Welcome back to Good Taste, a friendly guide to eating well in the Bay Area. This week, we turn to classics from local culinary heroes for some practical advice on cooking for the forthcoming holidays (or for eating feelings).
TURKEY TALES
My favorite turkey instructional of all time aka the GOAT is called “Just put the F*cking Turkey in the Oven.” Legendary cooking instructor and food waste activist Mary Risley posted it to YouTube way back in 2011 and it was an immediate hit.
The advice still holds today; she’s tried turkey prepared in just about every way possible, and she hasn’t found them to be better than being unfussy with it. Risley’s Food Runners organization delivers 17 tons of food per week that would otherwise be thrown away to help alleviate hunger in the Bay Area.
I’ve also previously written about my love of the cooking tutorials on La Mar Executive Chef Victoriano Lopez’s YouTube channel, and last year’s episode where he shows how to make his Christmas Turkey, served with a roasted potato salad and rice, could come in handy in your kitchen this season. His tutorial is presented in Spanish, and the auto-generated English translation is helpful enough for non-speakers.
CRABSGIVING
Dungeness crab is a popular local choice for holiday cooking (whenever the season blessedly starts), and Chef Preeti Mistry can teach you how to make a Ginger Chile Dungeness Crab in just over five minutes, thanks to a KQED video from 2019. The local PBS affiliate has an appealing holiday recipes archive that includes ideas for leftovers as well as some infused snacks, in case that needs to happen this year.
Town in San Carlos also shared a Dungeness Crab and Artichoke Dip recipe to CBS News in 2012 that sounds quintessentially Bay Area.
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SIDE PIECES
Protein be damned, it is always about the side dishes, isn’t it? The Chronicle used to invest a lot into recipes, and this 2010 side dish story by Stacy Finz includes five approachable recipes from her upbringing as a descendent of Spanish Jews with nutritional information included as well.
CAKE CAKE CAKE
Whether you’re cooking for Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, or the Winter Solstice, consider a Kwanzaa-inspired dessert from Senegalese chef and author Pierre Thiam, who is now Bay Area based. An adaptation of his recipe for Sweet Potato Mango Spice Cake ran in The Californian, the student-run newspaper at California High School in San Ramon, in 2016.
CHAMPAGNE WISHES
SF confectioner Michael Recchiuti went live with Sunset Magazine in 2017 to give up the secret sauce on how his opulent Champagne Truffles are made. Don’t sleep on the fact that this is still archived and available to learn from at home, because that’s a real score.
YEAR OF THE SNAKE
I’m already thinking ahead to Chinese New Year in January, which the Bay Area always celebrates in such an extraordinarily delicious manner, with a classic from Fang chef/owner Kathy Fang that’s also coincidentally from 2016: a carb free, 8 Treasure Fried Rice that doesn’t need to wait until 2025 to make.
Tamara publishes the California Eating website, newsletter, and zine.
