We had a chance to sample a deliciously refreshing Rose and oaky Chardonnay before an inundation of hungry drinkers hit our tables wanting food.

At first, it took a little convincing to get folks to dirty their hands, but once a few brave souls jumped in and threw on an apron, the flood gates opened. For the next 3 hours, our chefs were racing around teaching people how to chop onions, shave herbs and flip quesadillas. They couldn’t get enough of the cooking (and eating)! Check out the photographic evidence here.

We featured our famous Shrimp Quesadillas with Tomatillo Salsa (goes great with Crushpad wines) and our Roasted Red Bell Pepper and Walnut Dip with Pomegranate Molasses and Crispy Pita Chips.

Looking for great summertime recipes? These and other delights can be found in Parties That Cook’s Sumptuous Small Plates recipe deck.

Looking for love? We’ve got that covered, too. Join us for the next Cooking Crush Party, an evening of wine tasting and cooking for singles! Wednesday, July 16th from 6:30 - 9:00 pm at Crushpad Winery in San Francisco. Click here to RSVP.

It hit 90 degrees here in Boston last week, so we fired up our grills and indulged in some carnivory to celebrate the real beginning of summer. The choicest hamburgers in town came from Chestnut Farms, in Hardwick, Massachusetts.

Green-conscious urbanites can sample fresh, hormone-free meat straight from the country by participating in Chestnut Farms’ Meat CSA (Community Supported Agriculture): pay a monthly fee to help keep the farm’s animals happy and healthy, and pick up a cooler full of the month’s meat selections at one of eight drop-off locations around the state.

You can even meet the animals you’ll later consume – if you’re into that sort of thing – at one of the Farm’s open houses, or at an info session in the Boston area. Brian Rose, who proffered his Meat CSA bounty to this writer, attended a session at MIT before he signed on. “I got to hold a baby pig,” he recalls.

Brian and Julia, his wife, have a small vegetable garden in their front yard, where they grow tomatoes, lettuce, mint, and other vegetables and herbs. They’re the kind of people, in other words, who want to have a connection with the food they eat. They’d also prefer to buy their meat from a local operation that cares about the well-being of its animals, and, by extension, about the well-being of its customers.

Chestnut Farms feeds its cows grass and organic hay, and lets its chickens wander around the pastures, where they can peck at grubs and aerate the soil. The pigs eat grain, not garbage, and even get toys to play with while they’re pent up inside during Hardwick’s icy winters. As a result of this caretaking, the meat that Chestnut’s customers receive has less fat and more nutrients than meat produced by giant industrial farming operations.

And, just as importantly, the meat tastes better than anything you can buy at a grocery store. Before cooking, our hamburgers looked juicier and denser than their store-bought counterparts. After they had been grilled, they tasted like, well, beef – a flavor that mingled with, and wasn’t overpowered by, the spicy mustard and cheddar cheese that garnished our burgers. The robust meatiness seemed more likely to be found in an unembellished steak, but the buttery texture was characteristic of the best ground beef. These tasty burgers, in the company of spinach salad and cantaloupe sprinkled with mint from the garden, made for a perfect summer meal.

Visit www.chestnutfarms.org for more on their Meat CSA.

Boston-based freelance writer and editor Katherine Hunt may be reached at huntkr@gmail.com.

Last fall, Parties That Cook moved into funkified new digs on Minnesota Street in San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood, situated right near Potrero Hill and the Bay. We love our new location, and have had fun exploring it. In case you have never been to this particular neck of the city, here is a quick primer.

What Dogpatch Isn’t:
- A band led by Keanu Reeves
- A style of facial hair for men
- An actual patch of dogs

What Dogpatch Is:
- An area with hot spots such as Serpentine, Piccino, Yield wine bar and a soon-to-open sibling restaurant to A16
- Sunnier than many parts of SF
- Home to Parties That Cook and the urban winery Crushpad

Crushpad quickly became one of our favorite neighbors in Dogpatch, and we’re not saying that just because they gave us free wine. However, they did give us free wine. And they did so in a cool way: Wine guru Stuart Ake led us through a blending session using their irresistible kit, Fusebox.

Much in the way that we help people cook up fabulous dishes by combining different ingredients, Fusebox encourages you to experiment with different grape flavors to create your own signature blend. Using the pipettes and graduated cylinder in the kit to mix varietals together almost made us forget the traumas of seventh-grade science class. Nifty evaluation and aroma cards gave us the criteria and vocabulary to distinguish between the varietals in the kit (e.g. “This cabernet sauvignon has notes of tobacco and molasses, with a hint of burnt match and wet dog.”).

Sound like fun? It was. You can embark on your own wine-tasting journey by attending Crushpad’s Open House event on Saturday, June 21, from 2:00 p.m. until 6:00 p.m. We will be there too, offering you the chance to do some cooking and noshing while you sip. If you are single, check out our Cooking Crush event on July 16, hosted by Parties That Cook and Crushpad. An excellent pairing, if we don’t say so ourselves.

