When we see parsnips at the store or in most markets, they're big, with a tough inner core. We were thrilled, then, to see smaller, in-season parsnips, split down the middle like a serpent's tongue, at the Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market. The slimmed-down root vegetables have not yet formed the woody center that we chop from normal versions. That means higher yield and less work for the home cook. Given the odd carrot colors......

Winter's deep chill has arrived, and you can expect it to stay here for a few months. Forget salads for dinner; our bodies need food that coats our bellies and warms our hearts. And few dishes heat us like cheese fondue, the perfect dish with which to greet cold friends coming to your home for dinner. When was the last time you dunked bread cubes into a simmering soup of liquid cheese? Fondue went......

We know how it is with onions. You treat them as kitchen staples, something to throw on the shelf until you need an aromatic for the saute pan. You take them for granted. But in the cold snap of winter, root vegetables come to the front. Gone are the vibrant, ripe tastes of summer produce; gone are the warm, mellow flavors of fall. The intense, peppery taste of vegetables on sale at farmers' markets......

We remember the late 90's when every food magazine offered the definitive risotto technique. Writers trudged to Italian villages to learn how rural matrons made this popular dish. Even as newbie foodies, we rolled our eyes at these accounts. Why make it sound so treacherous? We have a tried and true technique, learned not at the side of a Piemontese peasant woman but through observation and common sense. Risotto is a stress-free dish that's perfect......

We all know the picturesque way to roast chestnuts. Come on, sing along; you know you want to. And believe us, if the SFist test kitchen possessed an open fire, we'd buy a chestnut pan and snuggle in front of the fireplace, toasting the dark-brown nuts and popping the sweet meat into our mouths like bonbons. Provided, of course, that the pan fit behind the spitjack we plan to buy when the fireplace appears.......

You won't find jujubes at your average farmer's market stall. If you want to buy the olive-sized, black and brown fruits, hunt out Asian-themed markets or tables selling Asian ingredients. We're not sure why Chinese dates, as they're also called, haven't made more inroads into Western cuisine, though some historians think that Homer's lotus-eaters were riding a jujube high. The chalky texture of a raw jujube isn't very appealing, but the flavor—a subtle mix......

Last week we were shopping at a local farmer's market and overheard two women discussing what to buy for dinner. "How about spinach?" said one. The other greeted her suggestion with a smirk and they both nervously chuckled before moving on to other vegetables in the stand. These days, it's not easy being greens. No sooner had newspapers tired of the spinach-borne E. Coli onslaught than another Salinas company issued a voluntary recall on......

Fleshy summer fruit on a hot day sings a siren song of sorbet. We see plump, yellow peaches and imagine a spoonful of frozen fruit that holds firm for a single flap of a hummingbird's wing. On the tip of our tongue, the sorbet melts into a liquid alive with the flavor of the season. You can buy sorbet, but a little effort will give you the chance to try bold new flavor combinations.......

God, we're so sick of Snakes on a Plane that we want to kill anyone and everyone that makes a "something on a something" joke. But then we realized that there was no way we could ever win this fight, and, hell, if you can't beat them, we might as well join them. And with that, you have the theme of this weeks' Gothamist network post. Austinist makes it easy for us, with Candidate on......

Tomato crops haven't fared well in California's recent heat wave, which might explain why market stalls aren't overflowing with the iconic summer vegetables. We spotted some recently, and took some home for a tomato tasting in the SFist test kitchen. Honest, we came up with this idea before the New York Times ran an article about a similar tasting . We used tomatoes from the Grand Lake Farmer's Market and stored them at room......

Unless you shop at farmer's markets—and we know you do, so send this to your friends—you probably have never tasted good garlic. Supermarkets usually carry one of two types that travel better than they taste. No surprise, since 70% of that garlic comes from overseas, where cheap labor keeps costs down. But there are 200 or more strains of the famous aromatic, and each tastes different from its cousins. Some have more heat, some......

As much as we enjoy planning dinners, sometimes we just want to assemble a quick meal from fresh ingredients at the farmer's market. How often do you get to the many markets here in the Bay Area? If you haven't been in a while, we'd like to urge you visit your neighborhood market and taste the treats on display. Scrumptious stone fruits such as cherries and nectarines are at the peak of their flavor......

Here in the SFist test kitchen, we love putting food on the table. But we also love choosing a bottle of wine to go with that food. Unfortunately, most cooks don't have as much fun with the task, and this makes us sad. Shoppers fret too much about finding a "perfect" bottle. You're supposed to enjoy wine, not stress about it. We thought we'd share some of our wine-pairing tricks to help you decide......

We geeked out on garlic last year, so we instantly recognized the twisty garlic scapes at the Grand Lake farmer's market last week. A scape is the stem that shoots through the middle of a bulb of hardneck garlic, the more flavorful subspecies of that aromatic bulb, which we'll cover a bit more in July or August. Thin garlic scapes bend into graceful arcs as they emerge from the soil, creating a striking vegetable.......

We first learned about sorrel from our food writing idol Ed Behr, who devotes a chapter of The Artful Eater to the distinctive herb and its history. Behr takes his cue from French cuisine and uses it in salads, soups, and sauces.We've kept that essay in mind, and pounced on the vibrant vegetable when we saw it at the Berkeley farmers' market. The tapered point of a bright green sorrel leaf stands out at......

