| SF Chefs, San Francisco, CA |
8/7/2011 |
The National Pork Board was a platinum sponsor at this year’s SFChefs event and restaurant week from August 1 – 7, 2011. The event, which was organized by San Francisco’s Golden Gate Restaurant Association, is a food, wine and spirits festival. This year the Grand Tasting Tent on Union Square featured hundreds of San Francisco's best restaurants, bars, distilleries, breweries and wineries. There were classes, demonstrations, speakers and sponsored parties, held at different venues throughout the city.
As part of the National Pork Boards sponsorship, we hosted a booth during each of the tasting events. Joseph Villanueva, Executive Chef at Le Colonial, prepared pork dishes for the booth on Friday evening. He started with braised turmeric pork served with a cold rice noodle salad, followed by a braised pork shoulder and loin back ribs served with a corn and tomato salad and chili tamarind sauce.
Saturday was split into two tastings, afternoon and evening. We featured a live prosciutto carving by Herb Eckhouse, founder of the Iowa based artisanal pork curing company La Quercia, for the afternoon session. The evening tasting was a flight of three pan seared pork belly portions prepared by Chef Instructor Lars Kronmark and culinary students from the CIA at Greystone. Each pork belly piece was paired with a different sauce ranging from mild to hot.
Tom Pizzica, host of “Outrageous Foods” on the Food Network, prepared the final tasting on Sunday. He served a five-spice pork sausage topped with Vietnamese caramel sauce, a slice of hard boiled egg, a slice of jalapeño pepper, a sprig of cilantro and sprinkled with sesame seeds.
The National Pork Board, in conjunction with the California Pork Producers and Long Ranch farm, also provided twenty-two pigs for the event. The pigs were featured in a wide variety of restaurant dishes through the tasting tent. Chef Jim Modesitt from Big Jim’s BBQ smoked the entire pig and prepared an amazing BBQ pulled pork slider. Chef Owen Nattrass from The Restaurant at Wente Vineyards featured a pork meatball with stewed garden peppers, oregano and green olive aioli. And there were many, many more outstanding dishes prepared with the donated pigs!
In addition to serving four tastings and providing pigs, the National Pork Board also taught a sold out class on Saturday morning, “Tasting and Talking Pork.” Stephen Gerike, Director of Foodservice Marketing for the National Pork Board, and Herb Eckhouse, founder of La Quercia, instructed the class. Gerike spoke about the basics of fresh pork, the differences between breeds and how to identify the best coloring and marbling quality at the meat case. Eckhouse taught the class attendees about artisan crafted cured meats that highlight the special qualities of heritage breeds.
The event was a huge success. With over 3,200 dishes served from NPB’s booth alone and thousands more from the other 20 restaurants that featured one of our donated pigs, pork was well represented at this premier food and wine event.
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