Nermo

Street food is a big deal all over the world, but right now it is especially a big deal in San Francisco. Last weekend was Eugeapalooza: the Streetcart Wars, this weekend is La Cocina’s Street Food Festival and next weekend is Eat Real Fest, not to mention Off the Grid which happens every Friday at Fort Mason and may be spreading to other neighborhoods soon.

I’ve been threatening to quit my day job and sell food on the streets of San Francisco for a while now, and I need your guidance.

            

I want to post a quick piece on what a great time I had before and during the Lamb Takedown last weekend. This was my first public cooking competition, and although I didn’t win, the experience of planning, cooking, serving and socializing was spectacular!

Matt Timms, was the ideal organizer and deserves public recognition.  He put together the event, secured a perfect space at Thirsty Bear (with free drinks for the cooks!), got 300 pounds of lamb donated by American Lamb, which cut the costs to competitors greatly, as well as fabulous prizes, and he emceed the event in a way that kept everything running smoothly.  I never heard a single complaint, which is rare in a room with 250 foodies.

My plan was to play to the versatility of lamb as a protein.  I tend to think of it, as many do, as a meat found primarily in Greek and Indian food, but really it works in so many ways. I crafted a very straightforward lamb meatball (well, 300 straightforward lamb meatballs) seasoned with shallots, garlic, cumin, coriander, cinnamon and allspice that is really tasty on its own, but works with a broad spectrum of flavors.  To compliment, I produced a diverse array of sauces and slaw in every color of the rainbow (literally), plus beige and encouraged the eaters to customize them as they saw fit.

I ultimately went with a red marinara, orange sweet and sour, roasted yellow pepper coulis, green mint yogurt, blueberry chili sauce, spicy purple slaw and a beige mushroom gravy. People would ask which was my favorite as they stepped up to the overwhelming selection of squeeze bottles, but I couldn’t pick just one, so I described the applications of each.  I told people that blueberry chili was only for the brave, which goaded a few into putting down the yogurt and giving it a try, and several came back to tell me that the blueberry was their surprise favorite.  I pushed the sweet and sour sauce, because I made a gallon by mistake, and encouraged the mint yogurt as a good balance to the heat of the slaw.

I was fortunate enough to bring along two amazing and lovely assistants, Lizz and Sara who were a blast to hang out with and saved me from unforeseen disaster time and time again, and who rooted for me relentlessly when I wasn’t willing to do enough self-promotion. The highest praise I got was at the end of the day when a woman I believe to be the mother of the overall winner asked for a to-go cup of slaw to put on her son’s pulled pork sandwich later.  She told me not to tell him, because he makes his own slaw, but she would rather use mine.  A couple of professional chef competitors were complimentary as well, including one guy who said I must have cooked to meatballs sous vide to make them so moist, and I had to burst his bubble and tell him that I simply baked them.

As things were wrapping up, several people stopped by on their way out to tell me that I got their vote, or that I was robbed, which totally made my day. I was utterly exhausted, but overwhelmingly delighted by the whole day and am looking forward to the next competitive culinary challenge.

            

As posted last time, I’ll be competing in tomorrow’s Lamb Takedown.

To emphasize the versatility of lamb, I’m making a straightforward meatball with a wide array of homemade sauce choices.

So far, I’ve confirmed the following:

• Red – Marinara
  
• Orange – Sweet and Sour Sauce
  
• Yellow- Roasted Pepper Coulis
  
• Green – Yogurt Cucumber Mint Sauce
  
• Blue – Blueberry Chili Sauce
  
• Beige – Cream Gravy

Possible additions include

• White – Cheddar Cheese Sauce
• Purple – Cabbage Slaw
  
• Black – something berbere- or harissa-based

            

I’ve been toying with the idea of leaving the desk job to sell meatballs from a cart.  I’ve never made a meatball in my life, but it seems totally reasonable.  I have also never cooked lamb before, so of course, rather than making a couple of dinners at home from tried and tested recipes that only I will taste, I decided to enter a contest instead.

The Lamb Takedown will be happening Sunday August 8th at Thirsty Bear in San Francisco.  Tickets are only $15 and get you samples from the 20 different contestants, including my lamb meatballs with a rainbow array of sauce options.  Hope I see you there!  I’ve also started a new Twitter account @MobileMeatball

            

I buy kitchen tools I don’t need, and being a gadget-obsessed guy and culinary daredevil, my urban kitchen is getting crowded. I can’t seem to put myself on a diet, but I’m going to slim down my kitchen.

