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Top Eight Favorite Dim Sum Plates
From savory dumplings dipped in soy sauce and chili paste to sweet deep-fried sesame balls, here are my top eight picks for my favorite dim sum plates. What’s on your list?
1. Har Gow — shrimp dumpling
2. Spinach shrimp dumpling
3. Chicken feet with black bean sauce
4. Bee’s nest taro puff — fried taro dumpling
5. Shiu mai — pork dumplings with diced mushroom
6. Char siu bao — steamed barbecue pork buns (click here to learn how to make baos from scratch)
7. Custard tart
8. Deep-fried sesame seed ball with sweet red bean paste
Where can you enjoy fresh and great-tasting dim sum in the Bay Area?
Koi Palace
365 Gellert Blvd
Daly City, CA 94015
650.992.9000
koipalace.com
Yank SIng
101 Spear Street between Howard Street and Mission Street
San Francisco, CA 94105
415.957.9300
yanksing.com
City View
662 Commercial Street between Kearny Street and Montgomery Street
San Francisco, CA 94111
415.398.2838
How to Make Bacon Snickerdoodles
Inspired by Kitchenette’s delightful bacon snickerdoodles, I solicited the help of the Joy of Cooking for a basic snickerdoodle recipe and tweaked it a bit to accommodate the addition of some tasty salty bacon.
For the dough, makes eighteen 3-inch cookies
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp cream of tartar
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/8 tsp salt
6 Tbsp unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg
For the cinnamon-sugar coating
1/8 cup sugar
2 tsp ground cinnamon
And of course, don’t forget the bacon. A few strips will do.
Mix thoroughly the dry ingredients: flour, cream of tartar, baking soda and salt in a small bowl until well blended.
Using a wooden spoon, mix thoroughly the softened butter and sugar in a large bowl until it becomes a well blended paste. Add the egg and mix until well combined. Stir in the flour mixture. Stir it in incrementally so you won’t have flour all over the place. Mix thoroughly and set aside.
In a small bowl, combine the sugar and cinnamon for the coating.
Slice the bacon strips widthwise into 1/2-inch wide slices.
Shape the dough into 1-1/4-inch balls. It’s a bit sticky so I ended up scooping the dough with a spoon instead of shaping it by hand. Roll them in the cinnamon-sugar coating, and arrange about 2-3/4 inches apart on the cookie sheets. Place the bacon slices on top of each ball, right in the middle. Gently press down the bacon. This will flatten the dough a bit, but just a tiny bit. Doing this makes sure that the bacon stays in the middle of the cookie as it bakes. The first time I tried baking these cookies, I just laid the bacon strips on top of the dough without pressing it down gently. The bacon did not stay in the center and it flowed toward the edge of the cookie as it baked.
Bake one sheet at a time, until the cookies are light golden brown at the edges, 12 to 14 minutes. Let the cookies stand briefly then place them on racks to cool.
Just a word of caution, they are truly addicting. It’s the sweetness of the cookie combined with the saltiness of the bacon that I love so much.
How to Make Dungeness Crab Cakes at Home
It’s Dungeness crab season in San Francisco and there’s no better way to enjoy these tasty crustaceans than to make crab cakes! Alice Waters has a great simple recipe for crab cakes in her amazing book The Art of Simple Food.
Making homemade crabcakes is an excellent example of why homecooking is so cool: you actually know what ends up in your plate because you made it yourself. Most of the time I wonder how much crabmeat there is in the crab cakes I get when I dine out. Get the best crabmeat, pick the freshest herbs, make your own breadcrumbs and if you’re a little adventurous, make your own mayonnaise from scratch! Fresh ingredients plus a simple recipe equals great-tasting food.
Crab Cakes
1 lb crabmeat (picked from 2 Dungeness crabs)
1 cup mayonnaise
2 Tbsp chopped chives
2 Tbsp chopped parsley
2 Tbsp chopped chervil
1 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
salt and cayenne to taste
1-1/2 cups breadcrumbs (click here to learn how to make fresh breadcrumbs)
5 Tbsp unsalted butter (click here to learn how to make clarified butter)
Cooking the crabs
Boil salted water in a large pot and then carefully drop in the Dungeness crabs. Two Dungeness crabs will yield roughly a pound of crabmeat but use as many blue crabs or other crabs as needed to yield the same. Boil for 15 minutes. Remove the crabs from the pot and let them drain and cool.
Pull off the large top shell, remove the fibrous lungs and rinse lightly.
Split the main body in half down the center. Pull off the legs, crack them, and pick the crabmeat from the body and legs. Big chunks of crabmeat are good for texture. Put the crabmeat in a bowl and gently go through the meat to remove any bits of shell left in the meat. Refrigerate until ready to use.