We’re all grown up now and having developed a discerning palate for all herbaceous plant matter, we’ve grown quite fond of vegetarian cooking. There is an art and finesse to vegetarian cooking that not many chefs study. After all, there are thousands of types of vegetables to learn to work with, but only four major proteins to master.

A long time innovator in vegetarian cooking is world-renowned Greens Restaurant in San Francisco. For this month’s meeting of the Parties That Cook Cookbook Club, we delved into the vibrant water-colored pages of Everyday Greens written by long time Executive Chef Annie Somerville. The book focuses on recipes for “home cooking” - rustic ragouts, satisfying stews, vegetables on the grill, quick stir-fries, pizzas, tortilla dishes, savory tarts, pastas, sandwiches and desserts, of course.

On the menu for our belly-bursting vegetarian affair:

• Green Salad with Beets, Fennel, Walnuts and Ricotta Salata - A winning combination with a tangy, sherry vinegar and orange juice vinaigrette. Liz didn’t have any walnut oil on-hand, but the dressing was still wonderfully balanced.
• Grilled Fig and Endive Salad with Watercress - Erin couldn’t find any figs and substituted bursting-ripe Santa Rosa plums, which ended up being the unexpected star of this simple salad.
• Moroccan Chick-Pea Soup - Lauren wrestled a bit with the ROI on this dish (3+ hrs preparation versus final taste). With the additional of extra salt and garlic, this recipe still wins our recommendation. Very spicy!
• Soft Tacos with Grilled Summer Vegetables - Tanya had no idea this recipe actually is three recipes-in-one and forgot to copy the garlic oil and chipotle puree recipes. She winged it and upped the ante with sides of butt-kickin peppers & spring onions (she is our Chef de Cuisine after all!). She also miniaturized the tacos to make for a better potluck portions.
• Gypsy Peppers Filled with Fromage Blanc and Fine Herbes - Michelene substituted sweet piquillo peppers for gypsy, which comes into season in late summer. Fromage Blanc was also mysteriously sold-out at Whole Foods, so the peppers were stuffed with chevre instead. Decadent and simple, they were the perfect pick for Michelene, who is a busy mom.
• Mexican Pizza with Corn, Tomatillos and Chipotle Chilies - A favorite at the luncheon, expertly produced by Executive Chef Bibby. Her only revisions - doubled the cheese and highly recommends using a pizza stone for crust as crisp as it should be.
• Artichoke and Portobello Mushroom Lasagne - We loved this rich and hearty lasagna, but thought it more appropriate for a cold winter’s day. Crissy suggests skipping the hassle of trimming the small artichokes and opt for frozen instead, since their flavor is secondary to the heavy tomato-zinfandel sauce. Also needed more salt than called for. Many people had seconds of this one!
• Rhubarb Tartlets with Almond Streusel - The streusel topping was loose and definitely needed more butter/less flour than instructed. Rosie decided the cream cheese-based crust absolutely needed to be served warm for pleasing texture/taste.
• Basmati Rice Pudding with Mascarpone - Christina earned cookbook club brownie points by creating two versions of this recipe, one with coconut milk and the other with half-and-half. Topped with fresh raspberries, we thought both were a winner with the slight edge going to the slightly thicker textured half-and-half version.

The vast indoor and outdoor bazaar is a sensory overload of majestic Spanish fruits, dangling legs of cured meat, glistening Mediterranean fish and a rainbow of candy confectionery.

La Boqueria is the daily place of business for hundreds of local vendors. The market dates back to the 11th century, when the king granted a butcher ownership of “a table on which to chop meat,” which translated literally is la boqueria. We marveled to be in the house of centuries’ worth of commerce, whose soul purpose is to preserve local food tradition. It puts our beloved Ferry Building Market to shame!

Post siesta, it was back to eating - in the company of our friend and Catalonian local, Luis. A stop at his favorite tapas bar was in order. We piled our plates high with wedges of tortilla de patatas, bocadillos filled with jamón and cheese, croquetas and spicy pimientos de padrón (delicious fried peppers). Paired with a glass of Rioja, we could think of no better way to toast to a fantastic trip in España.

Dying for a taste? Try our Parties That Cook version of Spain’s beloved tortilla de patatas: Chorizo and Potato Tortilla Bites, miniature in size but big in taste! You’ll also find this heavenly egg omelette on the Summer International Small Plates Event menu.

Enjoy a vicarious bite of Barcelona and Ibiza with our drool-worthy photo gallery below…

…and with that, we will say hasta luego to the glorious Mediterranean sand between our toes!

