All about Fava Beans

When I lived in Italy there were all kinds of lovely things to eat that I never saw back home. Fortunately three of my favorites – fava beans, Tuscan kale and baby artichokes are now as common here as they were over there. Fava beans also known as broad beans take a bit of work to prepare, but are totally worth it. They are super tasty and healthy too, a good source of protein, fiber, iron and folate. Young fava beans are tender, have an unmistakeable buttery texture, an appealing herbal/bitter edge and cook up in no time. Older fava beans can be very starchy and are kind of earthy, but make a great addition to braises, soups and stews.

You can cook fava beans in the pod if they are very young and fresh. You can broil them, grill them, saute them in a pan with oil and salt or braise them in broth. But the more typical way of cooking them is to remove the beans from the pods, boil them for 3-5 minutes then pop the bean out of its thick skin (opening the skin then pinching the bean works best for me). I put the beans in a bowl of cold water to cool them down, it also makes them easier to handle. It takes about a pound of fava pods to yield a cup of beans. Just remember, smaller beans will be sweeter, larger beans will be starchier. Fava beans are so delicious you really only need a smattering to add color, texture and flavor to your recipes.

If you have lots of fava beans, consider making a mash or puree. You can serve it as a side dish, as a sauce for pasta or on crostini. I included a recipe for Fava bean and ricotta crostini with fresh mint in the book I wrote for Williams-Sonoma. While associated with Spring, you may find them well into late Summer. According to Ocean Mist, the ones grown in Castroville, California are in season from May through November, but you may be hard pressed to find them beyond September. Because they are somewhat delicate in flavor, pair them with mild or seasonal ingredients like fennel, lemon, seafood, morels, lamb, or fresh cheeses like mozzarella, feta and ricotta.

Other ideas for fava beans:

* Make a salad with fava beans, feta and vinaigrette

* Toss them in creamy risotto with shrimp

* Add them to bean salads

* Saute with garlic and onions in olive oil

* Serve on top of fried mozzarella, dress with lemon and extra virgin olive oil

* Use as a garnish to chicken and vegetable soup

* Serve with gnocchi or ravioli and butter

* Add to cold rice, bulgur, quinoa or barley salads

* Puree along with chickpeas to make hummus

Some enticing fava bean recipes

Garlicky broiled fava beans from Local Lemons

Spring fava bean fennel salad from Simply Recipes

Stewed artichokes with fresh fava beans from Hunter Angler Gatherer Cook

Turkish fava beans with garlic yogurt sauce from Opera Girl Cooks

Braised fava beans with prosciutto from What did you eat?

My thanks to Ocean Mist for sending me some fava beans earlier in the season

Pizza Pairing

You know what to drink with pizza, beer or wine, right? But what beer and what wine? Does it make a difference? To figure out the answer to this weighty philosophical question a group of food and wine writers descended upon Patxi's Pizza to eat and drink. A lot. I'm pretty sure this may the first and only time anyone asked for a spit bucket at a pizza parlor.

We ate thin crust pizza, thick crust pizza, deep dish pizza, pesto pizza, meat pizza, vegan pizza you-name-it-we-ate-it pizza. The conclusions were pretty clear in terms of what worked and what didn't. Here are the matches I liked the best:

Thin "cheese to the edge" pizza + Rosenblum Cellars Zinfandel After trying both Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon, I'm convinced Zin is the right red wine for pizza. The heavier tannins stand up to the richness of the cheese and it is not overwhelmed by the acid of the tomatoes.

Sausage pizza + Stella Artois This is an interesting match. The yeasty notes in the beer are mirrored in the pizza and each bite makes you want another sip of beer.

Spicy pizza + Hoegaarden The bright lemony edge and bubbles in the Hoegaarden are really refreshing with a fiery pizza.

Everything pizza + Bud Light While some might find Budweiser a bit flabby and boring, it's actually a good match when the pizza has got a lot of competing flavors.

When writing a story on pizza for a magazine a few years ago I learned Prosecco is considered a classic Italian choice to go with your pie.

What's your favorite beverage with pizza?

Thanks to Patxi's for hosting this tasting

Barbecue Sauce Reviews

Right now I have three open bottles of barbecue sauce in my fridge. I received each one as a sample to try. Welcome to the life of a food writer and frequent specialty food reviewer. So here's my feeling about barbecue sauce, the best barbecued meat doesn't need any sauce at all. It's smoky, spicy, tender and succulent (I'll post soon about Franklin Barbecue in Austin and you'll see what I mean). But for those of us who do not live in Texas or have a smoker, barbecue sauce is a great way to add flavor to all kinds of meat. You can cook with it or add it at the table to chicken, ribs, beef, whatever you like really.