Making the cakes
Stir the chives, parsley, chervil, lemon juice, salt and cayenne into the mayonnaise and mix thoroughly. Let me make a note that chervil is pretty difficult to find. Even the local Whole Foods does not normally carry them. If you find yourself chervil-less, don’t worry I think you’ll be fine without it.
Stir the mayonnaise into the crabmeat, mix gently but thoroughly. Taste and add more lemon juice and salt as needed. Form the mixture into patties. I ended up making six 3-inch diameter cakes. Roll the patties to coat in the breadcrumbs.
Warm a heavy-bottomed pan over medium heat. Pour in the clarified butter (click here to learn how to make clarified butter) and when the butter is hot, carefully add the crab cakes and fry until golden brown, about 4 minutes on each side. If the breadcrumbs start to burn, turn down the heat.
A cool variation to this dish is to use fish fillet to make fish cakes. Waters recommends using a firm white fish like halibut, haddock or ling cod. Use two cups of chopped fish fillet in place of the crabmeat.
How to make fresh bread crumbs
Breadcrumbs are best made from bread that has been dried out for a day or two. For breading and frying, Waters recommends using white bread. First, remove the crust. Cut the crustless bread into cubes and grind up the bread in batches using a food processor or a blender. The bread should be ground up thoroughly so the crumbs are more or less the same size. Crumbs for breading need to be ground very fine, so they will stick to and evenly coat whatever is being breaded.
Melt unsalted butter in a small heavy pot over medium heat. Cook the butter until it has spearated and the milk solids are just turning a light golden brown. Pour through a fine strainer to remove the milk solids.
Lelenita’s Nicaraguan Tres Leches (Three Milk) Cake in Bernal Heights
If you find making your own tres leches is a bit daunting there’s a Nicaraguan bakery in Bernal Heights that makes this seriously delicious sweet treat. Check out Lelenita’s Cakes.
Lelenita’s makes delightful tres leches cakes and other Nicaraguan baked treats like the Pio Quinto, a Nicaraguan rum cake with walnuts and dark rum.
Many people believe that tres leches, a popular Latin American cake, originated from Nicaragua. There are actually two types of tres leches. One is the deliciously moist traditional sponge cake soaked in a glaze made of three types of milk, and the other is a sponge cake with a fruit filling, usually strawberry, which is not soaked in a milk glaze and is less sweet. Both are topped lavishly with meringue instead of the more common whipped topping. Meringue actually makes their cakes truly Nicaraguan. But if meringue is not your thing, Lelenita’s can bake you a cake with either a vanilla or chocolate flavored whipped topping. They also make delicious and detailed decorated cakes for weddings and all occasions.
Lelenita’s Cakes is in Bernal Heights.
3743 Mission Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415.282.2253
Mom’s Hearty Homemade Chili with Homemade Cornbread
Where can you find the best cornbread in the city? Just for You Cafe in the Dogpatch.
Just for You is the place-to-be for tasty big breakfasts: fried eggs, ham, home fries and their freshly baked cornbread. I love my cornbread sweet rather than savory, but not too sweet and I love it moist with a little bit of gritty texture. Just for You’s has all these wonderful elements. Enjoy it with a generous spread of butter or with their sweet strawberry jam. The corncakes are equally good, too. They have that melt-in-your-mouth, buttery and gritty goodness that I love. And a visit to Just for You is never complete without indulging in their puffy beignets. So delightful.
Inspired by Just for You’s cornbread, I ventured out, bought myself some corn meal and made my own cornbread. And there’s no better way to enjoy a warm, fresh-out-of-the-oven piece of cornbread in this cold winter than to pair it with a tasty bowl of hearty homemade chili. For that, I solicited Dennis’ help to make his mom’s homemade chili, the chili he grew up with in chilly Ohio.
Homemade Cornbread
1-1/4 cup yellow corn meal
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 Tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 cup fat-free milk
1/3 cup canola oil
1 large egg, lightly beaten
Preheat the oven to 400F. Grease an 8-inch square baking dish. You can use a pyrex dish, a non-stick baking pan or you can also use a muffin pan to make corn muffins.
Combine the corn meal, flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a bowl. Combine the milk, oil and egg in a separate bowl. After mixing them well add the milk mixture to the flour mixture and pour into your baking dish. Note that the original recipe called for a cup of flour to a cup of corn meal but for a grittier texture I added a 1/4 cup more corn meal and used 1/4 cup less flour in this recipe.
Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.
