Local chefs share recipes in Northern California

Watch our Farm-to-Fork special: Local chefs share recipes in Northern California

Celebrating the farm fresh food. This is curry is called massaman curry of Northern California. Citrus salad, *** really simple one. Recipes you can use full of salt, full of pepper from local chefs. Put *** little bit of honey in there, *** little bit of local honey. Some of our favorite stops this year in *** KCRA 3 farm to fork special. And all year we’ve been going to some of the Sacramento area’s most popular restaurants, learning from their chefs about how they make some of their favorite dishes. Thanks for joining us. I’m Lisa Gonzalez, and tonight we’ll show you some of those techniques that could set your dish apart. We start at Camden Spit and Lader. On this week’s Farm to Fork Friday we’re at Camden Spit and Lauder with executive chef Oliver Ridgeway, and citrus are in season right now. Of course, in the summertime it’s all about tomato, tomato, tomato. It is right now it’s about citrus. It really is. We do talk about the tomatoes, but Sacramento being the farm to for capital, everything is in season. When it’s supposed to be, so we get citrus, and right now I don’t know if you’ve seen in your neighborhoods, there’s oranges and grapefruits all over the place, so I have so many lemons in my backyard I don’t even know what to do with them and oranges keep juicing, but for today I really wanted to do *** citrus salad, *** really simple one. Around this time of year you get lots of bitter greens which are really complementary to citrus and. If you make *** vinaigrette with citrus instead of vinegar, it’s actually called *** citronette. So we are going to do *** uh citrus salad with *** citronette with avocado. And I’ve got *** little bit of Cortijo cheese here, you could use feta, but we’re just gonna assemble it, it’s very simple, very good for you and full of flavor, so I will go ahead and let’s start with *** vinaigrette. So the bases of *** vinaigrette or *** citronette. *** typically acid fat, mustard is an emulsifier. Um, I like to put *** little bit of honey in there, *** little bit of local honey. So we got mustard, honey. Let’s get that out, come on, you can do it, you can do it. There it is. I’ve got some, I’ve got juices of lemon and lime in here, so I’m gonna put *** little bit of that in there. And I have this beautiful extra virgin olive oil from Sierra Orchards. And there we go, that’s the simplicity of the vinaigrette, and then we’re just gonna emulsify that. And as you can see that mustard is just bringing everything together. So now we have *** good balance of fat and acid with that mustard that’s created that vinaiggarrette consistency we want. Easy as that, so you don’t need to buy store bought anymore. There you go. Alright, we’re done with the jars. We are, so I’m just gonna throw these beautiful blood oranges. I’ve got karakkara oranges, grapefruits. Some really beautiful, just this is *** great dose of vitamin C to try and beat the flu and the cold. It’s why it’s all available, right? Some beautiful frise here. So this is all part of the chicory family. These are part of, you know, often known as on dives. So we’ve got frise, we’ve got California on dive here, which is, is grown here and supplies *** lot of the world. Our California on dive industry is very, very big. And are those bitter? They are bitter. So all these lettuces are bitter. They survive the winter and they stay strong by producing this bitterness. So we’re going to round out with *** bit of this beautiful avocado here from our friends south of the border, but we’re all connected, right? My avocado tree is in bloom right now. Is it really? Yes, perfect. Best avocados you ever had. And now I’ve got this citrus vinaiggarrette or citronet. We’re just going to put that all the way over the top. I love that all the colors of the rainbow are in there. Now just to kind of get it *** little bit vibrant, we’ll put some mint on there. Oh. So you can finish with cotija cheese, uh, like I mentioned, you use feta, ricotta satta, but it’s just *** really nice way to finish *** salad salty, um, good compliment to, uh, the citrus and the avocado and everything else on it. It’s *** perfect citrus salad with *** citronet dressing. That’s your farm to fork Friday. Chef Oliver Ridgeway, thank you so much for having us from Camden. We’re at Camden Spit and Lader. Well, steak is *** protein staple in the kitchen. The executive chef at the Hard Rock Hotel Casino showed us how to make the perfect steak. On this week’s Farm to Fork Friday, we are in the kitchen with the executive chef for the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino