A few weeks ago I had brunch at Dosa on Fillmore. It was absolutely fantastic. First of all, it's a lovely and glamorous dining room with high ceilings, gold accents and modern sculptural chandeliers. And the food is so good. I love having something a little out of the ordinary for brunch. There are omelets with chiles, dosas with eggs, spiced up scrambled eggs, all the things you want but served in a new way. So I was particularly thrilled to get a chance to work with chef and owner Anjan Mitra to put together a really cool menu for BlackboardEats. And now I have an excuse to go back for dinner.

Anjan uses the best ingredients and brings a level of freshness to Indian food that is pretty much unique in San Francisco. He's been wanting to do a chile pepper menu for some time and the dishes are all over the map in terms of heat. Because this is a BlackboardEats special, YOU MUST sign up at http://blackboardeats.com/ and download a passcode on June 28th (or first thing June 29th) to be able to order these dishes. But the good thing is you can order as many or as few as you want.

Help! I'm undergoing gulf shrimp withdrawal! On my Louisiana Seafood adventure I ate shrimp every single day and never got tired of them in the least. In Louisiana there are white shrimp, brown shrimp and freshwater shrimp. I particularly liked the flavorful brown shrimp I tried, though they are less popular than the larger white shrimp.

Shrimp from the gulf are sweet and succulent and perfectly safe to eat. At the Sustainable Foods Institute (part of Cooking for Solutions at the Monterey Bay Aquarium) I spoke with scientists who told me that the shrimp population came back quickly after the oil spill in the gulf and the testing has not shown any signs that the seafood is contaminated. Fortunately Louisiana gulf shrimp are available all over the country and are really worth seeking out for their superior flavor and texture and because they are harvested in a more sustainable way than the cheap shrimp you find imported from Asia.

So how many ways are there to eat shrimp? Probably more than I can count, but here are my absolute hand's down favorites from the trip:

Barbecue shrimp from GW Fins, upper left hand corner. Now barbecue shrimp in Louisiana are not "throw a shrimp on the barbie" Australian shrimp, or doused in Texas style barbecue sauce, they are cooked in butter and spices and positively delicious. I found this recipe online, so you can try making them at home. Now if I could just get my hands on the savory Jazzmen rice pudding recipe that accompanied the shrimp...

Shrimp boil is next, shown in the upper right hand corner. But here's what I learned about shrimp boil. It's shrimp poached gently in a spiced broth, off the heat! The shrimp never get boiled, just the seasoning mix and cooking liquid. This was news to me, but explains why you end up with such juicy shrimp, it's probably the most gentle way to cook them. Cooking them in the shells helps prevent them from overcooking and yet they do take on the flavor of the "boil."

Shrimp remoulade is in the bottom right hand corner, as served at Mandina's. My thanks to Pim for introducing me to this neighborhood gem and my other charming and enthusiastic dining companions�Adam aka the Amateur Gourmet and Chichi who writes for Serious Eats. The secret to this dish was of course the remoulade sauce, which was heavily spiked with horseradish. Yum! Horseradish makes pretty much everything taste better. Especially remoulade sauce.

Last but not least, fried shrimp (and some oysters too). This was another dish at Mandina's and while I never got my hands on a po' boy, this was the same thing, just no bread. More shrimp! The folks in New Orleans know how to fry their food so every thing is crisp and greaseless. Seriously, they are deep frying experts and I am happy to leave the frying to them.

What's your favorite way to enjoy shrimp? Shrimp etouff�e? Shrimp bisque? Is there a particular NOLA style shrimp dish you love?

My thanks to Louisiana Seafood for sponsoring this trip. It was a blast!

I'm just back from Bourbon Street, and I have bourbon on my mind. Of course, in New Orleans I drank Sazeracs, and the flavor of the city is really herbsaint as far as I'm concerned. But I'm thinking about bourbon and the young people I met in Louisville last Spring who told me that bourbon was what their granddaddies drank. It took them a while to come around to it, but they have now embraced it as their own.


Even though my father doesn't drink it, bourbon just seems like the quintessential spirit for dad. In my visit to bourbon country, I learned the distilleries were all pretty much family ventures, though now mostly owned by conglomerates. Even if you don't drink bourbon, a visit to this beautiful part of the country outside Louisville is a treat. I was a guest at the Maker's Mark distillery in Loretto which feels more like a national park than anything else. Historic wooden buildings with touches of their trademark red are set against a lush green backdrop. The tour of the distillery is very worthwhile. It's so old fashioned and small scale you might be surprised, I loved seeing the buckets of yeast and beautiful copper distillation pots.



Maker's Mark is made from corn, barley and local wheat. It is smooth and has featured prominently in my recipe development efforts. It has a sweetness and rich caramel and toffee notes with a hint of citrus. If you like Marker's Mark, try 46, which is also made from Maker's Mark, but is aged with more specially charred oak staves, it's a bit higher proof but still mellow and has more spice and vanilla to it.


There are lots of ways to enjoy bourbon, but if you are drinking it straight, by all means, check out the gorgeous American whisky glassware from Villeroy & Boch. The feel of these heavy glasses in your hands and the way the aroma builds and wafts up to my nose convinced me, these glasses are a must for bourbon purists. Villeroy & Boch make a whole line of whisky glasses for a range of whiskies and cocktails so you can get just the right glass to go with your drink. My thanks to Villeroy & Boch for sending me some samples to try out.


My favorite bartender in Louisville, Joy Perrine wrote the definitive book on bourbon cocktails, The Kentucky Bourbon Cocktail Book. Her recipes are layered and balanced and introduced me to so many new ways to enjoy bourbon. She combines it with everything from amaretto to vermouth. The section on creating bourbon infusions explaining how to use herbs, spices and fruits to flavor bourbon is particularly intriguing.