by Sam Tackeff | Sep 19, 2010 | Books, Challenge
There is nothing quite like a little forced introspection to make you sit down and realize that you’ve had one of the most jam-packed years of your life. (Literally, lots of jam.) In this case, a competition — Foodbuzz’s Project Food Blog is the name of the game. Their first challenge requires me to define why I should be the Next Food Blog Star. Perhaps I should start be re-introducing myself to them, and to you.
I’m Samantha. And I love food.
Two years ago I needed a change of scenery and decided to move three thousand miles from the comfort of New Hampshire to bustling San Francisco. To be honest, this decision was probably made years earlier when I first watched the film Mrs. Doubtfire. Few things live up to the wide eyed optimism of a seven year old, but San Francisco held up its end of the bargain. I love it here.
Continuing with the spirit of reinventing myself, I started a food blog upon my arrival.
Little did I know where it would lead me. Shortly after joining Foodbuzz, I participated in Foodbuzz 24,24,24 and got an amazing dream meal at chef Chris Cosentino’s Incanto. This connected me to an internship at a Food P.R. firm. I started working with chefs and restaurants on recipe organization, development and testing, and fell in love with all the hard work behind creating a dining experience. Okay, truthfully this love started when I became a stagiere in a local restaurant at the age of 12.
Somewhere along the line I also became the research assistant and recipe tester on a cookbook by “Jam it, Pickle it, Cure it” author Karen Solomon (see, lots of jam). I became involved (re: obsessed) with Omnivore Books on Food, and eventually ended up pretty much moving in, thanks to Celia Sack offering me a mercy job. All the while, I took control of my own health, got back into shape, and I went back to school at Integrative Nutrition to become a Health Coach and help others do the same.
And for the sake of full disclosure, I should confess the number of cookbooks I own now well exceeds the bookshelves I own to store them.
Why do I blog you may ask?
Ultimately, it comes down to the people I get to meet and be truly inspired by. For me, food blogging is not just about the chow, but integrally about those who are a part of it. I realized early on I wanted to share their stories with you. And in many ways, that’s what The Second Lunch has become.
In the past year, I’ve met so many wonderful chefs and insiders of the industry — I truly feel blessed for where my passion for food has led me. For this post, I decided to make a list of some of the folks I’d met, thinking that I’d get a good paragraph out of it. I did not expect this brick wall of superstars. This shocks me every time I glance down at it.
The short list includes: the wonderful folks from Big Sur Bakery, Polly Adema, Arthur Allen, Nate Appleman, Rose Levy Beranbaum, Ed Behr, Amy Besa, John Besh, Carole Bloom, Mark Bittman, Kim Boyce, Bruce & Eric Bromberg, Frank Bruni, Novella Carpenter, Mark Stewart Cassidy, David Chang, Nan Chase, Anita Chu, Andrew Coe, Langdon Cook, Chris Cosentino, Temra Costa, Elizabeth Crawford, Dave Cruz, Tod Davies, Penny De Los Santos,Tracy Des Jardins, Elan Drucker and Brett Emerson, Tara Duggan, Gordon Edgar, Elizabeth Falkner, Sarah Max Feldner, Jeremy Fox, Zoe Francois & Dr. Jeff Hertzberg, Fran Gage, Marcia Gagliardi, Anna Getty, Barbara Ghazarian, Darra Goldstein, Evan Goldstein, Joyce Goldstein, William Grimes, Giuliano Hazan, Dierdre Heeken and Caleb Barber, Jaden Hair, Pauli Halstead, Gerald Hirigoyen, Fergus Henderson, Lauren Hoover, Dianne Jacob, Madhur Jaffrey, Michael Kalanty, Niloufer Ichaporia King, Thomas Keller, Shelly Lindgren, David Lebovitz, Matt Lewis & Renato Poliafito of Baked, Barbara Lynch, Kermit Lynch, Deborah Madison, Jacqueline Mallorca, Harold McGee, Nancy Mehagian, Dr. Daphne Miller, Kate Moses, Marion Nestle, Cynthia Nims, Andrea Nguyen, Barbara Passino, Greg Patent, Cindy Pawlcyn, Georgia Pellegrini, James Peterson, Gayle Pirie, Michael Pollan, Michael Recchiuti, Peter Reinhart, John Relihan, Sara Remington, Tori Ritchie, Chad Robertson & Liz Pruitt, Lorna Sass, Rachel Saunders, Jennie Schacht, Lisa Schwartz, Kim Severson, Andrew Smith, Karen Solomon, Andrew Swallow, Heidi Swanson, Michael Symon, David Tanis, Pim Techamuanvivit, Corinne Trang, Patricia Unterman, Alice Waters, Max Watman, Tara Austen Weaver, Bruce Weinstein & Mark Scarbrough, Ari Weinzweig, Joanne Weir, Laura Werlin, Kathy Wiley, Victoria Wise, Molly Wizenberg, Paula Wolfert, Scott Youkilis, Grace Young, and Jane Ziegelman – Not to mention the hundreds of other food lovers that I’ve had the pleasure to meet over the past two years. (They would fill another post in itself). And I already know I’m forgetting some wonderful people on this list.
