This year my friend and extraordinary culinary whirlwind chef  Rachelle Boucher is spearheading a “Global Kitchen” series of talks and cooking demonstrations at the Marin County Fair in San Rafael. My talk and demo starts at 5:30 on Friday — if you’re at all tempted, please come! I even have a few extra admission tickets, so let me know asap if you’d like them.

(And yes, this poster is seven years old, but it’s so cool I couldn’t resist)

Happy to report that we finished a slew of dishes for the filming of the new cookbook, The Breakaway Vegetarian Cook, and had a blast doing it. Here’s what we made and filmed:

• Ginger Syrup
• Dutch-Indian Baby
• Gingery Oatmeal
• Dukkah
• Easy Picked Onions
• Yuzu Kale Chips with Flowers
• Green Tea Soba with Vegetable Medley
• Fragrant Umami Noodle Soup
• Three Ginger Salad
• Winter Citrus Salad with Gingery Yogurt
• Roasted Fingerlings with Saffron Breadcrumbs

It’s all very exciting for me, and finally becoming real. Now it’s time to put the finishing touches on all the recipes, and to start writing the intro, which will focus on why umami is so key to vegetarian (indeed all) cooking. Dishes are just a million times more satisfying when the umami factor is amped up. To me, dishes without umami are every bit as unsatisfying as dishes without any salt — something is sadly, and wrongly, missing.

The book is going to first appear as a digital product: it will be available as an Ipad/iphone app, and as an e-book, both for less than $10. Every recipe will have a video attached to it, with me demonstrating and commenting on the dish. Concepts, ideas, and mini-recipes within dishes will be linked to various writing I’ve done on those subjects, a feature that’s just not possible with a regular paper-based book. It will make the book vastly richer as a result, and will cost about a third the price of a paper cookbook. But for folks who still prefer a “real” book, no worries: I’ll still issue it in paperback. I just can’t help but feel the digital product will outshine the paper one by several orders of magnitude at a fraction of the price.

Here are some of the dishes we’ll be shooting next:

• Triple Tomato Eggs
• Daikon Wafuu Salad
• Green Papaya Salad, Breakaway Style
• Nutty Herby Tofu
• Freshness Itself Herb Soup
• Lotus Crack
• Breakaway Tomato Spread
• Umami Vegetarian Burger
• Ginger Potstickers
• Persimmon Udon
• Vegetarian Pad Thai with Extra Umami
• Herbed Kabocha
• Carrot Cookies with Matcha Creme

All of these are new — it’s been very difficult NOT to blog about them!

I’ll be giving regular progress updates. I can’t wait to share all of this.

In other breakaway news, I was JAZZED to get a phone call from the Commonwealth Club of California (in SF); they invited me to give a talk! It’s going to concentrate on the cult on of authenticity, why blind tasting is the shortest and best route to becoming a better cook, and why blind tasting is an excellent metaphor for living an examined life one’s own way, to not simply accept what is considered authentic to others. It will take place on November 30 — it would be fantastic if we filled the place, so please do come if you can!

And today’s last bit of news: I’m the featured chef at Cookstr on Thursday — do check it out if you can.

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I was pleasantly shocked at how much space the Chronicle devoted to the inaugural essay, replete with multiple photos, long side bar on 10 key breakaway ingredients, editor’s intro, and five recipes! Can’t publish the whole thing here for a while, but please do read it online here. Thank youuuu! It’s going to be fun doing it on a regular basis.

(And maybe all non-food short posts here are good excuses for recent Daphne pix!)

I have some exciting news to share. A few weeks ago I got one of those emails that snaps you out of your current, everyday rut-like consciousness and into a state filled with optimism and hope and clarity. These of course used to come in the form of letters. Many of us recall our letter of acceptance into the college we really hoped to get into, or letter containing a formal job offer you actually wanted, or even letters from friends having adventures in faraway paces. Nowadays most things come via email, and it’s sometimes hard to tell what’s real and what isn’t. My invite to appear on Iron Chef appeared in my spam box, because it really DID look like spam.

