Here’s a video of the Thanksgiving Prep work we did on wednesday. If you want the info to the music and such, Domenic has it on his site.

It was crazy! We prepped for about 4-5 hours roughly. It was all getting things ready for thursday. Domenic set up a little clock in the corner to show the time lapse. Pretty cool huh??

The day before Thanksgiving always means a crazy shopping experience; bordering on panic and chaos.

Luckily, we got to Berkeley Bowl early enough where the crowd was still pretty manageable. If you’ve never been to Berkeley Bowl, it’s a foodie’s(and hippie’s) haven. They’ve got an AWESOME produce selection; reasonable and even cheap in some cases. You can find tons of organic produce, rare produce, and some really weird stuff too.

I didn’t actually see these, but Jess said they’re “Buddha’s Palm” carrots. Freaky!

One of my favorite things about this place is the Bulk food sections. They’ve got a ton of things you can buy bulk from different dried foods, to spices, to salts and different flours. Very reasonable prices too!

Rock on Berkeley Bowl. Rock on.

 

 

Mis en place!

 

 

After all the food is prepped and packaged, it’s time to head over to my uncle’s house.

 

 

More butter! More butter!!!

 

 

Luckily, there’s lots of counter space.

 

 

Damn it smells good.

 

 

I’m the brown Mario Batali, and I wear shorts too heehee.

 

 

Me and Domenic working on the turkey so we can dunk it in the deliciously hot oil.

 

 

It is a damn good thing I turned the fire off before putting the turkey in. Even after we measured it overflowed!! Phew..!

 

 

Definitely need a hotter heat source next time.

 

 

Me and my Brat.

 

 

What a lot of work!! Domenic and I prepped the whole day Wednesday. We chopped, and diced, and blanched, and roasted everything we could to cut down on cooking for Thursday. Yah…didn’t help too much, there was still a lot of work to be done Thursday.

“SO…How will it all turn out??? Will the turkey taste good?? Are the mashed potatoes as creamy and yummy as you say they are!? Are you EVER going to post up recipes?!?!?!”

Find out how the food turned out tomorrow! (and recipes to come!!)

Gluttony overshadowed all other themes you can think of for this year’s Thanksgiving Extravaganza.

This year, like every year, I cooked Thanksgiving dinner for my family. This was probably the most ambitious menu I’ve put together in all those years. This was the first year I’ve cooked more than one turkey, the first year I’ve fried a turkey, and cooked for more than 20 people. For the most part, everything was great and everyone enjoyed it. There were a few dishes I was surprised turned out well (since I made up some of them as I went), and a couple of dishes I thought tasted better in my head than when executed. Sorry to those of you who were waiting for recipes! LOL, I was waiting to see how they would pan out first before I posted them up for people to try at home. I’ll have them up in a few days.

The madness started on Tuesday. After picking up Jessica, we stopped by the Ferry Building in San Francisco to have lunch and pick up a few things.

This place is singlehandedly responsible for triggering foodgasms in any gourmand who enters its halls.

 

Whatever specialty item you need, the Ferry Building will have it. Artisan breads and cheeses, fresh seafood and oysters, caviar, free range and organic meat, specialty mushrooms, chocolates, and olive oil. They have it all.

I. Love. Mushrooms.

 

On Tuesday and Saturdays they have an outdoor farmers’ market that sells all the traditional farmers’ market fare, plus a lot of uncommon seasonal items. The famous Slanted Door is also here. I haven’t eaten there yet, but I have cooked with Charles Phan himself, and the dishes we made were pretty damn tasty.

What?? Purple Bell Peppers??

 

If you go to the Ferry Building, be prepared to spend some money. Nothing is cheap here. You won’t be finding China Town deals in this place. Not only is the food of high quality, it’s also a tourist trap. You also get people from the Financial District coming here for lunch; and those folks are used to paying a premium for good food. Parking is also tough, but if you get a spot in the Washington St. lot, the merchants will validate your parking.

When all was said and done, I went home with a tiny bottle of White Truffle Oil and some dried Bing Cherries. haha…I figured I’d get the rest of my stuff from Berkeley Bowl in the morning. What a mad house that turned out to be!!

Truffle oil: Just another gateway drug.

Up Next: Wacky Wednesday and the prep work madness for Turkey day…..

Earlier this year my buddies and I went camping at Yosemite Park. If you’ve never heard of Yosemite stop reading this blog, use this website I found called “Google” and look it up. It’s probably the most awesome park in all the country. There are waterfalls, creeks, lots of trees, huge sequoias, and BEARS!!

