Several of my friends told me Valentine's Day is a Hallmark holiday and that they can celebrate love everyday, they don't need to wait until February 14th. If that's truly the case, they should all plan on taking their beloved to Le P'tit Laurent for a cozy dinner for two.

I was recently invited to be a guest at Le P'tit Laurent and I can't wait to go back. It booked up quickly for Valentine's Day and it's no wonder why. Though located just a hop, skip and a jump away from the Glen Park BART station in San Francisco, it's the quintessential French bistro, decorated with all things French�a pressed tin ceiling, a collection of antique corkscrews, vintage posters and liquor signs. The waiters and waitresses are French. I can't imagine not being charmed from the moment you walk in.

The food is classic bistro fare, onion soup, mussels marinieres, beef bourgignon, cassoulet, frisee salad with bacon and poached egg, bouillabase. Call if French comfort food. These are familiar flavors, nothing fancy, but hearty and warming. I had the Rabbit Normandy, served with fingerling potatoes. It was rich and had a slightly tangy sauce. The portion was enormous. Prices are reasonable and there is a very good prix fixe for only $22.

For dessert, don't miss the "Pain Perdu" or caramelized French toast with ice cream and a drizzle of caramel sauce. One bite and you will forget you are in San Francisco and all the cares of the world will melt away like the ice cream on your plate. And isn't that the point of going out to eat in the first place?

Le P'tit Laurent699 Chenery Street @ Diamond St
San Francisco, CA 94131
(415) 334-3235
Sunday - Thursday 5:30 pm thru 9:30 pm
Friday- Saturday 5:30 pm thru 10:30 pm

I was curious to try out the Ninja blender and to see how it compared to my VitaMix. The VitaMix is tremendously powerful and makes the smoothest creamiest purees, sauces and smoothies. While I love it, I don't love the price, which is around $500.

DESIGN
I like the design of the Ninja. It looks sleek and similar to the VitaMix. The pitcher locks easily onto the base and has a very firm fitting lid with a spout to make adding ingredients or pouring easy. There are only a few buttons and they are all enclosed so it's easy to clean. The pitcher is lightweight and BPA free. The biggest difference in the construction is the blade configuration, there are 6 blades that run up the stem in the Ninja. They are very sharp!

PERFORMANCE
So how did the Ninja do? I did two tests. In one I made a smoothie with milk, ice and a frozen banana. At least, I tried to make a smoothie. What I got was a smooth drink with little chips of ice. No matter how long I blended on high, I could not get the little chips to become smooth. This is something a regular blender also has a problem doing but my VitaMix does very well.

I also tried blending some very fibrous cooked sugar snap peas. The VitaMix blended them into a thin green puree with no chunks or lumps. The Ninja did break up the peas but the result was not liquid, but more like a medium thick puree. I could see each little bit of material broken into what looked like tiny squares, rather than microscopic bits.

RECOMMENDATION
I didn't feel my tests were really enough so I asked my parents to compare the Ninja to the conventional blender they have at home. They were able to turn ice cubes into snow in seconds and found it to be a significant improvement over their regular blender, an Osterizer. All in all, the Ninja does a WAY better job than most conventional blenders. So if you are looking for something significantly more powerful, the Ninja is a good choice. But if you are looking for something as powerful as the VitaMix, this is not it.

COMPARISON
Here is a rough breakdown of the power and price of each:

Osterizer=500 watts $20-$80 depending upon the model
Ninja=1000 watts about $99
VitaMix=1380 watts about $500, depending upon the model

Which blender do you have? Which model do you think is worth the price?

Chef Helen Roberts is the manager of culinary development and public relations at Kikkoman. She works on consumer recipes using the whole range of Kikkoman products from soy sauce to panko bread crumbs to soy milk and beyond. She used to work in product development and was hired because of her amazing ability to taste subtle differences in 16 different soy sauces! At the time she was hired, she had never even tried Japanese food.


I recently got to visit Helen and her test kitchen in downtown San Francisco. What a treat! Helen is friendly, enthusiastic and has a great sense of humor, and so it was no surprise to see that her recently renovated test kitchen in San Francisco is cheerful and lively as can be. The kitchen has a big island, two stoves and a large refrigerator. It also has a big flat screen television with cooking shows on all the time and the radio set to "old school." By the way, is there anything better than cooking with Prince playing in the background?


I had a great time cooking with Helen, whipping up some recipes for Valentine's Day. She was working on a version of a recipe she swears convinced her husband to propose to her. She fills puff pastry shells with a cajun spiced cream sauce (made with soy milk) and shrimp sauteed in butter. Helen made us a snack to nibble on while we cooked and shared tips with me such as use a splash of soy sauce in the water when you blanch vegetables instead of salt.

I made one of Helen's recipes for crab stuffed mushrooms which came out beautifully which is a testament to her skills, because I was so distracted chatting that I did not follow the directions as well as I should have.


