Thyme Balm

I’m happy to announce that the Liminal Feast to Spring (in which we celebrate the ephemeral moment between winter and spring in our foggy, sunny, rainy, sprouting city) will be on March 13, and vegetarian, by popular demand and metaphorical appropriateness.

Fog,sun; fog, sun.
It’s winter, but it’s really spring. Sometimes it rains and blows,only to give in to a bright blast of a sunny afternoon. Clearly, it’s time for the liminal feast to spring!

We hope you’ll join us on March 13th at 7 pm, for many courses of tiny rainsprung treasures. This one will be vegetarian.

The location will be a private home in the Twin Peaks neighborhood of San Francisco. We will send the address upon purchase.
If you’re wondering what it’s like, think of a one-night restaurant tasting menu (seven courses) in a home dinner party setting. Bring a bottle if you’d like one! For some photos from the first one, see David Gartner’s beautiful set here:

More pictures by Robin Jolin from this evening here.

Thursday October 22nd: Free Farm Stand Night
This Thursday we are excited to have Nicole LoBue and Leif Hedendal as co-guest chefs. Leif is a farm-to-table chef, cooking for many dining projects, including The Secret Cafe, The Secret Eating Society, Noise In my Kitchen, and Dinner Discussion.

A portion of proceeds will go to Free Farm Stand, which gives away free food every Sunday from 1-3pm at the Parque Niños Unidos at 23rd and Treat Streets in the Mission. So far this year, they’ve given away over 4400 lbs of produce.

MENU:

Dirty Girl early girl tomatoes with roasted piquillo peppers, Henry’s olives, piccolo fino basil, and Pug’s Leap goat cheese crostini – $8

Annabelle’s heirloom pumpkin soup with brown butter, chanterelle Tartine toast, garden herbs, St. George Chardonnay brandy crème, and pumpkin seed oil – $9

smoked black cod with shell beans, stinging nettle, Bloomsdale spinach, preserved lemon, wild fennel, and pistachio – $14

slow-braised Marin Sun Farms lamb shoulder with Moroccan spices, lamb-porcini reduction, Tierra chile harissa, baby greens, and fine herbs – $13

almond torte with poached quince, moscato jelly, and coriander crème – $7

butter fried cornbread with buttermilk panna cotta and bourbon-sage honey – $5.5

UPCOMING EVENTS AT THE STUDIO FOR URBAN PROJECTS STOREFRONT

The Self-Sufficient Kitchen
a series of cooking classes taught by chef Nicole LoBue

STOCKS + STEWS
Saturday, November 21st
1:00-5:00 pm

THE WINTER PANTRY
Saturday, December 12th
1:00-5:00 pm

LOCATION
Studio for Urban Projects
3579 17th Street
San Francisco, CA
94110

PAYMENT
Each class is $75.00
Please enroll via PayPal using the
button below. Space is limited.

This ongoing series of classes will introduce you to the basics of traditional food preparation. In a time when we can often mistake “food products” for real food, the “Self-Sufficient Kitchen” will ground students in the processes, recipes and nutritional benefits of cooking from scratch.

As Michael Pollan writes in his book In Defense of Food: An
Eaters Manifesto “Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother
wouldn’t recognize as food.” The self-sufficient kitchen will revisit traditional cooking techniques and reinterpret them in the context of the contemporary urban foodshed. We will examine the city as an agricultural site. When appropriate, the class will take short walking trips to neighborhood gardens to visit local growers and harvest ingredients for the dishes we prepare.

Each class will be taught by Nicole LoBue. Nicole has been working in the food industry in New York and San Francisco since 1990. She studied the culinary arts and whole foods nutrition at the Anne Marie Colbins School of Food and Healing and the French Culinary Institute in NY. With a deep passion for food inspired by her Sicilian heritage and world travels, Chef Nicole Lobue spreads the love of everything delicious to others. A dedicated student of herbal medicine; Nicole firmly follows the political and aesthetic culinary principles regarding the faithful use of ingredients that are healthful both for consumers and the environment.

Stocks and Stews
Traditional cooking used every part of the animal by making
bone broths. As we have grown to buy our meat in individual filets and boneless breasts, we have lost the numerous health benefits
as well as the rich tastes of dishes prepared with stock. This class will introduce students to the process of using broths as a base for making winter soups, stews and sauces. The class will explore preparing fish fume, lamb reduction, chicken consume, and beef stock. We will make hearty bone broths from pastured grass-fed animal bones. Students will come away with the ability to make
great soups improvising a variety dishes from what is on-hand.

The Winter Pantry
We are used to finding foods in our markets that do not grow seasonally. In fact, it is estimated that the average American meal travels well over 1000 miles to get from the farm to our plates. This class will teach us how to eat local in the winter months and find the subbtleties of flavor using what is available. We will cook with winter vegetables roots, squashes, tubers, braising greens, rancho gordo beans and whole grains, including farro and quinoa. We will learn
how to cook with these whole foods to make them delicious and nourishing. The class will take a brief trip to a neighborhood farm
to harvest some of the produce that we will use in the dishes we prepare.
For more information please visit our web site or contact us at info@studioforurbanprojects.org

Some pictures from class