and all their restaurants, Jared Davis, thanks for joining us in the kitchen. You’re going to show us how to make the best steak ever, right? I think so, yeah, absolutely. So what, how do you start? Start with picking the right meat, right? Absolutely. For me it starts with the right ingredients. There’s nothing else you can do the ingredients except for just make them worse, right? So you want to start out with the best, and I just happened to find *** ranch, *** Wagyu ranch, 3 miles from the casino. Yeah, it’s just phenomenal beach just outside Wheatland or in Wheatland. It is in Wheatland. Wow, OK. And what’s the name of it? The name is Uber River Ranch, and I was, you know, I just up one night late and I was going through the internet looking for ranches. I was looking for, um, Micrograins actually and came across this. And emailed her. She called back and we kind of hit it off and went to the ranch, and I was, you know, pet all the dogs and looked at the cattle, and we, we talked for, I don’t know, half an hour, and she had some offers from some restaurants in San Francisco and decided to put everything on hold and partner with us. So this is the only place you can get it. That’s amazing. All right, so start with *** really good piece of, of meat, and then, and then how do you start to prepare it and cook it? So normally if I was doing like ***, let’s just say if I was doing *** USDA prime, you know, I’d have thyme in the pan, I’d have butter. I don’t want to mask any of the flavor of the Wagyu fat, so I just do salt, pepper, and it’s, it’s own fat. So you start with the Wagyu fat because that’s really the best, and you’re using what kind of *** pan? I like to use *** cast iron. I like to use *** pan. You can get really hot, yeah, and you like your old cast iron. I do. I will cast iron, OK. So you start with that fat and then, and then what do you do? So, um, if I don’t have the towel, I’ll just take some of the fat from the trim when I after I get the, the sub primals and you know, I’ll burn that off in the pan *** little bit and kind of just at almost *** small point and then I will season that one side of the Wagyu, just salt, just pepper. I use *** little Maldon crystal salt, just tell the cherry black pepper, put *** face down and let that cook for, you know, maybe 90 seconds, 1 minute and *** half it. Put on your fan first because it’s gonna get *** little. Put on your fan, it gets smoky and you want to set off smoke smoke detectors. Now you could also do this in your barbecue outside, right? You could put cast iron inside your barbecue. Yes, yes, yes. I do have plates on my barbecue at Council. I actually have some plates coming that we’re going to do these on specifically, OK. And then, so about how long do you cook at each side? Uh, the first side, maybe 2, like I said, 90 seconds depending on the thickness of the meat. Uh, but if you’re high heat, you want to work with cere, and resting is the most important part. You don’t want to put *** cold steak on *** hot. Hot grill or *** hot pan, you actually want it to rest out for *** while, um, and that relaxes the fibers and makes it even more tender and then resting at the end is important too. That’s that’s what *** lot of people, so we’ve had this sitting here for *** few minutes now and then, uh, how would you cut this and prepare this? Uh, so because it is full blooded Japanese Wagyu, uh, raised in America, I like it blue. Some people don’t like that, so I cook it *** little longer, maybe medium rare. I don’t recommend anything over medium rare for Wagyu though. All right, and then you just plate it just like this, yeah, and then we’ll slice it down and send it out for guests to enjoy. After you salt it, you can garnish it with some watercress and some shallots, and that’s really the best Wagyu steak ever. That’s this week’s Farm to Fork Friday. *** family favorite and an easy weeknight dinner. Take *** look at this recipe for baked rigatoni. If you’re wondering what to make for dinner tonight, well, how about baked rigatoni? We’re inside the kitchen at the Grange Kitchen and Bar with executive chef Dane Blom. He’s going to show us how to do this. Get it started right now so we’ve got *** great dinner for later on, right? Of course, yeah. So we’re trying to do one pot meals here. So I want to do something nice and easy. We’re doing baked rigatoni. We have. Nice chuck roast here diced up, *** little salt, *** little pepper. It’s diced up. We have mirepoix diced up as well, really fine. We’re going to add it into this pot. What is that again? This is mirepoix, which is onions, celery, and carrot. OK, we’re going to add it in there. We’re going to put it