Red Egg Revelry

This weekend, I had the pleasure and privilege to attend my first Red Egg party, a traditional Chinese banquet to celebrate a newborn reaching its first month. Hosted by the baby's grandparents, the party was held in a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco, with a few dozen guests spread across four large round tables.  The lavish menu was served to each table family style, with about 10 courses arriving in pretty quick succession.  After appetizers and soup, the crab, lobster, steak, scallops, and chicken arrived.  Just sampling everything required pacing oneself.  The banquet continued for over two hours, not including the toasts and thank-you's, and the singing as the meal would down.
And the red eggs?  Each table received a plate full of hard-boiled eggs dyed red, with a bowl of pickled ginger on the side.  Iconic, but not so exotic as the jelly-fish appetizer, my favorite first-time taste. 

Platanos

Fried plantains, the sublime side-dish of Latin cuisine, come in several different formats.  This weekend, our local El Salvadoran cafe served them in long strips, as if they had peeled the whole plantain and made full-length slices about 1/2 inch thick.  In Florida, where they were a common offering at restaurants and cafes regardless of the menu's ethnic theme, the plantains were cut into chunks about two inches thick prior to frying.  At home, we cut chunks less than 1 inch thick and and fry them twice, mashing them flat on the second go in the Cuban noche buena supper tradition.

Regardless of how they end up on the plate, platanos maduros begin in the market as green plantains, a large, starchy cousin of the US-favored banana.  They mature on the shelves until they start to soften and the skins turn dark brown or even black.  When fully ripe, the sugars really sing in the pan, where they caramelize a bit, browning as they fry.  While I prefer my style of fried plantains, having someone else do the prep work is a real treat; and finding them so often in Florida endeared the state to me.
Add a sprinkle of salt, and there's heaven on the plate.  Crema provides a popular accompaniment, too. But why add to perfection?

Nosh

Grazing accommodates my metabolism - I get hungry every few hours, so I keep my meals small. But noshing provides the self-defense I often need against junk food cravings. Tonight, for instance, I walked downtown for a concert on the square. Too early for supper beforehand, instead I noshed.  A carrot sliced to scoop a little hummus, plus a half of a small avocado's worth of creamy guacamole, vaccinated me against the lure of street food.  Had I too rushed for that little bit of food prep, I'd have grabbed an apple and a handful of nuts to munch as I walked, instead.  But that would have been a snack . . .

Gluten-free Rapture

Although flourChylde Bakery does most of its business closer to its Marin County home base, it makes the trip down to the Peninsula once a week, May - September, for San Carlos' Hot Harvest Nights.  And I show my appreciation by always taking home at least one little treat.

In addition to traditional baked goods, flourChylde offers an array of luscious, small, gluten-free cakes. My favorite is the aptly-named Rapture, a marbled chocolate and plain/almond meal confection.  Like all of the cakes, it is pleasingly moist and substantial without being too dense, a tricky balance to achieve in any form of gluten-free baking.

This week, I may branch out and try the Little Black Dress again, or one of the other flavors I always neglect.  Or maybe one new variety, and one Rapture . . . .

Not Grilling Weather

Although much of our produce is following the normal seasonal patterns here - asparagus nearing the end of its run, strawberries in full swing, corn just beginning to show up in the farmers' markets - the weather isn't.  Seems the Bay Area is emulating Seattle.  The regular interruptions of spring sun and warmth with chilly, wet days has disrupted my seasonal sense of how to prepare foods.  I should be grilling (tonight's salmon and asparagus, for instance), but instead I hunker down in the kitchen, using oven and stovetop. The crisper is full of salad greens; but what I really want are more baked yams.

With a cool spell threatening to dampen Memorial Day weekend, I do hope that Junuary isn't around the corner.  If it travels down to the Bay Area too, I may have to demand a refund on the deposit I put down for California weather.

Maker Faire Food

Make Magazine's annual Bay Area extravaganza, the Maker Faire, just happens to be held in my backyard (well, at the Expo Center near it - my backyard won't hold 90,000 people in one weekend).

The fair draws the sorts of folks who read the magazine, visit the site for how-to tips, and/or watch Make TV - inventors, techies, gamers, crafters, eccentrics, eclectics and DIY'ers.

Makers are often resourceful, in the old-fashioned sense of the word: they use and re-use resources, taking items apart and repairing, enhancing, or creating something new from them.  In the dystopian world of speculative fiction writers, they will not only inherit the earth, but show us how to mine its waste piles for raw materials.  And they'll look funkily cool while having fun doing it.

Apparently, they will also eat well.  The Faire included many food related demos, workshops, and items for sale or barter, including:

• Composting demonstrations by our local Master Gardener program volunteers
• A vertical garden, constructed of pots planted with edibles and ornamental, hung on a wall
• Books on nearly-forgotten home arts, from traditional canning to growing crops from kitchen scraps
• A home cheese-making kit (with cheese queen Ricki Carroll's cow on it)
• A seed swap from the fledgling SPROUT seed library
• Some mighty fine henhouse models, complete with demo chickens