The Food Gal: Insights on Career, Family and Blogging

nright size-full wp-image-1436″ style=”margin: 2px;” title=”foodgal3″ src=”http://www.foodonourtable.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/foodgal3.jpg” alt=”" width=”216″ height=”228″ />

She is a native of San Francisco and claims the city was her original inspiration for her love of food. For 11 years, she was the food writer/editor for the San Jose Mercury News. She also was a contributor to the “Good Living” section of Gourmet Magazine, and to the book, “The Slow Food Guide to San Francisco and the Bay Area.”

In 2008, she created FoodGal.com, a food and wine blog that features interviews with celebrated chefs, reviews of intriguing cookbooks and products, the scoop on new restaurants, irresistible recipes, and her singular take on how food touches every aspect of our lives. In 2009, her blog was awarded second place for “Best Food Blog” in the nation by the Association of Food Journalists.

In addition to blogging, she is a ghost-writer and recipe tester for cookbook authors, and lends her expertise as a food industry/food trend consultant. Additionally, she was a judge for the 2009 James Beard Foundation Cookbook Awards. She has judged a bevy of food contests, including the biggie of them all, the Pillsbury Bake-Off. I had the opportunity to speak with her as she was preparing to judge Del Monte’s Crown the Cook Recipe Cook-Off.

Jennifer McClanahan-Flint: How and why did you get involved with the Del Monte Crown the Cook Recipe Cook-off? What do you enjoy about judging cooking and recipe contests?

Carolyn Jung: Del Monte came to me and asked me if I’d be interested in judging the cook-off. They said that they were impressed that I had judged the Pillsbury Bake-Off so many times.

I’ve judged quite a few things over the years. The Pillsbury Bake-Off is probably the most prominent. You’re actually giving someone $1 million, which is a huge responsibility.

Judging cook-offs are a lot of fun. You get to see the creative process that home cooks have these days when given certain parameters and what they can come up with.

Jennifer: How did you get into judging cook-offs and recipe contests? Was it by chance?

Carolyn: I’ve been a food writer for many years in the Bay Area. I was the food writer at the San Jose Mercury News for more than a decade. Now I continue to freelance for both local and national publications. What they’re looking for can vary in contests. Sometimes they want a celebrity-type judge. Others want people who seem well-versed in their knowledge of food, cooking and trends. I think that’s probably where I come in.

Jennifer: I noticed on your blog that you have a real passion for food and the food scene.

Carolyn: I’ve been a foodie ever since I was a little kid. I was born and raised in San Francisco, so I think it’s in my blood. Anyone who spends that much time here is going to develop a love for eating and cooking. That was my childhood.

I started out as a hard news reporter in newspapers. Then I switched over into feature food writing. It was the best decision I ever made. The blog came about after I left the Mercury News in 2008. I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do. I had been in charge of the food blog that the newspaper had been doing. Then, like hundreds of reporters and editors at the paper at the time, I was laid off.

Then the most incredible thing happened: Over the next month, reader comments appeared on the blog, even though we hadn’t had much readership while I was at the newspaper. It sparked an idea in my mind. I thought, ‘I might not know exactly what the future holds, but at the very least I could start a blog.’

I built my blog from nothing. I didn’t know much about blogging at the time. I dabbled here and there in photography but I was the most amateur of photographers. I had to learn that. It was a really educational experience and a fun one, too. People who used to read my blog at the paper started finding me. Then, people around the world started finding me, which was cool.

Jennifer: That is cool. You think that your world is contracting and then it ends up expanding in a way that you could have never expected.

Carolyn: It’s funny. I sometimes look at my analytics for the blog. For some reason I’m quite big in Australia. I don’t know why.

Jennifer: When I was reading the blog, I noticed you talk with many local chefs, as well as some that are not local. How have these relationships evolved in relation to your blog?

Carolyn: I treat my blog as my own food section of a newspaper. I know that a lot of blogs are very recipe-based and others are much more personal in nature. I include a little bit of everything that happens in the food world that I think will resonate with people. It’s news items, interviews with chefs, or recipes and cookbooks that I try out. It’s the latest-and-greatest in restaurants opening in the area. I have known a lot of chefs over the years because of my background in being a food writer for the newspaper.

