ESF's Final Feast. Best Meal of the Year!

Assignment:

Your delicious dish must be made from local, seasonal ingredients.

Document the process.

Your project must rest upon a platform that: a) supports multimedia, b) is open to the public, and c) allows visitors the opportunity to comment on your work.
When finished, thick tweet your project.

After days of flipping through a plethora of cooking magazines and more websites than I have fingers and toes, I finally decided to prepare two delicious sandwiches, with my partner-in-crime Austin.

The recipes:

Double-Decker Strawberry Chicken Club Sandwiches
Serves: 4 Prep: 20 Min Cook: 15 Min

12 ounces thick-cut bacon
1 ½ pounds skinless, boneless chicken breast halvesSalt and pepper
1 avocado2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1/3 cup mayonnaise
12 slices whole-wheat toast
2 cups romaine lettuce1 ½ cups hulled and sliced strawberries (10 ounces)

Open-Face Chimichurri Skirt Steak Sandwiches
Serves: 4 Prep: 25 Min Grill: 15 Min

2/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
3 cloves garlic, smashed and peeled1 Serrano chile, seeded if desired
1 packed cup parsley sprigs1 packed cup cilantro sprigs
Grated peel of 1 lemon and juice of ½ lemon
Salt and pepper
One 16-ounce loaf ciabatta bread, sliced on an angle in 12 pieces
2 pounds skirt steak¼ cup mayonnaise
3 tomatoes, thinly sliced

As I explained in my previous post, on Tuesday, Austin and I ventured to the Ferry Building, where we hit up a few of the amazing specialty shops for local and seasonal bread and meat. We also took advantage of the weekly outdoor Farmer’s Market for all of our fruit and vegetable needs. The recipes called for three types of meat and an array of produce. The Ferry Plaza Farmers Market is a California certified farmers market operated by the Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture (CUESA), and is open two days a week—Tuesdays and Saturdays. The market’s produce and flowers are from small regional farms and ranches, many of which are certified organic, and also pass the criteria for my assignment.

“Started as a one-time event in 1992, the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market's popularity led to the opening of a year-round market in May 1993. On Saturdays, 10 - 15,000 faithful shoppers attend the market because it reconnects them with their food sources. Shopping at a farmers market provides a forum for learning how food is grown, who grew it, and why it tastes so good. “ Ferry Building

The Prather Ranch Meat Company, where we purchased the skirt steak, bacon, and chicken, offers a wide selection of organic, sustainable, humane and pasture-raised meats. The company regularly carries beef, buffalo, pork, lamb and vitellone, a meat that is tender like veal and often found on menus in Tuscany. Raised on the 11,000 acre Prather Ranch, just north of Mt. Shasta, the beef is certified humane and organic. The Prather Ranch Meat Co. also raises pigs on pasture in Capay Valley, California. The pigs diet includes only organic fruits and vegetables from many nearby farms, which is comforting, especially after reading Omnivore’s Dilemma, and thinking much more critically about the idea—you are what you eat. These humanely and organically raised cattle and pigs, whose meat became the star of the sandwiches, rivaled some of the best I’ve ever had. There is just something about knowing that the food you’re eating wasn’t fed petroleum, pesticides, and pharmaceuticals during its short-lived miserable life.

Purchasing the ingredients is only half the battle when making a delicious meal; however, I thought that colorful and descriptive photographs were better suited to showcase the delicious sandwiches and ESF’s Final Feast.

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

Goodbye ESF, I will honestly miss spending Wednesday nights with 17 incredibly creative and inspiring people. But this is not the end of my food blogging, so stay tuned.