An Obsession with Food

Baying for Bay

2009-07-03T08:49:00.000-07:00

A couple months ago, I did something that I — and you — have probably done a million times: I opened a jar of bay leaves. I have dutifully done this whenever I make soup, stew, or any other long-cooking dish, but haven't thought much about it.

But when I gave the lid its last turn and lifted it from the glass, a powerful aroma poofed up at me. I had never really smelled bay this potent, and I found it transforming.

Suddenly, I was in love with bay.

And I was in love with it despite the fact that — judging by the long, dark green leaves — I had almost certainly come across a jar of California bay, which many deem inferior to European, or Mediterranean, bay. (The two are not just different species but different genuses.) As usual, a definitive article on the subject can be found in Ed Behr's The Artful Eater. Ed describes California bay with his typical flair: "A freshly dried batch of California bay I once had smelled rudely to me of bay plus particularly rank rocket (arugula) and bold nutmeg. A few weeks later it had subsided to nutmeg alone, distinct enough to recall eggnog."

The leaves in my jar hadn't diminished to pure nutmeg, but nor would you describe them as "subtle and submissive," as Ed says of European bay. They had a strong peppery and camphor character that, now that I was attuned to it, I could detect as a subtle taste throughout the stew I had cooked. Perhaps now that I've opened my nostrils to bay's character, I will appreciate the more delicate European leaf, but for now I'm enjoying the stronger form.

Bay of course shows up in a myriad of slow-cooked dishes, and Ed's essay suggests using it with tomatoes, potatoes, and as a seasoning in bechamel sauce. But in fit of diegogarcity, I've started seeing intriguing uses of it all around me. While interviewing June Taylor for an article, she had me try an in-progress Mediterranean bay-infused syrup that had all the fantastic bay character I had come to love. At a dinner at Eccolo to celebrate the launch of Novella Carpenter's Farm City, I tasted bay risotto and bay ice cream, each made with locally foraged leaves and having a very subtle bay character (just to confuse things, European bay grows here in California as well, so these may have been Mediterranean bay leaves).

Those creative uses have triggered my own creative impulses: Would bay leaf shortbread be good? Should I make my own bay leaf ice cream?

What do you like to do with bay?

Wine And Roommates

2009-06-29T21:12:00.001-07:00

Some of you veteran OWF readers may dimly remember that I write for other publications. Some of you may also remember that I occasionally write for this one. Ha ha. Yesterday, my article about managing roommates and wine tastes appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle. I had fun writing it and hearing the different stories of people who have had to wrangle wine interest into the already complicated dynamics of roommates in San Francisco. I also like the juxtaposition of this piece — almost certainly one of my most "wine light" wine articles — with a piece I have coming out in a couple of weeks for a different publication — almost certainly one of my most wine-geek-oriented pieces.

A Guide To Berkeley Wine Stores

2009-06-07T17:26:00.000-07:00

The other day, I mentioned in conversation that I live within a short drive of four excellent wine stores. And while I often assume that every wine lover in the town knows every wine store, I've noticed that even the students in my Berkeley Extension classes — who are obviously passionate about wine — don't always know about all of these. Inspired in part by the "I love this town" vibe at the new In Berkeley blog, I'm offering my guide to these stores.

If you're not in the Bay Area, this post may not interest you. But no matter where you live, I urge you to patronize the small, independent wine stores in your area. This isn't just my normal plea about local businesses and community economies: This is about service. Get to know the staff at your local wine store, and you'll get better wine. You can tell them what you like and don't like, and they'll steer you to wines you'll enjoy and introduce you to new ones you might never have found. Want to drink well? Let a true wine merchant help. A supermarket or Beverages & More employee may also steer you well but it's less likely — s/he probably doesn't love wine the way a wine merchant's staff does — and s/he's not likely to remember anything about you the next time you go.

A lot of people are intimidated by wine stores, because speaking about wine still has a veneer of snobbishness. Here's how to ask for help in a good wine store: Go up to one of the employees and say, "I need some help finding some wine. I typically like <fill in wines you like here>, and I want to learn more about other wines that are out there." That kind of question makes a wine person's day, and any good merchant will take your tastes into account. They won't hand you a barnyardy, earthy Burgundy if you say you like Napa Cabernet. Buy a few of the bottles they suggest, try them, decide what you like, and then go back and say (ideally to the same person), "I bought X, Y, and Z from you last time, and I really liked X but I wasn't very keen on Y. I normally drink <fill in wines you like here>, but I'm curious what else you have that's like X." Do this a few times, and you'll be a regular.

Kermit Lynch, 1605 San Pablo Avenue
Easily the most famous of our wine stores. Kermit made his name in the early 1970s by championing and importing the artisanal wines of France, and to this day he carries French wines made with integrity and care. (There are some Italian wines in the store as well.) Domaine Tempier, and the entire Bandol region, became famous because of Kermit. So did true Beaujolais. So did Chinon. Several top Alsace producers grace his shelves as well. The list goes on and on.

I can barely move in the compactly arranged store without the urge to grab every bottle I spy and put it in my basket. But that brings me to the downside about Kermit's bottles: They tend to be a bit pricey. Not too much so, and there are, as he recently noted in his eloquent newsletter, 80 bottles in the store that sell for less than $20, but I don't have quite the budget to buy as much there as I'd like. That said, the annual "Get the old Burgundy off the shelves to make room for the new inventory" sale should not be missed.

Note that Kermit actively encourages you to develop a relationship with the salespeople in the store, many of whom have worked there for years.

Vintage Berkeley, 2113 Vine St. & 2949 College Ave.
I've been a fan of Vintage Berkeley since I walked through the door the first time. Owner Peter Eastlake focuses on quality wines from around the world that are under $25. He has a fantastic palate (I know this, I tell my students jokingly, because it aligns with mine.) I have never been disappointed with a bottle I bought from him, and even when I don't know the folks who are working, I can pick up any bottle with confidence that it will be a solid, enjoyable wine.

But do ask the staff their opinion: The Vine Street store staff can cheerfully talk about any of the bottles around them (the College store probably can, too, but I've been in there less often.) Or, if you're shy, read Peter's excellent and witty "shelf talkers" for the wines. They're well written and they never mention scores, Robert Parker, or Wine Spectator. He carries the wines because he likes them.

There are only two down sides to Vintage Berkeley for me. One, I don't get the chance to chat with Peter too much since he often seems to be at the College store when we're at the Vine store, and vice versa. Two, he sells his inventory quickly enough that if you find a wine you really like, you have to remember to go back right away and buy it: Otherwise, you risk disappointment.

There are free tastings on Saturday afternoons if you want to try before you buy.

The Spanish Table, 1814 San Pablo Ave
I hear that The Spanish Table carries a wide range of Spanish foodstuffs, cookbooks, and gear in the front part of the store. I wouldn't know: I always walk straight to the wine section in the back. Not surprisingly, the selection is largely Spanish, but Portugal is well represented, too. In general, if it's good and it's from one of those two countries, Kevin (the wine buyer, who's usually working there) carries it. And probably knows a ton about it.

Sure you can find wines from Spain's famous Rioja region. But you can also find cava, Txakolina, Vinho Verde, and more. There's a wall devoted to Madeira and Port. There's a long shelf devoted to different sherries. Right now, he's carrying a Basque cider which is a beautiful summer drink: 4 percent alcohol, $9 and a sherry-like taste. We've also seen Spanish beer there.