The  email came from Michael Bauer of the Chronicle’s food section. I was reasonably sure that it was some promotional mail (I have a pretty public email address), but no, it was actually him, asking me if I’d consider writing a regular column on breakaway cooking for the Chronicle! No invitation to submit something to be considered, nothing like that, just a flat out offer to pretty much keep doing what I do here, except they get first crack at publishing it.  We worked out a contract, signed it, and now we’re on! It looks like the first column will appear in late April, I think. It will be a longer, expanded version of the regular column with at least four recipes, laying out the raison d’etre of the column, which will probably appear about twice a month, on Sundays.  I got to meet the staff, see their set-up/operations, including the rooftop garden and way-vaster-than-you’d-think wine library/cellar.

So I’m excited! It’s especially encouraging in this age of nothing but depressing news from newspapers and the laying off of so many talented journalists. The food section has won tons of awards for its writing under the helmsmanship of Bauer and Miriam Morgan, who will be my editor, so it’ll be an honor to write for them.

I have a million and one ideas of things to cover, but: I’d love to hear what YOU would like to see explored. Please keep the idea flow coming!

It’s finally up! Late last spring I inked a deal with the Vook people to produce a breakaway “cookvook” — a redo of the Breakaway Japanese Kitchen with video. Vook has garnered lots of press of late, so I’m really happy to be the first food foray in their lineup.

Lots of people have written me over the years, asking when a new edition of the BJK will be out. I’m happy to say: this vook is a rather breakaway version of the book! There’s definitely something nice about actually seeing the recipes being put together — it’s a very different experience from a regular book.  I hope everyone here will check it out. And: buying a copy would also help me defray some of the costs of keeping this site up and running — treat yourself and help me at the same time!

Check it out at Vook’s main site. And ask questions here, please! I’m happy to chat about all aspects of it.

An email came in this morning from the Iron Chef people, telling me that the long-awaited episode has been moved up! It will air, for sure, on Sunday, August 30, at 6pm and 9m west coast time, and 9 pm eastern time. It looks like I’m finally allowed to say who the contestants were.  It’s my iron man Morimoto versus the remarkable Jehangir Mehta, whose book I reviewed late last year. My fellow judges are football star Tiki Barber, and sommelier Alpana Singh.

If anyone has any suggestions for a viewing party in SF, speak up! We may have a place in Berkeley if we can’t find a suitable place in the city.

Taking a mini camping trip to deep Mendocino later on today, be back on Monday. Enjoy your weekend, all breakaway cooks!

It’s kind of staggering to imagine that the world’s population is set to rise by 50 percent, to some nine billion people, by 2050. That’s a big enough challenge for global agriculture, but add to that the fact that incomes are rising in most places where populations are increasing the most (India, China), along with constrained supplies, processing capacities, and distribution channels, and you have some rather frightening prospects for keeping everyone reasonably fed.

Rapidly rising incomes in the behemoth developing nations also mean that people there tend to want to eat more meat, which in turn creates voracious demand for world grain. And if biofuels continue their pace of development, that will put even more strain on global grain and vegetable oil production.

All of this and much more was hashed out at the Aspen Ideas Festival a few weeks ago, at a session called “Billions to Be Served: Meeting the Needs of the People and the Planet.” I found it captivating, and you might too; it’s led by my old pal Jim Fallows.  It’s long but very much worth it. Check it out by clicking below:

Billions To Be Served

Just got an email from the folks at Iron Chef — we finally have a date! September 20, I think at 8 pm, but I’ll confirm as we get closer. A full 15 months after taping, but better late than never!

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Breakaway cooks,

Michael Pollan recently sent out a letter to his list, asking people to sign a letter urging Barack Obama to nominate an agriculture secretary committed to reform. Its goals are laudatory –to wake up to the harm done by gargantuan industrial agriculture and to guide the nation’s food path toward sustainability, health, and sanity. I’ve signed it — please check it out. And if you haven’t seen Pollan’s letter in the NYT to the “farmer in chief,” do check that out as well (may require a login/registration; well worth it).