I have three bottles so I figured why not compare them in a blind taste test? I cooked some boneless beef short ribs (flanken) very plainly. I like cross cut short ribs because they are flavorful and tasty even without any sauce and don't require a marinade. Flanken is a relatively inexpensive cut of beef, if you can find it. It isn't as tender as steak, but cut thin it is equally delicious cooked rare or well done. Really.

Each of the sauces were good, and each had a different flavor profile but for me and my other taster, my husband, there was one clear favorite.

The first bottle was 1849 bbq sauce (14oz $5). I don't know much about this brand, even how I ended up with it. But I can tell you I like it. If you're wondering why it's called 1849, according to the website, it's because in 1849, the average man ate 6 pounds of meat a day. Unlike the others, it has a strong smoky flavor, though by comparison it does seem a bit sweet. It has both molasses and brown sugar in it. If you like smoke, this is a good choice.

The second bottle was Pendleton mesquite bbq sauce (18oz $6.50). This sauce is more vinegary, so perhaps it would be better for cooking than for using at the table? It's also much thinner and seemed spicier than the others, but I think that may just be the vinegar. Or it could have been the whiskey, one of the more unusual ingredients. While it is called mesquite, and it has "natural mesquite flavor" listed as one of the ingredients, I didn't get much wood or smoke flavor.

The third bottle was SFQ (the original San Francisco-style barbecue sauce) (8oz $5). What is San Francisco-style bbq? Well the idea is that it includes some signature flavors of San Francisco, namely coffee, chocolate and in a bit of a stretch, red wine in the form of red wine vinegar. This sauce is very complex but well balanced with just a hint of heat. It was the clear favorite when compared with the others and I highly recommend you try it. I have no doubt some serious work went into getting the formula just right because no one flavor dominates, the spice and seasonings all meld together beautifully. I couldn't stop dunking my short ribs into this sauce. I'm convinced it would make just about anything taste good.

So why buy bbq sauce instead of making it? Convenience, plain and simple. It's a great to have on hand for when you have limited time or energy for making sauce from scratch. I sometimes use it to dress up sandwiches too, though having 3 bottles is probably more than anyone needs...Do you have a favorite bbq sauce? Let me know which one you prefer in the comments.

Behind the scenes with Joanne Weir

It may come as a surprise, but the best thing about being a food writer isn't the food, it's the people you meet. And Joanne Weir is certainly one of them. I met her years ago and we quickly became friends. I've given her advice on blogging and social media and she has always been there when I needed career counseling and the inside scoop on folks in our industry. She's a genuinely nice and generous person full of enthusiasm and desire to help others learn to cook and have fun. Which brings me to her new show-Joanne Weir's Cooking Confidence. It's a natural progression from her most recent shows where she takes individual students into the kitchen and in no time gets them cooking.


"You stayed longer than anyone!" said Joanne as I was leaving. Despite the cramped space, I had a hard time tearing myself away. I wanted to see her at work and to share some tidbits about her new show. First of all it's shot in her home kitchen which gets transformed into a television studio for filming. As executive producer this time around, Joanne has assembled a crack team including director Paul Swenson who has worked with Lidia Bastianich, Eric Ripert and Christopher Kimball, culinary producer Chris Styler who has worked with Julia Child, Jacques Pepin and Jamie Oliver and a cameraman she has worked with since day one, eleven years ago. The result is a smooth quality to the process where everyone seems to know exactly what they are doing and anticipate each other's needs.



So what's different about the new show and what can you look forward to?

* A wider range of recipes
While Joanne is known for Mediterranean cuisine this time you'll get her take on all kinds of food including Indian, Asian and North African. Everyone on set was raving about her Moroccan chicken and sweet potato salad with pumpkin seeds. The day I was there she made an ahi burger with wasabi mayo and a crunchy slaw with grapefruit spiked with ginger and also an Italian pasta with tomato and cream and a salad made with ribbons of zucchini, summer squash and daikon radish. Look for ways to use more unusual ingredients too like farro and fregola.

