In the Kitchen

What's New at Paulding & Company

September 2009

The Market

The shortening days remind us that the fall harvest cycle has begun, as grapes and apples and pears come into the market, figs get sweeter and plumper (my tree just had it’s first ripe fig!), and the glory of summer stone fruits and berries start to slowly fade towards the end of this month. We should still have good melons for a while longer, heady basil, crunchy cucumbers and savory summer squash too, until the days start to cool. If you haven’t tried the yellow squash with pale green bases, or the pale green versions of zucchini, don’t miss either one, as they have distinctive flavors. My favorite way to prepare them: roll cut (that is, cut on an angle, turn 1/4, follow the same angle, etc.), put in a pan with a small amount of water—not more than 1/2 cup—a little salt, a half-teaspoon butter, and cover. Cook over highest heat until the water is gone and they are crisp-tender. You can microplane a clove of garlic and add it to the squash before cooking. We may well have figs, plums, tomatoes, peppers and tender lettuces into November, unless we get a cold and wet fall—and strawberries even longer. Don’t forget that trip to a farmer’s market in your weekly schedule, for the joy of eating well.

Kitchen News—Catered parties IN our kitchen

Every year we invest some of our earnings in improvements of one sort or another. Last year we addressed noise and lighting. This year, we are making a totally different kind of transformation. We are adding flexibility to our set-up: we have ordered new, 60” round tables, taken delivery of new and nicer chairs, and will soon also have a canvas wall that we can stretch across between diners and kitchen, so that we can provide in-house catered events, for up to 70 guests! We are booking not only our usual holiday parties of cook-and-play fun, but also wonderful catered events for those of you who want our great food, but no aprons or cooking, at your next meeting or holiday party. Email me for a quote on your next event.

All New for The Holidays

Yes, it’s time to start thinking about them. The dates book up, and then you’re out of luck—so don’t delay too long! We can cater for your party, make sure everyone has fun in a hands-on cooking party in the kitchen, and we are announcing exciting challenges, working with some new friends:

We have just formed a new team—working with Murder On The Menu, another local, long-established team building company, to bring you a customized interactive murder mystery event, set in our kitchen—where you are the chefs, and the mystery unfolds as you cook and dine, with their crew of improv actors contributing to the drama. What could be better? You get to cook great food, eat well...and solve the mysteries that unfold one clue at a time.

We also will offer a different joint event with this company’s Team Building Unlimited branch, a charity challenge where the team plays a series of children’s games, the prizes being parts needed to make unique stuffed animals (or build tricycles) that will be donated to charity—and give the group the opportunity to bake and decorate holiday cookies to go with them (and eat, of course)! For this event, Paulding & Company will provide a catered meal for the hungry game players. Please email me for more information on these new events.

Classes

Rosetta Costantino has some great classes on the schedule, an active month leading up to her Calabria tour. Of special interest is her spicy Calabrian pepper class on September 11th, which includes a special homemade pasta shaped around a knitting needle. There’s still space for you in this class—so spice up your life!

Our quarterly Knife Sharpening class will be on September 21st, with Eric Weiss. Learn how to keep your knives in tip-top shape, from a true expert. Eric sharpens knives for many Bay Area restaurants, as well as at the Saturday Berkeley farmer’s market, and the El Cerrito market.

Chamber of Commerce Mixer—October 15th at the Kitchen

You’re all invited to the mixer where we’ll showcase some of the new changes in the kitchen, and enjoy some delicious food and mingle with other wonderful people.

You’re also invited to become part of the team making, and presenting the food: On October 14th I’ll run my annual Catering Class in preparation for the Mixer the next night—students get to prepare the food for themselves, and for the mixer, and get free admission to the event as well, if they want to come help serve. The theme this year is going to be regional American—specifically New England food, and we’ll prepare some favorite dishes from our catering repertoire and from my family—so you will learn some tricks of the trade for your own next party, as well as eating rather well. Some of the dishes date back a long ways, using my husband’s ancestors recipes—this will be fun! This is a very inexpensive class, since you’re making the food for the mixer, so you don’t even have to spend much!

More classes will be added to the schedule, including some family classes run by my daughter, Tracy. Check the calendar for these additions!

Summer Camp Wrap-up, featuring Tracy Paulding

My parents and I had a mutually beneficial arrangement when I was a kid: I would go to overnight "ranch" camp for several weeks and they would have the house to themselves. It was obvious to me that I had gotten the good end of this bargain—Cowboy camp in the Petaluma hills: daily trail rides, shooting bows and arrows, banquets, the jukebox, skits, ping pong... read more here.

"The best thing about the cooking camp was that we got to cook and to be in charge." "Learning about tea from an expert was really cool." For Diep and I, as parents, it was wonderful to see both kids go off to camp each morning so excited to cook, and coming home every afternoon full of stories of what they'd done and that they had done it all themselves - every bit as excited about cooking at the end of a long day in the kitchen as they were in the morning anticipating it. Cooking in this camp was exciting and interesting, but above and beyond anything else it was creative and FUN! Our children love good food; but it means so much to us that they feel that making good food is not a chore, but is every bit as pleasurable as eating good food. That the camp worked equally brilliantly for our 9-year-old daughter and our 12-year-old son was a testament to how good the teachers were and how anyone, at any age, can be enticed by the beauty of sharp knives and great ingredients!

Recipe of the Month

Jessica Sullivan, pastry chef at Boulevard Restaurant, was one of the guest chefs who came and worked with our campers this summer. She created an amazing strawberry shortcake with the kids—one that had five components, including strawberry sorbet, mascarpone cream, and decorations made from Isomalt sugar. Everyone who tried it loved the dish—and to a person, said that these were the best shortcake biscuits EVER. We’ll keep the recipe simple, and just give you the biscuits and the mascarpone cream to make. Pair them with your favorite farmers market berries (and some whipped cream if you don’t feel like making the mascarpone cream), for a little bit of heaven.