Spain is one of the top spots for value wines at the moment, and the store's prices are quite reasonable. Kevin even maintains a "house wine" area in the back where the bottles are $7 each. But even outside of that small section, it's not hard to find wines under $15.

Paul Marcus Wines, 5655 College Avenue
Paul Marcus is not in Berkeley. But it's so close to the border, and it's such an excellent wine store, I couldn't leave it out. It easily has the best Italian selection in the East Bay, but it's also got excellent coverage in Burgundy, Austria, Germany, the Loire, the Southern Rhone, dessert wines, and more. When we lived in Oakland, this was our primary wine store, and we know most of the staff well (they're one of the stores I usually hit up when I'm hunting for corked wines for class). Everyone there has a ton of knowledge and is eager to help you find the right bottle. In fact, they recently added a "staff picks" section where each staff member gets to call out a few favorite bottles.

Here's a quick tip if you're looking for values: Poke around in the front of the store, which is where they keep their more affordable wines.

North Berkeley Wine Imports, 1601 Martin Luther King Jr. Way
A friend of mine who seeks out good Champagne says that North Berkeley is now where he goes for his favorite Champagnes. But the store, which like Kermit Lynch imports its selection, brings in a wide variety of wines. I don't take advantage of this store as often as I should, mostly because it's not near one of our normal shopping destinations, but every time I've been in there, the staff has been helpful and knowledgeable.

Solano Cellars, 1580 Solano Ave
To be honest, I haven't been in this store much since Peter Eastlake, Vintage Berkeley's owner, bought it a couple years ago. But I know he's kept its spirit intact: It's a neighborhood wine store with a broad selection of good wines. Solano isn't on our normal shopping route, either, but the wine store has never had a real personality to me. (It probably has more of one now with Peter at the helm.) Still, for North Berkeley residents it's an excellent resource. Unlike most of the other stores on this list, Solano Cellars offers wine tasting classes that will give you a solid introduction to any given topic, and the store pulls out some nice surprises: I once saw Terry Theise there giving the crowd at the bar a splendid tour of his German wine portfolio.

Vino, various locations
When I speak of a wine store having personality, I often use Vino!, a local chain, as a good counterexample. Each store that I've seen has a good selection and a knowledgeable staff, but I never feel like there's a mission statement or driving passion behind the inventory other than just selling wine. This is no doubt unfair, but even though the one on 4th Street is on a normal shopping route, I rarely do more than just breeze through. It doesn't grab me.

My Granola

2009-05-03T08:56:00.000-07:00

I’ve started making my own granola. Melissa likes to joke that this is a side effect of long hair and a Berkeley address — I hope she doesn’t buy me a tie-dye leotard — but it’s really because I developed a mild addiction to granola at my last job, where it was a common snack in the cupboards, and wanted to make my own.

I started by flipping through books on my bookcase. Surprisingly, given the large number of Bay Area authors and slight tinge of hippiness painted across my kitchen bookcase, I only found a few granola recipes. I started with the Grain-ola recipe in my friend Heidi’s Super Natural Cooking. That recipe also appears, with slight modifications, in my friend David’s The Perfect Scoop. This recipe produces a very good granola, but I wanted something a little different.

I didn’t know what it needed, though, until I tried the Killer Granola recipe in The Cheese Board Collective Works. That recipe produces a granola with deep flavor notes. But there were components of Heidi’s that I really liked (and components of both that I didn’t like: what’s with all the coconut in these recipes?). My favorite granola recipe thus became a hybrid of the two, along with some touches I’ve figured out on my own.

But a word of warning before you read my technique. You may think of granola as a healthy food. You wouldn’t be alone: It was created in 1863 by James Caleb Jackson as part of the “health food and religious purity” movement that would spawn graham flour, corn flakes, and a flood of enemas. If you view granola as a health food, good for you.

My recipe focuses on taste.

I imagine it’s healthy enough, especially compared to most commercial granolas, but that’s a side effect. A stick of butter, 3/4 cup brown sugar, etc. You get the idea.

Giving a recipe for granola is a bit like giving a recipe for salad, since you can vary it endlessly without much problem, but this is the template I use. Let me know your own recipes and ideas in the comments.

Granola Recipe

Preheat oven to 325° Place a silicone baking sheet into a jelly roll pan.
Combine 3 cups of rolled oats, a handful or two of shelled sunflower seeds, and thin slices of crystallized ginger in a large bowl. Do not use quick oats: I did that once and the result was horrible. I add the seeds and ginger until they look right, so I can’t give precise amounts. Use your hands to mix the ingredients so you get an even distribution.
Chop nuts coarsely to end up with a pile that fits between your two hands. I usually use almonds, but pecans work as well and one of these days I plan to use hazelnuts.
In a medium-sized pot, melt a stick of butter over a medium-high flame. Add the chopped nuts and stir until lightly toasted. While most of the butter will coat the nuts, I like to see a thin layer of butter on the bottom of the pan. If I don’t, I add more butter.
Add 3/4 cup brown sugar and 2 tablespoons of honey to the butter and nuts, and stir until well integrated. Remove from the heat, add a splash of vanilla extract, and stir again to mix the ingredients.
Add the hot nut mixture to the oats and seeds in the large bowl. Use a wooden spoon to stir the mixture until it’s cool enough to use your hands. You want to spread the butter and sugar evenly through the oats and seeds.
Spread the granola onto the silicone-lined baking sheet, and place in the oven for 15 minutes. Stir the mixture to bring oats from the bottom up to the top, and cook for another 10 minutes. Remove from the oven and set the jelly roll pan on a rack to cool.
While the granola is cooking and cooling, thinly slice a mix of dried fruit. (For you Berkeley farmers’ market shoppers, Blossom Bluff’s dried fruit is markedly better than Frog Hollow’s.) You can use anything you like — we favor dried peaches and plums — as long as you slice them into inch-long, matchstick-sized slices. Dried fruit pieces that are too big create an unpleasant clash in textures. As with the nuts, I like to chop about two handfuls’ worth.
Add the dried fruit to the warm granola, and stir to evenly distribute. (If you add the dried fruit before the granola goes into the oven, it becomes too dry.)
Serve with yogurt. We’re fans of Redwood Hill’s goat yogurt at the moment.

I know I have a few programmers among my readers, so you may also like my new blog, An Obsession with Programming. It’s definitely aimed at a technical audience, but everyone is welcome.

Wine And Roommates

2009-04-12T10:36:00.000-07:00

Hey, everyone. I'm working on an article about Bay Area folks who have to deal with disparate wine tastes among their roommates, and I'd love to hear your stories on the subject. Know a wine drinker who lives with beer fans? A wine snob who lives with White Zinfandel fans? How do they share their beverages? Do they hoard their wine or share it with roommates to enlighten them? How do wine drinkers — who often drink half a bottle with dinner and after — manage with light drinkers or teetotallers?

You can write me privately, and I'm happy to protect your anonymity if you want to talk about your current roommates but don’t want months of fights.