over *** heat. like *** medium heat. We’re in *** medium heat. We’re going to add some oil. We’re gonna kind of let it go for *** minute. We let this cook together as soon as it started to cook together and get some color, we would let it kind of cook down for *** minute and then we’d add red wine. So red wine, *** little oil, *** little broth, *** little broth. What kind of broth do you like to use? We use chicken stock in all of our cooking. It’s *** neutral stock. It doesn’t, doesn’t impart *** ton of flavor. It just adds that richness that you’re looking for and *** little sage, sage, kind of the season for it, fresh out of the garden, yeah, kind of the season for it. So you just let that cook until it came nice and down. That would be about 34 hours. OK, if you put that in *** slow cooker, yeah, *** slow cooker on the stove top, and then in about the last hour you would add your rigatoni, which is right here, um, so you drop your rigatoni into that pot for the last hour and it would kind of absorb that liquid, um, and absorb all the meat sauce that kind of is made in that pot, um, in that one pot. And then, um, as soon as that happens, we have some that’s done right here, um. That looks delicious. Yeah, so you have this. So that’s after about 3 or 4 hours, and then add the rigatoni 3 or 4 hours. It’s all cooked together. You have all the rigatoni that’s cooked. And then here at the restaurant, what we do is we’d add some nice burrata cheese. So if you want to be fancy that we break over it. Break the burrata over it. That looks so delicious. Grate some Pecorino. *** little Pecorino on top. That looks so good. And then we just put it in the broiler and it’s so easy as soon as the cheese is all melted, whether you put it in the broiler or the oven, it is ready to go, ready to eat, baked rigatoni, and then you add *** little olive oil on top. All right, and dinner is served. Dane Blom, executive chef at the Grange Kitchen and Bar inside of the Citizen Hotel. Thank you so much. Back to you. And after the break, *** classic Italian dish using farm fresh ingredients will show you how to make salmon risotto. Welcome back and thanks for joining us for our farm to fork special. Next we head to Mandi’s in Folsom for *** delicious salmon risotto. On this week’s Farm to Fork Friday we’re in Folsom at Menda’s. It is *** local favorite. It’s been in the city for 18 years at this location for 15. We’ve got the owner Brett White joining us. Thanks for having us. One of your specialties is risotto because you make it so many different ways, however, people want it fresh the way they want it, uh, but the one that looks like it would be my favorite is this pesto risotto with salmon on top. How do you make that now? The salmon, while we fresh cut our salmon *** couple of times *** week, so we’re, we’re constantly cut seem like we’re constantly cutting cutting fresh salmon, but the salmon’s cooked off on the grill, uh, lots of, you know, the standard cook off with, with the plenty of lemon and things of that sort squeezed onto it to give it *** nice flavor, salt and pepper, of course, uh, the risotto itself, this one is *** pesto. The risotto is. It’s par cooked down first so that we can process these things through the kitchen uh in *** in *** timely manner, uh, but cooking it off we put *** little bit of garlic, uh, oil, and uh the risotto into into *** small sauce pan. It’s cooked down, uh, bringing it up to heat chicken broth and heavy cream. Once that gets all the way to temperature starts to cook down, we add our. Parmesan cheese and there’s *** plenty of Parmesan cheese added to it to give it, give it, give it that, uh, nice cheese Parmesan exactly, you know, it’s we, we bring out that, that, that true Italian taste into it, uh, from there we add plenty of that pesto and that pesto goes right in and, and stirred right into it, uh, and right at that point as soon as that, that temperature rises, you know, after the addition of that pesto. It’s presented onto the plate with the balsamic glaze and *** little bit of oil to balance out the balsamic itself. The salmon is placed right on top and from there you can see we put our greens, which are spinach and tomato mix right onto the top of it. This is probably one of my one of my favorites also just. Pesto and and that that true blessing of Italian taste I guess the best way to put it and you don’t you have Italian, but you’ve got American fare here and everything’s made to order and it’s *** fun rock and roll theme here at Manders which by the way, what does Manders mean? It’s the Latin verb to chew, to chew, so lots of chewing going on here. Brent thank you so much, the owner of Manders. That’s it