Thanks for all of the excitement from last week; the accolades are still rolling in!The We Olive Tasting & Dinner Event in the Huntington Beach Standards of Excellence showroom was very exciting. I am grateful to the whole SOE team led by Scott Emerick. You all were so ready, willing and able and thanks to you, it was a blast for your guests. So what was so fun, you may ask?

We Olive was in the house! What a discovery. We Olive is the premier retailer of California extra virgin olive oil in the U.S., with several retail outlets throughout California. Their mission includes educating consumers about California’s extra virgin olive oil and creating a place where together with the growers, chefs and customers they can share their passion for olive oil. Owners Phil and Debby Brooks brought this exemplary experience to our gorgeous showroom with a full tasting event. My mission was to cook with these products using top notch Thermador appliances! (Thanks, Kevin!) Look at the gorgeous oils set up for sampling…

While guests sipped and sampled, Arlyn and I were rocking out Flat bread Pizzas and Parmesan Crisps in the Thermador Convection Ovens. We made Assorted Flatbread Pizzas with Calvirgin Olive Oil, Heirloom Tomato Salad with We Olive Tuscan and Balsamic Reduction, Summer Squash and Tagliatelle with We Olive Lemon Oil and Ricotta Salata, Oven Poached Chicken with Sage and Lemon and a special dessert…
I love cooking on top notch appliances! Here are two tips from this event for rocking your convection oven:
Great Tip 1: Par Cooking Pizza Doughs. Roll out raw dough very thinly onto an oiled piece of parchment paper. Slide dough and paper together onto the very bottom of a pre-heated 400°F convection oven ( this only works if the bottom elements are hidden!) . It will smoke a little and paper will crisp, use your ventilation. After about 3-4 minutes, carefully check bottom of dough. Crisp and brown? You did it! Remove from oven, discard paper, brush with We Olive Oil and top with toppings such as goat cheese and ripe sliced figs, or fresh tomato and mozzarella. Return to the convection oven, on a rack this time, with a sheet pan placed on the rack below the pizza to catch any drips. 4-5 minutes gets you to “Crisp, brown and gorgeous”. Remove and top with arugula and sliced basil and drizzle with We Olive Balsamic cooked down to a syrup. (Balsamic reduction) Salt and pepper, oh, yes!

JOIN US! Come to spectacular Sonoma this Saturday from 12-4 for the Sonoma Wine Country Weekend! Our partner, Viking is bringing their magnificent Viking Mobile Kitchen for a spectacular chef battle, cooking demos and incredible wine and food tastings at the Mac Murray Ranch located at 9015 Westside Road in Healdsburg, CA.
Standards of Excellence is there from 11-4 doing a luscious sampling, appliance advising and interviewing chefs and vintners from the Standards of Excellence/Viking interview tent! Who is coming? See you there!

Ahh, Las Vegas. What a wild frontier. My husband Rob and I found ourselves driving across the vast alien landscape last Saturday after the Sears Chef Challenge in San Bernardino to a party in Vegas hosted by a former private chef client. Can you believe that?
What an amazing drive it is straight through the Mojave Desert, such a slice of the Wild West with battered signs over forlorn forgotten buildings, 110 degree heat and a ocean of forbidden land passing by. Then,“POP” a huge, glittery air conditioned metropolis appears out of nowhere. Most incredible.

I love seeing all of the art, pageantry and beautiful people, the billions of lights and visions of grandeur and human folly. It is all there. My focus, is of course, the food. Nearly every famous chef that you can think of from Joel Robuchon to Emeril Legasse has a Vegas out post (or several) as in the case of one of my favorite chefs, our own world famous Michael Mina. (He lives in Novato, CA, so I claim him as “our own”!)

With times being tight, we were thrilled to see his restaurants, along with many others, offering a “Summer Tasting Menu”, at significant savings. We were able to enjoy a fantastic meal at his “Sea Blue” for about half price! You have to look, but you can find exceptional deals at these world class restaurants.