As usual, I was in charge of buying and planning our food supplies. While I know we’re old enough now that we can pitch in more than $20/person, I still have to keep the food budget within reason. Khanh has a membership to the local Cash and Carry, so we decided to go there and check out the prices on bulk items. On every camping trip you gotta have meat; and we love to eat meat.

So we get to the Cash and Carry, and everywhere we go there are restaurant owners pushing their heavily stocked carts around, picking up boxes of produce, cases of meat, cartons of supplies. Most of the carts in there looked like this:

They are not fucking around.

 

So we grab a cart of our own. We’re checking out the different aisles, looking at product. We even put on complimentary freezer jackets so we could shop through the refridgerated sections. After a lot of careful shopping and price comparisons, our cart looked like this:

That damn orange juice kept sliding off!!

 

Needless to say, the items there were too bulk for what we needed. And thus, I put back my jug of O.J. and my bag of chicken breasts, and we headed straight to the regular grocery store.

And now we know.

Last month we catered a party for Google! The party was down near the Google headquarters, on the Shoreline Amphitheatre grounds.

They erected this HUGE dome tent. Everything was decorated in white. The dome was really cool, when it got dark they projected the night sky and stars on it, along with a huge earth rotating. It was as if they were planning…world…domination….!!! hmmm…..

 

 

Too bad I couldn’t get a picture of it during dinner. Sadly, I was actually working.

 

 

 

They definitely spent some money on the event. All of the cocktail tables were made completely of ice, as well as both bars. It was really awesome.

 

 

 

 

 

As far as food goes, we served this awesome amuse course. I forget what’s in it, but i think it was hamachi and kiwi…it was awesome. We served it on these ice plates that were a bitch to get done. Some of our chefs had to prep in a freezer truck, and it was a real tight window of service so the plates didn’t start melting before the guest got them!

 

 

 

For those of you who don’t know what an amuse bouche course is, it’s basically a bite-sized morsel of food before the appetizers or first course is served. It’s supposed to get you in a great mood to eat. If I remember my french correctly, amuse bouche means “happy mouth” literally. (feel free to correct me on that).

 

 

 

 

 

We also served up a duck salad with a calvados gastrique. It was really good!!

Go try and enjoy your Hot Pocket now lol.

My faith in Zachary’s has been restored.

Zachary’s is a Chicago style “Stuffed” pizza joint right in the middle of Rockridge in Oakland. It’s not really deep dish, but what they do is stuff their pizza, meaning a layer of dough, topped with cheese and whatever topping, another layer of dough, and that’s topped with their tomato sauce. If you go there most nights of the week, and over the weekend, expect to wait in line for at least 45 minutes.

A Zachary’s Pizza. Yummy!!

Zachary’s Oakland restaurant is smaller than you’d think. They pretty much jam you into the space they’ve got, and it makes for a real cozy(a.k.a squished) environment. The place is decked out in all this Zachary Pizza related art work. It’s kinda neat.

Art! Yummy!!

 

Kat, Domenic and I decided it was a good day to splurge on some pizza, and that’s exactly what we did.

We totally pigged out. Our order consisted of two medium pizzas: the Barbeque Chicken Thin crust pizza and a Stuffed Pepperoni, Mushrooms and Garlic pizza.

I thought the barbeque chicken was excellent. The bbq sauce wasn’t too tangy or too sweet, the cheese was nice and gooey and it looked like they used a mix of mozzarella and cheddar. The crust was nice and crisp the way a thin crust should be. I think they topped it with cilantro, and that was a really nice touch(it was hard to tell with the sauce overpowering). I almost would’ve liked it to have a slight kick, but other than that it was good.

The Stuffed Pizza

The reason I say my faith has been restored in Zachary’s is that I never used to like all the tomatoes they put on top of their stuffed pizza. It was always too overpowering! The flavors of whatever ingredients you’d order never stood a chance against the tomatoey dominance of the sauce. But this time was different: it was nicely balanced against the pepperoni and cheese, and I think the garlic even stood up to the tomatoes.

Totino’s on steroids!

Overall, it was a great time. The pizza was delicious, the service was good, and best of all there was no wait!! You’ve won me back Zachary’s. You beat out Round Table as my favorite pizza place lol.

The catering company I work for does all the fancy parties for the Bay Area Elite. I don’t think I’ve worked for a company I love more than this one. I work whenever I feel like working, I eat AWESOME food, I cook with the best chefs, and I get to meet famous people! How can you not love this job???