for this week’s Farm to Fork Friday. Well, if you like pineapple on your pizza, you will love this next dish. We checked in with Woodland’s Burger Saloon. On this week’s Farm to Fork Friday we’re in Woodland at the Burger Saloon where they have more than 30 burgers on the menu, about 30 burgers on the menu. We’re here with the executive chef and owner Chris Lombardi. Thanks for having us back. You are famous for having very unique, tasty, healthy farm to fork burgers. Yeah, all kinds. We do all kinds of protein. as well, you know, we have *** certified Angus beef featured here, but we do *** chicken breast, *** Beyond patty for the non-meat eaters. We do, uh, portobello mushroom. We do *** rotating exotic. It could be anything from wild boar, Wagyu, camel, kangaroo, bison, um, whatever we can legally get and put on *** bun, we’ll try to serve it to you. I do not know about the kangaroo, but I’m sure it sold well. OK, so you’re gonna show us how to make your crazy Hawaiian, right? And so tell us what’s on this Crazy Hawaiian Hawaiian and how you start it. So the Crazy Hawaiian is, um, is *** take on another burger we had the Maui wowie. The Maui wowie has like crispy onion strings and the grilled pineapple. This one we did our caramelized onion relish, to give it *** little bit of that sweetness. So let’s start out with the burger. What kind of, so we’re gonna do the certified Angus beef 80/20. And so when you, you’re in the grocery store, what should you look for if you wanna buy that? You’re gonna wanna look for something that says either Angus beef or like Sterling Angus beef. Usually Angus proprietors usually use *** whole muscle product with the ground beef. And so you wanna look for that 80, 80/20. We like 80/20 for our burgers. That first number is the like lean muscle um content number and then the fat is the second number. So when you’re cooking this beef, uh, what do you add to it? Just salt and pepper or just salt and pepper, all right. And then so once it’s cooked all the way through, how do you know when to flip it? Um, you know, by touch or by looking at it, you know, these are 1 pound patties. Once they’re starting to cook on the inside from the top, you’ll start to see, you know, that like the juices sweat to the top. So that’s telling you that the inside’s starting to get to temperature. So then we flip it, cheese it. We like to cheese it when it’s still cooking that way all that moisture can stay underneath that lid and keep the juice, juices in there. So on the crazy Hawaiian, you do the patty and then what kind of cheese we do. Swiss cheese and then we do our grilled pineapple. We have black forest ham, the caramelized onion relish, and then *** roasted garlic aioli. Oh, and how do you make that roasted garlic aioli? I love *** good aioli. So we oven roast it like confisa in, in oil which we drain and reserve and we use the the garlic oil to cook and make all of our other sauces. And then once the, uh, garlic cools we mash it into *** paste and blend it in with our. Mayonnaise, black pepper, and that’s it. Pretty simple. And then our wowie sauce is our like house-made teriyaki sauce. Oh, that sounds good. Yeah, so that’s crazy Hawaiian, crazy Hawaiian. It’s one of many burgers here at the Burgers Saloon. You have another location in Davis called Outpost Burger. It’s on 4th and G. All right, Chris Lombardi, thank you so much for having us here. That’s this week’s Farm to Fork Friday. Thai curry lamb chops, it might sound intimidating to make, but it’s easier than you might think. We learned from the expert at Thai basil in Midtown Sacramento on this week’s Farm to Fork Friday. We’re back at Thai Basil in Midtown Sacramento, where they focus on fresh, uh, authentic. Farm to fork food. So the menu here kind of changes *** little bit. The executive chef and owner for the last 23 years, Suleka son Linley, thanks for having us back. Uh, you really do change the menu based on what’s growing right now, right? Um, thank you again for coming back. So, we, uh, we have *** stable menu year round, um, like the typical Thai dishes is like pad Thai, Dunkin’ Noodles, green curry, red curry. That’s available year round. But our seasonal menu changes about 3 to 4 times *** year. It all depends on what’s available. And, um, like this one, that we are doing today is, uh, Actually it’s coming kind of from the last season with potatoes, fennels, and then we, since it’s still available, we continue to feature it. Yeah, and so this is *** lamb chop curry. How do you make this lamb chop curry? So this is curry is called matzoan curry. It’s not popular here in the states, but It’s very popular in in Thailand. Since I just got back from