The Bookcase in the Pantry

2009-03-28T13:15:00.000-07:00

I recently moved a bookcase into our kitchen. It’s a tall, skinny thing, all white. The friend who handed it down to me no doubt bought it from Scandinavian Designs or IKEA. It fits in a space about one foot wide next to the monstrous metal shelves that fill one wall of the pantry space off our main kitchen area. (It fits now, anyway; those shelves were about 11 1/2 inches away from the wall until I moved most of their contents to the floor, pulled them over about an inch, and then replaced everything I had taken off them.)

Once I moved the bookcase in, I had to figure out what to put in it. Books, of course, and food books at that. But which ones? My collection of food books sprawls far beyond what one slim little bookcase can hold, even with the books grouped by height and squished together for maximum efficiency.

Part of the answer was simple practicality. Certain books show up often when I’m planning meals, and it makes sense to keep them close by. Super Natural Cooking, which guides gourmets through a world of interesting grains and veggie dishes. The Zuni Cafe Cookbook, perhaps my very favorite cookbook, with its long essays about the simplest dishes. Slow Mediterranean Kitchen, the perfect book for slow cooker owners. Kitchen Sense, a good reference for all those classic dishes that I mostly know how to make but sometimes need a refresher for. The Art of Simple Food, which reminds me that sometimes a souffle or pizza is a great dinner.

Others are books that I use often, but less often than the ones above. The King Arthur Flour Baker’s Companion serves my needs when I need to look up a simple baked good. Bouchon occasionally scratches a food craving itch, and The French Laundry Cookbook provides inspiration for fancier meals. The Perfect Scoop gives me ice cream ideas. The River Cottage Meat Book provides a nice reference for uncommon meat cooking tasks. Mediterranean Street Food has a stellar collection of recipes that give variety during the week. The Cheese Board Collective Works has a smattering of bread recipes and, at the moment, my favorite granola recipe.

There are, of course, reference books scattered about the shelves. I almost never look at these books, but I like to think that I do, and so onto the bookcase they go. On Food and Cooking, the must-have encyclopedia of food science for laypeople (and lapsed science nerds like myself). The Elements of Cooking, a handy pocket guide to unfamiliar kitchen terms and proportions for common preparations. Culinary Artistry, a collection of voluminous lists of flavor pairings. Putting Food By, the classic book about preserving foods. Sauces, with its no-nonsense title and thick spine.

But there is a final category to the books I fit in to the little white case: guilt-inducing. These are the books I feel like I should be cooking from, but almost never do. Perhaps I hope that by placing them next to my kitchen staples, I will finally pluck them from their shelves and give them the attention they deserve.

Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes came out ahead in an illuminating survey of bread books done by James Macguire in The Art of Eating a couple years back (though “came out ahead” hides the fact that he skewered every bread book on the market). I’d like to make my own bread more. But we live so close to Acme Bakery that making my own seems silly.

Madhur Jaffrey’s World of the East Vegetarian Cookbook is a thick sheaf of interesting vegetarian dishes from cuisines I rarely explore, and yet I haven’t cracked it open in years. The dishes are unfamiliar enough that I don't get a “Oooh, I want to make that” rush like I do when I flip through Zuni’s familiar French/Italian/California ideas.

Similarly, The Modern Art of Chinese Cooking promises to give me the basics of a cuisine I enjoy when I eat it, but know very little about cooking. I know it’s not hard. I know I could start with one or two simple dishes and add them to an otherwise European meal. Maybe I could make steamed pork buns for lunch. All good ideas that never happen.

The Whole Beast and Beyond Nose to Tail are witty, charming cookbooks that everyone should own. And yet I no longer make a point of keeping offal — the mainstay of the two books — in my freezer, and the meat vendors at the market don’t usually bring any. I know I could put in a special request, but that takes layers of planning that even I haven’t gotten around to yet. And so Fergus’s warm prose stays folded in the covers.

Charcuterie lives in this category. One of these days, I plan to set up a corner of my basement as a meat-curing area. I have everything I need, except a free few hours to plan it all out and set it up. And since I rarely have the extra meat on hand that would steer me to salumis and hams, I never get up the inspiration to set up my meat cave downstairs.

I’d really like to use Cooking By Hand more. The sprawling, in-depth look at making pasta is reason enough to pull it off the shelf. But I hate making pasta by hand. Its conserva technique is good, but I’ve done it enough times now that I don’t need to reference the book anymore. I’m probably missing yet more fascinating ideas simply because I never look to it for pasta suggestions.

But you know, I might start opening these books. Maybe I'll plan a vegetarian week that forces me to open Jaffrey’s book. Maybe I’ll make potstickers. Maybe, for real, I’ll make myself some pasta.

Or, you know, maybe not. But the books will sit there, right where I’m bound to see them, making me feel guilty for neglect.

Got any books you feel you should cook from more? Share your guilt-inducing cookbooks in the comments.

Almond Butter. What's Up With That?

2009-02-25T19:29:00.000-08:00

At the Ferry Plaza market recently, I counted four vendors selling almond butter. At the Berkeley market, where we usually shop, I counted three. At the Temescal market, I counted two.

I bought some out of curiosity; now I’m a convert to its deep almond flavor. Melissa and I frequently have almond butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch, and I made almond butter cookies recently by swapping it one-for-one with the recipe’s peanut butter.

Have I just been blind to this before?

In part, yes. Lagier Ranches has sold a range of almond butters for 10 years now, says Casey Havre, who manages the company’s livestock and the company’s subsidiary, Loulou’s Garden. Of the three types of almonds they grow, Lagier uses one, the Butte, only for almond butter. They use whole almonds, since broken almonds turn rancid more quickly. They know their almond butter.

But there has been a surge in almond butter at local markets. Massa Organics, best known among foodies for their flavorful, locally-grown rice, started making almond butter within the last year, says owner Greg Massa. And a quick look through Riverdog Farm’s newsletters shows that they started selling it at about the same time.

Probably everyone is selling it for the same reason: product diversity. Small farms succeed when they can sell a range of items. One crop pays the bills even while the market for another one tanks; one crop in season covers costs while another one lies dormant. “Almond butter for us was just a natural extension of getting into the almond business,” says Massa. “ In 2004, commodity rice prices were so low that we planted our first-ever almond orchard in an attempt to diversify our farming operation.”

It’s surprising that more farmers haven’t started selling almond butter before now. Almonds are everywhere here. California’s $2 billion almond industry is the only commercial one in North America, producing 75 percent of the world’s almond supply, according to the California Almond Board. Almond butter plays straight to our locavore crowd as a peanut butter substitute sourced from nearby. It plays straight to our gourmet crowd as an interesting, flavorful ingredient. And It plays straight to our health nut crowd as a “superfood,” a concentrated nutrition source.

But it doesn’t play to our budget-watching crowd, unfortunately. Almond prices are higher than peanut prices — though they’ve dropped off sharply this year — and almond butter reflects that cost. Most of the jars of organic almond butter I’ve seen cost about $1 per ounce, although non-organic brands seem to cost about two-thirds of that.

If you’ve got the budget, you can find Massa’s at the Berkeley market and the Ferry Plaza market. You can find Lagier at the Ferry Plaza, Grand Lake, Marin Civic Center, and Temescal markets. Any vendor will give you other ideas for using it beyond AB&Js and cookies. Massa likes his almond butter on toast with honey, but he also uses it in peanut sauce recipes. Havre likes it with her oatmeal, but she suggested a combination so odd I just have to try it: almond butter and homemade sauerkraut sandwiches.