*Great tips
I always learn something when I watch Joanne's shows. From little things like how to peel ginger with a spoon to making mayonnaise with nothing but mustard, an egg yolk and oil. I've always wondered what the heck to do with red pepper jelly and in this series she make corn muffins stuffed with a spoonful of it. And did you know if a label on produce begins with a "9" it means it's organic?

* Video app
This series will not only have an accompanying cookbook but also an app that has 20+ recipes and exclusive content. Look for it this Fall on iTunes.

* Confidence
You'll see it in the students and you'll see it in Joanne who literally seems more "at home" than ever before. I talked to her director about it and he said "She's evolved, you're seeing more of the real Joanne." Without missing a beat, she balances responding to student's questions with making sure every cooking step is explained. On the day I was there everything was being shot in real time, there was no swapping out of dishes. She's the quintessential cooking teacher on PBS and really what more could you ask for?

Peach Blackberry Cobbler Recipe

Is there a more old-fashioned word than cobbler or cobbled? It brings to mind a shoemaker in a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale or those stone streets in Europe (the ones that are so treacherous if you're wearing high heels). Just the word alone is quaint, charming and feels handmade. Which of course brings me to the culinary version of cobbler. A cobbler is basically sweet biscuit dough formed into tiles and "cobbled" together on top of baked fruit. It's the kind of thing you can make year round, just varying the fruit with the season. Because it's so chilly in San Francisco in August, it's really the perfect dessert at the moment. We'll have to a while longer before making ice cream I'm afraid.

My most recent cobbler combines organically grown peaches I got from my friend Gayle who annually adopts a tree from the writer and farmer Mas Masumoto, dark as night blackberries from Driscoll's and a spice I am crazy about, cardamom. I recommend combining a couple types of fruit, it makes the cobbler prettier thanks to the contrasting colors, but also adds more texture, complex flavor and sweetness. I also recommend adding a bit of spice. If black pepper and mint had a love child, it would be cardamom. It's an exotic and aromatic spice, common in both Indian cuisine and in Nordic baking. I added a touch of it to both the fruit and the biscuit topping but it's still very subtle.

This cobbler is based on a Sara Moulton recipe. She makes a scaled down version that bakes in a one quart pan in the toaster oven (I use an 8x8 inch pan instead). It's really smart for small households because cobbler is best fresh from the oven. In fact, if you preheat the toaster oven and then get cooking I find it reaches temperature just at the point the cobbler is ready to bake.

Note: You can blanch and peel the peaches if you like, but I prefer leaving the skins on.

Peach Blackberry Cobbler Makes 4 servings

Ingredients

4 peaches, cut into 1/4 inch slices
1 1/2 cup blackberries
3 Tablespoons sugar
1 Tablespoon cornstarch
1/8 teaspoon cardamom

Topping
1/2 cup flour
1 1/2 teaspoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon baking soda
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
2 Tablespoons unsalted butter
1/4 cup buttermilk plus more for the tops of the biscuits
1 teaspoon turbinado sugar

Instructions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Combine the peaches, blackberries, cornstarch, cardamom and sugar and toss gently to combine. Transfer to an 8 inch square baking pan.

In a bowl combine the flour sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cardamom. Cut in the butter using a pastry blender until the mixture resembles the texture of small peas. Stir in the buttermilk to form a soft sticky dough. Knead into a ball then turn out onto a well-floured work surface and roll to a thickness of about 1/2 inch. Use a biscuit cutter or wine glass to cut out 4 biscuits gathering the trimmings and rolling again as necessary. Arrange the biscuits over the fruit. Brush biscuits lightly with additional buttermilk using a pastry brush, sprinkle with turbinado sugar, and bake for 25 minutes or until golden brown. Serve warm with or without vanilla ice cream.

Enjoy!

All about Dijon Mustard

I never expected to visit Dijon. But on my first trip to France, I asked my Parisian friends for suggestions for where to go and they said Dijon and nearby Beaune, so off I went. The historic capital of Burgundy, Dijon is a dramatic looking city with lots to do and see. It has many museums, churches, medieval buildings with gargoyles and stunning geometrically patterned roofs of green, white, yellow, black and terra cotta ceramic tiles.

When most people think Dijon, they think mustard. But Dijon is in wine country, home of Coq au Vin, Boeuf Bourguinon and lots of other rich and rustic dishes including the classic preparation of Escargot in garlic, butter and parsley. In addition to Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Gamay and Aligoté, the region is also known for Cremant de Bourgogne and cassis. It's worth noting that you can get to Dijon in under 2 hours from Paris if you take the TGV.

