The Valentine's Day dinner

Oh you sexy sexy people.
You deserve to eat sexy food. Food you can eat with your hands. Food you can share with your love. Food that makes your heart race.

I really like playing with the alchemy of food. Not only do I get to manipulate taste, but other sensations as well. The heart races with chilies, chocolate. The mind drifts with mugwort, chamomile, absinthe....you get the picture.

This year for Valentines Day, we have a special tasting menu: Love Bites.
Seven courses sure to excite and tantalize you.

Check out "This Month's Menu" for the deatils

The Folsom Street Edition

Hello Lovely Diners~

Secret Kitchen would like to invite you to the first of our Fall Events! Our summer has been full of private parties and dinners and we’re happy to be open again to anyone who loves good food!

For this edition, we take our inspiration and play from an event that is quintessentially Bay Area: The Folsom Street Fair. As long time participants of the fair, we here in the kitchen didn’t have much trouble dreaming up a menu that delights and arouses the senses. It was fun to come up with a menu, inspired by our favorite aphrodisiac: chilies. Not only do chilies wake up the palate, but they go to work on the nervous system as well, heightening all of our senses, giving us a shot of adrenalin and stimulating us in ways nothing else can. Chilies are the Tango (the original “dirty dancing”) of the kitchen.

This month’s menu will bring you Pain, for sure, but that feeling will diminish with the wash of Pleasure that comes from every bite:

Anticucho y Camarones del Diablo

skewers of beef heart & shrimp rolled in dried chilies & grilled, served w. cumin crema

Ajo Blanco

a delicious cold soup of almonds, grapes and garlic

Codorniz Relleno con Salsa de Higos Picoso

chorizo stuffed quail w. fiery fig sauce served w. patatas bravas & sautéed cactus

Pastel de Chocolate sin Harina con Chilies Candied y con Sorbete de Vainilla

flourless chocolate cake w. candied chilies & vanilla sorbet

Details:

As always, the location of dinner is Secret until 24 hours before service. Dinner will be served at 7:30pm, sharp! Doors open 30 minutes early for schmoozing and boozing. Secret Kitchen is a BYOB event, with water provided.

Date: Thursday, September 29^th

Location: Oakland, CA

Price: $50/person

It's our First Birthday and we wanna Play!

It's been a long, cold, lonely winter, and not just in the country song way. The Kitchen wasn't dark, just in a quiet mode. Lots of preparations. Lots of fun and silly short term projects. I cooked for a reality tv show that was being shot in SF. I wasn't ON the show. NOooo, not my style. I just did the craft services. It was a great learning experience, and I got to see one of the coolest historical buildings in SF. I've got a few irons in a few fires and will be working hard on making them come to fruition over the next year. Some are food related, some not. I'll let you know more as it comes to light.
But here we are, on the verge of an amazing Spring, and it's time to celebrate a year of fabulous underground dining. Secret Kitchen held only private events for the past few months, but it's time again to open the doors to friends both established and new. Look for a new menu and time for our annual 4/20 dinner in "This Month's Menu"!

5136

Let me write that out: Five Thousand One Hundred Thirty-Six. That's how many meals I served in three weeks of building a Temple in the desert. We had a crew of 200. We built a Temple that was 21,000 square feet. And then we burned it, in what was one of the most spectacular Fires I have ever seen.

So yes, back from the desert. I say this often, but The Desert, She is a harsh and cruel Mistress. I don't think I would have agreed to do what I did had I stopped to think about it along the way. Instead I went headlong (as is my oeuvre, it seems) into the unknown, "blissfully unaware of my own peril" as Carlos Amigos would say. I still haven't calculated how much actual food I purchased, cooked and served. But here is what I do know:

1. I have an awesome culinary partner named Taz. Who saved the day more than once. Who battled the Eggtastrophy on the playa, and WON! (We lost 1500+ eggs to bad planning, broken refrigerators, and 110 degree heat in the worst culinary disaster I've ever witness on the playa) Who served with a smile when I couldn't, and who kept me sane when things fell apart.