Add your suggestions for almond butter in the comments.

1984 Terrebrune, Bandol

2009-02-04T20:41:00.000-08:00

Two years ago and some change, Melissa and I went to Provence. Before we left, I booked us winery appointments in Bandol, saying that I was a wine writer but that I wasn’t on assignment. While the town itself is a checklist of Riviera requirements — a cycle of bedroom-sized creperies, souvenir stands, and Egyptian cotton sellers repeated a million times along the beach — the wine region is probably the best of Provence’s appellations outside of the Southern Rhône.

It would be hard to pick our favorite winery visit. At Domaine Tempier, the darling of Richard Olney, Alice Waters, and Kermit Lynch (who imports the bottles), the wine maker played "guess the age" with a bottle of Tempier from the early 80s (I guessed early 90s). At Chateau Pradeaux, we met the seemingly endless stream of dogs and walked in among the foudres in the old cellar. At Chateau St.-Anne, Bandol’s biodynamic estate, the wine maker drove us to a remote vineyard in the forest and then to a vantage point — complete with an old ruin — where he explained the different terroirs of Bandol by pointing to the streaks of color in the hills across the valley.

But our visit to Domaine de Terrebrune (also a Kermit Lynch import) may top them all.

Once we arrived, the wine maker’s assistant took us around the winery, explaining in slowed-down French how the winery works. She took us downstairs to show us the gravity-fed system, which was busy with staff handling the harvest. The owner came down and chatted with us about his farming philosophy and his thoughts on Mourvedre, the dominant grape of Bandol. He then suggested we eat at the restaurant on the grounds (he tried to pick up our tab, but I explained my rules about such things).

I will never forget that meal. A heavy drizzle of rain plopped and pitter-pattered just outside the restaurant. It was open to the elements at one end, but the crackling fire for cooking all the food warmed the room. The first course was a plate of mushrooms with thyme and a hardened streak of grilled ham. The second course was an arc of steak cooked rare.

I don’t mean rare the way Americans think of rare. It was arranged by doneness, and the most well-done piece on the plate was what a good American restaurant would call rare. (And many restaurants can’t even deliver on that: A “rare” order often comes out medium-rare.) I can still picture the plate and conjure the taste of each piece of that meat. We ordered a bottle of a decade-old Terrebrune to go with it.

After lunch, we stopped at the front desk to buy some wine. We’ve found that European wineries often have good prices on library wines. We had brought shipping boxes on the trip, knowing that we’d be buying wine, so we still had plenty of room for two bottles of the 1984 Terrebrune. Like most premium Bandol wines, this one is 95 percent Mourvedre, a tannic grape that benefits from a bit of age: Seven years seems about right for the wine to start opening up, but it will last much longer.

We opened the first bottle earlier this year. We took our friend Sean-Michael to dinner at Jojo as thanks for getting me the Maxis job. We knew he’d appreciate it. We opened the second bottle the other night, just because. I made a pot roast, mashed potatoes, and braised greens. We burrowed our noses into the glasses, inhaling the smell of lush violets and leather. The tannins had dissolved into nothingness, but the acidity and the fruit were still lively and invigorating. A decade from now, we still would have loved this wine.

But it almost didn’t matter what the wine tasted like. Every sip and every sniff brought us back to that meal, that tour, the wine maker, and his staff.

Yes, yes, I have once again been neglecting OWF. Let me give a word of advice to you relatively new bloggers: Don't stop blogging, because you'll find it hard to start up again. Nonetheless, I intend to get myself back in this habit.

UCB Extension Wine Class: Fundamentals of Wine Studies II

2009-01-10T13:29:00.000-08:00

The latest UC Berkeley Extension catalog is out, and I am once again teaching Fundamentals of Wine Studies II, a class about the sensory analysis of wine. Unlike most classes, which talk about the regions, this one talks about the guts of describing wine. I love this class, and my students always get a lot out of it.

Here are my descriptions of an earlier incarnation of this class: Session 1, Sessions 2-4, Session 5, and Session 6.

Real World Wine Pairing

2009-01-06T21:42:00.001-08:00

My mom called me early on December 24th to brainstorm about wines for that night’s dinner. As I’ve said before, she and I have similar cooking styles, and she had planned a stunning feast. Fortunately, we were invited.

We were starting with a vintage Champagne, but then she asked about the crab bisque she had made. Crab is one of the few dishes that sends me hunting for the rich Chardonnays that we produce in California. You don’t want a lot of oak character for this pairing, because the tannins will smother your tongue and prevent you from enjoying the delicate crab. However, a little of the butter character that comes from malolactic fermentation (converting apple-crisp malic acid to creamy-soft lactic) goes nicely with the crab meat. After all, we dunk cracked crab into little pots of melted butter. But you still want some acidity: Avoid the flabby Chardonnays that winemakers so often produce here in the land of overripe fruit.

My mom had a slightly older California Chardonnay, and we pondered its potential over the phone. She read the label, which said that it had been made in the Burgundian style. Lots of people say that, of course, but the rest of the label, which at least implied that it had been aged in neutral oak, sounded promising. In the end, it proved to be exactly what we hoped. The age gave it an extra creaminess, but its Russian River origins gave it the acidity we wanted.

Then we talked about the main course. She was cooking Muscovy duck breast — rich meat even when it’s not magret, the fat-filled breast of a foie gras duck — and garnishing it with a pomegranate wine sauce. I like a jammy, opulent Syrah with this combination of rich meat and syrupy sauce, and I had just the bottle: Melissa and I had visited Ridge Vineyards during our Manresa weekend, and we had bought one Zinfandel and one Syrah. I don’t actually like jammy Syrahs in general, so this one still had a lot of acidity to combat the sharp tang of the pomegranate and cut through the fat of the duck breast. But, again, California wineries tend to produce heavier, jammier wines that can stand up to the weight of this meat.

Part of the challenge of real world wine pairing is that we don’t actually have a large wine store in our basement. We have to make do with what we have. But in this case, by combining my mom’s bottles and mine, we came up bottles that worked nicely with the dishes she served.

Chunks Have Returned!

2008-12-27T14:47:00.000-08:00

Sam and I work for the same large corporation — albeit in different divisions — and we are both on the Foodies list. In a recent email thread about tempering chocolate and the chips one can buy for the purpose, she casually suggested the new Scharffen Berger chocolate chunks she was snacking on.

My breath caught, and I clicked the link. Could it be? It could.

Because these are not a new product. Scharffen Berger made these chunks a few years ago, but the process was too expensive given the demand. As I remember it, they had to stop their normal chocolate production, switch the factory over to a new mode, and then make chunks for a while before undoing all the effort to make normal chocolate again. I guess all that Hershey money has empowered them to start up again.

You can snack on these, as Sam was doing, or melt them down for tempering, as she suggested. But the baking chunks are perfect in the thick, chewy chocolate chip cookies I prefer. They become gooey pockets in the cakey mass, bigger (and better) than chocolate chips. They are also, it turns out, ideal for the “chocolate things” recipe in The Cheese Board Collective Works (a buttery yeast dough filled with chocolate bits). The recipe even calls for six ounces, which is the exact weight of one package of chocolate chunks.