Chef Michael Mina’s Summer Tasting Menu at Sea Blue:
“Choose Your Own Salad” – you pick up to 10 ingredients for your salad
House made Naan with Three Dipping Sauces
Lobster Bisque
Grilled Halibut with Lentils, Asparagus and Herbed Butter with Grapefruit
Mini Cheesecake with Berry Coulis

And just look at this dessert buffet at Studio 54 at the MGM Grand, miniature offerings of delectable tastes, over 20 feet long and three tiers high:

At every turn, I was amazed at the sheer volume and detail of innumerable food and drink offerings. I kept imagining the legions of chefs, sous-chefs, pastry chefs, line cooks, prep cooks, dishwashers and more working 24 hours a day to keep Vegas awash with outrageous choices for hundreds of thousands of guests every day.

One last shot: Guess what this is? Who can name this shot? A hint: MGM Grand…

Well, I just returned from a trip to San Bernardino to visit Chef Tiffany Friedman of the Sears Chef Challenge for cooking demo number two.  It was a SUPERB event and I have pictures to prove it! But first, let me post a few recipes and culinary advice from the brilliant Aida Mollenkamp. She shared them at last week’s cooking class at Fresh Starts Cooking School. Check out my last post for more “behind the scenes” class details.
Aida’s Menu, created on the beautiful Standards of Excellence Demonstration Kitchen at Fresh Starts Cooking School:

Plum Blossom Cocktail
Baked Bellweather Farms Ricotta with Balsamic Reduction & Mc Evoy Olive Oil, Fresh Figs, Onion Jam & Rustic Bakery Flatbread Crackers
Arugula Salad with Nectarines & Pickled Fennel
North African Grilled Springhill Ranch Waygu Steak with Basil Chimichurri
Garlic Roasted Potatoes

Drunken Cherry Sundaes with Toasted Hazelnuts over Straus Ice Cream

Here are a few recipes that Aida shared:

North African Grilled Steak with Basil Chimichurri

Drunken Cherry Sundaes with Toasted Hazelnuts

She gave great cooking advice, most notably about skill building.

“Better knife skills mean better life skills” was one of my favorites. (She has excellent knife skills, by the way.) She explained that saying has many levels of meaning from simply being able to cook for yourself to the possibility of making a living cooking. This was a great message, not lost on our Fresh Starts Culinary Academy students, many of whom are recently coming out of homelessness and working so hard for a better life.
“Get to know your local purveyors.” We hear this a lot, but do we do it? Do you know the butcher at your market? Who grows your favorite tomatoes? Who raises sustainable beef in your area? Once you get past the habit of not reaching out, it really becomes so much more fun to shop. Reach out and get to know your food sources.

Once again, I want to thank Aida for her generosity of time and spirit. Be sure and tune into her new show Food Crafters on the new Cooking Channel!

Here are a few pictures from this past Saturday’s Sears Chef Challenge with Chef Tiffany Friedman. The San Bernardino Sears team did a MAGNIFICENT job!

Chefs. We are a wild bunch. After so many years in the food service industry, there are some things we miss out on. Take travel, for example. I am still getting used to how it works. I booked a flight into Santa Barbara Airport from San Francisco and arrived at the gate. I walked down a veritable gangplank into THE SMALLEST AIRPLANE I had ever boarded. I had no idea, thirty seats with propellers! I could have really done without that excitement (longest hour of my life). But I did live to tell…

Assorted heirloom tomatoes in all shapes and sizes

I drove down the glittering, shimmering coast from Santa Barbara to Ventura, CA for round two of the Sears Chef Challenge on Saturday. Wow! Team Ventura had it going on, manager Ted Harrell had everything in place for Chef Donna Barrow, owner of Your Plate or Mine Personal Chef Service for her first demonstration featuring tomato salads, Panzanella Salad and Plated Heirloom Tomato Salads with “Accessories”. The “accessories” are great salad add ons such as balsamic glaze and Parmesan crisps called “frico”. Here are the salad recipes from the event. Sensational Summer Tomato Salads! Just look at those tomatoes!

Sliced tomatoes and "frico"

It was all delicious, but the frico were a real hit. Donna made them in advance in the oven and then demonstrated our cook top method that I described in the headliner notes at the top of the recipe (same idea just done in a non-stick pan). Here are the recipes for the glaze and frico. Chef Donna worked on the Jenn Air Induction Cook top which she fell completely and madly in love with. Induction is magic, so quick to heat and cool, so efficient. I use them every chance I get at Standards of Excellence for our culinary events.The Ventura appliance team was blown away to see just how spectacular the technology works in “real time”!