But let's talk mustard. If I had to choose one mustard only (currently I have 7 open jars in my fridge) it would be Dijon. It's mellow and sophisticated in color but with a spicy bite. It's made from brown or black mustard seeds and usually from white wine vinegar, though initially it was made with verjus, a kind of unripe grape juice. Dijon is where you'll find the original Maille shop, founded in 1747, the windows filled with handsome ceramic mustard jars of all sizes. There is another Maille boutique in Paris (right near Fauchon and Laduree at place de la Madeleine).

I'm rather fond of the Maille brand (now a subsidiary of Unilever), it works particularly well in recipes and is not very expensive. If you substitute Grey Poupon (owned by Kraft), you will notice a difference (and it does not work as well in vinaigrette recipes). In France you can buy Dijon mustard flavored with everything from cassis to blue cheese to cognac, nuts, mushrooms, and piment d'espelette. Having been on the giving and receiving end, a small jar of flavored Dijon mustard makes a fine gift.

Here are some ways to use Dijon mustard (other than on sandwiches and hot dogs)

* Combine with oil and vinegar to make a classic vinaigrette

* Add to quiche recipes, especially quiche lorraine

* Slather on fish fillets before baking

* Mix with honey to make a dipping sauce, also great on salmon

* Add a touch to macaroni and cheese

* Use in baked beans

* Combine mustard and olive oil with red potatoes then roast until crusty

* Coat pork chops or chicken in mustard then crust with panko and bake

* Add to potato and egg salads

* Spread it on bread instead of butter

* Simmer mustard with pan drippings, wine, broth and cream to make a sauce for roast chicken

* Add to barbecue sauce

Want to learn more about Dijon cuisine? August 23, 2011 Michelin star chef chefs Jean-Pierre and Alexis Billoux from Dijon will be doing cooking demos at the CUESA kitchen at the San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market from 10 am - 2 pm as part of the Dijon Must’art tour.

The San Francisco Street Food Festival 2011

There are so many reasons to go to the San Francisco Street Food Festival it's hard to know where to start. First and foremost, for just a few dollars (nothing is over $8) you can eat things you love like chicken wings, cheeseburgers and ice cream to things you may not have tried before like chicken mole croissants or wax moth larvae tacos(!) The festival takes place in the Mission district along Folsom Street between 22nd and 26th. It begins at 11 am and goes until 7 pm. It's also a fundraiser for the presenter, La Cocina.

La Cocina is a non-profit incubator that has helped many successful local food businesses get up and running and the festival showcases many of the entrepreneurs in their program. Some of their graduates include Clairesquares maker of the highly addictive milk chocolate crunchy oat flapjacks, Azalina's luscious Malaysian food an Off The Grid stalwart (and featured in Bon Appetit not long ago), and Kika's Treats. Cristina aka Kika is currently offering a gooey Brazilian cheese (gluten free) bread you must try. Other clients include Donna of Love & Hummus. Her organic hummus is silky smooth and comes in unique flavors including my favorite, roasted lemon and thyme. More favorites? Anda Piroshki and El Huarache Loco who makes the antojitos or Mexican snacks that Alemany farmer's market shoppers adore (count me among their fans).

You will also find some famous local and not-so-local restaurants at the festival too. Been dying to try the food at Flour + Water, Commonwealth, Wise Sons Deli? They will all be there. Last year I fell hard for the chicken wings from Nombe, the succulent cheeseburger from 4505 Meats and the matcha gobs from Gobba Gobba Hey. I have no idea what will win me over this year but I can tell you I am planning on trying the banh mi taco from the Peached Tortilla from Austin TX, La Victoria Bakery pan dulce (you may have read that Luis Villavelaquez has revamped the recipes), Beijing's lamb skewers and the sweet potato pie waffle with bourbon caramel sauce from Pinx. Plan ahead by perusing the full list of vendors.

Last but not least, the festival could just as easily be called the International Street Food Festival. There will be food from all over the world with vendors who are originally from places like Japan, Russia, Malaysia, Mexico and Africa. If you still need encouragement, check out the slide show to see just a few of the smiling faces and to get a preview of the ridiculously delicious food. See you there?

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

More previews?

SFoodie
SFBG
Eater SF
Bay Area Bites (for vegetarian only picks)