2. I had the best kitchen team! There were lots of people who came into the kitchen to help. But there were some who stuck around most of the time, and they rocked it! Its so amazing to have people who can all work together like a machine, especially since we hadn't ever worked together before. People asked how long we had all been together, and when we said this was the first time, their jaws dropped. Part of me felt like Tom Sawyer a bit when I was asking volunteers to do things like roll 400 plus matzoh balls, or massage two cases of kale, or make 600 tortillas individually, by hand, in a 30+MPH duststorm. "C'mon, its fun! Don't you want to try"? And people DID! There were usually more volunteers than jobs to do, and I think it was fun for people to come out of the sun and off the project for a while, and do something different. A lot of people said that cooking in the heat and dust and wind made them feel better about what they could accomplish. I think that's what I like most about pre-event: that you are out there to do something, whatever it is, and that it's gonna stretch your limits and push your capacity, but it's also gonna make you a stronger person. You get to prove to yourself just what you are capable of doing.

3. I had the best kitchen out there! Not only did I have a fabulous work space that many hands help create, but we produced the best tasting, healthiest food on the playa. We served meals for vegan, gluten-free, AND nightshade sensitive people! We served raw kale salad with house made dressings. We served quinoa pasta with fresh swiss chard. I made chicken matzoh ball soup for 200 people. We made corn tortillas from scratch, and pressed them in a wooden tortilla press with our Temple's logo impressed into them. We did this in a duststorm of epic proportions. And still dinner was on time (playa time!). I has chefs from other camps coming to my kitchen asking for leftovers. Yeah, you wanna see Top Chef? Come out to the desert, and produce food for 200 people three times a day in that litterbox and we'll see who comes out ahead. Not sayin', just sayin'......

It's been a long road back as well, and re-entry into this world has been jolting for the most part. But all the kitchen supplies, the pots, platters, appliances have all been washed and put away, ready for the next expedition (in a week, when I cater a wedding...camping). I am happy at home here with my dogs. Happy to be at All The Comforts of Home Camp here in my little niche in Oaktown. I am so happy to be back, in fact, that it inspired me to do a All The Comforts of Home Secret Kitchen. So I am gonna do just that, on Sept. 30th, somewhere in the Bay Area. Check out "This Month's Menu" for details........

May comes in like a Hammer.....

Wow. The entire month of May has come and gone without so much as a peep from this blog. Bad blogger! Of course, one doesn't much feel like peeping or anything else when recovering from having an abscessed tooth removed. Ugh. May was a long month of ups and downs, trials and troubleshooting and not much cooking.
June, though, seems to be shaping up a bit differently, with a (vegan) art opening, a wedding and few other events to keep my knives sharp and my hands busy.

I did though, try out a few recipes in May that were delicious and fun. I finally had a reason to make home made PopTarts. I had seen the recipe on SmittenKitchen and so wanted to try it but since my hips and tush need no help in expanding, I had held off. Even with the clamorous pleas from my housemates and friends, I was vigilant. But then my friend Ted turned 40 and wanted snacks for his party and it seemed the perfect time to make them. I made two kinds: one with Nutella and one with Blue Chair strawberry jam. I also made them small 2"x3", so they'd be easier for snacking. The picture is of the ones I wouldn't serve to the "public", taken by my friend with his camera/phone thingie. Bad pic, but damn, they were delicious!

Since the party was held in a antiques shop (I was thinking more the 50's Modern antiques shop-not the 18-19th century French antiques that I walked in to) I wanted to make retro style food (plus, isn't that what's just sooo "in" food wise these days: neo-retro-interpretations of old American classics? Are you ready for something else yet? No, ok, then you'll like this). Since it was late night snacks the menu was simple: Mini House Made Meatloaf Sandwiches with Swiss Cheese and Honey-Mustard, Mini Pop-Tarts and a Popcorn Bar with all sorts of fancy oils and toppings. I even made my own Kettle Corn topping, which, if I may say so, was pretty good. I still have some and am looking forward to the next Movie Night here at Chez D'Pi.

So this is the way I apologize for no Secret Kitchen in May.

