use real butter

Recipe: grilled salmon panang

You will never find me lying in the sun on a beach unless I’ve died there or aliens have replaced me with a fake Jen Yu… in which case I have a predetermined question that Jeremy must ask to see if it’s really me. Aside from not liking the sand (it gets EVERYWHERE) and the humidity, I am not a big fan of the sun. I spent most of my childhood summers roasting on a boat on the water. I got enough sun to last me three lifetimes.

I recently met with some gal pals for lunch out on the patio of Pizzeria Basta. We started in the shade and as lunch wore on, the sun crept across our tables. We shifted the tables back into the shade when Beth said she’d be happy to switch seats with anyone as she liked the sun. And suddenly I looked around at my friends and envisioned them with a weatherman’s sun or a weatherman’s cloud over their head.

pizzeria basta is located in a mixed development

beth and marianne ordered a lovely salad

drea and i split the cart-driver pizza (with salami b/c they were out of sausage)

When I have lived on the East Coast, the sun was just sort of there (and in Ithaca, it was sort of not really there). It rose, it set – whatever. Living in the west, the sun dictates a lot of what we do. In summer, we make plans around the sun. Hikes start at 5 am or earlier – we run or ride in the mornings or a few hours before sundown. We all hide in the coolest parts of the house at midday.

even on the cloudy days, kaweah tries to soak up every bit of sun

but i was quite delighted to get some rain

A lot of effort goes into avoiding the heat and that includes heat from the kitchen. I swore to myself that I would focus on quick and simple recipes this summer and I think it has put me in a happier mood. Let’s do cool, fresh, quick, easy! Sounds good, right? By the time our evenings start to dip back below freezing in September, I will be ready for those beloved stews and soups and slow-roasted nommy noms. For now, I love me some grilled food. Meat + Fire = Good.

gorgeous wild caught salmon

fish sauce, coconut milk, panang curry paste, paprika, sugar

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: korean bbq-style burgers

Administrative note: The strong undertow of the holiday season is fast sucking me down to the bottom of the sea. I will do my best to answer any pressing questions in the comments this weekend, my good people!

Jeremy and I met our pal for a quick happy hour yesterday evening and there were THREE parties going on at the restaurant. I guess Office Party Season has officially begun. We had one to attend ourselves last night. It’s more of an event though. Ignite Boulder 7 – another sold out crowd at the Boulder Theater! My friends Andrew Hyde, Ef Rodriguez, and heaps of wonderful coordinators, volunteers, sponsors, and speakers pulled off yet another hugely entertaining evening of presentations, music, and prizes. AND they donated all proceeds to The Food Bank of the Rockies. It’s great meeting so many people from my online communities in real life, plus some fresh out of the blue.

ef always warms up the crowd with his sweet voice, guitar, and wit

sold out crowd

fellow citizens play the intermission

What was I saying the other day about my love of summer food in winter? Right… I can’t help it. We had some record low temperatures smacking the Denver-metro area about recently. Last weekend, I was flipping through my copy of Jaden‘s Steamy Kitchen Cookbook. I know, everyone has already seen it. It was part of the schwag bag from the after party at BlogHer Food 09 and I had emailed in for my free copy a few months ago. I waited and waited. I saw tweets and posts from everyone and her sister raving about the book. I waited some more. Then one day, I whine-tweeted online that mine had yet to show up.

Then Jaden, aka Busiest woman on the Planet, said she’d fix everything. And she did.

i love this book almost as much as i love jaden

For as long as I have been aware of food blogs, Steamy Kitchen has always been one of my goto sites for rock-solid Chinese recipes. That and Jaden makes me laugh much like the way my sister made me laugh. But her book is more than just Chinese recipes. It has Thai, Viet, Korean and lots of great Asian fusion dishes like her Korean BBQ burgers.

look at all those goodies

they go *in* the burger

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: big bob gibson’s barbecue ribs

**Warning** It’s a long post, but there IS a recipe at the end.

The road to knowledge has never been so fun. My teaser from a few weeks ago was a quick glimpse into the Rigorous Studies that I and several food bloggers/writers endured in California. Kingsford University’s 3-day program took us from Oakland to Healdsburg for a thorough study in buttermilk fried chicken, charcoal, slow cooked pork insanity ecstasy, Zinfandel, spice rubs, and grilled pizza. As with any university experience, the journey with your classmates and what you learn from them is just as important as the knowledge gained. So let me hit upon the highlights or else we’ll be here all day and all night!

Orientation: Everyone boarded the bus outside The Claremont Hotel and rode to Picán for an evening that started with a cocktail and hors d’oeuvres mixer on the patio. I was quite delighted in the parade of pecan and hickory smoked pork ribs, country ham and cheddar hushpuppies, chicken liver pâté and chow chow herbed biscuits, and Louisiana crab toasts because I had eaten one crunchy taco all day in my rush to the Denver Airport. [And thus my dirty little secret was revealed to my fellow food buffs: Jen ate Taco Bell Hell.]

i had never dined in oakland before

these biscuits were morsels of tender, melty wonderment

Eventually we were encouraged to mosey into the private dining room where Diane and I immediately scoped out the best seats for shooting – toward the back and against the wall. Priorities, kids. There was much conversation, much shooting of food porn, and of course heaps of phenomenal food. We were welcomed by Drew McGowan of The Clorox Company (parent company of Kingsford), Chef Dean Dupuis, and pitmaster Chris Lilly.

drew and dean introduce themselves and oakland to the group

first course: famous buttermilk fried chicken

first course: choice of shrimp and grits or southern caesar (this was diane’s shrimp and grits)

entrées: choice of grilled berkshire pork shoulder (that’s what i chose)

or grilled loch duarte salmon (what jen selected)

dessert: pear upside down cake

chris talks with picán’s fabulous event manager, miriam

On the bus ride back to the hotel, Chris Lilly sat next to me. I love Chris Lilly. He immediately struck me as a warm, friendly, and down-to-Earth kinda guy. Pitmaster. Wait a second, make that ten time world champion pitmaster and executive chef of Big Bob Gibson’s Bar-B-Q. What does that title say to you? It says “badass” to me. He is the Yoda of barbecue, but he didn’t make us do handstands while sitting on our feet as we tried to levitate the X-wing fighter out of the swamp. Chris was a far kinder master and had Luke been hanging out with Chris instead of Yoda, he wouldn’t have complained about the food… not a peep.

Charcoal 101: The next morning, I managed to wake up early enough to squeak in a workout (after wandering about the grounds of the Claremont in search of the fitness facilities) before we had to load up onto the bus and head over to The Clorox Tech Center where we were greeted with breakfast before sitting down for presentations given by the Kingsford research and development team and an unveiling of their latest product. Our group wasn’t shy at all and many of us piped up with questions, engaged in good discussion with the Kingsford folks as well as with Chris (he’s not a pitmaster for nothing, kids). I’m a gas griller for many reasons the main one being fear of burning down the state of Colorado. My fear has always been rooted in ignorance – my ignorance of how to grill using charcoal properly. Every minute I learned about charcoal at a more fundamental level (think engineering and physics) and in terms of what cooks are looking for, the more comfortable I was with the idea of charcoal grilling.

i dig the lectures

chris discusses what he looks for in charcoal performance

**Jump for more butter**