In the Kitchen

What's New at Paulding & Company

May 2009

May is an exciting month for us, with plenty of fun events you can participate in. We’ve been chosen to cater a special public event aboard the Presidential Yacht Potomac the evening of Thursday the 14th—a Chamber of Commerce fund-raiser/mixer that you can purchase tickets for at emeryvillechamber.com. Cruise the bay, sample some good wine, and dine on hors d’oeuvres aplenty. What could be better?

We’re also co-sponsoring two events with Periscope Cellars and Eden Canyon Wines, and both are great opportunities for a fun and inexpensive evening of entertainment. Fondue Friday on the 15th is a deal—$15 gets you a little fondue making demo class, lots of yummy fondue, and a glass of wine. It’s from, 6-8 PM at the kitchen, and advance registration is a requirement—space is limited.

Sin Zin night, on Sunday the 24th from 7-11 PM is a fun alternative to spending time in Memorial Day weekend traffic. We’re providing an authentic Cajun buffet and an oyster shucking class, and the wineries are providing a Casino experience. $49 plus tax gets you chips to gamble, zinfandel to sample, prizes to win, and the Cajun buffet, which includes our famous Jambalaya, cornbread, peppery greens salad with blue cheese & pecans, and New Orleans bread pudding with rum sauce and whipped cream. For $12 more, you get to learn how to shuck your own half-dozen oysters, and enjoy them with your choice of yummy sauce. Again, advance registration is required, and space is limited.

Shocking News!

They are coming to take me away! Sirens blasting, the cops are going to arrive at the kitchen on May 20th at 11 AM and take me to JAIL. But YOU can help bail me out!

This is all to help a good cause, MDA’s drive to send kids with Muscular Dystrophy to a special camp.

Granted, the “jail” is at Trader Vic’s, and I get to experience a “ride along” in a real cop car without the trauma of a real arrest … but I still need to get bailed out, and here’s how you can help: I have to raise at least $1600 in bail, and ANY donation at all would help. Even $5 from a whole bunch of people should do it (more if you can)! You can donate directly from “my” get out of jail website via the internet, or send checks made out to MDA to me at the kitchen address, if you don’t like doing online payments. I appreciate EVERY penny … I don’t want to linger in the hoosegow!

More Shocking News: Paulding & Company now is on Facebook!

What a month—getting dragged to jail, and also dragged into modern times. It seems that we can no longer survive without a Facebook page, and now Paulding & Company is all hooked up. I’m still not used to having such an ongoing public persona, but I want to invite all of you to be FRIENDS because … well, because you all already are friends and it’s one more way to keep in touch, and for you to let me know what’s going on in your lives too. We will try to keep you informed between newsletters, and remind you of fun events.

Cook! Creative Culinary Camp

Not only does Paulding & Company have a Facebook page, but our lovely summer camp has its own page too, and somewhere in that continuum, I have my own personal page as well. Cook! Summer Camp is turning into a real hit—registrations are coming in, and we’ve got some amazing kids and teens signed up for our camps.

If you have kids between the ages of 9-18, our camp could be a key piece of the summer puzzle—we know a lot of you are not taking big vacations, and yet the kids need to do constructive and instructional activities AND have fun. At Cook! Creative Culinary Camp they will join a staff of well-trained chefs, plus special guests who run restaurant kitchens, broker fish, write cookbooks, work as butchers, make chocolates, and more—the campers will learn cooking skills to last a lifetime. All while making International Street Foods in our one-week camps, or learning how to Make a Cooking Show, with a soupcon of help from Top Chef contestant Casey Thompson, in our two-week sessions.

There’s all the info you need on our website, including a poster you can pass on to friends who might be interested.

Classes

Rosetta still has some space in her Friday, May 22nd pizza class—but hurry, this one always sells out.

Eric Weiss is running his quarterly knife sharpening class on June 22nd (a Monday night). This is the class where you get to find out how to keep those knives you bought, and let get dull, sharpened. You get a stone and oil, too—and an expert lesson from the guy who sharpens for a lot of the local restaurants, including Chez Panisse!

Want to set up your own class for a group of friends, or for a party? Contact me and we’ll start designing the class of your dreams. If you have 30 friends and a bit of extra cash, the Valrhona Chocolate Class is still available—at $130 per person,with a 30 person minimum, it’s actually a steal. You get to work with a chef who normally trains high-end pastry chefs, learning secrets and tasting Valrhona chocolate—what could be better! And it can be scheduled anytime this year (subject to chef Derek’s availability).

Travel With Rosetta

Just when you thought the newsletter couldn’t get any better, boy have we got great news! Our marvelous Calabrian cooking teacher, Rosetta Costantino, is going to lead a lucky group on a culinary and cultural adventure to Calabria, down in the boot-toe of Italy. The tour starts September 26th, for 9 days, and includes a farmhouse visit, cooking classes, and a cultural tour of one of the most historically fascinating areas of Italy. I wish I could go (alas, I have already booked events for late September). Rosetta’s also started a great blog, as you’ll see when you follow the link—and there are pictures of her great garden in it too.

In the Market

First cherries of the season, Brooks and Burlats. That’s the good news—the bad is that with all this rain, the rest of the early cherry crop will be ruined, as they will drink till they burst, and then mold will start in the cracks. You may find some, but pick through them carefully and use ‘em up fast. The later crops, still in the green stage won’t be affected. The first summer squash, lots of peas of all sorts, green beans, cucumbers are getting stronger. Green garlic and mature, spring onions and big fat ones—all dependent on when they planted. Tender pea shoots, enough strawberries to get full just tasting at the farmer’s market, and a myriad of tender spring salad greens. There are excellent cauliflowers, standard broccoli (the de ciccio variety is all done), fava beans. There’s still citrus, in fact the California grapefruits are good right now. The baby veggie plants are abundant, now is the time to get them in the ground, and the growers are replete with an amazing variety of tomatoes if you have room in the garden.

Recipe of the Month

We make tapas for many team building events, especially for larger groups. When you get 50 or so people together, there are always a smattering of different dietary issues that present themselves, so it’s much more practical to make a buffet with a variety of small plate dishes, rather than a coursed meal. One of the all-time favorite easy recipes is prawns with garlic and pimenton. It’s also one of the absolute easiest. Pimenton, or Spanish smoked paprika, comes in many different varieties, from sweet to “bittersweet” which is not bitter, but has a bit of bite, to spicy; you can always find them at The Spanish Table in Berkeley or online at spanishtable.com, but they are becoming more commonly available at regular grocers too. Serve with a salad, for a quick and delicious meal.

View the recipe »