June's Secret Kitchen promises to be a SWEET time though! June is national candy month, it's also Soul Food month and June 16th (the night of Secret Kitchen) is national Fudge Day! Need I say more???!!!???!?!?!
Please see "This Month's Menu" for the details.

..and Secret Kitchen is born~

So it really happened. After months of talktalktalk about wanting to do an underground restaurant thing, it finally came to fruition! whew! Secret Kitchen got off to a smashing start with the participation of a lot of good friends. I will have pictures forthcoming. I've never had to deal with photographers in a kitchen. Fun, but man are they insistent on their lighting. sheesh! I was just trying to get 30 plates out at once! It was a good night, and I heard reports people were a bit "fuzzy" in the morning.
It was fun for me to cook for five days straight, making things I had never made before: a gastrique, beurre blanc (with lemongrass), braised pork belly (a three day process worth every step!), and chocolate spikes. But through it all, it was the soup that was the real winner. I don't know what it is. I didn't think it was especially great, it was good, but it was roasted asparagus soup, and still the overwhelming favorite of the night. I have soup foo. I am Souper Grrrl. Seriously. Ok, not so seriously. But dammit if I am not going to do a whole meal of nothing but soups! Soup app, soup entree, soup veggie/starch and soup dessert. Just you wait.
Anyways, the dinner was good, I was happy with most of the evening. I could have used another chef in the kitchen. Another set of skilled hands would have helped me in the kitchen part. I had rock star servers and help, but because I am a Female. Dominant. Aries. Chef. I tend to have some issues with control and letting go. (No, grrrl, you don't have issues, you gots a whole subscription!)
I had capped the dinner at 20 people, thinking that would be a good number to start with. I had 24 for dinner all told. And that was with four last minute cancellations! What I liked was that people were sitting at long tables forced to talk to strangers. There was a lot of new connections and shared laughter which is always what I want at my dinner tables. So despite all my fears and anxieties and melt-downs, it was a rather tasty night!
And I have to say it's all Nara's fault.

Cherry Tomato Tart

So like I said, it was raining the other day and for some reason it felt like a day to spend in the kitchen. Actually, when you live in a huge, drafty warehouse, its best to stay as close to a fire as you can. In this place, that's either the wood-burning fireplace or the oven.
I had seen this super easy but beautiful recipe in the newest issue of Food & Wine Magazine that someone in the house had thoughtfully left out for me to find. Or maybe it was a hint, I dunno. Anyways, I am all about this tart, being all about tarts in general, and also being all about cherry tomatoes. Really, I am all about all kinds of tomatoes. I am so excited for tomato season this year I have been staving off the desire to buy the first ones of the season. But then there's this tart looking at me, all glossy and beautiful and I think, ok, welcome to tomato season.
Having recently gone to Ikea with my housemate (where she wouldn't let me just go to the housewares department and shop but made me go thru the entire upstairs telling me "We don't know what our lifestyle options are yet!") and purchased a lovely new tart pan, I was eager to try it out. Its red. I like red cookware.
The tart crust was a simple flour, butter, heavy cream mixture. I can say that blithely only because I have a small cuisinart. Blessed Be the Cuisinart! Even though on mine the "on" switch doesn't work, so its all pulse or hold it down, its still better than cutting butter into flour. So yeah, the dough was simple to make. Chill it, roll it, shape it.
In the original recipe it was just cherry tomatoes on the crust, but of course I wanted MORE! So I tossed the tomatoes in a wee bit of olive oil (NOT extra virgin, btw, which I find way too strong flavored for most things I want to cook. I use a lighter olive oil to cook with a use EVOO as a finishing/dipping/dressing oil), salt & pepper. I put a few dollops of arugula pesto on the bottom-which was a mistake, too much liquid=soggy bottom crust-and then the tomatoes on top. I baked it at 400 for 30-35 mins.
When it was done, I took the basil I had chiffinadededed and toss it on the tart. Besides the soggy bottom, it was delicious. I can't wait to try this again with heirloom tomatoes which are starting to make their appearance in the stores and farmer's markets.