And that’s only in the past year. In the next month I’m going to add Rene Redzepi, Tyler Florence, Michael Chiarello, Dorie Greenspan, Jordan McKay, and Diana Kennedy to that list. And who knows who else?
* * *
Just incase you need another reason to push me onto the next round, here are several awkward and embarrassing photos from my childhood revolving around food. From top left: The taste tester, baking cookies with Sarah and Sara, hugging the Mauna Loa Macadamia Nut, and picking apples from a tree.
Mostly though, I blog because I love it here. I love being part of a greater community who cares just as much as I do, and doesn’t bat an eye when I whip out a camera at dinner and debate the origin of our meal with my dining companions, purchase another cookbook I don’t have space for because I don’t want to deprive myself of knowledge, wait an hour in line for crispy pork skin because well, it’s crispy pork skin, or wade through thousands of hungry hippies at the farmers market for the perfect summer peach.
Yes, my name is Samantha and I love food.
But equally, I love everything that surrounds it.
by Sam Tackeff | Jul 30, 2009 | Random
Mashable just posted their 15 top social media resources for foodies and I thought I’d weigh in on the subject. Some of them are crossover – that probably just means that they are really the best.
Note: I think that the best resources are often looking at the links pages and blogrolls of your favorite food bloggers. When I’m not exploring new sites that I find through the blogs, these are my go to resources:
Food bloggers:
*Foodbuzz : This is one of the best and fastest growing food sites on the web which brings together food bloggers from all over the world, and hosts the most excellent 24,24,24 every month, where 24 food bloggers from all over the globe are generously provided a hefty sum to enjoy their dream meals. Foodbuzz also works with sponsors to provide food lovers with a tastemakers program that has great perks of free food that comes to you in the mail. I’m looking forward to their food bloggers conference in San Francisco in the fall – keep an eye out for it! – and I’m a very happy participant (they aren’t paying me to say this!) and am excited to see what they have planned in the next few months to come.
*Alltop : You can use Alltop to catch up on the recent posts of the best of the best food blogs all in one place. Alltop is a web aggregator that allows you to keep up on your favorite topics. I also check out other aggregators such as StumbleUpon and Digg regularly to find new food related sites and keep up with food news.
*Epicurious: This website hosts recipes from several of the Conde Nast magazines including Bon Appetit and Gourmet. I use this, the Food Network, and Martha Stewart for the majority of my basic recipe searches.
*Goodbites: A collective efforts from some of the top food bloggers to create a network of recipes and food videos sure to please and entertain! Organizers include Jaden from Steamy Kitchen, David Lebovitz, and Deb from Smitten Kitchen just to name a few!
*Tasty Kitchen: The Pioneer Woman’s newest project – a networking site for recipes organized by Ree Drummond, one of the queens of blogging.
Restaurant Reviews/ Food Chatter
*Zagat was the original guide to good eats in cities across the country, and I’m always sure to get their city guide whenever I’m moving to a new place or exporing a new city. They have a good website now, but some of the features require a membership to access them. I think it’s worth it.
*Yelp – Yelp is my go to for plotting out my neigborhood – sometimes you have to take the reviews with a grain of salt, but it’s the first spot for figuring out where to go to dinner on any particular evening. Other similar sites include UrbanSpoon and Chow which both feature restaurant reviews. Chow also is a growing food community and hosts a great deal of food conversations and chatter as well. And don’t forget to make restaurant reseverations on OpenTable!