Here are some of the highlights from over the year(note that these are all taken with my camera phone!):

My Office!!

 

 

A tomato salad a coworker and I made.

 

 

This was a sweet banquet style set up

 

 

haha…I thought it was a chinese wedding at first with all the red. Definitely was not.

 

A really expensive wedding cake. That’s Fondant that they use for the ribbons and flowers.

 

Individual Wedding cakes! Well, ok…they’re more for people to share.

 

The main wedding cake. Yes, it is expensive. No, I don’t know how much.

 

Catering Pimp with a Mohawk

 

Sorbet shaped in the fruit they’re flavored with. AND passed in a heavy ice bowl. Poor waiters…heehee.

 

This sexy leg was made by a groom for his wedding! (it’s proscuitto if you can’t tell) How pimp is that?? He made proscuitto, mortadella, toscano, …they were all SO good! We served it to the guests JUST LIKE THAT! And he had bought an old school slicer off ebay for the other meats. It was cool!

 

I love these parties, you learn so much. Keep posted…I’ll be putting up pictures from the Google party we did recently!!

I have been making Thanksgiving dinner for my family since I was 15 years old.

To be honest, I don’t remember too much from that first Thanksgiving meal. All I remember that I was dead tired, nervous that nobody would like it, and hating that I slaved away all day. Haha, I’m curious to know how I’d critique that meal if I got a chance to go back and try it.

Some years I would cheat and enlist the help of Spuds, Stovetop, and Canned Cranberry Sauce. I’ve learned the hard way that their help wasn’t worth the shortcuts. It wasn’t until a few years ago did I really start to expand the menu, get a little ballsy, and stuff my family with experimental(yet tasty) dishes. And after finding some motivation, I think this year’s menu is going to be the best yet. I’m so excited – you have no idea!!

Thanksgiving Extravaganza ’07

Appetizers

Apple, Jicama, and Fennel Fall Slaw

Pumpkin and Chevre Quesadillas

Spicy Chicken Wings with Cilantro dipping sauce

Pigs in a Blanket

Cheese Platter – Humbolt Fog, Camembert, Manchego with dried cherries, figs, grapes and plums

 

Main Dinner

Fried Turkey

Herb Roasted Turkey

Creamy Garlic Mashed Potatoes

Classic StoveTop Stuff (yes, you read this right!! It’s like crack!)

Apple & Butternut Squash Soup

Pear, Beet and Bibb Lettuce Salad with a Pear Vinaigrette

Baby Roasted Vegetables with Herb Butter

Fresh Cranberry Compote

Sweet Potato Casserole

Cranberry Walnut Bread

 

Dessert

Jessica’s Famous Apple Pie

Pumpkin Pie

Ice Cream

 

I think I got so wrapped up with the main dishes, that I neglected the desserts. Certain people have already given me slack about “buying” pies, so in order to maintain my dignity, I’ll be baking desserts. (like anyone is gonna be hungry enough for dessert!! ::rolls eyes::) Once I have a better idea of what I want to bake, I’ll update the menu.

Also, if anyone wants any of the recipes, let me know. I don’t have exact recipes for most of them, but I can give you something to work with. If you want to come, just send me a message; all are welcome!

And keep posted for pics and results of the event!!

 

In San Jose, there’s a place called the Winchester Mystery House. It’s a pretty creepy place!

It was built by Sarah Winchester, the widow of the maker of the Winchester rifles. She was a little crazy since she believed that she needed to keep the evil spirits away by continuously constructing her house. So they started building the house in 1884, and continued building until 1922(38 years). In the end, there are 160 rooms, 40 bedrooms, 6 kitchens, 47 fireplaces, and 2 ballrooms!!

Here’s a peak:

Jessica’s been itching to to check it out, so that’s what we’re gonna do! If anyone wants to come the tour costs $28.95 and we’ll be going on Saturday, November 24th. Let me know if you wanna go!!

This is my weblog.

“Blog” for short. (You watch that term is gonna catch on like fire!)

This is my piece of the pie. My little corner of the internet. My happy place. For now.

I decided to hop into the trend of blog-writing mainly to cash in on all the money to be made by my legion of fans clicking on ads. I guess until I set those up, I’ll be posting up a bunch of different things on here for you to read.

There’s gonna be posts on various recipes I’m testing, restaurant reviews, antics at work, cool stuff that I’ll be doing, pictures I’ve taken, and other crap I think you’ll enjoy.

In the meantime…I wanna see if you can guess what it is I’m laughing at: