The San Francisco Chronicle Cookbook [antikvár]

Introduction SAN FRANCISCO IS THE METROPOLIS OF DIVERSITY. Although our ethnic neighborhoods are often distinct, they also intermingle: The very Italian North Beach and everyone's postcard-perfect Chinatown happily share their boundary streets. Other neighborhoods, such as the Richmond, which stretches along the northern side of Golden Gate Park offer a true amalgamation of cultures and tastes. On Clement Street, for example, one of the city's finest French restaurants, Alain Rondelli, is a mere block from Murasaki, a haven for sushi fanatics. And in countless grocery stores a few steps away, the Mexican staple jicama sits next to bins of Chinese lotus root. There's also a Russian bakery near a Mid-Eastern deli, and an Italian trattoria next to a Chiu Chow Chinese restaurant. The melting-pot nature of San Francisco also shows up in the foods we eat at home; it's become second nature for local cooks to mix and match ethnic flavors. Here, a rosemary-accented roast chicken might be served with a Thai cucumber salad (see page 46); the Thanksgiving turkey may get a tandoori treatment (see page ^39) with a pomegranate-juice marinade. The weekly Food Section of The San Francisco Chronicle has become a valued repository of these dishes. Created by scores of local columnists, contributors and chefs, each with a different background and approach to food, the recipes reflect our region's openness and abundance. In the last 10 years, we've published about 13,000 recipes, and we've scrutinized each one to come up with the 3 50 found here, all tested and retested for home use. Even though San Franciscans love to explore the exotic, we learned early on that Bay Area residents face the same constraints of time as everyone else. Speed is of the essence, and if a dish takes time to make, the results had better be worth it. That's why our bottom line has always been the time/value ratio of a given dish. At first glance, some ingredients may seem a little esoteric for a busy-day meal, but these varied flavors quickly expand a cook's repertoire, with very little additional effort. Asparagus is a good example of the ways that a single vegetable can be transformed. In one recipe, it's highlighted with a classic French orange-butter lutroJur VM