*Chefsblade: Chefsblade is a new community website for chefs, food lovers and anyone interested in the food business in general. They also post great articles about food and food trends, and are a growing social networking site for the industry and those intrigued by it.
Food Porn
*Tastespotting and Foodgawker: Two sites which aggregate beautiful photos from hundreds of different food blogs – it’s really what I’d have to call foodporn – I could click through these sites all day long.
What are your favorite food sites? Anything fantastic that I’m missing out on?
“Apple Pie” image via EvilMadScientist
by Sam Tackeff | Apr 26, 2009 | Restaurants
For the past few months I’ve been walking past the doors of Incanto every day and stopping to look at the menu. It’s pretty much become a daily ritual, as it is located exactly three minutes from my house. Menus are a little bit like illicit magazines for me. I sneak by each day to look at the list, memorizing each carefully composed and crafted sentence until “Foie gras torchon with preserved plums and grilled stirato” is seared into my head so I can dream about it all day long.
I think it’s fair to say that Incanto is different. Neighborhood Italian, for sure, but certainly not your spaghetti and meatballs joint. It specializes in Offal: the bits and pieces of the animal: including the heart, liver, kidneys, and brain. Bones, blood and guts, oh my! Does that scare you? Because it doesn’t scare me. I’m the kid that used to ask my mom to make liver, and would steal the giblets from the pan at Thanksgiving. The best part about it is that the stuff is good for you – it’s where the nutrients are in the animal – but aside from that, I’ll avoid talking about “healthy”, because I find that you lose all trust when you start that conversation.
Chris Cosentino, head chef at Incanto, cares passionately about using the whole animal, not letting anything go to waste. Offal are cuts of meat that are often thrown out, where in thousands of previous generations they have been rightfully acknowledged as delicacy. How is it that there is a whole generation of people who think that beef comes in two forms: ground, and steak – and are used to purchasing meat in sterilized Styrofoam packages. As the nation has become plagued by both health issues and financial struggles, going back to our roots and eating local, fresh, and limiting waste is key. Fortunately, eating from the whole animal is not only the more sustainable choice, but opens up a whole variety of tastes and textures to please the palate.
In addition to their use of offal, and locally procured meat, Incanto’s menu is full of locally grown fruits and vegetables, artisanal foods, and herbs from their own rooftop garden. They carry their own line of “tasty salted pig parts”, under the name Boccalone, which you can also get at their store in the Ferry Building. Do try the cone of meat. Its like a snow cone… of meat. I’m also a big fan of Chef Cosentino’s website, Offal Good.
I’ve wanted to go to Incanto for several months now. What was holding me back? I wanted everything. How could I possibly choose an appetizer, entree and dessert on a responsible budget? This, in retrospect was silly, and stupid. In the most fortunate twist of events, FoodBuzz wrote me back saying that I had been selected for their 24,24,24, where 24 blogs enjoy 24 meals in 24 hours on FoodBuzz’s generous dime! We just have to document it – which isn’t hard, because I’m usually in restaurants taking notes of everything I eat in my moleskin. So last night I brought out my camera and mini tripod, and went nuts.
Evening Menu
for four of us brave adventurers
Liquid libation: Vietti Barbera D’Asti 2006
Complimentary Sparkling Water. Who doesn’t love that?
* * *
Foie gras torchon with preserved plums and grilled stirato
Sweetbreads with peas & tarragon
Antipasto platter of Boccalone artisan salumi, roasted garlic, and marinated vegetables
* * *
Spaghettini, Sardinian cured tuna heart, egg yolk & parsley
Capunti, mortadella, sweet peas, ramps & potatoes
Rabbit Liver-Foie gras ravioli with grappa brown butter
* * *
Braised pork shoulder with rhubarb and fava beans
Whole roasted local sardines, garlic, chilli, capers & parsley
Slow-roasted lamb neck with baby fava beans, chilli and mint
* * *
Peas with honey and a knife
* * *
Flourless chocolate cake, beet ice cream and poppy seed crumble
Cream Soda float and lavender toffee-chocolate chip cookies
FANTASTIC, RIGHT?
