If you ever need to find me in a crowd, just follow the string of heavy silences I leave in my wake. It goes like this: I’ll say something, you’ll nod your head and smile, and then you’ll stand frozen while holding your mojito, wishing desperately that someone will come along and save you from me. Eerie silence ensues.

It happened recently when I met Michael Chiarello at a “Top Chef Masters” preview event. There were fans looking over my shoulder, PR reps flanking Chiarello and all kinds of activity in between. In an attempt to ask him something for a follow-up story I wanted to write, I managed to winnow that boisterous man down to a nodding and smiling animatronic. (Cue the crickets.) I’m not quite sure how I do it, but it may have something to do with nervously ramming three questions together in a single, incoherent sentence.

It’s kind of weird being a journalist who gets panicky around selective sources.

The Symposium for Professional Food Writers was yet another event that had me exponentially intimidated. The sheer number of attendees who’ve published cookbooks, the James Beard awards won and the fact that most of them could grow flourishing gardens with both hands tied behind their backs made me feel like a fraud. I’ve written some stories here and there, but did I really know anything about food? I can barely keep a potted thyme alive for longer than a month.

But my nerves subsided slightly when I met cookbook author Tara Mataraza Desmond. Her friendly nature put me at ease, foreshadowing what the week-long conference would be like: welcoming and encouraging. It was exactly what I needed. I had my awkward moments for sure, but I wasn’t a basket case (well, not the whole time). Had I not met Tara in the elevator minutes before the symposium began, I wonder if my experience would have been a little more anxiety-ridden.

So when Tara sent an e-mail to SPFW attendees about a blogger potluck being held in conjunction with her new cookbook “Almost Meatless: Recipes That Are Better for Your Health and the Planet,” I jumped at the chance to join in. The book is co-written by Joy Manning, with recipes that emphasize grains and veggies rather than meat (that’s the “Almost” part). I took on the shrimp and slow-roasted tomato risotto.

As a journalist, I think it may be difficult for me to write an unbiased review of this recipe because I’ve met Tara and think her a genuine and thoughtful person. So I’ll just leave you with this: The recipe reflects the person. And I’ll replace my own further thoughts with letting the recipe and photos speak for themselves. Or better yet, what do you think of them? (Click on “Read the rest of this entry” for recipe.)

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Once, I made a chocolate mint cake for someone’s birthday. We’re talking a big-deal kinda birthday cake, tall and proud, with Valrhona, fresh mint leaves steeped in cream, chocolate curls and piped borders. When I was finished, it looked like every Baking 101 technique out there had assaulted the defenseless, 10×6 confection. It took days to complete. And it only took a split second to devastate.

The cake was transported from my kitchen to the birthday site, a mere 10-minute drive down a residential surface street. I sat in the passenger seat with the plated cake in my lap. Sometime during the drive, I remember blinking, and the next thing I knew my seatbelt had tightened forcefully, and the heavy weight on my lap was suddenly absent. While my friend cursed the car that had caused the sudden stop, I sat stunned, staring at an almond-crusted pile of shit at my feet. It may as well have been steaming.

Cakes don’t travel in my lap anymore. At the very least, they travel in wide boxes with slip-proof rubber mats underneath. Since then, I’ve had a few more rounds of travel mishaps — like a car floor covered in cream of mushroom soup and butterscotch pudding after yet another sudden stop — but for the most part, things have remained unscathed. A homemade three-tiered wedding cake survived a three-hour trip from Orange County, Calif., to Santa Barbara, and this strawberry cream cheese cake recently arrived at a San Diego housewarming party in near-perfect condition. Thank goodness for that. 

(Click on “Read the rest of this entry” for recipe.)

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A lot of us have quite a tailored list to go through before we bestow the “Best” title upon anything having to do with barbecue or pulled meat.

For one, the best barbecue has to come from the hands of people who travel to county fairs by Mack Trucks packed with logs, iron smokers and grills the size of sedans. If it doesn’t come from a vehicle that beeps while backing up, we don’t want it.

If we have it at a restaurant, it has to be served by a burly dude in overalls and a shirt that looks like it was snatched from a picnic table. Better still if his fingers are perpetually curled into a loose fist, even when he’s not holding an iron pitchfork. And his smokehouse has to be no smaller than your two-car garage.

In other words, if it ain’t dirty or country, we don’t want none. Please turn your non-beeping vehicle around and go back whence you came.

It’s a similar story when we’re barbecuing at home. There are rituals up the wazoo, making it more of an event rather than a cuisine or cooking method. Many of us prep for days, marinating and coaxing any and all flavor into the meat. We won’t even look at our grills unless they can be filled with a pricy sack of (soaked) wood chips. No meat will touch anyone’s lips until you’ve stealthily added the “secret ingredient” to it, either. Modesty? Forget about it. “This is the absolute best (insert slow-cooked meat here) that you’ll ever know,” you say, as you plunk a heaping pile of charred and sauced animal onto a tablecloth resembling the ‘cue waiter’s shirt. “It’s the best. I’m the best. You will never have it better than this. Ever.”  (Click on “Read the rest of this entry” for more)

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