So far, I've only seen them at the Scharffen Berger stores (at the factory and at the Ferry Building), but you can order them online. Here’s hoping they stay around this time so that I don’t have to go on another hoarding run when I hear they’re being discontinued.

A Diminutive Dinner Party

2008-12-15T19:36:00.000-08:00

We have begun to entertain again.

Not, I should add, in earnest. We are rusty at the dinner party game, and so we are swinging our foot along the surface of the water, pushing wavelets about before we jump in.

But nonetheless, some people other than us have sat at our dining room table. Some people other than us have eaten more than a course or two at that table. Some people other than us have sipped our wine.

The other night, we had some friends over. One was celebrating a birthday — like me, she is on some repeat of her 29th birthday — and the others were there to wish her well and catch up. I greeted everyone with a platter of salt-roasted chestnuts, radishes, and balsamic-roasted figs to nibble on while we poured glasses of Champagne.

Regular readers may be about to call me out. I recently claimed that I only peel chestnuts once a year. That’s true, but I have no problem letting my guests peel some, which is the presentation suggested in the original recipe. As it happens, these chestnuts peeled more easily than my tear-wrenching batch, but they still engaged our guests. I like a tactile appetizer platter. There is something immediately leveling and companionable about eating from a common plate, even when the guests are already good friends.

While our guests snacked, I plated a cauliflower panna cotta (mostly the recipe from The French Laundry Cookbook) with a spoonful of gremolata on top and a green salad on the side. I paired it with a 2002 Sherwood House Chardonnay from Long Island because I wanted a wine that was somewhat creamy and weighty with age for the panna cotta but also acidic enough for the salad dressing and gremolata.

Our main course — already we have arrived at the entrée, so you can tell this was casual — was a roast leg of lamb on a rosemary risotto garnished with small dice of root vegetables that had been blanched, shocked, and reheated in duck fat. I pulled a 2002 Ceja Cabernet Sauvignon, a rich, robust wine capable of standing up to the red-rare lamb, from our downstairs rack.

The course I fretted over the most, however, was dessert. Yes, you’re shocked: There was no cheese course. As I said, we are still regaining our stride. I called my dessert “Taste of December.” Eggnog ice cream garnished with nutmeg, pomegranate sorbet topped with ruby-red pomegranate seeds, and spiced cider sorbet, garnished with an apple slice. All served in tuile cups. I was eager to try the freeform sorbet recipes suggested by Harold McGee's The Curious Cook, a recent discovery at a local used book store. He offers proportions for scoopable sorbets of many kinds in tables that promise the ability to create wildly and still score. My first attempt was not exactly what I wanted: Scoopable, yes, but unevenly so, so I couldn’t make perfect little balls. Perhaps some alcohol would have done the trick. I didn’t serve a dessert wine because I feel that frozen desserts blunt the palate and remove the pleasure that a dessert wine can afford.

Real-World Wine Pairing

2008-11-25T07:58:00.000-08:00

I’m going to use you all as guinea pigs. I want to start posting more about the connections between food and wine. It occurred to me that I have a perfect bag of material: dinner. I don’t cook every night, but even when we get take-out, we almost always have wine or beer to drink.

And since I invest a tiny amount of effort in thinking about that beverage, I thought I’d post occasional glimpses at my thought process.

First, some caveats. I believe that most wine goes with most food. I’ve had a few stellar matches; I’ve had some clunkers. But for the most part, it’s hard to go too far astray. I steer by a few guidelines, but mostly I follow my mood and work with what I have available at the house. Don’t look at these posts as absolute guides; look at them as a glimpse at my thought process. Also, I probably won’t write up every meal. You may have noticed that I’m not so much with the daily posts. But I’ll try to do these with some regularity.

The Dish: Pasta with Roasted Chestnuts and Bitter Greens
Once a year, some recipe inspires me to peel my own chestnuts. Once a year, the chestnuts reduce me to tears with their clinging flesh. This year, the agent of my despair was the recipe for salt-roasted chestnuts in Paula Wolfert’s Slow Mediterranean Cooking (a book I heartily recommend, by the way, despite some editorial lapses). I decided to put her chestnuts onto pasta and mix in wilted arugula and mache.

The Drink: 1997 Stéphane Tissot Vin Jaune, Arbois
I like oxidized wines when I have a strong nut component in a dish. Actually, as my students could tell you, I like oxidized wines with just about anything, and vin jaune is an unusual member of the species. A winery makes it by filling a barrel partway with wine and letting a native population of yeast form a mat on top of the wine. The Arbois region of France, in the Alpine foothills on the east side of the country, is one of the few places where you’ll find a yeast population that can do this: Jerez is another — fino sherries are made this way — and Tokaji is one more, though I’ve never seen a Tokaji Szamorodni here in the United States. Ed describes the flavor of vin jaune as “rancid walnuts,” which is as good a description as any for this funky wine. They age forever: Jack of Fork & Bottle recently let me taste a 1967 Chateau Chalon vin jaune, and it was still fresh and vibrant.

How’d It Work?
Because I so seldom suffer the agony of chestnuts, I forget that they’re more sweet than nutty. I expected the rich flavor of slow-roasted almonds, but I got a delicately sweet nut. The bitter greens mellowed quite a bit, and so the wine ended up overpowering the dish. A gentle, lightly sweet Riesling or Scheurebe might have been a better choice.

Go To Jojo

2008-11-22T12:20:00.000-08:00

Over the years, I have urged my Bay Area readers to go to Jojo in Oakland. Sometimes I’ve done so overtly, but I have always kept a link to it on the right side of this blog. Melissa and I have many happy memories tied to the restaurant and its owners — among others, it’s where we chose to have our rehearsal dinner — and it is simply some of the best food in the East Bay. Curt’s duck confit trumps all the other versions I’ve tried, and I’ve tried many, many versions. And I have always held up their wine list as a paradigm: Not because it’s big, but in fact because it is small, incredibly focused, and closely tied to the restaurant’s food.

We just got word that they’re closing, and it breaks our hearts. They’ve had a good run for a restaurant — nine years — but we still feel like we’ve lost a family member.

So let me urge you, one last time, to go to Jojo before the end of 2008. Don’t miss the chance to experience this rare gem of a restaurant. Don’t be left out when all your foodie friends reminisce about it in years to come.

Wine Writing Cliches

2008-11-20T22:35:00.000-08:00

John McIntyre, whose copyediting blog You Don’t Say is one of the few sites I read every day, has recently been covering cliches. First he discussed crime story cliches, then the seasonal cliches of the winter holidays.

I thought that the wine writing community should join in the fun and point out the clunkers in our field. This isn’t about outright errors, such as using varietal when you mean variety, but phrases we’ve grown tired of reading. Though not ones we’ve grown tired of writing, it would seem. (Just to be clear, I’ve been guilty of these in the past.)

Here are some I thought of. Post your favorites in the comments, and I’ll incorporate some into this post (with attribution, of course).