We're tired of lying to the San Francisco fooderati: We used to hate goat cheese. There. We've said it. Happily, we came to our senses nine years ago and now we promote the chalky, salty flavor of caprine milk with all the passion of a new convert. Of course, we weren't alone in those dark, pre-goat cheese days. Thirty years ago, few Americans knew anything about this French staple. A woman named Laura Chenel......

When life gives you lemons, you.... *set BART on fire *break someone's cell phone (allegedly) *wait for the Mac DVR *get in a District 6 shouting match with Joe Scarborough *do roids *win our Fake SF contest *read SFist on your Palm *vote for your favorite Gavin + Sofia couple name *pee on a Thomas Kinkade *check out St. Vincent de Paul's Project Runway benefit *yvesdrop *protest the 12 Galaxies! (scroll down to the......

The poor lemon. It's so common that you ignore it even in the midst of its high season. But we tend to agree with Chez Panisse Fruit, which lists this tart fruit as a cooking staple. No one will be surprised to learn that the book's authors dote on the low-acid Meyer lemons, which have become a defining ingredient in California cuisine. But nothing beats the mouthpuckering juice of a Eureka or Lisbon lemon,......

Finally! Some cold weather! We've pouted over this winter's heat, which has prevented us from cooking our favorite seasonal dishes. High up on the list of foods we would've made? Beans. Just imagine: Slow-cooked onions, beans, maybe a bit of bay leaf for an aromatic component, maybe a bit of salt pork or bacon for a rich meatiness? Is there anything more soul-filling? (Yes, we know about bean salad, but that's not what we're......

Wine tasting parties are all the rage these days. Lifestyle mags offer tips for throwing them, and our friends seem to go to them all the time (why aren't we invited?). It's not hard to figure out the appeal. You get a bunch of people together in a friendly environment with a half-dozen or so bottles of wine, and people get to unearth new finds or expand their tastes a bit. But unless you've......

California cuisine means something different to everyone. Some equate it with local, artisanal producers. Some cast it as a Mediterranean cuisine realized with California ingredients and American techniques. But for us, it all comes down to the fennel. Every chef who's come through Chez Panisse's kitchens uses this anisey, wintergreen-colored vegetable. We're pretty sure that if you made a pizza with grilled fennel, meyer lemon-infused artisanal olive oil, and rocket, the space-time continuum would......

You've probably figured out that we like citrus almost as much as we like duck (how convenient that they complement each other). We've covered blood oranges and mandarins, and we're keeping an eye out for kumquats. The vibrant fruits bring a burst of color to winter's palette of dark greens and browns, and their tart juice enlivens any number of dishes. But instead of once again extolling the virtues of winter's fruits we decided......

Those of us who enjoy the grey, rainy days of winter have been frustrated by the glaringly bright sunshine we've had of late. At least it's cold enough for the season; even the test kitchen's frigid facilities seem warm when we come in from the street. We're holding the hypothermia at bay by braising everything around us. This cooking technique, where food is cooked in a little liquid for a long time at low......

Okay, we know what you're thinking. Cabbage? Isn't that just a big Brussels sprout? Isn't it cheating to do them back to back? Yes. In fact, we thought about just pointing you to Seattlest Molly's eloquent ode to cabbage and ending this post there. But then we realized that we should do our own part to promote this vegetable, which, like turnips, has something of a bad rep. Most cabbage naysayers probably dislike the......

We loved the empty marketplace we found at the Ferry Building on a soggy New Year's Eve day. Few buyers wanted to come out on the wet holiday. Sadly, many farmers felt the same way, and the thriving market was a shadow of its normal self. Ah, well, we still found some bright green Brussels sprouts to take home for dinner. Brussels sprouts are one of those love-em-or-hate-em vegetables, and we hope you'll use......

Holiday shopping and holiday parties leave us little time to cook this season. As we wandered the waterlogged Ferry Plaza market this weekend, we passed by the stalls of produce, knowing any veggies we bought would go bad before we prepared them. We're sure many of you face the same dilemma this week, unless of course you're cooking for a holiday party. But then we saw the Hog Island Oysters stall. Wouldn't it be......

We urge students in our wine classes to drink sparkling wine with dinner throughout the year. It pairs with a range of foods and transforms any meal into a celebration. But we know that most people think of sparklers as a holiday treat and open more at this time of year than any other. With party season in full swing, we want to provide a reminder about the proper way to open a bottle......

Dark greens last week, turnips this week. If you need proof that winter is here, the produce at local farmer's markets drives the point home. On the other hand, Kitchen photographer Melissa spotted a late batch of strawberries at the Grand Lake Farmer's Market, and we've spotted tomatoes recently as well. And we wonder why other parts of the country envy our markets. Oddball summer produce aside, root vegetable season has returned, and carrots,......

We recently saw an email that Eatwell Farm sent to their CSA members. "Chard next week!" they enthused. Little did new subscribers know they'd be getting chard for the next several months. When we subscribed to their program, every box included a bundle of deep green leaves with rainbow-colored stems. We tossed and turned at night, desperate to think of creative uses for the ubiquitous green. We were sick of chard after just a......

Oh my darling, oh my darling, Oh my darling, Clementine! Thou art lost and gone forever Dreadful sorry, Clementine. Maybe Huckleberry Hound always sang Oh My Darling, Clementine because he too was mourning a drowned love that he's replaced with her younger sister. But we think he started to sing it when he had to give up clementines and other mandarin oranges for the rest of the year. Old Huck would be happy to......