Mom’s Homemade Chili
Chili Spices
2 Tbsp chili powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp garlic powder or freshly minced garlic
1/2 tsp cumin (optional)
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
Great-tasting chili is very much a cook-until-the-way-you-like-it sort of comfort food. So feel free to experiment with the spices as you wish.
1 to 1.5 lbs of extra lean ground beef
1 can black beans
1 can red kidney beans
1 large can diced tomatoes
1 small can of tomato paste
1 medium to large size onion diced
1-2 green or red bell peppers chopped
Worcestershire sauce (start with 1 Tbsp and then add more to taste)
Cooking time is 2-4 hours. Slow cooking is best.
Brown the ground beef in a large stew pot over medium heat. Don’t thoroughly cook the meat but only up to a point when most of the fat has come out. If you prefer a finer texture break up the ground beef completely but if you like a chunkier chili, as I do, break it up in larger bite size bits.
Extra lean beef (less than 5% fat) is recommended, which is the healthiest choice. If you do use extra lean beef there is no need to drain the fat out. Otherwise, drain the beef fat using a colander and return it to the pot. I think it’s a smart idea to give up the beef fat so you can indulge in butter with your bread later!
Add the diced tomatoes, tomato paste, onions, and peppers to the browned beef and mix well. It will be pretty thick but there is no need to add water here as there will be plenty as the vegetables continue to cook. Add the Worcestershire sauce and chili spices and mix well. Let this cook and come to a slow boil. Reduce the heat to a simmer. Add the red kidney and black beans to the mix and stir well together.
Now, here’s the fun part, or well, at least Dennis thinks so. Take a break and let it simmer for about an hour while stirring it occasionally. Come back and taste the chili. If you think it needs a little more oomph add more Worcestershire, salt, chili powder and perhaps more garlic powder or freshly minced garlic. Cook for another half an hour on low heat and stir well occasionally. Continue adding more salt and chili powder if you prefer but remember to stir everything well. Let it stand for at least 15 minutes before serving.
Great-tasting chili is truly a season-to-taste slow cooked meal. Chili powders have different levels of potency so feel free to experiment.
Enjoy a bowl of chili with a piece of warm cornbread or some saltine crackers on a chilly winter day. Some folks love red onions or grated cheddar with their chili but I love it just the way it is with some sweet cornbread.
For breakfast, scramble some eggs in butter and top it with chili and a piece of cornbread.
By the way, I don’t think I have found the best chili in the city. San Francisco doesn’t really strike me as a city for chili but maybe I’m wrong. What do you think?
Discovering the Dogpatch
Two old cranes loom large over the Dogpatch. You simply can’t miss them.
I actually think these old cranes are very cool. Well, I think the Dogpatch is very cool. It is a bit rough but, definitely, in a good way. Old Victorians and old industrial and commercial buildings that survived the 1906 fire and earthquake mixed with new and modern loft apartments and cool cafes and restaurants give this tiny nine-block neighborhood a really interesting character.
The Dogpatch is an enclave of industrial worker’s housing in the once-booming San Francisco Central Waterfront district. The city recognized it as a Historic District in 2003. It still feels industrial but it also feels neighborly. It was recently hailed as one of America’s best neighborhoods by Men’s Journal and recently featured in the New York Times.
I love its dog-friendly Esprit Park surrounded by quiet streets where dogs can run and play. I love its 260 sunny days in a year, on average. And I love its burgeoning dining scene. Fried eggs and cornbread with strawberry jam for breakfast at Just for You. House-smoked pastrami sandwich with bacon snickerdoodle for lunch at Kitchenette. A cup of Blue Bottle Coffee at Piccino Coffee Bar. A bottle of Malbec with cheese and olives at Yield Wine Bar. And a plateful of fried chicken with red beans and rice and yams for dinner at Hard Knox Cafe.
And if you’re feeling a bit more adventurous, the equally cool 18th Street in Potrero Hill is just a quick brisk walk away. Hop on the T to get to downtown or on the 22 to get to the Mission. The choices are endless.
Here is a link to read more about the story behind the city’s working class historic district. It is a great resource about the history and architecture of the Dogpatch. And here are more information about the restaurants mentioned in this blog.
Just For You Cafe
732 22nd
415.647.3033
Kitchenette SF
958 Illinois
Twitter, @kitchenettesf
Piccino Coffee Bar
801 22nd
415.824.4224
Yield Wine Bar
2490 3rd
415.401.8984
Hard Knox Cafe
2526 3rd
415.648.3770
Blue Moon in San Francisco
If round things are a symbol of good luck and prosperity then I think there will be lots of it in the New Year. We may just need to work doubly hard to find it.
Here’s hoping for the best for everyone. Happy New Year!