We believe great wine is made in the vineyard
“At least until we get it to the cellar, where we use a cultivated yeast designed to bring out different flavors; stuff the juice into new, heavily toasted barriques to add a lot of oak; and then use reverse osmosis on it to get the alcohol in balance.” This phrase is practically guaranteed to be on the label of the next midlevel wine you buy. Or on the website. Or in an interview. No one means it: They just want to pander to wine as a lifestyle choice.

pairs perfectly with (or variants)
Really stunning pairings do happen, but far less often than most recipe/wine writers would have you believe. Most wine goes with most food reasonably well. (And as an aside, if you’re going to suggest a wine pairing for a dish, the wine educator in me implores you to explain your choice.)

hedonistic
This Parkerism has spread to much of the wine press, and we have overused it.

rosés aren’t just White Zinfandel
This well-trodden theme about dry rosés crops up every May in what seems like every wine publication. Is there anyone with a passing interest in wine who has not heard this by now? (I assume that those with no interest in wine other than drinking it are not reading the publications that have these articles.)

rascally or rogueish as adjectives for Terry Theise
It’s not that these are incorrect descriptions of Terry, but they seem to always crop up. Reading articles about him begins to feel like reading Homer: “Prudent Penelope” and “clever Odysseus” skitter through The Iliad and The Odyssey. Find new adjectives, or give a richer portrait.

eccentric or maverick as adjectives for Randall Grahm
Ditto for Bonny Doon’s winemaker.

“pop the cork” or “uncork” when referring to anything other than opening a bottle
I often see this as a catchy bon mot — or so the author thinks — in press releases announcing some new product. Too bad that many other PR people used it first.

Katie seconds "we believe great wine is made in the vineyard and adds …

"Fruit bomb" drives me nuts (we can thank the grand poo-bah of wine, Parker, for that one). "Sideways Effect" is another...some of us want to go back to being quiet pinot-obsessed junkies w/o the hoopla!

Tete de Cuvee Rose Tasting

2008-11-12T07:33:00.000-08:00

As a wine writer, I get invited to a lot of tastings. As a person with a full-time job, I don’t go to all of them. I disregard some, hope to make some — and then can’t — and occasionally find myself at one. Then there are the tastings that get me to take time off so I can attend.

When I got a note from Schramsberg, America’s prestigious sparkling wine maker, inviting me to a tasting between Schramsberg’s wines and comparable wines from around the world, I jumped at the chance. And that was when I expected it to be a small but standard press tasting: Too many people in too small a space, industry friends chattering away while blocking the spit bucket, and a line-up of interesting wines.

When I showed up on Monday morning, after an hour and a half of hungover driving, I was one of nine people in the room, most of whom were in the winemaking business. A line of 12 glasses — it was a blind tasting — had been arrayed in front of each seat. We even had individual spit buckets.

As Hugh Davies, the company’s president, explained, we were there to taste wines from a similar class and see how they fared against each other. He and his staff do this periodically. I had signed up for the Tête de Cuvée Rosé tasting, which meant we were tasting some very nice brands indeed: Bollinger, Cristal, Taittinger, Dom Perignon, and of course the J. Schram sparkling rosés. Most were vintage bottles.

Pencils scratched out notes and glasses went up and down — and sometimes up and down again — as we quietly evaluated these prestigious pink wines. Then we gave our rankings and discussed them.

I consider myself knowledgeable about wine. I have that obsessive geek thing, and I put a lot of research into my articles, which I generally consider to be worthwhile contributions to the wine press. (Indeed, one of those pieces, about efforts to combat urban sprawl in wine regions, had made enough of an impression to get me to this tasting.) But seated among winemaking veterans, I felt like a wine novice. Adjectives poured out, fine points of balance and herbaceousness and bitterness were bandied about, and winemaking techniques were guessed at.

It was fantastic. I love this industry because I’m always learning. I jumped in as best as I could (I will say that I introduced some of them to the term petrichor) and listened to Hugh talk about the sparkling wine industry, his winery’s changes over the years, and more.

As an aside, I always urge students in my wine class to be honest about their opinions, because I can’t tell them what to think. People disagree, and it’s okay. Indeed, wines that I loved came in last place for other tasters. Wines with low marks from me came in first for others, and not always the same ones. And all those tasters disagreed with each other as well. Everyone has a unique palate and sensibility.

Except that there was one clear winner, a complex, well-balanced wine with a rich, fragrant nose and a great taste. As I said to the group, I could have waffled on 2 and 3, and 4,5, and 6 overlapped, and so forth, but number 1 was an easy choice. Most of us put it in the first or second spot. When they pulled off its bag, it was the 2000 J. Schram Rosé.

The Problem With Cabernet Sauvignon

2008-10-25T12:57:00.000-07:00

If you were to gauge our wine tastes by our wine rack, you might think we have an inordinate fondness for Cabernet Sauvignon. When I went downstairs to get a bottle last night, a cursory glance took in a Ceja Cab, a Mondavi, a Silverado, and a Judd’s Hill. And I can only get wines onto the top half of our big wine rack. And one of the shelves is half full of class wines. There were no Rieslings. There were no Sauvignon Blancs. There were no Southern Rhônes. There were no Piemontese wines. And yet these wines are among my favorites.

Why don’t I have any on my rack? Because we drink them all. (We do have a bunch in off-site storage.) But Cabernets sit for a few years before they get pulled out. My abundance of Cabernet doesn’t come from liking it: It comes from never drinking it.

The tannin-heavy, weighty grape has its place, but that place is next to heavy meats, and I just don’t have the budget for steak or rack of lamb every night. Even if I did, I like more variety in my food. To my mind, Cabernet Sauvignon does not.

On the other hand, this means that my Cabs end up sitting on the rack for a while, accruing a few of the years they need to mellow out and develop. Last night, when I made steak for dinner, we drank a 2003 Judd’s Hill Napa Cab, and its fine-grained tannins had settled down to allow the fruit — red raspberry jam and strawberries — to gush out. And there were the first hints of older Cabernet in our glasses: a thin rim of red that was more orange than purple, a whiff of tobacco and earth.

It will probably be a while before I drink another Cab, and so they will continue to pile up. But maybe that’s not such a bad thing, after all.

Manresa

2008-10-19T20:47:00.000-07:00

We may be among the very last Bay Area foodies to eat at Manresa, David Kinch’s well-sung Los Gatos restaurant.

We’ve known about it for a long time: Food bloggers everywhere raved about it even before one of our own started dating the chef. But the last time we thought about going, we bought a new house with a repair list that made Santa Claus’ naughty-and-nice list look like a quick read. We had to wait another year, and our eagerness grew as we read each new glowing report.

We worried that we had heard too much hype. Could the restaurant live up to the gushing praise we had read? Yes, in fact, it could.

In our 15-dish tasting menu, virtually every dish was a little gem: Intense flavors, flawless technique, and elegant presentation. It’s the kind of meal that inspires me, a good cook by most accounts, to improve and stretch my abilities. It wasn’t just good: It was revelatory.

From the starting amuse of red pepper gelée with black olive madeleines (cleverly mirrored with a mignardise of strawberry gelée and chocolate madeleines) to the “Autumn Tidal Pool” (uni and foie gras in a rich broth) to the pork belly with soubise (an onion bechamel) to the banana crème with chocolate fondant and meringue kisses, we had little transcendent moments with each dish. A waiter would describe each course as it appeared at the table, and our anticipation rose to such a pitch that we stopped talking entirely when, after the amuses, a waiter arrived with a basket, which he boldly presented to our adoring eyes as “unsalted butter with sea salt and house made bread.”