The other recipe I made was from 1984, and it was not created by Helen. It shows how much tastes change. The original recipe for Artichokes with Zesty Blue Cheese Dip called for only one tablespoon of blue cheese! Needless to say, it needed a little more. Ok, a lot more. I've adapted it here if you'd like to try it. Helen's office mates liked it a lot. I think it's a great choice for Valentine's Day, after all, it has plenty of heart.

Note: since this recipe calls for boiling rather than steaming, and I found the artichokes I used cooked very quickly. If you prefer, you can cook the artichokes any way you like.

Artichokes with Zesty Blue Cheese Dip(adapted from the Kikkoman Kitchen)
4 servings

Ingredients

4 medium (about 8 oz. each) artichokes ?
Water
1/2 cup mayonnaise ?
1/2 cup finely chopped fresh mushrooms ?
2 Tablespoons minced green onions
6 Tablespoons crumbled blue cheese ?
2 teaspoons Kikkoman Less Sodium Soy Sauce ?
Grated peel and juice of 1/2 fresh lemon

Instructions

To prepare artichokes, slice 1 inch off tops; discard. Cut off stems even with base; remove small outer leaves. Trim off sharp leaf tips (about 1/2 inch) with kitchen shears or paring knife or scissors. Rinse artichokes under cold water. (To prevent darkening, rub lemon half on cut edges of artichokes.) Arrange artichokes upright in saucepan. Add water to depth of 2 inches. Bring water to boil; reduce heat and simmer, covered, 20 minutes, or until leaves pull out easily.

Meanwhile, combine mayonnaise, mushrooms, green onions, blue cheese, less sodium soy sauce, lemon juice and peel.

Drain artichokes; cool enough to handle. To serve, spoon the blue cheese mixture into a bowl, and serve with the artichokes.

Enjoy!

The Superbowl is over! Thanks goodness. Frankly if I saw one more post about recipes for half time snacks I was going to go long and never come back. Not that I haven't been busy. I've been eating chocolate, consider it a warm up for Valentine's Day. There is a lot of not so good chocolate out there, and I'd hate to think you'd end up with some by mistake. What you need is someone you can trust to try before you buy. In this regard, let me be of service. Without further ado, here are my chocolate picks for Valentine's Day.

1st�New and Notable

Art Pollard of Amano Chocolate is a mad genius when it comes to chocolate and while a bit wacky, under the surface he is a true perfectionist. He's won just about every award there is to win for his chocolate bars, and his latest introduction are boxes of chocolate confections. They are insanely good. They have a wonderfully delicate texture. Each flavor I tried was better than the next. The flavors are elegant and include ingredients like honey, cardamom, black pepper, key lime, and tangerine. Oh so good! But unfortunately in very limited production. If you can get your hands on a box, they are truly for a chocolate connoisseur. Do not waste them on anyone undeserving. While one chocolate is very rich and satisfying, you will find it hard to keep your hands of the rest. Only the highest quality ingredients are used, not even lecithin makes it into these gems. The 12 piece box is $24.99.


2nd�A Classic

Michael Recchiuti is a very talented chocolatier who makes some chocolate confections that might cause you to swoon. His chocolates are not fussy, but always beautiful. Top of the list are his burnt caramel chocolate. Very few things taste better when burnt, but Recchiuti takes caramel just to the edge, making it less sweet but richer and more sophisticated. The texture is velvety and luscious. A box full of these is good for the indecisive. Every chocolate is the same. This season his Hearts & Arrows box is so pretty it will charm the pants off of your beloved. Which, I believe, is the point of this holiday. The 9 piece box is $25.

3rd�Up and Coming
Socola chocolates is a fairly new chocolate company started by sisters Susan and Wendy Lieu. There chocolates are not nearly as refined as the ones from Recchiuti or Amano, but the Aphrodite's Delight box includes some very lovely flavors. They make a burnt caramel which tastes more like ganache, with a touch of sea salt, a very good raspberry pate de fruit covered in chocolate and my favorite, the "sweetheart sammee" filled with strawberry jelly and some freshly ground peanuts. It's what a peanut butter and jelly sandwich might taste like, in heaven. The chocolate coverture is a bit more brittle than I prefer, and these chocolates are more about the filling than the chocolate, but I still enjoyed them. 12 pieces for $25.95

4th�Exotic Flavors
Vosges chocolates and their creator, Katrina Markoff are masterful when it comes to marketing. But when it comes to chocolate, I'm on the fence. Sometimes I like Vosges chocolates, and other times I think they miss the mark. The Sweet Coquette collection, at $48 for 16 pieces, it's by far the most expensive. The packaging is stunning and the flavors are all intended to be aphrodisiacs. The story behind each flavor is very interesting, but the results are mixed. The idea of an oyster flavored truffle is intriguing, but ultimately the result is overly sweet. The flavors are referred to as "parfums" which is interesting, because some have so many floral notes that they end up tasting like perfume. Flavors include absinthe, cinnamon, rose water, guajillo and pasilla chillies. If you are enchanted by the aphrodisiac stories and like intensely flavored chocolates, this might be the chocolate for you.

