7 days ago
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Some of S.F.'s most coveted handmade pasta comes from this one-woman operation
Each week, critic MacKenzie Chung Fegan shares some of her favorite recent bites, the dishes and snacks and baked goods that didn't find their way into a full review. Want the list a few days earlier? Sign up for her free newsletter, Bite Curious.
I don't get to eat dinner at home too often, and when I do, I'm usually reaching for something low-lift to supplement leftovers. Now in rotation is frozen pasta from Sfoglia Club, the one-woman micro-batch pasta company from Tanaya Joshi. A product designer by day, she folds intricate filled pastas by night and sells them via Hotplate. The drop model will be familiar to any sneakerhead, and her batches of balanzoni and tortelli sell out quickly. I got my hands on a couple boxes of sachetti — Joshi's version kind of look like hamentaschen but with four sides instead of three — stuffed with ricotta, corn and chives. The filling is very delicate; I've been saucing the sachetti ($20 per box) with butter, Calabrian chile and Parmesan so as not to overpower it.
I didn't intend for this week's installment to be What I've Been Eating, Corn Edition, but facts are facts: Restaurants are exulting in corn season, and I am happily along for the ride. At Lunette in the Ferry Building, chef Nite Yun stir-fries fresh kernels with coconut milk, chicken schmaltz, dried shrimp and scallions. Yun modestly told me that the wok does all the work — the corn takes on just a touch of char — to which I say, 'Yeah, right.' It's a glorious summer side dish that I can't wait to eat again.
Lunette. Ferry Building, 1, Suite 33/47, San Francisco.
Over in Emeryville, Good to Eat also has a seasonal sweet corn special. For $14, you get two half-ears of corn, skewered and grilled. The singed cobs are then lacquered with shacha, a Taiwanese barbecue sauce, and coated in sesame seeds. If 'barbecue sauce' conjures up memories of sticky-sweet Kansas City ribs or tangy, vinegary Carolina pulled pork, shacha is something else entirely — savory and briny thanks to dried shellfish.
