Village News: Pulcinella, Garchik, Foodbuzz Bloggers & NPR
It’s just been 2 weeks since we saved the severely damaged Song of Pulcinella restoration and rolled it across Columbus Avenue to a safe haven. It’s been a week since I brought the San Francesco statue to Emerald Tablet gallery to oversee the restoration.
The muralist Vranas was worried about the seam where the 2 big pieces were joined together. Sean O’Donnell had lined it up perfectly and Vranas repainted the vertical rip beautifully.
Vranas will finish the last shattered corner on Tuesday. It may be the toughest section to conquer. Thank you San Francesco, Song of Pulcinella is almost back. Thanks to Andre Hunt for his video of Vranas working on that last corner.
Leah Garchik picked up the restoration story in her Friday Chronicle column. Scroll down to find it.
I was out in the Village early Friday morning buying the fish I needed for the Cioppino Weekend recipe. I was making the tomato sauce base when Rick Kleffel arrived to tape an interview for his KUSP Santa Cruz NPR radio show and his website webcast.
“Smells wonderful in here”, Rick said as he entered. Rick makes many of my dishes so we spent time in the kitchen talking about the Cioppino recipe and the relative merits of San Marzano DOP tomatoes. I told Rick that when I find a good DOP producer often I will stock up on their non-DOP tomatoes. The DOP growing zone may end at a road near Salerno but more tomatoes are grown across the road just outside the zone. Trust the producer, those tomatoes are just as good and cost about half the price.
I met many of the 400 passionate food bloggers who gathered at the annual Foodbuzz Festival this weekend in San Francisco. A full day of sharing ideas and techniques about blog writing, photos, building your audience. Boy, I learned a lot especially about photos, tips that I will use to up my pix game.
I stopped by to see Zoe Francois and Jeff Hertzberg of Bread in Five fame. Rick Keiffel interviewed them just before coming up to my place. Zoe and Jeff were handing out copies of their fantastic book Artisan Pizza and Flatbread in Five Minutes a Day. Gotta love their message. When you make pizza dough make enough to use that day and enough to stash a supply in your refrigerator. Heat up your oven and every day you can grab a hunk of dough and make a loaf of bread, a pizza or focaccia in just 5 minutes. That’s what I do and it keeps for about 2 weeks taking on a bit of a sour flavor near the end.
I’ll let you know when Rick Kleffel’s radio show will air and when his podcast is up.