And now, lets take a look:
Here is the foie gras that I had been dreaming about. It was creamy, smooth, and flavorful, and paired with that most amazing preserved plum that was one of the stars of the meal.
A soapbox note on foie gras: A few weeks ago, a restaurant in San Francisco was targeted for it’s use of Foie Gras, which is enlarged duck or goose liver. I care passionately about the quality of life given to the animals that I eat, and try to avoid eating factory farmed meat at all costs. I don’t believe that the process of creating foie gras is harmful to the animal, and I’ve seen it in person. I also believe that it is a dangerous thing for the government to make laws against it, and other artisanal food practices, particularly when they aren’t doing much at all to prevent the cramped, illness inducing, and environmentally harmful methods of factory farming. Incanto has an informative and well written response here, that I believe really sums up the issue and is well worth the read: Letters from Incanto: Shock and Foie
*Step off soapbox here*
Look here! Sweetbread! It’s not a brain, and it’s not bread, it’s actually a gland. I remember refusing to eat the stuff for years, even though it was my grandmother’s favorite. Well, you could say that I’ve become enlightened. It takes some standing out on an odd textural limb to eat this stuff, but if you can perservere, it’s really, really good.
And here, for your viewing pleasure is the bread and olive tapenade at Incanto. I know we were trying to be prudent, and normally I’d avoid excess bread so I could save space for the food, but the bread was good we ended up with seconds. The few slices left became my lunch today with the tapenade and leftover roasted garlic from the antipasto platter smeared all over the toast.
And so began the pasta course. We chose three small pastas to avoid having to be rolled out of the restaurant after the meal. It was a good decision. This first one is the Spaghettini with the tuna heart, one of the only dishes I was ambivalent about – only because I’m not terribly fond of tuna heart. The fun part though is the warm egg yolk that you get to poke at the table to make your own little sauce.
Here are the ravioli pockets of rabbit liver-foie gras.
This was my favorite of the pasta courses. Possibly because it reminded me of a childhood favorite of macaroni with ham and peas. But it was a grown up version, and very tasty indeed.
The main courses.
We had tried to pace ourselves, really. I think we were all a little shocked by the time the main courses came out. So. Much. Food. I think Dante would have been proud of us, because we were really pushing it here. What can I tell you about these dishes? Everything was really, really delicious. The sardines were fantastic, and in the spirit of whole eating, I ate the eyes (after closing my own). Tasty, I swear. The braised pork was falling apart and the fava beans were screaming Spring! Spring! I swooned. The peas with honey and a knife – it’s pea season- they are fresh – sweet – you could feed this to any kid who hated peas and I promise a convert.
This is Sean, our server, preparing our lamb neck for us. It involved taking two forks, and ripping the meat down the side away from the bone and the gristle. The gristle, he explained to us, is white tendon fiber you don’t eat. We could, if we were interested, get the marrow out and eat it. Marrow happens to be one of my favorite bits of offal, I remember gleefully sucking the marrow out of the bones when my mother made lamb shank for us at home. The problem here became – how would one appropriately get the marrow in a restaurant, from a bone the size of a hand? The answer: by poking it through with one of the tasty and delicious bread sticks. I wish I had a picture.
Dessert. Here it is, two measly, slightly grainy photos of some of the most fantastic dishes we had consumed all evening. I tried for better photos, but it was getting dark, and even though I had requested a 6pm reservation (for natural light in the photos!) by the end we had lingered too long, and my hand was shaky. Sigh. Ok, but really, that beet ice cream was killer. Beets and Chocolate happen to be a fantastic combination. And the cream soda float was divine. They make their own cream soda. It’s awesome. If anything, I’m going to become a regular here for dessert.
And if that wasn’t enough, we continued our evening in the spirit of excess: heading down to the Haight for a long post meal stroll (a.k.a. wait) for after dinner cocktails at Alembic. Last week I had the duck heart with pickled pineapple from these guys and went a little crazy- but now there was no room left for food. I had the Southern Exposure: Junipero Gin, lime juice, mint, a touch of sugar and a shot of celery juice. That folks, is a tasty, tasty beverage.
THANK YOU FOODBUZZ!
