SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist in the Kitchen: Parsnips Given the odd carrot colors on display at the country's most upscale market, you'd be forgiven for thinking that parsnips are nothing more than beige carrots. They are cousins, but parsnips have a
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist in the Kitchen: Cheese Fondue When was the last time you dunked bread cubes into a simmering soup of liquid cheese? Fondue went out of fashion in the 1980s, but only after it had been in fashion so
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist in the Kitchen: Onions 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
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist in the Kitchen: Risotto 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
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist in the Kitchen: Chestnuts Peeling techniques and dish suggestions after the jump. Photos by Melissa Schneider
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist in the Kitchen: Jujubes 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
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist in the Kitchen: Lettuce These days, it's not easy being greens. No sooner had newspapers tired of the spinach-borne onslaught than another Salinas company issued a voluntary recall on its lettuce. Photo by Melissa SchneiderE. Coli
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist in the Kitchen: Summer Sorbets You can buy sorbet, but a little effort will give you the chance to try bold new flavor combinations. We recently made white peach-ginger sorbet, and friend of SFist meriko told us about
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist in the Kitchen: Tomato Taste Test We used tomatoes from the Grand Lake Farmer's Market and stored them at room temperature overnight to keep their flavor at its peak. We sliced them just before the tasting, since the best
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist in the Kitchen: Garlic But there are 200 or more strains of the famous aromatic, and each tastes different from its cousins. Some have more heat, some have less. Layers of taste can suggest spices or herbs.
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist in the Kitchen: Simple Summer Supper Great ingredients make great food, and all you have to do is get out of their way. Here's a casual summer meal we assembled for the test kitchen staff. This weekend, find your
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist in the Kitchen: Pairing Wine and Food We thought we'd share some of our wine-pairing tricks to help you decide what to drink with your next meal. There's no great mystery. Use a couple guidelines to steer you one way
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist in the Kitchen: Garlic Scapes and Others Thin garlic scapes bend into graceful arcs as they emerge from the soil, creating a striking vegetable. The center becomes wooden as the garlic ages (hence the hard neck in hardneck garlic), so
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist in the Kitchen: Sorrel The tapered point of a bright green sorrel leaf stands out at the market, but that leaf's tartness—from high levels of oxalic acid—stands out on the plate. Take a bite of
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist in the Kitchen: Goat Cheese 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 went to France to learn to
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist in the Kitchen: Lemons Even though the SFist kitchen staff is at a writing conference, we're giving you some homework for the next two weeks: Swing by a local farmer's market, pick up some lemons, and give
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist in the Kitchen: Rancho Gordo Beans As soon as the weather presented a semblance of winter, we headed straight for the Rancho Gordo stall at the Saturday Ferry Plaza Market, where Steve Sando sells his excellent dried beans, explaining
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist Tries WineParty 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
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist in the Kitchen: Fennel We fell under this vegetable's spell long ago (as opposed to the Fennels on Veronica Mars, which are more recent faves) and we're happy to see it back at area markets, where it
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist in the Kitchen: Citrus Techniques But instead of once again extolling the virtues of winter's fruits we decided to offer some basic citrus techniques that will impress everyone who comes to your table. Photos by Melissa Schneider
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist in the Kitchen: Braising 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 temperature, produces luscious, tender meals
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist in the Kitchen: Cabbage 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
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist in the Kitchen: Brussels Sprouts Brussels sprouts are one of those love-em-or-hate-em vegetables, and we hope you'll use the comments to share your opinions on the little cabbages. We used to be firmly in the hate-em camp, but
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist in the Kitchen: Oysters 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
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink How To Open Sparkling Wine With party season in full swing, we want to provide a reminder about the proper way to open a bottle of sparkling wine. Here's a hint: It's not about how far the cork