One can opt for a wine pairing with the tasting menu, but we decided to pluck bottles from the restaurant’s extensive list. We started with a 2005 Stéphane Tissot Chardonnay from the Arbois, moved to a 2005 Tablas Creek Esprit de Beaucastel Blanc from Paso Robles, and finished with a 2004 Dönnhoff Schlossbockelheimer Kupfergrube Riesling Spätlese from the Nahe (as someone with a high regard for Terry Theise, though, I was sad to see that the wine buyer had opted for a grey market import of this bottle instead of Terry’s). A dinner of white wines might seem odd, but in fact only one course in the menu, the slow-roasted lamb, might have preferred a red wine.

We walked back to our hotel that night, warmed by the company of friends — meriko joined us; I had two dates for the evening — and the memory of the meal we had just eaten. Every so often on that walk home and at breakfast the next morning, one of us would speak the name of a dish from the menu, and we would all take a moment to remember and sigh.

So let us add our voices to the chorus: If by any chance you haven’t already eaten at Manresa, make your reservation as soon as you can.

Pork Scratchings, A Version Of

2008-10-12T15:55:00.000-07:00

What do you do with leftover pig skin?

I recently decided to make my own lardo, salt-cured fatback, using a large piece of pig that my friend Bonnie got for me. Misremembering the details of lardo, I asked for a piece of fat with the skin on.

Bad idea. You want only the fat for lardo, and so I spent hours cutting the creamy white fat away from the pink, leathery skin: I understand now why they used to make footballs from this stuff. With the fat tucked away under weights in the refrigerator, I turned my attention to the square foot or so of skin I had left.

By chance, I had been flipping through Fergus Henderson’s Beyond Nose to Tail. (Also by chance, shuna had been, too.) If you have not yet discovered Henderson, run to the nearest independent bookstore to fix this gap. It’s not just that he writes recipes for offal, the “off cuts” of an animal: He writes those recipes in a warm, humorous, thoughtful voice that is as charming as it is knowledgeable. Of the snails you need for a nettle and snail soup, he writes, “24 fresh English snails, picked by your fair hands (you will need to put them in a bucket and let them poo all their poo out for a few days before cooking …); or there is Tony the Snail Man, who breeds snails.”

One of the first recipes in Beyond Nose to Tail is “Pork Scratchings, A Version Of,” which Henderson describes as “A most steadying nibble.” I describe it as pig skin confit. Pluck stray hairs from the skin; salt it; let it sit for five days; soak overnight in cold water; cook, covered, in duck fat for 2½ hours; and store in duck fat until you need it.

No one considers me shy about serving odd food to guests, but even I might hesitate before serving pig skin confit on toast to most diners. Fortunately, David Lebovitz was in town, and a few food bloggers gathered in San Francisco to pay homage to the master of chocolate and ice cream.

Most food bloggers will put anything edible into their mouths. And sure enough, the guests reached out without hesitation for my crostini, which held reheated, crisped, and chopped pig skin — a gummy, gluey texture — along with an apple-onion marmalade. I watched tentatively as the bloggers’ teeth sank in: I was prepared for disaster. Instead, I heard mmmms and saw eyes rolling back. The pig skin confit was a hit.

I still had some left a week later when I decided to make a variant of the classic French salad of frisée, lardons, and poached egg. Instead of lardons, I reheated the pig skin and chopped it into bits. Instead of frisée, I used Little Gems lettuce tossed in a bacon grease/red wine vinegar vinaigrette. The pig skin bits ranged in texture from teeth-shattering crunchy to teeth-gluing chewy. But they were still delicious. My one regret was that the chunks, even when chopped, glommed together: I wanted them to spread through the salad more.

Peanut Butter Truffles

2008-10-09T23:21:00.000-07:00

I have been on a peanut-butter-and-chocolate kick.

Sitting near our office vending machine hasn’t helped. It is always stocked with at least one Reese’s product: Sticks, Cups, or — for one heavenly week — Pieces. I know these are crap foods, except for Reese’s Pieces, which are wonderful, but they’re close and cheap when I need a snack at work.

But as I chewed my way through these unsatisfying bites, I remembered a peanut-butter-and-chocolate recipe in my cookbook collection: the Peanut Butter Truffles in the back of The French Laundry Cookbook.

As French Laundry recipes go, this one is fairly easy: Make a ganache by puréeing peanut butter, butter, sugar, and melted chocolate; chill; coat in melted chocolate; chill; dust in cocoa powder. It’s also astonishingly delicious. I brought them into work for a “pollinated pairing, ” our team’s occasional Friday celebration of food and drink, and my coworkers slurped them down. Our community manager asked, with hand poised over the plate, if she could take some home and then asked, on Monday, if any were left in the refrigerator. Our group’s designer left early, but I slipped her a truffle before she headed out: She said on the Monday after that it didn’t even make it to the car.

So consider us fans.

I’m not, however, a fan of the truffle dipping fork. I decided to give one of these delicate little forks a try, and I am far from a natural with it. I put the ganache ball into the room temperature chocolate, and then plucked it out with the fork. But the chocolate formed an uneven coat, and if I missed or the fork turned while buried in the chocolate, I ended up plunging the fork into the ganache and turning it into a malformed mess. Only at the end, when I switched to using my fingers, did I get the coating I wanted. I’ve made lots of truffles, but the dipping fork added nothing to the process except frustration.

Renewing America's Food Traditions

2008-09-25T07:41:00.001-07:00

A casual look around our country’s food supply reveals little more than a mix of sprawling, commercialized monocultures. Plants are grown and animals are raised with an eye to efficiency and profit. The nation’s highways swarm with worker-ant trucks that shuttle our agricultural products 1400 miles, on average, between the farm and the plate.

But take a close look, and you’ll see something different on the edges: The last remnants of America’s native foodstuffs and our pre-factory-farm agriculture. These are foods with real flavor, not the stripped-down blandness of food raised more for shippability than taste. Heritage turkeys have enjoyed the spotlight of the food press, but these are only the beginning if you know where to look.

If you don't know where to look, however, Renewing America’s Food Traditions is a good place to start. The book divides the United States into “food nations” (a practice already in place at Renewing America’s Food Traditions (RAFT) the organization, which birthed the book). A large swatch of California, for instance, is Acorn Nation — a name that rings true to someone like me who learned about acorn grinding holes at summer camp in the Sierra Nevada foothills. Alaska, not surprisingly, is Salmon Nation. The southeastern coast is Crab Nation. And so on. The names evoke the food patterns of the cultures who lived off the native bounty long before semis and trains connected every point in the U.S. with every other point.

Each of the book’s small and well-written vignettes focuses on one particular “heritage” food from the food nation that defines each section, focusing on one or two people deeply involved in preserving that food. Some, such as Honey Drip Cane Sorghum, I had never heard of. Some, such as the Olympia Oyster, are treats that I already seek out. Lovely photos and simple recipes accompany each piece. And — you other research-happy food writers will appreciate this — each two-page essay gives a list of resources where you can learn more about the food.

But not where to buy it. This is my only complaint about this book, which could live on your reference shelf or your coffee table with equal ease. I can understand why there aren’t instructions for poaching leatherback sea turtles. But where do I buy a Silver Fox rabbit?