All chocolates were provided as either samples or as gifts. I tasted some chocolates that I would not recommend, and chose not to review them.

This year at the Winter Fancy Food Show I was chosen to be one of the "trendspotters" for the National Association for the Specialty Food Trade. As part of a small group of editors, writers and chefs, I helped to identify a number of trends. But that was just the beginning. I saw and tasted a lot of other interesting and appealing things. There were cultured, pastured and hand rolled butters, snacks made from seaweed, shortbread cookies flavored with herbs and flowers and lots of lovely chutneys, jams, vinegars and olive oils. Here are some new things I had not seen or tried before that each made a positive impression on me. I hope you get to try them soon!


These wacky little fruit, Shanley Farms Finger limes, look like cornichons. Inside they have little beads of a very mild lime juice. It's like some kind of molecular gastronomy experiment only from nature! Crunchy caviar-like beads of lime would be great on oysters, smoked salmon, guacamole; I can think of almost many ways to use them. The season is October through mid January and they keep up to three weeks, so you keep your eyes out for them.


Saba is a thick syrup made from grapes. It comes from Italy and is not easy to find. This is the first time I have seen a producer from within the US. Saba from Terra Sonoma is lovely. It's thick and rich and would is terrific as a sauce or marinade. It can also be drizzled over things like ricotta, ice cream, yogurt or even hummus.


I am obsessed with wine pairing. Because I fully appreciated wine even more when served with food, I'm always interested to learn about cookies, crackers, cheeses or other snacks that are specifically designed to go with wine. Cookies & Corks, wine pairing cookies come in a variety of flavors and there are charts to help you figure out what pairs with what. There are about 15 cookies in three flavors in each box to go with red, white or sparkling wine. If you are hosting a wine tasting party or looking for the perfect gift to go with a bottle of wine, this is it!


Vin Tucci wine cookies not only taste good with wine, they are made from wine! I really like the crunchy light texture. There are several flavors, anise, spice and honey but none of them are very sweet. They are sophisticated and because they contain no butter, oil or eggs, they are fairly healthy. Look for them in speciality food stores. I think they're just great.


So you might be thinking what's new about charcuterie and salumi? Been there, done that. Well Olli Salumeria is really special. Oliviero Colmignoli is a fourth generation Italian salumi maker who makes his products here in the US using heritage breeds of pork. He is making prosciutto, speck and even culatello! Other companies I love that are also making fabulous artisanal salumi are La Quercia and Creminelli but Olli is brand new.


Zocalo Gourmet, Heritage flours offers a line of products I didn't get a chance to try, but am very curious about. They are gluten-free flours made from a wide variety of ingredients. I'm sure they add different flavors and textures to whatever you use them in. The gluten-free folks have gotten a head start experimenting with all kinds of flours. I look forward to working with them soon too. Varieties include mesquite, purple corn, sweet potato, and lima bean.


Sometimes it feels like the Fancy Food Show is nothing but tea, chocolate and cheese. It all blurs together. However new Poco Dolce Olive Oil with Sea Salt chocolate bars really stood out from the rest. They have a seductively soft creamy texture that is indescribably good. You just have to try them.


Last year I wrote about those crazy folks from Lillie Belle Farms, who made a blue cheese truffle. It sounds dreadful but one bite and you are converted. Now, instead of eating a bon bon, you can slather the Smoky Blue Cheese Truffle Spread, basically a smoky blue cheese chocolate ganache on bread. Oh man, this is nothing but trouble!


SanTasti water is a palate cleansing sparkling water. And it really works! At the Show there was no shortage of flavors to try and neutralize. The water has a touch of sugar to balance the acidity, but it doesn't taste sweet. It has some fruit pectin and cellulose gum which bind to the tannins left in your mouth from something you've eaten or drank like wine or chocolate. It also has a bit of citric acid which helps refresh your mouth. You don't taste the additives and it just tastes like fresh water but it does remove the flavors of whatever you've just eaten or drank. It's perfect for wine tasting. You can get a free sample if you like (you will have to pay for shipping and handling).



This is a tease. My friend Andy works for a cheese importer and happened to have a bag of these insanely sweet and crisp chiles from Basilicata. One crunchy bite and you will swear off potato chips forever. I am not kidding! I It looks like you can get these at Zingerman's and even cheaper from Market Hall Foods. Here's recipe from Rosetta Constantino for making them at home.

Note: Andy tells me "Others may have the peperoni cruschi but they're not the same ones. I should have them here soon and hopefully for a lot less."