Jennifer: That’s interesting. Much of what I write is about family news. I write and work with professional moms. Many of them struggle with planning family meals. How do you plan for family meals for yourself and your husband? Do you eat meals together? Is there a day that you try to come together and eat?

Carolyn: Sometimes weekdays are hard. We don’t always eat together at the table. I might eat first because he comes home late. I am invited to a lot of restaurant events. I go and he is left on his own at home.

However, I ascribe to the Alice Waters’s philosophy of the importance of sitting down to a meal at the table. Nothing can replace that. It’s so important, not only for nutrition, but personally.

Dinnertime is when you are present in front of each other and paying attention to each other. The TV is not blaring. Someone is not playing on their iPhone. It’s people at the table enjoying each other’s company over good food. That’s the best thing in the world. It doesn’t take much to do. Many times, I will cook on the weekends. I might make two different dishes and alternate them every other day for four days.

I keep a well stocked pantry and refrigerator, and have things on hand so that I don’t always have to run to the store. You can’t just jump into preparing a meal at the last minute. Cooking can be like that, but most of us don’t want to fly by the

seat of our pants every night for dinner. You can spend a few moments once a week to think out the plan for the week.

Jennifer: Let’s say you want to create something simple, quick and delicious. Maybe

you worked later than you thought or the unexpected happened. You can’t always plan ahead. What’s your go-to meal that you make?

Carolyn: It would be a stir fry of some sort, a pasta dish or some sort of fish dish. Many people are afraid of preparing fish, but it cooks so fast. It’s much faster than chicken or pork. If you don’t have time to stop at the seafood counter that night, there is plenty of frozen fish that tastes fairly decent.

You can make a stir fry out of almost anything. All you need are some vegetables. You don’t even need a protein. Tofu, or small pieces of chicken or pork, can be thrown in.

The secret to a good stir fry is not crowding the pan. If you do, the vegetables will steam and get soggy, instead of getting crisp. Home stoves don’t have as high of a BTU as a professional Chinese kitchen burner has. Put your pan on high heat. Then, cook things one at a time. Let’s say you’re making a pork stir fry with bite-sized pieces of pork marinated in something. First, put the pork in the pan. Stir it around until it’s 90% of the way cooked through. Then take it out of the pan. Then cook your vegetables. When your vegetables are almost done, put the pork back in. It will stay crisp.

Jennifer: That’s a very good tip. What do you think is the one kitchen items that home cooks should have on hand?

Carolyn: They should have a really good knife. The first time I bought my first good knife I was probably in my 20s. I brought it home and started cutting up an onion. I screamed. It was such a revelation. To have your blade go through an onion so easily and be able to cut slices so thinly was mind-blowing.

People often look at knives and think, ‘This is so expensive. Do I really need this?’ A really good knife can make a world of difference. It can make your cooking more pleasurable and a whole lot easier. It’s an investment, but if you take care of a knife correctly it will probably last you a lifetime.

Jennifer: I think you’re on the money with buying a knife. What is the most essential time saving item in your kitchen?

Carolyn: I would say my KitchenAid mixer. I love to bake. Before I got my mixer, I would cream stuff by hand. That took forever. The results weren’t nearly as good because you can’t aerate things as well. With the mixer, you can let it go for a couple of minutes to cream the butter or whip the egg whites while you do something else. It’s like another set of hands. Like a really good knife, a KitchenAid mixer is classic.

I would also say that growing your own herbs is great. Sometimes you look at a recipe that you want to make. You think, “Oh my God. It calls for chives.” Do you want to run to the store just to get chives? When you grow your own, you don’t have to.

Jennifer: Do you have thoughts about food, family or the upcoming contest?

Carolyn: There is one thing I would say to people. If there are dishes that your parents, aunt or grandma makes that you absolutely love, then get them to write it down for you. Don’t put it off.

We all fall into the trap of, ‘I can eat this any time. They will make this for me if I ask.’ It’s hard to remember that they will not always be there. The day will come when they are not there. I always tell people, ‘Sit down with your parents or relatives. Have them write it down and show you. It’s something that you will never regret doing.’