12 Round Shaped Sweet Treats for Good Luck: A New Year’s Tradition
Every New Year’s Eve, it has been my mom’s tradition to gather 12 round fruits to bring us good luck in the coming year. It has to be twelve, she says, one for each month of the new year. And it has to be round-shaped for prosperity, abundance and wealth. So she buys grapes, oranges, melons and even watermelons to ring in the new year.
This year, I’m starting my own tradition. I’m gathering 12 round shaped sweet treats to welcome the New Year! These are my San Francisco favorites culled from past blogs plus teasers for future posts. It’s definitely not a comprehensive list since I can only cram twelve. And I guess, that’s what the New Year is for, a whole new year to try new tasty treats! Send me a note and let me know what’s on your list.
And by the way, I define round shaped very loosely here. It can be spherical or circular in shape or served in a spherical or circular container.
Fried Dough.
1. Dynamo Donut’s maple glazed bacon apple doughnut. “The saltiness of the little chunks of crispy bacon complements the sweetness of the maple glaze very well, which makes the maple glazed bacon apple an instant favorite.”
2. I Preferiti di Boriana’s bomboloni. Italian doughnuts filled with chocolate ganash and tossed in sugar. Pure bomboloni bliss.
Street Sweets
3. Creme Brulee Cart’s Cap’n Crunch Creme Brulee. “But as he sprinkled colorful Cap’n Crunch pieces on my cup, for some reason, I got so excited. I knew I was in for a sweet treat!”
4. Wholesome Bakery’s Sweet Potato Pie. Healthy baby sweet potato pies that actually taste great. No need for sugar since the sweetness of the sweet potato shines.
I Scream for Ice Cream
5. Bi-Rite Salted Caramel Ice Cream. “One of the best things in life is real good ice cream. And Bi-Rite Creamery’s artisanal ice cream is beyond good.”
6. Humphry Slocombe’s Ice Cream. Yes, you read it right: salt-n-peppa ice cream. Crazy, one-of-a-kind and out-of-this-world, yummy flavors are what makes Humphry Slocombe truly special.
Cupcake Heaven
7. Kara’s Cupcakes. “A pink box full of Kara’s pumpkin spice cupcake, moist carrot cupcake, and banana cupcake with caramel filling, all topped with Kara’s silky smooth cream cheese frosting, makes me extremely crazy, stupid happy.”
8. Baked’s Red Velvet Cupcake. This small bakeshop in Potrero Hill is a real neighborhood find with baked treats like cookies, peanut brittle, and delightful red velvet cupcakes.
Filipino Finds
9. House of Silvanas Bakeshop’s Ube Silvanas. “They are best enjoyed frozen. The crunchy wafers and the yummy buttercream just delightfully melt in your mouth.”
10. Hilda’s Hopia. Hilda’s Filipino favorite bean filled pastry is flaky, buttery and sweet.
Breakfast Bites
11. Dottie’s Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Pancakes. “The neighborhood may be dicey and the wait may be long but breakfast at Dottie’s is always a treat. The food is simply scrumptious.”
12. Tartine’s Bread Pudding with Apples. There are so many tasty treats to try at Tartine (and a lot of alliterations, too); from delicious croissants and tarts to amazing bread pudding.
House of Filipino Sweet Treats
Just right outside the city is the House of Silvanas Bakeshop. This tiny bakeshop in Filipino-town Daly City truly lives up to its name: it’s the House of amazing Filipino sweet treats, from food for the gods to polvoron.
Food for the gods are tasty candy bars made of dates and walnuts. Polvoron, on the other hand, is powdered milk candy, which is basically toasted flour, sugar, butter and powdered milk. I fondly remember enjoying making polvoron with my mom growing up in Manila. She would mix all the ingredients and toast them in a huge wok and I would mold them into oval-shaped candies. But I remember getting too frustrated though when I tried wrapping them in delicate Japanese paper.
But the real reason to make the trip to this bakeshop are their deliciously crunchy and creamy silvanas.
A silvana is a layer of buttercream sandwiched between two cashew-meringue wafers, coated with cookie crumbs. For those who grew up in the Philippines, it’s the cookie version of Sans Rival, a rich Filipino cake with layers of meringue, cashews and buttercream. It comes in truly Filipino flavors: ube or purple yam, buko pandan or coconut and mango. And there’s chocolate, mocha and strawberry, too. They are best enjoyed frozen. The crunchy wafers and the yummy buttercream just delightfully melt in your mouth.
The House of Silvanas is a bit of a trek from the city but it’s well worth the trip. Just a note though that the bakeshop is in a rather inconspicuous location, tucked away in a shopping center. The obvious landmark to watch out for is a weathered sign that says bake shop to your right along Gellert Boulevard.