The plan: I’m emptying all of my cooking tools into a bucket.  Once a tool has been used, it goes into a designated drawer. When a tool from the drawer gets used, it goes into the canister on my counter.

Rules:
1. When cooking, draw first from the canister, then the drawer, and finally the bucket, if no suitable tools are in the drawer.

2. After a month, I can pick ten things in the bucket to stay and the rest go to Salvation Army. Tools in the drawer go back into the bucket, canister tools stay put and the cycle starts again.

3. If the drawer becomes full before the month ends, it triggers the purge that would happen at the end of the month.

4. Knives and appliances are exempt. No way in hell am I getting rid of of my Shuns, Cuisinart, slow cooker or immersion blender.

            

Food2.com just published a review I wrote of the Nirvino Wine Ratings Guide application for the iPhone. For those not in the know, Food2 is the younger, hipper, online branch of the Food Network.

            

Along with CreateShareWear, my other 5 jobs and an active social life, another recent venture has been taking up a lot of my time, hence the lack of posting on this blog.

I created MobileDocent as a digital tour guide for gallery visitors to access to rich multimedia content (text, links, images, audio, video and more), enhancing their experience of the art and objects being exhibited in museums and cultural institutions through their web-enabled mobile devices (iPhone, Blackberry, etc.).

I’ve been working with the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts to test my project and we have decided to begin piloting MobileDocent with the January Icons of Attention exhibition of work by Kamau Amu Patton, so stay tuned for updates on the progress of the program, and mark your calendars for opening night party, January 22nd, 2010.

For more info on MobileDocent, visit MobileDocent.com.

            

I’ve been neglecting this blog because I am deeply involved in a couple other projects, and this pesky day job keeps getting in the way, but I am very excited to announce that today is the official launch of the Picpoket, from CreateShareWear, a clothing/art/social media venture that I founded with a friend.  I’ve been coding like a madman all week trying to make the site perfect, and I am awfully proud of what I have built.

The premise is simple, but the overarching plan is exciting.  We are selling custom hoodies (and eventually other clothing and accessories) that hold your video iPod, facing out, so you can show your images and video to the world.  In conjunction, we will soon be launching a social networking site for our users to share their work with the Picpoket community to wear all over the world, and collaborate on collective arts and activism projects.

Check out the site, let me know what you think, visit our blog, and if you want to pre-order a hoodie now, we’re offering a special price, a bonus grab bag of art, and premier status on the social network!

            

Lately, I’ve been writing more about drinks, and decided the topic deserves its own site with richer content than just a blog, not to mention a slicker design and its own Twitter account.

The angle will be the same, explaining and demystifying the things you experience in bars and restaurants, documenting my bar experiments, reviewing products and sharing recipes for amazing cocktails.

All of the drinking articles from this site and new writing will be available at LibationLab.com along with printable guides, recipe cards, and cheat sheet for the home bartender.  I’m looking for other content to include, and am thinking of adding a social network for SF Bay Area cocktail enthusiasts and a database of local happy hour specials.  If you have any thoughts on what else a drinking site needs, please share your ideas.

Tell your friends: LibationLab.com is live

Follow Libation Lab on twitter at twitter.com/LibaLab

Click here to Subscribe to LibationLab via RSS

            

Because I couldn’t just spend the weekend celebrating the 4th and packing for Tales, I:

1. made a batch of hot sauce from farm-fresh chilies
2. created a tincture of shiso
3. made a gallon of traditional umeshu
4. improvised almost a gallon of apricot/pluot “umeshu”
5. infused a bottle of Hendrick’s gin with cucumber and persimmon
6. devised the Tomcat Collins with the aforementioned gin (recipe posted soon)
7. hosted the “Squash Blossom” dinner party with the lovely TSB (we may not be together any more, but we still throw one hell of a dinner party), where I served the aforementioned cocktail the following hors d’oeuvres
8. deep-fried two kinds of cheese-stuffed squash blossoms (chevre and mascarpone) with 4 dipping sauces (southwestern salsa, spicy tomoato, lemony aioli and a green onion sour cream).