Not to be confused with the layman’s canned Budweiser & Clamato aka breakfast beer (more appropriate for mobile situations like tubing), the refined Michelada cocktail is a winning combination of Mexican pilsner, lime juice, Tabasco, Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce and black pepper served on the rocks with a salt rim. The cocktail was born in 1940’s Mexico when a bartender thought to enjoy his salsa directly in his beer. Unlike other 1940’s inventions like vertical blinds, we’re glad the Michelada is making a comeback.

Salud!

Recipe for Michelada Cocktail as served poolside @ the Hotel San Jose in Austin

1 can of Mexican pilsner-style beer (like Modelo Especial)
Juice of 1 lime
A few dashes of Tabasco
A few dashes of Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon soy sauce
Freshly ground pepper
Margarita salt

Rim chilled pint glass with salt, fill with ice. Add all ingredients except for the beer over ice. Pour beer slowly over ice, then stir.

For more thirstworthy drink recipes, visit our Recipes page.

Recipe for Seasonal Fruit Potpies

We like to serve these individual pies warm with a scoop of homemade spice ice cream spiked with vanilla bean, cinnamon sticks and star anise. The perfect conclusion to a summer supper, these pies can also be found on our new Chef’s Table Summer Farmer’s Market menu.

Contributed by Guest Blogger:
Stephanie Beack of Scrumptious Street

If you’re anywhere near the Bay Area this week, you know that summer is upon us! Warm temperatures and sunshine on our skin means it’s time to move the party outside to the backyard. With grills firing up everywhere this month, it’s time to focus on summery dishes and terrific cocktails to pair with them.

While there’s nothing wrong with the staples of summer - dirty martinis, G&T’s and screwdrivers, true food lover’s follow a few simple culinary rules to stir up the best summer cocktails.

Think of cocktails as an extension of your meal - a course in its own right with a pleasing taste, texture and appearance. Follow the instincts of your palate and identify combinations that balance and complement each other (sweet & salty, bitter & spicy). Experiment with texture by integrating simple syrups, carbonated sodas, crushed or cubed ice, and juices or purees. Garnishes aren’t just for looks - flavored sugar/salt rims, lime wedges and herbs muddled in a cocktail add complexity and a pleasing appearance.

There are two clever techniques I like to use when pairing summer cocktails with food:

Counter-Balance Pairings: Start with a tried-and-true combination of contrasting flavors and split the flavors between the food and cocktail. For example, a peppery salad of Arugula, Gorgonzola and Walnut typically includes sweet, freshly sliced pears. Forgo pear in the salad and instead, serve a pear-focused cocktail like a Ripe & Ready (pear vodka and pomegranate juice). When enjoyed together, the sweet and tartness of the cocktail will balance the peppery richness of the salad.

Ripe & Ready with Arugula, Gorgonzola & Walnut Salad
Mojitos with Fresh Pea Soup
Banana Split Cocktail with Chocolate-Dipped Strawberries

Complementary pairings: Employ one theme ingredient in both the cocktail and its partner dish. View this ingredient as a common thread that ties the two components together. For example, make a Pimm’s Cup with the traditional slice of English cucumber as the garnish. Serve with a cold gazpacho with cucumber as its dominant flavor. The cucumber serves to unify the tasting experience: a sweet and tangy cocktail balanced by a cool, crisp summer soup.

Pimm’s Cup with Gazpacho with Shrimp Ceviche (Cucumber)
Dark & Stormy with Salmon with Ginger-Lime Sauce (Ginger)
Vin d’Orange with Salad of Orange, Avocado and Black Olives (Orange)

Food & Wine recently featured a terrific rundown of summer cocktails, check it out to get your creative juices flowing. Here’s a toast to throwing a great party with wonderful food and perfectly paired cocktails!

Taking a note from the jolly couple, we nominated the Barefoot Contessa Cookbooks for our monthly Parties That Cook staff Cookbook Club. Not to anyone’s surprise, all of Ina’s recipes were nearly flawless with all the right amounts of heavy cream and butter duly noted and clearly instructed. With no recipe changes to review at the dining table, we resigned happily to feasting:

• Warm Duck Salad
• Lemon Fusilli with Arugula
• Spinach Gratin
• Guacamole Salad
• Cheddar Corn Chowder
• Zucchini Vichyssoise
• Chocolate Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Icing

Last Thursday marked the official launch of Cooking Crush, an exciting series of parties that combine cooking with wine tasting in the hip industrial setting of Crushpad Winery in San Francisco. The professional chefs here at Parties That Cook had a blast showing guests how to cook up delicious small bites like Chorizo and Potato Spanish Tortilla Bites, Crostini of Fava Beans and Mint with Shaved Pecorino, and Mini Gyros Pockets with Grilled Lamb and Tzatziki Sauce. Guests enjoyed wine tastings provided by Crushpad, who create custom wine blends for very cool clients including Ted Allen of Top Chef/Queer Eye fame.

Check out Cooking With The Single Guy, for an insider’s perspective on the evening affair. And stay tuned for the announcement of the next Cooking Crush party happening in July!