It could be that the authors don’t want to contribute to the shuttling of food around the country — the editor is locavore founding father Gary Paul Nabhan, after all — but it seems unfair to build up interest in these foods and then snatch away the chance to find them.

But this is a must-have book for any food lover who cares about the more interesting ingredients available throughout our country.

This book was sent to me for review.

Hey all, there’s still room in my upcoming UCB Extension wine class. Sign up soon!

Really Perfect Roast Potatoes

2008-09-15T19:32:00.001-07:00

I’ve written about my roast potatoes before, but after making some last night, I thought it was time to resurface the technique. They’re dead simple and super delicious.

Preheat the oven to 425°. Cut waxy fingerling potatoes — say a generous handful per person — into halves or quarters. Chunks of onions make a nice addition. Place on a metal cookie sheet. Sprinkle generously with kosher salt and a woody herb: Rosemary is an obvious choice. Drizzle with a generous helping of olive oil, and use your hands to toss the potatoes with the salt, herbs and oil. Using your hands ensures an even coating. Cook until the cut surfaces of the potatoes are light to dark brown, 20-40 minutes. Don’t stir more than once, as the sides touching the metal sheet will get an extra thick crust if left undisturbed.

Serve with a thick, rare steak. And if you’re going to eat that, you should also serve a luxurious Cabernet Sauvignon or Bordeaux (a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc): The tannins and intense flavors of the wine will stand up to the flavorful meat. I poured a 2002 Volker Eisele Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, and though its fine-grained tannins had softened a bit, the deep fruit and remaining tannins still held their own against the meat.

The Genius Of Zuni's Bread Salad

2008-09-10T20:51:00.000-07:00

On a recent rare day-off — a short calm before the twin storms of Spore’s launch and the re-release of spore.com — I decided to make a dinner of roast chicken and bread salad. I thought it a spontaneous idea, but any Bay Area foodie knows that it is Zuni Cafe’s most famous dish. And, like many of the restaurant’s biggest hits, the recipe appears in the must-have Zuni Cafe Cookbook.

Judy Rodgers’ detailed bread salad recipe, modified to embrace seasonal ingredients, makes a delicious dish. But that’s not what struck me about it.

The bread salad pairs so well with the chicken because of the texture contrast. Even a good roast chicken has only two textures: tender flesh and crispy skin. The bread salad covers the whole spectrum between soft and crunchy. Her technique has you toast a few big chunks of bread and then tear them into pieces from bite-size to bread crumbs. Then she has you toss your 4 cups of bread with 1/4 cup vinaigrette: a scant amount. The result, as she says, is “a mixture of soft, moist wads, crispy-on-the-outside-but-moist-in-the-middle wads, and a few downright crispy ones.”

Cooking with texture seems like graduate-level cooking technique, but in fact we all know texture combinations that work well: crispy cones with smooth ice cream, crunchy cole slaw with tender barbecue, and crackling crust around creamy risotto in a rice cake. By triggering different sensations, these pairings keep our mouths interested in each bite. Still, it’s one thing to follow established traditions and another to pursue and explore this interplay. I wouldn’t say that I had incorporated texture at a conscious level, but now I plan to and see where it takes me.

Spore has shipped! Our new website is live. That means I may be able to return to life as a writer: I spent today researching an Art of Eating article, and I hope to get back into the blogging habit. Thanks for hanging on.

Fried Rice Cakes

2008-08-23T15:08:00.000-07:00

I still remember the risotto cake.

I ordered it 12 years ago while having lunch with a friend. A golden brown, perfectly shaped hockey puck of warm risotto arrived at our table, resting on a bed of greens. The outside was crunchy and just thick enough; the inside was creamy and melting.

I have chased that memory throughout the years. Even at the time, I made risotto cakes — it’s the best way to use up leftover risotto — but mine were always sloppy and unevenly cooked. That lunch gave me a goal.

And I think, over time, that I have reached that goal. By now, my technique is almost mindless, though it can be derailed by taking away my customary tools. If you find yourself with leftover rice, you should give these a try.

Starting
The easiest rice to use for fried cakes is leftover risotto. The starch that leaches into the cooking liquid makes for a creamy dinner but transforms into glue overnight in the refrigerator. You can shape this rice into cakes without even trying.

But with some extra work, you can even use regular rice. I made a pot of Massa rice last week, and the next night I mixed in an egg and a tablespoon or so of flour: Add enough so that the rice holds together when you squeeze a bit into a ball.

Shaping
One of the turning points in my rice-cake explorations came when I decided to use a circle mold — a round cookie cutter — to shape the patties. Before that moment, my patties still had ragged edges that marred the aesthetics and varying thicknesses that created irregular cooking times. After that moment, I made perfect disks of goodness.

Take a cookie cutter, put it on one edge of a plate, and smush your rice in. Push it into the corners, pack it down, and scrape any extra off the top. Remove the mold, repeat around the plate, and then put the plate in the refrigerator: You want to keep that starch gluey.

Cooking
What better way to reheat buttery, cheese-soaked risotto then frying? You’ll end up with a crusty exterior and a creamy interior, just like that risotto cake I had so many years ago. (You can bread them before frying, but usually I don’t.)

You can use any fat for frying, but I prefer butter. As the butter heats up, I skim the foam off the top to make it semi-clarified. Clarified butter can go to higher temperatures without burning. You want enough butter to come halfway up the cake. Any more and you get a dark band around the middle; any less and you get a light band of cooler rice.

Once the butter reaches the right temperature — a water drop flicked in should sputter loudly — I add the rice cake. I let the butter bubble and pop around the edges until the bottom half has formed a nice crust, and then I gently flip the cake with a spatula. When that half has formed its harder exterior, I pull the cake from the pan and place it on a paper-towel-lined plate to drain for a few minutes.

Serving
A simple salad of crunchy greens is a nice complement to this rich dish. I like to serve this as a light dinner, but smaller rice cakes make for a nice appetizer.

A crisp, aromatic white wine with a bit of weight — an Austrian Riesling, perhaps, or a white Rhône; — is usually my choice for the accompanying drink. The acidity cuts through the fat, while the weight and aromas weather the onslaught of rich flavor. But you would probably do just as well with a lighter red such as a Cru Beaujolais.

Only two or three more weeks until my life returns to what passes for normal around here. Thanks for your patience with the long lags between posts.

UC Berkeley Wine Studies II, Fall

2008-07-18T14:34:00.001-07:00

I’m once again teaching Fundamentals of Wine Studies II: Sensory Evaluation of Wines and their Components for UC Berkeley Extension, and I’d love to see some of you in the class. If you’ve ever wanted to see if I can actually babble about wine for 2 1/2 hours, now’s your chance. It starts on October 9 and continues for six weeks. By the end, you’ll have a great vocabulary for articulating what you taste in the glass, and you’ll be able to communicate your likes and dislikes with confidence. The class is less about regions (though some of that sneaks in) and much more about analysis. You can read my detailed description of the classes in earlier posts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

This semester, given that I live and work in the East Bay, I’ve arranged to teach the class in Berkeley. I hope that means that some of you can take it who couldn’t make it into SF in the past. Let me know if you have any questions, and I hope to see you in class.