Thailand, I want to bring some of the dishes that is my favorite. So massaman is one of my favorite. It’s kind of like influenced by Indian curry. So typically with grilled bread and the lamb chop is kind of our own signature dish is that we like to add some kind of *** little bit of uh some. Nice touch to the curry with the lamb chop. So the curry is *** mussaman curry typically has *** lot of clove and cinnamon to it, and we use the sprinkling potatoes, fennel, and carrots and simmering with *** very thick curry and with peanuts and fried onions. Oh, that sounds so good and it looks so good. It’s *** very kind of savory curry. It’s got *** little sweet. And had *** little bit of tamarind, which is *** little bit of *** tangy. And how do you prepare the lamb chop? The lamb chops, we marinate it in *** kind of three different soy sauce and *** little bit of sesame oil. Oh, that sounds delicious. OK. And then you just marry it all together and top it with *** little coconut milk. It looks delicious and fried onions. Seleka, thank you so much for having us. That’s this week’s Farm to Fork Friday from Thai Basil in Midtown Sacramento along Jay Street. Risotto, 2 ways. When we come back, we’ll go back to Mender’s for *** steak risotto recipe. Well, the cold weather lately calls for some serious comfort food. We go back to Mandi’s to learn how to make some steak risotto. On this week’s Farm to Fork Friday we are at Mandair’s in Folsom. It’s *** locally owned restaurant. It’s been in Folsom for 18 years at this location for about 15, right? And the owner, Brent White joins us. Thanks for having us. This is *** local favorite here, trying to get here for *** while. Yeah, it’s been *** while, no question about it, but we’re having fun. Yeah, it is farm to fork food here and everything made fresh, made to order, and one of their specialties is. Risotto, it’s an Italian rice, and, and like rice, it kind of takes on whatever personality you want to give it, right? And you can get it several ways here at Mandi’s, but right now you’re going to show us how you make your risotto with your, with steak, right? The steak itself is, is *** marinated steak. Most of our, uh, steak and, uh, different, uh, meats we marinate *** lot of it off more of *** Korean style, um, and the meat is. Cooked to order, uh, this one was done at about *** medium. Uh, the risotto itself is ***, uh, you know, your standard risotto base. Most of our, all of our risottos are Parmesan, pretty much *** Parmesan base, so you’re going to boil that in like *** broth, right? It is. And, and what we, uh, par cook it based on being ***, you know, we have to get it through the kitchen, chicken broth. Maybe cream, uh, butter, lots of butter, garlic, uh, you’ve got, you know, just multiple things that that are gonna bring the, bring the flavors, uh, into, into it for this risotto you also added some mushroom to it, right, along with *** lot of Parmesan with the steak. We do the mushroom and then from there it’s *** matter of lots of parmesan. It is and uh from there we do add *** spinach and tomato mix that uh just to garnish and something good to uh just kind of break it up and and give you *** little little additional flavor. It looks good, the steak risotto here at Manders, which by the way is Latin for to chew chew. All right, thank you so much for having us. That’s this week’s Farm to Fork Friday. And hopefully you learn some great chef secrets. That’s it for our farm to fork special. I’m Lisa Gonzalez. Thanks for joining us.

Watch our Farm-to-Fork special: Local chefs share recipes in Northern California

Updated: 7:25 PM PST Dec 26, 2025

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All year we’ve been going to some of the Sacramento area’s most popular restaurants, learning from their chefs about how they make some of their favorite dishes. In this Farm-to-Fork special, we’ll show you some of those techniques that could make your meals tastier and cooking easier. We celebrate the farm fresh food of Northern California with recipes you can use from some the best chefs in the region. Watch in the video above. See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel

SACRAMENTO, Calif. —

All year we’ve been going to some of the Sacramento area’s most popular restaurants, learning from their chefs about how they make some of their favorite dishes.

In this Farm-to-Fork special, we’ll show you some of those techniques that could make your meals tastier and cooking easier.

We celebrate the farm fresh food of Northern California with recipes you can use from some the best chefs in the region.

Watch in the video above.

See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel