Name that Mint

Michele and I had a nice dinner tonight at the Jasmine Garden, a Vietnamese restaurant a few blocks from our flat. In case you've never been, many Vietnamese dishes are served with a side plate of garnishes, including lots of mint and basil. I brought home some of the mint, since I've never seen it before, and I'm hoping that someone out there can tell me what it is.

The waiter said it was a mint they get from Thailand. I didn't want to press him on it, but do they really fly in mint from Thailand? It almost looked like regular mint, except that each bunch had a couple freakishly big leaves. The other odd thing was the leaves are dark green on one side and purple on the other. The taste was minty, with basil-ish undertones. Can anyone help enlighten me?

Teasing You with My Cousin Tony's Sausage

When my visiting cousin Tony told me he was making homemade sausage for us, I asked him if I could film it, as I knew some of you would enjoy seeing that process. So, it really is too bad that I sucked as cameraman.

I was running in and out of the kitchen, trying to work on other things - I was hitting 'record' too late, or 'stop record' too soon - so, I just missed too many shots to have the recipe make sense.

Undaunted, I decided to edit what I had, to tease you until I film one myself. As I say in the clip, making sausage at home is really not that hard, and I may even do a version that doesn't need a Kitchen Aid grinder. Stay tuned!

Three Cheeses in Three Minutes

This "How to Make a Cheese Plate" video demo was done for About.com, and was quite a challenge to edit down to the requested three minute duration. I usually film about 10 minutes of footage and edit it down to about five, then do a voice-over. The rough cut is then edited to the three-minute final cut. It's usually a very painful process involving me deleting frames and narration that I'm convinced is nothing short of brilliant.

But, as the deadline approaches, and my delusions of grandeur fade, I always manage to whittle it down somehow. This video was assigned to follow a 3-cheese selection already published on About's cheese site. I was excited when I saw the choices, since these were three of my all-time favorites. That was also the problem - if I had covered all the info I wanted, the video would have been 15 minutes long!

Since "bring a platter" party season is almost here, this basic how-to may come in handy. These cheeses are fairly easy to find, but if you can't, there are so many combinations that will work. Don't be afraid to ask the person in charge of the cheese department at the local high-end grocery store. The only thing that cheese-heads like better than eating cheese, it's talking about it (my wife sold cheese for years, so I know this for a fact!). Enjoy!

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's Not-So-Secret Beer Batter Recipe

This beer batter video is from the author of The River Cottage Cookbook, which my cousin Tony is currently reading, and enjoying very much. He has recently moved back to San Francisco to continue his culinary career, and like most young cooks, his appetite for knowledge, both literary and otherwise, is voracious.

Besides a plug for the book, I've posted this because every cook needs to know a simple, easy to remember beer batter – and this is about as simple as it gets. By the way, when he says to fry at 175 degrees Celsius, what he really means is 350 degrees F. Enjoy!

Whatever You Do, Don't Drink the (Bottled) Water!

At the Slow Food events this past weekend, I noticed that water was being served in these plastic cups. This seemed a bit odd for these earth-friendly folks, but closer examination showed them to be compostable. The woman manning the water stand explained to me that these cups were made out of corn, and were biodegradable.

She was beaming with pride as she filled it with San Francisco's finest tap water. Tap water? What? That's right, thousands of we effete Bay Area foodies were being forced to drink tap water! Something that people from places like Nebraska (where the corn for the cup was probably grown) are forced to endure. The horror.

If Slow Food Nation '08 accomplished one significant thing, it was educating people that tap water is good, and bottled water is bad. Who knew? There was lots of information posted at all the "water stations" that made a great case for giving up that plastic bottle. I won't bore you with the details. You can bore yourself at the Take Back The Tap website. In all seriousness, it's important info to read, and I encourage you to check it out.

Remember how we all laughed and mocked those first bottled water drinkers? What a bunch of idiots - paying for water, when you can get it free from the tap! Now, we all suckle at the teat of big water. What the hell happened? It turns out our original instincts were right - we should have known the first time we saw those net water bottle purses swinging off people's hips.

VIDEO UPDATE: A viewer passed along this clip from YouTube of an episode of Penn and Teller's show "Bullsh*t" - which will serve as further evidence of the bottled water scam. Warning: Adult language sprinkled throughout.

Fast and Easy Peach Strudel - Forced to Use Frozen Puff Pastry Once Again

There are two ways to make strudel, the right way, and the way I make it in this peach strudel video recipe. This fast and easy version uses puff pastry, instead of the homemade dough that's stretched paper-thin over kitchen towels, and rolled up into the multilayered masterpiece invented in Austria centuries ago. While Austria gets credit for its origins, the word "studel" is German, and most consider this to be a German pastry.

Back in culinary school I remember being so excited to learn we were going to be taught this impossibly flaky, and airy puff pastry. We rolled and folded, and rolled and folded in all that butter, and when we were done our puffy pastry looked nothing like the stuff the chef had made. Mine was flat, tough, and so not flaky.

So, like most cooks do, I eventually resigned myself to the fact that puff pastry would just be one of those products I would be forced to buy. It was something that was going to take more practice time to perfect than I had to devote - especially for something I would use only occasionally.

If you are in a big city, you may find a bakery or patisserie that sells it frozen. But, if not, take comfort that every frozen food case in the country has boxes of Pepperidge Farms puff pastry. It's a decent enough product, and when used to wrap up a filling this delicious, no one with any decency will complain. Just don't invite any Austrians over. Enjoy!

Click here for ingredients and transcript

Carlo Petrini, "The Most Interesting Man in the World"

I'm sure most of you have seen the Dos Equis beer commercials (if not, watch the clips below) featuring the bearded gentleman referred to as "the most interesting man in the world." While the star of these commercials is a fictional character born in some Manhattan conference room, Saturday I had had the pleasure of listening to Carlo Petrini, the foodisphere's real life, "most interesting man in the world."

As I listened to the founder of the Slow Food movement speak, a very strange thing happened - suddenly I understood Italian. It wasn't only me; the entire audience was experiencing the same thing. Several times during the discussion, the moderator, who was also translating, would stop and simply say, "I think you all got that." Somehow we had.

Carlo Petrini is one of those speakers with the ability to keep you hanging on every word. Even the perfectly timed pauses in his anecdotes, and admonishments, held the audience in satisfying suspense. That he was the most compelling voice on stage was no mean feat. The panel was a who's who of Slow Food, and each was brilliant in their own way.

Wendell Berry, Vandana Shiva, Michael Pollan, Alice Waters, and Eric Schlosser, joined Carlo Petrini for a conversation about the local, national and global impact of the philosophy and practice of Slow Food. Moderator, Corby Kummer, did a wonderful job guiding the talk, and making sure that even the subtlest of points were not missed.

I am very happy to announce that Slow Food Nation will be uploading videos of these discussions, and you'll be able to view every minute right here. This is great news for me, since I had no idea how to even begin sharing all that was discussed; from the charges of elitism, to how the poor are suppose to participate, to why the White House doesn't have a vegetable garden.

I can't wait for you all to see and hear what I did, and I very much look forward to a lively exchange of ideas afterward. Until then…stay thirsty my friends.