrigued by the photo of a whole pork shank. It caused a flash-back to our last vacation trip, which featured a visit to the Pilsner Urquell factory in the Czech republic. Lunch in its cavernous restaurant brought a similar looking pork shank, a gigantic mountain of meat and bone. Then on the menu (a picture book) we spotted another dish that made us go "Aha!". It's called "Sour sauerkraut with fish fillets clay pot". The idea of having pork shanks and sauerkraut in a Chinese restaurant, in California, made us laugh—and order the combo.

Our lunch would easily have served 6 hungry people, and was absolutely delicious. The immense tureen of soup was filled to the brim with sour, homemade Chinese cabbage sauerkraut seasoned with flowery Szechwan peppercorns, with tender, fresh white fish fillets floating in it, and a film of brick red chili oil on top.. We loved it, and then the shank came, glistening just like in the picture, surrounded by a pool of deep brown, slightly sweet soy-based sauce redolent of star anise, and a lot of tender but still crunchy greens decorating the plate like a necklace. To say the combination was good, was an understatement. We were thrilled to have a huge amount left over to take home—this is the kind of food that takes well to re-warming. In fact, it made a generous lunch for 4 the next day, with better beer—the Tsing Tao didn't quite stand up to the assertive flavors, but a Pilsner was perfect. Just don't go on Tuesday, they're closed.

Tomatoes in the Market

The summer "fregtable." The sweet ones you can eat out of hand—like a fruit—and yet they are definitely vegetables, of the Nightshade family in fact, which also includes eggplant. Dismiss them during the winter, unless you were wise enough to can some or freeze them—try freezing a zip bag or two of whole raw Romas, which remain perfect in their skins until you pull one out in January and slice it, still frozen, to add some summer zip to a cooked dish. As for canning, if you have never tried this, Rosetta Costantino is teaching a canning and preserving class September 8th—a wise investment for your taste buds (including one of my all time favorite dishes, her preserved zucchini).

The subtle differences between the flavors of all the heirlooms are best brought out in a simple dish, just a plate of tomatoes, basil, salt, pepper and olive oil—like the one we serve at the Piedmont Harvest Festival. We purchase our selection from Wild Boar Farm, and you can also get their tomatoes at the Grand Lake farmers market, or Village Market the rest of the week.

The Calabrian Romas from TipTop Farm, grown from seeds provided by our intrepid Italian cooking teacher, Rosetta. These are meaty tomatoes, and the perfect ones for my freezing trick (or the canning jar). A sauce made from these is rich and intense.

The dry farmed Early Girl, sweet enough to eat for dessert. Find them at both Berkeley and Grand Lake markets. Grown with only initial watering for the seedlings, intense and meaty and packed with sunshine and vitamins; definitely worth seeking out.