Chef Donna is an excellent teacher. She was a full time teacher for years before starting her private chef business. Now, she cooks weekly for several clients, filling their homes and fridges with smells and tastes of seasonal fresh food. Donna was assisted by Sears associate Mitch, who did a superb job. Excellent support makes such a difference. You can see by this picture after her successful demo, how grateful she is! I love this picture…people truly make the culinary world go around.

Sears Team Ventura, Ted, Chef Donna, Mitch and me

For the next trick, this coming weekend, I am heading back to LA to meet up with Chef Keven Lee from My World on a Plate who will be demonstrating in Carson, CA and Chef Tiffany Friedman from Butteroot Personal Chef Service demonstrating in San Bernardino, CA. Stay tuned as these chefs enjoy a life changing experience as contestants in the Sears Chef Challenge.

Grateful Chef Donna and kitchen expert, Mitch

After a long but successful day, I headed home. Upon leaving, I was informed that it could take more than twice as long to get back to the airport, on a SATURDAY! Southern California traffic defies all logic. But I was driving along one of the world’s most gorgeous coastlines…

Coming soon: a myriad of culinary festivals with Standards of Excellence in Huntington Beach, San Diego, Sonoma and Lake Tahoe!

• Plum Blossom Cocktail
• Baked Bellwether Farms Ricotta with Balsamic Reduction, Fresh Figs, Onion Jam and Flatbread Crackers
• Arugula Salad with Nectarines and Pickled Fennel
• North African Grilled Springhill Ranch Steak with Basil Chimichurri
• Garlic Roasted Potatoes
• Drunken Cherry Sundaes Straus Family Creamery with Toasted Hazelnuts

It has been really exciting working on this class. Aida is so much fun and such a professional. Despite her crazy busy schedule she is completely on top of things, calling and e-mailing me to make things happen. Although I took a few days off last week, I still found time to visit a few of the artisan producers to gather top ingredients for this class.

Springhill Ranch

Next, I visited my former neighbors, Karen and Chris London at their ranch, known for excellent Pinot grapes and now for raising top Waygu beef. They are the only full Waygu producers in California. Waygu is the same breed that produces Japan’s famous Kobe Beef. They raise and care for their cattle in what the local paper called “a country club for cows”. This gorgeous Wagyu cow (pictured on the left) was so mishandled before she arrived at Springhill, it took over a year of loving care to get her to approach humans. Now look at her! In the next field, they raise Scottish Highland cows,a magnificent long haired breed. People stop by the road side to get a better look at these beautiful animals.

The dust has settled and the confetti has been swept away from last weekend’s Sears Chef Challenge in Chicago , but still much excitement remains, especially for the four winning charities that our chefs supported. Congratulations to the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, Camphill Village in Kimberton Hills and the Food Bank of New York for winning $5,000 each from our chef finalists!

The top winner for round one, Chef Mark Maassen supported the People’s Resource Center located at 201 S. Naperville Rd, Wheaton, Il 60187 . They will receive a full $10,000 donation to support their work! Since 1975, the People’s Resource Center community has existed “to respond to basic human needs, promote dignity and justice, and create a future of hope and opportunity through discovering and sharing personal and community resources.”

As Chef Mark tells it, “The food pantry is very local for me. They offer a lot of premium products, as well as organic foods to people that would not normally choose them, helping to educate families about health and wellness. Having the food bank a half-mile from my house in Westmont makes me feel like an immediate impact will be made. Perhaps, I can draw more attention so that more companies will support the People’s Resource Center.” Mission accomplished, Chef Mark!
It was a tremendous honor to hand each winning chef a $5,000 check written to each charity and to hand over a “big check” (see photo below) for another $5,000 to the PRC. Doug Moore, the President of Sears Home Appliance signed and presented the check to Chef Mark Maassen who passed it on to the PRC’s Executive Director, Kim Perez who was beyond thrilled.

As a dedicated community activist and the resident “non-profit expert” on our SCC team, I am amazed at what has happened. Before the SCC only a few of our original 12 chefs had a current charitable affiliation, and now nearly all of them are regular,(hopefully) life time supporters of their charities. (Once you begin charitable work, it becomes so fulfilling and mutually beneficial, it usually becomes a way of life.)

How about you? What are the ways that you give back through food or otherwise? How can you become more involved in your community? I would love to hear some stories and ideas. Let’s keep this “giving” going!